Critical Role Critical Role Campaign 4 Episode 4 is a High-Octane Rollercoaster

[overgeeked]

I’m glad the original Lake Geneva group didn’t share your disdain for characters being “special,” or we’d never have gotten the cleric, the thief, or the ranger. Homebrewing new options to allow the players to realize their unique character concepts is a tradition as old as the hobby itself.

It comes down to the workload involved. Homebrew is great, forcing the referee to do a mountain of homework for you is not. Compare a class in OD&D to one in 5E. In OD&D, playing a dragon PC would be “you can fly, breathe fire, and have bite/claw attacks” and balance largely doesn’t matter. In 5E, it would be pages and pages of special abilities, level features, subclasses, etc and something like rough balance would be expected. It’s several orders of magnitude more work. See also the whole of the OSR/NSR scene.

OD&D even has this paragraph:

“Other Character Types: There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as, let us say, a “young” one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign referee.” —OD&D, Men and Magic, page 8

 

[Mort]

I think you're both coming at this with different definitions of 'special'. The person you're responding to seems to be of the opinion that this Taliesin is a 'spotlight hog', so stretching the meaning of the word 'special' to an undesirable extreme (haven't watched Critical Role... this is just my interpretation of what this poster is saying, correct me if I'm wrong). You're definition of 'special' makes perfect sense for the context you're placing it in though.

I haven't seen Taliesin be a spotlight hog at all - certainly not at the table. He just likes quirky characters with "dark" backstories - which seems to fit right in for this campaign.

As for being a sentient mask- It's funny, my group are all pretty bog standard - most nonstandard we've had is a tabaxi (and since I run Greyhawk, Tabaxi actually go WAY back). But my Son's group, this wouldn't even raise an eyebrow. Heck one of the players was playing a sentient hat (also a warlock!?! - their campaign started 3 years ago, so no copying from CR!). As long as the player isn't screaming "me, me, me!" at the table - it's all just in good weird fun!

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

No it was meant as being special in the sense of not wanting to use the default character classes or species. The player is definitely not a spotlight hog in the sense of wanting to be in the centre of the scene often, he often is more of the opposite IMO. He just likes high-concept characters. In this case its a homebrewed special.

I wanted to add to the points already stated, that having homebrew species is very common for homebrew settings.

I wasn't referring to you! @overgeeked was the poster that was being responded to.

 

[TiQuinn]

Been mentioned a couple times now in the thread, but yeah, bears repeating. The concept is very specifically tied to D&D.

Ah, sorry, must've missed that upthread.

 

[Mort]

It comes down to the workload involved. Homebrew is great, forcing the referee to do a mountain of homework for you is not. Compare a class in OD&D to one in 5E. In OD&D, playing a dragon PC would be “you can fly, breathe fire, and have bite/claw attacks” and balance largely doesn’t matter. In 5E, it would be pages and pages of special abilities, level features, subclasses, etc and something like rough balance would be expected. It’s several orders of magnitude more work. See also the whole of the OSR/NSR scene.

OD&D even has this paragraph:

“Other Character Types: There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as, let us say, a “young” one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign referee.” —OD&D, Men and Magic, page 8

Making the DM do a bunch of UNWANTED extra work is not cool. But that doesn't seem to be what's going on here. Brennan is weaving a whole funky mythology and Taliesin's character seems to be right from it and fitting into it. As for abilities and balance? We'll see but, so far, it just looks like he's a warlock and the fact that he's a mask is basically a ribbon/fluff thing (we'll see how the whole possessing bodies thing works). I Bet Brennan actually relishes the fact that he has such an in to inject mythology/setting lore here.

 

[TiQuinn]

Making the DM do a bunch of UNWANTED extra work is not cool. But that doesn't seem to be what's going on here. Brennan is weaving a whole funky mythology and Taliesin's character seems to be right from it and fitting into it. As for abilities and balance? We'll see but, so far, it just looks like he's a warlock and the fact that he's a mask is basically a ribbon/fluff thing (we'll see how the whole possessing bodies thing works). I Bet Brennan actually relishes the fact that he has such an in to inject mythology/setting lore here.

Agreed, I don't understand this notion that somehow this is a bad, unwanted thing. Critical Role is not a home game - it's a professional production. All of these characters have been vetted, all of the players know that their job is to entertain the viewers at home. If there were any problems, why would anyone think this wasn't hashed out behind the scenes?

 

[Charlaquin]

It comes down to the workload involved. Homebrew is great, forcing the referee to do a mountain of homework for you is not. Compare a class in OD&D to one in 5E. In OD&D, playing a dragon PC would be “you can fly, breathe fire, and have bite/claw attacks” and balance largely doesn’t matter. In 5E, it would be pages and pages of special abilities, level features, subclasses, etc and something like rough balance would be expected. It’s several orders of magnitude more work. See also the whole of the OSR/NSR scene.

OD&D even has this paragraph:

“Other Character Types: There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as, let us say, a “young” one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign referee.” —OD&D, Men and Magic, page 8

I wouldn’t say Taliesin’s characters have required mountains of homework. Percy probably did, but as you observed, he started playing Percy as an off-the-rack character for a different system. The blood hunter and the gravity barbarian were both things Matt had written separately, and Taliesin chose to play because he thought they seemed interesting. And the homebrew element of this character is his species. I very much doubt that took a significant amount of work on Brennan’s part. Heck, for all we know he could just be using the custom species rule from Tasha’s Cauldron. A lot of people thought he was an elf before episode 4, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s using the elf stats and the mask stuff is pure fluff. Or, given the mask’s connection to halflings, maybe he’s even using halfling stats.

 

[Charlaquin]

Ah, sorry, must've missed that upthread.

No worries! It’s not like there’s a rule against reiterating things that have already been mentioned. A lot of threads would be a lot shorter if there was!

 

[overgeeked]

He has played a homebrew character in all of the campaigns, but he’s far from the only one to do so

He’s literally the only one to do so. He’s the only one who has played a custom character in every campaign.

C1. Only custom character was Tal’s gunslinger fighter.
C2. Tal has a custom class, blood hunter. Marisha has custom subclass.
C3. Both Tal and Sam have custom subclasses.

We’re four episodes in to C4. We don’t know enough about the PCs’ mechanics to say who all has custom stuff at this point.

 

[overgeeked]

The blood hunter and the gravity barbarian were both things Matt had written separately, and Taliesin chose to play because he thought they seemed interesting.

Do you have a source for this? The blood hunter definitely seemed more put together but the gravity barbarian seemed like Matt was literally writing it as the campaign went along.