The Legend of Vox Machina

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Qhue

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Last set of episodes from season 1 dropped this evening. Ended well and has a nice set-up for season 2.
 

Kaines

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The payoff was well worth it. Can't wait for season 2. That story line is just as awesome.
 
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JOESAN21

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i THINK part of pike's narrative early on was because their home game was pathfinder. same story, just pathfinder rules. when they swtched to streaming they had JUST switched to 5e dnd rules because pathfinder rules are really chunky with modifiers. a typical pathfinder attack role is basically d20 +3 -2 -1 +2 +3 -2 and those modifiers might change every attack depending on who you are attacking, where they are standing, where you are standing, how many times you're attacking in a single round, etc.

so pike's diety is Sarenrae, which is a pathfinder diety, but doesn't exist in dnd. i THINK matt was trying to demonstrate a weakening link, sort of as a story beat but ashley never picked up on that because she never picks up on ANY of the story beats that matt gives her. but like, her symbol broke so it messed up her connection to Sarenrae, whereas matt was pulling a thor ragnarok when thor's hammer breaks and has to figure out that the hammer was just a focus for his power, not the source of it. but again, ashley never really picked up on that at all.
Ok that makes more sense. I was wondering if they got her "everlight" from Sarenrae. Makes a whole lot more sense now than it just being from the 5.0 universe.

I think the show has been great! Love the humor! My wife hates Pathfinder/AD&D; but even she is watching the show with me and asking questions about the types of characters. Loving it!
 
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Caliane

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Ok that makes more sense. I was wondering if they got her "everlight" from Sarenrae. Makes a whole lot more sense now than it just being from the 5.0 universe.

I think the show has been great! Love the humor! My wife hates Pathfinder/AD&D; but even she is watching the show with me and asking questions about the types of characters. Loving it!
yeah. in the beginning there were a few things.

Pre-stream it was a Pathfinder game. Pike was a cleric of Sarenrae very notably. The crew also had a good number of high powered magic items from Pathfinder. scanlans +30 bullhorn. Vax's belt of returning, 3 magic capes, 3 magic daggers, boots of haste. Vax spends most of season 1 being stupid op, due to constant haste, and 3 magic daggers he can throw every turn, for sneak attack damage..

Early game they used names. Sarenrae, Pelor, kord, bahamut, Ioun, etc.
Towards the end of the campaign however, Matt started to write the campaign book, and organize the world into a set thing, for his "totally just friends playing a homegame for fun, not a commercial product getting millions of dollars month, for reals, we love you, and send us more donations", they had to ditch using trademarked names. so they swapped to the title thing.
there was at one point some confusion on there being 2 sun gods. ha. matt just waved it off as them being cool with each other.

Pikes holy symbel. in game it was just Ashley having no idea what she was doing with her class. she was just a healbot for travis/grog basically. Didn't understand the lore, etc at all. so, didn't think about what she was doing, and did something that would be anti-thetical to Sarenrae. the whole cast is pretty laughable bad at learning the game, despite being basically professionals.. ashley got a pass due to only being there like 1/3rd of the time, due to work.
 
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Kaines

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yeah. in the beginning there were a few things.

Pre-stream it was a Pathfinder game. Pike was a cleric of Sarenrae very notably. The crew also had a good number of high powered magic items from Pathfinder. scanlans +30 bullhorn. Vax's belt of returning, 3 magic capes, 3 magic daggers, boots of haste. Vax spends most of season 1 being stupid op, due to constant haste, and 3 magic daggers he can throw every turn, for sneak attack damage..

Early game they used names. Sarenrae, Pelor, kord, bahamut, Ioun, etc.
Towards the end of the campaign however, Matt started to write the campaign book, and organize the world into a set thing, for his "totally just friends playing a homegame for fun, not a commercial product getting millions of dollars month, for reals, we love you, and send us more donations", they had to ditch using trademarked names. so they swapped to the title thing.
there was at one point some confusion on there being 2 sun gods. ha. matt just waved it off as them being cool with each other.

Pikes holy symbel. in game it was just Ashley having no idea what she was doing with her class. she was just a healbot for travis/grog basically. Didn't understand the lore, etc at all. so, didn't think about what she was doing, and did something that would be anti-thetical to Sarenrae. the whole cast is pretty laughable bad at learning the game, despite being basically professionals.. ashley got a pass due to only being there like 1/3rd of the time, due to work.
1) As to "totally just friends playing a homegame for fun" that IS how it started. It was Felisha Day who thought the homegame stream thing might be commercially viable and convinced Matt/the group to stream their games on Geek & Sundry. Once the stream started to take off, that is when Matt and Travis saw some commercial value in the project. Matt started writing campaign material and they started selling merch. One early episode they created 15 t-shirts of merch to test the merch waters and they sold out in 5 seconds. To say this didn't start as a bunch of friends sitting around playing a TTRPG is simply wrong. To also deny that they turned that regular gaming session into a multi-million dollar business is also wrong.

