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Cases! Cases! Cases! (Patreon)

Published:
2025-01-06 17:13:19
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Hey everyone! Big Boy Bailiff Jake here, and the Supreme Crit is convening this very afternoon. Please submit your brief (1-2 paragraphs plz!) case on this thread and we will bring you direct justice.

Comments

SiteZero

Hello honorable justices who can not be bought unlike the Supreme court and the Bailff Justin who gives Florida energy (in the bad way). I am a long time DM who has started to introduce friends to the game that haven't had the ability to play before. Recently they have been having such much fun that they are surprising me with their friends (which I take as a compliment) this is not the case I present tho. I have run multiple books (which I alter significantly to kinda make my own campaign and just use the book for assistance with timing) and we were halfway through Out of the Abyss when one of these "new additions" asked if he could DM the next campaign. I was super supportive and excited to be a PC. This is when problems occurred. We have been running combat heavy comedic campaigns for the most part but the more we all keep listening to him planning (which he did very loudly during break times and forced conversations in that direction) he is planning a super serious Warhammer 40K political roleplay campaign and got super defensive anytime we tried to Crack anytype of joke. The other PCs and I had discussions that we didn't want to play that and voiced that to him but he just kept saying trust me yall will have fun. During the final session we all told him that another of the "new additions" wanted to run a Fallout new vegas esc combat heavy comedic campaign and that is the direction the group is deciding to go this was met with a "OH we'll see about that". The epic conclusion I had designed in my campaign was that the Demogorgon offered them a wish if they sabatoged a simple wedding and killed the Groom. What I didn't tell them and they didn't roll high enough to know is that the grom was Graz'zt and the bride was Juiblex (in a human form I made). They hijacked the systems to keep the wedding secure and weaked everything before rushing in the finish the job (kick ass right?). They all formulated the plan to finish off the the bride because she was significantly weaker. This is when "new addition number 1" (let's call him Corey) breaks formation as a monk and uses insane movement to barrel rush the groom way across the castle 1000's of feet away while saying at the table "I'm getting that fucking wish so I can wish us all into my 40K campaign, y'all will have to play it then". While the rest of the party was struggling to finish off the bride he rolls a higher initiative and gets first round of combat against the groom greatly weakening him (putting him on deaths stoop). I see that the rest of my party was about to defeat the bride, so I cheat and use Graz'zt teleport ability and just move him into the room with the rest of my party problem solved. That's when from across the table I hear "Um, Actually his ability only let's him move 120 ft" so I bullshit and say "Correct but he is using the spell which allows him to go anywhere he is very familiar with and since he was planning on getting married in the ballroom he would be very familiar with it". This gets me a sigh and his turns become I run 180ft while the rest of my party are slaying the groom getting the wish and using it to wrap up the campaign where they all either go back home or set themselves up with the life they were seeking. He refused to narriarate his ending and even took a six pack home that wasn't his. I await my sentencing for if my crimes of bending the rules to prevent someone for hoodwinking future campaigns

Jarod With

Justice Axford, you are talented and wise beyond your years. Justice Murphy, your charm and charisma are unmatched. Justice Tanner, you bring the joy of youth and wonder to all that you do. Bailiff, you are here. I bring to all of you a confession. For the last two years, I have been running a campaign for my partner and three of our friends. All of these great people share one, not-so-great, character trait: They are all VERY forgetful. I have worked to help counteract this trait. I now open every session with a recap, Oppa Murph style, have given each of them a brief lore cheat sheet specific to their characters, and have gotten into the habit of printing and laminating custom item cards for each and every item I give them. I usually tend to over-prepare but occasionally, if one of my players asks to loot a body, or to search through a dungeon for treasure (things of which I do not have prepared), I will roll random loot using a generator I found online. The most recent time this happened, I rolled the loot and began reading to the players what they found before actually reading the descriptions of the items myself… One of these items was the Gauntlets of Ogre Power, a wondrous item that instantly boosts the wearers Strength score to 19. Our three friends all have decent strength already (18, 18, and 16) so they offered the gauntlets to my partner, a Warlock, knowing she loves loot and has a low Strength score. My butthole clenched in this moment as I realized this would make Strength her THIRD stat sitting at 19. She ALREADY has 19 Con and 19 Charisma due to rolling three 6’s TWICE during character creation (for real, I rolled them myself and she yelled at me when I tried to nerf her). Not wanting to give my partner the ability to womp me more than she already does, I did something treacherous… I simply did NOT make an item card for the gauntlets. As hoped, and expected, the next session went swimmingly, and every other session, after as well, and not a single person has mentioned, or questioned the whereabouts of these gauntlets and my partner’s strength remains a lowly 12. However, I can’t help but wonder if I have sinned against dice Christ by taking a page out of my players book and “forgetting” something.

Mj

Nothing to submit, both my campaigns are going well. Just wanted to say I love the content

Mason N.

May it please the Grand Court of Crit and that guy who played Jake from Jake and Amir. I propose to you all 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.

Krysha Syrin

Mighty & merciful justices of the court & bailiff, Hank Hogfish, I bring a case of Christmas-based tomfoolery, oppa Naddpod style. Myself & other members of the Naddpod discord played in an online Christmas-themed one-shot during the pandemic. It was in the midst of Campaign One & my Elven Druid, inspired by Moonshine, & our party found ourselves fighting a Sentient Christmas Tree in Santa's workshop. I had cast Flaming Sphere (sorry Murph) & because trees are flammable, it was highly effective. Herein lies the case. On their next turn, the tree used Ice Knife on my Druid. However, at the end of my turn, I had moved the Flaming Sphere in front of me, hoping it would be a shield from any tree-based attacks. I posited to my DM that the Ice Knife spell wouldn't work bc the ice would melt as it passed through the flames but my DM said the tree had just been burnt by the orb & would know to cast the spell in a way that avoided the fiery orb and that the spell isn't actually Ice, just a spell flavored as Ice. Judges, did my Druid pull a Zirk before Zirk existed or did my DM just want his Sentient Tree to get a few swings in while our party continued to be attacked by living Gingerbread Men & Krampus, kidnapper of Santa Claus himself? I humbly await your judgment & also shoutout to DM Nemo & our amazing crew of Naddpoles who came together during a difficult season & brought the joy of D&D to one another with Christmas shenanigans.

Talia Johnson

To the wondrous disciples of the church of Dice Christ. And James. I write with not a confession, but an exaltation! I’ve played as a PC before, and when my last campaign failed my wife pushed me to DM for the first time. As an incredibly shy actor, I avoided it for years, but finally agreed to DM for my wife and her teenage brothers. I figured with a younger audience any mistakes I made would be easily forgiven. But y’all. The nerves lasted all of 30 seconds into playing before I felt right at home. It was awesome. Then, of course, on the first roll in our first ever round of combat, I crit on my wife. I panicked a little at the idea of dropping her in the first round, and then thought back to all of the dungeon courts I’ve listened to. So I did some funny business: I had her to do a dex check to dodge the hit because of a stellar perception check before initiative had started. Thank you to Naddpod for the years of listening that prepared me to DM so comfortably, and thank you to dice Christ for letting me crit on my wife. Tal

Andrew Fournier

To the most esteemed council of Dice Christ, I lay myself at your feet in the pursuit of forgiveness. A few years ago I was in the tournament arc of our dnd campaign, and I was playing a wild-magic barbarian, battle master fighter multiclass. Our DM said that the breaks in between each round would count as a short rest, so as we were using D&D Beyond, I would press the short rest button between rounds. After 4 rounds of using my battle master maneuvers and rages, my DM asked if I had been regaining my superiority dice and rages between rounds as he didn’t mean “Short Rest” he meant we could roll hit dice, not a full short rest. I then panicked and lied and said I was not and was down to my last dice and rage so as not to get in trouble. So I ask for forgiveness for misinterpreting my DMs use of “Short Rest” and accidentally breaking the rules

Oliver Foster

To the venerable judges and to the glow-ly bailiff Jake: I present to you the case of I Am Ducks Now? Judges, I need your advice about a game that I don’t even play in. My real name is Oliver Foster but my friends call me Ollie. I’ve been a fan of a popular Dungeons and Dragons podcast for 6 years but according to said podcast I am now 2 (two) ducks. I do not know what this means for me, my life, my partner or my job. Is there any precedent for charges in a case of being assigned ‘you are two ducks now’ (no consent)? Am I entitled to bring proceedings *against* the court? I’m pretty sure either my parents or Murph are guilty of future crimes. If Murph is a creepin’ mind reader he HAS to tell us, right? Let me be clear; I am not necessarily against this decision. There might be some ramifications for my personal life or for local wildlife authorities but on the whole, if the court decides that I or my parents are to blame, I will do my best to make this work. Sentence me to eat sliced grapes, I guess. If the change is imminent, please advise URGENTLY. Yours sincerely, quack quack, Ollie Foster

Maddy Thaller

To the most excellent, esteemed and extremely sexy supreme crit justices, and the lowly (but also sexy) bailiff jake I bring you the case of the horny ranger For just over a year my partner and I had the pleasure of playing a fairly intense campaign with another couple. We were living together at the time and got to play frequently because of that. The boyfriend of the aforementioned couple was the DM, and he was really good at it, we played in a home brew world that he’d been building for years and knew like the back of his hand. It sounds like a dream scenario, but DMing proficiency was actually part of the problem. Eventually me and my partner noticed that the better a session went, the sooner the session would end, always due to Dms gf (our parties ranger) being So Extremely Tired. We also noticed that on these occasions we would almost immediately hear the telltale squeaking of their broken bed, despite the alleged exhaustion of the couple. Your excellencies, once is understandable. Twice is understandable. But it got to the point that we could guess before they would adjourn to their room which sessions would be fodder for their sometimes loud romps in their room beside the living room. So, your honours, are we to be sentenced for being annoyed with our ranger, or is she to blame for cutting our adventure short to prioritise non table top role play?

Hallie Martenson

To the judges, whose wisdom illuminates the darkest corners of the kingdom of Tabletopia. And also the bailiff, who is a very silly old bear. I bring you the case of the Nat 20 Commoner Death. It was only the second session of a brand-new campaign set in the worlds of Eberron. Context: the campaign is being DMed by a good friend of mine, whom I trust and love, but whose taste in stories is a bit darker and heavier than mine. Our newly-formed party had stumbled upon a teleportation machine, a top-secret technology. We bamfed directly into enemy headquarters - my PC’s family’s arch business rival, who had developed the teleportation technology. We knew we needed to get away before we were discovered, or face dire consequences for accidental espionage. It was at that moment that the building’s janitor walked into the room, saw my PC, recognized my face, and bolted down a hallway. Our rogue, thinking rogue-ishly, shot her crossbow right through the fleeing commoner’s neck. Being a commoner custodian, he started bleeding out. Our Fighter crouched next to him and tried a medicine check to stabilize him - NATURAL 20. The DM winced and explained that the fighter had stopped the bleeding, but that the Fighter could still see that the custodian was dying. He told her to make another medicine check, and judges, I kid you not - it was another NATURAL 20. You could tell this wasn’t the answer the DM wanted to hear. He explained that the Fighter was employing some battlefield medicine she learned during the war, and then asked for another Medicine check. On this one, she rolled a 16. Then he narrated our party watching the life leave this innocent commoners’ eyes. The Fighter was frustrated and so was I! We both wanted to play good-aligned characters and being complicit in a cold blooded murder was not the beginning of our arc that we were hoping for. So Judges, I ask you - am I in the wrong for expecting TWO natural twenties to bring a commoner back from the brink of death? Or is my DM wrong for pushing through this dark story beat because it aligned more with his storytelling style? -Hal, your Pal

2fastBicurious

To the most honorable justices and my burpless brethren the baby bailiff. . . Brad? May 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.

Andi

Honored Crit Justices and Crit Justice Adjacents, I come to you today with the case of The Fountain Crit. My DM has shown a tendency towards evolving villians & sneaky encounters. In a recent session, we were to meet with a supposed ally in a garden and were instead met with an ambush from her and a few lackies. We were told icated to my fellow rogue that the fountain seemedthis garden had some trees and topiaries & a fountain in the middle. As some of my party members closed with our combatants, I comm kinda sus & he agreed. On my turn, I miraculously rolled a nat 20 & asked the party to trust me as I rolled damage on the fountain. The DM says that a chunk gets taken out of it, but nothing else happens because it's just a fountain. My party argues that I should have done an insight check to see if there was anything going on with it before attacking. Honored panel, I ask you, was I justified in going with my suspicion based on previous encounters, or should I have done an insight check before even rolling for the attack, risking that fated crit on information over getting ahead of a potential threat.

Steve Graham

To the resolute and distinguished justices, and the bailiff who has probably already dropped their New Years resolutions, I bring you the case of the halflings best friend. A couple years ago I had moved to a new city and was looking to join some groups, and found one through a local gaming store. After swapping some information, the four of us met up to go over a session 0 and plan out some details with the DM. We were all early late 20s to mid 30s adults, but the DM was in his 60s, which isn't a problem on it's own, but he kept going on about how he had been playing since first edition, and how "games these days are just too soft". I was too excited to play and stayed on, but should have taken the hint that over the next weeks, all of the original players would drop, and 4 more players would come and go. Which brings me to my own breaking point. We were playing a Halloween-themed session one day, and had recently gotten couple of new players who were really kind and good to play with. I was a Halfling Paladin, whom the DM insisted had to have a steed to be a Paladin, and thought it would be fun to give me a miniature lion as my steed. Which is cool. But after a couple months with this lion partner, we found ourselves in a creepy old mansion, looking for medicine to help an injured old man we had found. The DM says we should go explore the house, but tells me a lion can't walk around a house, so I need to leave him in the main room with the old man. I figured he wanted me to be on my own for some kind of jump scare and said okay. Not much later, he tells us we hear loud sounds from the main room, and we rush back to find a zombie hoard had broken through the front door, and were actively tearing into my lion and the old man. We fought like hell, I was so shocked I ended up doing incredibly poorly in the combat, until he suddenly told us that a light flashes, and we woke up outside, with no trace of a mansion having ever been there, with the implication that it was all a dream. He ended the session and as we were packing up I mentioned almost being really upset that my lion was gone seemingly out of nowhere. He told me, oh no the lion is dead, sorry. When I expressed that I felt like that was unjustified and came out of nowhere, he told me not to be so sensitive and maybe he wanted to use the death to fuel a character arc and possible resurrection storyline. I did not go back to the game. Justices, was I in the wrong to take my ball and go home at the nearly offscreen death of my lion companion? Or was my DM in his right to build his story any way he wanted to? Honestly, I still don't know if I was in the right.

D Cord

To the honorable Crit Justices and the baby baliff I submit the case of the disappearing player: I was running a Roll20 game with some of my closest friends, but approximately 4 out of every 5 sessions, one player would just disconnect. Occasionally I, or other party members would call them to make sure they were ok, if they were getting back on, etc. they never did. I asked what gives, was I doing something wrong or obnoxious, and was told “no, my internet just gets spotty sometimes. I humbly ask the court to rule, am I a bad dm, or was this player abusing my prep and game?

Matthew J

To the honorable justices and Jake who owes me $37 for his bailiff’s license, I humbly bring before you the Case of the Dhampir Mutineer. A couple years ago, our campaign was on a brief seafaring arc to rescue one of the player characters, who had been abducted. In the meantime, the player whose character had been kidnapped played an Artificer who was secretly a dhampir. One fateful session, my Paladin, who had been elected captain by the rest of the party, was keeping watch at the helm. In character, I had to step away for a moment, so I asked the party’s Bard, who was also the ship’s first mate, to take the wheel. The Artificer announced that she wanted to go for the wheel instead, prompting an Athletics check between her and the Bard. The Bard won handily, and he narrated his character casually pushing the Artificer away. The Artificer reacted by biting him with her secret vampire fangs. My Paladin grappled her and tried to get answers before things devolved into full PVP, but instead of answering any questions, she commanded her robot familiar to shoot me in the back. The party then collectively turned on her, and the Bard, who was convinced that the Artificer was a full vampire, finished her off while she was rolling death saves. After tying her up, we cast Revivify on her so we could get answers (and, out of game, to give the Artificer player a second chance with the character). For the next hour, we begged her to give any explanation about the vampirism or why we should trust her going forward, while she refused to explain herself, apologize, or even acknowledge any wrongdoing (in and out of character). When our characters stepped off to the side to discuss how to proceed, the Artificer tried to break free of her bonds and escape. We knocked her back to 0 HP, and, seeing no other course of action that made sense in character, we ultimately decided to kill her. For additional context, this was not the only time that the Artificer player initiated PVP, but it was the only time that it resulted in a character death. Justices, were we wrong to kill our friend’s character twice, or were we justified in executing an unapologetic instigator? We humbly await your judgment.

Rebecca N

Deacons of Dice Christ, I seek forgiveness on the behalf of my DM. Our group has been playing through a Pathfinder module to learn the system, and we ran into an encounter with a demonic guard, who reluctantly tried to arrest us. We closed the door on him and tried to run away, which lead to a combat encounter. On one of his attacks, he crit on my Tripkee (Frog folk) Fighter, and immediately brought her from full health to Dying 2. Here the DM began to sweat, and he said the demon picked up my PC, and dragged her away a bit before dropping her and walking back to his "office", muttering about needing to do paperwork first that would probably take him long enough to complete that someone could help me. Here's where the transgression lies: The DM ended initiative after I was dropped (most likely because my turn would have come right after the demon's, and he wanted to give me a chance to survive). Other PCs made some attempts to end the conditions on my character that would knock her back down if she was healed, but they ultimately failed. I attempted to roll to recover from these conditions, and rolled a 1. Suddenly, the DM decided to have us reroll initiative, but he ended up ignoring my failed rolls. I rolled low, my character survived, but we all know she should be dead. The DM very specifically said he didn't want to kill my character, but I feel awful because other PCs have died (admittedly early on) in this adventure. While I appreciate the DMs mercy, I know he has sinned to spare me. Please forgive us for these transgressions

Jack TenBarge

To the awe-inspiring justices of the Eggman Empire, and Jake. Not Hurwitz but Jake who appears in the Sonic Underground television series. I bring you the case of “The Nat 20 with Unknown Repercussions”. It was my first campaign and I was playing a Human Fighter named Luca Redding. I won’t lie he was a Hardwon copy. Our party was on a runaway train, equipped with the magic equivalent of a nuke, headed for the capital city of our world. We had to jump from train car to train car, find the bomb, and stop the train. It was a dexterity check to jump between cars, and on a fail, you hit the side and had to make an athletics check to climb back up. Me and our parties wizard had failed our previous dex check and were hanging on the same car. I rolled a Nat 20 to climb back up and asked my DM if I could use said Nat 20 to grab our wizard and throw him to the next car. My DM said yes so I Josh Allen’ed our wizard forward. However, on our wizard's next turn, my DM told him to roll a dexterity saving throw to land on the next car successfully. I argued, saying I wouldn’t have thrown him had I known he had to make a check considering our wizard had a -2 to Dex and had failed every check so far. My DM shrugged and said, “A Nat 20 doesn’t mean you get to break the laws of physics. You should’ve known”. I shut up since this was my first campaign and my DM was a seasoned vet. Our wizard rolled a Nat 1, fell between train cars, and was promptly and unceremoniously killed. The party yelled at me for the rest of the night, and even though we don’t play anymore I now DM for that wizard and he still brings it up. Justices, was I wrong to use my Nat 20 in a flashy fashion, or was my DM being a stickler and teaching me a valuable Nat 20 lesson? I humbly wait for your sentence.

Zordonmlw7

Dear esteemed judges and that handsome and charming bailiff who sleeps on Jill and Tucker’s couch: I’m GMing a campaign in Fabula Ultima, a system which has points that the players can use to reroll important rolls or add details to the plot and the world. Normally you get these points when you crit fail a roll but you can also have your character intentionally fail to gain a point for free. The problem: the party had just saved the queen of a race that was at risk of extinction and had moved on to stop a group of nuns performing unethical human experiments. While infiltrating the evil laboratory, one of my players whose character was into botany and had recently invented their own strain of weed wanted to retroactively get high with the queen they saved. I told them they could in the future return to meet with the queen and do whatever they wanted then, but they insisted on getting high with her *before* the infiltration mission they were currently on. Hoping to appease them with an unattainable goal, I said if they spent 100 points (for context, a single character having 5 points is considered a lot), they could retcon the story to get high with the queen. Unfortunately, now they’re intentionally failing rolls left and right and refusing to spend their points on things that would actually help them or enhance the plot all so they can “save up.” They even spent a bunch of their recently acquired funds to pay for special equipment that gives them MORE points when they fail intentionally. Judges, I ask you: Was I wrong to give them an obviously fake goal that I may have to honor if they keep this up, or should they have laughed it off and played the game as intended? I eagerly await your judgment.

Kevin Piening

Campaign crushed by cannonballs from crazy chaotic coworker To the shining beacons of Justice Axford Murphy and Caldwell, and the rusty loyal bailiff Jank. My first time DMing was with a co-worker, who I'll refer to as Bark, and his 3 friends. Second session they're in a goblin warren, and Bark's Barbarian found a side cavern filled with goblin children. Bark said the party should slit the children's throats. Bark's lawful good best friend said in AND out of character that if Bark did he would walk away from the party. Bark happily slit one of their tiny throats. Bark's best friend said he was done, while the other two PCs sat in stunned silence. Hyperventilating and trying to salvage my first campaign, I said everyone gets one chance to roll a new character with no consequences. Bark's friend agreed and made a warlock pact with Oberon. Cut to next session, Bark got bored of his Barbarian anyway and threw him off a cliff. Then he requested an overpowered homebrew psionic gnome who used telekinesis to throw cannonballs. At that point I'm treading water in a pool filled with DM sweat, and I relented, treating the cannonballs as shortbow arrows. I even wrote Bark's new character as being the Puck in disguise, working off of his friend's warlock. Both Bark and I thought that was awesome. Two sessions later, after a chimera fight on board a hand crafted airship I made complete with metal soundtrack, Bark complained about his damage output. I said that increasing it would definitely unbalance combat. He said fine, I quit, collapsing the campaign. I don't ask for judgement for him because I know he's going to Crit Hell, but for myself. At what point should I have grown a spine and told him he didn't deserve the hard work and special treatment? At what point would Murph have leapt over the table and beaten him senseless with the airship? I await your judgement.

Kate W

To the Most Honorable Justices and the Cool Cool Bailiff Jeff (Geoff?), I have been playing dnd with the same group for about four years. Our usual set up is three players and a DMPC to help balance the party. One of our players was really new to dnd when we started so we tried to go out of our way to cater to them. We let them drive the party choices most of the time, we regularly bent rules that were too complicated for them, and we had to institute a no pc death policy since they found the idea of their character dying really upsetting. This special treatment has persisted to this day. Recently we finished a campaign, and that player asked if he could try DMing a one shot before our usual DM started a new campaign. We agreed, and he told us all to roll level 7 characters. As soon as we started playing it became clear that our Interim DM had not prepared. We were supposed to spend five nights in a haunted hotel, fighting the monsters. Instead we were subjected to a long, incoherent, and confusing shopping episode in the town around the hotel. This happened multiple times and stretched the “one shot” into six sessions. When we tried to go back to the hotel at night to fight the monsters, we were not allowed to fight them. They instead made idle threats but ran away and vanished once the party tried to fight them. And we got the feeling that the Interim DM didn’t have any stat blocks prepped. We tried to be patient since this was the first time he was DMing, but then came the final fight. Despite telling us to roll level 7 characters, he had us fight: a bone devil, two nagas, four skeletons, and four ghasts all at the same time. He kept targeting my Paladin because I was the only one with healing abilities. He never attacked his own DMPC, claiming that he “forgot he could do that”. The fight resulted in a TPK where only his DMPC survived, and the DM was both smug and gleeful about killing all of our characters. Judges, I know that DMing is difficult, but was this unreasonable? He literally cackled when our characters went down. I humbly await your verdict. [Jake, please wait until the moment you think it’s funniest to reveal this] PS: Our Interim DM is my 10 year old nephew.

Jacob LeBouff

Bonjour the one who sadly shares my name, may I present the case of I did an oopsy. I am currently running a long term Mutants and Masterminds Campaign (Super Hero DnD essentially) and I had this amazing idea, or so I thought, to create a rotating super hero team all stationed at the base that my players can pick and choose from depending on the case or adventure. Well, this has backfired, as my players wanna take all of the NPCs to every adventure despite me actively trying to prevent this by having some needing to stay back for one reason or another. But my players keep finding loop holes to bring all of them along. Or call them with their cell phones. Am I wrong to kill off the NPCs or write them off another way? Please help.

Madeline Black

To the beautifully radiant supreme crit justices and that guy that chooses the cases, Jonk. If it may please the court, I bring to you the case of the sword wielding sorcerer. My partner is playing a wild magic sorcerer in the campaign that I DM. Early on, I gave him proficiency with rapiers for two reasons: 1) mini that we found for his character has a sword and 2) he comes from a noble family so it’s not unlikely that he’d take fencing lessons or something. I told him that this was just for flavor and assumed that it wouldn’t come into play too often. We just moved up to level 4 and he took the Defensive Duelist feat. I have two issues with this: 1. sorcerers don’t usually have weapon proficiency. I gave him it for fun flavor and he’s now using it for mechanical benefit 2. the War Caster feat states “You can perform the somatic components of spells even when you have weapons or a shield in one or both hands” which leads me to think that without this feat, you can’t perform the somatic components of a spell while wielding a weapon in one hand. He cites the PHB section on somatic components: “If a spell requires a somatic component, the caster must have free use of at least one hand to perform these gestures” This is the only dispute in our near 5-year long relationship that we haven’t been able to resolve on our own. For now, I’ve allowed him to use the feat until we receive a ruling from the esteemed Supreme Crit. We both agree to defer to your final decision about whether he can wield a weapon and cast spells and accept whatever punishment you deem fitting this heated debate.

Clint Schaffer

To the honorable justices and the bailiff that bit me. When I was a fledgling D&D player, I played in a Legend of Zelda campaign as a Goron (half-orc barbarian) who was exiled from his tribe. When the campaign eventually required us to return to my village, there was a contest of strength being held there and an opportunity presented itself for me to redeem my worth to the tribe in 1 on 1 combat with another warrior. I was privately messaged by a fellow player, a much more experienced one with a much more optimized Sheikah (monk) character, asking what my max damage output was. My build was very vanilla and we were only level 4 or 5, so the number was low. In our next roleplay with the contest’s event coordinator, the Sheikah convinced the coordinator that it should be a team fight instead of a 1 on 1 fight without consulting me or my character first. The fight ended up going well thanks to it being a group effort, and I probably would have gotten my ass kicked in the 1 on 1 fight, (not to mention, it’s more fun for everybody to be in a combat together than just 1 person) but I can’t help feeling a little ripped off all these years later. Was I wronged by my fellow player or was it ultimately better for the group that we participated in the combat together?

Adam Giebner

Forgive me dice Christ for I have sinned against my fellow DM. Last year I was running a D&D campaign but I got busy helping to plan my wedding and decided to take a break and pause the game. Another friend of ours, who was new in town, wanted to run a game for us, saying that his old table called him “the best DM ever”. We played a few games before we realized he was in fact not good and that these were the most boring 5 hours of our week. My friends asked me to start up my game again and we did— without the other DM knowing…and not including him in our old game. Will dice Christ forgive me for sin against my fellow DM? I humbly put my d20s at your feet.

lucy pickle

May it please the ever awe-inspiring judges and their little bitch baby bailiff. 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. We’ve all played in at least one campaign before and the game has been flowing very smoothly, we’re having a blast. Our one problem is that every time it’s our wizard’s turn in combat they take about 3 minutes 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 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 that 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.” 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, should I have let them continue to pick good spells, although very slowly, during initiative? Or do they deserve to be sentenced for behaving like a middle-schooler? I prostrate myself before your tremendous wisdom and await your judgement.

ImmortalCrow786

Hello fellow Bahumians! Glorious judges and I would jab at Jake but he already jaked his jab. I bring you the case of the forced tpk. I dm'd for a couple of friends and in the story I wanted to kill them off to let them connect with a unnamed god whose station and name has been taken by a pretender. It happened and I thought it went great but then the campaign fell through and we ended up picking up another campaign. Should I have done something different or is this just a, things happen sort of deal?

A. Lee. S

Dearest esteemed judges, HRH Axford, and the other sort of funny guy. I bring to you a case that may rock my family. My brother is our DM for our group. He is a great DM except for one thing. He punishes nat 1s so harshly. And, friends… I roll worse than Murph (5 nat 1s in a session). I have eldritch blasted my husband from behind on multiple occasions… He has me do full attack rolls. I’m scared to roll! At some point, my party is going to decide my adorable warlock is a liability. This is mean. Should I tell mom?

Fuzzboxx

Hello my Honorable Judges and the nubile Bailiff Jack Today, I present the case of the deadbeat Dad My cousin joined my already running campaign and his character's goal was to rescue his kidnapped 6 year old son. In real life he is an incredible father. This gave me idea of making the boy vital to the main plot of the campaign, meant to travel with them once rescued. He however never brought up his missing son 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 were more pressing things to do -- There were not. After ANOTHER 6 months they finally rescued the son. My cousin's 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 behavior. 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?

Joshua Morgan

To the eloquent and wonderful Bailiff Jake and the ever merciful judges I bring the case of the Wrongful Railroad. In my first long running campaign I was playing a Bladesinger Wizard. Everything was going great until before the final dungeon I used detect magic and realized there was a scrying curse on my character from the BBEG. I decided to leave the party even past my DMs "*wink* that's bad" for the party's good and my character died. I was initially satisfied as it felt like a noble sacrifice. However, instead of a new character for the final dungeon, I was required to play the nearly featureless rogue follower we had which made the final session a snoozefest for me. On top of that, at the end when we recovered the artifact we were trying to keep from the BBEG, she somehow knew exactly where we were anyway. The DM narrated as the characters fled and she got what she wanted with no combat or rolls. Clearly this was to set up for a future campaign as he revealed later. I ask, was my group cheated with our choices not mattering? Should I have been allowed a fun character for the finale? Or was our DM right to continue the ending he had planned all along.

Elias Roessler

Greetings, Glorious and Gregarious justices, and the bailiff Jark. Today I bring a case of frustrated players. I am a player in a game with 4 other players. They are all closer with the DM than I am, and have been playing with him for years, and have always seemed to enjoy his games. However, recently, there has been a distance growing between us and the DM, with questionable storylines, overpowered NPCs taking the spotlight, and session-long combats (because of the OP NPCs) we have decided we want to say something. However. This led to them nominating me, the person who knows the DM the least to be the one to start the conversation. Justices, should I be expected to broach such a sensitive subject? He’s been known to respond poorly to feedback before, even cancelling sessions when players have expressed irritation with how things were going and I’m very nervous to reach out and start this contentious conversation.

Nick Andrusin

To the studious judges and the [redacted]bailif, who's a big dragonball fan, I hear. I present the case of the Suprise Monk. I was in a game where half way through a session the DM suprised introduced his friend as a type of cowboy/assassin/bounty hunter coming after us, complete with a drawl and 2 Katanas . The Guy was playing a Kensi monk sent to hunt us down. He was level 5, same as the rest of us. He proceded to absolutely beat the shit out of the party dropping 4/5ths of us to death saves in just a couple rounds of combat. He took out my dwarf Fighter Lecha with 49 HP and 18 AC in one round. He then proceded to take some of our key magic items a walk off into the sunrise whistleing a tune, telling us to visit the king to get our stuff back. He also beat the shit our of our NPC, a kid named Charles. To make matters even more interesting, this was a guest appearance, he only showed up to kick our ass and steal our stuff. He ALSO just broke up with his long term girlfriend hours before the session in a reportedly messy break up, so the DM probably felt bad for him. We laughed alot, He seems like a good guy and felt bad about mollywhomping us. But judges, I ask, was this ok for the DM and guest player to suprise whomp us like this in a 1v5 and steal out Key/Quest items? I am at the mercy of the court.

Kevin Alman

Honorable justices Axeford, Murph and Tanner, and the bailiff whose name escapes me for the moment. I bring you the case of the confusing cat person. I just took over as DM for my group of friends that have been playing pathfinder for several years now. We decided to have a session zero where we were figuring out who everyone’s characters would be. During this one of my PCs learned about animal races, specifically tabaxi. She was thrilled about this and we all stared to make the characters and talk about how everyone’s characters meet. This is where the confusion started. My PC was talking about how their character got on all fours and approached another PC to pickpocket them while pretending to be a cat. I explained that they don’t look like a normal cat but a cat humanoid. This devolved into a friendly argument eventually split amongst everyone about whether a tabaxi looked like a large cat or a bipedal humanoid cat person. Justices please clear this up for us. Is a tabaxi more like the movie cats or like puss in boots? I await your fair and just ruling.

Ally

Dear cardinals of dice Christ I fear I have strayed into the lands of goof and away from the road of rationality. My crime, my sin, the red in the ledger of my DMing life is called Bodega Simulator. After wrapping our first multi year campaign the group I DM for we decided for the next campaign we wanted to play through the character's backstories before they set out on their adventures at level 1 in 5e. To do this we've been playing in the rules light system kids on bikes. The intention was to see the highs and lows of these characters growing up in a small spooky town together. However due to the fantasy band Copperback needing an opening act, a great roll for a signing bonus after the gig, and a lucky gambling streak at an underground boxing match, the party have pooled all their funds and bought the 'fantasy' bodega across from their school. Everything has become about the bodega. They finish school and go straight to the bodega, they employed their school friends at the bodega, they host gigs at the bodega, if they find out a clue about a monster or mystery they regroup at the bodega. There's even a Excel sheet for the bodega's finances. We've hombrewed more rules for the bodega's mechanics than there are in entirety of kids on bikes. The party now refer to the game as bodega simulator. I fear my desire to follow the fun the party is having with this will negatively affect the characters they had been developing. The necromancer witch, dumpster thief, silver tongued guitarist, and bear knuckle boxer have all taken a wild left turn into bodega owners/employees.

Flying Mongeese

Dearest Judges of the court and Dear-less Bailiff of the alley outside, I bring the case of the Not-So-Greased Up Spider. I played a Goblin Alchemist in an ‘Oops! All Goblins!’ One-Shot where our evil lord sent us through a Death House. The DM told us that we would most certainly die (which maybe should’ve been a red flag), but we surprisingly got through with little issue. Cut to the final battle, we are fighting a giant spider thing and I go to cast Grease to trip it up. My DM, however, informs me that Grease would only work if I could get it under all of the Spider’s legs. This would be impossible cause the range of grease was just a little under the size of the spider. Judges, what? I know if I had half my legs step in grease, I would probably be down. So why would this Spider be any different? I know that ‘real world’ logic doesn’t always apply to DnD worlds, but this felt like the DM bent the rules in order to make his one-shot more ‘dangerous.’ Long story short, we died and I am still a little miffed to this day. Please deliver judgement and if I am somehow wrong, I will bear the brunt of your ire, so help me Gods.

Dillon Davis

To the inimitable Supreme Crit Justices and that little smelly trash bailiff Gonk, I present to you the following case: I love TTRPGs and am a bit of a forever DM, HOWEVER, in the past two years I have tried and failed to have a home game of any kind continue past three sessions before completely dissolving. Oh Supreme Crit Justices, may you live forever, could you sentence my friends and family to find time in their schedule to play pretend and roll dice with me or am I to be forever sentenced to be a smelly trash person like Gonk.

Fletcher Pratt

G’day dishonourable judges and exalted bailiff. A few days ago I played in a gladiator style campaign at level 5 that everyone knew was going to end up with pvp, the winner was going to receive a wish. The mini campaign had 3 sessions, a large free for all, a race, and the last session was against 1 big monster and then a final free for all with the 3 players. Before the race my tiefling contacted his devil daddy to get a hellhound for help. In the final free for all, my tiefling bard rode in on said hellhound, and I ended up winning the free for all, only for the dm to rule that I had to fight and beat the hellhound with the hellhound winning and thus none of the players win. I ask bailiff and I suppose the justices, was I wronged? Ps for justice Murphy, I have already moved on and gotten a new group so that’s been coeared

Hardtooth unsureleg

Hello to the best bailiff and some ok judges, I’m a long term dm for a group of 8 players, who recently added a new player. We were starting a new campaign so it was the perfect time to add a player, the first few sessions went very smoothly and everyone WAS having fun, until I sent them to hell. I did it the murph way and did a cut scene and immediately gave them a hook to get out. But the new player looked visibly upset and texted me in the middle of the session and said that he didn’t like hell and didn’t want to be here so could we leave faster? Everyone else was having lots of fun exploring the city I made but he was just fuming because I didn’t text back. Justices, I’m I right for ignoring this text to keep the flow of the session going smoothly, or shall I be entombed? Thank you.

Gabriel Balog

To the most honorable judges and to the bailiff that went so low that, following PacMan rules, became elevated. I bring you the case of the NAPPER'S REVENGE. 😴🤜🧙‍♂️ My older cousin invited me to play in a Pathfinder campaign with some of his friends and, even tho I'm DnD's little bitch, I got excited. On the first session, the party was preparing to rest before an invasion that would happen in a few hours, and I started happily interacting with the Magus, asking him about magic. That’s when it began... The Sorcerer, impatient to start the long rest, said: "You want to see a cool spell?" and casted Sleep on the party. The spell lasts 1min so, when the Magus woke up, he stated that he was "attacked" and "would have his revenge". They rolled initiative and, in one turn, the Magus dropped the Sorcerer with punches. He would keep going and kill the guy if the DM, my cousin, wouldn't have said that the invasion was starting and we had to deal with it. The group was silent, we never played again, and I miss my unused PC. Judges, I beg of thee to awnser: what the fuck just happened? Who's fault was it? PS. Love from São Paulo, Brazil 🇧🇷

Tenkura

Dear Knightly Judges and their not-so-knightly DM/Bailiff jAKE, I come to you with only a small qualm, but one I’d like you to weigh in on. I play in a campaign as a barbarian named Björk the Örk, and one day when our session was planned I ended up being sick and had to miss. The plan was to join via call, but technical difficulties ruined that. The last session left off with initiative being rolled so I promptly rolled my dice for 5 attacks, and the damage numbers for if they should so hit, and sent these numbers to my DM. Come to find out, rather than joining the battle, my barbarian orc had a net tossed over him and sat out the entire fight. I know I wasn’t there, and it’s a lot to ask your DM to fully play your character in your absence, but due to the intention to join and my prompt rolls, should Björk have been allowed to fight? I await your wise decision.

Hannah N

Long time listener, first time caller. Revered judges and that other guy I present the case of inside the globe. I DM a campaign for my friends and our most recent encounter had them facing the BBEG, an arch mage wrecking havoc across the continent. He cast globe of invulnerability blocking spells from entering the globe. Our Eldrich Knight entered the globe, grappled the mage (who miserably failed the strength check to break free) and then later cast shocking grasp which they crit on. I said this wouldn’t work, as spells cast on the creature within the globe wouldn’t hit. He argued that since the globe covered a 10 foot radius, the player was within the globe, and it should hit. I ultimately allowed it, but was I right? Should another creature in the globe hit the one who cast it? I defer to your ultimate wisdom, except that other guy who isn’t as wise.

Shelby

May it please the court, honorable justices and however we feel about the bailiff today. I present the case of dispelling invisibility. I was playing my bard who had both invisibility and dispel magic. An enemy cast invisibility on themselves. On my turn, I attempted to use dispel magic to "dispel one magical effect within range", the invisibility. The DM argued that since I couldn't see the creature, the dispel wouldn't be possible. I argue that i am dispelling the effect of invisibility within range, not the specific target. Especially since my lore bard is also familiar with the invisibility spell, I felt that they would know how both spells interact. I ask the court, can a spellcaster dispel an invisibility effect even if they can't "see" the target? Does it change if the spell caster saw the invisibility spell being cast?

Sam

To the highest Lords and Lady of Dice Christ and ... I have a confession of the topping tower. My gaming group has recently started playing Dread. Dread is played with a Jega tower in which you pull blocks to take actions and if you knock the tower over your character dies. One of our more recent sessions we were playing and our characters were trying to escape from a creepy undead ghost child when we decided to take a break. At this point we were already pretty in to the game and our tower was quite unstable. Our DM got up and left the table for the break and the rest of us remained for a second. However when we got up to take our break someone bumped the table and the tower fell. We all stood in horror at what had happened. We all quickly feld the room and when we came back they had just reset the tower saying "it fell over when we took our break." This is where I confess all of us looked at each other and decided to not tell her that one of us had bumped it. We finished the session and no characters died but someone definitely should have but our deception let us live on.

Conifer

Dearest Dice Diocese, deeply devoted defenders of Dice Christ's divine doctrine, I bare my wretched soul before you and beg for the damnation I deserve. During the 2020 Covid lockdown, my good college friend organized weekly D&D hangouts on Discord, which I attended on my bed. During one fateful afternoon one-shot, I, with headset donned and 3 cherished companions on the call, fell asleep. I awoke roughly 4 hours later, still in the call, alone. I still see these friends regularly, and none ever uttered a word regarding my folly. However, I recently realized a detail that turns my deepest shame into a crime worthy of damnation: I snore. Please rend my soul from my flesh and cast it into the deepest pit known to Dice Christ, where my slumber shall disrupt this world no further.

