D&D Court: Bonus Cases - The Deceptive Blood Hunter

That player reveals their boat that has a bumper sticker "My other boat is a dad" The other one has a sticker "My other dad is a boat"

Ziel R.

That rest length change is actually an option in the DMG it's said to use of you want a gritty realism campaign, but I've always though t it sounds impossible, it's kind of why I dislike games lik e call of cthullu because you either spend a long time healing and allow a bunch of evil plans to go through or you risk losing your character who you really like.

Quantum OFZENTRIX

As one of The Youths (I’m 21 lol) I can confirm that we did (and tbh still do) bully our friends and engage in horse play, BUT, generally when we were hanging at or around a pool, it was an unspoken thing that you 1. Kept your phone in your bag, 2. Were fair game if you were in a swim suit, and 3. If you were wearing clothes, and weren’t planning on coming in, all bets were off if you pushed someone in (even if that person had a swim suit) so if you were gonna be a dumbass, you had to be smart enough about it to put it off to the side where everyone’s stuff was, other wise you just wouldn’t have a phone, and generally just be in so much trouble unless the thing magically survived after getting put in a bag of rice. Also 14/15 year olds didn’t all have phones back then, or if they did, they had their parents old phones, so it wasn’t the end of the world if it got dunked. Also they slowly got more and more water proof, and I know I fully just got a waterproof otter box bc I didn’t trust myself (or my friends) to not do something fucking stupid, which was smart bc I managed to break my otter box within its one year waranty. Twice.

The Grinch (feral)

Thank you. I came to the comments to make sure I'm not crazy. Is it not in the 2014 edition? It's in 2024 for sure. Edit: D&D Beyond doesn't have appendices in digital books, so I can't find the stupid thing Edit 2 because I can't leave this alone: it's called "Gritty Realism" and it's on page 267 of the 2014 DMG.

MsMagey

For exactly the reasons mentioned here I don’t like the 2024 changes to counterspell now it’s a decent spell at 5th level and thats it. In any big fight counterspell has lost all its stakes because a legendary resistance is all the DM needs now.

Colin Kilzer

I know this is a necro, I've been listening to NADDPOD for like 3 years and haven't caught up yet, but the 1 day short rest isn't homebrew. Just an optional rule from the official dungeon masters guide. It's just to spread out time more. Make it so a multiple year long campaign doesn't take place in like 2 weeks in game time. You just treat a week like an adventuring day using the previous system. Since the recommended amount of encounters per day is like 6 in normal play.

Xathonn X

I'll have to thank my father for my pimp walk and all the times he'd call doorknob on me and proceed to ONLY deadleg me to make it harder to get to the door, ahhh the good ole days 😢

K(Ch)ristian Elderidge

every time I hear this one it makes me mad. they are so out of line for suggesting the long rest thing is unreasonable in any fashion. it just stretches out in game time. you can have the same number of meaningful encounters in a week as you could in the regular adventuring day (6-8 encounters per LR) that they don't even use in the first place. I know they're pretty far removed from how 5e actually works since they play theater of the mind but every previous edition you didn't get everything back on long rest. short rest taking a day isn't any more short rest abusable than short rest taking an hour. If anything that affords short rest classes FEWER SRs per LR, something they somehow just didn't understand? even the submitter clearly doesn't understand the game given the line " I, of course, was appalled, and told him that this was too tense. If we ever got in two combats in a day, we would be absolutely womped". are you kidding me? two combats in a rest is too much? just brutal

Summer Tribe

This case should be thrown out

Matt Gustavson

It's not homebrew!! The short rest = 1 day/ long rest = one week is from the DM Guide as an optional rule.

Whitney Weltz

I love Murph's Blood Hunter voice that is vaguely reminiscent of The Ultimate Warrior lollll

PJ

Most phones are waterproof now, so I just let myself get dunked

Torsten Johnson

My DM also has the short rest day, long rest week rule, but we play in a West marches format, where each session takes 2-3 days, most of which are travel without combat, and the next session took place a week or 2 after so it works very well.

YaniShadelynn

Elder zoomer here. Never heard of doorknob but yes we had all sorts of games where the whole point is to beat each other up. The ones I remember are: punch buggy(ofc), slap box, “get down mr president” where you tackle whoever’s last to put their hand to their ear, and “palm slap” (or it’s even more violent variant “Knuckle tap.”) We also had a variety of “games” that were essentially just giving each other rug burns.

