anonymous asks: Vex's a beastmaster \ Though Mercer made some changes \ Thus: Do we know those? (Haikus are difficult without multiple line support)
Trinket gets hit dice.
His armor class is quite high.
Rolling cannonball.
Has a higher Int.
Smarter than the average bear.
Four is more than two.
His challenge rating
is higher than usual.
No bear left behind.
Leave Trinket behind.
Haikus are a great way to
argue about bears.
anonymous asks: What rule set do you guys use??
We strictly abide by this set of rules:
…Wait, that’s not what you meant. Critical Role uses the Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition rules, with a number of home brew rules thrown in for good measure.
anonymous asks: Are you one person, a collective of people, or two gnomes standing on each others shoulders wearing long coat?
Guys, I think they’re onto us…
There are three of us at the core.
@trenchantwit manages the site, answers the DM-sided questions, and runs the Twitter account. If you’re asking CritRoleStats a question, he’s probably the person you’re talking to. He also started the site, so, you know. Props and stuff. (He’s also super humble.)
@thesingingbadger is the other main poster to the site, coordinating with volunteers, and accumulating data for the lists we put out. TSB wanted to make a whole bunch of references throughout this post, but is attempting to show restraint.
@kathatherine is the stealthy one, doing mostly behind-the-scenes tasks, working on character proficiencies, and converting recorded rolls to the natural values. Kathatherine is like a patient Vax; she stealths along until she’s ready and suddenly-wham! She sneak attacks you with massive, awesome posts like this.
And, of course, there is everyone else who helps us with various stats, from watching for stats through old episodes, working through character sheets, and logging rolls. Notable contributors include:
There’s a lot more, too, who are all awesome. Y’all are awesome.
dasbif asks: How much total damage was dealt to the White Dragon in episode 40? By who?
Total damage dealt to Vorugal: 275
Matt pointed out that Vorugal hardly looked injured after even this much damage (which didn’t surprise us at all, considering Rimefang didn’t go down until he took 630). Full fight analysis coming Monday!
anonymous asks: Do Vax and Gilmore kiss?
anonymous asks: How on Critical Role does Vex'ahlia with a wisdom of 14 have a passive perception of 21. There has never been mention of a magic item that increases it and no half elf or ranger ability allows some magical huge passive perception boost.
You’re right, it’s not magic item, half-elf ability, or ranger ability: it’s a feat! Vex took the feat Observant. It increased her wisdom score by 1, gives her a +5 bonus to passive perception, and allows her to read lips.
yo-lucas-yo asks: Do we have an idea of what Big Red (what I'm calling the Larger - than - Ancient Dragon) would fit under in terms of age and size?
In order to qualify as an Ancient, a dragon must be of at least 801 years of age and Gargantuan (bigger than Huge) in size. By this definition, Big Red would still technically be considered an Ancient Dragon. It is implied that his size is larger than that of the run-of-the-mill ancient red dragon (which are already intimidating as they are), and presumably its age is also notably older than is typical.
Ancient dragons can live for over a thousand years. It is not specified how much more beyond 1000 years until old age is more likely to kill a dragon instead of combat, but it would not be unreasonable to estimate that any four of the members of the Chroma Conclave are over 1500 years in age.
Once a creature hits Gargantuan, it’s hard to go much bigger than that. Mechanically, this deviation from the normal red is probably only reflected by an increased AC, as shown by Big Green’s extra point. Story-wise, its increased size is likely to show its dominance to any other ancient dragon (of any color), as well as provide a significantly more ominous tone. This wasn’t just any dragon, which are dangerous on their own. This was the single most dangerous dragon in existence.
Tl;dr: Gargantuan, and over 1500 years. Maybe.
Update: mashtar points out that in earlier versions of D&D, there was also the Colossal size category (creatures greater than 64 feet in height or length). To put things in perspective, the ridiculously large tarrasque is 50 feet tall, making it both Gargantuan and the largest creature in the 5e Monster Manual. As large as Big Red is, we find it unlikely even it is larger than the tarrasque. However, as mashtar says, “if the Red Dragon is considerably larger than the others then my bets on are Colossal.”
