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Cases Please! (Patreon)

Published:
2023-09-25 14:32:41
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Your Honorable Bailiff Jake here to let you know the Supreme Crit is convening this afternoon. Please submit your brief (I do beg!) case on this thread and we will bring you JUSTICE.

Comments

ChefJustinLane

Honored Justices and first-time-guest-bailiff Jake, 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 and the DM just seems to chuckle and move on. I ask you, judges: should the DM have been more conscious of choosing enemies that made a player’s character irrelevant, 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)

Caitrin

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

Brandon Boling

To the lovely justices, I must apologize in advance for my tardiness to your most auspicious court hall, as my alarm was set to JST (Jake Standard Time). Regardless, I bring you a case of flavored death. I play a Hexblood Eldritch knight named Briar Thornewood. I joined this specific group via a Reddit thread requesting another player to an ongoing campaign. During the session, we find ourselves in combat against a group of baddies. Things seem dire, but I luckily cast a fireball in the group, specifically selecting a spot where enemies within 5 ft of me would be hurt, but not me. This helped lower the numbers, and with the chieftain of the baddies right next to me, I as a bonus action attacked with my sword to deliver the finishing blow. This is due to the War Magic class feature of Eldritch knight. For flavor, I described how as I cast the fireball, the chieftain was knocked by the explosion, allowing me to swiftly skewer him with my blade. As I thought we were ready to move on to the next person in initiative, the DM stops and goes: “that didn’t occur”. Bewildered, I asked if someone cast counter spell or something? He simply responded: “no, you killed him, but he wasn’t knocked closer to you for you to do that blow”. I was confused, as I told him I just said that as flavor, and on the map, the chieftain was already 5 ft away so I just described it in a way that seemed cool in the moment. He simply sighed, and said: “this sets a bad precedent so let’s just move on and say he simply died by a slash as you moved forward”. For the first time, I felt really awkward for a session, despite usually feeling really confident in role play. He even later sent me a DM letting me know to ask him ahead of time for “cool flavor ideas” for finishing blows, as he didn’t want his longer term players thinking what I did would be the norm going forward. I ask justices, was the way how I described the scene really deserving of such a dramatic talk down? Does this actually set a precedent going forward? I leave this in your gentle hands.

Dan Healey

To the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Crits and it's clergy. This is more of me Testifying to the power of Dice Christ. I'm currently DMing for the first time over discord for my 6 friends and they just had their first boss fight. The heavy hitter was an Alleybasher Ogre from the Tome of Beasts, but the party is level 2, so I figured they could handle it. Well half the party decide to split up to look for an escape and very quickly the Ogre dropped 2 of the remaining players unconscious. The next round it was the Ogre, still looking pretty beefy, versus the halflings fighter who had taken some hits. With his first attack, the Ogre rolled a nat 20. In that moment, I thought about fudging the roll, but everyone saw my face so I put my faith in the dice and rolled damage, which was minimal, but the fighter was in single digit HP. Second attack, I thought about skipping, hoping that in the chaos of battle, maybe they forgot about it but no, they remembered and I let the dice go knowing full well, that this might be a death sentence for the party. Once again, I put my faith into Dice Christ to show me the way and I rolled a Nat 1. The Ogre was killed the next turn and the 2 downed players were able to be brought back up. I am now a true believer in the mercy of Dice Christ and might have to start my missionary work. In the name of the Help Action, Advantage and the Natural 20, Amen

Skillful Ferret

If it would please our judges and the Busty Baliff, please recount the tale of the Torn Tabaxi, During our third session, the other characters in the party decided to make a plan to betray our mission and become an evil party. So, they role played a distraction to ostracize my character who was a lawful good Paladin, for the entirety of my last session (due to having to leave for a deployment). I had offered to play a Lawful Evil Cleric at session zero, but the other players told me to play the Paladin. Thus, I had to spend the entire session pretending to be alone in another room. Then in the last five minutes of the game, to roleplay my character out, I took the artifact from our NPC priest to complete the mission on my own so that he would stay safe. Which I thought would let the party have an excuse to quit the mission since they wanted to switch to being an evil party. I found out that during the next session they caught up to my character who had sacrificed himself using the artifact to revive a village that was destroyed (dm choice) which I thought was cool, but the remaining players decided to mutilate my character’s corpse to remove the artifact that I had apparently swallowed, in order to sell it. I was upset to learn this. Were the players justified in defiling my character’s legacy, and should the DM have allowed it?

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

Darkrisky

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 played 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. (Keep in mind my character saw all this in a “Facetime”.) 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 stood there smiling at me waiting for my answer. 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. PS sorry if this confusing. I had to condense a lot.

Matthew

To the extremely hot judges and the strange looking bailiff I bring you my case of the campaign ending counter spell While playing in a pirate campaign we had planned a stealth mission to get some documents for our pirate boss. This compound we are attempting to raid was surrounded by cliffs, we decided to attack from above and target the biggest threat. We were able to successfully sneak to our positions and waited for our bard to cast hold person on a surprise round. When hold person was cast the boss was able to counter spell without knowing the hold person was being cast ruining our plan. We argued that since the enemy had no clue the spell was cast it wouldn’t work but the dm wouldn’t even give his reasoning for counter spell working. This made everyone kind of lose interest in what was happening in the session. Later in the combat my monk opened a door to the inside of the compound and found more enemies after running in. The banishment spell was cast on me and I failed my save. Banished inside the compound the enemies shut and locked the doors with my crew outside. When the banishment ended I reappeared outside of the compound with my crew and that was the end of the session. Those questionable rulings along with other issues with our dm the campaign ended. So I ask you judges where me and my crew wronged or will we have to spend eternity in Davy joneses locker.

Adriana B

To the honorable crit justices and the lowly bailiff Jake (Just one lowly to honor the rules of the court). Am I the Asshole? I bring you the case of DM v. Gummy I'm the DM of a campaign about the PC’s entering cursed games. In a past session, PCs managed to rescue the soul of a young dragon (Linda) who was wrongfully killed in the material plane and harnessed as a glitch. To save her, the players put her soul into their pet axolotl, Gummy and took her out of the game. Gummy happens to be a tiny dragon that hatched recently. Next session, I wanted them to find Linda a new body, and to put some urgency in this lead, I decided to make Linda’s soul to be too much for Gummy to handle. At the start of the session, I started to do 1 hp of psychic damage to Gummy every in-game hour. I had the PC’s do perception checks, starting at a DC 25 the first night, and lowered the DC by 5 if they didn’t pass. By the time the party found out, Gummy’s scales had lacked luster and appeared fatigued at 10 HP (27 hp total). My players were DISTRAUGHT at the fact I had the nerve to hurt Gummy. All things considered, I don’t think 1 HP of psych damage per hour was all that much.

Choc DISCO

To the honorable justices and the not-too-lowly but still down there Cake Hurwitz, I play in a long term, currently low level campaign with two other players. One of my co-players crits probably 3-5 times a session, whereas the only crit that I have been blessed with the entire campaign was to see how well my character could cook fish! To put salt on the wound, in a recent combat, that player had rolled 3 natural 20’s in a row, and exclaimed “I am the main character!”. We are all experienced players and make in-depth backstories, but to be pushed off and feel like a side-character ruins the fun at the table for me. Am I wrong to think that he might have some weighted dice known or unbeknownst to him, or is he truly trying to take the spotlight for himself? I await your judgement.

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." There was no charisma roll and barely a hint of role-playing to earn this privilege. Ever since, our paladin has been riding this incredibly powerful, sentient creature and I'm still carrying the single, golden hair from her golden 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

Nick Gamber

Dice Christ Confessional: To the most beautiful Sister Emily, the magnanimous Father Murph, the ever clever Father Caldwell and the under appreciated fourth guy, Jack. I come seeking absolution for I fear I am testing fate in an already cursed group. I play a Dwarven Alchemist Artificer, Ricky Thundercock, a naive trust fund kid from a family that breed the loudest roosters in Tal’Dorei. I want to start multiclassing him into Artificer/Fighter with my next level. It’s makes a lot of narrative sense; my party and DM all love the idea. But here is my sin: Ricky Thundercock lacked both a STR and DEX requirement for fighter so I just went in and secretly bumped up both stats by 1. Our table has already managed to pull off two IRL divorces since we joined two years ago. Am I playing with fire at a table that already has been cursed or am I providing addition fun for some necessary escapism? Should I forgo my inevitable proposal to my girlfriend until the campaign ends? I don't want the forces that be to strike again. I will prostrate myself in a Walmart parking lot as I wait for my absolution or damnation.

lawless-crows

are ghosts organic? to the highest of the realms’ court, and those who preside over it, and the bailiff ****, I present the case of the shatter spell vs the organic ghosts In a midnight attack that awoke the party by dropping one of the PCs & a BELOVED NPC, then splitting the group two and two, a group of banshees and will-o-wisps set up a fun challenge. It was a hard fight, with at least one PC dropping every round, and tensions were high to try and keep everyone safe. With her surrogate father figure under risk of soul-sucking, the sorcerer, Sienna, cast Shatter. She then asked: “since a ghost is dead, therefore not made of living things anymore, is it considered inorganic material?” She then argued that because spell’s wording says “any creature of inorganic material has disadvantage on saving throws,” the banshee should roll with disadvantage. I, as the DM, hesitantly said no, they are organic, which lead to 15 minutes of research and a heated (but friendly) debate that split the table. It ended with a “fuck science, magic is real, I’m the dm” and combat continued with no hard feelings. It sticks in my mind, even months later, so I beg the court to weigh in. Are ghosts organic material, or should I have given the them disadvantage on the save?

Riley Counts

To the wonderful judges of Murphy, Axford, and Tanner. To the baby bailiff jake, I have repented for my past sins, just over this past weekend I did as the church decreed and I did DM a game of dnd for my sisters birthday and I have rekindled my love for dnd and I’m going to keep on dming for a long time, I just wanted to say thank you oh humble judges, and thanks Dice Christ for forgiving of my past sins, and to jake I guess you’re welcome

Bgn87

To the cool justices and the not so cool bailiff Hurworse, I bring to you a confession for dice christ. Our party had just scared off a group of gangsters wanting to shake down a local blacksmith. They escaped into the sewers and my character, a warforged dropped down to follow them. Instead I was only met with a large dumb tiefling named Chuck. My character became friends with Chuck through combat and left to go get a drink with him. The dm asked for a low DC charisma check to befriend chuck all the way. I rolled a nat 1 and lied and said I only got a 5. 5 was enough and we enjoyed the night and took Chuck home. The next session chuck was murdered in his home. The dm could not have seen my role as I was on the other side of the table. I witnessed the power of dice christ and beg for forgiveness from the church.

WreckBadger

May it please the honorable Supreme Crit Justices, the Baby Bailiff, and his baby, I give you the case of the unpardonable passive perception: Our campaign hinged on a very important map that was wanted by different factions across the wide world. Our party had taken turns carrying the map and as we entered a busy and gritty city, we decided that I, the surly, suspicious dwarven Druid, should hold the map for safekeeping. I narrated putting the map inside my shirt, robes, and leather armor against my stomach, repeating that I would be hyper-aware of the map at all times, checking it frequently and regarding everyone around me with extreme caution. A few in-game days later, we hunkered down in a hotel and I narrated taking the map out to be sure it hadn’t been damaged in a recent fight. The DM told me it was gone. I asked when it had been taken and he said, “You don’t know. That’s how passive perception works.” I insisted that I had been aware of the map and had it buried under numerous pieces of clothing - it would have been impossible to pickpocket! He relented and told me it had been stolen by someone in the street the day before, but that he had rolled against my passive perception and I hadn’t noticed. He maintained, however, that the map had been taken and there was nothing we could do about it now. I beseech the court to tell me - must I accept that my grizzled and grumpy dwarven hermit didn’t notice someone pulling a map from under the multiple layers of her clothing and let the whole party down? Or has justice been denied by my DM? I humbly await your judgement.

Nick Gamber

I noticed my post was liked when I submitted it for the live court. I'll be heartbroken if it was used and that live court isn't posted.

Trevor McDaniel

To the honorable justices and the rad bailiff Jim, A few weeks ago I was playing my bloodhunter cleric dark elf in a 5e homebrew. I am the lycan subclass and I have been unable to transform as my transformatio is related to my god. When I took the level and per my request I would roll a d100 to find if it worked. I finally had an opportunity to use it and I rolled a double zero in the d100 and the dm siad it didn’t count because a 00 is a hundred and that I needed to roll two d10 and use that because it’s too confusing. I re rolled and got a 16 which was still under the requirements but I feel like dice Christ gave it to me and it stole the magic from the first transformation of my character. I humbly await your justice

Brock McDonough

To the honorable judges and Zac Oyama, I am a seasoned DnD lurker (listened to D20, Naddpod, Critical Role, etc.) but never played DnD before. I was coming to your guys’ live show in Chicago with my brother and a friend. Before the show, we decided that I should DM for the first time. I had been thinking of a fun one shot for a while now and decided to actually flesh it out on the road trip to Chicago from Des Moines, Iowa. My brother is an experienced DM and said he would help me plan it and just be my friends squire in the one shot as to not give away big plot points. Our friend lives in Chicago so he wasn’t on the road trip with us. I thought this was a great idea! Oh how wrong I was. The plot goes like this: My brother and his friend have been arrested under suspicion of being a magic user. In this country, there have been strange deaths on the border of this country. It is thought to have been magic related so all magic users are being arrested. The king brings them to his court and gives them two options. Die or work with his advisor to find what is causing these deaths. They decided to take the latter option. The advisor tells them that the town they are going to be heading to is a small farming village that worships Lathander (god of Renewal). We go through a combat, a puzzle, and then the final fight for the one shot. It ends in the revealing of the advisor being a follower of Lathander and being the one behind the killings. I intentionally made this fight harder than normal because of how seasoned my brother and friend are at DnD. They were on their last few spell slots and hit points, the music crescendos as my brother rolls high enough to take the advisor down. I ask my brother how his character would like to end this combat. He says, “He cums himself to death.” I was taken aback as he just starts laughing so hard. Too hard. This man has been my older brother for over 2 decades and knew that this was my first time DM’ing and was pretty anxious about it and wanted it to be badass and he reduces my BBEG to cumming himself to death. My brother and his friend were laughing so I am glad they had fun but I can’t help but feel like I was punished for making the one shot. Was my brother wrong to make my BBEG cum himself to death and ruin the cinematic moment I have dreamed of for years?

Elana

Forgive me Podcasters for I have goofed, the game that I'm currently running is the first time I've ever gotten to play a campaign all the way to the higher levels, usually they fizzle out by now due to scheduling. The party recently had to go steal something from a monsters lair for a crucial NPC quest and during the fight I forgot to use my legendary resistances for the suggestion spell that immediately subverted the encounter, ultimately it was still a fun session and we all laughed but I worry about being able to run challenging encounters for my level 16 party. I seek your vast wisdom in the ways of dice christ to better my future DM ways.

D Cord

To the honorable Crit Justices and the baby baliff I submit the case of the demoralizing first mate: I was the first mate of our ship. Two of the PCs got into a disagreement in front of the crew. I didn’t interrupt because I didn’t want to pull focus from the moment. The DM said the crew noticed the fight. The next session I went to each crew and thanked them for their job thus far, attempting to raise their morale status. At the end of that session, the DM said the crew had lost a morale point due to the fight and because specifically my character not intervening, and that my after fight check in was not enough to keep the morale from slipping. Was I wronged?

Ryggwelter

To the honoured clergy. I ask no advice, I merely come bearing a confession to free myself from the torment. Several years ago I lied to my friends about playing dnd and being a DM. I ended up agreeing to be a DM for a group of friends and run them a homebrew campaign. While I planned what I could, I experienced a level of stress I didn't know possible. I started drinking to quell the nerves and proceeded to get black out drunk during the 4 hour session. I had to continuously ask the players what happened while running session 2 as I remembered nothing. To this day I'm still a DM to the same group, but that is my greatest shame. That is all

Dan Healey

To the Esteemed Judges and Bailiff Jorb, My first D&D game was a 3.5 game but when we went to sleep, it became a 4E game with different characters, and we weren't sure which one was real or dream. It was my buddy's first time DMing. One of the players was a friend who was our resident Forever DM, he made a female halfling rogue with a "shadowy past". We were hired for a mission and walking to the town. The Rogue decided to walk off the path and stay hidden up in the trees. We encountered our last friend, who was late to the session, who was playing an orc barbarian. The Rogue decided to shoot a warning arrow at him for no reason and rolled a Nat 1. The DM then asked the Orc to roll a Dex save, to which he also rolled a Nat 1 so the DM said the arrow hit him and to take damage. It was funny at the table but in game, the Orc demanded an apology. The Rogue refused. So the Orc asked, "Can I attack him to make us even?" My DM said, sure roll attack. Nat 20, rolled Max damage And one shotted the rogue. The party didn't have a cleric or healer and no one had any potions. The shadowy Rogue died and the Forever DM was irate. He kept talking about how he had this incredible backstory where he was this powerful princess and now he won't get to play that character He worked so hard on. The DM countered with you shouldn't have try to attacking your own party members because if you're going to act that way because that's what your character would do, the other players get to play the same way. Was he wrong for allowing that character to die?

Eric Chord

To the honorable judges and bailiff with questionable credentials, I've started DMing a campaign for 4 friends where we are all new to D&D. One of our players is playing a druid fairy and has started looting every body they come across, including the dead body of another pc's best friend. They roll investigation to see what they can find on the body, announce the roll to the table, and then look to me to ask what they find. As a new DM, I threw out some random crap that they found, (a potion of black ooze) and now the party thinks this is critical to the plot. This has sparked debates in and out of character about looting friends, and now I've backed myself into a corner explaining what this ooze is. Judges I know I'm clearly in the wrong, but I seek judgement and guidance for how to dig myself out of this hole. - Eric

JackJack

I come today with a confession, dearest justices who are also religious leaders and the baliff who in the eyes of dice christ is equal to the justices. Many many years ago now (I think around 2018) I played one of my first games of D&D. All of us were given prewritten character sheets and I selected a bard. Unfortunately I was not really told how a bard works and even was, in retrospect, told some spells worked differently then they did (I was told Faerie Fire was not a combat spell). Because of this I started to fudge my rolls to try and hit with my crossbow because it wasn't very good. While I wish I could've gone back in time to tell past me more about how my now favorite class and favorite spell work, I still feel incredibly guilty about my roll fudging. Justices/Baliff/Speakers of Dice Christ, I humbly seek to atone for my succumbing to temptation in my first game, and my apologies if it seems like I was trying to justify my actions I just hoped to give context. P.S. I am working to one day strive for the same skillfulness in roleplay and combat as Our Lady in Dice Christ Emily Axford. And I hope I might be able to use this opprotunity to grow closer to that level of divinity.

Spencer

To the Dice Pontiffs Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the lowly(+) altar boy Yake, I have a confession. As a DM, I have sinned before my players and Dice Christ himself. In a recent battle against the Demon Prince Orcus, I realized the PCs were, frankly, womping me. Orcus has an ace up his sleeve: summoning shit loads of undead, which would have turned the tides of the battle. However, I feared that would not be enough before they kill him outright. So my plan was to have him cast Time Stop to do the summoning AND get some solid attacks in to take down the highest damage player. The problem is that my players would likely counterspell him, essentially wasting his entire turn. Rather than choosing either summoning OR attacking, I made the decision to reflavor Time Stop from a spell to an innate ability, denying my players from countering it. They were none the wiser. I now plead forgiveness for this act of not fudging a roll, but denying my players a chance to roll altogether. They did not have 9th level spells, so the odds were only around 25% to successfully counterspell, but those were odds I didn’t want to take. Help me find solace in the darkness of guilt, and may Dice Christ bless all of us.

James M

Dear honourable justices of the court and to the joke…. I mean Jake, that is the the lowlyest… umm I meant loveliest bailiff. I bring forward to you the case of the Narrative Advancing DM. I’m in a current campaign with a bunch of theatre friends, (Always lots of Drama). The guy running the campaign has taken it upon themself to produce quite an epic story, creating his own map, currency, races etc which in its own right is awesome, but, upon starting the sessions we have noticed that he seems to hurry us along. On our first session, we found ourselves stranded on a beach after a shipwreck. Having a roleplay moment we were about to introduce character names when the DM spoke out and said ‘you see a map’ None of us were currently looking for a map! We were just enjoying the comedic role play of our rather unusual characters, myself being a Kenku Druid named Klang who likes shiny things. We continued with the role play and none of us picked the map up, this is when the DM then sent us a digital image in discord of the map and said ‘Are you guys gonna leave and carry on then or what?’ We hadn’t even got to introduce our characters names before he was handing us a map and making us climb a cliff edge! We have since done another 2 sessions and the same sort of thing keeps happening, The DM will advance to plot points and the next puzzle quicker than you can say ‘Investigation Roll’ So I ask you honourable members of the court and Jake, am i wrong to judge the DM for his pushy demands or is he at fault for not letting us gel as characters before we began our campaign.

Majoras Milk Bar

To the Honourable Supreme Crit Justices and the graceless baby bailiff jake. As church and state and not separated, I will humbly ask for your direction during recess. Due to distance, my friends and I play online using Foundry and use the online rolling system. The past five or so sessions, I have not rolled above a 5 on attack roles or saves. In our last session, the DM asked me roll for save and I rolled a natural 1. I laughed it off like usual, but then my group asked me continue rolling until I got a good roll. I then rolled another three natural 1s in a row. The table argued on my behalf that the probability of that was ridiculous, and that something must have been wrong with the system. The DM said this was not possible because it was completely randomised, and that my rolls were purely my own bad luck. Has Dice Christ truly forsaken me? Must I prostate myself before Him to absolve myself from sins unknown? Or should I be seated at the prosecution bench to argue my case against the prejudice Foundry holds towards me and my DM who refuses to let me roll with physical dice? I patiently await your directions, and if you have a map that would also be appreciated, I’m new here. P.s. I don’t mind either way because we are still having fun, but I find myself not engaging or interacting in sessions anymore so I don’t let my party down with my rolls.

Mason N.

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

James M

Dear honourable justices of the court and to the joke…. I mean Jake, that is the the lowlyest… umm I meant loveliest bailiff. I bring forward to you the case of the Narrative Advancing DM. I’m in a current campaign with a bunch of theatre friends, (Always lots of Drama). The guy running the campaign has taken it upon themself to produce quite an epic story, creating his own map, currency, races etc which in its own right is awesome, but, upon starting the sessions we have noticed that he seems to hurry us along. On our first session, we found ourselves stranded on a beach after a shipwreck. Having a roleplay moment we were about to introduce character names when the DM spoke out and said ‘you see a map’ None of us were currently looking for a map! We were just enjoying the comedic role play of our rather unusual characters, myself being a Kenku Druid named Klang who likes shiny things. We continued with the role play and none of us picked the map up, this is when the DM then sent us a digital image in discord of the map and said ‘Are you guys gonna leave and carry on then or what?’ We hadn’t even got to introduce our characters names before he was handing us a map and making us climb a cliff edge! We have since done another 2 sessions and the same sort of thing keeps happening, The DM will advance to plot points and the next puzzle quicker than you can say ‘Investigation Roll’ So I ask you honourable members of the court and Jake, am i wrong to judge the DM for his pushy demands or is he at fault for not letting us gel as characters before we began our campaign.

Rueben Winter

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

Georgia

Honorable justices and the bailiff, I am here to submit an appeal your ruling on the weapons-stealing rogue! I fear in my quest for brevity I did both myself and the case a disservice. This player was explicitly asked to discuss her build with me, because unbeknownst to the party, they were all going to bring back an element of their AU characters into their standard character sheets. For example, the paladin got to keep her specialized channel divinity when she returned to being a fighter. Additionally, while my language was unclear in the original post, I offered the rogue an opposed check to take the crossbow. However, she argued it should be made against the bad guys passive perception. I argued he was in the heat of battle and actively fighting, and would be actively looking out for things, and therefore would be using active perception. I beg you then justices, to reconsider your ruling. While i appreciate the free food within your food chain conglomerate, i tire of sneaking sips of water between salty snacks.

Benjamin Reilly

To the honorable supreme crit justices and Tom, the other guy. I present to you the case of the Min/Max Tabax. During my first ever DnD campaign, I joined in with a group of friends that had just turned level 4. My DM helped me create a character and asked me what I was interested in. I told him that all I really care about is dual wielding weapons. His response was that dual wielding is fairly weak in 5e, so he will “help me out” by giving me some powerful items in order to keep up with the others in the group. I ended up choosing a Tabaxi Fey Wanderer Ranger. The items he gave me were +2 weapons, which in retrospect now seem way too strong already. By level 5, I received a reward to upgrade them to +3. Fast forward a few sessions, it became apparent that my character was by far the best damage dealer now. My DM decided to “nerf me” by removing one of my character’s arms in a cut scene. I now don’t really enjoy playing this character anymore, as a dual wielding character is what I really wanted to play. I even lost the +1 AC from the feat. I talked to the DM outside of the game for in game solutions to getting my arm back. So far, nothing has come up. Anyway, that was over a year ago. Have I been wronged by my DM? Or was this a reasonable solution to the situation? Cheers, Ben

Timmy Standafer

To the Honored Keepers of the Crit and Josiah, I bring you the case of the NPC breaking a spell rule for story purposes. Before COVID, I was DMing a fairly long-running campaign of Storm King's Thunder for my wife and 4 of our good friends. The module is basically a big sandbox so there was a lot of room for me to add my own towns, characters, etc. When entering one of the new towns, they decided to stay at the local inn that was ran by an special NPC. To the characters, she appeared to be a normal innkeeper, but in reality, she was a powerful demi-god, simply known as "She." The players were feeling unsafe in this new town so our Wizard cast Leomund's Tiny Hut before going to bed. During the night, She (the demi-god NPC) visited the players in their dreams with visions and left some of the players notes with important details. Our wizard was confused that anyone or anything had gotten through his tiny hut and contested that She shouldn't have been able to visit them in their sleep. After inquiring further, I explained to our wizard that it must be someone or something very powerful to have gotten around the effects of his spell (which admittedly is a pretty low level spell). Keep in mind, the players had no idea who She was at this point and I was using this interaction as a bit of an introduction to the character, so my wizard probably thought that She was some sort of BBEG. Was I wrong to allow an NPC to ignore the rules of a spell to advance the story? Or was I justified in going forward with my planned story delivery method? I await a swift judgment.

Jettblack

To the crit-centric court and the handsome bailiff John, I bring forth the case of the single player role player. A little while ago me and my friends got into pathfinder 2e on the recommendations of the pod. I was DMing and each of my players made low level characters. One of my players made a Kitsune Druid with an NPC companion that I had made to help myself learn the system. A couple sessions in and that NPC got caught and ultimately the party almost got TPKd in the ensuing rescue attempt. After the NPC was unrecoverable the Kitsune’s player talked to me about making a new character. I agreed and said we can work them in. They then mentioned that they had an idea for a hook to get them into the party. I love when players take initiative in the story and world like that so I agreed. Cut to the new characters intro, a human bounty hunter who was there for the NPC. Cue a several minute long dialogue between the kitsune and the human, a PC going back and forth talking to just themselves. Myself and the other players shot each other looks as it went on. After the session I brought it up and said that while I admire the enthusiasm it did take away from the time allotted for other stuff in the session that would’ve given other players more time to role play. I ask the court now, was I wrong to extinguish the flame of the self driven single player role player, or was I in the right to pull this player aside and ask that he not create a one man scene while the rest of us watched on. I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Adam Baker

May it please the high crit and the Balif who is $20 richer if this being read to the court. I come with the case of the Revenge Piano. I have a crime with potentially multiple victims and perpetrators but I will remain succinct. I DMd a one shot where players were forced to use improvise weapons and fight back some intruders with items around the players’ cabin (e.g home alone) . I had a player choose to be a bard and during my prep I didn’t consider to give him an improvised instrument, thinking it’d be unfair to the other players if he got his equipment but they didn’t. The only instrument in the place was a grand piano on wheels. I told the bard that he could use the paino as an improvised instrument and could move it around at half speed. The player proceeded to sing and drive the piano (e.g. Thousand Miles) off of the back porch of the cabin onto an enemy below. The question is of damage. Another player pulled up chatGPT and asked it what the damage would be. The answer was 5d6 for a 500lb piano for a 15ft deck, I decided to make it 7d6. The enemy STILL didn’t die. I felt bad because I may have ruined the bards largest contribution to the game though hilarious. Was I wrong to roll for damage at all and not make it an insta kill? Was I wrong to take the bard’s instrument in the first place even though it allowed for the coolest moment of the game? I await your judgement

HaysForHorses

May it please the omniscient (all knowing) and omnipotent (all powerful) judges of the Supreme Crit and also Jill’s side piece. Today I bring forth the case of the ‘Unreciprocated Romance’ I am playing a College of Whispers bard in a roleplay-heavy campaign. Naturally, while working to boost my social status, I am constantly ‘flirting’ with everyone. And I mean everyone. However, I apparently made an error by repeatedly flirting with the waitress who works at the tavern we frequent. While I was just playing along and trying to earn us free drinks, both the DM and all 3 other players have decided to aggressively ship our characters. This would be totally fine if they didn’t bring it up 5-6 times per session in addition to mentioning the nonexistent relationship many times outside of our sessions. Even our last campaign arc revolved entirely around this waitress confessing her feelings for me as she suddenly had some information related to the overall story. I have told them multiple times that I am not interested in this character or even this type of serious romantic role play. I even apologized for apparently leading this kind woman on, but it seems that I cannot climb out of this flirtatious fissure that I have fallen into. My question is simple, benevolent justices, am I doomed to date this waitress? I sit in my tiny little chair and await your judgment.

