Calling for Court Cases!

May it pretty please the court. I'm DMing my first homebrew campaign set on a pirate island. My players had a task to retrieve some stolen treasure belonging to the tavern owner who was a Sphinx-like tabaxi. Behind the screen, my players are unaware that she is cured to not grow fur due to her being a desendant of a cursed pirate captain. The party find the treasure kept in a goblin village nearby, and the warlock at the time decides to disguise themselves as the tabaxi and walk in. In my head, I didn't know what to think. The goblin in this village knew about the curse and recognized the tabaxi as the captain. The player rolled a really good intimidation check and I couldn't think of what kind of response the goblin would have and just said they fainted. Was I too quick to come up with a reaction and therefore made an easy win for my players?

Jason Rodriguez

This is basically a high stakes "wheres balnor?!"

Jason Rodriguez

May it please the court, the case of the party vs. The homebrew DM: Our DM has been working on a "homebrew" players handbook (and play system) for D&D. The party agreed to switch to this new system to help the creator playtest. However, this was over a year ago, and we continue to play with this new ever-evolving system. It was fun trying things new for awhile, but the existing party (of 2+ years) is beginning to tire of constant changes as we further ourselves from the deep rooted 5e. We have been close to a TPK on several of our recent encounters, with several characters either: Dying, since we are not high enough lever for resurrection magic. Or "Leaving" the party so the player can make a new character that is relevant. We believe it is due to the DM making full use of the system they created, while the party is left to fend for themselves in this ever changing environment. To conclude, Does the party have the right to view the "monster manual" of this new system to better understand the changes and how enemies work? Or Did we (the party) deserve this after agreeing to play with a homebrew system?

Tommynachos

Sounds like you did you're best to make your player feel included. Asking for feedback, which you did, is what DMs are supposed to do. It sounds like your player overreacted.

This needs to be upheld in court, if even just for laughs

May it please the court to hear the case of the guest DM's murder of our usual DM. A guest DM borrowed our group. I'm a bard who had been befriending villagers. During a Wicker Man style festival which the youngins weren't involved in I played my bagpipes and gave a rousing (nat 20) speech to convince them to help us. The guest DM then forgot about me for 3 rounds, but I was headed to help and was 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 if I'd been allowed my turn I would have healed them. I did protest at the time, but it was via Zoom so hard to get a word in. The guest DM did later admit they'd been missing my 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 stopping. (They haven't been invited back.) Should they have reversed this death because I should have been able to heal the DM? Or were they right to commit?

Noodyl

They kinda addressed this on the Short Rest when Jake wanted Henry to pick up lucky 😄

Max Telmer

Hello! This one is kind of a bummer, sorry about that. I am a first time dm for five players, a mixed group of my brother’s and my friends. All of them are first time players. Today one of my friends told me that she wants to stop playing because she doesn’t like the attitude of one of my bothers friends. In her defense, he does have a bad attitude and is kind of a dick. He can be a know it all (interrupting me to explain rules) and is pretty rude to my brother (both in and out of character) and he has convinced himself that I do not like him, so anytime there is any sort of challenge he accuses me of trying to kill his character. A quick example of his behavior: recently we played through a combat against a horde of zombies and the PCs were accompanied by a cleric/sorcerer npc who cast bless in the first round. I chose not to bless his character (a celestial warlock) and prioritized the melee characters. The next session we finished the battle and while I was reminding people that they were blessed he complained several times about how I didn’t bless his character and never “give that kind of thing” to his character. (Even though I do) However, I feel like he is just a socially awkward person with insecurities and asking him to leave seems mean. Her leaving feels like a done deal, but do you think there is a way to work things out for her to stay? If she leaves what do I do with her character? What do I do about him regardless? Help?! Sorry, I don’t think this is a very good court case.

May it please the Court! No gripes here. I have 2 DM's at the moment, one of which is my wife. I love them both dearly, and they do a great job, so I wanted to shoutout Marissa J and Jared W. Thank you, honerable judges.

I am the DM in this situation. I had a goblin bard NPC and a player and I planned that said goblin would have a half Goblin half Gnoll son, who is a PC in our campaign. During a scene we talked about the goblin having other half goblin half-x babies. My players then asked numerous detailed questions about how goblins might breed with various races around Faerun, which I had to answer in a goblin voice in the terms of a goblin father explaining the birds and the bees to his son. My players argue that this was deeply scarring to them, whereas I argue that they asked and I had to improv therefore it was worse for me. Was this a war crime, and if so, who has taken the most psychic damage?

EGG

May it please the court, I am the DM for a group made up by my partner and several of our mutual friends. We are all first-time players and DM who decided to finally give D&D a go after having talked about it being a great idea for a very long time. We had been playing for a short while and had really gotten into my homebrew campaing. We played for my birthday early on and spent 14hrs screaming and cry laughing around the table and it was very nice and all was right in the world. Then, just as we were getting to the juice of the first arc, one player (we shall call her Myfanwy) decided to move to Scotland. We live in Australia and so there is an 8hr time difference and now we have to play over discord which has significantly impacted the game due to delays in her audio coming through. My partner and Myfanwy were my most Chaotic players and together were responsible for some of the stickiest and silliest scenarios in my game, but now due to occasional internet disruptions and audio delays Myfanwy has become not very vocal although still very enthusiastic about the goings on in game. It has resulted in my partner who is playing a Bard fighter being solely responsible for the party’s stupidity and now struggling to outvote the party towards the shallow end of the gene pool. So that Myfanwy still has her chance to roleplay, I occasionally setup scenarios where she is assumed to be the leader of the group or is talking 1 on 1 with NPCs so she can get her chance to talk, and not worry about poorly timed one liners a few seconds after conversation has already moved on. I still feel her game has been impacted by this move to Scotland and she has lost a lot of her chaotic energy which is so important for D&D. I secretly think it was very selfish for her to move as it means we will never be able to do an around-the-table session again like we did on my birthday until COVID allows us to travel to Scotland. Am I being unreasonable? Is it her fault for moving to Scotland for very valid reasons? Or is it Internet providers worldwide for not supplying us with instant feedback audiovisual communication to the other side of the world? Or my fault for being upset as a 25yr old that my next birthday won’t be a D&D party with the whole gang? I thank you Judges for your time,

(this is my second submission, but I thought I'd throw it in the pile anyway!) May it please the court, I present to you the case of Araia v Party. A few years ago I played a tabaxi wizard named Araia. During a combat encounter at level 14, I was really excited to use a new spell I had just learned called Crown of Stars. Our party encountered a group of vampires in the city, and combat ensued. Our cleric had cast Truesight on my character, to keep an eye out for an invisible arcane trickster who had been hired to kill us. During the encounter, I had Mage Armor, Truesight, and had just cast Crown of Stars, which is concentration, when I spotted the arcane trickster and told my party where he was. He immediately moved to attack me, and I had several vampires trying to cast spells at me from the rooftops. My entire party ignored me begging for help for several rounds, despite the fact that I had several spells active that would fizzle if I went down. Araia lasted several rounds in melee combat with the trickster, with the use of Shield and melee spell attacks. I couldn't move from where I was, or multiple vampires would get line of sight on me. Those rounds of combat took over an hour of irl time, and my party ignored my pleas for help. It turns out that the arcane trickster had a vorpal sword! Eventually he rolled a nat 20 and beheaded my character. The cleric had dismissively told me that he could always revivify me, but now my character was missing their head. My new 7th level spell was almost entirely wasted, and so was the Truesight cast on me. The combat went on for over 2 more hours, and I couldn't participate. Eventually a plot-relevant npc showed up and cast true resurrection on me, which was kind of an easy out. I maintain that my party should have done something to help, not only because that's what a party is for, but I was the only one who could have seen the arcane trickster and I had a 7th level spell active that used radiant damage, which was extra effective on vampires! How do the judges weigh in?

ursa

Feel free to cut this down as much as you want, jake. Your honors it is a sad day as I have come with news beyond the table that surely will not please the court. I freely give myself to your mercy. A bit of backstory me and my bestie, he’s known across the lands as "jet", we're the only two in our group. We make the most of it, he dms and I’m the solo player. So im a big numbers guy. Fortunately for me my dm is the same so it’s match made in revory. He invited me to play a Pathfinder iron gods campaign using gestalt characters, two classes fused into one where you take all the better saves, BAB, spell slot progression, etc from each class and make it a single class. This was my thought process: With normal characters at level 10 jet was throwing enemies that had 10 attacks and averaged 300 damage per round. With mythic characters he threw gargantuan undead construct monstrosities at us. So you’d understand my excitement when we were to play gestalts. I was under the impression he was going to throw absolute mechanical monstrosities at me and as such created a monk/Druid gestalt going full natural order of the world vs machines yin/yang kinda thing. I hailed from a hidden civilization where I studied as a monk and Druid. I was a prodigy in both fields as I was starting at level 5. I was a one man army, an absolute tank. I had average HP but my AC was never below 30, and as such my dm literally had to crit just to land a hit. He had to resort to attacking my very mediocre allies and it became a game of keep away. We played a single session and then never picked up that campaign again. He made it very clear I had sullied the game. It has been months since we've played, were still besties, he says he wants to try gestalt again. Hes a nice guy and has forgiven me but I feel justice has not been served, I broke the sacred "just have fun with your friends rule". Your honors, I lay my head on the chopping block with jet ready at the side to execute any punishment you decide. May the court rule justly. -Zaos Sylphaeros p.s. he didnt freak out in text a-la murph style.

Cristian Perez

May it please the court, I present to you the case of D'Jasper v Party. Over a year ago, my group began our campaign that is still running today. One of the characters, a wildfire druid named D'jasper, was a committed troll. Our starting group was 8 players, and had a fairly serious theme. Due to the almost unmanageable party size, our dm had a house rule in place, that if you died with no apparent way to be brought back, you were out of the campaign for the forseeable future instead of rolling another character. A few sessions in, D'jasper had already cast several spells in the middle of town (a city where magic is illegal) drawing attention to our party. He often threatened to kill us all with spells like Erupting Earth and Bonfire, which probably wouldn't have done it but that didn't stop him from trying. D'jasper acquired an immovable rod and attempted to use it to kill several player characters by pinning them to walls or floors and not allowing them to defend themselves, trying to auto kill them. Our dm ruled against it, and warned D'jasper that if he kept drawing attention to himself (i.e. casting spells in public, being rude and suspicious to several npcs, etc) there would be consequences. Our party was on the run from the authorities at this point. D'jasper didn't heed the dm's warning, and while we were passing through a dangerous town in a poor area he and another player went into the tavern alone and immediately started throwing platinum pieces on the bar, rudely asking for information and waving around the immovable rod. The bar happened to be full of bandits, and D'Jasper immediately threatened to kill all of them. They knocked him and the other player out and stole all of their equipment and gold. D'Jasper protested the bandits being "too strong" while the rest of us found it well deserved and hilarious, how do the judges weigh in?

ursa

May it please the court, *WARNING* Contains Aarakocra fuckery, also this was a couple years ago now but it still plagues my thoughts rip. I joined one of my first DnD campaigns through a new work friend which was a group of all guys that he knew, except myself. I played a badass (but goody two shoes LG) dragonborn fighter named Korrin, and we had a winter eladrin, tiefling thief, and Aarakocra in the party. The entire first day was spent by me trying to stop the tiefling from stealing from everyone, attempting to convince the eladrin that we're on the same team and he should divulge necessary adventure info (that only he could interpret due to languages) to the rest of the group instead of keeping it a secret (WHY?????), and basically trying to keep the party together. That 'night', we camped in a forest and the DM suggested someone should keep watch, to which the Aarakocra offered to keep an eye out in the trees. So while we were all asleep, the bird saw a party of gnolls heading our way that would surely sniff us out. When the DM asked what the bin chicken would do with this information, he opted to STAY IN THE TREES AND WATCH THE GNOLLS ATTACK US, no wake up call or anything. The others ran away or hid to cast cantrips, leaving me to fight the gnolls armour-less. I left the game a session later due to harassment from one of the players, but I still wish I could have seen some justice for Korrin :( I am now a DM for a great bunch of people but have no idea how I would handle this situation, so what does the court think a suitable punishment or course of action for players that act AGAINST the party would be? Thank you, love the podcast so so much, and if it weren't for NADDPOD this situation may have been the end of DnD for me so thank FUCK :) xxx

In all seriousness thanks for keeping me entertained on my way to and from work most of the week :)

Will L.

Hello Fair Justices and may it please the court. I am playing a 5e campaign with my friends. This is a newer campaign as we have relatively recently finished up our first. Anyway, a topic was brought up regarding halfling lucky and I thought that it is a neat race trait. Due to never having played a halfling, I guess I wanted to take a Feat myself and mentioned lucky as it isn't overpowered but it is really fun. In our prior campaign, it was fine but in this current one my DM accused me of "min-maxing" (1) and basically told me no because it didn't fit my character because he was "cursed" and "how has he ever been lucky." I kind of get this but wouldn't you say because he was initially down on his luck and now he has friends he likes (forced by promise too), he's gone from negative luck to at least neutral? I guess he might be implying the lucky feat is just the friends we made along the way. Thanks for reading and I hope justice is swift. (1): isn't the sacrifice of ASI as a +1 to all attacks and main stat checks and saves a lot more min max than rerolling 3 dice per long rest? Is my DM just an avian of a bread loving variety?

Will L.

May it please the honorable Judges, Emily Autumn Axford, Brian Tobias Murphy, and Caldwell Samantha Tanner... (And pleasure the delectable Baliff Jake “The Quad God” Herwitz) I bring you the Case of the Wily Muskrat v The Raging Hawk I was running a game using the Unisystem game All Flesh Must Be Eaten, with my wife and three friends. More of a modern horror game, one of the players was a detective from the “big city” come to a tiny backwoods Alaskan town to search for a missing reporter. The rest of the party were local townspeople who had each been given a clue to the reporter’s whereabouts. When pieces together they would unravel a mystery incriminating the town’s doctor as a practitioner of dark voodoo and murder and stuff. True to form, the party solved the mystery with only two of the clues, confronted the doctor in her house in the night, and killed her, cutting the game several hours short. HERE BEGINS THE CONTROVERSY: At the exact moment that the voodoo woman was killed, the PTSD-riddled Vietnam vet failed his checks, was surprised by another cast member in the dark, and murdered them with a crit. In order to keep the game going, I called a quick pause and casually pulled aside the player of the Veteran, and had him roll Willpower checks, which he failed. I then informed him that he was so traumatized by killing his friend, that the Voodoo woman was able to possess him at the moment of her death, making him secretly the new “big bad” The drama begins a short time later, when said player flipped on the rest of the cast, attempting to burn them to death in a library, then run them down with a car. When clipped by the car’s mirror and taking 1D4 of damage, one of the other players stood up, slammed their laptop shut, and loudly proclaimed “This is NOT how you play a (TTRPG)” They then scooped up their stuff, their dog, and left. Do I the DM, or the player-turned-big bad have any guilt to bear for this situation? Or should I feel comfortable in my choice of no longer associating with this 52 year old child? - Sincerely, J. Muskrat (Sorry I am not brief, Jake. Feel free to summarize)

Josiah Muskrat

May it please the court, In a session the other day, my adventuring party was leading an assault team into a fort/castle held by a league of bandits/insurgents. It was a standard castle set-up, with a stone wall with a large wooden door surrounding the courtyard and castle. My character snuck through a rubble portion of the wall that was in disrepair. Then, seeking to weaken the door to allow the members of the mercenary force we were leading to break through, I lit an arrow on fire and shot it at the wooden gate door. My dm said that would not burn down the door or weaken it. And that the wooden door was massive, it was raining, and that such a small source of flame wouldn’t burn down a giant wooden door. Am I right that the door should have gone up in flames distracting the guards and weakening the doors structural integrity or is my dm a buzz kill?

May it please the court, I am in my first ever campaign with some old friends of mine. In our last session, 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 for saving him. He grew frustrated, and chased me through the alley. We ended up stumbling into a chamber filled with gold during our debacle. Unbeknownst to us, the sentient room cursed anyone who stole its riches, and blessed those who were lawful/not thieves. My party member chose to tackle me and grapple for my/his bag of gold. He, a talented football jock, rolled a 23 strength check. I however, a preppy nerd, rolled a natural 20 (the only possible way to beat my party member’s check). Or so I thought… Instead of winning the grapple, my DM decided that 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 on the fly 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? -Rael Goldpetal

This is a great one, I hope the crew answers this

Sammo Cando

Absolutely not. He's LUCKY that all a 20th level caster did to him was essentially ignore him.

Man, D&D players have some broken people among their ranks.

Long time listener patron since Galaderon. May it please the court. My case surrounds a DM and how rolls should maintain consistency when it comes to value. I have been in this table for a couple of sessions and it was pretty plain and simple. But something that ticked me off was that the DM seemed to change the worth of a roll willy nilly. Case and example: I was playing a rogue and was being chased down the city streets, but I ran into a dead end. I asked the DM if I could jump over the wall (8 ft) and rolled a 14 on an athletics; the DM said I failed. Now I usually accept the outcome of a roll, quoting justice Axford "the dice tell a story". But what bothered me is that a couple sessions/levels back the DM allowed me to basically mario wall jump an entire building with an athletics roll of 13. Back to the current session, I argued that I had done more difficult stunts with lower rolls and being a lower level. The DMs counterpoint was that "The higher your level the higher the DCs are going to be even for small things". So I ask, should the table have a reference for roll value? Should each roll get harder as levels progress?

Guys, gals and non-binary pals of the court, I submit the following scenario for your judgement. I was playing in a high level 1-shot as a Fighter/Divine Soul Sorcerer. With my armor and defensive spells, I had 30+ AC and 300+ effective health. Which is probably why, after several rounds of combat with the boss and repeated castings of Meteor Swarm from his Archmage minions, the party was looking bad but I was still standing. It was my turn and I had a big play to turn things around but it was going to get tricky. The archmages and I had been Counterspelling back and forth so I knew it wasn't safe to cast spells. However, I also knew that Counterspell can only be used " when you see a creature within 60 feet of you casting a spell." Taking this into account, I Subtly cast Mass Heal using my 9th level spell slot. I reasoned that, without material, somatic or verbal components to the casting there was nothing to see and thus nothing that the archmages could react to. The DM said that the Archmages saw the wounds beginning to close on my allies and they countered the spell. I argued that, at the point that wounds would be healing, the spell had already been cast and could not be countered. The DM held firm on their ruling and the combat proceeded. In the end, we scraped out a victory but the exchange never sat well with me. Thus, I bring the question now before the highest court in the land. If a spell without material components is cast Subtly, can it be counterspelled? Quick shout-out to Justice Axford. Multi-class dipping on a full-caster to get shield/heavy armor proficiency is called the Fia-Frostwhip Classic at my home table.

Westin Lanser

Long time listener, first time patron :) May it please the court and Paw Paw: This is an old case that I still think about a lot. My first time DMing a campaign and their first playing in a campaign. Throughout the months of playing, one player would continuously metagame but get away with it by saying "not to metagame but..." I would try to remind him to do it in character or have my NPCs react in character so that it wouldn't be metagaming. But finally near the end of the campaign the party had to decide where to go and an NPC recommended against what the metagame player suggested. He then turned to one of the new players and said "we should do that because the DM's NPC suggested it". I was furious and decided to take away his inspiration as punishment. Was I right in the ruling? And how do I help curb metagaming going forward?

Both Jordan and the DM are to blame. The DM made a huge change to the tone and focus of the campaign without really talking it over with you all. It's hard to tell what the actual vibes were from a description, but from what you've described about Jordan, they sound like a dick who was purposely trying to cause problems.

Yes. DMs are allowed to make up abilities, spells, or effects that don't exactly match the rules that players are meant to follow. This is a pretty minor adjustment and I don't see any reason why you would point out the discrepancy.

Get new friends.

Dearest Justices of the Supreme Crit, I bring to you the case of the elemental monks and the basilisk, may it please the court. In a campaign that I DM, my players are playing four elemental monks which serve as the last barrier of protection between a civilization and Genocide. In one of the recent battles, a high level enemy Druid polymorphed into a basilisk in order to attack the party. One of my party members argued that since they were proficient in snake charming as a monk, they should be able to charm the basilisk. I try not to argue with my players as they are very new, so I said they had to roll for it. This player, who usually has Caldwell level dice rolls, of course rolled a natural 18, thus beating the DC I had set. The rest of the session was spent role playing as this basilisk who was now essentially the pet of my player. Does snake charm work on polymophed Basili (basilisks?) Should I be allowing these shenanigans?

Grant Klein

Kind of depends on whether you want your game to have a lot of shenanigans like this, right?

Yes? Like, as the DM you would have known what HP the players were at, what HP the Balor was at, and that the Balor had a death throes mechanic. The dice tell their story, but you should have known that it was possible that if the unicorn you were controlling attacked the Balor you were also controlling, that it could result in a TPK. So the players basically had no say in whether this happened, which feels bad. You might as well have just dropped an asteroid on them.

May it please the court -- We play with a character who insists that all of his armor has the ass cheeks cut out. The DM said he can commit to this unending hairy ass joke but will be at a disadvantage for every attack from the side and back. The player insists that's too steep a penalty as only the ass is exposed. His back and lower legs remain in armor. But the DM is holding firm, saying that anyone exposing bare ass cheeks and their chute is inherently at a disadvantage in battle, and charisma. How do you judge?

Talk. To. Each. Other. There's no reason you couldn't have, as a reasonable human, just talked to the player about how it's hard for you to justify not being wary of all these "strangers". You could have also asked, "hey, I think my guy would shoot your guy thinking it might be a guard that's chasing them. Is this cool or nah?" It's not hard here folks. Just communicate.

I think the question I'd ask is, what about this is a negative for you as a fellow player? If the DM is into this kind of off-label use of skills, why not start making the case for why you should be able to use Athletics (or whatever skill your character is good at) to convince people ("I flex my muscles to emphasize my point") or bake bread ("I punch the dough fiercely")?

May it please the court, Honorable judges, my character (4th level wild magic sorcerer) was murdered in cold blood. Long story short, my character saved a city through questionable means. I lured all of the guards to a single location while our party broke some citizens out of prison. However in doing this the city suffered very heavy losses. Fast forward, we’re banished from the city yadda yadda. Then i’m having a discussion about the event with an NPC who has shown up throughout our campaign, he puts me in a headlock, so i cast “friends” to get out of it, when the spell wears off, he attacks & kills me without me using ANY offensive spells. I maintain that Willy Dougal did no wrong & saved the city, dying a martyr.

For the most part, I think magic in D&D 5e is meant to be read "closely". Meaning spells do what they say and nothing more. Which isn't to say that you can't get creative with spells but generally if a spell could do something like that it would explicitly say so. Even if the DM allowed this it wouldn't work anyway. First, it ends after an hour, so any changes to the creature would end. Basically the bad guy would be in a lot of pain for an hour and then be fine. Second, I'd argue that what you're doing is changing the bad guy from a human wizard into a *different* human wizard with a disease, even if outwardly he appeared to be exactly the same. So, if the disease somehow killed the bad guy in an hour he would just revert to his previous form and be perfectly healthy. Third, there's already a lower level spell (but cleric, druid only) that gives a creature a disease: Contagion. Long story short: No, True Polymorph doesn't work that way and even if it did, it would be a waste of a 9th level spell because it wouldn't really harm the bad guy.

May it please the court: A simple, yet complex question. I pride myself on being an open-minded DM that heavily plays by the rule of cool and allows a lot of shenanigans. Despite this, I do enjoy keeping the story moving. Recently I cut my parties (friends from high school, at about session 25) Pirate arc short when a bunch of Vikings stormed their boat and took them captive. I made the encounter difficult on purpose so they could do a prison escape. One of my players did not like this “railroady” play and attempted to commit suicide twice. Only stopped because another PC found him first and the second time he didn’t take enough fall damage to kill him. Am I the asshole or should my player have come to me and talked about it instead of trying to send a message through his character ?

Branson White

You should have talked to the other players about it beforehand and asked if they thought it was fun.

Your player is correct. Even though he ran out of breath, he had a minimum of one round to swim to the surface, as "when a creature runs out of breath or is choking, it can survive for a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum 1 round)." He would, if his CON modifier is 0 or 1, go down on his *next* turn, not the end of his *current* turn, as when a creature runs out of breath and survival rounds, "at the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 hit points and is dying, and it can't regain hit points or be stabilized until it can breathe again."

Meghan

A short question, may it please the court. In my first ever D&D game the party and I (a wizard) came across a band of orcs. I cast the spell Ice Knife and missed the orc, but there were others and him within 5ft. So I told the DM to have them roll Dexterity Saving Throws, and she proceeds to make one roll for the whole group in which they all passed. My question is, should a group of orcs make one roll for the group, or roll individually fit the save? Love the show and everything you all do! Thanks for all the entertainment!

Familiars are intelligent creatures. While you can only communicate telepathically and see through its eyes within a 100 ft. range, the familiar retains its intelligence regardless of its distance from you. In addition, it is not a *real* creature, and thus wouldn't have a self preservation instinct overriding your commands. It would follow your last command regardless of how far from you it is.

Meghan

Cut the pig in half.

You ran it completely correct. The speed is both halved and doubled, so it's just regular. And the player gets their additional action, though they can make no more than one attack on their turn (even with the additional action). They can do other things with their Haste action, though.

Meghan

I would argue that you can, in fact, counterspell your own spell, because of one specific rules interaction. Let's use the example of a wizard casting fireball against a warlock. The warlock then casts counterspell to get rid of the wizard's fireball. The wizard is able to counterspell that counterspell, ensuring their fireball goes off, despite already casting fireball. Thus, I would argue that someone could counterspell their *own* spell, because there is no penalty for casting counterspell in the middle of casting a different spell in another situation.

Meghan

This sounds like a really cool use of a lich's abilities and wholly justified on the part of the DM! (I am the DM)

Meghan

May it please the court, I am the DM for a homebrew campaign with my best friends, during an arc that had the group overcome a small army of drow dragons and an evil eladrin would-be-queen, the fighter of the group scarified themself to lure away guards while escaping the castle, the rest of the group got away but the fighter ended up getting caught and imprisoned. Due to low rolls while trying to escape and being a level 10 fighter, the queen had what is essentially an evil mind control helmet placed on them and was then acting as her personal guard. A few sessions later, the player was playing as a temporary character until he got his fighter back, eventually the group got back to the castle, and during the battle with the queen and the fighter, this player killed his own character, he insisted I don't have the PC roll death saves and had pre-written some last words for the character. The rest of the group got mad at him and the temporary character was kicked out of the group. The player is sad about the death of his character and insists that after the campaign ends the group owes it to him to travel to the astral keep the fighter's soul is kept in and bring them back to life. Nobody else wants to do this but the player is still sad about his character's "unavoidable death". Is the player justified in being sad this character died? He insists he is; court, please give us your ruling.

