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Calling for Dungeon Court Cases (Patreon)

Published:
2023-12-05 16:41:14
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

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

Comments

Yodysseus IV

I present to the esteemed judges and the mall cop, the case of poorly used inside jokes. I am part of a campaign that records their campaign and post it online, it’s been going on for over 5 years now. It’s a very fun podcast laden with goofs & bits and everyone has fun, and it’s amassed quite the following in its run time. Sounds great right? However, here’s where the proverbial BUT comes in. The players have been increasingly making “inside jokes” that are references from our Patreon episodes! Granted the are funny and fun to hear, but our beloved DM is worried it will alienate our non-paid tier fans. It hasn’t gotten completely out of hand just yet, so I ask the court, is now time to take action? Do we encourage our DM to start killing off PCs mercilessly at the next mention of a Sweet Blue Hole?

Michael R

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

Court Davies

To the effervescent justices and the bailiff of varying degrees of lowliness, I bring you a philosophical quandary regarding the ethics of animating dead. Our party includes a lawful good paladin and a chaotic neutral circle of spores druid. One of the druid's favored strategies is to cast animate dead, to which the paladin fervently protests every time, claiming it to be immoral dark magic. The druid defends her actions by saying that in this context, the reanimation is natural and beautiful. Her class ability describes it as a corticep-like fungus merely taking control of a soulless meat mech. The paladin refutes by saying it is still disrespectful to the dead, and has even gone as far as to warn the druid that if she continues, he may eradicate her new undead followers to put the bodies to rest. So I ask the honorable justices, do you side with our paladin, who believes our druid is committing an evil act of dark magic regardless of the context, or do you side with our druid, who believes she is simply a perpetuator of the natural cycle? We anxiously await your qualified ruling!

Andrew Whitford

Dear Supreme Crit Justices and Bailey, I bring to you the case of the punted polymorph. In my current campaign, my party was facing off against two frost giants. Our bard cast polymorph on one, turning it into a rat, so we could focus fire on the other. Once the first frost giant was slain, all that was left was this little rat nipping at the spellcasters feet, who were 30 feet away from the main combat. So when my turn comes around, my sorcerer (who certainly would not want to be near the giant when it turned back) did what anyone would do in this situation - I narrate myself punting the rat back towards the melee characters, hoping to have it turn back to a giant as it landed near them. Instead, my DM narrates that the rat immediately turned back into a giant as soon as I touched it, and the giant plops down right in front of me. I argued that to kill the rat I would need to have pushed it enough to break its bones, causing it to start flying away prior to it turning back into a giant. My dm wouldn’t budge and kept his giant right next to me. Ultimately I fucked off with misty step and we easily won the battle but I ask you, was my cool move nerfed or was the DM right to keep the giant right where he was? I humbly await your judgement.

Nicholas Peterson

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

Madeline Chiarella

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

Mr BirdClaw

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

Ross Gilliland

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

Xavior

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

Scotland Kraker

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

Ronnie B

To the noble Justices and the ignoble bailiff Jam, I bring you the case of the Goodbye Gorilla. I was running the first arc of a pirate campaign in the Forgotten Realms for a party of beloved weirdos. There was a triton barbarian, a hobgoblin deck wizard, and one of them was an awakened ape fighter. The player of the ape wasn't feeling the build though and wanted to try something new, so I gave them an out. Towards the end of the arc, the ape's backstory called him to his homeland to defend it. This was a heartfelt moment of departure as he chose to stay behind to protect his ape family. The problem is that the player's new character doesn't really fit in the crew. A leonin glory paladin with a paper thin-personality that is all about the mechanics and is virtually vibeless. I've hesitated returning to the game ever since because I miss my goofy gorilla. Should I get over it or let the game be swallowed by the seas?

Ashen

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

IMRYAN

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

ADruidLifeForMe

honorable priests/shamans/rabai/prophets? and most especially Jake of the most unfortunate standing with the courts i come before you asking from a blessing from Dice Christ: my poor players on an online campaign have been cursed with terrible luck on roll20. we are playing Starfinder (pathfinder in space), which is a complicated system and the roll20 character sheets are very helpful by doing the math for you. unfortunatly they consistently roll below a 10, especially on battles, resulting in 1 player death I was not expecting and several harder than planned encounters. in reverse, i the GM have average luck in rolling. we have tried for playing with physical dice, but math is hard, and i am planning a fun boss battle involving mund controlled clones and an evil android. please bless those poor poor players

Katherine Shaw

To the all-knowing and all-powerful judges and the adorable baby bailiff, I present the case of the quest for ridiculously high AC. I play in a 5e campaign with my sister, brother-in-law and their friends. When we met for session zero, one player - a dwarven fighter - announced that his entire goal would be to pile stats into his defences so he had the highest possible AC. We probed his reasoning, but there was no real backstory or roleplay rationale for it - this was just a gimmick he wanted to go for. We let it slide but finally convinced him to at least have one weapon in case he ends up the last man standing in combat (which seems very likely!). We’re now at level 3 and we recently found some treasure which included a Ring of Proection, granting the wearer +1 to AC and saving throws. He immediately demanded it was his, and didn’t even consider anyone else might want or need it. Me and my sister tried to suggest that one of the spell-casters might get a greater benefit from the +1 to AC, as we are squishy and have much less HP than the two fighters, but he wouldn’t budge, arguing that we know this is his entire deal, and it would be wrong to not let his character achieve his dream of obtaining highest possible AC. We eventually let it go to avoid any drama, but are we right to be annoyed that our support characters are being left vulnerable for one guy’s random quest for maxing out one stat, or should we just shrug it off and move on?

Fuzzboxx

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

Mason N.

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

Andrew portillo

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

Daniel B

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

Keanu DRAMAFACE

Intro free for 2023, ya ducks. I meant to write cucks but that works too. I bring you the case of “Too Little, Too Plate”. I was DMing a one shot loosely based on the Australian Outback, a set of players who are explorers encounter a small tavern that resulted in a brawl. They are all level one, and one of the players is a barbarian, who told me he fully eats a plate for intimidation. He rolled bad, and the fight ensued but I said the shards of plate in his mouth hurt him for 1D4 damage. The barbarian ended up going down in the brawl but was ultimately healed before death. The players believe I was too harsh, and I contend that biting into a plate absolutely constitutes damage. What say you, honorable justices and Baillif “Bricked-Up” Hurwitz? (PS will you do intros in 2024?)

Ammon the Average

To the esteemed Supreme Crit Justices and tucker and Jill’s nanny, My party beefed the final boss fight allowing the bbeg to travel back in time to win a war before it starts, they followed him through the portal and now instead of the campaign ending they’re in the past trying to figure out how to create the best possible future, they keep saying they should be able to use the same time travel shenanigans to re do that boss fight and not beef it, simply put: do I allow a redo of the boss fight or are these fucks stuck figuring out a new path to the future?

PawPaw’s Overalls

I present the case of DM vs the Morally Ambiguous players My players were sneaking onto a docked airship that was hosting a party for the local inquisition guild. They were tasked with finding a MacGuffin somewhere on board. Little did they know there was a bomb waiting to go off. They eventually find the macguffin and after a perception check notice a ticking sound coming from behind the engine room door. Behind the screen I had set up a timer to give them 5 minutes once they heard the ticking. However, my disguised players didn’t open the door to check what it was and insisted on calling for the captain to come downstairs to look at it. Long story short, after getting the captain (and most of the crew) down to the bottom of the ship they open the door to find a timer with less than a minute on it. They ask if they can use the spell rope trick to essentially force the bomb into the extradimensional space. I ruled they couldn’t do this based upon RAW, so they decided to climb into the hole themselves after yelling to everyone who had gathered in the stairway above them “there’s a bomb, try and evacuate” with less than 10 seconds left on the timer. Through the portal they see a large explosion and after the smoke clears nothing is left of the airship as their portal sits hovering in mid air, with mass casualties reported in the news later that night. My players are insistent that: 1. They should have been given more time to act on the bomb despite wasting 4 minutes of time trying to bring down the captain and not checking to see what the ticking was until there wasn’t hardly anytime yet. 2. That they did nothing wrong since they provided a warning, despite not providing a time, drawing most of the crew downstairs closer to the explosion, and not attempting to help anyone actually evacuate. So I ask judges, was i wrong to have a hidden timer running behind the screen? Are my players culpable at all? I humbly await your judgement

Kevin C

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

Penderpeen

To the Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Tanner, Axeford, and Paternal fool bailiff Jake, I present the case of the absent boss fight. I play in a campaign of long time friends who have been playing in a new campaign weekly for almost a year now, with the end soon approaching. Recently, I have had to take a step back from weekly sessions due to work with the promise to return in a few weeks. As soon as I conveyed this, my DM and brother offered to do a series of one shots until I could return. However, other emmbers of the group quickly demanded they continue on to the final boss immediately and insisted it would be more fun to continue the campaign. I admit that I do not want to stand in the way of the momentum of the campaign, but am I wrong to feel slighted by my party wanting to move on without me? PS - I have played with this group for over five years and the DM is my twin brother

Moss

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

Darkrisky

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

Charlie Nicholls

May it please the church, I’d like to ask forgiveness for the time I screwed over both my party and my DM. In our martime themed campaign, I had just rolled a new character after dying in a tough combat with a kraken, his name was Stig Plank-Walker and he was a pirate who had survived walking the plank twice. The party (my fiends) welcomed Stig into the party so we could keep playing. My previous character always controlled the party finances, and so naturally I assumed that same role as Stig… but I knew in my head that Stigs backstory was having to walk the plank twice due to financial crimes against his former crewmates. Long story short, I snuck away from the party and had Stig embezzle the parties gold into his personal accounts, Stig was killed by the party and the gold was never recovered, and the DM needed to cut the session short to plan because we now had no money for potions, gear repairs, or to charter a ship to our next quest. All in all I don’t regret this one bit, but I’d still like to be forgiven, thanks! Happy Hoglidays.

ChocolatePI

Dear great and honorable bailiff and also those other guys. I submit the case "the boss of broken bull crap." Our party recently had a boss fight against a half orc monk. Little did we know that this boss didn't have to follow the rules of the game. This monk had a seamlessly endless amount of reactions, and used these reactions to do crazy stuff like cut off the arms of NPCs. The worst one was when I missed an attack and the boss usdd a reaction to break my sword. Eventually we finally managed to get him and we were all very relieved, only for the boss to pop back up at about 50hp and 1 shot the party's favorite npc. Despite all this we did end up winning but the death of our npc friend hurt. Are we owed a new friend, or dose rule 0 allow these shenanigans. I throw myself to the mercy of the court.

Charles Q Lowe

Writ to the honorable above all in the land Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner. Jake… sure. I write with a tale akin to the famed Ruby Tuesdays of Bahumia lore. I am the DM for a table of first time players who are fascinated by the idea of “canonizing” everything. From Christmas, Jesus Christ, or Spotify, I walk a razor’s edge of care about mentioning anything. Currently, they are trying to make pasta happen because I offhandledly mentioned a tavern didn’t have lasagna. They’ve secured flour and eggs. My question is two parts: how do I set the checks to create pasta, and how do I get them to stop trying to make everything canon. I want to have fun with side commentary too!

Nero

Hello Magnificent Honours, and greetings to Bailiff Javert. I propose to you a bizarre situation, but I admit I'm not sure what a resolution would look like. You see, there is a Druid. And there is also a wizard. And the druid becomes, as one simply does, a giant spider via Wildshape. But then the wizard Polymorphs them. Being un-charismatic, as a spider and druid are both Recluses, they fail and the polymorph goes through. But. When Polymorph ends, the druid appears as a spider. The rogue says, and I quote, "nuh-uh, Wildshape ended forever ago". Please, this has become an argument outlasting the actual campaign (DM ruled a wisdom save to maintain concentration on Wildshape, essentially. Nobody thinks it's perfect, but it worked)

Dave Large

Dear ever vigilant and sweet blue justices and the baliff Jorph, I present the case of disorganized D. I. D. I play an aberrant mind sorcerer in a campaign based off my work place. I’ve discussed with my DM characterizing this as a multiple personality situation a la Moon knight or similar media but never settled on it. Cut to mid combat when I take a significant amount of bludgeoning damage. Dm then hands me a new character sheet for a much more brawny character and says “this is who comes back after the hit.” The whole table, self included, is stunned. I ask, should the personality shift have been handled with more tact or am I the right amount of startled at being handed a brand new sheet mid combat? I humbly prostrate myself for judgement.

KennyH

To the Honorable Justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner. Oh I forgot that BARFLIFF guy? Anyways, I bring you the case of the burnt spellbook. My friend was a complete noob to DnD, he had joined a campaign-in-progress I was in. He played a wizard, ran by a veteran DM, whose world was rough, and he was a stickler for the rules. Well, because of the rules, there was 3 instances where my friend lost his spellbook. The first two instances are a case for another time. My friend learned that playing wizard without a spellbook is NOT FUN. The third (and final) time he lost his spellbook, I am ashamed to say, was by my own hand. His character had stolen my character's secret poetry book that I had been filling with poems she had written the past 7+, adding a new one each session. He had his character reading the poetry out loud to the party. Embarrassing her greatly. I did what I thought she would do, (a light domain cleric with anger issues), she stole his spellbook and threatened to burn it to a crisp, unless he stopped reading her poems right now. He continued to read the poems, so I said to the DM "I cast firebolt on his spellbook". The look of utter betrayal on my friend's face as my DM narrates his book being burned to a crisp, haunts me to this day. He narrated his character just walking away from the party down the road, ignoring any attempts to talk to him. Leaving the campaign. So I ask thee Justices, did I do my friend dirty? Did I perhaps go full nuclear when I could have gone more tactical? Should I have just torn a page out and burnt that? Or was this just a lesson that he had failed to learn twice prior, coming to an inevitable result? I beseech thee, give us a fair and just ruling, to save our friendship.

Extremely High Elf

To the honorable Justices and Murph's very best friend, Jake. Today I lay my case at your door to ask for judgment. I'm DM'ing an 80's Las Vegas biker gang themed campaign. My PC's are undercover with a biker gang who are determined to summon an elder God. Recently, they were taken to the summoning circle and one of my players (a changeling Sorcerer) decided to use prestidigitation to destroy part of this ritual. I had them make a sleight of hand check which they failed. They were caught and got into a huge fight with the biker cultists, nearly dying. I was pulled aside by this players spouse later and told I was railroading the story and should have made the DC lower. It was DC 25 to alter a summoning circle in front of a bunch of fanatics. I dunno. I accept all punishments. Please. Punish me Murph. I'll beg.

CommanderZ-76

Hello to the most honorable justices in all of the land, and the other guy. Today I come to you with the case of The Combat Cutscene I run a game online with a couple of my close friends and only recently started DMing, I’ve seen a lot of growth from myself but still have a way to go. During our last session my party infiltrated a cult meeting and chased the leader down a tunnel and caught him in his safe room after the fact. After a long fight the party had chosen to knock him out and not search his body. After one player decided to kick him awake to interrogate him, I had him say some ominous things and then pull out a knife to stab himself. My players then spent about 5 minutes arguing that they should have been able to stop him before he did it. So I plead to the court, was I in the wrong for taking a long time monologuing to give my party a hint of where they go next, or should I stay firm on the fact that they didn’t specifically search his body or tie him up, all so this scene to happen I patiently await judgement

Roman Ottinger

To the esteemed supreme justices and to bailiff Jake who is either my very best friend or my greatest woe, depending on how we are feeling today. I present the case of the plummeting paladin! My close friends and I were playing through a campaign and had been on a cloud giant castle in the sky for a bit. We saw something on the ground and most of the party descended a long, ethereal staircase to investigate. My paladin stayed above to keep watch from the skies, and for good reason as a band of fire giants soon began approaching. I shouted down to warn the others but the DM said they couldn’t hear me, as I was too far away. I tried a number of methods to try to warn my party but to no avail. Eventually, I asked my DM if I could jump off the castle, and hold my action to cast misty step just before I hit the ground to teleport myself to safety. The DM said under no circumstances would that be possible, because even if I could do it in time, my momentum would still crush me. This is where we need your guidance. We broke into a huge argument about the conservation of momentum with different teleportation-like spells like demention door, teleport, misty step, and more. So justices, I need your help to answer the question: is your momentum conserved when you cast teleportation spells, and can they be used to help save yourself from falling? I humbly await your results.

Tori

To the supreme arbiters of justice, and anyone else in attendance, I bring you a simple dilemma: when homebrew harms you, who is responsible? I was playing in a campaign that ultimately lasted four years, and we were in the penultimate arc. It also happened to be my character's backstory arc. I had given the DM a lot of freedom with where to take it, describing the magical mad scientist who had experimented on my character in his backstory only in terms of his reputation and leaving all the details up to her. Eventually we came face to face and began to fight. After my character whiffed the first attack, another member of the party said 'does anyone want this guy not to be melted'. Thinking it was just trash talk we all agreed. Imagine my surprise when the other player proceeded to use a homebrew spell that was essentially a giant laser that did tons of damage. The DM, excited, added that due to extra features of this homebrew spell, it would also 'dispel his many enchantments' and do extra damage for each one. Essentially, my character's backstory tormentor was one shot by a spell I learned existed right then. The other player and DM both seemed happy and excited, but I guess my shock and dismay was evident to the other players because three of them sent me private messages to ask if I was okay. I ask the honorable justices: who was at fault? The other player, for creating a cracked homebrew and not respecting narrative significance? Or the DM, for encouraging it and making it worse? Or still, me for not ducking out of the campaign before it ever got to that? I place myself at the mercy of the court.

LeCurve52

To the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and whatever temp they’ve hired this week to read the cases, may it please the court, I present to you the case of the denied Mortal Kombat Fatality. I have recently joined a new campaign. None of us have played together before. We’re level 2, but because we rolled for stats, i have 20 in strength. My character is a reborn orc who doesn’t remember anything about his life. He also doesn’t really know his own strength or proper battle etiquette. Our party was asked to save a small mill from being burned down by mercenaries. During the fight, I rolled a nat 20 and got to describe my finishing blow on one of the mercs. I gave a really cool description of how my character tried to grab this guy by the neck and pull him along, only to accidentally rip his head and spine out like in Mortal Kombat. I thought this was a funny and cool way to show that my character was stronger than he realized. My DM immediately cut in saying that i wasn’t strong enough to do a full spine-rip, and that i just snapped his neck like a normal person. I feel like, with a 20 strength and a crit attack, my chosen fatality was perfectly reasonable, but i didn’t want to cause drama at a new table. Am i in the wrong for describing such a glorious overkill? I leave judgment to the experts.

Beth N

To the honorable and wise judges, and that other guy Jack: This was my first time DMing, and it was a one shot. One player was a Changeling, who we'll call Changeling. The party got a quest after seeing some weird stuff in a kids' playroom upstairs from a massive holiday party. They met the entire family, including the children. Upon the group's return to the party a few hours later, Changeling declared he would turn into one of the children of the family hosting the party to fool the mother. Before I could respond, he rolled a natural 20 in Deception. I told him the mother wasn't fooled, as you can't fool a mother that someone else is her child. I wasn't planning to ask for a roll - he rolled before I could respond to his declaration. This led to some back and forth about it until I ended the debate by saying the real child entered the room. I ask you, who was right: myself or Changeling?

Mica K

May it please the Court and the gorgeous Judges and theres also that guy Junk! I bring to you the case of the Returning Character. One of the people in my campaign had a character that left and, you guessed it, returned to the party. The reason they left was because the Artificer class was too difficult for them. When they returned they respec’ed the character was a Cleric. They have a lot of difficulty playing this character as a Cleric (most spellcasters, really). Is it okay to ask them to change their class again?

Patrick Hynes

To the esteemed crit justices and the honorable bailiff, I bring the case of the jumping barbarian. My friend is running “descent to avernus” for us in the space between our first campaign and my next one. We were fighting a large devil inside of a home, when I (Goliath barb/paladin) was “punched through the floor” to the first floor. When told by my DM it was 12 ft ceilings, I was elated, as I could continue to use my movement to jump vertically and attack, like a monk. My DM decided this was disadvantage on attacks, despite that there’s nothing in the rules to say this, and monks do jumping attacks frequently. Wise and merciful court, was I screwed out of a fun whack a mole scene? (PS- it would have taken three turns of full dashing to return to the fight with this thing)

CARGO REAPER

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

Crits

Esteemed justices and Bailiff Blake, I present to you the case of the NPCs and the bees. In my home game, I created a backup character in case mine died (my boys rolls were dicey for a minute there) but luckily he survived and made it to a city hosting a ball. My DM told me he had an idea for a role my backup character could fit at the ball and asked my permission to use her as an NPC. I said yes. Fast forward to the session. My former character is flirting with our party’s bard, and within 15 minutes they’re fucking in a bush. Now, I did say he could use the character, to be fair, and I didn’t want to interrupt the, um, intimate moment, so I waited til after the session to say “hey, that was kinda weird”. My DM said forgot she was my character in the moment, which I find questionable but will not dispute for the sake of this case. (Full disclosure this isn’t a real argument between us lol, but we do want to know) Justices, was that kinda weird or am I being weird? I humbly await your judgment.

Helena VanNatter

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

Lorelei The Succubi and Kyra The succulent snack

To the teeny tiny little judges and the John Cena impersonating bailiff Blake. I bring to you the case of the unnecessary god intervention. I play a 5e Decent into Avernus campaign online with some friends. Whilst being overrun by a series of Gnolls on our travels I (a Cleric/sorcerer) moved up to help my ally barbarian tank some hits so he didnt die. At some point during combat I rolled an attack against a gnoll and had myself targeted while doing so and did 8 pts of damage to myself which is quite a bit as my max was 28. The DM had a rule about not doing self damage for stuff like that, but when I brought it up he ignored it each time (3 before I gave up). A couple rounds later, maybe an hour went by? But our fighter made the same mistake I did and hit himself and the DM immediately removed the damage saying that's not how we roll. Because of the 8 damage I had done to myself, I got swarmed by Gnolls and ended up having to use strength from the grave (like orc reckless endurance) and then a second time gifted by my goddess as I could have died if it sisnt trigger, the damage dealt wouldnt have been enough to down me a potential second time. So I ask, is my DM in the wrong for not removing the 8 HP of damage or should I suck it up or just let myself die next time?

