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D&D Court: Sphere and Ear Theory (Patreon)

Published:
2023-04-14 05:09:21
Imported:
2026-06
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AD-FREE EPISODE FOR $5+ PATRONS!

Dungeon Court is back in session! Join Justices Murphy, Tanner, Axford and the Lowly, Lowly, Lowly, Lowly, Lowly, Lowly, Lowly Bailiff Hurwitz as they convene to pass judgement on your trials at the table!

CREDITS:

Sound Mixing and Editing by Trevor Lyon

Dungeon Court Theme Song by Sam Weiller

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Comments

K

Yayayayay!

Jeff Osvold

What kind of pizza did you get tonight, Murph?

Xavier

Fuck yeah murph getting it done!!!

Q'Salvester

Emily was right about the sphere, if it is up slightly in the air the widest part of the sphere would also be raised potentially putting it where it would not hit targets 10 feet away, if the sphere has a 10 foot radius and you raise it 1 foot above the ground the widest part of the sphere is now 10 feet in the air meaning a target 10 feet from the center would likely be under it

Mason Shucart

Emily and Caldwell were totally right about the sphere hitting someone. You'd have to put the sphere 10+ feet above the ground to not hit the person. That would miss a decent amount of enemies.

Driftwood747

Counting the amount of times you say like now

Chase

Yeah, Emily is absolutely right - they're not raising it a little bit, they have to raise it a full 12 or so feet in the air to not hit their ally, assuming the ally was at the "center" of the blast. For enemies standing on the ground, only those in maybe a 5 foot radius sphere would be affected - anything further away and the blast would be above them. It's still possible but the blast won't be as effective.

Jack Jones

I was not expecting an orange fairy reference in the council of elders

jb

Although you don’t have to put it directly above the unconscious persion… you could put it a few feet up and a few feet to the side. Might get a few more people that way, depending on their positioning.

GeeseHowell

Day 1 of asking for the Flubber Mixed Bag

Archimedes64

For Like they should give them a title

Peter van Rosendal

Hilarious episode - Emily was right re: sphere but also super high for the first half?

boundspyral

In reference to the Name Change case, one of the players in a new campaign I'm in has named their character Hye. And I'm not sure if it's gonna get old, but currently everyone's loving the "Hey, Hye!" "Hello" bit that's going round the table. Will it be confusing at times? Maybe, but what's a DnD party if not sightly confused at times?

Pistols O'Brien

With the case of Lyk/Like, it's possible that the DM says like way too often and they named their character that to fuck with the DM

Thad

Wait...People got mad about Murph's stance on Anchorman? As a fan of the movie, nothing he said was wrong, man. 🤣

BeanCurdHero

Truly elevated of one my fav bits this ep. the Jake getting a "clean take" always got me, and then this one got a real spit take out of me.

PandamoniuMonarch

Wild that in the druid forced multiclass story, the dm didn't allow paladin OR cleric because paladins are Charisma while clerics and druids are wisdom

Pamphleteer

Why has Air Bud penetrated popular culture so much? Every DnD podcast I've listened to this week has referenced Air Bud in some way, and then I was watching the first season of Schmigadoon and they made a joke about the Air Bud Rule! I'm haunted by Air Bud references and I've never even seen the movie!

Gearbox

Murph was calling -10 to the druid's stats sloppy, but if anything I don't think it was enough. It still results in an array of 14, 16, 13, 17, 17, 20 for a level 5 character!

Bills Mcblow

This is some of the most wildly unhinged shit y'all have put out in a dog's age.

Grant Wilkerson

I'm really disappointed that Murph had to go so hard on Anchorman again. What's the beef Murph?

Stephen Fike

I love how we only got a couple of cases that spiraled into insane tangents

Mayor of Clown Town

Emily was gorgeously unhinged on this beautiful day in court

Tom J

There are currently 14 Movies in the Air Bud Series (1997-2013) btw. 5 Air Buds (Air Bud, Golden Receiver, World Pup, Seventh Inning Fetch, and Spikes Back), 7 Air Buddies (Air Buddies, Snow Buddies, Space Buddies, Santa Buddies, Spooky Buddies, Treasure Buddies, and Super Buddies), and 2 Christmas Spin-Offs from the Buddies Films (The Search for Santa Paws and Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups). That's 13 Sequels all because nobody thought to put in a rule that said a Dog Can't Play Basketball.

Obed Pacheco

Lykke Li has entered the chat?! Haha! Just call Lyke "Leaky" like the singer, or the more accurate swedish pronunciation (which I had to look up lol) "Lu-Kah"...or something like that :) Funny coincidence, I used to play Lykke Li's first three albums in the background while reading the 5e PHB back in 2014 and when I made my first two/three characters for D&D. Love how this came up here, haha!!

