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Cases Please! (Patreon)

Published:
2024-01-02 17:36:34
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Hello and Happy Blue Year! Bailiff Jake here to let you know the Supreme Crit is convening this very afternoon. Please submit your brief (I beg!) case on this thread and we will bring you sweet blue justice.

Comments

Nick Neverman

To the infinitely commiserative Judges & Tucker’s Au Pair, I present to you the “premature” death of Leonard the fighter. This incident took place in the very first session, of my very first campaign DM’ing. In said session, I had the party take part in a new year’s celebration festival in a rural village, only for it to be attacked as night came. There was a town guard of about 50 that went & fought the main attacking force while the party had 15 rounds to run around the town center and save various NPC’s from fires & other bad guys who had slipped through the initial skirmish. As they saved the NPC’s I had them retreat to a safe place slightly outside of town and prepare to make a mad dash through the woods to attempt an escape. After the PC’s cleared out the town center, I hinted it might be a good time to escape as a majority of the village had caught fire and it would be easier to make an escape with the smoke rolling everywhere. One my players, Leonard, voiced that he wanted to go fight with the town guard. I clearly stated that while there were 50 at the start, maybe 10 were left as the attacking force were better organized & seemingly more skilled fighters. Leonard however was certain that if the 3 PC’s went to help, they could change the tide of battle. My other two players vehemently disagreed & ran to safety with the villagers as Leonard made his stand. He lasted a round as the main force marched into the town center and overwhelmed him. Leonard was insistent that I was railroading him into running away instead of giving him a heroic moment of defending the town, but I told him this encounter was built to show the PC’s killing every enemy isn’t necessarily the goal of a fight, and a strategic retreat is a useful and viable means of victory. In the end I had the player brought back to life through story means that weren’t supposed to arise for another dozen sessions or so, but Leonard is still mad that I denied him his “heroic moment.” Judges, I ask you, who was in the wrong?

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

Mark Fraley

To the irreplaceable justices and the negotiable bailiff Jake, my brother and sister in law and extended family are really into d&d, but my brother in law is the only one who is able to actually run a game. He is a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to planning sessions, so it can be months between games. But we are very good friends and like talking dnd. This campaign started around 2015 and is at 15th level now. These characters are all our first characters we've ever made in the system. I've played a lot more than the rest of the party since then and I've made and played dozens of characters at this point and really enjoy experimenting with what the system can do. I see characters as very disposable and, in other groups, I have had my own character killed off just so I could work in something I found more fun to play. So I'm looking at my Goliath Battle master and finding him a bit bland compared to the Deep Gnome Thief/Battlesmith Monocycle Biker that I've been cooking up recently. The B.i.L. gets way more attached to characters than I do and seems slightly annoyed at the build and hesitant to let me switch. Am I being hard to work with or is he a bit too committed to my player character?

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.

Dani

To the honorable Crit Justices and the attractive yet deplorable Bailiff: May it please the Court, I write to you as an unbiased third party on behalf of both the DM and a player, a close friend and my brother, respectively. Our group of adventurers were navigating a maze of large wooden bookshelves in a monastery library while battling monk foes. The plaintiff, a senile wizard, cast the third level tidal wave spell at the monks on top of some bookshelves in the middle of the room to slow down the enemy. The monks succeeded on a dexterity saving throw, avoiding all damage due to their class ability. The wizard argued that the bookshelves should have been knocked over by the tidal wave. The DM ruled against this, saying the bookshelves were bolted to the floor and the tidal wave had no horizontal force, instead crashing down vertically with no affect on the structure of the shelves. After a few minutes of friendly bickering, the party moved on with the game, accepting the DM’s ruling. However, this is still a point of contention 5+ years later. The wizard alleges it is unreasonable that a tidal wave, even if vertical, would not knock over wooden bookshelves. The defendant DM does in retrospect confess to some “DM sweat” for fear of bringing real world physics into spellcasting, but maintains his innocence. Is it reasonable that the tidal wave would not have knocked over the bookshelves? We, the plaintiff, DM, and my impartial self, throw ourselves to the mercy of the court. P.S. Several months after the above incident setting the precedent that tidal waves crash down vertically, the plaintiff used this spell quirk to ground an enemy dragon from the air, in a move that was supported wholeheartedly by the DM. It was rad.

MacKenzie Tobias

Greetings to our esteemed judges and the lowly one! I present to you the case of the forbidden Forbiddance. I play in a campaign at a brewery with a ton of friends and rotating DMs. We find out about the game we’ll play that week a few days before to prepare. I play a life cleric, so I took the time to “cast” commune to ask the DM some questions and “saw we’d be facing an elemental in a vision.” I said “surely I’d have seen what KIND of elemental? Even at a glance?” I was told to roll and failed. No worries! Still enough info for some other spell prep! I prepped Forbiddance and was DELIGHTED when the BBEG (an evil mayor still acting nice for appearances) let us go to the mansion where we’d be having a feast (obvs. where the fight would be) ahead of time to get settled in and he’d ‘meet us there,’ allowing me to ritual cast this spell!!!! My friends had told me not to bother stocking it bc it wouldn’t matter, but HA! Except the joke was on me when, after reading the spell description and a bathroom break, the DM had an NPC show up and tell us the feast/battle would be moved to a new house, 7 miles away, so she could ‘put her kids to bed’ in the current one. We said ‘great!’ Bc we originally thought the spell covered 7.5 miles (DM did too - it’s actually closer to an acre), but then DM said, “It’s actually 7.5 miles away.” It was really disappointing and when we DID face the FIRE ELEMENTAL (apparently my character doesn’t know what fire looks like), it was sad knowing we could’ve taken care of it quickly in a cool way with a fun spell I never ever get to use. I almost started crying when he moved the fight. Judges, I ask, was I wronged? Did I get railroaded? Is this a case of metagaming? Or would my spell have nerfed the fight and what was done was okay? I await your wisdom.

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.

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 ten 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

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.

Matthew R

May it please Justices Axford, Murphy, Caldwell, and especially honorary Portland Justice Herwitz (as this is a Portland based case), I seek your wisdom. I play in a campaign with a group of friends that I met through D&D. We’ve played in a campaign for a year and I’ve been dealing with another PC rules lawyering my turns (specifically). He doesn’t contribute much to the campaign outside of combat encounters (he’s a Dragonborn paladin/bard) and I play around with my magic and character interactions (spring eladrin circle of stars druid/abberant mind sorcerer). Whenever I use features or spells, the rules lawyer makes sure to voice what I did wrong and tries to convince our DM to follow the rules strictly. Up until now I’ve been amenable and simply compromised each time. Recently, I rolled to hit on an attack against an arc’s BBEG and he brought up that my attack technically should’ve been at disadvantage AFTER I had announced I crit and rolled my damage dice (which took a while because I had to borrow additional dice). I’ve talked to my DM once before about this and he said he’d talk with the other player; he did and things slightly improved for a bit. Should I simply take things into my own hands or talk to my DM about this again? Further, am I right to be irritated that he’s watching my game play closely or should I relax and strive to remember the rules better?

bbyfendie

To the judges and vimeo's "lonely & horny" season 2 co-star josh rice. I present the case of do I HAVE to watch the dnd movie? I'm playing in a sick year long campaign about legendary Heroes being resurrected in the future as level 1 by a lich. I play a satyr bard. A few months ago my DM sent me a less than legal link to a rip of the dnd movie with Chris pine. I still haven't watched it. He's mad that I haven't and he said I have to watch it by the next session or I'll probably get some sort of boon! Is the movie good? He said he'll ask me questions to make sure ive watched it. Have you seen Oppenheimer? Thanks

Andrew

May it please the court 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.

Waddle Bawddle

Hello honorable justices and the guy who’s never been on 8-Bit Bookclub. 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, call him Aragorn, family with the exiled prince. They successfully captured the guy who had taken over the city, “Aragorn’s” half brother. The prince gave “Aragorn” the choice of what to do with him. Right as “Aragorn” was going to decide, another PC, Goliath, stepped in a beheaded the half bro. Everyone tried to stop him including the other player, but Goliath 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 Goliath around any big choices? Thank ya sweeties

Lizard Breath

To the Honorable Justices and Jim, I bring a cuisine query. I play with my friends about every other week. Deciding what to eat takes DAYS of deliberation, we end up choosing a variation of the same thing every time, our hosts offer to cook but do not want help in the kitchen or someone else to cook in their kitchen for us (I have not been allowed to cook a meal since an incident where I forgot to put the meat substitute in chili) and stress about the mess it causes. To me, this is madness and we need to get real about the fact that we have lots of picky eaters and should just have a set menu instead of performing this farce every session. I’m considering holding everyone at gunpoint and making them eat peanut butter and jelly next week. My question is this: do I have the authority to demand a change of this caliber as neither the DM nor the host? Or is this just what it is to be human and share a meal with other people? I await your ruling.

tonytheoneandonly

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

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 sessions 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.

Zak

No case/confession, I just want to know who the Pope of the church is. Probably Tucker right?

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.

Dylan C

To the honorable judges and the sweet Bailiff Cake I bring the case of the "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.

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.

gerard

To the somewhat important justices, and the incredibly important bailiff Jake, I bring to the court the hybrid case of the church and court. In a homebrew campaign where I was DM'ing for the first time in a kind of isekai style where the PCs played as themselves in a setting that had them jumping between planes to test the Radiant Citadels adventure path with my own sprinkled in, I was trying my hand at a mystery and I fumbled the bag. They were chasing the bad guy, and their bard not only rolled a nat 20 to climb the side of a building, but a nat 20 to see where he went after stealing precious ritual gems, and I knew where he was going, the church, but I didn't know how to do that without saying he vanished and my player saw nothing. We ended shortly after that and my bard was very disheartened the rest of the session. We still play regularly and I have fixed my mistake, but it weighs heavily on my mind.

Amelia Chisholm

Venerable justices and Jake the Cake, I come to you seeking rougish advice! I’ve recently joined a home game with my partner’s friends after moving in together. Our DM has included some homebrew rules to make the game (in her eyes) more fun for both herself and us - great, no problem, it’s her table. However, these rules include removing all opportunity attacks and exchanging ‘feet’ movement for zones. As my harengon rogue moves up to level 2, I asked her if I could have some kind of feat or common magic item, given that two of my abilities (dash and disengage) would now functionally be useless. She’s been amenable to this kind of thing before, so I thought it seemed fair. However, she told me that rogues are ‘already OP’ and even without using dash or disengage my character was ‘already way too effective’. I get that she’s trying to put her own spin on the game, but it makes me feel like half of my class functions are essentially useless. I await your wise and noble ruling! - rattled rabbit rogue p.s. we selected our pcs before the homebrew rules were decided!

Clever Innuendo

If it pleases the magnanimous Judges and the Bailiff that always wakes up with at Solid 9, I present my APPEAL to a previous ruling, in the case of the Bag of Holding Vs Seawater damage from opening it under water. While the idea of 'opening the bag of holding underwater' might seem cut and dry, I attest that the exceptions *must* prove the rule! See Exhibit A: "If the bag is turned inside out, its contents spill forth, unharmed, but the bag must be put right before it can be used again". I would like to bring it to the court's attention; that's how *all* bags work. So why bring it up? Because that's the *only* way to dump out all of the items. Even if the flap of a Bag of Holding was open, turning it upside down and shaking it wouldn't do anything. Exhibit B: A living creature inside the bag has 10 minutes of air. This is halved per extra person inside. Nowhere does it state "When the flap of the bag is closed" that there is limited air. There is just always the condition of limited air. Why couldn't you just leave the flap open a crack and let your hidden companions breathe? It's because the interior is an extra dimensional space that follows the rules of the Bag, and not 'a bag that's bigger on the inside'. If air cannot be let in under any rules of the bag, then there is no precedent to allow water to enter as well. Furthermore, we defend our client's intent to summon the item they needed, and *just* the item they needed while underwater, on top of the protections previously established, because it takes a full action to interact and get what you want, rather than a free action. All of this put together should hopefully exonerate the salty party. However, if I deserve to be put in the punishment sack for speaking up against the court, please just remember to get me out in 9 minutes.

Dan Healey

To the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Crits and it's clergy. I must confess my temptation to turn my back on Dice Christ. I'm DMing for the first time for my 6 friends and they just had their first boss fight. It was a heavy hitter 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 3 remaining players unconscious. The next round it was the Ogre, still looking beefy, vs 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, betraying Dice Christ and 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 the Dice and when the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, I rolled a Nat 1, sparing the Halfling. 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? I submit to your potential Excommunication. In the name of the Help Action, Advantage and the Natural 20, Amen

Cavan Edwards

SHOULD MY DM ALLOW ME TO RAIL SOUL COINS? Behold I am the herald of gruumsh, the great Uniter of orcs and men, the unscathed. The court will bow before me. Shoutout to Jake. After winning a bet against a demon in the nine hells, I obtained a very large quantity of soul coins, which subsequently became useless after we left for a different plane in the campaign. During a story beat where we freed prisoners from a labor camp, the DM allowed me crush up soul coins and have NPCs snort them, in order to gain a bonus. Oppa Rkane style. Only a few of the NPCs exploded and a few were dragged off to hell after using their coins. It was a good time. Since then the soul coins had been burning a hole in my inventory, I still had lots more… Recently my DM agreed to let me crush up and snort a soul coin to increase my running speed and make a cinematic last minute escape. He then requested I roll a d100 on the madness table. I was told as a consequence of the effects of the raw soul energy and my roll, I would be unable to speak for 24 hours. This was in the midst of a major campaign arc and highly dangerous dungeon. As a cleric, being unable to access verbal spells was crippling and could have even endangered the party! In the end the whole thing was resolved, I have no great table drama to report as we are buds and I moved on because I'm not a savage. I submit to the court. Was my DM’s consequence fair or too extreme? Am I insane to ask this or should I be allowed, within reason, to rail soul coins for minor bonuses without suffering debilitating consequences? The DM will gladly accept whatever brutal punishment the court sees fit.

Fuzzboxx

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

Ally Grant

To the honourable justices, and, Jake, we can see you itching that. Got a case about rules Vs 'flavour'. As a DM, I often tend to follow the rules as written for mechanics, however for 'flavour', I'll usually let my players decide. Recently this bit me on the ass. The party were tracking down the BBEG's lieutenant, and realised that head to head combat wouldn't go their way, and that some degree of roleplay was needed. They proceeded to try and convince the lieutenant of the error of his ways. This resulted in a nat 20 intimidation check. The player narrated how they caused the lieutenant to see visions of the BBEG ...sexing? a horse. I argued that this was stupid, but the player just responded "it's all flavour, baby". Is this player a psycho, or is it all just flavour, baby?

Lux

To the clergy of the Inquisition and their dancing imp boy- I crave absolution. I have more than once lied about rolling a nat 1 on death saving throws in order to perma-die. My problem is that I constantly have new ideas about characters I want to create, and new inspiration means out with the old. So on more than one occasion during more than one campaign, I have gone down during combat, and after really failing one death save, I have lied about a Nat 1 in order to create the subject of my next inspiration. I make a pestilent, lumbering barbarian. I inevitably get tired of this character, and move on to another one, this time an elemental monk, with another lie. Please, I beg Dice-Christ's forgiveness (or better yet, understanding, or best yet, ridding me of these impure urges).

Jesse Flanagan

To the wise, lovely Judges and that handsome court slut, Jake, I present The Case of the Tortured Tortle. Two years ago, during a campaign that is still ongoing, us players had to cross a deep chasm via a 200-foot-long rickety bridge. We had no other means of getting across, and it was our only way forward. The DM made it clear that Lanu, the party’s tortle cleric, would be at increased risk while crossing because of how heavy tortles are. One by one, the everyone besides the tortle safely made it across. When it was Lanu’s turn, he made it 160 ft across the chasm before the bridge gave way, leaving him dangling from the side of the cliff. Before anyone could make a move to help him, a huge cyclops attacked the party. While we were all forced to address the new threat, the NPC travelling with us goes to the collapsed bridge and starts shaking it and laughing while Lanu hangs on for dear life. Then, without allowing any checks from Lanu, an enormous yeti climbed up from below, grabbed Lanu’s entire body, and hurled him down the chasm. Lanu instinctively retreated into his shell on the way down, but he ended up taking 117 bludgeoning damage anyway which should have killed him instantly according to the rules. Then, after the party had defeated the cyclops, the yeti jumped up from the chasm holding Lanu’s unconscious body. Despite being inside his shell, the yeti proceeded to tear off and devour Lanu’s arm. Us players were pretty bitter about the whole thing, and ever since, we make jokes about how disagreeing with the DM could cost our character a limb. Much later in the campaign, Lanu did eventually received a cool, metal arm with fire powers. The DM claimed that this “narrative arc” was why he severed Lanu in the first place. I understand the court has established that railroading is mostly not a thing, but is this a rare example of locomotive lunacy? I humbly ask the court for judgement.

Charles Q Lowe

Greetings and a wonderful New Year of grand deliberation to the honorable Justices. Also Jan you’re there I guess. I present the case of the Nat 20 Death Save. In a recent one-shot based on The Night Circus, my party and I had inadvertently caused all of the magic of the circus to go haywire after my Paladin had a particularly bad roll pulling cards from a tarot deck (a Nat 1). After quelling several problems, we rushed over to save the fortune teller who’d been captured by an efreeti. Being the paladin, I rushed in to begin combat with the efreeti, holding my own until I was eventually knocked unconscious. When it came time to roll death saves, I was blessed by Dice Christ with a Nat 20, even making sure to display it on Zoom. However, my DM ruled that though I popped up with 1 hit point, my turn was ended and I was left to be returned to unconsciousness at the efreeti’s next turn. I argued that RAW I should have popped up at the beginning of the turn and should have had actions to escape the efreeti’s reach, or heal myself. Judges, I ask: did I unfairly have a turn taken from me? Should I have had the chance to go down swinging again, or am I doomed to forever rise and fall by an efreeti’s whims?

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 injured some of the bandits. 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 as the wording of the spell says it ends when the invisible character attacks or casts a spell. Does becoming a T Rex and damaging a treehouse and the bandits within constitute an attack? Please help us, oh mighty justices, and end this petty bickering

Mason N.

May it please the Grand Court of Crit and that guy who plays Jake from Jake and Amir. 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.

Andrew Patterson

To the illustrious three and he, I present the case of the tableside Jigsaw, I have played for years and consumed thousands of hours of DnD media but am a newer DM getting a game together for coworkers and friends, I handhold everyone through character creation, making it more Tolkien standard to keep it simple for everyone, batting away some dragonborn and dwarforged. One player, Barry, chooses the path of violence and makes a human rogue who's primary character trait is racism, towards elves, my first quick quest is to save a half elf's daughter from some kobolds, he halts the table and asks "which half is elvish?" table gets a laugh and he's stone faced. After the quest is finished I "very gently" suggested he makes a normal character, or change the one because they wouldn't last long as a racist in the fantasy world. The following week he comes with a high elf trickster cleric, now racist towards dwarves AND sociopathic levels of "neutrality", allowing those around him to die for his own entertainment! That night Barry texts me "My character. Full intention to be indifferent to human life. I need that" Judges and he, should I allow my table to lead where they will and I entertain these unsettling fantasies or should I stand for what I want to play and dismiss this serial killer wannabe?

Jason Rodriguez

To the happy Supreme Justices, and the mildly irresistible Baliff Jacque. I dont know whether to submit this as a case or a confessional, so I'll let my fate rest in the soft Baliff hands. Every Friday I dm an open game at our local game store and I've had trouble getting through my players hp. Some are more op than the rest, but I can't seem to get the frontliners down below half sometimes. I've given my bosses up to 6 legendary actions and 5 legendary resistances, but they drop before they are all expended. They also have triple the hp of a normal baddie mainly due to the fact that "I HAVE UP TO 12 PLAYERS AT MY TABLE." I know its a lot, but everyone has fun and they commend me for doing a great job, but I always feel like something is missing or I'm doing something wrong. Thank you for reading and hope I dont roll under a 10 for the new year!!

Coelacanth

May it please the honorable justices and also Micah's brother. I present the case of the secret box. Years ago, in a campaign I was in with the same group I still play with, the DM at the time set up a quest for our Warlock Luma. His patron said to go to a shady bar and buy a box from someone, which he did, and the guy he bought the box from insisted he not open it until after he leaves the city. We all thought this was some shady guy scamming him, so he opened the box there to see what's inside. The DM says it was a test from his patron, which summons a portal to hell in the city, we all get captured by skeletal hands and taken prisoner by the patron and forced to watch as the main city of the campaign is leveled by demons and hellfire. He still makes jokes about us "destroying the city" and we still make jokes about him "destroying the campaign". So I ask you, was the player right to investigate this shading dealing, or should the DM have punished us so severely? P.S. I still play with this group, but I've been the DM since a few sessions later.

May

To the esteemed Justices, Protectors of the Crit and most noble souls (and Jake is there too I guess). I present to you the case of the spell nerf. In a recent campaign, I was playing a blood domain cleric in a slightly homebrewed system. I stocked mostly heals, but kept Gravity Well as a damaging spell. Our party was chased up a long staircase to the roof of the building by a boss monster. We made our way to a gap 30ft away to a nearby roof using rope, and cut it before the monster got close. When the beast got to the edge, it began to throw chunks of roof at us. On my next turn, I cast a spell called Gravity Well (2nd level spell, ranged magic attack roll.) I hit, and deal the damage. But the other effect is that it pulls the creature 20ft towards the casted in a straight line. The DM announced that the monster would get a strength save to resist the effect, which I argued wasn't a part of the spell. He rolled in response, said the monster passed, and moved on to the next players turn. I accepted it, and we eventually killed it from range. The following week my dm tells me that from now on, all creatures hit by that spell will get a save to resist the effect and take half damage. I asked if that meant it wouldn't be a rolled spell attack anymore if they get a save, to which he replied "of course not. Why would it?" Am I correct in being upset that the one special spell I learned has been made useless? I humbly prostrate myself before the court.

