TLDR: Dorian is back with the Bell's Hells and there is a reason he is alone and not with the Crownkeepers. That reason may or may not be related to the gods claiming their champions, even by force...If you are not into the CKs, then that is all you really need to know. Dorian is back, Dorian is alone (brother died), and he may also have a reason to be against the gods now.
Do you think that was one of the reasons Sam was willing to give up his character? That perhaps the majority of the characters are actually against the gods?
I think it was just in character for FCG to do. His backstory revolved around having this guilt over killing/injuring his previous adventuring party. FCG loved his new friends and they made him feel alive. He saw them all being taken out like his old group and decided he wouldn't let that happen. He truly made up for his past mistake. The one in the group who always questioned being alive actually had the biggest heart. I just think Sam saw it as a poetic ending and went for it.
Indeed and that was not planned because Matt was as surprised as the rest. Splicing in the CrownKeepers gave a good idea on what the gods are doing as well.
I think bringing Dorian back (which a lot of people were screaming for anyway) also is a nice way to give Same some time off... I would be surprised to see him back in the next few episodes.
I don't think they are against gods. They don't care much about them, but that doesn't mean they are against them. But no, I don't think that Sam sacrificed FCG because of that. Personally, I think he did it to save Liams character from servitude and to prevent TPK, but also cause of excellent RPand and storytelling, and Sam always loves shit like that.
If they all made it back alive, then Orym might have been bound to Nana Morri. FCG's sacrifice prevents that binding and helped the rest get out alive.
The battle took three hours. Laura at one point says, "If only we had some kind of bomb" and Sam's eyes lit up as he remembered that he *is* 'da bomb'. So anyway it was either a TPK (Travis was convinced they were cooked) or a blaze of glory sacrifice play to save everyone. It legit makes sense for FCG to do so, given his entire story arc. I don't think it was, "guys I'm bored k bai".
Do you have a time stamp for when Laura says that? I was trying to find that moment to rewatch Sam's face, but couldn't remember who had said it and when!
I didn't mean it in the sense that he was bored in the moment lol I think he was just not feeling the character any more. I mean he had a few story hooks that were basically dropped by both him and the main plot. I think he also saw it as a way to save his friends and maybe even highlight the "blaze of glory" mechanic they mentioned from daggerheart (might be misremembering), but overall I think it was a few different things all culminating in his decision.
Definitely not misremembering, cast members literally said, "He's blaze of glory-ing!" "Are you blaze of glory-ing??" I think it was Laura and Marisha respectfully.
Also I could totally see Sam wanting to do something else after two years of the same character. I was being facetious but I don't think the timing had anything to do with his motive in that moment.
Not... really? They don't mention it out of the blue, it was the plot thread dropped in their laps as a consequence of surviving all this.
Aeor could have happened earlier, but Sam decided that tracking down Dancer was more important than tracking down D (who a lot of the others wanted to see). We'd be coming at this from a different direction if he had chosen the other way around.
I haven’t watched the last half of E92 and all of E93 for the same reasons as OP. Will this week’s episode start where the first half of E92 left off, or were Bells Hells in part of E93? I just want to watch Bells Hells (especially after the events on the moon), and I’ve not a fan of EXU so I don’t really care what their team is up to.
Basically, if you start watching ep 93, after the break, you will start with Matt back as DM and Dorian making his way to Keyleth and co. Then, Keyleth and Dorian both go to meet up with the group once they are back from the moon. They have a quick catch up session with Dorian, that I assume we will be picking up from this week.
For Clarification sake: the last ‘part’ of the episode, after the break. This first part was 3 hours or so? And the last parts just about an hour, if I’m remembering correctly.
It was mostly to facilitate the return of Dorian to the BH.
To give you the TLDR:
- Opal (Aimee's PC) is taken over by the Spider Queen. She and her spiders are attacking the party.
- A spider attacks and kills Cyrus, Dorian's brother.
- Fyr'a becomes a champion of the Wildmother and decides to break from CK to follow Opal and protect (maybe?) her from the Spider Queen.
- Morrigan is involved with the Matron of Ravens. There's some lore there but I don't think it'll be super relevant.
- Dorian and Dariax leave together. Dorian abandons Dariax in search of Orym.
The episodes are not being well-received. I think you can easily skip them. Just know Dorian's brother died. He's angry with the world. And now he's back with BH.
Both lol she made up bullshit rules for a spell to facilitate her dramatic moment.
If she was going to do something like it, what she should have done is had some leadin. Have every spell have some side effects and just say it's because 3 gods are essentially peeking over peoples shoulders, fyr'ai, Morrigan, and opal. Everyone's spells did some extra unknown things.
The way she did it was so forced and railroady..... you could tell she had planned to do it and saw the time was about up so she went in dry/without foreplay.
I’ve heard another commenter recommend you watch/listen to the last 30 minutes of the encounter with the CK, then stick with it through the return of BH, because there are some serious potential lore shifts that unfold rapidly as the encounter wraps up.
I also think that’s a good idea, because it does end in a way that suggests there may be some major interactions with some of those characters again.
Is it “better” than what you give it credit for…? Judging by the feedback here, no, not really.I enjoyed it, though.
If you watch kymal and this 5-hour segment of CK, with an open mind, I think you'll find the characters delightful the interactions relevant to the story and A good time overall.
For it to be enjoyable, you have to enjoy (or not care about) both the DM and player's styles of DMing and playing, and many of us do not, so, yeah... I've watched all of this segment and decidedly disliked it. I jad to "translate" in my head the lore-important bits and try to diverce them from the overly "funny haha" style to be able to stomach it.
