Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Calling for Court Cases (Patreon)

Published:
2024-01-29 17:55:02
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Greetings! Lowly-ish Bailiff Jake here to inform you that the Supreme Crit is convening this very afternoon. Please submit your brief (I beg!) case on this thread and we will bring you your due justice.

Comments

Dylan

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

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 clerghhy, 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.

Martian

Greetings oh fair and beautiful Judges and the Bailiff who is... Anyway, I bring you the case of the Drow baby Dawn. I play in a super fun game of DND that takes place in the dungeon of the Mad Mage. My character is a very serious, Batman meets Mcguyver meets Captain America type, Deep Gnome named Danzen Rubylocke. Who, despite being born sickly and even smaller than the other Deep Gnomes, managed to achieve his dream of joining the Breach Gnome Corp! He has been sent on a mission to explore Undermountain which he takes very seriously! Unfortunately, his new party of "top-siders" do not. From knocking Two Bits on every door, running head first into every trap, my Deep Gnome has become (hilariously) exacerbated by their antics. However, their chaotic feats have recently reached a new height after I missed a session. When I returned the next week, the group, with hardly contained grins, told me that I should check my inventory because they left me a surprise. A surprise it was indeed because what I saw in my inventory was a "Drow baby". Apparently, while iw as gone, the party had slain a Drow Priestess who had turned out to be pregnant! Fortunately with what I'm told was a miraculous series of medicine checks and death saving throws, they managed to save the baby. However, they thought it would be funny to charge my character with raising it! Danzen is a softy at heart and cannot abandon the poor child and has named them Dawn (they/them). However the Party does very little to help raise them! Oh illustrious Judges, I beseech you, please help this Single Deep Gnome Father get the Child support he deserves! Thank you. P.S. do any of you know how to get decent childcare in a dungeon? I had a zombie nanny (zannie) for a bit but it got squashed.

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

Fuzzboxx

Hello my Honorable Judges and the nubile Bailiff Jack I present the case of the deadbeat Dad My cousin joined my already running campaignand 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?

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.

Brooke Cruz

to the honorable judges and the bailiff who i think is a baby? I submit to the court the case of the main character syndrome. I’m in a new campaign that i found through discord that plays on campus at my college. While creating characters, a player immediately asks if he can have a phoenix as a familiar. The DM says because we’re starting at lvl 2 that that would be too strong of a familiar but he could have an egg that will hatch later in the campaign. In our first session, his character Asherah is immediately sketchy, spending money on random items and doesn’t tell the party what he’s going to do with them. (Asherah also has no concept of what money is and hands out gold to random npcs). While in a bandit’s hideout, he immediately splits off from the group and gets KOd by a booby trapped room. The DM then said that he was going to give the phoenix chick the ability to revive Asherah from death one time within the campaign once it hatched. The DM said he could use it now, but never again for the rest of the campaign. Asherah refused at first, bc he thought he would lose his phoenix in return, but the DM promised he would get the bird again at some point of the campaign. I ask the court: should the DM have followed the previously set mechanic that wasn’t even supposed to happen yet and let the player die to learn the consequences of main character syndrome or was the resurrection justified? I humbly await for your fair judgement

CARGO REAPER

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

Jared

May it please the sweetest of blue holes, the wormiest of wives and the dungeonest of masters, Also the bailiff, Jace(?), if he has so earned pleasing. My friends and I are in the process of starting a new pathfinder campaign ! My character is going to be a Catfolk druid, Vinci, whose main goal is to go around and paint the natural wonders of the world while going about the course of the campaign. In the backstory I’ve discussed with my friend, the DM, I have been staying in the campaign’s hub city with an older alchemist who is a cat lady. The last sentence of the backstory that I sent is “there are seventeen cats that live in this building” which my DM absolutely loved. He has since offered me the bone of naming these cats, and I am more happy to take the burden. Here’s where I may lose sympathy; Would it be inappropriate to name these cats after the seventeen main roles from infamous Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats. I certainly don’t want to make him feel like I don’t respect his world building, by injecting names like Mungojerrie and Skimbleshanks. But it would bring me quite a bit of joy to namedrop Mister Mistoffelees and the rest of his Cats coterie. Do I owe it to my DM to run the cat names by him or has he fallen in the sick trap of letting me room with Bustopher Jones and Jennyandots? Awaiting Jellicle Judgement in Austin

Clever Innuendo

f 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.

Skillful Ferret

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

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.

Ryan Lithgow

To the Supreme Crit Justices and NOT my nemesis, Jake Hurwitz, I bring you the case of the Jealous Boyfriend vs the Bailiff. In September 2022 my girlfriend and I went on vacation and I began showing her NADDPOD in preparation for the Toronto live show she had for some reason agreed to attend with me and my sister. Since then, she has loved your show and almost caught up - she is currently in the campaign 3 Legends of Irondeep arc. Consistently, she finds Jake's characters to be her favourites and says it's because he has a "sexy voice", which is obviously ridiculous. Unfortunately, she still hasn't heard Mavid Vantasmo which I hope will cure her of this affliction. Please, justices, rule in my favour: punish my girlfriend to listen to Twilight Sanctorum, and punish the foolish bailiff however you see fit for forcing me into my jealous rage.

Darkrisky

The Daddy Killing Patron To the incredibly badass judges and the plain bad bailiff Jared, I give you the case of the patron-less daddy killer. There’s a lot to this case so I will keep it as brief as possible. I played a sea elf fathomless warlock of a noble background with a surfer/stoner vibe and a distrust of authority. She’s at a school to get away from her overprotective parents who sent her there with a necklace of sending. (I have explicitly said to my DM I am excited to play this class and that I did not want an evil patron.) During their adventures, my character was given a flute by an evil entity. Not wanting the responsibility, she destroyed it. As she did, her patron began to scream into her head something about freedom and “destroying all the sea elves”. Concerned, my character decides to use her necklace of sending to call her dad to ask if he knows anything about her patron. When she contacts her dad in a FaceTime-y way, her dad screams at her that she has doomed her whole city by destroying this flute. Turns out that destroying the flute resulted in her patron being released from the plane her city elders were keeping it. A tentacle then rose from the water and skewered her father. (Keep in mind my character saw all this in a “Facetime”.) My character ran to the headmaster of the school to get help and he opened a portal to her home city which was being destroyed by my character’s patron. Suddenly, my patron got sucked into the sky without any explanation. My DM then turns to me and says I’ve lost all my warlock levels and had to choose a new class! He stood there smiling at me waiting for my answer. He was surprised when I said my character killed herself and then I quit the campaign. He quit DMing this campaign after this because he “got bored”. So I ask this of you judges, was I wrong to be miffed and should have waited to see where the cool storyline he supposedly had planned went or did I have every right to be upset? I await your humble ruling. PS sorry if this confusing. I had to condense a lot.

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.

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. 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 a year 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 apologized afterwards). The wizard sometimes takes hits so I don’t have to, and the monk has stopped using evasion to draw hits away. To add insult to injury, we all watched the DND movie together 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

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?

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.

Noah Goodman

Deacons of the Dice Christ 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.

Chad L

May it please the court: 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 wrap things up, and enjoy this feeling of completing our campaign, 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? I await your judgement.

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.

MikeAllenZ (MAZ Presents Personal)

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

Tim Healy

To the most exalted justices and the bailiff who bends the lowliness spectrum into a Möbius strip, I present to you the Case of the Tubthumping Team Cleric Abuse. My party is currently in the midst of a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign, and they had just survived a particularly nasty battle with a group of Ice Trolls. Providing an adequate challenge to my team of 6 extremely tactical and collaborative players often requires finesse, but they were definitely looking pretty rough at the end of this challenging fight. We took a brief break when combat ended, and when I returned to the table with a drink I found them all giggling amongst themselves. They turned expectantly to the Grave Cleric, our group’s infamously Caldwellian low-roller, who announced that he would like to bonk several of the party members on the head with his warhammer and knock them down to 0 HP. He explained that he wanted to cast Prayer of Healing, reasoning that his Circle of Mortality subclass feature would allow all of the unconscious PCs to restore the maximum amount on the dice. I was completely blown away, but despite the insanity of this play it seems to be buttoned up under rules as written. I okayed these shenanigans in the moment, since multiple characters were already on death’s door anyway, but I fear for a future where they may start beating on each other like deranged Looney Tunes when they’re in the red just to max out their healing potential. Was I a fool to permit these shenanigans, or was I justified in allowing such a wacky but creative exploit under the circumstances? I’m hoping that the math works out in my favor more often moving forward, since it likely won’t be worth intentionally getting knocked down just to get up again rather than simply rolling to heal, unless they’re already so close to death that it’s worth securing the maximum rather than gambling on the dice. Either way, I humbly await your judgment. P.S. By the end of the session they had managed to piss off an Ancient White Dragon, so at least in this particular case I feel like they’re going to need all the health they can get for next time.

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.

Extremely High Elf

To the honorable Justices and Murph's very best friend, Jake. Today I lay my case at your door to ask for judgment. For various reasons, most of the characters I play can't read (Irish Gaston, devotee of a blind god, outlander bumpkin, dyslexic drag racer, etc.) Not on purpose, but it's kinda fun. Recently, I decided to play a Jewish Rune Knight in a campaign in modern day New York, and the DM has been very insistent that I still somehow can't read. Like, not allowing me to make perception checks for things that involve reading, and a lot of comments about how "most of us" read something. But, like, this character can read. It's modern day, he's Jewish, he's a Rune Knight. It bothers me more than it should but I don't think I'm wrong.I dunno. I accept all punishments. Please. Punish me Murph. I'll beg.

Denver Studebaker

Between sessions my cousin broke up with her boyfriend and they were both in my campaign. She insisted she would be fine playing with him, but I think she was trying to just not be a bother. I went behind her back and asked her now ex boyfriend to not come to the game anymore, am I in the wrong? He didn’t seem to have a problem and told me he was on the fence anyway and I just didn’t tell her or the other players about me asking him not to come, the first session without him was yesterday and it was fine.

Haley P

if it pleases the court and the esteemed bailiff rake, I submit a case of fratricide. 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 describing yanking on my characters beard. I told him to stop bc she got mad and he continued to tell me he would do it again, so I said I’d fight him if he pulled her beard one more time. He pulled my dwarf’s beard and…. I swung 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. Should he have heeded my warning, or was I in the wrong for murdering my brother?

Jon Snider

To the dogmatic church and dungeon docent herself, High Priestess Axford I bring to you today not a confession, but a grievance. I am a forever dm and had the first chance to play in years when one of my PCs decided to run Dark Dice's Domain of the Nameless God for us. Spelljammer had recently come out so I created a lunar dragonborn (reflavored white dragonborn – so sick) as a twilight domain cleric who was completely moon themed, his holy symbol a moon rock, little spectral floating moon rocks for the light cantrip, etc. After a few sessions of poor rolls, I decided to take High Priestess Axford’s advice and cleanse my dice in the moonlight of the first full moon of 2023. My character being moon themed, everything was perfect. I set my dice out when the moon was brightest, highest value facing up so they can learn. Reinvigorated with celestial grace, I felt Atrus ready to take on anything. The hubris.. The first session after the full moon, I did not roll a single check or saving throw above a 10. Over the next few sessions, Atrus slipped into insanity via the madness rules from the DMG, and ultimately succumbed to the horror of the Nameless God being birthed into the world. While fleeing the sight of a ritual to bring the God back, my dm gave us a choice: do you flee or do you turn back to look? After everything that led to this, Atrus could only turn back. The dm asked for a wisdom saving throw and i rolled a natural 1 with wisdom being my highest stat as a cleric. Completely broken, Atrus sat down and laughed at the inevitably of everything as the rest of the party fled. This also led to another PC death where the bard of our group tried to drag Atrus with him but also rolled a natural 1 on his wisdom save. In the end, it was a beautiful scene in which the bard and I and passed on from the material plane and into another, where Atrus met his lunar dragon mother who he had only seen in visions. I lost my own mother in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic so this scene was especially heart wrenching and cathartic for me. Years later my faith in dice christ is still shaken and I am cursed by that which inspired what was my favorite character of all time. Can I ever heal? Can I ever trust again? Has dice christ truly forsaken me or am I another Job or Jonah or that one monk who rolled 7 nat 20 dex saves?

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?

Jamjam

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

MikeAllenZ (MAZ Presents Personal)

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

Eric Pennington

Howdy to the always benevolent supreme crit judges and co host of Jake and Amir, Jacob. I was DMing for my long time college buddy’s that have played s few times (3 time exact and I have DMed all of them) the sessions were great and the guys get real into roleplay after they’ve had a swig of crickwater. But this last session (the 4th), at around the 2 hour mark, the barbarian of the group said he wanted “lore” music. At first it was okay cus it was just lofi LOTR music and it was quiet enough that it wasn’t distracting but about ten minutes later it quickly turned into Nicki manaj and trippie red. I asked numerous time over the course of the next 6 hours if we could turn the music down or off and he refused or begrudgingly did it just to turn it back up again. It was super hard to narrate for them and some of my buddies were clearly not being able to hear me. Eventually I just got fed up with it and called the session but like I said 6 hours later. What do I do next time this happens.

Jesse Flanagan

To the wise, lovely Judges and that handsome court slut, Jake, I present The Case of the Tortured Tortle. During a campaign that is still ongoing, us players had to cross a deep chasm via a 200-foot-long rickety bridge. 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, 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 help, a huge cyclops attacked the party. While we all addressed the new threat, the NPC travelling with us went to the collapsed bridge and started shaking it and laughing while Lanu hanged 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 retreated into his shell on the way down but still ended up taking 117 bludgeoning damage. After the party had defeated the cyclops, the yeti jumped up from the chasm holding Lanu’s unconscious body. Despite having retreated into 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.

CatTorpedo

May it please the honourable justices and anyone else who happens to be in the room at the time, I bring the case of the reused PC. I used to DM a game for a group of six friends, which I ended when I became too busy. A few months later, one of my players wrote on the group chat about how they had been using their PC from the game in a playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3. They were very excited, showing screenshots and mods they had used. However, one of the other players seemed mad. They complained that the character wasn't canon to the Forgotten Realms and shouldn't have been used, and that the repeated use of the same character harms the development and story of the campaign as a whole. I was personally supportive of the player using their PC as a video game character, but can the court rule whether using the same character across multiple campaigns and media is just?

G-Money

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

Tails with really supple birthing hips

To the great clergy of dice Christ himself, I come to thee with a solemn confession. I ended my first campaign prematurely and have been cursed since then unable to start another. as the previous sentence says, I am a DM and ran my first ever homebrew campaign that lasted about six months before having to prematurely end with a TPK, and subsequent death of the world due to a plague which was prompted by my IRL moving out of town. It was an amazing session and some of my favorite story building and I feel as though I did my five players, a great injustice by any of the campaign in such a brutal way ( the entire party was overtaken by hoard of zombies and plague victims and died, while the eyes of a new God were being opened) however it’s been a year and a half since then and after multiple attempts to start a new campaign in my new town I have fallen short both online and in person I fear this may be due to dice cursing since I have been a bad DM. I come to thee seeking absolution and the chance to once again, and gain diced Christ blessing in the if a new campaign.

Andrew Fournier

The case of the never ending session May it please the oh so honorable and quite fashionable judges, and the sensual bailiff Jake. I am a first time player who wanted to get into the game after watching d20 and NADDPoD, and was excited to start a home brew campaign with my friends of many years through discord. The problem started when they would notify us every single day for a session, where I was the only one with a full time job and therefore couldn’t attend a dnd session 7 days a week. It got worse when I missed a session and it turns out it was a session with a real life 10 hour boss fight that lasted until 5:30am. I couldn’t commit to playing a session every single day, nor could I commit to 10 hour boss encounters, so I had to withdraw from the campaign, so I ask you honorable judges, was I in the wrong for leaving my friends dnd game, or are they too hooked on the campaign? (Not really pertinent to the case but I was able to play a tiefling skinned as a half orc tiefling that was a wild magic barbarian. I was super excited to play it but now I have to find a new group to try him out in)

Jack Francis West

Your Supreme Excellences who are not named Jake and Bailiff Jake who is named Jake. I present the case of CRIMES AGAINST GOOFMANITY. In my first ever campaign, I played a disgraced beauty pageant queen and my best friend Jordan was playing an idiot paladin named Godfre the Perfect. We were all newbies so the vibe was goofy and chill. Then the DM introduced a veteran player, whose min/maxed homebrew Half-Giant storm barbarian quickly de-goofify the game with boring giant lore and shifted the tone of the table (he also punched my PC in the face!). In protest, Godfre killed a random prisoner (in order to liven things up) and was sent to jail in-game, forcing Jordan to improvise an elaborate series of new characters for an entire session: - 3 sisters, appearing consecutively after the former would die in a random rockslide by the DM for being annoying. - and my favourite, Cherie the Body Percussionist, whose rhythmic slapping underscored a very dramatic scene for the veteran’s PC all while spouting her catchphrase “sometimes you have to make your own music!” Jordan was kicked from the group that had originally supported his comedic tone and I soon followed. It became a huge source of trauma around D&D for him. I lay our goofs before the court. ❤️

JC

To the justices of the supreme crit and the bailiff who I wish many nat ones upon, I have a case regarding a perhaps unlawful reroll. In a campaign I'm in, I am playing a mute goblin named candy who was attacking an enemy with her spear. It had been three rounds of combat and I had not landed a hit, even once with advantage and an added D4. Finally, on the fourth round I rolled the dice, praying to Dice Christ that I might hit. The dice was about to fall off the table when I saw it was teetering on a five. I debated letting the dice fall over the edge so I could avoid another miss but I decided to be honest and block the die with my hand to prevent it from falling. To my surprise, the die landed on an 18 and I was ecstatic. The DM, noticing that it has touched my hand, called for a reroll. I, not wanting to argue, did reroll, getting a 2. Justices, should my roll still have counted? Or is my DM right to have called for a reroll?

Courtney F.

Bless me Dice Disciples for I have sinned. It has been 20 tepidly tormented years since the events of this confession. At the tender age of 15, I inadvertently ended a campaign when I quit because....well, essentially because my fighter wasn't cool enough. I can recall neither the rolls nor the reasons leading up to my leaving, but I remember the breaking point well: when MY strength check failed to save an ally teetering on the edge of a cliff but the FUCKING WIZARD pulled it off. I couldn't take the embarrassment. I left and the campaign ended. Dice Christ has walked beside me through these past 20 years when I have played any other class but a fighter. In my most recent campaign when we hit level 16, I - a full Life Cleric - briefly contemplated multiclassing into Fighter...and then the DM abruptly ended the campaign citing familial duties. Oh wise Disciples of Dice Christ herself, please, tell me, when will I have paid my dues for my 15 year old table flippin' 'tude? When do I get to be.. A super bad ass fighter in a D&D campaign?

Jason Rodriguez

To the hands of the esteemed justices and the Sweet Blue Hailiff Bake. I bring forward the case of the "not at full potential" final session. I played a dragonborn acrobat rogue, echo knight multiclass at level 20 for the final session of a homebrew campaign, (class levels not important). Weeks before, the DM gave me a homebrew ability that let my echo be a large platinum dragon. My pc was corrupted at one point as well as his echo. It would turn on the party if I couldn't control it and it was more powerful corrupted. The corruption was flushed form my pc's body eventually, but when he tried to summon his echo dragon, it didn't work, meaning the rest of his subclass features were not usable. Long story short, I didn't go into the final battle at full power, despite rolling 7 nat 20s in total, I felt like I could have done more. Was the DM right to take away my abilities, or am I just being a butt hurt player who got what he was deserved?

Tessa R.

To the Justices of the Court who are looking gorgeous today, and to Jake: I play in a home game with a self-described hardass DM. I enjoy the campaign quite a lot, including most of the "hardass" elements, except for one rule. When the party wants to make a perception or investigation check, history check for research, etc the DM only allows one player to roll. This means that I only ever make history or arcana checks (which I'm proficient in) or occasionally persuasion checks if the warlock is in another scene. All I want to do is roll a perception check, but with my +0 perception and a ranger and monk in the party, I fear I will never experience the rush of looking around a room for goodies or traps. Does this seem like an un-fun rule or am I just being a whiny player? I humbly await your judgement.

Paul Deichmann

To the honorable justices and their amanuensis baby, I present the case of the sleepy baby. I play in a weekly game that began during the pandemic, online. It’s been great, and we’re three, almost four years in. It’s the dream. Only problem: we start at 7:00, and they’re often still going until 1 or 2 am. I teach improv to children in the early morning, and have recently turned 30–all to say I’ve been literally falling asleep on the call around 11 the last few weeks. The DM messaged me about it, and when I explained, he said “chug a coffee or something, we can’t have you missing half the sessions” Am I right in feeling that a 6 hour session is… too long? Has my dream game transformed into a nightmare, or am I just too old to kick it with the cool cats anymore. I humble myself before your judgment, saluting from my big silly toque, sleepy time tea in hand. Paul

JakesRamenShop

Honorable, beautiful, and inspiring judges, and I believe that’s everyone, I stand before you to present a grievance involving my former Dungeon Master, who attempted to disrupt the climax of my inaugural one-shot adventure. For roughly two years, my D&D group engaged in a campaign until our Dungeon Master expressed burnout from the role and ceased operations. Seizing the opportunity, I volunteered to assume the mantle and host thematic one-shots coinciding with holidays such as Christmas and Easter. During my very first one-shot, themed around Mrs. Claus kidnapping Santa in an attempt to cancel Christmas, the players had just vanquished Mrs. Claus. As I described her frantic and manic state, screaming at the party, a perception check revealed a mysterious black shroud, which Mrs. Claus recognized and began to plead with. It was at this critical juncture that my predecessor interrupted, suggesting he perform a 'funny' to shoot Mrs. Claus in the middle of my explanation, thereby undermining the narrative's tension in the moment. I said no and they looked upset that they couldn’t do the “funny” and then the shroud promptly “disposed” of Mrs. Clause. I seek your esteemed opinion: Is my frustration with my former DM's interjection during this pivotal moment of my one-shot reasonable, or am I acting like a little whiny piss baby? Your judgment is eagerly anticipated.

Bubba in the Bay

To the bewitching bailiff and the beguiling judges, I bring to you the case of the jumper. I was playing in a 5e game set in the city of Waterdeep. The party’s hideout was being invaded by a rival faction we PO’d and were defending our home. My character Radish was a kenku warlock/bard who was less combat based and more social interaction focused. During the encounter Radish was fending off goons coming up a set of stairs that led to the back of the house. He fired off an eldritch blast at the first set of goons on the stairs and I had him walk over the ledge to fall on the remaining goons in hopes of knocking at least one or two prone. Admittedly I would always try to max out the moves I could make in a turn because we had a player who would takes ages to make a move during battle so I had plenty of time to prep. The DM would sometimes allow my shenanigans but this time he pulled the plug. I argued that it was within my movement of 30 ft and knocking them prone would merely slow them down plus I was ok with potential damage. After going back and forth a few times I conceded to keep the peace and stayed atop the stairs. I plead to the court, was Radish within his 5e rights to take that step over the edge and fall on top of evil making its way into our sacred home or was the DM correct to cut out my Tom foolery?

Chazz

To the honorable justices and dutiful bailiff Cake Hogdick. Recently I was running a mall themed Christmas one shot for my sister and her friends who wanted to try out Dungeons & Dragons. The players were a dragonborn barbarian that worked at Spencer’s Gifts, a human cleric that worked at Wetzel’s Pretzels, and an elf bard that was a model for Ambercrombi and Fitch. Solving the murder of a mall santa, defeating a bunch of yule lads (shout out to drawfee), and preventing the second coming of Krampus the one shot ended with the real Saint Nick arriving and offering the players a single Christmas wish. It was the end of the one shot and it didn’t really matter at this point so why not. Things immediately went sideways when one of the players (Wetzel’s Human) asked if they could wish for anything. When I said that there was no limit to the power of a Christmas wish, they wished that her boyfriend Greg (the Spencer’s Gift Dragonborn) was locked in a closet and brutally assaulted by Hyenas. They didn’t wish for the player’s character to be assaulted by hyenas they wished for the player to be. The game was wrapping up and I didn’t have the time or energy to unpack why hyenas or why she would say that. So I narrated that their character is filled with the knowledge that in a different reality Greg was being viciously mauled by Hyenas. Greg asked if I was allowed to do that and I shrugged, not entirely sure. Justices I ask you, was I wrong to “yes and” and grant this wild wish? Or should I have forced my player to ask for a different wish for this one shot. (PS I’m the guy from the LA live show with the cat armor case, that player was not involved in this)

villager72

Ignoring the Plot To the ever so lovely judges Emily, Murph and Caldwell and... the other guy, I present to you the ignoring the plot case. I have been running a campaign for about a year now, but have been working on it since 2019, this has been a major project that I've been working on, and it's been a big deal. I invited several friends to join, who I thought would fit the vibe, and be perfect. However, recently two out of the four players have been practically ignoring the events of session and this isn't the first time. I've mentioned it to the group before, but recently we had a major session where the group explored a labyrinth which took me and my other friend a whole day to prep. We use discord so we are all on call, but these two are together in the same room which would usually be fine but they often mute and chat missing major notes and plot points. This entire maze session led to them ignoring puzzles and rooms and belittlingly other players who were trying to explore. At the end of this session there was a major campaign moment where a character met their cousin who they had no idea existed and the response was "okay?" from one of the ignoring players. To reward the two that were engaged I gave them a free feat of their choice and feel as though I should begin shaving down the other two people's plot lines as they do not appreciate the campaign as much as others. I humbly await your thoughts on this situation and what I should do going forward.

AJ Reid

Dear benevolent and all seeing judges and that other guy who I seem to forget the name of (Johnny?), I present to you the case of animal obsession. I am a first time DM running a campaign with six of my closest friends. Things were going really good for the first two to three sessions of my campaign, with my players (most of which are first time players) seeming to really enjoy the adventures I’ve wrote for them. We switch off the location that we gather at for sessions every time between me and one of the other players who have a place big enough for everyone, and one important thing to note is that we both have cats. One of my players during the third session seemed to decide that the cat in the room was more important than our session, and would get up anytime I wasn’t focused on them to go play with the cat, sometimes missing an hour or more of story details or even combat. It’s extremely frustrating for me who put hours into writing this campaign and the other players who are actually invested. When confronted he responded along the lines of “say please!” When we were all at the point of begging him to stay at the table for more than five minutes. At the end of the day am I being too harsh on my player by calling him out? Or are we all in the right to get verbally frustrated that he is not participating like everyone else? I will accept any punishment deemed necessary (PS I was at the Boston live show and it was amazing!)

Dave 3D Art

To the honourable judges of the supreme crit, and the wicked smart Matt Damon-esque bailiff. I recently started playing in a game of Cyberpunk Red. It is going well, but I have come to realize that we are playing a thinly veiled version of the DnD campaign "Curse of Strahd." Everyone is having fun, but this feels illegal. Wishing you, and all of your choombs a preem day.

