Guest character becomes a villain

Possible since it's Critical Role. Although he was pretty tanky and didn't get targetted all that often, plus the boss was undertuned af. Mercer played Vecna like a retard, the only reason the other guests died was a well-timed Hold Monster while they were over a chasm

It's epic because he roleplays the character well, and is an antipaladin worshiping the evil dragon goddess (especially since said dragons were a major villain in the group's previous arc.) He's a cruel, corpse raising evil paladin, and never hid it. He's an ally because he's also extremely powerful and they share a common enemy.
It was well done because it allows for a hook for future campaigns, it was well done (it all happened in less than a minute and so suddenly) and yet it doesn't diminish the heroes' accomplishment (they did kill Vecna and save the world) The Chad Stride in the end is also icing on the cake, the player left as suddenly as the character, so everyone, player and characters are left behind in their confusion.
Joe saved that campaign, desu, the Vecna fight was lame and too easy for a final boss, but Joe made it all worth it.
Plus, it another example of how a Chad Thundercock can make anything look cool.

>chaotic evil paladin

>Vecna uses cantrips instead of spells with his legendary actions
>Mercer doesn't make his GF roll concentration despite everyone screaming about it in the chat and one of the other players noticing
>His GF calls someone else out on concentration and makes them lose their spell

That whole show was a shitshow

I imagine they talk about major plot points behind the scenes, but that's pretty true of any long-term campaign. Asking your players about certain aspects of their backstory and setting up interesting storylines is just a part of the game.

I wouldn't say he was very mad about it. For something that big, it had to be discussed behind the scenes.

I agree. If Marisha plays a spellcaster in the next campaign, I don't think I'll be watching.
>paladin of 5e Tiamat

>and one of the other players noticing
????

Sam called her out on it and she ignored him. Then later she had the balls to call him out on not rolling concentration iirc

They defeated a god by ignoring the rules because D&D is about making dumb shit up with no consequence and being a celebrity. Then their guest who was an undead controlling anti-paladin of Tiamat took the hand and teleported out.

Who ever knew the game Arneson and Gygax created would by used for claiming "geek cred" as the best dnders ever on the internet by celebrities 40 years later..

Great (???) times we live in apparently.

this

Should remind you that one character missed 4 concentration checks on a 9th level spell that was used to solve all problems they had. That's effectively a druid with 5 slots of 9th level spells when it should have automatically broke in the round she cast it.

Don't get me wrong, everything to do with Marisha was horrid cancer. Killing a kid turn one as a Neutral Good, refusing to do concentration roles, apparently be able to use a page from an arcane spellbook because she was in planetar form. All was cheating and garbage. I just didn't think much cheatin gwas done in regards to Joe/Arkhan

You might find it interesting but Ranger was originally alignment restricted to good also.

In 5e there are no alignment restrictions to anything however. Specifically aligned things and restricted damage types have almost no meaning in 5e at all.

>Defeated a god by ignoring the rules

literally the only part of this that isn't you being a fucking retard OSR grognard

go to bed matt

In regards to how Vecna was played it mattered a lot actually. I want to clear something up that I don't mind she killed the kid or her alignment, dm's call, also the book is dm's call to determine the specifics. What wasn't the dm's call was that she didn't have to make concentration checks, Matt made not a single peep about it.

What Joe did was expected D&D fare and pretty cool but not exactly shocking except for newbies. I don't begrudge any of them their game but the way it happened it does cheapen everything about it. Like one of those campaigns people talk about where their DM let them kill an entire pantheon and reorder the planes.

No way man like I said dnd is all about celebs and geeky twitch shows. It's improvisation comedy with dice rolls, so cool and rad man.

>Killing a kid turn one as a Neutral Good,
Didn't she kill kids before the steam ? What does Marisha have against kids?

She's probably got a barren womb.

>dm's call
that's the point retard

the gm is biased

none of us give a fuck about children or alignments

It doesn't matter what he decides to do as long as he makes it clear or introduces his homebrew before the game. What happened was not given any explanation.

