Submit Your Case for D&D Court!

I'm a year late but it's a terrible and stupid idea. fighters get 4 attacks as they become better at what they do so the idea of them actually increasing their chances of being shit at what they and hitting their allies (more rolls = more chances for a nat 1) is just plain dumb

Summer Tribe

The wise court! I have long preached warlocks to use intelligence as their spellcasting modifiers, since one must have wits and smarts when dealing with an entity of such high power. This is how I usually run warlocks when I DM, rule it this way murph, and now Emily cannot threaten you with coffeelock! Well, less, at least. So, what say you? Like it or naw?

you know how there are bonuses for rolling a Nat 20? so what your thoughts on adding some peril when you roll a nat 1? for example hitting one of your party instead or damaging your weapon

That completely removes your agency as a player since these are the basic things given to you based on your race. If your DM is going to take away things that are given to you as a racial bonus, they should offer a suitable replacement, like a tool proficiency and a skill proficiency instead of the two languages.

DungeonMama

The twilight domain ability only lets you fly as a bonus action in dim or dark light and requires you to use your bonus action to get a flying speed while other classes just babe flying speed so I think it’s already pretty balanced.

Turner Tush

My party had an encounter where we begin talking to a Tortle, one of the two baddies below the warlord. In an attempt to be diplomatic, one of my players goes over and touches his hand to the tortles heart. When diplomacy fails, the player materializes his polearm. The players believe that since the polearm would materialize through the tortle it should be an instant kill, or at least an instant crit. Our DM merely gave us advantage. Who was right?

Ashley Mackin

To the honorable judge and jury, A player of mine is playing a Twilight Domain Cleric, and it's pretty awesome, but at level 6, they're supposed to get an ability that will let them fly as a bonus action until the end of their next turn. I would argue that this is means that because it specifies end of their turn, they can't use a bonus action on their turn to "re-up" their flying, and it seems a little ridiculous to me that there's no limit on the number of times you can use this ability, especially as a level 6 character. I've changed it so that they can cast the fly spell on themselves once/LR for 1 minute, but am I being unfair to my player and their class abilities? (Other compromises include: making it a channel divinity, or allowing them to do it a number of times equal to their WIS mod, like the abilities of Grave Domain at level 6)

Love this!!

Jackson Paine

If it would please the court, my dnd group has been in flux for a few weeks. Illness, babies and tired from work. As a dm I prepare to play each week but some players havent played for months. The reasons are legit but how long should I wait before I just play on without them or ask if they want to leave the group because of their personal situation? Am I being an asshole or am I right to ask for some commitment?

Alastair Stevans

If it may please the court, one of my players is an Artillerist Artificer and recently asked me if they could mount their turret onto a familiar if they took the Find Familiar spell with the Magic Initiate feat. The issue at hand is both a familiar and a turret are Tiny and I (the DM) say no due to the weight of the turret. On the other hand, Tiny is the smallest size category and offers a wide range of sizes. Please, how does the court rule?

Leth

May it please the court; our level 4 sorcerer wanted a flying carpet more than anything. It got the point where if we found a good piece of loot he’d ask for it immediately. We didn’t give him everything but we had roll offs and he had won a few. We travel to a town and find out he starts selling all the magic items that we would have used in hopes to get enough gold for a carpet. The DM said as he had rightfully acquired the items he wasn’t going to block his attempts to sell, but now the sorcerer is pissed we won’t give him any of our loot. Are we being too harsh or are we rightfully annoyed?

Nick Neverman

What kind of rogue?

Robert McDaniel

To me it sounds like he wanted a punching bag. Something to hit without repercussions.

Robert McDaniel

Honorable judge PawPaw, I bring to you the case of the doorbell. I was playing in a scenario in which I had to kill two npcs, and the dm said, “you ring the doorbell.” I protested, arguing that I should be able to sneak in a window or wait until nighttime. We argued about this for a while before the other players pulled us back to reality and I gave in so we could continue the game. Was I in the wrong to argue? Or did I have other options?

Abby Reeves

Quick one: as a party we were fighting air elementals in a mountain cave system. My tempest cleric can use the spell Call Lightning, which requires 100ft clear space above you to summon the storm cloud necessary to cast it; a requirement which has previously been discussed with me as a player by the DM in earlier sessions. Cut to a fight with an air elemental, on the start of my turn my DM goes ‘the cavern is 100ft high’ *nudge nudge wink wink* This appeared to be a little DM hint to use Call Lightning (a precious 3rd level spell at the level I was at, mind you). However my DM smiled with glee as he informed me the elemental was immune to lightning damage after I cast it. Was that a dick move on behalf of my DM, and/or am I being a big whiny baby for being annoyed at this? Thanks!

DM definitely should have reigned them in. Playing any evil alignment in a non-evil campaign is obnoxious at best and even then if you aren't doing Lawful evil then the group is 100% going to be dynamically split.

Robert McDaniel

Drop a giant constrictor snake on your DM and see if he can avoid dropping to prone. I would say without knowing the guys Str you don't know for sure whether or not he should be pinned.

Robert McDaniel

You were fine dude. Metagaming automatically puts them in the wrong. You didn't sacrifice their bear, you sacrificed a bear you would have had to kill anyway.

Robert McDaniel

I never understood taking stats in order rolled. What's the point of building a hero if it is entirely up to chance what they're like?

Robert McDaniel

Perception to know something is there, investigation to learn what is there/how to open it

Robert McDaniel

Not how eldritch blast works. If she's level 5 she does get two attacks with it because that's how the cantrip works, but she does not get to cast it twice. It goes off multiple times with one cast depending on character level, but extra attack does not allow you to cast multiple spell casts or cantrip casts.

Robert McDaniel

In my opinion A) you metagamed by knowing the Kraken's stats (unless DM shared them with you all) B) Help him out by pointing out the multiattack and legendary actions. C) That Kraken would 100% TPK in 1-2 rounds. You are right to complain because that thing only misses on a Nat 1, has spell casting, etc. You were right to complain.

Robert McDaniel

Love you boobs very much. On our first quest out the gate we had to snoop on a VIP. The warlock in our party rolled a nat one to hit a construct, dm had him roll damage and he crit on his Eldridge blast. Dm had him slip on ball bearings and blast at two children standing by, and our VIP target sacrificing himself to save the children, dying instantly leading to multiple sessions of arrests, court cases and being enslaved. How far is too far for nat 1 punishments? Again, love you boobs

Michael Singer

Grapple doesn't do anything besides reduce your movement to 0, so you should've been able to attack for sure

Kestrel

Runce they've talked about railroading being good, actually, at every possible opportunity

Kestrel

I think humanoid hand and ape hand are similar but different enough (human and in this case humanoid have longer thumb with shorter finger) that you need to learn how to hold weapon with it.

I (the DM) had a puzzle which the PCs need to put specific ingredients into a cauldron. After the first two ingredient were put, the last ingredient a corpse flower show up. The PCs try to just throw the large monster into a cauldron so I had him make a contest str check with the flower. I rolled pretty good so he waste 2 turned trying to pull it and now he accuse me of fudging the roll which I’m not, I just got 15 and 18.

Short one. I (the dm) had my archmage villain misty step away from the pcs fighting her when one was invisible. My PCs say this was metagaming and he had sentinal and should have been able to get her before she stepped away and ran but I say she new somebody was invisible somewhere and wanted to get out without taking opportunity attacks. HELP

Will Brannon

Hang in there, Jake. They don't seem to be getting any shorter.

Devin Tyler

I played a character (dragonborn druid) with 7 int who lived in/grew up alone in a forest. My DM ruled that there was no reason I would speak either common or dragonborn, and so the only way I could communicate was through druidic with the other druid in the party (who eventually stopped playing with us). I'm not upset about it because it was honestly kind of funny and also a while ago, but what are your thoughts on DMs making that kind of ruling on a character?

Kestrel

Should Nat 20s count as auto success on saves? My Warforged has a +0 to dex, but when I rolled a Nat 20 my DM said that Nat 20s didn’t count as auto successes, but just a plus 2. She had never brought this up before. So, because I couldn’t meet the 23 DC to beat the dragon’s breath attack I took 104 points of damage. I feel like this really isn’t fair because even if Nat 20s aren’t always an auto success (understandable) I feel like they should always be an auto success in combat. Am I right to be upset and should I get 52 points of health back? Unlucky in Luck

Ben Delahay

50. That's just how numbers work.

If it may please the court, honorable judges Axford, Hurwitz, Murphy PawPaw, and Tanner, I am dming a campaign set in hell (inspired by NADDPOD's version of hell). I’m a first time DM, but I’ve never played as a PC. All my players have played more than me, but I didn’t tell them that I’d never officially played before. The players were going against the first major bad guy, and they were going to easily kill her within only 2 rounds. As a result, once it got to my villain's turn, I had her teleport away. My players complained that I wasn’t playing the game right, and I was metagaming. I explained that logically if someone was getting beaten up, they would teleport away if they could do so. Who is right?

Yes, you fucked up. You tried to make a player uncomfortable and in turn that player made everyone else uncomfortable. You should have just talked to him and said "hey, can you cool it?"

