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Calling for Cases (Patreon)

Published:
2023-10-16 21:26:50
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Hello! Bailiff Jake here to let you know the Supreme Crit is convening very soon. Please submit your brief (I beg!) case on this thread and we will bring you that good justice.

Comments

Kevin Alman

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.

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.

Star_Drek

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

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.

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?

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

Katheroony

To the illustrious judges and the delectable bailiff Jared. I bring you the case of the unnecessarily slippery frog. I play in a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign with my sister, brother-in-law and their friends, as an elven Circle of Moons Druid named Isilmë. We were recently exploring some half-flooded caves in search of a hag who had been murdering nearby villagers, and I was scouting ahead of the party wildshaped as a tiny frog so that I wouldn’t be spotted by monsters. I came across an icy bridge which was 10-15ft wide and declared that I was carefully moving across the middle of it, using my sticky frog hands and feet to adhere to the surface and hold on tight. My DM asked for an acrobatics check, which I failed, and he narrated me falling off the bridge and dropping down into the ice below. I argued that I was a frog, and my size was literally Tiny, so surely, even with a failed save, I couldn’t possibly have the momentum or the slipperiness to slide a full 10 feet to the left and over the edge of the bridge. The DM ignored my protestations, and insisted that’s what happened, end of discussion. I begrudgingly accepted, taking the falling damage and immediately losing one of my only two wild shapes of the day and a chunk of my own HP, leaving me in a precarious position for facing the enemies we haven’t yet found in the cave (we are only level three currently). Was the DM right to make my frog form so slippery, or am I justified in being grumpy about the fall and loss of my tiny wild shape? I await your judgement and will accept the fate you decide upon.

Blaize Gordon

No case here as I don't play (can't find anyone to start a group) but wanted to say I saw you guys live at carnagie Halland it was amazing, truly unforgettable, hope you are all doing well!

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 seven 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

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.

E.E. Gads

Dear illustrious judges and the cutest baby bailiff there ever was; Junk Hunkwitz. I present to you the case of the Costly Cuckhold Conundrum. A while ago I had a coworker/friend, let's call them Nurph. I live in a very small town and Nurph was my only friend who was into stuff like Magic the Gathering and D&D. Fast forward a bit and Nurph is planning a full on campaign that is supposed to last years! I was so pumped because I'd never actually gotten to play more than one session irl before. He invites me over for a pre-session 0 type deal and while I'm there he ends up asking me if I'd wanna have sex with his wife. I was a bit taken aback, flattered, and also wholly uninterested. I said I was flattered but I didn't really think that was my cup of tea. He said that was totally fine, we moved on and everything seemed cool. The next day he texted me and said he thinks it would be best if we didn't talk anymore and I got uninvited from the campaign... I also have a new job so that was the last time I spoke with him... I ASK YOU THIS: Should I have fucked my friends wife for the sake of the game? P.S. To this day I still haven't found an irl D&D group 😭

MyrMonkshood

To the Supreme crit justice kids and their papa Jed, I bring you the case of the jail break. I'm in a campaign DMed by my brother. Our party was in the middle of releasing some Kuo-toa prisoners for an underwater city rebellion when a mage tried to stop us. He had some powerful Spirit Guardians surrounding him and a 5-inch tall PC needed to pass the jail keys to another PC who was within the radius of the guardians spell. Thus came about a discussion of whether you can pass (not toss) someone an item without entering the radius of the spell - simply when your hand passes into the radius. The DM ended up having them roll some dex checks for a safe hand off. No drama in this case, but an interesting question about entering a spells range.. PS I dont play dnd, I've never listened to nadpodd, and assume it's a show about rad pod racing.

D Cord

To the honorable Crit Justices and the bailiff, I think your name is Lynn? 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 game was virtual with a lot of big personalities) The DM said the crew noticed the fight. The next session I went to each crewmate and thanked them for their job thus far, attempting to raise their morale status(the DM was using the morale mechanic from Ghosts of Saltmarsh) 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?

Spencer Clark

Dear Three Judges and a Baby, I humbly present, for your consideration, the case of the not-so-lesser restoration. Our group is progressing through a homebrew campaign where we’re sailing across unknown oceans to discover new lands and peoples. Our most recent encounter found us trying to broker peace between an island of Grung and an adjacent small island with two shipwrecked elves, whom the frog people believed to be cursed. We offered to take the elves with us, and I started flirting with one of them. A few sessions later, they asked me to discreetly join them in their quarters. That’s where I found out she was a vampire. She paralyzed my naked-except-for-the-boots Ranger while her mute brother watched from the corner a la Boo Radley. Given the choice to die or turn, I opted to live (my plan being to have my party help get them off the boat). After I awoke in the bag of holding she was using as a portable coffin, I promised to keep their secret and left the room. I went immediately to the kitchen and traded my magic cape for the cheapest bottle of wine aboard. Pouring the bottle all over myself, I pretended to be drunk so that I could get one of my fellow players to speak with me alone (under the guise of caring for an inebriated friend). The only semi-private place on the boat is the bathroom. There I dropped my pants to show him the bite mark on my thigh next to the snake-skin speedos I created (after an earlier visit to an island of snake people). I was worried the vampire might be scrying on me, so we didn’t talk. Instead, we had a long “I Love Lucy”-eqsue scene where I detailed everything that had happened using only charades. We kept getting interrupted, though, by another sailor in the next stall who was suffering from severe upset stomach. My character cast lesser restoration to help, but the DM countered that needing to poop is not a condition. So we ask you, the omnipotent judges: should the lesser restoration have healed the sailor of his billowing bowels? We await your decision, Naked and Afraid

Waddle Bawddle

Hello honorable justices and bailiff Hake Jurwitz 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

Extremely High Elf

May it please the court and stimulate the Bailiff as his dulcet tones stimulate all of us. Today I bring you the case of the "Stolen Table". Please note, that phrases in quotes are meant as sarcasm. I play in technically two campaigns, one Main Campaign and a once a month side campaign. One of the other players DM's the side campaign, a dark and gritty 1950's noir mafia esque game. A stark contrast from the main campaign a "Gothic horror" shitshow in which the DM only wants to flaunt his own "storytelling ability" and we seemingly can't solve any problems with out some Deus Ex Machina bullshit. Lately the other players and I want to switch entirely over to the 50's campaign, but the Gothic DM heard of these plans and has begun passive aggressively wrapping up our storylines very quickly and "brainstorming his new campaign" with us. How do we handle this? Also, I have more complaints against this DM, but this is the most recent one.

MikeAllenZ (MAZ Presents Personal)

To the honorable justices Moop, Punchy-Frog, andMoody Elf Lady… and probably someone else that I’m forgetting about. I bring to you the case of “Two Dead Mentors”. For you see, I once gave my DM a character in a campaign, an Armourer Artificer/ Gloom Stalker Ranger (my first time as a PC, a build I was proud about, and a campaign we actually finished). However, my character had recently lost a mentor, the man who taught him to be a scientist, but had gained another in a vigilante woman who taught him how to fight. I had made it clear to the DM that I was hoping he’d heal over the death of his first mentor and that’d be his arc. (There was other stuff but I was told to be brief) In the first session there was a scene where the vigilante gave him a device to contact her, but warned to only do it if it was absolutely necessary. Later on we had found out that she DIED and when I was upset about it I got a “Well you never called her so you were unable to help her”. But she had directly told me to NOT do it. To this day I keep hearing that her death was my fault for being too prideful to call her for help when I was just trying to be a good student. Am I wrong for feeling upset about this or are friends right that I am responsible?

Ross Gilliland

May it please the court and the unconventionally handsome bailiff, I present to you the case of the unrepentant player. Once while DMing I introduced my party to a village where everyone had a personal vampire who offered them protection in exchange for a regular blood supply, a la True Blood. My real life best friend and most problematic player decided his character (Hektor) would go to one of these friendly vampires and petition him for his assistance in a personal quest. The vampire told Hektor he would not be helping him since it didn’t concern him, and retreated back into his coffin. Hektor’s next words have lived in infamy ever since: “I light his coffin on fire.” Now for context, I had started this very session with a quick reminder to my players that their decisions will have in-game consequences, as I felt like my party of college friends had been getting a little TOO silly with their words and actions in-game. I felt very challenged in this moment to initiate combat, but I didn’t want my friend’s character to be killed so I just had his character marked by the vampire to be his new thrall, meaning Hektor could be summoned at any point to serve him. Most lawful court, did I make a mistake by showing leniency after my friend so obviously challenged my authority? I humbly await your decision.

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?

SemiHuman99

To the honorable justices and the curator of shitposts, Jake. I ask if I was wrong for not letting a player roll to persuade an NPC he just revived to his marriage proposal because he was the one who killed her? I was DMing for a group in a homebrew world where they were visiting the elven hometown of one of the players. One player an Orc from the D&D official Swordcoast world that got magically teleported to my homebrew world, went to the local library trying to find a book the war between elves and orcs (there was no war, nor had I ever given any hints towards a war between the races). When he couldn't find a book he asked the librarian who had no clue what he was talking about, he then promptly killed her and tried to run but the party's elf, who’s hometown they were in, cast web to stop the Orc's escape. When the authorities arrived, the Orc told them he could help the librarian and was allowed to cast revivify on her. Immediately after he revived her, he dropped to one knee and proposed to her, saying that he saved her life. She responded with a slap to his face and ran away from him. The rest of the party showed up, heard the story from the Elf, Orc, and authorities and offered to make amends by executing his character as this wasn't his first incident. Afterwards the player was mainly upset that I had not let him roll to get the librarian to accept his proposal as her “savior”. I ask again, was I wrong for not letting him roll to "persuade" his victim into marrying him?

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. After that along with other issues we had with the dm as a person we stopped playing that campaign for good. So I ask you judges who shall have to spend eternity in davy joneses locker me crew or the dm

emilythecoffeewench

To the resplendent Justices of the Court, and the lukewarm bailiff I guess, I come with a full party's admission of guilt. My dnd group has two weekly sessions, one being our main campaign and another night reserved for short games and oneshots. In our last main session, we established that our cleric's god looks like a yellow Keith Haring figure, but can manifest a dick when he wants, and the dick can walk away. We promptly lost the last quarter of the session to this goof. 6 days later, on our oneshot night with two people not in the main game, we brought this up again, laughing our asses off. I, in partnership with others, made a gif of said golden Godly penis walking off the Keith Haring figure and off screen. We once again lost a lot of time to laughing about our own dumb joke, while the other two players were just sitting there politely. I come bearing our groups sins and humbly ask for forgiveness .

Adriana B

To the honorable crit justices and the lowly bailiff Jake (Just one lowly to honor the rules of the court). 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. I ask the court, was 1 hp of psych damage per hour too much pain for gummy to endure?

Contender in the making

To the honorable justices and the reasonably positioned bailiff I bring before you the case before the case. I am about to start a campaign with some friends them being the players and myself as the dm, we've been planning for months and are excited to start. My girlfriend who previously showed no interest in playing is now interested in joining, awesome! Hopefully. She wants to be a fire breathing pigeon person which i can make work but most of her excitment comes from just wanting to be silly. How do i gently say there are serious moments as well and it cant all be looney tunes shenanigans without making her less excited? I want to consider all players and sont want the others players work for backstory to go to waste if it all turns to jokes or am i being too worried? I await your judgment

Patrick Cameron

Honourable Judges and Jaliff Bake, I was in a group where every conversation that only 1 member of the party was privy to was done in private with the DM. This sometimes led to 45 minute discussions between the DM and PC where the rest of the party was waiting in the other room on their phones not talking. I spoke to the DM but she said that if we knew what was being said it would be meta gaming. Am I wrong to have quit the group. The rest of the party was ok with it but it was pretty awkward for me because they knew each other outside of the campaign and I only knew the DM and through mutual friends.

Austin

May it please the elegant and venerable Crit justices and Baliff Papa John. I offer the case of the Player vs Player mugging. In a campaign I have ran for about 1 year, one of my players unfortunately had to leave the campaign. No hard feelings or any animosity there, but issues started to arise when another PC (Warlock named Stain) demanded all the magic items and gear from the leaving PC (Monk named Aloe). The leaving Player was not at the session, so I was controlling their PC Aloe, and had planned on saying that Aloe got a letter from home. Which is why they had to leave the party. What was supposed to be a lovely sunset retiring of the character turned into Stain the Warlock asking for all their gear and items. When I told them that Aloe would need their gear for their own journeys, Stain was quick to cast Hold Person in order to mug Aloe of all their belongings. Rolling for Aloe I had passed the save and used some monk abilities to quickly beat the snot out of Stain and escape. The Stain Player has never let me live this down and while I don't think he is that mad, it makes me wonder if I should have just given him the items considering Aloe was no longer in the campaign. Was I wrong to deny Stain the chance to mug a retiring party member or was his prompt butt kicking the proper way to deal with this? I leave my fate in the soft supple hands of the court.

Santa Grinch Hugging HumBaba and two Fairies

Hey Yall, may I present to you the case of the impulsive pyromaniac the group I tend to play with there's this one player who is the younger brother of the DM and love them to death but there have been several instances where they set fire to something. In the deadlands campaign I was playing the mad scientist who had a wagon full nitroglycerine and they were the one that said fire to the wagon that the rest of the party was discussing how we could you said wagon to infiltrate the enemy. Or the pirate done just drags campaign we were talking about the stuff we just got off The Smuggler's boat and maybe using that boat to get back to our ship and as we were discussing that he lit it on fire do we need to tell him to stop setting things on fire while we're talking about stuff

Dave 3D Art

May it please the court justices, and the incorrigible bailiff Cork Corkwitz. Update on the potion enema case from many moons ago. To answer some questions you had, yes I left the campaign without explanation. Once the first session ended I bounced. While the potion enemas were the tipping point there were many houserules that I begrudgingly put up with. Such as: hand to hand damage being determined by hit dice, numerous restrictions on class/race, and not being allowed to roll insight checks period. Additionally it was a paid in store campaign so the experience cost me money. Now the store refunded most of it when I left, but the reason I chime in after so long is because I hear the DM of the game (who was a store employee) was fired for a reason unknown to me. So ultimately it seems the saga of potion enemas is over.

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

Declane Gilhooley

If it would please our judges and the beefy bailiff, Jake. I come bearing a confession to the church. I prostrate myself accordingly. I have been dming for about a year now. Two campaigns quite stressful but also very rewarding. One is weekly and the other one is monthly. In my monthly game. I have noticed that I haven't been giving my players a chance to react and get in those moves before my NPC's do their attacks. On several occasions. My players have called me out on it but I just can't seem to slow down. I humbly ask for your forgiveness as I try to rectify this and slow down

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 Wrap-up 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.

Harrison March

To the most illustrious supreme crit, and it’s lackluster bailiff, I bring a case against Wizards of the Coast. I DM a 5e campaign for my friends who are currently slogging through a deadly swamp in the Shadowfell. I let them know ahead of time this would be a very dangerous place. During an early run-in with a young adult black dragon reskinned with mushroom flavoring, the party warlock casted Suggestion, telling the dragon to “fly us to Denny’s and leave us alone.” He failed his save and obliged. Denny is a friendly goblin who runs a failing bed and breakfast in the swamp. Later on, they needed a favor from an alchemist in a nearby town. He said he’d do the thing for them in exchange for killing this dragon Fungoxus and bringing back 10 of its scales. The warlock Suggested “how about 3 scales instead?” The party had these from an earlier encounter. He failed his save and thought 3 was actually totally fair. The players are having fun and joking that their new goal is to protect this misunderstood dragon at all costs. I don’t mind getting whomped, but I worry the high stakes atmosphere has been lost due to one spell! I ask the court - should Suggestion be nerfed? Or am I no fun?

Joshua Daniels

With all respect I come before the judges and with a sort of apathy and a solitary bro nod I also come before the bailiff. I am DMing a group thats running a real crunchy winter survival game on the plane of frost. The players are the last survivors of the destruction of the material plane trying to carve out a place in this new world for themselves. Before the game started we settled on a really gritty style of play with random encounters happening whenever they are rolled, before, after, or during other important story events. So far it has been so fun and exciting and the players have had some really cool encounters that make the world feel fun and dangerous. One though, divided the group. We rolled a random encounter during the middle of a long rest. I had the people on watch roll to see it and they didn't. The next encounter in my list was a grizzly bear with barbarian rage attacking the party. Everyone rolled initiative, but because no one saw the bear no woke up from unconsciousness until the bears turn when it attacked. As soon as the first attack went off everyone woke up, but their next turns were spent coming out of surprise, because they all woke up to a bear attack which is arguably very surprising. The argument was this. Some people who beat the bear in initiative had to wait two rounds to act. The first passed sleeping before the bear attacked and the second passed during the surprise round. they argued that their first turn should have counted as the surprise round even though they were asleep for it. The argument was a quick one and in the end we just moved on. No one died, or held anything against anyone, but it stuck with me. Was I wrong? Is there a better way to get that same situation without making people skip two turns? What bird related business will I have to run for my crimes?

Noah Goodman

Honorable Judges and [insert weekly adjective(s)] Baliff, I seek to repent for my sin. In a recent game I DM, my party was on a quest for one of the PCs - a demon hunter witch (warlock), who was seeking out a demon on behalf of her Patron the Witch Queen. Once they located the demon the battle was intense, with one character (our Monk) effectively stunning it for most of the combat and dealing major damage, allowing the others to take out its henchmen easily. When the monk dealt what would have been the killing blow, I secretly increased its health, having it not die - this allowed the Witch, who was up next and had not had the spotlight for most of the session despite it being their personal sidequest, to deal the killing blow instead with Relentless Hex. This did not change the outcome of the combat and was purely a change in story to give spotlight to a player who doesn't often speak up and shine as much, and led to an epic moment of her describing how she captures the demon for her Patron. I still regret fudging the numbers, despite the outcome leaving everyone thrilled with how the session went, as the players do not know of my sin. I seek forgiveness, and will humbly take whatever punishment the Church gives for my transgressions.

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.

Mason N.

May it please the Grand Court of Crit and that guy who kinda looks like the starting quarterback for the Steelers, Kenny Pickett, I bring you the case of the killer Life Domain Cleric. 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 exploring, Coach 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 Coach Hawke Barski, and in the flashback he 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 Coach Hawke Barski and downed him. Once the tension settled, and Coach Hawke Barski was brought back up, he used all of his money and some of the other PC's money to do a Revivify on the teen and we moved along with the campaign. 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.

Will Boris

To the honorable justices and Jack the dirty foul roach. I present to you the case of the Impossible Steeds. I play in a game of pcs with no wisdom (paladin, rogue, warlock, wizard) and we were traveling a long distance. We were gifted two large panther like mounts, trained to carry people large distances. However, every single time we try to do anything, move from left to right, feed them, get on their backs, pitch them for the night, look at them, we are forced to roll an animal handling check. Because of our failure we have been bitten, thrown off, gotten lost, dropped into a swamp. My fellow players have heavily considered just taking the extra weeks of travel and just walk. Are we justified in our frustration at these poorly trained beasts or should we not look a gift panther in the mouth?

Colton Merrifield

Oh Clergy of the Church of Dice Christ, I have a ttrpg sin tht I have been living with and seek to be absolved. My first run at DMing I was the Storms King Thunder, but at the end of the second session, the players decision to not save the town that would eventually be the hook for the rest of the campaign. I declared the campaign over cause I didn’t know how to move forward and was upset tht it went far off than what was planned. Thankfully I realized that I was a dick about it and apologists to my players, who ended up enjoying the session themselves and wanted to play more. It continued on until work/family/school schedules got in the way. Though it had a happy ending, my heart still aches for my railroads assholeshness. Can dice christ ever forgive me?

Amarpal

This case is from “I’m your Pal Singh” To the honourable justices and the frosting and jam covered bailiff Cake. I bring you the case of “The Mysterious Dolls”. Me and my party have been playing various campaigns since 2019. We were recently playing The Curse Of Stradh and during pivotal interactions with NPCs and completing side quests, miniature rag dolls bearing the likeness of our PCs began appearing behind us. The players and I spent hours and multiple sessions over 5 months investigating their magical appearances and origins. Only when we completed the main campaign, one of the players jovially admitted he had been making the dolls and placing it behind us and that there was no mystery to be solved. I brought it up with our DM who said he had ok’d the idea. The rest of the party were annoyed that at no point over the appearance of 5 dolls did our passive perception spot they were placing the dolls behind us or that in our down time we didn’t see them making the dolls in the first place. The party felt that our time and effort had been wasted on a joke between one player and the DM. So I ask the court, am I just a grump or did one player and the DM collectively waste our time. I should add that this is not the first time this player and the DM have conspired together to run covert gags in our campaigns. I humbly and hungrily lay my case before the court.

Jeffrey Parties

To the judges and bailiff(not picking a side) My campaign has been going great for almost a year now. I am a first time DM and had a few minor difficulties at the beginning of the campaign but have grown and progressed and I'm great at it now. However, during an early session, I let a character roll a charisma check to decide the history between him and an NPC. To my horror, he rolled a natural 20, and it was decided that the NPC and the PC had a long relationship in the past, and it's been nice to add to the backstory. My problem is that now my players always want to roll to see if they've previously dated any NPC they might have met previously, and since they all have developed backstories, many NPCs are characters from their pasts. Am I wrong for not wanting my players to have dated every single NPC in my game?

kimikoroi

Dear honorable judges and the dishonorable bailiff Jark, I present the case of the lethal pre-rolled nat 20. In a recent session, my players blasted through combat with a homebrewed higher CR ghost, finishing her off in a single round. I was disappointed because this was the finale of a 3 part murder mystery and I had planned a lot for this fight, with cool environmental lair actions, a mid combat side quest into secret tunnel to destroy the runes of an anti-magic sphere encompassing the battle field, and even an opportunity to reveal one of my players big secrets through the ghosts abilities. This was mainly my own fault (as a new DM I tend to pull my punches because I don't want my players to have a bad time and often underestimate the amount of hp my monsters need) but the killing blow was dealt with a pre-rolled nat 20. I knew this player pre-rolled damage, but I guess I never caught on to the fact that they also pre-rolled to hit. They’ve never asked me if this was okay, but apparently this is how they play in every campaign they're in. As a firm believer in Dice Christ, I pre-roll nothing and put my faith in him to deliver the rolls as he sees fit in the moment of play. I don't see how a pre-rolled nat 20 could feel satisfying, but I let the player have their hit since their PC desperately needed a win, and this could still be a cool powerful moment for them. When I asked how they wanted to deliver the killing blow, they told me they couldn't think of anything. The combat and session ended abruptly and everyone could tell I was disappointed. Am I right to be upset about this player prerolling their hits outside of combat, or am I just being salty that the adventure I had spent so long planning had come to such an unsatisfying end? I humbly await your judgment.

