Critical role thread

Was it me or was everyone except Travis and Taliesen in full 'act like a shitheel' mode tonight? Especially Sam, fuck.

I mean from a show standpoint it makes sense, but when your dragons aren't acting like they should be in combat it's pretty boring. There was no difference between the white dragon fight and this one. Actually I take that back. The white dragon actually flew up into the air more than once and used its breath effectively.

Just tonight huh?

No one ever dies in high level DnD. The only reason they do is they're not super good at the game and fuck up a lot. They should've have had to resurrect as often as they do at their level.

They all have their moments, save Travis I guess, but everyone seemed to be at maximum.

I don't disagree.

The show is made for casuals, but it makes it easy to watch at least.

Thordak used his breath effectively here. Matt went for as many people as possible, and when that didn't work, he tried to nuke two healers. That's exactly what you do with the breath weapon.

He could've flown up more but Matt specifically told them he was never going to leave his hidey hole for some reason. He couldn't just fly super far away out of their reach or they just book it into his precious secret lair.

My point is Thordak should have nuked the healers to begin with. He might have been insane but he had enough brain cells left to realize you have to geek the mage first. And I disagree about the lair thing. He was much faster than Vox Machina and could easily return to his lair in a single turn.

He didn't know who was a healer and who wasn't until they started healing. They didn't start healing until his first breath weapon was done.

You're basically saying Matt should metagame to most efficiently use his monster's abilities. Not Matt's style, even if he lets his players get away with it. It's the same reason he wasted a lair action on a useless poisonous gas spell.

This was a fight of action economy. VM had a million people doing shit so it overwhelmed him. Thordak also expected to have Raishon by his side, which would've made it a very easy fight if she was.

>He didn't know who was a healer and who wasn't until they started healing.
Hasn't he been scrying on VM from like day one? It's not like Grog's going to suddenly start throwing out healing words. But I guess it's a moot point now. Maybe Raishon will actually prove to be interesting (though I doubt it)

The real problem is his house rule with spells. He's basically giving them all a bunch of free regeneration by allowing 3 healing words per round from the 3 casters. This also lets them super easily mitigate KOs. To the point where they can toss them on mook npc helpers.

We get all these situations where they go "Well now I'm at some number less than 20!" which is almost always due in part to free healing word abuse.

I get why the rule existed. Back in pathfinder you used to be able to do spell + swift action spell no problem and Matt made that house rule to kind of bridge the gap. Almost most certainly for Tiberius/Orion back in the day. It's just way too powerful in 5e and why they got rid of it for anyone but very specialized Wizards or Sorcerers (stuff like twinned spell and the enchantment class feature) -- two classes who don't fucking have healing.

No? We've never gotten a hint that Thordak scries anyone. He got a brief glimpse of VM ages ago in the Blue dragon's house but doesn't know them or their names, presumably.

Raishon does. That's why she's gonna be a way tougher fight. Thordak was a super powerful madman. The problem for Raishon is Sam very, very clearly is saving the Brass Dragon trump card for when they turned on Raishon.

As a much more powerful spellcaster she's probably stronger than the Brass Dragon, but Brass dragon + remains of VM is certainly enough.

Bump for MAD

Why is Keyleth so shit

Best Boss Battle so far?

because this one certainly ain't it

Yeah it was fucking lame. They didn't even have to call the bronze dragon.

I figured Sam was going to try to save the flute for Raishan's fight if he could, since it's one of the few things she doesn't know about. But we don't even know how long its going to take for J'mon Sa Ord to get there.

Were it not instantaneous, I feel like Matt would have said something when it was given to them. It's really asinine for a DM to give players an item like that and not even giving them a ballpark for how long it takes.

That's what I figured too, but it wasn't even a choice. There was never a moment where he really had to make a hard decision about saving the bronze dragon for Riashon or calling him in order to save the party.

Easily Dr. Ripley, because even though she and her crew were a lot less powerful than VM she managed to kill one of them and outsmarted them completely.

For me, it's a tie between Ripley and Kevdak, though that might be partly because I'm very fond of Sam's creative thinking.