Zoop

Zoomer - Everybody sees one of their friends push someone with a phone into the pool when they're young and because that one person made the mistake everyone knows to check for it from then on

Tom Bernett

Dear Naddpodders, I once went to a house party where there were specifically rules about horseplay, one had to opt in, wearing a yellow livestrong bracelet, my friend opted in. As I am tied to my service dog, and not a fan of potential death by stupidity, did not. The rules were explained to him, but he had been to one of these parties before and he basically talked them out of making him answer the main questions to make sure one knows that they are consenting to (genuinely these horseplayers party hard but ethically). My friend made a show of explaining the rules to me as I entered the backyard with him, having acquired for myself a glass of crisp white wine, as my friend held a solo cup of keg beer. He told me more than once that the “idiots” always forget to put their phone away, he patted his pocket the last time to prove it, I could have sworn the phone had been in the other pocket but, who was I to interrupt a mandplaining friend who I would later learn though it was a date. He tried to get in a fight with the owner of the house, who had pushed him in, his phone, and his Apple Watch, were very wet.

Brynnah

In the friend’s defence, he was in swimming trunks, but the kind that had zip pockets on them

Calyx Rose

I do remember as a kid my friend’s dad getting pushed in the pool by his friend, and him going apoplectic because he had a) his phone b) all his cash money and c) his passport in his pocket

Calyx Rose

The judges IMMEDIATELY razzing the blood hunter as soon as they heard even a fraction of the context is truly something special. *chefs kiss*

it was right there!

Michael Butzer

you could also play a system that has healing take longer, such as the Fragged Kingdoms system where each stat can recieve damage and hinder your rolls.

Noah Crystallize

I don’t expect the crew to see this, much less respond to it, but that short/long rest rule is actually a super common homebrew for more hard mode games, and the reason it works is that rules as written, a monster’s cr is meant to convey that a standard party of 3-4 can face a monster of cr equal to their level 7 times in one day. My Sunday party has been doing this for the past several months, and it honestly leads to our play feeling much more balanced, we aren’t resorting to combat constantly and whomping every enemy. It’s made the story itself much more interesting.

Zerum Sparklez

COUNTER-SPILL

Carter Carter

This episode alone is worth 50 years as a Patreon subscriber omg so good

MacKenzie Tobias

Anyone else think Caldwell was going for counter-spill and got lost? 😂

Mich Blackie

As a Zoomer: We still roughhouse, but my friends and family keep an eye on phones or anything else to make sure it's fine. In middle school, my one friend and I used to walk with our other friend between us and randomly shove her so that the other person slammed into the lockers. But with pools and pillow fights and stuff, we put the phones elsewhere lol

Idizzle22

Hot take, the Keebler Elves are actually Forest Gnomes.

Thom van Tijn

GM-chat. A private conversation between a player and their GM/DM. Virtual table tops like roll20 use GM because that's the generic word for all games.

Jarla

okay am i the ONLY one here who has no idea what g-chat is ??

Dorian Doran

I'm feeling really sad and my boat is a dad

Rachel 🌛

Zoomer here, completely baffled why you would be holding your phone by the pool close enough to get pushed in. Me and my friends still push eachother into pools, I've watched my friend get flanked in real life in a pillow fight - but if you're in a swimsuit, where on gods earth would you have room for a phone

Romlette

Yo the blood Hunter part is sooooo funny and seems like it will never end hahaha

Majk

The rest variants are from the DMs guide. Also lots of people like a game that's got more tension and downtime for character interaction, a 7 day long rest just means as a DM you don't plan a resource heavy encounter for every single and instead focus more on character interaction and downtime activities. It also puts spellcasters and martials on more even footing for social interaction, so spellcasters can't just charm person or or detect thoughts their way through every social encounter without it needing to be a cost.

Logan Freeborn

I'm sure so many people have already commented this, but I'm fairly certain that the short/long rest thing is just an optional rule in the DMG. I find it useful for long travel/survival type scenarios when you do series of challenges once a day. It prevents spellcasters from simply carrying their highest level spells at every single encounter and completely bypassing every challenge. (I do tend to switch back to standard rules when characters are sleeping in actual beds). That being said I'd never just spring this on my players like "hey here's a new rule, get fucked if you have a problem with it."

