Court Case Submissions!

I saw this one a while ago and cannot stop thinking about it. I need more details. Are you SURE this was the only option? Why did you agree to it rather than try something else? Was this DM the type to only give you one chance to get an important object? Is it possible the DM was joking when he gave that option, then just went with it when you agreed? I cannot help but think there were other options, like why not try and pull a heist?

As somebody playing in a campaign with a doublecasting Cleric, I stand in solidarity with you against the word of the judges.

Scott

If the honorable judges haven't already recorded the episode (or even if they have), I hope this case may please the court: I run a campaign for my kid sibling (15 yo) and a couple of their friends, aka the kiddos. It's fun and full of shenanigans, and I've been a benevolent DM for these beginner players, including giving our fire genasi rogue a potion of animal friendship. She's been holding on to it for a while, trying to find the right animal to befriend, and I frankly forgot about it. If I had remembered, I wouldn't have sent them up against a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Our paladin got a good hit in on the dino before the rogue slammed that potion, and one failed wisdom save later, the kiddos were chillin with a T-Rex. Our sorcerer and rogue furthur charmed (not magically, just high charisma rolls) the T-Rex into following the party around for the rest of the day, and I even had Bart (the T-rex) chomp into some would-be attackers for flavor while they long rested. I felt I couldn't actually just give them a dinosaur companion, if only because it would have been a huge crutch preventing the kiddos from actually learning how to play combat. After the 24 hours were up, Bart shook the rogue off of his back and swiped his tail at our paladin before running off into the jungle. I felt like that was reasonable, but the kiddos were DEVASTATED. They argued that they had charmed Bart into wanting to stay their friend, but despite those pleading teen faces I stuck true to my proclamation that Bart was gone for good. Fair court, hear my plea and resolve my distress: am I a cruel and vengeful DM for taking away my players' animal companion? Or was I a just and wise parental figure in making sure the kiddos learned without a cool dino pet to chomp all their problems? Thank you either way! -Taylor (they/them) P.S. if you're reading this I hope you have a good day!

May it please the court, Truly a technicality and interpretation of the rule. Our party is going on a stealth mission. One of our members wants to cast invisibility on our paladin’s mount. The spell reads that everything the target is wearing or carrying is Invisible. If the mount is carrying party members, will they also turn invisible? Is this a mockery of the rule or just the right amount of shenanigans?

Marley McDonough

Hi! Just a fellow D&D player/part-time DM giving non-requested input. In my group's experience, players/PCs behaving consistently antagonistically toward other players/PCs can be very annoying. With someone being secretly antagonistic and leading to a situation like this, I try to imagine what the campaign is going to look like when the other players and their characters find out about the antagonistic warlock character. My suspicion is that, even in the event that they aren't annoyed/angry, the logical thing to do would be to have the rest of the party kill the warlock PC. If this solves 90% of their problems, why wouldn't they? The real problem happens after this. Now, not only do you have PCs being paranoid because they might be betrayed by party members in the future, but you have real-life human players who are paranoid because they can't trust this warlock player. Additionally, you as the DM (I'm assuming you're the DM?) are setting a precedent for allowing this, meaning that the players' distrust will possibly extend to you, and perhaps to each other. My experience is that not being able to trust your party/the other humans at the table severely limits gameplay mechanically and roleplay-wise. Why have your character open up to the party about their mother who was strict but supportive during a time when your character's home country was occupied by an oppressive force, when it's possible that a party member might use that info to find your mother, kill her, and manipulate you to their will? Why try to plan a stealth mission into an evil castle with your party when someone might just scream your location while you're stealthed? Why play D&D at all if you can't do those cool things because you can't trust anyone at the table? My personal opinion is that antagonistic play is likely only fun for the person playing the antagonist, but not for anyone else. I honestly would recommend that you have a check-in with your warlock player, then perhaps the whole group, and potentially ask the warlock player to roll a new PC and take over that warlock character as an evil NPC. If you read this far, thanks for reading! I'm sorry if this is too much input. I couldn't help myself--learning about other D&D groups is so interesting!

ThePob

May it please the court I have no idea what law I'm invoking but my problem is this: I live on a boat and no longer have regular access to a computer, I work in film so I can get by with my phone But I really want to play more d&d and my friends don't really play d&d, are there discord groups or zoom d&d games I can join? And how do I find them, honourable court, thank you x

Jack Broadhead

They Will Die For Shit-Slinging May it please the Court and the Bailiff. There is a ongoing Homebrew campaign that consist of myself as a player, my GF at the time (now wife), a friend in common, and his BF as the DM. For majority of the opening act, our friend and I played characters that constantly looked at adventure or plot hooks like a driver in the woods during the 2006 killer clown trend, and nope'd outta there. Constantly confounding the DM and going off rails for most things, (I.e. sitting in a tavern noticing one faction of the authority in the city enter the tavern in full armor and another faction currently occupying the 2nd floor.) As much as I wanted to see what unfolds in the example above, we (the friend and I) played true to character and incited a bar brawl to cover our expeditious retreat out of the Tavern. Many hooks later, we accept a caravan job as my character's occupation was a tradesmen (FYI; Race: WarSworn, Crazy backstory) with a carriage and this was absolutely in character for them. Soon after departing from the city, My GF (now Wife) walked into a hook with caravan leader that involved some weird contract magic (where simply knowing the existence of the contract is enough to pull into the contract?) At this time, tensions between some of the caravan and our group were starting to run thin as our friend proceeded to jeer at an NPC he really did not like, somehow prompting a "who can shit the biggest" competition, which then led to flinging the contents of the contest at the NPC. The DM then had me roll a perception check, upon passing he relayed through writing on a torn piece of paper that my character smells sulfur (Due to my character's backstory as a soldier). It clicked in my head that it wasn't the sulfurous odor of the contest and immediately grab our friend bringing us both to prone position into the shit. Following that, the caravan was blown to pieces by advanced artillery from what became the first antagonists. During this scuffle, my GF's (Now Wife) character had died but not before roping the friend and I into the contract. After the session, my GF (Now Wife) revealed that our DM had written in his notes "They shall die for shit-slinging". (side note this was supposed to be a highly difficult campaign) When this topic came across the group, the DM clarified that he felt his BF and my characters deserved to die but was sorry that my GF's (Now Wife) character was killed instead. (Isn't it ironic?) Was our DM right for the overkill that occurred after he finally got a hook in on our group because of shit-slinging? Much Thanks, Steven from Guam (where America's day begins, cause we're GMT +10:00)

Steven Noel C Cruz

"I was humbled by my first attempt" is one of the funniest things I've ever read.

Lesser Court Ruling: ultimately, the world is the DM’s. Starting out either as royalty or as like a hardwon surefoot circa episode 1 introduction just doesn’t work practically, even outside of whether it screws with the DM’s setting backdrop. In the same way that dice will never roll as high as an episode 1 hardwon demands, an interesting adventure can’t support a PC whose a recognized member of royalty. Even with crown of candy in D20, the entire adventure centred around the fact that they became disgraced/fraudulent royalty. You can do something like a thorin oakenshield quest, but that comes back around to the world the DM created, and the campaign the DM wants to run. Ruling: gf is acting like a queen. Sentence: queenly guillotine.

Carl, The Lubricated

Lower court ruling: their nat 20 shouldn’t change the size of a crack. The idea in dnd is to have a preset location with certain features that players can investigate, not to have that investigation return something that wasn’t there in the first place. That crack was small, a nat 20 perception shouldn’t change the size. They already took major advantage of the crack by pushing through most of the party, and I’m sure the goliath could’ve disengaged or one of the other players could have helped them otherwise escape. Point is, a perception check shows you whats there, not whats best for your players. For the second thing about 50/50, there could totally be story telling reasons for a dungeon set up for the PCs to flee. Name one movie where the protagonist kills the big baddie or even a henchman on the first encounter. BORINGGG

Carl, The Lubricated

Lower court decree: all other players must enter jumanji-style into the game, down character 2, revive him, and down him once more.

Carl, The Lubricated

You gave them a chance, the game should never be about getting the most badass magic items, it's about pulling goofs on gods.

The dice are a player at the table. They should be given equal representation to a point. Now, figuring out if he has some modifier to add to rolls and advantage is okay. But auto-success is stupid for situations where luck/dice should be involved in my opinion because as we witness many times, failures can also lead to more interesting plots.

You were absolutely right! It's like asking your players to make a history check to see if they find any information, and one player keeps rolling over and over until they hit a high enough number. Checks represent time taken to think, inspect, choose words etc.

Jonnie Kimmins

May it please the court, I am DMing my first campaign ever and decided to give my players a sword in the stone encounter where they had to hit a 99 or 100 to pull the Sword of Sharpness. None of my players succeeded and they were upset. As I was explaining that they could not try again as it wasn’t a test of strength but a test of worth, a player rolled a 100 and argued that they should get the sword. This was his second roll so I told him he couldn’t take the sword but he argued that he hit a 100 he should get the sword. I argued that it was like trying to pick up Thor’s hammer, failing, and then seconds later picking it up. He said that the failure or pulling the sword the first time humbled him enough to be able to pull the sword the second time. Was I right in denying him the sword? Should players just be able to roll as many times as they want?

May it please the court. I'm DMing a Waterdeep : Dragon Heist campaign. My players have currently inherited an old and decrepit tavern. I had some adventures hook prepared for them to gain money that would pay for the reparation. One of my player, a dwarf named Reynald is CONSTANTLY interrupting me with "Reynald is able to do that because he worked as a craftman for a guild", every time ANYTHING remotely costly comes in the conversation. I was starting to get sick of this and after a long argument where the other players wanted him to stop asking so much for free tavern upgrade, I made a deal with him : -He can do any repair he wants as long as he find the materials (He never want to pay for them and barter for anything taking a lot of playtime for this) -If he is doing repair it will take time so his character can't do anything else during it Then we proceeded for a whole sessions without him participating other than rolling once in a while for repair and complaining he does not get to play. Was I right about this ? Should I have just make him die from tetanus and a rusty nail ?

Baptiste Bouyer

Hello esteemed members of the court, I am DMing a campaign and the BBEG that my Characters were facing was able to modify the memory of one of my players (player1), causing him to act against the group. After seeing remove curse successfully cast (by player3) and seeing the cursed player1 return to normal, one of the players (player2) in my group downed him. With his additional attack player2 hit his downed teammate, player1, causing him to fail 2 death saves and ultimately die. Player2 claimed his character would not “understand” that player1 would be cursed, and would think of him as a traitor who needed to be killed. I believe player2 made it personal and wrongfully killed player1. What do you all think? And what should the repercussions be?

Jack Campau

Damn, I don’t know what the Court has to say on this one, but I think you got done super, super dirty.

Caredwen

Hello All: TDLR people were really late to a session without notice so I pulled a non-canon oneshot out of my ass instead but couldnt fit in the people who were late as it happened Last session two of my party told me with half an hour to spare that they would be 2 hours late (they had not great reasons). I had quite important plot things to cover last session right at the beginning, including one of the people in particular who was missing. The party normally has 6 people so with 2 down we still had enough for a decent session. I decided rather than miss or mess up important stuff which I didnt really have a way of rearranging at short notice (and I was a bit annoyed at the people who were late). I would run a oneshot for the remaining party members instead. They all eagerly agreed as they are invested enough to have character ideas ready to whip out at a moments notice. I pulled together a few ideas I had knocking around and let the party run around with new characters in a place they hadnt gotten to yet. But when the latecomers arrived about halfway through the session I didnt really have a way to integrate them neatly so they ended up waiting another hour before I could stick them in (only really an hour before the end) they were both grudgingly acceptant but kinda annoyed. Should I have just done the original session I had planned and worked out a way to completely change its structure to allow the latecomers to slot in more easily or was it okay for me to do the oneshot instead even though they were less included? We're all still friends and we play weekly so hopefully they'll learn their lesson and tell me in advance when they're late next time.

Daniel Klein

Just started a new campaign with a new DM, and she ended up with almost a TPK (2/3 died) during our second session fighting against Ochre Jellies. The characters were really loved by us players, and it seemed to give a very engaged game (qt least so far). We were really devastated after the loss, though ofc understanding to the situation as it is part of the game. However, the situation seemed so avoidable had the DM chosen to, as we knew there were NPCs that knew where we were, or there could have been situations that could have prevented the deaths from happening (e.g. rubble fall, monster fleeing etc). I'm also afraid that the engagement for the campaign has diminished since it happened so early in the game too. I guess it's not really a court question, but what do you think the DM should have done, or us players? Should we have helped the DM by giving examples of other ways, or do as we did and just let it happen? The DM is also very new to the role, and there's absolutely no hard feelings between any of us

This is less of a case, more of asking legal advise in advance. My warlock started the game with the intent to work behind the parties back stealing things for his patron that they wouldn’t be ok with. This wasn’t supposed to be antagonistic at first, but now they have killed an acolyte of the cleric’s church, payed for the slaughter of another characters hunting companions that basically raised him, and given a powerful magical item that the party was trying to hold on to directly to the person they were trying to keep it away from, a demon. There are valid story reasons for all of this, it’s not just meaningless slaughter, but I’m worried it’s out of hand. At this point, 90% of the mysteries the party is trying to solve were caused by him and we are barely level 4. Is it ok for a player to be this antagonistic while in the party? Should I tell him to tone it down or just accept fate and make him the bbeg? I’m worried that the players will feel betrayed by this in addition to the characters.

Shawn Magill

I would find a new DM if they're criticizing how you rp, even the rest of that mess aside.

Crits

This is insane. Why can't we all agree high rolls = good :D

May it please the court, I was DM'ing a shortened campaign while our groups normal dm was away for an extended period of time. I decided to run just the ending section of Tomb of Anhilation after the group canonically reaches the city of Omu. Because thw game was intentionally shortened, I let my players have total free reign over what they made for their characters and how busted they were, so understandably the party was very strong. Unbeknownst to the players, the city is inhabited by a large group of Yuan Ti. The story is supposed to function where the characters are captured by the Yuan Ti and then wake up in the hideout where they are forced to back a power faction and have cool subterfuge missions for the snake people. When it came time for the players to interact with the the Yuan Ti, instead of having a large combat where the players fight hundreds of Yuan ti, I told the players they get poisoned and knocked out while surrounded. They were upset that I didn't give them a chance to not be captured, but I only didn't do thia because the book denotes there are hundreds of yuan ti warriors in the city. Am I wrong for railroading them into being captured easily to spare myself this horrible combat they would have had to do otherwise?

John C Schultz

May it please the court. Honorable Judges, I am playing a horror campaign that is also a murder mystery, with vampires and zombies, ya know the works. My party entered a town and we got on to solving the mystery and getting clues and pieces of the puzzle that we needed. When we came to the forest our DM said that it was foggy and it was hard for us to see, now we had a spell caster that wanted to cast control water and make a little opening in the fog so it's better for us to see. Now putting aside that he disregarded our wanting to try this. This is about our DM getting angry at us for continuing asking questions about the fog prior to him saying the spell would be useless, and then him saying that we should stop asking questions about fog because world building doesn't matter, even though this is mainly a campaign about clues and solving a mystery. Which would mean asking about the world around us. Do yall think world building is important? We are trying to level with them and only ask about the clues and what not, but have been avoiding asking about the outside world around us and the scenes set up in this world. P.S. This is also the DM who got on us for our lackluster roleplay just mere minutes before the whole fog debacle. _ a humble newer player Druid King

May it please the court, I was playing an inquisitive rogue (such a fun class btw, Murph made it look amazing in Fantasy High), for a 5e one shot done with all the regulars in our Pathfinder campaign. By the end of this one shot, we had dealt with a fancy charity dinner with a serving of lycanthropy, and then much to my chagrin, betrayal by a fellow party member! Which is funny, it’s a one shot and it doesn’t matter. My problem lies within the mechanics of said betrayal. I had been pushed prone, and an immovable rod placed on the small of my back, trapping me in place unless I push 8000 pounds off my back. Okay, very funny, a rogue can’t do that. But what can a rogue do, a rogue can roll very high to dexterously reach for my pack (which i did), a rogue can roll high to dexterously grab the vials of grease out of my backpack and pour them down my back (which I did), which had oiled me up, ready to squeeze out of the predicament, rather than try and lift the rod off my back. After rolling so high to set all this up, I was then not permitted to try and slither my way out of my bindings, despite all this, the dm citing that it wouldn’t budge bc I would need to lift 8000 pounds. I tried to argue that it’s not the rod budging, but me, but the dm said no, and the party thought I was crazy for thinking it would work, and then I was subsequently bitten by a werewolf and left there to die. All in all it was funny and no hard feelings were had, but it is still brought up occasionally and my friends don’t understand how I thought that would make sense. Hope I can get your rulings on this, if it may please the court. I would love to know if you all feel I have a rightful grievance, or if I am a fool for not understanding the physics of an immovable rod.

Hey guys, love the show. Me and my friends were on a boat when 3 ships wanted to board. After the two ships to our right and left boarded we used our necklace of fire ball to blaze the ships to our left and right. The problem arose when our druid casted controll water to take care of the last ship. She created a trench 100 feet deep causing the ship to fall in. We argued that the ship was finished because the trench fills within a round , our DM says that since it fills gradually the ship would just float to the top over time. In the end we just captured the invaders and all was well but i believe the druid was robed of a dope move. Please let me and my friends know if we were robed or asking too much.

I rolled a 55 stealth (nat 20+15 stealth+10 hide in plain sight+ 10 pass without trace) as a lvl 8 ranger, lvl 5 warlock, lvl 1 rogue, (plus being invisible cuz of “One with the shadows”) to hide from the big bad, and my DM wouldn’t let me take a surprise round cuz he said the big bad knew he was coming into a place where we would be waiting for him. We killed the big bad but also cmonnnnnnn

Honorable Judges, I’ve been a DM a short year and everything I’ve learned has been from podcasts and shows from the members of this esteemed panel. I have really fallen in love with cooperative story telling - the drama, the intrigue, the great endings...is what I’ll say in my defensive I bring to you the case of the reverse cheating DM. My players would never think to lie about their rolls - they groan with the truly truly BAD rolls that keep my fighters from hitting anyone ever! My bard always gets great ideas, but my baddies best every check and save, so her ideas never work! My wizard can’t intuit a persons emotions even if they turned into a living emoji and as such constantly gets caught in a truly epic backstab chain. And just as their dices are cursed, mine are blessed. I roll natural 20s so often I started to buy lottery tickets. I have switched out dice, rolled on a computer, but even that can’t compete with my players propensity to roll 3s and 5s. I’ve given them gifts of advantage, magic swords, charms - literally everything I can think of to help them succeed in a campaign I knew was tough, but based on the dice? Apparently cursed. So I started to fudge rolls on my end: change enemy ACs to be a bit lower, “forgot” to add a hit die or two if the damage rolls are high, my bard got so despondent her ideas never panned out I lied about a roll so her spell took effect and essentially saved the day. My players feel great (I hope), they still feel challenged (or so they complain). Your honors, I have also knowingly Final Fantasy’d them. I had a story to tell and so rigged a battle they couldn’t win to progress it. They weren’t supposed to die, only to learn something and grow stronger to confront the “boss” at a later time after some vital information is gained. The dice tell a story, but I worry - can they tell a bad one? Am I doing what’s right by my players? Am I doing the right thing at all? I beg of you, a ruling - is fudging a roll to make a player happy or create a more cohesive story a crime?

Cassi

may it please the honourable judges of the supreme dnd court- My party consists of my brother (the dm), his girlfriend, and a few of our friends. A lot of our party members are very busy people with hectic work schedules, and though brother dm runs very fun sessions, it's not uncommon for one or sometimes two people to be missing from a session. On the podcast, you've discussed interesting ways to integrate missing PCs into the story/play- Unfortunately, brother's go-to explanation is that "oh, yeah. is having a panic attack in the other room". This has been known to happen for sessions that started halfway through a fight - that character disappears to hyperventilate. Some of us feel this is a disservice to our characters. Another explanation was that our barbarian had food poisoning from eating literal shit off of the floor and had to stay back in the village while we adventured. To make matters worse, brother dm's girlfriend (A half elf / half tabaxi ranger with all of the racial benefits of both races) has also missed sessions, but when this occured, brother dm's explanation was that her character had to help lead a goblin we rescued back to safety- NOT a panic attack. Is the party being punished for their flaky attendance? Is it right that the only PC that doesn't get messy, flaky, or gross explanations is dm's girlfriend? P.S - brother DM is a listener, and I will delight in him hearing his case brought before the highest power

Matthew Strasiotto

So I feel like I keep making my DM internally cry. He let me buy a wand of polymorph for what was probably not enough gold. I’m a level 6 halfling wild magic sorcerer. We did a one shot earlier and he looked like he was going to cry on 3 occasions where I polymorphed my way to victory (trampled one mini boss as an elephant, defeated a water based section by turning into an orca, and then shredded another boss figure as a polar bear) - it has been suggested that I have this item taken away because of this, yet my argument is that he can just make things harder to balance out and that he let me buy the item itself. Yes I admit I cause a lot of chaos by using items and magic in creative ways but surely instead of taking these away they should just, as my friend suggested, Ellis (my name) proof the game. Thoughts?

Just an idea- this is my absolute favorite segment you guys do, and I get so so excited every time I get an email of you guys asking for more cases, and since you guys seem to love just as much as we do, you guys could consider making this a monthly episode like the mixed bags (can be a part of a patreon tier of course)? I just am always left wanting more dnd court, so anything we can do to get more, I would love to support you guys in doing!

Gentle people of the court, in the current campaign I am playing in our DM doesn't set a DC beforehand and he doesn't think about what leve of DC to set, what he does is he waits until we roll for whatever we want to do then after our roll he does his own roll then tells us if we pass or succeed. I think he is crazy doing it this way because the DCs are always all over the place and have no consistency but he doesn't think it is crazy. Who do you think is crazy in the situation?

May it please the court. Our DM makes us roll for performance when we’re talking in situations that might get us noticed, where high numbers are bad as it means we are talking too loud. I have asked if we could roll for stealth instead but he says no. My character is a warlock with a super high charisma stat and a plus 5 to performance making it near impossible to speak quietly, and while my stealth is a plus 0 I would still like my high rolls to mean success rather than having to hope I give a shout out to the 2 crew. Do you think my request is unreasonable? P.S. we play over Skype so we can’t whisper to each other in the way we could if it were a home game.

Jakob Hoffmann

Esteemed Judges, in the case again Chadwick Thundercock: I was a player in a campaign that my Best friend would DM. He invited some of his other friends in who, for the most part, we all got along with. One friend was playing a storm cleric named Chadwick ThunderCock (yep). His whole gimmick was that he would try to sleep with every woman in the entire campaign, and while somewhat funny to begin with, it would somtimes grind the story to a hault. In our 10th session, we had rescued a king from a band of orcs trying to kill him, and he presented us with a reward. Chad didn't like the reward so he killed the king. The DM then had the kings bodyguards attempt to capture chad, and once captured, execute him. However I had talked them into instead just cutting off a certain male extremitie, as it would keep him alive and serve as a reminder etc. etc. Well the player wasn't happy about this at all, he said that the Bodyguards weren't that powerful before (as the king was in danger), and that the DM was targeting him. He elected to die instead and then left the campaign, however he still maintains we were all wrong. what is the courts opinion.

May it please the court. My party and I were in the plane of air about to mount an attack on it's Castle, which had been taken over by the Fire Lord Ozai. The castle was surrounded in fire, and was incredibly hot inside. We were putting fire resistant runes in various pieces of items, to make us resistant. I asked my DM if we should be worried about our weapons melting or that sort of thing. He then laughed at me and asked if I knew how hot a room had to be to melt metal. Moments into the fight our DM said the mental on our persons starts to heat up significantly and do damage to us. I felt like I had been swindled. I know they're not melting per se, but I did ask if there was anything in that realm. My DM and I had a laugh about it, but secretly I am holding a petty grudge. I also found out midway through the fight that not only is my axe burning me, but when someone does mele damage to the fire lord, they take a fuck ton of damage in retribution. As a barbarian, this sucked ass. My DM only remembered part way through the fight, and instilled the rule from there. Is this wrong too?

