Critical Role |OT| Is It Thursday Yet?

[Reinhard]

I mean, Oban is a fiend right? He wasn't really "dying" either way, unless he's killed in the Abyss. Unless it works differently in Tal'Dorei.

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He might be dead being a cambion instead of a demon of the Abyss. Aren't they offspring of a human and a demon, I guess it depends if cambions are born and native to the Abyss, if when they are killed do they poof back there or they just die on the Prime material plane.

One thing I really wonder about is Taleisin's prepared spell list. He only ever seems to use bless, bane, some healing, and holy weapon (bad ass spell) . I was going to complain about not taking Silence but man that spell is freaking useless in 5E compared to prior editions. It only covers 20 ft and is only a single point in space. All Oban had to do was fly 20 ft away and continue the ritual without even delaying it a single round.

 

[Gilgamesh]

The twitch chat in general has always been pretty terrible. I tend to just turn it off, as it's just a distraction really. Last night though, yeah I took a look for some reason and it was nothing but people screaming and being terrible towards marisha and demanding to know why nobody had silence prepared.

 

[SilkySm00th]

Just general shit towards Matt's DMing, Marisha's choices, everybody leaving Yasha, lots of shouts of everything being scripted because Ashley has to leave, and on and on and on.

To be clear, it's only 5-10% of content posts (omitting smileys and "NO/YES/OMG") that have that tone, but when it's consistent through an entire episode it becomes extremely grating.

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..... what was even wrong with what Marisha was doing? Can she stunning strike through her lightning stuff cause i thought (and would rule as a DM myself) that she couldn't? Everything else was pretty much standard scrapping trying to just stay alive level goodness. She thought to prep the door and get it closed, saved Fjord, essentially killed Oban... I mean Talesin just sat there trying to poke homie with his stick for two rounds, Fjord ran back into the room when he reeeeaaally shouldn't have (like why not EEeeEeEldrtich blast the dog? I was sure he had something tricky planned and then he just like... hit it lol) ... Yasha was really the only one that felt super innefective here. Every one else had moments of clutch AND moments of terror the whole way through. That Mirrored image spell at the end with Jester???!!! 0.0 fuckin wild planning and luck coming together there.
Side note: I was really happy that Travis chimed in with a compliment for thinking to pull up the mirror images for this fight instead of just saying "LUCKY!!!" cause yah. That shit was only partially luck :-D

And can we all just collectively laugh as them just fucking bum rushing the dungeon on the way out? Especially the bridge. Knot freaking out and losing her mind but then running in the right direction anyway while cursing everyone out? Caleb punching himself in the fuckin face? The image of Fjord and Cad just carrying Beau by her elbows while she zones out? That shit was priceless and if i don't get wonderful fan art of that whole scene i'll be crazy disappointed.

 

[Reinhard]

The twitch chat in general has always been pretty terrible. I tend to just turn it off, as it's just a distraction really. Last night though, yeah I took a look for some reason and it was nothing but people screaming and being terrible towards marisha and demanding to know why nobody had silence prepared.

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They were complaining about silence spell there? Lol, maybe they are thinking it is still like older editions. It's a very situational, mostly useless spell in its current incarnation unless you need it to hide the sound from breaking a door/lock or you combo it with grapple against a spellcaster (otherwise spell caster just walks away 20 ft and continues casting lol). Here it would do absolutely nothing because Oban would just use his movement to fly 20+ ft away and continue reading the scroll without causing a single delay.

Another thing I don't understand is why didn't anyone ask Oban more questions at the beginning? Like how about, "hey are you the one opening portals to the Abyss or is that your collaborator in the empire?" Their freaking job was to track down who was opening portals to the Abyss.

 

[eyeball_kid]

Hah, not at all. It's hard to say if Travis isn't playing his character well or if he is just a superb roleplayer who does an excellent job playing a low Wisdom character who also wants to avoid conflict by willfully being ignorant and not taking action. The main thing that annoys me is when he completely misinterprets the situation (low wisdom?) and somehow convinces the party that his view of things was right.

