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Cases Please! (Patreon)

Published:
2023-07-03 12:41:11
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Your honorable bailiff is BACK! Supreme Jake here to collect your grievances for Dungeon Court. Please submit your brief (I do beg!) right here on this thread and we will get you that justice.

Comments

Dmkampz

Welcome back!

Josh

hopefully making better judgments than the real supreme court ✋🫶

Jeff Merrill

CONGRATS! Also... Props to you for operating on such little sleep!

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?

Rain

Nothing but respect for MY Supreme Court 🫡

Giemja

Welcome back Jack!

Dantes Gutiérrez

No questions. Just wanted to say that the utter giddiness I had seeing our lowly lowly LOWLY bailiff was back is comparable to a child finding out they’re going to Disney World.

iamnotjackblack

The dude they had on 8bit book club like once

Noel H

WELCOME BACK BAILIFF JACK HURLEY

Ebony-Rose Ellis

that's so weird, haven't heard of a "Jake" but it'll be exciting to have someone new step in as bailiff

Darkrisky

The Daddy Killing Patron 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.

Nick Garito

Jake? The guy who abandoned his fans because he had a "kid" Okay pal. Nice try. Bring Jack back to the podcast

saavikams

hello honorable justices tanner, murphy, axford and i guess the bailiff too. i present to you the case of the cube dicked rouge. it was our first combat of the campaign and our rouge was failing miserably (rolled a 1, a 2, and another 1). naturally they were disappointed by getting to do absolutely nothing in combat while my paladin and our bard beat up the baddie so they decided to find new entertainment. completely unsanctioned they announced they were going to “roll for dick size” they rolled a nat 20. now they won’t stop mentioning their 20 inch penis claiming that it is canon because they rolled for it and got a nat 20. they mention it every session even now claiming that it is 20 inches on every side and they have a cube dick. should this unsanctioned roll be considered canon to the campaign?

Itamar

So I bought these really coll dice with a possum in them and they keep rolling nat 20's and my dick grew 70 inches, what do I do

Tim C

To the fastidious Supreme Crit Justices, and the somnolent Bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of the Randy Johnson-ed Death Knight. I DM a party of 8 level 19 characters, and we are approaching the end of our multi-year campaign. Last session, the party was fighting a CR26 monster (Orcus) who had raised two death knights to assist him. Four rounds into combat, our party's druid/barbarian was a raging Giant Ape, who was enlarged to gargantuan size by our artificer. On his next turn, he overpowered one of the death knights and threw them 40 feet directly into the boss. This was baller as fuck, so of course I was going to allow it. But I had to scramble to assign damage because fall damage rules would only be a measly 4d6, and this is the DnD equivalent of Randy Johnson's 100mph fastball that exploded that dove. I decided to have my player roll maximum fall damage, mostly to reward the party's creativity, which killed the death knight on impact. I now humbly ask you, how on earth do you assign non-traditional combat damage due to the insane antics of a squad of near-demigods? PS: my players would want me to add that the impact did 69 bludgeoning damage

Arwyn Robinson

Welcome back Jake! I hope baby and Jill are doing great!

Casey Alexander

To the humble court of judges and the returning Bailiff Jake. I come to you with the case of the fishing paladin. I play a wizard in a horror based game with a bunch of friends. I was invited to the game a little late but it’s very fun. However in recent times one player, our paladin, seems to find that he has to go fishing. It’s struck me as off the first time but it continued multiple times. This includes one time where he was there for about twenty minutes and then got up and left to fish. I don’t even know if he is still playing. Another player (one of his brother. His other brother is our dm) often just plays his character so we don’t have any gaps. I’m stuck with what to even say because this player is my dms brother. Any advice would be greatly appreciated because I love playing with these guys. Ps to my dm if you one day hear this I love your game I just wanna hear an outside opinion.

James Burnett

Honorable Judges as well as whoever is reading this case to them, I ask you for advice on Character Bleed and Player attachment. I was playing a game with some close friends of mine when the PC's were in a very percarious position, with the possibility of character death or even a TPK. A player suddenly broke down and said 'Please don't kill my character, I love them too much." I put a hard stop to the game and had a long conversation with the player, learning they started seeing a lot of themselves in the character they were playing. Thankfully everything was resolved amicably, a friendship is more important than any game, but I ask you judges: How do you prevent or resolve deep character bleed and players who become too attached to their PC's that bringing fictional harm to them starts to cause real-world mental harm?

Dave 3D Art

May it honor the judges of the supreme crit, and the returned bailiff of magnificent importance. I present to you the case of the abundant Ashardalon. I play as a 13th level Eladrin Bladesinger/Knowledge domain cleric, and I make a lot of use out of the spell "Ashardalon's Stride." It is a great way to deal out damage in combat, and greatly increase mobility. The one caveat being that the fire damage from the spell doesn't distinguish friend from foe. So while I deal a tremendous amount of damage, a little bit of it tends to be to my own party. Nobody is mad or angry but this is a question of liability. If a party member of mine goes down, and at some point in combat took damage from my stride am I liable? Do I have to pay for the resurrections and/or spell components to heal? I await your advice, and will adjust my playstyle accordingly. Dave

MkA7L

Welcome back, Jim!

Evan Cordero

The man, the myth, the dad is back!

Zarroc

Welcome back Jack!

Jack M

To the honorable justices and the bailiff Jad(hope everything with Tucker’s child is going well) Is there such a thing as a DM “wasting my time” in sessions I play with my cousins only once every month or two and the cousin DM always has the basic things take too long, For example most recently he had one of my cousins and I (level 8, her first session) fight an NPC for 4 rounds, with them not using any abilities, then in the 5th round they cast timestop, fly, meteor shower, and up casted lightning bolt, clearly showing they were too strong for us to fight which I feel could’ve been revealed much quicker Am I being a big baby or do I have a point that we should more efficiently use the time we have to play together.

Jack Dunn

To the highest and most honorable judges Murph, Em, and Caldy and the probably sleep deprived bailiff…whose name escapes me. I bring before you the case of the Character Kiboshing DM. Our DM wanted to run a heist one-shot from the Keys to the Golden vault. He provided us a list of classes and subclasses we could use and we agreed. He said we could multi class if we stuck to the list provided. This was done in February but the one-shot was not until June. In his initial posts he said not to create characters until the session 0 but said we could have some ideas. I love character creation and proceeded to make 12 mechanical character shells on Dnd beyond. When the DM heard about this, he became angry and said and I quote “I wanted you to follow directions just because I said them”. Your honorable judges, am I in the wrong for making not even full characters but just some mechanical groupings??? Or is the DM a tyrant who is over stepping his bounds and not letting players make characters by the rules he designed?? I await your decision. If you think I have misconstrued the DMs meanings, I have the messages threads to submit to evidence. Thank you. PS congrats to Jill and Tucker. Very progressive for Naddpod to let you have paternity leave.

Ross Gilliland

May it please the court and the unconventionally handsome bailiff, I present to you the case of the unrepentant player. Once while DMing I introduced my party to a village where everyone had a personal vampire who offered them protection in exchange for a regular blood supply, a la True Blood. My real life best friend and most problematic player decided his character (Hektor) would go to one of these friendly vampires and petition him 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.” Now for context, I had started this very session with a quick reminder to my players that their decisions will have in-game consequences, as I felt like my party of college friends had been getting a little TOO silly with their words and actions in-game. I felt very challenged in this 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 so obviously challenged my authority? I humbly await your decision.

James Hailstone

Dearest Cardinals of the Crit, I have a confession to make which I fear may result in my excommunication from the church. During the pandemic I started DM'ing a game for some friends over zoom. All was going well for a few months before I started to notice that people were distracted by other things or just not really engaged in the game and we were all just going through the motions... It was in this time that I strayed from the light of Dice Christ... In order to keep my interest in the game I would simply roll the dice for a check or attack and whatever number popped into my head that I believed would be the most interesting result, was the number that I announced to the group. I didn't abuse this power and just womp my players, but sometimes a 7 just seems more interesting that the 19 Dice Christ gives you. The game eventually fizzled out and we stopped playing but it has played on my mind since.. And every now and then when playing I get the itch to just say the most interesting number. I throw myself at the mercy of the church and am willing to accept any punishment , however severe.. I just need to be Clean.

Vincent Wood

To the honourable justices and the ex-wifeworm that still hangs around the old friend group even though its weird now Jake, I ask for your guidance on the creeping darkness of immortality. I am playing in a living multi-pc world where players travel across the border into a realm called the vale to carry out missions. At the end of a mission PCs are then transported back to HQ by mysterious black mists that return all foreign objects (within reason) to their place of origin. This works well because we all have busy lives, sessions run for a couple hours midweek, and the DM does a good job of it while managing changeable parties for a rolling cast of 8 PCs, but the problem is it’s made us invincible. We know when the end of sessions is coming up and will often enter encounters we otherwise wouldn’t because we know the ‘mists’ are coming. In our last session someone literally said ‘it’s cool it’s like 10:30 the mists will be here in a second anyway’ before launching an attack on two super high powered guardsmen we couldn’t bring down, killing a beloved NPC in the process but allowing us to escape. My PC has a real deathwish and as such always runs to the front of the fray, but has been saved from certain death twice by the mists decending. I beseech the court, should I confront my DM and demand death for me and my compatriots in the event of late night assaults, or should I know a good thing when I’ve got it and allow the stakes to come secondary to my need for a regular bedtime.

Felix Principe-gillespie

To the zesty justices and pungent bailiff I come before you seeking justice in the case of the warranted PVP. My party and I had fought to the top of a snowy mountain only to find an imprisoned white dragon, who claimed to be totally chill and friendly. My fellow party members decided to try and free the dragon while my character, begged them not to. I tried to convince them the dragon was likely evil and just trying to manipulate them. They would not listen. Eventually, I fired a spell at them, a fight broke out and my poor character was beaten to death by the party. The others freed the dragon and were promptly killed by it. To this day they insist I should have just helped them and PvP is never justified. I ask the court, can PvP ever be justified and did my poor character die in vain, I await your judgment.

David Lipscomb

Good morrow to the highest, most esteemed Judges of the land and Bailiff Jeff. I present the case of the pet Nothic. During lock down in 2020, I DMed the Mines of Phandelver starter kit for me and my wife. This was my first time DMing, but not first time playing. SPOILERS, when we got to the bandit hideout, we encountered the Nothic in the cave. My wife's bard cast charm person on it, (I know a Nothic is an abomination, not a person. I allowed it) then rolled a nat 20 on a persuasion check and said she wanted to keep the Nothic as a pet. I said that she couldn't do that because it's an abomination and people would run in fear and guards would attack it. She wouldn't be allowed in towns. She said she didn't care. I still said no, so she stopped playing the game that day and I never was able to get her to play with me again. So I ask, was I in the wrong here? Should I have allowed her to keep the Nothic as a pet even though she would be ostracized and attacked? What could I have done differently? I fall upon the mercy of the court.

Alex W

may it please the court, i bring to you a semi-confession/case. i dm for 3 groups in one world that started as a big group and then split off into sub groups. the issue comes into the fact of scheduling: one group meets way more regularly than the other two, and as such, they’ve level up more and i think we’re all more invested in that game than the other two groups. unfortunately, this makes me feel bad for my other groups! is there any way to get myself invested again in this world of the other two groups? the plan is to have them reunite to fight the bbeg, but i’m beginning to rethink that plan.

ChefJustinLane

DM Vs. Player, Honored Justices and Whomever Replaced Jack this week, I play in a streamed 5e campaign that has been running for over two years now. One of the players has a third party subclass that was built with support from the DM due to the player’s desired character arc. The class focuses heavily, almost exclusively on fire damage. The player has even spent resources on Elemental Adept to bypass fire resistance. However, every–and I did not say most, I said every–significant enemy we have faced since this subclass was introduced has been not just resistant to fire, but immune to fire. The player has voiced frustration on a number of occasions. To make matters worse, there is additional context in that this Player DM’d our Strahd campaign, and brutally murdered the character of our DM in this campaign. I ask you, judges: Is this a DM holding a grudge or otherwise intentionally punishing this player/character, or should the player just live with the fact that the whole world seems to be immune to fire damage and take some other damage types? Sincerely, Justin (@TheBrunchGuild)

Victoria Fair

Welcome back, Jake! Congratulations and I hope your family is doing well!

Dave 3D Art

It should be noted that I am only a single level of Cleric, and chose it for the additional languages, and skill bonuses. I do very little healing, and I am not the party's primary cleric.

Lemonlimepickle

Dear lofty esteemed Judges, and the controversial bailiff John, A month later and this has still bought contention to the table. I present a question to the court. How many times must you pose a question before no answer is concidered acceptance? I DM for a party of 6, we meet on the first Thursday of the month. In June we needed to move to the second Thursday of the month due to an event, we were all attending (the UK games expo 2023). I asked the group at the end of the previous session, if it was OK to move the week we would play. There were no objections! I reasked the same question the week before we would normally play, the week we would normally play, and during the event. If we were still OK to play the 2nd week of the month. Again no objections! Two days before the new date, 1 player said they could not make it, because of a routine dental appointment (booked many weeks before) and their partner - another player needed to drive them. Am I justified in my aggrivation? Should my other players suffer because of one person inability to look at a calendar? I humbly await the verdict from the court. Many thanks A very agreived DM

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. O 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?

David Lipscomb

Ps. This has nothing to do with why she's my ex wife. Hahaha

Cody W

To the now TWO honorable daddies (welcome back/congratulations Jake) of the court and the wonderful wife worm and dungeon daddy murph. I present the case of the premeditated campaign reset. I play twice a month in a currently level 5 campaign of 5 players of various ages and experiences and a first time dm. I joined late in this journey with some previous player difficulties. Recently my character was donjoned so I rolled a back up character I'm just as if not more excited to play as. The dm recently told me in private after I expressed how excited I was to play my backup character that I don't need to get too attached as he is planning to blow up the world and reset it so he can "do better." He clarified over text afterwards that he is going to let people keep what they want, so it does I guess it balances out? But it is difficult for me to look forward to the current session in anticipation of my choices not mattering? I wish to support my dm in what narrative they want to tell, but is there some way I can assist them without a universal reset/redo? They ask me for advice semi-often as I have the most dm experience. Thank you for your time and consideration in my case

Jacob Campbell

Congrats dad! Hope you and your family are doing well, I just ask you start bringing some dad jokes to the podcast.

Sam the BT

To the wonderful supreme bailiffs of the court, 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 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. 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 was 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.

Cam WH

To the kind-hearted, magnaminous, and beneficent judges, and that one guy who didn't turn up for a few weeks. Our party infiltrated a lycan city, and challenged the leader to a team vs team battle for the throne. Through some fantastic charisma rolls, they accepted and eventually we won the battle. One member of our party decided to collude with our DM and stage a betrayal, which was ultimately really freaking awesome. He (Varus) dealt the killing blow to the leader, and thus took the title. He immediately exclaimed "arrest them!" and our party was immediately split - some of us dived out of windows, others turned invisible, and the rest stayed to be put in chains. We then had a number of separate sessions where we played in our split party (one half one week, the other the next) and planned a jailbreak. My half of the party were the ones staging the jailbreak, and we eventually found our way through the sewers to a cell holding one of our party members. Upon entering, and starting to pick the locks so we can stealthily unlock all of the cells & get everyone free, another member of our party interrupted us (locked in another cell at the other end of the room) and started "banging loudly on the bars" and summoned his weapons to his side (a class feature, I believe) which immediately alerted the guards, who all rushed into the prison. Before this happened my half of the party was trying to tell him to be quiet so we can take the stealthy route, to which he replied "I can't see or hear you, and this is what my character would do" and accused us of metagaming. My half of the party is built for stealth, and we had been preparing for two sessions to stage our quiet jailbreak, with one of us even changing subclass to suit a stealthy approach (DM approved). Ultimately the session ended with us all being swarmed by guards and the betrayer in the very prison we broke into, with two members of our party being dead. I ask the judges - should have had our chance to try our stealthy approach? Is it metagaming to ask a party member to hold on a second so we can execute something we spent two sessions (6 hours) planning? I leave this in your clean, callous-free hands.

Robert

To the honorable justices and the humble, lowly, groveling (or proud, mighty, and glistening depending on the vibe this week) bailiff Jjkae I present the tale of the first time I ever played a TTRPG: I had wanted to play D&D for years and finally found friends who had a regular game. It was a superhero campaign where the villains were megacorporation-sponsored supervillains. I was invited to replace a player who had left and stepped into the shoes of an ice-themed superhero (think Frozone or Iceman). When I joined, the player I was replacing had gone rogue and left the character on his own separated from the other players. When it finally got around to my turn I found myself in a sewer where I encountered a character who unfurled gigantic thorny plants and introduced themselves in a manic manner with a very clearly evil name (along the lines of Dr. Doom). I wanted to approach him and shake his hand and say “ice to meet you” and then use my ice knife power to attack this very clearly evil villain. The DM pushed back on this decision, asking why I was attacking him. I said that he was obviously a villain so I was going to preemptively strike. He was insistent that my character (a superhero) wouldn’t think this character was a villain since all he did was present himself as a manic mad scientist in a sewer and have a evil name. I eventually gave in and said fine and didn’t attack. Moments later the villain hit a switch and his enormous Godzilla-esque mechanical spider erupted up from the sewers and started destroying the city with its mechanical legs and was launching bombs en masse. This villain did not have any super durability and was exclusively protected by his technology and mad science. If I had been allowed to do “ice to meet you” my character would have been able to prevent this major attack on an American city. So I ask the court - was I robbed? Should I have been able to preempt this attack and save the city like Tom Cruise in Minority Report (I think, I haven’t seen the movie)?

Evranight

Hello wonderful and benevolent judges and their nice friend who hangs out there, I present the case of the magic item issue, I'm playing in a campaign set in ice wind dale which is normally a rather grim dark setting that our DM has added his own twists to making it a truly dark setting filled with horror, I absolutely love our DM and his ability to write monsters that haunt me to this day is amazing, my issue? In 15 sessions we have yet to get a single magic item or even a plus one sword, I was aware and loved going in that this would be a very hard campaign and have no issues that these things would be scarce in nature but didn't think there would be none at all, to further complicate the issue I am playing one of two magic casters (a war domain cleric) and in each town we come to there have been issues that only a cleric can solve causing me to burn alot of slots, our most recent session was a desperate rush to remove the curses on a group of children that worked as infection spreading out if I couldn't heal them all, this ultimately ended with 8/10 of the children surviving but our DM narrated a heart breaking scene where my character was forced to leave the last two kids which honestly left me quite stressed and since then I haven't been able to think how all of the magic issues fall to my PC to solve, am I wrong to complain about the lack of magical item assistance in a grim setting or has my DM let things get a bit too dark?

Spencer

To the honourable judges and that one guy whose name escape me right now. I bring you the case of the Sassy Dad. last Christmas I decided to make my dad and sister a one shot complete with custom maps, minis and props all DIY’ed and packaged up like a present. They were super excited to play as they had never played dnd before and when it came to playing they honestly took to it like fish to water in all aspects but one. My dad couldn’t seem to understand that NPC’s continue to exist in a scene even when they aren’t being spoken to. He and my sister were trying to gain entry to a part of town that is made up of a close nit gaggle of thieves and adventurers, upon entrance to the gate an NPC gave them a hard time entering and my dad and sisters PC’s began loudly talking about how they planned to sneak in or what tactics they could use to get him to let them in. I asked if this was in character and they said yes, I then asked if they had taken any measures to be quiet or step away and they said no. Above game I informed them that the guy could hear them and that it would be a good idea to try and have this conversation else where, my dad then said ‘but we’re not talking to him and you are behind the screen (referencing my DM screen, sassy phrasing but ok, go off pops)’ I told him that NPCS are still there and with you even when they’re not talking. We moved forward and I rolled to see how much of the conversation he was paying attention to raised the DC’s for persuading him accordingly. Do you think I should have let it slide considering that it was his first time playing or was I right to try and explain how it all worked? I leave myself and my father in your judgy little hands. JACK! THAT ONE GUYS NAME WAS JACK!

Zachary Armstrong

Perth Live Show Confession All knowing eminences of the church of Dice Christ, I must confess my sin during the wonderful NADDPOD live show in Perth, Australia. Pre-show Context: I have been listening to NADDPOD since 2018 and have been praying for an Aus tour ever since. I convinced my cousins (that I play in a campaign with) to come to your show with me, and spend $175 on the VIP front row seats, on the release day. These two cousins had never listened to NADDPOD before when they agreed, but listened to the show in the weeks before and got hooked. Still, it was a big commitment from them. The incident of Sin During your post show dice throwing, one of Jake's dice bounced out of my hands to the rows behind me. I have never felt more devastated or like a failure. Then I see Jake coming to the front of the stage making strong un-breaking eye contact with my cousin who was standing next to me. Jake lobs a D10 towards my cousin and I lash out with my left hand and snatch the dice out of the air, inches from my cousin's hand. My cousin looks at me with such disappointment in his eyes, I look to Jake and see the same. Jake then, as the true legend he is, tosses my cousin another dice, a Witcher themed D6. I lay myself before the mercy of the church. PS, my cousin also took over as DM of our group after I started and realised I really wanted to be a player. The D10 has also never rolled below a 5, and is the only D10 I use. Also my cousins both just finished Episode 88 of the first campaign and have fallen truly, madly, deeply in love with NADDPOD. So thank you to all of your for bringing me and cousins even closer together ❤️

Benjamin Dale IV

The Case of the Failed Astral Pirate: Hello Honorable Judges and Daddy Bailiff, I play in a campaign where the premise is essentially a villainous Hogwarts. The DM put me and another PC in a situation where we had to fight to the death. Being uncomfortable with PvP, I told my DM before the session I was planning on escaping to the Astral plane to avoid the combat altogether and was fine playing a new character and writing this one off with a new backup character prepped. I looted the school's magical items, said my goodbyes to my closest friends, and used a portable hole and bag of holding to launch myself into the Astral plane with the intention of becoming a planar pirate. My DM said after 6 hours I appeared back in the same spot from where I had left because my character decided to come back. Since our game is streamed I didn't want to fight him about character motivation online even though I felt it made no sense. In the end, both PC's were killed as the victor of the fight was hit by a power word kill by the school's headmaster. Our bodies were then tossed into lava destroying any chance of revivify along with all of our magic items. I ask you, was I wrong for trying to avoid the combat and send off my character the way I wanted? Should I have accepted the PvP and put my feelings as a player/friend aside in an "evil" campaign? Also, this is hearsay, but the DM's girlfriend told me he had said the session before that me and the other PC "are cockroaches who refuse to die"... I eagerly await your decision

Caroline

Jake welcome back! Truly, no sassiness or sarcasm, congrats to you and your family! Okay so anyway - Justices of the court, clerics of the church, please tell me whether my impatience is a crime or a sin. I have the best D&D group in the realm: our group plays in-person once a month. We all love our benevolent dungeon daddy's homebrew world, and we're great teammates. HOWEVER... over the past six months or so I've been developing some serious pet peeves about the length of combat. Our bard never knows what they want to do with their turn. Our rogue rolls his rapier damage and his sneak attack damage separately. I could go on. Combat is so much more fun when it's fast-paced, and I think too much of our precious session time is spent on hemming and hawing. I haven't said anything, because I don't want to be That Guy. I believe I deserve at least a razzing to remind me that I have it really good with this group, and these little things don't matter. I also play a healing-focused cleric in the game and I am the note taker IRL, so I hope you don't tell my group to get rid of me. Also, the DM is my boyfriend and he listens to the show - shout out to my guy!

Josh Wolff

Dearest Judges and Lowly/Highly Respected Daddy Bailiff (depending on which way Murphy is leaning) I bring to you the case of the Level 3 Baba Yaga. My friends and I recently started a new campaign (My best friend is the DM, Me, my wife, my wife's best friend, and my cousin are the players). During character creation, my cousin decided she wanted to play the Baba Yaga, and took 3 levels in Sorcerer. The DM said this was cool, and we started playing Waterdeep Dragon Heist. However, my cousin now insists that whenever someone slams a door, as the Baba Yaga, she can summon some kind of child demon to come and steal whoever slammed its soul. My friend the DM wants to bring up what on her character sheet describes this, but doesn't want to upset her, because she really likes playing the Baba Yaga. We also established that my character, a halfling bard inspired by Weird Al, has struck up a deal with her, and if I cross her she can steal my soul. I'm less concerned about the second one. Thanks and everything Josh

Mink

I hope the court's proceedings are finding the honorable Justices Axford, Tanner and Murphy well and the until recently MISSING Bailiff Janiel, decently enough. I present my case of "Magical Weapon=Magical Ammo?" We were at the beginning of combat after getting some pretty neat loot the session before, our rogue now rocking a rad magical crossbow. Upon firing a bolt at a baddie and calculating dammies, our DM (who, in all fairness, has been dming about 4 months, but has played for many years) said that just because his weapon was magical doesn't mean that the ammo itself was magical. The four of us players, our rogue being the DM of our long standing campaign, argued that that was the point of a magical weapon, you don't *need* magic ammo. We gave up and now have to make magic ammo for our rogue. It's not the only weird call he's made, gave exhaustion for a normal days worth of travel, constantly making super high DCs (25+) even though we're low level, etc... It's kinda made me not want to play anymore but he's my friend. I love him dearly and don't want to hurt his feelings but jeeesus man.

LAPROPO (The Language Proficiency Podcast)

Honorable daddies, docents, duncles and new actual dad, I humbly submit a short cheeky one: If I don’t have any submission to dungeon court AND play in several games, are my friends boring, and I need to get new friends because of that, or am I doing it right? I humbly await your honorable-parent-in-honor and new parent judgment. Paul D

Mayor of Clown Town

I present the case of the 5e HATING dm: Dearest, kindest justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, I bestow my story upon your newly-returned, freshly paternal bailiff Jake (congrats Jake!!) in hopes that you will be able to quell my qualms. I’m a huge actual-play show fan, but have only ever ACTUAL PLAYED myself once before for 3 sessions and have sought out a DM ever since I moved away from that one. Fast forward to now, my best friend who I introduced to D&D says her coworker DMs. Joy, joy across the land! The system I know is 5e, but he runs Pathfinder 1e. No problem!! We were eager to play and perfectly willing to learn some new mechanics to make it happen. It all went well and fine at first, spent a few hours doing character creation because as y’all know, Pathfinder is crunchy. As more time went on, and more differences between the systems came up, I started to pick up on a bit of hostility towards 5e from our new DM. It started with a lot of heavy comparison, a lot of “well this is why pathfinder is better”, and a lot of “so have you decided you like this system better yet?” To which I simply said “i dont feel like i have to choose one! I think this system is great, i appreciate you teaching it to us” And then we started rolling dice and getting into story, and things got a little intense. The first time we used mechanics that are pathfinder-exclusive or different from 5e, there was enthusiastic shouting from our DM saying “YEAH! FUCK 5e! SEE HOW MUCH BETTER THIS IS?” This continued throughout our entire first session and this type of disparaging talk about a system I know and love took me out of the game in a jarring way. It feels like I’m overreacting and should just let him love the system he’s running for us, but I also feel like there’s no reason for his plight to convert me from the system I cherish so deeply. I never once said I wasn’t excited to learn something new, had no complaints about the fact that it’s less accessible to new players, and absolutely went with it. Am I wrong to feel discouraged to keep playing with this guy? I love rolling my dice so much, built a character I’m so excited about, and don’t live in an area that’s abundant with welcoming groups. So I await your ruling, honorable justices. Is my discouragement valid or should I just power through for the sake of Maelstrom, my Undine Druid who I plan to multiclass with Bloodrager and want so badly to see live up to their potential??

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

BluDru (Blue-Drew)

Honourable Justices and supremely under-appreciated Bailiff. I stand before you asking "As a DM, how many failed attempts to get everyone together for gaming sessions is *enough*" We're all still good friends. 1 player has kids, 1 player lives 1hr drive away, 1 player runs their own business, 1 player is my husband and has never let me down. Have been running Tomb of Horrors since 2019, but sessions are so sporadic that they've only just figured out where the BBEG might be. I'm worried that our campaign will become yet another partially finished module. Players occasionally try organise a new session (showing they're still keen and having fun), but someone always bails eventually and we're at the part of the campaign where that's REALLY hard to work with...