Tabaxi Druid Sarah

To the honorable and distinguished Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner and of course the very lowly (though still honorable) bailiff Jake. I present the case of The Wise Land Shark. While playing D&D, we discovered a bulette (aka a land shark) in a barren wasteland. I, a beastmaster ranger, cast speak with animals and tried to get information about if he had seen the necromancers we were tracking (our DM has already ruled I can use that spell on any beast/monstrosity/etc because he knows my feelings on animals and he wants me to have fun). Because it had a low intelligence score, the DM insisted he wouldn't know anything. But his wisdom score was 10 (which is actually higher than two of our party members) so I said that while he wouldn't know cardinal directions or what a necromancer was, he would absolutely know how to navigate and be able tell where he'd been and if he's seen or eaten any thing weird - Survival is a Wisdom stat after all. Sharks have an incredible sense of smell, plus they are actually very good at navigation. Thus, I feel like it would be able to tell where it had been as well as if it had eaten anything rotten like a zombie. We agreed to disagree. So, honorable justices who clearly have a +5 to Wisdom, I seek your judement: are things like directional sense, knowledge of terrain, and previously eaten snacks something that a large animal with a wisdom of 10 would know?

Jay S

To the honorable, sexy, and little bit quirky judges, I bring you the case of the threatening player. A few months ago I was going to DM a campaign with some lads I met online, and we were going over character backstories and how everyone would be introduced to the group. One player asked to have the first encounter be the party fighting him, and having the party lose and be captured in the players bandit camp (he wanted the party to have him join up with them and leave the bandits he was apart of). I suggested that instead we start out with everyone waking up in the camp, as I didn't feel comfortable rigging a combat encounter to go a certain way. He protested, saying that he wanted them to have a chance at winning. While that was fine, I had no idea what to do if the party won and escaped without the player. A week before the session, I ended up busier with my job than I was expecting and didn't have as much time to plan the encounter as I would've liked, along with the rest of the session. Two days before the first session, the player DM'd me saying "alright, Jay, here's what's going to happen, we're going to get in a call and plan this out as this isn't something I want to half ass." I told him I just got in bed after work, as it was 11 PM, and he responded with "Sleep tight. I'll be waiting." Honorable Judges, (OH, AND JOSH!), I ask the court, was I right to cancel the campaign after the vibes emitted from this player? I couldn't kick him as he was friends with the rest of the group. I humbly await whatever punishment given.

Hawkmoondirge

Dear honorable justices and the always cake eating bailiff. I bring you a case of player on player violence. Years ago I started a campaign with some college friends. We had a bit of an odd couple group going with me as a neutral evil drow bard, a paladin who was forced to work under a mob boss, and a ranger. The ranger immediately played the game as conflict with my drow. That was the relationship. Cut to a sea battle, a nerfed kraken for level 2 players. The ranger was absent so we played their character solely for combat. However the kraken hit the crows nest where the ranger was sending them flying into the water. As the other p.c's went to fix the lower deck my drow saw his enemy drowning. I took a shot with my pistol. Crit. Dead and drowned. The player was annoyed and quit. Was I in the wrong for acting in character or should I have tried to save the p.c. even though it did not seem possible. I await judgment for these deeds a decade past.

Ricky the Moist

To the esteemed whatever their names are and the glorious lovely manly Bailiff Jack, I present to you the case of Railroaded Party Walk Off. Years ago my table had a DM who rail roared hard. Make decisions for us. Bring us back to life if his encounter was unbalanced with a legend of Zelda type fairy. If we cracked any jokes he would make a spider fall from somewhere to do one poison damage to the offender. Anyways, we used to use a crit fail table(if you roll a one on a d20 you must roll a d100 on a table). One of the options being roll a d20, if you crit you miss so bad you hit the ground and destroy the entire planet and the campaign ends. The DM jokingly played that table option out, however me and my fellow players straight up packed up and left as he just watched us leave. I have always sorta felt bad about this. However his table was unbearable. PS he used to turn on Bo Burnham’s ‘What’ after each session and make us watch it. No hate to Bo but that was too many times. PSS I will say, he did let me play as a half dragon(unchanged stat block from 3.5) ranger Sincerely, Ricky the Moist

William James

The case of clammy charisma. To the Supreme Crit Justices and Bailiff Jaeyk (spelling?), in my Pathfinder 2nd Edition game, I play as an Oracle with the Tempest mystery. Without slowing the case down with a ton of googling and searching for mechanics, this means 2 important things for this case: first, that I am (quoting the book) "the center of my own tiny tempest, ever surrounded by wind and rain (...). Even when you are calm and at rest, (...) you are slightly damp." The 2nd is that Charisma is my highest, key stat, with an 18 even at level 1. Now, here's the issue. With such high CHA and points in Diplomacy, Deception, and Intimidation, I try to act as the party face and talk with NPCs, but my GM says that NPCs are weirded out by a guy who's always wet and will sometimes prevent me from initiating conversation or rolls. In my head, I had imagined my character looking like the cover of a romance novel, not a creep who just crawled out of a river. Is my GM right to give NPCs the reaction they'd probably have in real life, or should game mechanics win out over game flavor?

Bryce Baker

To the Marvelous Justice Murphy, Amazing Justice Axford, and Terrific Justice Janner, as well as Joke the Bailiff. I bring to you the case of the shit-eating grinning DM. I love to channel my inner Murph and play the "Heel" DM, throwing red herrings and difficult decisions in my player's path. Nothing satisfies me more than giving my players a tricky puzzle or social encounter and sitting back with a shit-eating grin while they try to solve it, except perhaps the pride and joy of when they "get one over on me" and succeed! However, in recent games, my players have started spending more and more time picking at world building flavour I put in. If I introduce an interesting bartender character, they spend ages trying to pry his secrets even though he was just a quick zany voice I put together with no real backstory. If I throw in some random rusting armour in a swamp to give it a spooky feel, they'll investigate the entire area and dig way deeper into it than I intended, often leaving them a little disappointed that there wasn't anything to it. My Lore Lords, have I erred in making the game too tricky at times and broken their expectations of what is/isn't in the plot? Should I stay more on the straight and narrow, or should I embrace the chaos and lean into the derailing?

Jazami

At the leisure and pleasure of the juicy justices and baby bailiff, was I wrong to destroy my DMs world? I preface by saying I joined this group by walking up to them at the gaming cafe to ask what their campaign was about, and was welcomed in from there. The DM was one of the best I've ever had, so inclusive and thoughtful and creative at the table. There was the one problem player, wild magic goblin whose solution to everything was fireball, but we could manage him - until he volunteered to DM He made a magic the gathering inspired world which was very cool at first (colour kingdoms surrounding the no man's land white kingdom in the middle) but we soon realised every NPC wasade to be as edgy as possible. There was absolutely no redeeming factors to anyone, they were all assholes and served to railroad us into whatever plot the DM wanted. He literally got us all arrested for no reason, just because he wanted a prison break plotline. So, we pushed back and tried to make other choices. We decided to create an international conflict by breaching the white zone - mind you we were level 3 at this point, and managed to get in with a simple spider climb and athletics check. There was a whole community of clockwork beings that could have attacked us, but didn't, and literally nothing standing between us and a throne that could alter reality. Having seen no redeemable part of the world, my character sat on the throne and willed for nature to retake the world and start afresh. The campaign ended shortly after that, though he tried to reshape it a bit, and part of me feels bad for that. But at the same time, he shouldn't have railroaded is and we shouldn't have been able to pull that off at level THREE. So I prostrate myself at the mercy of the court, was I wrong?

The Game Itself back from nowhere

To the All-Knowing Judges of the Crit Court and High Pastors of Dice Christ and his son, RNGesus and,long the necessary, guy john. I present an IN-DEPTH case and confession of the "Final Session and The Unspoken Dual Concentration Spells," I know you ask for briefness but this is anything but, and for that I'm sorry. I play in a group of 10 dnd fiends that hold 8-12 hour sessions every Saturday, with about half of us having at least some DMing experience. We run campaigns on rotation with only one of our DMs having at least one campaign that ended early for any reason. That DM's latest campaign, that started at lv 17, ended a year ago due to the lack of interest everyone had with the inconsistent content he pulled from, a multi cultural mythos campaign (which was a cool setting) to which he also included races, characters and places from pop culture such as Destiny, Mass Effect, Zelda, Dragon Ball, and others IPs and it became too much for us to follow and no clear direction to go. I digress, he was convinced to run a one shot that wrapped up the campaign and it ended up being a 3 stage boss rush, featuring, in stage 2, a "unique" boss for each player based on their personal story that were each lv 30, where us 9 lv 20 players were split in 3 teams of 3. I play a Horizon Walker Ranger and have access to the spells "Haste" and "Banishment." My boss was a character that was not either of the bosses my dm ever alluded to during the campaign when it was running. During the fight he focused all 3 bosses on one of my teammates, the chronurgy wizard who "Convergent Future-ed" 4 times (Giving him 4 levels of exhaustion and Half Max Hp), because it was the smart decision and outright killed him, because of the health reduction, in the first 2 round of the fight that lasted 4 more hours. My DM let it slip that one of the other bosses, the boss of my third teammate who was a bear totem barbarian, was 20 lvs in a Paladin subclass that gave him resistance to all damage to counter the player. I, not wanting to deal with this, successfully banished my boss to deal with the other 2 bosses still up. We quickly killed the wizards boss and slogged against this Lv 30 Paladin/Barbarian over the rest of the night. We were all growing irritated at our DMs choices, and I forgot about concentration and cast "Haste" on myself, not remembering about the banishment. I made my hasted action attack, missed and moved on, but I only realized my mistake halfway through the round. Genuinely fearing what my dm might decide, I made my own ruling. I ate the spell slot, never used any of the spell's benefits after that and never drew any attention to it so that myself and all the other players wouldn't have to sit through more of this slog of a campaign if the 3 guy came back and nobody ever noticed or called me out on it. Ultimately everybody had a less than fun time anyway. Am I right to have been as frustrated as I was and for making the moves I did. I feel what I did was wrong but don't regret doing it, I'd do it again. However, I feel this was not the right call nonetheless and leave it to you to decide how I am judged or what my penance is if I am even redeemable. I now leave the rest of my already expired time to spout more details that make me feel validated in my decision. - Our other wizard started the first combat by casting mass suggestion to which the dm said, "They are all godly and are immune to charm" - This was supposed to be a one shot but lasted 2 sessions, which was a recurring theme for this dm, and pushed my session back because we thought the 2nd session was only gonna last 2ish hours, it was a whole 8-9 hours. - Several players stated to me how they wished they stayed home after both sessions. - In the final fight before the actually encounter, we were talking to the boss. I stated that I'd like to subtly cast Haste on my ally, to which a whole in game minute of talking occurred instead of a response to me after I asked if I could roll for haste, the dm said, "No, I'm not going to let you get away with that" to which another player verbally disagreed with. - The lack luster final boss fight of the campaign saw the dm use the first 2 stat sheets you can find when you Google "Odin 5e" which we called a week earlier and almost bet on that he would do because we're all friends and know him that well (We didn't actually use the stats to our advantage, we just wanted the mental high ground). - The Friday night before the first session the dm stated in the group chat "So not going to lie I've never made this many bosses in my fucking life at once. Fuck me lol", despite having weeks to have actually prepared for this. - Despite the final boss having access to every spell in the game, he only used the 3 spells we used against him 9th lvl Prismatic Wall, 8th lvl Dark Star, and 7th lvl Reverse Gravity. It was a cool move to use our own spells against us but felt sloppy knowing what he could do and how he didn't put any thinking into this one boss that ate our Saturday. Additionally this trapped one of our players for the entire 2nd session. - The wizard wasn't the only one who died, 2 others did as well in the other teams and they were sitting out just as long. One of them upon dying tore his character sheet out of his notebook and threw it away saying he wouldn't need this anymore (I disagreed with this on a personal level, but do find it objectively funny, so I fished it out and kept it for the 2nd session because even though he complained to the one hells and back, I knew he was still gonna play again.) - Finally the player that threw away his character sheet, landed the killing blow that could have one shot the final boss from round one. He had a broken homebrew that essentially let him dump all his health into one attack totaling 160d10 of damage and additionally the dm, for seemingly no reason, gave him an automatic critical on whatever his next attack was gonna be so he dealt 320d10 of damage that resulted in him outright killing the final boss, even if he was at full health. This particularly upset me the we were supposed to start early but didn't because this tantrum throwing man child didn't want to play this "one shot" again and said how he wasn't going to show up until we were done, but, on day of, didn't say anything about not going to show up and we started at normal time after he got there, and then proceeds to nuke the boss 8 hours later. I felt so robbed, lessly so, because I didn't get to run my session, but I didn't get to do, a Steel Wind Strike with a sword forged by my previous character who was also this characters descendant and it was gonna look like that one scene for Devil May Cry, the 1 cool thing I wanted to do that session but couldn't because of this anticlimactic move, and he has always verbally been the biggest hater of this campaign and at one point actually left the campaign because he was fed up with it before the rest of us were. - And to garnish this fusion cuisine of slop and gruel, the Tuesday before this my girlfriend and I broke up and then the Friday night before everything, I found out my grandmother died so I was ever so joyous when I realized I could wake up the next day and dedicate myself to my favorite pass time and not think about how cruel reality is. To anybody who actually read this far, thank you for sticking with.

Gigi

To the supreme crit justices and Melissa I present the case of the in game stuffies I dm a game for a party of 4 one of the members is a edgelord rouge multi classed with a bard(emo musician). Emo musician recently got a new child, aka a source of stuffed animals. During the pre bbeg fight the emo musician took out a golden dragon stuffie and placed it on the table claiming that his atheist rouges god had summoned a dragon to defend him. I joked about it but eventually shut it down because you can’t just rule that you have a dragon now. I thought the jokes were all in good fun but the rouge started shouting and eventually left the table and claimed that he never wanted to play with us again. This sucked as it was the second to last fight in the campaign. But here is where my main problem is, last night the angry rouge texted me begging for forgiveness and to join the party again. I ask the court should I let the rouge rejoin and was I wrong to not support the rouges stuffed idea

Jared Gabbard

Whassup court, I’m playing curse of Strahd with a close group of friends, it’s been going well, however our DM made a call a few months ago that bugs me to this day. We were on a frigid mountain pass when we were attacked by vampire spawn. During the battle, our Paladin cast daylight on his pants in order to disorient the vampires attacking us. The daylight pants effectively fucked with the vamps, but on the vampire spawns turn, the DM had one vamp attack the pants. The attack hit, ripping the pants off our Paladin. Our DM then declared that the vampire would use his second attack to throw the pants a full 60 ft, sending them down the mountain and leaving our Paladin half naked. We survived the encounter but I feel like we were wronged and our DM bent the rules to get rid of the pants. I don’t think a vampire spawn could throw a pair of pants 60 ft. Were we wronged by our DM? Should we still have that pair of pants? I leave it up to the court.

Shel B Kennas fav SG is welly’s number one felly

Dear cool cat collective I have a dice Christ confession… I was DMing an adventure (drop in) league and had an 11 year old first time player. He was very intent on getting into a fight at any cost. That cost was nearly a TPK of the entire table. To say he was a murder hobo is underselling. During an attack roll on him I rolled a nat 20 and since he was a level 2, I knew I had a high chance of killing his character. I imposed disadv on myself and rolled again….another nat 20. I also rolled max damage. I lied about the damage and subtracted 10. Unfortunately It was still enough to kill him. He cried and while I feel a little bad I also kinda am in that “well you basically got everyone killed and dice Christ wanted revenge” but also he’s 11 and I’m a 30 year old woman. Can dice Christ absolve me of this transgression of trying to defy their rolls?

Kal and her cats Portland, Star, and Berlin

Not a case, but a confession. For all members of the church, regardless of their standing in other areas, i bring forth the sin of the false failure. My players were in a forest and being followed by some bad guys. The bad guys got caught by a players perception check and a brief initiative followed. The warlock in my party cast a spell that required a saving throw from my dude, who failed with a five. But I thought that was kind of boring so I said they rolled a nat one. They all laughed and enjoyed the momentous failure, but I felt like I cheapened the critical fail for future rolls. Could I be forgiven? I haven’t fudged a nat one since, and this stands as the only (memorable) time I’ve lied about a roll. P.S. I don’t really care if the bailiff of dungeon court forgives my sins, as his opinion means so little ❤️

Jeremy

To the Honorable Justices Axford, Tanner, Murphy, and the lowly Bailiff Daddy J… I bring you the case of the Alienating Patron Party Attack: I DM for some friends and one them plays a warlock/actor (think William Shatner as a Tiefling) bound to a powerful archfey. The player’s character thinks his quest is just a documentary about adventurers and the other players are co-stars. There have been several clues along the way that the patron tricked the character in exchange for becoming a famous actor. Recently his world shattered when he uncovered all of that was a ruse. (I won’t share what their true intentions are bc my players listen to this podcast so no spoilers! All they know it was for something not good but haven’t gotten any direct answers yet.) Nevertheless, here’s where things get dicey (pun intended)…my other players decided this character was mentally unstable and wanted to go investigate his patron without him knowing. Lots of failed perception and insight checks and high deception and stealth checks led to the warlock player sidelined while the rest of the players were off on small side quests at night, spying on people and investigating clues to find out more about this patron. I even tried subtle hints like “Do you want to share what you uncovered with your other party member? Do you think he might want to know about X? Etc” They always wanting to keep it secret. Eventually, it led to an all out attack on this powerful patron when they finally encountered him, in order to try and get answers. The patron got away. I mean, they’re level 5 and ATTACKING an ARCHFEY PATRON who was already running away…But I was trying to not TPK them. Incidentally, this all led to a big boiling point at the table with the sidelined player. He was feeling left out, of course. They’re off sneaking away on this side quest while he’s sitting there saying “anyone have anything to tell me?” They were finding things out that even his character didn’t know. I know the players had good intentions to “protect him”, but I felt so bad! I’ve since brought in some additional details and new hooks to save the relationships and get everyone back on track. Everything finally got brought out into the open after an intense fireside chat. Things seem resolved with everyone, but I can’t help to think, could I have done something better to encourage my players to stop playing “keep-away” with the warlock’s backstory? I throw myself at the mercy of the Court.

Omnis

To the Honorable Justices and that guy I either Hate/Love depending on how Murph is feeling this week, I bring you the case of the unintentional player killer: It was my first time playing D&D with a group of friends from college, in a campaign affectionately dubbed "Kevin's Souls" as the DM was known for making things incredibly hard - all players except for me had played with him before and were bracing themselves for chaos. During our second dungeon diving expedition, we encountered a group of cultists who, alerted to our presence, cast a Dominate Person spell on our Dwarf Warrior. Through a series of errors, failed rolls, and poor insight checks, my character was lead to believe he had been permanently turned and couldn't be saved. Thus, when the time came to choose between fighting our friend or allowing him to harm another, I fought back - and with a Nat 20, I did enough damage that he fell, along with his death saves. My friend insisted I did nothing wrong and the DM later clarified where I had misunderstood, but the campaign soon fell apart just due to adult life taking priority - even so, I have been racked with guilt ever since that my poor thinking caused the end of the campaign as well as my friend's Dwarf And so I submit myself to the mercy of the court - was this a case of an inexperienced player just trying to do his best, or a negligent murderhobo in the making?

Quinn LaCasse

To the Honorable Justices and the Baliff that always gets the exact amount of respect he deserves; I present the case of the "roll" play versus "role" play. I must first admit to fault on the side of the plaintiff, when I was a DM as new as post-paternity leave baby-Jake, I asked players to use standard array for stats but allowed some to roll instead. This has resulted in a bit of a party imbalance as two players have a -1 stat while others feel a bit over powered in comparison. This game has gone on for over a year now, and a situation arose where the players were near a rip in space-time created with diety of luck's magic. I explained to the party that luck throughout the multiverse can manifest in many ways, and allowed the characters to harness this magic to channel their own experiences in other worlds (oppa Everything Everywhere All At Once style) to allow for them to re-roll 2 stats of their choice. All the players but one jumped on this and loved the mechanic! The one who didn't argued her warlock/sorcerer wouldn't take magic from a dubious source again. I love the role play of this, but in terms of numbers this mutliclassed caster with a -1 to dex often feels underwhelming in the party! I partially put this mechanic in to allow her character to expand abilities and catch up to other party members and yet she's the only one who didn't take it, resulting in even more party imbalance! Please wise members of the court, tell me if I was wrong to offer an instance of rolling dice for more power in dnd, or if my player is wrong for not taking an easy boon because it is in truth what her character would do?

Fuzzboxx

Hello my Honorable Judges and who knows how you all feel about Bailiff Jack today I present the case of the deadbeat Dad My cousin joined my already running campaign. In real life he is a father to an incredible young lady. So he joined the game and his character's goal was to rescue his kidnapped 6 year old son. I had the fun idea of making the boy vital to the main plot of the campaign. He however never brought his son up to the rest of the party. After about 6 months and 25 sessions it finally got brought up. Everyone in the party was shocked that he never mentioned it. He said there was more pressing things to do. There were not. After another 6 months they finally beat the person capturing the son and he was free. My cousins first reaction was to get rid of the kid immediately, he wanted to put him in an orphanage, a school for magic, even a brothel?? The party was obviously shocked by his deadbeat dad behavior. I had made the son a vital part of the campaign and he was meant to travel with them everywhere but he wants no part of the boy. Am I wrong for having made the 6 year old boy a major part of the campaign expecting my cousin to be all for it or should I have waited to find out what kind of relationship with the boy my cousin wanted to have?

Lauren Davis

To the incredibly honorable justices and the slightly less honorable bailiff, I submit the case of the party members who weren't allowed to communicate - Our usual DnD group decided to try playing a 1 shot of the TTRPG "The Witch is Dead", in which the each player is a different animal familiar of a witch who was recently killed. The familiars are tasked with investigating why their witch was killed and bringing her killer to justice. Each player rolls a D10 to choose which animal they're going to play. Our party members rolled a dog, an owl, a spider, and a toad. As soon as we began playing, the GM (who usually is a player in our DnD campaign, but wanted to try leading a 1 shot), told us that because each of us was a different species of animal, we wouldn't be able to talk to each other because "why would a spider and a dog speak the same language". We insisted that we'd need to be able to communicate somehow, otherwise what would be the point of playing as a party to solve the murder, and presumably because we were all familiars of the same witch, we'd have been able to communicate with each other while she was alive. Our GM ended up letting the spider and the toad talk to each other, the owl and the dog talk to each other, and the toad and the owl talk to each other, because in his mind those pairs were most similar. We fumbled through this bizarre web of communication, but after an hour no one was really having fun, and having to talk through each other to share information was a huge hassle, so we stopped the 1 shot early. I ask, should the party have been able to speak to each other without going through our sanctioned communication lines? Or does our GM's language barrier mindset make sense given real-world animal kingdom logic?

Malcolm J Gatlin

To the honorable justices and the summer ant stealing the courts sap, I present the case of "Racially Motivated" One of my players started a campaign with session 0s where we play our characters and back ups before becoming a party. After each of my characters had theirs, she found a homebrew book for creating races and asked us if we wanted to use it, since some of us where using races she made in lore. We all agreed to. Cut to like a week or two later. She asked me why I didn't change the race of my bard, I told her his race (fairy) fit him so I didn't. It was then when she informed me we didn't vote to use the homebrew, we also voted to nuke the ability to play WoTC published races too! I asked why can't we have both and her response was "Cause I said so". I quickly called her insane and informed my party, to which we all agreed to remove the homebrew. I ask the justices, and that thing I guess, Was our swift response to this blasphemy correct, or were we "only going back cause it nerfs our characters" P.S. For Context if needed: The homebrew book was a elf and a Orc had a little baby. Even if you use their system to try to recreate the default races, some of them aren't possible like Quan ti. And our DMs argument was "we didn't read" her text and "You are only upset cause it nerfs your characters".

Gearoid Cotter

May it please the Wise and Just Judges and entertain Bailiff Cake, if nothing else; I present to you the case of the DM vs the Goat. I play in my local D&D club twice a month in a local bar, a couple of sessions ago, my DM had a few too many drinks and was incredibly generous to our party in a local town, we were able to sell all our loot for very fair prices and negotiated a horse and cart as part of the payment for the job, as well as a goat, since named Lazarus for my dwarven paladin to ride into battle. The issue is, ever since the next session, when our DM was decidedly more sober, he said he gave us way too much, and has had it out for the goat. In every battle we’ve had since, all the enemies decide to focus their attacks on Lazarus as opposed to myself or anyone else in my party actively trying to kill them. I keep using my lay on hands to keep my goat alive, but am I right to feel my DM is being petty, or is he within his right to target my new mount relentlessly?

Cam the Frog Man Swags Dry Cousin from Gladeholm

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and that guy names Doug. I present to you the case of The Not so Scared Scaredy Cat During my first ever time dming a game for my friends who were getting into the game. I had a player who was already a problem player prior to this occurence. He played a Variant Asamir sorcalidan (paladin sorcerer) who magic missiled and smited everything he could and believed he was the son of god. During a trip to the ocean the party got stopped by the BBEG "police" due to a case of bad tail lights. The BBEG was on the police ship and ended up frightening the Sorcalidan and my player argued that he wouldn't be scared of him and would rather be mad because that's what his charecter would do. After 20 minutes of arguing and table banter. I let him not be frightened and instead threw him in jail on the Kings (BBEG) reguest Was I wrong for letting my problem player free of the fright or should I have argued more Sincerely The Little Ferret Pal

Readgirl

Honorable crit justices, and the kinda cool Bailiff Jake. I present the case of the lack of player creativity. I am currently playing in a pathfinder campaign (basically 3.75e i think). I created Troy Bolton as a character a cat folk (wildcat) multi class bard/barbarian. I have access to many spells. I have only gotten to do one creative thing with my spells-pants a mean dad using mage hand. Anytime I ask to do something creative, my DM shoots it down. I had a convo with it him and he said I could make spell craft checks (basically arcana)to use a spell in a creative way. I thought the problem was fixed. But anytime I ask to use a spell in a different way he shoots it down, and won’t let me do it or even make the check. He lets other martial players do creative things with their weapons and items, but not me. So my humble judges, do I have the right to be upset about not being able to use my spells creatively??

Andy Horton

Oh Great Esteemed Crit Justices and Jake who I stan, forget the haters I present the case of the dragon dive death. I am a long time player was playing in a Lost Mines of Phandelver game with some first time players and a first time DM. As an experienced player I chose to play a dwarf cleric to be support to the party, trying to take more of a background role and let the new players feel their way through the game and learn how to play. During an encounter with a certain green dragon, my party of level 3s got smacked by the dragon resulting in one death and everyone else going down while I stood but was out of spell slots. When it seemed like the dragon encounter was headed for a TPK the DM narrated The dragon flying away. The party had seemed like they were kind of over last mines and wanted to move on to homebrew, so with me being the last standing I decided to try to die an epic death resulting in tpk so the campaign could end and we could move on to homebrew next session. I object interacted tying a rope to my crossbow bolt and crit hitting the dragon as it flew away. The dm decided that the result of the crit was that my arrow flew directly into the dragons butthole. Now dangling from the rope I passed 3 athletics checks to hold onto the rope, climb the rope up to the dragon, and enter the dragons ring of fire myself. After successfully climbing in the dragon through the back door, I took a warhammer attack which the DM ruled auto Crit since I was inside the beast. Apparently the dragon was actually close to death and I killed it resulting in me falling 120ft inside a dead dragon. The DM Ruled that being inside the dragon I was cushioned from falling damage, and survived instead of perishing how I wanted. Now the DM is insisting that the player that died roll a new character, and that I had the chance to get my other party members up after crawling out of the dragon, so that we can finish lost mines instead of moving on like everyone wants to. I ask the court, is being in a dragon enough to stop a level three character from dying? Should we just refuse to keep going and move on to home brew campaign? I am a forever DM and like being a PC but feel like if I want to stop lost mines I’ll need to take up the DM Mantle.