>Didn't she kill kids before the steam ?
You would think she'd be better about it after the first time and that its your SO's sibling.

yet gnome girl fell from hurting a wounded enemy to get information because she was good aligned.

dumb matt cocsucker.

That's his call though, that's a totally different issue all together. You can find a lot of things to criticize about how he runs the game but ultimately it is his game.

The difference is that cheating wasn't how he runs the game, it was straight up breaking the established rules. Since he never mentioned it we don't even know if he was aware it was going on.

>Don't judge him we don't have all the pieces together!
Get the fuck out

All of VM are evil or at least neutral. They're practically murder hobos.

stopped watching the show like right when they met the first god. i dont really like the way he handles gods.

firstly, PCs shouldnt meet that many gods. you can get some pretty fucking mind-blowing cosmological intrigue through planescape and other materials without just showing a procession of gods. they could have traveled through the astral plane looking for relics of gods? astral plane is extremely interesting

also all the gods were like played as so wise and unflawed yet very simple beings, there was something boring about that.

gods should either be new agey inscrutable intelligences (IE: you cant live that long and know that many things without losing your humanity) so evil that you could never understand the motives or behaviors or so good that you could never understand

or they should be like the greek gods portrayals, extremely flawed and human and wrathful or vane or what have you. or even better, a little combination of both like in KSBD

perfect transcendant celestial thing, or flawed wrathful superpowered humans

mercers gods are just like, boring unflawed do-goody humans without even a hint of the weird and alien personality that would come from living for hundreds of thousands of years

Technically a cleric could always communicate with gods.

They took it a step further and had them become chosen but then Forgotten Realms had that mechanic first.

Are you critiquing the premise of divinity in D&D or do you think their interpretation deviates too much from similar interactions?

Joe doing that shit with the hand saved the episode for me to be honest, after meme-druid ignored the concentration aspect of true polymorph I was out of it totally, especially because they brought it up every single round when it was matts turn to take damage. I also like the way he brought the cringe down a tad, whenever they'd make a cringey gay joke ect he would visibly cringe so they stopped happening as often.

That whole episode was pretty bad besides Joe blowing everyone the fuck out. Also
>BBEG
>not a single person goes down
>Entire party nearly wipes to a large squid

My attention span ran out before I could write text

Please write text to this. I need something to post in Critical Role threads and on the subreddit.

I mean, the "hard part" is finished. Anyone can load that up in Paint and add some text to it lol. You could easily do it

nevermind, here you go, man. enjoy

...

even better holy shit. good job, man

>The back brace
You are the worst kind of person user, but I love you

Did he really cry on stream? what episode? Also make more please! I just finished watching that dumpster fire 114 and need the pick me up

>Did he really cry on stream? what episode?
youtube.com/watch?v=CCBfJBf-t2Y

>I identify as hetero-sexual
Why is it so hard to just say I'm straight? Fuck The left leaning stuff does get on my nerves sometimes

You can tell him yourself tomorrow at the D&D roundtable about the current state and future of D&D with other "famous" people and Mike Mearls the creative lead on D&D.

>eceleb game has an EPIC MOMENT
woah so impressive

yeah but he's arguably an actual celeb or at least a celebrity's trophy husband

>meme-druid
I despise her fyi, she has throughout the whole game never once seemed like she payed attention to what was going on unless it was entirely about her.

Also yeah that was a WOEFULLY underwhelming boss fight. Theatrical sure but fuck me if it wasn't... well lame that no one even got downed.

>never once seemed like she payed attention to what was going on unless it was entirely about her
Totally agree, if she wasn't such an autist she'd totally be that guy. Thankfully she can't speak up, so she just cries every other episode and lets the rest get on with it. I stopped watching after the kraken fight when she was intentionally trying to kill the party.

Also the way that matt's throw away boss kraken (not even at full potential) came closer to killing their entire party that fucking Vecna

>insulting a professional

...

Mercer's shit at boss battles, either through genuine incompetence or because if he does anything than crank up the HP and play them as if they had 5 INT they'd flatten the party.