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Travis plays Fjord most of the time as if he's very clever and sees what's going on in the group, so his reaction to Yasha's turn doesn't hold water for me. They've seen plenty of people charmed by now, so for him to automatically accuse Yasha of being a traitor, it really rubbed me the wrong way.

But the whole group's quick retreat bothered me too. Not one person said, "Yasha is our friend, we aren't leaving her. Full stop." They just all ran, because the actors knew this was Matt's plan for Ashley. It felt forced and there was a dissonance for me with their relationship to Yasha.

 

[Reinhard]

Travis plays Fjord most of the time as if he's very clever and sees what's going on in the group, so his reaction to Yasha's turn doesn't hold water for me. They've seen plenty of people charmed by now, so for him to automatically accuse Yasha of being a traitor, it really rubbed me the wrong way.

But the whole group's quick retreat bothered me too. Not one person said, "Yasha is our friend, we aren't leaving her. Full stop." They just all ran, because the actors knew this was Matt's plan for Ashley. It felt forced and there was a dissonance for me with their relationship to Yasha.

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I agree that part of it was the actors knowing Ashley was leaving. But a big problem was that most of the party was down to less then 20 hitpoints, the few that had near max hitpoints were squishy spellcasters, and the monster they were fighting can do more than 25-30 hitpoints of damage per hit and has 3 attacks. The Laughing monster could move quite fast/leap so the only chance of escape and avoiding a TPK was to close the various doors behind them to temporarily delay it. It was a high level mob with incredible stats, +8 charisma save, so spells like banishment and polymorph to enable their escape and make it easy to capture Yasha wasnt going to happen unless Matt rolled really poorly, he might have even been rolling with advantage against spell saves? Maybe if they had successfully casted polymorph on Yasha, they would have had a chance to recover her but otherwise it seemed near impossible in the situation. They didn't have spell slot to cast greater restoration since it was the end of a battle and in this case I don't think it was a charm, but he unlocked her memories of when she was evil and that old personality took control. No idea what kind of effect that would be considered (curse?) but I think Matt guessed they would have used up their 1 5th level spell slot before he had Yasha change.

 

[eyeball_kid]

I agree that part of it was the actors knowing Ashley was leaving. But a big problem was that most of the party was down to less then 20 hitpoints, the few that had near max hitpoints were squishy spellcasters, and the monster they were fighting can do more than 25-30 hitpoints of damage per hit and has 3 attacks. The Laughing monster could move quite fast/leap so the only chance of escape and avoiding a TPK was to close the various doors behind them to temporarily delay it. It was a high level mob with incredible stats, +8 charisma save, so spells like banishment and polymorph to enable their escape and make it easy to capture Yasha wasnt going to happen unless Matt rolled really poorly, he might have even been rolling with advantage against spell saves? Maybe if they had successfully casted polymorph on Yasha, they would have had a chance to recover her but otherwise it seemed near impossible in the situation. They didn't have spell slot to cast greater restoration since it was the end of a battle and in this case I don't think it was a charm, but he unlocked her memories of when she was evil and that old personality took control. No idea what kind of effect that would be considered (curse?) but I think Matt guessed they would have used up their 1 5th level spell slot before he had Yasha change.

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Yeah I understand they were up against overwhelming odds. I'm just thinking about it from an in-character pov, not "I don't want my character to die." Jester has thrown herself at certain death to try to protect her friends; we saw this with the dragon fight. Nott also has a self-sacrificial streak. I could've seen either of them staying behind regardless of the consequences.

But let's be honest... the actors and we all knew that this dungeon was designed to write Ashley out of the story somehow. Oban made it clear that he wanted Yasha and that was going to be a Bad Thing, yet they still went into the heart of darkness without much thought about it. So I think for me, despite how cool the dungeon was, everything felt on rails, without much in the way of player agency.

 

[Ebnas]

lowkey happy that Ashley is on another break. I was about one session away from printing, laminating and mailing CR a Barbarian Attack Flowchart and a pocket calculator so her turns might take less than 3 minutes.

 

[Rygar 8Bit]

Travis plays Fjord most of the time as if he's very clever and sees what's going on in the group, so his reaction to Yasha's turn doesn't hold water for me. They've seen plenty of people charmed by now, so for him to automatically accuse Yasha of being a traitor, it really rubbed me the wrong way.