Pedro De Oliveira

I offer a deep bow to the radiant, brave, eloquent judges. Oh and a small finger wave to the little bailif Jorge in the corner. May it please the court: In my campaign of over a year, my party and I defeated a wanted necromancer who had a reward of 50000 gold divided amongst the party. However, the gold would not be delivered until a few months later after she went through a trial. Within these months (meaning half a year irl) i was not happy with my character, a fighter who i didnt really connect with since it was my first dnd character. After changing characters, (i am now a bard that joined the party after the fighter left) my party received the gold and one of them argued that my bard should NOT receive my fair share of the gold. The other party members didnt say anything neither did the dm. I had no argument to make as the bard, thus i was left pennyless and worse: holding an irl grudge for an imaginary game. Then i ask for your judgement: should I just let it go or was my party/dm wrong for not rewarding me with fake money? I note that i was the one who came up with the plan to capture the necromancer and stole her arcane focus

Bebs

Friends and enemies of the court, I present the case of the rings that ended the campaign. During covid, I tried my hand at DMing for the first time with a virtual group of our friends. One player was a Chaotic Evil Dragonborn Blood Hunter, who decided to keep running off to random towns and killing innocent civilians. I as well as some players were getting frustrated , and as a first time DM, I wanted to keep the party together and on track. My boyfriend and I came up with a set of rings, whose wearers couldn't be more than so many hundred feet apart, or else they'd take damage. When the party went to a shop in town, the clerk offered them these rings for basically free. One PC immediately took them and put them on himself and the dragonborn, and it seemed like we had a solution. WELL... other members of the party got HEATED because these rings were a real item, and they were worth way more than what I gave it to them for. They said it would break the game if they sold the rings. I said they were worth much in this world. That didn't settle the argument. Everyone continued to argue, one player called me a terrible DM, and the dragonborn walked away from the party, taking damage from the ring, until he died. Thus, this ended the campaign. Was I wrong to offer these rings? Should they have cost more? What else should I have done? PS we have new groups to play with and I'm a much better DM now :)

Daniel Kreider

Honorable judges and bailorff Jay, may it please the court. I present the case of the pterodactyl-horse backpack. In the campaign I DM, one of our party’s favorite NPCs was attacked on the road and needed to be transported to the nearest city within a week for special healing or she would die. To maximize time, our level 9 druid wanted to wildshape into a pterodactyl to carry the NPC to town. Since she could only be wildshaped for 8 hours a day, however, she also wanted to carry a horse and the dying NPC on her pterodactyl back for 8 hours, then ride the horse for 8 hours, then sleep, then repeat. As the DM, I did some calculations involving strength score, carrying capacity, etc. and was left confused so I eventually decided it was too funny an image to deny. However, I feel as though I may have cheapened this NPC’s plight by allowing such a silly solution. Did I cheapen the stakes of my campaign by allowing a pterodactyl to carry a horse and a dying woman like a backpack?

Austin

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

JC

Dear Supreme Crit and Bailiff Cake, I bring to you a case regarding a DnD battle Royale. My friend and I decided to co-DM a one shot with 10 players where they would drop onto an island Fortnite style and do small quests and small dungeons and collect loot before fighting each other on the top of a volcano. One of the players managed to get a Mjolnir like hammer that only they could wield. While flying with another player above the volcano, one player tied the hammer to other players after a successful grapple and sleight of hand and let them go, resulting in them plummeting in the lava below, killing them. The player whom was dropped into the volcano argued that they should be able to teleport out on their turn, but I argued that being fully submerged in lava was absolutely lethal. It was also approaching midnight and I had been DMing since noon so I wanted to wrap things up. Justices, should lava be an instant death or did I cheat my player out of a potential victory.

Gianni Pappas

To the honorable Justices and the handsome Bailiff Jarf. I am submitting the case of the Ruined Disguise. I was running a train height one shot. The players were trying to infiltrate the back two private train cars. Our rouge wanted to steal the outfit of a waiter. I thought this was a great idea and mentioned they had seen a stop before where the staff rotated and there was one coming up for such a long trip. At the stop the rouge followed a waiter into the station bathroom. I asked so how do you take out the waiter. Expecting hitting them in the head or choke them out I was blindsided by there decision. “I’m going to sneak in while they’re at the urinal and sneak attack them with my crossbow”. Everyone at the table just stared at the rogue and when they rolled a 28 to hit and 46 damage they all started dying laughing. I then described how as it hit them in the chest they noticed the blood start pouring from the wound and covering the outfit in blood. The look of realization on their face was priceless as we did this for nothing. The rogue later mentioned it could have worked if they had said it was aimed for the head. I said they still would cost the suit in blood no matter where they were shot with a crossbow. Was I in the wrong for ruining an outfit when there were plenty other ways to take them out without a crossbow?

Ethan Johnson

To the Awesome Supreme Crit and the High Five-able Balif, I present to you the case of the mushroom pc. I dm for a party on my campus in a setting called steinhardt's (Bloodborne) and in the third session one of my PCs who was also my roommate decided to eat a werid grey mushroom with a skull on it he found in a broken down greenhouse. Since then he has fallen unconscious twice and his mushroom progressed both times. He has been begging me to do get rid of the mushroom. Should I just retcon his poor decision making skills or let him deal with the consequences of his actions? Note: he has also drank bonebrew and activated literally every trap thusfar. I prostrate myself before your judgement.

Kyu C

(I use they/them pronouns!) To the esteemed Justices (and Investigators??) Axford, Tanner, and Murphy, and their prepubescent boy detective/intern Jank- I present to you a case... and a mystery. For background, my first time ever playing D&D was in a pay-per-session Discord server that was run by one guy (let's call him Kevin) who had a bunch of paid DMs running multiple campaigns. He implemented mandatory homebrew rules for all games- to name a few: Long Rests took a week, Warforged were outright banned, and all PCs had to have 2 living parents they were on good terms with. No exceptions. I didn't recognize any of these were red flags because I was so new and excited to play. After playing 8 sessions in a Lost Mines game, we had a new player join our party who needed to get caught up. We had a single notes channel that we'd never use because it was impossible to keep track of messages that we couldn't organize or edit. Kev would comment frequently on how bare the channel was, so I used a 3rd party site to make a "wiki" with locations, key NPCs, session summaries, etc! I made it so anyone with the link could edit, posted it, and everyone seemed hype! ... Except almost immediately I got a dm from Kevin saying another player claimed I was gatekeeping the notes (I never found out what this meant). The new player left the server and campaign a few days later after only being in one session, and when I went to update the site later that week, everything was gone. I was devastated. We just assumed new guy had committed a crime of passion and escaped into the night. While the group was consoling me, our DM spoke to Kev to see if he had any insight. He said sorry that happened, but then followed with "This is why you should use the notes channel :)" So I must ask: who was the perp? Kevin or the mysterious stranger? What was their motive? And should they receive punishment for reducing my work to ash, or should I have foreseen this cataclysm and just used the safer but messier option? I humbly await your verdict. P.S. I'm currently in a wonderful homebrew campaign with some of the sweetest and most talented people I've ever met, two of them are also Patreon subs and got me listening to the pod <3

PlantGang

To the ever financially fiscal judges, and the grill hoarding bailiff I present to you the case of Detect Thoughts. My party is convinced that this spell can be used to eavesdrop, but I (the DM) told them that it is used to detect feelings and thoughts they are having in response to a conversation - NOT the words spoken. This came after my disguised bad guy tried to activate a verbal kill switch from 60 feet away and a player boldly stated that he kills the BBEG before the BBEG can finish the word because the player cast detect thoughts. We then spent 20 minutes rereading the spell over and over. I shall be patiently awaiting your awaiting judgement.

Jake bird man

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

AmberDextrous!

May it please the court and bailiff Jonk: i present the case of the grossed out ghoster. I play in a game on discord and for the most part it's been really fun. However there's one player who has completely ruined my experience. She eats her dinner during the session and instead of muting herself, she just makes loud chewing and nomming noises into the microphone. It truly makes me nauseous to listen to. I've tried to be subtle about getting her to stop by muting myself and then saying "oh sorry, i was muted, I'm eating and I don't want to make people listen to me chew." No reaction. No one else seems bothered by this, even when i messaged them privately and so when game time came up last week, I just didn't log on. The dm and the party have been messaging me but I leave them on read because I don't know how to explain that I can't be in the same call as this girl. Am I being immature about this? I know ghosting isn't cool, but everyone seems to think I was overreacting about the noises.

Kate W

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

Martian

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

Mikeroscopic

Good Morning Distinguished Justices and Omnipotent Bailiff, Drake. I bring forth the case of The Boat Monger. (Feel free to trim this down, it’s long but I tried my best to give an idea of what’s going on). I DM a campaign with 5 players. On of the characters, Johnny, is a former pirate. I leaned into that and this has resulted in travel and battles on the high seas. It’s fun and my players enjoy it. However in our previous ship battle encounter this resulted in the monk of the party, Tyler, capturing enemy ships with the intent to sell them. At first I thought Tyler was forgoing stinking the ship and instead boarding to capture then release enemy privateers. The party killed all the privateers, looted the ship, then Tyler stated “let’s tow this into port.” They did this with two galleys. Exhibit A - DnD 5e Vehicles: Ghosts of Saltmarsh: Galley. Three of the five party members protested stating “What are we going to do with two extra boats” and they didn’t want to go on a side quest to sell these. I tried my best to be impartial but reminded to Tyler “In Tyler the monk’s backstory you stated he is a hermit wandering the wilds, leaving polite society hundreds of years ago, why does he care about making money.” I also implied “You are going to be selling two privateer ships, this is akin to stealing and selling a police car in real life. It will be tough to find a buyer.” Tyler’s response was basically “But think what we can do with the money!” Since then every roleplay interaction with one of my NPCs begins with “Hey, want to buy a boat?” Sucking all of the air out of the room for the rest of my players. And this used-boat-saleman side quest really put the breaks on the rest of the campaign. Tyler is expecting to sell a galley for 30k gold which I believe he got the number from the DM Manual Mounts and Vehicles section. How do I mediate this? One player doesn’t care, three players stated they don’t want to go on a boat sale side quest and want to actually play the game, and Tyler is insistent and incorrigible on selling these galleys. I tried my best to subtly push Tyler away from the selling the boats in order to keep the party happy and the campaign moving, but he hasn’t responded to it. Am I at fault for allowing boat capture? Have I not done enough to disuade this behavior and not knowing my players well enough? Do I put my foot down? Give in to the insistence of selling a boat? Pull the player aside and explain this ain’t fun for anyone involved? Get a new friend? At this point I don’t want my players towing around boats but also don’t want to reward this behavior. Additionally, after this I don’t want to do another ship battle if this is the aftermath. Which sucks because it plays so much into Johnny the Pirate’s personal story. I await for your guidance and judgement.

WunDarWun

Honorable justices, and the bailiff who is a buff and a cool, we have a running rule that if you roll a nat 1 during combat you either hurt yourself or a nearby companion (or otherwise cause a catastrophe narratively). The other day, our lvl 12 rogue critically failed on an attack against a combatant fighting my character. Because they attacked from hiding, they had advantage and our DM ruled that the rogue must use their full sneak attack dice against me! My character dropped under the weight of all those dice. And while we eventually won the fight and I was revived, AND we were all laughing very hard, I still maintain that sneak attack requires a level of intention that should have allowed our rogue to choose not to inflict it. My DM and I vowed to swallow a d8 if either of us are vindicated, so I humbly await your judgment.

Aalexander Knight

To the esteemed bailiffs and Judge Jakey and Executioner, I write to you with a brief update on the "Aarakock-blocked by my DM" case in which my DM said I couldn't play my chosen race in his campaign because of "Aarakocra fuckery". On the court's advice, I asked my DM privately whether he was actually concerned about flight or whether he just didn't think an Aarakocra would fit into his world. He said that he didn't have a problem with Aarakocra conceptually and that they might be pretty cool, but that he had never DMd for any characters that flew so he didn't want to have to contend with that especially right at the beginning of a campaign. Long story short, we settled on a compromise so he doesn't need to trust that I won't try to find a workaround to the 'burned feathers' thing: we came up with the idea that my character (Ozzy)'s wings were burned by cursed flames and so they couldn't regrow- naturally or through magic- until some as-yet undiscovered happening occurs within the story. This compromise means I get to play as my pretty parakeet pal and my character has a goal and arc lined up already, and my DM doesn't have to worry about me skirting his puzzles. We're about to have our third session and so far my being an Aarakocra hasn't been contentious at all. Thank you!

Lucas Dahmm

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

MacKenzie Tobias

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

yumehop (no. 1 ol' cobb fan)

Spell rules v. Rule of cool. We're playing Curse of Strahd (dnd 5e). My rogue, Rafi, has gotten married to our party monk, Kira. During the reception, Strahd (my father in law ;-;) shows up at the church and we get into a huge battle between all the wedding guests and his cronies. Our druid Temerity casts Bones of the Earth, raising some of our allies higher and creating some pillars as cover. At one point the DM narrates a barbarian enemy going over and knocking the pillar over with immense strength. Her goal was to topple the pillar on top of several people who were standing in a line behind the pillar. however, per Bones of the Earth's spell description, the pillar crumbles into difficult terrain dirt. Should this maneuver have been allowed because it was pretty cool? Or should we have stuck to the spell's description? In the end, the party and the DM argued for a bit and went with RAW, but I'm still curious about what we could/should have done.

Tori
>>123813918

Realized after submitting that I should have opened with 'when homebrew becomes harmbrew' because that's snappier.

Sev Nessus

Hey hey justices, and what's good other guy. I bring forth the case of 'The DM Verses The Wizard With Mommy Issues.' Trying to keep this brief. Did a Ghosts of saltmarsh game with a friend and two strangers. One ran the game the other played a wizard with the criminal background. The dm was pretty good and worked everyone's back story into the game. The wizard didn't write much of a backstory, apparently it was two sentences long. He did let it slip that his mom thought he was dead and "that it's for the better." He wasn't an edgelord or anything, his character was pretty jovial and chill. The player and the dm once spent ten minutes ragging on the rule of cool and awful players they had. Cut to a few months in. We rescued people from pirates. One turned out to be the wizard's mom. The wizard casts sleep on her and says "it's for the best if she doesn’t know he's still kicking." My friend cried, it was sad. But the dm stated he was trying to give him some spotlight. The wizard said it's fine and he wasn't about it. Session ends early. I dont know if they talked. Next session things are tense. Wizard's mom wakes up and asks my character what's up. Nat 17 said she was mistaken and she didnt see her son. The dm is clearly upset and says what's the point of playing a game without backstorys and what not? Wizard says he just wasn't about it. The campaign wrapped up after another session. I'm playing vtm with wizard now, pretty awesome. But he has the same game runing style as our dm. They do similar voices too. Haven't heard from dm afterwards. I got the sense he was bunt out, which blows because he was nice. I was thinking of trying my hand at Changling The Dreaming since it's kind of up my alley. I was thinking of inviting the wizard guy and our old dm. But I don't know if they got beef. Was the dm being too presumptuous and was he trying to force a character moment? Or was wizard in the wrong for trying to Irish goodbye his mom and not going along with the dm? And should I reach out as try to pull everyone together for a weird tippy game or is this a sleeping dog?

Miranda Fox

To the honorable justices Axford, Murphy and Tanner and Jeff I humbly bring to you the case of the attempted laying down of party rules. I was running a homebrew campaign for some photographers I had worked with and a few friends of theirs after they had expressed interest in playing but didn’t have a DM and I had a world built and no current campaign. All was well and it was me with 6 players of varying levels of experience. After a mini-arc to get people’s feet wet and have them start to get into their characters we started to move out into the larger story. Here is where things start to go south, I couldn’t get these fuckers to do any amount of talking. Not to each other, not starting conversations with NPCs that were around and with a ‘kill first we will loot the bodies to find the secrets later’ mentality from some of them. Now I’m happy to let people ease in to RP because it’s new and nerve wracking to some people but when I broached it with my more experienced players they pointed out that their characters were more broody and didn’t find talking to others to be their forte, so I had nobody on the other side of the table putting anything forward. After keeping going (with some improvement from my newer players) we finally got to the 1 year mark and one of my PC’s wanted to run a campaign for a new module he had gotten. As a forever DM I jumped on the chance and we had reached a natural pause point to take a break for a one-shot. That’s when we get a message on the discord from the person who created the group with some “new rules” we were going to be playing by. These included: limited RP (we just want to fight I don’t know why we have to act out finding the clues), not wanting to meet interesting NPC’s (no shopkeepers with silly accents) and not wanting to have to have backstories. Me and the next DM both left the group immediately and I got a message from one of the more experienced players calling me a bad dm for not being able to work with their rules. So I ask the court am I in fact a “Bad DM” or is it kinda the point of a TTRPG to have the RPG portion. P.S. don’t worry Murph I have new friends.

Michael Smallwood

May it please the Court. To the beautiful and intelligent Supreme Crit Justices, I present the case of clueless NPC. I am running a play though of Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen and my players are ... oh Jake, I didn't see you there. Anyway, my players are just learning about the threat of the Dragon Army. Looking for answers, on on player, a Pact of the Genie Warlock, decided to go into her lamp and ask her Genie if he knew anything. The thing is, I haven't read the whole book yet, so I don't know all that's going to happen and all the machinations of the world. So I just did a thousand yard stare, and said the Genie didn't know and was just sent off by his god. My question is, should I have made something up based on what I did already know? Is there a way to retroactively have this make sense but still let it pay off for my player? I await your decision, and will humbly accept any punishment for my sinful act of not being prepared enough.

Sean Cullen

A rare Deck on many things case! May it please the court and the occasional 8 bit book club guest I was DMing a one shot where I decided to use the deck of many things to spice things up. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t consider that one of my players would approach it with “well it’s a one shot” energy and decided to pull 5 cards. I specifically said he would pull them one by one to build suspense. On the first pull my player pulled the Ruin Card, causing him to loose all of his possessions including his gold. On the next card he pulled the void, casing his soul to be taken from his body and effectively taking his character out of the one shot. My players argued that since he was drawing (and presumably paying) for these cards one by one, after getting the ruin card he did not have the gold to pay to draw more cards and never actually subject to the void. In the end I had him make a deal with the chaotic god (and owner of the deck) for his soul, and the one shot went on to be one of my all time favorites. Do you think he was correct to say he couldn’t have afforded the second draw? Should I have allowed this logical loophole?

Tyler Dowd

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

Banana Bread

May it please the kings and queens of the court, as well as the lowly squire James. I bring you a case that has not happened, but may soon come to pass. I am about to start a new campaign, within the setting of Horturos, which is a Game of Thrones/Crown of Candy style political intrigue setting of my own making, where all the characters are mice, rats, capybaras, squirrels, and moles from various kingdoms, that ride on size appropriate mounts, like small frogs or birds. All this to say, given the setting, I intend to have some scary ambush/assassin/Red Wedding encounters, but I’d like to get approval from the Court so my players cannot sue me. May I send assassins after my royal rodents? Or will their foes be confined to honorable combat? The fate of Horturos depends on you.

Contender in the making

To the honorable cake of a baliff and the 3 sit above I bring the cause of the sharpshooter Ive been playing in an inkine campaign to get more familiar with the game before becoming a dm for a friend group. I recently got the sharpshooter feat. Which says " if you make an attack at long range, you no longer get disadvantage on the attack roll" My online dm doesnt allow me to get advantage on roles while using the feat because " disadvantage is already cancelled out so you can't get advantage " I disagree and would rule that sharpshooter doesnt cancel disadvantage but ignores it from being applied due to distance alone Whose interpretation is correct I throw myself at your feet thank you

Embrim Swiftwhistle

Dear esteemed justices of the court and the other guy, I bring a case of mismatched desires. My group has been playing together for over a year, and it has recently come to my attention that our DM set out with visions of a gritty, meaninful world with consequences and death and whatnot, whereas us players want to frolic about in an escapist world where we win all battles and none of our friends are in serious mortal danger. Now, my personal feelings are that both kinds of campaign are valid and can be tons of fun. However, they do not coexist in the same world well. Honorable justices, which should win out in this situation? The DM's original intent, or the player's? How can we prevent such mishaps in the future? I prostrate myself at the feet of the court and await your fair judgement.

Verdugo

To the honorable Justice Axford and her harem, I confess to the court that I believe I may have committed a grave sin against Dice Christ. I'm a fairly new DM, and my players recently fought a Medusa. They defeated her, but not before three of them became petrified by her gaze. They were only level 5 and couldn't cast Greater Restoration yet, but I had given them a spell scroll beforehand, so they were able to restore one person. However, that still left two people permanently petrified. Those two players laughed it off and quickly rolled up new characters in the next session. But I realized something afterwards: when you have to make the saving throw against the Medusa's gaze, you can instead choose to look away, in exchange for disadvantage on your next attack. In the heat of the battle I had forgotten to give my players this option, and the two characters may never have been petrified if they had had the choice to look away. I told my players about my mistake and they seem to be okay with it, but I still feel bad. Can I ever be absolved of accidentally killing off two of my PCs? I humbly await the judgment of Dice Christ.

Armadon the only

If it please the high Honors and the Clerk of the Crit I present a case of story vs player motivation. I set up a campaign where the head church was involved with punishing criminals of god and government. No matter your rank of you’re guilty of a crime you pay back those you wronged. (Inspired by the Aiel from wheel of time). The “law” of the wealthy if you didn’t have a Steward, the church would look after your wealth. Now, after telling my players this more elaborately, they demanded I explain how anyone would want to live in this setting If you property could be confiscated so easily. We had a back and forth before I decided to change the setting to another part of my pretend world. Justices and Bailiff, was my setup so naive to have worked on a kingdom level, or were my friends just being difficult?

alli

May it please the beautiful and wonderful justices as well as the incredible bailiff Jorts, I bring to you the case of the resurrection without consent. I was playing a cleric/ranger (twilight/gloomstalker) in an online 5e campaign about a year ago. Our party was in a battle and I cast Life Transference on myself to give a party member health back. This knocked me out, and the session ended while I was in the middle of death saves. When we returned, combat continued and I ended up failing my death saves without the party realizing since I whispered the rolls to the DM. I was okay with this but slightly sad, and informed people of some errands I had to take care of, leaving the discord call. About an hour later I got several DMs telling me to come back on the call, as I wasn’t dead anymore. I was confused. I thought the DM would at least message me to see if I wanted to continue playing the character before choosing outright to resurrect me (we didn’t have revivify components, an NPC did the resurrection). I know I left, but I did say I was available if people needed to message me, and no one had in the small amount of time that I was gone. I have since left the campaign due to other issues, but I have to ask, am I wrong to be upset that this big decision was made about my character without my opinion being considered, or should I just be happy that she’s still out there somewhere, kicking ass?

