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yjhariani · 1 year

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After Price almost TPK-ed them, they decided to get a new DM.

"Soap, we're back to you at the top of the initiative, whatcha gonna do?" you asked.

"Okay," Soap said as he rubbed his hands together. "What sex is the dragon?"

For a brief second, the table was quiet.

"Excuse me?" you questioned, both offended and amused at the same time.

"I mean, you've been using he/him pronouns, but I don't know if he's a female or a male," Soap explained.

You only looked at him for a second, before swiping the table to see the other players.

"Are you trying to do what I think you're gonna try to do?" you questioned.

"Which is… what?" Soap replied, hiding his mischievous thoughts but not his smile.

"If you're trying to attack this dragon in the crotch or in the tits, it's gonna be with disadvantage, especially that you're standing behind him," you stated.

"Oh, Jesus," Price sighed, shaking his head.

At the same time, Gaz started wheezing.

"I'll give it a go," Soap insisted. "So, what is he?"

"He's a male. With a cock the size of a rocket launcher, resting," you sighed.

"Yeah, so I'll lightning bolt him on the crotch," Soap said.

"Fine! Do it with disadvantage," you said.

"How close to dying is this dragon?" Ghost asked.

"Very close, my friends," you answered.

"If Soap's killing him with a final blow to the crotch it'd be a little entertaining," Ghost persuaded.

"Well, I bet," you scoffed. "We don't know if he's going to be able to, though. He's been rolling shit after he rolled that nat 20 on the initiative. He's also standing behind this dragon."

"Now that you said that, watch him roll super well," Gaz chuckled, putting a dice tray in the middle of the table.

"If I roll two natural 20s, you owe me a drink," Soap said, now rubbing his hands together with two dice in between his palms.

"Sure. If I owe you a drink, it's Ghost's money anyway," you nodded.

You looked over at Ghost and saw him looking at you with his eyes telling you, 'What the fuck?'. You could not help, but gave him an apologetic yet mischievous smile.

With that, Soap rolled his dice. The clanking sound of resin hitting wood was the only thing heard around the table until the dice landed.

Gaz was the first to make a sound and he was wheezing. Soap laughed as if he was the villain in this case. Ghost tapped the table twice in support of his friend. The captain let out lazy scoffs of laughs.

The chances were not a big one to roll the same number on twenty sided dice. However, Soap did and it was on the biggest number.

"You're telling me that I made this cool-ass dragon and you're going to kill him by shooting lightning into his dick?" you chuckled.

"Hell yeah!" Soap excitedly said.

"Okay, you hit. I did say that he's very close to dying and there's no way that your damage isn't going to kill him, so how do you wanna do this?" you proceeded.

"Ah, well done," Price commented.

"Yes!" Gaz cheered.

"This is going to be the best kill in our gameplay ever," Soap stated.

The whole table looked at Soap.

"I'm standing behind this guy. I shot my lightning bolt from the back of his dick so it looks like he's ejaculating lightning for a moment," Soap explained between laughter.

Soap was not the only one laughing. Even Ghost let out an amused scoff.

"I don't know if it's a thing I could do, but what actually happen is the lightning gets into his bloodstream and it's striking his whole body like he's having nerve damage," Soap continued. "Then, his cock fell off."

"No!" Ghost said. "I am underneath him."

"I will allow it," you said to Soap before turning to Ghost. "The dragon's dick fell on you."

"Fuck you," Ghost stated.

"So, is Simon going to take dragon dick damage?" Price questioned.

By now, Gaz had attached himself to the table due to laughing so hard. Soap was wiping tears off the corner of his eyes.

"I'm at two hit points," Ghost informed.

You rolled a four sided die into the tray that Gaz placed in the middle of the table anyway. It landed on a one.

"Take one point of dick damage," you stated.

"No, I won't," Ghost said.

"Do you want me to make Soap roll the lightning bolt damage instead?" you challenged.

Ghost only looked at you without saying anything verbally. His eyes on the other hand, looked to be giving you a warning that if you did something that cruel, he would punch something into the walls.

"Take the dick damage, Simon," Price teased.

"Hold on, doesn't the dick still have lightning?" Soap brought up.

"No! Shut the fuck up!" Ghost protested.

You chuckled.

"You killed me in the last campaign! It's only fair I kill you in this one," Soap yelled.

"Just take the win, Soap, he's taking dick damage," Price said.

#simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #ghost x reader #kyle gaz garrick x reader #gaz x reader #kyle garrick x reader #price x reader #captain price x reader #soap x reader #john mactavish x reader

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unicyclehippo · 2 years

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hey ollie!! I’ve been seeing a few… mixed reviews for this last episode, and as someone that liked it, I wanted your opinion. I’ve been hearing a lot of people call this fight ‘clumsy’ and ‘railroading’ and ‘boring’, considering the only trigger to end the fight was one specific PC doing one specific thing, and making it feel like ‘imogen is the only PC that matters, regardless of her prior reluctance in giving into her powers’ (real take I saw here on tunglr dot com). I for one was expecting a TPK followed by a group-vision, so the fact that only two are dead so far is actually doing better than anticipated. thoughts? comments? concerns?

i have happily missed all of those kinds of comments & when i stumbled on one rather harsh criticism that drifted into my world i blocked that person. i don’t rly talk about stuff like this? im more of a “lurk in the shadows & throw my writing out” person. but i have seen some ice cold takes so yeah fuck it, i’ll talk abt my impression of the episode

i really really liked it

matt has a stupidly difficult job balancing encounters for SEVEN PLAYERS. i have three players at my table & i still struggle to give them a real challenge sometimes. in my opinion, he did both the set up & the encounter brilliantly.

first of all, he set up the mythology of otohan thull in the last eight episodes or so—everything the paragons call said about her in passing, the vibes of imogen’s dreams, the fact that she was somehow in the feywild, the fact that she’s working with daleth (who WE the audience know to be Very Powerful), what ashton told the party about her being a famed warrior—& made it concrete. there is a reason she’s a famed warrior, there’s a reason she’s the head of the paragons call, there’s a reason she lunged at imogen & imogen thought she died. otohan thull is a boss level character who has the ability to kill all of them. she is Supposed to be powerful, she was set up to be powerful not just to challenge the players but also narratively. it wouldn’t make sense in the context of the world & the aggressive, martial basuras if this person wasn’t stupidly scary & stupidly proficient at murder, yknow?

secondly, the encounter. a nail biter. this one made me think of - i know people have alluded to the stress of the first vecna fight but i was thinking about raishan because that one nearly made me break my teeth clenching my jaw as hard as i did. it’s a good episode to link to (because it fucks severely & keyleth is incredible) because it’s a one-against-everyone PLUS allies & it’s one of those episodes where everyone seems to drop & get back up & by the end two revivifies were used (one failed) & they had to res ritual someone after (for those of you who don’t know, when someone has been dead for longer than a minute, they have to use the resurrection spell instead of revivify & it’s a whole extended ritual & it’s amazing RP always).

if they had fought thull tomorrow, they could have won. today was already knocked by the FCG fight, imogen used a spell to try activate the feywild shard, laudna used hunger of the shadow, fearne used heat metal & she & FCG used some healing spells too. they’d already tapped into some of their spells & abilities & then again in the chaos of the attack on the call.

if they had doubled down & fought thull & had better initiatives (though the STORY it tells of thull going first, the assassin being quicker, the person who has fought wars being scrappier & quicker on the draw) they could maybe have won. matt was saying at the end that she looked “ragged-ish” & i agree with him when he points out they spent those first vital actions running away. they didn’t know when they started that she had legendary actions/reactions. they didn’t know that she could cross this battlefield in a bonus action if she wanted to.

when you think of an encounter, it’s never just about the stats—it’s about the story. especially when it comes to matt’s world, especially when it comes to these players who balance class skills with character choices. otohan thull came out alone to fight them—she’s arrogant, but not undeservedly so, as we find out. brennan lee mulligan said the scariest encounters are the ones in which you give your bad guys a goal to complete. in this encounter, the goal was imogen—to break her, change her, recruit her? dunno—&, like everything else about otohan thull, that had been Hinted at but couldn’t be confirmed until the fight.

im gonna join this with the third point

third, concerning the idea of a dream or vision: when each encounter is a fragment of story, what does it mean that the battlefield was otherwise empty? is it just otohan’s arrogance? or does it mean something that matt didn’t describe people scurrying out of the periphery of the fight, or anyone in the building imogen tried to escape from. does the sandstorm mean anything? it didn’t have a mechanical effect in this fight when it did in the previous encounter. was that just because it died down a little or does it hint toward it being a dream/vision as people have said?

personally, i think it was real & in the immediate aftermath i did say to a friend that a dream/vision would undercut the story for me. i don’t think that anymore. dreams have been such a point of visceral terror for imogen continuously through the campaign so far that i think it would be horrifying to realise that it was a dream, to have matt play around with the limits of a dream—which is SUCH a powerful thing in the fantasy genre to use dreams as exploration or invitation or corruption, to be in dreams that are on the cusp of prophecy, dreams that are a little too real—so if that’s what they end up doing i’m totally onboard. that being said, i don’t think it is. they’ve always been direct with deaths & that sort of thing & i think that it’s a very real moment that is supposed to emphasise how they are in over their heads. orym made a very nice speech about how they’re the only ones who know the threads of what is being done & that they have to stop it—and now this. eight hours later. they’re a little group (in world, at least) of squishy scrappy adventurers & they’re getting their narrative comeuppance for hubris, & a distinct lack of caution. hardly any health potions? a healer on the fritz? very little reconnaissance? no real allies? their attention divided between personal & everything else? i think it’s real, i think it’s very deadly, & i think like molly’s death it’s going to make for a more sombre & driven party. otohan’s goal for this encounter was imogen. narratively, the goal of this encounter (i suspect we will find in the coming months) was to be a hydraulic press & squash them into one party with one goal

fourth, main character imogen. this is bullshit straight up. i could leave it there but i’ll keep going bc i love women & i’ll take any chance to defend their right to take up space & tell their stories. laura makes the most awesome characters & frankly didn’t get Huge amounts of time dedicated solely to her story line in c1 & c2. it’s cool, it’s fine, she tells amazing stories in the time she gets & is a vital part of the story they’re all writing together, but as soon as we found out that purple-eyed, anime-haired, horse girl, night-terror, lightning-handed imogen was a thing i fell to my knees & wept in gratitude with the knowledge that laura was gonna get narratively whammied & whammied Hard by matthew mercer & his plot stick this campaign, as she well deserves.

do people complain about the briarwood arc? something that revolves entirely around percy’s backstory? or is it so beloved that they made a whole animated series about it? on a smaller scale—because of nott, the mighty nein left the empire & trekked into xhorhas; because of fjord, the mighty nein went & became pirates & explored sunken ruins, or went to uthodurn & nearly fought a dragon to make him a cool sword.

characters get their time to shine. it can’t always be about everyone all the time—matt gives a player a gift & the whole table comes together to react to that gift, following the player it was intended for. that’s the fun of storytelling together, that’s the fun of building characters & handing it over to your DM, the expectation that for a session, a couple of sessions, a small arc, you are the main character. your story matters. that’s what this is for imogen/laura—it’s at once a story beat for everyone, one of those pivotal moments where they realise they’re outmatched, but it’s also a turning point for imogen where we don’t know where she goes next. im sure that it also functions as a way for matt to introduce whatever lore he has about ruidis born up his sleeve for us.

hope this answered all your questions, i enjoyed ranting about it! i have just woken up so forgive me for any glaring errors

#cr spoilers #critical role spoilers #I’ll add a readmore when i get to my comp but hopefully the intro is long enough that it gets hit w the long post ray

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maliro-t · 11 months

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nat 20, crit fail, prep and tpk!

nat 20: What's the most memorable RP scene you've been a part of?

