Critical Role Reveals Soldiers' Table and Motivations

The first of Critical Role's three tables has officially been revealed. Near the end of last night's episode, the Soldiers were revealed as Kattigan Vale (Robbie Daymond), Teor Pridesire (Travis Willingham), Thimble (Laura Bailey), Tyranny (Whitney Moore), and Wicander Halovar (Sam Riegel). The group's initial objective will be to track down the smuggler Casimir Gavendale, who betrayed a conspiracy to rescue condemned rogue Thjazi Fang and then left the city in pursuit of Teor's brother Cyd Pridesire.

Casimir's Crow Keepers (a thieves guild) had attacked Thimble immediately prior to the campaign, leading to her not delivering a glyph that would have transported him to safety. Meanwhile, Kattigan and Teor are old associates of Casimir, as they had all served in a mercenary group that rebelled several years prior to the start of the series. Tyranny and Wicander are joining the party as Casimir had dealings with Wicander's family House Halovar, and Wicander is seeking to rectify the wrongs of his family. Tyranny is seemingly loyal to Wicander, having made a pact with him to enter the Material Plane.

Two more tables will be revealed in Critical Role, presumably by the end of the next episode. One group, the Schemers, will likely look to take on the Sundered Houses and their growing influence on Dol Majkar, while the Seekers will likely be tasked with protecting Occtis Tachonis (Alex Ward) from his family and also exploring the state of the afterlife in the aftermath of the gods' death.

 

[overgeeked]

I mean, it’s not that an early character death would be a bad thing per se. But, in that specific scene, it would have come across as arbitrary and unavoidable. Marisha had zero control over the situation, this character no one playing the game had ever seen before let alone interacted with just rolled up out of nowhere, insulted her to her face, threatened her career. and when she was mildly passive-aggressive in response, threatened to kill her. That’s effective tone-setting because she survived. If she had died, all it would have established is that Brennan, as DM, can and will kill your character on a whim at any moment, and I don’t think that’s a good tone for a game to have.

Ah. Then we fundamentally disagree about most of that.

 

[Tanek]

Nice! I really enjoyed the first one, so I might consider it.

I think you might still be able to get a free month by using the code OVERTURE during sign-up. That'll, at least, get you a chance to watch a couple more Cooldowns to see how much you like them.

 

[Tanek]

Not having watched much Critical Role before this season, I'm kind of curious about all the tablets being used. Do they all use D&D Beyond or something for their characters?

 

[TiQuinn]

I mean he is all of the above, but he's also just unhinged. He's the one who is storming into her college, being rude to the faculty, insulting Murray, and when she talks back he threatens to murder her.

But then given what his family does later in the episode I suppose he came to the city to cross the proverbial Rubicon.

Yeah, I get the distinction impression by the end of that episode that this is a coup, and even the Halovar’s, who are also despicable, are just bracing for what the Tachonises are doing.

 

[TiQuinn]

Why? We’re still talking about a certain character death from C2 several years ago. It’s a great way to get people talking. It‘s no different than any other long-form TV show at this point. They‘ll have 100+ episodes at 4-5 hours each. They have plenty of time to get a new PC into the action.

Molly’s death occurred after nearly 30 episodes in, and was mostly due to some bad player decisions (not to mention the Bloodhunter character class is one that sets itself up to get in trouble) in game. The scene with Marisha played very differently and seemed more one sided. In the cooldown, Mulligan stated it was an upcast Bestow Curse - so if he had killed her PC, during the prologue, it would definitely have seemed more arbitrary: A 3rd level PC against a possibly much higher level caster.

 

[nyvinter]

Based on the description of things. my take is that the curse was from the dean to shut Murray up and save her life. Brennan told them well in advance that he'll not do CR scaling to them so this Primus is probably stated up like the threat he'll always be: 10+ CR above Murray.

As for the threat coming out of nowhere, rich self-important people really love when people they consider a nobody talks back like their equal or better, yes? In real life and in literature? He even addressed it with "you say my first name like we're equals?" so there were lots of warnings, Marisha just ignored it. Which was good because we got to see what kind of a person Primus is.

 

[ruemere]

I mean, it’s not that an early character death would be a bad thing per se. But, in that specific scene, it would have come across as arbitrary and unavoidable. Marisha had zero control over the situation, this character no one playing the game had ever seen before let alone interacted with just rolled up out of nowhere, insulted her to her face, threatened her career. and when she was mildly passive-aggressive in response, threatened to kill her. That’s effective tone-setting because she survived. If she had died, all it would have established is that Brennan, as DM, can and will kill your character on a whim at any moment, and I don’t think that’s a good tone for a game to have.

I understand your perspective. I really do. As a GM, I've lost a long campaign over such an event. Another time, my PC have died and caused TPK also under similar set of circumstances.

Being more experienced person, that I like to think that I am now, I would order a short break, and then, once the mood cools a bit, I would carefully explain the stakes, and then ask the player to make a decision. Then I would also plan for the follow-up, if the outcome was tragic.

The important takeaway is that before a point of no return, the GM and the players should be on the same page. In the heat of the moment, when all choices seemingly lead to nasty outcomes, it is easy to make a wrong decision.

 

[Charlaquin]

Not having watched much Critical Role before this season, I'm kind of curious about all the tablets being used. Do they all use D&D Beyond or something for their characters?

I believe so, yeah. They were sponsored by D&D Beyond back when it first came out. Sam Regiel made up a commercial jingle for them, which later got an animation to go with it they would play every episode during the break in Campaign one. I’d assume they all started using it then and never looked back.

 

[overgeeked]

Molly’s death occurred after nearly 30 episodes in, and was mostly due to some bad player decisions (not to mention the Bloodhunter character class is one that sets itself up to get in trouble) in game. The scene with Marisha played very differently and seemed more one sided. In the cooldown, Mulligan stated it was an upcast Bestow Curse - so if he had killed her PC, during the prologue, it would definitely have seemed more arbitrary: A 3rd level PC against a possibly much higher level caster.

Yes, and? Brennan has stated multiple times that the PCs don’t have plot armor and that the world exists independently of the PCs’ level. The super-powerful NPC are super powerful, regardless of the PCs’ level. Here be dragons. And Marisha poked it. Nothing arbitrary about it.

 

[overgeeked]

Based on the description of things. my take is that the curse was from the dean to shut Murray up and save her life. Brennan told them well in advance that he'll not do CR scaling to them so this Primus is probably stated up like the threat he'll always be: 10+ CR above Murray.

As for the threat coming out of nowhere, rich self-important people really love when people they consider a nobody talks back like their equal or better, yes? In real life and in literature? He even addressed it with "you say my first name like we're equals?" so there were lots of warnings, Marisha just ignored it. Which was good because we got to see what kind of a person Primus is.

Exactly. The world is treated as a real place, not a power fantasy theme park for the PCs. The NPCs act like real people, they don’t fawn over the PCs. This is one thing that’s making me more interested in this campaign, not less.