Jeffrey Steck, Lord of the Fjord

I totally forgot about the Flubber mo with Robin Williams. I do believe that Caldwell was correct, that the original was The Absent Minded Professor with Fred McMurry.

Nick

Thought I would put it out there for those interested, a flat sphere is called a circle.

happylinlin00

despite the seemingly sentimental reasoning, the fact that Like's PC's response was specifically "you're *railroading* my creative choice" and not something like "i'd rather not, i was really close with my grandma and naming my character after her is important to me" leads me to suspect that the PC is just using their grandma as an excuse to mess with the DM's speech habits at the very least it gives me the sense that the PC isn't acting in good faith, which would be extra nasty since theyre using grandma's name to do it smh best case scenario PC is genuine about the sentimentality, in which case i feel like they'd be more likely to also be understanding and compromise with the DM over using a title or the character's surname to refer to Like, or smth. maybe it's just me but i dont think playing the grandma card is actually that effective bc even if the PC's genuine about it, i'd bring up concerns about how potential d&d shenanigans might be awkward if the character has such an important namesake. unless everyone's super clear about expectations and stakes, i think naming characters after deceased relatives is something i'd wanna avoid

Deeleenee

Emily deserves the peace prize!!!! I think it’s easier to picture it projected onto a 2D battle map. If you take a slice of a sphere, you have a circle. If you lower the point, you can draw a 10 ft radius circle on your battle map. The higher you put the point, the smaller the circle slice is at humanoid height level, the smaller the aoe circle you would draw on your battle map. If you wanted to get really crunchy, maybe you could put the shatter point on the square *beside* the downed character? Thats where my singular brain cell stops though.

Johnny Clifton

The sphere conversation is hilarious. Of course Emily and Caldwell are correct. The higher you raise the center point of the basketball, the less jellow will be hit, width wise.

Connor Dub

CR3 set precedence for Lyke's case when Erika named her PC Yu

A.J.

i can't believe they forgot to mention that the PC with a 26 dex score name was actually rian urphy

ananarama

10/10 I want Dr. Emily Axford as my math teacher

Big Baby J

As a former math student, this hurts

Alex Moore

Assuming you raise the sphere 1 foot off the ground (seems reasonable to miss someone who is prone) then the "true" radius of the sphere for someone who is ~5'5" would be 8 feet. If it was cast on a tile to the side (5 feet away, I believe?), and not off the ground, then the prone person WOULD be unaffected, and people within four feet of them (on the other side of the sphere) would still be affected. Anyone who wants to try this out can input f(x) = -sqrt(100-(x-L)^2)+10+h (h and L are parameters) and g(x) = 5.5 into Desmos. Whatever you select for h will be how high off the ground the sphere is cast, and L will be how many feet off to the side you cast the spell. Where the line intersects the sphere is the limit for someone 5'5" to be affected when standing within the 10 foot radius. Assuming the player is prone at the origin. But if we had to do it this way, then if someone where to cast the spell with the widest part of the sphere aligned with the ground, then there would be a chance people's heads could poke outside the sphere and thus not be affected. I understand the math but I think I'm with Murph on this one, for simplicity.

Bubble-gun 🔫💖

For the “Lyke” character…if I were the DM in your campaign (or even the other players) I would constantly be doing mental gymnastics and it would be hard to stay focused. Why not choose another name related to your grandma? Maybe her favorite flower/stone/animal or something like that? (: Good luck!

Patrick Sullivan

The sphere/basketball bit was so good, but also I'm mad

Andy

If I had to guess, I'd say the dm in the first case is thinking about the logistics in terms of battle maps, not narrative. Technically, standing or prone, a PC still takes up the same 5 foot square on the map

Sam

Murph knew he messed up the second he said the word basketball

DC

I'll be the ninth person to say that Caldwell's and Dr. Axford's shared braincell is 100% correct about the shatter sphere. I am appalled by this injustice and demand that Justice Murph put his dice in jello.

Elizabeth Lees

It doesn’t have to be 12 feet in the air, the center point just has to be shifted up and over enough to keep the ally out of it. That could just be shifting to the left or right so the curve excludes the ally.

Chase

You're right, the way I imagined the scenario the fallen ally was basically in the center of the blast, surrounded by enemies. Either way, I think the answer is that yes, you can position it to avoid the ally, but it will most likely reduce the number of enemies you can hit with the blast.

Mary Emma G.