Hm, sounds like you might perhaps ... have first hand experience 🤔

Peter Mundell

Never give the players a toy that you don't want them to use.

Thats some gross shit. I always hate these stories, they're so same cringy.

Shawn Magill

My dm won't let me summon instrument and drop a piano on someone.

Alternate submission: my character successfully intimated the ringleader of some demon worshippers who were kidnapping children to ritual sacrifice on an altar to their deity(npc is tied up) the player wanted to strangle them to death with their flail chain after getting the info citing no mercy for the wicked. DM took a pause to figure out how to roll for it and a gruesome series of awkward athletics roll ensued saving private Ryan death style(you know the one) how would you handle a strangulation against a restrained character?

wasabibagel

Your honors- we traveling in a desert and our DM asked to describe how we were positioned, after some debate we agreed we were clumped up in a group, one player even said "V formation" but when the DM laid out the battle map he put us in a single file line because "otherwise the dragons breath attack wouldnt work" my character almost died to the breath weapon, was i wrongly almost murderized?

Humble Goblin

My Lords and Lady, tis an honor to submit this for your review. My DM decided to introduce my party to the evil genie god that was the campaigns main villain when we we're level 5. My character made his arcana check and found the genie's lamp and was now owed a wish. He then wish for the genie to unmake itself. The lamp exploded killing the genie and my character. Was this a justified death?

Shenshen

I built an Oath of Conquest(XGE) paladin for a campaign. The idea was a self righteous meat head too stupid to back down from a bad fight but had a strong sense of morality/justice. Picked shield mastery feat(told dm about this plan from session zero) so once I hit lvl7 I could knock people down and keep them there (aura)and intimidate my party's foes into easy targets. I messed up a couple of encounters not realizing we were suppose to run from some big monsters early on(I leapt off a cliff onto big worm and made it afraid of me/ I passed checks to hold on it while the mon panicked and party killed it as it couldn't buck me) As soon as we hit level 7 and I got aura DM wanted to contest rules on movement to get up from prone We looked it up in handbook and he conceded. Then the party was then faced with a choice to sacrifice a member to petrification if we didn't recover an artifact while our warlock was held hostage(time sensitive) . Of course my character volunteered. He kept throwing encounters in the way until my character was petrified and made me re roll a new one. Jerk move or was my character punished for his arrogance?

wasabibagel

Your honors- I am playing with a DM who is a total boner, but I have no one else to play with. I once flirted (charmed) with a stable boy in the campaign to try and acquire some horses, and he lectured me after the session about being overtly sexual, and if I wanted that kind of content, Roll20 has 18+ groups. It’s not like I sucked his dick for a horse. Am I crazy, or is this some kind of puritanical bullshit? What can I do? I want to play really badly, but I don’t know anyone else to play with. 😭

Adriana Siler

If it pleases the court, what’s the opinion on home brewing an official subclass, specifically I chose a homebrew and my dm continues to remove or limit its abilities to the point where I only get one or two uses of its only ability. Thank you

Máighréad Shelley

Hello Good People of the court! In a short campaign, I was playing a level 9 Spores Druid (the nerfed, "official" version :( ) and pulled that, yknow, OP pixie-polymorph trick, turning like 3 of the pirates we were fighting into seahorses, and then casting Sleep on another 2, and Confusion on some more. My DM allowed this then (he's very kind and saw I had a plan) but ruled that, in future, I need to roll for what Woodland Beings are conjured. The rules are unclear about what this should be and I'm curious to know that what it SHOULD be, and also what I can do with eight blink dogs or sprites if the odds aren't in my favour

Jay V

I play a wizard and wanted to use a contingency spell. I wanted to know if you think "Bestow curse" upcasted to a 5th level (Does not require concentration) is a legal spell to pair with "Contingency. -Thank you!!

K

I DM a campaign and after my party ripped off a casino, they went on a magic item spending spree. I perhaps unwisely allowed one player to purchase a Helm of Teleportation, which I think has made the game less fun. They're able to escape from most threats with just an action, as well as bypass a lot of challenges in a very unexciting way. So when the party was defeated in combat, I had the villains capture instead of kill them, and take the helm from them. But now, the party thinks that I'm metagaming and too salty about them thwarting my plans. I'm conflicted. Am I in the wrong for taking an item I willingly sold them, or did I just make an unpopular decision that will make our game more fun in the future? (P.S. Love all y'all, can't wait for C2!)

Jake P

this isn't a question, but it takes about 30 minutes for 8 level 8 players to take out 100 feral cats.

remi patton-elias johnson

In nearly every illusion spell, the RAW specifies whether things can pass through the illusion or not. In the 5th level spell Mislead, the RAW doesn’t specify this. Does that mean that the illusion created by Mislead is physical/concrete?

CarpeLiam

This isn't about a specific dispute in a game, but I hope you'll talk about it anyway. I've noticed that the vast majority of the questions here can basically be solved by talking to the people you're playing with and saying out loud why you're upset. Do you think that there's something specific about D&D that makes people fall back to disputing the rules or character motivations rather than just talking about what's making them feel bad? Following on from that, how do you feel about people thinking that "metagaming" and "railroading" are universally bad?

I am DMing a group of 6 people and we often play with 1 person being unable to make it (for my sake I just had the characters silently tag along after many attempts of coming up with good story reasons for them to be gone). Recently, it has been the same person. One of my other players kept pranking her character while she was not there (putting gum in her hair, stealing her airship ticket, ect.). I would roll for her character and the character would just silently note it. With the last time, I told my player to save the role playing with the character for when her player could actually play. He got very defensive, and I think he thinks I was scolding the pranking. I tried to clarify the pranking is fine, but I wanted the actual character to role play back and not just be a silent target. He said he wouldn’t prank her again and so far has not, even when she has been playing. Was I wrong to call him out like that? Should I have handled the pranking differently?

Catie Gormley

Neothelid has levitate, but it doesn’t specify it can levitate itself. The spell says the max weight is 500lbs, but mind flayer like creatures always are able to levitate themselves. It’s unclear if it should be able to or not. This completely obliterated my players strategy of dropped it in pits for damage. Should they have been able to drop it in pits?

Dylan Petty

Hi guys! I have a Champion Fighter (Hardwon Shoutout!) with 20 strength (sometimes more, depending on my strength stealing swords!) I recently picked up a set of Boots of Striding and Springing (like Emily's Louboutin's!) and, combined with my 'Remarkable Athlete Ability', the jump distance calculator says that I have a jump distance of 75 feet! More than enough to let me close the distance and start hacking away! BUUUUUUT my DM says that I can't jump more than my move speed (35 feet) in combat. Please tell me that I can soar like an eagle and slash my enemies to ribbons!

So. I’m a DM, and I’m worried I done fucked up. This campaign is my first time playing dnd or dming, so I don’t know if what I did was okay or not. My players had an encounter against 2 frost giants, who they killed. They looted, found some info, and then they BUILT AN IGLOO next to their dead bodies. In the morning, they stayed there for a While. I felt like I needed to move the story along, so I had the Frost Giant’s son come up and yell “you killed my dads!” And then try to kill the bard. They ran away. The players had a rough time with this, both in and out of game. They claimed they would not have killed them if they knew they were civilized. I decided to roll death saves for the dads to calm them down, and they both survived. Did I do the right thing here? Do I need to have this come back to haunt them?

Pawpaw your legal advise is needed! My first campaign ever was a completely homebrewed campaign. My I was playing a sourcerer of the void. Eg void magic ect. However everytime anything magical that was clearly in my realm of expertise eg) a mysterious transportation mirror my DM would always have someone else interact with it. Eg)Me asking to investigate and him encouraging others to smash the mirror. Even though the other players tried to pass it to me the DM insisted leaving me with nothing to do with the object. Eventually I ended up leaving the campaign right before the final boss battle. Would I be in the wrong to let the DM know exactly why I left, eg) He clearly have an idea of what he wants to happen and that takes out the fun of making choices?

Bukvar's Assistant Isy F

To whom it may concern-hopefully it concerns the Band of Boobs. I am a first time DM for a campaign that I am running with my family members as the party. The problem is I have a huge family. I was talking to them one day about the podcast and they all seemed very interested, almost too interested. There are EIGHT PARTY MEMBERS in the party. Do you have any advice on how to make encounters still entertaining and balanced while avoiding three hour slug fests. Also what is a good idea to get them more involved in the role play aspect of the game, they can't seem to separate themselves from their characters. Fuck you I love you Eat a rat

Paul Hoffmann

Your honours I present to the court a recent issue from the last session I dmed. My players were facing a giant turtle hydra, none of them wanted to hurt it as until they tried to enter the ruins it was protecting it was peaceful. They all said non lethal damage (minus my two ranged fighters who didn't have that option but purposely stopped doing damage once the hydra was at low health) during this an issue arose. My Hexblade Warlock hexed the hydra and then began to do mele damage. He said it was non lethal. Then another player brought up that spell damage can't be non lethal and they have hex on the turtle hydra. But he argued it was a mele attack so... Non lethal was a damage. We went about it for awhile. I suggested a few compromises but none that satisfied all of my player. So we could move on with the fight I let them do non lethal but said I was going to review the issue a bit. I had a few players come to me after the game saying they felt it had been unfair. So judges was I the guilty DM? This is my first dming venture. I'm a little worried I made the combat unfair. And more importantly what do I do if this happens in the future. I'm leaning towards halving his damage (his damage output is INSANE it won't be a huge handicap.) If he has hex active and wants to do non lethal damage? But what do you suggest? Is there a rule I don't know of that can solve this??

