Soliciting Cases for D&D Court

a 1st level squishy shouldn't be face checking in a dungeon, sounds like you had a fine session anyway

Summer Tribe

Hey-yo! Heard this one on the Mixed bag today and had an idea. HUGE SAW 5 spoilers! In SAW 5 Jigaw set a group of 5 people through a series of traps that, in the end, they figured out they could have done each trap all together and never had to sacrifice another person fully. If you put together a 3-5 part encounter like that were it isn't flat out told to them they could do everything easily by working together but, if looked at enough, they could tell. Kind of forces them to work together OR eventually figure out what you're doing then they team together to try to womp you as much as they can. I hope any of this makes sense and I apologize if you hate gore and try to watch a synopsis of SAW 5 on YouTube or something.

Marsh Land Monster

Chris is the worst.

Idk if this is too late but my first dm had us roll d8s instead of 6s for our stats and I played a barbarian. She also had us used our score as our modifiers so at level 1 as a gnome barbarian I had 28 ac. When i told her that's probably unbalanced and broken she said "I'm going to throw cr 16 monsters at you so just be grateful you have good armor." A few sessions later she complained how she couldn't hit me with a melee attack, so she used a Beholder to make my intelligence score 0 and wouldn't save against it because my character was "just a meathead, so there's no way you could save no matter what" even though mechanically I could save.

likedafish

It was everyone but the DMs first time playing D&D. We weren’t together as a team yet, but we’re all headed to the same cave. My character got their first but was being followed by another players character; I attempted to scare her away from following me and my DM had me roll an intimidation check against her — nat20. The other player just responded that her character wouldn’t be scared and proceeded to attack me. She was a barbarian and I was a warlock so she KO’d me in her first hit as we were all level one. I proceeded to fail all my death saving throws and died in the first minutes of the first game I ever played. I just feel like with such a good intimidation check, the other player shouldn’t have been allowed to just ignore it, or was it just my fault for trying to play a character who starts off mean?

Jakob Hoffmann

My character wanted to cut a support beam from a platform that was over a pit to kill the ranged enemies on it. I rolled a nat one on my attack roll and the dm said I had to lean over the pit to hit the beam (which I was not aware of until after I rolled the nat one) and my character fell to his death, no death saving throws, no damage, just dead. It wasn't even that big of a pit, there were just spikes at the bottom. I was about level 5 with 44 hp at the time so there should've been a chance for me to survive a small fall with some spikes in my opinion.

Nicholas

In the final boss of the campaign, had six attacks (this was in pathfinder) rolled a nat one on the first attack I trip drop my weapon and shit my self and now I lose all my attacks for the round! A clear abuse of critical fails!!!!

henry horn

I played in a campaign that ended almost ended in a pvp scenario because our paladin was an adherent to a god that ended up being not so good. The paladin player was quite upset at me for having looked at his character sheet to make a plan to beat him (all players sheets were available to all players). My logic was I played a 20 INT wizard that had fought next to him enough to know his capabilities and had time to plan to take him out smoothly. We ended up cutting the campaign there and restarting elsewhere to avoid unnecessary conflict. Do you think he was right to be upset at the sheet peek?

Jack L

One time we were playing pathfinder with a friend who was new to DMing. Our Party was made up of three level 7 characters (we started at level 6) and all of us were relatively squishy. He threw three beefy frost giants at us. Each giant had Damage resistance 10 to both magical and melee damage and an AC so high that the only way my character could hit would be to roll a nat 20. We were getting womped when he threw another frost giant in the mix. The party decided to flee and no joke, the DM made fun of us for being “wimps” for at least 5 sessions afterwards.

Cassie Von Behren

Went to a casual one-shot about exploring a tomb with an inexperienced DM. I was playing a Level 1 Warlock. We played for 3 hours and we'd slogged through a handful of encountered and were low on HP. I walk into the room that turned out to be the "boss fight" and found out I was between two Mummy Pharaohs. Went to move away, which apparently provoked an attack of opportunity. One missed and the other hit and crit on me. Did me for double my max HP (which was 8) and I was killed before the fight began. I was unimpressed and the DM was steadfast that they made the right decision but realized they made the encounter too hard for a party of 4 (now 3) level 1 characters. They eventually gave them "vulnerability to fire" after the fight proved way too difficult, which allowed a party member to throw a torch at them and instantly kill them. I applauded his improvisation but was still irate that I had been playing for 3 hours and had to sit for another 45 minutes and watch them fight Mummies who my death had nerfed. Am I wrong to be upset about this?

My Fiancé accuses me of being too harsh on her during the game as not to show favoritism This has lead to me letting her get away with some stuff hats nonsensical all in good fun of course I charge her with using her influence over me how do murph and em handle this I dunno how this court things works to be honest lol

Alex

My Buddy and I are playing twins and we named ourselves Rin(Lady Druid) and Ren (Dude Ranger/Wizard). How much right does my DM have to hate us. (our long lost sisters name is Rei, so the names are Rin,Ren,Rei lol)

Nikki Lynn

ALSO ONE OF MY PLAYERS MADE HIS BACKSTORY THE LAST CAMPAIGN WHERE THE PARTY WIPED AND I CANT STOP HIM BC IT WORKS IN THE LORE OF THE WORLD BUT FJFKGMGKDKS THE LAZINESS

Katherine Lindeman

Playing Out of the Abyss Campaign, and still early in it. I'm playing a very preppy, outgoing, but ruthless warlock. I put two drow to sleep, and we exited combat. I went back and killed them to keep them from following us. The other party members seemed a bit unnerved. I even asked if it would be too murder-hobo-y if I did it and they begrudgingly said no. The DM seemed to approve. Did I miss something?

Are there any spells/races you would consider banning for a campaign? Personally i dont like yuan-ti or certain cleric spells like augury.

Makeitsweat

I, the DM, had a game that led to a dragonborn cult's hideout to rescue the players' tavern's kidnapped wait staff. I fully intended that the leader of this cult would be a reoccurring villain, so my plan was that, as soon as the players started to be clearly winning the battle, the cowardly boss would escape through a nearby sewer tunnel. The heroes are gaining ground, and I decide that next turn, I'd make my escape, immediately after the bard's. Unfortunately for me, they cast Suggestion and kindly recommend that the boss gets in a barrel the cleric had been sneaking through the hideout in, Solid Snake style. I fail the save, but know that with how they worded their Suggestion, I could just exit the barrel immediately after entering. The boss wastes one turn getting in and out of the barrel, I'm set to escape next round. The cleric thinks this is hilarious, and uses her next action to cast Command, saying "return" to get the boss back in the barrel. I waste my next turn doing the same thing after a failed save. This happens 4 more rounds, where my players whomp my boss as I fail every save (even after giving myself advantage after the third barrel-visit) as the spellcasters spam control spells to neutralize his turns and make him play leapfrog in and out of a barrel. Meanwhile, the martial players have just finished mopping the floor with the cultist mooks. I'm still not too worried, because despite being 5 rounds behind on my escape plan, they haven't damaged the boss, who is intentionally extra beefy for their current level. He's in the barrel currently, but after the barbarian and the bard (who is finally out of spell slots), he can eat some AoO and GTFO. The barbarian asks if she gets advantage due to the boss's current barrel-based predicament. I say sure. The barbarian proceeds to roll TWO NAT TWENTIES on the attack. I had a house rule at the time that, with a double crit with advantage, you'd roll x4 damage dice instead of x2. My face pales as the barbarian rolls nearly max damage against my boss, and rolls EXACTLY the boss's hitpoints, OHKing him. But- this is where I need the judgement- I decide to fudge the HP a bit, and give him one more hitpoint. I describe how the dragonborn barely withstands this blow as the barrel splinters, but stands up, takes the Disengage action, and sprints to the tunnel. The barbarian: "...but don't I get a second attack?" "..." "..." "...yes." The barbarian hits, killing him. After that session, I removed the x4 damage crit rule and retcon that barrels no longer exist in my world (wherever there was a barrel, there is now a crate). My question is, am I a goober/dealt an injustice to my players for fudging the HP of the boss I wanted to return mid-fight and for removing both the crit rule and all barrels? How would you guys, with your different DM styles, have handled the players instantly and unexpectedly killing a plot-critical villain too early?

