D&D Court: Bonus Cases - A Quick Make-Out Sesh (w/ Ify Nwadiwe)

Here's the thing about the white dragon case that I can't get past. They left a dragon wyrmling alone for three weeks. That's basically like leaving a toddler or small child alone. It's not about treating it like a rabid animal. More even than an animal, sentient beings need more nurturing due to social dynamics. You can see it in orcas and the sad case of Tillikum. If you rip a sentient creature from its social group and expect it to just adapt, you have the potential to have a very emotionally unstable being. Not always but it's there. And they left it on its own for a long time, hoping a few months of training would be enough to create a stable social framework. Anyone who's been around small children who have been neglected will tell you that's kinda doubtful. I'm probably guilty of applying too much real world logic, but that's my take.

“Caldwell, why don’t you make us out?” was right there!

I don't think I've ever heard Caldwell left so hard and I am here for it LOL

Do you mean… Dale of Waterdeep? 👀

The tiny makeout sounds were awful

Late 2 conversation, I work with monkeys, those bastards (affectionate) know how to wield sharp objects and can and will use them with glee. Also it would be incredibly easy to train a monkey to stab, though they would 100% lick a knife cause they can

One time my dm got drink on near and I had to give him a run down on what happened two days later. I was tempted to say we levelled up but I acted honourabl y. We still laugh about it to this day

Sooooo unhinged

As someone who is substantially taller than my older brother, the correct way to describe it is "My Big, Little Brother"!!

Lol I know I’m very late to the convo, but there’s def documentation of bonobos using sharpened sticks as spears to hunt bush babies, and chimpanzees have been taught how to use a kitchen knife for dicing

Thank you for your absolution clergy members, my soul is now unburdened

I'm late but I wanna comment that I agree with y'alls ruling on the White Dragon case. Regardless of lore or biology and stuff, it was clear that the DM and the other players immediately shot down the idea of that one player even attempting to keep it as a pet and raise it, even if they entertained that PCs attempts at training it, it felt like instead of acknowledging the possibility and developing decent mechanics for it along w the player, that DM let them do some rolls cause denying it outright would've been bad DMing, while still not giving any actual consideration to the possibility of them taming it, and ended up accidentally creating some false hope. I don't think the player should've had it forever had they succeeded, since of course that would be extremely overpowered, but the DM could've always just set up an arc of "if you love it let it go" once it reached maturity, or even like they said, had it escape and then have the party search for it in order to take responsability both for the damage it could cause and its own wellbeing. Or put it in danger/have it get kidnapped/stolen/poached and have the party rescue it. I also don't think that player wanting to have fun is as selfish as some comments put it; and in the case of the world being more sober like Game of Thrones or something, there's always the (d20 ACOC SPOILERS) Saccharina-Cinnamon precedent, in which Brennan did make the dragon have a destructive, hard to control nature, along with some very real consequences to go with it. Still, even though I'm of this opinion, I don't think it was malicious of the DM or anything like that, it just so happens that they could've handled the situation better than they did, had they had more experience, and had they put more consideration into it. (Sorry for the long comment,,, just felt like the player got dealt a bad hand when it didn't seem like they were making any serious infraction on the rest of the table's enjoyment)

can't believe this only child ruling... @ whoever wants to give their LITTLE brother a cursed item to make them shorter: i support you, you are the hero of this story, perpetuate the pettiness, your brother should never make you read books

Getting caught up on naddpod rn so I know this is late, but Ify was so funny and I hope he comes back more often!

Anouther classic siding with the wrong person because they didn’t pay attention to part of the prompt, the basement dragon didn’t attack the party until after some rolls to calm it down failed and it lashed out, as well as while chromatic dragons can talk white dragons are known to be the most feral in their description.

Related to the concept of elves height variance, my head canon of the crick elves with the exception of Moonshine and her mom is that all of the other crick elves are roughly the size of Kokiri children from ocarina of time and that they are born in litters. Something about the names Cooter and Petrie elicit short little mischievous asshole vibes.

Wolf with a Buster Sword aka Sif from Dark Souls?

Caldwell's absolutely insane laugh at Ify's "Salvatore-up" was SO similar to my own when I heard it that I just feel SEEN.

