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I'm a huge fan of this, and since I have no job or social life I've caught every episode to varying degrees, though I've more skimmed or skipped through episodes Orion is on. I knew about the drug issues but didn't know about the dice, I mostly hated him because I found him annoying and he kept trying to do poo poo with spells that wasn't in the rules, like using telekinesis to fling loads of daggers at stuff. And yes I am that huge of a nerd and D&D snob. If you want to watch campaign 1 I'd jump in at around episode 30 for the Briarwood arc since that's just good fun with a fair number of highlights, and if you don't mind seeing how things end catching the final stretch of 10-15 episodes of the campaign is full if high spots. Since the time commitment is a big ask you can't go wrong with checking out campaign 2. The roleplaying is really the best part of the show, though I enjoy all the fights too, so if you just catch the episodes after the fact and mainline the non-combat stuff you can trim down a fair amount of time. You can look up the couple of live shows they've done too, those are just markedly better than usual. It's basically my favorite show, so my advice is to not let the amount of content daunt you, you can always skip around past episodes for what you like, and there are tons of highlights and cute little animations based on the show on Youtube. You can probably catch some highlights there to start with to decide if this is your kind of show. Glad to see a thread for Critical Role, and I hope to see some discussion of the upcoming episodes as they happen!
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Mar 19, 2018 05:23
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Pumat's great, there have been some good NPCs so far but he's the first absolute SSR-rank one able to go toe to toe with the likes of Victor. They were talking about going to bug him to get them to clean them all in the latest episode and I was so hoping they would, it actually made a lot of sense for the characters to do it in addition to all of them I'm sure wanting Matt to do the character again. I hope they spend a solid 10 episodes in the city they're in now since it seems full of fun shops and quests to go out on, and I'm worried that the latest developments will lead to them getting run out of town at best and imprisoned at worst. On the other hand, I don't think they've done a proper prison escape or extended prison scenario, their escapade in hell is probably the closest they've come but they had the escape plan built in from the get go. It seems like that would be a fun scenario for these new characters to try to work through, especially since some have time spent in at least a county jail situation and they would still be low level so they can't just wave their hands and poof out of there.
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Mar 19, 2018 12:19
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As fun as all the new characters are, I'm kind of hoping for a character death while they're all too low level to really do anything about it, or with an attempted resurrection not working, so that we can see the actors flex their dramatic chops and get someone exciting and fresh in there. I would have never wanted to have a party member swap happen in campaign 1, but then Tarion showed up and was instantly super fun to see in action and to see how everyone else bounced off of him. They won't be fighting Dragons anytime soon, but since most of them aren't super deep into maximize every combat action or character build possibility, or choose to put what their character would do in the moment ahead of the broader "game" aspect of things, I can easily see their first encounter with something like a beholder leading to a death, really all it would take is a big disintegrate hit and you're kinda screwed. Granted even something like that is a ways down the line, but it's something I'm open to. Of course I say that now before I've completely fallen in love with a character to the point of really missing them if they're taken before their time.
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Mar 20, 2018 11:27
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Gaz-L posted:Because Sam's been so consistent about Nott not caring about the value of what she steals, I had actually only clicked to WHY she was stealing Fjord's letter about 10 minutes before that scene. (Then again, Sam Riegel spent like 6 months setting up a gag of turning Vex into the Wicked Witch of the West, dude can play the long game) It was over a year at least from start to finish, super long game, or at least remembering and having the perfect little move chambered. Based on the Nott backstory/character stuff during her second letter theft attempt, things are going to get interesting as they advance in levels and have more and more spells to help her change her appearance at both the illusory and physical level. NowonSA fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Mar 29, 2018 |
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Mar 28, 2018 21:43
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CuwiKhons posted:Speaking of which, while this isn't a general G&S thread, Geek and Sundry and Project Alpha really do put out a lot of other very good shows. There's Talks Machina, a sort of after-show for Critical Role - which you wouldn't think would be that interesting but it's mostly a chance for the cast to gently caress around for an hour and a half and just be extremely funny friends. There's Wednesday Club, as mentioned earlier, there's Asinine Wisdom (also a podcast), there's Painter's Guild, a show about teaching people how to paint minis, hosted by Will Friedle, noted bad painter, and assisted by professionals, there's the Sagas of Sundry horror series, on which Matt, Taliesin, Liam, and Marisha have all appeared, and there's multiple other RPG's that I haven't watched because I simply do not have the time to watch more than one 3-5 hour per episode show. Alpha has an extra subscription fee of $5 a month but honestly I find it completely worth it. If you're looking for more of a bargain option Project Alpha is part of VRV, which is basically a bundle of a lot of different subscription services including Crunchyroll, Funimation, Dramafever for my fellow Korean TV fans, and a few other lesser known ones, and you can subscribe to that for $9.99. I just have an Alpha subscription since I tend to get my anime/KTV fix from free streaming sites or Netflix, but it's worth a look if you're into those things as well. Alpha also has stuff more on the enrdist side of things like a nice interview show with various major voice actors, I just saw a thing with Alicia Vikander of all people on it, basically they have interesting shows based on all kinds of pop culture, but particularly nerdy stuff like comics and comic book movies, and sometimes they punch way above their weight level in their guests. Like most things you can check it out for a month free to see if you like it, but for Critical Role in particular the only thing that's really behind the paywall is same-day streams of episodes and the archive of Talks Machina and the 15-20 minutes of extra talk show they do just for Alpha which is them just dicking around even more than usual.