Cain Bowman

In my campaign at level 5 our dm had us fight a evil undead dragon in the under dark. Right as we thought we won my barbarian saw green ancient word floating over our heads. It was power word kill and he immediately killed our entire party of 5. As a first time D&D player I was shocked, turns out it was always the plan to kill us and then bring us back as evil characters who basically had to then kill Pelor! Still super fun campaign just kinda traumatic as a first campaign.

Skyler Morford

Our DM (let's call him Bob) is my significant other's long-time friend from school, and as much as I appreciate and respect him as a person, Bob has a bit of a power complex at the table. There have been many times where Bob will create seemingly impossible and unwinnable scenarios just to make us players feel stupid and powerless, only to have his "dark and mysterious" dragonborn NPC come in and save the day, ultimately looking like the hero. Bob's real-life best friend (let's call him Jack), who plays a dragon knight, always tends to be the butt of every joke and after 3 years of them playing together, it's obvious that Jack has become very jaded and resentful toward the campaign and toward Bob. Jack's dragon (run by the DM) also has become a teenage alcoholic that none of the party can seem to reach anymore. Every time we try to help the dragon to get clean, no matter what approach we take, we always somehow end up looking like the assholes. As the only female in the group, I too have been the butt of many jokes. I enjoy a good razzing and I have thick skin as a tomboy, but sometimes it goes too far and I don't feel seen as an equal. I'm a fairly new player, I've been in their campaign for about 8 months, and I (regrettably) decided to play an arcane trickster rogue who used to work in an upscale bordello. Well...long story short, the term "whore" gets thrown around a lot when referring to my character, and it has caused several spats inside and outside of game. I feel like my character (and my real-life self) is the loving and kind glue that is holding our party together at this point, and to be brutally honest, the group would be doomed without me. All in all, we as players have continually felt belittled and disrespected, and have talked more than once about just leaving the campaign. What do you guys think? Is our campaign salvageable? Is there any advice you can give us on how to address the situation with DM Bob without it ruining that friendship? Thank you, we love you, eat a rat ♥

Gloria

I was a first time dm(and player) at a table with my best friends who were all first time players. Not so much an injustice as a hilarious goof gone great. Sister is playing a dwarf fighter along with a high elf wizard, halfling bard, and wood elf cleric. They have just finished delving into some Dwarven ruins, hacking their way through oozes and the like. They come out totally exhausted, ready to head home and cash in their quest. This is session 1. As they approach the doors i let them make perception checks. The bard passes and i let them know they hear what sounds like orcs outside along with tortured screams and a crackling campfire. Bard wants to get closer and investigate. Rolls stealth to peak around the huge stone doors. Nat 1. What else could I do but have a hinge give way and the door falls forward with an echoing boom. The gang is in cover but the orcs are now alerted. Sister looks at me across the table. "This is an excavation site right?" Me: "yeah?" Sis:"Are there any wheelbarrows?" Luck check. Yep, there's a wheelbarrow. Long story short with the groups combined efforts of thaumaturgy, bard shenanigans, a cloak, a wheelbarrow and some incredible rolls on their part these mfs got full on Dread Pirate Roberts'd. Their intimidation beat all three Orcs wisdom saves combined. It was ridiculous but amazing and I couldn't think of a better way to experience this game for the first time!

Shakespearmint

Our party found a shiny. My kobold divine soul sorcerer wanted it for their hoard but everyone else decided that we should sell it to buy our gnome divination wizard a piece of paper or something. They already take my shines when they die and I need to bring them back to life, why would they take my shines to give it to a gnome of all people?!

My PC (Half-Orc Ex follower of Kord) was attacked by another PC ( Dwarf Cleric of Kord who only joined the party to convince my PC that Kord is not bad) because I tried to burn down a elven tree ent (Elfs were a bad group committing genocide against the orcs). I was also the only remaining PC who had ties to the main campaign ( I was busy for a session where a TPK happened and this was the first session back).

Phew, read through all that and none of my ex-players have made a post about me. We went to switch to online play when lockdown started, I got everything prepped on Roll20 and then one player shows up an hour late and complains he doesn't like Roll20. Okay, that's on me for not checking if Roll20 worked for people beforehand, I'll find something else! And I do! I send out invites to the new site and ask if people could check it out and see if they like it before I put a tonne of work into the prep on there. No response. I send out little reminder messages every day that week, no response. So yeah, I got mad, I sent a message saying I'm not asking for much and it's pretty rude to just not answer me at all and oh did *that* message get a response. 2 players were nice and apologized, 1 just left the group and hasn't spoken to me since and 1 went on this huge rant about how I'm power tripping and THEN left the group and hasn't spoken to me since. Ironically the one who went on a rant is the same one who complained about Roll20 and asked me to find a different site. Honestly still hurts a bit, that campaign was my baby.

Robin

I was playing in a group that misunderstood a rule in the PHB, bonus action under casting time for spells, and they thought he could cast any spells as a bonus action after casting a cantrip, even spells requiring an action. I told them that someone casting Eldritch Blast followed by another spell that requires an action is not how the rules work, but the DM ruled that it was allowed. I know the DM is a fan of Naddpod so he will hear the verdict aswell.

Mikkel Voigt

I was playing a game with a real murder hobo and after having to flee a town that HE SET ON FIRE!!!! we came across a man buried up to his neck in the dirt and just as he was about to open his mouth, our resident murder hobo shopped his head off with an axe and continued on his merry way! I will never know how this man got stuck there! Was he taking a literal dirt nap!? Was was what did his body look like under the dirt!? Was he just a head with roots, like some freaky head flower!? These are the questions that haunt me.

MissAdventurer

So in my party two members broke our warlock pacts, both having multi classed into warlock from either ranger or rogue. Right after this we had to fight BBEG so we had to find a way to get magic back as our magic from our patrons was gone. Neither of us wanted to be warlocks anymore so I multi classed into sorcerer and the other guy multi classed into paladin. Our DM made us keep the levels in warlock, allows us to use some of the abilities, and just suck it up. I wanted to ask about trading them out slowly for one of the other classes instead of being 3 classes all at low levels. What would y'all do?

My party went to the feywild. Went to a massive city that essentially had house-elves like from Harry Potter that would punish themselves or ask you to punish them if they thought they did wrong. We pretended I was a master, and the other 2 in the party were my house-elf like servants. We asked 3 of these servants to send us to a certain level of the city in an elevator, one of them said the wrong floor and I corrected them, and he went crazy asking me to whip him, and kept insisting no matter how often I said no. In a weird moment of inspiration I cast message inside his head and told him to stop disturbing the greatest wizard in the world and he would be rewarded. He went insane, screaming there was a demon inside his head. The other two servants flipped, one grabbed him and held him down, the other grabbed an axe and decapitated him. At the end of the session the DM told me that my character essentially murdered this guy, and that I had to change from chaotic good to chaotic neutral. I contest his death wasn't my fault! Help!

Wayne Hickey

5e, My 7th level sorcerer was given access to the spell armor of agathys (or amethyst to our friend Onyx), and used it in a one on one fight against a npc. After casting it at a 4th level, my character gained 20 temp hp with 20 damage after each melee hit while maintaining the temp hp. After the battle, which I lost, my dm saw this spell as too powerful and nerfed the damage to scale with the amount of temp hp. I argued that the spell was by the book and that range attack allowed for an easy work around and that nerfing the damage made it so that an enemy could easily deplete the hp and melee attack me with minimal damage and I’m out a 4th level spell. He wasn’t hearing it and just went on with nerfing the spell. While I didn’t see it my place to fight him, I do not see the spell as being that overpowered.