I know this is technically a question for me as a player but as a DM, there was an exchange with one of my players (in blue) as this little kid NPC (in red) after they'd saved him from a pretty horrible massacre that just went:

"Have you seen people die?"

"Yeah."

"Did you like them too?"

"Yeah. But there's nothing I could do for them. And they're happier where they are now."

"I wish you could be happy too."

"Yeah."

Which just got me real in my feelings about Mr. Mumford and made me real proud of his player :)

crit fail: Have you ever had a character death? What happened?

I personally have not! I think that's in part because the longest campaigns I've been in as a player were only over about 7 or eight months, so I haven't had a ton of opportunity to be thrust into mortal peril. Although I guess you never know lol, especially at lower levels.

prep: How much prep work do you do? How far out do you prep?

I would say it varies session to session, which is probably normal. I've played around with completely homebrewing some shorter sessions, but there honestly isn't a place for that in my work life balance, so I've turned to running published material (namely Curse of Strahd). That takes a lot of the burden of prep off, since I more rarely am designing things from scratch-- although I do my fair share of modification, and there still is plenty of stuff that I have to figure out myself! For most games I will make sure I have the sections that I will need from the book marked out and available, and especially if looks like it's gonna be a sort of open-ended RP game, I'll write out certain guidelines for myself into my campaign notebook so it's easier for me to keep track of things (I also do this for combat, in that I'll usually write a few lines about major figures' goals, if they're relevant, and maybe their first move or two). I try not to prep much beyond what I think will fit in a session (because I frankly don't have time), but sometimes I overestimate, and will end up with notes that last me three sessions. But beyond sort of vague notions of bigger picture building blocks that are moving in the background, I try to only prep stuff I think will be immediately pertinent. And I do trust my improv skills enough where a lot of that will be vague sketching! For example, in CoS there's a festival that's upcoming in one of the major cities, but the book has truly no information about what the festival itself entails beyond sort of a morbid procession, so I went into that game with an opening scene, a vague thought about ring toss, and a vague thought about local card sharks, and just kind of played it by ear from there. And it was one of our most fun games! I do prep a LOT for combat though-- we play on roll20 so I'm cobbling together maps (which usually will take an hour or so depending) and will often times write out entire stat blocks so I don't have to be looking for them. I do use the dnd beyond encounter tracker some of the time, but in big, complicated encounters, I find that can actually make my life extra confusing, so I do a lot of handwriting shit out on paper.

tpk: Have you ever had a game go completely off the rails? TPK? How did you adjust?

I did in fact facilitate a TPK in my current campaign which was !!!! yeah I would say off the rails is putting it mildly! The entire party was slaughtered by dire wolves, which was a random encounter on the way to a completely different objective so. very unexpected. It was one of those games that truly makes you feel insane, and it was almost entirely down to rolls-- I was rolling very well for these wolves (I think I crit 3 or 4 times?) and they were rolling extremely poorly. It was honestly easier for me that everyone went out than just a few people, because it meant that I could make on the fly decisions for the group and no one had to sit out the rest of the session. So, once the last person went down I gave everyone a kind of solo limbo vignette where we zeroed in on some character/backstory stuff for each of them, just to kind of settle everyone (which was really fun to do, especially since there's a lot they don't know about each other's histories, some more than others), and took a five minute recess to figure out what to do next-- I was lucky that unbeknownst to the party, they were on their way to knock on the door of a hag coven, who had their own reasons to want them alive, so I ended up having them all wake up as their captives. Congrats, you made it to where you were going! Sorry, you're still fucked! And THAT ended up being one of the most fun, intense encounters we've run. And I certainly am weaving some threads in the background about how exactly they survived and what the long-term consequences of that are.

#thank u truths! the whole list of questions is great #there are. definitely more off the rails examples i could have given #but u know the literal TPK was a big one #ask #impossibletruths #placeholder campaign tag #it speaks

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khttrpg · 8 months

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Hordes in V0.2

Please note this is playtest material, and subject to change.

This is an abridged description - the full current version of Hordes is in the V0.2 Google Doc!

HORDES

There are four things to consider when building a horde:

Its creature type.

Its level.

The number of creatures in the horde.

Each creature’s abilities.

Creature Types

The first thing to decide when a creating a horde is what type of creature composes it: Heartless, Nobodies, or Unversed. Creatures of darkness instinctively avoid others of their own kind, knowing that killing them will have no benefit – a horde is never more than one creature type, and in general, most worlds only contain a single creature type within them. (Creatures capable of higher-level cognition, like humans or more powerful Nobodies, are not part of Hordes; they are Bosses, which can accompany a horde for extra challenge.)

Heartless are beings created by a heart immersed in darkness. When a Heartless horde knocks a target unconscious, the target’s Darkness increases by 1 until the next time they Take a Break. If a player character’s Darkness is increased to 13 this way, the player chooses one of the rules for death as if they had experienced a TPK.

Nobodies are beings created by the shells of empty bodies. When a Nobody horde knocks a target unconscious, the target’s Body and all of its associated talents decrease by 1 until the next time they Take a Break. (This does not affect any talent points.) If a player character’s Body is decreased to 0 this way, the player chooses one of the rules for death as if they had experienced a TPK.

Unversed are sentient beings composed of negative emotions. When an Unversed knocks a target unconscious, the target’s Heart and all of its associated talents decrease by 1 until the next time they Take a Break. (This does not affect any talent points.) If a player’s Heart is decreased to 0 this way, the player chooses one of the rules for death as if they had experienced a TPK.

Creatures, Levels, and Abilities

A horde is composed of creatures – individual enemies who you control and move around the Area as they do battle. Each creature rolls it’s own combo roll, but unlike player characters, each creature in a horde starts with a d2 rather than a d4. (In order to roll a “d2,” roll any die; it is a 1 if you roll an odd, and a 2 if you roll an even.) To give a horde power, you can give a creature a set of abilities and levels all of their own.

Unlike players, levelling creatures is much less complicated: each enemy ability is worth a certain number of levels, and you just add those levels up! You can have as many creatures in a single horde as you like and can distribute abilities/levels among them as you see fit. However, the total level of the horde should be about 1/3 of the sum of the players’ total levels.

For example, if you are just starting a game with three players, each player starts with two levels. That would give you six player levels in total. The first horde players would face should be at a third of the players’ total levels, so it will have two levels; that means you can create either two enemies with one level/ability each, or one enemy with two levels/abilities. (One enemy can still make up a horde as long as it’s created using horde rules!)

It's tempting to simply use the levels of a given player to measure the levels of a given horde, but as players multiclass, the number of levels they have will start to jump all over the place! Make sure to keep track of the total levels, especially early on, when levels are very easy to come by.

The total number of levels on an individual creature in a horde is called its power, or POW.

#just copied the first page! the full thing right now is about three pages #this is so so far from what all the abilities would be but id like to get the basics tested before i invest more in it #khttrpg #kh re:roll #preview #kh

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royuuo · 1 year

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I have beef with demon slayer, a long rant to compulsively write about. Beware of nonsense ahead.

Demon Slayer Season 2 n 3 spoiler

Alr not long ago I finished season 3 of demon slayer and I have something to get off my chest about...

The last few episodes nearly BROKE ME-

The only thing I was clutching onto that was also what made me get through the episodes is that I knew those characters had plot armor (as much as I'd normally have an argument about having such blatantly obvious plot armor being bad I'M FCKING GLAD IT HAS IT even if it at times break tension from the watching experience but anyways).

Allow me to give you some context:

Since the first few episodes of the first season, we establish a group which will be the ones to direct the fights. We see the main three (+ nezuko but her main connection is with tanjiro not the other two) develop into a team, using their strengths to save others from demons.

Their bond strengthens in the second season where they're more coordinated in battle. Even nezuko who was more to the side in the overall group dynamic, becomes more integrated; truly joining in the others instead of just being attached to only tanjiro. The group is even by the mourning of the hashira rengoku.

By then, the group is real close, more coordinated with each other. Even the stubborn inoske is open to hearing what tanjiro has to say without reluctance.

So,

With this said...

Comes in the big battle of season 3 with this close group that the audience has seen grow and become more attached with each other...

It's like a bunch of episodes like 3 or 4 all just battling with one demon, the hashira decapitating the demon by the end only to find out there's a second demon and now they're fighting two demons. To defeat the demons you have to decapitate the two of them at the same time.

So begins the other 3 or 4 episodes of fighting the demons. They divided themselves in two groups to fight them and even though the battle is quite hard because this group is like,, severely under leveled,, they power through! So far only tanjiro is kinda hurt and the hashira is poisoned but overall going a-ok 👍

After like lots of fighting and planning each move before fighting, the main group manage to kill the weaker demon while the hashira fights the stronger demon and to secure a success, inoske takes the head and runs off with it so it can't heal by the time the other head is decapitated.

And then it happens-

As inoske is running away with the head, sickle slashes through as blood splatters. He's dead.

Tanjiro looks to the side where the hashira was fighting the other demon only to find him on the ground with a missing hand, bleeding out and succumbing to the poison. He's fucking dead.

An explosion happens idk how shut up iM CURRENTLY IN SHOCK ABOUT WHAT I JUST WITNESSED-

AHEM CONTEXT: previous season the other hashira DIED aka telling us oh they're NOT afraid to killing off a character especially one as important as a HASHIRA

The episode ends and then the next episode starts and in those few minutes in between I AM PANICKING LIKE OMG WTF THEY CANT POSSIBLY KILL ANOTHER HASHIRA RIGHT?? RIGHT????

The next episode starts and both my mom and I (Yes I'm watching it with her) are HOPING it's some sort of fucked up dream 😭.

Those hopes are destroyed when tanjiro wakes up to a ruined city in ash and fire.

The demons taunt him as they point out his dead friends to him. Inoske stabbed through the heart, Uzui killed by the poison, Zenitsu trapped under burning rubble as he squirmed and tried to get out to no success. Nezuko, Tanjiro's sister, was the one who remained alive, out of her box sleeping in the midst of disaster.

His friends, all the strong bonds he had built up to now lied dead in burning city.

I was holding up tears by now, it was a tpk without chance of resurrection! I contemplated myself "is this real? Is this what the series gonna be about? Losing everything and starting from zero?" My sensitive little heart was torn to pieces.

