Callin' for Cases!
Added 2025-10-27 15:47:16 +0000 UTCGreetings! Bailiff Jake here to inform you that the Supreme Crit is convening shortly. Please submit your brief (I beg!) grievance and/or table top drama on this thread and we will bring you divine justice!
Comments
May it please the court and mildly irk the bailiff: I play a halfling monk named Muggsy who is an aspiring young boxing champion with a mild to moderate case of CTE. Muggsy has always worn a set of diamond grilles he acquired through glory. Mechanically, the grilles do nothing but Muggsy tries his best to look tough and rich by flashing them all the time. Many sessions later, we were in a tough battle when a hefty stone was flung at Muggsy. I countered it using his deflect missiles monk ability to reduce the damage. For flavor, instead of trying to catch the rock, I figured it would be more fitting if Muggsy just took it right in the face like any good boxer would. I was able to reduce the damage to zero. However, the DM made me roll a luck check to see how my grilles held up against the direct hit to my mouth. I rolled a 1 - no problem, with my halfling luck, I'll just reroll. But the unthinkable happened - I rolled a second, devastating 1. The DM informed me that my prized grilles were shattered and tumbled out of my mouth. I argued that this was out of line - Muggsy shouldn't lose his iconic jewels because of the flavor I added to how the missile was deflected (successfully, I might add). Had I not said anything, Muggsy's grilles would certainly be untouched. Eventually I relented. So I humbly ask the court: Do I have a legitimate grievance with the DM in that he punished my flavorful role playing by taking my favorite toy? Or is it fair that he countered flavor with more flavor, and I need to find a way to recover? I await your judgment. PS - sometime later, Muggsy was able to acquire new and expensive diamond grilles so he has his swagger back. However, unbeknownst to him, they are in fact made of cubic zirconium.
Jack H
2026-01-05 21:25:18 +0000 UTCTo the most honorable Justices Tanner, Murphy and Axford and the underappreciated Baliff Jake.. . content warning for sensitive stomachs. In a recent campaign, I was playing a fungus-and-disease themed gnome warlock named Pox with an imp familiar named Varicella (aka SmallPox), who for flavor would emerge from my fungus-ridden body each time he was summoned. I love dramatic visuals so every time SmallPox emerged and coalesced into his imp form, I would narrate how he oozed bubbling from my pores, or dripped out of my eyes and nose, or popped out as a set of spores poofing out of a throbbing pimple, or something simlarly evocative. One of the PCs in my party always commented when that happened something like "I'm not looking, I don't need to know how this happens to your gross little body", but when I pulled aside the player to ask if he was actually grossed out, he said no it was just RP of his prim character. But the comments kept coming and that player seemed really squicked, so I stopped the disgusting descriptions even though I (and the other players) thought they were fun. Was I wrong, and should have taken the player at his word that it was just RP, or is it better to err on the side of the least potential discomfort even if it makes things less vivid? P.S. I am playing in a new campaign with that same player and his new character is a druid who wildshapes into weird crab-wolf hybrids that fingerpaints with downed enemy blood, so I am starting to question his discomfort levels...
Tierney Lorenz
2025-11-06 02:21:09 +0000 UTCI'm not submitting my thing here this time but does anybody know the etiquette of resubmitting a story that you put on a previous one? I haven't really been a subscriber for all that long and I think I poorly told one of my better ones the one time I tried to do it
Dustimus
2025-11-01 01:30:57 +0000 UTCI come to the church in the spirit of sharing somewhat belated divine wisdom, because sometimes you decide to start Campaign One from the beginning and miss that your submission got picked up for a Dungeon Court until nine months later: I speak, of course, about the cavernous depths of Bear Hell. To be brief, everything Murph has said about Bear Hell is Bear Cannon, obviously, with one important distinction: not only do Bears who have failed to repent for their Bear Sins fall into the honey-sticky clutches of the Bear Devil, but also those who have committed unforgiveable sins against Bear Kind, as was the fate of our party's barbarian Gentle Hommage when he befouled a sacred pool of Dire Bee honey. Ultimately it was fine, we crashed our airship into the Bear Devil while he was hibernating and scampered away with our friend. But the ultimate lesson is this: if you fear you may have wronged a bear at any point in your life, you had best start committing as many non-ursine crimes as you can if you want to be sent to Regular Hell instead of the salmon-bereft nightmare that is Bear Hell.