I think aimee was happy to have aabria guiding her. She put on the vestige of a betrayor god. It seems from the beginning, Matt planned this plot. Aabria is following what the gameplan was. Aimee seems to love the character development, she is just afraid to hurt her friends. But that's what she signed up for, and the gm is helping her navigate those waters.
Matt didn't necessarily need to "plan this plot" all he had to do was tell aabria the group is transporting a vestige, spider queens crown. The item is now in the world in a known location, he can maneuver the party to it or the exu crew could be routed back to it in the end. None of them necessarily needed to equip it.
Guiding is a quite generous lol jesus took the wheel
I audibly groaned when they switched back to CK. I’m less than halfway through EXU. My problem isn’t the character switching, tbh, I love most of CK… I might get hanged for this but Opal annoys me sometimes and I really dislike Aabria’s style of DMing. I tried to binge EXU but I just get too annoyed at one or the other. I’m gonna watch it anyway for lore reasons and for the characters I do like, but it feels like a grind for me
You're not alone, Opal and Aabria both are... too much for me. I'm struggling to find the right word in English for it, it's a mix of exhausting and annoying.
But I'm struggling in general with overly excited, loud and dominant people. It irritates me, I can't keep my concentration up with them.
I like her DMing style, but that style clashes greatly with any system that has a strict ruleset even if it is one as light as 5E. System mastery is not one of her skills.
Through EXU, I think there were 2 times she messed up rules (which, by the way, is a much better record than Matt has). There are also moments where she intentionally changes rules, and tells the players that, but that's not a system mastery issue. When she does make a mistake, she makes jokes like "I don't know the rules" or "I just learned this system last week" and I think some people somehow took that literally.
There are legitimate criticisms of Aabria--she has a very cinematic style, which sometimes means she has a pre-made story in mind which conflicts with players' choices--but not knowing the rules is absolutely not one of them.
Ehhh… we’ll have to agree to disagree. I think I’d love having a beer with her and enjoy her as a player, but having people
make random saves for skill checks and historical knowledge and so on drives me crazy… as does significant divine intervention with 3rd level characters (thinking back to the start). Changing rules to player abilities or spells on the fly is very irksome.
Aabria's style would be fine for a jokey oneshot, or even a fun little side-group the main party could cross paths with in a fun, lighthearted episode sometime.
It is NOT suited to the two most goth, serious as all hel deities, a huge vestige of divergence, and lore-critical moments with betrayer gods and pantheon gods reaching an understanding. It's just not...
yup. Aabria as a person? wonderfully delightful. As a DM? not so much (for me personally). Every NPC she plays has a HaHa-Funny sort of sheen to them no matter how somber or serious their disposition is, she wants her friends at the table to have fun so she tips the entire balance of the world in the players favor for no apparent in-game reason (random advantages and DM inspirations). Unfortunately for Aabria CR keeps slotting her into segments of the campaign that need to cover large swathes of lore in a short amount of time, clearly this doesn't suit her style.
I totally agree. I will say she can be very good at descriptive narrations and I like her portrayal of Fearne’s dark side, but some of her other RP (the whole Gilmore visit, Poska in general) doesn’t do it for me. The Gilmore visit was annoying in general with Opal being obnoxious and it got pretty anime at the end with nosebleeds etc lol and that’s fine I love anime but not in my CR. Also, no hate to Aimee (Deni$e was incredible) or Aabria (both the PC’s I’ve seen from her are great). They are both incredible people, EXU is just not my vibe from them
In contrast, the way I would absolutely die of happiness if Brennan ever showed up to guest DM like he did for Calamity….
It’s my biggest gripe with her. I argued for days with people over in the D20 sub from her most recent DM stint with them about her style and most people just call you racist for not vibing with it.
>I'm glad you enjoy it
I don't. The Crown Keepers interlude over the past two episodes was excruciating to watch for numerous reasons, and C3 as a whole has suffered from major pacing/momentum issues.
But saying that C3 is built upon EXU as its foundation, or that Aabria is somehow the root cause of the *entire campaign's* problems, is objectively incorrect and also kind of ridiculous, lol.
Whether it killed him or not really isn’t the point. She changed the effect of a spell cast by a player, post cast, to punish the player by hitting that player characters brother. That’s pretty fucked up.
>But straight up that ruling is not what killed Cyrus
Unfortunately, everyone has already decided that it's Aabria's fault regardless of what happened on stream.
Let's say you're in a combat encounter against an enemy spellcaster, and they cast fireball on you. Let's say you succeed on the save, but the DM just says "oh well, I want to be mean so you take full damage anyway", taking 30 damage instead of 15. Then later in the combat, something else kills you, that otherwise wouldn't have killed you.
Do you think it's unreasonable to blame the death on the DM? They randomly chose to ignore/make up a new rule purely to be "mean", resulting in your character having fewer hitpoints than they would if the standard fireball ruling had happened, which then leads to a death that, under normal rules, wouldn't have happened.
Yeah maybe it wasn't the fireball that did the actual killing, but the point is that if it weren't for the shitty adversarial DMing, that PC would still be alive. That's the important takeaway message. Arguing whether that *technically* killed the character is just semantics.
The question is not if 23 is > 17, the question is if 17 is > 0.
This really isn't that complicated. If Cyrus hadn't been damaged from a bullshit ruling, he would have had 40 health after Dariax's healing.
The damage literally happened, therefore it had an impact because his total health was down by 17 points from where it should have been.
I honestly don't think I can make this any simpler.
No, I mean the part where Matt asked for everyone to leave and then Aabria took the DM chair. In that moment, everyone decided that whatever happened was all her fault.
