The Great Dungeon Court Case Thread!

Honorable justices, I present the case of The Fantasy iPhone. I am the forever DM and my players and I have a fun back-and-forth where they do silly bits and I roll my eyes and act annoyed. We always all laugh about this. In some recent sessions their characters have joined a group called "The Adventure Society" (A concept from the 'He Who Fights With Monsters' books.) Upon joining they received a magical stone ID about hand sized to prove their membership. Immediately the players began joking about the stones being iPhones, constantly doing bits about using them to text, call, etc. So I playfully act annoyed and have the NPC's ignore them as if the PC's never said anything at all. In a recent session my Paladin made another iPhone joke so in an attempt to be funny I gave him a d6 with the numbers 10-15 on it to subtract from his next role as a punishment. It got a few laughs, he rolled it but still hit with his attack, and we all moved on. However, since then none of my players have joked about iPhones and even though no one complained about the dice, part of me feels like I ruined the fun instead of playing into it as intended. Justices, was I too harsh to add dice to the joke, or was this all good fun and my players are probably just done with this bit?

To the beneficent justices and the bailiff/janitor Jank, I submit to you The Case of the Tiresome Trials. We have a weekly TTRPG game on Saturdays most weeks. A little over a year ago, one of our group pitched a 5th Edition Campaign that was intended to be extra-challenging. At the time, we were mostly running crunchy, old-school style games, and I jumped at the chance to play some 5e. I was super-stoked to play a campaign where we might fight high CR encounters, and get a chance for a high-powered, high-stakes, challenging fights. Fast-forward a year and change, and I'm starting to regret having ever been excited for this campaign. It has been, frankly, a slog. Rather than give us tougher fights, the DM consistently employs dubious tactics, ranging from technically RAW but really tedious (like having most boss encounters cut and run as soon as the party gets the upper hand) to unbalanced, home-brewed BS (such as having monsters do damage to our core stats, which resulted in insta-death for a member of our party). Lately he's taken to ambushing us in our sleep every long rest, to the point that two PCs took the Alert feat independently. Recently, we were tasked with recovering some Spirit Crystals to power our ship. The Elves who control them told us we'd have to pass their three trials to gain access to the crystals: The Trial of Mind, The Trial of Body, and The Trial of Spirit. We started our most recent session at the entrance to the trials. I assumed Body would some sort of tough fight, Mind would be some sort of puzzle or trap, and Spirit would be... actually I'm not sure. Some sort of skill check or social encounter? Boy, was I wrong. In the Trial of Body, each party member had to take damage to open the door. Anticlimactic, but fair, right? It was the amount of damage that gave me pause. The DM rolled 3d6 *times* 1d10 damage on each of us -- that is, minimum of 3 and a MAXIMUM of *180*. We are level 8. Thankfully, the highest damage anyone took was 40, and we were on to the next trial. In the Trial of Mind, we had to, collectively, play the DM in a game of chess. That's it. After about an hour of trying to outmaneuver the DM, we lost. Three of our characters (the ones "actively involved*, though we were all discussing strategy between moves) took 2 permanent intelligence damage each. After losing the game and taking the INT damage, he said we did "good enough" and that we should've played more chess in high school... like for the chess team... like he did. And then sent us through to the final trial. In the Trial of Spirit... actually I'm still not entirely sure what the solution ended up being. The party got split up, with half of us just... sort of chilling (at one point, my PC had to make a CHA save that I passed, but am still unclear what it was for)... while the other half had to go back through the initial two rooms multiple times, but without actually doing the puzzles. We eventually met up and the end and were told we passed. Justices, am I right to be annoyed at my DM's "challenges"? Or should I tough it out because I was excited for it in the first place? I'm not inclined to leave the table altogether, as I like all the players (and DM) and we've been friends for years, but I'm nearing my wit's end with the unbalanced and un-fun gameplay. I eagerly await your judgement!

Not a case, and hopefully you’re still checking out this thread - have you all ever been to the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester NY? They have an amazing collection on video games, including the history and of course, interactive areas for all types of games. Informative and fun! Naddpod field trip material! Thanks for all the joy and laughter you bring to stories and games!

When are we getting The Beth May episode?! Did I miss it?

When is this happening?

Benevolent Justices and, *clears throat*, I bring the case of “are we falling”? This year I started an anonymous d&d podcast w/ dear friends and some wild guests. As our party careened to the bottom of the ocean in an anchored cast-iron submarine and party members were getting brained on the walls, my monk NPC asked “are we falling?”, arguing he should be able to Slow Fall damage away. I argued that slow fall implies a free fall, and he was instead drunkenly bouncing inside a cast iron egg. It’s been months and he still asks me, “but are we falling?”. Justices, please settle this case once and for all.

To the delightful justices and bailiff who I daren’t say anything bad about because sometimes Emily is the bailiff - I bring the case of the initiative skipping pen. I’ve been DMing less than a year and was using a pen laid sidewise to move down the paper where I scribbled initiative order. I must have needed the pen to make a note and accidentally moved it back to the top of the order. The monk noticed their turn had been skipped while the rogue had gone twice. I ruled that we wouldn’t undo anything that had happened and would move forward correctly from here. The monk suggested that, to even things out, we should skip the rogue’s turn next time it came around. I chose not to, and everything went fine. The monk respected my decision, but I still wonder if it was fair. What would you do in that situation?

To the Clever Justices and the Corpulent Bailiff JohnJacobJingleHeimerSchmidt: I bring before you the case of the meta-game menace. A few years ago, I was part of an online PvP campaign. There was a party of four convicts trying to evade a party of 4 bounty hunters. It was pitched as PvP, we all knew what we were getting into, that's not the issue here. Just wanted to be clear. This campaign was a play-by-post campaign run solely on discord. It was a blast. The DM put in a ton of work, had separate channels for individual groups, would combine them when players ran into each other. It was so cool, and everyone involved was having fun exploring and the brief but brutal clashes between groups. Except for one player I'll call Spring. Spring wasn't there to have fun. Spring was there to win. From attacking disguised people without even a role to identify them to using ooc knowledge of the setting (it was set in the Rime of the Frost Maiden campaign) to find specific advantages, it was clear they were meta gaming from day one. The incident that broke the camels back came after I died at the hands of Spring. When a character died you could re-roll or be a ghost. I chose ghost so I could haunt the asshole. We had a hard "no possessing PCs" rule, but NPCs were fair game. As soon as I was added to their channel, the first action they took was to cast protection from good and evil on their horse. No interaction with my ghost. Just riding their horse between towns, I join the channel, and they cast the spell. When the DM questioned them on this, they insisted it was normal behavior for their paladin. Again, my character's ghost hadn't even entered the scene yet. I rolled with it and decided to troll them by being a poltergeist. Unhooking saddle bags and such, each thing requiring a successful charisma check. Easy for my warlock. When the character got to a town, I possessed an NPC and confronted them. They killed the NPC. I possessed a different NPC. They killed that one, too. They started getting mad that I could keep doing it. At this point it should be noted that when the NPCs died, I rolled a death save. A success meant I continued to exist. A fail meant perma-death. I was lucky. They started arguing with the DM. It got so heated the DM eventually just kicked them from the game, then thanked me for giving him a reason. Justices, should I feel guilty? Did I push a player too far, or were they destined to get booted eventually? I await your judgement with open arms.

Dear absolutely respectable and wise judges,(Oh and Jake), I come to you with The Case Of The Pre-Campaign Deal and not a doubt in my mind about your legal ability to pass judgement. I am currently Dming a campaign with a few friends, most of which have never played Dnd before. One of these individuals came to me before the campaign asking if their character could have a wife who was pregnant with triplets. They also stated that they wanted the wife to have a terminal illness. Now, as soon as I heard this, I figured that for a mini arc they could go on a quest to cure the "illness" which would actually turn out to be a slaad tadpole. Because of the tadpole, the character's wife would not have the ability to be healthily pregnant, so I made a deal with the player for their Pc to be the pregnant one instead in exchange for the promise I would never kill the pc's wife. Other players found out about this deal, and (Seven months later) are still bugging me about it, saying that I should not have made an under the table deal like that, especially involving a promise not to kill a NPC. However, as I have planned more, I have discovered that it would majorly support character development and the plot if the pc's wife did die. So I ask you, honorable justices, should I kill the Pc's wife later in the campaign or stick to my deal? Also, was it right to make that kind of deal in the first place?

To the honorable judges and EWWWW WHAT IS THAT!!? I bring you a case of your own creation. I play as a classic dumb ass barbarian with a group of long time friends, most of whom listen to NADDPOD. Every now and again court rulings come up during our sessions to guide our DM, and on one occasion I believe one of the precedents you set was misused. We were in an enemy’s home during a heist and I asked if I could look inside a specific book for a key to a locked door. There was no major set up to this decision, just that I knew the book was important to the owner of the home. My DM asked me to roll an investigation check, and thanks to my -3 int I got a 6 and didn’t find anything. 2 minutes later, the rogue decided to investigate the whole bookcase , gets a 19 investigation check and finds that THE SAME BOOK I OPENED was hollowed out and the key I was looking for was inside. I was all like “wtf” to which my DM said “dude, there’s no way your low int barbarian would have thought to look inside that book, this comes up in DnD court all the time; outside skills should not impact in game results. Do I make you bench press 1000lbs to see if your character can pass a strength check? No I make you roll a dice. It works the other way too, just cuz you, a player, associated a fact from 3 sessions ago with a hiding place for a key, doesn’t mean your barbarian could have done the same”. Anyway, we argued about it a bit, but it quickly turned into a series of jokes and rightful razzes, we’re all still friends, all still play weekly, all still hangout outside of DnD, like this impacted nothing, but who was right?

To the panoply of justices maintaining the panopticon on truth and order at the table ...and Jake I present the case of denied payoff: A few years ago our longtime DM announced a non-Strahd vampire hunting themed campaign for which I created an aged Tortle monk named Raleo Donmi. Raleo was an expert in the basic monk weapons such as quarterstaffs and shortswords and fought bravely alongside the party in search of a way to redeem an old master vanquished by vampires. At the outset of planning the campaign, our DM forecast that being turned into a vampire "was on the table" and, in the event it occurred, we would maintain playing our PC in a quasi-independent but adversarial status to the rest of our former party. Sadly, many sessions in, during an epic battle against a regional vampire lord, Raleo and our cleric were downed and, after some unfortunate death saves and crowd control on the party, was indeed killed, taken captive, and turned. At the beginning of our next session, our DM narrated Raleo waking looking youthful but perhaps permanently changed. At this point I revealed this had been my longtime goal to infiltrate the vampires and that I had now become a teenage mutant ninja turtle and would have my revenge. My DM said absolutely not, despite just narrating the youthful bit and denied the history I had been laying down since session zero! Should I be allowed to continue in my TMNT ways or is my DM being a complete Shredder? Thank you and I await your verdict

to the perspicacious justices of the crit and bailiff grogu, i bring you a dice stacking dilemma i've been playing an in-person Light of Xaryxis campaign with several friends for over a year now, and it's been a lot of fun. my character is a wood elf chronurgy wizard (shoutout to fia!) who is estranged from her family of nomadic druids bc she wanted to research the mysteries of space and time. at the beginning of our campaign, a fast-growing alien plant sprouts and consumes most of our planet and we all escape on a space ship. when we asked our DM if our families were okay, he said that if we could contact them he'd roll a luck check to see if they made it. i had sending, but my wizard wasn't ready to reach out to her family yet so i messaged the barbarian's wife, our DM rolled, and it went through - his family was alive! i continued sending messages to the barbarian's family when i could, and after some character development my wizard finally decided to reach out to her own. i sent a message to my wizard's sister, our DM rolled and…nothing. i tried again and…still nothing. i rolled an arcana check to see if the spell had failed - it hadn't. my wizard's sister was dead. justices, at this point i was valiantly trying not to cry irl. with my last 3rd level spell, my wizard started to send a message to her mother pleading for her to be okay - and right in the middle of it, the dice the barbarian had been stacking fell, loudly clattering onto the table, and he burst out laughing. i will admit i snapped at him and told him to stop stacking his damn dice when someone's roleplaying, then i finished the message, got no response, and my DM confirmed: my wizard's entire family had been wiped out. the barbarian apologized, but to this day hasn't stopped stacking his damn dice during rp moments. so justices, where do you fall on dice stacking?? i await your sagacious judgement. p.s. after the session our DM revealed that he rolled a nat 20 luck check for the barbarian's family, and a nat 1 for mine. so it goes.

To the benevolent judges and "AHHH!!!".....Oh Jake! I didn't see you there. I bring you the case of Counterspell Clairvoyance. A few years ago, I DM'd an online game for a group introduced to me by a friend. Things were good to start, but as we progressed, we found ourselves butting heads over the mechanics of the game as well as the lore of the world I made. But there was one moment that lit the powderkeg of our bickering brighter than any, and it has to do with Counterspell. The party was engaged with the bbeg of the arc in the Feywild, when the PC druid was ready to cast a powerful spell. The bbeg knew this would cause trouble so I proclaimed he casted Counterspell and I asked what level the spell they were casting was. The answer? ......Guess! "... What do you mean guess?", I asked. He claimed that nothing in the rules state he had to say what the level was and I could potentially waste a higher spell slot to Counterspell there druid spell. I argued that even though I didn't know the spell stats, the bbeg, who was a powerful fey magic user, surely would know and I could know the spells level and plan accordingly. This devolved into a semi heated argument, where I relented and just "guessed" to use the higher spell slot to stop the spell. Ultimately they succeeded the combat and we went on to eventually wrap the campaign up and dissolve the group for other reasons, but I think this argument was the beginning of the end. So I ask you judges, was I right to assume that a BBEG would be able to know a spell's level to Counterspell, or should I have let my druid continue playing guessing games? I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

May it please the court, and may the Bailiff be reminded that Rachel dies at the end of Animorphs, I bring to you the case of the Overpowered Archer. I was GMing a new campaign for an established group of players, plus one new member. They brought an archer so minmaxed (killing adult dragons in one round of shooting by level 10) that I had to balance every combat encounter with him in mind. Obscuring weather, extra enemies, targeting the archer with mind-control, etc. What I’d later learn is this was because one of the older players had, on the side, told the new player to “not drag the group down”, and to “make a strong build.” This veteran player then made a really poorly built character and constantly felt overshadowed by the archer, leading to hostilities in and out of character, and a tense gaming experience for the whole table. Justices - apart from talking to the two players like an adult, obviously - what could I have done here? -B

To the benevolent judges Axford, Tanner and Murphy, and also Jacob Elordi: I’ve recently joined an ongoing campaign with some friends from college. The DM tends to roll with everyone’s preferred play styles and we all have fun in combat, role playing and solving puzzles. My issue is the rest of the party is OBSESSED with loot. Every body. Every crate in every room. Every crevice and every corner is searched. The DM, trying to add some friction, makes them roll for investigation every time they loot anything. Despite the rest of the game being fun, I can’t help but notice over the half the sessions are dedicated to loot rolls. I’ve described it to friends as “D&D for gambling addicts”. Am I in the right to offer the DM feedback or should I just let this table have fun and find another game? Thank you for your time, I will accept any fate you decide.

To the esteemed Crit Justices and guest Crit Justices, and the bouncing baby Bailiff Jonk: I present the case of the fight-inducing flaw. Let me preface by saying I had submitted this case then deleted it because I thought a resolution was in the works, but it’s not quite a resolution, so here goes. I am part of a TTRPG podcast with some great friends, and the system we’re using takes place in an intense, cruel, slightly unbalanced world that the gods have abandoned. One of the character building options is to have a fatal flaw that you get rewarded for leaning into in certain moments, making the situation more complicated or more dangerous. We have an assassin/murderer who’s fatal flaw is that he sees people as targets, not necessarily people (a flavor of face blindness) and in our most recent combat we took an enemy as prisoner, stripping them of weapons and armor, to question them of their cults’ intentions. The assassin wanted to kill them after questioning, tying up a loose end and leaning into their character’s fatal flaw, but another player at the table (the assassin character’s IRL wife) is playing a character with a strict moral code to show mercy to an unarmed enemy that has surrendered. This led to a near hour-long, heated debate between the players and GM about the correct course of action, as well as a 3 on 1 PVP to stop the assassin from murdering the prisoner. Three out of the four players wanted the assassin to just let the enemy go and flee town, but he refused and doubled down. Ultimately the assassin got what he wanted, and one player went as far as to say that he wasn’t sure how the group could continue as they are when 3 people want one thing and another doesn’t listen. Our GM did a great job of trying to maintain peace and keep the conversation open, and this ended after a long debate with tense, weird feelings, but ultimately we all hugged it out. Then the group chat activated again a day later and the player admitted that he felt awkward, but stands by his decision, though he executed it poorly. Some dialogue into a resolution was opened, but it ended up with the player stating that he feels as though his decisions are constantly outvoted and that he will simply take more of a backseat for the group integrity. I am left feeling just as conflicted about the situation, and therefore resubmit my ask: Judges, did the player have a right to double down on his character’s flaw and chase this kill regardless of the feelings of his team? Should we have leaned in more to his character choice and accepted our edgy assassin for who he is? Or should he have yielded to the wishes of his friends? I humbly await your judgement, and wish for any punishment to be kinder as everyone I feel is just maybe doing their best.

Hey there slick and stylish justices. I run a Pathfinder 2e campaign that's been going for over a year. Long story short, I'm the DM and I'm facing the difficult decision to cut one of our players. To start, I had to essentially make this player's character for them since they made it through session 0 and to session 1 without a written sheet, but they were dead set on their name. Chunch. Against all odds, their story is actually engaging for the other players- though my hand has been admittedly heavy in its guidance. Things really started to break when they became delinquent in their rent to one of our other players. Eventually, this sum surpassed $3000 and the delinquency couldn't be resolved. The other player forgave the rent, but evicted Chunch's player from the home. Both of them somehow insist that their relationship has not become unbearably tense, but I don't believe it. There have already been issues with this player's lack of engagement (playing Balatro at the table) amongst a number of other things, but this was the breaking point for a lot of us. The group chat alone feels like a frayed wire waiting to snap. I don't want that kind of energy at my table. Chunch's player insists that they'll repay the debt and they already had housing lined up to leave anyway- so I told the group I'd be happy to resume the campaign after the debt has been repaid. I said there would be a time skip. What I did not say is that I would be running the time in between the skip with the remaining players so that we can actually live in our world again without feeling like we're defusing a bomb. Am I in the clear for excluding Chunch in secret, or should I have been more up front about continuing without them? I await your judgement.

To the infallible Justices, their esteemed guest, and that other motherfu**er: I bring to you the case of the Lovers' Surprise Deadly Whomping. My girlfriend and I began a campaign several years ago. I had nearly 20 years of DnD experience at the time, both as a player and as a DM. She had no experience at all. She'd been wanting to try the game, but wanted to learn the rules well before she sat down with others at an actual table. I floated the idea of a GM-less campaign. She liked the idea! So, we created our characters, rolled some dice to get a feel for the world, and then took off like a rocket. We played SO MANY HOURS of that campaign. She'd come over after work and we'd adventure the night away, sometimes foregoing sleep entirely just to take down a villain or discover a new location. Our game was DMed almost entirely by dice rolls and conversation between us two. If we walked into a new room, for example, we'd discuss between ourselves what was most likely to be in it. If we didn't want to make it up, we'd ask the dice a series of yes or no questions. Are there baddies in this room? Does it look like a struggle took place here? Is there any treasure around? That kind of thing. It was an absolute blast. We started at level 1 and worked our way all the way up to level 20 over a period of several months, playing at every opportunity. It easily ranks as the most fun I've had playing DnD in all the 20+ years I've played. I wouldn't trade a single moment of it for all the wealth in the world. Well, almost any moment. At level 20, we were gearing up to take down the BBEG. We'd just finished a quest given to us by a priest and had returned to the priest's temple to find it under attack by storm giants. We decided to help fight back the Giants and secure the temple. By this point, we'd taken down a number of crazy monsters and villains. We worked through a huge portion of the 5e Monster Manual by the time we'd gotten here, so I wasn't worried about a few giants. We could easily take them. When we dashed into our first encounter, we did what we always did: asked the dice. They generated a pretty simple encounter: there were a number of giants wreaking havoc on a temple building. My girlfriend and I looked at the stats of the giants, then discussed what die should be rolled to determine how many were present. The girlfriend was riding high on our recent victories, so she suggested a d20. Now, I knew we could handle a few giants. But more than a handful would be tough. I suggested a d4. She thought that was too low, so we compromised on a d10. I was pretty worried about a high roll, but I was confident we could just get out of there if things got tough. Judges, things got tough. We did not get out of there. Ten storm giants absolutely whomped us into oblivion. I'll spare you the grainy details, but suffice it to say that a 10 v 2 did not go our way. We managed to do some ungodly amount of damage on our first turn, but then 10 storm giants all took their turns, and their consecutive attacks obliterated us almost immediately. When it was obvious we were boned, I suggested we RETCON the whole affair and simply say our characters fled when they realized they were outmatched. The girlfriend did not like this idea. You see, she'd been building an extremely badass character the whole campaign. To make it more fun and give her even more power to work with, I was suggesting things throughout the campaign that subtly influenced some choice dice rolls. I never fudged the rolls themselves, but I did ask some very specific yes or no questions here and there. She ended up having stats that frankly no DM would ever allow at an actual table. She was insanely overpowered and essentially untouchable (... unless we happened to fight 10 Storm Giants with two attacks each and +14s to hit). I never told her that I was bending the game to make her character super overpowered. I just wanted her to have a fun time. And if you could've seen the joy in her face during some of these moments, I think you'd understand. So when those Storm Giants came up, the girlfriend was adamant that we'd win. Her character would never, ever turn from a fight. Especially when there were people in need. So we didn't RETCON. The giants took their attacks and smashed us into the floor. They did enough damage in that turn to kill us outright. We stopped playing for the night and went to bed. In the morning, we tried to pick the campaign back up, but her energy was entirely different. She wasn't having fun anymore. Wasn't asking questions. Didn't seem all that interested in the campaign at all. We returned to the same characters on their journey through the Afterlife, as they attempted to return to their old bodies or find some way to come back. I thought it was a pretty fun adventure, all things considered. She didn't seem to feel the same. After a couple more sessions, the campaign fizzled. We stopped playing. Judges, I keep coming back to that fateful d10. If I'd flexed my experience a little and pushed back on her just a bit more, I might've convinced her to roll a d4 or a d6 instead. The encounter might still have been tough, but it would've at least lasted more than a single round, and surely it would've been a more fun time. We might've survived. We might've gone on to finish the BBEG, save the world, and my girlfriend's first campaign could've seen an arc so few players get to see: their character going from 1 to 20 and actually completing the story. It is one of my biggest regrets, even now, years later. She still brings up the campaign from time to time and I feel that regret creep up again every time. We've talked about it and she assures me she doesn't harbor any resentment or bitterness. She doesn't see the death of the campaign as either of our faults, but rather the whim of the dice. She wishes she could finish the campaign, but she's also not interested in playing it again. We've started a couple campaigns of the same type since, but none of them have kept our interest. Every time we play, we think of our original world and the bitter note we left it on. Judges, I ask you: what could I have done to save this campaign? Should I have been less lenient in getting her character better gear and crazy stats? Was I wrong to allow that d10, when I knew it would probably kill us? Should I have pushed back more? Or, perhaps, was it foolish to even run this type of game with her in the first place, knowing as I did that when you put too many things to chance, eventually you run out of luck? I throw myself humbly before the court and eagerly await both your sound judgment and for this guy to stop talking already. P.S.: We're still together, still happy, and I am now DMing a game for her and her friends. They are having an absolute blast.

The long awaited Cross over between Naddpod and Dungeons and Daddies has finally arrived!

I’m so excited I’m gonna throw up

Forgive me Dice Christ for I must have sinned, though I know not how. I recently started playing curse of strahd and while my rolls outside of combat are great, in combat I have yet to roll above a 10. We have only been in combat twice, and in combat I have been possessed by Strahd twice and knocked out either during my first turn or before my first turn even happened. I’m a level 3 bard with 12 hp who unfortunately ends up right in the middle of combat, and when rolling stats I ended up with 18 charisma and everything else below 12. My DM has taken pity on me multiple times during battle which I appreciate, but I want to be able to hold my own in battle under the light of Dice Christ. We are now leveling up to level 4 and my DM is encouraging my plans to multi class into Paladin, even allowing me to partially rework my character so I go from three levels of bard to three levels of paladin and one level of bard (or two levels of each), but I fear that my bad rolls will continue and forever curse my dear bard. I beg of the clergy and of Dice Christ themself, please cleanse me of my unknown sins. I thank you all.

To the Honorable Justices and Amir's +1. I bring before you the case of Hugo Wylde vs The Horny Allegations I've been in the same D&D group since 2019. This is our 3rd campaign. Our DM adapted the Magic the Gathering "Ixalan" setting to his own and we are playing our first sandbox campaign in it. This campaign is over years in game as level ups flash forward months long time skips to justify slow training or growth over time. The DM has made crafting mechanics for salvaging parts from creatures to make magic items like in the Monster Hunter franchise, and Research Trackers for leads on ancient ruins, and even pokémon esque dino breeding and training. Most significantly, an NPC Relationships chart, (like the Persona Series,) for using these time skips to learn things, get side quests and, yes, ROMANCE. This chart is the crux of the problem and the reason this campaign has been referenced as "The Horny Campaign." Enter my character, Hugo Wylde, an arcane trickster who has a moral compass and left his old crew to keep magic items away from bad people and the black market. He's easily my most grounded and complex character to date. And yet the phrase, "Hugo is for the streets" has become solidified in the group chat. I don't believe I have earned this and for once want my character be taken seriously. I'll lay out the allegations (women that Hugo has associated with beyond the mandatory involvement in quests): 1 Mulaya- Hugo and the gang met a gryphon rider of the indigenous nation whose steed had been struck by lightning on her first mission. If word got out, she could lose her job and salary which supports herself and her younger siblings. When our druid briefly messed up negotiations, she shot Hugo in the stomach with arrows 3 times, but he miraculously survived and talked everyone down. They lied to her boss and said she saved the party from danger and escorted her back to her base. With our alibi for her delayed return she kept the job and Hugo simply played the dirty rogue thing of "you just owe me a favor sometime." 2 Penny- The gang took a job with an archeologist woman named Penny Crawford. She needed guards to defend her as she explored ancient ruins. Hugo speaks 9 languages, including dead ones and his backstory is about keeping relics away from bag guys so the two have a shared vocation of sorts. Our DM admitted that he made Penny to be "romance bait" for Hugo specifically. They hit it off and he added her to his archeology mailing list/pen pals, but the "spark" wasn't quite there maybe something in the future? Who knows... 3 Abigail- The gang took on a job to get a special gem that was being housed in the engine of a machine that stabilizes an active volcano. Abigail is the granddaughter of the original inventor of the machine, but the machine is getting unstable for longer term. She has an original design to replace the machine with something more sustainable and we needed the gem from the OG machine. She wanted us to steal it so people would be forced to sub in her machine and she can step out of her grandpa's shadow. Hugo's old crew was run by his Dad and Hugo had 18 intelligence so he deeply and personally related to her motivation of making her own way and generally being intellectually motivated. So he took the job at half price. NOW for when the allegations began. After the quest with Abigail and level up/time skip/downtime. Hugo spent both of his downtime slots on the NPC chart. He took Abigail (#3) to dinner while they were still in town. It went well, but the romantic chemistry just wasn't there. Probably better friends from Hugo's side. Hugo then visited Mulaya (#1). He asked how things were going she took him around town, she clocked his daddy issues and they bonded over that. At the end of the evening she went 90. Hugo went 10. The party was in shambles. The fact that Hugo went on two dates was being treated as a "slut behavior." On top of that, everyone was sort of already assuming something between Penny (#2) and Hugo, but they only met the once and only communicated otherwise through this game's equivalent of a work slack or discord hobby server. So there seemed to be this air of "cheating" or "playing the field." But Hugo is a single guy who went on a date, didn't really see a romance and then went on another separate date that went better. Hugo as a character had kept both dates secret only for the party to find out in character, which certainly doesn't help the optics. But this time skip was directly after Hugo and the party had a big fight and the time skip was him actively distancing, setting boundaries, and cooling off. Justices, I am clearly biased in my interpretation. Am I too close to the situation and think Hugo is an upstanding, if busy and romantically curious, guy? Or is my party appraising correctly that Hugo is, in fact, "for the streets?" (PS Hugo's dad is a multiple divorcé so this would be a point of pride for him to NOT be like his dad. I'm here for that drama, but only if the shoe fits.)

To Your most well dressed and dapper justices and the comfortable looking baliff- I present to you the case of the Pilferred Fit. 8 years ago I retired my favorite and most personal character-a human bard by the name of Simon Sparrowsong. Simon was brave, beautiful and a stalwart defender of the small folk. He also thought himself quite the fashionable lad. This is where the problem arises. I am going to be running a new game for my loved ones soon. My wife will be joining us for this campaign-she was not a member of Simon's party. When asked to describe her character, she described a foul little middle aged man who looked like Danny Devito. When I asked about his outfit, she said he wore a red vest, a low collared tunic, tight pants and a sparkly blue cape. Your honors: this was Simon's outfit to a t! My wife has been clear that she intends to razz me at every turn, and I respect that. But is this a bridge too far? Is her rogue cosplaying as my beautiful dashing bard just playful teasing? Or is it akin to dishonoring a hero of old? Should I tell her to get her own outfit?? Thank you Your honors P.S. I have told her I would be writing you all for judgement and I have agreed to honor your verdict. She was noncommital on the subject.

To the holy acolytes of Dice Christ, and also Bailiff Junk Hogwarts: I come to you all seeking spiritual counsel after an incident involving a d20 roll and an ill-spent thirteen U.S. dollars. My local board game cafe has a unique menu item: pay a flat $13, roll a d20, and the result will determine which alcoholic beverage you are served. These ranged from the more expensive drinks for higher rolls to simple shots on the lower rolls. Naturally, I rolled a 1. After the table lamented the critical failure with me, our gracious server said, “Nah, I mean, you can definitely reroll that if you want.” Humble churchgoers: I refused, wishing to honor the dice I had been given. My question to you all: was it the true devout choice to pay $13 for a shot of Fireball, or did I ignore an act of divine intervention when our server offered me an out? This decision has haunted me for years, and I await either your retribution or your clemency in equal measure.

To the holy acolytes of Dice Christ, and also Bailiff Junk Hogwarts: I come to you all seeking spiritual counsel after an incident involving a d20 roll and an ill-spent thirteen U.S. dollars. My local board game cafe has a unique menu item: pay a flat $13, roll a d20, and the result will determine which alcoholic beverage you are served. These ranged from the more expensive drinks for higher rolls to simple shots on the lower rolls. Naturally, I rolled a 1. After the table lamented the critical failure with me, our gracious server said, “Nah, I mean, you can definitely reroll that if you want.” Humble churchgoers: I refused, wishing to honor the dice I had been given. My question to you all: was it the true devout choice to pay $13 for a shot of Fireball, or did I ignore an act of divine intervention when our server offered me an out? This decision has haunted me for years, and I await either your retribution or your clemency in equal measure.