Muqtadaa Miandara

We're doing more in 2024, to wit: to the fairest and most wonderful Supreme Crit Just-dices - and our homely and cuckolded Baby-liff Jug, I present to you the case of the overpowered dinosaur familiar. After 3 years of running a 1-20 campaign in which my players went from fighting rats in sewers to saving the corrupted soul of a lost goddess, I am finally playing in a campaign run by one of the players from my table! Unfortunately, my newly crowned DM was overly permissive to one person in particular in the game. One player (also from my previous campaign) has a deinonychus - an actual dinosaur. His whole build is wild, with his PC having several stats already at 20 ("I rolled well" he said), and a custom-built heavy-repeating artillery crossbow. And, oh yeah, a fucking DINOSAUR. The deinonychus has four attacks, nearly 50HP to start, and has natural camouflage, and also acts as a mount. This dinosaur has sort of stolen our big "scrape-through-by-the-skin-of-our-teeth" moments several times. 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 get upstaged by this guy firing several fucking artillery bolts and then having his goddamn raptor kill anyone left over. Tell me your esteemed honors, is this a drastic Jurassic travesty? Was my DM too busy considering whether or not he could that he didn’t stop to think if he should? Please, Just-dices, sees that just-dice is rolled for my table.

Big Green

May it please the court and the resplendent bailiff Joshua. I play with an online pathfinder group for my first pathfinder campaign (thank you to Justice Axford for the introduction), and everything has been going swimmingly. However, a couple sessions ago, I noticed that the boss had one of my party members off-guard (a condition that lowers the target's AC in certain circumstances, like flanking or prone). The GM didn't notice this, and I didn't wanna tattle on my fellow player, especially as a newbie and during such a close fight. We won the hard fought battle, but I still feel guilty whether or not I should have said something. Justices, did I do the right thing and the boss blunder play out, or should I have snitched on my fellow player? I humbly await your judgement.

JC

Dear Lowly Justices and Esteemed Bailiff Jack. I bring to you a case of a DM who I do believe was actually railroading. First (and only) session of the campaign started with us as pirates sailing to an island to hunt for treasure. We were stopped by an imperial vessel that was far greater in size and man power to our own. My aaracokra artificer (Brian I beseech you to hold any comments until the end) rolled an extremely high charisma check for them to only capture us instead of killing us. The DM said I failed, but then described that our captain, a tabaxi named Atlas, was able to talk to the other captain and succeeded in saving our lives with no roll. While on the ship, we attempted to escape with multiple different plans all failing. That was until our captain exploded a hole in the hull so we could finally escape by climbing down the anchor. We didn't have another session due to scheduling conflicts but frankly I'm not too disappointed. Bailiff, and I guess the justices as well, do you think that was a true case of railroading, or am I in the wrong for thinking that these moves were kinda lame.

Keanu DRAMAFACE

QUICK AND DIRTY: May it please the court and all you dirty little judges. (Sup Jake) Intro NAUR 2024 My gnome bard wanted to seduce a Goliath. My DM said that the two races just could not mate. I disagreed saying that not all sex is P in V. DM still said it couldn’t be done. I beseech the court to allow my randy little gnome to fuck anyone and everyone that consents. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LET HER CUM

Sam Ross

To the Honorable and Wise Justices, and the serviceable Bailiff. I bring case of the 'Reluctant Frontliner' against my fellow party members. I am (or, was) playing a Shepherd Druid, a summoner focused class, in a high lethality game set in Sigil. My fellow party members over several sessions gave me continuous grief over not volunteering to be on the frontline in our combats, saying 'Druids have the highest HP of any class, you go in the front'. I explained, many times, that they are used to playing with Circle of the Moon Druids, which *are* extremely Tanky. Shepherds are actually very squishy, because they can't Wildshape in combat as all their Summons need voice commands, and the summons are all concentration based so I shouldn't be taking hits. But they wouldn’t listen, and I would have our Monk, Paladin, and Barbarian all retreat *behind* me during combats. Last session, I of couse died. We're still pretty low level, as the party Healer I was the only one with access to Revivify anyway, so I'll be staying dead. Did my party wrong me, and if so can I roll up a plate armor Fighter that hides behind our Wizard?

Choc DISCO

To the honorable justices and the festive Cupcake Hurwitz, I play as a pacifist paladin in a long term, currently low level campaign with two other players. In the most recent session, we were ambushed by a group of cultists. We defeated them, and as a pacifist, I attempted to keep them stable or 5 hp if we wanted to interrogate them after. The fighter multiclass at the table was visibly upset by this. Later, we fought a Lightbender and I wanted to try and befriend it as a companion (my DM showed me that there is a companion stat block for it). This frustrated the fighter even further, as when the DM said some more monster slaying quests that could be found in the city we are in, he exclaimed “Who would want to do that?”. Am I being overly peaceful, or is my fighter friend full of bloodlust? I await your swift judgement.

Rachel

Honored and beloved Dice Christ Clergy, I come with a request for advice, or perhaps a blessing? I was lucky enough to receive several sets of dice this Christmas, and I of course took part in the time honored tradition of rolling the d20s to see how quickly I would roll a Nat 20. Friends, on every single dice I rolled not 1, not 2, but three 3 natural 1s before I rolled a single natural 20. I cannot think of a single thing I've done to anger Dice Christ, please help me to reverse this dice curse and renew my dice with the blessings of Dice Christ!

TayJulia

To the honorable justices and slightly less honorable bailiff, I pose more of a legal dice quandary rather than a case and seek your humble opinion on the matter. A few months ago, a new girl joined our campaign and she is a great player and wants to dm, and our current dm has been letting her shadow him and dm at times to help her learn. She keeps introducing home brew rules for us to try, most of which are fine and if we don’t like them, she lets it be and we don’t do it again. But she is insisting on this rule for crits that the rest of us are hesitant to agree to, and here is where your thoughts on this issue would be useful. She wants all critical hits in fights, both pc and dm, to be double dice rolls plus max damage. For example if your sword deals 2d6 slashing damage, you would have the 12 slashing damage (max) plus what you rolled, let’s say an 8. So 20 damage. While this is exciting for certain players, like our level 18 paladin and barbarian, my simple arcane archer never deals insane amounts of damage even with a crit and so it’s not as helpful for me. Furthermore, our dm crits a lot, and we worry for potential tpks if he gets a few good rolls in. Honorable justices, is this potential home brew rule strange and potentially deadly, or just a fun way to really highlight a critical hit. I await your opinion. Thank you.

Joseph M McDevitt

Your honors and John, on New Year’s Eve we played a one shot. the DM is a close friend and let my children (10 and 7) play. Our 7 year old was not very attentive and would frequently step away to watch bluey or play with toys. Whenever she returned, the DM would just give her an attack, regardless of initiative order. This outrageous behavior leads to anarchy on the field. In addition to this already egregious crime, DM also gave her advantage on attacks if she wore her chicken hat. I humbly ask that you sentence both my daughter and the DM to harsh punishment for their lack of respect for combat.

DowdMusic

May it tickle the judges and slap the bailiff around a little bit. I bring to you the case of Too Many Tyler's. I am a DM who ran a one-shot inspired by the world of Bloodborne. My name is Tyler. In the game the PCs play 'hunters' including my one player actually named Hunter. Two of the Hunters, including actual Hunter, decided to name their characters Tyler. Now I have a buch of hunters, including Hunter, who all refer to each other (and me) as Tyler. Furthermore, they all refer to Tylerism as some way of existence. A way of living that could eventually rise one to true Tylerdom, the ultimate state of collective consciousness. This was all funny, but slowed down the game.

Jesse Dunlap

The case of Fat Bastard v. Party of normally named players. To Your supreme simps and beta balif I present a case to blow minds. This last summer I started a campaign with my brother, his gf, our cousin and a “friend” of ours who were all new players. Everyone make up a name, race, and identity except for our friend who wanted to be Fat Bastard from Austin powers. He decided to be a half orc barbarian who wanted to eat. I was running storm kings thunder with some changes inspired by NADDPOD. So when the party went on their first quest to save a group of children kidnapped from their starting town by goblins the party was quick to go. Except for fat bastard who anticipates telling the children to “get in my belly!” In the encounter I described how the leading goblin Dak had a sword that glowed with dark fire and seemed to be berserk fat bastard went at him and grabbed the sword. Smiling. The session ended there. I discussed with the player that he had the sword of the beserker and would go nuts if he failed his save. He was down for the consequences until during the next session he went in an all out range and attempted to eat the kids and attack the party. Instead of my goblins Fat bastard became the final battle and was slewn in a close fight with the others. To this day he blames the party for killing him when her knowingly took the cursed weapon and intentionally tried to eat the kids for an Austin powers bit. Little does he know that I knew he would take the sword and I planned his death accordingly as soon as he decided to be the metric ton, Scottish assassin Fat Bastard. Who is at fault me for trying to kill my gimic player hands off, my players for executing him, or Fat Bastard.

Lucca Emil Rodriguez

To the Honorable Crit Justices Axeford and Tanner and the lowly bailiff Brian: May it please the court, I present the case of the players not caring for combat. Ive been running a campaign with some friends for a bit more than a year and its going great they love the story and really engage in it. Their still shy about the roleplay but likewise engage in it, the problem comes when we wnter combat. One of my players likes that aspect but two are lost and dont really engage and one fully disengages and gets on her phone or starts drawing. Which i wouldnt mind too much but im just afraid that their not having as much fun. Any advice on engaging my players in the crunchier side of dnd. Thank you and may ur roles be blessed by Dice Christ.

Iain Standing

Hello honourable, wonderful justices and some guy who reads these things out loud semi-successfully. Jansen, maybe? The case of the idiot soul swap. I run a campaign for two new players and one experienced player. I was running an encounter in a frozen rainforest where the players come upon a statue garden where upon investigation, the statues have an opportunity to possess the player. This was all fairly straightforward until the barbarian, one of the newer players, failed all of his checks (dc10 strength against a literal mental wall) consistently for fifteen rounds of combat where he became so frustrated that he ceased to try anything with his rolls yelling “what the fuck do I do?!” even when I tried to give hints to him how to defeat the encounter and gave him inspiration . I had to fully pause the game and tell him how to beat the encounter and explain that he had been doing everything right, he just had been consistently rolling like dogshit. Was I right to fully break kayfabe for the entire table or should I have let him and the party succumb to his possessed body’s raging attacks?

anniemurphs

Sweet blue year to you four, intros are back in 2024! I present to you all the case of the crushing, possibly bitter dm (may it please the court): I was playing a level 15 swashbuckler rogue a few years ago. Me and my party were in this tournament where we were sent to a house in a pocket dimension to rid it of the mimics that were hiding there. We were up in the somewhat cluttered attic and I was told to roll a perception check, and rolled a nat 1 so a mimic got a sneak attack on me. The issue is that I had Reliable Talent and added my prof bonus to perception. I argued that it shouldn't be treated as a nat 1 since I technically couldn't roll below a 10. The dm (who I think was upset that I did not reciprocate a crush he had on me) ruled that it would still get a sneak attack. Gracious court, I can understand if the mimic were to get advantage on its initiative roll or the first attack on me, but I feel as though Reliable Talent should've been taken into account to stop the sneak attack- am I in the wrong for thinking this unfair? Thank you! ❤️, Annie P.s. we ended up winning the challenge and my rogue was fine, but the dm stopped talking to me and my other friends shortly after so we ended up not playing what would've been a really cool campaign

Miranda Fox

To the ever wise and sexy Justices and Jill’s manny James, I present the case of the startling shadow puppets. I was running a homebrew campaign for some friends of mine who had a group but needed a DM. I had 6 players mixed of some experienced but primarily newbies, but this story is about my lovely bard Tilly. Now Tilly’s player was one of our brand new players and didn’t always have the greatest grasp on her spells but usually had a creative move up her sleeve. In this particular instance my crew were in an the city’s abandoned underground canal system looking for information on the creatures that attacked their last village and ran into some cultists and a zombie beholder during combat Tilly said she wanted to use mage hand and the lights from the lanterns to make shadow puppets on the wall to distract the beholder. I said that it sounded like fun but that mage hands were spectral and wouldn’t cast shadows the same way but that she had spells that would do the same effect. She was insistent on mage hand and failed an arcana check that would have made it potentially more opaque and so I had her roll with disadvantage on the check and she still managed to roll a 19 and Nat 20, so my beholder now had to make wisdom saving throw on its turn. Combat went on after that and it only lasted a round before she swapped to healing her party but after the session one of my players said that I had made Tilly jump through too many hoops. I thought the rolls were justified and he was just salty I wouldn’t let him not take damage when he wild shaped into a bear just to jump out of a tree on someone as an attack. So judges (and I guess their manservant) was I right in my puppet show principles or was my Druid right and without Dice Christs blessing the show should have gone on?

Hedge

May it please the illustrious justices and the dutiful bailiff of varying status, I come to you with the case of the stolen campaign. I was playing in a remote campaign that merged a couple's two separate irl friend groups. The DM ran a fun, light-hearted campaign that one of the players seemed to have some trouble matching the tone of initially, so they switched their character. A few sessions after switching characters, that player told everyone at the beginning of the session that they were thinking of taking over and asked our opinions. The DM seemed surprised but didn’t really protest. These two were longtime friends and I knew the DM was starting a new job, so I emphasized that I’d been having a lot of fun with my character and the campaign, but that if the DM needed a break or wanted to be a player, I wasn’t opposed. The other players had similar reactions. The player said that in that case, the DM could wrap up and we’d switch to them as the DM next session or the session after and talked about character creation. The DM scrambled to improvise an end to the campaign that session without getting any prep time and the next time we met, the player was the DM. It always stuck with me that the DM seemed blindsided, so after many months I finally worked up the courage to outright ask if the player had talked to the DM before suggesting taking over. They confirmed they did not, but said that the DM just didn’t seem invested in the campaign. Should I have trusted the person’s vibes that their friend wasn’t invested, or was this a coup ‘DM?

Jake

Dear incredible justices and Bailiff Hardwon (thank you for kicking off that jebidiah guy) I bring to you the case of the potion soup I was doing for my group of friends when one of them had a great idea! Take all of the potions (healing, poison, invisibility and the like) and dump them all into the bag of holding and mix them around to make a horrid Frankenstein-esk drink. Sounds fun right? Well it was until one of my players decided to drink from the bag by scooping some mystery liquid out and chugging it. I had decided to roll a d20 3 times to pick randomly what effects they get. Turns out this player was furious when they got poison and demanded that the healing potion mixture in the slop should counteract the poison. This devolved into a long argument that ended with him saying that I was targeting him since no one else had gotten bad effects (the potions of poison were the only bad potions) and he got up and left my house, ending the session there. Was I in the wrong for not letting the healing potions overtake the poison potions? Or did my player get truly lost in the sauce? I await your fair (and sexy) judgment

Helena

May it please the Supreme Crit, dear Honorable Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the humbly handsome Baliff Hurwitz; I present: the case of the druid who couldn't hit. During a level 20 one-shot, I played a druid and couldn't hit an aspect of Tiamat. I only had +6 to hit with my weapon and her AC was over 26. I rolled multiple natural 20s during the session, but mathematically, I didn't hit the AC, so the DM ruled I wasn't able to do any damage. I believe I should've been able to hit anyways if I rolled a natural 20, because a critical hit is a critical hit; it's doing the near impossible. I even tried to barter, asking if I could hit on a nat20 and not do crit damage, only normal damage; my DM denied this, leaving me with basically nothing to do during the one-shot. This was a few years ago, so I don't remember why I wasn't able to hit with any spells, but regardless, my DM made it impossible for me to hit the BBEG and practically rendered my character useless due to the way they were built.* Should I have been able to hit on a weapon attack with a nat20, even if I didn't technically hit the AC? I humbly wait your ruling and will graciously accept any and all conclusions you reach. *quick note if questions arise: the plot of the one-shot was a complete surprise. We as PCs only knew to make a level 20 character, and to expect a combat that was balanced for a party of 5 level 20 characters. I'm not the most experienced player, so my PC was built for fun, not to min-max my abilities. - Helena (huh-lay-nuh) V.

Lokee Neuman

To the honorably dishonorable judges, and the one they call Jake I come to you with a question of homebrew and fairness to the party. I run a homebrew game for some friends, and one of them is playing a crystal warforged named citrine. They have asked several times if by replacing their limbs with the limbs of other crystal war forged they can change their class. I am fine with this, as we've established that any of the players can change their class if they feel there is a thematic reason. The problem is that they have changed class very frequently, and originally they were the parties tank. Now my other players are starting to get upset about the lack of tank. I ask the court for judgement as to whether I should allow the class switching limb stealer to continue with their actions or I should put a stop to it.

Birthday Girl Cara

to the post hogliday judges and... i wanna say... jim? i bring to you the case of "the fight that ended magic". In my home game all magic stems from "The One Tree", a tree that the creater of the world wove themselves and their magic into in order to stread it across the planet, my players are aware of all of this. my party had an encounter within The One Trees branches and the sorcerer cast fire ball and as a DM i made a huge mistake... i made a face. the party thought they had found an enemy weakness when in actual fact I was grimmicing at the thought of fire mixing with the wooden sorce of all magic. I narrated how the fireball had singed the leaves of the branches surrounding them, going on to say "You see a large branch of the one tree, badly singed, has caught fire." but, convinced they had a DM womp in the bag, the used fire spells for the rest of the fight. they defeated the bad guys and set the tree alight. i narrated the feeling of their magic fading from them as the tree began to crack and burn and they got so pissed! they insisted that I was being far too harsh by reducing their magic abilities due to the damaged tree but i maintain that i gave them plenty warning. judges and jim, was I being a womped weinner or were my players being fire starting farts? ps. the group have since gone on a druid driven quest to create a magic balm and heal the tree so magic has returned!

PWJ

Oh bailiff my bailiff, and all honorable members of the Supreme Crit, I present to you the case of the Board Game Breakup. I joined a campaign mid-way through a campaign in Waterdeep. A few months after I'd joined, the DM also added his (then) girlfriend to the campaign. Alright, cool, she seemed nice at first. But then little things cropped up. She'd act hurt if the enemies happened to target her specifically on a turn. She was mad we had magical items from before she joined and she didn't. And eventually, she started to get jealous of how the DM was treating the other girl in our campaign. It came to a head one session when she got into a fight with the DM, and they both stepped out. After 30 minutes, I decided to take out a board game I keep in my backpack (Sushi Go!) and we played it. We got through a ~45 minute game and were starting our second when our DM came out and told us that the two of them had broken up, and that his ex-girlfriend would no longer be participating in our campaign. It was tremendously awkward. The DM has been pretty cool about the whole thing, but some of the other players have told me that I made it more awkward by making the DM come back to us sitting in his living room doing something that doesn't even involve him when he was mid-break up. I agree it's kind of weird, but we didn't know at the time, and no one said anything about it then. Was I wrong to break out a board game when the DM was away for over an hour? Even though it was obvious something weird was happening?

Matt Hartt

To the oppulant justices and the kind of hard to look at bailiff, I present the case of the banned bag of holding. I am the forever DM for my group of friends, and while I don't consider myself to be too strict, I have one ruling that extends to all of my games: The bag of holding (and similar dimensional storage items) do not exist in my world. This has led to a lot of grumbling from my players, constant razzing, and snide remarks over the years. My group does not track carry weight, so I argue that the players only want the bag of holding for suffocation and smuggling shenanigans. When I ask the players why they need one as they've always been able to store everything they find, the answer that "they just want one." Justices, I ask you: Am I justified in my outright ban, or am I being a Murph in the mud and deserve all the razzing I've received thus far? My players listen to the show, so I will either uphold or strike down the ban based on your infallible ruling.

Andy Hunsucker

To the most honorable justices of the only court I recognize, and also Jake. I pray you consider my case even though it's not in a D&D system. My board gaming group was trying out Call of Cthulhu as a change of pace and we had reached a point where we were being chased by ghouls (we were in a car, ghouls on foot). We reached a building and the group discussed going inside and barricading the home and trying to fight from there. However, one player insisted that we should stay in the car, going so far as refusing to go inside the house, assuming that the house might be a trap. The DM warned the player that staying in the car might be very dangerous. The rest of us went inside and barricaded the house, leaving the lone player in the car. The ghouls arrived, ripping through the car, and killing the player in short order. The other players were able to barely fend off the ghouls from inside the house, and the player that was killed spent the rest of the session tearing his character sheet into tiny pieces. We never played Call of Cthulhu again. Do I and the other player bear any responsibility here? Should we have respected the choices of our friend, trying to fight through the ghouls to save him, or are we good?

Jake's embezzlement attorney

To the honorable justices Murphy, Axeford and Tanner and the lovely lovely lovely, lovely lovely lovely, lovely lovely Justice Axeford again I present the case of Stunned in more ways than one. I was running a one shot for a couple members of our group when our last member wasn't feeling well and had to miss our normal sesh. It was a fortnite style battle royal with random teams competing to survive. Our heros ran into a Bone Knight and Gnome Ceremorph team. The Gnome used their Mind Blast ability and stunned my players. Tug, the bard, went to cast healing word on their turn before rolling for their save again. I said that they were stunned and could not use their bonus action. Tug said that stunned, and by extension incapacitated, only block actions and reactions and don't mention bonus actions. I said I'd allow it this time to keep things going but I'm going to look this up later because it feels wrong. Well guess what Tug?! consider this me looking it up after! Also I actually looked it up after and the PBH states that anything that deprives you of your actions also deprives you of bonus actions (chapter 9, order of combat) If it so please the court I would like to motion that the rug be pulled from under tug.

Micayla Towe

May it please the court in all its regal majesty, I present the case of the prone fish. A party was adventuring in an underwater environment, after taking some potions of water breathing. They were attacked by several monsters, including a some giant crabs and a giant eel. The eldritch knight of the party proceeded to take an attack action to "shove" the giant eel, in attempts to knock it prone. This has sparked much debate, as to weather a fish or similar creature can become prone underwater. For humanoids underwater or land based creatures like crabs this makes sense, but a fish? Are you fucking kidding me? I humbly submit this request to the court to take the plunge into this debate and finally decide, once and for all if there is such thing as a prone fish. Thank you.

