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Time for Cases! (Patreon)

Published:
2023-03-27 14:51:09
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Heya! Bailiff Jake here. The Supreme Crit is convening this afternoon, so submit your (BRIEF, puh-lease!) cases on this thread and we will bring you the truest justice.

Ever lowly,

Jake

Comments

Mason N.

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

Jackie

To the effulgent, jocular justices, and the luminous, sagacious bailiff Jaque, I earnestly beg for your assistance. In the first room of a recent dungeon crawl, my party faced a sphinx which, naturally, asked a riddle. If they answered wrong, the entire party would be attacked and since this was a mind palace, there was no way to turn back. One of my players wanted to immediately answer, fully confident in his answer (which was actually correct) while the rest of the party wanted to discuss what the answer might be, fearful that a wrong answer would end in a TPK. The player remained steadfast and refused to tell the party what his answer was going to be. In the end, after a heated and hilarious argument with a lot of exasperated shouting, I ruled that he could give the sphinx his answer and if it was wrong only he would be killed so long as the rest of the party did not intervene, but I wonder if I did the right thing. I await your benign judgement.

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, 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 initiate 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 friend made such a stupid decision? I humbly await your decision.

Namtao

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

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?

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. 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. 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. 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.

Jon Gravina

~~Dice Christ Confessional (question mark?)~~ I am currently DMing Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden and we are about four sessions in after taking an extended baby hiatus. In the second session of Chapter 2, the party was facing off against the Gorton's Fisherman, a Gentleman Walrus, and two smaller walruses (Walri?) pulling the fisherman's ice sled. Don't ask, it's a weird module. Anyway, our Swords Bard cast Faerie Fire on all three walruses. In a move where the literal odds are 1 in 8,000, I rolled three nat 20's in a row for the walrus' saving throws. Was Dice Christ on my side, or should I have gone with the Dice Devil and fudged them? My players still throw a good-natured razzing on any subsequent Nat 20 my monsters have rolled in the sessions since. My argument is this: IF I was going to fudge three crits in a row, why would I waste them on a Faerie Fire saving throw? Should I pickle those dice or put them on ice?

Alex Cannata

No court case, just wanted to tell you that If I Were You has been my #1 source of comedy for 10 years and I'll really miss it

Yashuntafun

Dear Most Honorable and Wise Justices and the respectable, workmanlike Bailiff: May it please the court, I would present the case of the Double-Dragon Drag. In a campaign I ran for some friends, I had one player who chose the Dragonborn species and the Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer subclass. One of the features of the Dragonborn *species* is resistance to damage of the type associated with your ancestry - in the players' case, they gained fire resistance. However, when they hit level 6, we discovered that the Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer *subclass* gives you the ability to spend a sorcery point to gain the same kind of resistance for 1 hour. We agreed that this was an oversight of the books, but couldn't come to an agreement on how to resolve it. The player believed they should get the ability to gain *immunity* to fire damage, but as a new DM, I was afraid that would be too strong. (The players didn't know, but a trip inside a volcano was on the horizon.) The player wasn't interested in resistance to another element, or any other metamagic features. We ended up buffing their familiar's abilities as a compromise, but the player wasn't happy, and still sometimes brings up how *I* short-changed them for going all-in on draconic features. So I ask the court - who is in the wrong here? The player, for asking for too much? Me, for being scared of giving them fire immunity? Or the RAW, for giving them a redundant ability? I prostrate myself before the court to see which way the the dragon scales of justice tip.

Ash

Also commenting just to say I love if I were you and will miss it! Excited for what you both will do next ❤️

Keanu DRAMAFACE

I plead to the court above courts, I send bribes of jam and flashing tits to the Zaddy/Zommy justices, and a big shout out to my boy Jake, drop him a like. I write to you about the incorrect saves clause. My DM has been irritating me by doing saves really bad. Instead of having a number in mind before hand, he will ask me to roll a dex save. Once I have rolled THEN he will roll for a character that he has given crazy stats for and then say I failed. If I PASS, he will then make me do a separate roll, that no one else had to do to make sure I fail. I feel like I’m being incredibly railroaded, but have no way to stop it. Please help and punish them

KoboldB0i

To the transcended justices and the Baeliff (if you're feeling soft), I present the case of "Closing the door on Dimension Door" I play a female brass dragonborn divine soul sorcerer in a 3 party campaign (including myself). Looking into the wording of Dimension door, I figured it was a big enough grey area when it refers to bringing someone with you as "targeting a creature" where it would fall in line with the Meta Magic, Twin spell. I pleaded my case to my DM about this cool idea to aid us in popping into the enemy's food supply barn to burn it down. After a minute of back and forth he struck the idea down. I plead oh justices, was I denied a cool rule to aid a small party? Or should my silly mechanics be stubbed by the closing door? I eagerly await your decision.

Kristina The Sorceress

To the honorable justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, and the deplorable bailiff Jake. May it please the court, I present the case of A Song So Sad. For my first ever campaign, I joined my friends mid-campaign. In character, they caught me up to speed on their quest and the BBEG. Not soon after, we encountered an accomplice of the BBEG. This accomplice was a Bard. The rest of the party had encountered this guy before, and took measures to place magical miniature sandbags in their ears to help resist any charms or spells that utilized sound. I, as the player, knew this accomplice and his attack style; however, because he was an accomplice to the BBEG and not the BBEG, he never came up in character. Fearing of metagaming, I did not take any precautions. The DM then had me make a wisdom saving throw. After failing the saving throw, he told me that the song that was played was so sad, it made my character “clinically depressed.” I was told my character felt impending doom and had to be played with a gloomy disposition towards the world, and this magical effect only could be undone by a greater restoration or remove curse. The DM never told me if and what spell it was, or even if it was a legendary action. I no longer play with this DM due to other reasons, but Judges, I ask you, was this penalty too extreme? In addition, even if it was a legendary action of some kind, does it warrant the alteration of my character’s choices and attitudes towards the world? (P.S. We never got high enough level to get greater restoration/remove curse, and we never encountered an npc who had and could use those spells on my character)

Anthony Drake

Dear Perfectly Splendid Judges and the ever so handsome Baliff, May it Please the Court I bring to you the Case of the Skill Check Scandal. I was Playing in a Curse of Strahd campaign my character named Ignis Fairwind was a human Oath of Glory Paladin who worshipped Kord (shoutout to hardwon for some of the inspiration) on our 3rd night I had to bury my characters brother who was another PC who died the previous session. I held a viking style funeral for him on a lake and made a prayer to Kord to take care of him and to protect my friends and I as we had to continue out journey. I rolled a religion check and got a Nat 20. After a fun scene of lightning crashing in the background, My DM asked for a Perception check. Something terrible like a 4. I got surprise attacked by some animated scarecrows and barely clinging to life I woke my party members. I ended up being knocked unconscious on the next round and had to start rolling Death Saves. A friend of mine named Connor was fairly new to D&D at the time and wanted to help me but was playing a fighter with no healing spells or abilities. He asked the DM of he could roll something to save me and the DM asked for a medicine check. Here is why I'm writing in. He accidentally rolled an atheltics check on D&D beyond. He rolled very well with around an 18 from memory. My DM caught this and continued to narrate how he picked up my character and tossed him towards the wagon we had been traveling in. I apparently landed in the wagon 20 or so feet away and snapped my neck causing a failed death saving throw. He did nlt allow my friend to re roll the check as a Medicine check. My turn was next and I proceeded to fail it and my character died. The DM and even some of the other players thought it was funny and proceeded through the combat as normal. Was my character wronged for being killed just because something was kinda funny? Since my friend was new and his experience was exploited causing all this mayhem? I humbly ask for your decision. P.S I was later reincarnated but it required another PC to sacrifice a soul if their PCs childhood best friend they were trying to save while in Barovia, however the campaign ended a few sessions later

CarlL

Damn that's a tough one. In cases like this you could always copy the Heavy Armor Master feat: Basically while you have resistance to a damage type and another source gives you that resistance again, you can take half damage then further reduce that damage by 3 (or even make the reduction scale with your Proficiency Bonus). Hope it gets on the pod!

Hamish Kemp

If it may please the Court and the handsome bailiff. A couple years back in the midst of Covid when things started to free up again me and my best friends of now 10+ years convened to play our campaign. However the session ended earlier than anticipated and we have not played since (mostly scheduling as we're all over the place but I may be at fault) Rather than trawling through the mountain based dungeon our DM had planned I instead zipped our party to the top via dimension door and fought the aspect of the god in this realm as per our quest. DM seemed taken aback and the rest of the weekend would bring up all we missed out on. Am I at fault here? Or was it on the DM for not shenanigan proofing his boss

Daniel Jester

To the just justices and the entrusted bailiff, I present the case of the Absent Grappler, Illikan Ninecount. I play an unarmed and unarmored Human Rune Knight built to grapples and shove with my +11 to Athletics (and advantage when using Giant's Might). I recently had to miss a session and asked my DM to play on without me. In our next session, I learned that Illikan fell unconscious several times ....and my dm rolls lingering injuries for each instance. In the past I've broken ribs, been scarred, and even lost a finger (hence the name Ninecount). But now, Illikan lost a leg and 10 ft of movement speed, making him practically useless in combat with no spells or ranged options. While my party confirmed the rolls were all in the open, I feel like such a drastic injury to my character shouldn't have happened during my absence....even if the party was playing him the same way I would've. I leave the judgement on the missing foot in your esteemed hands.

Two Deers Beep

Honorable judges Brian Emily and Hugh and Bailiff Jeremy. I submit the case of the poorly constructed character or the Max Minner. I Dm for a group of 5 friends and last year we finished our 1-20 campaign. We just started a new one up and one person made a character that while not useless enough to be a joke is useless enough to raise some eye brows. He is a goblin bard/ rogue 3 levels in each. He doesn’t do anything good and a lot of his skills sort of go to waste. He isn’t effective in combat but is fine in most other aspects. He keeps complaining that he can’t do anything in combat and it’s not fun everytime I tell him he built a bad character ( nicely) and he should just scrap him and make a new one. This has been going on for about a year and I have given him items but he just keeps complaining and being useless. Should I just kill the useless goblin?

Hufox9

May it please the court and titillate the bailiff. I present to you the case of the river cube. I am running a pathfinder 2e campaign and my party will need to swim across still water. I plan to put a gelatinous cube in the water. My plan is to have the cube form a vacuum inside of itself before swallowing a player from below, then promptly sinking into the water. I come seeking litigation on this before i whomp my players.

Riley Counts

Dear judges, lords, and lady. To the high king bailiff Jacob or something, I have a confession for dice Christ. When it was Covid I was in a campaign that lasted the whole time on zoom, and I have to say that I fudged several Nat 20s. As penance I have stopped playing dnd all together to learn from my past crimes. Does the church feel I may be punished more? Or is my time in solitude still ongoing. I leave my sinful soul in the lords hands

ali

To the most Honorable justices Murphy, Tanner and Axford and to the supreme bailiff Jonk, I humbly request your input on the case of the Thri-Kreen circle of the shepherd druid and their telepathic speech ability. We are currently playing a waterdeep, dungeon of the mad mage campaign with Brutal realism *( i.e short rests take 8 hours and you only get a long rest if you spend a 10day outside of adventuring). When this campaign started Thri-kreen race was still a UA but is now in the spell jammer book. Their ability states they cannot speak any other language out loud besides their Thri-kreen language however they can telepathically communicate with any willing creature within 120ft as long as they speak a language. This has been helpful in the dungeon keeping us silent as we sneak, making my Character Elbee basically a switchboard, relaying messages and instructions into her groups mind so no one has to speak out loud. In the beginning when wild shaped my DM let her telepathically communicate but has since changed his mind stating she wouldn’t be able to use that telepathic ability while in the form of beast. I disagreed stating she has an innate ability to telepathically communicate and with her being a shepherd druid she is also able to communicate and be understood by beast, regardless of their ability to understand language. My biggest issue is this being brutal realism I only get wild shapes back after a 8hr rest which makes me loath to drop the form early. This is causing issues with group communication since I cannot give my input on decisions in the dungeon while wild shaped. I respect my DM’s as we have all been playing together for 10 years and friends for 15, and we all also DM our own campaigns for each other. I as a DM would have let the druid keep telepathically communicating when wild shaped but we all have our own styles so I am curious as to what the high and honorable court Justices and DM’s would rule. Your honors I am willing to take any punishment given, please please razz me to your hearts content, yours humbly – Ali, lover of druids and the weirder playable races

Justice Bwr

May it please the court, the supreme judges who all smell great today, and Jack Hershimts, I am the DM for a party of 7 in my dorm at school. I have a player who wanted to play a cyclops named “cyclops.” He is a newer player and I figured out a flavor way to have him play, the problem is, his character is horribly built. He is playing a warlock with a CHA of 12, has no constitution, and is generally a detriment to the party. I have told him time and again that I can help him rebuild his character to be better in combat but he says it’s fine even though he is level 6 and has literally never been helpful in any battle or role play. Should I tell him to fix his character? Or just let its weak build die in combat? I humbly await your judgement.

qbull

May it please the court and the honorable bailiff (word on the street is he used to do comedy, how cool!) I recently had my players solve a puzzle in a spider-themed dungeon based off minesweeper: as they stepped on new tiles attempting to cross the room, spiders on the floor would either clear the tile (leaving it blank) or reorganize into the number corresponding to the tile. There came a point in the puzzle where there was a 50/50 shot on them hitting a "mine" (spider cocoons falling on them) or being safe. They chose incorrectly, and although they were not instantly killed, were still peeved at this. Am I in the wrong for having one instance of the tiles having a 50/50 chance of being safe or dangerous, or are my players overreacting to taking a bit of damage?

Matthew R

Honorable justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and questionable Baliff Jake. May it baffle the court. Our DM regularly involves his wife in our games allowing her to take over an established NPC. We agreed to it one time and decided we didn’t want it to happen again as she left us very confused and the NPC was nothing like when the DM played it. She regularly jumps into our discord chat about the game and listens in regularly interrupting our game. Should we say something about no one wanting his wife involved, or do we just put up with it so we don’t make him upset? We are at your mercy.

Moth

Dear eldritch and unknowable justices, and that wiley little scamp bailiff, I present to you the case of the nipples pierced by god My dnd group is an in person campaign of my bestest college friends and I and for the most part, we all play together great and love each other very much. However, we all have our flaws, and specifically our cleric has been known to be a bit of a power builder and someone who really likes to push the boundaries of their abilities in order to ‘win’. For example, they have instigated PVP, talked our DM into giving them not one, but TWO Tomes of Leadership and Influence, attempted to rob another player, and despite being a cleric of the sea, have also used their Divine Intervention ability for a lot of shenanigans, including bringing Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to life so we could install them as a puppet government in the empire that we’ve been trying to travel into and retrieve a magic gem from. (It did end up helping us and it was funny when we got to kill them later, so hey, can’t knock the grind) One day, our bard and cleric got into an argument and the cleric jokingly threatened to use divine intervention to get their god to pierce the bard’s nipples if they didn’t give in. The bard refused, and the cleric actually went through with it and they rolled a 3 on a d100!! The DM ruled that the cleric used the ability fair and square, and thus, the bards nipples were pierced via the divine power of the ocean. Everyone went WILD and the bard looked completely gobsmacked. They did end up being very good natured about it, and have since drawn their character with the pierced nipples and made jokes about it, so it seems like all is resolved? But I beseech you, oh crit justices, is this a case of two friends getting a little rowdy, or was it totally whickity whack and bogus of the cleric to use that ability to threaten another PC? Should I have stepped in, or perhaps should the DM have been stricter with shenanigans in the first place? I eagerly await your divine ruling. PS. I want the wise and remarkable justice Axford to know that my character in this campaign was a nasty little swamp goblin named Guh who was raised by a family of raccoons, had a raccoon companion named Deborah, and who was lovingly based on Moonshine Cybin<3

Katheroony

May it please the all-knowing justices and the ever-benevolent and always handsome bailiff. I play in a homebrew campaign with a group of colleagues I consider to be good friends. I play a multiclassed Barbarian Wizard who always somehow finds a way to break the DMs plans with the shape water cantrip. Recently we were fighting a terrifying giant bipedal insect monster which sensed our approach via a sticky substance it secreted. I decided to be clever and use shape water to freeze it, so we wouldn’t get stuck and could glide between its tall legs to freedom. My DM decided to punish my continued use of this cantrip for my shenanigans and turned my ice path into difficult terrain, and the whole party began slipping and sliding, and my poor Minotaur pirate made a fool of himself taking a tumble in front of the other players. Was the DM right to ruin my clever plan, or should he have let us glide to freedom?

Jon Poderdunk

I plead before thee, A court unlike any other! Help solve this mystery, Who was Leafy’s Mother? My friends and I were D&D first timers, with myself in the (hot) DM chair. Before even beginning, an impasse arose between a player and I. During character creation, one of my players wanted to be a Druid, cool I read about that, no problem. He added that his Druid, Leafy, was half human half bear. I told him no, and he rebutted that I told him he could do anything in D&D, which I do not deny. I counter-offered that Leafy could think he was half bear, have been raised by bears even, but he declined. I went on to propose that he could be the result of some twisted sorcerers experiments, which I felt satisfied the half bear condition in a practical way, however in response my player declared that Leafy’s mother would be a bear “all natural” or no Leafy. This was years ago and my exact ruling escapes me, but I do remember keeping Leafy’s parentage vague and it being a source of major contention. Will you finally uncover, The long lost identity of Leafy’s mother…

Larry

May it please the illustrious, megalomaniac, and truly beautiful judges and jake.... I guess.... I have been DMing a campaign for a while now and we just recently got a new player. A bard. I like to allow my players to play whatever they want, so long as it's in a published book. No problems there, but the new player took silvery barbs, which is basically a better counterspell. After using it constantly, every fight, for a few sessions I asked him to maybe find a different spell as it was kinda ruining my fun playing the enemies getting womped over and over again. No big deal usually, but silvery barbs just makes it a slog for me. He got mad at me and said that I was railroading him and ruining HIS fun by not letting him use that spell. Judges, am I being an unfair DM by trying to limit his silvery barbs? Or should I just continue to let my monsters get womped over and over again? I await your judgement.

Connor Rigney

To the unelected clerics and the class traitor J*ke, I present to you the Key Conundrum. I am a dungeon master for a small two-person party. We're running a low-magic, low-combat, mostly espionage-focused campaign set in a world of anthropomorphic animal beasts locked in an eternal conflict. A few sessions ago, a good investigation check in a train car got them a small chest with a brass key and a note that reads "Beware the siren's song." A few sessions later, they lifted an identical key off the corpse of a military governor of the monkey kingdom. Then, they found a third identical key on a Dung Beetle Witch in a cave. Here's the problem, I keep giving them these keys but have absolutely no idea what they go to or even what the hell that riddle means, I just said some stuff that sounded cool and ran with it. But now they've latched onto the idea that the keys are important and I can't figure out what the heck these things do to make all this hullabaloo worth it. Please help me avoid a future lawsuit and make me right with dice christ.

Kelly Roberts

Dear esteemed and beautiful judges and the less good looking but has a good personality bailiff. I love listening to D&D content: NADDPOD, D20, TAZ, etc. My very sweet parents take interest in what I’m listening to/watching and want to learn about D&D and know about my interests. How do I politely explain that all these shows are probably not their speed (too raunchy/inappropriate). Not blaming y’all but you did talk about Dragon genitals in your very first episode, so kind of blaming y’all😆 Sincerely, Coy in Colorado

tony bakov

May it please the court and no one else. During a recent dungeon crawl my entire party went down, after some incredibly bad rolls. They had almost win the encounter then no one hit for 4 rounds and some wieners took them down. During the death saving throws as I was panicing (this is my first ever dungeon and I did not want to kill my party), our paladin Aka God, rolled a fail and a nat one, and died. Our wizard however, rolled a nat 20 right after and came up with one HP. He franticly stabilized our fighter and with a look of desperation looked at me and asked if the time flows the same in the bag of holding. Being excited to see a solution I said no, time stands still (knowing full well as balnor once said, "it takes 10 minutes to suffocate in the bag of holding". They then took his corpse back to a priest who I had not stacked with revivify, but said he did have it and revived the paladin. My players all went along with this and are happy to avoid TPK, but I feel like it was transparent that we cheated, and don't know if this was the right decision? Sould I have let the dice christ kill the paladin, or was I right to reward my players attempt to save his teammate?

Declane Gilhooley

Honourable members of the Court as well as Jake, love bro. I bring youth case of The New Player. I am a new DM, Running Rime of the Frostmaiden since October. Going great. Until we added a 4th player. Since the player is also new I am not sure how to handle this player. They have been acting like an asshole, focusing combat when the parry clearly needs too rest. Has fought me on rules out of game and most recently been looking over the DM screen to see what I am rolling. I am a pretty nice guy and don't really do well with confronting people. I humbly ask for some godly advice

Joshua Daniels

May it please the court, the judges, and the bailiff, I present the case of the sweaty DM, the annoyed warlock, and the hand of Vecna. I've been Dming a game for the past two years for my brother and a bunch of our friends. During that time my brother has been playing as a warlock who collects magical sugar daddies the way others might collect shells on a beach. He now owes allegiance to a colossal jellyfish who reincarnates him when he dies, a demonic gun who claims the souls of all he kills, and a dragon who he pledged 14 of his own lives to. Every time a bad guy comes up, he just wants to negotiate instead of fight. Almost every item in his attunement slots is cursed. Over the course of the adventure the party has had a few run ins with the hand of Vecna. As part of the world, there is an order of wizards who make dungeons in order to keep magical cursed items at bay and almost the whole party was adamant about getting the hand of Vecna to those wizards, all except one player. The warlock wanted to go three for three and have his last attunement slot be the cursed hand of Vecna. I tried to explain that the party has literally watched it corrupt every other person it has been attuned too. The warlock had a sort of, "RIP, but i'm different," mentality to that fact. It almost erupted into pvp, where the warlock could have teleported away and attuned without the party catching him, but i stopped it. Then behind the warlocks back the party decides to sneak the hand to the wizards, and I allow it because I really can't do another voice whispering in this guys head without it becoming a full on one man improve comedy act. My brother the warlock was not happy about it and I got chewed out for hours after the session saying I should have let it go to pvp because the warlock would have gotten away. Was I wrong to stop pvp? Was the party wrong for getting rid of the hand? Does the warlock have too many dads?

Carter W

May it please the court and the astonishingly okay bailiff Drake, I am currently playing in a 5e campaign, and the dm and all of the players decided we wanted to use the alternative Spell Points option instead of the normal Spell Slots (this can be found in the DMG). We were all pleased with this since the spell points gave us a little more freedom when using spells. After some trials with spell points, our DM decided that the warlock should use a slightly different system, since he uses pact magic instead of spell casting. Without telling him, he decided that the warlock will instead take points away from his health pool when casting spells, using the spell points list to determine the amount of HP used. While this seemed fine at first glance, the warlock began frequently dropping in order to cast a spell. I have talked with the DM about our warlocks distress concerning this, but he still thinks the HP is the best way to go. Should this warlock continue to drain his life force in order to perform his class feature, or is the DM just in this case. I humbly leave the fate of our warlock in your hands. P.S. our party is still together and tweaking many aspects as we go, this has just been the biggest rut so far.

Zac White

To the beloved and hysterical justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, and the slightly less hysterical but equally beloved bailiff Jake. I am a fairly new DM and during my first campaign I had a player who we will call Candy. We'll Candy asked if he could pray to his God for the powers of a Demi-God. I told him if he rolled a Nat20 I'd allow it and sure enough he got a natural 20. I gave him a bunch of God powers. I'll admit I made them very broken. After a few session of him calling himself a God. I made a God killing devil. They had a 1 on 1 duel and Candy lost. I didn't kill him just took his power. Well the whole party got upset that I took away their Trump card. Was I right to do this or should Candy be a God? I humbly await judgment.

Vitor Magnanelli

Honorable BEATLES (in my head is bea-toes) may this case be of use to get some "OYYWN" (Beatle sound) - Recently I Started to play d&d and CoC (👀) Whats the best advice to when your party either is COMBO-ING or not playing the game (doing other stuff or just don't playing at all via interwebs) It's more of a opinion in the matter, how to read the room and create more "RP"or involving games? Should I seek other groups? Either to play or to be the DM? Truly yours, a Brazilian new naddpole fan! (Yes, come to Brazil) haha funny

Cain Brown

To the Honorable judges of the court, and the Juicy Bailiff Jeff. I present the case of the Twice Stolen Fey Dust I run a 5e campaign for some friends in school, prior to this campaign only one of them had ever played but they all took to different aspects of the game and seemed to enjoy it. Case in Point: Our Rogue is one of my roomates and he made it very clear all he wanted to do was get enough gold to buy and make “Fey Dust” (fantasy cocaine I put in just for him with special properties and addictive table) and become a drug kingpin. Long story short I set up a mother load for him to hit, he tries some of it, fails con saves and becomes addicted, our cleric 1v1 pvps him to take the coke and then he quits the game for “ruining his character arc” as he shouldn’t have gotten addicted. Am I the asshole for giving into my roomates drug kingpin fantasy or making fantasy drugs addictive? I humble myself before the court

Jamjam

If it may please the court, the hardworking justices and the hardly working bailiff, I present: The case of the questionable character choices Last December I played DnD for the second time in my life within a university game analysis course. I was excited, I baked cookies for the table and sat down for a oneshot where we all played premade characters (I was a gnome rogue, there was a human paladin, a halforc barbarian and a halfelf ranger) and it was fun until i noticed the halfelf ranger was using slurs when talking about other races, calling me a footscraper and later a female dwarf something i’d translate to “beard slut”. That second one made me really uncomfortable and when I said so, he pointed at his character sheet that stated the ranger doesn’t trust/like other races and said he was just roleplaying. i dropped it and the dm moved on, but it still felt weird. the only other girl at the table later also said to me that she felt it was crossing a line and thanked me for mentioning it, but both of us don’t really play rpgs, so I wonder: was I in the wrong for objecting to the way this player chose to play his character? Is casual sexism just something I’ll have to deal with when playing dnd? I bow to the court, hoping for mercy. PS: The guy playing the halfelf ranger was also our professor

LovelyLorelei

To the mighty Judges and whatever their capricious will decides that the bailiff is today I submit the following for arbitration: To what measure is an amnesiac PC? My DM for several years has a table rule against amnesiac PCs as he is a very roleplay heavy DM and sees them as extra work as he must come up with a backstory to keep them engaged in the setting. I came forward with an idea for a character who lost most of their memory due to a curse and I figured that I could get around his rule by having a written backstory my character could not remember but my DM vetoed the character saying 'Any character with memory loss central to their backstory is still an amnesiac PC' Was this ruling truly fair and just or was my DM letting his biases get in the way of an interesting story? I await your ruling.