Meanwhile in the show, tanjiro had no time to cry. Filled with grief yes but he still had the demons to face and more importantly... his sister to protect.

Emotions surging in but he kept it all together as he grabbed the box with his sister and ran off! The demon catches up with ease of course but that doesn't matter as he has one last trick up his sleeve which consisted of distracting the demon to get him poisoned which left an opening for tanjiro to take and try decapitating the strong demon. Useless effort since he needed to decapitate both of them but did that matter to him? No! He's getting his revenge, his bitter and filled with grief along with rage revenge! Adrenaline pushing the katana further into his throat and then-

Flash of light... Zenitsu escapes the rubble and goes after the other demon. Tide turner! With the combined forces, the adrenaline rush of revenge and anger, the two take fate back into their hands and have one last chance to finish off the battle they started, the one all of them started but was now in the hands of the two remaining survivors!

And then inoske comes back to life from being stabbed through the heart with the excuse he can move his internal organs so actually his heart wasn't stabbed

And then the hashira came back with the excuse he made himself die to stop the poison or something and now he's back to fight

... yeah.

Don't get me wrong I sighed of relief when I saw them get back! I was thanking the gods, crying of happiness, my heart was refilled, my fav character was back and I was loving it!

Until... the battle finished and the excitement wore off...

The ending of season is no good. I was left with a bittersweet feeling asking myself "the fuck was that?" As I tried to rationalize what I had just watched. I felt like my feelings were invalidated?

So you, the show, are telling me that characters can be permanently killed, humans aren't immortal like demons so if they're mortally wounded they will die. Buy if the main characters are mortally wounded, they won't die.

Rengoku was stabbed through the heart leaving a hole on his chest.

Inosked was also stabbed through the heart, no hole so he didn't die woo?

The ending really played with my emotions in a bad fucking way. You can't have a season where you demonstrate me mortality is real in this show only for the next season to push said ideal put the window.

Felt like Rick and Morty all over again with the ending of demon slayer and that's bad.

Yes I'm REALLY FUCKING GLAD that my skrunkly and blorbo survived my heart would've been broken to little pieces if the season ended with their burials but at the same time... the execution of it doesn't feel appropriate?

You can't just establish a group, make them go through a death, and then say death isn't real.

I... have a lot of mixed emotions...

I'm tired of writing so much so imma leave it here with all my emotional turmoil.

If I got something wrong like names or scenes, I have horrible memory and no fucks left to give so pls shut up and ty for reading ig leave me alone

#demon slayer #spoilers #i am in so much fucking pain #coffiirant

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moss-sprouted · 2 years

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okay so bare with me since ive only mostly watched highlights of campaign 1 and ive only kept up with campaign 3 through tumblr and a critical role discord but i have seen 70 ish eps of campaign 2 and heard of the reaction to mollymauk's death at the time and its kinda hitting me how like

there was a LOT of drama with that in the fandom, because it was kinda impossible he'd actually be able to come back without it feeling like a big undo button, and i know most of people's experience in campaign 1 was that deaths were pretty quickly undone and if not there was maybe an episode inbetween it but no one permadied except for the end so everyones hoping for a big undo button for what happened in this latest episode of campaign 3 and while id love that,because i love both the characters from what ive seen of them

but exu:calamity taught me to appreciate character death, and tpks and the drama of it all and i hope there Isnt a big undo button but maybe theres a compromise, or a fix, or a closure to it because i think mollymauk's death made good tension and pace to the story and since this campaign 3 is only like 5 episodes farther in then molly's death was id really like to see something permanent to see what it would make with the story,even though id be sad to see either characters but especially both go permanently

and honestly from how much of it ive seen the campaigns been Really slow so far and i wonder if this event will pick things up and move it along and bring more to the story even if the two characters are forever dead i still wanna see them Try rather than the characters wake up and it was all a dream like i saw the live chat in the server during the episode hope for or everyone gets magically healed and is fine now, cause that just doesnt make for a great story

#critical role spoilers #critical role campaign 3

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feralphoenix · 3 years

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NO ONE IS HAPPY WITH THIS: Leitmotif & Sound Palette In “Sealed Vessel”

whats UP hk fandom i am back with—“more picante takes?” WOW YES HOW DID YOU KNOW!!!

CONTENT WARNING FOR TONIGHTS PROGRAM: today we are discussing the hollow knight boss fight, and all that entails for all the characters involved. relatedly this post does not have anything nice to say about the pale king, so if you’re very protective of his character, you may want to skip it.

FURTHERMORE, i would like to iterate that this essay is working from a place of compassion for ghost, hollow, radiance, AND hornet, because every single one of them is miserable at this point in the game and doesn’t want the events of this boss fight to be happening at all. this post is not an appropriate place to dunk on ANY of them. if you want to do that, please do it elsewhere.

thanks for your understanding.

ALSO, AS USUAL: if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of radiance and the moth tribe’s backstory is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay, ty

NO ONE IS HAPPY WITH THIS: Leitmotif & Sound Palette In “Sealed Vessel”

A while back @grimmradiance made a lovely essay about comparing and contrasting Hollow’s moveset in their Hollow Knight and Pure Vessel boss fights and using what can be gleaned from the differences to speculate about their psychology. (This essay is currently their pinned, but I’ll attach a link in a reblog.) It is extremely good, and it made me want to look at the Hollow Knight boss fight my own self through one of my own areas of expertise, meaning music!

As we are all well aware, Christopher Larkin's soundtrack to Hollow Knight rules ass. There are two specific ways in which it rules ass that are relevant to this essay: Leitmotif, and sound palette.

Quick rundown for folks who aren’t familiar with these terms: A leitmotif is a melody associated with a character or event or mood that's incorporated into songs in different ways based on what's happening in the story. Undertale is an example of a game with an incredibly strong use of leitmotif that’s really only possible because Toby Fox is both the composer and the game creator, so he can synchronize the subtleties of the writing with music and scene scripting too.

The phrase “sound palette” can have a lot of meanings, but in this case I’m using it to refer to specific instruments or groups of instruments that are associated with certain characters. If you’ve watched Steven Universe and seen interviews/production commentary by its composer team Aivi & Surasshu, you’ll hear them talking about part of their approach to scoring episodes being how each main character is represented by certain instruments: Steven with the triangle wave, Pearl with jazz piano, and so on.

Hollow Knight is a small team project rather than a one-person show, so Christopher Larkin can’t go quite AS over-the-top with leitmotif integration as Toby Fox can on simple virtue of Team Cherry having to communicate what they want to him. But Larkin is Hollow Knight's sound designer as well as its composer, so he folds leitmotif and character sound palette together with striking use of stems to create a very immersive and cinematic musical experience that enhances HK’s story and gameplay.

This brings us back to the track Sealed Vessel, which has EXTREMELY tight and cinematic sound design and uses leitmotif and sound palette to not just sock players in the feelings during a charged and dramatic boss fight, but also tell us a lot about what Hollow and Radiance are experiencing emotionally, especially with the gameplay in mind.

So, let’s play the soundtrack version of Sealed Vessel (and some other stuff) and talk about what’s going on in the game during it!

You may want to get out your copy of the OST or visit Christopher Larkin’s Bandcamp page so that you can listen along.

LEITMOTIF & SOUND PALETTE

Before we actually get into analyzing Sealed Vessel, let’s talk about the involved characters’ leitmotifs/sound palettes so we know what we’re listening for.

Both of these things are easiest to identify when characters have a distinct theme song. Ghost does not. However, the main theme of Hollow Knight (see: the title track, Hollow Knight) is used as a leitmotif for the vessels as a whole. Most pieces involved with a vessel character include this leitmotif somewhere. For instance, you can find this leitmotif and variations on it in Broken Vessel’s boss theme. The Vessel leitmotif is led by a cello solo here, so we can identify that the cello is the central part of Broken Vessel’s personal sound palette.

When the Vessel theme is associated with Ghost in specific, it tends to be performed by viola and/or piano, as it is on the title track and in other places like the opening cinematic.

Moving on to Hollow, their specific sound palette is established not in Sealed Vessel but in Pure Vessel, their pantheon boss theme. (Sealed Vessel was composed first, since the Godmaster DLC didn’t drop until over a year after HK’s initial release, meaning Pure Vessel was reverse-engineered/extrapolated from relevant parts of Sealed Vessel. But we’ll get into that later!)

The major instrumental fixtures in Pure Vessel are choir and tubular bells (i.e., those dramatic vertical fellas that sound like church bells or a carillon), with some soft background instrumentation: bass drum, woodwinds (appropriately led by flute in the main melody’s “falling motion” - flute is the centerpiece of TPK’s sound palette), strings, and high/mid brass. Hollow’s overall sound palette has a very Christian choir-esque sound (in the Pure Vessel theme this is very idealized and saintly: soft and slow and tragic) and the beginning of their leitmotif has a very distinctive climbing melody that mirrors their ascent from the Abyss. The Unbearable Vesselness Of Being leitmotif is absent from the Pure Vessel track.

Meanwhile, Radiance’s boss theme is a very fun expression of her character upon which Larkin evidently went ham. Her sound palette is expressed through full orchestra (plus choir and pipe organ) that has a special emphasis on the bass part of the brass section, which does not see much use in the HK soundtrack. Her leitmotif has also got cute and distinctive touches: It’s full of triplets to match her tiara-looking antennae, and also has a repeated “fluttery” pattern of background sixteenth notes as countermelody, often spiraling downwards.

The majority of the piece is loud and bombastic and in a minor key to play up the “resplendent and terrible” wrathful aspect of herself Radi is pushing during this section of gameplay, a very quintessentially moth intimidation tactic: Try to look as scary as possible to keep your enemies from messing with you, since you’re not built for fighting. These blasts of intensity from the brass section match Radiance’s strategy of Overwhelm You With Bullet Hell Spam To Make Up For Lack Of Battle Experience/Poor Aim. But in between said intensity spikes you can hear traces of softer instrumentation and major key, little glimpses of a gentle warmth we can otherwise only infer from her backstory and the implications of Moth Tribe lore.

0:00 - 0:41 - OPENING AMBIANCE

The Sealed Vessel track begins with the ambiance of the Black Egg Temple’s interior: The faint tones of the glowing seals we hear when we pass by them, the only light in a pitch-black world besides the floor lighting up under Ghost’s feet.

Then a slow string tremolo fades in, slowly growing louder. In the track new notes join the tremolo progressively, while in-game a violin joins the anticipatory chord every time you snap one of Hollow’s chains. Which, may I say: A+++++++ sound design!!!!!! Rules ass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The tremolo reaches a peak in dynamics - all three characters present are extremely tense - and then cuts off to allow for Hollow’s boss battle opening, i.e. Radiance screaming. Team Cherry kindly demarcates each phase of the battle with a Radi yell.