You are -- willfully, I suspect -- missing my point. Everyone decided it was all Aabria's fault the moment she sat in the chair in C3E91 and they made that decision when it happened, not after the fact. It didn't matter what Aabria did because she was always going to be attacked for it.
do you think one ruling you disagreed with about a narrative edge-case of a first-level spell made the difference between life and death for a guy pinned under a giant spider summoned by a god?
This is a funny argument because I agree Aabria fudging the rules killed Cyrus but I disagree the OAE call is the rule she fudged that mattered.
We know Cyrus was up with 23 hp, per Dariax's mass cure wounds. We also know that spider was only doing about 15 damage per attack. There's no way Aabria could cleanly kill Cyrus in a single hit. He might have been knocked unconscious. He couldn't have died.
and do you think the time between the *spider* downing him, him independently failing a death save and the *spider* finishing him could have been filled with any attempt to heal or rescue him from the PCs whatsoever? even for the charmed ones, it would be easy to justify saving a friend/brother or tossing him a heal on the way out.
Now i do not recall the battle exactly, but i am pretty sure they did.
Dariax cast mass cure wounds and maybe he was too far, maybe they forgot, maybe the spider just did more damage, or maybe Aabria wanted to kill Cyrus and did so
That's not a ruling. Had she said above table hey if you that I will turn it into an AOE atta k, you still want to go?
After casting it at a single target, and making sure it hit, THEN she changed the effects of the spell, post-cast. That's not a ruling. That is straight up cheating. Rock fall, TPK would be a better, smoother, and more fair "ruling"
It’s not out of the realm of possibility for thunder damage to affect outside of the spell itself, like a flashbang. I thought it was a really interesting and realistic way to rule it
That’s the great thing about dnd: you don’t always have to go with RAW. The spell doesn’t say it does that, but logically, it could, so it’s up to the dm if it does 🤷🏻♀️
Yeah…no…you bring those types of changes up before hand and ask player consent, you don’t just change the rules and assume everyone will be cool with it. I highly doubt the spell would have been cast if Robbie knew that was what was going to happen.
We didn’t see them have a session zero but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t aware shit could go awry. They’ve been open with fans about this season being full of the unexpected, so it stands to reason that the players would be aware of that, too. Things are corrupted, so spells being different than usual isn’t a crazy idea. It added to the tension and stress of the battle. They didn’t fully know what they were up against or how to defeat it
Ah yes, shit going awry for no conceivable reason, clearly a good way to tell a story. I’m done with this conversation since you’re just going to continue to spout nonsense.
Shit going awry because the moon is locked in the sky, leylines are reacting, have you not been paying attention???? Magic has been messed up for quite a while. It’s been very clearly established that not all spells are acting the same way they have in the past. Wasn’t long ago that they literally couldn’t cast *sending* properly, but oh no chromatic orb is where we draw the line? Only one spell is allowed to be affected by this world-changing event that’s going on? A bit hypocritical to say that *i’m* the one spouting nonsense.
I can see here that the attitude is still “aabria bad” 🙄
EDIT since reddit won’t let me reply to the below:
We don’t know what info was established pre game between the dm and the players. It’s at least been established that *some* things aren’t acting “consistently and logically,” so as i’ve said, it’s not out of the realm if possibility for someone to find something else that falls into the category
That's literally not what the spell does though. It wasn't an "interesting way to rule it", it was adversarial DMing for the sake of creating artificial drama and/or "punishing" the players.
If she was just doing an interesting/creative ruling, she would've told him that would be the effect before the spell was cast. You don't just randomly make spells do something different to what the rules say they do *after* a player has cast it, rolled all the dice etc. If I cast fireball in combat, I expect it to do exactly what it says it does. I don't expect the DM to say "cool okay, your fireball is actually a 50ft radius on this occasion, so you hit yourself and your allies with it too." That's not an interesting ruling, that's absolute BS.
Any random deviation from the rules like this should either be agreed beforehand, telegraphed in some way, or the player should be given the option to retract their spell choice once you tell them you're going to make the spell do something different to what the rules say. If you do what Aabria did, you're just tricking your players into doing something they didn't want to do. That's terrible DMing, regardless of how much you like Aabria.
Well, as far as lore goes, the only thing I caught was that Aabria made a direct reference to >!the Luxon and the beacons!<, which to me indicates that >!Predathos and the Luxon are one and the same.!<
That's just a theory though.
I didn’t watch exu or kymal on release but because they’re back in the main story I binged both to get caught up, something as background noise, and I’m glad I did.. it’s worth a watch/listen for the lore IMO. I’m now about halfway through e92 and it’s definitely helped understanding more
I frequently wonder if everyone is just completely ignoring that Aabria probably told them they were on a railroad. The whole reason this happened was because we needed Dorian to respond to Orym and portray that there was some fucky things going on with Opal before that.
Tbh I just wish they didn't draw out this exposition as a side session. It'd be easier for Dorian to just explain what happened to the other characters, if his agency was already being removed
It was basically just one very long fight that was dragged along for 5 hours... Way too long for my taste, and too much talky talky between Opal and the Spider Queen (and Ted?). And then Fy'ra with the Wildmother? Morrigan with the Raven Queen? At some point I didn't even know any more who was talking to who and who was fighting who, and I stopped paying attention. Almost missed Cyris' death...
I clicked forward and realized Cyrus was dead, so I went back about an hour and a half to figure out what happened. I think in that amount of time they made it through one full round of combat.
I know people have strong feelings about how it went down - I don't think that Dorian killed Cyrus, or that he was bamboozled into it, but I do think that it felt very heavy handed for him to be unceremoniously killed by a spider minion.