Taylor routt

Honorable, magnanimous, magnificent, beautiful justices and top tier bailiff. I come with a case of “rule of cool” vs. semantics. I’m playing a storm sorcerer fighter- my DM wanted me to go for a Thor vibe- they ASKED me to do it. And as a short masculine, teddy bear shaped lesbian I of course didn’t hesitate to agree to play as a tall, hot, buff God of thunder. Anway, As a level 3 Eldridge knight I have the weapon bond ability. I can bond with up to 2 weapons and cannot be disarmed and if I lose it/leave it, it can be brought back to me instantly. Well….Ive bonded to my lightning charged war hammer and of course, I want to throw it and then summon it back to me- having it fly through the air. I’ve asked my DM if they would allowed it to possibly fly back to my hand and, MAYBE, on a high enough roll, knick a bad guy on the way back. But my DM isn’t allowing it because the wording says it is brought back to me instantly. He won’t even let me add the FLAVOR that it flys back to me and makes me describe it as teleporting instantly or doesn’t let me describe it that at all and does it himself. He allows others to flavor things in such ways but he is really getting stuck on the verbiage. I just feel like they should be less controlling and let the rule of cool win here or at the VERY LEAST give me more freedom to add some visual flavor. What do you think?? I prostrate myself before your gavel and humbly await your ruling.

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?

Crane

To the honorable Crit Judges and bailiff Cakewitz, I ask a simple question? How lame is a pegleg. In a recent session, my sorcerer was injured and lost his left foot. In conversation out side of the table, I stated that mabye I could carve a peg leg out of wood. To my suprise I was called an idiot for wanting a peg leg for my newly amputated character. They said I should have permanent disadvantage on stealth. The rogue in the party called peg legs"lame". I debated saying I can learn to adapt to moving around or put a tennis ball on the leg to make it quieter. So I beg the question, would my sorcerer and every pirate that has a peg leg get disadvantage on stealth?

XtraStinky

To the most honorable Crit Justices and the Salty but sweet bailiff Cake Hogdick, I bring you the case of the Homebrewed Cowboy Beholder I am in a DM swapping campaign set an a multi-verse. Me and the party of level 7 characters were fighting a cowboy with 10 arms. In each arm he had a gun that shot a different magic bolt. Cool right? After my paladin character used command to make the cowboy drop all his guns the dm used the cowboys turn to pick up two guns. The paralyzing gun and the death gun. Then proceeded to spam death Ray killing two of the party members including my character. We brought up that this was a little harsh but the DM said that the cowboy knew this was the strongest gun. But beholders have to roll for the different rays My question is should we be butt hurt that our characters died to a death Ray spamming cowboy or should the dm have had to roll for different effects? I leave this case at the glorious feet of the court PS hate the show never even attempted at listening

Dylan

May it please the court and the ultimate baliff, I bring you the case of the ungrateful PCs who became NPCs. I was DMing an official module in which my players came across a vault containing essences of sealed away dark gods. The party could free these dark gods in exchange for incredible powers, but there was a risk of them getting possessed in the process if they failed a WISDOM Save. The Lich NPC they were allies with warned them of this, and two of them freed three each, and both failed the saving throw. I took control of their characters, and they made temporary characters to help the rest of the party save their original characters. When they found them, I had made custom stat blocks with additional powers, and a boss fight against two former PCs began. After they were saved and exorcised of the dark gods, the two players were upset to see the abilities the Boss Fight version of their characters were using weren’t on their character sheets I handed back, and said I should give them back. I did not, and things went on as normal after this side quest, but it’s always tickled at the back. Should I have given them the powers their dark god-possessed characters had at one point? Thank you for your verdict, whatever it may be.

Craig

May it please the unnecessarily humble Justices and J$ I bring you the case of the fumbled face reveal. I was DMing a game for my childhood friends (we are all late 20s now). One player was a warforfed warlock that was in disguise as a human. He had escaped an illithid ship and was in hiding. There were hints of the mind flayer threat throughout the campaign, and the party was highly suspicious. The fated reveal happened on the back of a 15ft tall giant elk. Fresh off a combat the party was grilling the warforged as they traveled. Finally he turned to the party and rather than remove his disguise he cast disguise self again to look like an illithid. Apparently he wanted to say something afterwards but the party attacked and knocked him unconscious instantly. I asked if they kept him from falling, they said no. One death save down from falling off the elk. His turn was next and of course he rolled a one on his death save 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?

aidan Sanders

To the holy pristine supreme crit and that slimy bucktooth baby bailiff, I bring the case of the multi DM beat down A couple of years ago I participated as a DM in a multi campaign giant friend group dnd session were myself and 4 other dms each had our groups come together to play out a war between campaigns. My campaign and players were a feywild dictatorship led by queen ezra (thank you murph) who were amped for war and had been planning for days. As soon as the battle begun a player from another group immediately bum rushed queen ezra and tore through my army and players, apparently he was level 30 something i had thought mechanically impossible, he instakilled my queen forcing me and my players were to bow out within the first 5 minutes, the session went on for 3 hours and in good spirit me and my group still played it out but could only watch the combat enviously. Afterwards I asked the main DM what was that, he said that player had been grinding dragons for weeks and felt they should be rewarded and my own players were too powerful compared to the other campaigns and had to be taken out. I ask is this collision or just clever planning. p.s. I hate the show and this is all ironic, p.p.s cant wait for la live show

Kaitlyn S

To the legendary judges and Juke. I present to you the case of the sacrificial party. I play in an online game that is part of a larger homebrew world that the DM runs all his games in. My group and I have been playing this campaign for over a year in a race around the world style quest. It has become a bit obvious that the DM did not think this campaign would take as long as it has and is itching to finish it even though we’ve only made it through 3/12 legs of the race so far. A few weeks ago he messaged the group and asked us if it would be ok for him to kill off all of our characters soon to move things along for the whole home brew world. Obviously many of the party members were very upset by this request. We have poured time and energy and love into these characters and our DM is suddenly wanting to sacrifice all of them for other campaigns. We can all tell that since he made this request he has been rushing through our story (including completely changing some challenges he set up and we prepared for). While he said he won’t kill us all until we “finish” our characters’ stories, I can’t shake the feeling that he is going to force this to happen even though we all asked him not to. I ask you judges, are we right to continue to push back and protect our characters, or should we resign ourselves to be sacrificed by our DM? I solemnly await your judgement.

Luciana

To the honorable justices and Jill's husband I lay at your feet charges against Calwell for possessing my players. Honestly this could also be a Dice Christ exorcism. I recently ran a Blazing Babe one shot for a bunch of my friends almost all first time players. I know none of them listen to NADDPOD but somehow Caldwell Tanner came and possessed three of them. I didn't notice at first because the first sign was a dragonborn who wanted her breath weapon to be her spitting on people, but when we started playing she also made a big deal of collecting other peoples spit in vials (a la zirk) to see if she could make other breath weapons. Then one of my players asked if he could play a "frog guy who knocks people out with his tongue" and ended up being a Grung Monk. I laughed it off thinking of Sol, until we started playing and the very last player introduced herself as Ruby Tuesday. They were all lovely and had a lot of fun but it did feel crazy to have three different Calwell iterations at my table? Am I going crazy or is three Caldwell coincidences too many and I need to perform an exorcism?

OldStump

Dishonorable justices and that one guy, I present to you the case of the mini nuke misunderstanding. During a massive boss fight against a legendary strength goblin my werewolf Druid managed to kill the goblin and took his cursed belt. I managed to pass the dc 30 wisdom saving throw. But the dm still took control over my character as if I failed. Making my Druid systematically kill the party 1 by 1. Since we were all playing 2-3 characters I had my orc pull the pin on what I thought was a common hand grenade. And shoved it in the druids wolf mouth. Turned out to be a mini nuke with a range far exceeding my ability to throw it. The resulting nuke killed off my girlfriends characters and one of mine. But the ones that survived were thrown 15 years in to the future. I tried to argue that on both accounts agency was taken away and the nuke thing was a complete ass pull. But the party says I I should have known I couldn’t beat the save, why else would it be DC30. Or he made it a nuke because I ruined the whole thing by letting my Druid kill everyone. I’m genuinely not sure if it’s my fault. I pridefully await your judgment.

John Wilkes

Dear Judges and Jeff I have a case of the dumb smart barbarian. The DM for my campaign has recently made a rule that your characters intelligence score is tied to how you as a player can approach situations in the game. With that rule in place one of our players is a Barbarian with a 6 int score so the player can’t say anything to the party that is intelligent. I would love to hear your ruling on this.

LARGELinCHARGEL

Forgive me, Church of Dice Christ, for I have sinned. I am a DM for four separate groups. We're all adults in our late 20s to mid 30s. I have been dealing with a lot of mental health issues, which has caused me to spiral and have been unable to run my games recently. My friends have all been understanding and kind and supportive. But I just am having a hard time getting motivated to run any games recently. They've been excited every time we schedule a game but I end up having such apathy that I can't get myself to soundtrack our sessions, or to run something simple for them as most of our sessions are at key plot points. I've been seeing a therapist and it's slow. Please, I beg your forgiveness for failing on my duties to my friends, and keeping the games going for them.

Freckosi

To scintillating, charming and gregarious judges (and whoever that guy that’s called jake is), I bring the case of the crying cleric. I play a level 11 tempest cleric in a game and recently my characters little brother died in battle trying to protect me. This made both the player and the character extremely sad, so I role played me falling to my knees and crying on the turn he died. Anyway I tried to get up and cast a spell, but my DM said that I had used both my action and bonus action to mourn. This lack of action on this turn led to the death of every player save myself, which while narratively cool and satisfying, me and my players feel robbed. P.S I despise the show and I would rather die then play d and d

anti lag

May it please the justices and the elegant, beguiling baliff Jork. I was playing in a campaign, with our party leaving a cave network and approaching a medium-sized goblin encampment. We were intending to fight our way through. I asked the DM about the camp, and he confirmed to me that the goblins were set up with a number of tents. In order to aid our fight and sow confusion amongst the enemy, I asked if I could use our torches to set fire to the goblin tents. The DM was reluctant, but I argued that my character had torches and I should be able to try. The DM relented, but they seemed perturbed at my creativity and did not enjoy my addition to the combat's flavor. The group never met again, but now I wonder if it's because the DM simply never invited me to the next session. The whole reason I play D&D is because you can theoretically do cool unique things that aren't possible in the more restrictive world of videogames. Was I wrong to try and spice up combat with my neat raid tactic?

Canadian Schubert the Mushroom 🍄

Most honorable justices and Drake. I present to you the case of Shouldn't we like solve the puzzle? Our party was exploring a secret dungeon hidden within a great tree, and we kept finding little statues of animals and bringing them along with us. Until finally, we found two podiums, and a high enough Int check revealed the words on the podiums translated essentially to "Sleeps during day" and "Sleeps during night". I was excited! What a fun payoff for these little critter toys we'd been gathering. So I said "Okay, obviously the owl goes on that pedestal, fox there--" and I was interrupted by my Warforged party member saying "Yeah, you know that, but does your character?" I was stunned. Then the DM agreed, and instead of interacting with the fun puzzle, the party just went around in a circle until someone roll high number. Justices, was I right to silently stew for a few seconds, then move on and enjoy my time? Or was the rest of the party fair to reduce a cool mechanic to a skill check? Lemme know.

Schmelbert

Honorable Crit Justices and Jake, I bring you the case of the uninterrupted ritual. I was running Dungeon of the mad mage that got heavily off the tracks after the party had commandeered a slave ship from skull port. They fled out to sea and I had a cultist escort there stolen ship to a kraken who had a mission for them. An aboleth was building their own cult and they were doing a summoning and binding ritual on a demigorgon to kill the kraken. Needless to say the kraken wanted it stopped ASAP. The party arrives at the location of the aboleth cult and make there way through the dungeon fighting the aboleths minions. Right before descending to the ritual spot the party decided to take a long rest. I warned them hey this might not be a good time to do such a thing, but they did it anyways. They awake and descend only to discover that the ritual has been completed and now they have to escape not only an aboleth and his cult but a freshly summoned demigorgon. This led to an PC death who was upset that, why where they fighting an unwinnable battle. I pointed out the fight was winnable with their party before the ritual was complete. We are all still friends and there where no hard feeling after we moved past the PC death. I'm starting a new homebrew campaign for the same group here soon I was just wondering was I wrong for having the ritual complete while they rested?

Dale Colburn

To the jolly and just justices and that one guest who can’t burp I present the case of the mysterious egg. After our long rest at the local tavern we wake and go to checkout the local shops where we find a pop up pet vendor. My character spoike the long tooth shifter bard rolls a persuasion check to see if he might have anything a little more exotic on a nat 20 the dm says “shit” and hands me a card of some exotic creatures at the bottom of the card it says mysterious egg (obviously I buy the egg and am told to roll a d100 to see what I got I rolled a 73 and received an aboleth egg i realize that maybe my inexperienced dm doesn’t quite know what it is and just wrote down cool sounding creatures in a list I try to explain what it is in private where the dm get super butt hurt and asked if “I’m trying to insult his intelligence” I tell him “no and try to explain why he really shouldn’t give me or the party something of this magnitude” where he proceeds to tell the whole group about what I got and hurl insults at me for “calling him a bad dm” should I show him why this shouldn’t be a pet?

Kristina The Sorceress

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

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, I am finally playing in a campaign run by a player from my table! He painstakingly crafted this world 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 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 DINOSAUR. A deinonychus, to be exact. 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 tragic 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.

MikeAllenZ (MAZ Presents Personal)

To the honorable justices… and perhaps someone else I’m forgetting about… who knows? I bring you the case of “Allergic to Taverns”. I have consistent group of friends who play a bunch of games together. where me and my friend Lily take the brunt of the DMing work. She is running Rime of the Frostmaiden and we all have made her really cool character. Except for the barbarian (who is a player notorious in our group for lousy if-any backstory). When she introduced all of in a tavern in one of the towns, the player jokingly said “I refuse to start the game in a tavern” and then he proceeded to stick to his guns and wouldn’t enter the tavern, staying outside in the snow. Later on, he complained that his character didn’t feel as connected to the party, but it was clear to us that it was the way he played his character to begin with. Are we right, should he have sucked up his loathing of taverns to join us? (I am arguing on behalf of my DM (and she is unaware), so I feel it only fitting to take any punishment you might give her if she is found guilty. I am nothing if not a loyal DM’s pet when I’m a player.) (if this is relevant info this same player did the same in one of my games but it was far less disrupted in my game)

Nicholas Peterson

To the most honorable, lovely, and daring justices and also jorn, I present the case of the dueling nat 20s, if it may please the court. My friends and I were traveling through the Faewild and went to the temple of bonefairy, because we thought the soul of one of our friends might be hidden in there, and ended up fighting the bonefairy. During the fight she had got on top of one of the other players and my fighter with the grappler feat (remember this for later) went to go and grapple her off. We both rolled our respective checks and on my roll I got a nat 20. The dm told me that he also got a nat 20. With our bonuses I had a 26 and the dm had a 22. The dm said that the nat 20s canceled each other out and instead of me grappling the bonefairy, we were both sprawled out next to each other on the ground. This allowed the fairy of bone to grapple my character and then use one of her legendary actions on her turn to remove a limb from my character, the left hand, which the bonefairy can do if it has a creature grappled. If I had won the role my character would still most likely have its hand. So I ask you respected judges, was I wronged? Should my nat 20 along with the higher score and the grappler feat allowed me to have grappled the bonefairy? I humbly lay may head in front of the court. ps the next session when we went to a town that had a cleric my dm said that the only cleric who could regenerate my hand was out gathering supplies for a few days so I couldn’t get my hand back.

Deenaa

Lovely Judges and Handsome Baliff, I bring you the case of mutual assured destruction. I'm the DM in a campaign, and one of the rules I have is "if the players have it, NPCs can also have it". This functions as a soft banning tool for spells or exploity tactics that can be tricky to DM for. (For example, Detect Thoughts or Silvery Barbs and Peasant Railgun or Coffeelock). I find this works great in getting my players to put themselves in my shoes as their DM, in addition to allowing them to curate their game experience. Because my players are great, this rule is more of a running joke than anything else. Recently however, I was explaining this rule to a fellow DM outside the game and they exploded on me, arguing that I was contributing to an adversarial and intimidating relationship with my players, and that players should not be beholden to the same rules NPCs are. I disagree with that since the rule has worked great for me... But since we're at a total impasse, I put it to the highest courts of D&D - am I a cruel dictator, or a crafty gamemaster?

Harrison

Dear Crit justices and the Cowardly baliff who permanently changed my vocabulary through his web series, I bring you the case of the unavenged deaths. My DM decided he wanted to invite his mother and a friend of his parents who have been playing dnd a long time to play assassins hired to kill our party. He let us know in advance that this would be a very tough fight and we got very excited, making elaborate plans to counter the wizard/monk duo he told us was coming. When the fight arrived, we were fireballed from a distance by the chronurgy wizard and devastated by the monk who was able to split into 4 different people. We got thoroughly whooped, and basically didn't get an action where we were above maybe 30% health. What really grinds my gears is that we were promised that we would get the chance to get revenge once we came back to life. The monk's player gave a long monologue during our game about how much he loved the dm's mother's "character", like deeply in forbidden love. We never saw the monk again. The wizard did reappear, but when we agreed to help her in exchange for the chance to kill her, we were saddened to learn that no matter what we did, the DM was going to bring the wizard back to life with a true resurrection spell, even when we used a custom spell he had given our dragonborn bard that should have killed her with no way to come back, as per the spell description. Judges, am I being unnecessarilly butthurt or did the DM just make us feel bad with an impossible combat and then take our revenge away from us? I leave my fate in your hands.

Dan Healey

To the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Crits and it's clergy. I never truly believed in the power of Dice Christ. I'm DMing for the first time 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 I figured they could handle it. Well, half the party decide to split off 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 reaction so I put my faith in the dice and rolled damage, the fighter was still standing. Second attack, I thought about skipping, hoping that maybe they forgot about it but no, they remembered and I let the dice go knowing full well, that this might be the start of a TPK. Once again, I put my faith into Dice Christ and when the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, I rolled a Nat 1. The Ogre was killed soon after and the players were brought back up. Was Dice Christ testing my faith to become a DM of the cloth? In the name of the Help Action, Advantage and the Natural 20, Amen

Matt Nusbaum

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices, and “Micah’s brother, right?” I present the case of The Eight Year Old’s Evil Armor. I run dnd games for kid at a comic shop. Recently, I had a kid who had never played before, but came in wanting to be a Helmed Horror. I offered that he could be an animated suit of armor (reskinned warforged), which he was down for. He chose to be a sorcerer named Gremlock, and said that he was created by an evil guy in a laboratory in hell, but he rebelled against his creator and escaped. He insisted that his character be evil, but I figured this would be manageable. We began the homebrew campaign, which was about a village being tormented by a night hag. The party members arrived in the village for its summer solstice festival. Everything was going well, they were having fun at the festival and I was teasing the problems in town. Then this kid tells me Gremlock is going to eat someone. I’m confused. He says he’d like to pick up a villager and absorb them into his armor body by swallowing them. I tell him that he can’t do that to a living person, so Gremlock pulls out a knife and goes to stab a guy. I warn him that he’s gonna get in trouble for this, but he wants to go for it anyway. His attack hits, but he doesn’t kill the guy, and people start calling for the town militia. One party member tries to help Gremlock fight the militia, the rest try to stop him. Eventually, Gremlock and his ally are knocked out and locked up in the barracks, while the rest of the party is brought along for questioning. When the captain of the militia talks to the reawakened Gremlock, Gremlcok tells him that he was fundamentally designed to “corrupt the world.” He would not elaborate. At this point, I’m scrambling a little bit. I decide to send for the town abbot, who found she couldn’t break the curse on Gremlock (the kid insisted it was unbreakable), so she cast a geas spell on him, forcing him to protect the people of this village. Gremlock was mad at the abbot, and wants desperately to break the spell, but played along, working with the party to break out of jail when they heard that something terrible had happened at the festival (possessed scarecrows were attacking the crowd). We ended the session there, with the party about to jump in and fight the scarecrows. Justices, I am conflicted about my decision. On the one hand, I saw it as the only way to keep this character from going full murder hobo, messing with the rest of the players’ experience, and potentially reflecting poorly on me/the game if he goes home and tells his mom how much fun he had murdering civilians. On the other hand, I feel like I’m railroading Gremlock, especially because I didn’t initially plan on the abbot being powerful enough to cast geas, he was very enthusiastic about his idea, and most of the other players were amused by Gremlock’s actions. Was I right to curse this armor, or should I have just let evil kids be evil kids? I humbly await your wise decision.

Kyle Nolan

To the honourable justices Murph Emily and Caldwell and the the icon that is Jack I set up a group with a group of actor friends as we are all currently on tour together. Few of the group have played before and listen to the podcast but most are first time players. Being actors, the role playing aspect has been one of the highlights for the players. Things were going well and people were truly throwing themselves into their characters, even those who had never played. However one of the players spoke to me privately and said she feels very out of her depth as she didn’t feel as confident on the improvising side as the others. Even going so far as to say she felt incredibly nervous and sweaty whenever we would chose to play. She also mentioned that she is so nervous that she might chose to sit out of play and just spectate the game. This came as a shock as she always committed to the role playing character parts of the story and certainly hid it well that she was uncomfortable. I ask you this, how do I accommodate to a single player that isn’t as comfortable improvising and getting into character, when everyone else at the table says that that is the part they love most about the game? I humbly await the decision of the court. P.S the player in question is an avid player of the game, not one of the first timers.

jacob donnelly

To the honorable crit justices and the esteemed bailiff, Joke. My group will occasionally play a battle royal creating lvl 20 characters to fight it out. My friend had won the last two battle royals and had announced he was going to play a moon Druid for the next 3 person battle royal. Leading up to the game he bragged all week how moon Druid is a dmg sponge and how there was no way either of us could win. After hearing about how hard is PC was going to be to beat, without ever planning it, the other player and I almost exclusively went after his moon druid. He said that it was unfair we were teaming up on him. I said that our only chance to win was to team up on him since moon druids can take an amazing amount of dmg and he was talking a lot of trash. I went on to win after a 7 hour slog but he still gripes about being teamed up on. Were we not being strategic by attacking the hardest opponent? I mean he said that he was going to be the hardest to beat himself? Ps we play on a randomized map without using a dm so no one to mediate during the game

Dominic Valentini

May it please the court, and razz the bailiff: I bring you more of a story than a case, in the hopes that you’ll enjoy it during the court’s recess. I am running a game in 5e and one of my players, who happens to also be my fiancé, has grown increasingly more unhinged over the last few sessions. She is playing an elderly Tortle Cleric of the god Kelemvor, her character’s name is Sen. In most scenarios, Sen is a lovely grandmother to the party who makes cookies and dotes on the rest of the party. However, against enemies she is an absolute gremlin child who strikes fear into my very soul. Her most recent escapade occurred after combat with cultists who had taken over a city. During the combat, one cultist had been eaten alive by the bard who had polymorphed into a T-Rex, and another had burned to death from the sorcerer’s magic. Leaving one alive. Sen immediately got to work interrogating the cultist by running up and screaming “We’re going to fucking eat you! You see that man over there?!” Indicating the burned cultist. “We cooked him, and we’re going to eat him and then we’re going to eat you!” She didn’t even ask any questions, she just screeched that at this beaten man. All he could do was make a charisma save to avoid shitting his pants in fear. I don’t know how or why my fiancé plays Sen like this but I can’t lie, it’s given the party some of the best laughs in the entire campaign. Thanks for reading.