My uncle’s dog played AirBud in AirBuddies! Just a fun little almost famous thing 😜

An_Armed_Bear

Wow I can't believe Murph hates Anchorman so much, what's up with that?

Kaileigh Rose

You know? Emily was right about water. It is bad.

Carson Moore

this episode made me cry laughing, Jake’s tickling bit was so fucking good

Dax Motarex

Hearing y’all argue about basic spacial reasoning is truly one of life’s treasures

Johnny Clifton

He has to play his next session using dice made out of jello

JigMink

I think subtracting 10 from the bear-folk druid's stats sounds right since it sounds like they rolled stats as normal and then added 10 to the rolled stats. After subtracting 10 you get Str 14, Dex 16, Con 13, Int 7, Wis 10, Cha 7 which, while poorly optimized for a druid, are feasible stats and not that bad for other classes. Also, I didn't think Emily was dumb during her jello explanation. I thought she was high.

Frankenjam

My favourite thing in this world is Emily discovering, for the first time, very well known pop culture movies or TV shows from what should be her own era. (I'm about the same age as all of them, so it's extra weird just how much I also remember about things like Flubber after, like them, I haven't seen it since it was released)

Frankenjam

Would i be right in guessing that everyone in the media you consume is around 30ish to 40ish? Air Bud was heavily referenced when we (people from that age range) were in our formative years. Mainly because it's one of the most famous uses of the "There's nothing in the rules that say..." trope

Crits

I knew exactly where Emily was going when she brought up the basketball and jell-o, Murph's simply not on the level. That being said, I agree with Murph only bc as a DM I would be so annoyed if I had to geometry to determine who gets hit

Dag Swaniels

If I'm not mistaken, people were disappointed with Murph for saying that a player who names their character something like Sex Panther is someone who just doesn't care. I saw lots of comments saying that just because someone has a silly name, that doesn't mean they're not invested in the campaign.

Mauricio Caceres

I think if the player in the first case would've convinced the DM if they had busted out Pythagoras' theorem to make their case. Placing the center 10ft off the ground makes the blast radius completely tangential to the prone player, and even 6ft above ground the radius of the horizontal blast is sqrt(10^2 - 4^2) = 9.2ft, which would inflict damage on almost all opponents as an optimally placed sphere at a slightly lower height.

Excelsidorks!

Shout out to any players who've had to deal with DM's like the trainwrecks that get mentioned. That fact y'all still wanna play is proof of how amazing ttrpgs CAN be❤️

Aidan Warlow

This is one of the all time best Emily bits. Going on to credit Murph for all your success and ability too is next level. So good

Jac Stevens

I don't know if links work but idk how else to attach a picture

Martian

WHY DO YOU HATE FLUBBER MURPH

Ella B

Thank you for making me laugh so hard I couldn’t breath, it was a great way to start my Friday

Marge and in charge

Emily is right about water and she is brave and should be applauded for speaking up

Jake the Accountant

Anchor Man quoters were the most annoying people of that era. Murph doesn't miss

Kyle Corbett

I mean, if they were in the underdark, then the druid probably didn’t have a lot of familiar terrain, unless they were a circle of land underdark druid .

Mila Janus

Murph joining in and just allowing the chaos is always so wonderful. He is also correct about anchorman quotes.

michael biles

I'm sure someone already said it but baseball air bud was called "the 7th inning fetch"

Barbie Pootsky

My man, there are FOURTEEN Air Bud movies

Kris Barnes

Need a mixed bag where they all watch Anchorman

Garga Lenoir

People just don't understand what railroading is, they think it means "every time a GM takes a decision about your character". What it actually means is "when a GM has already a set story in mind and ignores/punishes all PC actions that don't go in that direction"

Garga Lenoir

Me : Oh I guess that first case will be really short, open and shut. Caldwell : Not on my fucking watch buckaroo!

Peter van Rosendal

I changed my mind. No way Emily could have remembered to replace like with in essence and fucking for the rest of the podcast, if she were as high as she sounded when explain jello cubes

ceeg

One up: My characters name is "Yoo". Lots of who's on first stuff happening

Buzz Hardin

Anyone on there happen to be TAZ fans as well as a NADDPod fan? The question where the party is facing a Treant inside of a city bank feel extremely inspired by the Petals to the Metal arc, no??

Nathan Wilson

So, I saw the absent minded professor when I was little, and liked it more than Flubber. Thanks for calling it out Tanner!

Koty Kai

Caldwell might remember- with Drawfee, Jacob wore layers of shirts and was fed yogurt. he was later made fun of for this and got called "yogi boy" for a WHILE and was associated with yogurt. the Lyke case reminded me of this!

