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Beautiful Bailiff Jake here to let you know the Supreme Crit is convening this very eve. Please submit your brief (I beg!) case on this thread and we will try you justly.

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tristen ebersole

To the honorable justices Murphy Axford and Tanner, and the lowly bailiff John. I present the case of the inadequately described chest. I was playing in a new campaign with some friends of a friend, and we were delving into a dungeon, as the rogue of the party, it was my job to scout ahead for traps and other danger. While doing so, I stumbled upon a hidden room. As I entered the room, the description I was given follows "This is a mostly bare room, save for a single "chest" against the back wall." approaching cautiously, I searched for traps, I was told I didn't see any noticeable traps. So I decided to open the "chest". This is where I take issue, as I got closer to the "chest" I was told to make a dexterity saving throw, as giant blades sprung from the wall at waist, and neck height. as it Turns out, the "chest" I was looking forward to opening was not in fact a box with a lid, but instead a dismembered human torso, left by the last unfortunate soul who entered this room. I argued that had I known this was a human torso, I wouldn't have been so keen on opening it, but I was told that I would still be taking the trap damage as I still approached the "chest" this nearly killed my low level character. I ask you, am I right to be upset at this outcome, seeing as I was deceived into approaching from the start?

Anonymous

To this esteemed judges Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the only baliff I can tolerate (but then, I haven't met many bailiffs). I submit the the case of the Absentee Execution! The first campaign I ever played in was in high school. We would meet in our school's library during our spares and played every day. We played the rules loose, and all of our characters were incredibly overpowered, but it was a really laid-back, exciting intro to the game! One day, I decided to skip school, and therefore the day's D&D session. All good, I thought - we were in the middle of a dungeon crawl, but I assumed my friends had it in the bag. So I was surprised the next day, when I showed up and asked my DM about the game, and he told me that, oh - we weren't playing today. Also, sorry, my character had been killed while I was gone, and the campaign was now over! Thankfully, he didn't suffer much. Our fighter had looted a cursed sword from a chest, got possessed, and swung around on my wizard on the spot. He cleaved the poor guy completely in half - right down the middle, I was told. Then, not long after, the rest of the party was confronted out of nowhere by the "gods of the realm" for being too overpowered. I think the party was given a choice to surrender, but decided to fight the gods instead, which resulted in two more casualties, with a final lone PC on the run from the gods for the rest of his life. That was the end! We never fought the BBEG or even discovered what his real plan was, we just died in some random dungeon we found. Afterwards, we remained friends and there was no ill will, but I will always remember how I abandoned my boy in his time of need. Was I at fault for skipping school, or does the blame lay at the feet of my DM? Please judge these teenagers from nine years ago.

Anonymous

Greetings honorable justices Murphy, Axford and Tanner, and the lowly squared bailiff Blake! My case is a simple one. During a Christmas special session that happened in the Christmas plane. My players experienced a light-hearted let's save Christmas session. This involved slaying many Christmas themed beasts such as a giant snow man, grinch-like goblins and candy cane wielding fairies. There was also a lot of Christmas themed loot/magical items that at the time I thought were just fun/neat little things to have. Some examples are a bell that summons a spectral reindeer once a day, Christmas cakes that act as greater healing potions, a giant bag of holding themed as Santa's sack and many more. This was all fine, except I took in a little too much of the Christmas spirit (if you know what I mean) and gave one player a Santa shirt. Seems harmless? We'll, this shirt gives the player a +4 to AC and doesn't use an armory slot. This resulted in my player having a whopping 24AC at level 3. Now, I've found ways around this (int saves and the like) but today I had the idea to make the shirt a little cursed. Nothing mechanical, just that the shirt will always appear on the outside of what he's wearing and people will comment on the weird Christmas themed shirt that he's wearing mid year. I also would like to have them grow a white beard every morning and start to grow chubby. I have done this retroactively a few sessions later (my reasoning is that it's a curse that develops the further away from Christmas it is), my other players love the idea and think it's a funny way to balance his OP ITEM but the player in question won't have it, they say I'm metagaming and retconning their cool gear because I'm salty that it turned out to be so effective. I understand I'm a little late to making some rulings but I find them harmless and in good humour. Is my player right that I'm metagaming and retconning their item because I'm salty about how effective it turned out? I humbly await your judgement.

Anonymous

To the virtuous clergy of Dice Christ, please offer one of your lambs some resin-cast guidance. My boyfriend keeps a d20 in his car. There is a flat space past the cupholders and under the display where it can freely roll around as he drives. I generally think of this as fun and cute. But recently I have become increasingly aware of when his Mazda rolls a natural 1. We have taken a lot of road trips this summer and there are just so many ways this little car could get absolutely bodied. Then again, nat 20s feel like a little emotional boost. I humbly ask the church: is this a blasphemous use of dice? Will Dice Christ smite us on I-95 for our indiscretions? Or should I simply always fear the maniac drivers of Stamford, CT, regardless of what his car rolls? Yours in faith and the passenger seat, Liz

Anonymous

To the honorable justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the dastardly bailiff Jake, I've run into an issue recently. I DM a game for my family. We started Waterdeep Dragon Heist and my mother made an urban ranger with the Urchin background. Part of the background is that the character starts with a little pet mouse. My mother asked if she could have a pet monkey instead. The fool that I am said, "Sure, that sounds funny." I thought it was an innocent enough ask, and she's a new player so I didn't want to rain on her parade. My issue is this, she uses this damned monkey for everything! Need to sneak into a place? Monkey can do it. Need to pick a pocket? Monkey Monkey Monkey. I asked her if we could tone it down on the monkey business a little and she flat out refused. My mom is generally a reasonable person, school teacher, but she's turned into a maniac for this blasted ape. Would I be in the wrong if I absolutely obliterated this monkey, or at least had someone kidnap it? I humbly request your guidance, and surrender myself to your judgment. Thank you.