Ilana Galpert

venerable justices of the court and supple, nubile bailiff, I'm running a campaign for 4 of my friends in a gladiator-esque setting. One of them built a character thats much, much stronger in combat than the other players (an average of 40 damage per turn at level 3.) In the last group combat, I targeted him pretty heavily. He said, correctly I believe, that it wasn't fair. I didn't like doing it either but the combat would have been really *really* short if I hadn't. After he went down, I let him come back up pretty much immediately out of guilt after one death save, so he only missed one turn. I proposed to the group giving the rest of the crew magic items to help in combat and weaker magic items (or non combat magic items) for him but he pointed out this wasn't strictly fair either. I don't want to nerf his character. I had to adjust the way crits work for everyone so he couldn't double the great weapon master bonus. He's an assassin rogue with great weapon master and a double bladed scimitar (one thing we did sort out is he was adding the modifier to the bonus attack when he wasn't supposed to be.) I don't like what I did, but what should I have done? He once did 80 damage at level 3. I trust that he's not cheating. As a DM himself, he's sympathetic to my problem. I'm a player in the game he runs, if that matters.

Philip LaLone

To the "honorable" judges and the magnificent bailiff Jake, I bring to you the case of untouchable enemies. My first campaign I played in was run by a tricky dm, always abusing the "I don't have to tell you that" part of being a dm. Regardless, we were in a very tough fight back and forth constantly, we had killed most but one enemy ran over and revived another. They retreated off the battle map, when I went to make chase I was told that I couldn't. The enemies left the battle map, I could no longer fight/find them. After complaining that what he said didn't make sense I was told "too bad" and "that's just how it works." Was I wrong to complain about this rule that seemed to appear only to save some key npc or was the dm right. I await your decision with grace.

KalooKalay

To the benevolent and glorious judges and that other guy. I’m fairly new to DnD and have been playing on and off for the last 2 years so there is still much I’m learning. The case I bring to you is a case about table etiquette. As we all know playing DnD as an adult can be difficult sometimes when it comes to scheduling so we have a rule where as long as there’s at least 2 out of 4 players able to play we will continue with the session and the DM will play those absent PCs. On this day one of our players was out and the DM was player her PC. Our party was currently chasing down some cultist when we get to a fork in the road. One road led to a temple that we suspected was where their main ritual was being performed the other to a village that we suspected had already been ransacked because of the smoke we saw in the distance. Me and another party member wanted to go to the temple since we believed that there was an urgency to stop this ritual but our third party member wanted to go to the village since she believed that there may still be lives to save. We argued for a bit but when she noticed neither of us were giving ground she try’s to use our absent PCs vote against us saying “Paxton would want to go save those villagers she’s a paladin.” The DM says nothing and annoyed and tired of arguing we just said ok let’s go then. Judges I ask of you am I wrong for feeling annoyed at this behavior? Should the DM have intervened on this since the PC was absent and he is supposed to make the decision for the absent player? Or does she have a point since the absent player was a paladin and probably would have agreed anyways? I humbly await your decision. Thanks for all you do and all the amazing content you grace us with. PS NADDPOD is why I started playing DnD I had lost my job during covid and was so bored and had stumbled on to your beautiful content keep doing what you do!

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?

Nicolas P.

To the perfect, flawless, quintessential, and absolute justices of the Supreme Crit, and Jayke Hurwhits, I bring to you a dry case of contradictions. A while ago I was playing in a one shot with some buddies of mine. I had built a sick Echo Knight/Vengence Paladin multiclass with a lot of emphasis on my bonus action. During the final fight I action surged, which according to the player’s handbook I have, said that I got another bonus action as well. My DM disagreed with this and said I didn’t get another bonus action. We discussed it for a moment or two but then I relented and we moved on because we are good friends and like each other. I ask, should I have gotten another bonus action? What is the definitive ruling by the Supreme Crit on this?

Emily Martin

To the beloved justices and bailiff uh… um… anyways! I humbly ask for your judgment on a case that has resurfaced on a number of occasions to mock me. Do not worry, no spoilers ahead for our podcast. At the time I was playing my sweet, older sister type, paladin named Janice. For some ungodly reason, the other players as well as NPCs had an innate drive to hate her no matter how loving and caring she is. Like overly rude when she is trying to help them. We were at a random pawn shop which is when our DM tends to throw out the most random items that we as players will then find creative ways to exploit (as players do). The item being offered to me this time was a ring of random keys, like a hundred random keys. Not entirely sure why, but our DM started at his initial price then after I suggested a slightly lower price he haggled himself down to free very quickly without me being able to get a word in edgewise. I took a half a second to think and responded with “how about I take these keys off your hands and find what each one goes to. For each one I find where it goes, you pay me 5 gold.” Without hesitation, the shopkeep snatched the keys and said “the keys are off the table.” No opportunity for a persuasion roll or anything! To this day, “the keys are off the table” is said by all those who were at the table that day when I am pushing my DM too far. So I ask you justices, can you really call yourself a D&D player character if you have not challenged your DM to find where the line is? Is it not the players job to fuck around and often narrowly escape finding out? Or are the keys really off the table? I anxiously await your fair ruling. Ps I have never played D&D and I hate the show

PlausiblyPJ

May it please the wise keepers of the holy crit and that guy who stands at the confessional and announces our sins, I come to you with a confession. 3yrs ago, I started playing in a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign where I met my fellow players for the first time during session 1. It has been fantastic and we are all the best of friends now. However, I made a bold mistake very early on that has weighed in my conscience ever since. During our 3rd session, we were locked in a depate among the party on whether or not to assist a town in need or to allow the town to turn against the mayor which would assist the medieval Mafia that our party was loosely affiliated with. All but 1 of us was on board to become "made men" and helping the criminal organization. This player (lawful good) was threatening to rat us out if we went through with it. So... I casted Sleep on them. We then proceeded to tie them up, lie to the towns people that he was delusional and a danger to others, and left him on the side of the road penniless and alone, kicking the character out of the party and causing the player to create a new one, which they were happy to do as it was very comical. This was the point that I realized my mistake. I was playing a bard, and I didn't realize bards can't prepare spells each day. So, Sleep was not on my original spell list. I added it after a rest for this plan to work... Luckily, the campaign has continued and has been an experience we will remember forever. Our DM even made the abandoned character an ongoing villain hell bent on revenge! But I always wonder what could've happened if I hadn't accidentally broken the rules and changed my spells... I kneel before you hoping for absolution, but accept any punishment you see fit.

Colin Fitz

To the brilliant and clever Justices, and the guy they pay to read these, I present to you, the case of the spell starved wizard. I used to play in a 5e campaign online with some people from school, and all 5 PCs (including myself) were first time players. Because I had some familiarity, and Emily made spells seem so fun and strong, I tried my hand at a Divination Wizard, who I now accuse my DM of criminally neglecting. As you may know, Wizards rely heavily on learning spells through finding spell books or other magical means(see Fia in C2) to expand their spell library. Well, after 4 grueling months of playing and wiping out cultists to earn the necessary xp to level up from 1 to 5, I was not given a single opportunity to learn a new spell other than those I earned for murdering a ton of people (leveling up). I tirelessly searched for spells in libraries, or on the corpses of fallen foes, but I was always met with "you don't find a spell book or anything like that", which left me feeling insignificant and starved for more. Unfortunately, we stopped playing before we could get past level 5 (just scheduling stuff), so there wasn't any more opportunity, but I beg of thee, fine justices, does my DM deserve severe punishment for the months of neglect, or do I face eternity in the 4th layer of hell for my greedy desires?

Luke Shealy

Benevolent cardinals of Dice Christ, I have a confession. I have been a DMing for my group of friends for a long time and during this time I have rolled so many natural twenties that encounters I created to be easy introductory encounters have even turned into tooth and nail fights. Over my career as a DM I have killed a total of 5 PCs and 4 of those were from natural twenties. I regularly roll 3-4 crits a session. This got so bad that I have changed my dice set several times and even tried rolling online. I have finally started fudging my rolls to decrease the difficulty level and my players have yet to notice. I fling my self at the foot of the Altar to Dice Christ and plead for forgiveness for this crime against probability.

Sam McInturf

May it dismay the beneficent Judges and inspire the Balif! I seek an injunction to this case as I am Tyler! Tyler is attempting to Punish the Collective Tylers by breaking our player immersion by refusing to use our player names (instead using hyphenated forms) because he has sought and failed to bring charges against us in prior Supreme Crit Cases. Previous notable cases include Too Many Bombs in which he was ruled against. He has continued to bring cases against we Tylers as punishment. Please Crit, you are our only legal hope for getting out from the thumb of this tyrannical DM

Divine Tragedy

I seek the high judgement of the clergy of Dice Christ, To whom it may concern, our DM loves to do nightly "dream/nightmare" wisdom saving throws. It's been established by now that if you roll poorly, something terrible happens in the dream and you don't get the benefits of a long rest, and if you roll between a 1 - 5, you even get levels of exhaustion. As a result, I've been fudging my rolls whenever I roll low. Everyone seems to enjoy this mechanic, but I can't help but feel my low wisdom Fighter gets heavily penalized for just trying to sleep off the day. Should I let the dice roll as they are and allow my fighter to have insomnia and be consistently exhausted... or continue wallowing in sin?

Alex Smith

To the most Honorable Justices and “nice guy” bailiff, I bring my case of the “Pipe Cleaner Monster charm”. I was DMing a one shot in which my players were playing family members who had been shrunk (a few cm tall) for not getting along at a family thanksgiving gathering. I needed to keep the players from getting off the table because everything I had planned only existed on the table plane and the one shot had to be efficient. My players were failing almost every roll during the game. I introduced a cat (called the “pipe cleaner monster” due to the fact the PC could only see its tail) that was prowling under the table to keep them from getting off the table. Without my prompting one of my players rolled for animal handling and was finally successful. I didn’t want to take her success away for rolling unprompted but I also couldn’t allow them a means to befriend the cat and get down from the table (thus breaking my game plans fully). I eventually decided to tell them that the pipe cleaner monster would only not attack that specific character so long as she kept feeding it, but it wouldn’t like the other PCs. Am I wrong for allowing an almost story breaking roll when I didn’t say she could roll for it? Thank you, and I humbly await your intelligent ruling. (Extra context is that they did not decide to drop from the table in the end thankfully)

Ben H.

to the ever-vigilant justices, and new-cake-fan bailiff i present the only table drama i’ve ever had. it was my second campaign playing with my longtime friend group, and my wild magic sorcerer was with another party member engaging in an assassination, we were successful until the DM revealed the target had a child, and that this child was going to scream and alert the camp we had snuck into (which she told us during and after the session would’ve resulted in a TPK) having no other means of resolving this (and my dm giving me a real life countdown from 5) i shot the kid in the stomach with my crossbow, which made 2 of my friends mad at me in real life, the kid was part of a gross necromancy cult so he was fine, and we got over it after some arguments, both in and out of character, but i ask fair judges, was i wronged for the sake of drama?

DaddyPatty24

Dear excellencies, I DM a game with some of my friends online using roll20's map tool. I would spend days creating maps or finding something that matches my vision of the setting as closely as possible. We have had to put the game on pause because of all our work schedules (our bosses are a bunch of knobs) so we haven't played since August. As our lives have settled down and life is finally giving us a time for gaming, we are wanting to get back into the swing of things. However looking back on our sessions, I have noticed that part of the game gets lost in the maps as my players will take the video game route and search every room they can see looking for that sweet sweet loot even if there is nothing in there. This is causing our sessions to be 4+ hours long and not a lot gets done. As we are NADDPOD fans we have thrown out the idea of playing NADDPOD style and throw away the maps and just play with our imagination. I think that it would make the game more fun for all of us especially since I don't have to spend all my free time searching for maps that on the internet don't even match what i imagined. I bring this case to the great and powerful DnD lords and lady to see what your opinions are on the matter.

Omnis

To the Honorable Justices and that guy I either Hate/Love depending on how Justice Murphy 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?

3 Minions in a trench coat

Holy and mighty servants of Dice Christ, you may remember me as the one who brought my d100 rolling girlfriend for absolution. It seems that I have angered Dice Christ in this matter because on New Year’s I rolled a d20 as is tradition to see the prediction of the coming year. Nat 1. I rolled again to confirm and another Nat 1. I prostrate myself before you and beg your blessings lest I end up having a year of Murph rolls. Bless you

Scott D

To the Judicious Judges and the Baffling Bailiff. I present the case of the oversized giant rings. I DM a long running regular campaign with two friends and one brother (let’s call him Hank). For a time, my other brother joined (let’s call him Paul). During this period, they raided a giant fortress and looting ensued, as it does. Paul snuck off alone to loot before others saw him. No big deal. I told him that he has a minute or so to quickly look around and grab some stuff before others walk in the room, however, giant loot is large and heavy, and he can’t just pocket a bunch of jewelry. He asked how large the rings were and I said they were 25 pounds each (SKT pg.182). He immediately protested, saying that’s way too big. I countered saying that he may have a point, but this is what the book says, and I don’t want to hold up the session by estimating ring weights. Both of my brothers went silent for a time, muttering to one another as I continued the session. After a time, they produced a diagram of a ring, with estimated size, density, and the equation for weight based on the volume of a tube. I again said, look, I don’t want to hold things up with this. Let’s just go with what the book says for now. My only hang up is that I am an engineer, and I think they were actually correct. So, my question is this. Should I have held my ground for the sake of flow (which is my preference), or acknowledged their efforts in some way?

Ben Delahay

I cast myself humbly before the steps of Dice Christ in the casino he calls a church. I implore you as his servants to help me because I believe I am cursed or going through a Job or a Jonah situation. I’ve never been a lucky roller. I accepted that. But on the last session of our Curse of Strahd game something incredible happened…I rolled 8 Nat 20s in a row. Before you cheer and toss out my confession please understand what these rolls were for. 1 initiative roll and 7 Dex saves…7 Dex saves where the DC was 14. I was a Level 14 Monk. 8 Nat 20s. 8 completely useless Nat 20s. I wasted all my luck that I’ll ever have in my entire life on 8 rolls that meant nothing. Do you know how many times I hit Strahd? 0. Do you know how many times I hit the man that killed my mentor? 0. I don’t think I rolled above a 10 against Strahd. Can you imagine having it all? Can you imagine feeling blessed by the hand of Dice Christ only for him to backhand you an hour later? I don’t even know how to go on anymore. What can I even do now? What’s the point? Thank you so much for hearing my plight. XOXO.

roguemoose

A cluckganebowl reboot? To the most honorable justices and the affectionate bailiff who hugged my husband no less than 4 times after the Denver live show (so many hugs, it was lovely): This fowl event happened the second session my husband and I played with new people. It was agreed between everyone and the DM who hosts at his house that we can bring food and eat it while playing. We brought chips and peanut M&Ms to share with the table. However another husband/wife player couple decided instead of pizza or snacks, to bring a WHOLE rotisserie chicken and a Costco-sized Caesar salad mix. They borrowed a giant mixing bowl from the DM (who didn’t eat anything), pour in the huge salad mix, and the husband starts ripping off large pieces of poultry BY HAND. Unwashed hands, ripping huge chunks of chicken and consuming some of it before it even got to the salad. They ate their personal giant chicken Caesar salad, we started playing, and then they continued picking at their chicken carcass for the entire rest of the game! The whole room smelled like chicken for hours! Was this normal or are our nostrils wrong to be distracted by the lingering scent of roasted meat?

pickles and milk

To the honorable justices and the brilliant bailiff Emily, or whoever that other guy is. I bring you the case of snakes in a man The issue first began when my long term DM decided to run a one shot heavily based on Brendan Fraser's the Mummy. I asked my DM beforehand if my character Professor Phineas Grail could in fact be a bunch of snakes in a man suit. They agreed and we had a great time with the one shot. And it's a memory we still laugh about regularly. However now when it comes time to make new characters I have this choice thrown in my face, it's often said I only make joke characters.I love to make my friends laugh and to make fun choices. but my characters are more than jokes to me. I spend a lot of time thinking about how they feel and fun ways to interact with the party. Was I wrong to play a bunch of snakes in a man suit? Should I play more serious characters?

Wheelord

To the most radical justices and the other guy from Jake and Amir. We had a long term campaign where i played a Ranger building a new settlement on the edge of the frontier with the rest of my party. After about a year of investing our characters time into this project, our DM took a break and the campaign was taken over "temporarily" by his brother. His brother decided to send the party back to their home city, months travel away to pay back a debt their family's owed. As there was no way my character would abandon this settlement after all that time, i asked if my characters well documented twin brother who still lived in their home city could fulfil this debt and i would just play him. The DM agreed and i swapped over to his Hermit Druid twin. After spending a much much longer time in this city than anticipated, it was finally time to head back to the main campaign, with everyone having acquired several magical items, as well as a good amount of gold. I stated that since my current character was a Hermit who had given up worldly possessions, and that he was leaving for good, that i wanted him to send along most of this to his brother who could make better use of it starting his new life. My DM laughed and said absolutely not, that i couldnt' just pass gear between my characters like it was some sort of video game. Was i in the wrong to not want to miss out on all the loot from a yearlong detour? I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

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.

NowWhatComix

Greetings beloved justices and bountiful bailiff, may it please the court, I bring to you the case of the Overcommit Bit For context, my group likes to surprise each other with character secrets the same time that the PCs learn them, utilizing things like secret chats to have insane reveals and stimulate character conversations to learn more about one another. The issue is, I think I may have gone too far in committing to a bit character, Hue Mann the Human, a changeling artificer. This campaign has been going on for three years real time, and my fellow players still haven’t realized that Hue isn’t human. They’re suspicious of him, I think, but I worry I may have gaslit them a little too well, as now they don’t even question when he gets hit with a polymorph effect with no roll and stands there human as ever! At first the DM and I thought it was hilarious, and I even went so far as to tell the other players that this was all an elaborate joke to mess with my best friend, who knows I would never play a human in dnd. But now, I’m ready to actually play what I picked, and can’t find an out! For some reason my party loves Hue Mann and his uncanny valley Normal-ness, so I want to give my friends a reveal they deserve after 3 years, but I just don’t know how! I ask ye, justices and Jake, is this all my fault? Did I go too hard, or are my friends too easy to accept that a guy named Hue Mann is human? (P.S. Any advice on the reveal is appreciated!!)

Eric G

To the most merry judges and balif guy. I bring you the case of "floor time". When I play dnd I like to have what my group calls "floor time". This is where during the middle of the session, I will get out of my chair, lay face-down on the floor next to the table, and stay there for 10-15 minutes until I get back up into my seat. I don't really know why I do it, It just feels nice. My group has banned floor time because when I am on the ground, I don't interact as much. Often I will start to get onto the floor and our DM will will have to stop and tell me to get back into my chair They have given other options such as breaks. But there is something about being on the cold floor, playing your favorite game, next to all of your closest friends that I can't get with a simple break. Should floor time be banned, or should I be able to get down on the ground and enjoy dnd my way? I humbly await your response.

Shannon V

To the greatly esteemed supreme justices Murph, Emily, Caldwell and the lowly (x20) bailiff, Jay; I was DMing a game where the party was searching through a floating mage’s tower. During battle with magic constructs the player playing a wizard cast fireball. I determined that since the floor was old carpet and wood, the fireball caught it on fire and spread quickly, I had the fire expand 20ft each round. The players had to abandon the many chests full of possible treasure on the floor and move on. My wife, who was playing a fighter, argued that fire doesn’t spread that quickly and she was googling many examples. The player playing the wizard was okay with it as a narrative device and we moved on. After the session was over my wife said she disagreed whole heartedly with how fast that fire was spreading. Was I wrong to have such quickly spreading fire?

so-crates

To the sweet blue Crit Justices and the sugar-free Bailiff Cake: May it please the Court, I present the case of the backseat DM. I briefly flirted with the idea of becoming a paid DM through an online service. It was a grassroots organization run by some hippie Canadian tree planters, all very nice people I met through my older brother. I'd been a forever DM for about a year, and after a week of a couple interviews and a practice session with the organization owners, I was feeling reasonably comfortable and confident. The two people who interviewed me had written the campaign I would be running, and they were very proud of it, with good reason; it was a compelling story in a well-developed world. But the world and the story were very decidedly theirs. When I was running the first session with a party of internet strangers, with one of the owners listening in, things were going well until the party's carriage was almost toppled by an ancient sap dragon that crossed their path. The sap dragon spewed boiling syrup all over a tree, ate it up, glanced at the party, and moved on. All very cool and according to plan. One player wanted to investigate to see if any scales were left behind...Nat 20! I launched into a description of finding a scale when the owner texts me in all caps "DO NOT LET THEM FIND A SCALE, NO MATTER WHAT." So I quickly redirected to finding the very end of a claw instead, but I could tell the player was confused and dissapointed. The rest of the session went well, but for multiple reasons, I decided that being paid to DM for randos online wasn't for me. The question I bring to the court is this: was the website owner justified in taking control of the story from me and derailing my description, or was the player robbed of their dragon scale?

Nick McCornack

To the paragons of integrity that are our Supreme Crit Justices, and also the pitiful bailiff Jacque, I present the case of the Meta Gamed Reveal Steal. I was playing in a campaign with a bunch of friends that was the first campaign for most of us. One guy though had been played a lot, and helped a couple people build their characters and set up their backstories. Let’s call this player Chad. Throughout session one Chad repeatedly pressured other players to roleplay more, sometimes pulling them aside during breaks to “chat.” At one point during session 2 he picked up another PC who he’d helped set up the backstory for, and immediately asked the DM if the PC’s hood fell off. The DM, also quite new to this, said yes. This then revealed that the PC was secretly a revenant to the whole party. He then forced all of to go 1 by 1 and describe our reactions, because, “that’s what we always do in my other campaign.” I’ve always felt this robbed another player of a cool reveal later on and is a rare case of real meta gaming, but am I wrong about this? PS: I later had to kick this game from a game I was DMing, but that’s a story for another time.