Zhade

To the Dripfull Chomp Munchers and James the dad. Some weeks ago I have been engaged in a city sprawling gang War type campaign run by an old friend. The players were myself, a Half-orc samurai, my wife, a human child warlock adopted by a godly goldfish, a vampire bard and a human blood hunter. At the beginning of the campaign he asked if we were playing it good or evil. We all agreed to try out evil, however we quickly started to want our own way in the city without the restraints of working for a gang leader and doing all his bidding. We stealthily began negotiating with powerful locals and even procured a gambling den to use as our own hideout and source of income while we plan how to pursue our own goals. We thought we had done a pretty thorough job of hiding our trail overall until, after completing a mission to fight off a mudman in the rivers leaving our bard down, our party was suddenly jumped by assassins that said they were there to kill us on behalf of our "boss". Exhausted from the fight, the warlock went down with one knife crit which left my character the only one up (the fourth was busy that day). This led to several athletics checks to vreak away from the group carrying my two party members in a long backalley chase scene, constantly being told that they were on my heels only to discover, when stumbling across some city guards, that they were nowhere to be seen. The guards then tried arresting us on the spot but luckily a revived warlock cast invisibility and we snuck away. Were we wrong for feeling angry at this? It felt as though we had no real freedom to pursue our own goals and I stead had to adhear to this dms "good or bad" campaign structure. Or is our frustration just a part of the game? I await your Chomp Munching judgment

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

SnuggleB

To the beautiful and talented judges and the guy living in Tucker and Jill's new family home. I humbly offer the case of the never ending story. I've been dming a campaign for my friends for about 5 years now, it started as my first experience with Dnd, i assumed a homebrew campaign would mean it would be easy to run and i was wrong. But we are 5 years in, we've gone from marathon weekend long sessions for weekly 5 hour games, and we have finally caught up with one of the big bads, the mouse king (shout out kobold press). I have told my group after the fight with the mouse king win or fail i want the campiagn to stop and someone else take over as Dm for a while, this was mostly accepted apart from 1 player who keeps insisting this is just a brief pause. "We'll pick it up again in a month or two, will you be ready?" I've been asked by said player to which i've said no im not running it anymore but they keep insisting we will keep playing. I beg you for some guidance on this. Yours faithfully Ben

Fabrizio Moreno

Dear high priests and bible camp counselor, I present you, the "jawa incident" A few years ago, some friends and i were playing a star wars campaign, it was the first time for all of us, including me, playing a ttrpg. In our first session the wookie ranger encountered some jawas in the back of her store, and because some anxious, some misfortune and some WILD rolls (a nat1 in persuasion, 2 in intimidation and 19 and nat20 on attacks) all the jawas died in two rounds. Now, this wasn’t supposed to be a battle encounter, they were only the guys that give them their first mission (they were a married couple that escaped a slave trader and were looking for someone to go there and save their children), and I was desperate thinking what to do, until the fighter got a nat20 in investigation (wild rolls) and I told them everything. They were shocked, realizing that they killed some innocent people, destroyed a family and made some kids orphans. After that they continued with that mission and save the slaves, but the campaign finalized shortly after, and till this day the "jawa incident" it’s an obscure part of our lives, so I ask: was it wrong for me to tell them everything? Or should I just respect Dice Christ in the rolls and flow in the game? I expect your words

Tails with really supple birthing hips

Hello venerated yet oft under appreciated dms/justices of the highs crit, and the lowly bailiff that is cool now that they’ve joined the parent club even if they have to trade in the Apple car for a minivan. I present the case of the all nonsense luck check dm. In respect to the court I’ll keep this brief, however there could be a whole case built off this utter tomfoolery. I am/was a pc in a campaign lead by a fairly newer dm and everything was going very smooth until we met our first ability check where the dm proceeded to tell us after each check, “oh you got a 17? Well your luck check is 1 so you failed that jump and take 4damage and are slowed for 3 rounds. This gave the whole table pause but we just assumed it was a weird quirk of theirs … until it happened again and again, the dm would regularly yet randomly tell us that out “luck checks” were favorable or not after a check/attack/etc. After the first session me and anoth player approached the dm just to get the response, “ oh it’s like how I’m real life even if you do well you still can fail.” My question is, was this a valid reason to leave the table or am I just a knob for not liking a random added mechanic? P.s. the dm seemed to only allow one player to succeed wildly with these “luck checks” while me and the other pc got shafted.

River B.

Honorably Dishonorable Justices Axwizzle, Murphizzle, Tannizzle, and the dank-bippy-slim bailiff Jake! I prostrate myself before you for I must disclose the case of David and the Banshee. I was DMing a Pathfinder adventure path that takes place in fantastical Ancient Egypt. I wasn't very experienced at the time and had found myself a party that was struggling to meet regularly and we lost players pretty often to scheduling conflicts. So I had found yet another new player in hopes of revitalizing this dying campaign. We were right in the middle of a massive dungeon full of cultists and I needed to introduce this new player on short notice. So I hastily helped my friend put his character together in time for his first-ever session. We hadn't gotten around to picking out his starting equipment but I told him it'd be fine for one session, after all the party was mowing through everything up to this point. I was wrong. The party gets acquainted and shares all their dramatic lil backstories as is custom. They quickly get back into the swing of things, exploring the first few rooms with ease. That is until the meet the woe-ful tortured artist of a ghost, lamenting to themself in a room full of discarded canvases. The group had a habit of heckling NPCs and this particular one had a nasty reply for hecklers... The banshee's wail turned out to be more powerful than I expected, and managed to hit every party member but only one player failed their saving throw... the poor newbie with no stat-boosting items rolled a natural 1 and took enough damage to die instantly. My friend wasn't very interested in playing any more after that, after dying on their first saving throw on their first session ever. But he's since joined a new game of mine, a homebrew, and insists on holding this fluke over my head. Is my friend right to rent me a room in the razzberry patch or should the writers of this adventure path take some of the blame? I humbly await your decision, Your Honizzle.

Damon, Son of that one merchant named John

To the most honorable judges and the good bailiff Jackson. I bring to you the case of the murderous sister. I have been DMing the radiant citadel for my dad, stepmom, and little sister. My dad and stepmom are having fun roleplaying and fighting, but all my sister wants to do is fightand kill everyone and everything, including the other PCs. I ask you, should I let her champion fighter fight my DM PC and learn the outcome of trying to fight everyone the party comes across? P.S. my little sister is seven.

Tim

To the honorable justices Murphy, Tanner and Axford and Bailiff Jake, who’s honestly a pretty dope dude, I can’t lie. I give you the case of the multi universal Dragonborn: A couple of years ago, my friends and I started playing D&D. We played through our first campaign, got to level 20 and beat the bad guy. It was awesome. In that campaign, one of my friends played a Dragonborn warlock/paladin named Dryder. The campaign was DM’d by my friend, who had some experience. But after experiencing a full campaign (and listening to tons of NADDPOD and Dimension 20), I felt I was ready to take the reins. The campaign has been going great, except that recently the player who played Dryder in the first campaign wants me to bring Dryder into this second campaign. Everytime he’s incapacitated, he wants to “remember” some of his past life. Recently, I had him spend an hour (in game) attuning to a plot-relevant sword. During that time, I wanted to show him a plot-relevant flashback, but he secretly texted me and asked if this was a good time for him to remember some of his past self to identify the sword, which makes no sense because the world of the first campaign and the second campaign are completely unrelated. So I said “no.” Have I made the right decision, not letting him engage in the multiverse madness, or should I let him remember versions of his past self?

dani

To the most honorable justices, as well as Gemma’s dad or whatever (congrats!!), I present the case of The Shitheads in Delta Green. I’ve run a dnd campaign for my Shithead (used lovingly) brother and his friends for a while, and it recently came to an end. It was supposed to be a horror campaign but since they were first-time ttrpg players, they had trouble adjusting to horror and roleplaying. So I pivoted, turning my world into a comedic one, with japes abound, and frights infrequent. I have recently gotten into Delta Green (Call of Cthulhu but modern day). So, I wrote a one-shot that’s like if the Hangover was a cosmic horror film. I wrote poetry for the introduction, creating over 30 minutes of original music, and spent at least 20 hours writing/creating everything. I first ran this oneshot for my other dnd group, who are seasoned roleplayers. It went AMAZINGLY, and one of them loved my writing so much that she ran it with my notes for her family. As a result, the expectations for my Shitheads were heightened. I hoped that since they had been playing ttrpg’s for over two years, and since the one shot ran like a crime procedural like NCIS, they would do great. The session was the worst we had ever played. They were always on their phones - nothing new but they would interrupt my descriptions to show each other weird ass memes. They also refused to take anything seriously. When interviewing a grieving mother about her dead SIXTEEN YEAR OLD daughter, they asked if the daughter and her only friend were *making scissoring motion with hands*. I laughed and said “haha no really what do you say to her?” and they said “what I just said.” Eventually I had to stop the session early because they were all laughing so hard from a joke one of them made, they couldn’t even investigate the dead girl’s room. Am I in the wrong for having too high of expectations for these people that my therapist literally only knows as the Shitheads? I humbly await your ruling. Also, congrats again, Jake :)

Matthew Rudland Barfoot

To the honourable daddy bailiff and the lowly lowly, lowly cruchwrap supreme crit justices. I bring you the case of the freestyled beyond the witchlight. My DM is a recent DM with no prior experience, other than as a player. We've been playing Wild beyond the witchlight for a few months and aside from this being unequivocally the campiest and most laborsome WOTC release I've played (too much lore) our DM does not appear to understand the basic rules of play. To keep it breif and to date, most players complete 2-3 actions per turn, including multiple spells. Equally, when encounters don't go how the DM plans, he just shuts down play and says "the npc leaves and is gone" when I try to chase and rely on my monks fast movement speed. He says "No, they are gone". He also gives NPCs first initiative everytime, leaving us at clear disadvantage and taking the fun out of tactics. The DM is my good freind and he is clearly trying but he appears to find the system overwhelming and not know how to play. I don't want to rules lawyer or backseat DM. Should I sit down and take it or should I continue to encourage my DM to consider the state of play?

Vera

Hello to our righteous and empathic judges and of course who could forget Jork. I present the case of the druids animal companion. This happened 4 years ago during a first time DND session for me, my friend (The DM), his uncle and cousin. The DM was introducing his cousins character, a druid, after mine and his uncle had met and were walking down a road by a forest. The druid came running out of the forest and the DM had me roll a perception check. I forget exactly the roll but it was at least above a 14. The way the scene was described was that the druid was being chased by some black mass. I then used eldritch blast, Critted, and one shot the black mass that ended up being the druids wolf companion. This moment was mostly treated as a non event except for many times over the years when I would defend my choice or the DM would bring it up as "you just attacked the first chance, why didn't you do literally anything else". Of course this is good natured poking fun at each other. Was it fair game to attack what seemed like an enemy after an okay ish perception check or should I have stowed my trigger finger and waited to see what came of this character introduction. I await your just judgement. P.S years later during my first campaign being the DM the same cousin whomped me and destroyed an entire encounter involving dire wolves with the spell spike growth and I couldn't have been happier.

Klinton

Hello honorable justices and new daddy Jake (and Zaddy Murphy, looking good DM). Please use a pseudonym for me as I don’t know how to change it on here lol. We have a player at the table who frequently wants to change out his character. He kills characters off every few months in real time, sometimes by suicide, intentional death in battle, or he’ll ask the DM to think of ways to send off his old character and introduce his new ones to the group, and isn’t picking up on the fact no one finds it fun when we’re constantly dealing with essentially hirlings who die or disappear every few days in game time. We recently started a new campaign and we’re specifically told to build new characters with synergy and longevity in mind, and he showed up to session 2 trying to die off again as he had a new build. The party has tried to talk to him but he keeps saying he is bored already of the new character, and my suggestions he join another adventuring party outside of ours so he can play multiple characters go unheeded. What is your suggestion to curve this frustrating curiosity?

Kellie Cthulhu

To the most honored crit on high and the lowest of gutters bailiff I present the case of Not So Tricky Tarot. I was a DM for some friends in which the campaign was centered around the PCs living a groundhogs day situation where if they died, slept, or tried to leave the island town they lived on the day would reset. The eclectic group of adventurerers had met my hot goth self insert who was also aware the day was repeating. She was an information broker and quest giver so I thought it would be fun that every time the day reset and the PCs came to her for a quest or advice that she would offer the character either guaranteed basic items or to draw a tarot card for an item. The idea was I would at the table shuffle my physical tarot cards and whatever was drawn would correspond with an items table I had made that I felt matched the meaning of the card. This was NOT a secret deck of many things. I had explained this whole system I had created to my PCs when they all decided to choose basic items like rope or a lantern instead because they all did not want to chance drawing from the deck of many things. Still they refused to draw a single tarot card and due to scheduling and life things fell apart soon after. I humbly ask the court was I too pushy and at fault for trying to use tarot like a gachapon or should my players have been brave and at least attempted to use my cool system that took me way too much time to make? -Kellie

Aaaaaarushi An Anachronistic Enigma

Honorouble lads and gross lil boy, My players unfortunately have lives and careers and therefore we havent played in months. Do they suck? Txx x

Aaron Homme

To Their Excellencies the Supreme Crit Justices, and the venerable balliff Jake I present the case of The Deus Ex Machine Genie and the Sword of Legend. May it please the court, my party and I were playing in a homebrew campaign fighting against a fiendish army from the hells. We were level 9 and had traveled deep into the northern mountain range which was incredibly dangerous and difficult to track down a magic sword of legend that was necessary to trap the soul of the fiend lord in charge of the army, classic mcguffin stuff. After retrieving the sword my Sorcerer/Valor bard was the only one proficient with the weapon to use it, so it was decided my character would wield it. In the final battle my character was wielding it and a voice spoke to me from inside the sword asking “if it was time to aid the fight”. Things were looking dire so I said absolutely. Suddenly a genie/djinn (not revealed to us at the time,kinda just thought it was some guy) appeared out of the sword and began fighting the fiends with us. Given I had my magic spells and not really knowing who this was, I saw he had no weapons so I handed him the sword and said “go nuts but I will need this later to finish the fight.” The genie takes it and begins using it. The dm says “well he was already gonna be pretty good using his fists but now with this sword he is gonna be great”. Later in the fight we trap the BBEG with a magic item allowing us to make some attacks with the magic sword on my turn I turned to the genie and asked for the sword back to finish the fight, the DM makes me roll a persuasion check. I roll an 18. The DM says this is not enough to persuade a sentient magic being into giving up a legendary weapon. The genie on their turn then walks over and crits the BBEG landing the killing blow for us and trapping their soul while we were left just standing and watching. I was upset so much that after this session I told the DM I didn’t know I wanted to continue playing this campaign. I told him I was upset that the genie wouldn’t give the sword back and he replied that if I had rolled better he might’ve and if I wanted it I shouldn’t have given it to him in the first place, even though I thought he would need it to fight and the DM gave no indication this genie could fight by himself. I ask the court, was I wrong for being upset and thinking it was crap he wouldn’t give the sword back or was the DM right that I should’ve just held onto it myself and the genie was in the right to keep it and land the killing blow?

James Hoebbel

Honorable Judges, Honorable Baliffs, and Honorable newborns, I bring you the case of Tork de Ork. Tork de Ork meant so well, wanted to be the best big orc man, but was born missing legs and left arm (shameless self-insert.) To compensate, became an Armorer Artificer, an absolute UNIT if you will. He traveled with the party hoping to prove to the other Orks that you could be useful without limbs. However, we found ourselves downtown in Hadestown fighting 2 Balors. We kill one, and his explosion destroys a section of the floor. Our fighter falls and Tork de Ork flies in to save her. DM starts narrating how she is already in the water when Tork de Ork flies in, and de Ork gets wet. As the two surface, we are missing ALL metal, weapons, items, armor, everything. As an Armorer, this already hurts because infusions, magic casting, everything is tied to the armor and the metal tools it was carrying. As a disabled de Ork, it hurts worse because we are in the Underworld and there is no way to forge new armor, the next sessions are devoted to carrying Tork de Ork in a baby Bjorn, further emphasizing that he is useless without the armor as the DM tells me to play a different character. I beg your judgement, am I correct to feel slighted from the forced obsoletion, or is this harsh turn the correct character development that I needed, and I simply put too much into the character. I await your decision.

Court Davies

To the effervescent justices and the bailiff of varying degrees of lowliness, I bring you a philosophical quandary regarding the ethics of animating dead. Our party includes a lawful good paladin and a chaotic neutral circle of spores druid. One of the druid's favored strategies is to cast animate dead, to which the paladin fervently protests every time, claiming it to be immoral dark magic. The druid defends her actions by saying that in this context, the reanimation is natural and beautiful. Her class ability describes it as a corticep-like fungus merely taking control of a soulless meat mech. The paladin refutes by saying it is still disrespectful to the dead, and has even gone as far as to warn the druid that if she continues, he may eradicate her new undead followers to put the bodies to rest. So I ask the honorable justices, do you side with our paladin, who believes our druid is committing an evil act of dark magic regardless of the context, or do you side with our druid, who believes she is simply a perpetuator of the natural cycle? We anxiously await your qualified ruling!

Austin Gumbiner

To the powerful, sensual justices, and the newly Daddied bailiff Josh... I dm for a party consisting of my wife and several friends. Unfortunately, we are not able to meet very frequently, despite many of us hanging out often. At most, we are able to play every three months, but it can be even more spread out than that. For these rare meetings, I do intensive prep work for my players, and i'm always so excited to play, and they are, too. The problem is, whenever we get together to play, they all start smoking so much weed that they begin laughing at me and making fun of the things I say. The last time we played, I mispronounced a word, and they lambasted me to the point that it rivaled even the crabster and terdis debacles. I typically don't partake in the smoking, because I feel like I would dm worse while on it, but I have no issue with weed in general. I am in no way thin-skinned, nor am I insinuating that I can't take a playful ribbing, but all of these jokes at my expense end up cutting into so much of our play time that we rarely end up using even HALF of the stuff I prepared for. What should I do? Should I just prepare less? Should I toke up with my fellow players? Should I BAN the devils lettuce from the table altogether?!?! I humbly, and fervently await your ruling. Ps. I can't wait to see you guys in Minneapolis this fall, and im very excited you'll be able to experience the city outside of sub-zero temperatures this time :)

Aiden

forgive me dice for i have sinned. yesterday i killed my best friend in dnd. hes an asshat and a troublemaker and makes me work 3x as hard as dm, and he finally forced my hand. i had tricked the party into being captured and fighting in a gladiator ring for a douchebag king who was meant to be my bbeg with a personal connection to the my best friend of this story. i was letting them meet face to face and hoping for some tense moments, maybe some shit talk but no. hes fucking level 5 and he just charges straight at him with a knife only to be put down in a single turn. im really bummed about it and i feel as though maybe i should have been more lenient, but it just felt like such a stretch

Noble Actual Ballistics

Welcome back my fellow Jake! Finally after all this time I can finally get my case out there!!! To the ever esteemed Supreme Crit Judges, and our wonderful, dependable, and exquisitely eloquent Bailiff Jake. I come to you today with a case that nearly tore a campaign apart, and HEAVY DM sweat. I DM for my best friend and my brother. To make an already long winded story as short as possible, due to unforeseen circumstances, my friend’s character was rendered unconscious, and teleported to some unknown location (Deck of many things shenanigans). So, on the eve of a fight that would wrap up story arc, we had to sort of shoehorn in his backup character. The battle ensued between the party and the villain’s giant warforged battlebots, and my friends new character was fighting the villain on his own. The PC (a wizard) managed to trap him in the black tentacles spell. Thinking he would have time before the next round to get away, he was shocked to hear that the enemy had cast Misty step, and in an instant knocked him unconscious with a barrage of sword strikes. Now for the possible crime. The battle was taking place in a tight, underground hallway, and the warforged were holding back the rest of the party. On the villains next turn, who had been given lord of background as a sadistic killer, he could not get to anyone else and had nowhere to go, so I did the only thing I could think he would do, and that was to murder the PC beneath his feet. When the deed was done, my friend was quite angry at the whole situation, he thought the Misty step was bullshit and even though it is only verbally cast, he thought black tentacles should be able to cover the mouth of the trapped person. I immediately panicked and realized I needed to fix the situation, so I fudged some rolls on the clerics behalf to get through the warforged, and cast revivify on him, using a diamond I quickly made up that she had in an earring. Did I make multiple mistakes here? I was a relatively new dm at the time, but almost 2 years later, I have never heard the end of it. We still play together in the same campaign, and have even had players join, like my girlfriend. But I have never been able to get over whether or not I made good choices. I throw myself at the feet of the court, willing to bear any judgement you see fit.

Noble Actual Ballistics

I know this is long, but this has been eating at me for TWO YEARS. If the glorious bailiff wishes to paraphrase, it will absolutely not hurt my feelings. I just felt that some details were necessary.

Elana

Elana (she/they) dear grandest of the grand Justices and histories most beloved bailiff Tucker, my case I bring to you today is actually about a character I have not played yet. I'm running a campaign that has been going on for 2 and a half years now and is starting to come to a close, my brother has volunteered to DM for the next campaign so I can break away from the forever DM chains. however, the character I want to play is a human wizard who made it to graduation of her wizard school mostly by cheating on assignments, so at level one she'd have a higher charisma and deception than intelligence (her intelligence at Lv. 1 would probably be around 12-13) that way there could be some game mechanics playing into her character growth rather than having her spell casting modifier almost be max at low levels, the problem is that my brother hears this everytime I bring up how excited I am to play and tells me that the character journey he'd put me on is making my character realize she should have been a bard and start leveling in bard instead. Should I make a new character to play in this campaign or be extremely bull-headed that I want to play a wizard, or is he right and this isn't that great of a character concept..I await your judgment on my little problems

Caddy Wampus

To the venerable and sagacious Supreme Crit judges and the newly paternal bailiff, I present the case of the stagnant GM. I have been playing in a game with my partner, their friend and their friend's husband (the GM) for a couple of years. I absolutely love my character, Vasilisa the Witch (archfey warlock/divine sorcerer) whose patron is Baba Yaga, and my fellow players' characters. The problem is the GM. He has repeatedly engaged in many offenses the court has ruled against-- nerfed nat 20s, needlessly antagonistic NPCs, wild goose chase quests, etc. I have tried to give feedback to him and he will take it then do the same thing in a slightly different way. Currently our game is on hiatus because the GM was going through some personal stuff. In the meantime my partner and I have run mini campaigns that I enjoyed a lot more. The GM has recently said that he feels ready to get back to the campaign, but I'm not sure if he will run things any differently than before. I would hate to give up my beloved Vasilisa, but the mini campaigns were a lot more fun. Should I offer to GM a new campaign or do I give him another chance to show he can grow?

Hal Martenson

To the most honorable justices and Daddy Bailiff Jake, may it please the court, I bring you the case of the speedy weak gnome. I play a rogue/blade singer Wizard multi class in a modern day campaign set in a magical Dublin. I built my little guy to be a speedy criminal, and gave him expertise in acrobatics. I envisioned him hopping from fire escape to fire escape ala Spider-Man. But justices, I cannot trigger an acrobatics check to save my life. My DM (who I worship and would never cross) insists that anything involving jumping, grabbing, climbing, flipping, etc is Athletics. I’ve heard different DMs deal with Acrobatics and Athletics in different ways, but I’m begging the court to set a precedent. Can I use Acrobatics to be Spider-Man or are those kinds of antics rooted only in Athleticism? If they are, what can I use my expertise in Acrobatics for that isn’t putting on a trapeze show?

Bebs

Highly respectable Justices and that guy jack. At the beginning of one of our campaigns, the DM asked us to send him our backstories. I play a 1000 year old warlock named Marina Nyteshade who lives outside the swamp by herself. My husband plays Boudro Bumpkin, a half elf Druid who lives in the swamp (similar to the Crick). In my backstory I wrote that Marina was an orphan and made a deal with her patron to save her and her fellow orphans by killing the people who ran the orphanage and then running into the nearby woods and joining a little commune. Her orphans mixed with the commune and that became the Swamp. The DM liked it and okayed it and we thought it could be a fun reveal down the road. We also said that Marina fucked Boudro’s dad. Well, cut to down the road and my husband did not think it was very fun. He felt like I inserted myself too much into his backstory without clearing it with him and felt like I overstepped. Did i overstep and take away from his story? Or was it all in good fun? I prostrate myself before the court.

Proopypants

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

MJMM

May it please the Court and Bailiff which then may please or irritate the court. This is not a case but an update of a former case. Over 2 years ago I submitted the case of the tiny cow familiar named Abner*. That campaign recently ended, and the spark notes version of what happened is my character got turned from a Blue Dragonborn to a full Blue Dragon. He became a bad guy for awhile and even tried to kill Abner but they were saved by the other members of my party. Later my old character was changed to a Sapphire Dragon and regained their good alignment. We then had a tearful good bye with the party and Abner. My new character (Paladin) then prayed to his God for a way for Abner and my old character to be together again. (Meta gaming but wasn't called out on it) I didn't get a nat 20 but did a relgion check of 23, and Abner then changed from a Tiny cow to a Cow Dragon. As they flew off in the distance my character declared he would from then on do the GOMAD diet in thanks to the gods, but my DM said, "No." Which I respected! Abner and I thank you for your time!

Heathcliff Ryan

To the honourable justices most high and the sad little boy who just spilled his ice cream (Jake). I recently had to stop running an in person game with people I met on reddit. This was due to one player who kept rolling Nat 20s. We started off over zoom and these Nat 20s made me suspicious but when it became in person and I saw them in the flesh I was gobsmacked at the truly miraculous amount of 20s this player would roll. I would even be okay with this if they played it off as a character who was incredibly lucky but a bit of a doofus or whatever but this person played it very sincerely and emphasised how their character was just really just a really powerful, super smart person. I even tried to go for the angle that their character was super powerful and smart but struggled with understanding others a bit but they insisted their character was morally perfect and very good socially. I could feel the other PCs lose interest with this dynamic and one by one they all left. Was there something I could have done??

Nick Rees

Resplendent Judges and handsome yet hunched bailiff, I present the case of dragon PCs. I've been the dm of a 5 year campaign and our wizard recently acquired 9th level spells. After losing the ability to use Wish after using it only once, He used true polymorph to turn himself and the other 2 party members into gold dragons. With the dragons shapechange ability they could turn back into their humanoid form at will, so they all agreed. This presented an issue for me. With the dragons high CR most of my combat encounters skyrocketed to account for the dragons damage output and abilities. My players got upset saying they could rarely use their actual characters anymore. We reached an agreement and they aren't dragons anymore but I know the wizard is a little upset after losing 2 of his 9th lvl spells. What should I do?

Rebecca N

To the Highest Court in the Land and... Oh... He's back? *whispers to my lawyer next to me* "You didn't tell me he was coming back!"... Ahem. Anyway. My group has been trying out Pathfinder 2E recently, and to help us learn the system, our DM found a pre-written one shot, where the party plays as a group of Kobolds being sent to investigate some ruins that were discovered underneath the city. This ended up being split into two sessions, where we fought taxidermied dogs, haunted dolls on horses, and carnivorous plants. While we had opportunities to heal between these encounters, ultimately one by one the carnivorous plants took us all down. While some of us succeeded on our Death Saves and were technically stable (including my Alchemist, who had healing potions on her), the DM ruled it as a TPK. We mostly just laughed about it and moved on, and the DM is now trying to write a more heist-centric campaign where he heavily discourages fighting (Surely not related to the end of this one shot). But the question remains: Was this truly our parties first ever TPK? Or was there an opportunity for us to bounce back somehow? I await your judgment.

Patrick

A simple question I bring before daddy's old, daddy's new, worm wives and cool guys; During an interrogation me and a fellow player were putting the heat on a poor npc. Worried about the target getting spooked and running I pre-emptively kicked off combat. The DM calls for initiative and I roll terribly. This is fine until he says I'll have to wait for multiple other combatants to attack before I get mine! I actually think the call is mechanically correct, but logically it is almost paradoxical. How can a fight break out over an attack that hasn't actually happened yet? Did I deserve my opening strike? Or will you be delivering me a closing one?

Sam Ross

To the magnanimous Justices and the serviceable Baliff, I submit my case for your review. I was starting a new campaign, in which the initial adventure was the PCs attending the wake of an elderly pirate. My intention was to have the PCs be hired as Officers for the Rogue Trader ship 'The Woebegone' after impressing the crew by saving the newly inherited captain from assassination at this party. The new captain and inheritor of the ship was a baby, a fresh clone of the deceased former Captain. The assassin was to be the son and presumed heir of the dead Captain. So far, so good, until the PCs spoke with the son and agreed this pitch to help assassinate the baby in exchange for positions aboard the ship. All my PCs were on board with the scheme to whack the baby. At this point, I panicked, and came up with a second heir that approached the PCs with a scheme to freeze the baby in stasis Han Solo-style and give everyone jobs afterward. This caused a rift between my players, half still on team whack the baby, half team freeze the baby. In the end, they decided to try and stop the assassination plot, but I could tell this argument had sapped the energy from my party and burned the energy from the session. Was I wrong to panic and improve a new NPC after my PCs all happily signed on with the villain? Should I have gotten in the way of them whacking the baby?

Jay V

To our awe-inspiring and venerated judges, and our equally awe-inspiring though somewhat less venerated bailiff, I present the forgotten Silence. I was playing in a campaign recently with some online friends, playing a wizard/druid multiclass. As someone who has DMed a lot, and knows a lot of the silly rules and interactions, the DM would often ask me for help when she wasn't sure what the ruling should be RAW, and this was a position I treated with utmost respect. For one combat, the enemy ambushed us by casting Darkness and Silence, leaving us blind and silenced. As a caster without melee options, I spent the time between sessions scouring my spell cards and effects to find anything I could do to help the fight. We come back to the fight next session, and I'm eager to put my research to good use, but before my turn in initiative, the warlock takes her turn, and casts a spell, which I know requires a verbal component. I wait for the DM to mention it, since the Silence spell was, y'know, sort of the stakes of this combat, and I hear nothing. I then remind the group that we're under the effect of the Silence spell, and the warlock changes her action and instead engages in melee. The very next round, and again the warlock casts a verbal spell. This time I didn't say anything, but I have spent way too long since thinking about that combat, and the Silence spell but everyone except me forgot about. Judges, was I the problem player for trying to respect the stakes of the combat, or should the warlock have remembered the set-up of the fight before casting her spells?

