Court Cases Please!

I'm late to the discussion but I'm surprised that Murph doesn't seem to know the difference between a singular shrub and a hedge: "a fence or boundary formed by closely growing bushes or shrubs".

Valerie Klauscher

May it please the beloved court and the beloved bailiff, I present the case of the Grappled Grung Cowboy: My grung cowboy was grappled a couple sessions ago. I argued saying that the grappler should be rolling for poison checks as the rules for grung's poison skin states that "any creature that grapples you or otherwise comes into direct contact with your skin must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or become poisoned for 1 minute." He argued that since my character is wearing winter clothes and armor, that the rule above wouldn't apply. This never came into play, but he also toyed with the idea that the poison rolls should come into play with healing spells that require touch, i.e. cure wounds. It doesn't mention in cure wounds that direct skin contact is needed, they just need to be touched to be healed. Again, poison skin rules apply to grappling or otherwise touching their skin. (Here's a link to grung's traits: https://www.dndbeyond.com/races/grung#GrungTraits) I am I in the wrong or was my DM correct for ruling it in this way?

Cheneil

If it pleases the court and the venerable bailiff, I bring to you the case of the subtle spell. I'm in a five person party that consists of a druid, rogue, wizard, cleric and my Gnome wild magic sorcerer (teehee). Long story short, our wizard wanted to attempt to cast prestidigitation in a sneaky manner, i.e prestitigitate a playing card to cheat in a game of cards. However our DM told him the only way to cast a spell with any sort of secrecy would be to use a sorcerer's subtle spell meta magic thus making impossible for our other spell casters to even attempt a sneaky spell. As a new DM, myself (with a different group of friends) I find myslef disagreeing with some of the calls my DM makes... I don't want to undermine his authority in our campaign however this call sets a precedent for the whole campaign that effects most of our party members. Are we wrong for wanting an option for casting sneaky spells without being a sorcerer? Or is our DM in the right for shutting us down and possibly preventing us from pulling dumb shenanigans?

We have many jokes that my cleric should just become a warlock with Wendy as her patron. She is the one who controls the dice.

If it pleases the Court and the most honorable bailiff, my dragonborn monk was scouting ahead in a forest while the rest of my party made camp. In a series of unfortunate events, I found myself rolling for initiative staring down a huge bear wearing a belt. Alone and too far to call for help, I decided to run. To get away, I decided to run across the nearby lake as I was a 9th level monk. To my surprise, the bear was carrying a shark on its back the entire time and proceeded to swim after me using the shark. Eventually, my movement ended and my DM told me that since I didn't end my turn on solid ground, I would fall into the water. I argued that since round order was more like a point in time rather than my character just standing there, the momentum of my run would carry me through the next turn. There was some back and forth but eventually, I accepted my fate and my character sunk helplessly into the water as both bear and shark began to maul me to death. Honorable judges, was I correct in that I should have been able to continue running across the water or should I have accepted the fate that no one escapes from BearShark.

Calvin Tran

What a fitting case. If it means anything I think you made the right decision. Good work Jane!

DanDrako

You fail to see Dice Christ incarnate. Wendy, the hot and juicy red head, and Dice Christ's only begotten Kitty, intervenes on behalf of DC in the mortal realm. Praise be.

Imagining a Mario game that ends within the first 15 minutes of the initial cutscene is just hilarious. XD

May it please the court, I present the case of the Santa Claus Spoiler. Around last Christmas during a campaign I was in, our DM had our characters go through a holiday-themed dream session where we had to rescue Santa and save Christmas. The session was a blast, but at the very end once we had rescued Santa, he randomly revealed an extremely important detail about one of the player characters' backstories. Said character was a Warforged Bard with amnesia that was trying to find out about their history, and Santa offhandedly mentioned he had died once before in the past before giving him a magical instrument for a Christmas gift. This wasn't prompted by anything, Santa just decided to tell him he had died. After the session, my friend playing the Warforged and I talked about how it felt kind of anticlimactic that this big reveal for his character was done in such a casual way in what was effectively a filler episode. In the end we just rolled with it, but it's always bothered us a little. Were we wrong to be unsatisfied with how that reveal was handled?

An_Armed_Bear

I feel like that’s what luck checks are for?

Sara S.

If it may please the Once and Future Justice Hurwitz and the sitting members of the Court. The Accused: TeeRee Staff Acrobat Monk and cheery circus performer. The Plaintiff: Tak the Fate Witch, bruised and battered Tengu mourning the loss of his familiar Krick. On the night 10/19/21 TeeRee while under the influence of a Suggestion spell cast by a Succubus(1) who's only suggestion was "Protect me". We are playing Pathfinder 2nd Ed. so Suggestion is a more powerful 4th lvl spell(2). Her first action in doing so was to dissipate the scarier Toad illusion Tak had summoned in reaction to Krick being murdered by an imp. When Tak prone on the floor tried to snap their friend(3) out of it by feebly attempting to hit at TeeRee's legs, the accused then proceeded to beat the plaintiff within an inch of their life. I am here to argue to the court that while suggestion is powerful it does not negate the amount of time TeeRee and Tak have known each other or make her more likely to beat the bejeezus out of them. Should TeeRee have followed the suggestion so stringently to defend her new lover against old friends? Evidence: 1-https://pf2easy.com/tree/index.php?id=3638&name=succubus_(lust_demon) 2-https://pf2easy.com/tree/index.php?id=1530&name=suggestion 3-TeeRee is wearing a friendship bracelet from Tak.

If they indeed specifically chose to knock out the baddies instead of killing them, then unfortunately you're being a bad DM and not playing by the rules. When you elect to knock out a baddie when you reduce it to zero, they don't die, and remain unconscious for a while until woken up. Furthermore, you dont roll death saves for enemies. Your players didn't "forget" anything, you have two instances of not playing the game correctly.

Relentless Endurance specifically states it only works if they drop to zero and AREN'T killed outright. The mind flayer remove brain action states "If this damage reduces the target to 0 hit points, the mind flayer kills the target". Sadly this is clear cut: your player died permanently. Mindflayers are nasty, nasty monsters.

May it please the distinguished jury of Critter Country and our distinguished Crit Justices who survived remote recording. I DMed a superhero-themed campaign for a group that was entirely new to dnd and it was not so lucky as to survive the past years challenges. We took a vote at the beginning of the pandemic and the majority decided they were too inexperienced to figure out playing online. That vote was a year and a half ago, and since then two players have moved away. Sadly, I must pronounce the game…dead. I suggested restarting with the remaining people and adding more to fill out the party but everyone seemed very cold to the idea. My question is…what do I do? I had plans for arcs and cool challenges that they’ll never get to know now.

Fandom Encounters

Text May it please the gracious and honourable judges, Axford, Murphy and Tanner and the other guy. My group of friends have been doing some one shots and our never dm decided he wanted to give a level 5 Mario themed one shot a go. The story began in peaches castle where bowser loudly grabbed peach and ran for his airship and began to leave. Our group of Mario, Luigi, Toad, Lakitu and me, donkey Kong, chased after the the fleeing ship and jumped on it before it was able to leave. At this point there was some obvious confusion from our DM, as this part of the Mario games would traditionally be a cutscene where the players stand and watch, our DM was not expecting us to chase after ship and was not prepared for us for initiate a fight with bowser and his children immediately. I should mention that in the group, the DM for this one shot by far has the least understanding of the game. We ended up womping bowser and his children by throwing most of them off the ship at high altitude and saving peach within the first 2 hours of the game. We’re we wrong to abuse or ability to be apart of a cutscene and interrupt the DM’s obvious plan? Ps - the DM had peach be kidnapped again that very night and the adventure went from there.

Tom

May it please the court: I’m a dm running my first real campaign, and I have a player who wanted to make a true neutral con artist type character, a wild magic sorcerer pretending to be a cleric and conning people with fake “miracles”. I had him tell the rest of the party out of character before the campaign started and they were all really into the idea, and I thought it seemed fun. The player is using the definition of true neutral that is “true neutral is not believing in or standing for anything at all” and is playing this as essentially the character is only looking out for himself, and sees himself as above everyone else. This is not normally the type of character this player plays, and there was an interaction with an NPC where the player was genuinely disgusted with himself for the way the character was behaving. After a couple sessions, I started to become concerned that I wouldn’t be able to draw the character into the plot/caring about the rest of the party, and asked the player for some ideas to get the character interested, which he obliged. Later, I realized that depending on the “scams” the character pulled, he might be directly responsible for killing people if he pretends to heal people for large amounts of money without actually doing anything, moving the alignment more into neutral evil than the intended true neutral. When I expressed this concern to the player and asked whether or not this was the case, the player said he wants to roll a new character. He seems excited about the new character, and says it wasn’t my questions that drove him to switch to a different character, but I can’t help feeling like if I had trusted him and kept my mouth shut, he would have wanted to keep using this character, as he and the rest of the players were very excited about it. Am I depriving my players of interesting role play opportunities and character arcs by possibly encouraging my player to reroll a character, or was I in the right to express my concerns?

May it please the court, but most especially his and her reverences Emily the luminous, Caldwell the fair, and Murphy the just. Hey Jake! I calling upon your guidance as I am not sure if my DM was focusing me unfairly. I had been playing in a online campaign for a few months and my 7th level sorcerer had recently gained access to the spell Armor of Agathys. Our characters were fighting in an arena, and in a 1-on-1 against an npc, I cast armor of agathys at a 4th level, giving me 20 temp hp and 20 damage to anyone who hits me with a melee attack. The issue then arose when I was hit twice, once for 7 and another for 12. After the second hit, I mentioned that the npc would take 40 damage total as per the spell rules, but the dm disagreed saying that they would take the amount of damage equal to how much temp hp was left, to which I verbally disagreed with since it’s not rules as written. He ultimately said that the spell would work the way I said for this round only, after which it would work his way. I contacted him after letting him know my reasoning for disagreeing, just that it was against raw and that I don’t know any 1st level spell that has the potential to only do 1 point of damage bar any resistances. He said that the spell was too op in the situation my character was in, and I just dropped it. After a few months I stopped playing for school but had rejoined for the “finale”. During which, another spellcaster cast armor of agathys and, to my surprise, the dm allowed the use of raw spell mechanics, even applauding the use of the spell. My question is, dear judges, was I being unfairly focused by my dm? Or am I just being a wee babe?

Yes please, this sounds amazing and like the best, if not must frustrating, way to D&D

BeanCurdHero

Much like the bird guy who lay prone in battle, someone needs to call this guy's mom because he's clearly going through something

Whether or not your question gets answered, the world needs those cat pics.

JBeev

May it please the court, the bailiff and most importantly any cats in the room, I play DnD virtually, and for this reason I play with my laptop in bed with my dice tray next to me. This is all well in good, but I'm a cat owner. My cat Wendy rules over my house, and insists on sitting in my dice tray or bat at my dice when I roll. I know TECHNICALLY there are ways around this, like not allowing my cat in the room, but Wendy wouldn't like that. She hates closed doors, and will body slam and loudly meow outside the door until she's let in. I could also use a virtual roller, but I've never gotten to play dnd in person so I like to keep rolling with my physical dice. So my question is, what is the rule for if my cat hits/interacts with my dice? Sometimes she does it so fast I don't see the number, so is that a re-roll? Or do I accept Wendy's number? Other times I pick up a bit of her belly to roll under her, but that does mean she may re-adjust so she can sit on the dice, and stop it from rolling early. I can also submit photographic evidence of Wendy in my dice tray if needed.

May it please the court, but most importantly the omniscient bailiff. I am a first time DM running a campaign for some friends known for chaos. One if my players was talking about his character concept to me and was very excited for it. However, his character was a sentient piece of bread who floated using mage hand and was a sorcerer. I was willing to work with him but also told him that he would have weaknesses to fire and water as a result and he got very pouty. It would have been very hard to deal with, so I am happy that he moved away with it, but he is a lot less excited and engaged during sessions. Was I wrong to impose limitations on his odd character in an effort to make things easier on myself? I await your judgement venerable crit justices.

Dylan S.

I was the DM in an Eberron D&D campaign. It's full of magic machines and robots so I thought it'd be fun for the party to have a robot dog. They were a 'puppy' version of the Iron Defender, who was harmless but could help give advantage or take a hit for the PCs. We had an Artillerist Artificer, who in the middle of combat asked if he could attach his Eldritch Cannon to the D0G. I said that if he rolled a Nat 20 he could... and he did. I backed away from that, saying that the D0G was meant to be a collective helper for the whole party, and making the Artificer's main class feature attached to it would make it seem like it belonged to him. The next session I said that the artificer gave the D0G a little laser that did a d6 on a hit. Was that a good compromise or should I have honored the Nat 20?

Michaela ZC

May it please the court and all its inhabitants, I recently ran a session where the party fought a lich-esque carnival barker. Near the end of the fight, the barker spitefully hit the downed bard with chill touch, bringing her to two death fails (and preventing any immediate healing from the rest of the party). The barker was killed soon thereafter by our sorcerer. But after the sorcerer's turn was the unconscious bard's turn. I asked her to roll her death save - which would either see her dead or give the party enough time to heal her. Our cleric argued that since the barker was dead, we should be out of initiative, so she should be able to heal the bard immediately. My thought was that even though the barker was dead, a party member was still in danger, and initiative order would continue until that danger was resolved. My slapdash decision was to have the cleric role a DEX check to heal the bard before the next death save came into play. The check failed, but the bard passed her final death saving throw. Still, if the bard had died, I think my decision would have haunted me. So, should initiative end once the bad guys are defeated? Or given the initiative order, was I right to have the bard roll her last save before anyone could heal her?

May it please the honorable crit justices and the entirely over qualified and handsome bailiff. I come to you today to seek your approval of what I believe to be the best pun in DnD play his/herstory. While playing in a campaign with my witty best friend, his wife and my other bestest bud who was playing a warlock, he got the ability to summon a familiar. So we go into the lair of the initial bad guy in the campaign and he summons his familiar, a quasit. The dms wife being new to dnd innocently asks "what's a quasit"? And without missing a beat, the warlock says "it's where you put your cwoes". To which she says. Ok and walks away from the table for 5 min while we all laugh hysterically. Can you give this the supreme Court judges stamp of approval for if not the best one of the best DND puns ever? Thank you for your consideration and deliberation.

Hi court people, I have an atypical case that is DM vs. DM. I help host a dnd club at my local gameboard cafe. Another DM, the shop events manager and I set up a system where all players are members of an adventuring guild with rotating DM’s who can host whatever one or two-shot they desire. Each one shot being a “mission” they’re dispatched on. We take turns so that way no one becomes a “forever dm.” I thought the DM’s would be me and one other guy but someone who works at the cafe has suddenly included himself quite aggressively. He told us what the lore was, came up with the NPC’s, title of the guild, even the entire realm… completely out of the blue. I thought it was odd but just brushed it off, I didn’t want anyone to feel excluded and the more DM’s the merrier. The first night of club comes along and I’m kicking us off. Super nervous, I come early to prepare and open up to him about my nerves and mention that I had an idea for a receptionist…. His sympathies quickly vanished as he freaked out about there being too many cooks in the kitchen and the lore will be all over the place and there’s no way in hell we’d be able to keep up. There’s only three of us. It was an idea for a receptionist of the guild. Not like some kind of bbeg!! But then he starts saying if only I put it in the group chat and gave a heads up would I have saved him the trouble of making his own idea that he’d now grown attached to. I suggested that each time someone else DM’s it’s a different time of day… so his receptionist could be the night shift or something. He still didn’t agree and thought it best that he come up with everything because if multiple people do, others will be upset and hate someone else’s idea. (What a polite way of saying you hated mine!) I said to him that that still has the same issue along with stifling other DM’s creativity. With some solid eye contact and direct questions about who made him in charge, he quickly rescinded all comments and said “I’m sorry don’t listen to me I’m just stressed.” And then… Dumped all of his emotional stress on me. I ended up having to tell him we weren’t going to abandon him and that it was okay, we had his back. Whoa whoa… when did this become fragile masculinity’s therapy sesh??? He felt better toward the end but I could feel the daggers he stared at me each time I role played as an NPC that night and nights after. Even cutting me off when describing a landscape saying “well actually it’s more like this-“ … Am I overreacting or is this DM railroading fellow DM’s?! Thanks guys!

This is a meta gaming question: I am a Life Domain cleric so I have preserve life. When I tried to use it, I was told I was metagaming for asking how many hit points would get them to half health. I tried explaining that I get a certain number to split, but they tell me talking about hit points is metagaming. Am I wrong for using the ability in that way? How do I use the ability without metagaming? Or are they just being pedantic?

May it please the most honorable and amazing crit justices in my time of need…and the other guy, I am a first time DM attempting to run a self written campaign that was absolutely thrown into shambles on the first couple sessions. I set up the classic “you meet in a small town tavern” where the party gathered and learned of the threat within the town and set off to begin their quest. The rogue of the party, the level 1 rogue at that, had an assassination contract on the leader of the local bandit group that was the cause of the problem in this town. (His reason for being at the tavern) Upon exiting the tavern the other 2 in the party decided they should venture out to the underground resistance as they were tipped off to go do. Our resident game wrecker decided it was a better idea to immediately attack the nearest bandit to which I told him that there were 10 or more in the area as well as a large bell in the center of town to call for reinforcements. His response, “Do I get my sneak attack bonus” I figured whatever sure, as the fight resulted in a tpk in the first session we ever played, my first dm experience. We tried to restart the next week with new characters and I made him change from being an assassin/bounty hunter. The next session same exact thing…his reason was he wanted vengeance for his rogue…who never existed In this new restart we had. He told me I was the worst dm and he’d never play with me again…am I wrong for killing them not once but twice despite warning them explicitly? Should I just put down the DM job and go back to being a PC from now on? I throw myself at the will of the court and Tucker.

i think your dm did a good job

Natalie

To the honorable justices and the charming bailiff, I bring to your attention the case of Beno, a DM PC. Our party of six (6!) met Beno about half way through the first arc. To start, this PC looks almost exactly like our DM and has several of his mannerisms and traits (for example, they both have ADHD), which he says was unintentional and just happens to be a character he could easily cosplay. He also has two guns, though it had been previously established that guns were basically just invented in this world. He also seems to be three different classes at once (rogue, fighter, bard) and our DM refuses to elaborate on what class he is. His first impression already put him on thin ice because he forcibly kissed my character on the mouth and inserted basically a golf ball into my mouth. He helped my character escape from prison, and I thought after that he would just go away with one of the other PC's. This was not the case. He said he would be our guide to the magical location we were looking for. Things almost immediately got worse. He asked for the ball that he had put in my mouth back and when my character refused (because it is needed for our quest) he proceeded to steal it from her in the middle of a combat where I was not allowed to roll perception even though I told the DM that I was worried he was going to do so. He then gave it back later and tried to pull the "Well I didn't run away with it like I could have therefore everything is fine" and then got mad at me when I was still upset. We then have a full cut scene with just Beno where we find out he is plagued by a demon named anxiety. Our DM himself has problems with anxiety and depression, so even though no one in the party liked him, we decided in a group chat that our characters would be nicer to Beno as it seemed to be affecting our DM. BUT THEN IT GOT WORSE. We would have full scenes with just Beno and one other character in our party and our DM would skip over the other party members who were actively doing other things. It turned out that he was not really a guide and refused to tell us anything about where we were going so he was basically just tagging along, which we didn't need in a group of 6 people. He has finally seemed to be leaving the campaign for a bit, but I am worried he is going to return. The whole party does not like him, but we are kind of forced to like him because our DM got upset when we didn't and we don't want to cause any drama. What should I do if this PC or another PC like him returns?

Ellie Donihue

May it please our supreme crit justices, beacons of hope in a cruel world... and Jake I guess I bring forward the case of Sylvas the sorcerer against the rest of my party. I've DMed this group of close friends for 2 years and for the first time one of them turned chaotic stupid. We had started a mini arc in another city of the empire to explore a B plot happening at the same time as the main campaign. Early on Sylvas the chaotic neutrol sorcerer butted heads with another PC: Doug the peace cleric, an important detective in the local police that plays by the rules. Third session in, Sylvas unleashed a series of weird actions that culminated in him poison spraying a smuggler they were dealing with to get out of town, in the middle of the busy port at 10 AM. That was enough for Doug that attacked Sylvas. Then issued a weird PVP battle to the death where Sylvas cast multiple fireballs, killing civilians by the trove. Both Doud and Sylvas fell but for some reason Dice Christ decided that both should live and they stabilised at 3 death saves. My friend playing Sylvas has rolled another character, but still thinks he was playing his character's chaotic nature. Doug is pissed because his reputation is destroyed in town and they're wanted fugitives. The next session I've played that the locul corrupt mayor has approached Sylvas in jail to recruit him. The other players are furious at me saying I shouldn't reward such behaviors. I want to build Sylvas as a BBEG of the arc where he comes back to the party with a vengeance. The other players don't know this but want me to punish him more severely. What do I do, dear justices? Am I in the wrong here? Should I drop the idea of Sylvas the bad and cave in to their demands?

Most humble bailiff and usually-honourable judges... I submit to you a case of...self imposed gender discrimination??? This is perhaps more of a roleplay case (or possibly for "if I were you"): I have been part of 4 campaigns now, but every time I create a character I end up making them male. I am female and identify as such in my own life, but for some reason I fully shy away from that gender within the game. My characters usually multiclass as bard but I tend to keep them with a young/innocent mentality towards life. (Barbarian/rouge/cleric/paladin) I have 1 female character who.... Is a sociopathic Frankenstein type scientist who striped herself of her gender for her deity and is basically on the way to becoming a litch... But displays as an adorable southern belle elf with a limp. (Bard of whispers/Paladin) .... Am I betraying my own gender by thinking I cannot play these characters as female? I think I've ultimately shyed away from female as I play with a lot of guys and I don't want my character to be sexualised.... My most recent character was a disillusioned dwarven cleric who still works for their deity but hates them and so drinks a lot. I challenged myself to make them female because ultimately it changes nothing, but I really had to fight my brain to do it... Crit-justices... Am I falling victim to my own misogynistic ideals of this fantasy world?? I await your decision. 🙇

Bat-Fran

For what it’s worth, that sounds dope as hell honestly. It would depend on what he adds to his skills but as long as he’s balanced I think that’s really cool

Mich Blackie

May it please the illustrious court and the hella rad bailiff 🤙 I have been the DM for our group for nearly 2 years. We have a couple of player who have tons of stories ripe for D&D court. They’re good people, but very difficult to DM for. The first 6 months or so was me establishing myself as a fun but firm DM that the more “rebellious” players would listen to, while I learned how to keep them engaged and on task, without eclipsing the other players. This is where I need your judgement. Recently one of the others players approached me about taking a turn DMing. Justices, I do not want him to upset the delicate D&D ecosystem I’ve spent 2 years nurturing. He is a sweet dude, but has nowhere near the assertiveness required to handle our more difficult party members. Added to that is the fact that one of our worst offenders is his girlfriend, who I have spent hours teaching to accept the DMs decisions and to work with the party. She will almost certainly regress if her loving bf is the DM. I’ve told him I’ll have to bring our current campaign to a satisfying pause point, then we can look at setting something up. Supreme Crits, would I be wrong to deny him his right to try DMing? I do really miss playing, but I don’t want our group to fall apart without a steady hand at the rudder. Would it be insulting to suggest I “co-dm” with him? Or that he should try with a smaller group of our easier members first? And how do I tell him his GF is NOT the kind of person you want to DM for on your first day out? I humbly await your judgement ❤️

Mich Blackie

You can't crit on an ability check. That's why DC can be set at 30, and why modifiers can be negative. Even a 20 die roll isn't high enough sometimes. Also, how can you reasonably explain how your character would recognize a mystery liquid as containing human flesh, especially when there's magic involved with this drink? Does your character have experience smelling human flesh broth? That said, this may have been a topic for the DM to discuss at a session zero to see of players would be comfortable with potentially being tricked into cannibalism

To the honourable and admirable supreme crit justices and bailiff Jake I guess. May I present to you the case of: A Player Forced Into Cannibalism. Me and my party were exploring a mansion n which we later discovered belonged to a sadistic witch who delighted in inflicting twisted suffering. After meeting a senile old buttler who offered us a drink, inspired by moonshine I rolled investigation on the smell of the liquid, crit and was told only that I had 'never smelt anything like this before but it was non magical and non poisonous'. Wanting to interact with the DMs creation in a way that seemed non dangerous a took a swig and was asked to make a charisma saving throw which I failed and so was told that i thought the drink was delicious and continued to drink it as we explored the mansion. We found the witch and defeated her in the same room as a big cauldron which contained the same liquid my character had drunk earlier, however amongst the eyes and bits of flesh was the hand of a human child. My character and I were both horrified and it felt extra weird that I felt like I had been tricked into something neither my character or I was comfortable with. Was I right in feeling tricked or should I have known better given the context? I keenly await your judgement

I’m in a few games with the same group of people. In one game we roll in real life. Because of this one player constantly makes little comments, always about how they didn’t believe me. Comments like, ‘yeah right.’ After a good role. I play one of their games and We roll online because of this, which I don’t mind, but when it comes to other games I feel like he has no right to judge me. What can I do to stop the little jabs? I really like this person so I don’t want to be mean, but a gal can only handle so much!!! From yours truly, an annoyed lucky roller.