Kate Kimmis

Oh great Crit Court, I submit to you the case of Sad Tweety the Aarakocra I have had a campaign for several months with friends that had gotten really close to unveiling the BBEG and I thought we would in the next session. A mutual friend has gotten into D&D and asked if he could join the campaign. Knowing he’s really goofy, I told him it’s a pretty serious campaign and it was at a really important point, but if he thought that sounded fun, we could let him roll a character. After assuring the whole table he’d join the serious tone of the game, he unveiled his character: Tweety McTweetface, the Aarakocra. We all expressed our concerns, but he assured us it was just a funny name. The party quickly began spying on the BBEG to try to learn who he was. After passing a group stealth check, Tweety declares he wants to “throw eggs at the guy so he’ll turn around” insisting at as a bird, he would carry eggs. I said he could try, but the BBEG is very powerful. The table was concerned, but Tweety insisted. This prompted a fight with the BBEG in which Tweety tried to use disguise self and bawked like a chicken. To avoid a TPK and let the party play how they would like, I allowed everyone else to stay hidden and had the BBEG cast banishment on Tweety out of annoyance. Tweety became sad and dejected the rest of the day and later than evening said he thought D&D could be fun, but I wouldn’t let him be creative and now he’s not sure he wants to ever play again. Was I wrong to try and keep the party alive and curbed his creativity, or was I correct to try and save the entire party from a TPK with a BBEG they weren’t ready, and didn’t want to fight? I humbly await your judgement.

lucy pickle

May it please the ever awe-inspiring judges and the other one, I think it was Jessica. I present the case of the slo-mo wizard. I’ve been playing in a campaign with some childhood friends for a few months now. Recently, one of the players invited another one of our old friends to join our table. The player is a lovely person and we flow very nicely as an adventuring party. They chose to be a wizard and not a new player by any means. The trouble is that every time it’s their turn in combat they take about 5 minutes of uncomfortable silence to chose a spell to cast. Recently, I mentioned to the player before a session that maybe they could plan what they were going to do on their turn before their initiative came up in the order because, sometimes, waiting for them to choose a spell brought the energy down at the table. They got very quiet and gave a curt response, saying that they could do that. Then, when it was their turn During the first battle of the session, they cast a spell that was entirely unhelpful and unrelated to the situation. When asked why they did that, they said “Oh, I was told I need to think faster so I went with the first one I saw…my bad.” After that, the energy at the table was tense for the rest of the session. Judges, was I wrong to ask our wizard to plan ahead for their turn or should I have let them continue to pick good spells, although very slowly, during initiative? I prostrate myself before your tremendous wisdom and await your judgement.

Adam Giebner

Forgive me Dice Christ, for I have sinned against my fellow DM. 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 game. 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 campaign 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. I brought up the idea of inviting him to the Wild West, but the other players are worried he would bring down the game because of his differing play style. This secret game has gone on for MONTHS. 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 supple hands.

RustandSilver

To the almighty overseers of Dice Christ's mortal influence on this realm, I come to you with a confession that I believe may have forever tainted my luck with dice. In one of the first campaigns I had ever played in, I was a cocky and overconfident dragonborn. While the party was resting, I decided to go off alone. The DM was sure to give me the patented 'are you sure?' sign, but I was sure. I wanted to see what was beyond and couldn't wait. I wiggled my way under some rocks and found myself best by skeletons, and although I fought valiantly, I died in one round because I was not very good at the game or fighting yet. Expecting to make a new character, the GM instead handwaved it, and said I just had never gone. From this moment, I feel my luck with dice has been tainted, as I rarely roll well, although not as bad as Murph. Oh mighty speakers of Dice Christ, I beg for forgiveness if possible, and if not, at least some form of repentance I can perform.

Ellie

Dear Justices and the magnificent Jake, I write to you on behalf of my fiance and the crimes that have been committed against him by a DM. A few years ago my fiance, who knows truly so much about dnd and often politely doesn't cause trouble, made a fire genasi druid grandpa and he was beloved by all. However, after fighting his avatar of death (from the deck of many things) his DM asked if he wouldn't mind actually letting his character take the fall so that someone else could hop in the campaign for a few weeks and then his character would be back with some abilities. This was on a zoom call, just the two of them, but I was in the room because it was my house. My fiance, being the good southern boy he is, agreed. But then weeks went by. Months. This other person? Never joined. My fiance made a new character who was similarly discarded in a manner that seemed cruel and unwarranted. This campaign is wrapping up in the coming weeks and my fiance wants to punish this DM by not holding back on anything but he feels that would be mean. I humbly ask that you either encourage my future husband to at last put this DM in his place or punish me for being petty towards a DM I just don't like.

Kay

To the competent Judges and Gemmas dad, I bring a confession of realized guilt! About six months ago, I submitted a case (Heinous Homebrew) about my DM introducing day-long short rests and week-long long rests. If you recall, the judges' advice was to "use something in the book", and sentenced him to a week of bad sleep on a boat. However, after showing my friend the case, he told me that those types of rests are actually IN THE BOOK as a variant rule called "Gritty Realism". Your honors and sweet baby Jake, I confess a mistrial and admit guilt, and stand at your feet, ready to accept any punishment granted.

YaniShadelynn

May it please the Supreme Crit Justices and that person Bailey Jakes they keep mentioning (is that a pop star or something??) I bring to you the case of the randomly rolled traitor. My long-time online friend and former forum mod coworker is starting a new campaign, where the party is wanted by tje law. I decided to play a character i had stashed for a while, a sweet paladin with a mysterious necklace they've worn their whole life that they can't take off. During session 0, our DM assigned us each 2 secret numbers. He then rolled 2 numbers and announced them, saying that whoever got one of those assigned should be quiet and wait. I got one of them, and he messaged me. Turns out my character was going to be a traitor, giving away our location to the local authorities. This was decided by the random role. This meant that my character was going in a completely different trajectory and I needed to find a justification for why a sweet person would do this. Justices, I know he's a reasonable person, and he'd listen to me if I spoke up. But I normally love playing duplicitous characters (i already have ideas for how this character may develop), and I'd hate to have a confrontation over a damn dice game, especiallysince ill enjoy the PC either way. Still, I feel like treachery isn't something you should spring on someone randomly, especially after they have a personality picked out. Was I wronged, or is this the only way to have traitor PCs in dnd? I await your judgement.

shannon

To the honourable justices and also that very nice guy Jacques standing in the corner: I present to you the case of The DM vs The Healing Bullet. We were in the final fight of our campaign against the bbeg, a homebrewed dragon/level 20 wizard statblock, where we were racing him through a series of our old battle maps to reach a wishing star first. At the time of the incident, the stakes were high: my wizard and our cleric were both in death saves and the artificer was next in initiative. The artificer had a healing bullet she can use in her gun to heal from a distance, and rolled to shoot the cleric with healing. She rolled a natural twenty on her healing bullet shot. We argued that because of the critical hit, the healing bullet’s effects should have also been doubled and the cleric should have received twice the dice worth of health, similar to a weapon with a secondary damage effect. However, the dm didn’t let us double the healing, saying, “just because you shot her with a gun really good doesn’t mean there’s more potion in there.” While the cleric thankfully was able to pull off a mass heal not long after that which turned the tides of the fight, some of us, myself and the artificer especially, believe that the healing should have doubled as a crit, but the dm stands by his ruling. We did defeat the bbeg, but it was a hot topic of discussion during our post game short rest. Judges, I ask you, in the final session of an amazing campaign: should we have had a crit heal, or was the dm right to not double the dice?

daisy

esteemed justices as well as the other guy, i present to you the case of the ill-deserved illness. i play a paladin, and was recently hit with the contagion spell during an encounter. i argued that the spell should have no effect on me, as my divine health feature renders me immune to disease, but the dm countered that that feature is for "the cold and malaria and stuff" rather than spell effects. i conceded, not wanting to slow the session down too much, but i maintain that divine health was designed with things like contagion in mind. should i have fought harder, or was i right to lay down and accept my case of the sniffles? i humbly await judgement.

inky

hello supreme crit justices and murph’s acquaintance. i’m here today to present the case of the stolen nat 20. i was playing in a campaign as a bard with my four friends and i often hosted the sessions at my house (this information is relevant later). we were in the midst of the final fight against the BBEG when i rolled a natural 20!! the table freaked out as i do not roll well but right as i rolled, our food delivery arrived, and since it was my house i got up to go and get the food from the door and when i came back my dm informed me that as i was gone our paladin who was next in the initiative decided to just use MY crit roll for his attack and KILLED the final boss with how good his smites became from my crit. i voiced my frustration at this and was shut down by my dm who told me that “the paladin had better use for it than you did as a bard”. justices, was i in the right to be upset that my rarely rolled 20 was stolen from me from my paladin or were they right to take my roll? p.s, i was never reimbursed for the food that we ordered.

Paul Westmore

May it please the high crit and justices.... My name is Jank, this is a bit of a different kind of case, the case of the long running joke. My friends and I put on a small show where we talk about fantasy books, D&D books, nerdy movies, etc... I really like doing this show with them and feel like we all work together to make it very funny and engaging. However they have this running gag where they pretend that I have never been on the show before, and at the top of each new episode, they introduce me as a first time guest. I should say that they did do a version of the show without me for a little while, but I really feel like we are all part of it and it is starting bug me that they razz and tease me each time pretending that I am a new guest. Should I just keep playing along with the joke or should I seek new friends? ... thank you for your consideration and insights, sincerely - hurt feelings

BuckyBoy

To the honorable justices Murphy, Tanner and Axeford - as well as a bailiff, who is either in high regard or lowly - depending on the day. I run a homebrew campaign (lamely named Soul&Steel) that saw my PCs chase a runaway bad person / background-related NPC to a frozen cavern atop a mountain. Inside the cavern they faced many challenges, including a remmorhaz. After successfully tracking down their bounty, they went to leave only to discover the agents of the big bad waiting outside astride eagles. My PCs, being a clever bunch, remembered they had found oil of slipperiness and proceeded to lube up the remmorhaz’s corpse to bobsled down the mountain. Panicking, I tried googling ‘bobsled speed’ to discovers it was really fast. I tried to average some things in my head and decided on a round speed of ~50 feet for their improvised contraption - initiating a chase scene with the Eagle mounted baddies. In my haste, I had forgotten one of my PCs is a monk and could walk faster than this. The PCs still hound me about this flub. So I ask - was I wrong to rule a bobsled slower than their friendly monk? Or were the PCs too intent on fast forwarding the encounter. Humbly yours, Buck Nasty

Alex W

To the supreme and infallible justices of the Crit and Baliff Jelsica, I come confessing my sins, as I may have robbed one of my PCs. I ran a Christmas one shot for my two sisters and parents, where they played as the iconic Christmas characters Blitzen, Hermey the Elf, the Heat Miser, and John McClane. To get them into the role play, I gave a point of inspiration to each iconic line from their characters they were able to naturally work into the conversations. However, I feel as though I robbed Blitzen, who in nearly all media has little to no lines. Blitzen ended up only getting 1 point of inspiration, while the rest ended up with at least 3. Forgive my sins, and I hope that I did not rob Blitzen enough to be excommunicated from the church of Dice Christ.

Sam Ross

Forgive me RNGesus, I have sinned against Dice Christ. I run games for a middle school after-school program, my players are all 12-14 and mostly don't know what they're doing but are excited to play. A new player was at the game this week, running a very complicated Druid build that he just didn't know how to optimize, and was getting sad seeing the other tiny murderhobos do tons of damage in a fight. He decided to try something creative, throwing a Produce Flame at a cave ceiling to drop icicles on a group of monsters. I told him that if he connected with the hit (a low 10) then 1d6 Icicles would fall and cause damage. He hit, and I rolled... a 1. In a moment of weakness, not wanting to tell this sad kid only one icicle fell, I lied and said I had rolled a 3, leading to a much splashier amount of damage, but this damage was a lie, it was a sin. Tell me how to make up to Dice Christ so that I may be forgiven.

Luna-Azalea

To the all powerful bishops and whatever Jake is at this point I come with great sorrow, a sin that I feel I must confess During my first ever D&D game my character had died and I made a new one, during first fight this new character that my party members started they decided to run from the fight without warning me. Once they where falling from the window I was hit and I should have gone down, but I instead said that I fell to 1 hit point where I then bailed out on my turn. I ask the church today for forgiveness for this sin against the fate of Dice Christ for not taking the damage he rolled for me to take

Randy Pillay

Dearest impressive and honorable Justices and that lil guy Jork, We had a party of 4 and our Eldritch Knight wanted to get a better sword. In an effort to get a discount with the Blacksmith, we were tasked to obtain ‘magical’ iron and obsidian from a fire-creature infested volcano. During the side-quest, my arcane archer rogue ended up going down at the volcano and was dragged along by the group until somebody at town would be able to revive me. About 5 miles from returning to town and completing the mission, the Eldritch Knight remembered he could recall his sword and did it, which was technically stealing the sword back. I dropped an audible “what the fuck” and the others had similar sentiments. I’m not sure if he picked up on our annoyance or had legitimate reasoning, but he ended up quitting the campaign too a couple sessions after. So I guess my question is: did we have a right to be annoyed or did we push him away by kinda over reacting?

AG

To the esteemed Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner... and the cool dude sitting off to the side--I present the case of the brash bard who dove into the time mirror. I play in an online game and my party was exploring the ruins of an abandoned civilization. In an old library, we came across a smooth pool of water on the wall, essentially a liquid mirror that, in its reflection, showed the same room we were in, only with the the braziers lit while they weren't on our side of the mirror. We were able to deduce that this mirror was a reflection of the past but unable to figure out anything more, our tiefling bard decided to tie a rope around himself and jump in, something even I, playing a character who possesses little forethought, felt was a bad idea given where we were. Our DM had the bard's player roll a d10 which we later found out was the number of years the bard had spent alone in the void of the mirror, even though he was pulled out in what felt to everyone else like only a few seconds after he went in. Also the player rolled a 9 so, the bard aged 9 years, going from age 20 to 29. The bard's player took issue with this during the session but dropped the matter because the session was still going. The day after, when I opened our party's discord chat, I saw that the player and the DM had been sending multi-paragraph, sometimes all-caps messages at each other, the correspondence between the two going back and forth across multiple hours. From what I gathered, the player was pissed at our DM for many reasons including: being mad his character had aged and the DM not allowing a retcon, being mad that the DM hadn't given an "Are you sure you want to do that?" beforehand, being mad that the DM wouldn't guarantee an immediate in-game solution to undo the aging and wouldn't explain to the player his reasoning, and he felt it was our DM's job to make the game fun and was no longer doing so for him specifically. Ultimately, our DM attempted to compromise and gave the player a free Greater Restoration from an NPC but the player still didn't feel that was enough. The player was eventually asked to leave our campaign (shortly after his grandmother had died, I might add) but his feud with our DM haunts me to this day. So, I ask the court, was the player right to feel he and his bard had been screwed by the DM, or was our DM right in allowing the character to suffer the consequences of his actions? I humbly await your judgment.

Native_nightmares

May it please the diabolically lovely court and the lowest bailiff jimmy I have a case where my old dm shot me in the face because my character was poor. So for background I was in a campaign my first ever at the time playing a lvl 3 barbarian who was raised in the woods by his sickly grandpa now being raised in the woods off the grid I wished to explore the world and went to a near by town where the rest of my future party would be we all signed up for a tournament of battle to pvp and which I thought at the time was an awesome way to pull together a party instead of going to some tavern and meeting everyone. So once there and signed up we were escorted to a back room with the other competitors( npcs). As names where drawn to see who fights who a npc wanted to bet who ever beat him in a fight would get 10 gold being poor with no money I said hell yea I could use some money we shook on it and the tournament began. I did not fight him till the 2nd round of the tournament but I did unfortunately loose forgetting to rage and being taken down at range. when back to the locker room area as I awoke the npc stood over me demanding his gold.when I told him I had none for him. He abruptly pulled out a magic pistol shooting me in the face then hitting me 3 times after for 3 death fails my party was upset but couldn’t do anything because they where both fighting each other in the tournament right at that moment. I was so angry I left never to return to that table but I now dm my own game with my wife and brother in law but to this day I am pissed about it so supreme crit justices was my dm wrong at the time for executing me without a second thought

doctor worm

humble greetings to everyones favorite worm enjoyers and the early bird who somehow still misses the worms. today i present before you the case of the unjustly (?) banned cantrip this one might be a little rules crunchy so keep with me here: i’m in a dnd group with a few of my friends, one of whom was playing a sorcerer rogue - and she ended up getting booming blade banned in the following campaign. it’s been a little while since this happened (maybe about a year) so the details are foggy, but the core of the issue is still burned in my mind! one of my dear friends, who is notorious for finding all of the little loopholes in spell wording (and who the dm - her boyfriend - never likes to let “win” with her loopholes) was playing a little tiefling rogue/sorcerer who had taken booming blade, the cantrip! she had the metamagic option twin-spell, and figured that she was able to twin-spell cast booming blade to attack 2 different people, and give the effects of booming blade to both of them. she spent the required sorcery points, was within melee of both, i’m pretty sure she was a war caster who didn’t need her hands free to cast, and she was dual wielding either shortswords or daggers. the first time she did it, it was kind of glossed over and our dm let her do it, and then a different day, they paused combat for fully 30 minutes while they had an intense argument about the mechanics of it. the rest of the table was trying to figure out if there was sage advice or anything rules as written that disproved her ability to twin spell that specific cantrip, but we couldn’t find anything at all - although there wasn’t a ton of supporting evidence for her ability to cast it that way either. i don’t remember how exactly that combat resolved, but i know she was never allowed to twin-spell booming blade whenever she brought it up in subsequent battles, and our dm ended up adding it to his list of “spells banned for campaign two” (the only other one is the ninth level spell wish, by the way).. all that being said: who in the world is right??? is our dm just a certified stinker for banning a simple cantrip?? the majority of the table disagreed with the dm, but there was never really concrete evidence for the combo being allowed, either! please oh please, benevolent judges, help me dunk on whichever one of my friends isn’t honoring the sanctity of dnd’s rules!!

Lily Holmes

To the Honorable and Trustworthy Justices and also Jake if he's there today I guess: I present the Bystander HP Dilemma In our home game, we had a player cast sleep on a train conductor and our DM announced that because every commoner NPC only had one hit point, they knocked out every single person in the first few cars of the train. I thought that NPCs had more hit points than that, and I argued that they should have ten because commoner stats are ten across the board. (Both of us are wrong: RAW gives Commoners 4 hit points.) The homebrew reason why the DM gave everyone one single hit point was to dissuade us from going on a murder spree, stating that getting into violent situations with bystanders was going to have some serious consequences. My reasoning was that if I could insta-kill any commoner with an unarmed strike, this would just encourage murderous players to see how many people they could take out at one time, and having more hit points means the NPC has a chance to fight back. So my question, dear judges (and also the bailiff I guess), is this: are one-hit wonders or beefy bystanders better for keeping your players from needlessly getting into fights? P.S. we've all gone along with the 1 HP commoners route and it's been fine, I'm more curious on your take than actively looking for a solution to a problem.

Seneca Kier

Hello most joyous justices and the bailiff who looks like he’s kind of having a day, who am I to judge, it’s just concerning. I’m playing a warforged divination wizard in a recently graduated adventurers party. We were on the run from the faculty of our various schools who had some sort of scheme that we never uncovered(foreshadowing). After we had fled, we were performing petty tasks for an artificer who said they could provide the tools to help us take on our foes. While we had been slaying robots and going to fighting rings, we were sent to go retrieve a gem from a cult. While in their lair, we had successfully stealthed through without any notice until finally we were caught. I non-lethally finished one sauhaugin before watching our oath of ancients paladin very brutally kill a different one. I realized my warforged probably hadn’t seen a death before and used it as an opportunity to roleplay how scary that might be, even if it’s a cultish fish man. The paladin came over to kill the sauhaugin I had dealt with before my wizard got in the way and tried to say we shouldn’t kill it with the paladin saying that this is a part of how the world turns and that we shouldn’t risk anyone being able to come after us. This argument however started turning into a real argument amongst the players as the paladin in real life can be very strong willed and a time out was called. We never played DnD again after that time out and now I must know judges and the bailiff can weigh in too I guess. Was I in the wrong for trying to preserve life in a violent world, or was the paladin for being thorough? I await prostrated even if it’s a little uncomfortable

Paul Westmore

I have a confession for the High Dice Church... My friends and I have been hosting a small show for a few year where we talk about fantasy books, D&D books, nerdy movies, etc... There are 4 of, though three of us started the show a little bit earlier. We have a running gag where the 4th host is always treated as a new guest, and never an actual member of the show. It started out as a harmless razz, but I think that our friend is actually taking it seriously somewhat and it may be hurting their feelings... Our friend is also in this really weird marriage with his wife and her ex Tucker... I don't know, his life seems kind of sad sometimes and I am afraid that our little jokes at the table are affecting him more than he is telling us. I tried talking to our other hosts about this, but they just laughed and called him a dweeb... When do you know if a harmless joke has gone too far??

Gabriel Felix

To the cute judges and Bailiff Jork. I bring you the case of the Stolen Pc. I played in a friends 3 shot over a year ago, along with a married couple, my sister, and one of the couples father. We decended beneath the sewers of Waterdeep and was confronted after a bit with intellect devoures. As lvl 2 pc’s this combat was tough. We won the fight but the wife of the couple was downed with an unknown amount of death saves or fails. One of the Devourers vanished, and soon after our downed pc woke up. But it was no long her talking. It was the dm speaking through her and later we found she had been taken over by the creature. She quit before the next session began because she felt her losing character agency was crossing a line. When the dm heard this, he shut down the game. I talked to him a few days later and he was so upset that hurt her feelings that he was going to quit dnd all together. After talking with him for a few hours and talking to the couple separately, I was able to get him to feel good enough to continue playing. We’ve played together in several one shots since then. Justices and Jork, was the pc right to feel like a line was crossed? Is there a better way the dm could’ve handled it? I leave the righteous decision in your capable hands.

Gabriel Mauch

To the most honorable justices and conniving bailiff Jafar. I played in an Aladdin themed one shot as an orc sword bard named Bludwig. It was an amazing session that followed the story of thr party being sent into the cave to retrieve a Genie's lamp. During a difficult final fight, our Kobold pizza chef sorcerer Pep Patoni was killed. When the genie came out of the lamp and offered us a single wish, (having just watched the movie with my toddler) I said that I didn't even think he was powerful enough to get us out of this cave that was now crumbling down upon us. So leaving Pep Patoni dead, the genie transported us to safety. Then, the DM said that I used the party's one wish. I tried to argue that I didn't wish it and that I was going to wish for Pep Patoni to be revived upon tricking the Genie. I'm not mad because it kicked of Bludwig's villain arc when he stole Pep Patoni's grandmother's meatball recipe, but still was I wronged? Am I owed a wish? This happened years ago and I still think about it.

Ryan Lithgow

P. S. Supreme Crit Justice Murph's characters are always my favourite <3 Who doesn't love a dirty little rat man?

Leanne Crawford

To the magnanimous judges Murphy, Axford and Tanner and the illustrious bailiff Jeff, I bring to you the case of the Wild Magic Murder. This occurred back in the days before NADDPOD, while I was relatively new and and still finding my feet playing DND. I played a wild magic sorcerer and in a relatively high stakes battle, I rolled a 1 and got to roll the wild magic surge table. Luck was with me, I summoned a unicorn! A little back story, in previous sessions, it had come up that our DM did not agree with how fall damage was calculated in 5e and had mentioned making the damage higher, a couple of the other players agreed but I and another had stayed silent, I was too new to DND and the mechanics still felt complex enough that I was not ready to have any input. Also, my DM, knowing my glass cannon status, had recently gifted me a flying broom. I'm sure you can see where this is going. I was 90ft in the air on the fateful day when I summoned a unicorn to a space within 5 feet of me. It was briefly, a truly magical moment which became suddenly horrifying when we realized that no, unicorns cannot fly (or cast fly) and it suddenly plummeted. This is when my DM announced that he had decided that fall damage will be doubled starting now and going forward. My unicorn was mercilessly splattered on the stones below. So I ask you, the wonderful, compassionate, clever judges, and Jeff, should I still be suffering from splattered Unicorn PTSD, or did my DM do me dirty? P.S. please do a dungeon court in Toronto when you tour again! P.P.S. Jeff have you considered being a guest on 8 bit book club? You might be funny.

Big Papa

to the honorable justices (especially the lovely wife worm emily) and i think his name was like Joop? I offered to Dm a game for my friends to teach them dnd. However i’ve been butting heads with my only other friend who’s played before after she pitched a truly insufferable character and told me she wouldn’t comprise on anything about him.I built a fantasy style pirate campaign for my friends and she built a Kenku named Albert A Albertson who’s a uncharismatic suit wearing bard from illinois who only speaks in a monotone voice and has a bran ceral curse that makes him boring and sad . I tried to compromise and tell her she could think she’s cursed but i wouldn’t have it be true in the world due to the fact my main bbegs whole character is built around a curse (as well as another pc who wanted a curse related to that bbeg) i thought it would ruin the build up if there’s some divorced dad who’s also cursed bc he ate ceral.My friend got super upset and her girlfriend texted me telling me i was a control freak and buzzkill. Should i let her have her joke character or am i right for not wanting a joke character in my campaign?

Contender in the making

To the honorable judges and the baliff cake I brint to you the case of puzzled intelligence I am new to dming only having done two sessions but ive listened for years and was feeling confident. My players entered into a room with murals depicting feats of hercules each mural had a puzzle/ riddle in front of it and when my players approached a spectral version of what the mural depicted came out to guard the puzzle. My players had to fight off the spectral enemies and figure out the puzzel/ riddles before they respawned. Ive never done puzzles and such so i kept them super simple. One of them naming a greek myth with snake hair. Answer medusa. One of my players said that their character had too low of an intelligence to think of the answer even if it would have been common knowledge in world,i settled on them doing history checks to see if they woule have learned the information by chance and that seemed to work My issues, how do i make puzzles or challenges if my players are going to be bound by having " low intelligence " i dont want to be stuck making puzzles children could solve as we are all adults and challenges are fun So i ask. Am i not honoring roleplaying your character accurately or are my players getting too caught up on a stat i await your benevolent ruling

Rebecca N

To the highly esteemed Jesties (Justice Besties) and good old reliable... *looks at smudged writing on hand* ... Zeke. I bring forth the case of an Anticlimactic Shot. May it please the court. I was playing with my group in a Jojo's Bizarre Adventure game (a homebrewed, non-DnD system that our DM found online). My character (Adina) was a no-nonsense astronomer with a stand which could manipulate light waves to create holograms/turn things invisible/etc. As such, she had a high Precision score (think of it like Dexterity). The party got into a fight with a baddie with a Stand named Wrecking Ball, which was a ball with a chain on it that he could control using a bowl he carried. Adina saw him, confronted him, and he eventually got mad enough to smack her with the Wrecking Ball a few times, then wrap the chain around her ankle and send her and the Ball careening down the street. I had failed enough rolls at this point (and the DM succeeded enough) to declare that I wanted start a roll off between me and the baddie. I asked the DM if I should describe what I wanted to do before rolling, and he told me to just tell him what I wanted to roll with, and we'd decide after. So I rolled Precision, managed to beat the Baddie's roll by 1 each time, and asked the DM if I could use my stand break the chain on Wrecking Ball. He said no. After floundering for a bit, I eventually just said "OK... I just get out?" And it felt a bit anticlimactic So I ask the court, was I wrong for not being quicker on my feet in describing how my character escaped? Should the DM have heard me describe what I wanted to do before we decided how to roll? I lay myself before the mercy of the court

Daniel Izquierdo

I present you the case of the sacrificial standoff I run a group at 14th level who have spent the last year gathering components for a powerful ritual to bring back the dead god of the party's cleric (Ilmater, domain of martyrdom). The climactic encounter was going in the party's favor and the cleric with his reformed NPC ally made it through a portal to the realm of the gods. Here the cleric discovered the dead body of Ilmater and a shard of divinity free for the taking. The catch in this realm was the divine law of a life for a life, meaning to bring back the god would require a sacrifice. What followed was a dramatic standoff where the cleric and NPC ally each tried to be the one to be sacrificed with a mix of hold persons, illusory doubles, and dimension doors. The player felt that his character would not back down from this. After pulling him aside in a separate voice channel to talk things out we landed on the NPC tricking the cleric and sacrificing herself to bring back his god. Should I have let the PC sacrifice himself dramatically to bring back his dead god? Did I subvert the gods theme of martyrdom for the sake of saving a PC? I lay myself before the mercy and razzing of the court (and that one baby reading this out)

Penderpeen

To the esteemed court and that guy standing by the door… weird. I bring to you the case of the Jabroni Jedi. I play with a group that has alternated multiple campaigns over the last five years. We like to play around with new builds and settings, and each one of us has seen atleast 6 characters over the course of our gameplay. Naturally, some members of the party have become less attached to their characters and built out multiple different backups. We are currently playing in a grimms-brother feywild campaign in which we are hunting an ancient archfey who in some way orchestrated the death of significant members of each party members family. We have been playing this setting weekly for nearly a year and have become very invested in the plot. Except for one player. The player in question regularly swaps out characters that are loosely connected to the story - this has become a running joke and has never really been an issue in the past. Most recently, however, this player watched Star Wars for the first time and fell in love with the idea of a Jedi-themed character. He announced the arrival of this new character into our game and we all had a laugh, until we had a look at his backstory, which he had neglected to share ahead of time. In his backstory, he wrote how the magic that governed our world was actually the force, and that every significan foe we had faced had in some way been either a Sith or a rogue Jedi. He included that the galaxy was governed by the force and his character was a “chosen one” who was set to bring balance. This went so far as to add a literal translation of our big bads name into “Sith Lord of Death”. I became immediately deflated when reading that every one of our baddies were actually just jedi and sith lords. I brought this up with the table, and the player explained that it was his headcannon and that I could choose to accept it or not. Usually I would be fine with this, but his character has begun proclaiming that we are ignorant of the truth whenever we disagree with his padawan proclivity. As an avid fan of the show, I was really excited to finally journey into the feywild and fight some trickster baddies. Now, the party is trying to trudge along through trials with a party member proclaiming how he has to defeat the sith and restore balance to the galaxy. Am I wrong to want my fey fuckery itch to be scratched or do they have the high ground now?