Noah Kyle

To the great Bishops of the Christ that oversees dice, I come to you with a most heinous confession: I messed up Bahumia. I was running, as an in-between game, Bahumia for my players. Since I knew so much I was able to do it with minimal prep. I told the players all about the world and they seemed excited. One player in particular really wanted to play a crick elf. Very exciting, I said. She said she wanted to be half crick elf, half orc. No problem at all, I said, we can homebrew that right up. She said she wanted to do a Russian accent. This, beloved bishops, is where I made my folly. Oh no no, I said, crick elves have southern accents. She said she’d been practicing Russian. I said she would have had to grow up in the frigid north to have a Russian accent. After much naysaying on my side, she finally relented and said she would do a southern accent. Great clergy, she was completely unable to do the country accent I had required. She spent the entire game either embarrassed or silent since her drawl was so bad. We played 10 6 hour sessions and in the end she had barely spoken, and thus barely played. It took me over a year to realize how badly I had ruined this player’s enjoyment. This is why I throw myself before you, O Blessed ones, and Murph, the guy that made bahumia, to ask forgiveness for taking your world a little too serious. Let my punishments be great, and the lessons I learn from them even greater.

Ken

To the High Honorable Justices and that guy who forgot the peanut m&m’s, I present to you the case of the Gamer DM. A few months ago I started playing a home game with a friend of mine and her boyfriend, who was a first time player. My friend has been an amazing DM, crafting a beautiful story and even drawing all of the minor npc’s. However, recently the boyfriend decided he wanted to try running his own campaign. I was so excited to see someone so new to d&d want to try his hand at DMing! He then presented us with the rules of his zombie apocalypse campaign. Using the Zombie Apocalypse 5e homebrew (which includes the rule about long tests taking a week btw) as a base, he then told us that proficiencies and abilities would not really matter as bonuses would be determined by him before the roll. Justices, is this wild and is it unreasonable to ask him to change the rules? I lay myself at the mercy of the court. P.S. There’s also no magic in his world and it bums me out :(

Ardy

To the esteemed judges and Amir’s friend I come with a case of the secret mission. I was my first campaign 6 years with a group of mostly first time players. During a session in which we reached one of our party members home towns we settled in for the night to rest and as we did two members (the only experienced players) knowingly glanced to the DM and proceeded to describe sneaking out and going on a heist like escapade to steal some magical item. It wasn’t related to any quest we were aware of or had any significance we knew of. My issue here is with the DM who effectively let us sit through over an hour and a half cutscene silently instead of somehow accounting for this by even so much as telling us we could go hang in another room or even head home as this ended up being the rest of the session. Is my bitterness warranted or is watching other players go on adventures while you twiddle your thumbs standard and i should just get over it. PS I may be extra bitter as I spent most of the time texting my at the time girlfriend I’d be free to call her as soon as the session ended. I ended up leaving earlier to call her at which point she broke up with me before I even made it two houses down.

Xavior

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

Winston Hayes

To the wise and always fair Supreme Crit Justices, and that guy that is "getting into cake" A few years ago I wanted to try DMing but I had no experience with the DnD cannon so I decided to make my own setting and campaign. I spent 3 months writing lore and planning the first few sessions and had a few friends decide to play. I worked with them on their characters and incorporated them into the greater lore of the world. Finally, the first session came along and I was so excited, until one of my players brought a friend who they insisted play. They made the friend's character together, a bunny person rogue that used the racial abilities of a gnome and wielded a greatsword without proficiency without talking to me or bunny people ever being mentioned in this world(this was before Harrigan came out as a race), I tried to shake off the shock and go with the flow, but that just set the tone for a very unfun first session, which included our barbarian just leaving when the party was ambushed by bandits, our samurai threatening to fight other PCs if he didn't get to 1v1 a Griffin that flew by, and the PCs just ignoring the quest I gave them because "that just wouldn't be interesting to my character" I never did a session 2 with this group and a few weeks later a mutual friend who is a regular DM asked me for all my notes on my world because, "everyone had a great time and we want to continue with me DMing" Am I wrong for not continuing the campaign if everyone else had a good time? PS I didn't give him my notes and told him he can figure it out

fangenstein

Forgive me Dice Christ for I have sinned, this is my first confession. I am a DM that does gimmicky one shots. My sin was a in a one shot I made for my husband's birthday a few years ago where I had pre-made player characters that the party would draw from with spares to use in case of character death since they wanted a rougher game. All together it was 8 character sheets I built all at level 5. We got about an hour into it when they ran into one of the spare characters, a young Warlock. Everything was cool. Until battle came and the Warlock used up his spell slots and then spent the rest of the battle doing help actions. One of the players asked why he wasn't using eldritch blast if he was out of spells. Dice Christ help me, I had never played or had a Warlock in a party before, and I hadn't written eldritch blast onto the character sheet. So I very confidently claimed that the Warlock didn't know it. When one of the players laughed at the idea, I doubled down and said that the Warlock had never asked his patron about it, so he couldn't use it. Eventually, my husband died and got the Warlock who again, didn't have eldritch blast on the sheet. He ended up improvising an attack using a bunch of skill checks to make molotov cocktails with things in the dungeon and roleplayed that as his eldritch blast which made everyone die laughing because each one came with a "whoosh! Hey Raven Queen is this how I do it? They said it's like this?" Everyone had fun, but the sin and my not thinking to properly look into Warlocks when I rolled up the characters haunts me to this day. Can I be forgiven or am I cursed to forever whoosh with the Dice Devil?

Nev Altan

To the absolute, powerful, and radiant Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the overworked bailiff Jim. Today I bring you the case of the bs trickster rouge ability. On Thursdays my friend runs a feywild campaign for our DnD group. During one of our missions, we were tasked with retrieving a crystalline flower in order to cure a flower cocoon curse a wild witch had put on a field of soldiers. When we arrived at the flower’s location, an Arcane Trickster Rouge NPC we’d met a few times before was also there for the same flower. After some brief talking, we entered combat. During combat, our pact of the chain warlock used her familiar to play an excellent game of keep away while the rouge flew after it. With more movement than the rouge though, the familiar greatly outpaced them. Later on in the fight, the warlock decided to bring the flower to us so that we may defend it better. The closest the familiar and the rouge ever got were 80 feet, but by the time it had landed with us again, the flower was gone. When asking what had happened, our DM said that the rouge had rolled a 28 on sleight of hand check using a mage hand. When we said that spell (for an arcane trickster) only had a range of 30 ft, he paused before saying he had a Magic ability that extended the range. In the end, we got half of the flower, and our characters spirits were heavily shook. So I ask you great judges, are we wrong to be upset by the seemingly out of nowhere ability of this rouge? Or should we accept what the DM has told us? We humbly await your response.

mike.ca

To the always fair and just Supreme Crit, as well as the guy who couldn't even guess his own wife while playing 20 questions, I present to you the case of the tortle monk. My group was between campaigns, so I offered to DM some oneshots while our regular DM worked on his next epic. I was very new to DMing and decided to do something from the candlekeep book. It went well, the campaign had a good mix of combat and exploration, and we agreed to do another one. This one was very heavy on exploration, and the group quickly sidetracked with some goofy NPCs I created. We were having fun so I went with it, but our regular DM, playing the tortle monk he developed to be only useful in combat, was visibly bored. We ended up going multiple sessions and the group continued to find solutions to problems that didn't include fighting. Our final session was a sneaking mission and the rest of the group was having fun. The DM purposefully threw the mission and the group ended up in a protracted fight. They succeeded, but it took away from the fun. It even put us off of doing another one shot. As the DM I feel responsible, so I ask you, what could I have done differently to make sure everyone was having a good time? Was this just a case of a player unwilling to engage, or was it a DM failing to make it fun for everyone? I humbly await your verdict.

Ben Ramirez

To the god-tier justices of the supreme crit, and me, Mommy's special boy, Jake. I bring to you the many sins of Greg. I am the DM of a Western themed monster of the week style campaign. The party are members of a magic detective agency (think x-files meets the Pinkertons). I have two mostly by the book players, and then there's Greg. Greg's lateral thinking often leaves me at a loss. The party refers to this as me "getting Gregged" and one player is keeping a running "Ben got Gregged" counter. In the past I have always been a "yes and" sort of DM, but recently I have had to put my foot down multiple times, as constantly home brewing rules in combat can slow things down. There have been many shenanigans, but the most recent were as follows. Greg grappled a zombie, and wanted to throw it as an improvised weapon. I said he could chuck the zombie at another one, but he argued that he could probably hit three. We went back and forth, but he ultimately followed my ruling. Then the party was infiltrating the church that the necromancer was held up in, and Greg wanted to peel off the roof to let sunlight in. He seemed to think that he could do this quite easily, but I rolled a D12, got a 12, and told him that if he wanted to rip the roof off it would take him 12 hours. Once again we went back and forth for a while before Greg accepted my ruling and changed strategies. All of this has been good and Greg does not seem to be upset, but I worry that I have been too lenient in the past, and am now getting my Murphday cake. So I ask, do I need to come down even harder, or should I just allow these shenanigans?

Camron Williams

To the Supreme Crit Justices and the Good Boy Baliff. I DM for my friends and we started a new campaign about a year and a half ago. Usually our games go smoothly, but this campaign has had many road bumps. One player, in particular, has been my main source of frustration. They come late and spends most of our sessions asking questions about the rules despite playing for the past 4 years. All of this wasn't an issue until I had to ask a problem player with whom they became close with to leave. And on top of it, they're upset that a player they don't like is still with us. Please, my Dearest Justices, what ruling would you bequeath upon me?

Emma

To the honorable supreme crit justices and the baby bailiff jerk: I present the case of the empty table. I play in a campaign with my sister (the DM) and two friends. Well, play isn't the best word, because we never meet up. Every time I reach out, my friends always say they are busy. Either with family, homework, college applications, or other plans, it never works out. On two separate ocassions, one friend has cancelled an hour before the session. They always assure me that we'll play soon, but I'm beginning to doubt that I'll ever touch a d20 again. Next year we'll all be in college, and at this rate we may never finish our heroic quest. I beg of you justices, what more can I do? Should I resign myself to this cursed existence?

Abraham

To the honorable Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner (and I guess the bailiff too) I submit a case that has been weighing on me. It had been about a year since being able to play DnD in person, so my wife set up a two-shot with a coworker and her boyfriend, where we were going to save a Druid grove from an evil shadow-Druid-lich that had taken over the surrounding nature. While playing, the lich asked our merry group of three if any of us would join his side, and show there is no balance without rot. My character (a Druid) staunchly refused, and so did the coworker (a cleric) but our only real heavy hitter, the luxodon barbarian played by the coworkers boyfriend, JOINED THE BAD GUY. So- it was two lower level spellcasters going against a balanced-for-three lich and a luxodon barbarian, and we barely eked it out. In the end, I was quite proud and said I would take the weapon off of my betrayer party member, a club flavored to be a septum ring on his trunk. At this point- the coworkers boyfriend went BALLISTIC saying it was unfair- that he was just doing what his power-hungry character would do, and that my wife was railroading him into being a good guy. I countered saying that he signed up to be a good guy when we started the two shot- and killing his tanky character was super hard so my character deserved a trophy. And before you say it- don’t worry, we haven’t played DnD with them since.

Jacob B.

Hey justices and.. I know im missing someone, forget it! I dont have a case to submit, I just love my group very much and Im desperate to find a way to rally folks during long sessions. Do yall take food breaks in the middle? We usually eat before and by the end everyones sleepy.

Daveman

Oh great mouth pieces of Dice Christ: Axford the Chaotic, Murphy the Lawful, and Tanner the Little Scamp... Oh hi Jake, sorry I didn't see you there. I fear I have sold my creative soul for nothing more than cold hard cash. A friend of mine and myself decided co-own a DnDBeyond account and split the price for every source book. It was a big investment and we both use it to DM, occasionally giving the log in to our players for character creation. One of these players who was given the "Murphy Treatment" (we got better friends) has held on to the login, continuing to create 150+ characters and counting. Instead of kicking him off and deleting his characters, we took pity on the hours he poured into his characters and allowed him to buy a share of the account. We both expected him to back out but he was all for it and his use of it has only increased. Now he expects to be let into our campaigns since he is a co-owner. Is this a just punishment for our greed? I Kowtow to you and all your holy wisdom. P.S. Hate the show

Trevor Wurtsmith

To the reverential court and the reviled bailiff Jank, I am running a campaign for some experienced players and some first timers. I run a session every other week, The games have gone well, with a little awkwardness and a few bad habits I attributed to a new group and first time players. One of the experienced players reached out to me saying if they could run a simultaneous campaign during my off weeks. As a forever DM, I jumped at the idea! But he had one condition, he didn't like one of the new people at the table and refused to run his campaign for him (Granted, player was the source of most friction, but I was giving him the benefit of the doubt) . Potential dm player also wanted to use the same discord channels so there was no chance of hiding it from this other player. Essentially it came down to kick the player or lose the chance to play. I ran one more session as a trial and there was even more friction, I decided to kick him. Was I right for kicking the player, or should I be punished for appeasing an ultimatum?

Adam Johnson

To the fun chill judges and "Jock" I think? I bring you the case of "The Warlock who doesn't need any of your handouts". My brother was running a campaign for a few friends of his and me, advertised as a brutal arena campaign where death was basically guaranteed. As you fought tougher and tougher fights you would gain better equipment(starting with basically no equipment) and levels to continue on fighting with roleplay between matches, making allies to fight alongside you. I myself created a hexblade warlock with armor of shadows evocation and a summonable weapon. As I started my first match I already had armor and a weapon when all of the other PCs had to pick up crowd thrown ones and fight without armor. On my second match in the second session, the DM said that my mage armor and weapon was dispelled immediately upon entering due to a new anti magic barrier installed and that I'd have to use my actions for two turns resummon them. The campaign didn't continue after that session. The DM later telling me I ruined the point of the campaign by not needing equipment. Judges did I do wrong by creating a warlock who didn't need any of the DMs handouts? (BTW never listened to the show and never will.)

Tyler Cheek

To the judges of fate and the Bailiff of something (who cares), I submit the case of the red hat wearing loxodon. As a one off diversion quest in my campaign, I had my players face off against homebrewed monsters that were a horrific amalgamation of beavers and geese, called Beavergeese. They would be assisting a reclusive loxodon who lives in the woods wielding a shotgun, who I named Red. I gave him a red hat to explain the name, and to me played a very hillbilly voice to play up the manic backwoods energy of the character. Elephants. Red hats. Guns. Backwoods. Now judges you may be seeing where I was going with this but frankly for whatever reason I fully missed the symbolism. My players immediately distrusted what they called a "MAGA analogue" and when the time came to help Red fight the Beavergeese, they allowed him to die in a last stand, and even more brutally threw his body in the nearby lake with no funeral citing that he "wasn't worth a funeral". Should I have paid closer attention when designing my NPC or is the unintentional parallels on my players for reading too much into it? I want justice for my frankly very sweet redneck elephant

Jeremy Umpleby

To the Cardinals of the Church of Dice Christ, and Hardwon's player, I bring to you my confession of the Fireball Scroll. During the pandemic, I ran the Lost Mine Of Phandelver module on Roll20 to learn how to DM. Along the way, my Level 1 players found a Scroll of Fireball, which one of the monks held on to. (This is important later.) Fast forward a couple of sessions, and my players (now Level 3) manage to intimidate 4 Hobgoblins into surrender with a Nat 20. The Halfling Rogue stole one of their soiled clothing (Long story), and sent them on their way. The party took a short rest, and I, being fiendish, decided 4 hobgoblins probably weren't going to just run off after being humiliated. So, I placed them into the room with their boss and marked the de-clothed one as dead. The idea was that the boss killed him for his failure. As you are aware, this drastically changed the difficulty of the fight, and I expected my players to be strategic in their fight. They were very much not, and things quickly turned grim. I didn't plan on killing anyone, but one of my monks has other plans. He pulled out the Fireball Scroll in this very small room and cast it with the cleric and another monk in the room. The Rogue split as soon as things went sour and was outside the blast. I warned the monk's player that he could kill most of the party instantly with that spell if he rolled high enough. He countered only if he rolled high enough. He rolled high enough. The cleric was able to survive with the damage coming short by 2 hp, and the other monk was a brass dragonborne whose resistance to fire damage saved his bacon. The casting monk, however, died instantly and ended up taking the dwarf they were supposed to rescue with him. The Rogue managed to finish the fight, but I felt that all of this could have been prevented if I hadn't been so willing to mess with my players. So I must ask, did I do my players dirty? May Dice Christ forgive me for my sin.

H D

To the hydrating judges and the salt lick bailiff Jake. May it please the court I bring you a case of fatal phrasing. This took place in Pathfinder many years ago and was my first time playing any D&D. Our party of all first time players had been gelling quite well after getting over the early chaos gremlin/murder hobo stages. We were still however on the run from some guards and after throwing a magical die, that our characters had received as loot, we were able to create a bunch of oil that we then threw a torch onto. Because we were playing with theater of the mind it had been a little unclear that the guards were not yet on the oil but our DM did say "Okay, you light them up." our party took this to mean that we burned them. But the DM meant that we simply illuminated them. We, now confident that we had done some early aoe damage, proceeded to get tpk'd by what had to be the most ruthless guards in any fantasy setting. Were we wrong to think that our oil bomb had worked or did our DM get one over on us? p.s. DM is a great guy and we get along wonderfully to this day.

Axyl and Olympia

To the darling, darling judges and that little fart of a bailiff JJ the Jet Plane, we present to you the case of The never-ending pre game lore. The two of us have a grievance against our DM. A dear friend of ours is preparing to launch his newest campaign and we have just begun the character creation. He had teased that he had wanted to try something new for his lore, and we were curious. He’s a very creative guy. Judges, what we are about to tell you is completely true. What initially looked like two lore documents turned out to be a labyrinth of hidden links to more documents, which contained hidden links to more documents. There was one page written entirely in elvish, which was a png so we could not copy paste into a translator. Instead we had to find within his lore a 7 page translation guide so we could translate it by hand. Judges, we shit you not there were 25 total documents, most of which were multiple pages long! And to make matters worse, within all this intricate world lore is very little actual information useful to character creation. The only saving grace is that he claims that we don’t need to find all the hidden documents so that each pc comes in with different knowledge about the world. The two of us have stopped looking. We are exhausted. The rest of the party seems to love it, but they’re all freelance or contract workers while the two of us work full time jobs. We beseech you wise ones, are we weaklings who cannot handle the lore or are we right in thinking this is too damn much?

Niko R.

Happy Blue Year to the illustrious Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner and of course, Baliff Jake please make sure to show the Justices the respect they deserve. (Thank you, Jake. I’m just trying to play the part. You seem cool.) I come to you with an injustice my DM has brought against me, the player. My party was about to enter a dungeon that had two blood hunters guarding the entrance because it was “Too dangerous” but said they would let us enter if we bested them in a fight. As the bard, I tried to persuade them saying “them fighting us would only make us weaker and more likely to die”, but this did not work. I then switched tactics knowing the fight was inevitable and while asking their name tried to get a dirty strike in before everyone rolled initiative. What happened instead is my DM narrated the blood hunter catching my blade with his hand saying “If we’re going to do this, let’s be fair about this.” Followed by the blood hunters activating their rites, one rite for one and two rites for the other. Then initiative was rolled. I never got to roll for the attack that was caught in his hand and my fellow player who is familiar with blood hunters had said that rites are a bonus action each, which means they got 3 bonus actions between the two NPCs. We wiped the floor with them both, but I became even more salty when I rolled a 31 on an intimidation check on the first blood hunter that yielded. I told him to run for his life in dishonor while the other blood hunter was still willing to fight. His response was a stoic getting up and moving about 30 feet away to continue watching. I told my DM the next day my frustration and he said that for combat it’s so hard to balance for us (Six level 10s) so he had to give them a little bit of an edge with the rites. As for the intimidation check, he said that guy wouldn’t renounce his whole creed by running away even with a 31 intimidation. Ultimately, he did admit how it would be frustrating from a player's perspective and we’re cool. With the facts said, I now leave it to you to enact your will judiciously.

Jake Johnson

May it please the court! To the Eloquent Justices on the top of their high horses and to jake on his low ass I plead for your deliberation on a long standing case that has persisted for over a year between my girlfriend and I and is likely a common argument for many D&D tables around the world. In D&D 5e rules as written there are no actual crit fails or successes for skill checks, meaning a nat 1 can still succeed and nat 20 can still fail. For many tables, including the one I DM for and my girlfriend is a player, we use the common house rule that 1s are always fails and 20s are always successes. I like this rule while my girlfriend does not. Her argument against the rule is that it feels bad that no matter how good your skill is you can still fail at a 5% rate. My argument is "what's the point of rolling if it's impossible to succeed or fail?" and trying to reduce the 5% fail rate is what getting advantage is for. Nevertheless, this argument has persisted and now I leave the decision to the court to decide on whether this common homebrew rule stays or goes for us. May the court strike true.

handsomemike06

To the honorable justices and the ever so lowly bailiff jan i present the case of the" flumph vs dragon debacle" . You see this situation came up in a spelljammer session where i had my players fighting against a solar dragon in a fighting arena in order to buy time for the audience to exscape . In this fight one of my players admittedly the joke player a clown cursed flumph bard came up with a clever idea to cast shatter and break up the stage supporting the dragon and cause it to fall into the poisonous mist this stage flew over . Keep in mind i had no plans for this fight to be winnable but due to the clever thought and thinking back to all the rough times they had to deal with due to being badly stated and shit luck , decided to allow the play and even fudged some dice to say it succeeded. My question to you the awe inspiring court ( and jan) was i in the wrong for going this route. Also as a side note everyone had a lot of fun and even had some cool plays like enlisting the help of the other fighters but this was the only one i fudged. So here i lay at you mercy and hope for swift punishment if needed

Eric Wills

To the supreme Crit, and bailiff Lowe Lee. I present the case of the OP guards. I am playing in a campaign with a DM who plays by his own rules. It usually makes for wild encounters where balance is thrown out the window for fun. In this case, my party has wrongfully been arrested for a crime they did not commit and Gunkles, my lvl 4 bugbear monk, has managed to slip away. Gunkles then arrives a bit later to the guard house in an attempt to break out his friends and begins to fight the guards. Gunkles goes down in the first round taking 35dmg from a single guard. I find out that my DM used CR10 Stone Gollum stats for his guards because he “wanted them to be strong.” I was upset as guards are usually CR1/8 - CR3. This resulted in me nearly dying, also getting arrested, and eventually escaping, forcing us to flee the city as we had an army of these OP guards chasing after us. I ask was my monk wrongfully smacked down w/o a chance of winning this fight or was Gunkles on a suicide mission and deserved the womping.