If it would please the court and even Jake. I am here not to plead a case, but here to confess my sins to all mighty Dice Christ... I feel I have failed one of my players in the game I run. The group were in a bad situation out at sea, where there were pirates, a jet pack wearing gnome, and a murdered PC (which is also the first PC I've killed in the 2 years I've been dming, and feel real bad about it). The player I failed plays an 8 year old human boy named Gideon, and after watching his hero die, he was scared and ran below deck. We were still in initiative, in the middle of a battle, so each time I went back to the child I asked what he was doing, and he would respond "below deck crying and scared" so each turn we would return to him and he would still be below deck and not respond with an action to take, so I would move on. Long story short, after the intense encounter happening on deck he seemed like he may have been cheated out of what he had planned and out of events that were happening above deck. I feel I should have tried harder to get him to fulfill his goal to the best of my abilities, and get him back above to the rest the party sooner. Please forgive my sins as I willingly prostrate myself to our rolly savior, Dice Christ.

Dear magnanimous Judges and the rightfully discarded ex-judiciary Jake. I submit the case of Call Lighting V The Sun. I am the DM of a long running campaign in which my players lived in a steampunk haven above a thick layer of clouds the separates them from a wasteland underneath. About 1/3 through I had planned to unleash my BBEG who was the God of the Sun. After preaching his totalitarian beliefs in a sealed cathedral of the moon, he began ritualistically separating ground as well as the layer of clouds so my players would fall through to the apocalyptic hellscape below. In order to prevent my character from leaving the chapel (we play with minis) I had Sun God's portal appear on the one and only door. He then use his ranged attack after combat initiated which were tiny pieces of the meteors falling from the sky. This was all going according to plan, however my tempest domain cleric dragonborn (Letrik) had a different opinion as he attempted to cast Call Lighting. I replied "you're indoors" which was followed by him claiming he could "see a point in the sky where the meteor fell through." I responded with "You can't call Lighting down on someone with a roof over their head." He said "have you ever seen lightning, it goes horizontally too." Our entire party began making defenses in his favor but ultimately I directed him to using his breath weapon as it could still be paired with Thunderous Strike. His intention was to force him back 10 ft to his divine plane so the concentration on the cloud separation would dissipate. Which didn't work due to distance rules. This is still a sour spot in our campaign. Was I being to strict with my decision? They still occasionally mumble call lighting should have worked and it is a running joke now. I prostrate myself humbly to the will of the court.

Jake the Snake

A MODIFIED DICE DILEMMA Forgive me justices, for i may have sinned. I know there is no separation of church and state in this court, so i lay before you a potential transgression. I am conflicted regarding a bbeg I’ve designed for a homebrew campaign that takes place in a magical New York City in the 1920’s. The ultimate villain is a mastermind halfling gangster by the name of “Lucky La Flora” who has trapped the god of luck in a gem and constantly siphons their power. In addition to several other feats and abilities, I had originally decided to represent this aspect of “godlike luck” by making all of his rolls with a modified d20. It is not weighted but does not contain a 1 or a 2 and instead has two 19’s and two 20’s on it. However, my conscious is beginning to eat at me as my players draw closer to the final battle. So your Honors, i ask you: Am i spitting in the face of dice christ if i chose to roll with this powerful d20 or is this, in fact, a rad mechanic? Please guide me in this moral quandary.

JBeev

Dearest Bonus Onerous Honores, Here’s a quickie while pod’s away In preparation of my argument I present page 220 of the DnD Constitution detailing the spell Call Lightning. I play a 5th level goblin Druid with a flair for cinematic, grandiose, and surprising moments, which translate into lots of sexy time in the real world. So the stakes are high. I am a player in every sense of the word. My strategy is to reserve my third level spells for the right moment, for the money shot. So sensing I might pop Call Lightning in a future session in the Feywild, I surreptitiously queried the DM if all the wind and clouds qualified as ‘stormy’ since the spell does an extra d10 in this environment. The DM, unaware of my the probe of my thrust, said sure, yeah, it’s stormy, whatever. Fast forward to next session, I cast call lightning above a priestess enemy and the extra d10 afforded by ‘stormy’ conditions takes her down in the first round. The dm now says it’s not actually ‘stormy,’ just kind of fey. This priestess was quite powerful and as their pet boss, was not susceptible to the extra damage. Then she killed my goblin with a fireball. Outrage. Is this fair? Also, am I an asshole? Thank you May Kaloo Kalay voice all of your farts.

Mark Zepp

May it please the court, most importantly the honorable lore and plot master Justice Murphy: I present to you the case of Hildibrand v Seraphine, a grievance of character interaction from player to player. A few months into a years-long campaign, our party had to flee their home and was being hunted by soldiers of the theocratic government. We escaped an ambush, while our comrades, including my character's father, held the enemies at bay. We watched in horror from afar, as the castle they were defending was vaporized. Seraphine, my wizard, then discovered her father's spellbook in her bag, and it was revealed that it was a sentient book made with blood magic (a homebrew item our dm made for me). The book then consumed my own spellbook, and was bound to me. Our party's rogue, Hildibrand, thought the book was bad news, and wanted to destroy it. This was not possible, and not Seraphine's choice either way, because it had linked to her parasitically, and a copy of her (possibly dead) father's soul was held inside the book. An argument ensued, Seraphine failed a wisdom save, and the book forced her to cast a firebolt (which missed) at Hildibrand, which prompted him to threated to murder my character. I think that the situation was great for the plot, and that the rogue took it too far and didn't consider how scary and uncharted it was for my character, and he did not consider that she also didn't understand what was happening and that the item likely had something to do with the larger story. Was he right to escalate the situation to threats of killing a party member to get rid of this dangerous item, or should he have been more trusting and understanding of a character that in-universe, he had known his whole life? I await your judgement!

ursa

May it please the Court and the handsome Baliff, I was running a game and when one of my players killed the first boss that they encountered I asked him how he wanted to kill him and he answered by striking his sword through the Enemy's scrotum. All was fine and everyone had a good laugh about it. With the loot they got from the encounter that player got a +1 shortsword and proceeded to name it Scrotum's Bane. from that point on any time he killed an enemy he made it a point to say he stabbed them through their scrotum, even to the point of interrupting me or other players to make sure he said it. I started to get annoyed by it and so I asked him to stop doing it or maybe cut it down to just bosses. He said no and that it was a defining part of his character and it ended up starting a minor fight between some of the group. Eventually he agreed to only do it for bosses to stop the fighting so we could keep playing, but he still seemed legitimately upset about it for a couple sessions afterward. Should I have just not said anything and let him keep up his scrotum stabbing, or was I justified in asking for it to be put to an end? I humbly await your judgement.

To the all-knowing justices and the some-knowing bailiff. I wish to know if we've wronged our dm in our pursuit of cheap comedy. Back in a pirate themed campaign we ran during the height of the pandemic we would occasionally do one-shot side-quests with our characters but DM'ed by one of us so that our DM could take a break for a week. Usually these were comedy focused and not canon, and just involved our characters and a one-shot character played by the main DM just getting into random hijinks on some low stakes quest. One day it was our friend's turn to run the oneshot and he went all out. It was a canon murder mystery complete with a lot of puzzles, an entire city district to explore, and a musical number complete with an animated music video. Our main DM told him he would play a detective character to help move the one-shot along as all of our characters were too dumb to reasonably solve it (my character was a half shark barbarian who could only say his name). Now the issue is we all usually get really drunk during one-shots. So our main DM (already drunk) introduces his character as Barnaby Quiggen and he "always gets his man". He then proceeds to never roll to investigate anything, harass shopkeepers, and get kicked out of bars while constantly saying "AND I ALWAYS GET MY MAN". At the time we thought this was hilarious but later I learned that our friend had a ton of interesting puzzles planned and basically had to throw everything out because we were too busy always getting our men and harassing random people. In the end he literally had us stumble on the cult committing the murders so he could end the session. He claims he had fun but I definitely feel bad for wasting his effort. Were we the assholes for meme-ing away our friend's heartfelt work? P.S. I've also recently agreed to be in his actual play podcast so honestly I am already being punished for our transgressions.

I was later vindicated when I rolled a nat 20 on stealth to sneak past them while they were distracted by the bard performing what amounted to a magical balloon animal show, proving that stealth was indeed an option!

Tristan Lestavel-Entwistle

May it please the court and bemuse the bailiff. I bring before you the case of the perfect illusion vs the drunk pixie swarm. While exploring an ancient temple, our party encountered a hall teeming with alcoholic pixies, who were working their way through multiple barrels of wine. Our objective lay at the other end of the room. My character, a trickery domain cleric, cast the light cantrip on a flask of wine, tossing it into the otherwise pitch-dark room from outside. I then used my 1/day ability to "invoke duplicity", which creates a "perfect illusion" of myself within 30ft, that I can control with a bonus action, as well as being able to cast spells from it's space. The plan was that I would sneak through the dark room, hiding behind discarded wine barrels, while I cast thaumaturgy from the space of my illusion to misdirect their attention. As soon as I did this, the drunk pixies formed a rat-king style swarm being and immediately went to pass their hand through my illusion to check it was real, before I had even been allowed to roll stealth. My DM informed me that they had already seen me, that stealth was useless, and the social encounter began with them accusing me of deception. Was my plan doomed to fail from the start, or was I robbed of my cool class ability? I place myself in the hands of the court.

Tristan Lestavel-Entwistle

May it please the court and maybe that other guy too. I committed a terrible act and wanted to know if I’ve been punished enough. A while ago a friend of mine started dming and I was an absolute piece of shit. I fudged rolls, looked up statblocks, and murdered an abandoned child in the woods. I was a total shit head. I apologized for my behavior and have since then become the forever dm for my group. Now though, the friend who had dmed earlier is making my life hell in revenge. He is purposely playing uncooperative characters who have sold out other pc’s to the villains multiple times. I’ve asked him to chill and he hasn’t said or changed anything. By the way, the other players are just tired of all the character death caused by him. My query is, is this just punishment for my terrible behavior or has this gone too far.

Are you unhappy being the only one who brings snacks?

Victoria Fair

Hello crit justices and beautiful bailiff Jake, your hair is looking quite luscious may I add. Today I am not presenting a case, but business opportunity, Crit camp! Crit camp is a summer camp for DMs and players alike to ask and receive advice from not the crit justices, but the crit counselors! Some of the best parts of D&D court are hearing you guys give advice! I think it would be fun to ask the NADDPOLES to send in scenarios where they are unsure how to proceed with their games or questions on how to play their character better. Instead of punishments you could sentence camp activities for the NADDPOLES to participate in! I think it would be really fun I hope you guys think so too! Also I understand that this is a dnd court episode, so I accept that I may still need to be punished. Sentence me as you will.

Eric Grochowski

May it please the court. Honorable justices and bailiff, I humbly submit to you a question regarding upcoming legislation. I DM a group of six adventurers, and we are currently on a hybrid hiatus where I post occasional role-play and combat encounter prompts on Facebook, as some of our members are studying for their comprehensive exams (we are all current/ graduated Political Science grad students). The current encounter is against a trio of babau (demons) that are luring them deeper into the sewers with a trail of dying and dead guards. They do not yet know what they are facing. After arguing over whether the whole party should run ahead or stay stealthy, they compromised and sent the wood elf monk with invisibility cast on her ahead to investigate. The rest of the party agreed to stealth slowly from a considerable distance away, except for the dragonbon paladin who "moves quickly behind her" to "stay within earshot." (exact wording) The monk rolled a 22 stealth, but paladin rolled a 3. What is a fair way to rule here? I’m tempted to have the babau attack the paladin (likely drawing in the monk) while the rest of the party is too far to give immediate help. How literally should I interpret the Paladin’s intentions? I eagerly await your ruling before I resolve the scene, and will abide by your decision.

The Right Honourable Crit Justices & Jake, In my very first campaign, I played an oath of heroism paladin named Gladwin (or Winnie) in a group of four. A year into the campaign, I’d noticed how easy the combats were due to how lax the combat rules were: two attacks meant “two actions”, all cantrips were bonus actions, and you could take an action on your reaction without preparing one. On top of this, our DM never used lair or legendary actions (though I offered to teach him and he turned it down). Tired of getting endlessly whomped, when we were at level 6, he brought out a full health adult Kraken. I protested this was far beyond our capabilities, but he said it would be fine and even some of the players agreed. I kept protesting and eventually he altered the combat. But I digress, was I wrong for thinking even with the action economy strongly on our side, this was way beyond our capabilities? Sincerely yours, I Now Play With Better Friends

Peter Mundell

May it please the court, esteemed justices I place myself at the mercy of the court for a crime I am about to commit. I dm a homebrew world with the elder gods as the big bad, we run with dread and insanity mechanics that are partially taken from sandy petersen and partially home-brewed. The players came up against some star-spawn trying to summon cthulu. The star spawn were successful and I made the players roll an insanity check. Dc was 18 so absolutely passable but hard nonetheless as 4 of my players failed. One of them got a nat 1 and I am considering with proper conversation with him transferring his character to a call of cthulu character sheet and getting them to play as that. The next couple of sessions will be dealing with the fallout of the insanity from this encounter and I am wondering if I am going to far?

Daniel Stewart

Honourable justices & esteemed bailiff, may it please the court, let's keep it short. My DM was running a punishing DCC campaign, occasionally cornering us into binding contracts with ageless, goof-averse demons (RIP Lulu). However, he is also an aspiring (and honestly, quite accomplished) mixologist. I guess my concern is just: how much does the Meta figure into the half-hour before a session, and how much should I as a player "beware the Greeks bearing gifts"? Does a delicious pre-sesh Boulevardier hint at an extra spicy encounter? Is that extra tipple of mezcal meant to lower my guard and send me carelessly down that rough-hewn hallway? At what point can I trust my DM as a human being again?

As a DM I love moving things along. And with a 33 I’d let you make the boat. However you’d be stuck doing that for a little while the party did whatever they wanted in the mean time 🤷🏼‍♂️

Like a canoe for a couple people to go a short distance, maybe bring back some booty too

Zed

How big of a boat are we talking

Nathaniel Levy

Since a flying speed is mechanically the same as a walking speed or a swimming speed, I think any rules you put on a flying player that aren't put on walking players for the same distance/speed are unfair. Same for if they are within their carrying capacity for weight. Though one compromise would be to have them do the athletics check, and rather than instantly giving them exhaustion on a fail, have them then make a constitution saving throw. on THAT fail, give exhaustion. To a human, the idea of swimming or flying seems super strenuous, but these are mythical creatures. You pretty much have to view it as a human walking.

May it please the court, I'm an artificer and my dm didn't let me build a boat in a day with a 33 wood carving check saying its not possible. I reckon, who cares let me build the boat fucker. That is all.

Zed

Honorable and esteemed justices of the Supreme Crit, the dashing Justice Murph, the radiant Justice Axford, the handsome Justice Tanner, and the beautiful and mighty Bailiff Jake, I humbly come before you today seeking your incomparable wisdom on a most unpleasant incident that occurred 10 years ago. I was playing a dragonborn paladin in a chaotic evil campaign with "friends", and had dumped as much as I could into charisma. Another player, a real knob of the "um. actually" variety, was playing as what can only be described as a succubus from one of his favorite "animes". He had been causing us all headaches the entire campaign and I decided I'd had enough. He and I were offered 50 gold a pop for sets of organs, "no questions asked." Naturally, we went to the town orphanage that night. I used my charisma to lure the kids, and he did the dirty work. We ended up being paid 1000 gold. I say we; he took it all for himself because he said "I did all the work." I pulled the DM aside and asked if I could roll to steal the gold when his character went to sleep. He had me roll for it in the kitchen and asked the other player his passive perception. First he tried saying he used magic to lock the door, then he tried saying his character slept with one of her eyes open, and finally said that she kept the entire bag of 1000 gold coins in her bra and thus I couldn't steal it. This is AFTER I left his character 300 of the 1000 gold. Was I in the wrong? Did I do a bad by pulling the DM aside and robbing another player? Or would I have been justified in taking even more of the gold?

May it please the court, I was in a game with some classmates of mine from uni. We only managed to play a couple sessions before people got busy with finals so play dropped off for a while, and when we managed to play again the DM told us we would be starting a new campaign in a new setting rather than continuing the original game. I was a little annoyed by this as I felt I had wasted a cool character concept (goblin pirate druid), but I went along with it and made a new character, a pixie chronomancy wizard, for the new feywild inspired setting. The first session wasn't great (he forgot my character was there in the big set up scene where we were all given our quest so I had to be like "I decide to come along too", and he insisted we used hex maps which no one understood and slowed down play massively) but I had fun interacting with my fellow players who had some really cool characters and was excited to continue. However, the DM said the next day he wasn't happy with the first session and wanted to start again in the same setting and with the same hook but with some changes - essentially "do-over" the session. This time he said we could use the same characters, except he was now banning fey PCs, which meant I specifically would have to come up with another new character. I ended up quitting because I didn't want to waste more time getting invested in a new character in case he decided to start over again, which was a shame because I did really enjoy playing with the other PCs. Should I have given the DM another chance or was I right to quit? Is it ever okay to restart a campaign/session? I humbly await your judgment. (Also to clarify, he was not a new DM, he told us he was very experienced and had actually DM'd professionally before.)

May It please the Crit, and may the Bailiff find my case worthy of the great one , The Murph. I recently started a campaign with some people I had just met in college, we were having a great time in the campaign with them going through an adventure on The plane of dreams chasing a mage who always took the form of an adorable animal. Whenever they get into combat I have one player who never lets me get away with anything. For instance, I don't describe the enemy's weapon until he attacks and the player says since I hadn't announced the weapon as they walked into view of the enemy the enemy couldn't have a weapon, and he also told me that since I never told him before that the gun he found had a certain amount of bullets before a reload until he used it he didn't need them. And he keeps going on like this. So in one fight with the mage it was his first turn and he says simply " I attack". So I let him make his rolls and so on, and at the end I let him know that since he didn't specify who he attacked he had just shot himself in the Head. He was infuriated and instantly started yelling at me about how I'm treating him terribly and am being a bad DM. Which normally I might agree with, but not today. He proceeded to leave the room, and has since dropped out of school and cut contact with everyone here. Was I being a Dick? Or did he deserve it?

Dearest Supreme Court Justices, and based beta male bailiff Hurwitz, I bring you the case of Player versus DM. I am a sorceror who through a loving DM have been allowed access to the spells find greater steed and tensers transformation. The wording of find greater steed is that while mounted any spell I cast that targets only me, also targets my mount. And the wording of tensers transformation is that it grants proficiency with all weapons, armor, and shields. In spite of this my DM claims that my mount, (a direwolf) cannot wield a sword as it does not have the means to do so. I have shown him Zacian from Pokémon and Sif from dark souls as obvious examples of dire wolves in fact being quite apt at wielding swords in their mouths but he has remained stalwart. I ask you great court, who wins here, the rule of cool and what the rules technically allow? Or Facts and Logic. - Your humble listener

To the honourable judges and the bailiff, May it please the court. I, the dm, may have made a blunder. I had a Paladin player roll a death save before I asked for it, and before our rogue player’s turn before them technically finished. They rolled a 1 and died. Right as the Paladin rolled, the rogue remembered he could do a medicine check, and asked to do that. We take pc deaths super seriously, and play more of a story driven game (low key I try to run Naddpod at home, as I call it) I made a ruling that if the rogue pc permanently lost one luck point, they could roll the medicine check. They succeeded. This left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths. Did I rob the Paladin of a heroic death? We were fighting a possessed dragon, after all. But would the rogue have felt like shit if his turn was robbed from him? Would have letting the pc die robbed the rogue of a cool moment? I leave my fate in the hands of the honourable judges. Story is more important than rules at my table, if that makes this ruling any easier. From Matt xx - *passes $20 to the bailiff*

Make Squidgy the resurrected big bad. It is now your turn to piss on their ideas.

Donny

May it Blease the Court. I am the DM in this Situation. My Players fought a group of mindflayers and one of them was the victim if the brain extraction attack and failed the save. The stat block of the monster says any creature instantly dies. However my player was a half orc and had the Relentless Endurance racial feature, which once per day allows you to pop back up with 1 hit point. ultimately i let the player live and only gave them minor brain damage, but i wonder if this interaction is valid. theoretically the removal of a brain should have prevented the abilities trigger. what do you think, Honorable Judges? Praise Dice Christ, Amen. -Jon C.

May it please the honourable judges and distinguished bailiff. I bring you a case of player vs DM. I am the (possibly) slighted player, though I suppose suppose is for the Court to decide. The setting is this. The party is climbing up the inside of a tower to fight one of the BBEG's top minions. So obviously it's filled with traps, and some magical ones as well. We pass by a section of tunnel with a very obviously trapped part of the wall, which is just a hole filled with darkness. We can't see through it. One of the party members who has shown very little self control in the past simply walks forward into the area of effect of the spell and makes a wisdom saving throw. (As a note, the area of affect of the spell extended across the entire hallway. Wouldn't have been much of a trap if we could walk around it.) He passes, and warns the party what the spell tried to make him do, go towards the darkness. Now, the problem is this. The DM didn't let the rest of the party roll with advantage against the spell effect. We had all been warned what it would make us do, and could be prepared for it, but he just had us roll flat. After I asked about the warning he let us add a +1 to the roll. But I was insistent we should roll with advantage. In the end, I failed my roll, and wanted to go into the darkness of spook, which if I remember correctly, held a sphere of annihilation inside. But lo, there is a secondary offense I bring to the court! I play as a Monk, and we have an ability called 'Stillness of Mind'. As an action I can end an effect on myself causing me to be charmed or frightened. Being magically forced to head towards a hole filled with darkness sounds pretty charmed, right? Well, the DM was 'prepared' for my ability. The wall had a version of the spell 'Antipathy-Sympathy' on it, which I'm sure our illustrious judges will look up to confirm this next part. Nowhere in the spell description does it say the affected party is under the charmed effect. I argued - quite a lot and possibly to the detriment of the game that night, and i will accept a just punishment for not letting this go like a petty wretch - that the spell is very clearly charming people to do other actions. That it was still in the 'spirit' of the charmed effect, if not precisely in the letters of the law. What would the illustrious DM's of the court do in these situations? Would you allow the other PC'S to roll the wisdom save with advantage when they knew the effect of the spell? And would you allow a Monk with the ability 'Stillness of Mind' to get around the trap spell, 'Anti-pathy-Sympathy'? I await your judgement, may it be fair and just.

May it please the court. I’m a player in a campaign where my character is a warforged armorer artificer. With out trying very hard I have ended up with a pretty high AC (25). One the other players in the party says that I’m being a dick for running a character with that high of an AC and that I’m going to ruin combat for the rest of the party. I don’t think I am given that we’re a 7 person party. I also don’t think my DM sees it as a problem given that he gave the party a +2 shield knowing I’m the only one who uses a shield. Am I in the wrong for playing a character with a high AC or is the other player over thinking it or judging me too harshly? Thanks!

Jibe Goslee

May it please you, My dm gave us hell war machines in the avernus game we play. The wrecking ball feature on our machine does 8d8. My character is a rune knight, and rune knights have a special ability where they can transfer damage from one character to another once per short rest. I have more than once used this ability by jumping in front of the wrecking ball and transferring the damage (you don't have to roll to hit, if it hits you then that's all that's required.) Is this shenanigans? Also we used the two machines we seized from hell lords to beat a sleeping Balor to death before it even had a chance to take a turn, which was definite shenanigans but worth it.

Ilana Galpert

May it please the bailiff and the humble court he presides upon! One of my players, a level 5 draconic bloodline sorcerer yuan-ti, is really interested in game mechanics and how best to optimize his character. He managed to design his character in a way so that he has 16 AC, immunity to poison and being poisoned and advantage on saving throws against spells and magical effects. I recently designed an encounter for the party against a Medusa, who has an ability called “petrifying gaze” with an associated constitution saving throw. He insisted he should roll with advantage since he has advantage against magical effects, but in my mind petrifying gaze is an innate ability of the Medusa and I see no description of it as a magical effect so I made him roll straight, with no advantage. He was upset about the decision and came to the next session having done research on how other DMs ruled this decision online and concluded “it could go either way”. Humble judges have I been too strict or was I correct in my decision? P.S. my campaign is Harry Potter inspired, all the PCs are meant to be 16 and a bit underpowered as a result of this. His character is far and above the most OP of the group and he’s very difficult to hit with any of the attacks from the weaker enemies I include that are more balanced towards the weaker members of the crew.