CASE: Dream Sequence Railroad Dear Justices and Bail Boy - I have mixed feelings on this one and I see the pain on our DM’s face. But is it enough pain? On our way to face the big bad, our party stopped to camp at an ancient town where a ruened wall gave us some semblence of a defensive position. We woke (spoilers - we were not awake) to the bustling town and one NPC missing - we had all our equipment but our clothes looked archaic in style and we had trouble remembering certain information. One followed was NPC interactions, learning about the time which was approximately 1000 years before our era. The issue arrises is that we fidn ourselves re-enacting/living out already predetermined events. The town is attacked. We of course defend, but the odds are overwhelming - we innevitably lose. We getr captured and this is where it gets tough. The DM has a plan, but he doesn’t want to tell us the plan - as he wants us to have decision making power - but also he wants us to do exactly what he needs to further the story he has set out. But we don’t know what the story is. So we are doing the obvious thing of trying to escape and fight back before we get delivered trussed and tied to the big bad (the not yet undead version). He seems to need us to get there - but it seems like a terrible idea to us as emersed playe. Is that the plan? Are we supposed to do? Are we supposed ot save as many NPC’s as possible? Does anything matter at all if this all happened already? Or is this a dream of our Missing NPC and hes being attacked by the Big Bad and we need to defend him? Meanwhile we just killed guards and ran off into the swamp and derailed a railroad that HAD NO RAILS. The GM seems let down, we expressed that its no fun to play if our choices make no difference and the dice rolls have no meaning.

To the honorable Justices and the Bailiff Jaundice or whatever their name is, I present the case of the break-up baby. This year, my partner and I have been blessed with a new baby. We couldn't be happier and look forward to teaching her D&D as soon as she can figure out how to throw dice instead of eat them. The arrival of my child did make it impossible for me to continue with my bi-weekly, long-time campaign as we met right around bed-time for 4-5 hour sessions and I did not want to shoulder my partner with solo bed-time duties that regularly. I let my DM know well ahead of my baby's arrival that I would have to bow out of the campaign due to the scheduling conflict, but he suggested I just bring the baby to the sessions. I tried to explain that the baby would not be able to sit quietly for multiple hours while we had our fairly rowdy sessions, but he assured me it would be a non-issue and the baby could just sleep in the corner or wherever. Judges, I ultimately decided not to bring my baby, but should I have at least tried it out to see how it went? Is it my responsibility to expose my baby to the wonders of D&D as early as possible or would I run a high-risk of raising a gooner if my baby was exposed to my loud and heavy-drinking D&D table. Justices, I humbly submit myself to your wisdom and judgement.

May it please the Jazzy Justices and NOT please the bleached blond bad body bailiff bitch boy baby Bake. I present to you the case of Lost Stakes v. Monkey Wake. During college, I was running a homebrew campaign for my friend group. In the first arc of the campaign, the barbarian's friend was in town and asked to sit in on our session, so I gave him an inconsequential NPC to play in combat: a Biddy (freaky little stupid reskinned gnoll witherlings used as minions). We'll call him Biddy Bad. In the combat, the monkey artificer, who was the newest to DND and a little less engaged than the others, went down. At that moment, our guest announced that Biddy Bad had created a philosophy called "Anarcho Biddyism" in which "All Flesh and Blood Belongs to Biddy." He then brutally tore open the chest of the knocked-out artificer to cause two failed death saves. The artificer went next, and failed his final save. The artificer loved his character, and I was worried that if I let him die in a random anticlimactic combat, he would lose all interest in the game. So I narrated his soul leaving his body and encountering a powerful spirit (the secret BBEG) who bartered with him to restore his life if he would free it from its chains. This was a cool moment, but the catch is, I had already done it once before. Another player almost died in an earlier combat and was saved by the spirit in exchange for killing a key friendly NPC. I had intended that to be the sole use of this plot hook. After the monkey artificer was revived, the fighter said "Damn, I guess we really can't die in this campaign." Am I at fault for deflating the stakes of our game? Should I have let the artificer go to monkey heaven? Or would it have been a worse fate to let a new player die at the hands of a rando guest Biddy doing a bit? Am I just bad at balancing combats or was Biddy Bad out of line? I prostrate myself before the mercy and fury of the Supreme Crit.

Enthusiastic greetings to the wonderful Crit Justices, and a casual nod of acknowledgment to the balif. I bring to you the case of the halfling tug of war. About a year ago I was playing in a campaign and while going through a dungeon where our halfling fighter was separated from the rest of the party. After a failed perception check he was attacked by two Ropers. He was grappled by both creatures. I, a blade singer wizard, sent my familiar to check on the situation and report back to the rest of the party. Once we learned of the plight of our friend, we did our best to speed run the dungeon to reach him in time. This did not end well. Our halfling fighter was forced to use his entire action economy to break free of one grapple, only to just be re-grappled the next turn. This encounter lead to a TPK. My question for the courts is can a creature be grappled by two different foes, or was our friend the victim of our DM’s tentacle fetish?

To the benevolent judges and "AHHH!!!".....Oh Jake! I didn't see you there. I bring forth a question: Who owns a character after a player leaves the table? I was approached by my DM and he asked if I could run the next campaign. I was nervous cause I've never DM'd before, but with his encouragement I gathered the group and we set off. The game was going well for months until my DM approached me. My DM asked if he could make a new character claiming he had taken their story to their end. I was worried cause I still had so much planned for him and even offered to workshop, but he was firm. So I narrated his PC leaving and introduced his new character Everyone loved this new character, so I thought we were all good. Untill one session later, my DM approached me again saying, " Im going to leave the game. I feel bored." Once again I offered to workshop, but he was firm so we bid him farewell and we continued forward. But I had a problem. I was left with his character that the party loved. So in the next encounter, I decided to introduce my BBEG and as a way to show off the bad guys power, I would have his character sacrifice himself so the players could escape. When I told my DM this, he was upset. Saying that it was his character and he should get to decide what his ending was. I argued that since he left the game, they were now a NPC and as DM their fate was in my hands. Well suffice to say this soured the group and the campaigned fizzled out. So I ask, who owns a character once a player leaves the table? Should I have let his 2nd PC sail into the sunset? Or was I allowed to give him a heroic death? I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Dear esteemed justices Murphy, Axford, Shenobi, and guests. In my early days of DMing I was really worried about making fights unbalanced (either too hard or too easy) so I would not give my monsters hit points. Instead I would determine behind the screen, without my players knowledge, when it felt "right" for a monster to die. It went well for my games so I posted about it on reddit, and was promptly dressed down and lambasted by the community for fudging rolls and railroading my players. One commenter wrote an essay in which they said my players were lions and I was refusing to let them hunt. Over time I've learned to let go of control over combat to such an extent but I still remain quietly adamant that for a newbie DM this was perfectly acceptable. I leave it in the hands of the court. Was I wrong to deprive my lions of their hunt, or was I right to protect myself from getting bit.

To the Most Jawsome Supreme Crit members and to the lowly wife worm pulling double duty for the last guy, who is still out of action from his previous grinching. I hereby present the case/my complaint of misplaced fatherly need. My college friend (Scrooge) and I have been in several campaigns off and on for several years. It's been this previous year where after life events disrupted a game I was dming that he was a player in, we reached out to our other college friends and made a new group. Since I was short on ideas, I offered the DM seat to two other friends who are also dm's. We were deciding what system to play when Scrooge called me out the bule and asked if he could play a third-party class called the monster hunter. I was confused since I was not DMing and we haven't decided on if we were doing dnd or something else. I asked him why he asked me, to which he replied: "I wanted your thoughts on the class." I told him it looks interesting, but he should talk to the DM for thier approval, and that picking a class before we even decide the system is a waste of time if we play Pathfinder or something. He then went silent, hurt by the statement, and proceeded to excuse himself from the conversation. A week later, we all finally decided on dnd, to which Scrooge then reached out again, asking the same question. To which I responded, "ask the DM." He then replied, "But I want your thoughts on the class." I gave it a quick read and told him, "Looks fine, get DM approval." He said he would then, 2 weeks before session 1, he reaches out to me again asking if he got approval for the class. In our group chat the DM said yes. Which I relayed to him after asking if he hadn't talked to our mutual friend in the 3-ish weeks since he last asked me. He said yes. After I talked with the DM he said he hadn't heard a peep out of Scrooge since he asked in the general chat if he could play the class. The start of next week, Scrooge messages me asking for my help with building his character (it was at this point and from previous experience that I knew he simply wanted me to learn how to play his character so he could just ask me what to do.) I said, "Yes, but I'm not going to learn how to play your character, but this would be better if you talked to and worked with the DM." He didn't respond to that, so I told him tomorrow, but he will need to know what his class does. On the night of character creation, he was uttler at a lose at what his stats should be and what he should do as a build. Since I had no interest in learning a class I wasn't going to be playing, I gave him general building advice. Which went out the window when I realized he never talked to the Dm, who wanted us to make level 20 characters, and instead of us leveling up normally, we unlock the high-level abilities as we play. It was at this point that I told him to talk to the DM or make a character that you can easily play. I suggested a barbarian, and he made a barbarian. After that, I told him to tell the DM that he had chosen a different class. I informed the DM two days before game, the DM reached out to get more info and Scrooge remained radio silent till day of, where the DM couldn't naturally implement any of the random character eccentricities and backstory, since he didn't have any of that before we got started. So judges, I humbly ask, was I justified for not investing the time and energy into Scrooge's nonsense since he was seeking my approval like I was his disapproving father, or was I being too harsh in my refusal to assist more? I radically await your judgement. Ps. I have talked to Scrooge about this behavior, and it's been met with more emotional shut-downs and withdrawals.

Dearest deacons of Dice Christ, I come before you today to request a blessing from Dice Christ for my DM. I recently threw a party for my birthday (very controversial I know), and I wanted to play D&D so my DM agreed to run a one-shot for us while my wife and I made themed food and drinks for the group. As if that wasn't awesome enough, my wife, my DM, and I have all recently gotten into One Piece, so he made a One Piece inspired one-shot where we had to save our weirdly attractive first mate in clown makeup (if you know, you know). What ensued was one of the best games we've ever played complete with carnivorous plants, a Devil Fruit that introduced Jerry the ethereal octopus familiar, and some of the most nsfw homebrew any of us had ever encountered. There were literal tears of laughter So please bless my DM with many interesting dice rolls and perhaps a good whomping as he has thoroughly earned it 😊

Dear sweet Justices, Im writing as someone stuck between two things I love, and I know the only solution is for one of them to be punished. I listen to your show every night when I cook. This means that my wife also listens to your show when she's hanging out in the living room knitting or studying. A few things you should know about my wife...she hates d&d, and that's actually all you need to know. She likes that I play TTRPGs because without them, I "get weird and start to DM in real life". However, she doesn't get the podcast. The cadence of boisterous laughter after the clacking of dice is "strange" to her and she wonders why it isn't "more like 99% Invisible". So Justices, I ask who is more at fault: my wife for having a difference in hobby and podcast preference...or YOU, for putting out a show that I really love and listen to regularly? She also finds it upsetting that Baliff Jake gets made fun of, so she wanted to pass along a "big ups to the lowly guy". P.S. headphones aren't an option because what if they fall in the sauce? I'm not the one on trial here.

Hahshahsha

My dearest Judges! My darling Baliff Jake! I present this family court case of the book dragon disappointment -- My youngest brother and beloved DM, "Bud", hosted a Thanksgiving one-shot a couple years ago for me and other family. It was my first ever time playing after pining to do so after listening to Dungeons and Daddies and NADDPOD for a year and a half. Our characters, all level 10, were all invited to a wizard's luxe (and machiavellian) birthday party. I played Astrid Hepburn, a transatlantic beauty-empire mogul and starlet who was a circle of stars druid. As we congregated in the wiz's library to celebrate, we were swiftly sucked into a painting and trapped in a multi-room there-and-back puzzle dungeon. We slowly cracked the puzzles and were able to solve the dungeon! As we were making our way out of the dungeon triumphantly, the wizard summoned a dragon made of books and pages, and it gave chase. We were running while in combat to escape. After three rounds, I remembered that I stocked Dispel Magic. I took aim, rolled high, and narrated a cinematic casting of the spell. Bud gave an impressed look and narrated the dragon coiled in pain while its tail fell off! Play went on, the dragon didn't do anything special on its turn besides attack, and my turn came around again-- excitedly, I cued up Dispel Magic once more, upcasted at level 5th, and rolled a NATURAL 20! But my beaming pride melted when Bud narrated that the spell fizzled on impact. Totally ineffective, no damage, no nothing. In the moment, my heart sunk, but I respected the DM decision even though it felt like a wasted a nat 20 and 5th level spell slot. Kirby, a noted rules lawyer, protested! "The wizard summoned this dragon! It was made of books!" They went blow for blow, long enough for a snack break. Ultimately, Bud said that it was NOT a magical creature, but that he wanted to reward my story telling. End of story. We persevered and made it out of the dungeon back into the library where the wiz stood grinning beside a giant birthday cake. Kirby promptly tried to murder the wizard who was unrepentant about toying with us for sport, and the rest of us grabbed bday cake to go before leaving the mansion. Judges, this game has become a fun story, and we still play together. And while I'm not fussed about it, I would love for you to litigate this. Who was right? Bud, who apparently used a standard dragon stat block and just added the bookish flair as flavor? Or me, a gal who thought a book dragon should realistically be held together with a little (dispelable) magic? I humbly await your judgement.

My dearest esteemed judges, and lowly lowly bailiff, today I present to you the case of the fighter turned bard that refuses to use a weapon. I am a Goliath paladin—whose backstory is the littlest sister of the Kildé clan— with 5 other players—gnome rouge, Dragonborn paladin, human sorcerer, half elf ranger, and human fighter turned bard. Our bard has one level of fighter and a high AC, but the problem is he doesn’t carry a weapon and gets right in the action. The bard does little to no damage, and the enemies ignore him and go for me or the other paladin who hit more. In our last session, a young adult dragon attacked our level 3 party—-we were loud and failed stealth checks. I cast Command, the dragon rolled a nat one, and halted. I yelled for everyone to run, and the bard got CLOSER. Everyone else ran further away besides the other paladin and I who had used our movement before. Combat ended up with both the other paladin and I downed, the bard badly hurt, the rest of the party being virtually untouched, and the dragon badly injured. After downing me, the dragon decided to retreat. The bard was the only that had an attack of opportunity. He didn’t have a weapon, so the dragon flew away uncontested. The other paladin and I are frustrated because we keep getting almost killed every other session and our bard isn’t being very helpful. Early on I asked the bard why he didn’t carry a weapon, and he said “I forgot it.” He even did this when he was a fighter. I talked to the DM about it, and he said that he would learn and either prep different spells or carry a weapon. Am I in the wrong for being frustrated at another player’s RP choices? Should I bring it up to the bard again or just let it be? I humbly await any ruling that comes my way.

Dear Justices, friends of the court and the guy who gets paid to look pretty and read the cases. A few years ago during the pandemic, my friends and I started a campaign where “death was on the table” and one player, a monk, was especially excited for damage having consequences. During an initial session he got knocked unconscious and after being brought up to full insisted he needed to see a Doctor. We kind of rolled with it. But during a session I was gone for, our DM killed an our ranger, also the newest player, in a freak way in what was supposed to be a side quest. The DM felt terrible and walked back the perma-death and basically divine interventioned the Ranger back to life. The only person upset by this was the monk. He stopped showing up to sessions and the group fizzled out. Was my DM right to take death off the table? PS The DM posted a few months later about a new campaign and the monk said he would only join if the DM would agree to a “constructive criticism” talk after *every session*. My DM declined much more politely than I would have.

Dear royal Judges & the Jester of the court. I come to thee today seeking a settlement on a dispute between I the DM & one of my Players, Toska, regarding the events of a DUI (DMing while under the influence). Another player, Mira, graciously made everyone at the table cocktails (sex on the beach) We enjoyed these and I shortly finished mine as they roleplayed with one another gearing up for the third player, Nikolai, to enter a gladiatorial combat against the reigning champ for the casino’s amusement. Toska after a while decided they were done drinking and offered me the rest, I happily accepted. Then combat began. I realized I had become a bit tipsy and yet in my addled state I decided it would be interesting if the champ had a slight advantage, and I gave them a Vorpal Sword. Something which could have been a unique reward that the players could later use against me. It’s not like it was gonna crit any way… right? This sword however did crit and remove the avian skull of sweet Nikolai… Who was swiftly revived by a manipulative menace. And later got the run back victory and opted not to take the vorpal sword. Toska and I now wrastle if I ever go for a drink before or during a session, no matter what. Your honors, is it so wrong for a gal to enjoy a brewsky during her home game? To crave a cocktail? I swore to have any drink in moderation yet they will not relent. I prostrate before you now for judgement. Shall I wander to sip mead with moderation? Or should I even take that cocktail as a lesson of alcoholic abstinence and go fuck myself solemnly on the beach?

I write not a confession, but a testimony of the favor Dice Christ bestows upon the faithful- and also probably needs a ruling. After years of consuming actual play content and dreaming of finding a party of my own, I finally joined a campaign with long distance friends over Discord. It’s been rocky. Tech issues, first-time DM growing pains, and a fundamental philosophical divide: ask for rolls vs. describe and let the DM call for them. My DM is a hardcore Do Not Ask believer. This has resulted in maybe 1-3 rolls per session outside of combat. Per. Session. Total. Recently, my 12-year-old bard had to sneak into a cult camp alone to save her parents while her tweenage party members waited for her signal. The plan: lie about my identity, create a distraction, signal the others in. Simple enough. The plan was created with my party members while the DM did an individual scene with someone else. Also important to note that I am not at all experienced or comfortable with acting or improve. But I am trying.. HARD. A camp leader immediately clocked me. No roll. I fumbled through a not-very-convincing story about being “Rebecca” and belonging there, doing everything in my power not to ask for a roll. The plan hit a wall. Panicked, emotional, and completely on the spot in my very first solo story moment, I broke and said out of character while fighting back tears, “I’m feeling stuck because I was expecting to be able to use my deception or performance.” My DM replied: “I don’t know what you’re expecting. This is a role play game.” I moved off camera to cry for a moment. (High stakes moment. People were watching me flounder. It was a lot for me.) I came back, channeled my inner Band of Boobs energy, squared my shoulders, and had “Rebecca” double down. This led directly to my arrest. As I was being walked to the jail tent, the DM finally called for a roll- persuasion, not deception. I stand by the fact that he asked for persuasion instead of deception just to spite me considering I was very much lying. But it didn’t matter because I rolled a NAT FUCKING 20. We saved everyone. Have you ever rolled a nat 20 moments after crying IRL during a session? Highly recommend. Dice Christ is real and She is watching.

To The Moral, Virtuous, Ethical and Principled Justices Axford, Tanner and Murphy! ... oh and the unprincipled disgraceful and ignominious balif Jack Hefeweizen I bring you the Case of the Double Down Disrespect. A few years ago I got invited to play on a livestream dnd campaign, I was told I would be coming in towards the end of their campaign as a replacement for a player they were losing who was going off to college, and that I would be joining in the new campaign with the new DM once they wrapped this campaign up. I was happy to join and play as I am usually the forever DM, I poured a lot into my cosplay (we all had to complain for stream) and my character. I came into the 1st campaign as a college of glamor bard, w a back story of being a disgraced pagent queen from the fey wild who decided to become a badass ubderdark pop and rebel singer, everyone was on board and seemed excited to have me, until we got into combat, and roll play where I was constantly talked over or people acted like my character choices were dumb and actively made choice to undo things I had done that had helped the group, examples being , mending their damaged boat , using persuasion checks to help get info and build a relationship with the people we captured only for them to start being rude and using magic to scare and intimate them so that they no longer worked w us or me to help or give more info. They also during combat they would demand I use my bardics on them so they could succeed and then I wouldn't have bardics for them later and so on. I let a lot of this go bc it was only like 10 sessions before we ended that campaign and started the new one. But I was often left w no spell slots or bardics for the times we needed it and they got upset w me... Once we started the new campaign I thought things would get better, I played an oath breaker paladin who had a pact w the raven queen, and a sad backstreet about my dead parents, they then also brought in another girl to play w us as well, and to shorten this (sorry I know this is not brief) my character choices were constantly being picked on, I was being picked on, when I tried to help or do something cool or had a NAT 20 moment they would talk over me or make it about them or shame me, I tried to help heal one tome w my lay on hands and our cleric flat out told me they would handle the healing our druid would get passive aggressive and try and one up me anytime I wanted to have a cool moment w my one friend who was playing in this campaign w me, but she would get annoyed and say we get it your characters are in love and gay for each other cool, now on to my characters cool druid and sorcerer backstory. I tried and tried to get the dm to stop the constant attacking of me as a player and my character but he would just be like hey guys let's all respect each other and then encourage them to keep being mean to me and my character. Me and my friend ultimately left. Am I just to sensitive or did I have a right to be treated w respect and have the same space to play they character I wanted that they all were getting to play. -Nat

Good evening Benevolent Justices Murphy, Tanner, and Axford and another good evening to the Bailiff Jake Hurwitz (fuck you) Today I bring you the case of the “Just Reveal it, Nat 20”. I’m in a pirate themed online campaign that’s been going on for a couple of months now and I’ve been having an amazing time. This is easily the best campaign I’ve ever had the honor of playing in. However, after an unexpected player dropped out our DM found a replacement that joined us this most recent session. Immediately I could tell he thought he was the main character. He interrupted DM narration to start new scenes, he took “leadership” over the party in where to go next, he also vehemently disagreed on where are party should focus our efforts quoting “something in my backstory is more important than whatever small mission we are going on now”. This came to a head at the end of the session when he rolled without being prompted and on a Nat 20 self proclaimed Investigation asked the DM to reveal one of the big mysteries we have been trying to investigate. Stating his Nat 20 should allow him to know everything about the mysterious NPC. After the DM said that he simply didn’t have the knowledge or plot related pieces to figure it out the player became insistent that he would be able to figure it out with his high Investigation modifier and his Nat 20. The biggest issue to me is that the other players were also insistent they should get more information out of this roll. Justices and Bailiff Jake, am I wrong for wanting to uncover this mystery narratively or should the Dice constitute more information than “you aren’t really sure unfortunately” PS hate the show

Dear Supreme Justices Axford, Tanner, I suppose Murphy, along with all valued guest judges, and the Supreme Overload of balifis Jake. I put before you the case of the rogue who stole to much. For context I run a small ( well rather larger) 12-person D&D after-school club for my students. For the national holiday “May the 4th” I dropped them into a Star Wars dream “episode”. One of my players… just has to drink EVERYTHING. So I knew he would buy something labeled “mysterious elixer” . Well long story short the group was counting on them to start up a ship so they could all escape. Naturally being fantasy characters dropped in a galaxy far far away they knew nothing about the ship. So in true Murph fashion I set an impossible DC that lowered with each try or helpful action. Well “the drinker” decided this was the opportune time to find out what the mystery elixirer did. I gave the obligatory “are you sure” they downed it, I rolled on the random table, and they polymorphed into a sheep…. I even let them roll for duration. Well… long story short this resulted in a TPK because they couldn't escape… and maybe the sheep hit a wrong button… hoove dexterity, the table had fun and no one was too upset, but I felt bad as the table blamed “the drinker” should I have fudged the roll to be something less… awful? Was I write to let the dice teach the lesson? I am humbally at your mercy and will take what judgment you bring. Respectfully -Teacher DM

Dear esteemed dads, aunties, and uncles of the court, When I was 7 years old, my dad introduced me to D&D. I spent hours before the first session creating a character and painstakingly drawing her portrait. She was an elf wizard named Moonbeam. During the first session, in a classic AD&D (90s era) dungeon crawl, Moonbeam was attacked and killed by a giant centipede that was hiding in a wardrobe. Instant perma-death. I never got to play her again; the next time we played, I had to roll a new character. It was brutal. I plead the court for justice for Moonbeam, taken too soon from a bright-eyed child by a no-shenanigans DM, risking alienating her from D&D forever.... Nevermind that my dad was following the rules, instilled in me a deep respect for the life-or-death stakes of the game, and gifted me & my sister a childhood full of happy D&D memories...

SungWon & Danielle?? Praise be

I step into your church to ask for a blessing from Dice Christ. Once upon a time, there was a writer who wanted to bring the joy of experiencing a story first hand to their friends. The art form that was table top RPGs seemed like a good fit for this. But writing a story and letting people experience it, are two very different crafts and so their first attempt at it went rather poorly. Disheartened, the writer closed that chapter of their life without a satisfying conclusion. Years and years went by, and as unfinished stories often do, they haunt their creator. The writer heard whispers from the unfinished chapter, but any time they came even near it, the fear of wasting their friends time and disappointing them again was too overwhelming. So that story sat dormant. Until one day the writer found something interesting. Judges from around the realms, who judged the mishaps at story tables. But they did not only judge. They also gave deep insight into why things did not work out, why behaviours were harmful and how to do it better. The writer was intrigued and sat in their courtroom as a visitor for every single case they tried. And with it, they learned what went wrong and how to do it better. The next time inspiration struck, the writer sat down, opened the unfinished chapter, scratched everything from it and started fresh. Now, they are leading a new group of friends through an adventure with confidence and success (so far). So I beg of Dice Christ today, to please bless the Judges of the Crit Court, so all their dice may tell interesting stories for all eternity. And please, if you will, tell the Judges how thankful I am for what they are doing. It brought me back to DM'ing and I can finally continue the chapter that I thought was closed from fear forever.

To the fat cat justices and the dirty dog bailiff, I submit the case of 700 named NPCs (Non-Player Cats). This case comes from my Wifeworm (she asked me to call her that), who was recently roped into DM-ing a campaign based on the ‘Warrior Cats’ universe for a group of 9-year-olds and two elder millennials who have never played D&D. If this already sounds like a disaster to you, I promise you it gets worse. Warrior Cats consists of a vast series of novels, graphic novels and extensive fanfic, with concepts like Cat Heaven and Cat Hell. My wife has devoted around 20 hours of research into figuring out what the fuck this is, home brewing the setting and making custom simplified character sheets, classes, subclasses etc for the players’ cat PCs. The setting is even based on our local area, so the players can visit the landmarks mentioned in the story. Justices, the kid whose idea this was in the first place, is not interested in playing through an original story. Instead, they want to play the Cat Queen (called Sandstorm) and for their parents and friends to play subservient kittens. They want to play out scenes exactly as they happen in the books, and they have an encyclopaedic knowledge of all 700 named characters, which they insist on my wife playing to the letter, to the point that they will correct her on character details and voices, and reject anything that diverges from the books. This is all in the prep phase at the moment, so with session 1 looming, what is my wife supposed to do? Does she have to teach these kids the hard facts of D&D and imaginative storytelling, or should this just become a Warrior Cats book club? We humbly await your ruling. P.S. we’re coming to the live show in London and my wife’s guide dog will be dressed as a Green Teen. Y’know, just in case this swings the case in our favour.

To the blessed judges and the Bailiff Jill, may it please the court; I bring the case of Conjure Minor Elementals. I run a long term campaign with some uni friends, one of whom played a bladesinger wizard. She was a complete power gamer, and her bladesinger was extremely optimised for combat. This itself wasn’t a problem, the problem was her attitude towards the rest of the players and the campaign. She would shut down other peoples RP scenes to focus on her own, or to hurry to combat. She refused to take any path that wasn’t the one she wanted, sent me paragraphs of texts immediately after sessions if she didn’t like a decision I made, and generally played like she was the only PC. Despite her being a ranger/wizard multiclass, no one can remember a single beneficial spell she cast that didn’t target herself. A player almost quit because of her. However, she is not the issue I bring to you, as we took Justice Murphy’s advice long ago and she is no longer welcome at our table. The case I bring to you is my decision about a 2024 spell called Conjure Minor Elementals (Sage Advice version). When it released myself and most of the party agreed it was very unbalanced, and banned it from the game. The bladesinger demanded the spell, saying that her character (made 3 years ago) had been built around this spell (released 2 weeks ago). I still said no, as the other party members were sick of her trying to outclass them at their specific roles (healing, tanking, now dps). Justices, I fear my judgement on Conjure Minor Elementals was corrupted by this player’s behaviour, and it was not a fair, unbiased rules judgement. Was I wrong to deny this spell on the basis of it being broken? I humbly await your judgement.

humble greetings to everyones favorite worm enjoyers and the early bailiff who somehow still misses the worms. today i present before you the case of the campaign-wide banned cantrip in a campaign a few years back, one of my dear friends, who is a little notorious for finding all of the little loopholes in spell wording, was playing a tiefling rogue/sorcerer (5e) who had taken the cantrip booming blade. she had the metamagic option twin-spell, and figured that she was able to twin-spell cast booming blade to attack 2 different people, and give the effects of booming blade to both of them. she spent the required sorcery points, was within melee of both, she had the warcaster feat, and she was dual wielding daggers. the first time she did it, it was kind of glossed over by our dm (her bf), and then a different session, they paused combat for fully 30+ minutes while they had an intense argument about the mechanics of it. (the table sided with the player) i don’t remember how exactly that combat resolved, but i know she was never allowed to twin-spell booming blade whenever she brought it up in subsequent battles, and our dm ended up adding it to his list of “spells banned for campaign two” (the only other one was the ninth level spell wish, by the way).. the group disbanded a bit ago but the back and forth still plagues my brain sometimes & id love your insight! thanks!!

Ey up Judges'n'Jake. I bring you a case of an accidentally retconned in-game hangover, may it please the court: Recently our party's half elf storm cleric "Falfinas" admitted that he was cannonically 100 years old, meaning he was due a naming ceremony to take on a new adult name. We threw an in-game booze fest at a local tavern to celebrate, with the drinks also flowing above table and settled that his new adult name should be "Falafel" and sealed the deal. Our characters went to bed and woke up with hangovers. Among other banter, I rolled a nat 20 convincing him that Falafel meant "Lightning Bolt" in Aarakocra, to make him feel better about it. Our characters set off from the tavern and we ended a great session; some of the most fun I've had roleplaying in D&D. The following session, our DM opened with "you awake the morning after the naming ceremony in the tavern" seemingly having forgotten about the hungover morning we had roleplayed last session (it had been a month or so irl). Falafel's player took the opportunity to instead be not-hungover and claim no memory of the naming ceremony. The rest of us players didn't push back too hard but it felt like the fun we had had the previous session had been undercut somewhat. Do I have grounds to feel unhappy about this half retcon, half backtrack or should Falafel and our DM face justice? JT

Respectable judges and funny bailiff Jess. I may have gone overboard trying to keep the DM PC dead. I’ve been playing in an open table campaign for a couple months. Originally just 3 players, we’ve gotten a few more in the last couple weeks. During a recap for a new player, the DM said “I basically play a character too”, referring to the BBEG. This week, we had the finale. The BBEG was an ascended robot version of the DM PC. We defeated her and she returned to human form, crying and begging us to save her from someone. Myself and one of the other original players immediately went over and killed her, as we had been saying we would do for weeks. The DM then introduced the person the BBEG wanted to be saved from, a scientist version of her who had made the BBEG as a clone of herself. She said she needed the body to see “where she went wrong”. Neither of the two of us trusted her with the body, assuming she might resurrect her in a final scene of the campaign, undoing the heroes’ progress. We ended up giving her the head, just so the DM would move this final session along. As we were about to be sent back to our home worlds, I asked the scientist for a final “yes/no” on if she would resurrect the BBEG. The DM said “roll perception”. I got a 24. The DM said “never mind, she won’t do that” and the scientist refused to answer the question. I asked if the scientist was going to lie to my PC and the DM admitted that was her plan. This is where I went off the rails. I had my PC pull out a cursed dagger and had the scientist swear a blood oath not to resurrect the BBEG. If she did her soul would be splintered into the 9 hells and tortured for eternity. The thing is, I had never mentioned this dagger before. I was not given it by the DM. I simply spoke it into existence in this moment. The DM didn’t push back and I successfully bound the scientist’s soul with this oath. I can’t help but feel that maybe this was too extreme a move as a player. Was I right to create a cursed object just to get the conclusion I believed we, the players, deserved? I humbly await your judgement.

