Soliciting Court Cases!

Emily is going to love this

Joelle H

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 and protect 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

If it may please the court, I am the proud papa DM to a group a newer players and we have been playing for over a year. One of my players, a Warforged Battlesmith artificer named Chap who is a sentient wooden head attached to constructed bodies, loves the Iron Defender familiar and uses it as a fun RP/flavor item. Recently the party reached level 5 and Chap is very disappointed that they can’t learn Fireball as the sorcerer in the party is now outshining them in damage. His proposal was that as a tinkerer, he should be able to rig his Iron Defenders up with explosives so that he could detonate them like explosive drones. I thought it was very interesting so I told him that it was fine, but the damage would be lowered to 6d6 and that the Iron Defender would be destroyed when the explosion went off. The player argued that since they can customize how the defender looks, they should be able to design it so the explosion would blast outside of its body in a way that it wouldn’t hurt itself. I told them that only evocation wizards can shield themselves from explosive magic, but he thinks this is science and not magic. Am I being unfair by ruling that the defender damages itself in this suicide explosion, or is my friend here getting damage greedy?

Kyle Rakers

Honorable judges, I am a DM and got into a biiiiit of a tiff with one of my players. A quick backstory, 2 sessions ago, I ended our session by revealing a giant mechanized crab that emerged from the bay that was going to attack my players air ship. At the start of the next session, one particular player of mine started telling our druid to cast summon fae creature in order to call 8 pixies which would then cast polymorph on the players, turning them into giant apes. The idea is that they would be flung as human characters and transform mid flight to giant apes to attack the crab machine. But the main baddy is an illusionist wizard who cast a spell on the players making them think there was no danger. It was revealed to be a big illusion and the crab left with the ship. The player who wanted the ape fight got mad and said why did they plan all of that if not to actually do it. Now he's salty and being a grump in the group chat. As a new DM, should I let that plan play out for the memes? Or was I right to stick to my original plan?

May it please the court, I am but a new patron (thanks to me asking my husband repeatedly for this to be my birthday gift) but I desperately want a ruling on a horrible DM ruling. I was playing Starfinder (a space themed TTRPG) and we were at a persons house after resting the night and I asked for coffee and the DM said it was black coffee so I asked for creamer and then said can I roll for creamer? They said yes. I rolled a nat 20 and then they said I found curdled gross looking milk that I could put it in my coffee. Frankly I believe a nat 20 should be at least normal ass milk if not hazelnut creamer. Thank you. So happy to be binge listening to all the episodes now. Happy Bday to me!

Honorable judges, may it please the court: my character is a gnome rogue, arcane trickster, who specializes in impersonation. in a homebrew campaign where there is a trickster God, for some reason, the DM decided that our battle worn veteran would play cards against the trickster goddess in a test (why??) And after winning get a deck of explosive throwing cards (dope). I let it go, don't want to be a pain. In the next session we battle a caravan of soldiers and he gets a sweet explosive-firing rifle because "he knows how to use it as a former solider"! Now I have nothing and he's got a deck of 52 explosive cards and a rifle...should I be annoyed?

SebbitySwooty (Seb K)

I love this so much! The creepy messages reminds me of the Silence from Doctor Who!

The Green Magus

Honorable Masters, In a short campaign my friend is running, he brought out a horde of creatures along with the BBEG and on my turn I cast Banishment at a 9th level for my turn. The creatures had to meet a DC 19 Charisma check and our DM said 4 of the 5 creatures including the BBEG passed the save. I was a bit questioning of that answer, but went along with it because Dice are Chaotic Storytellers. The DM went on to explain that because the creatures didn’t exist in that plane of existence, he rolled with advantage on their charisma saves which is why they passed. I debated that it shouldn’t matter if they exist in that plane or not, that doesn’t justify advantage. Of course they don’t exist there. That is why they are in my face bothering me. It felt like my DM was mad I had found a way around his BBEG being a powerful force and just wanted to stop me from ruining his game. Our DM also curated this spell list specifically for our adventure. Why give me the spell if the creatures would be basically immune to banishment? What is the highest court in all the plane’s ruling for this? Thanks

Tonks

Also the player who was forgotten kept writing ominous things on the other players arms and stealing his wallet and the guy could never remember. The only way to break the curse was to get rid of the horse.

Joshua Daniels

other details. The horse was always invisible which was very funny because no one could tell if the horse was around or not. The dm made us roll luck checks as to weather or not the horse had wandered off. That part was very fun and funny.

Joshua Daniels

Our Dm brought one of the characters to the fey wild where he traded his memories of another player character in exchange for a cool horse. However, the Dm made it so he cant make any new memories of the player. Its been very funny that the guy has short term memory loss when it comes to this other character but its also been annoying. Is the DM a knob or was this well founded?

Joshua Daniels

what a horrible dm!! sounds like they're straight up not letting you play the game that's so odd

Rachel

May it please the court, I am in a home campaign with a few of my buddies, we were playing a session in which the DM described large trees reaching up into the sky. One of the players asked if there was fruit at the top of the tree and the DM rolled for it, there was. The same player then casted shatter at a high level, the tree began to fall on top of him and the DM asked him to roll a red saving throw, he rolled an 11 or 12 and failed. The tree fell on top of him doing 60 damage. Was the DM too harsh, or was it fair for the player to be punished for his shenanigans.

Milk Teeth

This sounds not unlike a campaign I'm in where one party member decided to dive into a Gelatinous Cube thinking it was a swimming pool and lost their weapon to acid damage. I tend to fall on the side of "If you can be damaged by something, so can your stuff, especially if you critical fail a save.

The Silversmith

bean is wrong!! fig newton should be with their npc owner omg this broke my heart

Rachel

May it please the court. Who is the blame for completely derailing a campaign? The majority of the party blames me however I blame the paladin. This happened in our very first session. We were out of tavern and I was still fairly new to d&d. Partly being lazy on my part as the player and not wanting to break down currency I was paying and tipping the tavern very well. If drinks and food that only cost silver or bronze. I just paid with a gold coin. That got attention of a mafia type organization. One member decided to pickpocket another member of our group. The paladin saw this and went to confront the thief. Who had a body guard with him. A fight broke out and we killed both the thief and the bodyguard / assassin. I jumped in to help the fight towards the end because our other party members were starting to get killed. Because of this we had to then deal with this mafia organization. Which took three sessions and only ended when the party completely wiped. I put forth if the paladin had just let things go none of this would have happened. The thief only took 14 pieces of gold. So wasn't that big of a deal. Everyone else blames me for flashing our gold around and getting their attention. Who really is to blame?

Andrew Yeager

I agree with you. While it sucks, allowing them to tack on inspiration after for this roll will only lead to pushing the line and seeing how far you'll bend.

The Green Magus

Thanks, I typo-ed it. It's jerry "Spine" feld

Christopher Chow

May it please the court, In our last session of my first campaign, our party was on a quest to rescue a party member’s missing high school mascot (Keggy the 6-pack). On our search, our party got jumped by goblins in an alleyway and my party member, Bradicus, had 100 gold stolen from him. I casted Command on the goblin, told them to “halt,” and retrieved the gold back. I later chose not to return the gold back to Bradicus because he’s a member of my school’s rival and an obnoxious trash talker. I considered the gold payment mine for saving him. He grew frustrated, and chased me down the alley. We ended up stumbling into a chamber filled with gold during our debacle. Unbeknownst to us, this sentient room cursed anyone who stole its riches, and blessed those who were lawful/not thieves. My party member chose grapple for my/his bag of gold. He, a talented football jock, rolled a 23 strength check. I however rolled a NAT 20 (the only possible way to beat my party member’s check). Or so I thought… Instead of winning the grapple, my DM deemed our rolls were so good that with all of our wrestling, much of the gold was kicked out of the room. The voice in the room exclaimed that they had never seen such a thing before and created a new rule that cursed us both for the ruckus until five days of community service were completed. Is my DM at fault for cursing me after I rolled a Nat 20 in a nearly impossible opposed-grappling check, or was he justified for ending our tomfoolery in this already silly quest? Also, who rightfully wins the 100 gold?

Holy shit. What a horrible DM.

Nathan Rogers

lmao i just imagine you guys talking to the grandma tree from Pocahontas and being like, "The answer is fart!"

Claire Lines-Mattei

May it please the court. I recently started playing in a new campaign with a group of close friends. We've all played with other groups previously but never with each other before now. Almost every long or short break our DM will break off two characters for one on one conversations and these have led to some intense flirting between our characters, before I feel the campaign has really been established and before we really know our own characters. I don't think we're necessarily role playing - just awkwardly filling the time. Is it up to the DM to set the balance between action, plot, characterisation and romance that they want, or do they have a duty to get a few more sessions in before letting the PCs loose on each other.. As a side question to Judge Murphy, do you have any advice for DMs in dealing with your players' on screen and off screen (/podcast) chemistry..

W Jackson

Had they any evidence? Did you let them stand trial or roll to argue their innocence? As a DM I think you did the right thing if they killed him with 0 thought of consequences or story.

Mitchell Sigalas

May it please the court, my younger brother runs a game with me, my husband, sister in law, and friend as players. He challenges us to roleplay and when we reached a town he asked me if I, a tiefling bard with a trans-Atlantic accent, knew of any good taverns. I panicked and in my accent (which I know I'm not good at, or improv in general) made up a story of the Crickety Crotch, a tavern/brothel that had a ghost tour attraction for tourists. We had a good laugh and the next section my brother added it in, except it turned into a ghost brothel. We had to save a patron from a ghost, and afterwards we had to interrogate the patron on his ghost kink. My bother REFUSED to give a clear explanation as to how it works, and blamed us for making up the ghost brothel in the first place, so he shouldn't have to explain. I argued that I in fact made up a brothel with a GHOST TOUR. Therefore, he in fact made up the ghost brothel and should have had a clear vision as to how it works. We all had a great laugh about it and are eager to see how the honorable supreme crit judges stand on our dumb joke. Thank you for your time and have a great discussion - MG

May it please the court, I have been running a game for a while now and I started the characters with amnesia except one. One of the character comes from a woodland royal family and in her backstory added that she could identify magic rocks and use them for rituals. I was like ok sureeeeee roll a pure luck check to see if it has magic properties. She rolled a natural 20 so fuck. Several sessions later one of the players was on deaths door and failed their last death save. She wanted to try to use the magic rock to bring him back, I said I would allow to re-roll the last death save if she rolled a DC 23 arcana or medicine check. She rolled a 22 and the bard wanted to give bardic inspiration right after she rolled but I said he should have given it before the roll. Am I wrong to not allow the bardic after? I feel I already gave them so much for the stupid magic rock which I was hesitant to give in the first place. Hopefully the judges come to a right decision. Love you all -DM GMoney

Gianni Pappas

May it please the court to hear my one and only D&D story. I'll keep submitting it until I have my day in court, your Honors. I've only played D&D once, for one session, nearly 15 years ago. I spent a good while rolling my character. I drew his portrait. His name was HEAVY, and he wielded a big-ass hammer. When we got started, the rest of the party spent literally two hours IRL pretending to get drunk in a tavern, and I was impatient and wanted to kill some monsters and roll some dice, so HEAVY went out on his own. I encountered a river. DM asked if I wanted to cross it or go try to find a way around. I said I wanted to cross. He asked me to roll to see if I could swim. I rolled a 9. DM said "you can't swim. You drown and die." DM wouldn't let me play unless I roll a new character. So I left and haven't played since.  That experience turned me off on the game for years. Shows like D20 and NADDPOD have changed that, but now I'm too busy to actually play. I only made one roll in the game and a lousy DM soured everything for me.  Can the court please rule on whether or not that DM was a total knob? Thank you. 

Evan Spears

Keeping really triggering topics off the table, or at least making sure they're preceded by discussion & followed up w debriefing, is super important. It might be good to have a re-up of a session 0 & talk about boundaries you have as a dm, & encourage players to share topics they would like to avoid/be tread carefully around as well.

tacticalgrandma

May it please The Court, I submit before the Justices the case of the accidental Judgement Day. My friends and I are working our way through the Rick and Morty vs D&D dungeon crawl with some homebrew elements thrown in to smooth over some rough edges (ex. getting a bunch of gold and having no way to spend it, revising some rooms that are just unfair/unfun, etc.). One idea that our beloved DM came up with was to introduce progress-based pocket dimensions (with a Truck Stop Gas Station aesthetic) to take long rests and level up at between rooms. Our penultimate session just ended as we reached the last one of these rest stops and went up to Level 5; while there, we met with a magical merchant character (ala Resident Evil 4) who is allowing us to trade in gold and other unwanted/extra possessions in exchange for randomly determined magical items. Our fighter had the funds to get an Uncommon Magical Item and our wizard had enough for a Rare one, but I (the rogue) ended up with enough funds to get 2 Artifacts because I’d been scooping up gemstones throughout the dungeon (nobody else wanted them since up until now they were useless). The DM had us roll to see what we got, and I ended up with “The Infernal Machine of Lum the Mad” and the “Mighty Servant of Leuk-o.” The former is an exceptionally powerful and densely detailed magical craft that looks to be designed mostly for extreme chaos and shenanigans (multiple summoning spells, Wish, d100 wild magic surge style tables for beneficial and detrimental properties, and more), and the latter is a 10 foot tall construct with a stat block that should put it around CR 20 that functions either independently or like an Iron Man armor suit. As noted above, we just hit level 5. This may sound bad and unbalanced already (because it is), but it gets even worse; the description text on the Mighty Servant *specifically* states that if it strikes the Machine of Lum, it unleashes a 300 foot explosion that deals 783 damage to creatures and 2,349 to objects and structures. Our beefiest player is our fighter with ~45 hp, and our foes thus far have been on par with (and sometimes literal) goblins and orcs; one wrong move and not just every*one*, but every*thing* on our ~2/3 of the dungeon map ceases existing - as does most of the dungeon itself. Justices of the Supreme Crit, what can we do to avoid a thus-far great campaign going out on a bad bang that leaves everyone unsatisfied? My DM and I both agree that for game balance purposes this shit cannot fly, but are at a loss as to how to come up with an equitable alternative to an at-will Armageddon button that still keeps things fun and light.

Some Guy Named Mason

I laughed so incredibly hard at this

Illustrious magistrates. I have a somewhat unique query, wherein I don’t think anyone necessarily did anything wrong... but someone definitely needs to be punished! For the sake of brevity I will outline the events without much emphasis. Our party has been playing online (roll20) for about 6 months. For several sessions, our dm had been hinting at an upcoming boss fight. When we finally reached said boss fight, we were excited to learn that we would be squaring off with a home-brewed necromantic vampire and her resurrected bone dragon! A lot of trash talk was exchanged, tension built up, we rolled for initiative, the battle began, but before I got to take a turn, the vampire hacked another player’s spells and trapped my dummy dps rogue in a hypnotic pattern. Because of the battle layout and the intensity of the fight, no one could spare an action to break me out, so I had to spend the next HOUR AND A HALF, sitting online, watching my friends play dnd, while I scrolled Instagram... I admittedly started getting a little salty a few rounds in, and it got to the point where our dm just started skipping my turn, because he didn’t want to hear my snarky comments. Which I get... my friends were all having a ton of fun, and I was dampening the mood... but don’t you think the DM should have made something up to get me back in the game? RAW, there’s technically no crime - so was I being a little stinky baby, or did my DM truly let me down? I respect the judgement of the court.

John Richards

Sounds to me like a good time to ask the caster for a Stealth check

Jacob Corona

I guess you might think of it more as your willpower to resist the hits. Because there's half damage on a save, the creatures are getting hit no matter what. They're not dodging anything.

Jacob Corona

May it please the Court! How do you decide what counts as "magic" and what does not? During a fight in my friend's campaign, a wild magic role caused an "anti-magic field" to be placed over half of the combat. The rules of the effect stated that "Spells and other magical effects except those created by an artifact or a deity are suppressed." Two of the PCs were stunned by a Mind Flayer's "Mind Blast" ability. My friend the DM is a nice dirty daddy and he ruled that the stunned effect was cancelled, but also that the beastmaster rangers familiar disappeared, because they were magically linked. But, the antimagic field effect is so confusing and elaborate that they really weren't sure if they did it right. Luckily no new friends are needed because these are all reasonable young people, but what say you supreme crit justices?

David Heintz

May it please the court, I have a case that still keeps me up at night 3 years later. It was my first time DMing my own one shot, and I was really obvious with who the secret villain was. The king's advisor Rafaj ( Jafar spelled backwards), dressed exactly like the Disney villain, talked like a creep, and even had an evil goatee. At the end of the night, instead of letting me have Rafaj walk the players into an obvious trap and betray them, my players attacked him. They killed him, and instead of rewarding them, I threw them in jail. One shot over. My players were upset because he was obviously the villain, but I said even though he was going to do a big villain monologue soon, there was no way for the king or anyone else to know that. Did my players get what they deserved or did I do them dirty?

May it please the court, me and my adventuring party were defending a castle from a siege of giants. My character, a gnome artificer was responsible for commanding the castle's artillery. On my turn, I told the soldiers manning the cannons to stuff me into a cannon and shoot me towards my other party members. After critting the landing, my DM told me that I was not able to cast a spell as an action. My DM said that being loaded into the cannon and being fired out of it was my action, but I argued it was the soldiers who performed the action and all I did was talk to them. Should I have been allowed to cast a spell upon landing?

May it please the court. I DM a political intrigue game with 3 regular players and one player that plays all the bad guys so that they can conspire against each other properly. At one point the players tricked several of the bad guys into going into a remote cabin to have a secret meeting but when they entered the players locked the only exit2 and set the whole building on fire. Four of the five enemies died but on had a ring that made him immune to fire damage and when he showed up later the players protested that he still should have died from smoke inhalation as he was in the the burning building for some time. I come asking for your judgement on this matter: does immunity from fire damage make you immune from smoke inhalation. If it matter the character in question is not a major character. Thank you.

aw <\3 i don’t think it was an overstep. there’s. you could play an instrument and that be where the magic is kept. i think there were other negotiations that could have been made. like not everyone is ursula from the little mermaid 😂

May it please the court. We are preparing to start a game. I have chosen to play a bard and the DM and i were talking and he told me that during his campaign there may be times when i would have to actually sing for my character instead of making a proformance roll. I told him that i would not be comfortable with that as it was my character not me that had a high charisma and singing skills. He said there would for sure be times when it was sing or fail regardless of my roll. I refused saying i didn't want to embarras myself. My DM replied that i shouldn't have chosen a bard if i was uncomfortable singing. I am currently reworking my character into a gnome wizard, this has caused a bit tension between myself and my new DM. Please Justices, did I overstep in refusing to actually sing in front of my table on demand or am i good?

masterofmerc .

May it please the court, the flying gnome pinata smackdown (a continuation on the flying gnome case) My party angered a village of aarakocras by stealing a special amulet, so the next time my gnome began to fly, aarakocras swooped down with immovable rods in their talons, perched on the rods, then open fired with bows at the gnome. He immediately went unconscious in 1 round. The player argued that mage hand would have ended since he's unconscious and he would then fall to the ground where he could be healed by the party. I said that the mage hand didn't end and his gnome got beat up pinata style. We still agrue to this day about it.