Cha boi

To the exalted Murphy, Axford, Tanner and (?) . I come before you to ask for penance in the deepest and greatest sin of all: trying to look cool in front of my girlfriend. Last summer, I was playing in my second or third one shot ever with my girlfriend, who had never played before, with a group of at a retreat. Me being a huge D&D fan wanting to play more and especially get to play with my now-fiancée, I wanted her to have the best time ever, from helping her tailor a character that made her genuinely excited to min-maxing her character for social encounters, which she prefers more. We sit down at the table and one person, let’s call them Turuk, is more than all in. They have dressed up as a chaotic neutral gnome wizard in pinks and purples and ornate gems. They also preface the playing of the game by interrupting the DM by saying that “if you don’t know the rules, you can just ask me instead”. The game starts and they are immediately in character, bringing a Day-Lewis level of commitment to the bit, from their pesky voice to their wriggling hands. It is here that Bahamut bested me, as in an attempt to keep my girlfriend interested and keep thinking D&D is cool, I uttered “okay dude relax”. Turuk immediately retreats into theirselves and I fear I ruined their genuine enjoyment in an attempt to make my girlfriend think that D&D, and by extension, I, was cool. Please serve me the highest punishment allowed, as I believe this transgression to be of the highest gravity.

Felix Principe-gillespie

Jovial Justices and Boring Bailiff, I come to this court seeking your aid in preventing a future transgression. I have been invited to be a guest villain in a friends DnD game, he’s a fairly new DM, we did the first session, it went great, the party all want my villain dead and this upcoming session will be the clash. My concern is this, he’s allowed me to make my character however I want, he’s a level 12 sorcerer while the party are all around level 7. He told me not to hold back, but I’m scared. I have access to some pretty powerful tools and I think I might whomp the party. What do I do, do I do as the DM asked and potentially TPK his party, or hold back and ignore him. I come before the court seeking guidance.

Nick Rees

Resplendent Bishops and Pope Axford. I'm here to beg Dice Christ's forgiveness. I think I'm ruining the game for the wizard. I dm for a high level campaign and since level 3 the wizard has wanted 9th level spells. He recently used True Polymorph to turn the whole party into Gold Dragons which can transform back into their humanoid selves. However i had to make all combats after that equal to gold dragons. My players were upset that they couldn't use class abilities in combat anymore bc the difficulty required them to be dragons. I compromised and let them keep the fire immunity if they changed back but the wizard seemed upset. I talked to him after and he feels boxed out of an awesome spell. He already can't use Wish after using it only once. Should I give him more in the compromise? Please Help!

Hannah Rubinek

If it pleases the esteemed supreme Crit Justices and the lowly baby bailiff (Jack? Jonk? Doesn’t matter) — I bring the double injustice of the case of the bachelor party Bards. Many significant things were happening for my friend Henry this past summer. He was about to finish the “oops all bards” campaign he was playing an 11th level glamor bard in. Oh, and also, he was getting married. Our friend Billy planned to run a one shot for the final night of the bachelor party weekend, but the DM of the bard campaign said that since the whole bard party would be at the bachelor party, he should run the campaign’s final session and add Billy and the two other non-campaign members at the party into their campaign finale. (The bard party had started in person but had to go remote when the DM moved for grad school, so he argued it would be extra exciting and epic if they could finish in person. ) Billy agreed to change plans, wanting the night to be as special as possible for Henry. About 3 days before the trip the DM revealed that the new players would also all be bards — a rival band. That sounded great until he told us (despite knowing each of us were experienced dnd players) that we would all be level 2. We were bummed to not even get a subclass, but dutifully made our characters, planning to bring boy band sass and stacked our spells to mostly buff the rest of the level 11 party. The final insult came when the DM invented a kind of madness to take over each of us. (No wisdom saving throw or clear cause, we were just informed via text.) At first this seemed like fun flavor we tried to embrace. The DM told Billy that once he popped back up from a healing word he was overcome with insatiable hunger. Billy wondered aloud if going down had turned him into a zombie or something, so to test the theory he narrated that he looked at his bloody, scraped hands and licked his palm. The DM looked taken aback. He replied that Billy’s character was grossed out by this blood and then further determined that that was his action and moved on in initiative. Billy was crushed that not only was his attempt to play along with the DM was shut down but also that his playing at ALL was shut down! (And with 7 players that meant Billy would have to wait 30+ min for his next chance to do anything.) I ask the court: were we wronged to be relegated to doubly-nerfed level 2 bards? And should not licking one’s palms be an object interaction of sorts? Not a player’s entire turn?! I humbly await your judgment.

Eugene

Here ye here ye I honor the court justices and the lowly bailiff Steven May it please the court I have a DM versus player problem. So I have something that happened to my group and I a while ago but I just found out about the dungeons and dragons court. So my character had got killed by werewolves we are still a little bit triggered by them by the way. Before that my other player and I had used the marriage ritual to get the plus to AC and other benefits it gives. We discovered that when one person dies that is part of the ritual you can preform it again………… We just happened to have 3-4 scrolls of revivify and had a thought. We asked our dm if he would allow us to slit each other’s throats and die so we could always have the marriage ritual. I think we almost made our DM sick af he wasn’t a happy camper. Is it really that fucked up? Is it even more fucked up my friend and I had the idea at the same time. Sounds like true friendship to me.

Alistair Mackenzie

To the mighty, mighty Justices and the Bailiff Jorb, I present to you the case of the Overloaded Bag of Holding. I DM a campaign for a few of friends. One session, they were hunting down the leader of a local town who had killed a party member, and they came across a freezing river. While I had expected them to cross this with a combination of constitution saves and athletics checks, they instead came up with increasingly elaborate schemes leading to the decision to place two fully armoured dwarves and the (human) assassin butler into the sorcerer's bag of holding. After checking a couple of times that this really was what they wanted to do and they were sure they had thought it through, I narrated the ripping of the bag as it was overloaded. Rather than immediately sending all three players to the astral plane I asked each of them and the sorcerer for a charisma saving throw as if they were being banished. On a pass by 5 or more, they were fine. On a fail, they were sent to the astral plane. On a regular pass, they managed to hold themselves in place but all of their items (including clothing, gold) was sucked into the astral plane. Only one player failed - the artificer who had replaced the previously fallen party member and who found it hilarious. Though light-hearted, my brother feels put out that his sorcerer who wasn't in the bag ended up naked and needing to go rob his dad's summer house for a new arcane focus. Was I too harsh and/or too lenient? I wanted to try to honour the stakes in the item description, but in hindsight taking stuff away from players seems like a real Galad move.

Bruce Pouliot-Dallaire

Good day to the amazing and perfect Jake. A while ago, I was playing with a player that created his backstory around the fact he needed to last hit enemies or he would get berserk. It was not something needed from his class. He and the DM decided this way. It become quickly an issue when we are doing an investigation adventure. The player always wanted to kill the enemy we wanted to interrogate, and was always able to do it. After the second time, I said it was annoying, but the DM and the player just said it was his ''character'' and they can't change it. When it happened the third time and the group wasted all their resources to keep the enemy NPC alive, I asked everyone if we should kill the player character and move on since we were not progressing (we were not doing well). After 2 week of silence from the player and the DM (during that time I did apologize to both, they did not answer), the DM lied to me and my girlfriend saying they would cancel the whole game. They actually just continued the game without us. Was I in the wrong? PS: yes Murph I now have better friends (lol) and I DM a campaign in your style of play. I now have 3 player and my adventure is strongly story driven. Thank you for making me a better DM!

Noah Kyle

To the most radiant deacons of Dice Christ’s church, I prostrate myself in front of the pulpit for I have committed a most heinous sin: I’ve done the world of Bahumia real dirty. A few years ago we needed an in-between mini campaign and I, having listened to campaign one twice in a row, said I could run bahumia for everyone with minimal prep while the real campaign was readied. Everyone seemed excited and started talking about characters. One player in particular was very interested in being from the Crick. How exciting, I thought, I can use the crick rot plot verbatim and it’ll be very satisfying. The player wanted to be half elf half orc. No problem, I said, we can take some traits from one and some traits from the other and make a little homebrew race. She said she wanted to have a Russian accent and that she’d been practicing it. This is where I commit my sins. Oh no no, I tell the player, people who grow up in the crick have southern accents. My player said please, she wanted to do the Russian accent. I told her if she wanted a Russian accent she’d have to have grown up in the north, where people with Russian accents are from. She didn’t want that, she wanted to have grown up in the crick with her mother. In the end she acquiesced, saying she’d do the southern accent. Turns out, she was almost completely incapable of doing the crick drawl, and thus spent the entire adventure either embarrassed or silent. I always felt bad that she didn’t have very much fun in bahumia, but only a year or so later did I fully realize just how much it was my fault that she didn’t enjoy herself. This is why I throw myself before you, O Blessed ones, and Murph, the guy that made bahumia, to ask forgiveness for taking your world a little too serious. Let my punishments be great, and the lessons I learn from them even greater.

Noah Goodman

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

Kevin C

Intro free 2023 here’s my case. If it pleases the court I play a rogue in a campaign with friends and I was attempting to leap over a bottomless chasm. My DM told me to make a dex save. I rolled the dice and got an 18 but before I could announce the result, my DM changed their mind and said to make an acrobatics check instead. That’s was fine, I’m good at both, added my acrobatics modifier to the 18 and the response I got was “you can’t use your old roll you need to roll again.” I protested because it was for the same attempt, just a different modifier but they insisted, and I didn’t want to fight so I relented. My new roll was a 13 and while I managed to barely pass the check anyway, I still feel slighted. I ask you noble justices and wise Bailiff Jack, was I wronged?

Nathan Perez

This is not a case, but a confession for Dice Christ. I come before you asking for absolution for Rous Biggeron, my Bloodhunter who turns into a were-capybara. My friends and I played a spooky one shot where a plague of evil pumpkins kidnapped everyone. They were all vulnerable to fire damage, and when Rous transforms, he has an ability that allows him to add extra fire damage to his attacks. It was an absolute pulp-bath as I tore through pumpkins with my great sword and sharp capybara buck teeth. However, after the session, I discovered that I could only apply it to one of my weapons, so I was doing far more damage than I should have. I beg of you for forgiveness before Dice Christ, but please do not remove my curse. I like being a rodent of unusual size.

Nicolas R

Proud and honorable judges and whomever they have guest starring as the bailiff this week. I bring you the case of the traitorous counterspell. I dm for a group of friends that have been playing together for 5+ years. Typically, we run fairly low power encounters, as the players are used to the game being more casual and the game more roleplay focused. For this encounter I had one player, the only true power-gamer, who was playing a skeleton, resurrected by the bbeg and turned traitor for a combat. I had him pick his spells and gave him some abilities that made him boss worthy. First round into the fight, one of my other players, a multiclass rogue, sorcerer, wizard, cast a spell that was immediately countered by the traitor player. This was the first time the multiclass player had ever been counterspelled, and was so taken aback that he chose not to move or use a bonus action, opting to continue to stand on a table in the middle of a room full of enemies, next to another friendly spellcaster. On his turn, the traitor pc hit them both with a fireball that almost knocked both of them down, then on the other spellcaster pc's turn (a multiclass Warlock/wild magic sorcerer) hit a wild magic surge that confused both himself and the rogue. The rogue then spent the rest of the combat (2-3 rounds or so) doing nothing due to the confused state. The party ended up winning the day but the rogue had an awful time. I really like my play group, but I got kinda ticked when, after the session, he blamed me for letting the traitor pc use counterspell, that it was a bullshit spell and that it was bad game design for the only way to deal with someone with counterspell was to also have counterspell. I beseech the court, is it truly Wizards or my fault that spells do stuff, or does the fault lie somewhat on this player who chose not to use any of his three classes worth of abilities or movement to get out of the way of oncoming danger. I await fair and honest judgement.

Noah Goodman

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

Allen S

If it pleases the Magnanimous Judges and the Baliff that always wakes up with a Solid 9, may I present the cast of "Carried Versus Ridden". Our party found ourselves in the middle of an unnatural sand-storm, where the object was more to get a certain distance across the map than it was to defeat the enemies within the storm.  We were a few turns in when the conflict arose.  Our Wild Magic Sorcerer is zipping forward on a flying broom, and bunches up with the party.  My Wildfire Druid uses his Spirit's teleportation ability to pop the party 15 feet forward, trying to cut down on the total distance. Our DM retorted that this action would result in the Flying Broom being *abandoned* at the point we teleported from.  We argued that items 'worn and carried' are generally given a sense of Plot Armor.  The DM countered that it wasn't being 'worn or carried', it was a *vehicle*, and that maybe if it had a stat block that could count it as a creature, like our Creation Bard's Animated Objects, it'd be different.  He allowed our Sorcerer to teleport for the rest of the fight since we started that way, but ruled it would nerfed going forward. Judges, what do you declare the difference between an Item and a Vehicle, if any, when it comes to teleportation?  Was the table justified, or do we owe our DM an apology and spare ourselves the next debate?

DMAN

To the most honored justices (and the sometimes-if-in-Boston justice, Jack) I beg your wisdom. I run an in-person campaign that has been ongoing since 2019 (we switched to digital during the rougher months of 2020, and practice distancing at the table), and have recently been accused of "making things up as they go along" by one of my players. This happened after a session, wherein some particularly goofy things occured that had significant bearing on the overall plot. For reference: a good-aligned (and ally) lich in the process of repairing a broken phylactory possesed the body of a clockwork titan and ran the players through a gameshow-style quiz modeled after "Um, Actually" about the events of the campaign story. It's gonzo, I know, but after the session my player chimed in and said "Oh, I don't know how you expected me to answer questions about your story, I just assume that you make things up week-to-week and don't pay attention. These insane scenarios are just you trying to keep things fresh, you didn't plan these outright. You don't even keep a notebook at the table to refer to." I explained that some elements of DM'ing are definitely improv, or reactionary, but that overall, the story that I have planned out has been storyboarded years in advance. I explained that as a fantasy game, he should exoect outlandish scenarios. The book thing I understood, but having books at the table just isn't my style. Half of my party agreed with him, with the other half siding with me. At the end of the day I implored that the non believers reconsider, but if we were all having fun then I wouldn't continue to harp on it, but I am worried that half of the party is leaving the "paying attention" part entirely up to other people and only mentally checking in during combat. This is really bad for the narrative that I have written, as the lich game I described was priming them for a VERY IMPORTANT riddle near the end game that requires individual players to remember key moments of the story. I feel as though my players don't respect the energy I have put into this 4 year campaign, but my player feels as though I am not respecting THEIR time by seemingly showing up and improving for 3 hours every week. Should I show them my notebook full of storyboards and plot arcs? Should I start bringing piles of books to the table to break the momentum occasionally so I can flip through a prop? I appreciate you taking the time to answer, if you don't mind changing my name to "D", and maybe reading it on the bonus cases (if you do), and also: The orlando show was amazing! Did you get my House of Danger CYOA book gift? I had never been to a show before so I didn't know to leave it on the stage, and it got left with merch in a shirt box.

Trevor Nicholson

To the honorable justices and Emily’s bailiff understudy, I present to you the case of Bronson the Flamingo Kenku. I recently begun planning a new campaign for my wife and our closest friends. After some discussion, the setting of the campaign emerged as a world that has been subjected to an eternal winter and vibes like John Carpenter’s The Thing. Now, when it came time to create characters, I asked my wife what kind of character she had in mind. Within 30 seconds, she had developed a Kenku Bard named Bronson who she described as “a flamingo through and through.” Now, I relate to Justice Murphy’s disdain for birdfolk (albeit not as strongly) and was feeling a bit hesitant but decided to go with it because of how excited she was to play Bronson on a “Journey of self-discovery and friendship” until she told me that unlike Kenku, Bronson was not quite a bird-person, but a flamingo raised by Kenku who uses his wings instead of hands and presented me with a scene from the movie Rio as inspiration. When I said that Bronson could be a flamingo-flavored bird person with normal hands, she accused me of “flamingo-hole-ing” her character. I want to let her play a character she is excited about, but it feels like it’s already quickly getting out of hand (or wing) and we haven’t even started the game yet! So I ask the Court: should I allow Bronson, the flamingo with a passion for performance, to set out on a journey across a dark, frozen wasteland?

Basem H

To the 'makes my girlfriend want to listen to podcasts' justices, and the 'actually, nevermind' bailiff. I present the case of 'Engulf V Fear'. I DM a 5e game for some friends at work and my younger brother, a rogue. They were in combat on a boat with water elementals that used their 'Whelm' ability to grapple my brother. Because of the way that it's written, I flavored the ability as surrounding my bro completely, similar to a gelatinous cube. The elemental was forced to run when the bard cast FEAR on it. Because my brother was floating in a magic pool-monster, I had it instinctively run without releasing him. After the others started arguing that he should be auto-dropped, I resigned to giving my brother a free saving throw to attempt to escape. This put a weird energy over the night. The sessions had all be amazing up till then but that decision seemed to ruin the whole night, and I obviously still doubt myself because of it. Was I right to give in to their bullying, or should I have stuck to my guns since they were sour anyway? I will say that the 'water' elemental may have become a 'little-bit-of-pee' elemental. I await your judgement! (ps, my brother is 35 years old.)

David Heintz

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

Sam Ross

To the honorable, wise, and attractive Justices, and also Jake, I bring a case against my players and their abuse of game safety tools. I run an after school D&D program for a group of Middle Schoolers, wonderful little 12 year old psychopaths. As part of the games I run I've instituted basic safety tools of a Red Card/Yellow Card system as a basic lines/veils tool, where Red means play stops and we regroup and Yellow means fast forwars through something uncomfortable. Unfortunately, my 12 year olds have figured out that this also means they can Yellow Card fast forward through Role-playing scenes that they're not in and find boring so they get back to murder hobo-ing. Which feels entirely contrary to the concept of safety tools, but I can't take the cards away from the players and we'rein too deep. What do I do about this development?

LovelyLorelei

To the Tough but fair justices and the soft but duplicitous bailiff I humbly offer the case of the blank sheet. My friend has been learning to play DND and everyone at the table has been very thoughtful and kind in trying to make sure that they have fun while keeping track of all the new information. One day, after a particularly rough session I asked my friend why they weren't using their class abilities or magic items they told me they simply forgot, and when I asked to take a look at their character sheet to point out what they had they handed me a blank piece of paper, apparently, they had lost the character sheet I helped them make and didn't want to bring it up because they felt so guilty about it I asked them how they had remembered their scores and attack bonuses and they admitted they had been making up numbers to they could hit things. The DM at the table wants to kick them out for cheating, should I stand by my friend or with the DM? I humbly await your judgment.

Not.vry.gud.wrtur

To the honorable justices of the court and to that one dude who should really try out 8-bit book club. I bring the case of the crumbling Christmas cookies I have made a two session one shot for Christmas it started being a Oceans 11 style robbery game where the players hijack Santa's list to put them on the good list and their enemies on the naughty list. However, my players have turned the yuletides and turned it into an emancipation revolt for the Cookie people to be free from the elves as slaves to their hunger, I casually mentioned to them that the cookiefolk were just eaten by passing elves at any given moment and the mostly cookie folk party turned on the story. How can I get them back on track to my main story? Or should I give up my story for the sake of fun and what can I do to fulfill their dreams of gingerbread freedom? P.S. the party consists of a Polar bear barbarian, A snowman druid, Toy elf Wizard, 3 cookie folk rouges, and Rudolph Jr. Artificer

Tholey13

Dear 2 of my 3 favorite justices and that cool butler guy, Jarvis. I have a dilemma. A few months ago I finally convinced my friend group (2 other couples, my wife, and another friend) to try out a D&D campaign. This was my first time as DM and most of their first times playing. Our first session was a blast. The basic story line was the group coming together with the queen of Neverwinter to eventually take back the surrounding lands from Orcs, zealots, and a dragon. Everyone enjoyed the story start and was excited to continue the campaign. (I did a modified Dragon of Icespire Peak that fit their characters stories). Come time for the second session and we had to delay due to one couple not being able to make it. We later found out, it was because her and her then husband were beginning the process of a divorce. We’re now a few months removed from the divorce and we’re wanting to continue the campaign. I know that the former husband and wife will not play together. The husband is going to continue playing, but his ex-wife’s character was central to the theme of the campaign (she was the queen of Neverwinter). We have another friend who is wanting to join the party and I was debating between having new friend play the ex-wife’s character or trying to write out ex-wife’s character so new friend can make her own. I spent many (30+) hours preparing for the whole story arc and writing out the queen would take a lot of time and effort on my part. I also don’t want the husband to feel uncomfortable coming back to the table. What do I do? I prostrate myself before the court for judgement.

I Love Not Finishing My Sentences

May it please the Esteemed and Honorable Judges and jdawg. I come to you with the case of Wouldn't Solving the Puzzle Be Fun, Though? Am I Alone Here? I was playing in a game with some friends, and as we were going through this dungeon, we kept finding little statuettes of critters. Fun! Eventually, we reached two podiums, and a good history check translated the writing on them to essentially Sleeps During Night and Sleeps During Day. Excited, I was like "Okay, cool, we know the Owl statue goes here then, and the fox statue--" but I was interrupted by my fellow player saying "Yeah, you know that, but does your character?" I was a bit flabbergasted, but the DM agreed and instead of using our brains, we just went around until someone roll good. Was I wrong to be salty for about 3 seconds then move on and have a good time with my friends cause I'm not a crazy person? I await your ruling.

Craig M

Divince disciples of Dice Christ i fear our lord has forsaken me. I DM for a party of five that consists of a ranger, a rogue, a monk, and two barbarians. They are monsters that Dice Christ sent from hell to torment me. Combat was already tricky to plan with them having eleven possible attacks per round, but I kept beefing up enemies to try and find a balance. What I could not account for was Dice Christ working against me. They will not stop critting. In our last boss fight I rolled a nat 1 for my cool rock guy’s initiative and they crit three times in the first round. They crit five more times that fight. How do I make combat difficult when Dice Christ wills them to whomp me?

