Welcome to Critical Role Demystified, I’m Mike
Christensen and this is the series where I break down the lessons I can learn - as GMs and as
players - from episodes of “Critical Role.” Today we’re tackling episode 49, “A Name is Earned.” As
a note, this series comes out every other week, but we’re going to take this series weekly
once I reach 1,000 YouTube Membership or paid Patreon members. At the time of recording,
in January, we’re at 550 paid Patreon members, and 10 YouTube Members, so we’re more than halfway
there! So if you want to get these videos weekly, let’s get those numbers up! Ashley isn’t able
to join for this game, so Matt roleplays her for this session. They brought Pike in during the last
session because Blindspot was almost wrapped up, and very minor spoilers, Ashley *will* be
back in-person for the next episode for the start of her hiatus between seasons,
so we’ll have her for a bit longer. Picking up where the last episode left
off, the party approaches the orc camp, and finds the orcs playing target practice -
they’re using spears on a still-living human survivor. They also have some feral bears
chained up, and at the back of the camp there are two tents with the rest of the
human prisoners inside. The party settles on a plan - Scanlan creates a mansion door at
the back of the camp, near the prisoner tents, so they can evacuate the prisoners into the
mansion and get them to safety. Once the door is created, Keyleth creates a distraction at
the front of the camp to kick off initiative. Now, Keyleth’s goal is to conjure creatures
she can control remotely. That way, you know, if the orcs converge on the creature and
shank it to death, that’s not happening to Keyleth. So she’s trying to cast Conjure
Woodland Beings for the first time… but she doesn’t have a list of creatures she can
conjure. She asks for the Monster Manual, but Matt seems reluctant to hand that over,
because, like… he’s using it. And he asks, why doesn’t she know what she wants to conjure?
And it’s because the spell does not include a list. So the players just pull out their
phones and start listing fey creatures, and Matt starts flipping through the
Monster Manual looking for a list of fey. MATT: I hate conjuration spells, by the way guys, so you all know. The worst
spells in the whole game. SAM: I will say this, to be fair
to Marisha, the spell does say, your DM will have a list of the creatures. (laughter)
MATT: Does it really? SAM: It does, at the end of the spell. MATT: Fuck that spell. (laughter) MARISHA: Yeah it says the DM will have the statistics.
SAM: It says the DM will have the creatures. MATT: Fuck that spell. Conjuration needs to die. When we say “conjuration” spells in this video,
we’re mainly talking about spells where you summon a creature or a bunch of creatures. And
I don’t have a lesson here - the D&D community has had almost ten years with 5th Edition,
and conjuration spells are famously reviled for lots of reasons. Most people seem to hate
conjuration spells because the extra monsters taking turns slows down initiative a lot, which
is definitely true. But as we see here, these spells also put a lot of burden on the players,
and clearly on the DM, in a way that also slows down the initial casting of the spell. It’s why
the conjuration spells from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything were immediately so popular, because
they’re far easier to use than the conjuration spells from the Player’s Handbook. Matt also
turns directly to the camera and says they are not doing the thing where the player can summon
eight pixies, and each pixie can cast polymorph, so you can essentially cast polymorph a bunch
of times. This was *not* a rule I had when I ran my game for four druids, so I speak from
experience when I say that the conjuration spells from the Player’s Handbook are… a lot.
Anyway, they skim the list and decide on a couple of dryads. Marisha picks a random spot at the
front of the camp, to just distract the orcs, and the dryads appear there… and then immediately
fall into a hidden pit trap. One of them gets really badly hurt and the other just full-on
dies. So, yeah, they’re actually going to be completely useless in this fight, and they didn’t
really manage to draw the orcs in to attack one central target like they wanted - but at least
they did reveal a pit trap! Silver lining! So since they still want somebody in the front
of the camp to draw agro, Scanlan casts Resilient Sphere on himself and rolls forward in his
hamster ball, singing “Tro-lo-lo” and drawing the attention and ire of all of the orcs. And
it’s initiative, so here are some highlights: Keyleth becomes an earth elemental and hucks
an orc into the pit - onto the dryad that was still barely alive. Percy gets to use his
gloves of missile snaring for the first time, catching an arrow out of the air - and this
brings me to a cool lesson! Because this is the neat thing about lower-stakes encounters, like
the kinds we get from side quests like this one, or from random encounters. See, this isn’t an
“important” combat. It doesn’t move the story forward, aside from resolving a side quest, and
it’s not really dangerous enough for the party to actually be all that worried. So because they
don’t feel like they’re all about to be murdered, the players feel free to try new stuff, stuff
that they haven’t built into their normal combat routine. Like, for example, Conjure Woodland
Beings, or how Scanlan can cast Resilient Sphere on himself rather than using it on one powerful
enemy. And for players like Taliesin, whose character does not have nearly as many options
as Marisha or Sam, these short fights still give them a chance to look at their character sheet
and realize that they’ve got some cool things they don’t use nearly enough, like the gloves
of missile snaring. And because they’ve used these features or magic items or spells in this
fight, maybe they’ll remember they have access to some of these cool things when they’re in their
next big important encounter. This is actually a lesson I could really stand to learn from -
when I’m running the Epic Narrative campaigns, like your Hoards of the Dragon Queen, your Princes
of the Apocalypses, or your Curses of Strahd, I put so much more emphasis on the plot-relevant
stuff. But these side quests and random encounters are just as important, in their own way, because
they give the players a chance to really play in the space. This is also an example of why
relatively easy encounters are still really useful. You don’t need to have every encounter
be a knock-down, drag-out bloodbath - sometimes, if you don’t hit the most deadliest possible
capacity for a combat encounter, that’s okay, too. In fact, the freedom to try other
things leads Percy to pick up a javelin, walk to the edge of the pit, and try to stab
the orc who is trying to climb back out. But he’s a Dex-based fighter so he doesn’t have a
high modifier to a non-ranged attack like that, he also just rolls terribly, so after his first
attempt, he just pulls out a gun and shoots the guy. It’s a great “Raiders of the Lost Ark”
moment. But even later in the fight, Percy takes a Push shot for the first time, because
apparently he’s never used that technique before. And he has the freedom to experiment because this
is, essentially, a fairly low-stakes encounter. Now, returning to the highlights - well, maybe not a highlight but perhaps a lesson…
Matt did not hear Travis’ initiative score, so almost an entire round elapses before Travis
realizes he’s been fully skipped. However, credit to Travis and Matt, they don’t make a
big thing of it. Matt just moves him to the end of the initiative order going forward, and Travis
rolls with it because he’s a terrific D&D player. So this is clearly before Travis started
tracking initiative as well - and in fact, maybe this repeated problem is *why* Travis
started tracking initiative along with Matt, to help make sure nobody gets skipped.