Clay Renner

To the ever amazing justices and exceedingly average bailiff, John Hopkins. I bring the case of the DM and his NPCS, who are all dicks. I DM a game in world that’s a mix of the forgotten realms and Greek Mythos. One of the characters thinks he is a son of Ares and always introduces himself as such.(the player knows his character is not he just is good at acting) I always meet this with a snide comment of “if you say so” or something along the lines of “whatever.” The NPCs normally will not carry this attitude for long, but it’s come to my worry that I’m always an ass. Justices and John, is it wrong if me to always be rude to what a random person in this world sees as a delusional man? I will accept my punishment with grace. Thank you!

villager72

Dearest judges of the highest court and the other one, I present to you the Murder Mystery Mishap. Months ago I ran a murder mystery one-shot where one player was the murderer. He was leveled up against the party as they'd probably duel and I wanted it to be a fair fight. He was able to kill the other members and NPCs stealthily, which he did. The party however did not pick up clues or hints even though they were pretty clear and decided to split up in search. They thought it was another NPC and went after them with barely any evidence. Seeing that they were separated the killer killed them one by one and won the murder mystery. After the session, I and the murder player left the call leaving the victim players. I later found out that they were pretty upset that they lost and that they didn't get a fair chance even though there were multiple hints, even one that said: the killer is this tall, and gestured to the killer player. One of the players even said "the murder player midmaxed their character and was too OP" even though it was set up for a boss battle for 3 v 1 and they decided to not work as a team. So I ask, do you think I should have weakened the boss or was the party correct? I now await your judgment

Christopher Reeves

To the Righteous and Esteemed Judges, and also to Jack who's pretty good at reading out loud, I present to you the case of the 70% Rogue. In the first session of my first ever campaign, I had a DM who felt a need to teach me a lesson. Playing a Rogue, I forgot to check for traps when entering a bandit's camp. My DM informed me that I tripped a poison dart trap and was now poisoned. He then informed me that the poison could not be healed by any "standard means", and that my rogue would need to find a "powerful magical item" to heal me. My DM told me that until I was healed, my attacks, skill checks, and saves would all be hindered. Our group played on a VTT, and our DM used macros for all of our dice rolls. When we returned for our 2nd session, I found that all of my rolls were multiplied by .7 (reducing each of the roll totals by 30%). Here's the kicker though... for the entirety of the 9 month campaign, my DM never let me heal! I would ask him about it, and each time he would offer a vague response such as "you may need to find a ring" or "it could have to do with a magical statue"). I am pretty sure he never had a plan, and eventually just forgot about it. I ask you, was I wrong to want my abilities to be returned to normal, or did I deserve such a stern lesson from my fun-hating DM? Thanks, Christopher!

roolt

Honorable justices of the court and the bailiff who’s also there I guess, I have a case of my own bitter regret. I’m DMing my first campaign for my friends and we’re a couple sessions in. Because of scheduling we often have a few weeks between sessions and I’ll admit I don’t take the clearest notes. I had prepped a session under the assumption that all my players had gotten locked in a cell together, along with an npc who was on their side, but when I started the session one of the players insisted that he and the npc were both unconscious in a different place. I didn’t know what to do and so I laughed it off and just said “it’s fine you can just be here” because I knew I had nothing prepped otherwise but he insisted. I warned him of the fact that he wouldn’t have anything to do and he still agreed. The session went well, for the two other players, but the whole time I was nervous about the other player who spent most of the session on their phone. When his character was finally found and woken up, the session was over and we had to go home. Justices, I ask you is there anything better I could’ve done? I feel bad that the player didn’t do anything but what else could I have done? I guess they made their bed and then layer in it, but it bums me out. I am at your mercy

Kristina The Sorceress

To the honorable Supreme Crit and the guy who reads the cases. I present a case that has troubled me, but not my players. It was my first time DMing. One of my players was an avid animal and plant fanatic and so the first thing he did in an open forest terrain was make a perception check and he got a Nat 20. This was done unprompted, during the introduction of his character. I told them there was nothing special to see, and he was understandably upset — saying that a Nat 20 should warrant something. At the time it was because I was a new DM and I was focused on the upcoming battle and bringing the group of players together. However, in hindsight, I feel like I should have thrown him something, even if that something was along the lines of, “you don’t perceive anything and it’s suspicious there aren’t any creatures around.” Was I wrong to not reward a Nat 20, or does the DM have every right not to reward a Nat 20 if the circumstances aren’t special in any way? I await your decision and potential punishment.

Breanna

May it please the effervescent justices and Jake the enchanting bailiff, I present the case of the unsure old friend. This is not a situation where I was wronged, and I’m not sure if I have done wrong. I started playing in a campaign with my boyfriend as the DM about 5 years ago, we had a great campaign that lasted 3 years with a couple of buds that we went to high school with. When we finally wrapped, one of the other players said he’d like to try DMing next, and we obliged. We’ve been playing his campaign for two years now and we’ve done next to nothing, it’s incredibly tough to gauge whether we’re going in the right direction and he never wants to let us level up. 9 out of 10 sessions are just exposition or us just wandering around with no aim. Also, he wants to play EVERY WEEK. My boyfriend and I lament it privately that we want to be playing in a better campaign, and now the other PC (also an old friend) has been texting us and looking for reasons to cancel each week. Judges, I ask how do you get out of a bad campaign without being rude, or politely prod an old (but not very close) friend to be a better DM? I anxiously await your judgment. Ps, naddpod is what brought my bf and I together, thank you for everything <3

Michael Lewis

To the illustrious, humble, righteous and downright svelte justices and also Bailiff Jorts I guess: I beg your council. I have a player who loves to min/max to the point of always making really OP characters - they made an assassin/gloomstalker who was able to do a couple hundred damage on their first turn at level 10. I've suggested that in future character creations we do a 4d6 drop 1 for stats and roll 7 times then they pick which numbers go to which stat or if they roll utter shit they can take a standard array. They're not happy and want to do two lots of 5d6 drop 2 and pick whichever array is the best. Basically, they want to use all ASIs to take feats rather than ability score improvements. I think that some weakness is good as it gives the character room to progress and makes balancing combat encounters much more feasible - they just want to feel like a badass hero who can kill everything easily. I also think failure is often a bigger driver of story and memorable moments than complete utter success. Do we just want different things out of the game and I should accommodate them or should I be a hardass and put my foot down? im tired of being womped.. im sure justice murphy can sympathise... I await your decision and will accept whatever punishment you give me if I'm found to be in the wrong. Kisses and cuddles, Michael

Aryaman Kulkarni

To the honorable justices and dishonorable ballif Fake, may it please the court. I present to you the case of the gaslighting genasi. I'm recently beginning the process of starting to dm my first campaign loosely inspired by hot boy summer for 3 new players and 2 veterans. One of the veteran players, one of my best friends, pitched his idea as an earth genasi oath of glory paladin looking to get laid after a bad breakup. I thought this was hilarious (and still do), but when he started going into specifics about the characters relationship and breakup it seemed suspiciously similar to my own personal breakup that happened pretty recently. When I asked him about it he got snappy, saying "you're not something I consider when creating my characters". I was willing to just end it there and call it a coincidence, breakups are a universal experience after all and not something unique to me, but now every new detail he is adding to the character is something that is true about me in real life. His interests, aspirations, and flaws, all are my own personal interests aspirations and flaws. I've tried confronting him about it again but he's refusing to hear me out and just calling me crazy. His only actual defense is that his steed is going to be a moose and I irl am scared of moose so it can't be me, but everything else is the same!! I honestly don't mind if he wants to base the character off me, the part that's irking me is his insistence and refusal to admit it. What do I do? Am I crazy? Any thoughts regarding the situation would be appreciated 🙏

gerard

May it please the court and the sometimes looked upon fondly bailiff John, I come to you with a question. Was I alright for leaving an online campaign that was marketed as "gritty and realistic" for being too hard and targeting a player who had done nothing wrong. ( Not me ) The campaign was set in an 1880's setting where some sort of portal or whatever had opened up in the Louisiana Bayou and our characters were essentially hunters who would enter and bring back treasure from the zone. This campaign was essentially based around the PvPvE game "Hunt Showdown" which I found out after the fact and cannot play with my irl friends due to thinking about this DM. My issue was that, while it was based around realism, the campaign was brutal, we started at level 3 and the enemies were constantly dealing half our max HP in damage to everyone who wasn't our barbarian ( irl friend of the targeted player ) and that was even IF we passed the save. I left early on due to not enjoying it and not liking that the DM seemed to target the same player, a fellow rogue, constantly. In the first combat my 21 HP rogue was hit with an AOE that had I not passed would have done more than my max, and I still ended up taking 13 damage and was essentially benched the rest of the fight in the first round which was not fun. The targeted player was also hit with that AOE and after battle when my character, someone who was good at medicine, went to go heal, I had asked the DM what his rules on healing were and he said and I quote " If you don't remember the rules, you're out of luck" and I was stunned by that. Needless to say, I left a few sessions after that and blocked them, following the Wise Justice Murphy's advice and finding new friends.

Dan Healey

To the honorable judges, and the wonderful new part time Boston Justice, Bailiff Jerk. The case of the Big Baby DM! If it pleases the court, During Quarantine, my monthly game moved online and DM decided to make a new campaign with new characters (I was a halfling blood hunter named Jeff). The setting was a massive war campaign but was supposed to be a laid back game. During the 3rd session, we were aboard a ship when our friendly NPC crew started to become hostile, our DM narrated that they were all leering at us and then while we were all eating, they all drew their weapons to attack. The rogue and bard used persuasion and some intimidation checks to try to diffuse but even though one rolled a nat 20, the DM said they failed and asked us to roll Initiative. The Wizard went first and cast sleep at 3rd level to put some of them down, but immediately, the DM said it had no effect. It was at that point that the bard had this exchange with the DM, who we have been friends with for over 20 years, Bard- So there is nothing we can do? DM- I dont know. Bard- No, im asking, is there anything we can do to not have to fight them? It doesnt make sense. DM- Are you making an attack or what? Bard- Screw it, if they want a fight, let's kill them! DM- What! Did you say this in chat or in game? Bard- in game, im rolling to attack... DM- No! You're not playing right! That's metagaming! FUCK THIS, I QUIT! He signed off discord and then deleted our campaign on DND Beyond. The next day, the DM called the Wizard and said he worked so hard on this story and we weren't taking it seriously. He claimed we weren't suppose to fight and there was ONE detail we all missed that would have fixed everything but no one saw it. He also admitted he didnt know how Sleep worked. He then blamed the Bard for everything and called the rest of us campaigning for him to be tossed. 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?

Felix Principe-gillespie

To the honourable justices and Bore-liff Jake, I come before you with a case that haunts me to my core. Our group had been playing a session that would not end. It was my and my PC's last session and the DM and I had agreed my character an old water Genasi named Madden would get possessed by an evil orb, and flee into the night. It took a long time and almost every spell slot I had, but, eventually, my PC was almost out. The final obstacle was an underwater fortified net. Knowing the group needed the session to be over, I tried to use meld into stone on the ground under the net and argued I would wait for the net to move a little and could sort of, shimmy out onto the other side. My DM was having none of it, making clear the spell doesn't work that way and the session continued to power on, with no end in sight. The other players were deeply displeased. I hold onto this pain every day, and so I ask you, should my PC have been allowed to bend the rules just a little, just a little to end the suffering of the table? I await your judgment

Anna Green

Forgive me Dice Christ for I have sinned. It was my first time ever playing D&D and I made a grave mistake. I was playing a premade character with my own backstory in a game run by my partner at the time. My character was a tiefling sorcerer who loved books and didn't have much in social skills. While in a carriage going to our first town, one of the other players tried to get to know my character and I quickly shut him down, saying 'I don't know you enough yet. All you get is my name.' Not only did I just refuse to interact with my party at that point, when we arrived to town I asked a guide if there was a library. The guide said yes and I narrated that my character left the party and went to the library for the remainder of the day. This was our first and only session. I had never played or listened to anything related to D&D before this but my ignorance is no excuse. Dice Christ, please forgive my sin of being an edgy loner who didn't play nice with others.

Michaela Z

Good evening blessed judges & accused bailiff. This is the case of the Blessing of Luck. May it please the court. In my first game in 3 years. I play a harengon bladesinger (rabbit sword wizard). In a recent game we found some symbols of various deities on a wall, one I recognized as the Goddess of Luck. I touched it, & it gave me their curse/blessing. I can no longer roll 1’s or 20’s; instead if I get one, I have to reroll, & give the crit to either an ally or an enemy that they must use for their nest roll. The first time this happened, a fight ending critical hut became a 5, & instead became an intimidation check against a guard. Should I humbly take this goddess’ blessing, or is it an affront to Dice Christ to give away crits that were meant for me. I await your judgment

Brian Kleffner

May it please the court and Jack, I present the case of Arthur Tarthur V. Jealous Fireball. I was the DM for a campaign with a lot of friends that were playing for the first time, one of them being a Paladin named Arthur Tarthur. It took a few sessions for Arthur to start role-playing comfortably but once they met an NPC I made specifically to give him some side quests, he seemed to really like it. After a few sessions they even started flirting a bit. The problem came when I re-described what the NPC looked like (an attractive, red head half elf with plate armor). Another player named Imby said that he "saw her first" and began aggressively flirting with the NPC. Arthur stood up for himself and it devolved to Arthur eventually slapping Imby in the face. Imby then immediately says he casts fireball on Arthur, it would've hit the entire party and the NPC in the middle of the city. After literally everyone in the party got mad and angrily began rolling DEX saves I just told Imby "no". I moved on saying that a fireball in this situation was shitty and bad role-playing. Was I in the wrong for telling a player that what they did didn't actually happen?

Jenn

May it please the Holy Court but may it certainly not please Jake “Lawdog” Hurwitz. I present you with the case of the zoned-out rules lawyer. In my dnd group, my wife and I (both PCs) are often asked questions about the rules and regs of dnd because we’ve been hyperfocused on this shit for years now. A few months back, near the beginning of our current campaign, our DM questioned whether or not the fighter of the group got to attack 4 times when he used his action surge after reaching level 5 and getting multi-attack. He posed this question to my wife and I and truth be told I wasn’t really paying attention and just blurted out “Nope.” I quickly realized my mistake and tried to walk it back but it definitely came across like I was trying to bullshit the DM. I’ve unintentionally damned the fighter to only 3 attacks now and I feel terrible because in-game, the fighter is my twin brother (and yes we’re both kobolds). I beg of you sweet sweet court what legal matters can be done to reverse this precedent??? I splay and prostrate myself before you and dice Christ himself. Please be merciful

Tech D Rob

Oh great, glorious, humble, and fair justices, Murphy, Axford and Tanner (and first time lowly guest and all around unremarkable bailiff Jake...no last name needed), I have been running Curse of Strahd for my friends. They got into a battle in Argynvostholt and it ended up being a slog that took ages to finish, eventually the instigator of the fight, Vladimir Horngaard, was cut off from the group because one of the party members used an item that summoned a giant snake that is a 3 square by 3 square gigantic creature. I ruled it broke the floor because this decrepit building couldn't stand up to this giant beast and it fell to the floor below and began being attacked by spiders. The issue is that the rest of the party wasn't long ranged so they were no longer really involved until they made it downstairs in a few turns. My question is, even before this part of the battle it just wasn't fun for anyone. Is this a situation where I should have changed something on the fly or is that not fair to them as well? We've not really discussed our campaign at all since this day and I fear they may no longer be interested in Curse of Strahd with me.

Renee Wild

To the esteemed and honorable judges Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and that guy who sits a little lower - I present the case of the DM rolling for their players. For a brief period of time, I played at a table with a DM who established a house rule of rolling perception and insight checks for their players, in secret behind his screen and he didn't tell us what they were. He said it was so we couldn't metagame if we got a low roll. I thought it was an unnecessary rule, but I was desperate to play so I didn't make a fuss. It always irked me slightly that I would ask for a perception check, tell him my modifier and watch him roll, and just get an answer instead of seeing it myself. I ended up leaving that table for other reasons, but I wanted to bring this before the court - is this DM in the wrong for making rolls for his players? Or am I being sensitive about wanting to roll my own dice? Humbly, Renee

CJ the wise

To the most honorable justices and … jake… May I present the case of a drugged wug (bullywug) I play a bard in our new low level (lvl 3) game and our party encountered a bullywug situation reminiscent of NADDPOD c1. My party made it to the known bullywug cave to rescue kids and in a fun way to overcome being outnumbered by bullywugs I made the decision to strut into the cave and persuade my way to the king. It worked and i got all the way to the king and convinced him to partake in a drug i just aquired that made the users act under essentially sanctuary spell for an hour. I put on a great show that all the wugs paid attention to while my party snuck in to get the kids. When things went south, my dm wouldnt let me use the pipes of haunting to fear the king because I too was under sanctuary and causing fear is “hostile action”. Was my dm correct in not letting me play my grand flute to give my team more aid in the fight that pursued, and nearly killed 3/6 of us? Should I have been allowed to fear the bullywug king? Was my dm just strict bc he is my partner? Thank you for your ruling oh great justices!

Lucas

To the lowly justices Axfonk, Monk and Tonk and the ever honkly baliff from Amir's podcast, I submit the Case of the Rain-Walking Horse. I'm running a short level 10 campaign for my group, and as part of character creation I decided they could all choose a magical item or two. One of the players, whose character is a Cavalier Fighter, chose the Horshoes of the Zephyr, which allow the horse to float slightly above the ground. As the item states, the horse can also walk on unstable surfaces, like water. One day, while they were sneaking into a tightly guarded villain's lair, I narrated that it was raining heavily. The cavalier told me that since her horse can walk on water, she should be able to fly up to the top of the tower by having the horse walk on the raindrops! I didn't allow it. Am I in the right here? Should I have asked for an acrobatics check from the horse? The party all seemed dissapointed that she couldn't use the item this way, so I humbly await your omnicient and fair judgement! Lucas, Hater of Flying Horses

ChocolatePI

Honorable Justices of the Cort, and Jake as well. When our campaign first started the DM announced that they would run the campaign with little to no mercy. but if you want your character to have a better chance a way to bribe the DM was with art of the campaign and its characters. This put me at a disadvantage because unlike all the other players I am not an artist. So now poor character is target by every creature because everyone else has bribed the DM. I've asked if there is any other form of bribe I can give and I've been declined every time. Am I in the wrong? Thank you for your time.

Dakota

Kindest, most honorable, thiccest, bodaciousest justices, and dear fool Jank- I bring to you the case of the jumpy sorcerer and his magic hands! I play a blind sorcerer in an Eberron campaign. Our DM made it clear that we would get a lot of homebrew magic items, and that we could design them ourselves. As a sorcerer, I didn’t need cool armor or a magic sword. Instead, I asked to take extra feats in place of new items. This was all cool, but now that he has an Astral Shard item, polearm master, and warcaster, and a quarter staff he plays a bit broken. This build lets him cast a spell (from 10 feet away) at any enemy who approaches him with Extended Spell, then teleport with astral shard. My sorcerer has been called slippery, broken, minmaxed, and too hot to touch. He’s so powerful, he’s basically a bald, blind, Sephiroth. My DM is now considering not allowing my multi-feat jukes, while my whole party is reveling in their broken magic swords and ACs of 22-26. Is my cocktail of feats above board? Should I be allowed to zorp around the battlefield, completely invalidating melee enemies? Or is my evasive build too good to put on a powerful blaster? Please note that these enemies wouldn’t be able to hit any of the other party members, simply because of their insane armor classes I fall at the mercy of the court. Please be kind to my hairless, blind mage. Hopefully, he’s aerodynamic and slippery enough to slide right into your hearts.

Taylor Walker

May it please the court, and the meh Balif. I present to you the case of the the murdered cheater. I have been DMing a group of my friends on roll20 for over 3 years. Other players and I embrace terrible rolls and even have a prized golden d20 that gets passed along to the worst roller per campaign. There is one player that has caused eyebrow raises and sidebar text chains questioning the accuracy of their rolls. All of campaign one he played a sorcerer who somehow always avoided any trap/damaging spell while dealing near max damage nearly every encounter, never missing. He began campaign 2 as a bloodhunter and continued his questionable rolls. He got a little ballsy and ventured off on his own down to a basement while the rest of the party was investigating the main floor. Downstairs were several evil druids who all jumped him. I saw this as opportunity to make him pay for what everyone assumes are fudged rolls I ask was I wrong for unleashing a squadron of druids on him out of spite or were my actions justified. I await your judgment or mercy.

Dez Magner

May it please the justices Murphy, Tanner and Axeford, and the lowly bailiff whose name I can't remember. I present the case of the ignored character ending. We were going to face the main villain I had come up with for my backstory, during the fight an npc from the party’s fighter appeared and ended up dying. The following session focused entirely on the funeral of the dead npc and everytime I tried to do something I was dismissed. When we were done I told my DM I was a bit disappointed that I was pushed out of the narrative entirely, the fighter agreed, saying he didn’t understand why he got the spotlight. The DM got mad at this saying I should have tried harder if I wanted to do anything and that it was unfair to be dissatisfied with my arc. So I ask you noble justices, was I justified in my disappointment or was my DM right that I should have tried harder? I humbly await your verdict.

Renowned Actor Willem Dafoe

To the high priests of the church of Dice Christ: Long-time listener, first-time penitent here. I fear I’ve sinned against Dice Christ not just once, but that I’ve made it a habit. I’ve been DMing a group for a couple years and have adopted the practice of “banking hits” when I have monsters roll saves against my party’s spells. Sometimes, when a monster rolls a high number that would succeed on a save against a spell, I announce that the monster failed. Then, on the monster’s next turn, if it rolls poorly on an attack, I substitute the high number originally rolled on the saving throw and announce that it hits. Perhaps most appallingly, I have allowed monsters that roll a nat 20 on a saving throw to fail the save, “bank” the 20, and then use the 20 by announcing that they crit on their next attack. I believe this practice of “banking hits” makes combat more exciting, but my heresy weighs heavy on my soul. I ask you, O Wise and (hopefully) Merciful Priests, have I committed an unforgivable sin against Dice Christ?

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. 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)

Grisby's Pal

Forgive me Dice Christ, for I have sinned. Our table has homebrewed some mechanics for my cleric who has developed lycanthropy. As a werewolf my stats are pretty baller, so to counter it we’ve established a mechanic where I have to roll at the start of my turn and on a nat one I go into a rampage and have to attack the creature closest to me. Recently our party found ourselves in a small cave and under attack by a giant flesh golem. When the golem picked me up and began beating the other party members with my body, we decided it was time to skedaddle. Things were looking grim when our wizard used an ability to freeze the golem in place for a turn, allowing us to run away, but this freezing would be broken if the creature took damage. At the start of my turn I had to roll to see if I would rampage and attack the golem, thus breaking the spell and significantly hindering our chance for escape. Nervous, I accidentally rolled my d20 into my dice pile, scattering all the dice. The table couldn’t tell which was the one I rolled, so I had to re-roll, and I made my save. Forgive me, I knew which dice was the one I rolled and it was a nat one. I used the party’s confusion to allow myself to re-roll. I seek absolution. If it helps, at our next session we were with my werewolf clan as it was attacked by drow and the very same golem we ran away from. My mother has now been kidnapped by them, so I have to go rescue her as penance for my sins.

Lisa H

To the most esteemed judges and the occasionally esteemed bailiff, I present the case of the lock-picking badger. My paladin was guarding a caravan on the way home and failed a perception check. She discovered that the lockbox was picked, *not smashed*, gold was missing, and there were animal tracks leading in and out of the wagon. To make it up to the caravan, my paladin followed them into the woods to find the culprit. Was it a wild shaped druid? A werecreature? No. As my paladin wriggled into a hole, the dm described who she met clearly: a perfectly normal badger of average intelligence. Dear judges, I was confused. How does a badger pick a lock, let alone know that opaque boxes contain shiny things? My dm insisted that yes, this made perfect sense while I pled for his reasoning, of which there was none. He offered me a pity magic ring for this caper, but I left it in resignation. I returned to find the caravan left my character on the side of the road. Was I right to badger my DM, or do I need to chill out and welcome my new badger overlord?

Lindsay Davidson

To the venerable justices and belligerent Baliff, I bring to you the case of the quickie. On a beautiful sunny day some 9 years ago myself, my partner and a friend were browsing a local artesian comic book store when we stumbled across a very prominently displayed DnD starter kit. My partner purchased it and we decamped to our friend's verandah. None of us having played DnD before, I was browsing the guide (for no more than 10 minutes) when I was suddenly volunteered to be dungeon master. What followed was a harrowing experience of hurriedly trying to read the rules while being subjected jeers of "come on, quick games a good game" and "we'll learn as we play". Being a kind soul I obediently started narrating my friends coming across an overturned wagon with goblins. I was promptly interrupted by the two 'friends' saying they would run away. Flumoxed I looked at them, voice breaking and just said please don't. And after much discussion they agreed to continue with the encounter and fought the goblins. During the fight my friend died and they both essentially lost interest in continuing. I however, remained scarred. Recently my partner was talking to a colleague and once again volunteered me to run a game as I quote 'listen to DnD poscasts'. So I ask the court should I divorce my partner of 10 years and the father of my newborn child? Or was it my fault for not picking up the rules as we played?

Vinny Cigola

To the honored, revered, and respected justices and that other guy who does the reading, Jurk Hakwitz? I come to you with the case of the nod, the nitpick, and the newbie dm. The newbie DM (me) decided to introduce a bracer which prevented drunkenness as a reward for a pro-wrestling minigame One of the players (the rogue) ends up winning it. Later in the evening they see bar patrons playing drinking games the player then sleight of hands it to another party member and gives him a nod with no other context. The other player proceeds to clean up in drinking games and at the end of the Nighy the rogue asks for half of the winnings. The other player agreed but said the side bets the rogue was making on him should be part of the 50/50 split. A heated debate ensues while I step away from the table to use the restroom. I ended up telling them to roll charisma vs charisma and whomever won decided the split. The rogue won and still brings it up occasionally voicing his (in character) distrust of the other player for "trying to fleece him". Honored justices should I have let them have it out, or was the roll off a fair solution.

Ally

Dear judges of the utmost importance, honour and respect, and the guy who I hope you have on 8 bit book club. I present to you the case of the self inflicted NPC. In a campaign I've run for almost two years about 6 months ago the party met an NPC from the rouge's backstory called Midnight Blade, his vibe is he smokes cigarette stubs he finds in taverns, thinks he's the chosen one, and is a low level drug dealer. He is a useless shithead but the party have decided that no matter where they go they gotta have their Midnight Blade with them (or MB as they nicknamed him) so they convinced him to come with them playing into his dumb ego about being the chosen one. This was a funny bit until it started to hugely affect roleplay coz they spend so much time actively talking to this mean teen shithead instead of the NPCs they're meeting as part of the actual story. Even more so they take their downtime to train him instead of researching or training their personal character goals which they did before they met him. As a result they have a NPC equivalent to level 4 traveling with their party of level 11s, but because they take turns training him he has 2 levels rogue, 1 sorcerer, and 1 warlock. He dies in almost every fight and the paladin uses their third level slots to revivify him, I genuinely think a PC might die later on the campaign because they prioritise this useless shithead. My question is this, was I wrong to ever introduce this NPC or are my players being overly reckless?

Mad Dungeon Mama

May it please the Joyous Judges and the Boring Balif, I present to you the case of the Server of Suspicion. I played on a (now defunct) DnD discord server that started out as an amazing, West Marches-ish style world. There were about 25 active players and everyone was happy! Or so we thought. Though there were often live sessions, play-by-post were the most common types of quests run, as we spanned time zones from the UK to Seattle. But it is in these play-by-post games, and even in out of game role play, that the problem lies. Players would try to discuss strategy and other plans outside of roleplay, such as "Hey I have this weapon, I'll give it to you so you can blah blah blah" or "Don't stock that spell, I already have it." But more often than not, server "Mom" would get infuriated, making announcements threatening people against "metagaming" with promises of getting kicked out. This is also coming from the owner who would actively encourage power gaming. I argue, as a DM AND player, that this kind of discussion is absolutely part of the game and if you were at a real table with your friends, this would all be above board. Am I too loosy-goosy? Or to I need to tighten things down and be a stickler in future servers?

Tallerballer

To the gallant justices and plebeian bailiff of the Supreme Crit, I bring to you the case of the panther high jump. Our gnome ranger, Gnomeo, and his faithful panther companion Luna had fallen into a 10ft empty well, opa-Lassie style. Gnomeo climbed on Luna’s back and attempted to use the panther’s jump to get out of the well. RAW say that a high jump is half the height of 3+ strength modifier. In this case that would equal 2.5 feet (3+2 strength from panther stats) which doesn’t seem very far for the king of the jungle, spawning an hour long argument about panther jump heights. Our dear friend Gnomeo Googled actual panther jump height, and insanely, they can jump 15 feet in real life. Our DM stuck to RAW and we ended up having to rope and pulley system Gnomeo and Luna out of the well. Justices, was our DM right in sticking to RAW or were Gnomeo and Luna robbed of an Olympic performance?