Caoimhe

May it please the court, I am old school. (That's not my crime.) My current DnD group has been running now for close to 5 years and until mid last year was using the original red box DnD (a.k.a. BECMI 2nd ed.). I have been collect resources for this since the 80s and have an extensive library of rules, Gazettes and adventures. Several of my younger players (in their 20s) had been suggesting we switch to 5e to get more options for characters. I had been resisting because of Pathfinder, which I did not enjoy, but then started playing in a 5e campaign and loved it. Long story short I murdered my bank balance and now have the complete bundle set of rules etc on DnD Beyond, several hard backs and all the monster and spell cards. Alana, one of the players who suggest the switch is an avid NADDPOD fan (got me into it) and suggested to me that the players could chip in for the cost as they have access to ALL the rules through our DnD Beyond campaign. I feel this is not something I should ask them, as I am also getting the benefit for several other campaigns I run for my kids and at school. However, several do come to help paint miniatures or terrain (Alana being the most generous with her time) for the full 3d dioramas I have to pull out of my... garage at a moment's notice. There often a couple of extra beers left in my fridge at the end of a session. My question is this: Do you think it is fair to ask the other players to contribute, or is asking for their help painting enough of a contribution?

Anthony Felton

May it please the court, I DM'ed my first campaign during the spring term of university 2020 (my Junior year if that matters at all), and of course it was all over Zoom. While I've been listening to you for over two years now, I had only been playing for about 3 months plus a few one shots. I was (obviously) a new DM, and didnt totally know what I was doing, but ESPECIALLY didnt know what I was doing over a virtual DND setting. I used "pure luck rolls" (something I've seen both Murph and Brennan do multiple times) and one of my players said that I was a bad DM for not going directly from the handbook, which says nothing about "pure luck rolls." This particular player also, towards the end of the ten week term, finally told me that he wasnt having much fun with the world I had created, and one of the girls (his roommate), more or less agreed with him. Everyone else seemed to be having a good time, and one of the girls has told me how much fun she had, but we havent played as a group since that player told me he was disinterested. Was I a bad DM, or did I have a bad player? Are luck checks not okay?

May it please the court. I present the monk v. DM regarding potentially overzealous interpretation of Nat 1s. While trying to fit in with a gang at a bar to gain their trust and gather info, the monk, who had been taught a secret handshake by one of the gang members previously kidnapped by the party, attempted to replicate the handshake with the someone in the bar. A sleight of hand check was called and it was a nat 1. The handshake started with a fist bump and my DM ruled that the monk fully punched the dude in the face. The monk argued no matter how bad he could have done he would never have swung hard enough to land a punch. It seemed funny, until the DM made us roll initiative against 20 gang members who kicked our ass, and left us bloody in the alley with none of our stuff. The party lost several magic weapons as a result. Nat 1s are bad but should they fundamentally change the course of the game for checks about basically nothing?

In a home game of Star Wars d&d. Same mechanics and rules of normal dnd, but in a Star Wars universe. There came a point where we, the party, wanted to break into a vault. It was pretty obvious that the DM didn’t want this to happen, but we gave it a shot. I went first, trying to cut through with my lightsaber. Rolled something like an 18 + modifier, but the DM said it failed. Another party member wanted to try, who was playing a Jawa, a 3 foot tall weak race. He simply said “I kick the door”. He rolled for it and got a nat 20, and the DM said he busted the door down easily and we got inside. I complained that if a lightsaber couldn’t possibly cut through a solid metal door with a really high roll, a kick definitely shouldn’t have been able to do it. The DM said and stays confident that a nat 20 is an auto success no matter what, even if it was something small like a kick. Who was right?

if it may please the court . In a Pathfinder campaign I was a prankster bard gnome. The setting was an island filled with zombies and the big boss was a lich located inside of an old church. Our DM is very lenient and gives us a lot of money and I believe level 5 characters. I use that money to buy type III bag of holding it can carry 1,000 lbs. It's volume 150 cubic ft. Now before the fight I filled that bag up with ocean water and as we enter the church there are two sets of staircases going upwards The fight was in that corridor I proceeded to run up to the stairs empty in a vial of freezing oil and preceded to flip the bag inside out. My DM felt that there was enough space in the area not to flood with water and it was mostly knee height however that didn't stop one of my friends from almost freezing to the ground because he was knocked prone at the time and my other friends had to save him. Later on in that same fight I threw holy water at the litch. After revealing that I had holy water with me my group proceeded to harass me saying that I could have empty the holy water into my saltwater filled bag of holding to make a very large bag of holy water and that would have killed the litch. my DM told me I would have one shot at the litch. My question for the court is would the holy water have not been watered down or would it have actually turned the water inside my bag into holy water.

Drysax

I was the DM for two of my friends who were still new to dnd I was having them fight a revenant. The fight was super close the ranger was down and the barbarian had 11 hp left, however the revenant had 3 hp left! As I rolled the dice for the revenant I rolled a natural 20. I knew that if that hit it would definitely down him and maybe even kill him outright! So I did an unspeakable sin I said the revenant missed! Am I a bad DM for not killing my friends who were still learning the game!!!

Skyler Morford

May it please the court, my name is Anna and My rpg group plays Pathfinder instead of D&D but I feel this circumstance is pretty easy to associate with regardless. We were approaching an end of a chapter with our campaign where I play a Tiefling wizard and we were fighting our way through some enemies and there was an apparent “boss” approaching who was also a spell caster (necromancer) and was clearly only targeting me as I had been taking out a lot of people with AOE spells. I decided to cast “phantasmal killer” where essentially the subject will be scared to death, but only if they fail both a will save AND a fortitude save. My GM was immediately irritated that I chose this spell and claimed it was too “OP” and that it was dumb. He honored that his NPC failed his saves, but was a huge dick about it and essentially made his death as boring as possible and then told me that I’m not allowed to use that spell ever again in any of his games, and that I could choose a different one. Then another member of our group chimed in that it was unfair that I “one-shotted” the bad guy that was in his backstory (which I didn’t know previously) and agreed with the GM and was also kind of a dick about it for the rest of the game. I really just thought the spell was cool, and didn’t realize it was going to piss other people off to kill a bad guy with it. I will pick another spell because I don’t want to upset my teammates (and it’s my GMs game and he gets to decide what is and what isn’t) but I wish that instead of completely taking it away, he could’ve nerfed it a bit to keep it in the game, and made it a little more difficult to succeed. Am I in the wrong for questioning my GMs decision? Or was he just being a baby because I killed one of his important NPCs faster than he wanted? I leave my fate in your honorable hands and thank you for your divine time. (Wording of the spell description for context: You create a phantasmal image of the most fearsome creature imaginable to the subject simply by forming the fears of the subject’s subconscious mind into something that its conscious mind can visualize: this most horrible beast. Only the spell’s subject can see the phantasmal killer. You see only a vague shape. 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. Even if the Fortitude save is successful, the subject takes 3d6 points of damage. If the subject of a phantasmal killer attack succeeds in disbelieving and possesses telepathy or is wearing a helm of telepathy, the beast can be turned upon you. You must then disbelieve it or become subject to its deadly fear attack.)

Like a bat out of The 9 Hells I’ll be gone when the morning comes

RAW tabaxi unarmed strikes are not considered finesse weapons even if they use DEX, so they can't be used for sneak attack. Mechanically speaking the only difference between between sneak attack with claws and using a finesse based monk weapon is that you can't be disarmed of claws, which rarely comes up in most games. Seems reasonable to allow it

Donovan Phillips

May it... not please the court!!! Yeah that’s goddamn right, I am being an unruly child! 😈😱😭 I am not here as a defendant but a perp and laying down my sins!!! We decided to do a new session after our dm asked if we wanted to play at a higher level and I was excited playing a higher level Magus and even with me being new to DND/Pathfinder I felt confident that I would do great! Session starts and we get through session 0-1 and it ends... how you may ask? Well our DM explains this decrepit room we are in and we see this pristine statue before us and when I get up from the floor I see this statue with my blurry vision and decided to flirt with the statue in my confusion (A/N: I accidentally did a Joey from friends moment on my first ever DnD game with this character and thought I do a callback moment), but little did we know this would be our downfall. After a brief exploration and a some history explained to us all we had to do is find a way out. One of the players decided to do a goof and destroy this PRISTINE statue as a battering ram, but no one was near to stop him and I did not have knowledge- Religion so I let him continue. The statue breaks and we all die. Apparently the statue was the reason we were in here and became the source of our immortality. Our dm left to clear his head and probably laugh it out. He tried to display the importance of this statue and we just didn’t get it until it was to late. I do not ask for pity... all I ask is for my punishment to be rad/hilarious... ☠️

Alex aka Zol Ark

May it please, tickle and tantalise the court. The case of the party vs a headless Demogorgon. Basically, we were running the Out Of The Abyss campaign, fighting the Demogorgon in the ruins of a city we witnessed it destroy in the 3rd session. We were on the ropes, most of the party was at deaths door or down, including my dwarf champion fighter Bhelgus Crease. The party's barbarian, Blake Blakeson II, remembered the time a cosmic merchant sold us the bag of holding and the bag of devouring. This merchant warned us that destroying the bag would send everything in the near vicinity to the astral sea. After the monk (called Blim) and he readied the set piece, arrows were shot and the two bags were destroyed by each head, sending those heads to space. We thought the battle was over, but the Demogorgon stayed up and just rolled its strikes with disadvantage. We still won the fight, we would have lost if it wasn't for our life cleric barely clinging on, but we argued that the Demogorgons lack of all and any heads would have at least have had heftier penalties to its rolls. Moreover, does a Demogorgon need a head to continue living? Are we assholes for assuming a Demogorgon needs a head at all? Please settle this debate once and for all. Much love from a fledgling DnD podcast producer (Story Boys Podcast), your antics have inspired me so.

Scott Archer

May it please the court, in a naruto based dnd me and my friend's where playing which was 2v2 basically 2 of my friends took the role of the akatsuki with slightly different motives and me and another friend took the role of the "good" guy roles. The issue was that the dm would give more play time and planning to the akatsuki then me and my partner because he like the other 2s play style more. What would you the court say to a dm who patiently treats some players better then others?

If it pleases the court: We have a relatively large group (8 players, 1 DM), so it takes a long time to give everyone a bit of roleplay time. One of our friends is very verboise and talks a LOT, but no one wants to discourage it because it is in-character (and it feels mean). It happens at least every other session. Sometimes he finds ways to hijack others' scenes. Am I wrong for being bothered by him monopolizing time?

Kaitlyn with a K and a Y

If it pleases the court. I created a multiclass tabaxi monk/rouge. (Shadows/assassin) My DM states that I cannot use sneak attack with unarmed strikes as sneak attack requires a ranged or finesse weapon. I argue that a monks unarmed strikes are DEX based and that a tabaxi’s claws allow me to do slashing damage with unarmed strikes so it should work. What says the court?

Zac

May it please the court, In the game I run, for the past few in game weeks, the party has been in a city that has a lot of surveillance and general bad shit going on. Our Druid went outside the Sanctuary they are hiding in to check something, and the BBEG got the jump on her and tried to cast Disintegrate. The druid succeeded on the difficult save and Misty Stepped away, but she maintains Disintegrate was unfair. I think it was fair. The Druid is level 10 and has 91 hp, and Disintegrate does an average of 75 damage. I had warned the party that one of the BBEG's minions was stalking the party, and had gone to fetch someone. They also know the BBEG had access to all the surveillance, and actively wanted to kill them. They also have a way of casting True Resurrection to bring a disintegrated person back, though it would put them a few steps back. I always try to be as fair and forgiving to my players as possible. Was I fair? Thanks!

Jonnie Kimmins

If it pleases the court I bring you the case of the cozy cubby in the cavernous cave with catastrophic results. I DM for a group of friends who play in very different styles of playing, that's part of the fun. I designed a cave encounter that was heavily weighted against them. In all honesty it was designed for them to flee from rather than fight it out. Halfway through the encounter the party was in real trouble their dwarf cleric was down and it was the turn of Ariel the elven rogue. In a moment of brilliance she asked to make a perception check to see if there where any small cracks or spaces in the cave where she could drag the cleric to safety. She crit. With a nat 20 I described a crack in the side of the cave I also described how small the entrance with and how the large orcs they were fighting could not fit through. I meant this to be a potential safe haven for the cleric and rogue but soon the entire party tried to flee into this cave cubby to escape the orcs taking many opportunity attacks. The issue came when it was time for Arok their Goliath barbarian to enter. He is 8 foot and therefore much larger than the orcs he was fighting so could not fit through the crack. He was killed by the orcs. I believe this was a fun encounter that ended tragically. There are 2 issues that the party have brought up. 1 a nat 20 should never be negative and the size of the crack ended up being the undoing of Arok even though it was helpful at the beginning. 2 encounters you should flee from should not be made as in every encounter winning should be possible 50% of the time. I disagree with both complaints but would like some vindication if possible. Should nat 20s work in such a retroactive way? Was I being a dick in giving them an encounter that would probably force them to run? Many thanks for your help. Sorry it's so long, just a very specific situation

I play in a campaign with another player (let's call them B). B's pc has an antagonistic relationship with mine. It was fun at first, but the relationship has stayed the same even after dozens of sessions and it's starting to become annoying. My character will say something, anything, and B's character will call them an idiot and try to hit them. I need to stress that while I make jokes sometimes my character is NOT a moron that endangers or hinders the party, and I get the same reaction regardless if I say a flirty joke to an NPC or if I suggest we get rations before a long trip. I've tried to have an in character heart-to-heart in game, and my character has made some very big gestures and sacrifices for B's character but this hasn't changed. From out of game conversation's B thinks our characters have made great strides and get along great, so I don't think it's them being malicious. They will also yell at helpful and friendly NPCs to "just spit out the quest", when the NPC has done so 2 minutes ago and is currently answering other questions and being extremely helpful. How can I help B diversify their play and find a way to play a hauty character without being disruptive and stagnant? The dm has offered to talk to B, but I'm not sure I want to escalate things just yet.

I mean...these posts back to back is just perfect.

I'm playing a Rune Knight / Hexblade in a campaign. I just got Accursed Spectre. It mentions that you can activate the ability " When you slay a humanoid, you can cause its spirit to rise from its corpse as a specter". Does this imply that you have to use it on the same turn that you Kill the target, or can it be used afterwards? If so what do you think is a reasonable time limit to use the ability.

Thom van Tijn

I know one of my players is going to bring up the well-traveled bird. I can feel it.

Crits

The Case of the Well Traveled Bird: Honourable members of the court. While our party was travelling as fugitives by boat we were working out the best place to dock without drawing too much attention to ourselves. I was playing a Totem Warrior Barbarian and thus was capable of speaking to animals, the wording of the spell indicates they can recall information about locations so I suggested I talk to a bird, (my PCs daughter was a monk, and thus able to grab one out of the sky) and have it tell us what it saw by the nearby coasts and cities in regards to military presence and alertness. Our DM told us that this was ridiculous, and that a bird would not know where the locations it saw correlated to on a map, and would simply not be able to remember these details. I argued that if we managed to find a well traveled bird, it would have the knowledge of the area to tell us, but the DM still refused, eventually allowing us to find such a bird if we rolled a nat 20 with disadvantage, which we attempted unsuccessfully. To this day I claim that a well traveled bird would have been able to tell us this information about the nearby land and cities. Who do you all think was in the right?

Honorable Judges and Bailiff, may it please the Court, I submit the case of the Stoner Tiefling Sorcerer vs DM. I DM a homebrew campaign where my best friend plays a blue Tiefling Sorcerer whose main character trait is that he’s a complete stoner. I’m talking, some Alanis level shit here, your Honors. Before we even began our campaign, said friend asks me if one of his horns (again, he is a Tiefling) can be unscrewed and used as a pipe. My official ruling as DM was that this was fucking rad. He then pushed his luck, and asked if he could use this horn to summon dank nugs at will from a pocket dimension where only weed exists. I made the executive decision of “sure, why not?”. I did not expect what would come of this. Many sessions go by. The party is level 9. They are in a dungeon in the Underdark, being hunted down by elite Drow. They come to a long hallway in the dungeon and the Sorcerer gets an idea. He’s going to use his horn to try to stuff the hallway so full of weed, that the pathway to them would be blocked. I ruled that he could only summon small amounts per every few minutes to an hour, so obviously the Drow would catch up to them long before he could build a weed wall. He argued that as someone so in touch with the Marijuana Plane, he should be able to summon it rapidly and in larger amounts, even being willing to spend Sorcery points to speed up the process. While this would have been a funny moment, I didn’t want to set the precedent that this would be a continuous solution they could use, especially against elite Drow hunters. So naturally, I have him a d8 of inspiration, and told him to go fuck himself. He is my best friend after all. Should I have allowed my spellcaster to tap into the true powers of the Marijuana Plane? And as an aside, have you ever had any instances of unassuming homebrew items being exploited in any way? I love everything you all do, thank you so much for considering my case. P.S. Jake we have the same birthday so we’re basically twins even though I’m 23

Cameron Davis

The blizzard makes me wonder- is this Rime of the Frostmaiden? Bc I'm in the same boat w that module right now.

tacticalgrandma

Case of Extended Pacifism: my dm almost never has us fight. - it’s been 5 sessions without a fight and we had a longer drought before that. Role play is fun and all, but at some level you want risk, and I don’t know how many sessions of walking through a blizzard I can take - is my dm in the wrong for not arranging anything or am I just being bloodthirsty? P.S He scheduled one fight, but it had been so long he forgot what level we were, and had to cancel it as he had made it too challenging

Jboogieboogz

May it Please the Court: a while back I was starting a humblewood campaign with three of my friends. We had played a homebrew campaign together before with me as the DM. Humblewood was a level 1-5 module for four players, where all the characters are little human woodland creatures. I asked the party if they wanted me to scale the module back for three players, but they all decided that they were up for the challenge. During the first session, it occurred to me that they hadn't considered party balance and were playing a Druid, a cleric, and a warlock. The warlock was a divine warlock and responsible for healing, while the cleric had stated they were less interested in that role. During an encounter with some slimes in a cave, the party successfully snuck past the creatures by staying out of their blindsight range but on the way back the warlock decided that they indeed wanted to fight the creatures. Partway through the encounter, the warlock got really quiet and told me that his character was going to lay down prone in front of the slimes, I cautioned against doing that as the slow-moving slimes would have advantage on attacks against him. It became evident after another round of combat that the warlock player was no longer interested in the well being of his character and was simply going to allow his character to die. This was awkward for me as the DM and I didn't really know how to handle it. I kept running the encounter with the slow-moving slimes but I hadn't realized that the cleric (who was a hedgehog who had curled up during the encounter to present their quills) had also fallen unconscious. In the end, only the Druid survived by simply walking around the slimes. The Cleric was really mad that the warlock had just given up in the middle of the fight and caused his character to die. I was so shocked by the warlock character that I admittedly hadn't realized that the cleric was failing their death saves. we awkwardly ended the session with the druid returning to town and sharing a drink with some guy as he grieved his new dead adventuring companions who he buried in a cave. We awkwardly ate pizza and then the warlock player left without saying goodbye to anyone. We never played together again and I have thought back on this often. Should I have stopped the encounter if one of my PCs is obviously using it to just kill off their character that they have become 'bored' with or was I right to not understand what was going on and continuing to run the level 1 encounter?

Slippery Pete

may it please the court. I was in a campaign with a couple of my friends and the DM was one of their boyfriends. When we first started my friend wanted to have a character who was royalty but her DM bf said no cause it would mess with the lore. this ended with her making a character she hated and she ended up arguing with the DM and the other players whenever she could. was our DM wrong for not allowing her to be royalty or was she her being upset just

Adrian Vance

The case of the DM vs the Birdperson's stomach. This case belongs in the realms of small claims but let it be heard. Our party came across a rotting animal carcass, and our Aarakocra player (relax Murph, he only has one wing and can't fly) immediately took a bite of it. The DM made him do a constitution saving throw and on a fail the Aarakocra took damage - nearly downing him. The bird player reasoned that since he's a bird and birds eat weird shit all the time, he shouldn't have had to roll. Everything resolved amicably, but I really want to dunk on whoever is wrong. What say you?

David Heintz

Sorcerer vs DM As a player who was playing a lvl 4 sorcerer I feel like I was wronged by my DM. He’s new so go light on the punishment. I was attacking a creature with my last lvl 2 spell for the day with the flame sword. It is concentration to keep it active. I rolled a 1 on my attack and the DM said that I wiffed and hit the ground and my sword disappeared. I argued that a concentration spell is only broken when I choose, take damage or the time expires none of which happened. I grumbled but accepted his judgement. Am I wrong or is the DM wrong?

If it please the court, the case of Poison Immunity v. Paralyzed Condition: As a 13th level Circle of Land druid, my halfling can reroll 1s and is immune to poison. But when trekking through a cave, my druid got a Nat 1 on a nature check and walked straight into some suspicious roots hanging from the ceiling. The roots afflicted my druid with a mysterious goo and Paralysed them before dragging them away. Even if my character survived the encounter, it kind of killed my enthusiasm for my halfling druid. I argued that, first, I should be able to reroll that Nat 1 because that’s a halfling trait. And second, that my druid should have been immune to the roots’ goo because I don’t know if you could call a mysterious paralytic plant goo anything other than poison. I appealed to the Rule of Cool because my poison immunity is rarely relevant and dealing with hostile plants seems druidic. The DM ruled that I couldn’t reroll because the halfling ability to reroll 1s only works once per long rest and I’d already used it earlier (which… no. but i didn’t fight it because a druid getting a Nat 1 nature check is very funny). And he said that because the monster’s statblock inflicted the Paralyzed condition, and not the Poisoned condition, my druid was not immune. (Note: the text of the Circle of Land ability only references immunity to general poison, not the Poisoned condition). I defer to the honor judges honorable judgement at this time.

May it please the court. One time I let my ex sit in on a game so she could see a session that I was expecting to be pretty good and was excited for. In the middle of a super intense emotional flashback, she started playing a game of solatair at the table. It distracted me in the middle of what should have been a touching roleplay scene. I could tell it was distracting my player (and myself) so I asked her to leave the table (masking my disappointment with a joke). Afterward when I told her it upset me, she was pretty hurt. Was I in the right? Or should I simply not have invited her to sit in, in the first place?

Zed

May it please the court. In the campaign I DM I have an Inquisitive rogue in my party whose backstory involves a Sphinx who mentored him to see the world like a detective before they had a falling out. I had the Sphinx send him a letter with a riddle in it that when solved would magically reveal the location of the sphinx so they could reconnect. My monk player who has a Masters Degree from Stanford solved the riddle almost instantly and my rogue was a good sport about it but I felt the wind go out of his sails since he was denied an opportunity to play his character as intelligent as he is meant to be. Esteemed Justices, is it okay for the players to solve riddles of this nature as a group? Is my monk player in the wrong, am I in the wrong for not making the riddle harder or for not putting the kibosh on the monk player’s attempts to solve it?

The case of the slighted newbie, may it please the court. My first time playing I was invited to join an already in progress curse of strahd campaign. My character, Geran, was someone who just wanted to retire from adventuring after defeating strahd and making his home safe. When I attempted to win over and woo an npc with a rose another PC, a sorcerer, for no reason lied and told her it was cursed and I was trying to trick her because I was a follower of strahd. With his high charisma I as a ranger had no chance, and he even cast spells on her to convince her it was cursed. The party laughed the whole time and then moved on, as well as the DM. Yes I now play and DM with different parties so I already took the new friends advice. If the sorcerer messing around with geran wasn’t that bad, was it at least a little bit fucked up for the DM to do nothing or am I just being a classic newbie who doesn’t understand character razzing?

Sawyer Rogers

Howdy y'all! So a few years ago my friend invited me to play dnd with his family. I had never played before so I showed up early to create a character. I wanted to be funny and all so I created a frail old wizard man named Petunia Phillips and I created him to the best of my ability using my interpretation of the rule books. Well turns out I may have misinterpreted a rule or two about feats and such and was using a high level spell over and over again. The dm rolled with it because I was a new player but it obviously became a problem for the way he wanted his encounters to go. So later that night after spending hours and hours playing as this awesome gay old man named Petunia, we walk around a corner and a demon bear grappled the frail old man and next turn ripped him in half.... I then had to make a new character with the dm's guidance. DID PETUNIA REALLY HAVE TO DIE FOR ME TO LEARN MY LESSON!? Love you guys! Thanks!