Because Matt Mercer’s initiative system is bad, I’ve actually talked about that before. Also, during this encounter, the party
kind of retcons that they took a short rest during the last episode. They just
can’t remember whether they did or not, so Matt just allows them to basically declare
it here, and that means the party can just get some of their cool powers back for this
fight. However, when given this option, Travis clarifies that he *wouldn’t* have taken
a short rest in between episodes like everyone else did, because he was totally undamaged…
and he didn’t want to lose the benefits from Craven Edge. Because when he attacks an enemy,
like a basilisk or an orc, they have to make a Constitution saving throw, and if they fail, Grog
gains a point of Strength - and he had already gained a few Strength points in the last battle.
When he takes a short rest, the strength drains away. And he wants to see how much strength
he can gain. We’ll come back to that later. Scanlan teleports into the tents and starts
freeing prisoners and pointing them toward the mansion door. The bears get released into the
battle, and Matt describes how they’ve got bone spikes poking out of their shoulders, which is
a very clear reference to Spyke, Storm’s nephew, who was created for the early 2000’s cartoon,
“X-Men: Evolution!” Well, actually, it’s also how dire bears were described in 4th Edition,
maybe in earlier editions as well, so that’s actually probably what Matt’s referencing, but
hey, you say “bone spikes,” my mind goes straight to Spyke from X-Men: Evolution. His name Spyke
was spelled with a Y, because he was *cool*. At the end of the fight, they capture one
orc and ask if there are any others around, or if this is the last of the orc tribe. Grog gets
advantage on his intimidation rolls, thanks to how Craven Edge surrounds him with shadows, and so
the orc confirms, no, he is the last survivor. Grog also asks if the orcs worked with the
goliaths at all, which is a great question, we do know there are orcs and half-orcs among the
goliaths in Westruun. But no, these orcs are not a part of that group. Matt actually has the orc
say, “We don’t deal with goliaths,” and he spits at Grog in disgust. At this point, Matt knows
that the orc isn’t going to have any more useful information. The orcs don’t have any connection
to any other plot going on right now - they are just the end of a side quest. So when the party
asks the orc why they should keep him alive, Matt offers an answer that effectively gives
him an excuse to end the interrogation: MATT: “I should go to whoever made us. I will die here with my brethren.
I will not run a coward.” Now, technically, the interrogation isn’t
over - the party tries to milk the orc for any last information he might be able
to give them. Like, hey, he’s a local to this forest… maybe he’s seen the sphinx’s
cave? But because Matt has given a plausible reason for the orc to close himself off, he
has already given them the end of the scene, and it does not take long for them to realize
they’re not getting anything more out of him. TRAVIS: Before I dispatch you to your maker, have you seen a sphinx or a cave of
magical origin around these parts? MATT: “Rot in Kord's prison, half-giant.” And it works. Grog bisects the orc,
and he gets another point of Strength, he’s now at a Strength score of 24. They also
identify Cyrus, the brother of Cornelius, who they were specifically looking for - he was
the prisoner being speared with javelins. They take a moment to heal up the wounded prisoners
and cheer them up as well. Vax also says they should bury the dead prisoners, something that
has very much been on his mind as he navigates his newfound relationship with the Raven Queen, and
so Grog and Percy help him lay the dead to rest. Before they rest for the night, Vex flies
up to the beacon, with Scanlan polymorphed as a mangy crow to ride along. And this
is where we find out that Taliesin does an unnervingly good crow impression. Or
raven impression. Either way, it’s creepy. SAM: Yeah, I'm going to turn into a mangy
crow that looks like it would be with a witch. LAURA: I like it. (cackles) SAM: I'll Polymorph.
MATT: Polymorph. You follow her as a crow. SAM: And I perch on her shoulder. (crow sounds) TALIESIN: (unnervingly realistic crow noises) SAM: Thank you!
MATT: That's so creepy. TALIESIN: (unnervingly realistic crow noises) MATT: Perfect.
(Laughter) They fly up to the beacon, which Keyleth
points out to them thanks to her casting Find the Path in the last episode, even
though concentration would’ve broken when she cast Conjure Woodland Beings, but
we’ll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. They find a triangular cave
carved into the side of the mountain, but they don’t go inside too far - just enough
to see that there are some stairs leading down that go into darkness, but there’s a faint
blue light visible at the base of the stairs. Also, before they take their break and take
their long rest, Grog declares that he’s not resting for the night. Now, Grog got a point of
exhaustion for using frenzy rage, and this will give him his second level of exhaustion. So he’s
going to have disadvantage on ability checks, *and* his speed will be halved. TRAVIS: I want to see how far
this can go. I want to push this. TALIESIN: I’ve tried this experiment
in real life. It never ends well. During the night, Grog asks Craven Edge how much
he knows about what his former owners were up to. Specifically, the Briarwoods wanted to bring back
a god named Vecna - so what does Craven Edge know about Vecna? But no, Craven Edge only cares about
blood and satisfying his endless hunger. Craven Edge tells Grog he’s “so close to being full.”