Patrick Ferris

May it please the Court and be fun for Jake to read. I present to you the case of the Henry Cavill Head. I am the DM for a Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaign. The players needed to find Clapperclaw, a headless scarecrow, in order for him to guide them on his hot air balloon to the next area, but first they needed his head. When they found it, I had forgotten how the book described it, so I fumbled around trying to see what it was supposed to be until one of my players proclaimed “It’s Henry Cavill!” Thinking this was funny, I allowed it, and then did my best Henry Cavill impression as the voice for the character. Herein lies the problem. The party thought that the Henry Cavill head was SO funny, that they INSISTED the hot air balloon ALSO be Henry Cavill’s head, and that it would move on tandem with the scarecrow (who the party nicknamed Cavillclaw). Being the lenient DM that I am, I also allowed this, as it took away nothing from the game and seemed like just a harmless goof. During the subsequent travel between areas, I had planned an encounter where the hot air balloon was attacked by a Jabberwock. The party wanted the hot air balloon to have a bite attack. I said no. They insisted that I had already committed to the bit too much to not allow this. I still said no. This turned out to be a big mistake, as I was promptly transported to the raspberry patch and told to “let Cavill fight”. I ask the court, was I justified in allowing goofs until they became mechanical, or should I have allowed my party to put Henry Cavill’s beautiful jaw to good use.

Party Pat

To the ever effervescent and eternally epic Crit Justices, and that guy Jude. I bring before you a case of a drunken satyr, and a trigger happy wizard. In the latter part of a Mythic Odyssey of Theros campaign, my party of a satyr monk, Halfling wizard, and minotaur cleric, all had very powerful magic items related to our worshipped gods. The only subclass that is pertinent to this story is the monk’s, which was Way of the Long Death. At 11th level, this subclass grants the monk the ability to use a ki point to remain at 1 hit point when dropped to zero. Cut to our higher level party, prepping to go to the underworld and confront the god of death. Our halfling wizard had a powerful book of spells, with blank pages. He could use this book to cast randomly determined spells based off riddles provided by the DM. He was eager to test his book, as we were going on a perilous journey. The monk told him he could test spells on him, as he was confident he could survive anything, and it was a moment of levity before a dark adventure. However, the halfling and the DM giggled with each other before casting a spell. The dm then narrated the halfling unleashing a bolt of pure darkness, and stating that the monk dropped dead immediately. The monk, aghast, stated their class ability to keep them alive. The DM then proceeds to say the halfling cast Power Word Kill, which negates this subclass ability. The secondary tiff on this moment, was the satyr’s chosen god, the Charon-esque boatman of the underworld. The minotaur cleric immediately revivified the monk, which goes completely against what the monk would want in worship of their god. This immediately destroyed their plan for their character, and the table erupted into laughter as the monk sat speechless. The DM, then stated the monk would be switching their godly worship to the god of death, and ended it there. I ask, is the DM above board in making character choices that completely change the path of someone in the game? Or am I, the monk, justified in being super not jazzed about it. I await your judgment.

Jeff Wain

May it please the court, and also that one guy who guest stars on the show occasionally. I'm DM'ing my first campaign that's been running for over a year. The dream! I feel like I've threaded the main plot into the campaign pretty well so far. But, I didn't understand how to weave the BBEG and minions in effectively until too late while we were focusing on individual character stories. Do I need to be sentenced to harder prep time? Is there a way to keep things focused without railroading as we reach the end of the journey? Or should I just trust my players to roll with it? I stand at the mercy of the court. (A couple of my players also listen to the podcast, so maybe redact my name!)

Brianna

May it please the court, its honorable justices, and the esteemed or despicable bailiff (please choose one depending on the vibe of the court). I am a middle school teacher who started a D&D club this year. Last semester, we had 12 kids so I made the more experienced kids DM 3 groups, but this semester, I only have four students so I get to DM a single campaign for all of them. The kids that remain are all really psyched about D&D and two of them were DMs last semester. They came with custom characters, know a lot about their moves and mechanics, and know the rules really well even though they only played in my club. One child, the oldest in the group, let’s call them Cam, is a great role player and honestly keeps the party moving along. Last week, she was doing a rather unimportant perception check to notice some skeletons after scouting ahead for the group. She rolled and clearly got a two (shout out) but yells- YES NAT 20! Her party mate (a sweet younger child we’ll call Sid) said “I thought it was a 2”. Cam held up the die and showed a 20, doubling down saying “no? It’s a 20!” I let her have it since it really didn’t matter, but I feel it’s my responsibility as the DM and guide into the role playing world to teach these nerds not to cheat. I don’t know whether I should be confessing to Dice Christ (praise be) or seeking punishment for myself and/or Cam. Clearly, Sid is an ambassador of the Dice Child and is innocent in all of this. My hesitation is two-fold. 1) she’s 13 and this is her first time role playing and I don’t want to snuff out her joy. 2) I try not to be “teachery” for clubs because it’s a time to connect with the kids and give them positive interactions with adults. (Also she’s not my student and I only know her from this club). I throw myself at the mercy of the court and will accept any punishment with grace and dignity.

Cassidy

May it please the court and tease the bailiff, My players were fighting an electricity based elemental that had the ability to control people’s bodies via hijacking the electrical currents in the nervous system. Our chaotic fairy chronurgy wizard had a stash of drugs loosely based on r. cane (thanks Murph!) and hatched a hair-brained scheme. Upon getting possessed he convinced the oath of glory paladin to throw a yellow electric tablet into his mouth to and I quote “overcharge the system and flush the elemental out.” Of course I had no mechanics planned for this so I told him if he did it I’d require a pretty high arcana check to allow this to work the way he described. He took the risk and rolled a Nat20 so I described him channeling the arcane electricity from the drug through his nervous system and driving the elemental out. Half the table thought it was awesome and half the table thought it was insane and he probably should’ve at least taken some damage or something given that the drug had wild side effects other times it had been used. Nobody pushed it and we moved on but I was left wondering, is there such thing as honoring a Nat20 too much? Should there still have been some consequences for such a dangerous play? I humbly await the court’s decision.

Matt Leach

To the incredibly sexy justices Murph, Tanner & Axford, and the jealous bailiff Amir, I call you to judge the case of "New Player vs. Hero Complex" We are playing an RPG using the Powered by the Apocalypse system. It's simple, fun & super easy to play. One player, who is new to RPG gaming, is butting heads with the rest of us on every possible interaction with NPCs. He has to question every character we meet, no one can be trusted, and he is always suspicious that there is an ulterior motive. He often dives into leading the interaction before anyone else can get in, and will spend forever re-introducing himself, much to the annoyance of everyone else in the game. It's making everything slow. Going into a tavern takes forever and just interacting with guards or merchants is creating 5/10 minute conversations where the player just asks "BUT WHAT DO YOU REALLY MEAN!?" and never taking anything at face value. He wants to know everything about everyone we meet, and feels every character has some crucial role in the game we are playing. We want this to stop. I have politely asked him to be more trusting of characters he meets and to let other players take a lead on conversations. It will help the game flow a bit smoother, but it hasn't worked, and he says "but I am having fun". We want him out. is there a nice way to do this? OR can his position at the table be salvaged? He isn't an asshole outside of this game.

Muqtadaa Miandara

To the fairest and most wonderful Supreme Crit Just-dices - and our homely and cuckolded Bailiff, I present to you the case of the Jurassic World-Breaking Familiar. After 3 years of running a 1-20 campaign in which my players saved the world, toppled the binary dichotomy of the Feywild, extreme-home-makeover-ed the Nine Hells, and fought a god or two, I am finally playing in one my player’s campaign! He’s painstakingly crafted this world, has spent countless hours world building with me, and was super receptive to everything I came up with for my bugbear shaman (Wally, who is a very good boy in love with the moon goddess and plans to woo her someday). Unfortunately, I’ve since discovered that he was very receptive to everyone in the game, in a party of six level 3 characters (3.5e btw, not 5e), the balance is already strangely distributed at low level. I have a feat that gave me a bonded mage-bred animal companion, a polar bear named Mauritius who is useful in combat, and I take several flaws to gain the feats needed to have him be so useful. Many of us have animal familiars (a crow, a monkey, and a miniature baby unicorn to say the least), but most of it is just flavor. Another player from my campaign is in this one, and his whole build is wild, with several stats already at 20, a custom-built heavy-repeating artillery crossbow, and oh yeah, a fucking DINOSAUR. His deinonychus has four attacks, two fore claws, a bite, and a tail-whip, nearly 50HP, and has natural camouflage. The reason behind this over-permissive character build is obvious, my DM and my former player are best buds, lived together in college, started dating their current spouses at the same time, etc. But it’s really taking the fun away from the game to have a cool moment where our low-level asses grit and deal max 20 damage to some kobolds, and then get upstaged by this guy firing two fucking artillery bolts and then having his goddamn raptor kill anyone left over. Also, it kind of ruins the atmosphere of this amazing fantasy world with relatively low-magic, and yes dinosaurs are present on some continents but its just wild to begin play with one as your trained familiar. I've seen his character sheet on the shared drive, and he hasn't been forced to take flaws for feats or anything like that. Please, Just-dices, am I being a stick-in-the-mud as a former DM? Should I trust my player to balance the game now as a DM himself? Is my DM too soft-hearted? I beg you, see that just-dice is rolled for my table. I humbly await your judgment.

Sofia

To the illustrious Supreme Crit Justices and their funky little bailiff, I humbly seek your wisdom in the case of the stinky shrimp syndrome. I’m currently playing a campaign with my close friends, and my character is a multi class rogue/wizard. When we introduced our characters, I said it was my character’s desire to stay out of the public eye, and I made stealth checks in public to make sure I wasn’t noticed. At our first session, we found a mysterious potion. On a mediocre insight check, the DM informed me that there could be helpful effects from the mystery potion, but it could also have other side effects (no further details provided). Our party ranger/cleric did a successful survival check and found the mystery potion to be harmless. I figured I would take the risk of drinking it. Upon drinking the potion, the DM informed me that I now smelled strongly of shrimp. Permanently. I would no longer have proficiency in stealth, and anytime I entered a new space, creatures would know I was there. I wouldn't be able to use sneak attack or make use of surprise rounds. We asked about different spells for negating the effect (including lesser/greater restoration), and he said none of them would work. (We later learned from the DM that none of the other potion effects had mechanical advantages/disadvantages to them; only funny additions to role-playing). At the end of the session, the DM said that if I went down during combat, I would be cured of my new ailment. I formulated a plan with the rest of the party. At our next session, I would start a fight with our paladin and go unconscious. At that point, our ranger/cleric would cast spare the dying, and I would be good to go. After telling the DM our plan, he said that dying would no longer cure the shrimp syndrome and he wouldn't let me try to kill myself. It was an entirely in character choice to fix this problem as fast as possible, but he told me, as a player, to be a better sport about it and move on. Now, without my rogue abilities, I was basically playing a 1st level wizard with shrimp stink in a party of 4th level characters. After lots of push-back, he did say he would write in a way to cure my shrimpy-ness, but he was clearly annoyed by the whole situation. However, I feel justified in not brushing past it. He said the potion would be harmless, but the effect definitely DID do harm to my character. Was I right in pushing back against my DM’s decision, or should have I have just taken my shrimpy stench in stride?

Spencer

To the unforgettable Supreme Crit Justices, I’m here to present the case of the headache-faking fox fiend. As the DM early in a campaign, I had planned for the party to get ambushed by a creature called an arcanaloth and some of its goons in order to steal a macguffin. While most of the party took on the henchmen, the party’s bladesinging wizard took on the arcanaloth. Now, an arcanaloth is a jackal-like fiend that’s a high-level spellcaster. It has the spell “mind blank” prepared, which prevents its thoughts from being read and, importantly, gives it immunity to psychic damage. The wizard, naturally, had no idea this spell was cast before the fight and immediately casts “shadow blade,” a weapon spell that—you guessed it—deals psychic damage on hit. Up until this point, we had consistently described that spell’s psychic damage being just that: psychic, with no physical injuries. So, with the arcanaloth being as clever as it is, I figured that it would be reasonable for it to “fake” being hurt by the wizard. Round after round, the wizard slashed over and over, none the wiser that his attacks were futile. Meanwhile, the fiend laid waste to the party with devastating spells. When the wizard realized that his damage far exceeded what should be a reasonable number for the fiend’s HP, I admitted what the situation was. He, and the rest of the party, were furious. But it was too late. The arcanaloth killed the wizard, took the macguffin, and teleported out of there. The wizard managed to be revived, but there remained contention for some time over my decision of how feasibly someone could “pretend” to take psychic damage. So, impartial and fair judges, was I mistaken to deceive my players so? Or shall I await the clutches of justice to punish me for my crimes? I humbly await your verdict.

Big Baby J

I have nothing for the justices, but I'd like to bring forth to Dice Christ something that has weighed on my soul for some time now. It was over a decade ago, I was in high school. I had just wrapped up my friend group's very first campaign, involving a massive, epic counter-invasion into the Shadowfell, and we were on our way into the second. Things were going great, one of the PCs was occasionally under the possession of a cursed sword, and they were seeking out a dwarf who had been similarly cursed by a hammer. I built out a dungeon, some encounters, and an awesome boss fight in a room over a bottomless pit (as it said in my notes). They got through the dungeon and defeated the boss easily, with the hammer and the exit on the other side of the pit, meaning they would simply have to jump over a few five foot gaps to finish their quest. Now, we were playing 4e, which, unlike 5e, does not have fixed jumping distances. You divide an athletics check by 10 and jump that many (five foot) squares, +1. I, a young and foolish DM, decided to stand firmly in the rules and in my notes, leading to four out of the six PCs falling for eternity and eventually dying of thirst, leaving only the least two invested players with their characters at the end of the first major quest. Needless to say, the campaign fizzled out, and we didn't play again until 5e came out a couple years later. I come today to ask for forgiveness from Dice Christ for my harsh rulings and unwillingness to break from my notes as well as to share my testimony with the Dich Church: It ain't canon till it's said at the table, and even then, I think you can retcon something if over half your party dies from something as dumb as not jumping far enough. In the name of the 20, the 1, and the Holy Roll, Amen

Dr. Bearkele

A Dice Christ Confession: I am a nonbeliever. I roll like Murph at his worst 100% of the time. I desperately seek absolution, for I cheat on my rolls. Never on a nat 1, but if I roll between 3-8 during combat more than twice in a row, I get so fed up with losing the game of luck that I will bump up my rolls a few points just so it's possible to have fun. Especially as a fighter, if you swing and miss all the time, the game isn't enjoyable. Do you have any advice on what I should do to enjoy my inability to roll above a 9 better?

Austyn Donoho

To the gerrymandered appointed judges and the exposed ballz bailiff. We are new players and a new DM playing their first campaign. (Protection Paladin, Arcane Trickster Rogue, Stars Druid…classic, right? After dispatching some boars and some gnolls at level 1. We were sent to find and destroy some razor vine surrounding a sunken wizard tower. Enjoying the “video game” side of DND I asked to roll to cut off a piece of razor vine before we “burned it down”. Hoping to ask the local Fay to make it into a sword. I succeeded a dexterity throwing using the rogue’s daggers as gardening shears and we successfully and safely stored the root. The rub happened after several sessions when the Fay (DM) kept the razor vine instead of helping my low level tanky Paladin up their DPS. Shortly after I acquired a +1 two handed axe but I feel like it was to stop my “shoving” from my shield master feat. Am I in the wrong to expect help with my damage? OR should I accept my low damage destiny so I can protect my friends and forgive our new DM?

Anthony

To the dearest dalingest most beloved justices and the bailiff who's pretty cool I guess; may I present the case of the Perilous Panty Raid. My party was snooping around an evil priest's quarters, which eventually led us to his underwear drawer. We asked if he had anything cute in there, so the DM made us roll for undergarment quality (natural 19), and everybody immediately started squabbling over who got to claim the luxurious lingerie. We decided to settle it with a pillow fight, and the DM improvised a system of "pillow damage" to decide the winner. The battle began, and we gave our all. Luck points were spent, actions were surged, and the wizard even used some portent rolls. In an act of desperation, I decided to put a pillow in my hand and use an Eldritch Blast to launch it at the bard. I rolled, and crit! 21 points of sweet, sweet pillow damage! Or so I thought. The DM ruled that, since Eldritch Blast was a powerful attack even when it didn't crit, it would have exploded the pillow and shot at the bard with lethal intent. I turned red with embarrassment, and she started doing the math. Four measly hit points stood between her and the brink of death. Thankfully, the party thought this was absolutely hilarious, and I immediately burned a 3rd level Cure Wounds to bring her back to full health. My question is, should the DM have let me do pillow damage, or was he justified in sentencing to the rasperry patch?

Guy

May it please the court and displease or please the Bailiff depending on how we are feeling today(pulling for you Jake). I present the case of the Monk gone rogue. I DM a Wild West themed campaign where our party had just entered the mansion of a Water Tycoon that the Wizard believed had kidnapped her mentor after a group deception check. After acting strangely in front of the guard escorting them, the Air Genasi Monk cast Levitate(her Lineage spell) on the guard and claimed he had “floating disease” as a means of distracting him. Obviously this didn’t work because the guard isn’t an idiot and a tense combat to knock him unconscious before he could call for help ensued. Everything was going fine until they realized they needed to hide the body. The Monk said she would take care of it, and took the stabilized body outside. She then maneuvered the body over the manor’s walls, waited for the Levitate spell to end, and dropped the body twenty feet. I gave her that “DM look” but she went through with it anyway. There are no rules for what would happen to an unconscious body taking fall damage, because why would there be, so I described the body hitting the ground with a sickening splat. The Monk was pursued by the guards on top of the walls, who I had mentioned were there and used Step of the Wind to escape, while the rest of the party was caught in the manor and imprisoned. At the end of the session the Monk claimed I should have rolled damage because an unconscious body is actually better at falling from certain heights than a conscious one. I reluctantly agreed and didn’t roll enough to kill him, but decided to resented death saves. He died anyway, and even if he had lived I don’t think anything would have changed because the guards still saw her run away after a dude was dropped over a wall. My question for you is this; what should happen when an unconscious person takes fall damage? There are no specific rules like there are for melee and ranged attacks. Also, less importantly, what should I do about this player?

Magic zur

To the supreme crit justices and Jill's hubby? This is the case of awful siblings. It all started when I was listening to your guys first campaign and another d&d podcast. I was really hoping to pitch this to my siblings who at the time ages range from 13,9, and 5 I was 17 at time. I first tried to look up the rules and realized there was a lot. So after thinking and listening to the podcast grow. I had a some what Idea to make my own ver, of d&d. It was god awful but when I did get my siblings to play we actually had a fun time. So I invested money on the 3 books and TONS of dice. So when things were good for me I actually started to make a actual word with backstorys and problems. Then my 14 and 10 year old siblings at the time. NEVER PLAYED WITH ME AGAIN. After putting hours of time and work in to characters and good ish money in to it. I probably played with the youngest sister who I had to pitch D&D as bigger kid ver of lol dolls once . 🤷. I await the the courts ruling and punishment if brought on to me.

SkyGuy

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

Avery Woolard

May it please the emaculent Supreme Justices and the whatever he is this week bailiff, I present the case of the dimension door table top. My lovely wife was dming the frozen sick campaign for me and our friends ❤️. Me a grugg fighter, friend other animal race characters. We got all the way through the whole campaign to the mini big bad at the end and nobody had anything that could hurt him, aka magical damage or certain metal type weapon, we tried everything but had one party member down and the rest on deaths door. So my character had only a dimension door scroll in his pouch and a slippery idea. I used the dimension door to go 300 feet up above the castle, which was right next to the ocean, and squared down yelled " PUSH HIM THROUGH THE DOOR." My fighter, a bunnyfolk, picked up on the table top and did so by grappling him and dragging him through. Poof bad guy gone away from us we run away. Survive and get what we came for. Would you have allowed said cool play or said rules as written. I am at you with bended knee.

Travis Perkins

To the honourable Justices, and Jake, who by popular vote has the right to judge in Perth, I bring you the case of the deserved death. I'm the DM for a campaign that's been going for over a year. We're playing a heavily modified version of Rime of the Frostmaiden. My players had just escaped from an encounter with a blind, ANCIENT WHITE DRAGON (Chaotic Evil, challenge rating 20). The dragon rolled perception (+13) with disadvantage to detect the party in her lair, and they managed to escape. At level 4, the encounter was supposed to be the party running and hiding, but a high perception gave then plenty of warning and they were able to leave before the dragon arrived. As we started packing up to end the session, the rogue decided that they were going to sneak back to the Dragons lair. They made 3 stealth checks against the Dragons disadvantaged perception, making the check each time (I should note that the rogue is not optimised they have a -1 to DEX) and then saved when they got within 120 feet from Dragon Fear. They then announced that they were going to climb onto the Dragons back and ride her back to her main lair, as they were just in a temporary storage ship. I rolled and the dragon obviously noticed someone climbing onto her back. The dragon bucked them off, and they claimed that they were the grandchild of the Dragons deceased rider, who's body is still strapped into the saddle on the Dragons back. What I should have done is stopped the session there and returned next time, instead I ruled that they'd confused the dragon so much that the dragon let them leave. Was I wrong to not severely punish my player, or is it okay to let things like this drop. I'll note that we had people waiting for ubers and otherwise ready to leave while me and this one player were still playing. PS, saw you in Perth. And you've met the player in question. So judge harshly please.

Rae Weiss

to the honorable judges and the (insert appropriate adjective here) balif: my d&d party was arrested in a war-torn town. we befriended two of the werewolf guards (armin and armon) and promptly became invested in their torrid love triangle with a third werewolf named kyle, who canonically looks like matthew gray gubler. that happened two years ago in real-time and our party has moved on. however, in the last session, our monk/barbarian (who joined the party after the above event) told us about a dream sequence he had where he was fighting in that same war-torn town and he fucking punched armin, armon, and kyle to death in one fell punch. how do we make this against the geneva conventions. thank you

PJ

Praise be to the Honorable Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner. And of course the hard-working, benevolent Bailiff Hurwitz. I present the case of the Disguised Derriére Disturber. Our main characters are the DM, our Warlock "Lefty", my Druid "Daru", and the rest of our party. Towards the end of our last session, we were winding down after a brutal slugfest of a battle, finally settling down for a long rest (very much needed, most of us having burned all of our spell slots.) We take shifts for an overnight watch, and hit the hay. Now the shenanigans start. Please keep mind we're all pretty toasty IRL, Lefty being being the most inebriated. Lefty says he wants to use Disguise Self to impersonate Daru, then pulls his pants down, begins fingering his butthole by the campfire, and wakes everyone up -- his thought being everyone will think it's actually Daru doing this. DM states that no one would have to roll an investigation check, nor Lefty a Deception check, since it's obvious that Daru is also waking up at the same time as the rest of the party. Lefty is upset, as he really wants to roll deception in an attempt to fool the party and have a "who's who" evil-twin kind of guessing game. I make the point that Daru has never displayed anything close to this behavior before, so of course it'll fail. He's an old orc druid who would con people with little scams, not a red-light district worker. Anyways I cast Thorn Whip on Lefty's wang for a few points of damage, and Lefty continues to be upset that his trick wasn't given any chance to succeed. DM also nullified our Long Rest, saying it was interrupted by Lefty and some minor combat -- but after the entire party's immediate ire towards Lefty, DM relented saying we could get back to sleep for a longer period and get the full benefit. So I ask you, esteemed Judges and Bailiff of the highest order, should our DM have let Lefty roll for his derriére deception?? Or was he in the right by saying it was doomed from the start? And was the DM right in first nullifying our long rest before we swayed him? Thanks all, love ya gang! PJ

Zed

New Zealander who is finally awake for one of these! Dear honorable justices and (patronising) big man baliff. I present the case of the Impossibly Basic Boat. My friend was running a homegrown campaign set in a world based on a heightened pre-colonial Aotearoa (New Zealand). I played a manic Ork artificer named Bikky Badfrag (Bik for short). During down time one session I asked if, to prepare for a small side quest, I could build us a canoe. The DM scoffed and said it's not possible to build a boat in a single day. I politely but firmly argued that I have been allowed to build far more complicated magic items in much less time. He agreed to let me roll. I used my abilities and got a 34 tools check. My glee was cut short by the dm saying that wasn't high enough. Excuse me??? Your honors, I plead that surely in a world where one can build a fortress that materializes out of a cube, one could build a basic ass three seater boat in 8 hours?? I humbly await your judgment. P.s. later in the campaign I was allowed to build a magic flying boat with any spell stored in it. I passive aggressively consulted him on literally every 5e spell before deciding

Jessica

I address this not to the court but to the church because this is not a case, but a confession. I am running my first campaign and we are 7 sessions in. The players have been crushing it and since we are all pretty new we've just been learning together. At our last session, I had a pretty intense encounter planned for them with a Drider. As the encounter progressed it became very clear that I did not balance it right and they were all going to die. I tried to fix it by having the Drider encourage them to run because she could eat the other slain combatants, but they didn't do it! So I broke some rules. I simply could not let them die, they worked so hard on their characters and if I'm being honest I've got way too much story planned. I surreptitiously took some health off the drider and straight-up lied about a roll. Not sure if this is like a catholic thing, but does this religion have that thing where I can do stuff and not be guilty anymore? If so, lay it on me, I would love some of that sweet sweet forgiveness baby.

Jack el destripador

I bring a witnessing of Dice Christ’s greatness before the high Priests. A couple months ago, after a long time of consuming D&D media like NADDPOD and D20, I finally got two friends to run a game with me. In the first session they traveled along a road where they would get ambushed my four goblins (typical session 1 things). And in the first round of combat, I narrated that two goblins charge forward and make attacks. I rolled both attacks simultaneously and, lo and behold, I had rolled 2 nat 20s. My first ever roll in D&D. I knew in that moment I was where I was supposed to be, and that Dice Christ was welcoming me to the table. Thank you for hearing my story.

HaysForHorses

May it please the all-powerful justices and effect Jake in whatever way the justices see fit this week. I offer up the case of the Dead Dad Debacle. It was my first time playing dnd with a new group where I only knew 1 person (the DM). For context, my character was a disgraced Goliath paladin who had failed to protect his father, 20 years ago, during a gnomish overthrow of our kingdom (tee-hee-ing bastards). Our first adventure took us through a cold mountain passageway that I told the party “reminded me of my old home.” On mention of this, my DM asked me to roll a Wisdom saving throw as I “grappled with the memories of my father.” I went along with it originally as it seemed like potential role play fodder. However, after 6 of these checks with seemingly no effect, I mentioned to the DM that this was feeling a bit excessive. After some back and forth, I mentioned how my father had died in real life when I was of a similar age and I wasn’t constantly grappling with these thoughts 6 times per hour, but he insisted that this was different and “important for the character.” I ask of you judges, was the dm right to enforce these “role play moments” or should I be able to use some real world experience to inform some role playing choices? I thank you for your time and consideration. P.S. sorry Murph but we are still good friends to this day and got matching 2-crew tattoos before seeing your NYC live show last year :)

Fuzzboxx

Hello Beautiful Judges and equally if not more beautiful Bailiff Jack. 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 weren'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 had 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 decision?

Elliot Sitford

To the high supreme mega crit justices and naughty lil bailiff. I humbly ask for your judgement, was I too harsh on a player when he, nearing the end of the session decided to turn around and murder the child they had been protecting in a purge type situation. After I asked him are you sure, he laughed and said yes. After rolling an attack killing the child and damaging the player holding the child. Laughing some more. I told him that this happened and there will be mental health consequences as I ended the session. He in the next session asked if he could undo what he did. “It was a joke” I told him no and that he now how changed alignment and his sword now has a bloodlust or who takes damage. Was this too harsh? I humbly wait your judgement

Lilyannifer

I humbly present a player conundrum to the esteemed Justices and Bailiff. I play a game of Primal Quest, which has a nifty spellcasting system. You have arcane focii, each is associated with a word. (An example, I gave my character a soapstone amulet with the tag "heat" and have used it variably to burn a giant alligators tongue and make it run away, to warm the bones of an elderly village leader to comfort him, to suck the warmth from an enemy to slow it down.) We picked up a new player who also chose a spellcaster and he insists that all his effects come from his bag of magic hallucinatory shrooms. I get the rp aspect, it fits his character, but we're really clashing over sort of the essential nature of magic in our world! The book describes the arcane focus system as a way to create effects which could be reproducible by various levels of effort without actually doing all of those effort-ful things. If the magic is just mushrooms, where is the joy? Help me get over my grumpiness, please! I need convincing that my magic and his "magic" can coexist.