The One-Shot Wizard

To the Justices and Other, not long ago in a campaign I'm a player in, the party was in a challenging arc-ending fire-themed battle. All of us low on HP, the field full of enemy summons, my 12th level wizard did a last ditch, last spell slot, cone of cold (they were vulnerable to cold) knowing it would hit our ranger but hoping it could turn the tides of battle, and it did! Sadly, this resulted in that party member falling and dying. This was accounted for, however, and the druid revivified the player immediately after battle before a minute had passed. It's at this time, the DM informed us that the ranger now had a clubbed-Icy foot from being murdered with a cone of cold and would suffer either a -2 to dex or strength OR -1 to all abilities. This same penalty had never been applied after any of the many times we've previously died and been revivified in this multiyear campaign. The DM informed us he decided to "raise the stakes" but I protested that knowing the stakes would've been vital for my decision making and that to change the way death works should be something we're clued into, not discovered during incidental friendly-fire, especially when the impacts are so grievous. The DM held firm, and I informed him I would be taking him to court. By next session the DM reversed the ruling and decided to inform us of big changes before enforcing them, but I ask of the court, for precedence, was the DM right to add such a punishing feature of death without first informing the party? I await your judgement.

DankWilliamsJr

To the honorable justices and the often looked over but just as honorable bailiff, I come to you with the case of the condescending veteran. I started a campaign earlier this year. I have five players in the campaign. Four of those players are either brand new to DND or have played maybe once in a campaign and one that is a veteran player as well as a DM at our LGS. As of late I’ve noticed that he seems to be picking on some of the new players one of which is my fiancé. When the players want to do something creative or ask questions about something he either responds with a condescending response to them or berates them with the response of “well the rules say this…” or tells them that they can’t do something. He also tries multiple times in sessions to take the role of DM and make calls on thing that should happen in response to players actions. I’ve told him multiple times that I will make the calls in our sessions at which point he shuts down for a little while and will refuse to play. Over time I’ve seen this with three of the other four, with the fourth being his wife. His wife was one of my more engaged players and now she seems to not want to say anything at the table. My fiancé and I talked about it and she asked for me to not saying anything fearing that it will ruin the friendship between her and his wife. I personally feel as the DM I need to address this. On top of all this, it seems as if he is self sabotaging the campaign and purposely does thing all the time that ruins game play for the team. For instance purposely continuing something after I warned that he would blow everyone’s cover with the response of “well that’s what my character would do” Throughout the last three weeks my fiancé has blatantly told me he makes her not want to participate or even play them game. This sucks being that I had to beg her to play and now in my campaign she is loving it where as she didn’t like it when the veteran was running a campaign for us. Am I and my fiancé being over reactive or is the veteran player being a toxic player like I belief. I await your absolute judgement. P.S. tips on how to handle this would be wonderful

Tieler Soumas

To the esteemed Judges and proletarian Bailiff: (please excuse the long post, but y'all needed the background drama to understand the context) I present to you the case of the disorderly Brother-in-law's Girlfriend: I recently started DMing a campaign for a party of 6 remotely, made up of a mix of family and friends. In the process of setting up for this campaign, I sent a group text out to the people that I thought would be interested in playing to organize a party. This led to my brother-in-Law (wife's brother) asking if his girlfriend could join, as she was not included in the initial text. Wanting to be a good BIL I said yes, despite knowing that she is a bit much to say the least. Suffice to say, she is known in the family and in the friend group to be a raucous rabblerouser. Anyway, In the sake of keeping peace I said "sure, no problem." I should have seen the writing on the wall. The first clue was when her character was created: most of the people could read the room and understaood that our campaign was going to be silly and lighthearted, starting in a magical comedy club (they knew this beforehand). The other members of the party included a goliath rouge, an elfling (elf-halfling hybrid) druid, and an Aarakocra named Hoowhohoo, and a drunkard of a Dragonborn as a cleric. Enter: Deathbringer. A Dragonborn sorcerer whose scales and breath weapon change according to what time of gemstones are in their proximity. Her back story said her father was a black dragon and her mother was a powerful sorceress, but she was born as a blue dragonborn, causing much of a stir. Not wanting to quash their creativity, I just Yes-anded her putting the stipulation that only certain gems will change her scales, at my discretion. Since starting the campaign, on two separate occasions she has joined the discord session while she is actively at a party or visiting family insisting on trying to participate via text, only to use audio while still hanging out with the group she's socializing with. In addition, she tries to hoard all of the items I have given the group, often denying the player who it was obviously designed for the chance to have it. Nearly every npc she encounters she asks if this person would know anything about her back story, making the social interactions a slog. Her antics have gotten so out of hand that it has caused my wife to socially disengage from the campaign as it is hard for them to get a word in edge-wise. So I ask you Justices: was I right to include her in the campaign? Or should I have bit the bullet and excluded her? I humbly await your judgement

Jen Barnes

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices of The highest Crit Court, and the Guy who I guess is eating Cake now, good for him. I present to you the Case of the Comedy Bard's Silly Speech spell. I have been running our campaign for almost 1 year now, my husband is playing our party's bard and we designed a homebrewed subclass so that he can be a stand up comedian bard, telling jokes and using puns for his magic source. Well, there was a spell he wanted to use, a homered spell that I didn't realize I had available to my players called " Sloppy Speech" It's a 2nd level spell, and lasts an hour, without concentration. The targeted creature will say the exact opposite of what they mean to say, and it cannot be countered by them trying to say the opposite of what they mean. The only way to break it is an Arcana Check. I fully took it away and my husband threw a little pity party and got upset, so should I have just let him have this complete nonsense spell, or am I justified in taking away the sloppiest of speeches? I humbly await judgement.

Gregory Guidry

Hello Esteemed Justices and the Bailiff who I bet $40 would be lowly this week. I present to you, the case of the Oft-Womped Paladin. In my current campaign we’re playing curse of Strahd and all in all I’m having a good time with the majority of the campaign. My one issue I’ve had is that my Paladin continues to get absolutely wrecked pretty much every time we go into combat. My fellow players picked classes that don’t get in the mix (ranger, blood hunter, and cleric) which has led to me not only having my first character die (full paladin at level 2) but my current character also continually go down even though I gave them the tough feat and 2 levels of barbarian to to be a better tank (5 paladin, 2 barbarian). I wouldn’t mind this as it’s my role, but my team has a tendency to hide around doors, stay on the fringes, and not get in the mix, even when their best weapons sometimes are martial weapons designed for getting in there. I keep taking crazy damage in every fight from being the main target. After almost dying for the last few combats as my second tank character, I ask the court, am I right to tell my group that they need to help me in the front of the battlelines? Or should I take my lumps and pre-roll my next character since that’s the direction we seem to be moving in, with a trip to Strahd’s castle imminent. I lay myself at the mercy of the court.

Santa Grinch Hugging HumBaba and two Fairies

A confession My dearest Cardinal Cake. In my Pirate DnD campaign i was elected captian after a carfully planed Mutinee . I have a habbit of inviting large ontimidating figure the rest of the party is hesitant about and now have a Giant and a Mermaid who has meantioned something about eating children. How do i repent for my potebtial endangering of my crew because i insist on making insight checks with a -1 modifer

Randy

To the honorable and foreground justices and the out of focus background bailiff I bring you a case of magic circle montage. I was playing in a tomb of Annihilation campaign where we came across a large horde of zombies 200+ between two short cliffs ]U[ We tried to swing on vines but after a near death fail we had the idea to cast magic circle at the bottom of the cliff, leap inside and kill the horde from the safety of the circle. The dm refused because he said that combat would take forever and he didn’t want to run that. I said we could just montage the fight since as long as the spell was up (1 hour per level) we would win. He refuses we eventually made it across after expending multiple spells to get the less athletic of the party across. Am I wrong in suggesting a combat montage for what I think would be a cool way to eliminate a zombie horde or was the Dm right for wanting us to get across and leave them be?

stream doomsday diaries by emily axford

to the devout papacy of dice christ and the yope (young pope) jake himself: forgive me dice christ, for i have sinned. at my local board game cafe, i was playing a DND one shot where the other PCs were a rogue, fighter, wizard, and warlock, and i was a 4th twilight cleric fairy. i typically like playing support and healing casters, which was especially useful here since everyone was hellbent on doing stupid shit (example: i cast find traps to clear the way for the party, the warlock deliberately goes to investigate the trap further and gets blown up, that sort of thing) early in the session’s combat, i used my channel divinity turn undead to ward off some frozen ice zombies from attacking our fighter who had antagonized said zombies. fast forward later in the session, the entire party had taking a Lot™️ of damage, so i used my twilight sanctuary feature to give everyone temp HP. however, i realized twilight sanctuary would also use channel divinity and i only had one use of it at 4rh level. despite realizing this, i kept my mouth shut and didn’t alert the DM to my egregious error. we were eventually successful in our mission and no one was the wiser but i cannot shake the shameful guilt of being a dirty rotten heretic. i humbly seek your forgiveness.

Caddy Wampus

To the venerable Supreme Crit justices and the notorious bailiff, I bring to you the case of the Sticky Cliff. This happened many years ago, but I have never encountered a similar dispute so I ask for your adjudication. My party and I were traveling at night and came to a point in the road next to a cliff. Fearing ambush from above, my rogue climbed the cliff (about 20 ft) and sure enough there were bandits waiting! They spotted my rogue's head poking up before she could climb onto the cliff and they attacked. "Okay, I let go and drop to the ground" I told my DM. He said that the bandits rolled higher iniative and I would have to wait until my turn. The bandits all attacked while I was still clinging to the cliff wall, until I was knocked out and fell to the ground, immediately failing a death save. I had a periapt of wound closure and stabilized on my turn, but was out for the majority of the fight. I ask, was I wrong to think I could simply let go outside of my turn, or at least as a reaction after the first hit against me? I humbly await your judgment.

Scotland Kraker

to the honorable justices and the baliff jake, who is highly if he sides in my favor and lowly lowly lowly if he sides against me I bring you the case of the Blinded Beholder. I joined a friends level 12 campaign in which we we found ourselves fighting a buffed-up beholder. My orc paladin found himself face-to-face with a beholder while the rest of our party was fighting other enemies. The beholder had an anti-magic cone for anything in his vision but I was able to cast Blinding Smite while it was looking the other way, holding my concentration. Then on my next round of combat I swung and HIT, but my DM ruled that because the hit happened while the beholder was looking at me, the smite wouldn’t go off because of the anti-magic field. I pled my case but the DM held firm, robbing me of 3d8 +1d10 damage on that hit (plus the potential for a blinded beholder). The party took more damage and, in a last-ditch effort to kill the monster, I misty-stepped behind him because the friend who invited me convinced me to go up even though I was very low on health. I took a full disintegration to the face and fell, full dead no revivify. On the next initiative our fighter killed the beholder, meaning my blinding smite could have been prevented my death if it went through earlier. So I humbly ask the dungeon court, and Jake only if he is on my side: Should my smite have gone off because it was cast while I was outside the anti-magic-field, or was my character the necessary sacrifice to getting our party out of the fight alive? I await your judgement.

Brandon

To the honorable and esteemed Supreme Crit Justices, and Bailiff Jake, with whom I would probably do R Cane at a party, I bring the case of the Dark Jedi who deflected a ship's laser cannon with his lightsaber I play in a Star Wars TTRPG, and we had inadvertently attracted the attention of the Empire when one of our force-sensitive PCs used the force for a really stupid reason - to do better as a backup dancer to our Star Wars analog of Mariah Carey - on what amounts to broadcast television in the game, which made us targets for the jedi hunters, which was really great and a fine consequence for being an idiot. They chased us to our base on an asteroid, where we took the laser cannons off one of our fighters and set a trap where anyone breaking the plane of the front door would take 4 laser cannon shots (36 d6 damage total) , which we contend should have turned this dark jedi into mincemeat, but the GM chose to roll to deflect instead of dodge and rolled his save *below the damage threshold of the laser cannon* and the GM still said he deflected all 4 shots to our freighter and damaged it severely. I hate being too finicky, but when have you seen or heard in star wars lore of a jedi standing down a ship's cannon? The dark jedi has turned into a recurring nemesis, which is fun, but I still think we kinda got jobbed, even if we managed to beat him that encounter by letting him monologue and using a sonic grenade. I humbly await your ruling.

Stephen B

Honorable justices and I guess Jake is there, too: I present a case of attempted TPK. I am a player in a West March style discord server, where DMs choose players on a case by case basis to go on short quests. This incident occurred during one such quest. The DM threw multiple monsters with possession at the party, and shadows with strength drain. Due to lucky rolls and a well placed spirit guardians, most survived the deadly encounter, but the DM did remark he specifically chose players that would likely fail saves against possession, and targeted the low strength character to try to drop them in one or two hits. Was the DM wrong to target specific characters with knowledge that the monsters wouldn't have had and bragging about his good planning for maximum damage, or am I just being a bit salty, and should get over it cause my character lived? I await your judgement, and request harsh punishment, should I be in the wrong.

Spencer

To the honourable judges and that other guy whose name escapes me right now. I bring you the case of the random dad death. A little while ago I decided to join my DMs second campaign, I’d been playing with them for a while and I thought I had a good understanding of the way they liked to DM. I created a bard monk that I really loved. She was a lone adventurer that stumbled across the existing party while searching for her wife and mother. She had left her father behind to go on this mission, and he was the only family she had left. After a few sessions I realised that my backstory didn’t really fit in with the campaign setting as it was based on a game I’d never played and when I told my DM that my character didn’t know who her mum was, their eyes lit up and they said they new immediately who it was going to be. Ultimately she ended up being an evil character from the games that the party was always going to have to kill. I thought that this was a little harsh but I didn’t mind too much, but when the party travelled back to my home and met my Dad and he was randomly killed by a stray ice knife, I’ll admit I got a little peeved by this. It happened as my character had jumped from a cliff and as she was falling with her back to the ground (and I happened to roll high on a perception check) she watched as a reoccurring impossible to kill bad guy shot an ice knife at my PCs dad. My PCs dad had never interacted with him and my PC had only had one encounter with this bad guy, so it just felt kind of random and unnecessary. I think my DM could tell that I was upset by this. Once I landed where I had been jumping to, the DM asked us to make perception checks to notice things about the wasteland we had just jumped in. I said that my PC wasn’t interested in looking around to take in the view right now. I admit that I was a little blunt but my PCs last remaining family member had just been needlessly murdered in order to show us that this evil guy was still on his evil shit. Later that night as we all bedded down, my DM narrated me receiving a sending spell from my dad, who said that I would take a lot more than an ice knife to kill him. I think that they only did this because they could tell how uncool I thought it was. It’s been a while since this happened and the campaign ended on a beautiful ceremony between my PC and her wife once she found her again and all has been forgiven. I ask you judges, was I right to be bitter? Or should I have let my DM have their cool reveal that the bad guy was on our tails? I am at your mercy. JET! THAT OTHER GUYS NAME WAS JET!

PB&J

To the exuberant crit justices and also Jake- in our campaign finale I (a vengeance paladin) killed one of the other party members who had wronged me earlier than I was supposed to (I needed the advantage of surprise to stand a chance winning a pvp fight) and in retaliation another player cast feeble mind on me and then murdered me. When I I was brought back to life by the spirit of my vengeful sword, my DM said that even though I died and was brought back, I remained feeble minded. As a result I couldn’t lay on hands and immediately died again. Was that fair? Should death reset the feeble mind spell? Or was my brain still addled even though my body was revived? I await your mighty judgement.

theothorax

To the salty, umami, and spicy judges Murphy, Axford and Tanner and to the disgustingly sweet Bailiff Hurwitz, I bring you a case of sweaty portents. For several years I’ve DMed a homebrew campaign with three close friends. One of my PCs, Tally, has a backstory that includes a polycule with a wizard paramour. Said wizard is currently captured by the BBEG but has occasionally managed to get through to Tally. During a recent fight, I prepped a message and one of his divination portents for Tally. The message was beautifully devastating. I forgot about the portent. I rolled it the night before-- a shiny 18-- but I (a little high during the tail end of prep) forgot to write anything down in my notes other than just “18”. Tally fought bravely against the BBEG’s husband with sparse NPC help, was brilliant with their spells and wildshapes and absolutely tore him apart. Even with advantage, Tally rolled just one below his AC on their attack in the final round of combat. The husband was almost dead, no one else was prepared to attack him and I really wanted them to be able to hit, but I didn’t want to lie about his AC when it had been maintained all through combat. In that moment, I remembered what the 18 meant. I informed the player that, since it was my mistake forgetting it, they could use the 18 to attack the husband. They seemed surprised, but agreed. I told them to roll damage and they rolled the max possible they could do-- exactly his remaining HP, killing him. I was proud and thrilled and the player was extremely excited to give this absolutely awful guy an absolutely awful end. Tally maintained excitement but they have consistently been an unlucky roller (almost Murph levels) and while I love giving them an occasional boon, sometimes I worry giving them these sweaty portents makes those moments feel unearned. This isn’t the first time I’ve fumbled Tally’s portent gifts. Half of the four portents I’ve given them throughout the campaign have arrived as a railroad deus-ex-machina DM sweat milkshake like this one. So, honorable and delicious Judges and barely palatable Baliff, I ask from you a ruling: should I stop giving my druid divine girlfriend gifts? Should I take better prep notes, maybe while sober? Are gifting occasional divine portents to druids and frequently forgetting about them sins in the eyes of dice christ? I await your ruling and accept any punishments you see fit to place upon my sweaty DM head.

MC

May it please the honorable justices, but especially Justice Murphy who I fear will turn against me when he hears my case, I present the case of the self-imposed plot armor. In college, I was playing in a one-shot where myself and all the other PC’s played different newscasters from the Anchorman movies. My friend was a Paladin Ron Burgundy, I was playing Barbarian Champ Kind, etc. During a mission where we were trying to help the dog Baxter in a fight with an Owlbear, my friend who was playing a Rogue Brian Fantana was knocked out by the Owlbear and failed his death saving throws. After the fight, he interrupted the DM and narrated how his character kicks up, good as new. The DM looked perplexed as no one had cast any spells or used any potions. The player said he didn’t feel like rolling a new player for a one-shot, so he’d just keep playing this character until the end of the one shot. My DM agreed, but looked defeated as if his big Owlbear fight and the one shot no longer had any stakes. Fair justices and wise bailiff, I ask - was this no big deal since it was a silly one shot, or should Brian Fantana and his Sex Panther cologne have stayed dead? I throw myself at the mercy of the court, and beg Justice Murphy’s forgiveness.

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.

Starship X

I prostrate myself before the most holy of Dice Christ’s prophets Emily Axford and her altar boys, begging for forgiveness for my wrongdoing. It was my birthday and my best friend was going to DM a Zelda themed one-shot for our friends where she, at my request, was going to let me kiss my most beloved character of all time, the 10ft tall shark man Sidon. However it was never meant to be, for mere hours before we began, I was taken over by Dice Satan and deeply insulted one of her favorite celebrity dm’s, calling him “a basic white boy not goated in the sauce who dresses like an preacher from one of those rock and roll churches.” To this day I regret this, not because I didn’t get to kiss the shark man, but because it made my friend so upset that only apology Pad Thai I drove an hour to pick up could solve it. But still, it weighs on my heart. Absolve me of my sin, I beg of you, so my friend might play dnd with me once more.

dani

Dear honorable justices and that one funny guy that y’all should have guest on 8-bit bookclub (I bet he’d be great!) I bring you the case of my HRT (hormone replacement therapy) vs my friend. I’m a transfem (they/them) who has been on HRT for several months now, and overall it's been an amazing experience, very validating! The only problem is that now I’m basically going through a female puberty at the age of 23. I was playing as a grave cleric in a mini-campaign with my friends. We found a magical whistle, and our artificer (an incredibly nice friend of mine) cast identify on it, learning it was able to cast Raise Dead. I was excitedly staring at him as the DM read the description of the item, and he even said “I can feel your eyes on me, djentslut" Earlier on in the game, the artificer had found a magical amulet and we usually play that we distribute magical items evenly throughout the group, especially if they fit with a character’s theme. So imagine my shock when he said “I put it in my pack.” I even asked him in character what the whistle was, and in character he said "Oh it just casts Raise Dead, and I think I'm gonna hold onto it." Instantly, tears began welling up in my eyes and I spent the last hour of the session heartbroken and distraught like a little bitch, thinking “omg wait does he hate me? Are we even friends? What did i do wrong??” Looking back now, I laugh at it because it was obviously just a moodswing caused by the HRT, but I still think he was rude!!! So, who is at fault here? My friend? My HRT? Or me for being a big babybitch? Thanks! :) PS congrats on the baby Jake

Codleeco Vision

To the quite ham-fisted Baliff and the most benevolent, even handed supreme court justices - I bring DM v Crime Druid. During a year long game my friend bamboozled me into DMing - having asked me to play, THEN when I asked who was DMing he told me "I assumed it would be you" - he was playing a Crime Druid - a multiclass Thief Rogue / Circle of Stars Druid combo in search of a precious item he had lost from his Druidic Circle. Towards the end of the campaign - his character had travelled back to his circle for aid in stopping darker machinations that were afoot. Upon speaking with the elder of the circle, his character stated he needed "THE bow". This was met with confusion on my end - "What bow" I responded. Then what happened was awe inducing. My friend had DECIDED without mentioning to me, that there was an incredibly powerful magical bow that his circle could give him AND he was entitled to it in order to deal with the BBEG. I - after some confusion - relented and said "the bow is with the master hunter of the circle and they are on a dangerous hunt at the moment" sending them off on a quest. The bow allowed the user to select an element to be resistant to for the day - on top of being a +2 Long Bow. He inevitably got the bow, but should he have spoken with me ahead of time, or am I - in legal terms - Boo boo the fool and should have above table said "this doesn't exist". To this day we still talk about it, and he always seems ardent that he did nothing wrong. Also - do you need a courtroom sketch artist? I'm available pro bono.

Guy

May it please the court, notably the revered judges and less notably the itty bitty baby Bailiff Jake. I bring you the case of unconscious fall damage. I DMed a Wild West style campaign for my friends and they were in the process of infiltrating a local water baron’s manor. They were caught by a guard, which resulted in a tense initiative role and combat to see if they could knock him unconscious before he could call for help. They succeeded, and the air Genasi monk claimed they had a plan to hide the body while the rest kept looking around. She then used her species’ ability to cast levitate, then bringing it outside to the thirty foot wall surrounding the manor(a wall I specified had guards on it by the way) and then dropped the spell. I narrated the body hitting the ground and splatting, and she was immediately caught. She managed to escape due to their monk speed, but the rest of the party was detained. After the session, she insisted that I should have rolled damage and death saves for the unconscious guard she dropped from thirty feet in the air. You honors, is this a fair claim? I don’t think it would have changed anything, but she’s been real grubby about it ever since. I leave myself to your righteous judgement.

Jamjam

If it may please the court with its just justices and their ailing bailiff, I present the case of the not so surprising surprise round: I am playing in a fun pathfinder campaign with my friends and in the second session our gm changed the way he handles surprise rounds: instead of us getting the jump on the distracted scheming gremlins, whacking them and then rolling initiative, he let the gremlins attack right after us in the surprise round and we rolled initiative afterwards. this gravely injured our only martial character who had banked on being able to retreat before being attacked by literally everyone. He was (justly imo) upset, saying they should have been too surprised to act in a surprise round, while the gm argued, that in previous fights we had defeated the enemies we ambushed too quickly, so he changed the rules. ultimately, it’s the gm’s choice on how he handles stuff like this, and we all agreed to keep the game going but what do the judges of the mightiest ttrpgc in the land think of this decision? were we wrong to be upset that our enemies weren’t surprised by our surprise round? I kneel before your mighty gavel, may your verdict strike true! ps: It’s pronounced like Miriam, she/her.

PineappleLiar

Forgive me, most honored of Crit Justices and Lil Baby Bailiff Boy Bake, I come to you not with a case, but with a request. I wish to invoke the dual powers of church and state against one player that is killing the fun of a game my friends are in. This character, known as ‘The Architect’, is a kenku artificer who began the game with amnesia, regularly insults the other pcs, steals items from the party to use as blackmail, and has a novel length backstory about how he is a workaholic loner and the only person that can save the world from a climate crisis. While this person is definitely a problem player, they are also the DM’s best friend, and there are concerns that ‘being a bad player’ may end up getting conflated with ‘being a bad person’ if brought up. So instead I ask that the court (or church) sentence this player to some crime that will make them too busy to attend sessions anymore. I am also willing to be tried for crimes of rigging the court system for a particular outcome, if that is what is necessary to seal a conviction.

Frederick Adamson

To the supreme crit justice's and the tiny boy bailiff, I bring to you the case of WALL OF FORCE and other things. I was playing a paladin called Sir Gregor Kiribat, a member of the boulders gate watch whose wife and child were kidnapped by aberrations and he made it his mission to save them. I made this character as our dm said we were doing a eldritch horror campaign so I thought it would fit well. After the first 10 sessions of the dm ignoring my characters story stuff even though I thought I was handing it to them on a silver platter, I asked about my backstory and they said they couldnt even remeber it. After this i just played along having fun with the combat but soon that would go wrong as 3 combats in a row we fought spellcaster mindflayers whose first turns were always to trap me and my friend (a fighter) in a wall of force and due to the spells nature we couldn't make a save or break it so we had to wait several turns until the rest of the party broke their concentration but the dm gave them advantage and a really good con save so most of those combats we where sitting on our ass doing nothing. After those sessions the campaign ended due to scheduling issues and moving to pf2e but I'm not too sad leaving it behind me. Was I in the wrong for thinking of my characters story as important?

Joe W

To the highly esteemed Crit Justices and the below lowly bailiff Jonk. I bring to you the case of the "veterans" versus the "novices". My DM, whose campaign I have been a part of for coming up to 5 years ran a one-shot where my party, the "veterans" played out a battle royale style game versus his other party the "novices". Now please bear in mind these "novices" have been in a campaign with the same DM for nearly 3 years but are level 10 compared to our level 18. This battle royale was set at level 10 to make it fair and we were using our characters from the respective campaigns but with no equipment. We were all really excited, if not admitedly slightly nervous to see who would come out on top. The game started off very fun and all was going well until we found out mid way through that we had a life system, we were extremely surprised to find out that 2 of the novices had 3 lives due to successfully opening chests that contained an extra life essence in. 2 of our characters also manged to successfully open chests of the same variety and were quite surprised to find out there was no such thing in ours. To cut a long story short, we found out the DM is far stricter with our group than theirs, when we asked them if they had the right spell components to cast the spell they were trying to perform and they looked at us blankly and he said "nah don't worry about it". My fighter then lost both lives before even getting to take a single turn in combat other than to dash, I wondered how we were getting destroyed so badly until we found out that the DM levelled our characters down by doing a level 10 quick build while the novices characters had their normal character sheets which had boons and feats from their campaign. The DM then panicked as my character died and created a Deus Ex Machina by bringing an evil NPC character in to the fray to make us all work together. We eventually beat the bad NPC but not after a few awkward comments were made about the state of the game. It left a slight sour taste in everyone's mouths and the session ended rather quickly with a few brief goodbyes. When I asked the DM about it he said that he was so confident we were going to destroy them because of our experience over theirs that he had to find a way to balance it. I ask you, were we wronged by our DM who I must add is an incredible story teller whose sessions I usually leave either buzzing or completely awestruck from or are we just being bitter because we essentially got one shot in our one shot? I await any punishment with eagerness but I do ask that bailiff Jonk joins us in them if you deem it appropriate.

Jamjam

to clarify: when we ambushed them, we attacked them and then all of them got to attack us and THEN we rolled initiative for the actual fight.