Neeork

Hi! I was playing a warlock in a campaign, human, pack with the an arch Fey, king Oberon. Around level 4 the DM was saying we were all playing out of alignment and seemingly as punishment, had my patron visit me and revoke his pact stating (I was flaunting my power too much) and then left. No warning, no precursor. First time my character ever saw her patron in game, and he dropped like she was hot. So should it please the court, am I wrong that a dm shouldn’t just pull a warlocks patron and force multi classing at level 4 without even talking to the player?! Thanks, A fan from Canada

Jesymka

Your illustrious DMs and Jake when I played my Minotaur druid barbarian Torg my DM would constantly have any animal I approach attack me for laughs and didnt even ask me to make animal handling roles. Torg was good with animals as stated in his backstory and would know how to approach a group of freaking crows without them swarming him (one example) the DM says I needed to be more specific as to how I approach but I myself didnt spend years in the forest connecting with nature so I dont know the proper ways to handle animals like Torg obviously would. Am I in the right to be upset or am I being to sensitive with my character which sometimes does happen, thank you.

Dean Garcia

Hey there Right Honourable Judges, I have a DM who may be a little too into anime. I made a rogue/divination wizard multiclass intending to play a fake psychic conman scared straight by receiving real visions but the DM has railroaded me into basically becoming the Sage of the Six Paths from Naruto (with Sharingan Eyes!). This might be cool if I signed up for it and I'm not entirely ungrateful for all these cool homebrew powers, but he's not the character I envisioned anymore! Am I right to be annoyed by this?

Robin

I don't expect you guys to answer this cuz it's a lot, but one of my PC's keeps eating sentient creatures while insisting that they're good aligned.

Taylor Schult

Your Honours. I have a group that apart from 1 experienced player have never played DnD before. As most of them have chosen spell casters and keep forgetting to cast any spells or use them effectively. Instead of leveling them up and making the classes more complicated. Like you did with Bev's amulet I gave my players home brew equipment to power them up so they could have more entertaining fights. Such as a shield that can as a reaction block an attack (once per short rest) and an ability to let the wizard cast a damage spell to heal (as they have a cleric but he's not that fond of healing). How do you get your party that is not able/willing to behave like an RPG squad to behave or do you as the DM arrange fights differently. A question for all of you... apart from Jake were still waiting for him to lose his DMginity.

Your honors: my boyfriend DMs an awesome campaign with a mix of serious moments and quirky inserts. He using gnomes as comic relief, and they always have a different color hat, talk fast, etc. Our Tiefling Cleric, who claims he is not evil, tried to hug one such gnome, and when the gnome rejected the hug, the Tiefling Cleric attacked him. The gnome, pissed at this absolutely random attack after we barged into his home and caused a ruckus, attacked back and sent the Tiefling away. The player of this character was SO annoyed that my boyfriend did this, but I think that any character we attack has the right to attack back, especially when it was completely unprovoked. Do y’all have any thoughts on this?

To the Honorable Murphy, Axford, and Tanner may it please you, As a DM I like to give my players a good sense of their environment during encounters and make sure I describe the terrain and obstacles on their battle field. I will usually note this on the battle map (We play online on Roll20 and I draw digitally) . I have a player who plays a dragonborn rogue and likes to use the terrain I describe to his advantage which I encourage. However he often argues with me that since he is a fleet footed rogue he should not have to make any kind of check to climb and move vertically on the battlefield if it is within his regular movement distance. I argue that the rules state "While climbing or swimming, each foot of movement costs 1 extra foot (2 extra feet in difficult terrain), unless a creature has a climbing or swimming speed." and while even with that penalty the distance is usually still within his movement speed he groans if I ever as him to make an acrobatics or athletics check to make the climb or jump. Is this a case of the rules don't line up with the player's expectations for how they want their character to exist in the game or am I interpreting the rules incorrectly?

Ryan Vaughn

Your honors. My dm for my game at university has almost every major villain attempt to run away, either through teleportation or invisibility, so a lot of climactic combats end with trying to hunt down an invisible villain or just, having to deal with them teleporting, or using timestop to run. This would be fine if it happened on enemies every now and again, but in any game they run, when fighting a humanoid they will try to run. I think that this removes a lot of tension in fights when it happens so often, but the DM says it's the realistic thing for them to do. What do you all think?

Your honors, if I may approach the bench, objection, sustained. I DM a world where people live on sky islands floating above a gas giant- think chunks of earth floating a few hundred feet above Jupiter. My players got lost on a skyship, and in trying to navigate, one of them decided to case Infestation on his character to automatically fail and move 5 feet in one of these directions as chosen by rolling a D4: 1, north; 2, south; 3, east; or 4, west. Their intention was to have a rough idea of the cardinal directions to navigate. However, my world is not earth, and has no north. What happens? What would happen in the Astral Plane? I argue that the intention of this spell was just to allow for random directional movement on a gridded game mat, my player argues that the spell inherently “knows” the directions. I would love to hear the thoughts of the Judge Judy and executioners.

Hello fair judges. In my very first campaign of dnd, i was betrayed by my party. I played a level 5 Triton Battle Master with 2 levels of sorcerer. We were 2 months into the campaign. I was having a blast. The incident occured one fateful session during a classic shopping/training montage. We had played for 6 hours and i left to go home. They kept playing through, and they used my character without me being there. They traded my characters' soul to a creepy swamp witch so they could purchase a Deck of Many Things. Were they allowed to use my character with out my permission? Also when they let me pick from the deck during the following session, They told me they drew a card for my triton (which i had no say in) and i got the idiot card, which apparently meant to the dm that could no longer cast spells. Thank you for your service.

Crane

No reason everyone who knows Common can’t also know Common Sign Language, and then every “language” they know is just that, but sign. (The idea of Undercommon Sign Language is very fun)

Peter Mundell

Your honors, and the most honorable Chief Justice Paw Paw, May it please the court: my DM ran us through a wizard's tower where, in order to receive information, we needed to pass a series of challenges. One of these was a logic test to figure out which of 7 bottles contained an elixir of heat to get us through the next room. But, in reading us the clues, our DM read one of them entirely wrong (saying "neither bottle on the end is the same" rather than "EITHER bottle"). This changed the meaning of the entire riddle, allowing it to be a 50/50 shot between two bottles, and we got it wrong. Because of this, the wizard sent us away without letting us ask any questions and our session ended. After a lot of pressing in the next session, the DM admitted that he had read the riddle wrong, and gave us information from a journal we would have gotten in the next room...but didn't allow us to go back and ask any of the questions we had wanted to ask. Your honors, I appreciate that our DM owned up to his mistake, but is he still in the wrong here for not letting us interrogate this wizard? Or should we just be grateful that he gave us any information at all? Thank you for your sage counsel and wisdom!

My group and I were playing a hunger games one shot set in the actual hunger games world. The players were the “careers” and we formed an alliance in the games. We didn’t want to pvp at the end so we came up with a plan behind the dm’s back (while he was in the bathroom) to fake the deaths of all but one of us so that the game masters would come to collect the “winner” at that time we would hijack the hovercraft and take it down Mexico way to freedom. We successfully convinced them we were dead, but during the hijacking our DM ruled that since the guards had machine guns they could just gun us down no rolls required citing a scene from the third movie where the guards do just that. I argued that we should find 5e stats for a machine gun and play out the combat as I was pretty confident in our ability to take on these guards. Who was right and what call would you have made in this situation? P.S. this is not relevant to the case I just wanted it to be known that my brother was playing a 60 year old bard who was born on a leap year so he was technically 15 and still qualified to be in the games

Is discussing tactics out of character meta gaming? And if so is it really such a bad thing? My DM acts as if I’ve pissed on his mum whenever I try

frazninja

I was in a mini-boss fight. My character, a Warlock, was attacked at the beginning, the mini-boss had a tail and it wrapped around his whole body. To get out, I needed to make a strength roll DC18, which was my character's worst stat. The DM told me I couldn't cast any spells because I couldn't move at all. The tail would also squeeze my character. Eventually my character died, did the tail drop him? It did not. Then someone would heal me, I would come back to life in the tail. Squeeze. Dead. Heal. Squeeze. Dead. Over and over and over. That session lasted 3 hours and basically that was all that happened to me. I was getting frustrated because I didn't get to do anything on any of my turns except sometimes fail strength rolls. The mini-boss died. We finished the game and I never went back.

Rich Hilborn

Hello your honors. My party is currently in the Feywild, but for story reasons my character stayed behind in the mortal plane. Because I can’t play him for now, I started making an eladrin character and I was almost done with them when my DM contacted me. Previously, she had said that it was fine if I played an eladrin, but suddenly after 2 days of me making this character, she decided I couldn’t because she wanted me to play a less fairytale like race. I would be fine with this, if she had either told me from the start I couldn’t play an eladrin or if this was going to be my permanent character, but I will hopefully just go back to playing my other character after we go back to mortal plane. We have had to push back our next time to play because of this, and I really just want to play again.