Grog wants to know what happens when Craven Edge gets full - does he get bigger? Does Grog get
even stronger? But Matt doesn’t want to tip his hand to this yet, so Craven Edge just says,
“Feed me and you’ll find out.” The next day, Tyriok agrees to guide the survivors they
rescued back to the camp outside Kymal, and the party continues on their trek. And we get
this exchange, which I think about all the time: LIAM: Scanlan, maybe not black birds for
a while. All right? It’s a touchy subject. SAM: Ooh, sorry. I forgot. Well actually,
no, I don’t know what you’re talking about. LIAM: Stay away from black birds for a while. SAM: Okay. Sam is one of the best at this table at keeping
track of what his character actually knows, versus what he as a player knows. Even something
that is hardly a secret, like Vax’s dynamic with the Raven Queen, something everyone in the cast
has been fully aware of… well, Sam realizes that, actually, really only Keyleth and Vex would
know what’s going on. Now, the rest of them might be able to make an educated guess based on
some things that have been said. Obviously they all heard him make his offer to the Raven
Queen, and when they met Galdric the wolf, I’m pretty sure Vex introduced Vax as a champion
or chosen of the Raven Queen, this was actually way before the Raven Queen herself had
actually called Vax that. And of course, Vax is wearing the Raven Queen’s armor and he’s
been sulking for a while, so there are clues. But Scanlan didn’t see the raven in Keyleth’s room the
night after Vax made the deal. None of them have seen Vax’s visions of the Raven Queen or the pool
of blood in Vasselheim. So Sam realizes, well, Scanlan probably wouldn’t know what Vax means,
because he’s missing a lot of key context. And I want to be clear - this is actually really hard
to do. It’s hard to keep track of what you know as a player versus what your character knows. I take
copious notes during D&D games when I’m a player, and I sometimes try to think ahead toward this
problem, by specifically marking down the things that my character was not there for, or I’ll write
down who participated in which roleplaying scenes. But that’s why I appreciate so much what Sam is
doing here, by just offering a gentle reminder that Scanlan is still totally in the dark
about this. He’s not referring to his notes, he’s just really good at keeping his player
and his character knowledge separate. Speaking of knowledge, I want to pause quickly
to give *you* some knowledge! Seamless segue, 10 out of 10. I’m doing a YouTube
livestream next Friday, February 9th, at 5pm Pacific time. This is to celebrate the fact
that we hit 40,000 subscribers at the end of last year! Or early this year, I don’t know, time is
an illusion. And just a reminder, I’m also trying to get to 50,000 subscribers by the summer,
ideally before my first child is born in May, so if you aren’t subscribed yet, go ahead and
hit the bell! For my child! For that child! Anyway, as they march toward the cave, Matt points
out that Keyleth’s Find the Path is helping guide the way. But Find the Path is a concentration
spell, so even if casting Conjure Woodland Beings had not ended the spell, sleeping during a long
rest would have ended concentration anyway. Now, Matt might have forgotten that, or this might
be a conscious judgment call. Back in episode 8, Matt allowed Vex to maintain concentration on
Hunter’s Mark while they slept so they could better track the duergar queen in the morning.
Now, again, it might be an honest mistake - I forget about concentration all the time, I am not
one to judge. But even *if* he knew the correct rule back in episode 8, allowing Vex to retain
the spell allowed the party to take a long rest rather than *forcing* them to push forward
to chase Grog with no resources, which was especially important considering Travis wasn’t at
the table and they couldn’t really get Grog back in that session anyway. Now here, there’s another
meta reason why Matt might be ignoring the rule, *if* he’s doing it on purpose and not on accident
- and that could be because he wants Find the Path to feel like it was a worthwhile spell to cast.
Because the act of casting this spell wound up being a whole thing in the last episode, and he’s
trying to make all that feel better by giving Keyleth a benefit from the spell that he had a
hard time adjudicating in the last session. So, yeah, I really appreciate that he
is keeping Find the Path in play, because it helps smooth over some of the
awkwardness and conflict from the last episode. Also, if he just didn’t remember that Find the
Path is concentration and just got the rule wrong, that is also fine. This is a game with a lot of
thick rulebooks, and even if playing the game is literally your job, like it would one day be
for the cast of Critical Role, it’s okay to not know all the rules or memorize how every spell
works, because that’s a lot to keep track of, and not everybody interfaces with the game
that way. Just something to keep in mind for the folks out there who like to sling that
criticism around… hypothetically when relating to one of the cast members on this show.
They arrive at the cave, and follow the stairs down to a circular room with no exits, and a pool
of water in the center, with a faint blue glow beneath the water. There are words carved into the
walls in Celestial, which Percy happens to know, because he was an indoor kid who spent all his
time in the library. The riddle reads as follows: “Knowledge dost billow, all realms
are the shore. The sky a window, the water a door.” And it winds up being extremely
literal - they have to go down into the pool, swim down a 40 foot well, find another tunnel
leading forward and then swim up another shaft. But for the tunnels across and up, there are
algae-like plants on the walls that reach out to zap people and paralyze them. Keyleth is able
to control the water to allow them to walk through the tunnel. And Matt rules that the floating plant
tendrils can’t reach out the same way through air, because that’s not what they’re evolved to do,
so the spell completely neuters the danger. She also uses the spell to rocket them up the final
shaft and deposit them into the next chamber. This wasn’t exactly a difficult
riddle, because for one thing, the riddle was foreshadowing for something
else we’ll get to later. But for the other, the riddle wasn’t the actual challenge - there
was only really one thing to interact with in the room, it was the pool of water. The challenge
was getting through without getting zapped, and thanks to some smart spellwork, they were
able to bypass it completely. This is kind of the nature of playing for a party that’s level 12
or 13 or whatever they are - a lot of the time, they are just going to have spells to
help get them out of jams. But of course, every spell they use to solve a problem is
one less spell they’ll have if they happen to get into combat. It makes them feel clever
in the moment because they prepared the right spell and cast it in the right way, and it also
makes them less overpowered for the final fight, so everybody wins. However, I suspect the party
guessed that, while yes, Matt deliberately placed those plants in the tunnel to act as a challenge,
they could’ve just grown there organically and wouldn’t have been designed as part of the
puzzle. So you have a situation where the riddle seems to tell them where to go next, but
there’s a challenge along the way that, it seems, the riddle designers couldn’t have foreseen.