Patrick Walsh

To the most holy interpreters of the will of the one true God, and their altar boy, Junk. I come before you a penetant fool. I play a Deep Gnome Soulknife Rogue, capable of throwing psychic daggers which disappear after they’re thrown. Whilst interrupting a deal with a devil, the devil was sick of our arguing and said they would accept the terms of whoever drew the first blood. I threw a psychic dagger at a noble woman and the devil accepted my terms. It wasn’t until later that I realized that my daggers deal psychic damage, and maybe shouldn’t have counted at drawing literal blood. This is our first game of DnD and our DM has only DM’d once or twice before. I haven’t said anything to our DM about the mistake and it’s weighing on my conscience. I throw myself at the mercy of Dice Christ and the council’s fair judgement. Adice P.S. If you have time, I need some advice (ad-‘dice’ if you will) My partner’s sister made me a lovely dice box shaped like a book (ala Dimension 20) but now I’m rolling much worse. How do you pickle a book? Bury it in salt? Please help.

DowdMusic

To these absolute knobs, May it challenge the court and upset the power they wield. I bring you the case of "WTF High Crit, you got a problem with me?" I have written in in the past for your assistance and all you do is punish me. My players fill up a bag with bombs - my fault. My player brings and OP roided out God bird to the scrub match - my fault. My players name them selves all Tyler - not only my fault - but justice Murphy says he must make an example of me and creates the first NADDPOD precedent in my name. Furthermore, Justice Axeford stated openly on record she wished to torture me. I have clearly been targeted and I demand reribution from this kangaroo court. I ask YOU NADDPOLES if this tyranny should continue. Good day. P.S. I dont even like this show.

Al Tomkat

To the wise and kind co-Popes of Dice Christ and also Jake (unless he has an elevated status in the church, in which case, sup additional Pope?). I DMed for the second time ever this past weekend for a meet up with my long-distance friends. I created a fun escape room-like puzzle challenge and a combat with an interesting twist, all related to our friendship and interests. The problem arose when it came time to roll initiative, and all my bad guys rolled like dogshit. In an effort to make the combat more varied and balanced, I secretly rolled their initiatives with advantage even though none of them would actually have advantage. I did not mean to forsake the will of Dice Christ, only create a fun session for my friends. I humbly ask for your forgiveness.

RustandSilver

To the truly awesome Justices, and to Jerry Springer, I bring forward a case of an amnesiac character. I once played in a long running campaign with some old friends and a DM that was a bit of a hardass at times, but still fair. My first character died, and my second, and my third(a lot of my characters died in this game), so for my fourth I decided to just kind of phone it in. I didn't really make much of a backstory, other than that I was an alchoholic bird monk man and I'd been booted out of my home for various drunken activities. Well, eventually we encountered an NPC from my home, a little owl man, and it turns out that the drunken action that had gotten me kicked out was getting incredibly wasted and accidentally smashing some bird people eggs. Yes, the DM make me a child murderer in my backstory. Granted, I admit I should have maybe made something up myself, but I was rather burnt out. After that reveal, I kind of made the character a bit of a drunken joke, as I wasn't interested in trying to play him serious. It doesn't help that people liked to make jokes about me being a child killer. Justices, was I in my right to find that all frustrating and kind of disconnect, or should I have taken it on the chin for not writing a proper backstory? PS: The DM was kind of a toxic asshole outside of this so I am no longer in any games with him. PPS: I have other stories about this drunken bird man but I am unsure if they are too NSFW, depends on the tone of the Dungeon Court i suppose.

that_1_guy_alex

To the prestigious justices of the supreme crit and their widdle baby bailiff, I present to you the case of the crisped goblin. This happened a few years ago but it still keeps me up at night. I was new to dming and was playing a one shot with some friends of mine. One of my npcs that I like is a little goblin named Grikko, who throws all his stock into a pile behind him and dives in to look for items, Opa McDuck Style. However, before I could mention anything outside of him being a goblin, my chaos companions tackled him, winked at him, knocked him out, tied him up, then set his place on fire, and then tried to lie to the robot guards that they didn’t do it after LITERALLY WALKING OUT THE FRONT DOOR!! Venerable Justices I beseech thee. Was I wrong to tell them their lie was too batshit crazy? P.s. in case you’re worried, the goblin did survive, and decided to hop to a less dangerous dimension. And yes, I do plan on re-opening Grikkos Stack.

Matt Nusbaum

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

KOJXVMason

2024 take your entrances to the door I present the case of the bullshit monk. We were running a one shot that ended up being a 2 shot where a friends wife ran a one shot it was her first time running a one shot as a Dm and all the other players are all DMs that understand the rules for the most part and were pretty much well behaved and letting the new DM ,dm her own way except one. that decided to backseat DM everyones turn and I even at one point kept saying “take a drink”when I heard “well actually” or “the rule states”until we finally met the dragon where the level 15 centaur polemaster Monk with a couple of uncommon items and a haste spell along with criting with his magic polearms ability to double a hits damage once a day (basically x4 damage) one punched an adult dragon for over 600 damage to which I exclaimed was that fun for you which ended the campaign and my want or need to play with backseating DM so judges do you think it was bullshit to one punch the end boss and cause such an anti climactic ending to an otherwise fun one shot or should I have just suck it up and power through the douchey Rule Nazi I await your verdict

anniemurphs

May it please the court: Recently I was at a game cafe where I got pulled last minute to play in a oneshot one of the staff was running. I was really excited to play but unfortunately I was sort of let down- It was okay, just a bit slow mostly because of one player making it so nothing could get done and we didn't even get to fight the Rat King boss at the end. The (seasoned) dm was fine but I was a bit annoyed. Anyway. During this game, I rolled a few nat20 investigation checks (at least 2) but all I was given from those was 13 gold and a locket that didn't really have anything to do with the game (I don't even remember what the other nat20 got me because it was barely anything). I ask the court this: Am I justified in feeling a little cheated for not finding anything of use on those nat20s? I understand it was a one shot but I feel like there could've been some intrigue and possible motivation to move the game along so we could've fought the boss. I humbly await your judgement, Annie

Snuffles the Bear

To the esteemed judges and the intermittently respected bailiff who is doubtless soon to violently rebel. Years ago, when I was first getting started in D&D, I played a warlock in a campaign with a few friends. My friends, in character, good-naturedly bullied my warlock, constantly telling him to shut up and sit down and so on. This was all in good fun until it started feeling like my warlock really couldn't say or do anything without getting harangued. I stated repeatedly that my warlock did not like being spoken to in this way and that he wasn't taking it as a joke, but they kept on doing it. Eventually, the DM introduced a villain who brought up the fact that my character was being treated badly and shouldn't put up with it. My character agreed, and while he didn't join the bad guy or anything, he did start standing up for himself much more vocally, causing the party - in character - to need a therapy session or two to overcome the party conflict. It has been seven years since this game, and the cleric still tells me once in a while that he will never forgive me or the DM for this short side plot (it lasted two sessions) or for having my character be upset with his. He says that it is not fair for my character to have been upset when, aside from the bullying, his cleric also did nice things for my character, like comforting him when his parents died. What do you say, judges? Was I right to have my warlock stand up for himself, or should I smile through the biannual reprimands I still endure? I throw myself on the mercy of the court.

Moss

To the supreme Crit, and the great and powerful Jork; I present the case of geas v players. I had a semi-powerful enemy cast geas on my players, he gave a minute long speech & they all failed (all 5 rolls were under 8, and no one cast a detect magic or anything) an insight/arcana/etc check to see if he was being genuine. They found out that they had a Geas spell cast on them because they could no longer directly attack him and had to make do with creative AOE stuff. This guy wasn't a big bad, super manageable CR for them, and they killed him & his cronies in under 6 rounds! I, however, have been booed and lambasted for my ""sneaky"" nonsense. I believe it was within my right to make the combat cool and interesting. The exact wording of the Geas spell is "and any shot you take at me shall find no purchase", I thought this was creative and fun. So tell me the most supremest of court- was I justified in my disguised geas, or do you think my players are right and I should have told them that they were having a spell cast on them? I humbly await your ruling.

local sandhill crane

To the Supreme Crit Justices and the Supreme Baby Bailiff, I submit to the court the case of Poorly Executed Blood Contract. I was DM'ing a campaign of five good friends who were on the trail of an evil mage who had inserted themselves into the government of a major city to enact an plan for immortality. Of course, things went wildly off the rails and the party never even made it to the city. Instead, they found themselves in a chill mountain dwarf city, and were planning on spending the night. Unfortunately for everyone, one of my best friends to this day was playing a chaotic evil rogue named Sol, who stole everything not nailed down and killed (nearly) anything they couldn’t steal. Dwarves didn't like that, and so the party is run out of the inn and is chased through the mountain pass by some dwarven guards. Eventually, they come across the outskirts of the city, where they find an outpost with an imprisoned Drider. Most of the party stayed clear, but Sol went to the drider and promised it its freedom if the drider would become her slave. She then proceeded to STAB HERSELF and write out a contract on a kitchen napkin she found in the outpost to make a makeshift blood contract. She said that she knew how to make a blood contract because she was likely propositioned by devils and demons in her backstory. I told her this wasn't how blood contracts work, and even if it did, the structural integrity of the napkin was likely not able to hold up for longer than a day. Nevertheless she broke the circle of binding before I could mention any kind of relevant skill check. The drider, free from their bindings and hungry as hell, rushed the party, and killed Sol, who was the closest available target. The party was later saved by the dwarven guards who were tailing them. Even after all these years, I feel like there was maybe something I could have done to more clearly signal to my player to not free the terrifying evil creature with a blood contract she didn't know how to write. I can't help admit it was satisfying as hell to have a drider tear through my friends character. Justices, should I have abstained from my drider having a well deserved meal? I humbly await thy judgement.

Krybz

To the unimpeachable justices and extremely impeachable bailiff Greg, I bring you the case of the dreaded ice cream pipes: I have been DMing a multi-year campaign, and recently we took a break from the main story to do a oneshot where one of the party members got sent back in time to a floating wizard city during a more technologically advanced period of history. The other players made new PCs that were native to this time just for the oneshot. One of the players made an ice cream based artificer whose inventions and magic all tied into ice cream. As part of his backstory for the oneshot, he said he was responsible for maintaining the illegal network of pipes that delivered ice cream into everyone’s homes in the city. I went along with it because it was a fun detail, but when it came up in the session the party became obsessed with this concept. They spent 30 minutes just discussing the logistics of the ice cream pipes. I indulged the idea further by allowing them to use the pipes to infiltrate the BBEG’s lair but I’m afraid things have gone too far. I had to cut an entire combat encounter because of the delay to discuss ice cream pipes breaking and shooting out from peoples toilets. They now talk about the ice cream pipes even in unrelated sessions and it’s become a significant part of the world’s lore. Justices, was I wrong to allow such a silly detail in an otherwise rather serious campaign? By having the pipes be relevant to the story of the oneshot, have I doomed myself to having them be relevant to the main campaign when they return to the present? I humbly await your judgement. PS I was at the DC show and it ruled.

Fia (but not Boginya)

To the kind and generous Supreme Crit Justices and also the Bailiff who is honestly acting really defensive, and kinda ruining the vibe by acting like everyone is being mean to him, I bring you the case of the unwilling party member. I run a campaign for some friends, and going into the campaign two of the players decided they wanted their characters to be former crime partners, who grew apart after one of them went to prison. I agreed to this, thinking they would have some fun role play together. However one of these players has been completely unwilling to have their characters work together, stating that their character no longer trusts the other. This has lead to them outright refusing to go along with any plans that involve working with the other character no matter how much I try to get them on the same page, which has led to an almost permanently split party and a complete stall in the narrative. I ask you, am I right to be frustrated by one of my players refusing to work with the party, or is this choice in role play justified on their part. I eagerly await your exalted judgement, and Jake… just like, not everything is about you man, so maybe don't take things so personally

Gavin Rhoads

To my beloved bailiff and the people who wear fairly disheveled robes, This was my first time DMing. I got a few of my newbie friends together and one more experienced player (my previous DM, Nathan) to guide all of us and answer our mechanical questions. We ran a few fairly simple encounters in which Nathan cast a spell nearly every turn. Due to the frequency of the spells, I had assumed he was casting a cantrips and I did not question him because he was our "guide" and was far more experienced than I was. However, the lurking worry of betrayal sat heavy in my heart, so I looked up the spells he most frequently used. Every last one of them were either first or second level spells. Confused how a level 1 wizard was casting 15+ first and second level spells during our session with no long rest, I confronted him about it. His response..."Ha ha ha, I was waiting to see if you would notice" and no apology for lying to his long time friend who was just trying to learn how to DM. Justices, am I at fault for not knowing enough about classes and spells to "notice" his treachery, or is he just a bad friend? I beg of you justices, put my heart at ease.

Sebastian M.

The case of the Poly-din To the beloved judges and the tolerated Bailiff, if it may please the court: I dm for a crew of good friends, two of them are a married couple IRL. She's our (very aggro) Paladin, he's our (playful) bard. Sometimes their characters get into fights with each other that seem to be not only about things that happened in our campaign. Recently I learned that she is trying to start a polyamorous relationship (in real life) and that he is not _that_ psyched about her new boyfriend. In game she also tries to get it on with an NPC of mine, while her husbands character is trying to fix the relationship with her. Judges, I ask of you, how do I navigate a person on my table trying to flirt with my NPCs when I know that their private life is in shambles and their unhappy spouse is sitting next to them? Right now I sent the NPC on an "important mission" so I don't have to deal with that. I was thinking about telling the paladin player to leave our group until they settled their home problems, but her bard-husband asked me not to – because them playing dnd together is the only fun time they have right now. Thank you for your help.

lofi bnuy

Forgive me dice christ for I have sinned. I'm not an avid church goer, but this has been weighing on me in recent years, especially now that I am preparing to step into the dm chair. Very early on in my gaming, I joined a random group of players on roll20. The dm was running an old module from a previous edition (I don't remember which ones). There was a puzzle and the game ground to a halt as we were trying to figure it out. I was playing a herbo paladin and was getting bored of the 2+ hour delay and wanted to move on to the next section. So I looked up the module and read the answers, made a remark about one of the colors matching the schools of magic, and that sparked the rest of the party to figure out the puzzle. I should not have metagamed like that. I ask for forgiveness so I may be able to make a fresh start as a dm.

Sam Francis

(no intro for judges) Hey Bailiff Jayce, One of my players in session 0 of our 2nd campaign decided on the last name Shower-Handle I refused this name but they continued to use it once in play. So I stretched how it was pronounced to Sh-ow-uh Hin-de This new way of saying Shower Handle caught on but I still wince at the memory Should I have forced a new name upon my player or is living with the memory of Shower Handle my own fault?

riley

good evening justices, please nod sternly at Jake. I present to you the case of the petty pc (me...): I am a player in a campaign that some friends and I run live on air on our college radio station; 3 players and our dm. for Halloween, our dm had planned a special spooky session and we were all very excited. BUT. when I showed up for our session, there were 2 extra "guest players" (who I had never met and, btw, had never played dnd before), and, to my surprise, everyone had prepared a new setting-specific oneshot character Except for me. after berating my dm about leaving me out of the loop, he told me to just "pull up a random character generator" and my random roll was a lawful neutral order cleric with the soldier background. wildly out of place in our silly Halloween game. I was, admittedly, a little pissed about feeling thrown off and left out of the session planning, so I pretty much just stayed silent through most of the 2 hour game. that is, until the final boss fight. when it came to my turn, I explained that my randomly generated character flaw was "agrees with enemy's views", so I narrated my character completely switching sides and proceeded to spend the fight healing and buffing the big bad, which resulted in the death of my two friend's pcs. the big bad was eventually defeated by the guests, but the vibe was for sure off at the end of the session. I ask you justices, was I justified in my malicious compliance, or is being a bad sport never excusable in the eyes of the law?

Bleepers

May it please the Court and the widdlest widdle waliff Jakey, I bring you the case of Execution as teaching a lesson. I play a campaign where I am an echo knight werewolf, a la Jekyll and Hyde, with my two other friends one a tabaxi Bard and the other a drawven rouge. My DM has been wanting to teach the rouge a lesson for not paying attention while playing and just always sneaking off to go steal and cause chaos for the party. One such endeavor caused my PC to get excuted because of it, the bad guys had captured me restrained me and used everything in their possession to keep me restrained after isolating me from the party. They asked for a simple trade the Mcguffin or your friends life and to meet them at sundown for the trade off or I’m dead. Come sundown the rouge and bard made their way to the meetup where the trade was being held but the rouge decided to sneak off and break some prisoners free to cause a distraction however the bard was in the prosess of handing over the Mcguffin and the chaos caused the Bad guys to kill me outright for pulling tricks. This caused my PC to die and was nearly a TPK as the bard also went down in the chaos though the sneaky rouge didn’t. Which I did not feel great about because I wasn’t allowed to roll to get out and break free as the restraints were unbreakable and silver. I felt like my PC was robbed of his happy ending and was instead put down like a dog. Me and my DM have worked out a fun mechanic where I now get to haunt the rouge as my old PC to make him act “right” though a part of me wishes it didn’t need to cause a PC for that to happen. I have also came back into the game as a circle of stars druid who sells crystals. Justices was it wrong for me to die for actions that weren’t even mine and not being able to get out at all or should I just stay a haunted ghost and enjoy playing Crystal healer

Cory

To the luminous Bishops of Dice Christ and the Time Devil, I come with a heavy conscience. My freaky darlings with who I homebrewed a Mortal Kombat themed 5e campaign seemed both entertained and underwhelmed by the ending I gave to them, and I believe they were right. The insectoid character went home to serve their new hive in peace, and the spiky barbarian went to find her general to ask for an honourable execution as punishment for her abandonment. The human fighter Bryson, however, had earlier sworn allegiance to the BBEG, Shinnok (Shin-Knock) in exchange for warlock spells, which I totally allowed because it also came with the stipulation of letting the villain look through his memories and keep monitoring the party's movements, effectively giving the bad guys the advantage. No one thought it was suspicious that the BBEG wasn't the final boss, so I thought it would catch them off-guard and excite them when I made a giant pair of skeletal hands fold into Bryson, trapping him between dimensions to be used as Shinnok's puppet for a possible sequel campaign. However, everyone laughed and thought it was such a dumb form of closure that it simply had to be left alone. I ask now, on my knees with two weird thumbs-up, for Dice Christ's mercy through His bright, shining vessels, you three Bishops and Fourth Guy Yakub (don't correct me).

gazzafizza

Forgive me, Dice Christ, for I have sinned... I moved to a new town recently and finally worked up the courage to visit my local gaming store. They offered to let me sit in on a game to see if I would like to join, and I took over one of the NPCs for that session (a kobold artificer). During the game, I had the chance to roll a Stealth check with advantage, and I rolled two nat 20s! The problem is, I regularly keep my dice 20 side up on the table (for good luck), and I'm worried that I may not have shook the dice adequately before rolling, which would make my double crit unearned. I want these people to like me and let me join their game, so I said nothing. Was I wrong to hide the fact that I may not have rolled properly on my double crit? Or was Dice Christ blessing my new gaming venture?

Toni McGowan

To the irreplaceable supreme crit justices and their dependent: A while ago we played a short 1-shot with my boyfriend who was DMing for the 1st time. I had DM'd before and told him I could help him here and there with the rules. even though I was playing as a PC. As time went on, I proceeded to see him do no research or prep at all for the session, and when the session came he was stopping constantly to ask me what to do. When I told him after the session he should have prepped more, he told me that he didn't have to because "he could just make it all up anyways". I told him that the rules create a fun sense of realism and give players things to look forward to, to which he adamantly disagreed. Should I have just let my boyfriend make up his own version of D&D and not said anything, or was I right to be frustrated? I humbly and excitedly await your verdict.

Aaron W

To the Illustrious Justices Tanner, Axford and Murphy, and the Lugubrious Bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of the Baleful Body Mod Addiction. Once while DM’ing, I had my adventurers come across The Infernal Machine Of Lum The Mad, a wondrous item with d100 table unexpected effects, some good, many disastrous. I had intended it to be a brief silly diversion on the road to facing the campaign’s big bad for the first time. Unfortunately, upon first activating the machine, my player rolled a 99, which replaces the player’s arm with a non-magical tool of the DM’s choosing — in this case, a tentacle — while causing them d6 harm. The players thought it was so cool, they did it again. Another got the ability to fly, at the expense of all other movement. This only encouraged them, like some kind of transformation catnip. The party became so enamored that they proceeded to spend a full hour using the machine, slowly losing hit points and mutating their characters beyond recognition — and losing all interest in the mission at hand. To get them to move on, I went against RAW and eventually had the machine just do damage to them with no more cool effects, which were too many to count by the end. My grotesquely modified players — now more monster then man — seemed disappointed. So I ask — did I do the right thing as a DM by putting limits on their mutant mayhem? Or should I have let them abuse the machine until they were nothing more than blobs of weird ability modifiers? -Aaron W

MONCO

Honorable justices and bailiff of ever-changing repute, I present the case of the Double Jumping Druid Duo: I DM for a campaign in which two of my players both took the Jump spell. During an encounter where the part needed to scale a rapidly-sinking tower to rescue some NPCs friends taken hostage, the two druids both cast jump on the party’s sorcerer, leading to a lengthy (but civil) debate on if or how this worked. They argued that the spell’s effect should be multiplicative whereas I argued it should only be additive, if anything. We settled it via a roll of the dice with a group arcana check) and ultimately the dice decided it would be additive. I commended their creativity, but said that in the future I may not allow the spell effect to stack. While I’m glad that Dice Christ allowed my vertical-movement-centric encounter to still have some stakes, I’ve wondered every session since: who was in the right or wrong of the Jump spell, and, if they attempt it again, how is this supposed to work, if at all? I submit myself to the mercy of the Supreme Crit, and eagerly await your ruling.

jordy v.

To the Critiful Court and Hake Jurwitz, I present The Same but Different Tabaxi. A few years ago my friends and I were running a homebrew campaign. My friend, who we’ll call Tony, joined our campaign mid-way as a Tabaxi Ranger, who was primarily a stealing-hobo. He would steal from notable NPCs, who would then distrust the party by association, and often steal from party members. When he would steal from us, rather than doing a Sleight of Hand check, he would just say “… but nobody notices.” It was a little annoying but whatever. Fast-forward to a time-skip in the game, and Tony decides to play a new character. A completely different Tabaxi Ranger, same subclass and character sheet. But this time, a murder-hobo. His reasoning was he had forgotten to reroll a new character for the session, and decided to just reuse his sheet with a new character. I was visibly and verbally annoyed at this, and have since have jokingly/seriously banned Tony from playing Tabaxis, Rangers, and Tabaxi Rangers. We are still friends and laugh at this situation from time to time, but was he right to recycle his character and play it off as a different one? Am I right to limit his character choices in future games? I await your ruling.

Paulken

To the supreme crit justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner, and the lonely? bailiff Jake, I hope you practice international DnD-Law because this crime was commited in Germany. I bring to you the case of the brutal murder of my duck which I was forced to witness because the DM insisted on a spot check. For context I am a first time DnD player and a ranger-elf with a beautiful but now dead duck named Edna. It was our third session and also the third time I met this DM. We found a cavern where our enemies (= big evil rats) mined some shiny stones and we were curious about these stones and thought they could potentially be iron ore but we did not have a stone sample so our druid could not roll a nature check. She tried to sneak nearer as a mouse but was directly discovered because the mine was so crowded. She barley escaped with her life and than I introduced my duck Edna. She has owl stats because there are no duck stats in 3.5, so she gets a +17 move silently bonus. Our party didn´t thought that would be enough to secure her mission, so our druid proceed to cast spider climb on her, which the DM encouraged. A truly amazing idea. As a ranger I stock „animal trick“ so I chose to use the command Fetch, so Edna could fetch a stone sample for us and I also told her to do it quietly. The DM then narrated how my duck, because „ducks are very stupid“, walked right into the rats. I argued that my duck has 14 wisdom, my character only 12 and I did not walk right into the rats. He said that I didn´t explicitly include the part of my duck using the cave ceiling to walk and the duck did not know that it has spider climb on it and only followed my command. But even than, wouldn´t my duck have chose to fly? Our Paladin then tried to save Edna by jumping foreward and trying to catch her but she couldn´t grapple her. But the rats grappled her instantly. The DM didnt even roll for anything. He just continued to descripe in detail how my duck was literally teared apart between two rats. I said my character didn´t see it because I honestly was shocked over this instant kill, and did not know what to do because everytime our party tries something fun and creative our DM encourages us as new players, only to than shatter everything without even rolling a dice. He than forced me to make a spot check which was decent enough to get even more bloody details and the knowledge that my duck died in the belief I willingly send her on a suicide mission with her last words being „Mama“. Our party could flee out of the mine and because I was obviously sad about the loss of my duck, my party decided to go to a nearby sea where I held a quick but heartfelt funeral and could also get a new duck but the DM rolled inside checks for all the ducks there to see if they detect my bad duck charma because I willingly fed my previous duck to rats and they listend to the funeral. I have a new duck now but it is super suspicious of me which must be an amazing thing for an animal to detect that isn´t even smart enought to NOT WALK RIGHT INTO THE ENEMY. Also it isn´t Edna and I am not ready for a new duck committment. I am scared to add any flavour to our camapgne because everything fun gets instantly destroyed only for the amusement of the DM. My question is: Did Edna deserve an instant kill after we buffed her with spider climb and animal trick to get a small stone sample? I humbly await your judgement. P.S. The shiny stones were in fact iron ore, so my duck died over nothing :((

Kevin

Are my sins inexcusable? My friends and I played a weekly remote campaign for many years, over Roll20 and Discord (microphone only, no cameras). Some days I would set up at my kitchen table, others I would be more tired and bring my laptop to the couch or even my bed. I love my party and the work my DM put into it, but some days I was so tired from work that I was counting the hours down until the session ended so I could sleep. Once, I was listening to a longer conversation between the DM and some other PCs, and I fell asleep for 20-30 minutes. I think I played it off okay, as if I had been having tech issues with my internet or Discord. I confess, this happened a couple more times over the next two years. Once was during a battle, but the party succeeded just fine despite me missing a turn. The other was near the end of a session, and i woke up to an empty Discord channel. I was never called out for it, and we enjoyed several more years of fun after the last incident. Is my soul redeemable? As far as I know, I always played it off as tech issues and my party never knew that I allowed the Dice Devil into my heart; however, Dice Christ knows all. - Kevin

ittai baum

To the honorable crit justices and the bouncing baby J: I bring the case of the blinding snuffbox One of my players brought a friend who had never played DnD before, to join the campaign I DM. I premade a character for him, a frisbee-throwing surfer fish-man, and rolled on the trinket table for his starting equipment. One of the items was an empty snuffbox with the inscription 'Dreams' on it (actual item in the PHB). During combat against some lizard folk who were trying to steal some artifacts, he saw the snuffbox on his sheet and asked if he could use it to reflect the sunlight and blind the lizard folk. I said it would be very difficult and might not do much, but to roll sleight of hand. He of course got a Nat 20. I decided to make this cause the lizard folk, who was trying to escape with the artifacts, to go in a random direction. This ended up preventing the lizardfolk from escaping and allowed the players to defeat them and rescue the artifacts. Apparently days later this player was still talking about it with his friends and that he couldn't believe he blinded someone with a snuffbox. He now can't wait to play more DnD. So I humbly present this question to you justices: is it ok that I brought before you just a heart warming story of how someone fell in love with DnD or should I be punished for wasting the courts time with this non-case?