Luke Jarrett

Great justices and their hype man Jork. I present the case of Tery (only has 1 r as more fantasy) the item roller. My party, Blue the barbarian (me), Nym the sorcerer (My wife), Tery the paladin (A close friend) the DM (Another close friend). Tery is always the first to loot for items and gets all the items even ones that the DM has put in for other players (Nightvision goggles/ring of protection) and when we ask for it he makes us do a charisma check against him to see who wears it better. This has ended with a 21 AC paladin with 180 dark vision at level 4. Am I just being sour or is Tery being a dick as he will always win charisma checks?

Mav

Dearest darlingest judges and hogwash stonedfoot, I present to you the case of irl split party. This is a cold case of two years so thank you for your illustrious help. My closest college friends and I (3 players, 1 DM) had just wrapped up a 2 year campaign (mostly on zoom #covid) We were planning our next campaign when the DM asked if they could bring in their best friend and his girlfriend. The best friend had played as a one shot character before, and he seemed cool, but we also didn’t know him. The other party members and I expressed while they were welcome to guest, we wanted to keep the party to just our close friend group. The DM soon after canceled the campaign (siting this wasn’t the cause but to this day we don’t know what it is). With still no answers two years later I ask you judges, was it our fault our party collapsed? Or did we have the right to be selective about who we adventure with?

Hannah

To the wicked cool crit justices and uh...Joel? We humbly present this case of the case lf the obstinate player and oblivious elf We’ve been in this campaign for about a year with our friend who’s a bard/sorcerer PC. He was brand new to dnd and made his character with our DM. They made the character as a joke with the bard/sorcerer not believing in magic (even saying he blacked out when he cast spells) and refusing to believe elves were real and that all humans had pointy ears and lived a long time (despite being a full elf and meeting NPC humans). Despite this we’ve enjoyed being in a party with him and want to continue playing. He ADMITS that he doesn’t like his character anymore, but won't leave him behind. Our DM isn’t taking a side and says the player could keep, leave behind, or kill his character if he wants to. The rest of us are getting pretty tired of having to continuously try and convince this PC that magic is real and he’s not human. So we ask the court, ask if we should be punished for not trusting our player and DM to fix a "joke PC" or should this PC find his unlikely demise at the bottom of a tall tower. We dutifully await your judgement.

Scramble Ma’am

To the Deacons of light, I am a YAunt with a confession. I ran a one shot for my husband and 15yo niece and nephew. This session can only be described as one frustrating cluster. These children of thunder tested me and I failed. My niece was drawing, taking selfies, and would get up to dance around randomly, while my nephew was more engaged, he was caught cheating and watching music videos. They were texting each other and sharing earbuds. My husband asked if they wanted to play and they kept saying yes. Here lies my sin. Towards the end of the game, I lost it. I yelled at them, full ugly shouting. I stepped away to collect myself then we finished the one shot. Is there grace for me or am I bound to end up in the 5th level of hell with the other rotten DMs?

Matt Gustavson

Honorable Justices and Jake my absolute king, saint among men. I bring you the case of the Chatting DM My DM likes to use private DMs to keep individual secrets secret. Especially on things that pertain to backstory. Justices, this isn’t just a occasional note every once and a while, but stretches of silence as they write up paragraphs and have others read them can eat up to 30 minutes at a time, multiple times per 3 hour session. Justices, this is a in person game. I told my DM this made me uninterested during sessions, I was met with pushback from him and one other player. Justices: is it ok for me to be upset that my DM takes up the whole session silently typing P.S. I managed to fit an entire level 10 mission on Helldivers 2 on my gaming laptop while waiting for

Iris Geurts

Estemed lords and ladies of the Church of Dice Chrust, and altar boy baby Jake, I bring to you, a confession of the forgotten scary dog I was in a fight against a celestial archbishop, who had mindcontrolled an entire city and was using the people as sacrifices to make more celestials. In her birthing chamber, we fought her, and she summoned her dogs. One attacked me, I failed a strength save, and got knocked prone, and this also frightened me Come to my turn (important context, it was about 3 days later, we do play by post) and I had completely forgotten, so I made all attacks I made that turn without the disadvantage I should have had, allowing me to kill 2 of her minions that turn. I only remembered the frightened after I had the epic roleplay, but before the end of my turn, yet I did not confess. Please tell me what I must endure as punishment for my crime against the dice gods.

Ricky the Moist

To the highly adored, esteemed, and wonderful Bailiff Jake and the dorks in robes I present: The Case of the Misclaimed Angel Blade. My table has just finished the Avernus module, the party consisted of a Kensei Monk(Me), a Watcher Paladin, a Armorer Artificer(which I planned to play for months before the campaign then we got a new guy and I didn’t wanna be a dick and box him out of the class I am not still bitter about it shut up) and an Illusion Wizard. Towards the end of the campaign we find the BBEG’s angelic sword The Sword of Zariel. Everyone just sort of stood around staring at it doing the classic “Unlocked door that is in no way trapped but the party takes 3 hours to open” move. So I picked it up then my dm prompted me by saying “btw the sword can be attuned in a single action” so I fucking did it man. Lo and behold it transformed me into an angel permanently gave me 2 boons and a free spell to cast on a breath weapon recharge die. You can give the weapon to someone else to use however the transformation was a one time thing. The paladin thinks he should have had it but everyone was sitting on their stupid hands and doing nothing plus I had no clue what would happen. My dear Bailiff Jake and the dorks in the robes, was I wrong or was it just not a clear situation?

Noah Kyle

A warm hello to the justices and a hearty middle finger to the blaff. This is the case of the dead lizard. My fiancé’s pc died during his first session as a wizard. We all thought it was funny and it was his first time as a spell caster, so I let him roll on the reincarnate table (he went from tortle to lizard folk) since there was a coven of Druid’s nearby that could help. An hour later the party was trying to get past a bullywug camp (we were playing in moonstone) and my fiancé had a great idea: his newly lizard wizard would hide and then make noise to draw out the bullywugs. I confirmed, you hide then you yell? He said yes. I said ok, and then had all eleven bullywugs roll perception checks against his stealth. When 8 of them found him, I had those eight throw spears at his pc, who was hiding in a shrub. He died again, twice in an hour. We remember this fondly as a failed spellcaster experiment but justices and blaff, do you think I was too harsh with the behavior of the enemies? Should kameji the now-lizard wizard have gotten more of a chance to shine?

Jesse Dunlap

To the all high supreme justice… Daddy Jake? I have yet another Case of pvp at my table and I must confess. I stated a campaign level 1-5 based of the stormwreck isle starter set with a lot of my unused home tee thrown in. I asked all the players to com up with a reason they were on a ship headed there. One player “smiley Tie” wanted to be an assassin in disguise as a jovial halfling youngster who was there to assassinate one of the other players. After a few month of games this finally happened. I told all the players they’d level up once they took a long rest so of course most wanted to go to bed, however I made eyes at Tie not to. His mark, the parties rouge had decided to snoop around and steal some treasure. The room went quite when I’m the middle of it I ask Tie what he is doing, Tie roleplayed a change in voice and attacked. Everyone was shocked. After a single round of combat I had the bbeg dragon attack the temple they were staying and the rest of the party join initiative from where they slept. In a close battle Tie failed yet was able to slink away, unmasked. Despite the hour of screaming and confusion we all had perhaps the greatest combat session of all time. I ask, should I be condemned as a sinner just as I condemned fat bastard in my previous campaign or is plotting PvP in your campaign badass and cool?

Ethan Tabor

To the awe-inspiring, prodigious judges and the buffalo sauce-stained trash napkin of a bailiff, Jefferson. I bring you the case of the Hunter’s Crit. In the second session of the last campaign I was DMing, involving PC’s going through different worlds by an evil deity, the players were put in Snow White. My S/O, in her second ever session of D&D, but very excited for her PC’s future, was a level 2 bard who had climbed a tree to attack Snow White’s Hunter (their enemy) a lvl 5 Ranger. I had the Hunter on his turn switch trees, cast Ensnaring Strike, and attack. Her bard had taken damage already, so I thought the attack would make her go down, and the 7 dwarves could heal her. However, I rolled a Nat 20, told her so, then rolled high on damage, not only downing the bard, but getting her to negative max HP, killing her character outright, no death saves, and pinning her dead body to the tree for all to see with vines made from Ensnaring Strike. She started crying, and we played the rest of the fight, and ended the session there. I had the evil deity revive her in the next session, Oppa warlock-not-warlock style. I ask you, should I have fudged the damage rolls so that my new player/gf wouldn’t have to mourn the loss of her first character so soon or should I forget it and trust in Dice Christ? I still feel bad for this, and my players and girlfriend still razz me about it to this day. P. S. My first D&D character also died very early on (3rd session) which was a bit ironic, but might be a sign from Dice Christ?

Alien butt puppet

Dear sweet judges. And wittle bawif. I present the case of the Irish catholic Bard. My wife is a player in my campaign and plays a Bard who willing got turned into a vampire. Her very religious parents disowned her for it, the problem is, my wife insists that her parents are Irish catholic and worship Jesus. I have suggested they could be Pelor or Lethander worshipers but no. She absolutely will not back down. Even after I allowed her home town to be called Boston. Judges, do I relent to my sweet wife and her insane demand? Or do I stand my ground? I await your tender judgement.

Trans Rights

Hail, wise and prestigious Judge-priests. Stay for a moment, and hear my confession. You can leave your pet Bailiff at the door. A few years ago, I committed a grevious sin against dice christ. I was in a campaign where it wasn't working out (DM had clear favoritism for another player). Thus, when my warforged bard, Disk-0, went down in a random encounter, and no one healed me for a round, I lied and said that I rolled a 1 on my second death save. I planned to use my character's death to graciously exit the campaign. The party kept using every reroll ability they had, and I kept lying and saying I was rolling nothing but 1s, over and over. The worst part is, however, that after Disk-0 died, the resulting funeral and character interactions reinvigorated my appreciation for the game, and the quest to bring Disk-0 back spread DM attention across the rest of the party, so I stayed for the rest of the campaign. Judge-Priests, while I no longer play with that group, the story of how I rolled like, 7 nat 1s in a row lives on, and I must confess my guilt. While that campaign ultimately sucked and I wished I had left when I had the chance, this cheating of my youth has driven me to roll everything in the open, as a player and DM, for the guilt of cheating in the bed of dice christ haunts me so. I beg for your forgiveness of my youthful folly, so that I might finally move on from this incident.

adrieenna

dearest judges and acceptable bailiff, i submit before you the case of the forgotten wife. our dm has revealed to us that a false hydra has eaten some of our dearest companions. among this reveal was the fact that my character caleb had a wife who was eaten and subsequently forgotten by everyone. in order to preserve the secrecy of the hydra, the dm did not ask my opinion about caleb having a wife. as he was in the middle of escaping a crisis concerning a promised first-born and a hag, i do not think caleb would’ve even considered marriage. also, he’s only 27 years old. he’s too young to be a widow ): he should be in the club. so i ask of you, wise dms, is the big reveal of the false hydra worth more than my vague ick that i have a dead wife? also as of our most recent sessions, i am now under the pressure of being able to bring her back to life, which sucks because i didn’t want her here to begin with.

Jay S

Honorable Judges I present to you the case of the no nuke city. May it please the court. I just started DMing my first actual campaign and started it in a big city called Dawnguard. The plan was to have the bbeg, some fallen gods wanting to reclaim their throne, essentially nuke the city with a bunch of 9th level fireball spells and some homebrew fuckery, having the newly formed party bond by escaping together and looking for revenge. However, after the world building I improvised during my first session, I loved this urban scape too much to nuke it day one. The party did have to end up leaving a few sessions later due to a chain reaction of grain silo explosions and an attack on one of the players, but I feel I robbed my party of an initial bonding moment and worry that the group won't mesh as well now. They seem to be moving along nicely, but DM anxiety is a bitch. Honorable Judges, (OH, AND JOSH), was I wrong to cancel the Nuking of Dawnguard? I lay myself at the mercy of the court. Or was his name Jeff?

Mike Conroy

May it please the illustrious judges and I really hope Amir has taken over as the bailiff at this point. I ran a Christmas Monster of the Week session for my players where they hunted a feral Grinch. One of the players wanted to play as ‘Peely’ the banana from Fortnite. I of course said “absolutely not, moving on”, but when the session came along I found out he was actually a little disapointed he couldn’t. (Granted, judges, I did somehow let another player, his roommate, morph his character to be just playing Snoopy but I concede my wrongdoing in letting that happen). To make it up to my player, for our most recent session I gave all my players a special vignette scene where they got a magic item or ability, as Christmas gifts to them all. For this player, I had him be kidnapped by a cult who thought he was their banana god’s chosen. The walking banana man helped him in escaping and gave him yhe Bag of Beans item reflavored as a bag of Banana seeds and banana themed entries to the table. He loved playing this scene and was excited to get the item, but Judges, was this banana-themed divine intervention enough to make up for my plantain faux-pas or do I still owe my player more banana gifts?

Dylan S.

Venerated justices of the court and the talented bailiff who barely manages to keep them together, Sean or something I think. I come not with a case asking for advice to atone for my sins. After years of desperately searching for a campaign to join a friend allowed me to take the last spot at their table for a new campaign. I was only friends with the DM entering so I was understandably nervous. In our first session we had a short combat and social scene following. For my first attack in the combat I rolled a nat 20, and got excited taking it as a good omen. The next round, another nat 20. It was still exciting! But when the third crit came I was apprehensive to announce it as I didn't want people to think I was cheating. Then, I got yet another crit. In a moment of panic I announced it was a natural one and let combat proceed. Nobody has brought this up since it has happened, but my DM has crit on me, and almost killed me with said crits, each session since. How can I atone for this sin and let Dice Christ's light shine on me again? Also Emily the music you wrote for the end of the season was absolutely amazing!

Fabrizio Moreno

Dear high judges and Jason from accounting, I present you the case of "the Jawa Incident" Some years ago, we began playing Star Wars ttrpg with some friends; we were all new, but I became the GM because it was my idea to play. In our first session, the wookie ranger found a couple of jawas in the backroom of her store, and here is when things started to go south. Because of some anxiety, the tense moment and some wild Wild Rolls (nat1 and nat2 intimidation and nat19 and nat20 on attacks), all the jawas died in two rounds and here I panicked. This wasn't a fight encounter; they were the ones to give them their first mission, and I didn't know what to do, so when the half-human soldier got a Nat20 investigation (WILDS ROLLS), I told them everything. The jawas were a married couple that escaped an illegal slave ring, leaving their kids behind, and were looking for some people to help them. In the end, the players saved the slaves and destroyed the bad guys, but the party was traumatized, especially the ranger and to this day, the "jawa incident" is part of an obscure part of our real lives. So I ask: Could I've done something different? Or was I correct in respecting the rolls?

JesterTheCleric

To the Deacons of Dice Christ I come before you with a humble confession of the first and only time I have lied about a roll as a player. I was in my second game as a player (I had DMed for a couple years before that, and had fudged rolls sometimes so as to not tpk my players, you know how it is). I was playing a human gunslinger named Matthew Beren, the previous Captain of the Hupperdook Specters, a force of sharpshooter rifleists in the army. He went on a few adventures and during one, we fought a gang of were-creatures, one of whom was a werebear. The werebear bit Matt, and I had to roll to avoid contracting lycanthropy. Deacons, I desperately wanted to be a bear with a gun. I rolled high, over a 17, but I lied and said I rolled low, like a 3 or a 4, just low enough to still fail the save with my high constitution. Matt became a werebear (modified slightly to not give me so many resistances in bear form which were over powered), and had the campaign continued, would have needed to do a whole character arc to learn to control my werebear form. Alas, that did not happen, as the campaign fizzled due to scheduling conflicts. I loved playing my bear with a gun, but I know it was undeserved. I present myself to you, Deacons of Dice Christ, to purge me of my sin.

Joey O'Day

To the honored Crit justices and and Jake “the beef cake snake” insert last name here. I bring you the case of the Shirtless Video gamer. I was DMing a game for a few years that transitioned to remote when COVID hit. One of our party members played a character named Longfinger. When we moved to zoom , we noticed he would get more “comfortable “ each session. It started off by not muting his mic while he was eating (duck ALOT) - and then playing shirtless, which was fine, except for the duck grease would glisten off his skin when he dropped his food. Eventually it was just him in his boxers and socks. It all came to a head when he would have his camera off, and not pay attention to the game, instead choosing to play a video game (Sikeiro shadows die twice) while we were playing D&D. We knew this because he would forget to turn his mic off. We ended up booting him for the campaign as we neared the end of a 3 year game. Was I wrong do this so late in the game, or was I justified?

Darrius Davis, the guy from that one thing.

(Insert formal greetings to court here) I bring you the case of the bloodthirsty girlfriend. I have been DMing for a group of friends for about 7-8 months, the group including my girlfriend. All of my players were brand new to DnD, so it has been a fun experience guiding them through and showing them some of the level creativity you can play around with. However, my girlfriend has taken to a dark path of play. My gf wanted to play as a druid gorgon (like Medusa, you know), so I made her a homebrew character using a DragonBorn as the base and reworking from there, giving her advantage to grapple checks and a 1d4 poisonous bite as a bonus action, as benefit to being half snake with snake hair. She has proceeded to use these abilities to crush, poison, kill, maim, bleed, and otherwise dispose of several characters that had no flaws outside of just being a little coarse. I've tried to punish her in game for it, but her rolls are always so incredible during those instances that she keeps getting away with it. Honorable justices, whomever is taking the bench, do I allow my beloved to continue her unending spree of terror, or should I do something to quell her insatiable bloodlust. I await your verdict.

David Ousley

To the honorable Justices and that dude from that one episode of Bobcat Goldthwait's Misfits & Monsters who seems to keep showing up to these things, I bring you the case of the boat in the bar. So I was in a online campaign and my character, a big full ork path of the Giant barbarian, was drinking with the party at this fancy bar in our bards hometown. We had acquired a foldable boat many sessions before but never got to use it, and our characters were getting very drunk so I committed to the roleplay and said my character wanted to bust out the foldable boat in the bar, so that way the bard could play some appropriate yacht rock. My DM decided that was fine, but said that as I took out the foldable boat it began expanding rapidly in size, crashing through walls and killing the bartender who I had really come to love as an NPC. Then, the guards came and threatened us with death or exile. I was kinda shocked, we were all having a fun time RPing a drunk adventure and I feel like the DM went a bit too harsh just because I wanted to hear some yacht rock and use the foldable boat given to us so long ago. So I ask you fine judges, was I being too silly in busting out the boat at the bar, or was I just receiving the consequences to my actions? I leave my fate in your fine manicured hands.

Ronan Cowsill

To the most gracious court and the guy from the Shrek 2 Retold thing. I submit the case of the Over Flavored Sword. I DM a game for my long time friends of many years. We have been on this our current campaign for about 6 months now and it’s been going great. The problem of lies in a sword I made for the king of a city who was once a great fighter. Their story revolves around this city and the king in question btw. When the party met the king someone disrespected him and I told them to roll initiative, the king went first and I described him “slightly cutting their cheek”. I then asked my player to make a wis save in which they failed. I described how their character must make a death saving throw before rolling another wis roll. This made the players absolutely furious, they said I made a stupid sword that is way too OP and that there is no chance to ever continue on whatever I had planned if he was this powerful. Justices, this sword is sick. The king is actually a bard who is lying about everything being a fighter and the sword is laced with poison that (upon a failed wis save) only makes the player THINK they are dying. Thats why they roll another Wis save after a death save. They cannot actually die from this sword, in fact it doesn’t do any damage. Upon three fails it simply stuns (which yes I know still is lame but come on). My players refuse to go down this quest line because of this sword and the fright it brings. How do I convince them without telling them about my super duper fucking sick sword that I made. Am I to blame? Is the sword? If the sword is to blame then I shall fall on it and take the blame myself, the sword is dank. Thank you!

Megan Kutruff

Honored Crit Justices and Jersey boy Jackson, I bring you the case of the bath bomb interruption. On Saturday, my D&D group planned to play after not playing for over a month (largely due to one player cancelling last minute). This game is a rather simple game I’m running for newer players to give them a taste of dnd. I know everyone except one person whom is a friend of another player and also new. Well.. this person let’s call her Sophia is the person who cancelled last minute for all of our December sessions. I found out later that this was due to the passing of her grandfather. Anyway fast forward to Saturday. We had all agreed on a time of 8 pm days before game and I reminded my players that morning as well. Game time arrives and Sophia doesn’t show up. When I message her she states that she is in the bath and just put a bath bomb in. She refuses to get out of the bath unless one of us pays for her bath bomb. Justices, I was quite upset at this whole situation as she has cancelled right before session in the past and then decided to choose a bath bomb over dnd. Eventually one of the other players agreed to buy her a new bath bomb and she joined the session although she didn’t really participate during the session (big boss fight for the end of the arc). As a result of this and some other issues as part of our game as well I intend to end the game after this arc. Justices, am I wrong for wanting to end this game for new players and should I give them more slack or should I give my bath bomb loving player more slack? Thank you justices!

Benjamin Reilly

Do the honored crit justices and the jailiff, Bake. Three years ago I started my first ever campaign as a late addition with a group of friends who were about a year in. I started character creation with the DM at level three to match the party. He was very helpful with the creative process, and tried to help me optimize my character because "these boss fights are really hard." He asked me what I wanted to play and I told him "anything dual wielding swords" and "ranger seems cool." He told me that both of those things were really bad in 5e, but he can give me some custom items to help me keep up with the party. Fast forward a year, by level 5 he gave me two +3 weapons. I didn't know this at the time, but apparently that's... pretty broken. I was much more effective in combat than my party members. He kept mentioning how it was hard to balance now, and my character "needs a nerf." This resulted in an npc removing my arm in a cut scene with no rolls. I was devastated, but he assured me that I could "get it back" later with higher level spells. I took every future opportunity to ask about this in future towns that we visited, but nothing has come of it. Justices, I have been playing half of a character for two full years. Even my selected feats no longer work, as to get +1 AC from dual wielding you need to be... dual wielding. Have I been wronged by my DM? Should I let this character die so I can re-roll a character that actually does what I intended? Should my DM have nerfed my character in another way? Thank you for your attention to this matter, and may the power of dice compel you.

Xavior

I plead my case too the Almighty and powerful judges and Amirs friend what's his name. I bring forth the case of the discord prince. So my friend was running a campaign for me, a friend and my fiance. We'd play once a week. They wanted to do more to do more RP stuff while I was at work so they all started a discord together. Well a couple of weeks go by and now my fiance's character is a Prince who keeps trying to use their power and wealth to buy our way out of trouble. I was originally told the RP wouldn't effect the campaign. But my DM just allowed and was okay with my partner hiring an assassin to take care of one of the bbegs. It's caused issues between me and the DM and starting them between me and my partner. Judges should I just let it go and follow this prince? Or do I have a right to be upset?

lizzy with a y

May it please the court. I was playing in a campaign with a group of friends about a year ago. Around six or seven sessions in, the DM said, "I don't really like running combat, so this is going to be a more roleplay focused campaign from here on out if that's okay with all of you." Three of the five PCs were happy about this, as they prefer the roleplay part of the game; myself and one of my other friends were a little disappointed. I was fine to go along because I was a beast master ranger and my animal companion (a hawk named Barley) gave me plenty roleplay opportunities. My other friend, however, was a champion fighter. She asked if she could switch classes to something with more options for roleplay, since her entire character/all subclass abilities were built around combat, but the DM said no. The DM justified this by saying that we had already played enough sessions that it would be weird to change it when her champion subclass abilities had already come up multiple times. The campaign disbanded a few months later (no other combat encounters were run) due to other issues*, but I still feel my friend was wronged and should've been allowed to switch classes to something that had more utility outside of combat once the DM decided to make the campaign roleplay heavy. Was the DM justified in telling my friend to stay a champion fighter despite not running combat, or am I correct in thinking this was a weird move that just served to decrease my friend's enjoyment of the remainder of the campaign? *In case the court is interested in the drama, two of the PCs who were dating in real life had also made their characters romance each other in a way that was (kudos to our DM) very interwoven with the plot of the campaign. They broke up, didn't want to keep playing romance, and the campaign kind of fell apart around that.

Moss

Dearest Dice Deacons, I come to you baring my soul for judgement: I was running a one shot themed after action movies (Using the Never Stop system), with a homebrew feature called the "cameo die", where players could roll a d100, add it to (what they deem) an important roll, and a movie character shows up to help them. As a joke, I said "haha okay, if any of you rolls a 100, it can be the Grinch" (we are all NADDPOD listeners, and understand the weight that the Grinch carries) I should have prepared for this as a student of the Brian Murphy school of "Don't let them roll for things you don't want to happen", but one of my players rolled a 100. So a man in the a Grinch suit (or hell, it could have been the Grinch himself) appeared in a helicopter with Dwayne "the rock" Johnson (another player's cameo roll) to shoot George HW Bush and prevent him from blowing up the Eiffel tower. I understand I did this to myself, please cleanse my soul of saying "if you roll this, this happens" to this absolute group of Caldwells. May crits be with you.

Jarod Kostick

Dearly beloved judges and ordained minister of justice Jake, i gather here today to bring the matters of the Baby Bjorn Kenku. Many moons ago on my first campaign I DM'd, one of my players worked 3rd shift and would miss a session every so often. As she was playing a Kenku and to not just write her off I said she was asleep in a baby Bjorn with the half giant NPC (Mama Mia, a bartender the party wouldn't let stay and run her bar with her gnome husband) back at the camp cooking supper while the party adventured. One party member (and the kenku's IRL boyfriend) A rogue who was edgier than Shadow the Hedgehog, consistently demanded to do damage to both the giant and Kenku after he was done beheading goblins and innocent villagers in town. Saying their AC should be halved since theyre doubled up. I said no, stating that wearing a kenku in a baby Bjorn would give her too high of an AC to hit so he couldn't even try. This argument led to out of game arguments and the couple eventually breaking up. And the game disbanded. Judges, and Jake, am I in the wrong saying no to a bloodhunter wannabe because wearing a kenku in a baby Bjorn would double your AC or would it half it. Love the show. Please tell my council of elders wife, Olivia the enchanting bard hello for me! (Hi Dear!)

Ivan Kay

To the real justices and the virtual bailiff, I present to you the case of Quetzalcoatlus Peril In a dinosaur-themed campaign I played in a while back, our DM gave us a homebrewed ring of permanent beast taming. To use it, you had to be touching the animal (or dino) for a minute while both of you stayed still and if either took damage, it would be interrupted. Additionally, if the dinosaur took damage it would be permanently weaker. This meant that we had to try and find ways to tame the dinosaurs without them taking any damage. At some point, we sought to tame a Quetzacoatlus, a dinosaur that's like a bigger pterodactyl. We cast hypnotic pattern on it while we took down its mate, but knew that we didn't have enough time to cast the taming, so we instead we restrained it by wrapping it up in a ton of rope to bind it and had a few of us try to climb on it to restrain it ourselves. We all rolled poorly on athletics and were tossed off, but then our DM narrated how it willingly dislocated its shoulders to slide out of the rope, taking damage and freeing it. This was done without any kind of roll or save from the dinosaur. We were all pretty upset by this, as we had taken particular care to not damage it and it had just damaged itself. After a five minute argument between about half the table and the DM, the DM gave up and said that we had tamed it without doing damage to it. The session ended soon after with a bad vibe in the air. My question is, justices, were we right to push back on the DM?

Jeremy Skeele

May it please the honorable high justices, and also Hurwitz. I bring you the case of the Shield/Rapier Barbarian. We are currently level 4 in a seven player Curse of Strahd campaign & it has been going well, but recently, an argument arose between the DM and a fellow player. We were in a combat against a single fighter who was supposed to be very powerful and intimidating. In the fight, the Path of The Totem Barbarian kept hitting the enemy — and with the Barbarian’s level three subclass feature, the enemy now had disadvantage on any attack that wasn’t towards the Barbarian, and even if they hit someone else, the damage would be halved. The DM then claimed that this feature was absolutely busted, essentially gave every character ‘rage’, and that they would talk about what to do about it later. The player pushed back, saying that it wasn’t busted, simply working well, and that the DM was just upset because he didn’t know about the feature and was now overreacting to it. While I agreed that this seemed like a harsh reaction from the DM to a core subclass feature, the player has a bit of a (in his opinion, unfair) reputation for being a sweat. In this case, he made his barbarian dexterity based with a shield, medium armor, and a rapier, specifically to evoke this feature instead of focusing on strength or damage. So, dear justices, I ask — was this an unfair usage and build, or was the DM simply overreacting? I await your judgment with quivering anticipation.

Aether

Hidden by cloak and nightfall, I hurry into Church with a confession for you, his most pious of arbiters. I'm running an ongoing campaign with my wife and several friends, each of us being fairly seasoned TTRPG players. Because of this, I figured I could up the spice with a few elements of the campaign. This appeared too hot for the pepper though as in session one, they rolled a Nat 1 on an encounter tables, right into two tussling dragons. The intent was to have the party sneak past, wait for them to leave, or hide away like the level 2 fresh faced adventurers that they were. Several Nat 1s later, one of the party stumbled in front of the scaley boys, and, well, he was a level 2 character who was a homebrew race with a weakness to fire, so Dice Christ knows he went down pretty quick. Needless to say, the whole table got a huge laugh out of that, but the fact is that a random, unwinnable encounter I put on the table killed a brand new character on session one. It's been the subject of (well-deserved) ridicule for a while now, but I needed to bring this to the light of Dice Christ. I humbly await your judgement.

Nate B

May it please the court and the bailiff I see sadly sitting alone on a bench outside the courthouse. I play in a game with my wife, sister, and a good friend from school. My sister is the DM. She’s an excellent DM, the setting is this cool steampunk 1800s London, and we all have a lot of fun when we play. However, one of our recent sessions ended with my character getting an encrypted note from one of his siblings. My sister said the note would need to be decrypted before we next played (we play about once a month). I of course procrastinated until the night before our next session and figured it would be a quick and easy solve, since at the end of the last session I had correctly guessed how the message was encrypted (a shift cypher). I was wrong, cut to me spending three hours in an excel file trying and failing to decrypt this message. When we started playing next I explained I couldn’t figure it out. My sister then explained the key to the cypher was the date my character opened his detective agency, a date I absolutely did not know. She further explained that it was supposed to be a group effort and we could’ve asked her questions. Something I felt was not communicated to us all properly. Justices, who was in the wrong here. I patiently await your judgment. PS. We quickly solved the puzzle together, once we had the key and have all moved on. There’s no hard feelings, and we are set to finish our campaign in a few sessions.

Willow Morningstar

To the opulent, esteemed crit justices and the sweet wittle baby bawiff; I present the car of Shape Piss. A past party was trapped in a room with a door that only opened via electric control, that was on the other side of it. Our spellcaster yells "Quick! Everybody piss!" Being the goblin of the party, I delighted and pissed so hard I almost passed out. Using the spell Shape Water, they created a block of frozen piss ice to force the door open from the underside. The DM was obviously bamboozled and argued the validity of the spell. I ask you omniscient and effervescent judges, was this a proper piss play?

RomanProphet

To the magnanimous justices of the Supreme Crit and also Bailiff Jake, damned devil’s kith and kin: the Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, pig of Armenia, Podolian thief, and fool of all the world and underworld. Our group has had an long-term Pathfinder 1e campiaign and my DM, who I can only think to describe as 'shockingly permissive', allowed me play a character who, unbeknownst to the rest of the party, had originally been born a black dragon, who had been slain by a party of adventurers and then reincarnated by a druid, his soul relocated into a human body. Now, as part of a larger plot arc, our party was required to attend a dinner gala at a noble's mansion. Everything went fine, until dessert, when the maître d' decided to serve everyone a 'special delicacy': Dragon Brain. You can probably put the rest together on your own, but long story short, the party ended with my character eating part of his own brain. It's now been a running gag that my character is, technically, a cannibal, to the point that other party members will introduce him as such to NPCs. Obviously it's all in good fun, but I would very much like a ruling on the matter, o' great and wise justices: Is it technically autocannibalism if your soul has transmigrated into another body? And does my poor cleric deserve a bit of a break from all the jokes? I eagerly await your judgement.

Lux

I come with a dice Christ confession. For years, I have been lying about my roles to kill off my characters. I purposely put my characters in dangerous situations, and then, when they go down, I will lie about my death saving throws. Roll a nat 20? I turn it into a nat 1. A 10 becomes a 9, etc. My reason? As much as I love these characters, I am constantly hungry to make a new one. New inspiration, new class, new background, new feel. I recently killed off my wood elf bioterrorist monk so that I could try out an undead pact blade warlock. Frankly, I don’t know if I can stop killing, but I crave absolution nonetheless. PS your recent recommendation of Brightsword may lead to a new cycle.

Gabriel Felix

To the cute judges and Jailiff Bake. 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 he had 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.

Jerrid M

To the three name brand judges and the off brand bailiff, I present the case of the 3D printed D20! 3D printing is cool right!? Maybe. Maybe not. A player at the table decided to use a 3D printed dice they made from a 3D printer. It’s kind of janky and it’s hard to read the numbers sometimes. There is no way of telling whether it’s weighted correctly, how good the printer was that made it, or if it’s intentionally weighted by whoever the original designer of the file was….. Judges, should 3D printed 3rd party dice be allowed at the table or should we put our trust in name brand dice companies!? Ps. There has been no noticeable display of high numbers being rolled but if you saw it you would still have questions about it !

Trevor Thistle

To the Radical Judges and the tubular Bailiff Jazz, may it please the court. I bring the case of "The Wife ReRoll" I am the forever DM for a group of my friends and my wife. We've run two successful campaigns with very few issues and have been playing since 2019. The issue I bring to the honorable justices arose a few weeks ago. My wife has been playing Baulders Gate 3 a lot recently which allows rerolls when you fail a check. This recently became a problem at our table when my wife was rolling a very important check for her character. For background we're running a StrixHaven campaign and She is playing a fairy Bard named Rosalyn. It's the night of the drama clubs big show and she had been excited for it for entire school year. Her charisma is maxed and she is constantly rolling 20+ on charisma based checks by adding buffs. Her character is extremely popular at school and she loves that her character demands to be treated as if she's famous. This has created a lot of fun moments where her high status gets slapped down because she treats a lot of NPCs as if they were assistants working for her. She has always agreed these have been funny and everyone at the table loves this angle of her character. However when it came to me for her final performance check unfortunately it was a disaster ! She of course rolled a Natural 1. I began to snicker but before I could narrate anything she simply replied "Nope!" Scooped up her dice and rolled again rolling an 18 and saying "I don't care, I didn't wait all school year to fart on stage or something terrible" and just immediately plowed forward. I was dumb founded and everyone else at the table shrugged laughed and moved on so I simply did as well and narrated an excellent performance before a battle broke out in the theater. Afterwards I asked her about this and she has shown no remorse simply saying "in Baulders gate when I fail a check I can usually reroll it 🤷🏻‍♂️" My question is, should I have let this reroll stand and what should I do going forward. She has never pulled this stunt before but I'm concerned she may again on another even more important roll that may effect the whole party and not just her character. I throw myself at the mercy of the court, Thank you, Trevor

Bugbear OrMiss

Honorable Justices and the bailiff we deserve (also Murph, who has wronged me personally and I havent found it in my heart to forgive yet), I present the case of the Bugbearian turned Buzard: I was playing in a campaign where my PC (A Bugbear wizard) had a brother who was a hot headed Bugbear barbarian who ran away from home to join a goblin horde because he was sick of always living in my PCs shadow. This was the inciting incident that led my PC to adventure: Find his misguided bro and make amends. When we found him, however, the DM described him as a smooth talking and collected war general working alongside Drow and his first act upon seeing my PC was teleporting away and summoning a giant storm over the horizon. I was, of course, bewildered but figured that maybe this was the setup of some mistaken identity plot and after the session mentioned how out of character my bro was acting. The DM, however , became despondent and after ghosting me between sessions, came back next week adamant that this was all perfectly in character for a hot headed barbarian to do. Justices, I plead. Is this true? Should I accept my Bugbearian Bro turning into a Buzard? Or is this wack

Sammo Cando

Dear honorable crit justices and sweet baby bailiff Jakie poo. I present to you the case of the evasive scout vs metagaming. We were playing a 3.5 campaign for several years, and my halfling scout with evasive had a colossal DEX stat and accompanying gear, leading to a +20 in Dex saves (verified by the DM, 3.5 is wild y'all). With evasive, it almost always meant that on anything other than a nat 1, I would take no damage from breath weapons etc. We were in a cave where we found 15-20 black dragon wyrmlings, who each have a weak breath weapon. I was tasked to kite them back towards the group, and when I arrived, my scout dove out of the way around the corner. This unfortunately led to ALL of the wyrmlings firing upon our wizard, with enough damage to not only kill him but melt his corpse with the acid. We did eventually use a tooth or something to resurrect him later in the session, but the player was mad at me for not tanking the breath weapons as I was essentially immune to them. I argued that my (notably cowardly) character doesn't have the knowledge of the evasion mechanic, and that you don't have a scout kite to then also just stand there and get blasted. So supreme crits, what say you? Should my scout have used his knowledge of his in game abilities to take 15 acid blasts to the face or after bringing them to the party, dodged out of the way?

Nathaniel Flowers

To the bailiff whose wits are better than Hurwitz, the esteemed Executioners Axe-ford, the honorable Called-that-Well Tanner, and… Blain? Blain Murphew? I present the case of the thieving DM. After fixing an “illusion-made-real” machine, we tested it with an illusion of many platinum bars, totaling some 250k or more gold, before using it on the illusion of a wizard who hired us. On our way back to town, our DM told us the platinum has a short half life and is disappearing. As he does, a little devil guy pops out of the wizards watch and does not much. Very random. Wizard has had the watch for some time. We shrug it off as a later problem and we book it to the bank. We set up a deal with the bank teller to launder the money. At that moment, said little devil guy pops out, pushes the teller in the bank vault portal, and locks it. After the money went in. This was our first campaign together and have played many since. Often in the same world and characters or from same characters guild. The bank is “still investigating” and our money is lost. Please validate us, the players who never let the DM forget, that this was an insane way to take our money? We were in the Icewind Dale, so it’s not like that money would have mattered all that much in the short term. Right? Thanks judges. Oh, and you too… Bargamel.. the Smurf?

Alex Borowski

Worthy Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner (and that dastardly Bailiff Jake the Snake), I bring to you the case of the Trampled On Nat 20. I’m a player in a campaign going on 3 years now. It’s been an incredible journey with some amazing friends, and we’ve given our DM his fair share of early gray hairs with our antics, so I don’t want to come across ungrateful. HOWEVER, I’d love a fair and honest ruling from your non-partisan wisdom. We were in the penultimate dungeon/battle against the BBEG’s right-hand woman — a powerful sorceress obsessed with vanity who gains her power from people worshipping her. In one of the many rooms of her dungeon we traversed, we came across a nude statue of her with corpses surrounding it in “worship” stances. My character, a Tiefling bardlock, thought that if this sorceress gained power from worship, dismantling this statue may reduce her power and lead to an easier end-of-dungeon fight. I asked to do an Arcana check to test this theory. After the requisite dirty jokes of the horny bard “Arcana checking a nude statue”, I rolled a Nat 20. I was elated! Our DM thought for a minute then said “with a Nat 20, your connection to the Weave is so strong, that as you look at this statue, a wave of necrotic damage directly reaches out to you and your party”, causing us to each lose ~30-50% of our hit points before the fight. This put us in a very dangerous place, and at the time of this submission, we are currently fighting her, likely on our way to a TPK due to coming into the fight so weak. Disastrous! My question: was my Nat 20 trampled on and pre-battle damage unfairly dealt? Should a Nat 20 Arcana check have alerted me to the fact that this statue was not, as I suspected, an opportunity to reduce her power but rather a seductive trap in waiting? Or was chasing Arcana as my check a mistake, and I should have opted for a different check instead? I await your humble judgement while my character (currently at 1 HP in this battle) awaits his untimely demise.

Amanda K.

May it please the court, this is a dramatic one, My name is Amanda, I’m a college student in upstate New York, and I’ve been playing in a campaign with 3 other girls from school since September. My case is about some drama that took place in real life, and is bleeding into our game. Our party is pretty standard, I play a barbarian and two of my friends (let’s call them Apple and Banana) play a cleric and a wizard respectively. To keep things brief/anonymous, Banana got broken up with recently and was pretty upset about it, and Apple said she saw our DM (who we can call Blueberry) making out with her ex boyfriend at a party hosted by a mutual friend we all share, who we can call Pineapple. There’s no proof that this kiss took place, but both me and Banana trust that Apple isn’t lying. Our most recent session was tense, Blueberry didn’t know that we knew about the party. Nobody felt like roleplaying, and things almost came to a head when she was describing a busy tavern and Banana mumbled “sounds like pineapples house…” a little too loud. Justices, I’m not asking you to solve college hookup drama, but how do you deal with interpersonal conflict at the table? D&D is a social game, and I just don’t know if I can handle another passive aggressive session. Thanks, Amanda

Babbles The Clown

Salutations Supreme Crit Justices & the other guy (or wonderful Bailiff Jake) I submit the case of the unnecessary epilogue. This took place at my local Comic Con Museum at the D&D night where a bunch of DM's ran one shots. I was a player randomly assigned to a table. We ran through the session with a number of first time players all using prerolled characters & it was a pretty fun time. In the world we were all elves being treated as second class citizens & we over threw our master & obtained the McGuffen. At the end the DM asks if we want to join the elf rebellion. We all agree of course to which the DM states "Well those were the BBEG of my home campaign & you guys all lost to my players." as you can imagine this kinda sucked the air out of table for a bit. So I ask the judges was the DM wrong for calling us all losers? Or were we players wrong for so quickly going turn rebellion? I humbly await your judgement.