Fabrizio Moreno

Dear high priests and bible camp counselor, I present you, the "jawa incident" A few years ago, some friends and i were playing a star wars campaign, it was the first time for all of us, including me, playing a ttrpg. In our first session the wookie ranger encountered some jawas in the back of her store, and because some anxious, some misfortune and some WILD rolls (a nat1 in persuasion, 2 in intimidation and 19 and nat20 on attacks) all the jawas died in two rounds. Now, this wasn’t supposed to be a battle encounter, they were only the guys that give them their first mission (they were a married couple that escaped a slave trader and were looking for someone to go there and save their children), and I was desperate thinking what to do, until the fighter got a nat20 in investigation (wild rolls) and I told them everything. They were shocked, realizing that they killed some innocent people, destroyed a family and made some kids orphans. After that they continued with that mission and save the slaves, but the campaign finalized shortly after, and till this day the "jawa incident" it’s an obscure part of our lives, so I ask: was it wrong for me to tell them everything? Or should I just respect Dice Christ in the rolls and flow in the game? I expect your words

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 called dyscalculia which makes even the simplest of math problems embarrassingly difficult and uncomfortably long to figure out especially during combat. Unfortunately im also cursed with a pretty bad case of Murphism and can often go through whole 4 hour sessions without rolling above a 10. So to combat my awful math abilities i’ve started using Dnd Beyond to roll my dice and it will automatically add up all my damage or proficiency bonuses. However i have also noticed now that im using an online roller im rolling astronomically better, sometimes critting 5 times a session! So i ask the church, do i walk with the dice devil now that i have strayed away from physical dice and prevent the other players from hearing the click clack you keep talking about? or am i just being blessed by dice christ? or have i finally killed god with my machine? ps hate the show and ive never listened to i and if i did, it probably wouldn’t help me laugh in years past when i was really low and struggling.

pief
>>123814007

Dearest sultry Justices, and Jonk or whatever his name is. Regarding Crits' case of the NPCs and the Bees. I promise I'm not (that) weird. So I had already been planning to have a strong female character and the backstory for Crits' backup fit the bill perfectly in terms of her potential as an ally. Long story short, the NPC lady is 100% the type to be physically attracted to those subservient for her, and it would be dishonest of me to deny that. Since the bard did her the huge favour that she asked (and let's not forget, this was at a Masquerade ball where other NPCs were already getting down), I saw no reason to exclude her from getting what she wanted. Admittedly, being in this NPCs headspace, I did also forget in the moment that she was kindly given to me by Crits lol. I rest my case.

Maddie

To the cutie patootie swan justices and the ugly duckling (but beautiful on the inside) bailiff, may I present the case of the Dim Light Dilemma I was going to join a campaign with some friends and wanted to be a drow twilight domain cleric. This campaign would take place on the surface, not the Underdark, so sunlight sensitivity would be an issue for me, but I knew that. The twilight domain cleric’s channel divinity reads as follows: “…As an action, you present your holy symbol, and a sphere of twilight emanates from you. The sphere is centered on you, has a 30-foot radius, and is filled with dim light. The sphere moves with you, and it lasts for 1 minute or until you are incapacitated or die…” In my mind, this is a sphere of shadow, that would negate the disadvantage of my drow being in sunlight. Dim light is specifically referred to as shadows in the handbook. My dm didn’t object to this, because she didn’t really care. But one of the other players (my friend) very openly voiced his opinion and tore into me for this dumb read. He said it would be a sphere of dim light on top of the already bright light, like a flashlight on a sunny day. The campaign ended up being cancelled before it started, but I still want to play this character one day. Should I give up on this concept? My friend still bullies me about my beliefs to this day. Thank you for reading!

AU Emily, Anna Lee Hatchetworth

To the noble clergy, and Beacon Hurblitz, I believe I find myself in possession of an artifact of the Dievil (dice devil). I recently bought a large d20 that performs a little light show when a natural 20 is rolled. But because of the way the internal switch is oriented, it also lights up on a 7. Luckily I found this fault before ever using it in a game. But should it be disposed of? Is there a place in this world for a liar of a die?

Michael Griffith

To the Honorable Justices of the Court, and the Bailiff of Schrodinger's Honor. I'm a relatively new DM who's co-DMing, but we have a trouble player. They're character isn't working well with the group, and makes choices that at best wastes time. He recently, in character, said they were quitting the Guild, and when I asked the Player what that means, he said it's "Character Development". In game, I talked to him as a NPC for some options of which the PC refused. For context of the Character, in the 2nd game of the campaign, he slept with an NPC, and then tried to steal from her, then attacked when he was caught (almost died but thankfully she rolled a nat1 to attack) and he hasn't really improved much since. I want to help this Player but the Character seems unwilling to listen enough to talk. How should I go about talking to this Player for a 2nd time?

Mr. Satan, the World Martial Arts Champion and the Earth's protector

This message is for the high priests and preistess of "Our d20 of Dice Christ" congregation. This past weekend my team just got to a pinnacle boss battle. They had been tormented for months through their dreams by this advanced Night Hag known as "The Doctor". They had grown tired of these antics, and her terrorizing loved ones and decided it was time to fight back, but not in the material world, they journeyed to the dreamscape. To shorten this up, they came up with some cool ideas, as a GM I bent some rules and homebrewed up sometimes since what they were trying to do was a little beyond their level. They ended up with a modified imprisonment spell scroll, and some javelins inspired by Mercer to help with the success. So session day comes. The group had sought out a druid who made a tea out of a variety of mushrooms that would allow them to share vivid hallucinations and dream together. In the dreamscape, they all must navigate through a labrynth of their own memories to find each other. Two hours of the session was a delightful experience of people sharing origins from their youth, teens, and then getting glimpses into their own worries or fears. They eventually meet up, but the Doctor is waiting for them. At that point, a 3 1/2 hour battle commences before they get the doctor weakened. Two of the four party at this point have gone donw multiple times, one is on two failed death saves. The two that are up could easily be taken down within the next round. They successfully use the spell scroll casting a higher level than able, the dice approve! Where I ask your forgiveness, is the Doctor then must make her save against it. With some of the debuffs they insituted, the Doctor needs to roll a 17 of higher to make the save, if she does at this point it will easily be a TPK. I pull out my Dimension 20 box of Doom, and roll a little too aggressively, and it flies out. I dont see it, but one player does, we all agree to re-roll it in the box. I reroll and its an 18, the doctor saves, I learn from the player that saw the one that fell out was a 16, which would have failed. I panic a little, and see my player who cast the spell still has her inspiration token I give out at the beginning of session. I on the fly say "You know you can use that to force an enemy to reroll" they were a little confused, I have never allowed that before, but they didnt hesitate to call for the re-roll and on this attempt the dice show a 6! The doctor failed. In this too long confession, I just need pennance from Dice Christ for ignoring that first roll that stayed in the box. I didnt want a TPK and I bent your judgment in my groups favor. I am certain that success meant they needed a lesson learned on entering the dreamscape to fight a horrible hag, but I had to shield them from your punishment and am offering myself in their stead.

Thimo Trommer

Highest of judges, most honourable of the clerici alearum (clergy of dice), and the jovial Jive Hurwitz as well, I beseech thee! I must repent for my sins, and my sin is speaking untruthfully about the spell-list of my character. In a pen and paper session (not DnD, but the German DSA) that has been running for over 10 years now, my initial character is still alive and kicking and has grown his spell-list to over 50 unique magical spells. When an NPC suggested that we could summon minor demons to travel the continent, the DM asked me if my character knew the spell to conjure them along the cool, goth NPC. I said yes, and we conjured the demons together and flew the party to our destination. I quickly added the spell in question to my sheet at an appropriately high level, intending to never use it again. Ultimately, this had no consequences on the story or resources saved or gained and nobody was surprised or even questioned that my character would know that spell, too. But I know I have sinned and I wish for judgement. While I can only hope for absolution, I shall deferentially and piously accept any punishment the benevolent dice Christ might bestow upon me.

Muqtadaa Miandara

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

Frankie from team Gal Pals

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

Johnny Timmins

Greetings to my illustrious court judges and bailiff cake hogwits I bring you the case of the burnt child and Meta gaming druid. I run a game set in the world of Bahumia and this session in particular I was taking inspiration off of one of the very early sessions of campaign one in Ezry. My players were looking for the entrance to the secret fight pit. To find it I led the players to talk to a drug dealer selling some R Cain, to prove that they weren't narcs the monk in the party did a line right there. In my game I made it so they still have to roll a wild magic surge, but since my players are fairly powerful, I made it that the different colors of R Cain gave them one use very powerful magical spell. Nothing too significant happened with the wild magic surge and they proved themselves to the drug dealer and they led them to the entrance. The entrance was a vat of ooze upstairs from the bar that when the players jumped in it dissolves them and reconstitutes them at the bottom in the fight pit there's a small kid extorting people to get into the fight pit and the kid tried to skedaddle and was caught by the monk. Everyone jumped into the pit after all the commotion of catching the kid and the monk lingered behind for a little bit, he then proceeded to throw the kid down the stairs and cast his R cane spell which in this case was fireball. I was shocked and so was the rest of the table. He then proceeded to jump into the vat after everybody. As soon as he joined everybody, the druid wanted to do perception and insight checks insisting that he would notice a clear change. I told him that he's never really seen this drug and wouldn't know what to expect. He said that the drug dealer would know and wanted me to roll an insight check for them so I did and they got a nat 20. I played it off saying that in their head they know exactly what happened but know they just let a maniac into the fight pit and are going to pretend like they don't know anything but are secretly terrified. Was this a fair way to play this way I await your humble decision.

Chazz

Forgive me Dice Christ for I can not forgive myself. I was running a campaign in which my players were detectives for the city watch. They were investigating a murder and the prime suspect was a mysterious figure called The Silkwoman, who is something like an urban legend in the city’s underworld. To this day they are probably the best bad guy I have ever created for one of my campaigns. They were the perfect heel to my party having wronged them both in the game and in their backstories. My players were legitimately excited to figure out what this mysterious psychopath’s deal was. Here is where I mess up. I was reading off of the Silkwoman’s stat block as we were going through combat and I was getting whomped by my players. Without thinking I say, “Okay the VAMPIRE is going to run over here and cast thunderstep.” I had yet to reveal the Silkwoman was a vampire and had planned to save it for a cool shocking revelation like Dusk till Dawn or something. My players immediately stop and go “wait what vampire?” and “holy shit she’s a vampire.” Queue the sweatiest DM “uhm no I mean actually that’s not”. I was planning to drop little hints that she was a vampire but the surprise was ruined. Months of planning gone with a fumbled word. My players were cool about my blunder, but I still occasionally stay up at night salty at myself that I ruined my surprise. (PS I am the guy from the LA live show who submitted the case about the half bugbear, half aasimar, half orc and the cat armor. That player was not invited to this campaign if you were wondering.)

SkyeFed

May it please the most highly esteemed justices of the crit and also Joe, I present the case of the stolen spirit of Christmas. (Critmas) For my first ever time playing DnD, my best friends older brother dm’ed for me, my friend, and her boyfriend in a christmas one shot. We, as holiday related characters were tasked with killing an evil santa who had taken over the north pole. After sneaking through the elf village and getting some info, we arrived and fought the evil santa. Me (Belshnickel), my friend (the grinch), and my friends bf (frosty the snowman) succeeded in our mission after taking decent damage. But, in the sweet afterglow of our victory, our dm narrated that the spirit of christmas was now on the loose and needed to inhabit one of us, thereby turning the session into pvp. We were given a choice to compete for the spirit. Only me and my friend chose to fight one another, with her boyfriend choosing to hide away in his hat of holding (frosty’s top hat) what followed was a grueling back and forth that i barely won with 11 hp remaining. As i went to claim the spirit, my friends bf hopped out of his hat and declared that he wished to compete as well and the DM allowed it. I thought this was absurd but given that it was my first session, and my friends bf, I didn’t want to complain. However, he then proceeded to Eldritch blast my belshnickel ass and killed me in one round, claiming the spirit of Christmas for himself. That was the end of our oneshot and not gonna lie, it felt kind of flat. I humbly ask the crit, though it felt more impish than admirable at the time, was i within my rights to have protested the DM’s ruling in my first ever session rather than just let this happen?

Chris E.

To the Honorable Judges and the Sensual Bailiff Jake, I come to you with the case of the hidden rolls. I have been playing in a virtual campaign for the past 3 years. Our DM has been using foundry for our sessions which has been great but recently he has decided to hide all our rolls. So if I did an insight check on an NPC, the DM wouldn’t let us know the number I rolled but just narrate what information I got. When we asked the DM about letting us see our rolls, he told us he liked it better when we didn’t know since no one would second guess someone else’s roll. I trust our DM so I don’t think he would fudge any of the results but I ask the justices is it ok for the DM to hide the rolls?

LegoZmbeKillr

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

Will Cousineau

Dear honorable judges and sometimes honorable bailiff Jock; I bring forth the case of the near impossible one-shot. I have a group of friends that I play with, and we have several campaigns going at any time, switching around who DMs. I've run both a campaign (currently on indefinite hiatus) and a one shot before, and in the past I've been notorious for accidentally making my combats way too easy. Additionally, all of my players are very experienced and I have one player in particular who tends to really get into Min-Maxing his PCs. This usually isn't an actual problem since he really enjoys building his characters into the story and is always willing to concede to the DM, but I know him well enough to know that he tends to think of every combat as a puzzle that has a solution and he doesn't like to be faced with something impossible. I recently found Level Up's Advanced 5e and wanted to try it out, so I invited my friends to do a fun Halloween one shot that I warned from the very beginning (and repeatedly reminded them) would be stacked against them and near impossible. Emphasis on near. They built level 5 characters and I built a world in which their PCs had been plucked off of the material plane by a Fatespinner and placed in the Shadowfell where she was basically having them farm for XP and level up, always erasing their memories at the end of the day. She was doing them to train them to eventually fight against a nebulous "great evil" in the future. They figured they were in some kind of a time loop almost immediately and set off to try to stop it. My min-max player kept trying to play it safe, constantly checking his in-characters notes to see if he had left himself any hints and so on but nothing I couldn't deal with. They reached the temple where the Fatespinner was. All of them but especially my min-max player attempted to get around fighting her, which I would've allowed had they found a way she couldn't escape, but seeing as they had been through this loop before, she knew most of their tricks and could escape them with her own abilities. Eventually, they fought her and two phase spiders, which is something like a CR 16 or so encounter, and they very nearly won. They had gotten her down to twenty hp and had just the cleric and barbarian still standing at around 1hp each. The barbarian hit on her first attack, getting her down to ten- and then missed on the second. The fatespinner was next in initiative and killed them both, sending them all back to the starting point with no memories of what had happened and now at level 6. We ended the session there and when I asked if people had fun, most said yes, some even excited by the TPK since we hadn't experienced that before, but then my min max player said pretty clearly "I had fun until that last encounter. I don't think its fun to be put against an impossible challenge". which dampened my excitement quite a bit. He later messaged me to try to explain how CR levels worked which.... I already knew. I pretty explicitly used CR levels to give them a near impossible challenge and had told them this over and over again. When I said that, he said I should've built in a video game-like weakness that made her easier to kill, which I feel like is against the whole point of my story. I was kind of hurt and annoyed by this but its been plaguing me ever since- is he right? Should I have made the encounter easier? I humbly await your decision.

Noah Steele

Honorable clergy. I come to you not with a case but with a confession. In a recent session I had my party fight an oni who had some spellcasting ability and could shapeshift. I had the oni cast darkness on itself and one of my party members and on its next turn it turned the party member invisible and shapeshifted into him. Here is my confession. Shapeshifting and the invisibility spell are both actions. I essentially had my oni take two turns because I thought it was a cool move. Can I ever be forgiven? If the death penalty is needed I understand.

Jordan Sisneros

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

Please Dont Look at Me

To Whomever May be Listening (Intro Free 2023) I present you the case of the Surprise Switcharoo My party and I have been playing the same campaign for 2 and a half years and we’re close to the end (like, a matter of weeks). At our last session, we were visiting a party member’s long lost family and they begged him not to leave, asking “Why does it have to be you? Isn’t the world full of heroes? Can’t someone else do it?” I thought we were just doing some thematic roleplay about heroism and duty, so as my party member stammered, I answered, “If the world is full of heroes who say ‘the world is full of heroes, someone else can do it,’ then the world isn’t really full of heroes at all, is it?” I thought that was fine, until the “family dog” shifted back into a humanoid and volunteered to take my party member’s place. It turns out my party member wanted to play a new character but didn’t want to kill off their current one. Apparently they wanted to surprise us, and the shifter reveal WAS pretty rad, but unfortunately since I didn’t know what was going on, I had unintentionally dissed their old character’s choice to leave. My character was already a little jealous of his big, loving family. She would definitely feel abandoned by her friend, who promised to always have her back, leaving her right when things were getting dire. I know I could roleplay through my character’s feelings without making everything about me or implying that I as a player have the same feelings as my character, but I keep thinking about my unintentional burn before. My friend just wanted to play a new character without dealing with the heartbreak of killing their beloved pc. Part of me feels like I should let my character’s feelings go to avoid highlighting the accidental resemblance to Scoutmaster Denny. However, our table sometimes struggles with (but enjoys) interpersonal roleplay, and I also see this as an opportunity to have some interesting and fun roleplay moments with my friends. Should I drop the issue to avoid criticizing my friend’s beloved PC, or should I bite into this juicy drama? PS, we will have already played by the time this episode comes out, so if you think I’d be wrong for roleplaying it then also punish me because that’s what I’m leaning towards doing

Jesse Flanagan

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

woodsorrel

To the auspicious judges and the audacious bailiff: I bring you the case of the Phoebe Bridgers battle music. I have been DMing a game for some friends at their house. Usually, they’ll have Spotify playing from their TV when people arrive. When I ask them to turn it off for the session, they either mute it or turn the volume down instead. Their TV is large, so when the screen flashes every time the song changes it makes the room a slightly different color. The song choices make things difficult, too. Last session, I struggled to get people engaged in a climactic battle scene while a Phoebe Bridgers playlist was playing in the background. I’ve tried to explain that it’s distracting and have asked them multiple times to turn it off, but they say it’s fine. I’ve even made playlists for ambiance and battles that they could play instead, but they refused. It *is* their house. Am I being overly sensitive, or is this a Bridgers too far?

Jules Mulholland

To the preeminent justices and the (presumably) acceptable bailiff, I run a solo campaign for my girlfriend, with her playing a circle of wildfire druid backed up by a flying mace sidekick and a lower-level fighter. A while ago, outside of our sessions, she asked me if she could wild shape into a war ostrich, since it’s only CR ½. Without thinking too much of it, I agreed. Problem is, when I actually looked it up, I found that it was insanely overpowered, and changed my mind. We've argued about it ever since. Ultimately, circle of wildfire generally needs to use wild shape for other stuff, but now she’s hit level 5, has Conjure Animals, and wants to ostrich-nuke my bad guys, bringing the issue to the fore once again. Should I forbid this beaked ballyhoo, or am I just being a salty spoilsport? I humbly await the ruling of the court. PS: the war ostrich is from Kobold Press’ Tome of Beasts, and is probably most comparable to a CR 2 rhinoceros. PPS: I’m Australian, and she keeps razzing me about the Great Emu War, which I know will only get worse if I allow this.

Sam McInturf
>>123814868

May it dismay the judges and inspire the Balif! I call for an injunction on this case. I am a player, a Tyler, in this game. I display here that Tyler is attempting to punish the Tyler collective because of lingering salt from prior court cases settled either not in his favor or to his satisfaction, see the cases "A Bag Full of Bombs" and "The OP Bird". Because he is unable to run a game to his liking, he is bullying us in these Sacred and Just halls. We Tylers display Tylers attempt to punish us for his grievences by ruining our player immersion through a refusal to use our names, Tyler, instead using names ("guardian tyler" or "monster tyler" in lieu of Tyler) nor will he interact or develop our back stories Court! I ask that you stop these superfluous court cases and allow we Tylers our peace as we, fairly, accost our DMs sensibilities (Prior Rulings: in A Bag of Bombs: Tyler v Players Tyler was sentenced to continue to play DnD with the party in question, in the case of The OP Bird: Tyler vs Player the player was sentenced to own a long lived bird.)

Nick Neverman

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

Captain Morgan Pirate Wizard

May it please the court early pandemic I was playing a Zoom game with some of my friends from high school and I was playing a Arcane Trickster and when I went to use backstab in the first combat they said "wait flanking gives you advantage? I don't like that that's broken" should I have tried to argue about it instead of just going with it

Nick Asmussen

May it please the court and brief boy Jake, I bring the forth the case of Gust of Wind vs. a House Fire. It was my first time ever playing a PC and my tempest cleric cast gust of wind to put out a raging house fire. The DM, also a first timer, ruled that the spell was not strong enough to put out the fire. I countered by reading the wording of the spell and I was overruled. We compromised by allowing me to roll a d8 each round and that’s how many tiles of fire would be extinguished. Though, fire being fire, it spread exponentially and the house burned down. We ended up missing out on a hoard of magic items, which is fine, but I still believe my spell should’ve worked. Was I wrong for pushing too hard on a DM’s first session or should I have made more of an argument for my second level spell? I leave my case at the mercy of the court. P.S. This is no shade on her, she is a great DM and we’re all having fun.

Novak

To the honorable Crit Justices, and Bailiff Blake, I present to you the case of the overshadowed familiar. At the time of the offense I was adventuring as a Chronurgy wizard named Garreth. Garreth was a forest gnome who loved talking to the small creatures around his home. At a young age he had acquired a familiar in the form of a small sugar glider named Reggie. Reggie and Garreth had stuck together through thick and thin, and I often roleplayed them mumbling to one another about other party members’ antics, or just dancing and singing during down time. Reggie was largely beloved by the entire party. Then cometh the DM… To kick off the second arc of this fresh campaign, after 10 or so sessions where we acquired a couple of NPC tagalongs, the DM pulled a twist that left everyone at the table shook (in a good way). Garreth had been cursed and was doomed to be overtaken by shadow (die) in 10 days. In talking to a witchdoctor on the 8th day he was able to remove the curse, but at a cost unknown to him until his decision had been made. The witchdoctor didn’t remove the curse, but instead simply transferred it from Garreth to Reggie. In the hut where this ritual was performed Garreth had to watch Reggie be overcome by the shadows. He was told that Reggie not dead, but merely taken to a big bad’s hideout. Naturally, the entire party rallied together and headed forth to save the beloved familiar. About 6 or 7 sessions later, after months of build up, we finally made it to the lair of the arc’s big bad. An epic battle ensued, Garreth absolutely mopped the floor using a combination of Greater Invisibility and Shatter, and we soon had the big bad on the ropes. The plot writes itself, right? We triumph over the big bad, Garreth and Reggie are reunited, the entire party celebrates with our new loot, and we move on to the next arc… Well here cometh the DM again… Our DM used this boss fight as an opportunity to embellish the story arc of one of his NPCs. He had this NPC being consumed by shadow at the end of the fight. Spouting words of regret about his father, how he wished he had made different choices in life, how he hoped that he would die as a ‘good person’ (most of which we were hearing for the first time), then poof. Gone. Dead body on the floor. Session wrapped. Nothing on reuniting us with this familiar that had inspired us to come in the first place. No heartwarming roleplaying. I, along with others at the table, vented our frustrations on this afterwards and our DM apologized and admitted that it should/could have played out differently. I’ve since stopped playing Garreth, but more due to time constraints than anything. I handed him over to the DM and he remains a large part of the plot as an NPC. In the end we were all adults, and no friendships were harmed, but I ask the court… Was I right to feel like I had been stripped of an awesome moment in the reuniting of my player and their familiar after so much buildup? Or should I have lived in the moment and simply enjoyed the arc’s ending for how the DM intended it? I peacefully await your justice.