2) Calling professionals is also rather strange. They are professional voice actors no doubt and the show reveals how good these guys are at their true profession. But I get the feeling they play D&D because they like the role playing aspects of it more than the detailed rules of the game. When you can spend 2 and half hours on a shopping episode at least once every campaign, the detailed rules of class creation and combat really don't matter.
 
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j00t

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1)I don't even think it was just that one day matt and travis thought about monetizing it... i think it was that the 100k+ people that were watching their streams in early campaign 1 were clamoring for more. people were begging for merch way before they ever sold any.

2)it's odd, but they ARE professionals. they get paid to play dnd. but you're also 100% right in that they just love the role playing. a few of them have talked about how their first game (liam's birthday request) laura showed up with an accent and never dropped character. travis has talked about how he and laura are always doing random accents and characters all day at home. Marisha says she hears matt doing weird voices and noises all day in his office. it's CLEARLY something they enjoy doing. 5 years ago, i'd say they weren't so much tied into DND itself, but they've since become brand ambassadors basically and matt has written several books for wizards. on one hand i think they'd be doing the same thing no matter what ruleset they were using, but on the other hand critical role has become synonymous with dnd. i mean, dndbeyond is like a permanent supporter of them at this point... i don't think they'd just drop dnd for another ruleset (outside of the oneshots they do)
 
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Attog

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I haven't played D&D in over 30 years. I didn't even know this show was based on someone's campaign, just thought it was a good show. You got me going through my closet to dig out my old D&D stuff, wasn't sure I still had it but I found it:

D&D stuff.jpg


Then I started looking up new gaming related things on Youtube and found this. Holy fucking shit this is cool:

 
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Kaines

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1)I don't even think it was just that one day matt and travis thought about monetizing it... i think it was that the 100k+ people that were watching their streams in early campaign 1 were clamoring for more. people were begging for merch way before they ever sold any.

2)it's odd, but they ARE professionals. they get paid to play dnd. but you're also 100% right in that they just love the role playing. a few of them have talked about how their first game (liam's birthday request) laura showed up with an accent and never dropped character. travis has talked about how he and laura are always doing random accents and characters all day at home. Marisha says she hears matt doing weird voices and noises all day in his office. it's CLEARLY something they enjoy doing. 5 years ago, i'd say they weren't so much tied into DND itself, but they've since become brand ambassadors basically and matt has written several books for wizards. on one hand i think they'd be doing the same thing no matter what ruleset they were using, but on the other hand critical role has become synonymous with dnd. i mean, dndbeyond is like a permanent supporter of them at this point... i don't think they'd just drop dnd for another ruleset (outside of the oneshots they do)
If Talisaen hadn't asked Matt to run the Iam Birthday session as D&D, I bet any amount of money they'd have stayed with Pathfinder. The characters and the campaign had already been created with that ruleset in mind. Wizards of the Coast is FUCKING LUCKY AS HELL the group stuck with D&D rather than going back to Pathfinder.
 
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j00t

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If Talisaen hadn't asked Matt to run the Iam Birthday session as D&D, I bet any amount of money they'd have stayed with Pathfinder. The characters and the campaign had already been created with that ruleset in mind. Wizards of the Coast is FUCKING LUCKY AS HELL the group stuck with D&D rather than going back to Pathfinder.
I'm confused what you mean. Liam asked Matt to run a dnd game for his birthday since he used to play as a kid, that was how it all started. I don't think Taliesin played with them for that game. I could be wrong, but I know they talked about Percy joining a couple games in and the party found him in a jail cell. Though, I suppose Taliesin could have played a different character...

But Matt talked about switching from pathfinder to dnd specifically because of how crunchy the combat was, whereas 5E's simple d20 rules made it a lot quicker for the players. They were doing like, one game every 2 months or so and as they got better weapons, higher levels and more feats they spent a lot of time just figuring if they hit their target.

I don't know if there is an exact timeline for when they switched to dnd, but I think it was a few games prior to streaming. It may have coincided directly with streaming, but they were all under the impression that streaming wasnt going to work and that they'd be back to running it at home within weeks.

Is there a different story about Taliesin wanting dnd?
 
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Angerz

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I'm confused what you mean. Liam asked Matt to run a dnd game for his birthday since he used to play as a kid, that was how it all started. I don't think Taliesin played with them for that game. I could be wrong, but I know they talked about Percy joining a couple games in and the party found him in a jail cell. Though, I suppose Taliesin could have played a different character...
I am 99% certain for that initial one shot, Talesin played a Dragonborn Paladin, but switched to Percy when they decided to make it an actual recurring game and not just the one thing for the birthday.
 
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Kaines

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I'm confused what you mean. Liam asked Matt to run a dnd game for his birthday since he used to play as a kid, that was how it all started. I don't think Taliesin played with them for that game. I could be wrong, but I know they talked about Percy joining a couple games in and the party found him in a jail cell. Though, I suppose Taliesin could have played a different character...