Max Telmer

wtf i thought Jake was promoted to justice. justice for justice hur-stice

Cory Harbak

Dear steamy justices and I thought there was a fourth person but I don't see him. I present unto you: the case of the insane one-shot canon. I played for a few months with a casual group over Discord when I started playing D&D. Everything went awesome and besides a few weak player decisions on my part, the DMs (plural) ran some really exciting one-shots! We even defeated Krampus and saved Christmas (you're welcome). The problem? Both of the rotating DMs agreed on one thing: nothing was canon except deaths. None of us actually died, but if we had, we would have needed to roll a new character even though everything down to the cause of death wasn't canon. I have since become a DM myself, and so I get wanting to keep a lid on things, but isn't "nothing is canon except deaths" a wild thing to claim? If I had died saving Christmas (you're welcome), you'd good and goddamn better believe I want that on the tombstone of my weak himbo dragonborn bard. Otherwise, let him join the next quest! Am I being ridiculous? Yours truly, Cory.

Tykora

Hello your Honorable justices and the "interesting" Baliff Jortz My first time ever playing dnd i was a gnome druid that was uncomfortably fond of tree and married with a stump wife and child. My Problem lies in a case of party alignment struggle as i was playing chaotic neutral with a tendance to horde anything i could pickup, the rest of my party was either good or lawful aligned so when we petrified some enemy goblins and i wanted to behead and dismember a petrified goblin to make an improvised club by tying the head to an arm my party was abhorred and litterally dragged me away and the dm didnt even allow for a contested role (to be fair we were pretty new to the game). So i ask you should the party have been allowed to railroad me without even a roll?

Ardy

Venerable judges and Jake, just Jake, nothing special (just like him). I present a case against both players and a DM in hopes you can clear up who I should be saltiest at. During the summer between classes I was in my first ever campaign with some friends from University and during the campaign we reached the home city of one of our PCs. He was the son of a high ranking noble and due to some shenanigans in his absence he, along with our help, would have to fight in a gladiator style arena to rightfully return his family to the ruling position from a tyrant. It was our first big encounter and we were pumped, and naturally settled in for a nights rest before the big day. This is where the issue occurs. Two other PCs decided to sneak out at night - only them, not waking up anyone else in the 6 player party, including the PC who’s home it was - to try and steal from the city treasury. What ensued was over an hour of watching them roll and stealth through the city while our PCs slept through the whole thing. Here is my beef, I get that side stories happen but must we be subject to sitting, without warning, through the whole thing? Couldn’t the DM have relinquished us to the kitchen for snacks or to just hang out instead of sitting silently or is that also rude to the other players and DM? If there is a two player cutscene that goes long enough we won’t be doing anything afterwards shouldn’t we just go home and let the three of them do their own thing?? I beseech you are they in the wrong? And which “they” should I wield this salt towards?? PS I am extra salty because the whole time I was getting texts from my girlfriend at the time asking when I would be free to talk and I kept saying vague things like “a few minutes I think” and “i think we will wrap soon” and eventually left before the conclusion of the heist at which point she called me and broke up with me before I made it two doors down to my house.

Dr. BoomBoom

Oh wise and litigious Justices and Good Ol' Bailiff Whatshisname, I humbly present to you the case of Ghostly Eyestalks and Magic Monk Hands I run a campaign that began using the Waterdeep Dragon heist module. Near the conclusion of the module, my players ended up infiltrating the lair of their Big Bad, a Beholder named Xanathar. In the main hall, as they crept in, they began to feel watched, and, as is mentioned in the module, they succeeded on a perception check to notice a ghostly eyestalk protruding from the ceiling above the large double door, much like a security camera. The eyestalk was beholder themed flavor for a scrying sensor. Due to my inexperience, my party was about level 6, slightly above the ideal level for this encounter. Incidentally, the goblin monk player recently got the ability to use his hands as magic weapons, and the ability to be able to touch/punch ghosts. He wanted to run up the wall and grab the eyestalk to rip it out or turn it away. Fearing I would set the precedent here that would mean he could reach out and touch spells later, I said no, setting off a drawn out argument. Though we moved past it, I wonder now if I made the right call. Part of me wonders if I should have let him have fun in this instance with a creative solution, or if I should have trusted my guy, as this player did go on to become a very toxic "rules lawyer" despite never reading any rules that didn't pertain to his class specifically, and has since left the table. Justices I throw myself at your mercy. Did I avoid a dangerous precedent, or like magic monk fists, was I out of hand?

Laura Webb + Michael Garcia

Salutations to the most supreme justices and soon to be supreme GM, Jark. I bring you the case of the Moogle Player. I recently began a campaign of Fabula Ultima with my wife and our two married friends. This is a game system based off of another TTRPG, Ryuutama, that is designed to mimic JRPGs (and it is a ton of fun!). When making characters, I told the players they could be whatever kind of weird thing they wanted to be: cat person, bug person, human... whatever kind of little freak they wanted to be! One of my friends asked to play as a Moogle who rode a Chocobo. I tentatively agreed, on the condition that their Moogle speak English, and not just say kupo all the time. Some depictions of Moogles exclusively say 'kupo', and I thought that such a character would become annoying quickly. She agreed and decided to stick to being a Moogle. Several sessions in, and we are having a blast. Nothing is wrong actually. She did name her character Kupo as a sort of workaround, but really it's not a big deal. It turns out she didn't know anything about Moogles, but it just looked cute (which is factually correct). Actually this isn't a case, it's more of an advertisement for Fabula Ultima which everyone should try. I guess I await my punishment? Sincerely, M

JesterHat

To the supreme crit justices, echelons of wisdom and bearers of knowledge, May your W's be big and your haters not feast, may you not be worm wives, and may you be allowed to wear a bucket hat. and also shout-out to bailiff janky. This is a case of bodily autonomy versus group dynamic. I am in a two-player campaign with my wife. We have lots of fun and she is always engaged in the story, rarely misses anything. But the whole time we are playing she is also on her phone, scrolling or playing other games. I have told her it is very frustrating and distracting to me, and makes it hard to engage in roleplay with someone who doesn't look at you the whole session. She acknowledged that, and tried to be on it less for a few sessions, but is back on it consistently. She absolutely has the right to be on her phone, and she's not even an absent player. She doesn't miss any plot moments or lore dumps, and always has her turn prepared, but it is so tough for me to engage with her. What do I do? Do I suck it up because it's her right AND she's so engaged? Should I politely bring it up again? Please help me, I'm so distracted. And she's not. And that's very frustrating. I submit myself to the mercy of the court, because I suspect I'm just being a whiny baby. Kthanks.

Rune

Hello justices and whichever poor soul has to fill Jilt’s tattered, dissipating shoes. I bring to you the case of the Positively Possessive Paramour. A while back I started evangelizing the word of the good book (then 4e) and slowly brought on copious converts. At the zenith of this I was running 10 people games just to accommodate all of the people that wanted to join. At the time I invited a newly made friend that just started interacting with the group. They asked if they could invite their partner, which was fine by me as we had a couple of open slots. The game is set and the players arrive; all is well. Shortly into the game my friend, playing a bodacious bard, decided to facetiously pursue a “romance” with an NPC, an effusive Aarakocra. Shortly into this interaction, maybe two minutes in, the boyfriend states they “enter the room and immediately stab the Aarakocra” stating they had “found the assassin”. Judges there was no assassin. There was no talk of assassination. When my NPC reacted with violence the boyfriend stated I “wasn’t playing the game right”. When I asked what they meant they yelled, in front of an active audience of 10 people, “dnd isn’t about stealing girlfriends!” Judges I knew not what to do, so I pretended his character had been the source of the shout and tried to roll this into the narrative. After a number of awkward moments we moved past the outburst and finished the game. The boyfriend practically ran out of the house post session and was never to be seen again. Judges, I beseech your council, was I fine in my romantic antics or should I have been more attuned with my group and deferred to the apoplectic partner. I await your order and will follow it to my mildewed grave.

Ben

O' judges, O' judges- to whom I bow, and with the Balif beside me, Bowing ever lower, I bring you my case: Unfortunate Circumstances Vs My Patience I love the art of DnD, and have been dubbed willingly as a forever DM. I love creating homebrew worlds and running adventures for my group of friends- as most are new but some experienced. Creating is the essence of my soul and I pour all of my creative juice into my world and campaign. Judges, herein lies my case: we play, if I'm being generous, one session every three months. And it's not guaranteed to even be in the same, large-scale campaign that I have tirelessly handcrafted and stitched together. Almost none of the time can everyone meet together all at once, and if we all do it's always 'been so long' that we take that time and simply 'enjoy each other's company' (I'm being a little sarcastic: I do enjoy the time i spend with friends) durring a break in the working life. If I can break off a group, we start a new campaign with just them, as to satiate my desire for DnD. I'm currently 'running' 4-5 games but at intervals of 3 months between any given session! Some of these were supposed to be one shots! Judges, I feel as if my effort is in vain. My worlds exist in my psyche, but I need player input to bring them into reality, and I find my passion waning to keep creating and developing them. Judges, I have no strict query for you to adhere to, but I am tired, physically and creatively; so I will lay here, where there are convenient blankets with the name 'jim' sewn into the hem.

Corwin Michaels

To the Supreme Critical Successes and the lowly Critical Failure, I bring to you the case of the not so Legendary Reaction. I was running my very first game as a baby DM, I had planned it all out and had a some cool hombrew monsters. The big bad was a magitech robot that was powered by lava. The players had done a create job killing of the mobs but had each taken enough damage to make it feel exciting. Being new I had forgotten about the Legendary Action until it was my one players turn. ( I had being doing lair actions though) So I used the monsters legendary action to react to my player and he got very upset when I hit and said "Oh do you feel cool killing my guy?" I was pretty taken aback by it because they had all seemed to been having a good time. I did roll the damage in front of the board as per Justice Murphy's advice in prior cases. He survived with 1 hp, which I thought was pretty cool, but I still feel bad. Should I have not used the Legendary Reaction since I had forgotten about it up until then or was I right to use the Legendary Action when I remembered to do it?

Ashley Malpass

To the sweeties and cuties of the Supreme Crit Court (and the less sweet but still a cutie bailiff...) Every time I've played with or as a Barbarian, there have been debates about Danger Sense and everyone thinks the other side has a fundamental misunderstanding of what exactly this class feature means and how to interpret the nuances of the description. Last week, my half-orc barbarian (based loosely on Regina George from Mean Girls) was attacked by a Hellhound's fire breath - this is a dex saving throw and the effects can be seen (fire), so I assumed I would have advantage. The DM argued that I should roll flat because it's not a "spell" or a "trap", but the description says "LIKE a spell or a trap", so not exclusively spells/traps. It's a low DC and I saved regardless, but my mention of danger sense caused the table to devolve into the debate we've had countless times before but never resolved. I humbly has the brilliant legal minds of the Supreme Crit Court to provide some guidelines around Danger Sense - is it ALL dex saves where the outcome can be seen? What are the nuances? Or, is this just something we should work out with the DM before deciding to play a Barbarian? Danger Sense isn't the only reason to play a Barbarian, but it's a bummer to not get to use class features in the way you think they should work.

Sammy

May it please the court... My brother is DMing a very fun Curse of Strahd campaign, his first campaign and my first as well. Early on, my character Immianthe (a cleric librarian) received a cool magic item: a quill that will tell me if a statement is true once a day, as ink will turn red or green. A wise NPC (van Richten) told me this quill could also open a doorway to a magical library. I went in and soon discovered it was STRAHD'S library. I met Esmeralda there and liked her but was still cautious, so I asked if I could roll to see if I could trust her. I rolled a nat 20 (plus a high modifier) insight check that I had no inkling of suspicion about her. I then divulged some important info. Long story short, we later met Esmeralda and she didn't know me; I had been speaking to Strahd in disguise. I was shocked because I had rolled such a high insight check on the figure I met in the library. Should a powerful character such as Strahd be able to fool even a nat 20 insight check? Thank you in advance for your time and deliberation.

Alec Rudek

To DJ Jazzy Jake and the Confessionals (dice christ remix), I ask for forgiveness of my flagrant offense of ruining the finale of our group's 3 year campaign. Our team makes it to the final evil dragon BBEG after a long 6 hour session. We had been carrying an orb that contained a universe within that it wanted control of. However, I completely misinterpreted that and thought we were meant to use it to imprison it. After a long fight I ask my group if I should "do the thing". Without understanding what I meant, they all kinda nodded and I "trapped" the dragon in the orb. Everyone, especially the DM stared open mouthed at me, and explained how bad I just fucked up. The DM had to quickly spin an alternative ending where we were allowed to travel back in time and try again, but my awful decision destroyed the momentum and the impact of the final chapter. We all laugh about today but i definitely lose sleep over this. I hope DC understands my intentions were pure but my weak attention span had different plans for me. Amen

The angry cat

May it please the court, Esteemed judges, and baby DM bailiff James I bring you the case of the 25 NPCs. First, Sorry for any English mistakes and shout out from a Brazilian fan I play in a campaign where 15 PCs play one-shot-like missions, rotating the PCs in grupos of 4 or 5, to improve our guild's fame. The DM is an old friend and we played many games together, this campaign takes place in his homebrew world. This specific mission we are currently on is to kill a dragon. Cool right? Well, we are level 3. I was scared but thought maybe we would go and it would be some other creature or maybe a young dragon. No, it was an adult dragon. So we could have a chance the DM presented a party to go along, 25 PNCs, all with their character sheets, places in initiative, personality and voices. We camped on the way to the dragon, and he insisted we talk and interact with ALL NPCs. The camping took 2 sessions. The travel time was 1, and now we are finally fighting the dragon. The problem is we are fed up with this quest, and we cannot move on until we finish but none of the players want to go into this fight with 25 NPCs, some of which are way higher level. So I humbly ask judges, are we in the wrong to want to skip this dragon and go do other missions? Or is our DM just having fun with his characters and I need to endure what will be a slog of a combat?

Zaq Putnam

Hello to the badass judges and assbad bailiff. I come have a case against myself. In my first dnd campaign, my bard was gifted a ring of invisibility and it was amazing and I used it often. In one such instance my party was in a underground fight ring and our dragonic sorcerer high elf decided to go into the ring in a 1v1 with a magical assassin we were trying to catch. I had the amazing idea to put on my ring of invisibility and help her out (use my shield to stop her from taking damage, attack when she attacked to deal extra damage, and do support spells) everyone thought this was fucking awesome (and it was) but we were all still pretty new and it wasn't until much later, like a year after, that the ring of invisibility stops working after the user attacks or casts a spell... All the times I had used the ring incorrect came straight to my mind and I fucked up a lot. Was it a forgivable accident or is it my fault for not reading the fine print?

Jesse Flanagan

To the wise, lovely Judges and that handsome court slut, Jake, I present The Case of the Tortured Tortle. During a campaign a couple years ago, us players had to cross a 200-foot-long rickety bridge over a deep chasm. The DM made it clear that Lanu, the party’s tortle cleric, would be at increased risk while crossing because of his weight. One by one, everyone besides the tortle safely made it across. Despite spending 30 minutes figuring out a way to get him safely across, he made it 160 ft before the bridge gave way, leaving him dangling from the side of the cliff. Before anyone could do anything, an enormous yeti climbed up from below, grabbed Lanu’s entire body, and hurled him down the chasm (no checks of any kind were allowed.) Lanu retreated into his shell on the way down but still ended up taking 117 bludgeoning damage. A moment later, 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 left arm. We ended up saving Lanu from death, but we were pretty bitter about the whole thing. We still make jokes about how disagreeing with the DM could cost our characters a limb. I understand that railroading is an overly misused critique, but is this a rare example of locomotive lunacy? I humbly ask the court for judgement.

Jude

To illustrious judges and the buoyant bailiff Jake. I present the case of the reverse Cinderella. This is a case from 8 years ago that I occasionally still get miffed about. In a campaign I was playing with some old friends I played a tiefling sorcerer named Willoughby with a noble background. My best friend (and the dm’s girlfriend) was a half-elf rogue named Trys, and the other two party members were also half elves. Trys’s backstory was that he was the son of a servant in the royal palace before being forced to flee and become a pirate. Trys eventually turned out to be the lost son of queen and king via body switching and was the only one who could use a magic item. It was later revealed that the other two players were long lost siblings and cousins to Trys. They were also able to use the magic item because any half elf could use it. Furthermore I had a lot of personal and family issues happen partway through the campaign and so we had Willoughby confront his neglectful parents and take over their holding. It was a good way to explain my absence for a few months or whenever I needed to be away for a time. It was never plot relevant. During the lead up to the end of the campaign Willoughby trained forces in the main setting and his hometown was never brought up except when he sent his his classes human box boyfriend there to be safe. In the finale the big bad fires a weapon that obliterated only willoughby’s hometown and his lover (because I hadn’t mobilized the troops so obviously everyone would’ve been there) I feel like I was kind of targeted and left out by the dm for truly inscrutable reasons. I would be fine if this was something my character could react to but it was in the finale in which people became gods took back their kingdoms become head masters and ascended to master ranks in their profession. Meanwhile my character got his home family and duties disintegrated. Justices am I correct in feeling that I was unfairly targeted or does this just happen. Sincerely Homeless tiefling.

Krista 'Birdy' Bertrand

To the Honourable justices Axford, Murphy and Tanner and the bailiff jammy dodger, I present to you the case of the mist. I am a forever DM and joined a curse of straud campaign as a player and was so excited. A few sessions in I had to miss a session due to my health and the DM decided that I had wandered out of the house into the mist in my sleep. As a result I took 2 levels of exhaustion. Cool… fine. We then left the house and when we got into town my character didn’t want to go into the house we heard a scream from (it made sense for my character and her backstory to not want to go in) and she then hit me with two hell hounds at level 1. Am I the asshole or did this DM seek vengeance upon my soul for no good reason? Please advise.

Jambalaya

To those whom profess the will of Dice Chirst and the mediocre bailiff Jonk, I would like to present my case of my Hunter Ranger and his horse cock. In college, I was playing in a homebrew campaign shortly before covid prematurely ended it. Our party was exploring an abandoned palace in the clouds, and in one of the combats my Dwarven ranger had lost his weapon. One of the spellcasters had shattered a marble statue of a horse, so in a moment of genius I ask if I can use a piece of marble as a club. The dm thought that it would be funny if I grabbed the horses penis. I also thought this was hilarious and fought the rest of the fight with the 1d6 horse cock. However, the next session I showed up, and the dm proceeded to hand me an index card with horse cock weapon stats 1d10 and finesse (I was dex based). The whole time he is explaining it to me with this huge grin and I really didn't want to wield... again a horse cock .... I ask was I right to just grin and bear it or should I have shot down this idea? I await your judgement with baited breath.

Ben Rohr

To the Esteemed judges and severely overlooked and underrated Baliff, Jeff. I am writing to you regarding the case of the kneecapped cleric. During the pandemic I was invited by a few online friends to join their new campaign. I had a session zero with the Dm over zoom where I talked about the character I wanted to play, a peace domain cleric/wild magic sorcerer multiclass. I had an entire backstory relating to learning more about wild magic and my upbringing with peace domain clerics, which the DM liked and I ended the call feel really excited to start playing! During a fight in our first session, I tried to cast emboldening bond and the DM stopped me and told me that since all the other characters in our campaign were playing more standard subclasses (Hunter Ranger, Berserker Barbarian, ETC.), I was not allowed to play this subclass and I had to switch to a life domain cleric. After some discussion I was able to keep my subclass, but the rest of the campaign the DM would stonewall me and my character development (ex. I wanted to ask a professor from the local magic college a question but the DM said if I did I would have to enroll in the college and be in school for at least a year in game time). This happened a few times which made me feel excluded and ended with me leaving the campaign. Judges, was I wrong to want to play a specific character or was this DM too harsh in his response to my peace domain practices? I eagerly await your judgement.

Bradley Hopp

To the lofty Justice Priests and the Cake man himself. I present the flying swords of crit. During Covid I started DM-ing for the first time over Roll20 with people met over social media. We played Frozen Sick, a pre written adventure set in Wildemount. The low level adventurers delved into an ancient frozen laboratory and one player accidentally activated a teleportation effect that sent him into a room with 4 Flying Knives, a variant of Flying Swords. The player decided to stay and fight. The knives started to crit and it looked like the player was going to be outright killed. Justices, never have I lied with such frequency in my life. The crits kept coming and I was mortified of a player death so early in the campaign so I fudged nat 20s into dirty 20s and arbitrarily reduced the damage dealt by the damage die. Was I in the wrong to save this character or should I have let the die slay the player? I am pleased to report near the end of the campaign about a year later I did one-shot kill the player in an unrelated explosion for 372 damage, but the flying knives still haunt my dreams.

Kay

Hello Juicy Justices and Bailiff Jorkin It, I present the case of the Deadly Dopplegangers. I run mini-campaigns for a small company that hosts dnd games at local breweries for an affordable price. The campaigns are set dates that run concurrent with the breweries’ event schedules, but I am usually open to hosting makeup games out of my own time if a player or two can’t make a date, because I want them to get their moneys worth and I think the more personal 2 on 1 type dnd games are really engaging for roleplay in an otherwise limited timeframe. With that set up out of the way, I usually need to come up with reasons to kidnap player characters to get them away from the party. In come my current players, the Deadly Dopplegangers. They are lvl 15 clones of lvl 18 original heroes, but were created as a means of organ harvesting if the heroes were ever gravely injured in combat. Set on a mission for revenge against these heroes, they… have had multiple schedule conflicts in the first few sessions. That’s fine, I can handle that. What I’m having trouble with was my last kidnapping. Two players, a sorcerer and wizard, needed to get Taken so I had the original sorcerer use an upcasted banishment with heightened spell ready to force a disadvantaged save if any of them saved. I did this from invisibility, so I counted it as a surprise round too, all buttoned up right? Well one of my players had alert, meaning they couldn’t be surprised, and my gang of action economy min/maxxed players turned a quick surprise that was to wrap up the session into two full rounds of combat and resulting in my sorcerer losing half of her hp by the time I managed to get them in the banishment bag. My question is this: am I guilty for not over stepping / necessary railroading in order to get a side game going, or are my players guilty because they wanted everything by the book thought they could try to outplay me, and my trying to get the makeup game going? I will be adding minor legendary action type things to my villains moving forward, but what say you judges and Jork?

Mike C.

To the illustrious judges, but especially Justice Murphy, who I am afraid will once again turn against me when he hears my update to a previous case: I bring an update to the “permissive Anchorman DM” case from a while back. To answer a question, we played this game in college when we were freshmen in 2009. But that is not the only update I bring: we got together again this Christmas for a reunion and we played another Anchoman one-shot: same characters, same DM. The only difference: I walked to the DM before the one-shot and gave him Justice Murphy’s advice - kill a PC early, and keep them dead, don’t let them just kip up because they don’t feel like rolling a new character. This happened almost exactly like it did in college, our rogue Brian Fantana was killed by an Owlbear, and the DM narrated how we - his friends and fellow news anchors - watched as his soul left his body forever. At first this was met with silence from the table, and then uproarious laughter as all of our characters had to immediately begin to grieve and process Brian Fantana’s death. That player rolled a new news anchor (Champion Fighter Veronica Corningstone) and we finished the rest of the one shot and had a great time reconnecting. I thank the court for their recommendations, and once again beg Justice Murphy’s forgiveness for making him hear about Anchorman.

Naomi

Dear Effervescent Justice Emily, the cats, the Boys, and also Jak, I DM for a group that meets about every three weeks for only two or three hours at a time. We had a lull in playing for 6+ months, so despite the fact that we’ve been together since 2021, we only JUST, in the year of our dicechrist 2025, finished the Frozen Sick module. Now I’m really excited to finally follow some of the plot hooks I’ve been dangling/backstory threads the PCs have come up with. I told them to level up (two levels!) in preparation for tonight’s session beginning our new arc. I also sent them a six or seven question google form (homework is bad, ik). Since we’re doing a new arc, I asked for feedback on what they liked and didn’t like, what they were looking forward to, wanted more of, etc… 2 out of 4 players filled out the form, and only one player says he will level up before our session. The leveling up/figuring out their spells usually takes them at least 20/30 minutes, and that + small talk and multiple people having a hard-stop at 10PM means we’ll only get to play for an hour and a half, if that. I put a lot into prepping each session and the lore. Other than this, the players are really lovely and we’re all good friends. Should I be punished for giving out homework? Or should my players be guilted for our plodding campaign and their lack of effort? TIA, happy hopping!

Brolson

Resplendent justices and bailiff boy Jack, I bring the case of the maybe hypocritical good vs evil PVP. One of my first campaigns was high level, evil focused, with round robin DM rotation. Everyone had PCs the DM just had to write out their PC out of the story temporarily or juggle a PC while DMing. I didn't pay enough attention in session 0 and brought a morally grey good aligned half-orc paladin to the campaign. The 2nd DM in rotation kept their PC in the story and was using their PC to beat up random villagers as we were traveling. I kept my mouth shut until they broke a child's arm and held them over an open well for no clear reason besides being evil. I initiated PVP, used a whip to smite the DM/PC to drop the child and then misty stepped into the well to catch them. The party was tense for a time after this and that player/DM left the group later and I later converted my paladin to go full evil edgelord pledging themselves to Tiamat in hell. I feel kinda hypocritical for being on a "that's what my character would do" high horse early on but going with the evil flow later. Justices was I right to stop the murder-hobo behavior with PVP or should I have just relaxed because this campaign was destined to be evil in the long run? I welcome any punishment you deem fit.

Kixystick

To the glorious and lofty Justices and the birdbrain bailiff Jarnathan, a case from a campaign long ended, about a legendary vampire, a broken Bag of Holding, and lost treasure. QUICK AND DIRTY FROM THE DEFENDANT’S LAWYER (aka gf who was also in this campaign): Our bard trapped an evil vampire (mist form) in a bag of holding, preventing the vampire from escaping back to their resting place to heal/reform. We thought this would kill the vampire for good but when we awoke the next day the bard discovered that their bag of holding had been torn from the inside by said vampire who for some reason managed to reform in the bag. This caused all the bards acquired assets (money, magical items, sentimental keepsakes) to disappear into the Astral Sea (along with said vampire). While it was funny in the moment and taken in good faith we still wonder if this was fair? When asked about it the DM said that this legendary vampire was a special case, where the entire material plane was considered her resting place due to some pocket plane/dimension shifting shenanigans. Should this be allowed? Is a bag of holding not like its own plane of existence? The campaign fell through for other reasons but we still joke about this moment. My client is mostly wondering where you three magnanimous judges stand on the issue. The original statement from my client in case you need more details: In a campaign I played in previously, we once had a combat encounter with a group of vampires, including an especially powerful one who threatened the world at large. During the battle, the legendary vampire was misted, and my Bard/Rogue had an idea of how to kill her without tracking the vampire to her resting place; scooping her up, in mist form, in my character's trusty Bag of Holding. After two attempts, the DM said I was successful in trapping her within the bag, which I then sealed shut and was careful for the next 24 hours not to open. However, the following morning, my Bard awoke to a terrible discovery; their Bag of Holding was broken, the vampire having reformed in the Bag of Holding and torn into the interior, with tens of thousands of gold, a Horn of Valhalla, many sentimental items and the vampire herself lost to the Astral Sea. While the moment was funny, I asked my DM with genuine confusion why the vampire seemingly reformed in the Bag of Holding, as I had assumed she would die because of not being able to reach her resting place. My DM said that this legendary vampire was a special case, where the entire material plane was considered her resting place due to some pocket plane/dimension shifting shenanigans. I then asked if a Bag of Holding's interior was considered the material plane, or if it was its own demiplane separate from the material plane. The DM said even if it was, he was not going to retcon the Bag of Holding's destruction, which I agreed to because it was funny to roleplay my character being petty about their things. I come to you today, a few years later after parting ways with the DM for unrelated reasons, and ask only to hear your esteemed thoughts of the situation because of genuine curiosity of whether I was rightly De-Bagged or if I should have had a defeated vampire in the Bag. (I tried to keep it brief but I wanted to make sure I had all necessary context to clear up gray areas)

Bert

Long time listener first time sinner. I'm the only experienced player in a group of five. Recently in a fight my Warforged Hexblade Warlock, Hank, was downed after I forgot that I had both advantage on being poisoned and to add my curse damage. Our sorcerer chose to heal Hank leaving my friend's first ever DnD character to die to a Nat 1 on his second save. Please grant me your forgiveness so that Hank and I may walk in the light of Dice Christ once more

Donny

Illustrious Justices and night-light bailiff, I present a critical question: how often should we try to schedule around a no-show player? I am running a d&d game for allegedly 3 players. However, one player - the one who got our group together, no less - has been very unresponsive and noncommittal to scheduling games. Frankly, me and the other 2 players will not know if they will play until we've already begun the session. This has led to several games being cancelled at the last possible moment. I feel bad playing without the original organizer of the group, but everyone else is eager and available to hang out and roll bones. Justices, am I wrong in feeling wrong about playing without our missing PC, or should we cut our losses and stop waiting?

Ashley Wilson

What’s up nerds, or justices or whatever. I come to you with the case of the new campaign setting. I’ve been running a Strixhaven campaign for my players for a little over a year now, and it’s been going great. I implemented some fun side missions from candlekeep mysteries, adopted some downtime mechanics from dimension 20s junior year, and changed the big bad from a self serving frog man to a more biblically accurate creeping phyrexian invasion. Cut to New Year’s Eve, where one of our players couldn’t make it so I decided to run a one shot from the new obojima campaign setting, and it was a blast. We all fell in love with the setting, the new subclasses, and the potential for the new potion brewing mechanics. The only issue is that in Strixhaven we are coming to a crossroads, what I had initially planned out was a multiversal campaign where the students jump from Arcavios through the blind eternities to places like Kamigawa, Kaldheim, New Capenna, and New Phyrexia, but that may take years. Should I instead cut this campaign short (while still keeping it narratively satisfying by destroying the phyrexian threat to their plane) in regards to their excitement for this new adventure, or continue on the march of the machine? P.S: I’m not Ashley, my partner lets me piggyback off her Patreon account, hope that doesn’t affect your judgement (I’ve bought a lot of merch and been to live shows)

pooki

To my good friends, Justices Murphy Axford and Tanner, and bailiff…Jay Kerwitz… i think? I bring to you the case of MY loot that I made for ME!! A few years ago i was playing in a campaign, DM’d by my housemate at the time. One day while he was prepping, he asked me if there were any magical items i was interested in. I asked if we could homebrew something that would allow my aarakocra shadow monk to use his flurry of blows at range. Together we agreed upon a set of gauntlets that could rapid fire shuriken in place of punches. Cut to the end of the our next session and the party stumbles upon some loot. There was one item for each party member, each intended for their respective class. Eg a spell book for the wizard, a bow for the ranger etc. The DM described my cool gauntlets and another player excitedly called dibs. In character, I suggested maybe my I could make pretty good use of those. She responded somewhat dejectedly with “but i got them first”. Now out of character I explained that i literally designed them for me. They’re intended for my character and one of these other things is meant for you. I got my thing and she got hers, but she seemed disappointed, additionally this is almost certainly meta-gaming. Judges, was a i wrong to meta-game and insist on getting my tailor made loot? Or should i have stayed in character and let my gauntlets go? Love, pooki

Rebecca

To the three solid judges and the one spongey bailiff, Jake, I’d like to present the case of the Tactical Avalanche. So about four years ago I was playing as a trickster cleric in a campaign with my sister and her husband, he being the DM. We had gotten arrested and were sent to kill a yeti that had taken up residence on the only road out of this town. No one had been able to use this road in four months and trade was starting to suffer. So we go, kill the yeti, and start heading back to town. On our way back, we stumbled across the aftermath of an avalanche with the remains of an Orc raiding party buried inside. I run up to help and see if there’s anyone there I can help. I go to pull a man out of the snow and the avalanche ERUPTS as every single member of the orc raiding part jumps out of the snow to attack me. Very confused by this, I ask my dm if I could roll to convince the orcs that I’m trying to help. The DM says no and that the Orcs purposely let themselves get hit by the avalanche in order for them to surprise attack the next group of adventurers coming this way. On the mountain. That no one has traversed in months. Despite my confusion, I went along with it because I wasn’t going to argue with my DM on something to trivial as thinking his npc’s plan is stupid, but in the fight, EVERY ATTACKER ONLY ATTACK ME!! To the point where they were purposely taking opportunity attacks in order to run up to my little cleric and stab him. I asked why all the orcs were ignoring my other party members and only going for me and my DM said it’s because his npc’s “aren’t stupid” and that they can tell I’m a cleric. Judges, I hadn’t even gone yet in initiative. I hadn’t casted a single spell that would imply my character’s class. The DM argued that they could tell by the clothes I’m wearing. I said I was wearing leather armor and a fancy hat. He said the orcs “just know” and my character was soon knocked unconscious. Despite me being out of the fight, THEY CONTINUED TO ATTACK MY CORPSE, making me lose two death saves. Then, by the grace of Dice Christ, another attacker rolled to hit (with advantage cuz I’m down), a hit that would perma kill my character with no chances of me being brought back cuz I was the only one with revivify, AND HE ROLLS TWO NAT ONES. Then, it’s finally my turn and I roll what could be my final death save and I get a NAT 20 allowing my character to pop back up at 1hp. I miraculously did not die in the remainder of the fight, mostly because I used my trickster clerics challenge divinity to turn invisible and hide. So judges, I ask you two questions today. One, are you able to tell a character’s class based solely on the clothes they’re wearing? And two, is letting your entire Orc raiding party get hit by a tactical avalanche a bad plan? I leave the decision to you.

Vandal Sausage

The Case of the Spicy Chicken Carry To the lowly bailiff and the highly justices. I was a long time player but first time DM running a Chicken Run themed one-shot for my regular party. The chickens (party members) had been mutated by a Wallace made battery that powered a prison/chicken pie machine they needed to escape. The party had made it nearly to the end of the escape where they needed to navigate a conveyor belt of knives/boiling gravy etc ... with each stage being a skill check with damage on failure. They were escorting an NPC (Ginger) through these challenges, the barbarian asked to carry the NPC through the challenges and not have them roll at all, I ruled they could but would do their checks with disadvantage because they were carrying a whole other chicken. There was a couple of minutes of arguing that got slightly tense and the player wouldn't back down until I just ruled that that was how we were going to do it, end of discussion. Some damage was taken but everyone made it to the final chase scene, where Mr and Mrs Tweedy (hill giants) try and catch the chickens before they escape on a plane. The barbarian again wanted to carry another player, which I said was fine. I then, perhaps driven a little by annoyance at the previous argument, used the giants ranged weapon attack on the barbarian. Saying that two birds with one stone (hammer) was too tempting for Mr Tweedy to resist. I hadn't really been planning on using their ranged attack in the chase. The barbarian was downed by the one shot as the rest of the party fled to safety. I didn't use the ranged attack again saying he only had 1 hammer to throw. The farmers caught up to the barbarian and executed him like a farmer would a chicken, pretty brutal. The barbarian is my regular DM we still have a great time playing together. Was I wrong to murder him?

James Leese

To the Judgiest of judges and the super basic bailiff John. I was running a campaign thats started at the Yawning portal, my players ignored my warnings of always paying for their use of the portal and instead of ending where they needed to go I sent them to Hell based off of yours truly. After traveling through hell and picking up a vehicle, angering multiple demons, one of which I pointed out was very important but retired on a ranch. They were intercepted during their travel through a portal to the second layer and imprisoned by the demons old faction. After some terrible stealth work using very loud spells such as thunderwave to escape they found themselves one PC dead and had barricaded themselves in a single room. As this was looking dire I allowed the dead player to reroll a very quick paladin to try and help them through this mess. They ignored his attempts to help during a brief time the enemy had backed off to regroup, the chance I had given them to get out and escape. The enemy then came back in numbers as it was within their stronghold and they all died. I was blamed for making the session too hard but they failed at stealth to get out and stayed in one room in an enemy stronghold rather than trying to escape. Am I the arsehole?

morwinire

To the knights of the roundtable and their courtly case-reading jester, I bring the case of the Perpetually Hooded Half-Elf! I was playing a new campaign with my husband and his friends, in which a human kingdom and an elf kingdom were at war. During character creation, as we all discussed our characters, the other player told us he’d be playing a half-elf rogue, but wouldn’t go into more detail than that. In-game, he played his character as a classic shadowy criminal type, not divulging much to the rest of the party. Later, about four or five sessions in, I referred to him, in character, as a half-elf. The player insisted that my character wouldn’t know his character was a half-elf, as he had been keeping his cloak hood up over his face. My husband and I argued that there was no way he could have kept it up the entire time we’d been together, since several days (and a long rest) had passed since we all met, and if we had known this detail, we would have asked him about the hood before now. But he stood firm, and after the session, asked us not to metagame with out-of-character information again. Am I right for thinking our characters would have some idea of what race our party member was, or did the other player have a right to character privacy? I look forward to your just and sound decision. P.S., we have not played with or heard from the rogue player since this session several years ago, so I can’t deliver your verdict to him, but at least the rest of us will have closure

James Stewart

To the most honored judges and Emil's friend from those old College Funny videos, This case occurred a couple years ago in a Pathfinder campaign I was in. We were fighting a group of cultist ogres and the eldritch horror that had enthralled them when our wizard used "Create Pit" to trap the eldritch monstrosity while we finished off the ogres. But in my bag I had an old magic item, the tree feather token, a one use item that can conjure an oak tree with a five foot diameter that is 60 feet tall, which I did directly over the pit. Certainly this 30 ton tree falling straight down on this monster would've been a decisive killing blow, I thought. But it wasn't. Instead the DM modeled the damage on what a fighter did on a crit on one of their attacks. I argue to the court that a whole tree falling directly on a monster in an enclosed hole should've done far more than a fighter could do with a single attack, and realistically should've outright killed the monster.

Darkrisky

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

Allen LaFollette

Dear delightful deacons of the church of Dice Christ. Today I have for you not a confession but a testimonial to the power of Dice Christ. At a session a few weeks ago our players were sneaking through a forest tracking thier quarry when I (the DM) excused myself for a bio break. When I return one of my players claimed she had rolled a 17 on the stealth check. It was clear that she was fibbing but it was a low stakes roll so I didn't push the issue. Later that session during combat I rolled dual nat 20s on the enemy's attacks. I even got a nat 20 on the silvery barbs rerolled for one of the attacks. Meanwhile the fibber did not roll above a 5 for the rest of the session. Dice Christ be praised.

Chris B

Dear stars of justice and flashlight of subordination, I present the case of the overly-forgiving lich. My party and I ran into a powerful lich. My character snuck away and found his phylactery. Not knowing what it was (I didn't IRL either), I grabbed it and dimension door'd to nearby mountains to hide it. I then made my way back and loudly announced "I have your Fuckery". The session ended and the first-time DM basically told me I was going to die. So I prepared a new character, and was pretty excited to play them. But next session, the DM kept giving me opportunities to live in a back-and-forth with the lich. I was kinda bummed about not playing the new character I prepared, but my DM tried really hard to let me live. So I gave in after some shenanigans where my character kept getting wrecked. But once things settled, the lich insulted my character's BFF. So I said fuck it and threw an alchemical jug of piss at him and he insta-killed me. I regret making my first-time DM go through that. Justices, should I have just let my character live? P.S. The back-and-forth lasted about 30 mins and the rest of the party seemed fine, though I did give up when realized they were probably getting bored.

Evan Fleischer

Bonjour, and may it please the court, How can I celebrate five years with my current D&D group? I'm a forever DM who's been running weekly sessions with my group for the past five years. They're a great group. I love them. They're a terrific mix of rules lawyers, comedians, and people who have been almost magically unable to learn the rules of the game despite playing the game almost every week for the past five years. Our adventures have taken us everywhere: from the realms of high fantasy to 1980's Miami, we've covered a lot, and there's more to come. But I also want to celebrate them and how far they've come, and I don't know where to begin. Do I gift my players character art? Their own HeroForge minis? Something else? I know your work as judges and the way it's feared across the land, so I'd love to find a resolution for this before the case goes to trial. Yours in dice, Evan, who is Not French.