Kyle Duggan

Honorable Justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, as well as the Bailiff, about whom we all have opinions, I present to you the case of the puzzle shortcut. For context, our group meets remotely. My fiancee and I use our own computers, but sit side by side as we play. Our party was presented with a coded message. I thought it might be a Caesar cipher, so I found a website that would help me decrypt the message. I had to try out several rotation of text offsets before finding the correct one, after which I triumphantly revealed the message to the party. My fiancee immediately accused me of cheating, since I had used a website to decode the message. I said that I had simply used a tool to make things quicker. We put it to our DM to decide if I had cheated. She was silent for a moment, then said, "Was that fun for you?" I argued that the fun part of the puzzle was figuring out the nature of the cipher rather than doing the busywork of transcoding it, letter by letter. Another player said that he was already trying to do that and had been looking forward to solving it by hand, but I said it would have taken him an incredibly long time just to find the correct offset, much less decode the entire message, grinding our entire session to a halt while we waited for him. I feel bad for upsetting our DM and stealing another player's fun, but I still think that what I did both made sense in context and does not constitute cheating. Still, I throw myself upon the mercy of the Court.

Cameron Kennedy

Oh exalted emissaries of dice christ I have a confession of mixed up DC's and passives we recently had a last minute cancellation for one of our dnd sessions so those of us who made it had a battle royale with characters we made on the spot but I made a mistake when calculating the spell dc for the chronorgy wizard I made as I accidentally made it using to formula for passive skills of 10+modifier instead of 8+proficiency+ability which caused me to have a save of 20 instead of 18 which I only realised after the fact but they did roll a 18 on a save against a lightning bolt which technically should've passed but failed instead. Over all i used a tether essence spell and another lightning bolt to win the fight and delt enough damage to kill both in that hit but I still feel guilty for the cheating. Please I accept any penance you deem fitting.

trashclown

Initiative is people realising danger is beginning, and reacting; people who roll higher on initiative than the initial aggressor are those seeing what's about to happen and reacting appropriately. Seeing someone reach for their sword, go to cast a spell, etc will make people either act in kind or go to stop you.

James Cockrum

If it pleases the court and the slightly less lowly than before bailiff (congrats on fatherhood, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me) I recently started a new job working for a technology company. One of the benefits of working there is access to cool things like giant touch screen displays. I plan on building a new gaming table with a 55” touchscreen display built in, but my current group only actually shows up for maybe 1 out of 4 sessions. Should I use this to try and draw them back? Or should I build it and start a new campaign with a more dedicated party?

Emmie

Welcome back and congratulations Jake! To the illustrious supreme crit justices and wayward bailiff, I present the case of the flying chair and the tree window. A few years ago I was DMing a oneshot for my regular group, the first time I had done so, and the final boss was a wizard who lived in a tower carved out of a giant oak tree. I described how the tower walls were thick and ancient wood, with natural windows formed from twisted hollows in the tree. The only means of entry was a single door at the base, but one of my players (who was playing an elderly eldritch knight convinced he was a wizard equipped with a broom of flying reskinned as a flying rocking chair) said he wanted to fly in through one of the windows on his chair. I tried to explain that the windows weren’t big enough, that they were literally just holes in the trunk of the tree rather than conventional windows, and as the tree was old and the wood was thick he couldn’t just crash through the gap. He said I was being ridiculous and trying to railroad them through the door and no window would be able to withstand a man crashing through with a chair. I caved immediately and let him do it because I didn’t want to be a bad railroading DM, but it’s always stuck with me. I throw myself on the mercy of the court: should I have fought back harder that an old man in a rocking chair can’t break a tree, or should I let it go and move on with my life?

MC

To the tough but fair justices, and the returning bailiff Jim (I think); I present the case of the Backstabbing Baron. I was new-ish to DND and playing a mini-campaign with a few friends and we were trying to take back a village from a local baron. It was a hard slog of a final fight and eventually all of my party members went down, leaving my dwarves cleric by himself. The DM made a speech for the Baron about how he was going to drink some ale next round if I wanted to try and stabilize my friends. I gave my DM a look out of character to see if he was serious, and he nodded. I’m sure you can guess where this is going but on my next turn, I healed my friends as best I could, and the baron promptly stabbed me in the back, and eventually TPK’d us. My DM said that I shouldn’t have trusted such a bad guy and was just showing that actions have consequences, but I think that I wasn’t trusting the baron, I was trusting my friend the DM, who nodded. I ask the court - did my friends and I get a well-deserved whomping or were these consequences unjust and unfair? I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Max Telmer

Welcome back brother! Hope the baby is doing well 🙂

Joe Lenton

To the honourable justices and the dirty daddy bailiff, I bring to you the case of the Dragon God PC. I DM for a group of 4, 2 of whom recently died when the dice decided to punish them. One of the players rolled his new character - Dragonborn fighter / rogue member of a heroes guild who had lost the power of his Breath Weapon. I said yes to the concept as I found nothing suspect. Two days after the first session my friend asked to have a zoom meeting to discuss his backstory, where he revealed that in fact the Dragonborn was actually the right hand of Bahamut, a Demi god in their own right who had decided to take mortal form to help the Platinum Dragon on earth. He assured me this would not be a problem but his last PC had similar “backdoor backstory”, so I have restricted a lot of how this backstory can factor in. Was I right to limit my friend knowing how this could turn out or am I stifling a creative idea? I await your judgment, may Bahamut keep you and may the Baba Yaga not take you this night.

Jen

To the mega-pious-popes of dice christ I come asking to be cleansed. I have a curse that I need lifted or simply need to learn to shut my DM mouth. I forget how jokes work and often say “Haha, if you roll a nat 20 sure.” And every. single. time. My players have rolled a nat twenty. Want immortality? *nat 20* Want a feat based off fried pickles? *nat 20* If you get a nat twenty on this next attack you want weapon buff?? *nat 20* Of course I always follow through and make sure my players have a great time. There are a lot more examples but I just can never learn my lesson. In the midst of a good time I am blinded by my hubris and will say those cursed words - “Haha, if you roll a nat 20, sure!” Please, I just want to make a joke and dangle the impossible without sealing my own fate. Dice christ be with you.

Hope Hughes

To the delectable judges and the capital B Bailiff Jake who we hope has had a wonderful paternity leave. I bring you the case of the altered backstory. We were playing a Strixhaven game where our DM asked us to provide a backstory that included an “emotional trigger” for why we had planeswalked to the academy. I created a rogue/sorcerer who had always been in the shadow of her sister and, after a vicious training session gone awry, took lightning damage from her sister that sent her to Strixhaven (with commissioned artwork with sick lightning scarring to boot). In our first session we did a flashback to this backstory, but the DM, roleplaying as my characters overbearing mother, forced the backstory to be that I had killed my sister and it was the grief that had sent me to strixhaven (I was very reluctant to keep fighting but I asked out of character if my mother had heals, and he confirmed, I followed through with it) I was despondent for the rest of the session and the other players could tell. After the session I communicated my dismay with the changes, but he insisted that it was more interesting this way. He eventually brought my character’s sister into the campaign (and the group eventually sacked him as DM) but was I right in being so aggrieved that my backstory was changed in such a major way? I humbly await your decision. ps if I am selected I hope this ends up on the short rest because i’m 99% sure he listens to the main feed.

benjensenben

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the Bailiff - Father Jake. I submit to you the case of the feather fools. I was DMing for a party who were attempting to outrun a vicious warrior tribe in a race to save the mother of the groups Barbarian from being captured. The party had reached a cliff that would take ages to climb and the Gnome Artificer asked if they could jump and cast feather fall close to the bottom of the 3000 ft drop. I agree but the Gnome thought it would be funny to prank the Barbarian so he cast the spell on everyone but him and the said he recast it immediately to he’d fall a bit further but be ok. The Barbarian at the table argued that this wouldn’t work as he would immediately fall 500 ft out of the spells range and would die on impact. The Gnome argued that he would have time to recast as he had the plan in mind and was essentially holding feather fall as an action the using a reaction to recast it. I tried to calm the heated argument by making the Gnome Artificer role a DC 15 intelligence save which he passed and ruled that he was able to time it well enough to recast in time. The session ended after this was resolved with the Barbarian player arguing in the chat that night that he should really be dead and held a grudge for a while against the player and his character in game. So I ask the honorable Justices was I wrong to prevent the Barbarian pancake with my ruling or was I right to not cause a player death from a dumb prank.

Patrick C McAuliffe

To the esteemed justices and court support staff (whose work is as essential as it is anonymous): In an online hell-themed campaign, I played a lawful evil character in a party otherwise made up of good-aligned characters. This was new for our group (we had played two medium-length campaigns over the last two years), as we had all played straightforwardly heroic characters. For this campaign, I tried to avoid the most egregious party-fouls (pun intended). I tried to remain up front about my character's fiendish transformation, declined opportunties to betray the group, etc. It made sense in the story that the rest of the group would not fully trust my reborn, devil-parasite swords bard PC with the campaign's macguffin magic items. Toward the end of the campaign, my PC was presented with opportunities (in fiction: uncontrollable hunger) to eat any high CR monsters we killed for a stat boost. I assumed the DM homebrewed this to let me get the equivalent of magic items, and also to set up an endgame for my character to either be redeemed or fully fall to his fiendish fate. Our 3rd to last session ended with us killing a high CR demon. When I tried to eat the demon, several of the other PCs stopped me with counterspells, grapples, etc. Instead of escalating to PVP, I dropped it and we left initiative before anyone took damage. I think this was for the best, but it felt like we ended up in the mushy middle without resolution. Justices, did I err in character creation? Was my choice to play a fiend fated to fail for this fundamental flaw? Did I escalate too quickly by eating a nameless NPC in the first session? (This is all in good fun; my fiance and I were lucky enough to find a great online group including other NADDPOD listeners that has stuck together. Our final session for this campaign is the Thursday following the request for cases, and it has been incredibly fun). -Jake

Cat C

Welcome back Jake! ❤️

katytron

Honourable Justices and…Jack, was it? I seek the court’s wisdom: is it ok for a DM to apply a clumsy thumb to a session’s scales? I’m a first time DM running DoIP for a group of friends, some are first time players. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves (including me!), however, the party’s seasoned veteran (who is also my husband) says I’m pulling my punches too much and I need to take the training wheels off. So far, due to some lucky roles and good combat strategy, I’ve only managed to drop his character and do moderate damage to one or two other characters. The newer players find combat quite scary still as they’re just learning how to play, and I think there’s enough tension while still being fun for them. I do my best to make the monsters fight like they mean it and give the game stakes, but is it okay to keep my players in a little bit of cotton wool while many of the party are still finding their feet? Or is level 3 high enough that I should go beast mode on my husband’s halfling cleric? I await the wisdom of the court and remain always a whimsical Wife Worm. the DM from Down Under, Katy

Jamison

Honored judges. Honorific bailif. I come to you with the case of the unintentionally op character. I was playing a little two session game with some friends who were brand new to DND. For the big final fight my character rolled highest in initiative, went straight to the big bad to draw his attention, and, with a crit, delt something like 84 damage to the big bad on her first turn. On his turn, the big bad ran to eat one of his buddies to recover health and reveal. But. . . As the dm narrated the process, I raised my hand and asked if I got an opportunity attack. He said, oh yha of course. I rolled another crit, rolled multiple 12s on my damage dice, and delt something like 50 more damage. The dm laughed and explained that I'd killed the big bad. Some of our party hadnt even had a turn yet. After the game I realized that, even without meaning to, I HAD power gamed. I had gotten feats and multiclassed for 4 attacks (action, extra attack, pole arm master bonus, unleash invocation echo knight) and chosen a magic item to boost my strength to 21 so I could ignore asi and take those feats! I now live with the guilt that I ruined this cool, purposefully easy encounter that the new people didn't even get to enjoy. I throw myself at the mercy of the crit. Was I wrong to just do what came naturally and make a kick ass bodyguard for a one off? Or was dice christ taking the wheel by giving a half orc barbarian two crits in the first round of combat?

Joy LoveLife

Overreacting player vs overreaching DM. To the noble crit supreme justices, and the bailiff I guess, I bring you a case to decide. Was my DM overreaching or was I overreacting? (Apologies if this a long one, just trying to give all the context.) I had just finished my first d&d campaign which was curse of strahd.After the session the players and the DM, went out to dinner. At the table we were all epiloguing our characters. In her epilogue, my druid PC cast reincarnate on her 2 of her fallen party members. A day or so later the DM messaged me to ask, ‘did I have the spell components to cast the spell? 1000gp of rare oils and unguents would not just be lying around’ Further, that casting it without explicitly asking him if I had the components was akin to cheating. Throughout the campaign I had always been particular about spell components and checking things with him. But this was not in a session, just a dinner time epilogue and he had already ruled that the party had free reign of castle ravenloft and Barovia. So when I was saying this I wasn’t worried/thinking about components for spells. I replied that I would walk it back, but I wish he had said something at the time. He replied that he hadn’t been aware of the spell beforehand; but I had literally been talking about it for months to him and the other players. I had said several times if my character survives to the end of the campaign, she would reincarnate her party members. I even made a point in session, of finding the body parts of our slain party members for the spell. So noble justices I await your final ruling, was I in the wrong? Was the DM just giving some reasonable ‘housekeeping’ feedback? P.s. He didn’t want me to retcon, saying he would allow it as my character could have got the components from the Druid grove (in COS there is a whole druid town/villiage). I was even more confused and feeling very gaslit. I insisted on the retcon, as I was uncomfortable, however indirectly, of being accused of cheating. He then accused me of overstepping/trying to co-dm. Some other negative stuff was said about me as a player, before he told me to not take it personally, he was going to bed and just had some ‘housekeeping to do before the next campaign’. Over the next few days this sparked a conversation among the players. It turns out we all had been having some problems /frustrations with this DM, and decided to not join his new campaign.

Catherine Coates

May it please the three esteemed justices of the court and “Jake.” I present to you the case of the hopeless romantic player and the reluctant DM. I DM for a group of four players who are also my very close friends. Currently, I am running the Odyssey of the Dragonlords module for them (essentially Greek-inspired mythology but with dragons). A few weeks ago after our second session of the campaign, one of my players, who plays a naive, sheltered tiefling, came to me about wanting to pursue a romantic relationship for her character. She specifically said she wanted a “romantic, boy-next-door type who knew how to treat her sweetly.” I thought it was odd that she had such a specific request, but figured she was just spitballing and noted I should throw some NPCs at her further down the line to see if anything naturally developed. However, this past weekend me and her were drinking wine and watching the Pride and Prejudice movie together. During the romantic hand flex scene, my friend loudly sighed in a wistful manner and said she couldn’t wait for her character to meet her very own Mr. Darcy. I expressed surprise that she sounded so assured that this was going to happen and asked her if she was expecting me to present her with this ideal guy in our campaign. She was incredulous in return and reminded me of her previous request for a “romantic, boy-next-door type who treats her sweetly.” I ended up sitting her down and letting her know that I am happy to have her character explore romantic options at the table, but her character will have to put in the work to organically develop those relationships with the NPCs, and she shouldn’t expect that I can just present her with her dream guy. I felt fine about my decision until I was talking about it with a fellow DM, who told me that they didn’t see the harm in giving my player her dream guy if it would have made her happy and had no effect on the story. He said that players should have some agency in choosing where their story goes. Now I worry that I took away my player’s happiness over something that might have been relatively minor at the end of the day. So justices, I plead for your judgement. Was I right to temper my player’s expectations or should I just give her her Mr. Darcy?

Stale bread on salad, aka Crouton!

To the beloved bailiff and honorable judges (especially Murph). I'm a forever dm for three groups and in one I have a problem player. His PC is a tiefling rogue named Rigby in reference to regular show (and yes he does the voice for him). Rogues get a bunch of steel metal balls that he used as a difficult terrain Tom and Jerry style so the enemies would slip on them. I allowed it one time delighted thinking it was clever but this quickly backfired. He tried doing this to every enemy from then on and when they encountered some dwarven ironfoot in steel mechs (who he pissed off). He wanted to throw the balls underneath them, but I ruled that they crushed the balls hence their name or at least ignored the difficult terrain and he greatly protested saying I was mad he found a clever way to mess up my baddies and was "drunk with power". Judges, was I wrong to deny this cartoony work around or should this tiefling been a smear underneath ironfoot boots?

Albert Unn

To the esteemed Justices and the returning guest bailiff Jake, I present the case of the abandoned DM. Two years ago, I DM'ed a Lost Mines of Phandelver campaign for a group of 6 new players during my country's mandatory military service. Initially, we had regular sessions, but as our free time diminished, we resorted to late-night sessions in the barracks attic during bedtime. One night, I was caught violating bedtime along with one player, while the others narrowly escaped. Due to the pandemic, passes home were infrequent and me and the player's passes were revoked. In the next session, fueled by resentment, I pumped the monsters in the next dungeon full of sterodis and nearly TPK'd my party. Was I justified for taking my anger out on my players or could they not be blamed for there unlucky circumstances?

Jessica

To the judicious judges, and the mostly missed bailiff Jake, I am presenting the case of the comatose contributor. I am running a campaign for my friends, a whole homebrew epic story kind of thing. All of the players are pretty new (as am I) and one of my players is pretty introverted. We've all been doing our best to provide information and support and she is having a great time. We are also all moms who work full time, which means we don't have a lot of time to play and we wind up playing every other week fairly late into the night( we are talking in bed before midnight so like mom late). My introverted player, bless her, often starts to fall asleep near the end of our sessions. It's actually how I know it's really time to wrap it up. It's possible that my case won't fit your format, but I would love to hear of any precedent that could help me adjudicate the situation. I don't want to embarrass this person or make it harder for them to be open and engage, should I stay the course and just subtly end things when she starts being a little less "responsive" or do I owe it to the other players to talk to her about it and find a solution? Thanks, People pleasing planner

M Scotter

To the ones who I trust the most and the bailiff I bring you the case of too many NPC. Recently in discussion with two of my DMs I was accused of creating too many NPCs in my backstory. In one case my 300 year old Firbolg had 2 parents, 5 siblings (2 of whom were missing), a dead wife, an ex-husband, a mayor who ran him out of town, and 8 Waterdeep residence (that the DM gave me when I asked who do I know here). In the case of my former Elf reincarnated into a Gnome, I have 2 parents and 3 siblings (none of whom he talks to), and 4 adventures who had gotten him killed as an elf who are all MIA. They say it's too much for them to keep up with in addition to what they are already doing (although they both accepted my backstories). I argue that I'm giving them people from my character's life that they can pick and choose who to use and help bring my character into their story. I even make some of the MIA for plot hooks they are free to take advantage of. Most of them are just names, relations, and how my character feels about them. Am I right in trying to help my DMs by doing a little world building for them or am I placing too much on their already heavy shoulders and I should just make boring lone wolf orphans who haven't been making any connections in over 100s of years? I await your judgement with bated breath.

emjemme

Honorable justices Axeford, Murphy, and Tanner. Also Jake, I guess. May it please the court, I think my DM hated my character. In a three year, ten level campaign my tiefling enchantment wizard learned two or three spells from books and was hit by maybe five attacks. At the start, all of three players wanted to play bards. He decided our newest player would be the bard. Our other party member chose a monk and I an enchantment wizard. Our bard did not cast a single healing spell the entire campaign and when I raised this concern with my DM he told me to buy healing potions and/or talk to the player myself. I even offered to take a level of cleric but he said it was not necessary. This discussion was after a beloved commoner npc nearly died and I was the only one trying to stabilize him. After this point, I was not hit with another attack for the remaining two years of the campaign. While most wizards may appreciate this, it felt targeted. This was especially frustrating because I never got to use Instinctive Charm (6th lvl ability). On top of this, the only library out characters had access to was written in a code with a that I was not able to crack. The DM said the DC decreased based on the success of my rolls and with several 18+ dice rolls (for intelligence 24+) and other rolls with score over 15 over a period of 40 sessions. Am I so conflicted because I appreciate my friend but I can’t help but wonder if he resented my pink Tiefling. I throw myself at your mercy.

Michael Kessler

To the esteemed justices and Daddy Jake, I present the case of the Spoiled Heist. I recently started running a Star Wars 5E campaign loosely set in the Starstruck universe (shout out to the Gunner Channel!) The "campaign" is more like a series of one-shots, with me narrating the party's downtime at the start or end of every session. We're all too busy to play weekly, so this compromise will let us get together and run a crazy encounter once a month. The party's first session was a 'Battle of the Brands' style cage match, with the players facing off against a team of cybernetic space hags, a squad of asteroid-mining dwarves, and a chaos elemental made of electricity. Predictably, the level 3 party did not win. However, during the post-fight epilogue, I narrated a team of heavily armed mercenaries breaking into the award ceremony and capturing the winners. I emphasized that, in the confusion, the winners accidentally dropped their prize worth 100,000 credits on the podium. Immediately before wrapping, one of the players shouted that they wanted to grab the prize money. I said we would come back to that at the start of the next session. As we were cleaning up, I mentioned that I was glad it occurred to someone to go after the prize money. The player in question gave me a funny look and asked if I had planned for them to do that, to which I said yes. He looked crestfallen and told me, a little sadly, that he was proud of himself for thinking of it on his own. I tried saying he had good instincts, and explaining that if I didn't want my players to have that much money I never would have introduced it in the first place. I watched a bit of the light leave his eyes, and I realized that maybe I had shown him too much of how the DM sausage gets made. Justices, I ask you: should I have tried harder not to spoil some of the mystery for my player in their first tabletop game? Or is this just a part of the game that all players have to accept sooner or later? For the record, most of the other players are DMs themselves and they all supported the way I designed the encounter, but I think this only made the new player feel worse. I leave my fate in your capable hands.

Ben Scott

Good evening, exalted bishops of dice christ and alterboy josiah. I bring before you a predicament where a party member spat in the face of dice christ's infinate kindness. At the weekly "one shot night" at my LGS, a regular party member brought a divination wizard and another brought a conquest paladin. My wizard companion was blessed by dice christ with DOUBLE NAT 20 PORTENT DICE. Near the end of the 3 hour session, while fighting the demonic wolf boss of the dungeon, the paladin claimed both nat 20s on their attack rolls in order to get some meaty smites. This was admittedly an impressive amount of damage, but I am ashamed to say that I did not intervene. (BTW, I knew that the wizard had planned to save the rolls for an upcast/crit witch bolt spell, the players favorite spell). Is there any way to redeem this self absorbed paladin? Or shall they be cast into dice christs bottomless rolling tray?

ZZBones

To the Supremely Divine Crit Justices and the lowly naked guy Johnson. I present the case of "Party Betrayal". I was running a grim hollow campaign and one of my players was a bard and a Wechselkind, wooden doll guy. He was a bit of a handful for the rest of the party, chaotic in fact. After a lich killed the party and sent them to a false afterlife that was fueling his phylactery, they met some other people surviving there (a handful of NPCs). There was another Wechselkind there and after the party went to sleep the bard started whittling the other dolls leg, he screamed, and alerted the other survivors. The NPCs grappled the bard and threw him over the barricade that was holding back the periodic undead assaults. The rest of the party decided, fuck that guy and left him to his fate, which was the undead ripping him apart. Later they collected his body and threw it on the fire to keep them warm. The player still brings it up, was I right to have the npc's throw him over or am I absolved because I didn't know what my maniac players would do? Thank you for your Supreme judgement 😊

Kay

To the ever present justices and the freshly minted papa Jakob, I present to you the case of the “Heinous Homebrew” (may it of course please the court). My good friend was gearing up to run his third campaign with me and some other friends, and at our session zero, introduced a few home brew mechanics to “up the intensity”. At first, it was only a few small things, like a chance of instant death on a nat 20 (ala Neverafter style). However, the final and most significant change he wanted to make was changing the short/long test system. He told us a short rest would now take a day, and a long rest would now take a week. I, of course, was appalled, and told him that this was too tense. If we ever got in two combats in a day, we would be absolutely womped. I also said that my character as a bee-themed Druid (shameless plug for Axford support) would become a heal-slut, my few spells going to healing my companions. I expected the other players to also be upset, but I was sorely mistaken. One player was completely for it, as he was playing a character with a 24 AC and never got hit. Another player was “indifferent”, and I ended up healing him the whole first combat, and the last player (the DMs little sister) stayed quiet, and she ended up playing a home brew cleric that used hitpoints to cast spells instead of spell slots. In the end, the dm allowed us to get back abilities and spells after a short rest, but it didn’t solve half the problems. Justices of the court and Gemma’s dad, was I correct in feeling upset and miffed, or was dm correct in wanting to try his new home brew? Thank you, and shout-out the bean rat.

PlantGang

To the nigh omniscient judges, and the barely educated bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of the inter-dimensional straw. In a more recent session that I DM for, the party had to work together in order to sneak into a gang’s home base. After much discussion the party decided to shove some of their lighter members into a bag of holding, when I told the party that they don’t have infinite air, they told me that they’d simply get a big straw, stick it out of the bag, and breath that way a la hiding in a river. After I instructed them that that would not work, they were insistent that I was wrong so I settled that they would need an “inter-dimensional straw” in order to traverse the magical properties of the bag and exist in two planes. This then started an argument that lasted 20 minutes with the whole party, and a 15 minute long phone call with one of the players where they were ALL convinced that they would simply need to go to a restaurant in the elemental plane of fire and get a straw for it to be “an inter dimensional straw”. When I brought up the example that if they got a straw from the moon and brought it down to earth that it doesn’t change the property of the straw they said “well duh that’s the moon”. Am I in the wrong here? Would a straw from a different plane of existence suddenly gain magical inter-dimensional properties? Or are my players trying their best to get one over me? Waiting your judgement patiently, A bari saxy man

Sahara

To the honourable supreme crit justices and the guest bailiff Jake (I know it’s your first time on the pod but you’ll do great, buddy, I know it) I present the case of the disruptive boy-toy. I DM for a group consisting of my 72-year-old neighbour Doreen and her friends. It’s my favourite campaign that I’ve ever run and they all dress up as their characters whenever we play. Generally, it’s a great time. Last session, however, one of the players arrived a little late and, as she was walking in, nonchalantly mentioned that her boyfriend would be joining us. I glanced up briefly to see this new boyfriend, because I had heard a lot about him. She had spoken about how attractive he was a lot and described him as her ‘new boy toy’, but, to my horror, I found myself staring into the wide eyes of my own father. I tried to make a joke out of the situation and thought I’d played it off well, until we started actually playing. My dad complained about everything. The zombie minis looked too gross, he didn’t like my music, I was speaking too loudly, then I needed to speak up because he couldn’t understand me, if I put this much effort into studying for my PhD I might have finished it by now, and so on. I tried to keep the session going as best as I could but the players kept talking to and about him all throughout the session. All-in-all the session was ruined. Nobody was engaged with the plot because they were all fussing over my dad, who spent the whole time either complaining or glaring daggers at me as if it was my fault. After the session, I called him and asked him not to come back, but a number of the players have asked me to make sure he comes to the next session because they like him and were disappointed when I told them he wouldn't be there. I ask the court: what the fuck am I supposed to do here? Would I be right to stand my ground and demand that my dad doesn’t come to the next session or should I just do whatever the old ladies want because they’re nice and they bake for me? My dad says he’ll come to the next session if his girlfriend wants him to, but he obviously didn’t enjoy the session anymore than I did and I don’t have enough time to 4 hours being insulted by my own father while surrounded by horny old ladies. Help me. Please.

Sciz

To the magnanimous justices and the freshly new dad.... Jim? I ask as apart of an issue my party had with lets call it: Trap Dementia. Our party is in a dungeon where we are about midway through where we have just finished going through two traps one which was a hallway where if you were not standing in the correct spots you were zapped with lightning, and another which was even simpler fountain that if you stood next to it for a full round it would attack you with the statue. We got through this part and found a room where we could rest, so we did the long rest. The next adventuring day we had to eventually go back through there and the DM instead of either handwaving it since we found the solution or letting us do the correct motions to get through safely, had us all do Intelligence saves and if we failed we somehow triggered the trap, and in my case I went down to 89HP to 11 due to being "critted" since I rolled a Nat 1. The other players were fine with this as no PC is smart in our party but this just feels rude. Am I correct in being outraged and allowed to complain louder about this or is this just the DM doing a bad job of using resources.

DM Othman (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-05 07:00 COUNTERSUIT: If it please the court, I beseech the honourable justices to hear my pleas and overturn their ruling with newfound evidence. In the case of the "players turned NPCs". I am the DM that brought the level 25 homebrew in. Facts were greatly exaggerated and misconstrued in this case. I did spend 20 minutes speaking to the Cleric. To nerf him, incase our murder hobo party who clearly likes to be the victim; tried to gang up on their help. Which they did. After natural 20 striking the cleric and attempting to assert dominance, the instigator was met with a back hand. The plaintiff forgot to mention it was their own member who meteor stormed the PCs and caused great damage to the party, although his wife was slapped, she earned it as her attack killed any residual chivalry in the air. Had the players made a team effort to destroy the Cleric, it would have been a fight. But ultimately a full focus of effort failed (because the mission was already a success) but could have killed the Cleric rather quickly. The only player that did not attack the cleric survived. I humbly succle the wife worm toes in efforts to try my former players for murder hobo in the first degree.
2023-07-03 13:42 COUNTERSUIT: If it please the court, I beseech the honourable justices to hear my pleas and overturn their ruling with newfound evidence. In the case of the "players turned NPCs". I am the DM that brought the level 25 homebrew in. Facts were greatly exaggerated and misconstrued in this case. I did spend 20 minutes speaking to the Cleric. To nerf him, incase our murder hobo party who clearly likes to be the victim; tried to gang up on their help. Which they did. After natural 20 striking the cleric and attempting to assert dominance, the instigator was met with a back hand. The plaintiff forgot to mention it was their own member who meteor stormed the PCs and caused great damage to the party, although his wife was slapped, she earned it as her attack killed any residual chivalry in the air. Had the players made a team effort to destroy the Cleric, it would have been a fight. But ultimately a full focus of effort failed (because the mission was already a success) but could have killed the Cleric rather quickly. The only player that did not attack the cleric survived. May it please the wifeworm to try my former players for murder hobo in the first degree.