Ian Hudson

May it please the court- I come today not with a dispute but with an amicus brief- a shoutout to my DM We formed a group after meeting at y’all’s atlanta show awhile back and Carson (our DM) has built an incredibly rich and deep world that us three idiots get to play in, and yes ands our stupidest tangents (a churro does 1d4 bludgening damage, btw) Most recently she home-brewed a bee-themed monster that is wildly OP but dies when it drops someone to zero, and I thought it was so awesome I had to shout it out. Carson we love you and you’re the best Love, Ian Nick and Allen [ps it was her birthday recently and I’m sure she’d love a HBD from yall]

Caiman Corner - Reptile and more

To the amazing bailif Jake and trifecta of Judges I humbly present to you the case of the “WHAT IS GOING ON?!” player I was DMing a game online with four of my friends and one of their significant others. The campaign was a western campaign set in a fantasy world and at this point in the campaign the main camp was being raided by two separate campaigns. This was the first session we had done in a month for this campaign so I made sure to go over everything that had happened to the party before the break occurred. Around 45 minutes after the session started a large fight broke out and the significant other was being silent. I made multiple attempts to ask if they were there and ready to continue and they responded with yes every time. Right after the combat had ended the group was winding down and roleplaying what had just happened in the session because the camp the whole party called home had been destroyed. During the wind down time I had an NPC go over to the significant other character to initiate roleplay. Almost as soon as I did this the player started screaming. At first I thought it was IRP because I have never been screamed at like this before. I soon realised it wasn’t IRP because the person started cursing me out (they were saying my real name and such). So I got confused and asked what the problem was. The player then told me they had no idea what was going on and that I never explained what happened in the recap. Though every other player all sided with me and stated they perfectly understood what happening in the previous sessions. As soon as that event happened the vibe at the table was ruined and the session quickly ended. Then the player had texted me and said “wanna play baulders gate with me?” I didn’t respond and have not DMed for that group since that event. It was over 3 months ago. So I ask the court, have I done bad in ending that campaign or was the player wrong for screaming at me and cursing me out for explaining it wrong? I humbly await your verdict. PS. I love you guys and murph has inspired me so much as a DM. Thank you for being such a big inspiration on my DnD experience!

Daniel Backal

To the most esteemed justices of the highest court and maybe anyone else who happens to share the stage, I bring forth the case of railroading to the point of a player death. A few years ago, a few of my friends started a game in which I played a rogue, and my friend played an eladrin druid. Everyone else is irrelevant. In the very first session, we went to retrieve someone stolen by a goblin encampment run by two bugbears. With everyone taking out the goblins, I started firing my bow on the beefy bugbears guarding the caged hostage. Apparently I was doing serious damage and this was no good, as they decided to run away with the cage. I gave chase, but the DM didn't want me catching up, so she decided both bugbears would get their movement speed, meaning they would travel 30 ft on one bugbears turn, then 30 ft on the next, and both still had their actions. I argued this was insane, as each bugbear was travelling 60 ft in total per round, but she claimed that it was totally reasonable that as a unit they moved 30ft, but the unit had two turns? I had a bow, and could attack them a little longer, but would have quickly fallen behind, so the druid decided to dash to get in between us (I had gone on ahead) and misty stepped onto the cage. Unfortunately, the bugbears had their actions, so next round the unit moved 60 ft in total, and both bugbears used their full attacks on the druid, who went down immediately. As I physically couldn't catch up to them at this point, the druid ended up dying on top of the cage and the bugbears got away. My friends agreed the math wasn't matching but basically told me to drop it, and even though my friend playing the druid was bummed, she agreed sometimes you just have to let the DM have their rules. We never had a second session. We don't even talk to that DM anymore, but please, am I wrong for wanting this battle to have made sense or should I have just accepted that we weren't supposed to save the captured girl? I humbly accept all judgement, and will stop holding this random grudge if the court rules it so. (ps, I'll be at the LA dungeon court ep so if you choose this one it would be cool to hear it there! Love y'all) -Slipper Sender

yumehop (no. 1 ol' cobb fan)

Hello supreme crit justices and jalliff jonk <3 (ps. You all looked amazing at Carnegie! And thank you Emily for your Doomsday Diaries album which has inspired a lot of my game). I present the case of the dolphins. I have been GMing a camapign for a year and a half now set in a post-post flood calamity setting a La Breath of the Wild / The legend of Zelda windwaker, where most of the world is sunken and there is only ocean, flood rains, and islands. My players managed to secure a small ship and begun their pirate adventures. This game is mostly serious but has a lot of goofy characters and moments like most JRPG inspired settings. Early on, the players were having an extremely emotional moment after witnessing a duel to the death. I narrated that the boat crossed into calm waters: "you see islands with palm trees, waves, and some dolphins". Well this crushed any emotional moment we could have as the players stopped dead in their tracks and said "I go and look at the dolphins". Then another player who had his character leave to go below deck comes back up and looks at the dolphins too. All 4 solidly looked at dolphins for about 20 minutes and every time I tried to get the conversation back on track, it somehow ended back with the dolphins. Now where I might be in the wrong is i narrated their boat "running over" the dolphins and this made the players protest. In a later session I said that the flood calamity got so bad that all the islands the dolphins were in had sunk, and that all the dolphins had drowned. I know dolphins are aquatic and one of the players was playing a marine biologist, but is it fair for me to rule all dolphins out of the game? I humbly await your judgement. Ps. One of my players got me a pin of a dolphin holding a knife for my birthday

James Lloyd

A minor confession: as DM I asked a Player to roll a d12 to determine the colour of the dragon after release from a curse making it Demonic. They rolled a 2, which on my homebrew table said Black Dragon. I find White and Black chromatic dragons odd and boring and I was tempted to say a different result, like a Void Dragon but stuck to my table. My Player then admitted that they wanted it to be a black dragon, so I had almost robbed them of that cool moment because of my own biases. I doubted Dice Christ even thought he was 100% right and I have been drawing kickass art of the dragon to make up for my thought crime.

Jakob Hoffmann

To the honorable judges and the widdle baby baiwiff. I present to you the case of the unclear year. My friends and I have been playing a dnd campaign for about a year and a half now, and in our most recent session we were planning to murder a local bar owner who was secretly a demon in disguise. We spent three hours seceding a plan to get all of the patrons out of the tavern, slip the demon a laced pastry to put her to sleep, and then block all the exits and set the whole bar on fire. After all of this careful planning and several clutch successful rolls, we put our plan in motion only for the DM to tell us “I decided the bar would have a sprinkler system like 2 hours ago so I’ve just been waiting for you guys to finish with this”. The fire was quickly put out, and the demon disintegrated a wall to escape and handily defeated us as we tried to run. After the session we asked our DM how the demon has a sprinkler system, to which she responded “I always imagined this taking place in 2006”. There has been no hint that this campaign was in the modern era, we have been fighting with swords and spells for over a year. So judges I ask; was it our fault for not asking enough questions, or is our DM to blame for keeping vital information that our characters realistically should have known from us. P.S. we knew a demon wouldn’t take damage from fire, we were hoping to kill her with smoke inhalation. We didn’t have a better plan and were only level 5 (except one of our party members who’s level 9, but that’s a different case)

Eric Chord

Dear disciples of dice Christ, I must confess of a sin most foul and sinister. During 2020, I started playing d&d for the first time online with some friends. We used a chrome extension that allowed for stats to be clicked in dndbeyond and show up in roll 20. The rolls showed up nice and pretty... and looked super authentic. I noticed that all this extension was doing was posting some fancy text into the chat, and where it said something like "roll 1d20 +4" I could replace it with "20 +4". This would result in fancy looking, but foul and fake rolls. I proceeded to sin against dice Christ again and again, sometimes choosing to roll low to be funny, but many times choosing to roll high so I could kill the monsters. I was never caught, but each cheat made me so nervous. Since then, our campaign has moved in person, and there's no more lying with fancy text. But I can't help but feel the sins I've commited wriggle in my brain. Please dear bishops of the church, what can I do to make up for my fake and phony fancy text?

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

PattonH

To the ever-wise Justices of The Supreme Crit and their wretch that is beneath my notice, Once when our party was investigating a Count’s manor we discovered they were behind recent crimes in town. When confronted The Count signaled to his kindly old Butler “Now Darby!”. Darby leapt from behind a door and said “bleh” like Dracula. After an extensive laughing fit the DM informed us Darby’s distraction allowed The Count to escape and we needed to give chase. I ask you O wise Justices, does laughter out of game allow the bad guy to escape or should we have been allowed to roll to resist Darby’s charms?

Eric Dong

Honorable Judges and Jaliff Bake, I present you the sweaty home-brewed long rest rules. I’ve been playing D&D with this DM (let’s call him James) through a couple successful and unsuccessful campaigns. The last campaign ended due to a difference in expectations between James’ and the party which led 3 of the 5 party members to stop attending. But, this current campaign with some similarity minded folks is going well and I don’t think it’ll fizzle out! However, in discussion for the DM’s next home-brew campaign, James mentions that long rests won’t be able to be taken unless we are in a settlement or village; ie, if we are on a quest that takes us into the wilderness, James says we won’t be able to long-rest. Concerned at this rule, I messaged him saying I play fantasy games like D&D to move further from reality, not get closer to it. He then said, quote, “Fantasy =/= no common sense.” Annoyed at this statement, I challenged him in real life saying that video games, like D&D, are more fun because it circumvents some of the more cumbersome things like sleep and down-time. James was not receptive. The work around was to pick a class where I can going into a trans to compensate for not having a long rest. Judges of the court, was I wrong for challenging this DM’s home-brew rules and confronting him about it? I humble ask for your judgement.

Kay

Forgive me Dice Christ for I have sinned. A few sessions into the fist campaign I ran, I introduced a “fun little rule”, where on things like perception or insight, the player would roll behind the board where only I the dm would see the result. This was to prevent meta gaming that would occur from rolling a 3 on insight and not trusting a npc. At the end of the session, there was one big role that a character made to resist being ritually sacrificed. They rolled behind the board and I announced, astonished, that it was a Nat 20. Cue the celebration and cheering, and I was able to narrate a cutscene where the character met the god they were protected by. However, as you may be able to guess, there was no Nat 20. No matter what was rolled, I would have narrated the cutscene. I had made the mistake of trying to tell my own story, rather than the one the dice were trying to tell. I beg to you, benevolent cat lords and parents of small children, forgive me and cleanse me in the eyes of dice daddy.

Cory

May it tease, please, and... ...release all over the justices and the handsome, if foolish, bailiff Yakub. I present the case of the perfectly reasonable and correct DM (me) and the not at all reasonable player buttholes (my very good friends and my wife). Late last year, my players and I concluded a 2-year homebrew 5e campaign set in the Mortal Kombat universe, and we were all ready to start a new campaign. After speaking with them, they had all agreed the world of Half-Life would be fun; they said that they knew enough about the games to dive in, and that they loved how my storytelling had filled in blanks for them in MK as well. Fast forward 6 months, the day comes where we agree on a date to make characters, and everyone bails because they "don't know enough about Half-Life to coast along", and "can't count on storytelling to fill in the blanks". Am I unreasonable for being upset about this complete Christ Air 180°, or are they unreasonable for Kickflipping my emotions? Thank you for your RSVP to my next campaign: homebrew 5e Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.

JC

Honorable judges and bailiff Jayke I was apart of a spacefarring campaign where I played a rocket raccoon like character that was a rat (think Kugrasg). We spent a majority of our time running from the bbeg, a world ending psychopath who for no reason wanted us dead that would follow us from planet to planet and destroy them. We were finally powerful enough to confront him and so we did, but when we did the DM described how the BBEG grabbed a beloved NPC, killed him, and then continued on with his speech while behind a wall of fire. We asked if we could stop it. We couldn't. We asked if we could heal him. We couldn't, he was disentigrated. We then proceeded to fight him where the DM fumbled through the combat as he had no statblock for the BBEG, and allowed us to kill him in like 2 rounds cause he gave up. So, like what?

RuinedDruid

Dear Supreme Crit Justices and the person who is the bailiff, I bring to you the case of the klepto paladin. I was running a homebrew game with my roommates all first time players and I a first time DM. Throughout this game our Tiefling Paladin of Tyr was very interested in picking which loot they wanted and which loot would go to the party. They would sneak away in combat and rp scenes to make sure no on else had a chance to look first. After a few sessions of this I thought I should give a small slap on the wrist with a playful cursed item, the boots of blinding speed a magic item from a video game we all had played. But when the Paladin did their usual sneak off and get loot I mentioned the boots and a note where in a chest. No questions asked he puts them on which I then tell him he can run very very fast, but he is moving so fast he can't see where he is going as well as his feet moving on their own keeping him running. With some fun shenanigans the party tries to find a way to get these shoes off and every one is having a laugh except the Paladin who doesn't say a word until his shoes are off then says I'm done for the night. We didn't play for 3 weeks (usually a weekly game) and even after he was salty. I put myself before the court was my curse goof a missuse of my dm power?

HalcyonicHermes

To The Infallible Crits and their pet, Cake Hogdick: The Passive Perception Predicament. Our party was "lost in the woods". Our DM had us rolling perception checks to see if we noticed anything, and our party came to the conclusion that we were going in circles. However, I claimed that my character should've noticed this sooner, as I had traits and backstory relating to this, as well as the fact we were walking a well traveled trail, it should've been obvious once our characters had been duped. My character had the Outlander Feature and Detect Magic Expert, as well as a passive perception of 19. The DM claimed that I didn't notice anything with detect magic no matter how many times I cast it, and whatever has us caught in a loop was above my 19 passive perception, so I rolled again for true perception and ended up getting a nat 20, but even with my combined bonuses pushing my roll over 30, I still didn't see anything. So our party was forced to continue wandering in circles as night fell. No changes in landscape, no creatures or evildoers tried to jump us, our DM literally had us just narrating seeing the same tree over and over again. I finally had enough and cast Dimension Door to escape and brought one party member with me to the tavern we had met at, promising to pick the other party member up after I had rested and regained the necessary slots. The DM then took this opportunity to punish(?) The alone PC, claiming a demon from his past arrived and proceeded to just demolish this character, left them at deaths door, and that's how I found them when I returned the following day. Was our DM fucking with us? Did they forget to prepare a full session and just dragged us along trying to think of something clever? Should we have tried something else or not separated the party? How would The Mighty Murphing Dungeon Master handle a character with 19 passive perception? Outlander Feature: • You can always remember the layout of a region's geographical features, and can usually find enough food and water for six people • Detect Magic Expert: You don't use a spell slot when casting detect magic

In memoriam of Jens Lyndelle, shoutout to a real one. -three sets of three question marks-

May it please the court and tickle the humble bailiff beneath the nose with a feather so that he sneezes, blowing a ball onto a track, which knocks over a series of dominoes, around the last of which is tied a length of yarn, pulling aside a curtain and presenting said bailiff with his first ever slice of cake (I know he's been meaning to get into it). Four years ago, my character Longchewer (an incredibly hairy goblin druid/barbarian pastiche of Chewbacca who spent most of his time as a polar bear) died in honorable combat against his son Dumpy, a warlock created by the DM specifically to counter my playstyle. During the duel Dumpy polymorphed into an orca, ate Chewy whole, but was murdered by the party after combat ended. Disemboweling Dumpy, they found inside nothing of Longchewer's body, but his enchanted adamantine teeth still intact. The rest of the party insisted that since these teeth had been permanently embedded into Chewy's mouth and were a huge part of his identity and behavior, they should be viable targets for Resurrection, but our DM heartily disagreed. In essence my question is this: How much of a creature is needed for Resurrection to be valid, and would these magic teeth (enchanted to remain present even when wild shaped), or a similar replacement body part with a deep personal tie to its owner, qualify? Please kind justices and be-caked bailiff, was I wronged? Or is it I that will be sentenced to dentistry? I await your judgment

Denisa

May it please the court and that’s it I think, I present the case of the Stunned Ranger. I joined a pre-existing 5e game that my friend had been playing in for a couple months. The very first session I joined was a battle tournament, and when the DM asked me to roll initiative, I got a natural one. My DM said that my character was stunned and had to miss the first round of combat. Then she asked me to roll a save to get out of the stunned condition with disadvantage. I did not get to play until the third round of combat, but my character took a lot of damage while I was down. I said I didn’t think natural ones worked like that for initiative rolls, and she said “it just made sense with your rolls”. Was I wrong to be upset?

Jesse Dunlap

Dear Supreme Critties and bailiff Littie, I submit to you the case of the evil player character. I am a long time DM for my group and I have always had fun working with players to have enriched stories where the consequences matter. Nobody likes a murder HoBo. However when my friend wanted to play curse of straud I wanted to play a semi evil barbarian knight who revels in battle and calls himself a demon. We where given a mission to remove a curse from an orphan boy. Instead of searching the orphanage I demanded the scrolls upfront to save the boy. Threatening him with an intimidation check. He fleed and I still the scrolls from his office. At this point the DM get very upset with me and things get weird. Emotionally he says “if that’s what you want to do” I counter saying that that is what I wanted ti do and that he shouldn’t have let me do a check and break in if it was so far off plan. The night ended with me leaving kind of upset at how heated he got that I didn’t go according to his wishes and I didn’t really understand because as his dm I always wanted to pivot based on his actions. It ended up turning into a really great arch where my character had to run from the law and help the party at a pivotal moment but I’m still shocked that he wanted to curb my agency and do it so emotionally. Ps it was his birthday pps I may have had a couple drinks

LeCurve52

Honorable Justices Tanner, Axford, and Jersey Murph, as well as the often regarded and variably appreciated bailiff Jared, or Jim, or maybe Kyle, or whatever, i present to you the case of the Cleric that tried to kill my dog. I've been playing in a high level campaign in a homebrew world, and I'll admit that my Chronurgy wizard is not a "great" guy. Still, he hasn't actively tried to go against the party or hurt them. He's just selfish and cowardly. Our party has a lot of pets and animal/robot companions (I think at least 2 per PC at this point), For this case, we just need to focus on two. Ollie, the small puppy who's life is tied directly to my Wizard, and DaM, a robot duck that is the bff for our party's Cleric. Our party is trapped in a Prison Plane that corrupts the robo-duck and turns it into a giant robot monster that tries to kill us. Our Cleric was desperately looking for ways to peacefully end the combat, and was kind enough to protect Ollie for me. My wizard took it upon himself to fight the giant robot while the rest of the party dealt with an encroaching army of zombies. Once it became clear that we couldn't save the robo-duck, I apologized to the Cleric, and fired off an 8th level Disintegrate. Our DM was kind enough to allow enough pieces of the Robo-duck to survive in the hopes of being rebuilt, but our Cleric was still super angry at me. He immediately cast Spirit Guardians knowing that Ollie would be within the AOE and definitely couldn't survive the damage. If my dog died, I would also die instantly. Our DM intervened and spared my dog, and we eventually were able to rebuild the robo-duck, but my Wizard and the Cleric are still angry at each other. I ask you, was my Wizard in the wrong for putting the party ahead of the individual? Or was the Cleric overreacting when he tried to kill my dog (and me)? P.S., neither the Cleric nor the robo-duck have apologized to my wizard yet, which I think is rude.

Maxwell Patton

May it please the jovial justices and the slightly less jovial bailiff, I present to you a case I have forever felt guilty about. I am currently running a Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaign with some homebrew modifications, including a time loop brought on by fey magic and a wand of Illusory Dragon. I had told my players before the session that their characters would level up, but they would also die, implying but not explicitly saying a level up upon TPK. Everyone died from falling rocks while running through cave passages (a “borrowed” NADDPod encounter that wasn’t scaled correctly) and the last character standing, our bard, was killed by a recurring villain and the dragon in a cave below the Mystery Mine attraction. Upon death, they all woke up 38 minutes prior to getting killed and they were now level 2. To me, I feel I have hardcore railroaded them into following this story beat since they were told to go here and were led into this situation once the ride malfunctioned, but are my thoughts here justified?

Dylan C

To the honorable judges and the sweet Bailiff Cake I bring the case of thr "Darth" Mop. In my first long form game I gave my player a +1 mop as a joke for getting a nat 20 on an investigation check where there was truly nothing to be found. He RAN with this wanting it to be a double sided Darth Mop like a star wars lightsaber. I can't stress how much I hate this mop that I gave him and he knows it. But it makes him happy so I live with it. The problem is that he wants the mop in every game I run now. Can someone (justice Murphy I beg you) tell this mad man that he can't have his double ended lightsaber mop! I will commit mop seppuku if the court deems me in the wrong.

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?

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!

Sido Hikami

Dear honorable judges and the so solid bailiff Jake, I present of the case of the banned artificer and keen mind A couple years ago, my friend DM a campaign on discord where everyone except me was a new player. I decided I would play a keen mind, Sage, artificer to role play what I imagine a smart character is. Our DM, without warning, was brutal to the new players with the main issue being remembering story info irl. After a long fought battle with a cannibal farmer, we got intel about the story from a half eaten victim and ended the session. Two weeks later, we met back up and the DM asked if we remembered the info we had gotten. We said no and the DM said “welp, I guess you don’t know where to go then”. I told her “well I have Keen mind, so I remember anything told to me up to a month ago” the DM didn’t believe me and after I gave her the web link AND the physical book entry, she said “okay; I don’t remember either so I guess we’ll end early today” AND LEFT THE DISCORD. The DM then messaged me saying “we can’t have another session if you’re gonna have that feat.” Judges and Jake, was I in the wrong or was my DM too hungry for a brutal campaign? I await your humble judgement

Keldog 1260

May it please the stately justices and the soft boi bailiff. I present you with the case of the shoe horned hero: My group and I had been playing through this campaign for close to 2 years when it finally started winding down. Our Bard-Paladin was moving less than a week after the planned date of our last session so this was the last chance we'd have to properly wrap things up. After arriving, I was informed we would be having a kid from his church joining for the last session since he'd promised him he'd show him the game and hadn't had the chance (I believe?) To bring him over before this. What came next was close to an hour of making a lv14 paladin for this first time player. His mother and younger sister were there as well sleeping in the next room adding a rushed feel to it all. When the time came to fight the BBEG (a suped up beholder), it went relatively well at first considering this was his first interaction with the game. When we started to get him on the ropes though, the new paladin just happened to have the Magic sword of old needed to finish him off. He went into a cutscene-esc narration of him finishing him off with a big divine slash. Afterwords, we went into what our characters did afterwards and the usual stuff. SO I ASK, Am I wrong to feel robbed of the finale of our near 2 year campaign or am I just being salty? I lay myself before the court for judgment.