Eric Grochowski

May it please the court, the case of the unusable stats. In the campaign I play a bard, and everyone knows that bards are the face of the party, be it deception, persuasion, or sweet sweet seduction. But my dm doesn’t seem to recognise these as actual skills I can roll for. He either states that the npc knows I’m lying without him even rolling, or flat out refusing to let me roll any persuasion checks. I drew the line when he wouldn’t let me do an insight check on an npc who I thought was lying to the party, for him to turn around and say “there’s no possible way to tell if someone’s lying just by looking at them”. Please, give me some insight on why he might think like this or why he’s dead wrong in steamrolling his narrative and to abandon ship. -best wishes, Jed x

Jamale malone

If it please the court, DM here questioning my own call. I am DMing a game for a set of mostly new players. At the beginning of the session the players witness an assassination and have different motivations for solving it. They determine that the assassin is a member of a thieves guild and want to find the guild to learn more. They decide to have one of the PCs (barbarian) walk around with a conspicuous medallion while the others watch. A group of bandits from the thieves guild start talking to the barbarian and asking questions when BAM! the warlock/paladin in the party decides to fire an eldritch blast at the bandits. The party fights, the same warlock/paladin finds a way to de-escalate and end the fight, then decides to start it again when the bandits insist on taking the party to their boss, who the party were trying to find anyway. The party, who was injured and low on spells at this point, decide to go to a seedy taven to find someone else in the thieves guild since they killed the last 3 bandits in the guild they met. I decided to have 12 bandits show up out of nowhere and take them into custody, partially because it made a good cliffhanger ending to the session but mostly because the party is so chaotic I was worried they would keep on stumbling around into fights when they can get what they want via a little roleplay. Is it ok for me to give them this push, or am I being a heavy handed railroader?

If it please the court, I play a paladin who’s a protection style fighter, so I can use my shield to impose disadvantage when something attacks an ally of mine. Recently we were flighting a banshee who was the undead spirit of our bard’s aunt, so she was targeting him almost exclusively. Our Ranger had cast protection from evil and good on him, which gave her attacks disadvantage, but she rolled a 19 and a 20. I argued but I should be able to use my shield to impose an extra disadvantage, since nothing in the language says I can’t, and I can use it after the attacks has already hit, but my DM wouldn’t let me since advantage doesn’t stack. The party was divided pretty much 50/50 on this one, and it’s an issue which will almost certainly come up again, so I would very much appreciate a ruling on this matter.

Billie Turner

Should it please the court. I was running a new campaign with a group of old friends who had never played before and one friend that i had run a very fun and wholesome Baulders Gate campaign with. But with this new campaign the friend who had played before decided to try and make a bit of a mysterious character, to the point that they seemed like they were keeping aspects of thier backstory hidden from me, the DM. This player is an adult man whose character was a 17 year old trifling sorcerer woman. Eventually I had to press them for more information so as not to accidentally overwrite thier backstory and begrudgingly they told me that while raised in a religious community thier character had been (TW assault) sexually assaulted. I told them that i was uncomfortable with running this in my campaign and told them that it also wouldn't make sense considering that in this world there would be spells like zone of truth that the people running this religious community would regularly be subject to, but mostly i just felt uncomfortable with it and didn't want to even bring this into a campaign that several new people would be experiencing as thier first dnd campaign. They felt like they had a story to tell with this character tho and that I wasn't letting them roll play something that meant alot to them. I eventually put my foot down and told them they could not do this and if they acted vindictive about this i would kick them out of the campaign, at which point they voluntarily/preemptively quit. Should I have tried to navigate this in a better way to let them play this apparently meaningful to them character, or was I right in keeping the game pg-13. This has bothered me alot as its the only real hickup in our friendship and it seemed so out of character for them as a person.

Peydon Bush

If it should please the court, I present the case of the table of Shauna vs. the DM husband I bring to you the case of a DM who has cleaved my heart in twain. To make a very long story short, our party was making our way to fight a black dragon. Along the way we found a baby black dragon, who was the sweetest most adorable little thing whose name was Budu. He was with the party for a couple encounters and my character, who was a grieving mother at the time, became very attached to the little guy. He leads us to the black dragon lair. Well, it turns out that this baby black dragon was the "good" imperfection the black dragon was born with, that was magically separated from him and given form. Basically my loving DM husband Dragonhearted this baby dragon with the black dragon, leading to the party having to kill the baby dragon to take down the bigger one since they would both die anyway. My question to the court: Did the DM murder this innocent black baby dragon by setting us up, or was it the arcane archer that shot it in the head? Also, can I get reparations for my broken heart? Sincerely, Considering a Divorce

May it please the court: I play a celestial bloodline sorcerer in a PF game with some friends, and a lot of my spells specifically work (or work better) against evil creatures and entities. Recently my team was fighting against a large group of gnoll raiders who had taken over a village but hadn't killed anyone, and I asked my GM if they were evil. The GM (and the party) agreed that they were objectively evil and I shouldn't need to ask if the enemies are evil at any point if they're doing something my character considers evil right in front of me. Obviously that makes combat a lot better for my build, but I would argue that just because someone is doing an evil thing doesn't mean they're evil, especially since two of my party members were gnolls who used to be a part of raiding parties before leaving and becoming adventurers and they weren't evil, so who's to say that the gnolls in THIS raiding party weren't evil as well? I personally enjoy morally grey and complex antagonists, even if it screws with my powers, and I think that should be incorporated into the mechanics (so that sometimes my "against evil" powers don't work now and then) Is anyone right? Is anyone wrong? Would love to hear your thoughts Sincerely Morally Gay

faizaan723

This kind of sounds like you made a discussion of how a player wants to play a game, & decided that indicated how the player viewed morality on like a geopolitical scale. Just from how you're talking about them, I think what upset the player was rightfully feeling judged by you. Probs should like talk to them about how they feel about this.

tacticalgrandma

You're 100% in the right RAW, if you can a spell in a round you can still cast cantrips.

tacticalgrandma

May it please the court, the case of the Warlock and the Children's Books vs the DM: I don't use alignment when I DM because I think it's a reductive way to look at morality and I think it mostly exists to help gamers ease into acting. I had a player who created their character to be a "raised by wolves" kind of warlock, except instead of wolves, they were sharks, it was a warlock of the Deep One, cool idea so far. It became a running joke that the character was a power-driven sociopath with no regard for human life, but the other party members were doing their best to educate him as to why that's not a cool way to be. The paladin even went so far as to procure children's books about bullying (it's a modern setting) to try to illustrate empathy to the warlock. We all treated this as a funny joke. Later, we were discussing how we don't play with alignment, but what if we did? The warlock said that "well, I was probably Neutral Evil before but I'm probably Neutral Good now after those kids books." Everyone else laughed because that's a good joke, but he was serious and hurt that none of us agreed. Keep in mind, to this point, the warlock had absolutely continued murder-hobo-ing even post-kids-books. I argued that there's no way that someone's core morality gets flipped by a first exposure to picture books as an adult, and they argued that it was character development. I insisted that if that were the case, world peace would be so easily achieved. This spiraled into a huge argument and to this day we simply cannot talk about alignment as a group. Should I, the DM, have allowed my player the leniency to change their character's core personality on a whim, or was I justified at laughing at the proposition, like when Jake* suggested that Henry take the Luck feat? Sincerely, Morality Matters *sorry Jake, love you xoxo <3

As a compromise, how about Binky Fiasco?

tacticalgrandma

People get annoyed w "It's what my character would have done" when it's used in selfish ways that hurt other players. That's not what happened here, but your dm clearly isn't happy w the game. Maybe talk w them about what their expectations are, what your guys' expectations are, & try to come to an understanding moving forward?

tacticalgrandma

A stealth check given all the measures you took could have been valid but given that you "lost your shit" so bad that a friendship hangs in the balance you're in the wrong

tacticalgrandma

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tacticalgrandma

That's messed up, both in game bc pvp happened in a super high stakes way wo one participant having any recourse. & bc this is at best eating-pc being spiteful & nasty to a random player for no reason, & at worst them bringing their fetish to the table nonconsensually. Need to have a talk & apologize to paladin.

tacticalgrandma

I mean if it's in the DMG it's in the DMG. Your players can probably read, they're just telling you how they want to play the game, & you have a different way you want to play the game. Probs need to just talk to them in an open & understanding way, & come to an understanding or compromise.

tacticalgrandma

Two weapon fighting comes down to action economics. For your action, you can make one weapon attack (unless you have a feature that specifically says you can make more, like Extra Attack or the Great Weapons Fighter feat) For your bonus action, you can attack using your off hand weapon. So one hand attack uses up the Action, other hand attack uses up the Bonus Action. You only have one of each, barring a DM willing to let you run all over them. If you google two weapon fighting 5e, you should be able to find breakdowns about the differences in modifiers & such.

tacticalgrandma

May it please the courts. Our dragonborn rogue/bard thought it would be funny to seduce everything we came across. It started with a cow named Petunia but eventually he was seducing monsters, one being an Ankheg. While it was funny at first, the repetition of it caused most of our encounters to be him fucking the monsters while the rest of us watched in bewildered frustration. Am I wrong in thinking that him using his skills to his advantage is anticlimactic for the rest of us or was it above-the-board role play?

Stanarchy

For those reading the comments on these things, have a DND Court Drinking Game Character has aggressively stupid name– drink, finish your drink if they’re a gnome Aaracockra or Warforged– drink Poster constantly brings up that the pc they’re pissy at is the DM’s girlfriend in their case– drink, finish your drink if the poster self-evidently was being a dick to her Rule of Cool is invoked– drink Cluckgane Bowl happens– eat an entire roast chicken Tort Reform Subsection: Case could be have been resolved if anyone at the table had googled it & clicked on the first result– drink Case could have been resolved if anyone had just said out loud what they were thinking or feeling to the defendant in a non-angry way, with compromise as an end goal– drink Case could have been resolved if player had read their character sheet– drink

tacticalgrandma

May it please the courts. my group and I haven’t played in a while since the pandemic so my dm was getting restless. He said “don’t prepare any background just give me two sentences, max. Everything else will be improv. Anything that happens session 1 must become a part of your background. Anything goes, I want chaos.” My two sentence backstory were I was the son of a successful merchant. I made my character to be a valiant protectorate with a shield and spear for the down trodden. The dm’s little brother shows up playing the beloved ketamine, yoda-like speaking, wizard he loves to play. When we encountered him he was strewn about a random road high off his ass off his own supply. Being the protectorate of the down trodden I attempted to help the old man. To where he recognized me as a rich merchants son and said he wanted to franchise his drug paraphernalia and head into the big leagues. I was DOWN! He offered me some heroin to which I declined as a good merchant never gets high off his own supply. This is where our dm cut in and said he was not going to Run a drug-empire building campaign. His little brother and I begged and pleaded telling him he said anything went and that we just had to roll with the punches so he should do the same. Were we wronged? Should we have been allowed to build our drug empire and have turf wars with rival drug lords? I introduced my dm to naddpod so any ruling made here will be executed. No exceptions. P.s. we love you em! Caldwell you’re the goofball king! Brian we love your chapters of lore! Oh and the fourth guy, tell tucker if he wants to come over this weekend we’d love to host such a charitable person. - lovingly, zaos

Cristian Perez

May it please the court, I am a new DM and have three players that are all friends playing with me. We are doing a campaign where they are facing an uprising of Myrkul cultists trying to revive their god. Our Half Orc Fighter multiclassed into barbarian in his first level and has since taken another level of barbarian and one level of paladin, however I forgot about the rule of rage giving no benefits when wearing heavy armor and he has been running around using rage in practically every big fight for three levels. Having realized this I now feel I must bring it up and correct it somehow since him wearing plate armor and halving tons of damage feels very broken. I ask you most supremest of courts, should I now enforce the rule and make it so this PC can no longer rage while wearing heavy armor, allow it as a homebrew rule and have any barbarians they run into the future also wear heavy armor, or should I allow him to retcon his barbarian levels and put those levels into either of his other classes? Or do you have another solution? My humblest thanks, Latheron

If it pleases the court, not DnD related but after the last short rest can we just get 30 minutes of Jake and Murph talking about their favorite punk bands, albums, etc. just think it would be a good time. Long time listener, first time commenter, Aj

Andres Rodriguez

May it please the court, My party is approaching a wooded ridge, and DM says I hear goblins talking in the trees that haven't noticed us yet, describing a stream separating us as being loud enough to drown out our voices. After some discussion, the ranger decides to sneak up on them. I cast Guidance on her, but the DM says because of the verbal component, the goblins will likely hear me. I argued that we had already been talking quietly, so the verbal component shouldn't heard if our discussion wasn't. DM said verbal components must be spoken clearly and loudly, otherwise the Subtle Spell would be useless (which is untrue for many reasons - and also we don't have a sorcerer anyway). I cast Guidance anyway because that's what I said I would do. And of course, he immediately said the goblins noticed us and started firing from the treeline. Who is in the right here? Must I shout all my verbal components like an anime character for my spells to work?! I need to know for my sanity! With respect, DungeonMama

DungeonMama

an undead warlock is cool aesthetic!

If the rest of your players are fine with a meme-y/goofy tone, maybe it’s that player’s issue...

May it please the court, Honourable judges allow me to present to you my case against the DM regarding the 'blinded" effect and the cleric spell "Spirit Guardians". Let me set the scene, our party has blinded a mammoth. Meaning that it automatically fails any checks that rely on sight. It's my turn, I cast spirit guardians, now in the past whenever I cast the spell we flavour it so that I am exhaling smoke from my cigar which then turns into the form of an angle with butterfly wings (the form of my forgotten god), in the past we always described the spirit guardians as physically hitting enemies, therefore I assumed that the mammoth would automatically fail the save as it fails checks relying on sight. HOWEVER: The DM made the call that seeing as it is a wisdom saving throw and not a dexterity or strength saving throw it a form of internal psychological damage and the mammoths mental fortitude (wisdom save) would be unaffected by it being blinded. I being a former forever DM agreed with his call straight away, his game, his call. But I am just wondering where you would all stand on this issue seeing as on the past we have described it as a magical form that hits people. Thank you for viewing my case and look forward to your trip to Melbourne.

let them reap what they sow

The case of the AaraCOCKra To the most honorable Justices Murph, Axford, Tanner, and Bailiff Jake: May it please the court. I’m currently running Curse of Strahd and my party loves to find humor in this dark setting. One of my PCs is playing a modification on an Aarakocra (sorry Murph) to fit the world of the module, a “Baatrakocra” if you will. He is playing a shadow monk and has literally broken my game due to the lack of sunlight, so I should have heeded the warnings. There is an ongoing bit that the Bat-man has had an erection for the past month. Recently they were in the main castle and were talking to statues whom they got to ask a question to and the Baatrakocra asked: “how do I get this problem with my dick to go away?” To which the statue replied: “I dunno man, I’ve been hard for centuries.” I was pretty proud of this but one of the other players has been complaining about the lack of seriousness in the party and that we didn’t accomplish much during the session. Personally, I think this bit stole the session and idk what more they could want entertainment wise. Should I refrain from buying into the party’s shenanigans to keep moving forward and maintain the spooky mood? I will humbly submit to any punishment you see fit.

The Case of the Narrative Nightmare Honorable Justices and Bailiff Jake: May it please the court. Our DM has made some questionable narrative choices ultimately leading us to not really getting to play the characters that we wrote. Our Warlock, who’s entire character and patron were based on their backstory, had their patron taken away in less than five sessions for a plot line that isn’t playing a significant role in this campaign at all. Her whole bit was that she was undead and her patron was the souls of her family who saved her from actually dying, and now out of convenience she has a celestial patron who has nothing to do with her character at all. Additionally, our Artificer is the clear favorite of the DM. They have received special treatment and have had magic items laid at their feet without being a product of character growth or development. The Artificer is continually permitted to butt into every other PC’s business and ability checks, so much so that our Wizard isn’t even the smart one. It got to the point where the Wizard got her magic taken away just so she could become a rogue and no longer be continuously overshadowed by the Artificer. As a party we understand the significance and sanctity of the greater narrative and story that the DM wants to tell, but it feels like the story has taken precedence over allowing us to play the characters that we wanted to play, not to mention the constant frustrations triggered by overt favoritism. Are we in the wrong for being frustrated with the DM?

May it please the court, during an encounter on the way to town my players were attacked by a Blindheim. During combat the Blindheim jumped onto the horses of the wagon the players were using to get to town. A player wanted to use Witch Bolt, but I warned them that, that would also hurt the horses as the electricity would travel through them as well to ground into the Earth. The player’s argued that since it was a spell it was magical and did not have to obey physics since the spell says, “A beam of crackling, blue energy lances out toward a creature within range, forming a sustained arc of lightning between you and the target.” Do spells still follow physical law or do their magical nature mean that consequences outside the spell’s verbiage cannot occur?

Skillful Ferret (insert fan art request)

may it please the court, this petitioner humbly submits the case of the orbital crab drop. i am running a 5e campaign with a very nontraditional setting, and my players have similarly unusual characters, all currently level 9. one of them, a yuan-ti paladin, decided some time ago to summon a steed. their choice was reggie, a giant crab who smokes cigars. normally, reggie is just an obnoxious-in-a-fun-way detail, as his extremely low stats mean he isn't much good in a fight at this point. HOWEVER since the party's wizard learned polymorph, she also found a stat block for a Huge Giant Crab, CR 8, and often uses her concentration to polymorph gentle reggie into precisely that, giving him an obscene amount of HP and a powerful claw attack. and all that was fine! until, in the middle of an encounter, our paladin says "oh!" and then goes quiet, saying only that they have to wait a turn to do "something". their turn comes around, they ride on their currently huge steed to approach the beefiest monster...and then cast misty step, taking their steed with them as is explicitly mechanically allowed, to teleport 30 feet into the air ABOVE the monster. the orbital crab drop. some frantic googling amongst the party led to discovering that the minimum weight for a Huge-size monster was 2 tons, and that damage dealt by an at least 200 lb object falling 10 feet is 20d6 damage. so, in a fight against a 70 HP big mean monster, a GIANT CRAB FALLING ON IT from 30 feet dealt 60d6, which ended up being 230 damage. reggie took fall damage, of course, but due to his beefy Huge Giant Crab stats, it barely made a dent. my players have sworn not to use this strategy again, and i have similarly sworn to nerf it if they ever do, so we're in a very stable stalemate. however, thinking back on it, i probably COULD have argued that, as the creature was polymorphed, it teeeechnically no longer counted as a summoned steed, and therefore couldn't be misty stepped with. i feel i was right to let it happen anyway, the crab drop was SO good, but i am wondering if i should keep that solution in my back pocket should the mutual crustacean disarmament pact be violated. please help me, justices (and jake)

Hey Band of Boobs, Hot Boys, Triplets, and Choo Choo Crew! Fortunately I have no qualms with any of the games that I've played in, just wanted to tell you all I love this series and, while comedic by nature, has helped me as a DM be more confident in pointing out the ridiculousness of some character choices. Thank you for all you do, you inspirational bunch! May this please the court, and may the justices find their verdicts fairly and hilariously.