0:43 - 1:39 - PHASE 1: HOLLOW ON AUTOPILOT

Phase 1 opens immediately with Hollow’s leitmotif in bells, but with brass, piano, and percussion backing them up; grand and tragic. In the background the bass section of the orchestra's strings flutter in a repetitive pattern of 16th notes, i.e. Panicky Radi Noises. The violins harmonize with Hollow's leitmotif as it climbs, but then join the rest of the string section in fluttering 16th notes, transmuting what in Pure Vessel is the flute leading Hollow back down (8th notes) to a slightly louder “a” from the backseat.

In actual gameplay, the only attacks Hollow uses are their basic nail skills. Building on grimmradiance’s analysis of the window their attacks provide to their psychology, and pairing that with the Pure Vessel leitmotif booming over the metaphorical loudspeakers, we can tell that this is Hollow reacting automatically to a threat the way that their father trained them to. Their conscious mind might still be making dialup noises at Ghost’s sudden reappearance jumpscaring them with murky childhood guilt and trauma, but that’s only let muscle memory take over. Slash, parry, charge and thrust. Their time spent at bee bootcamp (which we can assume because Hornet was trained at the Hive and Hollow’s form while nail fighting is identical to hers on their shared moves) has served them well.

Radiance, meanwhile, has frozen completely for this combat phase, and contributes nothing here except the anxiety of the string section.

As the strings continue to go “a” the piano (Ghost) and woodwinds harmonize on something between Hollow’s personal leitmotif and the Vessel leitmotif in the backdrop.

However at around 1:29ish, the key changes, building into an overall color change for the Sealed Vessel piece.

1:39 - 2:15 - PHASE 2: SHE’S AS SCARED OF YOU AS YOU ARE OF HER

In actual gameplay, the part of Sealed Vessel used for phases 1 and 2 of the Hollow Knight fight is the Entirety of 0:43 - 2:15, possibly because there’s no easy transition spot like there is between phase 2 and phase 3. But the changes to Hollow’s moveset are clearly tied to this specific part of the piece.

Phase 2 is where Radiance pushes herself past her freeze response and starts trying to hit Ghost. Hollow gains two attacks here, which we can tell are Radi because they’re often accompanied by her crying (a softer and more abbreviated sound than her full scream): These two attacks are the Infection blob blast and the Light/Void pillar attack that hits for a full 2 masks damage (which appear to be Radi’s take on Hollow’s Pure Vessel-exclusive moves, their grabby tentacles & silver knife pillars respectively).

In the Sealed Vessel track, this part of the piece is almost entirely Radiance’s fluttering. The strings start by following the descending motion of Hollow’s leitmotif but in 16th notes, then ratchet up to start spiraling down again while straying further from Hollow’s leitmotif. This section ends in a back and forth between hard blasts in a one-two-(rest)-one-two-three pattern and gasps of fluttering between, with piano and low brass building behind it. Eventually the nervous fluttering of the strings becomes less frequent between the blasts: Radiance is inexperienced with fighting and very very afraid, but she’s also FUCKING PISSED and prepared to defend herself.

The OST version of the piece punctuates the break between the first half of the piece and the second with Radiance’s scream.

2:16 - 4:04 - PHASE 3: “I’M HELPING! :)” SAID HOLLOW; “HOLY SHIT PLEASE DON’T,” SAID LITERALLY EVERYONE

Phase 3 opens with Hollow stabbing themself repeatedly, a movement pattern they repeat throughout the phase. It is shocking the first time you see it, and never stops being horrible and sad no matter how many times you do this part of the fight.

Here, Hollow’s mind has finally come back online after their own freeze response, and they choose to destroy themself and bequeath the duty of sealing Radiance to Ghost. Even if they can’t be the one to make their father proud, they can still make sure their directive gets carried out.

Radiance knows exactly what they’re up to and why, and she reacts to this by completely losing her head and mashing buttons in a panic. This is something we see out of her at the ends of her boss fights too, where she’s feeling too threatened and afraid to do anything but spam optic blasts. In the Hollow Knight boss fight this manifests in two horrifying-looking but easy-to-avoid new attacks: The Infection blob sprinkler and the ragdoll.

Ghost does not react visibly because we're in gameplay, but their horror and grief at their sibling’s choice is echoed in the BGM. The Sealed Vessel piece goes soft and sad, with Ghost’s associated viola leading the bass strings in the Unbearable Vesselness of Being leitmotif. At 2:51 the violin comes in with Hollow’s leitmotif, and gradually the choir appears in the backdrop. The ensemble’s overall dynamics build in a slow crescendo, and at the very end of this segment the other instruments begin to join in.

This segment of the piece is also used in phase 4, which occurs if you don't have Hornet’s help or miss your cue to Dream Nail Hollow. Phase 3 ends when Hollow reaches 0 HP; in phase 4 they are for all purposes already dead. But Radiance manifests an extra 250 HP out of terrified, unadulterated FUCK YOU FUCK THIS!!! even though all she can do is get Hollow to fall on their face trying to slash and ragdoll them around. The BGM continues to play as Ghost absorbs Radiance from Hollow and Hollow’s body loses its shape and dissolves into liquid Void.

And there’s one other place in gameplay Sealed Vessel (Unbearable Vesselness of Being) is used: The Path of Pain, the completely evil kaizo-level obstacle course which presumably featured in Hollow’s childhood training, and behind which the Pale King has hidden his last and most terrible secret—that he had realized on some level that Hollow was a kid with feelings who loved him and wanted to make him proud, and condemned them to death despite it all by using them to imprison and torture Radiance as he’d always planned.

The OST version of Sealed Vessel includes the music for both normal ending cinematics, so we’ll be looking at them too.

4:05 - 4:35: ENDINGS 1/2: NO ONE IS HAPPY WITH THIS

In the BGM for The Hollow Knight and Sealed Siblings endings, the Vessel leitmotif is played by violin, viola, and choir while the cellos and contrabasses—and then the brass bass section too—play a slower version of Radiance’s downward spiral. But once Ghost is pierced by the Black Egg’s chains and Radiance’s struggle to free herself ends in failure, the soprano and bass sections harmonize. The animation zooms out of the temple and the seal reforms. They are stuck together now until the end of Ghost’s life. Hooray.

The OST version of the track immediately segues into the BGM for Dream No More.

4:36 - 5:45: ENDING 3: THANKS, I HATE IT

Here, Hornet’s associated instrument, the violin, plays one long sustained note with a few notes of Ghost’s piano alongside as she wakes up.

TPK’s goddamn flute comes in at 5:00 with his leitmotif overpowering the backdrop Vessel leitmotif on piano while Hornet surveys the carnage: The temple has been destroyed, Radiance is dead, and what’s left of Ghost’s corpse is smeared across the floor. The Void may have taken umbrage with his horseshit and unceremoniously vored him, but the motherfucker still got what he wanted in the end; the Pale King has ended the Infection by completing his genocide of the moths, using the children he abused and abandoned as his proxies, and wasting two of their lives. Can I get a hearty THIS SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in the chat.

Given that Hornet herself is canonically unsure if bringing the fight to Radiance is really a just course of action, one can only imagine how she must feel when she sees the cost of that decision.

Our only real moment of catharsis is in this shit situation comes in at 5:13, where the flute gives way to a solo from Ghost’s associated viola, playing the Vessel leitmotif as the Siblings curl up and sink back into the mountain of their corpses. Goodnight, kiddos. You deserved better, and so did literally everyone involved in this whole stupid boss fight.

This is where the OST version of Sealed Vessel ends. Even without the gameplay and story context it slaps, but now that we’ve taken a look at how this 5:45 piece is wall to wall misery and fear on the part of literally every involved character, hopefully it will have even more impact!

#hollow knight #sealed vessel #the hollow knight #the radiance #hk radiance #ghost hollow knight #hk ghost #hornet hollow knight #hk hornet #essay #hollow knight meta

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grimmradiance · 3 years

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Close to Me: How the Hollow Knight's Fighting Style Reflects Their Trauma (and the Radiance's as well)

So I've been trying to actually beat the Radiance, which means I've been fighting the Hollow Knight. A lot, as a matter of fact, since I'm beans at this game sometimes. I've also been thinking about @lost-kinn's meta about how fighting styles are how Vessels, especially the Little Knight, communicate.

In trying to apply this to the Hollow Knight, I've been coming to some very interesting conclusions, especially taken in context of...Everything Else in the lore, and Everything Else implicated in this by the psychology of it.

There's a lot to cover here, and it tracks through a LOT of different places, including trauma psychology, the relationship between chronic stress and lifespan health, and shape symbolism. Two warnings first:

One: this essay is gonna get heavy. It includes fine-grained discussion of the Hollow Knight's trauma, including discussions of the real-life machanics of psychological abuse, as well as the Extremely Concerning Implications of them harming themself during their boss fight. please read with caution and when you're in a safe emotional place to do so.

Two: This post is not a place for justifying the Pale King. If you read this essay in its entirety and still want to do that, please make your own post; my relationship to the Hollow Knight themself is deeply rooted in my own experiences, so in the context of this discussion I can't promise I won't take it personally.

With that out of the way, let's talk trauma and fighting styles:

We know that the Hollow Knight is trained to be a paragon of fighting skill, through the Pure Vessel fight, and this gives us a fantastic way to compare what they were like before they were made Government Assigned Radiance Jail, and after. Or, in other words, we're given the perfect opportunity to see what the Radiance is doing (i.e. context effects), and what Hollow is (i.e. what we can conclude is reliably consistent as a part of them). Listed here, for reference:

Hollow's attacks:

Three slashes

A dash slash

A Radiant Shade Soul, which launches a volley of Infection blobs in arcs

A Radiant Desolate Dive, which produces pillars of entwined Void and Light at random intervals

The Infection bursting out of them in random arcs, covering a significant amount of the aerial space of the arena

The Radiance ragdolling their body around trying to hit the Knight

Contact damage from them stabbing themself and falling over atop you

The Pure Vessel's attacks:

Three slashes

A dash slash

A Pure Shade Soul, which launches a volley of nails in straight lines

A Pure Desolate Dive, which produces nails at specific intervals

A Pure Focus, which causes circular explosions across most of the aerial space in the arena

Lashing out with a Void Arm (word choice intentional)

I've highlighted attacks from each battle that are different, since those are our points of interest here. In addition, both the Pure Vessel and Hollow are exceedingly fond of teleport-spamming in a way that is usually reserved for a specific group of bosses.

Another very important distinction between these two fights: the Pure Vessel doesn't scream. Well, they certainly try to, but no sound comes out. No voice to cry suffering, after all. All of these points have a lot to go into, so let's address them one at a time.

All That Remains: Theoretical Background On The Significance Of Constants

Making comparisons across time is important specifically because humans (and human-like bugs) change. Most personality traits aren't set in stone--they exist as an interaction of someone's internal tendencies, their experiences, and their environment. Speaking of those last two points, not all experiences and environments are created equally. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs for short) are known to have lifelong implications for a child's health, both physically and mentally. These are events that are so stressful or stressful for so long that they exceed a child's ability to cope and become toxic stress (yes, that's the term in the literature, because it actively damages your organs). They compound, as well--the stress of one ACE makes it harder for a child to cope with another, especially if they overlap.