3.5e but still. I was playing in an Underdark campaign when the DM decided he didn't want to continue it. He then told me that my character was poisoned and had only one action left to live while i was in the middle of a petrified forest. He had given me an amulet of treestriding towards the beginning of the character and i had promptly forgotten about it. His goal was to have me fall into a petrified tree and come out in a sacred grove to land in a healing pool. Mind, i had only been there once. Looking story short, i died. When another character tried to resurrect me, a demon hijacked the resurrection and became the main villain...in my body with all of my Warlock skills. Murph, would you ever do this to one of your players?

Shenshen

Bard paternity case with like six different kids.

Kae

I was playing a character with the Noble background and her family (Mother & Father) was one of the main rulers of the country. (Several Noble families shared the job of running the country.) My party and I needed to get from one coastal town to another, so I suggested that “we travel on one of the ships my family owns.” My fellow players and DM nearly turned the table over in indignation and outrage and to this day (several years later) tease me about “my family’s ships.” Apparently it was laughable (and game breaking?) that my character would have access to a ship. Yet I unwaveringly maintain that my character, being a noble, would have some access to a ship (if we didn’t outright own one, we’d have merchant connections or SOMETHING!) Was I right to roleplay this resource into my character or are my best friends right to have shamed me for 5 years? #justiceforConstance

Jillian of Midgard

I am the (possibly at fault) DM. Party was in an underwater combat. PC casts Cloudkill. I allow the initial created cloud but smaller AOE (as water compresses gas). Then had the cloud dissipate (?dissolve?) in the water. Players weren't upset but weren't thrilled either. How would you rule a cloud spell underwater?

Nicholas C, star of every film ever made in Bahumia. Now starring in the Irondeep production A Squire Never Tires

I was told I was meta gaming (by another character in-session) because my outlander woodsman character was worried a magical circle of mushrooms we encountered in the forest was a ‘fairy circle’. The character called me out for metagaming while still in character and I had no idea how to respond. It was my absolute first time playing dnd ever in my life and I had never met anyone in the group besides my one friend who invited me. They never asked me to play with them again. To this day I don’t really understand what metagaming is and am terrified of doing it.

Emma Horton

one of my players always has suspiciously good stats. like nothing under a 14. this has happened with multiple characters. do i confront him about this? ive just been having stronger enemies go after him but he is much stronger than the rest of the party. should i just buff the rest of the party to his power? should i confront him? we play over discord so im also a little worried about his dice rolls. how do you handle cheaters?

When ever I am playing I roll pretty well. But when ever I am DMing I roll like absolute shit. I play 2 games a week and DM 2. Please find in my favor against the gods of fate, the dice devil or dice christ. PS i also "cook" my dice IE leave them on the highest number so the learn thats how they are supposed to be

Kevin Dowd

I made a character for my very first D&D session named Kronch. Kronch was a slave and the whole arc of the story revolved around him hopefully eventually rising to free his people and stop his father from taking over the world. He was a fighter/barbarian Orc who loved people and protected everyone he met with his life. Our party consisted of Kronch and Nyide (a dragon born Cleric) played by my friend Nellie, we met a DMPC wood elf named Thurcon along the way and for the most part we had an easy time of it... Until we fought our third boss, a boss we had been building up to for weeks, he kidnapped our favorite DMPC, framed us for murder and threatened the town that Kronch called home. When we entered the boss room we were surrounded, 4 giant spiders, 4 bug bears, and our big boss standing in the middle, Kronch had to think of the best strategy to garuntee his homes survival so he did the best possible thing he could think of, he lunged passed the wall of other enemies and directly attacked the big bad dealing max damage on a crit and near max damage on his second attack and single handedly murdering the boss, Kronch was a true hero with a miraculous victory... until all the enemies in the room jumped him all at once and sent him straight to the after life in one turn... oof

OtherJason

Stop and Shop didnt have Annie's mac n cheese in stock. Shout out Rhode island

Crane

Tom Nook has enslaved most of us with his predatory lending practices. This is class action, BINCH!!

David Pugh

Pretty early into the campaign I am still playing in, my Tiefling wizard and another player character entered into an underground fight club. Upon losing my match, and being healed by the on-site cleric, I attempted to attack the victor for a round two. I managed to convince the other PC to join in, but the sudden appearance of town guard broke up the fight and knock both of our level 7 characters out. Characters were dragged to the fantasy gulag. After regaining consciousness, our characters were just... summarily executed. Without any real to roll or roleplay out of the situation beyond some fruitless bargaining. Like literally shut down any attempts at escape by saying “you can’t do that.” Similar, though less severe, situations have played out where the DM makes a decision and won’t allow players a way of roleplaying out of a situation. Was my DM in the right for bestowing swift justice against our kinda evil agents of chaos, or in the wrong for killing off our characters without a chance for escape or progression?

Hannah Speidel

The wording of the spell is "each creature you choose". It absolutely should include the horses!!!

Vic

So, the most experienced player at my table has the habit of correcting me or other players when they break the rules, which isn’t something I personally mind (it keeps me on my toes and helps me learn). But some of the other players don’t like it as it often makes them weaker in some way (for example, in the latest session they told our wizard they couldn’t over-channel their ninth level spell meteor storm and kill the dungeons boss in one hit, as its one of the restrictions on the ability). This has made a little bit of tension at the table, but I don’t know who is in the right about it, the person who is playing by the rules, or the person who feels robbed of their special moments in game.

I DMed a one shot for a group I had been a player on a year or so ago. This was a chance to give the main DM a break since they didn’t have enough time to prepare for that’s week’s session. I asked the players to come up with characters before the session so we could just just down a play. The adventure revolves around a group of thieves working for a local thieves guild who had to sneak into a large church and steal a holy orb (pretty standard stuff). The adventure went well until we got to the secret underground basement of the church where the real orb and the cult of demon worshipers hung out. The party was At the bottom of the stairs on the opposite side of the room as a ritual using the orb to turn a cultist into a demon was happening. One player, whose character was a shifter monk (basically built to have 100 ft of movement in one turn) interrupted me as I was describing the ritual and asked if he could run and steal the orb or kill the lead cultist before they finished the ritual. I immediately said no because I knew that the whole fight I had planned with a half-demon cultist would be down the drain. The player argued because they said they built their character for moving fast in moments like this but I still said no. The adventure continues on and it ends up being a fun night ending in a huge chase back to the thieves guild hideout chased by an army of demons as the city burns down. So, the question that I bring to the court is, was making the decision to say “no” to a player who powergamed in order to try to save my story a bad thing? Should I have said yes and tried to go along with what the player wanted? Should a DM allow meta gaming or power gaming players to do things in game that may derail a story?

Mason McCauley

Our DM is new and honestly we are all new to playing online (via Roll20). But our group has been playing together for years and we've all known each other for more than 10 years. We are giving our friend a shot at being the DM because he's the most well versed with Roll20 and has been playing online for a while. However, it is not going very smoothly. He is railroading us into his story and often just tells us what our characters are doing without giving anyone a chance to input our own flavor. We don't get the opportunity to give feedback either really because he gets defensive quickly and will sometimes simply say "well I'm the DM" when anyone challenges a rule. We all really like our characters but it becomes draining and no longer fun most sessions.

InsertName

Oh man, that sounds like less of a fun "court case" and more like a really shitty situation. It sounds to me like that person has got to go if they don't change their behavior. If you don't want to bring it up, you could talk to youe DM and see if they'd be willing to talk to that player directly. D&D is a game and should be fun for everybody. It's not an office job where you just have to resign yourself to shitty coworkers.

Haven

starspawn

Legion

So I play a nature cleric with a custom "herb witch" background. In my backstory I canonically crafted healing potions, it's kinda my whole deal. I'm proficient with healer's kits and herbalism kits and I also own both. Spent multiple sessions meticulously gathering/buying herbs for a single healing potion (this is a very low level, low power campaign). Finally had everything, and then our DM decides I actually can't make healing potions because I don't have alchemist's supplies. I have never owned those and I'm not proficient, so how could I have made potions in my backstory then?? Suspect he just didn't want us to have that much power. Sucked because I invested so much time and ALL my money in the ingredients. I know the rules for making healing potions aren't super clear - was I wronged?

