Critical Role Thread

>people still take le obviously semi scripted meme show seriously

Such nurds xDDDDD

Dude, they have Raise Dead. There is no obstacle to a party bring a dead member back at their level other than damage being done to the body.

Also, did they not have 500g worth of diamonds? 'Cause that's kinda pittance at their level. I'm pretty sure they just pulled it out the bag of holding which, yeah, that's not surprising.

Death isn't that difficult to overcome in 5e unless you start throwing enemies that fuck with the body. The resurrection ritual easy, but it's harder than the default.

Simple question - is it worth watching? I'm not talking about having good moments here and there, but actually watching all of it.

...I mean all campaigns are a little semi-scripted. Lots of DMs'll have an overarching plot or a quest-line n mind, he'll adapt to what the players do while trying to reintroduce as many resource they've already made as possible. That seems fair, it's a style of DMing.

Travis is only one worth watching of the regular cast

It's ok if you know nothing of DnD or TTRPGs in general

I could listen to Mercer talk all day. Shame most of the players are shit.

Oh yeah Mercer is 9/10 husbando, but i'd imagine he's vanilla as hell if you talk to him normally

He had a sweet Geralt cosplay tho

Are we supposed to seriously believe those girls are roleplayers?

...Yeah? I mean, they do. Not that well, to be honest (Vex is alright) but they do. I mean they're not supermodel hot - they are voice actors, not regular actors.

I don't think he does, I believe he just simplified it when he started giving out loot piles large enough to warrant their being a table for gold coins AND gems in the X-Y gold coin range.

I do remember him saying that the party got some amount (several thousand to tens of thousands worth of gp) in gems back when they killed Vorugal just to simplify things.

And I believe it's assumed that for spells that require expensive reagents (like Revivify or Raise Dead) they're given ahead of time to the people who can cast it (Pike, Keyleth).

The red-haired one looks like a slut.

Ok, let's reformat the question - how does it compare to Gamers?

Laura's improved her roleplaying since they started filming their game sessions (from mediocre to pretty good), Marisha has stated that Keyleth is meant to be this moral ground and awkward character to roleplay as a challenge for herself to improve her roleplay skills (for better or worse).

Ashley is the only one of the group that's an actual actor but it's a combination of Pike's personality and Ashley's relative inexperience with tabletops in general (this campaign was her first one period) that makes her roleplay seem awkward.

Watch episode one and see if you can deal with the cast. If you can't deal with Orion he leaves around 24ish?

I think it's alright, some characters/players are better than others (Travis role plays pretty well compared to others)

As with many things, give it a shot yourself and make a decision after.

I think it's pretty good to watch. Matt is an excellent dm and so there's a lot to learn about how to dm from him. Sam and Travis are top tier players we are entertaining to watch but are by far the best role players. Everyone else is hit or miss except for Marisha (and Orion when he was there). Plus Ashley is my waifu

You're probably not wrong

If I had time to watch entire episode, I wouldn;t be asking questions while circling tabs in the office, would I?

So far this thread convinced me to avoid it like fire

Honestly the first 20-ish episodes are skippable. They help introduce you to the characters and some of their intricacies, but the growing pains of the first dozen episodes combined with tech issues take away some of that enjoyment.

It's around episode 24 or 25 when the second arc begins and things really pick up there. Also, you don't have to watch it; it's entirely possible to just listen to it like a podcast and you'll get 90-95% of everything said. You just miss out on the reactions from the players when they get killing blows or natural 20s or a tense moment occurs.

I'm really starting to fucking hate Percy and how Taliesin plays him, like he tries to play the character like he's clever af but since Taliesin isn't it just comes off as incoherent

He seems more like the alpha player to me how he tries to tell everyone else how to play or what to do in combat

Laura has the prettiest face but dat ass on Ashley is something else

I want to fuck the girl with the fake white hair

It's a shake Travis is stuck with a relatively simple character and that he's really a smart guy. Maybe the smartest of the group.

I stopped watching after a bit because I couldn't stand the girls trying to be smart and make terrible plans and shit, but I'm thinking about picking it back up again. Plus lizard guy was being a bitch, but I know he leaves eventually.

Mercer's GMing is pretty decent though. He's been trying to set up games for him to play in with Rollplay.

What do you anons think is going to happen tonight?

It's a completely different thing. Gamers is a much shorter comedic film, while this is just a filmed unedited multi-hour DnD game

God damn the Thordak fight was so underwhelming for how much build up there was.

Gonna need pics for proof

She also has a beautiful singing voice

Taliesin also said in one of Q&As that Percy thinks he's smarter than he is

It was so incredibly underwhelming. I feel like Kvarn and the Briarwoods were so much more exciting

Yeah, I know, Thordak was literally not!Deathwing and got the dicking. I was expecting them to go in and be cocky like usual and all get one shot by his breath weapon. I guess Matt giving them resist potions and a gorillian magic items on top of babying them makes things difficult to balance anything. I know he's gonna pull the whole "Thordak was Raishan's or X BBEG's pawn all along!!!", just so frustrating not a single person even got downed I think besides one nobody npc.