COUNTERSUIT: If it please the court, I beseech the honourable justices to hear my pleas and overturn their ruling with newfound evidence. In the case of the "players turned NPCs". I am the DM that brought the level 25 homebrew in. Facts were greatly exaggerated and misconstrued in this case. I did spend 20 minutes speaking to the Cleric. To nerf him, incase our murder hobo party who clearly likes to be the victim; tried to gang up on their help. Which they did. After natural 20 striking the cleric and attempting to assert dominance, the instigator was met with a back hand. The plaintiff forgot to mention it was their own member who meteor stormed the PCs and caused great damage to the party, although his wife was slapped, she earned it as her attack killed any residual chivalry in the air. Had the players made a team effort to destroy the Cleric, it would have been a fight. But ultimately a full focus of effort failed (because the mission was already a success) but could have killed the Cleric rather quickly. The only player that did not attack the cleric survived. May it please the wifeworm to try my former players for murder hobo in the first degree.

Stephen Cothrine

To the illustrious judges and the newly patern'ed Bailiff, may it please the court, I present the case of the metagaming DM. Early in our campaign, our party of three had just left an arena with several powerful artifacts we had won as prizes. Pursued by ruffians, we encountered some priests who offered to cast the haste spell on us to hasten our retreat, and we agreed. Immediately as a reaction, they dropped the haste and caused us to lose our turn and gave the bandits time to catch up to us and initiate combat. The DM argued that, as willing creatures, we had no chance to protest this heinous removal of action economy, based on the rules as written. This DM has spoken out against metagaming in the past, so it was really frustrating to see him do it to us, gleefully at that. My esteemed crit justices, was the dm's duplicitous trick above board and was thus a righteous whomping, or did we get screwed out of a clean getaway with the prizes we had rightfully won?

PalaeoPoems

May it cause a creeping sense of dread in the bailiff and please the rest of the court. I present you the case of The Space Hamster Fashion Faux-Paw. My friend is playing in a Spelljammer campaign with his brother and his friends. He's playing a Mechagnome Wizard named A.C.E., and the group has a pet giant space hamster named Angry Germaine, who they are all deeply attached to. During a session, they were approached by a ship that was basically a traveling town of wealthy penguin people, and had an entire shop dedicated to giant hamster barding. They decided to buy an outfit for Angry Germaine, and their problems began. The shop they went to had several options with no statistical difference, but with slightly different pricing, and no one could agree on an outfit. They decided to each choose an outfit and roll for who would get to decide, agreeing to split the cost of the outfit that won. ACE ended up winning, but after rolling, he changed his mind about which outfit he wanted Angry Germaine to wear. Two of the PCs, one played by the DM, said he couldn't do that, because he was rolling for the OUTFIT, but ACE and another player said they were rolling for the CHOICE. The DM ended up ruling that ACE could select the outfit, but the other PCs had to split the original cost agreed upon and ACE had to pay the difference. Should ACE be thrown out the airlock? Or should he and Angry Germaine get to watch the others die in the vacuum of space? Supreme Crit Justices, we leave it to you.

Anthony Murphy

Welcome back daddy bailiff! Esteemed court I bring you the case of the uninterested DM. Back when I was but a highschooler I was invited by some friends playing in a campaign to join their game. I had just finished doing PA work on a documentary and went to the DM's home to play. As soon as I arrived the DM (who was a slight acquaintince of mine) begrudgingly helped me roll a Rouge halfling character. They instructed that I wait to start playing until they can work me in to the story. I waited for almost 2 hours before they decided to introduce my character (Lylia Thistlespring). Then as we crawled through the dungeon I wanted to be helpful although I had no idea how to play so any time I asked to do something like pick a lock or try to find a path I was told it wasn't my turn yet even though we weren't in initiative. Then finally we encountered a steel vault door which had a small glass window and I thought it was my time to shine. I asked the barbarian to simply chuck me through the window since the DM wouldn't let me pick the lock. My friends and I found this idea rather amusing but the DM clearly didn't as they rolled my damage and declared I was down from the move. We had no healer so I just layed there on the ground unconscious for the rest of the game. I regretted my decision to not go with my director to help edit the documentary I worked on for this game severely and it still haunts me to this day. I beg you esteemed justices, was I a problem player or was I simply hated by my DM?

Ghostedflakes

To the Honorable Justice and the newly fathered bailiff, I present to you the case of the polymorphism lair action. My level 12 party and I were gearing up to fight an ancient black dragon, an encounter that would surely lead to our deaths without proper planning. We resolved to target its legendary resistances and once all three were gone our bard cast polymorph on the dragon under the effects of hex and cutting words. The dragon failed and was transformed into a bat which gave our party time to heal and gather the op magical items we were meant to steal from the dragon and use against him. However the DM, my brother, began to narrate a lair action . We argued that the polymorphed dragon would not have access to this ability as it was now a bat but the DM held firm that the bat maintained the dragon's personality and so would still have a connection to it's lair. Our bard rolled three nat 1s in a row to maintain concentration and the dragon broke free. A few well timed Crits from my hexblade warlock as well as the already depleted legendary resistances allowed us to walk away from that fight alive but I humbly ask the court, can a polymorphed creature still use lair actions?

Gabriella Pilarski

To the holy robed representatives of dice Christ, forgive me for I have sinned. Years ago I used to fudge rolls. We were playing virtually and if I got a bad roll, I would just reroll it. I was young and did not understand that the failures make the victories sweeter! But I have felt dice Christ turn from me and have not rolled a nat20 during combat since then. I played a paladin then and a rogue now and I miss the sweet opportunity to double all the smite or sneak dice. Dice Christ forgive me for my transgression of fudging rolls

Thomas Seifert

From: TJ To the honorable judges and the tiny bailiff, I regretfully must bring charges against the court itself. Recently I purchased the Paw Paw dice set as a surprise gift for my girlfriend Selena. She’s a huge fan of the show (she came to one of the live shows with a broken foot), so she was delighted when I gave them to her prior to one of our D&D sessions that I GM. Unfortunately, during the session itself all of her rolls with the dice were just abysmal. So much so that she switched from the Paw Paw Dice out of desperation. So I ask the court, why did Paw Paw, the court and/or dice Christ cruelly betray my Girlfriend? How could my surprise gift, turn into a surprise dud!? Also, I must say we were very pleased with the product, such a fair price and great craftsmanship. https://naddpod.com/shop/product/paw-paw-dice-set

Sneakers O’Krool

to the esteemed court and the new daddy bailiff jake i present the case of the the betraying cleric. i play a forest gnome rougue in my campaign and i’m one to steal from nobles and kill ones who are abusing their wealth for nefarious means. on a train from one town to another me and another rogue stole a lot of magic items from a blacked out wizard. when we arrived in the town, the cleric said to me “relax on the stealing or i’ll turn you in” now i took this as a complete betrayal and now am seriously considering either defecting from the party or worse. my question is, should i have acted more calmly or was my reaction justified? i humbly await your judgement.

Miranda Bermes-Goller

You gotta attune to your dice! The dice you think are the coolest always roll bad right out the box- you gotta get to know each other ;)

Thomas Seifert

Shhhh don’t give them ideas on how to get out of this!

Santa Grinch Hugging HumBaba and two Fairies

Dear Bailif John May i please Present to The Supreme Crit my case I met my most recent Ex playing DnD online during thd pandemic and we met on person for 3 trips before i moved from NJ to Az They startes Dating a friend who was in their IRL DND gamd about a month before i left Jersey and when i did get there they tried to Break up with me the first week Should i have been more critical of how insencitive they were of my emotions and assuring me it will be differnt in person. Everytime i tried to bring up my Jealousy they got defense of their new partner and made promises to improve that never resulted in real changes in Behavior Am i a dumb ass for Ignoring red flags and moving so far from home for someone who seemingly used me when they were at a low point and started a polyam relationship when they had doubts that they only voiced to me after i made the move thst apperantly predated their asking to open the realtionship

Cavan Edwards

To the exalted justices: Wife worm Axford, Murph bot and Gavel Guardian Tanner. Oh and what's his face the bailorf he has a kid or something now. I come to you with the case of the crunchless DM. I've been a long time DM and player as well as podcast listener. The longer I've played dnd the less I've come to care about perfectly executed mechanics. Nothing grinds a fun time to a halt like stopping to dig up some specific ruling about an ability or spell. I'll regularly allow friends to cast spells in ways I know that are wrong simply because it's more fun to let them have their OP interpretation. Rather than say no, you can't do that it doesn't work and debate the text. I often fudge rolls estimate damage and even change enemy stats on the fly to create or remove tension. Combat flows smoother and the willingness to bend/flex and focus on gameflow keeps everyone engaged and living the action together. No one in front of the screen seems to have noticed and always has a great time because they get immersed in a fun story and engaging action. Is this a crime, a sin against dice christ? Or just another way to play the endlessly flexible d&d? I submit myself to your ruling.

Damocles' Teaspoon

Honorable justices of the Crit and ignominious bailiff, I play Stix, a kobold rogue/artificer in a long-running campaign. Long story short, a fellow PC (who happens to be the wife of the DM) stole a healing potion from Stix. Not knowing who stole it, Stix (evil aligned but ultimately harmless) began enacting petty, role-play exclusive revenge like poking holes in water skins (we don't track rations), loosening saddle straps, etc. When I went to do something to the ranger who stole my potion, though, our DM ruled that because she had the "blindfighting" fighting style, I could not get within ten feet of her without her knowing everything I did, no matter what my stealth/sleight of hand rolls might be. This meant that Stix had been caught and led to in-game party drama. We've since talked (in and out of character) and resolved the conflict, but the ruling on blindfighting still rankles me. Is blindfighting passive Spidey-sense, or did I deserve my chance at (petty) revenge?

Penpen

Welcome back Jake, hope the paternity leave was fun and restful

Ducky

To the omnipotent Justices and the Gollum like creature known as Jake (congratulations on the baby), I present the case of the Trauma Session. A few months ago I and one other person joined a campaign as a replacements to a party of 6 reduced to 2. The DM informed me that the reason so many players left at once was because one player had asked to play a new character and the DM said "no not right now, maybe later in the story." The player didn't take this well and began to devise a plan with another player to have the other PC murder their character to allow the switch. After a bit the DM became aware of the dastardly plot and immediately said no you can not do this and the player unhappy with this "railroading" left the campaign with their co-conspirator and two other players. The session I join the DM began to systematicly kill all the PCs of the players who had left. From an Ent character be turned into sawdust and lit on fire, a Kenku Ranger made into a chicken pot pie. The conspirators had a more gruesome fate with the player who wanted to be murdered having been so, they and their family and fiance impaled on spikes and burned. Lastly the murder a psychic fighter was interrupted while meditating making their head explode. With the remaining 2 PCs seeing this happen to their former party members; the question I ask judges was the DM in the right to do these things and give the 2 remaining PCs boat loads of Trauma or should the DM have found a different way to remove these PCs? I eagerly await your judgment on my long winded tale.

MC

To the tough but fair justices, and the returning bailiff Jim (I think); I present the case of the Backstabbing Baron. I was new-ish to DND and playing a mini-campaign with a few friends and we were trying to take back a village from a local baron. It was a hard slog of a final fight and eventually all of my party members went down, leaving my dwarves cleric by himself. The DM made a speech for the Baron about how he was going to drink some ale next round if I wanted to try and stabilize my friends. I gave my DM a look out of character to see if he was serious, and he nodded. I’m sure you can guess where this is going but on my next turn, I healed my friends as best I could, and the baron promptly stabbed me in the back, and eventually TPK’d us. My DM said that I shouldn’t have trusted such a bad guy and was just showing that actions have consequences, but I think that I wasn’t trusting the baron, I was trusting my friend the DM, who nodded. I ask the court - did my friends and I get a well-deserved whomping or were these consequences unjust and unfair? I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Kt

To the honorable Judges and Papa Bailiff: I present a case of the Dice-Christ Cursed DM and his attempt to thwart the curse: In our long-running campaign recently, our group encountered a pack of demonic bugs. Our fighter/barbarian attacked one first with a multi-attack, rolling a crit on one. But after she rolled, our DM remembered that we were all supposed to roll Con saving rolls at the start of our turns, which she rolled and failed, negating her attack and knocking her asleep for that round. Our group gets along well, so we just took our DM to the raspberry patch for a while and though it was a pretty hairy fight, we went on to win the fight anyway (my noodely-armed bard and his pet cat got the final blow in on two of the bugs). The DM claims his ruling was based on the fact that we have been absolutely spanking him in fights lately with our dice rolls, while his have been trash for the past several sessions and he wanted to even things out a bit. I contest that this thwarting of Dice Christ will only come back to haunt him further. In addition, my bard had to burn a high-level spell to cast greater restoration on our Cleric as a result of the bug fight. If he is correct in his ruling, I accept whatever punishment is coming to me. If you rule against him, I guess I just want that spell slot back before our next game. Blessings of Dice Christ be with you.

froggy

No case, but congrats Jake! Hope you are your family are doing well :)

handsomemike06

Honorable justices Axeford, Murphy , and Tanner. As well as newly daddy bailiff .... todd i think , I present the case of the heals allergic lizard. It all started with the campaign curse of strahd where me and the rest of the players were excited for a fun horror tinged campain , sadly we only truly realized what we were in for after the first session in which resulted in my untimely death after a nat 20 arcana check for magical traps but found nothing but when proceeded was curb stomped by 5 shadows after picking up a magical orb. This would have been fine since i expected it to be a tough campaign , tho what i didnt expect was to be broughtback to life by a cult the party trusted, after this i was brought back as an undead creature , this wouldve been fine if it was just this but i was also let know without warning the next session that i would not be able to reseive any healing as well as would be damaged if it was attempted as i was an unholy abomination . I ask you noble justices was this an over board call by the dm especially without any talk back and forth or should i look at this through cobb shaped lens and should accept my newfound medical change. I leave myself at your mercy

Dean Barr

I don't have a case for you bud I just want to say congratulations then wish you and the family all the best!

maggs

Congrats daddy bailiff!!!

Wzrdkng

Honorable justices and lowly bailiff, I come to you seeking justice on a word ruling . I run a 5e homebrew campaign for 5 of my friends, all level 8. They are currently in the elemental planes facing trials in order to acquire a legendary trident to defeat the Kraken, however one of the bbeg's highly ranked minions, Ojamar the Necromancer, is also searching for the trident and has taken the sister of a player hostage in hopes to exchange her for said trident. Now here comes the reason I write to you. The level 8 kenku rogue said that he could forge 5 perfect replicas of the trident to try and fool Oj. When I asked him how he was able to do this, he refered to his racial trait "expert forgery" and said that he should be able to do it he'd just need to find a forge. Kinda puzzled, I looked at him and told him that that's not the type of forgery it's referring too, it refers to being able to replicate and create forgeries of documents. Immediately the entire table went to his defense arguing that he should be able to do this because it literally says forgerie in the writting of the trait. Even after I read the definition of forgeries, which clearly backed up my statement, the paladin immediately piped in and said "this is fantasy, not the real world, get that logic out of here." They then brought the wording of the racial trait into play, to where it says "produce forgeries and duplicates of existing OBJECTS." Again, I said these objects were referring to types of documents or maybe a small item, not 5 tridents that needed to be made in a forge, however, they argued until I held my head in my hands defeated, giving in to their demands. Judges, was I right in my interpretation of the racial trait, or were the players right in being allowed to forge these tridents. I lay myself humbly before the court and await your judgement.

Austin from Austin

To the benevolent justices and my dad the bailiff, I present the case of the chaotically persuasive player. I was in a campaign where everyone was new to the game including the DM. While most of the group was trying to follow the questline the DM laid out, we had a sorcerer player who was more chaotic and often wanted to go off and do their own thing. That would be fine if they truly were by themselves, but the issue is that they wanted to convince other players to follow them instead. For example, while the group was trying to talk to a sweet old lady about clues for my missing little sister, the sorcerer decided that she was actually evil. Instead of trying to do an insight check or anything to see if they were right, they asked the DM if they could roll persuasion to convince the other players, which was allowed. Being a sorcerer, their high charisma was no match for us and we were told that we now thought the old lady was evil and to stay in character, we didn't talk to her anymore despite the players wanting to. I at least tried to ask if I could roll something to challenge the sorcerer's persuasion like an insight or deception, but nothing I did was high enough. There were a few other times where we stopped the main quest line because this player "convinced" us to do something else against our will. So I ask, is that the appropriate way to persuade a player group to do something you want or could there be a counter roll or some different way altogether to handle this? Thank you.

Fulton

The Case of the Double D20 (Boobs) Honorable Justices and bailiff - our DM and his PC wife host our game at their home. Last week as we gathered around their table, one of my attack rolls took an errant bounce and disappeared into my DMs wife’s cleavage. Without missing a beat she screamed “Nat 20!!” and the whole table laughed as she joked about having “magical tits”. The DM did not look amused and said I needed to re-roll. I had no problems with this and assumed I’d be re-rolling anyways. But before I could roll again his wife stops me and says “don’t roll again you got a nat 20”. Our DM and his wife devolve into an argument about whether her “magical tits” warranted a nat 20, the whole time watching to see if I’ll roll again. I was too nervous to pick a side and the DM ended up stomping upstairs and slamming his bedroom door, ending the session early. I can’t help but feel my indecision caused this argument to escalate the way it did. What should I have chosen?

Bliss

I’d like to present the case case of a withered vine v. Fairy. During the break between sessions our dm messaged us to tell us we leveled up during the previous session. This was critical since we were totally effed - an almost certain tpk (party split, failed stealth, basically everything went wrong) - between sessions I came up with a baller plan to save us. I took wither and bloom as my new spell to heal my passed out friend, and I’d use my chronurgy magic a la fia bonkginya 😎. But when I tried to use it during combat to heal my party member the dm ruled that I didn’t have the necessary spell components to cast the spell because I didn’t have a withered vine twisted into a loop in my inventory and hadn’t had time to gather the material components of the spell so I wouldn’t be able to cast it. Then the dm narrated the other half of our split party winning their insane battle and traveling across the map to save our sorry doomed behinds between rounds. Is there justice for my cool plan or should I have been foiled by the withered vine?

Jmarshmallow

To the, like, venerable judges and the in essence disbarred baliff, I present the case of the "Giant" Misunderstanding: I was playing in a home game with a group of close friends, and during one session my Circle of the Moon Druid (who is known for his shenanigans) was razzing a powerful rakshasa, who is a recurring mischievous NPC that enjoys following our party's hijinks. After said razzing, the rakshasa cast what was essentially a 24 hour Enlarge/Reduce curse on my character, which led to a lot of laughs at the table when later I wildshaped into a super cute half-sized bear. This was totally fine, until many sessions later we were fighting a Dragon Turtle, and my Druid (at this point multiclassed with Sorcerer) cast Enlarge on myself and then wildshaped into a Giant Crocodile as a bonus action, for an epic Kaiju-style battle with the Dragon Turtle as a super-giant Giant Crocodile. My DM said that I was just a regular sized Giant Croc as opposed to a double-sized one, and that the Enlarge wouldn't carry over after the Wildshape: only my Druid is enlarged, not his wildshape. I argued with him that several sessions ago the Rakshasa's Reduce carried over so why couldn't mine, but he said that was different because it was more of a curse, and in that case it was two separate spell-casters using magic rather than just me (who is the only spellcaster in the party). My DM ended up having the aforementioned Rakshasa appear in the nick of time to cast Enlarge on my Giant Croc form and the Kaiju fight ensued (with all my party members riding on my back into battle) but I'm still wondering: was I wrong to attempt these spell-combo shenanigans, or was my DM trying to rob our party of some giant underwater hijinks. I await your judgement. -Justin M

Nick Wesell

Congrats on Gemma, Jake. Its good to have you back!

margot d

To the honorable judges Axford, Murphy, Tanner, and that other guy(just kidding, congrats Jake!!!), I’m a fairly new player in my first campaign, we’ve had probably 7 sessions so far, and one of the players is lying about his stats and I’m worried he’s fudging his rolls to get the outcome he wants. We ran a tournament where everything went wrong, à la A Crown Of Candy and when fighting another PC for the melee event, he randomly raised his AC for seemingly no reason and held up the session for 10 minutes to fight about it. At one point, he took damage from that PC and the DM asked, “doesn’t that down you?” and he said “no I have one hit point left”, but no one really believed him. This is an online campaign & while we use dnd beyond to share our sheets we don’t have to keep track of hp on there or do digital dice rolls. I don’t want to be a table tattler but he’s disrupting the flow of the game and the fun of combat by not just going with it and the DM hasn’t really been able to do anything to combat it since it’s over discord & roll 20. This is the only time I get to play dnd and despite how awesome the DM is and the world they created is, I don’t really want to go to sessions because it feels like he doesn’t respect any of the other players, or the DM really. How do I find fun in this again?

Liam

Ciao and well met, honorable justices and hopefully still Ify. I present the case of the grim rizzking: I’m currently running the Curse of Strahd module for a party of 2. Since it seemed obvious that a small party would struggle with many of the encounters, I granted them some boons at the very beginning: starting the campaign at level 5 instead of 3, magical items, and a few other small tweaks. Where I may have made a mistake was stating at session zero that I would be more accepting than usual of shenanigans that the PCs, two charisma-based characters, wanted to employ, thinking this would improve their chances of survival. In our first session, one PC, who fights with a scythe, tried to evade a room charge at an inn by convincing the innkeeper he was the grim reaper, and that as the grim reaper, he shouldn’t have to pay. The commoner-statblock-innkeeper had no chance of seeing through this ruse, and grim slept free that night. We all had a good laugh, and I commended my players for using their stats to their advantage. The issue has become that they perform the grim reaper routine every single time they meet a new npc, regardless of whether there is a clear benefit in doing so. With their charismas maxed out I have been unable to slow down the Grim Sleeps Free train, and I’m running out of ideas. It’s definitely still funny, but I’m losing control of the game and have to stop to figure out how to reconstruct encounter hooks and plots every time they bust it out. So far, I’ve tried giving them disadvantage on these deception checks, giving their victims advantage, and turning it into an automatic failure for any npcs with any sort of association with religion, but this has only brought the success rate down to 75 percentish. Are they allowed to do this? Am i allowed to hamstring the rizz, or is this all part of dice christ’s plan? I humbly await your ruling and congratulate your manservant on his new kid

nollie pollie ollie

Congratulations Jake!! Many love and blessings to you and your family

An ancient chaos god disguised as your cat

To the illustrious and magnanimous justices Murphy, Tanner, the reinstated justice Emily, all hail the wife-worm, and a special shout out to the new dad-liff! I bring to you the case of the not-so-free object interaction. My level 4 party and I were ambushed by 9 thugs who quickly began to get the best of us. After only three rounds, our cleric and ranger had both dropped, been revived, and dropped again, while we’d only managed to take out one thug. Without healers or remaining healing potions we were forced to retreat inside a building with our enemies clustering at the door. Then it was my turn. My dwarf wizard picked up a bead of fireball off our downed rangers necklace and prepared to throw it at the enemy, ready to turn the tide, but my dm ruled that picking up the bead would count as my action, and throwing it required another action. I found that strange, as simply grabbing a small bead felt like something that should be a free object interaction, but I respected the ruling. I tried to make a deal with my dm, asking that I be allowed to walk outside into the center of the enemy group and ignite the fireball by simply dropping the bead at my feet. My dm refused, stating that it required more than dropping the bead to activate the fireball. In the end, I used my turn to pick up the bead and misty step outside into the center of the enemy group. My plan partially worked, and as the enemy focused fire on me my party managed to stabilize our ranger and fight off the thug that had followed them inside. On my next turn, with 3 hp remaining, I activated the fireball and took out all but two of the remaining thugs, and myself. Even more tragic, my party’s cleric failed his last death save the next turn, something I feel could have been prevented had I been allowed to activate the fireball a round earlier. In the end we’re both excited to make new characters and look forward to continuing the campaign, but I still wonder if the loss could have been minimized. So I ask, was my dm wrong to rule that I couldn’t pick up the bead of fireball and use it in the same turn? Should I have fought to use my free object interaction? I await your judgement and appropriately harsh punishment.

Anya

To the Supreme Crit Justices and that other guy, I think his name might be, like.... actually, I have no idea. Do you guys do Dice Christ Exorcisms? I'm a support-others-first, heavy on the RP kind of player. I love to engage in a cheeky lil' hijink or two if everyone wants to be involved. My favorite thing about combat is the cool ways people apply their spells and abilities. That said, I am either Dice Christ's most heinous sinner, or I am possessed by something on par with, perhaps, the literal devil because I rarely roll above a 10. I've changed dice three times, I've switched seats at the table, I've even played a game with my sleeves over my hands to avoid touching the dice-- to no avail! Every time I want to do something fun-- or frankly, anything at all-- the single narrowed eye of the '1' reminds me of my place. Sometimes, the dice will even teasingly rock on the side of a '20' only to fall into a '2' the minute I even begin to hope! I'm a DM as well and I've started artificially inflating the HP of my monsters and making up abilities on the spot because of how poorly I roll. Justices, I beg of you, am I cursed? It seems rather silly, but rolling so low for so long has started to take the fun out of DND. I don't want to give up on my favorite hobby, but it seems to be that Christ or a darker power is guiding me that way. My question here is: do I need to be exorcised or should I pick up a pair or knitting needles next time I'm at the store.

Noah Ramirez

warning: drama. like serious drama. better watch out for drama otherwise you’ll get wet with the drama for the eyes and ears of the justices who are firmly on the right side of history and the corrupt daddy bailiff, rotten to the core. weclome back bud 🥂 i’m running a campaign with a genuinely good group of friends. it’s my first group to span multiple years. everyone for the most part is vibing and keeping it tight. but i’ve noticed some discordance when it comes to the general tone people want the game to be. generally, the players who have been playing dnd since before the recent popularity boom, want to play a more drawn out game with extensive looting, a graver tone and a lot of that kind stuff that doesn’t make it into most actual play shows. whereass the players enjoy shows like naddpod, d20 and other more comedic shows, want to play something a little tighter with a more comedic tone. wanting to cut out stuff that gets in the way of story flow. one of the players even requests a smash cut when a scene of theirs is going on “too long.” benevolent justices and guests of jan and troy, how do i make the game be exciting for both types of players? and how do i get soy sauce out of white pants? ps: theres not any drama. i just felt like i needed a hook. sorry for fibbing up top. won’t happen again.

JC

To the honorable Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, as well new Step Dad Jake (huge congrats to Tucker and Jill btw). I bring to you the case of a problem player named Todd. We showed up to the DMs house, all ready with character sheets. We then went around to introduce our characters and you will imagine my surprise when Todd introduces his character as it's literally another person at the table. Same first name, same last name, same brother, same parents. He said he graduated the top of his class at the Academy of Academic Farts and his whole motivation is to resserect his brother (the same brother as another person at the table) after killing him by hitting him with his car (it's a 1930s campaign so there are cars). Am I right to be confused and maybe a little annoyed or am I being to judgemental of this case of stolen identity. PS The DM looked annoyed as well but wanting to get the session going allowed it.

Kevin Fitzsimons

To the wise yet ,still in their physical primes Justices, and the bae-liff jerms, i present the case of the waterskin wetsuit. My younger cousin joined our extended family campaign a couple months in and fit right in. We finished his first session with a bounty at sea as one of our options for our next session. My cousin came to me and told me he had something that would help with the ocean voyage and enventual encounter on the high seas, his waterskin. He thought a waterskin was a wetsuit. He is completely new to DND and i could have told him what a waterskin is, but couldnt help myself. At our next session after a member of the party fell in the water, he confidently stated that with his waterskin on he could save the party member. After a moment of confusion the DM explained what a waterskin was and everyone had a good laugh and our tortle saved the pary memeber. My younger cousin shot me a death stare and was like "bro wtf". Was i wrong to have withheld info in order to get some laughs at the table. I humbly await your firm yet gentle judgement.

Zach Stenzel

To the man, the myth, and the legend of the jury (and the one who pulls the cases), I come with a grievance, as well as a response from my DM. I was playing in a 1 on 1 session in a video game inspired world. My character, Pretzel the Arakokra, entered a royal grave in search of a lost relic, and upon entering, was greeted by a skeleton of a dead grave robber with a note (which gave clues of the puzzle), and a bandana. This bandana had the number 6 on it, indicating there were 5 more to collect. As I began to find the other skeletons and bandanas, I entered the 4 other rooms in the grave. In most, I found a skeleton with a bandana and a note, something of value, or two Mech-shrooms (large mushroom creatures with armor). However, upon entering the 3rd room I was told “inside is another grand tomb, but outside of that, there is nothing else.” I continued on my quest, entering all other rooms, and solving the puzzle to find the artifact. I made it out by the skin of my teeth, but one bandana short. Judges, this is where my complaint lies. Should I have been asked to make a check to find the skeleton, or should I have been the one to question what my DM said? I posit the fact that I never had to ask for a check in the other rooms, but was told to make various checks throughout the tomb. Should I have not trusted the word of my DM and scoured the room anyway? Does this mean every room I now enter I should ask for an investigation check? How am I ever to believe my DM again? I humbly await the courts decision, and hope you all have a wonderful day. - Zach Honorable Crit Justices, as the DM in this case, I present my side of this encounter. The last bandana was hidden in a secret compartment in the 3rd room. While I did ask for checks in the other rooms in regards to what was readily apparent to Pretzel, my thought was that describing one empty room amongst 3 others that had clues within them would be enough of a hint to beg further investigation, but Pretzel turned from the 3rd room without asking to investigate beyond the surface level description I gave. I prostrate myself at the whims of the court. PS - Hey Caldwell, this DM is Tanner from Foes and Fables, the one we established as your long lost son during our interview. I hope, as your nepo baby, this unfair advantage may help defend my case.

hey!