Barnacle Doctor

To the sweet blue justices and their bailiff, Cake, I submit to you the case of the misappropriated boat. My D&D crew have been playing in a high-seas adventure for a few years. Early on in our campaign, another party member was doing some research in a pirate library and ended up critting on an investigation check. My DM rewarded this success with a very cool foldable boat, a magical box that could transformed into either a canoe or small sailing vessel. Despite the fact that our party already had a larger ship, we ended up using this item a lot for ship-to-ship combat and travel utility. The player who found the foldable boat ended up having to drop out of the campaign, and so divvied up his items among the other party members during his final session. I was given the foldable boat, which was thematically poignant since my ratfolk pirate had her own ship stolen many long years before. A situation arose a few weeks later in which having another boat would be useful. However, when I went to use the foldable boat, my DM said that he didn’t want me to have it since the item was nerfed, so I should take it out of my inventory. After some frustrating back-and-forth, I narrated my character dropping the foldable boat over the side of the boat while saying “Oopsie doopsie,” which seemed to aggravate my DM further. To this day, I am still haunted by the feeling that this beautiful little boat should be mine. Was my DM wrong to misappropriate my secondhand boat, or am I just being too sensitive about having a second ship stolen from my character? I eagerly await your judgement.

Sander Bjerknes

Honorable judges! Your just and fair punishments has reached the ears of the northerners. So I've come from the far of kingdom of Nor'Wahy to seek justice! And I guess hello to you too bailiff Jake. You are not known to the kingdom of Nor'Wahy, and I can see why. I present the case of the loot hungry miscreants. I was looking for a new group because my current one was disbanded because of the dm being finished with his Bachelor and moving away. I came across a post on a discord server about a dm wanting players for a physical game in my town. I sent a message and he replied that he had a nautical themed campaign he wanted me in, I thought I had won the dnd jackpot. We have a session zero where we make our characters. I put alot of time into my character. I wanted to play a Warforged College of creation bard. The idea was that I was a steampunk ship computer that had gained sentience and now made sure the ship functions as it should. My name was 6 T.A.N.T (Tactical and Nautical Tech for short). First session arrives, we are on a ship heading towards our destination. Suddenly a storm hits the ship and the dm asks what we want to do. I'm first and I grab the helm and try to steer the ship. The ranger tries to tie the sails. And then the artificer decides he wants to go underdeck to find loot. The wizard and the barbarian joins him, they get under deck and find a door guarded by two soldiers. The artificer attacks. The ranger decides to join them. I'm still trying to save the ship. Bare in mind this is a big ship with civilians on board that we had been talking to. The ship ultimately sinks and I can see the disappointment in the DMs face. We end the session as we get washed up on shore. I am pissed! I say: Hey guys, if you want to play evil characters, say so. A evil campaign can be fun, but everyone has to be in on it. They look bewildered, "but we are chaotic good characters" "leaving all the civilians to die so that you can get som loot is NOT GOOD" This becomes a quite heated debate where arguments like "well they were obviously bad guys since they wouldn't let us in the door". I end the fight by saying that if you don't see how murder hobo that was, I guess I'm not fit for the group. I leave and I get a message from the DM and he says that he agrees that it was very murder hobo'y and asks if I can come back for a new session. He will try to make the group realize that by narrating all of the civilians they had talked to was washing up onshore dead. They don't fucking bat an eye and starts looting them. That was the last session I joined. Was i correct in leaving the group? Was it murder hobo'y? I'll take your decision with me back home and I'll personally carry out the punishment, be it on me or the others!

Adam Giebner

Forgive me Dice Christ, for I have sinned against my fellow DMs. I have been DMing a Wild West campaign for my friends and it was going great but life got busy for my wife and I so I had to put the game on pause. During this pause, we had someone new move into town and join our friend group. He knew we all played DND and offered to DM a game for us. We were all really excited… until we started playing. His DM style didn’t mesh with our group (goofs, gaffs, with some dramatic beats here and there). After the third session, everyone was ready to quit. I brought up the potential of bringing back our old Wild West and everyone was for it! My sin is this: we did not extend an invite to the new DM and he does not know this game is happening behind his back. The other players are worried he would bring down the game because of his differing play style. Can I ever be forgiven by the dice Christ above or am I doomed to roll nat 1s for all eternity? My eternal soul is in your waiting hands.

Kyle Epperson

Oh pious priests of the gaming-table cloth, I come to you with a confession. I recently played a game with a few friends. This was a new TTRPG I had not played before but was a spin-off of DnD so I knew my way around pretty well. The difference was that spells were pulled from a deck of cards. Our GM had attacked us with an emerald dragon and I was frantically trying to figure out what to do. It just so happened one of my cards completely neutralized said dragon. I played the card, the GM was stunned and I saved the day. Ten minutes later, I realized I should not have been able to play that card as I didn't have the resources. Here is where I must confess, that I did not tell anyone and let it slide. Forgive me for my cowardice. Perhaps I should be talking to the church of The Lamb of Card instead of Dice Christ? JK this was a dream I had and I was playing with my wife and Emily as players and Murph as the GM. Despite my sins, we all had a good time playing.

Barnacle Doctor

To the wise justices and the rather milquetoast bailiff, 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?

Saleana Judd

To the Honorable Justices and the lowly, belayed bailiff Jack (Jim? John? idk). I bring you the case of the serial mood killer. The "Devil's Advocate." Our group consists of 5 to 8 players in 2 to 3 campaigns on a rotating DM schedule. Yes, it's a handful on the best days, but overall, we have a great dynamic. That is, until the problem player in question joined our group. In every campaign he chooses to play "the devil's advocate" character, and will wait until the group feels as if they have come to a satisfactory decision in terms of planning, etc and chooses to argue "it's not a good idea" or that he wants to do something different. And if anybody voices resistance to his ideas or points out that the group already formed a plan, he becomes upset and lashes out as himself or more rarely as his character. It's not that he's not been given ample floor time to pitch his ideas before hand, it's more he's too busy talking over everyone else (including the DM) about real-world tangents (politics is a favorite even after we banned such talk) and being generally rude and obnoxious. There have been incredible moments in roleplay where I as DM have had to raise a finger to my better behaved players in a "hold up" gesture and brought the problem player up short with a curt word or two and ask the rping players to please repeat their actions because I couldn't hear them over the problem player laughing at his own joke. This only works occasionally, and it always feels like it cheapens the other players' experience when they have to repeat themselves in the middle of something they were really into, because HE wasn't paying attention. We've tried the subtle steering approach, we've tried the sit in silence approach, I've even used NPCs to call out his behavior, and I've talked to him about it outside of the game, but he won't stop using game night as an excuse to talk the loudest and be the center of attention, regardless of who has the reins. It's become such a problem that I dread my game night and the prep I need to do that will surely get thrown out because of one of his tantrums, and it's a physical relief to see his "I can't make it" messages in the discord. Help, how would the Honorable Justices deal with this Devil in Advocates clothing? Thank you, 3 DMs in a Trenchcoat

Sam

To the honorable and respected judges Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, as well as the lowly bailiff Jake I present the case of "You Stole My Bit". For my first D&D campaign with my friends, I created the world's most horribly optimized tritan monk. He was all strength and no wisdom - the opposite of what you want for a monk. I decided to commit to the bit and made him a literal fish out of water. He was awkward and uncomfortable and bad at everything he did except for hitting people really really hard. In one of our first sessions I challenged a stone golem to an arm wrestling match. This later became a reoccurring bit - whenever we entered a bar or tavern I would roll a perception check to find the strongest person in the room and challenge them to an arm wrestling match. About a year into the campaign, one of our other friends who frequently watched us play decided to join. Her character was a minmaxed barbarian with both high strength and high intelligence, who did everything my character did and also did it better. The barbarian was even also a non humanoid race that was considered "strange" in the setting of our campaign, like my character was. I was a little upset that her barbarian filled the exact same role my monk did, but I didn't want to create any issues in the campaign so I didn't bring it up. That is, until our characters met for the first time at the very end of her first session. The first thing the barbarian did was challenge my monk to an arm wrestling match. The bit she had witnessed me pull at least four or five times over the course of the campaign. She would literally sit at table with us when we played, so there's no way she didn't know this was a thing my monk did. In the next session, the barbarian started a fight with a group of travelers on the road that posed no threat to us, despite the whole party telling her we didn't want to aggravate them. She insisted she could (and would) take them on her own. Since she was so confident, my character threw a bead of force - effectively trapping her character and the travellers together in an impenetrable bubble. The rest of the party then stood outside of the bubble and watched helpless as she got demolished by the travellers. She failed her death saving throws, and her character was permakilled in it's second session. I feel bad that it ended in the barbarian's death, but at the same time I think it was really unfair of her to make a better version of my beloved character and then steal my bit - and also, she insisted she was capable of taking down the travellers alone. Was it too petty of me to trap her in a bead of force?

Benjamin Reilly

Happy new year honorable justices and the lowly bailiff, Honky Honk Honk. May I present to you the case of the curious cutscene. About three years ago I started playing in my first ever D&D campaign online with friends. I needed help making my character, and so the DM guided me through the process. My goal was to make a dual wielder, which he said is rather weak in 5e, but he can "help me out." I ended up with a Big Kitty Tabaxi Fey Wanderer Ranger. The way that he "helped me out" was by giving me +2 swords as early as level 5, following with +3 swords by level 6. My character ended up dealing the most damage by far (noticeably so) and the DM wanted to change that. I talked to him outside of the game about reverting the change, but he said he'd figure it out. His solution was cutting off my character's arm in a cut scene, and then giving me no in game way of getting it back. Not only have I lost my character's identity, but not I have these useless fighting styles and feats. Anyway, that was 18 months ago and my character is still missing an arm. Justices, have I been wronged? Or is dismemberment a just response to be involuntarily overturned? I await your decision. P.S. - We play weekly, if that matters.

Amos Heller

May it pleasure the most high justices and the most mid bailiff Jorts I present the case of the Bad Actor. I was DM’ing and at level 5 my bard took the Actor feat. Not long after we are sneaking in a restricted area when we encounter some night watchmen who give a good old fashioned “who goes there”. The bard answers that he is an emissary of a fancy Jarl and should have clearance. When I asked him to roll deception flat he protested that the Actor feat should mean he rolls at advantage since he is lying about who he is. I maintained that the language of the Actor feat “passing themselves off as someone else” means the PC would roll at advantage when trying to impersonate a specific person (accent, voice, vocabulary) rather than the broad station of someone who should be allowed to be where he was. To this day we have no closure so I expose myself to the high court. Should I have been less of a stickler or should my bard have made stronger acting choices?

Colby Greer

Dear Supreme Crit Justices, and the guy who invited Yugo, I come to you with the case of The Exegol Execution. I was playing in a Star Wars campaign DMed by my brother. One session 2 players canceled but we decided to play anyway, so our 2 remaining pc's set out to explore a mysterious cavern on the sith planet of Exegol. While in the cave we were ambushed by 5 sith lords. We did our best to fight them off, and managed to kill 3 of them, but in the end we were both dropped to 0 and promptly executed on the ground. After the session, my brother commented that the sith lords were all lv5 despite us only having 2 lv4 pcs. He then said that he was surprised that we managed to do as well as we did. Justices I ask you, was it right for my brother to throw such an impossible fight us at our low level, or is it our fault for choosing to play with only half our party present? PS: there were multiple similar incidents in this campaign, ultimately, resulting in 7 PC deaths in a campaign that lasted for 8 sessions, and ended with a TPK against Palpatine.

Eric Wills

May it please the court and the Sweet Blue Bailiff. I bring the case of science vs magic. I run a campaign of extremely well educated friends and family, including doctors and nurses. After some Con fails, their characters became diseased by an exploding fungus and had 8 hours to find a cure or they would die. They tried to convince me that the spell “purify food and drink” should cure them of all diseases as humanoids are technically edible. I said no. They continued to argue with me about the blood brain barrier and other science stuff that l couldn’t care less about. I continued to resist but I finally acquiesced an arcana/medicine check to try and cast the spell in a way that was not intended. They failed miserably rolling like a 6 or 7 on the check, but continued to argue with me and the results of the dice. Nobody ended up dying from this encounter but the trend of real life science trumps magic logic continues in all future encounters. Should I go back to school in order to better implement science in the fantasy rpg? I humbly await your verdict…

Zeno is a Paradox

To the Adored and beloved justices, and jake who is tolerated, I present to you the case of the Starspawn Matryoshka True polymorph. One of my players offered to run us a lv20 oneshot in December due to my job getting amazingly hectic over the holidays. As a forever DM for the past 4 years (2 for this group specifically) I was Very excited to be a player and rolled up Harlow Cephid, a reborn swords bard with just enough levels of paladin to smite and one level of hexblade to attack with Charisma and crit more often with hexblades curse. The game was great and I enjoyed playing Harlow but my case pertains to something that happened durring our penultimate and our last session. Durring the game through a combo of casting borrowed knowledge and skill empowerment on myself I was able to give myself expertise in a investigation check in a powerful wizards library, I rolled a natural 19 and used the reborns knowledge from a past life to add another D6 and altogether got a 39 on the check. For this outrageous number my Dm gave my character a scroll of true polymorph, and I started looking at monsters to turn into for our final battle. Eventually I came across the perfect thing, the Lesser Starspawn from Van Ricktons guide to ravenloft, it's a CR allowed for true polymorph and it fit my characters theme of being a space pirate. The questionable part comes from a effect of when the lesser starspawn dies, mainly that it transforms into a Greater Starspawn. Now I know that when you run out of hitpoints in true polymorph you revert so I sent my dm a message asking "if a monster has a feature that happens on death, will that still go off with True polymorph" after some back and forth and me giving a openly censored version of the effect (taking out any mention of What appears) he agreed. The session went great and both transformations happened (the dm fucking loved it) Harlow was in the end able to get the final blow on Tiamet with a crit lv5 spell slot smite. But now a few weeks after the battle I still wonder if I should have been allowed to transform twice, especially since the greater starspawn is a CR that I wouldn't have been able to become with true polymorph I leave my judgment to you Justices, and I suppose jake can weigh in as well.

Cathal (Kaa-Hull)

To the big wrinkly brained justices and the sweet smooth brained bailiff, I bring you the case of the cursed reward. My friends and I play in a newer homebrewed setting and just finished our first arc defeating a minor bbeg. During the fight my character, a paladin of the Sun (Ala dark souls style), sacrificed his arm to win a battle that was not going in our favor, and it led to us defeating the enemy and coming out alive. When the fight is over i tell my DM that I'm going to get new (standard) plate armor when we get to town since I can't hold a shield anymore. I tell him beforehand everything I'm looking to buy to help streamline the shopping process for next session. Next session comes, where we are in an advanced city capital of the continent, and only one store sells plate armor, and is a magical set being sold at 5 times the price of normal plate. After some high rolled persuasion checks that ultimately did nothing because "this is the only guy selling armor in the city" I begrudgingly buy and wear the magical plate. I then immediately fail an arcana check and do not discover the armor is cursed, making my character resistant to bludgeoning but vulnerable to peircing and slashing and I cannot take it off. 5 sessions later and we get into our first fight where I'm wearing the armor, and the first round of combat my frontline paladin tank gets dropped from an arrow that ends up doing 70 damage because I'm vulnerable. My dm started freaking out asking how I just dropped from one attack, and I remind him of the cursed armor he sold me that my character didn't know about and hasn't tried to take it off. Now he wants to retcon my armor being cursed cus he forgot about it and this will probably lead to a tpk. I say let that shit ride and don't retcon it, if I die I die. So I ask you oh wise and honorable judges (and a slight side glance at the balif), do I stay with the cursed armor and most likely face my first character death, or let my dm take away the curse cus he made a whoppsies and doesn't want to kill a character.

Noah Goodman

Honorable Justices and Court Jester Jacques, 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 Kyle. 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. Kyle 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. Kyle 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 Kyle 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.

Noah Goodman

Honorable Deacons and [insert weekly adjective(s)] Baliff, I prostrate myself before the church and 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.

Shane H

To the fresh new year justices and the Sweet Blue Dolt Baileff Jacket, I come to you with a motorcycle smoke man mess. I play in roll20 with a bunch of old friends, and in a world made through The Stolen Century. My friend's character has a crotch rocket flavored steed that produces smoke. He's taken tunnel fighter, a spear, and a bunch of other feats that end up with him dropping smoke on enemies, and ruining them with near infinite attacks of opportunity. That's cool as hell. What is not cool are two problems. First, once he puts down the smoke, all of us essentially become useless as we begin flailing wildly trying to hit anything. The other larger problem is that this strategy interacts with so many rules about visibility, we can't help but bog everything down in questions of whether or not this strategy should work. I ask the honorable justices, is it okay to have a badass character this complicated but technically legal, or should my friend ride off into the sunset?

Faust the Fiesty

To the Subterranean Judges and the Most Esteemed and Honorable Bailiff Jake (Tucker's Last Name). I offer to you the case of the questionable illusion death. For the holidays my usual group got together for a simple PvP Battle Royale where we limited ourselves to level 8 characters and a single magic item. It was just for fun and was a chance for our usual DM to play and we were all experienced enough to not need a DM for the encounter. The issue came about that when our usual DM's player faked their death. They had started the match by going invisible and the next round had shot a lighting bolt. On my turn I guessed the corner they were in and attacked the area with a spell to no effect UNTIL over a full round later they made a big show of screaming and appearing as a burnt corpse. I found this suspicious as it was early and I hadn't rolled for that much damage. They played it off as flavor but I still spent a round investigating and stabbing the corpse. Of note for flavor they had introduced themselves with an alter self spell and I was running an eldritch knight/divination wizard of reasonable intelligence/experience so I didn't think my character would buy this "death". But he insisted he was just running a quirky suboptimized gag character very emphatically. Several rounds, a summoned demon, one downed and 2 weakened players later he suddenly starts having me do saving throws, I get charmed and he unveils himself as hiding up a tall pillar with full cover and spamming spells out of our reach and invisible. His claim is he had rolled a 26 performance check and when I investigated the body earlier I failed to beat that. Funny enough I was accused of metagaming for never believing he was dead. So I ask the court was this a fair tactic or was I unreasonable for thinking it went too meta on their end? P.S. We still had fun and their were no hard feelings. I actually won by virtue of my familiar's blind sight and some very lucky rolls and the DM is a good guy just rarely gets to play and I think was just feeling cheeky.

Dan Malloy

Honorable Judges and Bailiff Joosh, i bring to you the case of the Stubborn Player. Few weeks ago our DM had us in the apartment of a high up mucky much in what was essentially a police state. We’d been sent to steal something from the leader and we were currently dealing with one of his subordinates. Our bard was trying to distract them while the rest of us took a look around his place. My character owed people money so he had some sticky fingers going in. Eventually, the underling notices I’ve stolen some magical instruments and puts the Bard under what is essentially a Command spell to tell him why we were there. The bard then attempted to lie despite the rules of the particular moment being that he had to speak the truth. He and the DM went back and forth for about 10 minutes until our DM started to say “As the DM…” but never finished as the rest of the party jumped in to “resolve” this issue before he kept speaking. The situation resolved itself eventually, but this player often has these stubborn moments where he seems to almost be fighting the DM trying to do anything that results in him facing consequences. Whenever he does, he’ll often complain and shut down verbally for the rest of the session. This player is notoriously stubborn and will often do stuff like this, so I ask, who was in the wrong?

Chad L

To the Pulchritudinous Justices (Jake, that word means “attractive or good looking.”), I present to you the Case of the Hollow Victory: Our party just completed a 3 and-a-half-year campaign (123 sessions!!) and our 4 person party defeated the BBEG in epic fashion. We won! We saved the world!!! Now time to learn about all the great things to come from our heroism, right? How wrong I was… on the first turn of battle our DM had had a minion explode all entrances/exits to the arena. Then, when the fight was over and we were trapped, the temple started collapsing. Our Artificer had a Ring of Teleportation, so dipped as soon as the collapse started (he’d been pretty cowardly all campaign). OK, there’s got to be another way out of this, right? The map was GIANT, and filled with difficult terrain, but over 3 rounds of the temple collapsing we learned that the now-dead mages that were holding the temple up (at the far corners of the aforementioned giant map, each about 200 ft away from the other) each had a Teleportation scroll (not signaled by the DM, but whatever). Great, this is our way out! Alas, it was not meant to be… our DM nerfed Teleportation to be for one person only. Our Cleric, who miraculously found the first scroll, selflessly sent our Paladin home to her family. Over the next 2 rounds the Cleric and my Fighter desperately tried to get to another mage and scroll, only to be crushed by the temple. Permanently dead. A few things: • Our DM had never nerfed a spell scroll, and admitted that it was a homebrew to intentionally limit the number of people. • Even if we would have reached enough scrolls for us all to teleport away, we would have needed a high enough spell casting stat for it to have worked. What was my Fighter to do, even if he had a scroll? I prostrate myself before the Court. Am I wrong to be salty about my longstanding, beloved character perishing in a homebrew situation in which the DM could have easily allowed a normal Teleport spell to carry all of us? Am I also wrong to be disappointed that we didn’t even get an epilogue? “Kogall and Gil are dead, crushed beneath the falling temple, and that’s the end of our campaign.” 3 and a half years! I await your judgement.