To Jake and others. I’ll keep it brief. I was playing as a frog person and during one encounter against a giant centipede I wanted to utilise my jumping ability to add some flavour to my attack. Normally I had two attacks but my DM ruled that because I jumped I would only have time to do one attack in the air and that the jump forfeited my second attack. I ask the court, wasn’t the jump my movement and shouldn’t I have been allowed to attack twice? PS ‘don’t read this bit until after they’ve sided with me’ this was Murphs ruling against Caldwell during 8bit book club monster madness 😂 just razzing. Love pod. Thrum on!

I bow my head in reverence to the steadfast defenders of justice of the Supreme Crit and try my best to ignore the sniveling Bailiff. I bring forth the case of the compulsory hangover. Back in school, I was playing with a group of friends and our party was investigating a series of -- please hastily cover eyes and ears of all minors in the court room -- disappearing genitalia. We headed for the local tavern for a lead and our DM described us overhearing a group of drunkards talking about it, so we sat down at their table to find out if they knew anything useful. The DM asked: „They offer you a drink. Do you accept?“ Thinking not much of it we accepted, but the DM immediately proceeded to narrate how we all got black-out drunk. We complained to the DM that we should have a choice in how much we drink or to at least get a roll, but the DM was unrelenting and proceeded to narrate that we all woke up naked and tied-up in a warehouse, where we got attacked by genital-snatching demons. Justices... what? Was this a somehow justifiable rail road or did we all get roped into some DanDaDan-esque horny fantasy of our pubescent class-mate? I await your judgement with the weird taste in my mouth from thinking about that awkward session. PS: I informed my DM about my discomfort and this never happened again, for whatever it’s worth.

Dear justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner, Cho, Reese, May and Radford and i guess also the Bailiff Hurwitz who should have gotten my coffee about 10 minutes ago. I present to you a case i will call "The Extendo-table Multi-planetery apocalypse" once upon a one shot we played in a world that was 2 planets connected by a (You’d think heavily reinforced) magical tube shaped glass bridge, our mission was to get something from the other planet and we got a bag of weird magic items to aid in the mission. I naturally took the button that turns into a 100 person table. As one does, we of course ended up fighting a giant chicken on the bridge connecting the 2 planets, we get to my turn and i ask if i can push the button into the chicken’s mouth and press the button, the DM doesn’t even make me roll (first red flag). The Dm than described the table making the chicken explode into viscera and the table now being stuck along the diameter of the bridge piercing it along it. Now i don’t know about you but i feel like an inter-planetary magical glass barrier that connects 2 planets and has 1000s of people passing through it every day, usually with carriage and horses and/or giant chickens, should probably be able to withstand a damn dinner table suddenly expending inside it but our DM didn't think so which had already started the murmurs of mutiny among the players. It was the next move i made where this truly gets wild: i decided to pull out the knife and re-buttonize the table thinking still that there’s no way if the bridge is that weak that the magic around it isn’t some form of self repair... nope. The gaping holes into outer space begun too shutter as the bridges crumbled away and the planets started locking into each other’s gravitational fields eventually crushing into each other destroying everything and ending the one shot like an hour in when clearly there was more planned. After the game mostly the other players got into a fight with the GM about whether or not a damn table would have been able to do what it did while at that point i was just appriciating the salt and audacity levels. There’s no bad blood and we still joke about it all from time to time but i still believe that even though physics already got butchered by the very nature of that world, that table should not have done that. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Am i a dingus for even pulling out that trick? Well that’s your job to decide. Whatever Lou reed x metallica themed punishment you have is okay by me, hope this wasn’t horrible to read english is my second language. Also sorry i forgot to joke about the hit 2012 movie "upside down" Dry details/ evidence: *i was playing a fighter, i believe everyone at the table was playing a martial. *the chicken was described to be about 10 feet tall. *The bridge was described as a hollow cylinder connecting the planets with its own inner gravitational pull that let people walk along the tube’s inner walls all around. * while the item itself was magical, the table was described as none magical and made of wood with some metal studding for reinforcement. *the chicken was dragging a circus cart if i remember correctly. *the dead chicken parts did block the hole for like a second. *the end of the one shot was us somehow floating in space somehow still breathing and left to reflect on what had just happened.

I humbly greet the incomparable justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner and Guest, and ahsuh to the guy who threw a D20 at me in Sacramento. I present to you the case of the unhinted apocalypse. Years ago with the group I now DM for I was playing a Goliath Barbarian in a part of five, one of whom was an edgy warlock named Chrollo, whose patron was some kind of fiend with desires to conquer mortals. Chrollo was always trying to get the killing blow on bandits and goblins to serve his patron. Cut to a few months later and the party is in a coastal town that we've just successfully defended from a pirate invasion. We're investigating a mystery about why the pirates attacked, and a shady NPC delivers a small box to Chrollo, telling him not to open it until he leaves the city. Chrollo, obviously not trusting this tweaker, ducks into the corner of the tavern and tried to slyly open the box. The DM proceeds to narrate as black tendrils come out of the box and immobilize the entire party, then a portal opens in the sky and destroys the entire city, leaving only us standing at the end. So I ask: was the DM right to destroy the main location of our campaign because an untrustworthy NPC's advice wasn't heeded, or is the party right to razz the DM nearly a decade later for basically ending a campaign out of nowhere and ending up getting replaced as the forever DM(by me)?

To the Wife Worm and Wife Guys of the Supreme Crit, and whatever Jill calls Jake to calm him down when he's crying, I present the Neglectful Husband. We were a group of lv 7s fighting a lich and his minions. the DMPC cleric had thrust her sword into the lich's chest to absorb his magic so we would take only half damage to lower the difficulty of the fight. Knowing the lich couldn't remove the sword, my bard cast heat metal on the sword. After 2 rounds of my bullshit, my DM ruled that I'd heated the sword enough to melt it, even though that's not how the spell works. I was fine with it, and took it as a compliment for my spell usage. We won without any permanent deaths thanks to the cleric's revivify and her father, a Duke of Hell, dragging the boss to hell to completely skip the second phase. My actual grievance is that on the way home, the cleric's husband, an ancient silver dragon and my DM's pathfinder character, arrived to guide us home. As we celebrated our victory, the dragon cornered my character demanding I buy his wife a replacement sword, as the sword I melted had been an anniversary present. As a lv 7 bard, I did not have the funds to buy a new legendary class sword. He said don't worry, I can pay it off later. Judges, I do not want to buy him a sword. if he wants his wife to have a sword to defend her, I recommend he be more present in her life. What say you? I humbly await the wisdom of her worm-li-ness and the compassion of the court.

Hello good judges and wonderful, fantastic, and wise bailiff! I bring to you the question: should wildshaping into a bug get you out of a grapple? I have been playing with this group for years, and it is an ongoing disagreement. The first time it happened, my Druid was grabbed by a giant stone hand, like wallmasters from Zelda. My Druid has low strength and dexterity, so I turned into an ant, reasoning that an ant would easily walk out of the grasp of a giant hand. My DM disagreed, keeping me grappled (no roll), and justifying it with a hand motion showing that the giant hands would just grasp tighter and still hold me. Because of that wasted turn, and because I spent my first grappled turn buffing another player, the hand was able to squeeze me enough to down me and make the other players have to come rescue me. This has come back up several times since. Recently, we were fighting a monster that attacks with animated nooses made of rope-like hair and my character was grabbed by one. I asked, a noose wouldn’t be able to hold a bug, right? My DM first said that a single hair strand noose could do so and added later that the hair-noose is not just choking but also actively squeezing. My DM also estimated I have asked to try this 5 times (I get grappled a lot for a ranged caster). I think I want to creatively problem solve and that I should be able to, especially as I am using a limited resource to do so. My DM is probably sick of me trying to use the same trick every time — a trick that he already said will not work. Am I correct that this should work, or is my DM correct and I should drop it?

Hello Exalted Justices of the Supreme Crit and the bailiff in Jorts. Today I'm bringing you the case of when does the DM subverting your backstory go too far? In my first DnD campaign, I played a druid and my backstory was that my character was from a really stable family background and was just going on an adventure as a sort of gap year before returning to work at his family's business. For some reason, this backstory really spoke to me rather than having a big fantastic thing. Anyways, by the end of the second session of the campaign, it was revealed that the truth of my family business was that it was a Mafia sort of thing and my father was set up as the BBEG of the whole campaign. This was so opposite of the character backstory that I had proposed that I kind of lost interest especially since all of the villians of the campaign were my family members and I didn't really enjoy that. My DM eventually let me switch characters although he wasn't that happy since the campaign sort of centred around the original character and the campaign eventually fizzled. But now I'm a DM and I know PCs often like being surprised by things from their backstories coming back in unexpected ways, but I'm too afraid of killing my players' interest in their characters like what happened to me. How do I find the right balance of subverting their expectations in a fun way without going too far? Thanks, hate the show, never listened.

To my omniscient and aesthetically pleasing judges, and that pugnacious guy they let read the cases sometimes, I present the case of the Willfully Despondent Player. I am a self-prescribed forever DM, as I've never been able to find a group to join as a player, so I've made it my mission to always provide the opportunity for others, whenever possible. It's still tough getting a group together, but I've had a few good (albeit short) runs. I remain a baby DM, having led a few different games of lingering lengths over the years, but nothing incredibly substantial, and while having a plethora of DnD podcasts these days has helped, and given me plenty to learn from, it's still a muscle I don't get to work out very often if the groups just aren't there to sustain. The game in question was my very first long-form group (which only went maybe 6 months of actual play, at once or twice a month at best), where we played Pathfinder largely motivated by a close friend and player's distate for 5e, and fueled by NADDPOD's example wayback. I led a group of 6 players, a good mix of jokers and storyhounds alike, and all good friends. One such player created a goblin "urchin" teen barbarian named Buster (best friend to another PC named Nutson). Buster was always very down for a fight and felt himself a very tough guy. Classic goblin barbarian teenager behavior. Cue a fight club setting, where they've found themselves after hunting down some plot leads. Buster of course found the sign up for the ring, and asked about the fighters, so I listed them off in ascending order of power and fame in the ring. Immediately, Buster goes up to the biggest beefcake (a rhinoceros-like humanoid) and challenges him to a fight. I'm sure there was a better option in front of me, but at the time, I sure didn't know what it was, and I did what I felt was likely for the smug bastard. The fighter laughed at the twink challenging him and agreed to whoop his ass--and did just that. The level difference in Pathfinder even from 0 to 1 is kinda harsh, and this guy was level 5. He took Buster out in one (kinda sick) move. It was nearing the end of the night for my players and everyone was noticeably ready to be done and go home, so I called the session after the fight, but I could see the player withdrew a little bit to himself. I messaged him later and asked if he was okay, and that he seemed upset. He admitted he wasn't very happy with the outcome of what he thought was in Buster's character, and that he thought I would've or should've had a way to avoid it happening that way, but he didn't have any ideas at the time either so he understood we both felt kinda stuck. He said it was fine but that "he would probably be less invested now". I apologized for the outcome not being what it probably should've been, but said I didn't think was a negative for his character to lose a fight, and that it was a testament to Buster's strength that even if outmanned and overpowered, he would always get back up and keep pushing on. Eventually he relented to the idea and we kept on--in the next session the fight right was busted and Buster reminisced about his first time losing a fight and getting back up, and swore vengeance on the fighter before fleeing--but I have never gotten over my friend and player saying "I think I will be less invested now" as if it's a choice he was making in the moment. I beg you judges, I know I could have done better, but I was still learning, and in the end the game did go on and he did still invest--but I'll never know if it was 100%. Is there a "right" and a "wrong" here, and how can I learn from it? How can I teach on this, in future games? Love you! (PS. I've still made mistakes and I'll keep doing it no doubt, but I've grown more as a dm since then! Hopefully, I'll keep doing that, too.)

Woah what a wonderful line up!

To the honorable judges and even more honorable guest, When I was a fledgling D&D player, I played in a Legend of Zelda campaign as a Goron (half-orc barbarian) who was exiled from his tribe. When the campaign eventually required us to return to my village, there was a contest of strength being held there and an opportunity presented itself for me to redeem my worth to the tribe in 1 on 1 combat with another warrior. I was privately messaged by a fellow player, a much more experienced one with a much more optimized Sheikah (monk) character, asking what my max damage output was. My build was very vanilla and we were only level 4 or 5, so the number was low. In our next roleplay with the contest’s event coordinator, the Sheikah convinced the coordinator that it should be a team fight instead of a 1 on 1 fight without consulting me or my character first. The fight ended up going well thanks to it being a group effort, and I probably would have gotten my ass kicked in the 1 on 1 fight, (not to mention, it’s more fun for everybody to be in a combat together than just 1 person) but I can’t help feeling a little ripped off all these years later. Was I wronged by my fellow player or was it ultimately better for the group that we participated in the combat together?

Beth May and Branson Reese I CANT WAIT

To the esteemed pastors Murph, Emily, Caldwell, Sungwon, Branson, Beth, Danielle, and I think Jork, I come to to this holy church seeking guidance for my faith in Dice Christ is at its lowest. My partner and I just got engaged. They surprised me with extra large d20 in my dice bag. This d20 turned out to be a ring box and they proposed on the spot. I of course said yes, and fittingly we decided to roll the ring box for Dice Christ's blessing. Natural 1. Does Dice Christ not approve of our marriage or is this the work of the dice devil? I ask for your guidance because I am conflicted. If this is truly the work of Dice Christ, must I renounce my faith and love with the shame of being excommunicated or do I cancel the engagement in accordance to his wishes?

The Case of Astral Escapism: Hello Jubilee Judges and Little Buddy Babyliff, I played in a campaign where the premise was essentially villainous Hogwarts- complete with house ghosts, house parties, and teachers and students who sought eachothers' downfall in an effort to create the most dastardly beings possible. By order of the school's headmaster, myself and another PC were told to fight to the death as a cliffhanger before our next session. I told my DM between sessions that I was planning to escape to the Astral plane to avoid the combat altogether since as a player and a character I was uncomfortable with PvP. I was fine playing a new character, and I even prepped a backup baddie. I looted the school's magical items, said my goodbyes to my closest friends and other PCs, and used a portable hole with a bag of holding to launch myself into the Astral plane with the intention of becoming a planar pirate. My DM said after 6 hours had passed in the material plane, I appeared back in the same spot from where I had left. Since our game was streamed live, I didn't want to fight about character motivation in the moment as to why I would want to return in the first place. In the end, the duel took place and both PC's wound up dead as the victor of the fight was hit by a power word kill by the headmaster. Both bodies were tossed into lava destroying any chance of revivify. I ask you, was I wrong for trying to avoid the combat? Should I have accepted the PvP and put my feelings as a player/friend aside in an "evil" campaign? P.S. the DM's wife who played with us told me he had said the session before that the other PC involved and myself "are cockroaches who refuse to die"... I eagerly await your decision.

Dearest judges and the fantabulous bailiff Jonk, I come to you with a twist. I feel the court has grown a bit complacent, and it's about time for some chaos. Therefore I have released a crate of 23 frogs in the courthouse. What are you gonna do about it?

To the highly decorated justices of the supreme crit and the long pitied bailiff, I bring to you the case of the Faceless Dungeon Master My friends and I are big fans of ttrpgs, with our group having two concurrent games running, one ran by me and the other by my friend, let's call him Alan. This is great because not only do the DMs get a chance to consistently be players, but both games are different genres which gives the players variety; my game is a sci-fi mech based campaign and Alan's is a dark fantasy campaign. Recently, Alan has preparing to run another dark fantasy campaign in a different homebrew setting, much to my excitement. As soon as he sent out a lore doc for us I rushed to make a couple of character concepts, all of which he said he liked. A month or so went by and the topic of this new campaign came up in one of our sessions. While discussing his plans Alan proclaimed that he would like me to not be a player but a co-dm. Justices, this was news to me. Feeling put on the spot I said I'd have to look into the concept but was still interested. I later asked him how the co-dming would work between us, and he told me that I would help him write the sessions and plan combats, but I would rarely be at the table since he didn't like the idea of two people behind the dm screen. He said I would be able to dm some sessions, but would largely be absent from the table. I asked if I could potentially play a rotating cast of NPCs when I wasn't dming so that I could at least be participating in the game I was helping to build, but this was "not [his] vision of the game". After much thought I told him that I wasn't liking the idea and would rather just be a player if possible, which he allowed though he seemed a little short with me. Ultimately everything is good now and we have our first session in a few weeks, but justices was I right in being peeved that I had been essentially relegated to a writer's position for a home game? Or should I have acquiesced to Alan's wishes and enjoyed the collaboration between us? I humbly await the outcome of the court.

To the Supreme Crit and the guy who did my favorite ad reads before I became a patron. I was with a dnd group for 5 years and I thought they were my friends, until my dog died. I told the group as soon as I got the news she would need to be put down, and I got 2 very strained, forced messages of condolences. On the session 3 days after the vet appointment, they were razzing me and I jokingly said "hey you can't do that, my dog just died". Fucking crickets. A few weeks later when I told them I needed to leave the table for other reasons, they messaged me saying they'll miss me, they'll be there if I need to talk, and they're still my friends. Am I being gaslit?

Your honors, esteemed guests, and I guess the baliff too. I present my case of Twitch the Bitch V the unrelenting party. I’m trying to transition my campaign to a new vtt. I’ve got the levels built out and everything. The problem, I hombrewed a quickling to have spells and goblin abilities, “Twitch” who dared pop a bottle rocket off for 1 hp on 2 of 5 party members flying over head on Nightmares, at level 3. The party could not abide this insult, and took immediately descended, used their Flying Fire ponies to Dressage stomp the tiny Twitch down to 5hp, who made the poor choice of attacking in the day light. This module was only supposed to be levels one and 2 for new players. They are now level five, and have not yet killed Twitch and are seething. They’re having fun and are invested in the story, making Allies, getting potions and spell scrolls, Freaking Nightmares. But Twitch is fast and doesn’t want to die. They aren’t going to let this go. I’ve give them a lot of disposable magic items to slow Him down and detect him but they can’t kill him, he has 50hp. Last session they caught him at half health after having a local temple elders scry on his location using cursed tokens he let the party find. We went nine rounds in 2 hours and at the end I had him dive off the a cliff faces in a dramatic escape ala James Bond swan dive. I’ve called or talked to my players individually and have asked, “hey is your character willing to fail the mission the were sent to this village for to stay and kill Twitch?”. Your honors, no hesitation, no mirth, “I will kill Twitch if it’s the last thing I do” similar opinions have been expressed in our one on ones. I want to move on, I’ve stacked the deck in their favor on three major encounters, they’re new, they can’t get the job done and I’m not sure I want to level them beyond fifth level in this module that was basically a fetch quest for ingredients for a fancy dinner party. Have I wrong my players? Do they deserve blood? Am I guilty of baiting my players? Do I have them kill Twitch next session so we can move on, i don’t know how to do it in one session without making it feel I’m just giving it to them. Please punish me but let the punishment come with a solution, dice Christ is with Twitch and the little bugger is just a tiny fey cockroach that the dice won’t let die. After this last session I given the party the Twitch character sheet and I’ve only been using his stealth and basic quickling dagger attacks. Judges help! Is this a teaching moment for the table, is it ok to let an enemy live to see another day or how do I manufacture a death for Twitch the party will be satisfied with? At this point I’m even willing to to take the bailiffs advice.

May it please the court, and may the Bailiff find a baby barber who can fix whatever is happening on his head. (With a nod to each judge) "Your Honor, Your Honor, Your Honor." (Stares blankly at the Bailiff for a beat too long before turning away). I bring to you the case of "The Fast and the Furious Puzzler." My group recently did a classic dungeon crawl packed with riddles. Because I am a highly visual person, theater of the mind can be tough for me. I need to take diligent notes on the DM's auditory descriptions just to process what's happening. The problem? One player confidently shouts out the correct answer literal seconds after the DM finishes speaking. Every. Single. Time. They are a puzzle savant, but their speed leaves zero room for party collaboration, roleplay, or for my slow-processing brain to even finish writing the setup. It leaves me feeling totally deflated. Justices, do I have the right to demand a 60-second "processing grace period" before anyone can speak? Or must I accept that I may just be a spectator whenever a riddle appears? I await your judgment.

To the immeasurably wise justices and the Bailiff, whose wisdom could be measured with a standard 12" ruler: I bring before you a serious manner, and vehemently demand that you show me no pity, and bestow upon me as much or more petty wrath as you do any plaintiff who begs at your feet. I struggled with alcohol in college, and it was an open secret among my friends that had started to strain my personal relationships. In an exemplary showcase of the incredible decision making skills typical of both college students and alcoholics, I chose to play a character in my friends' campaign who was also an alcoholic. The campaign was roleplay-heavy and fairly dark, so she fit in tonally, and nobody expressed any OOC concerns about this choice. Half a year into the campaign, I was rapidly spiraling towards rock bottom in real life, and will shamefully admit that I did get so wasted during a session where a guest character died that my friends had to spend it taking care of me. A few weeks later, one of my fellow players decided to make a passionate plea in game to my character about her drinking, and very seriously asked her to hand over her flask, to which my character acquiesced. Now justices, as you all know, an adventurer should be prepared for anything, and that's exactly why my character had a second flask in her inventory. Once my character went straight back to the bottle, my friend became quite upset - allegedly because I had ruined the character moment. Justices, was my friend a maniac for expecting my character to win a battle that I was actively losing? Or am I to blame for the plethora of poor decisions that led to that point? I eagerly await your harshest judgement and cruelest, most unusual punishment. PS - This same friend gave me an IRL intervention a few months later, which I am happy to report was much more successful.

To the Supremely Talented Court Justices and their adoring sidekick Jakey, I present to you the Case of Too Many Crits. I'm currently playing in a game that uses a homebrew crit table. We used it with no problems for a couple of years; it was all fun and games ... until it wasn't. Several months ago, we were in a tough fight and my barbarian crit. Awesome! From the crit table, I chose the option to do regular damage and take an extra attack. In addition, I have a greataxe with the soul of a former warlord stuffed in it. When I crit, there's a 5% chance I get an additional attack. I rolled a 4% on the d100, so that was 4 attacks in one turn: 2 because we're level 10, 1 from my axe, and 1 from the crit table. Plus I attacked recklessly, so every roll was at advantage. I was super pumped, knowing I would do a ton of damage. And then it began. On my fourth attack roll, I crit again. Chose the same option on the table. Didn't make the axe roll so it was three attacks that time. Then I crit *again* on one of those rolls. Justices, I'm sure you can guess where this is going. In this one turn, I crit 4 times for a total of something like 15 attacks and 11 hits. It was insane. I switched up my dice. I rolled out in front of the table. Everything was above board and of course we the players were absolutely loving it. When I rolled my fifth crit, my DM lost it. He flat out said no. Absolutely not. No one can hit with an axe more than 10 times in one turn. This has become a farce. You cannot do anything with that last crit other than double damage. He seemed mad, and the table instantly started defending me. I wasn't cheating; I was literally using his own homebrew. He was having none of it, so I rolled my damage and we moved on. It really messed with the mood of the table and the rest of the fight was pretty subdued. To his credit, the DM later clarified that he wasn't mad at me or really even mad at all, just frustrated in the moment. We have continued to play together and all is well with our group. However, that battle still occasionally comes up at the table. Justices, am I wrong for thinking he should have let it play out? He could have talked to us afterward and made changes to it then. Instead, he shut down my turn and made me feel like I had done something wrong. On the other hand, maybe cutting it off was the right way to go because even I'll admit that doing 167 points of damage in one turn truly is absolutely bonkers. We can't come to an agreement and so await your judgment with open hearts and revised crit tables. P.S. I must share that the DM is my husband and the state of our 24-year marriage now lies in your hands.

To the supreme crit justices and bailiff jorkob pants copper herb witch I present to you the case of the premature code breaker I’m playing in a dagger heart campaign that’s starting in a month with my long term dnd group and my game master sent us a world document to help us with character creation. Within the historical timeline section of the document certain sentences and names were written in an ancient tongue so as to add a layer of mystery to the lore. Since I had a free afternoon I decided to spend an hour decoding the majority of the cipher save for a few fantasy names I couldn’t parse. I learned secrets including the use of necromancy in a forgotten war and the name of a pc from a previous campaign. I brought it up with the gm and they seemed impressed but a bit peeved that I solved it so fast. Should I have waited until the campaign actually started before uncovering its secrets or is a puzzle free rein to solve as soon as it’s presented to us? I humbly await your judgement.

To the ecumenical priesthood of Dice Christ, I have sinned the sin of cheesiness and awful timing. I DMed a Zoom game during Lockdown that included two of my best college friends. They had been dating for 7 years, and I got the news that they were engaged during one of our sessions! Excited, I added an engagement themed puzzle to our dungeon crawl, which we got to in a session about two months later. It was a pair of ghosts who could phase through walls, and when reduced to 0 HP would endlessly regenerate after a short cooldown. The solution? Help one of the ghosts, let's call him Shyguy, propose to the other, something he had never had the guts to do in life. My players successfully found Shyguy's engagement ring and diary in his tomb and convinced him to pop the question. I RPed a brief dialogue (exclusively in gestures and ghost moans) where Shyguy proposed to her, and she said yes. Love requited, they both faded away, and the players could continue on. For some reason, this did not land with the IRL couple. All I got were a few awkward laughs. They seemed very tired. Maybe the bit didn't come across well on zoom? A few days later, one of them calls me to tell me they were splitting up. Apparently, this decision was made at 3am the night before the ghost story engagement session. They are both thriving in their separate lives, and they have never razzed me for this. But, my siblings in Dice Christ, I still feel really bad about the timing of my cheesy-ass ghost story. I seek your absolution and your blessing as I start up a new campaign, that I may avoid stepping in it this bad again.

(Shorty) To the esteemed Senior Judges, Junior Judges, and the Jankiest Baby Bailiff Jake the Baby Snake Hurwitz, I bring to you the case of “The Extended Holiday Getaway or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About D&D and Love Myself.” I play (played?) in a weekly D&D group that’s been together for almost three years. We recently took a month-long break so our DM could catch up on life. Another player took this break as an opportunity to travel to the other side of the world. Toward the end of our downtime, the traveling player reached out and said they’re extending their international trip by another two months by exploiting a visa loophole after traveling to another country for a weekend before going back to their original destination. Shortly after this, our DM very politely notified us that he needs more downtime and we might play again as early as next week or as far away as next never. Judges, would I be in the wrong to just get new D&D friends, or should I maybe work on me for a bit while I wait and see what happens in a couple months assuming our DM works on himself enough and/or our international friend isn’t arrested for potentially abusing passport visa laws? I await your judgement with an old rogue’s bated breath.

To the Highest Crit in the land as well as jake. I present the case of The Mind Trick. This was some time ago, when I was invited to play in a Star Wars one shot. I created a force user & when we met with the contact they told us to collect a data card. When I heard this my character proclaimed "oh you mean this data card?" & asked to roll & use my mind trick, the GM allowed me to & I apparently rolled well. (I say apparently because this system used "D6" but with pictures not numbers) When the GM saw my roll he looked disappointed & said "Well there goes my planning.” Which made me feel bad, but the session continued & ended up okay. Now Judges was I wrong to asking for the roll, or should the GM simply have told me no? I humbly await your judgement.

Dear benevolent justices and Jerp, I come to you with a case of murderhobo miscommunication. I DM for a table of six players who range in experience in DnD. This case regards two players in particular. One, is my gfs good friend (edgy gloomstalker ranger, Gloom going forward). And the other is Gloom’s bf who has been kicked out of previous DnD tables. He’s playing an edgy rogue. We can call him Jake. The level 7 party arrives at a town with a quest to kill kobolds. They arrive as kobolds and a half dragon are attacking the village and fend them off. It is revealed during the fight that the kobolds are working for a dragon and they have previously kidnapped a child. After the fight, the mother of the kidnapped child asked the party of heroic adventures to save her child. The party didn’t want to because they were afraid to fight the dragon. It is worth noting that the two problem players constantly avoid downtime activities because they find them boring and “want to go kill something.” Regardless, I had some of the townsfolk say they wanted to abandon the village and they wanted the party’s help to escort them on the dangerous journey to the city (where the party lives). I had one of the NPCs say that the child was gone for a week and was probably dead. The players mistook this as me saying the kid was definitely dead, not as miscommunication from an NPC. I admit I could have been more clear here. So the party has two options: fight a dragon and maybe save the child (who definitely was still alive by the way) or help the villagers escape the village that was being threatened by a dragon and hordes of kobolds. Judges, the two problem players found a third option. Jake killed the mother of the child because he was growing impatient and annoyed that she was asking for help to save her son. Meanwhile, Gloom shook down the mayor for the quest money. They then planned to kill the rest of the villagers but there was a NPC related to another players backstory that was in the village and caught Jake trying to stab another villager. This led to a stand off with some of the other players (my gf included) being upset with Jake and Gloom’s actions. They left the village to go hunt owlbears because they “wanted to kill something.” My gf was visibly upset and one of the other players mentioned that we should discuss what happened. Jake and Gloom defended themselves saying that they were just “doing what their characters would do.” Judges, it is here that I snapped, I told them that is not an excuse for bad DnD play. I then told Jake that I can see why he was kicked from his other tables. The table got tense and then Jake started tearing up. Him being kicked from the other tables is a sore topic for him and I, admittedly, knew this. Judges, I then had to apologize to him in order to smooth over our friend group dynamic. So I ask, was I wrong for snapping? Should I have just let them do whatever? P.S - I have changed my DM style since then. I do more dungeon crawls with more intricate encounters and puzzles (sometimes stealing Justice Murphy’s designs). And I avoid NPC interactions and world building because I don’t feel like having them just break it.