Kevdak is one of the best because of the party's smart thinking which made it interesting when they cut off his hand and just completely fucked him up. We saw nothing like that with Thordak, but I guess humans are funnily enough just more interesting to fight than dragons.

Matt really needs to punish them more for their behavior -- they are not good people, and it never seems to come back and bite them in the ass.

I really hope Raishan fucks them up for this.

bamp

Kash and Zahra spinoff when

>Critical Role, but with enthusiastic, down to earth people.
I'd watch it.

buddy cop movie when

I was worried when I first saw Kash's special snowflake self with the heterochromia and god-that-only-loves-me but he actually roleplays pretty well.

>trips of truth

Yeah, I've warmed to him a lot since the first session he appeared.

Sam and Travis as honorary guests, maybe Taliesin and Ashley.

Taliesin is fine and welcome to come along.

Travis can be a regular, as long as Laura doesn't come with.

Sam can't come.

Isn't it fun that Vax just put his sister on "almost certain death" status just because he can't wait a fucking second to kill another dragon? Can't wait for Percy to give him back the punch to the face.

all because of metagaming Keyleth

What a shock.

Yeap. And it really bothered me when Liam was pushing Laura to use her readied action. It's almost like he wants someone to die.

Yeah, Liam's been bothering me more and more lately. Strangely enough, that coincides with his connection to Keyleth...

I really don't get why they're so eager to fight Raishan.

>I really don't get why they're so eager to fight Raishan.
This. It fucking pissed me off that he knows his party is separated and near death yet we will fight a near full health dragon that was casting speak with dead

Well, Keyleth has all that revenge bullshit because Raishan opened the path for Thordak but everyone, including the raging maniacal murderer of all things breathing barbarian, told her to stop and wait until anything happens. Only Vax went in with the "you make the call and we'll do it for you", without asking anyway if they were ok with the plan.

And now we have Keyleth at almost nothing, Vex at nothing and really fucking close to a lava pit and everyone a couple hundred feet way from them. That's pretty much a gg in my book.

I'm sure it's just more of Liam's "roleplaying" -- look how in love he is with Keyleth! He trusts her implicitly!

I think dragons are fucking great, so maybe I'm biased, but I don't think Raishan chose where Thordak broke out, right? How is it her fault?

And ignoring that, they're fucked now and I'll be super pissed if Matt let's them get off so easily when they fight Raishan. Not only did they betray her and go back on their sworn word, but they're still recovering from the fight with Thordak.

Keyleth is the only one who's focused on putting all the fault on Raishan, and Vax just follows suit.

Now, about what will happen to them, I'm almost hoping for Vex's death just to see intra-party conflict between Percy and Vax. It was really fun to see Percy and Grog fighting for the Githyanki skull after the Conclave attack, and I just want someone to do something with the emo brat.

I like Keyleth and Marisha is my favorite

I used to not mind her very much, but over the last stretch of the show she's really started to grate on me.

All of them have problems with their spells, and remembering their abilities, but her character is just so... annoying. It isn't helped that she metagames way more than any of the others.

I dont think she will die initially. Vax has lay on hands and other paladin spells

is this the first time Matt retconned something on this show?

Yeah, she's probably fine, but will probably be out of Raishan's fight. I'm just hoping for some sort of karmic justice.

He probably would have caught it if they'd continued the game. He's retconned stuff before in game.

Im hoping for party infighting. Its fucking retarded to listen to the one person too emotionally invested.

To be fair, this retcon is one that a lot of people on their reddit were calling for. And let's be honest, as a GM winding down after a big fight, your brain is going to be very mushy and fatigued and you might mistakenly give out wrong information (in this case the amount of bludgeoning damage they took from Meteor Swarm after saving from it).

The Thordak fight went about as I expected after how successful their infiltration into the city went: a lot of low HP players but no one really dead or at risk of dying (save Jarett who should stay out of the hole).

However, Raishan should prove to be a much harder fight, because even if they're immune to her poison breath thanks to Heroes' Feast, she can still sling spells at them, or depending upon what spells she knows, straight up kill someone (Finger of Death, a lot of the higher level Necromancer damage spells have a, "if target hits 0 HP, they're instantly dead" tag).