Jade Finch

Just tell your DM that you understand and instead you'd like to be a canonical D&D race from an old edition if that's okay. Then show them this: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Dohwar

So this is an argument about something that happened in a campaign I run months ago- the campaign has continued with no problems, but me and one of the players will still occasionally butt heads about the moment in question. If it pleases the court, I need a final answer: THE BACKGROUND During character creation for the campaign in question I allowed some homebrew/Unearthed Arcana races and classes, and gave people free 18's to put in stats, started them with magic items, or let them start with a Feat. I was overall very pleased for players to make any kind of character they wanted, with one exception: I told them they could not be evil-aligned. I made it clear that the campaign and all my plans relied on them being a rising group of heroic adventurers in a crime ridden city, and that it would be problematic if they just started being evil. Some of them made what at the time seemed like joke complaints, but we kept playing regardless. THE ADVENTURE A little gnomish man of moderate fame in the city hires the adventurers to save his kidnapped husband, promising them 100GP each. They succeed after a few close calls- one of the players nearly drowned in raw sewage (nat 1, heavy armor, not my fault), and the boss of the dungeon they were in knocked out more than one character. My players arrive to collect their reward, kidnapped-husband in tow. I then have the gnomish gentleman reveal that he doesn't have the money to pay them, and will instead be gifting them a 1000GP home in a beautiful part of the city. This is double the GP value they would have gained by getting 100 each. THE INCIDENT The "Lawful Good" Paladin in the party grabs the kidnapped husband and holds a dagger to his throat, threatening to murder him if the gnomish man doesn't cough up the GP. The "Chaotic Good" Bard continually makes persuasion, intimidation, and insight checks to demand this as well, going so far as to threaten to murder or torture both of them if they do not pay the agreed upon amount. I point out in-game and out-of-game repeatedly that the property would be an upgrade in reward, and not a downgrade. They ignore it. Everyone else in the party was also pretty much on board with getting a house, but the Paladin and the Bard steamrolled the conversation. I was flustered, not having been prepared for the possibility that they would be so homicidally inclined by what I felt was a better reward. So I started offering them more. By the end of the conversation, the party was given the deed and keys to the house, and also literally everything the couple owned including the clothes off their backs. The Bard told them to get out of the city. Eager to end the interaction, I had them agree. The Paladin then demanded they convert to their religion or they would kill them. Finally, I just told the Paladin, completely out of game, "Your character is lawful good, and follows a strict religious code. You would know threatening that, let alone doing that is objectively a terrible thing to do." The Paladin said they take it back, and the session ended. THE AFTERMATH I had a conversation with the group about sticking to alignment both for the purposes of consistent roleplay, and because I don't want to have to roleplay innocent people being harassed and bullied on a regular basis. Night-of I had played along and did my best impression of a hopeless man begging for his husbands life, and it was NOT fun. The Paladin apologized and relented. The Bard maintains that she was acting perfectly in-character and that there was nothing evil about her threats or actions since she didn't actually kill anyone. I maintain that taking the clothes off someone's back while holding the love of their life hostage is evil. The player has not been problematic since, but the topic of whether or not she behaved poorly during that still comes up frequently. Court, please provide us with a final judgement.

A fun thing to do is let it happen with "normal" people. Low level grunts, guard, mercenaries, goblins, etc. But then when they're the appropriate level have a something *much scarier* show up and not be impressed. If you're worried about the intimidation roll succeeding, just remember that if you think there's no way a devil or other monster would be scared of someone just because they have some magic, you don't have to allow the roll.

May it please the court. There is a campaign that myself and two friends have been playing for over a year. One is the DM and the other a fellow player. We are 2 level 16 casters (I'm a wizard, he's a cleric) with spell slots up to level 8. We've continuously been running into an issue where the DM will tell us our spells don't work the ways we want them to work and how the spell is worded, but will bend the rules for his high powered NPCs. The most recent example is going on an under water heist. The cleric cast etherealness (7th level spell) and I cast teleport to get us on site. Once we got there the DM claimed we were drowning even though we were on the ethereal plane. When questioned he just kept saying "the ethereal plane is just like that". However, he has a high level sorcerer NPC who has dozens and dozens of simulacrums and helped him conquer the world, even though that seems like a over powered use of simulacrum. Who's guilty here? It feels like we can never get a win no matter what solution we come up with. Thank you for your time, you guys are wonderful.

Kristina LaPointe

Why not compromise and say that they can have fiery hair, but that it might draw unwanted attention and freak people out?

Whether characters could die when the players weren't there should have been part of the conversation when you all agreed to the DM controlling the PC when one playe ris missing. Seriously, just talk to each other about these things.

Lol I tried my best. I shortened mine from like 500 to 300 words.

Kate W

May it Please the Court! In the case of Steed lost and Familiar Found. Our fighter Jax (unimaginatively named after Sons of Anarchy) had been using Find Steed to summon a large hog that he rides. After picking The Void card from the Deck of Many things Jax was transported to gem in a well for many months. Rowel, our child prodigy wizard, was always feeding and playing with the pig and declared that she kept the pig as a familiar after Jax disappeared. Jax maintains that because it was a found steed it would just disappear and Rowel has said that she has the find familiar spell and can use that to perpetuate the existence of this delightful pig. Now many months later the adventures have rescued Jax and now the custody battle begins. Over quarantine we have all taken turns DMing so it is hard to have a definitive ruling. Should this magic pig be a steed or a familiar? Or should we set up our own court case to resolve this?

Sean Marz

Rules as written you fall 500 feat PER ROUND as in the bard wouldn't able to do anything before becoming a fine past on the ground.

Melon Bread

This is a misconception about how Surprise works in 5e. There actually no "surprise round." You roll initiative as normal, then if you're surprised you can't take an action or move after your first turn, after which you stop being surprised. So if you had rolled a higher initiative than the ballistae, you would have been able to cast shield. But anyway, there's no reason you wouldn't have been able to detect such a big piece of machinery unless you truly did just march through the door.

Melon Bread

Make him RP the arrest at least

Luke Shealy

May it please the court, My group and I have recently started a home game, and we are several months into it. As a group we all get along really well. The current DM is new to DMing, but he is well versed in Dnd (he has been playing since second edition). Our DM told us that we could basically do anything and he would roll with it. Well there was a point that another player at the table killed an important NPC, though we didn't know it at the time. The player that did the killing was playing a neutral evil character and though it was a fairly ruthless killing was doing so in order to steal what was thought to be valuable loot. Fast forward a week to the next session and the DM immediately rules that the player needs to make a new character because the one that he has is being arrested and sentenced to death for the murder of the NPC. Things got very awkward at this point, especially because the DM didn't mention this to anyone before the session and didn't give the player a chance to roll to try to get out of jail. We then all had to sit there as the player had to make a new character during the session. I understand that it is frustrating that an NPC was killed but it feels like the DM had other options here?

This sounds like a really tough situation, & I'm glad you're talking w your DM & group abt it- I really hope you guys can figure something out, possibly w the Supreme Crit's help! Also wanted to say that Juniper Jet is a FANTASTIC name.

tacticalgrandma

May it please the court My friend and I have always shared the burden of our groups ‘forever DMs’ – we both run games simultaneously and will help out each other as needed, if one of is isn’t up to running one night the other will take over etc. The problem comes however, when I killed his campaign with a tree stride. We were closing up the game and this was to be the final battle. He had set up a complex chase/battle, where the players would race other groups we had encountered throughout the campaign to the mcguffin, and then fight a final boss to claim it. Unfortunately, he narrated this scene as being an overgrown jungle city, where trees broke through derelict walls throughout the ruins, and the room the mcguffin was held in could be seen from the hill top, as an overgrown oasis of sorts. As the groups druid, I decided the best course of action would be to cast tree stride and simply take it. Then I returned to the party the way I came. After a lot of hilarity I was very happy to call it a ‘bit’ and continue with the session he had planned – I didn’t want to kill the session! But everyone at the table was in tears, and he decided to simply call it a chaotic end to a very chaotic campaign and we spent the rest of the session narrating where our character went. I still feel horribly guilty about this months later, and he has now taken to min-maxing characters to cause as much chaos as he can in my games, it’s all in very good fun but I still wonder, am I the worst Player/friend ever?

Ciara Connor

Love to read these stories and just get angry

Alice Azalea

This was a badly written item--it should be something like 1 minute-24 hours, depending the rarity.

Melon Bread

It's a good idea but it would require both a strength check from you to break the shackles and the possibility of you accidentally causing damage to yourself. Standard Manacles have hitpoints, and these would probably have more and require a pretty hefty check to break out of, with the possibility of notifying even the lasiest of guards.

Melon Bread

Some people just enjoy being the quiet one observing the conversation. If no one complains about it or if it's not disruptive I don't see any reason why it's a problem.

Melon Bread

Negative levels are just a bad idea--revivify is expensive anyway.

Melon Bread

A poll of collapsing is a common magic item, but it is still a magic item. You would be fair to demand a higher price for it, but it's still reasonable for a character to have.

Melon Bread

If it may please the court, When Quarantine started one of my best buds offered to DM for a group! It was me and another close friend of mine he had DMed for before and three of his other friends we’d never met. One of the guys played a drow and based their whole culture off of Japan. (He was white.) His character was a diplomat.... that only spoke drow aka Japanese. Zero Common. I had my sorcerer take Comprehend Languages to try and help us all communicate, but since I could only understand him and he couldn’t understand me it sort of fizzled. The drow quit the next session I think out of frustration. Do you think the DM should have bent the rules for my spell so communication could have worked? Or insisted the character knew at least some common? Sincerely, Tongues Tied PS I’m not against language barriers in game and it made for some interesting RP, but I don’t think the group knew each other well enough for this.

Nova

Trickery Domain's perfect illusion ability requires concentration, so I would definitely allow the "appearing to have no effect" in a players case--it seems only fair to allow it in the DM's case. However, because of this--they shouldn't have been able to concentrate on it and silence at the same time. That said, this character is a monster, and they don't have to play by the same rules as PCs--the DM should have prompted checks from you when it clear something was going on. On the other hand, you might have considered retreating when your abilities proved to have no effect.

Melon Bread

Ohoy Third Mates May it please the Court. My brothers-in-arms and I finally found a mage in Magetown that was able to teleport us to the dwelling of the Big Bad Death God (Marbtarch), that was about to destroy the World. We needed to investigate if we had any chance of stopping the End of the World. The only problem was, that he dwells deep underwater in the Rift Strait, surrounded by a vast anti magic field he generates. My druid Ivy and my ranger friend Pálandorn are the only ones capable of using magic within the anti-magic field, as we both in different ways (botched resurrection ritual and a demon possession) has broken souls that bypasses the Evil Death Gods anti magic rules. Lucky us? But our magic is cancelled when we pass the borders of the anti-magic field goind in or out and we have to use our magic inside the field for it to work. The problem arose when my GM informed us, that we would arrive way below the surface in the Rift Strait, close to the underwater dwelling of the Big Bad Death God. My plan was to cast the 3rd level spell Water Breathing as soon as we arrived, as my spell would be cancelled passing the borders of the anti-magic field if cast before teleportation. No problem I assumed. But then one of my fellow players loudly protested as the spell has a verbal component and that means I cannot cast the spell while underwater as I cannot speak underwater? After a heated discussion, where the DM could see and support both sides of the discussion, we went on a side quest in some mountains to kill something and cool off, delaying the decision until the DM could make a ruling (grow some balls). So we need a Supreme Ruling from the DM Court: Is it possible to cast Underwater Breathing while underwater?! Greetings from Denmark – Morten / Ivy the Druid

Crown of Madness of all spells specifically says it conjures a crown of thorns on your head. I don't know if this was a the DM's failure to describe or the other player just being a dick.

Melon Bread

Thrice-honoured crit justices, may it please the court: A while ago I was playing a wizard, when the party stumbled across a ruin with some text nobody could read. I began to cast Comprehend Languages while the rest of the party went ahead to scout. Naturally, they encountered some hostile bug people, so I had to come running from behind. I ended up being barely out of range, and so I held my action to cast Scorching Ray for, and I quote, "whenever something evil comes in range." However, when they did, the DM told me the spell was wasted because the monsters were technically chaotic neutral. I got into an argument with him over this but he stuck to his ruling, which I still disagree with to this day.

Sydney

May it please the court, I have 2 separate grievances to file. The first is for a campaign I play in where we at part of a monster hunting guild. Me and another player backstory are intertwined, she is A death domain cleric and I am a necromancer, our characters are married. At the start of the campaign our dm did say a nat 20 wont always mean success however this instance is particuarlt stinging. During a delve into a dungeon we reached the boss, a bugbear holding a magical black orb. We had all managed to enter quietly and my wife being a cleric said she wanted to guiding bolt, which of course she crit and did severe damage. However the dm ruled that the magical orb deflects the blows and no damage was done. Since the fight we now own that item and itnwas no shielding properties. Is my partner right to still be angry? My second grievance is with myself as a dm, during a climactic boss fight my party were fighting a hobgoblin eladrin gunslinger and some other mages who with some strong hits brought down a party member. The party cleric (incidently the same girl) tried to heal a player and I counterspelled her heal. Obviously she was frustrated. Was that fair, or did I just take away a cool moment from a player? Thanks sweeties

Ryan Bourne

May it please the court, I have been playing as a Storm Herald Barbarian in a campaign with some friends and I wanted to lean into the elemental magic concept and take the magic initate feat to get a few Druid spells. (Fog cloud, Gust, etc...) My DM said I couldn't take the feat because I didn't already have any spellcasting ability. Which isn't a requirement as written. I ended up taking the great weapons master feat and I really enjoy it but I can't help feeling a little cheated. Does my DM have a point? Should I just stick to hacking and slashing or is there room for a little more magic in the world? Thanks

Jacob Dewald

Hallow makes the player immune to the frightened condition. A Nightwalker's Finger of Doom ability causes the frightened condition, and "while frightened in this way, the creature is also paralyzed." If a creature cannot be frightened, they cannot be paralyzed.

Meghan

Flame Arrows specifies that its effects take place "when a target is hit by a ranged weapon attack." Conjure Barrage, meanwhile, is resolved with a dexterity saving throw, not a ranged weapon attack. While you'd be able to use the flaming piece of ammunition as the material component for Conjure Barrage, as nowhere in the spell description does it say that the ammunition becomes magical, Flame Arrow's effects would not transfer or multiply to affect the casting or damage of Conjure Barrage.

Meghan

Darkness smothers all sources of magical light created by a spell of less than 2nd level. Faerie Fire is a 1st level spell, so your DM is correct, as the Faerie Fire is dispelled.

Meghan

1. Implants aren't worn or carried. 2. Not all implants are made of metal (bioplastic, rubber, carbon fiber etc.) 3. It *is* overpowered if this is a world where a majority of people you run into have metal in their bodies that they can't drop (unlike weapons and armor)

Some people need distraction.

If you were the one being shot out of the cannon (ignoring the fact that you probably shouldn't have been able to live after being shot out of a cannon) and the soldiers were the ones shooting it, then it would have taken the soldiers' actions to aim and shoot the cannon. However, if I were the DM I would have ruled that you'd have had to hold your action or the soldiers would have had to hold their actions to shoot you out to get you where you wanted to go on your turn. I would also have likely made it so that being shot out of a cannon took your movement, but not your action.

Meghan

RAW, you would have had to disengage in order to not take opportunity attacks. And unless your statblock specifically states you have disadvantage on opportunity attacks (such as quicklings, toward whom attacks are at disadvantage unless they stop moving), then unfortunately there is no reason for you to have had a benefit by being a tiny sized creature. It would have been cool if it did, but your DM is correct in this situation.

Meghan

Sounds like this DM is trying to prove that intraparty conflict sucks and you're playing right into his hands by forcing you to ban someone from starting intraparty conflicts. Call his bluff and boot him.

Yes, always talk about how you're feeling and why something might be making the game less fun for you. However, if you want a solution, you might try getting this player to use the old kender rules from way back in 2nd edition. Kender don't steal things because they're greedy or want to amass wealth. They're like innocent children and just like picking things up and don't really understand the concept of individual ownership. So in 2nd edition the rule was something like, there's always some percentage chance that the kender has one of the parties items on them. No need to roleplay actual stealing. The knifing thing is bad though.

If you use the standard 5 foot grid battle-map rules then D&D is non-euclidean and something 150 feet away and 40 feet in the air is still 150 feet away.

The DM is right. Nat 20s on ability checks are not automatic success. It's a common house rule that they are, but contested rolls probably *shouldn't* be an automatic success. Otherwise you could beat a tarrasque at arm wrestling by just rolling a nat20

May it please the court, I play a clumsy low intelligence Tortle Barbarian Tortle named Ohno. In the hombres world we play our weekly sessions in it has been announced that Tieflings are a non playable race and are a rare race because they are mutations of other races into part devils. This was announced to the party at the start of the campaign. After a Blue Tiefling killing several townsfolk and a party member we were confronted by a Red Tiefling who said they wanted our assistance killing the Blue Tiefling. A temporary truce was freed soon by everyone in the party except Ohno. We hop on a ship to head to an island that the Blue Tiefling is hiding on, Ohno sat on deck for two days and nights watching the Red Tiefling with distrust. Another smaller boat calls for aid, the Red Tiefling who is captaining the boat pulls the boat over and lets the folk on, who instantly turn into Sea Hags and attack. On my first turn Ohno tackles the Red Tiefling accusing her of being responsible for the attack... Afterworlds I was accosted by the whole party that I put a valuable box and myself out of combat for two rounds whilst I made stupid choices. My DM was okay with it, the party was not. Was I wrong to make this decision to attack on what I thought would be fun RP flavour or should I have let the Red Tiefling be.

In my estimation, the player is right. I can empathize with the DM wanting to better control the narrative, so to speak, but if you want to run a completely RAW game, then the player is correct. If you want to compromise (which I don't think is optimal here, as I believe the player is correct), I'd suggest the DM tell you that it did, in fact, fail, but only after the situation is resolved. For example, if the Hexbuds rolled a Psi-Bolstered Knack d8 on their stealth checks and still failed, Murph could simply continue on until he revealed that Gideon had actually seen them, at which point he would state that the rogue could regain their ability. This is certainly an interesting situation where you'd have to leverage narrative versus mechanics, but ultimately I'd fall on the side of preserving mechanics and just trusting the players not to metagame.

Meghan

If this was in 5e Charm Person shouldn't have worked at all because a Verbeeg and an Ogre are Giant creature type and not Humanoid.

Please talk to him out of character. This seems to be a very messy situation that no one is likely going to have fun with. You're upset, and your mom probably isn't going to have a fun time as someone without any items. I don't think it was a good idea to curse him, but it was a dick move on his part to hoard all the magic items. Personally, I would have just told the group what items were "for" each player. However, it happened, so there's no reversing that. Ultimately, I would talk to the party as a whole and tell them the "intended" magic items now, as well as talking about how they're a *party* and should share magic items with the group.

Meghan

There's no ambiguity here? If the creature has a higher AC to start your player can use that. If not they can use the 16 AC.

Jake: please keep it short Naddpod fans: I got CHAPTERS

Jack McAlevey

Familiars can be revived. It's part of how they work in 5e.

Your DM sucks.

Faerie fire should be every color of the rainbow.

Neither. Sharks don't normally attack things that aren't in or on the water.

If you missed the attack on the noble, your DM shouldn't have made you hit. This is a dick move on your DM's part. He, in essence, forced you to murder an innocent man to further his narrative. Your DM was absolutely in the wrong in this instance.

Meghan

This caravan leader was absolutely in the right to just leave. Your players are insane to have acted this way, in my opinion. I would suggest having a conversation with them about their actions and, if this doesn't go well, finding a new group.

Meghan

Most DMs allow parties to have a "breakfast period" where the party can discuss spells to prep for the day, but RAW you're to prep your spells at the beginning of the day, before anything can happen. I agree that casting Lesser Restoration was a clever solution, regardless of whether they had stocked the spell before, and think that you, as the DM, should have rewarded this clever thinking, though I understand the desire to ensure the players stay on your desired and planned-for path. I also don't think this would have been a whomp! Ultimately, I think that while you could have allowed the player a win, your solution was fine. It gave the party information and progress on a solution without completely curing and nullifying the plot hook.

Meghan

Careful. Next they'll be demanding to be the DM.

Please can you all just talk the participants in your games like reasonable adults? It would solve 90% of these cases.

If it may please the court. I present the, ”Can’t find a book, kill a b*tch” case. I was DMing a homebrew game, where a human and elf PCs were apart from the party in an elven city and decided to go to the library to get some information. The human couldn't find the book they were looking for after one check and decided to kill the librarian... He then ran away, but the elven PC followed and cast web to stop him. The human was then arrested and taken back to the scene of the crime. The human PC then proclaimed he was a healer and cast revivify on the librarian, and then to avoid repercussions, he proposed marriage to the librarian who vehemently denied. The goblin PC then hit the human PC with his frying pan that he was using to cook an egg on the fire genasi PC’s head and the party proceeded to kill him and told the police they will deal with him. The police approved of the action since they were going to execute him anyways. The player who was playing the human then argued that the party shouldn't have been able to kill him without repercussion. I ask the court. Was I wrong to let the party kill the problematic PC without repercussions? FYI we no longer play with the problem player controlling the human PC.

SemiHuman99

Don't do this.

Does this character have calligraphy tools proficiency? You have to have particular skills to read a person's state of mind for handwriting. (Xanathar's guide even has particular rules for this.) Otherwise I'd argue the check would be for investigation.

Melon Bread

It doesn't make you invisible and you don't need a perception check to see someone who is just out in the open. And you can't hide out in the open unless you're invisible.

If it pleases the court. I am throwing myself on the mercy of this fair and just court. I run a small game with 3 other people and I had planned a session where I had the daughter of the innkeeper my PCs were staying at brought in with a poisonous bite on her. I had planned for them to find the source of the bite to have an antidote made for it. However the cleric in the group, my wife, decided that they would then pick their spells for the day and choose to switch in lesser restoration, which was not stocked before. These events happened after they already had breakfast so I felt that she should have already had their spells stocked for the day. So because of this I said the spell removed the poison but the bite had a curse that was still effecting the girl, so they would still have to find the cause of the bite to fully cure her. But now I feel like I took away this clever solution and I should have let her take advantage of this solid derailment. What do you think? Was I wrong to make this choice, or should I have let them womp me? I await your wise judgement.

Kevin Alman

If it may please the court, I DM'd a game that included my younger brother in it, as well as 2 other players. The start was the party arriving in a town on the edge of a neighboring country by caravan. It was supposed to be a pit stop for the journey to the Capital. Well, they disrupted a cult or something and I had the caravan leave without them. But I needed them to know that, so I had the caravan leader wait behind to inform them, as a matter of honor. My brother demanded payment and the party agreed and entangled and robbed this man. My brother asserts they were due that payment and it was wrong of the caravan leader to leave them without pay. I say they were just people hitching a ride on a caravan with the promise of pay upon arrival for helping out. Did they just rob this guy, or was he in the right to just leave?

DisClever

Wanted to share a case that never reached court. DM sometimes spoke over people, or cut in during silences after rp prompts. Another player brought up that this upset him, & DM explained that he was anxious abt the time limit on our sessions, & giving everyone in the group a chance to RP. This helped me understand & empathize w him doing that a lot more, & he's working on a way to rejigger the module to allow for more rp. Really appreciate my group for that, & wanted to share a reminder that infractions of dnd law don't always come from malice/thoughtlessness.

tacticalgrandma

Honorable Judges, May it please the Court, I bring the case against the DM. We are playing a 5e campaign set in the Warhammer Fantasy Universe. We had gotten to the climactic battle of the first arc of the campaign. It was myself a Fallen High Elven Redemption Paladin/Sorcerer on the road to turning evil and our Evocation Wizard. We were in the top room of a tower with the person we suspected of being bad and his mage who we knew had been seeding the area with Greenskins (Orcs and Goblins). The Wizard had hit the area with a fireball and had basically killed the Mage. I was squaring off against the Noble, who unbeknownst to me had been charmed by the mage and that effect had worn off. This is where the conflict in question starts. I go to cast Inflict Wounds on him and the DM interrupts and informs me of the Charm effect wearing off, but quickly changes his mind and has me roll an insight check. I got a 15 and the DM says I didn't notice anything and automatically hit him with Inflict Wounds. I had already rolled a 17 to hit which the DM says would not have hit but goes through with the attack anyway. The attack kills him and a few moments after he dies a vampire takes his place, then uses a 9th level spell to kill the mage because he didn't like that his vessel didn't offer himself up willingly. I argue that I either should have succeeded on the Insight check or Missed on the attack. I feel as though the DM took this opportunity to railroad this event into taking place so he could introduce his BBEG for the next arc of the campaign. My issue isn't with the outcome, but the manner in which it was done. I feel like my agency over my player was removed at that moment to advance the plot forward. This DM is my best friend and I love him dearly, but I feel like he dropped the ball at this moment and could have found a better justification for the BBEG to rise.

Thom van Tijn

Bless you for this update

Alice S

I think this sounds like a major questline your DM wants the whole party to follow & be invested in, & that's why they're making sure everyone's included.

tacticalgrandma

All the online arguments I'm reading support you & also hard relate to "I want to be more overpowered please help me."

tacticalgrandma

You framing this as "the dm's girlfriend" kind of gives away the ghost of what you're really upset about here. If this isn't a group dynamic you're comfortable w, take that on yourself instead of blaming her for his decisions.

tacticalgrandma

I'd say based on that logic, anyone trying to play a blind character would be seriously screwed w a lot of checks. A lot of spells specify "see or hear" etc., if SG doesn't I think the DM was right.

tacticalgrandma

May it please the court Honourable judges and bailiff, A group that I am in recently discovered who the BBEG is for the campaign. We want to take him out, but we would like to it discretely as he usually surrounded by a couple of high-level baddies that would wipe us. Through a string of nearly impossible luck, our wizard was able to secretly cast a spell on the BBEG. Our dm asked what creature to do you want to turn him into. Our wizard replied he doesn't want to change him into anything else, just give him Stage 4 colon cancer. Our DM argued that you are only allowed use the True Polymorph spell to change characters into different types of creatures. Our wizard argued that if we are allowed to change the physiology of the NPC, then changing the physiology of only specific organs should be no different. According to the spell, there is nothing that would prevent Ultimately, the DM ruled that it was not allowed, and we turned him into a chicken. Who was right? Does the spirit of the spell allow for alterations to be made to a creature or should it only allow for changing into only other creatures.