Worms and Dragons all the way down…
The purple worm is a gargantuan monstrosity, a ravenous hunter who detects its prey by the vibrations they generate, chewing through solid rock in pursuit. Smooth tunnels are the result of its travels, often used by denizens of the rocky mountains or Underdark where it lurks. Its toothy maw is large enough to swallow even large creatures whole. Creatures it cannot bite also may be a victim of its poisonous stinger.
Adventurers who are trapped inside the worm take 6d6 of acid damage at the start of the creature’s turn. They can be regurgitated to safety if they deal 30 or more damage on their turn from inside, provided the worm fails its Con Save (DC 21, with a Con mod of +6).
The frost worm’s roots appear to stem from Pathfinder (at the very least, that’s where the mini came from). However it has been modified to be a significantly easier encounter, much more in line with its purple cousin. The worm’s frost breath dealt a 30-foot cone of cold damage (at 33 and 36, we estimate 8d6). The versions of the frost worm we came across also had an ability to erupt in a blast of cold upon its defeat; we consider Vox Machina very fortunate that this effect was absent.
The most dangerous capability of both worms were their appetite. With the high damage requirement to escape from inside and an even higher constitution in case that requirement is met, the quickest option to escape the extremely acidic innards was magic (e.g., Dimension Door) or killing it outright.
The most notable wrinkle in the fight came from the miscommunication of Wind Walk. (We did confirm during the live stream that both the Android and iPhone spell sheet apps listed the spell as requiring 1 action to cast, while the PHB does specify it takes a full minute. Let that be a warning to confirm consistency with your own resources!) With half the party unable to provide support and the other half quickly becoming a meal, the difficulty of the encounter was notably increased. Fortunately, D&D is a flexible game with a malleable reality, so with a little creative thinking, the battle was evened once more in time for the stranded members to receive appropriate assistance.
Another note to DMs: if, at any point, the party has the opportunity to become richer than sin, keep in mind to always have a better reason for them not to. A collapsing cavern, a bigger version of what just almost killed the party, the threat of losing access to something even more important…
anonymous asks: What would be the estimated CR rating for fighting the 4 ancient dragons of the Chroma Conspiracy? Worse than a Tarrasque? (Consider: the green had an AC one higher than listed in the book.)
Oh, we’re definitely considering the increased AC. On top of that, let’s even, temporarily, consider HP. Rimefang was a mere adult white dragon (compared to the more-powerful-than-ancient Conclave), and his health was approximately three times that of an adult white dragon (about 625, compared to the suggested average of 200). If we give the Ancient White the same treatment… It has over 1000 HP.
But, let’s pretend that their HP was modified only a tiny bit, all their ACs went up by 1, and their individual challenge ratings increased by a mere 1 point each. With these modifications (XP totals indicated by the table on DMG p.275), let’s go with the extremely optimistic set of the following challenge ratings:
The sum of all together is 199,000 XP. Using the Encounter Calculator on DMG page 82, we know that we have a Large party of 7 facing an encounter of four hostile creatures. This will result in a difficulty modifier of 1.5, which, when applied to the sum of the four dragons, results in a difficulty encounter of 298,500 XP.
For those completely new to D&D, the Tarrasque is the single most powerful creature in the Monster Manual. It has a challenge rating of 30 (155,000 XP), and is only brought out by DMs who are ready to give their capped-out level 20 players an end boss that has a high probability of ending in a TPK. A party of 7 facing a tarrasque will actually bring down difficulty rating to half, or 77,500 XP. Two tarrasques will actually balance the scale, making the experience gained and the difficulty XP rating 310,000 XP.
So. Between fighting one tarrasque, four more-powerful-than-ancient dragons, and two tarrasques, the first is definitely preferred.
Bonus: For a party of six level 12 PCs and one level 11 PC, we can calculate (DMG p.82) that an encounter of difficulty rating 30,600 XP will be deadly for Vox Machina, meaning the Chroma Conclave is 10 times worse than a Deadly Encounter. (For a party of seven level 20 PCs, 88,900 XP is considered deadly; one tarrasque would be somewhere between deadly and hard.)