But when we get to the next riddle, we’ll see what happens when Matt uses the same formula,
but it really doesn’t work nearly as well. They enter a second room, with four pillars around
the pool, with a lion head on the top of each, facing away from the pool, mouths closed. This
room has gold and platinum filigree in the walls, it’s very ornate and beautiful. Another riddle
in Celestial, carved around the pool is a less obvious riddle - it reads: “Betwixt the
chaos, our order reigns, the ones who made us, refined the planes. As ages die, their time
an ember, the four endure, the four remember.” There’s also a mural on the walls of flames
twisting into rock, which becomes water, which becomes air, which meets back up with
the start and becomes flame again. And there’s a hole in the ceiling, which Vex flies up
to and sees a shaft leading up. There are draconic magical runes on the ceiling around
the hole, which the Hunk of Quall confirms are magical. Percy splashes water on the
pillar nearest the water mural - and the lion mouth opens. They do the same to the
other pillars, opening all the lion mouths. And then sand starts pouring out of the
lions’ mouths and filling the room. And Matt drops an hourglass on the table,
and now they’ve got to get out fast. Vex flies to the top and drops a rope, but there’s
nowhere to tie it off to. She can get a sneak peek of the next stage in the journey - above the
shaft, there’s a hallway and a set of metal doors with no handles. But nothing to tie the
rope to. So she ties it to the immovable rod, and Keyleth casts Wall of Stone to raise
everybody most of the way up to the hole, so they only have to climb up through the
shaft itself, which is still a challenge. Only one person can fit through the shaft
at a time, and when the hourglass runs out, another aspect of the trap activates, and
sand starts pouring directly onto their heads through the shaft they’re currently trying
to climb up through. Everyone works together to help the stragglers pull themselves up, and Grog
*barely* makes it up - rolling with disadvantage was rough, thankfully he has a ridiculous
Strength right now and rolled incredibly. Now, this prompts Laura to
ask a reasonable question: LAURA: I thought we were doing what
we were supposed to do down there. SAM: I think we did do what
we were supposed to do. LAURA: Oh jeez, it would’ve been better if we
would’ve just gone up the hole to begin with. This is something to ask when you’re creating
riddles and traps - does solving the riddle mean you bypass the trap? In the case of these riddles,
no. The riddle points you to the right direction, but the traps still exist to help
filter out the unworthy - if you consider the unworthy to be people who
aren’t strong enough to survive traps, which does actually tell you a lot
about the people who wrote the riddles. This is a useful approach to solve the way we
think about riddles in our games - after all, if ancient wizards left Legend of Zelda-style riddles
to access their treasure, where a literal child playing a Gameboy can figure out those kinds of
solution while waiting for their parents to pick them up from school, then theoretically anybody
who can solve a pretty basic puzzle can get to the ancient wizard’s treasure, which is exactly what
the ancient wizard was trying to avoid when they set the trap and wrote the riddle. But as a Game
Master, you also can’t make the riddles too hard, because some players don’t like riddles. And you
can’t make the riddles based entirely on things your characters would know about the world, like
obscure in-universe lore, because then players can solve it with a History or Arcana check. So this
is one possible solution. The riddle itself is simple and straightforward - but it’s followed
by a skill challenge. Sometimes that challenge can be bypassed with a clever spell, and I’m sure
the sand trap would’ve worked the same way if they could’ve figured out some way to close off the
sand portals - which is yet another reason why Matt actually had a time-release sand trap in
the ceiling shaft, not just as a time crunch, but also as an in-universe back-up plan in
case anybody screwed with the lion heads. Of course, this does ultimately beg the question -
if you’re setting these traps, then why leave the riddles? Well, because riddles are an important
part of the fantasy novels and real-world legends and myths that inspired games like D&D. That’s
especially true for riddles that prove that the hero is worthy, where other potential heroes are
not. Additionally, riddles are kind of the core theme of the sphinx from mythology. So in this
specific case, Matt is trying to take that concept and turn it into something the party can interact
with in a more explicitly gamified way. Because here’s the thing: The goal of a riddle is to
challenge the players, and not the characters. And that’s also why riddles are really hit-and-miss
in D&D games. Some players really enjoy trying to figure out “how many were traveling to Saint
Ives,” which is my favorite riddle from “Die Hard 3,” or how to get 4 gallons into a jug when
you only have a 5 gallon jug and a 3 gallon jug, which is something I still can’t get my head
around no matter how many times I watch “Die Hard 3.” But some players really *don’t* like
that. Not “Die Hard 3,” that movie kicks ass, it was the best Riddler movie ever made until
“The Batman” came out. But some players don’t like solving riddles, at least not in their D&D
games. And even if they like riddles, that doesn’t mean they’re going to like every riddle the same
amount, because different riddles challenge the brain in different ways. And sometimes, players
might just say, “Look, my character is smarter than me, so can I just roll an intelligence check
to solve the riddle?” Because the players are used to solving their problems with their character
sheet - which is exactly what riddles are meant to do the opposite of, they are meant to challenge
the player instead of just the character. So Matt’s solution in this episode is to feature
some pretty straightforward riddles - but then, once they’ve solved the riddle, they still need
to perform a skill challenge. And in theory, I can see how this could be a really smart
solution to the “riddles in D&D” problem. Except that’s not how riddles are meant to work.
The idea behind a riddle in fantasy stories is that, generally speaking, it allows you to bypass
danger rather than putting you in further danger. So you get a situation where solving the lion
head riddle was actually worse for them than just ignoring the riddle and leaving the room,
and that actually works against the players’ expectations. And subverting expectations is not
always a bad thing, but here, it does kind of mean that the players just feel like they did something
wrong by engaging with the riddle that you gave them. And it also breaks the fantasy of riddles
in D&D, because it doesn’t line up with how “prove your worthiness” riddles are used in fantasy and
folklore. And to be clear, I don’t think Matt committed a D&D sin here or anything - as I’ve
said many times already, riddles are an imperfect thing to include in D&D for lots of reasons.