Barlosaur

Warmest greetings to the sweeties who reign on high; and a smile that doesn't reach the eyes for the bailiff. I bring the case of the overreacted reaction. I'll cut to the chase, this disagreement led to one of my players leaving the table. I'll spare you the full mechanics Jake but effectively what it boiled down to was a player wanting to use their reaction to cast Featherfall but also wanted to cast the spell they was holding on another player's turn, I said no. They were holding a spell, concentrating on another (cannot do both already in RAW) and wanted to use a reaction and use the held spell still. That is nuts action economy and breaks all kinds of rules. Justices, this went over poorly. I mean, this guy pouted all session and I overheard him cussing me out to other players at the table, which was met with awkward murmurs. At this point I know it seems pedantic and normally I would let it go ahead, but, Justices, this guy is a habitual line-stepper; and never in a fun way. He always tried to slightly bend or break rules and makes a scene if I did not acquiesce. This time I held firm, play continued after about 20 minutes of back and forth where I just said we're done arguing. He sulked for the rest of the evening and after the game when I had a quiet chat with him about his behaviour at the table, ruining the atmosphere for the evening and making it personal towards me. He said he thinks I keep limiting him because I struggle to handle his creative plays and solutions to encounters; I retorted I imagine it's easy to think of yourself of creative when you've never deigned to learn or play by the rules. We agreed to part ways after this 'terse discussion I did not enjoy'. This was 2 years ago and he's never come back, which is honestly fine and we're now more harmonious as a group. It still eats at me though. Could I have done better? I lay myself at your mercy P.S. hate the show x

Wren Koziel

May it please the esteemed justices and equally esteemed baliff (I don’t understand why everyone is so mean to Jake, #JusticeforBaliffJake) I present the case of the Block Blast Battle. I am currently playing in a campaign with 3 of my friends, and it was been really fun overall! I haven’t gotten to play in a while, so it’s been great to get back into the game. I’m playing a Druid who does “pollen” damage similar to how Moonshine did her spore damage, and we’ve been having a great time. The issue comes in once we get into combat. One of my fellow players (who I love like a sister, so Justice Murphy please don’t say I need better friends) has a tendency to start playing Block Blast on her iPad when it’s not her turn in initiative. I love getting to comment and talk about people’s actions, and roleplay through the combat, and when one player is checked out, it kind of ruins that. (Not to mention, I have ADHD and it’s just flat out distracting) I’ve talked to her and asked if she could stop because I feel like it takes away from the moment, but she just says “but it’s not my turn, I pay attending when I’m going.” What should I do? Am I overreacting and should just let my fellow player be? I leave this case in your capable hands. Sincerely, Wren The Distracted Druid (They/Them)

Caddy Wampus

I come with a near-court case turned Dice Christ confessional. Illustrious judges/clergy members, I must confess fibbing about spell duration. My party had a player who could no longer play due to time constraints, so my DM created a dramatic send off for them by luring them into a one on one fight with their rival that ended in their death. As they were a spores druid, their body was absorbed and preserved by their fungal network, leaving an opening for them to be revived if the player ever returned. Prior to them going off on their own, I cast Protection from Evil and Good on them, which is a ten minute concentration. Between sessions, I got into a small debate with my DM about whether the spell would have ended when the druid died, dropping my concentration and alerting me something was amiss. My DM ultimately decided that I would know the spell was gone but not why. Herein comes the lie. My DM had been unclear of how long the druid had traveled to get to the ambush and the next session he narrated that I felt concentration drop after half an hour. Not wanting to lose my dramatic "somethin' ain't right" moment, I did not let him know the spell would have already ended and initiated the investigation into our missing friend. I apologize to the church and Dice Christ for my putting drama over the truth of the rules.

CJ

To the jovial Justices of the High Crit and the lowly bailiff who's a bit shit. I bring before you today the case of the pointless point-buy. At the beginning of our current campaign I rolled extremely well for ability scores and planned a multiclass that would be an Axford-level menace. Unfortunately part way through session zero the DM decided that I and another player had 'rolled too high' and defaulted all of us to point buy. After a couple of dozen sessions the PC of the DM's husband died and on seeing their new character I noted that their stats were good. *Very* good. On pointing it out the player and DM simply stated that 'they'd rolled really well' and 'it wasn't a big deal since we were all high level now anyway'. Multiple players bought up the session 0 ruling but the debate ultimately went nowhere. Justices. I am wrong to feel aggrieved by these spousal shenanigans or should I suck it up and be happy that my current character is cool despite their lack of superhuman statistics? I await your point-by-point judgement.

Cherisher of cats

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and the adequately endearing bailiff Jack: I present to you the case of the tragically lost murder cat. This was about ten years ago in the days of my DnD infancy. My first ever character was a human druid whose sole mission was to befriend all animals. My dm at the time had a recurring character he added to every campaign: a murderous cat whose taste for blood was their singular defining trait. After narrowly avoiding an assassination attempt from said animal, my character instantly fell in love. I used charm animal (3.5e) and befriended the cat. He promised not to hurt me or any of my party members and I for one believed him to be completely trustworthy. My party, however, was not convinced, and chased him away while my character was asleep. I was devastated, for I had lost my new best friend. I turn to the honorable judges for their wisdom. Was my party justified in chasing away our newfound companion with a thirst for blood, or should they have let me keep my beautiful yet slightly edgy feline friend?

Dennis J. Dolan

To the resplendent justices and the bailiff who... come to think of it, bares a striking resemblance to that guy who kicked me in the nada outside of a Panera Bread I bring to you the case of the Bless gone wrong (spoilers for Decent in Avernus) Our party had reached the end of our campaign where we had all decided that instead of fighting Zariel, we were gonna save her soul and bring her onto our side. It took a bit of convincing, but Zariel finally joined our side when another scarier demon arrived on scene and was ready to get it on like Donkey Kong. During one round of combat, Lulu (Zariel's hollyphant companion) was able to cast Bless on Zariel. The problem... well, the rest of the party were also in range for bless: my character specifically. Me and my DM engaged in lighthearted banter about whether or not my character should've gotten a Bless or not. Her argument was that Lulu was Zariel's life long companion and I eventually agreed, realizing how low on the friendship ladder my character was. However, the Bless would've been welcomed, especially given that my character biffed pretty every one of my act rolls after that; a few of which could've been successful had a Bless come my way. This whole debate would eventually end when the DM, who at this point had been laughing at my misfortune, laughed so hard that she suffered a real life asthma attack and needed to take a brief break before continuing with the session. So I humbly ask you judges; should my DM have given my character a Bless and, more importantly, can I be held liable for giving my DM an asthma attack?

Secret Grandpa

Dear First Team All-Pro Surpreme Crit Justices and that Waterboy Baliff, I come to you seeking your divine direction on my dismal dilemma. This has multiple layers so bear with me. Many years ago I was running a Curse of Strahd campaign for a group of friends bi-weekly. This was large group of 8 in total with differing schedules but luckily we were able to make Saturdays work. Everything was going great until one of my players approached me and said he joined a soccer league on Saturdays and could no longer do this day. Keep in mind this was his 3rd team he joined and no other day worked for the party. So, naturally I was hurt because I enjoyed those nights and I don't like playing without the whole party. Other players were upset too and this led to it coming up during a night of drinking at a birthday party. Things got emotional and a bit heated, but nothing crazy (i swear). Here's the issue...partway through the argument one of my bestfriends who lived out of state (and also plays dnd) heard we were arguing about dnd and I guess misunderstood and told me, "Clearly none of your players are having fun" and other things like that. I was too confused to defend myself and I believe this has led him to think I am not a fun person to play with. Quickly the OG party made up and is still active years later, but this other friend hosts online dnds and even after some subtle nudging I've never been invited to play with him or he says he will and doesn't. Justices am I crazy to think he still considers me a problem DM because of this night and if so do I try and explain after all these years? I am at your mercy.

Hollow Dylan

Dear Supreme Crit Justices and also some guy who's here I guess, I come to you with a Dice Christ Confessional: For a friend's one-shot I tried to make an op fighter combining the Polearm master feat and the Great Weapon Fighting style to get a 1d4 bonus attack and to get to reroll 1s and 2s on the damage dice. I used a glaive and in some situations got 4 attacks within a round at level 5. I also had a spear and shield and depending on how the fight was going I would switch between them to maximize my AC at the loss of some of the damage from GWF. But it was too much! I confused myself and during a hard fight I could not remember when and where I got to reroll damage, if it applied to the bonus attack, the difference between versatile damage dice. During a damage roll I panicked when the DM asked if I got to reroll my damage dice and I just said yes but I have to say, I have no idea if I did. The one-shot was fun, but I think I did too much damage and had too much AC and I'm afraid to try a version of the build again. I prostrate myself before Dice Christ, I was Icarus flying too close to the op mechanical interaction sun and when my wings burnt up I fell into the deep dark waters of dice sin.

Saoirse

To the illustrious judges and the average baliff, Jerkoff; I present to you a case of election fraud: A while back I joined a group of teenagers to play a Strahd campaign. One session, an election was held to replace the mayor that we had killed. Everyone decided to run except my warlock, who chose to be the campaign manager of another PC. In the election; I gave him advantage on his roll for his speech, and then spent 2 hours sitting there while everybody else did their bit. I admit I was bitter that I'd done nothing the entire session. So, in the night before the votes were decided, I had my familiar rig the election in my candidates favor. This proceeded to enrage every player at the table. They all started yelling "deception roll" and insisting their character saw me do it. It further derailed from there and ended with a ballot box full of hot oil and ball bearings. The results were interrupted by combat and had no real effect on our campaign as a whole at all, and our DM said the player I aided would have won anyway. So the question stands: am I the bad guy? Did I make this a main character moment and was the rest of the party right to be so angry and desperate to one-up my move, or did these teenagers screw me over? I eagerly await your deliberation.

Josh Kumar

To the effervescent justices and the baliff whose name I shamefully share, I submit the case of the endless dragon curse. In an old 5e campaign, I threw a rock at a blind man. For brevity's sake, we will say that this was unjustified (it wasn't but let's say it was). My DM then narrated how the blind man dodged the rock, pointed at my dwarf cleric named Deez, and declared that I would have misfortune for the rest of my days. He then transformed into a gold dragon and flew away. After that, my DM would periodically make me roll a d6, and on a one some circumstantial misfortune would befall my character. Sometimes it'd just be something embarrassing for my character like a bird pooping on me, but depending on the situation, it could alert enemies to my party's location or mess with a persuasion check. After I emptied out my gold on a remove curse spell, it was revealed that the dragon "altered my destiny" and only he could reverse the curse. Future attempts to solve the curse by contacting him via sending failed, and to make matters worse, attempting to fix the curse would just remind my DM of the curse and cause him to tell me to roll again. Justices, is it incumbent on a DM to provide a possible path out of a curse they impose on a player, or is it incumbent on the player to not act in a way that justifies an indefinite curse? PS we're all friends so there's no hard feelings. I humbly await your decision.

Taylor

To the most Honorable Justices and that guy who is only important in Boston I think. I present the case of the Urgent Sending Spell. I am currently playing a Life Cleric in a Curse of Strahd campaign. I will avoid spoilers as much as I can for anyone who might be planning to play. My party is in a town and we got word that a woman we've befriended has been kidnapped by the head of the town's guard and been brought back to the mayor's home where he resides. We have to figure out how to get into the home and get her out without just rushing in because we are already at odds with the mayor. I decide because we have befriended the mayor's son and he's expressed the want for the head guard to be killed due to his cruelty, that I would get him to let us in. So at the start of the day I cast Sending to message him in his mind that we need his help, it will involve taking care of the guard he hates and to meet us at the church. Once I send that the DM says you wait two hours and nothing happens. He has me roll an insight check and tells me "you feel maybe your message wasn't urgent enough to convey he needed to come right this moment." I just stare at the DM and say "I think someone using magic to directly send a message into your mind shows quite an accurate amount of urgency." and the DM responds "not to an absent minded wizard who mostly spends time in his room." We are only lvl 5 so I have two third level spells slots a day....but I use my second to send "GET HERE NOW!" Fast forward and because our wizard cast mage armor "loudly" my negotiations turned into an all out fight. Int his fight our Barbarian's head was "smashed in" We won, but because I had to use both 3rd level spells just to get the son to us to have a way into the home, I now couldn't Revivify (I had the components) our party member. I ask for your judgement, am I wrong for thinking the first message was enough to have someone come see what is going on right away? Or was my DM correct in basically tricking me to waste my final highest spell slot right before we got into a fight that he even deemed "the boss fight of this arc"?

Austin

To the splendiferous Judges and Baliff Papa John! I present the case of the uncontestable check. Playing a game with a couple friends and a DM we had found online that we didn't know. Our party took a job from a shady fellow to get a valuable item from the back room of a casino. My plasmoid, circle of stars druid eventually got to the back rooms alone and found the item we needed. But I was attacked by the same shady fellow we had taken the job from. I got hit with a bunch of damage from a throwing knife so I retreated with the item and Misty stepped under the door back to my friends. As the DM allowed me to do this he rolled a Sleight of Hand check at the same time and got a Nat 20, he exclaimed that I Misty Step and appear by my friends but the item I had was gone. I didn't know how he was able to take it in the first place being at a distance when he attacked, but I said since I had it directly in my hands that it should have been a contested roll. I would also have to roll a Nat 20 but the DM didn't let me try. Later on in the session, (because we roll digital dice on Roll20) I could see the Sleight of Hand modifier for the shady fellow was a +20. I was a level 6 character so I had no chance of beating it regardless. Was I roped into an unwinnable situation facing a +20 Sleight of Hand or was Dice Christ against me by giving the DM a Nat 20 anyways?

Mick

I come hurriedly to lay my sins at the step of the beloved Church of Dice Christ. There I was, 3 hours into a session full of nothing but rolls sub 8. My faith in good ol D.C wavering when my DM called for another roll. A 16. A COCKED 16. With tears in my eyes I confess that I, in fact, did NOT honor the cock. I claimed the 16 as my own with slight guilt in my heart. Dice Christ must have felt my wavering faith because after that 16 I rolled 3 Nat 20s back to back. The guilt I felt grew with each roll and I decided to banish that Dice because I did not deserve those Nat 20s. Dice Christ may not have punished me for my sins but I beg of the Church to punish me instead. I await your judgement.

jordy v.

Intros and Hi’s 2025! Hello Murph, Emily, Caldwell, and *scoffs* Jake. I present to you The Cleaved Arms Case. Years ago, I played a Tortle Tempest Cleric, who had lost his arm in a BBEG battle. While it was a badass moment, it was something I wasn’t exactly keen for, but I pushed through. Following this victory, my character spent the next (in-game) year finding the resources, spending the coin, and going through physical therapy to create and adjust to a new mechanical, steampunk-esque arm. Fast-forward to our second-to-last session of this campaign, and my party member, a Dragonborn Barbarian, was charmed by a powerful enemy during combat. The rest of the party failed to defeat the villain and his Dragontortle, and he had our Barbarian, still charmed, roll an attack on me as I kneeled there defeated. The Barbarian rolled a Nat 1, to my excitement because that was obviously a miss. Instead, however, my DM narrated that the Barbarian cleaved my other arm off with her axe. I was pretty upset that this occurred, as my Tortle had gone through so much to get a mechanical arm, only to have his other arm be cut off. I would also like to note that nobody else in the party had any body part removed from their self, and these two incidents of me getting mutilated were the most brutal moments in the entire campaign. I ask you, shouldn’t the Nat 1 have meant the axe would miss me? Was the DM targeting me to an unfair degree? I await your decision, and would give it two thumbs up if I didn’t lose my hands.

Andrew Simmon

If it pleases of the honorable (and quite charming) Crit justices and that other guy Jack. I was a first time DM at the time and had no knowledge of DnD at all. However, the only thing my friend wanted was to play DnD. So I stepped up, watched a single youtube video and came up with a cool story. However, due to my lack of knowledge I had NO PREP. Therefore, I ran a rules light story under the name of DnD and it wasnt quite what my friend was expecting. I gathered a group of players and nearly all of us werebrand new to the game. One of the other players decided to play a Gnomish Wizard named Bungly. Bungly was incredibly funny and carried a staff that was nearly twice their size. (I fell in love) One thing led to another and Bungly decided to pole vault (With a -1 DEX score and a 0 STR score) into the rear end of a blue dragon. They rolled a natural 20 and I decided to respect it. However, I made them roll a CON saving throw to make sure they werent squished. The player obliged and rolled another nat 20. The player roasted the dragon from the inside with a series of fireballs and effectively derailed the story. It was incredibly funny and had the table rolling with laughter. It even angaged some of the players that had been on their phone all session. I was happy with it however, the birthday boy was disappointed with the result and said that they didn't end up having much fun because it wasn't "real DND." This was years ago but was I in the wrong? I anxiously await the justices' verdict and humbly accept your thoughts. (BTW, I love you all)

Spencer Young

Greetings esteemed justices, and I guess Jake too, why not. I present to you the case of the Manacle Maniac. My 3 friends and I are playing in a rotating DM campaign, where we switch out DMs every 5 or so sessions. We are pretty deep in and it’s been going great so far. We all bring a different style of DMing, but have been challenging ourselves to keep the story cohesive and fun for everyone. In our most recent session, myself and the other 2 players were investigating a cult hideout, and we stumbled upon a room with several people who had been experimented on and chained to the wall with manacles on their hands and feet. One of these prisoners was my character’s father who I had been searching for. So, being the hotheaded emotional bard of the group, I immediately bounded from our hiding place over to my dad to try and save him. I made it to my dad and succeeded on the Sleight of Hand check to unlock him. As I looked at the manacles, I asked the DM if they were magic, to which he replied: ‘No.’ When I succeeded on the roll, the DM began to narrate how as I unchained my father, I accidentally activated a glyph on the ground that contained the Symbol spell, a 7th level spell that left me incapacitated and screaming in pain. The guards were alerted, and me and my 2 allies were captured and chained to the wall just like everyone else- with manacles on our hands and feet. This, esteemed justices, is where the issues begin. Myself and my allies chained to the wall, and 3 guards pondering what to do with us, we needed to act fast. I decided to attempt to cast the 3rd level spell Antagonize on one of the guards, in order to cause them to start fighting each other and give us a window to wriggle free. When I tried this, the DM asked ‘does that spell require any somatic components?’ Justices, I was shocked. Never once in our years of playing together have we been concerned with spell components: material, somatic, or otherwise. My fellow player brought this fact up in my defense, but the DM ruled that because of this case where our hands are specifically bound, the somatic component is suddenly relevant. We debated this for a while, but I ultimately relented and said ‘Okay, if I can’t use a spell with a somatic component, I will just use Misty Step which doesn’t require anything.’ It was at this point that the DM said that these manacles were actually magic, despite my father’s being normal. So my Misty Step wouldn’t work either. It ended up being fine, as the Paladin and Barbarian rolled well to break free, and I ended up rolling a high Dex check to wriggle out, but the question is still chained to the wall of my brain. Justices, in a game where components are usually ignored, is it valid to bring them up in these specific situations (chained up, gagged, etc.), or should our DM lock himself up with magic manacles and let us cast our cool spells? I humbly await your ruling.

Rivv

To the magnanimous and venerable crit justices and wherever we stand on Jort these days: I present the case of the Dungeon Downer. We have a player in our campaign who is always enthusiastic about the idea of playing and is always reliable when it comes to showing up. However, during the actual game, they seem to often have a miserable time. Especially if rolls don't go their way or if they're not able to contribute to a scenario as much as they'd like, they become ashen-faced and withdrawn, go quiet, and largely stop interacting with the adventure. Dice being what they are, this happens a LOT, almost every session, and their visible dejection is incredibly distracting. As the DM, and I try to drawn them back in by giving them softball rolls or engineering a more significant role for them in the action. This however doesn't seem fair to the rest of the party, as the session becomes less about a fun adventure for the group and more about rehabilitating this player's mood. It's also really stressful; we had one of our number volunteer to DM for the first time, and this player was so visibly miserable during the session that the newbie DM blamed themselves and swore off ever trying to DM again. Judges, how do we address this? I really want them to have fun, and it seems like calling this out would just make them more self conscious and make things worse. On the other hand I don't want to devolve into a campaign that's disproportionately focused on and distracted by one player's mood. I humbly await your judgment.

Waddle Bawddle

Dear benevolent justices and… Drake? I bring to you the case of the Bag of Tricks - Carnival Edition! I DM for a group of 5 and there is one player who has been begging for a Bag of Tricks since before we even started the campaign. Since we started at level 1 I told him he would have to be patient, but every session (and often times almost anytime we hung out aside from DnD) he would ask when he was getting his Bag of Tricks. So, justices, I decided to throw him a bone while the party was visiting a Feywild Carnival. Through a multitude of games, the player in question finally won the Bag of Tricks. He was elated, arms up in the air in victory for a split second. Then I said, “Carnival Edition”. This player, and two others said “What the fuck”. I explained the bag can pull out carnival themed animals such as rabbits, doves, and even mini jesters. To which, I was given “You’re an asshole”. (In an only sorta joking way). Justices! I ask, am I really an asshole for getting my players hopes up only to dash them a second later? Or should some players relax and be patient for powerful magic items? Note: they were at level 5 at the time. I will accept whatever judgement you deem necessary, oh mighty ones.

Comrade Capy

I'm here to cut a promo on you Supreme Crit JOBBERS: Scryin Bryan, Demolition Axford, and Tanny Omega, I have NOT come here today seeking your heelish advice! In fact, I am here for the wisdom of the Big Boss Bailiff: Jake the Break Hurtwitz. I DM a pro-wrestling themed campaign for a few of my cousins. We are part of the extended Anoa'i family (please pause to acknowledge the Original Tribal Chief ☝🏽) and it has been a blast to combine the wonderful worlds of rasslin and RPGs. My cousin created a character inspired by Hardwon: a hardcore, Indy wrestler straight outta the dwarfanage by the name of Rawberto Rockbottom. He is a Path of the Ancestral Guardian Barbarian who can summon his 4 Dwarf Daddies when he rages. The issue we have run into is this: who should voice and RP the Ancestral daddies of DeDwarfination X when they are summoned by Rawberto? My cousin has had me do them thus far in our campaign, but as DM... I'm pretty worried about running out of different voices 😂 I don't want to force my cousin to RP them and I enjoy doing it, but I also think he'd be great at it! He's worried that he might go too over the top with the shenanigans if I give him this much power, but I'm willing to take that risk in exchange for how hard I know he'll make me laugh. So, we seek the guidance of the white meat babyface bailiff: who shall speak for our dwarf daddies!?!?!? Fa'fetai lava from your friends in the Bloodline 🤙🏽

Shel B Kennas 1st fav sprite girl! celebrating turning 32 by seeing D20 at MSG dressing up as Sofie Lee!

Hello Jolly Justices and Blue Bailiff Burrwitz I humbly bring to you part confession, part case: Looking a gifted dice christ in the mouth. During secret santa this year, I was gifted a GORGEOUS set of dice. They're so lovely and detailed and.... metal. (Justice Axford knows what I mean). I Hate Metal dice, they feel ugly and wrong in my hands, and with how I roll my dice it would be akin to beyblading--it's frankly a safety risk. I planned to keep them in my office as decor. Cut to my works D&D group i play in, and i noticed one of my fellow players looking excitedly at my dice I brought and then looking a little bummed. At one point they also mentioned "Everyone should have their character coded dice... well almost, everyone" and looked away from me. I realized in this moment my dice were character color references. Shit. I brought them the next time for set dressing, but my fellow player REALLY wanted us all to roll our character dice in crucial moments, and another coworker mentioned "He did buy those specificially for you." But... I don't want to. They're REALLY heavy and dented my carved, wooden dice rolling tray the 1 time i rolled this set. Am I besmirching a gift in the eyes of Dice Christ and being a real gift grinch by not wanting to roll them? Or am I being forcibly converted to the metal chapter of the religion against my will?

Tim Woods

To the effervescent judges and the lugubrious bailiff Georph, I present the case of the non-plussed Orc. I was playing in a campaign as a half orc barbarian named Barnabas Thruster. During the campaign, I became the proud owner of a Berserker's Axe. My DM tweaked the axe slightly, saying the curse was caused by a spirit living inside the axe, and that later in the campaign it might be possible to banish the spirit, removing the risk of going berserk from the axe. Super cool! Barnabas loved this axe, despite sometimes using it on his companions... the axe's curse making Barnabas "unwilling to part with the axe" also didn't hurt. That is, until our party encountered an effect nullifying all magic and curses -- I don't remember what caused this effect, but the upshot is Barnabas took it as an opportunity to discard the axe -- both because he didn't love using his axe against his companions..... aaaaand maybe because I wanted to take the Polearm master feat and saw it as an opportunity to change weapons. Shortly after discarding the axe, our campaign fell apart -- our DM blamed his increased responsibilities at work, but I can't help feeling that I was responsible for taking some magic out our campaign by discarding my axe; the axe lead to a lot of exciting combat with the party trying to buff my wisdom saves, or dashing away from my crazed barbarian. Was I wrong to drop my cursed axe? Was I being a little stinker? I humbly submit to your judgement.

Valens

To the ever hydrated judges and the guy I passed outside the courtroom saying to himself "surely this time they'll respect me." I ask for your guidance in a matter that brought some heated gameplay. For brief context I am DMing a Jujutsu Kaisen based campaign with entirely homebrewed subclasses I created for my PCs. It has been incredibly fun, but the sheer amount of homebrew can make ruling things a little messy. In a recent session an enemy the PCs had been womping up to this point managed to knock one to zero, and with a legendary action gave them two death save fails. After the following turn the NPC had another legendary action ready to go, but I narrated that they told the other PCs to stand down or else they would kill their ally. I asked what they wanted to do and they responded "I can't do anything, it's not my turn". Judges this continued back and forth for far too long as I tried to tell my PCs that even though it wasn't their turn they could express their intention to follow the NPCs demands or refuse and ultimately let their ally die. Since we weren't making any headway I relented and said we exited combat for the moment and that the bad guy was holding the downed PC hostage as he tried to escape. My PCs said they wanted to try doing some spellcasting to try and stop the bad guy and we rolled initiative again to see who acted first in this quick draw scenario. Ultimately the PC was saved and the bad guy ran off, but judges this fiasco was quite clunky and left a sour mood in the group. How in the future might one better handle a hostage situation like this? I ask for your wisdom, and understanding that this is a court of law am willing to take the guilty ruling to appease the judicial system.

Jason Rodriguez

Deer esteemed justices and the doe eyed bailiff Joe. I bring forward the case of the absentee witch doctor vs. the forces of hell. I have been DM'ing an open dnd table for 2 years. In our current setting, one player has made a crocodilian witchdoctor pc (using shadow sorcerer/necromancer multiclass) who believed there was a way to claim ultimate power before they reach level 10. Their INT and CHA modifier are both +3 with no other buffs and no spells of 3rd level, only the spell slots. I will note that his characters goals was to collect corpses in his bag of holding and experiment on lycanthropes. There was a point in the campaign where the party stopped a devil from infecting the water supply to a city with water from the River Stix, and the witchdoctor wanted to experiment with it. It has been 4 months and that player hasn't returned to the table due to scheduling. The party is now level 9 and to keep the ball rolling, I announced that the River Stix bag be held by a more present pc. Judges, was I wrong to deny an absent player a very powerful item, even though his friend messaged him about the situation? This Croc Doc was not a help to the party in any way shape or form in combat and was more interested in hoarding. I lay my head at your feet.

Karen Corcoran

To the Honorable Crit Justices, Keepers of the RAW and RAI, and to Bailiff Jake, the human equivalent of a nat one, I come before you with a pressing matter. In our game, I have been using the *Message* spell as a tool for strategy and coordination. However, all the NPCs seem to have developed an uncanny sixth sense about these plans, consistently thwarting them. Frustrated I resorted to texting my Messages to my fellow players. Well, the DM caught on and said it was cheating because my character must visibly point to the target of my Message in-game, necessitating a stealth check and on a failure his NPCs might cast Silence. Fair enough, my bad. Hail Dice Christ x 5 BUT, I proposed a compromise: I will announce when I'm casting the spell, but on a successful stealth roll, I would still text the other player directly. We already use our phones for stat checks with the D&D Beyond app, so it’s not a distraction. I👏🏼LIKE 👏🏼IT👏🏼 The DM, however, decreed: “No texting. It👏🏼 is👏🏼 not👏🏼how👏🏼the👏🏼game👏🏼 is 👏🏼played👏🏼.” So now I ask you, wise Crit Justices: Must I speak my strategic Messages aloud for all to hear, betraying its very purpose? Or can I argue that texting is merely a modern interpretation of this classic spell? What say you? ~Glitch

nat the neat

I have a confession. May Dice Christ forgive me in all of their mercy, I bring my confession into the loving arms of Human Father Tanner and Cat Mother Axford, and I hesitantly give Cat Dad Murphy a 'sup nod. (Hi altar boy jonk! Can't wait for your upcoming ascension to dm!) My first and only PC death is my fault. My 1 ½ year-old campaign had a dark week due to scheduling issues, so my friend stepped up during normal session time with a oneshot. My usual DM and close friend was playing a beloved NPC, a drow pirate captain named Gwendolyn. The problem: this friend can be kind of an asshole, and after a very bad day and some well-placed jabs, I was at my DM (and Gwen's) throat. After one-too-many insults made their way under my skin, my character Dorian took a swing at Gwen. We duked it out until we were both at half health, then I stopped for the sake of time. Short rest, yada yada, we healed back to full, it was fine. When we discovered the final boss, a night hag disguised as the lady of a manor we had spent the evening in, I knew we wouldn't win. The HP pool was too high, and we had to make a run for it with the hag's step-child. But I wanted to buy the rest of the players time. So I stayed an extra round. Gwen called me an idiot for staying any longer, so I dug my heels in out of spite, which resulted in an extra round of focused attacks from the lady hag. When I finally tried to flee, my character was a goner. An opportunity attack knocked him to zero, and the night hag dragged his body into her cave, where he died alone as everyone else escaped to safety. I can't help but feel that my stubbornness is what killed Dorian. The weeping of the night hag still haunts my waking moments. Forgive me for my pride, and may my beloved fighter-rogue find peace beyond the liquid-core gates of dice heaven.

Sev Nessus

To the judges and fellow Connecticutioner bailiff, I bring you the case of elven trichology. I started a game online with people I do not know. This started out fine. I made a wood elf fey warlock and during session one I described him as having a beard. The dm stopped me and told me elves can't have beards. The other players jumped in, citing other settings where elves have beards, which I was about to do myself. I cut them off and said it was fine to just drop it. The dm was chill to move. I'm at a loss, it wasn't resolved, and nobody wants to die on these hills. Is anyone in the wrong here? If my elf can have a beard, do you know where he can get solid oil for it?

William Wood

To the most radiant justices of the highest crit in the land and their low, dirty, downtown Jakey Brown. Every Christmas season, I take a break from my regular campaign and run a one shot for the holidays. This year it centered around the players making Christmas-themed PCs defending the north pole from the armies of the other holidays, looking to topple Christmas and stop its endless creep, akin to the Battle of Helm’s Deep. The PCs fought in a number of different encounters themed around different holidays: A foppish vampire lord with his cupid archers, a beholder in a childlike ghost costume with zombies, a turkey dragon, etc. The final encounter was a multi-stage final fantasy-esque boss battle against five former presidents who eventually morphed into a giant voltron mech. The battle was close, and everyone was hurting. I let one of my players play a 1 foot tall homebrewed gingerbread man monk, (I know). In the final fight against the giant mech, he used his monk's ability to run up the legs of the mech and perch on its shoulder. On the next Mech initiative I attacked the monk but the player claimed that I wouldn’t be able to hit him as he was only a small gingerbread man on the shoulder of a giant mech. I disagreed, but accepted that it made enough sense to give him the benefit of the doubt. I instead told him he’d have to make a contested grapple check for the Mech to grab him and throw him to the ground. He said that he should be able to move and not be in a place to be grabbed. I said no, made him do the check and threw him to the ground, then attacked and killed him. He was a little chuffed, but we got by. Dearest Lords and Lady, should I have allowed the Gingerbread Monk to dart around the head and shoulders of my Mech unmolested, or was I correct in forcing a check and summarily executing him? I am eager to accept any punishment you should decide to levy, I like pain. P.S. Everything turned out great when Mariah Carey came over the hill oppa-Gandalf style, giving the team just enough of a boost to overcome the mech and save Christmas.

Robert Stegmann

To the cromulent Justices, Brian "Murph" Murphy, Emily "Wife Worm" Axford, Caldwell "Flip a DVD" Tanner and the unsung Baliff, Jake "The Cake" Hurwitz, I present the case of the Slime of the Century. This happened nearly nine years ago, but I am still a bit salty. My older brother was DMing for me and my friends in 9th grade, and we were all very new to the game. Our party consisted of my generic human rogue, a dragonborn sorcerer, a paladin based on DJ Khaled, and Shrek, a half-orc barbarian flavoured as an ogre. In our 3rd session, we were tasked with escorting the seven dwarves on a mining trip where we encountered two gelatinous cubes. Things quickly went south. I found myself with the rest of the party stuck in a cube and several dwarves dead. Our DM told us that we could try to succeed a skill check before an attack to do double damage. Desperate, I got the remaining dwarves to form a ramp so I could do an acrobatics check over the cube to do extra damage. I failed, and fell in. My dumbassery ended up having one of the party members being spit out, which resulted in the rest of my party surviving but my character being quickly dissolved. After the session, I looked up the stat block for gelatinous cubes and found they had a challenge rating of 2, making this was a very deadly encounter. I felt that this lead to PC dying unfairly. I questioned my brother about why he made the encounter so deadly and he said that because the cubes are so slow, he expected us to attack with ranged attacks and keep out of the cubes range. He pointed out that he showed us the stat block when our sorcerer rolled a Nat 20 looking for a weak point on the cube and that we had the dwarves continue to mine instead of fighting (even though they had commoner stats). Was I right to be upset at my brother for giving us such a deadly encounter, or was my PC's death the fault of our lack of strategy and my dumbassery? I await your righteous judgment.

Mark

To the Fickle Judges, and the balance board Jeff. I bring you the case of the denied Suplex. My party and I were exploring a run down wizard tower that had been taken over by a witch of sorts. We were on the top floor, the ground cracked and breaking with the more people we put in a specific area. As the party’s fighter (hollow one echo knight ala Talion from the Shadow of War games) my instinct was take on the witch herself while my friends take on her living dolls. My idea was to grapple her, and suplex her into an area of the ground that was already damaged, with the idea to take her down a floor to isolate her (I would have tanked the falling damage). However, my DM wouldn’t allow it, and didn’t really give me a good reason as to why I couldn’t. I light heartedly argued for it, but conceded pretty quick. Judges, was I wrongfully denied a gnarly opportunity for a cinematic moment, or should I prostrate myself before the almighty Tiamat herself? Love the show! Thank you for all the work you guys put in!

christopher belisle

To the venerable DM's of the court and the baby DM, Jake. I bring you the case of the wrongfully poisoned potion. May it please the court, during the course of my parties adventure through a tower that led to the BBEG, we found a vending machine that had potions that did various homebrew effects. Examples being a potion that granted a +2 bonus to AC against plants, a potion that cleared you of all current effects on you, and an improved health potion, 6d6+6, that had a 5% chance to poison you, specifically rolling a nat 1. During our final battle with said BBEG, I was low health and need to take a potion to not die. While I was rolling out my hit die, our halfling fighter brought up that since he was lucky, should he be able to reroll the nat 1 on the poisoned health potions since he was lucky? The DM said that that was a little too broken because he would probably never be poisoned so he decided to change the ruling so that you got poisoned on a 2 instead of a 1 as I was rolling the dice to see if i would be poisoned or not. Justices, I could not believe the number that had showed up on that dice. For it was in fact, a shout out to the 2 crew. The DM ruled that I was still indeed poisoned despite having just arbitrarily changed the number so that our halfling could be poisoned. So I ask you, do I have a right to be a little peeved at this ruling?

Glenn O'Dell

If it may please the court, and slightly entertain the guy reading this I present to you the case of the timey whinny DM. I joined an on going campaign ran by a coworker that had been going on for awhile, we would talk at work and I really liked his world and the story so I joined in with a character that could easily leave and come back as my schedule wouldn't allow me to play on a regular basis. All was fine I clicked really well with the other players and had a really great time even when my character rolled two nat ones with advantage on his death saves because the dice tell the story. My issue came when we encountered a dragon up until this fight combats had been good not to hard not to easy, but we all knew we were fighting a dragon in and out of character so we were able to prepare, we started to bully his dragon to when we managed to lock it in place and I cast cloud of daggers on top of the dragon, after this he asked what was the save i told him there was non it's just flat damage and last until concentration is broken or 1 minute. He said ok and nodded and we went on, at the beginning of the dragons turn he doesn't call for the damage roll, so I think he just forgot, because at this point we are 4 hours in to our session so I remind him of my spell, he causally tells me it's dropped and proceeds to move on like it was normal so I ask how because I hadn't taken damage and it was still the same round. His response was well your fighting a dragon it takes time so each turn is 6 minutes not 6 seconds I tried to argue that meant that the barbarian was out of rages because they had activated it at the beginning and it only last 10 minutes and we'veeach had a few turns at this point, he said that's diffrent and we moved on. The session lasted another 4 hours of just combat because all of us were confused how time and combat worked now for spells and abilities. Should we all have put up more of a fight for consistency on time worked or should we have just moved on because his world his timeline?

Jabbermilwaukee

May it please the ethereal judges and the stalwart bailiff…I wanna say Ryan Creamer? I present the case of the forgotten flumph. I have been DM’ing a game for my friends for about 2 years. Early on one of my players was flipping through the books and spotted the flumph. Immediately enamored, they proclaimed their desire to have one for their character. I had some underdark adventures planned so after a time the party found an abandoned flumph egg which I had an npc explain someone needed to spend time with so it could be nourished by their psychic energy. I had planned on making the player who took care of the egg influence the personality of the flumph when it hatched. To my surprise the player who had been excited about the flumph said “ew, no.” and refused the egg. Everyone else in the party had a familiar so I was kinda hoping that they would choose it but alas they refused and the flumph fell by the wayside. Judges the real issue comes when the same player asked if there can be a “Henry Cavil Mermaid” for them to romance. This would not be outside the tone of the campaign (they even acquired a ship recently) but I worry if I don’t introduce it in the next session they will have already moved on to the next thing and another moment will fall flat. Am I wrong to just ignore the request and hope they forget or do I deserve to be thrown to a hunky siren who builds their own water cooled PC’s?

James Wilcox

To the three justices and the soaring ever so highly highly highly bailiff Drake, I present the case of the Elephant in the Room. I was Dming for a group of friends and my brother, who was playing a Loxodon monk who specialized in passive perception. The party had just discovered an underground town that was home to a cult of Kobolds and the dragon that they worshipped. The party spotted some Kobolds standing guard and decided they were going to try to stealth past. While the Loxodon snuck past, I had him roll stealth and he rolled fairly high, but I had the Kobolds roll contested perception. After I mentioned that the Kobolds rolled higher, he argued that they should use their passive perception. I argued that since they were guards, on an active lookout for things, it no longer would count as passive perception since it’s their job to perceive their surroundings. This spiraled into a big argument and even though I tried to convince him otherwise, the Loxodon ended up switching his character around entirely because “passive perception was useless in this campaign”. This was his first session as this character. Was I being too harsh on the Elephant by making the guards roll perception or was he over reacting by switching his character? I humbly await your judgement.