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Mar 29, 2018 03:52
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Keru posted:How the gently caress do you calm down after that? For some reason I had a feeling that tonight's episode was going to be extra good and probably the best of the new campaign, and boy did it not disappoint. I felt like Mercer really got to show off his DM chops by having so many contingencies in place for how their plan went down and a big fat surprise that had just the tiniest sliver of foreshadowing to it. He came up with a really wild situation for low level characters to find themselves in, and I love the constant tempting of "here's this shiny magic item or this money, but you're trying not to leave a trace so don't take it" and then that whammy of Crazy poo poo is going down in town so it's probably not gonna matter much and you could've taken alllll that shiny stuff . The one knock I'd have against him is that he should have communicated the battle situation to the players better, it's good to know what your options are when a character is in a compromised position, what you can use your action for, etc., but hey he's only human and that's a trade-off I'd take every day for his general storytelling ability. Definitely the first "can't miss" episode since the first couple that were just introducing the characters and are super helpful going forward because of that.
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Mar 30, 2018 12:00
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Lucas Archer posted:Even heavily wounded, I'm betting this guy will be a tough fight. Jester has already said she's out of spells. I also think it's super interesting to see a bunch of level 3's against one guy who's probably level 10+ but is already wounded and probably doesn't have a ton of magical equipment to help them since that'd give the party too much good stuff if they do decide to just kill him and loot him, on top of whatever the magical grey aura mcguffin does. Due to the structure of the game the low level people win that fight, but it's at least going to be interesting when they're in various states of wounded and low on spells while the guy they're fighting has at least a few tricks left in the tank. I'm thinking they just subdue him and then try to talk with him later, which if he can't speak a language they understand is going to be interesting when Caleb is able to understand him but not communicate with him. I'm hoping for a fun Caleb/Nott teamup when the Crick speaks halfling somehow, and the negative charisma goblin has to try to convey the party's words to them. So many fun moments from that Grog game, but one quick highlight to further incentivize people to check it out: Vex has to jump over a small little trap, rolls a 20+ Grog: You just poo poo and fall right into, oh it's just a total mess.
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Apr 3, 2018 05:11
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Dragonatrix posted:The denouement to Thursdays episode was insanely cool and all, but it really highlighted the one big failing that Matt has a GM, insofar as CR is concerned obviously, IMO. Namely that whenever something like that is happening, he actively doesn't let anyone do anything. In this case I'm thinking more about the stuff in the High Richter's mansion; he just had this minor character setpiece ready and once it started, it might has well have been an actual non-interactive cutscene for all the difference it wouldn't have made. I mean, i feel like those specific things come down to the players declaring that they want to do something in those moments, even just to interrupt them mid sentence or action to do a thing when not in combat, but I do agree that if he has a weakness it's in not being willing to stop or pause the plot train, I just think the onus isn't entirely on him to ask if anyone is doing anything, which I remember him doing a lot more often on Campaign 1 in similar circumstances. I was planning to DM a campaign set in an alternate Tal'dorei where the Chroma Conclave killed Vox Machina and each dragon took over a city or area, and the players would be their evil servants basically acting as their top-level agents and spies. For some missions they would have secret orders from the primary dragon they were in service to as kind of a bonus objective. I ultimately balked at it because I didn't want to try to learn DMing in roll20 on top of barely being competent as a player and having very little voice range. Anyway, I bring that specifically up because the one idea I had nagging at me that made me try to get it started was a scene of Allura and some Vasselheim nobility (probably their princess) meeting with Raishan in Whitestone (the city she took over) to discuss opening proper trade relations between Vasselheim and Whitestone, and more broadly Tal'dorei as a whole, and I'd just think about their dialogue going back and forth even though it would just be me as a DM rambling to myself while the party wouldn't have much to do. Plus when the party did get crashed it'd have Raishan, Kima and Allura bashing the ambushers on top of X amount of guards, so it's not like they'd be super impactful in that conflict (though maybe it'd give them a chance to carry out subtler objectives). So as someone who had a firm idea of how a scene would go in that case (as well as a few others I had dreamed up), I think Mercer kind of does the same and gets into the roles he's playing in a story in that particular moment and basically acts as an actor first and a DM second, so kind of a fun greatest strength and greatest weakness in one there. Oh, and since I doubt I'll turn the ship around and DM that evil "Conclave in charge" game, if you want to ask any questions at all about what I had in mind for the setting or plot please do so here because I don't have private messages on SA, I love to throw out worldbuilding details to curious people (and if I don't have to actually DM it all the better apparently), and if someone wants to DM a game with that premise on Roll20 I'd get in on that in a hot second. I apologize for the long post as well, but I like CR too much to not really let fly with one eventually. Looking forward to tonight's episode just like everyone else is I'm sure!
