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Cases Please! (Patreon)

Published:
2023-04-10 15:59:17
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Hello! Honorable Bailiff Jake here. The Supreme Crit is convening this afternoon, so submit your (BRIEF, come on!) cases on this post and we will bring you all the justice.

Honorable,

Jake

Comments

Benjamin Lashbrook

Hello to the honorable judges and I guess Jake is also there. My party and I ended this race war between Deep Gnomes and Duergar, so we decided to stay in this town to make sure that the peace stayed. Our paladin decided to set up a church to their god, and I agreed to help. When it came time to level up, my DM said that I could only take a level of paladin because I had joined a church. I talked to the DM about not wanting to do this, but he said that I had spent more time in the church than in nature, so I had to take a paladin level, not a druid level. My druid did not want to do that, and I ended up quitting because of this. Was I in the wrong? P.S. Love the show, just got a paw-paw tattoo :)

Anna

May it please the court, and the lowly, but respectable only in Boston, bailiff Jorn. I present the case of the Accidental Whomping. I was a first time DM for one shot, and I hosted a clue themed dinner party. I planned it as a classic 1920s murder mystery, and hyped it up to my group. But after a month or so of work, I realized it’s really hard to make clue into a DND session. So I made a quick change, and had the apparently murdered man, come back as an oil dragon, with the stats and CR of a young gold dragon (for context my players were level nine). When it came to the session, all my players had stocked roleplay based spells, and I was sweating. Eventually it came to the encounter, and I stated I would give them two real life minutes to restock their spells for an encounter. As if Dice Christ was punishing me further, the internet was slow, and they only got to swap some of them. And if that wasn’t enough, I accidentally began to whomp them, and I could tell my players were not enjoying themselves. In a moment of panic, I threw an NPC into combat, and stocked her with like seven potions of superior healing, and I fudged a roll so that the dragon would not get its breath roll back, preventing a certain TPK. I throw myself at the mercy and cruelty of the court. Should I have killed them? Or was I right to go against Dice Christ, and save my relationships.

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?

Jack M

Hello esteemed High Shamans and The excommunicated sinner Hurwitz, I am officiating a wedding this week and i decided to roll to see how well it would go, I unfortunately rolled a 3. These are two of my best friends, I ask the Clergy will dice Christ allow me to roll with advantage this one time? I await your interpretation of the scripture

Lorne Mintz

Hello esteemed Crit Justices and the dishonoured one time Bostonian judge turned Bailiff Jack. If it please the court I present to you the case of the Curse of Invisibility. So I play a Tortle Divination Wizard in a 5e Campaign named Lightfoot. I am level 7 and have the spell Bestow Curse, this spell specifies numerous options you can inflict on a creature but also states you can use a custom effect With dm approval, in a past campaign I used that option to make a Gladiator throw down all their weapons. Now is the quandary, we were trying to hunt down a creature known as a Yowtcha, yes a Predator from the movies, since it’s from the future we know not of it’s tech which allowed it to remain invisible, however I had a plan to stop that. I couldn’t make my plan happen but we did manage to break its arm band that made it invisible and my character with high intelligence noted this. Later we had to fight two more of these guys, I managed to catch one in a tree and used portents to make it fail contested strength so I could grapple it. Finally with my chance I casted the spell stating it has to remove its arm band, and this prompted an argument from my dm. He said I shouldn’t know that’s how it was being made invisible which I disagreed on, and that it was too powerful a request. I asked for it to just turn the effect off which he said the band can’t. Ultimately I couldn’t plead my case so I casted it to make him re-roll wisdom or do nothing, which to me is much MORE powerful than it losing invisibility. In the end the DM stated it would also take too long to remove the arm piece as it’s attached by wires. Who was right in this situation, is it too much to ask a to use that spell to make it do that, could it have just forcibly ripped it off breaking it, I’m really not sure if this request was in line with the spell or not. I await your 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

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.

Tristan Belzer

May it please the Justices and gently tickle the Bailiff. I present the DM vs the Overpowered Bear. I am playing a 5e campaign with a group of close friends over Roll 20. During combat last session, our level 5 bearfolk Moon Druid was knocked out of wild shape. When I asked for the AC of his Druid form for the villains second attack, he said it was a 20. This confused everyone, and when we asked what armor he had on, he stated “leather”. Curious of how he had such a high AC, I took a peak at his character sheet. His stats were as follows. Cha: 17 Wis: 20 Int: 17 Con: 23 Dex: 26 Str: 24. I was shocked, as this had never come up as he was typically in Wild Shape during combat and using creature stats. I ended up subtracting 10 from his Con Dex and Str and let him shuffle those stats around as he please, deeming those stats still good, but more balanced. The player protested heavily, stating that everyone’s stats were better than his, causing the rest of the players to turn on him. The worst part was, with his new dex, the attack that had missed with an AC of twenty, now hit, knocking his character out, and causing the player to become visibly upset, and accuse me of punishing him for not understanding the game. This was session 22 of our 3rd campaign. Was I wrong for handling this midcombat in front of the rest of the party? Was there another solution rather than axing his stats right there and then? I humbly lay myself at the mercy of the court.

Arwyn Robinson

Forgive me emmisaries of Dice Christ for I have sinned. May Dice Christ have mercy on my soul. I was playing as a druid and our party was faced with an underwater tunnel that some of the party did not have enough constitution to swim through without drowning. I wildshaped into a giant octopus and wrapped them in my tentacles and used my swim speed to get everyone through, much to the DM's delight. Twenty minutes later I realized that the CR of a giant octopus was too high for me to be feasible. I immediately dropped my wild shape so I wouldn't benefit from it any longer , but my sin is that I kept quiet and did not tell the DM because I felt like too much time had passed to undo it. Was I wrong to not confess my mistake to the dm? I humbly await your judgment in the eyes of dice christ.

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 at 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?

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?

Alex Cannata

Just wanted to tell you that If I Were You is my lifeblood and I'm going to miss you and Jake a lot. Hope you're back with another podcast at some point ❤️❤️❤️

Eden Hunter

Dear exalted Judges and all-round incredible fella Jamile, If it may please the queen and court, I present the case of the player who wanted to fit a 4 day process into a 6 second turn. I was running a non-canon pvp game for my players main campaign characters and one of my players (Human Sorcerer) turned invisible after taking quite a bit of damage. He then messaged me privately asking if he could use the herbalism kit that his Character had to brew a healing potion so he could regain some HP. I was foggy on brewing rules and so looked it up to find that it takes 4 days to brew a health potion. Now, as you will know, a turn in D&D combat takes about 6 seconds, so it might be a bit of a squeeze. But as this was a non-canon session and rule of cool etc I said I would let him roll a medicine check for it, setting the DC so that he would be able to do it if he roled a 19/20 and that he would have to drop concentration on his Invisibility to focus on this endeavor. He then started to argue back that it wouldn't make him lose his concentration, at which point I reminded him that I shouldn't be letting him perform a 4 day process in 6 seconds in the first place. He then got grumpy and distant. Did I make the right call? Love, Eden x

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?

Tubasauraus

To the most honorable justices of the Crit Court, I come to you as a humble beginner DM who started a campaign with my family who are all beginners. The campaign is based of a My Hero Academia-esque adventure. They are all SUPPOSE to be heroes but here lies the problem. My sister is a level 1 human monk who worships the monastery of Beyoncé. She uses a melee weapon called “Queen’s Lemonade” and to my dismay, is a brutal vigilante who takes out justice on who she sees fit. The first session, she went and brutally killed an intoxicated male NPC who greeted her. When I made Agnes face repercussions and suggested she not kill NPCs at will, she commented that Agnes is enacting Queen B’s judgement. She has continuously enacted Queen B’s punishment randomly even when it has negatively impacted the party. How do I stop her mercilessly enacting judgement? Thank you justices! Oh, and I forgot about the bailiff…James?

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?

Keanu DRAMAFACE

TUCKER HERE. Wanted to see what my lil bro Jakey Jakey eggs and flakey (cause he has dandruff) was up to. I have a question for the court: Jake said I’m not allowed to play D&D with him and Jill even though Jill said she would only play D&D if I could play. Who’s at fault here? Thanks guys. And Jake? Love your wife, can’t wait to be a father! (You can be uncle Jumble)

james_in_space

Hi Justices! Hello, Jake. So I'm a first-time DM for a crew of 6 improvisers who've never played DnD before. Second session, my players helped save a halfling farmer from an evil scarecrow. The farmer had a loyal mastiff named Fig Newton who fought alongside her, even serving as the halfling's steed. Of course my players fell in love with Fig Newton the mastiff, as I expected. Having cute NPCs is a treat for your players. But then as they were leaving, the party’s sorcerer tried to essentially steal Fig Newton by attempting to lie to the farmer, claiming the adventurers needed the dog to help save the world. She rolled a 23 on Deception, so I allowed it, but I was sure to describe how sad the farewell was, and how Fig Newton kept whining and looking back to the farm as they left. Fig Newton helped the party on their way, and since he’s friendly and his owner had told him to help them, I gave the Animal Handling checks a low DC, so they were no problem for the sorcerer. But since I kept mentioning how despondent the dog seemed, one of my players (not the sorcerer) finally took the hint and ordered Fig Newton to go home. I immediately narrated how, with a delighted "RUFF", the mastiff trotted off back toward the farm. Happy ending, right? But now my sorcerer is pissed at me! She says if I was just going to "ruin the fun" and take the dog away, I should never have allowed her to make the Deception roll at all. Justices, should I have just told her she couldn’t take Fig Newton in the first place?

Felix Principe-gillespie

To the honourable justices and Bore-liff Jake, I come before you with a case that haunts me to my core, the case of the never-ending session. 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

THEJordonBrown

Reminder that Jake called Massachusetts a state, so he shouldn’t be allowed to practice in Boston.

qbull

anyone else find it strange that they're having jake, a guest of the pod, solicit the cases? are they really that short on staff...?

Kris Warrington

To the Supreme of all Supreme, and also Jack. My DM refuses to let me play a Dragonborn or anything dragon adjacent. His reasoning is "dragons are overrated, I want to do something different for once". For some reason this has always ercked me because Dragonborns are my favourite race. Should I just accept this weird rule, or should I continue the good fight? Signed, Me.

Theodore Bunnell

I submit for your consideration the case of the missing tortle tank, the people have ideas that need to be seen by the no chortles tortle!

Nick McCornack

May it please the both stunning and cunning Judges Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and, of course, cute lil Bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of Knowing the DM Too Well. I am a player in a campaign run by my husband (Justices Axford and Murphy, surely you see why I am submitting this case to you and your judgement) and in a recent session, our party rescued a little girl that had been kidnapped by a cult in the area. As we came out of combat and ventured further into a cave, I asked to do a perception check on the area as we had a child with us, and could be potentially entering another intense situation. My husband and DM allowed me to do so. He then asked me what specifically I was looking for, and, I, as a player and his wife, realized by a look on his face that my DM/husband was 100% concealing something from our party. (Spoiler alert, the little girl that we had just rescued was the shapeshifted villain of the arc that we were currently searching for.) I point blank asked if I could do a roll for perception on the child and DM said sure. I rolled incredibly high (18 on the dice; 23 with modifier.) Our DM said “sure, she’s just a kid.” I accepted that answer as truth with the high roll in mind and we carried on. The child was frightened and tired so I not only fed her a goodberry, but also allowed her to climb onto my back for a piggyback ride. Almost immediately following that, we entered another room and the rest of my party took the lead since I was holding the child and they found her deceased body. The child then returned to its true form of the villain ON MY GODDAMN BACK and we entered combat surprised. I was obviously shocked because I had just specifically asked about the child and was told that nothing was up with her. His argument was that I as a player had knowledge that I as a PC would not have had. So, Justices, (specifically Justices Axford and Murphy), my question to you is this: As someone who plays DND with someone they know incredibly well, was this situation handled correctly? Or should my character should have been able to benefit from my IRL deductions as it could have drastically changed the outcome of the situation? My husband and I humbly await your judgement. Dice Christ be with you. P.S. Don't worry. Despite starting combat in a surprise round with the villain on my fucking back, the party and I still absolutely womped our DM.

MyrMonkshood

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

Seth Nichols

To the honorable judges, and the venerable bailiff Jean, I present the case of Wizard v. Flint and Steel. While fighting the final boss of a dungeon, I asked our 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 trap put on the floor by the boss. 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.

Jay

Honourable and worthy Disciples of Dice Christ and wherever James is within the theological structure of the church this week, I bring you a confession/concern of mine. In a recent online game, set in an excellent homebrew world my friend has created, I had rolled 2 nat 20s already in a short session, and on a save that became important, I rolled a 20 but rolled at self-imposed disadvantage because I was self conscious of the successes I was hitting. We still succeeded in our goals but it was a lot closer to the line and there were nearly some significant world consequences. This transgression, though small, has been playing on my mind, and I wish to be free of sin!

Dan Healey

To the honorable, beautiful judges, and the hopefully reinstated 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 and drew their weapons to attack. No matter what we did, magical or otherwise, it didn't work. Nat 20 persuasion, nope! Wizard casting sleep, no chance! 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?

KoboldB0i

Greetings oh high Justices and Jake the Baelif: My DM closed the door on Dimension Door! I play a divine soul sorcerer in a party of 3 that includes myself. We wanted to pop into a food shelter and set fire to it siege tactics style. Due to the description of dimension door, I figured it was a big enough grey area where I could twin spell it and being my whole party with me. But my DM wouldn't allow it due to it not being specific enough. Oh knowledge Justices and baelif, was I denied a cool thing? Or do I deserve to let that door hit me on my way out. I eagerly await your ruling

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.

devin tweedell

To the honorable justices axford murphy tanner 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

Samwell54

May it please the court, the debate lords, and the security. This is the case of the doomsday prepper. I was playing in a walking dead inspired game using the Savage Worlds system, a player got invited to join but he was introduced later than everyone else. His character was in a bunker he had made and refused to leave. I repeatedly tried to get him to join our group to no avail. He said his character would just stay in the bunker. I tried a couple different times and then I just left him. Was he wrong for not joking up with the main party or can we punish him for staying alone in an imaginary bunker? I’ll leave it to the court to adjudicate

Fraser Reid

Honorable Justices and measley bailiff not worthy of naming I bring to you the troublesome yeti cub Roger. In our currently running Icewind Dale campaign our parties druid adopted an orphaned juvanile yeti that we found. Since then it has on numerous occasions almost gotten us TPK'd and my warlock has wanted it gone/dead since day 1 as he is a monster hunter. In our most recent session the yeti was captured and only I knew where it was. Rather than leave it to be stitched into part of a larger abomination (a fate worse than death) I begrudgingly rescued it and returned it to the party. Have I sealed our fate into getting killed via yeti or was I right to save sweet Roger from the mind flayers that abducted him? I leave it in your delicate smooth hands of the law

Justice Bwr

Hello fabulous judges and the ever fashionable and sexy Jake. May it please the court, I present the case of “Dead Ass.” A couple of my friends started playing dnd and I was so excited for them as I have been playing for years. This is a group of 4 long time friends so I was shocked when one came to me asking for advice. Apparently his brother (one of the players) brought a character named “dead ass” who was a half donkey-half person who was really really stupid. He disrupted gameplay, ruined in-character role play and was a general nuisance. The player told me that they planned on killing dead-ass in the next session, but i advised that they maybe just talk to him about it. He seemed genuinely dismayed, and explained they already had a new group chat dedicated to killing dead-ass. My question is this, should I have let them have their fun by killing this character they hate so much? Or was my advice justified even though they may have less fun. I am forever in the mercy of the court, forever and amen.

Contender in the making

Hello thr honorable justices Murph the red m&m caldwell the yellow m&m Emily the tan m&m and baliff jake the blue m&m I come to you with the case of the dog killing AOE I was playing a ranger in a online one shot with some random people. The dm was using similiar rules to Corbo in reguards to my dog familiar As long as i wasn't using him in battle he effectively had plot armor but could still give me help or carry items to other players etc We are nearing the end when the big bad used an AoE spell that the dm said killed my dog immediately as even a save wouldnt be enough i asked why i hadnt used him to attack and the dm said he wanted the narritave stakes to be higher So i ask you was my dog oreo uselessly killed for "plot" or do i just have to accept the story i await your decision Thank you

Patrick Ferris

May it please the effervescent court and the murky bailiff. I am running a wild beyond the Witchlight campaign where my party travels between sections of the map via hot air balloon. The balloon is piloted by a once headless scarecrow named Clapperclaw. I’m order to gain access to the balloon, the party had to find Clapperclaw’s head, which they did. When they found the head however, the party thought it would be funny to make it Henry Cavill’s head. I foolishly agreed to this. The party ALSO thought it would be funny to make the hot air balloon ALSO Henry Cavill’s head. Foolishly, I agreed to this as well. The only problem I have with this is that the party has tried to tell me that the Henry Cavill balloon head, along with Cavill-claw’s actual head, should move in tandem, and that the balloon should be allowed to make a bite attack. I denied this and have been Razzed ever since. Was I wrong, or is my party a bunch of fanatics. My fate is in your squeaky clean hands.

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.

1Lonelybaguette

May it please the supreme crit court and marginally satisfy Nate, I think that's his name anyway. I present to you the case of the power hungry DM. Years ago, when first getting into dnd, I joined an online game with my first character, a tiefling ranger with a fear/hatred of dragons. Things immediately began feeling strange as the dm (who claimed to be very experienced) introducing strange rules and conducting the game like he was authoring a book. He would describe my character doing things that I did not initiate (ie "you approach and ask the man his name"). Additionally, he ran a cut scene where a dragon landed in town. My character, afraid for her life, attempted to run away, but the dm said that the windows to this random attic were magically sealed and could not be opened or destroyed, and continued his talking. Finally, the dm stated that since he could not trust us to be totally honest with our physical die rolls, he would be "randomly" deciding whether the roll would be what we stated, or if he would make it the opposite number, AFTER we tell him what we rolled. An 18 could be a 2, a 20 a 1, or a 4 a 16. I left after the first session and never looked back, but when I posted this story online it seemed that everyone was against ME and that I had been too harsh with my departure. I ask you, fair judges and bailiff Mark, was I too hasty in my leaving, or should I have left even earlier than I did? I place myself in your capable hands.

Star_Drek

To the magnanimous court and ascendant bailiff: I am the player (he/him) and my DM (she/her) threw a lord of snails at us. We have another paladin (he/him) in this story. We ran into this giant snail in a cave, who the DM described as “intelligent” and could speak in primordial. His name is Tecuziztecatl, Lord of Snails, if you happen to want to look up stats, good luck pronouncing it. I, a wild magic sorcerer, ran up to it and attacked it via melee (don’t ask). The snail attacked me with two swipes of his pseudopods, and the paladin cast Shield of Faith on me to give me +2 AC. The snail then chose to cast Spit Acid on me to get around my AC (dex save) and downed me, leading me to my eventual crit-1-on-death-save death, and to the DMs credit, dramatic plot armor revival. The DM posits because the snail is intelligent (int 13), he would see the shimmering wall around me and decide to acid spray instead of swinging at me like he was to get around my AC boost. I argue that this snail lord was metagaming, because regardless of any lands or titles he may have claim to, he has lived in a cave his whole life and wouldn’t know what shield of faith looks like. He also would not know to change strategies from attacking AC to using dex saves just because a shimmering wall surrounded me, and I argue a more reasonable strategy would be to attack someone else or just hit me harder. We both await your swift judgement and long for our worthy punishment. P.S. we were both at the trinyvale dog and pony show in Chicago, great stuff.

Carson Kleinbeck

Honorable Justices and Esteemed Bailif! I bring before the court a case of randomized characters! I’ve been playing dnd 5e for about 5 years now and I was asked to join a group of friends who were just getting into the hobby. The only person I didn’t know at the table was the DM. When I showed up, I learned that the DM had asked if he could make the characters for the newbies and they agreed. That was fine, but the. I got to take a look at their character sheets. The paladin had -1 to Cha and the Hexblade Warlock had no weapons or armor and had thunderclap and prestidigitation for cantrips. There were a long list of other reasons that brought me to the conclusion that the DM had simply pressed the randomize button on DnD Beyond and handed the players the characters proudly claiming that he made them! We played for about 4 hours and I held my tongue because I didn’t want to be “that guy” but now that we’re going into the rest of the campaign, I’m wondering if I should say something about how poorly optimized their characters are. I’m by no means trying to min/max, I just want our paladin to be able to cast spells, and our warlock to be able to hit things! Am I the Asshole for being upset at the DM while everyone else was having fun? Or should I say something so that my fellow players can actually use their characters effectively?

henwarto

To the most Honorable Justices and Bailiff Jarb. I bring to you the case of the child in the sun. In the d&d home game I run one of my players decided to create a cleric of the child in the sun. He started creating lore for this religion, and I let him knowing that if he created lore he would be more invested. When he gave me his lore notes, he had based his whole relgion of the baby in the sun in teletubbies, and his relgion had such priests as St. Elmo, St. Clifford, and the Holy Paladin Order of the Paw Patrol. The issue comes when 2 sessions in this player decides to leave my game. Now the current players keep asking about the religion that this missing party member, my question is do I abide by the children's entertainment religion, or is it alright to retcon the religion completely? I await your humble judgement.

Hal Martenson

To the most esteemed Supreme Crit Justices, and Jake who I went to Jewish summer camp with. I play D&D online with an incredible DM, and will often jump into one shots that he runs on the side. One of my DM’s one shot regulars is an older guy who we’ll call Rod. Rod is for the most part a fun guy to play with, but has an annoying habit of insisting that no one share what character classes they are playing ahead of the one shot session. He insists that it puts pressure on people to play certain roles. I’ve tried to talk to him before, explaining that I enjoy creating characters that fulfill a need that the party has - it’s no fun being a healer if there’s three other healers in the party. But he refuses to budge, going so far as to lecture new players about “power gaming” or “meta gaming” if they do any talking at all before the session about their character mechanics. So Crit, I ask you: is Rod in the wrong for jumping down people’s throats for talking about party roles or am I a power hungry meta gamer who just wants the glory of being useful?

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)

Chrys

Hullo magnanimous judges and that dude I think his name is jurttz I’ve been playing for years now and DM’ing a long term 5 year campaign that basically switched to once a month if that playstyle and plan on switching GMs when my campaign finishes because one of my players got a feel for it and wants some Cyberpunk style setting and transitions. I feel bad because I don’t want to stop GM’ing or playing a 5E type system where we can have crazy fights that might be broken but align with all of our interests and gaming styles and setting without the similarities to real life like sci-fi tends to have. I have no other group and mostly play with my wife as well and closest friends to avoid all the typical case bullshit. Am I being too greedy or should I just get more friends? Love when y’all switch it up but there’s too much I want to do in this space and never enough time, should I just play what everyone feels like doing or put in the effort to be able to play with any group available? At the end of the day I know it’s just a game but gods the escapism is worth it

PineappleLiar

Dearest court and the much maligned baliff, I come to you with an accusation of murder most foul. I’ve been playing with my current group for a few years now, having finished two previous campaigns with them in the DM’s world. One of my pcs, who was actually a triton warlock who starred in a previous court case, received a happy ending of marrying a half-ghost rogue npc and living out on a coastline vineyard. So, it came as a bit of a shock to me when, in the current campaign, we find a document amongst the possessions of the bbeg we just killed that offhandedly mentions that this character was MURDERED BY HER BRAINWASHED SISTER IN LAW (her sister’s wife, not her wife’s sister). Now, my main issue with this is that I learned of this grim fate at the same time as the rest of the party, and I had hoped that if my DM planned a former pc homicide he’d at least mention it to me beforehand (which, if it changes things, I would have given the go ahead for). So, should my DM have brought this up in dms, or is he justified in surprise manslaughter?

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

Boomclaw the Twice-Dead Kobold

Greetings gorgeous justices and also Jake I guess, I come to you seeking justice for crimes against my character. I was recently one-shotted on a crit by a giant eel thing that then immediately swallowed me. A fellow adventurer successfully cast Banishment on the creature. Our DM ruled that my unconscious body was also transported to the pocket dimension, still inside the giant eel. Is this a correct interpretation of Banishment, or should I have been left behind to be resuscitated? I await your judgment. PS: I was saved from this situation by a clutch use of Wither and Bloom, which apparently doesn't require you to see the person you are trying to heal.

Crim Rogers

Hello Human Jake and the ones I hear have much more power I Drog I barbarian I give case of my ham Had friend Sam Sam magic boy Sam take ham I have I punch Sam Sam say I do bad? Drog do bad? Help Drog, with judgey Hello, thank

Gavin DeCroix

To the judicious and jeweled justices and Jill's jilted jabroni, Jake. May I present the case of the kleptomaniac Druid. I DM a campaign for my girlfriend and a few friends from college. My girlfriend, who plays a Druid, has begun using her wildshape ability to steal from any shop they encounter. The party will enter a shop, my girlfriend picks up literally as much as she can carry, and then will wildshape into a spider and scurry away. Since wildshape states that anything worn or carried merges with your new form upon transforming, she says this includes anything she holds while in a shop. The other PCs are on board and participate in this rampant larceny. This has led to the party having a dragon's hoard worth of pilfered potions and packages. Justices, am I wrong for wanting to cease these stealing shenanigans? I kneel before your majesties. P.S. I should have suspected my girlfriend would use her character to steal, considering in real-life she stole my heart.

Skillful Ferret

If it would please the judges on high, will the bailiff down low please recount the tale of the Torn Tabaxi, While playing my last session (though only the 3rd session) due to leaving for a deployment the other characters in the party decided to plan to betray our mission and become an evil party so they role played a distraction for my character who was a lawful good Paladin. I had offered to play a Lawful Evil Cleric as well, but the other players told me to play the Paladin. Thus, I had to spend the entire session pretending to be alone in another room. Then at the very end, to roleplay my character out of the session I took the artifact from our NPC priest to complete the mission without putting the others in danger. Which I thought would let the party have an excuse to quit the mission since they wanted to switch to being an evil party. I found out that during the next session they caught up to my character who had sacrificed himself using the artifact to revive a village that was destroyed (dm choice) which I thought was cool, but the remaining players decided to mutilate my character’s corpse to remove the artifact that I had apparently swallowed, in order to sell it. Was I right to be bothered by that despite being out of the game?

Katie P.

Forgive me Dice Christ for I have sinned- In my first ever campaign, I rolled, well, like Murph. Or like Jake whenever he says, "Watch this!" It got so bad that even though I streamlined my turns, my rolls were no longer cosmically funny. My table and DM were getting so fed up with me missing that some players started leveling their characters to make up for my poor rolls (taking tracking, animal handling, etc.) I began to make up rolls just so I could barely hit the monster's THAC0 or so I can succeed my checks (Yep, I started with 2E). The table's mood increased dramatically, but I still feel guilty about that first campaign. Additionally, I never faked an Nat 20, and I only got one once.

Mica K

May it please the court, and the tennis players, I present the case of the Evil Earth Elemental. I play in an Out of the Abyss campaign as a githzerai wizard. I previously played a drow sorcerer who died at level 2 (note: this is the second campaign I’ve played with this group, and last campaign my character died as well). We were recently playing an encounter with several gargoyles and an earth elemental. At one point, the elemental attacked me, almost knocking me out. I ran, and placed myself behind the paladin who was tanking. When it came to the elemental’s turn, the DM tried to hit the paladin, but with his high AC was unable to. The DM then exclaimed that the elemental was going to attack me, taking opportunity attacks from three characters to attack me. I claimed this was stupid, and that I was being targeted for no reason. The DM said that they weren’t able to hit the paladin so they weren’t going to try anymore, but I said they were elementals and therefore are not smart enough to have that strategy. Who was right, and was I being incorrectly targeted? I eagerly await your response.