Rainbow Cake

To the venerated Crit Justices and their okay bailiff, I bring to you the case of the Slime King. I DM a group of 5, one of whom is my brother. We started at level one and I gave them a quest to find a missing researcher studying slimes so they could earn some gold and move forward with the plot. My brother’s character, an artificer, quickly became obsessed with the slimes, eager to learn what he could do with them to pay off his debts. I indulged him and added a few things about the slimes. I gave them some small magic items (an alchemy jar, a +1 staff, etc) after they defeated the “boss” slime so, when he asked if he had found something,I let him find a bangle that summons 1d6 slimes. At level one, it was a death sentence to summon them and he, a seasoned player, wouldn’t do something that stupid. Judges, I couldn’t have predicted the left turn he took. He wore the bangle as a crown and determined that he was now the Slime King. I’ll admit it–everyone thought it was funny. He changed his character’s name to Slime King. The problem, Honorable Judges, is that I let his obsession take hold of me. I rewrote the module’s plot and focused on making slimes pivotal. I ended up cramming my players into it before I realized my mistake the next session. The next month was spent carving out spaces for their characters and their roles in the story but I’m worried the damage is done. It’s been six months since then and we’re still playing but I’m haunted by my choices and have done everything I can to make each character shine but I throw myself at your mercy for my crime of nepotism and neglect.

baerzerker90

To the honorable ‘your honors’ and the bailiff who should be busy reading the DMG right now I present the Case of the Conflicting Counter-Measures, a tale of well-intended barbarism that resulted in my character’s re-alignment: While playing through a recent campaign module, our party ran afoul of an evil organization who had hired a rival party of adventurers to recover the same artifact we had been tasked with retrieving from a dungeon. Although we were able to recover the artifact first, fighting through the dungeon had left our party weakened so we were unable to stop the rival party from teleporting to the end of the dungeon, attacking us, and stealing the artifact. Sometime later on the day in question while we were trying to negotiate the artifact’s return in the middle of a fantasy-bistro, weapons were drawn, rivals were slain (deemed justifiable “future-self-defense” by our cleric), and the artifact was recovered. However, knowing the rival party worked for a powerful criminal enterprise and having seen our cleric use the Speak with Dead spell to interrogate dead bodies in the past, my Lawful-Good-tortle-beast-barbarian-druid-multiclass-that-would-make-Justice-Axford-proud began beheading the corpses in an attempt to render them unusable by the spell as a forensic countermeasure. While my DM allowed this, he told me after the deed was done that this was an evil action and would change my character’s alignment from Lawful Good to Lawful Neutral and wouldn’t let me roll my actions back. While I accepted his ruling and changed my character’s alignment, I now ask an even higher authority: did my DM (who does not subscribe to your Patreon) make the right call, or was my barbarian unjustifiably neutral-ized? I humbly await your decision, Meglin Mossback, Acolyte of Melora

Jane Paintrain

To the Honorable Justices and the worm bailiff, Lowly - I present the case of the Marvel Menace. In the early days of our core D&D group one of the players, we’ll call him ‘Sonic’, wanted to try his hand at DMing and asked if I’d be willing to play in a practice session using two PCs. I agreed and rolled up a grumpy old Shadow Monk and a wanna-be ladies’ man Hunter Ranger. As this was the late 20-teens, I thought it’d be funny to name them Danny Rand and Jeremy Renner respectively. We had a fun session with just the two of us, and Sonic asked if I’d be up for another practice session. Again I agreed. What I didn’t know was that Sonic invited another player from our core group to join, we’ll call him ‘Grinch’. Sonic had told the Grinch that I was playing two characters: Danny Rand and Jeremy Renner. So of course the Grinch comes to the table with Thor and Black Widow - not PCs inspired by these heroes mind you, but full carbon copies of the supes. When the Grinch realized I had simply used comical monikers on original characters, he still kept up the Marvel Movie personas for his PCs. In fact, he loved it so much, he played exclusively Marvel characters in all future campaigns and one shots with our group despite the variety of DMs and settings. Over the last six or so years he's played as Professor X, Iron Man, Loki, Wolverine, and even Rocket Racoon complete with a Groot familiar. These PCs have not been well received at the table and we tend to try to treat them as typical medieval high-fantasy adventurers. Judges, I ask you - who must bear the blame for this superhero epidemic? Is it the Grinch for forcing his superhero fantasy into our various realms, is it Sonic the new but overly permissive DM, or must I make my way to a Dice Christ confessional and beg forgiveness for this superhero inception? Perhaps everyone is to blame and this case has no heroes after all. I leave the ruling in your capable hands.

Ray

Hello Justices and the unnamed but brawny bailiff over there. A life hangs in the balance and I call on you all to assist. Recently my group had a session where we were ambushed by Ogres that were hired by a backstabbing Goblin. After dealing with the Ogres, 3/5 of us decided to kill and burn the goblin like murderhobos. This caused our Ranger, who claims to be like Batman, to say we are no better than the goblins. He then tried to kill us in our sleep (he failed), deserted us as we fought a fire elemental, and then tried to kill us again when we returned. I typically use the Sleep spell to de-escalate, but he says he plans to hunt us as his primary enemies for the rest of the campaign. Justices and Jake, do we continue putting him to bed or is it off with his head? Thank you

Daveed

2025 Intros revived? To the benefiscient justices and Shroedingers balif who exists in a superposition of both high and low status simultaneously until they are perceived. I give you the case of The IRL Death and Subsequent Balance issues. I have been working on a new campaign with some friends of mine. I've been spending a lot of time trying to balance a party of 5, with homebrew magical abilities, boons from their respective Gods (Oppa Hades Style) that may or may not be sort of overpowered for where they are beginning at level three. I figured that if the party is a little stronger, then I could throw slightly higher CR enemies at them, still erring on the side of not resulting in a TPK. The day of the game arrives, and not 10 minutes into the the introduction, our healer gets a call saying that his uncle who has been sick, has passed away. My player, and close friend, needed to leave immediately to grieve and be with his family, but insisted that we should play without him. And so we did. Judges, my players got absolutely dumpstered. While narrowly avoiding a TPK due to some behind the screen shenanigans where I lowered enemy HP and didn't utilize some more devastating abilities, I could tell that my players felt a little dejected at how poorly they performed. While they understood that the game was balanced for 5 PCs, and no one blamed me at all, I still feel like maybe I should have just cancelled the session when our friend had to go, and regrouped for a more appropriately balanced session. Judges, I ask you this: What would you have done in my sweaty shoes? Should I have cancelled the session then and there, or should I just accept that our mortality is fleeting and life is precious in its beautiful fragility?

SemiHuman99

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

Shanelluh

To the meritorious judges and the adequate bailiff, I bring you the case of the punted fighter. My friend was dming a game of Curse of Strahd and we were travelling through the Tsolenka pass. We had previously rolled rather high perception checks and were already on the look out. When all of the sudden my character, a 10 foot tall Goliath fighter, was catapulted off the mountain and took 50 bludgeoning damage after landing on a cliff. It turns out that a Sangzor (a 9 foot tall goat) had snuck up on the party and chose me as it's soccer ball. I conceded that yes even though we had a perception of 19 that it was possible that a giant goat can sneak up on us. But where I practically died on the mountain was that I insisted that for someone who grew up on a mountain themselves and would be used to having multiple situations in which she would have to hunker down and either wrestle or fight off an attacker/livestock, I should have at least been able to do a saving throw to not be thrown off a mountain. My friend insisted that no throw would exist and I would have to climb up a mountain to reunite with my party. I would like to add that this was a hit and run, as my party did not get the chance to react and avenge my boot from the party. So while I asking for a saving throw, they were asking to hit the goat. When the DM rejected all our pleas we solomonly proceeded through the pass, and ultimately ended the session early. Our characters are currently still stuck in Barovia because that ended up being our last session of CoS (for other reasons not mountain related). So here I ask the court was I right to plead my case for a saving throw or should I have just taken the free fall and gone through the pass. Yours truly, The air Goliath

David Heintz

On behalf of Michael M, I present the case of the "Puzzle Poisoning." May it please the Court, Two years ago, our party of four (level 3s) encountered a philosophers-stone style potion puzzle with 5 different-coloured potions, one of which opened the doorway we needed to continue. A confusing poem handed to us was the key to which potion but we were stumped! After 20 mins irl, we just start drinking potions. The Fighter drinks one randomly, he gets a stat bonus. My Goliath named Gurth drank one at the end. A black one. Without asking "Are you sure you want to do this?", my DM looks at me chuckling and goes "You're dead." Offered no saving throws. Nothing. He points to the poem and it reads "At the edge lies death", "Therefore, Gurth just dies". Apparently the two black potions at each end were insta-death potions which he had planned. DnD Court, is this fair of the DM to do? Instant death at level 3 on our 5th session?? At our time of need and confusion, our DM just left us out to dry? Then brutally poisoned me?

Trisha Bagby

I am submitting this for my friend! So the “I’s” in the case are from my friend Tommy - To the honorable justices, and the less-lowly-than-usual-bailiff-because-why-the-hell-are-the-justices-not-giving-you-time-to-work-on-your-campaign, One of my friends in this group brought up the idea of having a character that was of Chinese descent and had a “Chinese accent”. For years we laughed it off as a joke because everybody in this group is white. But recently the group started to seriously debate this subject. Some members of the group including the DM said that if a Scottish accent was ok then a Chinese accent was ok because apparently doing accents is racist either way and claimed that I was being performativelly outraged. As someone who was theatrically trained, I said even if you could do it in a respectful manner there was no way my friend was doing it for any authentic story telling or character exploration reason. The group took that as a “yes it’s ok” and started to plan a one shot around just accents. I told them I was not going to be a part of it. Was I in the wrong?

Ethan Trujillo

May it please the radiant and sexy justices, and that one guy from Jake and Amir: Fish Scroll, I present to you the case of possible DM favoritism So our group has been playing for about 6 years now, usually we have a forever DM but one of the players has been running the current campaign we’re playing. Him and one of the other players are dating and are now engaged. The issue is that the DM seems to mostly include details and people from her character’s backstory. Our forever DM who’s a player in in this campaign has expressed some frustration with me that no one else seems very important in this world, I told him it’s possible that the DM just knows more about his fiancé’s character since they live together and she probably info-dumps onto him all the cool things she wants to do, but he hasn’t made the effort to reach out to the rest of us about how we’d like our character’s backstories to be implemented. Should I say something? Should our forever DM say something since he has more experience DMing? I await your judgement.

Brian McAree Murphy

To the Honorable Crit Justices, and to Tucker's girlfriends boyfriend Jonk. It can be hard to find an ongoing game out in the countryside of Ireland so many of the games I play are one offs at conventions, usually these are a blast, quick games with different systems and new people. My case concerns the only one I truly can't believe actually happened. It was a murder mystery on a boat, we were given sheets and asked to flesh out a character that would be a suspect/investigator. All told this took an hour (a bunch of new people to TTRPG's always adds time). Following this we jumped into the story! Or we should have... instead the DM told us to randomly pick a number, I was lucky enough to choose right.. which meant my character turned out to be the murder victim. Ok, sucks to have wasted my time making a story, but at least I was going to be a detective on the case right? With a ready made character? Turns out no, the DM fully expected the victim to spend the rest of the 3 hour game watching the other people try to solve the murder case, in a game I paid to be in. I just walked away to be honest, but I crave the judgement of the court. If it please you, bring justice to this DM that still wastes the time of players to this day!

Tieler Soumas

To the esteemed Justices and the equally esteemed Bailiff Jake (#JusticeForJake!), Happy New Year! I present to you today the case of The Misplaced Main Character. About two years ago, I had the pleasure (and eventual pain) of DMing a campaign for my in-laws and a few close friends. The setting was a world still reeling from its salvation by a band of legendary heroes (taking a bit of inspiration from campaign one!). This new adventure embraced a mix of silly and serious, with characters reflecting that balance. We had a drunkard dragonborn paladin, a Goliath rogue, a diehard fan of the previous heroes, and an Elf-ling druid rounding out the roster. And then… there was Deathbringer, a dragonborn sorceress brought to life by my brother-in-law’s girlfriend, T. Deathbringer, bless her scales, came equipped with every fantasy trope imaginable and main character energy that could light up a small kingdom. Her serious vibe clashed with the lighthearted tone of our campaign, but not wanting to yuck T’s yum, I tried to help her fit in. To make a long story short, tact was not T’s strong suit. She once attempted to play a session while attending a house party rather than sit it out. She routinely tried to monopolize special items meant for the whole group and even attempted to steal the Elf-ling druid’s beloved pet companion. T’s Deathbringer also insisted on interrogating every. single. NPC. about her backstory—regardless of relevance—and frequently talked over the other players. The final straw came when my wife, fed up with the interruptions, no longer wanted to play. The campaign quickly unraveled. A few of the group moved on to start a new campaign—but notably without T. And so, I come before you, dear Justices, to ask: Was I right to let the campaign fizzle out? Should I have tried harder to reign in my discordant sister-in-law? What could I have done better as a DM? I await your verdict.

sofia

To the astounding Justice Axford and the dudes, I humbly offer you the case of “Mush-vanov”. This happened years ago, but when I explained the premise of D&D Court to the DM and main player involved in this case, they both agreed *passionately* that I should present this case to the Supreme Crit. Here it goes: A group of old high school buddies and I have been playing together since 2020. Towards the middle of our campaign, our cleric, Ivanov (Bailiff Jake: please read his name in a vaguely slavic accent), faced a tragic demise when his soul was captured by the demon Baphomet, rendering his body ostensibly dead. However, in the dungeon leading up to the battle that killed him, our party encountered Shroomy, a cute tiny walking mushroom that sold us “healing shrooms”. Desperate to bring back our fallen cleric, our party tried to use one of these “healing shrooms” to revive Ivanov. Instead, “Mush-vanov” was born. Ivanov’s body became the puppet for a sentient fungus-Ivanov-hybrid creature, that retained his accent, but was otherwise a weird newborn creature. We joked around with Mush-vanov until he eventually floated off into the sky (I think? It’s been awhile. Anyways), never to be seen again. Now, Justices, Ivanov’s player insists that this beat of humor cheapened the tragedy of his dramatic character death, but… is it illegal in the eyes of the crit to get a lil silly with it? And if it is, is the party to blame for beginning the mushroom antics, or is the DM guilty for making Mush-vanov so silly? Ivanov’s player has a reputation in our party for enjoying switching up the character he plays, and this wasn’t his first dead character in our campaign. He already had gotten an epic death scene with his werewolf bloodhunter Felicia. Ultimately, we are all enjoying our incredible campaign, but things still get playfully heated when Mush-vanov comes up in conversation. We all eagerly await your ruling.

Wren Koziel

Esteemed members of the Supreme Crit (yes that includes Baliff Jake), I bring to you not a case, but an ask for advice to avoid appearing on trial in the future. I am about to begin my first campaign as a DM, I’ve played DND but never DMed. I am going to be running a game for my two siblings so we can stay connected (my sister is in college in Chicago, I’m starting college next year (hopefully in LA 🤞🤞for Chapman!!), and my brother is starting high school next year). How do I make sure I am a good DM for them? I really enjoy world building and writing the story and all that, but I am worried that I am going to get too stuck in my story and struggle to improv and adjust with them. I’m an actor and I’ve got some improv training, so hopefully that will help, but I’m still worried I will accidentally railroad them or push them in directions they don’t want, just because it’s what my story says. I leave my fate in your hands. Sincerely, Wren The anxious DM (They/Them)

Snackonomics

To the lovely judges and the world's okayest bailiff, I present the case of the Hidden Bugbears. May it please the court. About 5 years ago I ran the Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure as a first time DM for a group of very new players. For those familiar with the adventure this took place underneath the Redbrand Hideout, which is a bit of a dungeon crawl. The party had gotten through all of the basement except for one room. They decided they wanted to explore that too. I asked them if they were sure, because they were all low on hitpoints and spells. They said yes. i asked them if they wanted to take a short rest to which they said no. The rogue of the party decided to sneak up on the door. They rolled terribly on their stealth check. When they opened the door the two Bugbears behind it immediately took surprise attacks. For those not familiar, bugbears do an extra 2d6 of damage on top of their standard damage of 2d8+2. One of them crit turning that into 4d6+4d8 of damage, instantly killing the rogue. The party then fought a brave fight, nearly ending in a TPK, however the bard and druid managed to get away. This is still a fight I often think about. Should I have been kinder and fudged the rolls? Should I have been more firm on how this was a terribad idea? Or was this a good lesson for the party not to go into rooms you don't know the contents of? I humbly await your judgement.

Lucas

To the ripped judges and the slightly less ripped bailiff, I run random games online for stray d&d players, and one of them built too much into his character. The short campaign was supposed to be 3 sessions at most, but the Wizard paid for custom art and made a far too elaborate backstory with a dragon dad, a dying sorceress mom, a 6 person adopted family, wanted custom spells, familiars, etc. The definition of hat on a hat… on another hat. I let this happen and feel guilty about letting him spend the money (even though I insisted he didn’t) instead of putting my foot down firmly, because I truly wasn’t into their whole vibe. The other players still had fun, and so did the wizard, but at the cost of my sanity. Should I have just dropped the wizard after he kept making things extra complex? Am I at fault for the money he spent on this character? I am at your mercy but please don’t behead me.

Mirarreiro

Hello grand and fair justices, and a polite nod to the newest DM, sorry dude I don't remember your name. I bring you the case of The Head Hopping Warlock. About 5 years ago, my husband DM'd a game with some of his cousins and I as the players. In one session, our party attended a town party for the reelection of their mayor. We were in the back of a large crowd of people looking at the stage and, during his speech, the Mayor was attacked. While the coup was happening, my half elf warlock who was 5" tall, tried to get closer to the stage by jumping up and stepping on the heads of the people in the crowd, "Suki from Avatar: The Last Airbender style." My husband told me that because of my height and "only +3" to dex that it wasn't possible, we were too far away (approx 150 ft away from the stage) but allowed me to roll anyway. I got a natural 20. Rewarding my nat 20, he said, "you get pretty far, a good 15 ft before you fall." I asked if it could be an additional 15 ft so I could cast Eldritch blast to help the mayor and he said, "No, it shouldn't have even been possible to do that, that was really good for what you were trying to accomplish." In the end the Mayor was assassinated, the leader of the coup installed a curfew for all citizens, and the session became a fun "escape the city with some innocent townsfolk" I ask thee, should I have been granted the extra 15 feet so my lvl 3 pact of the tomb warlock could try to help? Or was my husband correct in sticking to his guns? Ultimately, we had a good time escaping the city by disguising as the rebellion guards, and helped about 20 citizens in the process. But I can't help but feel a little disappointed that my warlock didn't get the chance to help fight in the initial attack. I await your rulings with a heavy heart and even heavier boots

Scotty

To the justices and the bailiff, created equal under the light of palore, I bring you case of undercover boss. Me, my fiancée, and our two very good friends have been playing DnD together for years and It’s always worked great for us that way. About a year ago one of me and my fiancée’s coworkers expressed interest in playing DnD and we offered to let them join the campaign we were about to start. Session 0 goes great, and we get a few sessions in before our new addition dropped a bomb on us, they were being promoted and would be our boss, starting that day. We tried desperately to make it work, but soon our work problems were being brought into our campaign and my fiancée, who is also the DM, said she cant deal with hanging out with our boss outside of work once a week so we told them that we can’t play together anymore. Our boss was super upset and I still do feel kind of bad since we got about 20 sessions in before we kind of abruptly told them they cant join anymore but were we justified in our move to kick them out?

Doctor Ransom

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

Prieg the Ranger Gobbo

My venerable justices of the supreme crit, and that guy that reads these cases to them. Jasper? Who cares? Anyhow, I have a case unlike any I've heard you read. My friends and I have been in a small but regular group for a few years. We're all very large men (6' and 200lbs is the smallest of us), and thus have been dubbed the Clydesdales, or 'Dales for short. We were in the early-middle stages of an evil campaign. We were clearing out a cave of dissenters and trying to recruit the monsters that were willing to recognize the power of Tunk, our bugbear leader. We had come into a large room in a cave and I was scouting as the gobbo ranger that I was. I saw a strange woman walking among the sleeping minotaurs that had inhabited the lair. Being the strategic genius every gobbo is known to be, I started a conversation with her. Just kidding, I shot an arrow right through that hag; and hag she turned out to be! Just a projection of one, really. It awoke the minotaurs and they attacked us. We play theater of the mind, with hardcore rules, so a charging minotaur critically struck one of our team and killed him outright. In hardcore being dropped to -10 kills you without death saves. That's not REALLY the problem here though. The question I pose to this great court is THIS: my friend who's character had died (and wasn't res'd) brought up after that he never said he entered the room. He was fairly insistent that his character, who was arguably the wisest of us, and a spell caster (Druid) wouldn't have just walked in. This all matched his playstyle, he's a legendary coward. He did NOT bring this up during the session or to the DM after. He played it out like a champ because he too DMs on occasion and knows that interrupting the flow can be a downer for everyone. He didn't mourn or pout he just moved on like an adult. BUT, did he do his character dirty by not defending his positioning? Does he owe Az'agrim (Azzy for short) a better death? Is it better in theater of the mind to argue points like this or to just roll with them crit dice? Is he guilty of CHARACTER MURDER?!? I defer to your fairjudgement.

Daveed
>>160472916

An opinion you didn't ask for: Sophia has no interest in D&D but wanted to scam your friend out of a bath bomb.

Ashton Longwell

To the fabled judges of myth and legend, long live your houses, and Mr. Too Big for His Britches, Jark. I’m writing to you about the dishonorable end of a bard. Years ago I was playing in my first ever TTRPG. It was a first edition pathfinder game my friend had gotten together with me and some of our coworkers. I was instantly hooked on the game and made a Halfling bard raised by dwarves who wanted to find his true family, where the others had made a talking donkey who trafficked drugs and a well-endowed orc who was hunting his evil brother Kanye Woost. After a few sessions the other players lost interest and told the DM they didn’t want to continue. So during our last session the DM threw us into a battle with Kanye Woost. The donkey ran away immediately and Kanye’s brother went down quickly after having his member cut off. Kanye then proceeded to beat my character to death with his brothers junk. Judges, I still feel slighted by losing my first character in such a way. Is it wrong for me to feel like my investment in the game should have led to a more heroic finish for my bard or should I just accept that not all stories have a happy ending? I patiently away your ruling.

Brandon Hess

A Tale of Two Strahds To the resplendent justices and their most dashing bailiff, I bring you a Tale of Two Strahds. I’m a forever DM for a rotating crew of friends I’ve gamed with for a decade or more. I had put out feelers for a new campaign that I communicated would be running Curse of Strahd, newly released at the time, but slightly modified where the party would start out as a team of Paranormal Detectives. A player (Judas), asked if two of his friends, who I hadn’t played with before, could join. I agreed and four sessions in, things were going great with our party of 5 paranormal investigators. However, early in our fifth session, the group was about to learn about Strahd and before my NPC could lore-dump, Judas told me to stop “To make sure I didn’t spoil Curse of Strahd” as he and his two friends he had invited to our game had started a separate home campaign running Curse of Strahd that week. Confused, I told him that’d be incredibly hard to do since this was Curse of Strahd and they protested, forcing me to end the session for the night to reconsider. I decided that week to ask those 3 to leave the campaign, killed off their characters and invited 3 regular players to take their place, which Judas and his friends continue to be upset about as this campaign nears its 3rd “season” with the new group. Was I wrong to feel betrayed or was this a reasonable request given I had slightly modified Curse of Strahd? I leave my fate in the steady and well lotioned hands of the court. - The Forever DM

Brian McAree Murphy
>>160476464

I suggest memo pad's, write the note in secret and pass it to the player, now that is exactly how the game is played

Jay Dragonborn, Guardian of the Vibe, Honoring the Cock

Hello to the authentic, brilliant, and charming Justices Axford and Tanner, and to the awe-inspiring, brave, and cunning Bailiff Jacob Herwitz. Oh, and that fourth guy, Bradley Munchy, I guess. I present to you, the case of the stolen Nat20 that went forever unnoticed. So, my DnD group, comprised of people from all across the globe, had just begun to play Dragonlance with a brand new DM. I was his first DM, and I was excited to, as Bradley and the prolific Brennan Lee Mulligan once called it, "69" with him. This case stems from a moment when I was sparring with an NPC who viewed my Dragonborn barbarian as his better, but, mechanically he was much stronger than me (To note, I had a +2 in STR, and was level 3, and this character had 2 attacks). During said spar, I was missing most of my attacks when, low and behold, I finally rolled a Nat20! I was elated! I finally got a hit in, and a crit to boot! But then, our party sorcerer cast silvery barbs, and, while I still hit, the sting of losing a Nat20 still stung. But this is not where my issue lies. My issue lies in that, later, when I role played having noticed the sorcerer cast the spell on me, so that losing my Nat20 wouldn't go in vain, and there could be a nice story moment about it later, the DM claimed I hadn't noticed it! I protested, saying that she hadn't casted it secretly, nor did she use subtle spell. The DM then made me retroactively roll to notice the spell be cast on me, and of course I failed, leaving my Nat20 to be absolutely useless, combat- or story-wise. Was I wrong to think my character would have noticed a flash of silvery sparkles, and that it could be a good bonding moment later to reconcile over the slight PvP? Or is my DM correct that the spell was cast discreetly and my barbarian was just a dunce in the heat of combat, leaving the Nat20 wasted? I humbly await your verdict, and if I am found guilty, am ready to accept my punishment.

Anthony Drake

Dear humble judges and extremely “____” bailiff A few years back in a Curse of Strahd game I played with friends online at the start of quarantine. My human path of glory Paladin to Kord had just had to send off his brother (who was another player character who died last session) in a Viking funeral and made a prayer to Kord to have his soul be taken care of and swore I would let fail our cause to find out what happened to our parents that traveled to this terrible place. I rolled a religion check: Nat 20. The DM narrates a wonderful scene for me to send off my dear brother and then asks me for a perception check after. I rolled a 4… I then proceeded to get jumped by 4 scarecrow like creatures while my fellow party members were asleep and as I go down almost instantly since in level 3 I managed to wake them up just barely. A fellow Pc wanted to help me but didn’t have any form of healing so asked if you could try to stabilize me and the DM said “yeah sure roll a medicine Check” My fellow PC then accidently misclicked and rolled Athletics and then tried to roll the correct check only the website but the DM burst out laughing and proceeded to narrate that his character picks mine up and tosses me towards the wagon and away from the fight…doesn’t sound too bad right? Until he continued and said my body crashes into the wagon and my neck cracks and I lose a death save. Whose turn is next? Oh I’m sure you can guess as I go to roll the worst Natural 1 I’ve ever rolled. To this day my friends joke about how this is my fellow Pcs dumbest move and can’t believe he rolled athletics even though i was trying to argue to just let him roll the correct check only for the DM to make my character fall victim to the bit. Judges please tell me I’m not crazy for thinking this is so outrageous and say a quick prayer for Ignis my paladin.

OrangeCat

Oh most venerable, gracious, and beloved justices, and their lesser but also beloved lackey, I present to you the case of The Gag Gone Wrong. Our group was trying to sneak past a guard to bring a captured enemy to an ally inside the building. We had established earlier that we had bound and gagged our captive. Our Druid then cast pass without trace on our party members and we all got very high stealth checks. Our DM asked if we cast pass without trace on the bound and gagged enemy too, and I said we shouldn’t need to because the enemy was BOUND AND GAGGED so he couldn’t have any agency. While we were still discussing the plan of how to enter, one of the pcs said something that riled up the enemy and he made a noise through the gag. We laughed it off and continued with the plan. While we were sneaking in later, the enemy screamed through the gag, making a noise that alerted the guard to our presence and foiling our plan for a discreet entry. When we argued that that wasn’t fair, the DM insisted that we hadn’t specified putting him in a strong enough gag and that we should have cast pass without trace on the captive too. The DM also said that it had to be okay because we had earlier accepted the captive’s muffled noise as a bit, so we then HAD to accept it when they put it in as real consequences. I feel like that sets a precedent that we have to then completely shut down any bits that could however possibly interrupt our future plans. Ultimately, I said that I still thought it was unfair, but that we should just move on, since the other party members didn’t seem to care that much. Am I wrong in this or was I right to gripe about the gag? I leave my fate in your most regal, legal, and sometimes lethal hands.

Jake the Snake

Merrily new year to the puissant and concupiscent Judges of the Supreme Crit. May your pets be healthy, gardens be green, and spills be minimal... Heartfelt wishes that you have replaced that forth guy at this point. Lou would be pretty swell. I have the case of the shattered PC moment. I was an relatively unexperianced DM for a group of friends, Late stage, level 15 or so, the Arc for the barbarian was finishing out. He was fighting his clan leader (whom killed his mother) in a mountain top crypt. I homebrewed a stat block for a character that would perfectly match the strength of the Barbarian, making this come down to the role of the dice. Our barbarian using danger sense, noticed a trip wire and tripped it anyway for an intimidating role play scene. This was accompanied by the waves of goons that needed the other PCs to fight to keep outside of the crypt. The issue being our very much so min-maxed Cleric. The Cleric may not have picked up on these cues (let the Barbarian come full circle and fight one on one) and was feeling helpful. He cast shatter on the door that was locked from the tripwire. I, admittedly, fumbled the next ruling: Shatter does not succeed, the door has too much HP. The Cleric (using tempest domain) rebutted then I will upcast it and channel divinity for max damage. This led to an hour long argument about Shatter and Door HP. The Cleric even mentioned he was going to banish the Clan leader to limit the fronts to fight on. Our Barbarian intervene and dejectedly told me "just let the shatter break the door." I ran out of arguments and discovered he was correct rules as written. I frustatedly said, I will not allow you to cast shatter on the door, which got him to mockingly say "because I said so..." It felt as though no one was happy. We are still great friends years after the conclusion of the campaign but this was a very shakey moment in my early DM years, so I ask: Should I have accepted my poor planning and rules as written or was I correct for standing up for my Barbarian and giving him this moment. PS In hindsight, I should have just also collapsed the doorframe.

Steven

To the resplendent supreme crit justices and the guy who, let's be honest, y'all only keep around so we can make cheap jokes about a cheap man. I bring to you the case of the world's most hated NPC, aka Bart Simpson. I was DMing a campaign and the PCs were traveling to the Abyss to meet and broker information with a succubus warlord. During the meeting, I briefly introduced the warlord's guards, which included a wispling (half gnome/half demon) named Shadowfire. I described him as “pacing back and forth behind the warlord, with his hands resting on hand axes” and “he has short and spiky hair. Kind of like Bart Simpson.” I got some light razzing for this description, but nothing else was said about him. The party succeeded with the warlord and were offered to stay the night as guests. That evening, Shadowfire was sent to deliver a message to the PCs. As soon as their door was opened, and without saying a single word, the party fighter began to attack Shadowfire and the sorcerer plane-shifted him to their deity's home plane, where Shadowfire could be hunted for sport. Despite having never spoken a word to them, my PCs had unanimously decided to turn on Shadowfire. After the session I asked how they came to their decision. One player said, “I knew he was going to die the moment you described him pacing with his hands on his axes.” Two others said it was when I compared him to Bart Simpson. Regardless, they all claim that their actions were justified. Shadowfire was supposed to back stab the party during a climactic fight, so it worked out that the party just dealt with him before hand, but I ask you: Was I wrong to add a little flare to my demonic NPCs, or are my players just masters at sniffing out a traitorous Bart Simp-- demon?

Lord Conqueeftador I

To the honourable Justices Axe Fjord, Murphin USA, Caldwell B. Cladwell Tanner and the boisterous bailiff/budding DM, Blake. I present the case of: The Sadistic DM Who Hates To Lose Case: Our party was waiting out a snow storm while travelling through some mountains, our second 6+ hour session of walking up mountains and snow and getting caught in snowstorms. Our party explored a cave and encountered and defeated a manticore. While looting the layer we found an egg which my PC decided to adopt, the party begged me to return it where we found it and so I did but while putting the egg (named Chibibooboo) back the mama manticore came home, a Colossal Manticore (think shadow of the colossus). Our party had to then make a daring escape through the mountain’s tunnels trying to evade the enraged monster. Our chase came to a climax as we decided to engage the Mama-core realising we couldn’t out run it. In a harrowing battle that had tapped our wizard and cleric (me) of useful spells for the encounter and brought all of us to the brink of death. The mama-core was finally felled by starting its turn in the Blade Barrier I had conjured. However the DM declared the monster attacked with one last bite at my character in its “death throws”, which hit for 17 damage, I had 16 HP remaining. The Eladrin (autumn) cleric then fell from the sky (was using steps of night to fly) in the far side of the cavern that a river of lava ran through. Due to the fall he had one auto death fail, and failed twice more in the following 3 rolls before the other party members could traverse over and give him a healing potion. My Cleric was able to be revived through the wizard using “dark magic” (further explained below) a homebrew mechanic which ended up with our fighter losing power to one of their arms, the wizard becoming deaf and blind and the cleric being sent back missing an arm (bitten off by the mama-core) AND he was now slowly dying as he was not properly resurrected. (Every long rest must make a wisdom saving throw, loses 1 HP from Max HP until properly revived). In the following town ruled by dragons and inhabited by dwarves there were oddly NO diamonds available to complete the spell components required to perform a resurrection. Justices I beseech your ruling, is our DM being unfair? There have been other moments where the party has been punished for succeeding a challenge or out smarting their plots, I humbly await thy ruling. Lord Conqueeftador, first of his Name Black Magic: In the event a player has used up their spell slots they may expend hit dice to cast or upcast a spell when out of spell slots up to level 5 spells. The hit dice are rolled as damage against the player, if they wish to cast beyond a 5th level they must roll 5 hit dice plus how ever many levels above 5th level spell in damage to oneself and take one level of exhaustion per spell level above 5 that the spell is cast at. Ex: casting Spirit guardians at 5th level with no 5th level slot available = 2 hit dice of dmg against caster Casting Blade barrier with no 6th level spell slot would cost 6 hit dice of dmg to caster + 1 level of exhaustion. PS: I should also mention that losing my arm to the mama-core was my idea as that arm was cursed and slowly being taken over by the Ichor (ick-or) that is the BBEG we are fighting in our campaign, think crickrot but hive minded

Faye the Fae

To the lovely justice Axford and friends, I bring you the case of The Rejected PC In one of my first d&d groups that ended recently for different reasons, I was in a party of 3 including myself. My pc was getting into an emotional state that was too close to home so I had asked my dm if I could introduce a temporary pc, and I made sure to check in with the other two members before the switch and all were okay with me switching. We went through a handful of sessions where there was a fun new dynamic with our pcs as mine helped them with a task, but once we started on a side quest for my temp pc, the other two pcs were clearly not very interested in helping her find her sister. After one session, the two players spent almost 15 minutes talking about how much they disliked my new pc. I was silent, the dm was silent. We had to have a brief aside afterwards where we wound up deciding to just have my pc leave next session and skip over her departure. I was pretty sad as I had put time into her backstory and was looking forward to the party (who was usually quite helpful to people in need) helping her find her sister. We started the next session with a gloss over but one pc brought it back into rp with the other pc and spent almost another 10 minutes about how much my temp pc was irritating and they didn't want to help her as it was out of their way and not connected to them before the dm finally interrupted. We went on to have the party not have much to do as their pcs wanted to relax from adventures. A few sessions later, the dm canceled the game. Was I in the wrong for bringing in a temp pc that seemed to ruin the party dynamic?

Josh Levitt

Oh, towering Cardinals of the Church of Dice Christ ⛪️🎲✝️, I fall at your feet to confess my sins. I am a first-time DM running a homebrewed heist-style mini-campaign, where my players must steal the blueprints of a powerful magitech Infuser device. Our party warlock (who gets her powers from a magitech implant in her head, controlled by her mafia boss father/patron) decided to min-max her character with high charisma but depressingly low con, resulting in her max HP being nearly half that of the other players. During session 3, while fighting several ooze monsters, one of them crit on the warlock when her HP was at only 7. After doing the math, I realized that the 45 damage dealt was enough to kill her outright. But justices, I was a weak little baby. I could not kill her. I had so many fun interlocking backstory reveals planned, and in a moment of Dice Devilry, I falsely proclaimed that the monster did only 41 damage, just enough to spare her life. The campaign has been an absolute blast, but this blasphemy hangs over my head like a malevolent frog bucket hat. I beg the sweet, sweet forgiveness of Dice Christ, my maker and master, so that I may be reborn anew.

Randy

Good evening honorable judges and bailiff Judd. As a proud owner of hot date season one and two I present the case of the alert vs the surprised. A little over a year ago my party and I were playing a campaign where doppelgangers had taken over a town. When went into the town to investigate. Upon entering the town our guide transformed and attacked. The issued arose where my character, a fighter was surprised attacked! My issue being I had taken the alert feat. I argued that I shouldn't have been surprised but the DM stated there's no way I could have been ready for this attack. After some bickering I relented and we moved on with our game. I however still feel the DM robbed me. All in the implications we're rather small but I still want to bring this to the courts. Thank you judges.

Bakuraptor

To the esteemed justices and the just-steamed Baliff Jonk, I bring you the case of the tranquil timeskip. I've been playing in an online D&D campaign for a few months. A few sessions ago, after a climactic battle to close out "Act I" of the campaign, the DM told us that he wanted there to be a year-long timeskip before "Act II" kicked off. We were all fine with this: he told us to think about what our characters would do in the timeskip so we could roleplay that in the following session and progress our characters' abilities. My character is a wizard who went back to run his family restaurant after failing out of school, before a threat to his town drew him back to magic - so, at the next session, I explained how he had used the year to go back home and train up his niece to run the restaurant, which I thought would be a fun roleplaying choice for the character. However, the rest of my party narrated what were essentially training sequences (for example, our barbarian said she had been hunting beasts in the wilderness), and, at the end of our narrations, the DM said that everybody would level up and gain a bonus feat to reflect their training, except for my character, because, he said, he'd "spent his time cooking instead of training". After arguing the point, I did eventually get the DM to allow my character to level up, but he's refused to let me choose a feat like the rest of my party - even the chef feat, which isn't that useful for my character but would at least be a fun roleplaying choice. So I ask the court - was my DM cooking when he punished me for "wasting" my timeskip, or was his decision half-baked?

Victoria Shotts

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices and Baliff Jace, I bring to you the case of Gus and the Homebrewed Inspiration. To preface, my husband's family wanted to learn DnD, so they enlisted his younger step brother to DM. He loves to "homebrew" to shake up the game, so one of his first rules was a new version of inspiration: roll a 30 sided die to decide your fate. The scale of success and failure would the same, the added numbers above 20 making it easier to succeed on checks. This knowledge is key to this drama. We played through a campaign in The Sunless Citadel with the group of 7 newbies and myself. The final battle occuring under a giant tree. During this battle, the DM made some very questionable calls: our bard wasn't allowed to give out bardic inspiration, cast any other spell or even move while casting a concentration spell. When my husbands ranger armor was shattered (for rolling a 1 on an attack), he was told to calculate his new armor class by adding his Con modifier and not his Dex. My husband's AC went from 18 to 10. None of this is by the book, but simply because he said so. Not wanting to be rude to our DM and a kid 7 years younger, I let those frustrations go, since the other family have no idea this is not according to the rules. However, the most egregious act was when the 14 yr old youngest brother's Dragonborn Paladin, Gus, was pushed into the giant tree and *SPOILERS* began being swallowed!! To give Gus the best odds on the strength check to pull himself out, he used his previously granted inspiration D30 dice. He rolled a Natural 1. Our DM ruled that because he "critically failed" on this specific die, it was considered EVEN WORSE than a normal die roll and therefore he would instantly be swallowed and disintegrated inside. This literally almost made the kid cry, as we had no way to help and he didn't even get to roll death saving throws for his character. The DM revealed later that normally one would have been slowly consumed over multiple rounds and there would have been several chances to save him if he hadn't rolled so poorly. He also stated that if little bro had rolled above a 20 he would have "critically succeeded" which made the current outcome fair. High highs and low lows. Not being able to contain myself, I personally argued for 20 minutes that using inspiration should ALWAYS be a boon to the player using it, or AT LEAST should not kill a PC without death saves OR hope of recovering the body. My husband, wanting to keep the peace, told me and his teary brother to chill out, that it's just a game. I felt like I was being gaslit, that my reaction was unreasonable. Justices, I beg for justice to be served on behalf of my little brother and myself. Does the size of the die determine the size of the punishment? Should not the sentence have been more lenient because he was using his inspiration? Also, does my husband have a point and I should have ignored my brothers tears, or did the DM act in way that deserved to be called out? I humbly await your decision.

Cas Marie

Honorable justices and Mr. Crabster himself, I bring to you the case of the wizard vs the dm. I play a bladesinger wizard in my good friend’s campaign. In our recent game we fought an Aboleth that has the ability to charm creatures. Our dm was able to charm me and the Aboleth commanded me to drop my bladesong, mage armor, and my concentration on haste that I had on our monk. It took a couple rounds of combat to get all of those effects up, and it feels wild that this beast would know exactly what magic I had active. Am I being a salty wizard? Is this worth bringing up? Or is my dm just pissed I can get my AC to 21.

Kiyahn Navissi

Dearest so so justices, and the sensual Bailiff Jarf, of Jarf and Amir fame, I present to you the case of the exploding npc: I recently ran a campaign set in a fantasy Texas-like town. Keeping with the theme, my player Anni was a gunslinger who i worked with to homebrew some exciting weapons for, one of which being (her idea) a shoulder mounted heat seeking missile launcher Cut to the final encounter of our game, the BBEG is dead and all that’s left to do is to remove a mind control device from beloved npc Deadeye Darla, who was already under the Slow spell. Anni’s method of handling this, of course, was to fire at the one legged octogenarian with the missile launcher. To her horror, I asked her to roll damage for the attack, to which she argued that the force of the rocket should have destroyed the device and then exploded harmlessly off screen. Justices, was I wrong to nearly k*ll everyone’s favorite npc after what was merely a goof from a dedicated player? I splay myself nude and breathless before your judgement Kiyahn (key+on)

Olbyack

Supreme Crit Justices and the ballif I present the case of Mr. Whispers. Our party stumbled upon a Lich in a floating ancient capital of a long dead empire. He never gave a name so we called him Mr. Whispers (because he Whispered a lot). Not knowing what Liches are and how evil they are my character, Willow Wisp, starts flirting with him. It wasn't going well so Wisp started lying to look cool. Wisp accidentally said something interesting so Mr. Whispers cast detect thoughts, it was countered, the party flees but one of us got disintegrated. The dream of the sweet couple name 'The Whispers' was dead. My question is do I need to declare I'm lying to look cool and roll deception (and hopefully fail so a player doesn't die) or was my DM right to have Mr. Whispers take the desperate lies of Wisp seriously.

David Klein

To the Honorable Justices and straight up Jorking it and by it I mean my Naddpole bailiff Jake. May I present you the case of the the Character Creation Conundrum. A few months ago I tried joining my friends new Dnd group for the start of a new campaign. I have played with this friend many times before but no one else at the table. Things were kind of bad immediately. During character creation I asked everyone excitedly what Race/class they were going to play as I was very excited to play and was immediately met with other players asking me of I was trying to meta game and/or "Spoil" other people's characters. I just replied with a simple "no" and explained that usually I like to discuss characters as we build them so that no one is stepping on each others toes. I respected their wishes and built my Purple Tiefling Shadow Sorcerer Inquisitive Rogue multiclass P.I. Lucius only discussing details with the DM. Come the day of session 1. I was met with 3 characters of completely different vibes one was also a Tiefling that came with a completely different backstory for Tieflings in the world. When I asked him for his name in character he told me "You have to earn knwoing my name". I left this group after session 1. Was I in the wrong here and should I have toughed it out to see of things got better? This was almost a year ago and I unfortunately have only gotten to play 2 other sessions with a different friend. I can't help but feel jealous knowing how often these people play. I humbly await your decision.