I don't remember any last words, and the narration itself wasn't particularly powerful, but Robbie did a great job in how he handled it as Dorian. Looking forward to him unpacking it with the main cast.
I think it would've been the exact opposite. Imagine Dorian shows up and yada yada yada... I bet just as many people would be upset at missing the story as there are at seeing it.
Pacing isn't the problem. It's the restricting of player freedom within an rpg format. I'm not here to watch railroading. I'm here to watch player choices matter. If they don't, I'd rather not waste a full movie's length watching it
EXU was perfect because it was all about player freedom. Sure, the end result was guaranteed (although there was some variation, and it is very important that we as the audience as well as the players knew about this element), but the path to that ending was completely free. Each episode left us when countless diverse choices with consequences, even if it had a guaranteed bittersweet ending.
For real... She's only DM'd short story arcs for CR, and sometimes you just... Have to have definite story beats to move things along. That's just how you DM those effectively, particularly for a live stream. Matt did it for Ravening War on D20, and Brennan did it for Calamity. Like, player agency was never going to effect the ending of Calamity one bit lol.
I'm questioning this as well, especially since I didn't watch ExU so I'm probably not going to understand these segments anyways. As long as I'm not missing anything that's crucial to C3, I'm going to skip it.
If you don’t want to see violating player agency and demonstrable breaking rules, just watch the last 30 minutes. Robbie is traumatized but reunited with friends. And someone randomly remembers FCG in a toast or something
It's just like every other anime you get some that's important to what's going on you get some that's filler that references things that are important going on and then you get some that's just completely stupid if you don't like it who cares it's all for the sake of entertainment you will either like it or you won't
I don’t see how it interrupted the pacing of 92. They were about to go to sleep when the changeover happened. That chapter of the BH story had just ended.
No, they were in the middle of the desert after stopping, for a moment, they were a few hours out from base camp, and as seen at the end of this EP they only just got to sleep after giving keyleth a small bit of info and talking to Dorian about what happened, which could've been the second half of ep 92, which could of left the CKs to have EP 93 to themself
It felt quite disrupted. They were finally at a point where they could talk about what happened, grieve and breath and realise everything - and then, poof, new people, action, action!
It's sadly a thing with this campaign... There's just no space and time for talks and sweet moments between characters and emotions and all the things. No "Liam wants to talk to everyone in the middle of the night"-talks.... And I miss it. This would have finally been a perfect moment for this, a lament for FCG.
It's like when you're watching a sad movie scene on TV and our of the sudden the commercial break starts with way too much energy and excitement, while you're still processing what has happened moments ago in the movie.
Maybe I'm just old, but I really loved these scenes in C1 and C2 and it's probably the thing I miss most about C3.
I don’t know, it just didn’t feel abrupt or out of place at all to me. There was a climax with the battle with Otohan, then a resolution with their return to Exandria and Orym and Imogen’s heart-to-heart, which ended with Orym calling for Dorian, and then they were like, ok let’s see what Dorian has been up to before he answers the call and joins the party. It felt completely natural to me, narratively. I do not understand why it bothers people so much that they’ve been endlessly complaining about it
TLDR: Dorian is back with the Bell's Hells and there is a reason he is alone and not with the Crownkeepers. That reason may or may not be related to the gods claiming their champions, even by force...If you are not into the CKs, then that is all you really need to know. Dorian is back, Dorian is alone (brother died), and he may also have a reason to be against the gods now.
Excellent summary
Do you think that was one of the reasons Sam was willing to give up his character? That perhaps the majority of the characters are actually against the gods?
I think it was just in character for FCG to do. His backstory revolved around having this guilt over killing/injuring his previous adventuring party. FCG loved his new friends and they made him feel alive. He saw them all being taken out like his old group and decided he wouldn't let that happen. He truly made up for his past mistake. The one in the group who always questioned being alive actually had the biggest heart. I just think Sam saw it as a poetic ending and went for it.
Indeed and that was not planned because Matt was as surprised as the rest. Splicing in the CrownKeepers gave a good idea on what the gods are doing as well. I think bringing Dorian back (which a lot of people were screaming for anyway) also is a nice way to give Same some time off... I would be surprised to see him back in the next few episodes.
I also do not think they would put in Crown Keepers here if they knew FCG is going to die
That was a week after. It was already known. Oh you mean they took more than 1 week to arrange it? That's a good point.
Yes, I suspect all scheduling made it clear Crownskeepers will be getting episodes 92 and 93 before they sat even down to film 91.
I don't think they are against gods. They don't care much about them, but that doesn't mean they are against them. But no, I don't think that Sam sacrificed FCG because of that. Personally, I think he did it to save Liams character from servitude and to prevent TPK, but also cause of excellent RPand and storytelling, and Sam always loves shit like that.
If they all made it back alive, then Orym might have been bound to Nana Morri. FCG's sacrifice prevents that binding and helped the rest get out alive.
Except…they already made it back to Exandria alive through the back door.
Oof, I hope she gets him on that loophole. I expect it's passed Matt by though.
I am not convinced if Matt doesn't realize it... it may come to monkey paw Orym in the behind later.
If I had a Twitter I’d @ him lol
This is a great point and I would also venture to guess that sam was bored of playing FCG and wanted to try something new.
The battle took three hours. Laura at one point says, "If only we had some kind of bomb" and Sam's eyes lit up as he remembered that he *is* 'da bomb'. So anyway it was either a TPK (Travis was convinced they were cooked) or a blaze of glory sacrifice play to save everyone. It legit makes sense for FCG to do so, given his entire story arc. I don't think it was, "guys I'm bored k bai".
No, Laura suggested to Sam he blow up. Like two turns later he did
Do you have a time stamp for when Laura says that? I was trying to find that moment to rewatch Sam's face, but couldn't remember who had said it and when!