And these riddles do help set expectations for the final challenge, which we’ll see soon, and
there’s a value to that. But as we’ll see shortly, I think the final riddle does a better job of this
concept by putting the challenge in *front* of the riddle’s solution, instead of behind it. You’ll
see how that works in a second. This is a good trap, it is well-designed and it’s interesting,
and it was really tense for the players as it played out at the table. I’m gonna make a whole
other video about traps, probably later this year, but in short, I do like this trap a lot, it’s very
cool. But the trap really *should* be triggered if the players get the answer *wrong.* Or this
should just be a death trap that triggers if the players do something they’re not supposed to,
like they break a commandment like “Touch nothing but the lamp.” Pairing the riddle’s correct
answer to a death trap makes sense in theory, but in practice it really messes with the players’
equilibrium, and makes it hard for them to know what they’re supposed to do going forward,
which can be a really hard bell to unring. Anyway, in this next hallway, Grog suggests they
take a short rest - it’s worth losing the Strength bonuses to get rid of disadvantage. Except then he
learns that a short rest doesn’t cure exhaustion, only a long rest does. So, while everyone
else takes a rest, he’s gonna power through. The doors have the symbol of Ioun
etched into them, and as they enter, they see this room - the map is on screen,
I’ll describe it as well but the visuals might help you track the locations as I describe
them. There’s piles of rubble in the corners nearest where the party enters. There are two
walls running down the center of the room, creating three passages leading ahead - the ones
on the left and right have some webs inside, though those webs don’t fully block
the path. The passage in the center has a bowl or pit in the center - almost like
a fire pit. At the end of each outer hallway, there’s a pool of water. Additionally, the walls
facing them include some of the same markings they saw on the obelisk in the Frostweald. Scanlan fits
his Ioun stone into the slot, and the room lights up. They start making their way across the room,
but Scanlan teleports to the other side - and finds himself right next to a male sphinx, lying
lazily, fondling a crystal ball, waiting for them. MATT: “You, you seek power, glory,
retribution. I know your quarry, and I know your goal. She has told me. I can
show you. But all great knowledge should not be given. You must be proven. It must be earned.
It must be EARNED.” And as his voice roars, the room echoes and you can see wind begin to
whip all around you. Glancing over your shoulder, you guys can see now the empty pit in the center
of the hall behind you is now whipping into a whirlwind and what appears to be a small
centralized cyclone that's now rising up, meeting the ceiling, staying stationary in place,
arcing there. The braziers flame up even brighter now, the flames, you can feel the heat even
from your distance at this point. You can see now the sphinx is baring its gleaming white
teeth there at the top. “What. Is. My. Name?” SAM: Fuck.
MATT: Roll initiative. MARISHA: We have no fucking clue!
LAURA: Oh my god! So now the four elements are clearly represented
in the room. And it’s initiative, so let’s start with some highlights before we get to the lesson,
and then we'll have more highlights after the lesson. Percy starts experimenting with the elements,
and Vax holds an action in case the sphinx attacks anybody. Then, on initiative count 20, a lair
action kicks in. Wind rushes through the room, and everybody has to make a
Constitution save. Scanlan, Grog, and Vex fail, and they age about 15 to
20 years. There’s no mechanical consequence, though, so it’s not the end of the world… but
this is a very roleplay-heavy group, so this is something that would likely have some consequences
even if there was no mechanical detriment. It’s also worth noting that Travis seems to have
gotten confused about his exhaustion rules, unless I’ve missed something, he’s rolling his
saving throws at disadvantage, but I don’t think he has three levels of exhaustion, he only has
two. Now, this is a pretty easy mistake to make, and it won’t matter that much in this combat…
might be relevant in the next session, though. Anyway, the sphinx roars, and half the party is
now frightened. So things are jumping off. Pike casts Freedom of Movement on Grog, that’ll be
useful later. And now, Grog faces off against the sphinx. And he gets one more Strength
point, bringing him to 25 Strength, which is the max for Craven Edge. And sure enough, Craven
Edge finally gets what he wanted - he gets full. MATT: As you do, a voice
in your head goes, “Yesss.” TALIESIN: Oh my god. MATT: At this point, as you look at the blade,
the blade now begins to emanate a shadow aura stronger than previously that begins to also form
around your upper shoulders, drifting. The blade suddenly extends another foot, the edges of it
that were smooth project with a jagged, thorny outside. The blade itself now is longer, thicker,
and far more dangerous-looking than it was before. Until your next short rest, all attacks with
the sword do an additional 2d6 necrotic damage. ALL: Whoa!
TRAVIS: (laughs) Super Saiyan, motherfucker! The sphinx uses three legendary actions to cast
a spell, and casts Flame Strike on the twins. So, hey, that’s good to know, good to know
that that’s something he can do. Meanwhile, on each of their turns, they’re all just
randomly guessing possible names - names of gods, names that might match Osysa’s, names of the
continents. And no, none of them are right. Because obviously, the clue was “a name is
earned,” not “a name is randomly guessed.” Some phase spiders emerge from the spider
webs, and as soon as they bite someone, they deal psychic damage and then they
flash out of existence. That’s going to keep happening throughout the fight,
I’m not gonna call it out every time, but that’s a cool way to incorporate
something like a hoard of minions. They each vanish once they succeed in biting
someone, although they can also just be murdered like typical phase spiders if
you don’t want to get bitten by them. Percy slashes through the webbing, and
reveals a carving on the wall that reads “Windows and doors.” A callback to the
first riddle. Water and sky. Now they can stop guessing every proper noun they can
think of, and work on the actual solution. Then the sphinx messes with time,
and everybody re-rolls initiative. And then we jump to the sphinx’s next
turn. And at first, Matt rules that, because Scanlan and Vex rolled higher than
the sphinx, their turns get skipped. Then he realizes that Scanlan has the same initiative as
the sphinx, so *only* Vex gets skipped because she rolled the highest initiative. And that’s a
huge bummer for Laura. But then Matt rules that the power doesn’t actually specify that it stays
on the sphinx’s turn once he resets initiative, so he just starts at the top of the round. He
says, out loud, “I could be a dick about it, but it’s more fun to not have your turn lost.”