Gicky

Dear ellustrious justices and graceless bailiff. A few years ago I was in a group running curse of strand. I initially played a monk but after a few sessions the party agreed we needed a healer. I discussed with the DM who agreed to write an in-fiction reason for my monk to leave the party, and hinted he would return later in the campaign. My monk ended up sneaking away from the party and left a note that he was going to find more information on defeating Strahd on his own. Cut to the end of the campaign, we have defeated Strahd, and the DM is narrating finale scenes for each of the pcs. The DM then narrates a flashback to the night my monk left our party, writing a note by the flickering light of the campfire, tearfully whispering goodbyes and promising to return, before being attacked and killed by wolves around the corner from the camp. He added that the party slept especially deep that night and did not hear my monks screams for help and awoke feeling particularly restful and in a good mood. We laughed at the time but over the years this wound continues to cut deep. Am I right to feel I got done dirty by my characters unceremonious death or is it unfair of me to have expected my monk to return? I await your judgment. Thank you. P.s in respect of the court I add that I did once fall asleep at the table I doubt this will affect your judgement but I splay myself before the court nonetheless.

Keeblare

To the honorable Crit Justices and that lowly, lowly bailiff guy- Baby Jake: May it please the Court, I bring the case of the mis-managing cleric. Our 1st level party was on a mission to map the greenbelt and remove any potential threats in the area, such as monsters or bandits, which were known to be operating within the forest. Our second encounter with these bandits was at one of their watch posts and instead of stealthing in with the rest of the party, the cleric went forth boldly as a distraction of some kind, in her mind, I guess. During the ensuing fight, the cleric and my gunslinger were both heavily damaged, nearing the point of going down, and for some reason she decided to spare the dying for one of the bandits instead of healing either me or herself, to the consternation of the whole party. While this left the party quite vexed with her, it left us the problem of what to do with the bandit afterwards. Getting information was great, however having to take a prisoner (making sure neither he nor the cleric would free them) all the way back to the city halted our progress. None of us were going to kill the bandit as a helpless individual, nor could we let him go back to his life of crime within the forest. Were we right to be mad that the cleric chose an enemy over our party, or should we have been grateful to have the information he provided us early in the campaign- all for the price of an argument at the table?

Keeblare

((Sorry, my post didn't keep it's formatting))

Charlie Gillespie

To the honorable justices and the baliff sweet blue hole, I brin you the case of the baby owlbear killers. I am running a spelljammer campaign and my 3 players are all characters out of “story land” I had them in Neverland and they were in their ship. One of the lost boys flys over carrying a child. The armor artificer decided shootion the out of the sky into the ocean was a wonderful idea, it was not, so proceeds to do just that. At that time I have the pirates show up. The lost boy gets away and they are taken to the mainland to be questioned. They do well and go on to find check of the lost boys who were twisted in the breaking of story land. They come upon a family of owlbears. Two parents and a baby. Now I knew they would make short work of the parents but I was going to let my Druid have a cool pet to raise. Well again the artificer decides that they all are going to their gods today. I set the scene. The baby isn’t fighting. It’s just crying over it’s lost parents. Her heart is stone and kills the owlbear cub. Now at this point I needed to do something, I took a break to think about it. Now their goal was to activate all the anchors, but I had an idea! They could also destroy them so they would stay on the Astral Plane. So I decided this act of evil and callousness was enough to destroy the anchor leaving them drifting in the astral sea as Neverland no longer existed. At this point our artificer leans into her husband the Druid. He screams “get off me you murderer!” Ending the session early. As we died of laughter and it would not stop. Now was I wrong for the harsh punishment of destroying Neverland or was this a natural consequence of being murderhobos? I leave it to the court to decide.

Matthew Woodbury

To the Judges on most high, and the sweet guppie Bailiff Jimmy. I am the forever DM of my group, and this encounter took place in a city based campaign. The party was fighting an artificer group that were trying to monopolize the sale of magical items in a city. During the fated encounter our barbarian ran into a group of artificers alone and was downed very quickly. Combat quickly devolved into the rest of the party healing the downed barbarian and then him being immediately dropped again. After four round of this I decided to lay down the hammer. I counterspelled a healing word and had multiple artificers unload into the downed barbarian with flintlock pistols to finish him off. I had felt in the moment that the encounter was turning into a war of attrition and that this was the only logical end to the stalemate. However my player’s faces said differently… so was I wrong to shoot my downed barbarian in the head?

Dr Pleasure

To the esteemed, high justices and the lowly, worm-crawling bailiff jake or the acceptable/average-looking, sweet baby jack-e-poo (depending on how the high crit justice decides), I bring you the case of the power gaming Great Weapon Master Paladin, Once upon a time as an green, wet-behind-the-ears dm, i ran a group of adventurers in the premade module- Hoard of the Dragon Queen. This was very early in 5e. One of my players, who i knew was purposefully trying power game, was playing a paladin with great weapon master (GWM), able to reroll 1s and 2s for damage. He cast smite and rolled a 1 on one of his smite dice. He immediately started to reroll due to his interpretation of GWM. I told him that great weapon master would only apply to weapon dice and not to his divine smites, since it didn't make sense to me that being an expert with weapons would apply to divine magic. Cue a 30 minute arguement, after which someone eventually looked up the Unearthed arcana where Jeremy Crawford stated the intention was GWM should only apply to weapon dice. The player then stated who was Jeremy Crawford and who cares what he says. He then stated his entire build was based around this and that he would need to reroll a new character. Although he eventually calmed down and stuck with paladin, i always wondered if i should have handled that better? Should i have just rolled over? Should i have told him we would talk about it out of session? In anticipation of a classic murph response, we eventually stopped playing as school ended and moved away. I now dm 2x different campaigns with better, easy going players. PS. Huge fan of the cast, long time listener and new time patron. Love the last 5 years, looking forward to the next 5! Best regards, Dr. Pleasure.

Joe Lenton

To the honourable, well adjusted adult justices and the precious little newborn baby bailiff, I bring to you the case of Shield Spammer vs Reaction Metagamer I have been running multiple campaigns for a group of friends for several years, and one week I was a bit burned out from DMing so one of my players proposed a Non-Canonical battle royal PVP, just to get to roll some dice and have fun. I played my DMPC, a Mastermind Rogue who normally in the campaign just used Help actions and picked off minions. When it came down to just three PCs left standing - myself, a Paladin who was helping me “for now” and a Bard/Sorcerer Gnome, I kept trying to get Sneak Attacks but was blocked by him casting “Shield” every round. To mitigate this, knowing I likely only had one round left before he finished me off, I approached the Bard/Sorcerer and then walked away, prompting him to declare an opportunity attack, which missed. I then turned around and announced my ranged attack with sneak - A hit! He yelled out “shield!” but I pointed out he had already used his reaction, and then did enough damage to kill him. The player got incredibly mad and said I was just trying to meta game so I could win, and that I am a cheater. I agreed that I metagamed a little, but it is nothing I wouldn’t allow my players to do against an enemy, so I feel was being consistent. He left the voice chat and didn’t come back until next session, where his character was “not feeling well”. The player left the group eventually and I often wonder was I in the wrong for tricking someone into using their reaction? I await the divine mercy or the dreadful punishment of this honourable court. (additional note: the paladin kicked my ass with a divine smite Nat 20 the next round)

John Murphy

To the venerable Justices of the Supreme Crit and the middling at best Bailiff Geoff, I submit the case of the self banishment. I DM for a party of five players in a homebrew campaign where the party is trying to stop Asmodeous from entering into the material plane. Through some time travel and fey realm shenanigans the party was able to track the staff Asmodeous’s followers need to bring him into the material plane and defeat one of his avatars to retrieve it. Enter our party’s warlock Kahn Dum (seriously) who proceeded to steal the staff while the rest of the party was downed or incapacitated at the end of the insane fight and banish himself to hell to give the staff to his patron Mephistopheles. Since Kahn is canonically from hell and I thought some interparty conflict would be fun I allowed this spell to send him home permanently. Was I right to let the warlock banish himself or was this sketchy DM behavior? PS. Kahn and I had discussed him stealing the staff but not this particular escape maneuver.

Nick M.

Good Day Honorable Justices and the cool surfer dude who moonlights as a Bailiff, I bring to you the case of the Mad Scorned Lover: I recently got into DND and joined my friend’s table with some of his other friends whom I had never met. 2 guys and a girl. Early into the campaign, the girl’s character, a level 2 rogue, and my level 2 fighter character, started to get a little flirtatious in some of our role play. Harmless in-character fun right? But I quickly noticed one of the other guys at the table kept glaring at me and giving the girl a side eye. I later found out they used to date and I guess he was getting jealous of the flirty role play? I figured it was all fun and games, but this guy eventually claimed in-game that he suspected my character was a turncoat and attacked me! Luckily I survived and the session ended quickly after that. The guy left immediately afterward without saying much. Was I a jerk for flirting with this guys ex-girlfriend in DND role play? Maybe I am just too new and don’t know the etiquette, but this feels way too much like high school drama P.S. I loved the relationship between Hardwon and Moonshine in campaign 1, and am curious to know Jake and Emily’s thoughts about dnd/story-telling flirting.

woodsorrel

To the magnanimous justices and the other guy, I bring to you the case of the extremely failed con save. I play in a campaign with six other players. It’s sometimes hard to find the space to participate with so many other people. An hour into one particular session, I had been unable to say or contribute anything. That was fine—some party members got to address drama that had been brewing for several sessions, and I was happy to listen. Our party then entered a cave where we all needed to make con saves or be forced into an enchanted slumber. I was the only person to fail the save. For the next several hours, I sat quietly while the rest of the party continued our quest, dragging my body along with them. The spell wore off after 24 hours in-game, so I was able to play again the next session. I can’t help but feel like the duration of the effect was a bit harsh and that my DM could have provided my party with a solution so that I could still play after an hour or two. Was I wronged, or is this just a consequence of adventuring? I await your judgement.

Jack Nolan

Hello most righteous and honorable judges and my name twin bailiff Jack. I come to you with the case of the accidental PC death. A few years ago I was a new DM running a Percy Jackson inspired campaign with home-brewed subclasses flavored as godly heritages. During one of our first few sessions while the players were at camp they were attacked by a wild pack of griffins. Being a new DM and not really understanding how balancing combat works, I quickly began to realize that this was heading towards a TPK. One of my players was down and had 1 failed death save. I told her that Chiron, the camp director was coming to heal them on his next turn but it was her turn first. I said “All you have to do is not roll a 1.” Of course she rolled a 1. With the players being level 3 and no one having revivify the PC was dead. I allowed the son of hades to basically roll a divine intervention to attempt to bring them back and had Chiron try and bring them back but with failed rolls on both the players accepted the pc death. It brought them closer together and the new PC was quickly adopted to the group the next session. The problem is this. After, the PC told me that if they had another character death they would quit the game, and the other players quickly followed suit. Of course I don’t want to kill my PCs but without the threat of PC death in combat the stakes are completely gone. Was I right to let the PC die after all these attempts to bring them back, or should I have gone against the wishes of Dice Christ and allowed their character to live on? I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Chrimzen

Dear Supreme Crit Justices and the bailiff with his fly down, Jakeathan, I bring a case asking for a Supreme Crit Ruling. In my group, alongside many others I assume, there are arguments about how a d10 and percentile should be rolled for a d100 rolling (i.e. Treasure tables, wild magic effects, etc.). Our DM argues that a d100 should be read with the d10 being the ones spot (unless it is a 0 or 10) and the percentile is the tens place (with 00 making the number single digit). So in his case, a 0 or 10 on the d10 and a 90 on the percentile would be read as 100. (7 on the d10 and 30 on the d00 equals 37) One of our players agrees with how the numbers should be read, but argues that triple zeros (0 or 10 on the d10 and 00 on the percentile) should be read as 100. As such, the only way to get multiples of tens in their case is by having a 0 or 10 on the d10 and the result of the percentile is the result (10, 20, 30, etc.). So I ask for you all to bring down the righteous hammer of Dice Christ on how a d100 roll should be read.

The Witch of the Well-Struck Flint

Revered members of Dice Christ's clergy, I have not a confession, but a request for penance. I have been playing DnD fairly regularly for over three years, using a mix of online dice rollers and real dice. I much prefer real dice, but I fear that I have incured Dice Christ's wrath somehow; I usually roll under 10, roll frequent nat 1's, and have only ever rolled a single nat 20! This is across many different dice as well! I roll a perfectly average spread if I use online dice rollers, so have started favouring them even when not necessary, which makes me deeply sad as I love my collection of physical dice. My dice-rolling hands are cursed by the fickle whims of Dice Christ, and I beg advice on how to appease him and un-curse my dice rolling skills. I am at the mercy of the Church of the Crit.

thesorceress

To our most honorable justices and Jakes, I present to you the case of the murdered barkeeper. I, two party members, and our DM, have been having a friendly disagreement about a situation that occurred several years ago that we just call ‘The Bar Incident.’ Our party members at the time were a sorcerer, a Barbarian, and a bard and we were just stopping at an inn in the middle of nowhere. As we were leaving, our sorcerer thought it would be funny to scare the barkeep by illusioning the money we paid into spiders, in a country where most magic is illegal. This freaked the bartender out and he ran outside into our barbarian. Now the barbarian had something the player rolled for himself called confusion dice. It was basically a self imposed rule by this player where he rolled a dice which had question marks on it and if he rolled a question mark on it he didn’t understand the situation. So when he rolled the dice and got a question mark, he decided that running away meant he was a bad guy and murdered the bartender. After this my bard decided I needed to clean up this mess so I went around and Geased the patrons at the bar to walk away and not tell anyone what happened or die to the Geas I put on them. We wish the court to settle this dispute: which of our characters committed the worst crime? We await your punishment.

3 Minions in a trench coat

To the holiest of holy clergy of Dice Christ, I come to you today begging your justice, to smite a heretic who repeatedly and flagrantly spits in the face of our Lord. It has recently come to light that my girlfriend rolls her D100 in a way that makes my skin crawl. She will regard the 0 on the single digit d10 as a 10 no matter what, meaning that a roll of 30/0 will be a 40 and a crit to her is 90/0. A true crit roll of 00/0 is by her standards a mere 10. While there is a method to the madness and I have no reason to believe she is inconsistent in her rolls, this is a slap in the face. I implore you to please condemn her abbhorent behavior, and also to forgive me for holding such tender feelings towards someone so abominable.

Court Davies

To the magnanimous and benevolent justices, and... yup, that's it I think... I bring to you the case of the DMs shady potion robbery (working title.) I play in a hardcore campaign with a few close friends. We were fighting a gargantuan Roc and it was dealing tremendous damage to our party. After a few grueling rounds of combat we asked if it looked tired or injured. The DM simply stated it was bleeding a lot, but showed no signs of relenting its onslaught. Our paladin took this as a sign that the fight would continue for a while, so he used his action to chug a greater healing potion. During the very next turn, the DM narrated that the Roc geared up to attack, but then grew faint, and fell to the ground dead from blood loss. It turns out the roc had hit 0 hp several turns ago and would only die during its next turn in initiative. Our paladin asked if he could take back the potion he drank, so he could heal with a short rest instead, but the DM refused, saying he had made his choice. No one argued with the DM, but the paladin fell noticeably quiet after this. After the session, the pally and I agreed that he was cheated out of an expensive resource and the DM has set a dangerous precedent. We are now afraid of wasting our consumables in battle. So I ask, are we right to feel that this ruling oversteps the bounds of fair play, or is this kind of thing justified in a "difficult" campaign?

MC

May it please the honorable justices, but especially Justice Murphy who I fear will turn against me when he hears my case, I present the case of the self-imposed plot armor. In college, I was playing in a one-shot where myself and all the other PC’s played different newscasters from the Anchorman movies. My friend was a Paladin Ron Burgundy, I was playing Barbarian Champ Kind, etc. During a mission where we were trying to help the dog Baxter in a fight with an Owlbear, my friend who was playing a Rogue Brian Fantana was knocked out by the Owlbear and failed his death saving throws. After the fight, he interrupted the DM and narrated how his character kicks up, good as new. The DM looked perplexed as no one had cast any spells or used any potions. The player said he didn’t feel like rolling a new player for a one-shot, so he’d just keep playing this character until the end of the one shot. My DM agreed, but looked defeated as if his big Owlbear fight and the one shot no longer had any stakes. Fair justices and wise bailiff, I ask - was this no big deal since it was a silly one shot, or should Brian Fantana and his Sex Panther cologne have stayed dead? I throw myself at the mercy of the court, and beg Justice Murphy’s forgiveness.

Saxisce

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and Bailiff Jake who deserves better than he gets: I present the case of Player Agency vs. Team Player. My fiance (a very experienced player/DM) and I ( at the time a very new player) play a homebrew 5e campaign with a group of close friends. He is a very good DM, but is not running this particular campaign. I play a Mastermind Rogue with all the attendant trauma and trust issues, and he plays a Bard Cleric. There are 3 other players, one of whom is a Sorcerer Druid. The party defeated an evil Sorcerer and my Rogue and another non-magic using player looted the body. I looted a cursed crown that could only be attuned by a sorcerer. My fiance cast Identity as a ritual to find this information. Our DM handed me a piece of paper with the item stats/description. I reviewed it and then gave it to my fiance when he asked to see it. He then gave it to the Sorcerer Druid and I didn't notice that I didn't get it back. Next session, the crown was stated to be in her possession. I protested that my character hadn't given it to her and would not have, as she was highly unlikely to give up a valuable item simply because she couldn't use it. I dropped it at the table and she kept the crown, but my fiance and I have never been able to agree who was wrong in the scenario, him for taking away my character's agency, or me for trying to withhold an item that "wasn't meant for me," even though the DM gave it to me. I have argued that it would be the DM's responsibility to correct any behavior that would hurt the party. He has argued that keeping an item meant for someone else is harmful to the party and makes the game less fun. I am honestly not sure I would have kept it, but did not get the chance to make that decision. We have continued to enjoy playing together in this group and others, but I would love a second opinion. I await and will abide by your judgement.

The D-Emma

To the most auspicious Justices, and Boston based trial attorney Jake , I bring to you the case of my first kill. A number of years ago I was dming a campaign for a bunch of friends. It took place in a homebrew setting that was primarily jungles filled with dinosaurs and the undead. The party in the previous session had been tasked with rescuing a missing patrol they had run afoul of a necromancer and a legion of undead soldiers. They successfully tracked the undead to a fort where the necromancer was converting living captives into undead zombies. My intent with the fight was to show them a set piece for later in the campaign, have them save the scout, and leave. However, when they gave my skeletons the womping of a lifetime, they wanted to push in further and explore the fort. Not having anything prepped I tried to force them to run away by introducing a clear threat in the form of two zombie t-rexes. As they were level 2 or 3, most of the party took the hint and began running, except for one player, Sooty. Sooty was a gnomish druid, who, when confronted with these two huge zombie dinosaurs, decided that instead of running to safety (which was possible with a dash action) with the rest of his party, he'd instead cast mold earth to dig a five foot hole, jump in it, and try to hide. I tried to ask him if he was sure if that's what he wanted to do. He said yes. I then said I was going to the bathroom and gave him time to rethink his strategy. When I returned he decided to remain in the hole. To be fair to him I gave him a stealth roll, which he failed, and on their next turn, t T-Rex knocked him unconscious and ate him. This is the only PC I've ever killed, and to this day I still worry about if I handled things right. Noble justices, did I make the right call? Should I have let this player do something silly and get away with it, or was I fair enough giving him the hints and multiple chances to run away? I humbly await your ruling. Emma

gypsy

Dearest and Honourable Crit Justices, and the finest Bailiff in any D&D court, I bring you the case of the Awoken Horse. My group has taken a break from AD&D 2e to play a Pathfinder 1e module. One of our first quests was to clear a goblin camp, and retrieve a prize horse, Shadowmist, if we found him. Eventually we cleared the camp and found the horse, and my Paladin rolled a nat 20 animal handling to calm him. While I didn’t want to abandon my new horse Starscream, I took this as a sign from the dice gods to buy Shadowmist from the breeder we agreed to find him for. Once we were back in town, after a bit of persuasion, I bought the horse for an exorbitant amount and thought that would be the end of it. I don’t remember how it started, but two of the party members became obsessed with casting awaken on Shadowmist, asking every NPC they could find about where they might find scrolls, and going as far as seeking out a talking tree to see if he could do it. This evolved into wanting to awaken the horse, and then having a friend of theirs join the campaign and play AS the horse. A few sessions have gone by now, and even though we are in the middle of investigating a string of murders, the party is so hell bent on awakening this animal we have left town and gone to a major city, and sunk all the party’s funds into a scroll of awaken. It was cast, Shadowmist chose to become a War Priest of some evil god of destruction, is now best friends with the kineticist, and is currently having a hard time squeezing through the corridors in a haunted house. My problem, dear judges, is that this was all done without my consent. I was happy with my above average mount and while it’s very funny, every time I tried to divert their attention elsewhere, I was always shot down and ignored. I really enjoy having pets and familiars for my PC’s, and find myself getting attached to them in and out of game. Am I wrong for being mildly put out because my horse was appropriated by the party and given free will? I humbly await your judgement.

Aiden

Forgive me dice, for i have s(p)inned i play in a small group of people with my stepdad and a few of his friends where he plays a horny dragonborn lady slinging coochie. everytime he rolls he cheats; i have sat by and watched so i may reap the benefits of his rolls. he has this big plastic dice with all the largest numbers on one side that he clutches from the twenty and spins like a dreidel. i dont know how our dm has not noticed this incredibly blatant cheating but i certainly will not be the one to tell him. if i must burn in hell for my sins i will do it surrounded by sick fucking loot

Barbara Williams

To the esteemed crit-a-licious judges and the slightly less crit-a-licious bailiff, I bring to you the case of the Wild Magic Mushroom. During the pandemic, my players were missing going to music festivals, so I created a halfling musical festival, with all of the things you would experience at a real festival. One of my players, a warlock, decided to look for “drugs” he could purchase. He purchased a mushroom from a very shady halfling, and when asked by the bard if he could cast identify, he refused as he didn’t want anyone to know he had it. He did an arcana check (rolled an 18) and I said that it had “wild magic properties.” He left it at that. Since he did not identify this magic item, I left out that while I did cause the wild magic effect, you don’t know when it will happen, as sometimes it can be more “potent” or even a “dud.” He took some on their journey home, and I rolled a d20 behind the screen to see how long it would take to kick in. I rolled a 19, so it took 19 mins to kick in. While that did cause some chaos, ultimately it was harmless. Fast forward to later in the campaign, where the other party is racing to gain a magic item in a dungeon before a very powerful cult group. After they obtained their magic item, the warlock took the mushroom to “celebrate” thinking it would kick in later after they escaped. I rolled my d20 and it was a natural one, which meant that the wild magic would kick in instantly. I had him roll on the table, in which he rolled a 1 on a d100, which meant for one minute he would have to roll on the wild magic table at the start of his turn. I had him roll again, and this time he turned into a potted plant. Now this was a problem because he was their escape plan from the cult, as they needed his teleportation circle. The cult group was approaching quickly, which I knew would result in their capture. Over the minute, he rolled again and again; he started levitating, then blinded the group and cast fireball on everyone. The rest of the party was furious, yelling at him asking why, as they felt they were nearing a TPK. He said that he assumed it would be 19 mins, and that I should have informed him of this way back when he did an arcana check. I told him he should have cast identity, (always test your drugs kids). The cult did catch up to them, but they were able to bargain with them to prevent capture and a TPK. So was I wrong to not give him the info up front with a high arcana (18) check? Or was I right and identity spell was needed? I await your ruling and accept any punishment you all see fit.

Craig Felt

To the honorable justices and bailiff I have to be nice to so they pick my case: I present the case of the repeat character death. Several years ago I joined my friends' campaign for several sessions. Going in to the adventure I knew it was a more gritty, hard core campaign. The DM and I met before the first session and came up with a front line tanky character since that's what the group was missing. Within the first hour of playing my character was focused by the enemies and killed. I was fairly sad but he said I could make a new character. I spent the next hour making another character while everyone else kept playing. My new character was introduced, and then shortly after focused and killed in combat again. I made a 3rd character, a human fighter named John Doe, in 10 minutes, and asked to rejoin the party. My DM wasn't super happy with my character choices, and the session ended with John's death. I did not rejoin the campaign. Was I wrong for making such a generic character and disrespecting this hard core campaign or was my DM wrong for killing me over and over? I humbly await your judgement.

Ross Gilliland

May it please the court and the cakesniffingly confused 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.

Zaxbeez

To the munificent Court and the fourth-best 8BBC guest [1], I bring before you a case of misaligned dreams. In a campaign where one of my players tried his hand at DMing, I tried to be a Gilear mixed with Jake (Tucker/Jill version) pathetic man. He worked at a Fantasy Burger King and received his Astral Monk training from the Fantasy Mall Dojo. His divorcee’s 12-year-old stepson was his bully, and constantly berated and beat my guy up. I communicated with the DM that over the course of the campaign, I would like to gain some confidence and at least grow out of the desire to ‘win’ back my ex. He agreed and thought it was a worthy arc. Cut to the end of our first arc about 4 session later where the party took down the corrupt political structure of the starting city and uncovered the existence of a dark cult of Shia LaBeouf. On our way out of town, my nemesis challenges me and demands I’m still a loser despite my team’s accomplishments. Thinking I was about to get humbled, I activated my Astral Arms and unexpectedly thrashed this child. My ex was impressed and said we should get coffee sometime, to catch up. I expressed confusion at this turn, and the DM said that he was happy I could now play a badass monk like I wanted. Justices, am I wrong for being disappointed with my character’s preternatural growth or should my DM have turned down the heat on my desired slow-burn? I humbly await your ruling. [1] Susanna Wolff (The Lore of Mortal Kombat), Nathan Yaffe (Caldwell’s Lore Corner: Skyrim), Jasper Willian Cartwright (The Vampire Express, Monster Mix-up), Jake something, who cares.

Cassual Grammer

May it please the court and the wonderful Judges and no one else. I bring you the case of the DM cockblocking Puffy the human fighter. I am DM'ing my first ever campaign for my DM and other friends and sister. One of these friends is a work friend who is just getting into D&D who plays Puffy the human fighter. After an interesting session where Puffy leaned really strongly into this name for no reason, he tried and failed (with a bad roll) to flirt with the local blacksmith. I narrated that she turned him gently but maybe he could try again another time. He couldn't make it to the next session so I asked what he would like his character to be doing. He said training in the woods, and I jokingly said "Training your pickup lines"? He laughed and said yeah that works and we continued. In the next session some of the other players asked in character what he was up to and he responded to the effect of getting to third base with the blacksmith. I immediately put my hand up and said "no you did not, you have to roll for it." He rolled poorly again and told him that it wasn't high enough for hand stuff, but he did get a kiss on the forehead. He seemed disappointed but but didn't argue. Afterwards I felt bad to shut him down so bluntly. I obviously won't narrate a full scene, that's not really what we're about, but I would have considered a fade to black if he rolled well. Esteemed Justices, was I wrong to deny my work friend a fantasy hand job, should I have been more accepting? Or am I justified to to tell the story according to the dice rolls?

Jay V

To the humble and gracious judges and bailiff jake who tries so hard but can never quite achieve the same esteem, I plead for the case of a forgotten Silence. I played in an online campaign with friends as a stars druid/wizard multiclass, and at the end of one session, the DM set up the stakes of a fight: the party were silenced and enshrouded in darkness. During the lead up to the next session, I, as a simple spellcaster, searched through my abilities for anything I could do to help the fight, and by the time we played again, enticed by the major disadvantage I and other spellcasters had in the fight. As the session begins, I do my action in my initiative turn, and after me, the warlock goes, and casts a regular spell, despite it requiring verbal components and line of sight. I committed the table faux pas of lightly reminding the table of the silence spell (I was often entrusted with the rules-knowledge by the DM), and the warlock was like "oh, right yeah" and chose a different spell. The next turn comes up, and neither condition had been removed, and the warlock once again casts a verbal spell, and no-one comments on it. I stayed quiet the second time, but I still think about that combat and the Silence that wasn't. So, I ask thee; should I have commented? Should someone have done something? Or am I a stinky rules lawyer who needs to loosen up? I submit to the whims of the court. Thank you.

Craig

May it please the esteemed Justices and J$, I bring you the case of the fumbled face reveal I ran a campaign for my friends of 15+ years, one player was a warforged who had escaped a mind flayer ship. He was disguiseing himself as a human while on the lamb, the party did not know and were suspicious. The mind flayer threat loomed in the campaign and after a tough combat things came to a head. While traveling on a 15ft tall elk the party demanded the truth. The warforged, rather than do a classic reveal, instead cast disguise self to look like a mind flayer. The party immediately attacked and I called for initiative to keep things orderly. The warforged was knocked out in one hit. I asked if they stopped his body from falling off the the elk, they said no. He fell and lost a death save from the damage, his turn was next and he rolled a nat 1 instantly dying. The player feels this death was unjustified, the rest of us feel he should not have made himself look like a mind flayer and then roll a nat 1. Where does justice fall on the matter?