Chelsea

Dear justice's and bailiff of the supreme crits, I am the long time DM for my friend group and recently one of the PCs got knocked unconscious during combat and the player called me out for not having the baddie hit them when they were down. Should I kick this PCs ass next time they're down?

Enahs

May it tickle the sweetie and the tiny, little bailiff in the case of Ranger vs Artificer and Fighter. So I’ve been playing with some of my friends recently (I’m DMing) and we’re all very new. We played a few sessions in the Starter Set module Lost Mine of Phandelver and then added a new party member. The new member is playing an Nymph Artificer using the custom lineage race. The Artificer’s backstory/driving force is to create the perfect life form, thus her Homunculus Servant changes appearance each long rest. The most recent version is (very gross, you might not want to say it) a pigs bladder with a canary attached that breathes in and out like a lung to fly. Upon seeing this without knowing it was a class feature, the party’s Ranger fired an arrow at it, killing it instantly. The Artificer and the Fighter were upset, and drew to pvp against the Ranger. I struggled to stray from the module and struggled diffusing the situation. Am I in the wrong for not making it clear that Birdzeppilin (as we’ve called it) was not a monster, is the Ranger for jumping the gun, or are the Artificer and Fighter in the wrong for drawing to PVP? Thank you for your time honourable sweeties.

Hank Cox

Tl;dr The Case of the Great Pterodactyl Plummet May it please the right honourable bailiff, I was playing as a Leonin Paladin named Sarabi and our party was in the midst of a battle between a group of rebels and their royal giant overlords (heh). I was flying over the city on a pterodactyl and spotted a pair of giants wreaking havoc with an arcane turret, so I made the calculated decision to dive from my mount and use my heavily-armored self as a lion-sized cannonball (I had near-full hp, was 60 feet up, and had full lay on hands hp to bring myself back). I dive-bombed the gun, took the damage but stayed up, and the giants turned and attacked. The first missed me, and then the second rolled a nat 1 to hit. My DM said that the giant's attack hit was was left of the gun and it did damage to both of us, knocking me unconscious (my character proceeded to did after this btw). Was I unjustly punished for an enemy critical fail?

Nick Lindstrom

May it please the court, justices and bailiffs alike. I dm for a group of my 3 friends. The party wizard and bard were in a church looking to steal some holy relics they needed to kill a devil. Originally they had just planned on casing the place and seeing what was there, but while talking to the priest that was there at the church the wizard decided to cast mass suggestion on her with the suggestion “give me those” which I asked him specifically to clarify was the words he was choosing to say for the spell. The exact wording of the spell is that the suggestion can be anything that is “worded reasonably”. To me, “give me that” did not sound reasonable when it came to ancient holy relics, but I didn’t want the spell to be wasted. So I decided that the priest would think of them as friendly people who worked for the church and told them they could either go to the head of the church and get his permission with her blessing, or offer up some relics in return to basically trade out with the ones that were currently at the church. The wizard said he felt that since it was such a high level spell it should have worked, and since mass suggestion can work on 15 people why wouldn’t it work on 1 person 15 times better. The bard also said that I was taking away the power of their spells. Was I wrong? This has been the only major sticking point in our campaign so far, and it’s always bothered me that I could have done better. Thanks. I await judgement.

The Wizard Shield

May it please the court, I present the case of Squidgy the betrayed, a tale of a wasted golden opportunity. I had wanted to give my players a cute mascot but I also wanted to give them some agency in what kind of creature they would get. Thus I added a font that would animate one object they put in it. If they put if some water they would get a tiny water golem, a dagger and they would get an animated weapon, if they put in some gold they would get the tiniest cutest treasure golem. Well when my players encountered the font our rogue with the archaeologist background pissed in the basin. It was after a leghty pause that I discribed the acrid smell and the yellow bubbling mass that emerged. Attempting to salvage the situation I gave my cutest squidges and squelches to try to endear this urine mistake to the party however in the next room the party used Squidgy to intentionaly trigger a trap. He went stoically, he went bravely and he died. Your Honors do I have the right to be upset at my players for pissing all over my ideas?

Get new friends

JBeev

May it please the Sweeties and the beloved bailiff: I bring a case of an unfortunate start to a campaign. I am a first time DM and never player. I thought it would be an interesting start to a campaign if the players woke up in an underground laboratory, having been experimented on, and had to escape. However, after the escape, both players insist that their characters want to do nothing else but go their separate ways and return home as quickly as possible. I’ve tried to throw other things in their way (people who need help, a cool egg they could hatch to make a sick monster companion) but they insist that their characters aren’t interested. So here I am bringing myself to the court: am I wrong for choosing a campaign hook that was traumatizing to the characters, or are my players being party poopers?

Kenna Evans

A DM v. Another Flying PC’s May it please the Bailiff and the sick, lowly judges…just kidding, I hope it pleases everyone. Yall are great. I bring to the court yet another case involving a bird race PC. In one of my campaigns, a character plays as an Avian Ranger. Like aarakocra, this race gets a fly speed at level 1. However, I have been homebrewing what i believe to be reasonable mechanics related to flying. For example, I make them make athletic checks when making long distance flights with the possibility of exhaustion if they fail. Additionally (though i am not usually a stickler for things like carrying capacity), I often consider what this character has on them if they are planning to do some flying, as i would imagine flying is an incredibly strenuous task. These are all mechanics that i implement outside of combat (when initiative is rolled I try to stick to as close to the holy 5e texts as possible). However, the player in question has clearly gotten pissed off by these new mechanics when they come into play. So honorable bailiff and judges, am i being unreasonable with these homebrewed mechanics? Though it upsets one player, it aids my general session prep, and I believe it gives other non-flying players a chance to shine in RP and puzzle scenarios. Any guidance and suggestions would be appreciated.

JBeev

Laid at your table of mercy, may this case I present before the honorable Crit Justices and highest of the low bailiffs Jake, reach a fair and reasoned verdict! During a campaign tasking the party to smuggle a magical artifact back into a dragon's treasure horde unnoticed, our party had been traveling through a jungle when a random bird began blaring like a loudspeaker, alerting whatever was around to our presence. Thinking quickly, our druid cast fog cloud to cover us as we snuck away from danger. We rolled well on our stealth checks and began moving north within the fog cloud, being careful all the while. The DM then informs us that we can see many shapes surround the perimeter of the fog cloud, and before we are given a chance to react, we are attacked by an overwhelming amount of tribals. I questioned how they figured out the exact dimensions of the Fog Cloud so quickly, and how they were able to communicate so quietly, but the DM would only say that my character did not know how for now. I asked why the jungle, being as dense at it was, would not obscure the shape of the Fog Cloud enough to buy us at least some time, since the Tribals descended on us instantly, but he gave no further answers, and nothing was revealed later in the campaign that could explain it either. Am I being a baby to think this was an unfair move on the DM;s part? Was he right in allowing them to find us instantly?

May it please the supreme court, and the immortal bailiff Jake. My DM has decided that he does not want run another session until anyone else brings some form of snacks. My DM has forbidden me from bringing snacks sense I'm the only one that does bring them every session. How do I even deal with this situation?

A MODIFIED DICE DILEMMA May it please the court and the butts of those who sit upon the hallowed bench (and Jake too if there’s time), I am conflicted regarding a bbeg I’ve designed for a homebrew campaign that takes place in a magical New York City in the 1920’s. The ultimate villain is a mastermind halfling gangster by the name of “Lucky La Flora.” A major aspect of his backstory is that he trapped the god of luck in a gem and constantly siphons power from them. In addition to several other feats and abilities, I had originally decided to represent this aspect of “godlike luck” by making all of his rolls with a modified d20. It is not weighted but does not contain a 1 or a 2 and instead has two 19’s and two 20’s on it. However, my conscious is beginning to eat at me as my players draw closer to the final battle. So your Honors, i ask you: Am i spitting in the face of dice christ if i chose to roll with this powerful d20 or is this, in fact, a rad mechanic? Please guide me in this moral quandary.

JBeev

may it please the court, disgruntle bailiff jake, and appease the dice christ! i come with a case that i’m not sure how to label. i am a relatively new dm and dm for two groups of friends, who have various levels of experience. recently i created a campaign by hand, meant to last many hours and filled the city it was based in with fun npcs, that all generally led the characters to the main goal. in BOTH campaigns, my players wanted to have sex with my npcs. constantly. finally i got frustrated and made my npcs people with significant others, races that i thought my parties wouldn’t like, or so hard to please that the dc was unreasonable. yet. in each campaign i had a character that rose to the challenge and still managed to beat my dcs. i had a pc roll 19-20-20 in that order, and another character that rolled 3 nat20s in one sesh, all on persuading npc to makeout. is dice christ trying to tell me that my players should have screwable npcs? the whole party has fun during the seduction process, i just feel my hard work is being wasted

Jo

If it may please the gracious and benevolent Justices... And Baliff Jake. During a character creation session, I argued with my DM about a possible Bee Keeper Druid going into wild shape as a giant bee and laying eggs to build a giant bee swarm army (or even normal sized bees). My argument was that when an animal lays an egg it’s not considered a birth because it’s not fertilized, and that laying eggs is more like a menstration or ovulation, so my little bee body could lay eggs as long as it’s ovulating, even timing my ovulation specifically to wild shape into a Bee and lay as many eggs for as long as I can, BUT the special thing with bees is that non-fertilized Eggs still become worker drone bees that follow and take care of the Queen (aka their Mommy bee me). So would you rule that I indeed can become a Bee Keeper Druid can form a Giant Swarm of Bees Army?

Marissa Mars

To the honorable crit justices and supreme bailiff, may it please the court. Me and my girlfriend just started playing a campaign together. Me as the DM she as a circle of wildfire Druid. 1 on 1. During the adventure she nudged an animated broom. Which according to description then attacked her. She attacked first with cantrip produce flame. She hit and argued that the broom was made of wood an should have vulnerability to fire. However this was not on the stat block. I did give her the double damage as if it would be vulnerable because it made sense to me. Should I have done this differently? I humbly await your verdict

Dennis de Groot

Darling Justices and Bailiff Jake. Should you be allowed to have a “silly” name if it served as an inspiration for a really interesting character? I created a Deep Gnome Mastermind Rogue named, “Boogie the Knight.” I based the whole of the character around him trying to con people into believing that he’s not just any Knight but THE Knight. Getting cushy spots in court until he’s found out for the charlatan that he is and he skips to the next town, never actually having to fight. My DM said he likes the idea for the character but the name is to silly and has got to go. I told him that I came up with the name first and built the entire character around it, down to the voice and the little catchphrases that any good con artist has. Should I dig my heels in and try to convince my DM that’s is not that silly, put the character to the side and wait until I play with a DM that appreciates the character, or should I send Boogie The Knight away?

Tommy Williamson

Ps: the crit did make me go down.

Zhade

To the honorable justices and humble bailiff, May it please the court, I DM a group of all new D&D players, including myself, that has been going on for about a year. Recently, one of the PCs, who was played by my wife, was killed during a gnoll raid on the party's home village. This character was a war cleric that had been collecting parts from various enemies that the party killed, including slime from an ochre jelly and the gland from a white dragon that produced its breath weapon, to make into a sort of unstoppable avatar for her goddess. The other players immediately told her that they were going to resurrect her character as soon as they could figure out how. This concerned me because I wanted character death in the campaign to be rare but to have grace consequences. I came up with the idea that the PC could be resurrected, but only for a few days in order to finish the avatar for her goddess. I wanted to make sure that the party understood this, and to make sure they thought it was fair, so I had them vote for or against the idea of limited resurrection to accomplish a specific goal. They voted for it, and the campaign moved on and they are currently looking for the components for the resurrection spell so a powerful NPC cleric they know can bring back the PC. Upon further thought, however, I am worried that this decision was too harsh and my players only voted for the idea since they are all new and might think that the DM has unilateral control over the story and world. Is this idea for resurrection only for unfinished business fair, or should I have mercy on my wife and allow her to keep playing her character?

May it please the court and “Mufasa-Maned” bailiff. “The Shunning” I was playing a human warlock, whose patron was Oberon, king of the Fae. I essentially was playing a Fae fan girl who wanted nothing more than to serve or become Fae. She wore fake ears, learned elvish, the works. Very fun to play. About 2 months into playing, the DM has Oberon visit her in a dream, and revoke his pact with her because she had killed. . . Which was not within my alignment (chaotic neutral) It’s D&D! Things die! This campaign started with the DM saying “it’s going to be lethal and combat heavy so bring a back up character.” So I was forced to multi class at lvl 3, and he basically broke my character because I participated in combat with people who were trying to kill us. Am I the asshole for thinking this was completely uncalled for? (This group has since lost members and disbanded)

Jesymka

P.S. Can’t wait for the live show! See you guys in Gramercy!

Those who love and give where they can

I humbly approach the court, and may it please thy gavels. I DM for a group of friends and have been for a year or so now. Last night was a session I had literally 45 mins to plan for. I decided on a chase scene, chasing a doppelgänger through a Victorian city, post-monster attack. The doppelgänger got on a horse, and my players had no way of feasibly catching up at that point. One of my players cast darkness at a 2nd level, and the point she chose was on the doppelgängers cloak. The idea was to blind the creature so that it couldn’t ride the horse anymore I had the doppelgänger shed the cloak, and since the players were on foot, they were quickly outsped, the chase scene ended, and they lost their quarry. The friend who cast darkness argued the doppelgänger wouldn’t know the source of the darkness, and accused me of meta gaming for having the creature remove its cloak. I argued that due to the thing’s backstory it would recognize the spell darkness, and she accused me of meta gaming further. If I had more time to prepare, I could have possibly added more elements into the scene, or some way to hunt it down, but for now my players have lost their strongest lead and are mad at me. Humble justices, am I a bad DM?

Those who love and give where they can

May it please the court, Oh honorable judges, and equally honorable bailiff: I was running a desert combat with a purple worm, and as purple worms tend to do, it swallowed a member of the party. The party warlock banished the purple worm, assuming that the swallowed teammate should emerge in the area the worm was banished from. They argue that banishing a creature should not banish the contents of its digestive system - as written, banishment does not banish a creature’s worn or carried objects, and in this case the teammate could be considered “carried” in its stomach. I allowed this to work because I wanted to reward the creative thinking, but it'd be weird to banish a wizard and expect the sandwich they ate two hours ago to be left behind. I put it to the court - what should happen to a swallowed creature if the creature that swallows it is banished?

To the honorable, honest, and dashing supreme crit justices… and lowly bailiff, may it please the court, I present the case of the year built one shot. I play with a group of people in a continuous weekly home brew campaign that has been running for about 3 years. Over the coarse of said time I(player) started building a home brew one shot that I have put nearly 100 hours into over the course of a year, about 3/4 of it was spent building the maps and encounters, 1/4 balancing, for a party of 5, level 10s, to traverse. The premise of the one shot was that the group of adventures were individually teleported from somewhere in the world to the treasure room of a dungeon and had to fight there way out starting with the boss and working there way towards skeletons and rats. After nearly three months of trying to plan starting this one shot we finally got to begin the dungeon, and all things seem to be going well until one of my pc’s was killed by the “final boss” in the first fight. It was an intelligent ice devil home brewed as a champion with legendary actions. After the fight was over and they defeated the ice devil, we had to take a brake for the night to pick it up next week, due to a late start because of several work related issues on my end and another PCs, and a pc(not the one killed by the ice devil) decided they didn’t want to play anymore because if it was this hard off the bat then they were all just doomed to die anyways. I tried to tell them that this was the hardest fight, and that there was a lot more going on in the dungeon than just fighting(I didn’t want to spoil that there was a glyph with basically a reincarnate spell in the next room) but they were adamant that if I killed someone right away that I was a bad dm. So I present this case to you all, was I a bad DM for attempting to change the way dungeons go and starting with the hardest enemy, or was my player in the wrong for not seeing how it played out until the end? P.s. this was my first time DMing and I was super excited, then a bit heart broken, to see how things shook out as I planned the dungeon to be about 12-15 hours of play and we only got through 2. P.p.s I love this podcast so much thank you all for all the laughs!

May it please the bailiff, My dumb idiot draconic sorcerer/commerce cleric just had a run in with his holy artifact. My character quickly catapulted the Wealth Stone into his hand as the cure to his draconian blood. The stone dealt damage and he went down. After I awoke the party convinced my character that the stone was a dud and didn’t work. A small patch of gold scales now cover the blue ones on his grasping hand. I am convinced my character would take the damage and rise again like Gandalf the Gold but right now the party is leading on my character and mention a prize at the end of saving the world. UPDATE: My dummy’s love interest plans to sacrifice herself AND all the cosmic stones to complete the campaign and save the world. A plan only OTHER party members are aware of. Is this my villain arc? Is it crazy for me to go wild on the party once dumb dumb loses everything he cares about? Yours Truly, The True Jake

JakeF

May it please the court I humbly ask the court to reaffirm or repeal its opinion on "The PawPaw Clause". One of my players wanted a polar bear animal companion (it is her first time ever playing D&D so I let her have it) and another of my PCs got a grizzly bear from a wild magic surge (that's on me for making it an option). They use their bears in combat which worked incredibly well during the low lvls but now that they're lvl 6 their bears are going down in combat at lot more. I warned them when they got their bears that there's going to be a point where their bears become liabilities, I even gave them little pokeball crystals to store the bears, but they still accuse me of unjustly targeting their bears Artemis and Apollo. The PawPaw Clause dictates that animal companions/familiars are generally off limits to combat unless they actively engage in combat. Does the court affirm this ruling, thusly decreeing that the bears are fair game to fight and die, or does the court reject its prior ruling and affirm that I the DM should give these bears (as my players put it) "a god damned break".

Matteo Cina

May it please the honor full, merciful judges and the just Bailiff. My dnd party includes three of my friends and all our significant others. One of our friend boyfriends (his characters name is Xol, a Goliath Paladin) has made our sessions excruciating. He constantly talks over the dm as well as other players and takes forever when it’s his turn to RP. We’ve been playing this campaign weekly for a month and a half and we haven’t even made it through out first encounter. We are still at level 1! This is also not the first time he has steam rolled a campaign. In our last Campaign he also did the same thing. We confronted him then on his behavior and he changed for a little bit but has since gone off the rails. All of us are fairly new and he is the only one who has played consistently before. He has most recently started picking fights with NPCs, beats them down, brings them back up with lay hands and then continues to torture them. Half of the party wants to kill his character off and not allow him to roll a new one. While some of us think that the Dm should have a conversation reviewing the table rules and give him one last chance. What do you think judges? We need you’re insight. Thank you and may you’re dice be blessed!

Erin

May it please the court and especially the renowned bailiff Jake. I bring you the case of the wheelchair bound murder hobo. A few friends came to town and while they were here we did a oneshot. I played a wheelchair bound bladesinger wizard + paladin named Bethany. In this oneshot all 6 PCs were given very powerful magic items. The magic item my character had is a ring that allows her to use misty step for free instead of her movement. Part of the plot of this oneshot was that magic in the world was becoming unstable and that manifested itself in our magic items which mechanically meant that every time we used them we rolled on a custom wild magic table. During the one shot we met with the leaders of an underground society who tried to take our magic items away. 2 of the other party members submitted and did not want to fight while myself and 3 others refused. My reason for refusal was that my character had become extremely attached to her ring as she used it all the time in her every day life to live a more normally. As you can imagine, a dnd city wouldn't be very accessible to someone in a wheelchair. In short, We ended up killing the more unreasonable of the NPCs and the other one stopped the fight and said we could keep our items. After the one shot one of the PCs who did not participate in the fight (he had good character reasons not to) said I was being kind of a murder hobo there but I think my character had a good reason to refuse to part with her magic item. Was I trying too hard to go for a fight or did I do it for the right reasons?

Chris Broderick

With advanced thanks to magnanimous court and bonny bailiff, I present the case of “I am unkillable.” As a usual forever-DM I have been enjoying my sabbatical as a player in a one-shot turned several-shot run by one of my players. In our journeys we periodically pop in to a dimensional way-station where wiley demi-gods threaten my lvl 12 rune-knight fighter, SABLE NOIR, with death, and try to barter that I hand over a child we protect as a party; these Demi-gods claim to know the exact time and date of Sable’s forthcoming death at their own hands. The DM has privately disclosed with me he intends to end the campaign with my death at their hands, a gesture of “fate,” which I have agreed to as a story beat with which to raise stakes for the other players in a final encounter. With this guarantee of “I can’t be killed yet,” I plunged into a pool of scrying water the Demi-gods guard to gain insight into a problem our party needed to solve to escape an abyssal descent. The DM made me roll to save to not die, which I did, but put me in a temporary coma with lingering effects equivalent to exhaustion (though incurable short greater restoration). Am I being unduly punished for exploiting the in-game and out-of-game knowledge that I am, at this time, unkillable? I feel my DM was more surprised I found a way to gain the necessary knowledge outside of a combat encounter, and is frustrated by the surprise rather than rolling with the surprise to help us finally come to a close with this herniated “one-shot.” If it helps with the judgement, I was indeed in full-plate armor when I fell into the scrying pool, though the punishment seems unrelated to the prospect of drowning and more to do with the cosmic magnitude of divine scrying waters. I await your inimitable insights! Best, B.

Your Honors, A while ago (before Covid) my friend Joseph was DMing a Saltmarsh campaign for me, my wife, and some of his other friends. I was a dwarven druid who left her home in the mountains because she was upset about the mining practices that were harming the Saltmarsh environment. So when people on the city council started dying, I said I would run. I was half-joking at first, but my DM liked the idea so I went with it. Cut to four, five, six sessions later where we’ve done almost no combat or exploring- just politics. I had to buy property, do actual debates that were not based on charisma rolls, and jump through a number of other hoops. I asked if I should stop pursuing this and even tried to back out, but the DM told me both in and out of the game that he liked the idea. Yet he kept throwing up roadblocks. Finally we just stopped meeting because it was just so tedious that it wasn’t fun, and the campaign was only focusing on my character which was making other players bored. After the campaign ended, my wife and I looked up the Saltmarsh module and it DEFINITELY would’ve broken everything if I got on the council.

I don’t think this is an issue of “dnd only supports simple characters not complex masterpieces,” it sounds like your character just wasn’t meshing well w the party. I think a better lesson to take from this might be that table talk & group session 0s are important, & that if you’re having a niggling issue w gameplay being upfront & open abt it is the best way to learn what your fellow players are thinking/be able to cooperate w them.

tacticalgrandma

Is the implied question “should I be in horny jail?” Bc yes.

tacticalgrandma

To the honourable judges and distinguished bailiff, may it please the court. I am a first time dm running a homebrew southern gothic style campaign for my family that began during lockdown. Two of the players were either completely new to dnd or new to this edition, my mom having played a bit back in the 80s. The other two players are relatively experienced. They did well in the first combat, knocking out both the fight’s main antagonist and his lackey. They then revived the antagonist in order to question him. We were playing in person with a board, so they could definitely see that lackey #1 was still down. I let them interrogate the antagonist for a few minutes, then rolled death saves for the lackey, killing him. My players got mad at me for not telling them that I was rolling death saving throws, claiming that they did not realize he was in danger. I don’t want to be one of those dms who punishes my players unnecessarily and unjustly for little things that they forgot. Are my players right to be mad at me?

May it please the court, and the attractive sounding Bailiff; I play a character that is the reincarnation of a witch that escaped persecution in Salem, our game takes place in the modern world, and I have a familiar that has been there for each incarnation. My familiar is a black goat that can transform into a male human (for flavor only) and we are soul mates that have lived lifetimes together. The other player is a Christian cleric and has attempted to kill my familiar multiple times, we have a strict no PvP rule as there is only 2 players and the DM and so I cannot do anything but heal/protect my familiar. I asked the player to stop but he refuses because his character believes that my familiar is the Devil (satan himself) and while I love the idea of my character having a romantic relationship with the devil, I’m tired of having to waste spell slots on something so trivial. Finally, when I was unconscious and we defeated a corrupt politician/incubus the other player decided to kill my familiar with an “exorcism” and I protested but the DM ruled that if I can have a familiar that turns into a human then the player can exorcise the “Devil” from my familiar. Meaning that my character loses their soul mate!! This means a lot to me and I’m thinking about leaving the table and they are calling me dramatic. (One thing to note, I am gay and so is my character and the player and DM are straight, I can’t help but feel like this is the reason why they’re teaming up against me). Please help!!!