Some examples of ACEs? Being exposed to physical danger or the threat of physical danger, deprivation of normal social relationships with peers of a similar age, being forcibly seperated from family members, witnessing a loved one being hurt or killed, chronic illness in oneself or a family member, neglect of a child's emotional needs....

Poor fucking Holly. It's a miracle they didn't disintegrate under the pressure. The only other option is that they bent and adapted under that much stress--in other words, most of their personality has been forcibly reshaped by what they've gone through. Anyone who has up-close experience with parentification or complex child abuse already knows: this was by design. I'm not saying the intent was to traumatize the Pure Vessel past several points of no return, but the intent definitely was to reshape their personality for the purpose of being The Vessel. We only see them (the Pure Vessel) in battle after this process is mostly or entirely complete, but we do see them a few times beforehand. I'd like to draw attention to the Path of Pain cutscene right now.

I've seen people talking about the look the Vessel and the King share as a sign that TPK really does love his child. That might be true, but it's definitely not relevant when it comes to how abuse works. This is, in fact, exactly how the cycle of abuse uses affection as a tool. Long periods of abuse or neglect, smoothed over by small periods of affection that placate the survivor? That's textbook love bombing, the kind that forms stubborn trauma bonds and facilitates unhealthy dependency. Forgive me for not giving the Higher Being of knowledge and prescience the benefit of the doubt on that one. (/s)

Team Cherry knows about the importance of parallels and dissonance. There's a reason the music in the second phase of the Hollow Knight fight plays in the Path of Pain. There's a reason it cuts out the moment the battle with the Kingsmoulds is over, instead of at the room transition. There's a reason it doesn't cut out in the Black Egg. Actually, there's two potential reasons, which could also coexist: either little Hollow trusts the Pale King to keep them safe, even after the borderline torture that they were just subjected to, or big Hollow is so hypervigilant that they're in full functioning-through-trauma mode even while they're at death's door.

If you don't see how much the Pale King scarred his child at this point, I'm not sure we were playing the same game.

Walking the Straight Line: How the Pale King's Teachings Show In the Pure Vessel

The Pale King loves order and control. Everything about the White Palace and every decision we see him make implies this. Everything is spotless white walls and well-maintained gardens; the only signs of disorder are hidden away, either in his workshop or in The Pit™. This also reflects in the Pure Vessel's title--pure as in holy, but also pure as in without flaw. Considering the Nailsmith's emotional state after completing the Pure Nail, TPK's fate with his Perfect Controlled Kingdom, and the Godmaster ending as a whole, attaining perfection is not a good thing in any sense.

We know the Hollow Knight isn't perfect--that's the whole catalyst for the plot. But considering their upbringing and their fighting style as the Pure Vessel, their imperfections absolutely kill them emotionally. I'll spare the lecture on how perfectionism affects neurodivergent kids even more severely than neurotypical kids, if only to keep this post to a reasonable length (look up "twice-exceptional children" if you'd like to know the theory I'm glossing over in more depth). But, in essence, the deck is doubly stacked against them--they have a higher goal to reach, and far more obsctacles in their path, including their own emotional scars.

I've already discussed how Hollow isn't meant for this kind of stress in a physical sense in other posts. They're not prepared for it emotionally, either--the Pale King wants perfection, and they can't even stand up straight (every spoonie in the audience already knows how exhausting people's obsession with Standing Up Straight is). There's another page on their stack of emotional baggage, even BEFORE you consider that the Pure Vessel knows their perfection is what bought them a ticket out of the Abyss.

Bringing Teleportation To A Sword Fight: Where The Pure Vessel Reveals Their Fears

How else are they going to cope with that need for perfection, that need to prove themselves worthy of the reason their life was spared, by being flawless in any way they can? Being a mechanical, flawless fighter puts so much pressure on them, both literally (repetitive strain injuries fucking HURT) and figuratively--if you're predictable, the only sure way to win is to mop the floor with your opponents before they figure you out. Hell, that's the way most people play their first run of Hollow Knight, by throwing themselves at the bosses over and over until they figure out the patterns. That strategy is inherently going to fail against an opponent that's, say, an immortal higher being.

There's no way that the Vessel didn't figure this out, and yet none of their TPV specific attacks are positioned randomly--the nails are always evenly spaced, and the Focus explosions are always in a specific height region of the screen. That's clinging to survival strategies even when they become maladaptive in its purest form.

Another dip into psychological theory: let's talk about disorganized attachment. Attachment styles describe how someone's relationships to their main caregiver(s) influence their understanding on relationships in general. Disorganized attachment is a result of an upbringing of inherently unstable parent-child relationships, where there's no way of a child predicting whether an adult is going to be delighted to see them, ambivalent, upset, or otherwise. If my parent woke up some days saying "all right my child, time for the Infinite Buzzsaws Obstacle Course," I'd be the same way. In adulthood this manifests as an inability to form a stable sense of self-concept as well as concepts of others. Mission accomplished, TPK, there's no will to break if you broke it yourself.

This is where the fighting styles as communication comes in--Hollow needs to keep Ghost at a distance to fight, but also wants to be closer to their sibling (the only being who has a chance of understanding what they've been through), BUT also has a trauma-rooted fear of attaching to people, as their experiences with attachment are inherently unpredictable and dangerous. Hence, both the teleportation that doesn't seem to match their fighting style any more reliably than "aim at the thing attacking you" and the second attack unique to the Pure Vessel--they're quite literally lashing out in pain to push people away. There's a reason that attack is so reminiscent of the Thorns of Agony.

Of note is that Holly does seem to teleport like the bugs of the Soul Sanctum do (favoring the edges of a screen, rather than going wherever like Dream Warriors do), which makes sense--they're the most obvious answer to the question "how did they learn how to teleport, anyways?" However, Sanctum bugs have abilities designed to capitalize on this, like homing spells and slashes from above. I can only assume this means that someone saw Holly's proficiency with the nail and assumed it translated to other forms of combat, and didn't feel the need to give them at least a bit of a primer on how to make the best use of it. There's another tally for the Hollow Knight as an autism metaphor.

Trauma Bonds: How the Radiance Speaks Through Hollow

Now, we're back to the Black Egg, and two people stuck in the same sinking ship. The thing that makes this hurt so badly is that Holly and the Radiance are at complete cross purposes here, and yet they both want the same thing:

They both want out, no matter the cost. For the Radiance, this means forsaking the pacifistic nature of the moths and nuking Ghost personally.

For Hollow, this means forsaking the way they were raised and everything that was bludgeoned into their personality: the only way out is to fail, give up control, and trust that Ghost will do what needs to be done.

Imagine how much pain they're in to actually go for it. Going against a literal lifetime of conditioning is something that takes the average person years to even consider, let alone go through with. It's a form of learned helplessness--if you try to break free and fall, again and again, it actively discourages further attempts. Breaking through learned helplessness is an interesting process, because it generally involves re-establishing a sense of control by recalling previous events where the person was able to change their situation.

Which, as far as we know of, are nothing but traumatic memories for Hollow. It's very unlikely that they'd break through it on their own, but we know they have by the time we see the second phase of their fight. This is them at their most desperate: the same music as the Path of Pain, the way they let, or can't stop, the Radiance throw their body around, the way they actively try to let the Radiance out by stabbing themself.

You'd think that giving up and learned helplessness are inherently compatible, but when giving up both goes against your core personality, and involves your active participation, they're in direct opposition. So either Holly was able to process all their trauma by themself (which I doubt, judging by how much effort the player has to go through to even see Ghost's and Hollow's traumatic memories), or someone gave them a nudge or three in that direction.

Considering that there's been someone living in Holly's head who has a vested interest in them Not Doing Their Duty, I think we know who. And the thing is, I think we watch Hollow have this breakthrough during their battle. Imagine for the first time in decades, at least, you can move. You're in pain from being in the same position, probably hallucinating from sensory deprivation, with an infection sucking at what strength your body has left. And there's this little creature who looks ready to fight you, who seems to have let you go for that exact purpose.

And you look down, and both you and the Radiance recognize them from a place rooted deeper than consciousness, in the murky depths of trauma. You see the other Vessel who just as easily could have been you, and who looks so much stronger for not being you, for being an imperfect, willful creature. And the Radiance sees history threatening to repeat itself, another one of the Wyrm's cursed children seeking to lock her away once more.

What else do you do when you're triggered? You scream, and you go on instinct, and you retreat into your head. Those first blows, with the epic music? That's the Vessel the Pale King forged, the fighting machine that will endure unimaginable stress because it knows no other way. What snaps you back out of dissociation? Usually, either the passage of the triggering stimulus, or an even more relevant stimulus (severe pain from getting beaten up by a nail, for example).

The tragedy is this: we know this isn't a triumph. I think most of us went into that fight the first time, knowing we'd be putting the Hollow Knight out of their misery. The music turns tragic, Hollow screams, and then we see the Radiance and Hollow themself break through: the Radiance trying to fight Ghost directly with the resources she has, and Hollow trying to help her along.

For what it's worth, Hollow even had the right idea, when it came to letting themself rest while helping Ghost stop the madness their father started--they were just digging for the Radiance in the wrong place. The dynamic between the Radiance and the Hollow Knight is something I could write on for pages and pages, but this has gone on for long enough. Tune in next time, where I'll presumably talk about this same topic but in reverse with regards to the Radiance.

#hollow knight #hk #the pure vessel #the pale king #the radiance #my meta #the higher being speaks #i hate fact-checking my abuse infodumps because the ableism against personality disorders is EVERYWHERE #but here this monster of an essay is #anyways the hollow knight as a character sniped my trauma on sight #so i may be a tiny bit biased here But Also I'm Right #abuse //#child abuse //#emotional abuse //#i legit do not know what tags to throw on this #also the overarching title is a reference to the song of the same name from just shapes and beats because. yeah

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ceescedasticity · 4 years

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outline: jin guangyao’s hoarding problem, part 1

I am STILL NOT WRITING THIS.

Cast:

Jin Guangyao, schemer extraordinaire. He’s got a lot on his plate right now, scheming for the Jin Sect’s advancement, scheming for his personal advancement within the Jin Sect, trying to get Qin Cangye to let him marry his daughter, trying to juggle his sworn brothers, wrangling weird 13-year-old Mo Xuanyu who his father dropped on him as some sort of power play, wrangling Xue Yang insofar as it is possible to do so, promoting research into demonic cultivation, and on and on and on. Jin Guangyao, as no one will ever let him forget, was not born rich; he understands that you can’t just go throwing things out when you might want them again later; and in this universe he’s let that reluctance to discard outweigh his caution.

