Challenging Your Players During Actually Good Plans! Vox Machina, Ep. 51 | Critical Role Demystified
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- Опубліковано 13 лип 2024
- Let’s see how Matt Mercer adapts and reacts to his players actually coming up with decent plans!
CW: Language
Chapters:
00:00 - Lesson: Rewarding Players for Making Good Plans
06:49 - Lesson: Bad Guys Reacting to the Good Guys, Part 1: Foreshadowing
07:35 - Lesson: How to Challenge Players During a Stormtrooper-Style Charade
13:15 - Recap: Vox Machina Almost Took Even Longer to Get to Kevdak
16:59 - Lesson: Saying All the Right Things to Provoke the NPCs
25:45 - Recap: Grog v. Kevdak: Clash of the Titans(tone Knuckles)
28:07 - Lesson: A Frank Discussion About Kevdak’s Mechanics
32:41 - Outro
You can watch the full episode here:
Episode 51 - Test of Pride
• Test of Pride | Critic...
The Pyre Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Dark Fog Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Industrial Complex Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Dances and Dames Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Stormfront Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Satiate Strings Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Crypto Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Devastation and Revenge Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Unanswered Questions Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Do you have any stories of a plan in D&D actually going (mostly) as expected?
I had a campaign end with I and my party squaring up against weakened versions of most of the demonlords.
I figured we were going to get slaughtered so my character used thaumaturgy to disguise themselves as a cultist of fraz-uurb blu. (I was a red tiefling now turned blue) With some prestidigitation to mark myself with cult runes and the only time the friends spell has ever been used, I managed to trick the demonlord into fighting Baphomet before I and my party launched our attack.
Nope! Never happens 😉
I think it mostly boils down to making the plan not too complicated or too reliant on everything going right.
Deciding to go in full super-nova, focusing the BBEG from second one while using all your one time ressources and telling the mage to counterspell any attempt of said BBEG to teleport away is still a plan. A plan way easier to execute than "Let's have our rogue infiltrate the compound to scout, expecting the ennemies to all have garbage perception, the rogue to not fumble his stealth and then let's use all this information to make an even more convoluted plan" is bound to fail, only by the laws of statistics.
In a recent campaign that went to high levels, I had the cleric and sorcerer come up with a tag-team opening of Sunburst (sorcerer) and Sunbeam (cleric). They once successfully snuck up on the base of the local Pirate King and simultaneously cast the two spells with overlapping areas. Killed the Pirate King almost immediately and just left his wildly underprepared minions staring in shock.
In a Pathfinder game (played in Faerun lol) i had a group spend most of a session planning an in depth stealth mission against a dracolich who was a rather well know eccentric and silly personality. The wizard of the group planned to transform into a sexy dragoness and seduce him along with a couple buffs to help out from the others. With some hilarious but convincing "seduction" and some pretty grand rolls as the two dragons began a deep kiss, our Wizard lady-dragon spit her acid breath right into the dracolichs maw, the plan all along, and since they pulled it off i allowed the breath attack to do critical damage and mostly decide the battle at its initiation. A moment the players still talk about from time to time.
Travis showing that Grog had finally understood Earthbreaker Gruun's lessons about where he gets his strength is pretty damn epic.
These upcoming episodes translated SO WELL into the animated show
“Well too bad Grog. They couldn’t save you.”
“Yeah. But the thing is…I got more.”
“Vox Machina…”
FUCK SHIT UUUUP!!!”
Such a good moment!!
The Kill Box will live in my memory forever. What an epic end to the fight.
"You heard the man!" *sick guitar rift*@@hollowspawn9675
Their best plan was getting Will Wheaton to touch EVERYTHING Matt had for that episode
And it WORKED
When Trav takes center stage he really steals the show.
I love how everyone keeps "Vox Machina: FUCK. SHIT. UUUUUUP!" ❤ the animated series kept it, Mike used the clip here... It's so good.