Robert Brown

Hello honorable crit justices and the man, the myth, the many times failed bailiff Jake! I bring the case of the DM vs murderous players. I made a completely original campaign for my coworkers to play in the winter. The first session went great as they stole a boat by distracting the young dock hands with booze. But everything went red after that. Every NPC that had a mission for them was either slain or ignored. Not everyone wanted to kill, 1 person even talked to me about how he wanted his character to die because he was the brunt of every joke, but the big hitters didn't care and continued their killing. It was stressful as the DM because I didn't know what they wanted to do. So I indulged their bloodless and gave them a whole city filled with orcs to kill and rampage over to satisfy their unnecessary rage. After they burned the city to the ground with a players dragon (playing a dragon rider) the elvish army teleported to the city to apprehend the criminals that burned their city to ash. Little to say, they were not excited or happy to be going that route but I thought I was being too kind for the sessions before. My question is to you all-knowing justices, was there some way to make it more entertaining for the players? I understand it's their game in my world, but I didn't know what else to do but railroad them a bit after giving them so much freedom. Should I have left their bloodlust alone and continue to let them kill without restraint? Is there a way to have more fun as a DM when your party is murder hobos? Or do what I did and stop the game before the last session, never to be played again...

Olaf Dies in Frozen 2

May it please the court, the Right Honorable Bailiff, and the Supreme Crit Justices: Two weeks ago I had my first PC death in a two year long campaign. The player (a dragonborn Battlemaster/Ranger) split the party. He investigated one fork of a path, while the other party members took the other. When the rest of the party ran into trouble he used his ghost step tattoo to move through the solid stone separating him from the party. Because they were not within sight (both below and behind where he was) I asked him to roll a d100 to determine where he aimed himself as he ghosted through the mountain. He rolled poorly and ended in a room where two Skull Lords, a Devourer, and three Deathlock's were completing a ritual. As you can probably guess, that didn't go well for him. He dentonated an Astral Bomb (a device that puts one bag of holding inside another) and was pulled to the Astral Plane where he was killed and turned into a servant of Orcus by the Devourer. It was a wild moment and the highlight of the session, so there is no injustice here, but I need a ruling on whether the PC should be recovered and redeemed, or turned into a future thorn in the side of the party. What is the precedence for a situation such as this, and how should I proceed in accordance with the laws and teachings of Diceus Critus?

As a DM, why would you interrupt a short rest? Like that’s got to be intentional, it would be easy to say “as you guys are waking up a swarm of bullywugs attacks you” but to go to the effort of specifically saying “before you wake up and finish your rest you are attacked” feels intentional - so DM has got to have something planned so this has to go to them… WITH ONE EXCEPTION; if it wasn’t planned as a specific and devious way of starving the party for something specific then this is just messy and crunchy DMing and the DM SHALL BE SENTENCED TO NEVER GETTING A FULL NIGHTS SLEEP EVER AGAIN

May it please the supreme crits and the bailiff I come not with a case but a confession to dice Christ while starting a new campaign the players were clearing a manor they were paid with for hero work they did, during the clearing our level 2 spore Druid war forged named scarab was critted twice and I fudged the damage dice because the actual damage would have killed him out right. Should I have killed my friends newest character or did I do right by the PCs by fudgeing the damage?

jacob brewer

May it please the Court and tickle the fancy of the Most Honourable Bailiff, My DM makes me roll stealth checks to have my bard cast spells on PCs without their awareness. I argue that, unless the spell specifically says that the target is aware they have been charmed or otherwise spelled, that bards are able to weave their spells into their words and leave PCs unaware that they’re working magic, and thus no stealth check should be needed. I beg the Court for their sage ruling to settle the matter.

May it please the honorable justices and our lord and savior the God King Bailiff Jake. I’m playing in an 8 player dnd game at my LGS, I know, 8 is way too much. But we make due. However, our table has a tendency to try to plan our whole entire plan for taking over a bunch of towns in a region, this takes up a lot of time during our 3 hour session. Am I the bad guy if I think this level of planning is a bit much? I want to offer a peaceful solution but the goose in the corner with a knife is looming closer and I feel peace may no longer be an option. Do I need to be sentenced?! I must know!

May it please the court and the sultry bailiff Jake, I bring forward the case of the Earthbound Chimera. We were atop a mountain on course to slay a dragon who had been terrorizing a village at its base. Partway up, we encountered a trio of three chimeras. After felling two, the remaining chimera was able to take down a PC, our gloomstalker ranger, and began to fly off with her. In retaliation, I cast earthbind to ground the chimera thinking it would keep it from flying off. The DM maintained that an earthbound chimera could still fly on its turn, but simply had to finish each turn on the ground. Ultimately, we were able to save our ranger, but not without a defensive word or two from my end. Benevolent crit justices, how should we have handled the use of the earthbind spell? PS we killed the dragon only to find that our questgivers were actually all ghosts. The entire village disappeared into the ether once we put their souls to peace, haunting us all.

DieBard

May it please the honorable Judges Murph, Tanner, and Axford as well as , I have been playing dnd with my group of friends for several years. During this time, we have done several campaigns and one-shots. Some of which never happened due to timing, player availability, etc. This has lead to the creations of a multitude of characters that were never played. For our next upcoming campaign, I would like to play one of these characters. His backstory and build would fit perfectly into the narrative to the campaign: Cha’ad Brough - a hotheaded level 1 wizard pupil that would rather solve his problems with fists and uses spells as a last resort. He was such an asshole, all of his fellow wizarding students changed his assignment so he sent to a group of nomad minotaurs instead of one of the leading financial wizarding firms. The problem my DM has with this character is he has high stats. I rolled extremely lucky during one of our session zeros (which was witnessed by the group so all of the stats are legit). I have no interest in making a max/min character and I thought I would be hilarious to put the highest into all of the dump stats for a wizard: STR:18 DEX:16 CON:17 INT: 14 WIS: 15 CHA: 8 The DM said he wouldn’t allow him in his new campaign since he considers him to be OP, however, I argue that he had no problems with the character when we were about to start up a new campaign previously. I believe nothing has changed. Was my DM justified in his decision not to allow the character or did he commit a mortal sin against Dice Jesus?

Spencer Clark

This case is so funny to me because I'm a phd student in math, have played with different groups of other phd students in math, and without fail when diagonal movement is brought up everyone says "no fuck Pythagoras"

Esteemed judges and hardworking bailiff of the court: at the table I DM, I like to end sessions by having the party vote amongst themselves to give a point of inspiration to one person, based on who they all thought was the MVP of the session. Oftentimes these points of inspiration are effectively a part pool anyway, as they’ll give them to each other to help with dangerous or important rolls. Recently, I had a player character die to a natural one on a death saving throw. One player wanted to use one of his points to let him reroll the save. I ruled that they couldn’t, as his actual character was not there (the party had split and I had them playing NPCs to keep them engaged), and we had set a precedent where we gave inspiration not to players but to characters (as they had at one point elected to give it to an NPC who they were about to support in an important duel). The party accepted this ruling and the PC died, but I’m wondering if I was too harsh. I humbly ask for an ethical review from the court, and place myself in their judgment.

Dear honorable judges and the honorable but slightly less so Bailiff, I am playing an armorer artificer, named Sir Evan Gelion. My character is not a human, as he claims, but is in fact four goblins operating a suit of mechanical armor. Nobody thinks he is human, but the party believes he is a Warforged. However, inspired by Henry, I have been taking fighter levels with the intention of becoming an Echo Knight. My dm says that the echo created should be the single suit of armor, but I argue that it should create four goblin-shaped shadows. I think it would be cool, and I could teleport between them, and that would be rad. Please confirm that I am right, allowing me to do cool Naruto shit. I throw myself on the mercy of the court.

Mitch

D&D confession: It has been forever since my last confession. Dice Christ, please forgive for I have sinned. Last Xmas I started playing on a one shot DMed by a friend that turned into a 6-shot. We were playing in person because Australia (then online, nothing good lasts forever). I was playing an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer whose origins were a failed infection by a mind flyer tadpole had left him infused with magic but chronically ill. Dealing with some chronic illness myself, I wanted to put this into my character for RP reasons (also made CON a dump stat, sorry party members). I was having fun with this character until towards the end of a session where something gross happened and I RPed my character being unwell afterwards. I physically was in character, doing the body language of someone uncomfortable for a while around the table. One friend was very amused when she noticed (nothing major or distracting). When we entered a new room and I rolled a CON save to inform my RP as to whether I had recovered. I know I should ever roll my own dice without the DM asking, but this was just to inform my RP. I rolled a nat1 and thought it was super funny. My friend the DM was very pissed I rolled without him asking and told me off. I got a little sulky as I was shocked. Then later he asked me for a CON save and I asked if we could use my nat1 from earlier and he refused. So I rolled a nat19 and was very uninterested in the success. We ended the session with my PC feeling improved but I was left sinful and sad.

James Lloyd

Honorable Judges and Esteemed Bailiff Jake, I am currently playing in a long term campaign (lvl 10) with a group of friends. Our adventuring party was called on to help out a small town in the mountains who had sent out a distress signal. As we were preparing to go help, me and my business partner (another PC) decided we could also use this trek for a little expansion. You see, as well as defeating monsters and defending the realm, we also spent almost every single piece of gold and minute of downtime we received in this campaign on opening up a chain of restaurants. Much to the chagrin of our DM. Before heading off we stopped at the local “Jolo’s Pub and Grill” and talked to the assistant manager Jerry, telling him that he was being promoted and would be running his own restaurant in the new town. He was to head on ahead with us, and we would move his family up after he got the place running. On the trek, we cut through a mountain cave system that turned out to be home to some dangerous Yetis. We sent Jerry off to hide in a small cave to the side, and engaged in battle. During the course of the battle, our Wizard used a Wall of Force to trap one of the Yetis while we focused on the rest, not realizing that he had trapped the Yeti in the same corner cave where we sent Jerry to hide. After realizing his mistake, he released concentration on the wall, and I rushed into the side cave to rescue my employee. What I saw then was a Giant Yeti eating Jerry, half of his body down the Yeti’s throat, the other half hanging out of his mouth. Thinking fast, my Hexblade Warlock cast Banishment on the Yeti, looking to quickly separate the two. My DM ruled that Jerry would be banished with the Yeti, and by the time I could release my concentration on the spell and everyone got into the side cave, Jerry’s body was too torn apart and mangled by the Yeti for our Cleric’s Revivify spell to bring him back to life. I argued that Jerry shouldn’t have been banished with the cleric, as the spell only targets one creature. Our DM counter argued that Jerry was swallowed, and that therefore he would also get banished if the Yeti did. I re-counter argued that our DM specifically described Jerry as halfway down the gullet of the Yeti, not completely swallowed. Thus he should have treated Jerry as a grappled creature, not getting banished. Our DM re-re-counter argued that technically Jerry was dead at the time, and as such would be treated as an object, and carried objects are banished with the creatures. I re-re-re countered argued with “Oh Jerry is just an object to you huh? You never wanted us to bring Jerry on this adventure from the beginning! And what are we supposed to say to his family!?” After some more back and forth and some pressure from the PCs to give Jerry a fighting chance, our DM let us roll for Jerry’s fate. Luckily Dice Christ was on our side. Jerry wasn’t banished with the Yeti, and we were able to Revivify him in time. We all still laugh about the scene to this day and there are no hard feelings, but I am interested in how the esteemed justices would rule in this situation. How would Banishment affect grappled, swallowed, or half-swallowed creatures, who may or may not be dead at the time. Thank you for your time, and I humbly await your decision and accept the possible consequences, Frankie C.

Twinned spell does specially call out Scorching Ray as not eligible because it is capable of targeting more than one creature. Which works the same way as Eldridge blast when you get more then one beam. I think RAW twinned spell doesn't work this way.

May it please the court, even the lowly-but-still-alright-with-me bailiff Jake, I present to you the case of A God in a Box. Last year, I finished DMing a 2-year campaign that ended well. However, there is a moment that remains a shadow (a dark stain if you will) on the whole experience. The party at the time was aboard an enemy ship, captained by a disgraced elven noble and his elven lover, Telga, an evil sorceress hell-bent on becoming a lich. (I used Drow Matron Mother stats with different spells.) She was secretly in possession of an evil, sentient book hidden away in a chest in her room, a book created by the god of death, the overall bbeg of the campaign. One of the party members, Ramen, a rogue/fighter, decided to have a private chat with Telga in her chambers. He attacked, casting Silence through his bow, a homebrew magic item. At the time, the bow was worded so it caused an effect like Silence, but a spell was not actually “cast” and therefore couldn’t be countered. After that, he grappled her, pinned her, and began making attacks, with her unable to do anything about it. She couldn't move, and Silence prevented her from using spells. Panicking, as this was the big bad for this arc of the campaign, I fear I may have cheated my way out of it. The sentient evil book rested in a chest not too far away. The book itself cast a Dominate Monster spell on Ramen, which he failed. With Silence dropped, Telga stood and opened a door to a demiplane and sent Ramen through it. After that, she gathered some of her belongings and teleported away. After this, the player brought back an old character, and the stakes of the plot became higher. Suddenly, it became a race to find Telga and bargain with her to get their boy back. Eventually they encountered Telga again, and the barbarian/warlock killed her before she could re-open the demiplane. Only a divine intervention was then able to bring Ramen back. So, Justices of the Court, though no feelings were hurt (the player was super on board after), and the campaign went on smoothly, I still feel I may have been in the wrong. Is it okay to bend the rules for story’s sake, or should I have let my player womp me?

Luke Jungermann

May it please the court, honorable Crit Justices, and disgraced bailiff (whomever it may be). In my first real D&D campaign I played in (over 10 years ago) one of my friends at the time was playing a rogue and has escaped justice for his war crimes ever since. We were a party of 4, a dragonborn sorcerer Reash (me), a halfling fighter, a tiefling cleric, and the man in question a human rogue Lenny Fastfingers (the accused). We were on a starter mission to clear out some bandits and found them holed up in an abandoned farmhouse. Lenny stealthed in first then gave us all a signal to come in and start the fight. Once the fight broke out though, Lenny never joined combat. He noticed the bandit's treasure in the back and instead of leaving stealth to help us in combat he went to loot the room. It ended in a TPK (minus Lenny obviously) and after the session was over the only thing I remember to this day was hearing the players maniacal laughter of the 3 innocent adventurers he killed. I have since never trusted anyone who plays rogue or human in any of my campaigns and it is all Devon's (the player's) fault. Honorable justices, please sentence this man to a harsh punishment so that I may move on with my life and accept rogues once again into it. P.S. We played in Texas and the statute of limitations for murder has no time limit so he can't escape justice forever.

May it please the Honorable Supreme Crit Justices, and the lovely Bailiff to whom I just can't be mean: please tell me if I was too nice to my falling bard. The scene: my party's bard Dimension Door'd up to stand on a dragon construct that was flying away, and brought our ranger with her. The party's monk and sorcerer were giving chase on the ground in a sled. The dragon construct had charmed the ranger and then tried to shake the bard off. The bard failed her check and began falling. They are 200 feet up now and she did not have any more spell slots for Dimension Door, so instead chose to Shatter the dragon as she fell, dealing the final blow. I think RAW says she should have fallen straight down on that turn, but I ruled that because part of the turn was sliding off the dragon, she was now 100 feet in the air in a freefall. Our sorcerer then prepared an action to Misty Step once she was 30 feet above her and pull up against gravity, and our monk prepared an action to jump straight up (12 feet or so) to try and brace the bard as well. This was awesome, so I let everyone roll appropriate saves to catch her, and then split the 200 feet of falling damage equally between the three of them. Everyone survived (even the ranger, who had his own problems to deal with in what was essentially a dragon-shaped crash cage). My question is: Did I bend too much and so robbed the party of something more emotionally dramatic? Should I have had the bard fall her full distance initially? Why are 5e falling rules so weird? Happy (honored, even) to take any judgement.

Tim S.

Justice4Stiv

I Love Not Finishing My Sentences

If it may please the court and the lovely bailiff My sister played her first game of D&D with an established group. She played as a cleric. As they were exploring a maze, one the npcs was taken down to critically low hitpoints by the party bard (thunderclap). She, of course, heals him.. Sis, being the only character with darkvision, scouted ahead in a pit and dealt with a problem, calling to the others that it was safe to jump down. Despite a character having featherfall prepared, the bard decides to push the still-somewhat hurt npc into the pit, and then when he jumps down makes sure to land on the poor sap, making him take the fall damage twice. My sister asks if he was pushed, is lied to be the bard, sees through the lie, and decides to (in character) leave the group that is obviously willing to throw their companions to the wolves. So the bard casts hold person on her, to "stop her from fleeing combat," despite no combat currently happening. As she finally shakes off the effect, another character sleeps her, to "stop the fighting." At the time, her cleric had 42 hp, and the person who cast sleep did not roll any dice, merely telling my sister that she is now asleep. She's able to wake up and sees the bard, with - 1 to intelligence, trying to win a game of chess, and she commands the force on the other side to forfeit, which works and causes a rope ladder to fall down from the ceiling. Her and the abused character climb up first, and she cuts the ladder behind her to distance herself from the people using hostile magic on her (a dick move in some circumstances, but she had been asleep for over 20 out of game minutes, doing nothing and being unable to contribute). Later on as she finds her way through this maze with the rest of the party hot on her heels, she finds a large door and is slept by her party again, except this time she is down multiple hallways, likely out of spell range, and definitely not in line of sight. When they catch up to her as she wakes up, the bard throws a dagger at her, and that's when the session ends. I told her that if I were her I would not be returning to the next and final session. I personally would have kicked up more about the rules, but it was her first game. The dm is a first time dm and they have only played a handful of times. The bard and spell caster(sister doesn't remember the class) apparently play often. The other player seems to be on my sister's side and told her later that they were being stupid. She's afraid to say too much seeing as it's a group of her Co workers. She's would like some advice on how to handle the next session, hopefully this is read and uploaded before then.

May it please the honorable Judges and the equally honorable Bailiff, last year my fiance and I joined a new D&D group in which my fiance friend was DMing. There were 4 players total plus the DM and it was session 1. Our party was trying to find the reason why an important, mayor-like figure's loss of shipments coming into the town. Our adventure took us into a warehouse that he stored his shipments in and we found a hole leading into secret tunnel. There was no ladder and no one seemed to carry any rope on them so the only choice we had was to jump down the hole. The DM stated that we could see the bottom and it didn't look that far down so the check would be low. So the party decides that my 7'8" Firbolg should jump down first and catch the rest of the party since the jump would be easier for my character. Well... I failed the check. The DM didn't read the module very well and couldn't find the actual depth of the hole and said that I fell 30 feet and took so much damage that I died according to RAW. He nerfed the damage and said that I was just knocked out since it was SESSION 1. The rest of the party passed their checks and jumped onto my lifeless body to cushion their fall. Another party member healed me and brought me back up. As that happened, another party member exclaimed "hey I DO have some rope" I was mad but not too bad since it was too late to do anything. However, that changed when the DM said "oh the hole was only supposed to be 12 feet deep." I tried to argue that since that was his mistake that he didn't read the module very well, that I shouldn't have been knocked out and that the other player should get their spell slot back since I could have easily just hung onto the ground and just hopped down because I was so tall. The DM said that it was too late and that it already happened. Who was right in this situation?

ap.cleric

May it please the venerable Supreme Crit justices and their unwavering guardian: Jake. Our 8th level party of 5 plus an adult bronze dragon were fighting a group of powerful Cloud Giants in a 200 foot by 200 foot chamber. Things were going pretty well for us until the main baddie cast lightning bolt at the party. The DM ruled that everyone in the party, plus the other giants in the fight, would be hit by the 5-foot-wide line of lightning and thus had to make the saving throw. 3 party members went down as a result of this spell in what turned out to be a Total Party Kill. We have used battle maps in the past but went with a more “theater of the mind” approach for this battle. After the session I went to a TGI Friday’s with the DM and argued that there is no way a party of our size would be perfectly stacked up in a chamber of this magnitude after 5-6 rounds of combat. His response was that since we had not explicitly stated that we were spreading out in our previous movements, the assumption was that we all remained in the same line we started the battle in. He also allowed our bronze dragon’s breath weapon to hit all the giants on his attack, so he saw it as fair that his monster received the same benefit. So I ask you: is it on the players to be meticulous in describing lateral movements around the battlefield, or should it be assumed that as we all move we naturally spread out to avoid this situation? I have never seen us form a formation like this when using a battle map. I accept whichever verdict the Crit determines. Thanks!

Honorable judges and chiseled bailiff: I ran a fantasy campaign in which one of my players was restrained and in a prison break scene. This player has recently led a murder spree and killed literally everyone in sight because a cursed book had made their alignment evil. I argued that even Darth Vader or Hitler could talk to people without killing them, but he persisted. So when it came time for his prison break he tried to pull a classic “whisper gently so the guard comes close” and headbutt. But I was so fed up with the nonsense that I made the guard say “I’ve seen movies” and she carried on. There were no movies in this world. I lay myself before the judges, was I too harsh?

May it please the fragrant and beautiful, yet thorny Justices and the fickle, yet upwardly mobile Bailiff. I present the case of the Dream Sequence and the Briefcase My party is currently making their way through a homebrew Plane of Dreams (based loosely on the dream world from Wheel of Time). They’re on their way to kill a dream tyrant who has been twisting dreams into nightmares and trained one of their primary enemies to do the same. He started off powerful and intimidating, but my party started freaking razzing him, so he’s started to seem more and more low status. He’s been “testing” them while they traverse through his lair, and the most recent test was dream sequence in which I gave everyone an altered, more secret agenty identity with their same stats. They were all tasked with finding a Pulp Fiction-style MacGuffin briefcase (hidden in a room full of briefcases), which would end the dream sequence when opened. All but one person played along well, and I thought it was a fun, whimsical departure from the slog of what would otherwise be a normal dungeon crawl. It was a lot to keep track of, but I thought it was overall really fun. But after the dream sequence was over, all but one of my players admitted they hadn’t enjoyed it all that much. And it had apparently actively frustrated one of them. I ask you. Is that a fun and cool idea, or do you think it sounds too distracting. I prostrate myself before the court and await your judgment.

May it tickle the fancies of honorable justices Tanner, Axford, and Murphy, and that other guy I guess too, I have a case to bring against my fellow players in defense of my poor DM. It has to do with resting. We the players were taking a short rest (mostly for the warlock) and were interrupted near the end by an encounter. It lasted about three rounds and then we asked the DM if we could finish the last few minutes of the short rest. Our DM said we would have to restart it and the other two players launched into an argument involving sourcing the players handbook to say we should be able to continue where we left off. The book gives clear rules for when a long rest should be restarted, but not so much for short rests. I mostly stayed quiet because I hate when they argue over rules that we all have access to, our DM is so fair and when things are ambiguous I feel like it's the DM's world etc etc. Anyway the DM ended up putting his foot down after a while of arguing, and we restarted the rest. How would you rule interruptions to short rests? And either way, what is your punishment for the two players who are obsessed with rules lawyering when it benefits them?

John Solorzano

P.S. Part of the struggle has become that Hellathar rarely contributes to combat, instead looking for things to steal often. Another player feels it slows combat down more than is ideal.

Katherine Clarke

Title: my DM is a push-over should I be self policing? To the honourable crit-justices and the gilded court bailiff Jake, I humbly submit this case and myself for sentencing. I am a lvl 11 warlock with meta-magic named Alabaster; although people call me “Alabaster-SpellCaster” As a warlock we all know that Eldritch blast is our bread and butter. But here is where things get “Fucky”; At lvl 11 eldritch blast does 3 blasts for 1d10 each. I have a plus 12 to spell attacks so I hit basically all the time. With the eldritch invocations “agonizing and repelling blast” I add 5 damage to every hit and push the target back 10 feet for every hit. Because eldritch blast is a cantrip I can spend only 1 sorcery point on twin spell (no action) to double the 3 blasts to 6. After doing a favour for a magic item collector we got to take something from his collection and I took “illusionists bracers” if you’re not familiar these are just plain broken for warlocks: whenever you cast a cantrip you can cast another on as a bonus action - basically giving warlocks 2 attacks.. I can also use sorcery points on this extra bonus action cantrip. All meaning that I am able to do 4 instances of eldritch blast for 12d10 + 60 damage and push the target back 120 feet. (Or split that damage across up to 12 enemies) all in a single turn without using a single spell slot. (Next turn fire ball). It’s like I have machine guns for hands but our DM is so “by-the-book” that he isn’t balancing this at all because it’s TECHNICALLY legal. I would be fine with him saying “the pushback doesn’t stack” or “twin spell only gives you 1 extra blast and not 3” but I don’t know if I should. Am I in the wrong for walking all over a “by-the-book” DM. Should he take more license over the game mechanics? Every encounter has been a breeze - the campaign has no lethality - because the DM balances it based on our levels and not our level if fuckery. For the sake of variance I have stopped using the machine gun hands but I know I always have it up my sleeve (literally in the case of the bracers) and if things did get lethal I don’t know if I could have the self control not to use them. If sentenced I will comply. If you sentence the DM I will gift a Patreon sub so he can listen Yours Alabaster-SpellCaster

Since you were carrying her, it was forced movement. So the opportunity attack could only have been used on you. I call bull.