During my party's battle with the big bad, in which the villain was performing a ritual to possess one of their NPC friends, the artificer of the group who doesn't get along with anyone tries to stop it by throwing his bag of holding at the BBEG and shoot it with a spell. His reasoning was that if he destroyed it, it would create a black hole to the astral plane and suck away the villain. Unfortunately, another player (suspiciously the artificer's least favorite player) was in the vicinity, so I looked up the bag of holding details and told him that it would simply throw everything inside the bag into the astral plane. Said player proceeded to have a titty attack and quit the game on the spot. This wasn't the first time I've dealt with him, so I just let him go. Am I in the wrong here?

Nathan Perez

Hey guys, I want to know how would you handle this situation between my DM and Me. My DM pulled me aside after a cession and told me that if I would be okay with the Idea of turning my character into a spirit that lives inside a glave( the weapon I use) after I die, I agreed to it but since then his been trying to kill me more than usual. Like targeting me me first of more than the other PC's.

Greetings your honors. I was playing a small game with my two good friends, just a fun little mission...fun, except for the fact that I was playing a lawful good dwarf, and my other party member was playing a chaotic evil sea elf. Upon successfully retrieving the magical item we were sent to fetch from a hostile fortress, I hatched an escape plan. The plan was for her to wait up above on a wall, while I went down to hopefully distract the guards and escape safely. If something went wrong, I told her to wait for my signal, and throw her trident at a guard. Our problems arose when "her character" didn't like my plan, but I insisted it was the best course of action. When things went south, I gave her my signal, and instead of attacking a guard, she rolled to see if she would attack a guard, or my character instead. Baffled, confused and upset, I watched as she rolled a 1, and proceeded to throw a trident at my character- ultimately leading to the death of my poor sweet boy. We have moved on from this, and joke about it now, but I still harbor resentment for what she did. How do we move on from this once and for all? Was I crazy for suggesting a reckless plan? Is she heartless and cruel for killing my character? Thanks. P.s. my character had a dog. At the time of the plan, she was under possession of my dog, and with her character my dog shall remain. Just a little salt in the wound.

My first ever introduction to D&D was a group that came together off of the Dropout Discord back in the early days of the Discord while Fantasy High S1 was coming out. I really wanted to DM, but figured I should play as a PC first. I made a high elf wizard bc of course it's just what I play in all fantasy games, and we had a solid few sessions before it fell apart. The reason? Turns out our DM was only 13 but had a super deep voice. The rest of us (22+) would have been fine with that if he'd disclosed that beforehand. But he'd told us he was 19, and so we felt comfortable with all manner of jokes and bits and goofs. It became blatantly clear he was lying about his age because he kept forcing sexual jokes into random situations, like I crit failed an insight check into an overturned cart and he told me that I was kinda into the pile of wood. Funny at first, but then he kept doing it, and forcing us into weird situations that got more blatantly sexual. We disbanded the group, and he cried foul saying it wasn't fair bc he felt like the kids his age sucked at D&D and he just wanted to play with people who could push him to be better. The catch is I'd privately messaged him my concerns, and asked if he'd be open to some honest criticism, which he said yes to and then completely ignored. Someone I told this to said we should have kept playing with him, but sort of forced him to confront the consequences of his DM style by RPing things to the point of discomfort, and help him to grow into a better player. I still feel like that wasn't my responsibility as new player. So who is right? Should we have nurtured this enthusiastic but inappropriate teenage DM? Were we right to stop playing? I accept the judgement of the Court.

Muqtadaa Miandara

Hi pals, first time submitting to DM court, love y’all so much! So I had this friend group that I played DnD with constantly, like almost nightly, we all worked so well together with a lot of things and our DM was fantastic but over time people started getting excluded and others were focused on a lot more story wise, and we were told it wasn’t personal or due to lack of experience but it almost felt like favoritism to the “better” players. Those “better” players were then the only ones kept in the games after some time and the rest of us were just kind of pushed out and our games were split up. I’d like to settle, for myself, as an aspiring DM (inspired to start by our beloved Murph!!) and future players and DMs, how do you make sure to have all your players feel welcome and not excluded to avoid future favoritism?

If it pleases the court, I present a class action suit in which I join the DM and other aggrieved players in a claim against a party member. This issue at hand is where to draw the line between meta-gaming and actual strategy. It was explained to our party that a baby Kraken's blood was being used by a necromancer for a ritual without the Kraken's caretaker's knowledge and she wanted our help to stop it. One of our party members was adamant that we should kill the baby Kraken now because it would later grow into an inherently evil deep sea monster that would be more difficult to kill as an adult. He refused to admit that he was meta-gaming and kept arguing that this was a strategic decision to cut off the necromancer’s supply. How would the court rule?

Honorable Judge Pawpaw, I the DM just ran a section of our game that was vampire and lycanthrope themed. The head vampire had control over a colony of Werebears, who are usually good per the DM guide. The werebears bit 4 out of 5 of my characters thinking they will have to battle the beast within. One of my players pointed out that there are changes for characters who are bitten in the DM Guide. They'd get STR 19 score, +1 ac, ability to tranform, and the DMG immunities. So to rectify giving them essentially superpowers they have to get 4 out of 6 passing WIS saves to control this power. Is this a fair way to have them get access to these Werebear abilities?

Muse93

Your honors, this is a classic DM vs the Wizard case, I call this The Lorax loophole. In my 5e game I play as a depressed wizard named Randy, the weakest member of our 4 person party, we literally joke about how weak he is. In 5e there is a way to fly where if you cast reduce on yourself, you'll be lighter than 10 pounds and then be able to carry yourself with mage hand ala the Lorax. I know this is a loophole so I just wanted to do this for fun once, which I expressed with my group. The players were on board, but my DM was against it. Even though most of my players already have flight thru items or traits, I am still not allowed to fly once as a joke. Judges please decide the fate of my depression wizard.

Eric Grochowski

I am playing as an astral self monk in a group with a ranger. My astral arms are projected (giving me a range of 10 feet), and I am standing between 2 enemies. The ranger shoots an arrow at one of the enemies and misses, could I use my deflect missile reaction to try and hit the arrow into the enemy he missed? My DM said that it isn't allowed since that isn't it's intended purpose, but I argued that it should be allowed since I am using a reaction and a ki point (we are only level 3, so I don't have many).

Corey Ruef

Someone is a group of mine who wasn't the dm let's saying that peoples.charaxter choices didn't for the world's meta. I left this group because of this was I wrong or do players create the meta

My first time ever playing D&D was at a gaming shop last year. When I got there, the crew paired me with a DM who helped me get set up an hour before gameplay started. Once there, I learned that it was an adventures league module game of Avernus and everyone who was playing was at Level 6. I told the DM I could build a character to level 3 at least, but he insisted I start at level 1. When asking what character would be best to play at level 1 with a bunch of level 6 character he gave me free rein to pick whatever I liked with no advice. I chose a monk. I quickly learned that was the wrong choice. I was immediately thrust into combat encounters with giant spiders, stone golems, and graveyards of undead and spent the whole 4 hour game running away from combat as one hit could knock me out and even permanently kill me. Honorable Judges, was I wronged?

Chandler P

This is my second question, but I was recently in a campaign with a new DM, who wanted to homebrew her own world. I wanted to support as much as possible, but in the end, I had to stop playing with her. She invented a new magic system, all new races, a new pantheon, new classes, and a number of other features that cycled in and out for the few months we played. I love playing with inventive DMs, but the entire thing was game-breakingly unbalanced, to the point that my level 3 equivalent character (based on the cavalier fighter class) could do potentially 4 attacks in a round, all with advantage, for a total of 6d12 damage. While I love rolling that many dice, I don't love playing with rules that are subject to change on a whim. She's asking me for feedback now, how do I tell her that her system sucked without sounding like a jerk? ¿am I a jerk? P.S. her "not magic" system used "not spell slots" to affect the world, but it's up to the dm to decide how many "not slots" each "not spell" used. The number of slots was determined by their race, ranging from 3-15

Mick C

Over the summer, I decided to run a game for my siblings introducing them to dnd. In the party, we had a Tiefling Warlock, Kenku Ranger, Dragonborn Paladin, Genasi Monk, and the plaintiff of this case, an Aracokra Barbarin played by my brother. At the beginning of our session, The plaintiff intimidated a Goblin to assist the party, which quickly turned into Stockholm Syndrome by placing Jerry the Goblin in Danger before saving him several times. In the final encounter, the party wanted to send Jerry in as a distraction, but the plaintiff rejected the idea, ordering Jerry to stay back as a precaution. In the ensuing battle, Jerry's initiative was low, and it just so happens that he was the first one to have an opportunity to hit the Mage leading the gang of Gnome ruffians. Since I controlled Jerry, I saw this as an opportunity for Jerry to serve his new master, the plaintiff, and he rushed in to stab the mage rolling a crit on his attack and nearly K.O.'ing this mini-boss. By the next turn of the Mage, all the other players were occupied with other enemies, and no one else had landed a hit. With this in mind, the mage targeted Jerry with his Magic Missle spell. There was a chance for Jerry to survive if the Mage rolled low on damage, but since Jerry was originally meant for fodder, I played the death soundtrack from Naruto as I described Jerry's last heroic moments before being magically gunned down. So herein lies the case, the plaintiff argues that I should not have had Jerry rush into battle given his order to him before the encounter started, stating I did this just to razz him. I, the defendant, argue that given the opportunity and Jerry's strong desire to please his master he would rush in to help, and the only reason Jerry was targeted was that he critted while everybody else was still occupied with the other Gnomes, which means I was fully within my right to womp Jerry. An outside perspective would be much appreciated, thank you for your rightous and fair judgment.