*with reverence* Justices, *with spite* jake… I bring you a simple question of time equivalence. I have a friend in my game who is constantly cancelling on us, rescheduling, no heads up or lots of heads up, predictably unreliable when it comes to dnd. That’s fine, it’s a game! It’s the one our friend group spends the most time on now without reschedulingfriend (RF) but recently RF has started to ask for my patience outside of dnd too! She’s been putting me down on her resumes and i’ve had to fill out a bunch of surveys for the jobs she’s always applying too and by now it’s added up to well over a few sessions of dnd of my time. Am i right to tell RF that i will only be doing more of these surveys if she starts showing up to dnd? I get that work and play are separate but now mine are getting smushed together and torn apart because of her! I humbly await your help.

hey!

for context we don’t always have to cancel because of RF but sometimes we forget ourselves and she is the lynchpin that falls out of the Dnd copter

quolby jack

To the venerable judges and bailiff Jorsh, I present the case of the Tipsy DM and the Bejeweled Drake, may it please the court: Recently, my party was raiding a duergar fortress in Icewind Dale, and our DM was having a chill Sunday and imbibed several beers during the session. Apparently, the Austin craft beers had a higher ABV than he was used to. By the time we broke into the king's room and found his treasures, our DM was pretty drunk. Among the loot, there was a nonmagical smoking jacket encrusted with gems. Though it did not fit any of the party members, the DM allowed that my ranger's drake companion could wear it and that it would even give a plus one to AC for all the gemstones. By the next session, the DM no longer recalled this interaction and was surprised by my decked out drake and her increased AC, but he ultimately allowed his impaired decision to hold despite the dwarvish smoking jacket not actually being a great fit for a quadrupedal drake. So I ask, should I have returned my drake to it's normal stats, or was the drunken decision okay to uphold? If it matters, my ranger and thus his drake, did die that same session at the hands of the king.

Polina Milashevskaya

Congratulations, Jake!! Hope Gemma and your wife are feeling great and healthy ❤️

Spencer Clark

Greetings Magnanimous Judges. Oh, Jake, didn’t see you there: could you hang up my coat? Awesome. My friends and I were joining a pre-existing campaign in our first ever D&D campaign. The group had already started Tomb of Annihilation and we rolled in as they reached the island of Chult. As we explored Port Nyanzaru, we stopped at a crowd to watch Executioner’s Run (where criminals race through a dinosaur pit trying to win their freedom). My character, a level 4 Fighter named Jan I’tor (pronounced Yan Eetor), though this was a good distraction and tried to pick someone’s pocket. When the DM asked why I would do that, I responded “my character is chaotic neutral and it sounds fun.” He grunted “that’s not what Chaotic Neutral means, but I rolled sleight of hand and was noticed. When the city guards came over to arrest me, I cast Thunderstep to give myself room to escape. When the DM asked why I would do that, I responded “my character is chaotic neutral and it sounds fun.” Again came the “that’s not what Chaotic Neutral means.” After my spell knocked a few of them down, the DM narrated that more guards came and This-Is-Sparta’d me into the Executioner’s Run pit where I was promptly torn apart by velociraptors. We were only 30 minutes in. I had to sit there for three more hours while everyone else finished the session. I humbly ask you: was I wrong to explore my chaotic nature or was the DM a dino-sore choice for entry into D&D? We await your wisdom, Naughty by Nature

Helen Hnin Oo Lwin

Glad to have you back Jake. Hope you and your family are well and happy 😄

Persephone

Congrats, Jake! So happy for your little family!

Apple Slapple

To the Highly Honorable Judges and an enthusiastic hello to you too Jort! I present the case of Forced Aging and even more so Forced Romance: I was playing a teenage Dhampir Cleric named Lona in a 5e campaign with a small group of friends. One session, Lona was traveling with a DMPC Paladin who was, to make a really complicated explanation short, the favorite of another DMPC who would/could destroy the world if something would happen to the only person on the planet she likes. The goal was to stop a Vampire lord from draining a towns worth of peoples blood via a magic ritual. The DM told me that Lona was suddenly riddled with pain and passed out. When she awoke she had been aged to adulthood. This was certainly not what I had wanted for my character so when I asked my DM what the deal was he told me that the Vampire lord was so powerful that getting close to the town activated deep vampiric DNA that aged me to make me stronger. I wasn't happy with the explanation but thought there could be fun role-playing challenges with this situation so went with it. Then things got weird. The DMPC paladin I was was with was apparently the most attractive person on the planet which was one of the reasons he was a favorite of the other world ending DMPC. The DM told me that it would take almost all my strength not to immediately fall in love with him and that if I got too close to him it would almost guarantee that Id fall for him. This made the vampire lord fight weird because I knew that if the Paladin were to die the world would explode but if I made contact with him to heal him I'd be forced to fall in love with him. In the end I found a way to prevent a physical fight with the vampire lord by distracting him until sunrise so he'd have to retreat without completing the ritual, thus avoidng this weird catch-22. Am I wrong for finding this whole situation of being forced to age then having to fight sudden romantic feelings to be weird? Or was I perhaps missing some hints at a grand plan my DM had laid out for my character? I humbly await whatever judgement may come my way.

Ergsauz

Welcome back Jake!

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. Both new PC's have evil alignments (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 party's 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? I await your fair and just ruling.

yumehop (no. 1 ol' cobb fan)

. Dearly beloved judges and Jake, Is it appropriate for a DM to rule that your character is taller than you thought? I have been a player in a Curse of Strahd campaign for 2+ years now. At the start of the campaign we were all granted a magic item, except my friend Rusty. He forgot to submit his request for a magic item so the DM told him that his barbarian, Paul, had gained a 8ft vertical leap after finishing the Death House (which I believe is a reference to a podcast they both like). But the weird part is the DM said that his 5'11 character was now 6'11. With seemingly no reason or basis. We all rolled with it because we were all strangers at the time playing an online game. Is it ok for DMs to suddenly change the height of your character by a whole foot?

Spencer Clark

Dear Brothers and Sisters of Dice Christ, I has come to proclaim the good news. To those who roll dice every night before bed, I must bring forth the tale of how Dice Christ accelerated my career. Recently, I began my journey to seek fortune in the ways of interviewing. During once such session, I noticed something odd but familiar in the attire of interviewer. The interview continued to proceed as normal until it clicked. I stopped mid sentence and replaced my words with those that derailed the conversation for the rest of the interview. "You're wearing the chicken shirt." He reciprocated the smile and stood up so I could see the rows of dots and the word chicken in all of its glory. The topic of the hour were no longer about my technical skills but were dnd swapped stories, homebrew technics, and our shared love of NADDPOD. The offer was immediately extended and the job was mine. Thus began the golden age. So to all, I urge those to keep the dice warm in your hands and announce the double 20s or perception and luck. Squirely yours, Spencer

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.

Kit

Justices most high and Jake most low, If my player has a fly speed of 40 and a walking speed of 25, flies 25 feet into a tunnel where she can’t fly, and then has to switch to walking, does she have movement left?

Shpipple

Oh great and merciful Dice Christ! I’ve come to speak of my wrong doings to my party. So my group is playing a very deadly module and at session zero the Dm said “there will be death, you will struggle, prepare your selfs” fast forward a year and half and no one has died yet. At this point I’m begging for some action and entering the new floor of the dungeon and a lucky roll later, the group finds out that a charecter we will meet is secretly a minor bbeg and upon meeting them I do what any sane person would. Cast fireball. 2 sessions later it leads to the first TPK of our play group of 8 years. Every one said it’s fine but I feel like secretly they resent my mad goblin behavior. Forgive me dice christ for killing my friends and pray the dice devil doesn’t steal my soul

Aidan McGeath

To the benevolent judges and in honor and respect of Bailiff John’s return, I come to you with the case of Players vs GM’s boss battle trophies. I have been running an online Pathfinder 2e game for the past three years and have a group of seven PCs. The issue is this: for each boss battle I sculpt, assemble, and paint a custom miniature representing that boss. I then mail this miniature to the player who dealt the finishing blow to the boss enemy as a trophy and reward for whomping me. After 3 years and many a trophy, some of my players who play support characters have never dealt the finishing blow to a boss and have thus not received a miniature. These support players have recently voiced their frustration at some of the martial players having received multiple trophies while the support PCs have received none. Judges I beseech you: Have I acted inequitably to my players? Should I be using a different method of handing out these trophies to account for all character classes? I stand at the mercy of the court and await my judgement.

AshDronaut

Honorable justices and new daddy, Bailiff Jake! I’m running Out of the Abyss for my partner and friends and I let them use third party sources for their character builds. My partner chose ratfolk plague lord (inspired by the Skaven) from Valda’s Spire of Secrets which has been very nasty and fun so far UNTIL his new ability at level 6, projectile spew (it buffs his main ability but also allows touch spells to have a range of 15ft instead of touch). This is great for attack spells (which is flavored as “you use magical projectile vomit to deliver your payload” per Valda’s which is gross but on point for his nasty rat) but now him and the other players are trying to argue for him to cast identify from a distance by throwing up on items. This was tricky with a particular artifact they found: (spoilers) a cursed gem that causes madness when they touch it. I think it’s clever that he thought to use that ability for it but I’m still trying to work out how throwing up on something, even magical vomit, would allow someone to understand it better. I didn’t allow it for this item but I ask the court; going forward should I allow my partner’s ratfolk the ability to cast identify and other utility spells by throwing up on the target?

Willowandthewind (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-05 07:00 Honorable Crit and the bailiff Jacob whos status is in super position, I bring the case of the Italian Chef PC, I started a new game with a 3 friends and things are going well, one character is a knight redeeming honor, a special agent finding a way back home, and an Italian chef trying to make the best pasta ever. Things are going well however sometimes the italian chef breaks the emmersion. He reacts to tense moments with a poorly done italian accent with phrases like "Mamma mia" and generally seems less invested in the world. Am I doomed to give this chef the fated spoon 'stirrers-bane' or can I kill this pasta totting fool?
2023-07-03 15:51 Honorable Crit and the bailiff Jacob whos status is in super position, I bring the case of the Italian Chef PC, I started a new game with a 3 friends and things are going well, one character is a knight redeeming honor, a special agent finding a way back home, and an Italian chef trying to make the best pasta ever. Things are going well however sometimes the italian chef breaks the emmersion. He reacts to tense moments with a poorly done italian accent with phrases like "Mamma mia" and generally seems less invested in the world because of his joke character. His magic is all themed around red sauce and he doesn't use certain class abilities because they arent cooking flavoured enough. Judges I asked Am I doomed to give this chef the fated spoon 'stirrers-bane' and endulge his culinary passion or can I kill this pasta totting fool?

Honorable Crit and the bailiff Jacob whos status is in super position, I bring the case of the Italian Chef PC, I started a new game with a 3 friends and things are going well, one character is a knight redeeming honor, a special agent finding a way back home, and an Italian chef trying to make the best pasta ever. Things are going well however sometimes the italian chef breaks the emmersion. He reacts to tense moments with a poorly done italian accent with phrases like "Mamma mia" and generally seems less invested in the world because of his joke character. His magic is all themed around red sauce and he doesn't use certain class abilities because they arent cooking flavoured enough. Judges I asked Am I doomed to give this chef the fated spoon 'stirrers-bane' and endulge his culinary passion or can I kill this pasta totting fool?

3 Minions in a trench coat

To the courageous, wise, highly esteemed justices, and the lowly, lowly, lowly, lowly, lowly, lowly, lowly bailiff Joke: if it pleases the court, I present the case of the fireball casting craze. My wizard loves to interrupt every description and monologue by casting fireball and insisting it counts as a surprise round. The party is currently in hell and conscripted a little devil to help them out. The next time I began describing the enemies they could see the wizard predictably casts a 6th level fireball. The issue is all these devils are immune to fire. I asked if there would be any indication of what he was doing when he cast the spell and he said no, it was cast before anyone could react. So I let it happen, and it had no effect. He is mad because he wasted a spell slot and is trying to argue that the devil broke his deal of helping them by not informing him of a fire immunity. I feel like I covered my bases by asking about how quickly he cast the spell, the devil wouldn’t have known in time to tell him otherwise, and he never cared enough to ask. Am I wrong in that ruling, and how can I get him to settle down a little and maybe listen before he acts?

Elliot Sitford

Forgive me Dice Christ for I have sinned, for you see I have committed a sin so foul it may have been to start to the end of my career as a dm, as a new dungeon master for a small group of online friends I wanted to have some fun and do my own thing rather than follow a book, cutting to the chase my players were following the trails of a “Rat man” who has been seen around town, and after a few days of tracking him down my the one player (sorcerer) who can fly, decides to “fly ahead and scope out the cave” while the 2 slower (paladin and cleric) walk; after following a figure into a cave the sorcerer decides to head further into the cave where I had 2 wererats hiding. Which attacked him, rolling 2 nat 20s and him rolling a 1 on a curse save, he would have died on the spot, Not wanting to kill my player I lied and held back only knocking him unconscious and miraculously at that point the other 2 players appeared and rescue him. The campgain only had a maybe 4 more (short) sessions and we never played again. Please forgive me daddy dice so I can play again

Brett Miller

To the esteemed justices and the newly returned bailiff turned papa (congratulations!!), I am a longtime listener but a first time submitter, coming to you with a crisis of Dice Christ faith. I have been running a homebrew D&D campaign set in a superhero world (unaffiliated with major comics) for nearly five years, which mostly consists of the players realizing that each of their parents were unsuccessful in stopping a cultist from ascending to godhood, whom they must now defeat. At the start of our campaign, almost all of my players were brand new, and I was their first dm. However, they are experienced players now, and I felt that my players were in need of a new threat that felt more personal. So I introduced a longterm turncoat NPC who would betray them. I employed a system that included numerous deception checks, performance checks, and stealth, to get around them, but my players were suspicious from the start, and they eventually confronted this foe in a conflict that arose to a battle. I really wanted to challenge my players, because I felt they were ready, so at the time of the NPC’s creation, I pulled a Death Knight stat from the monster manual and reskinned it. I warned my players of the difficulty of the fight, and they were prepared. But when it came to the fight itself, I found myself pulling punches, like completely ignoring abilities and legendary actions of the Death Knight, in favor of my level 8 players. (That said, they did talk their way out of the end of the fight, leave their opponent alive, and lose a major NPC ally in the process.) I’ve purposefully cultivated a goofy and fun space with serious and grim undertones whenever I can, and I often describe the campaign feel as a playground (since I often let bits and jokes continue on for far too long, because I myself am having fun). So I ask you, humble court, in the eyes of Dice Christ, did I rob the players of a potentially game changing event that they earned as a party? I await your verdict.

Dionysus' Worst Sommelier

To the providers of potent polyhedrons and whatever their favorite bit has been this episode, if it pleases the congregation I would love to testify the love of Dice Christ. In a recent encounter, one of the goals was to free the twin brother of my Eladrin Wild Magic Barbarian/Battle Master Fighter from the Gaes of a chain devil using him as a boy toy. After the cleric broke concentration on Banishment and the devil came back, I did what all good barbarians do and cast Hit Them With My Greatsword to save my bro. The first two attacks, both natural twenties on the Eldermourne die I received from merch club. I managed to rake up some bonkers damage that turn with a combo of those Bookvar-blessed rolls, Goading Attack, and Action Surge. After the battle, Bookvar came back twice on an Insight check on if my brother got laid in the Fey Wild (he did) and an Investigation check that totaled 34 when I rolled an eight on Tactical Assessment superiority die. It truly felt like a little guardian book familiar was making sure I was able to reunite my buff elf with his twin brother he had not heard from in months. Have a Trickser-blessed day!

Caddy Wampus

PS Vasilisa has a wolf familiar named Bayushki. All details about Vasilisa were included to gain favor with Justice Axford.

Leila Elliott

No court cases here, but I hope you had a wonderful time with your family during paternity leave, Jake! 💜 Congratulations on your new addition!

Nick Morganella

To the esteemed justices and the steamy bailiff Hurwitz, I present the case of “The Forced Fade-To-Black.” In the midst of the pandemic, I was lucky enough to be invited into an online D&D group by a good friend and fellow NADDpole, and so began our adventures through the Lost Mines of Phandelver. The group started working together seamlessly, the RP flowed naturally, and all seemed to be going well. That is, until my Warlock started taking an interest in a shopkeeper NPC after a few increasingly flirty encounters with her. Finally, I decided to ask her on a date, and she coyly accepted. When the time for the date came, what I thought would be a simple scene at some sort of outdoor picnic or other chaste affair instead became a very sexually charged fade-to-black moment that I was not expecting. I was really bothered by this, enough to retire that character a couple weeks later due to how all the PC’s started treating my Warlock after this forced affair, and the DM didn’t really seem to care or understand why I was upset. Am I justified in feeling a little violated by this moment, or should I have been more flexible and rolled with it? My case is in your capable hands!

Hardtooth unsureleg

To the omnipresent existence of the justices and the mediocre bailiff. I am a long time dm for a 2 years long campaign. My players keep kidnapping and tortureing almost ALL of my npcs, most notably my quest giver from the empire. I would not have a problem with the need to torture some of my npcs but it’s honestly scary how much detail the do it in. They are all having a lot of fun and I don’t wanna be the one to ruin it for them. I humbly thank you for your time

Kyle M Harris

To the honorable Justices and the DNDaddy Baliff Jake (long may he daddy). I present the case of the Misty Advantage. My Wild magic Sorcerer cast misty step in combat, appearing behind an archer that was raining arrows down from a roof top. The Sorcerer then attempted to push this archer off the roof. The case is this; the sorcerer argued that they should have advantage, as they appeared behind the archer with misty step and surprised them. I argued that it is a spell in the middle of combat which would create some visible effect, and they aren't surprised (it being several turns in). I ended up giving the advantage as other players joined in the discussion, but I ask you, should I have stuck with my ruling, or would the Sorcerer have advantage?

Erik Gospodarski

To the humble yet magnificent parishioners of Dice Christ's grand church, I come to you with a confession of the highest sin. I have been working on making a Harry Potter style D&D system on and off for the past year, filled with new, more customizable leveling, new combat rules that fit the HP universe better, using wand types instead of race, etc. I ran a one shot for a group of friends while I was visiting home in the setting of a new wizarding school I made, completely improvising what was supposed to be a 20 minute classroom session that they asked for when they decided to challenge the two best duellers to a 2 on 3 duel. Now here's where I sinned... While they were fighting (what was supposed to be an unwinnable fight) they used a variety of methods to completely disarm one of the NPCs for the majority of the fight, leaving me struggling, and in a moment of weakness, giving myself advantage on a roll when the first was a fail in order to hit them and deal some serious damage. They ended up losing but gaining the respect of the NPCs, and got to learn a new spell as a reward for such a good fight. They were a little salty at the loss, but otherwise had a great time. Great Holy Ones, I await your divine retribution. P.S. The unbeatable NPCs would have still won the fight, they just got me caught in a tight spot and I panicked.

Johny Dude-Kay

To the virtuous and upstanding judges, and the jakely, jakely, jakely, jakely, jakely, jakely, jakely baliff Low, I humbly lay before you, "The Case of the One Mile Throw" I was the new guy in a group that had been playing together for a few years already. Our DM was the best friend of the guy who brought me into the group. It was my 3rd session ever and I was playing a Rogue; a chaotic good thief, and I was all about the freedom the game offered to think outside of the box. Through a series of crazy events, our party was set to lead an Army against a horde of orcs with a demon possessed general. As a thief, I didn't feel like I had much to offer on that sort of battlefield, and so I played my strengths: stealth and subterfuge. As the rest of the Party Faced down the Orc General and the bulk of his Army, with my DMs permission and a passing roll, I would sneak behind enemy lines about half a mile over hilly terrain to their camp. Upon arriving and hearing the DM describe where the orcs were keeping the horses they meant to ride into battle, I decided that I would sabotage their reinforcements by releasing all of their horses. My DM asked me to roll stealth and I was blessed with a natural 20. The DM had a house rule that even on skill checks, 20 was an automatic success, no matter what. I might as well have been invisible. And so as I described my character sneaking through the camp and reaching the horses, my DM rolled an attack roll and said something much higher than my AC. Confused, I let out a "uh... hit? But what-" before i could finish, the DM cut me off and stated that from the chaos of the battlefield, the Orc General had spotted me and had thrown his greatsword at me, impaling me like a ballista. The whole table was in disbelief. I asked him to explain and justify this happening, since I had gotten a Nat 20 on stealth, the general didn't know I existed let alone that I was headed for his camp, and the distance and terrain the DM had described denied him line of sight or any natural way of detecting me. In the ensuing argument, the best he could come up with was "Well, he's a demon so" where, the worst of his argument was "because I'm the DM and I said so!" The rest of the table tried their best to stay out of it, but did noticeably raise a brow at the attack roll. Things escalated to the point where the DM threatened that if we were all so dissatisfied with his DMing, that he would just quit and we'd be without a game. When no one argued for him to stay, he packed his things and stormed out. Feeling bad that I, as the new guy, ruined their game and possibly their relationship with a life long friend, I offered to try my hand at DMing and did my best to teach myself the ropes of the game. 15 years later, I am a happy forever DM that has run dozens of games, in multiple systems, some having kept on for more than a year and have introduced dozens of people to the magic of TTRPGs. But I always think back to that one session. I humble myself to your authprity and ask for a ruling: Was I out of line to question my DM, or was I right to feel that my DM was violating the established circumstances and rules of the table? I will graciously accept any decision from this esteemed court, and honor any punishments ordered. I am at your mercy, Shafted Spekz ~Angel LaPamela Sandra-Rita~

Kristen M.

To the ever-myrmecophilous judges and the shamefully-pulchritudinous bailiff: if it please the court, I present the case of the ineffective fighter. I was playing in a campaign a while ago where there were three PCs: a kenku cleric (me), a fairy wizard and a kobold fighter. We had a great time during roleplay, but the issue came during combat. Despite always talking about how they wanted to "separate heads from bodies" in roleplay and us having to hold them back from murdering random NPCs, when in combat the fighter didn't actually... fight? They'd go completely off script, not use weapons or class abilities and only use some non-combat spells they had from a feat (like thaumaturgy and minor illusion, I can't remember) to try to "scare" the enemy. When asked by the dm to roll intimidation checks, they refused and said they weren't trying to intimidate the enemy, only scare them. They refused to take any other action at all, even a dodge action, insisting they just keep creating illusions. We were all baffled, asked if they were joking and they said no with this glint in their eye like they were doing something really clever? Ultimately we played two sessions and had near TPKs both times. The campaign was basically DOA but am I wrong to still be irritated and ignore any requests to play with this person again? I await your wise judgment. P.S. They are the wizard's spouse and have played D&D before, with no report of misconduct, if that helps.

uudd

Dear Fellow judges and whatever adjective you want to describe tuckers girlfriend's husband I bring a case of two people who can agree on everything had a massive argument that still has no answer. A player and I got into a debate about the alert feat and surprise rounds. I, the dm, said that the villian would not be able to attack them but could still get its own round. They, the player, said that they should act during the creatures surprise round. My question is this: is a stripper more clothed by area covered or pieces of clothing? I as because we solved that first problem quick, this question brought up a heated argument. I said that it is amount of clothing specifically like coming out shirtless but adding a belt is doing the reverse of stripping. They said that it is area uncovered that makes someone a stripper. Judges, does stripping involve surface area or amount of individual clothing. We throw ourselves at the mercy of the court

Tj Rincon

To the dutiful judges and the new spicy daddy Jack. I present the case of the 'Player determined reward". Im running my first campaign for my mom, girlfriend, sister and her wife. The background of my sister's character is Noble and I thought it would be cool for the first session to start in the town her family presides over, so I had the first mission for level 1 characters be to rescue her sister who was kidnapped by gobins. To entice another PC to join the quest(a rogue who wanted a reward) she offered 1000 Gillians(a Harry Potter thing?) to the rogue(her wife) to help, saying that she was rich cause of her background. After the successful saving of the sister, the rogue wrote 1000 g on her character sheet and we ended the session. At the next session I decided that was way too much so I lowered the reward to a measly 50g for each PC. The rogue laughed off the deduction but my sister claims she is super rich and lives in a castle so she should've kept the gold. Honored judges, should I have let them keep the 1000g or come up with a better way to lower the reward? I offer myself to you and humbly await your judgment.

LovelyLorelei

Welcome back to the pitiable and spineless bailiff! The case I present to day is that of a new DND player. I’ve know her since highschool ( we are in our 30s now for reference) and after introducing her to NADDPOD and D20 she asked if she could join the regular game I DM. I was excited to let her in and after conferring with the rest of the players they agreed as well. I helped her build her character over the phone and was excited for the first session. She quickly became a problem player, forgetting dice and somtimes even her character sheet out of game and in game taking swings at any NPC she could and flirting with all the rest no matter how uncomfortable it makes the rest of the table. When she was sick one session I NPCed her so the rest of us could play and I saw that she only had half of her abilities even written down on her sheet and none of her items or weapons. She told me that this is the most fun she’s ever had but The rest of the group is debating kicking her out, should do so or try and guide her to a more harmonious way to play?

Drew P

To the radiant justices of the Supreme Crit, and also that grimy rat boy they let in to read the cases for some reason, I submit to you a case on everyone’s favorite DnD buzzword: Metagaming I recently started a new campaign with some relatively casual friends. In an early session, our barbarian engaged in an arm wrestling tournament at a tavern in an attempt to win the party the favor of the local big buff bar boy. As any self-respecting barbarian is wont to do, our brawny barb flew into a rage at the start of the tournament in order to gain advantage on all her athletic checks. She won the first round, and we all swarmed to congratulate her. However, issues came about when our cleric said, and I quote, “In the hubbub I throw a punch at the barbarian, trying to deal as little damage as possible.” To anyone listening who is confused (as I’m sure that fool of a bailiff is), a barbarian must either take or deal damage each round to stay in their rage. The cleric was hoping to extend the barbarian’s rage into the next tournament round with some light friendly fire. The DM, however, chastised the cleric for Metagaming and did not allow this action, giving the cleric “A Warning” (his words). In my desperately humble opinion, this DM has a history of pulling the Metagaming trigger too quick, as he had previously asked us to roll arcana checks to see if we understood what our teammates’ spells did. So I ask the illustrious court! Was this truly an excessive act of Metagamery?? Would the characters, who had been traveling together for weeks at this time, not know how our comrades’ abilities worked? Would the perceptive cleric not learn that his beefy barbarian bud is most formidable when she is getting whaled on?? I prostrate myself, eager and trembling, before the iron justice of the court. PS: Congrats on the kid or whatever

MyMomSaysImHot

To the honorable justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner presiding, and the lowly bailiff Jake (I hope your child can one day also practice in Boston) Today I present to you the case of the self-destructive character intro, and the consequences thereafter. Many moons ago one of our party members (let’s call him Bryce) was getting bored of his current character and wanted to play a new one. He decided a great way to introduce his new character would be to have that new character (Bryce 2) enter from behind and kill his old character (Bryce 1) in front of the party. Naturally one of our other party members argued that our characters couldn’t let this slide, watching our friend die in front of us and had to retaliate. The rest of the party then initiated PVP and began to kill Bryce 2 as revenge for killing Bryce 1. It was a 5v1 and Bryce 2 was dead almost instantly and Bryce (the player) was evidently upset that we had slain his new character. It’s been a long time since this and everyone is still friends and Bryce’s new character Bryce 3 lived a long time but Justices, I ask you this: Were we wrong for avenging Bryce 1? I humbly await your judgement, but I will not go back to prison.

David Klein

To the Honorable Justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, and the kind bailiff jarm who is so kind, he is raising Tucker and Jill's child as his own. May I present the Cold Case of the Cardiac Arrest Causing Dragon Cum. I was playing in a heavily homebrew campaign in which our DM had given us the opportunity to buy a potion that would make people instantly jizz their pants and mechanically go prone. In the same session we had begun to raid a bad guys compound. With the help of a friendly NPC and his Bronze Dragon partner. We flew above the compund dropping arrows coated in the Jizz Juice, causing the bad guys to collapse to the floor with moistened underwear. As a bit of flair I decided to give the dragon a little bit of the Jizz Juice and to my horror. The DM described the Dragon instantly dying and crashing to the ground, stating that going from soft to cum was enough to kill the Dragon out right. I simply wanted to rain Dragon milk upon our enemies but instead gave our party's friend a cum filled cardiac arrest. Was the DM right to kill our dragon friend. Or should we have been allowed to bask in our glory and cum? I humbly await your decision and prostrate myself for any punishment you may see fit.