Dear Supreme Crit Justices and Josh(?), my case is between a player and the dm of our pathfinder game. The crux is simple: does quicksand count as a body of water? As I’m usually the judge on our internal court cases I’m at a loss. My sorcerer wasn’t in any real danger of drowning (can hold their breath for 8 hours) but our DM did clamp down very hard on quicksand not being water…. If it is water our cleric could have used a focus spell (tidal surge) to toss me to safety. I suffered passive razzing because I didn’t know quicksand has a pretty high water content.

Dearest Supreme Crit Justices and Jarl, I bring to you the case of Fog Cloud vs. Cloudkill. During a long running homebrew game, my players had recently descended into the underdark and had taken the bait to investigate a clearly destroyed and haunted temple of Lathander (aka Lythander in our game because my group's cleric could never remember his actual name). While retrieving a holy relic, they were set upon by a group of drow ambushers, one of whom cast cloudkill around the relic during a surprise round. The group's ranger then cast fog cloud, arguing that the fog would displace the poisoned air of the previous spell. Unsure of how anything regarding the flow of air works in real life, I said no, it doesn't. My Naddpod-loving players immediately threatened to bring me to court. Supreme Justices, I beg you. Please tell my players they are wrong and that any DM worth their salt cannot let a 1st level spell counter a 5th level spell, no matter how creative and thoughtful a player is being.

To Jake and those other three: I bring to the court of the Star Wars Switcheroo. I have recently started DMing a Star Wars 5e campaign for two different groups. In the online group, one of the PCs is a Gungan Operative. He RP'd the entire first session as a JarJar Binks-like stereotypical fun-loving Gungan. In the final combat of the first session, he switched voices to a grizzly, outlaw type and said "It's just business" before shooting one of the other players in the back of the head and escaping the Krayt Dragon's burrow. Was I right to chase him into the desert with a gang of juvenile Krayt Dragons that spontaneously hatched? We did all have a good laugh about this and his second character, another Gungan Operative (named Knott Guilty) showed up in Session 2.

no case but tell branson hes a fuckin real one

To the esteemed Justices and the guy who performed the seminal masterpiece “Dirty Little Egret” for College Humor in 2014, I bring before you the case of the False Confession. My party was in a forest looking for some missing kids from the orphanage our fighter owned. The cleric, who the party knew was a vampire, suddenly revealed that she was behind the disappearances. As players, we knew this wasn’t true. While the cleric had attacked several children from the orphanage in her backstory, it was years ago, when she was a child herself and didn’t know any better. She had since sworn off human blood and had been trying to atone for years. Our characters, however, didn’t know the details of her backstory, and the cleric refused to explain at all. To keep the party together, we asked 3 times in and out of character “Are you currently, ACTIVELY murdering children?” The player kept insisting, “Yes. This is what my character would do because she feels guilty.” This then led to the party trying to kill her before she snuck away. This obviously derailed the entire campaign and later led to a near TPK, so the entire party has been razzing the cleric for this decision. A couple sessions later, the cleric got mad at us for razzing her, saying she doesn’t understand why we keep bringing it up. Judges (and Mr. Egret), is this a rightful razzing or should we let a murderer go free?

To the benevolent judges and the bailiff Cake. I bring forth the case of the razzed revivify. Years ago with my highschool friends, I was playing my first ever character, a self-rightious paladin (I've matured, I swear it!). In search of clues and secrets my character split from the party to ask questions in the cities underbelly, only to be ambushed by bandits in an alleyway. I quickly dispatched them with a weapon AOE. When my DM gave me an opportunity to inspect my surroundings he revealed that I had unknowingly struck and killed a small orphan boy hidden in a barrel (none were mentioned until this point). Racked with guilt over catching this child in the crossfire, my character used his only scroll of revivify. With a botched religion roll, my DM announced that the spell had worked but only enough to restore the poor child to a vegetative state. My character frantically tried making things right, giving all his gold and a request that the boy be taken care of. For the rest of the campaign, not only was I razzed by the rest of the table for "wasting" a scroll of revivify but also shamed whenever i tried to make a moral decision for my character. "Where was your mercy when you hurt that poor orphan boy?". So I ask of the Justices, Was my DM cruel to thrust such an agregious act upon my character? Or was I deserving of all the razzle dazzle for trying to play a just character in an un-just world?

Case of The Constitution Slight of Hand. Hello to the Highly Highly Justices on high, and the guy, the dude, the lowly, and the bailiff Jah-hake. I bring to you the case of The Constitution Slight of Hand. I'm a forever DM but its my jam. I've been playing with my roommates, and my three brothers for two and half years. We are a month into our Neo-Cyberpunk Pirates Spelljammer campaign. The setting so far is a prison on a dwarf ice planet. Thier all inmates and have opportunities to get work assignments and free time activities to get intel/tool for breaking out. During a work assignment scene two of my brothers, a plasmiod artificer, and a Orc pugilist. They attempt to smuggle tools out of a work station. I ask for a sleight of hand and offer to use a different ability modifier based on how they go about it. The pugilist goes "Oh! I'll try put it in my prison pocket." Cue small pause before a eruption of laughter. I say "Go ahead and give me a constitution sleight of hand." Or in the case sleight of sphincter. My brother then asks if he can instead like a magician make it disappear. I tell him "No, im sorry but this is too funny, and your character isn't a trained magician." Justices, he crits...cue another eruption of laughter. Justices was i wrong to not let him back out of the roll and choose another way? Or am I despicable for railroading for the sphincter. I leave it in your...gavels?

To the prestigious justices, and… um… who is this guy again? Julius or whatever? Anyways, I bring you the case of “The checkers DM”. Our party was deep within a dungeon looking for an artifact requested by the guild. One of the final rooms of said dungeon consisted of a large room that had an elevated black and white tile platform with large statues on each black tile. In front of it was a panel which had arrows that selected and moved a statue to another tile. It was a giant checkers game and our dm was an absolute PRO at checkers. Round after round we would slowly lose our pieces, so out of desperation I would try to cast the spell shatter to try to gain an advantage. Our DM described the statue being demolished by my spell, but that the deity who created the puzzle was angered and flung the debris at me and dealt massive amounts of damage bringing me close to death's door (We were only level 3). With only one piece left we tried to concede with the panel in front of us. It was described to us before that the panel had a large red button to the side of it and when we asked what its use was the dm said that we weren't sure. Thinking it was used to concede the game we push it only to find out that it reset the entire board. We were forced to get womped for a second time and only then we allowed the dm to take out the last piece. Then the DM proceeded to throw a huge monster at us for failing. We were able to dispatch the monster and claim the relic we were after. Some people commented that the session felt like it dragged on and felt unrewarding while others said that they like the experimental aspect of the session. Now judges, Should this dm be condemned for their sins, or am I just salty for losing a game of checkers?

To the angelic justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner, and the cherubic bailiff Jaique (pronounced Jake, just spelled wrong). I come to you with a case of cowardice in conflict with Aarakocra insanity. In the land of Barovia was an Aarakocra bard, ‘Lactimus Prime’. A dairy enthusiast with a songbook full of cheese based puns. Things were mostly fine, until it was revealed that some pastries our party had been enjoying were made with ground up children. The witches responsible for this offense of nature offered us gold in exchange for more kids, which we all refused. All but one of us. Lactimus insisted that it was ‘no big deal, let’s get the cash’. We disagreed. He grew impatient. We put our foot down, exclaiming the morality of it all. The frustrated Lactimus threw his hands up and yelled “It’s just a game, none of this matters.” And the room soured. Your honors, and cute little baby boy bailiff. The crime is how I responded. Being conflict averse, some might say a social coward, I got quiet, and dipped out of the party after that session without stating why. The party did not meet again and I feel I am responsible for leaving a world in peril to a child eating Aarakocra and the arguably less evil Strahd von Zarovich. I lay myself at the feet of your judgment, covered in shame and a comfort blanket. Note: Since this falling out, I went on to become a forever DM and only 2 campaigns I’ve DM’d have ended due to divorces (not due to my DMing, I think), but that’s a story for another time.

Hello one and all, plus that weird jerk Jorketh. I DM for my ex-wife and her nephews. Our relationship went different paths but we are still roommates because of the economy and trying to set each other up for the best lives possible because we’re still best friends. Now the actual problem. Her nephews are a little chaotic but I’ve always loved the gremlin energy when we get together to play. One problem was no matter what they always wanted a new character with a Keyblade. It’s fucking awesome, but I’ve gotten it down to not restarting characters every time. It is however nearly impossible to get a story arc in. Them being 7, 13, and 15 it is so varied in what they want to do always. I always allow shenanigans and my former partner sets them up to do their best in encounters, which they kind of steam roll all help in favor of chaos. (Casting fireball on a red dragon, jumping into traps that were pointed out, and never giving an npc enough dialogue to start a quest without just attacking/instigating things). I humbly ask, what’s the best way to get chaos entities to respect their aunt’s in game wishes to help them realize a real story?

Danielle’s coming back! Literally just listened to her dungeon court and twoyal tumble two days ago!!

To the upstanding standing Justices, the outstanding guest Judges, and the understanding Baliff; I give you the case of the Unwanted Plot Armour. I’ve been blessed with an excellent and long-suffering DM who has dealt with my many feral himbo characters over the last twenty years. In our most recent campaign, I finally threw him a human Paladin with a normal backstory. He’s been thrilled to get a more serious story and less lil stinker behavior. But a few months ago, for fun, I rolled up a new character, a multiclass bard-monk goblin stripper named Maximum Groin. Max’s mission is to restore his family’s reputation as the masters of burlesque by finding the lost arts of Pole-y-metrics. I showed it to my DM, who rolled his eyes and sighed. A few weeks later, when my Paladin was making (and failing) death saves, I joked “well, it’s okay, Max is waiting in the wings!” I cannot overstate the look of shock and fear on my DMs face. He insisted on the last death save being with advantage, and since then, has systematically avoided any damage to my character. But I’m the tank! I keep throwing my Paladin into more and more danger and it’s getting absurd to never get hit. How can I get my DM to attack me again? Am I wrong to demand the right to be womped? Or is my unwanted plot armour just punishment for forcing my DM to be the straight man to years of my rascally goofballs? PS Maximum Groins siblings names are Juicy, Itchy, and Red

Dear esteemed bailiff Jace and the peanut gallery of judges, I’m not sure if this is a case or simply a plea for advice but I beseech the court to hear my plight either way. I’m in a campaign with some long distance/online friends of a few years, which has been going on for three years. We all have a lot of fun roleplaying together and generally don’t take the rules too seriously if they get in the way of a bit or a cool move. However, I fear that my DM is too lenient. I want to be railroaded, dammit!! My character is a wild magic sorcerer and he will oftentimes choose the “crazy” option in roleplaying or battle and I feel like my DM is letting me get away with stuff and often letting me (and the party in general) run wild. I’ve tried to talk to my DM about this and she will always say she will find a way to make whatever we want to happen work, but I don’t wanna wreck her plans or get in the way of cool story! She has run an incredible campaign so far and I fear that now that things are starting to get more serious story-wise she is letting us interfere with the plot in order to let us “have fun” with whatever stupid bit we run with. How do I make my DM understand that punishment and consequences is part of the fun? Am I doomed to always wreck her carefully laid plans with a well timed nat 20, or is there a way I can get her to railroad me? I thank the court for your time and am grateful for whatever ruling you see fit. (Please don’t send Peppermint Patty after me.)

Dearest Honorable Crits, and the lowly yet possibly higher than i baliff: The party needed to steal a gem of planes-shifting from the villains. One player accidentally triggered one, and was warped to hell, where they began to rescue NPCs important to the party from personalized hells. The other PCs encountered a villain, who offered them a gem. Because one of the NPCs i mentioned was one of their husbands. The player was so intent on getting to that scene that she didn't ask any questions, and they were consequently trapped in their own personal hell and missed it entirely. As DM, did i utterly fail to reinforce this self-admitted villain may be lying, in seperating the party at all, or does the fault lay in another aspect?

On behalf of a non-Patreoner, I present "The case of Party vs Perilous Potions" To the esteemed and effortless Judges and the other guy. What's his name... I've been stewing on this one for many years! Our level 3 party had just entered into a Dwarven tournament of games—dungeon rooms filled with puzzles and monsters! The 1st room was a puzzle with five different-coloured potions (like in Harry Potter) and one of which would open the doorway when drunk. Our only clue to the correct potion was a confusing poem handed to us by the DM. After 20 mins irl, our Fighter just picks one up and drinks it - gaining a permanent stat bonus. So following in his footsteps, my Goliath character quickly chugs one on the end. A black one (its important apparently). Without asking "Are you sure you want to do this?", the DM looks at me chuckling and goes "You're just dead." He offered no saving throws. Nothing. He points to the poem and it reads "At the edge lies death", "Therefore, Gurth just dies". Apparently the two black potions at each end were insta-death potions and were pre-planned. So I ask these truth seeking justices of DnD Court, is this fair of the DM to do? Instant death at level 3 on our 5th session?? At our time of need and confusion, our DM just left us out to dry? P.S. Later that session, in a combat designed for 4 players, the rest of the party was TPK'd by a room full of snakes! But instead he used a friendly cleric NPC to resurrect the whole party...Except for Gurth, "because I had died earlier." I still had to make a new character.

Finally the NADDPODxDaddies crossover I've been dreaming of

May it please the court, I present the case of Not My Monkey, Not My Circus. I agreed to start an entirely new game of DnD with a mixed group of friends and friends-of-friends. However when we met for session zero, we were informed one of the players (a terminally obnoxious man and well known bad sport who is a friend of the DM, we will call him “Teddy”) would be playing a Level 5 character while everyone else played a Level 1 character. Additionally, we were told that this Level 5 character would gain experience/levels at a rate 2x faster than the rest of this. I inquired why and was told that this difference was not relevant to the narrative or character development but, instead, intended to reflect Teddy’s supposed real life higher IQ score than the other players (note: IQ scores are a horrendous measure of intellect and, bonus, none of us had taken an IQ test except for Teddy and he did so via an online quiz). I objected to both the advanced character level and expedited leveling based on the provided reasoning, which caused Teddy to shout, swear, and insist he was the smartest person in the room and we should all read his blog for proof of this (*insert eye roll here*). I decided to leave, informed the group I would not be coming back at any point in the campaign, and went home. I have since been accused of “ruining the campaign” and the DM now wants me to pay him $250 for his “wasted labor” as well as apologize to Teddy for “upsetting him and causing him to lash out”. I have so far refused to do either, but would appreciate the guidance of the court.

Dear wonderful judges and (Good/Bad) Boy Jake, I bring to the court a case of Character Assassination through Retcon. After years of listening to podcasts I managed to join my first game of DnD with a group that was already 14 Levels deep into a campaign. I created a Chaos Sorcerer Saytr named Forgo, who was pretty much Tobi from Naruto if he was played by Codwell. On the day of my first session everyone was happy to finally have me join the table. Drinks were flowing, moods were high, and when Forgo was introduced I absolutely crushed it. I was throwing out Disintegrations left and right, I broke a curse on another PC by swapping places with her sword as a bit, and I ended up 1v1 one of the bosses while the party handled the other. At the end of the day everyone went home giddy with how much fun the session was, everyone except for the DM that is. For when we sat down for the next session he hit us with "I actually got too drunk last time and forgot about Legendary Resistances. I spent way too much time creating these monsters to have them go out like chumps, so we are just going redo last session". Everyone said okay and we began to run it back. That is when things fell apart for ol' Forgo. This time around, instead of hitting like a dump truck, Forgo's introduction hit like a wet fart due to him being the ONLY combat spell-caster. Every single one of my spells was met with a Legendary Resistance for 8 hours straight. 6 turns total against 2 bosses that died the turn after I was done burning their Legendary Resistances. After this session the trend of Forgo doing nothing but burn Legendary Resistances continued to the point that I started to target only the boss's minions, and when I did attack the bosses it would be with a lower level spell that the DM wouldn't use a Legendary Resistance to block. Unfortunately, the campaign fizzled out shortly after Forgo's arrival because the DM started a new adventure called fatherhood, which none of us fault him for, but part of me still feels bad that Forgo never managed to reclaim his big dawg energy again. Your honors, I understand that Legendary Resistances are a part of the game, but is it really all that fair to Retcon an entire session just because the DM forgot to use them? If it helps you decide the DM is my older brother. Also, do you have any suggestions on how to work around the problem of only 1 character of a party of 6 being able to burn Legendary Resistances? I suggested that they could be used to block home-brewed abilities that everyone had in the game, but we never reached a clear verdict.

To the magnificent judges and... bailiff? If he's here? I bring to you the case of "my players keep razzing me about level ups." If i am ever so slightly late to our online sessions (which includes basically me not being first into the call) my players yell that theyre level 69 in every class and subclass. They also ask me for level ups almost every session (they leveled up and fought one (1) monster of a slightly higher CR than them and they were like "we get a level up right we go from level 4 to level 5 right are we level 7 now omg we're totally level 10 we gotta be"). Do I have any recourse?

To the trusted and reverent justices Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and the … I bring you the case of the pregnancy scare. A few years ago I wanted to start a campaign loosely based on arcanum of steamworks and magic, a world set during an Industrial Revolution where magic exists, but magic breaks technology by breaking the laws of physics. So I decided to ask my friends if they wanted to play and they were ecstatic, so we scheduled a session 0. Unfortunately, when we were making characters my friend decided that they wanted to be pregnant. I wasn’t really fucking with the idea, but Wanting to be inclusive since they were a new players, I asked why. They said they just want to be pregnant, and they wanted to be having that child with another player, who just wanted to be a cool monk and also wasn’t really fucking with that idea. This started an hour long argument of me just trying to get her to come up with literally any other idea, but she wouldn’t budge. So I just kinda said yeah whatever, and let the campaign fizzle out. It never really came up again and I just let it fade into obscurity, but justices I need veneration. Am I crazy? Or should I have tried harder to try and make that campaign work? What could I have done? I await your legal absolution.

Judges, Jury and exeCUTEioner Jake, I throw the case of the random rug at your feet. A few years ago I was running a Ghost of Saltmarsh game for a group of long time friends. In the lead up to the climactic battle they recruited NPCs from nearby town. One of them was the a hedge wizard. Not wanting to run a full wizard NPC I told them the wizard could hold a summon spell and bring them a random creature in a moment of need but they knew from experience that this wizard was only pretty good at being a wizard. I had a random table built with an eldritch octopus , a brain golem, a mind flayer and a rug of smothering. At the moment of truth they rolled a 3 on the d4 and while it didn't max the roll out the players were clearly very pleased with the result. Here's the thing judges - I filled out the table at random. A 3 was the rug of smothering. For a battle that took place underwater. And it only had a speed of 10 ft. The clear worst option. It spent the whole battle closing the distance on one opponent. I have been a DM for a while now. Never have I had a table so palpably irritated with me as the moment I revealed to them that the table was truly a random order and not ranked. Judges, what is a random table if not random? Should I have taken the care to make sure the number on the die aligns with the quality of the result? I await your judgement under this shag thrown in the corner.

Dear esteemed honorable judges Huey, Duey, and Louie and that weird uncle bailiff that doesn't wear any pants. I give you the case of the Nat 20 PTSD I have been a DM for a group of 3+ years and after wrapping up my latest campaign, one of my players stepped up to the plate and chose to run a new homebrew campaign. Thus I created Brick Lazarus, a disgruntled old dwarf bloodhunter. He was a veteran in multiple wars and eventually went AWOL after he could no longer take the horrible atrocities his country was forcing upon him. With his trusty rifle, Bernice, he hid away until coming in contact with the party and beginning his grand adventure, hoping to regain some semblance of pride back. Fast forward to session 3 where our party has infiltrated a village looking for a certain item and Brick has ended up in the mines with one of the other party members. Lo and behold, they stumble across four children playing in the blocked off part of the shaft and what do they have in their hands? The very item the party is searching for. A tense back and forth with these kids has us rolling persuasion and intimidation checks to attempt to get this item from these kids but they are just not budging and hurling insults back at the two of us. My partner with me has a tendency to be a bit of a hothead in games and the DM knew he could push their buttons and it was pretty funny bantering. The other pc then calls to Brick “Fire a warning shot”. I oblige and I describe to the DM how Brick aims to the right of the child holding the item and fires into the wall. I rolled and got a Nat 20. I pumped my fist in joy only to be explained that I shot so well that my veteran instincts kicked in and I crit on the child, severing his arm from his body. Panic set as the children retrieved the item from their dead friend and ran away to alert the village. This… gets… worse. We hop into separate mine carts and now are chasing one another, attempting to retrieve the item and get out of dodge. I explain to the DM that I wish to shoot the brakes to their minecart to make it stop (and only the brakes!) of wish I shoot again and by dice christ himself, another nat 20, and another kid dead. At this point Brick and the other party members realized there was no going back from this and finished the job, leaving bits of animal fur and pieces to attempt to fake an animal mauling. We retrieved the item and never spoke of what happened in those mines to anyone else in the party. Now I admit that the way I played Brick was as a cooky ol timer that was trigger happy and slightly senile. But for a Nat 20 to alter my character's intentions so drastically seems unfair, especially when the results were so catastrophic. We have since moved past it and I still grief him about the results but I can't help but feel like it was the worst Nat 20 I have ever rolled in my 10+ career of rolling dice. Was it my fault

To the old but reliable justices, the newfangled guest justice, and the old, forgotten, derelict bailiff, I give to you the Case of the Stolen Joke. I play in an online D&D campaign in a homebrew setting in which I play an Illusionist Wizard Kobold. The rest of the party is a Tiefling Eloquence Bard, a Human Blood Hunter / Fighter multiclass, and the problem player in question a High Elf Devotion Paladin. It's pretty laid back and a great time usually. We were in the capital city doing a tournament and the Bard asks how long a turn in combat usually is. and the DM answered "six seconds." I responded in the expected way, saying "six seconds!" in the intonation of "Six seven". The Paladin was the only one that heard me, perhaps my microphone was too quiet, and was chuckling, and then repeated it because he thought it was funny, and this is where the problem comes in. The other players, including the DM all started laughing really hard. It was the joke of the night, everyone commenting how great of a joke it was. The DM even gave the joke thief Heroic Inspiration for such a good joke. Judges, I ask you, is this not illegal? It is stolen valor! I made the joke myself, and yet someone else gets the credit. I ask you, should I seek retribution? Is it not against the way of a Paladin to steal? Should I leave these friends forever and take legal action? Should I kowtow and let them get away with it, as the loudest individuals have the most power? I humbly accept whatever punishment may be sent my way. (PS. In truth, me and the "joke thief" both thought it was incredibly funny that he got Heroic Inspiration for the joke, truly one of my favorite moments of the whole campaign, it was hilarious. We told everyone the funny situation and all got a good chuckle, we're all good.)

To the honorable judges who are easily the fastest in my class, and the Bailiff Jake -- if they're being mean to you, you just let me know, okay buddy? I've played in an online Discord campaign for about 4 years with my friends who moved all over the world. It has been wonderful, time zones notwithstanding, and the DM has lovingly crafted a story consisting of twelve realms in a multiverse that we travel through one by one. A year or so ago, our party of 6 level 7 characters had reached the final boss of our Underworld adventure - the goddess of Death, a child who was acting out against the magnanimous Raven Queen. Death mostly observed the battlefield, as we tried to convince her to free the souls she had taken for herself while tangling with a Warsworn. In the very first round of combat, we rolled three failed persuasion checks. Death threw a temper tantrum and cast a homebrew spell, "Ashes to Ashes," which dealt approximately 150 fire damage to every PC, disintegrating us when we reached zero hit points. The next session, the Raven Queen came out, calmed Death, and revived the party, in a cutscene moment that was preplanned and served only to characterize the NPCs. The energy at the table was pretty low for all of this, and the wind was knocked out of the whole adventure. Judges, should failed persuasion checks result in an instant and preplanned TPK, or should narrative combat not end so abruptly? P.S. Me and another party member wrote and recorded an in-character parody of Boulevard of Broken Dreams that my goblin bard, Zog Bognog, played when everyone was dead, so we all still had a good time.

Greetings to all esteemed justices, and a hearty wassup to my lowly homie, Jork. This case begins with a member of our party dangling from an airship, needing rescue, while the rest of us were on the ground. The party quickly determined who could fly up to help. Without any way to fly, my wife and I were forced to keep our characters on the ground, and too far away to assist. The other four party members, however, flew up to rescue our ally and confront an NPC who later proved to be a major villain. (One other PC was secretly a dragon, but that is a story for another time). During this encounter, one of the characters on the airship threw a corpse overboard. With this, the DM instructed me to roll a Dexterity saving throw. When I asked why, I was told I had been struck by the falling corpse and, due to the height, would take maximum falling damage. Despite objections that the airship had been moving away from our position for a while, the ruling stood. I failed the save and took the damage. This resulted in my level 3 character taking double their max health, resulting in their death. This incident continues to be brought up as a joke at the table years later. I ask the court: am I wrong for being upset by how this was handled, or should I be more open to the humor of the situation? I humbly await your judgement.

To the most delicious Supreme crit justices and the bailiff, Jack Turtwiq, I present the case of the Unwanted Unplanned TORTURE. At this point I was DMing for around 5 months (1 year now this month!) And I let my party to a metal gear like stealth mission to burn down a guard outpost so they can get information on the king. They proceed to kill everyone. Even an old man who's retirement was the next day. Except... they didn't kill a private who joined the force a week ago. They put the immovable rod to his neck on the floor so he couldn't move, and asked him questions. I asked them to roll and they rolled well, so the private told them that he JUST joined the army and didn't know much information (they killed the guy who did). Justices, i had to narrate and roleplay him getting all his fingernails ripped off, then healed again, and ripped off again for 10 minutes. I was so uncomfortable the entire time. They kept healing him so I couldn't just say he died! Justices... are my players sadistic, or is it just part of my DM duty to narrate how an npc is in chronic pain. How can I ensure for the future that this will NEVER happen again. I await your judgement.

To the croissantly justices and bailiff Cake Horwitz, I bring you case of the Lackadaisical Level-Up. I have been DMing various groups online for 5 years now and have been yearning to get an in-person game together to get that classic D&D experience. I've finally wrangled 4 friends to play. They are all fairly new to D&D but are avid gamers and genuinely seem excited to play, even investing in dice and leather bound note books. My issue is that two players seems to be struggling with the manual nature of D&D when it comes to leveling up compared to the video games they are used to playing. They were supposed to move up to level 2 a few sessions ago but haven't leveled up their characters. I have sent them resources, including online tools and even offered to level them up myself. Before each game they say they will finish leveling up but when they arrive they are still level 1. I offer to help them up before we start but they say not to worry about it and they will just do it before our next game. In the last game they got enough experience to reach level 3 right before this arch's mini BBEG fight. I'm wondering how to plan for the BBEG fight. Also, I get the feeling it bothers the other two players who come prepared, enthusiastic and want to enjoy the game with a properly levelled party. I beg the justices for their wisdom and will humbly accept the blame and punishment if I have let down this party. P.S. to be transparent and fair one of the lackadaisical players is a real life bailiff and has to deal with a lot of lackadaisical judges.

To the Judges and Jakes: My group is currently playing Strahd. At the end of the Death House adventure we had to jump out a window, maybe 30' high. One player who was seriously wounded and probably wouldn't survive the fall decided to use his ring of petrification, believing that a statue had a better chance of survival. It didn't, and he shattered on impact. Two of the PCs thought he should survive, while several others sided with the DM. What say you, oh Judges? P.S. when we took the ring off the PC essentially turned into ground beef.

To the lavender-scented judges and the stinky bailiff Jonk. I bring forth the case of the illiterate pseudodragon: My pact of the chain warlock and party were in a trial that involved stealing an egg guarded by a dragon and her magical wards. For my turn, I had my lovely pseudodragon familiar (who can understand common and draconic) fly to the egg and read the draconic glyphs guarding it, then translate the details to me via our telepathic bond. My dm ruled that my familiar can’t read because “although it understands draconic, it cannot speak”. In the pseudodragon stat block it says that it “understands common and draconic but cannot speak”. I lost the argument but have since stayed salty. Judges, am I wrong to be offended on behalf of my son who is a very smart and special boy?! I prostrate myself before your 80 foot tall bench.

To the right and honorable judges Axford, Tanner and Murphy…. (almost imperceptible nod to Jake) I bring to you the case of the retconned revivification. This was in the last act of a year long campaign where the big bad ambushed a beloved npc’s wedding. Many precious npcs died, notably, our paladin’s adoptive son, and the fighter’s lover. As our bard had only one revivify, our DM prompted a cinematic moment where the bard had to make the sole decision as to who got revived. The paladins son was revived in a relieving yet bitter moment. That is until ten minutes later where our DM realized the diamonds we had bought the session prior were fake due to failed deception/persuasion rolls by our bard. (bbeg was in control of the shops in the town) He then rolled back the scene this time describing the failed magic as the material components were not met. We let it slide as a table, as our DM is devoted and mostly fair, however, was it reasonable to retcon after the scene was so far over? Was the emotional whiplash worth one trick unknowingly pulled on us a session ago? I await your judgement.

May it please the Bountiful Bishops of Dice Christ and also Junior Choir Boy Jake; I am a man cursed by some sort of Dice Demon, and I need a blessing from Dice Christ to save my eternal dice soul (and also my dice rolls). I am known in my wider gaming group for having some incredibly unlucky rolls; in a recent session, I rolled 3 nat 1s in 5 rolls (4 attacks, and 1 desperate test of a new die). I have tried multiple methods to fix this; I have rolled on DND beyond, discord, and with multiple sets of dice, some of which I made myself. I even fostered some dice with a fellow player in an attempt to purify them. None of these attempts worked. In fact, the fostered die immediately betrayed me with a nat 1 the first roll back. The nat ones are usually very funny, but I'd like to succeed at least sometimes. I beg of you, save me from this curse so I can actually accomplish something in my games.

To the pompous bourgeoisie justices and the proletariat bailiff, I present you a case of vampiric nature. I recently started a curse of Strahd campaign where the DM allowed us to pick Homebrew races and classes with their permission. I chose a curse based sorcerer class where I had advantage against getting cursed. Another player, fake name Daniel, played a revenant that was immune to ALL disease. In the campaign, when we both got bit by vampires, the DM said that vampirism was an illness, not a curse, and I was turned without having advantage on my roll while Danial was immune to the bite. Am I wrong to think I’d at least have some resistance to a vampires bite or am I just a blood sucking sucker. (Ps. Being a vampire was very fun and cool and I had advantage against getting lycanthropy which was apparently a curse)

Hi judges! Hi Jork! I recently joined a campaign that has been running for 2+ years. Everyone has been extremely welcoming, and they have been eager to tell me all about the world they made and send me many many many many lore documents so I can catch up. Despite all this (or maybe because of it?) I have really been struggling to immerse myself in the world and match everyone else's effort and care. I like playing DND with them! And I really appreciate how welcoming they've been to both me and my character. But I'm easily fatigued by the overarching lore and tend to zone out in outside-of-game conversations when everyone starts talking about how awesome the campaign is. I fear terribly that I'm harshing the vibe by being the only one who doesn't show interest in the family lineage of a beloved NPC or the tense relationships between the different nations and powers in the DM's world. Should I be sentenced to catch up on the lore? Should I be disbarred from the campaign? Or is the DM in the wrong for expecting this level of commitment and world knowledge from the guy playing the 6 int barbarian? Will accept any sentencing with grace and not rage about it even a little bit.