Alex Taylor

Hello! New player here and joined a campaign that has been together awhile. I came first in initiative against a horde of goblins and ran up to attack them. My edgelord party member cast a spell that caused everyone within a 60 ft radius (just myself and the goblins) to take 28 damage, leaving me almost dead. They then said "I would say I'm sorry, but I'm not" and offered to heal me next round. She explained that if I succeeded the spell save for their heal I would take MORE damage. Am I right to be miffed about this? This player knew I was inexperienced, and it was my first time playing irl. I want to be amicable, but part of me also wants to stunning strike her ass.

The Case of the Unlikely Uncle May it please the court, During the first session of a new campaign, the other players and I were tasked with infiltrating and finding evidence of the existence of an illegal underground fighting ring. We successfully obtained invitations but were unsure what we could find that would constitute evidence. One of my party members placed a bet, and upon winning, asked for a signed receipt of the transaction. When the bookie seemed surprised at being asked for a receipt for an illegal transaction, the player said that his uncle had recently been audited and he was trying to be careful in case the same thing happened to him. The dm set a high dc for the deception check. I then made the comment that since this character is a warforged, and thus was not born but made, it was unlikely that he would have an uncle. The dm heard me say this and imposed disadvantage on the role, causing the player to fail. This caused all the other players to get mad at me, saying that my character, a halfling paladin who fights for justice and equality, is racist against warforgeds. I am new to dnd and this is really messing with my enjoyment of the game, but the other players seem to be enjoying the joke, so I don’t want to ruin their fun. Was I wrong to make that comment? Or are the other, more experienced, players/the dm being unjust? I eagerly await your honorable judgment

(hi—you say my name like keer-suh!) Your honors—if it pleases the court, I would like to honorably pick your brains on campaign two! Mainly, my question is, will there be any story bleed between the arcs? Specifically, what do you each think could cause the story bleeding—what would arc 2 have to do that makes arc 1 have to clean up their mess or finish their battles and vice versa. I’m sure Murph wants to keep his cards close to his chest if he is planning on any of this or thinking about planning it, but I’d love to hear wild speculation on situations leading to story bleed.

Kjersa

May it pleasure the court. During a one-shot campaign, our party had fallen into a ravine during a battle and one of our horses had also ended up there. Most of the party did a simple athletics check to climb out, however our gnome wizard decided to cast spider climb on the horse, allowing him to ride the horse up the cliff face to safety. This seemed like a good idea until the DM told the gnome he had to do an animal handling check to stay on the horse. Failing it, he fell off and back down into the ravine. This caused him to take fall damage, breaking his concentration on the spell. The horse, losing its ability to scale a sheer cliff, then fell back down and was killed by the fall. The party was appalled by this but the DM held firm that the animal handling check should be much higher DC than simply climbing out. The players believed that using a spell should have negated the need to do a check in this situation. Please, resolve this dilemma for us!

Cameron McEwan

At will means he can cast it without spending a spell slot. Monsters with Multiattack usually specify how their multiattacks can be used (two claws and a bite, two greataxe attacks and a gore, etc.)

Robert McDaniel

May it please the court: I present to you The Case of the Incorrectly Calculated Damage. To set the stage: I recently ran the Shilo the Buff one-shot for some friends, including but not limited to my daddy DM (let us call him Kyle). I put together the characters my players would be using as there were specific abilities, I did not want my players having (namely magic). This whole one-shot is designed to be very difficult and imbalanced in the favor of The Monster as well as leaving the party in the dark about The Monster’s true nature, being Shilo the Buff. The encounter was going well but almost lead to a TPK. Kyle’s barbarian and The Monster were in the final throws of battle, each only needing one hit to drop the other. The barbarian had one hit and missed killing The Monster by 10 HP and was subsequently killed himself. Now the player, Kyle, started getting very upset saying that the encounter was not properly balanced, that The Monster had way too many abilities, etc. I felt bad so I looked again at his character sheet to see if he had missed some ability. Turns out that as a barbarian, while he raged, he gained at extra +2 to his attack, which he had been throughout the whole encounter. After this discovery, we went back to see how many times he hit, and it was enough to cover the last bit of HP The Monster had, winning the encounter and the one-shot. My question for the court is this: should I have been lenient in going through my players character sheet and helping them with their abilities after the fact and changing history? Thank you for your judgement.

Melissa MacDoyle

I am humbled to grace these chambers, and I beg for the mercy of the player's judge, the honorable justice Wilson. Take pity on me. This is The Case of the Perfectly Perceptive Paladin vs the DM. I play Thad Bench II, a blind oath of the watcher paladin. My DM and I worked out a homebrew mechanic where I was gifted a pendant imbued with the Find Familiar spell, and I'm able to use the sight of my familiar as a BONUS ACTION instead of a regular action, to see through my familiar's eyes and hear what it hears. This compromise was meant to make combat easier to navigate. But my familiar Ploops is a bat, who is also as blind as a bat, so I rely entirely on its echolocation and its blindsight. Recently, I fear I've started to borderline "abuse" the blindsight mechanic of 60ft, and it's "Kean Hearing" ability to have advantage on perception checks. This amounts to me seeing what others wouldn't perceive under normal circumstances. I can see that which is invisible, I can see around corners, I can see ambushes coming, nothing is hidden from me. Is this mechanic too overpowered? I'd argue that I'm using the tools that are available to my character, but I also feel like I somehow swindled my DM. I'm turning myself in, may the court's judgment strike true.

Matty Z

Your character making a promise to a god should not be grounds to force a multiclass, let alone force a specific domain. If they are saying you must then restrictions should go out the window.

Robert McDaniel

P.s. my stats went back to normal with the helm off

Tatum Scheiderer

You absolutely are not in the wrong. It is your world. You build it how you want it and you were up front about them not being able to use it, instead of springing that on them last second. Lore dictates there are no dragonborn or dragons. They have to understand that you are building a world from scratch for them so you are free to build how you want. They are free to not play in said world.

Robert McDaniel

May it please the court presenting the case of the magic helm. My very first game of dnd we had created characters our dm allowed us to roll d20s for our stats, side not this was a bad idea on his end. I ended up rolling a 20, 19, 18, 14, 12 and 1 in front of him. Because I played a fighter I put the one in intelligence because he said it would raise to a 4 so I was sentient after a time I found a helmet that allowed my to add 2 to my intelligence at the cost of 3 points gone from Dex and charisma the argument occurred that since I set the president of liking weapons and armor (which I did) he always wanted his helmet. But I wanted to take it off for battles, my dm and my party argued that because he was so stupid without the helmet on he didn’t know what the helmet did. I argued I should be allowed to take off my helmet to fight, who was wrong. Also my characters name was Hugh mungus a Dragonborn in cause you wanted to know.

Tatum Scheiderer

May it please the right honourable lords of the supreme crit council: I have been playing a half orc barbarian chef in my 2nd ever campaign. My orc has been using a maul that we flavoured as being a giant ornate wooden meat mallet, which our party has dubbed 'The Tenderiser'. This is where the issue lies... We were fighting a young red dragon who, naturally, breathed fire. I was made to roll a luck check after every fire breath to see if my maul set fire. After 2 or 3 turns I got unlucky and my maul caught fire and was subsequently destroyed. I was essentially out of commission for the rest of the fight. I have been riding the fame of my character's successful food career and avoiding combat ever since. We are looking for someone who can do such a repair at every village we pass, but was my DM right to destroy the weapon over a detail that had already been deemed to be purely flavour?

Thomas Hillman

May it please the court: I've played 2 powerful build characters (goliath and firbolg) and my DM still makes me roll strength checks for out of combat interactions whereas I think I should be allowed to do what is within limit of powerful build with no check! Am I within my rights or should I follow the DMs choice!?

Honorable judges, I'd like to present the case of the background check. I'm playing Rime of the Frost Maiden, which features every PC having a secret from the start, that could hurt the group or tie into the main plot. My monk's secret is that she literally has butterflies in her stomach (it's a conservation movement), & my DM gave me some extra background features stemming from that- she can communicate simple ideas to insects, & can cast the Decompose cantrip (critrole homebrew), w an additional ability where I can spend a ki point to prevent something from being raised as undead unless they pass my Ki DC. I thought this was super cool at the time. But later, a player revealed that they were able to cast Detect Thoughts (a second level spell) at will as their background ability. & the first time I had reason to use my Decompose bonus feature, the DM flat out said it didn't work because the person was frozen (the module is set in the tundra). I'm feeling a little nerfed at the moment, though since some of the players don't seem to have any background features at all, I might be doing comparatively well. I'd normally just be direct, but since this is the player's secret, it feels thornier. Should I tactfully ask why the player has this powerful ability, wo ruining the secret mechanic or just being petty? Or should I trust this DM? Who deserves to get eaten from the inside out by butterflies?

tacticalgrandma

Hi guys! I hope you’re having wonderful holidays, and I hope that bluray bookcase dispute has settled, it has caused me many a restless night. Anyway, to the problem at hand! I was playing an inquisitive rogue (such a fun class btw, Murph made it look amazing in Fantasy High), for a 5e one shot done with all the regulars in our Pathfinder campaign. By the end of this one shot, we had dealt with a fancy charity dinner with a serving of lycanthropy, and then much to my chagrin, betrayal by a fellow party member! Which is funny, it’s a one shot and it doesn’t matter. My problem lies within the mechanics of said betrayal. I had been pushed prone, and an immovable rod placed on the small of my back, trapping me in place unless I push 8000 pounds off my back. Okay, very funny, a rogue can’t do that. But what can a rogue do, a rogue can roll very high to dexterously reach for my pack (which i did), a rogue can roll high to dexterously grab the vials of grease out of my backpack and pour them down my back (which I did), which had oiled me up, ready to squeeze out of the predicament, rather than try and lift the rod off my back. After rolling so high to set all this up, I was then not permitted to try and slither my way out of my bindings, despite all this, the dm citing that it wouldn’t budge bc I would need to lift 8000 pounds. I tried to argue that it’s not the rod budging, but me, but the dm said no, and the party thought I was crazy for thinking it would work, and then I was subsequently bitten by a werewolf and left there to die. All in all it was funny and no hard feelings were had, but it is still brought up occasionally and my friends don’t understand how I thought that would make sense. Hope I can get your rulings on this, if it may please the court. I would love to know if you all feel I have a rightful grievance, or if I am a fool for not understanding the physics of an immovable rod. Thanks guys!

This year has been really frustrating for people who want to keep others safe, being mocked by people benefiting from their caution. Sending hugs- I hope you're able to play that character again, & w a better group too.

tacticalgrandma

That had to be so hurtful to your wife too- what an incredibly inappropriate thing to say. Good on you for standing by her.

tacticalgrandma

May it please the court. The Honorable Judges: (say names of the Honorable judges), I hired superstar actress Cameron Diaz to take part in my DnD Campaign, but whenever she shows up, she refuses to speak into the microphone. You have experience with Hollywood big shots, so what are the options for getting the talent to engage with your world building and other players at the table? Or, Perhaps Diaz was in the wrong? signed anonymous

zach orion miller

I think you feeling obliged to point out the player in question was the DM's girlfriend & "you were kind of being a dick" are linked.

tacticalgrandma

That is insane? Making the game more relatable & fun for people from a variety of background gives it a better reputation, as much as any private game between friends can affect an IP's reputation. People who get that pissy about these things are the real reputation ruiners.

tacticalgrandma

May it please the court, I am the long-time DM to a group of wonderful friends and during downtime between campaigns we ran a few one shots with the characters, including the Yawning Portal adaptation of Tomb of Horrors. I had a level 20 Druid in the party with amazing perception and the Robe of Eyes, essentially making surprises nonexistent to this crew. A puzzle in the dungeon rewards the players with a Gem of Seeing, but the text specifically states anything other than meticulous searching by hand has no effect on finding the gem including the See Invisibility spell. The players spent about 10 minutes looking for their supposed prize before learning it was essentially invisible in plain sight. This caused some disruption at the table due to the Druid's incredibly skilled perception and robe, but I had already accepted the module's wording and apologized. Was I out of line as the DM to not let my player with these incredible skills see the gem through their magic methods, since the Robe allows them to see invisible objects, or was I right to follow the guidelines of the book?

It kind of sounds like the bigger issue is your boyfriend not engaging with or respecting your game- & no one should be "upset a great deal" over their partner's funtime dnd choices.

tacticalgrandma

To the honorable, Supreme Crit Justices, I ask you to rule on the sentencing on one of my player's character, may it please the court: A paladin, oath of the crown, in my adventuring party committed an act of cowardice. In the face of overwhelming odds, the dragonborne paladin failed to act and ran away from battle leaving a sorcerer and artificer to defend themselves against melee attackers. In my mind, this is breaking the oath the paladin made to Bahamut to be courageous. How should Bahamut react to this craven warrior? I don't think he should immediately lose his paladin power and become an oath breaker, but he does have the highest AC and second-highest hit points of the party and a lot of his future paladin powers stress protecting others and taking damage for them. How do I, as a dragon god, nudge my player to fill his role better?

May it please the court: Some of my friends and I ran a witcher campaign made with custom classes, and a friend was DM'ing. I was playing a Scoia'teal elf that was abandoned in human village when they were little. Fast forward 100 years later and me and my witcher buds were getting harassed by a human trying to lych one of my fellow witchers. Being from the Cat school I threw a dagger at the human before he could talk anymore. I was then yelled at by my friends for being quick to violence, and saying that it was against "the witcher code". I said that because of wanting to help my friend and how my character hates humans it was justified. Was I wrong for playing it this way? BTW this argument lasted for over an hour.

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 (ridiculously high stealth and slight of hand). 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

I started a post on r/notanotherdndpodcast for any of y'all that want to post on it

Jacob Buttarazzi

In the campaign I'm currently playing, we recently met and befriended a young gold dragon. My character (a kalashtar bard) is the only one who can speak draconic (the only language this gold dragon speaks), so I end up being pretty much the only person who can talk to him, and I recently took the mounted combatant feat so I could more effectively use the mounted combat rules with the dragon. My question is this: have I wronged my fellow players by hogging our new dragon friend, or is it okay for my character, as the only one who can talk to him, to be more connected?

Dermot Louchart

I'm wondering the same thing- I worry about hurting people's chances of getting their questions read, but some of these have p direct answers RAW. Also this thread is like an encyclopedia of evidence for why session 0's are good & passive aggression is unhelpful.

tacticalgrandma

Me and my dm homebrewed my character a lot for the story but now can be a bit more powerful then the rest of the party at times, should I feel bad for talking to my dm when other members of the party don't?

No Cool Name Ideas

This is probably a troll but "steer /my/ story" players are kind of supposed to steer the story in dnd, it's not just yours?

tacticalgrandma

May it please the court, I was playing in a DnD game where my character, a rogue, was pretending to be a guard to cause a distraction. When it came time to cause the distraction, my DM wouldn't let me roll deception, and instead insisted that I use performance. When I sighted the definition of the skills being deceiving people vs entertaining people, they joked that it was entertaining them a lot and moved on. In the end I rolled poorly enough that it wouldn't have mattered, but I took expertise in deception so I could be a disguise focused character and it felt like that was being invalidated. Should I have talked about it with them before hand, or was it reasonable to assume deception was the skill to focus on? P.S. This DM is a lovely person that I very much enjoy playing with, but I wanted to bring this matter to the court for their unparalleled wisdom.

Blair the bugblair barblairian

If it so please the court, I present the Case of the Noobs. I'm a first time DM leading Curse of Strahd with a group of completely new to D&D players. During a session, the players were talking to an NPC at the town inn/bar. One player wanted to try to steal alcohol from the inn. I called for a stealth check to get behind the bar, and a sleight of hand check to see if they could get it because there was a bartender there. They decided to forego stealing the wine. As they went back to the NPC they were talking to, the party had many different conversations happening. I paused the session, and said "I have to go to the bathroom. Figure out which of you is saying what to the NPC so we can keep going," because there was no way the NPC could answer all of them at once. When I returned from the bathroom, their conversation died down with "Don't tell Cam" (I'm Cam, the DM). I thought they'd figured out what they wanted to do, and the session resumed. The next session, as one player was doing a recap, they said that while I was away from the table, the player who had wanted to steal the wine had done so, and that because they were telling me in the recap, it was now canon. They then wanted to use the stolen alcohol to commit arson. I explained that that didn't work because they had acquired the alcohol without my knowledge. They said "Let's put it to a vote as to whether or not we have the alcohol." I told them that's not how D&D works and that nothing happens without my (the DM's) knowledge or approval. While it is collective storytelling, I need to know what is happening and have final say in what the players get and if they can use stuff in the way they want to. Your honors, as a new DM with new players, how would you address the situation/punish them. I did not shut them down and say "You cannot steal the wine;" instead, I had called for two rolls. They elected not to do the rolls. Then to say they stole the wine while I was away from the table, and to use it for a different situation in a future session.

CSmall

They weren't stacking temp hp, were they?

tacticalgrandma

May it please the court, My DM-brother runs a group with me and some friends, and we have been playing the “Out of the Abyss” adventure module. I am having my character retire from adventuring following some traumatic events that happened over the campaign, and I am planning on bringing in replacement. Here is my issue: I want to play a divination focused circle of the star’s druid, but my brother gets cagey any time I mention scrying. His exact words were "expect it to get shot down a lot." When I asked what his issue with the spell was, he replied that it is “too hard to use when working from a module,” and “I’m not good at improving that stuff.” I think he is just being a wet blanket. Who is right? Desired sentence: Death by d4s

Really short one: does a fey charm spell work like a command spell? DM believes that you would essentially do whatever the fey would tell you to do but players think that the fey/dryad is just highly suggestive and when not be able to brainwash players.

Anferny

May it please the estimable court. I play an 8th level Sun Soul monk in a low magic campaign. Any and all magic items are strictly given out to characters by the dm as loot. The group enjoys the scarcity and and importance, that getting even the lowest level magic item is a rare and special thing. With this context aside, we can dive into my grievance. My monk was rewarded winged boots by the dm, something that excited me, because I had invested some feats buffing movement speed to go with my boosted speed as a monk. When my gm set up a chase encounter, I thought it was my time to shine. I could move 70 feet with just my movement due to longstrider, was hasted, and could fly at my movement speed. I was able to end the encounter before it began by stunning the fleeing enemies, and I had a pretty glowing moment. My dm decided he had made a mistake about the usefulness of the boots and I was abusing the system and the rules to be "broken". I just thought I had done a cool situational thing with my new toy. Can the court rule that I should be allowed to keep my boots?

Dakota Paulson

If it should please the court I propose the case of thaumaturgy vs cloaking. I was playing a sci-fi low magic campaign with some friends and we were traversing space in my small space ship. One of the players made an investigation check on the scanners and discovered something hurtling towards us that we couldn’t physically see due to some sort of cloaking. My character proposed attempting to cast thaumaturgy to create fireworks or some sort of flame illusion in the rough space they occupied while using a sorcery point to use distant spell allowing it to reach a larger area. My thought process was that we at the very least could begin to gage the size of the attacker. My DM without much reason said that wasn’t how thaumaturgy worked and that due to their cloaking they could move through the spell without revealing themselves. No one really protested and we just moved on but I still think that should have worked. What are your thoughts? By the way the cloaked figures impacted the ship and completely destroyed it and the contents, my character was a space pirate and well, suffice to say, got in a lot of trouble for not delivering the packages in addition to losing my ship. I was devastated. My DM insists there was a solution and that I could have saved the ship but I honestly have no idea what we could have done. Thank you all so much.

DMing a one shot campaign with a couple friends and I was narrating a magical necromancer (the final boss) who was standing on top of a roof in the burning town who was channeling his energy into the sky to possess all the living trees in the forest. I told my players that as they walk up they can try and take actions before they enter initiative, within reason. One of my players said that he wanted to create a rain cloud over the mage to put out the building he was on, so I asked him to make a stealth roll to see if he would be spotted. Before doing the roll I let him cast past with out trace giving him a total of +13 to his roll. I then rolled a perception check for the necromancer who only had a +3. My player rolled a nat 3 and the Necromancer rolled a Nat 20. So I said we instantly start initiative as he notices the spell being cast. My player argues that since the necromancer had no reason to believe they were there he should have gone off his passive perception, which his roll would have beat. We argued for a solid hour about the logistics of this single decision I made to the point where he got so mad that the game was ruined and we decided to stop playing. So tell me honorable judges, was I in the wrong? My player claimed that since he was too busy focusing on controlling the trees that he wouldn’t be able to actively roll perception, but I argued that he was already in his own initiative order with the townsfolk and therefore was vigilant in battle. Please help!

Sean Cullen

Hear ye, Hear ye, and may it please the court. I present to you, Bailiff Hurwitz, and the presiding Judges Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, the case of the "Super Salty Star Spawn Save". I'll include the issue here in brief first, and the nitty gritty after if you choose this case to court. I'm salty that my party member was able to keep himself up using a COMPLETELY unrelated mechanic when we were both dealt an immense amount of damage that already outright killed me. And more to the point, I don't believe my DM used the abilities of his troops correctly, which then damned my character to death. The Nitty Gritty: It had been months since we had played in our campaign when this happened (about a year ago now). But it was Siege Day upon the city we were in, and amongst all the fodder and other guys attacking the wall, there were 2 Star Spawn Hulks and 1 Star Spawn Seer around myself and 1 other party member. These Hulks had an ability called Psychic Mirror, so when they take psychic damage, they send it back out in to everyone within 10ft. This was a detail we had forgotten after a pause in the campaign. To get to the crux of my issue; whilst my party member and I were in the mix of this fight, the Seer used Psychic Orb (deals 5d10 psychic), and it has Multiattack which lets it cast it twice. The DM ruled this: He crit against one Hulk, so he rolled 15d10 damage in total, which, with Psychic Mirror, makes that 30d10, and my Half-Orc Paladin with 42/88 HP remaining took 135 DAMAGE, instantly killing me, while my party member was able to use his DM sanctioned "BIRTHDAY REROLL" to STAY UP WITH 1 HP. Now, while, at the end of the day, I'm not really upset that my party member stayed up, as he was able to get my body (along with an NPC that died with me) back to the city wall and they went on a 5-session mission to save my character, but in game-speak, I would assume that the redirected damage wouldn't proc passives, cancelling out half the rolls and probably keeping my at least making death saves. Now that my case has been presented, what say you?

May it please the court!!! My group have taken to calling my Lizardfolk paladin murderer, and I feel unjustly so. We were exploring an old mine filled with glowing crystals, my Lizardfolk paladin; not the sharpest tool in the shed, was leading the way when we encountered this floating mechanical eyeball with wings. It slowly hovered over to my lizard until it was an inch away. As any sane lizard, he licked the eyeball and startled it. The eyeball then tried to STAB my lizard, but missed, and in an act of self defense, my lizard crushed it with its greatsword. It died and disappeared, and our artificer tiefling/gnome accused me of murder, spurring the rest of the party to join in and now every session they accuse my lizard of atrocities. Was I in the wrong to defend myself against this eyeball? I may have killed a few other none combative NPCs beforehand.

Robert Mukwaodayin

My character died in my campaign, but my DM is letting my character's soul come back in any body and class of my choosing. I choose to come back as a penguin bard, cause they'll always have a tuxedo on. My dm says that the idea is ridiculous and told me to do something else, despite the campaign already being super ridiculous. The penguin is a modified Aarakocra, like replacing flying with sliding. Should my dm let me play the penguin bard?

blob209

May it please the court! My brother/DM is trying to start a one shot for me and our friends but one of them keeps trying to break the game by being a powerful necromancer that can raise around 1000ish undead a day (we are playing LV16 characters). My bro keeps trying to nerf our friend politely but he just doesn’t seem to take the hit? Is there a way to resolve this were my brother isn’t pulling his hair out and our friend can still feel powerful. Thank you your honours

Connor Noonan

May it please the court, I present the case of the war of temporary HP. I was running a level 20 pvp tournament in 1v1 matches. One of my players was playing a level 20 circle of spores druid and thus unlimited wildshapes/symbiotic entites. The other was playing a level 20 abjuration wizard who regained temporary HP to their arcane ward every time they cast a abjurative spell. Esstientally, they had limitless temp HP to use. Three hours into the fight, I (the DM) was getting Incredibly tired and they had dropped Maybe 25 HP from their actual totals at this point. So I threw an 8th level tsunami at them in the 'arena'. They still held onto most of their HP, both still in triple digits. After a few rounds, I then threw a Meteor Swarm to try and knock down their HP a lot so that the match had a chance of ending before we hit 4 hours. However it knocked one of my players fully out. Should I have allowed the fully knocked out player to get back up at 1 HP so they could continue the fight proper. I do not remember how much HP the other player had left but I remember leaving the session feeling like a cheap DM for doing it. But also I don't know if the fight ever would have ended if left to the natural order of things. Did I fuck my players over?