Travis Hammer

Hello! I'm asking for more of an opinion, my DM and I have argued several times on the merit of requiring PC's to come into new campaign with just a little thing to establish a relationship with at least one other character. (For example in one of our games, in a school setting, another PC is my character's favorite professor) My DM thinks that's railroading, but we have also have had trouble in several of our games with the PC's not wanting to work as a group because they have no "reason" to, or don't trust each other. Can this bit of railroading be for the greater good, or still a bad idea?

I recently ran a wedding themed one shot for my friends. The general premise was that one of the PCs was getting married and the bride turns out to be a demon (a rubetzhal to be exact) who tries to kill everyone at the wedding. When we do one shots in our group, we generally allow the players to pick a fixed number of magic items depending on the level we are playing at. One of my players chose a clarinet of charming (I don't remember the exact name), which charms creatures for 8 hours if they fail a saving throw, and instead of "vows" they used that magic item, which was pretty dope. My demon failed, along with most of its minions, but since having my demon be charmed would essentially stop the entire encounter, I ruled that instead of having the demon be charmed, I would allow the player to make an insight check, and passing a DC 15 would make the demon not have advantage on a surprise round, and a DC 20 would make the demon not have sneak attack. My player was annoyed that her magic item didn't really do anything, but I didn't want to end the one shot without letting my players do the combat encounter I'd planned for. Was I being unfair? How would you have handled the situation?

While Playing a longer campaign another player (lets call them Alex) was tired of their character but the DM would not let them change and create a new one. During a session where we were spending time between quests, Alex pulled me aside into their room and revealed to me he had been stealing money from the party by secretly slipping the DM notes and begged me to kill him. When I rolled a 1 on my attack the other players heard and rushed into the room. Despite my conversation with Alex taking place at the table in front of the other players and the other players knowing Alex wanted a new character, the other players argued their characters would not have heard the private conversation between the two of us and attacked me upon entering the room. The DM let the combat take place and the other characters ended up killing my character and saving Alex. Alex and I got upset because I loved my character and he wanted something new. The DM and other players got upset because they said they were properly roleplaying. The group stopped playing together soon after. Were we right to be upset?

My rogue/fighter multi class was fighting a star spawn. I wanted to use action surge to ready an attack for when my ally moved in on the star spawn. I did this instead of using the action surge to attack on that turn again so that I could get sneak attack on the readied attack. (You can only use sneak attack once per turn). My DM ruled this to be meta-gamy and unrealistic, and so he vetoed. He then started crying that he wasn’t held enough as a kid. Who should prevail and what is the punishment?

David Donnel

My players faced and defeated the Moonlit King and as booty I gave one of them his hat which is imbued with power of lightwalking (The Moonlit King teleports from one area of moonlight to another within 100 feet). Many weeks later, it's the final battle and he's trying to run away from the big bad and tried to use the hat to teleport away. I had mentioned that it was day but he argued that even during the day there is "moonlight" its just not noticeable with all the sunlight. I disagreed and his character did not survive the fight. He maintains to this day that it was unfair for me not to let him use his teleport.

Laura Gibbs

If it pleases the court. I have a party with a lot of spellcasters capable of AOE damaging spells like fireball and lightning bolt. I let them place their AOE marker on the board and move it to where they want to have thrown the spell. Naturally they place it in such a way that it would hit all of the enemies but not their ally, standing 5 feet away. Despite this requiring a genius level of trigonometry to get the angles and range right I'm usually fine with it for sake of moving things along. To counter this I decided that, as a caveat, if they ever shoot it at a target flying in the air or swimming they have to roll to hit and if they do hit, dex save doesn't matter (the logic of this being that if they are in a room or the ground it doesn't matter if they hit or miss because it's an explosion but if they shoot a flying dragon the fireball could just go sailing past them into the sky and explode hundreds of feet away). The party immediately went into an uproar over, what I think, is a fair compromise that almost universally favors them. For your consideration.

Matteo Cina

omg. we all need an update when Chickleganebowl happens. did the rotisserie player agree to stop if they lose?

Claire Lines-Mattei

Hey guys I love this show very much. ❤ This has been hotly debated between my friend and I for years. I am the dm, he is the player. Basically he was hanging on a cage many hundreds of feet in the air being carried by a giant bird. When the bird noticed he was there, it, successfully, removed him. He was a cleric so as he was falling he wanted to cast a spell to try to save himself. It was hundreds of feet so I figured he had time. They were very low level at the time and this was in 3.5. I don't remember exactly what he had but all he could do to save himself was summon monster. But he can only summon a medium creature and to save himself brings out a giant bee. A giant MEDIUM SIZED BEE. Anyways he hits the bee at terminal velocity and it slightly slows his fall before he hits the ground and dies. He argues that he had the bee moving downward as he was falling and that it could catch him. I argue your going really fast and your landing on its wings! He thinks the bee could flip over and catch him. I do not. That is not feasible for a bee. I don't care if it obeys your commands. Help us naddpod, we need the Bee Ruling. Ps He was a normal sized human in chain mail i think and the bee was a... medium bee.

May it please the court, one of my PC's is a Beastmaster Ranger. I gave her companion (a fox using panther stats) an eyepatch that allows it to wildshape once a day into any beast with CR 1/2 or lower. My PC has argued that while using the wildshape, the companion should be able to use a multiattack feature since it is built into the CR. I said that as a companion, it still can't use it. I look to the court's wisdom and will accept any judgement (provided it is in my favor).

Barbie Pootsky

(If it please the court) Our DM has on several occasions decided that several spells simply do not work when this would contradict the events he has planned. Obviously the DM has final say, but are we justified in being frustrated when spells do not work as *either* intended or written? At the very least, should we be able to get the spell slots back? I think the DM is just not very familiar with spells, but I would never let players waste spells simply because I didn’t want them to work.

Joe Lenton

This has big "there's nothing in the rules that says a dog can't play basketball" energy

Mick C

I am planning a wildfire druid (UA) character. They have the ability to use their wildshape to summon a familiar (druid UA variant) or summon a wildfire spirit (wildfire druid ability). We decided it would be cool if it was flavored as a corgi puppy, sort of like a hell hound feel. I later decided it should be a wiener dog so I can say in game that this is a hot dog (cause it's on fire). My DM does not want to indulge me in making my dog into a weiner dog that she has to play just so I can make the joke. Should the familiar/wildfire spirit be a weiner dog?

James Ching

Most humble, gentle cricks and Mama Gump. I must ask, should I wrestle my players for being mad at me for rewarding only one of them with a gift from a ghost girl instead of all of them? They are upset that my player, who is a half drider half elf (homebrew), received a necklace from her after burying her heart in the blood-stained soil where they killed her enemy (a half dragon) and he can now communicate with her soul. It also has something else it does but he hasn't discovered it. My reason for allowing him to take this is because when they first encountered her, he was the only one willing to hear her out without first wanting to kill her. No one else trusted her at first. When they eventually found out she was a gentle spirit, they all agreed to avenge her. But the one player that trusted her first also volunteered to carry her ghost heart. No one else wanted to. She trusted him most so gave him the gift of the necklace. My players all feel like they should have received rewards for helping avenge her as well but I don't think they totally deserved it. Am I a mean DM for that?

Arianna Cortez

If 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

BTW, unimportant to the case but my paladin is essentially a Canadian Mountie halfling who is strongly inspired by an older version of Bev from campaign one. 😊

Lizzy French

This occurred in a previous campaign of mine. I was playing a bard up against a shadow dragon in the shadowfell. The dragon was very low and we were running very low on spell slots. My bard using his instrument of the bards casted fly on himself and flew up above the dragon who was at this point 80 ft in the air fighting our fighter. I hovered 5ft above it then dropped concentration on fly to use my last spell slot to cast polymorph on myself to turn into a trex and body slam it WWE style back to the ground. However the DM made me roll opposed strength to land on the dragon. Me being literally 5ft above it and turning into a creature similar in size would give me advantage on that roll or disadvantage on the dragon since it had not seen me go above it?

Christian Nicdao

We are a 3 man crew, a Paladin, a rogue and a wizard. The rogue was almost dead so it brought up the conversation for if we all had a back up character. He told us he would be a paladin and when the rest of us told him he should pick a different class then the rest of the party, he got really mad saying we were not being fair. We dropped it for now, but what do you think? Is it a good idea for more then one character to play the same class in a small party like this? As the other paladin am I being selfish for wanting him to play a different character?