Kristina The Sorceress

To the honorable justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, and the deplorable bailiff Jake. May it please the court, I present the case of The Unwanted Blues. 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)

Lobbying for another Atlanta Live Show - Mr. Adams

Honorable justices, and the only OK Bayliff, Jim, I come to you, not with a true case, per se, but more of a query and a desire for wisdom. I am currently running a campaign for four other dads. We have been playing monthly for about a year and a half, but have recently come up against some frustrating situations. Generally, we schedule two months in advance , in order to give everyone time to adjust their schedules or find a free night. Lately, one of our members can’t do the nights that everyone else can. As of right now, our last session was in October, and our January session has yet to be finalized due to this one member. We are reaching the end of the campaign (I think about three sessions remain.) and I need all of my players there to wrap up the loose ends. What do I do? I am at a loss as to how to handle this particular situation.

Fergus Woods

To the dudes in robes and the ruggedly handsome baliff, I bring to you the case of the backstory oneshot. I am a DM for a fairly newish campaign (first one ive ever run), where I have created a storyline set in Faerun using the lost mines of phandelver module as a launch point. Each PC has a backstory which ive done my best to tie into the overarching plot, however, because we sre using the module, trying to tie in their stories and the main story has been a bit slow. As such, I decided to do a few one shots focusing on the history of the world and the big plot point of my story, tying it into each PCs backstory. However, I ran into an issue when I created a oneshot meant to be the bit before the backstory of one PC, who then couldnt make it to the oneshot! Luckily, I threw in some extra fights for the rest of my PCs and have turned it into a twoshot, but we are unsure if he can make it to the next session. Although Ive heavily heavily hinted that the oneshot is to do with this PCs backstory, I havent outright said anything cause I want it to be a surprise. I ask you, should I just tell him outright and spoil the reveal so that he feels more encouraged to come, or should I continue it without him? I throw myself at Jakes feet. Thank you

Figgy the Cat

Dear beautiful and attractive justices and the talking cat. I bring forth the case of the Sanctuary vs Command. My party was in a fight where a player was commanded to attack an NPC by the enemy (both within 5ft). I had cast sanctuary on the npc to which the player failed the DC, forcing them to attack the next nearest target or forfeit their action. The only target within attack distance was the enemy that casted command. After a brief debate, the DM graciously ruled that the player forfeits their turn and we proceeded as normal. But we all asked ourselves, what does the court think of this ruling? Would the player run to the next available target? Would they attack our enemy? We await your judgement safely (or not) behind your Sanctuary.

SwagDog85

To Justice Sweet, Justice Blue, Justice Whole (milk), and Jake? I am a DM who won’t allow aarakocra’s at my table because fuck flying. Anyway the player circumvented this problem by abusing the crazy weather (like nearly tornado storms) in our setting by using a combination of boots of levitation and kites to create “a falling in style” type of flight. I told them that there is a possibility that in these storms characters might be struck by lightning if they roll a 1 on a d100. A player was low on hp and in a hasty retreat took flight only to be shocked to death. The player was so mad that it stopped the session early. In fairness I am willing to accept my faults of having the body fly away in the storm making revivify impossible. Am I in the wrong for killing this player, is the player in the wrong for getting upset over known consequences, or is it a little of both sides. I will see you in Boston for the live show and willing to receive my sentence in person, thank you.

h moon

Honorable justices and bestie josh, may it please the court, and opposing council (???) I come to you with the case of the Pillowtalk Player. Recently, my partner and I were discussing our campaign during pillow talk. We were talking about things that happened last session and then they asked about something I had not confirmed yet in game. I was, in all honesty, quite sleepy and answered honestly, confirming that an NPC was a dragon prophet. The hints had all been laid but nothing had been confirmed. Is there a way to retaliate in game? Or would that be taking it too far? I don’t want to switch anything up, I don’t think it’s fair and unnecessary but is a punishment needed in this case. Thank you.

Jacob Peterson

To the bountiful and bodacious judges and that one little guy scampering in the corner, I bring you the case of the undead ass thief. A few years ago I was dming a wild west themed campaign for a group of my friends. One of my players insisted on playing an undead race despite my telling him there would be drawbacks (cleric heals don't affect undead targets). He accepted the consequences and we enjoyed a good few sessions before trouble started. My undead friend decided he wanted a bigger ass on his character, and through a series of deplorably good roles, managed to sew the ass from a dead body onto his character. This eventually lead to him stealing multiple body parts (with a focus on asses) from dead and recently dead npcs (that he had killed for their assess) which in turn upset and disturbed a few of my players. After a dozen or so sessions like this, several instances of pvp directed towards the ass bandit, and a shenanigans induced migraine, I decided to kill the thief with a bounty hunter using an eighth level spell (finger of death I think). I ask the court this: was my execution fair for the integrity of my campaign, or did the ass bandit deserve a more just trial for his ass-crimes?

Haley P

If it pleases the court and the esteemed bailiff rake, I submit a case of a sibling rivalry going on 7 years now. When I was in high school and my brother was about 10 our dad dm-ed a one shot session for us and our other two sisters. My character was a dwarf, and while we were all riding in a wagon my brother described yanking on my characters beard. I told him to stop bc she was very proud and he continued to tell me he would do it again, so I said I’d fight him if he did so again. He pulled my dwarf’s beard and…. I swing my axe. Well basically we were first level and injured and I killed him in one hit. Since that session he has refused to play dnd with us again. (Also my family continues to razz me an out this- constantly referring to my competitive nature invading cooperative games.) Should he have heeded my warning, or was I in the wrong for murdering my brother?

Scott Estep

Honorably infallible justices and the dude that reads these and sits on the short stool. Jake I think. I bring to you the case of the 7 year old murder hobo. I put on a small portion of the Dragons of Stormwreck Isle campaign for my friends twin 7 year old boys and 12 year old daughter while babysitting them. I'm new to DMing and I figured the kids wouldn't be able to tell. Well one of the boys Auliver would demand to change his name every 3 minutes (which I allowed to keep the game going) and wanted to stab every NPC while they were talking. No RP, just listen for 5 seconds and then stab stab. I explained that these were the good guys and he needed them to tell him where the bad guys are. He demanded that he could find them on his own and didn't need help. After stabbing about 5 people in the starting village, his siblings finally picked him up and carried him to the boat that would take them to a cave they needed to investigate. Once at the mouth of the cave he proceeded to attempt PVP with his brother and sister. At this point I asked him to roll a D20 without explaining why. He rolled a nat20, the first of the game. I explained that 20 giant bats flew out of the mouth of the cave and devoured all of the flesh from his bones. He asked why, and I explained that the bats had a taste for murder hobos. The kids laughed and we took a break. When we came back he made a new character and I ran them through a standard dungeon with minimal RP and it went fine. I ask, was I too harsh on young Auliver, or did I teach a valuable lesson to an up and coming dnd player? I put my fate in your capable hands. Just please don't sentence me to death by Blasting Gma. Thank you for your time

Derek Thedell

To the highest dice court in the land and its practitioners of justice, Axford, Murphy and Tanner. Oh also Jake, you're doing great champ. I bring to you a story of two 20 two phase turmoil. A few years ago, I was DMing the conclusion battle to a year long campaign for my wife and many of our friends who had never played DnD before. They were facing a corrupted adult black dragon, who was seeking to release an evil creator god into this world. The battle was tense and dangerous with many of the spellcasters being cashed on spell slots. After describing the dragon being on his last legs, our cleric drew her dual shortswords (the ceremonial weapons of her God) and rolled to attack and behead the weakened dragon. She rolled TWO natural twenties, plenty of damage to finish this dragon off. The table erupted in cheers - but I faced a conundrum. I had planned for this fight to last two phases and for the dragon to rise again, even more corrupted as before. I even lowered the health of both lives to not make the fight too difficult.

Cheneil

To the beloved Supreme Crit Justices and the lowly but still beloved bailiff, I present to you the case of the Pinky Promise and the Pink E. I play a lil' rainfrog aasimar wild magic sorcerer named Cherry in a Weird West campaign who often makes pinky promises. After a day of the American kestrel kenku, Silence, being separated from the group, Cherry asked them to promise to not run off again sealing the deal with the pinky promise. Both Cherry and Silence were aware that breaking this promise entailed losing a pinky and were fine with it. Come a few months later, Silence being a roguelock did rogue things and ran off. When he returned he was happily offering his pinky to the frog tween who was fully ready to cut it off with her dagger. Our tiefling fighter-barbarian, Shelley, was against this from when the promise was established. She got between Cherry and Silence who were both mildly annoyed by her coming between this longstanding promise. Our changeling cleric-bloodhunter, Cres, interjected offering another pinky promise to let them be there so they can heal Silence which Shelley blocked get-down-Mr-President style. Lastly, the DM with a detective NPC popped in, "solving" the problem with a Pink E aka a pink cloth cut into the shape of an e. He gave it to Silence who gave it to Cherry with both the small sorcerer and sneaky roguelock being disappointed with the outcome. Were Cherry and Silence in the wrong for being willing to enact the consequences of a pinky promise or was Shelley in the right for stopping it? Sidenote: This was all happening in Shelley's dining room a few hours after her butler was killed by a parasite bursting out his chest Alien style.

Santa Grinch Hugging HumBaba and two Fairies

Justices and 'The Jerk' (Staring Steve Martin) May it Please the Jonorable Crit, The first time i played DnD was 3.5 with some coworkers and one of their cousins ( not actualy family but their families are close) was my coworker Justified in cutting off another player's johnson in response to the cousin playing a Dragonborn Paladin refusing to stop touching himself while we were traveling between town in a cover wagen. (Ps the cousin didnt show to any future sessions)

Imi B

Your honours, the justices of the bench. And to whomever else it concerns. I request a ruling in the case of Plantiff vs Unimaginative Players. This case is from two years ago but bugs me to this day. I used to play D&D regularly in a pub - this was great, 30 to 50 ish people would be in the very large pub every saturday and would either be playing in long running groups or form little pick up games. My group and I were between campaigns and so the organiser asked if we fancied running "newbie" sessions for a few weeks - little one shots to help new players find their feet. In my first ever newbie session, one of the new players arrived with a character sheet, backstory and description etc that was just a character in a very popular D&D streaming show. I didn't say anything as I figured they were just nervous to RP and the one shot was pretty successful. It did end in a TPK but a funny one. Next week the same player is back, and guess what, their new character is once again a clone from a different show (D20 this time!). I told them they could not play in this week's one shot unless they brought their own character. They had DNDBeyond etc and could have built a level 3 whatever in no time. They refused to play unless they played as the one they had "prepared". Stalemate ensured and eventually I sent them to a different table with a DM who had not watched Unsleeping City. Judges, was I too unforgiving with a newbie or was I right and its kinda weird?

Lucas Dahmm

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

Ian

Hello esteemed justices and the hunchbacked bailiff who lives in the belltower, I come to you with a case of doppelganger shenanigans I was the DM during a boss fight involving a main antagonist as well as a side enemy inspired by the Reaper that you can summon from an unfortunate pull from the deck of many things, in this case it was a doppelganger of one of the players who had the ability to clone itself if anyone but the already cloned player attacks them with the new clone mimicking whoever the new attacker was and attacking them The problem arises when the barbarian who had a clone of himself to deal with used some wily movements to make his clone run towards the main boss, hoping to trick him into firing on it and creating a hostile clone of him to fight, I narrated as the boss refused to attack it as the doppelganger was one of his own minions and so he'd be able to tell it from the real barbarian, the players argued saying that I described the doppelgangers as completely identical to their targets and that the boss knowing they exist shouldn't matter, which i argued back against saying that if he didnt have a way of knowing hed have an incredibly chaotic workplace on his hands, overall the argument fizzled out without incident and the boss was killed in a much cooler way later on anyway But was I too harsh in the face of boss fight shenanigans or was my boss's extensive knowledge of his own underlings justly rewarded in the end

SirDonglers

To the Venerable Judges "Taxfurph" and bailiff YACOB, I bring the case of my Rogue that shattered the group, and ended a 3 years long campaign, with only their alignment... I joined a campaign a few levels in, and quickly found out that I was the only character who was Chaotic neutral (the other 3 being some form of good). Our group worked well for almost 20 sessions until a players brother that left the group came back. They brought a Lawful Good Paladin, during a mission with a Lich, that was helping our party hunt down shapeshifters. I tried to convince the Paladin that the greater good outweighed the negative aspect of working with the Lich. Even though I rolled a 23 charisma check to convince them that the Shape Shifter Oni was eating BABIES, the player deemed me a worthy target because of my alignment, and ran off to find his God's temple. This led to a 2 hour PVP session which led to most of us dying, an argument about alignment afterwards, and the campaign ending with blocked numbers and hurt feelings. Your Honors, was I in the wrong for bringing in a character that was unfit for the established dynamics of the group? Or was the Paladin at fault for being too devout? I await your judgement, and hope for a fair sentencing. Chao for now

Michelle Choi

To the bountiful supreme crit justices and Jeremiah I think?, I present to you the case of the counterspell that split a friend group apart. When I was in school, I didn't get to play dnd often because of life/work, but when I could, my group and I liked to play pvp one shots. One of these one shots was a 2v4. Me (a fighter) and my friend (a paladin/sorcerer) were on the same team because we were the best at min-maxing and usually won when we did pvp. The players on the other team were mostly beginners/people less adept at min-maxing. One of the people was a sorcerer who was hosting the session. We didn’t know the sorcerer very well and he was the oldest by a year and took great pride in that. While in combat, the sorcerer quickly realized I had built my fighter with a low wisdom and continued to cast spells to render me useless (which I didn’t mind!). Eventually, he tried to cast dominate person and the paladin/sorcerer counter spelled, knowing I would probably fail. Next round, the sorcerer tried to cast again, and the paladin/sorcerer counter spelled again. Next turn, the sorcerer got extremely angry and yelled at the paladin/sorcerer, telling them that they were ruining everyone’s fun and they should just get out of his house. As a friend group, we say many goofs and pretend to get angry at each other, but this felt serious and we didn’t know what to do. The DM just asked the sorcerer to take his turn or else it would be skipped. Eventually, me and the paladin/sorcerer won! Afterwards, the sorcerer texted in our group chat that counter spell should be banned forever because it ruins people’s fun. There was heated debate (the sorcerer against everyone else) in which the sorcerer refused to change his opinion and threatened to leave the group if counter spell wasn’t banned. We told him that was fine and he left.

Fabrizio Moreno

Dear high judges and Tim from accounting, I present you the case of the jawa incident. Some years ago, few friends and I decided to play a homebrew version of a Star Wars ttrpg, no one had ever played before, but because of naddpod and dimension 20 knowledge, I was the designated GM, everything went well for 1 hour until our ranger Wookie found two jawas in back of her store. Now, I knew this player and her character was a pacifist, so I thought that she would try to talk to them, and that would trigger their first big mission of destroying an evil slave mafia. But everything went south when instead of talking she tried to intimidate them and rolled a 1, after initiative she came first and rolled a Nat 20 on her attack, dealing 20 of damage (the jawas had only 10 hp) and in the next round she killed the other. The problem was that I didn’t had a way of moving the story and the mission, so when our fighter rolled a 21 on investigation I told them everything, about how they escaped, how they had to kids that were enslaved just like them and had to leave them behind with hopes of getting help and meet again. Needless to say, the party was demolished, especially the Wookie. Later they found the evil guys and liberated all the slaves but till this day the “jawa incident” bring sadness to us and some even say it was a bad move from me to just dump all that information on them, after they killed the innocent couple. My question here is: Was there something different that I could have done or can it be consider just a simple offense, because it was also my first time (playing and as a GM) and didn't know better? I will accept your judgment, even if it means spending time with Jill's husband.

Gabriel Martinez

To the resplendent justices and the middling bailif, I bring you the case of the Homebrewed Dominating Snake Lady. My party had reached the conclusion of a multi-session mystery where we learned that the people of a village were being sacrificed to a homebrewed Naga creature after she hypnotized them. We finally get to the Naga's lair and knowing my Rougelock has weak soft stats I came into the fight with inspiration, bless, and protection from evil and good active from various sources to avoid the hypnosis. Then once the fight starts the Naga dominates my roguelock immediately with no save and I spent the whole fight as her bodyguard. We accept that our dm uses Homebrewed monsters, our table is experienced and using monsters out of the manual would be too predictable, but giving a monster a saveless dominate feels like something that shouldn't exist in 5e. Am I wrong to be frustrated by this or is my gm in the wrong?

Emily Amity

To High Priestess Axford, Chosen of Dice Christ, and her lowly lowly Alter Boys I'm the GMily for my friends' ongoing Kids on Brooms campaign set in a Divine Magic school run by fascist, genocidal angels. I gave the players a magic item called an Abracabracus that basically does the Identify spell for them. All magic taught in this school comes from the one GOD of the empire, but one of my PCs worships a different deity, the goddess of sea and stars, and has a magic item from her. When everyone else put their magic items on the Abracabracus, I gave them slips of paper with technical descriptions of the items as if generated by a computer. For the Sea and Stars worshipper, I gave her a slip with jumbled text that was decyphered quickly to be an error message which said "error: language incompatible with Galactic Organizational Device." However, the player who decoded it missed the capital letters which reveal that GOD is an acronym for this big galactic computer. He then asked me if he got it right, and I said "Yes, but there's a small discrepancy between what you wrote and what the answer was." My intention was to make a fun bit of foreshadowing, but I was afraid that if they fully got it, it would deflate the big reveal scene when they finally infiltrate heaven and find GOD to be nothing but a switchboard of divine chains that maintain physics and all magical pacts, instead of an actual entity. The next day, that player told me he couldn't see any discrepancy still, and I basically gaslit him to protect my big reveal by saying "Don't worry about it, you didn't miss anything important. I must've gotten confused last night. The only thing you didn't see was a small bonus thing." Was I right to gaslight my friend for the sake of a big cool reveal later? Or should I have accepted that I messed up initially by encouraging him to look deeper, and let him keep agonizing over it? What penance must I pay for my overexcitement for puzzles that kept me from just shutting up in the first place? -Emily L.

TayJulia

PS- I forgot to mention this includes any buffs, smites, magical features anything on your weapons. Max damage plus double dice roll. Our paladin had the killing blow recently and it was a crit. The new player asked just to see what he would roll “just for fun” with his smites and green flame blade, was more than 200 damage roll.

Yashuntafun

May it please the elegant and refined justices, and the workmanlike Bailiff (I think it was "Juh-" something): I present the case of the "Cantrip Can" Trip. I was recently playing in a campaign where everyone is born with a bit of elemental magic inside them, meaning that every player received an elemental cantrip. Very cool. The issue, is that one of the players, the one who had the Shape Water cantrip, became so fervent about it that he used it in every situation. Need to hold your breath? Shape Water into an air bubble around your head. Need to pick a lock? Shape Water into a frozen key. Need to intimidate an NPC? Shape Water to basically waterboard them. They tried repeatedly to use it in combat as an attack, despite it having no offensive capabilities. I didn't really think it's supposed to work in any of those ways, but aside from the combat usage, the GM allowed most of the player's requests. Who's wrong? Was the player wanting too much value out of a cantrip? Was the DM allowing too much excessive, but creative, use? Or am I just jealous of the versatility of water? I prostrate myself before your wise justice. - from T.F.

Doctor Ransom

To the most archangelic Supreme Crit justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the ungodly sinner bailiff Jon Odenhurtz, I bring you the case of “The Smitten Paladin.” While playing in a one-shot with some good buds of mine, a very sticky and intense situation occurred during the final battle with the big bad guy. My “friend” James, who was playing as a warforged Paladin named Junkbot, got charmed by an Incubus and immediately turned towards my PC, asking the Incubus much too eagerly, “Shall I Divinely Smite him, Master?” After hitting my character twice, Junkbot used his highest level spell slots to Divine Smite me on both attacks, after which my PC dropped unconscious. Our party then TPK’ed immediately afterwards. Justices, I beseech thine most discerning deliberation. Was this Incubus-smitten Paladin well within his right to savagely smite my guy or should they have toned it down a notch? I await your most shrewd and sangfroid of sentences. P.S. - To my ‘friend’ James, “Fuck you, I love you, eat a rat.”

E. Tucker

I present to the noble and just court, and to the feckless baliff Jorts, the case of the Konami Kerfuffle. Our groups DM locked us in a magical building with nothing but stairs that went up and down from the current platform and a torch on the wall. Traveling up or down the stairs let to an identical room and our party explored this puzzle for an hour with our increasingly exasperated DM trying in vain to give us clues. The final clue that my elderly paladin Churl Fleeps saw before the DM gave up on the puzzle was that my character saw teens in front of a glowing screen where they were controlling characters that were shooting aliens. Our party never discovered that the puzzle was to travel the stairs in this order: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, and then to press b then a, which is the Konomi code. We were perplexed by the puzzle and the mysteriously appearing and vanishing torches on the wall. Was this a reasonable puzzle or should our DM be punished in an unusual method? Thank you to the jubilant judges and stern regards to the bumbling baliff. - Churl

Spencer Clark

Greetings to the legal luminaries of the D&D domain and employee #5, Today, I bring forth the case of the DM Betrayal, a saga woven in the intricate threads of a homebrew high seas campaign. Picture, if you will, a sociopathic yet lovable redneck wood elf ranger narrated by yours truly. Our crew, having heroically rescued shipwreck survivors from an island teeming with cannibalistic mushroom people, embarked on a continuing voyage to our next destination. Alas, members of our crew began to mysteriously vanish. In parallel, one of the survivors attempted to woo my character. An invitation was given to him to pursue courtship. In a twist of fate, it was revealed through a separate session for our solo encounter with my DM that these disappearances were the result of a vampire coterie. All of the survivors were citizens of a vampiric land. My character faced a choice—embrace vampirism or face certain demise. I begrudgingly choose to live. A subsequent session saw the unmasking of the vampiric threat by fellow party members and a theater of violence resulted in their departure from this realm, all while my character harbored this dark secret. Complicating matters, my newfound vampiric nature demanded sustenance, leading to nighttime escapades where sea creatures met their untimely demise to satiate my bloodlust. However, the tides turned upon reaching an island where the delicate balance between animals and villagers had thrived for centuries. My quest for sustenance inadvertently triggered a riot, and a relentless manhunt ensued to unearth the mysterious creature responsible for the demise of a beloved animal. In an unforeseen twist, a fellow player, perhaps guided by divine intervention, declared at the gaming table, "You are the one everyone is looking for!" A revelation that caught everyone off guard, including our mirthful DM whose laughter betrayed the gravity of my character's secret. The session continued with the entire party privy to a clandestine truth obtained outside of our session. Now, I stand before this illustrious court seeking guidance on how to navigate these treacherous waters. Can the blood spilled be returned to the body, or must we put this delicate matter on indefinite hiatus? I beseech the wisdom of the assembly to advise on the course of action for a character now defensively regarded, caught in the web of secrets that demand revelation.