Haven

In our campaign one PC has a Aarakocra monk with 25 AC AND mobile so he is very hard to pin down/hit and in an encounter on a moving ship he had the banishment spell cast on him. We preceded to get womped by the pirates so we all had to flee (except my character who died alone below deck) . So all the pirates surrounded the spot where the Arrakocra was banished from so when he came back he would get womped but he argued that he would come back in the water behind the ship because the ship kept moving forward from where the banishment spell was cast.

Alexander Vaa

Hey gang! Player here with a complaint about my DM. I feel like the party and our dm have differing ideas on how serious our game should be, and it’s hurting the overall game. For reference, the party has a dragonborn barbarian who’s adopted an alligator and a literal bartender who got roped into adventuring, so the party just has a good time being silly about the adventure. However, the DM really bemoans every time we get into antics, and rarely, if ever, joins in on the comedy. All of the npcs are real hardasses, with no real senses of humor. This wouldn’t be too bad, but it does kinda cut into my enjoyment of the game when we try to get information from our enemies. Basically, no matter how good our persuasion or intimidation attempts, all of these foes are brutally loyal, and require at least some threat of bodily harm or just actual torture to coerce. This is, in all honesty, an absolute downer, cause it feels like I spend all this time trying to be creative with my social solutions, trying to play into things like bribery or seduction or unionization, but the only answer that’s ever right is torture. How to I tell my DM politely that ge’s being a buzzkill?

Maddy Leaman

I was playing in a gladiator rebellion campaign and my Lvl 10 party and I planned to hijack a gnoll caravan containing some prisoner NPCs we needed to rescue. The leader of the caravan was a Yeenoghu who ended up just going after my Tabaxi Ancestral Guardian Barbarian character despite there being plenty of other targets it could easily go after. I know Barbarians are supposed to be the tanks of the party, but I believe the DM was metagaming during this encounter because of my character’s Ancestral Guardian abilities. Also it had a +16 to hit while my Barbarian’s AC was 16, which needless to say was very discouraging, especially when it kept attacking my character’s unconscious body after it dropped me to 0HP.

TL;DR how to make players from a group that I'm not super close to find the spirit of roleplaying and not only fighting things? I was briefly DMing Lost Mines of Phandelver for a group of Sort Of Friends. One of their players was their old DM, who was going to set up the game but didn't have the time, so quit before it started (fair enough) which is where I came into play. The problem was that, 1) the old DM had allowed stats of 20 at first level when folks were making their characters, and 2) had rolled really REALLY well on his own character. Normally if i were DMing from the start I'd encourage them to maybe work on balancing their stats out a bit more. Usually I’m playing with players who are pretty cool about this kind of thing, playing more for plot than skills anyway, who don’t really want to be good at everything. But I didn’t do that here - a combination of social anxiety from not knowing them and the fact that they had already built their characters, I suppose. And things just got worse from there. With one crazy OP ranger who was the only one who had played before kind of dominating every fight (would get like, a 24 initiative and kill little enemies in like, a hit) and no one else stepping up to roleplay, it felt like i was fighting them at every turn to get them to interact with the world in a way that wasn’t hurting it. The thing is, one of my friends was playing a charming and lovely half elf paladin with high persuasion and penchant for trying to dazzle and persuade enemies rather than fight them. I absolutely LOVED this character decision, because it was exactly what I wanted them to do. Interact with the world in a non-violent way ever. But the rest of the party found this character annoying. He would make an offer of some sort to an enemy, or try to talk to someone, and they would all complain, and at one point tried to tie him up and gag him so he wouldn’t ‘ruin their plans’. (I stopped them doing this, telling them that it simply wasn’t fair and wasn’t in the spirit of the game). My general question is, like, I’ve stopped DMing for this group for the moment, because it was such an exhausting game to run full of wildly disparate tones and attitudes towards playing, but if I were to pick it back up, is there any way to salvage the game and make something good out of it while still running the module faithfully? Am I just in the wrong trying to mould their play style to be something different?

Jay V

First session into a campaign, after being rescued from hanging for being dissidents by an underground organisation, we were allowed some free time to shop for stuff not supplied by the organisations Blacksmith. We immediately went to a charity shop across the road, called Save the Owlbears (we made it up, and basically forced it into the campaign). We spent about an hour messing about in this shop, buying scarves and tormenting the old halfling who "ran" the shop. It was a hoot, we bought badges and offered to run a few shifts. The DM tried to take it on the chin, but ended up not being able to give us all their planned exposition for that session. The next session we went back to buy more badges and the shop was trashed and the old lady who ran the shop was MURDERED, for no reason other than "the towns guard are horrible and we were wanted criminals" There was no evidence we were there. The biggest travesty is... We didnt even get to adopt an owlbear. I accuse the DM of murder of an NPC and negligence of wild animals!

In one of my husband's D&D games he put the party in a room full of gunpowder and the enemy they needed to fight and our friend Chris decided it was a good idea, after being told that fire would make the whole room explode and kill the party, to use a fireball with the excuse that his AC was high enough so he would at least survive.

If I roll a d100 and I roll a 50 on the 10' die and then a 0 on the d10, what number do I get?

Leith H.

Don’t have a case just wanted to say hi to Jake. How are you, brother?

Damodar

I as a DM wronged my players! I had a few players who were RPing solo type edgelord characters. They would often question each other or be shady to the point where it didn't make sense for them to be on the same team. It also made it harder to write sessions for them. I got so frustrated with it that I basically called one of them out in the middle of the session for not playing nice. We're cool cause we are friends outside of the campaign, but how do I avoid this in the future? How do you get past players who don't wanna play as a group ( apart from AGGRESSIVELY texting them after and freaking out Murph style)

Vinegar Tom

Playing a bard tortle (can hold breath underwater for 30 mins) got hit with a paralysed spell and BOOM nat 1. Dm said my character drowned even though combat was over a few minutes later. My character could hold his breath. Rolled up a new character (monk) called brother. Dabbon who’s fatal flaw was over the top showboating after winning a fight. So while drinking heavily (me) I would loudly run around the table yelling as brother dabbon stopped in front of my dm and dabbed on my dm. He hated me for doing it and everyone died laughing and my bard tortle was revived by a paladin the start of the next session 😂😂

Running zombie hordes: did I fuck up? In an attempt to challenge my level 6 PCs I slammed a bunch of zombies into one stat block and planned to have the characters chip away at their HP. The casters complained that their AOE spells like fireball and spirit guardians should affect individual zombies in the group, not the swarm's total HP. They definitely have a great point, but it turned what was supposed to be the session encounter into a lousy 1 round whomping that wasn't fun for anyone. How do I unfuck running horde encounters? (Shout-out to D!)

Lisa Hartman

I’m in a campaign over zoom! We are all friends but there is one guy who continues to lie every game about rolls. Either that or he has literally magic dice. I’m so frustrated by this I’ve been doing math and out of 39 rolls over the last 3 sessions he has rolled 22 NAT 20s and out of the other 17, 14 have been over 16-19. The rest of my party agrees but isn’t as intensely annoyed at this like myself so idk what to do. Do you let it go and wait till we can do sessions in person where he can’t cheat or do I text him? Do I reach out to the DM? I’m so confused PLEASE HELP

Justin Borak

In a recent Session of our new group, my Halfing Bard Caliburn and a Leonin Barbarian Boon of Bain, were working working on a dreaded level one challenge. A METAL CAVE DOOR!!! Now in this cave there have been spore “mines” all over the place, and only one of the party, Silas a Human Ranger, has been fully exposed. So after Cal and Boon get the door open by ripping it off it’s hinges (it was unlocked :0 ) Silas decides to make a stealth check in order to get into the room. He rolls a Nat 1. The DM describes Silas coughing loudly which sets of Spore Mines that are hanging from the ceiling near Cal and Boon. We take a boatload of poison damage (like I’m at 1hp here) and now have disadvantage on stealth rolls till we get the “Spore Lung” fixed. I believe it’s unfair that someone else’s nat 1 affected me and another’s player so much. TL;dr - Someone else Nat 1 caused me and another party member to be grievously harm with lasting effects. Do I have a case here PawPaw Attorney-at-law ?!