Doctor Ransom

To the most beneficent Supreme Crit justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the unscrupulous bailiff Jon Odenkirtz, I bring you the case of “The Smitten Paladin.” While playing in a one-shot with some good buds of mine, a very sticky situation occurred during the final battle with the big baddie. Our Parties’ Paladin, a Warforged named Junkbot, got magically charmed by an Incubus minion. He was absolutely smitten by the Incubus, and while pointing in the direction of my Bard-Barbarian himbo Hurricane, asked them much too eagerly, “Shall I Divinely Smite him, Master?” After hitting my character twice, Junkbot used his highest level spell slots to Smite me, and dropped my PC unconscious. We unceremoniously 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. - We’re still good friends (sorry Murph!) and we recently celebrated our 1-year anniversary of playing together. However this session still gets me all sorts of spicy. To my ‘friend’ James, “Fuck you, I love you, eat a rat.”

Patrick Sullivan

May this case of passed potential of a paladin-poured potion fall gently upon the ears of the resplendent Supreme Crit Justices and become a burden to the gormless bailiff Jornk (sp?). In a recent session in a Greek mythology-themed campaign that my wonderful older brother DMs, we were in the middle of pitched combat in caves under Athens with a big bad spellcaster and his minions. Our wizard cast Eyebite and the villain failed his save, falling to the ground under the effect of magical slumber. My minotaur paladin ran up to the unconscious foe and I asked the DM whether I could use an action to pour a potion in his throat - I had the idea of pouring a potion that transforms the drinker into a harmless pool of water for an hour and scooping him up in a jug to transport safely out of the cave. My brother didn’t entertain such tomfoolery, and said that just picking up the sleeping body might wake them. Everything went well, with our druid wild shaping into a giant owl to get the baddie out of the cave just before reinforcements arrived. However, I maintain that because the villain was under the effects of magical sleep, rules-as-written dictate that he shouldn’t have been able to be awoken by anything except damage or an intentional action to slap/shake. Can potions be force-fed to foes under magical sleep? Is this a slippery slope to game-destroying shenanigans as my brother believes? Please bestow upon us your divine judgement - I accept the irreparable rift your decision may cause upon our familial bond.

D Cord

To the Honorable Crit Justices and the Caked up Baby Baliff James, I would present to you the case of the virtual dipper. 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 humbly move the court to punish this player.

Tim Been

To the sweet blue justices and the bailiff that rides loose like the rat he is, I bring to you the case of the irl perception check. I started dming my first campaign in a homebrew world that started in a town with a gang run casino. Early in the campaign one of my players weaseled his way into obtaining a legendary weapon by looting a plot assassinated npc. The casino was there so that the group could heist it amidst a world class Three Dragon Ante match, where high ranking nobles and Adventurers would buy in with a legendary item. He bought in with his axe and we rolled for the prize structure breakdown, nat 20, meaning the winner would take all. Obviously I couldn't let him take home 7 legendary items at level 3. I warned the players there was plenty of cheating afoot in the game before hand. I bought a physical version of the card game and let the players each play an npc while I ran 2 npcs and the player that bought in played himself. At a certain point I, in real life, traded cards between the 2 npcs that benefited them both and did not call for a perception check. In my mind, we were playing in real life so real life cheating would require real life perception but I have felt guilty since. I prostrate myself before the court, should I have let him win and load up on legendary items or was I right to strip him of his dirty loot goblined weapon?

Thorn.Squiggles

To the court I present the case of the returning absentee. I dm a 4-year long-running campaign for a group of friends online, one of whom we will call Greg. A long list of powergaming/spotlight standing sins aside, Greg's character died horribly as a result of an npc prince sending assassins after him (as petty revenge for Greg killing him, accidentally). After a long and touching funeral, Greg had a new character and all was well again as we continued on in the campaign - or so I thought. ~5 sessions later, Greg left the group discord server without a word. After I asked him why, if everything was okay, he just said he missed his first character and wasn't feeling it anymore. I asked if he ever wanted to return (and possibly play his first character again), to which he said no. Fast forward a full year, when Greg messages me asking if he can listen in on some games again - not to join, I was assured, just to hang with friends. After everyone gave their blessing, he was allowed back into the server. After that session, I asked again if he wanted to rejoin, as his first character again. He happily agreed. Here is the case I bring before the court. Thanks to various scheduling conflicts, we haven't had a session in almost 4 months. Every other player is available for a weekly time, except for Greg. Honourable judges, how do I tell Greg that I don't want him to rejoin the party? P.s. he listens to the main feed, if you want to do my job for me lol

Annalea

Dice Christ Confession: ¡WARNING CUTENESS AHEAD! To the divine devotees of Dice Christ I seek your spiritual counseling. I come to you with a sin that is not mine and I find it hard to even call it a sin when it comes in such an adorable and innocent package. I babysit two boys ages 8 and 10 who are just discovering the world of D&D and love when I come over to DM, their parents do not understand the game so it's our special time together. They were so creatively charged by the game that they gave themselves homework to create their own Dungeons and each take turns DMing a game when I came next, and boy did they deliver in the most charming way with hand drawn maps and unbridled enthusiasm. Here's the sinfully cute snafu, the 8 year old when DMing can't keep honest. When his brother casts a spell and says the DC is 14, the 8 year old rolls behind the screen, pauses and says he rolled a 14. This happens almost every time. I often ask if he's being honest, as the good AND bad rolls are what's fun with the game, but I don't want to push too hard and ruin their fun. They respect when I have my DM screen up, I want to respect when they sit behind the screen as well. How do I continue to encourage their passion while keeping him honest? I humbly await the light of Dice Christ to illuminate the path forward.

Luke Knecht

To the honorable judges and the mediocre bailiff Joke, I present the case of the Nuclear Proof Rogue. Awhile back, in a campaign titled The Revival of The Gods, my phantom rogue was asked to make a dexterity save and it caused some issues. To add some context my party was attempting to free one of the gods trapped in a magical sphere. This sphere was also surrounded by an army of Aasimar. My party got into combat with this army and in order to free the god my character decided to use an item to dimension door next to the sphere. In order to disable, it my character used a magical knife to stab into the sphere. When I said I was going to do that my DM gave me the "are you sure about this" warning to which I ignored and did anyway. As soon as my character plunged the knife into the sphere it set off a small nuclear explosion. My character was the only one within 500 feet of the sphere and it still hit everyone in my party. Everyone was asked to make a dexterity saving throw including of course my rogue who was standing right next to the sphere. Because of the evasion ability my rogue took zero damage from a smal nuclear explosion. I ask you, should I have been punished for ignoring my DM's warning and setting off the bomb or was I right to trust my instincts. P.S. the rest of my party was incinerated from the explosion and they were upset but I was able to revive them later down the line

Joe Schmoe

To the esteemed and regal justices, and the bailiff who’s name escapes me but I’m pretty sure he’s Tucker’s Wife’s Baby’s roommate. I present my case: During my senior year of college, my party and DM decided to dorm together. There were 6 of us total and it made it easy to play our campaign of 3+ years on a weekly basis. Everything started good, but quickly turned to shit due to our wizard who went by the name of “Sleet.” Over the course of the year, every session became more and more of an issue. He would fudge rolls, “forget” to keep track of his spell slots, never read his character abilities, inserted himself into other characters’ key narrative moments and attempted to make the moment about himself, antagonize every npc we came across, and would abandon key plans the party had made because “it’s what his character would do.” On top of that, he missed half the sessions, and would leave early from the majority of sessions he was present for to go play video games in his room. Also he was a bad roommate, never cleaning, never contributing to snacks and supplies, taking other people’s snacks, and also shit talking us behind our backs to mutual friends of ours. We had all reached a breaking point, and at the end of the semester we were planning to lie to him; we were going to make up a fake ending and play through it with him, only to retcon it and continue the campaign without him in a different location with him being none the wiser. However, we didn’t have to follow through on this plan. During a pivotal session, our party was fighting in a pirate cove. There was a gargantuan, golem-esque construct that had the size and strength to pick up our ship and start walking away with it. My character shot at the construct with a nearby cannon, causing the construct to drop our ship and turn and look at me with murder in its eyes. I semi-jokingly said “it was him” and pointed at Sleet. My DM told me to roll a deception check to which I have a negative modifier for. I got a Nat 20. The golem proceeded to insta-kill Sleet, doing 150ish damage to him while his max hp was in the mid 60s range. Throughout this battle, everyone went down at least once, sometimes twice before triumphing and leaving on our ship for a brief respite. The problem with this death was that Sleet’s player was not there for that combat and threw a fit at us when we told him his character had died. We offered to resurrect him but he declined, and still went and shit talked about us killing him off to our mutual friends. I humbly ask, were we wrong for creating an entire fake ending and being ready to act it out in front of him? Was I wrong for pointing at Sleet, and inadvertently causing his character death? I humbly prostrate myself and await any sentencing.

DJK

To the fantastic honorable justices and the also honorable bailiff Jake. I bring the case of "The Slime Kink that Went Wrong". I run a homebrew campaign with a group of friends that haven't played DnD before. On their very first session the players came along on apon a maze full with bullwags. One of my players without fail, after each fight with the bullawags would enjoy there body in a very sexual way. He said that it was how his character was, so I accepted. But on the last one that he "did", I gave him a new character flaws that is a Slime kink as a way to almost punish him. That didn't last long. On our most recent session (five sessions after the first), that player was in a confrontation with the queen of the human realm to convince her for help against a cult. During the confrontation the party's wizard casted minor illusion creating a small area with slime within the other player's vision. That player rolled for horny and got a Nat 20. Originally the horny check was for laughs, but this team it was different. My player wanted advantage on persuasion rolls to seduce the queen, claiming since he rolled a Nat 20 for horny he would have in easier time seducing her. I argued that is was just flavor, but the other party members took the player's side. After an hour of arguing and looking up how the human body works. I agreed, and the player succeeded on the check with two Nat 20s. After that I took away the kink. I ask you supreme crit justices, should I have stand my ground or agreed automatically and hoped that they don't use it in the future? I await you decision.

Joe Schmoe
>>123821834

P.S. Enough had been enough. After graduating we all gave this guy the Murphy-special: we are no longer friends with him

Michael

To the noble justices and their little pig boy: I’ve been part of an ongoing game for a few years now. Early in the campaign, our party was playing through a corrupt company town arc with the help of a DMPC that was described as looking and sounding identical to the Rock. After bashing through the town’s second-in-command, I asked my DM if I could check some of the bodies for loot (I was playing a tomelock and looking for scrolls for rituals). The DM said I could ask the Rock if it was okay, and then proceeded to run a scene where the Rock told my character I couldn’t disrespect the dead in his town by searching bodies, regardless of if those people were good or not when they were alive. Knowing the Rock was on death’s door after the prior fight, I asked the DM if I could try to intimidate the Rock to stand down so I could loot. He said yes, but that it would need to be a high roll to be successful. I proceed to crit. Instead of the Rock standing down, the DM then narrated that the Rock charged my character and gave me the choice to either get out of his sight or roll initiative to fight. My party, who hadn’t been closely following this encounter, tuned in at this moment and all demanded to know why I was trying to fight the Rock, our only ally in the town. As a result, my character spent the next few scenes hiding in the forest nearby. When I asked the DM about the intimidation check after the game, he explained the roll was successful, but that fight or flight exists, and when the Rock is scared, he fights. I argued that defeats the purpose of an intimidation check and that the DM saying I could pass the check with a high roll was misleading - if truly intimidating the Rock wasn’t possible, the DC should have just been higher. Justices, was I wronged by the People’s Champ, or should I have simply accepted what the Rock was cooking? I humbly await your judgment.

Joey Simon

May it please the court I would present to you the case of the genie. I was dming a campaign for a group of friends (we've been playing together for years) and I ended a session with them getting the ability to make one wish each with a genie. I warmed them outside of game that they needed to be very careful with how they worded their wish as genies in this world are notorious for screwing with people. They would grant the wish but would look for any loophole to screw with the party. Wish 1) party needed a dragon egg for a ritual but dragons were all but extinct so the genie sent a party member back in time to an egg and left him there. Wish 2) they asked for the party member and egg to be returned to them so he took them to the tomb of the party member who went back in time and protected the egg. Wish 3) they asked that the party member be resurrected so I rolled on the resurrection table and changed his race accordingly. The other 2 players thought it was hilarious and loved that I was messing with them, the player who died and came back got so mad that he quit playing and it ended the campaign that session as we only had 3 players. Was I wrong to screw with them even though they had a warning and 2 weeks to prepare their wishes? Or was this player out of line in their reaction?

Carla Jane

To the honorable and wise justices, and Jailiff Bake who has to be here. I present to you the case of the dim-witted druid and party of murder hobos. I am a new DM with most of my experience being from a very silly, home-brewed campaign with my boyfriend and his best friend. Recently, I decided to try my hand at creating a political campaign with a bigger group of friends. The plan was to lure the party to the woods under the pretense of helping an elderly woman find her husband, but instead they would only find a troop of bandits.  After a butthole-puckering fight, all that remained was the bandit captain who surrendered. Yuriko, our ninja assassin, tried pleading with the party to not kill the captain immediately since she had some questions. I even tried telling them, while begging in character, this captain would willingly trade highly classified intel for his life. Regardless, the rest of the party used their turns to deal lethal damage. Our minotaur barbarian claimed to have been blind with petty rage; meanwhile, our blood hunter, crazed for blood, was too bloodthirsty to stop. The cherry on top was when the player of our druid chose to RP his character to be hung up on finding the non-existent husband. This was after I had insisted, as the captain, they had been set up and it was all a farce. Unfortunately, the captain was brutally beheaded before bequeathing information. Justices, I beseech you. Have I wronged in allowing the others a turn at cold-blooded murder? Should I have asked for an insight, or some sort of roll, from our druid? And above all else, have I forsaken Yuriko far beyond making it right?

BrowndogPiedog

To the most illustrious Supreme Crit Justices and their beloved and committed spouses and to the cowardly bailiff Jerk Jerkwitz, who surrendered his marriage to Tucker without so much as a fight, I present the case of the Abandoned Rogue Fiancé. A few years ago during my family’s annual Christmas Eve one-shot, it was my turn to DM, I was incredibly hungover and my notes only read “Beach explodes, 4 poison spray crocodiles, lighthouse hag”. I was DMing for 7 of my family members and doing a pretty good job, I think. It was my father’s first game ever. During combat, my then-fiancé , playing a rogue, took a homebrew poison spray attack from one of the crocodiles. She made her DEX save, but still would go down from the halved damage. I narrated her falling and she got emotional, almost starting to cry. My sister pointed out that as she was a rogue, she had evasion which spared her from all damage. My fiancé hugged my little sister and glared at me, saying loudly that I had abandoned her and was using my position as DM to come for her. Should I have done more to prep her for playing a rogue in the one-shot? I had never played a rogue myself and only went over the basics with her, I.E. how to get advantage so you can sneak attack, various arcane tricker spell-usage tips, etc. I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Victoria Balbes

To the honorable justices and that bailiff guy, I present to you the case of the fancy familiars. My dm has created his own world that is low magic, but we are magical. My character is a fairy prince not from this plane. I took the ritual caster feat and picked up find familiar and asked the dm if it could be some strange fairy creature or like a moogle or an enchanted chair but using one of the normal stat blocks. He said no, it had to be a bat or whatever that couldn’t talk, and told me I should take identify instead because it was better anyway, so I do. But then he gave the ranger a special extra spell to make a familiar out of magical light and be anything it wants (even a talking chair!!!) justices I beseech you, was my fairy prince dealt an uncourtly and unfamiliar slight?

Matthew griffin

To the juicy, booty justices and the "flat, but I would still tap that" bailiff Jake. I bring to the court the case of the disruptive dogs. I recently started a campaign with some friends from high school (we are now all in our mid-20's). Most of us are fairly new to D&D, but our DM has been playing for a long time. Our DM has been incredibly accommodating of us all as new players. He has provided hand-painted minis of each of our characters, he hosts games at his house, and he frequently provides home-cooked meals. Despite how hospitable he has been, I still have an issue with his home, actually two issues. Our DM has two beautiful dogs but they are incredible disruptive when we play. They release truly stomach curdling farts, they get into spontaneous fights that bump the table we play at, and they aggressively hump me whenever I sit down. I have gently suggested that we play at someone else's house, but the DM insists on hosting. I feel awful complaining when our DM has been so accommodating, but I truly don't think I can withstand another multi-hour humping while I try to role-play a dramatic moment for my character. So court, can I demand that the dogs be banned from the room when we play D&D or should I accept this discomfort and find new ways to stop these unwelcome advances? I humbly accept the court's ruling.

Emma

To the honorable clergy of Dice Christ and that guy Geoff, I come with a confession. I DM a high level party that recently defeated a Fey Lord who had taken over a human village. After the party had created some chaos in town, she confronted them, announcing them banished. As a show of Intimidation, she cast True Polymorph and turned one party member into a frog. All but 1 of my party fled, but one asked to speak with the noble who the fey stole leadership of the town from. Here is where I sinned When they did, the Fey cast True Polymorph and turned the noble into a chipmunk. I had completely forgotten about spell slots, and that the Fey's 9th level spell was taken. I had the frog-player turn back into a person, as she couldn't have 2 concentration spells up, and after regrouping the party managed to battle and ultimately banish the fey. Upon reflection, not only did she cast those 2 9th level spells, she also broke concentration on the nobles polymorph in battle, despite me having the noble remain a chipmunk until she was banished. Am I sentenced to be a chipmunk myself? I humbly await your judgment.

Marrow

Dear wide and powerful justices and the wee little bailiff Bob. I come to you with the case of the spell requirement. I play a weekly game of curse of Strahd run by my best friend. One time we were inspecting a cart and a detect magic revealed it was magical. My character as an artificer rolled up his sleeves to inspect the cart for magical symbols, indications of its origin or what secrets it may possess. 29 on an arcana check! My first good roll in a long time. Praise be to dice Christ but I have definitely been tested a lot recently. The DM says that with a 29 I would know I would need to use an identify spell to find its magical properties. I said I didn't have it stocked and if I would know anything else from my roll and the DM flat out refused to elaborate. Another player said she had the spell as a ritual and began to cast it. I felt saddened. The player in question often is the centre of attention and now I feel like my character’s whole deal is being taken away. Am I wrong to feel this way? Punish me as you see fit oh great justices.

Whattheduckisupkyle

To the honorable Lady and Lords of the court and chucklefuck Jake, I present the Ignored Call to Adventure. For context, in my old DnD group we had a forever DM and a set group, well things changed pandemic happened, etc. So we had new people and were going to make the switch to 5e to make it easier to learn before getting into 3.5 again. In total we have 3 seasoned players Lucien (myself), Willis, and one other and 4 new. So to make it easier narrative wise we all start in the same village as its protectors. Session 1 starts at night with the village being ambushed, we all wake up and rush to kill all the specified weak dragon borns and we do. Well one of the players, Willis, come to find has been entirely unhelpful first combat and putting free ride signs on the party's familiars. We laugh because no harm done right. Well its next day in game and we find out that they were part of an encampment planning to take out the village and they can attack again at anytime. Being the designated party leader since most people are still new and the other 2 didn't want to do it, I go to round everyone up. I go to find our party Druid and Willis, in a bar and I start to tell them " there's going to be more coming we should go take them out lets gear up and go." As is our role in the village. Well Willis is "chaotic neutral" which means be a dickhead to him. Because he quite literally starts yelling things like I don't want to, who made you the leader, I'm too busy yada yada. Won't let me get a word in edgewise, so in game I put my hand over his mouth, he moves it starts yelling again. I do it again, he moves it again. I go to do it one more time and he says if you do it I'll break your arm, I tell him then if he can let me speak I won't feel the need to. He refuses so I go to do it again, he rolls to attack me, misses and I just give up and walk out in game. I go tell the rest of the party and just don't bother with him. We start to gear up and he comes up going "Hey whats going on guys? Where we going?" I explain in game. He says "Oh yeah I don't feel like it." And at this point I lose my shit irl and look at him just short of yelling "Why are you here if you don't wanna play DnD?" DM calls smoke break and everyone else goes and comes back 15ish minutes later. He's acting butthurt and we get back into it. We continue preparing for the adventure, and we turn to his character after he came back and prepared, we ask him something and he announces "My character is Mute since Lucien doesn't want me to talk anymore". Just a full grown 40 something man throwing a tantrum.

Skeeze

To the "super-serious-all-the-time-with-stern-expressions," justices, and the happy bailiff, I present the case of loose ends; As a new dm, I came up with a great story for a campaign. The players and I were happy, but I felt it needed more.. depth. So I made a side arc for them to play as specific characters with different views and personalities. This would be a medium sized one, having them come to the inevitable end confrontation with a boss they couldn't easily beat and faced with a dire choice of which one would live and which wouldn't. It was the story behind how the king came to be, why he worked so hard to create a peace and unity within the realm, and what it cost him to do so. Sadly, the players are bored with it, and now want to "just wrap it up." So as a dm, what would you do? My opinion is to have a good and bad ending, create higher DC checks for them to get the good ending, but have it be overall more gratifying. The bad end would be a tpk, leaving the bbeg on the throne, which would mean reworking a bit of their main story, but wouldn't be too difficult to do. Please, all opinions matter in this, help me find a solution!

