D&D Court: Bonus Cases - The Lord of The Snails

I get why they say to use Kenku but idk if I trust a DM who is this inflexible would allow them to play a kenku who speaks however they want and not in the mimicry way

Garrett Durham

Love y’all but the conflation of PhDs and MDs in this ep made me crazy….. please do not let the Linguistics PhD into the OR !!!

Grays the Fae

"so embarrassing not to know an aesop fable" a) it's pronounced eeeesop and b) there are a lot a lot a lot of aesop's fables

Summer Tribe

I’m a dm in grad school and it’s just for my MA and on top of also working part time, and just like juggling normal life shit it’s honestly a lot. I can’t even imagine dming while gettin a phd. In that context, imo it was quite considerate&kind of the dm to to take on running a campaign for(who I’m assuming is )their friends. The players willingly agreed to play knowing that the dm was busy and wouldn’t be able to take on all the usual responsibilities of a dm so it’s not like this is some case of taking advantage of a dm who’s just kinda ya know, crappy and not actually invested. So yeah, The fact that one of the players would take advantage of their the dm,who, notably, trusted them, and went out of their way to run this campaign for them and the other players despite how busy the dm was w/ grad school, is super uncool ESP if the player is and was from the start, friends w/ the dm. HOWEVER, it is possible that the dm trusted the players to understand the game and his rules more than they should’ve and that this wasn’t actually intentional cheating. I could see a situation where the player wasn’t super familiar with dnd or with logistical dm mechanisms of dnd, agreed to take on the responsibility of the npcs xp as a genuine act of accommodation and kindness, and believed themselves to understand the mechanics (and possibly also actively chose not to ask many clarifying questions or go to the dm w/ every application of the mechanic that the player did, out of a desire to take as much of that load as possible.) Considering that possibility, I def think the dm should have a genuine conversation with the player about it, bringing up their discovery of the players violation of the rules and giving the player a chance to explain themselves-(w/ the dm) taking care to clearly express their desire for honesty and transparency. Behind that If I were the dm, the player taking advantage of me like that would genuinely bother me bc even if the player and I weren’t really friends when we began the campaign, after playing so much with them I would see them as a friend. So if the dm is bothered by this,and does see the player in question as their friend, especially if they were friends before and outside of the campaign, I think the dm should speak plainly and earnestly with the player, about how the situation made them feel; not simply as their dm but as their friend. In other words, i believe it’d probably be good for the dm and for the dm& the player’s friendship, for the dm to express to the player how the player taking advantage of the dms trust&circumstances hurt the dms feelings and/or felt like a betrayal not simply as a dm, but as a friend.

Zoop

Not my barber shop having a parrot in it

Captain Positivo

If the DM changes the attack only after getting an AC boost then it's metagaming, the snail can do whatever the next turn but that turn they shouldn't change attacks

tonytheoneandonly

Ugh I hate myself right now but um actually the eagles do talk in The Hobbit pretty normally. They are not bird people or course.

GGCoopie

I like to think that Caldwell earnestly believes all PhD’s are medical doctors

Heck

I'm sorry but there's no way I'd let someone get away with producing a flashing lights/rave outfit with disguise self. Every other spell that can produce Light is evocation. I'd let them get away with a hi-vis jacket or reflectors or something, potentially giving advantage on a perception check to be seen, but flashing lights? Nah, I'll let you stretch the limits of the spell, but when they start stepping on other spells' usefulness is where I draw the line.

Queue

No one has mentioned it yet, but kenku are not a stand in for aarakocra. Kenku specifically are corvids and also cannot speak unless mimicking, and some people just don't wanna have to do that

Loved seeing the pseudopod and spray attack at the Denver live show! And the ice bridge

CommodoreBlue