Karma Kamille

So first action is Eldritch smite, then your next action would have to be path to the grave with your channel divinity grave domain feature right? I believe that takes an action. I don’t think you could then do twinned spell because that’s also an action. Quickened spell could use your remaining bonus action. I don’t think the action economy necessarily agrees with you here but I think I could be wrong. This is so much going on and this build is awesome but insane. I would love to hear the logic on how you could accomplish everything in your comment in one turn!

Melnar Bonemaker

No case, just saying I'm stoked for this!

Tyler Board

Our campaign had been plagued with highly immoral decisions from half the party, such as wonton killing of NPCs and then gaslighting their ghosts to believe we didn't kill them. The DM somewhat encouraged this, but agreed to put a stop to it when the rest of us spoke up about it. A session later we teleported to an unknown attic with only one way out. We worked out way through the house killing cultists and rescuing a captive they were performing a ritual on. Feeling good that we had finally done the right thing, we stepped outside and the captive exploded. Apparently, the cultists were the captive's family who were trying to help them and the captive was, wait for it, DEATHLY ALLERGIC TO THE SUN. We were railroaded to fail from the start. A through J, how fucked up is that?

Will

TL;DR: The former DM of my group's campaign pulled the classic "It's what my character would do" card to justify attempted murder on a crucial and completely benevolent NPC as well as a guest PC played by my best friend's younger sister. The first campaign I ever played in was DM'd by a college friend (J) of my childhood best friend (C). C, another one of her friends (P), the DM's younger sister (G), and myself comprised the party and I enjoyed it thoroughly. After that campaign ended I began planning my own that I would run for J, P, and C. J decided their first character would go on a journey to find themselves, and their new character, a monk librarian, was awaiting the party in a port town. The character was strong but very rude, impulsive, and oblivious (at best) to social cues. This was a jarring departure from their former character, who was a bit awkward but kind and caring. The new character decided that diplomacy was for the weak and began punching first and asking questions later, which would have been fine if that had in any way vibed with the rest of the party, which it absolutely did not. The first incident was when a priest attempted to meet the party clandestinely on the docks at night to arrange for the party to do a heist of the priest's own temple and donate most of the haul to charity so that the monks would again be a humble brotherhood instead of a self-important greedy group of puffed-up bandits. Upon being displeased with their own perception roll, J decided to start trying to kill the guy instead of waiting for the others to roll perception or discuss it amongst themselves since "that's what their character would do". Since this was the first campaign I had ever DM'd and the second I had ever been a part of in real life, I was completely unprepared for this open antagonism and fortunately they were assuaged by me having the priest rip his hood off and reveal his identity to the group prematurely. However, a few minutes later in this very same session, C's younger sister (G) made a guest appearance since C was home for the holidays. G's character had been hiding under the dock attempting to eavesdrop on this conversation, and when J's character discovered her there they IMMEDIATELY began attacking her and would not stop for several rounds. Everyone was very confused and upset, and I was barely able to hold back tears as I saw my attempt to include my best friend's younger sister in our cool D&D campaign falling apart before my eyes. The other players finally managed to intervene but the vibe was sufficiently soured. Lay your judgment down and I will accept

Darby Nicole Mishra

We also have weird magic item disparity. I have two uncommon items (Sentinel Shield & Mithral Plate) but our cleric has 13 items including 1 artifact, 1 legendary, 1 very rare, 5 rare and 5 uncommon. I can’t be the only one who seems weirded out by that, right?

Peter Mundell

*Maw maw* YES MY CHILD YOU DO BRING UP IMPENATRABLE VALID POINTS

Cristian Perez

Let the court preside I leave it to you

So I made a character who had an abused past and was racist towards Humans, he came from a temple that practiced silence so he never really learned how to speak well. People at the table told me that my character choice was stupide because he was racist even though he was slowly throughout the campaign changing learning how to be in normal society. Is it fair for people to demand you change your characters major flaw just so that it makes the journey easier. My argument is that even if character have huge flaws like that if they grow through experience and become harmonious through bad experience is that a bad character

I am DMing an Final Fantasy style dnd 5e game where the players are the "warriors of light." So far everyone gets along and the game is going well, but one player has an issue of metagaming and power gaming poorly. They get upset when I say a monster has resistance or immunity because I changed their stat block from the monster manual, which they have apparently memorized as they like to mention. He also asks leading questions such as "How much HP does this guy seem to have?" or "What type of damage could this trap do?". They are wording in such a way to seem more like an attempt to get peaks behind the screen while playing so he can do the "optimal" thing. Some metagaming is fine and a min-maxed character can be awesome, but is getting upset that your meta knowledge does not line up in-game play or that the DM is not willing to also go meta all the time fair or no?

Leondatwani

I as a player in a campaign play a very intelligent artificer. Despite my characters high intelligence stat, I’ve recently been getting into a lot of shenanigans. Chugging to much chowder and coating my naked gnome body in soap and running around the kings party naked shouting out that I’m to slippery to be caught as a distraction so my party could play a prank. Also chewing coffee beans and eating soap. Soap is like 2 copper pieces it’s insane. Well, a lot of times the party will just start treating my character like he’s an idiot and often don’t try to participate or help the shenanigans but shut it down. I don’t know how to ask them to role play the goofier stuff with me more. Is it okay for high intelligence characters to make really stupid decisions?

Melnar Bonemaker

In a game I DM we chose to take a more episodic approach. Instead of leveling up over time I chose to instead give all the players who showed up to session a goody at the end of each game (a magic item, some sort of 1 time use potion or what have you ) so there's still a reward for attendance and beating up monster One player (who frequently skips to play video games) complained this was unfair because it gives people who CANT show up a disadvantage after he realized everyone was more powerful than him Since he wife plays as well we know that most of the time he skips a session it is because he was doing something like video games and not a valid reason to not be able to make it Am I crazy for thinking he is in the wrong?

TheNoodleDoodler

Your honours, peoples of the court. I was DMing a party who were exploring a castle that started flying. The castle was at an altitude of 2 miles (around 10000ft). The druid decided to question a spider in the lobby of the castle. I said the spider was friendly but too panicked to be helpful, as he was terrified at the castle being so high in the air. The party FIERCELY disagreed on this, arguing at length that a regular spider would be too small to be concerned by the elevation of the castle. I argued that it was akin to witnessing first hand your entire nation be lifted out of the earth into the sky - whilst not directly feeling it, it would likely alarm you. The party additionally stated that many spiders can live at altitudes of up to 30000ft - i admitted that whilst this was true, this spider did not. Naturally, this minor disagreement ground the entire game to a halt. So, fair judges, who was in the right? At what altitude would the average spider be scared? And does the fact that some spiders live high up mean that they don't care about potentially falling to earth?

My friends and I have done a ZOOM DND session since lockdown began and one of my friends has on several occasions eaten an entire rotisserie chicken during the game. I argue it’s a distraction, he argues because it’s over the internet “the smell can’t be a distraction” and it’s fine. He’s also claimed as it’s a medieval setting it adds to the atmosphere. Our DM has remained neutral but at one point tried to polymorph him into a hen during a fight which makes me think she’s on my side. One of our group says if it’s a problem we should ban all food from the session, but I think outlawing innocent popcorn snacks and the odd mike n’ ike over this coq-eating fiend is too far. Who is right and who is wrong?

Calum Gillies

During quarantine I found my first real DnD group to play with online, but the problem is a couple of players keep missing sessions because they live in South Africa and with the time difference they keep forgetting about our game and sleeping though it so we have to cancel. I’m not sure if there’s anything that can be done about this, with our schedules the time we have set right now is pretty much the only time everyone’s free to play. If this keeps happening should I throw in the towel and try to find another group? Or do you have any advice? Sorry, this is less of a wrong to be judged so if you ignore it that’s cool. Love you guys, love the podcast, keep being awesome, etc!