Definitely do not give in to this person- if he doesn't want to play in the campaign you proposed, he can sit this one out and go be a space alien somewhere else. If you let him play like this he will not take your campaign seriously and most likely ruin it for you and the rest. Honestly this sounds like a super cute idea and you deserve to have players who are excited about that!

Hero TJ Quinn

May it please the court, I want to know if I was wronged by my dm. I play a goliath rogue and was tasked with getting a basilisk egg for a wizard. However after asking around my assassin syndicate, the only way to find one was from the syndicates item dealer named deepthroat who was a bullywog. He charged 15,000 gold for it which was more than the whole party had at the time. Since he was a member of my syndicate I asked if i could get a deal. This is where I feel wronged. The bullywog said that the only deal would be if i sucked his frog member. Feeling as though it was literally my only chance of getting the item, I grudgingly accepted. Now to this day my character is made fun of by the other party members and it is his biggest regret. Was I wronged by my dm into performing an unnecessary sex act?

May it please the Court. I was playing a druid on a mission to recover a high-profile stolen artifact. We had already had issues with thieves and spies stealing the item while we were trying to deliver it, so when we recovered it the next time, I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. While holding the artifact, I wildshaped into a mangy cat, and thus transformed the artifact with me. However, upon ambush, a wizard immediately blasted me out of my cat form so his allies could attempt to steal the magic item. I asked the DM how the wizard knew I had it, and she replied that he had used Locate Object. I briefly argued that locate object shouldn't be able to find something that has been incorporated into my fluffy cat body, but she ruled that the object still technically exists, and can thus be located. What do your honorable judges think? Should wildshape stop locate object? Thank you for hearing my case. As an additional ruling, if it pleases the court, do you think it was overkill to sentence the wizard in question to death by giant crocodile for the crime of shooting a cat?

Eli M

The Case of the Charming Bard vs. The DM May it please the court, I present you the case of our Bard using the "Charm Person" spell in combat. I am neither the Bard nor DM on trial, just a chaotic party member that agrees and disagrees with both sides... I basically did nothing to help this situation at the virtual table because I argued for both sides. Anyway, our party walked into a situation with a bunch of bodies on the floor and two huge, Beefy Boy NPCs. Our Bard tried using Charm Person once we were in combat on their turn. They were successful! However, on the NPCs turn, the DM was going to have them attack a different player than the Charming Bard. The other party members argued that if the Beefy Boys were charmed, they would stop attacking because we were the Bard's friends. The DM argued that the charm only works in the Bard's favor and the Beefy Boys would still attack the other people. After heated debate, in which half the party was "Team Bard" and the other half was "Team DM", the DM compromised by letting the Bard do a persuasion check to convince these Beefys to stop attacking. Bard was successful and we were out of combat (at least until the charm wears off). Our DM is very much about sticking to the rules and mechanics of the game and threatened to take this to D&D Court for an official ruling. In conclusion, if Charm Person is used in combat, will the charmed continue to attack other people?

If it may please the court, I want to discuss if I committed the dreaded sin of PvP or was just doing good RP. The second D&D character I ever played, a cleric in 4e, was my favorite for a long time because he was my first attempt at taking roleplaying seriously. One noteworthy moment was when I interrupted a fellow player speaking to an NPC at a royal masquerade. See, this NPC was a devil in disguise, and only that player and I were able to see through the illusion. The devil was offering to give the player unlimited power in exchange for his soul. Not only was my character opposed to soul-selling as a cleric, but I (as both character and player) knew that the other player's mentor had made the exact same deal being offered and it backfired spectacularly. So, I forced my way into the conversation and politely, but firmly, asked the devil to leave the ball. The devil obliged. The other player felt salty for a few minutes but forgot about it by the time we had our next session. I felt proud of that RP moment for years, but now I am wondering if I overstepped my bounds and ruined something the DM and that player had secretly worked out. Justices of the Crit, am I guilty of PvP?

Donny

May it please the court! I was playing a rogue thief with my group of friends, but the one that I am having trouble is with the dm. My dm has given me some cursed items, I thought he was being to nice to me for some odd reason, I then was taken to his kitchen and he told me he was going to kill my charger and turn him into a cured item like the ones I wild and give it to another character that I was planning to use on a different campaign.

A quick update on the flying gnome from last time! So I decided to fight of this jerk gnome with the ultimate jerk move, using aarakocras. My party recently angered a small 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 talon feet, perched on the rods, then open fired with long bows at the gnome. He immediately went unconscious, and argued that mage hand would have ended since he went 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

You're not playing a real elephant, and even if you were it is very common for adult males to be solitary. Please tell your DM an internet stranger says he is Double Wrong and deserves to be trampled by an elephant herd for his crimes.

Hero TJ Quinn

If the campaign setting I describe and my party agrees to is an adventuring summer camp that they attend as 14 year olds of various races in a magical world, and the players agree to this, Is it fair some of my players consistently keep saying there characters want to leave the camp in finding creative ways to draw their characters back in but am annoyed at the concept of writing sessions of material and the possibility they just wander off, WE AGREED TO A CAMP GO TO CAMP

Jack Malizia

The Case of the Froggy DM vs The Players May it please the Court, I would like to present myself for trial. During the first game I ever ran, in the zombie-infested jungles of Chult, my players were approaching a fortress shaped like a frog inhabited by humanoid frogs (grung). The side quest was to help the frog chief find love. I thought this was very funny and wanted to run it for my players so they could enjoy it too! But, when they got close to the encounter, the aarakocra fighter flew up, saw the frog-shaped fortress and told the party. They all decided they wanted no part in what was going on and tried to walk away. I got desperate. I had frogs come out of the jungle and force them into the fortress with spears. This only made my party dislike the frogs more and after a long discussion about whether they should kill all the frogs (even the druid wanted this), they begrudgingly went through with the quest. The party finished the quest but the whole time they made fun of me for being a "Frog lover". Please Court, was I wrong to railroad my party and do I deserve being called a "frog lover"? Or should my party be sentenced since I had their best interest at heart and I have been razzed to this day (2 years later) for loving frogs?

Mason McCauley

May it please the court, I present to you the case of the murdered hag. A few years ago I was a player in a group where we tried to rally a town behind us to stop an oncoming army. In order to get into good graces with them we investigated the mystery of the corpses vanishing from the graveyard. We found out that a trio of hags were raising the dead to build their own army and had also stolen a dragon egg in an attempt to put blame on the townsfolk. Ergo the dragon would have killed the townspeople and the hags would have lots of dead corpses to raise. We messed up during our fight against them nearly resulting in a TPK with one hag remaining. Our DM let us survive as prisoners of the last hag. After we woke up and spoke to the witch she suddenly offered us allyship and the hide out that she lived in as our base of operation. My PC as well as I as a player was deeply suspicious of her motives since she seemed fine with us out of nowhere. My PC convinced the most of the others in the group that we couldn't trust her and assassinated her. One of the other players was very upset because we killed the hag and insisted that it would she wouldn't have harmed anyone (when the hag was literally putting children in a stew). She insisted that the DM had other plans for the hag because she and the DM had gotten into a book with evil but cool witches. Eventually the DM confirmed that the hag wouldn't have betrayed us. I as a player didn't have that knowledge and my PC had even less of a reason to trust the hag. Was it wrong for me to push for the assassination?

Saru

My case may it please the court. I was running a campaign for newbie friends and decided to make it fun for me by only having frogs as enemies. Throught the 5 sessions they encountered bullywugs, giant toads, giant frogs and was gonna end with a bang when they fought a froghemoth. After 5 sessions the group was fed up and told me they won't be fight frogs. I the DM was kinda upset they were trying to stear my story. I ended up yeilding and had them start fighting other enemies. These are my best friends and there are no hard feeling but im still miffed they didn't get to fight my giant frog. Should I have gone through with it and made them fight the froghemoth early leading in a party wipe more early to teach them not to backseat dm, or was I right in begrudgingly have them start fighting undead. All punishments will be dealt. With or without consent...

Levaithan

If it may Please the Court, I present the Case of the Players vs. The Murder-Hobo DM: I was playing a Kalashtar Twilight Cleric in an online campaign some time ago. Our DM was an older gentleman and we were running an adventure from the old days (maybe 2e or possibly 3.5e, I am not sure) called the Tomb of Blood Ever-Flowing, set in Greyhawk. This DM seemed cool to begin with, granting us all a free feat to start the game and we had a base of operations, which would protect our items and gear that we didn’t need that day. There were a number of complaints that began shortly after the campaign started, but I will skip to the big issue. When we got to the actual Tomb of Blood Ever-Flowing, this is when it all went to shit. We entered a room with a large fountain of blood (duh) on the left, three female captives along the back wall, and a large figure with a metal plate on his head and a mace in hand, standing in front of the captives. As soon as we entered the room, the Silence spell was cast on the room, rendering our 3rd or 4th level spell-casters relatively useless. Also, a massive Owlbear came out of the pool, dripping blood. Finally, massive doors closed behind us, effectively locking us in the room. A number of us asked to perceive various things on our turn, and despite some rolls of 18-23, we couldn’t deduce a number of things. First of all, none of us perceived that the Owlbear was undead until he told us after the fight, despite two people doing a perception/investigation check on it. Another thing was that our Rogue did upwards of 70 HP worth of damage by themselves to the large man with the mace and metal plate in his head (Veltargo was his name) but the DM continued to describe it as “having no effect on the target.” We were super confused and the DM did nothing to help. He gave us no hints, didn’t have us roll any perception checks or intelligence/wisdom saving throws to figure out what was going on, nothing. Four of our 6 party members went down and 2 of them perma-died from failed death saves. None of our healers could cast spells because of Silence still being up (despite about 150 damage being done to Veltargo, the obvious person who cast the spell) and we had used all our health potions over the course of the fight. Finally, one round, he just vanished. There was no indication he did Misty Step or Dimension Door, nothing like that. We were so confused and because it was super late at night, we called the session. In communications to the DM that week, he revealed that Veltargo was a 3rd level Cleric of the Trickery Domain who had cast his Channel Divinity: Invoke Duplicity, which creates a “perfect illusion of yourself.” The DM argued that because it was a perfect illusion, we couldn’t distinguish that it wasn’t the real Veltargo. We argued that since it’s an illusion, things should have gone right through it, arrows, daggers, spells, etc. He said no, it’s a “perfect illusion. You couldn’t tell.” Despite us showing the passages from the PHB that illusions are not solid, he refused to go back and redo the encounter or make it right. He even refused to admit that he just described it poorly, which would have been better than nothing. The players moved on to find a new DM and are much happier now. But this DM still bugs us to this day. Does it seem like he wanted to kill his players or was it merely that he was a bad DM? I have my opinion, but I now leave judgement at the mercy of the Court and The Supreme Crit Justices.

Ragnar Færdwynd

In by campaign, I allow the players to use homebrewed items, but some of the items we found on line don’t have full specs (dc for saves, types of damage, etc.), just the dice to use on hit. Since we kind of figure it out based on what they’re trying to do, we argue a lot on what should be sufficient. Should I just make the call, or have a powwow to determine what will work best?

Kane Sanchez

May it please the court, The case of DM vs. Burning Hands: At the beginning of a dungeon crawl, my DM had warned us about spells like "Fireball" in enclosed spaces. He told us that some spells need to fill out their entire AoE, and to be careful as to avoid Friendly fire. Our wizard knowing this thought to use a different fire spell, "Burning hands", at a group of enemies backed into a corner by me (a ranger) and our paladin. Our DM said the flames would bounce off the wall and hit me and the paladin as well. The argument we came up with as a defense was that the wording of the spell specifies it as "...a thin sheet of flames shoot from your fingertips..." and a thin sheet of flame would not bounce perfectly perpendicular to a stone wall. They would have a better chance of just being dispersed up and down the wall instead of coming back at us. Were we the players correct in assuming this and being mad at the DM for making us take damage from this spell. And what precedent should be set for this case in the future?

Jarod W

May it please the court. I bring this case against myself for my frequent rules-lawyering. Amongst my friends, I tend to be the one most familiar with the official rules. I try not to tell my fellow players what to do but I’m often frustrated when people don’t know the more basic abilities for their character (such as how a barbarian’s rage works, spell mechanics, etc.). I try to restrain myself from rules lawyering too often, especially when it would have negative consequences for their character/our party as a whole. Am I the asshole for pestering my friends with rule corrections, or am I being helpful? Thank you for your time, sincerely a player that loves rules and is just trying to keep her party from being murdered by vampires.

My case, may it please the court, is that of Too Many Glyphs. Our campaign had fled a large calamity and taken to the sea to explore and find our way to a hidden druid oasis. My Vedalken Fighter had been chosen as the ship's captain, but due to some NPCs hating me for drinking alcohol, the Wizard in the party was pretending to be captain (it was at confusing as it sounds) and we were sailing around looking for some kind of clue about where to go when we were attacked by pirates. We beat the boarding party, and their Orc Captain said he wanted to speak with our captain. Me and the Wizard both speak up, and the orc decides he doesn't like the wizard, and they argue briefly before the orc decides he wants to talk to me. We end up striking a deal with the orc Captain to help him save his brother in exchange for peace and for him to guide us to the Druid Oasis. Cut to a bit later after some intense dungeon crawling to rescue the brother, our Paladin is now petrified and we're trying to regroup and move on. Wizard ends up provoking the Orc Captain and then running into the captain's quarters on our ship. The orc captain reaches for the door and... Explodes instantly. Turns out the wizard player had been messaging the DM that he had been spending every single spell slot over the weeks we were at sea placing Glyphs of Warding holding Magic Missile on the door to our ship's captain's quarters, and set them to trigger if the orc captain touched it. The wizard was allowed to stack something like 60 glyphs of warding on the door, which would have killed the orc even if they all rolled 1s. I argued that A. he shouldn't have killed our only ally and our guide in the middle of the ocean. B. he shouldn't have been able to set more than one Glyph in a single place. And C. my character had a 17 in passive investigation, and the wizard had a spell save DC of 17, I should have seen the glyphs when I was going in and out of that room every single day during our trip. It had also been multiple sessions since our altercation with this orc, he was just still being rude to the wizard. Am I wrong? Should my character have seen the glyphs on his own doorknob? Was the wizard justified to straight up murder another captain that we'd made a deal with because he's dangerous? If so, I await my punishment.

Codey Borges

May it please the court the I give you Lola Bunny vs Reduce Size Honorable judges our party after being captured by grungs and brought before their king our sorcerer decided to use disguise self and make himself attractive to the king. After seducing him they retreated to have "sexy" time but instead he reduced the kings size by casting enlarge reduce on the King himself. Now the case is can you kill a character after they are reduced to the size of a normal frog by crushing them under a bed post. Our soucerer decided to throw the king out the window after we had this discussion for 30 minns.

it sounds like that's between the DM and their player and up to the DM to determine the level of forgiveness they want to extend.

Arwyn Robinson

I have no opinion on who was right or wrong, but just wanted to say how awesome your character sounds! Love the commitment with the shit throwing

Arwyn Robinson

Yeah, "wearing off" is complete BS. If it was a spell, sure I could make the argument, but as a ring there is crystal clear language outlining under what circumstances the invisibility ends. I think you were in the right.

Arwyn Robinson

Idk 🤷‍♀️

Anton

May it please the court, the case of me (the DM vs the identify spell. My party has two people, and they are a cleric and a paladin. We’re all good friends and have been playing for a long time, so everyone is pretty good at gilding tough characters. Whenever my players find magic items out of combat, they ritual cast identify. I used to give them powerful items they didn’t understand and couldn’t attune to yet, keeeping details a secret, but with this I’m in a weird spot. My players argue that the identify spell should work for all items regardless of power, which is RAW, but I have ruled that items too powerful may guard their secrets (so I can have mystery around rarer things they find). Am I wrong to partially nerf the spell, or is the mystery worth it? Note most items can still be identified

Katherine Lindeman

May it please the court, During my party's Christmas Special, the party wanted Mrs. Claus to join them in the final battle to rescue her husband Santa. Mrs. Claus said she had to stay in the North Pole to protect it. The party insisted she should come, and said the single reindeer Blitzen who escaped kidnapping could watch over the North Pole. Blitzen responded he could not because he couldn't open doorknobs being a reindeer. In protest, one of my party's players claimed they could open a doorknob with their mouth, and if they could do it, so could the reindeer. To prove this, the player got up, wiped down the nearest doorknob and impressively opened the doorknob with their mouth. I, the DM, out of fear and respect, allowed Mrs. Claus to join the party. But 1) would a single reindeer be able to handle the responsibilities of defending the North Pole and 2) is my player opening the door with their mouth enough evidence to say a reindeer could open a doorknob with their mouth? PS: Please keep my name anonymous if this is used in the podcast thanks

If a player forfeits a character and is no longer playing them, I believe they also forfeit the ability to determine what is going to happen to them. As the DM, I think you were operating well within your right.

Arwyn Robinson

I'm just going to be in the audience for today, can I sit next to Cameron Diaz?

K

May it please the court: Honorable judges, here is my case. Judges, I was playing a Dwarf fighter (who may or may not have been inspired by mishka) in a one-shot where the playing where divided to two opposing sides of this war; I was a member of the resistance and had been captured by the other side. A battle occurred on the airship we were all on, and we had to fight together. After the battle. We all ran to an escape pod on the ship to leave. In a private message to the DM, I asked if my character could silently slip away to rejoin the rebellion. He had me do some stealth rolls, which came out to be pretty good (an 18 to grab the equipment and a 17 to leave). He let me slip away on a parachute. When he narrated this to the players, they immediately redirected the ship to capture me. I was of the opinion that my stealth rolls were to get away quick enough that by the time the rest of the party noticed it would be too late for them to catch me. However, this is not my main quandary, honorable judges (though I would like to hear your opinion on the situation). This encounter has led me to this question: At what point should your prioritize storytelling over the technical rules of the game? Thank you, honorable judges, and may your wisdom scores always be high.

May it please the court, I present the conundrum of Stupid Player, Smart Character. Honourable judges, my 16 INT rogue discovered a clue in the form of a riddle that once solved would unlock the next step in our adventure, which my DM constructed from scratch. After bringing it to the attention of the other player in the session, we both spent 30 minutes trying to decipher the code, with no success. I asked the DM if I could roll an intelligence check with my character's bonus to see if HE might find a clue to help him solve it. I am just a humble guy (probably 11 INT tops) and so I thought my smart character might have a better chance of solving it than us dumb real-life players. The DM refused the roll, saying that if we couldn't understand it, our characters couldn't. We spent the remaining time of that session bitterly trying to solve the dm's puzzle, solving it after another 90 minutes as the DM watched. That was our last session as a group. Judges, do you think my DM was in the right, or that this dumbass should have gotten a clue from his smart character?

How do we feel about other members of the community weighing in? I don't have any real cases of my own, but man do I have opinions about some of these. I just don't want to offer unsolicited advice

Jacob Buttarazzi

Yes and you love it

Arwyn Robinson

For my druids when they want to wild shape into something they've never wild shaped into before I make them tell me in a few sentences where they've encountered that creature before. There are some normal creatures I disallow because they can't articulate how they've encountered the creature before, even if it's a pretty normal creature. I think you followed the rule of cool and made the right call. :)

Arwyn Robinson

May it please the court, Myself and a small group of friends decided to do a one-shot battle royale (every man for themselves) at level 10. I decided to be a Firbolg Death Cleric and took the Mage Slayer and Savage Attacker feat since we had a monk, a fighter with high HP, and a Chronurgy Wizard. I threw together my character in less than an hour before the campaign and the wizard spent hours building their character. At the very start of the fight, the wizard cast Warding Wind on himself so that he could be basically untouched. My character saw this and decided that this was not quite fair since half the group had no magical ability. I decided to Dispell Magic the wall he built and was immediately pissed and decided he was going to take me out. He tried to cast Gaeas on me and the DM wouldn't allow him to do so, since it takes 1 full minute to cast. He argued that he should be able to since I dispelled his Warding Wind but the DM said not. He instead polymorphed me into a hummingbird.... which had 1 HP. On my turn, I used my movement to fly into a wall and drop the bird HP and turn back into myself, and then I cast Cloud Kill on him. The wizard argued that I would had no idea of how to fix polymorph and wouldn't have been able to finish my turn, that I was metagaming. I argued that at level 10 there would be no way I had gotten to that point without seeing that spell and knowing its language even though it wasn't on my spell list. The DM took my side and allowed it. The wizard eventually took me down since I had not stocked any healing spells (I thought it would be unfair to the monk and fighter since they couldn't really regain HP in the same way). He counterspelled several Dawn spells, Blight spells, and Cloudkills (we used spell point, not slots) and dropped my with several Scorching Ray's. I let him have his victory without casting Dispell Magic any further since he was so mad at it earlier. So my question(s) to the court is: did I go too soft on the fight? Was the DM correct on his rulings? Was the wizard (who happens to be my boyfriend and has admitted that he was just mad that he felt that a new player like myself made a better character than his without as much effort as him, a seasoned player) right to be upset at my character's actions?

ap.cleric

May it please the court and honorable judges, I present the case of 1 too many things. I joined my 1st D&D campaign while unemployed, pulling temp jobs end of 2019. It was great, my wife and I joined a new campaign, which at the time I thought was new content, called Fantasy High. The DM was excited to share his "new material," and as a new member of the D&D world, I did not know of all the podcasts that existed. It turned out our DM had finished Dimension 20, and was binging all of NADDPOD, and using the story to write his own with nearly identical villains combined. By session 5, we had experienced the purple worm, named the dusk mommy, that shot out pseudopod arms like Maribelle, which killed me and turned me into a vampire at which point I had to carve a coffin while we sought to reincarnate me, but then was teleported mysteriously to a casino in the 4th layer of hell. I was quite upset, as I had also taken up binging this podcast. The last straw was covid. We were unwilling to meet in person, and requested online games. The group said no, they did not want sessions online and preferred in person, so decided to wait. Less than 2 weeks went by, and we scheduled a 1shot over discord because everyone wanted to play. This went terribly, no communication or planning, and all players and DM could not keep track of what was happening. We asked again to go back to regular sessions, but online. The group said no, we're gonna landing our next campaign that will be the followup to our "Fantasy High." So, both my wife and I tried to write out our issues, privately to the DM, and leave the group on a positive note. Was I in the wrong for not wanting to relive NADDPOD over in my new campaign, named for the dimension 20 campaign, and privately telling my DM after they wouldn't treat covid safely? Last note, the DM immediately messaged all of the other players privately, to tell them I was accusing him of being a bad DM, who then attacked me. Still haven't told them all the truth, I did not want to taint the view of all his childhood friends and girlfriend, though I suspect they'll hear it here and now.

Oof that's tough. Sounds a little bit like your player got a freebie Wild Shape. I agree with your first instinct that if they came back up or stabilized their death saving throws they aren't a monster anymore.

Arwyn Robinson

In my game, I appreciate when my healers are paying attention the damage people take so they already have their mind made up who they are going to heal based on damage vs. health pool. I agree with you that realistically in game, your character would become familiar with how many hits your friends can take before they go down and it's no different than asking the DM "how's the monster looking" to gauge how much health they have left." Side note though, my players are also very secretive from me how much health they have left because they don't want to be targeted. lol

Arwyn Robinson

Hello Coooouuurt, quick question, is it unreasonable for a high level fighter to dual wield great swords? This is something me and my dm have been arguing for three years now. Also, I dont even play fighters, I play bards, I just think the idea is cool Thank you.