I BESEECH you for content warnings, for misophonia. (The sound of slurping makes my anxiety spike and my heart pound, in a really bad way.) Love y’all infinitely, I know you’re not slurping with malice.

inject a new episodes straight into me pls daddy

Caldwell absolutely losing his mind early on in this one lmao

naddpod I need you so bad tonight

I'm so excited that Ify is on the pod! I've been saving these episodes to listen to for a day when I wouldn't be interrupted and its finally here!!!

Emily at the very end made me audibly scream

my fear of mouth noises made this episode torture luckily im a masochistic

We prostrate ourselves before the benevolent wife worm!

It comes up so much in my games I'm gonna say it hear! To the white dragon pet wanter and any dm who inevitably has a player who wants a pet, there are 3 types of pet. I lay these out every time a pet option shows up. 1. Toy pet, this is a creature that you have as a pet, it cannot mechanically effect the game and is invincible, you can flavor anything you do within the rules of the game or role play to involve it, all rolls come from you as though you are doing it, it can't be places you aren't. 2. Familiar pet, you have the find Familiar spell through feat or class the Familiar becomes flavored like the pet you got but mechanically follows the rules of the spell and the creatures you have available to you with it. 3. Other pet, these pets are run by the dm, can die and are ultimately at my discretion to control, you can persuade the Xorn or wolf or falcon to help you and be your little buddy but they're gonna act like how that creature acts and your decisions could put them in danger! TL;DR let your players have pets, but give them the terms upfront!

They missed that the party failed a bunch of persuasion checks on the dragon!

I’m baffled by the rulings for the Dragon Wyrmling case. Absolutely insane read.

It's a bad day to have misophonia, gang. xD Would love to see more Ify on NADDPOD! He's got a fresh perspective and is so funny.

I can’t express how hard I laughed at Ify saying “I’ve seen a monkey love” so earnestly and wistfully

I feel like the point of that first question was the brother was constantly being a stickler for following Forgotten Realms lore, and then showed up with an elf that's way too tall and tried to justify it with Tolkien.

My little brother is a solid 4 inches taller than I am but he knows full well how quickly I can drop him. He knows who the bigger brother is😆

Man ya'll, the dragon case is the most ungenerous read for this poor dm. It was a good villainously ironic twist, and the pcs even failed rolls to get the dragon to stop, and the player overreacted. If we punish the dm for this, their lesson is "always let the pcs do whatever they want, less they threaten the entire game with their presence"

If the tall elf ever goes back to his people, make him the runt of his home town.

that "do they ball?" joke from Cladwell at 3 mins is maybe one of his best jokes ever 🤣

So slurpy. So gross. Yet so funny. Iffy is awesome. Best wishes to the lowly absent Jake (and the magnificent Jill ) but he better be greasing those supreme Crit Justice’s palms to hold his job with the likes of these guests.

Precedent: https://www.wionews.com/world/monkey-with-a-knife-running-riot-and-terrorising-in-brazilian-town-for-a-week-491873/amp

I think I speak for us all when I say we need more Ify on NADDPOD

Thinking of that news story about a monkey last year that ran around Brazil sharpening a giant kitchen knife on rooftops, that pcs monkey absolutely should’ve been allowed to wield a knife

The dm gave them rolls for the wyrmling and they rolled poorly.

I just wanna say, there's a Final Fantasy Pathfinder system where a wolf TOTALY can strap a buster sword to his back and charge demons to death.

Y'all cannot have enough Iffy on here

So funny Ify bringing up the new mtg set because I was just looking at spoilers for it. The 4c Aragorn looks hype.

I guess now I’m gunna have to run a campaign with an Irwin Dale. Some thing about big reptiles and Racing

Ify had some really funny and sage takes. The 'Becky With the Good Hair' patron is perfect, and I too would have clapped that octopus druid. His peek behind the curtain about fudged rolls has maybe ruined my relationship with actual play, though? It sounds dramatic, but it took me so long to relax and trust in the 'actual' part of actual play. Now my brain has evidence that fudging DOES happen sometimes and I'm right back to doubting everything again. I want to think that I can still trust IRL paladin Murph and a few others, but I'm not the best at judging these sorts of things so...I just don't know anymore.