Scanlan refusing to play the flute could be their biggest ace in the hole, but there's no guarantee that the Brass Dragon's going to aid them in fighting Raishan, when they specifically told VM to call him to fight Thordak.

I dropped out during the break and I prayed that they would let raishan go, the party is going to end up being KOed because kelith couldn't just let it go, yes she caused the death of a fuck ton of druids but fighting a FULL health dragon is suicide at this point, whistle or no. But Matt is just gonna have the raishan teleport away and then he isn't even gonna play a ancient green dragon with a vendetta against you right. And from experience, having a green dragon hate you more than anything is the worse than a super red dragon any day.

I don't mind a little retcon like that tho, it's hardly a retcon and more a fixed mistake

This is slightly off topic, but apparently the new season of JourneyQuest is out. Has anyone seen it yet?

Yeah. Matt's job is to interpret the world correctly and ensure that the things that would have happened "IRL" actually happen.

There's a difference between a retcon like this and a retcon to let a player use an ability that they forgot to use.

This. He is just fixing a mistake that he made at the end of a 3ish hour long battle

While you're probably right about Matt not playing this fight the right way, I believe the situation they put themselves into is way too convoluted for a completely happy ending.

The fight will be a 3 v 1 for at least 2-3 rounds, where 2 of them are almost at 0, and the others are more than 100ft behind and pretty fucked up too with the exception of Kima and Grog, the former being one of the slowest.

They only have the lack of lair actions and one less legendary resistance from Raishan in their favor, and her being a spellcaster can make up for the lack of lair actions. It would be way too stupid if they don't end up massively fucked, even if they win.

Anyone else hoping they summon J'mon only to have it not fight Raishan? We haven't really seen chromatic-metallic interactions in-game yet, and I'd love to see J'mon take Raishan's word, dragon to dragon, over VM's regarding the 'agreement' they'd made, and then bow out as it doesn't concern Marquet or J'mon.

The look of oh shit we fucked up badly look will be priceless

No, Matt won't let that happen, he'd make the fight generic, albeit epic, good vs evil fight.

Just to be clear though, they attacked raishan at the end of the stream?

Yep...

I don't have a problem that they did it. I had a problem how they did it.

Yep. Matt even asked Liam to make sure, and Liam explained his reasoning behind it. It basically amounted to, "Keyleth said to not let Raishan touch the body [of Thordak]. Raishan's casting a spell on the body, which means she's interacting with it, which means I have to intervene."

Liam just doubled down on the action of them going to fight Raishan by basically saying, "your deal with us is gone, the only way your leaving this cavern is over our dead bodies."

You forgot to add they took a meteor swarm to the face. It's quite important.

I really hope she kills one of them. I don't care who, but I want to see them be punished for their shoddy planning, even if the only consequence is "lol, revive".

Here's hoping Gilmore isn't the only one with disintegrate.

True. But basically, Raishan's reaction was a mixture of confusion and agreement, and dropped her current plan of, "talk with Thordak's soul to try and cure this soul disease" to her, "fuck over VM plan like I'd always planned to do."

Honestly I think her plan was to drop Meteor Swarm on all 7-9 of them as her, "you done fucked up now" moment thanks to Keyleth having a rage boner over Raishan helping cause nearly a quarter of her tribe to be killed. So the half-elves eating it first might actually be a benefit in disguise.

If you think that's bad, thanks to the fight above with Thordak and them all being at low-ish HP, they're all in range of a Finger of Death insta-kill and zombie revival. She did burn her 6th level spell during the Thordak fight, but we don't know what her spell slot casting is like.

We don't know if Matt's using the innate spellcasting rules for dragons or if she has class levels. If it's the former, she could have finger of death ready to use.

Matt definitely spruces up his monsters, so I would not be surprised if she's got a whole suit of spells ready to go.

I mean, you can't necessarily make a claim for the exact personality/terrain types of a dragon. Finding a tropical blue dragon, a arrogant green, or a personable and charming but still very very evil black is entirely possible.

That said, Raishan's been played pretty close to the hip.

We did see Raishan use a Legendary Action to cast Blight on Thordak, along with firing off a Chain Lightning during it too.