To the most honorable justices and their sultry little boy toy Jake with the Cake, I bring forth the case of the afflicted appendage. I joined the party as my now-second character, a Paladin, joining a barbarian, an artificer, and a bard. As we approached town, our party was attacked by wolves. The barbarian and I quickly stepped in to take the brunt of the attacks, but I rolled low on initiative. The wolf takes its bite attack, and our DM flavored it as the wolf “going for my crotch” and “latching on to my dick.” Everyone chuckled so lightly, and then when it came time for my turn, I killed the wolf, in return jokingly adding the flavor of beheading it to keep as a trophy. The DM said, “no no, it’s jaws were latched on, you’ll have to wait to pry it off.” Confused but rolling with it, since it didn’t have any ill effects, we finished the battle and then the artificer helped to remove the wolf’s head and I cast Lay on Hands on myself. The DM then insisted that while my hit points were restored, my unfortunate appendage was maimed and could not be healed magically, and I’d have to see a doctor in town. I argued back, saying that surely the heavy plate armor would have a codpiece of some sort of protection? This went back and forth for a few minutes, the other players also chiming in to say this was ridiculous. It wasn’t until we said “do you really want us to spend in-game days or weeks of downtime here, having reconstructive surgery on a penis?” that the DM decided I should roll a “maiming check.” I failed, but it was conceded I would just need “one visit to the town doctor.” Judges, I ask: am I wrong to think my character shouldn’t be physically maimed at level 3 for an offhand flavor add-in?

To the dearly beloved gathered here today and that guy who snuck in for free cake... I DMed a campaign which was a blend of DnD rules and A Court of Fae and Flowers. The story was set in the Regency era, and I had an epic idea that the three PCs (all sisters in game: fighter, rogue, bard respectively) were secretly of a magical bloodline. I won't bore the court with details, but it's important to note that I had planned to reveal that there was magic at the end of season one of the campaign. However, I underestimated the lure of the mystery surrounding the magical serial killer in play. My PCs were plot hounds and the magic twist ended up coming out earlier than expected... but to my disappointment, it upset the Fighter. When it came to light, the Fighter grew uncharacteristically quiet, then expressed disapproval later (away from table). They said that they should have been warned that the world had magic before the campaign, which they pictured as involving more social intrigue/romance and less crunchy DnD. I argued at the time that the surprise of the plot would have been ruined if I told them upfront; the surprise reveal was necessary. But now I am wondering... should I take a tiny L? I leave this ruling in your capable hands. PS. The other players enjoyed the magic reveal and were fine with the pivot. The Fighter came back around so all is well now.

Oh praise be Dice Christ and bless thee emmaculate clerics and the altar boy who is….well I mean he’s there so that must count for something. I have a confession that has been weighing heavy on my soul for 5 years. When I played dnd with a group that were friends with my roommate at the time, I was an inexperienced player who only played video games and thus, warped my mind as to what a PC was. I was stricken with a horrible case of M.C.S, or Main Character Syndrome. I made my characters as holier than thou and always wanted to draw the attention onto my character because I thought they were the coolest and the most important and I definitely ruined campaigns and soured moods. I am no longer friends with my roommate or their group because they are genuinely horrible people and since then I have learned my lesson and tried to make my characters as far from the main character as possible, but that doesn’t excuse my sins against Dice Christ and I pray that in all Their rolling benevolence I may be cleansed of my filth and be born again clean and pure.

Praying for Sungwon to star in a 5e/TTRPG one-shot

Noble Justices and Jeek, I humbly present you with the case of the bard who was too in character. A few years ago in college I made a new friend who wanted to start DMing a campaign for her friends and she invited me to join. Several of the players were new to DND but the DM and I were not. There was one new player in particular, let’s call him Kyle, that everyone else at the table knew, but I had never met. Kyle was a music major and wanted to play a bard. He wanted to be charismatic, powerful, and have a dark past. Unfortunately, when we started playing, he only seemed to be interested in participating when he could romance female npcs, and frequently forgot major details of his backstory. He was somewhat attentive during role play but completely checked out during combat. I sat next to him to offer help with spells and navigating DND beyond when he needed it, so I could see that he spent most of the sessions designing his buff bard (with 10 strength) on hero forge. During one combat session, Kyle actually left the table and sat on the couch playing the guitar when it wasn’t his turn. As you can imagine this was disruptive, and I felt bad for our DM who did a lot of prep for each session. When we asked him to come back to the table, he brought the guitar with him and continued playing. Again, this was distracting. He did after a few months learn better table etiquette, and we had a lot of fun sessions, but to this day he proclaims that I “used to hate him” because he was new to DND. Judges, I ask you, was it wrong of me to be frustrated with Kyle’s behavior, or should I give more grace to a new player?

Good afternoon to the freshly dry cleaned justices and the wrinkly Bailiff Ekaj. I bring before you the case of the of screen training arc. A few years ago I was Dming for some of my friends and very early in the campaign they adopted an NPC who was working a shitty retail job. They did put in the effort during downtime to train him with a sword so I gave him levels in fighter (always 2-3 levels below their own). Eventually as we neared the end of the campaign I figured I would need to buff their NPC buddy for the final battle, but since the players had no time to train him more i decided to have him get injured while saving a critical NPC, and tell the party he’d catch up with them later. I had planned to have him show up to turn the tides of a tense battle but ever since my players asked me every session when their favorite sad boy will be returned to them. Justices, should I just have this NPC show back up seemingly out of nowhere to appease my friends or is it better to make my players wait for the “right moment”. I await your decision with 0 humility or humbleness

To the esteemed Justices including the honorary SungWon, Branson, Beth and Danielle...and erm the other dude...Josh I think it is? I bring you the case of no resurrection for robots. I played an Autognome Battlesmith Artificer in a West March Style Campaign where each session was deadly by design and so often at least one or more party member would go down and occasionally one would die. This particular session my character was victim to this as a result of poor constitution saves and some nasty damage rolls from an Echo worm and minions. If you don't know this monster, it's because it's homebrew. Designed specifically to attack those who use verbal components aka Spellcasters and steal their voicebox. Now I didn't debate my construct having a voicebox as they can speak. When my construct did die however, the necromancy wizard had a Valda's spell called Lazarus Bolt to revive me. The DM said this wouldn't work as autognomes don't have hearts. I argued my backstory was a gnome converted to autognome through an experiment gone wrong. He still said no. I accepted the decision. The real issue came afterwards when the party wanted to bring my character back as did I and the DM opened up the option of raise the dead. This required a hefty payment (all the sessions loot plus more) plus the aid of characters in the campaign but not the session. This took a lot of management my end, mainly because the deadline was set for three days time. I work full time, as do most players hence the West March Campaign. When we finally worked out who knew what to conduct Raise the Dead and the payment the DM complained this took up two full days. I said, well there is a time limit. And that's when the DM decided to not only not ressurect my character but kick me out of the campaign. Was I in the wrong for wanting my autognome artificer and steel defender clank back? Especially in a campaign I pay to play and have invested my precious time off to attend? Or is the DM right in his decisions over construct anatomy and muddling funds? I bow to your great judgement and I look forward to seeing you in London this Autumn!

To the handsome and benevolent Justice Murphy and the others that are permitted to share his space, I bring you the case of the reanimated ward. My group has been playing a Pathfinder game run by my cousin themed around Monster Hunter. One of our players has been planning on dropping his character, a noble my character was sent to protect. The DM had no issue with him swapping out his character at town or something. However, the inventor in our party wanted to retool his character also. This became an issue when the "retool" was killing off the noble PC and turning his corpse into an undead servant. Not to be the "my character wouldn't do X" thing, but it feels hard to roleplay around my ward being murdered and zombified. Should we just let it play out or would it make sense to just also abandon the character I made?

not a case but I just had someone submit an AI generated backstory, help??? it’s a friend of a friend, and now I am dreading

Dear sweet justices and that cutie balif Jack. “My group was starting a new campaign and my dm nerfed me before we could even start. I rolled amazing stats, with him there to witness, he came to my house just so I could roll. And then when my roll was too good he decided to change it to standard array. 10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18 Was my roll, I was already planning all the feats I was gonna take, but then a week before we start playing I'm told that I have to change to 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 That's 16 less stats now I have to take ASIs to get my character to be able to even hit the enemies and all the fun feats I was gonna take are outside of my reach in any way. Is this fair? I feel cheated” That was what my player Said when I asked him his side on our disagreement. These rolling of stats was for our second campaign. The first campaign he Also rolled amazing stats. The dice gods must love him. The other players who doesnt nearly role as good, not so much. We started the second campaign level 0 with child pc’s, but he actually first joined the second campaign 5 sessions into campaign, when the Crew became adult and level 1. Me and the other player talked about doing it standard array, and They were okay with it. But when he joined he became sad that he couldnt use his good roles. He has rassed me ever since. So should I let my player get his OP stats, or must he settle for being as average as every other player? I Will leave it in your hands justices.

To the esteemed Justices of the Supreme Crit, and the great or terrible bailiff, depending on how we're feeling about him today (or, if the bailiff is Emily, the wonderful bailiff as she is always amazing). May I present the Case of the Retroactive Shield spell. My party at the time was me, a redemption paladin, a shadow monk, and a bard/sorcerer multiclass. We were on a mission to rescue some abducted kids, and were in a flight that we were planning to run from once we had them. The evil wizard cast fly to try and get away, but our monk used shenanigans to catch up to the wizard and grab hold of his foot. They were about 120 ft in the air. The monk's turn was done and we moved on to mine. I had started to explain what I was going to do when the monk's player made a comment that he was lucky the wizard hadn't cast shield. At this our DM perked up and told me to wait because he "wasn't used to playing caters." He went back to the monk's turn and cast shield, which meant that the monk missed his grapple check that he had done to grab the wizard and he fell from 120 ft up. The fall damage was enough to drop him, and I had to change my entire plan so that I could get him back up. Ultimately we did rescue the kids (although one lost a foot) and got away safely, but the retroactive shield left a bad taste in my mouth, and that damn wizard continues to be a problem. Judges, I ask you, was our DM within his rights to rewind the encounter so that the evil wizard could cast shield, or should he have taken the "l" and let the encounter move forward as it was already progressing? I humbly await your exaulted decision. -Paladin in a predicament from Alaska

To the Supreme Crit Justices Tanner, Axford, and Murphy and the lowly lowly Baliff Ake-jay I present The case of the Resurrection Class Change. Years ago, heck nearly 2 decades ago I played in a Homebrew 3.5e campaign with my friends at our Summer Camp. We had 1 DM Larry who graciously DM'd our table of 5 AND another of 6 during rainy days. My first real experience w/D&D without a module. The world he crafted was an Iseikai (transported to another world) where we made characters based off of ourselves. Very Narnia, very Through the Looking Glass less anime. I had a blast. After a Summer long campaign during the finale both tables combined. Our table of mostly heroes and a "death is on the table" bunch of edgelords. We joined forces to defeat the BBEG we both were traveling to vanquish. Judges the moment the BBEG fell you know exactly what happened next. The tables broke out into all out PVP as a way to send off the characters. I immediately was targeted by my friends little brother and his goons. Judges my DM did his best to balance initiative by alternating tables and not using pure initiative. But I was felled in a single turn. On my turn proper I rolled a nat 1 death save. I was trembling because the Power Gamer table was killing the younger kids off who were just happy to play. Each kid crying as they described "banishing" them. So with our Barbarian, myself a Rogue and my buddy the Paladin we were outmanned and outgunned. Larry made a call to let me roll my Death Save at the top of the order. I roll a Nat 20. He pauses and calls for the Paladin to make a Religion Check. He rolls a Nat 20. He offered to revive me on the spot and change my class for this final encounter. I'd become a Paladin. I accepted. It turned the tide so quickly as we began back to back Smiting. It was amazing. The other table raged. Saying it was cheating. And not in the rules! Judges I was happy to avenge my fallen homies but the razzing of getting special treatment didn't end until we graduated. Did I make the wrong choice and should've accepted my L or did Dice Christ shine his Divine Advantage on this PVP? I humbly await your ruling

Justices of the supreme crit and honorable defenders of the dice gods, Murph, Axford, and Tanner, oh and also no one in particular. I have a confession to make. I find it egregious and it has torn my soul for quite a few months now. I started a new dnd party with some neighbors, we all live within the same block. I am the DM of a party of six, two of the players have never played before. I had an encounter on the first session to get them used to combat. I had them fight some measly skeletons. I had some extra skeletons also prepared for backup just in case they dealt with the first group quickly, which they did. However when the second group of enemies appeared the group began to roll poorly and they got several of them low on health one of which was a brand new player. Then a I rolled a nat 20 to hit this new player. Judges it knocked him down to zero and on his first death save he rolled a nat 1. Another round went by without any of the other players being near him and on his turn he rolled low killing his first character ever on session one of the first game he ever played. He laughed when it happened and said he had a blast playing and was excited to play a new character (best case scenario i know). However I cant help but feel responsible for this new players death by adding maybe too many skeletons to the fight. Judges am I guilty for killing off a new PC or is it possible to let this weight go? I bow myself before the court and beneath dice Christ's feet. P.S. His character was a ranger named Sal Monella. He now plays a path of the zealot Goliath barbarian and he is loving the new character.

to my favorite crit justices and my favorite baliff, big mike, i bring the case of the nemisis switcheroo. A few years ago I took part in a boss rush style campaign, where our characters (antihero henchmen) would be tasked with taking out their own evil bosses together. I played a very cool pro wrestler build that was 5 levels of barbarian and 5 levels of rogue, where I would use profeciency in grapple checks and reckless attack to force sneak attack whenever I wanted. My boss was the retired wrestling world champion, now manager. when it came time for me to confront my boss in the middle of the wrestling arena, i was suprised to see that when he began to fight, he split into two seperate earth djinn. Justices, I had known my boss for my entire adult life as my character and my entire wrestling career. I had no idea he was actually two earth djinn in disguise over my 15 years of working for him in my backstory the djinn proceeded to poison me with a poison sword for 10 minutes, preventing me from using sneak attack, since the poison imposed disadvantage on attacks. I was womped! I had to wait for my team to kill MY boss while my build did almost nothing. did I deserve a suprise boss that happened to counter my exact character build, or was my expectation of a no holds barred grapple fest too presumptuous? ps., the dm has a wife and a 5 year old child so dont kill him or anything

BRANSON REESE LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Hello, this isn't a court case but my DND group is debating which positions Murphy and Ify play in hockey and would love to resolve the conflict tearing our group apart 😊

S/O Branson Reese and Rude Tales of Magic, truly one of the most energetic, funny, chaotic DMs I’ve ever listened to

To the esteemed judges, incredible guests, and exploder of mini paints (Jake)! I don't want to play ttrpg with class traitors! Had a session zero of Draw Steel with some of my dm's friends and one of them offered to """""make"""" everyone character"""""""art""""""" using AI I said I didn't want to waste water and electricity on a hobby I actually like doing He also asked to record the session which is apparently normal for that guy because he has a bad memory. But I don't want to participate while being recorded by some asshole who's probably going to feed everything I say to an LLM later. Justices, do I message the whole group on why I don't want to play or should I just DM my friend who is DMing? As an artist and a writer I can't stand the use of generative AI

To whom it may concern and Jake. I bring to you the case of the fraudulent dynamite. My party and I- fueled by vengeance, planned a raid on a militia camp surrounded by a large wooden palisade (big spiky log fence). I procured a demolitions expert who told us he would blow a hole in the wall allowing us entry to the palisade, all was well, he was entitled to a share of the loot, and my bard even got a signed guitar out of the deal. Later another party member figured out a way for us all to sneak through the front gate in a wagon. No longer needing to blow a hole in the wall, I suggested we load the wagon up with dynamite and blow up something important, inside the palisade. The dm reluctantly agreed to this plan. Fast forward to the raid. We didn’t all blow up in the wagon, and I used my sword flourish to push a bad guy fifteen feet so he falls inside the dynamite filled wagon. I was overjoyed- I say a one liner that was not funny, but somewhat clever, and hit the detonator to end my turn. The dm rolls damage for the bad guy trapped inside the exploding wagon. Justices, 14. I did 16 damage just pushing him into the wagon. He wasn’t even bloodied. There was a door in an earlier session with a damage threshold of 15. The whole table razzed the dm, but I’m still bitter, and the razzing was third rate at best. Justices, does the demolitions expert still deserve his share of the loot? P.S. my bard isn’t even proficient with a guitar

goated guest list

To the High Council of Honorable Judges, and the guy who I guess will read this to you. I bring you the case of ‘The Over-Attached Warlock.’ I was running a fantasy noir campaign surrounding a group of private detectives. The Party learned of an NPC who had vital information on a case they were working. The NPC, however, had lost her memory and the Party needed to make a deal with a mind flayer to retrieve the lost memories while also holding back hitmen who wanted to make sure what she knew never saw the light of day. In the last round of combat, one mercenary remained with just 2 HP. The Party had just moved away from the NPC, so the mercenary ran past them towards his target. He only provoked opportunity of attack from one PC, the Warlock of the Party. I asked if she wanted to use her reaction to attack the hitman with her dagger, she said she never said she drew it. I offered to let her have done that retroactively so she could get the attack off, she refused as she didn’t want it drawn. The hitman, uncontested, then walked over, rolled his attacks, and killed the NPC they were defending with a critical hit. The Warlock (who was a pact of the celestial) tried to revivify the NPC right after the fight but didn’t have the diamond required. I had specifically asked the Party just before this session if they wanted to buy a diamond for the purpose of revivify, and they said no despite knowing I was strict about the spell components of resurrection spells. The Warlock then started crying uncontrollably. She started saying things like “She was my friend” and “She trusted me.” Judges, the NPC had one, maybe two, lines of serious dialog, she was with the Party for an hour before the fight, so I was confused why she was so attached to the NPC. It was so bad I had to end the session early. The Warlock’s boyfriend later threatened me for making her cry. So, judges, I ask; should I have done something different? Should I have made the hitman not rush his target? Or let the Warlock ignore the spell components of revivify for the sake of fun? Or was I right to have the consequences match the stakes I set up?

Dear judges and their +1, I come to you with a case that happened years ago. I was starting a new game for Pathfinder First edition and was excited to DM for my Fiance's first TTRPG. I also invited our friend, let's call him Nigel, to play and he asked if he could have his girlfriend, let's call her Lois, play with us. I was hesitant since I didn't like her, for reasons I don't completely remember, but agreed knowing it would make him happy. Cut to the first session starting right around the corner and my fiance tells me of an argument Nigel and Lois had about the game. She wanted to be a Catfolk who could fly but Nigel told her it was impossible because none of the playable races had both wings and cat features. Judges, I knew how to help with this issue. In Pathfinder First edition they have a whole book on how to make your own custom race and keep it balanced with the already existing races, so I could've helped her make a cat race with wings but I didn't. Was I a coward for not sticking up for one of my players, was I right to avoid having someone able to fly at level 1, was it ok to stay out of a lover's quarell? These are the questions I deem I should be judged on. PS That campaign only lasted 1 session because I believe the 2 of them broke up shortly after, I was able to restart the campaign with Nigel, my Fiance and 3 other friends and it was a blast for 6 months. Nigel and Lois would continue to be on again off again in their relationship for almost 2 years

To the respected judges and the bay-leaf Hurwitz. I DMed my first campaign a few years ago and I absolutely loved it. I learned a ton along the way and experimented with theater of the mind (Murph, you’re a legend). Ever since then, the players have had kids, and I now have a daughter of my own who is 4 months old! I feel this longing that I need to “get the band back together” and try to DM, but with a baby and trying to schedule everyone seems so daunting. Shall I answer the call and reach out to the players for what could be an epic saga? Or shall I continue in purgatory wondering what could be? I await your ruling and thank you for your discernment.

May it please the court, its divine judges, and the bedeviled balif. I come before the crit for a ruling on whether PVP is allowed if it saves another PC’s life. One of my players invited me to join in a game he was starting and I,as a forever dm, jumped at the chance. We ran the game more mission based rather than a single large overarching story, which allowed us to run basically a bunch of short stories in different locations. The big bad for this mission was an evil wizard who sent a group of guards to hold us off while she went to find an artifact. While she was leaving the evil wizard cast a spell on our Assassin rogue which put a flaming crown of razor wire over his head. I (a divination wizard who ran an illegal casino) knew this was probably crown of madness, but didn’t want to metagame and let the others know without checking first. Through pure luck I was first in the initiative, and asked the dm if I could roll arcana. He allowed it, I rolled high, and was told that this was not only a crown of maddness but one that would cause any attack made while under its effects to add an extra 4D6 to the attack, but instead of being on one person continuously it bounced around to anyone in the fight, including enemies. Our Assassin was now a ticking time bomb and he was standing right next to our cleric. As I was only level 4 I didn’t have dispel magic, and so I decided to cast hold person on the assassin. I used one of my portent rolls to force him to fail, and watched his face fall. While not a brand new player he had only started playing with this group and we were only about 8-10 sessions in at the time. He enjoyed doing big damage so I could tell he wanted to use the empowered strikes. But I didn’t want to take the risk of him potentially killing the cleric. On his turn he dejectedly said “I guess I do nothing” and I released the hold person on my next turn when the crown had disappeared. After that fight I had the idea of stocking crown of madness to try and get in the way of the enemies spell next time it happened, but it never came up again and I fear I may have dampened the mood for the rogue, and possibly the dm as I may have scared him off of using the spell again. I appoligized above the table and the rogue said he was ok with it, but I still feel bad. Was I in the right for taking away this players turn in the attempt to save another’s life?

holy shit this is what we train for naddpoles!!!

To the Supreme Crit and Bailiff Jake (or add something mean if that's what we're doing this time): I present a case of questionable NPC (former PC) death. Okay here it is: We have a 2014 5e campaign in which we are thieves attempting to infiltrate the Strixhaven campus to steal an item. We took on aliases as a way to infiltrate the college without raising any suspicion and also had an NPC advocating for us as a "notable alumni" of the university. This NPC, named Jason, was a favorite of the party and a legendary dragon slayer. Jason was ALSO the first DND character I have ever played, as I did not have a character sheet when I joined this campaign, and I have since developed my own, which added more to the sentimental attachment to the character. Another player joined our campaign during this session, coming off as a bright eyed and bushy tailed student entering their first year of college. At the end of the session, however, when we all parted ways for the night, this new player went off with Jason. They stopped to watch the sun set on the main bridge on campus. As they did so, this player used Puppet (from UA),to make Jason walk off the side of the bridge, thus killing himself. The DM did roll a save, but I know Jason’s stats. Unless he got less than a 5, I don’t think Jason could’ve failed. Judges, I ask you, was it fair for the DM to allow this to happen, when there's no way Jason could have failed this roll with the stats I know he has? (Thank you for your wisdom)

To the timeless and classy judges and the single-use plastic John: I bring you the case of the unprepared character. After a few years’ hiatus from TTRPGs, I was invited by my close friend to join the online Daggerheart game she was starting. Many of the players had played together before, I was new to the group. I asked my friend if session 0 was where we'd be pitching character ideas and building them together, she said yes. I saw some players talking about characters they were crafting, but assumed they were just very attached to their ideas, and was happy to make a character that fit the group well. When I joined the call for session 0, everyone had fully built out characters with detailed backstories! My friend kept asking me what my character’s name was, I was still confused and said I typically choose that once I get a better understanding of who my character was, but then the rest of the players joined in and kept insisting I choose a name. I went with my most fleshed out character, picked a name from a name at random and tried to go with the flow. After everyone introduced their character - including some very detailed backstories - we spent a few minutes connecting our characters with one another. Then, imagine my surprise when, instead of discussing campaign themes and gameplay style as I'd expected, we just started roleplaying. And soon after that, my friend starts an encounter! I obviously did not have a character sheet. I missed most of the lore dump because I was rapidly filling out a sheet, and could barely contribute to the fight. After the game, I very lightly and jokingly pointed out that I had asked whether I needed a full character before session 0 or if we'd be making them together. My friend basically responded “well you did make a character? I don’t see the problem.” I talked to her one on one afterwards about how thrown I was, and she still said she didn’t think it was that big of a deal, though said she was sorry for assuming I had a character sheet made ahead of time. Judges, am I being a big baby over this session 0 not being what I thought it was? Or did my GM fuck up by not preparing me properly?

Swanboy is so good! Also fuck yes Beth May!

Greetings to the beautiful baliff Jork and the pretty good judges Axford, Tanner, and I want say.... Murph? No that can't be right. I also bow to any visiting judges who are deserving of much praise. I bring you all the case of maddening mind control. I was playing in a slightly homebrew Tomb of Annihilation campaign over discord with people I had met only online. I had previously played through the lost mines of phandelver with this DM and another of the players. So far things had generally been good. Occasionally I (in and out of character) had made choices that the DM had to shut down to keep us on the tracks, such as trying to continue to fight when the DM was trying to capture the party (the other players had given up at this point, I did not realize until after that we were being forced into a loss to continue the story). I say this because I made another choice that either got me kicked out or ended the campaign but I still feel was the correct move given the context I had. Near the end of the campaign in the final dungeon, one member of our party who had been forced into a deal with the bbeg got mind controlled and became a boss fight for us. After we won, the DM described him coming to his senses and everyone else wanted to continue into the dungeon. I (and my character) could see no logical way to continue to the bbeg fight with a party member who is clearly susceptible to mind control, and said (in character) I wouldn't continue if he was with us. After a little in character arguing the session ended. At some point before the next session though, the discord server disappeared from my list without a word. I never got a single message about why. I don't know if I was kicked, if the campaign fizzled, or what. But I ask the court, should I have ignored the obvious danger and let things take their course? Did the DM create an unsolvable problem by mind controlling a character and giving us no reason to believe it couldn't happen again? Am I super in the wrong and can't see it? I lay at the mercy of the court.

To the most Holy of Holies and Roll-y of Rollies, I plead for your forgiveness. Several years ago, my friends and I got together for what was supposed to be a simple holiday one-shot and hang. Our party consisted of a fighter, a paladin, and my character, a ranger. Our DM set us at level 5 with one magic item of our choice. I obviously chose the marble elephant figurine, allowing me to summon an elephant opa Moonshine style. The session proceeded as expected, drinks were flowing, and everyone was having a good time. The final encounter against a Santa corrupted by a black iron crown ended with our party victorious and the session nearly over. Your eminences, my drunk ass wasn’t ready to stop. In my inebriated state, I came up with a backstory that gave me a personal reason to take the crown from the dead Santa. The DM understandably gave me the “are you sure?” before handing me the statblock for the crown. What proceeded was the realization that I could “win DnD”, leading me to kill the paladin first. My elephant trampled his downed body while I flew out of range of the fighter to “win DnD”. Divine court, this was my first and last experience in DnD PVP. I have done what I can to repent. I have become the primary DM for our friend group. I teach a DnD social skills class for middle schoolers that helps prevent problems like the ones I have caused in my past. I may not be worthy of forgiveness, but I implore you to at least bless the paladin, as he was recently married and he rolled a 2 on a d20 just minutes before the ceremony.

Most Judicious, Just Justices and Jacob Hurwitz (Pronounced Yahkoob Hoorweetz, in a vaguely Dutch or Norwegian accent), I humbly present to you the case of “The Pulled Thumb”. I had been DM’ing a campaign where the party has been in a train race, conducting a big honker across the world. While investigating a floating island in the sky, some of the players failed some saving throws and began to experience momentary glimpses of alternate lives that their characters could have gone down prior to the campaign’s start. One character in particular, Ernie, a plucky street urchin girl who reads the train-centric mag Playtrain, experienced a vision of her getting caught stealing food and the authorities taking her thumb for it. Fast forward to a boss fight later, still on the island, where the party was fighting against a mysterious woman who harnessed some of this temporal magic that was causing these visions. The woman casted Dominate Person on Ernie, causing her to relive the vision of her thumb getting cut off after failing her saving throw, and told Ernie to “get revenge”. I described how Ernie, under the dominate person effect, saw one of her allies as the person who cut it off, intending for the player to attack their ally. Instead, Ernie went up to the ally and pulled his thumb, trying to “take it” like her thumb was taken. I told the player that the intention was to attack their ally. They argued that attacking was against the way that their character would interpret those specific words. I mentioned that even if that’s how their character might act normally, they’re under a spell that would cause them to act outside of their normal behavior. I relented quickly though, preferring to keep the battle going rather than get in the semantics of what revenge is. Also, it’s a pretty funny interpretation and I’m a sucker for some goofs. While I think it was rather inconsequential, I do sometimes lie awake at night, considering, maybe, that my thumb was the one that got pulled. I ask you justices, am I a terrible DM who hates roleplaying players? Or did my player, who eventually commanded an army of rat mechs in the same campaign, get one over on me? I will accept whatever punishment is currently en-vogue for this episode or, if justice leans as such, I ask leniency on my player, who always brings excitement and engagement to the table. Thank you all, including you Jacob, for your time.

To the lovely judges, lovlier guest judges, and loveliest bailiff, i present to you the case of the player who was Just A Bear. I was running an online PF2E dungeon crawling campaign inside an inverted tower that was pushed from the Abyss into the mortal realm. It was my first time DMing pathfinder 2e after being a player for a bit. One of my players, who was playing a druid, introduced their character in bear form. They continued to be in bear form for pretty much the next couple sessions, until i finally thought to ask how long their wildshape was supposed to last. Obviously, it was certainly not a couple sessions worth of time. For whatever reason, instead of ret-conning that he wasnt a bear for this long, we somehow decided that he was just a Bear now. I gave him the CR 2 bear statblock, since my players were Level 2. CR 2 means that it would be a good challenge for a party of 4 adventurers. I didnt completely understand this at the time, but i figured it was my own problem since I would just have to tweak the enemy balancing on my side of things. That is, until I decided to give them a fun little no stakes PVP challenge to "appease" the leader of one of the floors. Not a fight to the death, just a little "battle each other to entertain me" kind of vibe. I made a system where dogs would bring healing potions to the players that were low- i didnt necessarily want anyone to perish in this battle as i knew the game wasnt made or balanced for pvp. Judges, this was my grave error. My wizard had recently found a joke bag of Holding called a bag of Weasels that would sometimes give you a weasel instead of the item you were trying to pull out of it. The player who was the bear, trying to "roleplay" being a bear, decided he was going to fight the wizard to try and take this bag of weasels so he could eat as many weasels as he wanted. He attacked the wizard, of course downing him with a crit due to the wizards low AC. I then asked the bear if he was attacking his friend non-lethally, to which he responded: "no." I sent one of the dog creatures toward the wizard immediately, but even with all three actions the dog could not make it to the wizard in one turn, since he started on the opposite side of the map. On the wizard's turn, he rolled a natural 1 on his recovery check, putting him to dying 4, and killing him completely. I had ALREADY deus ex machina'd this wizards death on the first floor (due to poor balancing on my part), and it felt incredibly too forced to do it a second time. The obviously very upset player left the call almost immediately, and messaged me that he would be taking a break from playing in my campaign. I felt absolutely horrible. Judges, was I wrong to let my player play a CR2 bear? Was i wrong to throw them in a low stakes pvp arena and think they wouldn't kill each other on purpose? Or was this all on my players shoulders for attacking his friend all for a silly bag of weasels? I humbly await your judgement and wholeheartedly accept any punishment that might come my way. PS: The bear eventually died to a Kelpie, and I made sure the player came back as an actual PC, and the wizard player did eventually come back after a few months and was able to finish out the campaign with us, and in the end it was a great campaign that I look back on fondly. We laugh about the whole bear thing now.