Spencer Clark

May it please the court, I believe I had wronged my player. My players are sneaking into a shrine to retrieve a some information from an ancient tablet. With some pretty good roll on both luck check and stealth, they found the tablet guarded by a sleeping cerberus. When one of the bard is deciphering the tablet, the paladin roll a nat 1 on sleight of hand to secure the door causing the lock to clank waking up the dog. The dog is pretty intelligent so I make him focus fire on the bard who is the only one touching the tablet, making him fall unconscious in 2 round. None of the party try to remove him from the spot and keep attacking while I try my best to make it clear that the dog only going to attack the bard. 2 round later, trapped by my own word, the bard got killed while the rest of the party is in full health. Furthermore, when the bard asked is there anything else for him to do, I foolishly say he will need to sit out the fight but I will let him roleplay a contingency letter after. My player is very upset and left the session. Once he calm down he explained that he put in a lot of effort to be available for the session, like working until 3 am to clear his schedule. To get killed this early in the session, he feel that his effort is wasted. Honorable judge, how do I avoid wronging my player again? How do I included the player who got killed early on in the session? What is my penance?

Dear the supreme sweetie crit justices. We were playing an all bard campaign and during a search for “the instruments of legend” so we could win the battle of the bands our lead singer was scooped up oppa-Robin hood in Shrek style in the woods by a band of goblins. We defended ourselves to save the restrained singer by killing all the goblins in a brutal one round fight. The DM said cause we had killed the other band in the battle of the bands outside the tournament we were now disqualified from the competition. We argued that they didn’t announce themselves as a band and assumed that he meant “band of goblins” as a group not a rival band. Should we have gotten disqualified from the competition or not?

AJ

May it please the court, or not, I’m just a comment. I’m a seasoned DM running a campaign with a player that requested their initial PC die, then came back as a new PC, decided they didn’t want to play that PC, and now demands that I let them make a new character who will be the BBEG. I already have a BBEG. They want to play the BBEG as a normal PC that will slowly take the party down the wrong path from within. I think this is a great idea, if I didn’t already have TWO BBEGs in play within the world. Am I being too harsh by not letting this player run the opposition? Help please!

Jessica Valles

That argument doesn't really hold up IMO. If that's your definition of athleticism, than 23 gold medal holder Micheal phelps isn't a very good athlete cause he can't punch, shove or carry nearly as hard as tyson can. Just because a marathon runner can't lift as much as a body builder doesn't mean one of them is athletic and the other isn't

May it please the court, Another player running a human bard (Chunga Chunga Hummus) keeps trying to rework all of his rolls into performance rolls, using interesting logic to get the results he needs. For example, when we came to a line of rope stretched between two points, it was going to be acrobatics to walk across, or athletics to go under the rope and make your way across like monkey bars. The bard (Chunga Chunga Hummus) argued that he wanted to do the tightrope walk blindfolded while reciting the mantra of the college of bards, and as a result, this would become a performance check. Our dm let him have it, but my dm also almost always gives in to his logic. Does performance logic work like this? Is my dm a big pushover? Or am I a whiny baby?

May it please the court, I’m in a home brew game that’s been running for over a year now, yet my DM seems disappointed in how the party are interacting with the game, while missing some of the custom lore he’s made. He’s built this immense world with each of us having significant conflicts to unpack, but in our four person party there hasn’t been enough time to focus on each one without neglecting the other evils happening. We know these all intersect somehow, but it splits the party’s focus because we all have individual issues we need to fix, rather than a common goal we’re all working together on. This overwhelming story, not accomplishing these goals, and the natural progression of levels, means out party doesn’t always feel equipped for higher level encounters. Often party members consider running away from bosses instead of facing them because we don’t feel competent enough. My question is: how should we approach the game moving forward? Should the players be talking out of game about being more heroic, so that we’re not trying to manage each other in game to fit what the DM is wanting? Should we ask the DM to condense the story down more to give us a more linear progression, and so that we can feel more accomplished, or is there more that we could be doing as a group to guarantee everyone is having similar game fulfilment? Thanks gang!

May it please the court Honourable judges and bailiff, During our first session, my party and I were approaching the door of a supposedly haunted mansion. I was playing a sea elf rogue smuggler named Riptide, so I decided to do the responsible thing and check for traps. My DM asked me what I added to investigation and I told him (+5, I was a smart cookie and proficient) My DM then rolls, smiles, and tells me I don’t find any traps. I realise that he had rolled my trap check for me. I immediately argued that I should roll my own checks, but he said he doesn’t let’s his players roll things like trap checks, because if they know what they roll, they will meta game accordingly. For example, if I had rolled very poorly on my check, we might have looked for another way in. If the DM rolls poorly for me, we have no idea until we get hit by the trap “I” missed. While I understood his point, I still argued that half the fun of D&D is rolling, and he can control as a DM whether we meta game. I let it go at the table but we ended up having a long talk and I decided not to continue playing with him since he wouldn’t budge. Poor Riptide got shelved and hasn’t been used since. So who was right? Does the DM have the right to roll my checks? Or was I right to put my foot down? I early await your verdict, Riptide Mariner TL;DR my DM wanted to roll my investigation checks to avoid meta gaming. I thought that was bull and left his game. Who was right?

Mich Blackie

May it please the court, A group I'm in online are playing Curse of Strahd. 3 sessions ago one of my fellow players had his character flee the fight when we encountered some tough enemies. At the time it was seen as a character moment that he would grow from. Jump to this session and he ran from the fight again. Note that in both cases it's been within the first two rounds and his character hasn't even taken damage. We had an in-character talk about fighting as a party and he was adamant he would run again. We then parted ways in a way that seemed like he was retiring the character. Turns out he wasn't and he wasn't seeing what we were. We then had an out of character conversation about player expectations and offered ideas for how he could play a cowardly character without removing himself from the game and slowing it down. In today's session him running added an extra hour to the fight. Most of me is confident that we made the right choice in confronting the situation but part of me thinks that maybe we could have lived with it and it could have led to interesting stories. I would hate to lose a player over this. Thoughts? Sincerely, Daniel Dwarf with Indecision

Andrew Davis

May it please the court I had been the DM for a game of relatively new players, we had been using Discord for coordinating and managing the game chat. Two of the PCs were friends of mine, the other two were friends of another PC who dropped out due to time constraints/lack of interest. Initially I had been the person who organized the sessions, but I started to wonder, is it reasonable for me to be the one trying to coordinate the logistics of the game session in addition to preparing to DM?

My it please the court I AM a dm for a table of 5 players who all stay they wanted a realistic game........so I gave them one . Broken bones, bleeding effect, mental health points and illnesses if they take to much physical or mental damage. I killed a player by to many Broken bones. He started fighting me on this saying that they should go away after a long rest my rebuttal was this. A Broken bone doesn't heal after one night although you are a adventurer and your body heals better than most a bone needs more time than 8 hours. We still enjoyed the survival game I set up but was i a bit to realistic about the overall damage the body receives after a adventure

Andrew Scott Verdeja

May it please the court, During quarantine, I tried to DM a home game for my three roommates who are new to DND. During a battle, I looked over to see one of the players noodling around on Minecraft (he’s a grown man). I spent a lot of work writing the session, so I got frustrated and called it quits. Am I in the wrong for expecting my players to know that it’s not respectful to play Minecraft at the table? PS - I’ve never even seen him play Minecraft before, what the fuck?! Sincerely, Lizard the Wizard

May it please the court, I wish to present the Mike Tyson defense to our honorable judges. I’m a DM who earlier this year, had an age-old debate with one of my players, athletics vs acrobatics. One of our party members transformed into a Dire Wolf while trying to hunt down enemies. While hunting, that player wanted to cut off their enemy by jumping over a large gap 15 feet across. I called for an acrobatics check but one of my players Zeke argued it should be athletics. So I presented what is famously known in our campaign as the Mike Tyson defense. “Mike Tyson is the most athletic dude I’ve ever seen. He can shove, punch, grapple and pick up a bunch of people. I’ve never seen Mike Tyson jump. He probably can, but not like an acrobat.” Does my defense hold strong? Thank you for your time, I throw myself at this court's mercy. -Evan

Evan

May it please the court, in my very first campaign I was playing with another player who was playing a Changeling Monk. He kept disappearing and reappearing as different people. I was totally fine with his shenanigans but as we got close to 10 sessions into the campaign and had to keep accepting new people into the party, sometimes multiple times per session, I was getting a little frustrated. At one point the city guards were after our party. Our party split up to hide from the guards and we all met back up. His PC decided to lerk in the alley instead of meeting back up with the rest of us. We managed to get a long rest before the guards found us again and as we were running away once again when his PC, disguised as a person we hadn’t ever met before (I checked with him,) began following after us. My Bard, a Dragonborn named Stacei, shot him with her bow and revealed he’s a Changeling. He got very upset, saying that I was a bad player for attacking him. I told him we were literally being chased by a bunch of guards so I would have shot someone running after us that I didn’t recognize. I didn’t want PvP but I was deeply in character. I don’t play with these people anymore but in the back of my mind I always wonder if I was being a bad player. So, I ask the honorable judges, was I being a bad player?

James-Anne Lovely

If it pleases the court, I would like to provide you will this case. My brother chose to put on a mysterious gauntlet. He was asked to make a wisdom roll that he failed. He was overwhelmed with hate for the person that wronged him the most. He chose to suggest a childhood bully. I proceeded to tell him that he must immediately take off to capture this bully. He then decided that I would be demoted as DM because he thinks he could come up with something better. I realize I simply need a new group. Any tips on finding one, I’ll take it!

BriLeigh Spilde

May it please the court -- I currently play a divination wizard with proficiency in arcana, religion, and investigation and an intelligence score of 18. My DM presented our group with a puzzle that required us to deduce a path through a maze using arcane symbols. As a human person, I was able to work out the puzzle using process of elimination and a few context clues, but my DM claimed that my character wouldn't know what the symbols meant. I asked if he would prefer that I make an arcana roll to see if my character could also solve the puzzle, and after some deliberation, he gave my character a hint to the puzzle I'd already solved. Honorable court, should I have solved the puzzle, or should this have been a series of skill checks that I ruined? - Possibly Problematic Puzzler

Casey Sears

May it please the court, I DM a game for some friends and had a player who's character never wanted to engage, siting that they didnt think that's what they would do, but it got to the point where a bad npc gave them a choice and they wanted to stay behind while the rest of the party went on the campaign adventure. Out of game, they weren't a very good team player either. I even got a fun bunch of pirates to play team building exercises with them all to inspire collaboration and goofy fun but they rolled their eyes through it. Finally, I asked them one on one if they were happy playing or having a good time to give them an out and they said that me asking that made them uncomfortable and that I crossed boundaries and then they blocked me on Instagram. Court Justices, could I have gone about this in a better way??

Gill

It has a duration that isn’t concentration, so it would last a full minute, regardless if the caster is unconscious or not. But how was mage hand holding him up? It can only hold up to 10 pounds of weight.

May it please the court, the session I have been running with my friends (my first time DMing) has been going great so far. However my players made some questionable decisions which put them on a path towards a group of enemies they were no match for at the time. Wanting the story to continue I gave hints to them that they should probably avoid them but they ignored them at every turn. I wrote up a NPC character that they could convince to help them to even the odds. They were successful and they won the fight, thanks to the NPC's support skills. At the end of the fight the NPC made a comment towards the sorcerer of the group that he should have jumped into the fight earlier (as a joke because the Sorcerer rolled a NAT 20 at the end and did hella damage). The sorcerer then tried to shocking grasp the NPC (for insulting his honor) which started another fight that ended with him dying. He argues that trying to shocking grasp the NPC would not have been enough to antagonize a fight however I argued that he basically tried to taze someone and expected that person to be okay with it. Did I do right or wrong?

Tryston Cole the Loose Obtuse Goose

Hey Jordan! Officially, Dragonborn do not have tails (the information should be on p.32 of the phb if I'm correctly recalling. However, you're the DM and it's obviously up to you whether or not they have tails in your game

Con

"The target's hit point maximum is reduced by an amount equal to the necrotic damage taken, and the vampire regains Hit Points equal to that amount. The reduction lasts until the target finishes a Long Rest. The target dies if this Effect reduces its hit point maximum to 0." Just a point of order, the bite reduces the player's hit point maximum by the necrotic damage (3d6). So if the players are 'at level' for the CR 13 probably has like 50-ish health. So if the vampire focused one person on average they would need to get bitten by this effect 5 - 6 times to be converted into a vampire spawn. The ring of resistance halves the damage from necrotic damage so that would raise how long it would take their maximum to drop to 0 to about 10 bites. The effect doesn't go off if they were getting beat up and the final strike is a bite that takes their current HP to 0.

Hobbad

TAIL OR NO TAIL? May it Tickle the Court, I will keep it short: Do dragonborn have tails? If so, can they use them for minor shenanigan actions like pulling levels, stealing keys, or pushing buttons? As a DM, a particularly chaotic player constantly fucked me with their god-forsaken tail pranks on nearly all of my boss fights (ALWAYS rolling a nat 20 when i allow this bs check). I then discovered that in lots of fan art, many dragonborn are depicted as tailless. Please, settle this madness your honors (please pronounce the “h”, Jake)

JBeev

An intermission on the flying gnome from a bit ago. My party angered a village of aarakocras by stealing a special amulet, so the next time my gnome began to fly, 4 aarakocras swooped down with immovable rods in their talons, perched on the rods, then open fired with bows at the gnome. He went unconscious, and 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 ruled that party couldn't get to him cuz he was 30ft in the air and mage hand doesn't end when you go unconscious. Is he right or just upset?

Eric Grochowski

May it please the court, I have a case where my player still blames me for a TPK. The party was gathered in the Canyon of Blood fighting a Balor (which was possessing a different player and they did a ritual to pull him out and fight him). It was an extremely hard fight because the party decided to fight the Balor in a compact ravine in the canyon with no prep, this led to all the players being close to death during the fight and one of them got killed by the Balor (goblin in a mech suit with a Unicorn companion) when his companion Unicorn saw this player die, I thought the Unicorn "Titanius" would jump in and try to kill the Balor, avenging his friend, however the Unicorn crit and managed to just kill the Balor with his horn, which activated its death throes. The Balor exploded and killed the entire party since they were all so close and one of my players still says I just wanted to kill the entire party. Am I in the wrong here?

I am just here to observe what others consider "brief"

zach orion miller

May it please the court: I present to you my first case of pc shenanigans. Session 1 for all players (all under 15 except for mom) and DM, we were running Lost Mines and were at the first goblin hideout. In a room of 6 goblins one of our druids, Nova, got caught sneaking and very quickly and cleverly said she was a health inspector and they had to leave for the cavern to be decontaminated. Then explaining the other party members were her team. She rolled a 19+2 and had us all in stitches. I allowed it and all 6 goblins ran off. Have I made a huge mistake and set a precedent for rather unlikely shenanigans to fly? Thank you for your time, honorable Justices of the Crit

Mad Dungeon Mama

May it please the court, This is more of a confession asking if me the DM made an encounter too hard or that I should accept that dice sometimes kill players. The party was level 4 and the encounter was that they had to reach the other side of a corridor (approx 200 feet). every turn there was a lair action on initiative 15 for 3 gelatinous cubes to fall on the 3 players who rolled the lowest on a luck check out of 6 players. They had the opportunity to dc12 dex check to avoid this and the cubes were modified to have no actual attacks, just the ability to try and engulf. This meant that once freed you could easily dash action away with no repercussion. With all the help actions, dex saves, strength saves, and attempted magic use our poor centaur just failed every luck roll. He got left behind to be dissolved and one player even scooped some of the gelatinous cube into a jar to keep as a party mascot...mr jiggles. I humbly ask the court, should I keep bearing the guilt of my first player death or accept that the dice were not on his side?

garett144

You are 100% correct and all you'd have to do is read the spell description to know that

I love how this "call for court cases" had one request, "BRIEF," and after less than 6 hours there are over 200 submissions and every one I've opened is a full story. Give 'em a break, guys. May it please the Court to have a great day, with as little stress as possible!

Lopiena

That just sounds like a selfish player to me. Dnd is no fun if only one person makes the choices for the party (unless that's what the party wants). You're NTA here imo

MegAnn Haubold

May it please the court, I present the case of the bard and the boot. I am the DM for a party of 4, a gunslinger, barbarian/warlock, rogue and bard. In their quest to free the barbarian from his pact with an archfey, they have to steal a book from another powerful fey and they were looking for information in a town near the library they were going to rob. There, they encountered a recurring wizard NPC, the amazing Renaldo, a legendary 20th level spellcaster who Runs a traveling shop selling potions and various other magical services (curse removal, item identification and the like). During a conversation with Renaldo, the bard tried to intimidate him into a discount on the potions they were purchasing. Upon failing, he continued to press the issue aggressively, so Renaldo cast True Polymorph on him, turning him into a boot. The party bought the potions, got helpful information on the fey they were seeking, and moved on, while Renaldo teleported away to wherever else he goes. Upon returning to gnome form, the bard complained, as he had a magic ring he needed identified, and with Renaldo gone, he’d have to wait for a long time to learn what the item did (which I require prior to attunement). Several sessions later, he still brings it up, complaining whenever he looks through his inventory and sees the ring. Was I too harsh in giving him the boot?

Nathan Amundson

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 is more of an internal physiological damage and having the mental fortitude (wisdom save) would be unaffected by the mammoth 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.

In a short campaign I was DMing I had a few vampire players. One of them, upon killing a displacer beast, argued she should be able to bite the displacer and bring it back as her pet. I didn't want to deal with a level 1 rogue having a displacer beast as a companion animal, but also didn't want to shut her down completely, so I told her she had to bury it until the following day when it would be resurrected. Since the story was basically over by that point it seemed fine to let her have it, though I did still have her roll Charisma checks so it didn't just eat her. Was it reasonable to prevent this player from having the companion at all? Should I have made the displacer a lower CR? Was the idea that vampires can resurrect monsters too wild to even entertain?

May it please the court, me and my adventuring party were defending a castle from a siege of giants. My character, a gnome tinker 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?

Your honors, may it please the Court: The Case of Mix and Match Classes. A group I am a player in is getting ready to start a new campaign--it's a 5e game set in the time of Alexander the Great, and our party is a special squad in his army that is magic. All of our characters are supposed to have ties to Greek mythology in some way, be it deities or creatures of legend. I have decided to play a Bard with ties to Hades, somewhat inspired by the myth of Orpheus. This means I want to have ties to the dead. There is a subtype of Bard called the College of Whispers that has a few abilities that are really cool flavor-wise for this--mostly an ability to capture the soul of a dying person and use it to Alter Self and look like them for an hour, and know the things they know. This is great flavor for a Bard of Hades! Unfortunately the rest of the class features are...not great, mechanically, other than one or two of them. I went to my GM and asked if I could play a standard College of Lore Bard instead, with the flavor being that I get my knowledge from the dead, but keep the thematically appropriate College of Whispers abilities and have them replace the equivalent Lore features. My DM hesitated at this, eventually saying I could do this with a maximum of one ability. I think I can make this work, but will miss out on some of the flavor I was hoping for. What would your approach be to homebrewing different subtypes together in the name of good flavor beating bad mechanics?

Michael Hubbard

As much as it sucks, it just sounds like that one player wouldn’t be playing anymore.

Your honours, may it please the court: the case of 6 magical items for 6 players. I am the DM for my family game consisting of my parents, 3 siblings and my little sister's boyfriend - all currently at level 3. My mum (gnome evocation wizard) unfortunately rolled very low on her stats. Her highest stat is her intelligence which is 15 after her racial bonuses. This is her first time playing DnD, but she seems to be having fun regardless. To get her on the same level, I engineered a situation where the party found a smuggler's cache with 6 magic items. Including a circlet of intellect for my mum's character. My sister's boyfriend, an arcane trickster rogue, took 2 of the 6 magic items when they found the cache including the circlet. My mum ended up being the player with no items. I was furious, and when the rogue later attuned to both the items I changed one of the items he picked up to be a cursed item (gloves that he can't take off and are steadily growing over his body). I have later calmed down after session, and feel bad that I cursed my sister's boyfriend. Was I wrong? How do I fix this?

Omg I love this so much

DMs shouldn't force any player to do something they don't want to do outside of a spell that does just that.

8BitBruché

May it please the court, Today I raise the case of DM vs. DM’s girlfriends character death from the perspective of another player on the group. About a month ago whilst leaving the Sunless Citadel (a low level dungeon crawl) on Roll20, the party remembers an unexplored passage that had something scrawled in Undercommon into the side. This is where the conflict comes into place. The DM’s girlfriend and my best friend, decided that she was going on just to take a peak. Which is fair, as a lvl 3 Tabaxi Monk the gal got Move. A few moments later as she’s exploring the passage, she comes across a Mind-flayer. It was a set piece in roll20 and it was clear by the first piece of dialogue that this was an OLD one at that. It tells Niera, the monk, to leave and never return or else. She just stands there and tries to talk to it. Needless to say when she gets dragged into the darkness for good, it wasn’t a surprise. The DM gave his girlfriend so many signifiers that this was going to be bad if she didn’t gtfo and she didn’t. Me and another player advised her frantically to disengage, bonus step of the wind, reaction feline agility. Niera choose to attack and then flurry of blows. The only one who could fit in the passage safe was our human samurai fighter( I play a 7’7” Warforged), and the only thing he finds is her Bo-staff. As we get to the top stairs leading up and out of a cliff face, we find a fully conscious and bruised, but healthy Niera. Am I wrong for feeling upset about this? D&D is a game of action, reaction, and the fallout of those things. So to see someone that clearly should be dead because of their actions is upsetting. How should have this entire thing shaken out, would love to hear the honorable judges’ commentary along with the bailiff most high.

Karma Kamille

I'd say it's magic and if the spell doesn't say it can do that, then it doesn't do that. You should start using that same logic though. Argue the same when you use it on enemies that are riding mounts or touching in some way.. Have everyone wear rubber insulated boots so they aren't grounded so they should being immune or at least have resisiance.

8BitBruché

May it please the court, I have recently introduced my chaotic good Necromancer into our long running campaign. My new character gets along well with the party, however, my DM recently ruled that because certain PCs in the party are "Good" aligned, they cannot abide my PC's necromantic ways, and must attack her zombies on sight. I feel this makes it difficult for me to play my character at all, and question why I was allowed to make her in the first place. My lords, I defer to your wise judgement in this matter.

Danny Summers

Honorable crit magistrates. I bring forth the case of the airship shenanigans. My player had recruited reinforcements for a city defense and upon returning decided to aim their airship at the enemy and have everyone jump out while it plummeted forward. I told him he could do so but their was a DC of 22 to make it unharmed and if they failed miserably they could possibly die. He agreed to the terms but after some terrible rolling all but 2 of his reinforcements died during the jump. His airship still did a ton of damage to the demon army and he still came out with a victory. He still to this day (3 years later) says I was to harsh and the “rule of cool” should have made the DC lower. Was I too harsh or is my player being dramatic?

Michael Millar

Sounds like simple baseball to me. Three characters and you're out.

8BitBruché

That's tricky due to the wording of the immunity. It can cover either the poisoned status or poison damage or both. But they referred to this as a poison that inflicts paralysis rather than poison damage or the status. I think this is poor wording on the DM's part and if I was in their shoes, I'd take the hit since I called it a poison. I side with you my friend.

8BitBruché

May it please the Court, I play a Business Druid named Mr Hedgeroth, Clan # 401k (insert Murph groan). We were in a tough battle against foe named General Maular, wielding a bleed damage inducing maul named Molly...Mauler's Maul "Molly", if you will...Mauler was tearing us apart with the maul so I cast Heat Metal on it and immediately bonus action wild shaped into a meerkat (cat stats) to quickly scramble away and concentrate on the spell (circle of moon druid, so I can bonus action wildshape). When I tried to scamper away as a meerkat, 3 different enemies got opportunity attacks on me and my thought was that turning into a quick scrappy little beast would help in trying to scramble away and maybe impose disadvantage or something. But the DM just used the basic cat stats AC and I get demolished and lost concentration. Didn't argue because I'm a fellow DM, but don't you think trying to hit a scrambling little meerkat would be really difficult in the heat of battle and impose some sort of benefit to me the player? Thanks, love the show.

Cody Doiron

What a cool campaign. Sounds epic, Im glad you caved

Bad DM this makes me sad >:(

High Justices of the court, may my case please you. During the latest UK lockdown, I managed to get a game going with several family members. It ended up being a large party - 4 cousins, my auntie and my grandma, myself as DM. I thought this would be a sweet way to keep in touch with my grandma as we cannot visit her during the lockdown. Session zero, Grandma decides she wants to try a paladin and adds that she wants a talking sword. I thought this sounded fun and was glad that she was excited for the game. She also gave me a detailed backstory about how her character was the chosen one and some day she would fulfill her destiny etc. I tried to explain that as there were six party members, there couldn’t be one chosen one, that D&D is often goofy and in particular that level 1 characters are weak and flawed to allow for character growth. About mid-way through session 1, the characters had all met and were sitting in a bar, discussing what their first move should be. Grandma says she wants to ask the sword what they should do. I started improvising using a Nanna Kindleaf-esque voice and introduced myself to the party as Mackey the talking sword. The five other party members start laughing and I figured this was a good move to reduce the seriousness of Grandma's character, in line with the rest of the party. 5 minutes of conversation go by and I realise grandma hasn’t said a word, Mackey finishes saying something and Grandma then goes “Why is the barman talking to that kitchen knife?”. The rest of us get confused and try and continue the conversation but Grandma spends the next 5 minutes insisting that Mackey has been the barman talking to his kitchen knife the whole time, before finally saying that only she can talk to the sword and no one else can hear it. I messaged her about it after the session and Grandma informed me that she suspected in the future the sword will have the power to turn her invisible and control the weather. After the second session, I spoke to a couple of other players and decided to end the game as we were just finding it frustrating. The next night, my cousin remade the group chat without my auntie or Grandma and set up a short three session campaign which went great. We’re currently doing another short campaign with the same characters. I have said that I am keen to start DMing again and everyone wants to pick up my original campaign with their characters. I have an idea that I can’t get out of my head. My question to the court is this: Is it acceptable to restart my campaign without Grandma, making my Grandma’s original character the chosen one who turns evil and becomes the BBEG? I ask that you judge me on the grandson I set out to be, and not the one I have become.