Lizzy French

Some of my players have been having struggles lately with character motivation, and is thus leaning on me for coming up with and giving them motivation in game. I of course love to have the creative freedom that comes with making character choices for my players, but I feel like I’m intruding on their territory... Should a player always make his own character choices and motivation, or is it ok for DMs to take over sometimes? Would love to hear what you guys think!

Honorable lords, ladies, and various minstrels of the court, my case begins with my first DM ever. In combat, he was always BRUTAL with nat 1s. Broken weapons, damage taken, and once I even went temporarily blind on a nat 1 perception check. While this was clearly a bad house rule (he even let nat 1s negate advantage), our dispute came when he ruled that a nat 1 broke my weapon, rendering it unusable. I was playing a pact of the blade warlock. For the first time since 3rd level, I was without a weapon (save for a dagger) and I was unable to summon a new one. We're still very good friends, but I still cannot stand playing D&D with him. To this day, he still thinks that he made the right call, that "there need to be consequences for actions."

Mick C

HELLO everyone i just had a quick question so im playing a Tortle Necromancer/Artficer nammed Grok and i just reached level 3 on my Artficer. I choose the battle smith subclass which allows me to build a steel defender (think like an iron dwarf from frostwind) anywho it says i/grok am the one to build it. So i decide what it looks like/what it is. Also it says that the size of the steel defender is Meduim which also happens to be the size of a golaith. That being said can i construct a MECHA CRAB the size of a golaith? Dm is uncertain but im all for it what do you think?

Kelley40k

Hi there! A recent morality question happened in another podcast, and I was wondering NADDPOD's take on it. Basically, the DM gives minor XP-like penalty for any death caused by the PCs between missions. Would this qualifies: "One NPC was controlled by the team's Mage, and threatened one of his party member, who shot her in the face with a shotgun." How much responsibility the PC have in this death?

Rémi Maloney

May it please the Court. I am a DM trying to figure out how to reward one of my players’ creativity without lowering the stakes. One of the members of the party just became the leader of a few hundred skateboarding kobolds, and the player now wants to temporarily leave the party (and play a new character for a few sessions) so his main character can train the kobolds into an army. I love this idea, and want to reward my player for being willing to give up playing his character for a few sessions; but I’m afraid that giving them an army of kobolds to command will remove the stakes from future combat encounters. How do I reward my players without giving them a tool to break the rest of the campaign?

So I played a character that was a sentient chair(reskinned Satyr for stats) wild magic sorcerer. I have high Charisma from being a sorcerer, but very low dex, cause you know, I'm a chair that basically floats around and talks telepathically with people around me. My DM said that to convince people I was a normal chair would be a DEX(stealth) check. I argued that unless I'm trying not to be seen, it should be a Deception or Performance check to be seen as a regular chair. Is he right based on mechanics or am I?

What to do with a wish spell. Hey doods, I was playing as a bread domain cleric (Ser Kneady) and the party came across a casino with a deck of many things slot machine. I threw caution to the wind and gave it a pull and got the wish card! Suddenly I had 3 wishes as level 4 character, and here was my predicament. I chose to use my first wish to imbue my hammer with spirit guardians ( shout-out to Hardwon) and subsequently our party handily womped the casino boss. I then used my second wish to create a church of the bread faith directly above the casino to flatten it. Furthering the church of the crust in the city. My question now is, what do I do with my last wish as a level 4 character?

Daniel Crisp

If it please the court. One of my players started a war by revealing very sensitive information about a doppleganger colony to a King. He did this very suddenly and without consulting the rest of the party. The session ended early soon after because that player was bored. The next day he messaged me saying he didn't want to play anymore and quit the campaign. I asked my remaining players if they wanted to retconn and they said they didn't. What are your thoughts on retconning? And is this guy an asshole?

In our 3.5 campaign, the cleric had cast Wind Walk on all of us, turning us into a gaseous form. We were detected by a monster, and it swung against the cleric, hitting him for 2 negative levels and dispelling the wind walk on the whole party. Our other party member is a Crusader with a stance that gives a -4 atk when a monster attacks someone else when they could've attacked him. The language is extremely vague, but technically, the language of the stance says that it's always activated, so despite them both beings mists, the Crusader's mist should've drawn the attacker's eye to it, giving a -4, resulting in a miss, and keeping the spell up for everyone. What do you think? Can a godly stance meant to draw foes towards you work while you are a mist? Is this is a case of interpretation over RAW crunchiness?

Sammo Cando

We're playing through a module and my DM likes to bend and break rules pretty liberally, for the sake of creating an interesting story. Sometimes it's to the players benefit, like allowing the first actual character death of the campaign to be undone, but other times it feels like they break the balance of the game or take away agency, ie narrating our characters for the sake of a sweet "cut scene" at the end of a boss fight. How much creative freedom is too much?

Mike Pindara

Howdy crew! My friends and I were starting a new campaign, but because of scheduling two members couldn’t join the first few session. The rest of us got our team of good/neutral characters together, made plans for our first big mission, and had established a group that would realistically work together. When the two other players joined, they built chaotic evil characters and immediately began swearing at our characters, pissed on their belongings, stole their money, and tried to drug two characters who declined to drink at a tavern. The way I see it, there wasn’t any reason my character would want to be around these people, and I said so once the session was over. This did not go over well and we haven’t played since. Was I wrong for wanting group cohesion? Should I have not said anything at all? Hoping you can settle this case so I don’t feel bad anymore. XOXO, Paige

Paige Kosa

I play in a homebrew setting that our DM designed. They've built it over several years and it's fleshed out enough to warrant its own extensive google doc detailing nations, factions, etc. There have been times when I'm roleplaying in character that I feel like improvising background details about the world is appropriate (for example, small details about the culture of the community my character comes from). Most of the time, my DM h[as shot my improvising down and would tell us that those details that I've made up on the spot are incorrect. I'm of the opinion that players should have some say in the homebrew world but understand as a DM myself that it's their setting and they've put much more blood sweat and tears into it. Am I a jerk for trying to force small worldbuilding into my DM's world, or are they not being accommodating enough?

Alexis R

My DM recently ran a level where he described a cave covered completely in ceiling to floor cobwebs and crawling with spiders. Naturally, my dragonborn used his flame breath to try to clear the webs away, and possibly take out a few spiders while I was at it, but my DM was having none of it, and said that the patch I burned was not connected to the rest of the room, so the rest of the cobwebs, and more importantly all of the spiders were untouched! Am I wrong, or was this unfair?

Gearoid Cotter

One time my DM allowed me to bonus action misty step into a room full of goblins during combat and then use my action to cast Burning Hands on them, then in a more recent fight wouldn’t allow me to use a sorcery point to bonus action Lightning Bolt and then use my action to cast another spell. I know the rules support this but because of his previous decision, this left me confused. I followed the DM because arguing with the DM is rarely a good idea, but what would the Boobs do in this case? Pawpaw, help me out here!

Matthew R

So, I'm in a game where one of our players is playing a tabaxi bard, and we have made so many Cats the musical jokes about it our DM has flat out banned any musical theatre references. How do I break it to him that my entire character is based on Mary Poppins and he never caught on? Or do I just go on waiting for him to figure it all out?

Austin Johnson

So I play a Wizard with the Boots of Elvenkind and the Cloak of Arachnida (I can cling to walls/ceilings), so I'm very sneaky. We were stopping a bank robbery and so I had one our party members open the door to the bank while I quickly snuck in through the top of the doorway undetected and made my way to the ceiling where I waited. One of our players got surprise attacked by an enemy and so when it was my turn I took out my bag of holding and since I had a dead giant constrictor snake inside it, I held the bag upside down with one hand and pulled out the snake with the other to drop it on the guy. After a good Dex check for accuracy the snake hit him, and I argued with my DM the guy should be proned because he was not expecting this to happen and therefore did not brace for the attack, I also said the guy if prone should be pinned by the snake as well. After a long argument with my DM, he finally agreed to proned the guy but still disagreed with the physics of it. Who was right, was it proper in the first place for me to pull out and drop the snake the way I did? Should the guy have been proned, and if so should he have been pinned by the snake as well?

Lorne Mintz

How do you correctly read a d100 roll? There was a decisive and divisive moment that came down to a d100 roll 1-50=bad thing, 51-100=not bad thing. Buddy rolls a (50) on the d100 die and a (0) on the d10. Does this equal 50, or 60?

Leith H.

OK y'all, pretty basic question. My friend is. Dming a home brew and when he heard me pining for so e d&d he invited me into the campaign. This is my first time ever playing but you guys were my gateway and now I've costumed almost all of you, d20 and critical role (as of last summer). So I build my level 6 character (as the campaign had already been going a while) and I am a multiclass barbarian bard. During our building session, however, my dm was a little unsure of the multi class rules and tells me I can take all the proficiencies for both bard and barbarian.... I brought up the mistake once I read the guide a little better but he said it was cool and just to keep them. My question is: have I got a slightly broken character? I gave myself +0 intelligence and -1 wisdom, so I have a slight handicap, but as I'm a totem barbarian I get a lot of proficiencies in those skill checks... None of the other players have multi classed yet, and I'm not sure they know he let me do this. Is my dm giving me a rediculous bonus or should I just shut up and be greatful - he knows my stats and will balance accordingly 😅

Bat-Fran

When rolling characters for descent into Avernus, I rolled two great characters and my friend rolled very poorly. The DM made me switch one of my characters with the other player after he complained it wasn't fair and he wouldn't have fun with low stats.