Muqtadaa Miandara

To the fairest and most wonderful Supreme Crit Just-dices - and our homely and cuckolded Baby-liff, I present to you the case of the OVERPOWERED DINOSAUR FAMILIAR. After 3 years of running a 1-20 campaign in which my players saved the world, extreme-home-makeover-ed the Nine Hells, and fought a god or two, I am finally playing in a campaign run by a player from my table! He has painstakingly crafted this world, has spent countless hours world building with input from all the players, and was super receptive to everything I came up with for my bugbear shaman (Wally, who is a very good boy from a very bad place in love with the moon goddess and plans to woo her someday). Unfortunately, we’ve all come to realize that he was overly receptive to one person in particular in the game. In a party of seven level 3 characters (3.5e btw, not 5e, so there are level adjustments for different character races), the balance is already strangely distributed at low level. Add to that, there are lots of animals in the party - for example, I have a feat that gave me a bonded mage-bred animal companion using my shaman levels as druid levels, a polar bear named Mauritius who is useful in combat. Despite many of us having animal familiars (a crow, a wolf, a monkey, a cat, and a miniature baby unicorn), none of them are truly combat effective without having to take flaws for feats. Most of it is just flavor. One player (also from my previous campaign) has a deinonychus. His whole build is wild, with his PC having several stats already at 20, and a custom-built heavy-repeating artillery crossbow. And, oh yeah, a fucking DINOSAUR. The deinonychus has four attacks, two fore claws, a bite, and a tail-whip, nearly 50HP to start, and has natural camouflage. The reason behind this over-permissive character build is obvious, my DM and my former player are best buds, lived together in college, started dating their current spouses at the same time, etc. But it’s really taking the fun away from the game to have a cool moment where our low-level asses grit and deal max 20 damage to some kobolds, and then get upstaged by this guy firing two fucking artillery bolts and then having his goddamn raptor kill anyone left over. Tell me your esteemed honors, is this a drastic Jurassic travesty? Was my DM too busy considering whether or not he could that he didn’t stop to think if he should? Please, Just-dices, sees that just-dice is rolled for my table.

Avery Thompson

To the Honorable justices of the court...... and Jack i guess. I bring you the case of the OP hellfire rogue. Our party was in the feywild when our plasmoid rogue(named Morty) possessed a past PC(this takes place 200 years after the first campaign) and kills an NPC important to another of our PCs and the queen of the feywild (who is this PCs mom) told us to track him down so he can be brought to justice, but he didn't want to do that, so we killed him. After that, we came back to the material plane and Morty comes back with his original rogue stats(+13 to stealth so we couldn't see him), an extra 300 hp and fucking level 5 hellfire smites. It took 3 PC deaths(one of which was mine who got resurrected), a busted demon trapped in a sword and a lot of prayers. Tell me, am I wrong to be just a little filled with salt or do I deserve to be smited?

Jordan Holl

To the promiscuous and honestly sexy Supreme Crit Justices and the oft cuckolded Bailiff Jake: I present the case of Nori the Kenku druid. I am running a homebrew campaign set in a Steampunk/Wild West world where the players are a part of an outlaw gang in the western frontier of the world. One of these players being Nori, a Kenku druid who we reflavored to have more of a vulture-like appearance. In the midst of battle, the players were nearing a TPK when Nori asked me the question; "Would you consider humanoids to be open canisters?" After a long pause, I relented. I told them "I mean technically I guess, yes." He proceeded to tell me that he wanted use the spell "Create Water" inside of a combatants lungs. I told him that this was a very dangerous precedent for me as a DM to set to just allow them to essentially drown every person they fight- so I asked them to roll an Arcana check of DC 25 to use the spell in an obscure fashion. Not having a very good Arcana, naturally, Nori failed. After that he continued to roll very poorly for the rest of the session and became visibly despondent. The party however pulled together and escaped to fight another day. So I ask: Should I have given Nori what seemed to be a much needed win, or was I correct in making them do an Arcana check to try and drown his enemies? I thank you for your time and am humble in victory or defeat.

Adriana Duffy

To the honorable Supreme Crit justices and the disappointing bailiff, who we would return to the warehouse if we could just find the receipt. I bring to you the case of the third session termination. I am DMing a game for a bunch of new players. On our most recent session, the party was fighting a very large security automaton inside a small room. Our bard decided to try to climb the automaton, and when they rolled a natural one after not getting very high up, I said, mostly for flavor, “It kicks you off into the wall, and you take one damage.” Lo and behold, this player only had one hit point left, after taking damage last session. Long story short, they failed all their death saves (including another nat 1), and Dez Pacito was no more. Most of the party ended up getting knocked out and subsequently arrested, and I hastily had them all get revived for interrogation. I ask you, did I take the coward’s route by not letting Dez Pacito remain Dead Pacito? Or was my compassion for my newbie player justified? I await your judgment with bated breath.

charlene

Dear esteemed crit justices, particularly the illustrious Justice Axford, and disgraced Justice/reputable Bailiff Jank. We bring to you the case of the Good Fighter vs. the Evil God Plot Hook. We are a party of 3 and 1 of our party has been at odds with the group's main motivations. We are a narrative-focused group playing a Grim Hollow setting where the world has been plagued with an ever growing darkness. As our party has traveled, the good-aligned Fighter made a choice that resulted in an evil god blessing (or cursing, depending on your perspective) the party with a boon from the god and an invitation from his minions to meet and figure out how resurrect him. Our Fighter is staunchly against going, upset with the boon, and refusing to engage with the story thread, even ignoring a summons from a key NPC in his backstory to go. The other two PCs see value in finding out why he needs to be resurrected at all and maybe releasing us from the boon. This has brought our party to a stand-still and has increased tensions in how to proceed with the story. It might be different if the Fighter was keen in choosing a different plot hook, but it seems more like he's just against to committing to *any* plot hook unless the DM lays out specifics of what a "good" decision is in this situation, which the DM will not do. Would it be wrong for the other 2 PCs to make it clear that they are pursuing this hook, even if the Fighter doesn't want to? Should the DM drop this plot line entirely and send us in a new direction? Or is there a way to get our mulish Fighter to compromise?

Hannah

To the righteous upholders of justice and the small boychild who so orders said justice, I recently put on my best friend’s and forever dm’s bachelor party as their best man. The wedding party was our long-standing dnd group, so I decided to try my hand at dming a one shot to let my friend get the chance to play as a PC with the crew. This would be my first time dming. I let the party know this was the plan, and they seemed psyched. However, on the day of the party, one of our friends - the officiant - showed up with a board game and asked if we could take a couple hours to play it as well. I was a little discouraged, feeling like there was a competing activity. Regardless, we sat down to play and for the first hour things were going well. Then, people started getting distracted, pulling out phones, and walking off to play from another room. I felt myself and the table losing momentum, even though I had two more encounters planned (one of them styled after the kelp forest from Hot Boy Summer). I decided to wrap an untidy bow on the game and shift over to playing the board game the officiant had brought instead. Overall, we had a lovely night and our friend felt celebrated, which is all that matters. But I still regret ending the one shot so abruptly after all the thought I had put into designing a world and a narrative I thought my best friend would enjoy. I ask the court, was I in the right to read the room and go with the board game, or did I do a disservice to my friend, who was still really enjoying the game, by ending early? Thank you for your judgement P.S. please don’t tell me in need new friends, I really like these people!

Ashen

To the honorable justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and I guess also to Murph’s DMPC “Jaek.” I present to you the case of the Difficult Druid and the Bleeding Bard. My partner and I have been in a campaign for over two years with four level 8 PCs: a wizard, a monk, a druid, and me, a bard. I should say up top that we are all great friends and there is no bad blood here. Anyway, our dragonborn druid refuses to wild shape, and instead hangs back to use her acid breath or spellcast. Of course, the wizard stays out of melee range and the monk, with over 50 movement, moves out of range each turn, leaving me, the bard, as the easy target (with few spell slots and a bonus to melee damage from College of Whispers). The druid never wild shapes and only uses her acid breath or the spell Wind Wall in every situation. ONLY Wind Wall, every time. To encourage the druid to wild shape, the DM created a home-brew ability for her to wild shape into a young dragon, which the druid has only used once since getting it six months ago. As the only PC up in the mix, I get absolutely rocked. Once I was downed three times in one combat (the DM even - unnecessarily - apologized afterwards). The wizard sometimes takes hits so I don’t have to, and the monk has stopped using evasion to draw hits away from me. To add insult to injury, we all watched the DND movie together after a session, and when the druid in the movie wild shaped, our druid said, “that’s so cool, I wish we had someone in our party who can do that,” to which I responded, “you can turn into a fucking bear.” I prostrate myself before the court and ask if we should get over our tank not tanking or if we should trap our tank in a wild shape a la Tobias from Animorphs. P.S. don’t play, hate the show

DM Dennis

To the esteemed members of the Court and brilliant bailiff Jeff. I run the module Hoard of the Dragon Queen using a virtual tabletop. A few sessions ago two of my players (fighter and barbarian) got tricked into signing a devils contract, one got +2 to stats and the other vital info for reaching an evasive unicorn. Fast forward to the next session, the Elturel arc comes to a close with a big fight against dragoncultists working together with Devils. A NPC they have rescued before is about to be sacrificed over a portal to Hell. This portal would try to charm you into jumping in DC 4 Wis save. However if you had signed a devils contract the DC would go up by 10 to 14. I made it clear that if you entered the portal your character would die. Low and behold the fighter rolled a 6 and proceeded towards the portal. I then gave all the others one full turn to try to get them away with contested strength checks. All 3 of which failed. On the fighter s next turn she jumped into hell and had a cool death scene rolling her last roll a Nat 20 to keep one good memory as all others corrupted and faded. Some of the other players thought it was too easy to get tricked into jumping into the portal, I think I have given them plenty warning and opportunity to stop it. I await your Verdict with bated breath.

ForkingCookware

Supreme Crit Justices and bailiff.... I wanna say Jonk, but that can't be right. I come to you with the case of People against the DDR of Doom. I was Dming a campaign in a modern setting that had used magic to bolster and improve technology. One of my players was a father looking for his missing son and the rest of the party agreed that rescuing a child was a bit more important than their own character development. In our 5th session the party me an Npc that used to work for the gang that stole the kid and he was talking to them while hiding in an arcade. 2 of the players began playing the Dance Dance Revolution and insisted on rolling for their skill and rolled very well. They continued to do this for the entire scene and so I eventually tell them that they defeated the mighty beast that was DDR and a wizard trapped inside offered them a gift. They insisted that the gift should be to return the child to the father, and after a lengthy talk as to why the wizard couldn't do that (he would need to know where the kid was first) the father than asked for a clone of the child instead saying he was willing to settle with that. This obviously made the rest of the party lose their minds but the dad insisted it was my fault for not just letting the wizard summon his son. Should I have allowed this players wish? Or maybe not have rewarded those high dancing roles with what I thought would have been a funny joke? I hold myself at the mercy of the Crit

Flying Mongeese

To the most honorable judges and that Jake guy, I present the case of the Denied Silvery Barbs. I was in a campaign where I played a Changeling Paladin and my friend played a home-brew race Sorcerer. We were fighting the BBEG on a falling rock that was launched into the sky by a volcano eruption. We ultimately decided to escape by opening a door to a demi-plane diner. However, the BBEG tried to stop us. After the BBEG succeeded a roll, the Sorcerer used Silvery Barbs to make the BBEG reroll. The DM countered saying that since we were falling, the sorcerer would have to roll concentration to see if they could focus enough to cast the spell. The Sorcerer had already cast many spells before we decided to flee with no check needed. We argued that this was uncalled for but let it go. Once inside the Diner, the BBEG tried again to stop us. Once again, Silvery Barbs. Although we were not falling anymore, the DM still said a concentration check had to be made. After failing the concentration again, the DM had his cool NPC get the BBEG out and save the day. I am still a little miffed to this day thinking the DM cheated the player out of using a spell. What do the judges say, was the DM right about this call and did it make the combat more interesting? Or are we right thinking that the sorcerer was jipped? I await your humble judgement.

Justin Broadbent

To the Holy Ones who speak in Crits name, I come before you, not to for a dice christ confessional but to see if this account can be elevated to a Dice Christ Miracle. I was playing in a campaign and my friend was a greenscaled Dragonborn bard. His backstory was that he was originally a gnome that through wild magic was turned into a dragonborn and he was searching for a way to turn back. While investigating a wizard's tower we discovered an experimental device that could potentially transform him back but our DM warned us that it had a special table that could turn the PC into crazy things such as a potted plant or even a Displacer beast however gnome was on the table. I having the most skill in arcane volunteered to man the device. I rolled a d 100 and got a 45 the DM looked at the table and said roll a d10, I got a 7. Out of all the possible combinations I got Greenscaled Dragonborn. So Grand ones is this a miracle of Dice Christ, I humbly await your judgment.

Cinnamon's #3 Fan

Honorable Justices and tepid bailiff. I bring to you the case of The Novelist DM. I had just moved to a new state to be with my online girlfriend (now wife) and knew absolutely no one in the area. After a few weeks at my new job, one of my coworkers mentioned being interested in D&D. Being experienced with AD&D and 3.x, I offered my experience in DMing 5e. Another coworker (we'll call him Tom) offered the same, and as a compromise, we agreed to alternating weeks, where I would DM one week and Tom would DM the next week. Everything went mostly fine, until Tom's game ended in a brutal TPK, where my Bard was killed ignominiously by a spiked pit, and the rest of the party had to save (at level 5 after a year of play) against a DC 20ish mass Hold Person, with only two of them making the save. They were told that they could not get past the other PCs, despite this taking place in an open chamber, and could only watch the bad guy steal the macguffin, ending the campaign in fire and darkness. Tom confided in me that the game had ended mostly because he hadn't liked the other players characters, feeling that they were cliche. It was disappointing, but we shrugged it off and I ran weekly for several months while Tom finished a homebrew world he'd been planning for a while. During this time, the other players jointly agreed that they wanted my campaign to end, and wanted to play in Tom's new homebrew world. I was again disappointed, but agreed, being somewhat excited for my new character, which Tom and I had been talking about for most of a year. I had bought an in-character journal prop, and was excited to get to know this level 1 wizard we'd both been eager to see played. My hopes were dashed when Tom TPK'd the entire party in the second session, when our second combat began with no perception check or stealth check as we were suddenly surrounded by 12 sahuagin warriors, each of them CR 1/2, attacking our level 1 party of 5. We died near immediately and Tom made noises about bad rolls. Furious, I asked him he hadn't asked us for perception checks, or used our passive perception. He attempted to wave the question off, and when I asked him why he'd sent an unwinnable by CR encounter at us, he claimed that the CR was easy. Angry, I left the room (we were playing at my house) and went to cool off. I informed him via email afterward that I didn't feel like writing a new character for his next campaign, and would be sitting out. I strongly suspect that he killed the party off due to not liking the player made characters again, and that Tom wanted to make us fit his story, like a novelist, rather than conforming the story to the players, like a DM. Was I wrong to get mad? Should I have kept my cool after my lizardfolk wizard was killed in the cradle? I await your judgement. (PS. I later found out from another player in all three campaigns that Tom convinced them to quit my campaign, telling them that I was tired of it but didn't want to say anything.)

Katherine Clarke

May it please the elegant, parental justices and gently lull to sleep the sweet baby boy bailiff. My first campaign as a DM lives on years later so my early missteps do as well. A player was briefly replaced with a doppelganger in a trap dungeon, which I asked him to play to keep the party unawares. Long story short, a homebrew mechanic allowing the doppelganger to inflict a blood curse on his druid in a last ditch effort to prevent the party from killing him combined with the player actually really loving playing him has landed me with a player who plays two characters who split damage between them (due to the blood curse theoretically meaning that killing one of them kills the other). The child-like shapechanger is not a huge problem but he is often distracted by shiny things, delays or avoids helping the party in battle (battles already take long enough as is since the party loves summons), and just makes killing the already hardy druid near impossible because of the damage splitting. They have had a cure for the blood curse for months irl but haven't used it, so they keep the doppelganger with them constantly to (in theory) keep him safe. Would it be criminal of me to kill the doppelganger (and possibly the druid with him) as an excuse to end their blood curse, so long as I make reviving them possible? I'm fine with having the doppelganger around, I just would like it if everyone was back to playing one character at a time (which I have mentioned to the player but have not pressed him on) since I have already had to turn one player down on introducing another character at the same time as their original one. I accept any punishment the court deems fair for my possible premeditated murder.

Polliwog

𝖙𝖔 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖊𝖝𝖆𝖑𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖈𝖗𝖎𝖙 𝖏𝖚𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖈𝖊𝖘 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘𝖚𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖛𝖊 𝖇𝖆𝖎𝖑𝖎𝖋𝖋 𝖏𝖆𝖐𝖊, i bring to you the case of the character-development starved party: after feeling the effects of intense DM-burnout at the beginning of the year (2023), i elected to vacate my spot at the head of the table to allow one of my players a shot at running a campaign they’d been “cooking up for years”. the other two players and i were enthusiastic about rolling up new characters for our new western/frontier themed campaign, and as such put much thought into their individual personalities. we ended up with a wild-magic barbarian running from his clown-guild past, a star druid with feywild-related amnesia, and a warlock indebted to a money-obsessed chili djinn. after playing for roughly 9 months, our character’s backstories have had little to no impact on the overall story whatsoever. when we have asked (on multiple occasions) for more personal narrative links between events, our DM has told us “they’re your characters, you decide when your backstory comes into play”. how could we politely address the fact that our game is feeling more like a prebuilt video-game environment than an involved tabletop fantasy game? or should we just be happy to be clowning around in a cardboard frontier town? we patiently await your ruling

AnxiousAmphibian

May this appease the great and unknowable Supreme Crit Justices, and the horrifying baliff Jake. A couple years ago I was playing a monk in a 5e game with a party of seven level five adventurers. In a fight against two Chimera, one of our wizards was in melee. I object interaction picked them up and step of the wind disengaged. The dm told me that he would take an opportunity attack on the wizard, since they had not disengaged. I argued that opportunity attacks only worked on creatures taking movement, which the wizard hadn't. To make my disengage not entirely pointless he agreed to roll an attack against me with disadvantage, and hit. I did not go down there, but the fight ended in a near tpk. So I humbly appeal to the court: should you get opportunity attacks on carried creatures?

Jack M

To the disgraced Supreme Court Justices and the diety who is Jebediah Hurstits, I bring to you a case of falling, A character of mine fell into a pit, 60 feet and there were spikes on the bottom, I cast feather fall as a reaction and my DM and I didn’t know how to rule it, 60 feet per round equates to nearly 7 miles an hour so hitting spikes at that speed has to hurt a little right? we ruled the spike damage would be halved but I feel I may have gotten off easy? What say you and your gravitational prowess?

Zaxbeez

To the munificent Court and the fourth-best 8BBC guest [1], I bring before you a case of unintentional player knowledge. In a campaign where one of my usual players tried his hand at DMing, I created a new character after leaving my old one at a monastery to learn from monk masters. The campaign was set in a place where New Gods and Old Gods were vying for worshipers, with Old Gods like Nature, Coin, and Strength being usurped by Gods of Cultivation, Economy, and Industry. I had discussed a new character with the DM and they really wanted the campaign to focus on the Gods’ struggle, so I made my character as a member of an ancient order who strove to enshrine the Old Gods’ power. When he met the party, he went off on a rant about how the New Gods were siphoning off worshipers of the Old Gods, so they had less power and couldn’t maintain the world as they once had; thus the New Gods must be eliminated to protect the world. Very “the new world sucks and we need a return to tradition” mindset that I’d wanted to explore and grow out of, being that he was 22 and was just regurgitating what he’d been told by his order. I had just kind of made up my rant, and clarified out of character to the party that my guy thought he was right, but that didn’t mean the DM had told me this information. The DM then said “No, that’s right. To fix the world you need to get rid of the New Gods.” Justices, am I wrong for being disappointed that my character’s worldview was immediately justified and correct with no effort, or should I have been glad to so fully understand my DM’s world that I nailed the cosmology on the first try? I humbly await your judgement. [1] Susanna Wolff (The Lore of Mortal Kombat), Nathan Yaffe (Caldwell’s Lore Corner: Skyrim), Jasper Willian Cartwright (The Vampire Express, Monster Mix-up), Jake something, who cares.

Apple Slapple

To the High Priests where church and state shake hands often, I come to thee with a confession where I changed the mechanics of a monater mid-battle to avoid a PC death. My friends and I recently finished the Spelljammer module that I DM'd. Early on they faced a Void Scaaver, a giant space fish that swallows its enemies whole and deals acid damage while inside. The ships PC captain was swallowed by this monster and since they were only lvl5 at the time, lost nearly all their HP from that single attack. This was the first round. Trapped inside the stomach the only way out was to deal 30 damage from Inside the stomach and force the scaaver to make a con saving throw. Death was all but guaranteed. This is where my sin begins. No one at the table had experienced a PC death before, and I had never killed a PC before as DM. It felt like the table lost a lot of it's energy and I personally felt a little guilty for the sudden lethal damage so I secretly changed the monster's mechanics in that moment. Instead of having to do damage on the inside, I also allowed for damage on the outside to force a con saving throw. One well rolled fireball from our Wizard later and the Captain was spit up and saved. Everyone was excited by the clutch play, even myself, but now I can't help but to feel that I strayed from Dice Christ's will. High Priests of the Divine Crit, did I make the right choice by keeping the ships PC captain alive? Or did I turn my back on dice christ by changing the monster's mechanics mid battle and rob the table of a very important DnD experience? The guilt weighs heavy on my dice and I will accept any punishment necessary to free myself of it. P.S. I truly believe I would have done this for any party member in that moment but that PC captain just so happens to be my Fiancé.

IMRYAN

May it please the court The masterfully magical genius adult judges And the big ol baby Cake I’m running a campaign with my sister, girlfriend and 3 other friends. In the most recent session after defeating a group of enemies whose bodies morphed into monster creatures one of them was left behind and reverted to his human form but retained a backwards broken elbow. After questioning and killing him my sister decided she wanted to cut his broken arm off and try to use it as a boomerang I told her that if I let u do this you’ll have disadvantage on attacks this upset her and the party as they all thought it would be hilarious we ended with her using it as a slapping skeleton hand as a strength weapon with 1D4 damage. Should I have let her use it as a boomerang or were they being a group of silly geese. I await a response and a punishment for the sentenced.

Ziv like Steve

[Ziv rhymes with Steve] May it please the Crit and burden the Bailiff, I present the case of the NPC Affair and IRL Marriage. I run a homebrew campaign for my partner and three of our friends, in a horror setting where the party's home town was claimed by a Lich in session 1. One player wanted their character to have a wife -- no problem. When they escaped the town from the Lich, most of the civilians were left behind, including (determined by the dice) the wife. Months passed as the party accumulates power, with this player having one driving goal: I must rescue my wife. Lo and behold, last session, they heisted the town and freed all of the villagers, including the wife. Gently foreshadowed in scrys over the time were some hints -- the wife was not wearing the ring. The wife was spending a lot of time with the incredibly old and weak village wizard (also a captee). And on an insight check from the party cleric, it was revealed: the wife has been having a strictly-emotional nonphysical affair with the wizard, and the marital relationship with the player's character is over. The player, who happens to be my wife IRL, is upset that I did this without consulting her. I did not want the NPC to become a docile and loving follower for me to have to juggle once rescued and thought it would be a fun and edgy twist. I come before you now: Did I have a duty to consult my player(wife) before having her NPC partner (her wife) cheat on her? (P.S. For the avoidance of doubt, no IRL marital issues--purely tabletop!)

Audro Baggins

To the Honorable Justices especially ms. wife worm OH and of course Baliff Jake uh (enter sassy comment here). I come before you looking for justice and to hopefully find the answers I seek with the Case of the Flatulent Paladin. I am currently playing in a larger party with my sweet bf DM'ing. The party is actually comprised of couples which is great but also can be awkward to say the least. We are playing in a dark Ravenloft setting battling Strahd. We had been playing for a few sessions when our cleric asked the DM if her bf could join the party - he had a character and was skilled in D&D play + DM'ing. Our DM agreed and viola we had a new party member. I'd love to say it started out great, but from the get go - he came in HOT. Correcting the DM (which rubbed me the wrong way as he is also my bf) in condescending ways, farting and burping A LOT, and constant small mocking comments that put down other characters often including his gf. I noticed quickly how quiet she became in gameplay while also asking him if he thought she should use spells or save them/etc. I notice when he is like this, the rest of the party including my bf the DM, kind of avoids the confrontation but it feels like our table is suffocated by his presence and I personally feel less and less excited to play. I try to avoid intervening with my bf as the DM but I have told him how this is making me and the other players feel. I also do attempt to call him out when he jumps in on my character role playing to comment on how I'm playing, to have him just say things like -'RELAX!' or "I'm just joking, don't be so serious!" So I ask you, what can be done about this stinky Paladin with bad gas and a bad attitude? Is our DM being too avoidant in not calling him out? Any advice on the best way to approach the situation? I await your judgment, thank you! Signed, a Thicc Dwarven Monk, in a funk over the new Paladin party member who stunk

Doctor Ransom

To the most Honorable Supreme Crit justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the all around super chill broliff Jorsh, I offer my case henceforth known as “The Night of Too Many Crits.” I recently DM’ed a Candlekeep Mysteries one-shot involving a vicious order of surfer dude monks that the party had to defeat. I was running the game through Discord and had the players roll digitally using their DNDbeyond character sheets, while I was rolling my physical dice. Dice Christ was feeling rather abundantly kind towards me this night as I landed several crits on their characters. One player in particular, a Goliath Barbarian who took no less than 3 brutal crits in one encounter, started to get muy picante with me and suggested I switch my dice to digital as it seemed way too suspicious. There was no way I could prove to him that I wasn’t lying as he couldn’t see any of my rolls. I was honestly baffled as I normally roll horribly whenever I DM games, so I too was doubting my own good fortune. I lay humbly before the feet of our holy Lord of Crits and beg for absolution. Tell me dear Justices, was I wrong to not roll digitally with the dudes or should I harbor no guilt over what was truly my dice’s finest hour?

margot d

To the court, I present for your consideration, the case of the passionate party member. When setting up for our party’s second campaign, a pretty classic kids on bikes game, the group talked a lot about backstory and world building and the DM really made us feel like our choices shaped that world(it was awesome). But after our initial session doing that one of the other party members had a lot of correspondence with the DM about different things about not only her character but about the world and it seems, about our characters as well. She keeps adding core story elements from other people’s characters into her backstory, and she’s spoken to the DM so much that her opinions/ideas about the other PCs have been made canon by the DM. My character’s age and a good section of her personality and backstory got changed to better fit her idea of the world. I spoke up about it and the DM was apologetic and changed the details back but it seems like it’s still happening. I’ve also been talking to the DM about stuff about my character and the world but our conversations feel overpowered by the choices she’s made and it makes me feel like she’s the only actual PC in the game and the rest of us are just set dressing. I know it’s because she’s excited about the campaign so I don’t want to shut her down, but how do I nicely say “hey dude you’re not the only player” without being rude since the DM hasn’t addressed it? They’ve been friends longer than the rest of the party has so I’m worried this pattern might repeat if we keep playing together.

Zaxbeez

To the munificent Court and the fourth-best 8BBC guest [1], I bring before you a case of epilogue PvP. In a campaign I ran, my players had some tension throughout as one of the players played a Fire Genasi monk with anger issues (Using the addiction mechanics from Unsleeping City season 2). My player tried to get her anger under control, but Dice Christ must have really wanted the drama. Almost every time something triggered the monk, she would fail the save and explode in fire, damaging everything and everyone around her. The other players expressed frustration that this kept happening, and it eventually turned into the other characters (justifiably) not trusting the monk. We changed mechanics to be something less explosive, but it was still a narrative pain. About halfway through the campaign, we let the mechanic die off since it was inhibiting fun. Narratively, the monk got the plane that was feeding into her anger sealed off. A few months of sessions later, and the campaign was coming to a close. Barely scraping through the fight with a universe-devouring BBEG, the other 2 players assumed the mantles of gods as the monk had been taken to unconsciousness. I asked them what they wanted to do with their new powers, and one player restored the monk to 1 HP and put her on a mountaintop, saying she couldn’t be trusted with Godhood since she had caused so much destruction through her anger. Since this was during the epilogue narration, I didn’t know how to maneuver something good for the monk, and she really got shafted out of a satisfying ending of our year-long campaign. Justices, was I wrong to be so laissez-faire with the epilogue at the cost of one player’s satisfaction or should I have argued more for my monk and pushed for her to attain her goals? I humbly await your judgement. [1] Susanna Wolff (The Lore of Mortal Kombat), Nathan Yaffe (Caldwell’s Lore Corner: Skyrim), Jasper Willian Cartwright (The Vampire Express, Monster Mix-up), Jake something, who cares.