Mick C

I think the short/ long rest issue is more of an edition issue - try out 2nd edition or 3.5 with their rest rules- damage lasts longer and you have to go back to town more often

Katie P.

I can’t stop laughing listening to the edge lord voices

Foster Doss

I was pushed into the pool with my first phone in 7th grade. 2004 was a dark time.

Caitlyn Dill

Zoomer voice on the pool phone issue: we still hardcore bully each other, but we just don’t keep our phones actually on us around the pool anymore. If someone does have their phone on them, they make it known and they are immune to any sort of pushing for as long as they hold their phone

Dippity_Dip

The court really dropped the ball on the short/long rest thing. Even accepting they’ve never heard of Gritty Realism, they basically just assumed it was a normal game pace but without rests. Gritty Realism is a very good fix for the fact that depleting resources within 24 hours isn’t reasonable. It doesn’t punish spellcasters because you spread the same amount of encounters/difficulty over longer in-game time.

Andrew Kruck

I tend to prefer classic rests over gritty, but I have played in games where they work really well and fit the concept. In particular, I played a high level monk in a Victorian-era explorers style game, where essentially we would get long rests when we returned to the city between quests. It definitely improved balance between some of the more OP long-rest recovery abilities and fighters/monks/warlocks.

Alexandra Ferguson

I'm feeling really bad and my dad is a boat...

DC

My friends and I are all Late Millenias/early Gen Z and we definitely used to rough house a bit when we were younger. The phone in the pocket was definitely something we needed to be aware of! We had a few "DUDE ITS NOT WATER PROOF" situations.

nandrusin

My friends and I didn’t push each other into pools but we had an ongoing game called Get Down Mr. President. If someone touched their ear as if listening to an earpiece, everyone else would follow suit and the last person to touch their ear was the President and would be tackled by everyone else in the group

Jozee

Caldwell you Fool.......... you should have said "Counter spill"

Zane

Counterspell home-brew: When an enemy casts a spell you have to know if you were already looking at the enemy to counterspell, otherwise you can make a perception check to see. If you see the spell being cast, you can cast counterspell. Make another check (arcana, religion etc)to know what level and spell they are casting. This has made counterspell less disheartening for the players and dm at my table as it feels like a tangible interaction rather than just losing a spell slot.

Evan Kelley

The short/rest change is actually a variant rule literally in the DMG. While it is a thing that exists, it demands a much greater deal of responsibility from the DM. It only works for slower games, and most importantly requires the players to actually be down for it in the first place!

William Farris

re: Ball Bearings My artificer would use them all the time for infusing magic. One of his favorite tactics to check/clear out rooms in dungeons would be to infuse two ball bearings — one with the worst stench imaginable and one with the most annoying sound ever (a la Dumb & Dumber) — and roll them both under a door into a room then wait outside, with his party at the ready.

mike

I can't believe the doorknob thing came up, in middle school, I use to carry a doorknob with me in case anyone called it so I could avoid getting punched....I was weird kid

James Fite

Second thing of note, my wife and I still call doorknob on each other, unless it’s outside. That is the safe zone where one may pass gas freely due to the open air. Granted she gets me a lot more than I get her (and they are tiny playful taps, no wailing on each other!), it has corrected my behavior to try to toot outside more often. I believe she has used this as a training exercise and it has worked.

Mr. Satan, the World Martial Arts Champion and the Earth's protector

Adding to the chorus, the short/long rest is the gritty realism variant rule in the DMG. I think do think it should be discussed prior to character creation With that being said, most groups don’t use the daily recommended encounters for the balance of the regular SR/LR mechanics. The gritty realism rule I think makes it more fun for a more sandbox style versus a straight dungeon crawl of a campaign.

Mr. Satan, the World Martial Arts Champion and the Earth's protector

I am 29 turning thirty soon my friends and I have river days almost every Sunday that we call our anime beach episodes. And we enjoy a bit of rough housing in the water from time to time. Always a good time.

Hansel Herschend

I'm an older zoomer (a moomer if you will) and I was never around pools enough to experience getting pushed in but I do have an ex who told me he and his friends used to play the "pass out game" where... you guessed it. they made themselves and each other pass out.