Honestly I feel they handled it BETTER in the animated series.
This was probably Travis' best acting out of campaign 1. Excellent job of playing Grog's interactions with the villains.
I'm actually quite a fan of including enemies with normal class-levels as I find it can really make a bad-guy feel like a proper rival rather than just a gribbly monster. Tends to make fights come across as more personal.
OK, legitimate question: how else would I build humanoid NPCs that are meant to be swordfighters or mages or whatever? I looked around for NPC building tips and a lot of people were telling new DMs off for using class levels to build NPCs, saying that no, NPCs should use provided stat blocks only or at least be based on them with minimal alterations. NPC with class levels are considered dirty, bad game design, poor DMing by some people, because NPCs shouldn't have that many actions or whatever. But I looked at the archmage block and I didn't like it a lot? I made up a wizard with levels to suit where he'd be in his stage of learning magic, didn't specify a subclass and gave him a few extra hitpoints instead. Is there a better way of doing this? It felt all right to me. I am thinking the people who are so adamant about never using levels have just picked a hill to die on, but if someone can tell me a better way of designing humanoid NPCs, I'm all ears
The thing about the archmage block and a lot of others is that they're designed purely for combat (which makes sense), but to flesh out mine I like to give them spells that also deal with the environment around them, then I look at what kind of protective spells they have and go off of AC and HP from there (so it looks kind of like what you're doing). From my understanding giving out levels makes the NPC more of a glass cannon, more damage but less health, so that's something to keep in mind but you should just do what works best for YOU
seems like a weird take my DM used a weretiger assassin with ranger levels against my panther wildhunt shifter warlock rogue and we all lost it when after i shifted and cast hex on him and his response was to cast hunters mark on me and go to his hybrid weretiger form@@__-vb3ht
It's possible Matt was rolling against Kaylie's deception since SHE was the one the herd members were hearing.
I love when DMs incorporate a “that was weird” moment into the actions of a player. It makes the story seem far mor organic as we see how the world reacts to the actions of the characters, even when it’s not the focus.
Damn I forgot how ON-POINT Travis' roleplay was this episode. It makes me wonder how much of the Herd's culture was his creation and how much was Matt's, because he clearly knows it so well, but at the same time it doesn't feel like metagaming because Grog was part of it, logically he should be familiar with its culture too.
he also embodied the toxic emasculation side of the story. really interesting to see how travis specifically tackles that in rp
THE KILLLBOOOOOOOOX! Lookin' the hell forward to THAT!
I love this two part fight - especially with it being a continuation of Grog's "my strength is in my friends" arc
Finally finished campaign 1 and all the extra oneshots last week, now I just have 35 episodes left in campaign 2
wow! that's impressive!
On a point about Pike's bad stealth rolls.
Moreso in campaign 1, and sometimes in 2, Matt will have them roll a group check, and if even 1 player rolls bad/fails (Pike), he will have consequences. (He's mostly moved past this, focusing on averages or treats it like a skill challenge with number of successes vs number of failures)
I wasn't well versed in dnd when I first started c1, and it rubbed me the wrong way then. It's even more grating for me now, because it's almost a guaranteed failure when you have that many people roll. And I think it's a Big part of why the party has a bad precedent of heavy armor, and stealthing as a group.
I like how it changed over time into how if one player roles real bad and another roles real well, he'll describe a little scene wear that character makes a mistake and the stealthy one covers for them.
Really adds to the story in that this diverse group of people are not all ninjas, and are being successful because of their teamwork and looking out for one another.
That's one thing I love about Pathfinder 2e. It has a mechanic called "Follow the Expert" that helps the guys good at something to help compensate for the bad ones.
This video is cool and good! This episode and the next solidified Travis as my idol player. They're all amazing, don't get me wrong, but when Travis gets to make Grog smart at the things he would actually be smart at, it's just too good.
I can't believe we are already up to the Kevdak fight, my favourite fight in Campaign 1.