Stephen Fike

To the astute justices and disgustingly low bailiff John. I present the case of the party pet murder. My friends and I were in a campaign that suddenly came to a halt after the DM killed the parties pet, a baby dragon turtle named Sheldon that we had found and took in along our journey. In combat one of our players wanted to see if Sheldon could steal an item from one of the enemies bag as a bit and the DM asked for a sleight of hand check. Upon failure poor Sheldon was harshly targeted and killed as a consequence. This quickly led to an argument which ended up in the session ending and never reconvening. I ask, was it wrong to expect nothing to happen to Sheldon? Should we have went along with the consequences or was our DM being too harsh? I await your fair judgement. (But not the bailiffs)

JT Gwozdz

Honorable Judges and Jill's lesser half, In a recent dungeon crawl, my party came across a swarm of stirges (Basic Rules 153, MM 284). On a hit, Stirges attach to a target and draw blood at the start of each of the stirge's turns for 1d4+3 damage. My party's creative solution was to cast Create Bonfire (Xanathar's, 152) and have the party jump through the bonfire to burn off the stirges. Create Bonfire requiers a Dex save to avoid damage when a creature moves into the bonfire's space for the first time on a turn OR ends its turn there. I was pursuaded to damage the stirges in this burn-off technique, but on appeal I ask the court for a ruling on the following mechanics: (1) Has a creature "moved" into a space if it is moved into it while sucking on foe? (Attacks of Opportunity, for example, are not triggered by involuntary movement). (2) The stirge must use 5 feet of movement to detach from a target - Can a stirge even make a dex save while attached to a foe? Or is it effectively restrained?

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 took 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.

Casey Miles

Honorable Justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy! I come for help with my DM making my character kill people when he doesn't try to! Also hey Josh. Wonderful Judges, my character is a chaotic evil celestial warlock with lawful good tendencies as he is contractually obligated to do good for others by his Unicorn patron. I had discussed with my DM before the campaign had even started and decided that anytime I cast a warlock spell on someone it would always be with non-lethal damage so that it would be impossible for me to kill anyone. But then we had some cursed towns people go berserk on us for a combat and we had to knock them down to get away and break the curse. Well, I ended up critting on one and the DM said that since I did enough damage to go passed their negative HP total that I had killed them outright. I brought up that that shouldn't be possible since I'm always doing non-lethal damage and the DM said it didn't matter since I had done so much damage. Illustrious Body, please tell me if I am in the wrong here or if my DM is being unfair in forcing me to kill people. I humbly await your just ruling. And whatever Josh's input is too I guess.

villager72

To the magnificent judges and the other one, I present to you the Murder Mystery Gone Wrong. Back in August of 2022 I ran a murder mystery one-shot set at a summer camp. I asked one of the players to be the murderer on the loose who was amongst the party. They were all level four except for him who had a level nine-character sheet, the reason being it would result in 1 v 3 combat, which I HAVE RUN SUCCESSFULLY in the past. With careful planning the killer set out on his next attack, going on to kill more people. I gave more than enough clues, including one that said, "the killer is yeh tall" and gestured to the killer-player. I gave several more clues, but the party decided to SPLIT thinking it was a nurse NPC allowing the murderer to one by one kill the party members with a few fatal swings. The players barely stood a chance alone, but also decided to split up. Anyways this ended up leading to two other player character deaths and the 'final girl' managed to kill the killer. I then left the call with the killer-player and found out the next day that they stayed on for another hour talking shit and were quite upset that there wasn't enough evidence or chance for them to win, when the plan was for a combat that they easily could have won together. Also saying that the killer-player was minmaxer, when that was not true. I do not speak to one of them and two of the players have beef now over this event that happened a while back. I now await your judgement, was the player too leveled, or were they wrong to split up?

Shleepyshlee

To the highly revered supreme crit justices and to the occasionally revered but mostly lowly bailiff Jake, I present the case of IRL friends vs old friends. After some old friends found out that I was into TTRPGs like they were, I was invited to play a one-shot DND game with them online around the beginning of the pandemic. It was my first (and still only) time playing, so I was excited to create my character and try out this game I've been curious about since watching and listening to D20, Drawga/Drawtectives, and NADDPOD for a little more than a year at that point. We were told by the DM to make level 3 characters, so I assumed that the game would be challenged appropriately for around that level. Little did I know that the DM had something else in mind when he introduced a level 50 (told to us post-game) adult dragon as the final obstacle in our little one-shot. I played stupidly and so my character dropped to zero HP pretty much immediately, and after terrible rolls including a nat 1, my character died. I sat there listening to the rest of the players finish the campaign for the next 1.5 hours and was having a good time regardless of not being able to do anything with my dead PC. A few days later I was thinking back to that game and remembered that after my character died, another PC had dropped to zero health and was given a potion to get back up by the other PC on their next turn. At that time I didn't think negatively about it thinking that maybe they were going to bring me back up but couldn't because I rolled a nat 1 for my 2nd death save, but now I'm not so sure if they would have ever brought me back up. I know that everyone else in that game were closer friends with each other and currently still play DND together without me... But is it wrong for me to wonder if I should have been brought back up to finish the game with them even if we're not that close in real life?? (Also side question a level 50 dragon vs lvl 3 characters, was that a cool move by the DM?)

Tiago Filipe

To the Honourable Crit Justices and the :insert today's mood here: bailiff. Some time ago, I was playing an Echo Knight fighter and because we were playing in the Eberron setting, they used exclusively firearms. One of the subclass features, unleash incarnation, allows you to make an additional attack when taking the attack action. Unbeknownst to both of us, the feature did not allow my amateur gunslinger to use this feature with ranged attacks. We realized this during a combat, while checking the feature for another reason. The DM told me, there and then, that we would be using the feature as written moving forward, even though I did not own any melee weapons and I had been allowed to do it for over a year of campaign time. The DM refused to reconsider this decision when I approached him after the session. I ended up leaving all campaigns that the DM ran for a number of reasons. Tell me, oh fair judges, was I swindled out of my shadowy attacks for the sake of playing rules as written?

Banana Bread

Greetings banana bread loving court justices and The Jerk (DVD) bailiff, I bring you the case of the Fudged Monster Statblock. My party, level 17, is about to venture into the dark recesses of the Astral Sea to fight a massive cosmic horror, and they wanted to get all the help they could get. This led to them beseeching the owner of the largest coliseum, an orcish blood hunter named Valaka, in an orc city for her warriors. This led to her asking for a fight to the death with the party, against her and her own party. An exciting fight ensued, as they fought an actual party of named NPCs. The problem comes in here, however, as Valaka landed a KO-ing blow on a member of the party, who just so happened to be her blood hunter student years ago, I decided to give her an ability due to her cursed bloodaxe. Instant death when reducing a creature to 0. This led to her decapitating her long-lost student, and the party was devastated. However, I believe this resulted in exciting stakes, as the party was absolutely whomping the encounter before this. Was I wrong to change the stats, or should my party have continued whomping me? I leave my fate, and fresh banana bread, in the hands of the court. P.S. The party won the fight and resurrected the party member soon after, who is now dating a member of the opposing party, as they let them all live except for Valaka.

JT Gwozdz

A DM shouldn't be forcing a player to take levels of anything. It seems like taking a level of Oath of the Ancients Paladin would have been a good compromise, but if the entire party was leveling up and you were forced to take a level of something else, that's weird from the DM. If you were getting a bonus level outside the normal progression, maybe it's a nice gift. But if you're working on a specific build, the forced class add sucks.

Dylan Voth

To the esteemed judges and the bemoaned bailiff Jorg: The Case of the Portent Pissoff. My group was after the hoard of the BBEG dragon. The wizard rolled a 20 and a 1 on his protent rolls. They used the 20 to persuade the dragon to part with half their hoard, and the 1 for the dragons response. After a few tense minutes of silence as I leafed through my notes, I succumbed to my womping. Substituting another baddie as a final fight later on. Do I feel bad because I got womped, or because we all were deprived of a big final boss fight with a dragon? I humbly await your judgement. -Vothemort

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.

Joshua Scheel

What Up Judges, I am DMing a very silly campaign where literal Santa Claus was an NPC trying to help the party. My players were very skeptical of Santa’s motivations and decided to tie him to a chair and interrogate him. After some improv back and forth the players demanded the an item from Santa Claus magic bag as a show of trust. Now here is where I messed up. I just did a quick google of “Christmas Themed magic Items” and handed them “Jinkler’s Snow Globe of Magic Cabin” that does the following: “The snow globe shows a miniature cabin filled with cozy warm lights coming from its interior. It shows an angry snowman on its snow-filled park area. A creature can spend 5 minutes shaking the snow globe to have the cabin come out of the globe and grow up to a normal-sized one, with up to 3 bedrooms, a hot tub, and a dining room. The cabin comes with its own personal green dressed gnome servant named Jinkler” We now spend at least an hour every session playing house in Jinkler’s globe. We are no longer adventuring and instead redecorating the rooms, inviting other NPC’s over for dinner and debating if we should free Jinkler from his snow globe bondage. I have essentially given my party a place to settledown and they are no longer interested in the BBEG Judges I need to get my players to leave the house but they are in love with their Thomas Kincaidesque life. If I destroy their house and kill Jinkler I think they will hate me. Did I ruin dnd? I await your ruling.

Cain

To the supreme crit, justices Axford, Murphy and Tanner, also bailiff Jake should you have to be there for these proceedings, I come to you with a light case. I've gotten into many arguments about what constitutes a roll and whether my way should actually count as such. I've yet to ever use this in an actual game but I will roll a D20 to just see what kind of day I will have, superstitious but it's kinda fun to do. I don't have a ton of room on my end table to do this so instead of actually dropping the dice and then invariably having it falling off a half dozen times before it stays on, I've come to just shake it in my hand several times then, without looking of course, set it down on the end table. Works wonderfully. I brought this up in passing once to a DM and he said emphatically it would never count inside or outside a game as that's not a real roll and it's idiotic to even think that would count as a roll of chance. I disagreed and it turned into a bit of a petty argument with him declaring I would get rid of anyone at my table that sought to do the same, but thought why not bring this up to the highest court in all of DnD should they be willing to listen to this case. I contend it functionally works exactly the same as a roll seeing as how I have no idea what's coming up by shaking it in my hand and just setting it down. However I've ran into much resistance. I humbly await your decision.

Lance Rendrag

May it forever please the court and it's eateemable bailiff. I come to you with the case of would you do what I did. There are two of us playing a campaign set in Ebberon during the time of a plague. We were on a mission to recover an amulet that could deanimate the dead (the plague is very last of us mushroom zombie vibe). While in the city after completing the objective and coming out of the crypt, my character sees her cousin who she thought had been dead for a long time, inject the NPC we were with, with the contagion and open a portal back to what I knew to be the winter court (he is a winter eladrin and I am an autumn) I used my reaction to misty step thru the portal after him... Turns out he's the BBEG, and my party member is now facing a zombie colossus on his own... If he does, no one on the material plane knows where I went, or that I have the amulet. To be fair I even rolled a wisdom saving throw to see if my character would have thought to stay behind but rolled a 3 so we decided to let the decision stand. Did I screw the party or would you have done the same? I apologize for the length but it was necessary to convey it all ... I lay myself at your mercy.

JT Gwozdz

As an amicus brief, I would think that putting your pet into consequential, adversarial action from an enemy opens them up to combat risk. If the pet is just for goofs, it has to remain for goofs only. But on the plus side, now you have a vengence arc.

Party Pat

To the honorable Crit Justices, and for the pleasure of the lowly bailiff Jonah, I do submit a case of an Avenger tabaxi. I was running a short campaign in a haunted town, with a party having a bachelor party. The tabaxi monk in our party had a tendency to partake in many shenanigans, in many a Caldwell fashion. The party was captured by the corrupted town guard, and locked in a prison. They managed to pull an explosive escape off with the help of the local sheriff that hadnt been corrupted by the BBEG. On their way out of the prison, they found themselves trapped in the courtyard, with a high wall and two guard towers blocking their escape into town. Queue our tabaxi monk, gears shifting, asking if he could pick up a shield off a fallen guard. I said yes, however shields require proficiency which he didnt have, so it wouldnt function as a bonus to him. He said fine, and then began to run up the guard tower as tabaxi’s have an innate ability to climb. When nearing the top of the tower, I described the small windows the tower had for guards to fire arrows out of with maintained cover. Our tabaxi monk then described how he, mid climb, tied dynamite to the shield, and captain america frisbee’d the shield into the hole of the tower. I made him roll sleight of hand to tie the dynamite to the shield, and an attack roll to accurately throw the shield into the smaller opening without missing. He failed the attack roll, and seemed miffed when the shield ricocheted off the tower and exploded. The tower was still damaged, and the guard killed from the collapsing roof, but it seemed like the moment was dampened. I ask the honorable Justices, was I TOO HARSH with implementing rolls into this endeavor? Or should I have allowed the player to do this acrobatic attack with an item they didnt have proficiency with in the first place? I await your judgment.

Sam Deniz

To the honourable justices and the bailiff who is still here for some reason. I bring you the case of Barbarian v Party. I am DMing for a group of mostly new players, and sometimes it is like herding cats with all of the conversation and distraction at the table. I sometimes will continue to DM while they talk, especially in combat where I can single out one player to keep the fight going. This was the case as our barbarian who has very unlucky rolls usually (3 nat 1s in a row the session before this, hadn’t hit anyone this session) rolled a critical hit! Her and I were celebrating and she tried to announce it to the table at least twice but the other party members were distracted. I feel bad that the energy was not there to celebrate the barbarian’s crit and I beseech the highest court in Bahamia to decide what justice should be dealt. Should the party be punished, should I as the DM rule with more of an iron fist? I humbly await your judgement.

Mackenzie Fresquez

The Case of the Postponed Level Up Honorable Judges and bailiff I just can’t bring myself to be mean to, I seek your expert judgement. May it please the court: My husband is running an XP-based campaign for me and our friend. We had just finished fighting some scarecrows and in doing so earned enough XP to level up! We were on our way to a dungeon when we encountered the scarecrows, and it was night time, so I suggested we take a long rest so we could level up before entering the dungeon. But my husband said we were not allowed to level up until next session! I argued because we took a long rest we should be able to level up, and that I wanted to be stronger against whatever we encountered in the dungeon. Plus, with this level up I got an extra attack! He refused and we continued on with the session. The dungeon crawl ended up being very short and not much happened, so I have my suspicions that he took out some encounters on purpose to make sure we didn’t struggle too hard at our current level. Was I meta gaming when I took the long rest just to be able to level up? Did he have any grounds for postponing our level up? I humbly request your judgement.

Bebs

Charismatic Justice Murphy, Dexterous Justic Axford, Wise Justice Tanner, and Jacob, I present the case of The Rings That Broke Up the Party Back when the pandemic first hit, my group of friends wanted to start playing dnd but no one wanted to DM, so I stepped up and did some research and started a campaign. None of us had a lot of experience with Dnd, but we had one player, let's call him J, that did know how to play and said he'd help with the numbers and crunchy stuff. The campaign begun and went a few weeks. Problem #1 I learned to play dnd and but J said we were playing pathfinder apparently. So I had no clue about those crunchy rules Problem #2 my friends younger brother was playing with us and he decided he was chaotic evil and insisted on going to random towns away from the party and kill innocent children. Solution? I gave the party a set of rings whose wearers couldn't be more than 100 feet apart or they'd start taking damage, and one player immediately put it on the younger brother. All good right? NOPE Problem #3 Other members of the party were outraged because those rings cost way more money than I sold it to them for. In the midst of this argument, little bro narrated that he kept walking out of town and taking more and more damage until he died. And we come to Problem #4. J went off on me saying I was a bad DM and he was doing all the work and he should just be DM (why he didn't volunteer at the beginning alludes me). I threw up my hands, he DMed for 2 sessions and we all quit because it sucked. I ask thee, should I not have given those rings out? Should I have handled this a different way? Should J be punished or the younger brother or myself? I await your fair judgement.

Ben Kullerd

To the honorable justices and beloved bailiff Jormp, I present to you the case of the DMPC ex machina. I’m running a homebrew campaign in which the party has been slowly making their way to compete in a tournament between ten Dragonborn clans. After 2.5 years of IRL play and nearly 50 sessions, we finally reached the final challenge: a life-sized dragonchess board on which the party had to face off against an adult silver dragon and remove a magical artifact from around its neck. After several rounds of combat, we were running up against the allotted time for our session - some context: one of my players has a very pregnant wife who gave him a strict curfew - and in a last ditch effort to give the players the win they’d worked so hard and waited so long to earn, my DMPC - a halfling bard that has been with the party since Session 0 - used my last bardic inspiration to assist our champion’s strength check to remove the artifact and cast my only 5th level spell to Dimension Door him onto the throne, thus winning the tournament. The players had an amazing time and are still glowing about it weeks later, but I can’t help but feel a little guilty for basically cheating and robbing the players of winning on their own terms. Was I wrong to intervene to ensure a win and get our tiefling rogue home to his pregnant wife, or will Dice Christ forgive a well-intentioned DM? I humbly await your ruling.

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 led to 2 players having their characters retire, and roll new ones. 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 OOC) These two PC's have evil alignments (also unknown to us OOC) and their backstory/lore makes them cowards and/or selfish as fuck (ALSO UNKOWN TO US OOC). 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 died. 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. The DM and I tried 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? Should the Life Cleric and I just have roleplayed a response to their cowardice and evil-ness? I await your fair and just ruling.

Dane Ostlie-Olson

May it please the esteemed court and bailiff Jack I present the case of slavery railroad and the murdered bard My partner and I were playing in a game with a few other couples- none that we were close with- I was playing a champion fighter after being asked to change characters by the DM because my original wizard did not fit the vibe he wanted for his game (just to set some context) and my partner was playing a bard- over the course of play the opportunity was presented to us to basically turn a blind eye to an elder brain taking over a town in exchange for the ability to cast eldritch blast we were all playing neutral to evil characters and so took the deal. The DM seemed very upset by that decision and next session we were attacked by another group of adventurers much higher level than us and sold into slavery against our will and with no warning at all- after that session I spoke to the DM and explained this was not a storyline I was comfortable pursuing and that I felt blindsided by the situation- he said that wasn’t a problem and that he would resolve it next session- the next session turned out to be individual fighting pits that each PC was sent into solo- my fighter was sent in to fight a Minotaur skeleton and won however our bard was sent in without any weapons or her instrument to fight two animated suits of armor and was killed outright in 4 turns- the DM seemed surprised and quickly ended the session my partner rolled up a new character-a barbarian- and we played one more session before being ghosted entirely. Were we in the wrong by allowing an elder brain to destroy a town or did the DM overreact? I humbly await your ruling and will accept the results regardless

Tyler

Hello esteemed Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, as well as that guy Jake who I think had a guest appearance on 8-Bit Book Club that one time. I write to you today to present the case of the Sad Trombone v. Traumatic Backstory Reveal. I play in a very roleplay heavy pathfinder 2e game with some of my friends that is based in an arctic nation. It is tradition in this nation to tell stories around the hearth, which our DM uses as a mechanic so that we can create possible quests for ourselves in the future. We don’t all live in the same city, so we hold our sessions over Discord which will be important later on. During an encounter where we saved a Wood Giant from a band of poachers, an acolyte who was trying to vouch for the giant was killed and his last wish was for his body to be burned over a hearth as we told 3 stories: one of love, one of death, and one of dishonor. My character told a story of love, another character told a story of death, and finally a third PC, Nightingale, told a story of dishonor. In short, Nightingale’s father held a power called the Right of the Wyvern that anybody can attain by killing him. Nightingale was meant to eventually take the Right once his father was in old age, but one night he heard a conflict in the family’s keep and found his father dead. Enraged, he assumed that his sister tried to take the right for herself, found her, and strangled her to death before realizing that it was not her that had killed their father. Immediately after Nightingale made this reveal, our DM accidentally hit a soundboard button on Discord that played the sad trombone sound effect. You know the one: Womp, Womp, Womp, WoOoOoOmp. As soon as this sound effect went off everybody in the call started laughing hysterically and the weight of Nightingale’s character reveal was entirely nonexistent. Our DM apologized profusely and the player who plays Nightingale was not too upset, but still a little disappointed that he didn’t get the character moment that he had worked for. Does our DM deserve a crit-ordered sentence or should we all just move on from this awkward mishap?

Aaron W

To your venerable and most convivial bon vivante supreme crit justices Axford, Murphy and Tanner, And the oft unsung but well-mannered gadabout social butterfly Bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of the Pure Evil Campaign Gone Too Dastardly. Many years back, some friends decided they wanted to shake things up by trying out an Evil Campaign, wherein everyone played an evil aligned character of a different archetype. We all went in with the expectation of playing the opposite of the classic heroes — self-serving, manipulative, distrustful, bound together by pure self-interest for gold, booty and plunder. It was a wickedly fun campaign, until our thief naturally decided he would begin robbing the rest of the party. When our glass cannon sorcerer rolled high on a perception check, he caught the thief red handed — and what began as an in character argument quickly escalated into a no-holds barred death match. Within three rounds, despite us giving narrative outs to end the fight, the sorcerer cast fire storm and crit, vaporizing the thief (and our IRL neighbor at the time) after he had spent weeks creating the character. This was our second session of what was supposed to be a yearlong campaign. the game ended, and we never played again. So I submit to the court — did our sorcerer go too far staying “in character”? Should I or the DM have done more to intervene despite our “evil” natures? Yours in Dice Christ, Misaligned Maybe(…?)

Chloe A. Schafer

The Case with the Wall of Wavering Height - DM and PLAYER PERSPECTIVES!!!! To the honorable Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and to the less honorable but necessary bailiff Hurwitz, thank you for hearing our case! While a little long, this case presents the unique opportunity to hear both the player and DMs perspectives of our tale. We patiently await your ruling. Player perspective: While in a Secret Garden pocket plane, my companions and I split up in order to investigate three different areas outlined in a clue. Consequently, our DM mysteriously rolled an unknown die and made a note. My fellow companions completed their investigations successfully, but I had more trouble. I climbed a large wall at the edge of the garden. I rolled a Nat-1 on my first climb check and took a d6 of damage. I then successfully climbed the wall, but the height of this wall and how far I climbed was unclear… I believe it was around 60ft, but heights ranging from 40 to 100ft were described by my height-wavering DM. Unfortunately, the mysterious roll earlier determined who would be possessed by an angry ghost that wanted to kill one of us to help tend her garden forever... Dice-Christ chose me. The ghost possessed me and then flung me from the wall. I rolled the falling damage, which was debated because the wall’s height was unclear. The damage took me to -2 HP. (Please note, I would not have gone down if not for the d6 of damage from my initial failed climb attempt.) My compatriots were not in range to heal me, I rolled my death saves. I failed. My character died. I ask you, omniscient justices, is this combination of wavering wall heights, secret ghostly possession, and damage for a failed climb check while on the ground more than a string of unfortunate events? Should my DM have intervened in some other way? Should my character have paid the ultimate price because of my DM’s inconsistent story? I humbly await your ruling. – Chloe aka Rutabaga Smut, Dwarf Wizard DM Perspective: I am lucky to have a group of boundary pushing, expectation defying, (too often) clever players. To challenge them, the day’s session was set in a trap-riddled and haunted garden, where survival would be contingent on collaborative and innovative play. Naturally, they decided to split up for the first time ever. I was concerned for a TPK, but through an inventive use of a bead of force on a submerged water wyrm, and the questionable structural integrity of graveyard tunnels, two out of three players bested encounters planned for the whole group. By the time we arrived at Rooti and the wall that would ultimately be her demise, I was happily exhausted in a way that only running a session that has gone completely awry can make you. The infamous wall of wavering height was in the neighborhood of 60 ft tall. The clarity of the final height is hotly contested, but it was TALL. There was a failed perception check and a failed wisdom saving throw. Rooti’s possessed body was flung and fell to the ground. She failed her death saves and then proceeded to die alone and broken at the base of a VERY tall wall. The 60 foot fall was by no means a sure death, but should I have picked a shorter falling distance because of the ambiguity in communication? How much shorter do I make the wall? Would any height that resulted in death feel unfair?! I await your judgment. If I too must be flung from a wall of wavering height, so be it. - Distant Mother, Chris Joy and Dragons, Chloe and Chris

Jen Barnes

To the Always Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the Sometime Dishonorable Bailiff Jake, if that even is his real name. I present to you a simple case of Inspiration and also gross men. This may end up just being a complaint about men. I was in my first campaign as a player after being a DM for a Year. I earned inspiration from the DM in the first session for RP, but when it came time to use it I feel like I was robbed. We were running the Phandalin Adventures and it came time to fight the manticore. My Halfling Barbarian swung her axe and I had rolled a 3, we were using the rolling system in Roll 20 so my DM could see it. Before he said what the outcome was I said I would like to burn my inspiration on the attack, but he said I had to announce that before even rolling. I was under the impression that it was to be used before you knew the official result of a roll. However, if that moment wasn't enough later in the session (we were playing online) my daughter, 2, came and sat in my lap and he made some comments about her appearance that made me very uncomfortable. I gave him a Bad review on his DM profile and I have only ever played as A DM since. I understand this case is probably open and shut but i am still irked about the inspiration situation and even more so about this creep. Thank you Judges and Bailiff for hearing my plea sentence as you see fit.

Evan Sherlock-Hubbard

To the Justices with the most beautiful plumage in the land, and Jake, I bring the case of Summoner V. Gravity. I was in a Pathfinder 1st Edition game playing a summoner. The BBEG of our current arc, a heavily-plated anti-paladin with a bonkers AC score, was across from us in an encounter the DM had pre-described as, 'Run or Die'. I had already cast Haste on my Eidolon (A summoner's personal summon creature) who I had designed with all points invested in grappling as a supportive crab monster named Congo. A light went off in my head, I cast Evolution Surge on Congo which gave him more Eidolon points I invested in a pair of large bird wings and a flight speed. With my dedication to grappling Congo was able to grapple the BBEG, and with a hasted speed I had him fly vertically skyward for two full turns, soaking a series of attacks until finally disappearing... And dropping the Paladin 350 feet in the air. The number of dice I got to roll for damage that turn was like a rattling avalanche of joy, and when I announced the total to the happiness of the rest of the party, my DM frowned, looked at his sheet, and said, 'Well he's heavily armoured, so he's cushioned from a lot of that damage' and the battle continued. After a long time we did end up having to flee, since more bad guys began to pour out of nearby buildings. Was I robbed of a sweet kill that took my DM by surprise? Or was the DM right to rule that the damage would be reduced even if only to save his cool evil paladin? I accept any ruling you wonderful folks pass down.