May it please the court, I would like to present the case here of a wronged player, a dead pc, and a derailed main campaign. The backstory here is long and storied, but to keep it brief the main things you need to know are, this is a homebrew campaign that me and 4 other PCs have been playing in for about 2 years now and our Rules As Written DM really likes playing holiday themed one shots in the same world, with the same characters, but everything usually goes back to normal at the end of things, no matter how weird they get. Well, last October, we had a Halloween one shot where basically, in the middle of a dungeon crawl in the main campaign, a kobold called down meteors and killed our whole party. Fun intro, right? We all awoke as different undead and my warlock was a ghost, and thus, the only one able to move around. I tried to free my companions, but none of us had access to our spells or weapons. Our gear was in a locked room, with a trapped door. Usually, I'm the lockpicker of the group, but since I could not interact with objects, I made sure to place my 1hp spectral body in the other room. But then I made an out of character joke about telling the person who was picking the lock that I could just try and float through the door. At that moment, the character unlocking the door failed his check and the trap went off. It was simply a firebolt spell that randomly targeted someone in the room. Even though I stated that my character was in an adjoining room, because I made that joke, the DM decided to make it so I was at the doorway and got targeted by the spell. I was at 1hp, so no matter if I saved or not, I was poofed. No big deal I thought, this is just a one shot. The other 3 characters continue through the dungeon, now with their stuff, and a ring of wishes with one charge left. Now, because my DM has always gotten on our butts as being a RAW purist, my wife, playing their wizard, was trying to decide whether to true resurrect themselves (as they posed more of a threat than any other person against the necromancer we were about to fight) or my character (the support with 2 spell slots). I told them to resurrect themselves, the DM watching and listening to this all going down. They resurrected themselves and the party won the fight easily due to some smartly placed walls of fire, timely shots with the mummy ranger and angry claw work from the Ghoul wizard. Now, I'm expecting us all to wake up and it all be a dream, or perhaps we were trapped by a mindflayer who found us sleeping, but no. This session was revealed to be cannon and now my warlock is completely dead. Turns out, the DM was expecting us to use the wish to bring us all back to life. But he never said anything as we spent 20 minutes trying to decide the one person who would be brought back to full. Now, because this team is upset about loosing my warlock, instead of going after the cultists who we were originally fighting for the world over, they now have to find a way to get me back, and get the other 2 their bodies back. The other two are now back at level 1(we were at level 7) and the second wizard has been changed to a fighter as he no longer has access to his magic. I'm pretty peeved because our DM never indicated that he would be ok going against RAW for this situation, or that this was all cannon. We have played 2 games since, and I am playing a fun trickery cleric until we can purify my body and then bring me back (which is a whole other thing), but I want to know is, is it fair for us to be upset with our DM, seeing as he completely nerfed 2 of our players, and killed me off without 1-letting us know this would be different than any other holiday one shots and 2-not speaking up during our conversation about who to use the wish spell on, letting us know that this was our "get out of jail free" card?

May it please the court: I am the DM of a group with three players; we're all friends at this point, and tensions never get very high. In a recent dungeon crawl session, two of the three PCs strayed from the main path to investigate a side room, while the third player patiently waited for them to come back (his character is currently in-game annoyed at them, anyway). They found a puzzle I'd made for them, and while normally they get really into puzzles, they were really beefing it hard. It's not like it was a hard one, they just had to match the proper crystal with the right arcane engine (classic fantasy nonsense), but they weren't really trying; not much talking, just shoving the crystals in whatever things were closest. After a few attempts at this, one of the PCs said "I just try every permutation." This sent me into a quiet, yet blinding rage; to be so lazy as to just say "uh I do stuff until it works" is, to me, the height of disrespect to not just me, the DM, but to the very pillars of tabletop games that our society holds so dear. I hadn't planned for the puzzle to have any sort of particular punishment for getting it wrong, but I used my $3000 improv training to come up with a damage dealing trap that was set off, taking them both down to low HP and rendering the the puzzle now unsolvable. To top it off, I had all of the remaining enemies in the dungeon (they were a military unit) converge on them, surprising the waiting third player (who hadn't had anything to do for a while, so this at least gave him some NPCs to deal with) and forcing the party to surrender in humiliating fashion. And in a weird coincidence, one of the enemies knocked out the player who tried to default solve the puzzle. The session ended as usual, but I think they could sense I was annoyed. Supremest of Justices, I ask: was this too much? Did I take it too personally? I believe my reaction was fair, since it got a neglected player back in the game and reminded the PCs that they must actually try if we're going to keep doing this (and also felt good), but if the court believes it to be an overreaction I will accept its will.

MY PLAYER STOLE AN NPC’S DOG: So my players met a kind NPC farmer with a mastiff named Fig Newton, and after the PCs saved them from a scarecrow, Bean the tiefling warlock decided she loved Fig Newton the dog so much that she would lie to the NPC and say that the players needed Fig Newton's help for their holy mission. She rolled a nat 18 on Deception so I ruled that the NPC sadly put Fig Newton into their care. Throughout the next session I emphasized that Fig Newton seemed sad to be away from his family, even making Bean roll some Animal Handling checks to keep him from running away, which she passed. But before too long one of the other players was fed up and told Fig Newton to go home, which I ruled that he happily did. Bean, however, was pissed at me for "taking all the fun out of having the dog," and said, "If you were just going to take it away, why did you let me roll Deception to get it in the first place?" Court, if it please you, was Bean right?-- after all, the dice were on her side. Did I forget the #1 rule (that people should be having fun)?

james_in_space

May it please the court, This one is short and simple and I shall except the verdict and punishment with grace. I was playing a one shot with a new group from my work. We are all medical professionals, not physicists. I was assigned a lvl 5 Goliath Druid and basically at the end of the session my character was going to sacrifice himself by jumping towards a bigbadguy (who’s size was large) off a cliff to bring myself within thronwhip range. I hit with my thornwhip but the DM ruled that since I was in mid air and not rooted by my feet that it did not pull my target towards me, and over the cliff. I fell into a river 50 feet below and then we ended the session. Idk if I died or not. I argued I should’ve still pulled him because thornwhip is magic and shouldn’t rely on physical strength but I conceded to the DM. The prosecution rests.

Turner Tush

May it please the court: I've got a player in my campaign who is a Monk named Zed, with the Guild Artisan background--specifically in Alchemy. He regularly tries to assert himself as an "Alchemist" in social situations and has begun looking for alchemy-related actions during combat. I've offered him some magic items that might nudge him towards multiclassing as an Artificer with the Alchemist specialty, but he insists that he's only going to continue as a Monk. Nevertheless, he continues to make character decisions that require alchemy checks and sometimes gets annoyed when they go poorly--like nearly killing off his character poorly. Should I continue to try to sway Zed into multiclassing or let his character run themselves into the ground?

Kozak

Those both sound like fun, appropriate uses of the spell with interesting consequences!

Melon Bread

Your DM should have clarified that by asking "Does your character say that out loud?"

Melon Bread

The whole point of rolling initiative is to deal with situations like this. It's not a video game, and events don't rely on the player's actual reflexes.

Melon Bread

Imo, without proficiency in alchemist's supplies she shouldn't be able to replicate it. Maybe use this encounter as prompt for her to start experimenting with them, possibly causing problems along the way?

Melon Bread

That’s pretty excessive punishment.

Nye-Low

Your DM needs to be more prepared for players actually affecting the world.

Melon Bread

May it please the court; was it an unjust ruling? Our dm planned for one of our players to die due to them leaving and needing an out from the campaign, but obviously it’s not really possible to just Let your friend narratively die when your character doesn’t know that. The dm used us exploring a tower and solving a riddle and the big bad guy coming in and holding our friend hostage. Player knowledge vs character knowledge meant I had to try and rescue them! When the baddy turned my friend into a slug, our dm told me straight up this wasn’t a fight I could win, so I begrudgingly followed the bad guys instructions to get into the small room and kicked my slug friend (knowing it would turn him back). The dm argued this would start a fight and killed my friend (who the baddy had been holding hostage) but I argued I was literally following directions. Who is wrong? The fight did occur, we did win, but we still had to let our friend die since that happened next session and they weren’t there. Honorable judges I ask, was I wrong to argue that I was simply following directions? I admit I Could have picked the slug up, but that would be gross, I had dropped my weapons and said I verbally that I was going to get my slug friend. Even though I know my other friend had to leave, was my dm in the wrong to start the fight anyways?

Alicia moseid

May it please the court. I present to you the Suits Suit. I have a Sorcerer PC that struggles to pay attention when it's not his turn in RP or Combat. After successfully slaying a dragon he and our gunslinger got into an argument over what to do with the loot and he let it slip that the gunslinger is wanted by Inquisitors, right in front of the Inquisitors. This led to events that saw the gunslinger PC killed and, turns out, that the player was watching Suits while playing DND and argued that even if he, the player, wasn't paying attention his character would be paying attention and wouldn't have let the info slip. I vehemently disagreed and let the gunslinger build a new OP PC as reparations. Members of the court, was I right for following through on consequences or should I have let the gunslinger off the hook for the sorcerer's poor behavior.

Matteo Cina

You should never build a boss without some form of legendary resistance. A succubus is CR4, you should have expected your players to actually use their abilities. Alternatively, there's lots of juicy things you can do with a baddy running away. Succubi and Incubi are manipulators anyway; they can turn a defeat into an opportunity that comes back to haunt the players.

Melon Bread

Taako!

Nye-Low

May It please the court. In our Rime of the Frost Maiden game, one of our wizards during a big fight was hanging from a chandelier above a ladder they had climbed up earlier, into the BBEGs lair. In an attempt to keep concentration on a polymorph spell, he jumped down through a cloud-kill spell into the ladder “tube”. Without saying anything other than catching himself on the ladder, he stayed there to keep concentration. On the enemies next turn, the cloud-kill spell started to descend the ladder at 20ft a round as the spell says, and we had rolled to determine he was 19 feet down the ladder. but he then argued he would have done differently, and he assumed he shut a hatch that neither he or I said even existed. In the moment, it was a big end of campaign fight, so for story said we could say that he could have shut a hatch kept the spell out. To catch himself, his Acrobatics check was middling, but i allowed for the hatch to be shut. Was I in the wrong? Should i have murdered my friends? The defence rests, I yield my time.

Scott Wall

May it please the court. Our party was at a magical tree that required us to solve a riddle to advance to the boss fight. The riddle went as follows: Take Note. I cast a spell that affects the masses I am the whisper you hear among the branches When with many, I face scrutiny. But when alone, I’ve been mastered. After much thinking, I realized that the perfect answer to the riddle was a fart. It satisfied every line of the riddle. A fart is, in fact, a whisper that affects the masses and is scrutinized among others. Everyone knows a fart is mastered when alone. However, our DM did not accept this answer and eventually gave us a hint which led to the real answer, A Song. This brought the party into a frenzy as we felt that fart was a more appropriate solution than a song. My question to you is, should a DM accept a creative answer to a riddle?

Jack H

Let your Grandma be what she wants. There's no reason you can't build a blasty bard who's also inspiring. Think stuff like Thunderclap, Thunderwave, Earth Tremor, Pyrotechnics, or Shatter. Plus, she's a Lore bard, so she can legally take Eldritch blast with her 6th level magical secrets if she wants. Alternatively, it might be that an edgy, sword-wielding hexblade is just not what she imagined for an offensive magic user. Maybe she was thinking more along the lines of the Evocation Wizard? Try suggesting something like that to her instead.

Melon Bread

May it please the court, I have a case of rules lawyering gone wrong and I need the expert opinion of the Supreme Crit Justices (and the wonderful Bailiff). I play a druid (Circle of Stars after I heard the exploits of Justice Axford on Rotating Heroes) and I attempted to cast both erupting earth, a third level spell, and shillelagh, a bonus action cantrip, in the same round. My DM said that because I cast a leveled spell as my action, I could not cast a cantrip as my bonus. I cannot find in the rules where this is illegal, but I was overruled and play continued. I'm still a little upset over this, but I concede it was not a dire circumstance and did not overly affect the fight. I throw myself on the mercy of the court and will abide by whatever precedent is set by your ruling. The defense rests.

Josh the Alchemist

I'm no supreme justice, but I'd rule in your favor. If your crew was high enough level wise to fight a dude with legendary actions, they're high enough level to face consequences like that for foolish decisions. Where would the stakes be if you always pulled your punches?

Katherine Clarke

Suggest he have more participants in a fight, or leave--he's only going to get worse.

Melon Bread

Daddy Murph and the Supreme Crit Judges, may it please the court. I am a DM whose group is nearing the end of a campaign we started in late 2019. My PCs are about two sessions from the big bad but one of my players is going to drop out during this coming summer as she is planning a wedding and moving. All the other players very badly want finish the campaign. Should I postpone the end of the campaign until the fall for her or continue on?

All Pulp! No Juice!

May it please the court, I’d like to call to question the general idea of critical fumbles and the like. My campaign was completely derailed by a nat one on an attack roll that almost killed two children, but luckily enough the vip that we were trying to save jumped infront of the attack and died instantly. My poor lawful good frog folk ranger binki balboa, that was running for mayor, had to sit through multiple sessions of a murder trial

Michael Singer

May it please the court, my dnd group is cool af just wanted to ask if y’all have any update on the video game love y’all 🤨

Jaydon

It sounds like she might have been prompting you for a slight of hand roll?

Melon Bread

May it please the court. This is the case of the ALLEGED murder of my husband. It was our first campaign on roll20 and I played a greedy high elf rouge named Nigella and my husband played a tabaxi monk named Shadow of the Mountaintop. It was literally written as Nigella's character flaw that she was too greedy for her own good. So when our level 3 party met up with a young dragon, they wanted to take the diplomatic approach and run away. The dragon said that they'd let us go if we gave it all our gold. Everyone said okay, but Nigella, with her flaw being what it is, yelled "NEVER!" And shot it with an arrow. The DM and everyone was shocked but as that was exactly what my character would do, we're now all fighting this dragon that we have no hope of winning against. Long story short, my husband was fixing something to eat and told me to get shadow "out of there with his maximum speed", but I heard "get him out of there" so I got him out the front door with the rest of the party, but Nigella goes out the back door gets a 21 stealth check to hide. The dragon, unable to find Nigella, then breaths his poison breath weapon and hits for over double the amount of HP that Shadow has instakilling him. My husband comes back and sees that if he ran his full speed that he would've been out of the breath weapons aoe. To this day my husband accuses me of killing him, but I argue that it was just a case of miscommunication. Can the court please put this story to rest and let Nigella mourn in peace or bring Justice for Shadow. Thank you.

Roxie B.

The DM is correct that the metal isn't touching skin, but the spell doesn't specify any extra damage. What SHOULD have happened is that once the artificer was confused and said they cast the spell, the DM should have informed the player that it wouldn't have worked the way they wanted and let the artificer redo the turn, especially because of the aforementioned perception check.

Meghan

Honorable judges and bailiff, Friendly conversation with someone that is DMing a campaign. They have a player that is playing as a Living Weapon Monk. The player took forged heart, so unarmed attacks are considered adamantine weapon attacks. The player is looking at taking a level of Paladin to smite while unarmed. I don’t think it qualifies as it’s an unarmed strike that is acting as a weapon attack. The counter is rule of cool, the player IS the weapon, and in an intense campaign I’d probably allow it. What’s the ruling?

Nye-Low

If he wants to randomly murder people for fun with no consequences he should play a video game.

Melon Bread

May it please the court to hear the case of the guest DM killing the regular DM. A guest DM borrowed our group. The night before the events below our bard had been befriending villagers. During a Wicker Man style festival which the youngins weren't involved in the bard played their bagpipes and gave a rousing (nat 20) speech to convince the young people to help us. The guest DM then forgot the bard for 3 rounds. The bard and helpful mob were headed to help and were only 1 round of movement away. Our usual DM was playing and was knocked out, then someone used Thunder Wave on the plant monster at the centre of the ritual. The guest DM said this outright killed our usual DM because they were in the zone and it took their HP too low. But our bard was ready to unleash the mob and heal the party. It was via Zoom and they did speak up, but must not have been heard. The guest DM did later admit they'd been missing the bard's turn, but wouldn't reverse the death. To add insult to injury, they said the player's head cracked open when they died and completed the blood ritual we were trying to stop. Should the guest DM have reversed this death because our bard should have been able to heal the regular DM? Or were they right to commit to the death?

Noodyl

If it pleases the sweetie court. Our party was contracted by a local king to eliminate a rival amassing power through rebellion against his rule. We were told to kill him to stop the rebellion. Shenanigans ensued but we eventually found our way in front of the rebel king and with a nat 20 persuasion roll convinced him we were here to present a real crown fit for a king. We had cast enlarge on a ornate bracelet to present as a crown with the plan to stop the spell after crowning him and leaving it to crush his head killing him. The DM claimed that the bracelet would just slip up his head and not crush it but we argued that it would shrink too fast for it to slide and would indeed crush his head. Were we robbed of our amazing assassination technique or not?

AJ

Your DM is a dick lol

Meghan

Well, Find Steed is a spell with a duration of Instantaneous. It also has very specific clauses defining when it disappears and why. Its original summoner disappearing is not one of those instances, so the steed should have persisted past the point of being gem'd. So the wizard shouldn't have needed to use Find Familiar to keep the pig, but even if this wasn't true, the Find Familiar spell is very clear on what kinds of creatures can be summoned and the creatures created by Find Steed do not overlap with those summoned by Find Familiar.

Meghan

That is exactly how twinned spell metamagic is supposed to work. It increases the amount of targets you can hit with one spell, but it’s still only one spell. If the player loses concentration, it all goes down. There are already dozens of concentration spells that can affect multiple targets (bless, bane, stinking cloud, spirit guardians, wall of fire, hold person when cast at a higher level spell slot, list goes on and on). This isn’t exploiting the system, it’s just the system.

Robert Z.

May it please the court. Honorable justices, I present the case of Bard and Sorcerer vs DM, formerly the case of Bard vs Sorcerer. A session ended angrily after the sorcerer knocked out the bard with an area attack and showed no remorse, then grew angry when the bard had a side conversation with another character about how troubled she was by that, which the sorcerer wasn't present for but his player was. As a sort of small court justice and first time DM, I spoke with both players, because one of them does not care for direct confrontation, and attempted a compromise. Henceforth, we would enact the rules that, unless a player consented ahead of time, characters were not to do harm to fellow characters and characters were not to have conversations which could offend or hurt the feelings of another player, unless that player's character was present and could address it actively. Neither was delighted by the rule that directly addressed their action but both seemed good with the one that addressed the other's action, so I figured they'd be fine. About two months later, in response to a survey I sent, the bard told me they'd actually separately talked it out after I'd spoken with each of them and found that neither liked having new rules. So I nixed the rules. Was I a fool to enact my own ruling or were my players just mad at having their respective rights to upset one another called out?

Katherine Clarke

May it please the court, 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, but I feel bad for saying no. 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

There is precedent, RAW, for DMs to call for concentration checks in other instances than damage. For example, the PHB says that "The DM might also decide that certain environmental phenomena, such as a wave crashing over you while you're on a storm-tossed ship, require you to succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw to maintain concentration on a spell."

Meghan

May it please the court. There are two players in my party that have been bogarting role play and the party decisions and hindering opportunities for mine and other characters to play to our fullest. I spoke to the party members about this happening and wasn’t listened to. To try and change up and hopefully curb there behaviour I spoke with the dm and had my drunken dwarf monk get married for the fifth time, lose his virginity and retire from adventuring and rolled up a new dhampir bard that would be there chaperone at the mage college that the party is stuck in for the foreseeable future to change party dynamics. I bring myself before the court to have myself judged for my actions if they are breaking any D&D bylaws.

Klanin IceCrushner

May it please the court. Immediately after dooming the world our party was in a newly dark and sinister forest. We were approached by a spider who pointed at one of our legs and asked “can I have that?” It turned out that the spider was hungry and wanted to drink our blood but was very polite. We all huddled to discuss this and the matter of the spiders size came up. Our DM described it as “the size of a large muffin” and later elaborated that it was “the size of a cinnamon bun, but not like a small Pillsbury one. Like one of those big ones from Cinnabon” The DM occasionally describes monsters this way (once saying a trash monster was the size of two bicycles on top of each other) and the party (myself included) thinks this is extremely funny and thoroughly enjoys it. The DM however, feels self conscious about this and thinks that she should be able to describe things using only objects that exist in the game world. Dispute our insistence that we love the way it is now. How do we make our DM feel more comfortable doing this so that we can hear more bizarre and amazing size comparisons. PS. We gave the spider our blood but it had 100 siblings so we had to run away and direct them to a nearby town.