Gabriel Mauch

Most esteemed justices, may it please the court. I ran a level 1 to level 20 campaign with my group that took years to finish. Now in our current campaign, I'm playing a lil raccoon-folk butler named Mr. Flooflesnoots. As a former forever DM, I'm a plot hound. I'm the person at the table who takes notes and I'm always moving the story along. I've been asking for a gun for like a year of weekly sessions, almost every session. My DM won't give me a gun. I'm not even proficient with firearms. In closing, during my campaign her character ascended to godhood. I'm only asking for a gun. PS - Thanks for reading this Jake. You did a really good job. I think you'd be a great guest on the podcast "8 Bit Book Club".

Jacob Haselden

To the well-groomed Justices and the scruffy bailiff, I submit to you the case of the digital dungeoneer. I recently started a new homebrew campaign with a few friends, and up until recently it has been going quite well! Everyone came up with fun backstories, and we've had a few great sessions with a warforged cleric and their artificial god, a hillbilly half-orc fighter, and finally... a rogue that had been kidnapped, experimented on, and granted mysterious powers. As we play, it has slowly become more and more apparent that my rogue is roleplaying their character from the game Baldur's Gate 3. Now, usually I wouldn't have a problem with homebrewing in certain mechanics from the game, but my rogue is becoming more and more blatant that his character is FROM the game, referencing other characters and plot points from BG3. I understand that the game has absolutely taken over every DnD player's life, and I do think it's kind of cute (i'm addicted to the game as well) but my homebrew campaign isn't really designed to intersect with the lore of Baldur's Gate. So I beg of you to tell me. Justices, am I a Baldur's Gatekeeper? Or should I tell my player to maintain a separation between tabletop and desktop (PC).

Elle2128

To the Honorable Judges and Baliff, I bring before you a single decision that has haunted me for years, by way of all the other players continuing to bring it up. I was playing in my first campaign (was the first for all of us, DM included) in the Mines of Phandelver. We came upon a statue of a Dwarven god in the mines that was described as "holding its hands up, and sitting on its hands was a gem". We sensed a trap, and decided that instead of taking the gem, we would just take the whole statue with us. That did not set anything off and we left the mines with it putting us what I thought was in the clear. Since it was a statue of their god, we agreed to give the statue to the dwarves outside of the mine. When passing it over, I took the gem out of the statues hands, because in my opinion the gem was not a part of the statue, but simply sitting on the statue, as one might put display an item on a side table. Needless to say, this set off the trap, killing one of the dwarves and injuring another and the members of the party. My party turned on me very quickly for this, and we had very heated debate about whether or not the gem was technically a part of the statue. I still hold to this day that with how it was described, the gem was not an actual part of the statue, it was simply resting in the hands of it. To note, I recently looked up the details of this campaign online, and my DM had even changed the description, which originally said that the statue had gems for eyes, and the trap was set to collapse the cave it was found in if you tried to take them. Was I truly wrong? Did I murder a dwarf and also steal from them? Please judge me and let this matter finally be behind me.

Herr Fryer

I have a Dice Christ confession to humbly lay before the noble high priests and novice Jake. I’ve been listening to your podcast for years but have a separate confession of my own - I have never actually played DnD. However my 12 year old daughter, having watched stranger things (no that’s not the confession either) decided she wanted to join her school’s club. They spent the first session creating characters and were just about to start mines of phandelver. She came home really excited and insisted we go buy the stater set from our local (quite pricy) DND store and play the game ourselves- the problem is the starter set only had the mines of phandelver as a campaign and I as a very new Dm was worried if we played it it would ruin her game at school. She insisted though so I created some npcs to help her wizard and off we went. First part of the campaign is a goblin ambush, she insists on her wizard investigating the two dead horses in the road, so following the guide I have a goblin pop up and attack her. The goblin goes first, hits and I get a 6 on the d6, which is enough for her wizard to get knocked unconscious on the first hit of the campaign. I quickly arranged an additional npc, who happened to have health potions, being asleep in the back of the waggon, and with the help of him and another npc meat shield her wizard was able to happily firebolt and minor illusion her way through the first dungeon, after which we agreed to stop until I had found a new campaign. But my worry is that first goblin attack was imbued with the holy fury of Dice Christ for the sin of revealing story arcs to a player. Please reassure me that I haven’t cursed her DnD life before it began. (Or mine).

Benjamin Dale IV

The Case of the Failed Astral Pirate: Hello Honorable Judges and Daddy Bailiff, I played 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 was 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? P.S. the DM's girlfriend told me he had said the session before that myself and the other PC "are cockroaches who refuse to die"... I eagerly await your decision.

Figgy Blue

The Case of the Bizarre Music Good [insert time here] magnanimous, magnificent, and majestic judges and whoever voices Calder. I was a player in an online game with a few people I don’t know, when we entered a dungeon and fought a kinda mecha-monster. The problem is less in the game and more if what music the dm put on as battle music, which turned from 1920 fast jazz to voiced songs like Mr.Sandman and life would be a dream. Judge’s and the mediocre voice actor, was i wrong to silently turn off the dms music to turn on different music for myself? I bow my head in deference to your judgement .

Benjamin Dale IV

The Case of the Failed Astral Pirate: Hello Honorable Judges and Daddy Bailiff, I played 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 was 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? P.S. the DM's girlfriend told me he had said the session before that myself and the other PC "are cockroaches who refuse to die"... I eagerly await your decision.

Jean-Philippe Haineault

To the highly honorable wise old justices and the toddler bailiff Jake. I present the case of the shredded character sheet. I play a monk in a campaign with some friends. The problem started at the end of an arc, a member of the party was insta killed after rolling a Nat 1 on a constitution saving throw against a life stealing artifact that a party member was using to seal an ancient evil. His sacrifice allowed us to save a country and the lawful evil shaman PC was based around his familiar being able to reincarnate him through possession of a new body. So it didn't seem too bad. However after he expressed his wish to go find an innocent to possess, I felt like I could not let him sneak away. So I chased him, expecting to either arrive too late or catch up and talk him into possessing a body in a coma or something similarly more ethical. I ended up barely catching him and pushing him away from his victim but before I could say anything, the player stood up and ripped his character sheet to pieces. Saying he was done playing the character since he couldn't play him as he wished. I apologized and offered alternatives such as taking it back or saying that I had knocked the man into a coma when I pushed him away, but he was adamant. It obviously put an abrupt halt to the session and left things awkward. We talked after the game and he explained to me that he was more mad at the GM for killing his character so suddenly and that there was no bad blood. But I can't help but feel like I took it too far by interfering with his character reincarnation. The next session he arrived with a new character that fit better into the group and all is well. But I wonder if I acted like an annoying lawful good paladin. Please show mercy on my soul or my friend's for our next reincarnation. Thank you

Tori Lynn

I have a confession. I am a first time DM and I am running a Journeys Through The Radiant Citadel Campaign. One of the players has been failing every roll for multiple adventures in a row. I've given inspiration when great ideas did not pan out, but I could tell the player was feeling dejected and starting to not have fun. During a particularly rough rolling session, we needed to roll opposed checks. Their strength vs a cultists dex. The player rolled a 6 and I rolled a 13 behind the screen, but I pretended it was a 3 to give them a cool moment at the end of a morale sucking session. While the player seems cursed, I believe I am at fault for not knowing how to raise the energy of the table without lying. I hope Dice Christ can forgive me.

Swoleveig

To the esteemed, most honorable judges and whoever else may be in the room: I present the case of the unlucky luck check. One of my players asked if there was a specific object in a room they were in. It was a reasonable assumption but not guaranteed and I wasn't sure so I asked for a luck check. I told the player they would have to get lucky for the object to be there. The player rolls a 10 and gets excited. I broke the news to them that wasn't lucky, they would have needed an 11 or higher. My thought process there was: 1-10 is unlucky; 11-20 is lucky. At best, a 10 would be neutral. The player argued that nothing can be truly neutral, because it should either help or hurt the player. They brought up for example, that death saves needed a 10 to be a success. To that, I said that was intentionally weighted to favor the player. Cheekily I now require that player to roll an 11 or higher on death saves for success, since they keep bringing it up. It's been a friendly but earnest back and forth between us for the last several months. Was I being a hardass DM or was I right to say a 10 wasn't lucky?

Alex L

To the glorious judges and and also Joke! Today, I bring to you the case of the puzzling paladin. This happened a couple years ago, and not even to me, but I am still baffled by it to this day. So, our level 5 party was in the middle of combat when the fighter failed a save and was blinded. In character, the fighter yelled out, “Ah! I cannot see!” Next up was the paladin. The paladin was standing next to the fighter and earlier that day had cast the spell “Lesser Restoration” to heal the monk and still had a second level spell. The fighter was surrounded by enemies that would all have advantage on the fighter as he could not see. The paladin went immediately after the fighter and right before the slew of enemies and decided to use his turn to instead give the help action to the rogue. When asked “why?!?” he said, “My paladin doesn’t understand his magic, so he wouldn’t know to cast that spell.” The reason this baffles me is that we started at level 1 and had made it to level 5 and the fact that he had used the spell earlier that day. I was mad because my mostly wizard/ a little bit of cleric character then had to spend her next turn healing the fighter from all of the advantaged hits on him. Please tell me, was the paladin right to stick to his character choice or was it time to “understand” his magic in a deadly situation?

Niko R.

To the Justices of the Crit and the disbarred Bailiff, Jill’s on-paper Husband. I bring to you the case of the surprise reincarnation. Years ago, my DM ran a one-shot when our regular DM couldn’t make it. For fun, me and 3 others at the table surprised our DM by making all of our characters half-siblings. The party consisting of myself being the washed up actor Nemo Horsedaddy (Human), the cleric Urra Horsedaddy (Half-elf), and the twins Lil Phil Horsedaddy (Half-orc) and Clem Horsedaddy (Man-taur, half man/half another man). The reason they’re twins is because our father, Daddy Horsedaddy, sired them in what he described as an “objectively hot threesome”. The party also has a ranger and a 2nd barbarian, but we’ve confirmed that they aren’t Horsedaddy’s. It was fun, we were basically the four Horsedaddy Issues of the Apocalypse, and our DM had to leave the room mid character introductions. Good times. Cut to now, we are doing a full re-booted campaign with these characters. A few sessions in, I died and was revivified for the first time, during which I learned that the one-shot where we had died wasn’t a shared dream. We had in fact died and had worked as reapers for the Raven Queen for 900+ years before cutting a deal to reset the timeline and be sent back to before our untimely death. The one-shot was canon! Since I had been the only one that had died, I was the only one who has regained those memories. So when an opportunity arose that another player would go down, the cleric Urra said he would let them die and then revivify them so they can also get their memories from the alternate timeline. However, when Lil Phil died. Urra didn’t cast revivify and instead waited so that Clem could cast reincarnate instead! It was a conspiracy Clem and Urra, the two IRL roommates concocted! We all thought it was funny, but at the same time it caused a lot of heated argument. Since Lil Phil wasn’t necessarily willing, would he just be permanently dead because of joke gone wrong? Lil Phil had been built stat-wise around being a half-orc and a lot of his story has gone into his ancestral roots, so it would have ruined most of that. In the end Urra’s PC said “people are getting too upset over this” and said “let’s just retcon this and say I did a healing word instead, but next time any of you go down you’re getting reincarnated”. So I ask Justices and Bailiff, should our group have gone through with the reincarnation of my half-orc half-brother or was the back peddle the right move? Is it just for us all to live under threat of reincarnation from here on out? I await your hammer of justice. Side note: I, Nemo Horsedaddy, was their intended target for this goof since I had already died twice in our re-booted campaign. Once to Daddy Horsedaddy. If it’s not clear, the campaign is heavy on generational trauma.

Mo

To the benevolent Crit Justices and the Bailiff (who I hope has a day as lovely as he is) I bring the case of the Targeted Druid. After playing mostly martial class himbos I had decided to play a Druid with social anxiety to change up the pace. My DM agreed, but I got the sense that he wasn't thrilled by the idea. We started at level one and first session he revealed that this world negatively viewed magic, so even using a small cantrip while fighting rats would be a bit of a big deal. I was stunned and reflected how he had been reluctant about my choice, but figured it would actually work well with my backstory so I didn't say anything. Our first quest was that we were tasked by the local priest to collect some holy relics that were stolen before the full moon in 5 days. On the way there was a forest that we could go through to supposedly cut 2 days off the journey, I asked to roll a survival check to see if it actually would and if there is anything we should be aware of that would delay us. I rolled a 19, with mods and a guidance a 22. The DM said it would so my character, in their first act of backbone, convinced the party to go through the forest. There was no additional roll before, halfway through the woods we were accosted by an Ogre. This left most of the party gravely injured and fleeing and instead of cutting 2 days it cost us 2 days. Thankfully out of character no one was irritated, but there was no way for the characters to just shrug it off and the DM made it a point to reiterate the point about magic that both me and the only other magic user (sorcerer) had used. The campaign fell apart soon after due to scheduling, but I couldn't help but feel targeted by the DM. Am I overthinking everything and it was just bad luck or was I targeted? I humbly submit to your ruling!

Brother Corvus

To the Honorable Crit Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner and the criminally underrated Jek. I bring you the case of the choker choking our campaign. I am a first time DM running the Curse of Strahd campaign for my fiancé and one of my best friends. My fiancé is playing a prestigious Dragonborn Paladin with a massive ego and my best friend is playing a Human Barbarian who has a choker that is imbued with a demon that keeps them mute. I didn’t think much of this in the first session but I noticed my fiancé was frustrated afterwards. We talked and she wanted to interact with my best friends character more but most of the time they would just nod along with whatever she was saying. I talked to my best friend about this on the side to find out if he even wanted his character to speak. He did want them to speak and kind of boxed himself into a corner. This is how the Seam Ripper was born. The Seam Ripper is a magic item that I homebrewed and can be used to tear cursed cloth. After getting my party to the Death House in Session 2 and running through it in Sessions 2 and 3 I had the Barbarian find small details tied to their backstory in the house. The final reveal after defeating the Shambling Mound was a chest with the Seam Ripper inside. They cut their choker and were able to speak again. They set the demon free but heard a menacing threat as it disappeared. The following night they were attacked by the demon in the middle of the night, they defeated it for now but this is not the end. I ask, did I make the right choice by putting the Seam Ripper in this early? Should I have waited to add more build-up? I patiently await your ruling.

JC

To the judges and today's guest (welcome to the pod Jacob), I bring to you the case of the too brutal nat 1. In my first DND game in 2019 we played in Basic Edition (the very first DND edition where magic items were hard to come by and your race was your class if you were an elf, dwarf or halfling) and my DM had a rule for nat 1s. If you rolled one on an attack role your weapon broke. No check, no durability bar, nada. Just a 5% chance your weapon broke. Your weapon hit the roof of the cave or it hit the wall and shattered. Magic weapons broke too, which in Basic Edition where magic items were extremely few and far between was especially disheartening. I no longer play with this DM but I ask the court, am I wrong to think my old DM is a craven bastard, or he is just in his ruling of nat 1s.

DarlingBun Doodles

To the honorable Crit Justices whom handle the judgment of the Bailiff, I come to you with the case of The Immunity Contract. A few years ago, I played one of my first campaigns as a warlock under the control of an evil god named Mangus so he could avenge his killed family. After a saucy romance with a goddess, he managed to convince her to try and bring them back to life. He found out Magnus had tricked him and was the one holding his family’s souls hostage. After a tense battle they defeated the god and in return for his life they drafted a contract that promised the god would never hurt the party or the warlock's family ever again physically or mentally-directly or indirectly. If he did so he would instantly die. Before he could be reunited there was an apparently planned TPK by the bbeg that we ended the campaign on. A few months later the next campaign began. It was a sequel just a year or so after the first. With the excited agreement of the DM I decided to play my warlocks revived cool older brother. He was a Rogue-Cleric multiclass and when we began to play as soon as they heard his name my party was excited to play with him. He became a problem however when the plot took hold, we were trapped in a pocket dimension and forced to battle the bbeg minions who wanted to enslave us and use us for evil deeds. After losing the battle with the much stronger NPCs we learned their boss was Magnus who controls the entire dimension. I said aloud in excitement, “Magnus? Magnus can't hurt me!” The DM seemed confused at first, but quickly realized. I explained to the new players that Magnus can't hurt my character to the contract even if by accident or he’d die. The Dm suddenly announced that he needed to look over his plans and then called the session soon after. For two weeks after he refused to bring up the campaign saying that the whole campaign rested around Magnus. I insisted that this was the last thing my warlock did to keep his family safe, and he can find a work around. I left soon after due to personal reasons but here I ask…Was I wrong for refusing to let up on the dying contract to keep my PC safe from one God, or should I have relented for the sake of my DMs campaign and sanity?

Bebs

To the honorable justices and the decent jacob, I present the case of the campaign ending rings. A few years ago, I was running a virtual session as my first time DMing. In my party was a blood hunter dragonborn who insisted on flying off to random towns and killing random innocents, and I and some players were getting tired of it. I came up with a solution of gifting the party with rings, whose wearers couldn't be more than a couple hundred feet apart or they'd start to take damage. Half the party greatly appreciated this and immediately put one on the dragonborn. The other half yelled at me that these rings are a real item and would cost way more than what they got them for and would end up breaking the game if they tried to sell them. I said in this world they aren't worth that much. The argument escalated to one player telling me I was a terrible DM and the dragonborn slowly walking away with the ring on, taking damage until he died in the town square. The campaign ended then. Should I not have given the party these rings? Did I take away my player's freedom? I wait your graceful judgement. PS we took murph's advice and got new friends and play weekly with a group of peeps. (One being said dragonborn who is now a much better player, and myself a much better DM) PPS My husband and I are flying from KC to see yall in Denver!!!

Tallerballer

To the gallant justices and the plebeian bailiff Jeremy of the Crit, I bring to you the case of the panther high jump. Our gnome ranger, Gnomeo, and his faithful panther companion Luna had fallen (or were maybe pushed by another member of the party) into a 10ft empty well, opa-Lassie style. Gnomeo climbed on Luna’s back and attempted to use the panther’s jump to get out of the well. Our DM, not liking fun, ruled that was not possible, spawning an hour long argument about panther jump heights. Our dear friend Gnomeo Googled actual panther jump height, and insanely, they can jump 15 feet in real life. Our DM stuck to their guns and we ended up having to rope and pulley system Gnomeo and Luna out of the well. Justices, was our DM right or were Gnomeo and Luna robbed of an Olympic level high jump performance?

Alexa Patterson

To the esteemed Justices and that other guy, I present a case of the disagreeing DMs. My boyfriend is a forever DM and I recently started DMing some one shots. We have both been players in the other's campaigns. The question I pose to you is a matter we disagree on: who should ask for rolls? My boyfriend thinks players should ask for rolls, not the DM. I think that the DM should ask for rolls but that it's okay if a player wants to ask for a roll, say a perception or insight check. Who is in the right here? I humbly accept whatever sentence you see fit.

Waddle Bawddle

Hello honorable justices and… uh… I come to you with the case of the Stolen Character Moment. I was DMing a campaign for three of my friends. One session, they sieged a city that was once ruled by a PC’s family with the exiled prince. They successfully captured the guy who had taken over the city, the PC’s half brother. The prince gave PC 1 the choice of what to do with him. Right as PC 1 was going to decide, another PC stepped in a beheaded the half bro. Everyone tried to stop him including the other player, but he succeeded on all his strength rolls. It’s been 3 years and none of us have forgotten this. Are we right to still never trust this player around any big choices? Thank ya sweeties

Tannicglint285

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the lowly but holy bailiff and father Jake, I bring to you the case of the Dracarys blade. May it please the court. I have been running a campaign around a year now, and near the beginning of the campaign, I gave one of my players (my girlfriend) the Flame Tongue sword. This came about because a lot of the creatures I put them against were resistant or immune to non-magical damage, which effected two players in my party specifically. After a few rounds where my girlfriend was unable to damage the stone golems with her greatsword, she became dejected and upset with me, saying she was upset she couldn’t do anything to help. There were chests around the tower that had a random magic item in them if they rolled above a 5 on a d20. She didn’t even roll spectacularly well, but to keep her happy and in the fight, I hinted towards a chest and within she found the Flame Tongue sword. In hindsight, I should’ve just made her deal with it, much like the other player who was fine with not hitting as much, but is a monk so used their speed to help the other party members outrun the golems instead of fight. Note: she normally would have done 4d6 damage with the flame tongue, but I homebrewed it to 2d6 (1d6 fire/1d6 slashing) to keep it more fair to the encounters and other players. So honorable judges and bailiff, was I wrong to give her an item and not the other non-magic player? Or to have given her this item at all? I humbly await the judgement of the court.

KennyH

To the Honorable Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner. Oh I forgot that BARFLIFF guy? Anyways, I bring you the case of the burnt spellbook. My friend was a complete noob to DnD, he had joined a campaign-in-progress I was in. He played a bladsinging wizard, ran by a veteran DM, and also there were several veteran players. The DM's world was rough, and he was a stickler for the rules. Welp, my friend lost his spellbook three times in the campaign. The first instance was deciding his character would go off by himself in a shady part of town. The DM had him encounter bandits, he was womped and robbed of everything. My friend soon found out that having no spellbook is AWFUL mechanically, and RAW very expensive to replace. He was flat out, not having fun playing a wizard without a spellbook. I felt bad, but he eventually replaced it. Second instance, the party had to jump into a canal to escape, the DM narrated that his spellbook became waterlogged and ruined, when my friend objected, the DM ruled that since he had not specifically sought out water-proofing or a waterproof case, that the spellbook was ruined. Frankly, I am shocked he did not quit the game, but thankfully, we had come into some serious gold, so buying replacement spell book and ink was no problem. The third (and final) time, I am ashamed to say, by my own hand. His character had stolen my character's secret poetry book, that I had been filling with poems she had written the past 7+ months we were playing the game, adding a new one each session. He had his character reading the poetry out loud. Embarrassing her greatly. I did what I thought she would do, she stole his spellbook and threatened to burn it to a crisp, unless he stopped reading her poems right now. He continued to read the poems, so I said to the DM "I cast firebolt on his spellbook". The look of utter betrayal on my friends face as my DM narrates his book being burned to a crisp, haunts me to this day. He narrated his character just walking away from the party down the road, ignoring any attempts to talk to him. Leaving the campaign. So I ask thee Justices, did I do my friend dirty, should I have maybe just light a single ember of the corner of the page? Or was this hurt exacerbated by the DM's brutal ruling on the canal jump / complete womping and theft of his first spellbook? I beseech thee, give us a fair and just ruling, to save our friendship.

Sean Johnson

Hi nerds and Jake, I recently was told by my group that the first game we played together, one of the players who no longer plays with us played a dragonborn bard who hit on all my NPCs. Apparently i eventually got sick of this, and said to his face "You succeed, and you and her go spend the night together and have lots of sex. Are you happy now?" The bard did not hit on any of my NPCs again. Here's the issue. I have 0 memory of this whatsoever, and hearing this, I thought it sounded like a dick move. Do I need to be punished for my actions, or was I justified? Please help me find peace.

Tannicglint285

Ps, the vocal command for the sword is “dracarys”

Steven Hamonic

Submitted to the Court, via that one guy... Jonk? Jilk? It's something with a J. The case of the "Legendary" Resistance. Last session, our party is fighting a boss and his goons. We dispatch the boss with an astonishing three crits in a row from our Paladin and Rogue. Dice Christ is on our side! Then we turn to blow up his goons, two necromancers. Our wizard casts disintegrate on one of them for 91 damage, he succeeds his save by 1. I cast Silvery Barbs and force him to re-roll, He fails! Our DM then says those dreaded words: "he uses a legendary resistance". My question for the court: should a flunky, a conscript, a *mook*- should he have a legendary resistance, or were we robbed of Dice Christ's Blessings?

Jake Johnson

To the honorable justices and the fancy glad lad Jake the dad, I humbly stand forth to bring to you the Case of the Fighter Wanna Fight. I was invited to an ongoing D&D campaign by a friend of mine who was the DM. 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 deception. I proffered himself before the cultists saying he would be a great asset as he was incapable of dying, 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 of a way to get the cultists to help us get to the relic but the fighter put a stop to that. Instead, he went ahead and attacked the cultists. The bard in the group argued with him about the decision to which the fighter replied, “What’s the point? We’re gonna have to fight them anyway.” I also felt miffed by the action but since I was the new guy I didn't say anything nor continue the argument. 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 plead who was in the right in this predicament? Am I right to feel slighted or should I respect the fighter wanting to fight? I leave the judgement to the court.

KennyH

To the Honorable Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner. Oh I forgot that BARFLIFF guy? Anyways, I bring you the case of the burnt spellbook. My friend was a complete noob to DnD, he had joined a campaign-in-progress I was in. He played a bladsinging wizard, ran by a veteran DM, and also there were several veteran players. The DM's world was rough, and he was a stickler for the rules. Welp, my friend lost his spellbook three times in the campaign. The first two instances are a case for another time. Let’s just say, he was flat out NOT having fun playing a wizard without a spellbook. The third (and final) time, I am ashamed to say, by my own hand. His character had stolen my character's secret poetry book that I had been filling with poems she had written the past 7+ months we were playing the game, adding a new one each session. He had his character reading the poetry out loud to the party. Embarrassing her greatly. I did what I thought she would do, (a light domain cleric with anger issues) she stole his spellbook and threatened to burn it to a crisp, unless he stopped reading her poems right now. He continued to read the poems, so I said to the DM "I cast firebolt on his spellbook". The look of utter betrayal on my friends face as my DM narrates his book being burned to a crisp, haunts me to this day. He narrated his character just walking away from the party down the road, ignoring any attempts to talk to him. Leaving the campaign. So I ask thee Justices, did I do my friend dirty? Did I perhaps go full nuclear when I could have gone more tactical? Should I have just torn a page out and burnt that? Or was this just a lesson that he had failed to learn twice prior, coming to an inevitable result? I beseech thee, give us a fair and just ruling, to save our friendship.

Shane Danisher

To the papal justices and the pastoral bailiff, I present the case of the ring of light. I was running a homebrew short campaign with some friends who were hunting down a group of cultists attempting to resurrect a powerful vampire. During the penultimate session, the players were navigating through three woods towards a cabin where the cultists had disappeared to and the party was attempting to stealthily approach. However a couple people in the party didn’t have night vision and a thick tree canopy obscured the moon light from reaching the road they traveled on. This caused the bard of the group to use his ring of light to cast a light down and in front of him. As the group approached the cabin they rolled at disadvantage and failed the stealth check because of the flashlight ring. This caused some chaos and playful arguing at the table about whether the light could have been controlled enough to be seen from two hundred feet away. To be fair this wasn’t the only reason I’d ruled for the roll at disadvantage because the group was arguing about using light leading to them approaching the path. I determined that they were so embroiled in arguing about the light that they didn’t notice how close they’d gotten to the cabin and the element of surprise was lost. The party was playful about it and still argue jokingly about it to this day and ultimately prevailed over the bbeg.However I still ask, was I wrong to have had the group roll at disadvantage due to the ring light? Or is it silly bordering on insane to think you can stealthily approach a lone cabin in the woods on the road with a light and not get noticed? I humbly await your decision and will mete out punishment upon myself or the party as to the decree of the judicial triumvirate.