I love your DM. They planned on it being an impossible obstacle but stood down for the nat20. That's a DM that respects the dice

Your Majesties, In my first session ever, I made a human swashbuckler who was a former pirate. A few hours, and drinks, into an 6 hour session, my teammates claim that I drunkenly said that my pirate didn't know how to swim, even though I stated before that he was proficient in swimming. 3 years later, they still claim that what I said was "canon" and that most pirates really don't know how to swim. Should what I don't remember saying still affect my role play for this character years later? PS - A few weeks ago, my DM allowed me to roll to see if I could swim while in the ocean to prevent me from drowning and I got a NAT 20. He said that I just "learned" how to swim, not that I always knew.

vinicius fernandes

Unless that is something that was established at the beginning of the campaign/session, this just sounds like an uncooperative player. Player have enough of their own stats and abilities to keep track of without doing the same for other party members.

8BitBruché

May the court please be courted, humbly, I, a teacher, run an afterschool DnD club for my middle schoolers. Recently in a side mission, the party stumbled across two catfolk chefs named Basil and Pesto trapped in cells. The heroes freed them, and made sure to keep them safe for the rest of the mission. One of my players then asked how to mark them down as his pets. I explained that, while Basil and Pesto were a) cat-shaped b) spoke only in meows and c) could easily be distracted with string, they were in fact fully sapient humanoids with jobs (as prestigious chefs) and a family, and the party could HIRE them possibly. They dissented and tried to compromise that they wouldn't use them mechanically (to keep them safe), but I overruled them. In my head, logically, Basil and Pesto wouldn't just give up their well-established lives for fraught, penniless adventuring. But also, it's an imaginary game where their addition wouldn't have unbalanced anything. Should I have just let the darn kids have some darn cats?

Cain Bowman

Oh my goodness, I understand the sentiment but this is soo evil ahhaha

I present your Honours with a case of player vs player. In an online Roll20 game, I played a water genasi circle of the moon Druid, and the other three players played various fighter/rogue/ranger multiclasses. In the heat of battle, as the “healer” of the group, I asked one of the other players how much health they had, as I wanted to make sure they weren’t about to go down. Their reply was “I’m not going to tell you that.”. Their reasoning being that in real life I wouldn’t know how much health they had and that it would take too long to say what they were at. I argued that I would definitely be able to look at someone who just got stabbed and see how bad the damage was, and that saying “I’m at 12hp” doesn’t take much time at all. Am I meant to keep track of my fellow party member’s hit points? Does asking for an update cause too much of a distraction and pull you out of the moment?

May it please the Court: Should a campaign involving 7 players stop completely because one of them doesn't want to learn how to use Roll20, Astral, or any other online tabletop system?

Donny

A few years ago I was playing a game with a DM that was more familiar with the older D&D systems and struggled a bit with keeping track of certain elements of 5e. At one point in the game we reach a giant circle of snow in an otherwise snowless field in the middle of spring. Upon touching it the DM insists it’s real snow and even lets a player eat it but after rolling a check I was told it was in fact the spell hallucinatory terrain. I don’t typically try to override a DM but touch allows you to see through the spell and you certainly shouldn’t be able to eat it. Upon saying that the spell doesn’t just make a solid mass I was pretty rudely shot down by both the DM and another player. Was I wrong to try and correct the DM in this instance?

Ben Delahay

May it please the court. I’m a player in a game where another player is a soulknife rogue from Tasha’s Cauldron. The Psi-Bolstered Knack ability allows the rogue to add a d8 to an ability check if the original roll failed, but the die is only expended if the modified roll succeeds. The DM argues that this provides unfair meta knowledge about the success of some rolls. For example, when the Hexbuds thought they got the drop on Gideon but he had actually seen them, a soulknife rogue could have known that the check failed and would have known if a modified attempt had succeeded. The player argues that this meta knowledge is a feature, but the DM says it is unfair. I have no personal place in this disagreement but eagerly await the court’s decision and will pass on whatever punishment is decided.

Kenny Cashman

May it please the court: My first dnd party had a player in it that was the Leroy Jenkins type, whenever the party would be strategizing he would just say "and I walk into the room" since he was a Warforged fighter and he said that is what his character would do. Needless to say, this was frustrating for the group as a whole as we were constantly forced to fight everything we encountered immediately. Cut to the party trying to sneak up on a group of cultists. As we are trying to come up with a plan said player goes to do his usual thing... until my character grabs his character and holds him to stop him. We do contested strength checks, which I win. The player says loudly at the table, "it would be nice if I could control my own character" and starts pouting. My PC let's his PC go after our plan goes into motion and we finish the session. 2 days later, this player quits our group and doesn't say why. He is the dms brother in law so we find out it was because of my actions during the session. My question is, was I out of line to do this in game? How would you deal with a player like this?

well this is unfair because the rogue has a funny name and murph has an icy heart toward any character who isn’t named, like, john

H-Train

Use half of both IMO need strength to steer quickly but some dexterity to aim accurately.

Groove819

Oh, buddy, you made the other players feel! Just because it's a "negative" emotion, doesn't mean it's bad. I say congrats to you.

I Love Not Finishing My Sentences

May it please the court: I dm for a party of 6 players, one of which is a Druid. The Druid cast wall of fire in a square, and the spells says that the wall is one inch thick. The fire coming from the wall goes inward ten feet. I ruled that when the spell was cast, the enemies inside the wall (square) would take damage. The other members of the party began to protest that the ruling was wrong. They argued that only the enemies within that one inch of fire would take damage. They argued with me and the Druid for a solid ten minutes until I forced the party to move on. Two sessions later, the Druid cast Wall of Fire again and the same argument ensued. Am I wrong and my players are right? Also why are my players arguing against something that would help them? I await your judgement, knowing that in my heart I will be on the right side of D&D court.

Well written I would second hearting this case

Bryan Holt

May it please the court and the honorable justices, I’m running the Out of the Abyss module for our gaming group, which includes my husband. He plays a halfling gloomstalker ranger named Jopher and was recently successfully stealthing under some driders (half-drow, half spiders) that were hanging from the ceiling in the Underdark. He wanted to send a message through a bat to the rest of the party since he had scouted ahead. Though Jopher was hidden, I rolled perception for the driders, who noticed the bat and swiftly killed it. My husband argued that the driders wouldn’t care about a bat flying by, but I thought they would strike at anything. I later felt bad and gave him inspiration as compensation for killing his creative bat dreams. Did I deserve to be shamed for my deadly driders or were they right to slash the bat?

If it may please the court: My Circle of Land druid is supposed to be immune to poison, but when inflicted with a poison that caused the Paralysed condition, my DM ruled that my druid was not immune because neither poison damage nor the Poisoned condition were involved. I disagree. Poison is poison, and the DM described the substance as poison. I await your honorable judgment and have a screening of that scene from Princess Bride ready to inflict on the guilty party.

Your honors and may it please the high court. Is a cannon a finesse weapon for a halfling. I am the dm, I was running a game and my halfling tinkerer asked if she could use her dex mod as opposed to strength. I said "no a cannon isn't a finesse weapon" and that was the end of it, but looking back I'm not so sure ... Thoughts? I thank you for your time your honors, may it please the court, and above all else pawpaw esq.

I present the case of My Best Friend Jordan v. The Party. In my first ever campaign, my best friend Jordan was playing an obnoxious paladin named Godfre the Perfect. We were all new to DND and so the party vibe was super fun and chill. Then the DM introduced a veteran player who was playing a min maxed Half-Giant storm barbarian or something. The game began to revolve around the DM and this PC exploring giant shit and the tone of the party changed to serious. Jordan was most effected by this and after Godfre killed a prisoner the party had taken (in order to liven things up!!!) the DM narrated Godfre being sent to jail, forcing Jordan to roll an elaborate series of new characters: - 3 sisters appearing one after the other because the DM kept narrating them dying in landslides. - Sharee the Body Percussionist (rhythmic slapping underscoring serious giant scenes) Jordan was kicked from the group that had originally supported his comedic tone and I soon followed (bc I’m a fucking ride or die). It became a huge source of trauma around DND for him. What went wrong? And who, dear god, is to blame?

Jack Francis West

Your honors: I am playing a blade singer wizard in an all wizard campaign (sounds silly, but it works). I have been successfully blade singing and killing monsters at 3rd, 4th and 5th level, but recently realized that once my bonus actions are no longer in use in longer fights (blade singing activation etc.). I could do just a little more damage by using my bonus action to use two weapon fighting. This means at 6th level I will be able to attack twice (one of those being a cantrip) and then attack for a third time since I am using a light weapon (fourth time when hasted). My DM and I got into a discussion about wether this would end the blade song. The rules for the blade song state that it ends if: "if you are incapacitated, if you don medium or heavy armor or a shield, or if you use two hands to make an attack with a weapon.". I argued that using two hands to make an attack with a weapon refers to making one attack with two hands, he argues that it means using both hands to make attacks and that this applies to using more than one weapon. I am still one of the stronger PCs in the game right now, but I want to be more overpowered please help me. Also this has not gotten in the way of any of the gameplay or my relationship with the DM or any of the players, I just hate language that can be interpreted multiple ways in D and D rules.

If it pleases the court: I was playing in a campaign. We killed some giant crocodiles so naturally I wanted to skin them and use their leather in my studded leather armor, just for flavor, nothing mechanically different. My DM made me roll survival, I rolled poorly, but argued that we had time so I could have been careful to get advantage, which was denied. I then argued that since I was a gnome, I only needed a little bit of leather, but he ruled that I shredded most of the crocodile skin. Thats no fun. Was I wrong to be upset, or did I deserve to wear tattered clothing the rest of the campaign?

If it may so humbly please the illustrious court. I once played a rogue who wanted to bring down a drug lord, and take over. Another player, a paladin, asked the DM if he noticed my character leaving the base in his outfit of a devil to use as intimidation. I had not specified I had put on the suit OR what time I had left. Both the player, and DM assumed that I left wearing the suit in broad daylight. Which lead to the paladin catching me, and engaging in PvP. The DM, and player saw this as just an excuse to get a laugh out of my admittedly very edgy character. However, I was never properly asked the necessary questions about my actions in such a matter. The DM has committed an egregious sin... assuming. Thank you for taking the time, lords, and ladies of the court. May you get many giggles from my dumbass friends, and I.

Aaron

Your honourable honours, may it thoroughly please the court. I'm playing as a Slavic lizardfolk Druid in a cyberpunk themed campaign and we've recently stumbled across a real bumble when it comes to the Heat Metal spell. My DM only wants to allow the spell to work in the scenario where an enemy has a weapon that is metallic, however I am arguing that cybernetic transplants are also technically made of metal. The problem is it seems overpowered (and who knows, maybe it is) but my argument is that in fantasy themed campaigns Heat Metal also works on enemy armor. Is my DM being a real TikTok in this scenario, or am I the TikTok in this situation?

Lex Flexington

If it do be pleasing be the courtly bodies that be: I would like a precedent to be set. When is RAW not good in place of Rule of cool?

Keanu DRAMAFACE

May it please the court. I haven’t played dnd very long and actually am falling in love with DM-ing. I like telling the story and seeing how my friends come up with solutions. Here’s the problem. I’ve done a few one shots for my friends and when I get feedback from them, they say I’m too lenient and nice and need to try to kill someone. Not to say no one has gone down, but how do I make it a fun experience and make it challenging at the same time. PS: I wasn’t a fan of dnd until you guys started NADDPOD. I’m part of the day ones! Love the podcast and for anyone on the fence of playing, just do it! Won’t regret it. Thanks!

Your excellencies, may it please the court, I humbly bring a case against myself, for I fear I have done a great wrong to my table. Our level 5 party was up against a crazy necromancer. We were down in a cave under an old church and the necromancer had a whole bunch of zombies and a Zombie Beholder. In the first round, my character got hit super hard and eventually got attacked by the Z-holder. Since they determine their attacks randomly, the DM rolled in secret and I could tell by his reaction that it was really bad. I encouraged him not to fudge the rolls and let the dice tell the story. It was the disintegration ray. My character was reduced to 0 HP and turned into a pile of dust, dead. My crime comes into play when the same thing happened later and another character died. I don't mind sacrificing my character, but I feel that if I didn't encourage the DM to kill me, he wouldn't have done the same thing to the other PC. Was I wrong to do this?

Jacob Buttarazzi

Supreme Justices of the highest court, if it may please it... I am currently playing a ranger in a campaign being run with a group of friends. During this campaign, we were camped out and waiting in ambush for a group of enemies to come by. In preparation of this, I cast flame arrows in order to make it so that one of my arrows will deal an extra 1d6 fire damage. This spell lasts for an hour and requires concentration. They enemies came in within that hour, and so I was able to act first in a surprise round. I then cast conjure barrage, which is a spell that does not require concentration and creates a 60 foot cone using one piece of ammunition as a material component were the enemies must make a saving throw or take 3d8 damage. I then stated that since my arrow was still a flame arrow, all of the enemies in the area took an extra D6 fire damage as well. Some of the players disagreed with me, saying that the damage type just became fire. I believe that the wording clearly states that it adds a D6, it does not change the damage type completely, and that since the component used for the conjure barrage was the flame arrow, the D6 transfers. If this was not the case, I would of done something else to plan for the attack instead of using a 3rd level spell on flame arrow, which is what both of these spells require. What does the highest court feel in this situation?

Brook A. Hall

May it please the court, I am a DM. During my session this week, my party faced an ancient dragon. A member of the party had haste on, and was hit with the dragon's "Slow breath". The language of slowing breath is: The dragon exhales gas in a 90-foot cone. Each creature in that area must succeed on a DC 22 Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, the creature can't use reactions, its speed is halved, and it can't make more than one attack on its turn. In addition, the creature can use either an action or a bonus action on its turn, but not both. These effects last for 1 minute. The creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself with a successful save. What does this mean for the hasted player. After some quick research, I allowed him to still take the extra action from haste, and counted his speed as half of his hasted speed. Was this the proper course to take? Or did I let me players get away with one? They survived the encounter, barely. So either way, the story continues.

Joseph Goldstein

May it please the court, I am currently a player in a group my sister is dming, consisting of: her girlfriend, her girlfriends brother, her two friends from college and me. I am the only experienced player in the group while for everyone else this is their first ever D&D campaign. Because of this I wanted to let the other plays take the lead while I helped out and played a more reserved character. Fastforward to the incident in question. Our party was at city hall to sign the deed for a haunted house a wealthy noble had gifted us, we were going through security and the guards were asking us questions about our characters. For reasons still unknown to the rest of the party my character doesn't trust the city watch so I had decided to lie about myself. However when I started to do this my sisters girlfriend decided to knock me out with a nat 20 athletics check and then come up with another backstory. The DM(my sister) decided to go along with this which annoyed me for two reasons: I was knocked out by an athletics check which I feel like is unfair even on a nat 20 and also I totally lost control of what my character was doing. I didn't protest this because I didn't want to derail the session but I was very annoyed and I am curious how the judges of the Supreme Crit will rule on this case.

Fair and Honorable Judges, Whilst fighting our way through the Dungeon of the Mad Mage, our party encountered a creature that could cast the darkness spell as an ability. To try and help, my dwarven artificer, Tink, cast faerie fire. (Re-flavoured as throwing a glitter bomb). The DM ruled that it didn’t work and that no one could get the advantage benefit because they can’t see the glow created by my spell in darkness. I bowed quickly to the ruling, but technically RAW says nothing about the creature needing to see the faire fire to get advantage.....should the spells effect have still worked and granted us advantage? Love you all, J from Thunder Bay

Jesymka

May it honk the court. Party finds imprisoned devil in dungeon. Halfling rogue, Cheddar Truckle, finds keys to his enchanted manacles. Devil promises a favour to the party if they release him. Party decide against. Party leaves. Halfling rouge texts DM asking to surreptitiously free Devil with the keys he has. DM texts back yes, roll a stealth check. Rogue rolls a 23. Frees devil. By this point it's clear to the rest of the table that the Rogue and the DM are texting. I ask the DM if we notice something is amiss and he, without asking us to roll, says we see the rogue isn't with us. My character rushes back into the room just as the devil is freed and disappears. Rogue insists we shouldn't have noticed anything due to the high stealth roll, and that no one rolled perception. Metagaming accusations fly. Should the DM at least have asked us to roll a perception check before telling us? I humbly throw myself at the mercy of the court.

(I'm a law student) Madame Chief Justice, your honors, and may it please the court. I am representing the DM in the case of the Players versus the DM In my home game, a central component to my Jurassic Park but with D&D Monsters campaign was crystal palimpsests that function like pokeballs. For a creature to be trapped inside the palimpsest, that creature must be at zero hit points. My players managed to steal some palimpsests and wanted to use them to sneak some Orcs (considered in-world to be "monsters") out of the "Village" zoo enclosure to get their help elsewhere on the island for a larger prison break. I told my players that the orcs would need to be reduced to zero hit points to capture them, and that if they wanted to do it right then and there, they would need to begin making damage rolls. My players, horrified, made each roll to knock out three consenting orcs. The players maintain I should have just narrated reducing the orcs to zero instead of making them make each damage roll. I submit to the court that reducing creatures, even friendly creatures to zero hit points is not something that should just be glossed over. Knocking out any NPC or PC in-world is a gruesome task, and if the players wanted to utilize the palimpsest mechanic, they should have to also be willing to roll the damage. I ask the court to sustain the DM's ruling. Thank you.

Eric Dang

THE WINGLESS ARACOKRA May it please and tickle: I DM for an 8-person campaign with an Aracokra Ranger in the party. During one encounter with some pretty tough bandits that the party blatantly antagonized, half the party went down, and the remaining had to retreat to survive. As opposed to fully murdering the unconscious 4 PC’s, i set up a scenario where they were taken captive and held for ransom for the other PC’s to save, but i felt that some amount of consequence needed to be dolled out to the captives. Each PC either had a valuable item stolen/destroyed or in the case of the Aracokra, the bandits severed his wings. The Aracokra player has, to this day, argued that this was too harsh a punishment and has been trying to find a way to reobtain his wings ever since (which i am open to, but im not making it an easy task). Was I too harsh in my punishment? Also, do you have any ideas for designing a sidequest for this birdman reacquiring his power of flight?

JBeev

May it please the court, please enter the case of the friendly gnome v sneaky DM. I have been looking for a D&D party to call my own for months during lockdown, and a good friend invited me to join his last fall. His DM and party welcomed me with open arms, and the DM got me right into gameplay the following week. It's been a few months since I began playing with them, and I have absolutely loved it, though it seems like the DM and I are the players most interested in RP-ing while the rest of the party is more interested in combat and goal oriented gameplay. I don't mind that style at all, but last week our DM texted me individually asking if I wanted to join one of his other more serious RP campaigns. I don't know if he asked my friend who got me into this party, and I am too afraid to ask either one of them for fear of hurting my friend's feelings. My friend has been playing for years, most of it with our DM, and is objectively more into D&D than I am, but is often shy during the game. I wanted to say yes and join a more serious game, but I only have time for one campaign and I would feel bad ditching my friend after he vouched for me for a party that he would want to join. So Supreme Crit Judges, do I jump airship to a new campaign with our DM or do I stay with the friend who got me into the party, and D&D in general? Sincerely yours, A much too friendly crick Gnome and her giant skunk, Nugget

CiCi

May it please the court, I present a situation that comes up still sometimes at my Shadowrun table. The real conundrum is rules agnostic, I promise. One of my players set out to build the tankiest character possible, one who could take a bullet to the head or a grenade to the guts and shrug it off easily. Great character, but she also took an ability to regain Edge (basically a luck resource) upon taking what the DM judges to be a 'daring action.' She played this character brilliantly, but here is the concern: She would consistently argue with me about whether an action she had taken was daring. The prosecution asserts that jumping in front of bullets, walking into machine gun fire, or trying to wrestle a car are very daring, and should award her some Edge points. The DM-fendant proposes that these actions, while very cool, do not qualify as daring, because she and I both know that she is under no risk of taking any damage from these actions, on account of her huge armor and damage soak. Thank you, honorable judges, for hearing our case, and please tell us whether an action can be daring in its own rights, even if it is performed knowing that things will very likely be completely fine.

Matt Branton

May it please the court -- About a year ago, I was playing a campaign with a few friends, and somebody had recently joined the group and he was playing as a monk. During a fight, it came to his turn and he started rolling his attacks. I quickly realised he ended up doing six attacks in one turn, which I knew wasn't possible. I pointed it out to him and said he shouldn't be able to attack six times, and that the max for monk at our current level (level 7) was 4. He argued that he could split his action into two bonus actions and thus, he would have three bonus actions to use flurry of blows three times. By this point, I was just trying to explain to him that that's not how the action economy works in 5e and he shouldn't be able to do that. Even though the DM and other players were agreeing with me, the monk player called me an unfun rules lawyer, and said I was the reason why people stop playing the game. He then went on to yell at me and quit the group entirely. My question to you is this: Was I being an "unfun rules lawyer" even if I was just trying to uphold something as basic as the action economy, and point out that he misread the wording for flurry of blows? If not, should I have even brought it up in the first place? Thanks

May it please the court: The case of the cleric/druid that left the party. I am currently a player in a campaign where my friend is running Out of the Abyss for a group of four. I started the campaign as a Moon Elf Twilight Domain cleric and multiclassed into Circle of the Moon Druid. I spoke with the DM privately about how - without spoiling that module - that if the party ever made it to a certain plot point, then my PC would be compelled to leave the party to protect a group of NPCs that the party had gotten close with. He was on board from a character perspective and we discussed a number of potential characters that I could bring into the campaign and we agreed to one that made sense for the party composition. When the time came, in character I told the other PCs that it was time for me to leave. I got an unexpected amount of upset from the group, even after my new character was introduced (the Oath of Glory Paladin sister of my original PC). ONE OF MY FRIENDS CRIED. ANOTHER FRIEND SENT THE SAD GIF OF BUTTERFREE LEAVING ASH. THERE WERE TEARS IN THE FIRST FULL SESSION WITH MY NEW CHARACTER. My original character was a sweet, evangelical (but ineffective) cleric. My new PC is kind of a dumb jock that likes to party - yes, I deserve a lesser charge for stealing a bit of Hardwon for my home game. The dice gods have MAJORLY smiled on me since I switched characters. I am super happy with the switch, but I get the feeling that people miss my previous PC (because they have told me). I am telling on myself here. Am I the bad guy for switching characters during the campaign without speaking with the rest of the party first? What punishment do I deserve?

Sarah Miller

If it pleases the court, I would like to present the case of The DM Who Tried to Foreshadow Danger vs. A Now Disintegrated Druid: my players were investigating a vault filled with forgotten/forbidden lore with a number of failsafes in place. One was a construct in the ceiling that was shooting intermittent disintegration beams at bookshelves. One player attacked it and it briefly retargeted them before resuming destroying the books they were trying to save (I’d intended it to act as a timer for them to identify and save what they thought was the most valuable.) A second player cast wall of flame over the construct, thinking it would block its line of sight. They hadn’t investigated the construct at all, and didn’t realize it had blindsight. It targeted the second player, who failed their save and were disintegrated. I normally want to reward creativity, and was impressed with their gamble, but stuck to my guns due to blindsight. Was I in the wrong? (They’re now going into an arc to find a way to bring that PC’s Druid back, and I’m very open to the PC returning)

Jon Wilson

May it please the Court, One of my longtime players sincerely believes that his character is lawful good, but the way that he plays his character is truly chaotic. While I think alignment is only useful for clerics and paladins, this player is frustrated that the rest of the party sees his character as a punchline and not the noble dragonborn he pictures in his head. I talked with the player about his frustrations and moved the focus to his character and his personal quest; hopefully giving him more room to change their perception of him through roleplay. The player still leans hard on the goofs (and his goofs are very funny) so I am worried this won't be enough. Judges, what can be done to get this player and the party on the same page about this character?

May it please the court: Common descriptions of magical weapons (such as a +1 longsword) often describe that the weapons do not require maintenance such as sharpening, repair, and so forth. My PC, a paladin, decided to use this to his advantage, arguing that his +1 longsword could be used as a stonecutting implement to destroy a vampire's stone tomb. I relented to allow the session to move forward, and so this paladin victoriously slew the stonework, but my question, noble Judges - did I deserve this whomping? Is the law on my side? Thank you for your time, honorable councilors - may Bahamut keep you.

May it please the court, I as the DM had set up a logging camp that was going to be besieged by a dozen Trolls. I went to great lengths to have an NPC explain to the party that the Trolls were perfect siege weapons because of their strength and ability to heal themselves. The trolls would attack the camp, and if the trolls get significantly hurt, they leave for a few rounds to regenerate before resuming the attack. The attack happened and the first wave of trolls started to retreat after getting hurt. A player argued that with only a 7 intelligence and a 9 wisdom, the trolls shouldn't be able to plan on retreating and coming back, and instead they would be cocky with their regenerative abilities and stay on the front lines of the siege. I argued that even animals are capable of using basic strategies and trolls may be dumber than average, but they would still be capable of making temporary tactical retreats. Should the Trolls have stayed at the front line throwing themselves into danger until death, or was I right in having the trolls fall back? Thank you Devin

Devin Awe

Your honorable honorses, our party has been killing it, literally, in a module that we’ve been doing. So much so that we were boasting. It was then that our DM told us that they’ll fudge the rolls in our favor sometimes because the battle is looking too tough. We lambasted them, saying we can handle the fates of the dice devils, whatever they may be. They just smirked and said ok! Well... the very next session ended in a TPK. It felt impossible. They had an “I told ya so!” vibe, but we said that our skin was too soft from all the coddling, and weren’t prepared for an untilted fight. Is the party wrong to be frustrated after getting what they want, or is the DM wrong for playing Dice Christ? Much love to y’all, A dead halfling.

If it may please the court, presenting the case of a rogue lizard vs any of my characters. I have a problem where my characters die far too quickly, but the sliver lining I would be able to play all my other fun characters. However every time I was introduced to the party, the rogue firenewt would attack me no matter what. Perhaps to introduce some tension to build a stronger connection? I don’t know, but he even went as far as sniping my winged tie fling out of the sky which lead to me dieing from fall damage, a character I only got to play for less then a minute. The DM sided with this player saying “it makes sense to his character and it brings moral questioning to the story” whatever that means. I’ve since left that party however I still remember the senseless deaths my characters faced.

If it pleases the court, I present the case of The Nightwalker vs Hallow. My players were preparing for a fight with a Nightwalker and, in preparation, our cleric cast the spell Hallow which, among other things, stops affected players from experiencing the frightened condition. The Nightwalker has the ability to frighten opponents but instead of the traditional "run in fear" it explicitly states that they are paralyzed by being "frightened". I argued that because the technical status effect was paralysis instead of frightened hallow would have no effect, the cleric argued differently, we rolled for it, he won, and they absolutely whomped my bbeg with hallow playing no small part because of it. Who was right? Does hallow make the player immune from the frightened condition even if the effects of this frightening aren't being subject to the frightened condition but, instead, the paralysis condition?