Moon Question Guy

I mean, the sea isn't still, it's moving and therefore counts as running water. That vampire is taking 20 acid damage a round as long as it ends its turn there.

Melon Bread

May It Please the Court, In my third ever session of DnD, my Sorcerer Sinder and I were gulled by our DM into attacking an NPC pirate captain. This event pulled us into our nautical-themed campaign where we ended up having to repay a favor to an Admiral Pirate for my transgression. After completing his task (over a year IRL later), the admiral hauled us back in because it wasn't completed in the way he requested. Once we were back before the admiral, our tiefling bard ran their mouth off and ended up losing their hands to the swashbuckling admiral. The player ended up having to go over a month IRL before their hands and most of their magic were restored. Outside of the game the player blames me for their PC losing hands and having to go without magic for so long because I was the one that pulled us into the events of our DM's campaign. I don't feel like that is fair. From session 1 my character had been a trigger finger, and I feel like my DM used that as a way to pull us into his events. I feel like the bard should own up to their hot mouth and admit they are responsible for their lot, not Sinder and I. I leave my hands and punishment at your Honor's ruling.

Jacob Deaven

THE CASE OF THE STONER DRUID May it please the court, Honorable judges and baliff, I DM a game in which one of the PC’s is playing a Grassland Druid named “Purp” who is also a weed dealer. We’ve worked out a mechanic to determine the strength of their magically grown, dank bud and therefore the price he sells it for. Ive also allowed him to use it to temporarily boost his own charism at the expense if his Dexterity. On one occasion, however, Purp got a nat 20 on their grow check, yielding the Stickiest of the Icky. They saved this batch until the party was infiltrating a military base, then stuck the intoxicant into some of the guards’ stew pot. They waited until the drugs started to take effect, and i played it as the guards were significantly less effective at perception and would roll any attacks with Disadvantage. Purp, however, argued that their “OG Crit” kush would’ve rendered them totally unconscious, but i disagreed. This did not end up impacting the sneak mission, as all the PC’s made it past the baked guards, but the real life player of Purp still complains about this detail. So my honorable judges and bailiff, did i not do enough to honor the nat 20 or is Purp being a lil’ diva? Honorably yours, JBeav

JBeev

Dear Honorable Judges, May it please the court. a short grievance, I wish for it to be laid to rest. I am running a pirate themed campaign with my players and during character creation one of them expressed the desire to play as a skeleton. Being very on theme, I was excited for their concept until they came to me with their name: Jerry Spine-feld. I vetoed the name instantly, but when word spread of the suggested name, all my players turned against me and said I should have allowed it. I argued that I'd let them choose their second choice of name: Captain Jack Marrow, which was plenty silly enough. Other silly names have come up in the session such as the name of their ship being the Rhum Tub Tugger, so they argue the silliness of Jerry Spinfeld should not have been vetoed. Thank you. (I expect the Honorable Judge Tanner, lover of puns, to side against me, so I plead my case to Honorable Judge Murphy.)

Christopher Chow

May it please the court. Our D&D adventuring group has been campaigning across the land, only to find in each case our treasure was stolen right before we got there by a mysterious set of three NPCs. Later on, we discovered a traveling merchant who had purchased all of the treasure from the thieves. One of our party is very into haggling, even setting up a cow futures market after acquiring some escaped cattle in the countryside. The merchant dealt in potions and items, and had a portal to another plane where a blacksmith dealt in weapons and armor. After trying to haggle with the blacksmith, the DM said that NPC is absolutely unwilling to discuss or change their prices. Was it reasonable for our resident economic expert to be frustrated and in-character denounce the idea of a merchant who doesn't want to engage in the bargaining trade?

Would you fine and honorable judges consider the mimicry of a Kenku as admissible evidence in court? My argument is that they can function as humanoid tape-recorders. The defendant submits that the kenku could doctor the evidence, thereby making it inadmissible.

Dear Honorable Judges, May it please the court. In one of my games the DM set up a very cool set of challenges that each player would do individually. My challenge was to stay inside a ring for three consecutive rounds while competitors tried to push you out. One of the competitors was an imp named Juicy, (with JUICY written on the ass of his sweatpants) who turned invisible immediately. With a combination of good strength checks and thunderwave I was set up to win -- until Juicy became uninvisible and stabbed me in the back, CRIT and downed me, clinching the win for himself. I tried to use cutting words to negate the crit (getting rid of the extra damage), since the language includes subtracting "from the roll," but my DM ruled that you cannot negate a crit with cutting words, leaving me with a loss. Who is in the right here? Should I have been able to stay up and subsequently kill Juicy, winning the challenge?

Your Honor(s), - I was locked in stocks for calling a guard a douchebag for strong-arming gold from poor peasants - Party (including real-life wife)said they'd get me in the morning - Had to cross a new city, discover their caravan, and action-movie style jump and grab a hand because THEY LITERALLY LEFT ME BEHIND

JesterHat

May it please the court, I run a campaign with a party of 7 who frequently runs into trouble with the guards. One of which (the rogue) is currently wanted in suspicion of murdering a king and the others are accompanying him to clear his name, however they’ve potentially made things worse. Our last 2 sessions have resulted in 2 identical situations. 1 guard is dead, 1 is restrained and saw their faces while they argue on what to do with the bodies. All in broad daylight on the city streets. I love moral debates, but these take up most of our session times. Am I in the wrong for including so many guards in my scenes?

Grayson

may it please the esteemed court, a while ago my party and i came across an abandoned and burnt village where we found a flame blade. our party’s fighter immediately claimed it for himself. we later found out that the village was the remains of my elven ranger pcs home town and the flame held the soul of her sister. after learning this information, the fighter refused to give up the sword or even let me hold it so i could communicate with my trapped sister. our dm did nothing to facilitate or help the argument and to this day, he still holds the flame blade claiming that “he found it first so it’s rightfully his”. so who gets the sword?

May it please the court I have grave injustice to report within the hallowed halls of roleplaying game experience. I wish to tell of the many injustices my brother has committed against me and the general populace with his TTRPG crimes. My brother sees fit to play the game as if he were in the late seventies, to his bones he is an old school DM and is filled with all the cruelties of that bygone era. An example your honor; while investigating a dungeon of his design we happened upon a room inlaid with a red crystal in the wall. Knowing my brother to be a trickster when it comes to RPG's my Inquisitor (this was a Pathfinder game) looked to investigate but was only able to discern that the crystal was magical. Being a brave sort my inquisitor decided to jump into the room but be ready to avoid whatever trap ma occur, wise as he had to dodge a gout of flame! After avoiding the fire and asking my brother what the deal with the trap was, he replied that it detected living aura. How wear we supposed to figure it out and circumvent that?! We also happened upon a chest in the room and upon opening it found three bottle marked "heal" I was somewhat distrustful but our Dwarven monk, who was played by the my brother the DM as we had such a small party, drank one and shortly began to feel sick. Not only was the devious trap ridiculous and twisted my brother voluntarily weakened his own character so as to make our trek through the dungeon all the more difficult so he could consume our characters very essence like the vampiric DM that he is. I pray that my words reach you honored judges, this injustice has already gotten out of hand and who knows what unspeakable evils my brother may unleash next.

Case of: Sould Ned be dead. We were exploring an abandoned mansion on a hill where many townsfolk had gone missing. While in the house we found a man named Ned tied up, who claims he just a townsfolk that woke up that way. We decided as a a party to un tie him and send him on his way. Fast forward, and we have found caves under the house with a smugglers ring set up. We end up fighting the smugglers, one of which turns out to be Ned (so understandably the party is mad he lied to us) By the end of the fight it's the party vs Ned, and on my turn I say "I dont want to kill him, we need to question him." Before firing an arrow. Turns out it was the killing blow, and the dm pronounced him dead, while the rest of the party cheered. I tried to argue that I didnt want to kill him, but just bring him down enough to question. The DM said that since I did not state that it was non lethal damage he is dead, and I am still salty to this day. Am I in the wrong? Should he truly have died or is my dm just being technical. Thank you all Brooklin247

May it please the Court - I play in a party with two members that are super stingy spending spell slots and using other special class abilities and items. I am sure some of this is just good old video game style inventory hoarding but I worry that it might also mean they just don't really enjoy playing their characters. The hoarding also makes play less fun for me because I feel like my PC has to take on a lot in combat and out. We are pretty well along in our campaign - should I even bring this issue up at this point? If I do, and character build is an issue, is there a good way to deal with this without totally derailing our established campaign narrative?

Stephanie Karisny

May it please the court: I DM for a rambunctious group in the Ravnica setting. Our Selesnyan monk just got access to a flying pegasus and the group immediately wanted to go on a joyride through the city by yoking him to a sleigh. I ruled that there was no way it could hoist all of them and a huge sleigh through the air. But the warlock insisted she could use telekinesis on the sleigh thus alleviating the strain on the pegasus. I finally relented and their joyride became the entire session. However, I had the Azorius cops attempt to arrest them for reckless flying (they were throwing stuff at people for no real reason) and the group says I was being unfair in retribution for throwing my planned session for a loop. I maintain that consequences are fun! Your Honors, would I have been correct to disallow the initial shenanigans and if not, did I go overboard in consequences for their actions?

Pamphleteer

MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT I solemnly swear to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me Torag. In fact, if I lie then I violate my anathema and lose my healing capability, so I'm not gonna. I play a dwarven cleric, Kelitorag "Grag" Smaragd, in a Pathfinder 2e campaign. A few months back our team had a battle with an adult black dragon in a forested region. As a cleric, I'm what some might call a "squishy," so I was looking for ways to improve my AC. I had a barkskin potion in my inventory, which causes my skin to "gain the effects of a 2nd-level barkskin spell." I suggested that were I to drink said potion, it would help camoflauge me in the trees, thus making it harder for the dragon to hit me. Our DM disagreed, saying that a barkskin potion makes your skin have the resistance to bludgeoning and weakness to fire of bark, but does not actually make your skin into bark. To be fair to our DM, the mechanical description for the barkskin spell just lists the resistance to bludgeoning and weakness to fire. But the first sentence of the barkskin spell is "The target's skin becomes covered in bark." As in, literal bark, not metaphorical. I decided not to pursue the line of inquiry any further, but I am still thorougly convinced that drinking that barkskin potion should have given me more cover, even if it's not the stated mechanical effect of the potion. What do y'all think? I await the honorable justices' ruling with bated breath and a prayer to the Forger of Existence on my mouth. (And yes, "Grag" is a reference to Pratchett.)

Supreme Crit Justices and may it please the Court, I play a Goliath College of Valor Bard. Before our campaign kicked off I was planning on a DEX build, but once we started playing it became very obvious that as a party we were sorely lacking in the strength department. Because the amount I can lift and carry is naturally doubled as a Goliath, I was fine with stepping into that role. I picked up Enhance Ability at 4th level so that in a pinch I can carry just under 1,000 pounds. 
 
Recently during travel we came across a tree that had fallen across the road. I tried to lift it out of our way without buffs, and my DM said I could lift it a little but if I pushed it I would hurt myself. I cast Enhance Ability, and he said that my carrying capacity is doubled but since the spell doesn’t mention anything about lifting, dragging, or pushing, the only benefit I would get is advantage on the check to lift the tree. I let it go at the time because it was just a tree, but I don’t agree with the ruling. He says that lifting and carrying are two different things, and while I agree that the physical actions are different, I would argue that you cannot carry an object without first being able to lift it. I said that the way he’s interpreting the spell, I will only ever be able to carry things that meet my increased carrying capacity if someone else puts the weight my shoulders or hands it off me. He said he would allow that, but that the spell is intended to allow a person to pick up and carry an increased number of items, not single items that are heavier than a person’s base carrying capacity. 

 As we’ve played I have found myself really enjoying being the big strong lady who can anchor the tug of war, and I am perfectly fine with being told “it’s too heavy for you.” I just don’t agree with the distinction between lifting and carrying. Can I get a ruling to settle this before we encounter something more serious than a tree? -Lauryn

May it please the court. My party and I were traveling between towns on a cart drawn by two horses. We then encountered some enemies, and began a fight/chase sequence down the road. The disagreement with our DM was as follows: he said that whoever was steering the cart had to spend their action to make the cart move. We argued that the horses were probably sufficiently spooked, and would have used their full dash to preserve their loves anyway. I understand using a bonus action or something to steer (maybe give animal handling checks), but it was just sad to see someone pretty much sit out a whole encounter. In your opinion, who was in the right here?

Mattie Honda

May it please the court. We are playing horde of the dragon queen. My player is a Ranger, who has the cults robes and dagger. I speak draconic and am good with animals. I asked to have one of the Guard drakes that was caged up be on my side and I had food for them. He asked me to roll at least an 18 and I failed, fine. Later this same session, another player asks to do the same thing, no food or anything to give them, he just got the kill shot on the roper. He had no robes, no equipment from the cult, nothing. In his defense, he was a Dragonborn. But My issue is he rolled an 11 and now he has two drakes with him and listening to him and the DM said they would even follow him outside the dungeon. My issue is I feel it should not have been so hard for me to get one but that easy for this guy to get 2.

May it please the court, I was running a divination wizard in a campaign and cast slow on the BBEG. The DM didn't use a legendary resistance, and figured they would pass the saving throw quickly. Two low portents later, the DM opted to cast a spell to break my concentration. They cast Power Word Pain. The spell causes no damage, but the DM insisted that I should need to make a CON save for my concentration, as the spell says it causes "intense pain", despite the lack of damage. Long story short, I passed the CON Save anyhow, but was my DM right to force a concentration save when I took no damage? Or should I have just accepted the ruling without question, as the DM made the judgement call? Thanks guys!

Mark Mcknight

I'm a DM for a campaign that just hit our year mark of playing! Two of my players are dating; they're amazing players and my best friends, but they play their characters so incredibly horny. No matter what challenge or setting I put them in, they assume every NPC is trying to seduce them, and every inn exists for sexcapades. (Nobody at the table is uncomfy, we do check-ins!) Should I honor their character choices to be simply, incredibly horny all the time and lean into it by just running an incredibly horny campaign, or keep trying to put up barriers to their role-playing pelvises? Thank u!!

reno

May it please the court, Not me, but a fellow player in our 20th level campaign. The party were tasked with fighting an under dark strike team, this included a purple worm. The group wasn’t having too much of an issue when we realised there was another creature that we couldn’t see putting effects on us. The creature was a death tyrant who used a petrifying beam on the barbarian, Kazador. Kazador became petrified after two failed saves, turning to stone. Our dm then decided that since Kazador was stone and the purple worm had a burrowing speed and a feature that specifically allowed it to burrow through solid stone, that the worm would burrow through Kazador and kill him instantly even though Kazador been on full health (over 300 hp). My dm argues that we’re in a high level campaign where resurrection is easily available, but I’d argue that he had also just killed off our only player with the ability to cast resurrection and we’d have to make some sort of deal with a god or use an artefact that could have lasting consequences on Kazador’s character. Was this a fair decision by our DM to just insta-kill a party member based on two save, or should Kazador been able to live? Thank you

May it please the court, I lost my entire action due to flavor. I'm playing a warlock and my party and I have just gotten into a fight outside the tavern we're staying in. I'm last in the turn order so I have plenty of time to think this through. Then it happens, it comes around in my turn and I start off by saying "I would like to start out by walking towards the door leading outside, on my way grabbing an empty mug, I would like to then kick the door open and say 'hey assholes, I came here to kick ass and drink ale *points to mug* and I'm all out of ale'." I then asked my DM if I could minor illusion a shotgun in my hand as I eldritch blast to make it look as 80's as possible. The DM allowed it but after rolling to hit, he then speaks up and says you can't minor illusion and eldritch blast in the same turn. This is true but it was just flavor I said. But he insisted that because I said I went to minor illusion first I couldn't eldritch blast him. I was frustrated and then protested further but he kept his ruling. He wouldn't let me choose between eldritch blast or minor illusion and forced me to stand there with a fake gun for my turn. It took 20 minutes to get back to my turn again. I feel wronged, cheated, and unexpectedly punished for flavor :(

BrethrenBlev

May it please the court, My rogue was gifted a ring of invisibility that proved to be quite problematic for our DM. I will admit to not always trying to use the ring as written. At one point, I critically failed a trap roll that happened to be a acid-based trap. The DM stated that the acid damaged the ring and its magic. I argued that the ring, being such a rare item, would have protections against mundane damage such as acid or fire. Please help, my rogue needs all of those sneak attacks back. Thanks! Cheers, Beau

Beau W.

May it please the court, I run a campaign for a group of four lvl 8 characters who love to optimize everything about their characters. (I do too.) But because of this the players are starting to do 40-60pts of dmg in a single turn of combat. To try and balance that and keep combat from being one sided. I started making encounters more difficult. After encounter where two characters nearly died. A player of mine felt the combat was too difficult and felt that they should be able trounce enemies more often. Am I being too harsh on my players or should I stick to my guns?

May it please the court. In my setting the sun is magic. The burning a god head set alight when his son consumed the last sun. My players know this to be true. One of my players needed a rare plant from the green house of a local Major Domo(Mid Management lord) they broke several panels. One player decided to summon a flail snail whose goop is magic and can be made into a glass. I informed him that the Snails Glass is anti-magic by nature and will block out the sun's life giving energy and kill all the plants inside. He argued that that's not how glass works and I was harunged as their plot was upended when the Domo returned from his holiday to find half the plants in his greenhouse dead. He put out a bounty on the players who now have to deal with the conciquencees of this. Was I being unfair by killing the plants or were my players not listening to the DMs warning? -Indigo

Bryan Holt

P.S. I ended up getting sweet revenge on that dragon after being rezzed by 1 hit crit killing it with over 200 damage as it fell from the sky 😀

May it please the court, I’m playing a lvl 18 circle of spores druid named Musk Wad in one of my games who kinda looks like a sewer dwelling Billy Idol. My armor class is 27 and I have 165 hit points. In a recent sesh, my entire party fell but me, and I still had well over 200 hit points because I get 72 temp hp in symbiotic entity. However, my DM then said that because the monster was also necrotic in nature, it cancelled out my symbiotic entity and I was forced to drop it by some bs effect. I argued that this was totally unjust, but he didn’t care. As things got dire, I decided to have Musk jump into the water, cast water breathing and swim away. The entire party died but me. There is no discernible reason why Musk should have had to drop symbiotic entity, and if he hadn’t, the party would certainly have survived. Please throw down your fungal justice

Frank

May it please the court, I'm in a curse of straud campaign where my romantic novelist turned hexblade warlock (Niklaus Sparks) has a sort of rivalry with Straud himself. However, I feel like the dm might be picking on my character a little too harshly in that it seems like every enemy we come against specifically targets him as opposed to my 4 other party members. We recently had a seige battle where there were 15 enemies and nearly single one of them targeted my character and ignored everyone else. Not only that, but it feels like the dm will specifically make up rules to counteract my characters abilities and defenses. For one, my counterspells never seem to work with the dm saying fireballs come from impossible angles just to avoid the counterspell. In a more extreme example, we previously fought a bone dragon that Straud ordered to kill my character specifically. In fighting the dragon, it ended up landing a killing blow that otherwise would not have hit because the dm said: "it has advantage against me because it is large". This blow was followed by the dragon using an attack to insta kill me and then taking a bite out of his lungs before flying away so that I could not be revived. Sessions later, my original character ended up getting revived by making a deal with the dm and is still alive and kicking despite my dm's best efforts. I get the rivalry with Straud, but it really seems like I have to be on my A game every single time to surprise the dm in ways that makes it difficult to kill my character. Is the dm in the right to have Straud and all of the people in the land target my character, even bending the rules to do so?