Mr BirdClaw

To the Crinkle-Cut Justices and Angus Beef Bailiff: I present the case of the Absent Player Death Save: Early in my time as a DM, I ran the first part of the Strixhaven module for my friends. This a magic school adventure, I assumed the module would account for a party made up exclusively of squishy arcane casters. I was wrong. Every fight they would try to approach from as far as possible, and flee from any monster that came within 60 feet. After the first combat, we talked it out and 2 players (the sorcerer and warlock) were willing to go up to the frontline during combat, but no one was interested in re-statting for close-range. The final fight of the module required they collect a sample from a polluted pond, triggering a boss fight with a giant scorpion. Right before the encounter, the sorcerer realized she had a crucial appointment IRL and left immediately, giving me control of her character. Unfamiliar with juggling PCs and enemies during combat (and fully unaware the sorcerer was at low health), I placed her at the front as usual, thinking I could spread the damage between the two frontline PCs. Nope! The warlock was also at low health and fled at the end of the second round, while the remaining three PCs (all at full health) kept their distance, whittling down the HP of the scorpion and casting Tasha’s mind whip on it. The scorpion now unable to both attack and move in one turn, and this likely the final round of combat in the adventure, I let the scorpion attack the only thing still in range: the sorcerer, whose turn was right after the scorpion’s. She was downed immediately, and had been the party’s only healer! She managed to recover after 2 tense failed death saves, and our group has had a lot of great adventures since then. I throw myself to the mercy of the court: was I really at fault for nearly killing a player character after the player left mid-finale?

Nev Altan

To the absolute, powerful, and radiant Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the underworked bailiff Jake. I humbly bring you the case of the Arcane Trickster Rouge, and the extended magic hand. My friends and I are in a Thursday campaign set in the feywild. In our most recent session, we were tasked with obtaining a crystalline flower, that could be used to make an antidote for a flower curse used on my Echo Knight Eladrin’s brother figure all the way back in episode one. When we got to the place the flower was hidden, and after solving a quick puzzle, we entered the chamber containing the flower. To our shock, and NPC from earlier in the campaign was there as well. After attempts to talk, it eventually turned into a fight. Combat lasted around 3 hours, in which our Dragonborn Pact of the chain Warlock used their familiar to play an expert game of keep-away. Nearing the end of combat, the familiar flew back to the Warlock, but to our confusion and shock, our DM said that it no longer had the flower on it. After much confusion, and us trying to figure out what had happened, our DM revealed that our foe had gotten a 27 on a slight of hand check with their mage hand. We mentioned that the range for it was only 30ft, to which our dm responded that they had a magic item that extended the range of their mage hand to 80ft. This had never been foreshadowed or mentioned at all before this. In the end we only got half of the flower, and our dastardly foe escaped to the material plane. So I ask you great judges, am I and my party justified in feeling annoyed by this seemingly out of nowhere ability? Or should we give our DM some slack? I humbly await the ruling of the court.

Em_Dragon

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices Axford, Tanner, Murphy, and the sorta-honorable bailiff Jan Antonio Spurwitz(SATX represent!) I present you the case of our DM shaming a character to death. A few years ago I was in a guild with rotating DM's and players, with sessions having a lot of high/low mixups in their character levels. One of the highest level characters on that days team was a Sorcerer named Perseus(name changed to protect the innocent). Percy was a loveable chaotic goofball but could also hold his own. We were in a necromancy-filled tower and I had just opened a door to find 4 vicious abomination flesh dogs shoved into a single-squared closet. A few of us shoved our bodies against the door, and made high DC strength checks to shut it again. Then Percy says he has an idea. He excitedly pulls out a firebomb, shoves us aside, yanks the door open and tries to toss the bomb inside, but immediately gets grabbed. He failed a strength save and got pulled inside. It's then I heard the words that haunt me to this day. In one of the Sternest and angriest tones I've ever heard the DM says "Do We Really Have To Play This Out, Or Can We Just Skip To The End?". The IRL player doesn't do well with confrontation and quietly said "i guess... we can skip to the end" and dm narrated the abomo dogs tearing Percy apart and eating him. The firebomb then went off doing a measly 4d6 fire damage. Justice for stupid actions right? I say not! In spite of being a sorcerer, percy was a few levels higher than most of us, and had an AC somewhere between 16-18, plus he could cast shield, and on his turn he could've cast haste to raise it even higher! The DM tried to justify it by saying the enemies had multiattack, but I think Percy had a fighting chance! The DM urged us to moved forward, but we wouldn’t leave these monsters alive. We plugged the doorway with an elemental and cast spirit guardians in a combat that I don't think even lasted 2 full rounds. We easily killed them, and I don't think we lost a single hit point. So what do you think Honorable Supreme crit Justices and Jan, am I simply stuck in the bargaining phase of grief, or was Percy shamed to death by a mean DM? P.S. A week later I was asking Percy's player how he was doing after the events and he got angry with me saying 'Obviously Perseus wanted to die, that's the only thing that makes sense!'.

Beelzebear

To the honorable justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and who could forget the Dice Cream Cake Champ Baliff Jarf Honkwitz I present to you the case of the abandoned cleric. My party of three ( a death domain cleric, myself and my two "friends" a genassi barbarian and a war forged sorcerer) had entered a demonic boss chamber with 8 spaced out circular platforms spanning a magically darkened chasm. Our sorcerer melds into stone and begins traversing the chasm while the barbarian begins vaulting across the gaps. I a cleric with no strength was left to run around the outside along a ramp towards our two menacing foes. One of which, I forget the name now but it was described as a demon monkey hell beast, charged at me, leaving me open to being attacked multiple times and grappled. Eventually being dropped into the darkness being unable to heal our battered party. After the eeked-out victory I razzed my party for leaving me at which point they played their trap cards and turned the razzing on me!! I ask you, am I right to feel abandoned by a party we had shared a years with of adventures or should I have played smarter? I leave my sanity in your benevolent hands

Vitor Magnanelli

To the eyes of sweet blue hole only And for the ears of the Chicken and Johnny freshly hatched Here I will tell a tale of two persons that were in a relationship in and out of the game, a certain night, I was GMing as usual, and suddenly one of the NPCs flert with one of the characters because they were talking to a succubus in disguise, after the check to see if they sucked them began to bicker at each other and saying stuff like "remember when that bumhole gave you the sweet blue hole at the party?" As a sexual innuendo... My dice gods, I've never been so ashamed, when they began talking about a story envolving a vibrator and someone's butt???? I just grabbed my stuff and leaved them , saying we would take back a few nights of recession...that was almost 3 months. Should I re-attach the group once again? Or the trust has been broken (like that sweet blue hole reference thou) Patreon/naddpod

Ryan Hayes

To the honorable, wise, and irrefutable justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner and the newborn baby bailiff Jake, I present the Case of the Sword and the poop chute. For context, this was our DMs first time running a game. We were on a ship and were getting suspicious of the captain, who had an obsidian sword we thought might be cursed. We explored the locked lower decks to search for clues. While down there, we discovered a trap door that emptied into the ocean, which we dubbed the poop chute. Later, we found the captain sleeping and guarding a chest. We snuck around and opened it, and found his obsidian sword inside. He woke up and we rolled initiative. During the fight, I took the sword from the chest to keep it away from the captain, who had immediately lunged to get it. Worried that my squishy bard wouldn’t be able to keep it away from him, I tossed it down the “poop chute”, thinking that was probably what it was there for. Even unarmed, the captain managed to down my character twice before we took him down. It turns out that the sword was supposed to be a major plot point, and the chute was just a part of the map that the DM improvised earlier when we were exploring. The sword was also supposed to be a major plot point. My DM spent the rest of the session frazzled and kept muttering “I’m so mad” every ten minutes. I felt apologized after, and he said it was fine and we moved on. However I can’t help feeling guilty. Should I have kept what was in retrospect an obvious plot item to go easy on a new DM, or is it okay that derailed the plot for what I thought was a cool strategy? I Humbly await your judgement.

Panda-Man

To esteemed, and benevolent Justices of the court and Baby Boy Bailiff Jakey-poo. I present the Appealed Case of the Cleric Executioner. Summary: Two PCs entered PVP and resulted in me executing one of them. The Lower Court Judge/Executioner: Me, a Lawful Good Cleric of Twilight PC. The Defendant: A Barbarian Murder Hobo PC The Plaintiff: A Min/Maxing Munchkin Coffee-Lock PC The Claim: I wrongfully executed a PC. I’ve been playing in an Adventurer’s League at my local game store, with a party of 8 PCs. At this time, the Plaintiff decided to have his Original PC stay behind to do research from a previous mission, and thus decided to play as a lawful evil Shade as a new PC using Tasha’s Caldron of Everything’s “Sidekick” mechanic. The shade still had the capability to make its own decisions, but had to follow a set of rules. Two of which were: 1. Ensure that the Party stays alive, and 2. Collect any magical items or secrets at any cost. During a raid of an evil Duergar Keep, the Plaintiff and Defendant discovered a Locked chest. After numerous failed attempts by the Plaintiff, the Barbarian rolls a Nat 20 STR to break open the chest. Inside, the Barbarian discovered a few items, including a scroll of unknown content. Thinking that it was magical, the Plaintiff asked to have the scroll. The defendant, being the one to overcome the challenge, said that he wanted to keep it. The Plaintiff, following Rule #2, attacked the barbarian bringing him down below half the Defendant’s HP in one round. The Cleric, in character, goes to investigate the barbarian’s cries of pain to discover the gravely wounded barbarian and the Shade locked in combat. After the Defendant throws the scroll across the room and me managing to heal him, the Shade goes to investigate the scroll. After confronting the Plaintiff and asking how he could attack someone who he has orders to protect, the Plaintiff said, “He’s still alive, isn’t he?” The Plaintiff technically did not violate Rule #1 and was giving off the “It’s what my Character would do” vibe, so I responded in kind. How could a Lawful Good Cleric willingly allow a Creature, who is willing to harm other PCs and is inherently evil in nature and action, go unpunished? So after engaging in Combat, I brought the Shade down to 0 hp with Spirit Guardians. Rather than let the Dice decide the Plaintiff’s Fate, I remained in the area to let my Spirit Guardians destroy the Shade entirely. Was I wrong to take it upon myself to decide the fate of the Plaintiff? Should I have let the dice decide? Should I have spared a fellow PC, even though actions have consequences? Will we ever hear Hardwon’s letter to Moonshine? Who would win in a Fear-Factor style eating contest, Zirc Vervain or Hungry Dave? Why is Gamora? I humbly await your Verdict.

Lucas Dahmm

To the merciful justices and the bouncing baby boy, Jacob (who is eagerly anticipating his first birthday when he can finally get into cake): The case I bring before you comes not from DND but from another TTRPG entirely, called Raccoon Sky Pirates (I know this is a stretch for the court, but I hope Justice Axford will find the grace to allow it). In this game, you and your friends all play as a group of raccoons, rats, and yes, possums, who fly through the sky in a ramshackle airship looking to break into suburban homes and steal their valuable trash. The game is designed with player improv as the focus, even to the point of not having a DM. I was playing a sophisticated black rat named Ratcliffe and the friend whom this case concerns was playing a possum named Gator, though his special characteristic was that he was secretly an armadillo. The issue came about near the end of the game when we were evading the neighborhood watch. We were at high risk of losing everything we had stolen as our ship was heavily damaged. Gator, as the name might suggest, was a very rambunctious character, and even when he rolled well he would often roleplay these as pyrrhic victories, getting one thing done while hindering us in the future. Despite these roadblocks, we had almost made it back to the junkyard and it was my turn to roll. Gator, who was next in the turn order, asked me to not go back to the junkyard quite yet because he "still wanted to try something out with his character," which he stated with a devilish look in his eyes. I rolled successfully, and after a bit deliberation, ignored his request and ended our escape sequence with the ship still intact (it would have blown up with one more failure, losing all our stuff). We moved on from that, but I can't help but wonder if I should have given into Gator and given him another chance as he asked. Justices, was I wrong to deny my friend a yes-and to his character fun, or should I live guilt-free knowing that it allowed our party to live happily ever after with our ill-gotten gains? I humbly await your decision.

Steven Hoffart

To the life time appointed judges and the bailiff on contract that’s probably coming to renegotiations soon, I present to you the case of the villainous monologue. In our 5 year running campaign we were facing a named and awaited enemy in her lair, we watched as she monologues her contempt to us and she slowly put on different magical items that were power ups for her in the fight. My character, an impulsive Druid, misty stepped before the end of her monologue and stole one of the magic items. They fight started immediately and the DM proceeded to focus fully on my character and only my character, killing them outright during the fight though the party came out on top. Next session the DM stated my soul had be trapped in the item I stole as that’s hoe the item is powered and this my character could not be reincarnated. It’s been a year, I play a ranger now and have moved on and my DM still maintains I got what I deserved but says she misses the Druid character’s personality I ask you judges, was my character’s permadeath justified for interrupting the cool villain monologue or was it too harsh a punishment for my quick actions?

Liz M

To the virtuous clergy of Dice Christ, please offer one of your lambs some resin-cast guidance. My boyfriend keeps a d20 in his car. There is a flat space past the cupholders and under the display where it can freely roll around as he drives. I generally think of this as fun and cute. But recently I have become increasingly aware of when his Mazda rolls a natural 1. We have taken a lot of road trips this summer and there are just so many ways this little car could get absolutely bodied. Then again, nat 20s feel like a little emotional boost. I humbly ask the church: is this a blasphemous use of dice? Will Dice Christ smite us on I-95 for our indiscretions? Or should I simply always fear the maniac drivers of Stamford, CT, regardless of what his car rolls? Yours in faith and the passenger seat, Liz

Stale bread on salad, aka Crouton!

To the magnanimous judges, especially Murph my favorite, and the confused bailiff whom feelings change on a monthly basis: I present the case of the problem tiefling named Rigby I'm a forever dm for 3 campaigns and have a problem player named after the Regular Show character (yes he does the voice) who antagonizes my npcs and will make decisions cause "that's what his character would do". it all. came to a head when he insulted the gang leader of a syndicate behind their back and hid so when the boss turned around the cleric would be the only one there. The cleric instantly threw rigby under the bus and gladly agreed to bring him to the boss to face repercussions and when Rigby claimed that was meta gaming, the cleric came back and said HE was meta gaming cause he's away hiding and wouldn't have heard the conversation. Judges, who should be held accountable for Rigby's actions and face the consequences? I humbly await your reply

Michael Smallwood

Forgive me dice christ, for I may have sinned. I was running Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen for my party. They were fighting a Boilerdrak (think large flamethrower war machine made to look like a dragon) when it used it's fire attack, and a few of them were caught in the blast. With a damage of 5d10 fire damage, Dice Christ decided to give 46 damage against a party of level 3 characters. With that much damage, our already-damaged barbarian (who is also my girlfriend) would have died outright. She even said "it's OK. Im just dead". But I decided to instead just have her downed with 1 failed deathsave, since this was still only session 4 in a pretty beefy book. But I still wonder, was I right to go against our Lord and Savior like that? I await whatever attonment I must endure.

Trevor

To the noble Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the notable bailiff Jacques, I present the case of the shamed siblings. I started playing D&D at the beginning of the COVID quarantine. After creating a family game that began with my sister and significant other, it soon expanded to include my mother and stepfather, who showed interest in the game. Since it was close to Christmas, I devised a holiday one-shot and planned it for a day when my whole family would be together. Little did I know, my brother was in town. As I was setting up, he displayed a lot of interest in playing with us, so I quickly rolled him a character and added him in. After about two hours of play, during which my brother struggled with the rules and couldn’t grasp the concept of one-shotting a dragon, he noticeably left the table during our break, much like a child would make it obvious they're upset. After our break, I asked him if he was ready, to which he replied with nothing. We waited an additional 10 minutes, during which I was met with eye-rolling and the word 'shame' muttered from the living room. After some time, I just played his character for him, with him dying at the end. As soon as he heard 'dead,' he ran into the kitchen, proclaiming he was going to come back and I should be ashamed of what I had done. So I ask the Justices: Did I do the right thing to keep the game moving for everyone else, or should I have tried harder to understand my brother's frustration?

Daniel B

To the honourable justices and the equally honourable bailiff, I bring you the case of the undersold risk of death. I play in a game with my 3 siblings. My older brother is the DM and largely written his own campaign which is a cross of Silent Hill type horror and Game of Thrones politics. Over a year ago, at the start of the campaign he told us anywhere outside of city walls at night is dangerous and full of horrors. That first year of the campaign there was a major focus on my character trying to free an NPC comrade, Sir Aiden, an experienced fighter, from prison before he was executed. Our party pulled off a lot of challenges and we successfully freed him! Shortly after, our party, along with Sir Aiden, was planning to travel to a nearby town to join a battle, however before we could travel we were forced to part ways with Aiden to remove a time sensitive curse from my sister's character. The battle would start soon and Sir Aiden was determined to go with or without us. It was just a 5 miles to the next town down a major road and lot of allied soldiers moving that way as well. Given the urgency to remove the curse the party decided to split from Sir Aiden. Once the curse was removed I asked if we could make our way to meet with Sir Aiden and my brother DM said "yeah... If he made it there alive." He then said that he told us at the start of the campaign that anywhere outside of the walls are dangerous. I protested and said he described the journey as low risk and didn't elude at all about a risk to Sir Aiden. Also Sir Aiden voiced no concern with splitting up. He was unmoved and said "it will come down to the rolls". I ask the honourable justices, was I wrong to forget the warning given over a year prior or was my brother wrong to fail to elude to the risk to our beloved Sir Aiden? Does Sir Aiden deserve an off screen death after a year of trials to save his life? I humbly await your verdict. P.S. it has been over 6 months since this happened and we still don't know if Sir Aiden lives! Your judgement could help tip the scales and help save Sir Aiden!

Arliden VanGrants

To the beautiful judges Murphy, Axford, and Tanner and the ok Bailiff sir baby Jacob I present the case of the campaign ending eternal mind battle. In one of our games that lasted for three years we finally got the precipice of the castle where the death knight BBEG resides. We bravely fought our way through his forces and faced the death knight that has thrown this world into chaos. My squishy wizard stayed in the back and watched as he murdered the other players and turned them into undead that were against me, until I to finally fell. I succeed his intelligence saving throw 5 times to prevent becoming an undead myself until the DM finally stated that after a while I would fail and be turned undead. I argued that since I never actually failed any of the rolls that my wizard locked this deathknight into a mental combat, sacrificing myself to keep this death knight at bay since he couldn't move while trying to take over someone's body. The DM disagrees and says the campaign ended in a tpk instead. So I ask the judges, was Lomar the war wizard brutally killed or is he still locked in a mental battle with this death knight to this day?

Andrew Gilson

Esteemed Judges, opossums (love ya pawpaw), space noodles, and idk the other guy, I present the case of baby vs. the goblin horde. It was my first game ever after watching dimension 20 and discovering dnd during the pandemic. A local game store was hosting a discord server where you could sign up for games. I signed up for the adventure league, made a celestial warlock, and was on my way. We were told we would have a combat heavy one-shot module, and after 2 hours of gameplay with seemingly no direction we ended up at the mouth of a cave with a horde of goblins. The rogue tried laying a trap at the mouth, taunted the goblins within, and ran and hide. The goblins stayed put. I, being new, shot off an eldritch blast trying to start things off. What followed was my dm stating “you didn’t say you hid after that” and proceeded to tell me to roll 20+ goblin attacks with advantage because “they were hiding.” He then had ME go through the trouble of adding their modifiers to each roll, and to announce how many hits and misses there were. Needless to say, I was outright dead immediately. I tried taking it on the chin, but did end up going with a different dm, with whom I am now lifelong friends. It all worked out for the better, but am I the asshole here????

Michael R

May it please the court, To the Honorable Supreme Crit Justices who need no introduction and Bailiff Jacob Hurwitz of Spring Glenn, Connecticut I present to you a case of patricide: Last session, my party and I were fleeing a horde of invading Shadowfell monsters by jumping through a portal, which we knew was very unstable and could close at any moment. Despite this, another PC (my actual, real-life little brother) was attempting to haul the unconscious body of his character’s father (a very father who, may I add, was unconscious after we beat him in an encounter where he used a modified “gift of gab” spell to gaslight us). While dragging this dastardly dad, the BBEG appeared, healing the problematic progenitor, who then promptly KO’d another party member along with my brother’s character, and resumed gaslighting us. My turn came, where I was able to heal one player, and then turn to attack the pugnacious poppa with my bow. After rolling a Nat 1, which I re-rolled as a halfling, I rolled a Nat 20. This wasn’t quite enough damage to do it so I rolled my second attack, rolling a second Nat 20. Our DM allows us to deal non-lethal damage, but I felt I couldn’t justify letting my brother’s offensive old man walk away, so I said that I shot an arrow through his forehead, leaving him dead. After our escape, my brother seemed disappointed that he wouldn’t have the chance to reconcile with his deceased daddy, who he had believed (after an Insight check), may have been magically compelled to fight us. Did I do the right thing in putting down this persecuting padre? Or did I rob my actual, real life brother of an opportunity to role play an important moment for his character? I surrender myself to the wisdom and mercy of the Justices.

Justin Catrambone

To the unctuous Justice Murphy, the obstreperous Justice Axford, the vacuous Justice Tanner, and the pusillanimous Bailiff... Jaxson? When I told my DM that I wanted to be a demon that was controlling the host body of an adventurer he was onboard for the unique idea. I was excited to play this character, BUT THEN, on our first sessions when I wanted to tear my heart out and force feed it to another PC to take control of their body he insisted that that wasn't part of the game and that he didn't even know where to start to break down the mechanics of that kind of possession. Am I wrong for wanting to play my amazing demon or is my DM a craven loser? PS. I'm fucking with you guys I don't even play DnD. PPS. Hate the show

Alexia VV

To the honorable and frankly divine crit justices and the bailiff I hold in higher regard than the justices, Jon. I present to you a duo confessional/case: the case of OP goblin. I'm running an online campaign set in a pirate world based on one piece, and in the second arc I decided to try and make "the worst NPC ever" in a goblin that lived in town, Tee-Hee. Based off of the gnomes from campaign 1 and how my girlfriend acts sometimes, he basically goes around with an incredibly high stealth and nigh-infinite teleportation abilities to steal from people, leaving them with a "Tee-Hee" before they go. One of my players at the time was a monk who decided to take their pet bull out for a walk completely separate to the party of five others. Before this, I had described how everyone lost all of their gold and heard Tee-Hee, but said clearly that they'd be getting it back in not too long. Eventually, Tee-Hee comes for this player, and they roll a nat20 on perception. Now, this player is known to never roll below like a 15 on the die and will often get 8 nat20s in a session, so at this point I'll be honest and say I was annoyed. Tee-Hee was caught by them, and he decided to taunt them a little before giving their gold back. However, after this, the player decided to try and kill Tee-Hee and the DM sweat kicked in, so I had him teleport away a bunch using reactions and bonus actions and stuff, to which the player said "that's bullshit". I somewhat agree, and Tee-Hee likely would've been fine even if he took a few punches (because i decided hes a demi-mortal being, basically half demigod and mortal). I prostrate myself before the court and accept the full penalty of law or light! Ps. This player did end up leaving the campaign right after this, but more because their vibe wasn't fitting with the group and they were an extreme minmaxer/power gamer (I think their weakest build in recent memory does like 30 damage a turn at level 3)

jesse sa

To the divinely appointed judges and their newborn intern, Jake, I ask for your judgement in the case of the doomed campaign, In an age long past, I was a diminutive 12 years old when I decided to start my first dnd campaign with a group of friends, me taking the mantle of DM. As a freshly hatched chicken of the game, I was extremely eager to DM a long term campaign and over the course of a couple months, in a fugue state, wrote over 100k words of egregiously bad middle school worldbuilding, filled out all the character sheets by hand with tips for the players, (none of us had played, but I dove head first into the depths of dnd mechanics in anticipation) and attempted to make plans many, many times. Our first session was on my 13th birthday, three months after I'd first tried to make plans, we did not get through a single encounter as one player left constantly to play with my stuff and another was watching minecraft videos with headphones the entire time, I asked him to stop with the lack of tact only a 13 year old has and he locked me and the others out of my own house while he cried in my living room. Our next session wasn't for 6 months, I got so annoyed with one of our players for being flaky on plans that it led to a massive real life falling out that took 3 years for us to talk again, though they still joke about how I "unfairly" kicked them out of the game. The player that took their place was rarely present for the sessions we played in our freshman year art classroom during lunch, (and on my 14th birthday) and another one of my players turned out to accidentally have made their character 4 levels above everyone else's. When covid hit, I took it as a chance to cut the binds tying me to this campaign from the hells, amidst many messages from my former players asking where I was, I ignored them entirely and lost contact with two of my actual childhood friends for the next year in an effort to stave off my guilt for leaving my first campaign in a locked basement to slowly die. My former players still say that they're sad the campaign ended without a conclusion, was I wrong to turn my back on my childhood dnd game? Or was my callous dnd assassination justified due to the close friends who happened to be difficult players, I accept any punishment the court may level on me for my unkindness, or my players for their youthful wiles. (P.S. We're all adults now and I've been DMing a campaign I love for over 2 years, with one of the players originally being from that first game)

Chrys

To the absolute jerk, Jake. And to the esteem Crit Justices I bring to you the case of the Conjure Swarm falling from the Sky. During some early play with a rather new player at the table I began doing some off the rails shit. I let a Paladin jump and bisect a shark from a moving ship. But one of the characters wanted to try Shepherd Druid and I was still getting the gist of DM-ing for a seven party table. This person immediately joined the table by asking where any purchasable farmland could be found in the main Portside city. After a weird table discussion about them needing the party to leave this city soon and would have no one to look after the farm the person shrugged and went along with it. I was momentarily confused but everyone seemed to enjoy the future sessions and weird antics. However in combat they would only cast Blindness/Deafness on every person but eventually read the spell Conjure Swarm. They asked at least 15 times in combat to summon a herd of cattle. I could not figure out how this would work or even why until they asked me to place them 90 ft over the enemy’s head. In turn giving a radius falling damage of a herd of cattle. Insta killing the target. They hadn’t even listened to why they were in a fight for combat and while I know now that would have been easily avoidable am I in the wrong for being mad at this bullshit? The table no longer plays together

Matthew Rudland Barfoot

To the righteous and holy counsel of dice christ, I come bearing witness to a dice christ miracle. In a session with our level 6 adventurers fighting zombies and wraiths that surround an inn at night, we defeated the fiends with my bards cleverly placed Major Image of the Sun which weakened them enough to advance an attack and made our way into the inn. In the inn we were asked our story and how we defeated the wraiths, my co-adventurer introduced us through song, singing that we was hitchhiking down a long and lonesome road. All of a sudden, There shined a shiny demon, In the middle of the road. Playing along I rolled a crit! And with my plus 10 performance rolled a 30, safe to say it wasn't a tribute, it was the greatest song in the world. Thankyou Dice Christ

Elliot Sitford

To the pretty boy Jake and the overworthy beautys of that of the high crit council, Justices and Jake I come today to determine whether or not I was in the wrong for leaving after only one session of this just god awful campaign that my friend invited me to, To keep it short I joined in as mercy monk ( a healer like the dm recommended) to “back up” to the party already in the dungeon, the first thing I hear as the session starts is the bard insisted that she was naked from the beginning and will remain so for the entire game, then as the dm describes my character and 2 others entering the dungeon the bard attempts to roll seduction on a fellow pc… after rolling my eyes and waiting for the dm to continue with the game hoping it was a 1 time joke (it wasn’t) and learning the rest of the party consists of another monk, 2 paladins, 2 bards and a sorcerer, also a warlock who didn’t Build their character right and had 0 spells and 0 charisma. Also in the game we entered a room and before the dm even finishes describing the room a player runs in and grabs the first thing the dm describes, activating a trap, spawning skeletons, dropping the player, me a monk ran him, hit the skeleton then way of mercy healed the dropped player who on her turn, instead of helping me, played dead so the skeletons would take both turns just hitting me, killing me for the rest of the fight

Ben Stone

To the venerable justices and fair-to-middling bailiff Jank, I present the case of the Waterboard Breakout Room. Back in early lockdown my friend decided to start a Cyberpunk RED campaign over Zoom to pass the time. For most of us it was our first foray into TTRPGs, and in general we had a really great time. One thing our GM liked to use were Zoom breakout rooms. Whenever the party split up for various reasons, they would put us in respective breakout rooms, then they would come to each group to GM what we were doing. This worked alright in general until one rather heinous incident. Our party was tracking down information on the murder of one of the PC’s rockstar love interests. Two of the players split off to question a suspect while the rest of us continued the search elsewhere. Per usual, we were split into breakout rooms. Some time went by. Then some more. Then after about 30 minutes with nothing from the GM except texts of “sorry this is gonna take a sec more”, our very flustered GM pulled us back into the main group. The party of course wanted to know what the two players did, but they refused to tell the rest of us anything about what had happened. Eventually, after some arguing, the GM finally just flat out let us know they had spent the last 45 minutes GMing a water boarding/torture session, which they were obviously uncomfortable with, and called the session early. We still had fun for a bit longer until the campaign fizzled out, but the waterboard breakout room definitely left a weird vibe for the rest of the campaign. To this day the two torturers, erm, players still think it was really funny, but I ask you, justices, were they in the right for torturing a character, and was our GM right for going along with it, even begrudgingly, especially at the expense of the rest of the party sitting doing nothing for nearly an hour? I humbly await your decision.