Yeah, I definitely preferred the times where liking tabletop was seen as a sign that you were severely mentally ill or completely incapable of functioning in society.

reddit.com/r/criticalrole/comments/74td7y/spoilers_e114_as_we_come_to_a_close_on_this/

so i'm not allowed to judge them for clearly cheating because "It's their game" bet all those shirts and shit they endlessly shill for are their shirts too

>endlessly shill
>only made because of the demand for it and having to continuously restock because of such high demand
>they need to shill

lol k

I find it sad and hilarious how people who are native English speakers don't know that professional means "You get paid", and not a reflection of skill level. The guy that fucks up your order at McBurger is a professional. The builder who forgets his tools on the way to work is a professional. The guy who makes random (but very fun) flash games in his spare time is an amateur.

There was never such a time in fact besides some religious outliers. Most people had heard of the game and at least thought it sounded interesting but didn't know how to get into it. A lot of the early staff came from sectors like engineering, teaching highschool, academia, military. Unlike today where guys like Mike Mearls was a neet or part timer in his parents basement writing homebrew and then some shitty mongoose 3rd party during 3.5 days.

Major Wesley the creator of the original Braunstein even worked for the military to run war games for their strategists and officers. Arneson who had played in Wesley's first Braunsteins later created a fantasy Braunstein called Blackmoor. Arneson influenced Gary Gygax and together created D&D. It would have been insanity if anyone actually thought they were mentally ill and non functional. Most likely you're just buying into the dumb modern narrative that D&D is now respectable because actors play it (since serious career people and military men aren't respectable?)

The girl
Tears groups apart

Needing to fast forward through 2 hours of adverts for shirts, boxes, jumpers, art sales, other shows, alpha exclusives, dice etcetc per episode sounds like shilling to me. But it's "their game" there doing it "for them" right sure thing

Spoken like a non professional D&D player your opinion is discarded and worthless.

It's their game, how dare you, you should be grateful they even let you watch them shill. Give them money so they can have fun but fuck you if you mention rules, it's their game their fun.

i hope matt's learned that even with 5 legendary actions, 1 enemy vs 8 people will never be balanced

Just like when they play it at home, the fancy set is just like the one at matts house. All those $100 pieces are even worse than the ones matt had!

reddit.com/r/criticalrole/comments/74wqlc/spoilers_e114_keylith_marisha/

Mad props to Keyleth for being so clutch with that cheating. Such great tactics to use that 9th level spell even though it would have automatically dropped the round she cast it if she didn't cheat. Amazing play!

Hah. Do these guys not have any self awareness how retarded they are?

>per episode.

10 minutes at the start of the episode is not 2 hours.

The adverts during the intermission is also mostly GeekandSundry, not just Critical Role.

This shit isn't free, so shit like sponsors make the shows possible.

come on, you know it's not 10 mins, come on, come on!

>friends playing DnD once a week isn't free
Oh wait, but they aren't actually friends. And this isn't for fun, but rather to turn a profit. Oh...

You missed the point entirely.

Whether playing on camera or playing at home, the campaign would be the same. It's ultimately for them, they play for themselves. It's their game. It's the audience that wants to see it, wants the merchandise, wants the panels and meetups at the convention.

If there is anyone to blame, it's the audience.

I’ll take connotation for 1600 Alex

They were playing the campaign for like 2 years before even bringing it live to GeekandSundry and they're all very close friends.

You're right, sometimes it's even less then that. Announcements and shilling their sponsor for the episode at the beginning before they get into the show.

The adverts during the intermission are again GeekandSundry.

>>BBEG
>>not a single person goes down
>>Entire party nearly wipes to a large squid
To be fair that's most D&D games. We GM' try hard but sometimes that spider swarm TPKs better than what you thought was a bad guy with a CR double the average party level

I also just feel bad for matt trying to balance shit around 7+ players at level 18+

Yeah maybe, but no cool maps, no epic pieces, no background for the room. Also going back to the original argument:
>If you pay to watch a movie you want too see you're not allowed to dislike it

Matt makes a point of never killing anyone though, 4 9th level spells, no one even goes down

Dead characters is bad for ad revenue. Can't anger the fans by killing their favorites.