Martian

To the arbiters of Dice Christ's will, who's authority I only recognize until I pull a Martin Luther on y'all's asses and split the church, I humbly beseech thee to hear my confession. I am a new DM running a homebrew-ish game, where I am including a lot of the homebrew items I have made. One such item, was the Mimic of Holding which is probably exactly what you think it is. A bag of holding that is also a pet mimic. One of the draw backs of the bag however, is that if a living creature were to die inside of it, a random mimic from a table I made will be spawned from it. Some of which are incredibly powerful. Now I made sure to tell my group this but the very first session one of them trapped a Blüd Pixie in it and told it that it is food. Long story short, a Giant Mimic spawned in the middle of the night, hid itself as a table and nearly obliterated the party. Now the tank is traumatized and can't be near tables while the rogue is wracked with guilt for feeding MOH in the first place. However, I know the blame truly rests on my shoulders for giving such an item to a level 3 party in the first place. Please redeem me of my sins 🙏🏾

Rueben Winter

May it please the court and the lowly but rugged and handsome bailiff. I submit for approval the case of the fallen T-Rex. My friends and I were playing DnD near the end of a multi year campaign and were in a fight that would lead to its final stage. During the fight, our artificer used a Polymorph spell to transform into a Tyrannosaurus Rex, but was knocked prone a few turns later. When it came back to the artificer’s turn our dm claimed that since a T-Rex’s arms were so small and useless, it couldn’t use them to help itself up. He then claimed that because of this, a prone T-Rex could never stand back up and would eventually die of starvation. Because of this claim he then said that the prone T-Rex artificer was effectively dead, and the Polymorph spell would end. Me and the artificer looked at each other in disbelief and both voiced our displeasure in the ruling, claiming that it wasn’t realistic and even going so far as to show myself standing up off the ground without the use of my arms. The DM relented slightly and said the artificer could remain in Tyrannosaurus form, but would be stuck in the prone position while the spell was active, effectively neutering his combat capability. Despite this compromise, me and the artificer still believe the ruling to be unrealistic at best. Were we justified in countering the DM’s argument in dinosaur biology? I await your fair and honest judgement.

anniemurphs

To the most mellifluous Judges Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the ever patient Baliff (or judge if we're in Boston) Jake: May It Please The Court, I bring to you a case of the Witty Rogue: I'm playing a lvl 3 Rogue in a Witchlight campaign w/ some new friends (s/o to the Nelsonettes). Our party is going to the Library of Knowledge, Hoskelu (for visual, think DreamWorks' "El Dorado"). In order to be a let into the library, we had to go through some trials. In one of the rooms was a sword in the center and an inscription on the wall that said "Speak My Name." In a quick act of wit and goofery I said "My Name," to which our dm told me to roll a persuasion check "against the dm". Now, I knew it was a joke, but I did roll a 25 on the check. This did not apparently solve the riddle, though we got out just fine. Judges I am at an impasse. I think that since I rolled a 25 persuasion that I should've gotten somewhere with that, but also kinda think, because it was so stupid, that maybe something in the room should've attacked me. What say you? Forever thankful for the fact I was able to see The Croissanting live, Annie (ie. the girl who dressed as Bukvar if he were a book but a human @ the Boston show)

Parker Collins

To the prestigious and ever honorable Judges, Murphy, Tanner, & Axford and the bailiff who is there i guess. I come to you today with the case of Sister May I? i am the forever DM for my group of 6-8 players but i am far from an expert in all thing TTRPG. I am finishing up a home brew 5e Pokemon game and looking to start a new 5e campaign i told the players and started doing character creation when available. I told the other players i wasnt doing any Tieflings among other races because i didnt know enough about the races to give them a good experience in game. My sister who is in our group and had an idea a while ago for a character who is a Tiefling warlock whos patron is also their demonic parent, cool idea i just dont know much about Tieflings so dont @me if anything i say is wrong. My sister changes her idea to be a Tiefling Bard going off of the song The Devil Went Down To Georgia. I told her i was not allowing Tieflings in my game but if she really wanted to play it i would allow it i just needed to do some more research on the race. She then got upset with me and said “You just never said that you weren’t allowing them to me, bc even my original idea was a tiefling. If that was the case I wouldn’t have kept building on my other idea. Just let me know bc there’s very little else in DnD that really speaks to me so I’ll need to start from scratch on ideas.” I then responded that i wasnt trying to argue and had even just told her i would allow it, i tried to tell her with the number of race class and subclass options in D&D its insane that nothing else “speaks to her” and i told her that our group was just starting to get serious and remain in character most of the session so i needed more justification for a character concept then wanting to make a Devil Went Down To Georgia joke in a world where Gorgia doesn’t exist. She the told me not to worry about it and to do whatever i want in my game and i believe she doesnt plan on participating. So i ask was i wrong? should i have left it alone and not stood up for myself when she continued to argue after i had given in or am i just overreacting, i am prepared to accept any punishment the court deems fit i humbly await your judgment.

Michael LaVecchia

To the Honorable Justices and. I present the case of watery invisibility. My party was in combat near a waist deep pond and the lastenemy alive (who we really didn't want to get away and call for reinforcements) cast invisibility on them self and presumably ran away. The next player in initiative asked if they would be able to see the enemy moving through the water because of the ripples around them or wet footprints they left behind and got a firm and immediate 'no' from the DM. The player then asked if they could at least roll a perception check to see any signs of the enemy in the water and received another immediate 'no,' arguing that one of our PCs relied heavily on invisibility and if he allowed that then any bad guy could do the same to that PC. The party agreed that was fine and I even piped up that they could have done that all along anyway, but the DM still said no. This led to reinforcements arriving later in the dungeon and us being trapped inside with no way out. Should our DM have allowed a perception to see not the invisible enemy, but the interaction of the enemy with the water or environment around it? My party and I await the judgemental of the court and any punishment we shall face if found at fault.

Casey Miles

May it please the Justices Axeford, Tanner, and Murphy and also the bailiff I guess. I present the case of the my poor warlock that was forced to be a murderer. I play a Celestial Warlock that has a Unicorn patron and part of the pact I made for this character with the DM was that anytime I used my spells, it was always non lethal damage because the Unicorn granted them power to help people, not hurt them. Come the session when some common people are afflicted with a curse that made them go wild and so to stop them from attacking my warlock attacked them with a spell and did non lethal damage to knock them out. One natural 20 and enough damage to normally outright kill a person later and my DM insisted that the non lethal damage didn't matter and that my character had killed them. Justices please answer this question not just for me but for all who love Dice Christ, what does a natural 20 mean? Do you summon unknown power within yourself and unleash unwanted power upon those that meet your sword as my DM insisted? Or does it mean that you ultimately succeed at the task you were planning to accomplish and deal out the proper justice from your hands as I had assumed? I humbly await your verdicts and wish you all a great day, yes even Jake.

Shambles

May it please the court who is looking especially hot today, and be read by Jake who we can agree, is a jake (fun fact, in Scotland, the word jake is an insult), I bring you the Case of the Premature Initiative. In my first campaign as a player, unfamiliar with the rules of D&D but a few sessions in, our party saw a group of bandits about 200(ish) feet down the road. We decided we would attack them and our DM asked us to roll for initiative. But we were still super far away from the bandits so we had to use our turns to dash (for about four rounds) until we got close enough to actually fight (meaning each member of our six-person party had to, in turn, say "I dash towards the bandits" until we were in combat range) I suggested that it seemed a bit weird and we'd be better just starting initiative once we were closer but the DM kept having us run towards the bandits. I ask the court: was that a super-weird thing to do? Or should I have kept my mouth shut and enjoyed the imaginary jogging? (P.S. I do think the DM was fairly inexperienced at the time and aside from small things like this, it was a really fun campaign and world that he created from scratch. But like, don't make me run, even in my imagination, come on now) (P.P.S. we eventually got to the bandits and defeated them, nothing else of note (i.e. nothing related to our long jog) happened)

Proopypants

To their lofty eminences Murphy Axford and Tanner and to the lowly choir boy/bailiff Jake, I have a confession to make before Dice Christ I play in a campaign with my younger brother. About 6 months into the campaign, they were attacked by two perytons. My brother's Felis (tiny cat folk) Sorcerer bravely stood against them despite having the lowest HP in the party. Being a tiny and tasty-looking kitten, the perytons swooped in to eat his heart. Not one, but TWO perytons, crit. They did a 55 damage against his level 4 character and knocked him to -14 HP. Here, is where I must confess; there were an extra 4d8 crit damage I simply forgot to roll. As I realised, I rolled them in secret and he should've actually taken total of 77 damage, which would've have been instadeath. His turn wasn't yet over but I didn't speak up, and let him remain unconcious on death saves and he ultimately survived. Please forgive my sins, I did not have the heart to instakill the cat sorcerer.

devin tweedell

To the honorable justices and that guy blake I submit to you a case of homebrew gone wrong, i dm and our party is at level four , i wanted us to have a little fun so I went online and found a homebrew lesser deck of many things, the deck while not as serious as the original still was a risk , so our cleric went to draw first and to my bewilderment drew 7 cards from the deck, some side effects included: nat 1s/20s being reversed, immunity to necrotic damage, a flying speed and one use of revivify our druid followed suit by drawing 5, we wrapped up shortly after and I recently pitched the idea that I would retcon this but the players protested, my players have grown fond of certain things they drew such as wings, a servent etc. so i ask should I let my players keep these effects or should I live with the consequences of my actions

Mara Howard

To the dearest Cardinals of the Church of Dice Christ and the flimsy altar boy Jake- I write you not only with a confession but also to seek your sagely guidance. When I was first playing board games as a child I was the shit-head kid who cheated endlessly for years to win at games like shoots and ladders, Parcheesi, and even Candy Land. There was no end to my luck manipulating depravity. As punishment for my innumerable sins, I have been struck by fullest extent of dice Christ’s wrath as an adult, experiencing Murph-esque dice luck in every D&D campaign I participate in. After recently rolling three 1’s in a row, ending in my halfling rogue dying prone and on fire in a runaway cart - I find myself wondering is there any path to redemption that could free me from Dice Christ’s wrath? Is there no mercy for the sins of a child who has since seen and accepted the light of Dice Christ into their hearts? Did Murph also cheat in Candy Land? Am I destined to attone for my sins for the rest of my critically failed life? I await the clergy’s guidance in this matter, Repentingly yours, ~Mara

Bird Law

May it please the exalted Justices and merely edge the bailiff; I present the case of the Imperfectly Instantaneous Fireball. I was dming a game in college and the party had agreed to help a village get rid a hive of ghouls that was picking villagers off. Instead of going alone, the level 5 party convinced a significant portion of the villagers to come help. They all slid down into the dark 10x10 ghoul tunnels and killed a few ghouls, drawing the attention of the hive and causing ghouls to swarm the tunnel—soon the entire tunnel was crawling with ghouls on the floor, walls, and ceiling. The wizard decided to fireball the ghouls. I warned that the nearest ghouls were only 5 feet away, but the wizard said he was aiming to hit the back wall *behind* the ghouls so the blast didn’t catch the party and their wimpy villagers. I told him there was no clear line of sight due to the darkness and constantly moving mass of ghouls in the tunnel. The Wizard said that fireball was *instantaneous*, so he should be able to hit the back wall with no issue if he Ever saw an opening, but I reasoned that “instantaneous” meant “really fast” like a bullet, so he could still clip a ghoul early as they all moved. In the end we agreed he would roll an arcana check to try to weave the fireball through the ghouls and hit the back wall on the condition that failure would mean the fireball would hit early. He agreed and got a natural 1, hitting the very first ghoul and incinerating everything in the tunnel, villager and ghoul alike, badly injuring the party. There were some mixed feeling about this pyrrhic victory, and the wizard was pretty peeved for the rest of the session. I’ve felt guilty about it ever since. Honorable justices, was I wrong to interpret “instantaneous” this way and make my wizard aim his fireball especially carefully? I sit in a sooty ghoul tunnel and await your judgment.

Blubread00

May it please the illustrious court justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, as well as the reasonably middle of the road bailiff Jake with the case of the Suspicious Roller. I am relatively new to DMing and I am in the middle of DMing a campaign for my best friends and their PCs are currently at level 2. At first me and the other player just thought our friend was lucky but it became increasingly obvious that perhaps some fudging was occurring as when we play in person his rolls are much more mild but when we play online his rolls don’t quite add up for his level as he is rolling mostly above 20s and passing all of my checks and encounters. My suspicion had reached its limit so during an online session I kept track of my friends rolls and on average with a total of 53 dice rolled he averaged a total of 15 on the dice without bonuses at the end of this session I brought this to his attention privately and he said and I quote “dunno I guess I’m just lucky when we play online.” Justices what do I do I feel as though all of my cool encounters crumble at his touch and I am loosing my minds trying to balance them with my other friend who is quite the poor roller. Justices should I kick my childhood best friend from the party and try to find other players?

Drew!

May it please the honorable justices and bulging biceped bailiff: The case of the stolen spotlight! Our campaign has been running for 6 years, and taken us from level 1-17. Last week, one session came to a head for a character's personal plot arch, we were competing in fae games to alleviate his debt to his warlock patron. At the last minute, the patron (Oberon) messaged the character in question and told us to throw the final game to let Lady Titania win. The entire group understood that this had major implications for our friend (who is also the shyest player at the table) and we all got in line to throw the game. One player was not on board and despite being 40 years old, pulled the teenage RPG sin of, "It's not what my character would do" and initiated PVP against the party, leveraging his entire 17th level monk sheet against us to secure the win in a team game of capture the flag for himself and pulling all focus away from the rare instance of personal plot highlighting a quieter player at our table. Because of resource depletion and a well timed invisibility potion, the DM had to step in and have the fae teleport us away at the last minute to prevent his win, ending the session. I bit my tongue but I'm still mad a few days later. Is this the sin I think it is? Am I an overreactive white knight? I humbly await your verdict.

Jack Rossow

To the illustrious judges and the quite frankly swell bailiff, I bring you the case of the deus ex bugbear-ina, may it please the court. I DMed for three friends and my girlfriend, and it was all of our second time ever playing together (first time was a mess, there were 10 PCs and it was my first time DMing). I was running a one-shot with level 1 characters, but unbeknownst to me, the final boss was incredibly difficult, having a multi attack as well as a few minions. In addition, their party composition wasn’t the most optimized, but I encouraged them to play whatever classes they wanted. The boss one-shotted the warlock who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and did a hefty chunk of damage to the ranger. The rogue and paladin were trying to retrieve a hostage a couple rooms over, so they weren’t in a position to help either. Because this wasn’t an ideal situation and I didn’t want to turn anyone off of D&D, I decided to have a bugbear from earlier in the narrative come back to assist the party, and attempt to get revenge on his former boss. My question is: was I too easy on the PCs? I didn’t want there to be a TPK, but I also didn’t want the fight to be a cake walk. I await your judgement, and will be happy to carry out whatever punishments you see fit. Oh, I also should mention that I definitely de-leveled the bugbear, seeing as he had over 20 hp and the rest of the party was either below 10, or in the low double digits.

Gavin DeCroix

To the most jeweled and judicious justices, Jurphy, Jaxford, and Jaldwell, and to Jill's jilted jew, Jake. I present the case of the pickpocketing spider. I DM a home game for my girlfriend and a few friends from college. My girlfriend is a Druid and the other party members are a monk, a fighter, and a wizard.The party is level 6 and is working to stop a group of eco-terrorists who have been manipulated by a disguised hag. A couple months ago, I ran a session where the party had to recover a Tortle ally who had been transformed by one of eco-terrorists into a stuffed animal. During the encounter, my girlfriend managed to grab the transfigured ally and then wildshaped into a warhorse to sprint away. She also said that since anything you are wearing or carrying merges with your wildshape, this included the ally. I thought this was a cool and creative use of wilshape so I allowed it. The problem is since this encounter, my girlfriend has begun using wildshape to steal any cool items she sees, including cool items in shops. The rest of the party is onboard with this rampant larceny, and have even helped come up with better ways to rob my apothecaries and magic item shops. Their latest strategy is for the Druid to gather up a bunch of cool items in the store while the rest of the party chats up the shopkeeper. The Druid then wildshapes into a spider and scurries out with the pilfered loot, reasoning that no one could see a spider leave the store. This plan has given them dozens of healing potions and low-level magic items for free. Justices I beseech you: should my Druid girlfriend stop robbing me blind? Or do I need to suck it up and install anti-wildshape security in all of my campaign's stores? I humbly await your jumbo-sized judgement.

Theophilus the Thistle Sifter

To the members of the Supreme Crit and whoever else may be in the room at the moment: This case pertains not to me, but to a longtime DM "friend" of mine who is a bit of a Diva Roach Supreme. They have begun doling out disadvantages for skill checks to their players, when the actions the players are attempting go against their alignment. For example: a Chaotic Neutral rogue wishes to convince the local nobility that he is willing to fight for the good of their cause, and that the nobility should lend the party several guardsmen to help in the effort. This rogue, showing genuine hospitality, was then told to roll a persuasion check with disadvantage as "A Chaotic Neutral character cannot fight for a cause that is not in their immediate self interest." I believe the party argued that if this was the case, the check should be a flat deception check at the very least. Should I place this rat coward under citizens arrest? Should the party find a new friend? Is alignment even relevant to multi-dimensional PC's that should and can change over time? Will Jill ever respond to Jake's daily voicemails? Only you can help.

Connor Cederholm

To the wildly efficacious justices and the bailiff of middling competency, may I present before the court the Case of the Piss-pants Guards. To set the scene: The city burns, as the mistreated populace takes to the streets in uprising. The players sneak into the king’s castle to assassinate him as part of a secret plot. They climb to the top floor of a tower, where a cadre of hardened mercenaries operate a ballista on the roof. The party’s sorcerer begins methodically casting prestidigitation above the ceiling, hoping to soil the pants of a guard with pee so that they need to come downstairs and change, where they will be ambushed. I, the DM, let them attempt his, but after time passes, it sees no results. My players are outraged, insisting that surely a guard with pee in their pants would be forced to go downstairs and change. I counter that, even if the spell had its intended effect, there’s no way these mercenaries are abandoning their post to change their pants in the middle of a massive uprising. What of it, fine court? Am I a ruthless tyrant, stealing my players’ freedoms like the king in the game? Or are my players deluded, and in need of horrible punishment?

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.

Kyle Dalton

May it please the court and the groovy bailiff I present the case of the over loved npc. I was DMing a campaign for my friends none of us had ever played but I had listened to multiple dnd podcasts so I was the best suited for the job. During session one my friends dispatched my monsters with no problems at all. So session two I turned up the heat and threw a couple Ettin at them. Long story short I crit 3 times in a row and accidentally Insta killed one of my level 2 players we can call him Dave.Ron a npc that was along with the party was also killed during the fight. My players were on there way to a paladin temple when this encounter took place, and seeing my player so upset over the death of his character I came up with a plan. When the party arrived at the temple I told the party if one of them rolled a nat 20 on a luck check there would be a paladin high enough level to resurrect him. One of the players rolled a nat twenty and the table went wild. However as I started to describe the scene of Dave’s body being brought before the paladin the players stoped me. They then told me they didn’t want to save Dave but Ron the npc. After 20 minutes of arguing the party was sure they wanted Ron not Dave. Ron was brought back and Dave made a new character for the next game. Was it my inexperience and sweaty dm ideas to blame for the death of dave or are my players to blame? I humbly await brutal and violent punishment.

JC

To the justices and Jake Herwitz, the guest from the last 8-Bit Book Club, I bring to you the case of the drunk monk. I played in a West Marches campaign with a bunch of my friends, one of whichwas a monk named Zeth. One session he showed up and was quite obviously drunk. He proceeded to interrupt the session with comments like: "You know having someone calling you daddy is weird" and "Fuck, I got to go buy condoms after this" and dropping everything loudly on the table. The DM didn't say anything about it nor did they appear angry but it clearly slowed down the sessions flow and made it harder for everyone to pay attention and play. So I ask you, justices, assuming this player is in the wrong, what is an adequate punishment? I await patiently for your response. PS. You should let Jake pick the path more in 8-Bit bookclub, he almost always says to take the right option after you've already taken the wrong one.

LAPROPO (The Language Proficiency Podcast)

I humbly come before your elevated court, Justices, and the.. is he sitting on a phone book to appear taller? … Bailiff Jake, with a crocodile of a dilemma. One of my players ended up in one-on-one combat with an unassuming challenger to the throne of a swamp kingdom allied with our party. (TLDR: a swamp kingdom run by a bullywug king who had died, so they were supporting the bullywug prince’s claim) To save the hapless prince from certain death our Harrengon Tempest Cleric stepped up to fight in his place. When the fight began, the swamp man revealed he was a werecrocodile (Kobold Press’s Tome of Beasts 3, shout out) and attacked the volunteering Harengon, grappling her in his jaws. Now it was her turn. My player announced: “Crocodiles have stones in their stomach! I’ve just read a book about rabbits and crocodiles and I’d like to use stoneshape to turn them into daggers and pierce his heart!” I was totally surprised. We hadn’t had a conversation about the book, or talked at all about crocodiles ever. However I thought the story was cool and did my best to roll with it. I called for an arcana check to see if she could use stone shape without touching the stones in the werecrocodile’s stomach. (She was in his jaws, not his stomach) The player, without rolling, defeatedly said “No nevermind” and was clearly sad she’d not gotten to use the cool idea she’d had. She went on to handily defeat him with her spells and magic halberd—but she was clearly bummed. I continue to remember this moment and worry that I failed at collaborative storytelling. So I implore the court —did I wrongly block my player? Should I have supported her in a different way? I lay myself in your jaws.

Lilybet Gates

To the wonderful court and the ever-gaslit bailiff John, I bring the case of the rudest bard ever. I was DMing a game for 10 new players at a summer camp, and one of the players wanted to play a warlock in disguise as a bard. I told her she wasn’t the main character. She said it didn’t need to come up much, and as long as she knew, I agreed. Five sessions later, I had dropped a few hints and even done a flashback for her, and I handed the campaign over to a new DM- the bard promptly flirted with a demon (against the request of the entire party) and lost an item that protected her from the BBEG. The DM built a five-session arc around retrieving this item, and the bard showed up for two of them. The new DM and I, frustrated, came up with a plan for her to get a new character and went over it with the bard, who agreed. After the bard missed three sessions in a row, we had her “kidnapped” by the BBEG. The bard was extremely upset by this?!? and chose to quit the campaign rather than create a new character. Should I have nipped this problem player’s tendencies in the bud, thus sparing my new-DM friend, or should I still try to allow my players creativity with their characters? Murph, please tell me I’m not the maniac here. Good day and have fun being judgmental!!

Daniel L Hodson

May it please the court and the honorable baliff Greg, I bring forth the case of the new DM. My long term group is doing a one-shot and one of our players that has never DMd before is going to run it. He immediately sent a 15 paragraph background for the one shot and a bunch of new rules to go with it. We are only allowed to be 9th level rogues, save for a 2 level dip in another class. Death saves are to be rolled by him and kept secret. All of our skill proficiencies are to be bought with a point system where you get 1 point for every proficiency and expertise you are allowed and each skill has a different cost. for instance stealth is 1 point for half prof, 2 for full, 3 for expertise. This means i will have much fewer skills than normal. I told him i would be multiclassing with druid and he said "approved but i'm restricting shillelagh to clubs because i dont want you to have polearm master." Am I overreacting or is this too much?

DMAN

EDIT: My formatting style makes this look longer than it is, if it helps to imagine it as a run-on go for it! To the honorable Justices, and to the gibbering pile of fleshy bits, Jake, I present the following conundrum: A few years ago I was running a game for some friends (old 3.5 rules), and I had given them a magical funnel/fang that, if a liquid was poured through it into clean water, would transmute the water into the liquid being poured through the funnel. I thought I was being clever by making it once a day, and specifying that ONLY clean water could be transmuted, and truth be told I wasn't expecting them to use it for more than a single-use dungeon puzzle. They used it to turn some water into elf blood, thus satisfying an insane request for 100 gallons of "pure elf blood" to appease a vengeful demigod, and they put the Funnel Fang away for good... so I thought. I had a made a critical error, though, in that I had forgotten to put a limit on how much it could do at one time. Flash forward 8 months of real time, and the party is barricaded inside of a mage academy, as the first wave of the BBEGs evil plans comes crashing down on the party in the form of a tsunami of undead. One of the players asks me "Hey are we still doing the "Healing hurts undead" homebrew?", I say yes, because I'm an old RPG nerd, and this player says: "Great, I have every capable wizard use magic to dig an olympic-sized swimming pool in the front of tower, and then I have every capable wizard cast create water and fill it to the brim, and then I would like to use the Funnel Fang to transmute the entire pool into health potion" I eventually, choosing my words carefully, say that undead would only be damaged if they fell into the pool, and that there isn't enough time to make a full mote around the tower. "That's okay, I have the wizards summon water elementals using the now health-potion water, and then I tell them to climb inside of the elementals and other mages to cast water breathing on them." 1 nat 20 Diplomacy later, and all these mages are just... doing it. It became clear that the players had realized how unbalanced this item COULD be, and had plotted behind the scenes to trivialize my end-campaign encounter (rather than bring it up to me privately), and while I did allow their machinations to happen, I caught a lot of flak for "The end being way too easy" from my players. So, Justices (and the Cronenberg monstrosity trying to read this out loud), should I have pulled the plug on this plan instead of rolling over? I didn't want to upset my players, but as the years have gone on I've realized that I'M more miffed with THEM (and this is likely why I changed groups entirely after that campaign), primarily because they broke my game (which didn't bother me too much) , and THEN criticized the final encounter for being "too easy". Thank you for the time spent listening to the baliff makes sounds that were approximate to the words written here, and have a wonderful day!

Adam L

To the Virtuous Justices and the Ever Present & Forgotten Baliff Jake, I wish to regale you with the tale of the other Nyack, a Half Orc Archer Cleric. Rewind about 3 months, our campaign started and our DM began the campaign with my character and the other PCs on different sides of a war, an apocalypse occurred and we ended up bonding and fighting off baddies together. This past week, we were pitted against a cult of Yuan-Ti Purebloods looking to ritual summon a demon lord and my god had tasked me with stopping the ritual at all cost. I ended up getting critically hit and went down and failed my first 2 death saves. The group talked about it, and our other cleric went before my next turn and was going to heal me. His turn came and he instead said I attack with my warhammer and my heart sank. Nyack passed from this world on the next roll and afterwards he said he didn’t heal me because this entire time he didn’t trust me because we started on different sides (even after I’d saved his life before). By pitting us initially against each other did my DM set up the situation where this was possible? Or should I have worked harder to try to build up the trust over the past 3 months in game?

Peyton Leuci

Dear honorable representatives of dice Christ. I come to you with a question of morality as a dm. I was dming my first major campaign for my friends that was a homebrewed version of the “out of the abyss” module. As the campaign went on I gave out fun magical items like a box that could be turned into a boat with a command word. My players seemingly had forgotten about the boat until the fight with the bbeg. As they walked into the demogorgans lair they had the monk (who had fly cast on him) fly above the bbeg and say the command word to make the box a big boat (weighing about 1k lbs). As he dropped it they cast enlarge/reduce on the boat making it 8x its weight. I looked up the rules privately, and realized that 200 dmg was the most that something could take from being crushed (sort of the same as fall dmg rules). I chose to let them have there 3k d6 of dmg and they thwarted the bbeg in mere minutes. Was I wrong to allow this? Or did I do my players a service by letting them win in this way?