Greg Wheat

To the Most High Justices of the Court of Crits, and the Low-but-not-the-bottom Bailiff, Jacobe. I present to you the case of the Not Dead Druid. I was a new DM running a Lost Mines of Phandelver Dragon of Icespire Peak hybrid campaign for two of my buddies who were new to dnd, Colt the Barbarian and Josh the Druid. After saving Phandalin from ruffians by locking most of their forces in a tavern and then burning it to the ground, they decided to explore a tomb of an ancient adventurer in the hopes of obtaining her dragon-slaying sword. In the tomb, the collected the sword, and were immediately attacked by an air elemental set to protect in. Colt the Barbarian Rushed in to fight it. Instead of helping his friend, Josh the Druid used Misty Step to "Nope" out of the tomb. In an effort to discourage his cowardice, I had a group of Wisps outside begin to attack him, which he responded to by casting "Feign Death" on himself. Being a new DM and timid about killing a character, I elected to have the wisps lose interest and leave him "dead." Colt the Barbarian went 1v1 with the elemental, and barely survived. I ask you, almighty Murph and the more compassionate Justices, should I have had the Wisps finish off the cowardly Druid, and teach my player that his actions have consequences, or was I right to show mercy and possibly reinforce his cowardly and selfish behavior?

Jack O'Keefe

Hallo to the honourable crit justices and the lowly Bailiff, lets say, Jeff. I present a case i believe needs a precedent set, how long do you give a first time DM? I was the long time DM who agreed to play in a campaign with one of my players who wanted to try DMing. Session 2 we are given a run down tavern as a reward for a quest well done and told we could roleplay hiring staff and getting it running next session. I didnt engage much during that discussion, saying my character was off looking for leads, and some light crafting. 2 hours of roleplay later the session ends and i apolgise to my dm for being quiet, but say because my job is running a bar IRL, i dont really want to roleplay that, but apart from that im enjoying the game. He said its fine, and the tavern was in the module he was running so he had to include it. Next session starts and im told my character hired a Kenku called Fart, and was struggling to make money because they werent engaging in the staff hiring. I asked if the kenku called fart was in the book. I left after session 4, after spending about 50% of the hours played listening to the unenthusiastic majority discuss mundane bar managing problems. Should i have stuck it out longer, his combat was fun, and he may have just been nervous. Or was i right to leave after repeatedly telling the DM "roleplaying work isnt fun for me, i dont make your character roleplay waste management solutions in my campaign" PS. We're still friends, we still play DnD, just not together.

Kelso of the Sea

I come to you not with a confession, but with a request for guidance and spiritual counseling from the much venerated Axford, Murphy, and Tanner. (Jake, I implore you to read my story with a long-suffering and anguished tone) I have been humbled by the machinations of some random men at local game store, and beseech the expertise of the followers of Dice Christ, and particularly of Bishop Axford. I got interested in playing dnd because of naddpod, and the pod was an incredible escape from my work as a therapist during the great lockdown of 2020/2021. I’ve been hooked ever since. I finally got up the nerve to play my first game of dnd at a local gaming shop near me a couple weeks ago and the experience left me disheartened. While there was a lot of fun in the process of making my first character on my own, and I will say that between naddpod and d20 I have become pretty familiar with the basic rules which was great, the experience overall was pretty awful. I found myself the only woman in a group of men that just seemed to want to “win” at dnd against me, repeatedly trying to just kill my character in some bizarre PVP situation. I’m proud of myself for trying something new after wanting to play for years, but I left feeling so awful and cried the whole drive home. Please Cardinals of the Crit, how do I work up the nerve to try playing again? Or how do I better stand up for myself as a young(ish) woman in a situation where I’m singled out in a dnd game.

Gilbemesh

We’re doing more in 2024, so I beg at the judges feet (where I presume Jack has already posted up) in an attempt to settle a years old disagreement: the case of convenient glamping, loot-hungry PCs, and the bathroom defense. I DM'd a remote campaign using Discord and Roll20 during COVID lockdown for some of my closest friends and then-fiance (now wife, despite this story). The party was on a quest at the behest of our warlock's patron. This patron sent another agent of his to aid the party, a dwarven rogue named Nondrak, whom I used as a DMPC for the arc. Just before the arc’s final battle, our wizard cast Leomund's Tiny Hut for a short rest (I was weak and allowed it as I had just ramped up the difficulty of battles after getting whomped Murph-style for previous sessions). This proved to be a colossal mistake, as the players would literally duck into the hut mid-battle to avoid being targeted by the boss. The hut was out in the open, so there weren't good places for Nondrak to hide for sneak attacks. He took to the shadows in the fog of war on our Roll20 map. The boss crit on a perception check to find Nondrak and they fought out of sight from the players and I didn't tell them how the rolls were going. Nondrak fell quickly to the boss who then fought the players closer to the hut they were taking turns hiding in. The players made quick work of the boss - the fight only took one more round in which Nondrak failed a death save. After the fight, the players busied themselves with looting the body and a treasure chest. My fiance left for a restroom break mid-looting. I had been rolling death saves for Nondrak immediately after the battle was over, passing once before failing two more times. It wasn't until after my fiance returned that they began to wonder where Nondrak was. Upon investigation, I told them that he had gone down in battle, and died as they were looting. My fiance was adamant that it was unfair that Nondrak died while she was gone, and only one of the other players agreed with my argument that their looting (not to mention the subsequent discussion of what to do with the boss's cool swords) took longer than 18 seconds in-game, three rounds of combat for death saving throws. Was Nondrak's off-screen death unfair? Or was it negligence that did him in? I lay myself at the mercy of the court and am willing to receive or distribute your punishment.

Sendam6

May it please the court, which would be honorable save for that sniveling bailiff (Hi Jake, love you~), I present a case of an annihilated sphere of annihilation. I was running a train heist one-shot, and one of the twists was that the artifact they were stealing was a Sphere of Annihilation (DMG pg. 201, hereon "the sphere") that they would need to move by force of will, or in the large special containment chest they found it in. One player crit on an arcana check to learn more about the sphere, so I handed them the book to read the full item description, including the table describing the possible effects of placing the sphere in an extradimensional space. Of course, the players had put in some effort in the preparation phase to get a Bag of Holding (DMG pg. 153, hereon "the bag"), so they immediately just put the chest ion the bag. I rolled behind the screen to determine the effect, took a picture of the result, and told them that the chest went into the bag with no apparent issue. Satisfied that there was no explosion or mass teleportation, they moved on to the escape phase. After fighting a security dragon on top of the train, they made their way back to the client to get their reward to find that the chest was empty. On a d100 roll between 1 and 50, the sphere had been destroyed on entering the bag. I thought that this would funny, and very in-genre for the thieves to end up right back where they started, but the table was silent, and everyone seemed disappointed, even though it was just a one-shot and they would never be able to use the reward. My question to the honorable judges is this: Was I cruel to allow my players to annihilate their own treasure? Or do I need to find some new friends that enjoy rolling a 1 almost as much as a 20?

Rhiannon

may it please the court - i prostrate myself before you, ready to confess. months ago i played dnd while sick with covid. my dnd group meets up over discord and roll20, so my confession isn’t that i infected all my friends with a terrible illness, but that i made a grave error that changed the course of a fight and made my character the sort of mvp. we were outnumbered and outmatched in a pretty straightforward fight, downed quite a few baddies but weren’t doing well ourselves, and my tiefling sorcerer took a chance at casting suggestion on the leader to call off the squad and give us some information that we desperately needed… and it worked! thank the gods, because i definitely wasn’t strategizing to the best of my abilities, being as sick as i was, and had already fumbled through much of the encounter and gone down a few times. but there would be a few more turns before the leader could call his goons off, and during one of them our ranger called out a shot against the guy my tiefling used suggestion on. i was too brain fogged to react quickly enough, and by the time i was able to ask “wait, who are you shooting?” in my mostly-gone voice, the deed had already been done. he hit the leader, effectively breaking suggestion and putting us back in danger. another round of combat, my tiefling goes down again, gets brought back up by our bard (again), and it gets to my turn. i don’t have many spells left, the enemies are still so healthy, and i am feeling very defeated and sick. my only shot is to try casting suggestion again, which i do, and which mercifully works again! the fight ends with the party in tact and with that very important information that we needed to advance our bigger mission. my casting(s) of suggestion get called clutch, there is some praise bandied about, and some gentle razzing of the ranger who broke the first suggestion spell (it is our love language). the session ends, and we all move on. my confession begins here: later on, when i am no longer sick, i realize that my suggestion spell is one i have gained from my tiefling bloodline, and it is only one use per long rest. i have never told anybody about my error because i’m too embarrassed and it has been too long since i made the mistake. and also the praise felt good :( but i’ve also never used suggestion again since then, because i feel bad even just looking at the spell on my character sheet. please either forgive me or flog me, because it is becoming such a waste for my 20 CHA sorcerer not to be manipulating as many people as she can just because my covid addled brain made a mistake that my normal brain wouldn’t have.

Austin Beasley

To the esteemed judges and the nearly adequate bailiff, I bring another tomb of annihilation debacle. We had just started the campaign and I had warned my players that I was playing this campaign purely by the book, and aftwr days of dino races and jewel market heists, the party braved the jungle and rolled a velociraptor ambush on the random encounter table. 2d6 raptors ended up being 11 raptors to fight, who nat 20'ed the stealth check for the surprise round and rolled higher initiative than the players. Adding in pack tactics and multiattacks resulted I'm the players taking 44 attacks at advantage before they even had a round to respond. The party was immediately eviscerated, and quickly replaced with the most broken, min-maxed characters I've ever seen. The Loxodon assassin never even got the opportunity to say his catchphrase (guess you didn't see the elephant in the room) The campaign ended up being super fun, but this still gets brought up regularly and I was given the title of "TPK Extraordinaire". Was I right to play by the book and let the TPK happen, or should i have added DM shenanigans to give them a chance? I await your judgement and sentence.

Ol Bad Eyes

To the wonderful balliff and the some what okay judges, I bring you a case of retcon madness. During my first game of DND I joined in on a game my brother has been DMing for a couple of years as a Lvl 14 Wild Magic Sorcerer named Forgo. During the session we fought 2 bosses one at a time. During the first fight I went first and did a Double Disintegration using Quicken Spell (couldn't find anywhere in the rules forbidding this). I ended up one shoting the boss. When the second boss came out I received a Reincarnation from my Wild Magic Surge, which gave me all of my spell slots back. So I Double Disintegrated the second boss and we ended up killing him in just a couple of rounds. I left the session feeling like a true badass and the party was happy to finally have a powerful magic user in their grim dark campaign. Cut to a month later when we had our next session and my brother DM informs us that we are redoing the entire last session because he "got too drunk to remember legendary resistances". Those legendary resistances were then used exclusively on me as I was the only one using combat magic. So I ended up taking out 6 legendary resistances just to have to bosses die the next round by someone else using a homebrew skill called Legendary Lungs that did 300 damage. In the end we won the fight but I pretty much spent 6 hours just getting counter-spelled for my second session of DND. Judges am I wrong for still being angry that my badass characters debut was retconed out of existence or should I just accept that Forgo from the first timeline will always be more badass than the Forgo from the second timeline?

Logan Stacey

To the tubular justices who are all invited to my birthday party. Oh, hey Jake, if you could pick them up at 8 that would be awesome. I present to you the case of the worthless Crittimidation. 7 years ago, 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 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 could easily kill them with fiery vengence. My bard cast Tensor’s floating disc to raise me twenty-five feet into the air, and the druid used control 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. Was this just cool flavor from the DM to keep us into a fight he was planning, or was I a victim to an ability that robbed me of my crit? I was upset, but ultimately let it go to keep the session moving along, but to this day I bring it up in a lot of DnD conversations as a "I was wronged so many years ago" situation. Please give me the peace 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 ended after about 4 more sessions for this amongst other instances and issues with the DM.

Isabella

May it please the court and the bouncy baby Jake- I bring to you a case that has been plaguing my table for months. I’ve been DM-ing for a group of friends since last summer and so far we’ve had a great time (for the most part). The only issue is my friends won't stop trying to make 9/11 happen in our game. Every time I describe a looming spire, a tall clock tower, a church steeple, or any building taller than the rest of the city, they ask if there is a second identical structure adjacent to it. I think this might be because they want an in-game version of the American rock band “My Chemical Romance”. I’m not a fan of My Chemical Romance but all of my players are. From what I understand, the lead singer of MCR witnessed 9/11 and was then inspired to create the band. When I told them I could create the band without them having to destroy a city, they said “It’s not the same”. I don’t know what to do. This situation makes me uncomfortable and I don’t want to recreate a tragedy in the world I’ve worked so hard to create. I welcome and accept any and all suggestions.

Ryan Janes

To the honest and all-powerful Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Tanner and Axford and that guy they let talk sometimes; I present to you the case of the Deceptive Decedent. My son is 7 and has watched D&D from afar; collecting dice and remaining infinitely curious about the game. I recently got him a small mini dice tray at New York Comic-Con and he keeps it in his car seat cup holder so he can “roll on the go.” While I drive, I will make up a “D&D lite” sort of game; simplified checks, no modifiers etc. He will battle things we see on our drive such as trees, other cars, and of course, the BBEG; the dreaded bridge overpass. But being that my hands are safely 10 and 2 and my son is the only one in possession of a dice tray in the backseat, I have to trust his rolls. He’s young, and we’ve discussed how the fun of the game comes from the honesty of the dice and how we react to said dice, but things seem to always edge in his favor. A perfect 24 points of damage on a 4d6 roll of damage in our latest battle with a gas station pump comes to mind. But soon, he will be able to sit down and play for real seeing that we recently acquired his first mini for actual play. As his future DM, I am planning to introduce him to full rules with soft hands and some minor fibbing behind the screen in his favor to allow his interest in the game to flourish. His mother however thinks it is high time to learn the harsh reality of dice christ and TPK this kid. Am I wrong to edge wins his way to encourage his love for the game at his young age? P.S. we usually assume lvl 2 Fighter stats for my son because Fighters are easy for children to understand Jake.

Jacob Bradley

To the Most Mathematically Inclined Crit Justices and also the bailiff, I present you the case of the squishy dragon. In my most recent session of my homebrew campaign, my party wandered into a cave dragon's lair and proceeded to fight it. After hitting most of the party with its breath weapon, on its second turn the dragon descended from the ceiling and downed the party's SorLock with its multiattack. Our Bloodhunter used his blood curse of the fallen puppet to give the SorLock one attack with his net, which hit and restrained the dragon. All well and good. Following this I wanted the dragon to use a legendary action to move out of the net avoiding the restraining effect with a feature called "Quick Squeeze" which lets the dragon move through any space larger than its skill without squeezing. Once I explained its plan the SorLock and Bloodhunter immediately cried BS saying that the skull would be too large to fit between the links of the net. I argued that although the dragon was a size large creature, neither it nor the net had listed sizes for how large the net's holes were. In order to keep the unlisted information fair, I offered the SorLock a straight luck check to see if the dragon could fit or not. He rolled an 18 and the dragon stayed in place. The Barbarian was able to quickly get in range and execute the trapped beast, ending the encounter. Crit Justices, was I within my rights to refuse the luck check and claim the dragon could squish through the net like an octopus or did I acquest to my party too quickly by letting Dice Christ take the wheel? I humble myself to your ruling.

Niko R.

To the esteemed Justice’s of the crit and their Baliff, who seems fine but is still grating to be around. I present to you the player that fails to learn. I’ve been DMing a game for over a year now, roughly a session every month or two. We have multiple DMs rotating, so we do play much more frequently than that. The monk in the game I run does not seem to grasp the mechanics of their character at all. They complain frequently that they can never do anything. They said they do no damage, but that’s because they didn’t update their martial arts die when leveling up. Before they even leveled up, I tried to accommodate by saying they could use a weapon and flavor those attacks as still fists. He also complained about Ki points, but we only just found out in our last session they didn’t know that they’re regained on a short rest. I also tried accommodating that before the game even started by having their starting magic item being one that lets them cast Expeditious Retreat at least once/day to save them a Step of the Wind. (Item: Guild Signet Ring, Simic) This isn’t exclusive to my game. In another game where they’re a ranger, that DM had to finally sit down and double-check the dice he rolls for attacks because they were obviously wrong. He’s played for 5+ years in multiple campaigns, is really into Dnd shows like Critical Role, has made supplemental materials, and is even one of our rotating DMs. I know some people are just here for the role-playing and that’s great, but I would think after all this time playing in campaigns where mechanics do matter that stuff would click better. Am I being too much of a Murph for wanting my player to engage with their character’s abilities or does this player need to be sentenced to knight classes for re-education?

anniemurphs

*insert intro or just silence depending on what y'all are feeling here* May it please the court: A few years ago I was playing a level 15 swashbuckler rogue with reliable talent (definition in comment below). My party and I were in an attic when I was asked to roll a perception check, to which I rolled a nat1, and was sneak attacked by a mimic that also got a surprise round. Now, even if I didnt have Blindsense (definition below, too), which I did, since I had reliable talent in perception I shouldn't have been able to get below a 10 on those checks and my character's mechanics should've negated any sneak attack ability/damage the dm said the mimic got. Judges, am I wrong to think this was unjust? I can understand the surprise round to an extent since technically I rolled a nat 1, but to then get a sneak attack and deal that extra damage as well seems like a bit much. I await your judgement, Annie B. (the one who gave Jake the helm dice/Murph the Witcher dice at the Bos- I mean Medford show)

thursdaysgrace

To the magnificent magistrates and the bumbling bailiff – I present the case of the uninspired baked goods. My group has been playing together for almost two years, and we now alternate weekly between two campaigns run by our OG DM and a player-turned-DM. We started off playing at our original DM’s house, and more recently switched to my house (due to some roommate issues). Ever since we started playing together, I’ve made and brought a homemade baked good or other sweet treat to every session, without fail. I’ve made cookies, tarts, cakes, brownies, ice cream, cocktails, and more – only on one week when I drove straight to D&D from an out of town trip did I buy something to bring. Originally, I did this every week because I wasn’t hosting and wanted to contribute to game night. However, now that I’m the one hosting I find myself still upholding the tradition. Here comes my issue. Our newer DM has developed an annoying habit of asking for a baked good once I bring it out, and then awarding inspiration to the person who hands him the treat, all while I stare from the far end of the table. This is, needless to say, super annoying. I’ve jokingly made a fuss a couple times and gotten an inspiration, but it feels really awkward to keep bringing it up, so lately I’ve let it slide. I’ve tried making baked goods that require serving from my kitchen instead of something that can be grabbed off the table and passed, but to no avail. In fact, sometimes when I do this he’ll accept his plate, and then later throw out “hey, if you grab me another serving I’ll give you inspiration” to another player in the kitchen while they grab a drink or clean a plate. I want to keep making treats for the group but every time this happens I feel a little more deflated. So, am I in the wrong for being annoyed that my game night treats go unrecognized, or is my DM entitled to have his cake and his inspiration too?

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

To the cool cat collective (and Jakelsica) I have a dice Christ confession During a session I had a player decide to go full murder hobo and put the party in jeopardy (I’m talking full tpk). He kept invoking attacks and I crit on him, and on my second attack I crit again. I decided to impose dis advantage on myself bc a back to back crit would put him to 0 and rolled again… yes, a third crit. I also rolled max damage both times. Because of this I full killed his character. It was the first session and he was 12. Can dice Christ forgive me not only disavowing my rolls and for murdering a literal child when I’m a 31 year old woman?

emjemme

May it please the court and the ish, Jake. I present the case of character confusion. I recently finished a three year campaign and I am feeling disappointed. At character creation my initial class choice was taken so I chose to build an enchantment wizard. She was fey adjacent and her main trait was intense hunger for knowledge. I asked him about other classes and character types and he said it was fine because he wanted everyone to play what they wanted. With “knowledge” as my motivation, whenever we arrived in a new location I immediately asked about libraries and magic shops. Everywhere we went would have neither of these, or the shops were described as “out of my price range.” (I immediately sold my “likeness” for media coverage for 1000gp and apparently still couldn’t afford anything.) After about 10 sessions we arrived in the capital city and I thought this was my chance. Again, I was told I did not have access to any locations with spells. A few sessions later, we were in an old house which was maintained by a ghostly illusion. I had 30 minutes to copy a spell (subclass cantrip) before the illusion disappeared. Finally, about 20 session into the campaign, we met a wizard with a full library. I was so excited that I could finally learn some more spells. That was until I asked the DM about the books. The DM told me that the entire library was transcribed into a code written by the wizard himself. After a multi session side quest, the wizard gifted my character a page of encoded text. I could attempt to decode the text with successful arcana checks which would decrease in DC based on my success. He did not tell me the DC but said I could make one check per day. Dutifully I made the check every evening in game. After several 17+ arcana checks, I was told I brought the DC down “a little.” For the next two years of playing I made checks every session. Even with my impressive arcana checks (again 17+), I made very little progress on the code. This remained my only option for learning new spells. Around 5 sessions before the end of the campaign, we returned to the biggest city. This time I had access to the government library. The asked the DM if I could study spells and he told me I could learn six spells. (I made a spreadsheet of spells to learn and everything which I presented to him because I was so thrilled to learn spells.) This was the last opportunity I had to learn spells. In the epilogue, the DM told me I partially decoded the page I received from the wizard two years prior. Am I wrong to feel like I got nerfed by the DM? PS. After I gained Instinctive Charm at 6th level, the DM never hit me with another attack. We reached level 10 by the end of the campaign.

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?

anniemurphs

Reliable Talent: By 11th level, you have refined your chosen skills until they approach perfection. Whenever you make an ability check that lets you add your proficiency bonus, you can treat a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10

Giovanni The Fighter

To the most gracious and spectacular Judges and that bailiff guy, Jake. May it please the court, I present the case of the Polymorphed Ape: During the most recent session with my group, in which I am a player, we were playing in a UFC (ultimate frisbee competition). Where the conflict occurs is during the match the DM’s wizard polymorphed one of his other players into a giant ape. Us players had no issues with that until our cleric read the polymorph spell and pointed out that a polymorphed creature couldn’t take any other action that requires hands. A brief argument about the spell and its rules ensued and the DM ruled that his giant ape was able to catch the frisbee and the game resumed with no hard feelings because we know the rule of cool should always win (and our DM was getting whomped). Humble judges, and Jake, I ask you this, can a polymorphed giant ape catch a frisbee? Or was the cleric right in saying it couldn’t?

anniemurphs

Blind sense: Starting at 14th level, if you are able to hear, you are aware of the location of any hidden or invisible creature within 10 feet of you.

Gabriel Babbitt

may please the illustrious and baroque Court with her lofty judges, and displease the baby bailiff with a, somehow, older baby: I bring to you the case of the competitive gamblers. I am DMing my first campaign with a group of new players. This happened at 12 sessions in at level 5; I decided to introduce the deck of many things. I'm fully aware of the chaos this can cause and was happy to shake things up in my campaign. I made it very clear that this was a very dangerous deck and gave some examples of some of the best and worst cards hidden within. I knew my ranger couldn't resist a gamble and I thought he would pull at least one or two cards, but what I didn't anticipate was that the party artificer, would want to "keep up" with the ranger. This was at the end of the session and the artificer needed to leave soon for work, but I wanted to get the deck in before the next session because I bought a physical deck and thought it would be fun. So, I presented a shady NPC with the deck. What ensued was a frenzy of drawing cards from the ranger, and the artificer matching every draw, like a couple of frat boys going shot for shot. They drew 11 in total. The artificer kept pulling devastating cards like -3 to intelligence and -2 to all saving throws, and the ranger kept getting lucky. At one point the ranger lost all their magic items but then pulled another card which granted 1 wish spell, which they immediately use the wish spell to get their magic items back. The last card drawn was the Donjon card by the artificer, they were locked in a demi-plane, and the only way to find them was the wish spell that the ranger had already burned to get a few magic items back. This caused quite the scene at the table. It was an upsetting end of the session and our poor artificer was distraught and had to go to work right away before processing or talking about it with the party. My player made a new character and the party is now on a quest to get her PC back, but I ask you: Was I wrong to allow my players to draw as many cards as they wanted, unchecked, or should I have capped it?

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.

Liz M

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

Josh Zellers

To the most gracious judges and the bailiff Jax. I present to you the case of the god wanna be. This case starts with the party wanting to infiltrate a demigods domain. Where one player who hasn’t even heard of naddpod said to the guard that he should “ bow down to her and worship the liiiiight” this later brought up how she wants to become a god in a world where all the gods have died.

Abigail Schneider

To the honorable supreme crit justices and Papa Jake: I bring you the case of Ryannurphy. I'm a long time NADDPOD listener and have gotten my BF to start listening to the pod and Short Rest. He recently listened to the episode where Justice Murphy introduces his DM PC "Ryan Nurphy" and thought it was hilarious. We've recently started playing Balder's Gate together and my bf thought it would be funny to name his halfling Paladin Ryannurphy and have him run around and participate in dialogue with his cock out at all times. At first I found it semi-funny (lol), but it quickly got old when we were interacting with characters in serious scenes and Ryannurphy would be standing there balls swinging while serious shit went down. I tried telling my BF that I didn't find Ryan as funny as he did, but he just told me he wouldn't listen to me unless I addressed "Ryannurphy" by his proper name. I brought it up another time to tell him I was liking the game less because of his character, and he accused me of wanting to "nurph" his fun. Justices, while I understand he's getting a kick out of playing a dumbass, I feel like it detracts from the game's world building and takes me out of my immersion. Am I wrong to want my bf to put effort into creating a character that fits within the world or am I truly "nurphing" his fun. I humbly await your judgement. Sincerely, Abs.

Michael Uken

To the wise and beautiful heads of both Church and State; and to Amir's acquaintance: I have a confession and a case for your consideration. In a previous game I was DM-ing for friends, my players had fled a cultists' keep with the still very much alive and speaking head of one of the cultist leaders. One of my players thought to ask for a perception roll as they were concerned they were being followed. A natural 20 put me in a predicament - they were being followed; but by two different things. The first: the stumbling, beheaded corpse of that cultist leader, attempting to get his head back from the party. The second: an invisible shadow hound that was ordered by the surviving cultists to track the party down. I settled to narrate the party noticing the cultist leader's body tripping over every branch and bush it could while trying to catch up to the party, but made no mention of their stalker. The party eventually cried foul when a different player finally did cast See Invisibility as they approached their encampment and saw the hound I had conveniently not mentioned as a pursuer previously. Did I do my players dirty with a lie of omission? Did I snub the Dice Christ by not honoring one of his blessings to a player? I leave it in 3/4ths of your capable hands.