Sin

May it please the court, Honorable judges, my paladin player decided to jump out of their boat into deep water with plate armor on to rescue someone. As the DM, I decided to have her roll a strength check to determine if she could swim even with her armor on. She failed miserably and thus started to sink. I allowed her to reroll her strength saving throws on her turn to swim successfully. If you follow the rules to the letter, plate armor doesn't effect your movement beyond reducing your speed if you meet the strength prerequisite, but I felt like realistically if you are going to try and swim with plate armor on you should have to roll for it. My paladin was butthurt because they met the strength prereqs and didn't feel like they should have had to roll to swim and they lost turns trying to stay afloat instead of fighting. I argued that was true when they were on land, but water was a completely different environment. Was I wrong to make my player roll to swim in their heavy armor?

Arwyn Robinson

Total knob. I think from D20 and Naddpod you can see this DM was power drunk

Sammo Cando

May it please the courts present the issue of the dm vs the accidental angel I have been through a couple campaigns with one of my groups of good friends, during the first of them I played a drow rouge who despite all reasonable expectations wasn’t actually that edgy and just was born into some unfortunate circumstances during one of our quests my character encountered a holy relic of the god of nature that (without warning) made me change my race and class to a assimar-cleric him I told him changing my race was fine since it was near the start of the campaign when the other players didn’t know much about the character and it only offered minor advantages/disadvantages was fine but I would really like to keep my class he then forced me to change my level 10 rouge to a same level cleric I still to this day say he was wrong to do so and should’ve just let me keep my class and not forced me to play something I didn’t want to play P.s love this new eldermourne chapter

Thistle

I second the player's perspective, if the monk wants to take they damage they should be able to punch with hot knuckles

Sammo Cando

May it please the court, I would like to present the case of the 5 foot step V. Stepping 5 feet. This was a Pathfinder game a few years ago. For context, in Pathfinder you can use all your movement to instead take a 5 foot step to move 5 feet without taking an Attack of Opportunity. Our party was fighting a group of rats. One rat was in front of me and was 5 feet away from a player that had attacked it, drawing its ire. The DM moved the rat to attack the other player. I said I get an attack of opportunity for moving away from me. The DM said that the rat took a 5 foot step to avoid the attack. I put forth that a rat is not smart enough to understand threat ranges nor cautious battlefield movement, that it had simply moved 5 feet away to attack something else. The DM ruled that 5 feet is 5 feet and I did not get my Attack of Opportunity. Honorable Judges, was my DM right in denying my attack of opportunity or should I have been able to attack the rat?

James Burnett

May it please the sweeties, In the 3.5 campaign I am in, the DM had set up a very long and complicated plan to incapacitate and kidnap the main spellcaster in the group. We faced an encounter where the primary enemy had extremely high DC's for save-or-suck spells, and while we fared better than expected, we went down and the caster was kidnapped. This led to a seriously tense and uncomfortable argument between him and the DM as he felt his agency as a player was stolen, and he now had to sit passively until the rest of the crew rescued him (he is a long time DM himself). The DM always had the rescue in mind, and used the encounter as a way to give a long term injury to most of us as well for interesting plot reasons. After he took a short walk to cool down, everyone apologized and we went on one of the best and most exciting rescue missions I have ever played, and he was even able to almost self-rescue himself through a cunning use of spells. Who was right though? Should DM's design a Kobayashi Maru encounter for story development? Or should they always leave room for PC victory?

Sammo Cando

If it may please the court, I would like to bring forward my case: THE TORTLES BEES v. DUNGEON MASTER (est. 2020) After ending a lengthy campaign, a previous player volunteered to DM the next game insisting they've had something planned for months. We were instructed to create level 5 characters and were ensured that each character would be worked into the game without issue. We were given no other instructions or information as the DM wanted to keep things secretive. Fair enough. I showed up with my new Bee-flavored; Tortle Swarmkeeper Ranger, intending on supplying healing and honey for the party as the other members let slip their intention of rolling damage focused characters. 45 minutes into the game I am being told the colony of bees my tortle keeps in their shell immediately freezes and dies after a freak and expositional blizzard hits while the big bad makes an appearance. I attempted to rebuttal explaining that my Bees would have sought out shelter in their home, my shell, but this only prompted the DM to declare my Tortle make a CON saving throw judging that the same cold that could kill a hive of bees would most likely impact 'the cold blood of a large turtle'. I rolled a 12+3 but was told there was now a tortle laying facedown in the snow and to make Death Saves. My party attempted to warm me but the DM insisted that the party could do nothing to help as the cold was so intense they could not warm a 300 pound turtle. A 2 was rolled, followed by an 8, and then a 5. The DM apologized but remained confident that all they did was make 'common-sense decisions based on biology and temperature'. Honorable Judges, Was my DM in the right or should I seek damages for the loss of my Turtle beekeeper?

Shawn Connor (DM4Hire.com)

May it please the court I play in a weekly session with 6 other players alternating between 3 different dms’ campaigns(myself being one of them). The dms of the group we got together and were talking about our dm styles. One of them brought up the fact that I give a lot of magic items out. I give out way more magic items than any other dm I have ever played with. However, I have magic shops that will trade, magic items can be sold for gold, etc... My case is, should I reduce the amount of magic items and rewards for players? I say no, to me it doesn’t make sense for magic items to be rare in an ocean based homebrew game where the planet has existed for thousands of years. Like if they fight another group of level 10 adventurers(same level they are) it would make sense that the other party would have a bunch of items not like two. Love the show, thank you all for all the laughs, tears, and good times. Thank you Lou for filling in, you are doing an amazing job, Congratz Caldwell

Makeitsweat

May it please the court: To the fair and honorable magistrate, I present my case. I was a PC in a game recently going up against the BBEG. The BBEG pulled out a weapon, then cast a spell at my group from it. I tried to counterspell, but the DM said that since the item was casting the spell, it couldn't be counterspelled and should be treated as an ability of the item. On my turn, I used charges on my staff of power to cast a spell back. The DM tried to counterspell, but I reminded him that he had just ruled that null, since it was an ability of the item, and not a "spell". He relented because of the precedent set, but I'm not sure it was the right move in either case. Should an item capable of casting spells be immune to counterspell? Keep up the great work and thanks for everything you all do!

Joseph Goldstein

here’s my case, may it please the court. three years ago, someone ran a game of dnd for me. i wasn’t really into it, and didn’t bother to come up with any backstory for my warlock or even learn the basic rules of the game, or what a warlock is, my spells, etc. over quarantine, however, i got super into d20 and naddpod, bought all three rulebooks, and am four sessions into dming. now, looking back, i was a total problem player. i don’t talk to those friends anymore (the politics of high school), but now that i’ve grown do i owe them an apology? an explanation? the thing is, i don’t want to play dnd with them again, and i’m worried it might lead there.

Cassidy RC

May it please the court, I am playing a goliath moon druid and i always try to think of creative ways to approach combat. I had stocked animal friendship and beast bond so that i hopefully make some sort of impromptu animal companion (Emily knows whats up). My group came across this giant manacled beetle monster in the forest and the rogue in our party attacked it with Booming Blade, then on my turn i cast animal friendship and it rolled a 1. Next it was his turn. My DM said that as he's now friends with me he'll want to walk towards me. On its first step towards me it activated the booming blade, thunder erupted from it and my spell broke because technically "we attacked it". I argued that the extra thunder damage doesnt count as its own attack since it is activated by the target. Your honors, was i robbed of a giant bug friend?

May it please the court, I would like to approach the bench with the case Nerf v. Buff. As a new DM, I accidentally handed out giant belts in early game not understanding the implications. As a result, the plaintiffs (my two melee players) had attack mods that were significantly higher than the defendents (my 5 spell casters) attack mods. To not have my melee characters one shot mobs I had to increase their AC, but it meant my spell casters could never hit. I explained to my players the issue with the disparity and they all agreed it needed to get back in alignment. The group then had an unfortunate run in with a Shadow monster, which I used to drop my melee character's strength down to be more in line with my spell casters. The plaintiffs complaint is that I should have given magical item to the spell casters to bring their mods up instead of bringing their strength mods down. I felt like I found a way to honestly and mechanically nerf them so that the game could be enjoyable for everyone again. Did I mess up by nerfing my melee characters? Should I have buffed my spell casters instead? I know I goofed with the loot, but I wanted to bring combat back into balance, but do it in a way that was part of the story and had an explanation instead of a retcon. When is it appropriate to retcon vs. Nerf, or to nerf vs buff?

Arwyn Robinson

If it may please the court, I present the brief case of heated knuckle dusters. Note: Our DM makes every encounter deadly as they feel if it’s not high stakes it’s not worth doing an encounter. We had finally tracked down a small Arch Big Bad. It was a very challenging fight as always but we managed to get him to focus my character and chase him into a corner where we then surrounded him. No where he could move without taking opportunity attacks etc. Even then the fight was still tough but we could tell the DM was a bit annoyed he had been cornered. Here is the issue. Our monk uses knuckle dusters, the big bad cast heat metal on them. Our monk said they’re not going to drop them but instead take the damage and attack using them asking can they do 1d6 fire on top of the set damage for the item. Our DM said no saying only the inside of them is heated which we argued it’s one piece of metal all of it would get heated not like a sword where the handle is not connected to the rest properly. Still our DM refused. I argued the rule of cool, it’s a great character moment, tanking the 2d8 damage and punching with a searing hot knuckle, for flavour branding the big bad but still no. I spoke after game with the Monk and they said it was annoying because our DM does stand between good moments often and if we forget to say something during our moves or opportunity attacks it’s to bad but if they forgot an opportunity attack and realise 10 minutes later they’ll make us take the damage of it. So dear judges I ask of you, should our monk have gotten their heated moment or was our DM fair in saying only the inside of the knuckle duster would heat up?

Side bar: this decision ended up having no impact on the rest of the campaign—which ended up concluding after a 4 year run at level 15. We laughed, we cried, and our bard went into labor irl mere hours after our final session. We went into the game as acquaintances and left as great friends and are now neck deep in our sequel campaign. Long live D&D!

Hannah Osborne

I played a game as a level 3 tiefling bard that had a knack for talking a lot of shit then backing it up behind the scenes. During the first of my party’s encounters with what seemed to be the BBEG, he cast time stop on us in order to take a ultra-powerful religious tome from my hands. Since time stop ends when you interact with an object a creature is holding, I told him he’d better give it back and a this point the DM announced the BBEG was casting teleport. I asked if I could make a sleight of hand since there would be a cast time and the DM told me sure. Natural 20 with expertise landed me a 28 and he let me take it. HOWEVER the BBEG ended up only using his 7th level teleport spell to teleport a stunning 30 feet away. To avoid my party getting nuked I handed it back over. I told the DM it would be insane for him to have used a 7th level spell (that is also supposed to be inaccurate just to) move 30 feet backwards when he could use misty step, blink, etc. to do the job and that I never would have gone for the book had I known he was just returning to his previous position. My dm said it would have been metagaming. I think that my bard would have recognized the spell as high level/powerful and that it would have worked in game, but at this point we just continued. Did I get robbed of a legendary nat 20 that could have shifted the campaign? And is that the reason I got robbed of the nat 20 or am I just hated? Love y’all keep up the great content

Distinguished magistrates, my DM set up a room that had bookshelves lined up library style with a narrow corridor between the shelves and a bunch of baddies in an open space in the other side. The only way to get to the bad guys was to go through the bottleneck. My character decided to use his action to knock down one of the bookshelves, planning on knocking down the whole row like dominoes, opening up the room for our range and caster types, and I explained this plan to my DM. DM said they were 10 feet tall, and he let me try to knock one over. I rolled over 20 on my athletics check. When I did he said that it fell down into it's own space and the adjacent space(10 feet total) and didn't knock down the next shelf. On top of that, the area I was now standing in was made difficult terrain AND I was prone, so it was even harder for me to get to where I needed to be. I argued that the shelf would have tipped over from its far edge not it's near edge, so it would have fallen into the next shelf, only 5 feet away. Was I robbed of a cinematic moment, or was I asking for too much?

Jesus christ this is a nightmare, your DM sounds like a power-hungry lunatic. Good luck homie

Alexis R

I’m the DM in this situation. My players were planning to do a “very” hostile takeover of an airship corporation called airships unlimited (which is run by a character who does the huh huh thing wren from gladehome does). They were beings kings in the north and had a nomad army to help them fight the criminals the company employed. One of my players wanted to retain a percent ownership in the company if they succeeds, receiving a profit share and licensing the brand. This player was trying to turn the company into a publicly traded thing where the party held a majority stake. He wanted me to come up with the profits and expenses, then pay him a percentage of it as the business made money. I argued that since this business chain was on a remote island the party would never return to, he couldn’t reasonably get the money (though I mostly was completely unprepared to flesh out an entire business). I managed to convince him to do the simpler thing and donate the business to the locals to stimulate their economy and just take some cool airships as loot, but he still wishes the party could’ve owned a percent of the company. The other player is neutral on this, so did I do the wrong thing denying my player an airship empire, or was it fair to not want to create an economic simulation? How should I respond the next time he wants to do this to a business, and I can’t use the distance excuse (this happens semi frequently)

Katherine Lindeman

May it please the court, My tiefling cowboy paladin lasso'd an Animated Armor off a balcony in Death House. The Armor landed a floor below me and was knocked Prone. I attempted to then shoot the armor with my hand crossbow. Rules as written state that shooting a prone target requires me to roll with Disadvantage. I suggested that from my character's birds-eye-view perspective, the splayed-out target was just as visible as if it was standing up on equal ground, and I should be able to roll normally. I was denied, and it is the only ruling I still feel salty about. Does this sound reasonable, or should I plead insanity? Thank you.

Lungless

May it please the court, I have a very large group of players (8 players) that I DM for and after about six months I pulled in a co-DM for support. I ran the story and he ran the combat given our respective strengths. I had a situation where my players were fighting a horde of zombies on a island surrounded by lava. My two Druids hatched the plan. One Druid went to cast reverse gravity (7th level spell) and my other Druid was going to cast Gust of Wind to get everyone floating in the air off the island and over the Lava and then they would release the gravity spell to drop them all in lava. I thought it was a dope idea and would make for an awesome story. Also worth noting at that point my players only had one 7th level spell so they would be spending their only slot to do this. Before I could allow, it my co-DM announced that the big bad was going to counterspell the reverse gravity. I looked over at the monster sheet and the big bad only had 7th level slots so it should have been a roll off. He didn't allow the druid to roll against it to see if the counter spell was successful, he just announced it was an 8th level and the spell fizzled. I pushed back that it needed to be a roll off and he was firm that it wasn't and moved forward with play. Was I wrong to not push back harder? I'm a big believer in DMs being held accountable to the same mechanics players are held to and I didn't perceive that allowing it would completely change the course of the battle. I think that DM ruling did more harm than good in damaging player morale, but was it better to yield to my co-DM than to raise a a stink on my player's behalf?

Arwyn Robinson

May it please the court: I am a dm anguished in regret for doing my players dirty. Well, one player, the most experienced player. My players were in the sewers below the shady part of town following a lead. It is the area that bodies are dumped to disappear. The player cast invisible and was leading the way after fighting off two carrion crawlers. I had traps set up and he went past the trap (falling leeches). I triggered the trap. He failed the save. He took 5 damage as an L3 bard. He pushed he was invisible, I said the leeches would bypass that. Was I too eager to use my first trap system? Should the leeches have waited for a visible player?

Brian Jones

Honorable judges, so just and so blind, May it please the court: This grievance is in regards to a game I briefly played some years ago. My friend and I joined an already running campaign in which with some work friends. This rowdy bunch was very chaotic and often easily distracted from the main quests they should focus on. As a solution, the DM regularly cast Geas on certain PCs to keep them on task. In our first session in this lvl3 campaign, we had this happen to us, binding us to retrieve an certain artifact. My friend and I, upset by this development, acted in an equally petty manner and refused to interact with any part of the world not related the compelled action. Esteemed Judges and Plucky Baliff, was I a real boob about this? Should I have spitelessly complied in this DMs desperate attempt to have control over the narrative? I admit that as I have started DMing I empathize with this dilemma but maintain it was a bad solution.

May it please the court and our most illustrious Judges, Jurors, and Executioners. I bring a case before the court about supposed torture that ended up being the end of one of the groups I played in. Our party had been attacked in the middle of the night during a long rest by demonic cultists we had been attempting to negotiate with the day before. The DM made a point to let us know that even though it was towards the end of our eight hours, none of us had completed the long rest. We won the fight and captured one of them, tying him up for questioning. We decided at that point to finish our long rest so we didnt start gaining exhaustion and to replenish after the fight. One of the other players suggested we not let this prisoner finish a long rest to not regain his own powers/spellslots, which most of us agreed with except one player that claimed that it was torture to deprive them of sleep. We tried to explain that it was only a couple of hours that he would not be allowed to sleep and that he would still be resting, and that we didnt trust him to not attempt to get away or betray us in some other way so we wanted to be extra cautious since we didnt know what he was fully capable of. This player and the DM refused to even talk about it and told us it was the end of the discussion, even though the rest of the seven person group was on board with the idea. Essentially, would the court consider it torture by not allowing a clearly hostile and untrustworthy person a couple of hours of sleep? Myself being in the military and a college student, I have gone many nights without much, if any, sleep, so I do not think it was as big a deal as this one player and the DM made it out to be. Respectfully, A kensai monk in need of work.

Venerable and revered honors I humbly prostrate myself before you to present my case, may it please the court I am DMing my first campaign ever and we are about 33 sessions in so I feel I have a decent scope of the rules, but I'm wary of becoming too loose. Recently in a session, my PCs were rushing through a city to fight a 20 foot tall necro-colossus to meet the other PCs battling the colossus on the back of a dire-bat named Chad. Our multiclassed necromancer/life cleric wanted to get to them faster so she cast Freedom of Movement on her horse with the goal of "riding her horse up the side of a building so she could run atop the houses and avoid the undead in the alleys." She argued that the spell gets rid of difficult terrain so she should be able to ride her horse wherever, even up the side of the building. I thought this was dope so I allowed it, but should I have made her roll for it? Is riding up the side of a building more than difficult terrain? I humply accept your ruling your honors!

Lakeboss

Great honorable Judges, I demand justice! So some back story: I play a Tabaxi Ranger and along our travels I gained a tressym familiar who has the ability to detect poisons. Whenever we would go to dangerous places I would specifically say that I left Tressy with our horses, back at the Inn, etc because I didn't want her to be in any danger and chance her dying. In our last session we traveled up a mountain and came across a village of Yakfolk, who were very hospitable and offered us food and drinks. I asked my DM if Tressy could detect poison in the food and he said she wasn't with me. I argued that because I hadn't specifically said I left her behind, that she was with me. He said nope. She's not here. It turns out that the food WAS poisoned and us getting drugged and captured was part of the plot. Am I wrong for calling BS because he wouldn't allow my Tressym to foil his nefarious plot?

May it please the court: I played a 14 fighter/4 rogue in a campaign. We were in the final boss fight against a Demi-Lich. I was up in his face, so to get rid of me, he cast the “Maze” spell. I had the “Mage Slayer” feat, which gives me an opportunity attack on a creature casting a spell within 5 feet of me, but the DM said I couldn’t attack, because the spell sent me into the maze, so I wasn’t there. I argued that it takes an action to cast the spell, as well as various components, so if I see the spell being cast, I would use my reaction to hit him. He said I was wrong and I am in the maze, so there was nothing left to do but fail miserably with my +0 intelligence to get out of the maze. Was I right and should have gotten the attack off before I left, or was the DM right and the Maze would take me before I could react. I leave the devision up to you, oh wise judges.

Joe Foran

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

Evan Spears

May it graciously please the court. Our party had just vanquished an infectious zombie plague from a town, with the townsfolk waiting anxiously outside. The townsguard were keen to blame the plague on our party and kick us out. My character stood on a hay bale and (attempted) to give a rousing speech to inspire the townsfolk to allow us free bedding and food for the night. The wizard used prestidigitation to give me a heroic aura, the druid gave me an epic Hans Zimmer-esque backing track on her ukulele, and the half orc barbarian tried his best to be an effective hype man. The Gnomish Gnecromancer (Lenny The Learn-ed Gnome) cast Blade Ward on my character - which he described as ghostly swords flying around my character. The DM ruled that the latter action could be interpreted as offensive magic (forbidden within the region), and so the guards promptly spear tackled Lenny and dragged him to jail mid oration. In all honestly Lenny The Learn-ed Gnome is a bit of a (loveable) knob and a night in jail is probably karma, however we would humbly request your verdict on whether a harmless spell with no ability to affect others would count as offensive magic or not.

If it may please the court, I present the case of Sister v. Brother. I planned a 1-on-1 DnD campaign for my brother (with me as DM) for a Christmas present. As a part of this, in character creation I offered that he could be the younger brother of the head of the secret criminal organization, and in-line with my character writing tendencies I made his sibling a cool monk who fiercely protects her baby bro. However, my brother refuses to engage with her character seriously- which I wouldn’t mind in general, I can’t make him like an NPC. The issue I take is that he stopped taking her seriously the moment I said the head of the organization was his sister- which was obviously a chance from the moment he took the option of being related to the head. His argument- as our irl dynamic is that of brother and sister, he feels I am trying to impose my coolness on him in fiction My argument- I’ve never been cool but I can write characters, and one of my characters shouldn’t be disregarded based on accusations of being a self-insert. The campaign continues regardless, as he did take to his Dragonborn mentor teaching him the way of the ascendant dragon, but it will really bum me out if he kills the organization head who I have roleplayed as adoring him. Who should be executed in this dispute- the insurrectionist younger brother or the delusional older sister? I await the court’s ruling on this case.

Mixxuie

May it please the Court: I run a homebrew game for 6 players. They are all wonderful, save for one friend - he plays an orc zealot barbarian7/paladin4, and CONSTANTLY pesters me for new weapons and upgrades. He's the definition of a powergamer, and I'm getting sick of having him interrupt intense/emotional player moments by asking for a new harpoon gun or to get a more powerful blessing on his dragon-fang sword. Combat with six players is hard enough in a party who aren't interested in crunchy battles, but he does genuinely enjoy doing the most damage possible. Am I being too much of a hard-ass, or should the barbarian just accept that he'll get more powerful weapons as the party levels up?

Thorn.Squiggles

May it please the court, Our party has an ongoing dispute regarding the actions of our Bard in an early mission. We had learned of an NPC with a magical vault that she'd inherited from her estranged father, a powerful wizard. This NPC was cagey and defensive about it, so our plan was to earn her trust so she'd allow us access. As we traveled to meet this NPC, the Bard wordlessly rolled into a ditch and hid, rolling a high enough stealth check to avoid having been noticed by anyone in the party. The Bard's player also said nothing to the other players at the table as to why he'd do such a thing. The rest of the party, unaware of the Bard's shenanigans, continued on to meet the NPC. In our conversation, it became apparent that in order to enter the vault, we'd essentially need to be given permission by its owner (the NPC), and she was unwilling to grant a blanket pass to "the party." Not wanting to leave one of our PCs completely out of the entire arc, we admitted to the NPC that there was another member of our party, at which point the Bard player became annoyed that we'd "ruined his plan." We argued that there was no way for our PCs to know what the heck he was doing, since he'd rolled into a ditch when no one was looking, and that if he'd had a plan, his PC should have at least said something to the party. He claims it should have been obvious he was trying to do something sneaky and we should have just "been cool about it." The debate continues to this day, and so we request the Justices of the Supreme Crit provide a final disposition.

Stephanie Karisny

Honorable Judges Murphy, Axford, and who ever may be sworn in for this session! May it please the court... I have been running a game from my friends and recently the players had come upon a cabin in the woods which part of a cult resided in. Once inside, they were trying to sneak around and were caught by the leader of the cabin. One of the PCs, a sorcerer with high Charisma, began to try and lie his way out of the encounter. He tried to lie and say they were new recruits to the cult. I asked for a Deception check, he INSISTED it was a Persuasion check(which he had a higher bonus for) as he was "trying to persuade the leader" that he was telling the truth. I stuck firm and said it was Deception as by definition, Deception is trying to convince someone of a lie. He failed the check and would have passed if he was allowed to use Persuasion and a fight broke out with the party barely escaping. Was I in the right to stick to my guns and make it a Deception check? When do you allow players to choose which ability check to roll?

case of the nat 20 death save (but 30 feet underwater!!) During the first combat I ever ran, one of my experienced players decided to jump from from their boat and attempt to swim to shore while being attacked by a hoard of merfolk. I wanted to set a precedent that it there would be real consequences (as was discussed in our session 0). After a few rounds the player was overwhelmed by merfolk and dragged underwater, he went down. on his second death save he crit! and came back up with 1hp. 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 this was an unfair call and he should be able to hold his breath for more rounds, but I stood firm. The party did survive but because of his choice to basically jump into shark infested waters, what should have been a fun but challenging battle became almost deadly. I am still teased that this battle was too hard and feel bad that my player felt robbed of his nat 20, but was I wrong to have him start drowning and go down again? Even after I established it would be a campaign with real consequences?