I Love Not Finishing My Sentences

Honorable Judges and the stinky, smelly, rancid Bailiff. If it pleases the court I would like to present the FUTURE case of changed homebrew magic mechanics. DM here. I am running a campaign with an interesting new magical mechanic. Magic was just introduced to this world, during a great celestial event. Prior to the event the whole world was commoners and maybe a level 1 warrior here and there. After the event, my players now have access to magic/classes. I wanted to make learning magic challenging. No one on this planet has casted spells before, so they don't know about spell components. In order to cast a spell without components you would have to make an arcana check, 10 + the spells level, to succeed. (I plan on having them meet NPC that teach them about components). If you have the components you will not need to make a check. There is also another way to cast spells... blood magic. That rights blood magic. A player can cast spells without needing components or using spell slots (as long as they have access to that level of spell) by sacrificing an creature with the amount of hit points equal to the spells level, or they can take the HP out of their max HP. Blood magic also maxes out damage so a 3rd level fireball spell would automatically do 48 damage with blood magic. This so far seems like a fun mechanic, with on of my players saying he now carries around a bag of rats to cast spells with. Here's the issue, we have only had 1 session and it was great. If this mechanic ends up totally sucking, can I as the DM change it?

Sebastian Lecha

May it please the honorable justices and the cheeky, but loveable bailiff. In a puzzle dungeon, one of my players was temporarily displaced in the group by a doppelganger. When I asked him to play the role secretly, he was so enthusiastic, he researched and came up with a new idea for a homebrewed blood bond he wanted the doppelganger, Hellathar, to potentially inflict on his character. I was hesitant but loved his enthusiasm and idea so, long story short, Hellathar has been traveling with the party for a long time now, with the player essentially playing twins with different personalities. The party is almost ready to cure the blood curse, with some of them viewing Hellathar as a mild problem, but I am sensing some tension between the player and the rest of the party now. I told him privately that he should work towards eventually playing just one character again, with perhaps the other one guesting in occasionally. He was quite receptive but I still feel like I'm taking a toy away from a kid because I couldn't afford to give out toys to all the others. Was I wrong to agree to that homebrew ability, thereby essentially granting a player a second, at times troublesome character to play? I humbly accept any judgement and plead for any advice you can give me.

Katherine Clarke

how clear was it that this fight was certain doom? i like the "3 strike" method, where you need a compounding of choices or mistakes to yield a really dire consequence. after choosing to participate in that fight, how many chances did the pc have to back out? what choices could they have made to avoid doom?

Natalie

May it please the court The cleric of my party was a bit of an airheaded aasimar named Lumi. My DM didn't like lumi's player very much, and complained about her lack of attention and how she never knew her abilities behind her back. One day, our party happened across a fight ring and Lumi eagerly volunteered. She fought an NPC with guard stats and cast Inflict Wounds toward the end of the bout, and the DM gave her no warning that doing so would kill him instantly. Was my DM justified in not giving Lumi any warning and allowing her to murder a dude in what was supposed to be a friendly fight?

May it please the court, honorable Judges Murphy and Tanner and Axford, and the dude who reads the court cases. I bring the case of the Cows vs the Dm. I’ve Dmed for a party of 6 for a couple of months. The party’s currently in the feywild and in a town of gnomes, goblins and other small folk who invent and create things. The party found out that there’s a thieve’s guild in town that wants to steal these magic items from the tinker’s guild. So as the party is sneaking into the hideout of the thieve’s guild, there’s a trap in the entrance way. If someone over 4 ft tall enters the space, then blades come out of the wall. The rogue of the party discovers the trap, and successfully makes the dex save. The rest of the party is on the other side, and don’t know what triggered the trap. The Druid of the party decides to summon 8 cows to test the trap on. Me, being the benevolent dm that I am, refused to kill a cow in a gory trap and told the party as much. The party cheered and passed through the trap with ease. Now as the party is traveling to the entrance of the thieve’s guild headquarters, I have them make stealth and perception checks. They all fail miserably (especially with the mooing cows), so I had one of the thieves on guard shoot an arrow at them. The Druid of the party decides to charge with his 8 cows in tow. The thieves then unload arrows on the cows, killing most of them. The party was then enraged that I killed some of the cows after saying I wouldn’t. I stood by saying that dying in a gruesome trap is different than being shot in an arrow and poofed out of existence. Was I wrong to kill the cows?

To the magnificently honorable judges and exalted bailiff Jake: one year ago our dm brought our Ravnica campaign to a flesh colosseum to defeat a rogue symic scientist creating rogue krassi that attacked our guilds headquarters. Me (a student of foreign languages) and our bard Nyx (played by a law student/teacher) told our dm that its actually pronounced kuh-LIS-eum as a joke. After that arc it never came up again, and thus I thought that was the end of the bit. Little did we know he took it to heart. One year later that group had desolved and I was replaying that campaign with a new group of people and when we got to that point he pronounced it kuh-LIS-eum again, and all the new players started razzing him for pronouncing it weird, and he deferred to me for the correct pronunciation. I would have helped, but I was incapacitated with laughter, which only intensified when he admitted to having used that many times over the last year in his normal life, and was extremely upset at my apparently life altering goof. Now every time he or I mispronounce collisseum (which happens often as he had apparently reprogrammed his brain to say it wrong) I get punished by taking substantial damage, losing gold, and getting a solid fuck you. My question: is my punishment justified, or is my dm being overly dramatic about something that was simply chicanery a year ago.

Koalabeyr

May it please the Court and the super awesome fun Bailiff Jake, I have finally taken the plunge and decided to DM for the first time. The group is with two close friends and my husband. I started them all off at level 3 and one of their first encounters was a shadow demon. The shadow demon can take a bonus action hide that means they had to look for it or attack with disadvantage. One of my players didn't see it but hit the monster with his long sword (a non magical sword). He argued that they all should now be able to see the demon because he hit it and I said no because he was a shadow and they wouldn't be able to physically cut the monster. In the end they defeated the demon and are progressing through the story. Was I wrong to make that call? I've noticed that this particular player is always trying to find a way to metagame or question my calling especially if it means that he can't do something cool, since the shadow demon encounter. He is very obvious if he is not having a good time by making remarks like "I wouldn't make that call but it's your game". I've asked my husband if I'm being unfair and he says that it's my world and I can make up whatever I want. Just lately I've been second guessing my calls in fear that my players aren't enjoying themselves. I await for the judgement from the Honorable Crit Justice's Brian, Emily, and Caldwell.

Cody & Tiare P. - Pendergreen's Roommates

May it please the court. I co-DM an extended campaign with a large group of players. At the outset of the campaign, all of us were completely new to D&D and so the campaign's primary storyline is from adventure books and modules. Several months in, however, we began to develop and run original multi-session "side-quests" that explore each PC's backstory and give each an opportunity to shine and develop narratively. Typically, some unresolved issue from their early days is resolved and some boon (like a cool magical weapon) is received. One of our PCs is a bit hard to describe succinctly. He's sort of a vagrant dirtbag pervert Pact of the Fiend Warlock. Think Little Nicky crossed with Ben Mendelsohn’s character in “Killing Them Softly” crossed with a necrophiliac. He’s challenging to DM, as he often undermines the group—turning on and attacking PCs mid-battle, wandering away from the group alone, stealing magic items from other PCs, etc. His side-quest played to this tendency, creating some narrative grounding for some of this behavior. Turns out: his fiend had been imprisoned by a faction of evil wizards, and they threatened to kill the fiend – thereby stripping him of his warlock powers – if he didn’t act against the party’s interests. The quest was to rescue the fiend and defuse the kompromat. Relatively early in the epic final battle to rescue the fiend – which was pretty friggin’ sweet, if I do say so myself – the warlock was petrified by a basilisk’s stare. When the player asked if he could communicate with the party, I (not expecting the question) asked him to Google whether or not Han Solo could communicate while frozen in carbonite. The player refused, saying that was far too nerdy and he wouldn’t lower himself to it, and so I decided that he could definitely not communicate. Meanwhile, the fiend – watching from a magical cage – became highly interested in and started cheering for the other PCs, and in particular our Aarakocran thief. At the end of the battle, the fiend was freed and offered up the side-quest’s boon: an additional warlock spell slot. But the warlock was turned to stone and unable to communicate whatsoever. And the Aarakocran thief, it turns out, was the only PC with a means to turn the warlock back to flesh, as he had pulled a Wish card from the Deck of Many Things some adventures back and nobody had stocked Greater Restoration. The thief negotiated with the fiend that, in exchange for burning the Wish card on the warlock’s petrification, the warlock spell slot would be his. The warlock could only sit there deaf, motionless and, most importantly, mute. So now we have a thief with a warlock slot, and a warlock who saw no benefit from his side-quest. Honorable Supreme Crit Justices, the question I humbly lay before you is this: Which one of us is the asshole?

There are admittedly other issues with the DM that contributed tonmy departure, but those were all house rule, and core rule specific disagreements that are harder to pull comedy from.

Dave 3D Art

May it please the court, I have a case from a few years ago. I was playing a gnome wizard named Brocc in a level 3 party at the time. We were trying to help civilians escape a kobold attack and Brocc tried to carry an unconscious child away from the scene. The DM asked if I wanted to take a disengage, and I said "No, I want to get her out of combat as quickly as possible." The DM said that the kobold took an opportunity attack on the girl killing her. I argued that because Brocc was carrying her and fleeing it should at least be a percentile die, but he insisted that a kobold would prefer murdering a child over attacking an actual threat so he just needed an attack roll on her.

May it please the court except for Murph, who is never pleased, I was the dm, and I decided to let my players draw from the deck of many things. One of the cards drawn was the sun, giving the artifcer 50k xp. I realized that at this point, he would have four more levels compared to the rest of the party, and I panicked and backed down. Instead i gave him 10k gold, which he is gonna use to build a pirate ship so he is happy. But was I a coward? I know I should have vetted the deck a bit better, but Should I have let him be super powerful or was I right to save myself from the nightmare that would be future party balancing and saving the rest of the party from feeling like side characters?

To the honourable justices and the dishonoured justice, Jake, may it please the court: My monk found himself surrounded by three hags and alone. He managed to escape to the roof and hid in a bag of holding that he placed on top of a chimney and pushed off die the chimney to escape inside. The DM said the bag hit the lit fire below, broke and sent my PC to the astral sea. I argued that there wasn’t smoke described in the chimney so how was I supposed to know it was lit, but they said it was a risky move that I should of expected to go wrong. Was this a dumb move on my part or was I a victim of theatre of the mind?

Steven Hoffart

May it please the exalted supreme Crit Justices and of course the honorable, handsome bailiff. A few years ago I ran Curse of Strahd for a group of friends. So here's a spoiler warning if you want to avoid minor spoilers. At one point in our game the players rescued a group of kids from a werewolf den. Inside the den there was a shrine to the Night Mother - one of the deities in Barovia. The werewolves made offerings of treasure and gold at this shrine and my players came up with the idea to repurpose these funds to give the kids a better life now that they're free. The kids knew not to touch the offerings or they would offend the Night Mother and pay dearly. My players tried to coax the kids into taking the treasure, but the kids refused. Eventually one of the players, frustrated at the kid's hesitance, took the treasure and divvied up to the kids. In doing so, he suffered a curse from the Night Mother to constantly see horrific visions when he rested at night and was therefore unable to get a rest during night-time. My players argued that even though the player took the treasure and gave it to the kids, since it was in the kid's possession, then he was wrongfully cursed. I argued that he chose to take the treasure and the act of taking it, even though he gave it to the kids, is what cursed him. I thought it would be a cool character moment for this player - cursing himself to help the kids. But the players didn't see it that way. At one point, the player rolled well on a religion check and I let him contact the Night Mother in sort of a dreamscape and I had her explain that even though he thought he was doing the right thing, he still stole from her. I even hinted that he might be able to work out a way to do favors or work for the Night Mother to earn his way to removing the curse. The PC happened to be an elf and due to their trance ability, the "not able to rest at night" penalty was not as bad as it could be, since he could still get a 4 hour trance during daytime and still have several hours each day to adventure. The players leveled up soon after this encounter and the warlock in the party took "Remove Curse" as one of his new spells. I was still fairly new as a DM at that time and wasn't familiar with "counter" type magic at that time, so I probably should have made him do a roll to remove the curse but I didn't think to do that. AITA for cursing my player for stealing treasure from a deity to donate to orphans to try and create cool roleplay and character growth? Or since their intentions were good, should I have just ignored the curse and let them carry on unscathed? I graciously await your judgment.

We were guilt tripped out of killing an NPC because it was clear that our DM had big plans for her. She tried to trick an entire town into fleeing towards an advancing army, and when confronted, she stabs my character’s sister (we both play monks, she’s a fire monk, I am a long death monk. Both eladrin) in front of us. Our party wanted to kill her after fighting but our DM made us feel so guilty that we would be “murdering” her that we gave her over to the local guards. He told us in depth what sort of legal action could be pursued against our characters I. Eberron. She escaped as soon as we left (which we were worried would happen) and murdered the guards. Was he wrong to tell us he had bigger plans for her and guilt trip us into letting her go? Was I right for wanting to finish her off and prevent additional death? She killed more than the guards before we were able to finally catch up to her.

Sarah Trimble-Tutor

May it please the court. Today I have a case that has been immortalized in tragedy and intrigue within my TTRPG group. A few years ago I, a first time DM, was running a home brew campaign. They were doing some Inkheart “written into fantasy books”-type stuff where we got to hit all the classic fantasy beats in a series of one shots. This particular session were fighting a dragon to save a princess. Our level 6 Wizard, a first-time PC, was roughly 60 feet away from this dragon and gets smoked by its breath weapon, doing double the PC’s HP and killing him outright. What I discovered that next day was that dragon’s breath weapon had a range of 30 ft. Rapt with guilt, I told the group. After some gentle ribbing, we continued with the game, keeping the PC death as canon. Two years later I still get made fun of for this by this tabletop group. My secret that I also discovered that fateful day: he was behind a rock that I had established gave him half cover and he should have added the dex bonus to his saving throw. He still would have been knocked out but not killed outright. I want to know: have I been ribbed enough and should I reveal my deepest-held DM secret now that this campaign has been over for a year?

Esteemed Crit Justices and oft maligned bailiff, If it may please the court, I write to you, not to settle a dispute (because I play with other reasonable adults), but to ask your advice on steed stats. My Eladrin Pala-bard Arkadi has Find Steed, and my cool DM allowed me to make the steed a giant black domestic cat named Laszlo. At the outset of the campaign, we decided to use Warhorse stats with the edit of a 16 DEX instead of 12, and a Pouncing Charge instead of a Trampling Charge. However, as we have played through a few sessions, there are other components of the Warhorse stats that don’t really align with a cat’s physiology. I’ve read suggestions online to use Worg stats, but that felt too overpowered for a level 6 character. Given Justices Murphy and Axford’s proclivity towards cats, I am appealing to them to supply a Cat Steed stat block that isn’t overpowered, but also better conveys the nuances of having a Fey Feline as my steed. Thanks, sweeties! (Side note: my name rhymes with patron)

Caitrin

Your fault

Jorge Collings

May It Please The Court, we have been playing with our DM in our current campaign for over a year. Some of us have been playing with this DM for up to 3 years. Since the beginning of the campaign (and in his past campaigns), and he has always handled Crits in battle the same way. Double dice for a Nat 20, and a roll on the fumble chart for a Nat 1. The fumble chart can be anything from "you accidentally hit a friend" or "your weapon gets jammed and you need to spend an action to unjam it" These rules apply to the players, and the DM's monsters. Very recently, a player at our table rolled a nat 1 and the string on his bow broke so he would need to spend a turn to fix it. Instead, he left the game, and later complained to the DM that it wasn't fair because it felt like his character was useless, and it ruined his turn economy because he had to spend action to fix his bow. This character is a warlock/paladin with a pact weapon and is one of our strongest players. The DM is now thinking of changing how crits work because of this, but I don't see anything wrong with the way he's handling it. Our DM isn't bad about the fails, and rewards us when we get the crits and lets us do amazing goofy stuff, so a broken bow seems like a fair trade for being able to decapitate a monster that should be unkillable because of a well-timed "shrink" on a chain. Oh Honourable judges and esteemed Bailiff Jake, Do you think The DM should change his ruling on crits because of this one person?

Nikki Lynn

May it please the wonderfully talented Justice Emily and the sexy boys Caldwell, Murph, and Jake. This case involves the failure of my charlatan chicken aarakocra bard, Klekk Bug-auck. The DM wanted us to build in-depth characters with a fair amount of back story for our next campaign. It was going to be 2-3 years long with heavy roll play. I spent 3 months working on my bard and came up with a mildly chaotic (definitely not evil) well intentioned chicken aarakocra who aspired to be wealthy and known across the land. He took "fake it until you make" as his credo. I wrote the back story/notes about all my character choices and shared them with the DM. We met about the character twice. Bards are the DMs character of choice and he supported the character with some light warnings that people might not believe his stories etc . . . and being level 1 he wouldn't have many real adventures to draw on. Luckily the stats rolled in my favor and I felt confident he would do well on charisma and deception checks. During game play it become apparent that the party thought Klekk's exaggerations were just lies and even when he boasted and fluffed up the parties exploits the other players would tell him to stop lying in front of NPCs. During role play they would try to urge Klekk if he were just nice and honorable good things would happen. This was a big bummer because I was so excited about playing a fun chicken that had a silver tongue that might sometimes get him in trouble, but ultimately helped the party get great gigs and score the best loot. After a few sessions I was pretty disheartened with the constant push back in roll play and then it came to a head when one of the players demanded Klekk heal him (I refused knowing he wasn't hurt badly), he failed a persuasion check, and then preceded to man handle my character trying to force him to cough up the healing magic. I decided to leave the game and now I feel like if I ever decide to play D&D again I need to play uncomplicated cute or standard noble characters. I hope the court will pass sentence if I was trying too hard with an over complicated character and need to reset my thinking on characters in the future.

Samuel Schimek

May it please the court--a friend wanted to play a Grung Barbarkan in our campaign, despite Grung being foot-tall frogs. I allowed it, on the stipulation that, if hit in combat, he'd have to use his frog tongue to grapple hook himself to the ground or an object to keep from being sent airborne like a baseball being knocked into left field. He claims it's unfair that his character weighing 3 pounds can't withstand a goliaths hammer swing based purely on his rolled stats. Justices--also Jake I guess, am I the asshole?

May it please the Crit and the lowly Baliff Jake. I am a playing a 12th level Redemption Paladin/Divine Soul Sorcerer and was recently involved in a combat with an extremely high level Assassin along side my fellow party members. Most of the party had been either KO'd or were too injured to continue so myself and the Chaotic Good Ranger chased after the Assassin when he realized he wouldn't be able to take us all out and retreated. We caught up to him and got him to the point where he offered to surrender but the Ranger was not having it and was about to kill him. I as a redemption paladin felt it was my duty to spare him as we had come to learn it was not his choice to attack us but had been compelled. Before I could react, the ranger pulled out an artifact level soul stealing dagger and plunged it into the assassin. I tried to pull the ranger off of the assassin but failed my grapple checks and when I tried to reason with him he ignored me. So with no other choice, I used my redemption paladin's Aura of the Guardian to absorb the damage of the next dagger attack. Normally I would receive only damage but the DM said it would do some damage to my soul due to the item being artifact level but this would be mostly RP. Visually the DM described my character as having his soul ripped out to the ranger so he would realize that I had activated my power (and he did) to protect the assassin. The ranger did not care and proceeded to attack the assassin again and I interceded again. I was near death and had to burn out the last few charges in my Staff of Power to put up a Wall of Force between the ranger and the assassin or possibly have us both be killed. Afterwards, I was mad both in and out of play and the player/character of the ranger told me it wasn't his fault because he couldn't be held responsible for me choosing to use my power to stop him, it was my choice so I had no one to be angry at but myself. I argued it was fine for the first attack as my power is a reaction and he couldn't have known what I would do, but the second time, knowing my character and being told what I had done by the GM, he intended to kill me and that my character could no longer work with him. This has caused a split in the party and group as we can't seem to come to an accord, whose fault this? Am I overreacting or do I have a right to be upset about my fellow player almost killing me? I don’t want to break up the party or campaign but this feels like a big deal both in an out of play.

May it please please the court and the very nice bailiff who really should do more GOAT Show pod because it's awesome, I have a familiar question. As part of Find Familiar you can dismiss it to a pocket dimension. My party was transporting a wish ring and to keep it secret and safe I had my sprite familiar take the ring and go into the spare dimension. It never says this isn't allowed RAW, but at the next session I and my DM found a Sage Advise from Wizards of the Coast saying this isn't allowed. We accepted this and my spite popped out with the ring and didn't cause any major problems. I'm just curious as to what you think since the spell doesn't say they can't do this and my sprite already has a bow and armor that he's takes with him into the pocket dimension. Thank you for your time.

Intestinal-Bookworms

Dear Honorable Justices of the court. I present you with not a case about a single event, but a case about a dungeon civil war. In our campaign we have a “problem” player that always creates terrible characters. Some examples are a warlock warforge who’s on a quest for a bigger dick, a halfling who is cursed with extreme shortness and wishes to play volleyball (volleyball did not exist in the world and he also insisted on being very bad at volleyball). This has lead to our group labeling these characters and any character of this looney toon variety “Melon Characters” after the player who committed these crimes(melon is his nickname). Melon characters were banned. We had peace. No more were there alcoholic bards who lay down in front of the enemy. Gone were the antics of these crazed players. Until recently. There have been a small coalition that are fighting for the rights of these melon characters. They have claimed we are fascists that only want to see Aragorns be played. This Melon revolution says they are for freedom, but the Aragorns are afraid of chaos. Should the Melons be allowed to create any character they want? Should we allow the Binky Fiascos to create a looney toons of our great game? I have been on the Aragorns side in the past, but i fear that maybe we are fascists. Is limiting the characters people play really for the greater good? Our party is split down the middle.

To all the sweetie court justices and the sour bailiff I bring my case. I'm a forever DM who's player decided to run a 1 shot so I could finally be a PC. I decided on a cool support barbarian class, Goliath+bear totem Barb to have high push pull capacity and the only thing I had for items were hand axes and a small cart that I could use to push around as mobile cover for the other PCs. The DM said he was cool with it. Flash forward to the actual game night and the DM decided that after realizing what cover gives to ranged fighters/wizards he didn't want me to play my character anymore and I had to quick make a new PC while at the table which cut our playtime. I ask the judges was I wronged in having to pivot so late in the game or did the DM have every right to cut my Cartarian down before he could shine? I leave the case at the mercy of the judges.

Aaron Thomas

May it please the most honorable supreme crit justices and the one and only bailiff, back when I first started playing dnd I was at a table of experienced players and I was but a humble noob. I decided to create a half-orc barbarian who was incredibly prideful of his orc heritage. Well we were in a town where some dwarves, through the power of capitalism, had enslaved orcs to collect lumber. Well my character decided to try and start an orc rebellion by punching the chief of the orc tribe to get up his fighting spirit. The DM had me roll an attack and after successfully striking him the DM described me absolutely wrecking this orc and killing him. I immediately tried to say I wasn't trying to kill him just punch him but the DM said because I didn't declare it as non-lethal damage ( I didn't know what that was, obviously) that the orc was dead. I was summarily banished and branded as an exile. Was I in the wrong for not knowing about non-lethal damage?

May it please the wise crit justices and the dapper bailiff. I come to you with a shameful admission against Dice Christ. In the first campaign I was ever in many years ago I fudged a roll. The campaign had been going on over eight months when the DM brought in a friend of theirs as a guest PC. The session entailed us fortifying our home for an attack from the BBEG. The players were all chipping in getting potions, enchanting weapons and armor, and warning fellow villagers to hide from the oncoming attack. The new player kept a pretty unsavory attitude during the session, and got progressively more passive aggressive. It reached a peak when, after our two characters interacted, out of character they told me to “go make myself useful”. Maybe I misinterpreted their meaning, but it still really hurt my feelings. Later in the session, as a response, I gave myself advantage on a roll even though I didn’t have it, and got a nat 20 to set up defenses around our home that ended up being extremely helpful in the fight. I then came back to the character, and in my character voice said “was that useful enough for you?” I ask of the judges: did the circumstances preceding the roll mean I can accept my act as a crime of passion and move on, or do I damn myself to my fate for committing a cardinal sin? PS: it is the only time in my entire D&D life that I have or will ever fudge a roll.