To the esteemed justices and the steamy bailiff John, I present the case of the over-eager vampire thrall. In a homebrew campaign set in 1970's London, my taxi-driver wizard was exactly dropped to zero by a thirsty vampire. I was immediately raised as a thrall, and the DM said I was now against the party. I set about my task with wizardly dedication, and absolutely fucking destroyed them. I caught most of the party with a fireball (dropping the paladin), before kidnapping the barbarian and sending him, trussed up, to vampire HQ, where he was eventually killed. When the session ended, the DM said "Good Job, you barely needed any encouragement at all." It was at that moment I wondered if I had gone a bit far. Justices, was I wrong to committ so much to destroying my party with so little provocation? Everyone had fun and the Barbarian's player is back with a new (even more hilarious) character, but in my darker moments I can't help but think I maybe didn't need to commit so totally to mass murder. So, was I wrong? I humbly await your judgement and submit to whichever judgement the crit decrees.

To the honourable servants of Dice Christ (and Jake, I guess) - I humbly seek guidance on a confession that may also be a case. A few sessions into a campaign with a new group, we were tasked with retrieving an essential relic from a dungeon, which the DM rolled for the alignment of. He landed on chaotic good, and explained this meant the relic was in the possession of a group of innocent, good-aligned clerics that we would need to slaughter in order to retrieve it. I objected, saying I was uncomfortable playing out the massacre of innocents - I had not signed up for an evil campaign. The DM shot down my objections. He stressed that we would not be able to continue the game without the relic; that negotiation was not an option; and, when I asked about stealth, that hide DCs would all be above 20. So this is where I must confess, and throw myself at the mercy of Dice Christ and the court - for in my eagerness to avoid a massacre, I cast Pass Without Trace on the group: a spell that I did not have prepared. It worked, and we were able to sneak through the dungeon with minimal casualties and my morality (mostly) in tact - but I cannot help feeling that I sinned against Dice Christ with my lie. Can Dice Christ forgive me for lying about my spells in my desperation to avoid participating in the slaughter of innocents, or must the court punish me for my transgressions? (P.S. - I left the group immediately after that session.)

To the Supreme Justices and whatever miscellaneous people happen to be around, I bring you the case of the hungover hound. A few years ago, I was playing in a game as an anthropomorphic Corgi cleric. We were roleplaying a night of carousing after a successful dungeon raid, and I mentioned that my introverted character just had a glass of wine and went to bed. We were ambushed that night, and the DM, mid-ambush, ruled that I was suffering a level of exhaustion, because wine is made out of grapes, and grapes are poisonous to dogs. This exhaustion directly led to my character being kidnapped, and so I needed to partially sit out of the next session. Everything ended up working out, since my fellow party members came to my rescue, but TO THIS DAY, me and the DM have arguments about the exact level of bullshit that ruling was. In my view, once your worldbuilding is whimsical enough to include a walking, talking Corgi, you're inhabiting a world where real-world canine dietary restrictions shouldn't be considered, let alone enforced. To my DM, this is a completely logical move, as they were merely providing consequences for my actions, and they insist that grapes being dog-poison is common knowledge, so I should have seen it coming. Justices, what the fuck, am I right? Although I can see some dissent amongst you when it comes to worldbuilding, the mid-encounter "oh by the way you suck at doing everything" exhaustion call was way out of line, right? Or have I been merely barking up the wrong tree this whole time?

Hello Clergy of Dice Christ. I am snitching. I was at a weekly One Shot event at my local game store. The adventure tonight was to descend into an abandoned mine and slay the undead green dragon poisoning the groundwater. A fellow PC (Divination Wizard) was blessed by Dice Christ with a nat 20 on a portant to great cheers from the party. Hours later, in the final battle, another PC (Conquest Paladin) says "Okay, I am going to use the portant to crit and smite, cause the Dragon is undead". I was aghast, while the wizard was completely silent as the paladin rolled damage. Clergy, what the fuck is wrong with this guy? Can y'all call Dice Christ to come and kill this guy? Sure, it was maybe optimal for the fight, but is that enough to justify stealing from a defenseless wizard? What punishment is appropriate for myself, for not stepping in to defend my fellow PC? I bow my head to your righteous judgement. Thank you

To the amazing judges, their fabulous guest judge, and that dude who is there for some reason, I present the “The case of the campaign ending roll" I was a forever DM until a friend offered to run a campaign so I could finally play. I made a bard, Beauty Montgomery, a cryptid-hunting YouTuber who was secretly two kids in a trench coat as my first pc ever. The campaign was frustrating because the DM often tried to TPK us and never made the goal clear. In our last session, we were in a labyrinth that changed mechanically without warning. Even though my bard had high passive Perception and we said we were mapping the maze and using the message cantrip, the DM said we were suddenly lost. I asked why my character wouldn't have noticed the maze shifting without a roll. The DM got angry, rage-quit the call, and later said they had handled things as well as they could because they wanted to surprise us. The campaign was canceled, and I haven't been able to play that character since. Was I wrong for asking for a roll that ended the campaign?

To the honorable judges Tanner and the Axfords and all the other esteemed judges and to jake who is here I bring you the case of the insane robot I ran a Star wars campaign a few years back using SW5e and it was a lot of fun, during character creation one of my friends (who is known for making insane characters) asked to play a droid specifically a magna guard barbarian, I hesitantly said yes. Com session 1 he had 6 reactions, resistance to all damage and 36 AC. was in fact concerned, this was a level 10 campaign but that's crazy. He explained that it is perfectly legal the rule book is just easy to abuse I said you have 22 AC and vulnerability to shock, he said that's fair and we had a blast, judges since the have razed him on it and he has exclaimed still that it's legal, so ask shall keep razing or is it just the systems fault? p.s. he said he's down to send an explanation of his build

To the numerous illustrious judges and retired skit-actor blake, I present the case of the secret spell. (I considered submitting this as a dice christ confessional, but frankly I don't feel all that guilty about it so I leave it to your judgement as to whether or not I should be). I am playing in a homebrew campaign where most magic had mysteriously disappeared from the world many years prior, making magic exceedingly rare. At the end of our last session, two things happened: 1) we leveled up to level 5 and 2) we visited a village chief who was supposed to give us a crucial detail for our quest, only to discover he was murdered, thus ending on a cliffhanger. Unfortunately, due to a prior engagement, I had to miss the subsequent session. At the session I missed, the party decided to track down someone with the ability to communicate with the dead, a rare prospect in this low magic world, ultimately leading them to a dungeon crawl through a necromancer's lair. At the top of the session on my return, we rolled initiative against the necromancer, had a fun and well-fought battle, and looted a scroll of speak with dead from his library. We returned to the village with the necromancer slain, our spoils in hand, prepared to finally get the answers we sought. Upon arrival to the chief's body, I immediately cast speak with dead, a rad new spell i obtained after reaching 5th level as an undead warlock. The party (mostly jokingly) immediately turned on me and asked why I didn't say anything sooner. My argument was that we were already rolling initiative on the necromancer when i returned, it's not like we would just say "oh nevermind we're all good sorry to bother you" and leave. So I ask you judges: Should I have mentioned that I took the spell sooner? Or am I correct in thinking that my last minute spell was funny and (mostly) harmless.

Esteemed justices and honorable bailiff (are we being nice today?), I bring you the case of the vengeful DM. Lately, it feels like my DM has taken a strong “me vs the players” approach that’s making the game not fun anymore. We’ve had light disagreement in the past over inconsistent rulings or ad hoc rule changes to nerf player abilities but nothing close to this. In a recent very unexciting dungeon combat, we faced enemies seemingly designed to keep anything from happening. In addition to “normal” boss fight stuff - like legendary resistances and lair actions - our two high-CR opponents had advantage and high bonuses on all saves, multiple level 9 spells (including Mass Heal) plus metamagic, multiple reactions, and could cast and concentrate on multiple spells in a turn. Despite multiple PCs with mage slayer, we didn’t break concentration on a single spell. Worst of all, our new player (this was his first session) was stuck in a maze spell for the entire fight. The session ended on a nearly-TPK cliffhanger and there was a strong feeling of dissatisfaction and frustration. I love hard combat but this just felt like a “gotcha,” to the point where I discreetly asked his wife after the session if he was ok. Am I justified in feeling salty at a combat seemingly designed to kill us without any retaliation? Or was our DM just trying to give us an exceptionally hard fight?

To the illustrious supreme crit justices and Jak, I present the case of the frustrating orb. As a forever DM, I was thrilled to finally get a chance to play as a PC (a reformed criminal half-elf ranger) in an online game where my friend was also a player. The only catch? I didn't know anyone else in the party except my friend, and to top it off, my friend dropped out of the campaign the week before I started. However, the allure of finally playing as a PC was too great and I decided to play anyway. The red flags started immediately. In session one, the DM allowed the party’s wizard a one-hour solo introduction explaining how he was on a special mission from the Goddess of Magic. In session two, he found a magical orb as part of his backstory. From that moment on, the entire campaign became The Wizard & His Orb Show. The DM would describe interesting plot hooks (a mysterious tower, a traveling band of actors with a broken wagon, etc.) and the wizard would refuse to interact with any of them. His mission for the Goddess was simply too important. The breaking point came when we found an overgrown cabin. A strange light emanated from within, followed by a short scream, then silence. My ranger wanted to investigate. The wizard refused, citing the orb. Frustrated with that dang orb, I rolled Sleight of Hand, snatched it, and yeeted it straight through the cabin window just to force a change of scenery. The wizard immediately declared, "I attack the ranger." Now, judges, you should know this wizard built himself as a "utility caster" and hadn't taken a single damaging spell. Hence, he pulled out a shortsword. As a level 2 dual-wielding ranger against a squishy wizard with a butter knife, I flattened him in a single turn. At this point, the DM suddenly remembered she wasn’t comfortable with PvP, retconned the entire fight, and ended the session early. I decided that this campaign wasn't for me and never looked back. Judges, in eight years of D&D, this was my one and only time as a player and it haunts me that it ended so disasterously. Was I wrong for snatching the orb? Was he wrong for initiating a sword fight he was mathematically destined to lose? Or was this game just doomed from the start? I crave your judgment so I can finally put this behind me.

BETH MAY

To all the justices of the Supreme Crit, especially Justice May, and whatever schmuck is reading this case, I bring to you the Case of the Vague Backstory. I have recently started DMing a Curse of Strahd campaign for three of my friends, who I've been with for over 10 years. As of this recording, we will have had our second session. It's been great so far; however, one of my players, a Kenku Ranger, may be a bit of a problem. He is frustratingly vague regarding details about his character and their backstory, using broad strokes and language like "let's just say" when I ask about events from the character's past. Most recently, I was setting up an encounter to introduce an NPC relevant to his character and asked what he looked like; all I got in response was "a big hat and horns poking out" Justices, that wasn't gonna fucking cut it. I did get him to give me a better description of the NPC, but I fear this may become a pattern. Is my campaign doomed to suffer a "wait until you hear my backstory" player? Must I, as Justice Murphy often suggests, get new friends? I await your swift and harsh judgement.

(This case has been given to me by my best friend Kate! Who love Beth May) To the Most Honorable Justices and the Cool Cool Bailiff Jeff (Geoff?), I have been playing dnd with the same group for about four years. Our usual set up is three players and a DMPC to help balance the party. One of our players was really new to dnd when we started so we tried to go out of our way to cater to them. We let them drive the party choices most of the time, we regularly bent rules that were too complicated for them, and we had to institute a no pc death policy since they found the idea of their character dying really upsetting. This special treatment has persisted to this day. Recently we finished a campaign, and that player asked if he could try DMing a one shot before our usual DM started a new campaign. We agreed, and he told us all to roll level 7 characters. As soon as we started playing it became clear that our Interim DM had not prepared. We were supposed to spend five nights in a haunted hotel, fighting the monsters. Instead we were subjected to a long, incoherent, and confusing shopping episode in the town around the hotel. This happened multiple times and stretched the “one shot” into six sessions. When we tried to go back to the hotel at night to fight the monsters, we were not allowed to fight them. They instead made idle threats but ran away and vanished once the party tried to fight them. And we got the feeling that the Interim DM didn’t have any stat blocks prepped. We tried to be patient since this was the first time he was DMing, but then came the final fight. Despite telling us to roll level 7 characters, he had us fight: a bone devil, two nagas, four skeletons, and four ghasts all at the same time. He kept targeting my Paladin because I was the only one with healing abilities. He never attacked his own DMPC, claiming that he “forgot he could do that”. The fight resulted in a TPK where only his DMPC survived, and the DM was both smug and gleeful about killing all of our characters. Judges, I know that DMing is difficult, but was this unreasonable? He literally cackled when our characters went down. I humbly await your verdict. [Jake, please wait until the moment you think it’s funniest to reveal this] PS: Our Interim DM is my 10 year old nephew.

To the Cool Pillow Justices and the Wet Blanket Bailiff, I bring the case of the Omniscient Magic Mouth. In our homebrew campaign, our party ended up on an island, covered by a magical barrier that prevented anyone from leaving. This barrier was tied to life force of the island's inhabitants. Naturally, our solution to this dilemma was to kill all the inhabitants, promising to resurrect them with Revivify. Surprisingly, this was both agreed to by the islanders and went off without a hitch. The issue I bring to the court however, is how we obtained the diamonds for said Revivifys. Upon being informed by the DM that this island had a mine with sufficiently valuable gems for the spell, our party's Artificer enchanted several rocks with the Magic Mouth spell, setting them to shout, "Hey, dig here!" whenever diamonds where in range, significantly speeding up the gathering of said gems. After the session ended, I brought up the fact that this implied some kind of greater consciousness behind the spell, it being able to unerringly detect any triggering source given to it within 30ft, regardless of the barriers in between. After a brief discussion, we agreed that the spell would not be allowed to function the same way in the future. Justices, was I right to bring up the potential abuse such a spell could have, or am I a big, fun hating jerk who should be executed for his crimes? I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

Radiant justices and benevolent bailiff, I bring you a tale of tabletop treachery. A few years ago my wife ran a home brew inspired by the Pagemaster. One player I’ll call Jane had been courting another player I’ll call Minerva ever since our previous Monster of the Week game. Jane is poly and Minerva was unsure about that, but they were feeling it out. After just over a year of gameplay, we had chased the BBEG through Sherlock Holmes, Pride and Prejudice, and Treasure Island and were getting ready for the final showdown when Jane confessed romantic feelings to ANOTHER player I’ll call Betty. Everything completely imploded; we never got to end the campaign and my wife hasn’t DMed since. Judges, I implore you: how can justice be served? What can I, a certified Wife Guy, do to give my wife narrative catharsis? (By the way, Murph doesn’t need to say it: Jane is no longer my friend.)

To the honorable justices of the supreme crit, and I guess that guy that hangs out with them sometimes, I present to you the case of the extra thick lightning bolt. I was playing a grave cleric in a curse of strahd campaign, and a few weeks ago we were fighting Morgantha's coven of hags. The party's paladin and I were standing side by side, in such a way that I assumed would not be vulnerable to us both being targeted by lightning bolt, as the spell states that the line is 5 feet thick and 100 feet long, and the hag would not have been able to get in position to shoot a straight line to hit both of us. However, the DM went ahead and cast the lightning bolt and called for both of us to make a saving throw to avoid damage. I argued, saying the area of the spell was 5 feet, and we were not standing in the same 5 foot line from the hag. He stated that the hag positioned the lightning bolt between the two of us, hitting both of us. I conceded as he is the DM and has the final say, but justices, I can't help but feel that this is not how the spell is meant to be used, and is supposed to be a five foot wide area ON THE GRID, not just willy nilly wherever. The encounter ended with both the paladin and I dying, and the rest of the party barely escaping. Do I have grounds to stand on for future encounters to say that 5 feet is 5 feet on the grid, or was my DM right to kill the only two healers of our party. I humbly await your judgement, and accept whatever decision you see fit. Btw, the DM is my long term boyfriend if that matters

To the esteemed Justices, guest justices, and the guy getting everyone coffee, I'll have an oat milk latte thanks Jack. I bring the case of the Eight Shot One Shot. I was in a consistent game run by a friend who needed to take a week or two off. Note: A week or two. So another member of the party agreed to run a quick heist one shot during our scheduled meetup time until DM prime was ready. Justices. It took three sessions to get to enacting the heist. Then another five to get through it. This would be fine if things were happening, but I assure you things were not. In one of the upwards of four hour sessions, all that my magic jewel thief rogue artificer managed to do was enter one vent. The rest of the party got through one door. I will admit that halfway through, I skipped a session or two for my sanity. When I came back towards the end, the team was disguised as scientists, but in a mess clearly designed to out us and initiate the final battle. And so, desperate for something to happen, I decided to out my own character and another, a famous wrestler, in order to hold him hostage and secure our escape. My team did not appreciate my big swing, and thought I'd wrecked their plan. Justices, was I wrong to get us back to our regularly scheduled game? The DM prime who was taking time off did also want to get back to his game, but still wasn't happy with how I handled it. Hate the show, never seen it, God bless.

To the Magnanimous Justices and the Bailiff who is either awesome or despicable depending on the day, I present the Case of The Rude Rogues. I am currently in a campaign DM'ed by my brother with a few other friends. We are level 13 (started as a level 10 one-shot) and have picked up a couple of recurring NPC's along the way. One of whom is a small lizardfolk rogue (Vutha). I (and by extention my character) have not trusted this guy from the jump. He's "funny" and has been helpful, but he's also rude, arrogant and definitely a higher level than the rest of us. (His rolls are always insane unless the DM rolls comically bad and seems to be there just to show everyone up). That issue aside, our party's rogue ("we have rogue at home") is absolutely smitten with this little freak (not romantically; she just loves having another "2 cool 4 school" rogue around who's basically her minion). In the overarching plot of the campaign, we have recently discovered that some evil gods have been corrupting people to do their bidding (including as-of-yet-unknown allies of ours) and can sometimes be spotted by compulsive actions/idiosyncrasies. I floated the idea to the party that Vutha, who is practically a kleptomaniac, may be a suspect. Our rogue practically jumps down my throat anytime I criticize or point out obvious issues with Vutha and this time was no different. She acts like he's her occasionally misbehaving puppy who can do no wrong and regularly belittles my character's choices (aka MY choices). The DM of course said Vutha was fine, but of course I know to take that with a grain of salt. My issue is the constant attitude from our rogue towards my monk. At one point, she (the rogue) got up in my character's face and basically screamed at him for starting a fight with the very-obvious bad guy who had spent the last real world hour dicking us around. She even went so far as to accuse my character (the "first fist" of his monastery) of being sent out by his mentors not to help the world, but to just be rid of him. After which, we got to sit through her going over her whole tragic backstory (of course) with one of the other PC's while I sat there and stewed. I have spoken with one of the other players and the DM (my brother) about this several times. The other player (warlock) agrees with me, but the DM poopoos my concerns every time. Justices, am I right to feel irked by this rogueish rudeness or should I just let the two of them do their thing while the rest of us are relegated to sidekicks? I'm about ready to just initiate PvP to knock either or both of them down a peg, but I will await your wise judgement.

For the sick as hell judges and...Jakeothy. I present the case of the absent one-shot. I am a DM that runs two different groups, boy group girl group style, in the same homebrew campaign setting. About 2 years ago two of my players, my brother and his then girlfriend, were going on vacation for a few weeks effectively putting both groups on hold, not a problem. Leading up to that I put a one-shot together combining the remaining members of both groups. I ended up messaging them asking if they wanted a specific reason as to why their characters weren't there, but to my surprise they messaged back that they were mad I was doing this. My brother and I met up to talk about it and he told me that they felt left out and if we were going to do a one shot while they were gone we should have asked them first or it should have been with new characters. I told him that I sympathized with their feelings of being left out, but rebutted that it wasn't fair for the other players and that I didn't need their permission to do a fun one-shot. We ultimately left the talk agreeing to let them know in the future even if they couldn't be involved but I still felt wrong tying PCs to the decision of other players. So I ask the court: Did I really mess up or should I obliterate my bro IRL? I humbly await your judgement. P.S. The day of the one-shot was the same day they were visiting the Shire

To the honorable judges who are looking very good today … and the bailiff who I think said his name was Jam? I bring you the case of the Hot Coco Strike. About a year or two ago I was DMing a oneshot for my brother in law, sister, and brother (our usual dm). It was a Christmas one shot that was basically a dungeon crawl as they run through the cars of the astral train Santa drives to rescue him from the gingerdead man. In one car they fought a hot coco mephit and my brother in-law ,whose PC basically Ash Ketchum, caught one to keep. A couple cars car over for some rest, A bartender was there to give them a healing cup of hot coco and restore them. WELL… in the final battle against the gingerdead man things were getting dicey…. so my brother in law asked if he could summon his hot coco mephit and eat it.. since they had drank healing hot coco before, the mephit should also be able to heal him. I said no.. BUT Judges, before i could offer my alternative for them.. ALL my players said they were going on strike and TURNED AROUND in their seats….. refusing to face me. After a minute I was finally able to get them to listen and I said the mephit could go GET them some more hot coco potions. So my beautiful Judges, I ask, was I wrong for not letting them eat the mephit? Or are my siblings just crazy? PS to this day they say they are not sorry about it. AND would do it again.

The Case of the Ghosted Player If it so pleases the Honorable and most Magnificent judges and bailiff Jake, who is okay, I guess. I have been a player in a long-running campaign with a group who all gets along pretty well except for one player. He only engages in RP during combat, while the rest of the time he is playing games, looking at pornographic images, or watching videos on his phone. In addition, he spent an obscene amount of time picking his toenails and burping very close to other player’s faces. Nearing the final boss battle, I had my baby, so we paused the campaign for a few months while I recovered. When I was ready to play again, the group decided we were going to start a whole new campaign and simply not include the problem player. We essentially ghosted him, and our DM told the player we simply do not get together anymore when he asked when we would play again. I ask the court, was this ghosting justified? Or will my baby and I be haunted by Dice Christ for the rest of time?

Esteemed clerics of Dice Christ! I’ve come to confess to a grave offense fueled by a thirst for revenge. My former roommate used to run an occasional DnD game at our place. He also kept all their physical character sheets between games. One of their players, a ranger, ended up being the person that my ex girlfriend cheated on me with. Despite all the drama, my roommate the DM kept inviting her to our place for DnD. One day, I saw that they had left all their DnD stuff on the living room table from the previous night’s game, and a dark thought took over me. The opportunity was just too good to pass. I found the ranger’s sheet and erased some of the penciled-in values. In the end, I removed one point from her Wisdom score, which dropped her modifier to zero. I also shaved off two points from her max HP (from 28 to 26) and reduced the to hit bonus for her primary weapon by 1. I moved out soon after and haven’t seen any of there people since, so I don’t know if they noticed the character sheet was tampered with, or if it had any consequences. Judges, to be perfectly honest, I don’t regret this one bit. I just thought it would be a funny story for the court, but as a DnD player myself, it does feel a little sacrilegious to mess with someone else’s character sheet. I lay myself at your feet for judgement, and I will take any punishment, because, quite frankly, it was worth it. PS: my ex used to listen to the show, and if she still does, this will be how she finds out about this.

To the principled clerics of the Church, I come to ask for guidance… Not for myself, but for those at my table who I fear are straying from the light of Dice Christ. My group plays in person, all of us love collecting dice and even gift cool sets to each other often for birthdays and holidays. However… half of the players still consistently roll their dice digitally! Even with a dice tray full of unique sharp-edged, liquid core d20s they still choose to let DnD Beyond do the math for them… How can I convince these heretics to use the gifts Dice Christ bestowed upon them? Or if they have strayed too far from his path, what punishment befits their sins?

To our once and future bailiff, Jim; I present to you the case of The AOE Execution: I’ve been playing Kingmaker, a PF2e campaign with some friends for almost three years now; my character, Sven, is a daring swashbuckler and was killed during a boss fight in a SUSPICIOUS manner. For brevity’s sake, after a long and frustrating battle (the nature of high level pathfinder is that creatures often end up with 25+ ACs so it’s still possible for a character with a +17 attack mod to miss), the party had gotten the boss to begin fleeing out of the caverns we were fighting in using a fly spell. Sven gave chase, and using his climb speed was able to climb the walls and attack him, bringing him to death’s door. On the boss’ next turn, instead of continuing to flee, he attacked sven with a melee attack, bringing him to 0. The GM got serious, as he began to describe Sven falling, taking falling damage, and having already been down once that fight, dying instantly—however Sven has a feat called catfall, meaning he treats all falls as being substantially shorter distances, meaning he took no fall damage despite being unconscious (catfall does not specify you have to be conscious for it to work). My GM floundered, and went to narrate him attacking Sven again after downed, but I jokingly pointed out that if even my GM didn’t know about catfall, the boss surely didn’t either, so I challenged him to roll a perception check to tell i was still alive—low and behold, he rolled a natural 1. While i was busy celebrating however, my GM narrated the boss attacking another member of my party with an AOE spell that juuust so happened to include my unconscious body within it (despite using his whole previous turn to flee i remind the court), killing poor Sven. i argue that this was UNJUST, and simply the actions of a GM who had not killed a PC yet in 2 and a half years of play getting bloodthirsty and doing whatever he can to kill my poor Sven.

To the expanded Supreme Crit and compressed Bailiff, I ran a one-shot a while back in which a family entered into a contract with a devil to give up the first born of each generation in order to maintain ownership of their estate. The players' mission was to help the current generation prevent the deal their ancestors made. One of my players asked to see the contract and became convinced he had found a loophole that would get the family out of the deal. It was a weak loophole and would have ended the one-shot on the spot. I pushed back and we had a 15-minute debate about the supposed loophole. I eventually broke narration and asked the group if this would be a satisfying way to conclude the story, or if they'd like to continue as planned. The group chose to continue, but the loophole player razzed me and I could tell he felt salty that his solution didn't work. Was I wrong to ask a meta question about how the group would like to play? Should I have found a creative way to allow the loophole and continue playing...somehow? P.S. - There was an ACTUAL loophole baked into the contract that this player didn't find. Which, of course, complicated my decision.

To the Just Justices, the Justified Guest, and you who is just a Baliff, I bring to you a case of absentee pvp murder. My party killed my character when I wasn’t there. It’s hard to cut details to shorten this for the illiterate Baliff, but I’ll try: we went to a gala for a rich lady and a necklace she stole from hags. Our characters had a plus one invite, and My characters were going steal the necklace. At the end of it all, I was absent for part two. I messaged my dm, who knew my intentions, “if there’s a good opportunity, they’ll go for it. Otherwise, they’ll hold”. Turns out, he decided “the necklace was being held by a mage hand, in front of everybody, while the evil hag was nearby” was a “good opportunity”. They all then killed me for trying to steal. Annoying for many reasons, but whatever. I said it was annoying but let’s just move on. They wouldn’t move on. On discord, the guy who killed me - again, while an evil hag was literally right there to kill and take back necklace - wrote “I hate PvP, and stealing is PvP” later followed by “It wasn’t fair his character was killed while he wasn’t there, we should reverse it”. There’s even more nonsense, but like, they admit guilt sort of. So, punish them please? More context if there’s time: Turns DM did not have my character sheet, so character put up no fight. Of the two, the non-thief made the attempt. We reuse characters and a few of us write long in-character narrative world-building stories. Thwynn was one of them. After she died, in front of her wife, I followed up with the emotional devastation via story. They said I was being “dark”. Probably because I put emotion into the story, and also was going to report the wizard who killed me, and his wife who is a head of state! For saying that thievery justified murder. Anyway. They wouldn’t drop trying to defend themselves (the Wizard is a lawyer irl) even when I wanted to move on. So, let’s not drop them and convict! If you actually read this, thank you. And thank you for your justice.

The Daddy Killing Patron To the incredibly badass judges and the plain bad bailiff Jared, I give you the case of the patron-less daddy killer. There’s a lot to this case so I will keep it as brief as possible. I played a sea elf fathomless warlock of a noble background with a surfer/stoner vibe and a distrust of authority. She’s at a school to get away from her overprotective parents who sent her there with a necklace of sending. (I have explicitly said to my DM I am excited to play this class and that I did not want an evil patron.) During their adventures, my character was given a flute by an evil entity. Not wanting the responsibility, she destroyed it. As she did, her patron began to scream into her head something about freedom and “destroying all the sea elves”. Concerned, my character decides to use her necklace of sending to call her dad to ask if he knows anything about her patron. When she contacts her dad in a FaceTime-y way, her dad screams at her that she has doomed her whole city by destroying this flute. Turns out that destroying the flute resulted in her patron being released from the plane her city elders were keeping it. A tentacle then rose from the water and skewered her father. (Keep in mind my character saw all this in a “Facetime”.) My character ran to the headmaster of the school to get help and he opened a portal to her home city which was being destroyed by my character’s patron. Suddenly, my patron got sucked into the sky without any explanation. My DM then turns to me and says I’ve lost all my warlock levels and had to choose a new class! He stood there smiling at me waiting for my answer. He was surprised when I said my character killed herself and then I quit the campaign. He quit DMing this campaign after this because he “got bored”. So I ask this of you judges, was I wrong to be miffed and should have waited to see where the cool storyline he supposedly had planned went or did I have every right to be upset? I await your humble ruling. PS sorry if this confusing. I had to condense a lot.

No case, just to say LOOOOVEEEEE the guests. Branson swan boy forever.

Greetings Glorious justices and Bailliff Bake i think I bring the case of Fanfiction Friction I dm a small game for two players, 3 years strong and has been quite enjoyable... One of the players, player 2, loves to write about their character, creative writing style. They have a long standing story with their PC that's set XX years in the future of the campaign, and they share these stories with player 1 This wasnt an issue until recently the party met an NPC related to 2's backstory 1 immediately was quite familiar eith this character, a spy. While 2 was taken aback by how "different " they were acting How do I present a character that already exists in a story that is not shared with me? I don't want to tell this player to stop their hobby but it is actively harming our collaborative story telling

Whoa that is a kaleidoscope of guests very excited to see it! Love the work of all of these people!