Kenna L

May it please the court, I, an outsider, have joined the online DnD group of a crew of high school friends. The DM burned out on his campaign, and we shifted to a playstyle where we take turns as DMs, as the players hop on and off a spectral train that travels across the planes. Recently, we ended up at the bottom of the sea fighting a kraken at only level 6; the current DM gave us a cool ship and buffs to even it out. The battle was fully engaged and I was fully engrossed as the DM described the kraken letting loose lightning to blast our ship - until the barbarian's player piped up that, according to the stat block he was looking at, the lightning lure cost 3 legendary actions and the kraken was out of legendary actions. The battle ground to a halt as another player explained that it was a new round and the legendary actions were replenished. He then gently expressed that having the stat block open might not be the best idea. I was a little less subtle and and cut in with "YEAH THAT'S CHEATING, FUCK THAT." With things slightly more awkward, the battle resumed and we somehow won, finishing that arc and that DM's tenure. The DM hat is now passed to me, and as we begin playing sessions in a new land, I find myself homebrewing some creatures and even hesitating to say the names of any monsters they fight, lest that player look up its stats again. I say nothing, however, because I don't want to rock the boat, and it's tough enough getting 5 people together every week to play without throwing unnecessary drama in the mix. Is it ever congruous to look up a monster's stats in-game? Did I handle the situation correctly with a quick comment, or is the onus now on me to initiate a conversation with the player on the expectations of my game? Am I a fool to even worry about this at all? I look forward to your judgement.

Hello benevolent judges, and may it please the court: In a big boss fight my bard polymorphed the Big Bad into a sheep so our party could unshackle and free some prisoners before going back to kill him. My brother as the DM used the Big Bad’s turn to have the now sheep run into a rack of weapons so the sheep could commit suicide, thus ending the polymorph. I claimed the sheep is too stupid to think of that plan, but he said the sheep would still have the same intention as the Big Bad and was justified in his action. Who’s right?

I have been sworn in on a players handbook and I'd like to submit to the court my case. Once my dm made me reroll a crit. He claimed that I had just dropped or 'placed' it like that. I was rolling to attack so I just picked my die up, held it above the battle map, then tilted my hand until it fell from my hand. I didn't place my die in my hand in any particular way nor did I do any type of practice before hand to give myself a better chance of getting a 20. I will say that I had just gotten my first set of metal die. When it did fall it didn't roll that much as I thought it would due to the weight. It has been awhile so I don't remember that well, but I'd believe it if I was told that it didn't even make a full 360 degree rotation. In hindsight, I probably should have done cupped my hands and shook them before the roll because of how hefty the die was. Are there specific criteria for something to be concerned a true roll, or should I have maybe gotten a warning for this since it was the first time it happened? Or am I overreacting because I lost a crit? Thank you for your time your honors

Kate W

May it please the court, This a is a case of players and DM vs. player. We had a paladin who the other chaotic aligned characters loved to harmlessly prank all in good fun. 80% of the time it was because the paladin came to a dumb conclusion and we ran with it. (Like the time my character bathed after a battle and the water was bloody so the paladin decided I had been doing some weird blood ritual which I sarcastically confirmed). After these happened, the paladin would always storm off and we and the DM would have to come up with some story/way to keep the party together. Should we have just let the paladin leave and gotten a new character?

May it please the court! I'm a player in a game where everyone has a race and class that's pulled from a big public homebrew repository, so we're all pretty powerful and weird. I play a sentient mushroom librarian who, for all intents and purposes, is an animated plant. Recently, my DM ambushed us with a group of soldiers using tranquilizer darts. I maintained that, as a literal mushroom, I should not be affected by tranquilizers as I do not have a blood stream or central nervous system. My DM disagreed on the basis that my character is capable of complex functions and therefore must have organs of some sort, but my character has a face made of floating light projections, does not eat but absorbs nutrients from a patch of dirt they carry around, communicates telepathically, can be de-animated with simple spells, and reproduces via spores. Was I vindicated in my assertion that you literally cannot tranquilize a fungus? Or does the court agree with the DM?

May it please the court... After a little back and forth about how mulitclassing works with my DM, I decided to take a level of Santa cleric with my wizard when we leveled up last week. At the time we had agreed to follow RAW for multi class spellcasting rules, but yesterday my DM messaged me and said he thought about it and the RAW spellcasting rules “don’t make sense” and instead I need to separate my wizard and cleric spell slots, I cannot upcast my cleric spells unless I take more levels in it, and my spell slot progression is permanently delayed. I said I felt like those rules are a bit punishing to multiclassing and asked if I could just stick to wizard in that case, but my DM said my multiclass was important to the story’s progression and it wouldnt make sense for me to just go back to being a wizard after the events of last session. I feel like I’ve been bamboozled into making a worse character because I agreed to multiclass when it was established we were using RAW. Am I being childish for wanting to push back against this/should I just accept that my character will be less optimal for the good of the story? Love, Jane

If it pleases the court, twould please me if... YA'LL CAN DO SOME VOICES FOR THESE EPS THUS BRINGING SPECIAL GUESTS ON. IVE BEEN MISSING BALNOR AND SO MANY MORE! MAYBE HEAR FROM THINE JURY AND THAT JURY IS ALL THE RANDOM FAVES DELIBERATING WITH EACH OTHER. Sincerely a fan who doth eared every thine naddisode thrice WHOM DOTH HEARD?

Vonvonvon

I propose entering the "Case of the Apes and the Hole" to the Supreme Crit Justices, May it Please the Court. I am the DM of a couple of campaigns taking place in a world called Ardicil. Recently, to ring in the New Year, and mainly to vent my frustration at certain players, we played Tomb of Horrors. They went through multiple traps and many rooms with ease but eventually came to a room with three Chests. After opening a few chests and doing the required tasks/combat, they opened the chest that summons a Giant Skeleton. After a round of combat, our Firbolg Druid chose to Conjure Animals, and summoned four CR 1/2 Apes to the room which swiftly stole the bones of the Giant Skeleton and beat the hell out of it. Upon realizing the room was complete, the Druid and Party attempted to leave, the caveat, the only exit was a small crawlspace which I estimated to be a 3 foot diameter, but on further review found to be a 3 foot by 3 foot square exit. I posited that the Apes would be too wide at the shoulders to fit through the hole, which was subsequently met with immediate backlash from >all< of my players, stating that there was no way that an Ape WOULDN'T be able to fit through that hole. I proposed that after working at a Zoo for a while and specifically working near Western Lowland Gorillas, I KNEW that they wouldn't fit. My players then proceeded to bring up the point that our Druid is a Firbolg, and is thus 8 feet tall, and wouldn't be able to fit in the crawlspace by my logic. I suggested that a humanoid build is different from a Great Ape build and that Firbolgs, being humanoid, could crawl on their arms and legs to fit through. That did not help my case as now I would have to backtrack and either remove the Druid from the room or leave him stranded in there... After a lengthy argument, my biology major mind took over, and said "Screw it" and chose to do the rapid research instead and had them roll on a custom table, to figure out what type of "Great Ape" they conjured, even though the spell allows me, the DM to pick any CR 1/2 beast. (For those curious, they rolled and got a Bonobo, a relative of a Chimpanzee). The Bonobos fit through the hole, but I question "Did I get wronged by the players getting to roll for a Bonobo?" or am I just a salty DM who had the belief that the creature named "Ape" references a Gorilla. And on the topic of the Firbolg, could a Firbolg fit through a 3 foot hole without struggling to get through? Or am I being unreasonable there as well. In the end, we came to an agreement, one that was Biologically true to what an "Ape" is, and the game kept moving, but this is just to prove a point to my bastard players (I'm talking to you Ismat, Jinn and all the others who listen). In essence, my players hate me lovingly and I hate them just as lovingly, sometimes without the love, and all is right in the world of Dungeons and Dragons. ~ Sincerely, Alex / Perigast.

Alex Volkov

May it please the honorable court, In my online game that I am DMing, part of the world building of the current elven city the players are in is this huge tree that has been tried to be destroyed but never has been. For me, this is a bit of a metaphor that relates to the philosophy the elves have in this city that there is always something stronger in the universe out there. However, as soon as I explained this, my players saw it as an immediate challenge and are now planning to find a way to destroy or cut this tree. I decided to set a pretty high damage threshold, but am unsure if I should keep that or not compromise the world building I decided to lay out. I don’t want to discourage the machinations of my party, but again, they decided a giant indestructible tree was their newest quarry. Am I in the wrong for setting this challenge to be unworkable?

Yoav Hayut

May it please the court. A tale of a player who was a wee bit too attached to his character. After a falling out between one player and the three other players in one of the groups I DM, that player was removed (fairly amicably!). But after that player was removed they messaged me to let me know that they were missing DnD. I understood that and offered to slot them into another group that I run for, saying they would have to level up their character (Bert the Bard) for balance reasons as their Level 4 Bard would maybe hold back the Level 11 party. They exclaimed that they couldn't possibly do that! That would be changing the character that they loved, and wouldn't be true to the story. I then offered to help them make up some adventures that could have led to Bert the Bard being an 11th Level adventurer. But I was told that this would be lying about the character and therefore unacceptable. So I left it at that for a bit. The 11th Level party has now gone on hiatus for a while (the barbarian moved to a different country/timezone so sessions are more difficult to arrange these days). I mentioned this to Bert's player and said if he didn't mind some one-on-one DnD then I'd happily help him catch up level-wise so that when we start up again he would be able to join. He jumped at the chance and we played some good sessions. I tried to keep the action economy balanced by keeping the monsters at fairly low numbers and giving him a few more magic items than usual. But he died. First to a mimic, which he proclaimed was too difficult, though Kobold Fight Club, his Flame Tongue Shortsword and a Cape of the Wildemount if he fancied escaping all say that shouldn't be too hard. And then to a group of four goblins. The first time he ended up in tears, as he didn't want to lose his character, so I went 'well, nobody's having fun here, let's turn back time and maybe don't go in that room?' which I know goes against Murph's Law of Consequences, but when there were only two of us I didn't see a nice way for that to end. The second time was four sessions later, and afterwards I told him 'that's it, Bert's done, but I'll happily help you roll up a new character if you want to keep playing?'. His reaction was to accuse me of hating his character choices (I didn't, there were a few too many references to Real Life pop culture but that was fine!) and of killing him off on purpose (I gave him two meatshield NPCs, the aforementioned shortsword and several different magic items, it should have been difficult to kill him!). Am I in the wrong and I should have wound back time a second time? Is one-on-one DnD just a bad idea? Should I have maybe seen the signs when we had to kick him out of the other party in the first place?

If it may please the court I present the case of chair vs man I was a player in a campaign where we were running Waterdeep and I happened to sit on a chair that belonged to the DM, this chair broke under me, and he has not let my in game character sit down since and he has often gained exhaustion. And now out of character when I leave the room to grab a snack or go to the bathroom the DM and other players take my chair and put it outside. I argued that rather than punish me he should make IKEA the villain of the story, or plan a coup to steal all their chairs. since it was their Faulty chair that busted under my exposure. My character is legitimately dying of exhaustion, I would love if you could resolve this.

May it please the court! I'm a DM running their own homebrew campaign with three player characters. A lich has recently taken up residence in their main city. During the course of this arc, they entered a residence that functioned as a ghostly communion for executing traitors to the Lich's family. There was a Black Guard, home brewed Ghostly Pastor, and a Lair Action of the ghostly congregation that on every third turn would begin singing and if the party failed a constitution saving throw, they would fall unconscious. Now the three PCs are a Paladin/Rogue, a Druid/Rogue, and a Cleric. I was accused of being unfair and throwing them into an unbalanced encounter, but here's the thing: they have so many different ways to heal each other constantly AND do insane amounts of damage. I took this into account and also set the DC for the Constitution save around 13, so the party would have to do insanely bad to all fall unconscious, but if they all fall unconscious, that's a really interesting position the party is in story wise (At least in my mind). Was I in the wrong for implementing this mechanic? Are my Druid/Rogue and Paladin/Rogue players wrong? Why Is My Cleric So Sweet And Has Done Nothing Wrong Ever?? Sincerely, A DM Who Gets a Headache Every Time He Asks For A Stealth Or Persuasion Check

May it please the court, I am doing a campaign with my friends over zoom. Because I am a new player, I use a dice roller app, which has been fine, until recently... It was a climactic point in the campaign and I was attempting to throw a conjured mouse at the war elephant riding big-bad, in order to scare the elephant and rear him off. The DM said a Natural 20 luck check was necessary for the elephant to see the mouse and get scared by it. I rolled a Natural 20 on my app and, understandably, was excited! However, in my excitement, I alarmed my 16yr old cat, Plum, who is known to sleep on my desk. She ran across my desk, stepping on and reseting my dice-roller app, and out of the room. The DM then demanded that I show him the Nat 20, but I couldn't due to the aforementioned feline hijinks. He then refused to accept that I rolled the 20, insisting that I was either lying or because it was gone it didn't count! I thought this was total BS and another PC ended up dying from this battle. Am I wrong here or should my DM have accepted the womping? Thank you, your honours, I hope this pleased the court.

If it pleases the Court, I present myself for judgement. The party has found the horse of a dead knight after killing the Cultists who murdered them. They named the horse Horse, I rolled my eyes at their naming skills so my wife playing a Circle of the Land Druid wildshaped into a Horse and wanted to roll speak to the horse to determine its name. As Speak with Animals is its own thing, I decided that just changing into the animal wasn't enough and that she couldn't talk as horses don't have a complex language system (to my knowledge, but I am a biologist). So I let her do an Insight check to try and communicate with the horse, with adventage because she was in horse form so more attuned to its body language. She rolled a Nat20 and seemed disappointed that I didn't give her the real name, but made it clear that the name Horse the horse was wrong. For context it was my 4th ever session DMing and I didn't want to break the world and turn it into one with all animals secretly talking to each other like some Disney film. Also I did reveal the name of the horse at the end of the session when they returned it to the castle (I named it Horse from a Tolkin Evlish language, furthering the joke from another player that it was called Horse the horse). I then let them keep the horse for all their hard work.

James Lloyd

If it pleases the court, I believe I was a naughty player (it was past my bedtime) but I would like to know if you will spare me due to the mitigating circumstances. I was playing a aberrant mind Sorcerer in a friend's one-shot that had now turned into a 2+ shot. My background I had agreed with him was a elf who had become infected with a Mind Flayer parasite that died leaving me unchanged except for physic and magic powers (as suggested in Tasha's). I wanted to RP my own experiences with Chronic pain with this new character concept, he gets powers but also pain from the failed infection. All good cosmetic RP so far. End of session 2 I look through the remains of foe and feel sick, a Con save is failed and I say my character vomits as a result. All good. I then act out being unwell and standing off to the side while the rest of the party decide what to do and in character tell the party I am unwell so they should lead the way. As we enter the next room I decided to "roll a Con save" to see if my RP being ill ends. It was a personal thing for RP as I was not technically U see any game mechanic making me sick. But I say this out loud and the DM tells me off for rolling without permission. I 100% agree with him and the Court's previous ruling on the matter, under normal conditions of play, but as this was for a personal RP decision, I feel that it should be except. Later on, the DM the decides to ask me for another Con save to see if I am feeling better at the end of the session, I ask if he will accept my Nat 1 from before (because it would be funny) and he refuses and I roll a 19, meaning my character is feeling better) but I as a player am disappointed.

James Lloyd

I, the DM, have a party of 6 that play every 2 weeks. I have one problem player that always manages to get sidetracked, gets stuck on Facebook or meme watching, and generally disconnects from the rest of the group. I dont want to make the table "a no phone zone" since that's how everyone pulls up their character sheets and how one of our players plays (via discord). It feels like every time we play, I'm bringing it up to this player and asking them to please pay attention. They end up distracting at least one other person and generally being loud and a nuisance to everyone. How do I fix this?

May it please the court, I would like your take on muting etiquette. When my group is playing D&D over Discord, I always mute my mic when I have to cough or burp or make terrible mouth sounds. My group thinks this is silly, and that the hassle of muting and unmuting is more disruptive than having to hear someone cough directly into their earholes, so they never mute even for the most protracted belch. Who is in the right here?

Daniel Oz

May it please the court: This is perhaps more of a philosophical debate than a case, but feel free to sentence me or my players if you see fit. I DM a high magic/fae oriented campaign in which one of my pcs is a fairy rouge. Based upon interactions and the stat block we used, I have stated several times that she’s 6 inches tall. We’ve just leveled up to level 3 and my player was keen on taking Disguise Self, but felt it might have limited use for her. Another player presented that if Disguise Self can make you a foot shorter, and since she is 6 inches tall, she could basically go invisible, if I so ruled it. I was baffled and perplexed. She also gets invisibility once per day at 3rd level, so I at first dismissed the question. My players were insistent however, and I was quite intrigued. Based on the language of the spell, ‘you can’t change your body type’, I ruled that she cannot make it appear as if she doesn’t have a body, but we could adapt it more to Hide in Plain Sight and go full Toy Story with the spell. Is this a fair decision? Should I have allowed the invisibility notion or is there another option I haven’t seen? https://dandwiki.com/wiki/Fairy_(5e_Race)

May it please the court, This is more between me and an acquaintance, Jason. We both DM games for our friends his being from here in the states, my friends being from S. Korea. So I have my setting being in an Asian like setting but Jason keeps telling my that means it’s not a D&D campaign because it’s not the right setting and saying other things I’ve let my players get away with makes no sense and means I’m making the game have a bad reputation. So am I in the wrong for my setting choice and letting my players do certain things??

Eden Dougherty

So I am currently running a game for two friends using the rime of the frost maiden book as source material, we had all agreed that the survival aspects of the game sounded fun and it might be nice to make it a little more deadly, anyway 4 sessions in falconhoof(druid) and dusty(bard) are heading toward some cabin somewhere for a quest and during the night whilst they rested they noticed these Chwinga(little spirit guys) who had a polar bear(also named falconhoof) in chains. Falconhoof (the druid) decided to initiate combat, now I had flavoured the chwinga a little bit so they had a snowball spell that would curse people to turn to ice on a dc 11 con fail, both dusty and the hoof failed but won the fight, no this curse was slow acting and would turn them to ice over 12 hours, they were 4 hours from town, it was night but they could have made it. Both of them decided to get the rest of their long rest, they subsequently made it just inside the borders of the town before turning to ice entirely and dying, with no other companions and no notable friends in the towns I accidentally did a tpk. We came up with new characters that both seem to enjoy playing more but I can't help but feel that maybe I screwed them when I could have let them off, should I have not been as harsh?

May it please the court. I had decided to run a short pre-written adventure (from Kobold Press) for first-level characters to introduce some of my friends to D&D. I also invited my boyfriend to play since he is a “forever DM” and thought he would enjoy a chance to play and help teach new players. At one point, some of the players started a battle that he disagreed with, so he had his goblin character wander off and take a swim for the purpose of going fishing. Now it is clearly written in the adventure that any character that falls in the water is attacked by a giant water snake, and I gave him and another player each two chances to spot the snake. They both failed their perception checks, and my boyfriend’s character was attacked by a snake, who crit, and rendered his character unconscious in one hit. Since he had fallen unconscious in the water, time was of the essence. Now one of my other players, who was playing a cleric, was out of range to use a healing spell, but was in range to use the Command Spell. She asked me if she could “command him to live.” After taking a look at the exact wording of the spell and seeing nothing that suggested the target had to be conscious or be able to literally hear the command for the spell to work, I allowed it. I enjoyed the creative use of the spell, and had my boyfriend’s character pop up with one HP, allowing him to get the better of the snake. It also meant I didn’t have to bring in an NPC to save him. However, this use of the Command spell upset my boyfriend a great deal despite the fact that it saved his character. He accused me of being too literal and playing the rules as written instead of the rules as intended. What say the courts?

S Koster

May it please the court! End of high school, i played the Curse of Strahd campaign with my friends and it did not go great. That campaign setting is a very dark, horror setting. I was playing a unearthed arcana Thundercanon Artificer with the Sharpshooter feat. When my party was fighting hags, i had missed an attack, a critical fail, and my dm had made it so my shot had hit the covered wagon a few feet away. The hag escaped but we found out that my missed shot had killed a child in the wagon that was kidnapped and bound by a hag! The dm said it was a horror campaign and that failed attacks have consequences. Is this ok? Is this child’s blood on my hands? Im not even sure if I critically failed at this point but my guilt says i must have for this punishment! Was my dm in the right for killing this child on my missed attack? Does a fail attack mean you hurt someone else? Please help!

Rob T

May it please the court, I am a frustrated DM (they/them) and we aren't even playing yet. Last week I proposed a one-shot game to my friends, set in a re-skin world were we play as cute forrest animals. There are 10 new races to choose from (mice, birds, deer, foxes and more) BUT one of my regular players said he will only play if he can be a space alien. I asked him to give me a good reason why and he said "because he wants to". Am I justified in being bummed out that he doesn't seem interested in playing in this world, or should I just suck it up, let him do what he wants and see what happens? Thank you for your time judges

Eli Tornøe

May it please the court. Our party is playing Curse of Strahd on roll20. We all have a plug-in that lets us roll on roll20 from our character sheet in dnd beyond. Sometimes, one of us will roll, let’s say, a dex save instead of a regular dex check. He will point it out, and we will then roll the correct one. This will some times turn good rolls into bad rolls. I argued that a dex save is still just a d20 roll and that bonuses just need to be adjusted instead of re-rolling completely, but he still makes us re-roll. How is this fair, your honors?

May it please the court, I have nothing I just hope y’all are having a good day

Corey Ruef

Honorable judges of the Supreme D&D court, My group was running through the feywild to get to the winter court. I had the way feel like a desolate snowy desert with exhaustion and encounters mechanics. 3 hours away from the court, they ran into a lady who invited them in for tea. She had a girl locked up in another room, which turned out to be the Hag in disguise mind controlling the "host". Which they found out by killing the "host" instantly, much to their surprise. After killing the hag, they then decided to drink the tea the "host" was making them, which was spiked with a sleep poison that knocked half the party for 8 hours. They decides to carry their unconscious friends the rest of the way and ran into an Adult White Dragon and her progeny in a tunnel. My players wanted to flee, but our wizard fireball'd the dragon, taunting her. She proceeded to seal the exit with her lair action wall of ice and managed to knock everyone unconscious and ate two PCs who had failed their death saves. Was I too harsh? Should I have nerfed the encounter knowing 2 out of our 5 PCs couldn't fight?

May it please the court, I play a Revived Rogue/Raven Queen Warlock in a Curse of Strahd game and in a random encounter against a Druid (and some werewolves and direwolves) I was surrounded by the wolves and used Invisibility and Dash to get away and sneak up on the Druid. Then, on my next turn, I slapped a pair of manacles onto the Druid and my DM claimed this Action ended my invisibility. The wording in the spell reads, "The spell ends for a target that attacks or casts a spell." to which the DM says when a spell description says that they mean any capital-A Action but I maintain I should've been able to stay Invisible as I didn't Attack. Is the DM right or should've I been allowed to stay Invisible?

Stephen Corston

If it pleases the court, may I present the case of Feebleminded Druid v Polymorph. We had an incident that was resolved quickly in the game, but set an interesting precedent. During a long, gut wrenching dungeon crawl, my level 12 Druid was feeble-minded. Ironically as party healer, only she had access to the spell that could heal her, so for the rest of the session the party was stuck dragging her feeble-minded butt along. I diligently played my feebleminded character, despite the shenanigans and indignities they drug my poor Druid into. Finally, the party decided that it would be best to polymorph the Druid into a mouse and stick her in a pocket for safekeeping. Under the effects of feeble mind, my normally wise Druid would be sure to fail the DC. I know the party was just trying to keep my character safe until she could be healed but I also didn’t care to be a mouse in a pocket for the rest of the session. So at this point I protested, saying as per the language in the polymorph spell: “a shapechanger automatically succeeds on the saving throw”. As a Druid, I argued, I was a shapechanger and therefore could not be polymorphed without consent. The DM ruled in my favor, though I suspect his decision may have been motivated by pity. So what is the court’s ruling? Should a Druid have to consent to be polymorphed? Or should I have languished as a pocket mouse for the rest of the session? I throw myself on the mercy of the court and will accept any sentence dealt.