Ros

To the most honorable judges and the modestly average baliff, I come to the court to ask this; did my DM rob my PC of his kill? I play a campaign with my very close friends. In this campaign, our DM gives us "finishing blows" where we get to add flavor to killing strikes. It's always just for flavor and is usually pretty funny. My PC had his family killed by a small dystopian leader (not the big bad) and later into the campaign, after a grueling, bloody battle, I had been lucky enough to strike the killing blow on him and when my DM asked me what my finishing blow was like, I said I coldly snapped his neck with a sneer. To my surprise, DM asked me to roll a strength check. I rolled a nat one and she proceeded to describe how my nemesis began to stand back up and crack his neck with one hit point. He got another turn where I went down and my party members took him down without me. No finishing rolls required... I still play in that campaign today but I will always be salty about the one and only time anyone was ever asked to roll for a killing blow

David Klein

It should be Noted that our DM claims the death was from falling Damage

Jade Finch

to the marvelous judges of the supreme crit and the guy raising tucker's child, I bring before you the case of the Uninterested Beggar. I am the forever DM for my group of friends, last Winter we finished a multi-year 1-20 campaign. Throughout that campaign, one player repeatedly split off from the party, got himself killed/trapped, made deals behind the other characters backs, and kidnapped and imprisoned a friendly NPC AFTER treating her to a romantic dinner in which he rolled well for! At level 20, while on the final arc of this campaign he repeatedly asked us all why they were in the abyss and what they were doing. During this, the player messaged me privately to say he would be too busy in the future to play and would leave the D&D part of our group after this campaign. Now I have been setting up for the second multi-year campaign the last few months and he has continuously interposed himself in campaign 2 conversations and mentioned what his character will be doing when the rest of the party find him? He has expressed desire in getting a guest arc type spotlight for his character in the future through a third party but has not messaged me at all about wanting to rejoin the party for a second campaign. Should I allow this player back at my table?? I throw myself from a balcony into your laps, deal your judgement as you see fit.

Kati D

To all of the most esteemed justices and the bestest bailiff, today I bring before you a question which has proved quite troublesome and brought much discord upon my mind. Here I present the case of the Flash-Boiled Familiar (and Other Occurrences). I recently joined a long-term pre-existing campaign. In my third session with them, the party was Teleported to a town. Unfortunately, this Teleport missed the destination a bit, and we ended up in the river. My character (Water Genasi) quite enjoyed this, and swam deeper down to frolick in the water, bringing out her crab familiar (Puffer). Unfortunately, others in the party were not so enthused to end up in the water. Another member of the party (a forge cleric) summoned his companion, a spiritual creature made of firey lava, to help quickly get the remaining members of the party back on land. All of the other characters made it back onshore safely with no damage. The DM ruled that this creature was summoned directly into the water, and therefore boiled the river. He rolled damage for the superheated water: Puffer was killed, and my character took minor damage. (I don’t remember the exact mechanics/spell used; I was rather in distress by the murder of my familiar.) Was this an acceptable response to the occurrence? Or was it cold-blooded murder of an innocent crab? There have also been other events with Puffer that have led me to question the actions of the DM. These include Puffer being stepped on and squashed by the transformed dragon changeling DMPC; Puffer being unsympathetic and angry in a time when my character needed emotional comfort (I was not permitted to retcon to dismiss him before a night of literal nat 20 lovemaking, which led to another, which culminated in a nat 1, which prompted my attempted bedmate to wordlessly vacate the room) and led to him dealing damage to my character with his pinching; and not working with my improv that Puffer enjoyed meeting new people and exploration. I am the only character in the party with a familiar. Is the DM being too harsh with Puffer? Or am I putting him in bad situations by attempting to work him into my character’s everyday routine? I humbly await your judgment and responses.

Alexander Kee

To the esteemed judges and also Tucker’s new babysitter, Jake - I present the case of the bag of beans. I DM a home game that has been running for three years now (this becomes important later), but one of my players has recently stepped up and is DMing a short module for the first time! In a previous session, my party was in a sketchy magic item shop and I was presented with a bag of beans. As a DM, I had spent a lot of time looking at magical items, and remembered a similar item in one of the source books, so I spent all of my gold buying the item. It is important to note that I had no clue if this item was the one I remembered, a homebrewed version of it, or even magical at all. Jump forward to our last session, where we were facing off against two ghostly mylings. One of their abilities was to grapple a target, and drag them under the earth over two turns, effectively removing the target from the battle and slowly suffocating them. You could attempt a strength save to try and escape, but given my strength was low as a warlock/cleric, I opted to pull out a bean as I was dragged under ground. The magic item I remember had a random effect table, and I specifically remembered one crazy outcome which would spawn a massive pyramid from under the earth. Sure enough, the bag of beans I had bought was the magic item I remembered, and as they were “planted” as I was brought under the earth, the DM asked me to roll for the effect. By a miracle only Dice Christ could have performed, I rolled the number needed for the pyramid. My DM was horrified, unsure what to do at the moment. He took a minute to think before finally allowing the shenanigans to happen. This effectively ended the combat encounter, destroyed the map layout, and changed the future of the arc. I was ecstatic, knowing my crazy plan actually saved my character - but my DM was flustered and defeated - stating I ruined his game. The rest of the night he razzed me and threatened (jokingly) that he was going to go out of his way to derail my campaign. I ask you this: was I wrong to use information outside of my character’s purview to guide my decision making, or should I take solace in knowing that the beans could have just been beans? I humbly await your ruling.

Courtney W

To the Justices Tanner, Axford and the particularly gracious Justice Murphy who took a 3 for me, as well as Baliff Papa Hurwitz May it please the Crit: awhile back my DM asked me to write a one-shot campaign for his bithday. I put a lot of effort into the event. There were traps, riddles, a four floor dungeon to explore, and even handcrafted props. I really wanted to shine, and admittedly, show off a little. (He enjoyed those kinds of obstacles, for the court record) He invited a couple of friends and we sat down for what should have been a lovely afternoon of birthday D&D. My players got through a good half of the campaign, everyone was having fun and I was feeling pretty proud. The party decided before going further they should take a long rest, at which point my phone pings. As the players make camp and RPed with each other, I read the birthday boy’s text in which he reveals to me his plan to murder all his companions in their sleep the moment it’s his turn to take watch, and steal the valuable magical item the dungeon was protecting. I did everything I could to try and stop him, used every roll for friend and foe I could come up with off the top of my head. I’m more experienced now and know better how I could have countered this play, but at the time I was at a total loss. I couldn’t stop it. The Birthday Assassin rolled exceptionally well and murdered his entire party. I promptly began packing up all my materials, and stormed off. I hoped I’d get over my bitterness, but no dice (pun intended), so I also stopped going to the group he DM’d. His treatment of what I put so much effort into making for his gift really hurt me, but his rationale was it his birthday, he could do what he wanted and I should have finished the one-shot with just him playing. Was I only serving him his just desserts to cut his birthday adventure short, or was he within his rights to have his cake and murder it too? I leave my fate in your hands.

Ayn Like Ryan

Welcome back jonk!! Congrats on the babe 💙

Troy D. Blaze, Future King Of The Pirates

To the honorable judges and the bailiff whose attendance may or may not have been spotty lately, I present the case of the DM’s unrequited love. I am in a campaign with a few friends and my ex-roommate, we’ll call him Dylan, had a crush on one of our party members. She would attack every NPC we encountered, and it would make diplomacy a thing of imagination in an all too imaginary landscape. When I would try and steer her into the right direction using role play, and use charisma based checks to make friends with otherwise very strong enemies, she’d get a little irritated. That would prompt the DM to pepper my rogue with rocks that fell from the heavens and would do 2d6 bludgeoning damage each time. This happened several times in the same session, and even perception checks weren’t enough to save me from getting out of the way of these god thrown projectiles. This led to a rather short campaign as said girl began to date her roommate. We were planning new campaigns, but I’m not keen on joining in the future due to past experiences Should I have talked with my DM about his blatant favoritism or should I have quit in hopes of joining a new campaign like I have done? I await your wise ruling. P.S. Happy belated rad dad’s day to the bailiff and Justice Tanner 🖤

Aspen

welcome back!!

Fitz of Rage

I beseech the Honorable judges of the court and the bailiff, who may choose an adjective and name starting with 'J' of his own liking I bring you the case of the Paranoid Ranger V. Mindcontrolled Teens In my first ever time playing/running D&D, I started the campaign with an old adventure called 'AGAINST the CULT of the REPTILE GOD', in which a town was slowly being mind controlled by a Naga and her troglodite minions. In the second session, after the rogue managed to convince the cult's evil priest that she was in the cult and "helped" drug and kidnap the fighter for brainwashing, the bard and the ranger followed them into the swamp for an ambush. The fighter was pretending to be knocked out while being carried by a troglodite and two local teens who had been mind controlled, while the rogue and the priest walked alongside discussing cult topics. The ranger convinced the bard that they should attack the teens first in the surprise round because they would go down in one hit each and then they would outnumber the enemies. I reminded them that the teens were children, had only improvised weapons, and were mindcontrolled, ostensibly being the victims here, but he insisted that they were a threat now and needed to die. After downing the teens and decimating the real threats in a short battle, the ranger (whose favored enemy was undead) began dismembering the teens. When I asked why he would do such a thing, he said it was to prevent them from being raised from the dead as zombies. I reminded him that they hadn't seen any evidence of necromancy here, and that the spell to make a zombie from a corpse could also make a skeleton from a pile of body parts. He refuted with "just because there aren't undead yet, doesn't mean there won't be" and "I wouldn't know about how the spell works" despite him being an expert in undead. The rest of the party that was present didn't seem all that phased and, being a new DM I didn't know what to do so I just moved on. In the next session, when the paladin player rejoined us and learned of what he missed in session two, he was just as baffled as I was, going so far as to change his planned character concept from vengeance paladin that loves fighting evil, to devotion paladin that has to keep the party on the right track. The ranger continued to defend the move for years, despite constant fresh-made razzberry pies thrown at his face clown style Were me and the paladin naive to bash this tactical brilliance, or was mutilating teens kinda overkill?

scott kennedy

To the illustrious judges and the eternal paternal bailiff, I bring the case of spike the heal-bot. My brother was running dungeon of the mad mage and in true Caldwell fashion, I wanted to roleplay a friendly robot. So I made spike, a lawful good warforged artificer who was programmed by his creators to be a battlefield medic. I took a medic background and to flesh out his story I decided spike had lost a previous battalion of friends and was determined not to lose anyone else in combat. Fast forward to the fifth or sixth room of the dungeon, and our mage steps on a trapdoor that slides her into a nearby ash pit. A thick cloud of ash fly’s up, and 10 duerger archers above the pit nearby hear the commotion. A rain of disadvantaged arrows fall on our mage and she goes down. My plans to take out an archer or two are dashed when my mages first death save is a nat 1; spikes programming kicks in and in my turn I slide into the pit, taking opportunity attacks in an effort to save my friend. Once in the pit I needed to roll to find my mage; And in Caldwell fashion, I nat 1. The DM describes the sickening crunch of my robotic boot flattening my mages skull. Spike stares at the bloody mess that is his right foot and after a few personal internal dice rolls, I decide it’s too much for his tender metal heart. The ash cloud dies down and the duergers take aim. 10 seperate attacks, they all miss and I roll 2 nat 20s. Spike stands there unflinching, grappling with his broken programming as arrows whizz by almost impossibly. As the rest of the party wipes, spike decides to power himself down. While it did make for a cinematic moment, Supreme justices, can a nat 1 with good intentions kill a separate party member? My brother and I have had long talks, where I say he robbed my mage of their last death save and he says that I did that by sliding into a pit with no vision. P.s. congrats jake, we all know you’ll be a better father than you’ve been bailiff

Rover Bernhard

I think this is an interesting case that would be more likely to be chosen if you changed the “succle the wife worm toes” part of the last sentence. It crosses the line from playful begging into sexuality on a person who likely doesn’t want you to suckle her toes. I say this because I want this countersuit to appear in front of the court. I also think it’s disrespectful to write that, but I doubt you intended it to come off like that.

SwagDog85

To the highest court in the TTRPG land with the bailiff/agent of Gemma named Jvelin? I ask for an expedited hearing. I killed my boss. Not my BBEG but my real life boss. The BBEG that they were fighting was an arch mage who set up his chamber with a bunch of glyphs of warning meant to counterspell any healing magic. Due to the chaos of battle I forgot to use some of these glyphs. As one last attack by the BBEG I had him cast fireball on the largest group which with high rolls killed my boss. When the cleric tried to revivify him the glyph of warning activated to counter the cleric's spell. The cleric was out of spell slots and my boss died. It was not until after the battle and my BBEG and boss laid dead that I realized that the glyph should have countered our bard's healing word a round or two earlier. If I rewind back too much I am not sure if more characters would have died as that healing word brought up the paladin who landed two crits on the BBEG. I ask the court what should I do? I have one week to come up with a meaningful solution before my boss gets back from his vacation. Screwed no matter what, Hank Addition information: Before this incident my boss took me to one of our locations that we managed which was 8 hrs away round trip and for a good majority we talked about an arch he would like for his character. I am an accounting major and NEED my boss to sign paperwork to help me complete my CPA pre-certifications but before his break he was avoiding talking to me in the workplace. I am a virgo.

DT5537

To the Honorable Judges, and the extremely handsome bailiff who's name escapes me, I bring you the case of the forcibly swapped race. My party recently swapped from 5e to Pathfinder 2e, by popular vote, and thus we had to translate our characters from 5e to PF2E. I am playing a Bardbarian, so this translated nicely as PF2E has a muse for the bard that is a warrior. So far so good. The problem is this, I WAS a dragonborn in 5e, and there is no nice translation for them in PF2E. I suggested the Battlezoo Ancestries: Dragons, as it was the closest thing to a bipedal dragon man. (Let it be known that my Dragonborn was tall and dumb, this is important). Alas, the DM said that I wasn't a literal dragon in 5e, so I would have to settle for being a LIZZARDFOLK with the draconic scion heritage! In his world, Lizardfolk are small, fast, and deceitful! My sweet baby boy Dremmesh is thick of ass and thick of skull, and would never lie to someone on purpose but the DM insists that THAT is how I should be playing him now. And so, honorable judges and handsome bailiff, am I wrong to be upset, or should I bend to God's will? PS, the DM and I are great friends outside of just Roleplaying, and we discussed this in person and came to a conclusion, but I continue to be pedantic and seek validation for my woes, joking as they are. PPS, congrats Jake and welcome back!

Zach Z

To the venerable judges and the newly christened "Papa" bailiff, I come to testify to the glory of Dice Christ. A couple of months ago, I along with a group of friends all traveled to a large D&D event where we were able to play one-shots run by professional DMs. It was an absolutely wonderful time, but I must give testament to the power and glory of the Almighty. For he blessed my first table with an absolute *whomping* on our DM. We rolled 18 nat 20s in four hours. 18. Nat 20s. In four hours. At a table of six people who had, up till this point, never met in person. It was an absolute blast of a time, with a lot of unhinged RP and general shenanigans. I offer this tale as an account of the glory and salvation that comes when you believe in the one true Dice Christ, and would ask that this be made into a story of the many miracles that come when the dice are allowed to tell the story. It was, without a shred of doubt, one of the best times at a table I've had in a long time, and I don't believe I could ever recreate that experience if I tried. Thanks for all the fun adventures, and again congrats to Jake on multi-classing to "father" on top of "husband"!

James

Honorable Judges and the tireless bailiff george, I attend a “pub-league” game monthly where there are 5 DM’s running the same session for groups of 5-ish random players at a time. This way you’re with a different group of players and DM each time. To keep things simple for myself in this format, I play a fighter. Generally, I have a ton of fun but as time goes on the number of martial characters have dwindled to the extreme. Most recently, my party was made up of 2 wizards, a druid, 2 rangers (ranged weapons) and me a battle master fighter. Through shenaniganery, the casters in my party circumvented every combat encounter and sneak mission leaving my character to do nearly nothing for the session outside of role playing. We completed the session an hour and a half early since we skipped all combats. Honorable judges, am I wrong for being annoyed that my party wanted to skip all the confrontation and rewards therein to speed run the session? Should I have been the “I punch the barbarian” kind of player to push the party in a direction that would have been more involved for me?

James Mckinnon

Nothing to submit here, just wanted to say happy you’re back and much congratulations on the addition to the family!

Evan Smith

To the illustrious judges and the newly established Papa Bailiff Jake. In a campaign I’m playing with a friend and his family, My friend and I are both playing monks. We ended a session falling into an area with 2 Half dragon big bads and 3 brezerkers. We convinced the dm to let us Dragon Ball Z Fuse together into one being. We then won the encounter after slight of handing the enemies sword out of his hands mid fight. Were we in the wrong for convincing the dm to let us fuse? We are at the Honorable judges and Papa Bailiff’s judgement.

Nora R

Dear Honored Judges of the Highest Court and disgraced former judge of Boston, I present to you the case of Stackable Shapeshifts. I DM for my younger sister, who plays a level 10 Circle of Stars Druid in a homebrew campaign. She was in an underwater cavern, trying to prevent a faction of anti-Fae fanatics from accessing a portal to a pathway between the Material Plane and the Faewild, guarded by a dragon turtle. Before the bad guys got there, she attempted to convince the dragon turtle she was friendly by using her last wild shape of the day to turn into her starry dragon form, hoping that a dragon turtle would be more receptive to another dragon. She was successful, but not before the bad guys got to the cavern. She decided to flee to the pathway between planes and destroy the portal from the other side. Destroying the portal would destabilize the pathway, so she would have to do a Wisdom check to re-stabilize it or become unmoored in the emptiness between planes, possibly forever. While she was in her starry form, she cast polymorph on herself to turn into a giant shark for enough strength and swim speed to grab her NPC companions and get to the portal first. She then dropped polymorph on the other side of the portal and destroyed it. She rolled her Wisdom check and got a 5, which is a fail, but she argued that she should have dropped out of polymorph back to her starry dragon form, not her original form. The starry dragon lets her treat any Wisdom check of 9 or lower as a 10, which would pass. All of this took place within the 10-minute time limit of her starry form. I thought that dropping polymorph should drop her to her original form, but ultimately ruled she could drop back to wild shape because I thought the move was rad. The question we put before the court is this: was my sister correct to smugly rub it in my face that she once again bested me and my petty obstacles, or should I have cackled madly as I let her spin out into the great nothingness between planes? P.S. Welcome back and congrats on the baby!

Jon

To the amazing judges and the bailiff who is awesome, just ok, or sucks dragon pussy (depending on how Murph is feeling). I bring to you the case of the player who doesn’t seem to ever be happy with a character. While running a campaign for my 3 players, everything seemed to be going well for the first 3 sessions. However, after finishing up in the starting town (while running from the current enemies) the session came to an end. Before the next session, my friend playing a wizard decided he wanted to completely change characters and be a sorcerer. Which I was fine with and allowed him to completely roll a new character/stats (which ended up being slightly lower than his wizards stats but overall all players were within 3 total ability score points) all players had 2 highish stats, 2 average, and 2 lower. My main problem comes from after ONE session with his new character he decided he wanted to roll yet another character. I told him that was fine, but he must keep his previously rolled stats but may reorganize them if he would like and change them based on his chosen race. He decided he didn’t like that and we went back and forth but eventually I let him have his way and roll all new stats… the raw numbers were 17, 11,12, 9, 9, and 7. Obviously he then wanted to have his old stats back. I said no because this is what he wanted. Now I’m not cruel enough to have him play a whole campaign with these stats, but a few sessions? I mean this IS what he wanted right? I should note that his newest character is a paladin so I had plans on his god granting him more power (improving his stats after a few sessions). My question is am I in the wrong for making him stick with shitty stats for a while? If not, am I being too easy on him giving him an out? Should I be more harsh? (P.S for Murph, finding new friends isn’t much of an option in this scenario because all players are going to be part of my upcoming wedding party)

Noah Muruve

Corrupt judges and Golden mic winner, the pinch himself, 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?

tonytheoneandonly

Brick v. A Dire Rat's Prick, 69 U.S. 420 (2023) I present my case to the Strong, Dexterous, Constitute, Intelligent, Wise and Charismatic Supreme Crit Justices. jake. Many years ago, my brother was DMing a campaign for me and my cousin. I was playing a Minotaur Barbarian named Brick. During an encounter with a pack of Dire Rats, I asked my brother if I could roll a CHA check to charm the leader of the Dire Rat pack. Since as a part animal, I can understand their instincts. Reluctantly he agreed and l proceeded to roll a 20, all natural. Elation! But since I succeeded so well. My brother decided that the Leader Rat became enamored by my Minotaur nose, as it is roughly the same shape and color as a Rat. On its turn, the Dire Rat leapt onto my face and started to make sweet Rat love to my nose. I objected. I argued that as a Minotaur I am wearing a septum ring, which would block the entryway into my nostril. My brother ruled that cows have notoriously long and wide nostrils so there would be ample clearance for a Rat's little dick. Reluctantly I seceded, Brick and the Dire Rat went on a few dates but nothing serious ever came of it... jk Brick killed the Rat. But more a decade later and I still believe the Septum Ring Defense would have protected my nostril from the Dire Rats advances, was I correct? I lie supine and humbly await the Supreme Crits decision.

DM Othman

Corrected. Ty for the perspective. I dont suck toes FTR.

Xavior

Dear almighty and powerful justices and the swift hand of punishment Jake. I bring to you the case of the discord Prince. My group were playing every Saturday but some wanted to play during the week (small things here and there) so we started a discord channel. I couldn't join in because of work. Well two weeks later one of the other players turns out to be a prince. Wouldn't be bad if when faced with a challenge he tries to use his wealth or army to get out of it. Mighty judges I ask what do I do?

Hannah

Dear esteemed Justices and the ultimate cuck bailiff Jack. May it please the court, I beseech thee to judge my older and taller brother's table. My brother has been playing various ttrpgs with his friends from uni online for some time now, most recently Traveller. His table has since been rocked by many a conflict (they pivoted from trading to opening a ski resort only to find out one player only enjoyed trading, my brother attempted to murder and then saved the life of another pc etc), but the most recent is most egregious. A new player, not a real life friend of my brother but of the other players, has been acting weird. His character is extremely paranoid (accused a npc of being a body-snatcher alien with no evidence), and has been potentially rping a DID character that makes my brother uncomfortable. He has roped another party member Into his shenanigans and both refuse to answer my brother when he asks (out of character!!) if they have a reason to act like this. My brother and the other PC were more than happy to play along with this, but they refuse to communicate any narrative direction. It has reached a point where it's no longer fun for my bro and he is more anxious than excited to play. He has suggested starting over completely but the rest of the party think that's unfair since it's the new guy's first pc. So Honourable Justices and little rat bailiff, would my brother be right to order a hit on these two pcs and cull the party? PS. The party had already agreed that PvP was completely fine, otherwise my bro would not consider this.

Bukvar's Assistant Isy F

May it please the court of justices and baliff juice (?). Lawyer Isy F representing fellow party member Jay. We were playing in an entirely home-brewed campaign based off 5E. Rather than leveling up, we had pretty complex skill trees that we unlocked with points assigned at the end of each session. My client was playing a clockwork tinkerer who at the end of his skill tree, got a fully functioning mechanical man. Much like a familiar. The issue is, once my client unlocked this after approx 45 sessions, the mechanical man (voiced by the DM) immediately begun to tell the party all of my clients secrets, even ones that had happened in my clients childhood and backstory. As a result of this and some other transgressions by the DM, the party disbanded. We beseech the court, has my client been wronged? Do mechanical men have the knowledge of their forefathers? Prosecution rests!

YungAshley

Forgive me dice christ for I have sinned. I was running my first ever DND one shot, and it was going great! While doing the boss battle I started absolutely WHOMPING the players. Two out of three players were down and after rolling my 4th nat 20 I decided to lie and say I missed. Ever since that game I have had guilt on my chest… is there anything I can do for dice christ to forgive me?

Jake Johnson

To the jovial justices and the fancy glad lad Jake the dad, I humbly stand forth to bring to you the Case of the Denied Deception. A while back I was invited to an ongoing D&D campaign by a friend of mine who DMed the game. I had never played D&D before and was excited to try it. I did not know any of the players but they were all friends of my friend the DM so I thought it’d be fine. My friend helped me make a monk and everyone welcomed me into the campaign. On the second session our group entered a temple to find a missing relic to discover that a cult had started living in the building. The cult accidentally assumed we were actually there to join them and I decided to go all in on the con. My monk proffered himself before them saying he would be a great asset as he believed he could never die, and I got a nat 20 on a performance check. The cultists were amazed and invited us to join, offering lodging and the cultist robes. I was pretty excited and thinking in my head of a way to get the cultists to help us get to the relic but the fighter put a stop to that. Instead, he just went ahead and attacked the cultists. One of the other players argued with him about the decision to which he replied, “What’s the point? We’re just gonna fight them anyway.” I also felt miffed by the action but was with a new group so didn’t put up a fight. The fighter held his ground that he attacked and the DM didn’t give any input on the argument and just went ahead with the fight. I played with the group a couple more sessions and ended up leaving after a couple other arguments and similar experiences occurred. To the court I ask this: Am I justified for leaving the group over this experience and as a followup is the person who played the fighter justified in what he did? I leave the decision to the court.

Cameron Seker

May it platonically pleasure the court and Schrödinger’s bailiff who exists both atop and beneath the hierarchy of power, I present the case of PvP (Peace vs. Pride) Years ago, I was joining in to a friend of mine’s home game. He was DMing for the first time and asked me to come in to help show some new players how to play. The game had been going on a few months already, but I could tell right away the new players were building some bad habits of murder hoboing, preventing the DM from having any type of grounding for the rest of the group who just wanted yo go on quests. My character confronted one of them and told them that they should probably not go around killing anyone who speaks to them as eventually it’ll catch up to them. In response, my character was stabbed. After warning the player outside of the game “hey if you really go through with this my character is going to kill yours” and being stabbed anyways, I was able to knock his character out with a sleep spell and proceeded to one shot him. I used all the abilities at my disposal to maximize damage to ensure there would be no death saves. Afterwards, the player would not speak to me except aggressively whenever I saw him after. Was I wrong to kill this murder hobo in my first session with the group? Or should I have shown mercy to the newbie? I await the court’s judgement and sentencing.

Sawyer

Dear really cool and radical judges and also the bailiff who is cool too, I submit the case of the Troublesome Little Brother. Recently I agreed to teach my young nephews, L (11 years old) and N (7 years old) how to play dnd. L is deeply invested, and is having the time of his life. N, who is younger and less mature, is presenting some problems. During our first session, L created a Dragonborn paladin named George. N immediately created his character, Mega George, claiming that he was cooler, stronger and more powerful than “regular George”. He then proceeded to break the minis that I had put out (which I was using for my home game), lose most of my dice, and then when I suggested that he work together with George rather than attack him, he pulled down his pants and tried to poop on my floor. I do not know if this is normal behavior for a 7 year old. Their parents are thrilled that I am babysitting for them and have offered no solutions. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to ruin dnd for L, but N just doesn’t seem old enough or mature enough to play. Please help

Loueve Vale (edited)

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2026-09-05 07:00 To the Vibrant Judges and The Bailiff Jake I present the case of: The Darkest Slog We were on a quest in the feywild to collect sugar crystals from a mine for a snooty high elf's daughter's wedding. This particular DM stood out from my other DM's in that his encounters were very difficult and heavily drained our resources. The monster's were also often creatures we had not encountered before. So, when we came across a patch of what seemed to be magical darkness we were cautiously curious (Well, at least I was). Then the party warlock (the only one who could see through it) went in, was attacked and immediately dropped to 0hp. Initiative was called and thus began the most frustrating, soul crushing, 3-hour slog I have ever experienced. All of our martials dropped in the darkness, we learned the darkness could move. The spellcasters were low on resources (me the druid, and an artificer), and unsure if our attacks had done damage. Any light that went in was immediately extinguished, and darkvision didn't work. Out of desperation, I asked if I could make a check to figure out how to deal with this thing. The DM asked me why I would want to do that, and that I already had all the information I needed to defeat this thing. But all I knew was this thing was dropping all of my party members and couldn't be dispelled. He then said the two spellcasters had the solution, which didn't narrow it down for me, and it was the same for the artificer. Several rounds passed with the downed players making secret death saves. In desperation me and the artificer used up the last of our abilities. My stars druid arrow constellation to do radiant damage and the artificer's cannon that did force damage. Finally, were able to take it down and luckily our friends had made their death saves. At the end of session the DM revealed that this monster was called living darkness, and only radiant and force damage would hurt it. In hindsight shooting a light arrow into the darkness makes sense, but having seen all lights we had brought into it including magical light, immediately extinguished, I thought it would be a waste of my last wildshape. Were we just overthinking this encounter and the solution to our detriment? Or were we right in our anger toward our DM giving unhelpful advice, and letting us flail in the dark for 3-hours? I throw myself at the mercy of the court. P.S. The campaign has since disbanded, and we went our separate ways. But this still weighs on my mind.
2023-07-03 20:41 To the Vibrant Judges and The Bailiff Jake I present the case of: The Darkest Slog We were on a quest in the feywild to collect sugar crystals from a mine for a snooty high elf's daughter's wedding. This particular DM stood out from my other DM's in that his encounters were very difficult and heavily drained our resources. The monster's were also often creatures we had not encountered before. So, when we came across a patch of what seemed to be magical darkness we were cautiously curious (Well, at least I was). Then the party warlock (the only one who could see through it) went in, was attacked and immediately dropped to 0hp. Initiative was called and thus began the most frustrating, soul crushing, 3-hour slog I have ever experienced. All of our martials dropped in the darkness, we learned the darkness could move. The spellcasters were low on resources (me the druid, and an artificer), and unsure if any of the party's attacks had done damage. Any light that went in was immediately extinguished, and darkvision didn't work. Out of frustration, I asked if I could make a check to figure out how to deal with this thing. The DM asked me why I would want to do that, and that I already had all the information I needed to defeat this thing. But all I knew was this thing was dropping all of my party members and couldn't be dispelled. He then said the two spellcasters had the solution, which didn't narrow it down for me, and it was the same for the artificer. Several rounds passed with the downed players making secret death saves. In desperation me and the artificer used up the last of our abilities. My stars druid arrow constellation to do radiant damage and the artificer's cannon that did force damage. Finally, were able to take it down and luckily our friends had made their death saves. At the end of session the DM revealed that this monster was called living darkness, and only radiant and force damage would hurt it. In hindsight shooting a light arrow into the darkness makes sense, but having seen all lights we had brought into it including magical light, immediately extinguished, I thought it would be a waste of my last wildshape. Were we just overthinking this encounter and the solution to our detriment? Or were we right in our anger toward our DM giving unhelpful advice, and letting us flail in the dark for 3-hours? I throw myself at the mercy of the court. P.S. The campaign has since disbanded, and we went our separate ways. But this still weighs on my mind.