Qorvae

To the most honorable and benevolent judges and Jr. Justice Jake: I bring to you the Case of the Contentious Campaign. A few months ago a friend came to us saying he wanted to run a new streamed campaign from an old 3e adventure. A party was gathered from old friends and new, we rolled up some characters, and embarked on our adventure. From the jump, one player has proven to be difficult. Our cleric, who usually plays a paladin, often complains about the RP play style of the game, the choices other characters make, and makes remarks that he thinks he's being picked on. Then a few sessions ago, this player got upset about a boss enemy getting away. During the session, his character refused to talk to any of us and said he would not join us on any other adventure actions until we chased this bad fellow down like he wanted. After spending the full session arguing with his character, we spent another hour and a half arguing, past midnight, as he accused our characters, and us as players by proxy, of being morally bankrupt for not putting our level 2 lives on the line to try to kill the bad guy right away. We eventually talked some of it out, agreeing to disagree on the rest, and decided to gather supplies and immediately track down this same baddie so he'd keep playing. Everyone else now seems to have mostly moved on, but I'm having a hard time RPing with this person without feeling slighted. Is it just me, or is this lawful good player actually being a lawful prick?

David Klein
>>160481212

Also may it please the court. I am getting three Pea Pufferfish today and need names! I will also have 2 new shrimpies aswell. Currently I am thing about naming the Puffers Bev, Hardwon, and Moonshine and the shrimp Balnor and PawPaw but I am open to any suggestions. I prostate (prostrate? Either one or both?) myself before the judges.

Ben Brassart

Dear Venerable and Most High Clerics of Dice Christ, and Josh, the weird guy at communion who insists on putting the cracker directly on my tongue. I'm DM'ing the Lost Mines of Phaldelver for our friend's 3 children (13, 13, and 11), after their D&D club at school closed down due to lack of DMs. I let them go hog wild creating their characters -- I explained the stats and skills, how it might affect their characters, and let them make their own choices. This has resulted in some mechanically truly terrible characters that the kids are super excited about and have really blown me away with their creativity. I confess to Dice Christ that I've fudged the hell out of a lot of rolls behind the screen to prevent multiple TPKs. I really want these kids to have fun, and have let enough bad rolls stand to put them in some sticky situations that ended up with some really high-tension and fun outcomes. I don't want them to get disillusioned by getting whomped every single session, and want to let them explore the adventure. But I worry that I'm cheating them out of the lessons of a whomping. I also am afraid every time I pick up the dice as a player that I'll be struck down for my sins. Please gang, weigh my soul on the scale of Dice Christ and either punish me for my transgressions or absolve me of my sins.

Galen Graham, Local Talent

The Case of a Forced PC Personality Trait A happy new year to the Supreme Crit Justices, and a light salute to whoever this week’s Bailiff is. I play in an online game with longtime friends, DM’d by a very close friend of mine. While the DM has played TTRPGs with me and some of us for many years, she is still a relative novice at DMing (though has DM’d many many sessions with us prior.) In the opening session of our current game, a group of street urchin-type kids were hired to steal some stuff off us and run down the street. My character, a Cowboy-Pirate mashup with a criminal background, chased down a kid hoping to get the stuff back, but also to try to get a new criminal contact. I made an attack roll to “grab the kid, or wear them down”. I hit, and my DM declared because I’d used my knife to-hit bonus i’d attacked with the knife, and described how my character shredded this 10y/o child to bits. I protested that that was clearly never my intention, but my DM didn’t budge. Ultimately all was well when the party healer came over and brought the child back, and we all laughed it off. I thought this was over, but the problem is this: We’re over ten sessions in, and the whole party keeps bringing it up, telling NPCs to keep their kids away from me and even pushing my character out of role play engagements where young or child NPCs are involved, even when I express a desire to be involved. I don’t mind improv, and I can go along with the bit to keep things moving and have a laugh, but it seems my group is intent on turning my silly Buster Scruggs lovable Cowboy/Pirate PC into a cold blooded child killer. Judges, should I have protested further, or has the damage already been done, and I must now overlook this part of my character I seemingly have no more control over?

Karen Corcoran
>>160476464

Followup though. Do I fold the message into a triangle and flick it across the table a la Paper Football. Or the more traditional classroom love letter rectangle fold with the triangle tab.

Nic Rangel

To the venerable, voluptuous, and verile justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner. And the baliff soon to be replaced by Justice Tanner's next of kin, [redacted]. I offer unto you the case of the underground agricultural revolution. I was DMing a a one shot for my brother, his wife and my cousin, who had never played the game before. In the game, kobolds and goblins had mixed forces and bodily fluids to create mixed kobold/goblin freaks--gobolds-- that utilized different skillsets to raid nearby sheep farmers. Rather than fighting their way through, the players decided to barter with the kobolds and goblins and offered up sheep from their employer. Therein lies the problem, the gobolds were concerned with the safety of sheep in a cave and requested land as well. The players stated that a hole in the cave ceiling would provide enough light for grass to grow and the sheep to be well kept. There was a long drawn out debate about the ethics of sheep ownership that ended with a smaller amount of sheep and a small parcel of land donated by the sheep rancher in exchange for no more raids. Justices, was i justified in applying ethics to a bunch of kobolds and goblins who are new to farming?

Joshua Mur

To the honored judges and the bailiff who is ever so slightly less honored, I bring forth the case of the Arcane Eye. My party entered a cavern with statues of frozen humanoids with scared expressions. We soon found ourselves face to face with a Medusa. On my first turn I cast the spell “Arcane Eye” and moved it up toward the ceiling. When my next turn rolled around, while peering through my Arcane Eye, I tried to throw a chromatic orb at the Medusa, but my DM said I had disadvantage on the attack roll. When I asked why he said it’s because I was “not used to the change in perspective while looking through my Arcane Eye”. Judges, should I have been able to attack the Medusa as normal or was the DM right to rule it this way?

Jared Bloom

Oh, hello my honorable judges and dishonorable bailiff. I present you the Case of the Midseason Finale. I’m DMing friends in a Camelot Campaign (shout out Boggy Robby) and I thought it would be fun to have a midseason finale with a big battle against the current BBEG. In my between session check-ins, a few of my players are talking about switching up their characters after this upcoming sessions. I can see a world where the knights work with a new crew and continue their missions, but I also see a world where they are effectively retconning their character and building a new 10th level PC that’s more optimized for the rest of the campaign. My question is this: should I encourage my players to make new characters and try something new, or maybe we just do some high level one shots between our regular campaign to scratch their itch? I humbly await your decisions

Eamon Sullivan

To the honorable justices and the poor schmuk who is know doing Jake's job, I bring you the case of the chaotic evil sorcerer. I was playing in a long-term online game with 3 other players and the DM. Due to various shenanigans, half of the party became trapped in the Underdark, with regional restrictions preventing myself and the other member from teleporting to the party and rescuing them. The DM decided to run a session with myself and Matt playing evil drow NPC's, who would lead the party members out of the Underdark in exchange for dealing with an Elder Brain. I was given a fighter/monk, and the other party member was given a sorcerer. After a long combat filled session, in which I spent a lot of time stunned by Mind Flayers, I was mentally exhausted enough that I logged off and let the other party members control my character for the combat. Later that night, I found out that the session ended with a near TPK. While the drow and original party members were separated by the Elder Brains Wall of Force, the sorcerer killed my character and let the Elder Brain kill the party. After it ended, the Sorcerer finished off the Elder Brain and fled the colony. After the session, the sorcerer blamed the results on his chaotic evil alignment, and later said his sorcerer didn't even know how to lead the party members out of the Underdark anyway, which I'm pretty sure he just made as a wild character choice. Myself and the party let the sorcerer off, because we had really bad luck the whole night anyway. Unfortunately, this was the last session of the campaign, as the DM had been suffering from burnout and this loss killed our momentum. Judges, was it fine for the sorcerer to act this way? Should the DM have gone easier with the Mindflayers? Was there anything else that I or the other party members could have done? I humbly await your judgement.

Nick Neverman

Dear the most illustrious judges and whichever little baby is the bailiff, I present the case of the “two rats piloting a robot.” I was planning a 5e campaign with some friends and invited my cousin as we had played a lot of pathfinder together. When it came to creating characters, he was adamant on playing what he called his “greatest creation.” This creation turned out to be two rats piloting a robot that spoke EXCLUSIVELY through Marvel and Batman quotes. He wanted to print off dozens of pages of dialogue and solely use those as his role play. He also wanted each of his mice to have different classes, be from our world and the robot to be equivalent to a golem. Judges my sole question is this; was I in the wrong to let out a hearty laugh and respond “while I love the creativity, you’re crazy. Please bring something slightly less….disruptive.” He ended up not playing as this was the ONLY character he wanted to play as.

Mitch Rhook

This is a Dice Christ confessional (or maybe a case of me vs dice Christ?) from a first time DM, with a table of first time players. I had done session 0 with my players for the lost mines of phandelver kit, having all my experience from listening to this podcast. Session 0 was 4 hours of character creation and everyone was really excited. If you're familiar with lost mines of phandelver you'd know that it starts with a goblin ambush, 2 swordsman and 2 archers against 5 level 1 players to introduce combat. This is where it all went wrong. I had a scourge aasimar cleric, wearing only robes, go down first round as he ran forward by himself with noone else. As the party ran up to engage and save him, he started rolling death saving throws, failing the first, then rolling a Nat 1 on second. While this was happening the tiefling sorcerer who was on 1 health was crit on by an archer taking her to her negative max health and insta killing her. I channeled my inner Murph here as I know how many times he's talked about new DMs panicking and doing something silly or militantly sticking by the rules, which meant these players sitting out watching 3 others play the rest of the session, so I gave them the option of using the druids Good Berry's, having the ranger give up his next turn to deliver them, and narrated that as they fell into darkness and faded away, the taste of sweetness was a lifeline back to the world of the living, and let the sorcerer do death saves, and the cleric reroll that Nat 1 death save rather than it bring them up on 1 health. The cleric rolled another Nat 1. 2 in a row. But I couldn't let him die so I did this again for a 2nd time and let the ranger stabilise the cleric, while the sorcerer was able to roll high on death saves. For the rest of the session the cleric did not roll above a 4 on his dice and failed many challenges, including accidentally killing my really cool NPC with an area of effect Attack, knocking him off a cliff, who would have given them all the context of the campaign. Did I anger Dice Christ in allowing the cleric to live so as to not ruin some excited players first time experiences? Did I do the wrong thing in giving him a 3rd chance after his 2nd chance was another nat 1? I am willing to atone for my sins, but also want to know what else I could have done here. I humbly await my penance.

Tyler M.

To the honorable supreme crit justices, and that tiny, little guy Jacques, may I present the case of Shrodinger’s Backstory. I’m a first time DM and have been running a Lost Mines of Phandelver game for first time players. We started with pre-gen characters, but at level 3 I had the party take more control of their characters to do a light respec, and flesh out their backstories with a eye towards a homebrewed Forgotten Realms. We’re a little over a year into the campaign now, deep into the homebrew and everything’s going pretty well - except the ranger is starting to feel left out narratively. He says he’s enjoying the gameplay, but I can see him checking out of the roleplay and he’s been getting passive aggressive about it out of character. Admittedly the direction of the campaign has been trending towards backstories of the other two PCs. However, let it be known I couldn’t tie his backstory in as I didn’t have his full backstory until a year after the level 3 respec (two months ago). The biggest part of the backstory is that everyone he cares about has died. It’s been hard to work with, but I’ve actually got big tie-ins for him to get closure on his past and have been trying to drop them into the sessions naturally. but he keeps avoiding them. He’s walked away from “wink-nudge” rooms that have lore drops, he’s killed NPCs with info that he didn’t trust, (because it’s what his character would do). Last session he split from the party for his character to go to a tavern, but ended up using meta-game knowledge of what the party was doing to reconnect with them before I could naturally drop an NPC from his past into the setting. So far I’ve been able to keep things tight in the story, but the surgical precision with which the ranger is accidentally avoiding his backstory is getting to be too much. Justices, am I justified in my efforts to try to keep the narrative tight or do I just deus ex machina an NPC to show him the radioactive BBEG hasn’t killed his kitty cat past? I humbly await your judgement.

Abbey

To my dearest judges Axford, Murphy, and Tanner who continue to inspire me each day and Bailiff what's his face: I submit to you the case of the Unlawful Blinding. I was in a campaign with my college radio friends two years ago. I was the only player in our party of six who had played before so I was used to helping my DM and best friend teach the rest of our group different mechanics and how to play as we went along. Since pretty much everyone was new, we used DnD Beyond (free version because we're broke and in college) to make our characters. I made an Eladrin Rogue named Ailynn who was part of a crime family that dealt in information. Enter Bogman, the Rock Gnome Monk with a gambling addiction in a goblin fighting ring. Bogman was really into his background that DnD beyond makes you choose: "Haunted One" once he remembered in the middle of a session that it was on his character sheet. Specifically, he fixated on the "Heart of Darkness" feature. While this characteristic is meant to help inform your character's personality, it quickly turned into a bit. Bogman began weaponizing the Heart of Darkness and anyone who looked into his eyes for a longer period of time would then have to roll a con save. If they failed, they'd take damage. At first it was funny, but then it got out of hand. In a moment where Ailynn was trying to comfort Bogman after the loss of his favorite fighter, out of game he asked if she had looked into his eyes. I said yes because it was a nice moment of friendship. I was then asked to roll a con save. Unfortunately because I also have the Murph curse, I rolled a nat one. I was then told that I was BLINDED for an indeterminant amount of time. In the heat of the moment, I had had enough and pleaded to my DM to see reason. The Heart of Darkness isn't a mechanic. Bogman doesn't have spells. We were in the middle of following a trail of clues and my character is now being punished for being kind and now unable to help with the one thing she does best? We all had a laugh about it, but despite how funny it was, I was still kinda mad. I ended up summoning my familiar (a chocolate lab named Lasso, who was then dubbed a seeing eye dog and given a service dog vest), but my blindness wasn't resolved until our next session. So my dearest justices, was it wrong for me to be blinded by a mechanic that doesn't exists? I humbly await your judgement.

SkipperMars

To the Honorable Justices and the Map Maker moonlighting as a Baliff, I present the case of The Loveless Goblin I’ve been playing in a HOTDQ/RiseOfTiamat campaign for the past several years and our PC’s are now level 18 and approaching the end of our campaign. One of my fellow adventurers Hank Greenbottom, a lovably mischievous goblin rogue has had many potential lovers killed. One particularly egregious time, Hank befriended a drow, we were surprised and rolled initiative, and then in the first round when Hank asked about his love our DM said outright she’s dead then proceeded to put an X on her token in roll20. Now Hank is dating a metallic dragon Elia but the final fight is approaching. My question for you is this. Should our DM be allowed to kill Hank’s last love?

Mario Avila

All Mighty justices and Jacobo Juarez, (or depending on the rotating jester: Brian Murphy → Brayan Murillo, Emily Axford → Emilia Hachacórdez, Caldwell Tanner → Carlos Curtidor) I bring forward the case of the Co-Dm Clusterfuck: A few years ago, I found myself craving more D&D but stuck in the bottleneck of our DM's availability. So, a fellow player—an incredible roleplayer who was also studying acting at the time—and I decided to co-DM a campaign. The plan seemed brilliant: I’d handle world-building, NPCs, storylines, and all the Roll20 setup, while she’d bring the world to life with her voice acting skills, playing all the NPCs. I wasn’t confident in my roleplaying, and she didn’t have time to plan, so it seemed like a perfect plan. After weeks of hard work, I had crafted enough material for 3 sessions andPowerPoint slides detailing story points, NPC motivations, and characteristics that we reviewed together. It was all neatly prepared for our first session. But, as a fellow player ominously warned me, this idea was destined for disaster. What followed was, without a doubt, an absolute clusterfuck. First, we had way too many players for a first-time DM team with 9 people in the discord call, which already made things chaotic. To make matters worse, my co-DM’s younger sister joined the party—only to discover in-session that she didn’t speak English (our group was a mix of English-speaking Mexicans and Americans). This meant I had to awkwardly repeat literally everything in Spanish after every scene. And then, when it came time to introduce our first major NPC, my co-DM—our supposed roleplaying expert—completely froze and said, “Sorry, I just can’t.” Cue me, improvising all the roleplay on the fly for three grueling hours. It was exhausting, chaotic, and borderline soul-crushing, but somehow, it was exactly what I needed to gain the confidence to DM solo. Now, with countless sessions under my belt and years of being a forever DM, I couldn’t be happier. But Justices, I ask you: who’s to blame? Me, for devising this harebrained co-DM scheme? My co-DM, for throwing me under the bus? Or as well the co-DM who invited, a player who didn’t speak the language and did not informed ahead of time?

ZZ Digital

I submit to the court: the case of personal hell: While stealing a plane shift gem from the villains, one player accidentally activated one and was sent to hell, where they started rescuing NPCs. The other players met the villain who offered them a gem, but told them a different way to use it than they had been. They decided the villain was lawful evil and wouldn't lie, despite many people, including the villain herself, calling her a monster. So when they followed her instructions they ended up trapped in Hell, requiring a beloved NPC to sacrifice themself to get them out. My players were extremely upset with me, not only for killing their friend, but for not telling them the villain could be lying, and also not benching the player who went ahead until the rest of the party could join them since they encountered friends and family of the PCs in personalized hells that they wanted to interact with. Were my decisions acceptable, or am i a DM not even worthy to lick the lowly baliff's shoes?

Kyle Davis

To the Glittering Judges and the pretty cool Bailiff Gunk, I present the case of the reluctant Snake Mommy. During the final arc of a long campaign, I lost my session one character and picked up a new one to wrap up the campaign, Xe'Era, a Yuan Ti (Snake Person) Paladin Oath of Vengeance. I did my best to describe and characterize her as a strong, spiritually devoted and capable individual who was focused on helping her dying people survive. Here is where the problem arose, in a game made up of men, attempting to role play a woman she quickly fell into a general description of "Sexy Snake Mommy" and that's pretty much it. I would've been fine with this if it was a Sol situation but alas it just came off as *weird*. Feeling uncomfortable by this characterization I quickly did what I could to nip this in the bud. I spoke with my DM and addressed the group directly saying, "I'm not interested in sexualizing this character, I don't think its interesting and it makes me *the player* uncomfortable." This was met respectfully and the weird behavior stopped save for one player. Despite correction from the DM and myself this player kept making sexual comments and was largely objectifying. Seeing that the behavior wasn't stopping and not wanting to make a stink of it, it's just a game after all, I made my own little game out of it. Every time the problem player made a comment I would later describe a scene of her shedding her skin and evolving into a more and more reptilian creature. This fit the story as she was slowly climbing the ranks and changing as a character. She eventually helped defeat the big bad and was honored with leadership over her ancestral homelands but the comments never stopped and I almost left the game early. Now comes the question of judgement. These comments, disregard of boundaries and other yikes-worthy realizations about this person led to me distancing myself from a long-time friend. But I ask you judges, am I being a whiny little piss baby and should I let this go to rekindle the friendship? I humbly and snakely await your judgement.

Ziv like Steve

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

Dakota Jahn

To the court My girlfriend and I briefly played in a campaign with a couple of neighbors. The DM was one of the neighbors, a cool goth guy. We played a couple of times over the summer holidays, during which it slowly became less fun. For one, the DM was very focused and didn’t like having to explain himself more than once and one of the other players, another neighbor, had never played before and was having some difficulties. The DM did not like spending time explaining to her how it worked and when we tried to help, he’d continue on without giving her time to understand what was going on. For another, I was playing a cleric and my girlfriend a paladin, and when we asked about what pantheon the world used, he said “I haven’t decided yet.”. I played several sessions without knowing who my god was (I never actually found out). In the end, school got busy and my girlfriend and I weren’t really feeling the campaign. I kept cancelling, but in the end I finally quit, bc canceling several times was more unfair that just ending it, when I knew I wouldn’t have the time or energy. The DM never answered when I wrote him to quit. Now, whenever I see him, I awkwardly hide until he is out of view and it is getting pretty difficult. Justices, have I done wrong here, could I have done something different? I throw myself at your mercy.

Nate B.

To the Honored Justices and that bailiff guy,   I bring to you the case of the hungry player   I have been playing D&D with a group of friends over Discord for several years now. One of our friends in particular has a habit of missing, or disappearing in the middle of our sessions to eat dinner. Once he DMed for our group, and halfway through the session said, "Roll initiative," muted himself, and never came back. Recently, said player failed to show up to a session and cited his absence because he was "eating ribs." When berated about his absence later, his only defense was, "I was eating MF ribs."   Judges, is this a valid excuse to miss a weekly session with the boys? Our typical session is 7-9pm and I feel like there's plenty of time to eat before that.   I humbly await your judgment.

Jennifer S

To the beautiful bumbling bailiff and the judicious jaunty justices- At our last session our party was in a 12 part tournament consisting of different types of challenges and puzzles. We breezed through the first few and pushed through a few tough ones but on the 8th challenge we entered a room with some type of invisible enemy. Numerous party members were thrown to the ground and received bludgeoning damage and after a few rounds of combat none of our party had been able to locate or hit the enemy with our very few AOE spells (we are playing four 4th level PC's). An NPC who was helping our party for the tournament used create water to make it rain in a 30 ft cube where the DM narrated that we could see "a disturbance in the falling rain" marking a 10ft square area on the battle map. We had the NPC repeat this move on our next turn and this time we prepared actions to immediately attack the area where the falling rain was disrupted. My rogue went first and threw a dagger at the area, I rolled a 23 to hit. The DM told me that WOULD hit the ac but I needed to show them exactly where in the 4 grid squares I was aiming. I asked if that isn't what the 23 is for, to see if the dagger was accurate, they said it was not. I gave in after they insisted and said that where I saw the disturbance I would aim for the middle of the disturbed area. They said that, in that case, my 23 did not hit. We were probably 4 or 5 rounds into this combat and none of us had landed a single blow or been able to locate the enemy in anyway so I started putting my things away and said that I needed to go home (it was getting late anyway) and we ended the session pretty abruptly and everyone packed up pretty quietly. But we still have no idea what we were even fighting. Should my DM have let my dagger hit or should I just be grateful that my DM planned an otherwise very fun and interesting session even if she did seem to be prepared to let us just be slowly bludgeoned to death over many rounds.

Max Barthelemy

Honorable justices and honestly pretty decent bailiff Jank, I present the Case of the Secret Plan. I was a player in a Star Wars 5e campaign a few years ago with my friends. It was our first campaign ever, and we were pulling off a heist in Cloud City. We had just barely managed to succeed on a very tricky step in the last stage of our plan and found ourselves in the clear for the first time in a while. This is when one of the party members said that he had something he wanted to do on his own. He and the DM went into another room and played out his plan while we waited. When he returned we learned that he had taken some revenge on an NPC from earlier in the mission in a way that brought all of us back under the gun. This complicated the plan, endangered our characters, and pulled us back into a mess that we had just managed to escape. The rest of the party was upset about this and (in what may have been an overreaction) there was an argument that led to the whole solo plan being retconned and some very hurt feelings on the side of the rogue player. We ended the session there, and it is still debated if we were right to retcon the scene. Should the secret plan have have remained canon or were we in the right to object to it? P.S. the campaign survived and we actually finished the four year long game this last summer!

Chazz

To the honorable justices and dutiful bailiff Cake Hogdick. I present Christmas Wish gone wrong In 2023 I was running a mall themed Christmas one shot for my sister and her friends who wanted to try out Dungeons & Dragons. Solving the murder of a mall santa 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. Things immediately went sideways when one of the players 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 (who was playing with us) 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.

Sydney

May it please the court, I run a game focused on dungeon crawling and collecting loot and treasure. While in the dungeon, the PCs met another adventuring party, who were very polite to them, and they all decided to camp together. While resting, the other group offered to take the last watch, to which the PCs agreed. When they awoke, they discovered that the other group had disappeared, along with pretty much everything that wasn't on the PCs bodies while they slept. One of my PCs says that this was unfair, and that they should have had more of an opportunity to discover that they were being taken advantage of. I say that they had that opportunity and squandered it when they decided to leave a bunch of strangers alone with their stuff while they all slept. Is my player right, and I was too harsh? Or should I have had the NPCs try and slit their throats instead?

Cian

To the magisterial Justices and the wiggly wormy Bailiff Gulp, I present to you the case of The Surprise DJ. A couple years ago I decided I wanted to DM my first campaign, I elected to home brew a campaign from scratch, and spent weeks crafting a deep lore rich world that had everything from complex geopolitical relationships all the way to a large pantheon of original gods (you know, all that fun blue sky stuff). After carefully putting together this campaign I loved and felt confident in, I then chose to ask my, at the time, college friends to play with me. It took some convincing, but eventually we figured out a time and place to play session one, I was ecstatic! I worked with the 6 of them to create their characters, and made sure that everyone was prepared and knew what to expect on the day. The faithful night rolled around and I was nervous, but when I arrived everyone was in good spirits and ready to go, I was so excited. That was when there was a ring on the doorbell, and one of our OTHER friends, who said she didn’t want to come and play because dnd was “Lame”, showed up with a bottle of wine and said she wanted to hang out and watch us play. We invited her in and started playing. Some important information was that one of my friends, let’s call him Bill, asked if he could put on the Skyrim soundtrack to create some ambience, I said of course, and he proceeded to play it off his iPad. As we began playing the session, the friend that showed up drank the whole bottle of wine to herself, and began heckling the game. She would laugh every time someone would role play something, and many times would ask what was going on as she quote on quote “zoned out”. This all came to ahead when she got the ipad off of Bill and began playing the entire Nicki Minaj discography over the session. I asked her to stop, in which she did, to only moments later pull out a sound effects app and begin playing fart noises over every sentence I would say. I lost the table immediately, the group began laughing over everything I tried saying, and the session ended in the middle of a combat encounter with me saying “I don’t think there’s any point in us finishing cause no one seems to have any interest in the game.” I was heart broken. But what tops it off is that I received messages after, proclaiming that the way I ended the game was “rude” and I was “No Fun”. So judges, am I rude and no fun, or are my friends rude and no fun for derailing the session I worked so hard to put together. I humbly await your ruling.

Charlotte

To the Beautiful, Stunning, Illustrious Justices and the Bailiff too I guess, I bring to you the case of the Cat Boys vs the Stinky Ponies. I was playing in a long-running campaign with my close friends, and our party entered a tavern full of rich Tabaxi lords. They insulted our party and told us we should sleep in the stable with the horses because we were uneducated and dirty, and our barbarian decided to fight them. My Druid had recently gotten the summon animals spell, and I used it to summon 8 pixies (in a move inspired by Erika Ishii on Dimension 20’s The Seven). All 8 pixies used their turns to cast polymorph on the cat boys and turn them into stinky ponies. This was made funnier by the fact that my friends are convinced I am a horse girl despite the fact that I am allergic to horses. I suggested that my friends leave the Tabxi as ponies to teach them a lesson. Instead, my party continued to attack, so all my spell did was give the cat boys extra hit points and a better hoof attack, and they nearly killed the barbarian. We all thought this was hilarious, but the barbarian razzed me about his near death at the hands of the powerful ponies. I ask the justices: Was I wrong to use this perhaps overpowered spell for such a silly reason, or should my party have followed my lead in teaching the cat boys a stinky lesson? I ask this question because the barbarian is my very dear friend, and I would love the opportunity to raz him back.

CommonCatepillat

To the Golden Gods of the highest council, thy kingdom come, thy crits be done, and (50/50 chance here so I'll say) Amir. I come to you with a cold case from my youth. At age 13, I asked to be in my brother in law's tabletop game with two other (adult) players. It was a magitech setting where our characters were recruited to be apart of a magical syndacit of people who stop evil. My character, Snap Clackers, was a Nature powered monkey who gained his abilities and sentience after being captured and experimented on. Me and the other players got along and played well off of each other and it was shaping up to be a fun campaign. At the end of one of our sessions, the DM (Brother in law) announced excitedly that there would be a guest who would play a villain next session which excited the rest of the table as well. However, me being 13 and getting shit grades on my report card, I was grounded that week and couldn't go to the session. The next session I was filled in by the DM what happened. Apparently, the guest played an evil spider queen who womped the party and demanded they bring her 100 slaves for her to do with as she pleased and they agreed. My character, who was present while I the player was not, was made to agree with them. You can see how this would be of big conflict to who my character was and, being new to roleplay, I simply played him dispondant and angry for the rest of the session, going against what the party was trying to do that session. The campaign shortly fizzled out due to other factors outside of anyone's control. Judges, should I have been more malleable with my marcupuals morals or was I right to lash out at my party for their decision? (PS. The spider queen session was the 4th session) (PPS. The guest who played the spider queen was my 23 year old sibling. The one who was married to my brother in-law)

nat the neat
>>160476464

Your dm sounds like the type that wouldn't appreciate the epic highs and lows of paper football at the table. Best to not be distracting, I think

Brian Woolfolk

To the honorable justices of the Supreme Crit, as well as [redacted], I present the case of the Backfiring Sanctuary. Our party walked into a trap that was laid by our BBEG and needed to escape while being chased by various minions. The Cleric in our party cast Sanctuary on our Wizard, so that they could run away from the enemies, hopefully without being targeted by attacks and dropping since they are so squishy (think how Tarragon used Sanctuary on Jabari after the infamous side-flap incident). The cleric and the wizard were running side by side. On the wizards turn, they used their movement and a full dash action, and so one of the enemies in range used their reaction as an opportunity attack against them. However, they failed their wisdom save and therefore couldn’t attack the Wizard. The wording of Sanctuary states that the creature must choose a new target or lose the attack. The DM ruled that the enemy could use their redirected opportunity attack to attack the Cleric, which they proceeded to crit on. We argued that since it was an opportunity attack on the wizard, the enemy should not have been able to attack the cleric since the cleric was not the one who left the threatened area. The cleric ended up dropping and permanently dying in a very heroic and satisfying way as they saved the party, but we still argue with the DM to this day that the Cleric should not have taken that crit and should still be alive. I lay our fate at your feet.

Sugar Bear

To the Noble Clergy of Dice Christ! i come before yall not with a confession, but with a question because no matter what you decide im still gonna keep doing it. So i have a pretty common learning disability; dyscalculia which makes even the simplest of math problems embarrassingly difficult and uncomfortably long to figure out especially during something you wanna keep fast paced like combat. Unfortunately im also cursed with a pretty bad case of Murphism and can often go through whole 4 hour sessions without rolling above a 10. So to combat my awful math abilities i’ve started using Dnd Beyond to roll my dice which will automatically add up all my damage or proficiency bonuses. However i have also noticed now that im using an online roller im rolling astronomically better, and critting multiple times a session! So i ask the church, do i walk with the dice devil now that i have strayed away from physical dice and prevent the other players from hearing the click clack everyone keeps talking about? or am i just being blessed by dice christ through the power of the internet? or have i finally killed god with my machine? ps hate the show and ive never listened to it and if i did, it probably wouldn’t help me laugh when im at my lowest

Haley Lukes

I must confess for my sins and transgressions against Dice Christ. I run DND for middle school ages students and I regularly change the HP of enemies that my students PC's are facing. Sometimes I will add HP if they are doing exceptionally well in combat and I don't have more planned and sometimes I will take off HP if they are doing not so great. I want this to be a fun experience for them as this is most of these kid's first time playing DND and PC's going down during combat is a fun killer for a lot of these kids. I know that changing HP isn't the greatest thing to do but I want these students to remember their time playing dnd as a positive and not something that they begrudgingly came to each week because their parents had already paid for it. Forgive me Dice Christ for my transgressions and let me live on with the knowledge that you will be walking by my side as I host 3 more dnd groups this academic year.

Zhade

The case of the Grundle Shot Rakshasa To the Malevolent Murph, Entrepid Emily, Courageous Caldwell and that jerk James or whatever. I bring you the case of the hellish crotch shot. I'm dming 2 campaigns in a shared world. One is in the 9 hells where this takes place. Many players play in both, save for one. This player is playing a wizard/artificer. They were in the Abyss looking for a way to get back into the hells. While in the palace of the demon prince of pleasure, the team met a peaceful Rakshasa who was reading in the corner of the party room. This NPC was designed to provide information and an alternative method of creating a portal back to hell. However, halfway through the talks my player interrupts (he discords in so that might be a factor) and goes on a rant about Star wars and Han Solo before saying he fires 3 eldrich blasts under the table into this guy's.... Private quarters. He has limited magic immunity so was unaffected by it, but became hostile and bid them farewell without a fight. Later on this same player tossed a lot stick of dynamite at him from afar with no provocation. My dear, blind justices, was he right to attack my NPC because the talk was taking longer than he would have liked? Should I have made him more interesting or done something to get the point across better? What should I do next? I have yet to speak with this player but feel I should. I look forward to listening to Jackson read this to you and your response.

Cheyenne

Dearest justices. Period. I come requesting both judgement and prepresident. We lucked out with our neighbors. Plans to play dnd continually foiled until we found these new friends. Now, I'm basically the forever DM. My neighbor, M, wanted to DM for his birthday. He had us all make lvl 8s, we got cake, and got our asses kicked by a beholder. M did a great job. B, however, a friend of Ms who plays a fair bit of D&D seemed to constantly find something wrong with the way M was DMing. I, as a follower of the Murph-style law of play, spent half my time saying the words "DM says what goes." Cut to the key question. The beholder is within melee of 2 PCs. It runs. They both take attacks of opportunity. However! The first one to attack has the new rules version of sentinel. Which hits. Stopping the beholder in its tracks. B (the other person to attack) still wants to get an attack of opportunity. DM rules that because the beholder didn't move, he doesn't get it. Whining abounds, but beyond that it was an awesome session and M had a great birthday. Please judge the guilty party and set a precedent for future attacks of opportunity when the baddie is frozen in place and can't leave melee. Thank you for your endless wisdom. Also, hi Jake, didn't see you there.

Marissa Mars

Hello radiant, magnificent, and omnipresent? Judges and the lowly lowly wilted side salad of a bailiff, Jakey. I present to you “Justice for Papa.” I am 1 of 6 party members in an online Dnd game, I joined an already existing random group on discord. So my DM has a habit of splitting up the party leading to one of us being left out for entire sessions, sometimes even 2 sessions. Ive been playing with them for 6 months and it’s happened around 5-6 times to myself and maybe once for a couple other people. He always says that “he will get to my scenes soon” but end up focusing on the other party members combat/scenes and we have to wrap up the session before even getting to me. Meaning I spend 5+ hours in a discord call, saying absolutely nothing. So the problem began when a grueling combat with all party members except me that lasted the last 4 hours of the entire 5 hour session. My character was put into a magical coma, so I figured I wouldn’t be role playing any time soon. While the rest of the party was playing, I decided I wanted to play my favorite internet computer game, Papas Freezeria, one of many in the Papas games. My DM checked up on me but once I told him that “It’s cool, I’m keeping myself occupied with a game” He got really weird and didn’t check in the rest of the session. His mood noticeably shifted to annoyed and they finished their combat, as expected I didn’t get my chance for a scene before the session ended. After the session the DM messaged me privately and told me I was rude and disrespectful for not paying attention. I told him I always take notes during other peoples roleplay scenes but not during combat, especially when I’m not involved. I also mentioned that I wasn’t playing anything that took too much of my attention and I still heard everything that was happening it was just Papas Freezeria. He then said “That’s stupid and that if im not interested in actually playing Dnd that I shouldnt be in the party anymore”, i got kinda heated and told him that I can’t play Dnd if my character is constantly left out. The conversation back and forth was unproductive, I did use the fact that it wasn’t like I was playing a game like Baldurs gate, it was just Papas Freezeria. So I ask of thee, am I in the wrong for seeking some sort of entertainment through the wholesome game of Papas Freezeria while practically being in a time out or should I have payed attention to the hours of combat I’m not included in? I await your wise wisdom.

Jake's Wife's Boyfriend

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

Mike Conroy
>>160472856

For added context, the Snoopy thing did sneak up on me. He came in saying he wanted to be a werewolf. He then wanted his werewolf form to be like Snoopy, so I determined when he wolfs out it resembles Snoopy. Then, he chose for an ability to be able to fly, which became Snoopy flying his dog house, and I tried to save it by him being bitten by a cartoon werewolf where he's a regular guy but when he wolfs out he's cartoonish like Snoopy. This was where I thought it ended, but then in session he never once was in human form, never spoke, and was just straight up Snoopy all session. The only reason I didn't submit this as a case is because I know by the Tyler Precedent that it was my fault for letting him play Snoopy at all.

DuckerQuackson

To the esteemed justices of the crit—and, begrudgingly, Jerky— I present the case of Dr. Danger and Mr. Sense I was playing in a one-shot set in the aftermath of a battle we lost in our main campaign, where a ragtag group of new characters was tasked with cleaning up the mess left by our regular heroes. Enter Edgar Mules, my level 3 artificer alchemist/level 2 barbarian tortle. Edgar’s shtick is his spell slots are made into elixirs, and his barbarian rage was reimagined as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-style transformation, turning him from a timid little nerd into a battle-thirsty confident jock. During an intense battle to decide the fate of an entire district in our campaign world, I had Edgar retreat into his shell using Shell Defense. This tortle ability boosted his AC at the cost of mobility and imposing disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws among other things. But as a barbarian, Edgar had Danger Sense, granting advantage on those same Dexterity saving throws against spells effects you can see. Things came to a head when the DMPC lobbed a Fireball into the fray, aiming to turn the tide of the battle—or, in Edgar’s case, roast a tortle as he was also caught in the fray. I was given disadvantage on the save and yet I can't help but wonder: should Edgar have had a fighting chance to dodge his doom with Danger Sense, or was his shell always fated to be his fiery coffin? I leave it to you, honorable justices—and Jerky—to decide if Edgars fate was a tort-ally fair call, or did my dm just crack under the heat.

Dragonkillbot

Your crit Justices, of the oh so honorable court that stand above all in honor and justice, of course and always above Bailiff jake who i think dropped a bowl of spaghetti on his only good Randy Garments T-Shirt I bring the case of the Hopeless player, I have been the DM for this Gestalt campaign for over a year and there has been a constant issue that seems to come up. One of the players, mind you there are only two, will always lose hope in every final/end of arch boss battle, and labels me as unable to create balanced encounters. THEY HAVEN'T LOST! These encounters are difficult and are supposed to make you think but he calls it quits AFTER ONE FAILURE OF A HIS PLAN, SPELL, OR ATTACK. I've brushed him off and was able to still create a pretty fun time BUT LAST session broke the camel's back. This was the end of a long arc where the players have been defending their home cities from an attack by an ice lich queen riding on her dracolich, bringing her armies to their door, they have lost allies and even lost the castle. In the Final battle, I wanted to add a bit of spice so i looked into MCDM Flee Mortal and added Villain Actions to spice things up, I gave them the heads up, The player complained, again ignored, but initiative was rolled, The PL (Problem player) went first and Crit, ooh goody, He's a Gestalt Rogue (assassin), Dragonsoul (custom class), so he was about to do an absurd amount of damage, which the lich responded by using one of her innate ability similar to Silverbarbs but only causing a reroll, which made him roll a Nat 2 (shoutout). IMMEDIATELY, PL gets pissed says there's no hope, and asks the other player how he wants to die cause there is no way to win. I wish this was him joking but he was actually distraught and upset. I want to also give the heads up, that I am by no means stingy with magic items both of them have Artifact level Items that could be the main focus of other campaigns and they individually can do 60-70 points of damage. I have to make bosses harder or they might one shot them.... regardless, tell me Judges and dirty Bailiff am I in the wrong for trying to create challenging encounters for my broken PC's or should I ease up and let my players rule the world. I humbly lay myself at your whims

emilythecoffeewench

To the righteous Crit Justices and the venerable Bailiff, I present my a case with my beloved DM's permission. At 5th level, we battled some tweens and one of them crit on my vampire party member with guiding bolt. She dropped, no death saves, taking double because it was radiant. She was also our cleric so no one could bring her back. She was eventually brought back through Frankenstein fuckery though. However! During another battle, my dm tried to kill a beloved npc but had the insta-kill rules slightly wrong. He thought you needed negative half their max HP instead of negative their total max HP. I spoke up, but my dm and the player behind the vampire disagreed. I did not think I was wrong so I looked it up, spoke up again, and sent a quote explaining the rule. It was awkward as we realized that our vampire shouldn't have died all those months ago. The npc lives on, but I feel bad correcting my dm. Am I in the wrong? I await your judgement.