Anonymous

To the absolute, powerful, and radiant Justices Murphy, Axford, and Tanner, and the overworked bailiff Jim. I have been running a campaign that (for the most part) has met every Wednesday for the past two years. It was my first ever campaign I’ve run and has been the campaign that has taught me most of my DM-ing knowledge. A few sessions ago my party were fighting a massive magically corrupted serpent from a kingdoms founding mythology. During the intense battle, I revealed that the serpent had 4 legendary resistances. Upon hearing this, our party’s rule lawyer spoke up, saying that creatures can only have up to 3 legendary resistances. We razzed and joked back and forth for a bit, and eventually decided to allow the forth use of the resistance stay, but I ask you mighty justices, was I wrong in tossing aside this rule, making my boss too powerful? I lay myself humbly before the judgement of the court.

Anonymous

To the court of the good lord Dice Christ and the bailiff gas station cake. My partner and I along with two of my band mates have been playing for almost a year. Recently my character ( half elf fighter) got a new weapon , a great axe that deals 5 d8 damage and has a trample flavor that lets me sacrifice a damage die to knock them prone. Over all this is a wicked weapon. The thing I’m asking for your ruling on is that it is shaped like flat rubber duck and every time I hit the dm makes sure that he makes a duck sound. So far this campaign and my character has gotten very serious. All the other characters have rad weapons that look and sound cool as shell. When asked the dm said that he was quote “ im just trying to lighten the mood of the table”.Am I wrong for feeling cheated of the cool finishing moves especially while killing an astral dragon.

Anonymous

To the honorable crit justices and that blonde dude I present the case of the auto hitting cleric Me and a old party got together to play a one shot that took place in water-deep, while fighting the dms wife who was joining us for the first time was confused when rolling to hit in combat so the dm said that she could just roll damage. I tried to explain to the dms wife and the dm that you need to roll to hit in combat but the entire party immediately shut me down saying that I can’t disagree with the dm. The problem only really arose when the dm ran a fight later that night against a evil golem with a 28 ac, the dm still made the rest of the party roll to hit the golem, we were having a tough time hitting the golem except for the cleric. After defeating the golem the dm got mad at the cleric for destroying the golem so easily and not following the rules The night ended with “let’s just make it a two shot” and the dm mad at his wife I ask the court is it the cleric’s fault and should I go back for the 2 shot

Anonymous

To the Honorable Crit Justices Axford, Murphy, Tanner and the absolutely craven bailiff Jimothy Hardnips, I present the case of Joritz of Mount Arreat. From what I know of the honorary Crit Justices all are huge Diablo fans as I expect no less with such cultured refined taste and decorum our brave justices carry. My question is this I am starting my first campaign and really don't want to be a hardass dm so am giving everyone pretty much free reign on their characters. I have so far a primordial druid, a haunted ranger who carries the ghost of his captain with him, a drunk monk who imbibes while he fights and his missionary makes some of the best wine in all the realm, and a swordsman fighter who wants to become the best in the land and is an honorary King's Guard of a huge city. Lastly there is Joritz of Mount Arreat who is just a subpar barbarian not even really that good, as the player has stated, with a Wife he can call upon once a day called Raekor who is absolutely supreme to him in every way which honestly I find to be pretty great, BUT....at the same time I'm not sure how well it works with the cohesion of the story or how others at the table will take it. I believe I might be able to swing it and make it work but don't want the other players to not enjoy the experience cause they're hung up that there's a couple characters from Diablo breaking the immersion for them. Am I right to let this first time player swing wide with Joritz of Mount Arreat and his super chad wife Raekor? Or should I give him some options for different character ideas? He says he isn't very imaginative so I don't want to push too much, but I will serve whatever sentence is passed down on me by our Supreme Crit Justices before I start this campaign. Thank you for your time and may Dice Christ always be guiding your rolls.