Tasha

My favorite episodes of these are the one when I tune out briefly and then Emily starts laughing so loud and uncontrollably that it sucks me back in and I NEED to relisten to see what I missed and it’s always GOLD!… this is one of those

Alexie Smith

the short rest in a day/long rest in a week is some real life exhaustion recovery rules. heroes would not experience that. but me? i do

Aiyana

Double stuffed elfwich cookies are my absolute favorite

Christian Hunt

Me and my 3 brothers would call doorknob on eachother and also made up “doorhandle” for burps which was more tricky because it meant that you can’t use a doorknob when u fart and vice versa. Anyways that was like 2 years ago and I’m 19, so pretty recent😂

Zeke Grubb

watched my brother teach my neice doorknob the other day and it gets called on her all the time now and she calls it on us

Natt Johnson

For the gritty realism dm, the big question is if they told their players that was the ruleset they were going to use prior to character creation. If the dm said, "hey this is gritty realism, make characters who are tough" then it's on the player if they find they don't want to play the game that the dm wants to run. But if the dm surprised everyone with it, that's another story.

Gearbox

Yeah we all kinds respect each others autonomy and i dont attack my friends. thats just is though, wrestling still happens big time

Ashton James

I feel like counter'spill' was right there caldwell.

Joshua Daniels

Gen Z elder here, I have never pushed someone into a pool bc of the phone thing. I bet younger Gen Z has tho bc when they were pool shoving age phones became waterproof

Crits

How did nobody say "counterSPILL" after "counter wine?"

Spotpilgrim7

"Who owns Keebler, Nabisco?" "The ELVES dude!" I lost it

Parker

Keebler elf cookie mixed bag. Like the mmm one

Jmp098

I think I gotta stand up a bit for the failing hypnotic pattern conversation. If it's a beast it makes sense a PC should know their spell failed cause why would it try to decieve them, but if it's actually a intelligent creature I think a DM should be allowed to try to trick the party like that. Granted they should do a deception check against the party's passive perception or insight to see if any of them realize it's ploy. Hell the dnd movie *spoilers* even did this with timestop.

Malcolm J Gatlin

Re:CounterSpell How old are some of the people writing in? This sounds like teenagers playing. Which is great and all, but it’s kind of an immature reaction! Just stock counterspell on your monsters and CS the player’s CS.

Tim R

I came to add to the chorus of others that the short/long rest case isn’t homebrew but is the Gritty Realism variant rule from the DMG in 5e. It’s fine to not like this variant rule, although I am ok with it, but it isn’t homebrew, it’s an optional rule, just like Feats and multiclassing are technically optional rules

James Lloyd

Gen Z here: you can take the chance that the phone is water resistant…

SJ

I need the 2 crew to do more blood hunter chad edgelord bits cause that was comedy in its purest form 10/10

Nick Johnson

in the last several months i have spent over $100 on the keebler fudge stripes and i am not ashamed of it

Seth

I bet Jake never forgot to call safety after that.

JigMink

I literally came to the comments to say this exact thing

Evan Cordero

Man, I love dnd courts. How did they not land on Counter-Spill for the wine bit?

Meapfreak366

Most modern phones are water resistant. Just throw your friends in the pool!

Benjamin Scheier

I've found that the short rest = day and long rest = week is one of the best, common, variant rules. It's even in the DMG as a suggested variant. In my normal playing of the game the players never reach the 'suggested' number of combats for a day and so a lot of the resource management of DnD falls by the wayside. I don't feel like the flavor is too bad either. A wizard or cleric spends a week collecting and preparing resources for their spells - maybe casting them ritually except for the final finishing flourishes that they can pull out to burn through in battle. Players also get more downtime to hang out in the setting outside of combat - get to build longer term relationships with NPCs and one another. I also like if at the end of a campaign the characters have known each other for years getting from low levels to high rather than you count it up and it's been a year and a half or so.

Ash James

There’s nothing like a dry ass “Kay” coming from Murph 😂

Jordan Tompkins

Dear Jake, yes, as a zoomer I still play doorknob with friends lol

Oppa SJ Style

Same, but there’s a few people I could probably get away with doing it. Or if I jumped/was pushed in after

Hank Cox

When I first heard the short/long rest alternate rules but the more I think about it the more I would probably prefer those mechanics in a home game. I don’t necessarily want 5 combat encounters a day personally so it wouldn’t be too unfair to spellcasters in my *ideal* campaign.