Especially because only one player would suffer from this, and it’s especially the player who
already gets FOMO and this would explicitly leave her out, as well as punishing her for
rolling the best of the group. So he decides, no, it’s just easier to start at the top of
initiative - nobody gets left out, and it’s also a valid reading of the rule. So, yeah, like he
says, “It’s more fun to not have your turn lost.” If you find that to be a controversial statement
and you don’t like it when Matt bends his rulings, not even breaks the rules, so his players have more fun,
um, eat my shorts, D&D is a game, and you’re a weirdo. On her turn, Vex sets the immovable rod, ties a
rope to it, and dives into the water. Then Matt runs to her and whispers something to her… for
a long time. When Matt goes back to his table, Vex pulls herself out of the water and shouts two
letters: K-A. And the sphinx makes eye contact with her, and seems to register that she’s
on the right track. And she tells everybody, make sure you have a rope. She didn’t have to
roll anything, but whatever Matt said to her, it seems clear that she could’ve gotten
lost in that water if she hadn’t had the rope. She also takes some cold damage from
the water once she’s emerges from the pool. So, that’s the riddle. There are elemental
features around the room, which seem to lead to the elemental planes. And once they go through
each portal, they will get to see a section of the sphinx’s name. But they can’t actually report
on what they see until they get back, and if they don’t take proper precautions, they might not
be able to get back at all. And there might be some other mechanical consequences for going into
the portal, like the cold damage Vex just took. And adding to the chaos, they’re currently
being attacked by a CR 17 androsphinx, and there’s a bunch of phase spiders
bursting into the fight every so often. Now, does this riddle make sense? Well, it
certainly suits a D&D game well, and ultimately, that’s the most important thing. There are some
things in Critical Role that happen the way they do because of how D&D works, and I would put
this riddle into that camp. That’s why this encounter was wildly different in the cartoon,
because a scripted narrative has very different needs than a D&D game. But you still might
feel like this riddle is just too contrived, and that’s fine - everybody’s threshold for that
is very different, I would assume. But taking this riddle as it is, and accepting that it's
a little bit artificial because it has to suit the needs of a D&D game, we talked about that
a little bit earlier… well, I think this is a much cleaner solution to executing on the core
fantasy of the sphinx, while also not punishing the players for solving the riddle. In fact, it
seems like some of those riddles weren’t actually clues to solve those previous rooms - they were foreshadowing for this chamber. They were clues for when the party got here. And, again,
it simply wouldn’t be fun to hand your players a bunch of chunks of letters and just watch
the two puzzle-lovers, Taliesin and Marisha, re-arrange them to find the right combination… so
Matt has a lot of other factors at play to make this challenge a lot more engaging for everybody,
and to give everybody something to do. In fact, because there is so much going on, everybody can
basically choose what they want to interact with. At this point in the fight so far, Scanlan and
Grog have been focused on running interference on the sphinx while everybody else experiments
with the other features of the room - and Vax is kind of doing both, he’s just trying to be
as useful as possible and help however he can, which could be the title of his autobiography. But
now, they have a goal, they understand the riddle. Unlike the lion heads, this isn’t a “gotcha”
where they get the answer right, but they then get thrown into a skill challenge anyway. Here,
there’s a lot of very clear foreshadowing that this is not going to be easy - and performing the
skill challenge will help them solve the riddle. The answer to the riddle is the reward. Yeah,
it’s still completely contrived, although I do think it still works because the sphinx knew they
were coming and Osysa put in a good word for them, so you’d have to assume that the sphinx might be
a lot less lenient if he thought they were evil, he might’ve just killed them along the way. And
you can also argue that the sphinx needs to know that Vox Machina can *protect* these Vestiges
and the knowledge he’s gonna give them, because otherwise someone more powerful could overpower
the heroes and steal the Vestiges from them, and the sphinx can’t let that happen. So that’s
why there are these traps to help basically figure out if the heroes are qualified. But whether you
buy my justifications or not, those contrivances still lead to what is ultimately a smart solution
to trying to channel the concept of the riddle of the sphinx from the original myth, while also
running a fun and challenging game of D&D. Okay, now let’s jump back into the highlights.
Percy digs through the rocks, puts on his mask, and shoves his face into the pool of sand -
and comes out with J-I, and some bludgeoning damage from the rocks. Keyleth becomes a fire
elemental and shoves her head into the fire, and comes out with M-A-L, and being a fire
elemental negates all the fire damage. So, assuming the other fire and water portals
would be repeats of the ones they entered, which they don’t know for sure but it’s a solid
guess… then the last clue is in the wind portal in the center of the room. Which Grog jumps into…
with no tether to hold him in place. Oh, and also, with the other players questioning
whether or not Grog can even read. Matt runs up and whispers to Travis, and then
he gets back to his table and starts resolving this in front of the entire group. He makes
it clear that Travis can’t communicate what the letters said yet, because he’s on another
plane of existence and nobody can hear him - but given what he’s going through, it’s going to
be way too complicated to handle this in a whisper. Grog does call out the letters into his
earring, but Travis does not say them out loud, because sure enough, Matt tells him the signal
does not go through the portal to another plane, so nobody would hear it. And now Grog is drifting
away into the plane of air, about 15 feet from the portal. He hooks Craven Edge onto the chain of
returning and hucks it through the portal, and it catches onto something. He pulls himself through
the portal… but everybody at the table can see the battle map. They know what Grog hit. They already
know whose miniature was next to the portal. MATT: You pull the chain and you make your
way to the portal, you put your hands out, pull through, and as you do, the chain in
your hand– you look and you can see now, grasping onto the edge of the wall, you see
Pike, sweat dripping down her face as Craven Edge has embedded itself into her abdomen.