Mitchell Murphy

Crunchy question. Everyone was within initiative, but not combat, as they approached the door with the boss on the other side, unaware of them. On the sorcerer's turn, he tried to stealthily open the door, his first stealth roll of the encounter. When he spectacularly failed on his roll, I moved on in initiative, but he believes he should still have gotten a full action. I believe he was technically taking a Hide action and using a free object interaction. What say ye?

Jacob Corona

I was in a game once where I had a character go explore the woods. Ended up running into not one but two t-Rex’s that chased my character down, (thank god for speed buff spells) I ended up diving in a random cave where I had to one v one a bear. Ultimately the Rex found us and roared into the cave stunning the bear. I pushed it out to the front be eaten by the t-Rex so I could live. However. Once back to the party another character with a bear companion meta games to smell the blood and identify it. I was then forced to explain to the party my mistake but they were most upset about me sacrificing a bear to save myself so they with held my loot from that quest. Was that called for or was I good?

This is a case against myself and for myself. I recently ran through a custom game with two players who I have had some ups and downs with as this is my first time-ish dming. I've done things like used teleporting dogs to take away too powerful items, and gently rail road them some times. But my last thing is a question of if I did them wrong. They were fighting a serial killer they had just discovered who controlled a bone claw, a nasty monster, and I had two lv 8 players, a half orc paladin of melora dmpc and their familiar hell hound pup fight against a two dryads, two knights, and a champion with a bone claw. They survived but I did cheat for them a little bit when it sounded they were at their lowest. I lowered the bone claw, a challenge lvl 12 creature, by 40 hit points to the end. It happened before the climactic cursed sword of one of the player's forgotten father was thrown into play, but I dont know. Should I have kept the creature at its honest health or was changing it to fit a story for my players the right call? Also can Jake say in Treds voice, "OBJECTION!"

My humble Honours, I beg of thee to hear my case. I asked my DM if I could play a Myconid Druid, and he told me only if I chose Circle of Underdark Druid as my subclass. Not knowing that Circle of Spores existed, I obliged. An injustice, to be sure, but not insurmountable. Then, he forced all of us to roll our stats in front of him, and told us that we had to take them in the order in which they were rolled. Thus, my Strength became a 16, and my Wisdom a 10. I argued that this was cruel and unusal punishment, and not befitting a tiny mushroom child. Should this kind of DM railroading be admissable in court, or was I correct in objecting? Thank you, my lieges.

Allie Rosner

Yo. I don't have a case as such, however I wanna share a story from a one-shot i dm'ed (especially since y'all got me into dnd) I dm'ed a pirat one-shot for my brother and some friends. They had gotten a treasure map from a suspicious cook that joined them for the search. They ended up finding out that the treasure was in a hollow volcano and guarded by a being some Kua-toa worshipped as a god. Turns out it is a dragon. First round of combat it fires it's breath attack. The only one not saving is my suspicious cook. He dies, and my group celebrates, as they! Then would not have to kill him later. Which is fair, since he was gonna backstab them. The dragon died 2 rounds later. And they are now rich and happy. And that was my professor Duttle? Story. Hope it wasn't to long

I just wanted to do a follow-up pup to my rotisserie-chicken eating friend from the last D&D court. My friend and I have agreed to an epic, poultry themed in-character brawl much like “Cleganebowl” during our campaign to decide the ultimate fate of his rampant hen feasting. I feel it may be the most important battle I ever fight.

Calum Gillies

Super small, and I have the GALL to ask: playing a Druid and I got into an argument with my DM about being able to turn into a swarm of bugs like in the monster manual. He says I shouldn’t be able to but there’s no rule on it. What y’all think?

Keanu DRAMAFACE

My group is playing in a homebrewed setting, and it is a very open world, very sand boxy, which is cool....the downside is that my group cant find a freaking path to stay on, we keep bouncing from one thing to another, without any real plans because our dm is so opposed to railroading that he doesn't give us any direction. Help!

Leith H.

Ok so this is a question I can not for the life of me find a straight answer to. For context me and my friend have been doing level 20 1v1s when we can’t get the full group together to play. In one of them recently he played an oath of ancients paladin and I played a clockwork soul sorcerer. Ancients paladins get resistance to all damage from spells but my sorcerer has elemental adept with fire so spells that did fire damage overcame resistance to fire. We argued wether or not overcoming resistance to fire would overcome resistance to all spell damage and eventually just rolled to solve it. I lost the roll but won the fight (in a way I’m pretty proud of). But what do y’all think?

Turner Tush

In a campaign my brother was DMing, we were fighting orcs in a mountain cave with a large chasm connected with a rope bridge. The Orcs on the opposite side of the bridge cut the rope while we were still fighting the orcs on our side. I went into a side room and wanted to use my investigation (intelligence) to search for another way across, while my brother insisted I use perception (wisdom). In combat, could I have used investigation to find the hidden passage, (which we ended up finding later in the session), instead of perception? I played a character with a higher intelligence, which is why I wanted to use investigate. Love the show!

Matt Rolfe

If it please the court, my druid had a dream of wild shaping into an ape and then having that ape use a simple weapon The....reasoning for it was idiotic, had to do with posing as a trained monkey. Anyway, DM said apes weren't proficient in using weapons, I argued that in wild shape I maintained my proficiencies including weapons, and wild shape has a specific line about only being able to hold things if the beast's anatomy warranted it, which..opposable thumbs! We did the idiotic thing, it's just that I had to fight as an ape with no weapon when the time came. :( I maintain I was right

Pamphleteer

One of my players decided he wants to play an aarakocra for our new campaign. Im sure this has been a head ache for many DMs, beings as how they can fly at lvl 1. What I decided to do, is instead of letting him fly around all willy nilly from the get go, I told him he's going to have to hit a milestone, or find a certain relic to regain his flight. Should I have handled this differently? Also, what would be a cool way for him to regain his flight, because I'm overdue for a headache. (They just hit lvl 6 in curse of strahd)

Devin Tyler

Everytime we play one of my players tries to get down and dirty with almost every PC. I always make him roll a charisma check but he always passes. Its gets tiring having him always try and seduce every PC, so i started making him give VERY explicit details of the encounter, in order to try to make him uncomfortable and stop asking. He LOVED it but it made everyone else at the table very uncomfortable and annoyed. Im not sure what else to do to get my very horny bard player to stop seducing everyone. Am i in the wrong for making him go into explicit detail or how else should i go about trying to make him stop?

Also one of his major counterpoints was that ostriches are not native to the primary setting of his campaign, but I see no reason that I couldn’t be a foreign ostrich.

Tyler T.

I’m DMing a game with my wife’s family. Super new to the game so I’m being really gentle and having an extremely basic “princess in a tower fight your way to the top” story With a hardish “boss” on each floor. (Players level 5 from the start and go up a level each floor they beat) brother in law is taking the piss by trying to jump out the window to climb up the tower. Gave him casual dm warnings. Do a perception check. Ok there seems to be oil on the bricks making it difficult to climb but I allowed him to continue and warned him failing a climbing check could be very bad. NAT 1. He falls and dies. (Had 18HP when he climbed out) failed death saves. And it ended with him throwing my dice off the table and his character sheet in the fire. Everyone said I was being a dick apart from my wife who’s played with me before. AITA?

If it shall please the court. Our DnD group fought in a colosseum in 1v1 vs NPCs and one of our players opponent ran away into the crowd .Our group said how was it possible since earlier our DM stated that our Aarakro pc couldn't fly out and we argued that the first opponent should have been able to flee combat to begin with.

I'm a DM running a small game. One of my players chose to make their character a mute. I was talking to one of my fellow DMs, who says I should give them disadvantage on all persuasion checks. I was thinking that having them make performance checks to determine how smoothly they can communicate would be better. Which idea is better?

I am in an argument with another person who plays an arrakokra. I posit that they are wrong, they say they are right. My question is for Murph, are they wrong?

Kersplode

I have a fighter warlock multiclass in my campaign, she started off as a fighter and was really good at taking advantage of her class features. But as soon as she's took warlock she just started Eldritch blasting everything. Should i let her use her multi attack to use Eldritch blast twice? I think it's a little too much at her level and it's really making her fighting way less interesting

Bigfüte

If it pleases the court, my players were in hell and got ahold of a tank. It was a modified version of the infernal engines. They used the tank to punch through an army of demons so they could attack the commander. After running over 3 greater demons they arrived at the place the leader was hiding. A set of steps led into his cave. My players argued they should be able to drive the tank up the stairs and into this cave so they could use it on the boss. I told them no, the tank won't make it up those steps into the cave. They tried to cast fly on the tank and I told them no to that as well. Finally they tried to cast levitate to make the tank light enough to move up the stairs and I told them the tank was way too heavy for that. To this day they argue that they should have been able to get the tank into that cave.