Drew Worth

I hope Murph got these out fast so that he can spend his weekend playing Baldurs Gate 3

Jenna H

I’m kind of surprised the crew hadn’t heard of the gritty realism short/long rest rules. They’re written in the dmg! They’re play tested. Probably the best for at home games. After a huge fight you rest up for a week and stick around your base or around a town. It makes more sense

Joe S

Was Caldwell thinking of caltrops? Worked for a company where packaging on a fantasy-based card product had flavor text mention these and people assumed it meant they were included…um they are illegal.

C. Dacey Tidwell

I’m gen z and it would genuinely cause a serious rift in my friendships if I pushed someone in a pool lmao

Jorde

I simply must be the 1000th person to say that the day long short-rest and week long long-rest are straight from the DMs Guide. Doesn’t make them automatically fun, but the DM wasn’t inventing some crazy balancing from nothing , it’s literally in the back of the book.

Morgan

I went to high school from like 2016 to 2019 and whenever you said something stupid someone would call it a neck and then you get slapped hard on the back of the neck unless you said pause in time. You would also get slapped if someone was making the ok sign below the waist and you looked at it.

Azn

looked it up and I it's not a 3.5 rules but it is how this particular ttrpg podcast handled it

Ilana Galpert

oh my god a blood hunter batman-voice one shot would be sooooo funny

Ilana Galpert

my former dm tried to do a version of that short rest/long rest thing and it was miserable and we all hated it BUT I'm listening to a 3.5 game and it seems like long rests were different in 3.5, that instead of auto healing to full they got back their abilities and rolled for the hp they got back. THAT seems reasonable to me personally

Ilana Galpert

Oh god, when y'all started talking about pushing people in pools with phones in their pocket, I was hit with a flashback of THE MOST DREAD. When I was in high school, most families only had the one cell phone that they gave to the kids to call when they were at an event or a gathering. I shoved my best friend into the pool only for him to emerge with a soaked Nokia. We had to call his parents from my family's phone and when they came to pick him up, I had to stand by their van and apologize for ruining their one cell phone and offer to scrounge up the $170 to replace it. That was the last time I pushed someone in a pool. 🙃

AmberDextrous!

I agree with that. I do think they should get some resources back on a short rest like some spell slots and some hit dice. Also this isn't even homebrew, it's a legit option from the DMG so that throws some credibility to the DMs side. I do think that if there is someone who doesn't like this mechanic then the DM should consider switching back but also the player should try it out for a bit and be a bit firm about not being a heal bot especially since there is a cleric also. And also maybe the game isn't for the player and that's okay also.

Kate W

I actually came here to say the same thing! It's interesting for games that don't have a lot of fights or ones that you want each fight to be deadly without just throwing powerful monsters at PCs. A game where running away it a good idea. Never played one before but would be interested to try

Kate W

Usually murph takes a full day to short rest. Much like the one case where it's a week to long rest

Kate W

I gotta disagree with the court on the long short rest case. It's a common homebrew that isn't to my personal tastes, but it is attempting to address a problem; lots of people only do one fight per day, when 5e is balanced for at least 7, which makes spellcasters even stronger compared to martials in an edition where the caster/martial gap is already a problem. Especially it just bumps me that the submitter seemed to think having to ration resources was oppression and not half the game

EmperorGreed

murph we love u

Jenna

Concerning the “home brew” long/short rest mechanics that nobody liked: that actually isn’t home brew! It’s an optional rule called Gritty Realism, and it’s actually in the DM’s guide.

Ian Jones

LEGIT. If you can’t handle a third level counter spell then you need to plan better my man. You knew they had it!

Scotty

Thanks for the double feature today, Papa Murph.

Phillip

how many monster energies did our boy crush to get this up for us so early???

stream eaxford’s doomsday diaries on spotify

Please make a Blood Hunter only campaign . Please

Eric Keller

Why does the blood hunter sound vaguely like the orange man

teethknight

Woah woah woah, Short Rest on a THURSDAY?!?!

thiswayjose

First!!!!….Dang it!

The End of Time (AKA Theo the Minotaur)

Waaaaa!

Jeffrey Steck, Lord of the Fjord

Best investment I've ever made

Itamar

Two in one day? Murph's going crazy in the editing bay today

Mack Dever