But the whole group's quick retreat bothered me too. Not one person said, "Yasha is our friend, we aren't leaving her. Full stop." They just all ran, because the actors knew this was Matt's plan for Ashley. It felt forced and there was a dissonance for me with their relationship to Yasha.

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That's why people back in the day said the show was scripted because of stuff like this.

Think it would have been more organic to just have the storm lord whisk her away at any moment for his own use, and return her without her memory of what happened during her being taken away. Would have been far easier.

 

[Dream Machine]

Excellent episode! Obviously Matt had to work it out so that Ashley would have been taken out of the equation by the end, but it seems odd to hold that against him or the other players. Their situation was either leave yasha (who is charmed, attacking them, and doesn't want to leave) or stay and die without even trying to close the door on the Laughing Hand. They tried I think three different times to get yasha out of there, but it just wasn't working.

There were some rules shenanigans, but I think whether Oban lived or died, we would still end up in the same place (though we might have lost another party member or two). He's a demon who is going to come back, so brainwashed Yasha being accompanied by him, or by his residual goo that will eventually be him again, is basically the same thing.

I will say, it seemed like the Laughing Hand's fear inducing movement killing wisdom save thing seemed like it was forgotten about for a round or two. Unless I missed something and people were immune to it after saving/already being affected by it. Considering those were also in the rounds when Fjord was on death's door and everyone was trying to run out of the tomb, they're lucky Matt forgot, if that's what happened. I really thought Fjord was a goner there. Same with Cad the round before.

Jester's Mirror Image was incredibly useful, and led to some super dramatic moments. I'm also super excited that she got the cool whip because she can do all sorts of cool stuff in and out of combat with that.

Liam seems to do one weird, left field magic usage per episode. When he made Beau giant right as she needed to squeeze through a tiny door, I laughed out loud. The woman nearly got bisected by a magic door for no reason, lol. That sure would have been an ignoble way to go.


All in all, I think this is an awesome ticking clock to set the tone and pace of the rest of the campaign (seems like it will be treated with more immediacy than Uk'atoa was), and there's something nice about knowing this is the final Ashley Break™ before she's back for real. And when she comes back, it's going to be HIGH DRAMA. I'm excited for campaign 3 on her behalf when Ashley can be a full time party member throughout.

 

[CoolOff]

It's kind of amusing that Tal remembered that Bless should've been dropped conveniently when it was for Yasha as a baddie to make an attack with it, what with the previous discussion here about his playstyle.

 

[SilkySm00th]

It's kind of amusing that Tal remembered that Bless should've been dropped conveniently when it was for Yasha as a baddie to make an attack with it, what with the previous discussion here about his playstyle.

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He's one of the more seasoned players at the table as well. Coupled with how long he can take for each action, literally asking Matt "What cures fear?" in the middle of a fight. I get it that this is a high stress slightly panic inducing position they find themselves in but if he isn't careful with that kind of shit it's not unheard of for Matt to start turning screws. He's skipped Talesin before for stuttering constantly for 5 minutes in the middle of a fight unable to decide what to do. He's thrown out attempts at plans when they are obviously attempting to bend the descriptions of spells to fit their desires before and you could tell there was some frustration at that point of the fight.
I feel like the only reason Matt didn't roll it back was because he maybe felt like he should have caught that himself but didn't. He shouldnt HAVE to but usually would have noticed something like that if was really gonna fuck with outcome of combat.

The "scripted" argument is clearly horse shit but even saying that this was more of a railroaded session seems a little unfair to me. Like is it really better - story and player agency wise - to just go about normal whatever and then say "Oh Ashley disappears in a crack of thunder. So did you guys wanna do some shopping oooorrrrr....?"
Like this is a way she gets to be included in this last game and work her absence into her story instead of working a story around her absence. It takes a lot of planning and work to cover all avenues when you're attempting to DM your group towards an outcome that will move an overarching story forward and Matt is VERY good at it. Like they are in a dungeon and they were the assholes that made the decision to keep opening doors and delving deeper into this fuckin Tomb and then everyone shat the fuckin bed hard for the 2 free rounds they had to attack Oban. They had plenty of agency in how they reacted to this place and then how to handle that fight. I think the clearer example of railroading or "scripted" DMing would have been if they decided to stay behind to try and save Yasha and - for some unknown fuckall reason - didn't get turned into a straight up paste by the Laughing Hand.
The real world correct decision in that instance was to run. Plot armor is the most egregious example of taking player agency away - they are free to make decisions and then deal with those outcomes - even when it sucks for their characters.