Eryn Galen

To the most esteemed, glorious justices and their dollar store bailiff Jack, I bring against *myself* the case of the Enabled DM. This DM is a longtime friend of mine. Before I ever joined their table, I was in the habit of sending them things I found - stat blocks for difficult homebrew monsters, encounter ideas, cursed items, etc - bc they would occasionally take one of these things and throw it at their party. I would make jokes and find out later it had been implemented, and it would be funny. Now, I am a player at their table. I physically cannot stop myself from still sending jokes and ideas to my dm, but now I see the results firsthand, up to and including what had to be the quickest homebrew monster I've ever seen after a joke about hermit spiders and skulls, which to date is the only fight I've ever seen the party actually struggle with, but which my cleric took exactly no damage from. My cleric has also been given an incredible amount of immunities after i made jokes about it, such as to blinded, deafened, unconscious, and poison, as well as it being ruled that my character does not need sleep and can stay perpetually on watch over long rests, doesn't need air, and has crit negation on attacks made against them. These all follow jokes to my DM that were taken as requests or ideas to be implemented, as they have stated "You chose to play as a skeleton, so I can have fun with this." Often, my cleric is left as the only member of the party who *isn't* struggling, and I can't help but feel that it's at least partially my fault for continuing to enable my DM. They're having fun and the rest of the table seems to think it's hilarious that I'm immune to so much, as well as whenever a joke gets made into an encounter, but I can't help but feel that I often inadvertently make things more difficult for the party, but easier for myself. Should I have shut up and not kept giving my DM ideas? I humbly await your judgement.

Vincent Ashford

To the beautiful justices and the Rizzed up bailiff Alphonse. I present the case of "why the roll?" I played in a one shot with a friend of mine who DMs for another game I play in. I made sure my stats were very rogue so I can be the best rogue to ever rogue. Final battle, I was caught sneaking in the shadows (Nat 1) and pretended to be a new follower to this corrupt clerics cult. I managed to get close to where they were and next to this tall humanoid stone structure. My first action is to roll behind structure and pull out bow. From other side shoot cleric and because of rogue things I did some pretty big damage. Then with cunning action I rolled to hide back behind the statue. With a 25 I was one with the shadows behind the statue. Evil cleric walks forward 15 feet and attacks me. I was shocked as my understanding they would have to make a roll to see if they see me. The DM said well I am still standing behind the statue. I said but you confirmed that lighting was poor (only a fire in the middle of room so shadows are casted everywhere due to these structures) so wouldn't they have to roll to see me. A few minutes of back and forth and then I conceded as they are the DM. We ended up winning and I went down for the first time in my 7 year career. Justices, was I incorrect in my beliefs of the rogue abilities or should I have been graced with a perception check before my life was reduced to rolling death saves? I await your decision. P.S. we still play in the other campaign and have fun with friends so the decision hasn't impacted my fun with them.

Mike C.

To the illustrious justices, but especially Justice Murphy, who I am afraid will once again turn against me when he hears my update to a previous case: I bring an update to the “permissive Anchorman DM” case from a while back. To answer a question, we played this game in college when we were freshmen in 2009. But that is not the only update I bring: we got together again this Christmas for a reunion and we played another Anchoman one-shot: same characters, same DM. The only difference: I walked to the DM before the one-shot and gave him Justice Murphy’s advice - kill a PC early, and keep them dead, don’t let them just kip up because they don’t feel like rolling a new character. This happened almost exactly like it did in college, our rogue Brian Fantana was killed by an Owlbear, and the DM narrated how we - his friends and fellow news anchors - watched as his soul left his body forever. At first this was met with silence from the table, and then uproarious laughter as all of our characters had to immediately begin to grieve and process Brian Fantana’s death. That player rolled a new news anchor (Champion Fighter Veronica Corningstone) and we finished the rest of the one shot and had a great time reconnecting. I thank the court for their recommendations, and once again beg Justice Murphy’s forgiveness for making him hear about Anchorman.

James Laky

To the Magnanimous and Revered servants of Dice Christ. This…is not my confession. Nor is it even about DnD. My wife and I were playing a dice based Jane Austen game with my sisters, wherein you collect stats like wit, beauty, and friendliness in order to try and woo Mr. Darcy and other literary hunks of hospitality. In the pivotal proposal stage of the game, my wife, attempting to marry the same man as me, rolled a cocked die, but insisted that it came up as a 5! I was left as an old maid, and my wife ran away with my man. Saints of the Church, I ask you not for forgiveness, but for an inquisition. I told my wife that dice Christ would be angry with her, but she was unimpressed. I throw myself at your feet, and beg of you to teach her to fear the dice.

Andrew Bonkginya

Dear esteemed, graceful justices, and sweet baby bailiff Yak, I've been playing with a group for years, and we all get along great typically having no issues, However, during one of our campaigns I made a centaur rune knight fighter, with the build in mind that I could wield a lance one handed as if I was riding a mount because of my horse legs. For the first few sessions, I played this way and had fun with my character, despite how often the DM had ladders, trapdoors, and other environmental obstacles that sometimes stopped my Pc from being involved, once causing me to miss an entire combat. And during the middle of our seventh session, the dm questioned how I was able to use a shield. I told him and he said that centaurs still have to control their own legs, and that's why they don't have the control to use a lance with one hand, and that I would need to change my weapon or character build to keep playing. Justices, do you think centaurs should be able to wield weapons as if they are mounted creatures? Or would that make them overpowered? I humbly await your judgement.

Poorna Athreya

To the most bubbliest, benevolent, smash-tastic-ified judges and the wicked bailiff Jellaba, I present you the case of the Icebound grandson. My friend and I decided to unroll in a PvP D&D tournament as part of a fun cross-D&D discord server event, as a grandma/grandson duo. (The grandma is a wizard and is disappointed in her sorcerer/cleric grandson’s lack of academic appetite) One of our opponents cast Rime’s binding Ice on my grandson which froze him in place and brought him to down to zero HP. On my turn, I administered a healing potion as my action and used my bonus action to fae step him away to another part of the arena, as a spring Eladrin. My problem is this: our DM ruled that the ice would stay with my grandson and restrain him until he used an action to free himself, as according to the spell the “area is hindered with ice formations” and the area would travel with my grandson when he was teleported. I would go so far as to say that this ruling cost us the victory. Was our DM incorrect or must I and my grandson hang our heads in shame and vent this drama at the family dinners?

Wyred

May it please the most Supreme of Courts and tickle the bailiff’s fancy until he wets himself… I present the case of the Bullseye Druid! My partner was playing a game DMed by her long-term friend with a couple other second-degree friends. They invited me to join and, since the party was two Rogues and a Barbarian starting at third level, I made a Grasslands Druid to specialize in stealth and healing. The DM was also running the same module, Avernus I think, for another group. They thought it would be fun if both parties “raced” through an underwater grotto obstacle course to retrieve some McGuffin for a local town festival. The DM was very clear that NO ONE WOULD BE ALLOWED DIE FROM PvP as part of this competition, though Mario Kart-type shenanigans seemed to be expected. My Druid did quite well navigating the nature-based challenges, naturally, and we avoided some combat using Pass Without Trace. In the final chamber there was a large shark guarding the treasure. The DM said both groups had gone about the same speed in our separate sessions, so the other party of six came in at the same time from a different direction. I suggested—via Psychic Whispers, courtesy of our Soul Knife Rogue—that we should use our stealth to grab the treasure and make a clean getaway without fighting. It seemed like a good option to avoid PvP and my Druid didn’t like the idea of killing the shark. However, the DM ruled that Pass Without Trace didn’t conceal us from the other party because we were in a large, open chamber and made everyone roll initiative. I felt like we should have at least gotten a Stealth VS Perception roll but let it go because I felt sympathetic that the DM was already doing so much cat herding. Our Soul Knife eventually managed to grab the McGuffin, which was an amulet. Plan B was to run a sort of Dash Action relay with it. I cast Invisibility on our Soul Knife so he could get away from the fighting while the Barbarian ran interference. Then my partner’s Tabaxi Trickster Rogue used Mage Hand to grab the amulet from our Soul Knife and move ~100 feet away using some crazy class/race combo. At this point the other party’s Wizard told his group to “Focus on the Druid and break his concentration!” since they thought our Invisible Soul Knife still had the amulet. Here, I’d like to pause and bring two pieces of evidence to the court’s attention: 1) the whole session was taking place in an UNDERWATER grotto with the benefit of potions for breathing and 2) the Wizard was the DM’s husband. Meta-gaming aside, Mr. Wizard would have no way of speaking to his party members. I pointed this out but the other party still turned their attacks on me—despite already being in combat with a big angry shark—and I quickly went down. By then our Rogues were long gone with the amulet and the Barbarian was able to stabilize and scoop me. Despite us “winning” the competition in the end, I still felt about an ocean’s worth of salty. Your honors, should our stealth plan have been given a fair chance? Should the DM have intervened to uphold her “no PvP death” rule, or at least stopped the meta-gaming focus fire? I await your verdict with bated Potion-of-Water-Breath! P.S. We are no longer friends with these people but that’s a story for another time…

feoran97

To the Ultimate Supreme Crit Justices and the lowely Bailiff Tina, I bring the case of the one shot catapult. I am a long term player and DM (over 5 years) and I'm playing with a new DM and two new players (I'm a player in this campaign). The DM asks me regularly for advice, as he is new to the game and I have more experience. One of the new players (Banjo the tree frog wizard) was attempting to make ammo for the catapult spell by having the artificer make essentially shrapnel rounds that would burst into 6 projectiles upon impact. The problem was, he was trying to calculate the damage as 3D8 for each piece. This would make the damage 18D8 for a first level spell, and up to 66D8 damage for a 9th level spell. I argued that it would not splinter and split that damage, to which he brought up ballistic rounds for a firearm. I argued that the catapult spell propels something 90 ft in 6 seconds, or about 10 miles per hour, which wouldn't be fast enough to do the same kind of damage. His argument was that I was crushing his creativity and couldn't compete with my damage so was feeling left out in combat (I am a lvl 3 rogue and level 7 gunslinger inspired by deadeye). Am I wrong to get involved and save my new DM from setting a precedent that this was OK, or should I have just stayed out of it and let Banjo have his nuke? I humbly await your almighty wisdom and judgment.

Alec Salazar

The case of the beast-less beast master Hello Justices and the stenographer. I am in a campaign with some close friends playing a ranger Beast Master named Stanky Franky. Stanky is a sewer exterminator who befriended a giant rat named trash to be his Beast Master companion. I often expressed my deep love for my rat and the length I went to take care of him. Recently we were dispatched on a quest to retrieve a magic item from a tomb across a swamp, as we crossed the swamp, we rolled encounter checks from a table our DM made. One of these encounters had a family of giant swamp rats fighting off a group of vultures. We jumped into battle helping the rats, and after the vultures were slain my DM had me roll a perception check. I got an 18 and he told me that Trash looked longingly at the swamp rats and my character could tell he wanted to stay. Not wanting to force my friend to stay with me, we said goodbye and continued on to the temple without him, I mentioned maybe he would have changed his mind later since he was a city rat. On the way back we all kept our eyes peeled but alas there was no rat to be seen. I thought maybe my DM had something bigger planned for Trash but soon after we encountered a vendor in the swamp selling a selection of new exotic animals. when I asked my dm what was up he said the encounter was called “goodbye trash” and he would not be returning. When I expressed frustration that I lost my beast, my DM said that I could have forced him to stay with me. I feel this goes against everything being a beastmaster is actually about. Justices, am I wrong to feel like I was forced to give up my rat without feeling like a total jerk, or should I roll over and buy a bloodhawk? I humbly await your decision.

HighGrove

To the Right Honorable Judges of the Supreme Crit and the exciting new DM Jake (congratulations!), I bring the Case of the Goodbye Gift Grift: In my college years I had the pleasure of being part of the an amazing DND campaign that stretched many years (big shout out to DM Kyle F; you set my imagination on fire). The adventure was a rousing success, but one moment has continued to nag at the back of my mind: the exit of the original party lineup's wizard. It was a natural, no bad feelings situation (he had finished school and was moving), and his exit was justified in-lore as his character dedicating himself to studying the portal-arcana we would eventually need to rescue another character from Bear Hell. He had his final session, got in his bows and roses, and exited with the vast majority of the party's cash supply to fund his research. Smash cut to four sessions later, and one of the party members asks the DM if we've heard how the research is progressing. Imagine our surprise to hear that no research was being done. The wizard had absconded with nearly all of our gold, not to research how we might confront the Bear Devil, but to fuck off to a personal Retirement Plane like some sort of Elminster meets Danny Ocean. I put it to the court: Was this a dick move, or an objectively hilarious goof? At the time more than one party member insisted that stealing from other party members is intrinsically toxic behavior, while others felt that happening as a players' final act took it out of the realms of bad table behavior and into the realms of storytelling. Were we rightfully fleeced like the sheep we are, or should the wizard's Retirement Plane have been raided by the Interplanar Bureau of Investigation? I humbly await your judgement.

Alexander Powers

Greetings to the stylish and magnanimous judges/Mother and Fathers Axford, Murphy and Tanner, as well as the contemptable and ignoble Bailiff Jake/equally stylish and magnanimous Father Hurwitz. Should it please the court-church (may it never be split in twain), I have a case of the Bad Prankster vs the Novice DM. Come back with me to the year 2014. Barack Obama was President, 5e was shiny and new, and all around America very smart and funny young men were incessantly but rightfully quoting the recent masterpiece Anchorman 2. I was DMing my very first campaign with a group of close friends, but unwisely allowed someone I suspected from the beginning would be a problem player to join. Let's call this player's character Jack. I unwisely allowed Jack to serve a trickster god of mischief and chaos despite my better judgement. To my surprise, everything seemed to be going smoothly in the first few sessions. Until, in the second or third session, another character (let's say Jill) found a lute in an abandoned and ransacked wagon. Jill's player quickly became very emotionally attached to the lute, as it reflected the player's own dedication to musical instruments. In comes Jack. Jack becomes *obsessed* with breaking the lute, for no discernable reason. Jill's player is somewhat sensitive, and as this seemed to be an in-game effort to destroy something simply because the player valued it, this came off to me as just plain bullying. And so, I decided not to let that happen. First, I reminded Jack's player that Jack did not know the lute existed yet because they had not been around when it was retrieved. Then, Jack failed a stealth check to root through Jill's bags ("just because"). Next, Jack discovered that the lute was made magically invulnerable and could not be destroyed through brute force. The repeated and dogged attempts to break this instrument were already clearly hurting Jill's player's feelings, and I became increasingly determined not to let it happen and frustrated with Jack's player's antics- and that the player would not take the hint that I wasn't allowing this mean-spirited prank. Eventually, on the umpteenth attempt to steal and destroy the lute, I narrated that a rock had fallen from the sky onto Jack's head, and Jack was unconscious for several minutes. This finally got the player to move on, but they sulked for the rest of the session and later told me that I was being "unfair," and that since their god was a god of chaos it would make sense for them to want to destroy the lute as an act of random discord. My question, judges, is was I wrong to handle the situation in the manner that I did, blocking Jack with in-game events and giving strong hints to stop? Should I have just pulled Jack's player aside and asked them what their deal was? Should I have let them break the lute and have them deal with the consequences, even though I thought it would upset my other player in real life? I know that Jack's player was kind of being an asshole, but now even 10 years on I can't help but think there must have been a better way to handle it. P.S. The problem player has since gotten much better and no longer does this kind of thing. They really aren't a bad person, they just had a lot of issues to work through at the time.

Connor Pryor

Hello dutiful and venerable crit justices and bailiff jabe? Maybe? I am a teacher at a high school dming a home brew campaign for the first time. It is for a group of 6 freshmen boys who love to get off topic or argue with each other about rules and plays. In doing so, some of them manage to go VERY off the rails in most sessions, while others are trying to play the campaign. I have felt the need to sort of railroad them along so as to be able to complete their heroic quest of saving the land of Elderath from a dragon named Steve. Overall, my question is this: Normally, I let things go pretty off rails in my personal campaigns, but with the immaturity of my freshmen, is it wrong to railroad them along with hopes of completing the campaign by the end of the school year? I await your righteous judgment

Maeve Pagan

To the sweet, supple, and sensuous judges, and the man in a shockingly realistic Bailiff Jake costume—Hell, it could be Bailiff Jake himself— I present to you the case of the vampiric vibe avoidant PC. About two years ago, my amazing roommate DMed a vampire hunting one shot for our friends which was set in late nineteenth century Transylvania. She was meticulous in curating a certain spooky aura for the evening, even lighting candles throughout the otherwise dark room and wearing a black cape throughout the session. With a story taking place during such a specific time and place, one would assume that the players would create characters that at least somewhat match the energy, but one friend (let's call her Z), a first time player, insisted on role playing as a valley girl-esque 21 year old interpretive dance major at UCLA named Chastity, all the while being adamant that she’d maintain a toxic long distance text relationship with her boyfriend Chad back in California. Upon frequent gentle yet exasperated reminders from our saintly patient DM that her intention was for us to play a Victorian gothic horror session, the friend argued that she could play whatever she wanted as long as she was still hunting vampires, even if that involved her role playing texting her Californian situationship. Wise judges, was my friend in the wrong for refusing to adhere to the DM’s carefully curated vibe of the one shot, or am I just being too grumbly towards a first time player exploring the magic of dnd? I seek your wisdom and prostrate my humble self before your greatness.

Nyx

Is it a sin to lay off the gas? I roll like shit. Because of this proclivity for bad rolls I balance my combat around it. It has always been a thing in my games and in our pre session ritual of rolling 5d20 I rolled a nine total so I assumed it would be a good combat for my players. I. Was. Wrong. I rolled averagely and things got dire. I feared a TPK in a moment that was supposed to be scary but not lethal showing of an evil’s empire soldiers and I started to play the baddies dumb and less focused. Splitting damage and pealing off to complete other objectives, “forgetting” abilities and generally playing in a dumb way. Because of this and a few clutch rolls from my party they were able to just barely pull it out. After the game I was talking to one of them and though relieved that her character didn’t die she knew me well enough to know I threw the fight and that my average rolls were the problem in the balance. I ask the church is it wrong to throw a fight with bad tactics and should I learn to fear average rolls? I lay judgment at the feet of dice christ and their holy clergy/court.

Pedantic

To the most critical of justices, and the most justly criticized of bailiffs; I seek redress for an ongoing campaign of ducking. My players have been coming to my home for a weekly gamenight for nearly 2 years now, and about a year ago, one of them found a miniature rubber duck hidden near my campaign books. An old college friend had left it there as a callback to an older joke, which was mildly amusing. The problem is that my players immediately bought in, procured several hundred miniature ducks, and have been hiding them around my house every since. I've found them in bags of cookies, in my slippers, in my coat pockets, hanging from light fixtures, in my freezer, perched on top of computers and doors, lurking in my shower, everywhere one could conceivably put a small duck. Worse, because I am chronically absent-minded and these friends are in my house weekly, they've consistently found the stash of all the ducks I've gathered and redistributed them, occasionally introducing new ducks into ecosystem. I've swung from amused to annoyed, to outright haunted by the duck's small beady eyes. My question is this; given this bit has run for a year, am I within my rights to take vengeance on my friend's PCs? And if so, what kind of duck themed monstrosity should I unleash on them, so they can feel a fraction of my terror?

Zon

To the almighty judges, and the the semimighty bailiff, I write in today in need of help; I submit the case of the Jackson twins, something of a Big Whig problem. I work with two great guys, both named Jackson. We work in a kitchen, all of us are cooks, and the name mix up when calling out orders happens frequently, to their delight. They are also best friends, almost attached at the hip. I introduced them to DnD after they got caught up in the Baldurs Gate 3 wave. Much to my dismay, during session zero Jackson number 1 introduced his character, a Rabbit folk Paladin, as something of a Big Whig. His name literally being Big Whig. Whatever, that's fine. Until Jackson number 2 introduced his character as a rejected tiefling from Avernus who was, something of a Big Whig of himself, literally titled Big Whig, before being stripped of his power and ejected from the hells. He then went on to meet Big Whig 1, and become fast friends over the shared name. At level three, the tiefling warlock took pact of the chain and named his quasit Big Whig 3. So now I've got the Jackson 1 and 2, playing Big Whig 1 and 2, while on my end voicing Big Whig number 3, the quasit. So, Judges, would I be justified to find a way to end this absolute madness of name issues, even though they have a great time with it? I thought the joke would die soon, so I let it go at the beginning, but somehow it has snowballed and even brought in other people at the table. They all love it. It is driving me mad, managing initiative tables with 5 of the same damn name on it, and getting half the table looking at me when I use the name Jackson or Big Whig. Judges, what do? Help me.

Captain Morgan Pirate Wizard

I think this is more of a confession is it weird to miss a fictional mermaid that your PC kind of dated

Taylor

To the illuminating justices three Tanner, Axford, and Murphy, and the dim, not so bright, bailiff Jakey Jakey eat some cakey. I bring you the case of the hermit shit-mancer. I was building my first home brew campaign for my pre-existing dnd group. I was having a blast building a lore rich world, involving the current pantheon of gods being replaced by a sinister new pantheon acting through their chosen (but the new gods where actually forgotten eldritch gods, and their chosen were disguised mindflayers, pretty neat-o right?). I shared some current world details with my players so that they help build their own characters and back stories and bounce ideas off me in private if they wanted to have secrets. Apparently to one player my world meant nothing (which is okay if the character at least cool), and he came to me with a "shitty" idea. He wanted to be a "Shit-mancer", and spell caster character that would just cast reflavored shit based spells. "Produce Flame" would become "Produce shit", "Fireball" is "Shitball" and I can't bare share more examples. Me and my friends are all in our 30s, and I even mentioned to him that I don't think the others would find this character fun to play with. He responded with "I'm sure it will be okay, my co-worker gave me the idea and thinks it is hilarious". To give him the benefit of the doubt, I even asked other players in secret what they thought of the idea and they all agreed the idea was dumb. In the end I ended up starting the campaign with out him, as I couldn't convince him to create a different character. Judges was I wrong for not letting this player bring his shit-mancer into my campaign? Or should I have let him literally shit all over everything I created? P.S. Before justice Murphy suggests it, I am no longer friends with this person.

Danny F - wait no that’s too obvious - D Fox

Gday from Australia Justice Jourts. I was running a Halloween oneshot using the Madhouse of Tasha’s Kiss module with some mates who are either mostly new or brand new to dnd. We came into a fight with a monster who cast Animate Chains to attack the party with multiple chains each turn (sick), and very shortly after that our wizard successfully cast Hold Person on the monster. As I’m moving to the next turn, the wizard suddenly pipes up, “Hey, don’t the chains stop moving since the monster is paralysed?” I check the spell description, and damn it, he’s right. Suspicious, I ask, “Did you look that up online?” He sheepishly admits he did. I then gently—but firmly—ask him not to Google content mid-game because he is using knowledge he shouldn’t fairly have. Fast forward a bit, and the same wizard starts insistently suggesting a long rest in the middle of the dungeon so he can get his spell slots back. Wanting the one shot to move faster, and NOT wanting to introduce an unplanned encounter or give them a consequence free long rest the middle of a dungeon I eventually, tiredly ask him “please just don’t”. Finally, later, the wizard messages me and apologises for “ruining the game.” Which made me feel WAY worse—because the game wasn’t ruined. Sure, his metagaming was annoying, but now I’m wondering if I’m the bad guy for making him think he’d tanked the session. So, I beg of thee, Jourts: who’s in the wrong here? The metagaming wizard, or me, the DM who fumbled the spell mechanics and squashed the long-rest dreams? P.S. The chains stopped moving, but the guilt? Yeah, that stayed animated.

Zoologist440

To the lugubrious Justices and that freaky little baby Jerk. I bring you the Case of the Disinterested Detectives. I was running a third party module for my group of friends that centered around solving a mystery in an island village beset by a giant wolf creature. The campaign started great, with the party making their way to the island and encountering the monster the first night. When the players began to question the townsfolk, I laid out the various investigation hooks (ie. There is a strange manor on the island, the mist seems to always creep in from this direction) to which the players immediately replied, "Well has no one investigated those things?" I replied in character that the townsfolk were scared of venturing beyond the village for fear of the beast. The party seemed incredulous that no one would try to protect their town, but moved forward following a lead. At the next location they met another NPC who provided a bit more information and clues to follow. Again, the PCs asked why this NPC had not gone out to investigate this mystery themselves, to the point of playfully berating him for not being brave enough to try to stop this hulking nightmare beast themselves. At this point, I was frustrated and after a long rest in game, the party woke up with the mystery solved and the beast defeated, having galvanized the village into action the day before with their words. The players got the message and we played as if that never happened and had lots of mystery fun. Justices, was I wrong to react so harshly to my players wanting the NPCs to have done all the work for them? I humbly await your judgement.

Karol D.

To the Clergy of Dice Christ and the dutiful altar boy, forgive me for I have sinned. Last year, in a Curse of Strahd campaign, I played Trevor Oxford: a kind, albeit awkward tiefling artificer. He was meant to finish the work started by his master, however he unfortunately met his demise at the hands (or voice) of a banshee. Thankfully, I had a backup character: a retired Rune Knight named Darach. He was strong and trustworthy; all the traits and attributes that we needed in our party that were mostly casters. Eventually, Trevor was resurrected once our party acquired the components and although I knew that Darach was the better fit for our party mechanically, I immediately went back to Trevor despite not being as powerful. Can I ever be forgiven for putting the needs of my first character before the needs of both my party’s and Darach’s?

MimeticGoblin

To the enthralling Justices and soon to be DM Jake, I have a most dire confession to make. Since I started listening to NADDPOD as of mid 2023, I've filled every waking moment with your shows. I listen while I go on my walks, while I cook, hell even at work. Since I work in administration, your fantastic story telling and fun personalities keep my mind entertained while I crunch data and process routine paperwork. As of last month, I've fully caught up to everything you've put out. This is all well and good, except that I've made a habit of only working when I'm listening to your podcast. As a result, I've spent the last few days shirking my responsibilities until something new is released, and then racing to finish as much work as possible before the end of the given program. I've Pavlov'd myself and I wait impatiently for Jake's campaign to begin so that I may yet again be a contributing member of society. Can Dice Christ ever forgive this gluttonous listener? P.S. My friends have recommended Dimension 20 and CritRole and I'm ashamed to say that I've caught up fully to those as well.

DJ Matty Lil Crits

To the Wife Worm and Wife Guys of the Supreme Crit, and whatever Jill must legally call her "husband" Jock, I present the Neglectful Husband. We were a group of lv 7s fighting a lich and his minions. the DMPC cleric had thrust her sword into the lich's chest to absorb his magic so we would take only half damage to lower the difficulty of the fight. Knowing the lich couldn't remove the sword, my bard cast heat metal on the sword. After 2 rounds of my bullshit, my DM ruled that I'd heated the sword enough to melt it, even though that's not how the spell works. I was fine with it, and took it as a compliment for my spell usage. We won without any permanent deaths thanks to the cleric's revivify and her father, a Duke of Hell, dragging the boss to hell to completely skip the second phase. My actual grievance is that on the way home, the cleric's husband, an ancient silver dragon and my DM's pathfinder character, arrived to guide us home. As we celebrated our victory, the dragon cornered my character demanding I buy his wife a replacement sword, as the sword I melted had been an anniversary present. As a lv 7 bard, I did not have the funds to buy a new legendary class sword. He said don't worry, I can pay it off later. Judges, I do not want to buy him a sword. if he wants his wife to have a sword to defend her, I recommend he be more present in her life. What say you? I humbly await the wisdom of her worm-li-ness and the compassion of the court.

SunKi11er

Dear Supreme Court justices, and that one guy with the beard who reads the cases I do not have a court case per se, because I am well aware I was in the wrong, but in fact a dice Christ confession of a misdeed long past, back when I was an emo 17 year old in the midst of lockdown/quarantine. I was playing a gnomish bard, with a very tragic backstory, inspired by my recent issues and ongoing estrangement from my biological father. I’d written a couple paragraphs down, which I had sent to my dm, a close friend who’s family had unofficially fostered on and off over the years, and honestly forgot about, up until it came up in session. When it did come up in game, that my characters old mentor was back and causing issues, I did what any emo 17 year old would do, and had my gnomish bard scamper away from the rest of the group and go off on her own, not entirely realizing how much of a wrench I was putting into the dms plans. Also, I should mention that it was only me, my friend (the dm), and my 12 year old brother playing, so part of me was subconsciously going off on my own was because he was getting on my nerves, as he was focusing more on wining rather than engaging with the world. Because duh, he was 12 My dm, using a tried and true NADDPOD approved method of dealing with problem players, pulled me aside to ask me to cooperate a little more with my brother, as he was visibly feeling frustrated and left out. Justices, I am very ashamed to say, that in a moment of depravity, my dumb ass 17 year old self proceeded to look them in the eye and unironically say: “I’m sorry, that’s just what my character would do.” I did not realize the severity of my sin, until much later, after binging most of NADDPOD’s discography, and going no contact with my shit dad, and while I have much empathy for 17 year old me, I still recognize my misdeed and prostrate myself in front of the holy deciples of dice Christ and ask for her forgiveness, should you see it fit. Also, p.s. my old dm listens to this show, so Chey, if you’re listening to this, I love you to pieces and thanks for putting up with teenage me, and introducing me to this show. It’s been my rock for the past five years, as have you♥️

DieBard

To the Honourable Judges and the Lice-free since '83 Bailiff, I bring you the case of the "Annoyed Newbie DM." About 15 years ago, I fell in love with D&D and needed some friends to play with. However, living in a fairly religious town, no one in my school played, and further, D&D was discouraged, and so I learned to DM myself, and invited my friends over for an evening of jest and merriment. When my schoolyard chums came over, I soon found out all but one of my friends had no inclination to actually play the game, but rather, fight each other. My players killed each other, and my remaining friend who had tried to play was devoured by worgs. When they all died, I went all Murph, and refused to run D&D for them ever again. My question is, should I have run games that more-aligned with my then-friends so that I could keep playing D&D, or was I right to freak out? This case is about to reach the statute of limitations, so I am bringing it forward in hopes that justice be served. Love, Diebard.

Rae Weiss

To the kind and benevolent justices and that guy they hang out with, I come to d&d by way of improv. My two favorite things to say while dming are "hell yeah you can!" and "why not?" I love to yes-and and tailor my stories to bits and goofs my players come up with. However, as you all know, just because you're lenient and fun does not mean you have no boundaries. Enter the shah halud scream from Dune (2021). We play over discord, and one of my players uploaded this to our soundboard. Judges, it is LOUD. It is LONG. And it is EASILY SPAMMABLE. So, before session 3 of this game, I disabled the soundboard. My players noticed and immediately started cajoling me for soundboard permissions back. I relented, but with one caveat: you can use the soundboard once, and then you're banned. I was razzed for this rule, but stood my ground. Immediately after getting permissions back, our gunslinger (Charles) pressed the shah halud scream. I told him I was writing down he had used his one, and if he used it again he would get banned. Well, an hour later, in the middle of combat, Charles hit the sad trombone button. I kicked him from the server, described his character vanishing in a puff of smoke, and continued combat. Judges, my players are split on whether I am a fair and just god or a cruel and unforgiving monster. I maintain I was clear about my boundaries (and even relented to allow him back after this arc) but they claim that my original rule was vague and he didn't even do the Dune scream a second time. When I asked Charles about it, he said it was "worth it" and when allowed back, he would "shah halud as soon as [he is] able." I await your ruling with baited breath.

DJCay

To the jolly, jovial, justices and the big bad bailiff, Jerk, I submit the following case. I have been a part of a campaign set in the Runeterra/League of Legends universe in the city of Bilgewater. My party and I were attempting to flee the country after accidentally causing the collapse of a large portion of the city of Bilgewater, killing thousands. In order to escape, we needed to procure a ship that was located on an island across the bay, requiring us to utilize smaller dinghies to reach our destination. According to the DM, my character was too large and heavy to be able to ride in one of the boats without sinking it (I am an 8’4 800lb Minotaur). Not wanting to be left out, I asked if it was possible for me to take a dinghy just for myself so I could stay with the party, it my DM was adamant that it wasn’t possible and that I needed to stay behind, so I did as to not waste more time in the session. The result was me waiting for FOUR REAL LIFE HOURS before the DM ended session as soon as the party returned to the docks. So I ask, genius justices and beautiful bailiff, was I wronged. At what point should the weight of a character come into play, and was I really too heavy to travel by boat? I leave this case in your capable hands. (P.S. - the previous session my DM had forced my character to have their weight reduced from 2200lbs to 800lbs)

Jackson D

To the honourable court and that little guy Jack, I present to you the case of the Long jump into Lava. To set the scene our Firbolg cleric was exploring a lost temple dedicated to his god, a homebrew god of the giants. Each room in this dungeon was themed around a different type of giant with this case set in a room dedicated to fire giants. To complete the room the party was required to fight fire elementals on platforms suspended 5 feet above a floor of lava and required the party to place motes of fire dropped by defeated elementals around the chamber to stop them from spawning. Standing at a L-shaped bend in the platforms, the Firbolg Cleric did not have enough movement to make it around the corner and into melee range with an elemental so he asked me (the DM) how far he could jump. As he was standing at the ledge, I told him how to calculate a standing long jump (ie you jump a number of feet half your strength score) which would not quite close the gap… so I told him I would allow him to attempt the jump and he would close the distance with a successful athletics check. He accepted and rolled a 5 and it looked like he would fall into the lava until the hafling rogue on the other side asked if they could use their reaction to try and catch him… to which he fittingly rolled a natural two (shout out to the two crew) and the Cleric slipped into the lava and taking 18d6 damage. The issue arose when the Paladin who was next in initiative and following the clerics lead jumped across the gap, however he took a running jump and crossed to the other side with ease. A fact that caused much laughter at the table for everyone but the cleric. What ensued was an heated argument between myself and the cleric that had he known that he could take a run up he would have done so and that I should have told him those rules. His argument was quickly shut down by the rest of the table and the cleric was clearly very annoyed. As a note by the next round the cleric was revived and pulled from the lava but due to the burns to his legs had his speed reduced to 10ft. I ask you noble judges, has the cleric been wronged here or had the years of razzing (mostly from the party) that have followed the event been just. For some background information, these are my childhood friends, we have played DND together for at least 5 years across three campaigns (probably 140 sessions), we have used the jumping rules frequently and this player has never read or opened the players handbook.

taii

To the honorable jugs and jake who i was told to bully. I am a first time person who submits a case, the case of the spice pouch. My fiance is our forever dm and tells everyone i am his problem player such as when i almost set off a fireball in a tiny room,and blinded his bad guy the beholder. but anyways he will not allow me to have a spice pouch. Every time i try to have one he refuses, he tells me its due to he is afraid i will somehow manage to use a mechanic to screw him over in the end. My logic is that per lotr we might run into a chicken or something but he refuses. Should i just accept spice pouch less adventures. I am awaiting your judgement (most likely if you say no i will probably still fight for spice pouch)

Bailey Wetherall

To the Supreme Crit Justices of the court and Amir’s friend that reads the cases and is the occasional honourary justice I guess; I bring you the case of the Movement Speed Controversies. My group has been playing off and on for the past 9 years or so, mostly in 5th edition though we have started to explore other systems now. This controversy has been an ongoing one among our table, never too heated but often leading to disagreement. In a game a couple of years ago I was playing as a scout rogue, our party had ambushed a convoy of goblins and managed to get a good few first rounds on them before they managed to gain on us. In order to gain advantage for sneak attack purposes I had been using the Steady Aim Feature. On one such turn where I had used steady aim an enemy later ended their turn within 5 feat of me, to which I declared that I would use the scout feature to move half my movement away from them. Our DM said that I could not as since I used steady aim, my movement speed for the round was now zero. I argued that the language was that my speed for my turn in initiative was zero, but it would return to 30 following my turn in initiative. This disagreement on movement has also bled into other conversations around the spell dissonant whispers where this same DM has declared that as it is “forced movement” the spell does not result in opportunity attacks being provoked, the table has disagreed stating that the spell makes the creature use its reaction to move away meaning that the movement should provoke an opportunity attack as it is using their movement rather than forcing them to move like in a push attack. The GM is also of the opinion that if dissonant whispers was used on a character that had used steady aim, they would not actually move anywhere, though this has not come up in combat for us yet. Is our table correct in this movement related matter? Or should the GM have right to paralyze us from the waist down for our movement related sins? I lay myself at the court’s mercy.

Myka

I appreciate everyone coming out, by now, you probably wonder why I have gathered you all here today. I bring to you the question of do mimics breath. We use to play in a group that would meet at a local bar. The sessions were a home built campaign by a dedicated and talented dm. (Who may be listening) During said campaign my thri-kreen order of scribes wizard/knowledge cleric had a run in with a door mimic. She was unaware of its presence, a result of her fascination with the mechanics of a living castle taking frantic notes (tbh my dm got me good with the trap) which bit her arm arm While the question of the trap isn't up for debate, the action I planned to take our next session remains unresolved. I ask the dm if a mimic needs to breath, and if so, would a create water spell for 10 gallons of water from my arm be enough to let me escape it's clutches. Our ride in this elevator has been short, but to this day I am unsure what the results would be as we had to disband sure to scheduling conflicts.

David Klein
>>160499345

Murph, would you make Caldwell buy Emily a new sword if he melted it making a pbj?

Matthew R

Hello Justices and our Baliff Jank. I offer the case of the Care Bear cleric: our group plays a text/play-by-post campaign and it’s been going for a few years. Our cleric is a huge fan of spamming Moonbeam, and as a Selune Twilight Cleric it’s on brand I guess. But he doesn’t prepare or cast healing spells often other than using us staff of healing (where his only healing spells are stocked, we checked his online character sheet through D&D Beyond). We’ve mentioned this bothers the whole party, but he doesn’t change. Justices, are we in the wrong for asking our cleric to heal, or are we jerks for asking him to change how he plays his character?

Brook Heater

To the Esteemed Judges of the Supreme Crit, Venerated Disciples of Dice Christ, and the diligent bailiff Jaque, I submit the Case of Horned Up Players In 2021, my friends and I were in college. One of them announced she wanted to try DMing & start a campaign for our group in a retro-scifi 5e setting. We all met, made our characters & sent her our backstories per her request before our first session proper. I was ecstatic. My course work didn’t allow for much creative writing. So the fact I could be part of this and escape real-life for a bit was amazing. My DM had created an elaborate scifi universe with 12 different planets, each inspired by a zodiac sign. Most of my friend group, including myself, had never participated in or watched actual play shows of DnD. The day of our first session arrived & we all piled into an apartment. Now, there were 2 main issues that arose during this session. The 1st being that my friend group, all of which were present at this session, totaled to be 11 playable characters (pc), and 1 first time DM. Out of the entire group, only 3 of the pc’s had actually played before. Everyone else was brand spanken-new. Our GM setup the first session to be a combat encounter on a grounded convict transport spaceship. The 1 min and 18 seconds (aka, 13 terns) worth of in-game combat took us 2 hours and 35 minutes to get through. Our poor DM was wrangling us like cats, trying to answer questions, update our whiteboard/battle aid & keep everyone focused on the game at hand. On average, each pc’s turn took about 12 min to get through, which lead to a lot of side conversations taking place to fill the time between new player questions & figuring out what to do. This now leads to the 2nd issue of the session: at that time, about half our friend group was dating each other. This was fine for most of the couples. They were content to keep their relationships out of character, at least for the first session. However, the wood-elf warrior secrete princess went against this sentiment. Throughout the session, she kept trying to surrender to the rouge investigator, who was her boyfriend at that time. She pleaded for the rouge to hand cuff her and take her in for questioning. Well, my smart ass, half in character, half not, told them to get a room, which derailed the group for several minutes as we all went in on the couple. Eventually, my turn finally came, and I was so excited to get to play. I played a Tiefling artificer and was one of the convicts being transported on the ship, so I was restrained for the majority of the battel. However, my arracacha buddy came aboard and asked if I could help, and then managed to free me from my restraints. I was so excited with all the possibility’s I could do with my turn. As so, as soon as I was free, I had the brilliant idea to flee the ship while I closed and locked all of the ship doors as soon as I left the ship. Trapping half of the group in the cockpit, the rest were in the hold trying to open all the doors again, meanwhile I try to stage a sneaky get away from the rest of the party. All of this was for naught, since this immediately took me out of the initiate, and made me sit while the rest of the party resolved the combat. Once combat was resolved, I was still in the middle of the space port hanger trying to hot-wire a ride, when another pc arrested me with some new-age hand-cuffs. As soon as they hit my character’s wrists, I said in my most snarky and confident voice, “Kinky…”. This immediately devolved the entire group into chaos, and we subsequently ended the session. Consequentially, this was also our last session of the campaign as well, which was devastating. So judges/clergy, I beseech you, was I wrong for saying kinky? Or was there anyway for this campaign to be salvaged?

Slightly.Lost

To the effervescent judges and the guy that's just trying to put his wife's boyfriend's kid through school, I bring you the case of... Fudged Stat rolls? I've been DMing for some friends for a couple years now. We finish our first campaign and recently started our second. Two of my players have had a total FIVE stats at 20 between their total of four characters. To make matters worse, they always have their characters rolled before session Zero. They're both incredibly great friends of mine, so I don't want to accuse them of cheating, but as a DM that gives a character sheet to every NPC that has any story significance, I've been able to get five 20s over 20-30 characters. Am I unlucky, or should I ask them to save stat rolls for session zero next time around?