Billy Glosson

Honorable Justices and Bailiff 'Jape, I present to you the case of The Black Razor Dilemma. As the DM for a group of new players running the starter set, I initially offered them the chance to carry their characters into our next campaign. However, as our journey through the campaign neared its end, each player expressed a desire to embark on future quests with brand new characters. Emboldened by their yearning for change and sensing an opportunity for harmless fun, I decided to add some extra spice to the final dungeon, Wave Echo Cave. I introduced not just new puzzles but also the fabled Deck of Many Things, expecting nothing but a memorable send-off for their soon-to-be-retired characters. The result? A cascade of hilarity and unexpected twists, climaxing with one player gaining the Black Razor via a random weapon generator, a magic weapon so potent it could overshadow deities. Then, in a dramatic reversal of plans, this player, now equipped with a sword that could make gods envious, (surprise surprise) chose to keep his character for our new campaign. I tried to argue that starting with a +3 weapon brimming with bonus abilities was akin to playing a high-stakes game with loaded dice. But he just replied, 'That sounds like a DM problem to me,' I now seek the wisdom of the court. Is the fault mine for introducing such a chaotic element, thinking it would be a harmless end-of-campaign flourish? Or is my player exhibiting a bit too much 'main character energy' by insisting on carrying over such a powerful relic into a new beginning? Your guidance is greatly anticipated.

Ally Grant

Ahoy ahoy to the judicious and wise judges, and Bailiff, please stop scratching it, we can all see it. I was recently DM ing a campaign set in the Great Depression in New York. I ran an encounter where they were climbing the still-under-construction Empire State Building, while under attack from the big bad's various goons. I described in intimate detail that they had to scale a section of scaffolding, and they would meet various obstacles. Depending on their approach, I described four rolls they'd have to make. If it was sensible - it was an easy roll, if it was fine - then a medium roll, if there were shenanigans, it was tricky. If there was total tomfoolery, then there was a chance of their character falling off the empire state building. One of the PCs was Art D'Ceaux (art deco), and decided he wanted to swing and grab a rope to "Tarzan his way up". I explained it was normal scaffolding but he wanted to chance it. He rolled, I shit you not. Three nat 1s. I had to narrate him dying while my friend looked ashen faced. Was I too harsh to have an insta kill, or did he deserve to die?

pickles and milk

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

Hemlock

Dear esteemed trio of judges, Murphy, Axeford, and Tanner, along with the best fourth wheel around, Jim the bailiff, I present the case of the sacrificial cockroach. I run a curse of strahd game for a wonderful group of new and experienced players, and they are currently running through the Death House. When they reached the basement, the druid wanted to make an animal handling check to see if there we any critters around to talk to. She rolled a natural 20, but since there are no animals around mentioned by the book I narrated a little cockroach crawling out of a crevice that she could talk to. As dnd parties do, they quickly befriended the cockroach (whose name was 'cockroach' and spoke like kermit the frog) and took him along. Shortly after they made it to the final room, a large sacrificial chamber with a dias in the middle and an altar on the dias. The barbarian walked up to the dias and ghost began chanting "one must die!". If the party were to sacrifice a *creature* on the altar they would be allowed to leave the house without a fight, but would otherwise have to fight a big bad monster. Much to my surprise, the party almost instantly decided to try and sacrifice cockroach, who with a non-existent intelligence score had no idea what was happening. The barbarian let the roach crawl up to the altar before immediately slashing it with his great axe. I narrated the cockroqch giving a hurt/betrayed look at the druid before it curled up dead, but the chanting didn't stop. I decided in the moment that a cockroach didn't count as a creature, partly because there isn't a stat block for a single roach, and the party seemed excited for a boss fight. Also the ghosts of the cult would likely not be satisfied with a less than 2 inch bug being their sacrifice! The fight ensued and although no one died, some members of the party seemed bummed that cockroach died in vain with one player telling me in private that they thought it was a mistake. Therfore I humbly beseech this court, was I right to not count cockroach's ceremonial cutting? Or should I have honored the move and let the party walk away from the Death House? P.s.: we haven't made it there yet, but I plan on having cockroach appear a la force ghost along with the two ghost children of the death house to show his soul is at peace.

Sam the BT

To the wonderful supreme bailiffs of the court, I present the case of “Airlock Sholmes and the Blowgun of Certain Death.” My ranger shot an NPC detective named Airlock Sholmes in the back of the head with the “Blowgun of Certain Death.” The DM said the detective died. I think this was unfair. Hear me out. We were working on a murder investigation given to us by the aforementioned detective. He was purposefully annoying and condescending to us, throwing out crazy “alternative” theories to any speculation we made. We were mean right back as he was making our characters miserable. It was a great time for all of us at the table. After a particularly stupid “But maybe that ghost was actually lying about her murder!” from the detective I wanted to hit him upside the head with some flair. I decided to use my blowgun for this. Now the name “Blowgun of Certain Death” is an ironic title. It is a blowgun that never misses but can never use special ammo. Its damage is always exactly 3. The joke being “with enough time certainly anyone will die.” I fired but then Airlock instantly went down. When I tried to heal him the DM informed us he only had a max HP of 1 and thus the 3 damage instantly killed him. This was a spry young man and my character never had murderous intent. When speaking with the DM later I asked if Airlock needed to be out of the story and he was just taking advantage of an opening. The DM said no; that we were supposed to have him for most of if not all of the of the adventure. The DM wanted us to know that Airlock was no good in combat. I guess we learned. Was Airlock really killed by my ranger, or was he more struck down by the DM.

Nathan Rome

I don't have a case but I'm surprised nobody has called Jake "joke" or "the joke bailiff" yet

pickles and milk

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

Nev Altan

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

Austin

To the stupendous Supreme crit justices and the Sweet Blue Baliff, I come with case of the Player Break up. Two of the players in my game are BF and GF. I found out they broke up AFTER a recent session and afterwards was messaged by them both. The BF broke up with GF and now thinks it's his decision to kick his now Ex GF out of the party. While GF really wants to remain in the game but feels forced out by her now Ex BF. The BF was who I originally invited to the campaign when we started 2 years ago, and he brought his GF to play. But have since come to love both of them as players and friends. My struggle lies in making the decision of who should be in my campaign, I just want a happy table with no drama. I leave judgment in the soft and supple hands of the court.

Wheelord

To the Superior Justices and Bailiff Jake whom deserves our respect for his works, i humbly present my case. For several years my friends and I played in a game where we were settlers starting a new colony in the wilderness on the fringes of civilization. After many adventures to help build up our settlement including clearing out kobold filled tunnels for a mine, driving out dangerous beasts in the forest for a lumber industry, and building up the settlement as a new hub for trade, our DM needed a break. The DM's brother took over for a short arc to let him detox and play in the world we had created. During this time, our new DM decided to tap all the player characters to have to return to their home city far to the east to fulfill a call for a family debt they all owed. My Dwarven Ranger had set down major roots in this town, having built the only inn, and running the local mine as well as other interests in town. I told him there was no way that my character would just up and leave at this crucial time, especially since we had been dealing with a pending invasion of orcs. Luckily my Ranger had a twin brother who had been well documented throughout the entire campaign, and was a Druidic hermit who lived alone in the swamps outside of their former home. It was decided that his twin brother could also be called to fulfil this family debt, and so for the duration of this new arc, i switched characters to play this Dwarven Druid hermit. This arc ended up taking much longer to finish than expected, with all characters being rewarded with a large sum of money and some other rare items. When it came time for the characters to return west to our settlement, I said that my hermit was sending back a large portion of his reward to his brother, as a hermit had no need of much of what we were given, but his twin brother was starting a new life with his family and he wanted to help in what ways he could as he could not abandon his druidic post in the east. My DM grew angry and told me i must be joking and that passing items between different player characters in that way was absurd and was not allowed in his game. I argued that I shouldn't lose out on months worth of loot and gear due to the campaign going in a sudden and different direction than we had planned, and that as much as it was in character for my Ranger to not leave the settlement, it was similarly in character for my Druid to not claim these worldly possessions. In the end, I was unable to claim any of the bounty we had earned in almost a year of playing. Was my DM being to harsh, or was my request to pass these items between my two characters as absurd as claimed? I lay myself at the mercy of the court.

Joey O'Day

To Jake’s three co-workers , and Junk I have been in a campaign that has been 3 years running. I am best friends with the GM , and the other players are my brother and 2 other close friends. The campaign has NOT been fun, and it seems like we are dragging every session (which usually lasts for 4+ hours), but I enjoy spending time with my friends, so I put up with it, It all came to a head on our last session. After 5 sessions of sitting in a town and planning out our big battle with a demon army, which was as fun as it sounds, we were told by the GM to “prepare for the next session, it is gonna be an insane battle” Cut to the session. We spent the first two hours listening to the GM describe the forest and the sky and the what the armies looked like. He then unveiled the battle map, which was really cool looking! There were nearly 60 tokens on screen representing both sides of the army. I was stoked on how we would navigate this battle. Then, we were told we would be rolling for EACH INDIVIDUAL TOKEN on screen, which each “battalion” having its own actions and reactions… This went on for 2 hours, and barely any tokens had been taken off the field. Using an app on my phone that controls the lighting in my house, I pretended that the power was going out, and disconnected myself and everyone from zoom. I text everyone and told them we had a power outage. Was I wrong to do this? I humbly await your judgment. PS. I was told by my brother that they kept playing without me for another 2 hours , and when it ended, the GM showed another map and said “phase 2 is happening next session, with all new mechanics”

Eric Grochowski

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

Tobias Baker

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

an_isabelle

Dear honorable justices and that new guy on 8-bit Book Club?, I present the case of “A Good Tiefling is Bard to Find”: Some years ago in a 3-year long campaign with my high school friends and sister (a 7 person party), my sister and I had to leave a session early but it was during an important battle and we agreed to let some of our fellow party members pilot our characters until next session. After we left my sister’s Bard was killed by the BBEG Jr (the BBEGJ if you will) and our DM feeling bad since she was not in control of her character at the time, instead made her character captured by the BBEGJ. Unfortunately due to scheduling conflicts the party had to be split up for any of us to play. Our DM hosted small party sessions for whomever could meet on those days. During one of these sessions my friend and I attempted to find and rescue my sister’s Bard. We rolled so poorly on SEVERAL checks that our DM told us that the trail had gone cold. We did not know at the time that we were the only group that had attempted to rescue her. At the next big party session our DM announced that the Bard had died in captivity because no one was able to find her. My sister was furious that her character had died and that she was even captured in the first place and now had to roll a new character. My question is this judges, was my sister unjustly wronged by the DM or should we as a party have tried harder to find her character? P.S. her Bard ended up becoming an important BBEGJ and it was really compelling and fun until half of the party quit the campaign due to internal relationship drama

Trans Rights

For the inventor of Do You Think You Can Jolf (Jake Golf) and his reluctant friends: In my campaign, I included a cabal of 3 undead lich judges and their maligned death knight baliff. They doled out whimsical punishments to a small town, and the party got a court date after the barbarian fell from orbit into the Judges' courtroom, where they were currently playing d&d - I described them in the middle of the scene where Gemma Bronzebeard died. The party's witch-lawyer managed to arrange a trial by combat, which the party won. Afterwards, they made sure the judges lost their job, and they stole Murph's bones. They don't know that these undead judges will return. What kind of sentence should these undead judges place upon the party when they return (they did steal Murph's bones, the gavel, and get the judges post-mortrm fired)? Also, bonus question, what would each of your phylacteries be?

Trey Makishima

To the fair-minded justices and the quite frankly biased Bailiff Jake, I present to you the Case of the Misplaced Race. I’ve been running a two-PC campaign with my girlfriend and her roommate for a few months now. Recently, my girlfriend’s roommate has been asking me to run a three-person one-shot with her new boyfriend. Her boyfriend has expressed interest in D&D in the past, but said that all the rules and lore of the game seemed overwhelming to him. He asked us to make his character for him, with the caveat that his character’s name be Lou Sassol. I suggested that Lou Sassol should be a human fighter or barbarian, to keep things simple for the new player. However, his girlfriend suggested the character’s race be something more interesting, like an Aasimar, or a Simic Hybrid. I argued that the race should be kept to something simple and recognizable, like a human or elf. The girlfriend’s argument was that humans are boring and she knows her boyfriend would want to be something cool, but I hold to the opinion that someone who chose the name Lou Sassol isn’t trying to be cool. So I submit myself to the court— should I follow my gut and keep things as simple as possible for this first-time PC? Or should I trust that this guy’s girlfriend knows him better than i do?

Nicholas Yokom

May it please the beautiful judges Axford Murphy and Tanner, also the hunk of a bailiff Tucker. I bring to you the case of the accidental womping. We were playing curse of strahd and we were down a player due to him being sick. It was his first time playing in a D&D campaign and he was loving it dearly. He insisted we play without him so the DM set up a "role play heavy" scenario where we were going to have dinner and a conversation with strahd himself. The DM described a NPC leaping from the balcony and casting a magic circle on strahd, sending us into a surprise combat. We immediately decided ok. Let's mist this fool and call it a night. Combat started and being a monk, paladin and druid we dwindled strahds legendary resistances quickly. The druid used moonbeam, and low and behold strahd failed again. (Dm rolling like shit) More fighting goes on, and after a bit, strahd is brought to very low hp and I the monk delivered the final blow. The DM described strahd turning into a mist to travel back to the castle when the druid interrupted and said actually he can't shape change while In the moonbeam. He never moved or left the beam instead taking damage every turn.. the DM looked at us in silence for a full minute before saying I'm gonna need a bit and walked into a different room of his house. What seemed like an eternity later he came back and started describing how strahd was vaporized and dead and the curse was lifted we tried to say no let's just make him mist back to the castle so sid (the cleric that couldn't make it) doesn't miss out on the victory. To which he said nah I'm done with this and told us to please leave, we haven't played since. Was it right of the DM to withhold a victory of a campaign (something many players never get) from our FRIEND just because our moonbeam mishap? (I tried keeping it brief. We all took very detailed notes on this day to relay any info to the missing player, so if more detail is needed, that is easy to provide.)

Matthew

To the extremely hot judges and the strange looking bailiff I bring you my case of the campaign ending counter spell. While playing in a pirate campaign we had planned a stealth mission to get some documents for our pirate boss. This compound we are attempting to raid was surrounded by cliffs, we decided to attack from above and target the biggest threat. We were able to successfully sneak to our positions and waited for our bard to cast hold person on a surprise round. When hold person was cast the boss was able to counter spell without knowing the hold person was being cast ruining our plan. We argued that since the enemy had no clue the spell was cast it wouldn’t work but the dm wouldn’t even give his reasoning for counter spell working. This made everyone kind of lose interest in what was happening in the session. After that along with other issues we had with the dm as a person we stopped playing that campaign for good. So I ask you judges who shall have to spend eternity in davy joneses locker me crew or the dm

Dylan Jackson

May it please the illustrious judges and the balif, John. I bring to you he case of the illusive G-Spot. I was In a campaign where one of my fellow players was in the middle of an intimate scene with their romantic interest, to spice up the roleplay they decided to cast locate creature on their lovers G-Spot for maximum pleasure. One of the other players told them that finding a G-Spot was requiring the use of a Locate Object spell. The player who had cast the spell said that a G-Spot was more of an and I quote: "Illusive and rarely found, and it's kind of like a creature that hides." They also brought up as well the scientific fact that a G-Spot is made up of many nerve endings, all of which are living cells." A little shocked at their explanation we decided to go with the locate creature, but to this day we wonder if that was really the correct decision.

Austin Lee

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

Liz

To the virtuous clergy of Dice Christ, please offer one of your lambs some resin-cast guidance. My boyfriend keeps a d20 in his car. There is a flat space past the cupholders and under the display where it can freely roll as he drives. I thought it was whimsical. But recently I have become increasingly aware when his Mazda rolls a natural 1. We have taken a lot of road trips this year and there are so many ways his little car could get absolutely bodied. On the other hand, a Mazda nat20 is pretty rad (zoom zoom). I humbly ask the church: is this a blasphemous use of dice? Will Dice Christ smite us on I-95 for our indiscretions? Or should I simply always fear the maniac drivers of Stamford, CT, regardless of what his car rolls? Yours in faith and the passenger seat, Liz

Alexia VV

I belay myself before the Supreme crit judges and especially the baked bailiff (I saw what you were doing outside of the court room, Jake). I present the case of the fallen warhammer. A couple years back I was running a Greek myth-inspired game for an entirely new group of people online to try and test out my skills as a dm with groups other than my main one. It was the first session, and the players end up in a battle aboard a ship docked in town. One of the players decided to spend their turn climbing up the mast of the ship, which I thought was gonna lead to something interesting (especially given they they were playing a melee character- let's say a Barbarian for the sake of the story, but I could be mistaken). Once they got up there, however, they said they wanted to use their free action to drop the warhammer they used down onto an enemy's head to try and deal damage from far away. I disagreed with this ruling, but the player argued with me about it for at least 6 minutes of session time. I tried being nice and saying they could use their action and the target would have to make a save against it, which didn't make the player happy but was enough to get us over the hurdle and keep playing. So I bring forward two charges to be tried! Was my ruling about this fair and/or correct? Moreover, was there a better way to handle this situation, was I merciful in handling it? I trust the court will rule correctly (because they always do)

Josh Zellers

To the majestic judges Murphy, tanner and axford. As well as guest Bailiff hurtwitz. I present to you, the case of the overperforming moth. Every session the moth bard named Phoebe wants to roll performance to stop stuff from happening. And mostly every time she rolls a nat 20 and I have no choice but to allow the wild bullshit. I await you’re punishment

Victor T (Balnor's Boy)

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

Shawn M

Dice Christ Confession: To the eminent and exalted prophets of Dice Christ, and their medium-rare bailiff Steak, I present the case of the Hot Brunch Blasphemy. My wife and I play together in several D&D games and always respect the dice. However, on a recent trip to Western Canada, we went out for brunch at a local spot that was recommended to us by local friends and what started as an innocent quest for breaking our fast quickly turned into... a breaking of faith. She was stuck between three options of what to order for brunch and so, she decided to leave the choice up to a roll of the dice. She assigned each breakfast option (let's call them options A, B, and C) to different numbers on a D6. A roll of 1-2 would be for option A, 3-4 for B, and 5-6 for C. She rolled a 2. However, she decided she would rather not order option A after all, and decided to roll again. She rolled a 1, confirming that Dice Christ wanted her to order option A! She then told me that she secretly wanted option C all along, and so she wanted to do one more roll. She removed option B and lowered the roll to a D4, and setting 1 and 2 as option A, and 3 or 4 as option C. Once again, she rolled a 1. Dice Christ, in his infallible will, made himself known that day. But my wife had other plans. Despite committing to all three rolls that told her to order option A (I'll now reveal that this was a short rib breakfast poutine), she ordered option C, which was a tuna poke bowl. When the plates arrived, she took her first bite and was immediately disappointed. The waitress then walked by with a short rib breakfast poutine for someone sitting nearby, and it smelled positively divine. We agreed that day, that we needed your counsel. What say you - can my wife be redeemed in the eyes of Dice Christ, despite straying so far from the righteous path? Has she suffered enough?

Dennis de Groot

The death portaled player: Greetings supreme crit and bailiff jack. I DM hoard of the dragon queen and added a supplement which fleshed out the city Elturel. During the city exploration 2 of my players made a deal with the devil to get more buff and some magic items. The supplement also added a big wedding with a secret ritual where they used the positive emotions of the guests to open a portal to hell. The party was to stop a few NPC’s from being sacrificed by the dragon cultist trough this portal. Meanwhile the portal would call to the players to jump in DC 5 Charisma. However since 2 player made a deal with a devil and didn’t read the fine print I told them the DC would be +10 for them, so DC 15. I also made it clear that jumping in means character death. One of the players who took the deal, proceeded to fail the check. 3 attempts were made to stop her but all failed the contested strength checks. There was a death scene where she met Tiamat and het last roll was a nat 20 on having all positive memories removed so she could retain one. My players thought it was too easy to get lured into the portal. Was I too harsh? I await your judgment.

Linnea C

Oh eminent and venerable judges/bailiff, dearest disciples of dice christ, I bring to you a confession, Back when I was running the very first session of my low-magic campaign, I had the party (a warlock, a druid, a wizard, and a cleric, heretofore dubbed 'The Witches') learn that a village girl was to be burned at the stake. She was being framed by a cultist, and when met was just going to give them a couple clues. However, the Witches immediately decided that they needed to bust her out and get out of dodge. The warlock shot an eldritch blast at the ceiling, surprising us all and making my stomach shrivel like a raisin, but I ruled that RAW stated that E.B. was to be shot at a creature, and thus was ineffective in this scenario. After about a minute of back and forth, realizing they were adamant and I was being a hardass, I allowed them to do it, using some stats I'd looked up for how tough a building could be. They ended up rolling like shit on damage and to attack and didn't actually do that much to the cell and I ended up sending one of the cultist's fat pigeons in to keep the game moving, but this ruling haunts me to this day. I prostrate myself at thine feet and beg forgiveness. Please forgive the folly of this fool.