May it please the court... In CoS my forge cleric Sam Steele saw a large dragon statue that was crumbing away, so being the good person he is, he spent time mending it to perfection. OOC I mention that in our next combat that we could tell was coming up I was going to animate object the statue. Our next session, combat starts and our opponent crushes the statue while transforming into a dragon. Please punish my DM for taking my cool toy away. All of Meloras blessings upon you!

Aaron Walsh

May it please the court, I present my case to the grand council of justices that preside over all things dnd. I am running a campaign for a group of my friends, three of which I’ve never played dungeons and dragons before. One of my players wanted to play a barbarian that never back down from a fight and was constantly trying to start fights with people. On an encounter check they rolled nat 20 and had to face a revenant, The rest of the party retreated, and he stayed behind to face some thing that was way beyond what he could handle, his character got killed and he created a new one for the next session. This time he created a warlock character who is constantly trying to convert everyone that he meets to his patrons religion. Here’s the kicker, if they don’t convert he then tries to kill them. I told him that this is now predicated under the sense that he has never encountered someone who has not converted that he has not defeated. I told him that this also might make interacting with people and townsfolk very difficult as it is often the very first question he asks them. But he stood his ground and said that this is what he wanted, am I wrong to have allowed this, and what can I do to mitigate the fallout from all of this. I don’t want to just keep killing his character. Thank you grand Council, and we will abide by your ruling

If it pleases the court. I was dming and I had put my players in the middle of a war between a monster nation with an ancient gold dragon as their leader versus a human nation ruled by a human king. I gave the players a choice between the two but i also made the human king super racist hoping that they would choose the monster nation. They did but I’m scared that this might have been railroading. Although I did put flows in the monster nation I just wanna make sure I’m not ruining the game?

May it please the court. I present the case of the Fabricated Bridge. My party (5 PCs, level 14) was in the bowels of a dwarven mine, hunting some starspawn (STARSPAWN!) when we came across a 20 foot chasm. Despite the fact that we had the ability to cross the gap with ease (most of us have misty step and the barbarian has an absurd jump distance), our Forge Cleric asked the DM if they could cast Fabricate to make a bridge. The DM looked at the spell, and ruled that it wouldn't work, since the chasm was 20 ft wide and the spell only makes an object that fits in a 10 ft cube. I, being the party's primary source of shenanigans, suggested that he Fabricate a folding bridge: two halves that are 10 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 5 feet tall, connected by hinges. The DM, along with another player, instantly shot the idea down, saying it goes against the intent of the spell. Justices, I ask you: is the intent of Fabricate to build a solid object that couldn't possibly extend beyond 10 feet? Or would my suggestion work, provided you had the proper materials and tool proficiencies? Thank you for your time.

Michael Kessler

May it please the court, I present the case of the invisible communist NY bodega owning imp Roland. In my current Curse of Strahd campaign, one of my players is a warlock of the genie with Pact of the Chain, and rotates between the four familiar types. As the dm, I voice the familiars during key moments, and we all communally create the personalities. By far the favorite is Roland, an imp with a thick long island accent who owns a bodega and frequently demands better working conditions and breaks as a familiar. We all liked this fun personality angle in the otherwise grim campaign, and so he's favorite. However, the player using him constantly uses Roland's invisibility to scout ahead, regardless of location. At first it was fun, but over time it became pretty tiring, with the other people at the table just waitiing for the invisible Imp to scout an area, check everything, etc. Basically Roland, in the name of party safety, does a lot of the exploring. I've tried to mitigate this somewhat, allowing enemies to make checks for sound cues, but since he flies and has good stealth, I have no luck. I've tried putting ground-based traps in, but after that working once Roland checks for those "gingerly" now too. Finally, in a fit of desperation, wanting something other than one player's familiar to do the adventuring, I tried to use Roland's personality to make him go on strike, to which the player got upset, because warlock familiars are 100% obedient, and after a rather long argument I relented. The thing is, he isn't even having fun using Roland like this. He's doing it out of an overabundance of caution, and even he knows it's slowing down the game. I love Roland, and the player is a good friend, but this bodega owning socialist is getting overused to a large degree. So, justices, was I wrong for trying to use the characterization of Roland to limit his use, am I out of line for trying to nerf him, is there another solution, or should my player just use a different warlock familiar for a few sessions?

Katherine Lindeman

May it please the court. Honorable judges, is this an appropriate use of the "it's what my charater would have done" defense? Our DM is running a very open homebrew campaign with lots of twists and turns. Our current mission is to take a secret package from one side of an large island to the other within a week. The moment we stepped outside of the starting city the DM rolled on a random encounter table they made and we found ourselves helping a random traveler  find their kidnapped child. This detour took us 3 sessions, 2 in world days, put us several miles off track and  sattled us with 3 sickly children. When we finally found our selves on course again our DM rolled another random encounter and told us there was a campfire in the distance. Having just had a massive detour and now having to also find medical attention for these children we promptly ignored it. We similarly ignored 3 more random encounters until we made it to a city about 1/3 of the way to our destination. At the end of the session our DM was in a huff and said he was disappointed that we ignored his encounters. We used the "it's what our characters would do" defense which closed the matter but our DM was still grumbly. Judges, was this an appropriate use of the "it's what my characters would do" defense or should we as players take our cues from the DM directly?

Miikra

May it please the court, I present the long-standing case of the airship heist tax sceme. I am the DM for a group of my friends and we have one argument that still comes up to this day. My players had organized a band of north folk (King in the North! style), and had decided to perform a VERY hostile take over of a regional airship company monopoly. The airship monopoly. was run by a group of high elves who liked being ultra capitalists (and sound EXACTLY LIKE REN) and who were exploiting these remote northern villages since the ice plains area where all this was located could offer no competition. My players, a couple NPC friends, and their army successfully obliterated the airship company HQ, which was staffed by mercs and the annoying elves, and found themselves in posession of the company. This is where the disagreement arises. Player A wanted to take over the company and continue treating it as a business, claiming majority ownership and believing that they should be able to run the business as they adventured on the main continent, getting revenue delivered to them. I disagreed, first reminding thm that they had promised ownership of at least some of the locations to their NPC friends, and that there was no reliable way to find them around the main continent, which was massive. They could not get. messages back and forth or be found reliably to receive the gold. Player A retorted that an airship could deliver anywhere, and so they should be allowed to "build their capitalist airship empire". I disagreed, one as a socialist, and two because I just didn't see it as practical. The player was quite upset, and while they still walked away from the encounter with a personal army loyal to them, three airships for their forces and one for personal use, as well as over 20,000 gp, he contends that I should've allowed the airship empire. Was I wrong to insist that the idea was impractical and that no workers would be able to make it work, or was he being a greedy capitalist weasel? I await your verdict!

Katherine Lindeman

If it please the court. One of my players is playing a fungal gnome sorcerer and is not exactly a nice character. He gets along with the party though so I let the evil slide. But recently in a combat he made use of the metamagic ability to attempt to cast witch bolt a concentration spell on two different monsters. It's my understanding that you can never have more than two concentrated magical affects going at the same time without the aid of a magic item. but he argues since twin spell makes it just one spell being cast that it should be allowed. I enjoy exploiting the system but this is ridiculous (but this is ridiculous). I would love to hear what the Supreme crit justices and bailiff jake have to say about concentration and twin spell.

Andrew Bonkginya

Oof, I feel the DM's pain here, but you gotta stick to your decisions, even the bad ones. There are plenty of creative ways to get rid of a player's magic items, and it seems like the DM was just trying to pull a sneaky on ya. I also generally disapprove of pitting PCs against each other, as that just translates to real life emotions a lot of the time, and no one wants that.

Daddy Master Dandy

Hear ye, Hear ye Now presenting the case of sorcerer v. DM There are two charges placed against the DM. Several years ago our party was first introducing ourselves to DnD. We were playing 3.5 edition because we told that was the place to start. We get deep into the story and 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 much closer. Except, the DM claims his character noticed the lack of background noise (Torches crackling, water dripping, ect.) and noticed us immediately despite the spell. Combat begins and the our warlock uses some spells to impose disadvantage on our villain. My sorcerer then casts the 3.5 version of phantasmal killer which says, "The target first gets a Will save to recognize the image as unreal. If that save fails, the phantasm touches the subject, and the subject must succeed on a Fortitude save or die from fear." Villain crit fails the first save and fails the second save by 1. Offense 2: 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 (which is also supposed to lower their level for each one made) We neither get experience nor loot because we didn't destroy the soul and the body exploded when we tried to inspect it. We would have to destroy the means of cloning if we wanted anything out of it. Was our DM just being a dick since we upended his story, or was what we did irredeemable. Should he have at least humored the change in direction of the story rather than completely override our accomplishment, and does the use of the 3.5 rules make Phantasmal Killer too unfair for him?

ThatManGareth

May it please the Court. My character is a Loxodon named Tusk who grew up orphaned in the Underdark and developed a hatred for all things that go bump in the night. I had heard good things about the Gloom Stalker Ranger build, and knowing that we were playing a campaign setting heavy on creatures that rely on darkvision, I felt the build’s Umbral Sight would be clutch, allowing me to move through the dark as if invisible. Unfortunately, my plans were foiled right at the outset by a Warlock in the party who insisted on casting Magical Darkness whenever we entered dark spaces, negating the darkvision of our adversaries but also eliminated a big advantage of my character’s build. This was, needless to say, a frustrating experience. Eventually, as we reached the climax of our campaign arc, I convinced my Warlock companion to cool it with the Magical Darkness and allow me to run around in the dark for a bit. I cast Pass Without Trace on our party and we proceeded into the sinister caverns whereupon we came to a door. With Umbral Sight and Pass Without Trace on my side, I decided to stealthily crack the door, at which point our NOT-COOL DM told everyone to roll initiative. BUT WHY, I protested, I’M INVISIBLE AND SHROADED IN SHADOW AND SILENCE! I argued that I should at least be allowed to make a Stealth roll to determine if I was able to avoid detection. Not so, said the Not-Cool DM, because the Bugbears within were facing the door and would obviously have noticed it come ajar. Coupled with my frustration over the Warlock’s earlier shenanigans, I lost my shit at the DM’s cruel course of action. Have I been wronged??? A friendship hangs in the balance.

May it please the court, I present the case of the op mercenary. Taking a break from normal sessions, the problem player from our table decided to dm for us, starting at 5th level. We were running a train heist, 3 mercenaries had been hired to protect it. No big deal, right? 2 were ninja types, both of whom beat a nat 20 perception check to hide. And the third, a heavily armoured guy, with +13 to hit, and full evasion. He eventually removed his armor (in the midst of combat) and his AC went from 19 to 24 We delt over 200 damage to this man, and he just kept miraculously surviving. Is the dm in the right to try and take away our hard earned win by giving this guy some thick ass plot armour?

Leith H.

May it please the court. As the DM, I have a player extra experience for surviving through an entire section of a dungeon alone. Our bard decided to wander off and would have died in a trap ridden hallway had she not rolled a nat 20 each time to save. I thought it was so cool that I have her an extra 100 exp for sheer dumb luck. Another player said it wasn’t fair because she did something dumb. I said that she survived an experience so she gets the exp. who was right?

Matthew R

Thank you and may it please the court!! We have been playing our campaign for nearly 2 years and have gotten to 10th level. We have access to a lot of magic items because early on we were given access to a magic shop that could source almost anything given an extra fee and a bit of time (usually 1-2 weeks in game). Some of the items we have bought are a staff of healing, dagger of venom, collapsable boat, etc. The DM has since regretted it. One item in particular that has caused contention is the cloak of displacement. Our barbarian bought it almost as soon as he had enough money for it. The combination of rage, reckless attack, and the cloak of displacement has made the DM quite frustrated. Recently, we’ve had 2 new players join the party - a paladin and a warlock. Most recently after a situation that made us all believe the barbarian was dead (dragged through a gate spell to another plane, which is a WHOLE story for another court session), the warlock let it slip that one of the tasks set out by his patron was to steal and destroy that specific cloak owned by the barbarian. We (as players) all think that this is an absurd task to give a PC and are quite upset - particularly the barbarian’s player. He paid quite a bit if gold for it and is feeling targeted more than the rest of us. This task would result in an all out fight between PCs if the warlock was caught. The task also doesn’t make much sense for the patron to be so focused on our barbarian. Is our DM being reasonable to task the warlock with stealing a PC’s magic item? Or are we overreacting? - Jules

May it please the court, My DM recently started a new '20s-'30s campaign and before our first session I emailed her some basic info about my detective PC, Frank Sterling. I envisioned him as a private investigator and was excited to riff on some Poirot archetypes, but I must not have mentioned that in the email because in our first session my DM introduced him as a police investigator and started a story thread about his connection to his police badge. For obvious real world reasons I’m not super jazzed to be playing a sympathetic cop character for the foreseeable future. Is there anything I can do to walk back Frank’s apparent police background without upsetting the campaign too much?

Kimberly Tevis

May it please the court. I a PC and our party were fighting the current BBEG who is an undead revenant. Our swarm Keeper ranger had entangled him and was restraining him as was our Orc fighter with brute strength thanks a belt of giant strength. Our cleric scored. Critical hit with his mace and per our DM the BBEGS head was knocked off but he was not dead and he would act on his next turn . I the artificer then used catapult to throw his knocked of head at his tied up body- here is where the discussion came up. The language of catapult state that both the object being hit and the object being catapulted each take 3d8 damage. I made the case that since the DM stated the revenant was not dead with his head being off he should take 6d8 damage as i had used his own head to hit his own body and My DM being an engineer ended up agreeing to the hilarity because of physics but how would the court have ruled?

DId I make good calls, or did I just screw over my brother's PC?

Georgia

May it please the court. I DM'd a campaign for my partner, younger brother, and dad that ran for a couple of years. Near the beginning of the campaign I accidentally killed my younger brother's PC and felt horrible. The PC was a tiefling warlock named Nikolai who (in his backstory, which my younger brother wrote) had an adopted mom who was in prison for a variety of criminal activities, and who himself had created so much trouble in the city that he had fled to the small town nearby where the campaign started. While visiting the city for some information, Nikolai decided to solo mission break his mom out of jail. He rolled incredibly well on stealth and initiative where needed and got to the cell without much trouble. I had his patron meet him there and offer to teleport him and his adopted mother back to the rest of the party in exchange for a future errand. When Nikolai entered the cell, his mom was confused and surprised at seeing a stranger. I thought he'd explain it was him, but instead he dropped the disguise self spell to show it was him. He then confirmed with his patron they were ready to go, and they teleported back with the party. One of the other members (my dad, funnily enough) reminded me that disguise self had been dropped and we'd jokingly established that Nikolai had conned one of the NPCs present out of upwards of 50gp. NPC started yelling, and Nikolai and his mom chose to flee. I rolled a perception check for the nearby guards who noticed and began persuing them. Nikolai blasted one, killing him. I then had him roll a d4+1 to determine how many dash actions it would take to get out of the city to safety. He rolled a 4. I then had him roll a d6 each round to determine how many guards noticed and joined the chase. He rolled all 5's and 6's. The rest of the party did not come to his aid, because he had not discussed this plan with them, nor did they know his pass, AND he did not get along well with the cleric. When Nikolai was nearly dead I had his patron appear in a vision and offer to save him and hide him, but that his mother would be left behind and likely die. Nikolai turned her down, immediately was hit by a card, was crit on by another guard while down, and then rolled a Nat 1 on his death save.

Georgia

The first time DM is definitely in the wrong here. Don't DM unless you know the rules OR if you don't know the rules be open to learning and receiving feedback.

Arwyn Robinson

May it please the court, I'm running a homebrew campaign and one of our players was clearly not a good fit for the table. He was noncommittal, flaky, and barely participated when he did deign to show up. I did my best to serve him the kind of content he would find exciting, but I couldn't seem to please him. After a year of this, I spoke with him and we concluded that maybe this campaign wasn't for him. We politely parted ways, no harm, no foul. However, my remaining party members still held some ill will for his poor behaviour, and I still needed to remove his character from the game somehow. Long story short, we left off with a "friendly" lich NPC inhabiting his body since he'd been absent. After he left, I made the lich's corrupting influence begin to rapidly rot his body from the inside out, forcing the party to try and save him, and ultimately giving up and watching him die. They LAPPED IT UP. I'm wracked with guilt over this, especially since none of us have told him of his character's fate. Was I wrong to dispose of him so unceremoniously? Should I tell him his barbarian basically turned into the melty bad guy at the end of Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade?

inkdrasil

Feels a little bit like the time Jake suggested that Hank could take the lucky feat and Murph pointed out it would directly contradict the character design. 😂

Arwyn Robinson

May it please the supreme crit justices of the court. My party was in an encounter with 2 froghemoths, and naturally, people got swallowed. When this happened to our Druid, she then decided to wild shape into an ankylosaurus, a creature as large as the froghemoth. They said due to common sense, the froghemoth would explode and die instantly. I ended up giving him a con save which he failed and as a result took 60 damage as the inside of him was stretched past the limit and he barfed the ankylosaurus out. They say that this was too easy on the monster but I think it’s insane to have a monster die because of one ability. Who was right?

Nicolas P.

May it please the court. I created a similar crawl mechanic that Murph ran in the Eldermourne campaign when the choo choo crew traversed the mountains, only I had the players traverse a swamp terrain. As the players approached the swamp and I told them how this will work, the druid cast mold earth to create regular terrain as he can have up to 15 feet altered and mold earth is a instantaneous cantrip. The party turned what was supposed to take 2 days into 1 day and completely obliterated the skills challenges. I was so disappointed. I let them have the win because it was really good thinking, but my question is, should the mold earth spell have worked as effectively as I let it happen? Does a swamp have "loose earth" as the spell description says it requires for the terrain to be altered?

Sean Rooney

May it please the court: I play a level 3 halfling paladin (a beta Beverly, if you will) in my friend’s campaign. During combat, I was equipped with a longsword and shield, fighting an undead enemy that had one attack. At the start of my combatant’s turn, the DM had me make an opposed strength check against the undead and I failed. The DM said that the undead had managed to pull down my shield, temporarily lowering my AC by 2, and still had the undead make an attack roll. I made a short protest about action economy but my DM said that because I wasn’t “disarmed” (I would still have my shield after the attack), it didn’t count as an action. Am I crazy for thinking this sort of defeats the purpose of having a shield? I’m afraid that every time I face off with an enemy in this campaign, they’re going to be able to bypass my shield any time I fail a strength check which makes me want to ditch the shield and find a two-handed weapon instead (which will negate my dueling fighting style).