My party had to take out three giants in a courtyard. The party could not decide on a course of action, we debated for an hour to an hour and a half, one player was very against my character's idea of casting seeming on the party as a disguise, going so far as to say (while the DM was out of the room) that he would kick my ass. So I took matters into my own hands, casted invisibility on myself, got close enough, and charmed two of the three giants, the party joined in, and the battle was all but over after two turns. The aforementioned party member got in my face saying I was in the wrong for acting on my own and forcing the party's hand. Was I in the wrong? Should I have just done what the rest of the party did and remain silent and let the issue sort itself out? P.S. One bonus about this epidemic is I stopped playing with that party and found a great NADDPOD D&D Discord with wonderful people and I am loving D&D again.

Dave Johnson

I was playing a one shot recently and our party needed a guide. We had been hired to find out why pilgrims were going missing while attempting to visit an ancient shrine. We needed a guide to lead us to the shrine, we chose our guide and began to negotiate a price with him. He wanted to charge us 50 gold to lead us on our journey. I decided to try to convince him to guide us for free, I asked him to consider his friends and family in the town and how guiding us would keep his town safe. I rolled for persuasion. I rolled a Natural 20. He reduced his price by a single gold piece, to 49 gold! I’m salty because I think my Nat 20 deserved a bigger discount. Our DM claimed he was someone who almost never worked for free, so him reducing by even one gold is a big deal. Am I justified in feeling totally burned??

I was playing the Curse of Strahd and my brother was DMing. we were level 10 by the time we actually fought the dracula and i was pretty sure we couod take him. about 2 rounds into the fight i was grappled by one of his vampire spawns and then on my turn i asked if i could do an acrobatics check to escape because i was playing a ranger/rogue multiclass and had a plus 8 to acrobatics. he said no and that i had to do a strength check instead. i had a minus 2 to strength. i couldnt do it for the whole fight and we got TPKd. i didnt land a single attack. he also didnt let me attack while grappled. i sent him the rules for grappling as written afterwards and he just shrugged and said "oh well". i miss my Shifter ranger/rogue. He is now a Dracula NPC

You answered my DM court question over a year ago about my DM not letting my aarakocra ranger have the ability to fly at starting level or even allowing me to be able to fly latter on as i level up. He was a new DM so i did understand him a little and we came to a compromise. Instead of flying i had a glide ability that was basically a really good feather fall spell and i could jump long distances. I even took Caldwell’s advice and used the fact that my PC couldn’t fly and put it into my back story of how my wings were severely injured while trying to save my village from gargoyles. Thank you guys for answering my question and for the advice!

Brandon Rodriguez

One of my players wants to be a gunslinger sorcerer and homebrew some mechanics that let's him imbue magic into his gunfire. I informed him this was the arcane archer fighter subclass. He wants to stick to sorcerer-gunslinger for aesthetic and mechanic reasons. Should I homebrew something or make him be an arcane archer if he wants the flavor.

Matteo Cina

I am playing with someone who is used to non-roleplay campaigns so when I get in character I will reply to his sarcastic jokes as if they are happening in universe because that is what I am used to. What should we do? Do I need to ask for clarity? Do we need to use character voices? Does he need to stop joking about how he hates all of us? I feel like I'm alienating him by calling him out in character for things that he is saying out of character. It's just stressful trying to be in a party with someone when you don't know what is in their character's head, what they actually believe as a player, and what is a joke. HELP!

Im gonna try to make this short. I played a death domain cleric who was kind of mad-ish, where as he was a type of plague doctor who followed the deity "plague mother" (who was inspired by the duskmother represented in naddpod). Well my character had this sick sense of what was a plague and not, and he specialized in ridding the world of toxic humans that he looked at like a plague. So all in all a kinda good guy, but my dm would have me roll "insanity" rolls in combat at random, where if i failed i would attack a teammate. The other PC's decided to gang up on my character cause they were tired of being hit. The campaign ended shortly with a feud because the dm blamed me for making an insane character, where i blamed him for misunderstanding my character. I wasnt a murder hobo, i would just overkill bad guys.

I had non important information from a criminal contact. Promised to tell the other players in the morning the information cause it was late and we had a rough day. That night another player cast suggestion on me to tell him everything. I failed and did have to say everything. DM ruled that since suggestion didn’t have anything saying I knew it was cast that I was unaware it ever happened. I did tell everyone everything that morning. Out of character no one agreed with me that the suggestion was unnecessary

DM here, been running a very fun, dragon-themed campaign for nearly a year now. We meet pretty regularly and, generally, get along well in and out of character. However, one of my players put together a PC with a backstory so full of heroics and a personality so deeply entrenched that there was little chance for a character arc to begin with. Now, this wouldn't be too much of an issue, except that he has repeatedly challenged me to "give him reason to change" or "give him an arc" when we talk in between sessions but, in character, nothing I throw at him even phases him. He's recently agreed to kill a child on behalf of his king instead of refuse the order and decided to continue down this path in the face of a Legendary Dragon telling him not to. I am wholly unsure of what to do now as we are so deep into this campaign and I'm only just now realizing that he and I may not see eye to eye about playstyle and such.

Mitothy

We had a campaign going in 3.5 for roughly eight months before our DM got mad at his girlfriend who is also playing with us and decided to kill her character and two others on a whim. We all haven't played a game of D&D together since.

Drew Smith

My first game DMing I accidently killed my entire party (2 PCs and a dmPC). I did not understand how npc stat blocks worked and put my party up against 2 Level 9 PC Druids, a Level 8 Ranger, and her bear companion. The party was level 3. They had to be brought back by Divine Intervention (ie God said they weren't dead and the basically got a free long rest from it). It's been 2 years and I haven't been allowed to DM again for them (our normal DM stepped back in). How do I get my party to let me try again?

In the final session of a sandbox campaign my mates character used his army to tear gas and take over the city. As a chaotic good rogue I decided I would challenge the bintch to a duel. Little did he know I really was early that day and had indeed got the worm, purple that is. I coated my bish ass blades in purple worm poison and pvpd my friend like the hero coward the city deserved. My friend was pissed (of course) and my question is: is that fair?

Zed

CURSE OF STRAHD SPOILERS After killing the Baron and Izek during the Festival of the Blazing Sun, our DM fast-tracked us to Castle Ravenloft at level four. Strahd then sentenced us to death and chose the horrors of the mansion as the means of execution. We faced 8 Gargoyles (CR 2 each), and then tried to shelter in place to regain some HP. Following our inability to do so without constant encounters (one roll per 10 minutes), we ventured forward until Strahd appeared and killed all but one of our characters. The session lasted from 7pm till 2am, and we learned afterwards that we would be "taking a break" from the game for a few months. Is this an acceptable way to pause a game?

Thomas Friedlander

Not an open fight but more of a how-to-handle-this question: I have a group of folks that I DM a home brewed campaign for, they all enjoy playing, and they all gave me backstories, etc, but they just simply refuse to take any notes. So when I do things like mention someone that was integral to their backstories that THEY told me about, they have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s gone so far that they fully forgot they had a gem to trap Graz’zt in, and they tried to fight him, only to get absolutely whomped (I didn’t kill them, I had Graz’zt just kick them out of the castle when they got low on HP). I put a lot of effort into making the story fun and relevant to my players’ characters, and just feel like it goes unappreciated in *this* group (I luckily have other, super wonderful groups). Is it wrong for me to dump this group? Or at least suggest we start a new campaign that’s just a module, so that it doesn’t require so much effort on my part?

Rhea Sublett

A DM entry from me this time. This has come up several times in the posts above, but I have a player in my first ever campaign DMing who won’t stop blatantly lying about his rolls, and always bends the rules. I don’t want to be mean, but I want to be able to have balanced fights, and it’s not fair to the other players if this one person always supposedly rolls 17-20 and they have to be honest. How do I solve this?