Cam the Frog Man Swags Dry Cousin from Gladeholm

To the Highly Esteemed Justices and that Owner of the Vampire Dog. I present to you the case of The Not So Scared Scaredy-Cat A year ago I ran a beginners campaign for a few of my noob friends so they could get an idea of how the game works. There was a Elf Rogue/Ranger A Variant Asamir Sorcerer/Paladin And a Aarakocra Wizard/Druid. Among the table we had a problem player known as the Asamir. His charecter believed himself to be the son of god and that he could get away with anything. While traveling to a small harbor town via Flying Ship they were stopped by the Red Kings Malitia. The Asamir decided to disobey the orders of the "Police" believing he was above the law which prompted the King to show up and try to arrest him. In doing so he used the Fear spell and caused the Asamir to be frightened. The player said that wouldn't be possible and argued that his charecter would instead have been mad at seeing his nemesis The King. After an hour of back and forth banter with the table siding with me. I locked his charecter in jail and made it so he was only frightened due to being locked up causing the table to dislike my solution. Was I wrong for giving him an easy excuse to wiggle out of situations or should I have stuck to my guts to make most of my table happy

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

Elizabeth Morgan

To the honorable justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner and the bailiff Jonk, I present the case of the Impossible Teleportation Circle In the current campaign I'm playing in I play a wizard, a few months ago our party got stuck in the Underdark due to the Duergar fortress we were being an elevator to the Underdark and we had accidentally destroyed the engine that an it. At the time, my wizard was desperately trying to find a way back to the surface so they went to a magic shop on a demiplane that we had visited a few times before and bought a spell scroll of Teleportation Circle for 1000 gold because we knew of a circle near where we wanted to go. It was a higher level than I could currently cast so I had to make an Arcana check, I was under the impression this was only a DC 15, 10 + spell level, apparently it was not. With my modifier, a 19 on the die, and a Bardic to guarantee it would work, I got a 31. I happily declared this to my DM for her to tell me that it still failed. Apparently since we had left the town, the circle had been destroyed and was unable to be used. The party had been in the town only a few HOURS before this took place. And so I ask the beloved court, should my DM have just told me it wouldn't work rather than wasting an hour of time in the session, 1000 gp, and my fellow party member's resources?

Aaron Wisener

To the ever humble Supreme Crit Justices and the somewhat adorable Baby Bailiff Jake, I bring the case of the Sinking Ship and Player Morale. I was running the campaign series Dragon of Icespire Peak and we were on the final encounter in Divine Contention which is a ship encounter. My brother, playing a level 16 Druid (all players were 16) wanted to cast tsunami on the enemy ships and sink them, because he has heard it done in various DnD podcasts. My other 2 players looked at me in disbelief. I said no, it's a sea fairing warship and would handle a wave that size. And if that wasn't good enough we would just go RAW and just do damage. He was not happy with that response, and became upset with me that i wouldn't let him sick the big bads. I didn't feel it was right to try and pull a "Gotcha" moment for our final encounter and leave my other players with nothing but a bitter victory. So I humbly ask was I right to put a stop to "his cool moment" for the betterment of the group? Sincerely Aaron W.

Cody Schwartz

To the very honorable judges and the semi questionable bailiff who has managed to stay as bailiff. I present the case of “the player who talked back” I was DMing my first campaign with 7 others (all of them being very new as was I) it was towards the end of the campaign and the party was about to fight the BBEG. I warned the party that someone may die and they all knew that was a BIG possibility. When they encountered the BBEG (Level 18 wizard vs 7 5th level players) was making his “evil speech” And was interrupted by one of the players. I felt like the wizard was a (doesn’t take any shit from anyone) type. So when interrupted, the wizard responds with “I could kill you and all your friends if I wanted too” and they respond with “I bet you couldn’t even touch my friends and I” little did they know I stocked power word kill for this only occasion. So I asked everyone to roll initiative and the wizard was second and casted power word kill on the player who interrupted him. The whole point was to show that this guy meant business. Instead the mood at the table soured and nobody was at all enthusiastic during the fight and seemed pretty salty with me after the final session. Judges, was I wrong to cast a spell with the players knowing well that I could kill at-least one of them, or were they right to be salty with me? I await you pleasant choice in the matter!

Scarlett B

To the honourable Lady Axford, the honourable Lords Murphy and Tanner, and mr g.hurzwit. If it pleases the court, I present the case of Otiluke's Resilient death trap. My party and I were helping an NPC escape from politicial instability in her kingdom. We were set upon by assassins on the road, who tried to kill her as we fled in our cart. I cast Otiluke's Resilient Sphere on the NPC, protecting her from harm. My DM argued that, since Otiluke's Resilient Sphere specifies that "nothing – not physical objects, energy, or other spell effects – can pass through the barrier, in or out, though a creature in the sphere can breathe there" that the NPC could only breathe the oxygen that was in the sphere when it was created, after which it would run out, since no new oxygen could pass through the sphere and the NPC would start suffocating. I argued that "the creature in the sphere can breathe there" pretty explicitly implies that the creature can breathe, but the DM insisted he was correct. This was some time ago but I still maintain that I was right, Justices, I beseech you for a fair ruling (preferably one where you agree with me).

Colly_wally_oxen_free

Oh Grand Crit Justices … and that small man who is also there. I humbly offer you the case of the forced last minute character change. It all started when my sister decided she wanted to DM a short campaign with a few friends and she asked me if I wanted to join and I said yes. I created a character about three weeks in advance. I always wanted to play a rogue so that's where I started. I collaborated with the DM to flesh out this caracter. We knew the other players would most likely play very by the book characters and that the party could benefit from a small touch of fun chaos. I ended up creating a scrappy little goblin boy named Vermin Schitter (the name was approved by the dm.) I was excited to play this little guy, the DM loved this idea, and all was well… until about two hours before the campaign started. The day of the first session the DM contacts me in a panic, she tells me that she is freaking out because the party has no cleric and therefore healer. I calmly try to explain to her that clerics aren't the only class with healing abilities plus there are always potions… right? It made no difference, she asked me less than an hour before we had to leave to rebuild my character to be a cleric. We had a quick debate and I decided to relent and with such little time I couldn’t do much more than very basic high elf cleric of the life domain as per roll 20’s default settings. I ask you, esteemed judges, is there no justice for the stifling of my creativity? I eagerly await your judgment, oh Crit Justices, and may the dice of justice roll in favor of creativity, a dash of chaos, and the goblin named Vermin Schitter!

Nolan Hunter McClung

Dear Justices of the Crit and Mr Jekel, a case of flavor becoming spice. May it please the court. I ran a game for two of my friends, one of which played a battles mith artificer. This artificer had both a steel defender from his subclass, and a homunculus infusion. We agreed that the Homunculus for us was a flesh and blood creature instead of the traditional construct. To keep him safe, we agreed for flavor that the Homunculus would hide inside the steel defender, and if it ever broke the Homunculus could fly away to safety through a steel defender safety hatch. During a battle with a shambling mound, the defender was successfully destroyed by the mound's multi attack, but since the multi attack also grabs a creature, the Homunculus was unable to use its escape hatch and was engulfed. On their next turn the players were unable to rescue the Homunculus as they were tied up fighting other animals, and he was promptly crushed. Because he was flesh and blood the artificer believed that remaking the Homunculus would be a false copy, and refused to denigrate his memory. I ask justices, was this Homunculus flavor too spicy for the game? Should I have forgone that sense and let him flee, or was it correct to crush him to death with horrific screams?

David Heintz

Hey weirdos, I present the case of Heat Metal vs Sanctuary. During combat, the DM's Pyromancer sorceror cast Heat Metal on my PC's scale mail, while I had the Sanctuary spell cast on myself. I amiably assumed that "Heat Metal" was a 'harmful spell' that should be deflected by Sanctuary, and was excited that casting that spell had paid off. But my DM (and best friend) politely pointed out that because "Heat Metal" targets an object, not a creature, that my armor was the target and thus Sanctuary could not deflect the spell. I cordially countered that surely, even if Heat Metal wasn't technically targeting me as a creature, it was cast on MY armor, and was clearly intended to be harmful, which would make Sanctuary work. The DM respectfully remained firm, stating that because 5e has such a clear distinction between "objects" and "creatures", we had to go pure 'rules-as-written' and treat the object - my armor - as the target of Heat Metal, and myself - a creature - as the target of Sanctuary. Since Sanctuary protects creatures, and not objects, it's protection did nothing against Heat Metal. I goodheartedly groused "what the hell man?" Shouldn't we be considering the intent of these spells instead of clinging to language that leads to pretty weird outcomes?" What say you justices? Should Sanctuary take precedence in this situation as Heat Metal is clearly intended to be a harmful spell, or should Heat Metal take precedence as it targets armor, not a creature? PS: We settled it with a roll: odds, Heat Metal worked; evens, Sanctuary. My DM rolled a 15 in front of the table and my low-level cleric took 11 fire damage in the first round, contributing to that characters later death in this combat. (I was later resurrected with a magic acorn I'd gotten from a friendly tree spirit, which I guess was my DMs plan all along, and this is just one of many fun, amicably settled debates we've had at the table, but I donno man it still seems hinky) I maintain that when we're talking about people wearing armor, the semantic difference between targeting an 'object' and targeting a 'creature' occupies some pretty middle school energy: like when your friend swings a foam bat at your head then says "you can't be mad, I was swinging at your HAT, not YOU".

Noah Goodman

Honorable Justices and Court Jester Jack, I bring you the case of the Infinite Horse Glitch. The members of this story are myself, the DM, and my friend (another player in the game) who we'll call Metagamer. During our session, a dungeon crawl sidequest, my character Aster came across two cards from the Deck of Many Things. They pulled both, and among the cards drew the Comet: "if you defeat the next combat single-handedly, gain a level." We tried this on the boss fight, ultimately trying flanking it from a hallway which got Aster knocked down to 0 HP, failing the mission. Metagamer suggests that I should have hidden around a corner of the hallway (which the boss could not fit through) and ritual cast Phantom Steed to create a riding horse every 11 minutes to run in, attack the boss as much as possible, and continue until it dies. This is not a strategy I find fun, so I didn't do it. However, in hypothetical discussion afterward, the DM said it wouldn't work - that would be giving the boss, a large statues construct, enough time to heal. Metagamer argues that if the creature didn't have an explicit healing ability, it shouldn't be able to heal without the time for a Short Rest. The DM also is not sure if this would be considered doing this single-handedly due to relying purely on summons. If I were the DM, I also would personally rule that the boss would start to patch up its wounds if the encounter is left, rather than waiting 10 minutes doing nothing, but I lay my DM and my Metagamer friend at the hands of the court to rule in both if this plan would work at all, and if this plan would count as defeating the creature Single-Handedly. I humbly await your ruling.

Benjamin Reilly

To the Supreme Crit Justices Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and the the big daddy Bailiff, Steak. I present to you the case of the disarmed feline. During my first ever campaign, I joined an party of friends that had been playing together for a few months. The DM asked me what I wanted to play and all I said was "I want to dual wield swords." He told me that dual wielding is pretty weak in 5e, but he home brews a lot so he'll make sure I'm doing similar damage to the rest of the party. We settled on a Tabaxi Fey Wanderer Ranger. Fast forward ~6 months, the DM gives me +2 weapons at level 4 and +3 weapons at level 5. At the time I did not know how powerful these were, but as you can imagine I soon out-shined my other party members in combat. To try and balance the party, the DM "nerfed" me by magically removing my PC's arm in a cutscene. I could no longer dual wield and even lost the bonuses taken from the feat at level 4. He told me I could get it back eventually when we meet a high level cleric. Anyway, it's been 18 months, we play weekly, and I have yet to get it back. I no longer have fun playing this character in combat. Have I been wronged or was this a rightful nerf to my character?

Callen Lappin

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

Callen Lappin

For extra context- I don’t know if the dm explained drowning rules in previous sessions as this was my first one with this group. The dm did previously say, however, that he intentionally recruited new players when starting his campaign bc he prefers to dm for new players.

Quinn

Forgive me archdiocese of dice christ for I have sinned. I was recently playing in a home brew 1920s mob campaign with a brand new DM. I played a Variant Human Barbarian, named Anya Cox, with a great weapon master feat. My DM, being new, did not realize I could only use this feat ability once per turn as a bonus action. I did not correct him and proceeded to decimate a legion of baddy minions with low HP by taking them to 0 HP one by one. Unfortunately my DM loved it and proceeded to plan encounters around the fact that I could whomp a large number of low HP foes. I proceeded to never tell him. Now some party members have moved and the campaign has fizzled out. I humbly accept my punishment from the church of dice Christ and repent for my sins.

McSandwich

May it appease the wondrous Justice Tanner, the forceful Justice Murphy, the Fairy-like Justice Axford, and... I feel like I'm forgetting something, oh well, it probably wasn't that important. I present to you: the case of the Accidental Pocket DM. This is from my previous DND adventure. This event occurred earlier this year. We were invading a sorcerer tower. Long story short, we found crucial plot information and we had to escape. The party retreated into a magical snow globe that were were using as a hideout. I (Tiefling Warlock) had gone on my own, the snowglobe, and therefore my party, safely tucked inside my backpack. I was going to attempt to get to the teleportation room so we could escape. I ran into the head mage of the tower, and I was planning to talk my way into the teleportation room. I rolled, and failed. The head mage didn't buy it, and cast Power Word Kill on me. I was well below 100hp, so I was for sure dead. I used counterspell, it worked, it was hype. Then, another player (Halfling Monk) said to the party "I sense danger, we should escape". This didn't sit right with me, it felt like metagaming, but I asked the DM if I could somehow contact the party, which he was just in the process of saying. I was able to, and we fought and it was well. Then, when our Wizard dealt the final blow with a lightning bllt to the enemy, they were asked the classic "how do you finish him off?". The player took a solid minute to think of something to say, totally in silence. Then said that they use their sword to finish. I butted in saying "wait but you used lightning bolt", which the DM also said at the same time. In hindsight it felt like I was being a real annoying pocket DM and stepping on the toes of the players. Some of the other players disagree with me, and I haven't had the courage to ask the DM about it. I ask you, was I being a dweeb, a fun-killer? PS: We're all great friends and I'm DMing a campaign with the same group right now. Oh yeah, the bailiff! Jake Turdshitz, right?

Jonathan Bartley

Oh, They Who Are High and Mighty and He Who Is Of No Consequence… I bring you the case of the Misread Flashback. I am a first time dm for a small group of 3 players and I play a very plot and character driven campaign. One character, a hunter ranger named Glim, out of character has asked to transition to a drakewarden. Over the last 6 or so sessions, I’ve been seeding the transition, having him find a magical orb, later discovering it to be a drake egg, and even in his dreams having the drake ask him to prove his worth. It came to the moment of truth during a magically induced flashback where he found himself back in his winter homelands in his tribal trials of initiation, hunting a displacer beast. A scene like the hunt from 300 ensued, except with a kestrel (a small hawk), saving his life twice, disrupting the displacer beast’s illusion, and again intercepting its killing blow at the cost of the hawk’s own injury. My hope was to prompt a response from Glim to show compassion to the kestrel, but the player, who has a love of the halfling’s leaf, might have had a slowed mind. Glim successfully killed the beast, but when prompted (multiple times) that the kestrel was wounded and crying for help, he said he “left to go back to the village”. I forced him to rest before he left and plagued his dreams with the kestrel’s wounded cry, but he remained stalwart. In the end, i told him he failed to prove to himself to the drake and that other opportunities might arise, but the player seemed upset and confused. Was I wrong to stick to plot driven purpose and punish my player as a result? Please don’t wag your finger too harshly at me

BahHumDoug

To the honorable justices and unremarkable bailiff Jonk, and may it please the crit, I bring you the case of the flashy outfit. I was playing as a rogue in a party camping in a wide grassy plane on a dark moonless night. I was on watch when we were ambushed by a band of enemies. Before I could wake anyone up, I was quickly grappled, bound, and hoisted by an enemy, who rushed out of the area of dim light created by our campfire. He started running away with me on his back. Luckily one party member rolled high enough to wake up on his own, but the DM said he couldn’t see me and would need to search for tracks in the morning. But, my character had a hat of disguise, which lets you cast disguise self without any components (we looked this up, it’s in the DMG), so the DM said I could use the spell. I said that I disguise myself to be wearing an outfit that literally glows with flashing bright lights like at a rave or something. The DM said he didn’t think the spell could make light, but after a lot of back and forth about illusion magic the DM reluctantly decided I could do that. My party spotted me and managed to run to my rescue before I got too far away. The DM seemed pretty annoyed and the game ended early that night so the DM could plan something else. I’m glad I didn’t get got but I feel like I may have gone against the spirit of the game, and ruined my DM’s story, while trying to rules lawyer my way out of a pickle. Justices, am I being too hard on myself or did I break the game with my flashy outfit? I humbly await your judgment.

djordan1990

Honorable Crit Justices of the highest order and Big Daddy Baliff Jake the Snake Hurwitz, I present the case of the Unwanted Harem. I play a nerdy half-elf wizard named Lucien in a Heroes Journey type of campaign with 5 total players. Instead of having in-depth character backstories, the campaign would start with us as young adults in our village who become chosen to save the world. The DM had this idea in his head for a bit so we all rolled with it. Pretty standard, cool, I'm in. It all started 1 week prior to the first session when the DM messaged me and asked if he could give my PC an NPC girlfriend for our first session. I obliged thinking it would be a short term thing and would be a funny juxtaposition of my nasally voiced nerdy PC to have a love interest. This... was my first mistake, as she has been a DMPC since. The razzing all started with Lucien being labeled as a "Ladies Man" by the other players just for having a girlfriend. Light ribbing, all in good fun. We all had a laugh. But then the DM started leaning into the sentiment. Every time we come across a female NPC doesnt matter if its a barkeep, guard, business owner, or sailor, he makes it a point to flirt with Lucien. I never give off flirty vibes, I'm just having respectful conversations. The other players have evolved the Ladies Man label into talk of Lucien having a harem. "Oh here he goes, adding to his harem." "How many girlfriends are you up to now?" There are too many memes on our discord to count. I've told everyone it's gotta stop multiple times because it's just kinda weird, but everyone is still having fun with it except me. I want to be a good sport and do love playing with the group as a whole. So it is here I lay myself prostrate in front of the court and ask NOT for a ruling on prior action, but a court mandated order in the form of role play decision for my character to take in the future. Whatever the decision, I will take it to the table after our soon to be 2-year in-game time skip.

Chaney bernt

I lay before the hands of the church to present my most shameful conclusion to a campaign in hopes of being forgiven. I was a DM for a group of friends and we were playing in a house game that ran for about a year. After a years work of progress, our Wizard named Theren Drymoon (he’s my fav of that players PCs so he gets named) found a way to encase a lake with a thick layer of ice so that the nations of a donut shaped continent could engage the campaign’s BBEG who had a stronghold at the center. This killed Theren (the wizard, the myth, the legend) and one other player in an elemental explosion of ice. Another player used a wish to revive the two and had an emotional scene about the betrayal of a sacrifice play. Here is my sin. Nigh immediately afterword the two other players took the group DMPC and went to go blow off some steam on a hunt. They chose an ancient dragon to hunt, not too far out of their reach but a big challenge. A challenge that proved fatal, the two players and DMPC were all killed by the dragon, leaving our wizard alone in the story and causing an abrupt and uncomfortable end to a long time, fondly remembered campaign. I come before the church to ask for forgiveness in robbing my player of a satisfying ending to one character, then having to end it when others made a mistake. And if I may, I’d like to ask advice/your thoughts on ending character’s stories before you feel your group has reached your climax? P.S. Jake you’re a beautiful baby boy and I hope this is a “we like Jake” week

Arliden VanGrants

Glorious glistening judges and good ol' what's his face? I ask for justice in the case of the end game TPK. We've stormed the castle, fought off the undead army, and faced our BBEG. One by one I watched as they cut my friends down and raised them into undead under their control. My puny wizard, with no more spells, didn't last very long. I died, faced him in my mind, and beat his intelligent saving throw. I popped up with 1hp, then died again, and beat his intelligence save again. Then rinse and repeat. This happened about 5 times before my DM ended the session saying I would eventually fall to the BBEG and be raised as an undead. I argued that if I never failed then my wizard would be holding him in a mental mind battle for all of eternity. My DM refused to except this reality and was adamant that my character died. I told him then we should keep going until my character finally failed the check. He never allowed me to keep rolling and to this day says that I still died in that final battle. So judged I ask of you. Was I robbed of an epic ending for my Wizard Lomar, or should I except this fate and your punishment for the dead wizard Lomar?