Matteo Cina

As a result of venting I figured out a way to keep them out of my stuff I need a silver gilded bag and a silver door knob for my room.

Good Guy Josh

May it Please the Court: The case of the pirate druid versus the dm and the druid. My character started out as a regular rogue pirate. I ended up multiclassing to pick up some skills as a druid because in our campaign we had a special item as a party that could only be used as a druid (and my character had spent some time at a covent for melora so it was a great harmony). However, one of our other players decided he was "bored" of playing a monk. The dm and the player killed off his monk and brought in a druid, who already came with a special item, "the staff of the woodlands" to equal what he had as the monk. During a quest, we were gifted another staff of the woodlands for helping out a local hermit. The other druid took the new staff and proclaimed he would be using both, which the dm allowed. In a peak of frustration, my pirate stole one of the staffs in the night. After the game, 2 of the other players, the druid and his real life brother, complained that stealing from the party was a major foul and asked the dm to take my staff away, which he did. Granted, I got a less powerful bow in exchange. But to this day I am extremely frustrated and actively avoid that player/character in game. Was I right to steal the staff for myself or were the other players justified in their indignation?

Alaina Moreno

The case of the faulty flight suit Defendant Rogue Fighter Vs plantain Sorcerer Paladin This rogue and I were budding heads for a while as a result I challenged him to an honorable duel in an arena and he threw a building at me (an instant fortress) to win it. Later on we were shopping for armor and I outbid him on a set of Magic leather armor that halves falling damage. The rogue then proceeded to buy his own leather armor that was non magical. Later that day after a particularly brutal fight I was the only unconscious party member, The rogue use this opportunity to switch out my magical leather armor with the Mandane set he bought, and a fire crossbow(which I have no use for as I have fire bolt). The next session I try to lend my magic armor to a different party member I was about to cast fly on, but I had to explain to the player that the armor doesn’t work even though my character thinks it does. The other players thought I was just trying to catch the thief by meta-gaming a way my character didn’t get hurt, but the whole reason I bought the armor was just in case I lost concentration while flying. After the loss in the arena my character needed a win over the rogue, he figured he could at least have a win over him in a social situation but he literally stole my victory, and even if I found out the armor wasn’t magical because I never got a chance to use it my character would probably just blame the store owner. I’ve been tempted to leave the group but I love my DM. I have since switched characters to someone who wouldn’t care about hanging out with a thief and a murder hobo. Ps reasons I disliked the rogue, he owns a small population female slaves, including one of the other party members. Because he’s an elf he has four extra hours every night where he regularly does solo missions where the rest of the table just sits there, as a result he has far more money than anyone else and owns two small businesses. His backstory made us all enemies of the elvin state. He has a werewolf form where he gets a plus one to everything. What is a suitable punishment for this behavior if it keeps up. (we’ve talked about stealing from the party now)

Good Guy Josh

May it please the court. I was running an encounter with two froghemoths, which was a hard encounter for my party but not necessarily deadly. Naturally, people got swallowed. This case pertains to one of my player’s circle of the moon Druid. While she was swallowed, she wild shaped into an Ankylosaurus, a creature as big as a froghemoth. My players said that due to common sense, the froghemoth would explode instantly because of the growth of the creature in its stomach. I found this a little ridiculous but wanted to reward their ingenuity. So I have the froghemoth a Con save to throw up the Druid while wild shaping. He failed but I said that he did throw up but would take 10d6 of damage as the inside of him was stretched and torn. My players still found this ridiculous but accepted the result. Was this a fair result? I am awaiting your verdict, fair judges.

Nicolas P.

Case of: Sould Ned be dead. May it please the court 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

If it pleases the court, I played in a homebrew campaign with my friends where I played a warlock.In this campaign one of the other people I was playing with gained a magic item that was a cursed axe that had the potential, if he rolled poorly To cause him to attack his allies. In one of the major battles, he rolled a nat 1 on his wisdom saving throw . The big bad in this case was nearing death, as all of us were as well. We were all out of heals, And running on empty. He then had to attack his nearest ally which was me. He hit me on a nat 20 to which I then asked him to use one of his luck points to try and miss as I had a fairly good AC of 18, or at the very least not crit. He then said I only have two left and dont want to waste them. I said its not a waste and loosing me in the fight would be worse. He refused and I went down. I then rolled a failure and then a nat 1 and died. I naturally was upset, and then To top it all off, the wizard that sent us on this quest, when the rest of the party went to tell him they had killed the monster said " n thanks for killing this beast I will give you anything that you wish for. I assumed he would wish for me back to life but he took a deep breath, paused, looked at the wizard and said make a statue of gannicus (my character) in his honor. I looked at him and said Why didnt you wish for me back to which he said that would be asking for to much. Am i crazy? should I be upset? or am I just overreacting? Him and I still play together and are great friends but this is one thing we both still talk about and he thinks that he did nothing wrong by not using a luck point or wishing for me back. I await your decision great council and hope for vindication but will abide by the ruling.

If it may please the court, i have the case of the magical items. My players and I are starting a new campaign- and for fun, we’re starting at a higher level. As the players are already 10th level, i said it would make sense for them to have “one or two rare magical items.” I’m pretty sure that was a fuck up. Now some of the players have Super powerful magical items (ring of protection and a luck stone) while some others had fun with it and got... less powerful things (wand of smiles, cloak of billowing, +3 boomerang). Would i be an asshole if I took away some of the more powerful magical items?

May it please the court -- During a recent one-shot, my pompous pro wrestler muscle magic character, in a moment of low self-esteem, attempted to charge ahead of the rest of the party and face the dungeon boss all by herself. Before clearing the doorway, our party's druid tried to use Shape Water to block the door with a cube of ice, but since there was no visible water in the area, he could not. However, there was a nearby pool of blood from an earlier puzzle, and the druid argued that since blood plasma is "mostly made of water", and that he "can see it", it was feasible to use Shape Water to block the doorway with a cube of frozen blood. The DM ruled that this was acceptable, and thus my sorcerer's ill-advised sprint to the boss lair was cut short by a large cube of frozen blood. I think this is a bonkers ruling. Please help us understand whether blood counts as water.

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

I love this. If you don't get an answer, can you turn him into a bird? Like maybe he secretly has a curse that he turns into a bird at night so he actually flew there. Or have him start saying that he needs to get back because of X and then they find a wand w 1 charge of Polymorph Into A Bird

Alice S

If it please the court, this past summer I played dnd with a group called emerald city games in Seattle. This was a group of strangers I found in the internet. The first game, I admit, was not my best behavior. I played a rogue barbarian that was designed to be pretty powerful, and was generally disruptive and obnoxious. This culminated with me pretending to kill Gary gigax as the DM was clearly trying to end the session. Later that week, I found that I was kicked out of the group. After some digging, I found out that it was because they thought I was under 18, which is against their policy. This assumption was incorrect, as I am 19. The dm begrudgingly let me back in the group, warning me to not be so disruptive and obnoxious. The next game I played with the group I played a popular high elf, characters known for being disruptive and obnoxious. I consider it to be some of my best ro, and I had a blast. But the group thought differently, as they kicked me out for good this time. I understand that I am biased in favor of myself, and fully invite the emerald city games group to issue a rebuttal. Respectfully yours, the disruptively dashing darion.

Aaron Sterne

May it please the court, I bring forth the case of the Party Splitter. We have a player that refuses to stay and work with the party. If they don’t agree with the decisions the party makes, they will ignore the group and do what they want anyway, causing consequences for the entire party. The party will decide on plans for what to do next, and if this player doesn’t like it, they will just leave without saying a word and party members will have to stop what they're doing and chase them down. If party members choose not to chase them down, this player will actively try for solo missions, which take large chunks of multiple sessions. In battle, the character will charge off on their own, then when they get knocked out, will make rude comments to the only healer for not healing them. The DM tried to make the player face in-game consequences but the player acted out, broke a MAJOR table rule. The DM had to force retire the character and the player is now on character #3. The new character has been in a few sessions and has already split from the party in battle and a party member had to chase after him so the player wouldn’t die. This player has been spoken to by the DM about this and other issues, this player is already reverting back to his party splitting ways (and other issues that he's been spoken to about). I ask the court, How many more chances does this player deserve and should more serious actions be taken? Thank you Your Honors!

Nikki Lynn

Honorable justices of the court, I present the case of Goodbarrel v. DM. Our party was fighting an angelic creature and when the tides turned against it, it attempted to flee. Our halfling monk Eldon Goodbarrel attempted to stunning strike it and the DM argued that as his fists counted as magical weapons the angel would roll with advantage due to magical resistance. Our party argued that stunning strike is more of a physical/pressure point effect than a magical effect and that the magical fists don’t make every thing the monk does a magical effect. The DM did not go for it and shut us down. Please your honors provide us with the closure we so need.

May it please the Court, I present the case of non-consentual cursed wording. Months ago my DM made an npc he really enjoyed playing and wanted an excuse to justify us seeing them more. During our first interaction he repeatedly had the npc say strange things like "The cost will be greater than you think" and such, classic curse stuff. My character is a very weary and careful type so he stood outside the store of the NPC and didn't interact with him. Another player did (and I did nothing to stop then because it sounded like a curse was incoming and that's fun for roleplay.) Except where it got weird was when the other player agreed to a mystery deal without knowing the cost, he made the cost cursing not her, but the WHOLE PARTY. Specifically all of her "friends" which was a moniker not defined by the npc and included my character, a ship captain she knew for less than a week. There was nothing that I think validated making all our characters, especially mine, valid targets of the curse (which was that if you tried to enter any shop that sold weapons, armor, or magic you'd be forced out and unable to speak to merchants that sold those things.) *Since I didn't speak to the NPC, designate myself as a friend of our party member, didn't give her my real name, belong to the same order as her, wasn't inside the shop, and didn't give her any rights over myself or my shopping needs, was the DM right to punish my (and other) characters who weren't even involved in the deal?* Basically, can an acquaintance sell your soul? (I later went so far as tearing off my arm with the curse seal on it to get out of the "deal" and even that didn't work. And that was AFTER verbally stating that I didn't agree to the deal and that I wanted out of it.)

Crimson Claw

Just a helpful New Stat I created because a halfling thought he could flip a catapult. By the way he shit his intestines and was launched by the giant maning it. He flew over the battlefield like a Chinese Dragon kite. "Fuckery Rolls" as follows Character level x 10 Add Stat Proficiency (+2 Athletics, Etc) Roll Under D100 for success. Works only till level 10 By Then They Should Have Stopped Doing Stupid Shit. Court Can Now Be Adjourned!

ConflictedDM

if it pleases the court, In my campaign monsters have been kicked from the material and forced to the inhabit the astral plane/ Any other plane they can live on so all my players are “monster races” and I put them in a near impossible fight so that they just had to survive until reinforcements came but went down a few rounds into combat do to poor coordination but instead of having them killed I had him do something to each of them to really piss them off and make a good big bad he took a single wing of the dragonborn an ear of the drow elf exposed the one human of party and mutilated his face and when he got to aisimar he was going to take his wings to but he states that the wings are incorporeal so he couldn’t take them but I argued that the weapon he was using was magical and thus could cut his wings as ghosts are incorporeal but you can still strike them with a magical weapon. who was right?

BenMightSmite

May it please the court, I have been in a homebrew Percy Jackson like dnd game for the past 2 years. My character, a daughter of Poseidon, has had an interesting journey. I never intended for her to go evil, but she accidentally went down a dark path with blood-bending. I've spent the past year trying to have her slowly become less evil such as switching out all her spells, making better choices. Then, I had to miss a session due to family things, and I feel like the DM screwed me over that session. He gave me a magical item that every time I attack someone, I have to do a charisma saving throw (I have a -3 modifier) or she goes out of control and possibly attacks anyone near her including team mates. He argued it's what my character would do because she wants power, but I was going to really try to have her resist this magical item if I was able to make it to the session. He now refuses to let me get rid of the item. I tried to argue saying she's trying to make better choices but he says that she wouldn't have been able to resist a better weapon. Additionally, he gave away another magic item of mine away to a different player. (They are super rare in this homebrew - after over 2 years of playing, I've had less than 4 items that could be considered uncommon or rare). Am I correct that my character should be allowed to try to be less evil and resist horrible magic items or is the DM right that she can't really go back?

Esteemed Judges of the Court, This question seems relevant given Jake's recently professed desire to take up the lucky feat again. I am 100% on jakes side with how this could be growth for Hank btw. Anyways, I am a dm that is running a dnd campaign for a group of friends. The campaign has been going on for a few years now and recently my players reached a level where they could take an ability score increase or a feat. One of my players started out as a human variant and had a feat by default and took lucky at that time. Another player, now a few years later has decided he wants to take that feat as well. I personally have no problem with it but the first player reached out to me saying it felt less special to his character to have that feat if another player had it too. I can kind of empathize because that player actually roleplays and sent me a backstory while the other player just kind of wants to hang out and only really pays attention or participates during combat. That being said, I don't want to make a decision and persecute someone for a different play style. Is it ok for me to ask that player to look into something else or should I tell the first player to deal with it and move on.

Hemang Mehta

Your honors, while playing as a monk I came across an orb of dragon kind. I asked the dm if I could get a dragonborn in the party to investigate it to figure out the command word and he said sure. The dragonborn rolled well and so I was able to attune with the orb but I failed my charisma check and was charmed by the orb. The dm said I couldn't use stillness of mind to end the charm because the orb was too powerful. We argued for a bit before settling on a mechanic we both thought would be fun, where I would roll charisma against a suggestion when I used the orb but was otherwise free of it's influence. I still think I should have gotten away with ending the charm scott free, and the dm thinks allowing us to discern the command word so easily was generous and I must be punished for the failed charisma roll.

Honorable judges, may it please the court, may I present the case squishy Wizard vs realistic DM I DM for my brother in a solo campaign where he plays a Tiefling Wizard named Ioday. In our last few sessions, he has been planning a heist on a military fortress. as part of the planning, he talked to a teenager sorcerer who lived inside to try to get a sense of the layout and defenses inside. I, trying to convey that this teen wouldn't be too awfully helpful, had them prattle on about the guard's personal lives and drama in the workplace. He then asked personal details about all the guards, particularly one named Ross, a half elf who has been divorced three times, and currently works for the captain of the guard, who happens to be one of his ex-wives. The night before the heist, Ioday went to a thrift store, and picked up a cheap bronze toe ring for a copper. During the first part of the heist, Ioday distracted the captain of the guard by convincing Ross to re-purpose, effectively creating so much drama that the guard captain was out of the way for the rest of the heist. I thought this was genius and very funny. The problem came in the final few minutes of the heist, after Ioday set the fortress library on fire and was escaping. On his way out he asked to make checks to locate Ross, and then tried to convince Ross (a guard in a military fort) to join Ioday's cause (stealing from the military). Here's the real problem - my brother does this with every NPC he meets. He also recruited a random Kenku guard he was supposed to fight, and the teenager sorcerer from earlier. I don't want to manage a bunch of random NPCs for him or make fights too easy. Plus, Ross was super lame and whiney and wouldn't be very helpful anyway. My brother wants extra companions around because it's a solo campaign and wizards have next to no hit points at early levels. After much discussion and initially saying no, I eventually let Ioday convince Ross to join him, but said that he's the last NPC that can join the party. Am I being a kill-joy, or is three NPC companions too many to deal with?

Kodi Knight

Player on Player betrayal. Honorable Judges, I was DM'ing for my party of all fighters when they were ambushed by a group of Lighting Elementals while traveling during a storm. They roll initiative and begin the encounter. Player 1 goes first and charges into the 6 elementals ready for a battle, but every other player, in initiative order, decides to run away and try to make it town. The elementals, having no one else to attack, all swarm Player 1 and absolutely slaughter him. The player dies and screams at his other fighter allies as to why they all ran away without communicating to him. Should they have rallied behind Player 1 since he won imitative and made the first action? Or was he dumb for charging into a losing fight without communicating?

Thomas Troy

May it please the court especially the players judges in this case. I present to the honourable justices the issue of the Trainwreck DM. I'm currently playing in a friend's campaign it has been going on for five months now. I play a Grung Cleric called Evan Beetroot who's entire backstory and motivation for leaving his small swamp is to find God, having found he is blessed by magic he is now on a journey to explore religions and find the god or gods that have given him Magic. By session two our DM had literally given me council with Ioun this leaving me without motivation to continue the story. As a compromise I decided to ask the dm could I take a few levels of Rogue (Arcane Trickster) to feed his growing emo side as Evan had just turned 13 and feeling a little dejected with the fact he was so far from home. The dm agreed but is now trying to force another God on me without consulting me. They have also done this to the rest of the party, another cleric of the light domain who didn't like the anger and aggression in the gods of thunder was given Thor as their god, another player as a barbarian who escaped from the circus as she was a freaks how attraction was immediately brought back by session three with no choice in the matter for us to go somewhere else. There has also been numerous times of being asked to roll for story beats, easily passing checks with Nat 20's and still being told you pass out, your attack misses or you can't go anywhere else. We are all struggling with continuing in this campaign as it feels the dm wants to tell their story regardless of ours.

May it please the court, I present the case of the kleptomaniac sorcerer. I have been dm'ing a high level campaign for a group of 4 players for some time; I introduced an item which is a very overpowered sword that had the draw back of deactivating all of your magic items and requiring you to live a life of poverty for as long as you held the sword. I thought it would be an interesting choice for the barbarian or paladin or other martial character that runs across it. I also warned the players about it multiple times via various npcs so they wouldn't accidentally pick it up. To my chagrin, when they got to the treasure room, the sorcerer who has a negative strength score decided to pick up the item. I did the dm 'are you sure?' comment and recapped what the sword was, but he informed me he was going to do it anyway. He then proceeded to go to the 5 stages of grief, as he realized that all the items he had been using to min/max were now gone leaving his AC at a middling 12. When he was in the bargaining stage of grief, the sorcerer's irl significant other began to yell at me for subjecting him to this. I reminded the group that this was a choice he had made after being warned about it multiple times. The sorcerer's significant other told me that I should never have put this item in the game. I have been operating off the assumption that this was the case of an overprotective significant other and I should just give everyone time to cool off, but I suppose my question to the group is should such an item exist, or should I be subjected to a punishment of having to sell all my worldly possessions while carrying a glowing sword.

Rajiv

If it pleases the court, I don’t have an argument my dm is a god, but I am vary interested in hearing an update on the naddpod video game at some point. Thank you vary much

Jaydon

May it please the court. In one of the campaigns I am a player in, I play a high elf phoenix sorcerer who has been disowned from his family and his boyfriend broke up with him, and he's really not great at making friends. He's a bit on an edgy rich kid asshole (which is okay in our group due to us all enjoying some funny inner drama, he's latched onto the other party members so is only at risk at actually fighting two of them- one due to them initially blackmailing him into staying, and one due to our gnoll gloomstalker ranger having high elves as his favored enemy and not realizing my character is a high elf). Point being that he has grown quite a bit as a character from being this entitled sheltered prick to still a bit of a dick but protective of the little family he's made of the party. Quite a few sessions ago started a trend of him trying to befriend animals, which started as a joke of me wanting my DM to let me have an animal companion and has now become an actual character trait (sort of a "im no good with people but maybe this bird wont leave me" way). He's kind of terrible at animal handling and more than once, there has been some team bonding in the form of a party member helping him pet a bird or lesser restoring an albino ferret of its rabies that we then had to release into the woods because our gnoll ranger insisted that he had to be "free", despite all of us players knowing that ferret was almost definitely going to immediately die. But because of all of this development, and also because I just really want him to have a familiar, I recently brought up multiclassing into druid. At first, my DM said no, citing that he was a sheltered rich kid who had probably never stepped into a forest prior to getting kicked out, but changed her mind after some talks about character and also the fact that I think itd be super fucking sick to be a phoenix sorcerer/wildfire druid, two subclasses closely linked with rebirth and growth which I actually think is extremely relevent to Rowarin, as he is trying to reinvent himself on this quest. My question is this, honorable judges, have I plead my case well and cemented actually good character reasons to multiclass as a druid, or should my DM have stuck by her initial ruling?

Will Cousineau

If it please the court,

Aaron Sterne

May it pleasure the court. I bring to you a case involving the oh, so contestable issue of Familiars. My sorceress healer ritual caster learned the spell Find Familiar to summon a lil raccoon.. He wears a sun mask and is named Ponto. The issue arose when our party split up to investigate a spooky manor. Due to some infortuitous roleplay reasons, the split had most of the party interrogating a man at a bar, with only our squishy wizard investigating the spooky manor. In an attempt to remedy this, I sneakily told our monk to follow Ponto, ordering Ponto to bring him to our wizard, seeing as I knew exactly where the wizard was: investigating the basement. They arrived at the manor, but seeing as it was more then 100 ft away, the DM argued that I could no longer tell Ponto what to do, so this is where he stopped. I argued that I told Ponto to bring him to our wizard, and I knew where the wizard was, therefore so did Ponto. He said the manor was close enough. I relented. The monk and my lil Ponto went wandering around the upstairs while the wizard was suddenly swarmed by vampires alone. After far too many perception rolls to hear a wizard battling a swarm of vampires (Ponto wasn't allowed to roll), the monk joined the fray. The DM decided Ponto wasn't allowed to help in the battle, and instead hid the entire time, citing that he'd read "somewhere official" that when a Familiar is outside of my range, the DM controls it fully. I argued that it would, at the very least act the way I had trained it to act, which was to jump on one of my teammates in order to give the help action, as well as allow me to heal them through touch. He disagreed, and Ponto disappeared from the battle and became entirely useless. There were many other things in this encounter that made us feel like he was working against us to end the session by vamping the wizard, but I bring to you this instance: Does a Familiar drop a command as soon as it's out of range of telepathy, and further, does it become set dressing from that point on? May the Dice Christ bless the Supreme Crit Justices and their tiny kin.

I Love Not Finishing My Sentences

May it please the court, My party is approaching a wooded ridge with a stream in front of it, and DM says I hear goblins talking to each other across the stream, but he says they haven't noticed us yet, describing the stream as being loud enough to drown out our voices a bit. We sit for a bit discussing a course of action, and the ranger decides to sneak up on them. I said I wanted to cast Guidance on her, and the DM says because of the verbal component of the spell, the goblins will likely hear me. I argued that because we had already been talking quietly and the goblins hadn't heard us over the noise of the stream, the verbal component shouldn't heard if our discussion wasn't. The DM says I am required to speak the verbal component extremely clearly, which would not allow for me to do it quietly, even though I said it is possible speak clearly at low volumes. Knowing what his ruling would be, I cast Guidance anyway because that's what I said I would do and I didn't want to take it back or continue arguing. 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

May it please the court, during a random encounter one of my players' HP got pretty low, but the rest of the party healed him to full health after the combat. The player asked if the character could have a concussion, and I, as the DM, said "no" since the character was fully magically healed and so had no reason to sustain a brain injury. Despite that, the player played the rest of the session loopy, like the character was concussed, and later messaged me that the use of one of his abilities gave him the concussion. I said that something like that wasn't the player's job to decide, and it didn't make sense in my lore. Was I in the wrong for stifling RP?

If it pleases the court; our party had gotten jailed on purpose to meet a character in prison. We had a moment alone in the cell and started talking about a sneaky escape plan. Our problem player out of the blue turned to the DM and told her he was blowing a hole in the wall and jumping out onto the rooftops with barely a "I'd follow me if you want to get out". The DM was neutral and continued the game but the other players and myself were peeved cause we were all clearly planning a strategy together and he wasn't being a team player.

Alex Kelly

A million apologies but I call this case THE RETURN OF TIK TOK... I'm still DMing a western-style murder-mystery campaign where the party has found the prime suspect of the Sheriff's murder: the town's doctor and curandero (and Sheriff's stepdaughter). In the ensuing battle to capture the doctor, the prime suspect was able to control and animate plants (cacti, tumbleweeds, and agave); evening the odds against the player's party. In response to this, Tik Tok the Clockwork Sorcerer (now LV10 ) spent TWO GOD-FORSAKEN TURNS becoming nude so he could then cast animate objects on his clothes to take care of the animated plants. I said I would allow it in exchange for his clothes being permanently destroyed when their HP drops to zero and the enemy having an advantage on him on account of literally being nude. Tik Tok of course stated that if anything, the enemy should be given disadvantage since the enemy would be confused by his nudity. As the Dm, was I in the wrong for making the cacti specifically target, knock out, and almost kill this nude sorcerer and having all of his clothes ripped to shreds? P.S. Tik Tok's Jockstrap did roll a nat 20 and destroy an agave plant creature.

May it please the court, During a fight, a party member cast Thunderwave at some zombies. The DM said I needed to make a saving throw against it because I was standing next to her. I corrected her that Thunderwave is a 15-foot cube that blasts forward away from you, rather than a 15-foot radius cube centered on yourself. The DM seemed to get upset, said that she’s been playing 5e for years, and I ended up having to defer to her ruling and take the friendly fire. Here’s the kicker: the DM cancelled the campaign a couple days after that session, saying she became too busy. (1) Was the DM justified in her misreading of the Thunderwave spell, even though it hurt me and I don’t think my friend would have cast it knowing that? Should I have shut up? (2) Do you think the DM cancelled the campaign because of me?

Jordan Valentine

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

If it pleases the court, I have a question about the dwarven Oath of Vengeance paladin I play. I play him as a quick to be angered devotee of the Columbus Crew, and our DM recently had him run into his mirror self, a dwarven paladin of Austin FC (we play fast and loose with the mythology in our campaign, look up #SaveTheCrew for context). Upon encountering the Gary to my Ash, I got within range and casted through my Channel Divinity: Vow of Enmity, You can choose a creature you can see within 10 ft. of you and gain advantage on attack rolls against it for 1 minute or until it drops to 0 HP or falls unconscious. However, another player suggested that if I casted this spell, and failed to subdue my sworn rival as a tenet of my paladin oath, it would be bad news for my character and I'd need to repent. The way I have been interpreting the tenets as written, I take the bonus action casting of this spell to be a mechanical means to gaining advantage in a fight, and not labeling the rival as my absolute sworn enemy, which would be done more dramatically through storytelling as the spell only lasts for a minute. However upon reviewing the relevant Oath of Vengeance tenet I'm not so sure: “No Mercy for the Wicked. Ordinary foes might win my mercy, but my sworn enemies do not.” It seems that the "No Mercy for the Wicked" tenet could be broken as I would be taking a vow to through my Channel Divinity on an enemy. I ended up not casting the spell to keep the game moving, but am still curious to find an answer. Would casting Vow of Enmity break one of my core paladin tenats should I fail to subdue him?