Members of the cloth, I present a story of praise and gratitude for our beloved Dice Christ. 3 years ago, myself and 5 others responded to a r/lfg (looking for group) post on reddit about a DM looking to assemble a group. We've been playing ever since and have all grown rather close. We've been through a lot together, and I even started my own campaign with a few of the group members being available to join in. In March, our DM dropped off the face of the Earth. Nothing on Discord or roll20, and we even lost access to the google docs he shared with us for notes and lore. In the meantime, our group held movie nights to replace our sessions until dad came back with the milk. After a month, we lost hope. We started to discuss a line of succession and how we would stick together moving forward, when we came across a reddit post on the lfg sub about a DM who lost his discord account and was looking for his party. WE FOUND HIM. Even though we lost access to the original discord server and all the notes and messages stored there, we're playing again! Members of the Church (oh, and Jake! How's it going, bud?), I want to extend my deepest gratitude and share my joy with you all at the return of the prodigal DM.

To the most holy priests of Dice Christ (and that altar boy Jonk): I come today with a confession that has weighed heavy on my heart. 3 years ago, I decided to DM for the first time for a group of college friends. At the time, I had only played D&D once. Needless to say, this “campaign” of mine, which only ran 3 sessions, was an absolute shit show in which I pretty much broke every rule in the book. I allowed 6 players at my table, only one of which had any D&D experience at all. This resulted in a table full of joke characters, edgelords, nervous first time players, and me. I lied about dice rolls frequently, I railroaded my players persistently, I neglected to do any session planning at all. I am still haunted by the last session of my ill-fated campaign. It was our first real combat encounter and I don’t think I rolled a single dice honestly. 3 years later, I’m happily in a long term campaign as a PC but am occasionally asked if I would ever DM. I can’t help but flashback to my own heinous affronts to Dice Christ. O Highest of the High, what must I do to repent for my sins?

To Justices Cho, Reese, May, Radford, Axford, Tanner, Murphy, and that weird ghoul in the corner, I present to you the case of unknowable character sheets. I am a player in a game run by a friend with a few strangers we met online. It is dark fantasy with an occultist wizard(me), a monk, a bard, a Druid, and a warforged artificer named C playing a homebrewed “Doctor” subclass. My problem lays with C. His subclass is designed specifically for healing. The DM even homebrewed it based off the 5e version to make it better suited for 5.5. The problem is, C doesn’t seem to want to heal anyone. During our first combat, someone went down. None of us had used any spell slots, and C had plenty of potions. Instead of healing, C proudly said “I stand over her and cast spare the dying”. We had to actively cajole him into healing our monk, the main source of melee brawn for the party. Next combat was similar, C spent the combat trying to damage evil trees with a gun before going down, meaning that my wizard had to spend a turn feeding him one of his own potions instead of fireballing the trees to end combat. Am I overreacting? I know healing isn’t always fun, but there are so many ways to make it enjoyable and the subclass seems super cool. If I am wrong, please do not kill me, as I worry it may lead to the deaths of my other party members as well. I await your swift and decisive judgment.

Greetings to the Angelic, wise Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner and the little shitty Baiiff Not-Amir, I present the case of the Strahd Sacrifice. I have been playing with an online dnd group of the same core players for about 5 years and multiple campaigns. After out long term campaign ended we have been taking turns sporaticallt playing/running games until our D.M got into Grad school (hes a Naddpole and we are So Proud him so Shoutout Ammon!). Our most recent campaign was a curse of Strahad game that started in Death House. After multiple sessions of clearing out Death House methodically with near death right around the corner we reached a basement filled with ominous chanting with no discernable source. As we entered the chambers the chants got more intense and tied up figure was presented on a dais. The voice of Strahd echoes out and tells us to kill this man he is a murderor. Before we could even respond our Wizard, (the only character native to Barovia) runsover and murders the tied up man, completing the ritual to quote "save everyone" Judges we were in shock: and began to razz this player for completeing the anicent ritual. Should he have waited and made it a group descisuon before participating in blood rituals or are we unfairly razzing him?

Honored Supreme Crit Justices and my birthday twin, Jake, I present the case of the Rules as Written Misty Step. A few years back, I was DMing a 5e campaign with my friends—Rogue, Barbarian, Warlock, and Fighter. After a 5 minute teasing session where the Barbarian talked shit to a group of 6 heavily armored bandits, she inevitably got her shit kicked in, being targeted in combat. While down and on two failed death saves, the Warlock suggested that he could use Misty Step to take her with him, out of harm’s way. Being sort of a hard ass DM, I ruled a flat no, as Misty Step has both a range and target of ‘Self’. The Warlock (my irl best friend) shrugged his shoulders and just said “rule of cool, Cam. Rule of cool.” I doubled down and told him that on his next level up, he should take the Thunder Step spell that allows the caster to take another creature with them. The session continued as normal, and the Barbarian survived. But I still get shit for this from my friend to this day. Judges, should I have taken the dramatic moment to implement “rule of cool”? Or was I justified in following rules as written? I accept whatever punishment is given, and ask that it be excruciating and horrible. Thank you!

To the honorable absolute justices and the thrice removed justice bailiff, I bring you the case of the rushed ultimatum. I DM a series of one shots with a cast of rotating friends to accommodate our busy schedules. In this most recent one I had the players vivi the sorcerer, Bloodgurgle a barbar/paladin, basil the cleric and bemeow the fighter In the frozen North facing Off a against a cult of the buried Who worshiped an eldritch horror that fed off peoples fear of being buried alive, and after a very tough session which had already seen the death of bemeow. the final crusader had managed to knock down vivi and with his back to wall threatened to mutilate the corpse to basil and bloodgurgle if they didn’t let him walk away. The barbarian said to give them a minute to think about it. He said absolutely not you have a few seconds to decide. Bloodgurgle said “what? fuck you then” and just attacked allowing him to kill vivi. After the session I said crazy so bloodgurgles just a bad person, but he said the crusader is a bad negotiator in real life a person taking a hostage would want the most time possible to make sure they get out. Me and the cleric say this is a fantasy world and giving the players more time to think about it just means he’s less likely to escape and the bad guy would assume the party cares enough about each other that it would be an obvious choice. We argued about this afterwards for a full 30 minutes. So supreme justices who’s correct Is my bad guy a horrible negotiator or is bloodgurgle a bad person I humbly await your verdict. P.s vivi is another’s friends first character who is learning to play dnd and we spent 3 hours the previous night making a character they’d be excited about and when asked they said they would have also tried some shenanigans to help the party member if the roles were flipped.

Brothers and sisters of Dice Christ… I have a confession. In the Fall of 2022, me and two friends planned the murder a girl and hid her body. We’ve gotten away with it… until now. Back in 2022, me and two college friends had started frequenting a local tabletop gaming store where people often ran games. We had other games with friends, but wanted to try and meet some new people and find a communal space to play DnD. There, we met a guy who we’ll call Rick. He was shy, but nice. I ran a few games with my friends, Rick, and Rick’s girlfriend. We even started hanging out outside of the game store, and things were good. However, one night Rick tells us about a problem that he’s having in another campaign at that game store. Him and his GF were in a Strixhaven campaign (magical college) where there was a notorious problem player. Let’s call him Jake Hurwitz. He was a short, usually unbathed, greasy man in his early 30’s. His most frequently worn attire to sessions was a hoodie with a collage of anime girls making the ‘ahego’ face (mind you, kids and teens were often at this store). Jake’s character for the campaign was a ‘tight-bodied’ half elven cheerleader that looked 18 but was really in her 40s. He would frequently steal the spotlight, fudge rolls, and argue with other player’s decisions in and out of game. He was atrocious. But the thing that infuriated us? Jake was bullying Rick’s girlfriend at the table, to the point of her wanting to stop playing that game. So Rick asked us: Could we join the campaign under the guise of wanting to be new players, and then murder Jake’s character? So… we did. My one friend rolled up a warlock, the other was a rouge, and I was an alligator Lizardfolk Ranger. When we joined the table we instantly stoked Jake’s ego, hyping him up and luring him away to an abandoned part of the campus. There, the warlock paralyzed him, the rouge crit-sneak attacked him, and my Lizardfolk devoured the body to hide any evidence of our crimes before slinking into the Witherbloom bog. As Jake was in a state of shock, my friends and I all shook hands and left the table. Apparently Jake didn’t even make a new character, and stopped visiting the game store altogether. Oh, Deacons of the D20… We bullied a grown man out of a game store. Even if he was an asshole, a group of strangers plotted to ruin what could’ve been his only hobby. Every PC has a bit of their player put into them, and I fear we murdered that part of Jake. To make matters worse, shortly after this we even stopped talking to Rick- the man who asked us to kill for him. We all got busy with a theatre company we worked at and couldn’t play as much, so Rick got angry and ghosted us for it. I have sat with this for almost 4 years. I know what I’ve done is wrong. I only ask you how I may work to gain back Dice Christ’s good favor. I’ll undertake whatever polyhedral penance he asks of me, I swear to the gods.

To the esteemed Bailiff Jake(heart emoji), and the delightful Justices, I bring you a case of injured trust. I played as a paladin alongside my friend’s rogue, Haddrick and Finnrod, in a game mostly drawing from the Baldurs Gate 2(2000) ruleset, that’s right, the videogame, no tabletop adaptation. Our friend and DM of the game agreed to run the game if we used this system, as he dearly loves BG2 and knows the game well, though I or our other friend have no experience with it. Going into this campaign, I thought that it could be fun to learn an older system, but when I asked my friend DM if we could include Skills from 5e or another edition into this system, he merely responded “Why?”. Justices, if anyone asks you to play this edition, don’t! Sessions were a slog mechanics-wise, and encounters poorly balanced every time. And yet, playing with your besties is fun! The high point of the campaign came in a battle between us and several demons that culminated in our narrow victory, and the mortal wounding of my characters love interest. With Creed’s “With Arm’s Wide Open” playing, and the setting sun illuminating our table, we roleplayed the most touching moment of any DnD I’ve played before or since. Well, life got in the way and we had to take a six month break before our next session. Having spent the last six months excited to build upon this story, I was rather crushed when the DM announced that we would be jumping six months ahead in game time, with no mention of the events after our last session, and then narrated us losing all of our items, each painstakingly earned, to fairies as we slept camped in the woods, without rolls to stop it. We tried to retrieve them by following their trail, but were met with stonewalling, and the campaign ended a few sessions later with a dragon easily ending our beloved character’s lives. Afterwards, he said too-happily that if we had passed the encounter that killed us, he had several more planned to kill us. He then excitedly narrated our new characters backstories, much to our shock. The three of us are still friends but DND has been dropped from any conversation and we never played again after that session. Its been three years since and I am still hurt by how he handled this. Justices, am I wrong in feeling discouraged from ever playing DnD with my friend again after this, is it even worth bringing up or has the statute of limitations passed on this? I eagerly await your sage wisdom.

Deacons of Dice, I come to you lower than a worm, for I have confession for a Sin made in your image At the conclusion of the my first homebrew campaign, a resurrection mystery set in a wizard city, the party and the Alanis/Aguefort-esc archmage NPC, headed to face the BBEG: a conjuration wizard who, failing to take over the city, was set on destroying it instead. Given the big bad’s magic, and a powerful wizard NPC, I thought I would take some inspiration (steal and reflavor) from the Akarot Hells fight in Campaign 1 (spoilers C1). Along with an army of foot soldiers, the mage had 24 acolytes, 6 of each around 4 different portals to summon demons across the world. As soon as the party arrived, the Alanis stand-in initiating the struggle to stop it, and I explained how the roll off worked My first sin: not believing my party was strong enough. Each acolyte had 75 hp, but just prior to session, I decided that was a smidge high. It was generally the monk running around dealing with fodder, and not wanting all her attacks spent on one guy, I lowered it to 40hp instead. In an effort to make the mechanics of the fight transparent, I revealed their HP as soon as said monk killed the first Humble bishops, imagine my surprise on the next turn when the healing focused cleric says: “Okay. I cast sunburst. It has a 60ft radius so I can hit all the portals, and I do …45 damage to every acolyte.” I was floored. The map was gigantic, with literally dozens of enemies, and a single newly acquired 8th level spell completely cleared them, destroying any stakes I wish I could stay that was end of my sin, but unfortunately, I had a session that needed to be filled with a boss fight. I explained to the party what happened- I had *just* reduced their HP, and pretty please, what if we said I’d only done that for half, so the others, while severely burned and ready to be picked off by the monk, could keep doing the ritual and keep the NPC engaged. My wonderful party agreed that they wanted to keep the stakes high, and we rearranged the board as such. But I couldn’t get away without a bit of comeuppance for Dice Christ. The next time the party had to roll off the wizard NPC against the ritual, even with a +16 and advantage on the roll, they got 2 natural ones, failing a save against cultists who were arguable dead a few rounds before, only brought back by a groveling dm. Thus summoning a bunch of demons It was still a great fight and satisfying ending my players talk about to this day, but I can’t help but feel chided by the dice for my churlishness, either for stealing the encounter, not having faith in my party, or perhaps, for showing too much of my hand. Probably the faith in my party thing though, if I could get forgiveness for that

To the esteemed judges and literally nobody else, I submit to you the case of the Gobbled Up Ice Goblin. I was playing as an ice goblin druid in a heavily homebrewed Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign. We're strangers who've been playing online together for going on two years. It's a wonderful group; we've already navigated some interpersonal blips at the table with maturity and respect. However, sometimes our DM can be heavy-handed with the effects of our characters' actions. Usually it's fine... She's a great storyteller and we enjoy the failure required to make our story interesting. This, though, was different. We were in the second stage of a boss fight after clearing a dungeon, so most of us were nearly out of spells and special abilities. My druid is one of our party's two tanks, so I was trying to absorb damage while keeping our barbarian on his feet. The aberration we were facing managed to incapacitate me, and rather than waste my turn, I used my movement to climb up his leg. I told the DM my intention was to distract the monster, and she asked for an athletics check. Your honors, I rolled a natural 1. The DM narrated the monster grappling me and lifting me in the air (on my turn). This is all fine... It was an entertaining cost of failure. I still had ~35% of my HP and an ability that lets me drop to 1 HP instead of 0 if I would otherwise go down. However, on the monster's next turn, the DM asked for my last words and narrated the monster putting my cute little goblin in its mouth, chewing her up, and swallowing her. No saving throw, no damage roll, nothing. I assumed she wanted to keep the party in suspense, so I went along with it and privately messaged the DM to make sure she remembered my ability to stay up after a mortal blow. My companions were able to slay the monster before its next turn. They pulled me out of its gullet, only for the DM to tell everyone that I was fully dead after suffering a "lethal blow". I was shocked! Should a critically failed skill check on my own turn be the only thing between my beloved character and oblivion? Or was my little scramble-girl wronged by an overzealous apostate of Dice Christ? P.S. my fellow druid was able to make a devil's bargain with the DM to cast revivify without a spell slot to bring me back, but she had to sacrifice her familiar in order to do so. It was a beautiful story moment, there were multiple people weeping at the table, and my druid and the other wrote each other very sweet journal entries after the session. We've since finished the campaign (my goblin got a happy ending) and have started another.

Oh Great Justices, and the also Great (yeah I said it!) Bailiff Jake. I bring to you the case of the “I’ve Only Played Baldur’s Gate 3” Group. My Seattle hockey league has some nerds and so I got a group of D&D Hockey Nerds together to play a campaign. Scheduling has been a nightmare between all of our hockey games and jobs, etc. and the sessions that we do get to play there is often a chunk of time dedicated to me explaining that BG3 works slightly differently than the regular 5e rules. But the only prior D&D experience any of them have is BG3. It’s like a similar issue to when the whole “Mercer Effect” was a debate where players expected every table to be like Critical Role. I love BG3 and I think they made some good changes, like Shoving is so fun in BG3, but it seems like they mostly just want to do the same things they do in BG3. Should I just dig in and embrace it and give them the game they all want, or do I stand my ground about the video game and the actual ttrpg being different things. I leave the fate of the table in your trusting hands. Thank you, Anthony

Dear infallible justices and the irreverent bailiff Cronk. I come to you with the case of the Four Hour Battle. I’m running Strahd for a group of 5 of my friends who were at level 4 at the time. Slight spoilers for Vallaki, I guess. They had went to the coffin maker’s shop in Vallaki to retrieve some bones for a priest. In the attic was a nest of 6 vampire spawn as per the book. They got the bones with ease but couldn’t help themselves to look into the crates the spawns were hiding in. And thus, a slog of a fight commenced. For four hours these guys fought, went down, got healed, and fought again. Only twice did running away come up and only 2 out of 5 people thought it was a good idea. Justices, they did not run. Miraculously, not a single one of them died by the end and all of the spawns were defeated. My players then proceeded to complain how much of a slog that fight was and said I made it too hard for them. They still razz me about it at least once a session and at least twice when we’re hanging out not doing DnD. Justices, I ask, am I in the wrong here? I only ever imagined they would run once the first person went down, or even as soon as they had the bones. Should I have made it easier for them once I realized they weren’t going to retreat, or let them (and me) suffer a four fight? I await your perfect judgment. Thank you.

(I was the DM whose table had two exes, who I set up and helped break up, that were constantly fighting and a third friend who was uninvolved in the drama, from the August 15th episode.) To the high priests and their shining choir boy, I bring you an update and a confession. I decided to take Caldwell's advice. I recently started medical school, and I told the party that I was too busy to DM. They were so understanding that the ex-girlfriend offered to DM instead. I thought maybe if one of them were the DM, the fighting would get better because they would be talking directly instead of in-character. I was wrong. Instead, the fights were super personal with constant sniping and allegations of unfair targeting, of being annoying, and of getting the rules wrong, and since I was a more experienced DM, they would demand I take a side, and get mad at me when I did. I really wanted to get out of it, and I was desperate enough to sin. During a battle in the second session, my cleric went down. On my second death saving throw, with one failure already, Dice Christ blessed me with a nat twenty, and I should have popped back up. Instead, I lied and said I rolled a nat one. I described myself bleeding to death on the battlefield then made an excuse and left the Zoom call. Later, the third player texted me to let me know what happened after I left. I hadn't considered that I was the only healer. The ex-boyfriend went down the next round, and minions attacked his unconscious body and took all his death saves. The third and final player, who was never part of any of this drama, slogged through six rounds of combat alone (she tried to run) before succumbing to her wounds, resulting in a TPK. All three of them have been trying to get together with me to start a new game since then, and I've kind of been weaseling out of it. Holy ones, I feel really bad. I am a liar, a coward, a blasphemer, and now also a double murderer. Is there absolution for me? Does the fact that I lied to avoid a difficult conversation mean I'm going to be a bad doctor? Can I blame Caldwell? What must I do to be normal with my friends? We've been friends for five years now, and I feel awful that I have basically enabled endless drama and ruined our bond.

Forgive me, I tried to be brief 🙏 Dearest judges, esteemed guests, and benevolent bailiff, I played in a Phandelver campaign that usually met in-person quite sporadically since we began the campaign over two years ago. As players, we met as strangers (minus my ex-sweetheart and I) and have become friends, but in-game our characters had only been traveling together for a few weeks max with little to no RP moments that could help us get to know each other’s characters better. This I think is where the crux of the issue lies. That and the fact we had to play a couple of sessions via my Discord server due to hella snow in January. In one of those virtual sessions, on my turn my Ilamter cleric ran to the aid of a combatant NPC that one of our monks was engaged with. We should have been fact-finding, but the situation quickly turned into combat thanks in part to the aforementioned monk. These things happen. However our monk took great offense to my actions in character, and out of it seems, which resulted in some tension. He felt that my cleric had done something unspeakable in being an ally who ran to the aid of a perceived foe and I feel that he projected our out of game friendship onto the characters who I would say really aren’t that close yet. The group felt that his response was out of character and it certainly threw me for a loop too. I admit that I could have said something to our monk before running to this NPC, but no one seemed to listen to my cleric when battle was as in front of them anyways, which was fine I was happy to heal them either way. We tried talking in-game about it, but our monk seemed to be holding onto the offense and even felt okay going so far as to duking it out with my cleric. Judges, I beseech yinz to put my mind at ease, was I the dungeon jagoff?

To the lugubrious bailiff and the effervescent justices, I bring the case of too many familiars. I was DM'ing a modified curse of Strahd years ago and one of my players was playing a warlock who's gimmick was summoning as many familiars as he could. At first this wasn't an issue, I can balance encounters fairly well and I wasn't having an issue making sure that combat was challenging, the issue came as he reached 6 different familiars all on the field at once, and all with unique attacks. It took over 20 minutes whenever it got to his turn for him to figure out what he needed to do every time. I talked to him and asked him to please do at least some pre rolling, but it never happened before I had to take a break from playing to finish up my masters. One of the other players had suggested a timer for turns, but I didn't like putting people on the spot like that. Was I wrong to not strictly enforce a timer for these exhausting long combats? Or was it something that given enough time we could have figured out in other ways? I humbly await your judgement.

Honorable Priests of Dice Christ, I bring to all of you a confession. For the last two years, I have been running a campaign for my partner and three of our friends. All of these great people share one, not-so-great, character trait: They are all VERY forgetful. Hoping to counteract this trait, I now open every session with a NADDPOD-style recap, have provided each of them a brief lore cheat sheet, and have gotten into the habit of printing/laminating custom item cards for every single item they get. During a recent session, my players asked to loot a dungeon that I had forgotten to prepare loot for. So, I rolled random loot using a generator I found online and began spouting off what they found before actually reading the descriptions of the items myself… One of these items was the Gauntlets of Ogre Power, a wondrous item that instantly boosts the wearers Strength score to 19. Our three friends all have decent strength already (18, 18, and 16) so they offered the gauntlets to my partner, a Warlock, knowing she loves loot and has a low Strength score. My butthole clenched in this moment as I realized this would make Strength her THIRD stat sitting at 19. She ALREADY has 19 Con and 19 Charisma due to rolling three 6’s TWICE during character creation (for real, I rolled them myself and she yelled at me when I tried to nerf her). So… not wanting to give my partner the ability to womp me more than she already does, I did something treacherous… I simply did NOT make an item card for the gauntlets. As hoped, and expected, the next session went swimmingly, as did every session after, and not a single person has mentioned these gauntlets and my partner’s strength remains a lowly 12. However, I can’t help but wonder if I have sinned against dice Christ by taking a page out of my players book and “forgetting” something to make my life easier. Forgive me, I beg.

Dear judges and smexy bailiff Jake. Back in 2013 I played dnd with a group of coworkers for the first time. At the beginning of the session the dm said there were some wolf tracks and that we should follow them. We then found a pack of dire wolves. Out loud I asked my crew not to kill all of them because I wanted to tame one. They then proceeded to kill them all. When I shared my frustration they shrugged and said next time say it in character " judges at that time I didnt know what in character even ment. So I ask you should I stop howling for justice or am I right to be a mad dog?

Hello, esteemed justices newly appointed and tenured alike, also to the guy in the corner, trying to pretend like he belongs here. I bring to you the case of the self-destructing murder. In a longer running spelljammer campaign, our party was ambushed by some elvish members of an evil empire, as well as their automaton soldiers. My character was a Assimar that was originally part of the evil empire before realizing how evil they were and deserting the army. During the fight, they were trying to capture me alive to forcefully reenlist me. The automaton soldiers whenever they were killed, would self-destruct, as we found out early in the fight, during the fight I went down and the next turn a member of the party attacked the two automaton soldiers that had just knocked me unconscious, killing both of them, causing both of them to self-destruct, killing my player character. When I expressed disbelief that they would do this, they responded that the enemy wanted to take me alive and making the explosion kill me prevented them from taking me back alive. We ended up tpking in this fight shortly after partially because I could not rejoin the combat with a simple healing spell. Justices was I wronged or is killing the hostage the enemy wants to take alive a valid strategy?

To the lavender-scented judges and the stinky bailiff Jonk. I bring forth the case of the illiterate pseudodragon: My pact of the chain warlock and party were in a trial that involved stealing an egg guarded by a dragon and her magical wards. For my turn, I had my lovely pseudodragon familiar (who can understand common and draconic) fly to the egg and read the draconic glyphs guarding it, then translate the details to me via our telepathic bond. My dm ruled that my familiar can’t read because “although it understands draconic, it cannot speak”. In the pseudodragon stat block it says that it “understands common and draconic but cannot speak”. I lost the argument but have since stayed salty. Judges, am I wrong to be offended on behalf of my son who is a very smart and special boy?! I prostrate myself before your 80 foot tall bench.

Oh Dice Deacons I have a confession. During covid times a player took over as DM as some of us moved online, while it was enjoyable I noticed for any combat where things looked dicey the enemy would start missing and rolling low a lot and I suspected he was fudging the rolls, while I think a DM should mostly do what they feel is right I started wanting to just get combats over with when this would happen and because some of us used physical dice I would turn low attack rolls into decent rolls that I figured would hit to end it quicker. This has been weighing on me for quite some time and I pray the church might grant me forgiveness. (It could also be noted that most of this party got melted by a black dragons acid breath in one shot)

dear lovely judges new and old and also jake, i bring you the case of the remorseful womping. in 2018 my group at the time had just finished our first campaign, and we wanted to do our second campaign with the same characters but giving someone else a chance to DM (the first mistake). i played a purposely unoptimized hexblade warlock that took pact of the tome and mainly used eldritch blast reflavored as magic arrows and a dip into paladin for ranger spells like hunter’s mark and cure wounds. during our first session our new DM stopped everything in the middle of our first encounter to ask me “wait, why do you have half plate medium armor as a ranged fighter? shouldn’t a hexblade be using a sword?” and made me rewrite my character sheet in the middle of the session. because i was a shithead teen and did not have the emotional maturity to think “this is weird, i should dip” or having grace for a first time DM, i instead made my character into an absolute min-maxed nightmare. i had advantage on every attack through darkness/devils sight, and three attacks per turn with pole arm master boosted with hexblades curse and double smites. it was an awful sight. because our second encounter was balanced for our original low damage party, my mid session rebuilt character absolutely chewed through what was supposed to be a primary villain. the rest of my party still had fun and were excited about the womping, but the minute the deed was done i felt remorseful for taking up so much spotlight and going shark eyed on my friend’s first time dming. so judges, am i absolved for absolutely (rules as written) going to town spin attack crazy style because my scholarly warlock was made to be reworked mid session, or are there no heroes here?

To the judges I don't respect, the baliff I don't respect and the guest who frightens me for reasons that will soon be unveiled. I bring a case from days gone by. I bring a case of betrayal and tradegy. I BRING THE CASE OF THE PRIMATE V SPIDER At age 13, I asked to be in my brother in law's Mutants and Masterminds game with two other (adult) players. My character, Snap, was a monkey who gained his sentience after being captured and experimented on. Me and the other players got along and it was shaping up to be a fun campaign. At the end of one of our sessions, the DM ( Brother in law) announced excitedly that there would be a guest who would play a villain next session which excited the rest of the table as well. However, me being 13 and a little shit, I was grounded that week and couldn't go to the session. The next session I was filled in by the DM what happened. Apparently, the guest played an evil spider queen who womped the party and demanded they bring her 100 peasants to turn into her spider army. Judges, they agreed to do so. My character, who was present while I the player was not, was made to agree with them. You can see how this would be of big conflict to who my character was and, being new to roleplay, I simply played him dispondant and angry for the rest of the session, going against what the party was trying to do that session. The campaign shortly fizzled out due to other factors outside of anyone's control. Should I have been more malleable with my monkey's morals or was my anarchy at arachnid attacks actually alright? (PS. The guest who played the spider queen was my 23 year old sibling. The one who was married to my brother in-law)

Greetings Honorable Justices, love your work. Jacob, I think you forgot deodorant this morning. When I am DM-ing and I need a fantasy name for an NPC, I have gotten in the habit of using League of Legends Characters. There's like 200 of them, and it can help me characterize the NPC in my head by relating them to a character I already know. Plus, none of my players have ever played the game before. At least until recently. Thanks to the show Arcane, one of my players has talked about getting into the game. Now when they talk to an NPC which I had previously named after a League Character, they get this look in their eye that I dont like at all. I worry it is giving them hints into who are secret bad guys, royal lineage, or just figuring out their deal before role playing at all. Should I rename or kill a bunch of old NPCs? Should I power through and use this as smoke and mirrors? My lazy naming scheme is in your hands. Thank you

UPDATE: Ahoy, Jake. Stig here. I gave myself that extra advantage die that one time during an absolute womping of a purple worm (owing to a mistake I'd made on a previous attack minutes earlier while playing virtually on the toilet). That campaign wrapped up a year after the DC episode, and I played the audio from my confession at the finale. Everyone had a great laugh and we continued to reflect gayly. Person after person demanded a predator handshake from me, saying: "Stig, you son of a bitch." P.S. I still work at the same non-profit, only I've been promoted to an assistant director role! Stay crazy, -S

To the illustrious judges and bailiff Tim… or Jim? Either way, I give to you the case of the dual wielding dunce. Years ago I started my first ever D&D campaign, joining a parting a bit later than other players. They were level 3, and had been playing for 6 months or so. I needed help making a character, and the DM was happy to assist me. He asked what I wanted to be, and I said “I just want to dual wield swords.” After going over my options, I landed on a ranger. He told me that dual wielding and the Ranger class were both under powered, so he’d help me out with items and stuff. Sounded great! Fast forward a few months, by level 5 he gave me 2 +3 katanas to dual wield. It was amazing, but I quickly out damaged the rest of the party by a significant margin. It was obvious, even to me, the novice. His solution? He cut off my arm in a cut scene with no rolls. It was devastating, as even my feats stopped working, as I could no longer get the +1 AC since I wasn’t holding 2 weapons. He assured me I could get my arm back eventually if we found the right cleric. Judges, it’s been three real life years and I’m still half a character. No opportunities have presented themselves in game. Outside the game, I’ve asked about it and he just says “don’t worry I have a plan.” My character isn’t fun to play in combat, and not the vision I had for the game. Is this just? Was this a valid way to nerf my obviously over tuned character? If I lose an arm in the game, do I lose an arm in real life? I put myself at your mercy.

To the honorable judges and the stacked bailiff Jenga. I bring to you a case of a spell, not working despite working. We were playing a Grim Hollow campaign and the DM set up a session where all the characters had to 1v1 their biggest fears. In my case, I was a bard that wanted to be a stage magician but wasn’t very good, so he tried to shortcut by learning real magic and his biggest fear was being a never-was and having his parents not love him for it. During the fight, I hit Hypnotic Pattern on the dark version of myself which rendered him immobile and I ranted to whatever was doing this and my other party members who were watching. The DM kept attacking me with bonus action spells despite the fact that he was supposed to be completely immobilized. I ended up winning the encounter so it wasn’t the worst, but I ask, was I wronged? The DM said he could still take bonus actions but I think he was just being nitpicky because I beat him.

To the justices I look at with lust and the bailiff who I look at with respect In an ongoing campaign I play a monk who can use his ki points to cast spells that can make me better at hacking. In our last session, our city was attacked by a virus that turned every Cyborg within the city into a feral crazed maniac running around and destroying shit, after about 3 hours irl of absolutely nothing happening, the dm finally gives us a way to fix the situation by having me make a hacking check, I use all my saved ki to buff my modifier into a +18 and earn advantage on the roll, after rolling a 37, the dm asked me what I specifically rolled, I replied 19 on the die and he only then said I passed, after the session I was told he had no intention on counting my modifier, and instead only cared about the dice roll! Justices is this heathenly behavior or am I making a big deal out of nothing, I goatsie to the court.