If it were me, based upon how Matt tweaks his monsters for these epic fights, I would assume she's some kind of innate spellcaster on steroids, with a similar spell pool to that of a max level Sorcerer, but tank her HP respectively to show how the plague has affected her (maybe she doesn't have legendary resistances and is relying on knowing Counterspell to deal with stuff like Earthbind).

I'm fairly certain she used a legendary resistance during the fight vs something of Thordak's (before moving off to fight the wyverm).

She used a legendary resistance against Thordak's earth tremor lair action.

Ah, thanks. I remember Matt mentioning it really offhandedly and none of the players seemed to note it.

Any thoughts on Liam clearly fudging his dice?

He had mentioned he planned several encounters to soften them up that the party bypassed, so that's their reward for actually showing up with a half-decent plan for once.

I didn't saw him doing that, but I saw him using a 4th luck point.

IT'S JUST A GAME

Yeah when he was on top of Thordaks head he had some SUPER suspicious behavior.

"First attack is a 24"
"oh btw you don't have advantage now, you would have disadvantage so its just a straight roll."
"ok, second attack was a nat 20."

so he either just flat didn't listen to mercer and rolled two attacks with advantage, or he lied about the second die (as he would announce the nat 20 on his first attack instead of a 24)

Oh, that one. Yeah, that was strange. I thought he used the third roll for the second attack, but then again IT'S JUST A GAME

It being a game doesn't justify cheating in a game...and I am not taking this too seriously cause it doesn't bother me that much, I just don't like liam.

Feel sorry for Travis and to a lesser extent Matt for having to play with some of these guys

Travis is literally perfect

It's just funny when he tries to be the most chill of the group that doesn't let the game get into his head and then use every little opportunity to get a little more. It's a fucking blessing he stopped bugging Matt with Assassinate's crit.

Matt Mercer doesn't have the balls to perma kill a character.

He will just fudge the rez dice roll.

I really hope they fudge the rez roll if the annoying Druid dies (can't be bothered to spell the name)

Fudges aren't really needed - Matt's rez rules don't make it super hard to rez a character at their level. They can probably get at least 2 of the 3 checks required for a rez, dropping the DC to a mere 4.

Travis & Taleison are the best imho.

Worst kind of cheating. It's cheating AND lying. Matt obviously trusts them, and that slimey fuck was so blatantly shifting the dice when he picked them up. As soon as the dice hit the table he scooped them in his hands to obfuscate them.

If I was the DM I would tear his sheet in half in front of him and tell him to leave.

I feel like Laura's stepped it up a bit lately too. Not on par with either of those two yet, but she's definitely a lot more entertaining to watch now. I remember her being my least favourite in the beginning.

He doesn't want to kill them. Its obviously for the ratings of the show. When Liam basically fucked up and picked a 3vDragon at the end of the episode, Matt had to pause, think a way out of it for them, then plot armor them to safety. Meteor Swarming them right then and there would've been the end. Help wouldn't have arrived in time.

Ruins the suspense of the show when none of the character can die. One of VM could literally spit in Asmodeus's face and Matt would find a way to not Perma them.

Ripley.

Infact, that was probably the best *everything* from Critical Role.

It was a little disheartening seeing how into it he was during the Thordak fight when so many others seemed to have the wind out of their sails.

I kinda blame Marisha (though I don't normally dislike or disapprove of her) for the whole Tsunami thing utterly killing momentum and enthusiasm.

Pretty sure Matt had to think of how Raishan would react, while considering what spells she had, what her ulterior goals are, what lay in the chamber ahead, and how much potential infodumping Liam had just stopped dead in its tracks (as well as how to work in some of that infodump/plothook in the ensuing scene/battle). Raishan is a cunning fucker and it would be a disservice to the character if she was played as anything less.

>cunning fucker
>pulls out a scroll and reads it with its back turned to people who arent exactly the best of terms with her
>didn't bother to just prepare the spell and cast it then and there

Sure. Matt made her really clever.

But half the characters have died?
Everyone but Scanlan, Keyleth, and Vax iirc. It's just the nature of DnD that death is rarely final for high level characters.

>sorcerer
>prepared spells