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Apr 6, 2018 00:53
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Keru posted:I cannot believe that they're getting away with this. Decent teamwork considering it was so on the fly, no really bad rolls and they lucked out that the guards are dumb and didn't know what they had. I love that they managed to snag it and keep their consciences clear of what would become cold blooded murder after tying up the guy and talking to him. With the gray McGuffin on top of that fat platinum stack and what are surely a nice sword and nice boots the guy they fought turned out to be about as much of a loot pinata as expected. If that phantom ability came from his equipment then that is super useful and if it's from the boots then I can see several characters who would get a lot of use out of it, whereas if it's the sword it's basically down to Molly and maybe Nott. I kind of want them to push their luck to the extreme here and try to tack on "sneak horace out" and "get a lead box" before they go to sleep, just keep going to that slot machine because it always pays out!
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Apr 6, 2018 05:16
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:*Spend hours preparing for a frame-up only to have it go up in flames* After the talk towards the end of the episode I now agree that Mercer kind of set them up for failure by having the big attack happen that night, since that throws all the guards and citizens into panic and basically ensures one of the two people whose houses they hit will notice that their place has been hit and probably round up and hide or destroy all the evidence they planted. I hadn't thought of that angle to it, I was just noticing the fun little swerve of "Whoops, with all this stuff going down you probably should have max looted everything, oh well." Fun little bit of intrigue set up for next week, and I love that an object of immense power, sought by entire kingdoms, is now being held in a cute pink haversack and that they actually did get it set up with as much safety for transportation as they could at their level. Some A+ conversations that I'm going to have to watch again too, I kind of got all I needed the first go around with sewer guy and I wasn't expecting that to be the case at all, I'm glad that so much other fun stuff happened after that. Adnor posted:So which one is the real name, Mollymauk or Lucien? Or none of them? I'm convinced the only honest thing he's said so far is that he joined the circus awhile ago. It just seems like a Taliesin move to go that route. In my current 5E game I've managed to keep my true backstory and my changeling race secret from the party through about 10 sessions, and I got a big kick out of everyone spilling at least the bare bones of a very key part of their backstory that we all shared due to the unique setting and setup of the campaign, and then I just full on lied and nobody insight checked me and I got off scott free. NowonSA fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Apr 6, 2018 |
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Apr 6, 2018 07:19
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Gaz-L posted:Oh, most of Matt's flubs or house-rules I have no problem whatsoever with. Case in point, when Scanlan used Dimension Door to bypass the Prismatic Wall, I had no problem with either response he considered (treating it as slamming into all the layers one by one, or allowing the player to do something really cool by explicitly looking at the text of the spell). The only time I've raised an eyebrow was letting Keyleth keep using beast shape after she got hit with feeblemind in the post-campaign battle royal. I get that he was trying to keep her competitive, but you have to consider whether or not an ability makes any sense for a character to be able to use when they're dumber than most animals. (Plus the 20th level removal on the limit of how many times a druid can wild shape is cool, but in that context made her literally unkillable) The continued shifts post feeblemind there REALLY bugged me as well, it happened at a time where even if she' stuck in one shape so many people were down and the battlefield conditions were such that she still had a reasonable chance to win it, and after being hit by that high-tier spell it should have put her under rougher conditions. Compare it to Grog where he had to essentially roll a 20 to save against a single spell to stay in the running. Instead he just says it's a natural ability and right there she's guaranteed to win it, I would have been super pissed if I was a player at the table, but they take it less seriously than I do and they also all definitely knew that they had to completely team up on Keyleth either through stacking up damage in a single round or combining disabling spells on her and they chose not to. I'm so sad that Ashley wasn't able to be there and play as Pike, I would have cheered so wildly to see her use her guaranteed success divine intervention at level 20 to disable Keyleth's wildshape, or just do insane damage to her followed up by the bonus action spell she used in a previous battle royal to completely own a low hp Keyleth since its effects got increasingly worse the lower your hp was. A Scanlan/Pike team would have been awesome to see in action too, and kind a team dynamic overall with the couples pairing off would have been fun.