Damien The Crustacmien Kirk

Greetings, pretty neato justices and sexy-ass bailiff Tucker. I present the case of the bean dad. I’m about to start DMing a new short campaign where the PCs are elite members of a mercenary company hired to fight in an impending war. During session 0, two of the players announced their artificer characters, one of whom is just a cube, and two others came up with a pair of twin former pirates. The fifth player didn’t come in with a single idea but wanted to focus more on story than mechanics, so we discussed a few concepts and seemed to be settling on a dad whose son is missing or was taken. The dad joined the mercenaries in order to travel the land looking for clues as to where the son went. I thought this was headed in an interesting direction, but suddenly, someone mentioned Shinji from Neon Genesis Evangelion, whom this player deeply despises. She announced that she would be playing Shinji’s dad and that her character’s “sole motivation” would be to find his son and beat the shit out of him for once failing to open a can of beans. Conversation broke out about the other PCs and the NPC leader of the mercenary company supporting this character and agreeing that his son has it coming. My mind went immediately to Fat Bastard and I told her that she couldn’t play an existing character from an anime and that her character needed more background and motivation than scolding his son for something trivial, but she dug her heels in. I may have lost my temper a bit in the course of this and the session ended without a clear resolution. She messaged me later and said her character’s name would just be Bean Dad and we had a second heated argument about it. Was I wrong to lose my cool over a character whose fundamental motivation was a bit? I am submissively at the mercy of your judgement.

Ariel, the Occasional Mermaid

May it please the most esteemed Justices of the Supreme Crit and that rising-star bailiff Jarmp, I bring to you a most simple and humble proposal. The sport played in the frozen north of Bahumia is Broomball. It’s like hockey’s backwoods cousin: also played on ice, just without…ice skates, a puck, hockey stick or full body pads. It’s somewhat insane but incredibly fun to play and I think even Riaris would agree it has the right vibe. Here’s a video with more info: https://youtu.be/dyEYPxOO0FY?si=2AxLM-Y0TSD6kCyK I apologize profusely and (of course) prostrate myself before the Crit for appealing to the Dungeon Court thread without nary a case and with only a shameless and largely self-interested pitch. I will accept any punishment the Crit sees fit to hand down, so long as you don’t actually have me disbarred from practicing law in New York State. (Girl’s gotta pay rent, you know.) Most respectfully yours, Ariel, the Occasional Mermaid, esq.

Alex Pitzel

May it please the court of wise adults and their co-parented baby: Jake- I bring you the case of the experienced but dreadfully clueless player. We have been playing this campaign with coworkers since just before covid hit. One of our players couldn't make it anymore and so the dm brought in a mutual friend of a few of the players. The player in question supposedly is very experienced, having DM'd multiple campaigns and having played since 3.5e. Very early on in their tenure with our campaign they constantly pushed for 8-10+ hour long sessions, and constantly had to be reminded of their fighters action economy. Their turns often take 5-10 minutes in combat and I have to explain each turn what they can do. Attack, bonus action shove, attack again. That's their turn. 5-10 minutes for that. We as a group have had to argue with them about how action surge works multiple times. On top of this, they tend to not pay attention and ruin our plans. The final session we've played, we spent a good 30-40 minutes scouting a main enemy base and decided on how to sneak in. Before we can even initiate a sneak attack on a couple guards the player fully leroy-jenkins into the open ruining our surprise and starting combat stating they couldn't remember the plan and just wanted to fight. After the first few guards including some hidden assassins nearly killed us, and we were out of immediate combat though the base was alerted, I pulled an excuse about having a headache and quit the session. The DM asked me about it and I told him honestly about my feelings. His response: everyone else seemed to be having fun. We have not scheduled a game in the month and a half since. Was I the asshole for finally hitting my breaking point and calmly leaving the game before losing it or should I have swallowed my years worth of frustration and just kept playing?

Tim S.

May it please the honorable crit judges Emilia, Mark, and Caleb; and venerate the one and only bailiff JAKE: I bring you the case of the cheeky Pass Without Trace range, or perhaps this is a confession simply looking for forgiveness. I've been DMing a campaign for almost 4 years now with the same group of friends, using Roll20 maps to play remotely. It's important to note that players can freely move their tokens around Roll20 maps, with some limits. Early on, the party was sneaking through a castle and the ranger, naturally, cast Pass Without Trace. They were all hiding behind some barrels in a room with a troll guard, and the ranger decided to scout a room ahead. Picture my face slowly turning into a Grinch's smile as I counted down the squares until the ranger stepped 35 feet away from the rest of the party. I immediately ruled, with the smugness of youth, that the rest of the party's Stealth check lowered by 10, alerting the troll and starting the fight. I now believe that this was a dick move. The only consequence was groans of dismay, and we are still playing years later because we're adults and like each other; but I now believe this was a case of punishing inexperienced players with knowledge their characters should know about their own spells. I beseech the court to tell me what you would have done in my shoes, and to punish me in any way you see fit that would absolve me of soul-crushing guilt.

J

To Jacob Penn Cooper Hurwitz, clerk of the Honorable Court: This case brings no social disputes, but a simple issue of rule application. I am the typical DM for a table of six lawyers. We are normal-ass-dudes, except for one quirk due to our collective personalties: We are brutal tules lawyers, so it is not uncommon for us for have thirty minute arguments about rule application in combat—but we all generally enjoy it so no harm. We usually come to an accord, but I felt the players were unhappy with a recent ruling. The party was fighting a Kraken. The Kraken had swallowed a Cleric. The Rogue attacked the Kraken but no condition existed to allow him to utilize sneak attack. He argued that since the swallowed player was restrained but not incapacitated, that sneak attack should apply as he was within 5 ft of the Kraken. RAW, he may be right, but I ruled against it as the player WAS SWALLOWED, thus negating the presumed intent of the “engaged” rule—that the enemy is slightly distracted by another player. I seek your sage ruling: RAW v. Common Sense. P.S. I implore you to implement an “Abuse of DICEcretion” standard when the DM has to make a close call, thus giving the benefit of doubt to the DM when s/he does not make a flagrant rules violation. Sincerely, The Worst Rules Lawyer.

Warthog

May it please the court most high, and captivate the bailiff who is getting there, for I am in desperate need. I present the case of “Dungeons and McDonalds.” I have been a forever DM for the past 8 years, running every game in the same home-brew world at different periods of the world’s history. My girlfriend and I have been together for a little over two years, so she has always known about my love for the game. She has always lightly razzed me for being a nerd, but has also always wanted me to DM for her since she’s never played. Recently, some friends of hers approached me and asked me to DM for them, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to finally play the game with my lovely partner. Cut to last night. We are laying in bed and she asks me what I’m planning for the first session. I tell her it’s a prison escape and explain how I have painstakingly designed it to immerse the new players into the game and my home-brew world. She was looking up at the ceiling thoughtfully, so I asked her if she had any character ideas. She rolled over and asked me “Can I play Ronald McDonald?” I laughed and told her she could be a bard that is a clown as long as the other players thought it was fun. She frowned at me and said “No. Can I be Ronald McDonald, court jester of the Burger King and his Lady Wendy?” Realizing she was serious, I begged her not to be literal Ronald McDonald because I play D&D to escape. She retorted “You want to escape McDonald’s but not prisons?” We argued (playfully) for the next 30 minutes about the validity of me denying her the opportunity to play Ronald, The Hamburgler, or Grimace in my D&D world that I have spent 8 years building the lore, ecology, and geography of. Justices, I ask you, am I wrong for denying my partner a McDonald’s character or am I right for saying “I’m not loving it?” I look to Justice Murphy specifically for his experience as a fellow no-nonsense DM with a romantic partner that is an embodiment of chaos. Thank you.

Hannah Celeste

To the honorable justices and the #boyboss bae-liff I bring you the case of the “Forgotten Fire Genasi”. Last month, my very first and longest d&d campaign came to an end! I was in an Icewind Dale campaign for two years with 2 friends (one which is the GM) and 3 other guys. In our very last session, our party was finally going up against the Frostmaiden herself, including my fire genasi who was ready to defeat her and end the endless night in the Dale! However, I had a migraine that day that caused me to forget that the session was that night, and found out the next morning that they played the last session without me. No only I have never skipped a session without warning/just cause, none of the players including my friends??/GM messaged me to ask where I was. When I messaged in the morning apologizing for my accidental absence they replied “That's ok friend we wrapped up the game so someone can give you an epilogue” so I don’t even know how the campaign actually ended. Because this was my first d&d character ever, I planned on getting a tattoo of my character but this situation has left such a sour taste in my mouth. My question for the court is this: they are currently planning another campaign they invited me to- I understand it is ultimately my fault for forgetting to show up but am I just for going scorched earth and vowing to never play d&d with them ever again and even distancing myself from this person who I considered a good friend for not including me in our most important session?

Kristina The Sorceress

To the esteemed justices Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, and also the disbarred bailiff Jax Hamstink. May it please the court, I present the Case of Metagaming Versus Party Knowledge. I joined my friends’ campaign group mid campaign, and within the confines of character dialogue, they caught me up to speed of their quest and the BBEG. Not soon after, we encountered a bard accomplice of the BBEG. The rest of the party had encountered this enemy previously and, at the start of the battle, used actions to place magical miniature sandbags in their ears to help resist any charms or spells that utilized sound. I, as the player, had heard of this villain and their previous encounters, but it never came up in character! My DM chided me for “metagaming,” and so my character took no precautions, failed saving throws, and was left to hear “the saddest song you’ve ever heard.” This homebrewed magical song effect altered stats and my character’s disposition for the rest of the entire campaign. The only way the effect could be undone was through a Greater Restoration or Remove Curse. Judges, I ask you, was it right to say that I was metagaming simply because I thought that the accomplice would have come up in previous conversations, but technically didn’t? I’m at your mercy. (P.S. We never got high enough level to get greater restoration/remove curse, and we never encountered an npc who could cast them on my character.)

Santa Grinch Hugging HumBaba and two Fairies

Should i be punished for setting up the bard to fail by encouraging his debauchery giving him disadvantage on the preformance check at the bandit hide out and catching a bottle thrown at use and returning the volley at the crowd i was a trickster cleric and used spare the dying to keep my party from dying and my cleric was the most effective in that combat

James Jackman

To the striking justices and the circle jerking diva bailiff Blake. I bring you the case of the infuriating imp. I'm in a game with a new player, a friend of mine, and his partner who is a long time dnd player. I play a Warforged Eldritch Knight whose soul was placed into his current body to serve as a soldier within a large empire. My case concerns the party warlock who has an imp familiar. This winged weasel has become the bane of my life. Every time we approach a dungeon, a city, a house, a dirty hole in the ground, the warlock turns their imp invisible and sends them to fly ahead and scout out the entire terrain. Any traps or hazards must be tested by the imp. If they are killed by anything, she insists on taking the time to rest and re-summon the familiar to continue mapping the environment. This has culminated in the rest of us sitting around for half an hour doing nothing as the DM slowly but surely describes the whole encounter. It was really bumming me out and taking away some of the mystery of exploration. I've made comments that we should accompany the imp and it would be more fun to work as a party, but they seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Am I in the wrong for not being more assertive about the way we could handle encounters? Or is she in the wrong for failing to let any of the other players feel IMPortant?

3 Minions in a trench coat

To the justices so so high above that anyone else is irrelevant, I come seeking advice for an IP thief player. I know we all borrow from other sources (thanks for some great mechanics Murph) but I have a player who has yet to come up with an original idea. Every PC over the years has been an exact clone of a video game character, down to the name. Any chance they have to insert lore is a direct copy of another IP. We have now played in worlds that have exact copies of League of Legends/Overwatch etc. They are a great player who gets into roleplay and interacts with the world as it is, but other players have said it’s uncomfortable that they keep doing it (and pretending that it’s original) how can I encourage them to be more original, or am I right to call them out?

Kane Sanchez

To the lovely justices and the baby in the high chair, I present the case of the worlds fastest monk punch. I’m running a campaign with my family and one of my four brothers is a tabaxi monk. The BBEG was escaping via expeditious retreat and he went to catch him to finish him off. With the doubling of movement, monk stuff to get a dash as a bonus action, plus the bonus movement, he traveled so fast to catch him and asked “can I use the momentum from covering this much ground to deal extra damage with my attack? After heavy debate, I was overruled by the party deeming “fall damage rules” for distance traveled to deliver the punch. Am I trippin’, or is the rule of cool in full effect and I’m just being a brat? We all listen to Patreon and have fully committed to whatever punishment is fitting.

Hannah

To the judicious jems and the bearable bailiff; I am currently in a couple online campaigns with my DM. Overall, it has been a surprisingly positive experience after finding a random group online. My DM works really hard and puts in a lot of time crafting fun adventures for our group. Recently, our DM shared his screen on discord to show the map to someone who was having tech issues. Since I was lloking as he screen shared, I happened to see that his monsters had 500 hit points. I thought this was odd seeing as the PCs were only level 12 and it wasn't some big boss fight. I gasped when I first saw it and my DM said, "Don't look yet!", but the secret knowledge had already wormed its way into my head. After reflecting on it further, I have realized that the monsters we are fighting do not have set hit points. He just lets us fight them until he feels it is a good time to end the battle. I have even noticed since then that it seems like the killing blow tends to be spread out between PCs when possible. As a rule follower, this is difficult for me to reckon with...What is the point of playing a game you can't lose? Are any of the stakes real? What do you think I should do? Should I discuss this with him or just leave it be since I was lucky enough to find a good group online? I rapturously await your ruling, Hannah

Tim

Dear exemplary judges and absolutely the lowliest bailiff, I bring a case about short rests. In a recent Strixhaven campaign, my party and I were tasked with breaking into a building and stealing a haunted doll from the attic. Classic magic college stuff. After we got inside, we were quickly attacked by a robot butler who kind of kicked our asses (We’re level 2). Everyone survived, but barely. With no spell slots left, I asked our DM if we could short rest. “Absolutely not,” she said. “The manor will open before you finish the rest.” We were told the manor was closed from 10 PM to 6 AM. We broke in around midnight and almost immediately fought this butler, so it couldn’t have been later than 12:15 AM. And short rests last a minimum of an hour. So at the latest, I figured it would be 1:15 AM when we finished the short rest. I was confused and asked why we couldn’t short rest and our DM said it was the DM’s discretion as to how long a short rest was. We moved on with the session and later found some potions, but I ask judges, should our party have gotten our short rest? Or should I respect my DM’s decision (which I normally do 99% of the time)?

Eugenio Velasco

To the devilishly good looking justices, and resident intern Jake, I come for more guidance and wisdom than a particular problem. I am the DM of a 2+ year campaign, which I just put on indefinite hiatus yesterday. I have a table of 6 in my entirely homebrewed world with multiple continents that all interconnect with story decisions from one place affecting another, think like Critical Role with multiple continents, each having their own set of cultures and laws. I built the entire world from scratch, and built each player to have their own individual character arcs. Recently, I've noticed my players, except for maybe 2 of the 6, just not caring. It wasn't a priority anymore, and they would just refuse to interact with my world. I would constantly put breadcrumbs for plot points, or set up potential quests to learn more about the world, but alas, they just did whatever was in front of them. When faced with open choices in the world of how to solve a problem, they didn't know what to do. One of my players is even falling asleep sometimes. We have been playing online for 2 years and in different time zones, as I am in LA, and the majority of them are in central time. They are constantly on their phone, not paying attention or interacting, so I am left carrying the burden of play to move things along. One of my players even met their dad who was presumed dead, and didn't even talk with them to figure out what happened, and let their dad just leave (and not even go to them to do more). The work I put in is just not worth the return in play, and I just can't justify spending hours prepping and building for people not to care. I humbly ask your guidance. Was I wrong to end this campaign early or should I have just stuck it out and hope for them to turn around? Your judgement shall stand as truth. Eugenio (eyoo-hehn-yoo)

Jack Ruggless

To the highly ascended court, and the highest of rock bottom bailiffs and namesake of my father Jake, I present the case of the Permanent Short Rest . Before I fell in love with tabletop games, I played in my first DnD game, at 10 years old, by begging my brother to let me play in a campaign he was DM’ing for his friends. About 10 minutes into the game, my brother narrates that it’s getting late and I had just arrived in a town. My 10 year logic deduces that my character is likely tired and I roleplay finding a tavern and taking a rest. My brother narrates that my character sleeps for the night and proceeds to play out the rest of the 4 hour session with my character asleep, prompting me to stop playing because as he put it, “You are asleep and can’t do anything.” Was my brother right to take my roleplay so literal, or do I deserve justice after sitting silently waiting to play for 2 hours before giving up on DnD for the next 6 years?

saavikams

To the immaculate judges and the lowly bailiff Julius, (?) I present to you the case of flakey players. My best friend is an excellent writer and wanted ti try his hand at DMing. He spent a month world building , weaving in character backstories, and planning broad strokes of the campaign. We only made it two sessions in when it all fell apart. Scheduling sessions was like pulling teeth; every time my dm or i would text the group chat we were met with silence or an “im busy this week”. When we finally did get to play one of the players would time the session and tell the DM we should start wrapping it up when we got close to an hour long. So I ask, were we wrong to completely ghost these two players and start a new campaign without them? PS. they have since had the messy breakup imaginable and are not our friends anymore.

Eddie Waitman

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the Baby Bailiff Jake, May I present to the court the case of the falling Whale. A little over a year ago, my party (around level 10) of friends I DM for in a homebrew 5e game was breaking into a fortress of an evil archduke that had been committing crimes against creatures of the feywild. The party had spent multiple sessions hopping around between outposts, and when finally making their way to the primary fortress, they began using code words and enacting a plan I was completely unaware of. This is not typically an issue, I encourage them to be creative and plan outside of session for major boss fights, but what they did really took me through a loop. The party's (wildshaped) Druid and our flying Fairy rogue made their way well above the keep under the guise of scouting and honestly, I thought that was excellent strategy. However, I became a bit suspicious when they began being very specific with their flying height (200 ft). I brushed it off, believing there would be some shenanigans around spell ranges and not being able to be attacked back. Boy was I wrong. The druid exited wild shape (free action), cast Polymorph on the Rogue (Action), and entered starry form (bonus action). The druid announced that he would be turning the rogue into a Sperm Whale, which would immediately fall from 200 feet onto the many many guards below. I was astonished and stopped in my tracks so that I could take a few minutes to read up on rules. I found nothing in the rules preventing it. I did not want the entire encounter leading to the boss fight to be bypassed, but more importantly I did not want to set a precedent that the 4th level polymorph spell could be continually used in an absolutely game breaking way. I argued that the whale, falling from such a height could deal max falling damage (20d6) and those below would get a Dex save for half damage (and the same damage done to the falling whale). It is a lot of damage, and felt like a good compromise. The party argued that the gargantuan creature weighing over 30 tons, should kill all those it fell on, or deal more damage than that, as well as completely destroying that section of the fortress. We had a bit of a back and forth and reminded them that whatever they can do can be done back to them in the future, (and how would they feel about that as a TPK) and they begrudgingly settled on accepting the damage as 20d6. It ended up killing many of the soldiers and leaving the remainder to be wiped out in a single round of combat. Since then I feel I made an okay call in the moment, however the party has recently boarded an airship and expressed intent to do the same to many other opponents. Thinking about the implications moving forward, I bow to the court and ask, did I make a poor call and need to live with the consequence, or was the party right and I should have allowed such a grand defeat to the soldiers/fortress below. How can this be handled moving forward without breaking many, many encounters?

Hannah Celeste

Additional context: - I've skipped 2 sessions total which is the same as all of the other players - The week before this I had just visited my friend/GM over NYE so we are on good terms, so I don't think this was done maliciously

Steph

To the accredited supreme crit justices and Jorts Hershey, I have maybe a case maybe a confession, I'll let you decide. In the first dnd game I had ever played I was given an admittedly over powered dagger. It had a ton of homebrew stuff that went into it but boiled down it would insta-kill anything I stabbed with it, but it would also kill me. The first thing I stabbed with it was a bug that I rolled to find..luckily my dm just knocked me out as I didn't know what the dagger did that first time. I am still teased about this. We played for awhile and I sat on that dagger waiting for the funniest time to use it. I played a monk and after the bug I swore to just get so good at movement I would be unstoppable. The moment came at a boss that was clearly set up as a turn and run kinda encounter. I rolled a high initiative and step of the winded my ass right up to him and stabbed him. We both died. Our cleric revived me. The session ended because it was supposed to be a chase/ escape. We were 15mins in. My dm was pretty pissed at me and said they thought about not allowing the revive. To which I said why give me the dagger if you don't want it used. I ask of you judges who is in the wrong here. Should I have just never used the dagger after stabbing a bug? Or was I in the right to be a maniac and use to tools provided? PS We are all good in this group and still play together. Just not with an insane item like that

Tyler Cummins

If it please the unreasonably attractive justices and the widdle baby Jacob, My partner and I were recently building characters for a one-shot and questioned the legally sanctioned approach. I prefer to let a character marinate for a long time, and often leave the dice on the shelf until late in the process. In fact, I will sometimes write stream of consciousness backstory for characters as a way to learn more about them and what class, species, or stats might best suit them, before I make a single mechanical decision. My partner vehemently disagreed with this approach and posited that stats should inform the character's personality and backstory, rather than try to shoe-horn a backstory onto inappropriate stats. In her defense, I am a forever DM and routinely roll like Murph when those d6's finally hit the table, so maybe Dice Christ has been trying to guide me all along. Wise justices, I happily await your determination of precedent, even if it means I will have to watch every episode of the Flintstones or get pecked to death by birds. -tyty

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.

Benny

To the Swell Honorable Supreme Crit Justices, and I'm pretty sure I heard his name was Jacklyne. I present the case of the unfairly brutal death. A few years ago my friends and I were played a modified game where we played ourselves selves during a zombie apocalypse alla Walking Dead. We were told upfront that we should expect to make a few back up characters. After a year and a half, I was the only one still playing their initial character (ie, myself), compared to the new PCs I became basically a commoner due to my low stats. One player at the table became notorious for driving poorly, due to some bad planning and dice rolls on two separate occasions where his previous characters had died. Even though I am pitiful in stats next to the other players, I am still enjoying the campaign. Until the end. We were raiding an outpost when things took a turn, two of out friends got devoured, another was gunned down, all thay was left was me with my broken legs and the poor driver. The only escape a vehicle. My heart turned to ice as I realised thay my companion HAD to be the one to drive. Sure enough, as soon as we build up speed he lands a crit failure. The driver immediately starts giggling, and the DM turns to me with a grimace and saddened look. I was low on hit points already, I knew what was coming. I get a description of my body flying out of the car from the resulting crash and pancaking against a wall. I go home that night crestfallen, with all of us dying we decided to call the campaign quits. Tell me judges, did I deserve such a bleak fate? Is this an act of Dice Christ or does my friend deserve to be charged with involuntary man slaughter? I await your decision.

ChappyThoughts

To the honorable justices Axeford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the bailiff who we are either belittling or exalting depending (Schroedinger's bailiff). I present the case of the almost experts. I was running a Viking themed campaign in Faerun when the party came up against a dragon turtle. I knew they couldn't kill it, but after a few rounds they had done well enough that I figured the beast would consider the meal too troublesome and it same away from the bay it had attacked them in. One of my players wanted to track it but I said no, he wouldn't be able to track a turtle in the ocean. He claimed he could. Here's the problem, he's a professional outdoor survival teacher while I'm a former submariner, neither of us is an expert in marine wildlife. Was I right to stop the party from spending a week tracking a monster that would just kill them in the end?

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 willaccept your judgment, even if it means spending time with Jill´s husband.

Caroline

To the resolute and unwavering Justices and everyone's favorite Bayloft: I present the case of Am I The Problem. My close friends and I have been playing in-person once a month for years now. My boyfriend is our DM, and he created a spectacular homebrew world for us. I am the note-taker, and I play a grave domain cleric. Lately I've been bothered by our propensity to choose paths that are easy in the short-term but have catastrophic consequences in the longer term. We're level 9 now, so in my mind, we should try to act like heroes. The most recent example of this is: my team voted to make a pretty terrible deal with a devil to get something we need as quickly as possible, rather than taking the time to earn the trust of a powerful person in the city who also could have helped us. I know for a fact that our DM would reward us for making a decision that's more work but more just, and I know the devil-deal we made will come at a high cost. I voiced my dissent, but when everyone voted against me I quickly relented. My problem is that I sense they're getting annoyed with me for wanting to do things the difficult way. So I ask you, most noble and benevolent justices: am I the problem? Signed, Not trying to be lawful, just trying to be good PS: You don't have to read this, but just in case you need details on what the deal with the devil was, here it is: My party decided to make a deal with the archdevil Fierna to bring back a deceased party member in exchange for leaving her alone to overthrow this dwarven city, and here were the terms: We cannot kill her. We cannot raise arms against her or encourage anyone else to raise arms against her. We cannot tell anyone about our deal, and we cannot tell anyone about her current hideout/hidden military base. So... we got our party member back, and now we're going to peace out and leave the city to be taken over by a devil. Keep in mind our DM had been hinting that there was another, less-evil way that we could have brought our party member back. It just would have taken more time. I am going to try to find a loophole to warn the city folk, but my party has already said they don't want to because they want to "air on the side of caution" so Fierna doesn't get our souls for breach of contract.

Ari T

To the Crit Council and Bailiff who is in over his pay grade, I present the case of the one-off that wasn't. Several years ago I was in a wonderful campaign with some friends from grad school. Over the summer I planned a camping trip and the DM suggested that we play a one-off campaign one of the nights while camping (the trip was 2 nights total). I told him no. My reasoning was thus: I wanted to keep the trip loosey goosey and I feared that committing to a one-off campaign would be too restraining and might prohibit some spontaneous fun. I didn’t want the DM to spend a lot of time preparing only to have us shut him down later, and I didn’t want us to feel obligated to play either. The DM was rather hurt by this, and continues to bring it up years later. Am I bad friend for putting this DM in his place, or should I have let the one-off continue and let the dice roll as they may. Please provide us the resolution we so desperately need.

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.

ChromaticMars

Hello Benevolent Judges, Axford, Murphy and Tanner, and the teenie tiny little pocket sized bailiff. I present to you the case of the FORCED aging. When I first started playing Dnd I only had NADPODD as an example so naturally I made a character based off of the Green Teens. He was a 14 year old ball of sunshine. He liked to give out information packets about the Green Teens, as well as did other charity works, but I made it a well known fact that he is a CHILD and role played accordingly (ie not drinking at taverns, talking to all adults as if they’re authority, etc) Well I guess my DM felt differently about him, because after killing all of the Green Teens leaving my character to be the last one, they also gave my character a magic ring that was “left for him by his parents” after they died that when he put on and attuned to, magically aged him to be 19 years old. I was pretty upset about this and asked if I unattuned to it would I turn back into my normal age? The DM said no you’re stuck like this forever. I tried seeing the brighter side because I was a halfing and could still be the sweet boy I originally made, but am I justified to be upset that I missed out on such an important pivotal story arc of my character growing up on his own? I await your all knowing judgement (Side note: I’ve also had issues with this group because the DMs husbands character tricked my character into drinking alcohol when My character and Myself said it’s something we didn’t not want to do so obviously they have issues with boundaries from the start)

Drew

To the most gracious judges and my wife’s boyfriend Jake, i present the case of Ring of the Grammarian. My best friends and i were playing for 6 months. I joined halfway through the campaign as a Chronurgy Wizard and was gifted the Ring of the Grammarian which allows the user to change one letter (add or remove or substitute) of a spell’s name and thereby changing the spell. I used it to change the “Mend” spell to “Lend” with the spoken intent of summoning a magical banker who would lend me an amount of gold because of items i wanted in a shop. I explained how i would go through the loan application process and agree to a decent APR. The DM said what actually would happen is someone comes out of a portal to give a helping hand. A non heated argument ensued and i eventually relented. However I am still butthurt that the spell didn’t change as i had intended it to and am now playing a chronically broke wizard. Was I in the wrong for arguing that my PC changing the spell should be how i intended it to change? I await your decision with arms wide open.