Peyton Leuci

Ps I absolutely love each and every one of you and what you bring to the podcast

Banana Bread

To the justices to bow to none (other than Dice Christ), and Jill’s roommate. I present the case of the invisible rogue. I am the DM of a 17th level party, who were fighting Medusa, the source of all gorgons and a powerful mage. The case lies in a rogue who used magic items to fly and turn invisible. On his first turn where he would attack and move, he then argued that because he moved in the air, he would not need to hide because Medusa would have no way to know where he was. This goes against RAW invisible rules, so I said he’d still need to use his bonus action to hide. He was agreeable (if a bit salty), and the fight ended with only one casualty that was then Revivified, but the question still rests in my mind. Should he have needed to use his bonus action, or should he have been able to be completely imperceptible? I lay my fate and his in the hands of the Crit.

csolo

May it please the justices of questionable integrity Axford, Murphy and Tanner and the honorably appointed bailiff Jake; I present the case of the exploding battery. I GM a game of Starfinder, a science-fantasy themed game with both spells and lasers largely based on the pathfinder and 3.5 ruleset. While exploring a planet, my party encountered a (randomly rolled) swarm of angry critters. Importantly, swarms in Starfinder are immune to single target damage, however this is overcome by AoE attacks that are more common in this system, such as frag grenades and automatic fire weapons, as well as the party’s spellcaster being able to cast several AoE spells. In this instance however, the players were unprepared, and did not have these tools. One player wished to use a battery (the ammunition for a laser gun) as an, admittedly cool, improvised explosive. Despite liking the idea, I vetoed this - batteries are meant to be stable since they’re used in fire fights, and you wouldn’t want the battery to be easily exploded in these circumstances. The players argued that batteries do explode a la the Samsung Galaxy, and they had a sufficient engineering skill to reasonably do so. Eventually we compromised to the point where, given enough time and a skill check, the battery could form an extremely weak explosive, but could not be turned into a grenade with a single action. However, this argument has re-emerged every couple of weeks for the past year, to the point where I avoid using swarm enemies to dodge the problem from reoccurring. I bring this before the court - was I wrong and should have allowed the improvised exploding battery, or was I correct and made an appropriate compromise? I put myself at your mercy, and patiently await your potentially ignored judgment.

Canadian Schubert the Mushroom 🍄

Hey Jake, Can you believe this shit? I pitched 7 D&D characters to my DM for his new campaign, and he said no to ALL OF THEM. Clockwork Sorcerer/Way of Mercy Monk -- Sorcery Points become shield. Broken? Storm Sorcerer/Rogue -- Move ten feet without spending Sorcery Points. Broken? Bloodhunter Werewolf -- Too many things. Broken? Barbarian Satyr -- Always naked. Off-putting? I could go on! He's not a new DM. So what's the damn deal? Punish someone!

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?

Stephen Burns

To the godly supreme crit justices and Jake. I present the case of the pregnant PC. My husband DMs for me and our friends. (I am posting on his account. Hi, I'm Molly B.) He started us out with the Lost Mine of Phandelver module as everyone, but us, was new to D&D. At the end of that module he offered to let anyone switch out their characters before we started a new, longer campaign. Only one player took him up on it. Jokingly, her and my character had tasteful, fade to black goodbye sex. Fast forward, we are now most of the way through our next campaign and her character has been captured by the BBEG. Instead of creating a new character she wants to bring back her previous character, but (you guessed it) pregnant with my characters baby. The DM is the only one wholeheartedly against this. He thinks it will mess with the party dynamics and combat strategy of us constantly trying to protect the pregnant lady. He also doesn't love the idea of potentially killing a pregnant person. We are heading into a pretty serious combat with the BBEG to save her PC. The rest of the party is either neutral to it or thinks it will be a fun call back. Personally, I think it will be fun to roleplay. We are not playing a super serious campaign, but maybe this is too wacky. So, I ask, is this player crazy to bring back an old pregnant PC or is our DM taking this too seriously?

Syed the Story Dude

To the honorable justices and the guy that's mean to Amir. I bring to you the Case of Wondering Eyes vs Fondling Hands. I run a game with 30+ year old DnD newbies who recently reached Level 3. Everyone rolled their hit die, and while the rest of the players explained rules of HP increase for the first time, I noticed my Bladesinger player silently contemplate the 1 he rolled before real-time sleight of handing it up to a 3. Mind you, this goon has been the most curious on how to hack the mechanics of the game and has already become virtually impossibly to hit with an AC of 25. What's worse, the Bladesinger scooped the dice away and told everyone he rolled a 6. My spine had unfortunately slipped out my ass and I jumped back into the session without saying anything. Was I wrong in not growing a pair or shall we punish my player by like shitting in his mouth or something? Dunno, just spitballing, I humbly await your judgement PS he's one of my best friends

Dylan C

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

Nico the Underpaid English Teacher

Dear Jake and all the patrons of the Birdlesque Club, I write to you to ask if I should feel bad for bullying my DM into making a shortcut during our campaign. We're playing Curse of Strahd, and we're in the final section of the campaign and we were just about to get to the final battle. Earlier in the session, we were joking around about exploring through an empty room - at which point, my DM goes "Oh, yeah, there's actually a treasure chest in here." There wasn't actually, but he was riffing, so we tried opening it and found nothing. No worries, but we established that our DM can produce things from nothing into the world. Now, my character, a Dhampir Mercy Monk, can walk on walls and ceilings at any time. When we entered one particularly large great hall, I remarked "Wow, sure must be dark in here" to which my DM said "Actually no, there's a skylight at the top." At this point, we goofed around a bit, and I decided to just walk up the walls to the "skylight". On the map display, the room we were in led right to part of the final encounter - Strahd's heart. There was no other route up to the heart chamber from the room we were in, and by going up the ceiling and going through the "skylight", we bypassed a decent chunk of the castle. I then proceeded to Devil May Cry the heart to death. It was rad as hell. My question is this - should I feel bad for getting my DM to actually go through with Tetrising the final dungeon to make things go faster?

Xavier

May it please the bailiff who choses the cases. Can a wild-shaped raging barbarian concentrate on a spell that was cast prior to shapeshifting? (Here's what the law says: Rage: "If you are able to cast spells, you can't cast them or concentrate on them while raging." Wild Shape: "You can't cast spells, and your ability to speak or take any action that requires hands is limited to the capabilities of your beast form. Transforming doesn't break your concentration on a spell you've already cast, however, or prevent you from taking actions that are part of a spell, such as Call Lightning, that you've already cast.") I'm arguing that since you cannot cast spells while shape-shifted, you are no longer limited by the "If you are able to cast spells" condition from the Rage ability, and Rules as Written, you should be able to 1- Cast a concentration spell (ex: Barkskin), 2- Shape-Shift, and 3- Rage and keep concentration. My S/O thinks I'm maliciously reading the Law and that Rules as Intended should be the proper interpretation. Our table kneels in front of the court for irrevocable ruling.

Jay S.

To the honorable justices and the man who reads our humble words, today I submit the case of Otiluke's Resilient Sphere. My boyfriend and I (we’re both players and DMs) were debating the limits and possibilities of of certain spells and strategies when he suggested that he could use the Resilient Sphere to cause a shove attack. He suggested that if I used his sphere on him, that he while within the sphere could push from within the sphere for a shove attack. I absolutely refused at the start but then finally warmed into suggesting that he would need to roll with disadvantage for the attack to balance the move. He said that rules as written actually don’t mention what shoving/interacting with a person could do and me adding the disadvantage would be actually throwing it out of balance. The spell does mention an enclosed creature can roll the sphere, but they’d probably be at disadvantage since they’re in a huge freaking bubble, right? We dutifully accept the judgment of this wise and benevolent court and any punishments or favors granted by it. P.S. The stakes here aren’t high by my god, my boyfriend and I are lovingly competitive!!! http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/spell:otilukes-resilient-sphere

The Jeff of Hearts ♥️🃏

Dear honorable Justices and their little sidekick Jake: I’ve recently begun a campaign with my family (myself DMing, mom is a human bard, brother is a tiefling monk, brother’s girlfriend is a tiefling monk). Overall things are going well, but I’ve found that whenever mom asks me a question about what dice to use or what she should do while fighting a twig blight, my brother will try to steer her in the direction of defaulting to a support role (because she’s a bard) while I as the DM want my players to be able to do what they want with their turns. I don’t believe Bards have to be support all the time and I don’t believe Clerics are strictly healers. How do I tell my brother to stop back-seat DMing and trying to make our mommy fall into the traditional role of her Class rather than what’s right for her as a player or for her character?

Canadian Schubert the Mushroom 🍄

Ancestral Protection lasts one turn at the most. Unwavering Mark also got some caveats (eg. 5 feet). This one man court finds this reasonable!

Hunter.osty

To the honorable justices and (I’ll let Jake decide what he wants on this one) I come to you with the case of the hotheaded bardadin I’m playing in a home brew campaign set in Greek mythos time where we’re living and fighting amongst the Greek pantheon of gods! My party was sent to capture a person of interest to Hermes who we found out later was using us as pawns for a bigger scheme but that’s besides the point, more importantly cerce is the daughter of the god/Titan that killed my father at his wedding, gruesomely I might add, when we found out this information I told the party how I’d react if she put up a fight (kill her dead) and eveeyone reassured my character I’d be fine, well when the time came and she insulted my dead father I was understandably pissed I announced I attack her and all hell broke loose, our Druid casted hold person and froze me stopping the slaughter, however I claimed I should get to attack first since in initiative I rolled higher, I was overruled in name of the story but I still feel cheated from a short term revenge, I lay myself before the court, was I cheated? Or did I deserve to be held back? I think it helped the story aspect more this way but I still wish I got to attack:/

John Crowder

To their honors, the most excellent Chief Crit Justices and to Mr. “and Amir”- I bring you the case of the Druid’s first wildshape and the sad effects of gravity. In my last campaign I played a circle of the moon druid whose go-to move in combat was to wildshape into a bear. Our DM set up a combat encounter with some bandits in what was described as a thick forest, so I wildshaped into a bear and climbed a tree. I then attempted to run/jump from tree to tree, trying to go behind the bandits and get the literal drop on them. In my mind I was picturing a thick canopy of branches that one could reasonably move through. My DM and the whole party laughed at me mercilessly, explaining that’s not how bears climb trees and it wouldn’t work. My DM described my druid/bear falling in a heap between the party and the bandits, utterly failing to move through the trees. Justices, was there ever a chance my bear could’ve made this move or was I rightly ridiculed? I humbly put myself at the mercy of the court and it’s terrific bailiff who honestly deserves more respect and possibly a shiny badge.

Kyle Dalton

* the paladin was casting raise dead not resurrection by bad

dat_rogue_baddie

To the divine and ever fair and just supreme crit justices murphy, axford, and tanner and the modest bailiff hurwitz, i submit the case of PvP and metagaming. i am playing in my first ever campaign via a discord chat and roll 20 as our virtual table top. we are a year into the campaign and are level 8, we all know each others abilities pretty well after dozens of combat encounters. the setting is a magical university and there is a mechanic for students to duel to settle conflicts. one of my party members challenged me and we began our 1v1. during combat, i was confused on how my opponent was able to do so many attacks and use his breath weapon and fly in one round as a level 8 monk, way of the ascendant dragon. when i was trying to ask about it, party members who were not in the combat said that i was metagaming and i shouldnt comment on what attacks my opponent can do. (worth noting: i was also trash-talking a good bit and mentioned how many ki points my opponent had and this sparked the debate). when i tried to explain my confusion and get clarification, i kept getting talked over and got really upset and ended up leaving the discord chat and not finishing the 1v1. later, i discovered i was right and that my opponent was able to do way too many attacks, wasnt using his ki points correctly, and was using incorrect damage die during the entire fight. i spoke with the DM after and he said he would talk to the other player and audit everyone's character sheet. we never revisited the 1v1. i come to you today to ask: was i really metagaming and if i shouldnt have left the combat?

Lemon Moon

Hey, I’ve got a quick and dirty one. The party in my homebrew Skyrim campaign were in a dungeon fighting some undead draugr. These undead had the power to shout magically (y’know, Skyrim shit), and so one of my players, Tandryn, a mage who had nothing to do with his action after he healed as a bonus action, tried to grapple one of the undead to try to keep it from shouting since it would surely take a party member or two down to 0. He got a nat 20+1 for a total of 21, while the undead got a 19+6, winning the contested roll. Was I wrong to deny the nat 20 as an auto success, or was I right to rule that the draugr who had a higher bonus and combat experience from a previous life would beat the mage in a grapple? The players were all fine with it and we were able to work it into awesome angsty role-play later, the moment just sticks in my mind.

StayPuffed Marshmallow-Scoop

To the most high judges who's +2 modifiers gave them a dirty 20 and the natural 20 Baliff, I am attempting to make my first character that will last longer than a one shot and before I bring it to my dm I have a conundrum. I want to make a goblin rogue with is a bit of a pickpocket dagger type but I really want him to have a little partner in crime. This would be a bit of a scamp rooster named tim. My problem is should I aim at getting a familiar and hope he doesn't die on me or should I find a way to have find familiar, lose him once in a while in battle and "somehow" (wink wink) Tim just shows back up the next morning like nothing even happend. Is this possible or am I attempting to make an over powered character plot

Kevin McCool

May it pleasure the court and the bailiff who is the apple of no one's eye, Jane, I was DM'ing my first ever full campaign with my wife and a group of friends. One of my friends was more excited about starting this campaign than the others and got very into creating his character, a human paladin named Sex Panther....In the very first session, during the final fight of the night, Sex went down and on the next turn, my wife, playing a wood elf wild sorceress, had to roll a wild magic surge and she rolled on a situation that caused her to hit Sex's body, giving him a death fail. Sex's turn was next and I told him he'd be fine as long as he didn't roll a 1, because combat would be over before his next turn came up. I've never seen the life leave a man as fast as it did my friend as he rolled a nat 1 and his character died......Being a newly minted DM, I freaked a little and ended the session as soon as combat was over so I could regroup and figure out what to do going into next session. My friend was devastated and left my house sullen. I felt horrific. That night I scoured the rules and replayed the entire session in my head. I found that I had fucked up! My wife never should have rolled her wild magic surge! And if I never made her roll it, Sex would still be alive and I wouldn't have ruined my friend's intro into D&D. The beginning of the next session, I roleplayed Sex meeting his God in the afterlife and being sent back to the party. Did I do the right thing allowing him to come back? Should I have just let me friend keep the dirty taste of death on his lips for the rest of the campaign and force him to roll a new character? I beg of the court to relieve my worrying mind.

Kyle Corbett

Dear Supreme Crit Justices and the itty bitty bailiff : I present to you; the case of a wily rogue and a ring of spell saving. Our party was deep within the underdark, trying to save an incarnation of our Paladin's god who was trapped there. While I, the wily rogue, was keeping watch, I had heard a passing party of enemies who had seen our tracks and tried to find us. They were nearby so I used my ring of spell saving to cast invisibility with the hopes of giving myself advantage on my stealth roll. Our DM then informed me that because Invisibility was a spell that required a verbal component, the ring made a noise and immediately alerted the enemies to my presence. This had never been previously established and ended up in a fight where I could've gotten epic amounts of sneak attack/assassinate damage out of the gate. My question is: How do spell saver rings work??? Should they make sounds when the spell requires verbal components? Please advise! I demand satisfaction! (Please and thank you kindly.)

Jake's embezzlement attorney

Forgive me Daddies for I have been naughty. My wife made a Lizardfolk druid for a campaign that never got off the ground. Later I joined an online group and played a few sessions to vibe check them (Shout Out to the Gal Pals) before inviting my wife to play. I made a lizardfolk cleric and right before my wife's character was introduced I mentioned to an NPC that Lizardfolk all sound exactly the same as me, who had been using a heavy New York accent Oppa Kugrash style. My wife ran with it and did her best accent but still flipped me off from aross the room. I know it was kind of a dick move but it was also really funny so surely dice christ can forgive right? Or did I cause our TPK last session?

Evan Sherlock-Hubbard

To the beautifully-feathered Cardinals Murphy, Axeford and Tanner, and to the Yankee-Candleboy Jake: I must confess that I let jealousy cause a TPK in my first Campaign. We played 3.5e in my early College years, and I was the big dumb fighter for my first-ever character. I was also the party bagholder, as the only one who still had a pack horse alive at that point due to my fighter's habit of taking any found swords and strapping them to the horse (named Sword-Horse), providing him a form of armour. My DM described a beautiful enchanted standing mirror made of dark glass, as part of a post-boss loot cache. I was left behind to tally and write down the loot we'd gotten, and, bored since the others had continued exploring further down, I described tossing my axe through the mirror. It smashed, and my DM gleefully rolled for a random magical effect and the target of that effect. Effect - The target is transformed into the race of the next-nearest creature. Target - The creature within a radius with the highest intelligence score. Long story short, Sword-Horse had a higher intelligence score than my fighter and was transformed to be human, and my DM ruled that since he was still covered in martial weapons and had travelled closest with me of anyone, he would be rolled as a fighter. With the DM controlling my beloved Sword-Horse-turned nude man covered with weapons, it quickly became apparent over following games that Sword Horse was a far better fighter than I was. My beloved horse had become my naked rival, and in the next boss battle that occurred, Sword-Horse became trapped under a large rock. I could have helped free him as the next-strongest party member, but tried to shine instead and focused on fighting the boss. It didn't go well, we got wiped, and I'm sure that had I swallowed my pride and helped free Sword-Horse we would have survived and continued the campaign. I humbly confess and beg forgiveness for letting jealousy of a DMPC end our first campaign and making the game less fun for my other players. I hope for the mercy of Dice-christ.

Thomas Hegarty

To the Benevolent Justices and magnificent pontifical Baliff Jared. I bring you the case of the overly countered Hunger of Hadar. I was playing in a short campaign with some pals and my dm allowed to be level 6. I go for a Hexblade warlock so I can deal big dams. After I killed all his goblins in the first encounter with hunger of hadar I think I spawned a bit more DM sweat then I intended on. Second encounter I get whacked by a mage and count the tile to see they are over 60 ft away. I only have two spell slots anyway so I am happy I wasn’t tempted. I cast hunger of hadar to establish a bit of battlefield control and I hear him prep to counter me. I politely say they are over 60 ft away. He says well maybe it gets countered anyway. I ask him how and he gets cagey. I ask him again and he says maybe mine has longer range. So I ask how. He gets quiet and then says I rule that counterspell goes off of where the spell lands. Which is not what the spell states. After being real salty about it and almost ending my turn deflated I counter his counter spell and he asks me if I can do that……… He did allow it but I ask the court was I wrong to be salty? Should I continue playing with these busted counter spell rules? I lane myself at your mercy.

Lorelei and Kyra Newly Weds

Greeting and salutations to the highest of esteemed judges and the always dapperly dressed baliff I bring to you a case that hopefully doesn't please you. This is the case of the Sus player. We host a common group for our friends to play in, one player always makes his characters children however. This isn't the issue, the issue is that he is always trying to seduce adults, via magic or just trying to trick halfings into thinking they are one of the family. They constantly refer to their young supple bodies, go into great detail when eating anything falic. We thought at first it was a weird joke but after 6 characters being overly sexualized children we wonder if we should kick him or try forcing him to play more normally. We leave this fully in your experienced hands. May the baba yaga have (not) mercy on their soul

Clinteris

To the Honorable Bailiff, and whomever else it may concern. This is the Case of my little Scrot (Scroterus). I joined a campaign at the request of a Dm friend to fill a gap left by a player who left the campaign. I used my Celstial Warlock/ Trickster rogue Kobold Scroterus or Scrot for short. He was tricked into a pact by a lawful good celestial whos goal is to convert evil creatures. He would refuse to heal until punished or forced by the patron, and sneak around and steal, resulting in more punishment. The Dm used him to find letters or items to push plot lines. This resulted in a lot of Scrot moments, being a scamp and finding info accidentally. Over time the other players slowed down their posts or outright left the campaign. I started to fear my Rp was the problem. But the Dm loved it. I did hang back during other players rp, but sometimes received whispers from the dm of info i find during, to help move things. Did my little Scrot ruin things? Ps. The name was a suggestion by the patron who had a sense of humor. It sounded like a powerful dragon name according to him.

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

The most honorable justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the unfortunately relatable bailiff, Jacob? 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.

The Cooliest Fooly

To the esteemed judges, and bailiff Jonk too. May I present my case of forgery, the plagiarizing DM. My first game, invited by a coworker to her boyfriend's game. Met once first, DM explained expectations. Set in a fantasy-high school situation. I set up my barbarian tiefling, and my now-wife joined as an elven cleric. From the 1st session, our backstories were changed to fit the DM's narrative. Our decisions pushed into a specific story. I thought it was railroading, until the DM mentioned insisted we listen to favorite D&D podcasts. We listened alright. To Fantasy High, and NADDPOD. Suddenly, I could pinpoint every moment of our game to these 2 great actual play games. Enemies, named NPC's. I listened well ahead of my wife, and was aware of spoilers in game all the way thru the end of campaign 1. So we quietly wrote resignation letters and messaged the DM privately. We did not want to play in a game that was a duplicate of these podcasts we were pushed to listen to. The response was overwhelmingly negative. We were suddenly accused by the whole group of calling the DM a liar and cheater, that we had said the words "bad DM." I have cut ties, played in several other games myself, and DM for my wife and friends. But I always think back, was I wrong to confront this DM and end a game because I knew the entire story end to end? I accept your judgement and the appropriate punishment.

Ross Gilliland

Ancestral Protection can be reapplied at the start of every turn though. A duo with these features can basically stunlock any single enemy, like they're not actually stunned but if both of these get applied to someone their options are either to A) attack the fighter with disadvantage and only deal halved damage if they do manage to hit or B) attack the barbarian with disadvantage and if they do hit the fighter gets a free attack on them. Super busted imo

Patrick

May it please the allmighty court, and mildly entertain Ultimate Bailiff Jeff, I volunteer 1-2 times a week DMing homebrew pickup adventures at my local game store. Recently, I was running a Tier 2 adventure (PC lvls 5-10), and my PCs managed to polymorph an enemy elf into a mouse. After this, I had the mouse try to flee, but another PC wanted to grapple the mouse. I declared (with no knowledge of true mouse stats) that the tiny mouse would probably be proficient with acrobatics and had a +2 Dex, coming to a total of +5 on the roll versus the dwarf bard. My players, after we had rolled and they won, insisted that it was bull that a monster had proficiency in acrobatics. Are my players right to say that a mouse shouldn’t be proficient at wriggling and writhing, or are mice the scramblemen I assumed them to be?

Damon, Son of that one merchant named John

May it please the honorable justices and tickle the average bailiff. I was playing a session with my family with my dad as DM. I (an eladrin barbarian named Igni) am consistently the voice of reason for the party (myself and a half elf wizard and tiefling fighter). Our fighter continuously wants to fight me and threatens every npc we come across. Should the DM start voicing more reason or should he let our fighter fight whoever they would like? I humbly await your wise judgement.

Certainly Not Brent

Noble, Sensual Justices and Stalwart Bailiff, I come to you with, on its face, a simple question: "why would polearm mastery make you better at casting spells?" I am the DM for a game where, in short, a copious amount of Saturday morning cartoons all exist in the same often troubled world. Having so many cartoon villains in the same world leads to a lot of comedy as well as highly dangerous encounters with the likes of Rita Repulsa and Dr. Robotnik. The party spellcaster, a circle of stars druid/bard cross class, came to me with a spellcasting exploit: if he stacks War Caster, which allows the user to cast a spell as an opportunity attack, with Polearm Master, which allows you to make an opportunity attack when a creature enters polearm range ... will this allow the player to defensively cast a spell on baddies that are running up to hurt them? Rules as written, I can see how this may well be possible. Even some of the game designers appear to be conflicted about this case, which is why I bring it to this highest of courts. While I definitely respect my player's hustle, to me this just seems like straight shenanigans that do not make sense in-world. I feel that rules as intended should win over rules as written; why would spear mastery make you quicker at spells? My player agreed to follow my ruling, but I am curious if I have robbed them of a dank, potentially above board combo. Was I in the wrong? I await your inerrant judgement.

Elizabeth Lees

Litigation requires a second party be involved, this is probably more of situation in need of the guidance of Dice Christ.

Colm Smith

To the honorable supreme crit and the bailiff that's in the room, I present to you the case of the Helpful Hippo and the Elderly Elf: I run a spelljammer campaign where one of my players is a giff(hippo person) gunslinger where he and the party recently defeated an elvish spy who had an elven chain shirt. The giff looted the shirt and between sessions decided to give it to an elderly alcoholic elf npc who is a member of their crew. This npc’s role on the ship is to make alcohol and potions. The problem is the npc has commoner stats, and is no use to the party once a fight breaks out. There are also multiple other members of the party without magical armor, or any armor at all, who often get knocked unconscious in combat because of it. This wouldn't be a problem except that the giff doesn't really care about any of the players except for the elf npc. My question is this: should I have the elf give the armor to another party member even though I know the giff would be mad that he was going unprotected or should I let the situation stay as it is even though the armor won’t see any use?

Toast Master General

Title: DM Date Night To my favorite judges and that guy over there in the corner playing checkers,
 Long time listener first time litigant, I present to you the case of the "DM Datenight". My playgroup been playing together for a few sessions now (Adventures of the Sword Coast), and our sessions are always filled with camaraderie, laughter, and memorable adventures. But one night, things took an unexpected turn when our DM decided to bring a first-date date to our session.
 As we all arrived at the table, our DM introduced her as Jessica, and it quickly became clear that they were on a date. We didn't think much of it, assuming she was just there to observe the game or maybe even participate as a guest character. However, to our surprise, our DM announced that they would be co-DMing the session together, effectively splitting the storytelling and game interaction between them.
 As the game began, the dynamic was... interesting, to say the least. Jessica, while charming and enthusiastic, had no prior experience with D&D. This led to some awkward moments, as she occasionally struggled to understand the rules, the setting, and even the basics of how to run an encounter. Our DM did his best to guide her through the process, but it was apparent that this was a learning experience for both of them.
 While we were initially bemused by this unorthodox situation, it eventually started to impact the overall quality of the game. The pacing suffered, as the two of them would often pause to discuss how to handle certain situations with tense and hushed exchanges between them. Oh holy justices, I ask you your thoughts on this unorthodox first date? Do you think it's acceptable for a DM to share their storytelling duties with a date, despite the potential impact on the game and the awkwardness it may cause? I volunteer my DM as tribute and have your will be done! :)

Hufox9

Seeking Dice Christ for sins of encounter design

Zack Auron

To the honorable, benevolent, and lauded judges of the highest, most esteemed court... and Jeff. I bring to you the case of the meta-gamer. I was a player in a session where our group was attending a fancy traveling art gala. I was tasked with finding evidence that the gallery owners were smuggling magic items. The sound of screaming towards the front caused a significant distraction, and I saw this as my opportunity to cast Detect Thoughts undetected. I read the mind of an important gallery worker and knew he was running to retrieve important documents at the front of the gallery. Other players and myself ran with that NPC towards the front, and I asked if I could hop my detect thoughts to another NPC until I ran out of time on my spell. The DM proclaimed the request was too "metagamey" and did not allow me to pry deeper or read any more thoughts. Was I in the wrong to try and work my spell to its full advantage in this moment of high tension? I humbly await the ruling of the court.

Goliver the weird Druid

To the honorable justices, and I think there is another guy, but i forgot maybe his name starts with an R. I bring you the case of the extreme anti-homebrew DM. This might be unusual because I never played D&D, but I'll try my luck. I really got into D&D in 2015 after watching a few actual-plays, but because none of my friends liked the nurdy stuff i had no one to play with. So i just started creating characters, which led me to create some homebrew races, items, and subclasses. Such as a playable dryad race and a legend of a zelda inspired race called a reincarnated soul. I made a lot of different characters, but all my characters have one thing in common. they all have ADHD since I have ADHD and it was a way to connect to my characters. So a few months ago, a game shop near me started a gaming area for people to play and meet new people to play with. And a D&D group was forming, so i joined, we were 5 players, and the DM was a friend of one of the players. We met up to discuss the setting of the campaign, the DM started by saying that there won't be any homebrewing, and we should tell the table 2 characters that we will like to play so we can see if they fits the group. When it came to my turn, i gave them the backstory of my characters and told them what they looked like. And added at the end that they have ADHD, then the DM looked at me and told me that my characters can't have ADHD. At first, I thought he was joking, but he looked at me very seriously and said it again. I asked him why, and he told me that he said that we can't homebrew, i told him that it wasn't homebrew since it doesn't affect the mechanics of the game. We argued for a bit, and then his friend interpreted and said that ADHD can't exist in the game because it's fantasy. At that moment I knew that I won't have fun at that table so i left. So i ask you was, i wrong to insist on adding that detail? or was the DM overreacting? I await your judgment.

Toast Master General

P.S for Justice Tanner, How about those AI portraits of Bev I Tweeted at you the other night? Pretty neat huh?