The final whisper with Ashley was kind of odd to me tho. Was that implying that he basically lifted a cloud off the memories of time they spent together? Is she mind controlled by the Hand? It would be dope to see Ashley turn into a minor big bad but the odds of that happening are probably 0.

----------
OH yah! I haven't mentioned it at all yet but that was a fairly decent play out for the whole flask situation. Will probably develop more in the future but neither one of them just tipped their cards and said "fine" whatever. Both brought up good points and then Laura at least admits - in a perfectly hilarious Laura kind of way - that Knot is just as bad of a Rogue when she's sober as when she's drinking lol
I enjoyed it.
I also got to thinking - can you fuckin imagine if anyone had tried to take Grog's keg/ale away from him because of their concern for his fuckin drinking?? LoL Sam's final "GiMmE mY flAsK or I'lL kill yoU!!" was priceless. All good stuff.

 

[timedesk]

Travis plays Fjord most of the time as if he's very clever and sees what's going on in the group, so his reaction to Yasha's turn doesn't hold water for me. They've seen plenty of people charmed by now, so for him to automatically accuse Yasha of being a traitor, it really rubbed me the wrong way.

Click to shrink...

I don't think this is as simple as a charm spell. I've seen some people liken it to a trigger phrase for the Winter Soldier. It felt, to me, like this is who Yasha was pre-Stormlord. Are there a lot of creatures that can just completely charm a player like that indefinitely? Most charms have a duration, but the implication is that Yasha will be with this thing until Ashley comes back, so in D&D time that could be anything from a couple weeks to a month depending on timeskips.

It was so lucky they didn't give Yasha the whip. Could you imagine how much damage she could have done with that thing? It feels like an odd item though, it uses dex to attack but the effect generates a strength check. Does anyone know if players can learn/develop proficiency with a new weapon?

Also I think this episode finally convinced me to give up on keeping the chat up during the broadcast. Most of the time it was just people about Cad's Bless/Holy weapon, or just spamming TPK over and over.

 

[Sensei]

Anyone who thinks it would be better for that stupid stormlord summer camp to happen instead of her becoming majin yasha and becoming a tool of the crawling king or whatever the fuck that Laughing Hand shit is... is silly. Complain about something else. Saying this is scripted or railroaded or whatever just makes no sense and it is a good way to flesh out the character. Fjord and Jester tried to get her out, Nott tried to appeal to her flower affections and it didnt work

If they got Yasha out of there then your next complaint would have been that she sucks because shes being controlled by Matt and Travis for four months straight or that shes wandering uselessly offscreen, like you bitch about every week. This is the best way for her to go because 1) shes going to be doing awful Orphanmaker business offscreen with the Laughing Hand, which is more interesting than her getting her angel wings back and 2) shes going to have something concrete to engage with everyone with when she returns because it keeps her directly involved with whats happening in the main story and 3) if anybody sees her being evil and reports it to the Bright Queen then the M9 is potentially FUCKED depending on how the group reports back to her (if they do at all) and 4) MAJIN YASHA IS SICK!!!!!!

 

[Rinse Bassfunk]

Phew, that was an episode alright. That was a day

 

[Dream Machine]

It seems like the thing from Oban was a mixture of Yasha selling her soul (figuratively or literally) to some extent in the past, emotional manipulation and conditioning by him in her past, and some form of the Geas spell. Like her past with him left her primed to be manipulated again, and that's why she made the wisdom save at disadvantage.

And Punished Yasha is so much cooler than the storm lord taking her away while Ashley is gone. It ain't easy to earn those wings back, baby angel.