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Apr 7, 2018 12:58
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In It For The Tank posted:Batle Royale and Boss Rush stuff I agree that the Darrington Battle Royale was the best one they did, part of me was hoping to Scanlan to basically take hiding to the next level by taking that etherealness spell and just sliding down into various areas below the battlefield for 8 hours unable to be hit by much of anything. The boss rush would have been fun, but also taken a pretty crazy amount of time with what you laid out. Lots of conclave at once sounds cool, but then you'd juggling all those legendary actions on top of normal turns and it'd just be hell. I think you give them the briarwoods, then a Riashan rematch (or all 3 of them at once probably makes for an actually kinda tough fight at level 20 especially with an annoying use of prismatic wall), and then like pre-god Vecna from the top of the tower on a Torrasque. A torrasque has to be somewhere in there since I want Matt to get that off his DM bucket list, maybe he can bust out one during campaign 2 as part of the campaign proper. Just glancing at the stats it's certainly nasty, but I feel like you need to combo it with some kind of annoying spellcaster or cleric to disable people or heal/buff the beasty for it to really cause trouble for a high level party, especially when there are 6 or 7 of them.
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Apr 9, 2018 15:00
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Gaz-L posted:5e Tarrasque is basically immune to magic, as I recall. And the DM rolls a d6 if you try and cast at it, and it reflects the spell on a 6, I think. I mean there is that, but then you have grog attacking three times, Percy going wild with action surges if he needs them, Vax sneak attacking each round and chipping in that tiny bit extra with boots of haste, Vex shooting, I mean they were already mostly a physical damage party anyway so it's hard to picture it lasting more than 10 rounds and that's being a bit generous to the sucker. It's mostly an action economy thing to me of needing something to supplement it since just a tarrasque even with its legendary actions doesn't seem too rough for an average top-level party, and they seemed better equipped then most since they relied on magic less. You never know how it would go based on the rolls, but I think Grog, Percy, Keyleth, and Scanlan could force it to puke either through big physical hits from within or a big flashy spell or changing into a super useful form with polymorph or more likely true polymorph. If it follows what seems like the standard gameplan of "bite something, try to swallow it, and repeat" and at 3 int I think it would, then it's only a matter of time before Grog gets in the tummy and is able to probably force a puke save every turn. If they don't have Pike it's a lot tougher since there'd be a lot of healing needed. It's for sure a fight I would have wanted to see, but I don't think the outcome would be in doubt as long as you have Grog, Pike, and the twins. Percy could be screwed by nonmagical weapons immunity if animus jams, and their Vestiges are pretty well suited to beat it up, and they'd have to be fighting it in a tight enclosed space so Percy can't sniper it from 300+ yards away while the twins fly above it shooting it up and throwing daggers. My current D&D party is Bard, Sorcerer, Wizard, Druid, Fighter, and Gunslinger though so I think we'd have a much rougher go of it even if we fought it as a level 18+ party. Maybe someday we'll see one of the big beasties on CR, I hold out hope for that fun, fun day. I was sure it was coming at the end of campaign 1 until Matt came up with something far bigger and more terrifying. NowonSA fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Apr 9, 2018 |
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Apr 9, 2018 16:09
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Gaz-L posted:Anyone want to set an over/under on how far into Campaign 2 before we see one of the Vestiges show up, btw? (They're actually the coolest thing from the campaign guide, honestly. Not a terribly original idea, but it's still really neat) I think 50 is a reasonable number to set that at, if we're talking the first time we see one held be either a player or NPC and name-dropped as a vestige. And I'd take the over at 50.
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Apr 10, 2018 14:24
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victorious posted:I did like seeing the level-up rolls done live though, I'd like to see more of the finer details too but it would probably break up the flow too much. When I jumped onboard campaign 1 it was pretty clear what equipment and abilities everyone had, particularly episodes that were combat heavy. It's also pretty easy to hit up google to tell you what special mojo a particular class has at a new level. I'm probably most interested in seeing what pact boon benefits Fjord chooses as he levels at the moment, Warlocks in particular have a big unique pool of passive or active abilities to choose from that I don't think any other class quite offers, it's basically like having the specialization options of classes built in to your class only you pick and choose what you like from all of them at once, and then have your warlock specialization on top of it.
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Apr 11, 2018 23:02
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Gaz-L posted:Anyone else find Liam's Jester impression kinda creepy? Nah I was diggin' it, anytime someone can make it I want multiple people tossing in impressions now, Marisha can do Yasha when Ashley isn't there since Beau is like 90% of the way to that anyway.
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Apr 14, 2018 03:28
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It was a kind of weak episode overall but still fun, and it did reassure me that things are still gonna be fun even when Laura and possibly Travis miss some sessions when the baby arrives.