Walker Hawthorne

May it please the court and the humble bailiff, I bring you the case of the reincarnated gnome. a few years ago I was in a campaign where my PC, Dalen, was traveling with his mentor, a gnome named Jarl. Our first quest was rescuing Jarl after he was kidnapped. While rescuing him, Jarl and the party’s half-orc barbarian named Brunch had a disagreement. When Brunch tried to leave the argument, Jarl forced him to come back with Command. Brunch was already on edge and didn’t know Jarl well, so in response to being kind-controlled he ended up killing Jarl (Dalen was unconscious). I wasn’t upset with the player since I knew she was just acting in character and it started some interesting narrative conflict, and honestly none of us really liked Jarl that much as an NPC. But I think it may have annoyed the DM, because next session he brought in a new dwarf NPC who revealed himself to Dalen as actually a reincarnated Jarl in a private chat without the other players, which kind of felt cheap. Later, after the campaign ended and we stopped playing with that DM for other reasons, I told Brunch’s player about Jarl’s reincarnation and we both agreed that it was kind of petty (She and I are still friends and have an awesome D&D group where she DMs). Are we right that Jarl should’ve stayed dead, or was the DM right to bring him back?

Chris Lomanski

Dear the most honourable Justices Axford, Tanner and the saltiest Murphy as well as that bailiff... Jack Durr-witz? I present you the case of "I wish you didn't do that" In my last campaign we were having a slightly broken high level battle with one of the bigger bads of the campaign. My character a human fighter pirate name Cpt. Captain Spalding (his first name was Captain, named after the late Sid Haig) was polymorphed into a dragon and having a dragon fight with the baddy who was also polymorphed to a dragon. We were up in the air and I had knocked them out if polymorph when they started falling they used the wish spell to wish me dead. I was slightly shocked, especially as I had just ordered a custom mini for the character which the DM was aware of a fully supported. I managed to convince the DM to instead of me just being dead that it altered my polymorph and we rolled on a table to see what I would become. In hopes of landing on something that can fly. Luckily I landed on a bird, unluckily it was a small flightless bird and this became my true form for a few seconds until I splattered in the ground effectively killing me the same as just wishing death. Am I wrong to be salty about my DM using a wish spell to just kill me off?

saphssquatch

To the lascivious justices and the comely bailiff Jake. I present the case of ex drama. I DM a magic college themed campaign, Strixhaven, and our party just went to the home town of the wild magic sorcerer. The Sorcerer is dating someone at college, but it was established through his backstory that he had childhood friend turned lover that he left to go to the college. Notably, he didn't break up with the ex and just left, this was established in the backstory. He ends up being discovered by his ex in his home town and she confronts him and he invites her to attend the school with him and invites her to meet the rest of the party. When they are in the party's homebase, he gives her a tour of the place all the while she is probing him about his relationships with the others in the party, seeing if he is in a relationship, he answers no. One thing leads to another and she is in his bedroom, sitting on his bed and tries to kiss him, he swerves the kiss with a dex save, emotions explode, and the session ends. After the session everyone is having a good time and talking about all the clear signs where she was trying to sus out the Sorcerer's current relationship status, obvious flirting attempts, how the Sorcerer definitely led her on after doing her real dirty and certainly did NOT lead with "Oh I have a new gf now". The player starts to feel bad and says, "well I was trying to be nice!" and genuinely gets upset. The player has a pretty close relationship with his ex and so I think that this may have struck a line where the game hit a little too close to home to player feelings. We are pretty close friends, so this is definitely something I had in the back of my mind while designing the ex-NPC, but I love the drama . Now my question for you all is this, knowing the player should I have gone easy here and not put him in this situation, or should the fun of the group triumph? I thirstily await your judgement.

Eric Pennington

Howdy oh holiest of Priests and the lovely valid. I have a Confession for Dice Christ. I am a first time DM, dming for a group of my four best friends. And it was out very sturdy session for my players who haven’t played before. We are running Mines of Phandevler and my Dragon born paladin wanted to persuasion check some goblins into joining his religion (will explain if asked) and he even went as far as putting his vestments on his character sheet and his REAL CHURCH CLOTHES for the role play. I have him roll with advantage and both come up nat 1 and I had him roll with advantage again and still really poor rolls but I didn’t want to kill the vibe and fudge the rolls so the team will continue have the fun. I await my punishment with baited breath.

anniemurphs

To the mellifluous ju-uuuust kidding! Intro free 2023, babyyy! My party and I were completing some trials to get into a library city. We went into a room with a sword in the center and the words "say my name" written on the wall. So like the smartass I am, I said the words "my name." My dm laughed and told me to roll a persuasion roll. I got a 25. This did not apparently solve the riddle, though we got out just fine. I think that since I rolled a 25 persuasion, I maybe should've gotten somewhere with that, but also kinda think that because it was so stupid, maybe something in the room should've attacked me. What say you? (No outro for thee, 2023) P.s. I can hear Murph saying frustrated no's multiple times as I'm typing this, so I'm sorry for that rise in blood pressure

Dench Judy

To the Benevolent Judges and Mr Jake the Baliff I bring to you the case of the Silent Ritual I am running a long term campaign with my friends which we started in lockdown and they have just fought part of a Necromantic Cult who were attempting to bring forth an Avatar of the banished god of Life and Death which would start to break the fabric between planes of existence. I laid out the rules of the ritual to the party and it was quite similar to the ritual in the end of NADDPOD Campaign 1 with the husks! However the issue came about when one of the party asked me a question. “If I cast a spell that doesn’t get any upcasting benefits, can I maybe increase the AOE?” I thought it couldn’t do too much harm and allowed it, rule of cool and all. Well, his turn comes around and he casts silence at 4th level, I had said double the level, double the range seems fair prior, and this single spell shut down the entire encounter, leading to just a slaughter of around 30 mages. When he first cast the spell I was thrilled, very cool play! But as it dragged on it just seemed to get dull and there were no stakes. Judges and Jake, I should have just said no right? Or is this just a sick play that I should celebrate with my players? I humbly await your judgement

Hannah

To the dutiful and dedicated judges and the dishonored, but no less dutiful and dedicated former Judge Jake: I humbly present the case of the obstinate player and oblivious elf We’ve been in this campaign for about a year with our friend who’s an elf bard/sorcerer PC named “Richard Dixon”. He was brand new to d&d and made his character with our DM. They made the character as a joke with the bard/sorcerer not believing in magic (even saying he blacked out once when he cast spells) and denying the existence of elves, claiming he was a human (despite being a full elf, having another elf in the party and meeting human NPCs). The rest of us are getting pretty tired of having to continuously try and convince this PC that magic is real and he’s not human. Despite this we want to continue playing with him, just not his ignorant elf. He admits that he doesn’t like his character anymore but doesn’t think it’s an option to create a new PC. Our DM isn’t making a decision but isn't moving the story in a way that would see PC growth and development either. So, I ask the court, should the party be punished for not trusting our player and DM or should this PC find his unlikely demise at the bottom of a tall tower. The party dutifully awaits your judgement.

JT Gwozdz

For what it's worth, Twinned Spell only works on something that targets one creature and doens't have a range of self. Twinned spell doesn't have a target exactly (it's "see text" description is different than something that says "target: one creature). Dimension door can affect up to two creatures, which also falls afoul of the rule.

JC

Oh glorious crit justices and the latest guest from 8Bit Book Club. I bring to you the case of the of the worlds worst superhero. I was in a campaign where everyone got to choose a class as well as a superpower that was homebrewed by the DM. One of my fellow players was a pyromancer monk but he was terrible. Not even just he was weak or he was built poorly (which he was) he refused to learn the game. He would constantly need reminded what his abilities where, how they worked, and even how basic mechanics of the game worked. On top of that he hardly payed attention, would play Minecraft during the sessions, and would only talk to interrupt the session with a poorly timed jokes. This campaign has since come to a conclusion and our group has removed him (as daddy Murphy would surely agree as he oft recommends getting new friends) but what does the court think of this problem hero. I await your judgement.

Ryan Gallagher

I present the Mysterious Case of Polymorphed Body Oil: May it please the Justices held in the highest esteem and (Adlib something about that “Josh” guy here). I run a campaign that combines the worlds of Eldermourne and the Witcher for one PC. Because he’s a solo player I add homebrew items and occasionally throw in a DM PC to help balance the combat. In the most recent session he was hunting a basilisk which can turn people to stone. To help avoid this, I allowed him to brew a body oil that would give him advantage on the saving throw against being turned to stone. He applied the oil just before the encounter, but during the combat, he cast Polymorph on himself to turn into a T-Rex. The question is this: Should my PC still benefit from the body oil he applied to his human form if he is polymorphed into a different creature? In the end I said the oil’s effect would still be active but I don’t know if I made the right choice. I beg the benevolent Justices for mercy if I am in the wrong. Dice Christ give me strength.

mr. nugget

To the honorable judges and whoever else happens to be there. I bring you the case of the sacrificial stoat. My group has been playing in our friends homebrew Baldur's Gate game for several years and we are fairly high level. Recently our group defeated a group of high level goblins who had some pretty sweet gear. One such piece was a pair of fire gauntlets that were an artifact. One of the drawbacks of the gauntlets was that they required a sacrifice of a creature of the same alignment to attune to them. The fire genasi ranger really wanted these gauntlets. I jokingly said that the druid in the group could cast the spell awakening on a stoat because they were most likely the same alignment. Everybody laughed at this and then to my growing horror began to take it seriously. I ended up having my character to my foot down and say that was way to messed up a thing to do and the ranger hasn't gotten to attune to the gauntlets to this day. I ask the court was I wrong to yuck our rangers yum or was giving a creature sentience just to kill it going way too far?

Three goblins in a dinosaur costume

Dear Beloved Bailiff and the Just-plain-amazing Justices of the Supreme Crit I present to you the case of the stagnant party: I am in a campaign with some very long time friends and our partners. We have been playing off and on for the better part of a decade. I'm usually the forever DM, but another friend decided to take over the reigns for a short campaign so I could play. That was almost 2 years ago. The campaign has dragged out way longer than anticipated with my partner and I being the only ones in this party of 5 that seem to be actively engaging in the world in a way that's driving the story. This has lead to sessions that take a lot of energy on our parts to be told that "well that character you interrogated didn't have any information to give" or other dead ends narratively speaking. Recently the DM changed the dynamic of my partner's character and a key NPC between sessions without telling her. She rolled with it at the game, but that seems like the final straw for her. She no longer wants to play that game, and I don't blame her. But nobody else can n that group seems to feel the same. I want to finish that game so we can move on to something else and I can still hang out with my friends but my partner just wants to start a new group. We both like that group of people and don't want to cut ties, but we aren't enjoying this game. Any ruling you deliver will of course be just and followed to the best of our ability.

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?

Kaiden Ciongoli

Good marrow to the wonderful judges, mesmerizing voice of Axford, the talented technique of Drawing Tanner, the Magnificent Mind of Murphy, and of course, the oh so funny Bailiff Rosie Blumenfeld, or I think that's his name I bring to you the case of the problematic hit points. My friend, a Half-Elf Orc barbarian, has recently had a small problem with my word choice. I am a fresh DM doing my first campaign, and the complaint is that I'm too "liberal" when describing how hurt enemies are. I'll use the classic Murphy phrases when describing damage: that fucked them right up, on deaths door, etc. Etc. My friend complains that he has no idea when he is close to winning an encounter, and that I should almost say nothing. In the most recent battle against clockwork automatons, I said that one was "near death", the half-orc went for an unarmed strike for a goof, which did little damage and resulted in the rogue being knocked unconscious. It largely led to nothing, as the encounter ended, but I've been tied to a horse and dragged through the razzberry patch for weeks about this. How should I refer to damage going forward? What say you judges? Am I wrong for being vague with how hurt my enemies are? Or is half-orc really half troll for being so salty?

RumbleJelly

To the honorable justices and whatever fate has in store for the bailiff this week. I am the DM for my friends in a long running 5e campaign. I recently gave the party a powerful homebrew item. It had bonuses to certain social skill checks and eventually allowed a character to raise their charisma past the cap. The hope was that it would go to the bard or warlock, as both players are pretty quiet outside combat and more charisma is great for both of them. However, when the item was found by the party. The very RP active ranger took it, did a quick, "does anyone else want it, no? Okay I'll take it." No one protested or seemed upset, but after the session I was worried that the others didn't speak up and my inner min/maxer wouldn't let it be. I spoke with my SO the bard and confessed I was annoyed that it went to the Ranger. I did not ask him to say anything, but the next session the Bard spoke up in character and asked that the item go to the warlock or himself. The warlock said it was okay, she didn't need it and the ranger flat out told the bard no when asked for it. The bard quickly dropped the issue and we continued the session after some awkward silence. Was I wrong to press the issue when the party didn't originally care about who got the item or should I have intervened more? I await your judgement.

Cha boi

To the Supreme, all knowing, all chortling, all deciding justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner and fucking Jake, I present the case of the Enduring Desire. My girlfriend's friend offered to DM for a group of my HS friends, and it went just friggin fine. No one died (from laughing or in character), and the interest that many had going into it had fizzled out like so many counter spells. Worse, I, the host of bringing together the DM and friends and host for the night, landed the final blow on the BBEG, which I think may have felt like an anticlimactic end for the rest of the party. I ask direction for how to proceed in either bringing together this party again, or continuing on to walk this path alone.

Gunga Gaj

To the most honorable of all the judges, and the bailiff who deserves a full body massage. I bring the case of my They/Them Changling, Alox who was a Prostitute Priest Cleric/Bard. I was in a game for about 1yr where we rolled for characters instead of using the pre-rolled numbers. I rolled 3, 18s and put them into Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, to create the healer/support of the group a Cleric, with 1 level of Bard just to have Bardic Inspiration. As a joke, and to make my Cleric one who believes in healing Mind, Body, Soul, and "Body". I would make gold in every tavern we rested at by offering my "services" to locals, I had roll-played it, by excusing myself as we tuck in for the night and fading to black, and rolling how good my job was, thus earning extra gold for the party. The issue comes when another PC's girlfriend joined in, and was immediately offended, by my character. Saying I'm "Slut Shamming and Transphobic" and me being a male, is extremely inappropriate for me to create this character. And one other PC said they did feel uncomfortable from the beginning, but let it go for the sake of the game. It got very heated, and I didn't want to offend anyone, I left the game to not cause any more problems, and to keep my friendships. Am I wrong for even playing and creating this character? I truly did not want to offend anyone.

Luke G

May it please the honourable judges and the sweet baby bailiff, i present the case of the Not-evil, Not-party member. I was running a mini campaign for my friends and asked them to make evil characters, starting at level 10 with a pre established history of adventuring together. the two relevant players to this case are the Warlock and the Shadow monk. The main quest giver was the warlocks patron, Belial, who informed the party that the good guy npcs where going to perform a ritual to let their good guy deity into the material realm. Belial told the party to hijack the ritual and bring him through instead. The shadow monk proclaimed “i will not let any god into this world” while the others all agreed to the plan in exchange for positions of power under Belial’s reign. After the session i spoke the shadow monk’s player who informed me that he’s “more neutral and all about balance” and has “only known the party for about three week” so has no real commitment to them. i tried my best to make it clear that working against the party might not work out well for him, he shrugged and said “i just think its a bit boring that everything is so black and white” This was the first session btw. My in-game solution was to have Belial pull the monk aside and, to summarise, say “hey man im all about balance too, there’s too much good in the world. They want heaven on earth, in just want earth on earth.” Belial then gave the monk a powerful banishment scroll and said “give me a chance, help me out and if you dont like what im doing, send me back to hell with that spell” However the monk was not aware that the warlock was privy to this chat. Belial gave the warlock a scroll of power word kill and told her to kill him if he stepped out of line. It all went as i expected. The monk turned on the party and was taken out immediately. The player was pissed. What do you think? Could i have handled this better?

River B.

Dearest most exquisite most honorable judges and that one guy with the name I never learned. I present to you the case of the fourth-wall oracle, who's power of insight is so strong he knew every plot point in the campaign. I DM this group that I found online. The oracle had created the group because there was an adventure path that they wanted to play and I agreed to run it. On session 1, the oracle came in with an incredibly grandiose backstory that included a divine vision of a meteor hitting earth, something we never discussed. As the campaign went on, this player quickly exhibited a main-character complex and even seemed to be prepared for what should have been major surprises. I wasn't sure at first but I was able to figure out that the reason the oracle wanted to play this adventure path was because they owned a copy themself, and was reading ahead so they may plan accordingly. Any time I deviate from the written campaign, the oracle gets tangibly upset. They throw tantrums, question my DMing choices, and attempt to retreat from their self-impossed role as face of the group. How do you deal with a player that thinks they know your every move? Am I wrong to try to keep making this work or was this broken from the start? I humbly await your divine judgement.

Tarren

May it please the court and Jake from the pit wall podcast. Im a new dm for experienced players which was nerve racking at first but I couldn’t have asked for more kind and enthusiastic players! They’ve been very understanding and we’ve never butted heads with rulings …until now. Last session an npc mage cast hold person on the fighter pc. I asked for a wisdom save which they failed and as I started to describe what happened they said “is this hold person? I’m a fey not a humanoid so it doesn’t work”. They say that the mage would have to cast hold monster for it to work and the table agreed. They’re a centaur which as far as I’m concerned is a PERSON not a monster. Please help us judges. I can see their side of the argument but Im very salty about it. Will you side with me or will you at least put me out of my misery with your sentence. Praise Dice Christ

Noel H

HELLO DEAR JUSTICES AND SOON-TO-BE DADLIFF JAKE HURWITZ I present to you: the Case of the Copulating Deer. I was second-time DMing for a group of friends in a off-shoot one-shot from our main campaign. However, two of my friends really didn't seem into it and made no independent decisions the whole session. In an effort to better include them, I laid out all the options they could do in an area and asked them what they wanted to do, to which they replied "Can I roll an Animal Handling check to make the surrounding deers fuck each other?". They crit. This tilted me so hard that when we got to the final fight, I fudged my BBEG's HP to deny them landing the final blow, because I did not want them to have the satisfaction of "winning" after they've been inattentive all session (and I wanted the other, more involved players to experience that victory). Yes, o' noble court, the deer sex was my Joker moment, and I feel like an asshole to this day. But I ask: Is there some teeny tiny piece of this where my actions are justified? Or is a fudging of this magnitude punishable by tarring and feathering? Please let me know of my fate. Yours foreverly, Noel

Pat N.

Hello nationally honored Supreme Crit Justices and temporarily, locally honored Justice Boston Jake, In a recent virtual session, two out of four PCs were obviously watching the March Madness championship game. They were still engaged enough during play but they were constantly looking off screen and their mics occasionally picked up the sports announcers or commercial break audio. I didn’t say anything in the moment bc I guess I’m a coward, but was I right to be annoyed? Or as long as play isn’t blatantly disrupted, are there certain things that are acceptable to multi-task a virtual session with bc they are personally or culturally important enough? I submit that a successfully scheduled D&D session should be the sole focus of all involved! Thanks for your wisdom, Pat

Jame Dudi Jench

May it plum the esteemed judges and prune the sniveling bailiff Joben, I present the case of The Guy From Highschool That We Still Can't Stand 15 Years Later. I have a close group of friends, most of which I went to school with. 6 of us started a new D&D campaign about 2 years ago. Midway through the campaign, our DM, brought in a guy we went to school with. None of us had stayed close with this person except for the DM, because he was frankly insufferable, but it's been over a decade so we were all ready to give him a chance. In the beginning everything was going smoothly, and he was content to go along with the more casual vibe we had already established as a party, and even if his kobold sorcerer was a little ridiculous and had an incredibly obnoxious voice, having him as a character that wasn't front and center in the party was perfectly fine. However as time has progressed and he's gotten more comfortable in the group, he has been gradually sapping the enthusiasm of every other member in the party; constantly questioning people's decisions and tactics in battle, edging in on other party members' specialties (tagging along with the rogue when stealth is required, boxing out the bard when it comes time to use charisma to talk to people), chiming in to tell grown adults how to do basic math, and generally talking down condescendingly to people to the point where nobody wants to even make a decision because he's going to shit all over it. The group isn't nearly as into the game as a result, and are less focused, and when we go off-topic and talk amongst ourselves he takes the opportunity to basically play one-on-one with the DM. The party has discussed this without the DM present and have tossed around thoughts of letting the campaign die, or trying to be insanely hyper-focused and just boxing him out of decisions until he gets frustrated enough to leave, but honestly we don't know what to do and are sad that our campaign that we once enjoyed has been effectively taken over by this condescending doofus, and since the DM is close with him we don't think he's going to resolve the issue. What are we to do?

Camden Jones

Justice Axford, Justice Murphy, Justice Tanner, and… [*ehem*] I present the case of the Held-back Hammer. Before character creation for my very first session of D&D, my DM told the table we could be pretty much anything we wanted. I asked, “What about a sentient hammer?,” to which he responded with an emphatic, “…No.” I attempted to negotiate, pitching the idea of a talking but immobile hammer that would need to be carried around and swung by a mostly unspeaking manservant. This would have made my character functionally identical to a normal person wielding a normal hammer, but the DM didn’t budge. Was I robbed of a fun and unique character, or was my DM right to deny my shenanigans? I humbly await your judgement.

Will Boris

To the Honourable High Justices, and Jake if he's in Boston I guess. I present you the case of the Timeline Hopping Dragonslayer I played in a campaign run by a DM who was running the same campaign twice at one time. He had two timelines of the same world running simultaneously. In my version of the campaign, we had a dragonborn player with an ancient red dragon villain in his backstory who we had just been sent to go slay once and for all. However, as we arrived at the island, we found a new member to join our party. A member of the other timeline, who had already completed the campaign 2 months prior (we only had about 1 month left) who had been invited back by the dm. This new future knight had already defeated the bbeg, killed this dragon, and saved the world, and was here to help us for some reason. We shrug it off and continue deep into the dragons lair and meet the bbegs main henchmen there as we fight this ancient dragon. Not only does this future player reveal information about the henchmen actually turning good in the end, revealing he was gifted his sword from his version, but this future knight also was the one to behead the dragon, giving us the victory. I did nothing to argue against this as a fellow player, and watched idly by as the dragonborn, bent on destruction of the dragon was denied his vengeance, and watch as that player slowly became less and less interested and now no longer plays dnd. Was I wrong to sit by, or was the DM and player wrong for stealing a second dragon skull to mount on his wall? I humbly await your judgement.

Morose Psych

May it pleasure the court and tickle the bailiff with whom I entrust my adoration. I have DM'd a campaign for the last 4 years with some old school friends, it started as our first ever game that just kept going with all the same player characters. I've suspected our monk is fudging his roles by quickly grabbing his dice to 'read the number' but I never addressed it to keep the flow of the game. But now my other players have approached me since his luck seems to be a little too good when it matters. I have now spoken to this player and suggested maybe he misunderstood his multipliers but he assured me its just his roles. We have the final session against the BBEG coming up in 2 weeks and I don't know if I can trust this player to be fair to the rest of the party. Should I be harsher and request he role in front of the table or should I trust in dice christ to judge his mortal soul? Thank you for glancing in my direction. P.s. we only started playing because I showed them Naddpod, I had them at "huge dragon pussy"

Delani N Wright

To the honorable crit justices and the bailiff who reads the cases eloquently though his decorum out of court might be wild. I bring to you the case of sadness and disrespect. I have been the permaDM for my friends and family for 2.5 years now. I have never rolled a character for myself. So, imagine my delight when a person in my grad program said he was DMing a new campaign and asked if I wanted to join. I made my character, a sweet halfling artificer alchemist named Ada. Who made bio-mechanical robots but wasn't very good at it yet as we were level 1, it was a lot of fun. The rest of the party loved my role-playing scenes and we had a lot of cool moments... except for one player. She was a Dragonborn whose hoard was a pile of clothes on a red rider wagon, they kept falling off and it was a huge hassle anytime we moved which, as you can imagine was all the time. We still had fun even with her antics until one fateful day. We ran across two grieving adoptive parents who needed safe passage to visit their dead son's grave. I hearing their story (removed for time), felt deeply moved, and knelt on the ground pledging my service and vowing to keep them safe. After this session, the player who was the Dragonborn said "Out of character does anyone else think that Ada is annoying?" I bewildered by this sat in silence for a moment before saying "Haha yeah I guess so." And there was an awkward silence until the DM ended the call. I have no problem with people thinking my character is cringy in game because quite frankly she was because I am. But she specifically took it out of the game so it feels like a slight on me as a player. My question to you should I build a bridge and get over it? Or should I knock over her dumb clothes cart? My fate is in your hands. P.S. I ended up having to quit the game because turns out grad school is hard. Also, the whole campaign ended shortly after I left.

handsomemike06

To the Honorable justices and the dedicated bailiff , I present to you the case of "does rock beat ghost". A bunch of my friends recently had a game that lead us to a undead town full of geod monsters and ghosts , we first attempted stealth but after miserable face plant soon found ourselves swarmed by the town full of monsters, after a couple of rounds of dreadful immunitys and resistances i had a moment of genius and decided to grapple one of the GEOdudes in order to attempt to make up for my lack of magic weapons, my thoughts were maybe possessed monster hits ghosts better. Verys quickly i was shot down by my dm but we had a great night all and all but i lay myself at your mercy to simply ask would you allow this act of grung stone age brilliance . I eagerly await your verdict .

Bebs

I bring not a case, or confession, but an exclamation of praise to Dice Christ herself. My husband is running an Ancient Greek, Percy Jackson style campaign for us where we are all demigods. We were on the island of Crete and needed to get across the Mediterranean to Naxos. Thalassa, the daughter of Poseidon, had the trident of fish command, so I (Zinfandel, daughter of Dionysus) suggested we use that to command a whale to carry us. My husband argued that there are no whales in the Mediterranean and we'd probably need to convince or hire some merchants to take us. We were resilient, however, and wanted our whale. Finally, he goes, Fine roll to see what kind of sea creature you can get. Thalassa rolled a Gods-given natural 20. and we got our damn whale. Thank thee Dice Christ for knowing what we needed in our time of need and granted us a whale named Finrol. Under her die, blessed be the loot, Amen

Renee Wild

To the amazing and illustrious Judges Murhpy, Axford, and Tanner and that guy who sits a little lower than everyone else. I present the case of the DM rolling for his players. A little while ago I joined a table where the DM had a house rule that he would roll insight and perception checks for his players behind the DM screen and wouldn't tell us the number. Instead he would ask for our modifier and then tell us what we perceived or gleaned from the roll, and then we would move on. This was to prevent us from metagaming if we got a low roll. I was desperate to play at the time so I didn't really care, but it always stung a little bit when I asked for a perception check and then was just told what I saw or didn't see instead of getting to roll it myself. I'm not at that table anymore for other reasons, but thinking back this still irks me. I humbly leave this decision at your feet - was this DM wrong to take even some of our rolls from us or am I just a stingy little dice goblin who wants to roll my shiny click-clacks as many times as possible?