Not dnd, but a PbTA game. A problem player inserted themselves as captain of our ship and is making the campaign annoying as all get out. Any suggestions to curtail his flair for self appreciation?

Kevin Ladd

May it please the court, The case that I want adjudicated by this august body is an interpretation of the Dimension Door spell and allowance of repeated PC shenanigans. During a tense boss fight, I allowed the party's bard to take them and an additional humanoid sized boulder through a dimension door approx 20 feet above the head of the boss. This instance, I thought it appropriate to ask for a spell attack, and let them roll a bunch of extra dice for dropping a boulder on someone's head. This allowance of non-RAW shenanigans embolden my PC who tried to use Dimension Door for Portal levels of jumping around. The issue that came to a conflict at the table was when the bard used Dimension Door to put them 500 feet into the air, then waited for six rounds (approximately how long it would take for someone to fall from to the ground at that height) to dimension door again and use his momentum to turn himself into a bard shaped torpedo. I, once again, asked for a spell attack. They replied with the quote from the spell which says "You arrive at exactly the spot desired" as an argument that it should just work. My thought process was, 1. If they wanted to burn two powerful spells to do a bunch of damage, they are going to need to make a spell attack, or 2. If they wanted to do a bunch of damage without a spell attack roll then they would do an equivalent damage to a high level Magic Missile, or 3. They and their target would take an astronomical amount of falling damage, turning them both into pulp. My player disagreed, and the session continued with a bit of awkwardness. Was I in the wrong here?

Honorable judges if it may please the court, I present the case of colby The kobald vs ballista. I was playing a kobaldwizard who was 2 ft 3, (3 ft 1 in heels) and weared your generic wizard hat and adorable cloak, we were running through one house that was full of gnomes and we were making a lot of noise, the party couldn't decide what to do when we came to a crossroads with three doors. So I decided to just walk through one, I went through the right door and immediately got shot by a gnome with a ballista I attempted to cast shield but the DM said " this was a surprise round" Even though I said I peek through the door to see if there was Anything. And somehow I missed a massive ballista that blocked the whole hallway. Being a level one wizard kobald I did not have a lot of health so the ballista killed my character instantly! So I guess my question is twofold first should I have been allowed to cast shield even if it had been a surprise around (which I don't think it was) And secondly is my DM a jerk?

Nothing to bring to the court this month, just want to say thanks for amazing and hilarious content. Also sorry Jake that no one follows directions and writes short tweet length cases and writes paragraphs and paragraphs instead. 😂🙄

Arwyn Robinson

May it please the court! I DM for a party of 6 level 7 characters and I recently adapted the first chapter of Hoard of the Dragon Queen to throw at them. Without spoilers they're trying to liberate a town from dragons and cultists. While attempting to sneak into the fortified keep through a tunnel, my players battled a small scouting group of 6 dragon powered cultists. Most of the party came out untouched but the bugbear barbarian (Earl) ate a lot of damage. When the dragons flew in to join the fray everyone scattered. Earl charged solo down the tunnel and eventually through the trap door into a room full of cultists. He roared and started swinging so I felt like I had no choice but to cut him down. I originally told my player that because he was alone and had no chance for backup that Earl was perma-killed. He thought this was unfair and requested to make his death saves like normal so I compromised and had him roll all three with disadvantage on the spot to see if he would somehow be left alive. This was my first character death and I feel guilty that maybe I was too harsh. Should I have gone against what I think the cultists would do to spare my player after this reckless maneuver?

I DM for a group of my friend, girlfriend, and sister. My sister is playing a neutral evil character and the other two are both good. The further we get into the campaign the more I realize this alignment is an issue. It's getting very difficult to get the party motivated to engage with the story because half of them want to go off and try and save the city while the other just wants to try and make money. What do I do about this? Should I kill of her character? Offer her some sort of moral dilemma that defines her character as truly evil or more of a neutral? I don't want to make my sister feel bad, but also I don't think the campaign will be as enjoyable for anybody if it continues in this way.

Caleb Gardner

If you’re having fun and your player is having fun, I don’t see a problem here. :)

Elizabeth Lees

I was playing a Pact of the Blade Warlock. We were fighting against a demon that had a prehensile tail. At a point during the battle the demon grabbed my character with its tail and had me restrained. The DM told me that since it had wrapped its tail around my hands and arms I could only cast spells that were vocal. The only one I had was command and it passed that twice so I was out of spell slots. I had to beat a strength saving throw to get out of the tail but my strength was terrible so I kept failing. The rest of my team were fighting the demon and a bunch of its minions. Every round the tail would squeeze my character. Quickly my character I ran out of hit points and was rolling death saving throws. The tail didn’t drop my character even though it was unconscious. The DM said that it could sense that my teammates could heal me, and so it held on. It also kept squeezing. Someone on my team healed me and I would pop back up only to be squeezed by the tail and die again. This turned into a cycle. Squeeze. Die. Revive. Squeeze. Die. Revive. The DM was also very anti-shenanigans so I couldn’t summon my pact weapon with my hand against its tail so that I could stab it from the inside, or bite it, or try to cast spells using my feet, or use my mask of many faces to turn into a copy of one of its minions to confuse it, I tried everything but he would not allow creative solutions at all. This was a boss battle so it went on for awhile. 2 hours of Squeeze. Die. Revive. I was hoping that my character would finally die so I could go home, I was so frustrated. Eventually they killed the demon and it released my character. If it pleases the court I think that if a DM can homebrew a monster like that, I should be able to do whatever shenanigans I want, and if I’m so frustrated that I want to leave then you’re DM-ing poorly.

Rich Hilborn

May it please the court, Our DM has decided to ban Rogues from being in anymore of our campaigns since he seems to find them problematic. He argues that the sneak attack ability is overpowered, as well as impractical due to its name and mechanics. He says the extra damage should not count because having advantage on a roll or another party member near the enemy is not “sneaky”, like the feat suggests, 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 advantage on the attack roll or a someone near the enemy. The other players and I have done our best to try and convince him of the validity to the class and 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. We are hoping the Supreme Crit can help come to a verdict on this case, please. Thank you!

Alex Attwell

May it please the court. I was playing my first ever character, a Triton battle master/wild magic sorcerer named Grald. The incident occurred when my party got their hands on a deck of many things. When it was grald's turn to pull a card, he pulled the idiot card. It lowered his intelligence to 5. The dm and the other players then stated that Grald was too stupid to understand magic and could no longer cast spells. I argued that as a sorcerer I use my charisma modifier to cast my spells, but my Dm said again I was too dumb. So I ask this, should grald be able to cast his sorcerer spells? End note: my party sold grald's soul to a witch without my knowing to get the deck of many things.

Crane

Good morning your honors and may it please the court- I’m playing a storm cleric and am currently in the process of building a temple using the Strongholds and Followers book from Matt Colville- I had to miss a session and the other two PCs hired a dwarven construction company while I was gone. I have since found out that I the client at responsible for insuring the workers on site not the construction company- I think that’s an unfair contract and not one I would have signed if I were present and I’d like to get out of it but my DM won’t let me. Who’s the dick here?

Honorable Supreme Crit Judges, if it may please the court: I am DMing my first campaign. It's a homebrew storyline and I have introduced a handful NPCs to grease the wheels of the story. My players keep trying to add the NPCs to the party. I already created a DM NPC because it's a small group, but every relatively interesting NPC they come across, they try and recruit them. I try to say no, but one player, a warlock, insisted that I should let them at least roll persuasion. I think, sure, why not and set the DC pretty high. The warlock rolls a Nat 20 persuasion to recruit the second in command of a secret society. It turns into an argument about whether I HAVE to make the NPCs join the party on a Nat 20. I get tired of arguing and just agree. She rolls a Nat 20 to recruit another time as well. So now i've got 3 DM NPCs in the party, combat is unbalanced and super boring because half the battle is me sitting there attacking myself. How do I get out of this? Do I try and kill the NPCs? Incapacitate them? Have them just... go home? Do I retcon the ruling?? Help me, DnD Court Kenobi, you're my only hope.

AmberDextrous!

May it please the court: The case of the double time stop disintegrate murder. We were in a level 14 combat fighting a lich. This lich cursed the ranger to be vulnerable to necrotic damage and killed them. This wouldn't normally be a problem because 2 PCs have revivify. The Lich then proceeded to dimension door away with the corpse (The DM claiming a corpse is an object and not a person) counterspelling the sorcerers counterspell, before casting timestop twice to get over a thousand feet away and disintegrating the body, making it impossible to revive the ranger. Was this too extreme a measure to kill a PC by the DM?

I feel like as long as you’re consistent that they only have one counterspell and they always come from the same source, it makes sense. I could see a patron giving their top cultists a defense mechanism, especially if they know they’re being hunted by magic users.

Elizabeth Lees

should've taken his head. 5e is too lenient and it's silly

Summer Tribe

Honorable Judges and loyal Plaintiff, I was a DM for a group of friends that was supposed to be a short campaign, but turned into a much longer story than I had intended due to some interesting choices the players made. In the beginning I gave them custom items and spells, but once it turned into a 2 year session I found that it was extremely hard to plan encounters due to the OP items I gave them in the beginning. When I tried to adjust and put limits on the items to make for a more balanced game play I was accused of nerfing my players, I caved and continued on, but I ask, would you make the item less valuable, or make the encounters more difficult to compensate for the item? And have you ever given a custom item to a player that later on bites you in the butt?

Eric McDaniel

May it please the court: I would like to present the case of Bloodmage VS The Church Of Moradin. At the time of this infraction, I was running a dnd 3.5 game for a group of my friends. I had played with these people for a while, so I tried a different character creation style than normal. I followed the advice of Satine Phoniex, where I let the players create characters in a void away from each other, trusting them to create reasonable characters. I was a fool. A variety of things happened during that game, but specifically, I bring you the case of this blood mage. The player had created a wizard that sought to step into the blood mage prestige class, they all were level 5 and to step into requires level 6. Another player had made a cleric of the Mordenkainen pantheon, specifically Marthammor Duin. The two characters got along well, somehow. The issue came when the cleric acquired access to a church's library but failed their checks to find the necessary knowledge. They wanted to bring the mage in to look at books. I warned them that the mage would reek of abyssal magic, due to his practice of blood magic so they would need to make a stealth check to do it safely. Instead the cleric decided to go up to the mother of the temple and attempt to convince her that, this mage was a really good dude, despite the fact that he practiced blood magic. In-sueing, the blood mage was captured by the church's guards and was sentenced to be sent to trial in the kingdom's arcane college. They claimed I was being too hard for essentially removing the character from the game, but I countered that they could have found a way to get the information without telling the mother they knew a blood mage. Long story short, am I the DM a villain for my crimes or are the players just trying to hard to make their edgy Oc's come to life. (Addendum the two players later agreed with what I did, but in the moment I was a villain)

Amber Reese

May it please the court, I would humbly present my case to you all. I have recently started playing DnD for the first time in July 2020, and am playing with all newbies including our DM. He offhandedly mentioned during an early session that he was considering rolling death saves for PCs and not telling the results until we died or stabilized. I argued at the table that this robbed PCs of so much player agency, and basically was a stupid idea that I didn’t agree with. He did later relent to allow us to roll our own death saves after I had made a big deal of it. Was I wrong to kick up a big fuss right as he dropped that information during a session, or is this a situation that warrants a big fuss mid-session?

May it please the court, Your honors, I have been part of a D&D group for 4 years now, and we switch DMs and campaigns every now and again. Things with our new DM rotation have been rocky from the start. I'm talking rather heavy railroading and our choices hardly having any effect on things. But things have only gotten worse. Every single fight now ends with 1, sometimes even 2, of our 3-man group being knocked unconscious, and the third lives with under 10 HP. Our DM seems to take the game as him VS us, with the goal of a total party kill. What should we do? What CAN we do?

Cody Smith

If it may please the court, our party ran into an NPC from my character’s past. He was meant to be a one off character but we liked him so much our DM told us he wrote a whole backstory for him to keep him in the story. We nicknamed him Dummy Thicc Intern Chad as a running joke but he was genuinely my favourite NPC and I was excited to learn about his backstory because our DM kept hinting at badass things about him (ex, the 2nd time we ran into him he was in an underground fighting ring). I never got the chance however because a few sessions later we were in combat and he showed up and fought against us for suspicious reasons. I wanted to keep him alive to question him since it didn’t make sense for him to turn on us suddenly, saying that he was, “just doing his job.” I was using non lethal damage and none of our other party members went after him. Except our chaotic neutral paladin. Our paladin got the finishing blow and not only did he kill him, but he completely removed Chad’s jaw and smashed his skull in so I couldn’t use Speak With the Dead, as it specifies the corpse has to have a mouth. We found out later that I was right and Chad was working as a double agent but our Paladin still holds firm that he did nothing wrong. I felt like he wasn’t acting like a team player and eventually left the party months later because this wasn’t the only instance like this and I felt I couldn’t get along with his play style. Was I wrong to be upset with this player since he claimed he was just acting in character or is it kind of a dick move to make a character that purposefully goes against the wishes of the party and kills indiscriminately without asking questions?

May it please the Highest of Courts in all the land I play a dragonborn barbarian/paladin called Kalax, and she was given an internet-found homebrew item by the DM. This item does extra damage on a nat 17, 18, 19 roll of certain types (acide fire necrotic respectively), and on a nat 20 allows you to make the target vulnerable to one of those types of damage, it does NOT specify how long the vulnerability lasts for. This is all well and good assuming an enemy target is killed, however in a fight recently Kalax was charmed, and told to attack her follow party members. The nearest was my IRL brother, a warforged artificer with 25 *base* AC. I crit on him. Twice. In one turn. (It was awesome, I did 89 damage with smites) However, that means I made him vulnerable to two types of damage. My Question is thus - how long is he vulnerable for? Is he now vulnerable to these forever? Or should we give him an out? We’ve discussed this, and agree it’s a DM choice, but my DM is happy to defer to the highest of courts to make the judgement. Please can you help?

May it please the court. A few sessions ago, one of my player (a gnome wizard named Lilwon) was downed by a vampire bite (piercing+necrotic dmg). As stated in the DMG, the bite kills you if it gets you to 0 HP. However, Lilwon argues that his ring of necrotic resistance makes it impossible to die from necrotic damage. I argued that being resistant to necrotic damage doesn't make him immune. Lilwon's life is in your hands, your Honors -- I tend to lean towards him dying even if it's a bit harsh. Help me, your Honors, you're my only hope!

JoWade

If it may please the court, I play a roguish captain in a sci-fi game. We were defending a backwater town in a bubble from the equivalent of the empire. We created a choke point at the airlock. We were doing our best holding the line and slowly losing until a walking mech entered the battle field and started doing massive damage to the party. I was on an elevated sniping location protecting people from soldiers in jet packs. The walking mech ended it's turn near the ledge I was on so I ran and jumped into the mech. I was then told that it didn't make sense that a mech / tank hatch would be accessible during a battle. I asked if I could attempt to hack or force the door open. The DM said I could try but the DC was very high. I got a 30 on my roll (nat 20 + dex + expertise ) to hack the door. He then told me that it wasn't high enough to hack the panel so I back flipped off the walker. The party had to flee into the nearby mining tunnels from the massive amount of damage the mech was doing. I had to pick up the unconscious cleric and carry them into the tunnels and we collapsed the entrance. We waited in there for a full session before digging our way out and finding the army and mech destroyed by deus ex machina. Should the DM have asked for a roll if the DC was impossible? It's not like I was trying to one shot the mech. I justed wanted to Indiana Jones it.

Hobbad

If it pleases the court, this is a question about transformations. I played my first game of DnD as an Undead Warlock with the Cloak of Flies invocation. The party was hired by a village to kill a nearby necromancer. I and the cleric were the only ones to survive the encounter. However, when we returned to collect the reward, the DM said that since CoF says that it only ends with a bonus action or by becoming incapacitated and I never said that I turned it off, the thirty villagers saw that I was also undead and attacked me and the cleric. Since the villagers surrounded us, we couldn't disengage or flee, there were too many to kill our way free, and we were low on health and out of spell slots, we basically had no way out. The session ended with us being beaten unconscious and then hanged. I argued that this was kind of a bummer, especially since the cleric didn't make a mistake and got executed, too, but he said that we were high-leveled and should expect more consequences, and that I should have paid more attention to the mechanics of the ability I picked, and since she was a more experienced player, she should have known something like this would happen. Who was right?

May it please the court. I am DM-ing a group of 6 friends which was arranged/managed by one of the members (we'll call them X), who were seemingly to be the one most excited to play the game. X currently plays a homebrewed Warlock combining 2 subclasses features (Divine & Hexblade) and also have a wolf pet companion. As the game progresses and as part of X backstories, I granted X an Avatar of their deity, another wolf from the spell Find Familiar and as a Pact of the Chain Warlock, X can sacrifice one of their attacks so the Familiar can attack. It was all fine until X took the spell Flock of Familiars to conjure 2 more wolves, and wanted them to also join initiative and attack enemies (RAW they can't but I allowed one of it to attack, so now X has 4 turns in a round). Because we are playing Theater of the Mind, it can get pretty slow during a long battle, and I don't want to make the other players feel neglected because X is rolling more & having more turns, leaving the others especially those that can only cast one spell/attack once per round get bored, I began giving the others more items/features and options to choose during their turn. Somehow, X thinks I'm playing favorites and did not give out options for them as I did for the others, I tried to explain it was because they are already playing well and had a lot of options, but it seemed that X still wanted more attention on them, and I decided to ignore their pleas for now. Was my decision wise? Should I just do RAW and stop the familiars from attacking? Try to coddle them a bit more after this? I am honestly stumped. May the honorable justices cast some light upon my distress. Thank you very much.

Yura

May it please the court: I'm a PC in our campaign but I'm asking on behalf of our DM, who is a good friend. She has confided in me that two of the other PCs have privately messaged her multiple times to beg that she add a romantic prospect for them in the game. She's trying to find a way to have it organically come up in the story, but also still have them roll charisma or whatever skill might be involved when they meet a potential love interest. She's upset that they're unhappy, but she doesn't want to just shoehorn something in. Who is right? Should she give in to make the players happy or should they chill and let the DM create the situation "naturally"?

Jamie

May it please the court--I was the DM to a member that wanted to play a Mogogol fighter, which is literally just a bipedal frog character. I allowed it as googling showed it to be balanced well enough, but due to his characters weight being 2lbs I insisted that if he was hit by melee damage he would have to roll with advantage on dex saves to use a tongue whip ability as means to stop himself from being launched like a whffle ball through the air. The ability was easy enough as it was but I gave advantage as a default to be lenient. He insisted it wasn't fair due to being the teams fighter, but in my defense I had already allowed a person in the party to play a homebrewed super saiyan so I was at the end of my rope already. Am I the asshole?

May it please the court: one of my player’s characters was captured and sentenced to death by beheading by a scary bad guy. The other players decided to try to save him, and a fight at the chopping block ensued. None of them managed to cut their friends binds or reach the headsman on their turns, so on the headsman’s turn, I had him behead the character. My friends were incensed, saying that the headsman should have had to reduce the player to 0 HP before he chop his head off. I disagreed, saying that he’d have to be a very bad headsman if it took him several rounds to do his ONLY job. The PC was bound and chained and prone, and none of the other PCs had done anything of substance to save him on their turns. The argument went on forever, until I finally relented and said that he’d only taken damage. They then rescued him easily and it was very anticlimactic. Should I have stood my ground and taken his head, or were the masses correct?

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. I seek to clear my name of accidental fantasy atrocities. In a game I had been playing, my character took up studying blood magic, which is incredibly taboo in the setting. Later the party came across a necromancer who planted a field of corpses and being the just and honorable group we were, killed the man. However during the first round of combat I took it upon myself to cast a spell that lifted this giant obsidian obelisk from the earth and split it apart, dropping the two halves upon the necromancer and a zombie in what all shall agree, was one hell of a dope ass trick shot. Unbeknownst to me though, the obelisk housed a powerful blood spirit which then was released by my very cool spell and raised an army of undead and lead it to war against a nearby province. My character stayed behind initially to buy time for the party and died in the process. Now it's been a year later and I'm still dragged for "that one time Haku did blood magic and dropped an army of the undead on the city." I'd like my name cleared of these charges and my honor restored as I believe the only thing I am guilty of is doing a sick nasty rock stunt to kill two enemies with one stone and had technically never used blood magic even upon my characters last dying breath even though I missed every warning sign that the obelisk was clearly evil and not to be fucked with. Thank you for hearing my case.

Fetterccino

May it please the court. I come to re-open a quick yet classic debate: can a caster who is being counterspelled counterspell themself that first counterspell? As a DM I rule on my table that you can't, because (as per the PHB) the purpose of counterspell is to interrupt a caster during the casting of a spell. If that caster stops the original casting to cast a counterspell (i.e. interrupts the sequence of verbal & somatic components) then they can counterspell the counterspell but, in a way, also counterspell themselves by interrupting their original casting. What do the supreme justices think? Does my argument make sense, or should I be counterspelled? All the best from Amsterdam!

David P

May it please the court. I present the case of The War of Temp HP and Meteor Swarm. I was running a level 20 PvP tournament for a large group over the course of a month. In the semifinal round I had a Circle of Spores Druid up against a Abjuration Wizard. The druid has unlimited wildshapes and with every counterspell the wizard could replenish their abjurative ward. Because they had the ability to get more temp HP very easily, this fight went on for a while. Eventually three hours had passed and I, the DM (though really more of a referee for this game) was getting tired. I called for a ninth level meteor swarm in the arena to knock a lot of health down and speed up the end of the fight. The spores druid was knocked down from the spell and the match concluded. Was I in the wrong for pulling this spell out after a 3 hour battle that seemed never ending?

Greetings honorable justices of the realm, and may it please the court, I submit to you my case: I recently ran the Lost Mine of Phandelver module by candlelight for my roommates during the power outages caused by the Texas winter storms. In the Goblin cave, one of my players (playing a dwarf wizard) decided to sneak up behind a bugbear and cast the Burning Hands spell while touching the bugbear's back. Since the spell calls for a Dexterity saving throw, I rolled against the wizard's spell save DC and succeeded, only taking half damage as a result. My player argued that since he passed his stealth check, was half as tall as the bugbear, and was touching him with his hands, there is no way that the bugbear could have conceivably dodged the spell, and claimed that no saving throw should have been made so full damage could take effect. I argued that it would set a very annoying precedent in the future if that were the case, since he would constantly try to touch enemies in order to avoid the saving throw requirement listed in the spell. Am I being a stickler for the rules as written on the spell, or is my roommate being a conniving little weasel?

May it please the court. Honorable judges, a close friend of mine has recently taken up the DM mantle for our group after I finished running a campaign. She is fairly new to the game but has really fun and new ideas. The only problem is that there are so many rules to know in DnD that she will sometimes forget a few. This isn't normally a problem, but our other session she threw an illusion mage at us that had self-cast invisibility on itself. We were forced to blindly try and find who was hitting us and even after hitting it she didn't roll concentration to try and keep the spell up. This turned what should have been a quick mop up of an encounter into a unnecessarily long and frustrating one. When I asked after the encounter was over the whole thing was waved away as a "well I forgot so it doesn't matter". My question is this, judges : was I wrong in trying to call out a breaking of the rules to a new DM or were they in the right because it was their encounter?

A brief update for the court on events following the Ape Case! This isn’t related to the initial case, but on the unusual happenings post-conviction that spooked the hell out of me. In the session immediately following the previous DnD Court case, the entire party was plagued by 2 rolls. The game even started with 3 different people rolling a 2 one after another. The stats person of the party tallied the numbers, and the number of 2s rolled in session were double what they should’ve been. In all, the likelihood of all of those 2s being rolled and for it to be a 2 in the first place came out to odds of about a 1 in 4000 chance of happening. I’m presenting this as evidence that the Dice Devil does listen to these court cases and WILL enact judgement upon those who are declared guilty.

Maddy Leaman

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, I play a human fighter in my campaign, and am hoping to select a feat that my DM seems unlikely to allow, based on prior conversations. While I believe a character should be able to choose any feat, my DM argues that my character should not be able to pick the exact feat I have selected, as it does not fit the character's development. For reference, I am playing an Echo Knight who has been reincarnated potentially hundreds of time over the past generations and cursed with bad luck, but I wish to take the "Lucky" feat. I believe this could fit the potential benefit of my shadow Shank being a new part of my current reincarnation, which my previous lives did not have before. Thank you.

Michael K

If it may please the courts. Last session my group and I found a blocked celler door. When we went down to the celler we met an injured woman. From context clues she was clearly suspicious. The issue is though that I used to dm our group, and one session I had used a succubus before. When our dm asked for wisdom throws and i passed, i decided to act against the succubus. I didn't attack her right away, but first when she tried to escape (which she did). In an effort not to metagame I attacked late and she escaped. Was I wrong to not attack her when I (the player and not the character) knew it was a demon?

If it may please the court, I'm in the process of joining a new campaign run by an acquaintance. The DM is fairly reasonable in all regards except for one thing; character names. For lore reasons they insist that all elves need to have names that are at least loosely based on Quenya or Sindarin elvish, and have them relate to the character somehow. While I initially opposed this, I did ultimately name my Palid Elf "Neledani Ithil." All would have been fine until I told them that the name was a loose translation of the popular Kids in the Hall sketch "Three for the Moon." At that point they insisted I change the name, but I think it works despite the comedic origin for a third level Warlock/Sorcerer/Cleric Palid Elf. The starting session has been pushed back for over a week because of this disagreement. I've grown attached to the name despite not appreciating the naming rules but at this point it's affecting other players. Whose in the wrong here, and what can be done to rectify this conflict? Thank you very much.

Dave 3D Art

Your honors, this happened many years ago. My party and I were fighting a young dragon as a group of level 3 idiots. I was playing the Goliath barbarian who had done the big man little man trope with the halfling rogue. The dragon was losing somehow and tried to flee. At this point my barbarian with a strength of 19 threw the halfling at the dragon. The halfling agreed with both daggers drawn ready to pull some action movie BS. My dm told me to roll a strength check for the throw. Nat 20. The whole table erupted into cheers, then the dm said “Roll again.”... nat 19. Not a crit but still a 23 paired with a crit. The dm stated the dragon being 60ft away was too far and the rogue would only make it halfway. The table protested and I felt a little robbed. There was no explanation for the second roll. It just was what it was. It’s something that’s always bummed me out a bit, because it would have been such a cool moment. After that I became the forever DM and rarely get to play characters. Either way, what would you guys have ruled in the situation?