Travis plays Fjord most of the time as if he's very clever and sees what's going on in the group, so his reaction to Yasha's turn doesn't hold water for me. They've seen plenty of people charmed by now, so for him to automatically accuse Yasha of being a traitor, it really rubbed me the wrong way.

Click to shrink...

Him accusing her of being a traitor the whole time followed by him saying they should all just fuck off and not tell anybody about the evil avatar of madness and destruction that just got loosed upon the world was a tough look for our guy, for sure, lol

 

[Rinse Bassfunk]

It was a slip that Caleb didn't roll a wisdom check as he saved Cad, because I was convinced he was gone. Same with Fjord, thought he was gone too

I think it's important to remember however that Matt does not use monsters as written. Oban is 100% coming back in my opinion and the Laughing Hand I bet is in fact unkillable without a specific item or ritual. I have no beef setting up an unwinnable fight, they got themselves in that situation.

My group (6 x level 7s) tried to take on 20 drow sailors, 3 drow elites, 1 drow mage, and fucking Jarlaxle. 50k xp fight and I took it lightly on them and they only got out of there unscathed after submitting. It started as a game of poker....I only got the fight prepared because I knew they would end up starting shit haha, hopefully they'll remember that

 

[timedesk]

It seems like the thing from Oban was a mixture of Yasha selling her soul (figuratively or literally) to some extent in the past, emotional manipulation and conditioning by him in her past, and some form of the Geas spell. Like her past with him left her primed to be manipulated again, and that's why she made the wisdom save at disadvantage.

And Punished Yasha is so much cooler than the storm lord taking her away while Ashley is gone. It ain't easy to earn those wings back, baby angel.

Him accusing her of being a traitor the whole time followed by him saying they should all just fuck off and not tell anybody about the evil avatar of madness and destruction that just got loosed upon the world was a tough look for our guy, for sure, lol

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Punished Yasha is amazing, and I like it way more than the Stormlord summer camp idea I suggested. I still kind of feel bad for Ashley a little though. I would feel like garbage if I had to sit and let the DM make me kill my friends characters. It all worked out in the end, but for a wile there I felt bad for everyone at the table. Also props to Travis for not metagaming and wasting his last spell trying to teleport evil Yasha, I bet part of him regretted that decision when he was at one hp.

 

[Alexiell]

Way to much "the players are running because Ashley is leaving" than actual character actions at the end. It felt like no one even wanted to try. And no, Nott handing her a flower and Fjord not getting her with thunder-step are not "trying". They instantly, over the span of what, 2-3 minutes in game time, decided that there was no chance of helping Yasha and bailed. Fuck that.

 

[Rinse Bassfunk]

Way to much "the players are running because Ashley is leaving" than actual character actions at the end. It felt like no one even wanted to try. And no, Nott handing her a flower and Fjord not getting her with thunder-step are not "trying". They instantly, over the span of what, 2-3 minutes in game time, decided that there was no chance of helping Yasha and bailed. Fuck that.

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Had it been a home game they may have attempted to save her, got a tpk, etc

Then again in a home game that particular encounter wouldn't have happened in that way

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, maybe Yasha is actually a villain

 

[Dream Machine]

Punished Yasha is amazing, and I like it way more than the Stormlord summer camp idea I suggested. I still kind of feel bad for Ashley a little though. I would feel like garbage if I had to sit and let the DM make me kill my friends characters. It all worked out in the end, but for a wile there I felt bad for everyone at the table. Also props to Travis for not metagaming and wasting his last spell trying to teleport evil Yasha, I bet part of him regretted that decision when he was at one hp.

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Yeah, they definitely tried hard and put themselves in danger to try to get her out

Way to much "the players are running because Ashley is leaving" than actual character actions at the end. It felt like no one even wanted to try. And no, Nott handing her a flower and Fjord not getting her with thunder-step are not "trying". They instantly, over the span of what, 2-3 minutes in game time, decided that there was no chance of helping Yasha and bailed. Fuck that.

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Jester also tried to charm her to override it, and then tried to grab her with the whip even while Yasha was still charmed and attacking the party full of people low on hp. Also, they needed to put a door between the big monster that had tons of movement and could take any of them out in an attack and themselves.