To the Vibrant Judges and The Bailiff Jake I present the case of: The Darkest Slog We were on a quest in the feywild to collect sugar crystals from a mine for a snooty high elf's daughter's wedding. This particular DM stood out from my other DM's in that his encounters were very difficult and heavily drained our resources. The monster's were also often creatures we had not encountered before. So, when we came across a patch of what seemed to be magical darkness we were cautiously curious (Well, at least I was). Then the party warlock (the only one who could see through it) went in, was attacked and immediately dropped to 0hp. Initiative was called and thus began the most frustrating, soul crushing, 3-hour slog I have ever experienced. All of our martials dropped in the darkness, we learned the darkness could move. The spellcasters were low on resources (me the druid, and an artificer), and unsure if any of the party's attacks had done damage. Any light that went in was immediately extinguished, and darkvision didn't work. Out of frustration, I asked if I could make a check to figure out how to deal with this thing. The DM asked me why I would want to do that, and that I already had all the information I needed to defeat this thing. But all I knew was this thing was dropping all of my party members and couldn't be dispelled. He then said the two spellcasters had the solution, which didn't narrow it down for me, and it was the same for the artificer. Several rounds passed with the downed players making secret death saves. In desperation me and the artificer used up the last of our abilities. My stars druid arrow constellation to do radiant damage and the artificer's cannon that did force damage. Finally, were able to take it down and luckily our friends had made their death saves. At the end of session the DM revealed that this monster was called living darkness, and only radiant and force damage would hurt it. In hindsight shooting a light arrow into the darkness makes sense, but having seen all lights we had brought into it including magical light, immediately extinguished, I thought it would be a waste of my last wildshape. Were we just overthinking this encounter and the solution to our detriment? Or were we right in our anger toward our DM giving unhelpful advice, and letting us flail in the dark for 3-hours? I throw myself at the mercy of the court. P.S. The campaign has since disbanded, and we went our separate ways. But this still weighs on my mind.

Zerolott

Greetings perfectly acceptable judges and the really cool Bailiff Jake, I bring you the case of Me Abandoning My Party Members and Leaving Them to Die. I was visiting a friend for a weekend, and they asked me to join a session of their campaign just as a one off. Theirs was a homebrew setting with Dark Souls like rules where if you die you come back just without your unspent XP. I didn't have a ton of time to prepare, so I just made a quick Bard to have fun with, and just decided they would be mysteriously androgynous because that's fun and hot. Big mistake. Within five minutes of starting to play my character was sexually harassed because they wanted to know if I was a boy or a girl. After getting them to back off, their next idea was to have me drink a mysterious potion from their last campaign. I didn't want to do it, but my friend, (the DM) made me roll a charisma save, which I failed. It ended up being something that turned me to stone and killed me immediately. I came back, but was not feeling any camaraderie to my new party. Anyway, after finally getting on with the adventure, we ended up in a pretty unwinnable fight, but the other members insisted we could win. I, being able to see the writing on the wall, quickly drank a polymorph potion I had found earlier. I turned myself into a bird, and flew back to the respawn area. Everyone else quickly died, and was pretty pissed that I left since they had lost a lot of accumulated experience. I felt that me personally and my character owed no allegiance to those rapscallions, and I don't feel bad for abandoning them. Judges was I right to leave my party to die?

Amelia (HolodeckQueen)

Honorable Shenanigans pro and against judges and potentially lowly bailiff. I am DMing my first game since I was 12 (I am now 26). I have a table of 5 pcs currently, with a 6th set to join in at the end of the summer (he is out of town). The 5 players have been working with me to build their characters in the world I'm building as we go (all but 1 are also first time players). However, one player insists on being from the real world who, when he died, was sent to the new realm. I'm allowing it with the stipulation of "I've worked really hard on this world (drew my own map, worked on lore, helped build back stories, etc.), please don't turn it into a cartoon". He agreed completely. Now my 6th player. The potential problem pc. We are (sort of) dating and I'm really excited to have him at my table. He also has very little experience, but a while back invited me to play with his old friends and I had a blast. He played a normal-ish character there no problem. However, in our game, he insists on being a thin mint girl scout cookie. He's going to be a Triton Tempest Domain Cleric who's God is Thor, but he wants Thor to also be a troupe leader and wants to flavor all of his spells to be cookie related. His character's name is Thinmint Von Gingersnap. I went along thinking he was joking at first, but it seems that he is not. I am working on talking him into some middle ground, but I worry I'm going to ruin his fun. Am I wrong for not allowing this anthropomorphic cookie man to play in my otherwise thought out, fantasy campaign, or am I being too harsh and should just try to roll with it? I am at the mercy of the court.

Scott Riccobono

To the honorable judges and a great guy, Jake. I've been playing at the table with my girlfriend and a few of our friends. We rotate DMs and we always had a blast no matter who was running the game. In a recent session, where I was the DM, we were all partying beforehand and started late. We were finally getting into the game when my girlfriend was setting up her dice. The rest of us were having above-the-table talk about our last session, and what we got with our new level up! My girlfriend wasn't engaged and when I asked about us being ready for a recap: she told us she hadn't leveled up or picked any spells. I was immediately furious! I told her it's unacceptable to show up unprepared. It got heated and ultimately she toughed out the session. Now we haven't played in a month and it's a point of contention for us. I believe she was disrespectful to the table, and I also believe I was out of line in my confrontation. I understand she plays for fun, but it's hurtful to me that she won't accept responsibility that it takes a level of commitment to play. Should I be steadfast and play without her? I've been remorseful and explained to the table that how I acted wasnt right (though they supported me for standing up for myself).

Olga Zasztowt

No case, but welcome back and congratulations!!

Martian

Dear Supreme Crit Justices and Papa Bailiff Jake, whose wisdom equals the heavens and is only matched by y'all's beauty. I beseech thee to rule on a case of corruption and persecution not seen since the trial of Socrates! Long story short I play a hotheaded but ingenious Fairy Artificer named Zorn who, in an attempt to free other members of the party from the clutches of a hag, offered to play a game of hide and seek with the hag where we competed to try and find a child she was hunting. I knew she couldn't find the child within the time limit but didn't account for the hag to grow frustrated and start attacking us. I managed to hit her with a suggestion spell and get her to take us to her bedside while she takes a nap. I then told my entire party to ready attacks for when she fell asleep so that we could take her out all at once and then loot the place. There was some trepidation as we all barely survived my last plan when we encountered a hag but eventually I convinced them. Unfortunately the Hag survived the onslaught and we will be starting next session in combat. One of the players has called for a vote to oust my character if anyone dies in the encounter because my previous plans have also had similar rough spots but I maintain were ultimately successful. Please judges, should I be punished for merely trying to help my comrades and enrich our pockets? Is not some sacrifice necessary for the greater good? I bow at your feet and beg justice be done.

matthew carroll

To the Honorable, Beautiful Judges and also.... Jake.... I have a question if I made a mistake letting a player become a Demon Lord? At the end of a 4 year weekly campaign, the last BBEG of the campaign was a fight against Orcus. The party was approached by a messenger of Asmodeus to get boons for the fight since they did not want demons to get a stronghold on the material plane. Some of the groups took the boons for the price of their soul. Before the fight the Barbarian sought out lore of Orcus and found out that he can only be killed on his home plane, and if he is killed on the material plane he will be resurrected on his home plane after a certain amount of time. At the last fight, Orcus showed up from a portal to his plane and fought the party. At the end of the fight my barbarian got the killing blow and then he told me that he wanted to do non lethal damage.... I let him, not knowing what he was planning, and he dragged Orcus back through the portal and killed him on his home plane. I was not expecting that and improved it that since he killed him on his plane he is now the Demon Lord of that plane. We play this campaign on the anniversary of our first time playing and now weekly we play a campaign that one of my players wanted to DM for. Now I have made it the mission of the group to save the barbarian and regain their souls for each anniversary one shot. It has been working out thankfully since I have such a great group, but did I make a mistake letting him become a Demon Lord? I look forward to the judgement of the court if I made the right choice in the moment as DM.

Kai Clarkson

Dice Christ Advice - is my son and campaign cursed? Praise be to Dice Christ, I prostrate myself and ask for your advice. 2 years ago, I started my first home-brew campaign. At the same time, my wife and I had just welcomed our first son into the world. For fun, we had him roll the campaign’s first dice. We had to have him hold it in his hand and wait for him to drop it. His first ever roll in his life? A Nat 20. We took this as a sign of fortune both for the campaign and my son. 2 years later, the campaign is still going strong, and my son is growing up beautifully. I write to you now and take us back to a time when we had just welcomed our second son into the world (the same day Jake welcomed Gemma!). To keep the tradition going, we had him roll a D20. His first ever roll? A Nat 1. Dice Christ I ask for your help. Is my campaign now set to fail? Is my son cursed like Murph? Does Dice Christ look favourably on one son and not the other? As a loyal servant I will humbly wait for any advice you have, and act any way I need to ensure my sons have a prosperous dice filled life.

Jada

To the Honorable justices of the court, and the cool dad bailiff Jake. I bring to you the case of The Husband versus the DM. I DMed the module Waterdeep: Dragon Heist for my husband and a few of his friends. We were at the very end, which usually takes place in the vault. In one of the areas of the vault, there is an enthralling fresco, which requires players to make a DC 12 wisdom saving throw or be charmed by it for 24 hours. While charmed, you cannot willingly move out of sight of the fresco, and you defend to the death. After 24 hours, you can gain a level of exhaustion and can repeat the saving throw. This is straight from the book. (I usually don’t go strictly by the book but I thought this was cool) However, my husband failed the save and then saw fit to argue with me in front of everybody about the specifics of this challenge. I told him it was a charm effect, but said the rest of the details would be unknown. He then tried to use various things such as dispel magic, but I told him he was under the fresco’s spell and wouldn’t act against it. This bickering became awkward but eventually he let me continue. After the game I gave him a peak behind the screen of the specifics and told him he owed me an apology. Mighty and sultry members of the court, was he in the wrong to so brazenly challenge me, or was there something I could have done differently while still keeping the mystery of the setting? I will accept your ruling with the most wife worm type energy.

tacticalgrandma

Beloved justices and cardinals of the Rolly Spirit: After friending a fellow player on Steam (Jake this is a gaming platform), I noticed that they'll start playing an fps (Jake this is a kind of video game that requires your full attention) during sessions. They'll then often be confused about what's going on when it gets to their turn, or be unengaged in problem-solving and puzzles. Most recently, they booted it up right when my DM started narrating an Emotional Scene for my character. Is this an egregious enough breach of dice dogma that it warrants table tattling? Or do I just mute Steam notifications during gametime?

Alonso Lopez (edited)

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2026-09-05 07:00 To the honorable Judges and dearly beloved Jacob, I present the case of the Burnt Out Players. A year or two ago I pitched my group a campaign where they would play fallen Greek gods on a quest to gain their godly powers back, not remembering why they fell. They weren’t completely sold on the idea but eventually agreed(except for one player who INSISTED on playing a talking squirrel). Session one I revealed to them that they had to travel to the Olympics where they would compete against other teams in an attempt to get their godly status back. When they arrived I had set up their main antagonist and his team that they would be facing as the final BBEG encounter. We almost made it to the end of the campaign, having done a few events at the Olympics where they then said they were burnt out and didn’t want to finish this game. Awhile later I asked them about finishing the game and they revealed they didn’t like the mechanics of the Olympics I had set up and didn’t wish to finish the campaign. So here I lay and humbly ask the judges, was I wronged that the party didn’t want to finish a campaign where part of the final encounter was contested skill checks, or is it ok to mix final encounters up sometimes with things like this? I accept any sentence wether favorable or not. PS. I played with this group on and off again for a while but haven’t played any games recently with them and instead DM two different games with other friend groups. PPS. There were 9 total events, including archery, a chariot race, 1v1 duels separated between casters and martials, and finally team vs team battle.
2023-07-04 00:57 To the honorable Judges and dearly beloved Jacob, I present the case of the Burnt Out Players. A year or two ago I pitched my group a campaign where they would play fallen Greek gods on a quest to gain their godly powers back, not remembering why they fell. They weren’t completely sold on the idea but eventually agreed(except for one player who INSISTED on playing a talking squirrel). Session one I revealed to them that they had to travel to the Olympics where they would compete against other teams in an attempt to get their godly status back. When they arrived I had set up their main antagonist and his team that they would be facing as the final BBEG encounter. We almost made it to the end of the campaign, having done a few events at the Olympics where they then said they were burnt out and didn’t want to finish this game. Awhile later I asked them about finishing the game and they revealed they didn’t like the mechanics of the Olympics I had set up and didn’t wish to finish the campaign. So here I lay and humbly ask the judges, was I wronged that the party didn’t want to finish a campaign where part of the final encounter was contested skill checks, or is it ok to mix final encounters up sometimes with things like this? I accept any sentence wether favorable or not. PS. I played with this group on and off again for a while but haven’t played any games recently with them and instead DM two different games with other friend groups. PPS. There were 9 total events, including archery, a chariot race, 1v1 duels separated between casters and martials, and finally team vs team battle. The campaign was also roughly 6-10 3 hour sessions total.

To the honorable Judges and dearly beloved Jacob, I present the case of the Burnt Out Players. A year or two ago I pitched my group a campaign where they would play fallen Greek gods on a quest to gain their godly powers back, not remembering why they fell. They weren’t completely sold on the idea but eventually agreed(except for one player who INSISTED on playing a talking squirrel). Session one I revealed to them that they had to travel to the Olympics where they would compete against other teams in an attempt to get their godly status back. When they arrived I had set up their main antagonist and his team that they would be facing as the final BBEG encounter. We almost made it to the end of the campaign, having done a few events at the Olympics where they then said they were burnt out and didn’t want to finish this game. Awhile later I asked them about finishing the game and they revealed they didn’t like the mechanics of the Olympics I had set up and didn’t wish to finish the campaign. So here I lay and humbly ask the judges, was I wronged that the party didn’t want to finish a campaign where part of the final encounter was contested skill checks, or is it ok to mix final encounters up sometimes with things like this? I accept any sentence wether favorable or not. PS. I played with this group on and off again for a while but haven’t played any games recently with them and instead DM two different games with other friend groups. PPS. There were 9 total events, including archery, a chariot race, 1v1 duels separated between casters and martials, and finally team vs team battle. The campaign was also roughly 6-10 3 hour sessions total.

Sarah Knopp

May it please the court and tickle the bailiff: I recently joined my boyfriend’s long-running campaign, in which he and his friends have been playing together for 6 years. I want to make a good impression and hope to find a sense of belonging at this table. I put a lot of time and effort into creating my PC, a level 15 Leonin Cleric, with a lengthy backstory and multitude of achievements that I created in sessions with the group’s DM. One of my tasks has been to create some followers or ally NPCs for my cleric to have been in touch with during her travels. Inspiration for a few of my followers came from fantasy characters; however, I had an idea to create a character based on a real person and I am unsure of how cringe this is. A friend of mine passed away unexpectedly last year and one of the cities where my cleric spent some time reminded me of him and his Polynesian heritage. I’ve thought about making a follower based on this person (who the others at the table do not know) as a way to remember him by. I think I would make the character loosely resemble him and give him a similar personality. I feel like there is something heartwarming about the idea of his memory living on in my game. Is this a nice idea, or am I crossing a line here? I don’t want to weird out my new table mates or make people uncomfortable. I’m not sure I would explicitly advertise I’m basing my follower on a deceased friend, but would I need to keep it a secret? I eagerly await your ruling.

Lorelei and Kyra Newly Weds

Greetings and salutations to the wettest of judges and to the newly appointed Father Jake!(no way I could be mean to him first session back) so I play in a Greek themed campaign with a group I met online. After recently having a PC death, my player has come into over 1 years worth of out of game knowledge. Shortly after that session I got my player back, plus all this new information through memories and shared experiences. My question is simply this, how much lore should I diverge to the group? I really want to trickle just enough to keep everyone inticed and help the DM as best I can tell a thrilling narrative. I don't plan to just put everything I know, but having all the knowledge is killing me inside to let it burst like a balloon. I also just wanna be punished by you guys. ~Youre lovingly Lorelei. Ps step on me

Baba Yaga (edited)

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2026-09-05 07:00 forgive me dice christ for i have sinned this is my first confession i’ve ever had to give: My dnd party and i have regular sessions every week or so and relatively recently my dm has decreed a new, really radical houserule (one discussed during Dungeon Academy’s Contested Roll) about hiding death saves from the party and only the dm and player know the outcome. Well my character was ambushed by a trap and immediately dropped to do death saving rolls. i rolled my first save and it was a natural 20, excited i exclaimed this to the entire table! i only realized later my grievous error and apologized profusely to my dm (who was cool about it). Humble priests and i guess jake, is there anything i can do to make it up to my dm and party, or should i just keep rolling along and make sure this never happens again. Thank you for your time, i await my punishment.
2023-07-04 04:47 forgive me dice christ for i have sinned this is my first confession i’ve ever had to give: My dnd party and i have regular sessions every week or so and relatively recently my dm has decreed a new, really radical house rule (one discussed during Dungeon Academy’s Contested Roll) about hiding death saves from the party and only the dm and player know the outcome. Well my character was ambushed by a trap and immediately dropped to do death saving rolls. i rolled my first save and it was a natural 20, excited i exclaimed this to the entire table! i only realized later my grievous error and apologized profusely to my dm (who was cool about it). Humble priests and i guess jake, is there anything i can do to make it up to my dm and party, or should i just keep rolling along and make sure this never happens again. Thank you for your time, i await my punishment.

forgive me dice christ for i have sinned this is my first confession i’ve ever had to give: My dnd party and i have regular sessions every week or so and relatively recently my dm has decreed a new, really radical house rule (one discussed during Dungeon Academy’s Contested Roll) about hiding death saves from the party and only the dm and player know the outcome. Well my character was ambushed by a trap and immediately dropped to do death saving rolls. i rolled my first save and it was a natural 20, excited i exclaimed this to the entire table! i only realized later my grievous error and apologized profusely to my dm (who was cool about it). Humble priests and i guess jake, is there anything i can do to make it up to my dm and party, or should i just keep rolling along and make sure this never happens again. Thank you for your time, i await my punishment.

Bailee.ailee

May it please the court: I recently joined a new table of people that met online. We have been playing for 3 months and a couple of the other players have chosen to keep their characters very close to their chest. During combat, they will often say: ‘I do a thing.’ And move on. This really confuses me. We as a table, have come together to collectively tell a fun story, and some players consistently refuse to engage with the shared narrative. In a recent challenge, one of these character went invisible and even took their mini off the board for 2 rounds and basically ‘passed’ on their turn, saying: ‘none of you know what I’m doing.’ I have tried to bring this up with my dm and the table, where they used the excuse of: ‘the character is closed off and doesn’t trust you guys’. What should I do?

LuridSilence

May it edge the court and bring Jake to completion. This is the case of the distracted player. I had a player that was constantly distracted while playing, on his phone, reading, or just generally not paying attention. He always seemed genuinely interested in the story but never seemed to pay enough attention to actually play. Eventually, since it was distracting to the rest of the party, I eventually told him it would be best if he no longer played at the table. He got really upset, but since we recorded and posted all of our campaign sessions, I thought it would be best to continue without the distraction. I ask the court, was I right to remove him from the table, or should I have done more as the DM to try to get him re-engaged at the table.

Dippity_Dip

This is in no way a dnd court case, but I found the most perfect example of “quick little makeups” from the iffy dnd court. Just look up pretty much any kissing scene from Gossip Girl - they all make out very quickly in public all the time

Alexandra Ferguson

May it please the court, and the known horse lover Bailiff, I bring a contentious case of (fictional) horse cruelty vs (real) DM cruelty. Our table tends to play jerk characters but be good players, and if the DM asks us to do something, we’ll find an in-game reason to do so. The one exception was when he asked us to buy horses for travel, since he was finding the slow pace a grind. We laughed, and asked if he would give them plot armour? Previously, we’d each owned at least half a dozen horses, who would invariably die mid-journey to random encounters. Every time, his reasons for attacking the horses made sense - hungry owl bears looking for meat, hobgoblins looking to reduce our manoeuvrability, area of effect spells that auto fried them… the list goes on. Eventually, we just stopped buying horses because it was expensive and felt mean! Our DM said no, he’d continue to play by the best tactics of the monsters, so we shrugged, and suggested he get used to slow travel then. In desperation, he even offered us a quest for endless free horses deal in-game, but we still didn’t want to keep having our horses die, even if they were free, so we didn’t take it. I ask you, who was wrong here?

Ryan Van Geffen

Dear all knowing and all wise Supreme Crit Justices and guy whose name I dare not utter, may I present to you the case of the bad attitude warlock. For some brief context this story took place a few years back when I first got to university and joined the tabletop roleplaying club. I was really excited to meet new people and share the hobby that I love, but that all quickly soured. Through the club's discord I got placed into a campaign that had only been running for a couple of sessions that was GM'ed by the club's president. How exciting! I quickly made my character, a Fallen Aasimar Undying Warlock named Nickel, after chatting with my DM about his world and could not wait to play. When the day of the session arrived I was ecstatic I went out and bought snacks and drinks to bring so I could help make a group impression on my (hopefully) new friends. The previous session had ended right before a fight with some cultists in a cave so my DM said "You will be a passerby outside the cave hearing the fight and will run in to help the party" followed by having me roll an athletics check after initiative was rolled. I got a nat 1 which became a 0 due to my strength dump stat. My DM said ok you can arrive in the fight after 6 rounds. In response I said, ok I cast fly on myself to fly there quicker, and he simply said "it does not work like that". Not wanting to argue and slow down the session, I accepted slowly floating through the tunnels towards the fight. Finally I arrive in the cave with the party of 3 nearly dead surrounded by swarms of enemies. Ready to jump into the action, I start my turn by narrating how my pupils darken and my ashen skin glows with pale light as tentacles from the underworld sprout from the ground to attack the cultists and cast Hunger of Hadar. The cultists went next and a big chunk of the already damaged cultists took cold damage at the start of their turn because of my spell. The GM seeing that my damage would be enough to wipe most of the cultists said "Oh shoot I forgot that the wizard recognizes your spell and casts counter spell on it" This is the first time the wizard had ever been mentioned or even cast a spell in this combat that had been going for over an hour at my point of arrival. I was very frustrated at this point and asked my GM "why hasn't the wizard cast any spells until now?" to which he just shrugged. At this point I just gave up after using my all two of my spell slots for nothing and after the session told the GM I would not be returning because I think we have different playstyles. He seemed genuinely shocked and confused followed by trying to explain to me "if you had a better attitude and didn't have to be the main character maybe I would enjoy his games more." I plead the court, was this GM power tripping or was I a poor sport leaving the game after one session and not powering through?

Chemo

May it please the supreme crit justices, newly appointed judges, and... Jake. As a constant DM that enjoys writing, I have taken on a DM persona type character which is an Ingame npc bard that writes of my players character adventures. Given the opportunity to fill in for a missing player in another campaign, of people I had only met once, I decided to actually play the bard in question. I was asked to arrive early to play one on one with the DM to get caught up on the story. It was off to a good start; mystery, fighting, and role play. Although with some odd subtle themes of rape. I did not think much of it at first, but as the main villain of the story entered the game, things took a slight turn. The DM described with great enthusiasm and gestures how the villain cast hold person on my character, then groped and humiliated my helpless character sexually. I was as stunned as my bard character, and at this moment the other players arrived to the session, the villain retreated and the pre game was broken off. The planned session kept going with the other players and the next arc of the story for another few uncomfortable hours. With many of the same themes, although the villain did not appear again to harass the others in the same manner. At the end I thanked everyone for the session and proceeded to never speak to these people again. It has left a lingering mark of sorts on my DM Persona, perhaps it has left a mark on me? alas it is all make believe. I ask, how engaged is it healthy to be with the stories that we make? and, should I have played along with the theme the DM and other players set?

ksm11

Dearest esteemed judges of the high crit, (and that one guy who guested on 8-bit book club that one time) I must ask you to absolve me of my sins so that I may once again look upon the glory Dice Christ without a feeling of shame in my heart. I recently joined a campaign that some of my coworkers have been playing together for a few years, and I might have potentially used some minor deception to convince them to allow me to join them. It got started when one of my coworkers, let's call him Todd, and I were discussing some of our hobbies. He'd mentioned that was a big Dnd fan, and I responded back that I was as well. After a few minutes of talking he ended up mentioning that he and a few of our other co-workers and their SO's all get together a few times a month for a home game. He said that if I was interested I should tag along to their next session, and that I could even join if I wanted. I'm already acquainted with several of the other players, and none of them have any problems with me joining. Here's where my lie begins, when they ask me if I have a lot of experience with Dnd I answer yes, and that I have 5 or so years worth and several different campaigns under my belt. Several of them are very excited by this news, a few of them aren't very experienced and have only been playing for a short while. They tell me that they're looking forward to having a more experienced player at the table. Here's the problem, I've never actually played DND before. All of my experience comes from listening to podcasts, mainly this one and a few others on occasion. The group is meeting up this weekend, and the dm has contacted me and said that he wants to talk in person later in the week to hash out the details of what my character will be. At this point, I think I'm too far in to back out now, so I'm just going to do my best to wing it. Please forgive me o guardian of the dice, and grant me the fortitude to bs my way through these troubling times.

Cormac O'Connor

Dear Esteemed veteran justices and the steamy Baliff Tucker. I am currently playing a low fantasy campaign where I play an Orc Barbarian called Thragg. Another player plays Thraggs, brother Vaelmir and the other two members of our Party are Ykir and Akeem, also brothers. In an ancient sunken citadel we discovered a baby white Dragon, which Vaelmir and I promptly injured and put to sleep the dragon, on about 1hp. Fascinated by the creature, as the DM had stated how rare dragons are in this world, we wanted to take it with us. However Ykir, our sorcerer, was put down by the dragon and after being healed back up proceeded to kill the baby Dragon in cold blood, stating his character felt enraged at the dragon for hurting him. This was very fun to roleplay as Thragg and Vaelmir were about as angry as IRL we argued about whether this was okay to do without the party's consent. Which the DM ruled that it was okay. Me, Vaelmir and Akeem felt mildly salty about it, but we have continued to play the campaign and are having a blast. However, dearest justice's, we're we right to feel robbed by 1 player making a decision for the party? Or are members of a party allowed to make radical decisions for the sake of good roleplay? I leave my case, and my heart, at your absolute and unyielding mercy.

Patrick

You outline why it is mechanically correct, but that doesn't override the logic of multiple people going from tense conversation straight into murder mode based on a potentially aggressive movement? but also, get the heck off my comment ya trash clown, I don't see no gown or gavel on you

The Crit Crew

Dear 2 of my 3 favorite Justices, my favorite City Pigeon, and the Bailiff who is the best of them all. I present to you the case of the Forced Departure of an NPC. I DM for a group of my friends, of whom most have been playing for over ten years. 2 of my players are brand new to the game and one of them I recently got hooked into Naddpod. During one of our sessions he drew from the Deck of Many Things and got the Knight card. So i decided to give him his very own weak dad knight in Nalbor. He instantly became super attached to Nalbor and stated he would die for him gladly. After a handful more sessions one of our other friends told me he wanted to join our campaign, to which we gladly welcomed him. However this gave us a party of 5, so I felt there was no more need for Nalbor to help the party with combat, and decided it would be best for Nalbor to leave the party. During a trip to the Feywild I had the Fey Queen fall in love with him and ask him to stay and rule over the Fey with her to which he accepted. This made my one player super upset as he did not wish to see Nalbor go. We slightly argued over it for about 5 minutes before he conceded as long as he could come and visit Nalbor, to which I agreed. Was I wrong to take away my players favorite NPC for my own reasons or am I guilty of being a selfish DM? I humbly await the verdict of the Justices.

Justin Totino

Benevolent Bishops of Dice Christ, I come to you not with a confession but with an eye-witness account: In 2016 during my first-ever time DMing featuring a party of mostly brand new players, I had the group do the classic "meet in a tavern" and most of the session was RP for the characters to get to know each other before being offered a quest. Toward the end of the session, the Fighter decided to get a room and turn in for the night. IRL the Fighter's player was both in college and working long nights and was nodding off for real. After a bit more RP and shenanigans, the rest of the party decided to turn in as well. Queue the Rogue, who did not want to pay for a room with her own money. She described sneaking into the Fighter's room and attempting to steal just enough coin to pay for a room. I had her roll a Sleight of Hand check - I don't recall the number but it was between 15-20. I woke up the Fighter/player and had her roll a Perception check. Nat 20. I described the scene as being the Rouge doing a perfect job getting into the room and sneaking up to the sleeping Fighter but when it came time to steal the coin, the Fighter, eyes closed, snatched the Rogue's hand before she could get to her coin pouch. "What are you doing?" asked the Fighter "Just making sure you're tucked in, good night!" replied the Rogue as she quickly went to her own room. Dice Christ be praised.