Miranda B, Crick DVM

Most honorable Bailiff Hurwitz et al. I present to you the case of the Murderous DM. During the pandemic I started an online game with some friends. We played over Roll 20 and it was the highlight of my week. I played a battle master fighter tabaxi named Remnant, I adored this character she made me so happy in a time of doubt and fear. I made a playlist for her and wrote short stories about her and she was so much fun to play. The game started out fine, we are all a bunch of theatre kids so we really dig into the roleplay aspect. Things started going down hill when a character got permakilled the second session in. We were a little shook. Our DM- coincidentally named Brian- felt really bad and had an NPC resurrect him. Then we were off into a dungeon. We played weekly for like 4 months. We never finished this dungeon. Over half of our party died in this dungeon. Including my baby who I feel was unjustly taken from me. We were fighting intellect devourers and my character- not knowing what they were and a melee attacker- was up close with one of them. She failed a save against them and it drained all of her INT stat and took over her body. I sat there while the rest of my party killed my character. I am still legitimately so upset that that’s how my character died. No death saves no chance to fight against the monster just insta death. I was not the only player unhappy with my character’s death and the amount of death that was occurring. The game fell apart a couple weeks later. I am still very salty about this, so I humbly ask the court was my character taken unjustly by a murder happy DM or is that just how the game goes?

I C

To the Beloved and Revered Justices of the Crit and the Bailiff of the Ever-Shifting Reputation, Longtime D&D player but a brand new, first time DM who has already jumped right into the deep end by creating my own campaign and campaign setting from scratch here! I’m writing in to see if there’s a better way to solve a problem with one of my players, the Forever DM of the group: I think he’s stuck in DM mode, not at the playing level (we’ve yet to begin) but at the planning level. Forever DM was the last player to get his character description and backstory to me, but boy howdy, was it a doozy. His backstory is VERY compelling, don’t get me wrong, but also he invented two brand new races (not with stats or anything, just… conceptually) that are integral to his story, a cult, a mysterious god-demon-entity-thing, and, worst of all, he claimed his character was not just immortal but entirely invulnerable. As in, comes back from the dead any time he is killed. Against his wishes. He is a suicidal, invulnerable, immortal goblin. None of this was run by me ahead of time. Also he did not include a character class or any stats. As you can see, a truly wild series of moves. Brand new races and demon-deities to build out and integrate into the story: sure, okay, I can work with that. But invulnerable immortality?? My first instinct was to shut this down completely… but my second instinct was to give him exactly what he asked for, monkey’s paw style. The campaign setting is a deeply magical forest where the magic has gone… wrong. It’s sort of a psychological horror fantasy situation that will involve a whole lot of wisdom and charisma saves to resist the mental meddling and general corruptive nature of the forest. I’m planning to let this character be the immortal, come-back-from-the-dead suicidal goblin that he wants to be, but he’ll have to make a series of increasingly difficult wisdom and charisma saves for his soul to return to his body after a death, competing against other entities of the forest who would LOVE to strand his soul in the ethereal plane forever and take over his immortal body. My question is this: is it petty to monkey’s paw Forever DM in response to truly the most bonkers character pitch I’ve ever seen? Should I simply be putting my foot down instead to nip this kind of thing in the bud and (kindly) remind him that he’s a player here, not the DM? Is there some other better option that I’m just not seeing? Or is it alright to let him think he’s getting his absurdly powerful, convoluted character and then pull the rug out from under him the first time he shuffles off this mortal coil? Sorry for the length of this case! The details of this case were too unruly and out there to either be further tamed or skipped over, but I would truly love some insight into how best to handle this balls-to-the-walls situation.

Finn Heath

Intro free 2023. I DMed a family online game start up during lockdown with 6 players. Grandma wanted to be a paladin with a magical talking sword that controls the weather, who had a profecised destiny etc etc. I warned her that a level 1 character couldn't live up to this backstory but she insisted. During the first session, I tried to ground the character in line with the rest to avoid a main character vibe around grandma, by making the sword non-magical, giving it a goofy voice and having NPCs act confused when she brought up "the profecy". Whenever I did this, Grandma acted as if she couldn't hear me and continued the conversation as if I hadn't said anything. Was I wrong to cancel the campaign after 2 sessions and join a secret revival with only 4 of the 6 original players (no grandma)? PS. She also said that my giant toads "weren't possible" as I described them as hopping along the beach, which only frogs do (apparently)

Victoria Shotts

Honorable Supreme Crit justices and baliff Jacob Hurwitz I humbly implore, does the size of the die determine the size of the punishment? Brief: We play a 10 person campaign, with my youngest (14 yr old) bro-in-law, whose PC (a dragon born paladin named Gus) ended up dieing using his DM given inspiration to escape being swallowed by a giant tree in the Sunless Citadel module. The details: At the table, inspiration isn't added the usual way, we use a 30 sided die instead because it's more "fun". Gus rolled a Nat 1 using the d30 on his strength check to attempt to break free of the tree attempting to swallow him. Our DM (the step brother) ruled that because he "critically failed" on this specific die, it was considered EVEN worse than a normal die roll and therefore he would instantly be swallowed and disintegrated inside (maybe that's part of module?). This literally almost made the kid cry, as we had no way to help and he didn't even get to roll death saving throws for his character. The DM revealed later that normally one would have been slowly consumed over multiple rounds and there would have been several chances to save him if he hadn't rolled so poorly. I personally argued that using inspiration should always be a boon to the player using it, but AT LEAST should never kill a PC without a chance of death saves OR even recovering the body. Especially when solely based on the size of the die in play. Justices, I beg for justice to be served on behalf of my little brother. Does the size of the die determine the size of the punishment? Should not the sentence have been more lenient because he was using his inspiration? Thank you for your time.

Delani N Wright

Dearest most esteemed justices and the bailiff whom I personally like most of the time. I present to you the case of disrespect and heartbreak. I have been playing/consuming D&D for about 2.5 years now and in that time I have pretty much exclusively DMed. I love being the DM because I get to share the thing I love and trick my friends into hanging out with me for 4 hours every couple of weeks. I am currently in grad school so I don't have a lot of time to plan sessions anymore so I haven't been playing as much as I want to. So imagine my delight when someone in my grad program said that he was putting together a campaign that he was DMing and asked if I wanted to join. I enthusiastically said yes as I would be able to play DnD and roll my first-ever character. She was a halfling artificer alchemist named Ada, who made little robots out of plants and tin cans. I loved her so dearly. I spent so much time making sure she fit into the DM's world and I was so excited when the first session rolled around. We played a few sessions and everything was amazing, turns out playing a PC is really fun! But at the end of one session it was revealed to us that one of the NPC's we befriended needed people to take his parents to visit their other son's grave in the town over. I feeling like this was a noble quest knelt and vowed to keep them safe. The dragon born with a cart of clothes that was her hoard (long story) said "omg out of character does anyone think that Ada is super cringy??" there was a decently long pause before we all nervously laughed and I said. "yeah, I guess she kind of is." and the session ended up ending awkwardly after that for other reasons. For a bit of context my charisma was very low and every social encounter I had was comically bad. And I have no problem with characters thinking that I am cringy in character. But with her explicitly saying I was cringy out of character rubs me wrong. Am I being a huge baby about my character or should I just make like Elsa and let it go? P.S. I eventually had to quit the campaign because of general mental health and I am always so busy.

Myriah Nottage

To the venerated justices and also bailiff Jake. Am I wrong for being salty to this day? My first game with this group at level 14, I introduced my circle of stars druid and hit a clump of baddied with reverse gravity. When I dropped the spell, I expected the floating dudes to plummet and take falling damage as the spell explicitly states. The DM ruled that they just safely fell to the ground over a couple of rounds, not because of feather fall or anything like that, but because that's legit how they thought the spell worked. I tried to argue how the spell actually works and we do go back and forth a couple of times, but I ended up conceding because he's the DM at the end of the day. I ended up just not using that spell after that, but this isn't even what I'm actually salty about. Fast forward like 2 years. We are clumped up like goofs, and one of our enemies uses reverse gravity. I'm thinking the DM is gonna rule it the same way but LO AND BEHOLD HE USES THE SPELL AS WRITTEN. In the moment, I did ask him about it in a very "wtf' way, but dropped it once he answered that it's how the spell works. I would have loved to know I could actually use this dope ass spell when he made his mind up about ruling it as written, and am still salty that I only found out when it was used on my character. Highest court in the land, am I justified in letting this salt linger? I don't bring it up, and it doesn't really impact anything, but sometimes it comes to mind and I just sit in a big tub a salt for a bit.

Griffin Whitley

Dear Honorable Judges and Stinky Bailiff, I present to you the case of the "Fishy RPG Fiasco". In this TTRPG, the characters are aging at a rapid rate, and my client's character is getting old and feeble. To make matters worse, they drank a mysterious potion that now makes them smell like shrimp permanently, rendering their rogue abilities useless. Despite their best efforts to come up with a plan to fix the issue, the DM kept changing the rules, and my client was left feeling helpless and frustrated. Now my client finds themselves in a predicament where they're an old, shrimpy-smelling wizard-rogue hybrid who can't stealth their way out of a paper bag. This whole situation stinks, both literally and figuratively. So, dear Judges, I ask you to consider whether my client was right in pushing back against the DM's decision or if they should have just taken their "shrimpy stench" in stride. Either way, we hope this case has left a lasting impression on you, much like the lingering smell of seafood in a crowded room. This case was generated by A.I

Marc Delucchi

To the good ole folks on (and around) the bench,

Jeremy Umpleby

To the Most Honorable Justices and Most Exalted Baliff Jake, I present the case of the accidentally bloodthirsty DM. Currently I am running a campaign with some friends from work. Before the first session I made sure my players knew that while I wouldn't actively try to kill their characters, their characters could die. We also have a rule that once a character dies they couldn't roll another of the same class. (To prevent cloning.) They told me they understood. In the first session one of the rougues failed their death saves after some really unfortunate rolls. (A fail and a crit fail.) He was a new player, so I feel bad he died in the first fight.However, he did say he understood the rules as was cool about it. The next session comes around and another player gets separated from the party and encountered some muggers. (3 kobalds and 2 cultists) I tried to give him an out saying they just wanted his money, but he chose to fight. He rolled poorly on his initiative, then goes down after the first two guys miss him. I tried to be merciful and said they just knocked him out, but he insisted he do death saves. He succeeded the first two, then got a fail. His final roll was a crit fail. He died right there. (They rolled their death saves. I just think it was rotten luck.) Now my players think I'm out to get them. Should I have been more insistent with the non-lethal damage, or was I right to kill my players? I await your sound rulings and whatever punishment you feel I deserve.

peace k.

Illustrious judges and I think it was Jason? I bring the case of the Unsatisfying Deus Ex Machina. I played a full campaign with my family during lockdown, and it was our final battle with the BBEG. It was my first time DMing and their first time playing. Needless to say, I whomped my whole party and accidentally killed everyone. I tried to narrate a scene where the Paladin could attempt something akin to a cleric’s Divine Intervention, but after so many fails, I was at a loss at what to do. Everyone was very tired, and starting to get uninterested in the battle, and I got the sense they were upset that they all died. I eventually fumbled and narrated a sloppy Deus Ex Machina where the dead cleric saved their lives from the lands beyond, but I never forgave myself for the terribly executed ending. I come to you now with my query: should I have just let the TPK stand and added a couple more sessions to loop it around to a more satisfying conclusion? Or should I have found a better way to deal with it? I humbly fling myself at the mercy of the court.

Sam

To the noble justices of that esteemed institution which we call the Supreme Crit, and to the... indescribable bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of the Tricksy Warlock. My party was in residence at a Church where they were searching for the fragments of a curse, when they were finally able to pinpoint the location of the cult that Kidnapped my Warlock's daughter... in tunnels beneath the church! While searching the place, they found a way into the tunnels and followed some shades down, eventually getting caught by the cult's leaders and brought to their inner sanctum, where lived a spirit who could tell when the party was lying during the ensuing interrogation. Upon realizing this, my warlock attempted to frame the situation (specifically the answer to the question "why are you down here") as "we were looking for curse fragments, then we started looking down in the tunnels." His argument was that because he had only specified a reason why they were looking around before (up in the church), that he was technically not lying. Eventually, I ruled that because he kept the meaning of his statement ambiguous enough for the cult leaders to take/assume a false meaning, what he said was still technically lying. Was I right to stop the buck where I did? Or should I have allowed my Warlock's persnickety semantic trick to slide? I await your consensus, long live the Crit and her Justices.

Steven Hoffart

Most honorable judges, arbiters of the Crit, and Jake, who I think is the lunch guy? I come to you with the case of the away amputation. Recently in our 2 year long campaign we have been having scheduling conflicts as I and another player start travelling for work on a regular basis. In the campaign we are gearing up to a end of a long running thread of a quest and a show-down with a big bad, legendary items in hand. We get in a fight with the right hand of the big bad and things are going well, when one of the players, the paladin, says they need to leave early for a plan they did not tell anyone about, the rest of us agree to polish off the combat and keep going. We autopilot the paladin to get to the big bad's right hand and immediately get crit on, fail a con save, and go down. Our druid rushed up to heal them, but before they could, the big bad came out of invisibility and moves to take the legendary sword from the paladin. The party, worried we were instrument in the paladin losing their main weapon when not even there, argue that the paladin's gauntlet would hold tight because they are magically unconscious, not dead. The DM then described how the big bad ripped the paladin's arm off, sword in hand, and teleports away before we can down him. The Paladin player is pretty upset when we told them what happened, the DM swears it was in the plan all along and would of tipped us off the plan if we stopped fcombat when the Paladin player left. So I ask you judges was it the party's fault as the autopilots of this PC for the loss of the arm or should the DM waited?

A Spicy Lad of the Shadowkeep

To the illustrious judges and the ill-fated bailiff, I present to you the case of corrupted lycanthropy. I'm running a horror-themed campaign, where my players (all first time but eager to learn) are being stalked in the desert by twisted monsters, each with grotesque takes on their vanilla Monster Manual counterparts. Some of these are were-monsters, which are afflicted by curses that can spread and fester in those foolish enough to fight them, instead of take flight from them. One of these infected one of my players, with homebrew mechanics that essentially grant cursed power at the expense of losing their sanity to the beast within (a la Ultrise's Helm) However, this player has taken it upon themselves to look at the vanilla stats of the were-monster that infected him, despite persistent reminders that it's a home-brewed mechanic I made. He consistently refers to these stats in an attempt to gain the likes of a hybrid form, or resistance to all damage, even going so far as to call my DMing skills into question for not letting him have these powers. I'm always happy to homebrew in tandem with an enthusiastic player, but this guy is becoming borderline intolerable, even as I try to stay patient. I ask, am I right to stick to my corruption-based homebrew, or must I give this player their OP stats? I beseech your wisdom!

Colton Merrifield

To the honorable justices and the firm but fair, as well as featherbrained and forbearing, bailiff Jake, I present to you a case in which a player, let’s call them PC, is a habitual rules lawyer, not barred I may add, with monsters and effects and such. One such occasion was a barbarian(absent for session and failed the safe when I rolled on their behalf) being possessed by a ghost and I activated rage to add a fun challenge. PC, no one else, was strongly against this and it started a brief commotion. It was quickly resolved with the rage staying in place. I will be the first to admit, my actions were against the wording but were enforced by the rule of cool clause. So I know I was wrong, but was I WRONG wrong?

HalcyonicHermes

To the honorable Justices and the lowly, but highly held bailiff Jake, I ask your wisdom in the case of PC pranks. A party I'm no longer with was camped amongst a group of Nomads, whom we were protecting/taking minor quests from. I played a Warlock who made a pact with the Fey dragon god Nathair Sgiathach (neigh-er skey-ak). He's known as a prankster so my character had to fulfill certain goof tasks at times as part of the pact. One of the other PCs decided to get in on the fun however he only pranked other members of our party. His go to prank was to cast 'Mold Earth' directly under someone and cause them to fall into a hole. They would do this multiple times a session(during travel, combat, sleep etc.) as they could cast it as a cantrip, and they thought it was hilarious, every. single. time. The DM continued to allow the 'pranks' as they didn't inherently harm anyone, however the rest of the party was getting pretty sick of it. So my Warlock had enough and I disguised myself as the PC who kept bothering us, and snuck into the Nomad camp. I caused a bunch of havoc, making it obvious that it was the other PC, not me, as well as having my Pact god stir some mischief as well, since that's kind of his thing. The following morning, the DM described the scene and told our Earth molding PC that the nomads wanted his head and would no longer offer us assistance or shelter until he was gone. This blew up into an actual OOC argument as the player couldn't believe that the rest of the party also wanted this character's head, and still couldn't believe that we didn't find his hole pranks funny. So I ask, did I go too far with the revenge 'prank'? Should we have just let the pranks be? I await the judgement at the bottom the hole someone else has dug. P.S. I got new friends.

Griffin Whitley

To the esteemed Judges Murph-Cald-Axe and the ever-funky Bailiff, I present the case of the misplaced loot. In a recent game of Dungeons and Dragons, the party came across a hidden treasure trove guarded by an ancient dragon. After a grueling battle, they emerged victorious, and the DM described the contents of the hoard. Among the gold and gems, there were several magic items that the party eagerly began to sort through. However, one of the players noticed that a valuable artifact was missing. The player in question, a rogue, had been keeping an eye out for a particular item that was rumored to be in the dragon's hoard. When they realized it was not among the loot, they immediately accused the DM of purposely withholding it from them. The DM, however, insisted that they had not intentionally left out the item, and that it was simply an oversight. The other players tried to calm down the rogue, suggesting that they search the hoard again or perhaps investigate the dragon's lair for clues. But the rogue was convinced that the DM was hiding the artifact from them and refused to let it go. They argued that the DM was favoring other players and not giving them a fair chance at finding the item. The DM, growing frustrated with the rogue's accusations, reminded them that they were playing a game and that they were not entitled to any specific loot. The DM also pointed out that the rogue had already received several other valuable items from the hoard, and that they should be grateful for what they had already acquired. The rogue countered that it was not about greed, but about fairness and transparency in the game. They argued that the DM's oversight had ruined their character's story arc and that they would be unable to progress without the artifact. The other players were caught in the middle, unsure of who to side with. On one hand, they understood the rogue's frustration, but on the other hand, they knew the DM had not intentionally left out the item. The group was at a stalemate, and the tension was palpable. So, dear Judges, I ask you: was the DM in the wrong for forgetting the artifact, or should the rogue have been more understanding and let it go? And most importantly, how can the party move forward and continue to enjoy the game without any hard feelings?

Colton Merrifield

It is worth noting, the issue was mediated by another player, who suggested that the barbarian was so determined to flush out the ghost, they went into a rage.

Josh Neal

To the most honorable judges and the most confused bailiff I make my case I’m a first time player getting ready for my first campaign (my first ever experience with dnd is listening to this podcast) with my dad and two of our friends, but my dad didn’t want to make his own character and as I have studied the classes he left how to make his character to me, and has told me he will come to me with how he should go when leveling up so I optimized our party to work very well together (my character being a ranger, my dad’s being a barbarian, and our third most likely being a Druid) have I flown too close to the sun with the power over 2 of our 3 party members?

Jon DNA Music

To the Mercurial justices Waxboard, Trophy, and Chandler, and the Baliff Jek. May it please the court: I run a dnd campaign for a friend group of 5 boys ages 11-13 over zoom (I am employed by their parents). We have been playing together once a week for about 7 months and ran through a couple shorter adventures before embarking on larger campaign in an original world built to match what they find most exciting about fantasy and fiction. We completed the first part of this campaign, ending with their city in the sky falling to the abandoned earth, gracefully setting up the next chapter of the campaign where they would make new characters. Enter (let’s call him) Alex. Alex, once the most mature, helpful, and focused of the boys, comes to our session 0 with an idea. He wanted to play a human who accidentally ended up as one of Santa’s elves, who then moves to Boston Massachusetts to find his biological father after spending time in Hawaii. He wanted to play Buddy the Elf from Elf. At first I thought he was joking, but when insinuated that I wasn’t taking his idea super seriously, he got very upset. I, as kindly as I could, tried to adapt this character to make sense in any way for our story, but he insisted that his character be buddy the elf to a tee. After about 40 minutes of conversation and being thoroughly perplexed, I call for a break. I then see a what is the most alarming and confusing texts from one of the other boys father. It says, I quote: “I hope you feel good for yourself not letting these kids do what they want on their own dime.” “I mean time. Haha.” We resumed the session and ironed out the other kids characters, all of whom were enthusiastically built into the world. We are scheduled to meet again next week and figure out Alex’s character, so I ask you: What the heck do I do? How can I accommodate Alex while looking out for the experience of the rest of the group? They care so deeply for the story they started. Also, am I misreading this dad’s text? Is he furious at me? Dear god, please help. Thanks!

Snugglegurts

Dear Voluptuous and fertile Judges; and the Scum Sucking Sewer Dwelling Bailiff... I have no case I just wanted to insult Jake. Thank you for your time.

Josh the Alchemist

Honorable justices, questionable bailiff, I bring forth today the case of the divine intervention debacle. I've been running a campaign for nearly 4 years now and we're getting ready to end it, but there's a particular encounter last year that still sticks in my craw. The party were facing off against a cultist that was trying to sacrifice them to his deity (present in the room in a spiderweb cocoon). It was meant to be a tough fight for my 14th level party, but our cleric got lucky with a divine intervention! His plea was to server the connection between the cultist and his deity, thereby ending the fight. The problem was, I made the encounter using the Mythic Odysseys of Theros rules for mythic monsters, meaning after the monster's HP hit zero, it triggered the second stage of the fight where the deity emerges and takes over the cultist's body. Instead of ending the fight, I fast forwarded them to phase 2 and they easily won from there. To this day, I still get shit for not honoring the intent of the divine intervention, but I also feel a little slighted because I didn't get to give my players a real fight. Was I in the wrong continuing the fight or should I have done something different? I lay myself at the mercy of the court and humbly await your verdict.

KennyH

To the Honorable Justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, and that other guy whose name is Joesh, I think? I bring you the case of the Pissed Priest, and the Cowardly Cohorts. In the first long term campaign I ever played, our party reached the end of a massive arc, which narratively lead to 2 PC's retiring. The game and overall party energy of the campaign for the past year was great until these player's new PC's entered the fray. New PC1, a Kobold who is craven and a whimpering sycophant. New PC2, a frail girl who us old PCs want to help, who is a cannibal (unknown to us) These two PC's have evil alignments (also unknown to us) and their backstory/lore makes them cowards and/or selfish as fuck. So that started the pattern of these two fleeing or hiding at ANY combat that shows any signs getting rough. This pattern of behavior in combat left my character and the parties Life Cleric in countless bad situations where we almost die. Eventually the player who was the cleric gets pissed, and unfortunately a pretty nasty argument happens between him and the players playing the two evil PCs, with the DM and I trying to keep things civil, but unfortunately lines were crossed in the argument, and that game died. The question I put to you Justices, who is at fault here? Not for the argument, but rather; The two players who decided to make evil PCs who will roleplay counter to group cohesion, or the DM who allowed them to make characters like this without talking with the group about it first? I await your fair and just ruling.

Morganatic

To the most resplendent justices and the shame scorched dirt that lies beneath their judgely heels (bailiff Jake), I bring to you the case of “The Paladin and the Pit”. I play in a game set in a fantasy style summer camp, the campaign is eldritch horror themed and has heavy Stranger Things/Camp Crystal Lake vibes. The issue came when we discovered a bottomless pit and, after some puzzling, we’re attacked by a bird monster bent on putting us in that pit. It immediately grabbed the NPC we were with and dragged him down. My camp counsellor paladin, not willing to lose a kid, tied a rope around myself, gave it to the warlock and stepped closer hoping to cast Feather Fall. I was then immediately attacked, grappled and then dragged into the pit (which gave me the shirt to actually catch the kid). The warlock tied the rope to a tree and before i could climb up the rope was cut, the cleric then cast Tensir’s Floating Disk so that warlock could land and hoist me up, but the warlock was the quickly knocked in the hole as well. Our characters survived but my paladin lost as eye and i’ve been dragged through the raspberry patch for my decision to “run towards the pit”. Judges, was my decision justified and our attempts to combat the situation unfairly thwarted or am i taking the hole thing too seriously?

Freddie Meraw

To the esteemed Supreme Crit Justices, and to the pitious, oft-libeled Bailiff Jack, I bring you the case of the Nat 1 Party Foul. Last summer I was running a star wars 5e campaign for 5 friends, and one of my rulings on a Nat 1 upset one of my players enough to throw his d20 in the trash. The group was attending the birthday party of a notable crime lord. They had just competed in a gladiatorial competition as part of the festivities, and were saying their goodbyes at the throne room after receiving their rewards. The player in question was playing a Sith (evil space wizard) and one of the npc gladiators was a Jedi (good space wizard). As they were leaving, he cast Force Disarm to steal the Jedi’s lightsaber, and the Jedi failed the save. As the weapon zoomed 30ft across the throne room in plain view, I had him roll a Charisma Check. The Nat 1 landed, and so the crime lord threatened him for disrespecting the other guest and demanded he return the weapon. In the interest of honouring the Nat 1, I refused to let him make a persuasion check (to which he adds a +13) to smooth things over and keep the weapon. He was visibly upset and argued a little bit, but to his credit he was generally respectful and accepted the ruling. The next session he informed us he’d disposed of the offending d20. It was large, stone, and definitely expensive, so I feel really guilty about my ruling and I still wonder if I was too harsh. I prostrate myself at the mercy of the court.

copperdragon

To the most likely honorable justices and merely existent bailiff Jacob, I present the case of the harvest razz. I was 12 or 13 and out camping with my family when my dad suggested we play dnd (this was my second time playing). In the middle of a session, after our characters had started moving towards a town being raided, I asked if there were any crops like wheat or apples I could harvest and bring in the cart we had. It had been established that we were in a farm area, and I wanted to get food for the villagers. Everyone immediately shot it down and started cackling, and I wasn’t allowed to roll perception. They spent the rest of the trip relentlessly teasing me about it. I didn’t play for years after. I ask, was this a rightful razzing or was I wronged? Thank you for your consideration and eventual judgement.

Tara Fedele

My humble greetings to the honorable judges and the okay-eat 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

Britnatz

To the smoldering supreme crit justices and the bodacious bailiff, I present to you the case of the Pit Trap Murders. Wanting to give my DM a chance to play and to try running a game, I offered to start DMing a second campaign set in Eberron. My idea was to have the players come to Sharn (a huge city that would be the main location of the campaign) to give an art dealer a beautiful magical artifact that the party was hired to retrieve. Upon entering the city my DM (now a player) had his character shoot firebolts into the sky and attempt to steal a flying taxi cab before heading to the art dealer's house. At the art dealer's house the party theorized that the dealer must have all sorts of awesome valuables in his house so they should rob him and of course, the party got the worst timed nat 20 to lockpick back into the house. Now, what they didn't know was that I had planned to make the art dealer the BBG and that he was a level 15 wizard. I figured it would make sense that the BBG would trap his house and hey, if the players take a bunch of damage it will make them back off, right? Boy was I wrong. After taking an ass load of fire damage from the first trap they just pushed on! They were only level 3, they had almost no health and they just kept going so when they triggered the basic spiked pit trap they all fell to their deaths. Everyone was pissed that I made the traps "impossibly hard" and that I was a "brutal" DM to TPK everyone in the first session. I'll admit, I was drenched in DM sweat by the end but was I wrong to kill my party? Should I have just let them succeed in stealing some random cool shit? I await your sage ruling.

John Squirrel

Dear Honorable Justices and that one guy Jake who's cool sometimes, I guess. I bring you the case of the Refused Surrender. This take place several years ago with a group I no longer play with. We were fighting in a tournament in teams of three. Before the tournament began it was explained to us that if we wished to be removed from the fight at any time we need only hold up two fingers in a peace sign. In one of our final battles our bard casts mass suggestion for the enemy team to hold up a peace sign. Two of the three enemies fail the saving throw and hold up a peace sign. Our DM says nothing happens. A long heated discussion ensues, our DM claiming he has no idea why we would think this would work. The discussion eventually ends in our favor, but the DM says the crowd is booing us for not fighting fair. We were fine with this. We knew it was cheap. Were we wrong to fight for our desired result or was our DM just mad we had an easy win?