Alicia moseid

To the esteemed judges and that one guy in the closet crying into his hand towel, I bring to you the case of the amazing DM. That’s right, a shout out to my awesome DM for managing three campaigns between 15 people, all of us are in different time zones and countries. Truly the best and I think that deserves a shout out. *he doesn’t have patreon*. He always goes with the flow, allows us to be silly but reels us in (even when we almost literally blow up the planet we are on), and delivers fun encounters that are sometimes balanced, lol, he gives us fun game mechanics, new invented toys to kill enemies with and inventive multidimensional (and multi-verse) plots. He’s a great DM and great friend. He embraces each of you as DM’s in his creativity, encounters, inventions, improve, and allowing us to womp him- only to womp us the next week (that’s right, weekly). Does he sleep? Probably not. Thank you for your time judges, he knows me as Sasira (one of my characters in one of his campaigns for I do participate in two of them).

Annika

To the lavender-scented judges and the pea-scented bailiff Jake. I bring forth the case of the illiterate dragon: My boyfriend DMs a campaign with me and my sisters. My pact of the chain warlock was in a trial that involved stealing an egg guarded by a dragon and her magical wards. For my turn, I had my lovely pseudodragon familiar (who can understand common and draconic) fly to the egg and read the draconic glyphs guarding it, then translate the details to me via our telepathic bond. My dm ruled that my familiar can’t read because “although it understands draconic, it cannot speak”. I lost the argument but have since stayed salty. Judges, am I wrong to be offended on behalf of my son who is a very smart and special boy?! I prostrate myself before your 80 foot tall bench.

Quantum OFZENTRIX

To the most Sagacious justices of the supreme Crit, and that fella who reads the cases who is most lowly, I bring the case of the Campaign Setting Hoodwink. Recently one of my players wanted to start a new campaign set in the MTG Ravnica setting, I was very excited as he is a big MTG fan while i know very little so I was excited to experience his knowledge of the lore. I made a loxodon storm sorcerer from the Izzet league and the campaign began with our respective guilds tasking us with exploring a mysterious tower. After a brief observation we accidently triggered a defense mechanism and were transported inside the tower, where a strange figure told us to beat the trials within to become gods. Turns out we weren't going to play in ravnica but instead in a isekei anime style fantasy world, where all the people where literal NPCs. I expressed a little disappointment as I had been really excited to explore Ravnica, but my friend is a fantastic DM so I said nothing and awaited session 2. My friend then told us he didn't like his own premise and decided to now run a campaign in the Theros setting. Justices am I right to be a bit disgruntled at this flip flopping through premises? I understand that the DM has to be interested in the story he's telling but I think if he gave himself more time to settle in he'd find something he'd enjoy, at least long enough for us to run a few session. I lay my head humbly at the mercy of the court.

August Berriz

To the dearest and most beautiful judges and the plain but useful bailiff: I have a player (in a campaign of 4 people) who will not stop sneaking off/running away from the party. I feel like I’ve tried everything in my arsenal to discourage this in a kind and/or fun way so as not to ruin the mood — contested checks, private conversation outside our game, i even made her last run away almost lethal (i made it cool for everyone else to listen to, gave them a way to participate, and incorporated some plot into what the runaway player found so our detour felt less like a waste of everyone else’s time). we don’t get to meet very often and this player has been trying to run away every session. at this point, it’s really stressing me and the rest of my players out and makes us feel angry every time it happens but this player seriously won’t take any hints we’ve thought of (even when the “hints” are us explicitly saying please don’t run off right now none of us like it and it’s hurting the campaign). esteemed overlords (and bailiff jake), i beseech you for any guidance you see fit to grant. much love !

Withani

To the humble shepherds of Dice Christ I bring to you a confession. Our party recently updated our characters to the 2024 rules, during which I made a few changes to my glory paladin’s character, including changing their background. Unfortunately, after playing a few sessions, I wasn’t liking a few of the changes. I took it upon myself to change my background again to get different skills—I did NOT mention this other change to my DM—and in our last session I rolled a nat 20 on one of my new skills. But, instead of glory I felt shame, so I throw myself at the feet of Dice Christ in hopes of forgiveness so I may feel the joy of a nat 20 again.

Ben Lavineway

Yo emily I play with a group of 5 other amateur dnd players. I forgive our table for most character breaks and metagame moments since these folks are more used to strategy games than roleplaying games, but there’s one thing that gets my goat. One dude is playing the ultimate edgelord character- a fallen aasimar sorlock who reigned hell and rode an undead dragon and also had a whole bunch of adventures through the abyss (and now somehow has like 40 hp max and no stat above a 12 lmao). My friend who plays him does a death metal growl for his voice. It’s a little tough to parse but ultimately he says most things out of character and typically just demands people’s fealty/souls/flesh in his character voice. I play a half orc cleric and I do the typical orc voice, pretty similar to Brennan’s orc teacher from fantasy high. The kicker is, if buddy’s saying a lot of stuff in character and his throat gives out from death growling, he fully just steals my orc voice and talks in that instead. I’ve been letting it slide but please affirm me that it’s weird at least? Bye emily love u

Fett_BobaFett

To the nigh godly Justices, and I guess the lowly⁹ Bailiff Cake, too; I present to you the case of a Wannabe Murderhobo DM. This group started the third campaign I've been a part of a few months ago. For the most part, I like his DMing. But I have a gripe with how he seems to always want to kill player characters. He even makes constant jokes about killing PCs in our group chat. In the first campaign (I joined late), he attacked a character making Death Saving Throws and killed her character. Luckily, I was able to bring them back with Revivify. Later in the same campaign, he attacked that character again with a Purple Worm. After swallowing her character, he was just going to have the Worm leave, having "...fed, and doesn't need any more food." The only reason she escaped was because of Dimension Door, and he still made her roll a Survival Check to go the correct direction, which she did, or just be buried and immediately crushed and killed. In the previous campaign, he killed our Cleric by attacking him while making Death Saving Throws, going so far as to Counterspell the only healing spell any other character had, and we had no recourse. And finally in this latest campaign, he did the same against my Druid (the only healing capable character). With everyone else's character in the red and close to a TPK, there was basically a revolt before he started making attack rolls. After comments all around, including his wife saying, "Playing like that isn’t fun for us," he left it to roll. When the roll went my way, he was obviously disappointed. Justices, and Cake if he hasn't been stripped of his duties by now, are we wrong to rebel against his desire to give PCs the forever yeet, or is he wrong to constantly make attempts on our make believe lives?

Doomster

To the all powerful Justices Brian, Emily and Caldwell, who's rulings are righteous and punishments fair; and Jill and Tucker's live in Nanny, Bailif Jorp. I DM for a group of 6 that includes my wife, an IRL friend and a bunch of online friends we met through Final Fantasy 14. This is my first really long homebrew campaign and I am still learning the ropes when it comes to certain mechanics. The group was coming to the end of a cave path and decided to run to the end of the tunnel. I had an Adult Oblex hiding in a crevasse at the end and had it cast hypnotic pattern, which 3 people in the group failed to save on; this move charmed the ones who had failed. This lead to a lot of confusion in the group, because this is usually something the party would cast on an enemy and not the other way around. One of the players got a hit off on the oblex, another player attempted to break one of the charmed players out of it by hitting them, but they missed their AC. The next time it came to the oblex it cast Charm Person at a 5th level and targeted the rest of the group and the npc's that were traveling with them. All but 1 NPC and 1 player failed the save. The group then ended up in a debate, that got a bit heated, about how the characters would handle this charm. Some said they would just continue to leave the cave as the Oblex would just seem like a friendly acquaintance . Others said they would likely attack the player that had hit the oblex, and in game their characters hadn't really known each other for that long. I unfortunately was not much help either which was a failing on my part as a DM, but I couldn't figure it out since the oblex hadn't actually attacked anyone yet (the original plan I had was to use charm the last person that left the cave and use its "Eat Memories" ability and then mimic the player, but It was late and forgot the plan in the moment and everything went to shit). My question is: Who would have been right? Should people have just walked away from the slimy friend monster, or should they have attacked their friends in the party for attacking the slimy friend? or should the group have sat there and twiddled their thumbs for 8 rounds of combat while they all tried to break free from the charm or got their memories ate? PS. The issue was solved by the remaining uncharmed NPC who was forced to use Drawmij's Instant Summons to summon his artifact weapon and took out the rest of the Oblexes' HP (He was trying to hid his strength, and was more or less there for observation purposes). So everyone got uncharmed and they were able to move on. That was where we ended the session.

Kyle Mills

To the all powerful justices Brian, Emily, ballswell Jammer, and the bailiff who sucks on hardboiled pickles for the wildboy esthetic between cases, I have a case and no more wit to spare. I used to DM for random internet strangers. This story involved A grung fighter well call, I dont know, "Purphy" and a half-orc druid we'll call "jem-ily", a new player to the campaign. Other two players are background jazz. While exploring a mansion, the players triggered a magic mouth trap, which would cause all the players to flee in fright if failed. That's when Purphy decided to comment that if anyone failed, they should also have to roll a con check not to shit their pants. Side note, purphy was a difficult player of whom I enjoyed his antics for most of the previous sessions, but I had spoken with before about slowing the session down by trying to manifest some power gaming situations for himself based on suggested additions to scenery and his background. I asked everyone if they were okay with it, they agreed, All the players passed, except Jem-ily. Jem-ily took it well, the players had a laugh, but Purphy did not let it go and continued to mention how they were a stinky boy party now. Jem-ily, the new healer of the party, decided to wait until they scouted further to heal everyone after the parties previous fights and let the party use a short rest to heal as purphy was only one who was injured and purphy was passively aggressively bringing attention to "the stank". About 10 minutes later, the party needed to climb down a ladder. Jem-ily mentioned letting the party climb down the ladder first. As soon as the rest of the party was on the ladder, Jem-ily stood over the ladder and cast "create water" to cleanse themselves, and suggested the rest of the party roll dex to avoid the "Poo-nami". I asked the party if we were good with this, they agreed. Purphy was the only one who failed, I described the party shining to the sides of the ladder while purphy was cast off the ladder and fell 10 feet to the floor, dealing 11 damage knocking him into death saving throws, which he failed due to the party being unwilling to put serious effort into trying to stabilize him (stood around him and yelled like drill instructors while players argued that should be enough to roll medicine tho one had "spare the dying" ready to go) and purphy's poor rolls. The game dissolved after that session. Judges, was I right to allow the dex save suggestion resulting in an annoying player's comical and fitting character death, or should I have tried to deus-ex umbrella the death-by-Poo-nami? I eagerly await your judgement and am standing by to flee to Canada in case of an unfavorable verdict.

Andy Horton

To the Honorable Supreme Crit Justices, and lil baby Jakey McJakerson, Should it please the crit, I present to you the tale of a well-meaning barbarian with a heart of gold but hands of doom. On our party’s maiden voyage into the vast, uncharted realms of adventure, the barbarian, spotting a humble dog, sought to bridge the gap between beast and adventurer with a kind gesture: a simple pet. Alas, fate (or a nat 1) had other plans. Instead of the tender caress this creature deserved, upon rolling a crit failure the dm narrated that the barbarian “delivered a resounding slap that echoed through the forest and brought shame to generations of our ancestors. I ask, how does one redeem themselves when their very first act as a hero is to unintentionally insult man’s best friend? Is it the DMs fault? We all felt really bad, and I could tell even our DM felt guilty having made our friend smack a pooch.

The Original Betsy

What up, Justices and a Predator handshake to everyone’s favorite Bailiff. I bring you the case of the Total Party Kill — Twice. In a first-timer mini campaign with 2 PCs, I played a snooty Elven Sorcerer while the other player was a Goliath Rogue with three daggers inspired by Zoro from One Piece. We loved our characters and were looking forward to taking down an Evil Necromancer. Imagine the audible gasp that echoed through the room when the very first thing I investigated on the grounds of the Necromancer’s tower alerted 17 Undead! My Sorcerer was overwhelmed, failed her death saves and there were still 13 Undead surrounding the Rogue. Yup, we TPK'd. This happened in the first 47 minutes of the campaign. We thought we’d have to make new characters, but the DM offered up that we could be risen by the very Necromancer that we were here to destroy. We'd be playing as Undead undercover agents. It sounded like a fun twist. A few sessions later we tried to stop the Necromancer's evil ritual to raise an Undead army in the BBEG fight. We even managed to convince an enslaved Cleric DM-NPC to aid us so that we would have a healer. But needless to say, we TPK’d for the second time and the campaign came to a dead end... Justices, I humbly ask if you could provide the help action on an insight check: Was our DM dead set on burying us? Or do we newb players just suck at this game? P.S. The Cleric never healed the PCs.

Logan Stock

To the Shiny Golden Justices and the Rusty Bronze Bailiff I present the case of Merty Chlap. A friend and DM of mine had gotten some cool dice that you could role to determine a race and class for a character. We rolled a d20 for class level and I ended up with my level 18 Pact of the Undead Half Orc Warlock Merty Chlap. We were tasked with exploring a mysterious disappearing mansion which dimensional doors to unlock its secrets and seize control of it for ourselves, the catch being that we only had 2 hours to complete the dungeon. The problem comes as we were about to enter the final room with 15 minutes or so. In preparation Merty activated his 14th level ability and stored his body in a bag of holding since he didn’t need oxygen. Upon entering the doorway the DM narrated how Merty, untethered from form, was nearly torn from reality but escaped back to his body with 6d10 psychic damage, having lost his ability. I accepted the L but was a little peeved to not be able to use the ultimate ability of my character and take a lot of damage as well. So justices I ask: was I wrong to attempt to pre buff before the final fight or should I have been allowed to go all out but just this once? I humbly await your decision

Sam Park

In the name of the father Dice Christ and of the begotten child the Natural 20, and of the devouts the 2 Crew… forgive me for I have sinned. It has been 28 years since my last confessional and this is my sin. When I was a new and aspiring DM, I wanted to get my friends into DND, and since we were all fans of the game League of Legends, I brought up the campaign and setting of Tides of Bilgewater, which takes place in the setting of the game. I had four of my friends make characters, and I did my best to accommodate and build and alter the setting to best fit their needs so they could have fun. One of my friends wanted to be a mounted combatant and wanted to make his character a priest of one of the ancient Sea Gods so I reflavored one of the creatures in the manual and allowed for an opportunity where he could meet his fighting companion and live out his dreams as a mounted combatant. Then the big combat hit. In the ultimate fight against the BBEG, the mounted combatant was downed and was rolling death saves. This is where I have sinned. I was an inexperienced DM, and having a player become downed overwhelmed me. I forgot the rule of making medicine checks to stabilize allies, and none of my players were experienced or had played before to truly be aware. I tried to urge the remaining players to hurry and slay the final foe so that combat could be concluded and that the fallen player could be brought back, but the other players rolled poorly and the mounted combatant passed away. In the conclusion of the campaign, I tried to make rolls to see if there was any way to narratively tie loose ends - I had the other players roll Animal Handling to tame the wild beast that the fallen player had mounted; I had the fallen player make a Religion check to see if the ancient Sea God he served would bring him back - all such rolls ended up in natural ones. This player was the player most attached to his character, and I feel as though his first experience with DND will always be one of bitterness as a result. He has played afterwards with some of our mutual friends and with his own group, but I never DMed for him again for fear that I may let him down once more. To this day, perhaps out of pride or out of regret, neither the player nor I have ever revisited those events, and I feel as though I am the only one truly aware of the grievance I caused, forcing a player to make Death Saves with no help from his allies who were all by his side. And that is all I have to confess. And for this sin I am truly repentant and ask Dice Christ for guidance and absolution.

EdwardBoyo

In the name of the One, the Roll and the Holy Crit, I come for confession under Dice Christ's redeeming fury and compassion. Forgive me sweet, unseperated Church and State for I have slain my Player in their overabundance of Natural 20's after assuming in good faith. In good faith, I believed their ranger was able to snipe a fleeing young blue dragon out of the sky that had heavy cover in clouds. (At level 4) In good faith, I believed they met the dc of resisting a cursed item's effects. (My ignorance had me not know the ways of cursed items fully.) In good faith, I assumed they rolled so well all the time in their badly made blood hunter warlock. This player, who rolled so well to learn that their raven queen patron was actually a shadow demon seeking to destroy his father, had rolled suspiciously too well several times in a row (20+ easily) to learn the nature of fiends, having done so every time I gave a chance to do so. In my weakness as an inexperienced dm, I had the demon retaliate and strike the warlock dead at the discovery of the faux contract. He would survive from a magic ring, but the flurry of natural 20s would make their course until they were later kicked for not bringing a good vibe (It would take too many paragraphs). Was I wrong to not give this player a chance to be the paragon of dice christ, or was I right to send them to dice hell? I fall before ye, my past weakness a mark of shame. Penance must be had and if I must take it, then so be it.

nullifi3d_

To the honorable and venerable justices Tanner, Axford, and Murphy, and their little lacky jake. I present to you the case of Deus Ex Stalagmite. In my freshman year of college, I played in a D&D campaign with five other players. Through our journey, we made friends with an NPC who was very quickly revealed to be the DM's favorite. Much of the plot of this campaign revolved around this NPC, his wants and desires, and his tragic yet vague backstory. At the end of an arc, we were in a red dragon's lair, and we all got to ask the dragon's ghost a question from our past. The NPC's wish had him stuck in a trance, unable to move, as the lair started to fall apart around us. The ground started to break, and all of our party jumped to save the NPC. Just then, as all six of us were holding onto him, a stalagmite fell from the ceiling, and broke our grip. No one got to roll to pull him up, no perception checks to see any danger from above, just a perfectly placed falling stalagmite. The NPC fell into the volcano and died. If that sounds tragic, don't get sad just yet. When our party returned to the city to recuperate and get our bounty money for killing the dragon, we started to hear fires in the city. Turns out, in the days of travel back to the city, the NPC had reincarnated as a god of fire and retribution, and explicitly called out our party members for not trying to save him. He blamed our party for his death, and wanted to kill us for it. At the end of the session, the players were confused and angry with this revelation. The campaign fell apart because I had to move away. Justices, I ask you this. Should the party have been punished for trying to save our beloved NPC, who died because of no fault of our own? I leave this ruling in your just hands. - P.S., I am no longer friends with this DM, and believe he should have just written a book.

katie potato

To the luscious locked judges and the measly duke of limbs who serves them; I bring to you the case of the hot mess (drama 2 electric boogaloo) Hi, I’m Katie, and I play dnd with some equally teenage friends, including my closest friend at the table and my neighbor lets call Evan. I got inspired to play from your podcast and d20 and I love the game but heres the thing. I have feelings for Evan, and he doesn't know. I really really like him and we have serious chemistry, but the DM recently discovered my feelings for Evan and told me in confidence that if I confessed, I wouldn't be welcome back at the table because this would “ruin the dynamic of the game”, despite our boundaries around relationships in game and the fact that there is another couple at our table. I was ready to accept my life of quiet pining in accordance with the decree of justice Iyengar when I found out that The DM, ALSO has feelings for Evan! I like him like crazy and we chat/text for hours everyday so I know him well, but I am afraid that if my DM found out so easily (and told the rest of the party), then Evan will too, and If it goes wrong (as I fear it might) I will be cast from the only dnd table I can currently play at forever. Am I wrong for wanting to confess my feelings? Or will it make things too weird? I humbly await your judgement, wise council. May your rolls ever be 20s and your siblings ever be peaceful. (LOVE YOU ALL)

Majoras Milk Bar

To the “Sexy” Supreme Crit Justices and the Junior Bailiff Jake. I present to you the case of the Solo Climbing Barbarian. Early on in our campaign the party encountered a tall wooden palisade wall, made from logs that had been stripped bare of their bark and branches, which was surrounding a village. The guards at the top of the wall were actively hostile towards the party members, releasing arrows and demanding that they leave. One of the players antagonised the NPCs further and then said that they wanted to climb the wall to confront them, despite the rest of the party telling him not to. Our DM said that he would have to roll an acrobatics check to climb the wall, but later (after some arguing with the player) reluctantly agreed to give the option of an athletics check with a higher DC — clarifying that because the defensive wall was made of upright beams it would call for agility, momentum and balance rather than raw strength. Judges, not only did this player disagree with the ruling and argue with the entire table before and after his failed roll, but he continued to interrupt the rest of the session reading paragraphs from websites aloud and watching youtube videos of people climbing walls on his phone at a loud volume while shaking his head to himself. We come to you to settle this once and for all. Would you consider scaling smooth, tightly packed vertical wooden logs dexterity based? Or would you consider it strength based because “he could do it that way”? Yours truly, “The Murph of the group”

BrowndogPiedog

To the illustrious judges and the post-Toy Island donkey boy Jart. I being to you the case of the DM vs. the 9-to-5ers. I run a game over Discord with 3 PCs. We’re all ex-military dads and due to personnel issues(people not being right for the table), we’re on our 4th campaign in about 18 months. It may be this constant resetting that creates the problem. It started when we ran the Revel’s End prisoner escape module. the party did not want to rescue anyone. They wanted to continue their cover jobs as guards and a cook for the whole 3 month shift and were discussing taking additional shifts until I had to force their hand by having an NPC grow suspicious of their fake ID. The story continued, brief Shadowfel arc and they found themselves at the airship shipyards while all their loved ones had been whisked away to the other continent via teleportation. Did they hitch a ride on the brand new airships or attempt to steal one? No. They immediately set out to try to find jobs in carpentry and enchanting at the docks. Every town they enter, they seek the job boards, but not for monsters to hunt or treasure to pilfer, but for blacksmithery or tannering. Justices, is my campaign just so boring that they want to work menial jobs or should my adventurers try harder to be just that? I lay myself at the mercy of the court.

Rootie

To the humble justices of the court and the way too prideful bailiff Jake, I bring you the case of DM vs Players in desperate need of a rest. In our most recent session, our characters faced an army of the undead laying siege to the town they were visiting. However, the session prior, with news of the incoming horde, our characters decided to go out to meet the horde and do some reconnaissance. The DM did try and stop us, and the group was split about going, but ultimately we left the town. We went and spied on the horde, leading to silly hijinks like dressing ourselves as zombies and making performance checks to blend in. Our barbarian is quite blood-thirsty, so in the end we also engaged the necromancer that was leading the horde. We managed to kill her and get out of there alive due to some wild rolls and our DM admitted at the end of the session that he was surprised we lived. We book it back to town with the knowledge that the horde is still coming but is less powerful now. This most recent session we arrived back in town and immediately ask for a rest and our DM says "Oh, no, you don't have any time to rest, the horde is literally on your heels, actually make a roll to see if you make it into the gates as they are closing." While this first roll was kind of fun to roll play and led to our halfling rouge flashing the gate-guard in order to buy us time, once we got in we were faced with the grim reality that we are all at very low hit points. Furthermore, as the party's cleric, I was out of all my spell-slots and channel divinity charges. This resulted in a 4 hour session of using sacred flame basically every turn. I finally had a moment where I could have some impactful action via spare the dying as our wizard went down. I ran to him and cast the spell via touch as is necessary and remained kneeling above him. There were two zombies in our vicinity and on their next turns, they both attacked the wizard leading to 3 failed death saves and the wizard died. I tried to argue that I was right there and the zombies would likely attack the person still up and I even asked for a check to see if they attacked me instead, but the DM was resolute. My question, Justices, is was the DM to hard on us when he refused a rest (with no alternative) that led to a slog of a battle and was he unjust when he had the zombies attack the unconscious wizard over the conscious cleric kneeling directly above the wizard? Or are we to blame for leaving the town when the DM obviously didn't want us to and therefore deserve all that befell us? I await your judgement.

InfamousJ13

To the honorable Justices and the lowly lowly lowly bailiff, a man who could possibly be or hell he might even be the real grinch himself john, I present the case of the 2nd level womping. I have been playing a long running 1on 1 campaign with my girlfriend for almost the entire 3 years we’ve been dating. In our world most of the people are demi gods my character being Tod my Bardbarian who is essentially a demigod mutt. In the beginning of my campaign, I had three DM PC allies to help, me along my journey the only one that needs to be mentioned here though is Benny a short Rock Gnome with an obsession for books and learning. Throughout the campaign I was given many new allies to help out and Benny fell to the wayside. We ended up doing as 20-year time jump after the events and I ended up playing Tod’s son Izuku with Tod’s whole extended family being background characters. Anyway, to keep it brief we had found out that Benny had stolen the book of knowledge a book that contained all of the knowledge in the universe. This immediately drove him crazy, and he started decimating the astral plane. So, Tod being given a scroll of banishment from the God of Creation herself was given the task of shutting his old friend down. In order for the scroll to work I had to make Benny Stand still for 30 seconds and get the book out of his hands. What was supposed to happen is one (yes one Tod has 4 husbands and a wife) of Tod’s fiancés was supposed to hold Benny down and hit the book out of his hands while Tod prepared the scroll. Resulting in a heartfelt sacrifice scene. However, in slightly cheatey fashion Tod cast Suggestion on Benny and told him to drop the book and stand still. Benny having incredibly high wisdom needed a Nat 1 to fail and that’s what he got. In the end we reversed the spell cast because I felt awful about womping her big bad and destroying the emotional moment. But judges I must ask was I cheated out of my womping or did I make the right choice in conceding for the sake of the story. Ps. We are still playing in the campaign, and we are nearly reaching the end!

ThacoIsWacko

I might have a case to submit, but I would like to know if this thread would be for future episodes, or would I need to submit to the announcement, i.e.; this thread for today's show, the next thread for the next show?

The Witch of Ways and Means

To the esteemed judges and the lovely lovely lovely lovely lovely listeners! You guys really make the dream come true. I present the case of the happiest memory and the random ass diary. This is my story. Walking into an arms shop one session the DM told our party that we could purchase weapons as per usual OR trade in something of deep personal value for a special object of the DMs choosing. Since he had no gold, my circle of the stars Druid, Pemblem Lo, offered up his happiest memory as a payment. I narrated the moment Pemblem first saw the night sky ablaze with constellations which was obviously very formative. My DM told me that the memory instantly vanished from my characters mind and in return gave him a ratty old diary. When I asked to read the diary I rolled poorly and was told I couldn’t understand any of it. The diary did turn out to hold important lore sessions later, but am I right to feel miffed? I can’t even use the thing anymore and my character gave up so much for it. Please don’t be shy in meting out your just desserts. P.S. Even though I’m often razzed for this decision, the group is as strong as ever and we’re currently on our way to battle the BBEG!!! Love you, Jake!

David Wieland

Dearly beloved (and Joke), we find ourselves in my homebrew campaign in which my 3 players have recently leveled up to level 3 at the end of a session. It was a thick sode as you would call it and I thought it would be nice to end it there. However. The next session I noticed that in a rush to finish up last time, I forgot that we had house ruled that to level up, you‘d have to take a long rest, but my players had already updated their character sheets. I then ruled that they couldn‘t use their new class features and had to substract one hit die from their current hp until their long rest. They couldn‘t take one at the moment however, because of time sensitive plot matters with which I won‘t concern you for now. The fighter of the party in this instance was quite miffed, because he finally got access to his subclass, which the druid and witch (from Worlds Beyond Number) already had gotten at level 2. He said that it would be more fun if I‘d just let them have it since it was my mistake in the first place to make them update their character sheets without really levelling up. Now I ask you, judges, was it unfun of me to back paddle on my mistake or was the fighter being impatient? I kind of understand him, since it took a lot of sessions to get to level 3 and we only play about once a month. I prostrate myself before you and kiss the lowly bailiff on the cheek.

Max M

To the Respectfully Hottie Judges and the Disrespectfully Hottie Bailiff,
I bring to you this case in the hopes of justice and maybe finding a love for DMing again. I’ve been playing in a weekly paid campaign for almost a year. While I love my party, I hate the DM (let’s call him Joe). He’s made weird comments about me and my character (who is a teenage girl). One of the other players even approached me and asked if I felt like I was getting "Manic Pixie Dream Girled" by Joe. I let slip during one of our games that I was a Twitch streamer, and I guess Joe found my channel and followed me. At first, I thought, “That’s nice that he’s supporting my side work!” Unfortunately, when he joined my next stream, he ended up making more weird comments and misgendering me multiple times. I know at this point I should have left the game and blocked him, but I was enjoying every other aspect of the game so much. I had been DMing a Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaign for my roommates, but I thought it would be fun to maybe DM for some of my regular viewers on stream! I put up a sign-up sheet, and guess who was first to sign up? Joe. I felt trapped, thinking I couldn’t say no to him for fear that he would retaliate and I would be punished in-game. He then spent every single game telling me things like, “Well, in MY games, I do things differently,” or “If I were DM, I would let that slide.” He consistently talked over me, and I ended up canceling the whole game out of frustration and anger. I now feel scared to DM again, worried that maybe I wasn’t that good, but also fearing that this will happen again with someone else. Judges, I trust your judgment and your punishment, and I take your advice as you see fit. Yours,
The Coward. (they/them)

Jack Dawson

To the honorable justices and the mid-tier bailiff Jake I bring before you the case of D&D Verus basic personal hygiene. In a game I DM I have a player who refuses to meet basic personal hygiene requirements he claims to shower regularly though admits he doesn't own any form of deodorant. It was gotten to the point several other players have refused to host (we play different games on different days of week and share the task of hosting) or give him lifts due to the smell. Since we eat during the game it the issue of certain players feeling too nausea to eat around him has arisen. Myself and other members of group have spoke to him several times over past 6 years of play and he improves temporarily then the smell returns. He has recently been given another chance to improve his hygiene again, if he starts regularly smelling again do the judges think it is fair to remove him from the group. I humbly await your judgement. P.S due to covid we played online for over 2 years and the hygiene was both a pre and post covid issue

Savor_The_Robot

To the illustrious judges and the resolute bailiff Cake. I present to you the case of the DM who runs really bad puzzles. Early on in my days playing D&D, I played with a DM who didn’t do a very good job running the game. He really enjoyed putting puzzles in his sessions, but these puzzles were usually convoluted or just generally boring low points in the sessions. But one session, it went too far. I wish I remembered the exact details of the puzzle, but as a player, all I remember was being completely stumped. We were in a room with a pedestal, and the pedestal had some sort of question on it that we, the party, couldn’t seem to figure out the answer to. We spent 1 real life hour trying to solve this puzzle. It reached a point, where one of the players just started reading a book, and me and the paladin were the only ones still talking out the puzzle. It was eventually revealed that the solution to the puzzle was information the players had been told at an earlier session, before I had even joined the campaign. And to be clear, the DM didn’t give us any hints for the entire hour of struggling. I ended up leaving the campaign a couple sessions later, but justices, was I right in thinking that this DM is an actual crazy person. How many minutes of your players struggling is enough before you just tell them the answer to a puzzle? (for me it's 10 minutes tops).

Brady Young

It would be an incredible twist to have Murph be the bailiff since Jake is DMing now

Harrypateman

To the Dice Christ captains I must confess a sin, the ever changing hp of the enemy. As a first time dm for a group of friends who were enthusiastic but completely ignorant to dnd I set out to do a one shot , I did a lot of home brew and started them at level 5 and to no one’s surprise they annihilated half of mid tier bad guys first round. So not wanting the evening to fall flat I fudge some dice rolls so my monsters actually hit for once, and added hp to some. In the final battle a pc did die but it was rather cinematic, still I can’t help but feel if I didn’t bulk up the previous encounter he might have lived. What can I do for penance.

Charbie

It’s my birthday today and I want to say thank you to the two crew for such a great podcast I love getting to listen to you all everyday weather that be on naddpod, dimension 20, 8 bit book club, or any other place it makes my days go a better, with lots of love -DM Charbie

Josh Regan

To the Honorable Supreme Justices and the Pokemon Bayleef, I present the Case of the Disconnected Crew. I am DMing for a group of friends, some are long-time players and some are relatively new to the game. When they were creating characters, I encouraged them to take liberties with their backgrounds and to give me connections they might have, etc. When we all sat down for our session zero, they had all created character sheets, but no backgrounds whatsoever. After this session, during which I asked them questions about where they thought their characters may have come from in the world and what connections they might have, I wrote backstories for each of them and sent them to the players, as to connect them to the world. We are now about six months into the campaign, and whenever I hint towards connections they PCs might have to the world, they give the impression they have not even read the brief backstories I wrote for them. Justices, I ask you this: At the beginning of the campaign, I told my players I was creating a deep and complex world that I would be connecting their players to, but I am feeling silly for working to write their character stories into the plot and to give them moments to shine individually. Should I scrap the parts of the plot the story that involve their characters, or continue reminding them that they existed before escaping from prison in session 1, and they have connections in the world?

Primalkrisis

Hello to the honorable justices axford, tanner and hurwitz, and a more casual hey to the lowly bailiff Brian. In a campaign I used to run a few years back for the other players and the dm of our main campaign, a session got interrupted by me needing to take my brother to the hospital, the player who usually dm’s for the main group volunteered to step up and run things til I got back as the session was just a calm lil day in a boardwalk fairground, i agreed on the condition he didn't do anything too wild story wise. When I got back however, I found out he gave the players a connection to a "milfy cthulu mommy" who was now a level 20 sorcerer acting as a farmilliar for one of the players. When I tried to retcon it, our usual dm stood up and said if I took cthulu away he'd take away features from the carachter I played in his campaign... This campaign was quickly ruined by the eldritch presence and had to end far earlier than I wanted it to. justices, if someone steps up to take your place during an emergency should they get to impose anything they want or should they not be insane, I await your judgement... (Ps. Please give whoever gets punished the second worst one of the day)

Brody Sargent

To the Luminous Judges and Dimly Lit Bailiff, I bring you the case of scary Loxodon. I was playing a game with my first DnD crew, where I played a Tiefling Divine Sorceerer named Magnificent or Maggie for short. Maggie was a literal nepo baby from hell, in that she was a demigod daughter of Bane raised by a cult who escaped to understand the world around her. She had high Charisma but was generally weak everywhere else. Once when trying to intimidate a commoner I rolled high plus my high stat got high teens or low 20s but failed to intimidate them. Then my fellow PC, a Loxodon Cleric also did an intimidation check and got a 14 but succeeded. I asked the DM why he succeeded with such a lower role? He said that a giant elephant is naturally intimidating and didn't need a high role. Was I wronged or should species really change the DC so much? I await your verdict.

Joshua Andersen

To the Impeccable Justices and the Peckable Bailiff, I present the case of the misused Malboro. I was DMing for a group of friends I’ve been a player in for a few years. The group selected one of multiple paths through a dangerous forest, and our Rogue spotted a mysterious cabin with several gems inside. Our Artificer smelled a trap and stated he would stay EXACTLY 40 feet back while the rest of the party went to check it out. He was correct, and the group was attacked by a Malboro (statblock here: https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Malboro_(5e_Creature)). If you read that statblock, you will notice that the Malboro’s Bad Breath attack is a 40 feet cone. Meaning everybody, including the diligent Artificer, was caught in the attack. Everybody rolled saves, and passed, except for the Artificer. All the people who passed also had class and lineage features that allowed them to greatly reduce or completely negate the damage. But the Artificer had no such abilities, and when I rolled very close to max damage, he lost more than half his hit points and was poisoned. The Artificer than proceeded to-- gently-- flip the fuck out. He felt that he had been targeted, as everyone else completely shrugged off the poison. He flat out refused to cast another spell the rest of the time they were in the forest or help out with encounters, and to this day, sometimes brings up the fact that he was “targeted.” This is mostly brought up in jest, with the player promising to “get me” in games he DMs, but I still wonder if I did something wrong. Judges, are you mad at me? Should I have realized the Artificer was especially vulnerable to this encounter and not run it, or is the player being a bit of a diva roach? If I am in the wrong, I will accept my punishment, and you may have this big brute of a bailiff beat me bloody. P.S. If it changes anything, the Rogue is an aarakocra. I know how Justice Murphy feels about that, so if you wanted to punish him instead, the defense would understand.

Shawn Harrison

Hey I just wanted to say that I hope you guys are staying safe and not being too affected by the fires.

Jillian M

I am also very scared and concerned for our LA peeps at NADDPOD. My thoughts are with you and everyone in the affected areas. I hope you’re all safe 🩵🩶

Gregory Hickey

Please stay safe Murph, Emily, and Caldwell!! Especially with that new baby!

Danielle Carolla

I hope everyone is safe!! Worried about you all. ❤️

School of Hard Knox

Hello friends, first time submitter but long time follower and fan of the 2 Crew! To the Scrupulous Justices and Skibidi(not sure if I used that right) bailiff ,Sock. I bring to you the case of "The Misinformed Vibes" Im new to D&D/TTRPGS and a player in a homebrew 5e game that I'm really enjoying, there's just one problem. During multiple sessions the party has been sent into encounters which we were led to believe were combat oriented only to have the potential enemie(s) flee, or in some cases RP emotional backstories throwing us off. This has either left the table feeling Combat Cucked™,or caused otherwise brief encounters last FAR longer due to emotional deliberation (literally 2+ hours IRL). Examples of shenanigans include but are not limited to; an escaped pheonix we'd spent days IRL prepping to fight, a family man/buddy guy set of guards that had the only key to a especially secure door (we were told after the session we were supposed to just kill them and move on), and the time I was impaled by a hysterical cave troll Matron who used the arm she tore off her living husband as a javelin after I'd one shot their 7yo child (I was unaware at the time of casting). JUSTICES! Is it reasonable to be flustered by the evershifting vibes or am I being too rigid as a player? Love you guys and love the show! Stay safe and a happy new year!!!

Nova

Also just hoping y’all are staying safe out there in LA! 🩷 Those fires are looking real scary and as a norcal-er know my thoughts and sympathies are with you guys!

Lucas

I hope y’all are dealing with chaos of the fires as best you can and that your friends and family stay safe.

Beth Fraser

Hope the Californian side are safe, and for your family/friends/communities - and that Jake hasn’t frozen in the East Coast snow storm.

victheterror

Opened the app to find a lot of kind people already have, but I just wanted to say that I hope you’re all managing to stay safe 💕

Jak Horner

Sending positive vibes. Hope you all are staying safe out there in Cali! ❤️

Evan Bartlett

I hope y'all are safe!

Elizabeth Gunn
>>160796841

Came here to say the same. I don't really have folks in LA, but due to parasocial affection, I'm as scared as if I did.

Nick

Hope you are all OK, best wishes from the UK

Caddy Wampus

I hope you all are safe and the backyard critters found hidey holes. Wishing we could send some Midwest snow your way.

macbeth

A lot of kind folks here already, but jumping in to say hope everyone is keeping safe ❤️

OzempicScrooge

May it please the court and that weird little freak Jake “Jake-ing Off” Hurwitz, I present the case of the Mistaken Domination. We were playing playing a 5e version of Cult of the Reptile God and our party had just entered the boss fight with the spirit Naga. First round the bbeg cast dominate person on my aarakokra warlock (based on chicken Joe from surfs up), and I failed the save. When it came to my turn I panicked and asked if the mirror image I cast just before the fight had any effect as dominate person is line of sight. Our DM thought about it and decided the dominate person spell had no effect after all. We ended up winning the fight and the campaign ended happily ever after. But I worry that little technicality ruined the intensity of the final boss fight. Judges, was I wrong to have my mirror Joes retroactively save me? I humbly await your judgement. Wishing you all peace and safety in what must be a scary time to be an LA resident 💜

Tiffany

We love yall hope you and the babies and critters are safe.

Jessy

Hope y’all in LA are okay and staying safe. Sending love your way.

Salem

i’m one of many dropping in to wish you, your families, and all the critters safety and health in what must be a very frightening situation right now. much love from idaho ❤️

Jensen

Just came here to check on y’all and, like everyone else, wish you, your families and all the strays safety and protection

Shel B Kennas 1st fav sprite girl! celebrating turning 32 by seeing D20 at MSG dressing up as Sofie Lee!

Sending you all a lot of love and hope you are safe. Please don't hesitate to postpone recording or posting while you sort your bearings out. Sending safety vibes to all members of critter country, inside and outdoors. Love from seattle. If you do have to evacuate, leave out water for the outdoor critters/strays. They'll be come looking for it after they return from hiding in shelter spots. General Evacuation tips for anyone reading: Bring a change of clothes and calorie heavy foods. Make sure you take sturdy shoes (thick soled boots are best), and have cat carriers/leashes and foods out and ready in case you need to beat feet. If possible bring a metal water bottle that can be heated up to boil water. Aim to have 1 gallon of water per person per day (for 3 days minimum) but if space is a concern, at least one liter per day per person. When in doubt, go before you're told as sudden traffic congestion can delay you more than you realize.

abi_all_pink

Hope everyone and their families are safe rn. And there should no feeling of guilt if this week’s eps get postponed. Please prioritize your safety and your families. We (your loyal listeners) will still be here after things calm down🤍🤍 Sending positive thoughts.

Benjamin Reilly

Stay safe, hope you're all okay! Best wishes.

Josef Jozefowicz
>>160559523

This is a good one, hopefully they pick it. Personally, I think it was cool you guys went out. Maybe atleast a short rest when you guys get back, for health if nothing else. And yes it was kinda bs they targeted the wizard only

Nathaniel Martin

Adding to the chorus of people hoping you are all safe!

Kate Oldham

Hopping in to echo the hundreds of comments already: hope yall and families are safe!