May it please the High Crit, and the highest bailiff Jake. Recently, our party had to clear a town of bandits, and the result was that 1/2 of our party had died, but the town had been cleared out. The next session, the 3 remaining PCs freed what little townsfolk were around, and were informed that the bandits had taken over the mines just north of town, where all the men were. Our DM had suggested (along with the other dead PCs) that the remaining party members retrieve a wizard from a nearby town and revive us. They refused to revive us (even joking about looting our bodies and turning us in as bandits) instead continuing on to the mines where they were only saved because the DM decided to have the miners revolt. The party waisted time going to the wizard, and ended up bringing us back to life in the last 24 hours for the “Raise Dead” spell. What can we do to get back at these guys in an equally infuriating way?

To the dishonorable bi-partisan judges and the exalted balif Jake of house Hurwitz, don't have a question, just wanted to say thanks for all the yuks

To the absolute beauties of the court and the wack bailiff Jake I was playing a half elf beast master name Stiv Erwin in a drunk campaign we were doing, in all my drunken shenanigans I decided I would collect the dick of every enemy I killed and keep it in a bag. I went to a pet shop to try to aquire a new companion and was met by the shopkeeper who said he had a mysterious item if I was a gambling man. I said I too had a mystery item and offered a trade. A crit on my persuasion check and gave him my bag of approximately 35 severed ducks, much to the displeasure of my DM. I received a dragon egg and an argument ensued among the table about how it was unfair that my tomfoolery could result in a personal dragon. Stiv was killed 2 sessions later by a hit squad from the shopkeep. Was I unjustly killed?

~~TRENT UPDATE~~ Most esteemed judges! I have some Trent drama involving reddit. Before I got a chance to tell Trent that our story got featured on naddpod, one of my friends sent me a naddpod subReddit post FROM TRENT. Again, he’s new to dnd and not a naddpole. Trent‘s post consisted of him begging for sympathy from all naddpoles as he proceeded to tell a ludicrously incorrect description of what happened, specifically as it painted me as a bumbling idiot dm who was extraordinarily unreasonable to all the pc’s. He neglected to mention he had been causing problems all night and burning all his cleric spells to cast speak with animals. The post got over 300 upvotes and 60 comments. Half the comments were people slandering my real life name (while trent’s identity remained confidential) and demanding a mistrial, while any comment with two brain cells deduced that Trent was clearly lying and acting exactly as I had described him. The next night, Trent texted me, “Hey did you see the latest Jake and Amir”. We’ve never talked about Jake and Amir before. I said no but I will soon. With no other communication, the Reddit post was mysteriously deleted by the next day, either by him or the mods, idk. I get anxious just thinking about this lol, my worst nightmare is you guys seeing that post and thinking differently of me. Hope you enjoyed the Trent update! P.S. I was sent the Reddit post the same day I asked a girl out on a date and it ruined my mood for the date. Trent strikes again.

Alex DiFiore

Supreme crit justices and honored baliff: can a paralyzed paladin lay-on-hands themselves if they can't move? I run a D&D campaign for the library I work at. A few sessions ago, one of my players was KO'd by the poison damage of a giant spider's bite attack. Per the monster's stat block, he remained poisoned and paralyzed even after another player brought him back up. When his next turn in combat rolled around, I asked if he had anything he wanted to do. Wanting to keep play moving, I suggested he use lay on hands on himself to regain some hit points. He asked whether he could instead use 5 points to cure himself of the poison and thus the paralysis so he could move again. I agreed to it at the time (there's no actual conflict here), but I've been overthinking it ever since. Can you lay on hands yourself if you can't move your hands?

Hanna

To all the beautiful sweeties of the court. In my custom campaign with a party of 7, the Artificer, armorer subclass proclaims that while in Infiltrator mode, using lightning launcher's once a turn ability to add a d6 of lightning dmg, they should be able to continuously add a d6 on every consecutive hit. I have ruled that this is allowed for 1 whomping as they have worse then Caldwell levels of rolls. Am I setting a dangerous precedent by negotiating with terrorists or being fair with giving him a chance? I humbly await my fate

Cody W

May it please the court and highly honored bailiff. I'm playing an elf named Trash Panda who gets most of her weapons from the trash. I asked if instead of a bag of holding could I have a defective one. Our DM my husband made one and I get to roll a d100 to see what I pull out. The bag is connected to other bags so when I pull I'm pulling from someone else's bag and if I put something in the bag it goes into someone else's bag or has a 10% chance of going to the astral plane. At first I got to pull 4 times a day now I've been cut down to 2. Our friends have not complained and love seeing what I pull out. I asked if I could have 3 pulls as a compromise and he still said no as it takes to long. I think I should be allowed 3 pulls. We want you honorable judges and bailiff to decide. How many pulls should I get?

Chelsey

May it please the figure-painting bailiff Jake, Now presenting the case of Party v. DM There are two charges placed against the DM. We have our first encounter with the main villain of our campaign, former DM character, fighter turned Warlock villain. 1st Offense: The party noticed the villain before he saw them, so my sorcerer used zone of silence to give us advantage on stealth to get the jump on him. The DM claims the villain noticed the lack of background noise (Torches crackling, water dripping, ect.) and knew something was up immediately despite the spell. My sorcerer casts the phantasmal killer spell (We were playing 3.5e) a round or two into combat. Villain crit fails the first save and fails the second save by 1, so is instantly killed. 2nd Offense: Villain dies extremely early in the story so you think we would get something out of this, except the DM claims villain had a nearly endless supply of clones using the Clone spell. (still 3.5 version, which lowers your level on use) We neither get experience nor loot because we didn't destroy the soul and the body disintegrated when we tried to inspect it. Was our DM just being a jerk since we upended his story, or was what we did irredeemable? Does the use of the 3.5 rules make Phantasmal Killer too unfair for him? And, lastly, can he only have 20 clones max at ever decreasing levels like we tried to argue. I eagerly await your response, Sincerely The Plaintiff Sorcerer.

ThatManGareth

Most honorable justices, and almost as honorable, yet surpassing in jawline, Bailiff Jake. May it please the court, I am turning myself in for sentencing. It was my first time as DM, so with little D&D experience I set my campaign at a community college in the Fantasy High world, Spyre Community College. My players (a bard, paladin, and ranger echo knight) did well, and were accommodating as I lead them through, but seemed under challenged because of my inexperience. At level 5 they were easily beating my monsters and so, as they left a short rest on the third session they were encountered by a young white dragon with a wizard rider. They did well, but eventually, due to the combination of my bad math, good Rollin a breath weapon, and them staying huddled together, the battle resulted in the death of my brother’s bard with no ability to save. They were ok with it, but we pretty much fizzled out and eventually started a new campaign a year later. I accept judgement for not paying attention to my players’ stats and ruining my campaign.

May it please the court and the algae eating bailiff, I present the soon to be DM vs Mayhem. I had been setting up my first ever campaign with me and a couple friends, I wanted to DM and I spent a couple weeks gathering info and planning for session 0, as we were all first timers. A players younger brother (who had no idea about anything D&D related) asked if he could join, I said of course! The more the merrier. I started talking to him to get his characters backstory and figure out what he wanted to do. All he said was he wanted his characters name to be Mayhem. No other details, just a name. I was worried he thought that this may be more like a video game, so I tried to explain that this was more role-play like and that he should try to think of a character with just, more to him. I walked him through the basics like classes and what the other players had planned out, and I thought he had it understood. He came back a couple days later and he came back and said that his characters name was Battle Master, no other details, just a name. I again tried to explain that maybe he should try to make a more fleshed out character, but that he totally could have a title as Battle Master and tried to walk him through character creation, but he just got disinterested and backed out. Was I being a stick in the mud? Or was i rightly concerned about a character with nothing to him? I worry that the younger brother thought of this more as a video game, and didn't understand what he was getting into. I await your decision and brutal punishment. P.S. In the end it didn't matter, we never got a chance to meet and none of us have played a single session of D&D to this day :(

May it please our most esteemed Crit Justices, and the newly risen Baliff: I bring you a transgression against the mighty Dice Christ, or so we believe. I played in a Pathfinder campaign turned virtual due to the pandemic, we all utilized the Roll20 platform. During the course of the campaign, our Elven Sorcerer, whom was their first time playing DnD ever, started "rolling Nat 20 after Nat 20" throughout the course of the campaign. Our DM never made it their initiative to ask the player to display their roll over camera, but both myself and the other experienced players noticed more Nat 20 rolls than our own game play. My plea to the Justices is simple: Does it seem suspicious to have more than 3 or 4 Nat 20 rolls during game play? Could it be that this player committed acts of tyranny against the mighty Dice Christ? How can I as a player prove or bring to light their transgressions? I humbly throw myself before the court in the hopes to prostrate myself before Dice Christ himself. Thank you.

PupKailash

May it Please the Court, I bring to the Court a case of The Emperor v. Jeff the Tiefling Warlock A few years ago, in my first DnD campaign played a Beast Master Ranger named Solomon in a year plus long campaign. My Ranger joined the party ten sessions into the campaign, but I thought that after a few sessions he had integrated himself into the party fairly well. Much later on in the campaign (9+ months in game) my character found out he was the rightful heir to the throne. He found the royal family’s ancestral sword that he automatically attuned to. The sword was sentient and told him he was the rightful heir. My character didn’t particularly want to be Emperor, but eventually decided to take up the mantle. A member of my party, a Tiefling warlock, named Jeff stated to other members of the party that he did not trust my character and did not want me to become Emperor. While my character was preparing a speech to accept his appointment as Emperor, I listened to my party member conspiring to assassinate my character. While I was giving my acceptance speech as Emperor where I talked about how much my party meant to me, Jeff was flying towards me with the intention of killing me. Jeff cornered me after the speech and asked to talk alone. While talking alone he stated that he never trusted me, that I should not take the position and there shouldn’t be an Emperor at all. He didn’t end up attempting to assassinate me because another member of our party who knew of the plot burst into the room. Our party had traveled in-game together for a year and we had been playing the campaign weekly for a year and a half. I don’t think my character did do anything to garner such distrust. But Jeff felt that because my character was very deferential when asked about party decisions, was quiet and that I didn’t talk enough during role play for him to trust my character. He also stated that he didn’t trust my sentient sword (I never told him in character that my sword was sentient, it was also confirmed by the DM to the player that the sword was aligned as Good) Despite the DM’s assurances, he still didn’t trust my sword or my character. I’ve had trouble trusting the actual player since this incident. I thought a year of travel and a lot of battle together kind of implied a bond. Should I have put more effort into role play and integrating myself into the party? It kinda put a damper on what was supposed to be the culmination of my character’s arc of orphan to Emperor. Is it wrong of me to harbor some resentment to the actual player for actions in game that are “what his character would’ve done.” ? I humbly request the Honorable Justice’s judgment on this matter.

To the supreme bailiff and his underling crit justices. I bring the case of Worthy End vs Covid. Your podcast introduced me to DND (thank you!!!) and I began a starter pack campaign with some friends. Covid separated us from continuing our game which only required one or possibly two more sessions to complete! we did not have the ability to continue virtually. When Covid ended the players informed me they were no longer interested in playing the last session to complete the campaign. I felt as though all my preparation and hard work was edged to finish then taken away from me. Am I wrong to be upset? Or was it my fault for not finding another way? -Jerrid M

Jerrid M

If it may please the court. I am currently playing a rogue, I started as a gnome, but due to an unfortunate run in with a mind flayer my character had a curse placed that couldn't be removed. The DM ruled that if my character were to die and be reincarnated the curse would disappear so I took poison and got reincarnated as a firbolg. My concern is that I'm now 7 ft tall and several hundred pounds but due to proficiencies and rogue stuff I have a plus 10 to stealth. Have I broken the game? and should I chat with my dm about a class change or something or is it ok because I came by it honestly.

May it please the Paid For and Corrupt Court, I present the Case of the case of the Hasted Bladesinging Wizard. I have been using the Bladesinging Tradition from Tasha’s Cauldron and upon reaching level 6 got in a debate with my DM over Haste against a Dungeon Boss. While using Haste I attempted to use 2 attacks and 2 Cantrips in a single turn, as at 6 Level the BSW gets an Extra Attack feature that lets you REPLACE one of the attacks with a Cantrip every time you take the Attack action. Haste lets you take a separate Attack action and only places a restriction on WEAPON attacks but doesn’t say anything about the number of attacks itself. I specifically avoided using Booming Blade for this but my DM shut it down even though I wasn’t making a weapon attack and was replacing an attack for a spell, nor would he let me treat my hasted attack as Booming Blade so we could settle this later. I don’t see this being broken as I’m the only player that can get Counter Spell so this move is easily shut down by an enemy arcane caster(counter spell/dispel magic). Who is in the right? PS. I call you corrupt for refusing to sentence someone you found guilty as they were a high tier Patron

Resplendent Judges and powerful Bailiff, I submit to you: the case in which God wanted everyone dead. My level 5 party was battling an early game BBEG, in what was supposed to be more of an exposition fight than a real challenge. In it, they had to destroy four totems with 10hp and 10ac in order to make the BBEG vulnerable. The party quickly realized what they would need to do and set about attacking them. What ensued was the worst dice rolling I have ever seen in my life. It was nat 1, 2 crew, 3 cree city, and when they did manage to breech a totem’s paper-thin defenses their damage dice would yield 1s and 2s. I couldn’t feasibly have them knocked out or captured and I saw the TPK written on the wall. I wasn’t ready to kill off these characters in such an inconsequential battle, so I decided to invent some unsatisfying reason for them to escape with their lives. Was I wrong to spare them? Should I have scuttled a large portion of my campaign because Dice God had it out for them? I prostrate myself face down at your feet and await your verdict.

Brad Yaskowitz

Esteemed and Supreme Crit justices as well as the highly present and existent bailiff, I present the case of the bag-mansion exploit. I run a game for a level 14 evil party, and we’ve been playing every week for a year and a half now; the party has recently found an exploit in the bag of holding that I cannot dispute on a shenanigans precedent that I allowed from watching Naddpod: it has been established that people can go in and out of the bag in our game as well. I never thought would be a problem until the wizard opened Mordenkainen’s box. The wizard has begun to cast Magnificent Mansion IN THE BAG during the day so only the ranger and his giant bloodhawk have to actually traverse dangerous places like the Abyss and Acheron, which is often done by just flying past most threats. As per the rules, the bag of holding collapses when it enters another extra-dimensional space, but there is no language about what happens when an extra-dimensional space appears in the bag. It’s clever, and I don’t wanna punish a tactical choice by just taking the bag away, but I feel like only the ranger really gets to experience the threats and intensity of dangerous environments now, I have to do a lot of work to make a LOT of aerial encounters that I’d rather not do, and the other 3 characters just do bits in the mansion, popping out for necessary combat because the Undead patron Warlock doesn’t need to breathe and hangs out in front of the gate to the mansion to alert the other 2 if the ranger calls for help. Is it my fault for following Justice Murphy’s lead and allowing people to enter and exit the bag? Should I try to just take the bag from them? I tried it once and they fully abandoned their mission to kidnap a demon lord so they could hunt their bag down, which tells me they REALLY love it and get a lot of fun out of it. Please advise.

MrMach6

Honorable justices and ok dude Bailiff Jake. I DM a campaign inspired by the Elder Scrolls series. The sorcerer was twin casting haste on the paladin and barbarian during a combat encounter. I was trying to hint at the sorcerer that it wasn't going to be a good idea as only 3 of the enemies were shown but I had another 8 Ogres that still had to show up. The sorcerer was upset that I was telling him to not due so. But, I let him twin cast Haste and he got hit and failed the concentration check had the Barbarian and Paladin lost there next turns and fell that round. The sorcerer was arguing with me that only one of them would lose their turn per the wording of haste. I argued that the wording applied to both targets of the spell per the rules of both Twin spell and Haste. Was I wrong for my interpretation of the RAW? Thank you for your time and great content.

May it please the court, I have one question your honors… Can you feel with mage hand? The scenario… I was running the first session with my new weekly group. We did the standard “everyone meets in a tavern” opening and the bar tender asked our hero’s to go collect the unpaid tab of a wizard who lived in the forest just outside the village. Upon arriving at the wizards tower they made their way to his bedroom only to find that the room had been magically silenced and that there was an orb of magical darkness above the bed. The wizard was using a combination of Silence, Darkness, and Levitate to create an arcane version of a sensory deprivation chamber so he could sleep better, but the party didn’t know this, and wisely approached the sphere with caution. After a few perception checks revealed nothing else of much importance the party realized that someone was going to have to investigate the darkness. At this point the party’s sorcerer asked if she could cast mage hand to feel around within the sphere. We briefly debated if this was something within the spells capabilities, but couldn’t find a straight answer, even after reading the spell card. I ultimately decided to allow it, since I thought it was a fun solution and the spell description doesn’t specifically say you cant feel with mage hand, but after the session, I decided to see if the lower courts (Reddit) had made a ruling on this matter, and they had. According to them mage hand does NOT have the ability to feel. So, I ask you now, was I right to to make this ruling, or have I unintentionally overpowered this cantrip and thus deserve punishment. I will accept the courts ruling either way.

May it please the court and any and all esteemed bailiffs. I am a player in a campaign with some friends, playing an Aasimar College of Eloquence Bard called Asriel. I was taken in for questioning as a routine check to enter the capital city and placed under Zone of Truth. When asked about, and I quote, "Significant events that have happened" regarding a certain character, Asriel wove a half-truth and said, "No, I do not recall anything significant", having judged it to be insignificant to avoid divulging anything. My fellow players loved this, and so did the DM, but I could tell that he wanted the campaign to progress with the authorities knowing what had happened and did not expect for me to skirt the questions. Later, Asriel and the rest of the party were arrested for a misunderstanding and had metal circlets placed on our heads. When a police captain asked us for some kind of bargain, the DM asked, "What would Asriel be thinking as he asks you this?" I replied honestly and said, "Backstabbing him after we get our side of the deal.” I asked to make a saving throw to resist the mind-reading magic, but the DM said, “You can’t, it just works.” Is it wrong to annul my articulation, or is the DM allowed to eschew my eloquence? P.S. No hard feelings, I’m good friends with the DM, but this is a worrying precedent for a character whose focus is weaving words.

May the lovable bailiff/indecisive judge and the remaining crit justices hear my plea. My grievances are not my own no they are the plight of a fellow player our parties ranger. We the players were crossing a dessert and found a mountain cropping and we're considering setting up camp in the shadow of the large out cropping. Our ranger the Dm's GF decides to climb the mountain/rocks to get a lay of the land. What then proceeds is the rest of the 4+ hour session being spent on the rangers climb doing well over 10 rolls until we the party below attempt to scale the mountain to save them. We then need to roll for the slightest movement upwards. My monk has climbing tools including rope and pitons. We reach out friend only to find a intense sand storm that nearing our location. I had fun this session but our ranger was mad and almost rage quit the session. My question is this did the DM require too many skill checks? Or where they just trying to create tension and demonstrate how dangerous his world is? I await your judgement

GREYFOX!!!!!

My Valiant Judges, and Coward Bailiff, I beseech thee as a DM with a problem player, I have playing with the same group of friends for almost 13 years now, and in the current campaign one player has committed himself to playing an antisocial kobold artificer, that only is amenable to a human warlock character and has gone as far as to claim "he's his familiar", he rides on his shoulder, and does whatever the warlock says, he's also openly hostile to other players, this behavior confounds me because he usually makes very interesting and in depth characters but this current ones entire character is built around being a subservient of the warlock, even giving him all his gold he gets from questing and such, but the weirdest part is he planned all this with minimal planning with the warlock himself, with him being surprised with this behavior thinking that the characters were just going to be old friends, please help me, I do not know what to do about this, the warlock player has decided to make a new character just to avoid this dynamic causing me to scrap an entire story arc.

May it please the court the wonderful bailiff and whomever listening to the trials. Our party had now needed to infiltrate an underground battle tournament. Tornado tag team style a la pro wrestling. Two of the players (a leonin fighter and a goliath rogue) wanted to take part of it. I did not. My dm then asked me to create 5 npc's to fight with and he would create 5 also to take part of the tournament so i could still play in the tournament. Everything was going great. Our players barely surviving but still managing coming out on top. Until the fighter and the rogue had to face off against my drunk monk warforge named guiness and a high elf cleric. I was told by my dm to not go easy on them from the start i did not. As the battle went on. By the end of it. The rogue was down to 10 health. The fighter had 26. So the dm playing the cleric decided to cast a healing spell on the rogue. Who is our opponent. The whole party became confused to why a cleric would heal the enemy and not her teammate he said that the cleric took an oath that she would heal those who are hurt. I called him out on it saying " you just dont want them to lose even tho you told me not to hold back." He claimed thats not true that all clerics must make that oath. So i asked him then why did she not heal my warforge monk with only 2 hp left and why did she enter a tournament meant for fighting if shes just gonna heal. To his excuse saying because i was playing the warforge and not a living being made of flesh. She did not need to heal me. I called out on the racism against warforges. On my turn I punched the cleric and then surrendered to let the cleric fight the fighter and the rogue alone. Was i in the right to call out on their claims and racisms to warforges or were the cleric's actions justified? Out of game we all had a great time and though it was a hilarious scene so no real life friendship was lost We await your decisions and accept any punishment to be sentenced thank you!

Benwahah

To the esteemed judges of the Crit and bailif judge then bailif again. I am a part of a DM group on Facebook and recently we had a huge debate about creating penalties for nat 1s on an attack role. The left brained DMs seemed to say that it is not a good idea to penalize nat 1s especially having players drop their weapons as that goes against the idea of proficiency and they basically have a 1 in 20 chance of failing like that. The right brains often had intriguing ideas for creating a penalty for a nat 1. Such as a nat 1 roll table where something could happen or something might not. Others had certain things like hurting an ally nearby. Personally, I use a damage threshold where enough nat 1s cause the weapon to be damaged and eventually break if not repaired at a weaponsmith. My question to you is, should there be some sort of thing to happen on a nat 1 aside from sheer embarrassment of rolling so poorly? RAW I believe nothing happens, but is this a rule of cool situation possibly? Love to hear your input!

Ranger Zenith

Welcome to my domain, my honorable Jakelif and the Supreme Court. Straight from the slavic land of Poland I have a case for you to judge. Me the DM, and my 4 players were playing through a dungeon of a demi-lich. After many traps, puzzles and enemies they got to the chamber with the skull of the previously mentioned boss. Our Paladin Tiefling had a vision quest to revive the lich (with a special soul scroll) and destroy him, but our mage decided to cast a True Polymorph on the cursed bone. I asked her to roll an arcana check and she succeeded, transforming it into a Lich, saving the scroll for potential later use. After barerly defeating him I decided the skull transformed into the Lich by True Polymorph after being killed turns back into the skull (Demi-lich) and consumes the soul trapped in the scroll, reviving itself. The party managed to teleport out of there, but was mad at me (except for the druid who didn't care) that I put the lich back to life after they killed him. Should've I let them have their win and said the soul of the Lich has been killed, or did I make the right choice?

May it please the court, and the lowly, respectful bailiff Jake. I have recently played a game where I had set up a boss fight. For the boss fight, I brought in a mutual friend to play the boss character that had 1 legendary action per round. One of my original players thought that legendary actions were only once per day and seemed to get angry that legendary actions were so overpowered. He said, and I am trying to quote as closely as possible, "they took d&d and added a bullshit darksouls mechanic" and it was not like the quest was abusing the use of the legendary actions. Was I wrong to give the guest a legendary action? The guest still burned spell slots during legendary actions and admittedly the boss character had begun to take their health down pretty handily. At the very least, how can I balance this better, because I would like the original party to still live but have a challenge? The guest understood and agreed to this as well.

Dear honorable judges and bailiff, I come to dare and present you with the case of the Necromancer Nerd vs. The Supreme Crit Justices. May it displease the court, I hereby challenge your ruling against the economical Necromancer from the previous court hearings. As a DM, a player, and a human being who has played Necromancy Wizards in the past, you have forsaken this player. Yes. The defendant de-meats children, and this is indeed problematic behavior, but the key to this argument is the Intelligence. Wizards are fun because their class is based on knowing rules. Having a player who knows how to experiment with material components and spells in order to do more damage in combat or thematically acquire a larger undead army... why that is a necromancers entire purpose! Thats why its an INT based class. Necromancers know all the rules of the spells and they unethically find ways to power them up. Additionally, because of the way necromancy works 90% of our spell slots per day go towards raising dead/misc animate spells. My dear judges, I merely ask that this man's bag of holding is returned, and in return he simply stop "gruesomely describing" the de-meating process. Thank you, and I rest my case.