It's pretty good overall, a few rough patches here and there.

When he handed out just enough fire resist potions for everyone who needed them you could tell he was going to go easy on them

An other instance of him going easy on them was the resurrection rules.
Up until the recent episode it always been 3 cheeks, starting at DC 10, decrease by 3 for success, increase by 1 for fails and a final roll by the DM to see if it works. He said many times he wants resurrection to be a part of the world, but not to be too easy and therefore giving death an actual meaning as the spell can fail.
In comes the Raishan fight were he randomly drop his rules to a single roll because they're in a fight and he knows that even with all the shit he gave them they're still gonna lose so he makes it easier.

IIRC He said something along the lines of he doesn't want anyone to die because it would be weird adding a new PC in the far into the story.

can we just get to vecna already???

Only after two more years of planning sessions and Keyleth arcs.

>Keyleth arcs
Motherfucking Keyleth

Sure, but usually the script does not include the player characters' actions as well.

Are all female roleplayers in ameriland hambeasts?
I know lot's of pretty girls that roleplay, especially larp.

Fuck these people.

Half of my group watches them and all their creativity is gone and their characters are carbon copies of critical role shit

I think the only reason she left was the giant brass dragon who was mostly unhurt. Otherwise she could have reasonably easily finished them all off, they weren't even running on fumes at that point.

Anyone know why the brass dragon just showed up all of a sudden? I missed that part and I couldn't be damned to rewind the video

Deus Ex McGuffin they got in the desert city

They're like Kate episodes.

He gave them a one time summon to call on his aid because he had a vested interest in seeing Thordak dead. They proceeded to not use it on Thordak, so they were lucky they still had it.

>It's a shake Travis is stuck with a relatively simple character and that he's really a smart guy. Maybe the smartest of the group.

Yeah the oneshot with Liam as the DM really showed what Travis can do with a non retarded character.

It's a pretty good show, desu. Some of the group are definitely better roleplayers than others, but there are plenty of genuinely cool/tense/dramatic moments and just as many humorous ones. Plus, Matt Mercer is actually a pretty cool DM. Definitely would recommend it unless you're an autist over numbers. They've said over and over the play it loose with rules.

>Honestly the first 20-ish episodes are skippable

I just finished the beholder fight. Should I just skip to the next arc?

I heard it was lots of pointless shopping.

Unless you really want to see how much of a prick Orion can be then skip it

thats your groups fault

I'm not going to sing the praises of the whole cast, but on the whole they're pretty normal for a DnD group, and a roleplaying group as a whole. They're reasonably amusing, and I can't count the number of times my sides were in fucking orbit.

Like, most groups aren't perfect. There's very few who come up with plans that actually work well. They're imperfect, because they're people and for most of them, this is their first campaign. Maybe the PC's will be better if they play something else after DnD, or have new characters, but for the moment they're good enough.

Also will sing the praises of just one person besides Matt. Sam Riegal is an absolute gem, and deserves all the praise, because Scanlan is a character that steals all the luck routinely.

i want raishan to leave to vecna's lair in the morning (night i guess), summon vecna, and team up with him and undead thordak to fight VM

imagine, a god, a dracolich, and a zombie dragon against VM

SCANLAN MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD

>it's an Orion has his phone glued to his hand and won't laugh episode

Just started watching this last week and I'm on episode 15.

Good to see I'm not the only one who can't stand Keylith.

For what it's worth, Laura had a grade A roleplay moment during their show tonight.

So they get back to Whitestone after minor looting of Thordak's horde and coordinating with various NPCs to help rebuild the city to rest, recover, and have some celebratory drinks for breakfast.

They also go to get cleaned off and have long, hot baths. Vax (butt naked) finishes his bath fast and walks over to Percy's bath to have a quick moment to talk to him about how he is going to try and treat Percy more like family. All the while Percy is embarrassed and says, "I was working on something," and is trying to get Vax to leave, when he finally does, the whole talk lasting a minute.

Queue Laura, roleplaying as Vex, bursting up out of the bath with Percy as she was holding her breath underneath the water and bubbles, saying that she thought he wouldn't leave.

Or if your party loses a fight and flee from the scene.
They need the body to cast resurrect, right?

>We are entertaning to watch
Sam or Travis confirmed

For a moment i had an issue with it, but really, the magic is just a summoning, so when he shows up, hes still an ancient brass, and an ancient brass is ALWAYS going to be interested in destroying an ancient chromatic if in a position to do so.

They have level 8 spells, and their NPC friends are canonically better than them. If they don't currently have access to True Resurrection if they really need it, they can probably find it pretty easily.

What do you mean "believe"?
Do you not see them roleplay in the show? Do you think somebody else is doing the roleplay for them?
Do you think they have roleplay stuntmen?

What are you even trying to suggest, here?