EmilyM

To the lovely Justices and… others. I present the case of the magical museum charm gone wrong. I was DM-ing a game with friends where the players were tasked with stopping a gang of bard thieves from robbing a museum. This was a small one-session sidequest, so I wanted to give my players a fun gimmick to shake combat up, so I filled the museum with magic items with the intention of the players and thieves using them in the fight. Also in the room was a cannon, but with no means of firing it, it was just for display. I had one of my bard criminals cast Charm Person on a party member, a Paladin, and tell him to start gathering things from the room to help the thieves steal the exhibits. The intention was to let the party realize they could pick up and use the magic items on display, since the paladin would have easily broken out of the Charm after a turn. Rather than doing that, the Paladin spent his turn attempting to pick up and steal the cannon on display, specifically to waste his turns and avoid helping the people who charmed him. We argued, eventually I let him do it because everyone thought it was fun, and though they eventually started using the gimmicks and having fun but it always bothered me after. Was I wrong to feel weird about his choice of tactics, or should I just swallow my pride and let it go. I humbly await your judgement. Yours, the charming dungeon master Emily. PS: A special Thank You to Justice Emily for inspiring my new name, fits me a lot better than the old one!

Tallerballer

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

levi herb

To the highest among high Supreme Crit Justices and the lowliest of lowly bailiff, whose names seems to allude me at the moment. I am in need of your ever so wise advice in the case of the Over Gracious DM. I run a small podcast campaign for four of my good friends. The campaign is very fun, and I know they are enjoying it. So far we have used some homebrew rules and mechanics to spice the game up. I have also given them some fun character customization options to really express their characters. One example is for our fighter who normally wears heavy armor and a shield and has a AC of 18. We came up with the option that he could doff his amor ( but keep his shield) while not in battle, his AC would lower to 12, but he would increase to 60 ft of movement. Unexpected to me, my players are very smart and know how to use these fun, quirky add on very well in roleplay and combat. I also give in to their side quite often if they question a ruling. Because of this, it has lead to them easily defeating anything I put in front of them. Though I am happy for them, it pisses me off that my bad guys don't get to do to much. Do I keep letting them get away with things and giving them things they ask for, or should I be a bit more strict to the rules so that battle is more scary for them. I ever so humbly await your sage advice. P.S: is that lowly bailiffs name "Jock"?

Audro Baggins

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

Koty Kai

To the esteemed Court Justices and Baliff Jake who I think is pretty okay actually, I bring you the case of the flaky friends. I am a brand new DM and I am- or at least was- running my very first campaign. Our group consists of couples, and at session 0 we agreed to skip a weekly session if one of the pairs couldn't make it. This quickly became a problem as we discovered one couple- let's call them Isaac and Grace- are flaky and unreliable people/players. They frequently canceled last minute (sometimes even 15-30 minutes beforehand). Later we had to put the campaign on pause due to other scheduling issues, but I continued to try making things work. I set up a way for us to play online, and I tried communicating with my group about new schedules, but Isaac and Grace gave us radio silence. They respond to texts about non D&D things, but not once did they respond to D&D related texts. Even worse, Grace comes into the coffee shop I work at more than once a week and dodges every question about D&D or scheduling. I'm trying to be understanding since I know both of them work more than one job, but I put a lot of time and love into writing my campaign and it's basically sitting on the shelf collecting dust. So my question to you is this: would I be justified in playing without some of my friends, or would this be rude and I should wait until we can all play together again? I await your ruling.

Austin Lee

To the eminent disciples of Dice Christ, I humbly prostrate myself before you to beg for forgiveness.  During a Halloween Vampire One-shot, which went on for over 12 hours, another player sitting next to me, cheated to get the final blow. To set the scene, we, the players, were a family of ancient and evil vampires that rose from our tombs to take revenge against the mortals that slew us. The game was epic, the roleplay superb; however, when we were fighting the final boss, a Biblically inaccurate angel, a Planetar, I noticed the player sitting next to me was using a spell the wrong way. The spell in question was Mental Prison, and I noticed that they were rolling full damage, 10d10 psychic, even when the DM said the BBEG saved or used a legendary resistance. Confused, I double checked the spell on my phone and saw the player was using it wrong.  At this point it had been over 11 hours of playing D&D and everyone was tired, especially the DM. To my shame, I did not call them out on this transgression, and this led to my greatest of sins. With many characters struggling at death’s door, my friend and I had a crazy idea to bring down the Planetar involving knocking him prone in midair to fall on my corrupted Holy Avenger, when the player in question once again used Mental Prison. They rolled full damage, even when the DM saved against their spell. The DM took a breath and said, “Finish him.” By this point I knew it was too late, both literally and figuratively. My shame was forever cemented with the knowledge I now possessed and the inaction I took in preventing it.  Oh, most reverent of Dice Christ’s children, what must I do to cleanse the filth of this most heinous sin!?

Adam Dubberly

To the honorable justices and the unfortunately necessary bailiff Jerk (?), I bring you the case of too many adventurers: A group of friends that are still in touch from college and I began gaming over Zoom during the lockdown. One week I offered, "If I learn to DM would y'all want to play Dungeons and Dragons?" We all agreed that sounded fun and began playing every other week over a year ago. (Shout out to local libraries and listening to Murph DM a first time player, I think his name was Jark, in campaign one, for teaching me how to fake knowing how to DM well enough to actually learn as we played.) We were having so much fun that more friends wanted to join and eventually we split the party. I DM half the group one week and one of my players, lets call him J. Druid, volunteered to DM the other half on alternating weeks. Unfortunately J. Druid is finding the time demand of DMing too much and asked if we could go back the way it was... unfortunately that would mean me DMing a group of 8 adventurers which sounds impossible. The other group has not played in a month and a half due to never being able to schedule sessions and ours has really gelled and is the highlight of my week twice a month. I don't know what to do, let the other game just die off? Keep the party split and only play once a month with each group? Try to figure out how to DM an eight member party? I will abide by your judicious ruling. - An Overwhelmed DM

Harecule Poirot, the Rabbitfolk Detective

May it please the Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner and first-time podcast guest, Jake. I bring you the case of the Rejected Dinner Invitation. My group has been playing a weekly Curse of Strahd game for just over 2 years. A few months in, Strahd invited us to dinner at his castle, kidnapping one of the main NPCs as an extra incentive to meet with him. Since then, we've done everything in our power to NOT go to this dinner. We've become wedding planners, staged a failed coup in a small town, spent a full in-game day reading in a library just for fun, hosted a dating show for a cave full of bears, and more. The DM has tried several times to get us back on track with the main story, but these attempts have only emboldened us to ignore Strahd further. The DM, to their credit, is rolling with the punches and keeping the adventure going, but are we being bad players for actively avoiding the plot hook?

Reuben Simmonds

May it please the honourable Justices and haunt the lowly bailiff when he is cold and alone at night, I bring to you the case of The Main Character. About a year ago I joined an online campaign that had already been in progress for 6 month. I played a Tiefling Sorcerer and the party consisted of a Tiefling Warlock, a Human Wizard, and a Dragonborn Paladin plus our DM. To join the party I had to have a one-on-one fight against the Paladin. I rolled high on initiative so I went first and you can imagine my surprise when he took no damage from my spell because his armour made him immune to all spell. Not resistant, it didn't give him advantage against spells but he was simply immune to every single spell. Naturally I lost the fight but the paladin told me I had fought bravely and still accepted me into the party. This was just the beginning however as with each session we played it became more and more clear that the Paladin was this stories Main Character and the rest of us were merely his sidekicks. Important NPCs would refuse to speak to anyone but the Paladin, whenever we received new items they were all immediately given to the Paladin and he could choose who to give them to, when making plans the person who always got to make the final decision was the Paladin. He also had a full selection of magic equipment with his armour that made him immune to magic, a ring that gave him a flying speed of 30 feet, and a +2 greatsword that did double damage on evil creatures just to name a few while the rest of the party had basically their standard starting equipment. I became increasingly frustrated with the lack of freedom and what confused me the most was that all the other PCs seemed perfectly content to be minor characters in the story. Eventually I had enough and quit the campaign but was I crazy to think that the collaborative game of D&D should have been played collaboratively?

Big Papa

The Case of The Cereal Bran Curse to the honorable justices (especially the lovely wife worm emily) and i think his name was like Joop? I offered to Dm a game for my friends to teach them dnd. However i’ve been butting heads with my only other friend who’s played before after she pitched a truly insufferable character and told me she wouldn’t comprise on anything about him.I built a fantasy style pirate campaign for my friends and she built a Kenku named Albert A Albertson who’s a uncharismatic suit wearing bard from illinois who only speaks in a monotone voice and has a bran ceral curse that makes him boring and sad . I tried to compromise and tell her she could think she’s cursed but i wouldn’t have it be true in the world due to the fact my main bbegs whole character is built around a curse (as well as another pc who wanted a curse related to that bbeg) i thought it would ruin the build up if there’s some divorced dad who’s also cursed bc he ate ceral.My friend got super upset and her girlfriend texted me telling me i was a control freak and buzzkill. Should i let her have her joke character or am i right for not wanting a joke character in my campaign?

Samantha Demmerle

To the most sexy conduits of Dice Christ, I have a TPK confession that has haunted my soul for far too long. A few years ago I was DMing the Dragon of Icespire Peak module, and my players and I were a couple of sessions in. They were a measly level 2. As we were finishing up a pre-written quest, the module suggested that the players would run into 3-4 orcs as they left the cave. However, my brain goofed and I read "3-4 ogres," so instead of a well balanced round of combat, I TPK'd my players. Midway through combat one of my players dm'd me and said "hey, I don't think it's supposed to be ogres..." at which point I realized my mistake. We proceeded to play out the combat, everyone died, and we never played that campaign again, and because of that I have been hyper paranoid about killing my players. I've DM'd quite a bit since then, but this event still weighs on my soul as one of my stupidest DM mistakes ever. For a final bit of context, I have a PhD in English, so reading comprehension is usually one of my strong suits. Will Dice Christ forgive me? May I continue to DM without this ogre-sized sin hanging over me?

Dana Aderholdt

To the honorable justice’s and that guy Jacques, a humbly ask you rule on a case that has yet happened. I started a ladies only dnd game for 5 of my friends and we have been going for over a year now. While most of them are very invested and are having a good time, one of them has consistently not paid attention during the game unless the story is about them specifically. Because of this they have often missed big pot points and twists by playing on their phone instead. It was a little annoying, but since she stated they were having a good time during all of our check-ins, I let it slide. Right before the most recent session however, they contacted me individually and dropped out of the game, stating that it felt more like a chore to them and they didn’t like roll playing with the group. This would be fine except that they have an item that is extremely important to the main campaign plot. I could have their character bow out gracefully, leave the item, and potentially be able to join back in if they like, but I kinda want to just kill them off and call it done. I am concerned that this is too mean, however. I beseech the court, should I leave the door open for this distracted dame? Or is it alright to use their death to motivate the actually interested players? I patiently await your wisdom.

E.Go

Dear Justices of the Supreme Crit and , I present to you the case of The D&D Noob vs A Ton of Lore, or AITA, however this goes. After an yearlong search, I found a group to play my first ever D&D campaign with. This campaign had been going on for about a year prior to my joining, and I had to face a Mountain of the lore which had a ton of characters (~30) and their interactions and a LOT of politics. When I started playing, conversations between other PCs and old NPCs—who they knew well, and I didn’t, at all—took MOST of the time. As I was interested in dice rolls, combat and a bit of improv, I found it very hard to keep track of this pure role-play, walking on the invisible tightrope of politics unknown to me. I faltered a few times and was lightly scolded by the players & the DM for not knowing all the lore. I did mention that the campaign was being wayy too lore-heavy for me. Nothing changed in over 3 months, and my interest began to dwindle. After yet another fateful falter, tempers exploded at me (the player), and I promptly left the Discord group, never to interact with these players again. (PS: This campaign was over Discord text only.) Justices, , was I right to abandon the campaign and leave, or should I have dedicated more of my time to earn a PhD in the history of this world, abandoning my own similar academic struggles? Would I be vindicated, or would I be bound by this guilt for the rest of my life?

Juhmes(Jums)

To the honourable judges and Papa Roach Jork, I present the case to you of the high explosive drugs. 3 or 4 years ago in a campaign that fizzled after the session where this incident occurred, my party was exploring a port town that was slowly dying from various issues. We found a secret tunnel and discovered a hidden warehouse. My celestial warlock, elderly eladrin (see blasting grandma) used her ghostly gaze warlock invocation to see through solid objects and found that the crates in the warehouse were filled with bags of powders and dried plants and, flavourwise being a bog-witch, she made a nature check to learn about them that she unfortunately failed to learn anything but their name . With her ghostly gaze still active she saw through the walls that bandits were coming and put down a wall of fire to let the party escape. We just about made it outside when my DM made an anxious/excited noise and we heard *lots* of dice being rolled through roll20. He said that the tower exploded and we were all flung hundreds of feet to land in the sea. He said that the wall of fire had ignited the drugs in what he explained was a drug lab and exploded for 120d6 of damage but we were far enough away that we took half and were flung. He then proceeded to describe the crater where the secret warehouse was. I was baffled why the drugs would explode. He seemed equally confused saying that, like a methlab, the drugs were explosive and we argued back and forth about the explosivity of a bag of weed or if holding a lighter to a bag of cocaine would cause it to combust. He eventually settled on a reason that the processing equipment was explosive but to me it definitely seemed to be making the excuse to fit what happened. The other PC's, finding the whole thing hilarious themselves (finding drug labs was a fairly common occurrence in my DM friend's campaigns), later described the drug laced mushroom cloud that would devestate the surrounding country as it poisoned the clouds above poisoning cast swathes of the map. I was pretty upset as I was playing a chaotic good blasting grandma and couldn't figure out how she would continue on adventuring after bring blamed and jailed for killing thousands of people. So I ask ask you judges, are all drugs explosive and should my character have to bear the weight of thousands of deaths? Or does failing a nature check justify the multitudinous manslaughter my character inadvertently caused? I await your judgement, thank you.

Lorelei G.

May it please the crit and the honorable Justice Murphy, the divine Justice Axford, the jovial Justice Tanner, and , I present to you not quite a confession, but a case for which I am pleading guilty In a Curse of Strahd campaign in which I play an elven light cleric named Pyre, I have committed the greatest sin that a dedicated healer can: I purposely left a downed party member unconscious during a fight with a mage when I could have brought him up easily The player in question, playing a kobold fighter named Mek-Mek the Bold, had rubbed me the wrong way ever since he joined the party, for example by proclaiming himself to be our only female player’s “manservant” and being vaguely creepy about it, and badgering the DM for a level up at the end of pretty much every session. I masked my dislike with bland politeness, but what pushed me over the edge to commit my dereliction of duty was when, during the aforementioned mage fight, Mek-Mek the Bold went down in the first or second round, then interjected descriptions of him moaning and writhing on the ground as he bled out. Once or twice would have been acceptable, but I mean every. Single. Turn. Not round, turn. I genuinely enjoy playing healers, but him blatantly dropping so many hints practically felt like he was demanding to be healed, and so instead I spent my turns fighting the mage and hoping for death save fails We won the fight, and Mek-Mek the Bold unfortunately survived, but later the player had to leave for scheduling reasons and I’ve enjoyed the campaign ever since. I still feel guilty for what I did, or rather what I failed to do, however, so now I kneel before the crit’s justice to decide my fate PS: That asshole is also still haunting us, he went out of his way to start a one-on-one rivalry with a master trapper who in-universe doesn’t know that Mek-Mek the Bold is gone and hasstill been setting elaborate traps for us, very nearly killing my character with a snare/scorpion pit combo

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

Ru

Dearest Bailiff and Darling Judges, presenting the case of The Trap Triggerer V. The Stickler Over the holidays my fiance's friend (the titular stickler) invited us to make level 11 characters and attempt Tomb of Horrors. My fiance has never enjoyed ttrpgs but agreed to to it because they knew I would have fun, and the other players had no experience playing. We did not get far. 3 hours into the second night my fiance (playing a bugbear rogue) was teleported into a small room with nothing in it but a series of levers. They started trying different combinations, eventually making the floor fall out from under them and falling 100 ft into a pit. The Stickler decreed that because they had intentionally pulled the lever it did not count as a trap, and they would not get the benefits from having dungeon delver. They didn't die but spent the rest of the game in the pit while the rest of us were being bad at puzzles. I didn't challenge the Stickler because I wanted to respect his decision as a DM, and no one was fighting or too pissed off cause it was just a one shot, but tbh I think it was bullhonky. Awaiting your final word. (Side note: My brother-in-law and I teamed up creating our characters. He played a fairy princess warlock named Alette and I was his personal knight, a harengon paladin named Adalind of Underweald. This has no bearing on the story, I just love them)

Dylan Jackson

To the illustrious judges and decisive bailiff, I bring the case of the furtive G spot. A while back I was in a campaign with some friends, we were in an sexually intense moment where one PC was hooking up with an NPC and they went to cast locate object on the NPCs G spot, and one of the players objected and claimed that a G spot would require a locate creature, since it basically hides and is technically a living organism, I thought this was hilarious, we didn't figure out which was correct, but the DM decided either were fine and continued on with the session. So this brings to question, who was correct and why?

DJ Matty Lil Crits

To all of you beautiful law persons, and yes that includes the hunky bailiff, I present the case of steamrolling character creation. I am DM'ing a campaign with mostly new players. I asked everyone to create whatever characters they would like, keeping in mind this would be a serious narrative, but with plenty of room for goofs. One of the new players created an elven fighter traumatized by his years in a war where he lost thousands of soldiers under his command. I was fine with the edgy theme of the character, but didn't know how to rationalize why this former general would be lv 2 and know no political figures. I asked him if we could scale the casualties down to a dozen or two, arguing that would also be quite tragic. The player said I said they could make whatever we like, and I should've announced if there were limits if I was going to shut her down like this. We wound up compromising on three hundred soldiers, after which he was hospitalized and recently awoke from a coma, but was I wrong for not providing more guidelines for character backstories? PS Sorry Murph I can't find new friends, she's married to my best friend who is also at the table.

Randy

To the honorable justices and the middling bail guy, I present the case of the cheating paladin. I recently started dming a group of 4 new players. Two who seem apathetic to the game and two who are more enthusiastic. One of the enthusiastic players is the paladin. We have played about 12 sessions and they have yet to roll sub 13 on the dice. My suspicions grew when I printed character sheets and he continued to use his digital dice on his phone. We use dnd beyond but his rolls don’t show on my dm page. I had my suspicions confirmed when he rolled damage and got higher than he could even roll. Justices I ask do I confront this behavior or do I just let them succeed on every roll and ruin their own fun

Tyler Harper

May it please the honourable justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and also that other guy i guess. I bring you the case of the Spontaneous Resurrection. This past summer I ran my first ever game. It was a Behumia-esque campaign where the previous party had failed to kill the big bad and so the country was in ruins. In the first fight I had my players fight a bear and 2 wolves who were familiars of the previous campaign's druid (the previous heroes were now all controlled by the big bad). they were a level 1 party of 4. I realised halfway into round 1 that this combat would last all of 15 minutes if I didn't do something, so I improvised that the black smoke trailing off of the creature's bodies started filling their wounds as they got more hurt. Once my players killed them, they resurrected at the start of their next round with about 3/4 health. My players were able to clean them all up after a bit more fighting and even killed the last one before regenerating with a crit which I narrated as the wolf's head flying off and so it didn't resurrect. And so I ask you this, since I hadn't planned on making these monsters revive before the fight, was it in bad faith to give this ability to them? Should I have just let my players breeze through the encounter or come up with something better? I humbly await your ruling and gladly take whatever punishment you give.

beckthebold

Wise and learn-ed judges and bailiff/Boston-area judge Jake (I’m in Boston & was at the live show where you were sworn in, so I still recognize it): I bring forward a simple question for your arbitration: can you cast spells while grappled or restrained? For context, I love playing spell casters and the group I play with is a bit biased in favor of melee/combat builds. (They insist high level casters are wildly OP compared to fighters or barbarians, which I just don’t think is true.) We’ve had a handful of situations where my spellcaster PCs are grappled or restrained, and our DM and the other players all agree that it automatically prevents the use of any somatic components. This doesn’t make sense to me either from a rules perspective (both conditions are pretty clearly spelled out in the rules, which don’t say anything about verbal or somatic components) or from a common sense perspective (you could probably move your wrists and hands even if you’re clutched in a monster’s jaws). I could see exceptions being made on a case-by-case basis, for example if the bad guys specifically tied my character’s hands behind his back with the intention of preventing somatic components, but a blanket ban on spells while grappled doesn’t make sense to me. My friends disagree and argue that this helps “balance out” how OP high level casters are. But again, that doesn’t seem accurate in the first place and I can’t help but feel like my skinny little wizards & clerics are being limited unfairly. Wise judges, what say you?

Ethan

To the honorable justices and the other guy, Duke was it? I bring you the case of the foggy Boomerang It was most of our party's first ever game of D&D and our DM had prepared a nice swashbuckler campaign for us. In our first combat our druid threw their weapon, a boomerang, at the enemy, missed, and we moved on. Upon their next combat they tried to throw it again, but lo, the DM asked, "did you go recover it?" To which the other player responded "it's a boomerang I thought it would come back to me" the DM elected to keep to the ruling that unless the druid collected it after every throw, they couldn't use it again. The player then responded to this by casting Fog on the party, despite the DM and the other players advising against it because the party didn't want disadvantage on all attacks, to which the druid responds "that's fine, I'm a pacifist so I don't like violence anyway" Justices, I beseech you, was the druid in the wrong? Or should the DM have allowed this magical returning boomerang? I humbly await your judgement. (Edit: it should also be noted that while we didn't wipe from this encounter it did end in the deaths of my rogue, the druid and our cleric)

Trevor Wurtsmith

May it please the honorable justices and the loose bailiff Jank. I bring you the case of the most broken mechanic. I was playing a strahd campaign for a while and around level 8 my dm added his friend to the group, a cleric. We played a while, and I had to miss my first session because of a vacation. That session they leveled up to lvl 10, and the cleric used divine intervention to end the campaign. They said the cleric used it to get the party out of ravenloft, and it worked because they rolled REALLY well. I'm still miffed, but I ask you, who should be blamed, the cleric who wished the campaign to end, or the DM who obliged?

sasha w

May it please the judges Judges and the vastly superior Baliff Jake tos I humbly present the case of the Roc drop. I bring you this story from a game I awhile ago our party consists of a dwarf barbarian a goblin monk and a teifling warlock who joined abit late in the game and this player, the reason I've no description of their character is becuase of their lack of decisiveness with their character choice, over the course of 4 sessions they played 4 different characters none of which died, the only reason for the change was he didn't want to play it any more and wanted to do something different however eventually finally settling on a warforged cleric wizard with a 25 ac who couldn't decide how many levels of which class he wanted to do until after about 7 or 8 sessions he finally decided to just go full cleric now all this was quite annoying but the thing that really got my goat was his lack of respect for my rulings decisions and custom game mechanics, the mechanics I explained before they became to relevant in the session eventually the straw that broke a camels back was during a time where they were going through a zombified town he decided to make noise and try to wade through the zombies however when i told him he would have to roll saves against mass creature damage instead of me rolling 50 attacks(like Murphy did in escape from fairy moutain) at once he got frustrated and kept arguing with not just me but my other players when they tried to back me up so then I decided I didn't want him in my game so instead of asking him to leave the game (as this was my 1st time dming a substantially long campaign) later I ended up killing is character by have a Roc(the bird) drop him from 480 ft up killing him, however I knew he would end up making another character so instead I made I the parties mission to reincarnate him as our warlock had access to that spell from their hombrew pact of the Phoenix the reincarnation was successful and this min max warforged with a 25 ac came back as a forest Gnome 1 session later he quit coming to games, so was I wrong for ending this guy's character and bring him back as a gnomebecuase he was not fun to play with and was making everyone else wildly uncomfortable? I wait your judgment (ps Jake ur amazing and wonderful dont let anyone get u down)

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.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

From Edelweiss the Rogue, to the the Honorable Judge, Jury and executioner, and sometime Yake. I bring to you a pre‐emptive ruling on the case of "Bat vs Magical Darkness". Hypothetical scenario If someone is in magical darkness and they have a bat familiar, then they can have the bat on their head and see through the bats Blind-sight. Giving the player a 30' radius of blind-sight to allow them to navigate and make straight attack rolls during combat. If this strategy is to breaking, I will not use it in future campaigns. I await your verdict.

Liam

Dear Scotus plus Jake, I present the Case of the Grim Rizz-King: I’m running Curse of Strahd for a party of two, and keeping the difficulty in mind, I made a few adjustments to give them an easier go. They started at level 5 instead of 3 and rolled for a couple magic items each from the DMG tables. So far, the hexblade warlock and scythe-wielding paladin of the raven queen have done a great job with the encounters, which have felt pretty balanced on the whole. The issue is that before we started, I also encouraged them (as an underleveled, smaller party) to lean into charisma checks to talk their way out of problems and said I wouldn’t care if they managed to bypass an encounter via shenanigans. Both of these charisma-based characters took persuasion and deception proficiencies as a result. They have not managed to avoid a single combat encounter, but they have managed to convince most people in the land of Barovia that the paladin is the actual grim reaper. They do a schtick where the paladin pulls his hood up and refuses to speak, only gesturing with his finger like the ghost of christmas future, while the warlock acts as his herald and dictates to the townspeople the grim reaper’s needs (mostly free shit). I have no clue how to nerf this in a way that feels fair. They both have at least a +7 to deception so group checks are shot. The only thing I’ve used is giving them disadvantage against ancient and/or clergy-involved npcs, but they’ve still only failed this check maybe once. Any ideas at all would be greatly appreciated, I humbly await your judgement.

Invisibledud251

To the almighty powerful judges in their infinite wisdom and grace, and to the wittle baby bailiff Jacob(googoo Gaga). I introduce the case of “god making my robot build himself a wiener. I played a warforge artificer named Kilroy and naturally the question arose if my robot man had a penis? I said no it’s just a smooth polished plate down there. Fast forward and I draw from the deck of many things and drew the “key” card getting a hunting rifle. I asked my DM if I could get something with a bit more pizzazz and he said he would make it a +1 IF I promised to used my crafting skills to build my robot a penis. I agreed and the next rest we had where I was able to craft things I kept my word. He had me roll a d12 for length and a d4 for girth. I rolled a 1 on length and 4 on girth. My human ranger friend feeling bad that I made myself a large chode he offerd to help me out and I was given advantage. I proceeded to rerolled a 12 and 4! It Making for a funny moment that I now have a big penis robot roaming around. Fast forward agin and we meet my creator who immediately notices my huge wiener. I try to explain to my father that god himself told me to create this contraption. My father then starts to call me defective and proceeds to call in his other robots(my siblings) to make fun of me. I ask was is ok for my DM to give me the challenge of creating a magnificent hog to only have him to have my dad and siblings make fun of me for it and humiliate me in the process in front of my party? I humbly await your verdict. (Deeply bowing)

Gabagooblin

To the venerable judges and their trusty sidekick Bailiff Boy, I humbly present the case of the do-nothings. I recently started DMing for a group of friends who are very new to DnD. There are varying levels of investment in the group, with some really interested in learning about ttrpgs/fantasy in general and others who are more just there for a fun game night. As a result, I've been keeping it casual and running short adventures from published modules, which has worked well- until our latest session. (Spoilers for journey through the radiant citadel/wages of vice!) Our players had tracked down the morally ambiguous culprit behind a string of attacks that they knew would culminate in a final assassination attempt at a mardi gras-style parade. However, some wanted to stop her, some agreed with her and suggested helping her kill the mark, and others wanted to wait until the NPC that hired them arrived to tell them what to do. I had them roll a luck check to see how many rounds it would take for their patron NPC to arrive, hoping it would force the party to be decisive and act. I'd also made a colorful parade battleset with multistory buildings, balconies, and other things to encourage them to interact with the environment. Instead, during the 4 rounds until their patron arrived, the players who agreed with the villain did nothing. They both hid inside the same building, and when it came to their turn I asked if they wanted to do perception checks, help their teammates in some way, or even just steal something from the festivalgoers surrounding them. But every time, they both said it "wasn't any of their business" and that their characters "wouldn't want to get involved". Eventually the other players foiled the assassination attempt and triggered the villains transformation into the wraith with whom she had made a pact. This got the other two involved but the fight ended quickly after that, so they had spent most of the night just sitting there. Everyone seemed to have fun regardless but I still feel guilty that nearly half the party just watched. So I ask the court, am I as the DM at fault for not finding a better way to engage these players?