She's holding it, and she looks at you with a gritted face and she goes, “It's okay,
Grog. You're back, that's all that matters.” LAURA: That's the saddest thing ever! TRAVIS: I crawl through the door.
Can I run to Pike? That's my turn. SAM: Did you get any of his name? MATT: Doesn't have a chance yet. Now, it’s interesting that Matt says Grog doesn’t
have a chance to call out the letters once he gets back. Maybe that’s because he already tried to
call them out while he was through the portal. Maybe it’s just because Matt feels Grog would
be shell-shocked after seeing Pike injured, just a couple of episodes after Grog killed
her in a dream. Or maybe it’s just because Travis already said, “That’s my turn.” And
maybe Travis did that… because *Travis* felt Grog would be too shell-shocked. Or
because he felt he’d done more than enough on his turn. Either way, the group
has to move on without his knowledge yet. The sphinx teleports next to Pike and Grog,
and that ain’t gonna be good. On Vex’s turn, she asks Grog what he’s seen - but here, Matt
does call for Grog to make a Wisdom saving throw, to see if he can give her the information, or if he’s
still rocked by seeing Pike hurt. But he fails, so Matt rules that Grog is still in shock. So
Vex just heals her instead. Scanlan Dimension Doors into the tornado - and here, Matt just
describes what he sees for the whole table: Scanlan sees chunks of land floating in the air,
and one of those islands has some letters carved into it. Matt runs up and whispers the letters
to Sam, but that’s the end of Scanlan’s turn. The sphinx takes another lair action, and the
half-elves all fail their saves and age 10 more years. Interestingly, I think *this* is how
the D&D designers tried to factor the riddle of the sphinx into the design of the monster,
since the original riddle was “What walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon,
three in the evening,” it turns out it’s man, and those are the different eras of life.
So in the design, they gave the sphinx the power to push man *through* those different
eras of life. That’s certainly one approach, I guess. Doesn’t really capture the “solve
a riddle” angle at all in any way possibly, but it’s still a cool power. Then the sphinx
roars, and Vax, Pike, and Grog fail their saves and they’re deafened - but if they also failed
the fear roll earlier, now they’re petrified. Except Grog still has Freedom of Movement on
him, so he’s *not* paralyzed, thank you, Pike. On his turn, Grog calls out the letters -
O-R-I. And then he does nothing. He leaves Craven Edge on the ground, and does
not attack the sphinx. This may have been his moment of clarity when it
comes to the dangers of Craven Edge. Now, obviously the cast was semi-joking about
how Grog can’t read, and I am sure plenty of audience members will feel like, well, if Grog
canonically can’t read, how could he get these letters? And the answer is this: Grog’s inability
to read is a fantastically fun character trait, it’s something Travis has a lot of fun with.
Grog also struggles a lot with numbers, which is why we got the fantastic “haggling”
scene. But when it’s time to talk strategy, Travis doesn’t always worry about that stuff,
because he actually wants to, you know, contribute to the game and not be completely
hamstrung. Now, I talk all the time about how Matt honors his players’ choices - and sometimes that
does mean imposing a consequence because of these choices. But there is a line. Now, where that line
falls ultimately depends a lot on the players and the table. But in this case, the cast of Critical
Role plays an incredibly tactical game. And Travis often enjoys participating in those tactics.
And so gating him off from that because he likes to joke about how dumb his character is…
well, that just wouldn’t be the right fit for this game. Also, there is really no specific
Intelligence number when a character becomes illiterate vs. literate, aside from, like, a 1
when you get Feeblemind cast on you. So it really is more of a roleplaying choice than anything
else, and Matt didn’t feel that it was worth determining that Grog can’t actually help solve
the riddle, when he actually did throw himself into the portal specifically because he wanted
to help - and he did that instead of staying and doing damage to the sphinx, which is really what
his character is *built* to do. And so actually, Matt is still honoring his player’s choice - by
allowing him to play the game the way he wants to. Percy was holding his action for
when he heard the last letters, so now it’s time to try to make some combos
and try some guesses. Matt allows Percy to call out three possible names with each
action, that’s the most reasonable way to keep someone from just shouting
out every possible name in one turn. On the sphinx’s turn, he knocks Vex unconscious.
Vax throws a lasso around Grog’s neck - which, actually, I guess that’s just a noose - and
Vax uses Grog as his tether as he jumps into the tornado to rescue Scanlan. On Scanlan’s
turn, he casts Dimension Door to the portal, but he actually - he thought he’d be able
to teleport through the portal that way, but he can’t, that’s not how it works, so
thankfully, he can use the rope to pull himself through, he can heal Vex when he
gets through. Wind rips through the room, and Vex ages another four years - she’s
aged 29 years in the past 30 seconds. Percy calls out some more names and
he lands on “Kamaljiori” - and Matt switches from Battle music to Peaceful
music, and the portals begin to close, so Grog yanks Vax to safety before he
gets sealed in the Elemental Plane of Air. Kamaljiori’s demeanor changes entirely,
he is much more regal and respectful now. MATT: “I apologize for the formalities, but
it is a pleasure to meet you, Vox Machina.” TALIESIN: Hello. MARISHA: Hi. LAURA: You too. SAM: What was his name again? MATT: “Kamaljiori.” LIAM: Hahaha, good one, that was a good
one. Hazing. Who doesn't love hazing, right? He’s also able to restore Vex’s youth, and
suggests Pike can help de-age the others, casting Greater Restoration. And now it’s time to
learn something about the Vestiges of Divergence. First - Kamaljiori actually has one that he
can give to them. A thin blade that vibrates, that literally sort of hums. This is Mythcarver,
gifted to the sphinx by the White Duke before his passing - that’s a reference to an NPC named after
David Bowie, who had passed away early that year, so he got a cameo in Matt’s lore a couple of
times this year. It’s an ideal weapon for a bard, it works in sync with the Cutting
Words and Bardic Inspiration features, so he hands it off to Scanlan. And then Kamljiori
starts listing off more Vestiges, and everybody starts frantically trying to write them all down
- but Matt does something really smart here: MARISHA: What was that called again? MATT: Don't worry, I wrote
all these down for you guys. LAURA: Oh, thank you. I know, I'm
like, there's going to be a test later! MATT: I know. I got this for you guys. This moment has stuck with me for eight years.