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Apr 14, 2018 03:45
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Different tastes I suppose, it was coming off of some serious highs and though they did the best they could in her absence, and indeed better than I expected, I missed Laura a lot. I've gotten used to the longer sessions too so ending after 3 hours was probably my biggest issue with the episode. Everything set up sounds like it'll be fun, but I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy the "ride" of this latest task and the fallout of it much more than seeing the track be laid for it. And nobody talked to the crazy gnome! Critical Role is basically my favorite piece of entertainment to regularly consume, but even I can't always say an episode really captivated me, and for me personally this was one of the lower quality episodes of the new campaign. Right now I think I'd rank it at the bottom, but that may be recency bias. It's still a fine show and I'm very glad to have watched it, but even all time classics shows like Breaking Bad have their episodes or seasons ranked and measured against one another.
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Apr 14, 2018 05:59
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Firstborn posted:It's kind of cool how if a player misses your session, they could just download a podcast or watch it on youtube to get caught up. Huehuehuehue. I'm going through S1 (i'm only on episode 5), and it was a weird start even at level 1 and knowing there's pre-stream games. I'm at the part where Matt is doing the Mindflayer voice, and goddamn, it's so good. I also kind of love Liam. Clarota's a cool Flayer, and one of the few names from back then that they've dropped quite recently and who comes up sometimes at convention Q&A's. Having full access to the whole game is a very fine resource, alas it takes some real skill and money to get it even close to the level of CR visually. Recording it on audio isn't a bad idea at all, seems very feasible for home games when you know someone will miss it, but I think 99% of D&D groups are way too lazy to do that.
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Apr 15, 2018 05:06
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Lucas Archer posted:Who else is super excited for tonight's episode? The entire gang should be there (hopefully Laura is feeling better after her bout with the plague). Spoilers for C1-The first real dungeon crawl of the new campaign! And they won't have all the super awesome abilities that VM had to just bypass large parts of the dungeon. I still remember Matt's face when Keyleth and Pike used earthquake spells to just crush Vecna's tower and destroy that entire dungeon he had planned. The tower wasn't so much a dungeon as a series of fights, and I think the Gnoll mines was a decent dungeon crawl, certainly moreso than we typically saw in Campaign 1. Here's hoping it's at least as beefy as the gnoll crawl was, I'm down for some conventional spell conservation and "we gotta take a short rest in the middle here" stuff to happen. If Mercer busts out a traditional dungeon map and they toss that sucker on the stream I will really, really love it, I don't expect it but I'm a sucker for that classic feel after I had a fair amount of those maps to work through in a previous pathfinder campaign.
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Apr 20, 2018 01:52
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Well that was more a couple of rooms than a big ol crawl, but still a nice puzzle and fight mix. A nice cliffhanger for next week too.
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Apr 20, 2018 06:47
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Fjord's dream featured nothing but himself and his sword, and it ordered him to "consume." I think he did exactly what he was supposed to, especially since the end result was that his falchion consumed the longsword's enchantment. Yeah it seems pretty straightforward there, not many other ways to interpret that. Consuming enchantments is a crazy cool ability for any class or character who has a specific weapon of importance, I totally want to be able to do that if I ever play a Hexblade or really any martial focused class. Even if it's balanced out to only allow one enchantment to be dominant at a time and they don't stack, the flavor of it is so drat rad. It's by far my favorite bit of Matt homebrew class rules or features so far in Campaign 2, nothing else is even close.
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May 2, 2018 02:57
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The last fight's gonna be fun to see next week, I think they have it in the bag since they can attrition it down really well and bring back anyone who goes down fairly easily. The baddie's probably getting 3 rounds of attacks, so I expect some flavorful descriptions of stuff going down but they really should have it in the bag. That second round was tense stuff though, and Jester having Prayer of healing prepped was clutch because I was just thinking how it would be perfect for this situation and there it was. I'm quite pleased by her spell conservation too. Taliesin's arc of keeping Molly inexplicably out of melee combat continues, sadly. Seems like things might start popping off again in the next few sessions, should be fun!
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May 4, 2018 07:21
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Yasha seems to be a foreigner to the empire too, so it gives me hope that she'll run into someone speaking her native (non-common) language and basically turn into Pike then, or do some other fun vocal twist. Next week's gonna be a fun test of how smart a wizard Liam's playing Caleb as, he's done some good work with the Cat's paw, but there's a decent variety of spells even at spell level 2 or lower that should be able to make the fight super easy. I was also thinking after looking up the monster's stats that if Nott was able to get it laughing and convince everyone to hold their actions on an attack until after the creature's turn they'd have a super easy win, but no way will that kind of teamwork happen.