My feed is glitches! I can play this one, but the main ep doesn't even have a time code on it.

Re:"if they can learn sign language they can use a knife" unfortunately monkeys cannot learn sign language. The past attempts of forcing monkeys and apes to use sign language have all been from people who saw sign languages as a lesser form of communication and didn't actually know any. The experiments were based on ableist understanding of deaf culture where the researchers basically saw ASL as a random collection of gestures instead of a language with its own grammar. So when the animals made random gestures, some which seemed similar to signs, they proclaimed success. When people who actually know ASL interacted with these animals, they witnessed no grammar or understanding of meaning connected to the gestures.

The mouth sounds are an absolute fucking nightmare.

I would have let that player have a tall elf but then make all the elves the “actual” height so he’s some interesting outlier that everyone comments on

It's a shame Jake wasn't on this episode - someone should splice Murph's ruling on the tall elf with Murph saying that Hardwon's reincarnation wasn't allowed to be as tall because he was now a half-elf.

One thing missing in the White Dragon's Plight case was that the question asker *did* mention that the final straw encounter was based on some "very bad roles from an otherwise persuasive group". So it sounds like the players were at least rolling in this final encounter to determine how the dragon reacted to them and it wasn't *entirely* based on the DM's will. Plus, apparently, it was *the other players* that were telling this monk that the dragon was a feral animal and the DM was supporting them, so it sounds like maybe the DM was reading the room and trying to just get past this choice of a sorta selfish player that no one else liked. Another small detail, the question asker said that the dragon had frozen *creatures* so maybe it wasn't as villainous and logistically confusing as freezing humans, just some rats or whatever. Something else I think was a bit glossed over was that the player was told over multiple sessions that this was a feral, un-pet-makeable animal, insisted on trying anyway, and when it backfired, they straight up canceled the game by leaving halfway through. Now *that's* wild and feral behavior. Ultimately, were I the DM, I probably would have gone with Murph's solution and with three entire weeks left unattended, just had the dragon wreck their shit and fly away for some later appearance down the road, leaving some frozen rats as a nod to the sculptures. If there were a Luck Point Appeals Court, however, I think there's a strong case in your favor, DM.

My approach to "always evil" species in D&D is to basically make them psychopaths. When you talk to an IRL psychopath, they will tell you that they've just never had any capacity for empathy and AT BEST have spent their entire life faking it in order to be able to function within polite society. They can behave "good," but it will never be coming from the heart. It's never out of concern or love in their hearts which isn't a sort of selfish and possessive sort of love. And this is just a matter of their biology being different than the rest of us. Their brains are wired different. Species like white dragons are like this. They simply do not care about causing suffering and never will because their brain does not have that neural pathway. Their natural inclination is towards evil. It's possible to teach them to want to act good. You could convince them it's to their best interest to have pro-social behaviours. You could raise them with the idea that getting along with people and conforming to the social contract will make its life better. But the moment it decides that it finds an exception to that rule, look out!

I need a 10 hour version of Murphy trying to talk over the sounds of a quick, breathy makeout

gotta go find a coyote i guess!

Holy shit I got too drunk when dming once and the next session my players were really excited about the magic boat I gave them and my mind was 100% blank

Ify guest character when?

A wolf with Cloud’s hair is basically Lycanroc from Pokémon

Ify saying he makes "anime moments" happen sometimes by fudging some things--it seemed like he expected the naddpod crew to jump in like "yeah we do that for dimension 20." Instead he got an awkward pause and a cautious "really?" from Emily. sooooooo funny lol (Ify we love you and I'll never forget you eating minotaur ass on monster high)

this kind of wet snake audio is exactly what i pay $5 a month for

Caught at the perfect timing where I watched all of Escape from Bloodkeep and Shriek Week just to see more Ify Nwadiwe

I am surprised Murph didn’t defend the dragon being taught a more peaceful nature, Considering his own NPCs

R.A. Salvatore Up killed me. I think Caldwell and I share a brain.

"My little brother is 2 years older" isnt confusing she is dunking on him being shorter yall made that waaaaaay to complex

YAY thank you wifeworm & co. for making my three and a half hour bus ride much better <3

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