Papaya W

Forgive me Fathers Murphy and Tanner, Mother Axford and Altar Boy Jake for I have sinned. I recently Dmed a fey-centric campaign (absolutely based on the dimension 20 season) with lots of whimsy, drama and competition. The problem was, I couldn't stop womping my players with my sweet nat20s. In the latest session, I didn't want to womp and so I lied on 3 nat20s, making the rolls lower. The campaign has since disbanded due to two couples breaking up, and I haven't been able to roll over a 10 since. Please give me some unreasonable yet hilarious punishment and reverse the luck I bought upon myself through spitting in the face of Dice Christ's generosity. Sincerely, Poppy from Perth (with the Papers) x

James Cockrum

To the Supremiest of Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the the Bail Bondsman Hurwitz… In our current campaign, we have a player who chose to be a Tortle. This player is basically the Guy Fieri of D&D because everything is all about flavor when it comes to her characters. Tortles are great, and have a walk speed of 25, but she chose to purposely lower it to 20. She also chose to Speeeaaak Sllllooooowwwllllyyyyy, and also chose to respond to things that were said 15 minutes ago in party communications as if she just got it. I’m all for flavor, but this recipe ingredient was just a bit too much for me. Am I being to salty? I lay myself at the feet of the court…

Shambles

May it please the court, the refulgent Justices, and the Bailiff Jake (it might seem like I didn't include a Bailiff put-down, but fun fact: in Scotland, Jake is an insult). I present the case of the Premature Initiative. The scene: me and my party members spy a group of bandits, some 300 feet away down the road. As upstanding adventurers, we decide to approach and attack the miscreants. The crime: the DM told us to roll for initiative. "But wait", you might be thinking, "that's no crime!" and you'd be right, except...he had us roll initiative while we were still 300 feet away, unseen by the bandits. We each spent the next several turns, one by one, saying "I dash towards the bandits" until we finally got close enough to fight. And even then, the players with long-range attacks were able to pretty much finish the bandits off by the time the close-range guys got there. I did ask if we could start initiative once we were in attacking range but the DM ignored my request. I humbly ask this most venerable court: was that a super weird thing to do, or should I have kept my mouth shut and enjoyed the imaginary exercise? P.S. Jake's a Jake, pass it on

Lucas Peterson

For the absolute pleasure of the court, the justices, and mighty bailiff, I bring you the case of the unlucky perhaps-soon-to-be unlycanthrope. I am running a game of Pathfinder 2E for my friends, and one of my players was dead-set on playing a werewolf. He wouldn't settle for Beastkin or any other archetype that was werewolf-LIKE, he wanted to be a full-blown, moon-cursed werewolf. Since Pathfinder, as far as I know, doesn't have any rules for balanced lycanthrope PCs, I came up with a homebrew system where he could shift into werewolf form during battles, which obviously comes with a host of benefits, but he would need to make saves in certain situations to keep control of himself and not attack his allies as well or run off in search of fresh meat. Now, I've run the math over and over again by this point, so I fully believe the DC's I set for controlling his form aren't too difficult. The werewolf player has just consistently rolled like absolute garbage almost every time these saves happen, and encounters where he shifts often end up with him attacking his fellow PCs, in one encounter even dropping two of them unconscious. It has come to my attention that the other players in my game are going to, in-character, confront the werewolf PC and demand that he help them search for a cure for his lycanthrope. I do not believe the werewolf's player would be receptive to this - and here's where I stress that it's not anything sexual, dude just likes werewolves. I am conflicted in many ways. Was I a fool for homebrewing this in the first place, instead of insisting on an already-written system? Should I bump down the DC for the control saves so the player is happy, even though that might lead to him being OP compared to his peers? Is the idea of the PC's confronting the werewolf a reasonable in-character reaction that might lead to a fun sidequest, or is it players stifling another's creativity? I eagerly await judgment so I can sleep soundly once more.

Jonathan Haynes

To the dynamic and awe-inspiring judges and whoever else happens to be there, I bring the case of the Cheated Rubik's Cube Death. I was running a short form campaign in Baldur’s Gate; as part of said campaign, the players found an item that exists in the canon world, but one that i had tweaked: an infernal puzzle cube. By default, the cube makes you make a dc 30 investigation check or take a lot of damage. I had to tweak it to do more damage and to be a straight intelligence check because the party was higher level and a rogue had expertise in investigation. Keep in mind, with the way the party has been set up, this was still a possible check, just hard. The rogue rolls one below the check, bringing him down to 5 hp, and proceeds to look up the item. He argues that since the base item uses an investigation he should be allowed too as well. Eventually i capitulated but i ask you: should I have stuck to my guns and almost killed a player to send them on a side quest or was i taking away player agency? I await the judge's judgement and refuse to hear anything from anyone else.

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 Heintz

May it please the Bailiff but not the justices, I present a case of Poetic Poisoning. Two years ago, our party of second-level adventurers encountered a philosophers-stone style potion puzzle with 5 different-coloured potions, one of which opened the doorway we needed to continue. To help us solve the puzzle our DM gave us a long and confusing poem, but that's it. We were stumped! After 20 mins irl, we just start drinking potions. The Fighter drinks one randomly and gets a stat bonus. My Goliath named Gurth drank one at the end. A black one. Without asking "Are you sure you want to do this?", my DM looks at me chuckling and goes "You're dead." Offered no saving throws. Nothing. He points to the poem and it reads "At the edge lies death", "Therefore, Gurth just dies". Apparently the two black potions at each end were insta-death potions which he had planned. DnD Court, is this fair of the DM to do? Instant death at level 2 on our 5th session?? At our time of need and confusion, our DM just left us out to dry? Then brutally poisoned me? P.S. not my case, this was submitted for a friend:)

Sean Marz

Greetings Justices and Jakes of the Court THE CASE OF "THE TREASURE ISNT WORTH IT" In the finale of a 2 year long campaign my PCs, were escaping a floating museum citadel plummeting into the ocean. The bard, Grievy Tricks, said that they wanted to run back into the museum to grab as much of the treasure as they could. As DM I gave them increasingly difficult skills challenges, and emphasized that going back for the treasure instead of helping folks evacuate was a classic villains foible. They passed challenges to pick up the jewels and treasures and used feather fall to remain unhurt on the way to the ground, but after meeting up with the team and showing off the treasure and touching each item, he was sucked into a cursed gem while I narrated the rest of the team sailing towards the horizon. He argues that this was unfair without additional checks, but his actions were so obviously in need of consequences and I asked him if he was sure he wanted to go through the items

Allia & Kyle

May it please the court and pleasure the bailiff, I present the case of D & ADHD: Dayna Goldstar, a wizard, was known as the High Elf who “spent too much time in the tower.” She believed in things others did not and had a…unique understanding of the world. ALAS the player controlling Dayna struggled with wizarding mechanics and juggling spells. Furthermore, the player struggled from lack-of-dopamine-itus, a condition which arises from playing a character with only a single action to give during combat. After playing Dayna the Wizard every other week for 6 months, the player decided that the wizarding class was not for her. She petitioned the DM to rebuild Dayna as a rogue and the DM agreed with the condition that the rebuild would have in-game consequences. The player, blinded by the light of actions, bonus actions, and D6s as far as the eye can see, agreed. She hastily rewrote her character sheet and waited for the next session. Thus the in-game consequences dropped. Dayna traded a powerful soul-sucking gem to a merchant devil in exchange for her new powers. The devil disappeared and the player happily moved on. SOME PLAYERS (read in a voice dripping with side-eye) disapproved of the deal, yet the player is now much happier playing a class that provides endless amounts of dopamine. Was the player wrong to rebuild her character? Is not the point of D & D to bring joy to those around the table?! What wisdom can you provide to those of us who tire looking at the same character sheet week after week. I (the player) await your judgment. Allia (Pronounced Uh-Lea)

Knox Cash

May I address the court, to the honorable crit justices and Bailiff James… I am DM’ing a campaign for my lifelong friends and we were three sessions into the campaign (4 member party) when my friend wanted to bring his long term girlfriend into the party. I wrote in her character for the next session as a princess of a royal family who had run away to start a new life. In this world some princesses of the royal family were good and some evil and I let the players try and decide for themselves which ones were which. I created an NPC that told another member of the party he would exchange information about his long lost tribe if he brought him the head of the princess. I thought my friend would reveal this plot, the party would rally behind the princess, defend her against the bad guy and form a solid bond. WHAT HAPPENED was one member decided all the princesses were evil since “that was the information that was given” and proceeded to plot against my friend’s gf and attempted to kill her when she was walking down a hallway alone because “that’s what his character would have done” Was I wrong to set up potential PVP and distrusted among the party? Should I have expected them to meta game a LITTLE and welcome the new member/someone’s actual significant other in real life? I humbly lay my head at your feet for punishment. Thank you

Lorelei and Kyra Newly Weds

Greeting my infant Judges and their chaperone Baliff Trent. I bring to you the case of the inappropriate adult. My party has tried multiple campaigns with the same group (small work group). The first campaign we tried went pretty well all things considered with scheduling conflicts and such. However as we got together for our second campaign meeting in a tavern in typical TTRPG style we described our PCs. I played a Lizard folk Barbarian with a raptor aesthetic (feathered), there was a Aasimar Cleric of Palor, wood Elf rogue and the problem player; an orc teenager (14). At first we didn't think anything of this, maybe a children's redemption tale or story of triumph. We were horribly wrong. After session one ended the orc had flirted with EVERY adult male in the campaign that even seemed remotely single. If that was the end of it this wouldn't be an issue. But lately they've been describing their characters supple budding teen body and talks about how horny being a teenager is. We've stopped the most recent campaign due to this. Im not sure what to do here and don't nessisarily want to straight kick them out of the campaign. But I'm not against the idea. I will not DM for a pedophile but I still have to work with them and don't want to make things awkward at work.

Critical Bromance

If it will please the honorable and dignified justices and the deplorable bailiff John, I would like to introduce the case of “The Stolen and Abused DM PC” About a year ago, myself, my cousins and a few friends decided to start a campaign that I was DMing. On the way home from session 0, the youngest player that drove with me stated he didn’t know what to play for the campaign. I pitched a character idea that I wanted to play of a Fallen Aasimar Oathbreaker Paladin/Hexblade Warlock that got banished from the Celestial Plane and exiled to the Material Plane, found love, his wife gets sick and he prays for anyone to heals her. The character goes to work for a goddess and all that is required is pray and occasionally a job to be completed when requested from the deity in return the deity will cure this unknown illness. He gains a Hexblade during his travels and through spending time with the Hexblade he would learn the fact that the Goddess doesn’t care about the PC and just wants power, using his sick wife as leverage. He was excited to play the character and backstory was created. The first few months went good, seems like he could handle the challenge will combat and RP. For a past few months, with personal stuff with him and now he has become disinterested from the table and totally stop caring about the character and now it is affecting the other PCs. Talking with my others players, they say the “problem player” should either experience a character death or just leave the table since all he does is look through memes on his phone and doesn’t interact with any of the players or the story. My question is should I have the “problem player” leave the group or just kill off my PC I gave him and have him roll a new character. We already talked to him about it and the problem is still occurring. I leave it the justices and Dice Christ hand to guide me through this rough pass.

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. Since he’d already rolled, and especially given 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. The next session he informed us he’d disposed of the offending d20. It was large, made from stone, and definitely expensive, so I feel really guilty about my ruling. Should I have let him try to roll again? I prostrate myself at the mercy of the court.

Guildedfangs

Update-I made it better To my dear SCJs and the CCB, too answer some of your questions, the derailment was over the course of 2 months worth of weekly games and accomplished in ways that could have been easily countered by the dm the most obvious one being when my best friend and my character left the party unguarded during our turn at watch using a teleportation circle to head bak to home base and leave a plot heavy artifact with the people we were working for instead of returning it to the dragon city. And while this story is full of other twists and turns this wasnt the dm's most egregious act,far from it actually. A year or two later I was in another campaign he ran along side my partner during a battle with a Neothilid our barbarian (my partner) got hit with feeblemind and failed the check after leading them to safety while the battle raged we barely got through and went to check on the barbarian only to find them dead, their brain eaten by a mind flayer off screen with no dice rolls. My partners first dnd character was killed off screen without so much as a chance to save themselves. Needless to say my old ways returned. Thank you for your time and everything you do Gunvost Gunfire, the Wolfen Captain of the Howling Moon P.S. he killed another character after a single dice roll that the player had missed the purpose of because of cross chatter at the table.

Libby

To the honoured justices and the man soon to be raising Tucker's kid (Mazel Tov!). I bring to you the case of a really meek person vs the DM. I've joined an online dnd group run by a friend of a friend, with a load of guys I don't really know (I am the only girl, don't know if that's relevant). I'm mostly really enjoying it, however the DM seems to be making lots of little mistakes which, when I have brought up, I am ignored (e.g. DM: 'That would be physically impossible to do in 3 seconds.' Me: 'A round is 6 seconds.' DM: 'No it's not.' Me: 'Ok.'). This kind of thing seems to happen more to me than anyone else on the table, probably because I'm sort of outside the friend group a little more. Everyone's having fun, including me, it's just a little frustrating. But I know I will *never* have the confidence to bring out a rulebook and go 'I'm right, look, it's there!'. Should I let the DM continue to make little, harmless mistakes, or should I continue to bring up little problems at the risk of looking like a nag? There are 100+ comments on top of mine, so on the assumption this will get buried, if anyone in the chat has any advice I would be uber grateful.

Itamar

So e and my friends are doing a campaign inspired by starstruck odyssey and we recently had a where i a big robot guy (shout out Sundry Sidney) mistakenly lopped off my friend's arm trying to save them from falling, now the problem is that i a combat scenario we had our enemies threw grenades at us and one of managed to throw the grenade back but our dm ruled that the grenade landed in their grenade stash so somehow we survived but are now "international terrorists" so my question is if the dm was right to suddenly decide to drop this on us? ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

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; on his longbow attack he had an average roll of 23.6, 4.1 higher than what should be 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?

Caitrin

To the divinely-favored court and the heathen bailiff, I present the case of the Hag Underground. My party was fighting a coven of hags, and after another member of our party killed one of the three. Our DM, instead of continuing the fight, had both of the other hags flee, one of them disappearing into the ethereal plane, and another turning into a swarm of beetles via Polymorph and burrowing into the ground. He said that unless any of us had anything preventing them from fleeing, combat was over. I said that my Bladesinger wizard cast Dispel Magic on the hag transformed into a beetle swarm, since the spell doesn’t require you to see the effect you’re ending. It wasn’t until I successfully rolled an 18 to dispel the Polymorph that my DM started arguing that I couldn’t do that. First, he said I couldn’t see the beetles, so I couldn’t cast it. Then, he agreed that I could cast it, but then ruled that there was just an un-polymorphed Hag 15ft underground, that she took no damage, and would just escape on her next turn via another spell if none of us could reach her by then. My fellow players argued that she couldn’t cast any spells with verbal or somatic components if she was immobilized under the ground, but were ignored. This wouldn’t have bothered me as much if my DM hadn’t counter spelled a Booming Blade attack AFTER it hit in the previous round, and if I hadn’t burned one of my only 2 third level spells to cast it (we’re only 5th level). I beg your benevolent ruling.

Dakota Smithson

May it please the most amazing judges and the just okay bailiff…oh what’s his name. I present the case of A new players conundrum. I was very excited to start my first dnd campaign with my dad a imp monk named chi-ip at a new friends/the DM’s house. The campaign setting was a pirate themed one in which magic if half powered and very rare in this world. Me a new player a cat-folk wizard had been told that finding magic items would be key. One session I had detect magic cast and noticed one of my DMs PCs had a magic ring on. I told my dads pc while the dm step out of the room so like normal honorable people we decided to gank them in a forest while they look for food. This fight saw my dad’s pc get killed and I managed to kill both the Dm pcs. The party started asking a lot of questions about what happened so i Lied that they attack us. The party started to call me a Lire and was casting spells to bind me. I argued that this was a little unfair and meta gaming seeing as there was no way the party would have know i was lying except a nat one. So I rolled a NAT ONE. The Dm just looked and me a said “the dice don’t lie kid.” The pain of watching my level 5 wizard be killed was a shock for my first dnd game. Was i wrong in saying the party would have believed my side if there was no other story or was it right to have the party murder my pc I humbly await your response. Ps. I still played with this group for 2 years after re rolling a warforged fighter dad stayed too.

Tim C

To the Illustrious Supreme Crit Justices, and Tucker's future babysitter Jake, I present to you the case of the Self-Meteor-Swarming Wizard. I DM a campaign for 8 of my friends who are all currently level 19. One of these characters, a lion-folk wizard named Chyz, has a penchant for collateral damage, having caused over 750 friendly fire damage to the party over the course of our campaign. During our last session, he found himself with 1 HP left and stuck to the floor of a battle arena, underneath 10 feet of water. Directly above him was a CR26 monster, with the rest of the party suspended in the air via Rope Trick. In a fit of selfless attempted auto-immolation, he cast meteor swarm on the monster directly above him, which did enough damage to permanently kill his character outright. Being so close to the end of the campaign, I had him roll an arcana check to see if he could perfectly place the spell so that the enemy would be within the spells radius but he would not. He passed the check and survived to the end of the session at 1hp. I now humbly ask you, should I have allowed this type of last-chance roll to save his life? Or should I have embraced the conceptual symmetry of a wizard dying the way he lived: causing catastrophic damage.

Dan Tebbutt

May it please the court, I seek judgement on the mismanagement of a monks merciful medicine. I am a player in a game with 9 PCs (god's bless our DM), in a campaign that started at level 1 as we had a few players who hadn't played before, and we had now worked our way up to level 3. The first session after we had our new lvl 3 abilities our party was ambushed while sleeping in our rooms by an assassin (the CR8 stat one). Due to the surprise auto crit and the poison damage, the assassin managed to one hit down our cleric to unconsciousness but not outright dead. After a short ensuing fight between the assassin and the other PC in the room, a wizard, enough noise was made to wake the party. Rolling high enough initiative allowed my monk to get to the room just in time to see the wizard go down to 1 failed death save. With 2 PCs down, and the cleric on 2 failed death saves, I used my new way of mercy monk ability, spending a ki point as an action for hand of healing to restore the cleric back to life. I then used my flurry of blows to hit the assassin once, and then per my ability replaced one blow with a use of healing, bringing the wizard back. The fight goes on, the party eventually won, and though it's a tough fight with people at low hp, no one died. The problem is then that flurry of blows can only be used if you take the attack action, which I did not. I only realised this after the combat, but before the end of the session, and have yet not confessed. Was I wrong to keep this to myself? I await the sentence of your esteemed selves.

garett144

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

Buck Schlerf

I have a confession I wish to humbly lay in front of Dice Christ. Although I had the best of intentions, on a few occasions I have choosen to take the blessing of Dice Christ into my own hands. A few years ago, I bought a loaded D20 online (a second 18,19, and 20 instead of the 1,2, and 3) and discovered that it looks almost identical to the d20 of a set I already owned. I showed it off to my party at the time, (we stopped because of covid, not my sins) and they thought it was cool and said they weren't going to be fooled by it if I tried to use it in game. One of the times I did use it was when one of the players brought in a guest for one session, a friend from out of town who had heard of DND but never played. In an attempt to ensure they had a good time (and maybe get them hooked on the game) I offered them my rigged rocks without telling them so they would crit more often and avoid the frustration of excessive low rolls in their first time playing. I didn't tell the other players I did this and they never found out, but I still believe I did it for good and not evil. I lay myself at the feet of the big DC and accept my judgement, was I wrong to deny this new player the true DND experience or do I get a pass this time?

Nicole Jordan

To my pious preachers and the little alter boy, Jake. I come with a Dice Christ confession. Thanks to NADDPOD and D20, I have fallen in love with D&D. I have always wanted to play, but have no friends that are even remotely interested, so I just consume as much actual play as I can find. However, last week I decided to bite the bullet and attend my college’s RPG club. The people seemed nice enough and after the DMs pitched their games they had us role initiative as a fun way to determine the order in which the newbies would pick the game they joined. I rolled and got a nat 20. With such a roll, I had a beautiful buffet of choices laid in front of me and a crowd waiting with baited breath for my decision, I awkwardly approached the whiteboard and signed up for the game that most interested me. However, that night my social anxiety got the best of me and I promptly texted the DM to back out, apologizing and letting him know I was too busy to play this semester. Please forgive me for ignoring such an obvious sign from Dice Christ. Maybe one day I will be brave enough to jump in and hopefully by then Dice Christ will welcome me back with open arms.

ChristheFu

To the simply radiant judges and the happy to be razzed bailiff I present the case of the organic earth elemental. I am a player in a 1920’s style Egyptian mythology campaign where we live on an earth that is slightly different than our own. We entered a combat with the god of fear and to populate the fight our DM said there were stone gargoyles who sprang to life as combat started. When it became the bards turn (the DM’s little brother) he cast shatter on the gargoyles and the DM refused to roll with disadvantage. My question is this, “Is a living rock gargoyle considered organic or is my DM a rock muncher?”

Savannah Myers-Gaines

Juicy judges and bodacious bailiff, I present a case of spite. I was playing in the early sessions of a game with some friends, a gnome cleric with a wall climbing gecko mount to help reach high places. When investigating a crumbling tower my gnome, Kizmet, gecko climbed to the second floor (away from the party) to look out a window for the fleeing bad guy. After looking through the window the DM ruled that because she is small she would have had to climb onto a chest to see out, and had me make a dexterity check to avoid being eaten by a MIMIC. With my stats was literally unable to make the save to escape, and isolated from the party there was no one to save me. I was not given the option to climb onto this obviously menacing chest, it was determined retroactively by the DM after I had already done the action. To this day I am a bit spiteful, and when challenged the DM ruled that’s what happened because he says so. So I beseech you, am I rightfully bitter or was this encounter worth stripping my autonomy?

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.

hell

may it please the court at large, be fine to the bailiff, and make justice axford proud: i bring this case knowing i will lose the RAW ruling of justices such as murph, but i must ask regardless. many of my characters come from ideas that tend not to work very well within the D&D rules-as-written. in this case, i wanted to build a support/healer based on the idea of cooking (i.e. cooking via food, maybe brewing potions, etc.). however, RAW basically only gives healing spells to clerics, and it seemed to me this character would make the most sense as a wizard (studying cooking, spellbook = cookbook where you learn a recipe and copy it down to add to your repertoire) or maybe, *maybe* a bard, and feats dont really compensate for the difference. i mean, heroes feast is only available to clerics and druids! so my case is this: provided it is true to the character and consistent throughout the campaign and not just for metagaming/ultimate whomping purposes, would you allow a class to borrow another's spell list for use with their standard casting mechanic – in this case, allow my wizard chef to use the cleric spell list without having to multiclass into cleric (and, as happened with this character, put all my levels into cleric to be any good at healing when the religion-y side of cleric didn't really make sense with the theme)? i humbly await my most-likely punishment. may bahamut bless you and the baba yaga not take you this night <3 (this is a heart but patreon does't like that i guess)

Joey Smit

May luck follow the crit justices in all areas of life including getting all the snot out when blowing of the nose. Hi Jake. I present the case of the noob gathering. The order of my grievances. The DM never prepares for the session as he reads directly from whatever book he uses. No flavor or coloring is ever put into his words or descriptions. All excusable but he constantly chews into his low quality mic while we speak :(. The other two players use their phones entirely to communicate and look at sheets so they cut out frequently and never use their cameras. My friend and I both use computers, actual microphones, and quality webcams but our mediocre knowledge of everything means we know the game is being played wrong by both the DM and the other two players. We both follow the "whatever the DM says goes." But it's so numerous the infraction that personally I've become annoyed to the point of boredom. That means blame also falls on myself. I find myself frequently on my phone till it's my turn in combat and barely able to follow anything the DM says. Should I bring up ideas so I can personally feel more immersed or just suck it up. There's more but words can only say so much. I humbly await judgment for all those involved

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. The artificer and I 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.

Emilia Russo

To the esteemed court and the disgraced former Justice of Boston, Jerf? I bring to you the case of the non-lethal brutal critical. In my first ever D&D campaign with a few coworkers we played through the Lost Mines of Phandelver. After spending roughly four sessions over two months of real time in the Cragmaw cave, we finally fought some wolves and goblins. We wanted to leave at least baddy alive to question and my halfling rogue, Babybel Crossprouts, attacked the final goblin to try and capture them. She crit and we had a house rule that everyone gets brutal criticals so with sneak attack, little Babybel did around 28 points of damage which I will admit was thrilling. The problem came when I asked if it could be non lethal damage since we wanted to capture the baddy. My DM ruled that since I “crit so hard” that I meant to do non lethal damage but ended up killing the goblin anyways. It was a funny moment at the time but then everyone was a little frustrated with me that we couldn’t question the goblins. And I felt like it was the first in a long line of moments where regardless of what I wanted to do all the opposition ended up dead. So, I ask the court and that other guy, should my request to do non lethal damage have been respected? Or was little Babybel just too deadly?

Lilybet Gates

Ooh this would be an interesting one very cool campaign!!!

Meghan

To the Honorable Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner and hello to that other guy I guess. I bring to you the case of the Charm Person spell that ended a campaign! I was DMing a campaign about 2 years ago and we’d played about 3 sessions when my PCs cast a Charm Person spell on a bandit leader to seduce him into going back to a city that was just over an hour’s walk away to go before the judges. Charm Person only lasts an hour, and so, when the spell ended, the bandit tried to get away. The bard cast Charm Person again, but I made the call that, since the bandit leader would have known he’d been charmed before, when they tried to convince him to go with them again, he would refuse and say he was going back where he’d come from. One of my players got so mad that he accused me of railroading the campaign and then LEFT THE DISCORD SERVER WE WERE PLAYING IN WITHOUT LETTING ME EXPLAIN MY REASONS. We tried playing two more sessions with just the people left, but the campaign just didn’t happen after that. Was I wrong to say that the bandit leader wouldn’t just willingly go to be arrested because a friendly acquaintance asked nicely, especially knowing that they’d charmed him already? Or should I have just let them take the bandit leader to be arrested? Or was my player wrong to basically throw a tantrum and leave without talking things over like adults? I await your judgement and will accept any punishment you deem necessary.

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

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

mel

Honorable Justices of the Supreme Crit, and his baliffness Jeorge. I have been playing a regular game with a group of friends for about four years. I started hyperfocusing on DnD over the course of the pandemic and have memorized a lot of the rules, including wordings of spells, class abilities, and other common matters that come up and rest on technical language. This has turned me into a lawful neutral rules lawyer - I will act as a walking DnD encyclopedia regardless of whether the information benefits or befuddles the party: i.e. ranges of spells, how many dice in a smite, grappling rules, etc. I only ever do this with the hope of presenting information for us to make a ruling rather than waiting for DnDBeyond to load, not to ask the teacher if he forgot to give us homework. In a recent session, we were battling a group of archmages who were mind controlling adult dragons to stage an attack, and our DM was using the stat block out of the monster manual. He had one of them cast time stop, and then listed off four concentration spells that the archmage cast in a row: globe of invulnerability, fly, wall of force, and then banishment on my Ranger. I pointed out, hey, that's four concentration spells in a row, played with concurrent effects. The DM said, "no, it's fine, it works out in the way and timing that they do it." As I play a Ranger, many of my spells are concentration, so I pay close attention to what I can and cannot do concurrently. My DM wanted to hand wave it away so I didn't push back again, but was pretty miffed. Can I, as a player, stand for justice as a rules encyclopedia/lawyer against a DM? It's one thing to hand wave for rule of cool, but this struck me as just not wanting to play by a pretty basic rule of the game. Thanks for your wisdom and clarity, and may Dice Christ bless us, every one.

hell

additional info left out to, as jake requested, keep it brief: the character was partially inspired by moonshine's heroes feasts and partially inspired by finding the item 'heward's handy spice pouch'; further research also led me to the xanathar's 'cook's tools'. most of what she is equipped with was based on flavor (lol): the dagger of venom is a knife she used to cut raw meat and hasn't yet cleaned, the create bonfire cantrip was so she can start a cooking fire, acid splash cantrip was based on the idea that many spices and seasonings are, ykno, technically poisonous, etc. etc. if you're interested in how the character wound up, here's the link to her dndbeyond sheet: https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/26142437

Lilybet Gates

I know how you feel, I was a female dm for a bunch of guys at one point, and ultimately I think it’s up to you. Usually I say talk about things, but honest (and sometimes unintentionally dramatic) communication can be difficult with guys and also online friends. I think you should set a line for yourself, and try to find a balance where you won’t regret it later- one thing I always regretted about that campaign was dumbing down my knowledge for the sake of people’s comfort. Either way, wish you luck and the blessings of dice christ in your next session!!