Cain Bowman

To the Honorable Judges! And the (footnote 1) Bailiff Jake. I DMed a holiday one-shot last year. After a Wish gone wrong, the party and Halaster the Mad Mage were trapped in a series of planes based on classic winter movies. Halaster started siphoning power from the festive joy of these places, with the intent of leaving the party trapped within. To stop him, they would need to spoil that holiday spirit, like by robbing Kevin McHalaster’s boobytrapped house or hijacking a Polar Express. When they were put on a map of Central Park and told that Halaster was escaping with an unusually-tall Elf (with a capital E) flying in a sled, they knew what to do. The party split up to ruin as many merry-makings as they could, all while avoiding the Nazgul-esque Park Rangers. My girlfriend, who plays a Victorian ghost child with the ability to possess any creature, went to desecrate a tree-decorating. She asked if she could possess the tree itself. I told her, no, as the tree was not a creature. She said that trees are living things, and I countered that a creature is something that can take actions, which plants don’t. She got suddenly and surprisingly heated, asking me if I’m “saying trees don’t do anything for us?!” and demanding “You don’t think trees fuck?!” The rest of the players, being the pack of jackals they are, jumped in on razzing me for ‘thinking’ that trees are just objects. I told them that trees wouldn’t get an initiative turn, and my girlfriend, seemingly defeated, slumped into her chair to look at her phone, and we moved on. Or so I thought. It turned out that she went on her phone to research DnD plant monsters that did have actions, and triumphantly displayed them to everyone during her next turn as proof that plants are creatures. I admitted that some plants are indeed creatures , but the tree was JUST A TREE. We sparred a bit more until she, exasperated, used her action to set the tree on fire. This, unfortunately, was not the end of it. The party went to the final demiplane, where a wimpy, single-bulbed Christmas tree turned into a fearsome treant through the power of childhood friendship. Everyone dogpiled me for THIS tree getting an initiative and actions, and my girlfriend leaned over and maniacally whispered “I’m going to be a big, beautiful tree and you’re going to have to deal with it.” She got to possess the treant and the party won, but still to this day they all still bring up how I “had to go back” on my original call and her PC still tries to possess actionless-plants. Was I wrong? Are trees creatures? Should I have allowed the possess-tree-ion? Or should my party give up the ghost and leaf me alone? Footnote 1. lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly lowly [that’s 100 lowlys]

Ford

To the most honorable judges, and some guy who was “getting into cake” (?): My wife and I are playing in a home game that has been a lot of fun. However, our DM has a homebrew rule that we think is unfair. Every time a player goes down in battle, when they are brought back up, they gain 1 level of exhaustion. Our friend, a paladin, was knocked out twice in a particularly tough battle, and therefore had 2 levels of exhaustion for the rest of the (long) session. Getting knocked out is already high-stakes, since everyone else has to spend turns and resources saving the downed player. Adding levels of exhaustion on top of that - especially because they have negative effects beyond combat - seems too penalizing and not fun for anyone. I would also explain that long rests have been few and far between in this campaign, so the effects of the exhaustion could last for an entire session or even multiple sessions. Are we right to think this is unfair, or should we hang our weary heads and submit to a life of exhaustion?

Sushi

Dear hot judges & the lukewarm bailiff, I bring you the case of the useless character. I’m in a campaign with a few friends from work and play a fourth level Dragonborn rogue. I just got this job about 2 months and was joining this campaign about 4 sessions in. I created my character with my DM and he seemed to have no problems with my class. However, during the first session I played in, we encountered a monster who was immune to all nonmagical damage. I only had my fire breath and did perception checks on the room the rest of the battle. I assumed the DM had already planned the encounter before I made my character so it didn’t bother me. Except for the next 5 sessions, all the monsters were immune to nonmagical damage so my character was essentially useless, usually just running around the map & doing skill checks. When I asked my DM why he didn’t tell me to make a character with magic, he said he didn’t want to tell me what kind of character I should play. I pushed back saying that there’s a difference between forcing me to play a certain class & making sure my character wasn’t unable to engage in combat. He said I should have noticed that all the other players were magic users and gotten the hint, and if I actually knew how to play, my character wouldn’t be so useless. I’d admit this is my first time playing DND but I don’t feel like this is entirely my fault. So I bring this argument to your feet, is it my inexperience that is causing my character to suck or should my dm have told me from the start that this was going to be a very magical game?

Dippity_Dip

To the lovely justices and also Jerk, I offer my case of the anti-80s rescue. I was invited to an already running Curse of Strahd campaign and played as a synthesizer wielding bard. During a rescue mission set against a group of cultists I pulled out my synth for a distraction but the DM ran with it and, in the end, the party banded together to defeat the cultists with a group 80s pop ballad. The Bloodhunter at the table, however, despite our many attempts to involve him, refused to be included (his character literally walked off into the woods during the song). Afterwords, he was really passive aggressive both in and out of game about the session. Everyone else appeared to have a good time, but I couldn’t help feeling bad about my friend who seemingly just wanted to play a serious Strahd campaign. Should we have toned down the sillyness, or should that player have loosened up a bit? I leave it to the mercy of the court.

Kevin Alman

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

Drew Pate

To the honorable justices and zaddy BAElif, I present to you the case of "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words should ALWAYS hurt me." I play in a weekly game with a bunch of friends, we've been playing for a few years and have a pretty good feel for the game and its rules as several of us have DM'ed multiple games. In our current party, one of the former DMs plays a Goblin Bard who has a penchant for casting vicious mockery when any NPC gets too cheeky. This has included potential allied NPCs, town guards, bartenders, flirtatious commoners and otherwise innocent people. When we remind him that there's a damage component to the spell and the law abiding members of the party (One of is a literal officer of the law) don't want to hurt innocent people, he responds with "I'm just using my magical words to mock them, magical psychic damage isn't the same thing as damaging someone with a sword." This seems like a wild take, and when we try to argue that he's assaulting essentially innocent citizens, he's fallen back on the classic "I'm a goblin bard, it's in character. Besides, I'm attacking their mind not their physical body." I seek your ruling on whether we are right in asking him in not use offensive magics against strangers he doesn't like, or is it fair for him to essentially neutralize the damage and make the spell more flavor than anything else? (The DM doesn't seem to care and hasn't made it an issue in game sort of laughing it off, this is mainly an internal player debate that everyone's tired of hearing us argue about.)

MJ Johnson

hello honorable justices tanner, murphy, axford and i guess the bailiff too. i present to you the case of the cube dicked rouge. it was our first combat of the campaign and our rouge was failing miserably (rolled a 1, a 2, and another 1). naturally they were disappointed by getting to do absolutely nothing in combat so they decided to find new entertainment. completely unsanctioned they announced they were going to “roll for dick size” they rolled a nat 20. now they won’t stop mentioning their 20 inch penis claiming that it is canon because they rolled for it and got a nat 20. they mention it every session even now claiming that it is 20 inches on every side and they have a cube dick. should this unsanctioned roll be considered canon to the campaign?

Emily from Enter the Fungeon Podcast

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

Timmm

Dearest Justices (and also dearish Jake), I, the DM, have recently decided to end my campaign of 1.5 years within 2 sessions of the conclusion. This was the campaign I'd invested in more than any other, and also the group that I had previously considered to be the one I was most comfortable DMing. I say previously because near the end of the campaign, I was going through a pretty nasty breakup and one of the players completely sided with my ex. To the point that they went over to my house (at the time I still lived with my ex), and changed the door knob on my bedroom door to one with a lock so that my ex could make sure I didn't have access to my things and wasn't able to move out fully. I forgave this at the time since they were asked by my ex, who was still their friend. The reason I decided to end the campaign though was because after all this I found out that they had been talking sh*t about me and my best friend the whole time my breakup had been happening. When I found this out, we were 1-2 sessions away from finishing the whole campaign, but I couldn't bring myself to DM since I didn't know if I would've been able to resist being vindictive in the game. I felt like this would have cheapened the whole experience, and decided to cancel it. Did I do the right thing? Or should I have pushed through for the sake of the other players?

handsomemike06

To the honorable justices and minion-adjacent bailiff Jack, I've got a tale that'll tickle your funny bones: "to choker or not to choker a frogs tale " So, picture this: I roll up with my fey-obsessed Grung Paladin, ready to dive into a mid-campaign adventure, but little did I know the wild ride that awaited me. The DM pulls a classic "hold my ale" move, setting the scene where the party stumbles upon me in the middle of a desert, wrecking an evil god's statue. It all starts off quirky and cool, giving my character a chance to show off their skills and peculiarities. But then, plot twist! As soon as the statue shatters, boom, the god springs to life and slaps me with a cursed collar, claiming I'm their property. Now, here's the kicker: this cursed choker was like a clingy ex, always urging me to do the naughty—murder, that is. It clashed so hard with my character's vibe, and get this, I couldn't ditch it even if I wanted to! Any attempt to rid myself of this dang thing was a one-way ticket to the afterlife. Can you believe it? I mean, who signed up for a permanent accessory with a god's hit list on it? So, yeah, I'm here seeking some wisdom from your illustrious selves. Was i indeed wronged with this unmatching fashion statement or should i take that as simply a way to add some edge to my whimsical frog (ps the dm also used this as means to deal 1d6 damage from the collar whenever he wanted in the form of the evil god so there is that)

Joey Simon
>>123822263

1) I wish for a dragon egg to be in my possession 2) I wish for you to return Andrew and the egg to to the party 3) I wish for you to bring Andrew back to life right now

DJ Matty Lil Crits

To the Exquisite Judge Murphy, Devastating Judge Axford, Mischievous Judge Tanner, and Craven Bailiff, I submit the case for Aggressive Peace I was playing a peace cleric in a fey campaign. Upon arriving in the fey wilds, we asked a knight, as an authority figure, what laws governed these lands to prepare for trickster fey deals. The most relevant rule was we confirmed the dead have no property rights, and we can still loot bodies. That session, we found some loot in a clearing atop a well, and after using detect magic, detect good and evil, and using mage hand, we were still surprised by will o'wisps who claimed we were thieves. I refused to yield to undead miscreants who talked shit and had no claim to property. My DM ruled that I was being too aggressive as a peace cleric since they were "nice" ghosts of harmless villagers, and I wouldn't have access to my Turn Undead ability. I maintained "do no harm, but take no shit" is an acceptable peace policy, and was granted access to my spells but still not turn undead. My character was reduced to 0 hp in fight, upon which my party immediately yielded and ran away. Instead of outright killing me with their consume life ability, my DM ruled divine intervention stabilized me since no one else in my party could heal, but they could drag me to safety. Was my DM right in ruling a peace cleric can't turn undead if they're behaving too aggressively? I know my DM was kind to spare, but I think he only let my character live because he wanted to appease me. I want it to be because I was right to exterminate shithead undead.

Cameron Davis

I prostrate myself before the glory of the Supreme Crit: Emily, Murph, and Caldwell. And also Jake’s wife. I present the case of Nat20 that failed. I DM a campaign where my players understand that I follow RAW 90% of the time. In a previous session, my players came across a legendary sword that was stuck into the wall of a cave built into the side of a volcano. My Paladin said that he wanted to pull the sword from the wall, which I gladly let him roll an Athletics check for. While the Paladin didn’t know this, it was DC30. The Paladin rolled a natural 20 on the roll, and celebrated to himself right before I asked him the dreaded question: “to a total of…?” The total was 28, which did not succeed. (Bear in mind, all he would have needed to succeed was a 2 or higher on a Guidance, and we had a Cleric.) Most of my players agreed that I shouldn’t prompt them to roll skill checks if there’s no chance of a success even with a nat20, but I disagree. I think it encourages players to use all of their abilities to the fullest extent to get the best possible outcomes, and I also need the roll to gauge the degree of failure. I know that the NADDPOD crew loves their nat20s and find them sacred, but I submit this case as my counter-argument. My decision is still final, but I will honorably submit to any punishment I am sentenced to, if I am found guilty.

DOOFINIUS

To the ever vigilant magnanimous and elegant justices, and also the wofting debased ignoble baliff jack, i bring the case of the cannon cucking co dm, for backstory a group of my friends did a few campaigns and our most experienced friend who always likes things to make logical sense helped two of us build campaigns. He has also been a dm for us a couple times and always seemed fair but i thought a couple times was a little to logical in fantasy and magic of dnd. When wr had rules questions or a different dm took up the mantle of storytelling he was a great soundboard of ideas and talking. Fast forward and because of life changes jobs all that the group split in two. The co dm still comes around and sits in the campaign im currently a player in. A saltmarsh campaign with some homebrew elements. I am an artillery artificer and can make cannons with magic i thought it was a perfect fit for the theme of the campaign. Me and the dm have already established i can magic tinker woth guns and other small stuff and it seemed at somepoint i could learn and build cannons. Seeing as i already can magically conjure one it makes sense id learn the inner workings. One night our co dm sits in and plays an npc. We acquired a ship wanted cannons. The npc selling cannons who was not the co dm just for clarification was rude and i wanted no business with him. So we journey to our favorite town smithy and inquire their price and if they have supplies so i can make it. At this point with all i have tinkered a couple good rolls a few hundred gold and i can make the boomtubes right. Nope my dm relents to our more experienced co dm as he says you dont have the right proficiency or knowledge and materials. I tried everything saying id look over blueprints and everything take time to learn but the final straw was cost. The cost of the material to the weight of a cannon means id be paying the same price for the material as buying it straight from rude npc. Our co dm has called out all of us before and i love them dearly but are they to logical. Should my dm have stood his ground in his own campaign and not given in to our more experienced and highly regarded co dm. Or am i in the wrong and artificers have limits and logic must always be followed and i am forever stuck watching as these two play with more than one cannon forever cannon cucked. I await your judgement.

EmperorGreed

To the wise and powerful bishops of Dice Christ, which technically includes Jake though he is not granted the rank of High Status, I bring you not a confession but a plea for an exorcism. Your Holinesses (and Jake), I am not a man who believes in the supernatural, but I undeniably have a dice curse the likes of which have not been seen since Wil Wheaton, and recently it has intensified. The last weekend I played, I first had a session of 5e where we played the Death House from Curse of Strahd, and despite making a character who had advantage on almost any knowledge checks and a solid to hit, I failed most checks (including two nat ones at advantage at one point) and missed all but two attacks the whole session. The curse only worsened the next day, when I played the final session of a beginner's box adventure in pathfinder 2e. In the first half of the session, I accomplished literally nothing, succeeding on no checks and unable to hit a measly kobold as my cool swashbuckler, before being ingloriously instakilled by a green dragon's breath and the rest of the party being downed. The whole party gained a level as I prepared a backup character I had planned, only for the backup character to accomplish nothing but landing a single punch on a single kobold before also dying alongside the rest of the party after failing 3 death saves in a row. The dragon had 1 hp. On Monday, my partners were playing Baldur's Gate 3 when I got home, attempting a difficult but doable check. This check failed about 15 times straight until I as a joke decide to leave the room. They immediately roll a nat 20. I come back in and the situation repeats on the next check they perform. Please, I know not how I have sinned against Dice Christ, beyond being roughly as agnostic as Bishop Murphy, but how may I cleanse myself?

Whimsity

To the illustrious Judges and the teensy tiny itty bitty little bailiff, I present the story of how I bullied my DM into giving my party nine level ups. My friend ran a campaign two years ago that was six sessions. The pitch? We were acolytes of a goddess of miracles on a quest to rescue a sacred relic of hers. When the DM of this campaign pitched it to me, they initially planned for us to start at level 8, but I requested to start at a higher level, in part due to a desire to finally play a higher level character in DND, but also as a narrative point that we were high-ranking figures in this religion. The DM mediated my request, setting the starting level at 12 and told us that we were looking at having the campaign set over six sessions. After the fourth session and second combat, I may have started pestering my DM for a possible level-up. After the DM relented, I realized that my bard's 14th-level magical secrets were just out of my reach. Longing for the delicious chance to learn some cool spells, I asked for another level. My DM said over Discord "Hmmmmmmmm no<3 but I appreciate your ambition". To this, I may have possibly begun to unionize the other players in the campaign to my side. After a couple of days of lightly harassing my DM, they relented, on the condition that our final battle would increase in difficulty drastically. Faustian power bargain achieved, we leveled up to 14. Before the final battle, our DM released the CR rating and experience gained from the final fight. I noted that the final fight's EXP would bump a character from level 14 to level 17 (like 90,000 XP. A tarrasque gives away 155,000). Because this was the final session, the DM said that we all would be level 17 if we beat the final fight. The final fight ensues, my DM killed one of us based on a Twitter poll, and we emerge victorious, but bruised. The epilogue begins, and we all have a happy ever after. Until... about 8 months later, after a different campaign session got canceled due to a player missing the session last minute that I was DMing, we managed to pester our GM into running a sequel campaign! It's currently running, we're at session 8 (my DM has yet to give us a level-up and will not relent) and could you bleep out this next bit I wanna drive them a bit crazy **I'm gonna be switching out my character next session to play a Witch class that Brennan Homebrewed!!!** Was I the asshole? I await any punishment you desire to bestow.

Andrew Goodenough

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

Christa La Reina

To the wise judges and the cute baby bailiff, I played my first campaign not long ago and I assumed initiative meant how much motivation and energy you put into a task. It made sense. It was a home brewed campaign and the task was help the elderly lady across the street. I announced I was rolling for initiative and rolled… he allowed it and we battled and she cut off when I was down to one HP and healed me with a boop and gave our party the map we needed… please judge me on my actions that could have ended the campaign before it even began.

Marissa Clopton

To the Justices of the Supreme Crit, Jake, My wife runs a campaign for me and our friends. This weekend we had a disagreement on the use of two weapon fighting. Our Paladin threw a javelin, which was infused by our Artificer with “Returning Weapon.” The Paladin then tried to throw the same javelin as her bonus action. As the party’s only member of the rules bar, I often argue on behalf of the players, but here I couldn’t allow such shenanigans to stand. After a brief and friendly argument, the player decided to use another weapon. The DM has stated she would have allowed it, based on the rule of cool, but will comply with your ruling. Thank you for your deliberation.

Tyberos

To the Creatures of the court and the benevolent God Emperor of Mankind ...jack? I bring you the case of The Surfin' Shenanigans. Years ago when I was a new Dm I had set up an encounter with a speaking riddle door as final puzzle before the party gained access to the Underdark. After easily passing the Forge Cleric asked if he could take the door while the party went ahead. Whatever fine. The problem occurs as for the rest of the party I described a treachours stair case leading down that several hunderd feet could lead to them falling. Only to find the Cleric wanted to surf the door down the stairs! Even with low dc dex saves and checks the failed all of them, leading to almost a tpk and a severed limb. It is a regret I still have to this day as I felt I clearly laid out the risks but they still fucked around and found out. I ask the court was I wrong to let them fail as grievously and fall taking several teammates with them who did nothing wrong? I don't humbly lay myself before you but I will take the punishment gracefully or enforce it on the old players out of context

Silver

Dear Justices and Jerome, I present the case of the entitled noble. I was running a human fighter/rouge I named Lawrence Lerlous Von Einswald. Giving him my most insufferable British accent, I wanted him to be an uptight posh character at first but grow into a decent person as the adventure continued. After a few mistakes on my part, and also just messing with my party, I abandoned the party during a critical moment of a fight (I had good story reasons for doing so) I did this because I was going on holiday soon and wasn't able to continue playing. Justices, was I wrong for caring too much about my character? I didn't want Lawrence to follow the party around as a bot controlled by the dm! I humbly await your judgement.

Chad L

To the Pulchritudinous Justices (Jake, that word means “beautiful”): I present to you the Case of the Hollow Victory: Our party just completed a 3 and-a-half-year campaign (123 sessions!!) and our 4 person party defeated the BBEG in epic fashion. We won! We saved the world!!! Time to celebrate and learn how our adventuring and heroics made the world a better place!! However, our DM had had a minion explode all entrances/exits to the temple we were in on the first turn of battle. Then, when the fight was over and we were trapped, the temple started collapsing. Our Artificer had a Ring of Teleportation, so dipped as soon as the collapse started (he’d been pretty cowardly all campaign). OK, there’s got to be another way out of this, right? The map was GIANT, and filled with difficult terrain, but over 3 rounds of the temple collapsing we learned that the now-dead mages that were holding the temple up (at the far corners of the aforementioned giant map, each about 200 ft away from the other) each had a Teleportation scroll. Great, this is our way out! Alas, it was not meant to be… our DM nerfed Teleportation to be for one person only. Our Cleric, who found the first scroll, selflessly sent our Paladin home to her family. Over the next 2 rounds the Cleric and my Fighter desperately tried to get to another mage and scroll, only to be crushed by the temple. Permanently dead. A few things: • Our DM had never nerfed a spell scroll, and admitted that it was a homebrew to intentionally limit the number of people it could teleport. • Even if we would have reached enough scrolls for us all to teleport away, the way the DM works scrolls is that we would need a high enough spell casting stat to use them (the Cleric rolled an 18 with disadvantage to make the Teleport spell work, because Teleport is not on the Cleric spell list). What was my Fighter to do, even if he had a scroll? I prostrate myself before the Court. Am I wrong to be salty about my longstanding, beloved character perishing in a homebrew situation in which the DM could have easily allowed a normal Teleport spell to carry all of us? Am I also wrong to be disappointed that we didn’t even get an epilogue? The last line of session 123 was “Kogall and Gil are dead, crushed beneath the falling temple, and that’s the end of our campaign.” 3 and a half years! I await your judgement.

DisClever

To those ever so fair Justices, and the guy that reads things to them, I bring the case of the Insulted Retcon. My party and I are going through an Adventure Module "The Ruby Phoenix Tournament" (Pathfinder 2nd Edition) One of our player's character has the ability to insult enemies with their different social skills for bonuses. One of these bonuses is an increase to movement speed. During one of the matches, this player needed the extra movement speed, but without an enemy to insult to gain it, decided to insult my character instead. Being an archer on the backline, I wasn't worried about any negative it might give me and neither was the player. During the battle I was hit by a Prismatic Spray. Thankfully, I was able to pass my save and not be affected by it thanks to a +2 bonus from our cleric which put me just over enough to pass. We finished the battle and went about our week. Before our next session the DM contacted me to tell me they were going over things and realized that being insulted by that player should have given me a -3 to that save. Meaning, I would have been subject to the Prismatic Spray. Just for fun, they said they rolled the dice to see what I would have been hit with. Turns out, I would have been hit with the worst one, Violet. This one sends the character to another plane. Still for fun, they decided to roll to see what plane I would have been sent to. They rolled a nat 20 on the table to find that it would have sent me to the Plane of Time. Somewhere unreachable by normal means. Both of us were in awe and we ended up retconning that it only "appeared" as if my character was not affected by the spray, as they relived their entire life from an outside perspective up to the point of being struck before hopping back out. While I'm ecstatic about this awesome moment, I do constantly feel weird bringing it up at the table as it all happened off screen and as a retcon. The other players are aware of it and it's given my character some life away from their recurring bits. So, I prostrate myself before your opinion, were we wrong to allow such a change or can I continue to make this part of my character? (One of my pupils were made to be an hourglass as a visual reminder of the trip)

Vanthiar

To the magnanimous judges and the effervescent bailiff, I present to you the case of the Solved Puzzle™️ I am playing a Goliath Lore Mastery Wizard (Unearthed Arcana). My party was exploring a mine infested with Meanlocks that had been tormenting the locals. Upon entering a large chamber, my DM explained that this chamber had four earthen pillars with candles embedded. This is where it goes awry. Knowing that Meanlocks are fae, I surmised these candles were part of a puzzle and cast a 2nd level magic missile as fire damage to light all four candles. Turns out, they weren't candles, but dynamite! I caused a cave-in. Thanks to our party's positioning at the time and some good saves, this killed all of the Meanlocks and only downed one of us, though we were all grievously wounded. I feel this result means I did, in fact, solve the puzzle, but my DM and party members contend I foolishly almost killed everyone taking his descriptions too literally! Noble Judges and Bailiff who also deserves positivity, should I be razzed for my puzzle solution or is my DM just basking in salt? I await your judgement with baited breath.