May it please the court. that case Asimar.V.Dm. in my world all non elf’s dwarfs halfings gnomes and humans have been kicked to the astral plane and labeled monsters and one of my players play a protecter asimar. During a fight with a much a stronger enemy where they just had to survive until reinforcements arrived the entire party was knocked out. And instead of killing them he took trophies the ear of our drow elf, exposed and mutilated the face of the human who was wearing a mask and stuff to hide he was human. And ripped off a wing of the Dragonborn. But when he got to the asimar and was also gonna take one of his wings to he said his wings are incorporeal and thus couldn’t be taken but i said he can just use a magic weapon to cut it off ghosts are incorporeal and they get struck his wings are no different. Who was right

BenMightSmite

I mean is that not what legendary resistances are for in a way

Spam gaming the not so skilled gamer (thanks jake)

May it please the court, One of the players in a recent campaign I ran won't stop rolling with disadvantage. They do it to "keep things interesting" and take rolling at advantage to mean they're just not rolling at disadvantage. I suppose this shouldn't bother me too much, but it does make balancing encounters more tricky for me. That's not even getting into the fact that the other players are frustrated with having a barbarian that rarely hits. Should I let my player continue to roll at disadvantage by choice or should I put my foot down?

Dave 3D Art

Good morning, your Honors. I have a pretty frustrating one that hopefully you, in your infinite wisdom, can solve. I'm playing a Circle of the Moon Druid, and the rest of the group consists of an Orc Fighter, a Human Wizard and a Halfling Paladin. Our paladin went down in the middle of a group of goblins and the DM was pulling no punches. The paladin had already failed two death saves, and I had a plan to get him out of there. I planned to wildshape into a elephant, charge in and scoop the unlucky paladin up with my trunk. However, the DM ruled that an elephant's trunk wasn't strong enough to pick up a Halfling. I argued that since Halflings are small and light that an elephant would be able to scoop them. I was overruled, and the paladin ended up rolling a new character. Who was in the right here?

The Great Zarquon

May it please the Court. This year we have been running a loose campaign where everyone has a chance to DM for a group of unruly treasure hunters, so final authority can be hard to come by. One player was using find steed to summon a warthog that they rode like a motorcycle, but was trapped in a gem for months thanks to the deck of many things. Our child prodigy wizard was fond of the pig ands been narrating taking care of them and now months later after freeing their friend we have a custody battle on our hands. One argues the steed should have vanished but the wizard says they have been using "find familiar" to keep the pig extant. WHO GETS THE PIG? HOW SHOULD WE SETTLE THIS?

Sean Marz

May it please the court, I am running an Odyssey of the Dragonlords campaign, a source book that the court has previously ruled on. Although I believe I am not being as heavy handed as the DM that refused to give their party member a dragon (a main component of this sourcebook), I have made a controversial ruling on a spell that comes with the book called Sleeping Draught. The spell reads: Level 2 spell, 1 action, range 20 feet, 1 minute duration You open a draught and a purple mist flows from you to a target creature. Roll 9d8; if the target creature has fewer current hit points than the total, then it falls unconscious. The target remains unconscious until the spell ends, the sleeper takes damage, or someone uses an action to shake or slap the sleeper awake. If the target creature has more hit points than the rolled total, then it becomes drowsy and its speed is halved, it can’t take reactions, and it can’t make more than one melee or ranged attack during its turn. The target remains drowsy until it takes damage or until the spell ends. Undead and creatures that are immune to being charmed aren’t affected by this spell. At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, roll an additional 3d8 for each slot level above the 2nd. I believe that “drowsy” portion of the spell is too powerful and have ruled that creatures with legendary resistances can burn one to not suffer the drowsy effects if they do not fall unconscious. If they do fall unconscious, they can burn a legendary resistance to instead become drowsy. Is this too harsh of a nerf to what I believe is an overpowered spell?

May it please the court, we recently switched up our group so our DM could be a PC and one of our newer players could try being DM for their first time, but to our horror ex-DM has turned out to be a chaotic evil edge lord Sorcerer named Malazar. Problem is, out of the 4 PCs, 2 of them are still very new and his antics are causing them to lose interest in the game. So the new DM came up with a fight club tournament for barbarians with a +1 axe grand prize. Except New DM forgot that Malazar had multi-classed his Sorcerer with a Barbarian. Malazar joined the tournament and in a series of rushed rolls that didn't allow our other Barbarian, Yari, to rage again, Malazar was set to win by quite a bit. New Player got very quiet and was just going through the motions. When it came down to the last few rolls, I had my Divination Wizard, Cel, use her two Portent rolls (a 2 and a 4) for the day to change Malazar’s hit and crit hit on Yari to two misses. Malazar still won the fight and the axe in the end, but Cel’s move got a big laugh out of our two newer players. Ex-DM did NOT find it funny. In character he vowed that he would not rest until he had killed me. Out of character I argued that Malazar wouldn’t know that I had done that. He said that as a sorcerer, he could tell when a spell had been cast. I pointed out that Portent is an ability and not a spell. He thinks it doesn’t make a difference, and it’s still magic and that his sorcerer would be able to sense it and know it was me – he also said I should be arrested for cheating in the fight (magic was not allowed). Was I wrong to step in during a sanctioned fight? Would Malazar be able to tell I was the cause of his embarrassing misses? Have I made the worst mistake ever by making an enemy of my ex-DM (who will return to DMing for us soon)? I throw myself at the mercy of the court and will accept whatever judgement you bring. (I am also guilty of making this way too long, for that I accept whatever punishment you see fit).

Carly Anne

If it pleases the court I would like to submit the case of Horny DM vs The Party. In a once monthly campaign that I am in, The Party had just completed a quest which then gained the attention of a local noble. Upon returning to the town, a messenger described as “rather busty” came to them on behalf of the noble; weird, but nothing nearly as bad as what was to come. When The Party arrived to this nobel’s keep they revived a 5 minute detailed description of what basically amounted to the Banquet of Chestnuts (also known as the Joust of Whores). Any time a player tried to leave the keep or mentioned they were uncomfortable they were met with ”It’s not happening to you don’t worry” or the character was brought back into the keep by the DM. Around the 2 minute mark, The DM server muted everyone in the call to “make us quit our whining”. It was the most uncomfortable atmosphere I had ever felt playing D&D. About a day or so after the session I was called by our DM and asked “why was everyone so uncomfortable the other day? It’s not like it was real.” The party had since cut ties with the DM and stared a new campaign with the pre existing characters. The DM claims this is an over exaggeration and that “this could have been worse.” The DM claims we are treating him unfairly, yet the party begs to differ. What say you honorable crit justices?

Where does she think the cleric gets their power from if god isn’t real in your world?

Mich Blackie

May it please the court. In our last campaign my paladin character picked up a squire on the second session of play, thanks to some lucky persuasion roles. He was with us as an NPC for the entirety of our campaign, but during the final fight with the BBEG, our DM informed me that because I hadn’t specifically mentioned training him throughout the campaign, he was basically the same level as when he joined our party (level 4, vs our Level 14). I argued that because he had been in all of the combat encounters with us he should have leveled up as we did, but he maintained that squires only level up when “trained,” and that it had been my responsibility to make sure he leveled up. We had to put a lot of effort into keeping him alive during the final fight, and it continues to be a sore spot in the group. Justices, did I truly neglect my squire in such a grievous way, or was my DM being too harsh? Please lend us your wise judgement.

Would you say that your monk felt "boned"? 🙃

Arwyn Robinson

May it please the court, I am in a home campaign with a few of my buddies, we were playing a session in which the DM described large trees reaching up into the sky. One of the players asked if there was fruit at the top of the tree and the DM rolled for it, there was. The same player then casted shatter at a high level, the tree began to fall on top of him and the DM asked him to roll a red saving throw, he rolled an 11 or 12 and failed. The tree fell on top of him doing 60 damage. Was the DM too harsh, or was it fair for the player to be punished for his shenanigans.

Milk Teeth

May it please the court, Justices, I present you the case of the denied Moses. I was DMing an arena-type arc where the heroes, including a cleric named Ulfgar, were battling rounds of terrain-appropriate monsters. Each round, the terrain type rotated. One was lava-spewing rocky terrain, one was a windy forest and the last one was underwater. The underwater round eventually made its way to Ulfgar, who chose to cast Control water to part the water, effectively cancelling the underwater part of the fight. I said that the arena was filled with water, and I had already pre-determined that there was a magical barrier blocking physical things from going through over the arena to separate the public from the gladiators (and prevent wall-climbing shenanigans or potion throwing from the stands). Since the language of the spell specifically states that Control Water: Part Water MOVES the water, I ruled that the spell would not work, as the water had nowhere to go. I did not make him burn his spell slot, as it was something he would have known, but I think everybody felt as if I was just being petty and did not want them to "break" my underwater fight. Have I been too realism-oriented? Should I have allowed Ulfgar to Moses his way out of the sticky situation?

Oooooooh interesting. I like where you're head is at for wanting your players to expand their horizons. One thing I did in my last campaign that ended when my players were level 14 is I gave them some of their end level stuff as "boons" from the gods for the final fight with the big bad. It made them feel OP for the fight and made them less sad the campaign ended before they were level 20. Plus it made for dope final battle.

Arwyn Robinson

Introduce an NPC who has (maybe they invented it in your world) it just to rub it in 😂

Mich Blackie

Ohh... Good question!

Mich Blackie

May it please the court. We are running a pre-written adventure and let’s say that my group is not the most tactful. We were unable to hide the fact we were going to be sneaking into the enemy’s hideout, which is how our DM justified replacing 3 bugbears (CR 1) with 3 owlbears (CR 3.) you may be wondering “oh did you metagame?” No! They still looked like bug bears and spoke goblin and carried clubs. They also just had a beak and talons. We missed a TPK only because our Druid was able to flee. Keep in mind our team consists of 3 PCs at level 3. I claim this was an unfair substitution. Our DM disagrees.

BuckyBoy

May it please the court. I have been DMing a rebellion campaign. All of my friends are under an opressive regime in the Great City of Vallas each one has been wronged by the city and has decided to fight back. One of my friends decided to be one of the lord's of Vallas and joined the heroes with a secret plan to cause chaos within the city so he can ascend to power. I thought this was a cool idea as it would be a good reveal later in the campaign and would cause a lot of great interactions within the party. Unfortunately fairly early on they kidnapped a Lord who revealed it to the rebel rogue. He then instead of telling the group and talking about it like I anticipated killed the Lord in his sleep. Now half the people are angry at the rogue for not talking to the party about this plot point, half the people are angry at the Lord for making a character that is not necessarily aligned with the party in the long term and everyone is angry at me... Please help could I have done something to avoid all this? Where do we go from here? Am I the guilty party? Many thanks Sam

Dude, you killed off a PC without your players consent? Was it in combat or did you assassinate them? Because if you just killed them of without warning or a chance to defend themselves you are 100% in the wrong. Even if she loves her new character.

Mich Blackie

This plan is absolutely hilarious and I'm so glad they got away with it

Nadja Nordstrom

You should have been given a chance to stealth. The stealth roll should have determined whether or not you got sneak attack or if it would end up being a "side flap" scenario (or ske-nario per Jake)

Arwyn Robinson

I think you made the right call. If someone was riding a horse the horse would take AOE damage so why wouldn't a broom that is made out of wood catch fire?

Arwyn Robinson

This annoys me... you don’t expect your player to be able to fire a bow of shoot a fireball so you shouldn’t be penalised for not being as charismatic as your character.

Mich Blackie

That's total bullshit imo

Arwyn Robinson

May it please the court. Someone in my party is a rouge with the bounty hunter background, which means that they should be able to have a contact in each city we go to, and thats where the problem begins. as we were walking through the town in a poor neighboorhood, he snuck away and followed a random person back to their home, busted down the door and demanded he tell him where his contact was, all without telling the DM what he was trying to do. Obviously this random person in a large town had no idea who he was talking about and we proceeded to razz him for this large gap in logic. The player got so defensive that he got up and left the table which put an end to the night. were we wrong to roast him or was it justified?

Jack Campau

If it pleases the court: I have a player who believes that they are the main protagonist, they came to the table with 7, yes 7 pages of backstory ready to go. Now the other issues is that when it comes to having the other two PC's interact with the story, they issue meta commands to the other players trying to get them to do what they want. Now I know this isn't ok, so to try and discourage his heavy handed play I fused a infant Atropal to his shadow to try and teach him a lesson. They now uses this to his advantage. Should we just start a new group, or how should I go about changing his behavior. FYI I have talked with them out side of game about the behavior

Maxwell Haranda

May it please the court, We were fighting mimics who took the form of tables in a dining room area. Our druid was caught scouting ahead as a giant spider. She found herself in a dead end room with only one way out. She cast bonfire on the table which killed a mimic. The DM rolled to see which way the table would fall to it's death, of course it blocked the door while on fire. She went down taking an opportunity attack from another table mimic. She fell unconscious onto the fire blocking the doorway. She took damage from the fire and failed her first death save on her turn, so she had two failed saves before the party could reach her. Our barbarian reached her first and wanted to drag her from the fire so she wouldn't take the fire damage at the beginning of her next turn, killing her. The DM argued that the act of dragging her from the fire would cause fire damage and she would still be on fire even after she was pulled from it. The party disagreed. We argued that each round is only 6 seconds and she hadn't been in the fire long enough to ignite. Also, the act of dragging someone from a fire would not cause damage. We held our own D&D court mid session and won our case. We obviously didn't want her to die, so may have been a little biased. Should our druid have died that session?

May it please the court, I was recently in a party of five level 2 players fighting sea creatures on a boat. One of the creatures knocked out a member of the party and subsequently grappled them, with the intention of dragging them out to sea. As we tried to grapple the unconscious player back, the creature slashed at us with two claws (using its multiattack), doing a decent amount of damage. I argued that as the creature was grappling a party member with one arm, it shouldn't be able to use both of its claws to attack (assuming that each claw of the multiattack corresponds to a limb). My DM argued that higher-level fighters get to attack more than once, and this was no different. Was the DM being harsh on our party, or was I being a whiny bitch that didn't want to get hit too many times? Thank you for your time, and may all your rolls be 20s!

If it may please the court! Recently our party arrived at a town besieged by a massive crystal worm. During combat it would disappear underground and then emerge underneath us for a swallow attack. My shadow sorcerer didn't have the speed needed to get out of range and I couldn't attack it or buff myself while it was underground so I passed my turn. My DM was confused but I was adamant that I couldn't do anything yet. On it's initiative, the worm rolled a 28 to hit me (10 above my AC.) I then cast shield as a reaction and used a sorcerery point to make it a subtle spell. This allowed me to use my Astral Shard item, which let's me teleport 30 feet in any direction whenever I use metamagic, and so I teleported away from the worm on my reaction. My DM ruled that I still would take damage because a 28 hit but that I wouldn't be swallowed because I was out of range. Should I have taken any damage if I was out of range on my reaction? I have a great DM and wouldn't normally complain but I'm wondering how the court would weigh in on the mechanics of this interaction.

May it please the court, dear and honorable judges, I was playing in a party with a bunch of eggheads, in our party of players there were several engineers, an architect and a physicist(The DM). As well as two non-useful nerds like me. We were on a mission to bust someone from an underground prison. Things have obviously gone awry when the security system started filling the place with water that would rise a bit with each round. Then the smart people started to do their math thing and claimed that the water level in the chamber would rise much slower than what our DM said it would. Our DM shut them down and said that he's not having any of this. Was he right to do so? (I should point out that we got out of the encounter pretty quickly and that I was playing a halfling and the water never rose above my waist.)

I DM for two different groups and reading all these comments I'm learning we evidently we have a good group. I have no cases for the court as we have really hit a stride with good communication and with everyone being agreeable. Feeling very fortunate right now. Some of y'all have terrible groups. 😂😂😂

Arwyn Robinson

If it may please the court: My three players were searching through the floating city of Lapota gardens for signs of a evil cult leaving a trail of bodies drained of all blood. In an attempt to "Get an overview of the situation" they decided to the tallest tower in the city to spy out over the city, which coincidentally was a sky bar. Once there one of my players rolled a perception check to gaze over the city and unfortunately rolled a nat 1 and I promptly told him he got distracted by some birds. Seeing this a second member of the party decided to roll a perception check, getting another nat 1. Seeing this the third and final member of the party decided to do the same thing, somehow rolling a third and final nat 1 at which point I told him also got distracted by birds while walking to the window and that he tripped into his comrades. I then had them all roll dexterity saves as to not fall through the windows, which they all somehow failed and therefor they plummeted to the ground getting quite roughed up by the fall. My players have rumbled about this, as failing a perception check should not lead to bad stuff that's unrelated to their perception. I on the other hand argued that since they somehow have angered the dice devil enough to roll three nat 1s they deserve their fate.

May it please the court. Esteemed justices (and bailiff). I am a first time DM doing a homebrew game with my wife, her sister, and her sister's partner. (Covid bubble.) My players completely legitimately found a cube of force from a random loot roll I made. I did not realize at the time how unbelievably overpowered this item is. I've been womped completely two sessions in a row, which I don't mind. It's kind of fun. But, I'm worried that the players are starting to find the sessions boring. I am trying to deal with the issue by having a bunch of deep gnomes in a cave who try to rob travellers of magic items who go through their realm. But, this is being called out as potentially unfair metagaming. Am I being unfair to the players? Do you have any advice for how I might be able to rectify the situation? We have had two sessions where these 3 level 5 characters have taken a grand total of about 7 damage, and the deep gnomes did witness the players using this insanely powerful item immediately upon entering their cave. Thanks, F. WallOfDeath

If it pleases the court: Last session we fought an Ekimaru and it was folding up like laundry. I had a bomb that I gave to my homoculous to fly into the mouth of the creature next tike it opened. My DM let me but said it as a dex versus strength check. Now I argued to fly into its throat isn’t strength but constitution to resist. Is strength of neck swallow muscles strength?

Steven Hoffart

May it please the court, I wanted to take the lucky feat but my dm discouraged this because my character has extremely bad luck. Roleplay wise I get him but I should be able to take the feats that I want right? Am I right or should I consider some other feat or asci improvement instead?

May it please the court! So there was an incident where my DM immediately killed a player and I’m still somewhat sour about it. Our party was a level 13 monk (me), fighter, and rogue and had to infiltrate an enemy stronghold to assassinate its leader, an extremely powerful Captain. This captain was armed to the teeth with +3 magic items that would have made a direct fight difficult, not to mention the army he commanded. Long story short, once we found our way inside, our Fighter wanted to approach the Captain to talk to him, and this is where the mess began. In a single turn, before the rest of us in hiding could react, the Captain wrestled the fighter to the ground and killed him with one blow. This really hit hard to the party, as our level 13 Fighter had over 100 hit points, and despite this captain’s strength, we had no indication that he possessed any special magic items or abilities that could do that. My DM reasoned that when a creature was “incapacitated” they could be dealt a killing blow, something never mentioned to us before. The rogue and I had to escape, while our fighter friend essentially met a quick and untimely death. After though, I argued with the DM to honor his incapacitated rules with his enemies. So the rouge and I were able to return and finish the assassination attempt, even though I had to use multiple stunning strikes and a nat 20 to finish the Captain off. The fighter is in the process of making a new character, and we did get revenge, but I’m still upset by how abrupt and sudden that was. I know the fighter made a dumb and risky move, we did get revenge, and the story has turned out interesting, but am I right to still be upset by this?

Frith the Storyteller

That’s fucked up.