Obviously, they were not meant to be taken on in a straight fight.
We know, that was a lot of math that relies on the DM side of the screen. We’re working on a series of articles that are a bit more detailed on encounter creation to expand on Matthew Mercer’s excellent first video on Building Encounters and explain where all these ridiculous numbers come from. Stay tuned!
imetamanwhowasatree asks: Hey there! I'm going to do the drinking game with a friend in the near future, and we were wondering what episode would be the best (or worst) one for us to rewatch... So: which episode has the highest drinking game score?
We’re sure most of you have heard of the Critical Role Drinking Game. After doing this study, we’re really wondering how many of you have managed to make it to the end of an episode while playing.
Quick Disclaimer: Critrolestats does not condone anyone below the drinking age their country has set playing this game. Also, don’t drink and drive. Bad idea. Just … Drink Responsibly.
Now, onto the fun! Instead of giving every episode a drinking game score, we decided to take two very different episodes of Critical Role and simulate playing the Drinking Game, for the sake of our livers. You’ll see why in a moment.
Here’s what we know about both episodes:
Episode Four
The lack of intermission makes up for Attack on the Duergar Warcamp being less than three hours long because, as we all know, the more drinks you have in a short amount of time, the more drunk you get. The heavy combat in the second hour also makes up for the thirty minutes or so Vox Machina spends trying to decide how they are going to get inside the Warcamp.
Episode Thirty-Eight
Because Echoes of the Past contains an intermission (i.e., a longer wait between drinks), a lot of role-playing moments, and almost no combat, you would assume that almost no drinks would be drunk. You would only be partially right. The Drinking Game has quite a few sips allotted to RP moments, such as Vex not trusting an NPC or Scanlan flirting with Pike. The sips triggered by Nat20s and Nat1s and the “finish your drink” triggers also helped increase the bottle count for this episode.
Analysis
Onto the actual numbers. We decided that we would be drinking a 12 oz. bottle of beer for this simulation and studies show that there are about 10.15 sips in one of these beers. Rounding down, that gives us ten tick marks to get to before a full drink is had. However, if a “finish your drink” trigger is said or done, we would mark a drink finished and start our tick marks over again.
We decided to track the BACs for an fairly average male and female, using this chart. The male weighs 180 lbs. and the female weighs 160 lbs. You’ll note that the chart says you should subtract 0.01% BAC from the total every 40 minutes, so that’s what we did.
And the final results? Episode Four, with a length of 2:36:28, caused us to “drink” eight full bottles of beer. That’s 3.2 bottles an hour, on average. The male BAC was 0.13, decidedly above the legal limit here in the United States and the female BAC was 0.19. Keep in mind that this was for a 160 lb. female. We can only imagine how sick (or close to death) a hypothetical woman below 140 lbs. would be.
Episode Thirty-Eight, with a length of 2:40:44, caused us to “drink” 5.3 full bottles of beer. That’s 2.12 bottles an hour, on average. The male BAC was 0.04 and the female BAC was 0.07, which is just shy of the legal limit of 0.08% here in the United States. This is much more like it. Pleasantly tipsy or pretty well on one’s way to drunk, giggling at every funny thing Scanlan says and screaming “Cordell, open another bottle!” right along with KiKi.
So, what have we learned? If you’re looking to get absolutely plastered, an episode you know is longer or combat-heavy is definitely the way to go. Try one of the boss battles. However, we recommend drinking a glass of water in-between every beer or cocktail, unless you want to get really sick. If you’re just looking for an excuse to have a few drinks one night, go with one of the RP-heavy episodes, like Shopping and Shipping. Maybe pre-game with a shot or two if you have a high Constitution modifier.
cmdrdara asks: Just want to say that you guys and gals do amazing work! Thank Sarenrae for doing what you do. <3
Thank YOU! And totally, SaRaeRae is our wing-deity.
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