Wen Ning, conscious fierce corpse. Keeping Wen Ning was always the plan, even when plans to control him didn’t quite work out. Because he’s a really good conscious fierce corpse. Maybe they’ll work out controlling him someday. Maybe he’ll be good as an example. They went to a fair amount of trouble faking his destruction, so no sense wasting that. (Wen Ning, for his part, is… not happy. Even when they’re not trying to control him, he is not happy. But he is not making trouble if he can avoid it, because…)

Wen Qing, really outstanding doctor. Jin Guangyao cannot understand why his father was planning to execute her – she’s such a good doctor! Groundbreaking! Sure, she has some inconvenient morals, but she’s simple enough to leverage, just grab some family members – Wen Ruohan kept her in line for years. Why would Jin Guangshan not try to obtain such a valuable resource? It’s probably because when he looks at a woman he stops after the boobs. Anyway, now Jin Guangyao has the opportunity, and it’s easier to fake her death than Wen Ning’s (just have to kill a heavily bruised woman in Wen robes, rather than something that passes for a fierce corpse). She can be kept in line just by threatening Wen Ning’s non-life as the stick, and for a carrot, taking the nails out of his head when they’re not actively experimenting. (Wen Qing is sick to her stomach. Although not everything she’s been required to do is bad–)

(Off stage, but alive, is Jiang Yanli. Jin Guangyao likes her more than he likes most of the Jin Sect, he didn’t want her dead – and whisking her away to a mystery doctor who saved her life means Jiang Wanyin owes him. Big. —He doesn't want her angling for any kind of power/regency after Jin Guangshan dies, so he's been making sure there are plenty of rumors that she's physically and mentally fragile, and his leverage over Yunmeng Jiang is better with her in Jinlintai so he's angling to maintain that, too, but unlike that other idea he's not blackmailing her. This is probably a mistake.)

Wei Wuxian, Yiling Laozu. Smuggled back to Jinlintai at least half dead, and really wanted to get all the way there. Didn’t really change his mind on that until after he got conscious enough to process that (a) Wen Qing and Wen Ning were alive(ish), and might be punished if Wen Qing couldn’t save him; (b) Jiang Yanli is alive, but in Jinlintai, which means not safe. Even after he’s trying, though, he’s in for a long convalescence – especially without a core. (Which Jin Guangyao has figured out and, worse, figured out the reason for.) Wei Wuxian is claiming he couldn’t possibly recreate the Stygian Tiger Seal outside the Burial Grounds and/or without all the pieces and/or while he’s still so weak. The last one is true, the others are… not completely false? He certainly couldn't make it like it was before.

Mo Xuanyu, weird 13-year-old. Inexplicably if usefully devoted to Jin Guangyao. Jin Guangyao doesn’t trust him to do more than some very basic reading on demonic cultivation, but when the secret prison acquired the gravely wounded Wei Wuxian it became important to have someone other than Xue Yang checking on things, refreshing supplies, and getting Jin Guangyao immediately if necessary. Mo Xuanyu also likes Wei Wuxian, and Wen Qing, and Wen Ning, and (for some reason) Xue Yang. Not enough to impact his devotion to Jin Guangyao, though.

Xue Yang, spite elemental. (This Xue Yang has never worked for Wen Ruohan – I may keep the Yin Iron in this universe mashup, it just had no particular connection to Xue Yang.) Half feral (at least). Demonic cultivation natural talent. Delighted to have the opportunity to independently recreate the Stygian Tiger Seal, not that it stops him badgering Wei Wuxian for tips. Big fan of “better to ask forgiveness than permission”. No, that’s not it. Big fan of “better to say ‘yeah, I did it, what are you gonna do about it?’ than ask permission.”

WQ, WN, and WWX are full-time imprisoned in some sort of secret dungeon/basement/hidden complex in Carp Tower. MXY and XY are in and out a lot. JGY less so because he has a busy schedule.

So, moving forward:

Wen Qing is trying to keep WWX alive. WWX is cooperating halfheartedly.

Xue Yang is trying to recreate the Stygian Tiger Seal. WWX is cooperating hundredthheartedly.

JGY picks up that WWX is not being entirely sincere in his cooperation. He decides to show that his threats have teeth, in a very mild way. He plays some 'healing music' for JYL.

JYL has a bad week.

WWX becomes somewhat more cooperative.

(JYL is aware enough of her own body and mind and has enough of an ear for music to say — extremely politely, and not implying (or suspecting!) any malice — that she thinks JGY may need a little more practice.)

(JGY decides he needs to be a little more conservative with his use of the Collection of Turmoil, and maybe, say, not teach any bits of it to people who are not definitely on his side, no matter how innocent and gullible he thinks they are.)

(Nie Sect's trip to the Sword Hall can't be said to go well by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not an almost-TPK either. No one unwittingly kills or spiritually poisons anyone they love. It doesn't make much difference in the timetable of NMJ's decline, really. It doesn't make as much of a difference as you might expect in the timetable of NHS Figuring Shit Out, later on. It does make a difference in the experience level and cohesiveness of Nie Sect's inner-ring disciples. It does make a difference in NHS's emotional health and support structure. It may in fact make a difference in whether JGY is going to get out of all this alive. But that's later.)

When the reconstructed Seal is mostly complete, Xue Yang takes off to Yueyang to "test" it. He may or may not have informed JGY first. Let's go with 'not' (not out of any concern that he'd disapprove, Xue Yang just doesn't want to bother).

So here's the thing. The Seal is not a loyal tool. Insofar as it has a consciousness and feelings it's kind of pissed off at WWX anyway. But he is still its original creator, and this time he's alive, and this time he was extorted into helping reconstruct it, and this time — unlike when he was forging it the first time — revenge doesn't even really make the motivation list, so it's not quite the same reconstructed Seal. It's not a benevolent tool. It doesn't like people. It doesn't want to help people. It doesn't have principles. If Xue Yang just stood outside and ordered fierce corpses to slaughter everyone in the Chang compound, the Seal would have cooperated eagerly.

But obviously Xue Yang isn't about to just stand outside, he goes in and gets his hands dirty, and when he tries to use the Seal to directly, personally attack a child, something goes… sideways. There's an explosion which blows a large hole in the side of the house. Some of the corpses attack Xue Yang. The Seal levitates six meters up into the air and won't come down until grabbed. It's very annoying. Xue Yang makes sure there's no one with a golden core left and sets the building on fire and leaves in a very bad mood.

There are only like a dozen survivors total, no adult cultivators, and the one surviving kid who saw him is too young to give any kind of useful witness statement, but still.

He goes back to the basement and blames WWX for the unsatisfactory performance of the Seal. WWX's response of "Good" didn't deescalate things any, but he probably would have gotten the shit kicked out of him regardless.

Someone interrupts before he can actually beat WWX to death (which had better not have been WWX's plan, says WQ). Right. No core, already seriously injured. Xue Yang gets Wen Qing, who has to do surgery for flail chest. Xue Yang makes a surprisingly good surgical assistant.

JGY gets back from wherever he was (Qinghe playing fake!Clarity? Laoling trying to get a date?) and is like. I was gone for two days.

Xue Yang does not deny almost accidentally killing the only available Yiling Laozu, but blames it on WWX being too fragile due to being coreless and injured.

Maybe if we gave him someone else's core he would be sturdier?

Jin Guangyao doesn't immediately shoot it down. Wen Qing tries to — WWX would never survive the procedure in his current condition, and the donor has to be willing, does JGY really want to sacrifice someone loyal for this questionable gamble?

No, he doesn't. At least not right now.

Xue Yang says he's taking time off. JGY tells him not to get caught.

He gets caught.

Trial, commutation, official imprisonment, and now Xue Yang is stuck in the basement with the others basically full-time. He's seriously trying to convince Wen Qing to teach him surgery. She's appalled, but on the other hand would surgical skills make him any more dangerous than he already is? And it keeps him from sticking nails in Wen Ning's head.

While she's distracted Wei Wuxian is trying and failing to convince Wen Ning and/or Mo Xuanyu that he is recovered enough from the flail chest to walk around. He is failing.

Jin Guangyao is spending a lot of time in Qinghe…

#other fic #things i'm not writing #more random mdzs thoughts

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thequeenofmyownscreen · 3 years

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Following the end of campaign 1, since I'm sticking to the chronological order, I've watched the numerous one-shots Critical Role did between the two campaigns. Man, the hiatus was long !

Some of them I appreciated less than others : wherever it was a tone of the one-shot, or the mood I was in... for example, I think I didn't enjoy enough the "Once Upon a Fairytale Cruise" (this one was, I think, because there was a weird inbalance between the fun dating cruise with explicit details, and the horrifying aspects of the fairy tales), or the "Epic Level Battle Royale" (this one was definitely because of the rythm, which suprised me because the precedent battle royale was so much fun ! But Liam made it real hard for the audience even if it was in character), or the Kobolds & Catacombs one-shot (this one was because perhaps it was a "normal" one, maybe too normal, and even if it was with a guest, there was a lot of combat and the universe did not vary very much from usual).

My favorites were, in order :

"Honey Heist", because I'm a Marisha Ray fan above all else. The system itself was really simple, and the story had a simple goal, but it's a demonstration of how you don't have to have a complex RPG system to have lots of fun : Criminal bears ! Plus the cast was just so great : seeing Matt as a player is a delight, especially as Trinket. Brian as a honey badger on a bender, Liam and Taliesin as brothers that have "roaring 20's criminals from New York" accents, Sam as panda that just can't shut up about being a vegan. I love that there were rolls to see what role the bears played in this heist, but also rolls to see what hat they're wearing. Bits and pieces :

"With these hats, there’s no way anybody in the town of Westruun would think that we’re bears !!"

Liam and Taliesin are playing it like honey is cocaïne, while Peddy Tuxpin tastes honey like a wine, because this is Sam.

Marisha as Vex, and Marisha as Victor, she's amazing.

The couple of criminal cows that are called Bonnie and Cow

Brian's personal challenge to make as many euphemisms as possible.

Tova, who survived the Nine Hells - it's canon ! - and is part of an order called 'the High-Bear Nation' (this pun is amazing, and so is Liam Las Vegas' line : "Listen, to one extremely high bear to another...").

And of course the game at the safe's door, this all sequence is hilarious.

Matt, to Marisha : "I'm so proud I married you."

Paddy had to ressuscitate Trinket who was uncounscious, by making "snout-to-snout", or "BPR", and Sam had the audacity to shout in character : "Trinket, if you died, I would be so upset !"

"Thursday by Night" was so great !! I know nothing about the system of Vampire: The Masquerade, but when Taliesin talked about vampires, I was on board instantly. Add to that the cast playing "themselves as newbies vampires" and you just know it's going to be great. Everyone dressing up vaguely goth (they are handsome people), and then for the 2nd part on Halloween in costumes, was great. Like Liam's one-shot, they all begin in a familiar place (the Nerdist set), that is strange and overturned by a calamity ; and Taliesin really brought the weird in the building ! And I love that it was destined, in his mind, to be a TPK since they are newbies vampires and he knew his friends would be reckless in this world ; but Laura saved her and Travis' non-life by staying true to her good heart, and this made for a very statisfying end. Bits and pieces :

Taliesin keeps mispronuncing "stamina" into "stanima".

Sam doesn't know anything else in the building except the Critical Role set.