I'm not buying this "they didn't even try" narrative.

 

[Grexeno]

The events of this episode had to happen because of real life and everyone knew it.

 

[Rinse Bassfunk]

Were there this many complaints regarding the Lorenzo kidnappings?

 

[timedesk]

Way to much "the players are running because Ashley is leaving" than actual character actions at the end. It felt like no one even wanted to try. And no, Nott handing her a flower and Fjord not getting her with thunder-step are not "trying". They instantly, over the span of what, 2-3 minutes in game time, decided that there was no chance of helping Yasha and bailed. Fuck that.

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I mean half the party was almost dead by the end. By the end of the fight the Laughing Hand by itself would have been able to take out at least three people in one turn. I can see the argument that Caleb could have maybe tried to Polymorph Yasha into something they could grab instead of using wall of fire, but that felt more like Liam was hoping the fire would break the grapple on Fjord.

i'm also confused why the Thunderstep, or the flower, or Jester pleading, Jester trying to charm her, or Jester trying to whip her through the door doesn't count. The decision to leave Yasha can't be completely divorced from the reality that Ashley was leaving, but you can't pretend that the party didn't make every effort short of knocking her out and dragging her body. I might have to rewatch, but if they had closed the door even a turn later the Laughing Hand would have made it into the mirror room with them.

 

[Dream Machine]

The events of this episode had to happen because of real life and everyone knew it.

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Obviously. It's about how that was handled.

I'm not really sure what people wanted. They could have legitimately risked a tpk and stayed in that room with the demon for another round/let it follow them through the rest of the dungeon for the sake of getting yasha out so that... she could be piloted by Matt/Travis for 6 months while barely being a character. OR, she could get left behind in a really dramatic way that gives her, the other characters, and the overall story much more interesting things to work with.

 

[Sensei]

And Punished Yasha is so much cooler than the storm lord taking her away while Ashley is gone. It ain't easy to earn those wings back, baby angel.

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MY MAN! YOU GET IT!

 

[Rinse Bassfunk]

I can only imagine if they had a tpk, community would have been pretty fucking upset.

 

[timedesk]

Were there this many complaints regarding the Lorenzo kidnappings?

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Not with the kidnapping, but I remember seeing a lot of people get mad at Matt for what happened with Molly. They framed it as Matt "punishing the party" for real world stuff that was outside of their control. To be honest I prefer these dramatic plot arcs over Pike's I have to rebuild a temple excuse in Campaign one.

If they got Yasha out of there then your next complaint would have been that she sucks because shes being controlled by Matt and Travis for four months straight or that shes wandering uselessly offscreen, like you bitch about every week. This is the best way for her to go because 1) shes going to be doing awful Orphanmaker business offscreen with the Laughing Hand, which is more interesting than her getting her angel wings back and 2) shes going to have something concrete to engage with everyone with when she returns because it keeps her directly involved with whats happening in the main story and 3) if anybody sees her being evil and reports it to the Bright Queen then the M9 is potentially FUCKED depending on how the group reports back to her (if they do at all) and 4) MAJIN YASHA IS SICK!!!!!!

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I pretty much agree with all of this, also because of you I am going to be imagining Yasha with a little M on her forehead for the foreseeable future, so thanks for that lol.

 

[Dream Machine]

I can only imagine if they had a tpk, community would have been pretty fucking upset.

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But that would have been authentic, man. /s

I can understand not liking the fact that real world circumstances are affecting in game events –even though that's exactly what happened with the iron shepherd kidnappings, and that whole arc was one of the best parts of this campaign– but at a point you just have to look at the execution within the game itself rather than pointing out the strings. It's like when film students learn about film structure and get way into pointing out all the seams and plot holes. Sometimes you just have to go with it and meet things half way

 

[Rinse Bassfunk]

Exactly. If my players aren't about, say an extended bit of travelling, and I don't want to have them miss out on the main story, I can just run an alternate game/setting for a while. It's just not going to happen with CR

 

[Smiley90]

I can only imagine if they had a tpk, community would have been pretty fucking upset.