HighGrove
2025-10-29 20:55:27 +0000 UTCTo the Meddling Supreme Court Justices and their little dog too. I present the case of the Duo Betrayals Long term Pathfinder campaign years ago with a party of 3 caught in the war of a pantheon of gods against the evil goddess Hecate, the goddess of evil magic (Imagine Eris from Sinbad, this will be relevant) Well, I the sorcerer and it being our whole groups first campaign was a bit cheeky and would desecrate her statues to lessen her influence, however the Sylph Druid would fix it up and would leave an offering to her, the end results of our actions being me being hunted/mind controlled to kill innocents by her while he was being flirted with by the goddess. 3 years later, we're all level 20, demi gods in our own right, me as the Time God's chosen and him as Hecate's. He even as her chosen has helped fight some of her forces but is far into the process of courting her. Despite our allegiances we are best friends in game and even soul bonded/fused at points. Then, the sequence of events happens as follows: The lets call them Good Aligned gods, my patron included spring a trap when we visit their summons to all try and kill the druid, in which case me and the Fighter intervene and save his life and promise to find a way to kill Hecate without having to kill the druid. This understandably makes the druid mad but, we continue on our adventure to find the book of Om, a book of all recorded knowledge. We best the temple and the druid gets to the book first as we work on a dibs system. He then goes, this will make an incredible offering to my girlfriend and I go, "What, NO, the fuck, we're barely beating her as is don't give it to her" He goes, "Nah, honestly I think she'll really like this, plus your guys just tried killing me" I go, yeah but SHE's made me kill innocent people. It goes back and forth like this until he just starts the ritual to summon her, I ask one last time and say" please, I am BEGGING you "at this point but he's not listening. We have never fought, and I wanting to show how serious I was symbolically cast Dominate Person to get him to hand the book to me, which he passes (and knew he would because Pathfinder stats). HE gets mad that I tried to mind control him saying that I've betrayed him (When we had JUST betrayed our gods to save HIS life) and finally accepts Hecates full influence. And becomes her general stating he can't trust anyone now but her. Thus begins a split campaign of fighting each other using the DM as a mediary culminating in a huge war (of no winners) Judges, I ask, who was wrong here if anyone, me for the attempted mind control, the druid for offering the book as a gift or the fighter for staying truly neutral in this conflict. This argument still comes up to this day because the druid is now my best friend and roommate of 3 years. Love ya Drew (or Drew-id)
Ian Bautista
2025-10-29 05:56:57 +0000 UTCMay it please the court, and may the bailiff take the cursed potions at the center of this case with quadruple disadvantage. I present my case, Song and His Merry Band of Chaos v. The Random Table Master. Case background: In 2020 I played my first 5e game with Song, a half-orc bard suffering from nihilism after losing his muse. Scheduling ended the campaign, which led me taking up the mantle of GM my first campaign with a Karnath Warforged special forces team in Eberron during the tail end of the great war. Now that I have years of GM-ing experience I feel justified in filing my complaint with the court. The complaint holds that our DM relied so heavily upon random tables, that he almost caused a TPK. The DM provided a single shop where EVERYTHING functioned off of a random table, including healing potions. We acquired several potions prior to raiding an enemy keep, and in the middle of battle learned how they worked: roll a d20 has a 50% chance to heal of harm you. This blew my mind, but it was my first campaign, and though it felt insane we initially went with it. I kept meticulous notes, submit to the court three pieces of evidence: Exhibit A: the first roll of 17, that healed for 2 d4 + 2. Exhibit B: the second roll of 2, that poisoned a player for 1 d4 + 1 damage, which almost knock the recipient unconscious while surrounded by enemy orcs. Exhibit C: a quote from the DM that if we rolled a nat 1 "it would kill us". I was used to getting screwed by the rules from my time in the army, BUT THIS IS RIDICULOUS, and it forced my bard to use healing word as our only source of healing. It resulted in a lot of 8-hour rests in random rooms, because 5e, and we just ignored the potions until we found loot. In conclusion, I implore the court to rule in favor of the players, because only handing out potions that has a 45% chance of harming them, and 5% chance of killing them serves nothing but to frustrate the players and force us to call it a day after one or two encounters.
Devin
2025-10-28 21:06:46 +0000 UTCTo the luminous judges Axford, Murphy, and Tanner, and I think that’s everyone? I present the case of the disengaging rogue. During an Adventurers League session at my local game store (and one of my first times playing D&D), our table’s rogue used his bonus action to disengage from the enemy next to him, moved to a second enemy and attacked (with sneak attack thanks to a nearby ally), then used the rest of his movement to leave the enemy’s reach and past a third enemy. When the DM said he would provoke opportunity attacks from the second and third enemies, the rogue argued that disengage counts for his whole turn. After some heated back and forth, the DM stuck to his ruling and the rogue took an opportunity attack. We were ultimately victorious, but the rogue was noticeably sullen for the rest of the session. So I ask: are rogues able to use one bonus action disengage to enter and leave multiple enemies’ threatened areas, or does it only apply the first time in a turn?
Kat
2025-10-28 19:44:20 +0000 UTC
