Critical Role Critical Role Campaign 4 Episode One +

[Charlaquin]

And it's over. Slow start but I'm intrigued.

I think I need a diagram to keep track of all the PCs, NPCs, and their relationships.

There’s definitely a lot to keep track of. I think I’m following the character relationships fine, but any time I hear “house [whatever]” I’m lost. IMO it’s usually best practice to introduce factions via characters, because that gives the audience (or players) someone to latch onto to represent that faction in their mind. And true to that, I know I’m not going to have a hard time remembering that the light priests are the house Wik and Tyranny are from, or that “the fallen house of whoever” is the one Matt’s character is from. But the rest of them are just proper nouns I’ll struggle to contextualize.

 

[Charlaquin]

I wish we got to see more of Laura’s character. I suspect she’s going to be my favorite, but she’s still mostly just the badass fairy everyone but Liam’s character knows. We haven’t really gotten to see her do anything but get rescued.

 

[Chaltab]

There’s definitely a lot to keep track of. I think I’m following the character relationships fine, but any time I hear “house [whatever]” I’m lost. IMO it’s usually best practice to introduce factions via characters, because that gives the audience (or players) someone to latch onto to represent that faction in their mind. And true to that, I know I’m not going to have a hard time remembering that the light priests are the house Wik and Tyranny are from, or that “the fallen house of whoever” is the one Matt’s character is from. But the rest of them are just proper nouns I’ll struggle to contextualize.

Wik and Tyranny kind of has a built in mnemonic. His name is a candle pun and their surname is Halovar.

But the rest... I'mma need a visual aid.

 

[Chaltab]

Also I'm really disappointed that nobody in this campaign is a Barbarian. I was hoping Thimble would be so Laura finally had an opportunity to say "I would like to rage."

 

[Charlaquin]

I thought we’d be learning who was in what subgroup (soldiers/seekers/schemers) in the first episode, but honestly I don’t feel any more confident in my guesses about who’s in which than I did before the episode…

 

[Charlaquin]

Also I'm really disappointed that nobody in this campaign is a Barbarian. I was hoping Thimble would be so Laura finally had an opportunity to say "I would like to rage."

I think one by one the group have all discovered the unfortunate reality that Barbarians are just boring. Rogues get to play the tactical positioning game and manage their action economy and fighters get to make a bajillion attacks and have at least two limited use class resources, and most of the subclasses have a third limited resource. Barbarians… have lots of HP. And they can rage to… gain a bunch more effective HP… And a little bit more damage, I guess, but their DPR is actually pretty low. There’s only so long you can play an enormous sack of HP that makes two or three mediocre attacks per turn while everyone else is throwing out spells and inspiration dice and wild shapes and whatever else before it starts to get kinda disheartening. Or maybe that’s just me.

 

[Chaltab]

....seriously?

 

[EthanSental]

Might have been mentioned in another thread or at the start but are they using weapon mastery rules?

 

[Mort]

I think one by one the group have all discovered the unfortunate reality that Barbarians are just boring. Rogues get to play the tactical positioning game and manage their action economy and fighters get to make a bajillion attacks and have at least two limited use class resources, and most of the subclasses have a third limited resource. Barbarians… have lots of HP. And they can rage to… gain a bunch more effective HP… And a little bit more damage, I guess, but their DPR is actually pretty low. There’s only so long you can play an enormous sack of HP that makes two or three mediocre attacks per turn while everyone else is throwing out spells and inspiration dice and wild shapes and whatever else before it starts to get kinda disheartening. Or maybe that’s just me.

They're playing 5.24, so that's no longer the case (not that it matters since no one took a barbarian).

There have been changes to the rage mechanic, it's active much longer if the barbarian wishes.

Berserker barbarians now have excellent DPR.

World Tree barbarians have really good tactical/control options and more importantly, look really fun to play.

It's not the near full redesign monks got, but it's a lot.

 

[Mort]

As for the actual episode.

Wow, that was a lot.

Looks like, paladins are very well represented.

Anyone know how they generated stats? The numbers seem REALLY high.

Sam's playing a cleric with a WIS of 10 but CHA of 18. Interesting challenge if WIS will be the spellcasting stat.