Grant Klein

First and last time playing with this DM. Join a few sessions after campaign starts. Campaign set in the underdark. Only Human, Dwarf, High Elf, and Halflings are allowed as PC races (kind of weird). Runaway slaves escaping Drow. DM takes literally 3 hours to introduce my character. First "encounter" I'm allowed to take part of is a sprint across an open room while being chased by a undefeatable army of drow soldiers. An undead beholder sits in pitch black darkness 200 ft above the party and fires random eye beams at us as we sprint from the army. My halfing is hit with the petrification beam. Fails his two saves. Turns to stone and is crushed by the army as they over take my character. I waited 3 and a half hours to finally play dnd instead of being a forever DM. I made two rolls and my character died at full HP. I was told I could roll another character and he would try to find another spot to introduce my new character. I politely declined and told them it was getting to late for me. I didn't go back. DMs should cheat and fudge rolls. Sometimes.

Austin Hendry

One of the players in my party plays a character who he made to be intentionally stupid, but it’s starting to screw the rest of us over. I’ve tried to talk to him but all he says is “this is what my character would do”. My character could easily kill his. Do I do it? The DM says he would allow it.

Theodore Giesen

I've only played D&D once, for one session, nearly 15 years ago. I spent a good couple hours rolling and drawing my character. He was a Fighter 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, 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. 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 is just hanging out with friends and role-playing, and I just wanted to roll dice and crush monsters. But my experience turned me off on the game for years. Shows like D20 and NADDPOD have changed that, but now I'm too busy to actually play. I only made one roll in the game and a lousy DM soured everything for me. Can the court please rule if that was fucked up or not? Thank you.

Evan Spears

May it please the Court, my name is Andrew and I was wronged by my party. It was the final boss fight last week. The only remaining characters not killed were myself (monk), the paladin, and the cleric rolling saving throws. The plan, get the boss talking thereby ending combat to ensure that the deus ex eagles [previously geas'd and hastened hell wasps] would crest the hill and help us kill the boss. We needed 1-5 minutes. The paladin thinking this over, declined to speak to the boss and instead stabbed her. Causing combat to resume and spelling our doom as we both died at the end of the next round. Your honors, when does following a rigid alignment go too far? I posit in this instance, myself and the party were wronged by a strict adherence to lawful good. This got in the way of a cool cinematic moment where 1000's of wasps sting the boss over and over again, and surviving the campaign. I request damages in the form of rolling with advantage, and a hot pot of jambalaya made by the paladin for our next adventuring party.

I played a sorcerer in a campaign where I tried to cast Fireball with careful spell as to not damage my allies. The DM said to not hurt the fire elemental that was traveling with us, I had to use a sorcery point on them due to it being a damage-dealing spell with the intention to cause pain despite the fact that fire elementals have immunity to fire damage. Is this right or should I not have had to use a sorcery point on that?

Nicole Vujevich

I’m a paladin in a game with the most destroyed action economy! Two attacks means two actions, all cantrips count as bonus actions, and your reaction is essentially just an extra turn. Our party has no problem defeating adult dragons and things way out of our level. Our DM’s solution to constantly getting whomped was to send a Kraken with maxed HP on us (four level 6’s) and thought I was nuts for complaining? How do you explain that even with action economy on the players’ side, that this is incredibly outbalanced????

Peter Mundell

Our party was exploring an underwater Sahuaguin keep. In the middle of the exploration, we opened our bag of holding to requip. Our DM (and my wife) decided that the salt water destroyed damn near everything in the bag, including several high level spell books we had discovered. How does the esteemed panel think a bag of holding would function under these circumstances. Thanks, and love everything you guys do! -Beau (in game name, Coats[lien] Severen)

Beau W.

I was in a low-magic campaign, playing a Tiefling Rogue who had spent his life on the mean streets. As part of my character, I was playing it super closed-off, walls-up, Hardwon-style since I was only used to dealing with other ruffians. We had this Aasimar in the party who I would clash with all the time because she would use magic willy-nilly, and my character resented it because magic was mainly an elitist/upper-class thing. Eventually the campaign fizzled out, but the Aasimar and I never really forged a bond within the party, and my DM actually kind of got mad at me about it. I thought I was playing the character well, but would love to know if I took it a step too far.

Don Kianian

Hi DM Court I'm a Cleric/Sorcerer/fighter/warlock and my DM won't let me Eldritch smite action surge inflict wounds twinned spell with my path to the grave up is it ok to need abilities if they use a million resources or am I right once again

Travis Butcher

Hopefully quick one: as a DM, two rounds into an existing encounter, I had a stealth/hidden monster join the fight. On the monster's turn, I had a PC roll perception and they rolled way lower than the monster's stealth roll. I had the monster move up behind the PC and multiattack, giving advantage on the first roll for unseen attacker, but not subsequent rolls. But later I read in the PHB that "In combat, most creatures stay alert for signs of danger all around, so if you come out of hiding and approach a creature, it usually sees you." Was I wrong to give advantage for that first attack?

Current campaign. I'm the DM the accused is one of my players, who's actively cheating still! The problem player, fluffed all his modifiers to +3 at level 1. He rolled all of them at home and turned up to session one with perfect stats. (That's my fault I know) his hp has always somehow managed to roll a perfect 8 every time (they're playing a warlock) they've progressed and they actively leave out certain key language on spells or try and say this misread it. For example: Left out that witch bolt requires concentration and was using additional actions. Tried to convince me that shatter works on armour and left out the bit that the creature has to be made of inorganic materials. He used thunderstep and tried to pretend it worked like teleport, leaving no noise. Finally, in our last session he claimed he rolled 6 Nat 20's as we play in person but social distanced it's hard to ensure his rolls are truthful. "If I were you" kinda answered this but it just ended with Amir calling me a nerd and Jake saying he rolls marbles while playing over zoom and making up numbers.

My first campaign I was a hostage of the big bad, and he brought me out on the deck of his ship as an ally because I convinced him I was on his side. He captured two other members of my party, brought them on the ship, and was about to try to kill them. I was a high level rogue assassin, so I used my sneak attack on him in an attempt to increase my party members’ chance of survival. Despite rolling a nat 20 on my attack roll, it was ruled that the big bad caught my blade. He then used a home brew spell based on power word kill that quote “killed my soul” and I died instantly and had my body thrown into the ocean. Another member of my party had revivify stocked, but it was ruled that they could not find my body in the ocean. Eventually a DMPC (basically rian urphey) came in and saved the day, and the big bad was killed fairly easily. After which the DMPC dove into the ocean and pulled my dead body to shore so that the characters could give me a funeral. It lead to a pretty cool epilogue of my character meeting his aunt in heaven, but still I felt like I was killed with virtually no ability to fight back, which tarnished the end of the campaign for me.

Grant Klein

My friend and I were invited to a oneshot DM-ed by another friend who's DMed for us before and told to roll lvl 10 characters. Very excited, we brought a pair of goblin cousins who are involved in the local art theft scene to the table, hoping for a fun, intricate game (we're usually big on roleplay and creative, non-combat solutions). Instead... oh boy. We arrive at some town which is ruined by a mysterious fog. Several times, an inn keeper tells us about this bad fog and how bad it smells, going as far as to make us bargain to buy gas masks from him before we venture out to continue our journey towards our grandfather's funeral. Long story short, along the way, we find out there's a dragon running rampant in the woods outside this town and yes, this is headed exactly where you'd expect. We learned that the mysterious fog was dragon farts. That's it. That was the plot hook. It was so disappointing and underwhelming that we fully ignored that "plot hook", tried to play for another hour after that only to be told "ok we gotta stop here 'cause I haven't decided what happens next" and... we haven't played since, obviously. We tried to tell our DM all the ways in which this onehshot ruined our experience and that maybe we're just not compatible as DM/party but we've barely even spoken since this happened. So the question here's simple: how do we recover from dragon farts? edited to add: in this same game, I got very excited cause I rolled my first 20 using a new set of dice and, like a normal human, went "AYYY I CRIT!!!!" only to be told by my DM, completely seriously, "ummm actually, it's only a *crit* if it's an attack roll..."