Doctor Ransom

Which Unsleeping City PC was it?

Imi B

Pete! And the first was Grog from CR...

CarpeLiam

May it please the court and make the bailiff genuinely smile, I come before the court with a spicy and tragic issue that is equal parts trial and confession- the Rules as Writ V the Rule of Tit. I have been DMing the same game for my wife and a close group of friends for about five years. The transgression in question took place at a cabin we rent every year to eat, drink, make merry, and dive into a weekend long D&D session. This trip, the party was set to infiltrate a fortress in the Shadowfell, with each floor being a challenge based on one of the five stages of grief. As the time to begin the session arrived, we all had a few drinks / mood enhancers in us already. Feeling a little silly and knowing it was going to be a particularly deadly encounter, my wife asked me if she could gain inspiration for her character by flashing me, the DM, in real life. Though I am always humbled and honored whenever my wife offers me a glimpse of her immaculate bosom, I declined, stating it wouldn’t be fair to the other players, and that it goes against the spirit of the adventure. It was then that every other woman in the party stated that, if they were also granted inspiration, they would gleefully lift their shirts in the name of quelling the menace of Shadowfell, dubbing the act “Titspiration.” Again I refused, saying this wouldn’t be fair to the fighter, the only other man in the party. The fighter insisted he didn’t want the inspiration, and endorsed the women’s free spirited gambit. With enthusiastic consent from every person in the room, and being no greater than the sum of my parts, I allowed Titspiration to occur. Laughs were had and the game began. Herein lies my plight. The fighter failed to pass his trial and was lost to the horrors of Shadowfell. Nearly every other player used their inspiration to pass their challenge. Though he took it well and has since made a new character to rescue his fallen fighter, I cannot help but feel crushed when I see the sadness behind his eyes. My question for the court is thus: Was I right to allow my players their silly and rebellious act of body-positive expression, or am I a contemptible pervert that needlessly doomed my friend’s beloved character of five real life years?

Gill

To the mighty Supreme Crit Judges and the (I dont want to be mean) awesome bailiff Jake, I present the case of the nervous DM. My sister is running a game for me and our friend and is very worried if we are having a good time, if she's doing a good job, etc. The problem? She's fucking nailing it--we're talking woven in backstories, mutant homebrew monsters somehow connected to stuff we have yet to uncover, a to-do list of adventures that all sound amazing and fun that connect to this web she's weaving, NPCs that are fun and interesting--and somehow she still isn't confident that she's an amazing DM. Judges, I argue that she be sentenced to facing the music of her creativity and coolness. I tell her how awesome she's doing after every session, but I hope that if she hears it coming from the highest court, maybe she'll start to really believe it 😊

Nero

Hello Mr. And Mrs. the Right Honourable Justices Murphy and Oxford, Herr Tanner, and Mr. Horowitz the Blaifff. I recently ran a one-shot wherein the rogue tried to use Cunning Action to sleight-of hand a ritual casting, on the argument that the time cost of rituals involves putting things "just so" rather than taking a full minute to physically place them. I said no, you can't just jump up and do a thing in the middle of your ritual, but I'm actually unsure whether or not I "need to chillax a bit", as they claimed. Halp, please, and thank you.

BrowndogPiedog

To the most illustrious Supreme Crit Justices and to the lowly bailiff…… Hugh? Big Huey C? I present the case of the Abandoned Rogue Fiancé. A few years ago during my family’s annual Christmas Eve one-shot, it was my turn to DM, I was incredibly hungover and my notes only read “Beach explodes, 4 poison spray crocodiles, lighthouse hag”. I was DMing for 7 of my family members and doing a pretty good job, I think. It was my father’s first game ever. During combat, my then-fiancé , playing a rogue, took a homebrew poison spray attack from one of the crocodiles. She made her DEX save, but still would go down from the halved damage. I narrated her falling and she got emotional, almost starting to cry. My sister pointed out that as she was a rogue, she had evasion which spared her from all damage. My fiancé hugged my little sister and glared at me, saying loudly that I had abandoned her and was using my position as DM to come for her. Should I have done more to prep her for playing a rogue in the one-shot? I had never played a rogue myself and only went over the basics with her, I.E. how to get advantage so you can sneak attack, various arcane tricker spell-usage tips, etc. I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Andrew Goodenough

To the divine judges and their sniveling stooge of a bailiff, I present to you the case of the Homebrew Hostage: I have been running a Greek-Mythology-inspired campaign for 3 years now. At the start of the new year, all our players rolled new Level 1 characters. One player really wanted to play an artificer. I worked with him to write an epic hero inspired by Daedalus, who has sworn vengeance on the gods for the death of his son. I was very excited to play with this character. The night before our first game, the player messages me the homebrew he wants to play: after a battle, he would be able to loot the special abilities of the monsters we defeat, performing his own legendary actions. Like the myths of Medusa or the Nemean Lion. I said no; I didn't want this one hero to grow too much stronger than our other heroes. So for our first game, he brought an entirely different character, a true neutral druid who doesn't care about gods or heroes, and only wants to fish. Later, over drinks, I asked the player what it'd take to get them to bring back the original character concept with such an exciting and engaging backstory. He said he'd only bring them back if I permitted his homebrew. I bring this before the court for your judgement. Should I let them have their broken homebrew? If I had to choose, I'd rather have a compelling story than a balanced party. I humble myself before the court, and await further judgement.

Logan Stacey

To the tubular justices who are all invited to my birthday party. Oh, hey Jake, who’s a good little bailiff? *Pats head* I present to you the case of the worthless Crittimidation. 7 years ago, count ‘em seven, I was playing in my first D&D campaign as a half elf sorcerer geared towards intimidation. The party was higher level, and we ended up having to running away from a Gnoll army that was hunting us on the prairie of a large wilderness area of the world. To try and scare them off, we decided I should try and intimidate them away into thinking I was a flame god that would kill them with fiery savagery. My bard cast Tensor’s floating disc to raise me twenty feet into the air, with the druid controlling flames behind me, silhouetting my sorcerer, and with the booming voice of a titan (flavor for my spell casting all campaign), my sorcerer then twin cast fireball to destroy two large sections of the army, and cause the Gnolls to panic. Upon rolling the intimidation check, I crit, and with my bonuses, it totaled at a thirty-four. There was much celebration from the party, as we surely got out of this large dangerous fight. Our DM began to narrate how the Gnoll army began to lose morale, and they started to turn and run away in panic. But, before they could run, the warlord stepped forward and yelled, and they immediately lost all their fear and began to charge at us again, the DM stated that the warlord had an ability that made him immune to fear and inspired the rest army to not be afraid. Should I just let it go after all these years, or was I a victim to an ability that robbed me of my crit? Please give me the justice I’ve been waiting for 7 years for, or the strength to leave it behind. I accept whatever judgement you will deal, oh honored ones. P.S. We won the combat when the DMPC rogue killed the warlord and that scared the rest of the army off…. The campaign soon ended for this amongst other reasons and issues with the DM, and have since stopped being in contact with them.

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.

Josh Zellers

To the most gracious justices and that other guy. I present to you the cast of the performance checks that change the world. Our moth bard has rolled countless nat20s, many of which have gotten the party out of sticky situations. She even dance battled death itself to get back to 1hp. As well as stoped the infamous blood war in hell. The problem rose when she has nothing better to do than to perform to stop the enemies from doing anything at all which is her go to move. How can I stop this monster? Have I dug the hole to deep? Happy hoglidays, and a sweet blue year to the justices and jornathan

Brock

To the noble Clergy of dice christ! i come before yall not with a confession, but with a question because no matter what you 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 often go through 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, sometimes critting 5 times a session! So i ask the church, do i walk with the dice devil now that i have strayed away from physical dice and prevent the other players from hearing the click clack you keep talking about? or am i just being blessed by dice christ? or have i finally killed god with my machine? ps hate the show and ive never listened to i and if i did, it probably wouldn’t help me laugh in years past when i was really low and struggling.

Jake Lenzen

To the most esteemed leaders of the church of crit, and Jeff, I seek forgiveness for the fake natural 1. I was playing in 3 campaigns at once and needed to downsize. I spoke to the GM of one campaign, and we agreed my character could leave at the end of the arc, which was next session. During that session, my party was in a brutal combat and my character went down. I failed my first death save and saw my opportunity for sin - I thought a dramatic death in combat would be a better exit for my character than simply walking into the sunset. My other party members were intent to heal me, but I waved them off. I said the combat was challenging and I had only failed one death save. Before my next turn, I positioned a d20 on my dice tray on the "1". When my time to roll my second death save came around, I obscured my tray, rolled another d20 (my dice tray had lots of dice in it), but ignored the result, instead pointing to the 1, as if that was the die I had just rolled. With that, I immediately failed two death saves, died in tragic fashion, and motivated my party to avenge me over the course of the next arc. I never told them the truth. I humbly seek forgiveness for my sin against dice christ. I now know that I should have rolled justly, and trusted in his holy critness.

DJ Matty Lil Crits

To the brilliant and handsome legal scholars Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the bailiff who despite all appearances is doing his best, I present the NPC who tests your relationship. My DM generously ran a solo adventure for me while I was traveling for work, which had forced me to miss a session. As a cleric, he put my adventure in a sewer overrun with dozens of undead, so I could turn undead. My only companion was Mia, a fellow clergy member NPC that the party had pressured me into dating after she expressed admiration of my heroic, definitely not murder-hobo feats. As we explored, we encountered a dead body in an underground prison. Suspecting it might be a trap and hostile enemy, I told Mia to let me check the body since I was experienced and heavily armored. She insisted she do it, claiming I shouldn't try to control her, that she needs to let me let her contribute if we want this relationship to work, and that I should trust her. As a DM myself I don't like to use the phrase "railroad", but my DM clearly had a plan for Mia, which I didn't want to interrupt since he'd made me my own personal adventure. Only Mia was surprised during her investigation that it was indeed a zombie, who instantly bit her and transferred his zombification curse, which was too high level for my remove curse to cure. While I cleared out the rest of the sewer to find the source of the curse, I asked her to stay in a closet. She instead wandered out after I left, as she mistook a ghast's foosteps for my own and was reduced to single digit hp before I could rescue her. I did eventually cure her, and she accepted that she is not meant for the adventurer lifestyle, but was I wrong for being overprotective my low AC, non adventurer GF?

Nigel Nyberg

To the honorable justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner and whoever their +1 is. During our last session in a fantasy/steampunk zombie apocalypse my party was attempting to get back to their crashed airship when they were approached, via sky-skiff, by some high-tech corporate soldiers who were offering transportation and sanctuary to any survivors who could pay ridiculous (probably) amounts of gold. Though flush with cash, our Druid decided it would be much more fun to summon a t-Rex directly above the skiff hoping to crash them into the crowd of zombies below. I told them that, while ridiculous and unprovoked, this was consistent with rules I think so I’d roll a luck check to see if the skiff crashed onto the roof (resulting in a fight) or on the streets (neutralizing them), but the Druid’s player wanted to roll the luck check instead. He rolled 2 and so I narrated the crash on the roof and started rolling crash damage for the soldiers. That’s when the session ground to a halt and the yelling started. My player argued that the soldiers should all be dead because the luck roll was for them, they rolled a 2, therefore they failed. I said that if I were rolling I would agree, but since he was rolling for luck, that result would apply to his character (high roll= he’s lucky and his plan kills them. Low roll= he’s unlucky and just hurts the bad guys.) As the dm I roll for all NPCs and only call for rolls from my players when they’re related to their character, so there’s no precedent for a player rolling any checks for NPCs. We disagreed and ultimately left it to a roll-off resulting in the corpos dying in the streets. But the aftertaste of this event is quite bitter, so should I have clarified that my player was rolling luck for his character (as most other players at the table assumed judging by their audible groans when they saw that natural 2) or was my player right in celebrating that 2 as a triumph for the party?

Alexia VV

To the most magnificent judges and the mediocre Jake, I prostrate myself before the court with what may be the first canonical cross-examination, as my friend and I present a case of snail-paced leveling. This is the DM Ali going first! Our disagreement is over the speed of leveling in my One Piece-inspired pirate campaign. I typically level them up at the end of each arc or saga of the campaign, which typically run about 7 sessions (~4 hrs/ea). My players believe that they are not leveling fast enough, but I always try to remind them that this campaign is meant to be an Odyssey, something long-winded and sprawling on purpose. I've even promised and implemented ways for them to gain new abilities and features without needing to level up. I rest my case an hand the floor over to one of my players. hello this is the player glitch. and I see where my dm is coming from but what you have to remember is just how lonmg it takes to play 7 sessions of dnd. thats almost 2 months assuming that nothing happens to make you take a week or more off. it just feels unsatisfying to wait that long and not see any kind of improvement in the character. we've been playing for almost a year and were only level 6 (we started at level 3) so i ask you great justices and the guy that eats thier food. think of all of the under leveled characters who never get a chance to see the high leves and think will you let this stand?

LegoZmbeKillr

Greetings to the fair and insightful Judges, and the stick in the mud bailiff, janice i think? May it please the court I bring to you the case of the party of non note takers. I currently DM a game with a large group of players that rotate in and out at their discretion and schedule. When a player cannot make the session i often give small reasons that character is not participating (or hijack the pc character to offer subtle dm advice). I recently ran into a situation where the party was trying to bring up previous lore info on a session, and because the main note takers were not present for the current session the party was at a loss. (Side note, the party has not designated note takers, they keep up with their own) I told them they could make a history check to see if they could remember the information they were seeking but they argued since they didnt have the notes they wanted me to “relay” the information through the absent pcs character as that real life player would have surely had the notes, but I declined and made them roll, only to fail some pertinent stuff that would have made their session easier. Ive suggested before the players start a group note thread or document for shared notes for just such an occasion that went ignored. I often recap previous sessions and sometimes place info in our group chat for reference, but not all. Was I wrong for making my players roll for history due to lack of note taking, or should I have just shared the information with my poor note taking players? P.s. the players still succeeded in their mission and had a great time.

Tom Stalley

To the honorable justices Murphy, Oxford and Tanner and hey Jake, you're doing such a good job big guy! Good for you! I present the case of the dubious doppelgangers. My party just successfully rescued the NPC cleric from a necromancer, disrupting her ritual and interrupting the return of the lord of shadows. While the party returned back to base, they setup camp and went through their usual spiel. The ranger and bloodhunter went hunting while the monk and sorcerer setup and guarded the cleric at camp. I narrated how the "ranger and BH" returned with a deer and began stripping it at camp, but these weren't the actual characters, they were doppelgangers sent to kill the party and cleric. There was some confusion as I started to voice the players and told the actual ranger and BH to hush a moment, then explained to them they found where a deer had been killed in the forest along with footprints that transformed from bare footed and gnarly to an exact match of their own boots. A D4+2 rounds later of sprinting later (4 rounds), they made it back to camp. Meanwhile, the monk and sorcerer fought the doppelgangers. The cleric was killed and the sorcerer downed before the ranger and BH came to help. Two of players loved the end result, having to play normal evening knowing they were about to be attacked, but two of the players kept asking for different checks once they realized they were being tricked. I told them there was a check and their deception and stealth beat their passive perception and insight. When the ranger looked up the doppelganger stats in DnD beyond he wanted to know why he didn’t spot them in the woods and I told him his perception/survival check to hunt didn’t beat their roll. The session ended there and we’ve had more since, but was I wrong for not making the players roll more to detect the doppelgangers?

Cameron Kennedy

To the glorious justices who's light guides us all and any rats scrambling around beneath them I present the case of mismanaged inventory. I DM a campaign for some of my friends with a very high level of magic, this means that there is a higher the normal amount of magic items however due to there being no real note takers amongst the players I've had to narrate that characters have misplaced or forgotten multiple magic items including healing potions and one I specifically made for one player as none of them wrote them down on their sheets or kept track of them mentally so when I reminded them about it all I got were blank stares. One of the players did notice this and has since started keeping an eye on each players stuff to make sure the don't forget things. I ask was I wrong to take those items away from them and how should I get them to keep track of their own stuff? I lay myself at the mercy of the crit

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!)

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 an already running Curse of Strahd campaign and played 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 ran with it and with a good performance check, the party formed a band and we defeated the cultists with an 80s pop ballad. The issue is the Bloodhunter at the table who, despite our many attempts to involve him, refused to be included (his character literally walked off into the woods during the song). 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 good time at the table, 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.

David Pazmino

To the esteemed Justices Murphy, Axford, Tanner, and the enigmatic shadow-dweller, Jog: May it please the court as I present the case of "Feathered Frustration: The Plight of Skywriter." In a Raveloft campaign, I assumed the role of Skywriter, an Owlin beastmaster and archeologist dedicated to the study and taming of large avian creatures as companions. Commencing with a Large Toucan, adapted from the stats of a Large Owl within our narrative, the game thrived within the sword coast regions of our starting town. Yet, the narrative took an abrupt turn upon our party's unwelcome relocation to Ravenloft. The crux of the matter rests in the Dungeon Master's assertion: birds, by their decree, did not exist in this realm. Moreover, there was an expressed disdain towards avian-like entities such as Owlin and Kenku. Consequently, my character's backstory, deeply rooted in a fervent passion for understanding and befriending large birds, was summarily disregarded. Should the DM have metaphorically clipped my character's wings, or am I perhaps overreacting here? Admittedly, the situation does hold a hint of absurdity – an archeologist stranded in a realm devoid of birds and seemingly harboring a grudge against them.

ZZ Digital

If it pleases the court, I ran a game where I set up some rules about using an important gem of planeshift, but didn't tell my players. The players could have investigated at any time to learn the rules, but never questioned beyond how to switch it on. So, when a villain (who openly admitted to being evil) told them a different way to use it, they implicitly trusted the villain and became trapped, which caused a player to miss a scene with a very important NPC to them and killed off another, beloved NPC to set them free. For trying and trick my players, never telling them they needed to roll to investigate or that an evil character could be lying, am I a bad DM not even worthy to lick the lowly bailiff's boots?

Ricardo

To the honorable justices of the court (and bailiff Jack?), I bring to you the case of the “Shapeshifting Shapeshifter”. Me and my girlfriend are about to start our first campaign together. She wants to be a Changeling Druid (with a cute Juvenile Mimic as a familiar) to play as the ultimate shapeshifter, but we had a disagreement about how she plans to use her abilities. She wants to use the Druid’s “Wild Shape” to turn into a strong beast (a bear, for example), then use the Changeling’s racial ability “Shapechanger” to shapeshift back into a human as a way to hide the fact she’s a beast to enemies, among other uses. She claims that while Wild Shape has restrictions for things such as casting spells, there’s little to no restrictions for using racial abilities, so she should be allowed to use Shapechange. I did my own research and believe it shouldn’t work, as Shapechanger explicitly states that you change your “race”, not species, and that the new form must have the same arrangement of limbs. She still believes that it would work regardless, and with seemingly no definitive answer online saying it can/can’t work, we’ve been stuck in a deadlock. Ultimately, I don’t mind that badly so long as she’s having fun playing the way she wants. The DM has shot it down for being too ridiculous, so either way the issue is essentially resolved. While she accepted the DM's ruling, she still firmly believes that it should work, and is a bit upset that she won’t be allowed to Shapechange while Wild Shaped. So to end the argument once and for all, I ask you respected judges - is a Changeling capable of Shapechanging while Wild Shaped?

Mr. Baggins

This is my Confessional To the Holy mouth, hands, and eyes of Dice Christ, as well as the Pope of the church of Dice Christ, I have a confession. As the DM for a Nine Hells campaign, my players met a group of devils on a floating island above the Styx. The players asked for help getting down to the River Styx safely, and the devils agreed. What the players didn’t know is the devils wanted to push the players into the River Styx after they got down to the river’s edge, potentially killing the players and destroying the Book of Exalted Deeds. The players rolled an Insight check, and got a nat 20, which in our campaign is a critical success. The players total insight was 34. The devil rolled a 19, for a total of 36. (This is a 20+ campaign.) Drenched in DM sweat and not wanting to skip a big skydiving battle, I told the player that “everything the devil has said is completely true.” Needless to say, when the players discovered the betrayal of the devils and the nat 20, they were upset, though they easily slaughtered the devils while sky diving after the trap failed. Afterwards, we discussed what a nat 20 will and won’t tell you against expert deceivers like devils, but the guilt of this neglected nat 20 still haunts me. May Dice Christ and the Pope of Dice Christ forgive me.

Alex T

Honorable Jake and the Judges (good band name), I present the case of the saved campaign and the angry paladin. I was DMing LMoP for a new group of players. The Paladin asked for a Talisman of Pure Good as a fail safe. We were at the BBEG’s hideout so with the campaign coming to an end, I had no issue with it. Adjusted the stats of the talisman a little to make it more level appropriate. The Paladin went first in initiative and instantly used the Talisman on the BBEG. He failed the save and instantly fell into a fissure that appeared and died. We stopped for the night because the rest of the party was clearly upset. I came up with the idea to use a doppelganger that was in the battle as a fake BBEG that the Paladin actually killed (the doppelganger was actually a higher CR). The Paladin was livid when they saw the BBEG alive in the next room. The Paladin didn’t say anything all night. The rest of the party had an absolute blast fighting the BBEG. The player never came back. Did I steal the BBEG kill from the Paladin or did I save the BBEG fight for the rest of the party?