Matt Thackray

Dear undead justices and suspiciously happy bailiff, I present the case of The Combat That Never Was. In one of my first DND campaigns, I played a goliath named Stoneheart. He had a desire to protect the weak, as atonement for being a very bad man in the past. Because of this, he and our alchemist would butt heads occasionally, going so far as Stoneheart telling him “if you get lost on your quest for power, I’m going to have to put you down.” This role-play between us was heavily enjoyed by the other players at the table, and they wondered openly when the two of us would have an actual conflict. They were howling for blood!!! The problem is that I didn’t have much experience, and I didn’t want to be one of those players that takes the spotlight and makes it all about them. So, even though a few incidents came up where I could have fought him, I was too timid to engage. The campaign has since been abandoned, but I have to ask whether or not I deprived my party of this conflict they were craving for or if I was right to not just attack a party member and derail the session. I await your judgment in my car shaped like a Jack-O Lantern. 🎃

Adam L

May the esteemed Paragons of Faith, the benevolent persecutors of our Lord and Savior hear my humble plea. My crew & I ran a one shot about a year and a half ago with a player who wanted to try being DM. I could tell his intention was to wipe our party at the final boss fight, but we came so close to beating the boss that when I was the last one standing, and my character should have went down from a brutal hit, I said I had 1 hp left. I was able to bring members of the party back and we beat the boss, but a cutscene still ended us dying, setting up a new campaign he wanted to run. Fast forward to today, he is still running that campaign and I have not done such an awful thing again. However, my characters have now died 3 times due to critical one shots where I have gone from full health to none and all in occasions where the rest of the party have been unable to save me and I have failed my death saves. I beg and humble myself before Dice Christ to release me from my curse of perpetual death so I can stop being that random dude joining a group of adventurers on a mission and finally find a family to call my own

Hunter Mcdonald

To the honorable supreme crit justices and the somewhat honerable but never too much bailiff cake I present you the case of Legendary action knock down I play in a campagin with 4 people plus me the dm during one of our sessions the party was fighting my big bad in a stand off to try and stop him from eating a demon boob however he had a lich as his companion i made the lich a little weaker so they could all fight fairly and the party had some npc help as well, on one of the turns my sorrcer played by lets say Dude Was about to take his turn and secure the boob and overall win this battle, however i used one of the lichs legendary actions, disrupt life it hit 3 of my players knocking down 2 of them dude included plus an NPC after this happend he seemed distrought threw out the rest of the session but in the end the party managed to succed in whomping me and winning this fight Ps. The party is all level 7 I ask you should i have robbed my freind of his momment or should i have allowed this womping i await your legendary punishing

Jiggy Merlino

To the honorable judges and that roach Jed. I present the case of the not-so-well-off barbarian. A few years ago I was DMing a campaign for 3 of my friends online. It was my first time DMing a real campaign and I home-brewed all of it, spending countless hours creating NPCs, villains, maps, etc. around the 6 or 7th session my players arrived in a town besieged by orcs and after a long fight ensued they emerged victorious. While two of my players were helping to clean up the bodies in the aftermath and were talking to villagers to gather information, my PC barbarian decided to start throwing corpses into the town well. When I (and one of the PC’s playing a fighter) explained that this would ruin the towns water supply he simply replied “ I don’t care I just want to go kill some more shit”. An argument ensued between the barbarian and fighter and eventually the barbarian was also thrown down the well. The other players said they would help the barbarian out if he would just cooperate with them and stop sabotaging the town they had just saved. At this point the argument was completely out of game and the session ended with the fighter accusing the barbarian of playing an ‘unplayable’ character and challenging that next session they could fight to the death and whoever lost leaves the campaign for good. Each of the two left the voice call leaving me and my last remaining PC wondering what had just happened and the campaign effectively ended there. And so I ask, am I right to be frustrated that my two friends, both of whom are teachers IRL, couldn’t find a way to resolve their dispute amicably, as I know they do on a day to day basis? or is there more I could have done to prevent all of my hard work from being thrown down the well AS well? I humbly await your judgement. PS hate the show

Will Griffin

To the Illustrious Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner; resplendent in their dope robes. And to Frank; in his sweat-drenched khakis. I present the Case of The Impossible Impersonation. I'm a first-time DM running a high-level short arc for a group of friends. We've all been playing for the last 6ish years, and all the DMs got busy, so I'm stepping up to the plate. I've definitely had some hiccups/learning experiences, but overall it's been a blast! In one session, the bard-druid-sorcerer-warlock (crazy build and really cool!) used disguise-self impersonate a 3ft dwarven exotic dancer (with a thick, well-oiled beard) to interrogate one of her regular clients. He drugged the interogatee's drink first, so I let him get away with the height change (his char is medium), and feeling and sounding very different than dancer during the lap dance. In our next session, he wanted to enter the BBEG's bar all by himself disguised as an assassin the party killed earlier in the evening. I pointed out he'd never heard the assassin speak, so it would be impossible to mimic her voice. He countered he could have a throat wound so it wouldn't matter if he sounded different (ok), and that he would pretend to pass out from his injury/bloodloss if the conversation wasn't going well. We just started using these high-level chars in unfamiliar classes, so I felt it was right to warn him with what I judged his character would already know: disguise-self is an illusion so anyone that touched him while he was "passed out" would instantly know he wasn't the real deal. He stopped short, clearly frustrated, and said "so you're saying no." I told him I didn't want to stop him from doing anything, I just wanted to be sure we were all on the same page to avoid a nasty surprise in a deadly scenario for his character. He decided against going forward, and proceeded to barely engage for the rest of the session. I checked in with him afterwards, and he said 1) He stopped trying to do anything creative because it was clear that I wanted railroad them into the bar and start the fight. 2) That I was just more RAW than he's used to. He would have allowed the miraculous vocal mimicry, and for disguise-self to hold up to touch if he was DM. 3) That it's just my story, and the PCs are only along for the ride, if non-optimal choices lead to death. We're just friends playing pretend, so it's all good... but I ask the court: my guy is crazy right? Even in a world with magic and +14 deception: nobody can expect to impersonate the voice of someone they've never even heard speak! And disguise-self is a 1st level spell with clear limitations! More important: was I wrong to warn him? I worried that he'd gotten away with disguise-self shenanigans once, and would expect to do so again.

Aalexander Knight

To my favourite band, 'Jayliff Bake and the Justices'; I write to you with a case surrounding a little bit of a D&D hot-button issue. My group is beginning a new campaign, and we just had our session zero. It was all going smoothly until I announced that I planned to play an Aarakocra- Justice Murphy, please maintain decorum- named Ozzy (in memory of my first pet, a beautiful blue Parakeet). Before I even finished giving the character's name, our DM loudly interrupted with a 'No, absolutely not.' At first I thought he was joking, but while the rest of us laughed, he barely broke a smile and just said 'I'm not dealing with any Aarakocra fuckery in this campaign'. I elaborated that I'd planned a backstory in which my character's wings were burned when he escaped from a forest fire set by a group of mercenaries trying to kill my PC's father. Essentially it would mean that Ozzy's wings would be very gradually regrowing feathers and wouldn't be able to fly for the first ten levels or so (by which point other classes would be able to fly if they chose to anyway), but instead his wings would allow for a slightly greater jump distance with each level until they finally healed enough to fully fly. My DM said that I'd just take the first opportunity to go to a healer and have them fixed, but I pointed out that feathers couldn't really be 'healed' back into existence because they're more akin to hair and just needed time to grow out. My DM said that he doesn't see the point in playing an Aarakocra if I can't fly so it wouldn't be a good character, but I'm much more interested in the character and his arc than just the innate ability to fly. We haven't had our first session yet so if you can convince my DM to let me indulge my avian affinity, then I'll be able to play as the flimsily feathered friend I dream of, or if you prove him right I'll make a new character who's forever tethered to the ground. I await your judgement, -Aara-cockblocked by my DM

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?

Tophat Pete

Honourable Justices, My party ran out of water in the wilderness, but I rolled a nat 20 survival check to find more. The DM said I found a stream, so I drank and filled my waterskin, at which point I was told to roll a con saving throw. I got a 21. The DM then described how my character spent an hour drooling, giggling, speaking nonsense and rubbing dirt in his face. Every other player who drank the drugwater experienced similar effects. With no other water sources, my character; who had sworn never to take inebriating substances, was reduced to drinking his own urine. I submit to you that a nat 20 shouldn't result in my character drinking piss. I await your judgment

Victor T (Balnor's Boy)

Radiant Justices, I beseech your judgement! Please allow your chamberman Jush present this to you the case of the epilogue SNAFU. I DM'd an anime style dnd campaign where my players were all the trope of "highschoolers get superpowers" finally reach level 20 and end! However, when it came time to end it after they fought off an evil God, I decided to have an epilogue for each character. Before the last session, I wrote an email to each of my 7 players as to what they thought could be a cool epilogue. This was done in secret so that they could all be surprised by each other's ideas. One of the players came up with an idea that he would use the wish scroll he saved up in order to try to help out the universe but to have it backfire and cause something that could be a hook to a high level campaign. This tied into another player's epilogue request quite well and so I decided to run with it. However, one of my players didn't get back to me since he was busy and he said "it's fine, just wing it" . I DID know that this player is the type of person to really like happy endings, and so I really tried to have this player really tell me what he wanted for the epilogue without spoiling the twists the other players wrote out but he insisted he would just play by ear. So when the day came around and all my other players were really interested about this twist, but this player was clearly crestfallen and disengaged from the fun and when attempting to get him invested, he was so disappointed that it brought down the mood of the entire group and the ending was botched. What was meant to be a hook to be able to return to these characters became a scar on an amazing and we have not returned to play these characters for 3 years. Should I have done anything different? What could I have done to have prevented this?? I submit to your wisdom.

Meredith

Dear vessels of Dice Crist, I come to you with a confession and a request and a truely staggering amount of crits. I am a beginner DM, currently running the starter set Dragons of Stormwreck Isle for my regular table, including our regular DM. During our second session, the first level party was exploring a cursed shipwreck. They immediately split up. Our regular DM, the party’s geriatric dwarven cleric, got stuck underwater facing two zombies and a ghoul alone. Above deck, the other characters took their time investigating the ship. He started using spells and cantrips that require saving throws. I rolled -at least- seven nat20s, but only on the saving throws. The combat kinda stalled because neither side was hitting the other. At some point I switched dice and rolled in front of the board, only to immediate roll another nat20. I confess that I started to doubt the rolls. I started to consider lying about them, although I didn't because that's the Dice Devil talking. It didn't feel like an exciting gift to have to tell him every turn that he didn't do any damage. I know Dice Christ knows all, but my faith wavers. Please, would you be so kind as to deliver a sermon to restore my unbalanced faith? (The cleric did eventually obliterate the monsters and the party has kicked my ass in every encounter since then, so I'm unclear on Dice Christ’s message. I just want my DM, who puts in a tonne of work every week, to have fun playing.)

Kaitlyn McKee

May it please the judgemental-in-a-righteous-way court. Bailiff *snaps fingers*: bring forth the case of the prone “stone” My party is fighting our way out of hell, which involves killing the demon lord of each layer, and of course each of our characters has a layer catered to them and their biggest sin. In heresy, the layer for my oathbreaker Paladin, my party was fighting the crow bro boss man of the layer. When the boss bird was close to death, one of his big moves was to essentially morph into a big square and drop on top of us. This was home brew, so I don’t know the exact mechanics of this action like if it was the polymorph spell or something else, but our DM described it as “his shape changes and compacts, as he becomes like a rock” and drops on us. Because my Paladin has the polearm master feat, I can reaction attack when an enemy comes into my reach. Additionally, I had thunderous smite on from my last turn. As he fell on us, i reaction attacked and the dm allowed it. I hit him, and then got excited as I remembered my thunderous smite, demanding a save or be knocked prone!!! However, the DM said “no, a stone can’t be knocked prone?” And wouldn’t allow it. My next turn, my Paladin missed all 3 attacks, PROBABLY because I didn’t have advantage (wah wah) We still kicked ass and joke about it to this day, however, I still believe in my heart of hearts that I was denied the killing blow for the foul creature in my layer of hell. I await my judgement (or the judgement of my DM idk)

Jake L.

To the illustrious Crit Justices and... Jerk? Yeah, Jerk, that feels right... i bring you the case of Whoops, All Corpses. My party of 4 level-16 players got TPK'd by an Archdevil's meteor swarm spell. I was trying to make it a tougher fight, but I expected to get whomped as I usually do. They were doing very well. The wizard/artificer did a combo mass suggestion and upcasted banishment, taking most of the minions out of the fight within a few rounds. Out of desperation, the archdevil cast her 1/day 9th level spell (20d6 fire, 20d6 bludgeoning, DC24 Dex for half damage), harming herself with the bludgeoning damage, destroying most of her minions who were still on the field but had their faces on the ground because of the mass suggestion, and she took 2 PCs and my DMPC to 0. The two remaining PCs had 1 HP and 3HP (wizard/artificer used mind sharpener to keep his concentration on banishment), but some of the remaining minions had their turns first and took them to 0 as well. We ended there because I had 0 idea what to do from here. I am totally fine with PC death, but a TPK hits different and because these characters have become so intricately woven into the world and story, losing them would cause such a ripple in the campaign moving forward. I would like to keep them alive, but give them some kind of encounter to keep the stakes high. This could either be each of them having to resist the brainwashing that the BBEGs have been doing to people (similar to the S-class upgrade pod at the start of C3) and potentially becoming sleeper agents who will randomly flip at an inopportune time unless they effectively remove the enchantment/curse. OR the archdevil could negotiate with the PC whose backstory she is most connected to. She's been looking for the PC because she has a connection to the god of death and the archdevil wants to get an in so she can get more souls sent her way, upping her standing in Hell. So she might try to hold the other PCs' lives over this PC's head to get a devil contract out of her. My question for you all is thus: Would it be uncritstitutional and/or an insult to Dice Christ to have my TPK not be a true TPK? And related, do you feel that either of the options I described would still feel appropriately high-stakes?

Brandon Carnley

The the honorable crit justices Murph, Axford, and Tanner and Amir’s friend…. Uhh… Blake? May it honor the court. I was playing a Yuan-Ti sorcerer. Yuan-To are immune to poison. My party was chasing down a foe which lead us into a dungeon. Upon entering the dungeon we only saw a small statue in the middle. The group thought the best course of action was to move the statue hoping it would reveal a secret door or something. Once we moved the statue a “poisonous gas” filled the room. I told the DM it would not affect me because I am immune to poison. His response was “this is gas. Not poison.” The gas made us all fall asleep. The bad guy got away and we woke up with some of our things missing. Was I wronged? Is gas considered poison or was I just panicking trying to get my Yuan-ti to escape the poison and follow the bad guy. Thank you guys love all that you do!

Madeline Chiarella

To the honorable crit justices and the court jester, John. I bring to you the case of the middle school metal band. I run a DnD club for middle schoolers at the school I teach at. For the vast majority of the kids (ages 12-14) this is their first time ever playing DnD. My last group got really into finding creative solutions to problems instead of combat (convincing the goblin underlings to unionize against their employer in exchange for paid time off, befriending the guard dogs, etc.) In our last session before summer break, I prepared their final boss encounter with spells, traps, and prewritten bits of dialog, they got to what I thought would be the epic fight, and I described the scene and the big bad. I apparently made the mistake of describing the big bad as “too goth” and the kids latched onto it, trying to convince the bad guy to start a band with them instead of continuing with his evil plot. My bard rolled a natural 19 on a performance check which I opposed with a wisdom save. I got a natural 20. Forgive me, but with it being the last session and the kids being so excited, I fudged the roll and said that I rolled a 10. They started a metal band with the big bad and never even entered combat. It was the perfect end to the year long campaign. When I was telling my more seasoned DnD friend, he told me that I was doing a disservice to the kids by fudging the rolls and not giving them a true DnD experience- that disappointment was part of what made the game great. He also said I was doing myself a disservice as the DM by throwing out all of my work in preparing the encounter. I think that the kids came up with a perfect creative solution and stand by my decision. I ask the court, was I right to lie? Or was I depriving my students of the true highs and lows of dungeons and dragons? I humbly await your judgement

HexMix

Oh Rredoubtable Crit Justices, and our favorite bailiff.......I wanna say Juan? I bring The Case of the Too Cursed Coin. So I play a Gem Dragnborn Fighter/Rogue in a Spelljammer campaign run by my best friend. Recently our party was raiding a dungeon when we came across a treasure room with an ominous treasure chest and a small pile of gold coins. Weary of the chest. I used Mage Hand to pick up one coin in an attempt to drop it on the chest to possibly trigger a trap. Before I could do that, however, the DM asks me to make a Wisdom Save. I fail and am stunned for one hour with no repeat saves. After the game I asked what happened and he said the cursed gold is triggered when someone "picks it up". We went back and forth on whether or not mage hand counted as me picking up the coin. On the one hand I cast the spell and picked up the coin. But, on the other hand it wasn't me physically touching the coin. So, I ask you. Was it right for my DM to hit me with a cursed coin from 30 feet away, or do I swallow my pride, and take my whomping like a man? I humbly await your judgement.

Readgirl

Honorable supreme crit justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, and baby boy Baliff Jake, I present to you the case of the reluctant rules lawyer. I play a 5e campaign as a circle of the forest wood elf druid. My DM is newer to DMing, this is his second time DMing. I am a bit more well versed in the rules. Our group consists mainly of people new to DnD. My DM defers any questions about rules to me. Anytime a player has a question about a spell, action, check, etc. At first, I didn't have a problem with it, but it has gotten a lot for me to handle. I have discord, Dnd beyond, the wild shape chart, google, and google docs up at all times (I was also appointed the note taker). It is getting too hard for me to keep up, and I feel bad because players ask me questions and not the DM. The DM keeps saying it is fine and welcomes the help. I am constantly put in awkward situations. Recently, another player used a potion to help a player who was downed. The DM made decision and said that potions would only restore a downed player to 1 HP. All the players turned to ask me to check that, but the DM insisted, so I stayed quiet. I didn't agree with his ruling, but he seemed confident in his decision. Later that player messaged me asking me what I really thought. I stayed as neutral as possible. I don't want to overstep boundaries and want to support my DM, but I am getting overwhelmed. I just want to focus on my druid, but feel as if I can't give my all to her. Am I in the wrong for wanting to shed myself of the responsibility of being a rules lawyer? Or should I keep giving my new DM the help? What should I do? I humbly await your judgement.

Arlen B

To the benevolent justices and the gracious/despicable bailiff (John please choose the appropriate one depending on the courts sentiment this day) I bring to you the case of the veteran player hijacking a session. I had been running a home game (a mix of zoom and in person)in a completely home brewed world for about a year and a half when an old friend who had actually gotten me into DnD and DM'd the first game I'd played in asked to join (we'll call her Sarah). I of course said yes as I had always enjoyed her games and was excited to show her how much I'd grown as a DM and player in general. The first couple of sessions went fine though she did speak over me a couple of times I figured it was just because she's a long time DM. We had agreed on a basic backstory where she was a wizard with a dark past but not overly in depth as we had agreed we would see how they got on in the party and work it into the world as we went on. It's also worth noting the party included mostly people Sarah didn't know for whom this was their first DnD game and though they had come a long way they were still hesitant with in depth roleplay which is totally fair! The incident for which I am begging your judgement came in the 3rd session this player took part in. The party we're dealing with some mischief in the fey wilds with the help of a gnome NPC detective my party had renamed sherlock gnomes when they found themselves in a battle on a speeding train in the summer court. Sarah decided sherlock was hiding something and decided to try interrogate them mid battle without consulting anyone. she asked Sherlock if he wanted to teleport to another car to help a party member but instead dimension doored them to a wizard school from their backstory which we had never discussed. She even populated it NPCs and asked the other party members to help voice them and improv. Some of the party we're uncomfortable but didn't want to shut her down and she said to the group that she knew I'd be fine with it, we had never discussed this. I didn't want to cause a scene at the table so allowed it but she then proceeded to interrogate sherlock and eventually threw him from a tower killing him. I ended the session at that stage claiming connectivity issues as I needed time to think. Sarah later messaged me saying she had a great time and knew I needed some help fleshing out my world. Of note the party had gone from level 1 to 14 over the previous year and a half visiting many areas and planes working in the majority of the party's backstories and home lands. For better or worse Sarah had to leave the group for unrelated reasons soon after but I ask you judges am I okay to still be annoyed by this usurpation or was it just a veteran player trying to aid a junior in an unsolicited way. I throw my fate at the feet 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?

lawless-crows

to the magnificent maestros of dnd and the off tune bailiff jake, i bring to you a case of bias against melee characters. i am playing a pirate themed campaign with a first time dm and some first time players. i’m playing a wild magic barbarian, my first melee character. recently, i was concerned i had been incorrectly taking an extra attack with my daggers as a bonus action and confused as to whether i needed a feat to do so. i told my dm, and after some googling he said i did get a bonus attack, however, i should have been using my bonus action whenever i change weapons. i argued that this would only negatively effect me, not my magical party members, but he wouldn’t budge. my dm has never been a sticker for mechanics before and is always flexible with the wording of spells, so this felt unfair. side note, the dm is my long-term partner of 5 years, and the other players are his childhood friends. so i ask — was i wrong to bring up my mistake to my first time dm, and is it fair for him to be harsher on melee than casters?

Kyled

To the revered justices and the rapscallion Bailiff Jake. I bring to you the case of 2 many decks of 2 many things. About a year ago my friend and a previous PC in our last campaign wanted to try his hand at being the DM. He was very excited going so far as to make a custom table ,world map and menus for taverns. Everyone was really excited about this new campaign however during the 2 sessions we had spanning 8 hours of total game time he had us play the deck of many things 7 times. He had bought a prop deck he was clearly really excited to use but my characters big boss to his personal plot didn’t even have a boss fight instead he just made me draw from the deck. Instantly killing my new gunslinger PC. Is it right if the rest of us PCs to abandon this campaign and return to one that has combat and stakes and less magic cards.

Wayne Keller III

To the Crittastic Court Judges and the Jaliff Bake - this may not be a court case but more of an individual hearing regarding Honoring the Crits on Initiative - I am a forever DM and feel my players pain when they roll crits on initiative so I have tried something new: on a Nat 20 on Initiative the roller gets an additional action or bonus action as they are quick to act for the combat, however on a Nat 1 they are caught flat footed and loose an action or bonus action (roller’s choice). This applies to both the PCs and the NPCs. My players have enjoyed this homebrewed change so I am wondering, Honorable Judges, does this Homebrewed Rule really affect the play? Also, is this something Emily would want to incorporate so she does not feel bad about rolling Nat 20s on initiative? I humbly await your thoughts

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.

G-Money

Good morrow, fair Justices of the Supreme Crit and the bailiff of little consequence, I bring an account before this panel of witnesses which I believe must be considered equally a case of justice and a holy confession. I bought some new liquid core dice. I love my new dice. They're dope as shit and I love them. Therefore, I'm ashamed that I have sinned against dice Christ Himself using my beautiful new dice. As His conduits and as impartial judges of Bahumia and beyond, I beg for forgiveness and aquittal. May mercy preside over us all. I begin here: The dice shop from whom I bought the dice replaced a number with their logo--a favorite feature of mine. I have other dice with the same feature and it always adds some extra sauce to a Natural 20. Until recently! You see, I've been rolling these new dice assuming the company's logo had replaced the number 20. However, the other day I rolled an actual Nat 20--with the number 20 staring up at me. Exactly opposite--where the number 1 should be--was the logo. To my surprise, I've been claiming Natural 20s that were in fact Natural 1s. I immediately came clean to my party and DM and have not made the mistake again. However, the shame of this mistake still soils my conscience. At the same time, I wonder what in the actual One Hells was the dice shop thinking replacing the 1 with their logo. Was I done dirty by the shop breaking convention? Or should I have been more aware of my assumptions? Who is liable for this sin against Dice Christ?? P.S. - My only solace is that I play a halfling, so any of the Natural 1s I rolled would have been re-rolled.