Christian J Lockmann

To the honorable justices and satisfactory bailiff of the Court of the Supreme Crit. I present to you the case of, “Dog Bones vs Stealth Elf” A few years ago I ran a prewritten adventure for some friends. The adventure was The Wolves of Welton. Things start out well, with the party following the story pretty well. The problem came when they investigated ‘The Den’s Denizens’. One of my players decides to try and sneak close to the cave to see if they could make out who all was there. They made a good stealth check and so I had them get close and make a perception check. They rolled an 11. This is where the issue arises. In the adventure it states that the wolves (intelligent) have set up bone tripwires that require a perception 13 to see or else the players trigger them, alerting the wolves. I narrate how as the player moves to a new tree branch to see better they trigger these tripwires. The player protested, stating that they had only rolled to see, and they shouldn’t have been moved. I rebuffed and said that they failed the check and that was part of the consequences and it’s natural to shift around while trying to get a good view. We then ran a chase scene where they escaped and we continued. With the player obviously still upset with the results. I ask the court here today. Was I wrong in my interpretation of the perception check? Should I have had two separate checks or just ignored the bones altogether? Or was the player too protective over every action their character took?

Kristen M.

To the respectable Supreme Crit Justices and the exciting bailiff, May it please the court, I bring you the case of the waiting barbarian. I play in a game where there are two other players. Myself and one other player play spellcasters (though the d8 kind), and the other player plays a barbarian. However, in combat, the barbarian often forgoes attacking on his turn to wait and try to do roleplay(ish) moves instead. I say "ish" because they don't actually do anything mechanically to help us. He'll say "I'm holding out a flame to scare them" or something, but then insist he's not trying to do an intimidation roll or anything. And he'll do this for turns and turns, despite seeing that it's doing nothing. Am I wrong for being annoyed that our one big hitter isn't hitting? Or should I allow him his flights of fancy? I await your ruling (but I'm still gonna take my turn).

billy nuttall

To the honorable judges, and a bailiff who should be harder on themselves, My campaign was doing a jailbreak sequence, and my Teifling Monk may have been inspired by my recent venture into the Hitman games Franchise. After successfully knocking out the guards in the break room I wanted my character to quickly change into the guard uniform from one of the guards (Hitman style). The rest of the table says it was a foolish plan that would take too long, but in my heart I think I could pull it off in about a minute in real life, (which when converted into a generous read of what people do in 6 seconds of a round, could’ve taken 2 or three rounds) The only tool or ability I have that could’ve helped this process was a disguise kit. I ask you court, should I have been able to “Cast” “Disguise self”

SnuggleB

May it please the court, the beautiful and wise judges, and anyone else less important in the room. I ask for your guidance on the case of the dumb seagull. I'm playing as a dreams druid and our party recently have been plagued by duergar attacks whenever we leave cities. Hoping to ease our journey i cast speak with animals on a nearby bird, the dm declared this bird would be a seagull. I politely asked it how its bird life is going, any chicks, hows the wife, and asked if it had seen any dwarfs outside of the city. Despite informing me its expecting chicks soon and its bird wife is hale and hearty, the dm delcared a seagull is too dumb to understand the concepts of cities and dwarves. I argued as its a sea bird and clearly in a city it should be able to determine a city as a 'people nest' at the very least, and pointed out one of the party was infact a dwarf so could see the difference. My dm was unconvinced and the bird flew away. While i know the spell is limited by the creatures intelligence i feel like every beast has low intelligence so surely they can comprehend basic things otherwise why make the spell. I await the courts fair and just ruling. Ps good luck retaking the bar exam in Boston Jim

Nicholas

To the honorable Justices and Jack, I present to you the case of the loaded D20. I DM for a group of friends and recently thought it would be nice to introduce a way to give my players an advantage on certain rolls that are either high stakes or something annoying that they are struggling with (fuckin doors man). I looked up and purchased a loaded D20 that I wanted to allow them to use once a session at their discretion. However, this has massively back fired and my players don't trust me now. One player in particular seems the most offended at the very thought of a loaded die. I offered to place the offensive D20 in a place everyone could see so they wouldn't think I was using it but they still had reservations. Now my players want to see my dice every time I roll above a 15. Please help! How do I regain my players trust? Was I completely out of line?

Jeremias B

May it please the Court and bamboozle the bubbly bailiff Jake, I present a case of disagreements over DM doctrine. I DM for what is essentially a DnD rec league. The rec league allows players to create level one characters and level them up through a series of one-shot adventures. The rules of the league are that players *must* start with a level one character. There are about a dozen DMs and an ever rotating cast of players. Several DMs, including myself, have an unofficial policy where we will not kill level one characters of people who are new to DnD. We come up with creative ways to avoid killing them, such as having monsters do non-lethal damage, having NPCs save them when they're downed, or sometimes fudging a roll behind the DM screen. We just don't want people's first experience of DnD being murdered by a giant rat or some other low CR monster. This unofficial policy does not apply to new characters of long established players, just players new to the game. This unofficial policy some of us have is very controversial, to say the least. Some other DMs in the rec league think that we're ruining the sense of danger, and setting up unreasonable expectations by essentially giving people new to DnD plot armor when they start out. Which group of DMs is right? Are we ruining the sense of danger, or are they being unkind to people new to the game? We await the decision of this honorable court. Jeremias B. (PS. Our group would also change the starting at level one rule, but we don't have the votes.)

Audrey

to the honorable judges aptly named the not-so-merciful murphy, astonishing axford, totally tubular tanner, and the benign bailiff jovial jake, may I present my case, or shall I say my predicament. I love creating characters, however I have only been able to play as one of them for a brief period of time due to a party that has disbanded due to an associate plagued with a bad attitude, and another who simply would not stop talking over everyone, especially the dm (we had a talking bucket and everything, nothing worked). recently, i have created a character that i simply cannot let go unplayed. one problem: i have no party. I would go online, however i have had multiple bad experiences in the past. the other option: play through my school dnd club. unfortunately, there is also an issue with that: one of the party members is my friends awful ex. So my wise judges, should i brave the online world, leave this character for dice christ, or face the real life BBEG that is my friends ex? i await the merciful opinion of the conjoined church and state.

WumpaFruit

I humbly prostrate myself before the holy emissaries of Dice Christ to offer a confession that has weighed on my mind for many years. Long ago, i was in a horror themed campaign in which the DM wanted one of the PCs to be a secret villain. To that end, my human Bard was actually a vampire, complete with hidden stats. I claimed to be a pacifist and refused to fight because the sight of blood would put me in a frenzy, i had a covered wagon that secretly contained my coffin full of grave dirt and i took every opportunity to mess with the party from making illusions of blocked off exits to killing npcs during long rests. Through it all, my DM encouraged my shenanigans and i justified my actions thinking that i was leaving enough clues, but the campaign ultimately ended in a fireball trap i laid which killed off all but one of the PCs. At the time i had great fun, but I’ve long since recognized that my spotlight hogging disruptive behavior fully ruined that campaign for the other players. I’ve since lost touch with most of the people involved but I can’t stop cringing whenever i recall my conduct. Please tell me how i can absolve this sin and bring peace to my tortured conscience.

Matt Cline

To the Honourable Judges and no one else. I bring to you the case of the Jilted Pack Horse Tabaxi and the displacer beast pelt. One session when the Tabaxi player couldn’t join us I tasked my low level party with killing a displacer beast who was menacing a nearby wood. I instructed them that if they killed it without piercing the hide (effectively no piercing or slashing damage) then they could take it to an enchanter and get the much coveted Cloak of Displacement made. The party succeeded and even hired a local butcher who skinned the beast and gave them the hefty pelt to now carry. Next session I informed them that the pelt was large, it would need to be properly carried (expecting them to hire horses). Instead, they got the Tabaxi player who was a druid to Wildshape into a horse and carry the pelt for them. This went on for several days worth of travel until one night when the Tabaxi player was on watch alone. She specifically asked me if anyone else was awake and when I said no she proceeded to get out a dagger and summarily cut the displacer beast pelt down into little strips to “make it easier to transport”. I offered her an intelligence check which she failed and made double sure she wanted to do this which she did. In the morning she presented the party with the strips of hide and I informed them after an arcana check that it was well and truly ruined, no more cloak for them. The party were fairly pissed with the Tabaxi who’s defence was that she wasn’t there to know that the pelt had to stay whole for the magic to keep and she was tired of being a pack horse for the party. To counter the loss of the pelt they worked hard for over the next few sessions I made sure that the party got new dope items but I ask: was I right for having the pelt be ruined? Should I have stopped the Tabaxi more harshly from ruining the party’s quest reward or did I give her enough outs and she needed to live with her choices. I displace myself upon the court, pelt and all.

Tallon McAbee

To the grand council of church elders and choir intern John. I have a confession for me and my DnD group as a whole (excluding the DM, for reasons that will be seen soon). To give some context, our group were all extremely new players, third or fourth session we had played, and our DM was ready to introduce a NPC into the fray. With a grand backstory in the works, a solid placement in the story and an intriguing hook for their introduction (The NPC was a sorcerer who was imprisoned in a dungeon/lair that belong to the big baddies of the campaign), the prisoner implored us for our help and our DM was excited for the possibilities to come. However, his smile would soon turn into severe disappointment when our party robbed the NPC of all of their belongings, used them to bait enemies in the lair/check for traps by making them walk in front of us and finally witness them die with a thunderous crack due to our fighter rolling a NAT 1 to throw the poor fellow at the boss of the encounter. In order to put his NPC out of their misery our DM said the fighter threw them short and the NPC broke their neck. From later discussions the DM told me he was close to just ending the session there and calling everything but he had a sliver of hope that everyone was just very new to the game and would grow out of this murder hobo phase. Two dead/turned villain NPCs later and he gave the group a floating indestructible sword named “Henry” who would guide us for few sessions until the campaign would fizzle out. Elders all I have are two questions. First is to ask if Dice Christ would bless our DM with a walmart sized lake of D20s to lavish himself in as a reward for putting up with the bullshit of 5 psycho murder hobos and second is there any way for our group to be forgiven for such transgressions? I have come to see the sins of my past as I have grown to play in more games and even DM my own campaign. The horror I found in my introspective view made me realize I had to come to this temple of holy D20s in order to reach for whatever forgiveness Dice Christ is willing to relinquish unto me and our group. I leave our judgements in the holy dice christened hands of Dice Christ and the council.

Izzy R

May it please the court and Jake too if he’s there I run a campaign for a couple elementary age family members where they go around stealing shit as robbers from different cool places. We do a session every time I visit them (two or three times a year). Last week I visited with my girlfriend for spring break and since my girlfriend also plays dnd I had her play an opposing robber for them to battle. However due to her more comprehensive grasp on the rules of dnd I had to ask her a few times to please not do stuff like kill the kids characters or use shield when the kids actually landed a hit on her character. Was this unfair of me? My girlfriend admittedly made a pretty badass pc whom I didn’t give the proper space to shine.

Birthday Girl Cara

To the honorable justices and... Um... I know this one... I wanna say James? May it please the court, I bring the case of the party VS the magic tree. In my homebrew the source of all magic on the planet comes from "the first tree", a huge tree made when the creator of the planet fused with the planet to create magic. The party were having a battle in said tree and the sorcerer used fireball. I narrated that the fire caught a few leaves and that they felt their magic dull a little for a second, hoping that would be enough to hint that maybe fire and a big ol' tree wouldn't mix well. However, as well as damaging the tree a little, the fireball also ripped the bad guys a new one and the party collectively decided the sorcerer should keep hurling them. Every time I narrated, with greater severity, the damage to the tree but still more fireballs. Eventually I narrated a whole section of the tree catching alight, and the magic in the party members fading until it was gone. Now they are super pissed that they don't have magic anymore and that I'm not giving it back to them after a long rest. Judges and james, I ask you, am I wrong to take away their magic after they dinked up my tree? If I am I will accept that, and take the croissanting option for my punishment

Matt M

Hail high priests of dice christ, i must confess. I ran a feywild campaign in which my players rescued an npc from cursed dancing shoes that cause the wearer to endlessly balet dance. They took the shoes, and in an encounter with a troll tried to make it wear the shoes. I ruled the troll needed to roll a charisma save, which it passed, but realised that it would be much more entertaining if the big hairy beast failed. I faked a failed save. The troll danced, memorable fun was had, and the guilt set in. Judge me please.

Triceranuke

To the honorable Judges and the much maligned Bailiff Jake, I present the case of deserved death. I was playing a circle of dreams druid who had gambled with a hag while lost in the feywild and had her steal his voice. Over the course of the campaign, to free Claude from his bargain the party agreed to kill him then use a scroll of reincarnation. This worked and the human Claude was reborn as a minotaur. As I rerolled my stats, Claude was a little bit dumber when we decided to launch a full on assault against an assassin's guild. After fighting our way to the boss we were confronted by 15 or so high level assassins and got absolutely bodied. This was after breaking in, setting fire to his hideout and killing several men. I prepared myself for the TPK after every rogue in the building passed their save with no damage on the firestorm scroll i had been holding on to. After a brutal fight the DM narrates us having our stuff stolen and dumped outside tied up and bloodied to "teach us a lesson". I argued that an assassins guild would clearly just kill us instead, and maybe one of us (newest player) would be spared to tell the tale. I was informed by the DM that he had already written Claude's story arc involving the hags so he wasn't going to kill him off. This immediately made the campaign lose all stakes for me and I ended up leaving that game. Was I wrong to desire the sweet embrace of death? -Triceranuke

PawPaw’s Overalls

To the honorable justices and lowly, yet lovely, bailiff Jack I present the case of DM vs the Morally Ambiguous players My players were sneaking onto a docked airship that was hosting a party for the local inquisition guild. They were tasked with finding a MacGuffin somewhere on board. Little did they know there was a bomb waiting to go off. They eventually find the macguffin and after a perception check notice a ticking sound coming from behind the engine room door. Behind the screen I had set up a timer to give them 5 minutes once they heard the ticking. However, my disguised players didn’t open the door to check what it was and insisted on calling for the captain to come downstairs to look at it. Long story short, after getting the captain (and most of the crew) down to the bottom of the ship they open the door to find a timer with less than a minute on it. They ask if they can use the spell rope trick to essentially force the bomb into the extradimensional space. I ruled they couldn’t do this based upon RAW, so they decided to climb into the hole themselves after yelling to everyone who had gathered in the stairway above them “there’s a bomb, try and evacuate” with less than 10 seconds left on the timer. Through the portal they see a large explosion and after the smoke clears nothing is left of the airship as their portal sits hovering in mid air, with mass casualties reported in the news later that night. My players are insistent that: 1. They should have been given more time to act on the bomb despite wasting 4 minutes of time trying to bring down the captain and not checking to see what the ticking was until there wasn’t hardly anytime yet. 2. That they did nothing wrong since they provided a warning, despite not providing a time, drawing most of the crew downstairs closer to the explosion, and not attempting to help anyone actually evacuate. So I ask judges, was i wrong to have a hidden timer running behind the screen? Are my players culpable at all? I humbly await your judgement.

Colton Merrifield

To the ever honorable justices and I wanna say….Simon? I present the case of the whomping of whispers We were in the under dark fighting multiple quaggoths and my level 6 bard of whispers stole one of their shadows and used it immediately. It was enough to fool the other quaggoth, but apparently enough to make my dm so salty, he had the other PCs roll an insight against(and failing) the disguise, resulting in the attack on me, knocking me unconscious. My dm said it was because I “didn’t share the plan”. I know I was being cheeky, but was my whomping warranted? I happily wait your judgment

RoleforThat

If it pleases the most honorable and level-headed judges, and that beautiful son-of-a-bailiff Jake, I present you the case of the ruined pants. Recently, I was DMing a game where the PCs were ambushed in the middle of the night by assassins. I had a mechanic for the fight where the assassins were using stick-on patches that if successfully applied would give the PC a random status effect (poisoned, paralyzed, etc), the effect would either last for 10 minutes, until the PC passed a check to remove the patch, or if an ally removed the patch for them. The bard of the party after being tagged by a blindness and frightened patch asked if she could take off her clothes to remove the patches. I not wanting the fight mechanic to be so easily bypassed, told them I thought a PC being naked was weird, and said no they couldn’t do that. There was some playful arguing but then we quickly moved on with the rest of the fight. The issue comes up later, when the same bard had been captured by the assassins, who were going to hold her hostage to get they rest of the party to comply. The bard devised a plan to get out, in which she asked if she could fall down and play dead, with the added caveat that to sell it she would shit her pants. I told her if she rolled a CON check and performance check she could do it. After using 2 LUCK POINTS on the CON check to shit herself, and making a successful performance check, the bard was able to fool the assassins into thinking she was dead and leaving her alone. When she was finally able to get out of her bindings she brought up taking off her shit-stained pants, which I jokingly agreed with. The players then dogpiled on me about not allowing her to take her clothes off before, but allowing it now. I think the situations are different, but also see where they are coming from here. Judges was I wrong for not for not letting the bard remove her clothes pre-shitting, but saying okay after the browning event, or are my players right in coming after me for an inconsistent ruling? I humbly await your judgement. P.S. The pants-shitting bard in question is also my fiancé if that matters.

John Squirrel

To the Honorable Justices and that one guy Jake, I present to you the case of the Suggested Surrender. Near the end of a campaign with a group I no longer play with, we needed to win a tournament full of powerful foes. We were told that if we wished to withdraw from the fight at any time we need only hold up 2 fingers in a peace sign. During our final fight, our Bard casts mass suggestion, suggesting our enemies hold up 2 fingers in a peace sign and 2 of 3 fail the save. Our DM states nothing happens. A heated discussion ensues where the DM adamantly states he has no idea why we thought that would work. Eventually we got what we wanted, but the DM was upset for the rest of the night. Were we wrong to question the DM's ruling or were we right to fight for the outcome were felt we earned? I humbly await your generous read.

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 rebooted the campaign. One of my PC’s, Antonia, is the daughter of a powerful Medici-like Don but LARPs as a rogue. Pre-reboot, I introduced the location of her father’s secret base to another character. A few sessions after the reboot, Antonia was faced with an impossible problem. With some innovative thinking from the player, she discovered a hint to the base’s location and rolled a nat 20 for investigation. The whole group lost their shit. I was excited too but I also felt a deep sense of dread. Because of a nat 1 in her follow up sleuthing, I somewhat forcefully cut the trail there. This was one of the most riveting moments for countless reasons and I can’t help but feel bad for ending this so abruptly. I beseech you, should I have continued the breadcrumb trail or was I right in gobbling up the breadcrumbs like some sort of starved goblin?

Omar

To the esteemed judges and the dubious bailiff, I come to ask if I was an asshole in my last session or if I was right to quit the campaign. We were playing our biweekly campaign 2 weeks ago, and after the session, a player privately messaged me saying that I needed to apologize to the DM for my actions during the session. My first offense was that during the session, a different player had to get up to deal with something irl - during this I booted up a video game since we weren't actively playing and waiting, and commented out loud something about this. It is important to note that a common joke in my group is "back to FTL!" basically someone throws out a spell in combat, misses, and starts playing a different game until its their turn again so I was confused that this player thought the DM would be upset My second offense is that later in the game, the player who asked me to apologize was arguing in character with a different character for about 15 irl minutes. It's important to note that every campaign with these two players ends up with them just yelling at each other in character about inane things while the rest of us wait around. So I suggested we continue going down a hole in the dungeon because "It's obviously what [our DM] wants us to do" (our sessions are VERY formulaic) I did send an apology to the DM, to which he was somewhat confused but said it was cool, and I ended up quitting the campaign because even outside of this I wasnt enjoying the game, but I beseech the court - was the other player just projecting or should I have conducted myself differently? Thank you for your time

Ben Nemeth

May it please the Crit, and I guess the bailiff too, I present to you "The Deck of Many Things Debacle". Our party received a Deck of Many Things and decided we'd all draw from it after a long rest. I decided to roll to see if my character, a young halfling sorcerer, could wait that long. I rolled a nat 1, so that night I stole the deck, drew a card, and then stealthily returned everything. The card I drew granted me 3 Wish spells. That morning the first card drawn stole the soul of our party leader, a half-orc cleric. Our paladin player then got upset and said he was going to keep drawing cards until he got one which would save our cleric. He drew several cards, each time getting bad outcomes. Other party members drew and got good outcomes. This only made the paladin angrier. I pleaded with him to stop so we wouldn't lose anyone else, but he refused to listen. I even threatened to fireball him, but no response. By the 11th card I had enough and cast the fireball. The player flipped out and acted like my decision came out of nowhere, and that if I wanted him to stop I should've rolled an intimidation check. I argued that he was being salty and was ignoring me because I got the best card and he was jealous. By the end we had drawn 13 cards, including the one we needed to save our cleric. The others got some nice boons, and the paladin was heaped with curses. Justices, I ask you who was right: the paladin whose reckless plan worked in the end, or me, the PvP-er who just wanted to keep everyone alive? I humbly place myself at the mercy of the Crit. Signed, 3 Wishes, But At What Cost? PS - For added context, this was the order of cards drawn: the Moon, the Void, the Skull, the Fool, the Rogue, the Key, Balance, the Throne, Ruin, the Comet, the Flames, the Fates, the Star.

Joey O'Day

To the honorable Justices, Backwards-Nasty Murphy, Sick McTwist Axford, Straight Dank Tanner and Jornk? Yarnik? Glurmp? I present to you the case of The Dimension Dooring, Canadian, chainsmoking Goliath I DM'd a campaign that consisted of my wife, my brother, and 3 close friends for nearly 2 years. One of the close friends mentioned that HIS brother also played D&D and was coming back from his Doctors Without Borders job in the summer, and wanted to join the table. Without hesitation, I said yes. The new party member, who we will call Jack, presented me with his Goliath Sorcerer named ROKE, who was deeply inspired by the character Wayne from Letterkenny. On one adventure, one of the player's PCs died, and the others were captured leaving ROKE as the sole possible savior. in the midst of a battle with a cult leader, Roke successfully grappled the cult leader and dimension door'd 500-feet into the air, dropped the cult leader, and then cast feather fall on himself to float down to safety. In the chaos of the battle, I made the mistake of letting it happen, and only that night after the game realized that the dimension door spell can only have a WILLING creature taken through and that he shouldn't have been able to cast a second spell, but sometimes the excitement blinds my rules memory. I called Jack that night and explained that, while it was a badass move and the image of it was cool as hell, in the future he couldn't cast that spell. Cut to 2 sessions later when he tried to do it again to a different creature. I confronted him about it and denied the action, to which he replied " You said it was a one-time thing, I took that as I could do it 1 more time, and then no longer do it again" To make things worse, the other players cheered him on and booed me for denying him to opportunity to do it again. Was I wrong to deny him this tactic again and take the fun away from the table? I eagerly await your judgment.

cameron fossett

To the delectable be-robed priests of dice Christ— I used the 4 naddpod dice for the first time while dming a Lumberjack Contest and proceed to roll 10 nat 1s in one session !! Using the hot boy summer die rolled 2 nat 1s in a row. I switched to the Bahumia die and rolled two more nat 1s in a row. 4 nat 1s IN A ROW. It made for some very funny moments during in the midst of an epic log roll battle but is purely astounding. My mom just used the Bahumia die and rolled SO hot. So it seems to be just me, am I cursed???

Crits

Thoughts on a pact of the tome warlock with a celestial patron? You'd get a book and access to healing

Colm Smith

To the pious priest of the divine dirty dice Christ, I prostrate myself for a crime I committed years ago: the one health beholder: About 5 years ago I was dming a group that was attacking a beholder. The group had an npc with them and they were going to get the killing blow after a fairly quick fight. I wanted to give the players a chance to kill it so I fudged a roll and left it with one hit point. 2 hours later most of the party was unconscious and one of them had died. I’ve never told my players that the beholder should have died 30 minutes into a grueling fight.

Toast Master General

Title: DM Date Night Dear esteemed judges and the case-bringer guy, As a long-time listener and first-time litigant, I bring forth the case of the DM Date Night. My playgroup has enjoyed several sessions of Adventures of the Sword Coast, filled with camaraderie, laughter, and memorable moments. However, our DM unexpectedly brought a first-date to one session. Introduced as Jessica, we assumed she'd observe or participate as a guest character. Instead, our DM announced they'd co-DM the session. The dynamic was intriguing, as Jessica, though charming, lacked D&D experience. This resulted in awkward moments and a learning curve for both. Initially amusing, it began affecting the game's quality, with pacing issues and tense exchanges between the co-DMs. I seek your wisdom on this unconventional first date. Is it acceptable for a DM to share storytelling duties with a date, given the potential impact and awkwardness? I offer my DM as tribute for your judgment!

shysparrows

The Amazing, Honorable Justices and that pretty cool Bailiff Jake, I present the case of the Cowardly Rouge: I am in a newer party with people all older than me. I, a barbarian, have become the de facto leader of the party as the tank and most courageous when making choices. Recently, we've gotten off mission and locked in a multi-level dungeon. Another party member, the rouge, constantly does not want to engage with the party when searching through rooms, unless he's monetarily motivated, saying that Rhoda (my character's name) has "got it and can take the most heat". He will stand behind everyone when doing anything which has resulted in me going down the most, and has even killed me (which was reversed since we are newer to playing and still at a lower lever). Is it wrong of him to not use his skills of stealth and lock picking to help us descend out of the dungeon to get back to our mission? Or am I just being sensitive since I have to make all the moves so we don't sit around in silence. I await your judgement and will take whatever is given.

Rachel K

Fj cousin UPDATE Fair tidings to the wise and sanguine judges and that little cutie that finds the cases.The campaign I was dming for my cousins fell through (without my cousin ever getting his FJ) and now we've decided to try playing again, but this time with my younger, non FJ obsessed cousin dming instead of me. Everything seemed fine for this campaign until I discovered that my older FJ cousin has decided that the reason our campaigns fizzle out is because the "rules" of d&d are too restrictive, and he's actually designing the story, monsters, and arch of the campaign with a distinct focus on a loose interpretations of the rules. The biggest problem with this is he doesn't know any of the rules in d&d, and when I say ANY rule I mean he doesn't know what stat you use for initiative after 8+ years of playing on and off. I've suggested we try other games like monster of the week that has a much less complex set of restrictions, but FJ cousin has seriously committed to trying to essentially design his own system. What do I do judges? How do I convince this man to sit down and learn an actual rule of the game? Should I just play in his silly campaign, or should I shun my family and make Thanksgiving awkward this year? P.S. before Murph says I need to find a new friend, he's my first cousin so I've got him for life.