Pork Chop

May it please the court, This happened a couple years back when I first starting listening to the podcast and wanted to try playing dnd, this ended up being my first and last time having the chance to play so far. I linked up with some friends I knew from college who had a regular game and they offered to start a new campaign as some others wanted to try as well. I had made a half-orc Paladin, our DM suggested giving them a theme or code to live by to help with role-playing them, and so I chose "No crime too small" Fast forward a couple hours and we find ourselves in a market in town, the DM asked me to roll perception and told me I saw a child stealing bread and stared at me for a good while before asking what I do. So, I didn't want to make my person out of character or anything and I struck the child in the stomach as hard as I could with my fist, told him not to steal and bought him a loaf of bread. The party wasn't impressed with it and I guess thought was too harsh, even though I tried to explain I only did it because of the code I wrote down for my half-orc. After that I didn't end up hearing from that group again, I guess what I'm asking is, is it better to avoid trying to play stuff like that out even if you've described it as an aspect of your character or do you roll with it even if it won't be popular and potentially get the boot from the campaign? Thanks! Just started the new campaign and can't wait to get further into it!

GaviRhino

If it pleases the court, my gripe is from my first ever campaign of d&d. Around session 3 the party had been captured by the followers of a dragon cult. My character (a Gnomish sorcerer) being a spell caster, was bound by shackles that fully cover my hands keeping me from casting spells out of them. Our DM stated we were under the watch of a lazy guy barely paying attention. With this information I cast ray of frost saying the metal would be weekend so I could break them against the walls of our cell. Our DM argued this wouldn’t work because that’s not how metal reacts with cold. I and my other players said it should work because that IS how metal would work. Eventually he argued us down and we gave up. To this day I argue this should have worked. My question is, was I in the wrong, would this method work and would it be fair? Or was this all reflecting my character making it truly gnomish behavior.

Dearest NADDPOD Justices, may it please the court. Recently I completed my first full campaign DMing my homebrew setting, and overall it was a success. However , there is one moment that caused some contention with some of the more seasoned DND veterans at the (virtual) table. After having made a mess of a cave of scientist Kobolds, the party found what they were experimenting on, a large dragon egg. The party’s earth genasi barbarian, Granite, grabbed hold of the egg, being adamant on having it in his possession. However, the party’s rogue/fighter halfling named Cheddar wanted to cause a little shenanigans and yoink the egg for himself in the moment (not for evil intentions, just to be a little annoying and cheeky). I had him roll sleight of hand and acrobatics, as he would have had to both jump up and finesse the egg away from the larger genasi. After using several luck points, he was able to get scores of over 20 on both rolls, and I deemed this enough for him to pluck the egg and abscond to the outside of the cave to try and hide. This quickly led to an argument between the halflings player and the genasi who was not happy to have the egg taken. 3 other players at the table (all more experienced DND players of 20+ years) chimed in to agree with the genasi’s player and say that this sort of thing was not something that could really happen given the rules and the circumstances. They argue that no reasonable roll would have been enough to make this occur . The barbarians character then proceeded to RP smashing up everything in the cave until the halfling came back with the egg. I was just trying to have some Band of Boobs-inspired hijinks, am I a fool? Should I eat a watcher-berry for this? Or should the more experienced players suck it and be cool with some hijinks.

Maxwell Cornwell

This makes me happy.

Elizabeth Lees

If it pleases the court, I have been the usual DM for my friends and, after a nice break playing a character have decided to start up a new campaign. I have one friend who always wants to play with us but when we play often doesn't pay attention and only doesn't interact with roleplay. I've asked her about this and she admits that she just likes hanging out with us and isn't really interested in roleplaying. The rest of my group like roleplaying and I can see how it might cause some issues. Am I overreacting? This player is happy playing a strong quiet barbarian, so maybe I should just let it be, but I'm worried it will cause a rift at the table. Should I let this friend play or how can I make it the best game for all involved?

Dillon

DM here wondering what our esteemed justices think of a situation that came up with a new group of mine. The party has been preparing to extract (kidnap) a target from a heavily guarded building for a couple sessions, and finally went in last session. Two players were inside in disguise, with the rest stationed nearby waiting for the two to cause a big distraction using a mini-bomb they made that would give them a chance to sneak in. The players inside manage to successfully bonk the target while he's pooping in the bathroom, but then get hit with indecision and spend five minutes talking without deciding on anything. The others did remind them of the bomb, but not the rest of the plan. After I prompted them to make a choice, they fully deviate from the plan and commit to a course of action that quickly leads to a downward spiral that ends with one of them bleeding out unconscious while the rest of the party goes full BLAP and rushes to them. After the session, people started pointing fingers at each other trying to figure out where exactly everything went wrong. Eventually one of the players inside said that the other three, or myself, should have chimed in and reminded them of the original plan after they bonked the guy. The others argued that they weren't inside, so it would have been metagaming to just tell them what to do when they weren't there, and the others should have tried to contact them if they needed more advice. My question: What do you benevolent justices think should have been done in situation? Was anyone in the wrong? Should I have reminded them of the whole plan myself? I don't think anyone is necessarily wrong here, but I do understand the frustration. I've mentioned to them before that I'm fine with chiming in to remind people of what was planned if they forget, so long as they don't try to force others into it. Thanks for reading my case! I typed it on my phone while waiting for my vaccine, so I hope it makes sense.

Thortron

Lower court judge here, that is extremely rad

Jack McAlevey

May it please the court. I recently let our DM play at my table because he said he missed being a player. He has a ban on inter-party conflict (that I don’t agree with) because he says it makes for a worse story. Imagine my surprise when he introduced his character (who had their quest item) by not sharing the loot but instead stabbing the other rogue over it! I argued that if he gets to do it at my table I should be able to do it at his, but he disagrees. I don’t want to stab anyone, just smack our wizard upside the head for threatening my cat familiar (who I guess isn’t a party member??) without taking damage. Please settle this argument. Is it fair to do something at one table while banning it at your own?

I've been waiting for this. May it please the court, I lost my action due to flavor. The scene played out as follows: My character, a warlock currently disguised as an eccentric commoner with sunglasses, was last in the turn order, so I had time to think this through. I wanted to walk out of the tavern, say a cheesy 80's one liner, and then eldritch blast a tough enemy my party was currently fighting with. My mistake was that I said that I wanted to minor illusion a shotgun and make it look like the blast was coming from the gun. The dm ended up forcing me to minor illusion a gun and I lost my action without letting me to at the very least choose. He said because I said "minor illusion" first, I had to go with what I said. I protested and said this was just for flavor and that I was trying to damage him and not stand there for a turn. Is this right? For clarity, this was my exact wording: "I'd like to walk towards the door, grab an empty mug on the way, kick open the door and say 'Hey assholes, I came here to kickass and drink ale. *Points to empty mug* and I'm all out of ale' Can I say for flavor that I minor illusion a shotgun and eldritch blast out of it so it looks like I'm shooting them with a gun?"

BrethrenBlev

May it please the court: I am playing in a game with a large party (7 PCs , one of which is the DMs character) which includes a Kender Rogue and a Gully Dwarf Ranger, so everything takes forever because of so many PCs, but also our small folks are always involved in shennanigans. The Kender is CONSTANTLY riffling through our pockets and stealing our stuff and just generally behaving like a nuisance most of the time. The player gets to do things without the other players knowing, regardless of the characters knowing. Her thievery even resulted in her almost killing our Dwarf Cleric when he grappled her to stop her from killing an NPC Lizardman who called her a thief (after she stole from the Lizardman). The DM ruled that she would get her sneak attack dice as it would be a surprise to have a friend knife you during a grapple. The backstory of this game includes that we have all known each other for 15 years. The attack on and subsequent almost killing of the Dwarf was not addressed in game because the Kender just walks away anytime anyone tries to talk to her about her behaviour. I am struggling continuing to enjoy the game because a) it is hard to believe that this party would travel with such an annoying Kender just because of a shared history, and b) that they would all go on exploring the temple as if she hadn't almost killed her friend. The Kender's player, anytime anyone gets annoyed with her character, says that is how Kenders behave. I do not have an issue with party drama, however, it it unrealistic to me that her behaviour wouldn't be dealt with in-game. Outside of the game, she seems to be a somewhat sensitive person and is also the DM's girlfriend. He encourages her Kender's antics. Should the PCs forcefully address this in-game? Should the PCs, out-of-game, communicate to her that her Kender antics are getting a bit out of hand and ruining some enjoyment of the game for several party members? Thanks!

May it please and tickle the court. I was playing a lawful good, and sometimes cowardly kobold paladin named Kraven. He is now dead, this is because whilst on a different plane of existence we were starting a war between some giants and a group of angelic elven archers (dm homebrew) we were on the side of the giants and losing badly so the bard and wizard decide to escape through a dimension door and our resident chaotic sorcadin (sorcerer, paladin) decides to charge head first in to line of fire. Kraven being the lg paladin he is finally overcomes his cowardice and dives in after the sorcadin. The sorcadin quickly dies to the elves but I mange to find some cover and start killing some of the nearby elves, but when my turn ends the dm just says all the elves surround me and I'm dead. I argue that he should have rolled for the elves to see if I would have survived and given me a chance to escape/find somewhere to hide. For clarity I will mention that there were about 10 elves and they had a fly speed of 60 I think. So I put it to the court, should kraven have died outright or should I have been given the chance that the dice may have rolled in my favour and I might have had a chance to escape.

Welliboot 1

May it please the court, this case concerns a shark, a guitar and a surfing rogue. For a bit of context, this was my player’s fourth ever session playing, and my fourth ever session DMing. The party had just been in a ship battle encounter with storm based layer actions. The Battle ended with the rogue in question jumping off one of the boats and trying to (and here i quote Miguel Desalad) “use my guitar as a surfboard and ride the waves away”. I asked for a series of athletics checks to see if he could ride a guitar during a sea storm, which he failed (because obviously). After losing his guitar he asked me “can i search for a shark to befriend and ride?” I asked for a perception check. He passed, so i said there was a shark there. Instead of an animal handling the rogue used his whip to try and lasso the shark underwater. This obviously failed and the shark attacked him. The PC died alone, in a storm, his corpse consumed by a shark. Was this ruling too harsh?

Jou Anodyne

Honorable Justices and may it please the Court. My case involves a dispute about spell range and characters that are flying. This was during a boss battle in which the party and the enemy were on ships sailing parallel to one another (they were Umberlee cultists and had stopped the ships with magic, so no issues with the ships moving). My character was flying 40 feet in the air with the Fly spell, when the boss on the other ship cast Chain Lightning on me, which has a range of 150 feet and arcs to other targets within 30 feet of the first target. I was exactly 150 feet away from the boss straight across, but I argued that because I was 40 feet in the air you had to calculate the distance to me taking into account the height as well. If you do a quick calculation to find the distance, it's about 155 feet, just out of range. The DM disagreed, and said it hit me anyway. We were fairly low level and this was supposed to be the boss' one time big nuke spell, and it ended up instant killing two squishy characters because they were already at low health (one NPC and one PC). We revived the PC quickly, but the NPC (who was story important) stayed dead because we only had one revivify. Disregarding that the boss maybe shouldn't have had such a strong spell at that level, to this day I maintain that the spell should never have hit and never arced to the two characters that died, am I right? Also, I'm in law school, so here's some fun actual court language if you want: WHEREFORE, for the foregoing reasons, Plaintiff respectfully requests that this Honorable Court issue declaratory judgment stating Plaintiff is correct, and grant all other relief deemed equitable and just.

Mike

May it please the court. I’m a first time DM running a WWE themed campaign where the party was hired by Macho Man to steal a magical artifact from the ancient necromancer The Undertaker. I made this monster sheet myself and used a legendary action to tombstone piledrive the barbarian off the top of the tower they were in and on The Undertakers next turn (which was right after the legendary action) to dimension door back to the top letting the barbarian smash into the ground after a failed saved arcana check. I was told my action economy was bullshit and didn’t give the barb enough chances to save. Did I wombo combo too hard or should this go down in history like when mankind got thrown off the top of the cell.

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

Frank

May it please the court. During the last session I ran our crew made it to the hideout of the morally grey rascal they were sent to bring to justice and I finally got to get them to the next phase of the campaign and the story we've been building for months. It was all going well until, after a nice cooking montage, one of the players tried to flip the longtable and assault the camp leader while surrounded by 40+ potential enemies. I wanted to avoid one player getting everyone killed so I had guards restrain him and did some mental gymnastics to justify the leader not icing them on the spot and still telling my players about the extremely rad heist I've been setting up, but I don't feel great about it. Should I have killed my friend for the shenanigans they pulled to respect their decision and the world I set up? I don't want to railroad them into specific scenes or choices but they were building towards this event for months and it was one decision away from TPK if I let it ride. Justices of the court, did I make the right call?

Luke Polito

Dont have a case this time but a little update on the dreadfull Link Pinkystink. So a few session after the burning of the wings incident i was going to guide them to the big anti magic city of this campaign, but I changed it to a religions empire with expert clerics instead, so that Link might get his wings back quicker by being nice to someone. That was literally my only criteria. Player did not approve by default and before the session started the group (who are real life friends) who kind of hired me to DM for them said that i wasnt the kind of DM they were looking for, since i made a super epic adventure and they just wanted to be the looney tunes crew. So I was asked to leave the discord group so that they could continue on with a new Dumbass Master. And I must say, for now im good with just listening to dungeons and dragons while im collecting sand for an indoor volleyball course. Its Too hard finding DnD groups in Norway, and by experience, random online groups are NOT good.

May it please the court! My DM set up a skill/endurance challenge for our group of level 16 players, which we got through with two character deaths. One of these was Gilbert, my wizard's intern, who is 5 levels below everyone else and tags along for a stipend and university credit. One of our home rules is that every PC gets 1 free revivify and after that must suffer negative levels for any true deaths, and Gilbert had already used his freebie. Ten minutes after the fact, I discovered that Gilbert had an ability which would have kept him alive, but the DM still made him take a negative level. Was I wronged or was this a just punishment for my forgetfulness?

May it please the court. In a past campaign I played a wizard (necromancer)/artficer (battle smith) tortle named Grok. His artficer subclass allowed him to build a steel defender. This defender can look however you want but will be meduim sized. That being said i wanted to make a steel defender in the form of a Crab named Shiny. I also wanted to make this defender the size of a golaith as goliath are meduim sized creatures. But my DM said it meant meduim size comparable to a dog. I argued that meduim size covered a lot of different height i.e dwarf to goliath heights and there was nothing saying i couldn't make shiny as big as a golaith. We concluded that i had to start around dog sized and could put in some work and upgrade Shiny overtime. I thought this was a great compromise but i just wanted to know the court ruling of if i could make shiny goliath sized right off the bat.

Kelley40k

If it may please the court-I have a case regarding the consequences of a massive shopping spree. My party had the chance to do some shopping for the first time in our campaign. With that in mind I found a general merchant inventory and shared it with the players for them to go town on. In hindsight I should of maybe screened the large list before sharing as there were some interesting purchases (one players now has a portable ram) However, my question for the benevolent and right honourable justices concerns one purchase in particular. A 10 ft wooden pole. I argued with the player that such an awkward item would mean disadvantage in future potentially stealthy encounters. He disagreed and tried to pitch that it should be retractable/collapsible. What is your recommendation in how to approach players who want to add niche items to their inventory? I await your righteous and fair judgement.

I run a few games with the same crew and we've been playing together for a while now. There is one player who is relatively new to the game but constantly tries to meta game and pull fast ones like lie about GM inspiration points he received and used. He was even so bold as to first agree with me when I said he used it only to try to gaslight me meer minutes later. Fortunately my girlfriend also caught it and backed me up in that last incident. I've been putting a hard stop on bad behavior like this and I've even implemented a 1d4 psychic damage penalty on extreme cases of meta gaming (i.e. trying to sell the idea that plates were throwing knives which his character had proficiency in). What is the best way to curb this behavior without flatout kicking him from the game?

Jessica Petra

May it please the court, A group of friends and myself where playing Pathfinder. We decided to camp in the game, and I had the bright idea of fishing while keeping watch, we where on a lakes edge. To my delight, I rolled a natural 20 on my survival for fishing. In response, our DM said a cougar attacked me from stealth. I argued that a cougar should have gone for my pile of fish first, but the DM said no. Our cleric Enlarged my armor clad dwarf, who then fell on the cat, and the DM told us it took no damage. The cleric and myself where very frustrated and made sure the DM knew. Where we in the wrong for being mad about this? PS, the DM then added magic ring to the fish that my character (the fisher) couldn't use, refilling the random item from one I needed.

Phoenix Trosper

I think that technically dice fall under the category of a gaming set, which is a type of tool. At least that’s what roll20 says.

Theodore Giesen

After months of watching actual play shows, about two years ago, my friends and I got together to play our very first game of D&D. We were all newbie players around the table. Our DM had played before, but this was his first time DMing. On our party’s arrival in town, the group Rogue immediately wanted to pick some townsfolk pockets. I said my Bard character would try and stop him from doing that and my DM ruled that I had to roll perception above his stealth to see him. I rolled a nat 20. It was my first ever roll in my first ever D&D game. I was over the moon. The Rogue rolled below a nat 20, but his modifier brought his stealth to a 23, whereas my perception modifier only brought mine to a 22. Our DM ruled that I could do nothing because I couldn’t see him. I asked “since I got a nat 20, isn’t that an auto success?” My DM argued, “no, nat 20s only count during battle and nowhere else” I let it go, as to not derail the game and argue with the DM, but it left an incredibly sour taste in my mouth knowing that my first ever roll in D&D was a nat 20 that was essentially flushed down the toilet. Who was right? Are nat 20s auto successes in contested rolls?

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. In my home campaign we meet this NPC that was acting pretty sketchy from the beginning. They were way to knowledgeable about the problems we had been dealing with but unsure of normal humanoid activities/customs/etc. My character does not trust this person but everyone else LOVES this character! And all for one reason their name is Hughie... short for the word HUMAN!! I took a level of exhaustion to stay up and watch this character do more sketchy stuff. Just because the name is funny doesn’t mean this NPC is are friend. Please tell me I’m not crazy.

Not a case, but I work as a clerk for a justice of a state supreme crit, and here are some fun vocab words: Concur: If a justice agrees with the court's result but for a different reason, they'll offer a concurring opinion. Or if the justice agrees but wants to make an extra point. Dissent: Justices dissent from the majority opinion of the court when they disagree. Granting cert: This means that the supreme court agrees to hear a case, since usually it's up to the supreme court which cases it hears. You "grant cert" on a case. Enjoin/issue an injunction: Whenever a court commands someone to stop doing something, they enjoin them from doing that thing. Whenever they order them to do something, they issue an injunction telling them to do something. Dismiss as improvidently granted: If a supreme court agrees to hear a case but then decides that was a mistake and just want to get rid of the case without deciding it, it will dismiss the case as improvidently granted. Remand: A supreme court might remand a case to the trial court when they want the lower court to find more facts.

May it please the court, our party was thrown into a level 20 portal to fight a ballrug ( we were originally level 3 but leveled ul for this fight) we defeated him but decided to explore more of the portal with our level 20 abilities. My charecter is a master mind wood elf rouge named Vance and has taken to the Dale Gribble style of throwing pocket sand at the enemy to blind them and give them disadvantage on attacks. The DM and I came up with this mechanic on the fly and that I can only do it 5 times per long rest ( my dex modifier) and used my acrobatics to set the dc which was a 22. In this fight we were in the mouth of a giant wale and the big bad was on the tongue. She quickly got frustrated and decided to flood the room so I could not fling my pocket sand, was this justified?

If it pleases the court I would like to plead guilty to harassing a DM. I was at the NYC live show and saw Caldwell use a dash action and misty step. At the time I had a player that had a bonus action dash so I thought that Murph had mistakenly given Caldwell two bonus actions. I tweeted this at him. Im a dumbass. Please execute me.

Adam McKinney

May it please the court. I, a human ranger, was keeping watch alone over a party member who was sneaking into a castle. SuddenIy I saw my party member about to be discovered by the enemy. I decided to try and shot a flaming arrow into the castle in hopes of creating a fire and distracting the enemy. My DM loved the idea and said that since it sounded so cool I had to use performance to shot the arrow. I hated this idea since I would go from adding +7 to the attack to adding nothing. I therefore argued that since I was completely alone, in the top of a tree, I had no one to perform in front of and could therefore not use performance. My DM argued that if you are singing alone by yourself you are still performing in some way so I had to use performance. I was about to argue more, but the rest of my party all told me to stop and not to argue with the DM, so I shut up and made the attack using performance. Luckily I got a 17 and made the shot, but I still believe I should not have been forced to use performance. What is your judgement?

To the sovereign throng of distinguished dungeoneers, may it please the court! I was playing a character called gavesh shivel who was a pirate in our campaign along with 5 other party members, one of which was a fighter in our team. Relatively early into our campaign our party had defeated some enemies after which we proceeded to commandeer their ship. Upon inspecting I found a safe in one of the cabins and proceeded to crack it open but made some noise while doing so. This alerted the fighter in our team who proceeded to come storming in. I was able to hide the money from the safe on my person (being a pirate and all it was only natural to want to keep it) and there was no evidence that anything had been in the safe. The fighter asked multiple times if I had gained anything from the safe, to which I rolled 5 -yes 5- deception checks against his insight and succeeded. After this back and forth they proceeded to ask me to empty my pockets, which I tried to do without showing the money but failed. This lead to money spilling onto the floor and then taking half of it. Was I being greedy? Should I have shared with the party some of what I found despite my traits? Or was I done dirty? I will accept any ruling by the court, thank you.

Ricardo

If it please the frickin court!! The case of the nat 20 death save (but 30 feet underwater!!) During the first combat I EVER ran, one of my players decided to jump from their little boat and attempt to swim while being attacked by a bunch of sirens. After a few rounds the player was overwhelmed by merfolk and dragged deep underwater, he then went down. on his second death save he hit a NAT 20! it was established he was 30 feet down, and after using his action to disengage, he swam up with his 20ft swim speed, and ended his turn 10ft underwater. I made the call that since he had no breath to hold, he immediately went down again, but was in a much better position to be saved by his friends. He argued that I was being unfair and he should be able to hold his breath for more rounds. The whole party survived the encounter, but because of his choice to basically jump into shark infested waters, what should have been a fun but challenging battle became super difficult and almost deadly. I am still teased that this battle was too hard and I feel bad that my player felt robbed of his nat 20, but was I wrong to have him start drowning again and go down again? Even after I established it would be a campaign with real consequences?

Kenna L

Hello distinguished panel of judges and may it please the court, This case concerns notetaking and player memory vs character memory. I play in a campaign that centers around the lives of tiny folk that live inside a mall (everything from rodents to discarded pieces of food to lego people). My character is a Rosy Maple Moth warlock. Since we’ve encountered so much chaos and mayhem in our campaign, we recently came under questioning by a sort of inquisitor who thinks we may have something to do with the violence because we’re always at the scene. During one of these interviews, I couldn’t remember something that occurred a week or two prior in-game (several months out-of-game). I argued that my character would remember this detail since it just occurred for her and that these events are the only thing on her mind, but the DM wanted it to be authentic and more of a fun interrogation to only use what we as players were able to recall. I can see the value in that but I disagree, especially since I take extensive notes and our party reviewed our stories prior to this interrogation, but just happened to not go over this particular fact. Do you think characters should be limited in memory to what the players wrote down and are able to recall?

Duergars have a +2 to strength, how did he roll a 1?

May it please the court. My players were in a published module where there is a place that they can trade parts of their soul for incredible abilities like a temporary 26 strength score and at-will Command spells that invoke disadvantage on the saving throws. The module says that if they accept too many of these trades, their character becomes an evil NPC controlled by the DM and the module provides no solutions for what to do after this happens. The party’s Ranger and Bard became NPCs in this way, and I wrote a small side quest for the remaining two PCs, along with temporary characters for the players of the Ranger and Bard, to go fight their friends and get them back. Since NPCS have different skills than player characters, I boosted them a bit and made custom stat blocks for them to make it a challenging fight with unexpected skills and abilities. My players were upset when they got their character sheets back and they were the same as they were before they were made into NPCS. They kept the abilities they got for trading their souls, but not the additional abilities I added to make combat more interesting, and insisted I give them those abilities. Am I wrong for giving them a challenging fight and disappointing them when they didn’t get the new abilities? Thank you for your ruling.

May it Please the Court. I am playing an artificer in my current game and I wanted to pass the time with the party in a short rest playing dice. The Artificer has feat that lets them make any tool of their choice magically it they work at it for 1 hour. I argued that while it was not a tool, game sets function like tools in the rules of the game and if I can make a hammer and pliers magically, why could I not make dice? My DM rolled their eyes at this and asked me to stop reaching. I do not think it was not much of a reach, and would enjoy some magically made dice for short rests. Am I being unreasonable or are they?

Steven Hoffart

May it please the court, I have a player who is a Kalashtar cleric who has taken a vow of silence. Kalashtar can speak telepathically to any creature they can see - they don't even need to speak the same language, just *a* language. This has caused some cool roleplaying scenarios with creatures who previously would have never been diplomatically available. However! They can only connect their minds with one creature at a time, so the rest of the party don't really get to interact at all, and now that they know this approach to monsters works - this player is getting all the screen time. How can I give the rest of the party more involvement?

I submit to the court with great humility - a guilty DM... As a fledging dm, I was super psyched to bring my players to their first ‘boss fight’. Naturally this was designed to be a tough fight. However, despite providing ample support, including a ‘highly suggestible NPC cleric’ to help, I accidentally killed one of players characters. They were only L3! Should I feel bad, or is it justified if they don’t take advantage of all I’ve provided to help them?

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?

JesterTheCleric

May it Please the Honorable Unsworn Judges, My group is playing Curse of Strahd where I play a Tabaxi Shadow Sorceress named Juniper Jet. To avoid spoiler territory I’ll be vague; my group was punished by some baddies after we lost a battle. The punishment was for each of us to “lose” a part of ourselves. We didn't know what we were losing, only vague hints (things like Victory and Silver Tongue). 3 out of 4 of the group, including myself, had been knocked out, so the one remaining party member was forced to choose the punishments. They chose for Juniper to lose her “Silver Tongue”, which we later learned she now has disadvantage on all Charisma based checks and skills. The only way we earn it back by stealing something from the big bad. This won’t happen for a while since we’re level 4. My DM feels bad but really wants me to stick with what I got, so I’m trying to make it work. As the groups face this almost feels like an unfair punishment. This happened a few games ago and I’ve since gotten used to it, but it’s still way more challenging to persuade and deceive and even just talk to people, plus it’s not as satisfying to be a sassy cat who can't successfully sass. Is this punishment too much for my charismatic kitty, or should I swallow my disappointment and try to make the best of this charisma curse?

