Anonymous asks: when does Vex die in sunken tomb?

Ep44, 4:24:18

Save Against the Beholder Odds

IsYitzack returns, with the odds on how often the party could have saved against the beholder’s eye ray attacks!

Matt was surprised to see how well the party was rolling against his beholder on Thursday. I was wondering how surprised he should be. And the answer is very. I’ll be using DCs of 16 for all eye ray attacks (including the eyeball that came out of the column to shoot at Scanlan). The tendrils coming from the wall only required a DC 15 Dex Save to avoid. (They didn’t last long enough to require acrobatics or athletics checks to escape their grasp.) Finally, I’ll be using the Saving Throw values calculated by CritRoleStats in their character sheets.

They made 14 of 19 saving throws. That happens 15,763,665,194,354,589,813 in 2^16*10^16 events (Mathematica does arbitrary integer and fraction arithmetic so long as the RAM holds out). That is approximately 2.41% of the possible ways will come out this good. I would expect 9.82 successes (out of 19) instead. There is a 3.35% chance of doing this well or better (see Figure 1). I wouldn’t be too terribly concerned about doing this well, but it is much better than I would have expected. The most likely outcome: 10 successes at 19.3% chance of happening.

Figure 1: The plot of the likeliness of making n saves. The X axis is the number of saves (out of 19), while the Y axis is the percent chance of that many saves happening. Vox Machina in The Sunken Tomb fall very far to the right, at 14 on the X axis.

For my initial calculations, I started my computer Sunday night to begin printing out every possible combination of fails and saves of the 19 ray attacks, using the brute force method. Turns out that after reducing the probabilities from out 20 and 400 to the simplest fractions, there are still 2^16*10^16= 65,536 * 10^16 possibilities. I stopped my computer Monday morning and it was nowhere near finishing. I took inspiration from what I had done whilecalculating the odds of Vex’s resurrection ritual (Ed: coming soon!) and worked on a network of nodes to arrive at a final result in much less time.

Most of the chances of success are fairly straight-forward. Critical failures and successes would have been failures or success without being aided in any of these cases. Grog has Danger Sense which he can always use to gain advantage on Dex saves. Travis stated that “I’m not raging yet” as he rolled the dice; while he theoretically should still have it when he isn’t raging, since he didn’t claim it, I won’t claim it for him in this calculation.

Figure 2: A graph of the probability of rolling a specific number on a d20.

Figure 3: A graph of the odds of beating a DC of n. Keep in mind that DC 2 is technically the lowest possible, as 1 always fails.

Thanks again to IsYitzack for this, and the resurrection odds!

Puns of Episode 44: The Sunken Tomb

We apologize in advance for these.  Seriously.

• (0:32:26) Matt: …was named Purvan.  Laura: Ha!  Yeah he is.  Sam: Last name…Pedobear.
• (0:34:41) Vex’ahlia: there’s definitely gonna be ghosts there.  Kashaw?  Kashaw: Yeah?  Vex’ahlia: Do your holy s*** when we go there, all right?
• (0:44:38) Mary: [Grog’s] very good at passing wind!
• (1:07:50) Matt: For lack of a better term, a pucker point. […] Mary: The loch has an anus.  Liam: Ah, you’re goin’ to Loch Anus, are you?  Mary: It’s very muddy.  Well it ‘tis!  I put my nose in it. Augh…
• (1:10:30) Will: See what’s coming out of Loch Anus.  Sam: Dark forces.
• (1:32:43) Sam: It’s a super muddy Anus
• (3:20:04) Will: You can’t finger [of death] it any more.  Mary: I can’t finger it to death!
  

Monster Analysis: Kuo-toa

• First Appearance: 44 The Sunken Tomb
  
• Armor Class 13
• Speed 30 ft, 30 ft swimming
• Darkvision 120 ft, Perception 19 (Archpriest)
• Basic Average, Max HP: 18, 32
• 24 taken, 10 killing blow by Percy
  
• 37 taken, 24 killing blow by Kashaw
• 24 taken, 24 killing blow by Kashaw
• Archpriest Average, Max HP: 97, 143
• 112 taken, 24 killing blow by Kashaw

The kuo-toa are fish-headed people, driven insane by generations of enslavement at the hands of the illithid and perpetuated by their own unquestioning belief and worship of deities they invented themselves. While these deities (Blibdoolpoolp, for example) are really just humanoid statues that had lobster claws and other sea-life appendages attached, with enough belief, kuo-toa priests are able to will enough divine energy into existence. This allows the most devote of them to cast a small collection of druidic spells.

They can also be fairly slippery in combat. They have developed an otherwordly sense that lets them sense and see any invisible creatures within 30 feet, including those that travel through the Ethereal Plane. They have advantage to save against grapple checks due to their slippery skin, and melee attackers who fail to hit kuo-toa grunts may find their weapon stuck to the weird goo coating the creatures’ shields.

That said, the warriors, the priests, and the more physically capable “whips” are still pretty puny. Their inability to withstand even mere sunlight (let alone a few attacks from a mid-to-upper-level party) makes them hardly a challenge (I mean, at least goblins are cunning). However, their blind obedience to creatures that could possibly resemble deities and step into kuo-toa society like they deserve the servitude of the race will receive it without question. Common examples include the amphibious and brutally intelligent aboleth, but as we saw, other aberrations can also take the place of leader at the cost of the kuo-toa…

(Now, most kuo-toa are evil and openly hostile to non-kuo-toa, but we had to at least give a shout-out to this harmless little guy…)

Company Endorsements

starman87 asks: Hello. This is an impressive and amazing work you've done. I was wondering if there was a list of companies and sites that the cast has endorsed, both officially and unofficially. The only one i can ever remember is Wyrmwood Gaming. I would like to check them out. Thank you.

For the purposes of this request, we’re going to leave off the charities that the cast supports.  For a list of those charities, click here.

• Espionage Cosmetics
  • Nail wraps, Makeup
  • Provided those for subscriber giveaways
  • Episode 7, (0:17:15)

• Aaron’s Books
  • Books
  • Provided four subscriber giveaway packages
  • Episode 13, (0:16:48)

• Shapeways
  • 3D Printing, including dice
  • Taliesin’s favorite d20 is from Shapeways
  • Episode 13, (3:22:39)

• Kommissar Props
  • Custom props, costumes, etc.
  • Made the Horns of Orcus
  • Episode 14, (0:00:48)

• Boonzy Arts
  • RPG/Nerdy Soy Candles
  • Used one of their candles during Episode 19
  • Episode 19, (0:03:50)

• Wyrmwood Gaming
  • Dice Trays and Vaults
  • Use code CRITROLE at checkout for free shipping
  • Episode 30, (0:02:50)

• Tor Books
  • Science Fiction and Fantasy Books
  • Sponsored Episodes 30 and 44
  • Episode 30, (1:55:57), Episode 44 (0:00:40)

• Hero Forge
  • Custom Miniatures
  • Cast received custom Vox Machina minis
  • Episode 31 (p3. 0:06:51)

• Dungeon Masters Guild
  • D&D Content
  • Matt’s Gunslinger and Blood Hunter Archetypes are available there
  • Episode 38, (0:04:47)

• Dwarven Forge
  • Miniature gaming terrain
  • Sent Matt terrain pieces that Matt used on-stream
  • Episode 44, (0:02:39)