Jeremias B

To the Sweet Blue Judges and the Slushy Jacques Hamstink, I bring you a case of a helpful informant. I GM for a local organization that hosts one-shot adventures in pubs. It's open to any adult, provided they bring a character that complies with the organization rules. I was was GMing a one shot for 5 level 10 PCs. I thought that I developed a well balanced adventure, and was excited to run it. I didn't know any of players who signed up, and none of them sent me their sheets in advance. This happens often, and is not usually a problem, but it does mean you have to trust the players to know their characters. That night, all the players brought min/maxed multiclass power builds, and they were absolutely whomping every encounter. About halfway through the adventure, player A, who was sitting beside player B, corrected player B. It had turned out that player B was calculating damage wrong, in a way that exagerated their damage, and was taking a bonus action attack when their build and equipment didn't allow them to do so. I thanked player A. I took a closer look at player B's sheet, and confirmed that player A was correct. I took it as an honest mistake, and was fine just moving forward with everyone now on the same page. I gave Player A inspiration for helping me out. After that, the game was much more balanced and more fun. However, Players B, C, and D did not like that I awarded inspiration to Player A for, in their words, "snitching". Justices, was I wrong for awarding Player A for helping me out, or "snitching", in some of players words?

Elise Brinkmann

To the honorable judges and wittle baby jake, I bring you the case of the economy driven paladin. My brother and his two friends ask me to run one shots for them every few months since they do not have a long-term campaign yet. My brother wanted to try to DM for the first time so I brought my now ex boyfriend to the game along with his two friends (my ex had never played before and did not take it seriously for example his player name was Mike Hunt.) the player in question played a lawful good paladin (which he has played everyone one shot) that he named after himself. About 30 min into the game, we walked into a tavern and the paladin ordered an ale. The bartender mentioned it would be a few silver to which the paladin audibly scoffed and said that is ridiculously expensive for an ale and tried to fight the bartender because of it. I was annoyed at this because a) this was my brothers first time DMing and did not have a good grasp of how the money works and b) we weren’t even keeping track of money in this one shot so it made 0 difference in the game. When I pointed this out he told me that he cannot be submersed in the game if the economic structure did not make logical sense. This led to a heated argument and by the end he loudly said fine and for the rest of the game he sat quiet and on every turn said his character stood still. After the game my ex told me I was over reacting by yelling at the paladin and I should have just not said anything. I turn to you honorable judges, was i right in standing up for my brother, or should I have just let it go since it might not have gotten as heated if I did.

Nate Ness

To those who shall decide my fate, and to he whom speaks for me. I present the case of the worst wish, and how I did my best to save it. I have been DMing a Curse of Strahd campaign for nearly 3 years that has extended past the end of the campaign, as Strahd’s machinations continue after his demise. After my players slew the great vampire and looted his entire castle, one player ended up with a luck blade containing 3 wishes, and for several sessions since has not had too great of a reason to use it. I mentioned in between sessions that he has to be very careful with his wording for the wishes, as that’s the nature of how wishes work in this world. However, I didn’t reveal that this was because the Dark Powers in the campaign were the ones granting the wishes. In the latest session a crucial werewolf npc member of the party was downed and then teleported far off into the woods. It wasn’t until the next session she was found dead, and my player activated the magic of the luck blade and wished “Return this friend to us.” The other two players and I gawked at the incredibly unspecific wording of the wish while knowing that it would be unsatisfying if nothing happened. Thinking fast, I narrated that a couple minutes passed before the werewolf returned to life looking scared as she had met the Dark Powers before sending her back, unable to get their whispers out of her head. I must ask this noble judiciary, am I in the wrong for now slowly making this werewolf a traitor, or does such an awkward wish deserve such punishment? I wish to remain anonymous

Brendan

To the illustrious justices and something something that Jork dude. I bring the case of the Apathetically Evil PC. I have been DMing Curse of Strahd for a party consisting of my wife, her siblings, and their partners for the last three years, and more or less, things are running well. They are definitely more beer-and-pretzels gamers that I wish would invest in the roleplay a little more, but it's a nice family get together and we're all having a good time. I think. Drawing heavily on the reddit community, I assigned each of my PCs a Dark Power, making this game a sort of Oops All Warlocks. Each PC has their own relationship with their Dark Power, with all of them, sooner or later, choosing to defy their dark patron and make their own path. Except for one. Despite remarking several times that 'this guy sucks' and similar sentiments, she immediately does whatever he suggests, accepts whatever he offers, and furthers his goals at the expense of whatever else is going on. Now, I'm perfectly fine with this as a character choice (I wouldn't have offered it if I didn't want an Evil Ending to be on the table) but she does not seem to be choosing it out of any sort of enjoyment on her part! I even took her aside and warned her that if she continued to choose her patron over the rest of the party, there was a very real chance that this game would likely end with her being a villain, which she said she did not want. But when I asked what she did want, she had no answers. Oh lordly Justices, how do I encourage my apathetic player to make a choice, any choice? Or am I in the wrong for foisting moral dilemmas on a simple player who just wants to hang out with her family and eat pretzels? I humbly await your judgement.

Donny

To the beloved Supreme Crit Justices amd the bailiff of mercurial standing, I bring before you the case of the intrusive thought. I play in a One Ring game, a d12 system set in the years between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Out party was infiltrating a Goblin Town to find a missing society of humans. When we founf the humans, the GM made a big deal about how no children were present among the survivors. After some prodding, we were informed that goblins ate all the children. We all remembered the "meats back on the menu" meme from the LOTR films, but the idea that the children would die first was shocking news to us. Here is were I messed up. When I get uncomfortable news, my coping mechanism is dark humor that I try to keep to myself. But that day, for a variety of life reasons, I was tired and struggling to stay awake during the session. So, when we got the news about the kids, my intrusive thoughts refused to stay on the inside and I blurtes out "Baby back ribs, I guess." Most of the table sat in stunned silence before continuing the game wothout further incident. Two people laughed uncontrollably. As far as I can tell, my accidentally shared joke did not cause any real harm to the people or the session aside from that pause. But justices, was I in the wrong to not stop my intrusive thought? I humbly await your judgement.

Pat N.

To the name-free Justices and comedy-free Bailiff Jake, I just started DM’ing a virtual campaign, and the first session was logistically tough. 3 out of 4 players are roommates and play on the same computer sitting side by side. Their internet was so bad that me and the other player only heard about half of what they said, missing key jokes, speeches, and interactions. Afterwards, I suggested that they dial-in to the Zoom on someone’s phone for audio so that we don’t miss anything they say next session, but they asked if it was really “THAT bad” and insisted that they’ll just plug into their Ethernet cable and it should be fine. If it isn’t fine, is it fair if I make us stop the session until we figure out an IT situation that works? Is it rude to keep calling out their bad connection? PS if you guys hear this, I love you dearly and just don’t want to miss any of the great things you say! Thank you Justices and sorry BJ, you are very funny, not comedy-free.

Cha boi

To the Justices, All-Seeing and fucking Jake. I have a confessional for which I hope to be absolved in which I believe I have committed a sin most anus: trying to look cool in front of my girlfriend. Last summer, my then-girlfriend (fiancee now) and I went to a retreat in upstate New York at which we participated in a one shot that explicitly had to do with accepting your limitations and overcoming self-doubt. I, a fledgling NADDPOD superfan, wanted my gf to have as much fun as possible. I helped her create a homebrew level-2 fae character named Jellybean Moondrop with a cat familiar named after our cat that was optimized for social encounters since my fiancee, as she says, "thinks fighting is mean". I was really excited for her to enjoy it so I can drag her to more D&D related things (shoutout Carnegie Hall!). In comes, let's call him, Pendergreen. He, for lack of a better term, put his balls on the wall, dressing up as a wizard and putting on his best gnome voice, while everyone else was less inclined to role play. In a moment of Hardwon-level bravado, wanting my gf to enjoy her first ever session, I said, after one of Pendergreen's rehearsed detect magic incantations, "Jeez man relax". Following that comment, Pendergreen visibly retreated into himself, reverting to his normal human voice and simply announcing his spells. I fear, nay, know, that I committed the grave sin of putting down someone else's roleplay and enjoyment for my own benefit. Let dice Christ's holy judgement absolve or banish me as they see fit for this cruel coward.

Mynne Maxine

To the beautiful and righteous justices and my little brother josh I present the case of Turell the warrior. Our DM was running a 1 shot campaign where we had to clear a dungeon and retrieve an heirloom for a king of land. After retrieving the ring, 3 of our party members (barbarian, cleric, and bard) wanted to use it for leverage to get the king to be kinder to his people. The paladin and I wanted to return it to the king, and the fighter Turell, who didn't care either way, said we should pvp for it. At the start of combat the paladin compelled a duel to the barbarian, then Turell took his turn. He is a level 12 fighter and level 5 pact of the blade warlock. He said because he gets an extra attack from deepened pact that he can attack 4 times per round, then action surged and used great weapon master after killing the cleric to attack 9 times in one turn, killing the bard. This is when the barbarian said he can't stack deepened pact with the extra attacks from being a fighter to which Turell just said 'yes I can' which caused the barbarian to start arguing with the DM for 10 minutes, after which he just had his barbarian jump to his death. Was Turell right in this situation? We all still play together Ps hate the show Ps I don't even play DND

Hanna

To the honorable justices and some other guy, I DM for a group of youth age 10-18 as part of my job at the public library. Being young, my players tend to be very interested in doing as much damage as they possibly can, often sacrificing party balance for DPS; the table I'm currently DMing for is six players, of whom 3 are rogues. I consider helping them learn how to play the game well to be part of my role, and have encouraged them to get familiar with the mechanics of Cunning Action and use sneak attack when they get the chance. This has recently come back to bite me, however, as one of them checked the rules under 'unseen attackers' and found out that attacks on a target who cannot see the attacker should be made with advantage. While I let them use their sneak attack damage if they bonus-action hide vs. enemies' active perception, I haven't been granting them advantage on top of this, both because I was kind of unfamiliar with this rule and because that's a lot of advantage when there's 3 rogues and they're all 12. Is there a way for me to slow these rogues' rolls, or must I live with being whomped by preteens weekly? I should note: we rotate our tables periodically, so there are only 5 sessions remaining until this table automatically dissolves and everyone rolls new characters.

Nicholas Strange

May it please the court -- A two year online D&D campaign that I’ve been DMing just imploded and I want to know if I’m in the wrong for how I wrapped things up-- In short, Players A (a couple) got into out-of-game beef with Player B over some social media posts. Both players A and B decided they couldn’t get along and the game was paused while I sorted things out. (In my opinion, neither parties were in the right) After a week I was able to calm things enough that Players A (who are going into conflict resolution as a career, lol) decided it would be best if we had a discussion to settle things and get back to the game. Cut to the night of the discussion, only I (the DM) and Player C (who had no stake in the fight and was not involved) showed up. I messaged both player A and B who both told me something along the lines of “I can’t talk to the other person because they suck so much.” So instead of having a conversation, I decided to end the campaign and reward Player C by making them an archfey with their own kingdom which we had a fun session building, and that character will be their new character’s patron when we play in the future. As a means of closure, I took a few weeks to summarize my 150 pages of game notes into a fun narrative version of their story which ended with everyone’s characters except Player C being unceremoniously crushed to death by a falling chandelier and Player C getting their happy ending. I sent this story to all of the players with the note the campaign was concluded. Now both Players A and B are now livid with me for killing their characters and I worry I’ve irreparably damaged decades old friendships. Honorable judges, was I wrong for how I handled this?

vrtx

Hey Folks! I'm a PC in a campaign with 3 others and a DM. We've played multiple premade campaigns for over 4 years and want to keep it going! But in our last campaign the DM switched the system from 5E to his own proprietary system he wanted to play-test, based on ICRPG (yeah I hadn't heard of it either). We played curse of strahd, and i wanted to be a broody edgelord so i picked to be a werewolf bloodhunter. He didn't have that as a character option, but said he'd be able to accommodate. As i got into the game I found out that apparently the full moon happens every week, and for 3 days straight. Me making constitution saves to not attack the other PCs in their sleep. We cured my lycanthropy asap, leaving me feel a bit confused about where my character would go from there. I thought the idea was he'd learn to control it and become a bloodhunter. Or even a barbarian with werewolf rage or something. I was eventually offered by an undead revenant to join them and be a bloodhunter, but by then why would the character want to go back to that? He was cured. I turned it down. I wasn't told what the bad side of it might be, but I know there's always a cost. My character stayed a fighter with very few powers to name of, and a multi attack that only triggers if I roll 16 or above on the dice. I ask you should I have just sucked it up and joined these revenants and become a bloodhunter just to get my expected class powers? is it fair to ask to go back to 5E? I miss looking at a level chart and seeing the powers I get, I miss my power fantasy! Thanks Folks!

Dingo

To the Supreme Crit Justices and the Brilliant Bailiff Blake, I bring to you The Case of The Raging Troll. I was running an afterlife arena campaign in which all of my PCs died in session one and were transported to a pocket dimension in which they needed to perform in an arena setting in order to win the favor of a goddess and be brought back to life. In one such performance they encountered a Rock Troll (home brewed build) that was both raging due to eating poisonous mushrooms and under the control of a hag (again home brew). My druid had done his homework and knew that a Lesser Restoration would at least get rid of one of the effects, so he prepared an action to cast it as soon as the Troll came into his range. However, the Troll did a charging tusk attack that I reasoned would have not left an opportunity to touch him. We argued a bit about it, but I ended up leaving it up to a hefty DC, which he failed. The Troll eventually was cured and proceeded to befriend the party and help defeat the hags that had captured him, but I still wonder about this niche interaction. Did I make the right call? Should I have respected the Druid's held action? I humbly await your judgement.

Sophie B Grapplin

May it pleases the effervescent Judges and... ew....what is that? [sprays with a hose] I bring you the case of the plot-armoured cleric. One of my fellow PCs is a teenaged cleric who previously, who has gotten into the habit of doing goofs that inevitably ended in his near death or more recently, full on death. While traversing an underground cavern. The cleric flew over the gap to "scout" and was promptly ambushed and killed by trolls. The rest of us had no way to get over to him and he's the only one with revivify so none of us could help him. However after a long rest and a post-death vision from some mysterious npc, he came back to life. This was cool the first time. But now it's happened five times. Including; Blowing himself up with mining equipment, using the bag of beans to summon an evil treeant to his jail cell, setting off a floor spike trap our rouge found because he wasn't paying attention and killed by the bag of devouring. All his own actions leading to his inevitable death. But instead of dying, the DM said he was just mortally wounded as "someone" gave him advantage in his final death save, which the DM rolled himself behind his screen. The DM has also not been making the cleric roll for some checks (like stealth and dexterity) and making weirdly low save DC's to save the cleric from himself. The DM is relatively new and I suspect he has a story in his campaign he doesn't wanna ruin but it's getting ridiculous. He'd probably do it for the rest of us too if we were as stupid as the cleric. I ask you; Is the DM justified in keeping the cleric alive to complete his storyline, or does the foolish child deserve to die for real? I stand ready for your judgement.

T

O Supreme Judges and He Who Judges If The Cases Are Funny Enough, extend me mercy if it pleases you to accept this tasty morsel: What counts as cannibalism in 5e? Are prion diseases in the PHB and can you catch them from nonhumans mechanically? The context for this question is a group of strangers I met on Reddit who have largely been a delightful group, except for 3 of our 4 sessions so far involving bare minimum half an hour of discussion on whether "butcher the goblin ambushers from the first part of Last Mines of Phandelver for meat" is ICly or OOCly weird to do or not. I don't need to describe more of the content of these conversations to you; I invite you to imagine anything and assume it's exactly that insane. I just need to know where in your infinite wisdom the lines for eating thinking creatures are drawn, and in what places with what methods a fellow player character can compel the perpetrator to Stop. Our DM has thus far been tolerant but has noted he'd probably GET eaten and GIVE someone a prion disease if this was a concern, because he would be easy prey for any monster girl who was hot enough. Please send help.

OrlaTheOrator

To the supreme Court justices and the buffoonish bailiff Jake, I present to you the case the raging moat. In a recent session my players were stealing a mcguffin from a castle which was on a small island in the middle of a raging river used as a moat only accessible by a long drawbridge. On their way out they were being pursued by guards and had a long way to travel to get to their waiting coach. Our wizard had the McGuffin and had been using his full turn to run and dash to get to the end of the bridge while the others jammed the drawbridge and fought off guards. He took 2 hits from archers but was at half health and was about to be out of range. Back at the halfway point of the drawbridge the 3 other players had fought off two guards, one player was grappling a third guard, one player had been nearly thrown off the bridge and was holding of for dear life. The third player instead of doing anything to help them ran after the wizard to get in range for a heal. We were all very confused but she insisted that was what her character would do. I pointed out that the PC hanging off the side of the bridge was her PCs sister but she insisted that her PC would heal her in real life boyfriends PC. I sighed and let her. The next person to act was the guard grappling with our PC. The guard rolled a Nat 20 to escape the grapple. I rolled a d4 to say what direction he would shove our PC 1 back towards the castle 2 to the right, knocking the PC into the raging river 3 towards the end of the bridge and 4 to the left, knocking the player hanging on into the river too. I rolled a 4 and 2 pcs ended up in the river and were carried away. The other 2 players escaped but had to flee up river and now the party is split and miles away from each other. The 2 players who escaped are mad at me saying I shouldn't have let the guard throw our PC into the river, and that I only did it to be spiteful because I didn't like the person who decided to heals actions. The two players who's characters were carried down river are actually fine with it all. They think maybe I was being spiteful but agreed that if I was it was appropriate since the player who healed was not acting as her character woudl. I don't think I was being purposely spiteful but admit i could have been subconsciously more harsh than necessary. So I ask you; was it unfair of me to split the party with my Guards nat 20? Was I being spiteful and if so was it justified? I stand prepared for your judgement

Jenkers

To the honorable and honestly stunning, seriously did you do something with your hair today, judges and this disgraceful flesh puppet I speak through. I bring to you the case of the really cool mini. I was running a low level dnd game with some new players. We play on grid paper and always used popsicle sticks glued to cut-out beer box cardboard to represent monsters. As a present to my players and myself, i decided to get into mini painting. I went to my game store, and saw settled on the Phase Spider as my first paint. In the Monster Manual the spider is this very cool light and dark blue and can blink in from the Etherial Plane with ambush tactics like paralyzingly venom. Otherwise known as a really cool guy that looks freakin awesome. I figured the CR was appropriate for a level 2 party of 5 and got to work. My mistake is that this monster is actually quite unfair in practice. Considering it’s an ambush creature I naturally imagined its instincts would be going after the easiest target with the least amount of visible armor. The whole party failed the DC 10 perception check I prompted them to make to spot the creature when they fell into the ambush. The sorcerer with no armor was nearest and got attacked, and then failed the constitution save on the poison. Now fully paralyzed, poisoned and dead by massive damage rules. I flubbed the rolls so it didn’t outright kill them, but it was too late. The fight quickly ended, but the player who got targeted had to sit there feeling useless for being taken out of the fight immediately, not getting a turn and continuing to fail their saves to recover. While not outright mad, the vibe changed significantly after that. The sorcerer went home shortly after and never played again. The cleric said afterwards that I shouldn’t have been so mean to my friends and didn’t show up to the next game. Nobody said anything about my cool monster or his sick paint job. I feel I did everything correct, and gave every opportunity to make the situation a bit better, but RNJesus (hollowed in his name) did not smile on her plight. Was I wrong for being too insistent on having them fight this monster or did I do enough to make the fight better while also showcasing how awesome my mini was? I lay my fate in your hands. Confused Collector from Canada

Dench Judy

To the pantheon of the court and their humble little champion, I bring you the dilemma of the intermittent main character. I have been playing d&d with my friends since Covid. I originally played but have taken to being the forever DM and I am loving it. However, my first DM moved several hours drive away and said he won’t be able to play the campaign anymore. No issue, we had a great climax for his story where the party saved his mother, beat the bad guy and had some tearful goodbyes. However, he has since started doing this thing where a day before or even the morning of the session, he will announce his triumphant return. He will make an incredibly strong one shot character with a huge backstory or bring his old character back which is always awkward to put into the sessions I already have planned. My players are also annoyed by this as they don’t get the chance to tell their stories, due to him steamrolling his own narrative and surprise lore into the plot. I need your help justices, I try to keep it loose and let everyone have fun. But is accommodating for this main character syndrome too much? I humbly await your judgement.

Brandy

To the Resplendent Justice's and that 4th guy. I happened upon D&D Court on YouTube last week and am obsessed and I dearly wish for a verdict in the case of Tardy Player vs Disguntled DM. The DM created a world/campaign and I was thrilled to play after a month break when we finished the last campaign. Unfortunately during the break my work schedule changed and if getting home went perfectly Id have 15 min to make food and get online. Day of session 1 comes and there is a crisis at work during my last 45 minutes which I immediately text the DM that I do not know how long I'll be and why (105 min prior to session). The DM did everyone's intros and then stopped the session until I arrived 45 min late and said he could not have gone on without my intro so I had caused everyone to have to wait. The second session I hit traffic and joined 10 min late which is about the average time everyone is online by and start to focus on session. At the end of the session the DM sent a long message about how disrespectful being late is and how hard he worked to put things together. So I sent about half as long of a response saying the campaign isn't going to work in my schedule if there is no longer the 10-15 min start time allowance and exited the chat. Was I wrong to expect more than 2 sessions of grace after 3 years of weekly attendance? Did I overreact to a pointed "group" message? (Ps I work in mental health, it was a literal crisis) (pps I don't understand why we're mean to Jack please point me to the content where he's an ass so I can get on board.)

Shane Nolan

To the Lords and Lady of Justice and the court jester Jake (Jake-ster if you will), I bring to the court the case of the never ending snakes. Back in my naval training, there were a lot of people who enjoyed DnD, as I showed up to my scheduled game (which I was planning to DM) one player said how he decided that he was going to DM and had planned a one-shot for the group, this was a bit odd but I was always happy to get my turn as a PC instead of the perma-DM so I brushed off the metaphoric dust off a character I had been wanting to play. After a brief intro to the world we find ourselves in a linear dungeon, being attacked at every turn, which is great fun, but we are quickly burning through potions and spells to keep everyone up. We enter the final room to find the wizard on an alter over a massive serpent. The fight begins and every round the wizard spawns 3 to 4 flying snakes, every attack on the wizard is either counter spelled or hits a barrier (which was described as "fizzled in thin air") Quickly after the fight begins, 3 of our 4 party members are knocked out and the remaining player is nearly holding on but the snakes can't hit his AC of 20. What I thought was going to be a TPK turned into a 3 hour fight where the fighter was trying to keep on his feet. Even when he would give us potions, the DM targeted the newly upped party member with his 12-15 snakes, before they even got a turn. Eventually I got bored, not having had a turn in 2 hours because I've been down since round 3, my significant other called me on FaceTime and I answered. The DM seemed mad that I wasn't interested in his fight, which I was barely a part of at this point. Was I wrong to be uninterested in his fight or was he wrong in his unbalanced encounter? I throw myself at the courts mercy in this situation

Summer Tribe

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

Aaron Biggs

To the Honorable Justices and their lil buddy Jank, I bring to you the case of the secret death saving throws. Some time ago our DM pitched to our group the idea that death saving throws should be kept a secret to build a sense of tension, as the players would not have an exact sense of how close their ally was to death. Everyone in our group was on board with the idea, myself included. The issue arose when our DM declared that he would be rolling the death saving throws for us and keep them recorded behind his screen so that we would also not know how close our own character was to death. I was instantly out at this prospect because it just feels bad to have a dice roll that important taken out of your hands. I also thought it showed an extreme lack of trust in us to stick to a rule that we all agreed to. I voiced this opinion but nobody else in the group seemed to have an issue, so I was overruled. The the real contention came from a session when my character went unconscious and the DM did as he said he would do and made my saves behind the screen. In protest, I also rolled my own death saves and recorded them while keeping the results a secret from the group. After rolling 2 failures and 3 successes, the DM informed me that my character had stabilized at 0 HP. I informed him that my character had rolled a nat 1 and a 4 and had died 3 rounds ago. He tried to push me to take the rolls that he had made because they were in my favor and I refused because I wanted to roll my own saves and prove that I could keep the results a secret, no matter how dire. We were at a low enough level that revival wasn't really an option for us and I rolled a new character despite being pressured to keep my original. Judges, who was right?

Hannah

Esteemed, learned, and attractive Justices and Jake, who’s okay, I guess. I’m a DM and I’m not having fun anymore. My group finished running a campaign in mid December. I’ve been trying to get another campaign started since then . Every week, I get an agreement for at least four people to show up. I gather all my maps, minis and handouts. Tromp down to the local game shop with my huge ass, spine bending backpack and set up. Only two people actually show up. I try to get in touch with everyone and they’ve either forgotten, even though I post reminders, or something comes up. They never contact me beforehand. I run an unplanned one-shot for the folks who show up, but it tends to be pretty dry as the consistent people are pretty quiet and do better in a larger group. I had enough this week. I posted in our discord that I was not having fun trying to track people down, and that if they wanted to play they could after they’d all worked out a date, but i wasn’t going to be involved in any of the admin anymore. Was I too harsh. Not harsh enough? If found guilty, I’d like to beg the court for community service. I’d be happy to DM for underprivileged youths, if they actually show up.

nat the neat

To the wise justices and the great(?) bailiff: all jokes about loud gnoll sex aside, can you control the amount of noise coming from outside of a Tiny Hut? I play an abjuration wizard that is traveling through an irradiated desert. We spotted a sandstorm and hunkered down in a small cave. I cast my spell, and my dm narrated that the fierce wind howled around us, making us roll saving throws to not take on a level of exhaustion from a bad night's sleep. I argued that if I can control the amount of light, I could also control the amount of sound. She insisted, so I went along with it. My DM is a bit crunchy, but she's otherwise wonderful, so no toxic table here. Thank you for your time and I hope Jake knows how cool(?) he is.

Erika Lee

To the most judicious Justices of the supreme crit and to the beloved (or blighted, depending on Justice Murphy's mood) Bailiff, I seek justice for a murder most heinous- unintentional player v. player homicide. Several years ago, I was playing as a wizard in my very first campaign, with all new players and a slightly more seasoned DM. During our third session, the party was tasked with slaying a giant sewer snake that was terrorizing a nearby village. While the encounter started off well, it quickly became apparent that the snake was beefier than anticipated and we were in real danger of a TPK. Despite our cleric’s valiant attempts to keep everyone alive, she went down after only a few rounds of combat and had rolled one failed death saving throw. Hearing the DM’s hints that the snake was close to death and wanting to end the encounter quickly, I attempted to cast Ray of Frost in a last ditch attempt to avoid the dreaded TPK. I rolled a nat one. The table then listened in horror as the DM described my Ray of Frost missing the snake entirely, and instead hitting the nearby downed cleric, killing her with no chance for further saving throws. I tried to argue my case that critical failures in combat, particularly on a cantrip, shouldn’t have such dire consequences on innocent party members, but the DM insisted that a critical failure could impact the entire party, not just the person who rolled it. The campaign dissolved shortly thereafter due to the fallout from the DM's ruling, but the question still haunts me: should my critically catastrophic cantrip have resulted in such critical consequences to the cleric? I lay myself before the mercy of the court and await your judgement.