Hannah Osborne

May it please the court, Humble judges. There is a Bard. Link Pinkystink is a jester-type aracocra who will use his wings to fly over a town the party enters, and give them the city pidgeon treatment (his backstory says he has constant diarrea) i had a hard time approving this character but the player begged me and I accepted. But at the 3rd town the party had enough of the harassment of common folk just as i did. And I arranged that the townsfolk would catch him and burn his wings. Since that happened, Link Pinkystink argued that he could get his wings back because the feathers would just grow out again. I said that the damage was too bad and he had to see a really good cleric to fix the wings. He said that was stupid and threatened with leaving the group, and the players somehow started agreeing with Link. I refuse to give him back his wings without working hard for it and I believe that would help to make the sessions more about progressing in the story and not shitting on random people.. Am I in the right or am I treating this player too harshly?

Honorable supreme crit justices and increasingly formal bailiff if it pleases the court, My level 3 party consisting of a tabaxi ranger, two dwarf paladins, and an aarakocra monk (murphs favorite) were being chased down a hall way with two bugbears 15 feet behind them. They thought that it would be a good idea to split in two groups at the end of the hall and tie a rope across to trip up the bugbears oppa scooby doo style. I argued with the bugbears so close behind them they wouldn't have time to set that up and that the bug bears would also see them setting it up and would step over it. This incident invited a series of spiteful shenanigans over the next few sessions. Please help us settle this before the shenanigans get worse.

May it please the court. The party I was playing with were planning what to do when a certain NPC showed up. And after much discussion, we decided to ambush and attack the dude. We waited in a tavern for said NPC to arrive and my character immediately unleashed a sacred flame on the target, to initiate combat as planned. For some reason, the party decided not to fight and stood by, whilst the NPC and his friends insta-killed my character with a metric shit ton of “focused fire”. Once this happened, the party then started fighting and the encounter proceeded as planned. Betrayal aside, was the DM right to roll all the attacks and all the damage at once and lump it onto my character, sending him beyond negative HP and into the afterlife? Or should he have attacked systemically, in turn order, giving the party a chance to intervene or my character a chance to disengage and flee? (Side bar, my initiative roll was absolute dog shit) (Side side bar. I was bitter at the time, when my friends let my character die but it’s water under the bridge now and something we laugh about)

Paul

May it please the court. I was DMing a game for some friends and the party was traveling through a forest. In their journey they fought some goblins and were met and assisted by a knight who was in the same woods. Their goals were the same so they decided to accompany him. What they didn't know was that this was the old king in exile, very much intended to be a good guy. As they were traveling they came across a random innocent fisherman who was really just intended as a reference to a YouTube video (viva la dirt league). Upon seeing him, he greeted them kindly and went about his business. Being the noobs my players are,one of them decided to attack the fisherman and killed him. The king called out the action and asked the character to repent his actions, which he pointedly refused.... so I had the king decide to attack the player in defense of the civilian. The king was only one level ahead of them,but used a strong build and so he was able to one shot the player (player was level 1, so not too crazy). This was also in pathfinder where you instant die if your health drops below negative con score, so his character was fully dead. I asked him to make a new character, but it definitely soured the mood and he decided to just wait til next session to rejoin the game with a new character. Was I wrong to have the king attack him?

Tyler Weikel

May it please the court, Years ago I dmed a game that had a decent amount of players (6). When it came time to dish out the loot they would announce the list and ask who wanted what. If there were multiple people who wanted the same item they would roll off for it. One player would always want anything that sounded cool regardless of if it fit their character. She was a wizard and would want to roll for magic weapons, armor she couldn't use, etc. It was causing friction at the table and yet it continued. After one heated round of loot dispersal where she was rolling particularly well, I dropped a small rock from the sky that hit her character on the head. On said rock was written "stop rolling for things you don't use." After this we didn't have any further issues. Clearly I am guilty of breaking the meta wall, to which I beg mercy of the court, but was I within my rights as a dm to step in and address the issue that was causing friction or should I have let the players handle the situation? Thank you for your infinite wisdom.

Jon Schindehette

In one of my current campaigns the DM has required us all to take a curse (Lycanthropy, vampirism, a homebrewed one etc), where the basic Lycanthropy and Vampirism are heavily homebrewed. My homebrew curse was one that steadily rotted my monk while he was alive. We completed my character's personal quest of retrieving an artifact stolen from his monastery which healed the damage inflicted by my curse. The dilemma is this: my DM had a high level Vampire appear and immediately bite my character infecting me without any sort of save or attack roll. Effectively giving my character a new curse less than a minute after curing the old one. The vampire then transforms into a swarm of bats and flies away. Do you all think 5hisbwas a fair thing to do for no reason other than her explanation of "creating drama." The party had had no dilemma with this vampire prior to this encounter.

Robert McDaniel

I’d also just like to know what the logistics are for you guys planning your flashbacks. They always work so well and flow seamlessly. How much do the players know beforehand going in? Like I said I like to keep my guys mostly in the dark to keep stuff natural and keep them on their toes, but should I give them proactive peeks sometimes?

Holden

May it please the court. I am looking for administrative guidance and common law support for an issue that comes up. One of my players takes a VERY long time in combat. I have a group of currently seven PCs, and my player who plays a boisterous Triton storm sorcerer often takes several minutes on their turn to act, which is much longer than any other character (he isn’t the only full caster in the party either). I added a timer of 1 minute for people to act on their turn, and I warn people when they are on deck to act next. He’s a great player and a good friend, and I know he is trying to do cool shit and wants to plan accordingly, but it’s really really slowing down combat, and he gets defensive when I tell him that he has to do something after several minutes of deliberation on his turn. I am close to skipping his turn if this happens again. Your honors, am I being too harsh here, or should I let my player take all the time he ‘needs’ to do the best turn he can in each round of combat?

RPKB

Honorable Judges, Steadfast Bailiff, May it Please the court. My friend and I recently moved out to LA and have been trying to get a zoom game going with a few locals. We started an Ice Winddale campaign with two people from a Facebook group and things started out well enough. Cut to 3 months later and my friend (the DM) is dating one of the players, who now tries to have sex with every notable NPC now (aka making him essentially perform phone sex in front of us), and our other player is playing a kleptomaniac who literally tries to STEAL from every NPC and us a few times. I’ve retaliated in game by throwing cold water on the offending horny parties, and warning NPCs of my cohorts theiverous ways, but surely this isn’t MY job. Please tell me how these unruly players could be reigned in.

Theo Dudley

Praise the DnD court, I loveth the dnd court and pray one day to be kilt by thee. Praise the court, praise the court.

Payt Suro

With advance thanks to the magnanimous and inimitable members of the court: I am a content perpetual-DM for several games of D&D and other systems. Following a few in-group breakups and other life messiness I merged a few fractured groups into one campaign setting with newly rolled characters. My trouble is this: a homebrew mechanic in which the PCs (drugged and kidnapped by the local tourism bureau) wake up in a giant pig pen, and are then prompted to catch one of three slicked up pigs with a grapple check (against a slippery pig’s +10 acrobatics), and then must use an action on a subsequent turn (or action surge, etcetera) to kiss the pig; after the three pigs are caught, the successful players each roll an animal handling or persuasion check to see which pig is least horrified about it, and that player is awarded 1000gp and other goodies (2nd and 3rd receiving lesser prizes). Players from one of the broken campaigns argued with a precedent in which they lifted an unconscious animal of similar proportion and were able to toss it to another player on the same turn—in their last campaign, as high level players; my players wanted to kiss the pig the same turn they grappled it even though my homebrew mechanic said it took a full action to kiss a writhing muddy slippery hog, opening the door for interceptions and other hijinks. I rebutted thusly: new campaign, blank spate for homebrew and hijinks, and that it is simply impossible to lift up and kiss an animal that is both so slippery and intelligent with a single action at level 2. Am I being a NOFUN DM? Am I trying too hard to maintain a level of stability here that was slowly eroded away in old campaigns? Or are my players asking for a fun, low-stakes mechanic to be so simple as to be redundant just because they’re not used to being bad at things again with new characters? Oinkily awaiting your wisdom, B.

May it please the court, years ago during my first ever DnD game we had been given instructions to make "basic, level 1 characters new on their adventures" so I went a simple human fighter noble. However upon arriving found that the other players had all been way more closely advised by the DM. This resulted in a party of: a Water Genasi that had angered a god and was thrown to the material plane, a Goliath that was known in his hometown as "Dragonslayer" because he had punched a dragon so hard it died, and finally the worst of all, a blind Elf who had been raised by wolves in the woods so the DM gave him TRUE SIGHT (even after I had suggested blindsight as an actual replacement) If this was a comedic campaign all of these would have been hilarious but everything was played completely seriously. Judges, was I right to be annoyed by this blatant ridiculousness and general overpowering of level 1 characters? Many Thanks, a now forever DM

Adam

May it please the court. I was in a campaign based on the Spanish Civil War, so we were using gun combat. Our group got taken hostage by anarchists,, and while we were being interrogated, one of the anarchists put a shotgun to my kneecap and told me that if I didn't explain what our group was doing behind enemy lines, he would blow up my kneecap. I told the anarchist to go fuck himself. He then shot my kneecap off. After the fact, my DM said this was permanent. I didn't realize my kneecap would be permanently shot off, so I protested that I had already been shot in the chest like 5 times that day, and after a long rest I was fine. I said he should've told me first that my kneecap would be permanently exploded. He said "Sucks to suck." Who's right?

If it may please the court. So, I’m a first time DM (and first real game), and I have a wonderful group who are so excited and having a great time so far. One player has been trying to get a “fantasy gf” as he calls it, but luckily can’t roll well when it counts. I have decided to give him what he wants but she will be the daughter of the man who killed his parents who turned over a new leaf and killing him would lead to thousands of deaths. Am I being too mean?

Gianni Pappas

May it please the court: Today I bring before you a classic case of player character stubbornness and a DM who is understanding to a fault. I (the DM) was running a haunted mansion adventure for my party, which revolved around exploring the mansion and using what they find to defeat its vampire lord. One of my player characters, a studious and stubborn paladin, decided the only way to keep the vampire lord from returning from death was to destroy his coffin, which I described in detail as intricately carved, well-worn, and made completely of solid stone. This paladin was armed with a magical longsword which was described as blessed by his order so as to not require repair or maintenance. Instead of using divine smites or spells to destroy the coffin, he proceeded to chop small pieces of stone off the coffin until it was rendered unusable, arguing that it didn't matter how much damage he did, as he was going to sit there and chip away at it, bit by bit. The paladin passed his saving throws against exhaustion, indicating to him that my whomping was destined by the Dice Deities. After the destruction of the vampire lord's coffin and his death at the hands of the players, I ruled that the paladin's beloved longsword was broken during battle, due to suffering untold stress while being used as a miner's pick. I provided the paladin the vampire cursed magical greatsword as a weapon (a +2 versus the paladin's longsword's +1, I might add, and other abilities for flavor). My Question: Do I deserve my whomping and should have allowed the paladin to keep Old Faithful, or may I be exonerated and let back into the purifying Light of the Dice Deities?

For story reasons, my party was put up against a dragon more than double our CR in a survival fight. Pre-battle I cast Fly on all of our melee to give us a chance against the dragon's inevitable battle control, and halfway through the fight it used a LA to wing buffet the melee players. We all failed the check and he claimed we were knocked prone. I mentioned Fly makes you immune to being knocked prone, (PH pg 71), to which he decided to add on the effect of slamming us down out of the air, being knocked prone, and taking fall damage. I mentioned Fly also makes you immune to fall damage, which he overruled, so I asked if we may make an acrobatics check to at least reduce the damage. He allowed it, and 2/3 of us rolled nat 1's, which he said was going to result in us taking double damage. I may have been too pushy on avoiding problems, but as a warlock my use of half my slots on a spell that was simply circumvented and extra punished felt wrong. Is this a miscarriage of justice or was I being too squirrelly in my attempts to avoid disadvantages during a fight? Thank you.

May it please the court. I am the DM for a group of friends and our newly created session last summer. The party was going strong, just having saved a farmer from a wandering were-bear when they discovered a plot to unseat the king and replace him with a new one. Their contact told them that pirates in the bay would have more information for them, as long as they could find them. Upon arriving at a tavern and getting, silent and worried, stares to their questions. Our lawful good Druid decided he had enough with the lack of help from the scared townsfolk. He cast a high level conjure animals and started attacking the tavern keeper. The party rushed to his aid as the tavern ending up being owned by the pirates but upon realizing this, they stopped fighting. At this point however, the Druid and his conjured wolves had torn the tavern keeper to pieces. As the DM, I tried to argue that this was in no one the actions of a lawful good character and tried to work with the Druid to try and motivate his actions but he insisted that it was the right move, despite the fact that the pirates turned out to be really nice people, and he murdered one of them. Was I right in attempting to either get my friend to change his alignment to more directly fit with his play style, or should I have just let him believe his character was acting in a lawful good manor?

May it please the court, I bring forth a case that questions the need for DM transparency. A small group of friends and I were together playing what was agreed upon to be D&D. We typically play 5e but were all relatively inexperienced at the time, aside from our DM. During a turn, I said I wanted to chuck my spear at an enemy and my DM told me I couldn't because I was holding my sword. If I wanted to switch weapons, I could use my entire turn to do so, but I wouldn't be able to do anything else. Or I could drop my sword entirely and be able to grab my spear and throw it. But holstering the sword, that costs an action. I said that I'd never heard of that, never done it in gameplay myself, and no D&D media that I consume has players following any such rules. He basically told me tough shit, it's always been that way, and said those were my options. I figured maybe I just am too inexperienced, said fuck it, and took my turn. Later, I had moved up to an enemy, about five feet, and then slashed at the enemy and wanted to move away to avoid them (they were slow and couldn't catch up if I used the rest of my movement). He said no, movement can only happen at the beginning of a turn; you can't split movement. I called bullshit again but was shut down again. I later looked into the rules and found out he was wrong, so I asked if he was going by pathfinder rules because I know he plays that more often. He said "I dunno, I just go by what feels right at the moment". We've since never invited him for D&D again unless I'm DMing. We never did say out loud that we'd be playing 5e rules, so am I a petty bitch or was he wrong for enforcing rules that nobody expressly agreed upon?

Hopscotch

May it please the court. In one of my old campaigns the DM had a rule that if only one person couldn’t play we would still have our session (we had a group of 5 players). During our second session one player couldn’t be there. The DM played as his character and we ended up fighting some monster that could turn you to stone then crush you after fighting a few waves of thieves. The person not present got turned to stone and I stayed behind to help because it would suck to have you character die when you weren’t playing (also my character’s personality would have stayed too). The rest of my crew ran away and abandoned us. This resulted in both of us being turned to stone and crushed which was permanent death. To this day I tell him I think this encounter was too difficult early on and that he should have changed the monster’s behavior with stone statues once he realized what was happening. Am I wrong to hold a grudge over this?

Tyler Draehn

I am putting myself on trial here. I dm a game for my wife and friends, and we had a situation where the inn keepers daughter was brought into the inn they were staying at with a poisonous spider bite on them. The cleric, my wife, had not stocked their spells yet for the day so she decided to then stock remove poison, which was not stocked previously. This was after they had gotten up and had breakfast so I argued that the spells they had should have already been stocked. I did let her change it but after she cast the spell I said that the poison had been removed but there was still a magical paralytic in the girls system, so they would still need to find the spider that bite them to create an antidote. I now feel that I was wrong in doing this and should have let them derail me with this remove poison. Was I wrong? Thanks

Kevin Alman

May it please the court: During a 2 year campaign I was playing a chaotic good character within the party. We reached a cave we were travelling to said to have stones of power we needed to help us along our quest. Waiting in the cave was a big bad evil woman on a throne who started monologuing about our doom as she absorded the stones one by one into her body. My character didn’t want her to get to full power so he misty stepped and swallowed (he was a yuanti) the stone. This started the fight and my character ended up being killed as she did knock him out and rip the stone from his stomach, but by the time she did the rest of the party had her knocking on death’s door. My party to this day says it was a dumb move and my character deserved to die, but both I and the DM stand by the fact it helped us fight a less powerful enemy and saved the party.

Steven Hoffart

If it pleases the court. Can a good persuasion check have caveats? I am reporting myself for a call I made as a DM last year and still am not sure if it was fair to my players. The PC J tried to find a seller of poisons in Waterdeep, a big city. I had her make a persuasion check to use her social skills to suss out and find willing sellers of such illegal substances. The roll was high, I think in the low 20s, and I gave her two choices: the black market in the underground city or a more "proper" alchemist stores who sold poisons under the table. She chose the latter. J is a noble fighter and daughter to a rich trade family, but I reckoned that despite her high persuasion roll to find the store, she needed to give the owner a good reason as to why she should sell a stranger what could be a murder weapon. A conversation ensued where J told the alchemist that she was going to use the poison to get rid of a troublesome subcontractor who didn't turn out profits. The alchemist didn't want to be a part of what she saw as murder to advance a corporate purpose and, in my memory, practically begged J to give her a good, moral reason to use the poison, and stated so outright repeatedly. She would, for instance, have sold poison to a heartbroken or desperate person seeking vengeance against a former lover or someone extorting them. The conversation went on without advancning and the players decided to steal the poisons, and the alchemist discovering it with a nat 20 perception. Fun stuff, but I am wondering. Was I in the wrong having the player make an in-game argument after already having made a high roll? Should I have prompted another check from J to persuade her to sell the poison for murder? Or was this fair where J's actions after a high roll to find a willing seller wasn't enough for the transaction to actually occur? Regards, Signe and the Lost Souls of Waterdeep

Signe Krantz

If it pleases the court I present the Case of player accusing DM of making one player the main character. I like to give my player pretty personalized quests that can be completed alongside or in conjunction with the main storyline. In this instance our Druid just finished a 4 part quest( spaced out over the entire campaign) in which she proved herself worthy to 4 ancestral guardian tree placed by Malora and was granted the status of champion of malora. It was a nice moment and I was very happy to see her finally finish this quest as we have been playing for about 2.5 years. The Druid is my wife and one of the players remarked guess if you sleep with the DM you get to be the main character. Which really pissed me off since we literally did a 3 month quest in which the player a paladin had promised his soul to Vecna and then the whole group went to shadow fell and had to stealth in and fight off hordes of undead in order to reclaim his soul. He then got a customized subclass that fit his fantasy. I argue my friends is being butt hurt and DnD has no main characters.

Alex

May it please the court: In a session some months ago, after a wild descent in mine carts around an open sky mine, our party encountered a Lake monster from Lord of the ring/Kraken style tentacles weilding foe. My friend who plays a dwarf beserker proceeded to swing at said tentacles recklessly therefore gaining advantage on his wild swings. This friend was using a feat from UA called fell handed that let's you knock a creature prone if the lowest of the dices rolled with advantage would've hit. Our DM said that it didn't matter what feat he had, this monster couldn't be knocked proned because it had no legs and was swimming. The argument continued for several minutes. Later, I checked the stat block of said monster (Juvenile kraken) and there is no mention of condition immunities to being knocked prone. Was the barbarian right and should the kraken had fallen on its submerge kraken knees? Excuse my french plz.

I hate when DMs don't respect biology! I'm a biologist and you're absolutely right that snakes can hear through skull vibrations. It seems like a petty move to take away the only way you would have been able to participate in the fight (unless you like, singlehandedly dominated all previous encounters and your DM wanted to give everyone else a chance, which is unlikely with a bard). Your DM could definitely have handled that differently and more creatively.

Haven

And I'd like to add that the Player's Judge is sounding especially righteous today. May you rule justly.

Flando Maltrizian

May it please the court. This is a two-fold question, both related to the Protector Aasimar trait "Radiant Soul" (See Volo's Guide races). Context: One of our players is a Bard/Rogue Protector Aasimar. He was going off in the night on a solo stealth mission to a corrupt guard captains quarters, and was understandably asked to roll some stealth checks. Part the 1st, the minor complaint: When the player activated they "Radiant Soul" feature, they also cast "Invisibility" on themselves. Would the Invisibility spell negate the radiant, bright light being shed by the Aasimars transformation? In the moment the DM allowed it, but then the follow issue arose. Part the 2nd, the major complaint: Now that the Aasimar is invisible and has a fly speed of 30ft, the DM requires the player to reroll their stealth check, citing the noise that would be made by the flapping of the wings. Aasimar player argues that they are spectral and therefore wouldn't make any noise, DM rebutes that the fly speed is specifically related to the summoning of the wings and therefore must make noise as they flap through the air. The question posed to the court is thus; Would the Aasimars wings granted a magical fly speed similar to that of the "Fly" spell? Or are the summoned wings fully corporeal and require all the biology and physics of an Aarakocra using their wings to fly? All pronouns involved are he/him. Thank you all kindly for you consideration

ZachDobb

May it please the court: recently I put the deck of many things in one of my games. My four players all are crazy people, and all of them drew three cards. Overall it worked out well, but one player ended up drawing both the sun and moon card. She is now a level 9 circle of stars Druid, while everyone else is level 5, and has two uses of the wish spell. Is it fair to ramp up the encounters in accordance to their xp thresholds, now that she is a significantly higher level, or should I keep the encounters easier, even though she is honestly kind of overpowered now. Is it fair to reward her the same amount of xp as everyone else, or should I try to help the other players reach a higher level so they are at least comparable?? Love the show and love you guys! the player who drew those cards also loves Naddpod and actually got me into it, and after words she referred to herself only getting good cards as “getting balnored”

May it please the court, When I made my character Deaf, my DM reassured me that there would be plentiful resources for me to communicate with my party. The character prefers using ASL (Arcane Sign Language) but will obviously get by with hearing people by writing things down or speaking orally if he has to. Once we started playing the game, though, he made it extremely clear that no one knows sign language and every time I spoke orally I had to do SUPER well on a performance check. Every time I tried to write in the dirt with my finger there was too much grass, every time I tried to look for a flat smooth rock and a piece of chalk it would never be good enough. I brought up my frustrations with him but he just told me he was mad at me and basically ignored my character in our next session (yikes!) In our most recent session we crit failed an encounter check and 3 giants came out of the forest to eat us (we’re all level 5) and our main spell caster had magic prevention cuffs on. When I cast command on the creature and told him to fuck off by flipping the bird, my DM argued that it wouldn’t work because they only understand giant... Even though another player had just used the same spell on another one and spoke to it in common. The other thing that annoys me about this encounter was how insignificant the PC’s were. We never do the final blow and are only a small highlight in his story. There are 4 PC’s and somehow... 8 NPC’s with full character sheets with their own initiative orders AND the 3 giants we were dealing with. Every encounter is like this, he prioritizes NPC’s and not even a players basic needs like being able to actually talk with everyone else. I knew that playing a Deaf character would create a barrier but I didn’t know he would purposefully make it this hard for me?

May it please the Court. I made a bard for a dungeon delving style game. As we lowered into the dungeon I decided to play a cheerful tune on my trumpet to keep spirits high. The DM immediately rolled on a table and we were attacked by kobolds. Apparently every time we made loud noise in the dungeon, we rolled to attract more monsters, and because I made a bard literally everything I could do would bring monsters down on us. We had 3 waves of encounters without leaving the first room, resulting in 1 character death. Afterwards, I argued with the DM that he should have warned me I was making a character that could do nothing but bring monsters down on us, I would've played something different. He argued that we wouldn't have been aware of the noise hazard, so it shouldn't factor into character creation. I left the group because it really seemed like a not fun time, but was I right or was he?