Kaylie Elise

If it may please the court I'd like to present a case about the ethics of stealing another DM's world. My groups first and longest DM was our at the time friend Bryant(fake name) and his campaign had all of our favorite player characters and fun npc's but we stopped playing when we got busy, so he made it so that our characters failed our quest and he started DMing a sequel campaign where we played as the children of our original pc's, but we've all since fallen out with Bryant because of due to him being creepy, homophobic, transphobic ect. Now honorable judges I raise the question, as the only person who never missed a session and who remembers the world and the characters the best, can I take over the world and dm it for my friends so we can continue playing in this cool world made by a very uncool person?

Liam Carrion

May it please the paw paw I'm a DM and I have a human warlock player who likes to intimidate his way out of fights by channeling eldritch energy and looking scary. His intimidation is high and in the past I've let him roll and he's successfully made encounters easier by scaring off low level grunts. Should I stop this behavior going forward for the sake of challenging game play or should I let him continue with caveats since I don't want to impose on his character choices Thank you, and I am prepared to fight in crick justice wrestling match

Dan Callery

May it please the court, in one of my first ever games my group had hitched a ride into the city on a postal wagon. Among the travellers was a Halfling thief (which we later learned was an old character of the DM) who we discovered had stolen the chest attached to the wagon. We tracked him to the Great Hall in the new town and the DM proceeded to what I can only describe as bully us with his old character. First claiming that we could not reach him at the other side of the hall as there were just too many people at the feast to get through. This led to a confrontation on the roof where his character beat the crap out of us while invisible and escaped with the valuables. Honourable judges, what is your opinion on DM's who use their old characters to show off how cool they are. Thank you and may it please the court.

Adam

Disclaimer: I’m a first time DM, so it’s very possible I boned this one. One of my players got hit with a Geas (sp?) spell with instructions to “go directly to the Big Bad’s lab, and do not resist.” My players then began to argue with me about what did and did not constitute resisting. The affected player tried to call to the rest of the party for help, but I maintained that that action would constitute resistance and would result in them taking psychic damage. They counterargued that they could do whatever they wanted as long as they kept walking in the direction of the lab. Was my wording too vague, or should my players have accepted my ruling and moved on? Thank you all! This show inspired me to take the plunge and start my own campaign.

Shannon Herbert

May it please the court, A simple principle question here - would a highly guarded 'witness' to a crime bring guards with them to the toilet? We needed to talk to/ kidnap the witness, and argued that surely she would be alone on the can, so we could use some combination of dimension door and polymorphing (think nannerfly in a jar) to capture her, but the DM adamantly refused, saying there was NEVER a point in the day she wasn't being watched. The whole thing left us feeling a bit crap, if your honours will pardon the pun, so would appreciate your input so we can wash our hands of the entire affair.

JessMayWin

Yo, not gonna lie, if someone tried to do this in any game I played, I would legit throw subtlety out the window, and tell them to STFU or GTFO. Melora bless you for the patience you all have shown for that. I know I wouldn't.

Also, I was holding the dragon by the neck.

Nathaniel Dazy

May it please the court, I was recently in a game where two spell casters—myself, a Bard and my friend a Warlock—stocked the Charm Person spell. We were caught by a Verbeeg and Ogre, but lucked out on initiative! We both succeeded the charm, and essentially ended combat by befriending these two fairly dumb NPC’s. However, we have two other PC’s in the party whose initiative came after the Verbeeg and Ogre, and was wondering if the DM should have gone for them. Likewise, since the charm was cast on the creatures at 1st level, we wouldn’t have necessarily befriended each others targets either. Did we end combat correctly? Or did our epic bard and warlock wombo-combo confuse our DM into ending an otherwise interesting but deadly fight? Thank you for your time, sincerely Andrey and Alyssa.

Andrey M

If it pleases The Court, I had a DM who I’m not sure if they just sucked at descriptions or what... we were running a module and the bad guy was a Cleric with a mace. We entered the room he thought he was hiding in and immediately fell under the effects of the Silence spell, which rendered our casters useless... so we all run up to beat the shit outta this guy. Our Rogue went first and proceeded went up to stab the guy. Here’s the rub: despite getting rolls of 18-20, each time they “hit” the DM said that it “appears to have no effect.” One TPK later, we asked what the hell was going on. He said it was the perfect illusion copy from the Trickery Domain. We tried to argue that it was an ILLUSION and, therefore, the Rogues blades (and all of ours) would have gone right through it instead of it “appearing to have no effect on the target.” The DM persisted with the whole “it was a PERFECT illusion” line, which led to us giving up on him and finding a MUCH better DM. Were we wrong to argue that it was an illusion and therefore should have noticed when we tried to hit it with weapons that they went right through him?

Ragnar Færdwynd

May it please the court. I am preparing to DM a campaign for 6 people that is set in a steampunk style military school. My sister, who is one of my players, wants to create a nature cleric with a horse familiar that attends class with her. I argued that is absurd and you cannot bring a full-sized horse to class. I offered her the opportunity to have a horse given to her by someone with the spell "Find Steed" that she could shrink to cat size in order to bring it to class. She reluctantly accepted this proposal, arguing that a horse is not that different from another familiar. Honorable judges, am I being too harsh by not following the rule of cool and allowing a horse to sit next to her in a classroom? I humbly accept my judgement.

Daniel Kreider

Justices, Jurors, and Jake, I take issue with pass without a trace. Set the scene: the party walks up to a door guarded by two guards. The guards are actively looking for anybody close by but the party is using pass without a trace. The party effortlessly walks by the guards and opens the door. I said it’s impossible, even with that spell, that they would not be seen. But the perception checks take side with the players (no nat 20s that would let the guards see them). Am I being the fun police? This has come up a few times now, so I am attempting to quell their overuse of this game breaking strategy.

Dylan Petty

If it pleases the court I plead you hear my case. A player of mine is a druid. One spell he constantly uses is barkskin which sets your AC to 16. He feels that he should add whatever creature he transforms into dex bonus to his AC. RAW says the AC can't be less than 16. Some sources say you ignore all modifiers to AC when using barkskin. We have stuck with setting his AC to 16 while he is in wildshape and using barkskin. However he brings this up every session. My problem is I can see it going both ways. Your skin becomes tougher so your natural AC is 16 + your dex mod. I can also see that because your skin has become wood like you would loose your ability to evade and counter attacks. I need a ruling and am willing to except whatever you decide going forward. Edit: I obviously wasn't being very clear. The player wouldn't use this spell if the creatures AC was higher than 16. He normally uses this when turning into a small creature for recon. He argues that if he turns into a swallow (European the table came to decide) then the birds AC should be 16+ the birds dex. Another player feels very strongly against this. Thus I need a ruling.

Raymond Nalty

A player in a campaign I’m in uses a 4e class in our 5e campaign with DM approval. This guy does stuff that sounds too good to be true and my DM has been letting things slide. This quickly became a one man show and it’s really taking away from the other 4 players’ experience, including myself. I mentioned something to my DM and we looked up the class online. Turns out the guy made up half of his feats and abilities. When my DM asked him, he said, “I like to take creative liberty when I play a character.” I’m asking for him to be kicked out of the campaign for making a custom character without approval while my DM feels it’s more appropriate to have him adjust his character. Please judges, how should this be handled.

Matthew R

May it please the court In-line 2nd café we had a ice wizard decided to split the party and ended up getting herself killed thus killing her familiar that was still with us. We were able to revive the wizard but our dm was a coward and revived her familiar witch we argued against for punishment for splitting the party! thoughts? #frozen2spoilers

AJ C.

May it please the court I’ve just started to DM and my players and I just had a session 0 and my good friend is going to be playing the owl folk from the new unearthed arcana but we both agree that flying at level one is kind of broken we both think it should be replaced by something else what should we replace it with

Oh god

FusRohNahSon

If it please the court— honorable judges, I just completed my first story arc with my players and we had a blast! Near the end of the session was a big lord dump and one of our bards played their lute to accompany the story being told by one of the NPCs. I played some lute music from YouTube in the background and it really set the scene. About twenty minutes later we were RPing a different scene and the bard asked if they could roll their Hit Die and get some HP back from the Song of Rest they played in the previous scene. I said no because she didn’t say that she was casting said spell. This led to a brief little argument about wether I was being too strict or not. She sided in my favor but I have to ask: was I being too much of a stickler by telling her she had to call out the spell at the time she was intending to reap its benefits or should I have been lenient and gave her the win?

Adam Giebner

May it please the court: A fellow player in a new online campaign has chosen a character that's the same species, class, and even has the same first name as a character I play in another campaign: a tabaxi bard who plays a violin, and is named "Strings." We share our other characters and their Hero Forge minis all the time, so she definitely got the idea from me. I know that immitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it's bothering me! I've already pointed out the similarlies in a humorous way, hoping she would change her mind, but she didn't really engage. On one hand I feel like that's my baby, but on the other hand I feel super petty. Should I say anything more or should I let it go and just play?

Dustin K

May it please the court My DM has said that for my new character I can choose whatever I want as a character, so I chose a penguin bard, cause the penguin is always wearing a tuxedo. He said that the idea is too ridiculous and that I have to make a "more reasonable" character, after he allowed our barbarian be a gorilla. Is the dm being unreasonable in not letting me be a penguin bard?

blob209

May it please the court: Around 10 sessions into a campaign, my DM realized that my paladin Eleanora only had 8 intelligence. In his opinion, because of this, Nora should not be able to read, and should speak only in broken Common (restrictions which he attempted to impose on her). I disagreed and didn't do it, but the question still haunts me. Please fair justices, who was in the right?

Jack McAlevey

Honorable Supreme Crit Justices, May it please the court, I am DMing a low magic campaign and a player wanted to play a fire Genasi, with fire for hair and everything. I said no and offered a compromise of letting him use the stat block and just look like a normal person. He denied my compromise and said it was my job as DM to make it so his character works in the world. I said there is no way I can have a world where magic is mostly legend and a dude who is just on fire all the time is a normal thing. AND the Fire Genasi player was the loudest voice pushing for low magic. Help a DM out Murph.

Austin Johnson

I’m in a campaign right now, and we were in a cave that had a white dragon in it. My character is a barbarian, and the sorcerer in our party polymorphed me into a giant ape. The ceiling was like 60ft in the air. I was able to climb up the wall to the ceiling where the dragon was hanging from. I successfully grappled the dragon, but the DM wouldn’t let me body slam the dragon, because of his ability to fly. I think thats dumb, because I don’t think a dragon could fly with a huge creature on its back. Thoughts judges?

Nathaniel Dazy

I'll try to be brief. P. S. Axelsson Esq, litigating on behalf of Caldwell Tanner vs. one Brian Murphy of Los Angeles. On 20/3/2021 or thereabouts, defendant alleged plaintiff was in fact "not god damn Bug's Bunny" and denied the use of a button as ammunition. Counsel for the plaintiff refers defendant to the story of Karl XII of Sweden who was, in fact, killed in 1718 by a brass army coat button filled with lead, fired from a musket. ( Https://www.thelocal.se/20080111/9628/ ) We look forward to this hearing and for justice to be done.

Patrik Axelsson

If it pleases the court, I DM a group who are all brilliant at RP and at combat, so it really takes a lot to challenge them. This is fun for me as a DM, but I recently ran into a problem. As a big set piece fight in the campaign, I had them face off against a hoard of Summer Eladrin, whilst having to protect 4 NPCs (who had Bandit Captain stats). In the end, due to me rolling high, they ended up defeating 17 baddies and saving the day. But the problem is that the XP reward I calculated put them up 2 levels, something I believe they earned but all the advice I sought said was a bad thing to do. You’re honours, was I right to bump them two levels? Or should I have only levelled them once?

frazninja

May it please the court. I see that my last case I was a bit too brief, and I feel like I got misunderstood a lot. - When I said that I loudly disagreed, I meant it more as a saying that I recognised the DMs desission, but that I disagreed with it, no wall was punched and I did not raise my voice. - When I said that the mood had died, i meant that after spending 20 minutes looking up the rule, since the warlock player did not remember where it was, it got more quiet, not because i said i disagreed with the DMs decision. - And regarding judge Axfords “He is on your team, why are you trying to rule against him”, if a player gets too powerful, the DM would have to balance with that player in mind and if the rest of us are less powerful, it would be bad for my “team” in the long run. I would just like to get a fair ruling without misunderstandings. My original case: “May it please the court! I was playing in a group with a warlock who said he had read in the player's handbook, that if he used an action to cast a cantrip he could then cast any 1st level or higher spell as a bonus action, this was after he had cast eldritch blast and darkness in the same round and I objected, we then found the rule he referred too, and the part he said that he could do it was "You can't cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action", the DM agreed with him, and I know rule zero and all, but imagine if it was eldritch blast followed by a fire ball, but I loudly disagreed with the DM's ruling and I felt the mood had died a bit after our discussion, was I in the wrong to disregard rule zero?”

Mikkel Voigt

May it please the court, I would like to present the case of my table vs. Dodgy dice rolling. I run a biweekly game for a group of new players and a longstanding ttrpg veteran in order to get new players into the game. I love this, since new perspectives fuel this hobby about changing your view to a fictional character after all. This has gone swimmingly, until a new player joined the group. The OG crew of the game brought to my attention that the new guy had some seriously insane, statistic bending luck, and a habit of hiding and/or picking up his dice after rolls. I confirmed the sketchiness at the next game, and even took measures to prevent fudged dice, but this guy went out of his way to grab a dice box that hid his rolls or picked his dice up very quickly before others could confirm the number on the die. Should I execute harsh justice against this new player and create an awkward tension for a while, or approach him with a come to dice christ meeting and try to convince him not to cheat?

May it please the court, I was playing a tiefling warlock named Jim around level 5 at the time. We wer e playing storm kings thunder and in a fight with some giants my character was crit on by a thrown boulder and was killed instantly by going negative my max hp. For this game, our dm decided to include a plot armor clause that allowed Jim to live at the cost of a large setback, I chose to have both of my legs horribly broken(don't try to good a God, bev). Fast forward to level 7, our party comes upon a prosthetic limb store (introduced after Tasha was released), the helpful salesmen offered both standard and cursed prosthetic legs. We decided which legs I should get as a party and we had a unanimous vote which ended up in 4 to 2 in favor of cursed legs. Was I wronged to receive cursed legs, as it saved our party 40 gold, or should I have received standard legs for a measly additional sum. (we had about 750 at the time as a group)

John C Schultz

May it please the court, Our group has a rule that if one person can’t make a session the DM will play the character. More than one gone and we will reschedule. This was our second session and we were put up against a pretty tough enemy and DM was playing for absent PC. This resulted in absent PC being turned to stone. I tried to help while the rest of the party ran. Because of this we both were turned to stone and shattered in session 2. As in we had to reroll characters super early. Am I right to be mad at the DM for killing off an absent player even if we decided the DM could play for him? Also should I be mad that he gave us such a tough fight in session 2?? I’m still mad about this today and the fact that my party left us for dead also is dumb so please toss them into some jam filled pit or something at the very least. ❤️

Tyler Draehn

My honourable judges Murphy, Axford & Cauldwell, if it please the court, I present not an accusation, but some case law I'd like the court to rule precedent on: When one player can't make a session due to illness or such, it seems to trigger a huge avalanche of the rest of the players postponing too. As DM, I prepare a lot for our games, how can I stop the cascade happening? Is it RIGHT for me to stop this happening? I just want everyone to have a good time!

Tris Oaten

If it may please the court, I’ve been running a homebrew world for a year now. I started dming this game having never played a game of dnd before. In the game we have a halfling ranger/paladin. When the pc decided on multiclassing I asked the pc if he wanted a sword or to continue with a bow. They said bow wanting to maintain the aesthetic of a ranger from a werewolf cult in the woods. So I made him a homebrew item that allows them to smite on ranged attacks. The other dms I talk to say this unbelievably broken and overpowered, but it’s a party of four at level 8 now. Should I nerf this pc or just keep having fun with ranged smites?

Carter Carscadden

May it please the court, I present to you the case of the Anti-metagamer. I was playing a Dragonborn necromancy wizard named Beowulf in a campaign who was always trying to be thematically spooky but in practice I was helpful to the group in combat/RP scenarios. In a huge fight where the session before I was captured, I was under the Modify memory spell and made to attack the party. Eventually an NPC used a lesser restoration on me, but a player chose to attack me that round anyway and fully went for the kill, resulting in 2 death saving throws failed and ultimately my death. He argues that because his character doesn't know what Lesser Restoration is, and he didn't know I was being mind controlled, he had no reason to believe I was a good guy anymore (especially with me being spooky) and said it was the right choice to kill me. I get not metagaming, but thats crazy right?? EDIT: it was actually Modify Memory but I wrote Crown of Maddness, hence no visual indicator.

Jack Campau

May it please the court, my case involves a blind character using his tremorsense ability to counterspell a spell being cast from behind a stone wall. The party was fighting a gang of githyanki pirates at an astral seaport. Oko, the party’s earth Genasi stone sorcerer , had enclosed the pirate captain with a Wall of Stone, and I knew I had been whomped. On the captain’s turn, he used his 8th level Demiplane spell that I planned as an escape hatch, which requires only somatic components. Oko, who is blind but has tremorsense while standing on stone (similar to Toph from Avatar), said he wanted to counterspell it. I said that since the captain was hidden and entirely surrounded by a wall of stone, Oko didn’t know the captain was casting and wouldn’t be able to detect the hand gesture. He argued that his tremorsense could detect the vibrations, and if anything the stone surrounding the captain would just make it easier for him to detect the spell because the vibrations of his hand motion would bounce off the walls. Ultimately I let him try to counter spell it, which he did after burning a luck point and a bardic inspiration die. It was an epic moment, but did I give in too easily in letting his tremorsense detect a somatic spell casting component?

Overall this case is very minuscule, technically Faerie Fire only lets you make targeted creatures glow green blue or violet light, my favorite color is Orange, we were in a survival setting and I used faerie fire on the river to be able to see where the fish were and throw a net in, I wanted to make them glow Orange cause it’s my favorite color, that is all this question is, should faerie fire be allowed to be any color the caster wants or is there some integral reason it has to be green blue or violet. I like Orange, let me make the fishies Orange. My DM ignored my request which didn’t change anything at all but flavor, I still got the stupid violet colored fish.

Jack Malizia

Honorable judges. Hear my concerns. As a DM whenever I have my players fight a humanoid boss they always have 1 counterspell. This is because all 3 of the characters are casters. Another reason is that the human bosses are from the same cult which has magic items gifted to them by there patron. My players are obviously upset by the counterspell but not sure how much since they do joke about it and keep the game going. However I still am not sure if Im doing the right thing? Should I keep this failsafe for every cult boss or should I let my players go nuts. For reference the counterspell comes from a magic item and is always 4th level

FusRohNahSon

Hello, first time DM and never player, I am running a homebrew game at my college for my friends, and I decided to pit my players against a sort of doppelganger, it was a clone of a player that was indistinguishable from the real one except it didn't have a reflection in the puddle which was expressly mentioned in the description of the room. to make a long story short, it took them 3 hours and a chair almost being thrown at me for them to figure it out, and even now, they still ridicule me about it even though I insist that they just didn't use their resources, Who is right in this instance?

May it please the court, Our party's cleric was given a magic item, which was essentially a "Little Nicky" flask that allowed him to capture creatures, and then he could release the creature to fight for us. Time came to release the creature he captured, and the DM had the bad guy cast banishment on it. When the cleric dealt damage to the bag guy and told the DM to roll concentration for the banishment spell, the DM looked up the spell, then said that he doesn't like how it works, and just rules that the creature was planeshifted with no save. He then said, "the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away." What's your ruling for the DM changing a spell just because how he WANTS the spell to work?

May it please the court, I have a player who is also a dm elsewhere. This pal backseat DMs quite a bit, telling other players what to do, meta gaming, saying how players do the things aka speaking for other players, rules lawyering, and getting mad at any house rules I have. This backseat dm has even messaged me about managing another pc's character sheet. . . The other pcs don't really comment on it in game, but I can tell they notice. This pc is a good pal, but can't seem to take a hint as I have tried to more subtly handle this. How do I get this friend to stop sliding into my dms per se?

George Koors

May it please the court, My players were at a fighting pit, fighting a tabaxi and half-orc on a platform above water. A shark was released into the water, and attacked one of my players because they had a pet rat on them. The player argued the shark would go for the tabaxi instead, because its scent would attract the shark. I argued that the tabaxi was clean and would not attract the shark, but the player brought up that the rat was cleaned with Prestidigitation earlier. Who would the shark attack?

Honorable judges! In a Star Wars themed dnd game, with all of the Star Wars logic incorporated, I played a Jedi. We had to break into a vault at one point and I attempted to cut through with my lightsaber. I rolled an attack on the door and got a 17, which was a 23 with modifiers. The DM said I failed at cutting through, which I accepted. But then my companion, a tiny Jawa, tried to kick down this solid metal door that a lightsaber couldn’t scratch. He rolled a nat 20 and the DM ruled that he easily plowed through the door. I argued that my high roll in addition to using a lightsaber should have beat a simple kick, but the DM said that a nat 20 is an instant success, no matter what. He later told me that he never intended for us to be able to get in, but let us do it because he he said the nat 20 forced him to. Should he have allowed that nat 20, which ended up being around a 24 with modifiers, to break a door that a lightsaber couldn’t?

May it please the court. In a past campaign my D&D character (a wizard) found a portable hole. Later, during an elaborate encounter our DM expected to be very challenging, we whomped our DM and defeated all of the enemies easily. During this encounter I pulled some shenanigans and used my portable hole on the ground in front of a patrolling Duergar, casting prestidigitation to make the hole smell like earth in hopes that he wouldn’t see it (stupid, I know). The Duergar stopped to investigate the hole. I rolled an opposed athletics check to push him in. He rolled a 1. I rolled a 2. I then folded up the hole and let the Duergar suffocate to death. My DM was so upset that these shenanigans worked that later he created an encounter where a Tabaxi stole my portable hole. I haven’t let him live this down ever since. Was my DM justified, or being a sore loser?

Elrohir Shmoon

Judges and Justices! May it please the court! An update from Taruk the Tiefling... DM!? I took your advice and let my brother in law be the DM. When I texted him all he responded with was "ok. Bet" I rolled my coffeelock and was ready for the session. At the beginning of the session he told us to be prepared for a TPK. The combat did not last long and not a single one of the PCs was downed. The session ended early because he was expecting us to have to roll new characters. I am back to being the DM every week.

Paul Hoffmann

What are your stances on underwater talking? If players have waterbreathing cast on them, can they still talk underwater? ( can someone notify me if they use this question, since I don’t actually have access to dnd court)

Is one of my players right for attacking our guest because it's what "her character would do"? For context, the guest is the younger sister of another player, who joined the campaign for a couple sessions while that player was home for Christmas. The player being litigated upon is our former DM. Her first character left the party behind unprompted for a 'personal quest' and she made a new one that was 'antisocial'.

Darby Nicole Mishra

In a campaign I am in, one of our players couldn’t make the session and as it is a regular thing where someone misses we decided to just play their character. As this happens quite a lot, I decided to take advantage of this and burnt through all of their spell slots buffing my own character and nearly got them killed making them act as a meat shield for my squishy halfling sorcerer. Apparently this was unfair and my character should make it up to them in a future session. I think it was totally fair as we had scheduled it way in advance and it’s not like I had their character murdered, although I may have tried slightly. I call upon the noble court to settle this judgement. Honk honk

PLEASE DO SOME CASES IN FUNNY VOICES! BALNOR SHOULD BE A GUEST JUDGE. PENDERGAST TOOOOO! I NEED SOME OF THE OL' TWO CREW AS WELL. IM FIENDING PEOPLE, PLEASE DRAGON VAGINA!

Vonvonvon

Is your character cursed?

Scott

If it pleases the court, I put forth the idea that you should be able to use insight on a letter. My DM disagrees and says that because you cannot hear the intonation of the words being written you cannot infer the state of mind of the writer. But I ask, can you not see if their hand shakes while writing? Perhaps they are nervous or afraid. Is one part of the letter written quickly and the other more flowing and calm? Could it be that they were simply rambling in the first part and came to their point and senses or perhaps 2 people wrote this same letter!? Can you not infer to the writer's state of mind with an insight check? Basically, there's a misunderstanding with an NPC that my PC wrote a letter to and my DM says that they would not be able to roll insight against my persuasion/deception (as they would in a face to face conversation) because it's in letter form and I simply disagree with that ruling.

It might be fun to put Brennan on trial for all the mean things he's done as DM lol

Diana

My DM won't let me take the Lucky feat because he says it doesn't fit my character's story. Seems like he's ok with others taking the feat, so it's not that he is saying no to Lucky because it is over powering. Just he doesn't want me to have it. Am I wrong to be upset with him?

Danny B.

If it may please the court, I have a case regarding flashbacks, backstories, and betrayal. Recently, I started DMing and I decided to take a page out of the NADDPOD book and use flashbacks to explain in-world the characters’ sub-class choices. I decided to show three separate moments from their childhood as they progressed into the characters they are now. The first two went really well and I spent a ton of effort on them all, but then we got to the paladin. The paladin is a fallen Aasimar that became fallen when he switched allegiances after becoming tired of the slavery within societies that worshipped his original deity. One of the cornerstones of his backstory was an annual festival, the first time he went he saw slaves eating last but accepted it as life following his church mentor’s explanation. Year after year he became increasingly more upset with the slaves’ treatment until one year he punched said mentor. I set the scene for that first festival and made it clear he was only 9, but he RP’d it as if nothing had changed and it was just his character in present day. I tried to keep RP’ing and whittle the 9 year old down, but he decided to stubbornly die on this hill. It really took the entire group out of the experience because the progression then didn’t make any sense. When I asked him about it he said “oh I forgot that was my backstory. I haven’t read it in a while” My question for the honorable justices: should he know his agreed-upon backstory, or should I have told the players that we were doing flashbacks and they needed to freshen up their knowledge? I chose to have them go in blind to keep suspense and mystery. Also, I chose to explain this as the character dreamed (all the flashbacks were via dream) of what he wished happened opposed to what actually happened. Was that a good call or just a cop out that removed some player agency?

Holden

No cases, just a big ole thank you!!

Dmkampz