>Ashley is the only one of the group that's an actual actor but it's a combination of Pike's personality and Ashley's relative inexperience with tabletops in general (this campaign was her first one period) that makes her roleplay seem awkward.
The biggest issue is her inconsistency, which makes sense considering her schedule. It's hard enough to roleplay well on a regular basis, but she touches Pike maybe once every month and a half, for a couple hours.

The only positive is she clearly watches the show when she can, so it isn't as jarring as it could be.

i believe entertainment is scripted, yes

Oh yeah I forgot that true resurrection is so easy to cast (except for the relatively high cost). I've always house ruled it. Resurrection without a corpse is lazy imo.

But yeah, they can probably resurrect people pretty easily. So far I haven't seen many opponents capable of devouring or capturing souls.

Why do you think it's scripted?
The playeres are relatively tame, because they follow the GM's plot (IE self inflicted railroading), but I doubt it's scripted.

Pretty much every long running game with any real stakes need some sort of houserule for resurrection. The only issue with what Mercer uses is that it was clearly an early game DC, and he didn't think to scale it in any way.

I doubt its scripted, but i have no doubt that there is some OOC communication about what and how things will be going in game. The players obviously do it, but i'd bet that Mercer gives them a bit of coaching behind the scenes too.

He did say later on that night via Twitter that the DC goes up by 5 for every subsequent resurrection. So Vex is currently looking at a DC of 15 or 20 if she dies again (same for Grog, who has died twice in the campaign). Everyone else - except for Vax and Keyleth - have died at least once now, so they're looking at higher resurrection DCs as well.

That's not too bad, but the issue stems from how he lets the ritual resolve, i don't think skill checks were they way to go about it.

For the more involved rituals (Raise Dead, Resurrection, etc.) it's coaxing the person's spirit back from the afterlife to re-enter their body as the divine magic heals the lethal wounds and re-connects the body to the soul, and the skill checks are meant to be ways to aid in that process (either to provide more power to the magic or to convince the person's soul to come back).

For Revivify specifically it probably should just be a straight roll, maybe with one skill check by the caster to see if they can give that last gasp of aid, power, or convincing to the ritual before the spell completes.

Remember, Revivify is meant to be the shock paddles, so the DC might be a bit lower, but only one person can contribute to the spell. Raise Dead and the other spells are the actual literal rituals to revive someone, where the DC should be higher because the body's been dead longer (or in some cases, straight up re-made) and the soul's been in the afterlife for anywhere from days to years on end.

>NPC friends are canonically better than them
Are they? Gilmore is lower level than them now and I think they're on the level with Alura and her merry band (She couldn't cast level 9 spells when they talked about the scroll of Gate)

I think only Earthbreaker Whatshisname is of higher level now

Watch your language

Don't say sweaaaars

>Scanlan ends up being the endgame villain

motherfuckers falling down that alignment chart like he's skydiving.

...I do that in my games. I might talk to another player, be like "Hey so I just realised we both had our families killed in similar ways, you want to maybe do a scene about that some time next session?" or go to the DM and be like "Hey, If it can be fit in anyway I'd maybe like some closure with Minor Villain X, I know he's minor but it'd help my character's arc". I feel like this is legit so long as the results are you know a product of roleplaying.

The only moments that Marisha really has good moments is when she's paired with that Kashaw guy (although that's more her doing than his).
She hasn't got on my nerves tremendously, but I can see why people might have a problem with her.
Also, when are they going to cave in and just make Kash and Zara regular VM members?

>that sudden demeanor shift when he casts that modify memory out of nowhere

Between snorting coke and this shit, he's on his way to start diving into the hells.

>more her doing than his
fuck *more his doing than hers. Most of the jokes are him bouncing off her awkward roleplaying

I fucking love Kash

Any link to this OS ?

Too bad his dice didn't let him do any of it

I watched Critical Roll, but I find it too boring if I not playing.
It sucks, because I feel like I'm missing out when my group talks about some of their stuff.

>It's an Orion never stops stuffing his face and constantly talking with his mouth full episode

youtube.com/watch?v=LgHm3Ct0Zh0

>what is audio book
Well,audio sitcom

Yeah, he's pretty great. One of the few people who manages to balance making a convincing, 3D character whilst still being fun and entertaining to watch.

I like will, but his character seems the most special snowflake of any of them. Different color eyes, scars all over his arms, and his back story is pretty "chosen one”. Also his defiance of his evil god is what gives him his divine powers? What?

>I was told I couldn't play anymore because the girls felt uncomfortable around me

its the classic "GMs GF". honestly the rest of the group does a way better job of tolerating it then i could especially during those early episodes

all that being said critical role has gone down hill recently

well they cant just let one of the most popular characters (or really any of them) die at this point. i think people fail to realize that it isnt just a game of DnD at this point, its a partially scripted show designed to keep viewers

the show being targeted at normies doesnt help things either

Oh yeah, its snowflakey as fuck. What I quite liked about it though is that I never noticed the snowflakeyness until I rewatched the episode. He does a fairly good job of keeping it in the background and not letting it dominate the character or the game.