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May 6, 2018 00:06
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I think dashing is underrated as a tactical move in 5th edition and most d&d type games in general. Getting a minor hit in on your way to a thing and then get to it next round, or get right there now and be able to chase it down if it moves, get reactions on it, be a target to spread the hurt around, etc. In Molly's case it's particularly egregious because he's doing what's usually a 50/50ish roll to do 4 damage max and cause disadvantage, which is something he can do already on a reaction. It's the circling around that really got to me this time, vicious mockery and I'll just do a little dosey do around the side, oh I'm up and I still can't get to the target better mock again! I do have faith in him to figure it out eventually, I think he's played more D&D than anyone else there except maybe Matt who mostly GM'd, but it kinda sucks having to wait for it. On another front, I have a new appreciation for Nott's build. I really wanted Sam to take that new investigator/detective type subclass after how he kept trying to solve the case with Jester, but being able to cast a few clutch spells and get off 2 crossbow shots a round at ranged or in melee with no disadvantage is a pretty sweet setup. It really makes me worried for him though since he's come way closer to death than anyone else, and with how the latest fights went down with him escaping unscathed from all of them just staying back taking potshots I think he might have noticed too, or maybe it's just that he's finally in an open space with no one firing ranged shots his way and no manticore breathing down his neck.
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May 6, 2018 23:00
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If you can catch it last tuesday's talks had me laughing more than any other talks machina I've ever watched, so it's worth checking out.
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May 11, 2018 01:24
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Gaz-L posted:"AND HE DOESN'T LIKE THAT I LIKE FANT-*sob*-ASY NOVELS!" This is a dark mirror.
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May 11, 2018 04:54
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Ooh, so many choices and a sweet level up too. I hope the gentleman's offer is equally enticing, and I want them to go that route selfishly because it'd be fun to see how much they're willing to skirt up to truly seedy stuff and it's not really something we saw in campaign 1. I was worried Matt wasn't gonna get that side of things in there and then he snuck it in right under the wire. Either way they better take advantage of something for making a name there, as attractive as it can be to stay out of things and hit the road it's going to be a harsh reality when they get to the next town.
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May 11, 2018 07:28
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Silynt posted:Liam rolled a 23, so the monster had less than 23 hp left - supported by the damage it took to kill it after it awoke, so I don't think there was any funny business. I'm torn on the after waking attacks - they obviously had positioned themselves to attack as it wakes up, but they didn't explicitly say that. I would have been fine if Matt had allowed the Legendary Action hit before it went down - it wouldn't have changed anything except maybe knowing out Beau after all, the fight itself was already determined at that point. I'm fine with how he did it, remind everyone to say they're holding actions but let them all swing away. It wouldn't really make sense for them not to do it and they seemed to be on the same page that that was the plan. I'm sad that Hideous laughter didn't land like I expected it to because I wanted to see the comedy of errors that would have resulted from someone yelling at everyone not to hit it for a round and get in position to nail it, and then inevitably beau or somebody just hits it anyway. The legendary action was a great call by Matt since I knew they were going to steamroll it without that, and it actually made it a somewhat close fight, though with everyone running in different directions and clerics on hand to heal so you didn't need to worry about death they still had it pretty well in the bag. I hope we get a few fights roughly akin to a much weaker Vecna, like a 1 on 1 fight against an enemy with spellcasting or other good ranged attacks and a few legendary actions each round. You probably can't do that well until they're around level 8-9 for even a real weak version of that kind of Vecna/Raishan encounter, but I'm looking forward to it and Matt's done those fights so well in the past I have to think he has a few along those lines chambered. A certain character from Caleb's backstory could fit the bill...
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May 14, 2018 01:17
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Yeah I just went up against a demon prince with a legendary action in my level 5 D&D group and it would have been a nice fight with some easily squished minions thrown in there if one of the party hadn't decided to steal the magical book he was obsessed with and spend loads of movement and spells via misty step running away for 5 full rounds. Since our DM is merciful we lived after lots of awkward stuff with myself and another party member running after the guy who ran off and 3 of the party left alone with the pretty chill demon who actually let them walk away after I came back with no book in hand, because the other guy who went after the book decided to run away with it and since he was a monk/rogue multiclass he was basically the flash at 120 ft. per round and his plan was "run until I'm out of the town". After the session we all agreed that we're going to feel kinda bad when we go back and kill him, most likely with two new player characters in tow since that big book chase is probably ending with both of them killing each other.