Dylan Petty

May it please the court, A few years ago I joined a long-running weekly campaign with a very serious DM. During character creation, we planned my epic half-orc gunslinger who loves to paint. My first choice of name for her was Gurgle Slugbucket. My DM insisted that it was TOO SILLY A NAME, and insisted we instead follow his “half-orc naming convention” of five-letter names with a rough sound. Not wanting to rock the boat, I allowed it and we agreed on the name Rhaka. I played her for two years and I still love her very much... but did I make the right choice? Many thanks, - Goblin

Goblin Snack

I Call Thee Upon the Wisdom of Supreme Crit Justices- If it may please the court, my Case is as follows: My second level Warlock was doggedly pursuing a escaped captive through a forest toward an enemy outpost. We play a very relaxed and generally low stakes game, so when it became clear that the demon escapee was going to reach the outpost before I reached him, we all decided that getting close enough to the enemy camp to fire off a petty Eldritch Blast at the fugitive would be fun shenanigans. However, as I was outlining my plan to the DM, I accidentally said that I wanted to unleash my spell, “turn around 360 degrees” and run away- and my dumbass accidentally said 360 degrees, not 180, meaning I alluded to running straight through the camp. Sure, I could’ve corrected my mistake yet I decided to stick to what I had said for roleplay and funtimes, and described to the DM how I was going to orchestrate a drive-by Eldritch Blasting, Inconveniencing the escapee and running straight through the camp too suddenly for anyone to stop me. However, as consequence for this absurd plan, I was captured without being able to roll for my speedyness, had all my equipment and weapons taken from me and had my right hand brutally hacked off, which negated any proficiency bonuses I had to weapon rolls. A few sessions after my poor warlock was thrown, half dead and handless, from the camp, I have not seen any magic healing capable of restoring my arm, nor any of the magic loot in nearby magic pawn shops, and my DM has given no indication that these things might arrived, despite hours of searching the campaign world. So I beg you this justices- was my punishment for my dedication and absurdity justified, or is the slap on the wrist I’ve received too harsh?

May it please the sweeties, I have been DMing a campaign for a few months now, and one of my players has brought up in private that he really wants his character to EAT one of the other player's characters. He is playing a rogue and told me his plan was to sneak up on our paladin while he is sleeping and just go to town...if I would allow it. Since he apparently specced his entire character around being able to eat this paladin, I allowed it to happen, and it was about as weird and upsetting as you would imagine. The dynamic of my group has never been the same since. Did I make a mistake in letting my player commit this terrible crime against decency?

It’s hard when you need to include the relevant details but are trying to keep it brief! 😂

Mich Blackie

If it may please the court, A couple months ago had to leave a dnd zoom group due to scheduling conflicts. But recently the dm contacted me and asked a question about my pc(H.P. Barnacles). I answered and asked why? He told me he was repurposing my PC as a npc and was changing a few things about it. Should I be a little upset that dm didnt ask me to repurpose my character or is it fair game since I left? May the court reap the justice of the dice gods on our souls.

Braxton Robinson

May it please the court, My friend and i were discussing character builds for a campaign we are hoping to start. He suggested a barbarian/rogue/bard multi class. He thought it world be funny if after failing a stealth check that he should be able to intimidate the one who caught him into not believing they saw him and continuing to go about their business as if nothing had happened by shooting/growling "you don't see me!" While i also found the idea hilarious i explained that mechanically it would absolutely not be possible and even suggested that the bard spell suggestion would have the same effect. He insists that it should work without the spell due to the his high charisma/intimidation score. Am i being a rule book thumper or is he being too ridiculously silly with his idea? Thank you for your time and attention to this issue.

May it please the court, I present to you the case of advantageous head trauma. I am the DM in a campaign where they players are trying to take down a tyranical queen in a Feywild setting. There is a nearby town just ouside of the queen's fortress and they created a plan to kidnap and replace the town mayor with the party's changling sorcerer named Ja Rule. From within they planned to start a revolution. They managed to kidnap the mayor and make the switch without getting caught, but I informed Ja Rule that he would be rolling his decpetion with disadvange when speaking to the mayor's close friends and family. This of course cancels out the changling ability to always have advantage when trying to impersonate someone. After some close calls, Ja Rule proceeded to go to a public area while in disguise as the mayor and have a horrible "accicdent" where he smashed his head into a wall running full speed and then convinced the town doctor and the mayor's wife that he had amnesia. After the incident, I let him return to rolling deception with advantage. Was I to lenient, or was this the right thing to do?

Jack Campau

May it please the court. My group and I usually have a lot of fun and this was the first instance where my players and I had differing opinions on how things should work. The setting: The players rode a rollercoaster into hell and came to a halt when a part of the rails was broken, leaving them with a huge gap to the other side of the rails. On the other side were some construction workers (Balguras, which are the construction workers of my hell) who told them, that the ride should've been closed for the day. My players, who got in through bribing the conductor of the rollercoaster, now started do discuss, how to get to the other side, because they had to go there for one of their quests. They began to talk to the lead construction worker and at some point in the conversation seemingly just kind of forgot, that he was there. Even though I reminded them, that they were still in front of the dude, they continued to work out a super convoluted plan to shoot the roller coaster compartment to the other side through the super human strenght the barbarian of the group would get if he rolled a nat20. In this instance I refer to judge Murphy saying "You are Legolas not Buggs Bunny" (Dimension 20 - Raising the Stakes (with Brian Murphy) *FANTASY HIGH SPOILERS*) and that even a Nat20 would not give him the powers to do so. With that and that they would certainly die if they tried, because if they had pushed the compartment they would've fallen in the acid swamp bellow, they started arguing with themselves what to do and ignored my suggestions. After a bit of time passed I told them that the construction workers had enough, that they already told them to leave and now started attacking, because they are still demons in hell, who do not like strangers endangering their construction site. Now I'm being accused of rail roading, because I didn't let them do, what they wanted even though I explained to them, that I neither wanted a TPK to happen nor to pull out my ass how they would miraculously survive the fall. Supreme crit justices, I apologize for grammatical errors, since I'm not a native speaker (greetings from Vienna) and patiently await your judgment.

David Wieland

Thanks for the update! What a ridiculous scenario. So sorry you have to deal with that in that family😅

Nadja Nordstrom

May it please the supreme sweeties, I was playing a sea elf rogue in the Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign. Our first mission was to investigate a supposedly haunted mansion. When we got the the front door I asked to check for traps. My DM asked what I added to investigating (+5). He rolled, smiled, and told me I didn’t find any traps. I realised he had rolled my trap check for me. I protested that I wanted to roll my own checks, and he told me that he doesn’t let players roll trap, insights, or investigations checks to avoid meta gaming. His reasoning was that if I rolled badly and didn’t find any traps, the party can just decide on a different plan, where as if he rolls for me and “I” don’t find anything, we have no idea how I did, and have to act as if I’m confident I cleared the door even if I’m not. I argued that rolling is half the fun of D&D, and as the DM he can control whether we meta game. He wouldn’t budge so I let it go at the table, (ironically we didn’t go in through the front door since non of us felt confident about it) but afterwards we had a long talk and I decided to leave his game. My cool rogue got shelved and my D&D friends are split on whether it was the right move. Was I right to want to roll my own checks? Or does his rule just add a bit of realism to the game? I throw myself on the mercy of the court! Riptide, the Sea Elf rogue.

Mich Blackie

May it please the court, I have a simple hypothetical my friend and I have been arguing over for some time. If I cast enlarge/reduce on a door, can I shrink it and walk through the now mostly empty doorframe? Can I use it to enlarge a locked chest, making the lock bigger and easier to pick? He argues that the door would get stuck on the hinges and not shrink, and that the lock is a different object than the chest, so it wouldn't grow if the chest did. These luckily haven't come up in play yet, but both of us are DMs, so I'd love to have the court's opinion before trying it in-game and potentially making a fool of myself.

May it please the court: I was once a player in a D&D session that the DM had crafted to be diplomatic in nature. We, the players, did not pick up on this and proceeded to hack and slash through the session until it clicked we were supposed to be diplomatic. By the end of the session we had made it to an important part of the King's keep and half the party overheard a conversation that revealed an NPC "friend" to be a bad guy. He passes us by later, surrounded by guards, and one of the players jokingly said "I'm gonna Cleave him." The DM heard him and forced him to roll, causing combat that resulted in a Total Party Kill (we were not ready to fight someone at his level, were wounded, and had depleted spell slots). After some discussion, we accepted the outcome, however I am curious to know if you think the DM was in the wrong by making the player attack when his comment was said in jest, as by then we had learned it was to be a diplomatic session and were following along.

Kyle Conrad

I played a dwarven Druid who protested the other dwarves mining practices, and when one of the town council members died I joked that I should run to make systematic changes to the mining practices. My DM took this way too seriously, asking me to own property in town, make campaign speeches (not just rolling charisma checks), and spend time canvassing with my squirrels. It derailed the campaign that wasn’t fun, but every time I told the DM to forget about it, he wouldn’t let me drop out of the race. I even talked to him privately out of game, and he said that it was fun and he wanted me to keep trying to get on the town council. I felt bad ruining the game for everyone else (including me) and the game fell apart. Was the DM wrong for not letting me just roll charisma rolls? Should I have tried to get more into the way the campaign was going?

May it please the court! A campaign I am in is using Roll20. Two sessions in and we are all at a tavern and there’s a group of sketchy people sitting behind us. We go up to them to talk and suddenly.... The DM starts moving them away from us on Roll20! We are all super confused and we are like “What? Where are they going?” (Keep in mind we have mostly first time players). The DM (experienced) simply says “they are leaving because they don’t want to talk.” At this point we demand to roll initiative because he’s moving them about 40ft away from us with every click (like 80ft before we even realized what was going on). DM said if we want to stop them we have to act and that he won’t let us roll initiative. Of course, all the new players were too confused on how that was meant to work and don’t know their abilities well enough to be that fast so they got away. Should he have let us roll initiative? All the players claim he should have. He claims we’ll never roll in initiative unless the OTHER group starts conflict with us, but he denies using any homebrew mechanics, and I did not think that was how it worked. How would the judges rule? Thank you!

Oh wise and powerful justices, may it please the court, I am DMing a campaign that is rather loosey goosey on the rules. By and large, the Rule of Cool stands supreme at my table. This has gotten me into a bit of a pickle with one of my characters, however. She is a Way of the Drunken Master monk and once, while fighting a mad scientist artificer in his lab, she had the admittedly sick idea to create molatov cocktails with her booze and his beakers. I allowed this because the supplies were there and she rolled well on a tinkering check. The problem is that now whenever she gets bored of slapping down bad guys, she wants to try to blow them up instead, regardless of the setting and her lack of any background in the skill. She believes that the cat’s out of the bag, and since I allowed it once I should keep allowing it. My stance is that she was in a unique situation in the lab and will have to justify the ability moving forward.

Shannon Herbert

May it please the court, oh the deck of many things and it’s troubles! Running a campaign with two friends they mentioned “yo deck of many things is crazy” so in a kind of in between session I said screw it these gnome merchants from the feywild have a deck. They drew some cards I want to reward them for taking the risk and I had them pay a 100 gold per card(at a point in campaign where money doesn’t matter much in my setting) but they drew Jester and then gem. Gem had little affect as they are exploring new worlds but the main issue is jester added 10k experience to the level 7 Gunslinger/Wizard in a campaign with only one other PC my friend playing the rogue now levels up a session or two after the Gunslinger wizard, I was previously doing milestone level up. Is there a solution to give the GSW the benefit without having the rogue feel left out and under leveled? Realizing this isn’t much of a court case whoops

Jack Malizia

Dear honourable judges, jurers and exicutioners. While we were on a diplomatic mission to a city deep in the desert looking for aid in an upcoming war, we were in a meeting with the cities ruler when the palace was attack my a group of revolutionary's trying to lay waste to building. We immediately jumped into action and ran down to the courtyard where the main battle was taking place. There was a group of mages trying to summon beasts thought a ritual, which they were preforming in the center of said court. This is where the injustice was committed. My level 11 divination wizard saw what they were trying to do and immediately cast a 6th dispel magic on the circle to try and stop the beasts from being summoned. The Dm said that it alone wasn't enough to dispel the magic so I made the ability check as the spell specifies. The final roll was a 22 which was the equivalent of dispelling a 12th level spell. The Dm dismissed it and I wasted my 6th level slot and got nothing in return. Do you think the dms choice was right just for the sake of continuing the encounter as he planned??

May it please the court. Im playing my second campaign with some buds. It's a gothic horror campaign where death is permanent. I want to add the lucky feat to my Giant Echo Knight at next level up but my DM is being a total knob about it claiming that it's OP and doesn't fit my character, an admitted downtrodden everyman. I think it does fit my character in an ironic sort of way. Supreme crits, who is right?

qbull

If it pleases the court, this encounter happened about 6 months ago in my campaign, the party was fighting giants. They were dressed in hide armor and carried trees that they used as clubs with a large metal ball at the tip. The party’s artificer did a perception check on these clubs to see if, at any point, the metal touched the giants hand, to which my dm said that it was at the end of the club. The artificer, now confused by the description, casted heat metal on the club. The dm said that the metal at the end of the club was now super heated, not only did the giant not drop it, when it made its next attack against me since I was closest to it, it would hit for an extra 2d6 fire damage. Thankfully the artificer dropped concentration on the spell just before the giant struck me. The artificer has since refused to use the spell ever again because of this ruling and the dm still thinks it was the right decision to make. Was my dm in the right since only the wood was making contact with the giants skin or would the rule of cool favor the artificer? Thank you for your deliberation.

May it please the court, I present to you the case of my misjudgements as a DM. My player, a dwarf fighter and chosen champion of Morudin, was turned into a vampire (sound familiar?) right as the party escaped the arrival of a nascent malevolent deity by using an ancient artifact to punch through to the Feywild. In the Feywild the benefactor they've run into (part of a group called the Solstice which seeks to end the grip of the Binary Courts and bring change to the Fey) has offered them a series of jobs that should grant them an audience with someone who can cast reincarnate to cure the vampirism. My players have started down that path, but I've gotten a few comments that it feels like they haven't had the chance to explore and find their own way to cure the vampirism. Where did I go wrong? The path I put in front of them was only one of many, the NPC they spoke to only knew of one, they haven't asked others and are moving forward with the assumption that I'm railroading them. Now, if I introduce an NPC with an alternative, they'll think I'm just pacifying them. Do I do that? What do I do? Help!

Muqtadaa Miandara

If it pleases the court. I'm playing a high charisma character (fire genasi sorcerer) and was trying to use said charisma to convince someone to let us pass without a fight. My DM asked me what I say, and I couldn't come up with anything clever myself, so I was deemed unsuccessful because my argument wasn't good enough and wasn't given a chance to roll for it. He said "what do you say?" I floundered irl for a second, and that was that. Should I be penalized for my inability to be persuasive enough, despite playing a character who is good at that on paper? Not high drama but it was extremely frustrating.

May it please and tickle the court. I was playing in a low level campaign based on the game baulders gate dark alliance, with my friend who was dming for the first time for a party who have all dm'ed before. We were fighting some kobolds in a sewer that were hiding behind some wodden boxes, being a low level cleric I had no way to break or move the boxes so I said I light my torch and then proceed to spend 2 turns holding my torch against the boxes to set them on fire and break the kobold cover. On the 3rd turn he said it still wasn't working so I decided to do something else. But he got really excited, saying "finally" when our barbarian pushed one of the boxes over and squashed one of the kobolds. Which makes me think that he wouldn't let me burn the boxes because he wanted to use his squishing machinic. He also later on had a chest puzzle where the chest was fused shut and we could pry it open, the barbarian decided that he would use his hand axe to break the wood in the top of the chest to get into it but the dm this time just said no literally saying he didn't want it to work that way for the sake of his puzzle. My question is do I mention to him that it's sometimes fun to let the players figure out solutions to puzzles that the dm didn't necessarily think as long as it makes sense, or am I the dick and just need to let him figure it out?

Welliboot 1

May it please the court, I have an issue with paladin auras vs fiends. So in our last session the group that I DM had an encounter with a succubus as their “boss fight” and one of the party is an Oath of Devotion paladin. This person in the first round cast turn the unholy and the succubus failed her wisdom throw. This upset me a little but there was nothing else I could do. So when the round continued it came time for the succubus’s turn, I decided to try to get her to do something by having her roll a wisdom saving throw, not to break out of frightened but to go after people outside the paladin’s aura. We agreed on the DC and was able to go after the party sorcerer but made sure to stay 30 ft away. Was this just DM pettiness or was this logical?

May it please the justices of the supreme crit, I have a home game with my parents and my 91 year old grandma based around the candlekeep mysteries. My grandmother is playing a half elf college of lore storytelling bard who I created a custom spell for to summon either a hero(Stat block soldier Guildmaster's guide) a mage (stat block apprentice wizard from Volo's) or a thief (stat block Nightblade from baldur's gate) however she insists that because she's magic should be able to "blast'em" with magic. I tried explaining to her why bards are good ie: cutting words, bardic inspiration, and high charisma rolls. My question to you is should I just fudge it and let her use like eldritch blast or should I hold her to the rules that I the rest of the party to? Ps I rolled her a new character as a reborn Hexblade warlock with a pact to the raven queen for more offensive character but she wanted to stay a bard. Sincerely, Alex Jones

Alex Jones

May it please the court, I am a dm of a long running campaign (3 years) with four players. We don’t have any major issues but we wanted to say DND court are the funniest episodes y’all do and please make it a regular podcast!

May it please the court, in a strange twist I have an issue with the court itself. Both I, the DM, and the majority of my players started playing D&D in no small part due to NADDPOD. Unfortunately, this has led to a bit of a rules misunderstanding amongst my players. On NaddPod natural 20's tend to get treated as successes no matter the context. However, per the DM'd Guide this is not the case; natural 20's are only guaranteed successes on attack rolls. They do not hold any special meaning on ability checks or saving throws. You simply add the 20 to your appropriate modifier and then compare that to the DC. It would be helpful if the court would release an official statement that it has made an intentional choice to deviate from the rules as written. Such a statement should hopefully squash any future arguments as my players will surly hear it. Thank you for your time.

The Broox

May it please the court, My friends and I have been playing in a campaign over discord since mid last year, and it started out really well. Recently, as we've gotten to higher levels, and are actually good at killing things as a group, the DM has started getting vindictive, and constantly gets mad when we unexpectedly thwomp his homebrewed monsters. At fist I thought it was just banter, but now it seems like he's actually getting mad, and acting vindictive. He also frequently whines about when we roll high, and I feel like these behaviors are making the game less fun for everyone. Am I in the right, or should I just put up with his vindictive complaining?

I really hope this one gets selected. The missing detail that the player was a walrus really clinches it.

The Green Magus

Not a case for the court, but as a brand new DM who has never played the game, only listened/watched D&D shows I wanted to share the utter womping I got during our first real fight. Our party has normally 6 (all new players) but only 4 could play this day, and I had suspicions the mimic might be pretty easy for them at level 2, but I didn't want to switch to a mimic of a higher challenge rating and then utterly destroy them, so I made no changes. When they finally got the the room the mimic was hiding my barbarian proceeded to roll a nat 20 perception check to find the creature, rolled a nat 20 on initiative and then a nat 20 on her first attack. Insanity. My mimic rolled second to last initiative and didn't even hit on their attack, so my monster got utterly destroyed in a round and a half, without even hurting the players once. I'm sure it felt good for them to do such a "good" job but I was pretty bummed. So, now I'm planning retribution for our next session with hopefully a much harder fight.