Matt really does not hold his players’ hands when it comes to taking notes, and I’m sure we’ll talk
a lot more about that in another video. But this is maybe some of the most important exposition
they will ever receive in the entire campaign. The Chroma Conclave is about two parallel
storylines - hunting dragons, and tracking down the Vestiges to help kill those dragons. So they
need to agree on exactly what they need to do, so there can’t be any discrepancies in their
notes, or any details they forgot to write down. And rather than pause multiple times to
repeat himself to make sure they all get the information correct… he just tells them that he’s
going to give them a handout of this exposition. I do this exact same thing when I run my Curse
of Strahd game. When my players receive the tarokka reading and learn what they will need
to do in the campaign, I tell them in advance, “What you’re about to learn will stick
in your mind… almost supernaturally, it will be very easy to recall this
information.” And then I tell them, “I’m gonna drop this reading word-for-word into
the Discord after the session, so you can just copy-paste it into your notes.” And that way, they
don’t need to frantically type while I talk - they can just sit back and enjoy the scene. And it
was inspired by this moment from this episode, it worked so well that I just stole this
trick entirely for my games. Speaking of which… let’s go ahead and sit back and
enjoy Matt’s exposition about the Vestiges: MATT: “Fenthras, the Wrath of the Feywarden, a bow that felled Titans. It was
lost in the Feywild in the Calamity.” LIAM: Obviously for Scanlan. LAURA: Obviously. MATT: “It now acts as the heart of a cancerous
tree, corrupting the verdant land there. The Plate of the Dawnmartyr, beacon of protection to
the chosen of Pelor, gathers dust on a wall in the City of Brass, a trophy won by a fire giant
in a card game from a Suutan bloodline that once donned it. Cabal's Ruin, a magic-devouring
cloak once used by an assassin to eliminate the unscrupulous den of Druja. It is now worn by a
merchant-warrior with a missing eye in the walls of Ank'harel. The Spire of Conflux, a staff
born from Melora's very breath, was devoured, along with its previous owner, by a goristro
named Yenk in the endless maze of the Abyss.” SAM: Let's go there! MATT: “The Titanstone Knuckles were taken from
the brutalized corpse of their proud owner, now worn by a terrible half-giant turned tyrant
in Westruun. I sense you know this, tall one. I can taste your fear from here. Whisper, blade
forged from metal pulled from the Far Realm, was a center to many a dark ritual. It
now lies at the bottom of the Ozmit Sea, sunken with the lost ship, The Shrew, in a storm
300 years ago near an island of glass. Know that all life is connected on an impossibly small
level, beyond the mind's ability to understand on your level. Ideas transcend distance and language.
Many share dreams, thoughts, inspirations without knowing. The fact that you are now aware of these,
others too may now be drawn to the search as well. Beware. Now go. You have earned the name, you
have earned the knowledge. The race is on.” I love how evocative each of those descriptions
are. You can easily imagine an entire adventure focused on each of these items, and in fact, you
might choose to mock one up if you wanted to run something differently from how it played out in
the campaign, and you’d have a lot to work with. And of course, the players’ minds are starting to swim
with expectations and fantasies for what they might find when they reach these vestiges, and plans
for how they might be able to recover them. Then sand swirls around them, and they
are teleported to back outside the cave. And that’s the end of the game… except
then they do establish that Craven Edge *did* come along with Grog, he didn’t leave it
behind. And while that was Travis’ decision, he seems to have some mixed feelings
about that. That’s interesting. So, let’s recap some of the topics we talked
about today, and some of the lessons that we learned. We talked about how frustrating
summoning spells are, which is something the folks at Wizards of the Coast have been trying to
fix for, like, half a decade now. We talked about how low-stakes battles can give your players
a chance to flex their muscles and do things they don’t usually do, which helps improve their
creativity and versatility in future combats. We talked about ending an interrogation on your
terms by giving your NPCs an excuse to stop talking. We talked about how Sam does a great
job of distinguishing what he knows versus what his character knows. We talked about how Matt
continued to honor the casting of Find the Path even though it’s not really rules-as-written
that she would still have the spell active, which might not have been intentional but it was
still probably a very nice gesture to help smooth over the previous episode’s rules debates. We
talked about how riddles kind of suck in D&D, and how Matt tried to solve this by tying skill
challenges to the riddles. We talked about the two ways he did that, one of which I feel worked way,
way better than the other one. We talked about how Matt did not punish Grog for being illiterate
when it meant he wouldn’t have been able to help solve the riddle. And we talked about giving your
players a copy of the really important exposition, so they can relax and not stress about taking
notes during what might be some of the most important exposition during the entire campaign.
And that’s a *lot* of ground to cover in just one episode, but if we can boil it all down to
one lesson, the most important thing we talked about in this video, it’s this: Go watch Die
Hard 3, “Die Hard With a Vengeance.” It rules. Thank you so much for watching, we’ll be
back in two weeks to discuss episode 50, “Best Laid Plans…” This episode opens with
one of my favorite scenes from this arc, and then a lot of the rest of it is table-setting
for the next adventure, but there should still be some great lessons to learn. If you
want to see me take these videos weekly, support me on Patreon or become a YouTube Member
- once I reach 1,000 paid subscribers across both those platforms, I should have enough support to
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sign up for my newsletter to stay up-to-date with all of my major life changes! We referenced the
“Find the Path” spell a few times in this video, so if you haven’t seen me discuss the last episode
where that spell was kind of a whole thing, make sure to go back and check it out right
here. Until next time, play fair and have fun.