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May 14, 2018 02:43
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kingcom posted:This is your party's real hero. The best part was that all that was chasing him was a CR 1 demon that got spawned by the boss, so if he threw a scorching ray at it or even a high roll on a magic missile it would have gone down and he could have kept running scott free if he wanted to, but he kept using action to disengage, then misty step, then move to go 60 ft in the round, and the demon just kind of kept dashing to get right next to him again. I really hope that Archfey = Traveler turns out to be true, I think it's a real cool arc to the typical cleric patron relationship if it turns out that hey, that trickery domain you swore to is just pretending to be a god and you're literally the only cleric he's lent his power to. It's also a really solid explanation for why there's a much closer relationship between Jester and the Traveler than is typical, I mean no matter how few followers you have it's pretty weird for any deity to speak directly to a cleric with such a low level of power, and doubly weird to physically manifest in front of them. In a practical sense that's actually a more useful divine connection than usual since they wouldn't be beyond the divine gate and can more directly provide aid on that plane. Imagine the reveal if one of them picks up some kind of truesight and just sees him hovering around with them, or sees him while they're hopped up on skein. Still, bestowing or imitating the bestowing of full-on cleric divine power is a hell of a thing, and I think it might be beyond even an Archfey with a convenient doorway between planes. Even if the theory turns out to be an utter goose chase, which seems likely, I've liked what we've seen of that relationship so far and I trust that we'll see plenty more goofy antics from the Traveler in the future. I'm predicting that anytime we see Jester's divine intervention succeed will be an instant highlight, even if it only happens like 1-2 times in the campaign.
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May 15, 2018 16:24
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I'm so paranoid about the Traveler-Archfey connection now that when Jester said the Traveler had told her all about the Feywild I had no clue if it was evidence of the theory or Laura messing with my head. Sam remains the most entertaining all around person at the table, being able to totally land and perfectly time out comedy bits alongside the more emotional reveal of his character's backstory, and coming up with fun angles to work in the combat beyond just punching things that also serve a purpose and are useful tactically. To me he's just a step above everybody else, though they all have their moments. Man that last stinger at the end of the episode was so perfectly done, I keep watching it and grinning ear to ear.
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May 18, 2018 10:12
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So far all the real story stuff has tied in to some character's backstory in my group. We had all died and come back to life through magical shenanigans, which along with being a neat premise is also a nice workaround to how you can heal massive wounds by resting for an hour and heal completely overnight, which doesn't make a lot of sense typically. One person had a rich noble backstory so that became our first destination to get ourselves set up with some money and a powerbase, and then to save his sick mom we were off to kill a demon who was closely related to another character's backstory (the crazy evil wizard). Mine's going to be a real trip when we get to it, and I've managed to keep it all hidden so far, while the DM still has plenty of room to have it come back to bite me at any time and it would make sense. The Noble in the party was killed by someone but he doesn't know who, so that's kind of that approach of leaving it open for the DM. He has 3 siblings and 2 of them are still top suspects after one of them was ruled out pretty conclusively. He also had us all write up pretty intricate backstories and then we've expanded on them since then, so add that to his like 5-10k words of text across various google docs for the setting and I'm kind of getting the extra-diet Matt Mercer treatment.
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May 21, 2018 14:16
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Bad Seafood posted:I don't think Nott's motivations are that murky. She's a goblin in a D&D game. People hate goblins, and even other goblins hate her in particular, and the racial dimorphism (?) that exists in D&D means that'll follow her everywhere she goes for the rest of her life. Fjord was teased for his tusks so he removed them. Nott is vilified for her status as a goblin, even by other goblins, so she doesn't want to be one. I don't think she especially wants to be a Halfing so much as she'd rather be literally anything else; a Halfing is just something of comparable stature. That's a solid comparison, and it's part of why I think you can make the trans comparison but only on the surface level of "I don't feel comfortable in my body as it is right now." To me it reads as an intense dislike of the culture she grew up in, and the cultural heritage is always with her since most goblins are evil baby-eaters and lots of people will respond to her with hatred or distrust just based on how she looks. Fittingly since she's so close with Caleb, the rough (not perfect) real-life equivalent would be if you were German in WW 2, knew all the horrible things the Nazis were doing and wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of the country, but were forced to serve in the military, wear the uniform, eat with the soldiers, etc. And then when you did desert and run away you could never take off the uniform and everyone would know you were with the Nazis, and all you can do is say that you didn't believe in their cause and wanted out and trust them to believe you. And poor Nott has to tell people that with 5 charisma. Going back to Nott vs. Naoto, I can see things working in kind of an opposite way where if she does manage to change into another race she still likes eating rats and does things that might gross out the other party members, where it's not that she was playing a role and has trouble getting out of it but instead that she's used to being a goblin and might have trouble adapting to the life and social mores of another race.
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May 24, 2018 09:10
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Really hoping that the latest addition to the Nein stays around for a long time, it's already a better spirit animal than Trinket ever was and seems like there's still plenty of depth to explore there.