Whitney Peterson

May it please the court, I recently started a homebrew game online with a couple of people that I kind of know, but not that well. I saw it as a way to make more friends online given the circumstances. Mind you these guys are all from America, whereas I am from Ireland. So we get into the game and it's going pretty well! We eventually reach the first boss and find out his name is Fergus. Fergus just so happens to be my name in real life. I was a bit confused but played ahead anyway and we managed to chase him away. I messaged the DM after and asked if the name of the boss had anything to do with my name (as they know my first name) and is there anything that I did to upset him. He said no and that he got the name and inspiration for the character from a different campaign, Eldermourne. I asked him if there was a chance he could change the name but he refused and said that I should get over it. Who is in the right here? Thank you for your time

Fergus Woods

May it please the court. A fellow player likes to use the True Strike cantrip to try and detect traps or see how strong an opponent may be because it's a divination spell that "grants you a brief insight into the targets defenses." The DM is clearly uncomfortable every time she uses it and is never sure how much information to give her besides "it's a locked door?" Or something like it. I've always written of True Strike as a terrible cantrip only used in fights, but I hope your just counsel may set the record straight.

Aaron Thompson

If it may please the court, After saving a vineyard from some evil druids, the owners of the vineyard recovered a gem that helped the grapes grow. One of the players (gnome ranger called Stumpleduck) saw that the eldest of the owners pocketed the gem. She immediately attempted to shove her hands into his pocket and take the gem. the player was SHOCKED when the owners of the vineyard initiated combat in an attempt to get the gem back. Was I wrong as the DM for it go down this way, or was I right that people would be mad when someone shoved their hands down your grandfathers pockets and took something from them? Full disclosure, I’m the DM and my wife was the player who did this.

Stephen Charbonneau

(I’m a law student) Madame Chief Justice, your honors, and may it please the court. I am representing the DM in the matter of The Players vs. The DM. The controversy is over role playing damage. A central component to my home game was crystal palimpsests—like in Fantasy High s1—that function like pokeballs. For a creature to be trapped, that creature must be at zero hit points. My players stole some palimpsests and wanted to use them to sneak orcs, considered in-world to be monsters, out of their village enclosure for a later large-scale prison break. I told my players they would have to reduce the consenting orcs to zero, and had them start rolling damage. My players, horrified, made each blow to knock out the three orcs. The players maintain that I should have just narrated reducing orca to zero instead of making them roll. I submit to the court that reducing creatures to zero hp, even friendly creatures, is not something to gloss over. If my players wanted to use the palimpsests, they had to be willing to dole out the damage one at a time. I ask the court to sustain the DM’s ruling. Thank you.

Eric Dang

May it please the Court: I run a homebrew game for 6 players. They are all wonderful, save for one friend - he played an orc zealot barbarian 7 / paladin 4, and CONSTANTLY pestered me for new weapons and upgrades. He's the definition of a powergamer, and constantly interrupts intense/emotional player moments to ask for a new harpoon gun or to get a more powerful blessing on his dragon-fang sword. Eventually, I got so sick of this character (and the opportunity arose) that he was assassinated. Brutally.The only problem is the player's NEW character is exactly as minmaxed as the last. Just last session, he bought both a headband of intellect and gauntlets of ogre power - despite being a tabaxi hexblade warlock. There are several party members with negative strength, and I am at the end of my rope. Should I stop being a hard-ass and let him live out his power fantasy, or tell him that he isn't a protagonist in a shounen anime? Help me, Honourable justices!

Thorn.Squiggles

May it please the court I'm a Dungeons master who took an opportunity that presented itself to kill off a player. The character wasn't working well and the role playing was difficult, the player thinks I should have given her a heads up with a prior conversation about it. I argue that as a DM if an opportunity presented itself I reserve the right to kill off players. P.s she loves her new character now. Does the DM reserve the right to attempt to kill players if an opportunity presents itself or should it be discussed prior

Elizabeth Deschene

May it please the court... I simply want to know if it is okay to kill two of your PCs in a super difficult encounter during only the second session in which one player is absent from the session and the DM controls that PC for that time. The absent player and DM playing them was already given then okay but it still felt wrong that the DM killed my character and his permanently so early after making a big deal about us creating backstories and goals etc. Basically, honorable judges, my feelings are hurt and I want punishment :( lol

Tyler Draehn

If it may please the court, I, the DM, have been running a campaign for almost a year and a half with 5 other friends. The campaign -shamelessly- mirrors Bahumia quite a bit just because how much I loved the lore and work Murph put into it. I've listened to campaign one probably about 5 times through at this point. Anyways, I spend about 2 hours every other week planning encounters, traps, dungeons, deep lore, and character interaction that intertwines between islands, and, when I'm not actually writing the sessions, I'm listenung either to NADDPOD or some other form of D&D media to get ideas for future sessions. We started off and it was going great. Now that it's nearing the end, I feel like everyones losing interest and not into it. I have two players that are constantly getting sidetracked and talking over the rest of the table trying to RP and play the game. I also can't get my players emotionally invested, no matter how many heartbreaking NPC's I throw into the campaign or how brutally someone kills them. It gets to the point that I'm silent for 15-20 minutes just because the noises of TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube are so loud that it's pointless to try and YELL over them just to keep the session moving. What should take about 2 hours ends up taking 4, so most of the time, I call the sessions early because I'm mentally exhausted to the point of almost feeling sick just trying to juggle everything all at once. It even carries over when we just have game nights and play board games. I've tried banning phones at the table, but everyone at the table has both a phone and a laptop and, considering we use them for character sheets and whatnot, its kinda difficult to have to ban both. Long story short, am I doing something wrong? Am I not as good a DM as I thought? Is it the players that just don't care? Should I try and find new players?

May it please the court: DM: I was leading a game and had a player who didn't like the spotlight being on anyone else. In an arc focused around the party's druid, the player decided to interrupt multiple scenes, even going as far as trying to kill people mid conversation for fun. In order to give the druid space, I created more and more elaborate reasons why he couldn't (one notable example was a npc casting hold person on the player the instant he walked into a room cause I was annoyed). I tried talking to him out of game on multiple occasions but he always blew it off as "its just a game, let me have fun". Eventually it resulted in asking him to leave the game. Was I in the right here? I'll defend him a bit by saying the entire party are uncontrollable hooligans who do things like plant magic beans in cities they go to just for the laughs. The only difference is that they let other players take lead.

May it please the court, Last session my players gleefully ignored a grizzled bounty hunter and the kidnapping of a baby chimera and instead got drunk in the woods, played never have I ever, and had some really rewarding character moments including multiple people turning into penguins. Fully unplanned, all improvised, and everyone had a great time! However, I still want to follow through with the events they ignored as they let this powerful creature (and it's poison) fall into dangerous hands. Honorable Justices, how severe should the result of their negligence be without it feeling like I'm punishing them for going off the rails and having fun?

Luke Polito

May it please the court. A few friends and I played D&D for the first time recently. All of us save one had never played before, and the one experienced player was initially going to be the DM until one of the new players insisted on being the DM or else he wouldn’t play. In our second session, the first time DM kept getting a lot of the rules incorrect and the experienced player kept correcting him. The DM got so fed up with the corrections that he ended the session early, and then texted the other players individually to rag on the experienced player. My question for the court is, was the player wrong for constantly rules lawyering, or was the first time DM wrong for not taking the help of an experienced player? Thank you, love the show.

Brian Woolfolk

May it please the court. Im playing my second campaign with some buds. It's a gothic horror campaign where death is permanent. I want to add the lucky feat to my character at next level up but my DM is being a total knob about it claiming that it's OP and doesn't fit my character, an admitted downtrodden everyman. I think it does fit my character in an ironic sort of way. Supreme crits, who is right?

May it please the court, I fancy myself a gracious dm, but recently I have been getting shit from one of my players in our limited-magic campaign because I removed one of his favorite spells, Gaseous form. It actively contradicts the world I’ve built, but he continues to berate me by saying “I cast gaseous form... OH WAIT!” Should I cave and give him the spell or hold my ground? Thank you, supreme crit justices.

Abby Reeves

May it please the court! My players were fighting several demons in a small underground room. Our bard used conjure animals to summon 4 “Haungharassak”, huge sized snails. I warned him that this was a pretty small room, and he said he still wanted to it. I described these huge snails as appearing , and that stretched from floor to ceiling and blocked the PCs from the monsters. Basically, no one could do anything because all the room was full of giant snail. The player was mad that I let him cast the spell if it basically meant they couldn’t do anything until they dispelled it. Was that a fair criticism or was my warning of it being a small room enough?

Dual wield attack & thunderous smite are both bonus actions, you should be able to use 2 smites tho

Max Telmer

May it please the court, I present the case of the cursed but hopefully lucky player vs. the DM. I'm playing a fighter, and roleplaying him as being cursed. The DM is having fun with it, and overall, it's a good experience. The issue is that I want to give my fighter the lucky feat. It's an awesome feat I've used for my previous character, so I'd like to use it again. However, my DM, Durph, argues that I shouldn't be able to take the lucky feat, because I'm playing a cursed character, and it wouldn't make sense narratively. I argue that it's just a feat mechanic, and I should be able to take whatever I want. Should my fighter, Hank, be able to take the lucky feat?

Michael

May it please the court. Dear honorable judges and also Jake, Fuck you Jake. I am currently writing a musical that uses a game of D&D as a framing device. In this show, there is a scene where the moon elf Chronurgy wizard—named Io—and their cat familiar Toast, get thrown off a balcony. Io has no spell slots at this time, so they can’t cast anything to slow or stop their fall. Another character, Dew, a cloud genasi monk, makes the argument that since she can catch objects thrown at high speeds with deflect missiles, she can catch Io and Toast. My fellow writers disagree with me. I think she can do it. Please help me!! (I’ll give you a shoutout in the script, not that you need it)

Ophelia

May it please the court, This is still my first time DMing a campaign, but have done several sessions. For context, I've been slowly running the Mines of Phandelver module and our warforged monk has been collecting and storing bones inside his chest cavity throughout the campaign. The party was getting whomped in a Boss battle when our evil align cleric gets a plan. Cleric: so since I'm into necromancy, I have animate the dead. Can I animate the bones inside Monk's chest? Monk: ......What Cleric: Animate the dead will let me animate a pile of bones within range, can I animate the ones in Monk's chest? DM: ummmmm give me an acrana roll? Monk: WhAT?! Cleric: Cool! .....Nat20! DM: Ummm yeah you animate the bones Monk: WHAT The Monk argues that the Cleric shouldn't have been allowed to do that, but they rolled a Nat20 and the Monk established that his chest opens up like the TinMan. I hope the honorable Judges can help settle this argument.

May it please the court. I’m a first time DM running a WWE influenced campaign where the party has to steal an artifact from the Undertaker. The undertaker was in a 600ft tower and tombstone pildrove (drived drove?) a PC off the top of the tower on his legendary action which was right before his turn and then on his turn dimension doored back to the top letting the PC smash into the ground. The PC said he should have been able to make a save to take the dimension door back since he was grabbed on to the undertaker but I said since he was polymorphed into a walrus at the time and doesn’t know how magic works he would not be able to. He was upset and fumed the rest of the session. Was I correct in my ruling?

May it please the court In the campaign I DM my players bard was subjected to a Liar Liar esque curse where everytime she lied she took Psychic damage. She tested this out by going up to a cleric and saying to the effect "God isn't real" I ruled that since she didn't didn't have definite proof of the Gods non existence but said so as if she did she was lying and took damage. She argued that because you couldn't proof the God existed or not there was enough wiggle room to say that she wasn't lying. The argument turned into a philosophical debate which I eventually won by invoking the DMs final say, but was I right in inflicting the damage? Thank you, I flash the jury

Dan Callery

May it please the court! I humbly bring before you a case of DM v Players. Can a DM, myself, require multiclassing (only that they multiclass and not to a specific class)? The goal: create richer, more thematic characters that can narratively grow. My players argue that by forcing multiclassing I am stripping them of their most powerful abilities. I humbly await your judgement.

The Green Magus

May it please the court. My dnd group decided to run Tomb of Horrors over a few weeks as a fun dive into the neurotic realm of DND. I created a fun fighter named Siegfried, a white Dragonborn who is quite haughty and overly confident. As the character I insisted we climb the mountain at the beginning, when it turned out the entrance was on the ground(oops). Anyways, one of the sessions I unfortunately was running about an hour late and the DM had me choose another player to act for my character in my stead. I hesitantly chose, and when I joined back in, apparently Siegfried has stuck his arm in a hole where a sphere of annihilation was, losing the arm and almost his life. I was disheartened, but accepted the opportunity to make arm puns. A couple weeks later however, I had to leave early, and had to relinquish control again. I found out the next day that my character had proceeded to lose his OTHER ARM, sticking it into another dangerous orifice of some sort. Judges I humbly ask you to rule. Am I a fool for not being able to attend the whole sessions and thereby have to accept my armless status, or is the player I relinquished control to making a mockery of my noble fighter? I accept whatever punishment you lay down.

Maxwell Cornwell

Taruk the Tiefling FINALE Lords and Ladies and Everyone of the court: I stand before you with the end of the Taruk the Tiefling saga! After I became DM again we scheduled another session. I was hyped I planned all week and thought I came up with some pretty good stuff! Then it was the day. I showed up early and got all set up. Taruk was running a bit late so he wasn't home quite yet. When he got home all he said was "oh did I not tell you guys? I quit. I'm not playing anymore" THEN HE LEFT HIS OWN HOUSE. I still see him weekly but he refuses to acknowledge his quitting. It's just weird tension now. There is no case I just wanted to let you guys know the conclusion of the saga

Paul Hoffmann

Dear court i came qith a case. My paladin of Gruumsh Thordus Bitchcraft (that was a dragonborn but came back as a Oni with the reincarnation spell) made a pact with Fierna thearchdevil with the thought that this would help gain power (-1 int) ...and last session after Thordus killed one of the BBEG of the campaing Fierna demmand for the divine spark of the BBEG, thordus gave to her and now he is the only one in the party without a spark, my dm should be nice with my dumb boy or this is what he deserve for make blood pact with the first dominatrix that he encouter?

Gregório Avellar the goblin rogue warlock that is happy because Brazil is not that dystopian anymore

May it please the court. Not my game, but listening to another D&D podcast, I have a plea to make on behalf of a certain wizard named after a Mexican street food. The players were facing a slime monster, and the wizard wanted to cast the "flesh to stone" spell. The DM said no because slime isn't flesh! How would the judges rule? Thank you

Mad Dungeon Mama

If it may please the court, I have a courier problem. My players are in the middle of adventuring across a icy wasteland, and while they were camping I had a courier drop off a message. That was it, just drop off the message and go. However, my players brought to my attention that the courier ALSO would have had to travel through this frozen wasteland, and ALONE, So they are convinced hes strong and would be useful coming up even though I tell them hes literally just a dude. Due to this oversight I have now stuck a useless courier to this group since "How could he get back alone if hes weak, he should stick with us, you know in case hes useful." Hes not. How can I remove this mail man and not let him be stuck with my party for the next few weeks of icy world adventure without my players thinking I'm just letting him die.(Which he would have to be fair. He never should have made it to them in the first place. My bad!) So what should I do? What would you do? All the best, Me (I posted this before and I already got over this issue I presented myself, still curious as to your thoughts!)

Frank

May it please the court, I am playing a level 6 human paladin with the dual wielding feat feat and it basically lets me take 3 attacks. On one of my turns I hit on 2 of my attacks and crit on 1. I wanted to use 2 divine smites and a thunderous smite but my dm said I could only use one smite per turn. Was my dm right or wrong?

Melanie

If it may please the court, My players and I, the DM, mostly are able to solve things on our own fairly amicably. However this one has stumped us and to this day hasn’t had a true resolution. I made a castle dungeon for my players to go through that had several rooms to it. In one of said rooms, there were five statues of different animals and on the wall at least 12 different weapons. They were meant to match the weapons to the animals based on what weapon would symbolically represent the animal. The animals were a lion, bear, owl, turtle, and wolf. The weapon choices were a war hammer, greatsword, scimitar, battleaxe, shield, pair of daggers, an arrow, a longsword, a bow, a spear, a halberd, a pike, a trident, and a knife. The weapons meant to go with the animals were greatsword (lion), war hammer (bear), arrow (owl), shield (turtle), daggers (wolf). I messed this up during the session, but theoretically for each wrong answer a kobold brute with lightning capabilities would drop down from the ceiling. During their first attempt, they had only two right answers, but I dropped down 5. I admitted to them after the combat that only 3 should have dropped. However, after that, they got the puzzle right and were able to progress with none of them even going down during the only combat. The issue we failed to resolve is was the weapon match up too personal without any other context clues? There wasn’t much to the room except the statues, weapons, and trap doors from above. There were a couple times after the combat where they did some investigation checks, but after the session they expressed not wanting to have to do an investigation check per statue and wanted more context clues on the walls or through lore they knew. Were the weapons I chose to go with the statues too much of a stretch or personal choice without investigation checks or more world lore? I know I probably went overboard on the number of weapon choices, but I was hoping some would just be fun flavor and easily ruled out. I figured they’d get a couple wrong guesses but be able to rely on common symbolism themes to solve the statues. Was this a poorly designed puzzle?

Derek Johnson

You "tried" my case on a live stream already but I'd love it if the other honorable crit justices would be willing to offer their judgement. Good morning justices and may it please the court. I run a campaign based on the plays of William Shakespeare and currently my party is operating out of ancient Rome. They were sailing across the sea in a ship and I made an encounter involving a vampire spawn that got aboard the ship, and would have started picking apart the crew had they not acted quickly. They began fighting the vampire when my fighter decided to use a homebrewer maneuver to lodge a hand axe into the vampire connected to a length of rope ( think Scorpion from Mortal Kombat) and push the vampire off the side of the boat. My players argued that since the ship was moving and they were dragging the vampire it should have been considered running water and there by killed the vampire. I say that the ship was moving not the water and allowed to vampire to make strength checks to climb the rope back up to the ship. Was I wrong to do this? What constitutes running water? Do I need to be punished? Thank you and have a wonderful rest of your day. :)

Myles Lee

May it please the court! I, a Ranger, was playing in a campaign my friend was running where we were supposed to invade an orc encampment, and assassinate a shaman. My friend cast spider climb on me, and I crawled through a hole in the roof of the main tent. I shot an arrow, and expected that I would be able to take it as a surprise round and sneak back out and run after I killed them. Instead, the DM ruled that every single orc in the tent (upwards of 60) would get to take a shot at my level 3 ranger. I was full dead long before he finished rolling. I argued that it wasn’t fair, and to appease me, he allowed me to come back, but took away my magic. Who is in the right?

May it please the court, should a broom catch on fire? The PCs recently found a broom of flying and while using it the wizard was hit with a lightning bolt spell. I started to narrate that the broom was ignited, as lightning bolt ‘ignites flammable objects in the area that aren’t being worn or carried’. The PCs argued that since the wizard was holding the broom to use it, that it was being carried, and ‘worn or carried’ is meant to include items on someone’s person. I argued that a broom of flying is more like a mount, and mounts are subject to AOE spells. A magical wooden broom is still a wooden broom, so it should ignite. How would the honorable judges rule?

May it please the court, Our DM has decided to ban Rogues from being in anymore of his campaigns since he seems to find them problematic. He argues that the sneak attack ability is overpowered, as well as impractical because of its name and mechanics. He says the extra damage should not count because having advantage on a roll or simply having a party member near the enemy is not “sneaky”, like the feat specifies, despite rules as written stating this is the way it works. He also argues that it doesn’t have any limitations because players can use the feat every turn—but even then, you need to have the advantage or someone near the enemy. The other players and I have done our best to try and convince him of the validity of this feat, but he’s stated he doesn’t want to argue about it so he’s banning Rogues all together which is rather upsetting. Rogues are so fun to play! We hope the Supreme Crit can help us come to a verdict for this case.

Alex Attwell

everytime jake includes the "BRIEF" and everytime we know its not gonna go that way

sesamese