Jack Campau

May it please the court and especially Caldwell for I have committed some Looney Toons shenanigans. In my friends campaign we had a guest player who instead of rolling a character sheet for the session just used a statblock for a clay golem. So the party and the golem were fighting a giant purple worm when an attack does something screwy to our golem player. Out of nowhere the golem gets angry and starts attacking the party too. I ask to do an insight check to see what happened with our golem buddy. Rolling a 22 the only info the DM gives me is......He just looks really angry....now in hindsight yes this is a clue that he is suffering an enrage mechanic, but my Loony Toon brain, a little annoyed that thats what a 22 got me, hung up on the words "looks angry". So being a rune knight with double tool proficiency decided to hold down the clay golem player and carve his face to be a smile instead. This obviously didn't work. So I ask the court, was my interpretation of "He just looks angry" justified or should I be punished for the shenanigan. Was that info for a 22 insight justified or should the DM have thrown us a bone? PS we ultimately all had a blast about the session and laugh at it in hindsight so there is no hard feelings.

garett144

Oh humble bailiff, I beseech thee! May it please the court: a dispute about aerial combat and Feather fall… Our party walked into a trap: we suspected the Big Bad was in a penthouse of a palace, but when we walked into the penthouse, the BBEG mounted on a giant Roc swooped down and grabbed the whole floor of the building and took off into the sky. During the ensuing 3D battle, we got spread out in our elevation, with the spell casters about 30 feet closer to the ground than the Fighter and Barbarian. We managed to kill the Roc, but the BBEG was still alive. Our wizard cast feather fall on us to slow our descent, but then he and the other spell caster were knocked unconscious by the BBEG. Since Feather fall slows the descent to specifically 60 ft per round, and our party was spread out our DM ruled that the non-spellcasters were unable to speed their descent and get to the spellcasters in order to give them health potions. The spell casters ended up failing their death saves (both got Nat-ones!) and died before they floated gently the ground. My questions for the kind and benevolent Justices is: should feather fall have ended once the wizard was fully dead, and/or should the fighter have been able to speed his descent voluntarily? If so, he could have given the Wizard a health potion and then the wizard could cast fly to save the party before they broke their walking sticks on the ground. Our DM is a fellow NADDPOLE as are two of the other party members shout out to Connor, Mark, and Joe) and we are all ok with the result and are on a quest to revive the fallen members, but we have been thinking about this quandary for months. Long live Blasting Grandma, Russ B.

TL:DR New group goes through dungeon, is led to a magic flag, we play with magic flag, dm ends the whole campaign by going into detail the world blowing up and vanishing for 9 months now May it please the Honorable Handsome Bailif Jake and his associates. A few months ago I played the first session that I have ever played before. We were vibing and having a good time in the dungeon our DM threw us into. Lots of exposition and lore dumping later we come upon our first puzzle. Now, while we were trying to solve said puzzle which involved a strange painting in the middle of the room, an urn, and a flag i could hear our DM getting more and more frustrated with us. To be fair, we were bumblefucking quite a bit but no matter what we inspected or touch we couldn't proceed. We were given vague hints like "there's something magical going on in here." I was playing a wizard so I used detect magic and the flag was the only thing giving off a magic vibe so I told my party. This is where it gets weird. After inspecting it and finding nothing wrong with it our barbarian wanted to rip it down. He was met with a harsh "no" from the DM. This was the first time he had spoken in about the hour it took us to fuck with the flag. After a further inquiry into why we shouldn't play with the magic flag he explained that if we touched it we would end the world, and campaign. We thought he was joking so we tore the flag down. He then proceeded to let out a DEEP sigh. And I mean like a DEEP disappointed and frustrated sigh only a father could perform. He proceeds to describe in detail how we had fucked up this world and it was being sucked into oblivion, our campaign ended right then and there and he said goodnight and left. I haven't heard from in 9 months and our group fizzled out. Was he being a bit unfair with us, he seemed pretty frustrated with us bumbling around or is it okay for a new group to stumble around and experiment while we try to see how our group dynamic would be?

Deareth supreme crit justices and slutty bailiff Jake, I just dm’d a session where my players could partake in various competitions and earn prizes based on the difficulty of the challenge. However, I threw in a hard difficulty that was basically going to wreck anyone who choose it no matter what as they are fairly low-leveled (about level 3). However, one of my players just blindly committed to fighting the hard difficulty, which was a sword duel with what will be their first antagonist (mithril guard from the kings army cr7) and basically ended up downing my player in the second round and because he’s evil and wants my player to die, he stabbed him through the stomach, taking two death saving throws. After he stabbed my player in the stomach I ended the session, leaving them on this cliff hanger, so now this player is incredibly stressed that his character who he just created 2 sessions ago is about to get yeeted from life because I didn’t scale each difficulty to their level. Was I wrong for doing this and presenting an option that I knew was going to absolutely beef my pc babies, or did my player just make a rash decision and face the consequences of his actions?

To the most distinguished Supreme Crit Justices, and, like, Jake, or whatever; may it please the court. Truthfully, the only one I must accuse this painful day is myself. I was DM’ing the second (third) session of my campaign with my younger brother, my best friend, and my girlfriend. All 3 are super amateur, but my girlfriend’s really been getting into it since I made her a fan of the pod! Here’s the deal. My girlfriend plays a mildly homebrewed “Fathomless” Warlock with a wicked cool demon tentacle monster for a Patron. I had a whole little scripted flashback sequence my girlfriend happened into by rolling really well, and after the flashback, she Nat 1’d her way into a really dope “invasion” by the Patron into the players’ current encounter. Four giant tentacles shot up from underwater, cool stuff. But there’s a problem— My girlfriend’s character’s “true nature” is kind of a cool secret and a good opportunity for her to improve in her roleplay! When I asked the other two players to make a check to see if they could figure out what the hell was up with the tentacles, they *BOTH* crit. I gave them a cool vague little tidbit about the tentacles having an owner and not originating on this plane, but I felt like I was robbing them of the magical super reveal that should accompany TWO SIMULTANEOUS nat 20’s. My question is this: Was i wrong to not be way more specific and potentially spoil a big part of my girlfriend’s character, backstory, and arc? Or was I wrong to prompt the roll in the first place? I was made very anxious in the moment and erred on the side of what I thought was caution, but now I’m having second thoughts. I await your judgement, be it wrathful or lenient, for I know it will nonetheless be just. Thanks!

May it please the court. I was in a campaign where I was Co dming because the group was so large (8 people). I was original DM and brought the 2nd in. I ran story, he ran combat. We were fighting on an island surrounded by lava. one Druid went to cast reverse gravity while the other Druid prepared gust of wind to blow all the skeletons into the lava once in air. The Co dm used counterspell on reverse gravity which made PCs very despondent. I looked over at the monster stat sheet and saw that the BBEG didn't have a high enough level slot to instantly counter. It should've been a roll off. I whispered to Co-Dm that the druid should roll for it and he was firm that it was counterspelled end of story. To this day my group is still very upset it and it kills me to know that they were jipped the chance to roll. Should I have stood up for the players and made the other DM be true to the stat block and made it a rolloff? Was I in the wrong for staying quiet? I humbly await judgment.

Arwyn Robinson

Additional information in case Judge Axford desires it: The party was level 5, so the wizard had just gotten third level spells. I set the DCs at 30/28/26 for first, second, or third level spell slot usage, and if he "consumed" the slot, he lost that spell slot for 4d6 days; the wizard ended up using a third level slot and losing it for 15 days, with a +8 to arcana. The cleric liked his current character, but wouldn't be opposed to rolling up a new one. The wizard and cleric both really enjoyed the session and the fallout, and the rogue enjoyed the RP of the moment, but wasn't a fan of me not going by the book, though he was very kind about letting me know his grievance, so if you rule in my favor, please go easy on him

Dear beautiful baliff and juicy justices, In my campaign I (a female identified bi player) play a tabaxi women (a shadow sorceress named Juniper Jet) who's married to a beautiful human lady. I briefly talked about it with my DM, and wrote it in my character notes pre game that I sent to him (two pages, double spaced and bulletted for easy reading). During a flashback, my dm described a scene with me and my wife, but said she was a tabaxi. I didn't correct him during to keep up the flow of the game but asked him about it afterwords. He essentially said "Whoops. Well I can't really see a tabaxi maried to a human and I must have missed it in your notes, so let's just make her a tabaxi." I was a little surprised but agreed cause I thought it was no big deal, but the more I think about it the more I feel he should have worked with me a little more on it because that was an important part of my backstory that was kinda brushed under the rug. Was I correct in kinda letting is slide? Should I have said something more? Did I make my character notes to long making things easy to miss? Please help me with this heartfelt quandary.

Kaylie Elise

May it please the most honorable bailiff Jake and the other guys, I offer up the case of Humphrey the Rouge. Humphrey was very problematic and stole from everyone including the other pcs. While the party was undercover in a monster bar, Humphrey, on a drunken bender threw himself into the arms of a few vampires as the session wrapped up. Afterwards he dm’d me saying he was bored and quitting the campaign and that I could do what ever I wanted to Humphrey. Next session the party fought and won but had to put Humphrey down since he became a vampire. 2 weeks later Humphrey changed his mind and wanted back in to the dnd sessions. I said ok but make a new character, Humphrey is dead. He preceded to blow up at me upset that I would kill his character without telling him or any heads up. Now, my most honorable jury, was I in the wrong for killing off Humphrey and making him create a new character? ( I have many side stories of Humphrey if you would like that I can turn into additional case/cases)

May it please the court and the now demoted bailiff, I present the case of the Shocking Grasp Revivify I was DMing a campaign where our PCs were fighting some ghosts - I narrated our cleric getting killed by a ghost reaching in and stopping his heart, and he failed his death saves and permenantly died. The Wizard in the party asked, since the cleric had died due to his heart stopping, if he could use shocking grasp in order to attempt to restart the cleric's heart. I thought this was neat, and ruled that he had to use an actual spell slot, since shocking grasp is a cantrip, and roll an arcana or medicine check in order to make it work, with a higher level spell slot allowing for a lower DC, and that he could "consume" a spell slot, permenantly losing it for a while, in order to roll with advantage. He made the check, revived the cleric, and they had a really great RP moment since they both worship the same diety, who I had thank the wizard in a vision during the revive. Later, in a private DM, the third party member, our rogue, respectfully messaged me and said that he didn't like my ruling, since it wasn't RAW and made death and stakes in our campaign feel cheap. I personally thought that the wizard used my narration well, and obviously this wouldn't work if someone was being beheaded. Was I in the right to go with rule of cool in this moment, or should I have stuck to RAW and let my cleric die? I await the judgement of the court

Dear Right Honorable Judges Emily, Murph and, Caldwell and Baliff/sometimes Judge Jake. Recently my group had to fight a horde of Zombies while trying to find the Night Hag controlling them. I told the group that towns folk were among them and any AOE spell they use would also hit a d20 worth of townsfolk but, if they saved them all they would get a special bonus. To which my sorcerer cried that's stupid and bull shit and no one looked happy. I changed it a little but at the end of the fight about a dozen villagers were killed and therefore did not receive their bonus. They were not happy. What could I have done better? Made me feel like I failed as a DM

May it displease the court as much as it displeases me! My little sister has started DM’ing over the last year and now has 3 weekly campaigns running at the same time, with mostly new players who she has introduced to the game. Her crime you might ask? She doesn’t think she is a good DM! This dungeon queen, who has kept these campaigns running through lockdowns, exams, terrible wifi, and players not learning their bloody character sheets thinks she is a bad DM! The only time she took a week off was after wisdom tooth SURGERY when she physically could not speak. She has even let her maniac players choose the kind of world they wanted to play in and let one group go to Hogwarts and another have a star trek campaign. Hear my plea and judge her for the most heinous crime of undervaluing her sick DM skills. If found guilty, may the court punish her harshly. Like giving her a medal for every session she’s run (she would surely drown under them) or having her players kiss her boots and cry “praise to the dungeon mummy” until she appreciates how great she is.

To whomsoever is on the judges bench this week, and the sexy bailiff, I humbly throw myself at the mercy of the court. I recently got my nephews (5,8, and 10, respectively) into dnd, and tried my first time DMing as well. We used the starter set and characters and they were super into it from jump. Unfortunately, I did not anticipate how little patience I had, when trying to get them to focus. Whether it was the constant influx of memes, the running around for snacks, and the infighting...I admit I became abit flustered. For context, what should have been 15m into the campaign took us literally 2 hours. During a stealth encounter gone horrible wrong, the 10y old wizard drops, the 8y old cleric is struggling, and the 5y old decides to use the only magic item I gave him... a beaded necklace of 3 3rd level fireball spells. So I tpk'd the party. After much crying, and talks of how the game was boring... I pulled the boys back and had the cleric role a d20. On a save, I took the party back 5m before the stealth encounter and said, "your deity has given you foresight of things to come, a chance to be better prepared for the fight at hand", and the game continued. Did I allow my irritation to rub off on children a bit too much, or did I sow the groundwork that actions have consequences, and that sometimes failing is ok as long as its forward? P.s. they built mini's on heroforge and are constantly asking to start a new campaign.

Nathaniel Thomas

May it please the court, and the godlike being that is the bailiff: I present the case of the grapple that nearly ended a game. For a little backstory, my group of level 2 characters were ambushed by a CR 8 Ice Troll from a random encounter. In the fight, three of the 6 characters died, including my Firbolg Genie-lock, and a poor Kobold rogue who was one shot as soon as he entered the fight after getting to the session late. I rolled up a Rune Knight fighter who uses unarmed strikes and grapples. With my 20 strength and Expertise, since we are now level 5, I have a +11 to athletics and advantage when I am enlarged. A few sessions after the Ice Troll incident, we get a quest to go get the ring that my genie-lock used as a spell casting focus/ home back from the Ice Troll. When we got there, the Ice Troll was not there so we just got the ring and decided to wait and ambush it. When it got there, I had already enlarged myself. I then used my attack action to punch it and shove it prone, then my bonus action to grapple it, meaning that it could not stand up until it beat my athletics check. As soon as that happened, my DM said “fine, we’re done”, then ended the session. We argued that we should have gotten a chance to just whomp the troll, which led to an argument that my character was too OP and that I was ruining the fun. Am I in the wrong for playing a suboptimal build for a niche utility role? Or is my DM a dingus? I humbly await your decision.

Liam Jenkins

Long time listener, first time caller My dearest Bailiff Jacob and most honorable judges, I bring an old case before you. It might be beyond the statue of limitations, but we shall see. It was my first game DMing and the, now I know them to be problem, players were a little rambunctious. This was a pirate adventure with the party in-charge of a ship and traveling to a volcanic island to meet with an ancient gold dragon of legend. They had found a stowaway in the bottom of their ship from a recent pirate attack and manage to capture and tie him up in the bottom deck where the gunpowder was stored for the cannons. Our fire genasi sorceress with a pension for burning decided to interrogate him to see if he had any information. He did not and I had really on planned for him to be killed and forced to join the crew. Our dear sorceress decided she was going to castrate him with flames. I warned her that she was on the bottom deck and she said she knew. I had her make a check to control the fire from lighting any gunpowder and Dice Christ abandoned her that day as she rolled a Nat 1. The entrie gunpowder supply lit and, despite me giving her a few rounds to try and escape, she refused. The entire ship blew up, killing most of the crew and half of the party, including her, dealing somewhere in the range of 50d6 fire damage to the lvl 3 characters. This effectively ended the campaign after 3 sessions, as the few characters that were left were stranded on a deserted island and I didn't want to do some railroad DM magic and have a wizard save them or something stupid. The player claimed BS and that the fact that she used a "Control Fire" cantrip meant that she should have had complete control of the spell and the flames. I said that gunpowder, as a powder, has a natural tendency to coat an area is it regularly moved around in. My desire for arbitration rests on this question: was I in the right on my call and was I too harsh with the consequences?

To the honorable justices, and bailiff Jake. I bring before you the single greatest fight I have had with my party of 4 years. My high level players has invaded hell, and managed to get ahold of a tank (modified infernal vehicle from descent) one of the party is a history nerd and asked one kind of tank it was, so I told him it looked like a panzer, because nazi tanks go to hell. They proceeded to use the tank to blast through an army of demons to reach the layer of demogorgon, and I told them the terrain was sloped and rough for them to bring the tank inside the cave. My players began to ask very specific terrain questions about the exact elevation and how rough it was and argue that since this was a panzer, it should be able to make it inside. I told him no. The party then tried everything to bring the tank inside, to include 6 levitate spells, fly, 2 floating disks and even trying to carry it with a Goliath with 29 strength. Eventually I told them the demon army was coming behind them and they needed to either get a move on or fight. Was I wrong to stop the party from bringing a tank to kill demogorgon?

Shawn Magill

If it may please the court, I have a dilemma that has haunted me since the day it happened. I DM for a small group where one player is the DM for our home game (we’ll call him Mark), and as a DM I like to run the game very loose and silly. When my players began joking about bringing the communist manifesto to my homebrew world, I went along with it, thinking it could be fun to see how they handled the political situations of each small country. However, I was caught totally unprepared when Mark, after the party took down a corrupt mayor, asked me if he could buy a gymnasium floor’s worth of grain, hire about twelve carts worth of workers, and start running an ale company out of the back of the party to destabilize the value of gold to the point where it would cause an economic collapse. I kept questioning how this would even work as the rest of the group was an adventuring party and not an ale company, and he kept insisting this was the most economic way to bring the communist manifesto as the party wanted to do. I ended up compromising and forcing him to keep track of all the stats for this endeavor on his own, which ended up being too much work and he completely swapped that character out for a more simple one the party could keep adventuring with. Was I right to make him keep track of the economics of my own world? Should I have simply veto’d this plan, or would that have ruined his fun as someone who never gets to be a player? Many thanks!

May it please the court: I bring you the case of the Players v. George R.R. DM The DM of a new campaign has chosen to emulate George R.R. Martin by throwing our characters into chaotic, random encounters at the start and end of our sessions to add in an element of realism. Examples include: throwing characters off of horses with the potential for them to snap their necks, muggings which can end with the thief slitting a throat from behind, and introducing mechanics relating to injuries sustained in battle (broken legs, concussions, etc.) Only 2/6 of the original characters remain by our fourth session of a low-level low-magic campaign. Is this insanity? Should DND be played in a hyper-realistic setting, or is this craven bastard hiding behind uncontrollable circumstances outside of normal play?

Good LORD what damage dice to you let these players USE?! That’s gotta be like 1500d6 lmaoooo

Noah James Perito

May it please the court and any cats within earshot, I come to you with a case in which I was not a participant, but a witness. I'm a player in a game with a ranged Rogue, specifically one who uses Cunning Action Hide a la Deadeye to get advantage and Sneak Attack via Unseen Attacker. Tensions piqued in last week's session when the DM denied him advantage, despite his 30+ Stealth roll, because he was shooting from behind the same hedge he had already fired from, and "the Gnolls were keeping an eye on it". This dispute ended the session a half an hour earlier than we usually would. Who was in the wrong here? Should the DM gave honored the high Stealth roll and given him advantage? Or should shooting from the same place twice nullify that?

Andrew PG Lusk

Didn’t you get promoted?

Michael Lawton

Honorable justices and I guess jake too. I am the dm for my friends and I’m worried I was too harsh. One of my players is a Dragonborn potion maker, some quests are focused on them finding new potions or ingredients, and the most recent potion called for a white dragon scale. I thought it would lead to a future quest but instead my player asked if they could remove one of their own scales. I thought this was clever and said yes with a successful con save since you’re effectively ripping off your skin. The player then asked if they could rip of their own scales more often in order to sell them… I said it would cause a decrease in AC if too many scales were removed without giving them time to grow back… my player seemed bummed and I’m worried I ruined their fun. Should I let my PC rip off their scales??

Cas Marie

May it please the esteemed Bailiff and the two honourable judges. I was in my first online campaign with strangers and they were all terrified of combat. Every forthcoming combat encounter started with at least an hour and a half of trying to get away from the combat or prep some shenanigans to defeat them without fighting. But we'd end up in the fight every time, and it was normal, even easy due to some DM homebrew rules (action and bonus action spells are allowed in the same turn, and we have an alchemist artificer. That's insane healing. We were SO fine). It wasn't the characters being nervous types, it was the players. So, I had my character change slightly in response to this, and be a bit more wild and push to just get into the fray and this caused some tension between myself and my teammates and even the DM. I recognised it was incongruent playstyles and stepped out, but was I wrong to try and push their boundaries? When we were SO fine.

I Love Not Finishing My Sentences

May it please both Justice and Bailiff alike, This case comes from a campaign I ran a few years ago, but it’s continued to bother me since then. I was DMing for a party that was traveling through a bullywug and naga infested swamp, and the druid and bard decided to scout ahead. The druid wildshaped into a snake, while the bard polymirphed themselves into a frog, with the intent of the snake to carry the frog in its mouth. However, I stated that because polymorph changes your intelligence and wisdom into the animal’s, the frog bard would then freak the fuck out because it’s in the jaws of a snake. The table erupted in protests, and I eventually allowed it, but it bothers me to this day. Should I have let the bard frog remain in the jaws of its natural predator?

May it please the court and our Honorable Judges and the tad bit stinky Bailiff Jake. I present a Players Vs Players case. Our party was fighting some wolves in cave after the wolves killed the man sleeping here. It came down to the last wolf and one of our party members decided to try to adopt the wolf. After a pretty good animal handling check the wolf stopped being aggressive. The wolf then laid with its fallen wolves and the Dm explained that this was its family and pack and it won’t come with us. This then lead to a 2 player vs player argument about the social aspects and behavior of wolves, noting they don’t hold grudges, and that lasted longer than it’s should. The Dm said we murdered its family there’s no way it’d come with us and 2 people agreed and the others refused and wanted the wolf to come. This then lead to tension through the session about the wolf and if we should go back to get it. Note the Dm said after he doesn’t want the wolf in the party. Should the wolf have come with us or not. P.S Olaf dies in frozen 2. Thank u

Playing in a campaign as a bard and the only other healer on the team is a cleric. We both have healing word and cure wounds yet, without me realizing it, by the time we reached level 5 I was the only one that cast healing spells. I talked to the cleric and asked if they wouldn't mind splitting the load and was told "clerics are dps and bards are supports. It makes way more sense for me not to waste my spells." We got into a battle where, with my +0 mod to constitution saving throws (DC 13), I remained paralyzed for 3 full turns. In the meantime, two of our party mates started doing death saving throws, one having two fails before I even got to my turn to try and save from paralysis. Literally on the turn before one guy would have done, potentially his last death saving throw, the cleric uses healing word. The guy he healed literally said the words "oh, I didn't know clerics have heal." Am I wrong to be in FULL disagreement with the cleric? Whether or not clerics are sole healers is one thing but to wait until the third session on level 5 to cast first heal spell in a campaign that started at level 1 seems insane to me.

Anthony Abreu

May it please the court and whatever beautiful person is currently the bailiff. I wish to file an appeal against the ruling on heat metal against Warforged. It clearly states in the spell that you can target an object, not a being. Therefore the previous ruling in favor of the DM in the case of the Warforged vs Heat Metal be struck from the record, the punishment reversed and compensation be awarded to the player.

Joseph Goldstein

May it please the handsome supreme crit justices and the stunning bailiff, I have a case of players not understanding the alignment system. My players in a Ghost of Saltmarsh campaign had captured some corrupt guards, and they were being questioned and threatened. These guards has interrupted a massive festival planned by the sorcerer. The sorcerer, chaotic neutral draconic bloodline human, said he would let go only the person that gave him information. One answered, and I asked the sorcerer if he was really going to kill two of them. He said no, then proceeded to use a fireball on all three. The survived, and one of the other players was aghast, as was I, frankly. However, it gets worse. He then fireballed them again to kill them. Luckily, the artificer had revivify. I immediately ordered an alignment change to Neutral Evil, and the player tried to make an argument that his character was stressed out by the stress of the festival and was angered these guards had ruined it. This “argument” really doesn’t go over well when the council that helped him organize it, and then had him arrested for murder, does not randomly murder people. Was I in the wrong for arresting him and changing his alignment after he interrogated and then double fireballed captive prisoners?

Alexander Mullarkey

If it will please the court and the mighty bailef. I was playing in my first ever 5e campaign as a high elf warlock with a demon packed. On our second long rest of our game my dm stole my tome while i was sleeping. I rolled with disadvantage and failed the check. I argued that i would do the roll flat since i tranced and not slept. He was not having and saying that elves slept like in 3.5. Then when i tried to get the tome back i blew up half the inn when i tried to get another tome. Thank you for your time and cant wait to see yall in savannah.