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May 25, 2018 07:36
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I guess I just don't see the tension or major issues that others are, my biggest complaint is that Molly isn't cutting stuff up all the time but that's some real minor stuff to gripe about. I do have to admit that Beau dying from poison overflow would have been an amazing conclusion to the arc of Marisha making poor combat decisions, and I was loving Liam just edging right up to making that happen and he would have won my heart forever if he pulled the trigger on it. Even if a player death didn't happen it was nice to see Matt throwing something that had a powerful ability you had to work around into a combat situation. It kind of reminded me of the carpet fight, only replace the tricky carpet enveloping mechanic with "you straight-up can't get into a melee fight with this thing." I actually liked the end scene of the last episode because it seemed true to the characters. Nott's still gonna steal stuff, especially if it's super useless and low value like buttons or real useful like a powerful magic item or spell scroll since that's the stuff she wants to funnel to Caleb to make him stronger. Once Caleb's figured out what it is and confirmed what it can do, just handing it over to anyone seems super risky if you care about the well-being of the world in general. Even if they have the best of intentions the guest had already confirmed they were on the cult's radar, and if they were pulling off a con you're giving it right to the bad guys. Like I get as a player and a watcher you think "Hey we're trying to wrap up and this is the guest, just hand it over and let's call it a day." but I liked that Caleb in particular was approaching things like his character would and wasn't fast to trust someone they'd just met with an item that powerful. I'm glad Ashley remembered she had the right tool for the job at the end, and I really liked the resolution that came of it. Anyway, based on the last session I'm predicting that Beau's going to be the first of the Nein to die, though by then I'm sure they'll have revivify at least and most likely access to proper post-battle revive options.
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Jun 3, 2018 01:40
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Yeah ranged blood hunter seems like a decent idea, self-harm from activating isn't as much of an issue if you're out of the fray and I'd think the weapon rites would work on ranged as well. I'd at least want to be two-handed so I'd just have to flip on one weapon. The more I think about it the less I take offense at class design, sure some can be better than others but ultimately everyone is chumped by high level casters anyway so what' the big deal. I also am feeling somewhat empowered by weakness since I have the worst stat rolls on my character in a campaign I just started (one 15 a 12, and the rest at 0, -1 or -2 mods) and the rest of the party rolled golden gods, so it's kind of fun to play someone who's so wholly incompetent. Of course, I wouldn't want to then watch that character constantly make ridiculous choices in every fight.
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Jun 4, 2018 16:50
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Yeah between Haste and a certain item Molly's picked up he should really just get into the fracas all the time now. Hasted Molly seems like a real beast if he's got 4 attacks and can make most of them with an enhanced weapon with a blood hunter rite on it. I'm looking forward to him being the new Vax with loads of attacks each round, but with that ability being much more effective since it won't rely on sneak attack and should get more juice out of each hit. Not Grog-level juiceiness, but some nice oomph. Taleisin's also working with a bigger hp pool than he might think he has, he doesn't have the defensive options that Zahra or Beau have but he's certainly got enough to soak hits for several rounds. I'm liking Caleb's choice of haste more and more with how many solid targets there are for it, basically everyone but Jester can get a lot out of it. Nott's the sleeper pick since she'd become able to chase down anyone with move+dash, able to keep pace with even that troll while still having an action available.
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Jun 10, 2018 03:06
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They've certainly played fast and loose with haste for a long while, but as I read it you just get one weapon attack action that you can mix in, typically you're tacking it on to your attack action anyway. So I think Fjord could toss some eldritch blasts and then get in and do one attack, but Matt's pretty consistently ruled that you get the hasted attack action only if you did a weapon attack already. Basically who knows how it shakes down until Caleb decides to get Fjord in on the hastey party. Rogues are terrible for haste unless you really need to chase something down and a 60 ft. move action somehow doesn't cut it. Vax was able to basically teleport across the map just with his movement speed by constantly being hasted in campaign 1, and having Whisper was just sugar on top of sugar. When he got those paladin levels and was using oath of enmity to get advantage he basically became a supremely good mage slayer who could take down a low hp enemy very quickly (unless it was you know, Vecna) or sooner with some help. I wish Matt had thrown in a fight in the latter half of Campaign 1 that let Vax really show off how insanely effective he was at chasing down someone. I'm still traumatized from one of my party members deciding to use his rogue movement to run out of town in the middle of the biggest fight of the campaign thus far, so I kind of have "able to make sure no one can run away" as a high-value skill at the moment, certainly for most combats it's not going to be an issue.
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Jun 10, 2018 06:32
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I started watching about midway through S1 or so, and because of it I can't really go back and stomach Orion eps since even when he's mostly being "good" it's just such a weird vibe to me seeing him there. For that reason I think if you want to maximize your CR viewing just start at episode 1 since for me personally it's hard to be back to the early stuff, which is a shame since I watched the early episodes to varying degrees and there's definitely fun stuff in there, Clarota is a really fun NPC for instance. Conversely, for the people who see the hundreds of hours of content as daunting, just skip to the first non-Orion ep and go from there, or even skip past the Briarwood arc entirely since even though it's cool stuff starts blowing up all over the place soon after it, and it's hard not to be hooked by that.
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Jun 11, 2018 00:17
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