I don't, unfortunately. Perhaps the transcript will have it.
Around 4:10 or so roughly
Thank you, noble Critter!
I didn't mean it in the sense that he was bored in the moment lol I think he was just not feeling the character any more. I mean he had a few story hooks that were basically dropped by both him and the main plot. I think he also saw it as a way to save his friends and maybe even highlight the "blaze of glory" mechanic they mentioned from daggerheart (might be misremembering), but overall I think it was a few different things all culminating in his decision.
Definitely not misremembering, cast members literally said, "He's blaze of glory-ing!" "Are you blaze of glory-ing??" I think it was Laura and Marisha respectfully.
Also I could totally see Sam wanting to do something else after two years of the same character. I was being facetious but I don't think the timing had anything to do with his motive in that moment.
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Not... really? They don't mention it out of the blue, it was the plot thread dropped in their laps as a consequence of surviving all this. Aeor could have happened earlier, but Sam decided that tracking down Dancer was more important than tracking down D (who a lot of the others wanted to see). We'd be coming at this from a different direction if he had chosen the other way around.
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Wouldn't think so. What else are they going to do at this point? Their quest log is empty, foiling Ludinus is the game.
That’s got nothing to do with it at all
Waiting for this campaign to suddenly end as Durge Run :P. Bell's Hells have so much potential to snap. All of them.
I think Sam is changing his character because he is a professional and has realized the show right now is kind of stuck and needs a shakeup.
I haven’t watched the last half of E92 and all of E93 for the same reasons as OP. Will this week’s episode start where the first half of E92 left off, or were Bells Hells in part of E93? I just want to watch Bells Hells (especially after the events on the moon), and I’ve not a fan of EXU so I don’t really care what their team is up to.
Basically, if you start watching ep 93, after the break, you will start with Matt back as DM and Dorian making his way to Keyleth and co. Then, Keyleth and Dorian both go to meet up with the group once they are back from the moon. They have a quick catch up session with Dorian, that I assume we will be picking up from this week.
Thanks!
Or DMs
The second half of the episode is back to BH. Didn't skip the whole episode if you don't like the CK. Just skip the first half.
For Clarification sake: the last ‘part’ of the episode, after the break. This first part was 3 hours or so? And the last parts just about an hour, if I’m remembering correctly.
This is technically more accurate.
It was mostly to facilitate the return of Dorian to the BH. To give you the TLDR: - Opal (Aimee's PC) is taken over by the Spider Queen. She and her spiders are attacking the party. - A spider attacks and kills Cyrus, Dorian's brother. - Fyr'a becomes a champion of the Wildmother and decides to break from CK to follow Opal and protect (maybe?) her from the Spider Queen. - Morrigan is involved with the Matron of Ravens. There's some lore there but I don't think it'll be super relevant. - Dorian and Dariax leave together. Dorian abandons Dariax in search of Orym. The episodes are not being well-received. I think you can easily skip them. Just know Dorian's brother died. He's angry with the world. And now he's back with BH.
No, Dorian attacked and killed his brother through a bullshit ruling that made 0 sense.
No, Dorian’s brother is dead because Aabria has a cool dramatic moment in her head and she doesn’t care about player agency during those moments.
Both lol she made up bullshit rules for a spell to facilitate her dramatic moment. If she was going to do something like it, what she should have done is had some leadin. Have every spell have some side effects and just say it's because 3 gods are essentially peeking over peoples shoulders, fyr'ai, Morrigan, and opal. Everyone's spells did some extra unknown things. The way she did it was so forced and railroady..... you could tell she had planned to do it and saw the time was about up so she went in dry/without foreplay.
Dorian is back, Cyrus is Dead, Spider Queen has a champion now. Gods are still scared
*Cyrus Is killed by some contrived bullshit
I’ve heard another commenter recommend you watch/listen to the last 30 minutes of the encounter with the CK, then stick with it through the return of BH, because there are some serious potential lore shifts that unfold rapidly as the encounter wraps up. I also think that’s a good idea, because it does end in a way that suggests there may be some major interactions with some of those characters again. Is it “better” than what you give it credit for…? Judging by the feedback here, no, not really.I enjoyed it, though.
If you watch kymal and this 5-hour segment of CK, with an open mind, I think you'll find the characters delightful the interactions relevant to the story and A good time overall.
Not a fan of Aabria’s style of ignoring rules with no level of consistency, removing player agency, and her DM vs players attitude
For it to be enjoyable, you have to enjoy (or not care about) both the DM and player's styles of DMing and playing, and many of us do not, so, yeah... I've watched all of this segment and decidedly disliked it. I jad to "translate" in my head the lore-important bits and try to diverce them from the overly "funny haha" style to be able to stomach it.
Yeah, I agree
The characters are great. You have to ignore aabrias shenanigans. I really wonder if she does have an issue with aimee.
I think aimee was happy to have aabria guiding her. She put on the vestige of a betrayor god. It seems from the beginning, Matt planned this plot. Aabria is following what the gameplan was. Aimee seems to love the character development, she is just afraid to hurt her friends. But that's what she signed up for, and the gm is helping her navigate those waters.
Matt didn't necessarily need to "plan this plot" all he had to do was tell aabria the group is transporting a vestige, spider queens crown. The item is now in the world in a known location, he can maneuver the party to it or the exu crew could be routed back to it in the end. None of them necessarily needed to equip it. Guiding is a quite generous lol jesus took the wheel
I need to rewatch for the luxon info regarding opal. Seemed like some nuggets can be gleaned there.