Sabald

To the powerful judges of the Crit and the great bailiff jack I bring to you the case of the repeated reaction I was Dming a campaign for my wife and roommate he was playing a monk way of shadow and my wife was playing a rogue. They were on a mission to storm a tower to stop a necromancer and his small army of undead kobolds they were doing recon on the tower and found a not so well hidden stone door at the base of the tower my roommate ignored the door and proceeded to clikb the tower using step of the wind I had hin role for every 20 feet of the hundred foot tall tower half way up there were windows used for archers when he got to about the 40 foot mark he failed his save and fell to the ground he used his reaction to use slow fall but he still made noise which caused the archers to fire he then attempted to use deflect missiles I told him he couldn't do that as he already used his reaction a few seconds ago he argued that combat hadn't started so he could use as many reactions as he wanted when I narrated how he got hit by 3 arrows he became despondent and barely talked or participated for the rest of the session. So I leave it to you oh mighty ones was I in the wrong

Jareth

To the gracious Supreme Crit, and their mascot, Bailee the Baliff. Today I bring you the case of Joffrey the Immortal. In the summer of 2021, the DM was handing the reigns over to two of his players (one overseeing the roleplay and the other controlling combat) so that he could enjoy some time in the player's seat. I joined the table as a Dwarf Rogue. Our first objective was to protect a merchant's wagon as it traveled it was inevitably attacked by bandits, and began to overrun our level 1 party. After being brought down to 2 hp I chose to attempt to hide, rolled a nat 20, and the DM described that I hid perfectly underneath an unconscious bandit on the ground. As my dwarf laid so perfectly hidden beneath a freshly knocked out bandit, unnoticed by the healers in the party, I asked the DM if I would be allowed to tie my arms and legs to the bandits, so even if I was spotted the bandits would think twice about shooting at me. The DMs found it funny and allowed it, and in the next two turns, I successfully restrained and tied myself to the bandit. Eventually, our party succeeded and my bandit buddy was conveniently the only enemy to succeed in their death saving throws, so we chose to take him with us for questioning. After entering the wagon to continue to town the bandit woke up, still tied to me. It was then that the old DM (who I'll call Matt) from the previous campaign chose to speak up, saying that it would be much better if we untied the bandit from me and re-tied him in his own restraints. I said that with him awake, and all of our party very low on health, untying the thief would cause unnecessary danger. The party discussed and came to the conclusion that he would remain tied to me until we arrived in town. Matt then spoke up, saying "Oh. I didn't realize we were playing that kind of game." He then had his character jump off the wagon, and announced that he was going to make a new character and later he introduced his new character. An hour later he joined back into the session as Joffrey, a character with a level in every class that could only say his first name. From there the session de-railed quickly. Whether it was a gang of skeletons, an NPC's house, or even forced PVP, Joffrey would immediately run into every situation to try and destroy everything in sight. Joffrey died, and Matt announced that Joffrey was immortal and would pop back up and track down the party. It was our DMs' first time tackling a campaign of their own and they didn't know how to deal with their tyrannical predecessor for nearly two hours. Eventually, our party got to the first central story mission given by one of the legacy characters. Not only did Joffrey attempt to break down the door of this godly man's home, as well as trying to burn it down, but When the legacy character actually was given time to introduce themselves Joffrey attempted to kill him. The DMs finally had enough and described their jolly giant picking up Joffrey and tossing him into a sphere of destruction. With the erasure of Joffrey, Matt was furious and promptly stormed out. My question, dear justices, was I wrong to stick to my goofs? Could I have prevented the terrifying reign of Joffrey by just untying that poor bandit, or was Matt doomed to this fate of bloodshed despite my shenanigans? P.S. When bringing up this story with my brother last week, he shared that Matt is an extremely rules-heavy player who believes comedy has little to no place in Dungeons and Dragons.

Wings of Silver

Dear Gemma, Ryan, Kaldheim, and Jake, I present to you the case of the chaotic noble. I was playing mines of phandelver with friends online, and the character I created was named Lawrence Lerlous Von Einswald. He was a human rouge/fighter with a noble background and spoke in the most annoying British entitled accent I could muster. On many occasions I did my best to make jokes and annoy the party with his fancy noble mannerisms, and this all lead to me abandoning the party in a critical fight and very nearly leading to a TPK. I had a good reason to leave as I could no longer play with the group, and I didn't want the character I cared so much about to become an NPC controlled by the DM Justices, was I wrong to have cared so much about Lawrence? Should I have toned it down a little? I humbly prostate myself at the mercy of the court.

Ziv like 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!)

Elf255

To the Mench of the Bench Bailiff Jake & those folks in the robes: I'll keep it brief: I'm DMing multiple games for kids (all between 10-14yo) in an effort to teach them how to play the game. In order to keep them from hating the game, I've fudged enemy rolls at times to keep their PCs alive during combat when my dice seem thirsty for PC blood. They have no idea I'm doing this. Am I messing up as a DM by not giving them the chance to experience the full game, which includes PC death? Or is roll-fudging like this acceptable in the name of learning? I accept your judgement & will adjust my DMing accordingly.

Logan Stock

To the shiny, illustrious Golden Judges and their Copper Bailiff, I present to you the case of Merty Chlap. A while back my friend got some cool dice that you could roll for a race and class and we decided to do a one shot with a D20 roll deciding the level. Lo and behold my 15th level Half Orc Warlock with the Undead Patron promptly named Merty Chlap. The mission was to clear a mysterious teleporting mansion to gain its riches in which we had 2 hours game time. The dispute comes before the penultimate battle in which I described Merty using his once a day level 14 feature to become a spirit form to power up before the next fight. As Merty’s disembodied spirit tried to go throw a dimensional door, my DM described how because Merty was disembodied, his untethered soul could not handle the teleportation and described him taking 8d8 psychic damage and being shot back to his body, losing his once a day ability. I was a little steamed as this was a unique one shot and was a chance to try a new subclass but I ask justices do I have a right to be angry for Merty being robbed of his cool form, or was I wrong in trying to power up before a battle and should I have waited patiently lest I get Chlap-ped for my impatience? I humbly await your judgement.

Katie P.

Dear Justices and Sweet Baby Jake, I present you with the case of the secret player character. I DMed a game while attending grad school and I told my players this would mean I would have a lot less oversight than a usual campaign. I told them I would have to trust them to do the right thing and police themselves while I was in school and that when I graduated, I'd be able to focus one all the extra DM work. Well, one player picked up an NPC follower and my rule for leveling followers is that they get 1/2 xp if they are active party member (no xp if left to watch the horses, etc.). I gave the Player control of this tabaxi bard and said she started at level 1 (the party was level 5). Cut to now, I've graduated, I'm looking at the party to start the game again and she's level 8, same as the party. The player has leveled her and used her as an extra PC this whole time. While I thought it odd that she was so powerful in our smaller fights, I was writing my thesis and too stressed to remember to check in. Now, they have a boss fight and I want to kill her off even if she's a party-favorite, but I feel guilt since I was negligent in my oversight. I await the judges' decision and shake a rattle to distract the baby bailiff.

Trans Rights

May it please the Undying Justices and their tormented Skeleton Baliff Jacob, as I present the Case of the Skipped Final Boss. This was a few years ago, but it was the end of the campaign. The DM had chosen one of the PCs, the tiefling sorcereress, to essentially be the main character of the campaign, and we were high level, in Hell, and ready to kill the Tiefling's ancestor, the Archdevil Fierna. The DM presented our party with a wizard NPC who the tiefling sorceress decided to bring with us, and we had gotten through most of the Archdevil's lair, when we had our first combat encounter with a patrol of Devils. The Sorceress had talked her way most of the way here, and I cast hypnotic pattern. My instrument of the bards gave them disadvantage, they had advantage innately which cancelled it out, and all of them failed the save. As we had done before, we executed each of the Devils with readied attacks, and moved on seemingly without an issue. When we arrived in the Archdevil's lair, the wizard NPC killed and took the Archdevil's place in a cutscene that we couldn't interact with. The Sorceress said that she was okay with this as she primarily wanted Fierna dead, and that's where we ended the campaign. Afterwards, the DM explained that those 3 random Devils patrolling were meant to be the mechanical final boss of our adventure, and was upset that I had "skipped" it, and decided that hypnotic pattern would be banned for their next game. I followed Murph's advice and got new friends. Fair justices, was I in the wrong for using an item/spell combo that enabled me to accidentally skip the final boss, or was the DM in the wrong for making a random patrol the final boss when we were expecting a cool archdevil fight? I await your judgment. (ps. In my latest campaign that I DM, I cast y'all as undead judges & skeleton baliff ruling a town with whimsical punishments.)

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.

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. PPS he did let me play as a half dragon ranger in 3.5 PPPS I lost 3 weapons to that table in a previous campaign to them turning into dire bears and attacking us

Max Littman

To the often-a-guest-on-8-bit-bookclub Bailiff Jake and the affectionately gaslighting judges: I bring you the case of Shaken Confidence. May it please the court. A few years ago I DMed a 5e campaign of Storm King’s Thunder as a new DM for a group of work friends. They enjoyed the diplomatic side of D&D more than the combat side, even avoiding combat through creative problem solving and persuasion. We all were having fun so I leaned into it. A few weeks later I was talking to a friend and fellow DM who was going on about the many monsters his group defeated. He asked me how many boss battles my players fought, and I sheepishly told him the only earnest fight they had was against an ooze since they couldn’t reason with it. He laughed at me and told me I wasn’t DMing right. My campaign ended a few months later due to scheduling conflicts, and I’ve been too nervous to DM since. Was the other DM correct that I was DMing wrong, or is it ok to lean into what my players enjoy (even if that means ignoring or altering the module as written)? I will accept any punishment you see fit.

Ben Delahay

To the wonderful Oracles of Dilf-die Axford, Murphy, Tanner and Cake “The Boss” Hurwitz I am a humble galoot simply trying to understand why the Dice Christ taunts me so. My luck with rolling has never been incredible. I’m what the people call a real Tanner Tosser most days or a Murph on my worst days. I’ve made my peace with that which is why this scenario makes me feel like Dice Christ is taunting me. I play a Monk in my Curse of Strahd game. In about 20 minutes I rolled 8 natural 20s in a row. 8. So why am I not ecstatic and loudly proclaiming myself as Dice Christ’s Special Lil Guy? The rolls were either for Dex checks all that were a DC 12 or initiative. 8 Nat 20s in a row. The best luck in my life or perhaps anyone’s life. Each and every one was completely useless. When we got to Strahd later I was USELESS and contributed next to nothing in the fight. I barely managed to hit Strahd three times. Why would DC do this to me? In what world is this kind of humiliation justifiable? I don’t know if I can go on believing in anything after this experience. Sincerely, Dicked and Diced Over In DC.

Chloe B

To the beautiful, powerful, esteemed judges and the guy whose name is juuuuuust on the tip of my tongue, may it please the court. I'm currently playing as a pirate warlock in an Eberron campaign who was hired to captain a cargo airship in exchange for valuable information. Not long into the journey, my warlock made a deal with her evil patron to save her friend from a curse, and it was later revealed that in return, my character could no longer leave the ship. Fast forward to a couple of sessions later, where an explosive trap on the ship caused it to crash land in the middle of a desert. Since my character was unable to leave the ship, she and a few other party members stayed behind while the rest of the party went to the nearest village to get supplies to fix the ship. Soon after the party members disembarked, the ship was attacked by a Wyvern. The entire pirate crew ran below deck to hide, leaving just my level 6 warlock and our druid to fight the wyvern single-handedly. Thanks to a few crit blessings from Dice Christ, we made pretty quick work of the wyvern, and in return, my DM said that it let out one last dying roar, which caused all of the windows on the already torn apart ship to shatter. This felt a bit like rubbing salt into a wound, since the ship that my character was already incapable of leaving was already in pieces, and in return for killing a dragon, we were rewarded with the ship breaking even more. So, I ask you humbly, am I right to feel as though it's a hollow victory, or is my character's anger at being trapped rubbing off on me?

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 where it can freely roll around as he drives. I generally think of this as whimsical. But recently I have become increasingly aware of when his Mazda rolls a natural 1. We have taken a lot of road trips and there are just so many ways this little car could get absolutely bodied. Then again, nat 20s feel like a good omen for the day. 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

Stems137

To the honorable justices Murphy Axford and Tanner, and the lowly bailiff John. I present the case of the inadequately described chest. I was playing in a new campaign with some friends of a friend, and we were delving into a dungeon, as the rogue of the party, it was my job to scout ahead for traps and other danger. While doing so, I stumbled upon a hidden room. As I entered the room, the description I was given follows "This is a mostly bare room, save for a single "chest" against the back wall." approaching cautiously, I searched for traps, I was told I didn't see any noticeable traps. So I decided to open the "chest". This is where I take issue, as I got closer to the "chest" I was told to make a dexterity saving throw, as giant blades sprung from the wall at waist, and neck height. as it Turns out, the "chest" I was looking forward to opening was not in fact a box with a lid, but instead a dismembered human torso, left by the last unfortunate soul who entered this room. I argued that had I known this was a human torso, I wouldn't have been so keen on opening it. I was told that I would still be taking the trap damage as I still approached the "chest" I ask you, am I right to be upset at this outcome, seeing as I was deceived into approaching from the start?

Daveman

To the most honorable and attractive judges Murphy, Axford, Tanner, and no one else that comes to mind, I bring you the case of the Forever DM vs "The Rat Pack." I have been a resident DM for multiple groups of friends and coworkers for years now. I pride myself on trying to bring as many people to the hobby as I can, sometimes running up to 6 games at a time. And when one of my players told me he was going take a crack a DMing with another group of people, I was thrilled like a mother goose watching her hatchlings take flight. I was also surprised as over the past year he bailed last minute on sessions 80% of the time usually with the excuse that he is, and I quote, "a rambunctious little scamp." About a week later, he texted me "Hey have you decided?" "Decided on what?" I asked. "On what character you want to play? We are all waiting on you." I was shocked because I never agreed to join, in fact he never asked me to or gave any other information on his game. Caught off guard, shoot him a character real quick and he sends me a discord link to the "Rat Pack" server. Turns out they were playing at that very moment. I was then trapped in a 4 hr game full of people who called themselves "ratty bois", and I quickly learned they weren't far off. Like one guy who said not a single word the entire time but just flexed shirtless on camera in a dark room. I let the baby DM run things and he would make outrageous calls like, denying the chance for a player to roll for an arm wrestling match against a minotaur in a bar and losing despite having a higher strength stat. Or denying my nat 20 to pickpocket a guard and having me sent straight to prison. I decided not to join again and quit the game by saying I was too busy (which I was). The problem is this baby DM is my boss and I see him every time I go to work. Was I wrong to leave my player's game or was I right to save myself? I prostrate myself to your judgement.

Daveman

P.S. hate the show

Persephonebloom97

To the justices who drive the apple car and the bailiff who rides atop it, I present to you the case of the npc turned PC. So a little back story, my character in my current campaign is an eladrin college of creation bard who comes from a family of adventurers. She has a tenuous relationshipwith her family and decided to distance herself from the family name by living on the material plane. Fast forward to the session after the dm introduced her brother our dm asked if it was okay for his girlfriend to join the session because she was interested in playing. We all immediately agreed. So the session starts as normal and I'm wondering when her character comes in when it's revealed she's going to be playing my character's brother. This came as a shock to me as the dm hadn't clued me in on it. The session continued on with me having to fill in info every now and then to give background on their sibling situation. It was also a little wierd seeing as my character had a bit of a hostile relationship with her family so most of our interactions were awkward and slightly antagonistic. Am I wrong to question my dm's decision? Or should I suck it up to keep the good vibes. I lay prostrate at the feet of the court and await your judgement

Michael

To the honorable judges and Tucker's BFF, I present to you the case of the right to squat in an abandoned home during a blizzard. Our party discovered a village was using a regenerating troll as a reusable food source. We found the act immoral, and tried to release the troll safely though we did end up having to kill it. After the battle, we were beat, and wanted to spend the night in town during a blizzard. Since there were no inns, and the townspeople were generally unhappy with us for removing their food source, we opted to squat in an abandoned home. In the middle of the night/blizzard, we were awoken by about 14 townspeople with torches who were demanding we leave. I asked the DM how the torches were lit in the blizzard, and he changed it to lanterns. I then asked how they were able to safely make it to our home during the blizzard, and he hand-waved it. After an 18 intimidation check, and some passed fear checks, a fight broke out and 11 of the townspeople were killed due to some very lethal spellcasting, while the remaining three ran away. It was at that point where we realized how much this changed the nature of our campaign, and are now debating whether we just travel back in time such that we don't spend the night here. Honorable judges, was it wrong for us players to have expected a good night's rest? Or are we just a bunch of murder-hobos who deserve whatever punishment we get? P.S.: I forgot to mention, the DM said we didn't have tents because we didn't explicitly buy them at the general store.

Eric G

To the tiny judges that get to live in a magical acorn house and dance with mice and rabbits in the woods on a mushroom, and the regular sized balif Jake. I bring to you the case of gaslighting a player. I DM for 4 of my friends. One of my players is an undead human who's body was naturaly mummified in a peat bog. Her name is Peony. The player wanted to add some story to Peony's past before she was mummified. We decided it would be cool if Peony was a long lost relative of Oliver, another PC. We decided to keep it a secret until it came up in the game. Jump to our first session back and Oliver's Player immediately says "wouldn't it be crazy if we were related and you were like my long lost relative?". Peony's player and I exchanged a grim glance and then started to gaslight him by razzing his idea and saying it was stupid and absurd. We couldn't believe he honestly guessed it so fast without any clues. My question is was it right to lightheartedly razz my Player for guessing the connection between Oliver and Peony? Or should I have just told the truth and let my player hold this over me forever?

Dippity_Dip

To the Justices - beloved as the dawning sun amid the churning sea - and Jerk, I offer my case of the anti-80s rescue. I was invited to a Curse of Strahd campaign and played my first session as a bard whose instrument was a synthesizer. One of the encounters we had was rescuing a fellow player from a group of cultists; I pulled out my synth for a distraction but the DM thought it was hilarious and with a good performance check, we were able to defeat the cultists with a group 80s pop ballad. The issue comes in with the Bloodhunter at the table who, despite our many attempts to involve him, refused to be included. His character walked away from the group during the performance and went into the woods, talking down to our characters when he came back. Even after the cultists were defeated, he remained mad at the rest of us for being silly and was really passive aggressive out of game when we talked about it. I thought we had a really good time at the table and was happy with the session, but I couldn’t help feeling bad about my friend who seemingly just wanted to play a serious Strahd campaign. Should we have toned down the sillyness, or should that player have loosened up a bit? I leave it to the mercy of the court.

Kyle M Harris

To the extremely scantily clad judges and Papa baliff Jork. I bring forward the case of acrobatics vs athletics. My player (lvl 2 fighter rogue wannabe warlock with their highest stat being charisma) wanted to jump over some gerblins coming up a staircase where the player was hiding on a scaffolding platfom. I described it as 10' over to jump the staircase to make it to the landing 10' below, clearing the gerblins. I asked for an athletics check. The player described doing an "Arabian roll" over the gerblins, and asked for an acrobatics check, as that was the skill they were proficient in. I stated that jumping about 15' to clear the staircase seemed like a jumping thing (athletics) and the Arabian roll would be acrobatics to land, if they wanted to do two rolls. They got a little upset and decided to just roll off the platform and drop 20' to the ground. They got upset again when I asked them for acrobatics for the landing from the fall. Was I being unfair, should I just have been cool with the acrobatics to roll over some gerblins? P.S. hate the show

Spenser Willden

Always venerable justices and every-once-in-a-while venerable Bailiff Jake, During a recent game, my party delved into the ruins of a Dwarven fortress occupied with undead led by a ghoul alchemist. As we explored the dungeon, we came across a seemingly alive Dwarven warrior. With a 28 deception and abilities that hid him from detect good and evil, he managed to evade notice as an undead skin-stealer. However, with a high medicine check on him, I noticed a small incision in his neck; the only wound on his supposedly-quite-injured person. Having learned in character that we were going against an undead with alchemist/tinkerer vibes, I reasoned that perhaps something was put in him that would cause him to unknowingly act against us, explaining some other gaps in the logic of the story he told us. Asking him about this, he pulled off his skin and attacked us, and as we were fighting him by himself, we made quick work of him. The rest of the session, the GM was upset with me, and told me that what I had done was metagaming—that failing the initial insight check means that even if I, as a player, figure it out, my character can't. I maintain that insight checks do not supersede a character's ability to reason in a given situation, especially when context and other checks (like medicine) pulled up the information I worked off of, and that I never questioned the information we received from the insight check. Was I wrong? Was this metagaming? Should I have let the GM plant the seeds of undead-skin-peeling without investigating them? Sincerely, Confused in the Crypts (Apologies for the longer question! Wasn't sure how to fit in all the necessary details in a tighter form)

Randy Greig

To the immaculate honors and new guest bailiff Jake, who I hope is having the kind of day he deserves. I bring to you the case of the Walock Woes. A few years ago I was playing a Hexblade Warlock in our campaign. After a few times of using the Armor of Hexes ability, my DM decided it was too strong of an ability and put a once per long rest cap on it. I argued that it's 50% chance to negate an attack as a reaction was similar to a rouges ability to automatically half damage of any attack once per turn. I'll admit I did get fairly passive aggressive about it, and that may have playing a factor in my DM not budging on it. It was during my edgelord character phase (sorry Daddy Murph, I have since repented for my sins and hope Dice Christ can absovle me). It has since been put behind us and the group still plays together 8 years later, but the questions has always stuck with me. Is Armor of Hexes a broken ability? I await your wise judgment, and also for the return of bailiff Cake.

Spenser Willden

(also not a justice but it sounds like you're a fantastic DM who knows how to meet your players with the kind of game they would enjoy! Having nerves is totally understandable, but alongside them, it sounds like you have so much to be proud of :) If you enjoyed it, you should try again!)

Cash

To the Jubilant Judges and that guy who always plays the best class, I think his name was Joel. I play in a homebrew world that I created with my friends. The world is divided into three main regions, each based on one of the older D&D edition styles of magic: Primal, Divine, and Arcane. Each region also has four classes loosely assigned to it in order to give the characters different backgrounds and promote differing interests. These differing interests also act as a driving force for a lot of the missions they go on as they travel throughout the three regions. One of my players, a Ranger from the forested “Primal” region, constantly tries to recruit helpers to assist them on their tasks, be it farmers from smaller towns in the “Arcane” region or the holy knights in the “Divine” region. The issue arises in that this player is also a DM and complains that players in his game do the same thing! He seems completely unable to make this connection and always seems confused when I try and gently steer the conversation away from mercenary mayhem. I ask you judges, should I continue down this path of denial or accept my fate and allow these sellsword shenanigans to continue?