But Matt talked about switching from pathfinder to dnd specifically because of how crunchy the combat was, whereas 5E's simple d20 rules made it a lot quicker for the players. They were doing like, one game every 2 months or so and as they got better weapons, higher levels and more feats they spent a lot of time just figuring if they hit their target.

I don't know if there is an exact timeline for when they switched to dnd, but I think it was a few games prior to streaming. It may have coincided directly with streaming, but they were all under the impression that streaming wasnt going to work and that they'd be back to running it at home within weeks.

Is there a different story about Taliesin wanting dnd?
As Angerz Angerz said Talisen has been playing with them long before the stream started. You can see him in almost any of the "home video" cell phone footage they shot before the streaming started. Yes Matt has said repeatedly that D&D 5e is a much cleaner game in terms of rolls, but that just goes further to my point that they aren't really "professional" D&D players. They roll because the rules say they do and to get those nat 20's/1's that cause so wonderful story moments. But the players and even Matt himself much more prefer the roleplaying aspects of the game over the nitty gritty rules part of the game. To this day, the players have to look up pretty basic rules around their spells/abilities every single combat session. But if you ask one of them what their persuassion/deception/perception checks are, they almost know those by heart. Because that is where they spend more of their time at the table. Simply being paid to do something technically makes them "professionals" but it's clear they don't put in near the time a REAL D&D professional would in studying the rule books.

Aside from Matt. That dude is uncanny with his knowledge of the rules. As evidenced here:
 
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Caliane

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Aside from Matt. That dude is uncanny with his knowledge of the rules. As evidenced here:
oh, god, that hurt my brain. a few matt oddly seemed to miss.
Also, dodge is an action, not a reaction.
Uncanny dodge is a reaction. which a goliath fighter would not have.

panel didn't actually say the axe did damage. just that it hit.


pit fiend casts hold monster on the barb. (which I missed at first, as I thought it was a player casting it., but when going back through and matts breakdown, noticed.)
so hold monster on ahumanoid, and then also makes its multiattack on the same turn.

Missed grummesh. fireball not being a cleric spell. too used to clerics having access to it via race, or other means. haha. missed that.
we both missed benign transpostion does not work like that. had to look it up, cause I didnt even remember what it did. Benign transposition swaps locations of two allies.
I missed the timing on legendary action. thought that was at any time. but no, hes right, at the end of another creatures turn.
he skipped the second LA use. oversight on his part, since he noticed the first.. but for the rules of this contest, would be another point.
Also, movement isn't a Legendary action. not saying to cast fly, then move. liches do not have flight in their stat block. demi-liches do... so.. uh. not sure how that would count.

edit. hold monster is any creature, except undead. versus barb would have been fine.
 
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Seananigans

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oh, god, that hurt my brain. a few matt oddly seemed to miss.
Also, dodge is an action, not a reaction.
Uncanny dodge is a reaction. which a goliath fighter would not have.

panel didn't actually say the axe did damage. just that it hit.


pit fiend casts hold monster on the barb. (which I missed at first, as I thought it was a player casting it., but when going back through and matts breakdown, noticed.)
so hold monster on ahumanoid, and then also makes its multiattack on the same turn.

Missed grummesh. fireball not being a cleric spell. too used to clerics having access to it via race, or other means. haha. missed that.
we both missed benign transpostion does not work like that. had to look it up, cause I didnt even remember what it did. Benign transposition swaps locations of two allies.
I missed the timing on legendary action. thought that was at any time. but no, hes right, at the end of another creatures turn.
he skipped the second LA use. oversight on his part, since he noticed the first.. but for the rules of this contest, would be another point.
Also, movement isn't a Legendary action. not saying to cast fly, then move. liches do not have flight in their stat block. demi-liches do... so.. uh. not sure how that would count.

edit. hold monster is any creature, except undead. versus barb would have been fine.

Add that dodge doesn't actually dodge, just makes you harder to hit, so "using dodge to avoid the AOO" isn't a thing.
 

Daidraco

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I sat down to eat breakfast and enjoy the rain this morning and my nephew had just started watching episode 2. Got him to go back to the beginning and we just binged out the whole of season 1. Wish there was a season 2 cause I really enjoyed this one.
 
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Sevens

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Liam asked Matt to run the game for his birthday. Liam and Sam had talked about playing on their podcast "All work and no play"
Talesin was at the first game and yes he played a Paladin. He was an old DnD friend / player of Matts that joined the game becuase Matt asked him to as none of the others really had any DnD experience at all. Ashley Johnson wasnt at the first game and joined a bit later.
 
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Mist

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Laura Bailey and Marisha Ray trending for being on stage at NYCC and being hot.
 
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j00t

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Laura bailey and marisha ray don't exist to be nice on the eyes for you!
no, they exist to be nice on the eyes for travis and matt, and i get to enjoy looking at them by proxy.
 
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