Greetings oh many mighty justices and the failiff Jiraiya. I bring you a case of a forced attack. Several years ago I was in a final boss battle against Rak Tulkhesh, a powerful fiend from Eberron. My blood hunter had earlier in the round used her reaction for an attack of opportunity on a minion when Rak Tulkhesh used a legendary action to force every creature within 60ft to make a wisdom save or use its reaction to make on weapon attack against an adjacent creature. I argued that since I had already used my reaction, I couldn't make an attack. My DM made me make the attack anyway, and I accidentally downed a beloved NPC. We did end up winning the battle, but I felt terrible for attacking this character, especially since I feel like I shouldn't have had to make the attack in the first place. Who was right? Does this CR 28 bosses Legendary Action supercede the lack of a reaction? I graciously await your judgement.

dearest dice christ, esteemed council, (and jorb) i ask yee for guidance. i recently have had a friendship end and i find myself spring cleaning the reminders of the loss. i have a beautiful gifted dice set and i am afraid to part ways with it, as it has bestowed upon me many a nat 20 and many a critical failures (not so different from the figuratively deceased friendship). i don't believe the reasons for the friendship breakup are relevant, and there were problems on both sides. do i part ways with the gifted dice from aforementioned removed champion from my life? or do i continue to roll these potentially cursed dice, haunted by the ghost of my real life PvP. the dice are beautiful and spirited, but i fear the story they tell is over. please, please guide me dice christ! what do i do??

Oh man I love all of these people! These will be so good

Dear Justices, the ignamorous Bailiff and esteemed guest (Branson is how I became a D&D Fan shoutout Rude Tales) This is a conversation that stems from the D&D table but goes far beyond: Is desert a vibe or a type of food? Can I have whatever I want for dessert? Can I have ribs for dessert? I claim That I can have whatever I damn please as dessert. But others disagree Trying to use “the dictionary”. I await your definitive ruling.

To the magnanimous, intelligent, and 100% unbribeable justices and their pet hermit Jork - i bring the case of The PC Turned into Skeletor I will preface this by saying I am no longer at this table for a multitude of reasons, but it was my very first table, and my very first game, with a group of 5 other players, who i was joining mid-campaign. The DM had told me it was a more serious campaign, so I worked with her to make a serious character who would tie into the existing events of the game very well: a skeleton cleric, raised from the dead by their god to atone for past sins. I was very nervous about actually *playing* this character, but the DM assured me that if I wasnt comfortable just yet, I didnt have to do a voice for my character, and that the whole table understood id never played before and wanted to help me break the ice. Then I started playing, and every time I said something in character, the DM would rehash it, in a Skeletor voice, while throwing in as many skeleton puns as possible, and would proceed to RP in my place with other players. This was, admittedly, very hurtful, but at the time I felt that i couldn't play my own character well enough and that it would be more fun for everyone if the DM took over my speaking. I was the only player the DM did this for, and none of the other players had any issue with it, and actually got very excited whenever the DM spoke for my serious cleric turned comic relief gag character. I have been considering bringing this same character to a new table lately, and its had me thinking - was i at fault for not putting my foot down with the DM/not being "entertaining" enough with my character, or was it really fucking weird that she did that in the first place?

Hello to the “Upward-Nod” Justices, and the “avoiding eye contact” Bailiff, I bring you the case of I Royally messed up - After playing Baldurs Gate 3, I thought it would be cool for my party to have about 4 NPCs that they could pick from ,one for at a time, for missions/quests while the others “guard” camp or whatever. Well, you’ll never guess it, but I made the quest too “world-ending” so my party is always like “well we’re fighting a world ending threat - we should find a way to bring all of them” And from rolls and convincing arguments - find a way they do. Anyways, help.

To the mighty and fair justices, whose wisdom knows no bounds, and I guess Drake, I present to you the case of the Was-wolf. My group recently started a new chapter of an ongoing campaign, in which my werewolf path of the beast barbarian has become the ruler of a nation and was tasked with housing peace talks to end World War I (yes, actual WWI, that our fighter accidentally started). This culminated in a battle where my character had to fight the villains of this campaign solo, including her usurper mother. It was going alright, until an NPC cast Command and I had to make a wisdom save (every barbarian's worst nightmare). I was relieved when I got an 18 - only to be told that that wasn't enough to save, which felt kind of ridiculous, but I relented. After this, the DM immediately used a magical book to rip my character's werewolf abilities from her, with no save. I was floored. When I asked my DM what I would do, since my bestial abilities make up my subclass and weapons, he told me I could do regular barbarian stuff without subclass abilities - effectively nerfing my level 10 character without a save. When I asked him why he didn't plan this out with me, he said he wanted it to be a surprise and was giddy leading up to it. My character was rescued from the encounter, but she is now a shell of what she once was. Judges, am I right to be peeved about getting nerfed without a save in a glorified cut scene? Or is my DM buttoned up? I await your judgment with a pitiful "awoo" (PS next session, he actually admitted that I had passed the save, but he accidentally miscalculated the save DC)

May it please the court and the baliff, and the lovely guest justice who was sworn in oh-so beautifully, I bring you the case of the PCs who wanted legendary actions. I was DMing an adventure in which my PCs could free the spirits of dead gods in exchange for power. The Lich NPC they were allies with warned them of the risk of possession, and two of them freed three each, and both failed the wisdom saving throws to not be possessed. I took control of their characters as NPCs, and they made temporary characters to help the rest of the party save the ones who were taken over. When they found them, I had made custom stat blocks with additional powers, and a boss fight against two former PCs began. After they were saved and exorcised of the dark gods, the two players were upset to see the abilities the Boss Fight version of their characters were using weren’t on their character sheets I handed back, and said I should give them those badass boss fight powers. I did not, and things went on as normal after this side quest, except them asking if they could use them in tense moments. Should I have given them the powers their dark god-possessed characters had at one point, or at least let them keep the abilities they were given before they failed their saving throw? Thank you for your verdict, whatever it may be, and may Dice Christ be ever in your favor.

To the hallowed Judges of the Supreme crit and... I want to say Jim? John? Something like that. I present to you the case of the callous counterspell. I am the DM for an online space based campaign using the Mass Effect 5e homebrew rule set with my longtime friends. After a long adventure my party was accosted by a notorious bounty hunter. Part way through the battle I had thought a party member was using a healing spell, and being devious the bounty hunted started to counterspell it. However I was mistaken and they were just using a potion. A turn or so later the bounty hunter used a powerful ability allowing him to sneak attack multiple targets at once. A different player, we'll call him T used a shield spell. The bounty hunter had their reaction and started to counter spell, and T said "No wait, I forget he had counterspell I dont do that" I told the player he had already used the spell, and as he hadn't actually counterspelled in the fight the character didn't know he has that ability (as it is quite rare in universe). He said "GM if you do this, I will leave the call right now" I was dumbfounded and eventually said, "Okay leave". He did and we had to take a break because I was rattled. He eventually came back and we finished the fight, but it put a sour vibe on a climactic moment. So I ask ye noble judges, was I wrong to not allow him to recon his shield, or was his counterspell knowledge misbegotten?

To the Justices of the Crit, I would say may it please the court but I hope it pisses you off actually because I’m Murph levels of aggro right now. Been running a table for 5 years with IRL friends, one of whom has given me a break every year by running a mini campaign that is rife with DM shenanigans but ultimately still fun. Calling our first session “fun” would be a major stretch. My aberrant mind sorcerer rolled what I was told was a successful insight check on an NPC that seemed suspicious. I additionally used detect thoughts to probe deeper and after the NPC failed the save I was told that he wasn’t suspicious and there was nothing important on his mind to worry about. Additionally, I was traveling with an NPC holding an important magic item in a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. I asked both in character and above the table if the NPC and item would be safe in my absence (attending a garden party) or if I should take more precautions and was again explicitly told not to worry about it. Lo and behold, at the party the “not suspicious” person betrayed his queen (our werewolf barbarian) using the important magical item to suck her subclass out with no save. Afterwards all of the players felt like we had spent a few hours in a cutscene, railroaded “for the plot.” Are we right to feel betrayed and lied to? I know we are but need you to validate me and punish our scripting DM. PS The barbarian has submitted her own case as well, we both hate the show.

To the fraudulent justices and the new justices who have actually bothered to swear the oath, I bring you the case of the Water Walking Dragon. I’ve been running a nautical campaign for my players and they were in battle with a barnacle covered aquatic dragon who had evolved to no longer have eyes like those weird eyeless fish Justice Tanner probably knows about. One of the players cast Water Walk on the dragon, which when cast underwater sends a creature hurling towards the surface at a speed of 60 ft per round. My dragon had a swim speed of 80, so I ruled it would have to use most of its movement every round pushing back down as it comically battled the current. My player was disappointed that they didn’t automatically remove the dragon from the fight. It was only after the fight, thanks to another kind commenter on a different D&D Court thread, which we will refer to as the lower courts, that I discovered that you had to be a willing creature to benefit from the Water Walk spell and the entire thing was a mistake, but my player still insists that I wronged them. Your honors, what should I do? I prostrate myself before the court.

Hell yeah Beth May!! Ron Stampler on the Supreme Crit. Who woulda thought huh??

Hello to the Esteemed Justices and a curt nod to the standoffish baliff Jim. I bring the case of the Terrible Teammate. Back in my college days, I agreed to DM for a few of my friends as a first-time DM running the Lost Mines of Phandelver. A few sessions in, and one of my buddies asked to join as a first time player, wanting to play an oath of devotion paladin "because I looked it up and they were the strongest". What followed were all the stereotypes of a problem player( torture, legitimately threatening PC familiars over loot, and engaging in PvP over disagreements, as well as killing friendly NPCs who didn't bend to his will). Me and the two more experienced players at the table agreed that something had to change, but everyone at this table played for our college football team, including the problem player. I was also the captain of the team. While we wanted a change, we didnt see a world where this was turned out well for the team's chemistry, especially with me as the team's leader. In the end, we had him change subclasses as his actions didn't much fit an oath of devotion paladin, but all these years later I wonder if I should have done more? So judges, was I right to resign my football friends to a toxic teammate, or did I commit a 15-yard penalty by allowing unsportsmanlike conduct at the table?

Justices Murphy, Axford, Tanner, and the Baliff who we may or may not feel a particular way about, May it please the Crit: I ran a Descent into Avernus game a few years ago. Near the conclusion of the campaign, I advised my players they could ultimately decide the ending, with whoever they wanted to align with having effects on who their end fight would be against. (trying to be vague here to avoid spoilers for the module) Justices, they chose to not align with ANYONE and they wanted to defeat Zariel themselves. I told them it was possible, but above table, it would be incredibly difficult. I neglected to inform them I had taken their character sheets and had ran five simulated battles with Zariel, all ending in a TPK. In the fight, things were looking grim, and one of the six players died and was revivified. To get them out of the situation, the rogue made a desperate pull on his deck of many things. He pulled wish. The conclusion of his wish was that virtually the campaign was pointless, Zariel was not redeemed, but she would rule Avernus with her original goal in mind. Fast forward to this past week, we’re playing a crawl through the hells game set in the same timeline, just four hundred years later. Zariel has been acting as a double agent to benefit the party, that is, until the last session. The players had eliminated all of the competitors to rule Avernus, and Zariel showed her true colors: the wish wasn’t worded well enough to prevent her from returning to evil due to the corruption of Hell. The former rogue who is in this campaign became LIVID. I ask the Court, should the players Wish override the corrupting nature of Hell? I humbly rest.

to the most honorable court on high, whose word is tantamount to the will of dice christ themselves, and that other guy…i wanna say…mike? May it please the court I don’t know if what I have is more a case or a confession, but I present the the accidental human shield I run a campaign for my wife, our roommate, a friend of ours, and a friend of my roommate. The level 4 party was exploring a cult temple when they stumbled across a ritual in process (think the Temple of Doom scene where they rip the heart out) I had intended this to be more cutscene like as they watch the cult attempt to summon an aspect of their god into the body of a prisoner, and that the party would fight the failed transformation (a modified zombie) and a few straggling cult members while the rest of the group retreated further into the temple. Instead, my roommates warforged paladin (Hecho) decided to attack immediately, and drew his sword which he described as glowing in holy light, which made every NPC realize what was going on and turned into an all out brawl that’s fine, it happens here is where the problem was My roommates friend, an orc artificer named Lorri who wanted to be a tailor, was standing back to back with Hecho as combat began. In front of Lorri was one enemy, in front of Hecho were 5 enemies. The one attacking Lorri went first, hit and Hecho used his reaction to swap places with Lorri, taking the damage. I asked him if he was sure, looking at the board in front of us, and he said yes. He even took 7 damage for the trouble Noble right? That was, until it came time for the 5 enemies to attack Lorri. Each person had 2 attacks (again, these were all of the enemies i had in the entire temple, meant to stretch a few encounters) With just the first 4 enemies (8 total attacks) I hit 6 times with 2 crits, reducing Lorri to 0. With 1 enemy left, I decided to have some fun and had him say that if they all dropped their weapons and surrendered he wouldn’t kill the artificer. Hecho refused. Thing is, I didn’t know the guy playing Lorri really well, and this was only the 4th session. I didn’t want to kill a guy I hardly knew, so I told them I would roll for the attacks, and he only hit with 1 of his 2 attacks, sparing him with 2 failed death saves. Party was able to heal him on the next turn, and they won a tough battle. Hecho has gotten razzed for this ever since, but I do feel bad for “pulling my punches” since an unconscious PC should have just been auto-hit and killed. I only didn’t because I just met the guy. My wife told me later that she would’ve felt slighted if she’d found out I’d changed the rules to keep her from dying, so I must ask, who was most at fault? my gung-ho warforged PC? Or myself for preventing a death from occurring? I ask that your punishment is as ridiculous and cruel as possible, bonus points if it involves whatever weird bit is currently annoying Justice Murphy

To the supreme crit cutties and guy with them, I think it’s Jeremy? I present to you a battle case. Our DM does not agree that the round takes 6 seconds, but instead 1 minute, cause a lot of things are done. By his logic the barbarian rage will last only one round, when I pointed that he says I am too nitpicking. What are your thoughts on the rounds, their logic and how long they last? Best wishes from small town in Ukraine, lots of love

Sooooo excited for these guests!

Hello, esteemed justices of the court and that bailiff I’m writing on behalf of a friend who may have a plausible case for wrongful razzing. My friend is playing a minotaur barbarian in his long-running campaign. At the end of a session, the DM introduced that they would be fighting a dragon and left them on a cliffhanger, having everybody roll to see if the dragon's frightful presence impacted the party. Only one member of the party failed their save (not my barbarian friend). The DM ended the session there and said that they would pick up the fight next time. My friend, the barbarian minotaur, reminded the DM that he was unable to attend the next session. The DM smartly said, " Oh, we'll just switch it so that your Minotaur is the one affected by the fear and say that he ran out into the hallway, so we have a canon reason for why you're pc is not here this session”. It all worked out, and without the barbarian, they still beat the dragon handily in one session. The next session, when my buddy returned to the table, the DM narrated the barbarian coming out from hiding after the fight. All of the players, both in and out of character, started making fun of what a coward his minotaur was for being scared by the dragon and running away. My friend is now trying to figure out how to handle the fact, both in and out of character, that he was forced into role-playing a coward when his barbarian has been your classic tough guy. Are my friend and his character being wrongfully razzed based on a decision he didn't have any agency in? Or does he have no recourse except to “yes, and” and go along with this and integrate it into a part of his character? I humbly await your decision.

Is this saying that next week will be an episode of Dungeon Court with these 4 guests, and none of the 2 Crew?

To the illustrious judges and that guy who played Tread Nevers, I humbly come before you with the case of the Level 1 DM. After learning that several of my fellow cast members in a community theatre production of Hunchback of Notre Dame were also fans of DND (shocker) I got everyone's numbers and made a groupchat for a one-shot, planning to DM something related to the show. A guy from the group created his own separate groupchat (with all the same people), said he would be DMing, and started organizing details. I assumed I hadn't been clear enough that I had hoped to DM and said nothing. He asked us to make our characters level 1, knowing two people in the group were first-timers. We had a goofy one-shot, mostly silly conversation and one combat with our level 1 characters. We all agreed it would be fun to play again — several of us, with more DND experience, suggesting that we play at level 3 next time. He is convening the next one shot in the group chat and I asked if we could be level 2 this time. He said no, we're only playing at level 1. (He is new to DMing and there are 7 of us playing, so I assume he is worried about us whomping his monsters, but couldn't he just give us harder challenge ratings?) Am I right to be frustrated with this DM, or should I chill out and just enjoy the chance to hang out with cool new theatre friends? -riley (she/her) p.s. to sway Justice Axford in my favor... I named my kitten Moonshine!!

To the properly inflated judges and the woefully under-inflated bailiff, Jork. I present to you the case of the Reluctant Murderhobo. I played at a home game with a (too large) group of 9 PCs, many of whom were new to the game. It became clear early on that about half the table was afraid to make any decisions, and they began capturing the last survivor of any encounter and interrogating them for upwards of an hour before deciding to move on. I remained patient at first, but reading the body language of the other half of the group, I began using my Drow Rogue to speed things up, namely by slitting the throats of the captured enemies mid-interrogation, much to the horror of half the group, and the delight of the other half. Judges, I beseech you, was I wrong to put the enemies and, let’s be honest, half of the table, out of our collective misery? Or should I have allowed the new players to continue to take us all hostage? I await your wise and fair judgment.

May it pleasure the most Supreme of Courts and tickle the bailiff’s fancy until it wets itself: I present the case of the Bullseye Druid! I joined a campaign my partner was in with her friends, who I didn't really know. The DM was running the same module with another group and thought it would be fun for both parties to race to retrieve a special amulet for a town festival. Each group ran separate sessions through an underwater grotto, using potions to breathe. At the start of the joint session the DM made it very clear that no one would be allowed to die from PvP. Our group was not allowed to make stealth rolls even though we ended the previous session having Pass Without Trace up. Our rogue got the amulet off a giant shark and I cast Invisibility on him. The DM's husband in the other group said, "Focus fire the Druid [me] to break concentration" even though his character had no way to speak underwater. Their party of 6 players proceeded to ignore the shark and take me down in one round, though I held concentration and the rest of my party dashed away with the item. We ultimately "won" but I was salty as the sea. Your honors, should we have gotten to make stealth roles against the other players’ perception? Should the DM have stopped the table talk to uphold her "No PvP killing" rule? I await your ruling with potion-baited breath!

To the most perspicacious of potentates and the bootylicious bailiff, I present for your consideration: Hoist Upon His Own Nat 20 My group’s first D&D campaign was 10 years ago in an office conference room, after work at a tech company where we all worked together. We were playing Out of the Abyss, with all brand new players (myself included) and our friend who was a Forever GM of older editions, but was also new to 5e We were cautiously picking our way through the dungeon and came upon a snare trap in the middle of the hallway. The thief in our party approached the trap, attempted to disarm it, and rolled a nat 20 The GM said that he had disarmed it so well, that he could choose to re-arm it, and it would catch anyone else that comes through this way – to which the thief said: yep, sounds great. You can probably see where this is going ... Cut to the next session a week or two later, that same Thief is being chased by some duergar, hastily retreating back through that section of the dungeon. As he dashed through the corridor, the GM asked him to roll a DEX save to avoid his own trap, because, according to the GM, he forgot that it was there and did not say he was explicitly avoiding it. The argument prior to the roll lasted about 20 minutes, but ultimately, it became clear that the GM was standing his ground, so the Thief rolled the check, and failed. An encounter ensued, which we all survived, but to this day, the Thief contends that they should’ve been able to avoid their own trap automatically with his prior nat 20. As far as the rest of the campaign, we had a few PC deaths but eventually we were able to successfully make it Out of the Abyss (TM). Players have joined and left over the years and others have started GMing, but four of us from the original group still meet weekly to play. Please, judges, make thy judgement and lay to rest our table’s oldest dispute. Also, if it matters, the Thief was the GM’s boss at the time.

Greetings Illustrious Justices, and special acknowledgement to Jake - hey! Today, I ask for your ruling on the case of the Bum-Bag of Holding. Several years ago I was participating as a player in a home-brewed campaign. I was a Dragonborn Wild Magic Barbarian by the name of Bumkrum Peters. One session, our party was attempting to infilitrate an enemy's lair by allowing ourselves to be captured and taken to the prison in his basement. So that we wouldn't be unnarmed after we were locked up, we needed a way to smuggle weapons in. Enter: The Bum-Bag of Holding. Bumkrum had possession of a bag of holding, and had the brilliant idea to tuck it into his sizeable, welcoming, Dragonborn-sized butthole, leaving just the opening sticking out. Since the bag is just a bag with a pocket dimension inside, we figured this would work fine. - we could put weapons in and take weapons out just by reaching in! Justices, would you believe that the DM rebelled against this idea? Jake? Despite us arguing our position and a discussion of logistics, physics, and anatomy, the DM held firm and we ended up going into the jail completely unarmed. We were able to progress through talking, but I can't help but feel we were robbed of the shittiest (in a good way) jailbreak of all time. I ask your judgement: is a Bum-Bag of Holding a brilliant idea or was the DM right to poo-poo it? Love, Bumkrum Peters

To the stylish justices and the mediocre bailiff. I bring to you the case of The DM’s Secret Sessions. I’ve been playing in a D&D campaign for almost 2 years now, and most of us are new players. We are all friends from college, and the DM and one other player are especially good friends. This player’s character fell in love with one of the NPC’s, and as a party we worked together to get them to go on a date; the two characters are now dating. The relationship has been really beneficial to help develop this player’s character. I have no issues with this relationship, however… I have recently found out that the DM and this player have hooked up, and are now dating. This would not be weird if not for the fact that they are roleplaying as these characters in the bedroom. Your honours, I am uncomfortable with this, but as far as I know they have not brought any of this to the table. Are they in the wrong for what they do in the private of their home or should I just get on with it and try not to think about their (hopefully) non-canonical private sessions. I leave the judgement up to you.

To the honorable justices and to the bailiff that just lost the game, if it pleases the court I present the case of the Wild Magic Sorcerer vs. the DM. I was playing a Wild Magic Sorcerer another player was playing a Druid. The Druid cast Geas on a corrupted hag we were fighting, their DC was 16, the DM said that the hag rolled a 16. I said that I would use Bend Luck so it would fail, the DM then asked me to roll, I said that it didn't matter what I rolled because even a 1 would put it under the DC. The DM then said that it rolled a 16 on the die, it had additional modifiers on top of that. Confused I asked what the total roll was, the DM remained silent even after I asked again and explained how Bend Luck works. I went ahead and rolled but it wasn't enough and the spell failed. The creature then paralyzed me and 2 of my party members for several rounds. I posit that I should get to know the total roll beforehand, as if it was high enough I wouldn't have used Bend Luck to begin with. We won anyway but l am still a little miffed. So honored justices was I wronged or did my DM rightfully get one over on me?

Jubilations Joyous Judges, Jurists, and Jacobs. I bring to you a case of a DM most unjust and unjubilant. Several years ago, we fixed a (now dead) wizard’s illusion-made-real machine, which would allow his simulacrum to become a real boy. Our wizard and artificer were successful with great rolls, but for safety, we tested it on an illusion of a pile of platinum bars.. equaling roughly 1 million gp. Didn’t want to test it on the guy, you know? Anyway, it worked, on both money and the guy. So on our way to launder it - the money, not the guy - we were told the money - not the guy - was disappearing slowly. So we book it to the bank. As soon as a laundering deal was struck with the teller- we were down to half our pile- a little demon/devil (tiny, red, twirling mustache, offensive French accent) Popped out of nowhere, grabbed the teller and the money, jumped into the vault portal, and locked it tight. It’s been 4 years in and out of game. Our money is still out of reach! Our characters are in the Icewind Dale, so it’s not like The money would let us do anything crazy. We just want to build our guild- the Claws of the Crag- a castle! Please guide us on how much further we can bemoan our otherwise great, though still sometimes petty, DM. I humble myself before your benevolent nonsense of a punishment. Apologies to Jake the Great for length, I have tried to keep it as brief as possible.

May it please the court and the beloved guest judges, and leave the bailiff feeling satisfied but not too satisfied but perhaps a little wet and soggy, I present to you the case of permanent disadvantage. One time I was playing an Ancestral Guardian Barbarian, mainly for the purpose of using the Ancestral Protectors subclass feature. In our first session, my friend who was playing a Cavalier Fighter discovered that their Unwavering Mark feature applies the same effect (disadvantage against everyone other than the PC that applies the mark). He then suggested that we use both of these features against a single enemy, ensuring that they have disadvantage on EVERYONE (ourselves included). Though the Ancestral Protectors feature doesn't use the language of "applying a mark", I tried to argue that though RAW that could work, it definitely shouldn't be allowed RAI. Ultimately, our first-time DM decided to allow it and we cheesed the final fight of the session so bad that we never played in that campaign again. O just and impartial court, how do you read and interpret these rules and mechanics? Should we have been allowed to carry out this campaign-killing whomp?

Dearest Judges whom I love dearly, *polite nod of acknowledgement with undertones of resentment* Jack Our group has a problem player and need help dealing with him. Almost 2 years ago my partner and I started a new dnd game, its a pirate campaign and we are currently level 8. We invited some friends we'd played dnd before and one who we haven't played with but knew are into ttrpgs, Trevor (Character name) who my partner knew from university and had SAID he boasted an extensive ttrpg knowledge. We later found out that this is the first ever game he's been in, which wouldn't have been a problem if he hadn't been playing an edgy undead human warlock with dead parents and former crew, who just will not interact with the party. He gets upset when he's not involved and inserts himself into every scene but refuses to engage with ANY plot hook set up for him. My partner, the DM, made a whole dungeon based around his warlock patron and he missed half the sessions due to a prior commitment he planned months ago and didn't let us know until the day of. He then later complained that there wasn't anything to do with his character in the campaign. During the last session his character Left the party to find a new patron with another crew. After the session he said "I've decided to retire my character as I realised my improv style doesn't work with you all". Am I allowed to kill him? This is not his first offence with TOMES of other crazy bullshit he's done. Should we kick him out the group, me and my partner spent an hour after the last session bitching about him.

Can't believe you got Beth May!!

To my good friends Justices Axford, Tanner and Brian, and also jake Hurtwirtz - bike thief, i know it was you. I bring you the case of the misplaced prize money. A couple of years ago i took it upon myself to organise my friends bachelor party after the best man failed to do so in time. With limited time and resources, i prepared a pirate themed one shot, i made dinner for everyone (ramen, from scratch), i bought an expensive bottle of scotch and cigars, and to round the night out, a Super Smash Bros tournament. I presented this plan to the group chat and added “id appreciate if anyone is able to chip in any money for dinner and drinks” - this is foreshadowing. One groomsman said he would put up some prize money for the smash bros tourney. The night went well. The players chose from characters I had prepared, while the groom played a swashbuckler rouge, with added legendary actions that allowed him to control the pirate ship and command the npc-crew. I even bought him a captains hat resembling Luffy’s strawhat from One Piece. At times, i was DMing while preparing dinner, leading to the best compliment ive ever received “i dont know how you made a meal that good while DMing a game that fun”. However in classic dnd fashion, the game ran long and there was no time for the smash bros tourney. The groomsman who offered up the prize money had to leave, and as he did pulled out his wallet, produced the 50 Australian dollars intended to be won, and handed it to the groom with a ‘congrats mate’ and promptly left. Justices, i thought he was going to give those Australian dollars to me. No one chipped in. To make things worse, one groomsman is a chef, but i made dinner. One guy worked at a tobacconist, but i bought the cigars. Justices, in lieu of a smash bros tournament, who should have received 50 Australian dollars, me or the groom? Ps. If you’re lost for a punishment, may i suggest lethal injection.

To the judges who I pay full reverence to and the bailiff who constantly messes up their paperwork. I present you the case of The Most Deadly Dodge. In a home campaign that I played in, another PC named Rebel was a war-forged eldritch knight fighter from a desert kingdom. After returning by himself to his homeland in order to find his creator, he eventually found his sort of Dad and had a heart to heart about his creation and purpose. Rebel had been struggling with the fact that he possessed an incredibly powerful magical hammer imbued with the spirit of an earth god but despite his best efforts, he couldn’t draw out the weapons magical power. We at some point learned that the hammer works similar to Thor’s hammer and will only lend its power to someone who it considers worthy or virtuous. After sometime the town came under attack by an evil wizard (my character’s brother). The wizard was able to take control of the minds of the other war-forged and had them attack the people of the town. Rebel sprung into action to defend the people of his homeland and eventually he is all that physically stood between a group of children and his mind controlled metal siblings with crossbows. With his shield raised, Rebel assured the children that he was prepared to defend them with his life. The DM let the player know that the war-forged were about to open fire on him and in an attempt to brace himself and get some bonus to his defense the player said “I take the dodge action”. The DM then described how as the bolts fired towards Rebel he dodged out of the way at the last moment, allowing the bolts to fly past him and into the group of children killing them all. This lead to a morose end to the session and the hammer still not seeing Rebel as worthy. The player protested that he was just trying to take some kind of defensive stance in order to take less damage from the oncoming attacks. I ask you judges, was the DM right to interpret the players words literally or should there be some way to increase your AC without pin cushioning bystanders? I throw my friends, and definitely not myself, at your mercy.

To the Hallux Jake and the Judges, I was DMing LMoP and the party was almost to the BBEG. The cleric asked for a Talisman of Pure Good, that would basically insta-kill any evil aligned character if it failed a save. I said I was fine with them having it as long as it wasn’t used on the BBEG. They agreed. The party busts into the BBEG’s room and the cleric uses the amulet and insta-kills the BBEG. I could tell the rest of the party was upset, so behind the screen I changed the character that died to a doppleganger that was supposed to be part of the fight. Once the party says the BBEG again, the cleric was pissed and the party was ecstatic. Should I have allowed the cleric to have their kill or did I save the fight?

Beth May!!! Lets gooo two of my favorite dnd podcasts

For CAKE HURWITZ! Two years ago, in our weekly campaign over Zoom. One of our members was getting bogged down with work and at the end of a session told us that he was leaving. At the beginning of the next session Our DM role played his wizards death, we mourned, and moved on. That same session we were heading into an evil church’s courtyard which ended in a TPK. After the game our DM revealed that this was supposed to be an easy encounter that was geared twards the wizard and had lumped the enemies together in large groups at the beginning of the fight to make full use of his AoE spells. But our wizard told the DM he was leaving after he created the encounter and didnt feel like changing it. So i ask the Judges, Should our DM have switched up his battle tactics to better suit that of a Ranger, Barbarian, and Rouge? or did we just get good ole fashioned whomped? either way no shade to our DM! LOVE YOU MIKE!!!!