Rasmus, son of Lars (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-05 07:00 To the majestic and magnificent justices and the baby cockroach bailiff Jakeb (Do not share with justices: I secretly respect the bailiff and his body of comedic work, but do not want to loose any tie-breakers). I bring to you the case of "the Fatal and Failed Unconscious Wisdom Save" I am currently DM'ing a Curse of Strahd campaign with my usual group of five close friends (one of them my wife). The incident happened during an encounter with Strahd, that turned into an (in my opinion) exciting and cinematic battle, where darkness was cast in the middle of the battlefield. This meant that Strahd was attacking the bard (my wife) until she fell unconscious, in complete darkness, which only a few nearby perceptive characters were aware of. I knew that Strahd would easily be able to kill the bard on his turn of using the usual melee attacks, but I wanted to try something more mysterious, evil, and hopefully more devastating, that would give the party even more motivation to go after him. So I decided that Strahd would kidnap the unconscious body of the bard and kill or turn her when he was safe and alone (probably to do some dramatics theatricals with it at a later date). So I described the vampire using an action to Dimension Door (that he prepared beforehand), but realised that he could only bring "a willing creature". So I again narrated him using his charm ability (also an action) on the unconscious bard, describing it as a creepy and tender moment in middle of the confusing "storm" of fighting, as he held her in her arms and whispered in her ear. I had the bard roll a Wisdom Save that she luckily failed! As I described the wooshing of their vanishing out of sight, I immediately started doubting my own decision: Was I wrong for bending the rules of the dimension door and the charm effect for a more cinematic PC death? And maybe even worse: using 2 actions (dimension door and charm) to get my desired outcome? I beg for your righteous judgment, and will come clean to my players if you deem it the lawful and honorable thing to do.
2023-10-17 04:58 To the majestic and magnificent justices and the baby cockroach bailiff Jakeb (Do not share with justices: I secretly respect the bailiff and his body of comedic work, but do not want to loose any tie-breakers). I bring to you the case of "the Fatal and Failed Unconscious Wisdom Save" I am currently DM'ing a Curse of Strahd campaign with my usual group of five close friends (one of them my wife). The incident happened during an encounter with Strahd, that turned into an (in my opinion) exciting and cinematic battle, where darkness was cast in the middle of the battlefield. This meant that Strahd was attacking the bard (my wife) until she fell unconscious, in complete darkness, which only a few nearby perceptive characters were aware of. I knew that Strahd would easily be able to kill the bard on his turn of using the usual melee attacks, but I wanted to try something more mysterious, evil, and hopefully more devastating, that would give the party even more motivation to go after him. So I decided that Strahd would kidnap the unconscious body of the bard and kill or turn her when he was safe and alone (probably to do some dramatics theatricals with it at a later date). So I described the vampire using an action to Dimension Door (that he prepared beforehand), but realised that he could only bring "a willing creature". So I again narrated him using his charm ability (also an action) on the unconscious bard, describing it as a creepy and tender moment in middle of the confusing "storm" of fighting, as he held her in his arms and whispered in her ear. I had the bard roll a Wisdom Save that she luckily failed! As I described the wooshing of their vanishing out of sight, I immediately started doubting my own decision: Was I wrong for bending the rules of the dimension door and the charm effect for a more cinematic PC death? And maybe even worse: using 2 actions (dimension door and charm) to get my desired outcome? I beg for your righteous judgment, and will come clean to my players if you deem it the lawful and honorable thing to do.

To the majestic and magnificent justices and the baby cockroach bailiff Jakeb (Do not share with justices: I secretly respect the bailiff and his body of comedic work, but do not want to loose any tie-breakers). I bring to you the case of "the Fatal and Failed Unconscious Wisdom Save" I am currently DM'ing a Curse of Strahd campaign with my usual group of five close friends (one of them my wife). The incident happened during an encounter with Strahd, that turned into an (in my opinion) exciting and cinematic battle, where darkness was cast in the middle of the battlefield. This meant that Strahd was attacking the bard (my wife) until she fell unconscious, in complete darkness, which only a few nearby perceptive characters were aware of. I knew that Strahd would easily be able to kill the bard on his turn of using the usual melee attacks, but I wanted to try something more mysterious, evil, and hopefully more devastating, that would give the party even more motivation to go after him. So I decided that Strahd would kidnap the unconscious body of the bard and kill or turn her when he was safe and alone (probably to do some dramatics theatricals with it at a later date). So I described the vampire using an action to Dimension Door (that he prepared beforehand), but realised that he could only bring "a willing creature". So I again narrated him using his charm ability (also an action) on the unconscious bard, describing it as a creepy and tender moment in middle of the confusing "storm" of fighting, as he held her in his arms and whispered in her ear. I had the bard roll a Wisdom Save that she luckily failed! As I described the wooshing of their vanishing out of sight, I immediately started doubting my own decision: Was I wrong for bending the rules of the dimension door and the charm effect for a more cinematic PC death? And maybe even worse: using 2 actions (dimension door and charm) to get my desired outcome? I beg for your righteous judgment, and will come clean to my players if you deem it the lawful and honorable thing to do.

BOB BOBERSON

The coupe de grace confession To the pious high priests of Dice Christ and the guy who reads the submissions. I prostate myself before thee with both a confession and a plea for clarity I recently started a side campaign alongside my longer running main campaign focusing on a smaller story in a bandit controlled town My 6 players were all excited to make new characters and each shared their concepts with me beforehand, I am a fairly lenient Dm and don’t get too upset with some whacky characters so I wasn’t overly concerned when one of my players came to me with their idea for a grung monk named pickles, pickles was supposedly an ascendant dragon monk who was raised by Dragonborn in a nearby monastery close to the town. Neat! However when the first session came around I was shocked to find out that they had decided to make pickles completely mute besides them saying their own name (Pokémon style) and had them frequently react to npcs by screaming and running around aimlessly, this was completely shocking behavior from an otherwise well behaved and unproblematic player so I was genuinely taken aback, in a moment of shameful anger and hesitation to confront the player themselves about their questionable behavior, I decided to simply murder the frog. During the 3rd encounter of the campaign Pickles ran head first into a pack of 6 or so angry cultists and I saw my opportunity to end the pickled plague once and for all, I had most of the cultist focus their attacks on pickles and in only about 2 rounds of combat dropped pickles to 0 hp, and here is where I believe I may have committed a grave dm sin, on one of the cultists turns (only 1 spot in initiative order until pickles had to roll a death save) I had them forgo attacking the rest of party and instead finish off pickles on the ground, however in a moment of hesitation and weakness I only had this strike deal 1 failed saving throw as I felt it unfair to have their death come down to a 50/50 coin-toss. Dice Christ must have felt my lack of faith because on the next turn of combat pickles rolled a nat 1 on their death save and permanently died regardless. Oh great priests was Dice Christ punishing me for unfair targeting of this player or simply giving me a guiding hand on what had to be done?

Matt Seal

To the merciful and wise Justices and the Bailiff Jack, I need your judgement on the morality of killing a “prisoner”. While resting my chaotic good rogue Ervias and the rest of our party was accosted by two young blue dragons (described as chaotic evil by GM). The party was able to kill one dragon and the other flew off before we could finish the job. Our cleric and the party decided to revivify the dragon in order to get some much-needed information from him. Ervias found out that the blue dragons (as well some nameless gods), having been using him for their own goals. After interrogating the dragon, the party was going to let the dragon go. But Ervias did not want to let this chaotic evil dragon leave to either A) come back with friends to kill us or B) go out and kill other people, so he stabbed him before he could fly off. I did not tell the party my plans and never promised not to kill the dragon. I can understand the party being mad at me for this subterfuge and making the blue dragon’s family mad at us. But what I disagree with is the GM said that it is inherently evil to kill a prisoner regardless of the situation and had Ervias’s alignment change and fall out of favor with a good aligned god. I disagree with this sentiment, this was an evil dragon, we were no where near a prison nor would we have a way to take him to one, and there was no way for the party to guarantee the dragon wouldn’t just come back to kill us. So, I leave in your capable hands, is Ervias a bad guy? Should he have let the evil lightning breathing dragon go, just because he was a prisoner?

Tobias Baker

Dear the most wise judges and that guy James, I bring you the case of the invisible T Rex. I write in as one of the players who does not care about the result of this case but does care that the bickering about it ceases. Our party has a similar setup to the initial band of boobs, 1 DM, 2 players that are keen DND players and a guy also called James weirdly who is along for the ride and picked up the rules as we went along. We were attacking a bandit camp in the forest and I (a bard) cast invisibility on our party. As we approached stealthily, I made a noise and one of the bandits came to investigate. To prepare for battle our wizard cast polymorph on our barbarian James, turning him into a T Rex. When James grew into a T Rex he caused damage to the treehouses and the DM ruled that this broke the invisibility. Much fun was had with a T Rex causing a lot of havoc. But our wizard and the DM disagree to this day (about a year later) on the ruling. The Wizard thinks the invisibility should have stood. Please help us, oh mighty justices, and end this petty bickering

Charl Oosthuizen

May it please the court and the bailiff Joke. I present the case of magical cancer and the unplanned edge lord. I am currently playing in a home brew campaign set in Robin Hobb's Six Duchees with my regular crew of 4 years. One of the players, the GM's brother in law, created a field medic character named Argil who uses the skill (a sort of psionic magic) to heal people. During the course of the campaign we have all been receiving a nemesis to act as a foil against our specific character designs. Argil's nemesis is the pocked man, a mythical boogeyman, who has so far only shown up once in the 3 months that we've been playing to curse Argil with a horrifying magical disease and promptly disappear. This disease has covered Argil in hideous boils and marked him as a pariah in a heavily social campaign. Whenever he has tried to research a cure for this disease or looked for the man who gave it to him, the GM has not given him any useful information and instead describes the horrific consequences of this magic as it affects Argil and those he tries to help. The only way for him to do anything to better his condition is to push the disease onto enemies in combat, meaning that our friendly healer has now become a cancer causing edge lord. Argil's player is becoming increasingly frustrated by his character's plight, to the point where he complains about it every session and has even contemplated letting Argil die so he can play someone new and devoid of disease. Is the GM wrong for pushing such an all encompassing and difficult to remove curse onto one of his players or should Argil lean into it and see how it plays out? We eagerly await your judgement.

Courtney W

To our most jovial adjudicators Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, as well as our befuddled bumbling Bailiff Jake, may it please the Crit, I submit to you: the Case of the Bad Faith Birthday Boy. My DM asked me to write a one-shot campaign for his birthday awhile ago. I was all too happy to agree and put great care into crafting an elaborate session, complete with handcrafted physical props, tricky riddles, and snacks. He invited a couple of friends and we sat down for what should have been a lovely afternoon of birthday D&D. At the halfway point we were in high spirits and decided to take a long rest before venturing further. At this point Birthday Boy privately texted me his plans to kill all his party members in their sleep. I tried my best to discourage this action, but his secret rolls blew everyone’s passive perceptions out of the water and his knowledge, being an expert in the rules far more than I was, allowed him to walk all over me and do as he pleased. The Birthday Assassin successfully murdered his entire party. I was hurt, feeling like he made a mockery of the adventure I’d gone to so much trouble to craft. I immediately began to pack up my materials and called an end to the adventure. He thought I was unfair, ending the story short and that since it was it his birthday, he could do what he wanted and I should have finished the one-shot with just him. The other players refused to weigh in on the issue. Was I only serving him his just desserts to cut his birthday adventure short, or was he within his rights to have his cake and murder it too? I leave my fate in your hands. Thank you.

Ifrah Majeed

To the grand, ineffable Justices and the more easily -effable Bailiff. I present to you the case of the stolen backstory. Several sessions into my very first home campaign my dm presented me with a mysterious homebrewed "mindflayer" drink at a tavern. My bard immediately passed out after drinking it and dreamt of what my dm described as a possible "previous life" where she was a swashbuckling pirate captain who died at sea. I was thrilled to embrace this curveball for my character and decided that this had awakened an alternate pirate personality in my bard based on her new memories. My dm loved it, and my dual personality bard / lvl 2 rogue multiclass was a favorite at the table. This is where the alleged theft takes place. Soon after the emergence of my pirate persona, another player decided that he too had a previous life as a pirate (in addition to his current backstory) and still had his memory of it due to being an undead. He texted us all a short-story length dense backstory of his previous life as a pirate captain. All of this was completely unprompted by the dm or the events at the table, and he made it clear that he came up with it after the mindflayer session. I was and still am quite peeved by this, and I ask the Justices if my frustration is justified. I felt that my own pirate awakening was a character moment that emerged naturally, and it was insensitive of my fellow player to directly encroach onto this with no prompting or reason. It was like my bard had a part of her story stolen from her for someone else's story, just for fun. To clarify, there was no mention of pirates or sea travel in the undead players' backstory prior to it emerging in my own. I leave judgement in the hands of the wise Justices, as ultimately this was from my first ever campaign, and a character whom I am still very attached to. PS. My bard was also named Calliope.

Nick G

I bring my confession to the clergy of Dice Christ with outmost remorse. My sin, creating a year long campaign to resurrect my fallen Character. 7 years ago my dwarves fighter Muradin died fighting a shadow dragon due to some poor rolling and poorer choices. I decided to take on the DM mantle within the original world of the first campaign to give our DM a well deserved rest.. With the hidden intention of resurrecting my dear Muradin. 20ish sessions into the campaign came the moment to release the captured souls of adventures from the lair of the same shadow dragon, Muradin among them. The DM & players of the original campaign enjoyed the campaign and let me play my old character again.. But my original motives to DM were impure within the light of our Rolliness.. I throw myself to the mercy of dice Christ for my sin and pray the Clergy may absolve me of my Deception.

Josh Zellers

To the grand and mighty justices Brian, Emily and caldwell as well as that other guy. I present to you the case of the “Christmas truce” I as the dungeon master sent my players to hell, and they were caught in the middle of the blood war. Phoebe the bard had gotten the attention of both sides by rolling a natural 20. I told the party that wouldn’t stop the blood war, but they argued about a Christmas truce, I went with it because of the natural 20. Was I wrong to even let my players try and stop the blood war or was the “ Christmas truce” a right call? I leave my mercy to you

ZZ Digital

If it pleases the court, During a play-by-post mini-campaign, my players were told to steal a planar shift gem from the villain using them to invade the world. One player found one early, accidentally activated it, and landed in Hell; kicking off a side quest to rescue NPCs important to the PCs. Meanwhile, the other PCs encountered an avatar of the villain, who offered them a gem, but told them to use it in a different way than they had been before. Despite me calling the avatar evil and a monster by several characters, including the villain herself, my players trusted her and were trapped in Hell; requiring a beloved npc to sacrifice themself to get them out. When i asked why they trusted the villain they said they figured she was probably lawful evil and wouldn't lie, and one player saw their PC's husband being rescued in Hell and rushed everything to get there immediately. (Though the setting made it pretty much impossible for them to make it there before that scene had ended.) Am i a negligent DM who held too tight to a mini campaigns setting, should have directly told them the villain might be lying, and needed to bench the player saving their friends until they all got there as the other players suggested after? Or was i justified in trying to keep the setting consistent and not trying to influence my players, who had been writing out their characters thoughts as they went, even for a better outcome?

Sam Hacking

To the ever aspirational and breathtaking justices, and the littlest baby boy Jake. This encounter weighs on my mind and makes me wonder if I am simply a killjoy or if I was rational in ending the life of another PC. We were about 5 sessions into this home-brew game run by my (now) fiancé, with his friends from high school. I had never met any of these people in person as we started playing online during the bad times. Quickly one player (Let’s call him Osriel) revealed that his character was not just a thief and generally full of himself, but was willing to steal from PC’s, kill potential familiars, and even put threat upon our party. I expressed to my partner out of character that I didn’t like his friend in real life because he was playing such an asshole in the game. I felt guilty about this but ultimately knew that as the most experienced player in the group I needed to take matters into my own hands. This came to a pinnacle when Osriel got himself into a bar fight by disguising himself as another PC (Scorcth), pissing off an NPC goliath and then running away. Me and Scortch decided it was time to end things and rather than engaging with the Goliath, we chased Osriel down and began to attack him. Once he dropped we decided not to land any death blows; but I also, as the cleric, intentionally did not heal him. We ended the session on a cliffhanger and expressed out frustration to the DM saying “If Osriel doesn’t die I have to switch my character to be evil aligned.” When the next session picked up Osriel was dead and the Player had made a new character (Good boy Paladin). Our party dynamic has been great ever since and we still play in this incredibly rich storyline, but sometimes I regret not trying to work things out in character without resorting to violence. Was I wrong to kill the PC who was definitely evil aligned even though we were given strict instructions not to play evil characters…. I humbly await your judgement.

Cody Hasselbring

To the high and holy priests of the d100, and Jake: the bishop of the d4. I confess that I robbed heaven of a ranger, and a froghemoth of his meal. I DM a campaign for good friends who are relatively new to D&D. We’ve been going strong for three years but I’ll never forget the froghemoth encounter. It was still pretty early in the campaign, and my level 3 players encountered a froghemoth in a spooky swamp. Right off the jump, the froghemoth crit on its multi attack against our ranger. I rolled the damage and saw that it would be enough to not just down, but instantly kill this sweet sweet ranger in his like third ever combat. So, dice Christ forgive me, I ignored the crit and had the froghemoth swallow the downed ranger instead. What followed was 3 rounds of the other players desperately trying to get the ranger out of the monster, failing strength save after strength save while the ranger failed death save after death save. I pulled out every trick I could think of: lowering DC, granting advantage for tenuous reasons, but that ranger must have been too yummy. It ended when our wizard just killed the damn thing but the memory haunts me (and the ranger) still. Holy clergy, can dice Christ forgive my crit sins, or do I need to give this now level 8 ranger over as a sacrificial lamb.

William Bowen

To the radiant judges and the necrotic but in a cool way bailiff Jim, I present the case of the Hold Person that ended a campaign. I joined an existing session about 6 months ago; all the other players and DM work together. I brought a female half orc paladin named Darcy but had to switch characters about a month back after the bladesinger in our group said "I wasn't getting their pirate vibe". The same player initially threatened my character with S.A. in the first session, which did not help. About a week ago we had a session during which we were stuck deep underground with no way out. I suggested bargaining with the queen of these people who had previously kidnapped and tortured our swashbuckling rogue. Since we had no other lead of escaping to the surface, and everyone's health and spells were low from fighting our way to her, my new character, a Dread Pirate Warlock Fighter decided to talk our way out. The bladesinger fought me on it but didn't have a better idea, so everyone went along. I succeeded in a brief roleplay and a persuasion check after which we all decided to help each other escape. Immediately after, the bladesinger player said "that took forever. Now that you're done with whatever that was, I cast wall of fire on the queen". We were aghast and when I asked him to stop and reconsider, he looks at me and said "too late! We're in this shit now!" So when it got to my turn I cast Hold Person on him to try to deescalate. He responded by screaming obscenities at me, the other players, and the DM. Then he picked up his things and stormed out. There has since been a debate with the group about whether to keep me or him. I offered to bow out and never come back, but this is far from the first outburst from this player and even one of the other players admitted she was going to try to cast a spell on the bladesinger to stop him anyway. So I ask: was i wrong to lose my temper and turn against a party member to save our only plot thread? Or should I have gone along with the party and doomed our PCs to live their lives underground forever? I throw myself at the mercy of the court. P.S. the DM stopped the session and threw the campaign on ice, admitting that this fight would have likely TPKd us anyway.

Cody Hasselbring

I can’t help but love the hustle though. Problem PC? Kill that ass

Izzy PM

To the honorable court justices, and John Bailiff, I present to you the case of the martyr barbarian. In my first full campaign, I decided to play a character that fit very well into the DM’s created world. It was a pirate/sea faring themed campaign, so I was a Merfolk that was a runaway slave from a notorious pirate lord. In one session, we came across a village that had been taken over by pirates and used as a giant encampment for them. It turns out that it was under the control of the pirate lord, one of my character’s sworn enemies and his former master. The group discussed how we were going to get into the camp and free the villagers at length, with the other members (a bard, a Goliath Barbarian in Full Plate, a sorcerer and a cleric) wanted to stealth into the camp, find where the villagers were kept and free them. We had just failed to stealth through a castle, and time and time again the group had a lengthy conversation about stealthing and the Best Way to go about things, when the dm clearly wanted to just move the story along. I suggested we could technically just go through the front door, as I was wanted by these pirates and they’d probably escort us to the leader and we’d figure it out from there. They insisted on the stealth message, and seeing this opportunity for my character, I had to refuse. His enemy was right there, why wouldn’t he walk right in and demand to see him? Boy was a barbarian not a wizard. I did so, and as I thought, I was taken right to the leader and managed to learn super important information, and use myself as leverage to go through the camp unharmed. Meanwhile, my party failed again at stealthing and got ambushed by pirates, and I had to go save them in a deus ex barbarian-a. After the session the players told me they were upset that I had split the party and gone “rogue”. The dm expressed to me privately that he was thankful I made the decision to progress his story, and I got a really cool backstory moment out of it too. I ask the honorable judges, was I wrong to split the party? I am normally against it but in this case I knew my character would be stubborn. Should I have gone with the party’s plan or was I right to stick to my gut?

K Leung

Dear Honorable Judges and the sufficient, but not necessary Bailiff, I present to you the case of the Nearly Crispy Halfling My friends and I have been playing the same campaign since 2018, and at the start, we were all relatively new players, including the DM. The campaign has been awesome, and we’ve had many fun moments ranging from our barbarian dwarf nearly getting killed by ghost E-girls to semi-accidental town razing (not 100% our fault). It was about four months into the campaign when the incident I’m writing about happened. The scene takes place at the edge of a wooded forest. Our party was taking a long rest at night on the forest's edge when a group of cultists we were hoping to avoid stumbled on our rest area carrying torches. My halfling Druid character immediately slipped away into the forest before reentering engagement distance for my short bow to shoot one of the cultists. I hit the cultist, but our DM’s response was to have a different cultist further than 120 feet away from me immediately pinpoint me with a fireball on the next turn. This instantly knocked my character out and started a massive wildfire, with my party needing to rush into the inferno before I turned into a toasty halfling poptart. The DM and I argued as I didn’t think the second cultist should have hit, let alone see me. It was night, and I was hiding in the forest. The cultists didn’t have dark vision, and the DM had established a range for their torches, making them easier to see. I argued that even if the initial cultist I hit with my arrow saw me, the further one shouldn’t have been able to see me without some sort of check. We still argue about this incident to this day, and we’re coming up to the end of the campaign. Honorable Judges, should the second cultist had to have roll a check to see me, or should I accept that my characters (near) destiny was to be a toasty halfling poptart? I await your (hopefully not crispy) judgement.

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.

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 worshippers, 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 worshippers 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.

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.

Lance Rendrag

To the the highest court in the realms, and whomever the bailiff is this week... I'd ask you to look in the PHB and take a look at the rules for HP increase. The verbage says your hit dice plus your con modifier per level after first. To me that means at level five you would add your con modifier five times to what you roll. My friend (who is also a DM) thinks it's just once. I humbly ask for your ruling... Many thanks your honorships.