Neda Marie Valcheva

Hi, we cast Pass Without Trace and our DM still made us roll with disadvantage because we were on horses, I believe that Pass Without Trace would INCLUDE the horses and we should have been able to roll straight. Thanks, I hope this can be settled. -alex from b4b

I am the dm, and very new to dnd, literally started after listening to naddpod along with my friends/players. Well, I hadn't read one of my PCs character sheets as thoroughly as I should have and threw a low level dragon at them for a fun fight. Come to find out that PC had draconic bloodline and could speak to it, so I had to pivot to a RP instead. Then I made a joke about the dragon having eaten a horse that looked like lil sebastian and another PC just lost it and attacked. NAT 20. It went from combat to RP, and then back to combat so quickly and I was flustered and scrambling the entire time. Self womp for not being thorough on a character sheet 🤦‍♂️

Ben Steen

I gave this Hurwitz guy a loan to build a house on his island paradise and he's yet to pay up. What recourse do I have? Tom Nook

Jeffrey Steck, Lord of the Fjord

I was DM-ing my very first campaign, and one of my players had been playing for years, whereas the rest were fairly new. After every session, I would ask my players for feedback on how to be a better DM for them, and my veteran player never said anything. After 8 sessions of not saying anything, he laid into me about needing to learn how to DM. Meanwhile, my other players complained to me about how he brought the mood down when he was at sessions. Was I in the right continuing on the campaign without him? I am conflicted

Josh Rindt

Okay so me and my party where going to kill a tyrant overload and it turned out he was Midas so I and idea to cast banishment on him and when he came back to shove my sword throw his heart before he could react and my dm said that Midas turned himself into gold as his last act. While we were congratulating each other anther party member who has a history of bad decisions decide to pour transformation potion on him and turned him into a horrible monster and while we were fighting Midas unsuccessful the member then used the potion on himself and before it could turn into a tpk our dm offered us the option to restart the encounter and let us live which we accepted against that party members wishes

kyler james

i'm the paladin in a campaign and the only member of the party that can take a hit. our bard keeps putting me to sleep instead of healing me when i'm close to going down. our dm is benevolent and doesn't have enemies kill me when this happens but i wanna know if i should be mad

Alex Allen

I was whomped by myself as DM during a one shot. The party was fighting a transmuted glockenspiel monster (glockatrice) next to a rickety bridge. An awakened giant duck carried a bear over to sneak the fight to attack the party. Gleefully I had the evil wizard riding the glockatrice cast enlarge on the bear BEFORE I read the whole spell, which increases the targets weight by x8. The giant bear crashed through the bridge and fell to the floor and wandered off, injured. The party then utterly rocked my big boss baddie. I was wronged by not reading properly.

Matthew Forrest

I played a 7 int dragonborn druid who basically grew up alone in the woods as a child and my DM ruled that there was no reason I would speak either common or draconic and so I could only communicate using druidic with the other druid in the party and then the other druid stopped playing. Honestly I'm not upset about it it was incredibly funny but also I do need everyone to know how insane it is to be the only one at the table who's played before and not be able to communicate

Kestrel

We were inside Starhaunt, an observatory that had been taken over by the aberrant Starspawn in order to summon the red star. When the big SP arrived outside, my DM exclaimed “cutscene!” and allowed it to fly towards us without rolling initiative before starting combat. This negated my party’s excellent defensive position and resulted in the death of our beloved bard, Hondra Leyo. I ask for the maximum sentence, death.

David Donnel

So, this was years ago in 3.0, playing the beginning of a horror themed campaign. The players were riding a stagecoach through a vampiric forest, when swarms of bats attacked them. The Defendant was the groups munchkin, who had created an utterly min-maxed dwarf with 20+ strength and something like a -2 modifier to dex (Dont even ask what his cha modifier was...). The Plaintiff was me, the DM, who was so new to DMing he didn't feel he could object. Defendant jumps on to the top of the cart, with his great-axe and attacks the bat swarm. Plaintiff stressed this was a bad idea, but defendant insisted. Plaintiff then called for an acrobatics roll to get up to the top of a moving stagecoach, while hoisting a great axe, to fight small flying rodents with a huge axe. Defendant rolls a natural one and Plaintiff decides the dwarf falls of the cart and is stuck in the spokes of the wheel. Every round, he gets to roll dexterity to try to get out from being dragged by the cart. Four rounds later, level three Defendant dwarf expires from being dragged in the wheels of a careening stage-coach. Defendant insists to this day he should have rolled athletics, with its strength modifier, to climb the coach. Plaintiff insists that it is an act of acrobatics to climb on a moving cart. Please, settle this once and for all!

Patrik Axelsson

Yooo yes! Okay I was DMing for 5 people and one of them brought a friend to join after 3-4 sessions had already happened. Even though I gave them access to my books and tried to be available they showed up without a character and made it during the game. The next session we leveled up and this same person didn't bother to do any of the leveling until it was game time during the next session. It felt like they didn't put any effort into learning how classes or spells worked so I finally told them not to come back. Some people were mad at me others agreed so am I the asshole or is this justified? TLDR; I didn't like a player using game time to figure out character stats/leveling so I eventually asked them to leave because I felt like it was wasting time and some people agreed while others were mad that I kicked them out.

Kellie Cthulhu

A DM maintains that grapple rules mean making a normal melee attack to hit AC then doing a str contest if successful. I don't think this is right, and my Barbadin was built to wrassle!!

Pamphleteer

Funny: My players have a habit of rolling nat 20s on critical last ditch religion checks and then all insisting that I make something amazing happen. As a dm I get overwhelmed by their shenanigans but I can’t do shit bc they’re all down and I offered a religion check as like a throwaway. They’ve had this happen 3 times, and gotten nat 20s every time. Serious: My party has a nasty habit of going on tangents about shows and pulling out phones which I dunno how to deal with since we’re all on zoom rn. Also i have a player that always “calls it” when something in the narrative happens. He’ll also defer to the other players rather than participate in rp. He also also sulks if he isn’t getting to fight.

Katherine Lindeman

Currently I am in a campaign where we are all basically overpowered by NPCs the DM insists they need to be part of the party. The sessions are basically the DM talking to himself between these 3 NPCs and another player geeking out because he is using old NPCs. I'm a barbarian and have only raged once. We are a level five party... how can we gently tell our DM he sucks?

Here's a classic! I play a kick ass half orc pirate who's a Druid of the Shepherd . My DM and I have gotten into many, many debates about the spell conjour animals. They state that because the spell description says the DM will have a list of possible animals that I do not get to choose which animals to summon and that the DM gets that choice. We've made a compromise where I'll roll on a random animal chart, but I still firmly believe that nowhere on the wording of the spell dose it say the player can't choose what animal to summon. Thoughts?

Kaylie Elise

How about a "would you have?" My PC was trapped in a mirror dimension and I managed to talk my DM into letting me out with Misty Step because "if you really think about it, I can see the space on the other side of the mirror and in a manner of speaking, it's "less than 30 feet" away from me." 😂😂😂 Would you have let me use Misty Step to get out of a mirror dimension? 🙏🖖

BlurryVizion

I think one of my players are fudging his rolls is there something I can do to keep him honest?

As a new DM I fudged the rules early on since I and my players were still learning. Having had more experience with the game, I tried leaning into the actual game rules more to help with balance. Yet my players insisted that i keep the old rules, even though it complicated things for me as they leveled up. (Real Quick:They kept casting speak with animals and adding animals to the party. Insisting they can continue convincing them to stay. I told them Animals will no longer help them to balance things out. They were not happy.)

Frank

My sister says caramel as kArrAmel and I say KAR-muhl. Whose right?

DM'd myself into a corner. Told my necromancy wizard to work on a secret weapon for the fight with the BBEG and that I didn't want to know what it was. Time comes for a tarrasque fight and he asks to break it out. I ask what he wants and he says he was working on the high fantasy equivalent of a nuke. A raw luck check to see if he'd had any luck at all lands on a nat 20 and in a pinch I let him have it. Monster vaporized, fight circumnavigated. Who fucked up where, and how should I have proceeded differently if at all?

Simple, how do I get my Players to feel an inch of the excitement I get from DMing...?

Barney Fritz

*PawPaw Noises* Reer, Reer, Reer.

Amber W

Unfortunately I decided a while ago that I'm never wrong in dnd :(

Con