I've never watched Critical Role, but I have seen Aquisitions Incorporated a few times (I like Chris Perkins and the tone feels more like my home game), how would they compare? It sounds like CR has a lot of issues

>mfdoom tshirt
>CE Pali
>Dicks over the party

I want to give this man a handshake and name my firstborn after him

>Yeah maybe, but no cool maps, no epic pieces, no background for the room. Also going back to the original argument:

Background it's give you, but Matt owns all the shit for the maps and minis. Dude has been playing D&D for forever, and he has accumulated a shitload of stuff to play with over the years.

Ooof that's nuts

Gotcha, I know a lot of GMs like that. Personally as a GM I've run a lot of WFRP and DCC so death comes extremely naturally. Lot of "Well you should have considered running away or parlaying" at our table. It's not that I WANT to kill players, but if they want to pick fights they can't win I roll the dice in the open, so to speak.

Could not agree more, if there's no death the combat is meaningless.

Their audience or more importantly the rabid fans are to blame for a lot of things. Not the marketing or shilling they do.
Instead those fans are almost entirely to blame for the hate the cast gets. Because those fans put sessions that are objectively a shit show on a pedestal they polarize people.
If the cast had integrity they would own up to faults and shut down their craziest fans, instead because of the money they let it continue. It's their choice but don't expect sensible people to respect them for it.

>Matt makes a point of never killing anyone though

Not only is that not true, but he's actually implemented rules to make death more meaningful than the default rules of 5e. If the ressurection ritual fails, that character is dead forever.

That the dice have favoured his players is just that, the roll of the dice.

Quite a few of the more impressive minis were donated by fans or other third parties. I don't think he would have had the dwarven forge terrain pieces either.

>k'varn
>briarwoods
>kevdak
>ripley
>raishan
>vecna (first fight)

I miss when Matt gave them challenging fights that posed the risk of at least one person dying.

>Not the marketing or shilling they do.

That's because nothing is free and money is needed to produce shows. They're part of GeekandSundry, and GeekandSundry needs money.

They can easily play at home without the show, but they like that people are invested in their campaign, they're actors. They like to entertain others.

Really Matt should have owned up to the whole concentration debacle and come flat out and said this is why a party over 5 is bad. Things get out of control and everything is cheapened by screw ups and cheating with so many players.

> death more meaningful than the default rules of 5e
Defult rules, 1 try at it, costs 200-25,000
Matt's rules, up to as many tries as you have in your party, costs whatever you like.

matt could have used Power word kill on anyone besides grog and it would have insta killed them. you're right though, he was trying so hard to kill them

Of course G&S needs more money, Felicia Day is a mom now.

Yeah, although besides that I think the only thing he really fucked up with was not using disintegrate any time he used finger of death instead. I know he cast it once out of the hand so that's fine, but there were quite a few chances to disintegrate members and he didn't do it

He would have likely bought them himself eventually. That Dwarven Forge gave these things to him is not unusal. Entertainers get free shit from companies if you have an audience and put in a good word to your audience for them. That's just good marketing.

literally facebook tier

AI is better for a couple reasons but saying that summons the trolls.

Both are inferior to those Sweet Sweet Boys, the McElroys.

>Defult rules, 1 try at it, costs 200-25,000

No, as many tries as you can afford. There isn't even a roll. You pay the cost and it just happens.

Matt's rules not only cost the default prices of the spells, but also other things depending on the emotional value and context between the deceased and the people taking part in the ritual. There are also rolls, tests to see if your contribution fails or succeeds, which in turn effects the DC of the final role if they come back to life or not. If they do come back, the DC for future resurrections for that character is by default higher, and keeps climbing for each subsequent resurrection until it fails. If it fails, they are dead, lost forever. No further attempts possible.

At the level they're at in the campaign, it's incredibly difficult for characters to stay dead. This isn't the fault of the campaign, but of the system itself.

...His rules don't, though. The "limitations" placed on resurrection in his setting are just a bunch of declawed cats. There's no bite at all.