Matt and Marish dying super early because they had to go prepare their wedding (Marisha, when Matt dies "We always knew you would be the first to go in the apocalypse", and Sam asking in-game if this means they get a refund on their wedding gifts, cracked me up).

The True Blood (Sam's only reference when it comes to vampires) and the Twilight (Travis' only reference) things.

The fact that they made secret alliances with each other, sometimes using mind-control (Liam was such a little shit ! I love it) so that in the end they all betrayed and double-crossed.

Travis saying "Can I take my shirt off..." and Taliesin, Liam and Sam simultenously responding "Always".

The lizard people living in the L.A. sewers, because of course there is, and some of them are fans of the cast because Critters are everywhere.

The whole sequence where Liam hunts a human that turns out to be Will Friedle, and stuff his body inside the hole of a porta-potty (Taliesin : "Actually you can shove a whole body in a porta-potty hole. Don't ask me how I know that")

The "Shadow of War" one-shot, because I'm a huge LoTR nerd and also Darin De Paul is such a treasure that I would watch anything he's in.

The Grog as a DM one-shot was so much ridiculousness that it won me over. It was very relaxing, since there were no high stakes at all, except Scanlan trying to kill Trinket. Also Seeing Travis panicking as a DM was a delight.

#my thoughts #critical role #cr campaign 1 #cr one-shots

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utilitycaster · 7 months

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I've been seeing complaints that Spenser was 'trying too hard to kill the cast' this episode, which I have to say I wildly disagree with, but I will admit to be a little confused why the players sometimes took one or even two marks after rolling a six. Or I guess I'm not confused so much as I wonder if the mechanics for injury, success, failure, etc could be too vague atm? Candela doesn't really have anything like CR rating or DC which it doesn't NEED, but I guess could create some grey area?

Good question! Here's the secret: all TTRPGs I'd consider worth my time have a huge swathe of gray area, D&D very much included (indeed, I find a lot of the more baseless criticisms of D&D, especially from Game Based Heavily On D&D But Different fans (derogatory) to come from people mad at that gray area) and as long as the players and GM have agreed on it, it's fine. With that said I admit that paying attention to individual rolls is not what I am inclined, personally, to do, but if this is about Sean rolling a six and taking two body...that is because he was going to take four body off the bat and reduced it with a good roll that the GM permitted him. (It also might be about Marion taking in the rift, which was similarly stated beforehand to cost him a Bleed scar no matter what he rolled, the roll reflecting how successful he was.) Now, we can talk about the implications of taking four body seemingly out of nowhere, but do recall that is coming off an earlier 1 roll in his interaction with Duncan.

CR ratings generally are a poor understanding of difficulty, and the thing about DCs is you can set them arbitrarily high (or for that matter, secretly low). Like...to use D&D, you cannot make a persuasion check for someone who dislikes you to give you all their belongings and run away forever. The DM is going to set the persuasion check at 50 and it is going to be unreachable by any means. Even a nat 20 will give you a result of "they think you're joking and laugh it off instead of run after you with a sword." If you jump off a sufficiently high cliff in D&D and roll a nat 20 to land, you still might take enough damage to die during your three-point landing. And so on.

So: while we don't have all the rules of Candela Obscura, it is valid from my knowledge of the Forged in the Dark engine, which Illuminated Worlds was heavily influenced by, for Spenser to say "this action is unbelievably dangerous and there is no possible way you are escaping unscathed, and a full success means that you live to tell the tale with only a gunshot wound or bleed damage rather than outright death." That's the other thing: completely valid for the GM to come in planning to kill the players. That's the premise of EXU Calamity. I would assume the table discussed that this was going to be a much darker and more dangerous game than Chapter 1 and everyone shares those expectations, and is prepared to possibly lose these characters. Which is, frankly, another thing that comes up specifically in actual play: what the table knows and expects and is prepared to accept is often something much harsher than the audience is prepared to accept. I mentioned being irritated at the presumptive nature of a lot of safety tool discussion (and am feeling very validated by Spenser's tweet about how he handled the letters to Sean) but like...when the CR or D20 or Candela tables prepare for their games, they have talked about expectations of tone and whether the GM will be trying to gently usher new players to victory, flat out gunning for a potential TPK, or somewhere in between.

This was a long, pre-full dose of caffeine way to say that one of the biggest rules of GM-ing is that the GM sets the tone of which the danger and difficulty of the world is part, and also that, based on everything about how this chapter has been presented, if someone accuses Spenser of being very hard on the party my answer is "...yeah, no shit, did you fail to realize that from the tone and text of literally every trailer and interview?"

#answered #Anonymous #candela obscura #i don't necessarily think the people making this complaint are No Combat D&D People. but also. they give off that air.#that But TTRPGs Are Supposed To Be About How Cool My PC Is and it's like. you can do that at your table #some of us want to experience catharsis through fiction though hope this helps

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alizrak · 3 years

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Battle Tactics to defeat Lucien?

I was so glad when they made it out from a TPK last time... but it shows that they need a plan and they CANT get in Melee. At least they know some stuff that might help them later. We saw the power of one of the eyes and saw that it also affects the rest of the tombtaker's abilities.

From that, the only way I can see of killing Lucien is staying out of range. They must NOT get anywhere where he can move and his cone would affect, so add 30ft. The only place he can't reach is *UP*. So they MUST stay flying +30ft above just to be safe from Lucien’s massive damage.

BUT, the problem here, becomes Otis. He showed he can pull them in with three eldritch blasts, 20ft each for 60ft. Eldritch Blast has a range of 120ft. So... The first one they need to kill first is Otis from afar as he pulls them in.

As this is happening, the only one with real capabilities to attack from a distance is Cree... so Caleb and Fjord need to save their counterspells for her. Once Otis is down, it's just a matter of keep firing and counterspell any of Cree's healing magic.

Light is an issue so they would need to attack during the day because magical light is likely to be snuffed out.

M9 advantages:

Superior flight mobility with Polymorph

Two healers

A full arcane caster

Two characters who can use counterspell.

Tombtakers disadvantages:

Grounded, no fly spells.

Only one full healer/caster

Only one member with ranged attacks.

They don't have high INT saves...

Lucien is still vulnerable to Phantasmal Force.

His own group is vulnerable to the antimagic cone of 30ft.

They can make it as long as they keep these guidelines.

-Polymorph Beau and Yasha to eagles. They won't be getting into melee. Fjord would have to fly on his own. He needs to be able to cast counter spell so he can't be polymorphed. -Start with Fireballs at 150ft as they approach. Try to get their HP down as much as possible even though Otis will likely make the save. They need to soften them up... Cree and Lucien especially. Veth can shoot Otis with disadvantage from 80ft-320ft. She might be able to do some damage there. -They must move 60ft above them so Jester and Cad cast HARM on Otis. Keep Caleb and Forjd also at range ready to counterspell them. That's going to be a motherfucker either way so Veth can continue to shooting normally to try to bring him down. -They must fly back up if at any point they are pulled down while Otis is still able to cast Eldritch Blast. -Fjord needs to attack Lucien from the opposite side of the cone with Eldritch Blast. His spells could help them gauge what direction Lucien is facing. -Once Otis is down, with one counterspell less, Caleb can continue sending fireballs and Jester/Cad cast spiritual weapons on Cree from above. If Lucien tries to protect her, he might LOOK in her direction, but that will keep her from casting or counterspelling... still making her a sitting duck for Veth's attacks.

Of course, all of this is might not work in the end because we haven't seen what the rest of the eyes do. But IF they get Otis and Cree... Yasha and Beau can turn back and they need to FOCUS ON LUCIEN TOGETHER AND FLANK HIM while the others keep Zoren and Tayfeil occupied. Fjord and Veth are the only ones who can continue to damage one of these... but an illusion can help as well.

#Critical Role #Critical Role Spoilers

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clockworklozenges · 3 years

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So, I think it may be time to regale you with the story of the worst heist that I, as a player, was involved in. It was in 3.5e, and genasi were a thing (thanks to the planetouched book) and with the DM getting the Savage Species book (those who read my post about Damien Fucking Bloodmoon will see where this is going, and that it will be going poorly) our group, fresh off an embarrassing TPK to what were, ostensibly, Minions who were aware of their existence being heresy in the eyes of Mother Nature, Father Time and Kooky Uncle Pop Culture - before the advent of the yellow tic-tac banana fetishists - decided that it was time for what could charitably be called the "monstrous regiment".

More accurately, it was Car Crash DnD.

The Monstrous Regiment was a mercenary group formed of the surviving crew of a plane-crossing Spelljammer vessel which had crashed in the Forgotten Realms, leaving most of the crew as social outcasts deemed as enemies of civilisation (fair enough with General Nibbles the Cannibal Goblin, though he insisted on proper table manners when eating people he respected) by the world at large, as we were all what many would deem 'exotic' or 'monster' races.

We had General Nibbles the Cannibal Goblin (not a general, General was his first name because he ate a general once and saved the nameplate from his desk, which he used as sunglasses), a Ranger who was the ship's cook and also had a level in rogue for the acquisition of what could charitably called "mystery meats". We had Table, who was a humanoid-shaped mimic bard, who could only communicate in nouns. This sounds like a handicap, but he effectively became a stellar country music singer. He was somehow the party face, since our other party members were an owlbear cleric who thought he was a bee (a big one, though. He was delusional, but not stupid), a zombie orc fighter called Mighty Green Chad and myself. I was playing as a water elemental Sorcerer called Andalf, who had water themed spells, but had been affected by the crash of the Spelljammer, making it so that he would, in moments of extreme emotional stress, explosively transform into a fire elemental called Malrog, whose spells and personality were much more firey and damaging than the calm and supportive Andalf.

An important note for later is that I could not choose when I changed between Andalf and Malrog. The DM would give me a Will Saving throw with a changing DC depending on the situation, and if I failed I changed, if I passed then I would sustain the form I had.

We had found that, in order to fix our ship and leave Ed Greenwood's magical prostitution brothel realm, we needed the aid of a wizard, who was trapped in his tower under house arrest. The key to the tower was stored in the Inn, where we had to disguise ourselves to even enter. In this respect, General Nibbles made a passable gnome (we did not ask him where he 'found' the skin-suit, but noticed that the gnomish population was less and less prominent with each day we remained in the town), and Chad, Table, Bee and myself used illusion spells and shapeshifting magic to blend in. We needed the key, and Andalf, the calm and collected Sorcerer with no damage spells at all, devised a plan of genius equivalent to the innovative spark of whichever fellow decided to stab bread before selling it.

Firstly, we have General Nibbles...do his thing and run diversionary tactics to distract the town guards, since two of the ten are always at the wizard tower, Nibbles will be given firebombs and potions to increase his speed and stealth, whereupon he'll use his chloroform (um. Don't, uh, don't ask why he has that) to give one of the bar staff a "surprise day off".

Table will mimic the...holidaying staff member, and ensure that they can ingratiate themselves with the Inn customers.