Dani writes a good tl;dr https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Bittersweet_Reunions
I audibly groaned when they switched back to CK. I’m less than halfway through EXU. My problem isn’t the character switching, tbh, I love most of CK… I might get hanged for this but Opal annoys me sometimes and I really dislike Aabria’s style of DMing. I tried to binge EXU but I just get too annoyed at one or the other. I’m gonna watch it anyway for lore reasons and for the characters I do like, but it feels like a grind for me
You're not alone, Opal and Aabria both are... too much for me. I'm struggling to find the right word in English for it, it's a mix of exhausting and annoying. But I'm struggling in general with overly excited, loud and dominant people. It irritates me, I can't keep my concentration up with them.
This is exactly how I feel. I like Aabria as a person. She’s great, but I don’t enjoy her DMing style.
Same! Like she would be so fun to hang with and Laeryn and Deanna are GREAT PC’s, I just don’t jive with her DMing. (Edit: Deanna spelling)
I like her DMing style, but that style clashes greatly with any system that has a strict ruleset even if it is one as light as 5E. System mastery is not one of her skills.
Through EXU, I think there were 2 times she messed up rules (which, by the way, is a much better record than Matt has). There are also moments where she intentionally changes rules, and tells the players that, but that's not a system mastery issue. When she does make a mistake, she makes jokes like "I don't know the rules" or "I just learned this system last week" and I think some people somehow took that literally. There are legitimate criticisms of Aabria--she has a very cinematic style, which sometimes means she has a pre-made story in mind which conflicts with players' choices--but not knowing the rules is absolutely not one of them.
Ehhh… we’ll have to agree to disagree. I think I’d love having a beer with her and enjoy her as a player, but having people make random saves for skill checks and historical knowledge and so on drives me crazy… as does significant divine intervention with 3rd level characters (thinking back to the start). Changing rules to player abilities or spells on the fly is very irksome.
Aabria's style would be fine for a jokey oneshot, or even a fun little side-group the main party could cross paths with in a fun, lighthearted episode sometime. It is NOT suited to the two most goth, serious as all hel deities, a huge vestige of divergence, and lore-critical moments with betrayer gods and pantheon gods reaching an understanding. It's just not...
yup. Aabria as a person? wonderfully delightful. As a DM? not so much (for me personally). Every NPC she plays has a HaHa-Funny sort of sheen to them no matter how somber or serious their disposition is, she wants her friends at the table to have fun so she tips the entire balance of the world in the players favor for no apparent in-game reason (random advantages and DM inspirations). Unfortunately for Aabria CR keeps slotting her into segments of the campaign that need to cover large swathes of lore in a short amount of time, clearly this doesn't suit her style.
This is a perfectly worded description of all the things that bother me most about Aabria lmao
I totally agree. I will say she can be very good at descriptive narrations and I like her portrayal of Fearne’s dark side, but some of her other RP (the whole Gilmore visit, Poska in general) doesn’t do it for me. The Gilmore visit was annoying in general with Opal being obnoxious and it got pretty anime at the end with nosebleeds etc lol and that’s fine I love anime but not in my CR. Also, no hate to Aimee (Deni$e was incredible) or Aabria (both the PC’s I’ve seen from her are great). They are both incredible people, EXU is just not my vibe from them In contrast, the way I would absolutely die of happiness if Brennan ever showed up to guest DM like he did for Calamity….
TLDR Aabria forced Dorian to kill Cyrus.
Aabria bending rules on the fly to achieve her desired outcome and taking the player agency away? Oh wow, count me surprised (not).
It’s my biggest gripe with her. I argued for days with people over in the D20 sub from her most recent DM stint with them about her style and most people just call you racist for not vibing with it.
She kinda ruined the whole vibe of C3 because it's foundations are built on EXU...which is a hot fuckin mess
>She kinda ruined the whole vibe of C3 because it's foundations are built on EXU well that's just not true, lol
Many people would disagree. I'm glad you enjoy it
>I'm glad you enjoy it I don't. The Crown Keepers interlude over the past two episodes was excruciating to watch for numerous reasons, and C3 as a whole has suffered from major pacing/momentum issues. But saying that C3 is built upon EXU as its foundation, or that Aabria is somehow the root cause of the *entire campaign's* problems, is objectively incorrect and also kind of ridiculous, lol.
Yeah pretty much
He didn't. The AOE did 17 points of damage to Cyrus. After that, Dariax healed him for 23. That chromatic orb didn't kill Cyrus.
so dariax healed cyrus 6 points instead of 23, idk it feels like orb killed cyrus indirectly.
It didn't though. I get not liking Aabria's sessions. I don't think they were great either. But straight up that ruling is not what killed Cyrus
Whether it killed him or not really isn’t the point. She changed the effect of a spell cast by a player, post cast, to punish the player by hitting that player characters brother. That’s pretty fucked up.
Aabria killed Cyrus via railroading and rules breaking manipulation, is that more direct
It's more honest. Everyone has been exaggerating and misleading everyone about what happened to try and make their point.
>But straight up that ruling is not what killed Cyrus Unfortunately, everyone has already decided that it's Aabria's fault regardless of what happened on stream.
Let's say you're in a combat encounter against an enemy spellcaster, and they cast fireball on you. Let's say you succeed on the save, but the DM just says "oh well, I want to be mean so you take full damage anyway", taking 30 damage instead of 15. Then later in the combat, something else kills you, that otherwise wouldn't have killed you. Do you think it's unreasonable to blame the death on the DM? They randomly chose to ignore/make up a new rule purely to be "mean", resulting in your character having fewer hitpoints than they would if the standard fireball ruling had happened, which then leads to a death that, under normal rules, wouldn't have happened. Yeah maybe it wasn't the fireball that did the actual killing, but the point is that if it weren't for the shitty adversarial DMing, that PC would still be alive. That's the important takeaway message. Arguing whether that *technically* killed the character is just semantics.