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I strongly believe that Matt wouldn't have let a TPK happen, at most maybe 2 people dying and then something happens to let the party escape. Like make it so the laughing hand is distracted eating the dead bodies instead of continuing to fight and let the survivors escape.

 

[Sensei]

ashley would have been upset too if they had all killed their characters for her blindspot related shenanigans. they did what they could imo and it was awesome

hell, she almost killed fjord and i think she was about to pass out LOL

 

[killerrin]

The chat is always terrible. But last night was especially telling with how many people were screaming for them to case Silence despite the fact that none of the characters even know Silence.

 

[Dream Machine]

The chat is always terrible. But last night was especially telling with how many people were screaming for them to case Silence despite the fact that none of the characters even know Silence.

Click to shrink...

I think it's just a Cleric spell, so either Jester or Caduceus could take it each day. But they clearly didn't, so I don't know why people feel the need to spam the same thing over and over again in chat.

The worst part about chat to me is that 50% of the people are flat out wrong about rules and ruling, yet they clog up the whole chat complaining about how the show got it wrong or how Matt or the players are dumb. That shit gets turned off immediately for me these days. I liked when they were streaming on youtube so that I didn't even have to worry about turning it off.

 

[Rinse Bassfunk]

I strongly believe that Matt wouldn't have let a TPK happen, at most maybe 2 people dying and then something happens to let the party escape. Like make it so the laughing hand is distracted eating the dead bodies instead of continuing to fight and let the survivors escape.

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Kind of what I mean. Matt would have to have pulled something, and likely someone would have been unhappy about it as you wouldn't need to do that in a home game, and this isn't a home game

 

[timedesk]

I do wonder if Fjord or Cad had died, if Matt would have let them go back for the body. If the survivors could have left the dungeon, waited for the Laughing Hand and Yasha to leave, and then returned to bring back the corpse. I think they have enough diamonds for one Raise Dead spell. It's pointless to really think about it, but I do wonder if that was in the back of Matt's mind, and might have been why he was so ruthless with Yasha.

Chat really devolves into nothing but people screaming about rule violations during combat, I think when the show comes back in two weeks I'm just going to get rid of it. Last night was super tense, and chat just became an active annoyance.

 

[Smiley90]

The chat is always terrible. But last night was especially telling with how many people were screaming for them to case Silence despite the fact that none of the characters even know Silence.

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Not to mention that the spell in 5e says

"For the Duration, no sound can be created within or pass through a 20-foot-radius Sphere centered on a point you choose within range."

that would've stopped Oban for exactly 0 turns as all he'd have to do is move 20 feet.

Unsure what would've happened if they centred Silence on the sarcophagus, but I'm guessing that probably wouldn't have worked either.

 

[Dream Machine]

I do wonder if Fjord or Cad had died, if Matt would have let them go back for the body. If the survivors could have left the dungeon, waited for the Laughing Hand and Yasha to leave, and then returned to bring back the corpse. I think they have enough diamonds for one Raise Dead spell. It's pointless to really think about it, but I do wonder if that was in the back of Matt's mind, and might have been why he was so ruthless with Yasha.

Chat really devolves into nothing but people screaming about rule violations during combat, I think when the show comes back in two weeks I'm just going to get rid of it. Last night was super tense, and chat just became an active annoyance.

Click to shrink...

Maybe Yasha and the Laughing Hand could have raised Caleb and Fjord and turned them to the dark side in the same way yasha was.

Could have been messy when when that trio showed back up in 6 months and Travis and Liam have to decide which characters to continue with, but that would have been a dramatic turn as well as just straight up killing them.

 

[Grexeno]

I'm watching the episode and Matt straight up said the stuff they were trying against Oban would have worked but he rolled too well.

 

[killerrin]

I think it's just a Cleric spell, so either Jester or Caduceus could take it each day. But they clearly didn't, so I don't know why people feel the need to spam the same thing over and over again in chat.

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Well, I was looking at both Jester and Caduceus' Spell Lists and none of them had the spell listed. And IIRC, you have to copy the spells into your spellbook/spell list before they can be prepared for the day

 

[Dream Machine]

Well, I was looking at both Jester and Caduceus' Spell Lists and none of them had the spell listed. And IIRC, you have to copy the spells into your spellbook/spell list before they can be prepared for the day

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Hm, I'm not sure. I thought clerics had access to the full cleric arsenal every day but they could only pick so many.