Alexandra Ferguson

To the honourable justices, and the crooked bailiff, I bring a case of getting waylaid in a u-bend. I ran a combat session for my players in which they were competing in gladiatorial combat on a battlefield littered with elemental shields. For water, there were 4 wells scattered around that connected in a series of completely full tunnels. They were deep and some distance apart from one another, so the triton and grung players who leapt down spent their first turn dashing and only got to the middle. On her second turn, my triton player announced that she wanted to cast Water Walk, since it would, “carr[y] the [submerged] target to the surface of the liquid at a rate of 60 feet per round.” I pointed out that the surface was touching the tunnel roof above (at which point they’d just be plastered to the top like geckos) and she should probably cast something else. She argued briefly, claiming the completely full tunnels meant the surface of the water was at the top of the nearest well, before going with it. Now I’m feeling bad and I turn to the courts: Was I right to state that water walk would bring you straight up if you were in the middle of a tunnel, or does it seek out a place to water walk to the extent of dragging you 40ft horizontally before going up?

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 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. 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.

sister himbo

To the right honourable Justices and handsome, virile Bailiff: Tldr: Am I a bad DM if I prioritize roleplay choices over combat? IS it my party and I'll cry if I want to? I've just started DMing my very first campaign, a noir spy mystery set in a 1970s Eberron. My party is full of seasoned players and two very experienced, kind of crunchy DMs. It's been great getting insight and feedback from them, but I'm starting to suspect that some players (the DMs) are trying to game the system or use their expertise to avoid challenges I present when we play. I've been friendly but firm in saying that, while it's a different campaign than they're used to and does ask them to do more roleplaying to get ahead, if they let themselves get wrapped up in the story I think it will be a really satisfying campaign. It's all been gucci until recently, when one DM-player told me that the NPCs shouldn't be so important to the story as it makes them "stop caring" about playing, and that roleplay shouldn't matter more than combat. But I've had OTHER players say they love the world of the campaign and really like interacting with fully realized NPCs. I don't know how to make everyone happy while also discovering my own DM style. So my question is, should I tailor my DMing to be more succinct and combat-focused, or lean into playing and presenting the world how I want? What's the line between making a fun experience for your players and asking the party to try new things? Also SHOULD combat matter more than roleplaying the story? I just want to play adult make believe with my pals, does that mean I won't be a good DM?

copperdragon

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

Dorian Doran

To the honorable justices and darling bailiff J Jonah Jakeson, I present the case of the Bardic Wedding Planner. In a campaign I sat in for a few sessions, there was an instance where the DM initiated a time skip of a handful of years, and asked the players what their characters did during the time skip. One player had recently romanced an NPC, so they joked about having thrown a lavish wedding for their character. The DM then asked them to ‘roll for how well your character did on their wedding planning’. This seemed to suck out the first player’s excitement somewhat, and seeing this I chimed in to offer them a bardic inspiration from my character, who I decided would have loved to help plan the wedding; the DM stated that I could not give bardic inspiration in this instance, since wedding planning is a long process and not a single action. I argued that they were already asking for a single skill check to determine the outcome over a long period of time, which was a stretch of the rules in the first place and that I should even be allowed to give the help action in this instance, but the DM was firm in their decision. I relented quickly and the wedding still turned out quite lavish (despite a middling roll from the player), but I am still somewhat bitter about the outcome. Should I have been able to inspire my party member into having the perfect wedding? I humbly await the justice of the Crit.

Chad Buckel

Esteemed judges; Axford the Silly, Murph the Dogmatic, and Caldwell the Choatic, along with Bailiff Jake the Jolly I stand before you as the legal counsel of my DM and player of the campaign. My DM faces two counts of PvP/character death and a situation he still feels conflicted by. The “victim,” henceforth referred as “Arthur,” invited themselves to join, showing up with an unapproved character with 2 sidekicks designed after King Arthur from Monty Python. He quickly lost interest in character 1 after being told the sidekicks were not allowed in combat as the party was all level 1 and “not that cool yet.” Character 1 was executed as a human sacrifice by the party in a not-so-holy reincarnation ritual to bring back the ranger who died. (Arthur even consented wanting to play a new character) However, Character 2 was a spellcaster that IRL berated other players for not being ready on their turns, while being on their phone and taking 20 minutes to argue with the DM about how spells worked. PvP quickly ensued, resulting in disorienting Arthur’s 2nd character and using them as bait for a hill giant. (not with Arthur’s consent,, but they already had 3 other characters ready to go) I ask the court, is the real victim not the other 6 players who were first time players? Was the DM within their right to allow PvP and to soft uninvite Arthur when the date and time of play was changed? I ask you show the DM leniency and only give them a single nasty look.

Chris E.

To the honorable justices and guest bailiff Jake! I give you the case of the generous Paladin. I played a Goliath Oath of Redemption Paladin, who grew up as a bandit and decided to change his life by joining the Church of Ilmater. Since his backstory was giving back after taking from others, I decided that he would give out his gold to anyone in need. Since it was early in the campaign and we were broke, I told the rest of the players that if they wanted to keep all the gold we received, they could lie to my character about the amounts and he wouldn’t be the wiser. I even told them I wouldn’t do insight checks to see if they were lying and he would just believe his party members. Everyone was onboard for it except one player who played a bard/warlock Harengon, who kept threatening to kill my character both in and out of game if I kept giving gold out. I asked the DM privately if anyone else in the party was upset with my choices and he told me no and thought it was weird how our bard/warlock was reacting. Eventually the bard/warlock player left the campaign but I ask the court was it wrong for me to play a generous Paladin or should I have double checked with all the other players before making that choice. I humbly wait for your decision. p.s. Just in case this makes it into the main feed a Sweet Blue Hole to all.

gab

To the magnificent justices and that cool guy whose name I forget. I present to you: a polymorph pickle. Tldr: can you self-injure out of polymorph? I'm playing a murder mystery one shot with my regular party. Out of combat,, a half-orc PC has Enemies Abound cast on him and fails his saving throw, starting to attack the rest of us so we all role initiative. On my turn my sorcerer casts polymorph on him, using 3 sorcery points to impose disadvantage and using one of 2 fourth level spells. I successfully turn the half-orc into a bunny rabbit, hoping to deescalate. On his turn, the player asks if my sorcerer has any weapons on her. When I reply with, yeah I guess a dagger, the player has the bunny run into my dagger, doing 1 damage and therefore taking the rabbits single hit point, returning the PC to his half-orc state. He then gets to reroll his Enemies Abound saving throw because of this point of damage, and succeeds, ending the combat. I briefly argue that this was bullshit and no way that he could do this, but when the DM said that she'd allow it and the player apologetically insisted it was allowed, I backed off. Is this metagaming bullshit or am I just salty that I wasted resources on nothing? Do PCs know that polymorph ends when the animal drops to 0 hit points? Please help!

Noah Muruve

Corrupt judges of this kangaroo court and golden mic winner, the pinch himself, big daddy bailiff Jake, 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, which was great. 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?

PlutoniumHeart

Hail the fanciful saints of the fair dice christ and that almost handsome homeless teenager popping angst zits in the corner... Jarod? I come to you with a true confession in the form of a cautionary tail. Dice christ granted me guidance that I so rudely ignored and it caused my friend to get hurt in the process. My best friend and I used to be in a romantic relationship with eachother sharing a life, a child together and everything. After a couple years though it became clear that things where not okay. After some time of therapy and realizing my health was not well. My partner offered me the choice to take space elsewhere to work on myself and come back to this relationship when I was ready, or if I was confident I could make meaningful change while staying I could. I took time to process this Journaling a lot. In my heart I knew I should go but couldn't bring myself to do it. I asked the gods for guidance through my favorite nat 20, should I take this gift and leave to heal myself? Nat 20. If I stay how bad will the outcome be? Nat 2. I was stubborn, skeptical, and stayed. That was a couple years ago now and we both have healed a lot. We concider eachother best friends. We coparent and are very happy but not before I seriously hurt them and their trust in ways that effect their romantic relationships to this day. If I listened to dice christ I know we would have come to the same type of relationship we have now; however, we would have gotten there without so much of the pain. Dice christ is a fair ruler and is kind. When they offer their wisdom do not be like me head it! Also listen to your inner voice and mental health is very serious dont half ass it. The turning point shouldn't be hurting someone to take it seriously.

Shane Murphy

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

Penny

To the wise saints that serve our all mighty Dice Christ and James. I offer to you not a Dice Christ confession but instead a testimony of the benevolent and merciful powers of Dice Christ who when I was about to walk away drew me back in. I had decided I was going to leave my campaign due to the inconsistency of our meetings and other reasons but would do one more session. The party was in the tavern and the DM asked what we were doing, I jokingly said karaoke but my DM took me seriously and had me roll 3 performances checks all the while my party was doing roll play and after rolling a 16 an 18 and finally a Nat 20 the tavern erupted into applause the tavern owner hired me made me a business partner giving me an essential it that helped the campaign. And just like that my Tiefling rogue multi-classed into a bard and continued on in the adventure. All praise Dice Christ for they are wise and good.

Tim Scanlon

Howdy Supreme Crit Justices and the No good, rotten, two-timing bailiff, I seek the judgement of the court. Our party was trying to save a fellow party member who had been captured by a slaver and taken to a slavers market. We snuck in undetected and once inside, our DM described the market as a bunch of wealthy individuals and slaves in cages. Seeing this as my opportunity to do something truly heroic and live out my dreams as Spartacus, I casted earthquake to surprise the market and try to jostle a few slaves free to stage an uprising. However, this is when my DM decided to inform me that the cages were actually stacked on top of each other like a giant Jenga tower. The fissure caused the structure to collapse, and all of the slaves failed their dexterity save as he rolled only one save for the entirety of the slaves. They all took 5d6 damage and our DM left the main market standing, meaning my spell essentially just killed all the slaves and damaged none of our enemies. Supreme Crit justices, am I in the wrong for assuming my DM would know how to layout a slavers market to avoid this catastrophe?

Brendon Clair

Dearest Honorable Justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner and I guess Bailiff Jack Daniels, I present the case of the Murdered Granny. During the pandemic a few players and the DM from our regular session started a new campaign on Roll 20. I had played with them all before but this was the first time we went without having the PCs knowing each other. We did the typical tavern meet with subsequent fight blah blah blah. At the end of the session the commander of a Drow army cast Power Word Sleep on our level two characters and we are captured. Second session we find ourselves conscripted to this invading Drow army and told to massacre a small farming community. Three out of the four PCs decided to help the farmers while the last one, our ranger, stood around quietly. I was playing a Great Old one warlock with telepathy so I used the message feature on Roll 20 to talk to the other PCs individually. I messaged him asking if he was on board (he might not have the seen the message, I am not sure). Farmers fail the check to stealthily sneak away and he proceeds to fire an arrow into the neck of Grandma Farmer killing her instantly. This is where things went to hell. My friend who was dealing with her own grandmother in hospice immediately attacked the drow, was knocked out in one round, and quit the session (I don't blame her it really fucked her up emotionally) and I ended up casting Fog Cloud on the area to try and give the rest of the family cover and then cast Dissonant Whispers on the ranger knowing a fail save would give him the fear condition. Well I ended up knocking him out and he failed his death saves. Our Dm wanted to talk to to myself and the player who quit about player etiquette. We never had that discussion and we never played another session in that campaign, but I have been haunted for three years as to who was at fault for this fiasco. Was I wrong to attack another PC my character had no ties to for killing an old lady in front of me? Was he wrong to completely disregard the rest of the party? Was the DM wrong for putting us in this situation before we had chance to know, let alone trust our fellow PCs? I humbly throw myself upon the mercy of the court.

Armadon the only

To the Bailiff/clerk Hurwitz, and the honorable justices of the Crit! In a non D&D game, i played a character that rolled a random Phobia against a certain invasive alien race. When my party defeated a young queen they communicated with it to find a non-violent resolution. Following my character i votes for its death. A quick discussion after and they DM just gave up and let me kill it. Was i the asshole?

Fraser Wright

To the honorable justices and my boy Jake Hurwitz, who does such a great job, I mean he's not, like, a judge or anything, but he just does such a great job. I present the case of 3 men and a baby. I started DMing for my partner and 3 close friends. Noone had played before. We started rolling characters and the first 3 people end up absolutely off the chain, each of them had at least 2 18s and only one of them had a stat below 12. The same dice that rolled these badass level ones were then passed to our final player, a Tiefling Ranger. He rolled one 15, the rest were all below 10. Noone except me understood the massive imbalance this would cause so I offered that he could take standard array, he declined. I encouraged. He declined. I insisted. He declined. Since then...we have played to level 8 and I have lightly peppered more magical items on the player to even the gap. The gulf between these players is still pretty immense, I didn't realise at the time that when your character starts with badass stats, you can basically always take a feat, making their characters more fun to play and muuuuch much stronger. We're talking a real Bailiff and Justices situation here. Everyone is still having fun but whenever we have combat or rolling intensive mini-games (heists, army commanding, wrestling, etc.) I have received several messages from the Ranger asking if they're "playing the game wrong". I don't know what to do. Am I not doing enough to elevate this dud of a character? P.S 2 of the players and characters are women, but who am I to not reference an old movie that I haven't seen?

Eric

Esteemed justices Axford, Tanner, and, Murphy as well as anyone else who happens to be in the room I guess. Today I bring to you the case of The Regretfully Regressed Rodent. Our adventuring party had been being followed by a rat familiar named Snitch, who was the familiar one of our BBEGs. We of course knew that Snitch just was giving information on our party back to his master, but none of us were willing to kill the adorable rat. Eventually, we realized that Snitch was also not happy with his forced familiar relationship to the BBEG, so I decided to cast Dispel Magic to remove the familiar spell and free him. The DM asked me to roll for it and I ended up getting a dirty 20 and the DM told me I ended up dispelling not only the find familiar Spell, but also the awakening spell that was keeping him sentient, much to the rest of the parties horror. To this day, from time to time they lightly bully me for the time I destroyed the consciousness of a cure little rat reverting him to being just a completely non-magical rat. Justices was I wronged here? should I have been able to target just Should find familiar spell without also dispelling other magic that was keeping the rat sentient or am I deserving of whatever bullying the rest of my party gives me for destroying their favorite evil rat

Polly Rinehart

To the esteemed justices and the guy who made videos with Amir (where’s he?) I bring you the case of the Double Speed Doctor Me and a group of friends discovered NADDPOD, and subsequently D&D, while in medical school. We had many a horrible day in the hospital as students improved by listening to campaign 1, and the podcast has grown to be an important part of our friendship group - we even went to both the Brisbane AND Melbourne live shows when you were here! Imagine my surprise then, when I find out my friend has been listening to the podcast at double speed the entire time, when he leans over during the live show and says “it’s so weird hearing them slowed down”. My friend claims that because we all picked up weird study habits in medical school (his was listening to lectures at double speed) his brain is used to this and he isn’t missing out on anything. Justices, I ask this - is this a slight on dice Christ, or is the dorky doctor allowed to double his listening speed without disrespecting the court? I prostrate myself before you.

Rainemaker

Intro Free Twenty Twenty-Three - what's up gamers. Am I in the wrong for making every NPC So Cool and So Hot? I run a couple campaigns for friends- and in them both i feel like I have a tendency to make NPCs 'cooler' than the party. From an oathbreaker paladin who collects cursed items to a masked changeling cleric with a Raven aesthetic, I worry that I'm taking the spotlight away from my party! I don't want them to feel like they're just 'background characters' or anything. This is their story after all! But I also want it to be seen that they're not the only band of adventurers around and that many other people are interesting individuals Should I tone back my NPCs to be generic guys with swords and bows, or should I keep the world interesting with an incredibly colorful cast of characters? I lay myself at your feet for judgement.

Jack H

To the honorable justices who keep the world in order and to the little baby bailiff who I think needs a changing. I present the case of the Invisible Footprints. We were trying to get past overpowered monsters in a swamp to save HP for a future fight. I decided to draw the monsters into one corner of the swamp and turn invisible so the party could get past safely. The plan went swimmingly up to the point that I turned invisible and tried to get away from the monsters. The DM said that I had to use the disengage action to avoid opportunity attacks. In a tizzy, I pulled up multiple online forums that said Opportunity Attacks only apply on a target that can be seen. My DM replied saying that the monsters would be able to see my footprints in the swamp and thus surmise my location to swing at. My fuming silence must have been obvious, because he eventually compromised to allow me to roll a stealth check with advantage against their Passive Perception. I only got hit twice and made it out, but I felt like my brilliant plan was foiled for no good reason. Was I correct that Invisibility should allow me to avoid attacks that require sight or does the swamp make my invisible sloshing obvious?

Eitan David Toubia

May it please the Honorable Justice and the intern Jake I present to you The Case of a stolen Nat 20. I wanted to impress an NPC to see how stealthy my paladin/rogue dex biuld that fought with a rapier was so in a roleplay moment I decided to toll a stealth check and happily proclaimed that I rolled a Nat 20 I felt so cool. My dm Said I didnt ask you to roll a stealth check so the roll is void he then proceeded to narrate how I hid like a little child behind a door thinking I was so stealthy. It was admittedly a very funny scene. I ask the court can I player chose to roll a dice or should it be prompted by the dm and how do you rectify the stolen nat 20. PS don't punish my dm to hard he is a really good dm if you punish him or me make it super comical as usual and keep up the great workn on dnd court and nadpod as a whole

PlutoniumHeart

Stubborn actually isn't the right word, ignorant and selfish is more like it. And thank gods it wasn't a nat1

Jordan Smith

May it please the Right Honorable Justices and the bailiff of indeterminate height. The Case of the Fuck Around and Find Out. I have been DMing for a close group of friends for about 10 years now. We have completed 1 home brew campaign and are about 4 years into our second. Our style of play typically does not involve any PvP, though there have been a couple exceptions where a character was seduced by evil and the party eventually stepped in. These few instances went very well, with all parties - particularly the "evil" player - fully understanding the consequences and accepting their eventual whomping by the rest of the team. In a recent session one of the characters, Jack, (a human wizard obsessed with immortality) found a book that would allow him to possible transform into a mind flayer (who, by virtue of their cephalopod nature are virtually ageless). Another character (Tom - elven fighter), not wanting Jack to attempt to transform into a monster, announced that he grabbed the book from Jack as soon as i was done describing the results of identifying the book. Before i could step in to check with Jack's player - or at the very least call for a roll - Jack's player immediately improved having the book torn away from him and begging for it back (a beautiful yes, and). Over the next 2 sessions looney tunes-esque high-jinks escalated as the wizard attempted to steal back the book, at this point everyone was having fun. After several failed attempts and the book being moved from hiding spot to hiding spot, Jack eventually was able to steal Tom's prized (and very over powered) +3 rapier. He intended to bargain with the sword for the book. At this point Tom's player got very sulky and quiet, and after a few minutes of back and forth in character, traded the book for the sword. We talked it over after the session and everyone said they were fine, but i could tell that Tom's player was pissed that his sword had been taken. In my mind this was a natural consequence for stealing something else from a party member. Once the initial stealing of the book happened and was rolled with by Jack, I took the approach to let them solve it in game. Was I wrong to let this play out as long as I did or was this just a case of fuck around and find out?

Cody Henderson

May it please the honorable judges and the temp bailiff John. I have been in a on going campaign going on 3 years. I play a chaotic good blade song wizard, who protects his friends at all cost. We were in a town that was covered by a strange mist, my character being the only character with a gas mask decides to traverse this sketchy terrain. Upon doing so I found a “frozen” townsfolk and poked him, but he did not arouse. I figured maybe doing small amount of damage would rectify this, so I cast shocking grasp and it be non lethal damage. I rolled max damage and proceeded to kill him per my DM. I would argue since I am a wizard and asked for it to be non lethal he shouldn’t have died. We later had a funeral which we all had to attend and had to consul his family.

thatoneguy

To the heavenly mandated Justices and the craven eunuch Jork, I recently joined a store game going through the Lost Mines of Phandelver module. Upon reaching a small town we were offered a few side quest. The village mayor asked us to retrieve a midwife for a local woman who was soon to go into labor. For some reason the midwife (who I am now convinced is the Baba Yaga) lived a day in a half's journey out of town and so myself and part of our group went off to find her. In-between nearly being murdered by stirges and killing a manticore we made two survival checks, both of which were lackluster and resulted in us going way off course and winding up at the shore side. Our DM essentially wrote off the mission as a failure despite specifying that the woman hadn't given birth yet. I wanted to argue that since we had two landmarks, the town and the shoreline, that we should be able to work our way back through the forest to find the mid-wife, but didn't want to cause a commotion. Was our DM right to cut us off after two failed survival checks or should we have been allowed to continue our search for the Baba Yaga? I await your justice, Tobias the Bard

Nicholas Strange

o the Honorable judges and --wait, did someone let a scruffy Victorian child chimney sweep in here -- ooh nevermind that’s just Jake. I present the case of the “add to inventory” kleptomaniac I DM an online game which uses D&D beyond to manage character sheets, as some players were new at the start of the campaign. One player, a wild magic sorcerer, likes to browse through the character and inventory options and has a habit of adding feats, backgrounds, and magic items they have no business having to their sheet. I sincerely don’t think they do this maliciously as the player is a scatter-brained chaos gremlin in real life and she legitimately forgets what she has some of the time, but it has started to cause some issues in-game when their level 5 sorcerer tries to whip out an airship or their holy avenger in the middle of combat and I have to figure out a way of telling them there’s absolutely no way they have that item / power / or spell. A few players have voiced frustration about this but nobody wants to kick her from the group, so I’ve decided to play these gaffs off as her character being certain she had the actual item, but her wild magic warping it into something that won’t break the game or that she was sold a fake item (example, she pulls out her second potion of cloud giant strength in as many rounds of combat only to find it was actually a diet Sprite the entire time, or that she dropped her OP magic greatsword into a volcano for the third time) but recently she has been getting frustrated that “she can’t do anything cool” which isn't true at all. She has plenty of level-appropriate magic items (as does the rest of the group) but she never uses them in the right context or at all, favoring instead whatever cool thing she accidentally added to her sheet this time. I’m at my wits end. Should I cave and give her one of the items she keeps trying to sneak in legitimately, keep yeeting her treasure into the void, or just let her stay a teacup the next time she “casts” true polymorph on herself? I await your judgment.

PandoraS117

I present to you the case of "Cure wounds vs The railroading husband" My husband is DMimg a solo campaign for me based on the Dark Souls game. This is my 2nd dnd campaign ever. Since this campaign was going to be at home, I decided to play a druid knowing it would be slightly harder than the basic fighter I had picked for my first dnd campaign. He said it was fine to play a druid and he would make it work. A couple hours into our first session I ( a lvl 1 druid) was going into a boss fight, the first fight in the campaign up to that point. The boss was powerful but I had a NPC with me to help me out. He told me this campaign would revolve around my environment and smart tactics. Walking into the fight I was instantly frightened, stunned, then attacked with a hit that was almost 3 times the amount of hit points I had (29 pts dmg) The NPC stepped in front of me taking all the damage, was knocked back, trapped behind ruble, and out of the fight. At the end of the fight I was about to fall into a pit with the boss and die. My husband said to wait a second and rolled death saves for the NPC, rolled a nat 20 and had the NPC pull me up saving me. I then proceeded to try to cast cure wounds, but my husband said I could not as the one massive hit the NPC took was too much damage and crushed his organs. The NPC died, I teared up, and we ended the session. I understand my husband did everything he could to save me in my first battle, however I am disappointed I was not able to use spells as that is the one advantage I was looking forward to having. Should I have been able to cure wounds the NPC he made successful death saves for or did he rightfully not allow my cure wounds to heal the NPC. P.S. The NPC was a knight so I assumed he was strong, but I do not know how many HP he had.

Daniel A.

One DM to another… you can delete these items and feats from your players character sheets in DnD Beyond if they’re in your campaign. I’ve done this before when I had a player doing similar things.

Scott D

To the Honorable Judges Three and the Uniquely Inspired Jackobson. I present the case of the overweight giant-sized rings. While DMing SKT (Storm King's Thunder) the party raided a Fire Giant fortress around the time my brother joined for a few sessions. At one point during the expected looting he separated from the party to loot alone (groan). He found some rings and grabbed a couple before other party members came into the room. After making the appropriate investigation checks I told him that the book puts them down at 25 pounds per ring and he'd only be able to grab two without someone else noticing. Naturally, he argued that they wouldn't weigh that much and proceeded to jot down the mathematical formula for the weight of a hollow cylinder with an assumed density and assumed giant finger size, etc. etc. I told him directly that I don't have capacity for this, and I'm going to go with what the book says. Now, I'm an engineer, and he's a mathematician, and I actually think he was right. He soured after this, and was less engaged the rest of the session. Should I have paused and conceded his point? Or focused on moving the story along, as I did? P.S. He's one of those "my alignment is X, and this is what my character would do" type players. He lasted a few sessions, and excused himself.

Nicholas Strange

I delete them frequently but there's always more.

Nick Hortie

To the Lovely Law Lords and the Duke of Balifton, I present to you the case of A Bell Rung too Quick. My partner and I were in a CoS game where I played Spirits Bard and they played a Blood Hunter. The group was trying to sneak up to the werewolf cave in order to attack. My partner and the rogue tried to sneak around to surprise the alpha werewolf while the fighter druid and I went through the front. We all were really against this but the blood hunter and rogue were confident in the plan. I had used major image to create a silent moving mound of snow so we would blend in to the blanket of snow and sneak up to the entrance. We rolled stealth checks. We all rolled pretty good except the fighter who wore heavy plate. The DM describes the fighter kicking a rock and it alerted a werewolf, who rung a bell before any of us could do anything. He didn't let us react at all and the Alpha immediate charged for the entrance, yet the blood hunter and the rogue, who were still not at the back yet, could not get there in time. The Alpha werewolf ended up downing out druid and "because he knew about healing magic" murdered the druid fully. Was this bad plan from the start or should we have been able to silence that bell?

Summer Tribe

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

Justin Smith

Posting for a friend Hello Exalted Supreme Crit Judges and Newbie Bailiff Dad Jake, I present the case of the XP grind: I DM my own homebrew game, but this was my first game as a player. Playing the Lost Mines of Phandelver, we started as a party of 6, with an agreed time frame of 6ish hours to play per game. This is across 3 games. Got ambushed by goblins on the caravan, then we immediately split the party, 2 staying with the caravan to make sure it won’t get stole while the rest head down the trail. We get to the goblin cave after 5ish hours real time, promptly murder the scouts outside, then start planning to go inside. We had to *convince* the dm to let us go back and retrieve the other 2 party members, as they never ended up cutting back to them the entire time. Got them, head inside, cross the water and sneak into the sleeping quarters. Kill 6 goblins and the head guard who was holding hostage the guy we needed after some tense diplomacy. I started a gold teeth necklace while the party started questioning the guy, the dm won’t give us any answers unless we ask the exact questions that are in the book, that took over an hour and several of us getting irritated before I just looked up the questions. The guy we saved wants to go to the town immediately, so we agree and start to follow him before the dm loudly proclaims that if we leave without fully clearing the cave, we get no XP at all. None, unless we go finish the cave. I tried to reason with them, but they wouldn’t budge, said that’s how the book says to do it so that’s how they’re doing it. We all begrudgingly go finish the cave, just to find out that we’re all still lvl 1 after 3 games and we only got 150xp for doing all that. My partner and I stopped playing after this, as every game was supposed to be 6 hours but was usually pushed to 10-12 hours, and there wasn’t any fun being had when we have to choose between advancing story at the cost of not getting XP. Was the DM right to go “by the book” on xp collecting or should we have got the XP acquired when we left the cave by our own choice?

Cassandra Vincent

May it please the court and Bailiff Tucker (wait did he ascend the bench yet?) Due to some real world bummer fallout with me and my friends, (to make a long story short, they were complete dicks to my partner and actively tried to set me up with another player at the table who they liked for me better) I bowed out of the campaign we were in and got new friends. However one of the players I was roommates with at the time and I heard from his room while doing laundry that they continued the campaign. Here in lies the case. Would I be wrong to ask what they did with my character after I left? Or did I lose my rights to know what was going on when I left the table? I humbly await your justice and will accept any punishment applicable for this Nosy Ex-sorcerer in Dallas

Kevin Alman

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