Katie P.

May it please the court and be a mild irritant, like an itch that won't go away, to the lowly Bailiff - I'm the DM for a difficult table. My pops is a Leeroy Jenkins type of player; my godfather who likes to test me on basic DMing stuff and see what he can get away with; my pops' best friend who last played 2nd edition and his wife, both of whom are mmorpg players and look at my game like an xp grind and made characters that exist in a dimension far from the basic rules of 5e; my mom who's a new player but quiet; and my brother who's not only a lawyer but a rules lawyer and a mouthy one at that (he gets snarky when the rules are bent). I'm a grad student so I told everyone beforehand that this game may be put on hold due to school. Whelp, I'm in my last semester, writing thesis - I told everyone I will need to take a hiatus until May, when I graduate, to finish my thesis. The mmo players and the DM tester are mad we're not playing regularly and my brother is defending me, but in a less than tactful way. Their arguing is getting to be so volatile that I essentially sent one last message saying I'm not playing until May, if they want to play so badly have another player DM in the interim, and if they do not stop being shitty on the Discord I'm taking my proverbial ball and going home. I'm usually very good at balancing all their crazy personalities, but I got kind of fed up. My brother, my parents, and the DM tester took the chastising well, but the my mmo players are sending me walls of text I told them I refuse to read until May. Am I as the DM in the right for yelling at my players then giving them radio silence until after I graduate? I await the court's decision.

Callen Lappin

Esteemed judges and also Jake, I ask for your righteous judgment in the murder case of the drowned rogue. Last year I joined a campaign already in progress with mostly new players. During my first session, the party encountered an abyssal monster in a sewer. The monster at one point grappled the rogue and pulled her underwater. The party continued to fight and soon slayed the beast, but by then the rogue had failed a constitution saving throw to continue holding her breath and had just begun drowning when combat ended. The dm asked the party what we’d like to do as combat ended and the life cleric said she would heal everyone who was downed (as a couple of PCs other than the rogue had gone unconscious as well) and make sure they were okay. The rest of the party either offered to help or continued talking. When the rogue tried to join the conversation, however, the dm announced that she couldn’t talk because she was dead. He said that healing her wouldn’t have saved her because she was drowning, and she needed to be pulled from the water before being healed. The cleric argued that she thought that was implied when she’d said she was taking care of the injured people, but he said she needed to specify that. I argued that it was ridiculous that the whole party would be standing there having a casual conversation while the rogue drowned in two feet of water directly next to us and that it was clearly a miscommunication, but the dm held firm. He said it wasn’t his job to remind us how the rules worked and we would have to deal with the consequences. We were able to bring the rogue back to life, so the only long term impact was the rogue having to roleplay staying with a party who had let her drown for no reason, but I always felt the rogue had been unjustly murdered by the dm’s intransigent callousness, so now I must seek resolution from your honorable court. Should the dm have pointed out that healing her wouldn’t save her from drowning, or was it on the cleric to specify what she meant by “making sure [everyone was] okay”?

Cristian

To the Divine Justices and my favorite 8-bit bookclub guest Jake. If it pleases the court, I present to you the Case of the Metagaming party. My partner and I love DND and recently met a dream group of players that love RP as much as the mechanical nitty gritty aspects of the game. For one of the player’s birthdays our DM decided to host a one shot; the Goal: to hunt down and defeat Jyloth Crimsonscale, the DM’s PC-turned-BBEG who had attained godlike power through the mask of Tiamat, creating a labyrinthine plane of existence to rule over. Within minutes of entering the labyrinth our DM rolled for our first random encounter and landed on none other than the BBEG himself, Jyloth. The party decided it would be better to fight now than to wait until we had exhausted our resources, and after a few tense rounds where one of our PCs was killed we managed to grapple the BBEG and wrestle the Mask of Tiamat off of him. He managed to teleport away to escape, but our party was happy that we had considerably weakened him. Our celebrations were cut short when a new character appeared in the room demanding the return of the mask. The other players all recognized her as the BBEG’s daughter from when he had been a PC. She appeared before the party as a Lich, having joined her father and ascended to new power. The party was quickly divided; half of us wanted to protect the mask and the others wanted to avoid fighting her at all costs. Ultimately one party member stuffed the mask into a bag of holding he then destroyed with lava; then when the lich attempted to plane shift to go after the mask my partner counterspelled her to keep her from going after it. But, in a stunning betrayal, my partner was then counterspelled by one of our party members, allowing her to escape. This caused our one shot to become a mini campaign, meeting up three more times before finishing the story. The last session even ended up going for over 8 hours, and most of the players were too tired to stay awake and see the story to its completion. Was I wrong for expecting my friends to keep their feelings from a previous campaign separate from the now or should I have expected this from such a role play heavy group? I humbly await your decision.

Old Dirty Blastoise

To the esteemed judges, and that guy Jack. May I present the Case of the Unintentional Warlock. I recently joined a campaign and I’m playing as a Warlock Dad, whose patron is a mysterious tombstone that was found when his daughter and her grandmother were hiking around a lake. Excited, the little girl presents the headstone to her father, who then reads the tablet’s carved words aloud and becomes possessed. Here’s the question for this esteemed council. My mother in law actually let my kid bring a tombstone home in real life and it’s been sitting in my backyard for like a week. Am I a Level 1 Warlock now, and should I be worried about any potential curses or lake ghosts? Forget Dice Christ…I await the Dice Demon’s cold judgment.

Riki Shimoda

Short version: Dice christ confession, Ragnarok with Fenrir, druid shapeshifted into bird to lure off fenrir with nat 20, found out after that druids cant shapeshift into birds at low level. Podcast version: Dear honorable justices, I come to you with a lighthearted dice christ confession. My friend is DMing a viking Ragnarok campaign. We were playing low level secondary characters and had to defend a castle against an army led by Fenrir, a massive wolf who breaks free from his magical chains to devour the sky and earth. As the battle started to go downhill for us, I decided to do some shinanigans to help my companions escape. As a druid, I decided to shapeshift into a bird, fly up to Fenrirs ear, and proceed to tell him that his captors fled to the nearby mountains. Knowing if I failed this roll I would most likely be dead as one swipe would utterly demolish me. I rolled my -1 persuasion check and got a nat20. Fenrir thrashed around a bit destroying the castle yet ran off towards the mountains, leaving just enough time for the party to escape. We later discovered that wild shaping into flying creatures at low level is impossible, my DM was a gentleman about it and said "it happened and was super cool so it's all good". Even though we all had a blast, this still makes me feel as if I cheated. Please, all mighty saints of the dice christ forgive me.

William James

Hello Judicious Justices and the Baleful Bailiff, I present a case of clammy charisma. In a Pathfinder 2nd Edition game, I'm playing a Tempest Oracle, which mechanically means 2 important things. The first is that I have high Charisma as my key stat. The second is that, per the nature of my curse, I am (quoting the rules of the game) "the center of your own tiny tempest, ever surrounded by wind and rain..." and am "slightly damp." I had imagined my character looking almost like the sea-blown hunk on a romance novella, but based on the GM's description of NPC reactions, I'm coming across more like a waterlogged corpse. Should my high CHA score offset my slight (repeat: SLIGHT) dampness, or am I doomed to drown in a sea of side-eyed stares and uncomfortable handshakes? I accept any judgment, though I may feel a bit salty after.

theodor c

To the honorable, amazing, beautiful, esteemed judges, and that other guy, I present to you the case of the cursed player. A few months ago, a friend of mine wanted to try their hand at DMing (for the first time) and ran a one shot with me and a few other friends. We all came up with fairly simple characters; Except for my friend, who I will henceforth dub Tenzix, who wanted to play an ultra complex character that frequently switched race and class. He was told no, and instead built a paladin Goliath, 7ft 7 and 200 pounds. We started the session, and everything was going well until Tenzix began describing his character as having his “eyelids flipped inside-out” and said he “started licking his fingers then rubbing them in his eyes to keep them moisturized”. As the session continued, the character degraded into a horrible, twisted beast with broken bones that slithered on the ground, tickled peoples ankles, and tried to kill the wolf the party tamed. By the end of the one shot, he was put down by another player, and we all laughed it off. Now, I’ve started DMing a campaign for the same group of friends, and the first session, Tenzix was fine! He stuck to his character, who was a detective, and he followed through with his goals and the backstory he crafted. However, at the second session, he began to slip into his old ways, watching a tied up man get almost killed by a zombie before reluctantly intervening, dragging said zombies’ corpse around a populated area with him, disturbing the villagers, and tried to kill a chipmunk to sacrifice it to the old gods. Due to scheduling difficulties, we have yet to play a third session. Before the court, I ask, should I punish Tenzix for these disturbing and horrid crimes? Or should I let my friend play as he wishes, as odd as it may be? I leave myself at the mercy of the court.

Lexi H

Esteemed Justices and Dingo’s Dad, I present - the Case of the Endless Dash Actions. I am currently playing in a game with 6 of my friends. We have had frustrations in the past of not getting to use our character abilities as written without warning from the DM, but we are all fairly new players and are working through stuff. One friend in particular is quieter and struggles with feeling left out of our sessions. LAST WEEK however, our party arrived into a new town in search of advice from a specific elder. When we arrived, we saw that the town was being ransacked by a chaotic force (that had caused us problems before). The problem was, when we noticed the monsters, we were still hundreds of feet away. Our DM had us roll initiative… hundreds of feet away. Our DM did the math and told us how many turns we would need to take dash actions for before we could get involved in combat. One of our players found a workaround via dimension door & brought the barbarian (the DM was not pleased), but the rest of us were left sprinting. For multiple turns. Just sitting there, watching him attack his NPCs with his multiple monsters, and when it got to our turn we got to say “dash,” and then wait for the next turn. This went on for about 5 rounds of combat. The friend who does not frequently get to use her abilities/feels left out was one of the ones running. We, the players, were frustrated that we missed out on most of the action but still had to sit through it, unable to help. We left the session feeling deflated and grumpy. Are we being unreasonable, or is there a better way our DM could have approached this conflict in a way that included the players more? I lay myself at the mercy of the court.

Alex

To the holiest of the holy rollers of the dice, I come to you-nay- crawl to you to humbly offer my confession. I am DMing for the very first time for three players who are also first timers. None of them listen to the show. I’m a massive fan of NADDPOD, and as a result have been consciously trying to ensure that my campaign is unique from campaign 1. Bc that campaign holds such a dear place in my heart, I knew it could influence me and wanted to keep that to a minimum. However, during session 0 things began to organically happen that bear uncanny resemblances to NADDPOD. For example, one of my players suggested that his race of mushroom folk should live high amongst the tall mushrooms in treehouses of sorts. Complete with bridges that connect all the houses! Then another player thought it would be hilarious to play a young Boy Scout halfling trying to get badges throughout the adventure. As I said, they aren’t listeners of the show and these were there own organic suggestions, but I still feel guilty. Am I plagiarizing the wonderful world of Bahumia, or are these forgivable similarities in a unique campaign? I don’t know how to feel and therefore cast myself at your holy feet for judgement.

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. -KDP

zac moehring

To the insatiable justisuccubi and the playtoy baliff. I love you. I present the case of the good friend, bad dm. My friends and I have been playing in a campaign together for a couple years and I don’t think any of us are enjoying the game but we do love roll playing these characters we love. Our DM is running a game where he inserts all types of lore into the world with the explanation that “the big bad is bringing interesting things to his planar prison” for example, “Yharnam, Harry Potter, Guild Wars, etc” and its pretty lame tbh. Also none of the people in the world are willing to have regular conversations, they all just seem like they have 1 or 2 things they say and won’t interact with us any more. This is not what we want from DND but we love our characters and don’t want to hurt our friends feelings. I tried to show him actual play to inspire him to make the campaign about his players and not these different lore pieces, but he says he “doesnt like watching dnd, he just wants to play.” I said “maybe he would enjoy playing more than dming” to which he replied “no I don’t like to play, i just love dming.” We feel the end of the campaign coming up so should we just stick it out, or is there a way to fix his dming?

Chris Coulier

Hello esteemed judges of the supreme crit, Emily, Caldwell, Murph and Tucker! Also good day to you Jake, I just think you're neat. I bring to you the case of potentially fudged dice rolls and accusations of an overstepping DM. I have been running an online campaign that includes many people, but importantly my best friend and his younger brother "Trent" (19). From the beginning I was suspicious of Trent's rolls. It started in character creation where he came to session 0 with already rolled ability scores, none lower than 14, a Dex of 20, and a Wisdom of 19. (On his level 3 aarakocra ranger he begged to play). After 10 sessions of tracking his combat rolls here's what I found; he had an average roll of 23.6 on a flat longbow attack, 4.1 higher than average. While using the Sharpshooter feat (taking the -5 penalty), he rolled an average of a 20.8, 6.3 higher than average and never missed an attack. With this evidence, I asked him to start using the DnDBeyond digital dice. He said no, because "dice rolling is one of his favorite parts of the game." He then said I had "overstepped my authority as a DM, who is supposed to facilitate the game, not police the players." he then quit the campaign. I feel bad because maybe this was a false accusation. So, I ask the Court, did I overstep my authority by tracking his rolls?

Poronekton

To the honorable Tortle Judges and The bottomfeeder suckerfish guest Bailiff Jake "WatchThis" Hurwitz If it pleases the court, i present the case of the "Other Table" ruleset. I (a seasoned vet of DND and NADDPOD) had just joined into a friends campaign where they are the DM who started playing DND 6 months ago and the 2 players who had just started the prior month were LVL 4. So excitedly i make a new character i had never messed around with a "College of Creation Bard" named Jabari! (My character isnt important to the story this is a chance for a break in reading bc Em will probably say OMG i love that class and interrupt or someone will say HEEYYYY JABARI!!!) After i get to the session and start playing with the party consisting of a Water Genasi Druid named Dahlia (Doll-ee-ah) And a Dragonborn Monk Asayia (Ass-eye-ah) we get into some trouble with the locals definitely not due to Jabari's antics...... Anyway the problem arose when we got into combat and Dahlia said they play at another table and at that table when you get an ASI you can forgo the normal options and instead get +1 ACTION.....PERMANENTLY..... So me being a DND vet i know JUST how broken that could be even at low levels but at my friends table i didnt want to step all over the DM and make a judgment call for him. The DM thought about it for a couple mins and said it would be fine. I will not be using that new rule but should i have stepped in and made it clear how insane it would be if Hardwon had 5Actions(1 as your main action and +1 at ASI levels). I accept your guidance oh holy Tortle tank.

Wade Mckenzie-Bahr

Hello Lawful Judges and downward head shake to the brash bailiff. My case is about a game-ending slap. Last year I was running an online game for my brother and some close friends. After about 8months of running tomb of annihilation, while I'm out with a player I meet his cousin who asks to join the game, apparently he played 3e for a while. I asked my players who all said yes to it. The new player creates a paladin(which I'll be using to refer to the player from here on). The paladin rolled an int score of 4, and when I suggested going with standard array instead, the paladin suggested that they roleplay having memory loss, like memento, to roleplay the stat. I asked if they were sure and they insisted. When we got to the first game all was going fine until they met some large crocodiles which the paladin insisted must have been friends and he just forgot, so he attempts to befriend one of the gators. The rogue decided to attack a different gator, which eventually scared it off without killing the beast. The paladin then strutted over and slapped the rogue for attacking his friends. The rogue then slapped back and the other players were about to start combat, when my brother(the warlock) de-escalated and we ended the session shortly after. In the next session the warlock tried to ask the paladin in-game to apologize but he "couldn't remember the incident" and insisted that the rogue was crazy/making it up. We then have a pretty uneventful session, but it's very tense and the dynamic has largely shifted. Just before our next session a week later, the warlock sends me a private text saying "can you step in if the paladin does anything else sexist" to which I get very surprised, because I hadn't seen that until they said it. Our rogue is the only female player, and the warlock suggested that slapping her and calling her crazy seemed very sexist. I later talked to the paladin who said that they thought a slap was less escalating than a full attack. Regardless a lot of trust was lost and players felt unsupported. This blew up into a much larger issue with many phone calls and people accusing each other of projecting/trying to read minds. Also, the warlock doesn't play at another table I run because he accused a player of trying to steal his now wife. Regardless, I ended the campaign a session later because it was becoming a huge headache. Justices, should I not have let in a new player? is it too much to assume sexist intent? am I not protecting my female players? I await your judgement to put this case to rest once and for all. P.S. I have a regular game with a different group that has been going weekly for 4 years, so my tables aren't all bad.

Blair Walker

To the Omnipresent Justices and the lowly Jailiff Bake, I present to you the case of “Why Did You Send Us On This Mission?” On the run from a city, our party happened upon a swamp with a ramshackle town and a thieves guild that could help us. The leader of the thieves guild stated that in order to gain their trust, they wanted us to break someone out of an Alcatraz-Style island prison. We agreed and set off on a boat to infiltrate the island, excited for the adventure. We got close and were told telepathically that the leader had thought us brave and to turn back, for we had gained their trust. But, wanting to help the leader, we pushed forward. We were immediately captured, and beaten down to 1 HP, and locked in an iron box on the island. The monk through a crafty use of ki points escaped away from the guards watching us, and my trifling fighter used their last resource, a darkness spell, on the wizard guard to help our Aasimar fly away, but I was summarily killed instantly by the wizard. The DM said after the session that once we got captured, he knew one of us was going to die, but was this unfair? I feel like we were sent on a false mission and punished for not knowing it was false. I await your just assessment.

gavin k

To the illustrious judges of the high crit and the mediocre at best bailiff, may it please the court. I bring to you the case of the spited succubus waitress. I’m currently running a dnd 5e home-brew campaign for my friends that has lasted several years. During one extended dungeon crawl my players found themselves exploring layers of hell which had seeped into the underground of a major city. Between the layers representing lust and greed they came to an underground casino run by a dark paladin of Asmodeous who used succubi and incubi as wait staff. During the parties time on this floor our wizard made it a point to be the rudest karen-type customer possible to the wait staff (asking for a manager, sending orders back, etc.) During the final fight of this floor our party’s wizard immediately cast banishment on my big bad dark paladin, as she is one to whomp, leaving his wait staff as easy pickings. Looking for a way to break her concentration I had one of the succubi charm the party’s ranger/paladin multiclass and order him to kill her, partially for strategic reasons and partially for being a horrible customer. The ranger/paladin (who I knew had the most broken stats of the party) went all out using smites and other special abilities (which the succubus ordered him to do). This downed their poor wizard in only one turn. But I’m not sure if their charmed OP ranger should have just made a single simple weapon attack or go all crazy with smites and the like. A succubus charm seems different from a simple charm person spell right? In the end their wizard was brought back and even got the final blow on the big bad, but I ask this: Was I in the wrong for winter-soldiering their party’s ranger so hard, or do people who are rude to wait staff deserve fates this harsh? I lay my head gently in the guillotine and await my fate with quiet dignity.

Jaina Brannan

To the cool, refreshingly crisp Judges Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the flat and warm Baliff Jake. I come to you with the case of Titty the gnome. I DM'd a campaign for 2 of my friends online a few years back. One of them made a sorcerer/paladin multiclass and the other made a gnome artificer. While setting up the character sheets, I jokingly wrote "Titty Boombalatty" in as a character name on one sheet, and "Hugh Jweenir" on the second. The wizard laughed it off, erased the name and put in his character's name. The gnome artificer's player messages me and says "Because you wrote that in there I am now keeping it". Even when I recanted, he refused to budge and said he would not play unless his character was named Titty Boombalatty. I got him to agree to be Titty "Boom" Balatty and go by Boom. I caved, and we played these characters for 2 years. They became level 18 characters and Titty's story ended with him taking the place as the god of Order in my world. This campaign was the continuation of another long campaign however now I have this god named Titty Balatty and I have not been able to come up with a solid campaign Idea for a sequel since. Judges, I ask you should I have stood my ground and made him change his name, or is Titty my penance for my immature hubris? I await your judgement thirstily.

DisClever

To the, you know, and all that jazz. I found myself playing a Lawful Good Rogue in a 5e game that was pitched as "The Breakfast Club meets Wild West". An ex-con who sends all of the money they acquire back to an orphanage they feel responsible for. Very early on (First session) one of our party members decides to pull the ultimate solo heist. Steal a very valuable and expensive gun from one of the two shops in town, which was displayed on the wall of the shop. Without knowing their intentions, my character was asked to talk to the shopkeeper with the intention of keeping them distracted. Being the only character with any sort of charisma, my character immediately botched the roll leading to verbal abuse from the shopkeeper. Meanwhile the party member cast an illusion spell to make the gun appear where it was, while they cast invisibility to steal it. Which to my character appeared as though a gun had just hopped off the wall, and flew right out of the store. While somehow remaining on the wall. The shopkeeper seemed to not notice while berating me. I then promptly left, as the thief hid the gun somewhere. When recounting this to my partner after the game, they argued that I couldn't be Lawful Good having allowed that crime to occur. While I argue that I did not perform the act, and was unaware of the crime attempt thus allowing me to keep my lawful status. It was also brought up that being the wild west, 'the law' is very had to define. We have yet to settle this past agreeing that my character should report the crime to whatever authorities there may be. Which I did, in front of all of my party members. Added comedy that my character looked like a loony talking about flying ghost guns that stole themselves, which was promptly dismissed by the 'Sherriff". What do you say, Justices? Can my character still call themselves Lawful, or will they be forever destined to return to the life of crime?

Cody

To the honorable justices and the guy who starred on that one episode of 8 bit book club. I present the case of the Coin of Changing. My friends and I are new to DND. We’ve been playing for a few months, after I convinced them to try and play finally. We started our campaign strong but it appeared to me some of our party members weren’t enjoying their classes early on in the campaign, but they didn’t want to retire or let the characters die off. So, as a new DM I invented the Coin of Changing. An item that allowed their characters to respec (change classes/whatever they wanted) to their hearts desire at the current level. However, I feel like I was being too nice. Since we’re all new to the game and I didn’t want to lose their interest so early on. It did complicate the story and some backgrounds a bit but everything is running smoothly now. Do you think this item is too overpowered? Should I have let them try and work it out with their original select classes and choices? Or was I smart in allowing them to dabble elsewhere?

Clairodactyl

Oh dear wonderful justices and also the bailiff.

Ya Boi Troy

To the all mighty, and benevolent Judges, and the bailiff Cameron. I am playing a collage of swords bard in a Spelljammer Campaign. My team and I were in a battle arena fighting Braxat, a huge rhino monster. During the battle I used hypnotic pattern to try to incapacitated the beast. My DM rolled the saving throw, and declared that he failed the save. So, thinking that the monster was incapacitated, the barbarian went out of his rage to prepare a coordinated attack with the rest of the teams. However when it came to the big baddies turn he moved and attacked the unraged barbarian. I reminded my DM the creature was under hypnotic pattern. He then said that the creature was immune to being charmed, so the hypnotic pattern I had cast did nothing. I argued that I would have seen that the spell didn't work, but he said the spell does not say that it tells you when the spell isn't effective. We ended up barely surviving the battle, and moving on to the next match. So, I ask the court was I right to be upset having no clue if the spell had an effect on a creature right in front of me, or would the spell or monster give no indication if it worked. I humbly await to hear your wisdom.

Ames

Dear esteemed and mighty Judges, and the pretty neat Bailiff if he’s there. I present the case of The Stubborn Sausage thieves. I run one shots for my uni’s dnd club and enjoy it immensely, introducing dnd to new players and allowing forever DMs a chance to kick back and enjoy being a player. Yes, almost new groups every week come with challenges but I love the different groups I get, with one exception… The Stubborn Sausage Thieves. This group of 3 pcs would not stop badgering the butcher in the small village besieged by a monster. Whilst using the butcher to reveal information about the monster they were trying to hunt to the whole group of 6 pcs, 3 pcs insisted they steal the sausage links I had described to create an immersive setting. I said okay, you can do this but if he figures you out you might not find out all the Crucial info about this monster you guys are here to hunt. They said fine, I set some dcs for slight of hand, deception, and stealth. All three CRIT failed, like dice Christ was sending them a sign. I said the butcher pulls out his knives and throws them right as your about to take a step seeing through your rouse, he kicks you out and refuses to aid the party any more. Thinking that was the end of it I continued to the night scene, where they could scout out the suspicious elder or gather more clues, but no. “We want those sausages” They demanded they go back, and again I set some higher dcs which they got did succeeded on and got the sausages. Again I thought it was the end of it, but no, they now they wanted everything. So for each night they were in the town, supposed to be gathering info as a group, these 3 went back and stole from this poor butcher. They robed this innocent man who was supposed to help them. Bless the other players, they went and got all the info, figured out the monster, and how to kill it. After completing their quest they reimbursed the butcher. So I ask the court, was I right to let them have a rob this humble butcher or should I have stuck to my guns a bit more and just said no? I humbling await your judgement

Linsey

Good afternoon to the supreme crit justices who are not above the law but ARE the law, and to the lovably simple James. May it please the court. I am hoping for counsel - or even a definitive ruling - on this issue. One of my players in a Pathfinder campaign has decided to play a Wishborn Poppet, a rare ancestry that I thought would make for great flavor. The (new) player was excited to play the doll and hoped to one day become a real girl, ala Pinocchio. Great so far! Things took a turn when the player announced that she wanted to start collecting the skin of her enemies in order to create a skin suit and become a real person. The rest of the table seemed horrified but I took her seriously and informed her that as a Druid, stealing dead people's skin could/would be considered Anathema (an actual mechanic) to her class and she may lose powers from it. I also said that to make such a suit she would need to succeed high DC Leatherworking checks, and may also experience penalities on her Charisma checks if the suit was not flawless. She seemed bummed that it would be so difficult and I wonder if I took it too far. Should I have put a clear end to her hunger for skin, or should I have allowed this dream of hers to become reality? I humbly await your judgment!

Mars Sink

To the all mighty judges and I guess Jake. I was playing a Druid elf in a campaign in my college dnd club. I was real excited and had a backstory that essentially my character had parents who were incredibly successful guild hunters and on my first adventure with her parents a succubus jumped inside of her trying to take control. Her parents, scared of the demon, locked her in the basement for many years until she eventually escaped and started her own adventuring party. Here’s where it went wrong. My partner joined the party late and obviously knew everything about my character cause I tell them everything, and made a character that was ingrained into my backstory and even changed elements. I told them when they were creating the character they couldn’t make the character involved with my backstory but they still did, and even turned my parents who I feared and thought of as strong casters and fighters into stoners? They played a kenku doctor/rogue who was essentially Jack the Ripper but also had a crush on me, which I detested cause a) creepy, and b) my dm gave me a in game gf and I didn’t wanna fight with the other pcs over jealousy and such. The DM facilitated all of their decisions without my permission as well and it felt like no one cared. We eventually left this campaign because the DM was making npcs way too high of level and a whole bunch of other things that need to be in another case. But I still feel scorned. I beg the court, should I have gone along with this weird kenku? Or should I have retcon the entire character and told my partner to get of my character sheet?

DonutHoo

May it please the court and the bailiff if there's time, I guess, but don't lose sleep over it. I was DMing a chase scene as the party chased down a satyr through the city streets. Eventually, their quarry took to the rooftops. The only one left able to catch him before his escape was the arcane trickster rogue who asked if there were any pipes built alongside the building. I told him yes, assuming he was planning to shimmy up the pipe using his cunning action to give chase. This was not his plan. Instead, he pried off a piece of piping, froze one end with his magic ice sword, and proceeded to cast burning hands into the opposite end with a smug tenor in his voice. There were several moments of silence as he no doubt stared at my discord icon expectantly. I began to narrate how the ice on the inside of the pipe melted and he hurt his hands a little bit from the very hot pipe (no actual damage was taken--just flavor). The rogue was flabbergasted--he asked why there hadn't been a resulting explosion from the buildup of steam to rocket him to the roof. After a back-and-forth argument about his strange understanding of physics, I allowed him to roll an arcana check. He rolled middling, but because we had already spent several minutes on his turn, I had the explosion go off and he took some damage as he impacted into a stone balcony. Did I do the right thing or should I have let him sit on the ground with a hot and wet steel pipe, all his hopes and dreams shattered? I prostrate myself before the court as I await your judgement.