Where were you looking at their lists? I might have just been looking at a bad source.

 

[Rinse Bassfunk]

I'm watching the episode and Matt straight up said the stuff they were trying against Oban would have worked but he rolled too well.

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I kind of figured decent stats plus advantage against magic helped him out

 

[Rinse Bassfunk]

Hm, I'm not sure. I thought clerics had access to the full cleric arsenal every day but they could only pick so many.

Where were you looking at their lists? I might have just been looking at a bad source.

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No I think you're right

 

[timedesk]

I'm watching the episode and Matt straight up said the stuff they were trying against Oban would have worked but he rolled too well.

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It seems like all demons have advantage on spell saves, and Matt was rolling really well. Combine that with his flight, and damage resistances and it would have been really hard to stop him from summoning the Laughing Hand. Matt gave them a statistical chance, but the odds were stacked against the party.

 

[killerrin]

Not to mention that the spell in 5e says

"For the Duration, no sound can be created within or pass through a 20-foot-radius Sphere centered on a point you choose within range."

that would've stopped Oban for exactly 0 turns as all he'd have to do is move 20 feet.

Unsure what would've happened if they centred Silence on the sarcophagus, but I'm guessing that probably wouldn't have worked either.

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Not to mention that given how everybody was positioned, firing that off would have immediately put the entire party at a disadvantage since everybody would have been forced to move to continue casting their spells.

Hm, I'm not sure. I thought clerics had access to the full cleric arsenal every day but they could only pick so many.

Where were you looking at their lists? I might have just been looking at a bad source.

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You can see their character sheets on CritRollStats.

Here are the spellcasters for Level 9:
Caleb
Nott
Jester
Caduceus
Fjord

 

[Dream Machine]

There were a lot of ways they could have ended up at the same point of Yasha being separated from the group. Just because the final result was known by the players and the audience doesn't mean it would have played out the same way no matter what.

Oban easily could have failed to summon the thing, Manchurian Candidate-ed Yasha, and they both could have bamfed out of there, moved on to some other plans, and left the party holding the bag. there didn't even need to be a big dramatic fight. It seems like some people are starting from the premise of "Yasha had to leave because Ashley had to leave" and then extrapolating that out into "everything in this episode had to happen the way it did" when it really didn't.

 

[timedesk]

At the end of the day I'm just glad Travis and Matt won't have to play her while Ashley is gone. It's going to be great seeing how the party reacts to not having her around in combat anymore. She was a solid tank and did pretty good damage. Watching them adjust to the loss will be all kinds of fun.

 

[killerrin]

The funny thing is, I think this may actually be what it takes to get the party to stop being so shady and secretive to one another. The characters wholeheartedly trusted Yasha. And now they dont know what to do. In game they mentioned that they percieved it as a big betrayal and that nobody even knew who Yasha even was. To the point that almost everybody but Jester thinks Yasha legitamitely wanted to betray them. So this could be used as a huge modus operandi to get everybody to begin cracking opened their pasts so that they can protect themselves and eachother going forward.

Double this down with it being such a major defeat for the M9, what with the Bright Queen breathing down the back of their necks, their (living) families in various degrees of danger and past allies in a state of likely anger for their betrayal to the Empire. I think it's all going to start weighing down on them now.

 

[SilentMike03]

Tense episode. Thought for sure Fjord was done. And I didn't think he was wrong afterward when he was arguing with the group about that being the real Yasha. Sure, we as watchers know that Ashley wouldn't create an evil character, but in game they really know fuck all about her. For all we know, Majin Yasha is the real Yasha.

Honestly I'd be super stoked if Ashley rolled a new character and just let Yasha be evil.

 

[SilentMike03]

The funny thing is, I think this may actually be what it takes to get the party to stop being so shady and secretive to one another.

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Yeah, I thought it was really great how Caleb at the end was basically like "we need to stop being assholes and just shoot straight from now on".