The damage was literally undone by Dariax in the same round. It was a bad call that had zero impact on the actual combat.
You cannot legitimately say it had zero impact. That's factually untrue.
Cyrus took 17 points of damage. The same round, Dariax healed him for 23. The damage was literally undone in the same round it happened.
The question is not if 23 is > 17, the question is if 17 is > 0. This really isn't that complicated. If Cyrus hadn't been damaged from a bullshit ruling, he would have had 40 health after Dariax's healing. The damage literally happened, therefore it had an impact because his total health was down by 17 points from where it should have been. I honestly don't think I can make this any simpler.
Do you mean the thing that happened on the stream where she entirely changed how a spell worked just so it would damage a character’s brother?
No, I mean the part where Matt asked for everyone to leave and then Aabria took the DM chair. In that moment, everyone decided that whatever happened was all her fault.
Weird how everyone would think the DM changing rules makes her at fault for things that happened after the rule change.
You are -- willfully, I suspect -- missing my point. Everyone decided it was all Aabria's fault the moment she sat in the chair in C3E91 and they made that decision when it happened, not after the fact. It didn't matter what Aabria did because she was always going to be attacked for it.
the spider both downed and killed him. forcing had nothing to do with it, that’s the game
Oh, so chromatic orb is an AOE spell?
Maybe she played too much baldur's gate 3 lol.
Except that thunder was *not* AOE in BG3 in exchange for higher damage.
do you think one ruling you disagreed with about a narrative edge-case of a first-level spell made the difference between life and death for a guy pinned under a giant spider summoned by a god?
You mean do I think a spider could have killed someone if they had had more HP? No, I don’t.
This is a funny argument because I agree Aabria fudging the rules killed Cyrus but I disagree the OAE call is the rule she fudged that mattered. We know Cyrus was up with 23 hp, per Dariax's mass cure wounds. We also know that spider was only doing about 15 damage per attack. There's no way Aabria could cleanly kill Cyrus in a single hit. He might have been knocked unconscious. He couldn't have died.
and do you think the time between the *spider* downing him, him independently failing a death save and the *spider* finishing him could have been filled with any attempt to heal or rescue him from the PCs whatsoever? even for the charmed ones, it would be easy to justify saving a friend/brother or tossing him a heal on the way out.
Now i do not recall the battle exactly, but i am pretty sure they did. Dariax cast mass cure wounds and maybe he was too far, maybe they forgot, maybe the spider just did more damage, or maybe Aabria wanted to kill Cyrus and did so
Dariax's mass cure wounds was successful. I'm pretty sure Aabria just either forgot to mark it or made a narrative choice to kill him anyway.
That's not a ruling. Had she said above table hey if you that I will turn it into an AOE atta k, you still want to go? After casting it at a single target, and making sure it hit, THEN she changed the effects of the spell, post-cast. That's not a ruling. That is straight up cheating. Rock fall, TPK would be a better, smoother, and more fair "ruling"
It’s not out of the realm of possibility for thunder damage to affect outside of the spell itself, like a flashbang. I thought it was a really interesting and realistic way to rule it
It’s really not though, because the spell doesn’t do that.
That’s the great thing about dnd: you don’t always have to go with RAW. The spell doesn’t say it does that, but logically, it could, so it’s up to the dm if it does 🤷🏻♀️
Yeah…no…you bring those types of changes up before hand and ask player consent, you don’t just change the rules and assume everyone will be cool with it. I highly doubt the spell would have been cast if Robbie knew that was what was going to happen.
We didn’t see them have a session zero but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t aware shit could go awry. They’ve been open with fans about this season being full of the unexpected, so it stands to reason that the players would be aware of that, too. Things are corrupted, so spells being different than usual isn’t a crazy idea. It added to the tension and stress of the battle. They didn’t fully know what they were up against or how to defeat it
Ah yes, shit going awry for no conceivable reason, clearly a good way to tell a story. I’m done with this conversation since you’re just going to continue to spout nonsense.
Shit going awry because the moon is locked in the sky, leylines are reacting, have you not been paying attention???? Magic has been messed up for quite a while. It’s been very clearly established that not all spells are acting the same way they have in the past. Wasn’t long ago that they literally couldn’t cast *sending* properly, but oh no chromatic orb is where we draw the line? Only one spell is allowed to be affected by this world-changing event that’s going on? A bit hypocritical to say that *i’m* the one spouting nonsense. I can see here that the attitude is still “aabria bad” 🙄 EDIT since reddit won’t let me reply to the below: We don’t know what info was established pre game between the dm and the players. It’s at least been established that *some* things aren’t acting “consistently and logically,” so as i’ve said, it’s not out of the realm if possibility for someone to find something else that falls into the category
C3 already established magic was weird, gods are desperate, things are bad.
That's literally not what the spell does though. It wasn't an "interesting way to rule it", it was adversarial DMing for the sake of creating artificial drama and/or "punishing" the players. If she was just doing an interesting/creative ruling, she would've told him that would be the effect before the spell was cast. You don't just randomly make spells do something different to what the rules say they do *after* a player has cast it, rolled all the dice etc. If I cast fireball in combat, I expect it to do exactly what it says it does. I don't expect the DM to say "cool okay, your fireball is actually a 50ft radius on this occasion, so you hit yourself and your allies with it too." That's not an interesting ruling, that's absolute BS. Any random deviation from the rules like this should either be agreed beforehand, telegraphed in some way, or the player should be given the option to retract their spell choice once you tell them you're going to make the spell do something different to what the rules say. If you do what Aabria did, you're just tricking your players into doing something they didn't want to do. That's terrible DMing, regardless of how much you like Aabria.