RefuelSapling

May it please the honorable and venerable Supreme Crit Justices, and the astute bailiff Mr. Jacob Penn Cooper Hurwitz. I present the following flavorful fact pattern: A gaggle of law students turned accidental muderhobos. A family of ogres forever shattered. And one Druid’s painfully tone-deaf apology. I am the DM for my classmates at law school. In one session, the party started a fight with a hiding trio of ogres. The party handily and quickly killed them. The disparity in combat prowess—the party was horrified to discover—was because these ogres were refugee civilians fleeing persecution with their three children. After this sobering epiphany, the party attempted every healing spell in the book. The party Druid, however, split his time (1) begrudgingly making medicine checks and (2) creating goodberries as a 'condolence' for the recently discovered children of the ogre. With some great rolls, the party was able to bring back two of the three downed ogres. One ogre, however, perished and returned to Dice Christ. As the two ogres came to consciousness, they were heartbroken and extremely skeptical. The party sincerely apologized—all except for the Druid: 'I understand that you're angry. I'm sorry what I did made you feel this way. But I have done all I could to make up for this. It was not even my idea. My party members did this, and I just did what they did.' The Druid, attempting a grandiose gesture, pulled out his sword and pointed it towards the Ogres. The ogres recoiled, but the Druid was 'merely attempting to show they could use the sword to kill him.' The ogres and his party demanded he put the sword away. He refused. He, out of character, began ridiculing the ogres under his breath—saying 'they're on their last two braincells' trying to understand the 'noble' gesture. The entire table was uncomfortable. Though I didn't want to, I let the Druid roll a persuasion check. He rolled a 15, but I didn't think that was enough to justify his actions. The Druid became irritated, sulking and blamed the ogres for 'not understanding' the apology. The rest of the party allayed the ogres' anger, and the party ultimately made amends. Your honors: did I contravene Dice Christ's will by not allowing the Druid's 15 to persuade the ogres? Did I erroneously allow table talk to affect my impartial ruling? What should I have done better? I submit myself to the wisdom of Bahumian jurisprudence. -Duncan de Nuit

hell

it isn't the worst idea, but i feel like there isn't a good patron that was suited the campaign (it'd be fun to have someone like julia childs or ina garten as your patron in a slightly more silly campaign for that though... hmm many ideas there), and (while it may just be i'm not super familiar with the warlock spells) i don't see enough healing there to be a healer, just to have some healing while being dps? maybe that's my own narrowmindedness tho (and thank you for the idea!!)

Chris

To the Most Honorable Justices, and their trusty side-piece Jake, I present to you the case of the Sulking Rogue and the Beholder Bungle. I DM for a group of 4 players that has been meeting online for almost 3 years. Recently, in a final culmination of an arc that closed out the Rogue character's backstory, my players were pit against Xanathar and his minions in their hideout, who were the cause of the Rogue's best friend's death (in their backstory). Unfortunetly, instead of getting a satifying ending to their character arc, the dice did not go in this player's favor, getting Slowed, Paralyzed, and Petrified throughout the fight, ending without ever landing a single hit on the Beholder. The rest of the party had fun and were celebrating when the Rogue player began to sulk and we ended up having to end the session early because they claimed that "my character is in shock that he did no damage in the fight and now Xanathar is dead" and refused to do anything else, including answer questions. Obviously, I know that this is childish behavior for a nearly 45 year old man, but I ask you: Should I have saved the killing blow for the Rogue player? I didn't because I didn't want them to feel railroaded into the perfect ending and it was just the way that the battle went down. However, seeing the reaction that it caused makes me wonder if I was in the wrong, because I just want my players to have fun. I humbly await your decision.

Orangeleader398

To the all knowing Crit Justices and the razzed Bailiff. I bring before you the case of the absurd bard. We had been playing a 4e campaign when we were in college and a friend wanted to join so the DM approved of his bard. He met us in a tavern at the beginning of the session and tried to lull us to sleep and steal our food to prove he was worthy to join us. (Our paladin, Dragonborn and thief were not happy) as we argued two giants attacked the town. After an hour of grueling combat and two PCs almost dying we had the giants on the ropes when the bard offered to produce food for the giants if they took him home. They agreed and left… and for all that work we got no XP and used up several potions and items in the fight. Are we right in hating this players bard still to this day 15 years later or does he deserve forgiveness?

Andrew Criteser

Dearest and honorable judges and Tucker’s roommate, I bring to you the case of the book peeping meta gamer. I was running a dungeon for my players, and brought them To a room 5 feet wide and 5 feet tall, at the end of the hall was a gelatinous cube. I changed one thing on the monsters stats to where it could pass through if they passed their save but they would take no damage. However my player who had been consistently looking up the monsters stats while we were playing proceeded to call me a c**t. I told him I’m the dm and can change certain rulings to fit the party and we finished the session after that fight. This was two years ago, and it still irks me and I have since ended the campaign with them. Was I wrong to change that stat for the cube or am in fact a c**t?

Alex L

To the honorable judges, and the brave bailiff Jake, I submit the tale of the Heist Botching Barbarian. There were four people in the party: Me (a druid), a bard, a sorcerer, and a barbarian. We had wandered into a city and after hanging out in a tavern looking for any sort of job or quest, and getting nothing, the dm finally had mercy on us and told us that there was a house with a bunch of magic items in it. The barbarian decided that the party needed to break into the house and steal the items. This was a problem because our party was definitely chaotic good. Like, we’d make a mess wherever we’d go, but none of us would steal from someone just because we wanted it. We all just kind of agree because the barbarian’s player will not let it go. We get to the house and it is this super guarded and barricaded house. (Also, we decided to go there in the middle of the day because the barbarian didn’t want to wait.) I (as a druid) wildshaped into a squirrel and snooped around the house, it seemed like a well-guarded house of a noble. Came back and gave the party the rundown. We decided the plan was as follows: I would cast pass without a trace on myself, the barbarian, and the bard. The super high charisma satyr sorcerer would jump in the fountain and start dancing around, distracting the guard. We would then sneak past and go inside. We do all of this and it seems to go off without a hitch. The one guard is trying to stop a satyr from dancing in his boss’ fountain. We all get over 20 on our stealth rolls. It’s working. Until the barbarian suddenly turns around and attacks the guard watching the sorcerer. Without saying a word to us. The DM has us roll initiative because the guard is not a one hit KO like the barbarian was expecting. I go right before the guard and in a desperate act to save the party, I cast charm person and luckily he fails the save. I essentially use it to give the party an opportunity to leave, and as I’m talking to the guard and distracting him, the barbarian’s player starts sending me texts saying over and over, “Flirt with him” - which I did not and it really annoyed me that he was doing that. Anyway, we were chased out of that city and were banned from it. The campaign only lasted like three sessions after that, it ended after the barbarian decided to “chop off the head” of an NPC who had a magic item he wanted. I’m still a bit salty about the barbarian ruining the heist that he wanted to do in the first place! I humbly await your judgment.

MikeAllenZ (MAZ Presents Personal)

To the honorable justices Moop, Punchy-Frog, and giant elf lady, 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 Armourer Artificer/ Gloom Stalker Ranger (my first time as a PC, a build I was proud about, and a campaign we actually finished). However, my character had recently lost a mentor, the man who taught him to be a scientist, 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 and that’d be his arc. (There was other stuff but I was told to be brief) 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. I will say that my case is not against the DM but to my friend. I think I failed to realize that he was not exactly running the kind of game I like to play in where there is a clear arc. But… To this day I keep hearing that Zora’s death was my fault for being too prideful to call her for help when I was just trying to be a good student. Am I wrong for feeling upset about this or is my friend right that I am responsible?

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 the 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

Bep Bingus

May it please the honorable court and their friend Josh, I am part of a d&d campaign that has been fantastic except for this one ongoing issue. My DM seems to be obsessed with creepy, fleshy, body horror monsters and settings, and the party and I have had enough of it. We've had to descend into a flesh canyon, climb a tower filled with flesh to fight a flesh dragon on the rooftop, fought giant balls of flesh, and more. We all love the campaign but wish the DM would take a break with all the hideous, gaping maws of his campaign setting. Would we be in the right to ask him to change the setting and monsters to give a bit more variety, or should we accept that the rest of the campaign is good and just live with it? I humbly await your wise judgement.

Brian Krebs

To the honorable crit justices BMurphy, Emily, and DUnkle Caldy and the exceptionally well connected bailiff Jakey, If it pleases the court, I submit the 25 year old case of, "The Dead Apprentice". In my teenage years, I was playing D&D with my best friend as DM, and to round out our party he had an NPC Wizard, who had been with us since level 1. This was D&D 2nd Edition, and in 2E - higher level characters can have followers and apprentices. Since we were 16th level - the wizard the DM was playing was permanently killed by a Ancient Dragon that vaporized him. My character, used his only wish scroll to do a true resurrection bringing him back. The DM, my best friend, was genuinely upset that I true rez'd his character, as he was hoping to have a story arch where his apprentice, who had an alignment/attitude that didn't get along with my character, would take over for the likely demise of the wizard (as in he hadn't planned, but hoped his main wizard would be killed). The apprentice became furious at my main character for using the scroll to revive his master, as he shared he was "prepared" to take over for him. In character, I told the apprentice that, "If he wished to be part from the party, he should leave..." and chided him for wishing for his master's demise, and mentioned that the party wouldn't accept him as a "replacement" member if the wizard died. This wizard, as a hothead, lost his cool and cast a fireball at my character! Needless to say, my 16th level fighter slaughtered the apprentice. My DM, and friend, was quite annoyed as was his main character that his elven apprentice (and elves in 2nd E couldn't be resurrected) was now permeantly dead. We that brought an end to the session, but we picked up next week, and all was pretty well. AITA for having my character kill the apprentice instead of non-lethal damage?( That fireball did a ton of damage) Or did he have it coming. I await your judgment!

Cory

May it tease, please, edge and release the steamy justices and the bailiff Hiswitz, who may watch from pretty close, actually. I offer the case of the flakey player with the sickest characters. I homebrew different video game settings in 5e because I'm a GMC (Game Master Coward) and I DM for 3 amazing players. In our first campaign (a Mortal Kombat setting), one of them played a female Tarkatan (Tar-KAH-tin) with retractable arm blades, whose one weakness was a nearly defenseless NPC in the party with an unstable Dimension Door ability she couldn't control. Combat was crazy, and roleplay was both heartbreaking and uplifting, sometimes in the same moment. Pretty sick, right? Next campaign (a Half-Life setting), they've statted out a biologist who keeps a little alien familiar as both a pet and a hat, and whose Animal Handling stat is through the roof due to ignoring learning about anything except alien biology. Hopefully they're fun at parties. Roleplay is gonna rule though. This player, however, can't seem to sit still for long; at their insistence, sessions have reduced from 4 hours, to 3 hours, to 2 hours, and even that duration was a tough sell. Last campaign, they missed 2 sessions in a row *after* we reduced to 2 hours. We've stopped arguing about it since, but I know that next campaign is gonna be turbulent due to them, with lots of making their character "go missing" or whatever I can come up with. My query is this: Am I wrong for trying to keep this player around? Or is this player wrong for periodically trying to quiet quit our group? P.S. I am married to this player, and our kid loves my silly voices. No, he's not in the group...yet.

Brian Kleffner

May it please the court and Jack. So I, the DM, finally got a shy player out of their shell and they were flirting and chatting with an attractive redhead knight NPC I specifically created to give them side quests. As soon as I described what she looked like though another one of my players said that he "saw her first" and those two players began arguing in character. The shy player then described slapping the other one in the face, to which the other then cast fireball on the entire party, including the NPC, in the middle of the city...this would have certainly ruined the story and possibly killed players and NPCs. So I told the fireballer "No" everyone seemed happy that I didn't allow the fireball to go off but was I wrong for telling my player he couldn't do something? I humbly accept your ruling.

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?

Pearl of a Girl Nursery

May it please the court and honorable Justice Axford, Mr. Justice Axford, Justice Axford’s friend, and Jork. I bring you the case of “Awkward Nepotism”. I’ve been telling a beautiful story with a fabulous DM and some great players for two years now. Two of our four consistent players are about to go on vacation, and per my suggestion, instead of DM having to run two separate campaigns once they get back, I suggested that the other player and I join them as new temporary PCs (like you guys did in Campaign 2). Everyone was super excited…until DM announced that his 12-year-old child would be our guest DM for the 6 episode arc. Awkward silence followed. The 12-year-old was present for this announcement, so we obviously couldn’t say anything that would hurt her feelings. She had been a player off and on in our campaigns that we had let tag along, but she always showed such little interest that she was kind of written out. We are all 30 and 40 year old people who have no interest in being DMed by a child. How in the world do we navigate this?! Sincerely, Emily’s biggest fan and a fellow codependent emotion bomb of a player. Thanks for giving me the courage to cry in D&D.

John Thomas

May it please the sweet, saccharine Justices and their salty, briney bailiff jeff,

Jordan Jones

To the most high honorable justices, and the thoroughly vetted and definitely not a criminal in disguise bailiff Jerry, I present you the case of The Surprise Wizard: I am the DM of a campaign that has been running regularly for the last 3 years, and for the last year or so, the game has gone from weekly to monthly because one of my players had a baby. To fill the time for myself and the other players, I kicked off what was intended to be a much lighter and fast-paced game that was intended to run for maybe 5-10 sessions and would feature a meta "system" (think LitRPG, like Dungeon Crawler Carl, but still high fantasy) that would give narrative reason for the characters to level up very quickly based on their actions, and bring a distinct new flavor. It caused thematic multi-classing based on choices and behavior (the trickery cleric did a lot of sneaking, so they eventually ended up with 3 levels of rogue, for example), and was a lot of fun. The party ranger (who also ended up with some rogue levels) got bored of his character, and asked if he could switch. I said, given that they had created a town for all the refugees they'd been finding (the neighboring countries were at war), one of them could be his new character. He decided on a wizard, and against my better judgment, I allowed him to come in without a multi-class at level 13. This gave him access to spells the druid and cleric *would* have also had if I hadn't multi-classed them. Was I wrong to allow this player to buck the trend and come in as a min-maxed book-boy with prismatic spray and other devastating 7th level spells? Should I have forced him to take a 3 level dip to keep things even? P.S. the campaign is called Goblin Valley is full of exclusively home-brew goblin variations for all levels of play in different regions of the valley, for context.

Roxie the Bard

To the esteemed and beautiful judges who probably smell nice and look great today! And also Jake, (you should ask about getting on 8bitbook club. I think you’d do great!) I bring to you the case of the hidden key and the salty feat. I DM a game where my party entered a key goblins hoard filled with miscellaneous keys. The party needed to find one to unlock a magical cage that held a beloved NPC. Upon entering, the mastermind rogue with the Keen Mind feat said that he simply walks over and picks up the key because he can remember everything he’s seen per his feat. Wanting to respect the feat, I told him to roll a luck check. He rolled a 2 and I said he could roll investigation with advantage and that I’d lower the DC by 5. He was really salty about having to roll at all and that I completely negated his feat. I thought I did my due diligence and they ending up finding it with no problem, but it’s been bothering me to this day. Should I have just let him find the key? I leave my fate to your judgement.

Grimace

I reach out and ask for repentance from Dice Christ. I am a first time DM and have just started a campaign set in a somewhat magical prohibition era setting. 2 of my players are extremely experienced at DnD but we had one first time player who was completely new to any type of TTRPG. Our first session was a very basic meetup in a speakeasy where I was encouraging the new player to lean into some character development. He had created a bard and was not exactly sure how his spells/abilities worked. Once the opening battle started (the party vs a bunch of goblins and gnolls) I rolled 3 separate nat 20s to either resist his effects or crit on his character specifically. At no other point did I even managed to hit the two other more experienced characters. On the 3rd I lied after rolling behind the screen and said that the goblin attacking him missed instead and allowed him to escape without murdering his first ever character. But as he fled I got a separate opportunity attack from a gnoll and once again crit on the attack. I again lied and said that the gnoll had only barely hit him and managed to only significantly wound his character before the party finally managed to escape. I ask now have I sinned in the eyes of Dice Christ? I will accept whatever penance good lord sees fit to dole out to my beleaguered soul. In Dice Christ, we trust and I ask for forgiveness.

Elliot Sitford

May it please the high crit and high off fumes Jake, the bailiff As a dm to a group on new players exploring a cave I had set up, across the cave floor was a lot of pit falls, which I had designed for the players to hide in/avoid while fighting a gelatinous cube, but my players decided after each player looking down a hole finding nothing, but a deep hole they can’t see the bottom, they chose to climb, down one by one to see if they can find the bottom, which in anger i decided to put a cursed ring that harmed them when they picked it up for wasting my time, with them FINALLY leaving the hole and discovering the gelatinous cube, they did not once move around the terrain I had set up and stood still, getting engulfed, escaping, attacking. Repeat till it died. Was I wrong for punishing my time wasting players. I humbly wait your judgement. Additional information it was a party of oath breaker paladin, draconic bloodline sorcerer and a blood hunter rogue. You would think at least the sorcerer would want to be ranged but they loved their +1 dagger so much they insisted on using it every time. Even after checking he didn’t want to be a class which would benefit using a dagger he refused.

Sage deGaia

To the high and honorable justices of the Crit, and the bailiff Jake "The Crabster" Hurwitz, I do not bring a case, I simply wish to submit to the record that, despite his demands, the bailiff has still not lived down his fear of the Crabster.

Darkrisky

The Daddy Killing Patreon To the incredibly badass judges and the plain bad bailiff Jared, I give you the case of the patron-less daddy killer. There’s a lot to this case so I will keep it as brief as possible. I play a sea elf fathomless warlock of a noble background with a surfer/stoner vibe and a distrust of authority. She’s at a school to get away from her overprotective parents who sent her there with a necklace of sending. (I have explicitly said to my DM I am excited to play this class and that I did not want an evil patron.) During their adventures, my character was given a flute by an evil entity. Not wanting the responsibility, she destroyed it. As she did, her patron began to scream into her head something about freedom and “destroying all the sea elves”. Concerned, my character decides to use her necklace of sending to call her dad to ask if he knows anything about her patron. When she contacts her dad in a FaceTime-y way, her dad screams at her that she has doomed her whole city by destroying this flute. Turns out that destroying the flute resulted in her patron being released from the plane her city elders were keeping it. A tentacle then rose from the water and skewered her father. My character ran to the headmaster of the school to get help and he opened a portal to her home city which was being destroyed by my character’s patron. Suddenly, my patron got sucked into the sky without any explanation. My DM then turns to me and says I’ve lost all my warlock levels and had to choose a new class! He was surprised when I said my character killed herself and then I quit the campaign. He quit DMing this campaign after this because he “got bored”. So I ask this of you judges, was I wrong to be miffed and should have waited to see where the cool storyline he supposedly had planned went or did I have every right to be upset? I await your humble ruling.

Michael Critz

Lady, Gentlemen… Jake. As DM, I reluctantly allowed a PC to play a Winged Tiefling. Never again. Flying PCs are the worst. She thinks she’s literally above the concerns of the rest of the party and kind of generally love metagaming the campaign. To keep the player ‘grounded’ (pun intended) and engaged with the rest of the group in combat and puzzles I’m ending up in highly contrived scenarios where wimpy kobolds are paired with a Mind Flayer just so I can get stunning attacks. Fundamentally, in D&D RAW flight is hard to mitigate as a DM and it kind of wrecks the fun for everyone. I’m seeking an injunction where I can apply some made up rules like Psychic Wind but for any physical damage to a flying creature. The logic is that it’s way harder to fly with a spear in your chest. I humbly seek the court’s advice.

Crits

Righteous justices and Jill and Tucker's future babysitter, I humbly present to you the case of the Rude Paladin. I was DMing for a party that included a warlock who functioned as the living phylactery/son of his lich patron/dad. To make a long story short, daddy lich created a magical oasis in the middle of the desert to keep his son/phylactery safe and hidden while he worked on his BBEG plan. At this point in the campaign, the party knew the lich was the BBEG, but didn't know his motivations, so he attempted to convince his son to join him by explaining himself. Well, he tried to, anyway. Throughout this chat, the party's paladin kept interrupting him by saying things like "we're going to kick your ass" and "that is so stupid." The lich ignored him several times, and even got a teleportation circle ready so the warlock could leave unharmed and take some time to think about his offer. After what must've been at least the fifth interruption, the lich said something to the effect of, "If you say another word, you'll never speak again." Right as the party was about to teleport out, the paladin said "word." The lich responded with a word of his own: Power Word Kill. Judges, while I did not expect my players to silently sit through my backstory dump, I did expect them to take a lich's threat seriously. Was I wrong for doing exactly what I said I would do, or should I have let the paladin have his fun? I humbly await your judgment. PS: He was revived with Raise Dead by a cleric from his backstory the next session, which we all agreed was fair since it imposes a penalty but doesn't perma kill his PC. This case is all in good fun.

Rachel Hulslander

I play an owlin rogue in our home game. At one point the evil city watch captain was alone with the mayor of the town we were in and I wanted to attempt to sneak in and assassinate him. I asked the DM if there were any windows I could sneak into and he said no, so I asked about a chimney I could sneak down. He said there was a chimney and the fire place was unlit. I flew up to the roof and said "I'm going to stealth down the chimney." Before I could pick up the dice to give a stealth roll I was told the mayor saw me and asked me to join their conversation. Should I be angry that I wasn't allowed a stealth check, or was the DM right in allowing their BBEG to avoid my stealthy flying rogue? Follow up, I was later able to kill said captain, and it was a great vengeance I felt to deal the killing blow. -- ~Kyle

cubmaster

Sup honorable judges! Please tell me how I’m supposed to feel about the bailiff. I submit to you the case of the “Harmful Hug.” I am a forever DM, but I had the rare opportunity to play in a short campaign my friend wanted to run. I played my lovable, teddy bear of a barbarian, Day’eve, who I like to roleplay as clumsy. I made several jokes about him not knowing his own strength, like going to close a window and accidentally breaking the shutters off their hinges, or shattering a mug of ale by slamming it on the table too hard. At one point the party encountered a distraught little girl and I had Day’eve give her a hug to comfort her. My DM asked me for an Athletics check. When I asked why, he gave a sly smile and said that I, myself had said Day’eve didn’t know his own strength. I have a bit of a confession as well, because I rolled very low, but I lied and said I rolled a 17 out of fear that he would make my character crush this little girl. I am well known in my friend group for being against fudging rolls, but it feels like an ability roll for a hug is going too far. What would have happened if I rolled a nat 1?!? Did my DM take the joke that I started too far? Or am I overreacting and should have played out the low roll?

BeuligXander

No intro 2023, but Jake smells: Torture nerfing dm vs supervillains: Running a modernist evil campaign where the players are trying to become super villains, and it turns out they are a little too comfortable with the idea. The first time they tortured someone, it was a backwards-aging super soldier (from a group called the Button Brigade) who, for all intents and purposes looked like a child. I wasnt super stoked by this, but hey, it's their game too. Then they did it again. Having known they were willing to resort to this though, the npc came prepared; she felt no pain and killing her triggered a glyph that teleported her away to be revived and give her handler the information they didn't know she was gathering. They seemed nonplussed by this tactic, but in the end, i doubt they'll be torturing people anymore. Was i wrong to ruin their fun by nerfing torture? I await your judgment.

Bryce Baker

To Cardinal Axford, Bishop Murphy, Reverend Tanner, and Bailiff Joke. I bring before you a Dice Christ confession of the most severe magnitude. While DMing a campaign for a group of newbies, including my wife, for whom I was very anxious about leaving a good impression, I committed the cardinal sin and lied about a roll. Upon conclusion of their first quest, I had them stumble upon a thief they had chased off earlier, and set a DC10 persuasion/intimidate check to get the hook for the next adventure. Each character rolled 3 times (18 rolls total), and not a single one was able to beat the DC10. My DM sweat flowed stronger than Dice Christ's love for their children, and I eventually made him roll a charisma check to see if he broke down and told the truth or not. I got a 19, but lied and said he got a 4, simply to not lose the one hook into the next adventure I had prepared. Upon reflection, I could see that the unrealistically poor rolls of my team was a message from Dice Christ, that I failed to heed, and I should have found a different way to feed them this information. Please assign me my penance so I never commit this atrocious sin again.

Summer Tribe

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

Jade

With guilt weighing heavy in my heart, I prostate myself and present not a case, but the confession of the eternally stocked, highest level spells. Though I've been playing various D&D campaigns with my college friends since 2018, I never really learned how spells worked. I usually create characters with non-/low-magic classes, but decided to try my hand at druid for our latest game. DM thought it would be fun to start at a higher level (10) since we already knew how to play and could skip straight to the cool stuff. I never learned how to stock my spells, how spell slots worked, or what it meant to cast spells at varying levels. I always casted spells at the highest level possible and casted high level spells multiple times per in-game day. At times, DM would ask things like, "You can do that?" or "How many slots do you have left?" to which I would lie with a simple "Yes" or "Ummm, that was my last one" because I was in too deep and too nervous to ask for help at that point. I figured if I asked, my friends would realize I'd been playing wrong this entire time and I didn't want to cause a fuss or get razzed. More than once, my incredibly powerful spells turned the tides of our story, saving PC lives (including my own) or solving complex conflicts quicker than expected by the DM. This went on for several months before the campaign went on hiatus due to current scheduling conflicts. I pour my heart out in hopes that Dice Christ can forgive my foolishness of the past. How can I make amends? Thank you, I await your wisdom.

DoodBroMcManGuySir

A Perma NAT20?! And my DM REFUSES TO LET ME USE IT?! Good Morrow my amazing, fantastic, wonderful and wise Supreme crit Justices… and Jake I guess. So the title may have caught your eye and I just have you thinking “ what’s a perma NAT 20? “ I, a fanatic of all things cheap and crafty have recently gotten into tattooing (myself and only those ready to let me multilate them, I am not a professional and I do this for fun though I do follow proper sanitization and rules of tattooing for obvious reasons). Since then my second tattoo I have braised myself with was a Nat 20 because I am incredibly lucky in games in general and tend to have things in my favor that do not make sense to those around me(especially my fiancé since he is that of the opposite and is often tortured relentlessly by games). My DM is said fiancé so therefor he was aware of said tattoo and I did jokingly mention it would be super cool to use this as a one time nat20 in the campaign we are playing. He IMMEDIATELY poo-pooed the idea with no thought. I, extremely offended said I would submit this case to Dungeon court and have the Justices inform him this would be a COOL AND FUN THING TO DO. He said if I did in fact make it onto dungeon court he would allow it in his campaign. So I know this is not necessarily a ‘case’ but if you plead in my favor I will also be tattooing my DM with a NAT2 for the ‘2 crew’ and would be willing to send a follow up with said tattoo included along with what I ended up using the NAT20 for. So ever so fair Justices: I beg you to find mercy in me for my clickbait title and for the chance to use my dumbfounding luck and skills to have a ‘get out of jail NAT 20’ card for my DM’s campaign. Thank you for reading :,) -Kirby

Bobomb36x

I apologize to the benevolent court and bailiff J-man for a non-dnd question, but i am humbly asking for a ruling regarding critical hits in pathfinder, and hoping the love of dice christ will compell you to hear my plea. My group has been playing together for 8+ years, but we had a particularly rough session last week after looking into pathfinder for the first time. Critical Hits and Misses work on a +/-10 vs ac so the nat 20 isnt the only way to score a critical hit. My DM found a deck of critical hit bonuses, like triple damage, instant decapitation, breaking the opponents armor, etc. Because of this, he was criting our lv2 party non-stop, meanwhile we were struggling to even hit. My character and another were instantly one shot on a non-nat 20 critical hit, and it started a few arguments about how the cards should work (only on nat 20s or 1s, vs. any 'crit' roll) and nearly TPK'd. We know he didn't intend this result, but insists on using them for every crit regardless of the roll. Were we wrong for wanting the criticals deck to only be used for nat 20s and 1s, or did we cry like babies because we were getting whomped?