This episode has my favorite Grog moment. They way he just strolls into town will always be bad ass.
The Killbox! Hell Yeah, can't wait for the next one. It's my favourite episode of critical role certainly of campaign one. Maybe of all three campaigns
This is a good channel. This is a good series. I like Mike.
"It's past 10, guys!" Yeah, back when the episodes were consistently under 3 hours. Good times, good times...
The next episode better include the moment about how the cast tried to weaponize the Wil Wheaton dice curse to their advantage in a short video ahead of the livestream. These guys literally tried EVERYTHING!
Yep it’s in there :)
I cant tell you how much I needed this episode dropping exactly today... I had a loud sigh of relief when I was looking for something soothing and distracting to watch on mi break ♡
Thank you Mike !
This upcoming fight is my favorite in vox machina. It's so cool. I can't wait for next episode
Just finished campaign 1 . On episode 5 of C2. Jester and Molly are my fave ❤
All C2 charaters are awesome but this two are the best. I hope you won't be spoil.
C2 is my favorite by far (even though they’re all amazing), enjoy your first watchthrough!! :)
Laura's face while watching Travis' epic speech is such a joy, it has "hell yeah, that's my man" written all over it.
I love the tactic travis used here, he wasn't down that many hitpoints but did the math about relative damage between the two of them and called for backup. this way he still has most of his strength for the second wave of this fight. Do you have any videos that talk more about different player combat strategies? I know a lot of people starting out (myself included) whose sole strategy is when initiative is called is to 100% with all your abilities and just keep swinging until you die. Imagine if travis had waited until 0-1hp to call in backup, he wouldn't be nearly as helpful and might even hold the casters back if they have to spend rounds healing rather than dealing damage. What Travis did was so smart and gave me a new perspective on player strategies!
I love these two episodes! So glad you're covering them!
Whenever I get home with lunch and see a new vid from mike it always brings a smile to my face.
Can't wait for the next episode!
Always love when I see these pop up on my feed!!! Happy Friday bud, hope you're looking forward to a fun weekend.
2 more weeks until we get your analysis of what might be the most insane battle in CR history. Can’t wait!
The Kevdak fight is one of the best in the franchise.
Damn has it been two weeks already? Cheers mike!
Next episode will be a special treat for me since I’m having surgery that week.
Good luck, and have a quick recovery!
This fight and the killbox were amazing in the animated show
This was a very dense in lessons episodes :D
Watching Laura enjoying getting to see Travis' acting really shine with his goading of the barbarians is so wholesome!
The previous session of Rime of the Frostmaiden we fought some bear clan barbarians and came up with an ambush plan that actually went without a hitch. They still outnumbered us but since we were able to get a surprise round on them we thinned out their numbers pretty quickly. Was still a bit of a rough fight, but much easier than it would have been without that surprise round.
I was almost excited to see Kevdak fight but I came an episode earlier.
Lol @1:35 Matt was really like "uhhh line?!"
I think this video is cool and good
One strategy I love to do as a Dungeon Master is to give villains class levels. But I DON'T give them subclasses. I feel like this gives enemies great flavor. But it helps players feel more unique and special.
I like to think of the classes as training most of the time. But the players are meant to be exceptional. And the subclass features can really help with that.
Yay!!!
Exhibit 230485 on why Travis is the best
Here we go, get ready for the Kill Box, everybody!
Could you go through what questions matt answered after the following episode, as a recent fan of critical role I didn't even know he did that.
I’ll definitely highlight his commentary in the next episode :)
"The first use of mythcarver...the first of many I'M SURE!"
I thought it was because he had Kaylie roll deception?
I actually got into crit roll because of an edit of the “VOX MACHINA!” Moment from the Amazon show.
Really creepy how these demystified’s are lining up beat for beat for the times I’m listening to Vox Machina, FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER
Hello! Brazilian fan here! In the end of the video you said that you dont like giving character levels to you NPCs/Villains. Mind telling me why? I find it quite interesting to think about it.