Flando Maltrizian

May it please the Court. I am playing in a two year long campaign and my original high elf wizard was eviscerated by vampires. I have since started playing a warlock/Paladin multiclass, taking the archfey pact and oath of the ancients. As a part of my warlock pact I have taken pact of the blade which allows me to summon any form of weapon, I’ve even taken the improved pact weapon evocation so I can summon a longbow. While I usually rock a long sword and shield, during our last session we were stuck underground and our friend was trapped behind a thick wall of dirt and stone. I ingeniously said that I would unsummon my long sword and bring it back as a shovel so that I might dig through the wall, my dungeon master protested, saying that technically a shovel is not a weapon. We argued for about a 30 seconds, citing the notorious shovel knight, however he did not budge. We continued with the session and found that the solution involved magical spider webs and shifting rooms. I think my DM wanted us to find out the clever solution rather than using my 1000 IQ shovel idea. Our sessions are great and my DM is amazing, but I still believe that my level 12 fey padlock should be able to summon a shovel as his weapon. May it please the court paw paw esquire aided in the writing of this complaint.

Jared Gabbard

Dearest bailiff! Back in spring, my DM decided to stop running our campaign almost a year into it, and I'm still crushed. I had been hosting the games (even bought a big table) but when the pandemic began, I asked that we move to playing online or at least outdoors. He thought that was a hassle, didn't want to hear my explanation as to why this would be better, and decided to simply cancel the campaign. Now, I know that's his right as a DM, but I loved my character and the story so much (it's been almost a year and I still miss her), it was always the highlight of my week, and I think it's ridiculous and petty to just scrap everything because one person, quote, "is coronaphobic". Am I right to be upset about this? Much love, H (they/them please) <3

Haven

I have no idea how this would work mechanically but have you ever heard of Phineas Gage? He was a railroad worker who accidentally had an iron rod driven through his head and survived, but it destroyed part of his frontal lobe so he changed a lot personality and decision-making wise. Could be an interesting Avenue to explore 🤷‍♀️

May it please the court I submit another; My players were starting a campaign in my homebrew world and picked the hardest quest out of four options despite warnings of the challenge and danger from the guild master (fable inspired). Half way through and at the end of a session they realised it was very hard (duh). I kept the difficulty as is and they ended up turning around next session, nearly dying to a spider snake and being rescued by the Bard class hall head who flew in and saved the day to the tune of "forever" by Chris Brown (I said she followed them worried when she heard they took the tough quest). Should I have scaled down the encounters and quest so they could go through with it? Did I railroad them by keeping it too hard? Or have I done the right thing by making them take one of the more doable quests?

Brobold the Kobold

May it please the court, I am petitioning a case on behalf of my DM, for a miscarriage of justice. First, I will establish that he is of good character: he runs several different games, and has introduced various different friend groups to dnd, he is a conscientious DM, and willing to balance rule of cool shenanigans with by-the-book hard lines if needed. He started running a game with some of his coworkers, all of whom were new to the game, and a few months in one of these players sent him a MULTIPLE PAGE list of all the things that the player felt he could have done better/should have allowed or edited, going back the entirety of the campaign so far. Personally, I was outraged at this libellous and slanderous behaviour, but the DM in question was remarkably gracious about it. He closed out that campaign with them, and volunteered to let someone else DM for a while. He ended up sitting out of the next campaign, even as a PC, because of the incident. The player who committed this act has subsequently tried DMing, though for a different group, and has sent a two sentence apology to the initial DM, to whit: DMing is harder than I thought. Sorry about that. My DM now thinks that he should accept the apology and be willing to play with this player again, whether or not he feels comfortable doing so, for the sake of the wider party. I maintain that this apology is not sincere enough to be worth putting himself back into a game with someone who impacted his self-confidence about DMing to such a degree, and that there is no obligation to return. I would appreciate the judges' ruling on this matter: was the crime serious enough to not be worth playing with that group again? Should he just accept what happened and rejoin? Does he have a social/moral obligation to rejoin, as he currently worries?

Calyx Rose

May it please the court: my DM has said several times that he doesn't enjoy combat. His preferred campaign is 90% story to 10% combat. Is this a good ratio for a dnd adventure when alot of certain martial and spellcaster character and class abilities have to do with combat? Thank you for your time. Edit: we have only fought 5 kobolds and 4 zombie wolves in the past 4 months, each combat lasting 2 rounds each.

Crane

May it please the court: in a game a few months ago, my party and I were trying to sneak past a group of apes guarding a golden banana that we needed to obtain for a nearby elder. After successfully convincing the apes that we were of their kind, I began to go around, introducing myself to the other apes and engaging in behaviour both to show I was one of them but also to goof around. My character, in good fun, took a shit in his hand and threw it against a wall, but the DM took it as me throwing it at another ape, and told us to roll initiative. After I explained I hadn’t, he had maintained that we were in combat and had me knocked prone. Firstly, was my throwing of poop a goof gone wrong or was I justified in my slinging, and secondly, should the DM have ended combat or kept it going?

Theodore Giesen

May it please the court, I am the rogue of our party. We were ambushed and every PC started getting put to sleep. I didn't get hit and used my ring of invisibility to go invisible and escape. After passing many stealth checks, I was able to successfully follow my party's captors. They were brought to a dungeon and locked in cells. I found a nice corner in the room and was waiting for an opportunity to break them out. The DM then informed me that my invisibility had worn off and that I was also captured. I argued that nowhere in the rules does it say invisibility wears off until I make any kind of action, which I had not. I was not even given the chance to react because the invisibility had worn off without my knowledge. We all argued that I should at least be given the chance to start a prison break. Our DM would not budge on the issue.

To the court, I'm currently running a campaign in which one of my players is an Aberrant mind Sorcerer. We're currently having a disagreement in regards to how slimy/how mucus covered they are in general. Their aberrant origin states that their flesh shines with a strange mucus whenever they use their powers. They insist that the mucus disappears when not using their powers. I insist they might need a shower. It's 90% flavour, but when you bring "Revalation in Flesh" into the equation it gets a little mechanical. Whose in the wrong?

Dave 3D Art

If it may please the court, my brother started DMing a new campaign. He says in order to incorporate my character, I must have a complete backstory down to the last detail. I'm a paladin Loxodon who is a professional mason. He believes my backstory is not strong enough and that my people should travel in herds like real elephants do. I countered that saying that I'm a bipedal elephant man who doesn't want to be part of a herd. Should I change my entire character to fit the mold he has given me or should I be able to create my own backstory that betters my character as well as how I play.

Honorable and fair judges Murphy, Axford, Herwitz and Wilson. A druid at my table realised he couldn't shillelagh his scimitar, and came up with a very fun workaround by using his turn in a boss fight to "raise my hands to the sky, my eyes roll back and I start chanting in tongues, and out of nothing in a flash of lightning I summon a wooden staff." I told him if he rolled a nat 20 arcana it would happen, he didn't and it cost him his turn, and to the others in the party he basically just wigged out on a drug trip. Should I have let him have that moment and summon a wooden staff? The boss they were fighting was about to drop a magic wooden staff specifically for him but sometimes I feel I was too harsh.

Brobold the Kobold

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, is this interaction canon now for how it happened when he was 9 or can I pretend it never happened/he just dreamed wrong (the flashbacks were canonically dream sequences)

Holden

May it please the court. I DM a campaign for my partner and my best friend and his partner. A few sessions ago I had them go into a shady casino and the opted to play with the deck of many things. First two draws got our own Balnor and the ability to answer any question. Now my best friend drew Throne, which grants him a keep in ther land and also doubles his persuasion proficiency, which was already 8. He says he wont abuse it but is always trying to persuade NPCs any chance he gets. Even to convince people to just run from battle etc. It's getting more and more difficult to deny a roll of 32 etc. If I say his roll doesn't cut it my players just moan saying im being unfair. I argue it can't be fun to always be able to just talk your way out of everything. Just want my players to have fun :(

Stephen Miller

If it may please the court, I'm playing a barbarian Leonin, who I've typically been struggling to enter as a character. We had defeated an enemy who was the last of his group, and as he was dying, some of my party was trying to talk to him, however the DM kind of made it clear he didn't have much to say, so I "mercy" killed him to let him pass sooner. At the end of our first dungeon, we defeated the big bad guy at the end, and there was a lot of dialogue between him and our elvish speaking Aaracokra. At the end of their dialague the DM said this guy was coughing up blood and would bleed out within a few minutes, and he was obviously struggling. As none of my party members with healing capabilities moved to assist him, I once again tried to go for a mercy kill, considering that I'm a barbarian who was still enraged, and this guy was going to die anyways. After the deed, I realize both the PCs and the players were pretty upset with me, so I tried to roleplay it out to be a difference of morals between our characters. I would like to stress that I'm having a hard time RPing this character, but wanted him to put a dying creature/person out of their misery to speed them along if death is inevitable. When we were looking at the loot we aquired, my DM was being very stubborn and would not let me know if a sword I found was better than the one I currently owned, so I asked if any of my team wanted to do a friendly duel so that the DM would have to tell me the swords attack die and modifiers. Well that prompted the DM to have the NPC in our party accept my offer, and attempt to kill my PC. Before this duel, I asked if more than an hour as passed since I went in rage to see if I'd need to use another, which I did have one), and the DM told me since "I'm so into roleplay" I need to have a reason to be in a rage, so I couldn't be now. Keep in mind this was post dungeon, against a full hp NPC that wasn't attacked, while I had only a handful of hp left... Was I wronged or was I being a difficult player?

Honorable judges and jurors my party and I have been wronged and we are here to plead for justice. At the heart of our complaint is the definition of the term “at will” In our climactic battle against a pit fiend known as Malagard, our (truly wonderful, seriously, great guy) DM began casting fireballs as one of the creature’s “multi-attacks” in combat, even going so far as to cast wall of fire and fireball in the same turn. When I politely asked if Malagard was now using legendary actions or something to perform these feats, the DM replied, “no he can cast fireball “at will” so you’re lucky I’m not casting it even more” i decided not to push the issue as I had already been counter spelling him at near Mavris levels during the combat, but I believe that my party has been wronged, does “at will” mean that a spell can be cast at any moment at any time...all the time no matter what, or was my party singed by the hellfire of a DM desperately trying to just get a spell off. Thank you for your time, we humbly await your speedy reply, as justice delayed is justice denied.

Joshua Robinson

Justices - if you are banished by the banishment spell, if you have dispel magic stocked can you cast dispel magic on yourself to end the banishment effect? My DM and I debated it but couldn't reach a conclusion. Certainly a shenanigan but an illegal move?

My DM added his wife and her friend to our campaign around 9 months ago. Since they joined, the campaign has slowed to a crawl because they do not wish to learn their characters nor have any interest in the story the DM has created, only want to have side conversations while others are trying to play and often say “I don’t care” when it is their turn. Is it too much to ask the DM to continue the campaign without players them?

May it please the court and honorable judge(s) How many gods are too many gods? I have nine, but DnD has so many options, so I'll let my players create their own gods. How would you deal with it?

Taylor Schult

Good day Supreme Crit. I am a new dm/dnd player whose introduction into dnd was greatly influenced by this podcast. My grievance is one of my players found a sentient dagger in a crypt and the dagger was inhabited by an aspect of Vecna the god of evil secrets. The dagger served as a phylactery and was going to try and influence the pc subtly at first by committing evil deeds on Vecna’s behalf. Pc would experience night terrors etc. so when the pc would be in one of these dreamscapes he simply refused, arguing that when he the player has a bad dream, he can simply stop dreaming. The following day his character left the party “to find a farming job”. So I killed him. The dagger drove him to madness and promised the new npc revenge on the party if he allowed Vecna to inhabit his body. So one of my Big Bads came to the story sooner than I had expecting . A few months passed. After learning of his characters fate, the pc wasn’t very happy and made it clear Was I wrong to “hijack” his farmer?

I am the bard in an island exploring campaign, and my only damaging spells are Vicious Mockery and Dissonant Whispers. My dm insists that snakes are immune to the spells since they require the target to hear you and snakes have blindsight and no ears. I argued that they still hear through vibrations so even if they couldn’t hear the actual words the sonic waves and therefore the magic that goes with them would still hit them. In the end I ended up sitting out the fight since I couldn’t do anything. While I understand their point of view it still bugs me. Which one of us, if either, is right?

Tony M.

May it please the court. Our DM sent us back in time to fight an OP dragon, and when it killed us we snapped back to the present. Except one party member made a deal with the dragon, became evil and stayed in the past, forfeiting his character sheet to the DM. 2 real time years later we’re at the end of that campaign prepping to fight that same dragon, this Player gets access to a wish spell and pulls our DM aside after the session. We find out he lawyered a wish where the dragon deal never happened, and he fought the last battle as his original character who now “never left.” We had fun role playing this but it did sort of break the world. As a DM would you have allowed this? Is this meta gaming impacting the story too much?

Hugh Cunningham

May it please the court, a few of us have suspected there is a cheater in our midst. We play on Roll20, but occasionally when one of our players needs to make a crucial roll, they will mute their mic or take forever to roll, and then get the perfect result. We know it is possible to cheat rolls in Roll20, though difficult, and it is even tougher to get proof of this. They are a software engineer, and would know how, but we haven’t got proof. Are we justified to move forward with prosecution without sufficient evidence?

Joe Lenton

May it please the court! I recently DMed a short Castle Ravenloft mini campaign. Since this was originally intended to be a one shot, I gave the players free reign on race, but I picked their classes (the players were all seasoned DMs and were down for the challenge). Two of my players decided to play warforged to attempt to be immune to Strahd's bite attacks. I allowed this, because I feel bad taking part of their choice in selecting their class. In the end, we agreed that since warforged are player classes and therefore alive, they wouldn't be fully immune, and instead of blood, Strahd could drain "life force". Was this the right call? Should I have let them be fully immune? Should I have not let them play warforged in a vampire centric story? I plead my case to the honorable justices, and especially the people's judge.

Pistols O'Brien

A friend is running a campaign, joining the Odyssey of the Dragonlords and the Odyssey of Theros books. I am a Paladin with Oath of the Dragonlord (think a dragon rider warrior at level 20) because I want a Dragon (Who doesn't?). However, the DM says I am not going to get a dragon cause that would simply be too overpowered. Is this fair, even if it's built into book as a playable option and therefore should be balanced for the campaign or am I just being too wishful of living my full nerd fantasy?

Damn dude that dm sounds like an dick

Samual brewis

Humble and merciful judges, may it please the court; I haven’t DMed yet and i am very excited to because of this podcast but I have been trying to get my high school buddies, who are just too used to playing RPGs on consoles and PCs that they don’t really seem interested in my Star Wars themed campaign, should i just hit hard reset and get new friends ? or should i try harder to advertise. Thanks dudes and dudettes, Love with all my heart, cisco side note: ive been writing this campaign for well over 3 months, I could definitely make a trailer at this point.

Cisco Garcia

Since similar things have been discussed before with different decisions I'll throw this out there. Our DM presented the party with an immovable rod. When, inevitably, one of the members decided to press the button, the DM made the player roll a d4 to determine a direction. Unluckily, the player rolled the worst number and the DM stated that the Rod became stationary with respect to space, so it stayed in place as the planet was rotating under it. He had the player roll a dex save(which they failed) and took 30d6 damage as this Rod essentially impaled him at like 1000Mph and tore through the temple it was in, full killing the low-ish level player instantly. We argued that it was unfair as there weren't any real warnings about how crazy bad it was to use the rod, but he argued that it was the player's choice alone that killed him. Was this too harsh for a campaign where most things outside of battle so far have been pretty low stakes?

May It Please The Court, I was Playing in a game where the party decided to split with my character A spider Monk (we are all animals) leading one group to one town bc we wanted to finish the job we were given and make some serious cash and another pc A Rat Fighter led the other group to abandon the job and save the town, The DM said he was fine with us splitting the party and then 5 min into our next session he forced our groups back together i called him out on it and said he was railroading us he denied this. So im leaving it up to you to decide was he guilty or innocent

May it please the court, In my home game there are three PCs and we each have carefully thought out back-up characters. My back-up was supposed to be an evil aligned warlock with a focus on necromancy who has another PC as her twin who is an oath of devotion paladin. However, the player I made my twin with who currently plays a fighter suddenly decided to multiclass as a warlock and his patron is clearly evil and he even dabbles in necromancy. It's so similar to my planned backup character I ended up changing her class entirely. Am I right to think he stole my character because he thought it was cool and am I right to be upset that he's fully butchering the evil to good storyline I was hoping for my warlock?

brianchi

My DM gave my wife a strength score of 24 and she gloats about it ALL THE TIME, like during dinners and between zoom classes (we are both teachers). What should I beg my DM to give me to make it even?

Adam Michael

To the honourable judges, although this did not take place in my game but my friends game and I wanted to hear your thoughts on the matter. My friend is playing an elderly character who uses his wheelchair to move around. In one of their sessions, he set his wheelchair out as “bait” and a troll threw it off a cliff, thus severely impairing my friend. Many sessions after this other players had received magic items and he had still gotten nothing, when he asked the DM about this the DM said “honestly I can’t give your character anything because he’s so boring”. I told him to leave and that was disrespectful to not only his character but himself as a player, and that a character who uses a wheelchair to move around is actually hilarious and opens up a ton of neat ideas. Honourable judges, what are your thoughts on this matter? Is my friends character boring? Is the DM too mean and serious? Should my friend leave the group or have a serious conversation with the DM?

Joe Pelaia

Good people of the court. Any question has a few components to it, and I’m interested in your ruling. In a recent combat, my party had to swim/sink/whatever to the bottom of the sea (300ft) to rescue an npc who was being chased by an aboleth. One of the attempts of this rescue, courtesy of the Sorcerer and his broom of flying, and the Cleric/Druid, was to have the druid wild shape into her wildfire spirit, and “fly” the broom of flying down into the water. How would you rule about a) a wildfire spirit controlling a broom of flying and b) a broom of flying being used to... swim? and c) can a wildfire spirit uh... be in water and just. do their abilities normally (made of Fire)?

Jay V

But did you win?

Matthew R

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 DM a campaign for my wife and several of our friends. My wife plays a goody-two-shoes celestial warlock who was offered power by a ki-rin and became an adventurer because she was too nice to say no thanks. Much of the rest of the party are in it for themselves only, and more than happy to engage in torture, indiscriminate killing, and holy war in order to save the world (for context, one of them is a Aaracokra light cleric who never heals the party). She has a lot of trouble roleplaying anyone that isn't an absolute pillar of the community and these murderhobo antics usually rub her the wrong way. I ask the honorable Supreme Crit Justices: Should I ask her to lighten up and join in the evil fun, or should I ask my party to tone it down and act like actual heroes for once?

Alexis R

If it pleases the court In a game session with myself two friends and my sister. I (the bard of the group) always seemed to get destroyed when it came to plot and character interaction joking or otherwise. During a time a political party set up, i stepped away for a moment to answer a call and when i came back i was under arrest for not answering the king when he asked a question, while i rolled well enough to get myself out of the prediciment it led to an argument that ruined the night for me. was i right in arguing and eventually leaving the group considering this had become the standard thing? Sorry for being so stark on details

Samual brewis

On a campaign my brother is playing online, there was a player who joined a couple sessions later who had pre rolled level 5 characters that he leveled down to match their level 2 characters, but his stats were still hella wack (the dude had no bad stats 20cha high everything else..etc) the dude was way overpowered and the dm didn’t care. So instead of raising a fuss, my brother just jacked up his paladins stats instead in order to make the game fun still. Who’s in the wrong here?

Alex Thompson

So I was playing D&D with my boyfriend and some of his friends, his friends first time DMing and most people’s first time playing. We had one seasoned player playing a bard, from the get go he was intent on playing a real arsehole. I was playing a Druid and went down during battle. The initiative was paladin, bard, me so the paladin asked about who to heal, I said heal the bard first and he can bring me up (I had one failed death save) the bard agreed got to his turn he tried to cast sleep on the enemies and failed. I rolled a Nat 1 on my death saves. Was that not a nice move or just being true to his character?

May it please the court, my character Dr. Magtizmo (Mag-teez-mo) a Dragonborn wizard has a familiar, which is a one and half foot tiny cow from a failed arcana experiment. As per an agreement with my DM  the tiny cow (whose name is Abner) can grow to a full size cow for a day if at dawn I roll a Nat 20. This happened once while exploring the underdark. Despite exploring for a while with Abner being as always his magnificent self, once he grew to full size my DM stated that Abner suddenly became claustrophobic and started freaking out. I argued with my DM that Abner didn't have this problem before, plus being my familiar my connection with him should help calm him until he was his regular self again. My DM disagreed I spent the rest of the session making animal handling/emotional support checks to help keep Abner calm while the rest of the party continued exploring. Was my DM right? Despite being my familiar and being connected to me, his sudden expansion and fear would basically override any magical link between us?

MJMM

MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT! I play a satyr, college of glamour bard and I managed to promise a favor to Pelor. My DM told me I had to multi class into either cleric or paladin. Since I was going to multi class anyways, I didn’t want to make a big deal about it. I couldn’t be a paladin because my strength wasn’t there so I asked if I could do Druid instead since Pelor is a god of light, the sun, and agriculture. My DM said no and that I had to play a light or life domain cleric and nothing else. Am I right to be upset? Should I have been allowed to pick Druid? Was my DM right in forcing me to multi class in a specific way? Thank you judges, but specifically, Judge Wilson, the Player’s Judge.

Matthew R

May it please the court: In one of my highschool campaigns, I played a ranger who had come to posess a longbow and exploding arrows. I was taking aim at a far away target and rolled a 1. This resulted in me looking down to see that a shiny blue bug had crawled onto my shoe, accidentally letting the arrow fly, and blowing my own leg off. Justices, do you believe that this is too tall a punishment for rolling a 1 on an attack roll? This happened a long time ago and the blue bug my character was so infatuated with continued to pop up whenever I rolled a 1, so in the end, laughs were had.

I’m the DM. One of my druids tried to wild shape into a seahorse while being restrained and drowned by a Water Weird. My instinct was to say no, but after thinking for a moment I changed my mind and let her, because I thought that was a creative solution and fun. What would technically be the “right” ruling?

Rhea Sublett

Love you guys, I miss Caldwell but the Lou Wilson hype is MASSIVE. I really wanted to know..for the players and the characters, what food is the reward for a bad day?

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

May it please the court, the case of the Broken Action Economy vs the Kraken: I was playing a paladin in a level 6 game with an action economy absolutely gone to shit. Every cantrip was a bonus action, spells cast outside combat didn’t use spell slots, extra attacks were extra actions (so you could attack once then disengage if you had two attacks), and your reaction could be used for movement, actions, and bonus actions. Needless to say, our DM was consistently whomped time after time again because of his lenient rules. His way to try and finally win a battle? We were four level 6s, and he brought in a full HP Kraken. I complained that there was NO way we wouldn’t be TPK’d, but even another one of the players said it would be fine. Fine Judges, was I really being a big baby for thinking that even with the action economy grossly in our favour, there was no way we would win such an encounter?

Peter Mundell

While writing for new campaign in running I told my players I didn’t plan on having Dragonborn as a thing in the world and along with that dragons as a whole. My players argued that if it’s in the book as a race it should be playable. I’m typically a dm who tries to make my players happy and give them what they want when they create a character, was I wrong to take away the dragonborn race or even dragons from my campaign world?

Brian

If it may please the court. In a one shot I was running I had a boss be able to turn one dead person into a random monster I had on a list that would be chosen by a dice roll. So one of my pcs died but they argued that they could stay as the monster because it’s their conscience but I argued that you had died and they were just using your body. I end up letting them have the monster and they recked me. Was I wrong?

I am our Cleric healer in the party and we entered into a fight and a few of us got smacked real good. We have a larger party and are playing through discord. I asked my party members to drop their damage in the chat as notes so I would be able to keep track of who needed healed in battle. My DM informed me that it would be metagaming to have that in the chat since I as a character wouldn’t know that, but I argued that I would see the damage occurring and this would just be notes for me as a player to act with the most efficient action economy on my turn for maximum effect. If it pleases the court, is this truly metagaming as I am just using it to keep track of damage for my party. It doesn’t feel any different from a cleric asking their party how they are looking on their turn and moves combat along.

Tonks

The warforged in my party weighs 400+ pounds. He jumped off a bridge onto a tiny kuatoa, I essentially made him roll an un-armed strike + 2 extra d6, which he argued should be more because of his weight. Who was right? Also he promptly sunk to the bottom due to his weight and lack of bouency

Alfie Wild

May it please the court, Not a case, but could we get an update on the video game? Thanks!

Yodysseus IV

Bailiff jake has the best name

Jake of all Trades

These are some of my favourite podcast episodes! 🎉🎉🎉

Luke Swannell