Frank K

I actually disagree with the sphere thing, to an extent. Yes, technically you can do that, but as a DM, I constantly have to question my players: Really? You can pinpoint a location that is exactly 25 feet up and 100 feet away from you? Perfectly? You're like some Ph.D geometry professor? I just don't buy it. I allow it if its not overkill, but if they're trying to like thread the needle on too many things, no, in 6 seconds there's simply no way you could adequately judge that to perfection. Also, if Murph ever reads this, what Caldwell and Emily were trying to explain, is that if you were to fire a sphere above the center of a group, the people on the edges of it would not be hit. That's all they were trying to explain. If you rested a basketball on the ground, as you get closer to the equator of the basketball, it's further from the ground than the point that is touching the ground.

John Tackels

Im really gonna watch flubber now

Kendra Waters

Can we get a mixed bag where Emily watched Flubber for the first time?

AmberDextrous!

As soon as i heard the overstatted druid case, it sounded to me like they were told 10 was -average- for stats, and they took it to mean that 10 was -base- for stats and added their roll4/drop1 rolls to 10 (and just happened to roll pretty poorly on half of them) so the dm dropping the 20s by 10, while leaving the teen numbers alone is more than fair.

Jordan Lyons

@Sphere V Ear: One twelfth of the square root of (120^2 - (120+[inches between ground and AoE] - [height in inches of the enemies])^2). If the enemies are 5'10" and you cast the spell to leave 18 inches of space underneath, your AoE would be right around 8'3". Can someone double check my math/formula?

Queue

The DM should reward Like with a free familiar, named You.

W1LDF1RE

That moment when Emily wastes 12 minutes because she doesn’t know the difference between a sphere and a circle 🤦🏼‍♂️

RuinedDruid

Emily calling the scenes from fubber made my day!! I think I need more flubber talk in my life. I can tell you are all Flubber stans

jawnster

If you would like to experience jello horrors, check out the Facebook page called "Show Me Your Aspics"

Dylan McCollum

One of the things that went completely unaddressed during the moon druid stat case was the fact that it was the 22nd session of their THIRD campaign. This player isn't new.

Dislyked

This episode is trippy with a “Benjamin L.” Writing in and a character named “Lyke” cause my name is Benjamin Lyke.

Theodore Carraro

This is one of the funniest posts on the patreon of all time

Locemo

....why is the jello orange

chaoticnuetral66

one of the most off the wall episodes, and im like fuckin here for it haha

Lachy

Every time I glaze out for a second at work I immediately think "sorry, I was thinking about Flubber" and have to desperately repress laughs in meetings thank you

david day

Saying fucking instead of like is great until you say "yeah me Mike and his kid were errr fucking errr walking through that weird park" and you realise the gap was too long.. just a very specific warning

Justin Mitchell

Just have to let the Patreon know that Jake had me, fucking, literally cry-laughing while walking down the street. Pretty sure passersby thought I was, fucking, loosing my shit. Fucking, for real. 🤣🤣🤣

Azeem

Emily and Caldwell were making a completely fair point! When most people cast spells with spherical area of effect, they put the point on the ground. So they are really only using half the sphere. When you start raising the sphere, you risk losing coverage on the edges!

Isaac

Since Lyke is the grandma's surname, could the character instead go by the grandma's first name?

Mooncrest

*Spoilers for Flubber*

Gabriela

These guys don’t know anything about flubber

justdev

Thinking about Brandon eating his dice in season 2 of adventure high :)

fletcher

I have a lot of newer players in my campaign and if they mess things up I just go whoa hold on no way, like my friend was a level 5 warlock with 20hp and i was like hold up have you rolled hit dice? and she said "did i do what now?" and we just added to their hp on the spot. my one friend is more experienced tho and keeps trying to do extra bonus actions and i razz the hell out of him bc he knows better he just thinks he can catch me slipping bc he got away with it once. so i think it depends on the player how you handle someone messing up their stats so badly.

EmperorGreed

it's so incredible that caldwell and emily were absolutely right in the sphere and ear theory, they just couldn't express themselves at all coherently

Zoop

I think a great punishment for the Lyke case is that the dm from now on gets to refer to the character as “railroaded Lyke”

Zoop

In all seriousness, I assume the character Lyke has a last name so why not just compromise by calling him either his full name or his first name plus the first initial of his last name so for example if Lykes full name is Lyke Butler, agree to refer to him as Lyke B (or his full name; Lyke Butler)

Zoop

There was defintely also an air bud where he played volleyball and I believe there was a soccer one although the soccer one may have been an air buddies film. Additionally there were many air buddies movies including one where they go to space. Personally I tend not to include the air buddies movies in the air bud cannon bc they fundamentally change the cannon by giving all the dogs the ability of speach. Additionally, I would like to shout out the underrated series Most Valuable Primate (MVP) which is basically air bud but with a chimpanzee and is imo superior to air bud

Zach J

Please don't talk about math more complex than multiplication on the podcast again. This hurt my soul. Nobody brought up the height of the assailants, which is a massive oversight.