Withani

To the honorable crit justices and our infallible bailiff Jacque, I present the case of It's a trap! I'm a first-time DM running a mostly homebrew campaign (yeah, I know). In the campaign, the players have found themselves in several encounters with members of a local crime syndicate. During the most recent run-in, in which a friendly NPC was downed, the players tried to persuade the syndicate to tell them their plans with an "enemy of my enemy is my friend argument," a roll they failed badly. So, instead, the syndicate offered the players a chance to prove themselves, which my players went along with willingly. Unsurprisingly (or so I thought), this was a ruse planned by the syndicate to use the players as a distraction so they could more easily infiltrate and steal an important McGuffin. What resulted was the players unwittingly became accomplices in what in the real world would be an act of domestic terrorism and found themselves confronted by the entire city guard, culminating in an escape with the final player jumping into a nearby river with only 1 hp left. I thought this was a dramatic conclusion but quickly realized my players were frustrated at having been tricked and feeling as if they were led down the path to this unwinnable scenario. All is good now, and I've even given the syndicate a more significant role in the campaign so the players can exact their revenge, but my conscience is not clean, so I prostrate myself at the mercy of the court; was I wrong to let my players walk into this unwinnable scenario?

D Cord

To the honorable justices of the highest Crit in the land, and the once shunned from practicing in Boston Bailiff, I present to you the case of the demoralizing first mate. I was playing a game wherein we had a ship, and with my pirate background I was stoked to do some ship things. The other PCs ended up getting into an argument about our next moves, and the DM made it very obvious that the crew noticed. I did not interject during the argument because I did not want to kneecap other players RP moments, and at the beginning of the next session I went to each of the crew and told them how valuable they were and how much we appreciated them being on our boat despite the difficulties of the rest of the player character crew. At the end of the session, the dm said the crew morale had slipped into the negatives because I did not interject during the argument and that it was my job as first mate to stop this from happening. I defended by saying it wasn’t my argument originally, and I had attempted to do damage control after the fact to save face for the rest of the PCs in front of the crew. I was told this didn’t matter and that the crew was a step closer to mutiny. I humbly ask the Supreme Crit to rule, who was in the right, who was in the wrong?

Todd

Honored members of the court and the guy who plans to raise Tucker’s baby. I present the Case of the stolen nat 20 Death Save. In spring 2022 I decided to try out a paid dnd session ($15 a session) with a DM and group I found on discord. The DM conducted their games using the Fantasy Grounds software and made everyone roll their dice through the software (which I didn’t like but understood). The issue occurred in our very first battle! My character went down round 1. I waited patiently for my next turn and was surprised when the DM told the person behind me in initiative to go. I thought I’d been skipped by accident, and asked about making my death save. The DM told me that the software AUTOMATICALLY ROLLS ALL DEATH SAVES without any user input. I felt scammed. When your character is down death saves are the only thing you get, and that was taken from me. The DM didn’t even give a brief description of my character struggling for his life, he just skipped to the next player. I had to click through several status screens just to find out if id succeeded or failed my death save. But judges, it gets worse. 40min pass with me on mute doing nothing, then suddenly the DM announces that I got a turn. Confused at first, i realized the system had rolled a nat 20 for my death save. Yet I felt nothing. No rush of joy or excitement because it took so long to realize what had happened. Judges, was I robbed? Or am I just being salty.

Nick Rees

Resplendent judges and the baliff who is lucky to stand in their presence. I believe I have let my players have too much fun. My lvl 18 party is heading to the plane of fire and instead of us8ng potions the wizard decided to true poly.orph them all into adult gold dragons. As written the spell does let him do this. Using the dragons ability they can change between their og forms and dragon form at will. This however means that every combat encounter needs to be scheduled up to be challenging to dragons, which mean the PCs can't do combat with their actual characters and are upset with me. What should I do?

Annalisa B

To the omniscient Cardinals of the Church of Dice Christ, I believe that I have offended Dice Christ and humble myself before you. About a year into my first campaign I purchased my first dice: a set of golden, metal dice with dragons, inspired by my character. I continued to have a soft spot for these dice, using them continuously throughout other campaigns even as I collected new sets. Then, during a role play session, I proceeded to roll a Nat 1 on 5 out of 7 rolls, all on the gold dragon dice. Going forward, I was hesitant to use this set and moved to other, newer dice. Flash forward a few months and I agreed to DM for the first time, a Christmas-y one shot for a few friends during the holidays. As some players did not have dice of their own, I let them borrow mine, including the gold dragon dice. A small part of me hoped those previously bad rolls would work in my favor. During the final combat, my players rolled 4 natural 20s, all on my gold dragon dice, obliterating the BBEG. I prostrate myself before the altar and ask for the forgiveness of Dice Christ. P.S. I have since become interim DM, running one shots and mini games when our normal campaign can’t meet, and my friends always request to use the gold dragon dice, hoping to whomp me once more.

Jacob B.

To the magnanimous yet humble judges Axford, Murphy and Tanner. And a wet and warm handshake to the bailiff... Bake? I present thee with a confessional of the flubbed spell slot. Ive been playing with my group for years now and as such we have rotated through DMs quite a bit to keep things fresh because our styles vary greatly. One night our game was DMd by one of my more ruthless friends. Our party had just stolen the deck of many things from a baron but we got caught on our way out. With our party warlock held by the throat over a bannister, our party could only watch in horror as we had exhausted all of our abilities and spell slots entering the manor. I wanted to cast misty step to teleport behind the baron and wrestle my friend from his grasp but After realizing that I didnt have the spell slot to make that maneuver, I decided "ah fuck it itll look cool as hell if it works" and even though it did look cool as hell because my little kobold sorcerer somehow succeeded the strength check the wrestle my boy free and escape I was left at the end of the session, watching the barons manor burn to rubble in the distance as we rode away, feeling like I had dragged a knife through the canvas of our world. Im waiting for your judgement in my cell with a sleeve of saltines I stole from the cafeteria

Bureaucrat Bill

To the honerable Justices Axford, Murphy, & Tanner and the current baliff of record; I present the case of the wrathful peacemaker entered with a guilty plea and request for sentencing. In highschool (early 00's) I was the DM of my group. When a PC's asked to run a campaign I gladly jumped at the chance to live life on the other side of the screen... little did I know the dark path this would lead us down. Things started off well. I loved my Azer (fire dwarf) spiked chain fighter who was the least min-maxed character in the party. During our first post-adventure downtime I went to the gladiator pits to earn some gold - a common trope for us. I don't know what I did to offend the DM, but it turned into a solo deathmatch against a mutant troll 8 levels higher than the party. I wasn't allowed to surrender and the other PC's weren't allowed to interfere. No one else was getting singled out in that way, they were always being showered with loot and rarely even having a tough fight. He even gloated about it and everyone acted as though it was fine. In my anger I created my new PC to not only be the most powerful I could make him but also to buzzkill the entire campaign. Enter Joseph a Monk, Apostle of Peace, Risen Martyr who had 9th lvl spells, tons of immunities, aura effects, impossible defenses, and one mission: to end all conflicts without bloodshed. Basically, I made Jesus. For the rest of the campaign (4 full-day saturdays) I would force a nonviolent resolution for every encounter and was OP enough that no one could stop me no matter how hard they tried. The table was so frustrated at me I honestly don't know how they kept playing. The campaign ended with a spectacular 4hr 'battle' when Joseph (lvl 26) solo teleported into the bbeg's (lvl 60 wizard) pocket dimension, beat him and all his toys, and rescued the princess. We moved on to the next campaign (one I created) without ever talking about it and went our separate ways a few months later after graduation. I have played and DM'd for many years since without falling to such pettiness again, but the fact that I have never been punished for my crime has hung over me these 20 long years. I ask the court to levy what sentence they deem just, that I may pay for my misdeeds and be rehabilitated into a functioning member of society.

Alec Posta

Intro free 2023: There is an heated debate in our group that has me at odds with my (usually) loving wife, and it's over something as petty as the numbering of our sessions. As the DM, I write at the top of my prep notes in big, bold letters which session I'm prepping for. 5th get together, 5th session...easy, right? The players are aware of the numbering system and we use the numbers to keep track of how long we've been playing. The PROBLEM comes in the fact that early on in our campaign, a session ran long, and we ended up getting together the next night to finish up. This extra session ended up being the same length as a regular get together. My wife INSISTS that this was NOT a new session, and therefore SHARES a number with the previous session. I say that's ludicrous because that's not how counting works. Every game now starts with an argument over which session were about to play and I fear our marriage can take much more of this clerical pettiness. Please justices, help us put an end to this. P.S. This is all lighthearted fun, our marriage is rock solid.

m. white

To the honorable and handsome bailiff, and the low-down, dirty Jakes of the court, I present the case of Brick. I've had a regular game with a few friends that's been going on for a few months now. One of the players -- I'll call them Champ -- started a new relationship during that period, and wanted to include their SO in our game. Meet Brick. The issues began almost immediately -- despite having apparently already been introduced to the game, Brick cannot understand the basic concepts. Every time a die needs to be rolled, they pick one at random, without regard for side count. We had to explain numerous times over the course of the night that the "d" in "2d8" does not mean that you add 10 to your roll. This went on for several games. At first we hoped that they would learn the game over time with some extra help, but there was never any sign of improvement. We offered a compromise -- Champ would handle all of the mechanical details of Brick's character, and Brick would handle the general decisions and roleplay. Brick was upset at this suggestion, and insisted on continuing as normal. After the game, the other (3 out of 5) members of the group got together and decided that we want Brick gone (although to be honest, I was kind of on the fence). Despite not being the DM, I was elected to deliver notice to Brick and Champ. Please, wise court, tell me if booting Brick is the right decision, and if I must be the one to deliver the bad news. I accept the judgement of the court, and request the death penalty instead if I have to tell them. Love, When are you coming to Buffalo

NormalRealHuman

This is a dice Christ confessional, forgive me but maybe a footnote will spare my eternal soul from damnation. I started running dnd weeks for kids in a local game shop for spring break, we had an awesome week building characters, painting minis, and playing. The final battle the shambling mound crit three time in a row on the kids level three characters. I omitted two of them and they barely survived. Did dice Christ try and go Old Testament on my children? Footnote for murph: if I have to ruin another sleeping bag for fun around the house I swear

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)

QueenViolet

To the effervescent crit justices and if Jake is there too that's fine I guess, I present the case of the annoying wizard kebab. a few years ago I was playing a long running campaign with 6 friends. unfortunately half the party (including me) were interested in following the plot and the other 3 only wanted to play joke characters, regularly changing to whatever new character they thought was funnier. one of these players made a character named Cyril the Wizard, who was an old clueless Wizard who was bad at magic but thought he was basically gandalf. he spoke in a shrill geriatric SpongeBob voice and made constant jokes about how every time he took damage he poops his pants a little and similar bits. the rest of the party found Cyril annoying and were open about this but the dm said it was fine and continued along instead. we were fighting a demon that session, whose lair action was to have bone spikes shoot from the ground to stab us. Cyril The Wizard rolled a nat 1 on his save and asked if the spike went up his butt. the dm chuckled, then said no. this somehow angered Cyril, who started to insist and then loudly demand that it goes up his ass. this turned into a yelling match which ended with the dm saying "fine, it goes up your ass, take double damage" these spikes did upwards of 60 damage so this double damage instant killed Cyril. I was the party's only healer and was completely separated from Cyril so he could not be revivified and stayed dead. only Cyril was upset about this. the session ended there and though the campaign continued Cyril's player left the group after. I beseech you noble justices, was Cyril in the wrong for derailing the session for a not very funny joke, or was my dm too harsh for killing a pc over a goof. I am no longer friends with this player or DM but I will happily track either down to enact your chosen punishment, thank you

Tino Bambino

May it please the honorable court and the fantastically honorable baliff Amir. I present to you the case of the not so secret campaign. I played dnd with a group of my friends however as the years went on i found myself not having fun mostly due to the DM (Chad), i found him controlling and uninterested with role-play, so i bowed out of his campaign. I also tried to play a few one shots with Chad as a fellow player. However even as a player i found Chad inconsiderate. Specifically talking during my friend’s and my own introduction and micro managing our hit points during combat. I decided to start a new campaign with a couple of my friends and a newcomer. It was great! We all had great chemistry. However, I heard one of my players had been trying to hide this campaign from Chad. I told them that i’m the DM and the Chad is not entitled to our campaign. There is no need to keep it a secret because i get to decide who i DM for. Am I justified in my behavior? P.s. I have not confronted Chad on his behavior but i have no qualms doing so if he asked why he was excluded.

Olivia and Jarod have two lvls of exhaustion

To the honorable judges and equally honorable bailiff I present the case of "Bards suck, and Eating hearts", When I first joined Dnd I wanted to be a Bard since I love to sing and was a band kid. My first group my DM was not very fond of bards and our very first session kept telling me that bards were the worst and useless. In addition one of our players made a point to have coitus with dead creatures and then eat their hearts. Having the my Dm judging me and the dead creature stuff I only stayed that one session and then never came back. Was I wrong to just not come back? I await your swift and just judgment.(ps player could not be reasoned with/didn't care)

George TJ

To the juicy justices and the bearable baliff I bring to you the case of the Jumping Himbo I have a multiclass glory paladin/swords bard (s/o Callie) in a 6-month long campaign. I thought it'd be fun to have him be *very* strength focused with expertise in athletics to better grapple and shove people. My DM was already a bit annoyed by this in previous encounters, and tensions rose when I used my channel divinity to jump higher and get advantage on strength checks during a big fight (Peerless Athlete). I wanted to do a move where I jump and grapple what ended up being an important enemy flying low. I saw some DM sweat, and *after rolling behind the screen* he ruled that "jumping that high in the air takes too much effort to grapple at the same time". I was butthurt, and I pushed back saying that jumping is movement, and since I have a 15+ ft jump I should be able to grab someone in the air and dunk them in the same turn. I argue that its not OP, and that I should even get extra damage for doing so. I relented after arguing for a bit, and my DM maintains the no jumping+grappling rule to this day. Am I wrong for still being salty that my DM killed my fantasy of pulling a sick wrestler move? Or am I being a greedy grappling power gamer? I throw myself at the court and seek your wisdom.

Lizard Breath

Dear Honorable Justices and Bailiff, I am in the process of planning a campaign so my dad can learn to play D&D. He's going to play in it, as well as my sister and a friend or two of hers (they've all played before). I'm a new DM, and I'm worried about planning poorly and accidentally womping the party when I only meant to make a hard but winnable fight. My question is this: is it okay to womp my dad?? I love him and want him to have fun his first time playing, but I also don't want the other players to feel like it's too easy. Plus, he's not that old. I'm not going to let him do whatever he wants like he's my grandma.

Libby

Thank you so much for advice! Honestly, I think I've drawn a line. Like, I'll think 'if it affects how well I attack, I'll say something', but once I've weakly brought something up once I generally don't pipe up a second time. I've said to myself that if there's ever a life or death situation and the DM does something I know is wrong that I'll stick to my guns a bit more, but who knows if I'll be able to suck up the courage when the time comes. In general everyone's having fun, and I'm grateful to have any sort of regular game. But 'dumbing down my knowledge for the sake of people’s comfort' hits hard. I should probably try to find a group where I don't feel embarrassed to contribute to the gameplay. Thanks again, I'm sure you're an awesome DM :)

Neil

To the most honourable Justices, and the tepidly spicy Bailiff. I present the case of the PC Voice that stopped a campaign. I am a long time watcher of DnD, and my partner recently started watching campaigns & collecting dice. Our friend who has been playing a campaign for years, offered to DM for us in a mini campaign (Lost Mine of Phandelver - his first time DMing and our first time playing), with set PCs. During the 1st session my partner kept commenting how much she hated the voice I was putting on for my character's (think the Prince in Shrek 2), and when we got home, said she didn't want to keep playing/and never wanted to play at that table with me again because she hated the voice. That was a year ago, and I haven't rolled a D20 since. Justices, was I right to put on a voice when she was not, or, given it was a first session should I have been more conscious of making the space welcoming and comfortable for all, and not brought in the voices of the Shrek Extended Universe?

Mo

To the great and honorable Justices of the Supreme Crit and the «just ok, I guess, if I need to give my opinion» Bailiff, I present to you the case of «the murdered character for two platinum pieces». A few years ago, I played in a 3e campaign with a few of my friends and a friend of a friend, lets call him Todd. Todd didn't like d&D, he though that D&D only attracted «munchkin players» and prefered other ttrpg like world of darness. With that in mind, he created the most optimized munchkin necromancer/ rogue combo. After a few weeks, Todd accidently killed my first character with a AOE spell . He justified his choice by saying that he saved the rest of the party from a goblin horde and my death was the result of accidental friendly fire. I was not that mad, the session had been fun and my character died heroically. For the next session I came up with a new character, a swashbucking paladin, who was the second in command of a ship. The Dm introduced my character by stating that the party would need a ship to reach the next quest. The cost of the voyage was 2 platinum pieces per person. Once on the ship, and before my character got introduced to the party, Todd ask the dm if he could go talk to the second in command (Out of character, Todd knew my backstory). Dm said sure, might as well introduce my character that way. Todd said that he did not want to pay for the voyage., he then tried to convinced me to mutiny against the captain, my mentor, and convince the rest of the crew to become pirates or throw them in the sea. I refused of course, he the asked the DM if his Undead Flesh Golem was with him, the dm said sure. I protested, stating that my character would have notice an undead presence right away but to no avail. Todd then commanded the flesh golem to grab me before initiative was rolled. He the proceeded to attack my character. I asked the DM if anyone heard the sound of fighting in my cabin and without asking for any rolls, he decided that the fight was not loud enough to raise suspicion. My rolls were unlucky and I never succeeded in getting out of the grapple ,Todd killed my new character before I even got introduced to the rest of the party. Having killed two of my character in a row, I was a bit angry at Todd, he replied that it'S what his character would do because he didn't like to pay for transport and that he hated paladins. I don't hangout with Todd anymore, but i'm still angry about the DMing of that encounter. I ask the court, should other characters have a chance to hear about the attack in my cabin? Thank you

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

Bellamy Posey

Not sure if it's socially acceptable to leave comments here. Forgive me, Justices and Gaurdians of Court Norms. I am prostrate and quivering. Ganja Gaj, your story hit close to home, and as a fellow They/Them-er I wanted to reach out. Brennan Lee Mulligan was the first man I ever heard play a woman PC ( Briggida, Elden Ring One-Shot: O Ye of Little Faith) and it made me realize, with a JOLT, how rare it is: Rare for someone who presents as a cis guy to play a charictor with a gender other than male. There is a cold, slushy slew of reasons for that, but one of the more wholesome is the fear of misrepresenting another group's stories and experiences. As a panicked and sweaty novice DM, I often fall into that same pit- to avoid captializing on stereotypes, My npcs are usually ambiguous men. Hearing Brennan Lee Mulligan play Brigidda absolutely delighted me. Hearing that you played a They/Them PC, potentially as someone who doesn't use those pronouns yourself, ABSOLUTLY DELIGHTS ME (it's pretty affirming, ya know?). To play a character is to experience the world through them, and a world where cis men can deeply relate to other genders is the one I want to live in. ( AND, not one that exists without practice, encouragement, and troubleshooting. ) In your query to the High Court, you described a charictor that was a confidant, charismatic, (spiritual/)religeous, sexually powerful HEALER- who, in this modern world, would have been appart of the trans comunity as someone off binary. That doesn't sound like transphobia, and it surely don't sound like slut shaming. The key to answering GANJA VS PARTY, is weather or not you relied on harmful steriotypes to develop and play Alox. Perhaps, one of the things the PC's girlfriend was tuned into is the conversation surrounding 'authentic casting,' or an extension of the conversation of appropriation, and she felt that as a cis guy, you couldn't- or shouldn't- tell the story of a trans sex worker. Perhaps the way you played your character was obscuring true stories of trans sex workers. I'll never know! And I don't need to- It sounds like you handled yourself with grace, and I don't think you're inherently wrong for making this character. The empathic bond between player and character can be transformative, and I can't think of a better place to explore gender, or someone else's gender experience, that a Homegame RPG. For what it's worth, I enjoyed the representation. If you'd ever like to hear trans people living their own stories, check out the actual play DnD podcast TRANSPLANAR RPG. For the second guy playing a female charitor in an RPG I ever heard, check out 'Worst Movies Ever Played, Water so Blue is Black'. Or some damn good conversations about DND - many relevant to this controversy - AND some phenominal actual play campains "Three Black Halflings". Thank you, I'm still prostrate, my legs fell asleep, goodnight.

Lorelei G.

To the deeply honorable and highly effervescent Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, as well as , I present to you the case of the incinerated artificer. Playing in a campaign with some friends centered around four cults devoted to evil elementals, our party of nine managed to infiltrate the air cult’s temple, and we found ourselves in front of the high priestess. After a few moments of talking to her, my level 4 rock genasi armorer artificer decided to kick off the fight by hitting her with his lightning launcher, dealing 11 damage. She then Chain Lightninged him for 104 damage, instantly killing him. To present evidence in my defense, 1.) I thought that this was going to be a hard but not unwinnable boss fight, not a try and convince the boss not to kill us moment, 2.) the DM didn’t have me roll a saving throw, which could have saved my life if I had succeeded in addition to the Absorb Elements that I cast, and 3.) the DM hit me with all three lightning bolts, not just one. In the DM’s defense, 1.) I knew that it was probably a bad idea, because 2.) I ignored the Are You Sure? warning. So, I ask the court, was this warranted execution, or was this murder? PS: It was and is a funny moment, despite being my first character death, and the DM and I are still friends. I am now playing a character that I’m more excited about, a centaur battle master named Mud.

the wretch

To the honorable judges and to the bailiff that I have no strong feelings towards either way, I bring the case of the Poisoned Monk. I recently guested for one session in a campaign that several of my friends are in. During the game, we were in the middle of some pretty serious combat against some magic wyvern things which were dealing poison and piercing damage. I noticed that the monk was taking the full damage even though monks are immune to poison. (I play a monk in a different campaign.) I didn't want to say anything since I was a guest, and maybe this had been clarified at some point in the past when I wasn't there. I didn't think it would make much of a difference, since the wizard/artificer had cast Warding Bond on the monk so he was taking half damage anyway. However, in the middle of the fight the bard went down, which led to the wizard/artificier casting Life Transferrance, and they rolled exactly the amount of HP they had left and knocked themselves out, ending the Warding Bond, Rary's Telepathic Bond that the party was using to communicate, the Disguise Self that the wizard was using to hide the fact he was a warforged in a country that didn't like magic or warforged, and the Polymorph that was containing one of the wyverns. At this point I brought up the fact that they should technically have more HP, due to the monk taking poison damage when he didn't have to, but the DM ruled against it. The fight took a turn for the worse with two party members down, and the party ended up having to flee the wyverns. I don't know what happened after due to being a guest, but it seems to have worked out in the end. My question is, should I have spoken up sooner to prevent the fight from going so poorly or should the DM have given the wizard some HP back? I await your ruling. P.S. the whole session was EXTREMELY funny and there weren't any hurt feelings, I just love being judged.

Eleanor

One time my friend was a jerk. Or was I the jerk? I await your judgement. Brief enough for you? -Eleanor

Nothing

To the adorable justices and the beautiful bailiff: I present to you the case of the Knighted Fish. I’m playing in a wonderful campaign inside The Neverafter and my DM is currently putting up with me and my friends. Quite recently my character Sandman was grievously injured by ghosts and left struggling to live inside a cave. My party members decided to help out my escape by dragging Sandman out of the cave with several dash actions one at a time. This was going great until one of my party members, a cat, (like a real ass cat) was distracted by a Huge fish they had caught further up the cave’s river system. The fish was so huge it actually began to pull my friend down the cave river towards me and my other party members. Using this opportunity my party members attempted to persuade/intimidate/animal handle the fish into boosting me up the river. I had yet to realize how attached they would soon become to this fish. In a single round they knighted the fish, became best friends, and even when it was not going to be any help, abandoned my character to go on a side quest with it, while I was injured. My character had the chance to go along with them, but like, it’s a fucking random fish, so I refused. I’m now stuck in a cave, critically injured, running from ghosts. Are they in the wrong for leaving me alone or should everyone make friends with a big fish if it seems sick enough? I throw myself at the sea floor of this court.

gab

G'day high priests of dice Christ! I play in a zoom campaign. In our most recent session, we went up against a group of villagers that the DM cautioned us through an NPC that we would not be strong enought to fight them. We defeated them without a single character going down. However, because our DM forgot his dice, he had us roll for some of the villager's saves throughout the combat. After rolling several low numbers for the villagers in a row, including two nat 1s, I could tell my DM was getting a little sulky that we were beating the villagers and that they kept failing our saves, and thought that I was doing a dodgy. When I next rolled a 5 for a villager to save against a high-damage spell, I lied and said that it was an 18, so that they would successfully save. I beg forgiveness of dice christ!

Rory Thompson

To the beneficent judges and the guest bailiff Josh, I present my case, I was a first time dm yesterday for a one shot with my group and while it was a very fun experience I can’t help but feel I was taken advantage of due to my lack of experience in one encounter. Now the player in question I highly respect as he is the normal dm he is a fantastic dm and I appreciate all the work he does, Where the problem accrued is said player has a in game character too (this one shot was cannon for the main campaign) This character has a ver strong weapon whilst that is fine it auto stuns an enemy on a crit he rolled high initiative and went first, crit and auto stunned my adult blue draco lich, I said it has legendary resistances can it resist an auto stun some chat around the table and then I decided to honour the crit and let it be auto stunned. It did not survive to the next round of combat. Was I wronged? Or should I of just put my foot down? I can’t find any rules if a legendary resistance can shrug off an auto affect. If it was a item in the base game I’d probably feel better but it was a homebrew item made by the dm for the dms character. Help me come to grips with this! Should I make the lich they are about to fight absolutely insane as punishment?

Paul Perkovich

To the magnanimous and magnificent justices and their feet cleaning fish pet Jark, I recently played a rather silly and lighthearted one-shot where me and another player leaned into the “dumb gym bro” stereotype (push up contests, rampant insecurity plus an eagle named Eagleton). We ended up making jokes that de facto put the third member of our party as the straight man. The third player seemed a little more quiet and reserved than normal, but role-played some fun gags pitting the dude-bros against each other. I still wonder if he had fun though. Were we out of place for somewhat forcing our friend to play the responsible role in our tom-shittery, or was it all fun and games?

Jakob Hoffmann

to the honorable judges and Jake (hey Jake!) I present the case of the overpowered items, I recently started playing a new DND campaign with some friends who have never played before. Even our DM is new to DND so she often asks me for help with combat and rules. Our first combat encounter involved us hunting down a low-level demon for a local church, and after this our DM rewarded us with several homebrew magic items. One of these items was a dagger that had +8 to hit and +5 on all damage, and the other was a relic that gave +5 on all hits (both melee and magic)! On top of these overpowered items (we are level 1 by the way) one of my fellow players asks if we could split the relic into pieces so the whole party could get the buffs, to which our DM responded "I don't see why not." Needless to say with these new powerful items we whomped all the enemies in the following sessions, which has been every session as we got these items in session two. So I ask the court, was it wrong of me to not point out how overpowered these items were to our new DM, or am I in the right to not be a table-tattle-tale and ruin the buffs for my teammates. I humbly await the cruel justice of the court.