Hunter

To the honorable justices and- oh shit what’s his name? James? No that can’t be right. Anyway I present to you the case of Half Movement and What that Means: In one of the campaigns I’m in a few weeks ago, we were in a pretty dicey fight in a cursed, decaying forest with an evil hag and her animated vine monsters. Because of the vine monsters, some party members’ movement was halved. An NPC who’s movement was halved from the vines was knocked prone. He stood up and my DM then declared that he had no movement left. We were all confused because he should have some. Our DM then said that when your movement is halved, that means you can take half of the movement available to you in a turn. Meaning that since this NPC used half his movement to stand, he can’t use anymore of his movement. We all disagreed and argued that it just means your walking speed is reduced to half its value. Honorable justices, does movement being halved mean you can only mechanically take half of the movement available to you or the actual number is reduced to half its value? I humbly await your judgement and bow to the mercy of Dice Christ. PS: Blake! It’s Blake the bailiff. He likes cake or something? idk

Samuel

I humbly approach the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and relatively esteemed bailiff. I present the case of The Double Jumping Goblin. I play a goblin bard-ificer in my good friend's homebrew game. My character gained the Telekinetic feat from Tasha's Cauldron. He is inspired by Ratchet from the Ratchet and Clank games and I thought it would be cool to double jump in homage to the source material. I reasoned that the Telekinetic shove ability should be able to shove the character 5ft in a given direction during a jump effectively giving him a double jump. I asked the DM if I could, he said no and we moved on. The campaign is great, however I still think the rules as written are on my side. What say you, Justices and Jank? P.S. Can't wait to see y'all at Carnegie Hall!

Anonymous

To the honorable justices and to that lowly guy in the corner, I present to you the case of the "4 hour repetitive discussion." In one of our sessions our DM had some issues right before the session started which delayed him by about an hour. Everyone else was there so we decided to talk about the campaign and what we should do with this session. We were about to make a huge decision which would drastically change the direction that the story would go to. We spent the entire hour discussing what we should do out of game. We came to an agreement on what we should do, and then then when the DM showed up we told him what we talked about and roleplayed it out. This lasted for about another 2 hours as we had to reconvince one of the players to go along with our plan. Then when the time came to actually make the decision, the player who needed to talk to the NPC was also the person who needed to be convince of the plan. She decided in that moment to do completely opposite option causing many issues that we still are dealing with. When we asked her about it, she said that she changed her mind and that she wanted to do this instead. Everyone in the party was pissed at her, but no one could actually do anything about it in game. We then talked for another 2 hours about how we could fix this issues. She kept saying she doesn't understand why we were angry, even though it cursed one of the other players. My question is should we be angry with the player, or is this a simple case of "that is what my character would do", even though it made no sense for her lawful good character to rip the soul out of a person to gain strength. I would understand if we had not already come to an agreement beforehand and had a total of 3 hours of conversation about this.

TheDopeGuy

Dear honorable justices Murph the majestic, Caldwell the cunning and Axford the awesome along with the third best guest star in NADPOD history the lowly Jake from State Farm… I give you the case of the lying (IRL) rogue. I play D&D with a group of co-workers. We work at a brewery in a college town (this will be important later) and during Covid we were dubbed “essential” thus we were isolated from everyone but ourselves at the brewery for 2 years. Over the course of the pandemic they found out that I played D&D and asked if I could run a game and I said yes. Once Covid became manageable our schedules shifted slightly so it’s been difficult to set up games. This last weekend we had a festival at our brewery. We were given Saturday off. Once we knew that we all planned to play D&D. The week leading up to the game everyone was on board and I had been prepping a scenario where the group would ambush a wagon with a mystical item they needed to fight the BBEG. I was excited to continue the story as it had been about 2-3 months since we played last. I had been wanting to do this scenario since then. Well the day of the adventure, 4 hours before the game was to start my rogue texts the group “Gotta bail guys 😿I need to catch up on some sleep. Feel free to adventure without me today” then about an hour later another player texts “I feel the same. I need to catch up on some rest. Sorry guys” I have to cancel the session and the other two guys of the party are sad but understand. My rogue kept Apologizing to me and I kept being like “it’s alright. You weren’t feeling good” he kept being weird about ruining the session. If this was the end of the story I would be fine and would have given him a free pass like I had been doing. Then the other night I was working with the rogue. We were throwing kegs around and he rolled a nat 1 in real life and let it slip he went to the first women’s volleyball game at the local university on the night of our D&D game. I could tell he knew he fucked up. I didn’t react to it and acted as if I couldn’t figure out what he just told me. Initially I just wanted to keep the peace and move forward. The more I’ve thought about it, I’m pissed at him. He ruined a week of hard prep and an afternoon of adventuring with friends. So my question to the justices is do I let this go? Do I tell other members of the party what he did? Do I confront him? Do I punish him in game? Am I overreacting? Is there something else I should consider? I await your verdict and justice my honorable judges and Jake from State Farm. If you use this case please call me Jay. You all rock!!!

Jacob B.

I spread my greetings to the court of illustruous and even-tempered justices. And to jake I present thee with this simple query: shall I try again? I ran a game with critters of chaos and whimsey with my girlfriend and her roommate. They played cats that were suddenly awoken due to a fermented catnip present in a petsmart garbage bin. My players began a bit of smoking wacky tobaccy whenever their characters would imbibe in the catnip and before long they were as stoned as sisyphus after the first trip up the dreaded hill. The session ultimately didnt finish as a result and we havent been able to conclude the part 2 of my oneshot due to school/moving. I of course hold no ill and fun was had by all, but I wonder if I should write a new one shot or continue with this one disjointed and gapped as it is.