Critical Role Critical Role Campaign 3 Discussion (SPOILERS)

[overgeeked]

Agree but they are working for a high level character who also offered to help

Right. Eshteross is plausible to not be helpful. He simply doesn’t have the connections. Sorry. Makes sense. It’s plausible that there’s no 9th-level clerics in Jrusar. Less plausible than Estheross not having the right connections, but within the realm of making sense.

But then you have a PC with a direct connection to a 20th-level druid (Keyleth) and indirect connections to a 20th-level cleric (Pike), and any other clerics they might know. It doesn’t make sense that in that connection there’s no help. That creates a tension for the story and the players.

It comes down to giving the PCs the connections then not letting them use those connections in reasonable ways. If you’re not going to let them use the connection, don’t let them have it in the first place. But having that connection takes the teeth out of a lot of things.

 

[wicked cool]

Right. Eshteross is plausible to not be helpful. He simply doesn’t have the connections. Sorry. Makes sense. It’s plausible that there’s no 9th-level clerics in Jrusar. Less plausible than Estheross not having the right connections, but within the realm of making sense.

But then you have a PC with a direct connection to a 20th-level druid (Keyleth) and indirect connections to a 20th-level cleric (Pike), and any other clerics they might know. It doesn’t make sense that in that connection there’s no help. That creates a tension for the story and the players.

It comes down to giving the PCs the connections then not letting them use those connections in reasonable ways. If you’re not going to let them use the connection, don’t let them have it in the first place. But having that connection takes the teeth out of a lot of things.

Agree somewhat on the teeth. My opinion these last 2 episodes have been the most tense in a long time. The end of the episode where Matt had almost hinted that something was happening with ladna that if they hadn’t acted there was no turning back

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

There's a lot of mixing in-character and out-of-character knowledge and tossing in random potential complications in this post. Healing magic works on whatever Matt calls revenants. There's nothing in the mechanics stopping raise dead or reincarnate from working on Laudna. According to Matt's bring back the dead house rules you call to the soul of the person, either they answer or they don't. Then there's the roll. Pass or fail. The only exception or complication to this we've seen in the entire time of CR live plays is Molly, Lucien, and Kingsley. Same soul, just fragments...or Matt and Taliesin set up the character to be a roulette wheel of personalities on death. It's possible Matt (and Marisha) set up Laudna to do something different with death and coming back. But we don't know. It strikes me as an odd assumption to make that doesn't really have any evidence as yet. Totally possible, sure. But no reason to assume.

As I understand it, Laudna is a "Hollow One", which is described in the official Wildemount book as being someone whose soul has passed on even as their body clings to a semblance of their former life. I think this is absolutely one of those edge cases where some questions of whether traditional resurrection would even work could be expected.

 

[Ayeffkay]

Several of the characters have close contact and connections to very powerful people who could easily bring Laudna back. Keyleth with reincarnation or Keyleth calling in Pike for a raise dead. This raises a lot of questions, like why didn't Keyleth do that when Orym's family was killed. Maybe that's a undeveloped plot point or it was just glossed over. Liam clearly pushed for this solution, but Matt seemed unsure or hesitant. Likely not wanting the higher-level NPC to simply snap their fingers and make it better or make it work. Which we saw a bit of in C2 with Essek being their taxi service for a few levels.

Matt has also shut down this kind of deus ex machina in the past, like when a certain player tried to get his father's army to deal with the thread instead of just playing Dungeons and Dragons.

 

[BRayne]

Matt has also shut down this kind of deus ex machina in the past, like when a certain player tried to get his father's army to deal with the thread instead of just playing Dungeons and Dragons.

I mean there is a difference between "Keyleth please kill Otahon for us" and "Keyleth please resurrect, or help us find someone to resurrect our friend". After all Pike was resurrected by a random npc cleric in exchange for a donation in the pre-stream days.

 

[overgeeked]

Matt has also shut down this kind of deus ex machina in the past, like when a certain player tried to get his father's army to deal with the thread instead of just playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Right. And that’s partially a problem. In the story, there’s zero reason Keyleth wouldn’t find out who the assassin is and handle it herself. A 20th-level druid is letting a band of 7th-level misfits do it instead. It’s “playing D&D” to handle it themselves, sure. But it makes the story nonsensical. When they’re playing a supposedly story-focused game of D&D, that’s a problem.

 

[billd91]

Right. And that’s partially a problem. In the story, there’s zero reason Keyleth wouldn’t find out who the assassin is and handle it herself. A 20th-level druid is letting a band of 7th-level misfits do it instead. It’s “playing D&D” to handle it themselves, sure. But it makes the story nonsensical. When they’re playing a supposedly story-focused game of D&D, that’s a problem.

Well, why doesn’t the most senior accountant at H&R Block come do your taxes instead of letting you do them? Same basic reason.

 

[Seramus]

Right. And that’s partially a problem. In the story, there’s zero reason Keyleth wouldn’t find out who the assassin is and handle it herself. A 20th-level druid is letting a band of 7th-level misfits do it instead. It’s “playing D&D” to handle it themselves, sure. But it makes the story nonsensical. When they’re playing a supposedly story-focused game of D&D, that’s a problem.

More specifically, Keyleth was never the kind of person to sit back and let other people do things for her. She was very pro-active as an adventurer, if somewhat lacking in self confidence, and it would be entirely IC for her to personally tree-BAMF into the scene and do a reincarnation, or find Pike with the same end result.

Granted, that was a 2 Year Window of Keyleth, compared to 30 Years Later Keyleth.

 

[wedgeski]

Whatever the outcome, I was riveted to both those episodes (as was my wife who, although a regular player of D&D, has until now shown no interest in Critical Role or RPG streams in general).

 

[DEFCON 1]

Let's also remember to separate what characters in-world can do due to "gameplay reasons" versus what they can do due to narrative and world-building ones.

Characters in D&D can reach 20th level because that's what the game gives out as game awards for playing the game. And spellcaster characters can have 9 levels of spells and 22 spell slots each and every day for gameplay purposes in order to play the D&D game. But we should never confuse that with any sort of "in-world reality", because if we did the entirety of the existences of these worlds would break down. Look no further than the Create Water cantrip or the Plant Growth spell-- if these could be cast as often and as easily as "gameplay" allow them to be there would never be drought or famine in any world ever again.

But we players realize that the magic at our PCs fingertips that gives us interesting things to do in day-to-day gameplay cannot and should be assumed to exist in the same form or fashion as part of the narrative of world-building. Because then we have True Resurrections and Wishes all over the place.