I'm planning another video about it, because it's come up a lot in my videos in the past few months :)
I always give AC and Hp to my gamers. And some times get someone to track it.
I think Matt rolled himself because it was npc that was actually doing the deception not a player
At that age? From what I hear? The child is basically just getting the presence of your voice and social bonding from it being directed at them, so... Literally if you're reading anything while an infant is awake in the same room you're in you probably should be reading out loud. So, yeah. As weird as it sounds to read PF2e Remaster Player Core to an infant? They're not going to be gaining anything from children's books that they're not gaining from that until they're a bit older anyway. And then you get the joy of reading the same bit of fiction to them five hundred times in a row because small children like repetition.
Fighr forever
I always hated that segment with scanlan escaping with the refugees, it worked out fine as sam isn't one to complain and is a clever player, however when watching I felt like Matt was just constantly pushing for a failure on sam's rolls wich eventually happened but at least they were practically free. I notice that Matt does this a lot using his smarts to slowly thwat plans rather than the persepctive of NPC's which is fair as you cant really act on multiple people's perspective at once, however when he does this the stress and pressure gets applied wearing down the players throught the sessions leading to momnets when players snap and became angry and confused as they have been broken down over time.
That is a viewer perspective however as trying to outsmart your DM and flex your brain will always be better and more fun than just sitting around for hours without difficulty even if sometimes it might be forced.
Apologies for the long but I do love this series as when i first watched critical role and other D&D stuff there hasn't been many channels that analyse a groups roleplay/ mental gameplay, which void SupergeekMike fills perfectly.
A DM should be constantly challenging a plan. If you just let them work or not with one or two rolls then it's boring.
@@shadowscall7758 Wow my comment is longer than I thought LOL. I agree with you ultimatley, if I was playing I'd prefer that challenging interaction with the DM, being a viewer can warp a perspective if led by frustration
It would be super cool if people didn’t invalidate a cool fantasy culture by throwing their own wet blanket on it by calling it “toxic masculinity” (which isn’t actually a thing) good writers and actors can step into the shoes of the worst kinds of people and see things from their perspective for immersions sake.
Raymond, was there any point at all in this video where I criticized Travis or Matt for including a culture with toxic masculinity in their D&D game? Or did I in fact point out that its inclusion actually enabled some excellent roleplaying? Your critique implies that I said it was bad that the members of the herd exhibit toxic masculinity, which was the opposite of my argument.
I recommend you watch this video about the toxic masculinity in Breaking Bad. Not only does it define the term (I think agreeing on a definition might help you understand that it does, in fact, exist), but it also demonstrates how a work of art can depict something, and even condemn it, without itself being condemned for depicting it. ua-cam.com/video/YsJ8xxUsWWQ/v-deo.htmlsi=O1HUp02jhTRYqSpk
too many goddam ads bro 👎
Toxic youtuberly
How so?
Don’t worry Dahktur, your dick is probably perfectly average
Ohh I see! You’re right, this was probably a reference to the toxic masculinity stuff lol. Thank you, Sting Johnny - I legitimately did not make the connection that Dahktur was trying to make a pun.
@@SupergeekMike 👍
Not toxic masculinity, just toxic behavior, there is no toxic masculinity, being a toxic person cannot be divide by gender. Its a logical falacy!
All I can do is point out that you don’t understand the term. There’s a great Breaking Bad video essay that opens with a clear definition, I think you would benefit from watching it: ua-cam.com/video/YsJ8xxUsWWQ/v-deo.htmlsi=ka4XXQoR0YGQ0Psy
@@SupergeekMike the term comes from the 70's when they were doing studies in male prison, they made up the term to talk about toxic behavior in men in prison. i know what the term come from and meaning that why im telling you there is no male toxicity, just toxic behavior.