Pandaman1165

To the esteemed Justice Murphy's, and Tucker and Jill's babysitter, is it okay to crimple my Aaracockra monk. I am a dm running a high lethality campaign where my players are stranded on an island where everything is trying to kill them. 4/6 of the players have already died (but came back to life by taking a warlock deal). One said player is an Aaracockra Monk named Zerk. Zerk's movement has already saved the party from potentially deadly encounters multiple times and the fly speed easily solves a lot of terrain based encounters. Is it okay if I create a situation where I force Zerk to fail a con saving throw to break his wings before a more movement based encounter?

Ashley & Atticus

Dear Dice Deacons, I come with a sin that has weighed on me for years. In 2021, my Improv Troupe turned D&D Group started a new game, where I, the DM since March of 2020, would get to be a player in an in-person campaign. Our DM, a friend who played in my campaign, presented three modules to play, and no one had any real preference, except for me. I wanted to play Tomb of Annihilation. I have always wanted to play in a brutal campaign, so I loved the idea of the Death Curse, the primary driver of the campaign, which causes those raised from the dead to lose 1 Max HP per day until the curse is beaten. Cut to our first session, my Level 1 Fighter was introduced in a fighting pit, where I 1v1'd my opponent and got my ass so stomped that I failed three death saves. Even with my party rushing in to fight the Gladiator, it was too late. The DM narrated me being raised by clerics of the fighting pit, and I was immediately looking forward to the motivation of the quest being so meaningful to my character. My DM, however, told me that the effects of the Death Curse would not be applied to me. I was disappointed, as the realness of unexpected character death is one of my favorite possibilities in D&D, and I became un-motivated to continue after the next session, taking the positive Covid Test of a fellow player as a sign to remain away. They continued to invite me to their regular sessions, as they progressed from Level 1 all the way to the end of the campaign, but I turned them down each time. Please, let me know how I can be absolved of this guilt! They played the campaign that only I wanted, after I abandoned them.

whitewinespritzer

May it please the court, My girlfriend and I have been in the hobby for some years. We have both Dm’d for and played for one another and like to talk shop about running sessions. We recently had a difference of opinion about the game that surprised us and we were compelled to seek the opinion of the Supreme Crit. We started a new Spelljammer campaign that she runs. The character I made is a retired mercenary. The company he was with trained him in close quarters sword fighting as well as enough magic to be useful to a soldier in battle. I multi-classed Fighter/Bard and we got started. The issue came up the first time I used my Bardic Inspiration. She prompted me, “What does it look like when you give Bardic Inspiration?” I narrated that soldiers in this mercenary company would often be fighting in close quarters. They would need magic to bolster each other’s abilities. A quick burst of steel gray energy radiated from my hands and onto my ally. To my surprise, almost all of the other players at the table objected. They said that Bardic Inspiration should be something that had at least a little do with some type of performance. “It doesn’t have to be a song,” they said. “It could be a poem, or a blade dance, or even an inspiring catchphrase.” We put a pin in it to keep things moving, and my girlfriend and I came back to it after the session. My argument was that the character sheet is not the character. It’s a translation of the character that’s in your head into the rules of DnD. The class provides the playtested and balanced mechanics that make DnD a game, and the coat of paint you put on top is all up to you. My girlfriend said that a DnD class means more than that. Your class helps everyone at the table visualize what type of archetype your character is [girlfriend’s edit: a.k.a. vibes]. For collaborative storytelling to hold up, everyone at the table should have some idea of what it means to be a Bard, and how a major class feature like Bardic Inspiration tends to work in the world of the game. In the end she suggested that we give me a custom class, something like Spellsword, and at the very least rename the Bardic Inspiration feature. I’m more than happy to do that, but we wondered where the Crit lands. Can a DnD class be just the numbers that facilitate the game, or do you buy into certain high level assumptions about what a DnD class is when you choose it?

Zenorum

To the Esteemed Justices, and the I-dont-get-why-we're-so-mean-to-him Baliff, Why doesnt my spell work? This happened several years ago, and this table no longer plays together for distance-based reasons. I was playing a sorcerer with the ritual caster feat, taking comprehend languages. My party and I were dungeon delving when we came across some ancient runes none of us could read. I cast Comprehend languages, wanting to learn more. My dm turns to me, and tells me I still cant read them. Not wanting to ruin the dms plans, I asked if I could tell why I couldnt read it. My dm asked me to read off the spell, and after doing so, got visibly angry and handed me a page of his notes, telling at me to 'figure it out'. The notes were a 1 to 1 code translater, only, they were incomplete and were just the translator; nothing to tell me what the actual runes were. Sensing the situation was getting worse, I let the matter drop. Later, from another person at the table, I found out my GM was upset I hadn't pursued it further. Justices and Balliff, was I wrong to ask about my GM's world or use the spell and feat I chose for my character?

Joey O'Day

To the venerable justice and Bailiff J-nasty. I present to you the case of my Invincible Cleric via Plot armor. I have been playing in a 5E campaign for the last 3 years that is a very dark Diablo inspired game. My cleric Azul has died a total of 5 times, only to be resurrected by his patron each time. He is the worst character I have ever made, and I have asked the Dm numerous times to kill him off, but the reply is always “ he is too important to the story”. I am no longer having fun because I know I can never die. This same thing goes for the other 3 players, who despite failing their saving throws, gets magically resurrected. I ask you judges, how can I end my misery when I can never die? Ps. I love the DM and the people at the table, as they are my closest friends

rooqsandravens

to the honourable justices and cheeky bailiff, i present the case of the harmful horns. im a newer dm dming for 3 players in icewind dale. i have given all players a little change to something, a few extra items, things like that as its 3 players. for one of my players, a fluffy and horned goliath barbarian named crag, i said they could do piercing damage if they attacked with their horns in an unarmed strike instead of bludgeoning. (since they are a barbarian! probably will use their weapons more) one of the other players ( a more experienced dm) says this is not fair and a bit too powerful with the changing damage types. i initially gave in to him since he is more knowledgeable but it continues to nag at me. should i have let crag have his piercing damage? i bow down to your final decision as superior judges.

Ian

Hello esteemed judges and the hunchbacked bailiff who lives in the belltower, I come to you not with a case but instead with a request for legal advise as I plot the murder of my party I'm a forever DM with a new campaign cooking on the side that I want to spring on my players next time there's an opening, a dark, difficult campaign designed to challenge them and I have an idea for an opening that's either going to wow people or ruffle a few feathers and I'd like your noble council on how to navigate it Essentially I would ask every player to bring two characters to the campaign, one they want to play and one they do not. Opening session I would ask them to play their secondary characters first going into a spooky dungeon and like a horror movie I would try my best to pick off these characters one by one, with potential for a tpk but still being open to a survivor or two escaping to tell the tale before we cut to the real party hearing about this and the real story can begin So am I a terrible murderer for planning this or am I a cool murderer who makes the story more interesting, I throw myself at the mercy of the court for this potential crime and will accept any preemptive punishment you devise

Gicky

To His worships Murphy, Axford, Tanner, and alter boy Hurwitz. Revered clergy of the church of Dice Christ, I come to you seeking not atonement but guidance during a crisis of faith in a post-chat gpt world. I play in an online game and recently played a session where the DM told us that next session he was going to record it, turn the audio into a transcript, and give it to chat gpt to be turned into the recap for next session. He mentioned he has been using chatgpt to create descriptions for landscapes and npcs and to fill out other details of the lore. He is even wanting to get chatgpt to create an entire world for his next game. Blasphemey! I consider this an affront to the game and to the spirit of Dice Christ. A homebrew game need not be original, but it should be ones own creation. Taking notes, writing recaps, making up descriptions, toiling endlessly in the fields to prepare for a session, is the price Dice Christ asks we pay in exchange for a successful session. It is in these times of hardship where our faith is tested, and to circumvent this entirely with ai is an insult to the church. I ask that the church denounce the use of AI in developing homebrew worlds as heretical, lest the name of Dice Christ be further tarnished. I humbly await the damnation of creation automation.

Thomas Richardson

To the benevolent judges and to the hard working bailiff Jake (when are they going to get you on 8-bit book club?) I bring to you the case of excessive shenanigans. I GM a game with three other players. We're all very good friends in real life, and for some of us our love language is razzing. Two of the players (who we'll call A and B) continue this expression of love into the game with their characters committing to magically enhanced pranks against each other. This includes but is not limited to A dropping coins on B from the ceiling while using boots of spiderclimb, B placing an immovable bar over A's sleeping head then yelling for them to wake up, and too many uses of invisibility and presti-digitation to mention. The issue is that both players eventually describe their characters getting so fed up with the pranks that they walk away from the party! Eventually to be replaced with a brand new character, who inevitably starts engaging in the prank war and the cycle continues. We've had a total of 5 characters walk away in this manner. The third player is fine with this, though maybe a little confused, but having the characters switch up so much makes it difficult for me to make any long term incentives for them (though admittedly everyone still seems to be having fun). Judges, I ask that you set a precedent that rules that PCs can not use being butthurt as an excuse to shirk their heroic duties. I look forward to your verdict.

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.

Nathan Wolfe

To the eternally wise, and effervescent Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, as well as the bailiff Jason who seems like he’s at least trying his best. I present before you the case of the math pissing contest. In a recent session our warlock began inquiring into magical calculators, asking how the citizens of this fantasy realm did high level math when required. I responded that they have a solid public education system and the average resident is just pretty good at math, but they do use abacuses. He wanted to find a magical abacus but finally settled for a normal one and set to work researching the capabilities of an abacus and how they could be used. Long story short, my party of heroes who were having issues with their messages being intercepted are now communicating with RSA encryption by taking massive exponents and using modulus operators to create codes that are essentially uncrackable without access to some sort of computer. My response to this has been to homebrew a Mathromancer who has built a computer out of hundreds of the undead each behaving as a binary switch to crack these encryptions and dunk on the party with my math skills, but I worry this plotline could alienate the rest of party (the warlock and I both have math degrees). Have I blundered by letting this level of mathematical metagaming go unchecked? I humbly await your judgment.

Overlord

To the Magnanimous Supreme Crit Cardinals Murphy, Axeford and Tanner as well as that Altar Boy Jarnathan who seems really nice, I beg forgiveness with a Dice Christ Confession. My wife and I run a home game, where the party was facing off against a wounded Hollow Dragon. My wife, to improve the pace of combat, rolled the dragon's damage beforehand. The dragon was nearly dead and was in a position where the only attack it could make was its breath weapon. Our party Monk, who had just joined the campaign with his first DND Character and did not yet have evasion, failed the save and said "If this does 59 damage, I'm fully dead, with no saves." The pre-rolled damage was 61. My wife did not want to kill this new player, so she made the decision to reroll the damage live. The damage came out to 57 after the roll, which put him down but did not kill him. While we were relieved that he was not dead, we felt dirty for shunning the gifts of Dice Christ in our pre-rolled damage. We humbly beseech forgiveness for questioning Dice Christ's plan and re-rolling the damage to save the player.

Thunderous Turtle

To the extremely charismatic, wise, intelligent, strong and dexterous judges. Jake, continue in your attempts to grow as a person. May it please the court as I bring forward the case of the neutered barbarian. I've been playing in a group for a few years now and at one point our DM swapped with one of the players. The player DM has a story to tell and its mostly been going fine. He likes making overpowered battles which he then clearly has to fudge/debuff mid fight - I get it, it happens but he also likes making rules - flanking now just adds a +2 to attack instead of advantage etc. There are 7 players so I get that as well. My one main pet peeve though is his interpretation of a barbarian. One of our players has a kickass pirate dragonborn barbarian. Though a lot of battles he keeps being told that the damage dealt to him while in rage is not halved as its from a magical weapon or the creatures attacks are deemed magical for their slashing/bludgeoning/piercing damage. In my mind the rage ability does not mention magic as it halves any version of those 3 damage types and our DM is basically wiping out the whole point of this class as all our fights his monsters or NPCs tend to be OP. Are they wrong or is my interpretation of the law incorrect? I await your judgement and anecdotes.

Alexia VV

Your immaculate bailiffs and the guy who eats their food today i have the case of the invisible lizard. I am currently playing in a hardcore campaign where i play as a Lizard folk monk who during an invasion of an enemy base found a room where 4 bug bears were torturing a goblin. My character ran in to try to save the goblin and was promptly squashed. the wizard thinking fast in an attempt to save her cast invisibility on her corpse which we thought would work since the dm had been playing the bugbears pretty dumb. But the dm instead had them make insight checks to find my characters unconscious body. The leader bugbear succeeded and commanded to other bugbears the ones who failed the check to attack my unconscious, invisible body They of course do this and cause me to auto fail my death saves and permanently loose my character. The party thought the the was unfair since i was unconscious and invisible but the dm said that this was a hardcore game and we would have to deal with more challenging encounters. So i roll it to the court was the dm right to have the bug bears single me out til i was dead in the name of a hardcore game? or should i have been given some grace due to the wizards quick thinking. I humbly await your judgement.

The Peeved Paladin

To the most magnificent justices and Jarb: I humbly bring to you a case filled with melodrama, mayhem and MURDER? I am part of a session that had five PC's and a DM all of whom are close friends, two of the party are a couple. The boyfriend was a problem player that was not helping the campaign along by constantly trying to murder hobo their way through situations and deny their backstory all while being an edgy rogue. He was part of the session for about a year during COVID until he ran ahead in a dungeon while we were in combat, left us to finish up the fight without him. I (paladin) used my Lay On Hands on the rogue for 30 points, before we entered the next room in the dungeon. We then met an enemy who said he worked for an evil god, the rogue said "huh, I like that, maybe I can get a favor from the God by helping kill the party". He turned and hit me with a sneak attack dealing 32 damage to me. He was quickly knocked unconscious by our party, but we were unsure of how to deal with him, as he is our friend in real life. Before we could come to a consensus, the wizard in our party used their wand of Magic Missiles to take away of the the rogue's death saves and kill him outright. However, to make things messy, the wizard was currently pursuing the rogue's girlfriend in real life and had pushed their relationship to a rocky point where it had become awkward at the table. So while my character was all on board to see the rogue die after so many betrayals and painful sessions, it was upsetting to see that particular player kill them and take them out of the game in such an efficient and brutal way that left nothing up to rolls. The rogue never came back to another session, and after a while the tension in the group eased, and their rocky relationship re-solidified, but am I wrong to question the intentions of a cruel and brutal execution or should I be thankful for a swift removal of a problem player. I humbly await the decision of the court and that guy. Sincerely yours, The Peeved Paladin

WookieJesus

To your magnanimous justices and that guy name Jork. I bring you the case of the invisible item. My party and I were playing in a Ravnica campaign that our DM had put together. In the most part, we had a lot of fun and the campaign has come to an end due to impending baby due dates. Towards the end of the campaign, my character was hearing voices as we long rested which for the life of me I could not work out where they were coming from. After a number of times of it happening, I decided to bring the voices to the attention of the rest of the party. They did arcana, history, insight, and even detect thoughts and nothing came up. The DM then asked me to roll a history check to see if I remembered what items I had on my person. I argued that shouldn’t I just know what items I had in my inventory which they gave no response. It came to light that I had a dagger from a blood witch in my possession that another party member gave me. The party thought I was possessed and immediately cast hold person and tried to strip me of everything I owned which lead to a PvP fight. During the fight, the DM whispered to me that I felt like I wanted to kill the rest of the party. Thinking maybe I was possessed by something and following my DMs instructions, I decided to try and fight my way out. Long story short, my PC left the party, one session before the end of the campaign. Did my DM do me dirty, over a simple item I should have seen in my inventory? Should I get over my saltiness that the DM essentially forced my PC out of the party?

Gearbox

To the fantastic Judges and Singing Billy Bass Jimbo Horsewhizz, I bring the case of Clairvoyance and Faerie Fire. I was recently running a game in which a Warlock of the Great Old one npc who was commanding Star Spawn in control of Shothotugg, the World Eater, cast Clairvoyance to eaves drop on the party inside their Spelljammer. The PC Warlock's detect magic that they had up lit up to say that a magical effect was in the area, but not where it was, since Clairvoyance sensors are invisible. The Drow PC then cast Fairie Fire, to try and light up anything invisible in the area. Clairvoyance specifies that the sensor can't be "attacked or interacted with in anyway," a distinction it has from scrying or arcane eye, so I ruled that the faerie fire didn't light it up. The party figured out they were being evesdropped on anyway and everyone had a great time regardless, so I'm just looking for the court to reaffirm or deny that interpretation, thank you.

Gearbox

I have a confession for the Church of Dice Christ. Recently while Dming, one of my players used the Magic item, the Iron Bands of Bolero for the first time, to restrain a Githyanki Warrior. The item perfectly restrains a creature, and can only be broken on a Strength check of DC 20. As this Githyanki's turn came around, and my players were joking about how in other games enemies always break out the first time it's used, I throw the Gith's check. Nat 20. This is where my sin takes place, because I didn't want to immediately destroy this magic item on its first use and I rechecked the Githyanki Warrior's stat block, and retconned that he would have instead Misty Stepped out of the bands without breaking them and attacked twice instead, negating my own nat 20, and saving the Bands for another day. I lay myself before the church

Hardwon’s red solo cup

To the elected judges and the lowly bailiff I present to you the case of the skelepathic communication dilemma. I play in a large campaign of about 6-7 players that runs very loosely as people are available. Due to our large size and inconsistencies in sessions we tend to have more home brew mechanics that spice up the game. Recently, our group came across a video that puts a name on the phrase “to feel it in your bones”; skelepathy. Simply put, skeletons can communicate with other skeletons. On paper, the idea sounds great, but after discussing it with my DM I’m worried that it will be too game breaking. He has stated that all skeletons (dead or alive) will have the ability to communicate with other skeletons (dead or alive) to gain advantage on attacks and snuff out enemies who are hiding. I contest that while the idea is fun, this is too game breaking and will ruin future sessions. I ask the court to please deliberate on the influence of this home-brew. Thank you.

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.

Anna Green

To the esteemed clergy of dice christ I come to you with a confession. A few years ago, My girlfriend at the time invited me to her campaign with her friends. I had never played dnd and wasnt sure what it entailed. I had a pre-made character that i flavored differently, a tiefling warlock with a deep deep love of books. My confession is that when it came time to roleplay, I narrated my character not wanting to interact with the rest of the party, to the point of her LEAVING THE PARTY as soon as they came to a town with a library. This campaign lasted one session and I was not invited to play again. I was ignorant of how to play, but ignorance itself is also a sin so I prostrate myself before you all and plead for mercy upon my future characters.

Zachary Christoffersen

To the esteemed prophets of Dice Christ and jeorge, I come to you with the song of jubilance and my rediscovered belief in the power. I recently started a campaign at my school with a couple of friends in the math department with me. One of my buddies, Tosumi, was playing a rogue with a grand total of 7 hit points. I specifically balanced the encounter such that none of them would die on the first turn of combat so that they could all at least ONCE get to play a round of combat. In an INSANE roll of events, tosumi rolled a nat 1 on perception, was attacked by a fetid rat (1d4-1 dmg) in a surprise round. The rat rolled a nat 20 on the first roll (I didn’t even bother rolling the second) and rolled max damage of 2d8-1=8-1=7. He then rolled highest in initiative and proceeded to roll a nat 1 on his very first death saving throw. As aspiring mathematicians we all calculated the probability of this string of rolls, which amounts to a 1/128,000 or a 0.0008% chance. This was truly a dice Christ inspired moment and an insane and heart palpitating introduction to DND for him. (P.S. Thankfully he was okay as our cleric saved him later in that first round of initiative and he made it through his first session with his PC still alive)

Justayyy

To the Jaunty Judges and the Bemused Bailiff, I think his name was Jermaine… I come to you not with a case, nor a confession to Dice Christ. Today I come seeking advice. This would be my second time DMing, my first time was a Fantasy High inspired game.(Shout out to Fig and The Fucking Ball) I plan on running a Isekai inspired campaign. I currently have two sub-sub classes for my players depending on their choice. Reborn or Summoned. In game, the Reborn would somehow die and meet with some deity and be reborn as a baby in a the fantasy world with all the memories from their past life, essentially a Jobless Reincarnation situation. The Summoned, is just that. Where ever the player is in the moment of summoning they appear with everything on their person in a strange world where communication would most likely be impossible without the help of a spell or magic item. A Shield Hero type deal. I’m wondering your thoughts? As a player, what would you look for in a game like this and as a DM, what obvious things should I have already in place? Thanks so much and sorry for the long message! Good job, Jalen for talking so long. P.S. I do have ridiculous boons for the PCs depending on who and how they were in their past lives.

Daniel Kishen

I prostrate myself before the bodacious bishops of dice christ to seek repentance for the most dire of sins: the rejection of a nat 20. Last Halloween I was playing in a low level horror one shot as a sweet, slightly senile gardening druid grandma. The party got ambushed by a small group of wendigoos and it quickly became clear we were outmatched. We managed to escape by the skin of our teeth, but grandma and another party member were cursed with endless hunger. It became clear that we were turning into the beasts and, when the change was inevitable, I found the character sheet of my sweet Marigold Sneezeweed whisked away to be replaced by a challenge rating 5 wendigoo. 2 wendigoos, against 3 horrified level 2 party members. Bishops, I did my best to go soft on my ex party members but the dice just were not having it. Nat 20 after nat 20 fell upon my desk and the party was getting ripped to shreds. Over the course of 7 rolls I rolled four nat 20s and two 1s. When the final nat 20 fell I mumbled something about it bouncing off my pen and quickly rerolled, missing the crit that would've guaranteed a TPK. I come seeking forgiveness from dice christ, and at long last, peace of mind for my blasphemy.

George TJ

To the Juicy justices and the bearable baliff I bring to you the case of Berries Gone Wild I am a newer DM in a homebrew pirate campaign with my group of four friends. They are all at 3rd level, and it ended up that the only 1 of the four PCs were capable of decent healing: the druid. I decided to homebrew a buff to the druid's good berry spell, allowing a character to fit as many of the 10 berries in their mouth as an action instead of the 1, with the caveat that if it's more than 5 berries you have to beat a DC 10 Con Save or you cough them all out with no effect. I thought this was a neat and funny idea to buff healing for the party that would rarely come up. However, it came to a head when in the end of the groups toughest fight yet, when the cornered wizard attempted to eat 8 goodberries at once and ended up failing, wasting an action. This lead to a death spiral with the near-dead wizard going unconscious in the next hit in attempting to run away, dropping concentration on an important spell that was protecting another PC, and leading to their death. The party ended up barely winning, and had to jump through some hoops in the next session to revive their dead PC. But half of the party is still mad at me for being a hardass about the berries, saying that choking on any amount of those 10 berries is unrealistic, and that it can be done "easily" in 6 seconds. The night ended with everyone logging off after a heated argument about goodberry sizes, characters' jaws, and strength scores. It has since been unresolved. To the court I ask: Did I go too far in standing firm with the berry estimation in my homebrew? ie. Is it possible to eat up to 10 berries without it being a choking hazard? Should my party just get good? Or are they reasonable in getting berry mad? I humbly seek judgement.

Jurriaan Los

I see a lot of cases in the comments that would also be a great pitch for the Turtletank! Did the Turtles die, did their eggs crack? Would love to hear more homebrew pitches :)

2fastBicurious

To the most honorable justices and my burpless brethren the baby bailiff, My it please the court and give you all the most supreme crit. ;) I'd like to submit the case of the quiet Kenku. My table was running a home brew campaign and we were getting close to finding and fighting our BBEG. Our party included a kenku, Crowbar, who played by the mimic rules that he could only repeat words and sounds he had heard before. The BBEG was hidden away on another plane and to get to him, we had to enter a cave full of grueling puzzles and traps to reach a portal. We barely made it through alive. At the end of the cave, our DM announced that we would be silent and communicate only in written form or telepathically, (though no one one in our crew had the message cantrip). We were presented with a written riddle (think "speak friend and enter" style puzzle). Part of the riddle was solving for the answer, the other part was determining who could say the answer. If we answered wrong, or the wrong person spoke we were told the reaction would be TPK bad, and we were very weak already from the cave. We sat around the table passing notes, and determined the answer to the riddle was "Onomotopoeia" and the person to give the answer was a choice between either the youngest member of our party, or the physically smallest member of our party. The problem? Crowbar was both. Crowbar vehemently insisted there was no way he would have heard the word onomotopoeia before and therefore could not speak it. Our DM knew going into this that Crowbar was both the smallest and youngest and seemed to be gleeful about our predicament. After several pleas to both the DM and Crowbar to try to find a loophole we conceded we could not solve the puzzle currently. I suggested we take a long rest, exit the cave, teach Crowbar onomotopoeia, rest again, and come back, as it seemed the only solution. In the process, we ran out of potions on the way out, and on the way back our cleric, the party's only healer, went down, and she failed her death saves. My hexblade warlock attempted to call upon my patron for help without success. In the end only 3 party members of our 6 member crew, including myself and Crowbar made it to the end concious. Crowbar triumphantly said Onomotopoeia and the gate opened. Our session ended feeling empty and hollow. In real life there was a fight after the session. The players expressed we were upset at Crowbar for being so stubborn and at the DM for intentionally putting us in this situation. Crowbar argued that's how his character has always been and we shouldn't expect him to change because of a bad in game situation. The DM argued that we could have been teaching Crowbar words throughout the campaign before this so we wouldn't be here. I said it was an intentionally obscure word and we had no reason to teach it. Our DM laughed at me for being so upset, so I got up and left with the cleric, saying we were going to start a new campaign. Later, Crowbar texted me and said I had overreacted to a simple difficult scenario, and that if that's how I reacted when things didn't go my way, then no one would ever want me in their dnd party. I feel justified in being mad, but wonder if I didn't react too strongly. So I come to the mercy of the court asking, was I wrong to take the Murph response of "find new friends" or was my DM being unreasonable? I humbly await your judgement and accept whatever punishment I may receive.

Ethan Fuld

To the most honorable crit justices and the puny putrescent pallid bailiff Jacques I come to you with the case of the wasted nat 20 strength check. A few years ago I was playing a campagin with friends. We were foolheartedly trying our hand at Strahd, for many of us it was the first time playing 5e (most of us having played pathfinder in the past). I genuinely cannot remember the greater context all I remember is as follows as it has stuck with me to this day. We were trapped in jail cells in a dungeon somewhere. We were each in our own cell and we needed to get out obviously. I was playing a bard and tried my hand at picking the lock to no avail. We continued to fail at various escape attempts until our barbarian asked if he could attempt to straight up rip off the padlock on the door keeping him in. The DM asked him to make a straight strenght check. Dice Christ smiled upon us with a nat20 and our DM ruled that he STILL didn't break out. He reasoned that 20s cannot magically make us succeed on anything and breaking a padlock with you bare hands is impossible. We argued that we are heroes/adventurers who possess abilities beyond that of normal people. Our barbarian's strength score meant he could casually carry 270 lbs of equipment around (18 str * 15 as per rules) so surely a nat20 could let him break metal with his bare hands. I beseech you all, I know nat20s cant succeed on everything but were we wrong to ague? Why make a roll if there is no chance of success? I prostrate myself at the mercy of your ruling as I will be bringing this to the friends who I played with