Ethan Armstrong

Howdy justices and the highly regarded and illustrious bailiff Jack, Presenting the case of the Monk-Shambling Mound Turducken. Relatively simple case, I was DMing an encounter in which a shambling mound had attacked and absorbed my party's monk, meaning they were grappled and restrained. Said shambling mound then pulled a leaf out of Stone Cold Steve Austin's book, jumping off a high tower to deal fall damage to the monk and take the monk back to the Shambler's allies for a beating. This is where the disagreement arose, I ruled that the monk could not use their Slow Fall ability as, grappled and restrained, there was no way they could arrest their fall from within the Shambling Mound. They argued that there was no part of the ability which stated they needed anything other than access to their reaction in order to use the ability, so they should be able to do so. We went back and forth until I stated we're moving on and that the ability wouldn't be usable in that situation. We discussed it later and still disagreed (part of their argument being that the monk doesn't really get to do much so taking away their ability feels more notable) but moved on easily enough. Was I wrong to rule in this way? Did I let my own personal verisimilitude get in the way of a class ability. Awaiting your fair and just verdict P.S. hoping I can meet Jack someday

Beau R.

This is more of a confessional to Dice Christ. 5 years ago as i was in my first group run by a friend. All of us were highschool friends so i thought it would be fun to bring my highschool girlfriend to the group. We all knew each other from theatre so i thought it would be nice. This was not the wisest choice. Over 10 sessions it became apparent (to all but me) she was fudging rolls. I look back and can totally see it now. her hand cupped over her dice and only ever rolling 17's or higher. i feel bad having been the one to invite her knowing now that she made my DM's fun and other players fun less than it could have been. I ply the mercy of the cardinals of Axford, Tanner, Hurwitz and especially to the Pope Stephen VI himself (Murphy). I will serve my penance how you please, I merely beg for Dice Christs blessing in inspiration as I'm now running my first campaign (Calls Of the Deep) for the heart of the first group and some new comers. i await you heavenly punishment so i may earn my blessings.

The Fun Yaunt

To the Supreme Crit Justices Axford and Murphy, the Sweetest of Blue Holes, and the deeply mediocre bailiff, May it please the court, I present the case of the bardic imposter. Last October I DM’d my first session, a one-shot for my regular D&D group. I planned a spooky adventure in which a group of cousins entered the mansion of their great-aunt, a witch that left them all a generous inheritance (should they successfully pass her trials). I asked each of my players to text me about their characters in preparation. To my surprise, one player told me she’d like to play a Changeling Warlock named Scylla who likes to take on the appearance of her friend, a sea-elf bard. I thought this was a strange detail, but didn’t think it was particularly important what appearance the Changeling chose. However, I soon learned that I’d okayed her character before fulling understanding it— this player intended to play a Changeling Warlock that was fully impersonating a dead Sea-Elf Bard (and the real niece of the witch). The character would also carry a necklace containing the soul of the deceased friend in hopes she could revive her one day. Her backstory seemed too complex for a one-shot, but she was excited about the character and I’d technically already okayed it. I asked her what her plan was for when other players asked why she wasn’t casting bardic spells— she said she doubted it would come up. Unfortunately my concern was merited— during the session one of the other players became increasingly frustrated that the “bard” refused to give bardic inspiration and heal. This other player, a rogue, stole the imposter’s necklace out of annoyance, derailing the session for a time while the imposter disregarded the mission to look for her necklace because “it’s what her character would do.” The rogue eventually dropped the necklace in a trashcan for her to find once he realized that the “bard” wouldn’t continue the one-shot without it. The players and I had fun overall (and I incorporated revivify into the witch’s inheritance), but I ask you— was I in the wrong to allow my player to play a character with such a complicated backstory? I humbly await your judgment.

Tatiana Gromova

To the Supreme Crit Justices, and Bailiff Jack, who is really not that bad. I was a player in a 5e module about defeating a dragon army. We defeated one of the dragons in a climactic battle, sending the army fleeing and earning a level up. It was the end of the session and I said that my character would want to pursue the army in the next game. My group agreed but the DM was hesitant and insisted we should return to the village we had saved. When I pressed the issue, he said that if we pursued the army we wouldn't level up as expected because you can only level up in a "safe place". I now understand that his hesitance had more to do with the flow of the module but I still think characters can level up in any circumstance. Am I right to feel resentful that the DM forced our decision by holding back a level up? I humbly await your judgment.

Katie Wilde

FYI you posted this as a reply to another comment rather than a top level, so it might not get seen! Repost maybe?

Katie Wilde

This one made me laugh twice and cry once - great submission

Sawyer Bernard

To the all mighty justices and the guy who should not have a chair I bring you the case of the of the maze in the 5th grade me and some of my friends were playing a d and d campaign in which my players would receive “goodies” like +1 to hit or something like that and when they died the boons where turned into xp towards leveling up every time they finished the dungeon or died they would respawn at the start but the dungeon would change one time I made a maze for my players I had spent three hours on and the ne of my players a friend from a long time said “NO WAY IN HELL AM I DOING A MAZE they take to long no” my question is was I wrong for making something that could have been boring or are they wrong for yelling no p.s. the maze was full of monsters and chests and the like)

Knockout

To the Supreme Crit Justices and the Bailiff Jedediah, I bring you the case of the race changing DM. I play a level 4 human fighter named Thotmire. Sometime during one of the sessions, I received a feather that the DM loosely explained “could possibly summon my deity” and nothing more. Well, during one fight with the BBEG, we were getting whomped. Our cleric and paladin were down, barbarian on 1 hp, and I was in deaths door. On my turn, I used said feather, and rolled a nat 20 on my arcana check to summon my deity. She came, she whomped, and took my back with her. She told me that I owed her my life, which I agreed to, then she put my in a stained glass painting and pulled me back out as a baring Aasimar. My question to you Justices, do I have a right to be upset? Or is the DM allowed to change my race on a whim? I humbly await your answer. Yours truly, Thotmire

Crudelise

To the Supreme Crit Justices and the guy that I think never was on 8 Bit Bookclub (Tucker?) I dm in a group of very mixed age (from like 14 to 25). I created a christmas one shot along the classical storyline of the Grinch kidnapping Rudolf, Santa therefore crashing his sleigh that became unstable, and the players (elves) having to help fix this. I had hellfire machine stats for the sleigh, had a few christmas flavoured obstacles (abominable snowman, rogue animated toys, mount crumpet, a dire wolf (Max), etc.) Now my players decided that this is wrong and not like the "real grinch story" and constantly tried to ignore all my obstacles and invent those, that are in the movie. I tried to go along (Max was a result of this) and even conceded that Grinch as the final boss must not absolutely be fought but could also be persuaded. I set the convincing DC to 30 (impossible, and get easier with turns without attacing him), which had one player mid game switch to their old character (who was a higher level bard) and make the DC check in one turn. Was I wrong to feel like this undermined the whole story and not be fine with them switching characters mid game? I humbly await your judgement

abfg616

Dear most honorable justices of the supreme crit, and bailiff of questionable shelf-life Jelq, I present to you most deferentially the case of the Eggmonger. I not-so-recently ran a heist one-shit in the roll for shoes system, for a friend and their partner (also a friend). The one shot was organized thusly-they would have one day to scope the joint, the night to plan, and another day to steal the orb. On the first day, one of my players seduced a nameless guard and brought them home, and cooked them eggs, getting all sixes on the roll. As you may well know, rolling all sixes in Roll for Shoes means you gain a new skill of greater specificity with regards to the task critted on. I, in my infinite, magnanimous wisdom decided so graciously to grant my player the boon of the skill “eggmonger” an ever so clever play on cheesemongers, fishmongers, and the like. However, my players, the dastardly bunch that they are, broke out a whole ass original cipher to encrypt their communications before me. The next day (in game), the newly minted Eggmonger and his partner in crime raided the casino, but used the Eggmonger skill to impregnate all of my npcs. Should I have worded the skill differently? Should my players have better appreciated the subtle wit of my genius wordplay? Or perhaps I ought not have opened the Pandora’s box of allowing my PCs to impregnate from range. I await ever-so-goodly your surely just ruling and certainly cruel punishment.

NoLifeKitty

May it please the court! I bring to the judges (and handsome bailiff Jake) the case of the sad old Lich. During a playing of Curse of Strahd my wife (eladrin rogue) was told of a old lich losing his memory and becoming lonely from solitude. Being a kind soul irl she immediately decided there’s no need to fight the lich and befriended it. Rolling well and convincing our Druid player to cast minor restoration to help him, she managed to befriend the lich and he walked us through the back half of a dungeon where he shared some gold and told us of the item we needed to kill Strahd. My wife told the lich she wanted to stay in touch (purely for his benefit not for a powerful ally) and our DM (my brother) immediately disagreed out of game and said he’s too powerful to be called up. My wife argued she would never call upon him for anything but company and to keep him in good spirits. Eventually the DM relented and allowed my wife 3 scrolls she could use to contact the lich. She accepted but ultimately never used the scrolls, she simply wanted a pen pal lich but got 3’single use scrolls that she’s too scared to use because she just wanted a lich friend. Should our DM have just given her a cute lich buddy or was he right to stifle this relationship?

Laurawr

Dear Honorable Judges and a stinky poopy, My husband was running Storm King's Thunder. Our party was attempting to talk down an invading Giant before the city was beseiged. The party's rogue rolled a natural 20 on a persuasion check. My husband/DM decided to use this to end the session on a cliff hanger by having the giant storm the gate before stopping short and agreeing to talk further. The next day (a DIFFERENT player than the one who crit, and one who is usually a forever DM) messaged my husband/DM saying that since the other player crit on the persuasion check that the giant should have done as we wanted and agreed to not attack instead of just agreeing to parley. My husband/DM said that just cause the other player rolled a 20, it didn't mean an auto total success on a skill check. He also specified that under these near impossible circumstances, agreeing to further negotiate was best case scenario we could have hoped for anyway. The player then said that when they DM they play skill nat 20s an auto success and he felt cheated. We later found out from other party members that he was complaining about the decision and my husband behind his back after the disagreement. Please smite him, or if you think he was fine in his actions give my husband/DM a light pat on the wrist PS. My husband/DM checked in with the player who actually rolled the 20 and she had had a great time and was excited to see how the next session played out.

Jensen D

Dear all knowing justices and the very average bailiff they keep around to remind themselves of how mighty they are. I present the case of the C-4 TPK. I tried to keep it as short as possible :( My friends and I were all players in a 5E campaign of our friends design. Myself and one friend having more experience than the other two players. During a session a few months in, one of the newer players, who was a dwarven wizard, asked a magical merchant if he had “C-4 plastic explosives” to which my DM had the merchant search through a large filing cabinet (Bruce almighty style) and presented the player with the C-4. Keep In mind this a fantasy world and there have been no other instance of such weapons. This player later used said C-4 at the end of a rescue mission to save the king of the country we were in from false imprisonment and future execution. The wizard did not use the C-4 to break down a wall or to distract guards, but rather used it just because he could while standing next to the entire party. We had just exited a staircase that led to a courtyard outside the prison when he decided to blow us all sky high. The character I played was a home brewed human warlock (named Brian) with a planetar as a patron, which allowed me a limited flying speed depending on how much mana I had. I quickly grabbed the king after passing a strength check to try and fly away with him, but the wizard had convinced my DM that the amount of C-4 he had was capable of doing as much as 20d12 damage or more with an insane blast radiance. I tried to argue against this, but the wizard had my DM convinced. In the end the entire party, along with the king, was vaporized aside from the other new player who happened to say he was further ahead than the rest of us because he’s a rogue or something. After trying, and failing, to find some fun in the situation, I packed my stuff up and said “I guess I need to find something else to do with my Thursdays” then left the session. My DM later texted us saying that he was going to mulligan the last session and we continued the campaign for a few more months as if it never happened. Some time later my friend who played the wizard mentioned that he bluffed about how powerful that C-4 was to the DM, and said that realistically it shouldn’t have been able to do that much damage compared to real C-4 Should my DM be punished for giving such an extreme and out of place item to a player, or should I have taken that 20d12 on the chin and rolled with it since we continued the campaign anyway. I throw myself at the mercy of the court!

Jeremy

Dear Crit-ically Honored Judges and “Hot Jake” - great bailiff. I present the case of my stolen plate. As a player who lives in the Fighter class I wanted to branch out to some new classes. Figured a War Domain Cleric would be a good way to dip my toes in scary spell slinging. My DM is running Avernus and my party is squishy. In the first dungeon we’re getting smoked when we came across play armor. I took it to fulfill the tank role we needed as it raised my AC to 20 with my shield. I donned the armor and become a menace to my DM and a shield to my party. I could see the fear in my DMs eyes. The next morning I awake to a text saying and I quote “Str 15 to wear plate. Woke me up in a cold sweat”But I took the movement speed reduction, but he held firm I couldn’t wear it. Was I wronged by my DM when he began to sweat thinking about my potential AC especially with shield of faith to further tank?! I graciously wait to hear your verdicts

Joy LoveLife

Noble judges and fellow esteemed acolytes, I come to you with a testimonial of the magnimity of the dice gods. After weeks of scheduling conflicts, my party of 5 level 9 PCs got together for the last session in our curse of strahd campaign. Our DM told us to prepare well, but it was likely going to be a TPK. Things were looking bleak. After facing 3 mini bosses, we came face to face with Strahd….and his army. There were like 20+ adversaries on the map. Our cleric was killed in 1 round after her circle of power was dispelled and 5 consecutive fireballs were cast at her. We were not going to be able to withstand the barrage of attacks and fireballs that stood between us and Strahd. Then it happened, the dice gods took pity on us. All of a sudden our DM could not roll for shit (he rolls in the open). The hoard of combatants could barely hit us with attacks. He changed dice, still the same. We gave him our dice, still low rolls. He switched strategies, the 17th level spellcaster started using his legendary actions to cast mind sliver on our not very intelligent rogue; the rogue was able to make almost all the saves. Still a TPK seemed imminent, with party members falling one by one, but the gods once more shone their light on us. Our downed barbarian/fighter rolled a nat 20 on his death save. He got up, disengaged, action surged and then crit on an attack against Strahd, bringing him low enough for our rogue with a held action and the sunsword to finish him. We erupted in cheers of victory, thanking the dice gods for their patronage and granting what was truly an epic moment at the end our campaign.

Garrett Wabel

Hello supreme crits and Jorf? The bailiff. sadly I know not if I confess, ask that you cast judgement or allow me to sit on the fainting couch conveniently placed in between the judges so that Caldwell can sing me sweet nothings while I cry Nevertheless I feel I have been wronged by my dice and in one case my dm I started playing D&D last December and I have been apart of three campaigns and I’ve had 3 characters permanently die but only one really bugs me my very first campaign in the first session the DM killed everyone in the party and had us regenerate through the power of chaos magic which allowed us any wondrous magical item we wanted so it being my first time playing and we were in a sea with 13 islands so I took the wondrous item the well of many worlds. This allowed us to go to any place that we had been, and we frequently robbed a thieves house that we knew was in a good part of a casino town on our final trip back the dungeon master had explained how the walls were a little bit different And the house looked more fortified than last time I was in aarakocra so I would generally fly with detect magic and warn my fellow PC’s of danger But this time after the walls had changed, there was an opening in one of the walls next to the hallway, and there was a chest on the ceiling of the room. Past the opening. I was the only one who could reach the chest, as I was the only one who could fly, but as I went into the room, three spy masters came out, and the wall closed behind me, I began to try not to die, and then two gargoyles came out, and I was dead within the first round of combat am I slighted or do my dice want me dead

Dlaamf

Hello Supreme crit justices and the Bakelif Cake, I bring you the case of the Tortle Barbarian. My brother insists that he should get roll flat on Dex saves due to the disadvantage of Shell Defense and the Advantage of Danger sense. But I believe that once he does shell defense he can’t SEE once he retreats into the shell. Your honors I crawl and scratch my way to your feet from his clutches. Does he roll flat or does he get disadvantage? I humbly rock back and forth awaiting your sentencing

Ryan

Dear honorable justices and that devilishly handsome bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of wasted time -- I'm a player in a 4 person campaign. The other week, the first 2.5 hours of our session was devoted to each of us making a pact with various deities. For my pact, as a Bard (with little access to direct attack spells and spells that do high damage), I was offered the opportunity to learn one 6th-level spell from any spell book. Since I skilled into mainly fun support and utility spells for flavor, I chose Disintegrate. After each of us accepted our pacts, we stepped directly into a semi-boss fight. When it got to my turn, I thought "this is my time to try out the new spell!" I cast Disintegrate. The DM rolled a 7 against my Spell Save DC of 14. "Yes!" I prepared to roll my damage. The DM said "wait..." and smirked. Then let me know that the baddie was using a Legendary Resistance to auto pass. My newly found pact spell that we just spent hours walking through acquiring did nothing. The turns proceeded until our melee tank pummeled the 200hp enemy to death with nothing notable coming from my PC the rest of the fight. I ended up checking a locked door and teleported to another trying to find us an exit with no luck due to poor rolls. To me that seemed like a wasted opportunity to showcase a custom ability given by the DM over the last hours of real time -- so I ask, was it a faux pas for the DM to resist the save or was it well within his rights so was just a bad use of the spell on my side?

Liam Love

Hello Supreme Court justices and the potentially honourable, potentially lowly bailiff. I bring you the case of “No Witnesses”. To sum up the backstory, I’m running my first campaign with my friends and we’ve decided to do the mines of Phandelver. The majority of our party is made up of standard characters, however our problem player is an Eladrin artificer, wielding a cursed firearm. To sum up their mentality, upon meeting the party, they refused to talk to anyone, and attempted to stealth away mid conversation and run and hide. Fast forward to the next session, the party enters the Redbrand hideout, and discovers the mother and her two children that are held captive there. After talking with them, the party goes to leave the room, but the Artificer asks to stay behind to “take care of business”. When asked, he told me, “I can’t trust these guys, what if they tell the redbrands and they end up betraying and killing us. They’re witnesses, they’ve seen our face”. The rest of the party tried to argue and stop him, but despite their efforts, he pulled out the firearm and tried to execute the mother. He missed, and was immediately restrained by the rest of the party. I ended the session here, and next session I offered the party a chance to retcon everything and move on. However the party lost all trust in one another and carried the actions of what the artificer did with them, despite the retcon. Was I correct in trying to wipe this action and move on, or should I have just let his character die and get him to roll another. I humbly await your punishment or vindication.

Tobias Baker

I apologise that not being clear enough led to a mis-trial and will now endeavour to provide enough information to resolve this case. The DM is Gemini and the wizard a pisces. We are all good friends and remain so to this day, we've had many sessions since with no issues so I may have overblown the amount of bickering. It is one of those things that both of them vehemently stick to their guns when it comes up and I wanted a resolution they would accept. To clarify only the t rex lost invisibility, no one else. And the wizard was the one complaining about the t rex losing invisibility. James was just enjoying being a dinosaur and I (the bard) enjoyed the carnage. I have received this message from the whiny wizard after they listened to the ruling: "I think my main case points are rule of cool (invisible T rex cooler than visible one, even for one round) and the ‘attack’ vs ‘cause damage’ wording. But very much not bothered because working at a swords r us would be pretty sweet" He also wanted to clarify that the barbarian was on the ground below the treehouse when he was polymorphed, not inside the treehouse. But in growing to size broke up through the treehouse

Mike

I love cases that roil the court. Well done. Two points I’ve seen. RAW you could rule the wizard shouldn’t have been able to cast polymorph since it requires seeing the target (who was invisible). But even if you rule of cool that and the trex blowing up the bandits, the wizard should have lost invisibility since they cast a spell.

Jesse Dunlap

Update for Emily and Murph. Yes the players killed him while down and were given the chance not too. Mitch I really tried to get him not to be fat bastard but unfortunately I folded. And I helped him build the character to fit fat bastard as best as I could because he wanted to be him but also be an elemental monk same as my brother while still being fat bastard. He is kinda off the deep end and unfortunately we don’t really hang out with him anymore. We have continued to play without him and they have had a lot of fun! My brother scored a tower and levels from the deck of many things and has kinda became the hero and his gf is having a ton of fun as a Druid

Jesse Dunlap

Murph auto corrected to Mitch. Your name is now Mitch

Jesse Dunlap

I can’t begin to truly explain how this guys has blown our minds!

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?

Leosocks

To the acclaimed adjudicators and J-Dog, When we rolled characters everyone's tragic backstory was tragically the same. They were all abandoned and don't know who their real parents are. I am new to DMing and am doing a campaign with friends who have never played before but are excited. We are three sessions in and while I've asked people outside what they imagine for their character going forward, they all just want to see what happens. I humbly ask is that too much work to ask of me? To co create a story together do I need more input from them, or should I let it go and see what happens while playing?

Nathan Jaimes

I prostrate myself at the feet of Dice Christs chosen extensions of his mercy and judgement. I fear I have betrayed dice Christ and my players. When I was deployed overseas I started my own game with my friends. We played very often sometimes 3 times a week. One night they begged me to play instead of going to the gym. I told them roll a nat 20 and we will play. Lo’ and behold their first roll was a nat 20. They started screaming and I was speechless. I left for the gym anyway to everyone’s disappointment and it haunts me to this day. Did I betray dice Christ and my players and can I be forgiven or have I blasphemed beyond the point of redemption. I await your mercy or righteous fury.

DragonMuhFeat

To the very official justices and Mark Riblet's less handsome twin brother. I present to you the case of the missile silo barbarian. Some years ago I was playing in a campaign based in the universe of magic the gathering. I rolled crazy high stats for my barbarian, Llanath/Lenny who ended up being completely stacked. This super jacked stacked behaviour continued when I got a god patron that I could sacrifice magic items to for permanent buffs. My dm wouldn't stop giving me stuff. I ended up getting some levels in warlock randomly, and then some gloves, and then two levels in fighter, so I could shoot around 15 Eldrich blast with an action surge. Nothing was hard, and