Ben Kullerd

To the magnanimous Justices and the staggeringly handsome new daddy bailiff, Jormp, I present to you the case of the too-quick Quickened Spell - (may it please The Court): I've been running a homebrew campaign for the better part of 3 years, and in a recent boss fight against Mask, the god of shadows and thieves, my players got completely whomped. I flavored Mask as a level-20 sorcerer and used Quickened Spell more than once to cast crowd-control spells like Hold Person or Telekinesis and then to do bonus action damage - but not with cantrips. By the end of the fight, one player was down and two were banished to the Nine Hells. Everyone is enjoying the adventure in Avernus, but the look of defeat on their faces haunts me to this day. Was I justified in overpowering a literal god, or should I be flogged for completely misunderstanding Quickened Spell? I await your verdict.

atlasrising

No cases for the Justices nor a confession for Dice Christ but I pop my head into whatever courtroom or office our Beloved Bailiff Jake is diligently working away in to tell him we're so glad to have him back, and hope his new little one and his lovely wife are doing well! ❤️

Toni Conge

Honorable Justices and Deplorable Worm of a Balife. My players were in combat with some Gnomes. The Bard and Druid had entered the room when the Gnomes ambushed them. The Sorcerer "Shadow Umbrix" (such a cool name) was in the previous room still and says she cast Fireball at the Gnomes. I say "Okay so you poke your head into the room launch the Fireball then run back" The player insist that their Sorcerer should be allowed to place a Fireball in the room with the Gnomes despite not having line of sight. Justices I demand that Shadow Umbrix requires line of sight!

Derek

Dear Bodacious Justices and Also New Dad Bailiff Jackson, I present the case of the Uneasy Friendship- My Fiancé and I are 2 years into our DND obsession and i was declared our forever DM, we have 2 couples that also shared our love for DND. Couple 1 was the first to be involved and were very excited to have their characters story told, while also guilt tripping me for not inviting Couple 2. Taking the hint I invited both couples in and we proceeded to only play twice before the first couple stopped replying to my invites to sessions. 4 months later and we decided to start a separate campaign with couple 2, after hear of this couple 1 then proceeded to complain that they were just burned out and tired of playing and felt like they weren’t receiving enough attention even though neither of them spoke to me. Am I in the wrong for starting a new campaign without them? I await your judgement- Derek

Dylan Meyer

May it please Bailiff John, Justices Caldwell and Axford and infuriate Justice Murphy I bring to you the case of the magically aged Verdan. My group is playing an Acq inc campaign and while we were fighting a Ghost several us failed our saves by a lot on Horrifying Visage. As we began to all rapidly age our Verdan bard, Norvie, suggested that this reveal what her future form would look like. It would have no mechanical effect, but roleplaying about what physical changes were to come and Norvie's shocked reaction seemed like a fun opportunity. Now technically Verdan don't transform until they reach level 5 and we were all still level 3. Our DM shut it down and was not happy that the whole group was all for it and told our bard player that this idea should have been brought up privately. Norvie became a wrinkled old version of her current form and everything continued smoothly, but I ask you Justices should we have got a sneak peak at what our Bard was to become, should Norvie have taken our DM aside and asked privately or was our DM right to say that is not how Verdan work RAW? I should add it was said that as soon as we cured ourselves Norvie would go back to their original form. My magically aged self awaits your infinitely wise ruling from my rocking chair.

Lindsay Hudson

Dearest judges of the highest crit court and the lowly lowly Baliff Rake. My partner and a few of our friends have been playing in a homebrew gestalt campaign going on now for nearly 2 years. In our last session, my character, a level 12 Bardaladin (Bard/Paladin) went down with the dragon boss threatening my other 2 party members to leave or he would effectively crush me to death. I intentionally stayed quiet since my character was unconscious. I wanted to give my party members a chance to role play and deliberate because I tend to be a bigger role-player in the group. I could tell one of them was a little stressed about not having my input, so I assured them that whatever they chose, I as a player would be okay and to do what they felt they needed to do. Ultimately they chose to attack (which my character would have fully supported) and I had to make death saves that I ultimately succeeded on. It was a risky move but it made the session really fun, if a little tense. My question is: should I have been more involved in the conversation to attack or retreat? Or was I right in letting my party members make a decision that could effect the fate of my beloved character?

dominic sweatt

hello lovely dungeon deity's including jake and his polycule ? i also think caldwel will like this one. I come to tell the tale of Matten the madleomon who died(exploded) in the first and only session that was held of a homebrew of a pretty serious digimon dnd mix where the races were different digimon who had whole fleshed out traits for every digimon. But back to matten during the first non character creating game me and the other two players both a bit older men one of which was the partner of the dm we were bounty hunters i believe but we play for a bit and then we cut to us waking up with bands on with a number 5 on it so i was impulsive and said i tap it five times after i did tap it once and it went down and the dm then explained me dying and ended the session we didnt end up playing again ever again for different reasons but i come to you all today too see if matten died justly there was no rolls of any death saves no real attempt to warn me i would die i was shocked afterwards because i had just figured out how my character would sound and how hes a fraud and wants people to think hes just a normal leomon but i lay at your dice riddled feet give me judgement

Carnal Crew Champion #CCC

Greetings Honorable Judges and Baliff (who is of corse the most important man in the court) i come to you with a case of my own failure: We play a pirate themed campaign with the party being part of a larger Crew. Recently, the ship came across an island that was devided in a desert half and a forest half because, as the party would learn, there was a empowered decanter of endless water feeding a river that went to one side. the players were supposed to even out the field by eather fighting or negotiating on behalft of the desert tribe against the forest people. instead the crew voted to steal the item for themselves, robbing the entire island of their resources. (npcs under my control were part of the votes, since they were dickheads some voted to steal) so a part of the crew, including one PC went to go for the theft, another PC got help from the desert people and the wood people to try and stop them. the party is lvl 5 the crew is a bit weaker. the problem is. i decided beforehand that the island people were commoners. to make the party’s impact more significant. this lead to the stealing group MURDERING all 28 guards and support from both island groups and that bard PC in disguise that led them. The pc barely survived my rolling a nat 20 on his last death save and stealthing away. now the player thinks about leaving the group because she doesn’t feel comfortable anymore, the bard definitely left the party. i ask you judges, should i have fudged the vote or the combat to stop the theft, or was i right in letting things just play out? i humbly await your judgement and possible punishment

-DivThePervDrowBard-

Greetings supreme crit justices and our best boi bailiff. I present you a case of consequences, most of it my own making. Our DM has stressed that no matter what we do, there will be consequences and we have coined the term FAFO (Fuck Around and Find Out). I play a Cleric of Pelor, who has been cursed by an succubus called Bo, to have bad luck, because Naz walked in on Bo and her ex-girlfriend sleeping together (willingly may I add). Recently, on the rare full night sleep, Naz had a lead to go to an Arcane University to look up demon princes or bosses that relate to Bo. It was discovered that while things were patched up with Bo and Naz, Bo could not remove the curse as her boss was still keeping it on her. With no experience with demons or its language or how they work, Naz was shown a book on demon princes and did not understand infernal. Frustrated at ending up at a dead end, she asked if there were any names that she could use who would be useful to her to find a demon prince that can help with her curse. She was given three: Void, Leviathan and Orcus. On my part, I noticed the summoning circle and my party joked that I should summon them. Now, side note: my character was on her own as the rest of the entire party chose to stay in the inn, Naz had asked if anyone wanted to come but they all said no as they wanted to wait for the new quest giver (that is five people). Naz being average intelligence thought she would push her temporary good luck and simply said the name Orcus. That was more then enough to summon the big guy, it lead to Naz making a contract with him, she did not give him her name but rather a vague title. She was shocked, embarrassed and scared that she – a cleric- summoned on e of the biggest and baddest demons. Naz asked of Orcus to find a succubus called Bo in a town in the middle of no where because she needed to find out Bo’s bosses name. (a small detail my dm forgets) in return, Orcus asked Naz not to speak of his name ever again. Naz shook on it, gaining a flaming contract seared into that arms flesh. Now, cut to last nights session, Naz had come clean on her deal to her party and feels pretty bad about it as they now hear news of towns in the countryside being attacked by demons. Her party offered to help, sneak into a library and get information on any demons, they grabbed 5 random books (two cook books, one mortgage broker book, one erotica and one on fortune telling) One party member went to the local brothel, found Bo, and was charmed to find Naz and bring her to them. Now, dear court, I am feeling incredibly guilty for my actions and ask for advice on what to do as I have lost confidence on how to play my character and Naz being honest in the past has done more harm then good. What should I do? How do I rise above this or am I doomed to bring darkness to our world? Punish me how you will

Emilia

Can you say a prayer to Dice Christ for me to find my lost dice? Prior to the pandemic I had a collection of dice I used for gaming that I collected over the years in a cute cat themed bag. Then the pandemic and all gaming was virtual and the dice bag was set aside. Now that I have opportunities for in person play I can't find it. I've turned over my rooms looking for it to no avail. Please light a candle and say a prayer for my lost dice please.

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 bovine expertise and judgement. -KDP

Through the Dimensions

hail and well met, honorable and diligent supreme crit justices and the baliff who i offer my sincerest congratulations to, but you can razz him too, i'm cool with that. i dm a pathfinder second edition campaign with some friends of mine that due to the dreaded scheduling issues lost its healer a couple months back. despite that, the party has faired pretty well sans healer, right up until they went up against their greatest enemy: some bees. the party had handily defeated a war council of gremlins in the room prior, and had been warned about the bees by a group of npcs they'd ran into a few minutes before, but the bees proved too much for them and two of my three party members went down. panicking, because what the fuck, you weren't supposed to die to the bees, i asked them to wait a moment before rolling their death checks (in pf2e, you roll four of them at increasing difficulties to pass) so that i could roleplay one of the npcs from earlier coming back and helping (since these npcs are their friends and housemates and would probably check up on them). but alas, due to discord (both the platform and the situation) and some crosstalk, my players didn't hear me and rolled anyway. both pcs died. TO BEES. since i had been trying to get them to stop, i offered them a choice: to have those rolls count and the pc die, or to rule that since i had essentially hit pause before they rolled, their pc survived. one player chose to survive while the other chose to die, and it's made for some fun roleplay moments since then. but, humble justices, i ask you this: should i have given them the choice? should i have just let them both die to bees? or should both of them have survived? i submit myself to your almighty will and judgement.

Patrick Ferris

To the lowly daddy bailiff james and the esteemed Yaunts and Yuncles of the court. I once DMed a homebrew campaign with some new players where, after earning some gold, I gave them a chance to spend it at some shops in town. One such shop was an alchemist. One of the new players attempted to bargin with the alchemist, claiming that she only wanted half of an invisibility potion because she only needed to be half invisible. Naturally, she rolled a nat 1 persuasion check, so the alchemist became outraged at her suggestion and kicked her out. The players then spent roughly 15 real life minutes arguing with me that “potions should absolutely work like that” even though I told them it would be absolutely insane of me to allow that. Ultimately I won in the end but I still get jokes about it years later. Do the enlighten minds of the court believe that drinking half a potion should have half the effect? Or do you side with me, the only reasonable person in a sea of loonie toons characters. I yield the remainder of my time. (Also for what it’s worth this episode will air on my 21st birthday)

Sonsa

Hi honorable Justices!! Aaand the guy that got his tongue kicked off by Amir (congrats! On the baby thing not the Amir thing) I present unto ye the case of: Just Being Kinda Paranoid? Back when I tried playing D&D after only listening to it for a while, I had a nice time improvising and supporting other players, trying to help them shine, but I found myself in multiple situations where I wanted to make sure a success was a success? I don't think I asked too many questions or investigated too hard, I know Emily has mentioned also feeling like that may bog things down, but after we would save someone from a dungeon, for example, they were sort of expected to make it back to town on their own? I felt they may get captured again or killed or something. So I would quickly separate to escort the person back to town. I guess no one else thought it was serious enough to come with me, but no one seemed too bothered and when we cut over to my escort scene I was very conscious to get it over with and was literally like "Okay, you're safe now, wish ya well, buh-bye" while still being nice. Maybe the DM let that scene go on a bit longer cause it did get a little cute and flirty as I was trying to quickly get back to the rest of the team, but I did try to keep it short and I think I did! Things like this happened a few times, I tried to save some dog minions a villain used that no one else felt too bad about killing but they did nicely help me save them, there was some big innocent bug grunts had tied up and beat up in a dungeon that I escorted out to make sure it didn't get captured again as there were lots of hidden rooms that could have more grunts, and I'm pretty sure there was some villain that we knocked out but were just going to leave around and I was the only one that wanted to make sure he wouldn't be a problem so I quickly dropped him off in a jail? I did try to make extra sure that would be okay, I remember asking whoever was in charge of the jail if they ever had break-outs and if they think they'd be fine and stuff? I think the DM had a nice time joking and making them seem probably good but potentially incompetent... So, all this to say: Do you think I was being annoying? I guess I probably didn't want to leave much room for getting tricked. I know getting tricked can be fun! But maybe seeing someone we saved and then sent off to get hurt again - that doesn't seem so fun. And the DM never did it, so it's not as though I was specifically responding to some slight. In the end it was a nice campaign with fun memories but a fellow player who intended to play another campaign, potentially with me, did one-on-one gently say that we probably kind of had different styles that didn't exactly go great together? I dunno about that, but no worries! It was a bit of a relief since I was thinking of how to let down the others that I didn't really want to continue for the sheer amount of time required at the time. Nowadays I think I probably just prefer listening and watching rather than playing D&D but hey maybe I'll try again in the future, who knows? But when I do...do you think I should cool it on making sure things are fine or what?

Ted

Esteemed Justices & ol' Bay Jay, I fear that I have unleashed mayhem upon my table. I ran a one shot years ago, and one of my new players, with my aid, created DaButt the sexy fish: a simple martial character, a Locathah Blood Hunter with high ass-kicking potential and very few abilities to keep track of, as the player had requested. She grew bored of kicking ass almost immediately, and spent the game attempting to seduce absolutely everyone. Although the one shot was a success, the player became hooked on DaButt. She plays DaButt in every game, and every session featuring DaButt is so chock-full of shenanigans that there is little time for anything but. Our heist became a jail break after DaButt got arrested for taking a commoner's baby and trying to do back flips with it to charm the crowded marketplace. Our getaway scene became a rescue missions after DaButt spent four consecutive rounds of combat standing in place and trying to convince a military ship full of soldiers shooting at her to let her come aboard for an orgy. Our post game discussions became tricky after she expressed frustration at how DaButt kept getting captured and knocked unconscious. I have considered "losing" DaButt's character sheet, but I don't want to disappoint my friend. Your Honors, should I try to steer this player towards new characters and new choices, or must I accept that every campaign featuring DaButt will become a DaButt campaign and surrender to the riptide of zany mishaps? I prostate myself before the Supreme Crit PS, can't wait to see you all in Chicago!

Big Sack Dragon

Hey supreme crit or whatever, and my boy Jake the plaintiff. I have a PC that imbibes a solid constitution throw’s worth of beverages before sessions and I have a bit of trouble sometimes deciding whether it’s okay. See, he’s a great role player, and is frequently the only one who uses a voice and gets ‘into character’, which is fun for me as a DM, but it feels like it may be a bit too much energy for the min/max gamers that we play with. I don’t think he’s ever gotten too cray to stay, but I worry that by letting him let loose I may be condemning my less exciting PCs to a night of unwanted excess in their pursuit of numerical success. Am I wrong in not asking him to tone it down? Ps. He is my brother and working to start DMing because he thinks my friends might not be into the role playing as much and I haven’t been able to DM since I had my daughter. ~best, ~bigsackdragon

Carter Carter

Grand council, honorable justices (and the lowly bailiff) of the Supreme crit, I bring before you my case. I think my DM may have it out against me…. I play in a campaign with my roomate (the DM) and some of her friends. They are all fairly new to the game while I have been playing for a couple of years. It has been a really fun game so far….mostly…. My DM is constantly asking me to roll. Everytime I make a choice. BOOM! Roll! The problem is that everytime another PC attempts to do the same moves as me, there is no roll and it is an auto success. For example, last session, my party and I were running off from a group of angry drunks. I was asked to do an athletics check to run. When I, a first level sorcerer failed the DC 15 athletics check, my DM narrated me falling into a pile of shit and getting caught by the group. The other members of my party were allowed to run without checks (and without being covered in shit). Am I being overdramatic or is my DM out to get me?

Alysha Knaphus

Hello Supreme Crit and Bailiff I have a case concerning a friend of mine who’s trying her hand at DMing and might be overstepping. I’m playing a campaign as a drowned warlock with some friends of my DM and things are getting rocky. It first started with our character intros. My character met our scholarly wizard who writes everything she sees in her notebook. In the first session, the DM sends me a private message, saying that the wizard has dropped her notebook, and that I pick it up. At the end of the session it’s revealed that I have the notebook, and when I offered to give it back, apparently I have ruined it with my drowned warlock wet ocean hands, and the wizard is furious. In our second session, we need to get a boat to travel to where we’re headed, and my character being a sailor, is the one captaining it. My DM says “player name, you start to steer the ship in the wrong direction, into the middle of the ocean”. When I start to protest saying that I don’t want to do this, she says it’s because my Patron is calling me that way, and that I lose control of myself. My team members have to tie me up Odyssey style. And we come to our fifth session, when I get to meet my patron for the first time. Our DM admonishes me as my patron, saying that I have been disobeying his orders by not taking the boat into the middle of the ocean, and threatens to take away my warlock powers if I don’t listen in the future. A few times my dm has made me make wisdom saving rolls to control myself, but not always. These instances of my character being driven by her patron are causing small spats in the group. I feel like my dm is oversteping her boundaries by telling me what my character does, but is it within the dm’s right to control a warlock as a patron? I await your deepest of crit knowledge.

Zack Comeau

My brave and benevolent godly crit justices, and guest star Jake. I was doing a one shot with my girlfriend with my cause as the DM, I have played a good amount but my girlfriend had no experience in D&D at all, I played a Dwarven ranger and my girlfriend was a Dragon born barbarian, I was trying to get information from a tranp and Attempt to determine a temptation check to keep his lips tight and rolled middling, my girlfriend decided to give it a shot and rolled a nat 20, the DM proceeded to describe the tramp being scared death, and the towns people being afraid mad and disgusted, me and my girlfriend said it was ridiculous for it to be a murder! Tbh we never figured the one shot but I look back on it and think she was wronged to be framed as a killer but I await your judgment

CARGO REAPER

Case of the ghosting dm. May it please the esteemed judges and Jake the Dog. I was a first time player a couple years ago and found a group on roll 20 to play a curse of strahd campaign. With the dm’s own “special changes”. He promised that it would be super fun and a good first campaign for me. Then we started and let me tell you, it was a horrible experience. We had a kid in the party who didn’t know how to use either discord or roll 20 or how any type of combat proceeded. Which is fine I’m a new player too. But if you still don’t know a single thing about it by the third session that’s a problem. We also had someone who would constantly be on their phone and we’d have to wait for them to catch up to what we’d been doing when not their turn. Not just in combat but for everything. One time we even got on and he was playing another video game during the session and told us he had to wait to do his turn in combat after his game ended. After that session we planned another. The morning of the session, I woke up to find that the dm kicked everyone out of the discord and disbanded the roll 20 campaign and blocked everyone from messaging him on discord and roll 20. He then posted in the official dnd discord looking for a group for curse of strahd campaign. Should the dm have told us that our group wasn’t working out and that our party needed to end or was he right to ghost this insane player group? Ps. I joined another group playing a Star Wars campaign and am having a blast. So this first experience didn’t ruin dnd for me :)

KCampbell

Not a case, but welcome back Jake! Hope everything is going well with the baby and mom is recovering well.

Aydin Prineapple

The Case of the Devious DM and the Problematic Player. May this find the ears of the supreme justices and the even more supreme bailiff Josh. Or was it Justin? I used to play in a D&D group that had effectively poached some players from a different D&D group (unrelated to the story). Both that game and the game this case is about were very lighthearted, and not serious games which took me a bit to grapple with, but I eventually got over. The DM and player in question were close friends and had known each other for a long time. As this was an online game, almost everyone new each other only a bit except for those two who knew each other IRL. I didnt care about that at all until they started to message each other during our sessions, when the problem player's character went off alone to do who knows what. Again, I didnt mind this too much. The straw that broke the camel's back was when the problem player's character met back up with the party, after having gone off alone, but this time, came back yoked out in magic items. He had some powerful shit such as +3 armor, a homebrew hammer that could turn into any tool he pleased as well as any +2 weapon, as well as similarly powerful items. I should also note, we were all level 6. After seeing this, I asked if I could talk to the dm (who is a really cool guy when not doing stuff with the other player behind our backs.) I wanted to talk to him about why he gave the player's character such op shit, and he said something along the lines of, "He is my friend so when he DMed me about wanting to go do a dungeon wile the rest of you guys fuck around, I of course obliged." I was left speechless and due to the unfairness of the game as well as the lack of fun I was having, I left soon after, though I stayed in contact with the DM and some of the players. One last thing, the problem player's character was one from a previous campaign that both him, and the DM played in previously. That campaign was set in Eberron wile this one was set in Faerun, so two completely different worlds. Everything that the character did in the previous campaign, carried over to this one, say for the his level. Now I ask you all, should I not have left? Should I give them a second chance? Or did I make the right decision? I rest my fate in the hands of the justices as well as the bailiff Jared.

BreeRuins

Dearest Supreme Court Justices and Baliff Jake, who is not dear to me, I come before you today with the case of a stolen character moment and a near-death experience. I play a Paladin of Corellon, the Patron of Elves and God of Art and Music. My character had her sense of wonder stolen as a child by a hag. Undoubtedly, wonder is integral to my god's domain, and my character feared being declared unworthy of her Paladin class and shunned by her god and newfound friends. During our last session, while trying to stay hidden and searching in a scooby-doo-esk fashion for our stolen gear, my character found her gear and the lost sense of wonder through sheer luck. I had envisioned this as a significant character moment. I had even gone so far as to practice describing the whimsy and joy returning to her eyes, the feeling of profound kinship with the party and the first smile in over a decade returning to her face. However, my DM swiftly took over the narration, and I didn't even get a chance to speak before we were thrust into battle. In the ensuing battle, I miraculously survived despite being struck ten times in a single round. The DM explained that the enemies were aiming to stun, not kill. Although I should be grateful that my beloved Paladin lives on, I left the session feeling disheartened. Esteemed Court, I seek your judgment on whether it is justified for me to feel bitter about my DM taking away my character moment, or if I should embrace wonder and gratitude for my Paladin's continued existence. I humbly await your judgment Sincerely, A Wonder-struck down Paladin

Nick Lerche

The case of the congrats jake! So happy for you and Jill and Tucker!

Jenkers

Welcome back Jake! We had no idea where to put our coats while you were gone!

Magma River

Yeah, you're right in feeling disparaged here. Liking Pathfinder should be about *liking Pathfinder*, not shouting about how much you hate 5e and trying to make other people say they hate 5e.

Andy Horton

A confessional before the chief popes of the church of dice Christ I humble myself before the triumvirate of popes and also Jackson i have come to confess a sin of getting too excited about an idea. While on a date recently my date expressed they had an interest in D&D we went back and forth about some of our fav podcasts (good luck for me she’s not a listener of NaddPod, which is bad luck for her) In the conversation and after a few bud heavys, we landed on the subject “Game of Thrones but for Whales” and I proceeded to spiral into an amount of Freeform lore that can only be described as a vision from the dice themselves: Game of thrones but it’s whales and dolphins after humanity has been wiped out by global flooding from climate change High political intrigue of a hyper intelligent sea mammals living in the flooded wreckage of society A clan of sharks having dominion over the state of Florida and the American south, have a working class of manatee as their main citizens that weave sea textiles The tops of the Rockies are still above water and the seals and sea lions claimed that land Their main commerce is penguins they raise as livestock. The Midwest us has been taken over by bottom feeders like catfish from all the rivers, but it’s so much deeper now that they evolved to be like angler fish with little lights bc it’s dark down there now since the Midwest is basically one big bowl. The north east, New England area is run by baleen whales and there are crab farmers tending the coral huge reef that used to be manhattan, which attracts all the krill the whales want and in exchange the whales protect them from the southern raiding sharks. The west coast is the kings landing capital of the empire, originally founded by the dolphins left in sea world they were over thrown and exiled. There’s a young dolphin last of the line like Daenerys Targaryen, who is the mother of squids, three long extinct giant squid. The rich tyrell family can be humpback whales in the pacific north west, redwoods evolved to grow incredibly tall and poke out of the water, so they have a lumber empire. This seemed to put her off and I haven’t heard from her since. Please help me forgive myself for getting too excited about a bit.

G-Money

Most High Judges of the Supreme Crit, and the bailiff of little consequence, I present the case of The People v. Unicorn Inflation: I've been playing remotely in a homebrew campaign since moving to another city in order to stay in touch with my friends there. We were Level 6 and in the Fey Wild attempting to assist the Lady of the Wood, a unicorn who had been mortally wounded by a cursed sword in the hands of the crazed antagonist trying to gain the unicorn's power. As a druid, I used several of my class abilities, spells, and some decent role-playing (if I may say so, myself) to gain her trust. We vanquished the antagonist and lifted the curse, healing the unicorn in the process. In return, she gifted me with a single hair from her mane which, if used, would summon her temporarily to my aid in a moment of great peril. An amazing gift (a-la Galadriel and Gimli) and a satisfying moment for my character. Well. Then the drunk, irreverent-yet-pious tiefling paladin (a vital part of our party played by a good, good friend--no hate) steps forward and asks the unicorn if he can ride her. Our DM clunked to a stop in his narrative tracks, panic-Googled, and then read out loud with little confidence that apparently paladins, considering their typically high standard of moral conduct, were of the few classes which a unicorn might permit as a rider. To which he ruled, "Uh...yeah. So, I guess she lets you ride her," with no charisma roll and little role-playing. Ever since, our paladin has been riding this incredibly powerful, sentient creature and I'm still carrying the single, golden hair from her mane which is now relatively worthless considering the unicorn is always accompanying our party. So I ask you, esteemed judges, am I a victim of unicorn inflation? Should my hard-earned treasure have become akin to a few pennies at the off-handed whims of our bumbling paladin? Or should I celebrate my friend's unlikely success after shooting his shot and scoring big? I humbly await your righteous judgment, G-Money

James M

To the finest members of the court and to the joke…. I mean Jake, that is the the lowlyest… umm I meant lovelyest bailiff. I bring forward to you the case of the cutscene conundrum. I had created what I thought was to be a quick one shot session. The party were bought to the floating city of Sparrows Ridge by the great Wizard Balthazar. They chose to investigate the going’s on in the town and collect a stolen scroll to which Balthazar had the other three for safekeeping. After countless hours of puzzles and searching, the party finally defeated the big boss in a spider mech who they had found out would have been able to destroy the city with meteor swarm if he had gotten his hands on all four scrolls. At this point the party sat round the table and looked weary, I noticed a player yawning and so I began to panic. ‘I’m just very tired’ was the response from the player when I asked if everyone was good. But I had a cliffhanger planned so that the party could potentially play once again with these characters (I doubt they will now) I therefore cutscened the remainder of the session so my players didn’t fall asleep. With the bad guy defeated I described how the party returned to Balthazar via the cities transportation system of rocket ships, steam punk style, and down to the port below. When they reconvened I gave the players a choice as to wether they handed the final scroll to Balthazar or not. They of course trusted the wizard with their life and handed it over. This is where i then cutscened the moment the friendly wizard became a seething world destroying monster. With the fourth scroll the wizard had planned all along that he would destroy the city and become the rightful ruler of chaos. At this point of course you can imagine the players tried to stop him. But instead of letting them I had him destroy the city behind as the players watched and I ended the session there. This same tired player was extremely cross, leaving the screen, (as we were playing in the lockdown) screaming ‘you have to let the players play!’ There was a horrible silence but the other players said they enjoyed themselves. Was I wrong to not let the players interfere with my ideas and plans for a following campaign because of one tired soul? Or was I right to cutscene the hell out of the end and destroy my players hard work and dedication to the game? That is for you to decide my lovely court and the bailiff joke ah I mean jake!

Christopher Derrick

To the highest and most honorable members of the crit and the bailiff Jake. I bring to the court a case that is a few years old about a new player whos meda gaming was left unpunished. So this campaign has gone on for two years and then ended upruptly. Our campaign was based on magic disappearing from the world our task was to find the reason on why and to prevent it's progress or bring it back. I played a half elf who was cruelly experimented on by fellow elves and because of this my character who is chaotic neutral and has the spirit inside of him who was forced inside of his soul. The other player who was a full elf kept going on as if he new my whole back story by even mentioning the name of the spirit or devil that was forced inside of my character saying I should just use his power. He was repeatedly told that I would have no control over a pit fiend and that his character would never know my characters backstory. But then the dm had a new job in a different state so he made another player dm. When he took over he went in two games and then had my character randomly captured in a cage and that ended the campaign with everyone running away and me recaptured. While the other player was left unpunished so my question to the high crit is this. Was this a just punishment to just end the game from a new dm or should the old dm have punished the meda gamer more harshly.