Bellamy Posey

Not sure if it's socially acceptable to leave comments here. Forgive me, Justices and Gaurdians of Court Norms. I am prostrate and quivering. Ganja Gaj, your story hit close to home, and as a fellow They/Them-er I wanted to reach out. Brennan Lee Mulligan was the first man I ever heard play a woman PC ( Briggida, Elden Ring One-Shot: O Ye of Little Faith) and it made me realize, with a JOLT, how rare it is: Rare for someone who presents as a cis guy to play a charictor with a gender other than male. There is a cold, slushy slew of reasons for that, but one of the more wholesome is the fear of misrepresenting another group's stories and experiences. As a panicked and sweaty novice DM, I often fall into that same pit- to avoid captializing on stereotypes, my npcs are usually ambiguous men. Hearing Brennan Lee Mulligan play Brigidda absolutely delighted me. Hearing that you played a They/Them PC, potentially as someone who doesn't use those pronouns yourself, ABSOLUTLY DELIGHTS ME (it's pretty affirming, ya know?). To play a character is to experience the world through them, and a world where cis men can deeply relate to other genders is the one I want to live in. ( AND, not one that exists without practice, encouragement, and troubleshooting. ) In your query to the High Court, you described a charictor that was a confidant, charismatic, (spiritual/)religeous, sexually powerful HEALER- who, in this modern world, would have been appart of the trans comunity as someone off binary. That doesn't sound like transphobia, and it surely don't sound like slut shaming. The key to answering GANJA VS PARTY, is weather or not you relied on harmful steriotypes to develop and play Alox. Perhaps, one of the things the PC's girlfriend was tuned into is the conversation surrounding 'authentic casting,' or an extension of the conversation of appropriation, and she felt that as a cis guy, you couldn't- or shouldn't- tell the story of a trans sex worker. Perhaps, the way you played your charictor was obscuring true stories of trans sex workers. I'll never know! And I don't need to- It sounds like you handled yourself with grace, and I don't think you're inherently wrong for making this charictor. The empathic bond between player and charictor can be transformative, and I can't think of a better place to explore gender, or someone else's gender experence, that a Homegame RPG. For what it's worth, I enjoyed the representation. If you'd ever like to hear trans people living their own stories, check out the actual play DnD podcast TRANSPLANAR RPG. For the second guy playing a female charitor in an RPG I ever heard, check out 'Worst Movies Ever Played, Water so Blue is Black'. Or some damn good conversations about DND- many relevent to this controversy- AND some phenominal actual play campains "Three Black Halflings". Thank you, I'm still prostrate, my legs fell asleep, goodnight.

Jorjudge

To the right honourable Justices and the solid bailiff (who I feel is underappreciated about half the time) Settle a bet. I'm perfect, right?

Tawihisi

Dear jake and Amir, I once rolled a NAT 20 on a stealth check to hide myself under the dirt where I knew the BBEG would show up to ransom my friend he captured, with the intent to surprise him and grab my friend and get out of there. Not only did I get the nat 20, I had the warlock feature where you’re invisible if you’re in darkness, plus my stealth was a plus 15, +10 with pass without trace, + a magic item I had recieved that gave me +5 on one roll I chose a day. So I rolled a 50. And my dm said “the bad guy is not surprised, he expected this” In the end I cut off the bad guys head and carried it around on a stick, but I was still and am still salty that my roll that essentially would have made me invisible to a god didn’t work. I await your swift and just judgement.

alice

DICE CHRIST CONFESSION To the humble followers and emissary’s of dice Christ, can I ever be forgiven?!? I Had a slow spell cast on me mid fight, meaning I had a total of -4 to dex. In a last ditch move on my turn, I wanted to roll a divine smite. My DM took a peek at my character sheet and thought the slow spell meant only a -1 to my dex (she mustn’t have seen that my dex was naturally a -3, for a -4 overall) and encouraged me to roll this divine smite. The table was SO pumped because we were heading toward a TPK so I went along with it but I felt awful instantly, as I ended up rolling a 19, which with my “-1” was JUST enough to do significant damage to the big bad to get us out of a TPK scenario . Please tell me, will dice christ forgive me?

Bellamy Posey

Side Note: My tech litteracy peeked with Google Drive in 2012 and this is the first time I've ever... um... forumed. Or submitted words on patron 😵‍💫 I have a shaky suspicion that I've broken a rule by commenting. If anyone would like to take the conversation off this sacred platform of Dungeon Court case submission, please hit me up on Instagram @bellaciraptor_yes. I beg for forgiveness, and in penance will wait another 10 moons before posting something again.

sam orchard

To the honourable justices and the bailiff who eats corn the long way. I present the case of the problem player getting repeatedly murdered and left for dead. For context I play with a group who can get very crunchy and for the most part enjoys difficult combat and the consequence of death. And then there's Ben. Ben who rolled up Arthus (as in the lich king) word for word for his backstory. I did my best and pivoted the story but the corruption ark he planned for himself ended with the party leaving him for dead. This was despite me mentioning that nearby druids could return Arthus to the party. His next 3 of Ben's characters were joke characters that got stale after 1 session, including a character that retconned another player backstory by being pregnant with their characters child. All left for dead by the party despite having a way to return him. Since the completion of the campaign this guy has said he felt upset that his characters kept getting killed and that he felt targeted by me. So judges, am i in the wrong for killing this player multiple times, or is the party in the wrong for not respecting Ben's desire to play world of warcraft at the table? PS. Despite my best efforts, no other characters were killed in this campaign

Bukvar's Assistant Isy F

May it please the court as well as my favorite sometimes streamer / painter Jake. I was playing a home-brewed campaign as a void sorcerer. I had spent many sessions sacrificing role-play in order to learn void magic, as the DM said if I was studying I wasn't here. During a battle the party accidentally travelled through the void via a mirror. Once on the other side and out of combat I asked to investigate as I had not cast anything. I was ignored and the DM asked our barbarian to roll for an attack. He rolled and he passed. The DM informed us the barbarian had smashed the mirror and I could not roll for an investigation check. I ask the court, I know I am being taken to the raspberry patch 🤣 but was the Barbarian wrong to roll and go along, given I had clearly asked to roll and was ignored. PS: The Barbrian is my fiancee of 10 years and we no longer play with this DM, due to loosing interest as I couldn't actually play. My fiancee now DMs a new campaign for 4 out of 6 of the party members.

Crickadeekat

Dear all y'all: I play in a couple campaigns with friends I met online during the early days of the pandemic. Our most experienced player keeps ditching his characters to play new ones, and it bugs me. I haven't spoken up about it, but I sort of want to. Is there an unspoken limit to the number of characters that you opt to ditch/play throughout the campaign, and should the DM have more of a backbone about it? I humbly await your ruling.

Connor

To the judgmental judges and Schrödinger’s bailiff who both is and is not Jake until the box he is kept in between cases is opened, I present the case of the Exploded Healer. I joined an elder scrolls themed campaign a few months ago. During the last session I was in, the party had a random encounter with a mysterious keyhole in the side of a hill. Up to this point, I had been making small but annoying asks that were getting on the DM’s nerves. For example, when I put a stick in the lock and got shocked, I replied, “But wood is not conductive.” We briefly argued but I conceded and took the damage. After some time investigating, we opened an opaque portal. Half of the party, myself included, went through and left the other half behind. Once there, we encountered a Daedric god who hosted a tournament. I wanted to get the rest of the party through the portal through an in-game means, so I tried addressing the god to see if they could send a message to another member who worshipped Daedra. The DM informed me my mouth had been sealed shut and continued talking about the tournament. When he said we would have some time to prepare, I asked how much time, hoping to get a long rest since we had already encountered several enemies. The DM then said, “This might seem rude to you,” then dealt forty points of damage with no save, and said (as the Daedra), “The next time you speak to me I will kill you,” so I said, “Go ahead and kill me.” He then blew up my character and I died instantly, leaving the other party members to pick through my remains for the health potions I had been carrying. I did not roll in a new character. My question for the court is; did my needling warrant such a reaction, or did the DM over-react? Also, should I have taken lightning damage through a wooden stick? I fling myself at your ankles to await your cruel and beautiful judgement.

Epilogue

I have a dice Christ confession - or a witnessing?? I was DMing newbies through a homebrew version of Jurassic Park II: The Lost World and they were at the part where they were trapped in the trailer by two angry TRex. Now I thought they would remember this part of the movie because it haunted my dreams as a child, but they were adamant that the best way to deal with this was to stay put in the trailer with barred windows, even as the TRex were knocking it around. I was quietly freaking out because we were heading for a TPK for my bb newbies when one of the PCs (Ian Malcom) remembered they had a "Chaos Roll" once a day. (Basically if they roll high enough, I tell them what's going to happen. He definitely has it in the movie). Just as I was bargaining with myself what I would give them for what roll, the player rolled a Nat 20 and they were able to escape before the TRex sent the trailer over the cliff. I am convinced they were only able to do this through the power of Dice Christ and his Light. For in his Light we all walk. Amen.

Polina Milashevskaya

What the actual F 😂 your DM ignored you?! I bet you are a woman and a DM is a man?;)

Bukvar's Assistant Isy F

You guessed it! The DM was my fiancees best friend since childhood. That dude really did not like me. 🤣 They're not really close anymore, but not becuase of this. I think this was just the nail in the coffin.

Polina Milashevskaya

Erm. No.. also seeing somebody doesn’t mean that he claimed this person as a property. He could have given it a shot with an NPC, and have a funny competition Moonshine-Hardwon style. But he chose a path of toxicity.

Polina Milashevskaya

Lol him rage-quitting is the best evidence that he did cheat.

Bright Morning

To Bailiff Jake (who is my favorite), and the rest of ya: I present the case of the chatty Firbolg. I’m currently running a Wild Beyond The Witchlight campaign with some friends. One of them is playing a Firbolg Ranger named Rue, who’s had her ability to smile stolen. This was my first time running a game for a Firbolg and didn’t know much about them, but i thought, “Hey, it’s core dnd content! How much different could it be?”. Things were going great until the group was attacked by brigands with a giant snail carrying their stuff. Once the brigands were bested, Rue approached the giant snail and used her racial ability ‘Speech of Beast and Leaf’ to ask the beast of burden to lead them to their hideout. As the module had not planned for a PC to ask this snail anything i brushed it off and said the snail hid in its shell. Later this line of questioning continued with random toads I’d mentioned when describing a swampy ambiance, some sad trees, the birds in the trees… all attempts ended about the same. None were helpful. I spent all my time researching the actually sentient creatures and their whole deal, you can’t expect me to give a personality and motive to every living thing this Firbolg steps over! After the session the player asked me privately if she was using the skill wrong, and i said no, but she seemed a bit defeated. Was i in the right to keep the story moving forward, and prioritize names characters in my story? Or did i step on a players attempt to use a cool ability to solve a problem in ways i hadn’t thought of?

Polina Milashevskaya

This is insane.. of course you should have left for your dear life!

Penfield

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the Bailiff, who’s as good as the char on New Haven pizza, I present to you the case of the Dubious Drowning. The fateful encounter took place along a narrow passage between a cave wall and the subterranean lake. My cheerful but oblivious goliath cleric was knocked into the water by a creature on the path, where in full plate armor I quickly sank 25 feet to the bottom. Upon my turn my DM informs me that I will have to make athletics checks to try to swim to the surface otherwise my character will drown in only a few turns as I didn’t get a chance to get a full breath of air. My first role is a 4, which even with my +7 to athletics keeps me firmly on the bottom of the lake. The next turn I roll a 19 (12+7) and I’m still unable to swim. On the third turn, following the DM’s hints, I try to find the wall of the lake to climb back up. I roll a natural 20! My DM tells me I make it 10 feet up the wall, but if I fail again before I make it to the surface, I will sink to the bottom. Lo and behold the next turn I fail my check and slide back to the not-very-deeps. My player ended up drowning as I couldn’t roll above the DC 25 athletics check enough times in a row and my friends were unable to help me in time (they were in combat and unable to see me in the dark waters). Was I done dirty by the destructive and displeasing DM? Or am I just a pouty player paying penance for poor planning? Note (if the Bailiff determines it relevant): We were not a serious group. In the previous campaign, of the same vibes, we had players named Boop and Poob, and a lizardfolk monk that seduced (and satisfied) every serious NPC she could.

Tyler W.

May it please the Honourable Judges of the Court, and the guy you have to invite to a wedding because you’re friends with his wife, Jack. I present the case of the Love Stuck Hero. A few years ago, I was playing in a campaign with a few friends from college, and in Character Creation, told the DM that romance might be fun to try out. They agreed and we came to a conclusion on how it would look together. As the campaign went on, the relationship started mirroring my real-life relationship with an ex to a frightening degree. I tried to have my character break up with their partner, but the DM guilted my character into continuing the relationship. I capitulated because I didn’t want to cause drama. I kept trying to get them out of the relationship any way I could, only to find my character trapped every time. The campaign died out soon after, so I never got to say anything. I ask you, O Judges, what should I have done differently? Should I have just talked to the DM instead?

Crescent Minor

I am beneath even the Baliff, but my 2 cents is that if my player had been trying to get out of something for a few turns, then rolled a nat 20, I'd call it good.

Natural Dragon

To the honorable Judges of the court and to the wrongfully disbarred former judge of Boston who hopefully will be deemed honorable once again in Bean Town, I present the case of the Patient DM and the forgetful wizard Player. I’ve been playing D&D since 2021. I had never DMed that was till the latest season of stranger things came out. Over the pandemic myself and the people I work with have become very close. They all asked if I could DM. I agreed. Since then we have played 7 games over the course of many months sometimes it takes 2-3 months per session but usually month to month. While none of them have played D&D before All of my players have really started to pick up the mechanics of the game except for my wizard. Before every session I text the group to look over their characters sheet, look at their character class in the players handbook and to review spells and a abilities so they ask me any questions before the game if they have them. I will even send D&D tutorial videos from YouTube to refresh them. I encourage them to listen to your podcast too. While my other players have questions here and there and I try to remind them of small things during the game none of them cause me an issue. Honestly I don’t mind helping with small things that new players are curious or don’t understand and if they have big questions for them to please just ask before the game so I can look it up. My wizard forgets how many spells he knows, he doesn’t count his spell slots, he forgets his subclass, he thinks he should be able to cast third level spells when he was a 3rd level wizard and in our last few games he started using hellish rebuke. After seeing hellish rebuke in action I thought I might pick it up for a curse of strahd campaign where I’m an arcane trickster bladesinger. When looking it up I found it was a warlock spell only. The wizard is a human wizard who has not multiclassed, taken a feat or has some racial bonus for the spell. I understand the mechanics and rules very well but not spells. Now this wouldn’t really be a big deal as all my players are still pretty new. Last session the players were discussing how much gold each one has. My wizard said don’t forget to add the one gold piece per diem we get each day. I was floored. I had forgotten in our first session (that was supposed to be a one shot I home brewed that we just continued from) I had mentioned that the NPC would pay them one piece a day for body guard work. When he said that I wanted to yell at him. Every session he is the least prepared and most forgetful player yet he remembers that super small detail. I have to constantly coach him. He remembered the one gold piece per day per diem that I had said just to get the party on the adventure for our first session. He is still a new player but it’s so frustrating every session having to tell him the basic mechanics of his class and watching over his spells when my other players are really starting to get it. I feel like I put a lot of effort and work into being a DM and he can’t even read over his class before a session. Really I was fine helping him every session it was the one gold per diem that just pissed me off and almost set me off. I will add he’s a good person, has a family, is a good coworker and a friendly person. I do need to be able to work with this person. He’s at least 10 years older then me. I’m in my early 30’s. He is not my boss. This is just background to help your ruling. I have to ask you judges Am I overreacting that he would remember about one piece of per diem or should I say something? Do I need to be more aggressive with him about the rules and mechanics or do I need to take a chill pill. How would you handle a player like this? I await your judgment.

Jude Rollin

To the regal judges and Trevor's girlfriends husband. May it please the court. I bring you the case of my first major womp. I have been DMing a game in the eberron setting for 3 years now, my party were hunting down a necromancy cult and found their way to the cults hideout. One of the main encounters in the dungeon was a set of necromancers who were working together to summon an extremely large horde of zombies. To make the combat simpler I made a hoarde stat block for the zombies that did more damage the more health they had. During the encounter out cleric used destroy undead in the hopes of wiping out the whole hoard, however the stat block for the hoard was about a CR 10 so I told him they would only be turned not destroyed. But he loudly protested that they were all zombies so should in fact be destroyed. After about 10mins of heated debate I made a compromise and allowed him to instead deal a metric shit ton of radiant damage to the hoard, resulting in the encounter being significantly easier than it should have been. So I ask the question, should I have stood my ground? Should I have allowed destroy undead to work? Or was my compromise adequate? I lay myself before the court.

Xavior

Dear honourable Justices and then Bailiff with incredible calf's, I present the case of the discord prince, So me and a couple of friends, one of which is my gf started a weekend campaign. Everyone but me was new to the game and I'm still learning, we were playing on DND beyond and through discord our first session or two all was fine, but people wanted our characters to be doing stuff while not in session so we introduced a new discord for doing side activities/downtime stuff like working or just chatting so we could get to know each other. Well because I work a lot I couldn't do this throughout the week. My gf and the DM would RP all week together though. Well when I came back to the next session they inform us that her character is a prince of a long lost city, which at first I was like oh...ok but later when we needed money she was like oh I'll just dip into my cities funds. When we had to fight a dragon she summoned her army (we were like lv5) turns out the bbg was an ex lover who wanted the kingdom that the player now ruled, it started to cause issues between all of us and the party has since broken up. I ask is this my fault for not playing in the RP chat and just going with it and forgive are that they just new players who didn't know what this would do overtime? Also it was only four of us three players and the DM the other player who wasn't the prince turned out to be a vampire with a basement of bodies because she was killing of npcs in the city...that's a whole nother story though....but it was chaos.

vinicius fernandes

To the very real and fleshy judges Axford, Tanner, and Murphy and to the AI generated bailiff Jake.exe, I bring you the case of the contested kill stealing. My party likes to keep track of who gets the most kills in my campaign with the paladin having over 200 kills and the cleric having less than 20. My party was in the Feywild fighting a hag made out of a hundred hands and a blighted unicorn. During the fight, the cleric surrounded the hag with a wall of fire. When it became the paladin's turn, he decided to pick up the nearly dead unicorn and chuck it at the hag. I allowed it as an improvised weapon. Since he chucked it 30 feet at the hag, I ruled that it would be similar to fall damage, so 3d10 bludgeoning damage for each of them. This did not kill the unicorn, but it did fall in the fire from the wall of fire. At the start of the unicorn's turn, it took the fire damage and perished. The paladin argued that it should've been his kill since he placed it there, but I gave the kill to the cleric because he caused the wall of fire to appear. The paladin now claims that his kill was stolen. Was I wrong to give the kill to the cleric instead of to the paladin? I await your wisdom.

Carly Mackenzie

To the adequately punned and exalted judges and creatively insulted Baliff: I present the case of the Bitter Bitch (Me) I have been trying with limited success to be a part of a regular campaign for years, but rarely do the start align. At the start of a fresh new year at work, I messaged our new cohort of employees asking if anyone would like to start a campaign, explaining that while I did not know how to DM I would be willing to learn. Several players took me up on this offer, but in the time it took to schedule, get a story together, and fully learn to DM, all of my players had either dropped out, or worse, joined a concurrent campaign started by another employee that I was never asked to join or told about outside of gossip. I was so bitter and salty that I remained upset for the entire year and lamented my tail to anyone who would listen. When told I should just ask to join the campaign, I told them that the proverbial ship had sailed and they had every opportunity to ask me to join, considering I spent an entire Slack message begging for a chance to play a game. Am I right to be bitter? Was this just...really rude and inconsiderate? Or am I just remaining a bitter bitch. Justice Murph: I did get new friends, and I no longer work at this workplace. I await your wisdom. Edit: one minute has passed since submission, and I fear I did not explain enough how upset this made me. I am filled with a rage that requires a Wisom Saving Throw. This happened over a year and a half ago, and I am currently worked up about it just thinking of it.

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

Peter Mundell

A Dice Christ Confession A year ago, my family asked if I would run a D&D one-shot for them. My brother has watched some Critical Role, but his fiancée and our parents know next to nothing about the game other than the fact that they know how much I love it. I decided to run A Wild Sheep Chase, the first game I ever played in as a player. We got to the first encounter, and they were all rolling terribly before I rolled a nat 20. They continued to roll terribly and I rolled a second nat 20. And then a third. Not wanting to spoil their first time playing D&D, I fudged the second and third nat 20’s, making my bad guy roll with disadvantage despite the fact that he was supposed to have advantage. But when it came around to the second encounter, Dice Christ came through for my fam. The druid cast Pass Without Trace and no one rolled below a 15 on the die, gaining stealth checks of 25+. The rogue got a 21 Thieves’ Tool check to unlock the wizard’s door, and then they decided to lock the door behind them to keep the guards out. With their continually high stealth checks, they then tied up the wizard so he couldn’t even get initiative started. They managed to bypass the entire final encounter. I hope Dice Christ can forgive me for fudging those nat 20’s, but I thank them for the incredible rolls they gifted my family, even though I don’t think any of them rolled a single nat 20. Because of this blessing, my family looks forward to playing again.

Marge and in charge

A hearty greeting to the eloquent and all knowing Justices and a passive aggressive cough for the bailiff who is wearing way to much sex panther cologne. May it please the court, I think one of my players is suffering from main character syndrome and I don’t know how to alleviate their symptoms. I have a very large party (8) and I try really hard to make sure everyone gets a turn in the spot light while also keeping the rest of the party engaged. Usually it isn’t a problem, people are content to wait for their moment. However recently one of my players keeps butting in to senorios and conversations that don’t center their PC. The most recent offensives were them taking control of an investigation that a player with a PI background was leading because he “wasn’t doing it right” and also talking over conversations that a different PC has with their childhood friend to insult her because they think “she’s a huge bitch”. I’m not sure how to fix the issue with out sounding like a huge bitch myself but I trust that the court can deliver either swift justice or a soothing balm to my table 🙏

WindowMan RR

Dear my lowly lowly lowly lowly Judges and the most honorable and yoked Baliff lover of caw caw, I present to you the case of lantern hijinks. Our parties in the campaign I dms yuan Ti Rogue in our first session decided to steal from the jewelry store in a place inspired by galaderon, he then ran to the lower levels of the city to try and pawn off the stolen sapphire jewelry, but he was stalked by 4 bandits, he rolled a nat 20 on his perception and had a surprise round to act first, he removed the hood from his lantern, lit it with oil, then poured water on it causing an explosion and threw it at the bandits, killing everybody including him. Flash forward to our session yesterday, and he was trying to make his bullseye lantern fire an explosion in a specific direction. I shut him down saying no, he began to argue and tried to compromise saying he could blow a concentrated bolt of fire like a dragon with the lantern. I shut him down saying that fire and explosions do not behave like light, he ended up settling on some Molotov cocktails. Was I in the wrong for denying him a portable cone of fire lantern? Or was he overstepping his boundaries? I await the bailiffs judgement and maybe the justices or whatever

Adam Henning

To the Resplendent Judges and I think Bailiff Blake, I present a case/confession (?) of Bad Token Management. I am running a campaign directly inspired by Hot Boy Summer (thank you Emily for explaining all your mechanics in the Short Rests❤️). I have created created several battle maps from scratch because my players like to use Roll20, and I control the all the character tokens from my computer so my Players just tell me where they want to move. When the party was trying to sail through the magical storm and fighting the Henry Cavill bird, the bard named Ace (an intern for the Fantasy CIA who is in college to become a secret agent) failed a strength save and was blown by a gust of wind 10 feet in a random direction, which happened to push him off the back of the boat. However, after a full round of Ace struggling to escape a swirling whirlpool in the ocean and the other PCs trying to help, another player pointed out that Ace had actually moved to brace the mast of the ship on the turn before the saving throw, but I had forgotten to move his token on the map, so the 10ft gust shouldn’t have knocked him off the boat at all! I apologized but said we were already playing it out so it was too late to backtrack that much. In the end our monk almost drowned too trying to save Ace thanks to some bad dex rolls and the Druid had to shoot them with a grappling hook ballista at the last second to reel them in from the whirlpool, doing a lot of damage to Ace in the process. In the moment I thought it was a dramatic finale to the encounter (the gust was the final weather event before reaching the island) but after the encounter I felt bad that Ace had to suffer for my negligence. Should I have walked back a full round of combat to make up for my error in Token Management, or was I right to push on in my attempted drownings? (PS I love you all and wouldn’t have become a first time DM last year without this pod, so thank you for everything you do :)

Melon Bread

You weren’t rolling to hit with Dex right? It shouldn’t have any effect on your smites.

Mike

Was there any explanation for how the scores were generated? These are Rian Urphy stats.

Mila Janus

I wanna see the pawpaw tattoo so bad

Horse Jonathan

Honorable Judges, I know this is usually more of a civil court rather than a divorce court, but I am in crisis and hope to receive guidance from your wisdom. Jake is welcome to pitch in if necessary. I've been playing with a group for a little over half a year now, comprised of some friends I've met through my roommate – they all know each other from college, and our DM was her long-term boyfriend when we first started planning the sessions. Unfortunately, he and my roommate since had a messy break-up, but I continued playing with the group. The problem is that my roommate and I have since started dating. I've spoken to the DM and he was very cool about it, but my girlfriend/roommate/best friend has a real problem with it. I totally understand that it's weird for her, but I love playing D&D and I have no other friends who are into it, and I don't want to join an online league with strangers. Am I in the wrong here? Should I stop playing D&D with my girlfriend's ex and find another way to enjoy this hobby? Or should I continue and hope she understands? I understand some members of the court have much experience with relationship advice, so I humbly await your arbitration, and thank you for the guidance.

Noah Muruve

Corrupt judges and Golden Mic winner, the pinch himself, bailiff Josh, I bring forward the case of Vidcen’s broken bow. A while back I was a PC in a campaign wherein the DM decided to make Nat 1s more impactful. A typical nat 1 would leave a PC or NPC prone or something similar. The DM did a really good job with this mechanic and it made combat more dynamic and funnier. The problem lies in the fact that our party had a halfling ranger named Vidcen. After dozens of sessions of re-rolled 1s, Vidcen rolled two 1s in a row which led his beloved, overpowered bow, “Mama’s Longbow”, to shatter. This revealed a crystal linked to his story arc which we never got to see because our DM moved to Denver but I’m sure it would have been amazing (we miss you Nic!). For some players this moment would have been awesome, however Vidcen’s player was quite upset about it as 1. Vidcen was A ranger and his slightly overpowered bow was one of the only ways he could have an impact on combat, 2. He was A first time player who should not have been playing a ranger as he was really into combat mechanics etc. the next character he made was a Druid, and then an artificer, both of which I think suited him much better and 3. Although he was all in on roll play, he didn’t seem too interested in this character’s story arc and just wanted to ROLL SOME GOD DAMN DIE. So, was the DM overly harsh in taking away Vidcen’s pride and joy, or was a broken bow a fair outcome for something that only happens 1/400 rolls?