Hey, Wellan, all I can do is point you to resources that explain how the term is used today to describe real-life phenomena, but I can’t make you internalize it. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Hope you have a great day.
@@SupergeekMike listen, i respect the work your are doing, your videos are good but you need to stop that woke nonsense. And btw imaginary fantastical race written in a book, no matter the backstory, is not racist!
Wellan, I have no desire to stop discussing subjects that mean a lot to me, including talking about the stuff you deem "woke nonsense."
Also, if you believe something in fantasy can't draw on real-world cultural aspects, both consciously and unconsciously, then I don't even know what to tell you. Every writer in the world draws on the world around them, and if you think writers can't accidentally evoke harmful ideas they grew up with, it kind of seems like you're not all that interested in questioning art in any meaningful way.
You seem to have trouble with the difference between masculinity and being a warrior/leader. If Travis had been talking shit about their junk, how small it is, or how weak they are, that would be attacking their masculinity. But he doesn't. He goes after their courage, their bravery, their warrior status. This is a group of people who live their lives wandering the open land, raiding and pillaging for what they need to survive, and they've found themselves settling in a town. This is so far and away from what they are, like a wolf being domesticated and having its balls cut off. Toxic masculinity also isn't a thing, though i understand that, being barely a man, real men must be incredibly intimidating to you.
I think you just proved that toxic masculinity is a thing, or maybe not. Because a real man, as you say it, wouldn't bother with such an asinine and insecure comment. So, I would say your comment shares all the hallmarks of toxicity, but none of the masculinity.
A lot of warrior culture is frequently framed in similar terms and themes as masculinity. When that masculinity drives you to choices that are, especially in the case of this encounter/situation, harmful and lethal, it's definitely toxic.
Apparently daddy beat you JUST the right amount 👍
Also if you genuinely believe that toxic masculinity isn’t a thing, then critical role is not for you Princess 🤣
“Being barely a man?” What’s your criteria, Floridabrn? I’m so curious why you believe I don’t qualify for the exclusive club of “almost one half of the population on Earth.”
Kevdac’s flaw is pride, not masculinity. Masculinity isn’t a flaw and I’m tired of hearing that it is. There is a reason male suicide rates are so high and this kind of rhetoric sure as shit ain’t helping
I didn't say masculinity is a flaw. I said toxic masculinity is a flaw. It's the same as saying "rotten eggs make you sick" - you wouldn't assume I meant "eggs make you sick."
@@SupergeekMike pedantic
@@corksucker No, it's actually just how words work. Some behavior is toxic in a way that is specific to society's expectations of masculinity - such as, in Kevdak's case, beating your children, invading and conquering other territory, and rushing to violence whenever anybody questions you. Obviously, none of this behavior is exclusive to men, and not all men exhibit this behavior (or some of them do and then they learn better), so simply denouncing someone as being "masculine" doesn't make any sense. (As a man myself, it would be ridiculous for me to claim that someone is bad because they are a man.)
Additionally, the word "toxic" has a lot of different meanings, so it would be ineffectual to simply call him toxic without any modifier.
By referring to Kevdak's behavior as "toxic masculinity," we are pointing out that Kevdak represents the worst aspects of our expectations of how men should behave in society.
Additionally, this term isn't the same as simply calling a person "toxic" (although I'm sure no one would argue that Kevdak is irredeemable), because in most cases, the goal is to inspire someone to learn healthy behavior and change their ways. Thus, this term is specifically designed to address the same concern you pointed out - the mental health of men. The goal is NOT to throw all of them under the bus, but instead to critique specific behavior that is unhealthy and unproductive.
@@SupergeekMike Out of curiosity, did he respond to your second response?
@@stingerjohnny9951 Not that I saw. It also looks like they also deleted their response to my first reply, where they just said, "pedantic." Maybe something I said in my reply made some kind of sense ¯\_(ツ)_/¯