Jenkers

To my efforvesent and religiously-adjacent bishops and the fleshbag who reads these, I have a dice christ confessional. Me, a forever DM had the opportunity to play in a “one-shot” organized by a friend who was more than a little excited to run his world. Knowing this, I made an elven artificer academic who scavenges the ruins of ancient civilizations destroyed in years prior. Flash forward to the game, we started chained up in anti-magic cuffs on a galley ship. The DM has consistently hit us with “how do you escape” and at every turn, describes how our attempts to escape are foiled. There has also been no story at this point yet either, as there are no other prisoners, except one who refuses to talk to us. It is now hour 3 and we have not left the chains. Not for lack of trying, or even low rolls except for one person. For purposes of realism, the dm put that one player on a separate call so that we didn’t know what was happening out of our earshot. We sat in silence for 25 minutes until the DM came back on the call and said that the player got caught and put them back in the chains. I was incredibly bored, and honestly kinda mad that my friend made me sit through this. I decided to edit my character sheet and changed my proficiencies to have sleight of hand and thieves tools. After fighting, rather forcefully, that my proficiencies and tools would allow me to at least attempt a check to unlock the chains. I rolled a high check (low 20’s) and the DM described me unlocking only one of the chains, only for a guard to immediately spot me and beat my character into unconsciousness. I apparently needed to perform a stealth check first. At this point I lied and said “my dog threw up, gotta go deal with that” and went and watched tv with my girlfriend. 2 hours later, and now 6 hours into the game, I check back in and see that they had only made it into the next room. Glorious nerds, is my crime of explicitly changing my character in a desperate attempt to have any fun unforgivable? I am somehow still a part of this game, after the DM improved significantly, and have stuck to this change in character.

I Want My Name To Be Spaghetti

To the fancy-ass justices, and to a lesser degree, that Jork dude, I don't have a case or a confession, I just wanted to let you all know that I have Darkvision.

Jordan Holl

To the promiscuous clergy of the church of Dice Christ, forgive me for I have sinned. For context, I am running a Steampunk/Wild West/Fantasy campaign with my players being at level 4. My sin: I did not plan my session at all during the week, at least physically, in my brain I decided I was going to sort of bullshit the session and pull out this really cute 'Deck of Many Things' set and just ride the wave. However, due to me being very bad at how much gold I am dishing out for Quests, and setting a very low price of only 10 gold per card, the session went completely awry. My Bugbear Ranger is now level 9, while everyone else is at level 4. My Astral Elf now has 50,000 and lost all of their memory. My Tiefling Warlock made a deal with an Archfey and decided to end the toxic relationship between their patron. My Kenku druid got a +2 magic item, a wish spell to use whenever, and destroyed the town they were in with a tempest. I am truly at a loss for what to do now, and recognize have been a very bad boy. Please, fathers and sister, punish me.

Sam Youngs

To the evanescent preachers of the holy diceliness, I beseech you forgiveness for spitting in my magical item. I recently joined a campaign run by friends as it approached the final act. During my first session, I found myself falling behind on all of the campaign lore, and wanting to fit in through bits and antics. After giving a quill an existential crisis, we found ourselves facing a four-headed crystalline dragon in a cave full of gems. Herein lies my crime to Dice Christ: My petite himbo half-orc Bard-barian Ekibya was given the option to have a magical item. I wanted my item to be useful and thematic, so I chose a battle-axe guitar. However, the party wanted to kill the dragon using a bag of magic beans. Wanting to get in on the action, I suggested through private channels that I could have my magic item be pocket sand, which could act as soil to plant the magic beans in the dragon's mouth. The plan would have succeeded without my intervention, but by giving myself a second (albeit relatively mundane for 12th level) magical item, I felt involved. I asked the DM if I could, "like, just have pocket sand" before we rolled initiative, to which he responded, "sure". Watching the shock spread across his face as a table full of engineers created an airtight argument for our bean bomb that included sand, (tread so carefully) spit, and druidcraft, was both beautiful and guilt-inducing. He let us have it, and we severely crippled the dragon with two pyramids and a magic beanstalk spawning in the emerald head's mouth. I know I was greedy in my ask knowing full well that my item was not as mundane as I made it out to be, but it helped me connect with my new team. (We never used this technique again out of respect) I lay myself at your feet for judgment.

Jupiter Ann

To the honorable judges and the delicious Bailiff Jake: I bring you the case of the selfish sacrifice. I've been playing dnd for close to 9 years now, and spent most of that time as a player. About a year ago, I decided I wanted to DM again, but didn't have time for a homebrew campaign while in school. I opted for Curse of Strahd. (I won't get too into detail to avoid potential spoilers, but this all happened so early in that it shouldn't matter). One of my players made a warlock suffering from amnesia, which in turn made him very distrustful and hesitant to talk to or even really interact with the other characters. This will be relevant later. I thought it was interesting, and had plans to reveal parts of his forgotten past throughout the campaign where it would make sense with the prewritten story. About two sessions in, this player tells me after that he hates his character. He told me that he'd actually written a *new* character and wanted me to kill his current warlock in game somehow. I refused. If a character dies, I want it to at least be sort of meaningful. I wasn't going to kill his warlock just because he wanted to play a different character he made like 2 or 3 sessions into the campaign. Over the next week or two, I'd received a few text messages asking me to kill his warlock, and also was sent the several page google doc for this new character he'd "created" that was basically Trevor Belmont from Castlevania to the point of blatant plagiarism, by his own admission no less. About 4 sessions in, we get to the first real fight. To avoid spoilers, it was basically a haunted house scenario that leads the party into a stereotypical spooky cult basement. The party gets to the basement and find a sacrificial altar, and are basically given a choice from the ghosts, to offer a sacrifice or die. Obviously this is where they refuse and fight, right? That's not what happened. This player uses that opportunity to have his standoffish, suspicious warlock sacrifice himself onto the altar and save his companions. He managed to skip the first real fight of the campaign by doing something entirely out of character just so he could play a different one. I ended up awkwardly ending that session early since I expected combat to take a decent amount of time. The campaign ended up dissolving soon after anyways due to my school schedule, but I might have tried harder to make it work if things had gone differently. Judges, should I have let this guy switch from an original, interesting character to diet Trevor Belmont less than 5 sessions into a Strahd campaign? I await your fair and just ruling.

Orion

To the honorable Supreme Crit justices and of course the Baliff. I present to you the case of the Mini Malarkey. A while ago, my sister was playing in a campaign with some of her friends. One night she came home from the session a bit upset, and she explained that the DM had bought customized minis for the entire party except for her, and had also hand-painted them. She even showed me a picture of a battle map where her character was a regular board game piece next to all of the customized minis. Seeing that she was upset, with her permission I decided to razz the DM a bit. I texted him from my phone (an unknown number to him) pretending to be a huge supporter of my sister’s character, writing a letter to him saying that he had “disgraced the character’s honor” by not buying a mini of the character, and basically listing off impressive things the character had done (provided by my sister) as reasons why the character should have a mini. He wrote back immediately clocking that it was me, and saying that I was “unfairly villainizing” him, as he had asked my sister if she wanted a mini, and she had declined. My sister said maybe she had remembered incorrectly, so I apologized, but it never made sense to me, because if she had declined a customized mini, why would she be coming home disappointed about it? A few months later, they kicked her out of the Dnd group as well as the friend group in general, and I always worried that I was one of the reasons why. I know that there are no heroes in this story, but I ask the court: was I right to defend my sister or was I unfairly villainizing the DM? P.S. Thankfully my sister followed Justice Murphy’s frequent advice, and got some new friends who are much nicer to her now.

Liisa Kuru

Honourable Supreme Crit Justices Murphy, Axford and Caldwell JJ, and the most salacious Bailiff Hurwitz. If it may please the court, my case is as follows; I joined a new D&d 5e group with starting characters at level 10. Seeing the balance of the other two player characters, I opted to play a Firbolg Forge Domain cleric named Nougat. Through setting up the character and their equipment, I checked everything through the DM. In particular, I asked about what armour would be appropriate for my character. Given my fairly wealthy background and advanced age, my DM suggested "that really good heavy armour". I found some, but it seemed a little overpowered for a campaign start but the DM confirmed it. Upon character creation completion, I excitedly shared with the group my stupidly good AC of 22 (with a shield, again approved by the DM). Upon hearing this, the DM turned to the paladin and asked them their AC, which was 18. The DM then said "given your backstory, your AC is now 24." This felt a little strange, as if the DM had chosen the paladin to be the main character and thus had to have the best stats. In respect of the DM's authority I did not protest, but even the paladin player looked uncomfortable. Your most learned honours, I respectfully ask for your ruling. I put a lot of work into this character, as I homebrewed my god with the DM, and even contacted a friend studying religion to assist. I drew character art for dice Christ's sake. Humbly yours, Nougat. P.S JJ is the plural form for justices (e.g Murphy J, Murphy and Axford JJ)

Alex G

To the fair and square Crit Justices Murphy, Axford and Caldwell, and the principled Bailiff Hurwitz, I give you the case of the assisted suicide. This is my first campaign as an DM after years as a player, mainly focused on druids and clerics. I currently run a near full home brew campaign for 7 players because I am a fucking idiot. I draw the maps, write the whole story, make loads of home-brew items, poorly paint the minis, and even home brew/modify a few monsters to make it more interesting for the story line. While I still take as much as I can from more official sources, I am clearly in very, very deep. I think my chaos approach to DMing and desire to make sure everyone has fun has let my players run amuck with some of their story lines. One of my players recently got sick of their rogue fashioned after a backwoods cross bow hunter, and decided to kill him off. We aligned on his character having a heart attack on the toilet as an in game/out of combat way for his character to die. He rolled a new character and we are just weaving him into the story line but I am having regrets. His original character was the brother of another person on the team, his story line was tied to some key protagonists, we have made him a special crossbow, tooled leather bolt holder, and gone to a lot of lengths to give him an interesting part of the narrative. While I want everyone to love their characters and enjoy the game, I'm tasting some serious salt in the mouth over my player tomfoolery. Was I wrong to let him kill off his character and roll a new one? Or was I wrong to be overly ambitious and precious with all the special shit I made for my game? Lay it on thick, as we still have two to three phases of the campaign and I need some guidance. Your judgement is my only path forward.

Brandon Moody

Justices of questionable repute, Guy that will eventually run out of fighter subclasses (no shade!), I present the case of the lost 2 years. My friends and I played a campaign a while back that went from level 1 to 20 over a few years. Our lovely DM was running 2 groups in the same world. One group ended up using a bag of magic beans to create a massive beanstalk, so large that it diverted an invading army loyal to Tiamat by a significant period of time, giving us ample time to prepare and successfully fight them off. 2 years of real time later, 2 of the characters from that party joined us in the other group. Long story short, we ended up with a wish spell. One of those characters foolishly looked at the other and jokingly stated, "I wish you had never found those beans". Our DM looked at us, horrified, as he narrated wish magic permeating the world. We tried pleaing with him, saying it was only a snide remark, but his mind was set. Because the beans were never found, Tiamat's forces were successful in their invasion, and the story changed so dramatically the DM essentially rewrote the last 2 real life years of our adventure (including some input from us) with the new timeline to get us to where we were at level wise so we wouldn't de-level (like around 13 I think) I ask; was it wrong for them to take the smart ass remark so seriously that those 2 years essentially never happened? Or should we have all giggled at the joke and moved on with our lives? I await your fair and surely reasonable judgement.

Callum Taylor

To the right honourable Justices and wrong honourable Bailiff, I bring a simple case before the court today; one involving the time honoured Bane (and Bhaal and Myrkul) of every D&D campaign since time immemorial – SCHEDULING. After receiving the Curse of Strahd adventure book for a birthday gift during covid and being crowned DM, then having not one but two players drop of out the campaign before starting (one not two days before session zero!), our players have finally met for session zero after almost three years of waiting. All was going well until we discussed the when, where, and how often we'd like to play. Although we were all on-board with playing around once a month – a miracle for four dudes in their mid-30s – one player informed the group that they could start playing for another three months. Three months! We've been waiting for almost three years to start! Argh! Should I as the DM and the other players exercise patience with our friend, or should we turn the screws on our other player to shrug off his other "very important" commitments after waiting so long to start? Is this delay another ill omen for our much-delayed campaign, or do we have to make room for life outside of D&D? And how much room? We await your judgement.

ZZ Digital

I ask Dice Christ's clergy: i recently bought my dear sister a set of pawpaw dice off your store. She immediately gave them a test on recieving them and rolled in order 1, 2, and then 3. So she asks: what penance must she perform, as she is unsure why Dice Christ is upset with her

Hennis the Mennis

To the honourable justices and the horizontally oscillating bailiff. If it would please the court, I would like to submit the case of the underwhelming grandma. I am running Curse of Strahd and my players are facing off against the terrible and ancient Baba Lysaga and her CR11 walking hut. The fight is meant to be a climactic last gasp for an outgoing player's character - but before we ended our session mid-fight, my level 7 players were whomping her with crits and the cinematic death scene is slipping from my grasp. I beseech the court: should I alter her stat block to give her a beefed up final form between sessions, or do I allow this grandma and my long time player to each go out with a whimper?

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?

Dani

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

Myles Lee

To the benevolent crit whose justice always shines down upon us...and the bailif who usually gets the coffee order right. May it please the crit. I bring you a case that nearly fractured my first play group. We were nearing the end of the first arc of our campaign. Our DM had set for us a combat that we could not win. This was deliberately done to make our ultimate victory sweeter. In a last ditch effort a player who was key to seizing the objective we were protecting threatened to down herself. The NPCs told her to go ahead. The problem arose when it was revealed that the player was lying about her HP total. When it came back to her in initiative she said she didn't need to make a death save and that she was trying to trick the enemies into backing off. A fight ensued in which we stopped playing for a month or two before we "so carefully" came back to the table to complete the arc.

Nathan Johnson

To the honorable Crit Justices and the glorious beard with that Jake guy attached: May it thoroughly pleasure the court to rule on my case of the Cleaving Goblin boss. Some years back I was joining a group to play 4E. We spent a great deal of time creating our characters and prepping to play. Including spending literal hours sifting through boxes of the DM's miniatures to locate all the necessary monsters he would use for our campaign. Our first session started off well and we had a great time of roleplaying our characters. We followed the DM's breadcrumbs to take care of some local kobolds that were terrorizing the local village. Alas, the kobolds were lead by a particularly nasty Goblin boss, which for 4E was quite literally a boss character. We found ourselves quickly outmatched and attempted to flee. The Goblin Boss chased us down and my adorable halfling sorcerer was quickly dropped into death saving throws. The Goblin Boss had the cleave ability and as he attacked other party members the DM used that cleave ability on my downed sorcerer. When confronted about what a cheap shot this was, the DM ruled that the Goblin Boss would try his best to use all of his abilities to murder us all. I was quickly cleaved into oblivion and we TPKed during our first session. Afterwards the DM realized he had made a mistake and that boss was not supposed to be encountered until level 6, we were level 1. The other players shrugged and started rolling up new characters immediately. I however, now had no desire to play with this group or the DM and I never played with them again. I beseech you attractive and fair justices, was it fair for the DM to use monster abilities against a downed player? Or was he out of pocket with his bloodthirsty murder spree? P.S. - The DM was a 52 year old man, father of two of the other players, and fully fit the worst of the comic nerd stereotypes in demeanor and odor.

MAH DICK FELL OFF

To the glorious crit justices and also jake if hes here this week May it please the court to review the case of the world war z zombies I was a fairly new dm for a homebrew campaign of dnd, a few years ago my players were on a pirate island that had formed from thousands of shipwrecks piled ontop of one another that had recently been struck by a zombie apocalypse type scenario akin to world war z, i described how the semi- intelligent zombies attacked anything that moved, including rats, birds, anything. my brother and the partys druid decided to scout the island in the form of an giant eagle about 30 feet above them. He rolled low on his stealth check and alerted the horde of zombies that were on the giant pile of ships, i grouped all the zombies together in the initiative order and he rolled below them, i described how they all piled on top of eachother to reach him, many using dash actions to do so, in exchange one zombie got a hit off on him, he argued that since they were all piling up he should have an opportunity to fly away cause it would take a while, i told him that as they all had the same initiative they went before him, after he continued to argue i told him thats just how it is and he had to take the damage. He acquiesced at the time and we moved on. However, years later he still brings it up whenever the players try to debate me on something as if its supposed to prove that i am wrong about whatever the debate is at the time, was i wrong to have the zombies get a single hit off on him or should he honestly just drop it at this point

Witpending

To the Enlightened Court Justices Murphy, Tanner, and Axford: greetings. Hey Jake. May it please the court, I bring before you the case of the Mayonnaise Bomb. I am a player at a table of 7. Our Aarakokra Monk picked an alchemy jug as one of his starting items and enjoys using it in creative ways, to the delight of our table. However, in our most recent game, there arose a disagreement. He revealed his plan to fly over the bad guy, produce a gallon of mayonnaise in the jug, then drop the mayo and a torch on him to engulf him in flame. The rest of our table countered that mayonnaise isn't flammable, to which he responded, "From personal experience, it is." He did not elaborate. We argued back and forth until the DM ruled he couldn't make a mayonnaise bomb, at which point he opted to use oil instead. My question is this: were we wrong to question his lived experience, or is the mayonnaise bomb a dud?

Barnacle Doctor

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

A Bug in a Hug

To the most Venerated Justices and that new guy Josh (welcome to the show!), I played DnD with a group of friends from work. We are in a demanding profession, so when the campaign puttered out, I thought nothing of it. However, a few months later, my friends began talking about character building and a new campaign---oftentimes in front of me---and would clam up if I asked about it. I thought I was going crazy and being a bad friend, but when I finally asked a mutual to be honest with me, they confessed that the group got together again on the caveat that I only would not be allowed in. Some members were lied to that I did not want to join. I eventually asked the DM why, and he ping-ponged back and forth between asking me to just show up with no explanation or mediation on his part, saying that he would kick out the people in the group "turning people against me", and also refusing to tell me what the problem was or even who the people were so I could personally talk to them. Needless to say, it all ended on bad terms and now I lie awake at night wondering what I did wrong and wishing I could fix it. I am having a hard time enjoying DnD-centric things, and therefore, NADDPOD, my favorite podcast, because of this. My question is: how does one gracefully handle being kicked from a group? How do I find joy in DnD again without always thinking about this awful situation? P.S. We all work together and usually see each other either on a daily or weekly basis

Josh Hayden

To the highest form of justice in the land the Jeff I think his name is who cares, I offer the case of fire wall hijinks I dm a campaign were 2 of my PC's play a drake warden ranger and a circle of wildfire druid, the range came to the table with the idea to have the druid cast wall of fire and then have his dragon familiar who has fire immunity to drag any and all of my monsters he can back and forth through the wall of fire, I'm still awaiting the firewall tactic to happen but I know it's coming, so I ask how would the dms of the court deal with this

Adrian Griffin

To the Almighty Justices of Roleplaying Justice, and the All-flighty Bailiff of Bailing, I offer you the Case of the Fruitless Finale. A while ago I was playing in a Star Wars campaign where the party was a mercenary company. My character was Barry, a medical droid with a thick southern accent(established to be a load-bearing file in his programming) was in love with the AI of a freight ship named Petunia. After a few years I have to stop playing due to work, and we decide to have my final session be the wedding between Barry and Petunia after which he would retire from the company as I retired from the game. Cut to the final session in question, and the company receives a distress call from Petunia that she’s under attack by the main villains, a rival mercenary company working for the Empire. I’m excited thinking it’d be a daring rescue right before the wedding, but when we get there she and the pilot are both dead, the bad guys nowhere to be found. After confirming there was no way to bring her back, upset at the circumstances, and knowing that it was my final session anyway, I decided to have Barry wipe his own memory, shown by dropping the accent and all pretenses of his sarcastic but kind personality. The GM and I apologized to each other and I’m still friends with everyone in the group, but it was clear I was upset and it brought down the mood for the rest of the night. What do you think? Was the GM in the wrong for ruining my plan for my character’s ending for the sake of motivating the rest of the party? Was my reaction selfish? Let me know!

Roguejedi89

To the honorable Justices and the Splendid Bailiff Jake (I can't bring myself to dunk on Jake, just wanted to say thanks to the NADDPOD crew for so many years of incredible content, you guys rock), I present to you the case of the High Stakes Help Action. May it please the court, my wonderful husband DMs a 5e campaign for me and three of our friends. We had successfully sneaked into the catacombs of the cult of a death god and felt safe enough to split the party. Our artificer and wizard were in the dungeon helping to free an incredibly important NPC, while the Rogue and I (a Ranger) discovered and were attempting to disarm a bomb powerful enough to level a huge section of the capital city. We got high investigation checks on the bomb and the DM described that the bomb would be disarmed after a series of four skill checks, and the result of each check would impact the following check's DC. The first step in attempting to disarm the bomb was a thieves' tools check to open the inner workings. I asked if I could give the Rogue a help action on his thieves' tools check, but my husband ruled that because I was not also proficient in thieves' tools, I couldn't give the help action. Rules as written I couldn't find anything about limitations on when a character can give a help action related to proficiency, so I feel like I should have been able to help even though I'm not proficient with thieves' tools, but I went with my DM's direction. The Rogue rolled a Nat 1. The DM narrated that we tripped something in the internal mechanism and the bomb started to activate. I tried a strength check at advantage to try to rip open the panel to give us another last-ditch shot at disarming it, but failed to get higher than a 10. With no other spells or tools at our fingertips (we're level 3 and early in our campaign so we don't have a lot of options), we tried to run. After a failed Survival check (10 at advantage) to escape the catacombs and failed luck check (3 at advantage) to see if we'd chosen the right way out, my DM was out of feasible options for us to escape the blast radius in time and our whole party suffered a TPK. To be entirely clear, everyone in the party had a blast with this session (no pun intended), all of our actions felt in-character, and we're excited to roll new characters and keep playing together, I'm more just curious about your ruling on the case. Should I have been able to give the Rogue the help action and avoid this disastrous chain of events, or was my husband's hand guided by the very clear will of Dice Christ to wipe the party? I await your wise and fair judgement. Best wishes and happy new year, -Roguejedi89

Tim Healy

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

Mark Fraley

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

Nathan Jaimes

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