Will Taylor

guten morning and may it intrigue the court as a whole, i think i robbed my friends of a satisfying mystery to solve. i dm an unsleeping-city esque campaign set in alternate 2020 vegas. there is a mechanic where people who call vegas their home essentially have a perception filter applied to the BBEGs, causing them to think the BBEGs have been in vegas forever. visitors can easy see that they’ve only been there 6 months. my party is split 2/2 with 2 vegas residents and 2 visitors. when it came to ask about these BBEGs, i asked the visitors to make insight checks into their party members. they didn’t roll super well, but i was so excited to reveal the gimmick that i gave them the info anyway. my question is, should i have tried to implement some self control and let them solve the mystery, or should i calm the fuck down and just have fun playing the game? love you all and love your gameplay❤️

Kal. Just Kal.

May please the court, i throw myself on your spikes of judgement for i have crimed against a player My group was running a game within the world of Dresden Files. One of my players was a paladin who was skinned to be a Knight of the Cross with a holy sword. Without giving anything about that away i will say that in the lore, these holy swords are often overlooked by most except when unsheathed. And a wielder loses the sword, only when they chose to relinquish the sword. Now my crime stems from one of my players, a rogue coming up with a long term plan to steal the holy sword. Since this was a short campaign of only 5 games i said that sounds fine. When the situation came up that the paladin was asked, by their spouse (i.e. me the GM) to not have the sword for one day, the player reluctantly went with it to see where I was going. Whilst away the rogue steals it, but i have it taken back by the main character of the Dresden Files story, Harry Dresden, so it will be “put back” into the published story My players (all but the rogue) hated i did that. So please, i prostrate myself at your tall Bench, seeking judgment

Armadon the only

Dear honerable judges and extremely well-dressed balif. May it please the court. A few weeks back I had a TPK for the first time in my DM'ing career. The party of 3 were going against a CR12 Everlasting Giant when they were only lvl 4. I intended to kill them for narrative reasons and after their deaths they were sent to Shadowfell to fight their way back to the material plane. However, everyone was really bummed they died. Could I have found a different way to send then to Shadowfell & introduce the BBEG or was I just hellbent on doing a TPK because it's fun to win?

CallMeButters

Dear esteemed judges and higher esteemed baliff, I'm a DM, and I did a session with my players using the puzzle Murph used with the chest and candle. After a little deliberation, one of my players, a dragonborn, peed on the candle then opened the chest. I flavored it as a urine elemental that emerged, just used the water elemental stats. The player who peed on it claimed since it was his pee, the elemental should be able to be persuaded by him to become his servant. The player then became angry when I told him that's not how the puzzle works, and you wouldn't give someone else the same benefit had they blown on it or something. The other players then mercilessly slaughtered the urine elemental and downed the dragonborn since he spent the whole fight standing next to the elemental defending it with everything he had. The elemental died in the end, but I still feel like maybe I could've come up with something that allowed him his own pee buddy, even if it was just temporary. Was I in the wrong?

Taylor Green

If it may please the court, the fantastic judges, and amazing bailiff, i have a case of imprisonment and tuning forks. Specifically, the ninth level spell. The main characters here are Alaynia, the wizard npc, Quinoa, the wizard, Dal, the rouge and Bob and Bobette, a husband/wife duo who live in a comfortable 3 bedroom within a tuning fork. Quinoa was somewhat rude to Alaynia after they met, as she has built up the wizards greatness in her head. As a show of power, Alaynia cast imprisonment on Quinoa, and trapped her in a maze. After a little bit, she transported into the maze, and in another show of power (and mostly for lols) summoned bob out of a tuning fork. Eventually, Quinoa begrudgingly apologizes, and Alaynia gives the part a quest in the Faewild. Upon arival, the party finds the various traps of the Faewild, and becomes angry that Alaynia did not tell them more. At this point, Dal reveals that he stole the tuning fork, and summons Bob and Bobette. They don’t have any further information, and the party begins plotting revenge. Out of game, they were upset that I didn’t give the party more information. Should I have told them more, even though they insulted and stole from my NPC?

May it please our honorable justices and long suffering bailiff: We had a problem player who, instead of ever strategizing, would simply walk into whatever encounter we were going into because that's "what my character would do". After 5 or 6 times, my PC/myself got sick of it and after contested strength rolls, held his PC down and quiet until he agreed to actually follow the party's plan to sneak up on a group of cultists. The player became visibly upset and told me "it would be nice to actually be able to control my character" and after this session left the group permanently. Was I wrong to handle this in game the way I did? Or was he in the wrong for essentially hijacking the group and forcing us to chase after him into danger constantly? The rest of the play group seemed to be on my side but sometimes I need to get checked.

Dear most high dungeon court and Jake, Recently, I've been working with a kids after-school program and one of the games we've been playing is dnd. The kids have loved playing it and got super invested in their characters, but ran into a bit of a snafu in a recent campaign. The party was doing an underwater search mission in an old abandoned shipwreck in a local haunted ship for an eccentric historian for 400 gold, 100 for each of them. The youngest player Liam, who was 8, was doing some reckless stuff after repeated warnings to be careful. Eventually as a bit of a punishment, I had a room he was in start collapsing and made him do an easy strength check to scare him. Being a barbarian, I thought it would be no problem. He rolled a nat 1. The kid started crying realizing what it could mean, so i of course gave him advantage. Another nat 1, and more tears as he started panicking. Luckily, an older kid offered to have his character help out. I shit you not, 3rd nat 1 in a row. I tell the older kid he csn roll with advantage, but he also panicks and says he doesn't want anything to happen to his character, and all the other kids were afraid to help, so liams character died. He was undoubtedly upset, and visibly didn't want to play again the next day. Upon finishing the quest, the mayor argued he should only have to give the kids 300 gold since only 3 of them completed the quest, while the kids argued they should still get the 400 since they lost a friend who tried to help.  The mayor eventually agreed, but I still feel I went to easy on them by giving them the extra 100 gold, especially after the specific wording of how he said he would pay them earlier. Was I too easy on them?

Michael

May it please the Court and our illustrious Bailiff, I DM a game for 6 friends who are all couples on a biweekly basis and we usually have a lot of fun. One of our Monks, who we'll call Jeff, consistently fails to understand his character sheet, by not knowing what to add to skill checks or saving throws or what he can do to attack, and always replies to "What's your Armor Class?" Or "What's the roll to hit?" With answers such as "100", or "2,000" every time and then sits and waits for me to continue. It was funny the first time, but after 6 months of playing it's grown to a real nuisance. (Please note, I had assigned my good friend at the table to help him learn his sheet during session and I worked with him so we'd go over his sheet at work when we had down time) My group and I had a private conversation without him (and his wife) and due to it being awkward and annoying with slowing the game down, we agreed that the best course of action is to kick him out. Unfortunately, "Jeff's" wife was in our group and out of solidarity she quit, too. Now my friends are a little upset that we lost our Healer but I thought that they'd realize this was a direct consequence of this action. Was I in the wrong? Should I have given "Jeff" more tutelage outside of the game? I humbly await for your judgement.

Aryn Santrock

May it please the court, especially the wonderful bailiff, may I present the case of DM v. OP Feat Loving Aarakocra. I DM for a half homebrew half module game where one of the characters is an aarakocra open hand monk. At level 8 he told me he wanted to take the lucky feat. I had just given all of them access to the Tasha's additional features, since like gestalt characters, they get a bunch of cool shit but the same number of actions to do them. However, I thought Lucky was too far and told him no. I've learned my lesson for aarakocra and won't be allowing them in future games (run for 2 total and they're way too OP), but should I have said yes to the player? I don't want to tell him his fun is wrong, it's an OP feat so I just ruled it out for everyone after I got asked, but I feel bad for saying no, since I told him no and then ruled it out instead of the other way around. Should I have said yes and allowed the OP feat to make sure the player was having fun? I accept any punishment deemed necessary.

JesterTheCleric

Humble bailiff and judge perfections, may it please the court. I was running a wuxia style campaign with some work friends and after some friends of theirs had been captured and taken to the Shadowlands, they followed to help. The kidnapper was a martial master who just won the biggest tournament and was currently corrupted by the chaos blot, so assuredly very powerful. They rolled well and were able to tell he was level 20 (they were all level 3) When attempting to reduce their friends there were many non-combat chances for them to save them without fighting the master. Even when they started fighting him I had him use legendary actions to react and catch all their attacks, showing he was no match. But two PCs claimed their intelligence was so low they were too stupid to know the danger and continued to fight, wiping the whole party. Should I have done something different or would you agree that even low intellegine creatures are aware of danger? I accept your verdict

Secret Grandpa

To the honorable justices of the crit and noble dungeon bailiff Jake. I am here to tell you the story of Nub, the pigeon Kenku, wild magic sorceror and her untimely demise. The party were negotiating with an arcanoloth who was squeezing them for magic items as a bribe to let them get passed in a dungeon. Of course, the party refused, fireballs happened and a nat 1 on a death saving throw killed our poor pigeon sorceror. My problem is, our artificer forgot she had an extra spell she could have prepared and didn't stock revivify. I ruled that Nub was dead and there was no going back. Am I a cruel DM? Should I have assumed that the artificer would have stocked revivify if she had noticed she had the option to? I feel extremely guilty. I submit myself to your ruling.

Maximilien Bianchi

Okay Bailiff and Honorable Crit Justices, may it please the court… I’m running a new campaign and one of my players is frustrated with the lack of spell slots warlocks get, and he stated last session “maybe I should multiclass into sorcerer” to which I responded “sure but there’d have to be a big story moment or some deep RP to make that happen” which he responded with “I should just be able to do that, the power was in me all along” Am I wrong to think multiclassing should come from story driven moments and not given out of the blue? I humbly accept death if Justice Axford rules me to be an unfit DM

Lakeboss

May it please the court and catch the eye of the venerable Bailiff Jake. Our party is currently running a campaign in a world where magic users aren’t particularly common (or, as we have recently found out, welcome). We quickly tired of rolling (and generally failing) stealth and sleight of hand checks to cast inconspicuously in public so we’ve been getting creative. Our newest idea is to cast spells discreetly via the Message cantrip - the wizard gives the bard a secret hand signal, the bard (120ft away) casts Message to the wizard, allowing him to then speak the verbal component of his spell without being heard by those around him. From our perspective, this would AT LEAST give the caster advantage on any stealth check to hide the casting, at most it would make a V or V/M spell virtually imperceptible. Our DM ruled against the idea at the time, which we of course respected in-game because we’re not assholes, but that doesn’t mean we think he’s right. Was our DM wrong to flat-out ban this creative and frankly ingenious bit of magical fuckery? Or should we back off and stop trying to find ways around this cool aspect of the world he has lovingly created for us?

It it may please the Court and tickle the bailiff: I joined a 3.5 D&D campaign with a friend group that had already played a few sessions, so my character started at level 3 or 4. I worked with my DM to make a traveling bard who would join the rest of them. In my first session, they asked me to introduce my character and say where I was coming from, and I mentioned that I had just come from a concert hall. The DM said those didn’t exist in this world. I said it didn’t have to be a big one, but they said a concert wouldn’t be time period appropriate. I argued that if magic existed in the universe, it would be easy enough to put 40 chairs in the same room, but I was overruled. Since it was 3.5, my character already had something like a +12 to lute performance checks. I went along with what they said as to not be a stick in the mud immediately with a new group. Was I wrong for wanting my bard to play in front of an audience? Awaiting whatever justice the Court sees fit - Jeffery

Zitronay

Distinguished Judges and Humble Bailiff: May it Please the Court. Presenting the case of the Pythagorean Precendent. I have three issues that have recently compounded in my D&D game. Issue 1: I have begun DMing in person again with my friends! It has been so fun, but I have run into an obstacle when it comes to the concept of movement. I run a lot of movement heavy encounters (most recent were a PvP museum heist and an escape from a giant SandWyrm.) With movement what we do now in person with a battlemat, is have every box be 5 feet, moving left/right, up/down, or diagonally. This brings us to issue 2: I am a high school Geometry teacher. I spend so much time hammering into my students that the diagonal of a square is not the same length as the sides, and now my players are ignoring this basic Geometric fact. For a 5 foot box, the diagonal length would be just over 7 feet. I mentioned this to my players, who said it was confusing and I should just be chill. Here is issue 3: I have no chill. Should we just "rule of cool" it despite my frustration with the accuracy? This would mean that moving 6 squares, instead of being a 30ft movement, would actually allow the player to travel over 42 feet if they did it diagonally. Would I be right to make them count out more of their movement to move diagonally? Or should I just cool my jets and turn off the geometry teacher brain for a 3 hour session? Thank you! Adrienne

Adrienne C

May it please the court, with this very crunchy questions. I've started playing with an already established group, and I noticed that a lot of them roll their attack and damage at the same time. When I asked about it the response was that it is a more efficient way of rolling. No one in the group has asked me to do the same, but what is the courts opinion? Should I conform since I'm new to this group of mostly strangers? Or should I stay the course since I prefer the suspense of rolling to hit then follow up with rolling damage?

MJMM

To whom it may concern, and the honorable bailiff Sir Jake Im a newer DM and I was running a game in which the heroes have to travel across the land to defeat the BBEG and all is going well except one of my players always seems like he doesn't care or that he's bored but the other pcs are having a blast and he tells me he loves the campaign and playing but as soon as we start play he shifts into this mode where he doesn't talk and he doesn't contribute anything even when I go out of my way to give him story arcs but he just acts like he doesn't care. Am I making the campaign to boring or does he just not care?

May it please the court, This is actually me turning myself in for something I believe was unjust of me. A while back I was dming a casual high level oneshot for a group of friends. The players all had powerful magical items and one had the Nine Lives Cleaver, a sword that on a nat 20, the target must make a con save or be fully dead. As a joke during some rp, the character with said magical item said that they bonked another character over the head with the sword, and as a joke I told them to make and attack roll. They rolled a nat 20, and the person who got bonked made a con saving throw which they failed. I told them that it was ok and that they didn’t have to be dead because it was a joke, but the rest of the table was committed to the bit and the character stayed dead despite my protesting. They told me that it was ok and since it was only a oneshot that didn’t care, but I’ve never stopped feeling guilty about it. Was I in the wrong or was it just a funny joke that went a bit too far?

Abby Reeves

Can a Were-shark fart? If it pleases the court, but displeases the lowly bailiff, During quarantine I started DMing for my 4 and 7 year old sons. During a session my 4 year old’s Wereshark, named Sharkbait, was attempting to sneak behind some goblins, but after failing his stealth check I said he farted and alerted the goblins. My 4 year old retorted that sharks can’t fart, I said that he could since he’s a wereshark with human like legs, he would have a human like butthole. My 7 year old after recently learning about sharks, came to his brothers defense saying that since his character had a shark tail he would have a cloaca and anal fin and his farts would be silent. So which is it, does a wereshark have a human like butthole or a shark cloaca? Also would this ruling extend to other were-beast?

May it please the court, and whomever it serves. I present the case of the arch devil v the goats. In a previous session my players went to the Nine Hells where they struck a deal with an archdevil to get immunity to hellfire in exchange for the archdevil to get their souls if they ever die in the Nine Hells. Flash forward to the recent session where a crazed magical devil polymorphed all but one of them into goats. The cleric, the only non-goat member, then cast firestorm to injure the goat players enough that they revert back to normal. I ask, does this fall under the realm of death in the Nine Hells and would they get their souls taken? They technically had taken more damage than their max hp as goats, so the goats theoretically died. I await your swift and righteous judgement.

Nicolas P.

May it tickle the court, my friend started a campaign recently and we all started at level 1 as 10 year old versions of our characters before we flash forward 10 years and 4 levels. It was an awesome idea and really made the campaign start off amazingly. The only problem is one of the players was incredibly slow to make their character. They didn't even give the DM their character sheet until an hour into the first session. After that we had 2 weeks to level our characters to level 5 and discuss with the DM what our characters did during the time skip. Our friend gave the DM literally nothing until the day of the session meaning he had nothing to work with so that character didn't have very much to say or do in the session. My DM is venting to me since I was the previous DM and had similar troubles with the player in question. We are curious if it would be reasonable to kick him from the group, he doesn't seem troubled by the lack interaction his character gets but it's frustrating to the DM. What should we do? We await your verdict. Eric U.

May it please the court, and well-endowed bailiff Jake and/or Emily (I have lost track) I play in a long time campaign and have recently been playing a new character since my previous one sacrificed himself to allow his patron to take over his body for a 1v1 Kaiju style fight. My new character is an Alchemist/Divination Wizard multi class. I recently was in a combat where I was fighting a man in a mechanical suit of armor, and they were flying in the air above a balcony, my character had spider climb up and wanted to leap off the railing in order to reach the ceiling ~10 feet up and enter 30 foot range to cast heat metal on the armored individual. My DM said I could try, but would need an extremely good roll; I had a divination roll of 19 and used it immediately assuming that would be high enough but the DM said it was not and I fell two stories. I could tell he did not want to give me the capability and did not like me using my portent, but would a natural 20 have been the only option in this encounter?

Elias Wilson

Honourable judges and esteemed Bailiff Jake, A few years ago I joined a party and made a UA ranger with a wolf named Gimli (approved by the DM). My character was pretty strong but by no means OP. Everyone else was also new to the game and they put no effort into their characters making them really weak and gave them all really sexual names. When playing, I was doing most of the damage and so my DM messaged me after and nerfed me so hard and took away Gimli :( I straight up left the group and never played with them again. Was I wrong to do this? I still feel bad to this day.

May It Please The Court, What’s the etiquette around playing games in-store? I’m having a terrific time with the DM and most of the other players (all strangers to me), but I can’t stand one player in particular. Is it cool to tell the DM that it’s him or me? As a genuine question? There are other groups I can join, I just like this DM. Also, we are all the same amount of strangers, there are no friendship dynamics.

May it please the two honorable, the one somewhat honorable, and the other judge. 5 years ago in my very first time DMing, I made an encounter where the players had to fight a flying dragon while traveling across a rainbow bridge thousands of meters above ground. The level 6 barbarian of the group, without any ranged options, decided to try and lasso the dragon. I had him roll athletics to do this and he rolled low. I decided that he would take 1d12 of damage from rope burn and I rolled a 12. He protested that 12 fire damage was way too much damage for rope burn but I argued that this rope would have been yanked out of his hand with the strength of a dragon, and would have realistically skinned his hand to the bone. He still razzes me about it till this day. Was I wrong to have him take this much damage?

Our paladin always burns her misty step in combat to bamf behind an enemy, usually getting herself surrounded. This then negates our ability for AoE spells and has resulted in her going down 6/6 times in the past few sessions. How do I broach this without upsetting their "cool imagery". Sincerely, Rico the warlock

Prowsy

Deplorable bailiff, and exultant justices, I shall be brief indeed, to please the court. My dm once crit on me. Was he wrong to do this? Please judge him harshly.

Zhade

Blessed dice part 2 To the bountifully benevolent crit justices and dutiful bailiff. May it please the court! I approach the court once again concerning the case of the blessed(?) dice. So last we left off I was concerned my dice was weighted and set off to test the balance with salt water. After following through on the ritual, to many odd looks from my family as I poured just so much salt into a cup, I the dice were found to be fair and balanced! I now keep the dice installed upon their holy place on the shelf above my desk, and I guess I am now officially a paladin of dice Christ! But I request the aid of the court in an occasion where I used these dice not too long ago. and I also wanted to give the justices something to rule on rather than just an update. I was playing a pirate named gavesh, who was a pirate used to living a solo lifestyle. We were two sessions into the campaign and my character found a safe full of cash and took it for himself (being the selfish pirate he was and not developed yet). One of the other pc’s who was not in the room with the safe came running in to find out what I was doing and asked some pointed questions about me finding any money. To this I rolled deception vs their insight using the blessed dice (before I knew it’s power) and succeeded which I thought was hilarious. But the other pc persisted rolling 5 more times against my deception and learning nothing. They then gavesh to empty his pockets because they “did not believe him” to which I rolled a nat one and spilled all the money on the floor. Was I being a selfish player in this situation and role playing to a fault? Or was I a victim? I humbly accept any decision by the court. Yours faithfully, Ricardo Ps paladin of dice Christ can be rendered as P.O.D. which I thought was sick.

Ricardo

Honorable and highly respected judges of the Supreme Crit, and almost (but not quite) as respected ex-judge/bailiff of the same, I bring you my case, may it please the court. In one of my campaigns, we were making our way back to my village (I'm playing a melee based, 18 STR, firbolg swarmkeeper ranger with twig blights spirits) when we see smoke in the sky in that direction, and find two enemy paladins guarding the entrance. In a heated moment I attacked, but once it was clear this was a show of power not meant to be fought (we are only level 3), I tried to save these random people I just met (the party) by casting fog cloud and grabbing our rune knight and running since they were on like 5 HP. I however was told (by the player and the dm) that if they willing let me move them they would still take the opportunity attacks. I argued that since I was moving them then RAW they should not and because I was helping pull my teammate out of danger, but bent to keep the encounter flowing. Now, I may be a simple country player, but was I in the wrong for this? Or should I have been able to do it without the other player being penalized? (Sorry if this was a little long, wanted all the context😅)

Carter Milius

May it please the illustrious judges and the stalwart bailiff, I come to you as a humble DM who gave their PCs too many toys to play with. I run a high-level campaign in which the party had recently received a large payout for their endeavors. One of my players decided that instead of spending all of his hard-earned loot on weapons, armor or magic items he wanted to buy two things. One - a bag of holding and Two - as many fire bombs as he could possibly fit into the bag. He spent about 100K gold on bombs - an obscene amount of money he has been saving up all campaign. A few sessions went by with a firebomb or four and it was good times. Then in one particularly dire encounter the PC with a bag full of bombs flew above the big bad cleric and proceeded to turn his bag of holding inside out. Relevant text from the item: "If a bag of holding is turned inside out, its contents spill out, unharmed, but the bag must be put right before it can be used again". These are on contact bombs dropped from a height. When they all hit the cumulative blast damage was over 3400! I made the whole party make saves to try to shield themselves from the explosion and several got seriously injured by the blast even though they were far away. The local environment, and all of the remaining enemies were decimated. I am now concerned that this is going to be something that the party wants to use again. I set up the rules of this world and told them they could have bombs, but 3K+ damage is ridiculous. This is the 2nd time something like this occurred using a large stock pile of explosives. The problem though is that my players love it. They love to just blow shit up and I don't want to take that away from them. Unfortunately for me, as high-level PCs they can definitely fill that bag up with bombs again. This leaves me questioning what to do. Should I nerf their bombs? Should I just plan for this nonsense and make encounters too spread out for a single nuke attack, or have a 2nd wave of baddies? Or I was I wrong to let them do this in the first place and now my players have toys that simply cannot be put back in the box?

Tyler Dowd

May it please the courts, and the honorable bailiff. I quit an in-store campaign as a player because potions only came in the form of enemas in his setting. Was I right to consider that a deal-breaker or are healing enemas an acceptable surprise to come up in a pirate campaign without warning? I paid money for this. Thank you very much for your insight.

Dave 3D Art

May it please the court and may it tickle the stinky binky boy Jonk. I was playing a dragonborn Hexalin in my friends and I's not so Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign and we were level 20 in the final battle against a lich who was trying to merge a plane of distortion with the material plane, but the problem came from another player I was fighting along side of. Kind of a tricky situation, we were on the platform that was surrounded my an antimagic field places by our firbolg war cleric (because yanno liches suck without magic) and our minotaur barb/monk had tackled the lich off of the platform and into the antimagic field, baller move for sure. However, our sea elf has cast polymorph on me to turn me into an ancient brass dragon because its the final battle, let's go all out. Sadly with the antimagic field I couldn't go down to fight the lich in melee combat or the polymorph would dispell, but the DM ruled I could still look down and breathe fire on him, but it would also be hitting the minotaur. Since our minotaur has an ungodly amount of health I asked if he would be okay with it and he said "Sure man, do whatever you gotta do it's the final battle." So I went ahead and had him and the lich make DEX saves, and of course the minotaur passed with flying colors and the lich failed. I rolled real low on the damage and got probably around 30 damage, but then the minotaur freaked out on me for breathing fire on him like I never even asked permission. Since he was upset upset me, our DM let him cast shield to protect himself but it also protected the lich since he was still wrestling him at the bottom of this cliff, the DM also happens to be the minotaur's brother. So it ended with no one taking any damage and me wasting the breath weapon of this ancient brass dragon. It's been 6 months since we finished this campaign and my friend who plays the minotaur still holds it over my head. Please, judge as you may, thanks in advance.