Pendergreen's Bowflex

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

Eliska G

To the honourable justices/high priests, as well as to that guy Tucker hangs out with sometimes: I come not with a case nor a confession, but with an example of Dice Christ's instant karma. My girlfriend was rolling stats for a dnd character while on call with me. She rolled above 14 for all her rolls until her last, which was a 7. She was unhappy, but I warned her against rerolling, fearing the wrath of Dice Christ. Deciding not to heed my warning, she rolled that stat again. She got a five. Distraught, she rolled again. Another five. Her final roll... was a three. Four ones on all of her d6's, something we calculated as a 1/1296 chance. The fear of Dice Christ was struck into her at that moment, and she decided to take the seven without another word. Needless to say, my girlfriend is now a devout follower of Dice Christ, and she's pickling her dice as we speak.

Bennett Lawson

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

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.

David Silva

May it please the tempestuous justices and the all-around solid bailiff, Jonk. I come to you with a case of the Frog King's Geas. My players are exploring the Underdark for side quests and stumbled upon an old ruin. At the bottom of the ruin, I placed a Frog King from Kobold Press to troll my players. The frog king gave them a big spiel about being a prince who was cursed by a hag and the only way to turn back was to eat fruit born from an acorn coated in the ash left in an Ashen Custodian's (another KP monster) wake. The bard immediately pledged herself to this Frog (as anticipated) and the frog offered a boon for his "champion". This boon was a slightly modified geas. It still functioned as Geas but I gave her some extra spells to cast at will and some minor advantages. The frog told them that they could use a rod they found in the ruin to guide them to their goal. Instead of using the rod, they just set off in a direction (the opposite direction of the goal) and the bard took a truckload of psychic damage at the end of the session. The player became furious that they took a bunch of damage (despite knowing beforehand that they were indeed Geas'd) and wanted to turn back and kill the frog. The player told me they hate being railroaded into going back a direction they already went and that they couldn't enjoy the sidequest now because they have to kill the frog guy. Was I wrong to enforce the geas in this manner? I prostrate myself before you and accept your judgement.

Thanatos

To the honourable and esteemed Judges and that one cool guy we all know and love, Special guest: Jake Hurwitz! May it please the court! I present case of "Are mushrooms plants?" I am playing a campaign with my cousin, first time DM, and a few of his friends. My character is a duel class oathbreaker/necromancer tiefling (home brewed). During a portal travel to the shadow realm me and my party landed in a swampy region of the lands. Which quickly broke out into a combat. We encountered some beefy Myconids monsters. After some combat I had an idea and asked the DM to answer the question- do Myconids (mushroom monsters) count as plants? He hesitantly said yes. I then used a spell called blight. After the creature failed its saving throw with disadvantage I got to deal max damage effectively killing his beefy mushroom monster; the DM was not happy about it. After a quick google check by the DM, he stated that mushrooms are not plants and thus would not deal max damage nor have disadvantage but instead he would reroll his constitution saving throw. After the reroll he passed and I ended up only dealing 16 points of damage. I contested since the DM's guide is unclear, but I do understand that mushrooms are a fungus rather than a plant purely biologically. Was I robbed of my max damage? What would Myconids even be if not some sort of plants? I humbly await your judgement! Sincerely, Thanatos

Jarla

Some months ago in a relatively new campaign, our party of 6 or 7 was introduced to a demon on a motorcycle. This demon was not actively aggressive towards us at first, but did make his intention to kill and eat people (including our party) extremely clear to us. Despite this, the party insisted on reasoning with the demon to not kill and eat people. The reasoning goes nowhere until one member of the party has enough and out of character declares her intent to attack the demon, to the disapproval of all other party members except for me for "not trying to talk it out" with the demon. The DM ends the session there, not giving said party member a free attack out of initiative.The next session begins with the DM calling for rolling initiative to continue with the party member's intent to attack the demon. I roll the highest initiative, higher than even the demon which would turn out to be significantly more powerful than the party. So I attack the demon, again to jeers and anger from the rest of the party. One other party member has a turn before the demon and spends his turn talking to the demon and nothing else. When the demon has a turn, he knocks out half the party at once. Following this, the rest of our turns are spent trying to run from this demon who is still on a motorcycle and easily catches up with us without using his Action. Seeing this, I stop trying to run and focus on attacking the demon as a barbarian, deciding that I would probably die either way and I would rather die fighting, until the spellcasters are able to teleport the party to safety. We ended up in some ancient ruins, but any possibility of exploring those ruins were removed as the session quickly turned into the rest of the party yelling at me for being the first to actually attack the demon and for not trying to run away. Choice statements that stuck with me are "So your first instinct when adrenaline kicks in is to escalate to violence?" and "You should've at least tried to run away even if you thought it was impossible and you'd die anyway instead of choosing to die in combat." The next day the DM decided to cancel the campaign. Was I right to be the first to attack on initiative even though no attacks had been dealt yet or did I deserve the anger and blame that was heaped on me for the rest of the session and in the group chat for the rest of the day? And further, was I right to choose a death by battle over a death by being stabbed in the back by an 80s metal mascot even though ultimately no one died in the encounter?

Zach Brown

To the honorary justices Axford, Murphy and Tanner. As well as the dishonorary Boston Criminal Defence Attorney Tread. I bring you the case of Health Cannon Madness. Recently I have been playing an artillerist artificer and one of the cannons I can make is a shield cannon that allows me to provide temp HP (d8 plus intel mod (3)) to any number of creatures within the shield. The cannon lasts an hour and each turn I can use it meaning I can use it 600 times before it disappears. I did this before an encounter and my DM was so upset with everyone’s 4200 (4 average roll+ 3 x600) temp HP that we haven’t played since January. Am I in the wrong for following the mechanics or should my DM get good? I await your ruling. PS You are all welcome to come to my wedding in August in Halifax. Or if you can’t please do a live show in Ottawa!!!!

T Aa

To the inequitable Judges and the tastefully lowly Bailiff John. I present the case of The Player-Stealing-DM. I was introduced to D&D in year 6, and instantly liked it. Then I got sent to boarding school, and couldn’t play. I got my D&D fix through listening to NADDPOD (thanks), but around year 9, I decided, “Hey, why don’t I run my own 5e campaign?” So through a mix of D&D Beyond, the google dice rolling feature, and me searching for free D&D campaign pdfs on google, I got a campaign going. The party consisted of 2 Dragonborne Paladins, and a Ranger, all of whom solely enjoyed fighting. As it was their first time ever playing and mine ever DMing, I let the shenanigans run rampant. Everyone was having heaps of fun, including me, until someone else decided to join the party. This someone, who we will name Colin, had had the same introduction as me, except they had bought the DMG, PHB, and MM. In other words, he was the most lawyer-ey Rules Lawyer you’d ever hope not to meet. He joined the campaign, and I set up and encounter in a store where Colin, a rogue, could steal back something he’d lost, a sword I had vague plans to make really interesting in the future. Upon entering the store, the ranger wanted to shoulder barge a customer out of the way. I had him roll opposed athletics and they both rolled really low. I narrated them both falling over and blocking the doorway, and causing others to trip and fall as they were knocked down as well. Everyone was laughing at the stupidity until Colin said “No.” I looked at him surprised but I asked why. He proceeded to take out the PHB and show me where I should have had them roll initiative and then have consecutive grapple checks to win, with one reigning supreme. I explained it was just a bit of fun, and It didn’t matter all that much, but he told me he wanted to play in an actual campaign, not just some silly made-up nonsense. He left and we finished the session with the players accosting the rogue who I had to quickly make an NPC, and we ended happily. Here’s where the bad part begins. One-By-one, my players came to me and said they didn’t really want to play anymore, I was crushed, and thought I hadn’t DMed well enough, and was worried I had ruined it for them by giving them a bad first experience of D&D. Well, the next week I was walking past the library where we played, and I saw all my players sitting around a table, talking. I went over to them, as they were still my friends, and to my dismay saw they were all playing D&D with none other than Colin. I found out he had gone to all my players after that fateful session, and told them I didn’t know what I was doing, and had convinced them I was a terrible DM. He had gotten them to leave my campaign and start a new one, and not to tell me. I asked my players to please come back to my campaign, as they had already started, but they didn’t want to, and I couldn’t exactly force them. So I ask you, was I wrong to play a loose campaign for my new players? Or should I have played by the rules more like Colin demanded? I humbly await your judgement. P.S I later discovered the players quit Colin’s campaign after just a few sessions because they weren’t having fun. They didn’t like D&D anymore. Thank you.

Seth Nichols

To the honorable judges, I present the case of Wizard v. Flint and Steel. In a battle between our heroes and the final boss of a cave dungeon, we were learned that the boss was using buttons on his throne to trigger traps that would harm the party. I was out of spell slots early in the battle since we were at a low level, so I decided to get creative when the boss activated a grease trap to surround his throne. I asked the DM if there were any torches on the walls, and he told me that there were several unlit torches around the room. I said I wanted to get out my flint and steel, light a torch, and ignite the grease. To my surprise, the DM instructed me to roll a D4, and I rolled a 4. The DM told me that it would take me 4 rounds of combat to light the torch, and that my turn was over. On the next round, I wanted to ditch this terrible plan and re-enter combat, but he told me that I was now committed to my plan and could not stop until the 4 turns were over. I spent the rest of the fight failing to light the torch, and my party beat the boss without me. Was I robbed of my autonomy? Am I wrong to make decisions for my character based on out-of-game foresight on how long their actions will take to complete? I humbly await your judgment. PS: After the battle, one of my party members clicked one of the throne buttons for fun, which triggered a high-level fireball to hit most of the party. Three of us were knocked out, one of which failed his death saves and died. The DM, sensing that everyone was bummed and a little miffed, told us that his DM-PC pulled out a wish scroll and revived the fallen party member. While it removed the consequences of our friend’s decision, it was obvious that the party appreciated his mercy. I have to give him kudos for that.

Rebe’s Art

G’day to the beloved Supreme Crit Justices and the honourable Bailiff Jake! I present to you less of a case and more of a desperate plea for guidance on what I have dubbed “the hesitant Hail Mary” Some background: myself and a couple of mates play in a level 14 high-stakes 5e campaign. As an example of how high-stakes the game is right now; the empire is at war, an eldritch world-destroying horror just broke out of the moon - and finally, how could I forget, the god of Death itself was just assassinated. My friend plays a cleric of Kord in this game. We love a cleric, especially one who has survived to high-level. Clerics also gain a fun ability at level 10 to roll for a “Divine Intervention” which they can do once per long rest. Which brings me to the point of my plea! There have been times a Divine Intervention has been desperately needed in this high-stakes game but the Cleric won’t budge! Not even when he was at Death’s Doorstep during a particularly bloody battle - in fact, he DIED. And was thankfully resurrected. But up to drawing his last breath, he simply would not Hail Mary. Justices and Bailiff I beg of you, how can I kindly convince my fellow player to make the most out of his amazing cleric abilities? I have tried to helpfully tell him about his Divine Intervention in character - saying things to his cleric like “gee, only a miracle could save us now!” - and out of character, with a lot of winking and nudging, but he kind of just laughs and moves on! I realise he may have reasons he doesn't want to use it ... but in any case, I myself worry about coming off as “bossy” so I try to reel it in. It would just be awesome to see a high-level cleric get to go absolutely ham. I can for sure see a lot of DM wumps ahead with some clever Divine Interventions. Any advice is appreciated - do I keep nudging him, or just let it go? Please help! Thank you crew for your time 🙏 Kord bless

Kevin Alman

Hello honorable justices and the (insert appropriate adjective here) bailiff. I come to you with a case of possible self robbery? I was DMing a heist at an auction and one of my players decided to cast suggestion on another auction goer, Thaddeus, and asked them to give the party all of his money to help reimburse them for the money they had to spend to win the auction and claim the artifact they were originally there to steal. Long story short a teleportation mishap cause Thaddeus to take force damage twice his hp, killing him before he could give anyone any money. But the question is, can you cast suggestion on someone to make them give you all of their money, about a total of 15,000 gold, or would this be considered a harmful act against themselves? I await your fair and just ruling.

MikeAllenZ (MAZ Presents Personal)

To the honorable justices and probably someone else that I’m forgetting about. I bring to you the case of “Two Dead Mentors”. For you see, I once gave my DM a character in a campaign, Jikai, an inventor, a character who had recently lost a mentor, but had gained another in a vigilante woman, Zora who taught him how to fight. I had made it clear to the DM that I was hoping he’d heal over the death of his first mentor. In the first session there was a scene where Zora gave him a device to contact her, but warned to only do it if it was absolutely necessary. Later on we had found out that Zora DIED and when I was upset about it I got a “Well you never called her so you were unable to help her”. But she had directly told me to NOT do it. To this day I keep hearing that her death was my fault for being to prideful to call her for help when I was just trying to be a good student.

Frank

To the Honorable Judges and a whimsical nod to Jake. I had a discussion with my coworker while on the clock, and he was telling me about a new D&D campaign he was getting into. He told me about the world, his fellow players, and his DM who I know. I unfortunately asked about his player character. After describing them, telling me their backstory and their class, I thought that's where it would stop. But then he began to tell about the arc he had planned for his character. Not just a general direction, but an entire arc. I told him that maybe it was a bit...un-fun to plan an entire beginning middle and end for a character without actually playing at least a few sessions if at all! We then spoke on the clock for a while longer about it but could not agree. He thinks its perfectly fine. So I come to you? Do you agree with him or I. I shall take punishment willingly. With thanks, Frank (P.S all friendly banter, no feelings were actually hurt)

Anthon Morgan

To all y'all court goers, I would like to present a case of betrayal by bed. I was playing in a campaign with some friends and the dm was somebody that one friend knew and the rest did not. After a day of travel we all go to bed down for the night and the dm asks us for a perception/investigation check. Our barbarian rolls a nat 20 and the dm tells him the the campsite is clear. We all go to bed thinking all is well and instead are told that since we didn't roll high enough we didn't see that the bedrolls were all replaced by mimics and to roll initiative. When we fought back he told us that it was a dc 30 check and that even with a nat 20 the barbarian didn't have high enough investigation (we are 5th level I don't think any of us had a plus 10) we survived the encounter but ended up only getting a short rest for the next day of travel. I ask, was the impossible asked of us or was simply the luck of the dice.

Aureia

To the Beatific Justices, the Resplendent/Vile Bailif depending on how you're feeling and may it please the court I humbly bring before you the case of the catfished celestial warlock. I played a satyr celestial warlock who was raised by a kindly mentor after falling through a portal to a forest in the the material realm as a child. The campaign was their first time in the wider world. As they explored faerun they realised they got the short end of the stick being stuck in a forest. I asked my DM if i could play the warlock patron relationship as a bit resentful. The DM stated i wasn't allowed to resent a celestial patron. I left it up to my DM what an alternative might be after efforts to workshop things kept meeting a dead end. The result? A homebrewed neutral deity who kidnapped my character as a child (I said in a previous character idea being kidnapped as a child was too dark). Whenever my character pushed back at being kidnapped he got told "it was his own fault" and couldn't blame anyone but himself. I eventually left the campaign and it's for the best but I can't help but wonder if my satyr boy got done dirty and deserves a crumb of justice. I humbly await your judgement and accept my own culpability

Fredrik Knief

To the rad crit justices with cool leather jackets. I bring you the case of the cursed staff. I recently ran a game with 3 players and myself, all of us with little to no prior experience other than watching/listening to show like naddpodd, d20 and CR. The party started out as level 3 characters with established backstories of having experienced some adventure together prior to arriving at our starting town. The party was enlisted by the duke and his wizard advisor to dispatch of a dark wizard who had been kidnapping kids to sacrifice to his demon patron. The quest was a success and the party managed to defeat the dark wizard and bearly escape the crumbling cave along with the freshly resqued kids. And, crucially to my intended plot development, they brought along the wizards staff which I discribed clanked to the ground as the wizard was defeated. As they were returning to town, to my annoyance, the groups paladin insisted they get rid of the cursed staff. Which I had hoped to use as a mind control device to cause one of the partymembers make an attempt at the dukes life and make the urgent need to GTFO or maybe capture/daring prison escape. Of course, that didnt happen and in my noob DM mind I couldnt see a reasonable way to make it happen anyway. The session ended with the collection of rewards and gambling at the inn with a subsequent brawl. which was fun all the same but I felt I would have liked the session to end with a clear direction for the next one, which has yet to happen. Should I have tried harder to make the party keep the staff? Or should I maybe not have put so much relience on it all? Oh the baliff is also there, didnt notice.

Scott Riccobono

To the honorable Justices, and the also honorable Bailif-Jake. May it please the court- I brought up the Simulacrum spell to my DM. She is relatively new to DMing so I often poke her about my past mistakes; or mistakes I've read other DMs make. She is also my girlfriend and gets pretty annoyed by it. I wanted to talk with her about the difficulty rating of combat as a DM. "When your players get more skills", I said, "your monsters will, too". I wanted to talk about using monsters effectively because the difficulty of combat is highly dependent on it. I picked a high-level Wizard with a stat block that contained the Simulacrum spell. I wanted to show how different the fight would be if you planted them in a random battle versus a wizard meticulously preparing for an expected fight. When I brought up the Simulacrum spell, she looked it up and told me that the material component was snow. "There isn't always going to be snow around," she said. I said, "Wizards can easily create snow". She said, "It can't be magical snow. It has to be natural snow." I said, "OK. If that were the case, a Wizard with enough time, could teleport, acquire, and store enough snow to be ready." She disagreed. Am I wrong to argue with my girlfriend here? I don't think she cares about level 20 Wizard theorycraft, but shouldn't I warn her about these things to prepare her for more difficult content? Why did she fixate on the material component of the spell? She loves womping me and laughs about getting womped herself. I just don't want her to get womped every time. I humbly await your -relationship advice- ruling.

Rob T

When you say teleport, i say “how many times?” Dear Mighty Judges and (insert adj here) bailiff I joined a friend’s game as a guest character between arc. I took a note from Ally Beardsly and played a level 12 multiclass Gloom Stalker Ranger/Assassin Rogue/Battlemaster fighter. It was a one time character so i got crunchy. I was from a futuristic sky city and the campaign’s big bad teleported into a vault and teleported out with an important relic. The DM specifically said he teleported in and out. That same day, he raided the heroes’ home, unleashed a beholder, and stole an important journal. The big bad ran off into the night. I was a sharpshooter feat crossbow archer that couldn’t be seen by anyone because of they all had night vision. I kicked ass. Got the relic back but not the journal. The BB then teleported away. Taunting the heroes with a sending spell. My question is, how did this guy teleport (7th lvl spell) 3 times in one day? How high a level wizard was he to do this? If he was that high then couldn’t he have destroyed us with 9th level spells instead of almost dying? Judges. When does a background explanation have to face material constraints of spell slots? I await your ruling. PS: this wasn’t a game ruining debate. We discussed for a few mins. He said he used a higher lvl spell slots. I didn’t want to look up how many wizard spell slots they had. So i dropped it cause i know he still wanted his BB to do stuff and i was a guest character. I STILL WANT TO BE RIGHT THO!

Q'Salvester

To the honored popes of dice christ and youth pastor Jake, I come to you with a confession I was running a one shot with my roommates and friends from work, one was a first timer. It was my first time ever running a module and after the first encounter which due to an incredible spell from the Warlock and really bad dice rolls on my part the party made it out completely unscathed. Where the issue arrose was immediately after this when there was an encounter they were supposed to lose in which they were absolutely womping the old hag they were up against. Out of desperation I made up a sleeping gas effect and upcast her spells to take them down. After getting things back on track the monk rolled a nat 20 at disadvantage to convince an insane giant they were married so they could bring him along to go back and womp her even harder than the first time finishing the one shot in under an hour. Was this dice christ's way of putting things back in order or was I right to try to save this one shot. I humbly await your judgment.

MasterWarcraft

To the honorable justices and the still-living bailiff Jake, I give you the case of the otter ending hijack. It was the last session of a long running 3.5 campaign which ended with the BBEG defeated in a dramatic battle on his own spaceship in... space. At the time, I narrated, "Because the adventurers did not know where in the cosmos they were, they couldn't return home. However, undeterred, the adventurers fired up their engines of their stolen spaceship, took their stations and smiled. They chose the second star on the right venturing forever in the infinite cosmos, having epic adventures for the rest of time." One of the other players got visibly angry at this and started to narrate himself, "No, that's not how it ends. My character immediately figures out the alien controls, navigates back to his own planet and retires. There, he starts up an family in the river with his otter wife and children. They live happily ever after. The end." I said, "OK." And that was the end of the campaign. So, I ask of ye judges, does the otter have the right to retire to a egalitarian life, or should I have stuck to my original ending?

Armadon the only

To the honorable Murph, axeford, and Tanner, and the bountiful bailiff/clerk Jake. I present you with numbers vs drama. I do not like being a player as much as being a DM, but on those off chances I have to abdicate I play a character I want no matter the efficiency. So in a recent scene where I was being grappled I decided to attack my opponent with a dagger instead of my great axe for dramatic effect. The DM allowed it but later he and his optimizing sibling gave me grief on my choice. So I ask should I have been subjected to my suboptimal dressing down or are they just number crunching midmaxers?

Brandon

Your most honorable judges or lore and legend, masters of the rules and rulings, and jack, I have but a simple question. Am I wrong for telling my player they aren’t allowed to name their character “Something”, as in Something the level 3 rogue. They want their name to add to the mystique of their character so all the rumors of his victims death were just that “Something must have killed them”. I argue that this is a fun idea for a one shot, but over a long campaign it just seems like having a name like “Something”, or “Someone” or the likes would get confusing in descriptions and conversations. Don’t get me wrong I love Nothin’ and hope Obsidian can find them, but I’m just not a fan of a name like that for a PC. I would also like to nominate Amir as a Supreme Court Justice of the dice.

Kai

Jenifer Joseph

I’m not the judges but if it’s only a 4 shot why not just stick it out?

Lilly Tang

Prayer to Dice Christ. I am truly blessed by Dice Christ as they know I am a devout believer. I listen to dice rolls and cannot tell a lie so I always trust in the roll. Recently I have been given the role of DM and Dice Christ has seen to keep the blessings rolling. Sometimes I watch in horror and awe at the amazing high rolls I have been gifted. However my players are cursed to rarely roll above a 10. I started letting them use my dice but their curse continues regardless. How can I lift their curses?

Enreal

Hello to the lovely bailiff and the tyrannical judges who torment him. I am DMing a campaign that starts in a Renaissance Italy inspired republic. After two sessions I decided to reboot the campaign. One of my PC’s, Antonia, is the daughter of a powerful Medici-like don but she secretly LARPs as a lowly rogue. Pre-reboot, I introduced the location of her father’s secret base to a different PC as a plot hook. A few sessions after the reboot, Antonia was faced with an impossible problem. With some innovative thinking from the player, she discovered an item that hinted to the underground location of the base. She then rolled a nat 20 to figure out the clue. The whole group positively freaked out. I did too but I also felt a deep sense of dread that she pulled this off without using pre-reboot knowledge. Because of a nat 1 in her follow up sleuthing, I kinda forcefully cut off her investigation there. This was one of the most riveting moments of the campaign for countless edited-out reasons and I can’t help but feel bad for ending it so abruptly. I ask you, should I have continued the breadcrumb trail or was I right in gobbling up the breadcrumbs like some sort of starved goblin.

Zaxbeez

To the honorous justices and the bailiff who I think would do great as a guest on 8-Bit book club, I bring the case of the Too Cool Failure: I was playing an astral monk in a campaign that was pretty heavy on the goofs. My monk was a 40-something working as a cashier at Fantasy Burger King whose ex wife married a much more successful man with a young son (who was my bully). During character creation, I drew upon Gilear (Fantasy High) and threw in some big Jake/Tucker energy; my monk had just gotten his orange belt from the mall dojo. I worked with my GM that my arc could’ve traveling the world with the party getting strong enough to stand up to my 9-year-old nemesis, and he thought it was great. A few sessions later and we’re getting ready to leave the city for adventures abroad, when my rival confronts me and starts pushing me, so I go to defend myself, thinking I was about to get trashed. Justices, I took this kid out with one punch, and my ex wife was impressed and said we should get coffee sometime. I thought this was too quick of an ending, and wound up dropping my monk off and making a new character because my failson was ‘cool’ now. Should I be upset that my loser monk had his entire character arc completed in 3 sessions, or just enjoy the knowledge that I can dunk on prepubescent karate practitioners? I eagerly await your judgement.

Casey Sears

To the honorable justices and fancy lad Jake, may I bring to you the case of the Roc and the hard place. My players are in a survival horror campaign loosely inspired Midsommar (if Midsommar had feuding fey and a Baba Yaga figure). To keep up the sense of danger and drama, random encounters are all rolled in front of the board, and the CRs for the encounters tends to be pretty high. My group of 6 level 6 characters encountered a Roc. Our sorcerer immediately got picked up (because he was making bird sounds with prestidigitation) and carried into the sky. Our eldritch knight jumped on the Roc's back to lend assistance mid-flight. When the fighter speared the Roc in the back, the Roc used its action to shake loose the fighter and drop the sorcerer (...180ft to the ground). The check was athletics vs acrobatics/athletics to stay on the Roc. The players failed their checks. The fighter argued that falling should take place on his turn and that he should be able to grab back onto the Roc. I argued that falling occurs instantaneously unless specifically countered by a reaction like featherfall. Revivify brought back the dead sorcerer, and the fighter was brought back up with cure wounds. Am I wrong to have turned my players into flat stanleys?

Melon Bread

NPCs don't have to follow character class rules.

Scott

Forget d and d court when are the boobs going to give us their takes on dungeons and dragons: honour among thieves ?

KOJXVMason

Dear universe 7 gods and the lowly bailiff who cleans their shoes, I bring you the case of the absent saiyan and namekian I made a home brew DBZ campaign that runs through the whole arc of DragonBall Z and Super including the movies and making it to where everything is canonical well everyone picked their race and a lot of these people are playing DND for the first time so I made it extra fun and exciting for all the players so our saiyan has been absent for every session all the way up to going to namek so like 10 sessions! On the 10th one where they finally start to face freiza I killed off his character and the namekian character for they were both absent because they decided to and I quote go see DR Strange 2 cuz they thought that would be more fun so after informing the other players of this I decided out of spite to have frieza death beam them and mercilessly destroy them in front of everyone and had a mini joker moment and the 11th session not only did the namekian showed up but the saiyan showed up for the first time so I told them sorry your characters have died but their is hope if the players can collect the dragonballs and revive you then your characters can come back so they had to watch a 4 to 5 hour boss fight without participating so I ask you am I being a little too petty for not having them play during an amazing boss fight or did I have a right to destroy these characters after I put so much work into this game that they deemed “not fun” I humbly await your judgement

ACK

* * shouted from the stand * * Do magically created clones have belly buttons? * * gets dragged out by security * *

William Kraft

Thoughts on banana bread now? Lol

Justin Noble

Dear Instagram-verified justices, I come forth with a case of an evil campaign finale gone kawaii. I had been playing my level 15 jumbo imp monk alongside 3 of the DMs friends, making up our world's dark council. One player was a reaper, however, he did not take the game seriously and would only roleplay a dumbass uncle reaper who constantly shit himself and used to farm, and on top of this, the player was generally disengaged from the game. Upon encountering the bbeg, I open the fight by critting on a deflect missile check to swing a kicked table back at this evil-doer. I was feeling very good about my monk and feeling very good about having a satisfying conclusion to this mini campaign. We defeat the bbeg and the four of us get to deciding who will inherit the dark crown. This reaper-player (who hasn't been paying to the entire campaign up until this point) decides to kick his rp into high gear and suggests to my imp that we join forces and take out the other two members of the council. I have an insane turn with flurry of blows and take them both out at once. In turn, uncle shit reaper cuts me down and proceeds to resurrect my badass character and the rest of the party as feminine fucking catboys. I found this to be an extraordinary move, but my DM was pissed and decided not to invite this player back. Justices, I ask if I was right to defend the reaper or if my DM was right to punish the player and exclude him from future games just when his rp was starting to get good. I await the ruling. And also Jake is there ig.