Richard Roehrig

To the glorious Crit justices and the baby bailiff Jack. I bring forth the case of the Spell “Guard” shield. I played in a Decent into Avernus campaign where I was one of the more experienced players in the group. I decided to play a Cleric of Tyr to ensure the party had heals and support to survive the nine hells. The last opportunity we had to purchase items before our inevitable trip to the hells I was able to get myself the Spell guard shield. (The dm was pretty lax on item availability but depending on rarity the gold cost was increased). I had spent all of my remaining gold and even traded in a few lower magic items I had collected thus far in the campaign to get this item thinking it would be good to have advantage on saving throws against spells and magical effects so I could ensure I could heal/support the party. However once we were in the hells, battling fiends and demons alike, my shield became almost worthless. Each time a creature had us do a saving throw against being feared (like the Narzugon’s Terrifying Commanf or the Bulezau’s Rotting Presence) I would NOT have advantage as the DM ruled “it’s an ability, not a spell” I argued that since it was a magical effect it would still count, but he held true to his ruling. After a few minutes of back and forth I let the argument drop so as to allow everyone to keep playing. The party still ended up surviving the nine hells and finishing the campaign in the end, despite my turns being used for a couple team buffs before falling unconscious due to targeting the healer rules. But to this day I wonder if I should have fought harder to have my advantage or if I did the correct thing and roll with the DMs ruling. We still play to this day and even razz the DM about their ruling. I throw myself upon Tyr’s scales and await for the courts decision. PS: May Bahamut keep you and may the Baba Yaga not take you this night

Doctor Ransom

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices, and the on-again-off-again cake-loving Bailiff, I bring you the case of The Buzzkill Ex-Boss. I was DMing what was supposed to be a fun little one-shot for my partner, former co-worker, and now ex-boss (I hosted this game before quitting). My ex-boss proceeded to play into every terrible problem player edgy Rogue stereotype imaginable, i.e. main character syndrome, constantly going off alone, describing all their "moves" in an overly dramatic fashion, etc. One thing he kept doing that drove me absolutely bonkers was he would constantly roll dice unprompted, then tell me what he was doing. After trying to lure and kill an innocent commoner woman for no reason, then cover up his attempted murder by disguising himself as her, I could see the eyes of my two other players glaze over wondering what the hell was even happening. The session went entirely off a cliff not long after all thanks to our edge lord Rogue and we ended it on a sour note. I was only running this game as a favor to my ex-boss because he was accidentally excluded from a campaign that I'm currently running due to scheduling conflicts. But after this awful session, I'm feeling like I really dodged a bullet. Justices, I'm implore your wise and swift judgment. Should I have just rolled with the punches and put up with this problem player or was I vindicated in keeping him the hell away from my table?

CocktailDeer

Most jocular judges and blithe bailiff - I bring a case of focus stealing. I recently started in a new group where all the other players have played together before. I play a bard, and in session 1 I gave another player bardic inspiration right before an encounter. He immediately attempted to steal another player's spell casting focus, using my bardic inspiration to ensure his success - the roll would otherwise have failed. We were all lvl 1 and this was mid combat. When the spellcaster then cast 'detect thoughts' to see if anyone nearby was thinking about their focus (in an attempt to locate it), the lonfingered scoundrel got incredibly defensive. He argued that even though he had failed his wisdom save there would be no way of forcing him to think of the focus, or the act of stealing it. This whole thing really gave me the ick for the group, and I'm reconsidering the campaign - am I overreacting?

Andrick Neal

To the high justices of the supreme crit whose names I can't remember at the moment and the bailiff Jace, I am DMing for a party of 6 of my dear friends/coworkers. Currently they are in the Elemental Chaos and are climbing a mountain of the elements, facing a different elemental at each level as a trial( à la Campaign 1 Bahumia ;). Last night the party faced the water elemental, where the battlefield was mostly shallow water with little bits of land throughout. Before the trial began, our bard asked the guide, a being made of lightning, if he could have one minute before the trial of combat would begin. Me, not knowing any better, said yes and he then cast Leomund's Tiny Hut. He then had everyone get inside and use only ranged attacks, shooting the water elemental and her minions through the walls of the hut. After an hour and a half of this chicanery, they realized they weren't doing much and dropped the spell. All of this is to ask Justices, should I have allowed my party's ranged attacks to go through the tiny hut or not allowed the spell to be used as an on the go fortress? I humbly await your ruling.

Anonymous

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices, and … (sigh) Jake. I bring to you the case of the spell-less Sorcerer. May it please the Court. My friends and I have been playing in a virtual campaign for about a year now, and it’s been mostly great! However, one of my friend’s roleplay decisions has started to cause some problems in the campaign. They play a Tiefling Sorcerer who is afraid of fire, and while that could definitely lead to some cool character moments, she refuses to engage with any conversation in-game about what’s going on. PC and NPC alike have tried to get the character to open up about it, but she gives one word answers or shrugs, and sometimes goes entire sessions barely saying a word in character. We had a fight with an evil wizard who summoned fire elementals and the character did nothing but run and hide nearly the entire combat, only throwing a single ray of frost at the start, and the party of 4 nearly TPK’d. Because she took mostly fire-based spells, she also has not used any high-level spells or any sorcery points at all and we’re now level 7, so this is becoming a real liability in every combat encounter. I asked my friend out of game what’s going on and how we can get her character more engaged, but she is happy with the character choices and said, ‘it’s only been a couple of months in-game, it would take somebody like this awhile to open up’ and left it at that. Am I right to be annoyed at the constant combat disadvantage and the inevitable TPK, or should I just let this ‘slow-burn’ roleplay decision run its course? I humbly prostrate myself in front of the court.

Charlotte G

To the honorable supreme crit justices. I play a paladin in a multi planetary space adventure run by my dear friend of over 10 years. Our party discovered a shipment of an intergalactic drug that works like a modified haste potion. Another party member and I went through a lot of trouble to steal a crate of it. We asked our dm how much we got, he dm rolled a d100 then told us we had stolen 50 “uhh doses?” of the drug. I, being a paladin, thought I could use my immune to disease ability to take this modded haste powder without worrying about the homebrewed addiction condition it had on a failed con save. The first time I took the drug I Murph rolled my save but then said it was fine because I can’t be affected by addiction because I’m immune to disease. Our dm said the condition still worked and that I had disadvantage on all ability checks until someone casts greater restoration on me (which no one in the party even has high enough spell slots for.) Then our rogue, a former global public health major, said “but addiction is, like, definitely a disease though.” He said “I know it is in real life but I can’t just give you 50 free bonus action hastes Charlotte.” I was excited to have an awesome use for this normally super situational spell and feel Isaac should have just let himself get whomped. Am I right to feel like my claim to these “free” haste spells is by the book (of both dnd and medicine), or am I trying to animal facts my way out of the consequences of my actions and a failed save?

Natalie Ste

To the Dearest Beloved Enriched And Vibrant Members of the Court (and the vitamin deficient bailiff), I bring you the case of the undying barbarian. I was playing in an online game and one week when the DM was out, one of my fellow players (let's call him Chad) offered to DM a homebrew one shot he'd been wanting to run. Chad told us all to make level 20 characters and "expect to die". Our party, a warlock (Carol), a ranger (Tweedle), and a zealots barbarian (Cupcake) faced an ancient red dragon in its volcanic lair. While myself (Carol the warlock) and Tweedle did plenty of damage, we quickly went down within 4 rounds (we made our death saves but we'd used all our healing already), leaving Cupcake to face the dragon alone. Chad either forgot or didn't know that level 20 zealot barbarians cannot die while in a rage unless you do double their max damage in one round. Chad REALLY wanted that TPK, and Tweedle and I sat delightedly listening to him page through his book over the discord call to find some way to kill this barbarian. He failed to do so and after another 15 rounds Cupcake the Barbarian killed the dragon. Cupcake stated that he wanted to scoop up our bodies and run them to safety and find a healer, smacking himself in the face every round to keep himself in a rage to keep from dying. However, Chad decided that as the dragon died, the volcano exploded, and said Cupcake had no way to outrun the blast. Did we take it too far with the shenanigans? Should we have allowed him to kill us all in an easier fashion? Or was he in the wrong for insisting on a TPK after Cupcake defeated his dragon? I await your always fair judgement! (For additional context, none of us know each other in real life, and we had been playing together for a year. Chad argued with our regular DM about everything, and took around 30 minutes every single time it was his turn, so I can't say that any of us held him in particularly high esteem. I never got actual stats on the dragon so I'm not positive it was an ancient red dragon. I know it was red and the biggest version)

Cristian Capestany

To the dentally hygienic Judges and Members of the Court, and the cavity-riddled bailiff who definitely doesn't floss, I bring you the case of the fish out of water gone wrong I was running a game made for new players in order to get my sister (G) and friend (F) who were new to DND a fun first experience. I had three other players (N, H, and M) in the game who wanted to play and were aware of my intended difficulty level. I knew my sister wanted to play in the sci-fi homebrew world I was working on and none of the other players particularly cared what the setting was, so I decided to make a fish out of water type story where the PCs were all from a typical fantasy setting plane but had been transported to the sci-fi one without their knowledge. The only catch? They landed in a Westworld-like theme park so the setting was only revealed gradually to them. The bard, sorcerer, rogue, and 1st paladin (played by F, M, G, and N respectively) all played well together and had a lot of fun rp moments, but H (playing the 2nd paladin) practically refused to do anything other than kill those who got in her way. H claimed to be a good alignment and often justified these actions by saying "my character doesn't understand the world she's in" in a spiteful manner to me, but that never sat right with me since the world was populated with common races that H's character would absolutely have contact with. This behavior only got worse and eventually made me dread running the game every week for fear of which random NPC H's murderous paladin would dispatch next. Other PCs came to me on a few occasions asking if I could simply kill this character off, and I did try to do so but H managed to get their character out of the way, causing the 1st paladin to die instead. Am I judging this player's character too harshly? Should I have been more clear with my PCs about wanting a fish out of water story? Or is H being a problem player by going so consistently against everything the party and GM wanted to do? I ask you this.

Anonymous

Fathers (and Mother?) please forgive me for I have sinned under Dice Christ and I seek to repent. A few years back I was DMing my first campaign. The players got caught in a battle with a towns guard for reasons that could be a court case. The party’s fighter (who was mostly innocent) went down in the altercation and started rolling death saving throws. First roll, Nat 1. 2 failed death saving throws. 2nd roll Nat 20. In my new DM ignorance we marked that as 2 successes instead of him getting up with 1 hp. His next roll was a fail and the character died. It wasn’t until years later that I learned how the proper ruling and I have felt a guilt on my conscious since. The campaign lasted a few sessions more but never officially ended What should I do to make up for this folly?

Cierra Collett

I preface this by saying I will be at the LA live show 💙 Dearest esteemed justices and the once baby, but obviously now in his rebellious teenage phase, bailiff - I present the case of the Twitch Chat Caper. Thrice monthly my friends and I stream our campaign on Twitch. We had a player who advised the group they would not be playing that week so we proceed crawling through a homebrew ancient baddies underground castle when low and behold the player that couldn't make it appears in the Twitch chat. Not just a drop in and hi, but full on playing their character and trying to RP decisions through chat. Our DM actively ignored the player trying to steal the show in chat and kept on with the present players. I ask the court to rule over this quandary, should the DM have acknowledged the backseat player in the Twitch chat or were they right to ignore it and keep moving on?

Blaine Moses

Dear beloved and honorable Justices and that dude Jake. I come to you not with a confession nor a case to present. But merely a humble request. As I have just listened to the tortle tank episode I must be honest and say that I am currently playing a gnome bard and I also drive an f150. And I sbaolutely think the d20 truck nuts idea was amazing and if it's not already a thing please, I beg you to make them so I can purchase these amazing and hilarious nuts for my truck. Thank you for your time

Stephen Fike

Attention naddpoles, I am no longer able to attend the Denver live show, seat is in the front Orchestra section. If anyone is interested message me, going to sell at regular value I bought for.

Alex Cavanaugh Music

To the illustrious supreme crit judges and the painfully ordinary bailiff. No case, I just wanted Jake to have to read another insult <3

TheBeardedTeddyBear

To the honorable judges and my favorite bailiff. As a dm I have heard your opinions about crits before and I have a situation where my players argued with my ruling on a nat 20. The pacifist bard of the group had failed their persuasion check on a friendly npc who was going to kill a bandit camps leader. So the warlock/paladin got a nat 20 on a deception check that the bandit leader was his dad. The npc then got confused and attacked the warlock/paladin but did not kill him. The npc then left upset. Was I in the wrong for not giving them a more favorable outcome?

Brock

To the noble Clergy of dice christ! i come before yall not with a confession, but with a question because no matter what y’all decide im still gonna keep doing it. So i have a pretty common learning disability called dyscalculia which makes even the simplest of math problems embarrassingly difficult and uncomfortably long to figure out especially during combat. Unfortunately im also cursed with a pretty bad case of Murphism and can go to whole 4 hour sessions without rolling above a 10. So to combat my awful math abilities i’ve started using Dnd Beyond to roll my dice and it will automatically add up all my damage or proficiency bonuses. However i have also noticed now that im using an online roller im rolling astronomically better! So i ask the church, am i just being blessed by dice christ or have i finally killed god with my machine?

EmperorGreed

More of a Dice Christ Confession: To the vaunted clerics of Dice Christ, and Jake who claims to have status in the church but if he has to say it does he *really*, I bring you a tale of accidental magic theft. I am playing as a paladin in the late stages of a Curse of Strahd campaign with my family, dm'ed by my fiancee. I thought i had been keeping good track of my spell slots despite my historic inability to keep track of anything in any circumstance, but my fiancee has occasionally been surprised at the number of spell slots I have, and now playing as a paladin in Baldur's Gate 3 - where a computer unfailingly documents my spell slots - I'm finding I have a lot less than I remember, and I suspect I may have been unwittingly cheating for years. Holy Clergy and also Tucker's girlfriend's sidepiece, how might I atone for this inadvertent magical tax fraud?

Denali Smith

To the cutie patootie judges and Jake I bring you the case of the healing human I play in a home game with a few friends and my younger brother as the Dm. We have just recently reached 20th level and my friend who is playing a human gained a special magic item that allows him to heal when he takes radiant damage. I, an Oath of redemption paladin, have the ability to “Rebuke the Violent” as my Channel divinity, according to RAW I can choose an “attacker” who deals damage to someone other than me within 30ft and they make a wisdom save and on a fail take full or success take half damage of the attack they did, but in radiant damage. Is my Dm right in saying that I cannot use this to heal my friend? Please punish me or my brother however you feel fit I lay myself before the court

Anonymous

NOTE: I will be at the Los Angeles Live Show if you're accepting cases for that now! If it may please the court, (specifically Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner, I’m not particularly concerned about how that guy Jake feels about it) I present unto you the case of Snake Dick Shenanigans. This was back during my first real D&D campaign, we had made it to the end of our adventure and were infiltrating the Yuan-Ti cult headquarters to face the final boss. On our way there, we found a door in the guard’s section and upon listening, determined that there was someone showering inside. This led to a lengthy discussion at the table about Yuan-Ti genitals, specifically what a snake dick would look like and whether it would just be a second, smaller snake attached to their body. We contemplated this conundrum for so long that our DM eventually announced that we had been having this conversation in character and that our shouting about snake dick had attracted the attention of the other guards, as well as our now very uncomfortable showering enemy, and we ended up in a combat encounter. The whole thing worked out fine and we went on to defeat the boss, but I ask you: did our DM have the right to turn our out-of-character shenanigans into in-character stupidity, or is it our right as players to ponder the questions of the universe free from consequence? Shea (like the hot druid)

Max Barthelemy

(I will be at the LA live show and and submitting for that if you are accepting those cases now) To the illustrious Justices and the oft-maligned Bailiff, I present the case of the traumatized younglings. My friends and I were playing in a Star Wars 5e campaign in which we each built expressly good-aligned force-sensitive characters ages 16-18. My character was an orphan who was a self-titled Jedi and defender of the innocent, and the other PCs were similarly pure of heart. Our first session was roleplay heavy, comedic, and featured fun, nonlethal combat. In the second session we were immediately descended upon by a police gunship for no discernable reason, and trapped in a small hangar where we were forced to use projectile power tools as guns to defend against the gunship that fired at us comfortably from way outside any of our ranged abilities. We were then also attacked by feral dogs and boxed in by two squads of stormtroopers at the only exit. All of these enemy forces were in no way related, had been given no reason to hunt us, and yet all worked together to try and kill us from all sides. Each time the DM narrated a policeman dying at our hands, I sank a little bit more, and when he gruesomely described the way our bolt gun killed one of the dogs all I could Imagine my character doing was crying. This was an insane battle for our small party of nonviolent third-level teenagers, and I had to dissociate from my character in order to not feel absolutely miserable. The rest of the party was visibly upset as well. When it was over we collectively told the DM that it felt unnecessarily brutal, and he responded by saying “It seems like you guys were looking for something fun and light. I was thinking more along the lines of the movie Logan.” This is not something he had previously so much as even hinted at. This long standing group has not played together since this session of nearly a year ago. Should we have respected the DM’s vision for the campaign and just rolled with it? Or were we justified in our complaints about the way this session was run? I humbly await your ruling.

yumehop (no. 1 ol' cobb fan)

Dear court and dearly beloveds (Jake included!!) Is there an alternative to stun? My bf in our long running curse of strahd campaign played a ranger. We were up against a vampire monk and a drider artillerist who had stun mechanics. I think he spent like 3 minutes on his turn, then had to sit out for 40 or so minutes as he got stunned 3 rounds in a row. It's not fun because it makes him lose engagement with the game a little. Would love to hear y'all's thoughts.

Hallie

To the venerable justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the vehement Bailiff whatshisname. May it please the court: Your honor and members of the jury, I represent today myself in both the prosecution and defense of this case. I run an urban magic campaign set at a college campus. For one of our arcs my players had to investigate a poltergeist attack at a fraternity party. Offhandedly I mentioned they saw someone vaping in the stairwell (as one will do at a college party.) Eventually it came time to investigate an obvious summoning ritual complete with chalk circle, candles, and ceremonial ruins. Still, my players decided to chase down the girl who was vaping in the stairwell, proceeding to spend two sessions in hot pursuit of a non-relevant NPC. They were convinced she caused a summoning with the vapors in her pen. In their words, they believed it was a “throw away lead for the villain.” I repeatedly tried to guide my players down the correct path by inventing more poltergeist attacks with repeated clues to gently push them down the right path but they systematically ignored the victims in favor of the vapester. Many innocents died in this saga. They simply did not care. After two sessions of trying to gently direct them I had to pause the game and very frankly tell them that the answer to this arc was not sick vape tricks. It was the summoning circle of chalk and candles that they found within fifteen minutes the first session. Was I wrong in breaking character to put them back on track? Or should I have succumb to their nicotine dreams and changed the mystery to be about juuling? On one hand I recognize this could be railroading for the plot. On the other hand, ghost summoning by vape trick is stupid and they had wasted two sessions and multiple hours of my life despite giving them ample clues. To this day I can’t decide if they were fucking with me or if they were convinced they were right. Honorable justices please advise.

Andrew

(Los Angeles) the case of Bastard Sword Backstory Hey judges... Jake OMG hi! That a new shirt? Looks great, anyway I bring before the court the case of the bastard sword backstory. My friends and I started a Pathfinder 2e campaign, but our GM has been a little strict about about lore accuracy. Before our first session, myself and the other players were discussing our characters. I'm playing a Magus Grippli(frog people) from the Mwangi jungle. I was sharing the backstory of how I found my sword. I said that my little frog man found it while going fishing in the swamp, and coming across an ancient battlefield, the sword was among the wreckage, so he kept it. It was a small inconsequential head cannon for my weapon, that would probably never even be brought up in the campaign. My GM however said that no battles would have ever taken place in the area I originate from, so this backstory wouldn’t make sense. We began arguing about this, and almost got into a bit of a shouting match. He said he wasn’t going to just change the lore to accommodate this backstory. Ultimately for the sake of peace, I acquiesceted and settled on saying that my character found it at a store and bought it. Was I asking too much? Or was my GM being too strict? I lay myself and my little frog man's sword at the courts feet, and await your judgement.

Barnacle Doctor

To the wise justices and aspiring cake guy, Jake, I present to you the case of the Kitchen Hire Misfire. I play in an online homebrew campaign that is set in Waterworld, a flooded, post-apocalyptic setting. Our group of PCs own a ship, where we employ several NPCs whom we befriended early in the campaign to keep things sailing smoothly. Our DM has — for the last seven years — given us shit for collecting and utilizing too many NPCs during campaigns. Thus, in this campaign we have made a point of leaving our crewmates behind during off-ship missions and not heavily involving them in decision-making to keep our DM happy. On a whim, we recently asked our crew to hire a cook for the ship. The following week, our NPCs presented us with their choice, Chef Blake. For a price of 70 gold per week, Chef Blake would make us delicious food that would give us an ongoing +1 bonus to our constitution scores. This seemed like a reasonable enough deal, but Chef Blake seemed increasingly intent on turning our NPCs into his own personal kitchen brigade and renovating our ship to include kitchen “essentials” such as a pizza oven. While it started as a joke, our NPCs also began referring to Chef Blake as their captain in interpersonal interactions. My fellow players and I became uncomfortable with this situation and collectively decided that maybe we should fire Chef Blake. When we tried to do so, however, our NPC crew became despondent. All of them expressed that Chef Blake gave them a sense of dignity and meaning and that we had been neglecting and underpaying them. Our party became frustrated, unclear on what exactly our DM — who was clearly enjoying himself — wanted from these interactions. Once several players left the Zoom call, our DM seemed to realize that maybe he'd gone too far, and very expertly improvised that Chef Blake was an ill-intentioned fiend that had charmed our crew. Justices, I humbly ask — did our DM go too far in making us feel like awful employers, or should our party have embraced Chef Blake and made an effort to placate our salty NPCs?

Dan Scheuer

To the unelected justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner and the properly appointed Bailiff J-Dawg I bring before the court a pivotal case that will set precedent about the right of self determination. While DM’ing a homebrew campaign, the players found themselves trying to stop a ritual meant to sever the planar tethers to the Shadowfell. One player, a paladin, attacked a cultist focused on the ritual and ‘marked’ him, a feature that allows the paladin to deal damage if the target attempts to attack someone other than the paladin. On the cultist’s turn he continued focusing on the ritual and the paladin argued that he should get to deal damage. I clarified that the cultist was not making an attack action, but instead still focusing on the ritual. The paladin said that because the ritual was going to damage the universe, it constituted an attack. I explained that’s not how the rule works, and even if it did, the paladin would STILL not do damage as he would be considered a target of the attack as the “universe” includes the paladin. This argument went in circles for 5 minutes until I asked the paladin if he was part of the universe to which he replied “NO!” I ruled that the paladin winked out of existence and the fight continued without him. He left the table, never to rejoin. I would’ve allowed him to come back at any time, no questions asked, but he was unwilling. Years later, my group still sometimes sees a wayward paladin drifting through the void during planar travel. I still wonder, was I wrong to allow him to self determine his existence? Or are some laws of the universe immutable and unaffected by the force of will?