Shawn Magill

To whom it may concern, I was playing a Level 6 Paladin with three other players and our DM. Our action economy for this game had been ripped to shreds (all cantrips are bonus actions, “extra attack” means extra action, and your reaction can use anything such as action, bonus action or movement). On top of that, our DM still had not learned that monsters have multiattack or legendary actions or legendary resistances. He was getting whomped so badly every fight, he felt the only way to make a challenge was to throw an adult Kraken will full HP (which is like 800 or something?) at us: four level 6’s. Apparently it was wild that I complained. Even one of the other players said it would be fine. DM Court, please, is this really wild or am I being a baby for not wanting to do this encounter?

Peter Mundell

I am here to present the case of Ostrich v. DM to the court. A group of friends and I are setting up a campaign and I told the dm that I wanted to play as a Swiftstride Shifter Monk. He was ok with this, but when I added that I wanted my half-beast shifter form to be an ostrich rather than the generic feline form he quickly shut that down because he did not want to have “a horrifying abomination” as a pc in the party. Should I be allowed to fulfill my life’s dream of playing as an ostrich shifter or should I just stick to the DM’s comfort zone and go feline over fowl?

Tyler T.

Years ago when I started DM'ing, a player in my group decided to put a custom item named "Sheila" in their inventory and would not disclose what the item was. Even going so far as to bring it up in more cinematic moments. They did say it was worth less than a few gold but in the end wouldn't reveal what it was. In the end, it was a violin. As the DM I felt it was kind of Knobbish and limited my ability to create cool interactions for them. They said they just wanted a surprise moment where they whipped it out to play. Was I wrong for not wanting an unknown factor?

DisClever

Long store short - can a flying PC use a cube of force to carry other party members through the air? Short story long: We were launching an arial attack on a city we'd accidentally allowed some mind flayers to turn into a colony. One of our PCs has a cube of force, which basically generates a forcefield centered around the character which blocks things from going in/out. After plan A failed (ride a polymorphed Pterodactyl, which was quickly blasted out of the sky by mages), a PC with a fly speed activated the cube, "catching" the other party members. Since the PC was flying, and the cube centers on them, they used it to carry the PCs to the ground. The DM let it happen vs forcing us to plummet to our death, but grumbled the whole time. Should the DM have killed us, let us do it without grumbling, or were they correct to allow it but complain the whole time?

James Ekstrom

What do you think of a character who plans on only taking a 3 level dip taking the 4th level ASI, to swap that ASI for another in a primary class later? (eg, going from 4 fighter/6 barbarian to 3 fighter/8 barbarian)

Callum

Okay. So some 3.5 bullshit 😂 played a game with a character called ‘Grif’ and at the conclusion we did another 20+ campaign getting Grif’s girlfriend back from the hells. At the end Olidammara (who was the father of Grif’s gf) refused to let them be together and Grif and his party killed the god and replaced him. The DM decided to make that cannon for all her campaigns. Later in a different campaign someone played a cleric of Grif and prayed to their god for guidance, got a Nat 20. Dm gave it. When this was relayed to the person who plays Oliver he disagreed and said that she should have contacted him for his opinion because it’s his character. Thoughts?

Stephaniku

I ran a one shot where all of my players chose to be 4 goblin bards who were in a traveling band. Using a (heavily inspired by Trinyvale) casino as the location. The goal was to steal an artifact from a secure vault. But being bards they just convinced someone they owned it and left. I then threw some guards at them to retrieve the artifact. The guards rolled well and a tpk happened. The issue is the guards knowing about the theft. They said if it were given to them they should have been ok. Where as I stated someone essentially saw a pit boss at a casino hand people a bunch of diamonds and had some questions about it. What do you think guys? PS Hot Boy Summer is amazing and I'm looking forward to campaign 2.

Snugglegurts

My dm had a 10gp sapphire ruby casted with a glyph of warding with the 8th level Demiplane to be able to hold sleeping gas in a town in a middle of nowhere to knock out my half elf and teammate elf since sleeping spells could not get them to fall asleep. The owner of the item was a regular florist npc that had to build up the town from nothing. Level 8 pcs at the time. It makes no sense how a florist was able to get a 17th level wizard or 15th level warlock to the city to do such a thing

Abysmalmelody

I was a long term dm, I also hosted(pre Covid) at my house because my house was the only place that could accommodate us. After two years of running the table I asked if anyone want to give it a shot. One player, a good friend, did but playing at “his table” was absolutely miserable. It was like I had personally wronged him and he was taking it all out on my character. It was so bad, I nearly quit dnd! You guys have masterfully switch dms without any issue on our end. Have you ever switched roles and had issues with the new dm going on a power trip? Forgot to mention that “his table” was still my actual table so me not wanting to play would effectively shut the whole game down. If Covid hadn’t stopped us from meeting it might have ruined a perfectly good relationship. Any advice for folk in a similar sticky situation?

James Millard

I was DMing a campaign for the first time, and a few months in a player's sister joined us for one session as a guest. One of the other players, our DM from the previous campaign, attacked the guest character until she went to 0HP because it's "what her character would have done". I was so upset that I nearly cried, but I did nothing to stop her. Was I too soft as a first time DM, or was she in the wrong?

Darby Nicole Mishra

So I was in a game where I was playing a dragon born hex blade warlock the dm started out by getting my character to care about his dm pc but the session before we started the third act he said that my patron told me to kill him so I thought about it over that week and concluded that my character would go though with the murder so on that session my patron casted dominate person and told me once again told me to kill the dm pc so I Polly morphed the barbarian into a snail and went for the kill but the dm let the cleric do some spell bs so I couldn’t tell witch was the real deal but you would think that I would be looking at the real one the whole time so guys should I have been able to kill the dm pc?

Nathan Cartier, The assistant king to the assistant king of IronDeep, Hail to the Hammer!

Lungs by definition are closed containers

Turner Tush

Deer honorable judges, Even though I have never played 3.5 I know that you were able to subtract levels from your players in 3.5. I've DMed many 5th edition games where I have twisted that level mechanic where instead of losing levels players will become a new class instead. For example we had a level 3 party and their Eldridge Knightfighter picked up a cursed item, after holding it for 10 minutes and failing a wisdom save when they leveled up their next level up he was forced to put a level into warlock. My players say that I shouldn't be able to force my players to change or take new classes am I at fault for implementing this level ability

Kodi Knight

I’m running my players through The Curse of Strahd right now, and they’ve arrived in Vallaki. There’s an event where a tiger from a traveling circus is freed and one of my players rolled very well on animal handling to calm the thing down, I believe it was an 18. The problem comes when the owner of said animal comes to reclaim the tiger. The player who rolled well on animal handling wants to keep the tiger as a mount, I said he would have to persuade the owner, he disagreed and said he has to persuade the tiger, which he has through his animal handling check. I tried to explain that the owner has built up years of rapport and trust with the animal but they refuse to listen. Happy to have this mediated by a neutral third party, especially one consisting of PawPaw’s legal aids.

The Soviet Dog

My DM made me roll a dex check for a cool entrance (which I failed), but when one of his NPCs had a cool entrance he wouldn’t roll a dex check so he was automatically cool. Please help me right this wrong 🙏

Marla Kelly

Thoughts on "this is an encounter where you all have to die regardless of what you do" events? Had a DM pull that at the end of our first big dungeon to forward his narrative and it felt pretty unsatisfying to have happen.

Luke Polito

I played a home brewed game a while back where the DM specifically stated that Aarakocra weren’t allowed at his table, then went back on that when another friend wanted to play one. I called him out on it, and was eventually allowed to retcon the home brewed flightless birdfolk that I was forced to use. Was I right to call out the DM on his backpedaling, and what would you do in such a situation where someone wanted to play something that’s banned at your table?

Whimsii

A friend was trying to seduce a guard and had rolled well enough to do it(as ruled by the DM). The DM(he) then asks the player(her) to describe how she was going to seduce the guard. She said, “okay... I guess I give him a blow job.” And then he says, “but how?” The rest of the players were uncomfortable and said, “cmon dude let’s move on.” He protested but then backed off. This was the first and last session we had with that DM. Would a Session 0 solve this?

saphssquatch

My brother was DMing strahd and it took us months and months to finally get to him. When we did he had vampire spawn with him that could grapple us. my Character had a minus 2 to strength (ranger/rogue) and he wouldnt let me use acrobatics to escape. i was incapacitaded the entire combat and we got TPKd. was that a good call? he also wouldnt let me attack while grappled

I was a first time player to dnd and my dm sent us into the under dark where we fought a Undead dragon. After about three rounds of combat the dragon used power word kill to murder me and four other party members at the same time! Later we found out this was the plot hook and he turned us into undead generals in an undead army. Fun but fucked up at the same time!

Skyler Morford

Hey NADDPOD squad, are humanoids, or should I specify, lungs inside a living humanoid, considered open containers? Druid in my party wanted to use the spell Create Water to fill up someone's lungs. I obviously said no. What is your take?

Robert McDaniel

Jake plz DM a game.

David