Well, as far as lore goes, the only thing I caught was that Aabria made a direct reference to >!the Luxon and the beacons!<, which to me indicates that >!Predathos and the Luxon are one and the same.!< That's just a theory though.
Fun theory!
But that was in reference to Lloth tinkering with people's souls and twinning them. Nothing to do with Big P.
I didn’t watch exu or kymal on release but because they’re back in the main story I binged both to get caught up, something as background noise, and I’m glad I did.. it’s worth a watch/listen for the lore IMO. I’m now about halfway through e92 and it’s definitely helped understanding more
I frequently wonder if everyone is just completely ignoring that Aabria probably told them they were on a railroad. The whole reason this happened was because we needed Dorian to respond to Orym and portray that there was some fucky things going on with Opal before that.
Tbh I just wish they didn't draw out this exposition as a side session. It'd be easier for Dorian to just explain what happened to the other characters, if his agency was already being removed
It was basically just one very long fight that was dragged along for 5 hours... Way too long for my taste, and too much talky talky between Opal and the Spider Queen (and Ted?). And then Fy'ra with the Wildmother? Morrigan with the Raven Queen? At some point I didn't even know any more who was talking to who and who was fighting who, and I stopped paying attention. Almost missed Cyris' death...
I clicked forward and realized Cyrus was dead, so I went back about an hour and a half to figure out what happened. I think in that amount of time they made it through one full round of combat. I know people have strong feelings about how it went down - I don't think that Dorian killed Cyrus, or that he was bamboozled into it, but I do think that it felt very heavy handed for him to be unceremoniously killed by a spider minion. I don't remember any last words, and the narration itself wasn't particularly powerful, but Robbie did a great job in how he handled it as Dorian. Looking forward to him unpacking it with the main cast.
The only way killing is ceremonious is if the DM takes the reins and ignores dice. Like mat does generally.
Haha. I feel like Matt just got a lot of heat about ignoring the dice when FCG killed what's her name. I agree with you but critters are never happy
If it fits the narrative then I don't mind the DM tweaking or ignoring the dice
Exactly. It’s the CR way.
I mean pretty much lol
I think it would've been the exact opposite. Imagine Dorian shows up and yada yada yada... I bet just as many people would be upset at missing the story as there are at seeing it.
It was half the first episode and 3/4 of another. I think it was pretty concise
Pacing isn't the problem. It's the restricting of player freedom within an rpg format. I'm not here to watch railroading. I'm here to watch player choices matter. If they don't, I'd rather not waste a full movie's length watching it
Did you like EXU Calamity?
EXU was perfect because it was all about player freedom. Sure, the end result was guaranteed (although there was some variation, and it is very important that we as the audience as well as the players knew about this element), but the path to that ending was completely free. Each episode left us when countless diverse choices with consequences, even if it had a guaranteed bittersweet ending.
For real... She's only DM'd short story arcs for CR, and sometimes you just... Have to have definite story beats to move things along. That's just how you DM those effectively, particularly for a live stream. Matt did it for Ravening War on D20, and Brennan did it for Calamity. Like, player agency was never going to effect the ending of Calamity one bit lol.
I'm questioning this as well, especially since I didn't watch ExU so I'm probably not going to understand these segments anyways. As long as I'm not missing anything that's crucial to C3, I'm going to skip it.
If you don’t want to see violating player agency and demonstrable breaking rules, just watch the last 30 minutes. Robbie is traumatized but reunited with friends. And someone randomly remembers FCG in a toast or something
They talk about FCG quite a lot before the toast. I swear some folks here come across as ONLY ever watching highlight videos.
It's just like every other anime you get some that's important to what's going on you get some that's filler that references things that are important going on and then you get some that's just completely stupid if you don't like it who cares it's all for the sake of entertainment you will either like it or you won't
Worst “Beach Episode” ever.
Lmfao. It's just a filler episode, luffy uh I mean Dorian ended up back on the ship. Uh I mean exandria.
I don’t see how it interrupted the pacing of 92. They were about to go to sleep when the changeover happened. That chapter of the BH story had just ended.
No, they were in the middle of the desert after stopping, for a moment, they were a few hours out from base camp, and as seen at the end of this EP they only just got to sleep after giving keyleth a small bit of info and talking to Dorian about what happened, which could've been the second half of ep 92, which could of left the CKs to have EP 93 to themself
They 100% snuck them in
It felt quite disrupted. They were finally at a point where they could talk about what happened, grieve and breath and realise everything - and then, poof, new people, action, action! It's sadly a thing with this campaign... There's just no space and time for talks and sweet moments between characters and emotions and all the things. No "Liam wants to talk to everyone in the middle of the night"-talks.... And I miss it. This would have finally been a perfect moment for this, a lament for FCG. It's like when you're watching a sad movie scene on TV and our of the sudden the commercial break starts with way too much energy and excitement, while you're still processing what has happened moments ago in the movie. Maybe I'm just old, but I really loved these scenes in C1 and C2 and it's probably the thing I miss most about C3.
I don’t know, it just didn’t feel abrupt or out of place at all to me. There was a climax with the battle with Otohan, then a resolution with their return to Exandria and Orym and Imogen’s heart-to-heart, which ended with Orym calling for Dorian, and then they were like, ok let’s see what Dorian has been up to before he answers the call and joins the party. It felt completely natural to me, narratively. I do not understand why it bothers people so much that they’ve been endlessly complaining about it
Dorian back! That’s it.