Natsuka

The sphere conversation was so hilariously over-complicated. For 28mm (1.1") mini figs, a bocce ball is pretty close in scale to the 10-foot-radius sphere, slightly too small. For plastic army men, usually 2" (~50mm), then a volleyball is a little bit larger than a 10-foot-radius sphere. Whatever the reference, lay one dude down, stand some other guys up in a circle around the prone dude, and check whether you can have the ball hit those guys' heads without touching the prone dude. Not perfectly to scale, but humanoids' heights can be all over the place anyway.

Natsuka

That's a good solution for allowing Lyke to keep the name. But also sentence that PC to having to DM a game of PCs named after the team in Who's On First, and see how much Lyke likes it.

StarsPaw-Pawn

“Flubber is… for sure a little guy” 😂

Colander

Scrolled down way too far and 9 months too late just to comment that I stand with Caldwell and Emily on the basketball and Jell-O conversation. They were in fact correct and because of the curvature of the sphere you would have a reduced effect and that could potentially hit fewer enemies. It's actually even more dramatic with fireball.

Dr. Eggman

I totally agree, because if you think of a basketball made of Jell-O the size of the earth, the circumference at southern altitudes are much smaller than the circumference at the Jell-O basketball's equator. Now shrink the Jell-O basketball down to a 10ft radius. If you move it further up to avoid the downed teammate, you also move the widest circumference (radius of 10 ft) up and above the enemy's ears, possibly excluding those right at 10 ft away since now their ears are at a lower altitude on the Jell-O basketball

happylinlin00

listening back on the "forced to take a level of paladin" case now that Fantasy High Junior Year Ep8 is out feels almost prophetic lmao

Aran Eardley

Ok I'm halfway through trying to understand Em talking about the basketball 😂😂 holy hell

WitchKnightRen

Murph is definitely treating it like it's a cylinder and not a spehere

Reverse Lamia

Hearing how many time they say “Like” while talking about the Lyke case is baffling

Rayne

“I’m crying because science brings me to tears” had me CACKLING

Lilli of the bog

These math people in the comments need to be told 'shut up, nerd'

Kellyd

I do not understand the Lyke/like thing at ALL - there's no way anyone would hear the filler word "like" in the middle of a normal sentence and think you were suddenly saying their name, and if they did just stop being friends with such pedantic freaks

OG Beef

But say you put the sphere 6 feet off the ground so the bottom of the sphere is 1 foot above the downed teammate. The widest part of the sphere is going to be a 5 foot radius at the height of 6 feet off the ground. Considering they were fighting orcs this is valid completely. If you’re dealing with smaller creatures then you can start missing.

Nehemiahdrums

Please do a view crew on flubber lol

Fxd Gear Queer

No chill at all. Imagine freaking out whenever someone gets something wrong from your specific field of interest, what an exhausting life. Just give yourself a sly chuckle and move on

Ryan Higgins

Em is *just* high enough to be perfect lol

Gabe Benninghoff

This is like two years ago but watching it today had to say that I ran into a problem a lot like this as a DM. I had a first time player who built a character and at lvl 8 used like a lvl 8 spell doing tons of damage. I asked during the session and let it fly but then afterwards met with her and we went over her stat sheet. I felt bad having not helped out and taken a look beforehand. Then in that campaign I had someone who had played a fighter before and with spells thought whatever level you were that was the spell level you had access to. I never caught that one (monks are confusing lol) but he got it figured out. Defenitly need to look at your players sheets before you begin the campaign and just do a quick once over! Happy that both cases for me were fun and easy and chill!

Liam McCabe

They are fuckin pissed in this episode. 10/10 no notes.

sam s.

“… now imagine there was jello.”

Venus Astria

Saying the other players have better stats than you while having three different stats over 20 is crazyyyy

Compound27

I feel like you can just call them by their class so "Wizard Lyk goes downstairs quiet like a cat" For the bear case, it was session 22 of their THIRD campaign! Lol if you don't know the game by then or others didn't notice seems wild

Nailah Renuka

all this time i thought Flubber was an Eddie Murphy film. i’m so flummoxed