Chad, Bee and Andalf will enter as bar patrons, and whilst Chad and Bee entertain the crowd with what they certainly thought was a humorous stand up comedy routine, Andalf will distract the innkeeper and see if he can access the safe using his enchantment spells.

We leave.

Profit.

Things didn't go as planned.

For a start, Nibbles got...peckish, and ate the waiter Table was meant to become, accidentally used an explosive arrow on the second waiter we tried to ambush and exploded him, and ended up carrying the one we actually got intact with him for his part of the plan, acting like he was starring in discount, arsonist Ratatouille, dragging the unconscious waiter behind him. This meant that the bar staff was whittled down to just the innkeeper, the cook and Table.

Table himself decided, after seeing rich guests, to start doing a precarious dance and using enchantments to lock those aforementioned rich guests in their ensuites and rob them blind, meaning that nobody is keeping watch on the door, me or the civilians (especially since most think they're chickens clucking away in ensuites more like indoor outhouses than bathrooms, and the others are transfixed by the bizarre antics of Bee and Mighty Green Chad).

Bee and Mighty Green Chad get drunk, make friends and then take over the stage, performing karaoke, ventriloquism, expressive dance and a 'comedy' routine which relied on two things: one, that the audience knows that they're an owlbear and a zomborc and two, that the audience is so drunk that they would laugh at James Corden making fart noises during an Adam Sandler film. Fortunately, the bar patrons had passed that point and had reached "you're my best pal, you know" and teetering on the "you fancy a kebab? I fancy a kebab, let's get a kebab, no, the health rating doesn't matter, I fancy a kebab" stage of drunkenness.

This does mean that, of the people in the bar, the only clear-headed people are either me, the innkeeper or an abruptly kleptomaniacal mimic. The cook doesn't count as Nibbles had finished his jobs and had stuffed both the cook and the waiter into a barrel of ale, which he was also sampling judiciously.

After, the DM remarked that Nibbles thought it a fine vintage, if a bit too flammable for his tastes.

So, to sum up- the guests are trapped in their bathrooms clucking their lives away, our spy is robbing purses, our demo man is drinking not-yet-quite-corpses wine in the yard and our muscle is drunk and acting out the Two Ronnies Fork Handles sketch in slurred Scottish accents. With all this, Andalf walks in and I hear the dreaded...

"Make a Will Save"

I pass, but only just, and sweet-talk the innkeeper, using Andalf's silver tongue and high Concentration skill to get into the back room and maintain my illusory Antonio Banderas face (judge me all you want, I have taste in fake faces), and she leaves the room to get some Elven wine from the next room. With only a thin wooden wall between me and her, I find the key, but to grab it is a risk...and of course...

"Make me a Will Save"

And whilst I get the key from the draw...I fail the will save, becoming Malrog, flinging the key across the room and causing the innkeeper to rush back in, howling about a demon who burned up the man she was seducing. Then she sees the fire.

So, as part of the transformation, the DM flavoured it as a small wave of flame or water pulsing outwards from the now-Malrog or now-Andalf respectively. Whilst it did a tiny amount of damage, the flame burst from the Andalf to Malrog transformation would ignite anything flammable in a 10-foot radius around me. This includes wooden floors, ceilings, furniture and, sadly, innkeepers.

So, the innkeeper runs out screaming about a demon (and being on fire, which is understandable when you're on fire) and leaves me alone, the key in a raging inferno near the safe, the room on fire and the fire spreading into the rooms filled with alcohol. And as I reach into the fire...

"Make me a Will Save"

Upstairs, the party have noticed the fire, and whilst Table the mimic leaves out the back window (landing on Nibbles), Bee and Chad drunkenly herd equally drunken civilians out, vaguely aware that the Very Hungry Goblin out back ate the waiters responsible for putting fires out, and the guards are dealing with multiple smaller fires across town.

I fail the will save, burning myself on the key, which causes me to re-transform after another failed will save, melting the safe key in my hand and causing the alcohol to explode, making the inn begin to crumble around me.

Bee and Chad are eagerly trying to get out, to the point where they're just throwing commoners out of the windows and through the walls to get them out of the way. They escape, and hurriedly leave before the cops turn up.

Faced with death, Malrog burns up all his spells to try Melt his way into the safe since the key is gone. This melts the safe shut. As a result of the stress from thoroughly beansing up the one job I had, I change back, and now begin to take fire damage as well as bludgeoning from the falling debris.

We did all escape, thanks to Nibbles being unable to resist the smell of cooking flesh and finding our unconscious bodies. However, the inn burned down, the innkeeper mourned Antonio Banderas and we left that wizard to die of starvation in his tower, along with the town.

After all, it pays to know when your welcome is worn out, and when it is burned to cinders.

#dnd #3.5 edition #dungeons and dragons #sorcerer #Bard #Mimic #Orc #Zomborc #Remarkably Nibbles survived longer than anyone else thanks to his hunger for Flesh #but that's another story #elemental #heist #Goblin #owlbear #cleric #dnd fighter #Fire #cannibalism

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theworldbrewery · 4 years

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multiclass your... WARLOCK!!

your spell slot count might leave much to be desired, but you’re a BAMF and you know it.

No matter what, I recommend multiclassing no sooner than 9th level--your best benefits are going to come once your warlock spell slots are 5th level. You’ll also have gotten a few bonuses from your patron, your pact boon, and your 5 eldritch invocations, so you’ve rounded out your full skillset by then.

In this post, I’ll take a look at what happens with each potential combination and which patrons will mesh with each multiclass the best.

Warlock + Barbarian

Once again, you can’t cast spells or concentrate on them while raging. Since warlocks are basically designed for explosive casting, this multiclass, unfortunately, won’t do much good mechanically. You can gain the Unarmored Defense feature to up your AC...but you’re better off getting some magic armor instead. If you’re still committed, you’d better hope your patron is the Hexblade, because you’ll need all the melee perks you can get.

Warlock + Bard

Bards rely on Charisma, which you should have in spades, so this is already a good start. Early-level bard abilities are great with their bonus action Bardic Inspiration and their added spell slots and cantrips. The subclasses I most recommend are warlocks of the Archfey, which lets you beguile opponents, or of the Celestial, which can give a little boost to your bardic healing.

Warlock + Cleric

This is interesting mostly because of the Divine Domain you choose, as usual. It’ll shape those early cleric levels greatly, so choose it wisely. You’ll get two first-level spell slots and three cantrips, as well. I recommend warlocks of the Undying to consider this multiclass because your ability to restore hitpoints to yourself when you succeed on a death saving throw can make the difference between a TPK and the party’s survival if you can then throw in some Cleric healing.

Warlock + Druid

I know that warlocks and wisdom don’t traditionally mix, but hear me out. Right off the bat, you get two cantrips and two first-level spell slots. If you use a big warlock slot on a concentration spell (like Witch Bolt or Hex), you can use cantrips and the littler slots to hit--and at second level, you can continue concentrating while wild-shaped. It’s the only casting-first multiclass that doesn’t conflict wildly with Wild Shape, because your spell slots are so few it’s not as necessary to be able to cast. I recommend Archfey or the Great Old One-patron warlocks for this option due to their pact spells and the sixth-level benefits from each--one granting a reaction to turn invisible and teleport while the other offers the ability to impose disadvantage on attacks against you (letting you keep concentration longer).

Warlock + Fighter

A fighting style rocks if your warlock does any weapons fighting, but the key components to this multiclass are the Second Wind (restoring your HP is always a plus) and the Action Surge. Theoretically, using your action surge would let you cast Eldritch Blast twice, for a total of 4 attack rolls! Otherwise, there’s nothing wrong with using the action surge to take the simple Attack action. I recommend Hexblade here, of course--nothing like using a fighting style with a pact weapon!--but the Fiend is also great because it essentially boosts you with an analogue for the fighter’s Indomitable feature.

Warlock + Monk

Hopefully you don’t mind falling behind on the spells a little bit here, because the monk + warlock multiclass does have its benefits, although common ability scores is not one of them--you need a minimum 13 in charisma, dex, and wisdom for this to work. You can use the unarmored defense and unarmored movement perks to help yourself remain flexible and concentrating on your spells during combat, and employ Ki points to further enhance yourself--warlocks have only a few bonus actions, so Ki points fill a good niche for you. I actually want to recommend this one to warlocks of the Great Old One, whose telepathy feature and Entropic Ward fit well into the Monk’s skillset.

Warlock + Paladin

I’ll admit, being a paladin won’t do much for you at first level -- the nice bit is the Lay on Hands, which lets you do light healing. This multiclass becomes worth it when you hit second level, when you can use Divine Smite with a fifth-level-spell slot (see being 9th level or higher in warlock). Plus you’ll gain a handful of paladin spells and new spell slots, but fifth-level smites. As a bonus, your charisma works in your favor, as it’s the spellcasting ability for both classes. Best option for this multiclass is Hexblade, as you’ll be able to attack with your Charisma rather than Strength or Dexterity and deal additional damage. Regardless, if you have pact of the blade with a few of its related invocations, this can work in your favor.

Warlock + Ranger

If you’re a Great Old One warlock, this could be right for you. The reason? You can choose a favored enemy language that will greatly affect your telepathy feature. Use the ranger’s fighting style to give yourself an AC boost, and take those two first-level spell slots as a treat. Take care: like the monk, ranger requires a score of at least 13 in both wisdom and dexterity, so while the benefits are good, the prerequisites are more demanding.

Warlock + Rogue

You best be a Hexblade warlock for this one. Reason being, sneak attack only works if you strike with a ranged or finesse weapon, which means to be worth it, you hopefully have a weapon on hand. Outside combat, you’ll get expertise, which is hopefully a boon to those who often run out of spell slots and need to do things the old fashioned way. And naturally, the Cunning Actions are a gift.

Warlock + Sorcerer

Although these two are quite similar, the issue lies in that they may be too similar. A sorcerous origin and an otherworldly patron can overlap strongly, and make your multiclass feel redundant. Still, you’ll get 4 new cantrips, the first-level perks of the origin, and the sorcery points at second level that you can use to create new spell slots, or use spell slots to become sorcery points (which will develop other potential uses at 3rd level with the Metamagic feature). One additional benefit is that both classes rely on Charisma. I propose Archfey warlocks consider this multiclass because of your Fey Presence feature helping to keep your concentration up (with regard to being harmed by enemies)

Warlock + Wizard

Once again, a tough call to make. The nice part here is that your wizard spells are affected by Arcane Recovery, so not only do you regain warlock slots on a short rest, but you also regain at least one wizard slot. Speaking of spell slots, at first level you’ll gain two of those, as well as three cantrips. It’s not outstanding or anything, but Warlock is probably the best class to mix with Wizard, especially if you’re Pact of the Tome. I would favor Celestial for this multiclass; the ability to do light healing is something wizards normally can’t access, but you can still use wizard slots and save your big Warlock slots for more badass maneuvers.

And that’s everyone! Please drop us a line in our ask box if you’re interested in seeing non-Core classes evaluated (such as Blood Hunter or Artificer).

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