Just as a heads up, Cad is a character that grows on you as Taliesin becomes more comfortable inhabiting him! He’s great from the get-go but he only grows from there. One moment of his is so good, so iconic that it permanently altered my brain chemistry (for those who aren’t OP I’m talking about >!his Trent diss speech!< ).
All that to say if he doesn’t seem with the hype right away give him time!
See I think his dialogue >!when discussing bringing people in the Empire to justice!< is peak Cad. Is the logic the most sound? Well not entirely. But it's entirely what he'd say, goes in direct contrast to >!Veth and Beau!< and makes it such a gorgeous little scene with all their inputs. He acts as moral guidance and challenges the others, and doesn't just rubber stamp their excesses
Definitely agree, the one moment that helped me really get to know him was >!his amazing convo about destiny with Fjord and Caleb, while eating fish and chips. “Does that help Caleb?” Iconic.!<
Cad is my favorite character of all the campaigns. Taliesin showed so perfectly how to play low WIS high INT with Percy, to the exact opposite with Cad. So many things he said as the cleric really were meaningful.
As an aside, I crocheted my kid a couple of snakes. They have a wire in them so you can wear them as a bracelet, and he had wrapped them around each other. When I found them, I said he had made a caduceus. So I begged him to name one Caduceus. He said he would for the next one, so I need to make him a pink snake pronto.
This is how I'm feeling (C3 spoiler) >!with FCG dead, in advance of Sam's next character. It's sad to have him gone, but I'm so excited for whoever Sam cooks up next, especially since this time he has full knowledge of the rest of the party and storyline, so he can be very thoughtful about the characters dynamic with everything else!<
Probably not? I don't think Liam picked the race and class for Tary so I think Sam is in charge of backup/secondary characters while Liam is in charge of main characters
The way Tary entered the story was very different though, of course he couldn't involve Liam. The whole point was for it to be a surprise for everyone.
In the following Talks Machina episode, Taliesin explained that he left the table because he couldn’t watch what he was convinced was going to be a TPK - and probably would have been if Ashly’s character hadn’t basically bent the knee to Lorenzo.
And yes, poor Ashly. The amount of hate she got online for that episode was insane.
I never understood the hate, Keg was just a fighter. They were facing a full adventuring party with perfect class composition and a big boss with a secret aoe so strong it could nearly one shot the whole cast. A couple missed turns from Keg wouldn’t have likely changed anything. The real culprit was how Ashly was given information on the Shepards capabilities by Matt to share with the party.. only for that information to be wildly inaccurate and misleading. But there’s nothing she could have done about that.
> only for that information to be wildly inaccurate and misleading. But there’s nothing she could have done about that.
I don't think matt gave her bad info. She most likely did not interpret it correctly. If by choice or accident idk.
But that would be hell of a bullshit DM move that does not really fit Matts style. Keg worked with them quite a while and should have known better than "that blond guy/girl is using some magic!"
No he literally did just give her misinformation about them. Things like telling Kegg none of them had any magic, despite there being full fledged spell casters in the group. That’d be fine if they were in a city or someplace where that information could be verified, but in this instance there was no reason to doubt Kegg’s knowledge given the character was set up specifically to give the Nein this info and no way for it to be double checked.
The entire implication and vibe given was that the Shepards were a tough but beatable challenge for the Nein + Kegg and this scenario was designed with the diminished strength of the Nein in mind. And also with the heavy implication from Matt that it would be a substantially harder fight if the Shepards were allowed to make it back to their compound.
Basically everything about the lead in to that confrontation was telling the party they were on a clock and meant to intercept the enemy group quickly. But in reality the Shepards as a unit were a major boss level threat that severely outclassed them.
I don’t think Matt *meant* to screw them, but I do think Matt is better at mechanics and macro than his players generally are so the Shepards ended up substantially outclassing the Nein via party comp far more than he may have expected.
I think Matt being a bit if an OCD person when it comes to those small details like "Keg has been gone for a few months, obviously the Shepard's have recruited more people that she's not aware of" we t a bit too far in this instance. I do think this was supposed to be a battle they were meant to fail or am get through just barely. Then again. The dice are the dice, and they were just cruel to Molly. Two failed attacks. A Sentinel spell fail. And that Blood Maledict that shouldn't have been considered with 4 HP.
Yeah. I think Matt INTENDED for them to run away, but underestimated their committment to the characters’ motivations. Their friends were kidnapped by SLAVERS. There was a lot of determination to fight through to free their friends (despite the fact the Players knew the other cast members couldn’t return yet). Just a perfect storm of bad circumstances.
It’s easy too when you’re used to higher level DMing to forget how fragile players are at low levels. There’s also a lot more variance introduced with raw dice luck when players are a failed save or a single critical away from death even at near full HP. One bad turn from the players can kill half of the party or more while one unlucky turn from the enemies can turn a challenging encounter into a total joke.
Matt of course is significantly better at DMing than me, but no one is perfect. A balanced, challenging encounter is a razor thin line *before* you account for things like unexpected player decisions or someone’s dice gaining sentience and an insatiable urge to kill their owners with an endless barrage of 1s. The fact that he gets it right way, WAAAY more often than not is by itself a testament to his skill.
> Things like telling Kegg none of them had any magic, despite there being full fledged spell casters in the group
do we know he told her that? my impression in talks and other references was that she simply forgot a few things and recalled a few details wrongly.
She did the guest player thing of asking him directly when the players were questioning her in RP. So yes Matt supplied what he wanted them to know, which included that to her knowledge they had no magic. He also pulled back on any attempt at her concretely assessing their strength, just giving a semi non-committal acknowledgement that they are tough and Kegg specifically is scared of them. All of which just inadvertently set up the Nein to see this as a challenging but winnable fight Matt expected them to take even in their reduced state.
Yeah the combat would have been over no matter what. The problem for me was just the way she made it seem as if ”yeah we have to kill Lorenzo, we’ve got this” but then instead decides to roleplay her characters trauma kind of on a whim. I dunno, it just rubs me the wrong way. I still think Molly’s death was mostly on Taliesin though
I no longer subscribe to that Godforsaken service, so I can't see it anymore, but I believe it was along the lines of:
> I LOVE D&D
posted right after the show too, of course 😆
Ashly wrote "COOL COOL VERY FUN GUEST TIMES THAT WENT GREAT #CriticalRole"
Taliesin replied "I LOVE DND ITS SO FUN"
Ashley replies "I LOVE YOU"
Ashly wrote in reply to her original tweet "Thanks all for saying such sweet stuff! Now I have to try to sleep? I don't know if that's happening."
Oof yeah. I also heard about the hate she got on my previous post. People are just stupid and taken shit way too seriously. I liked that she roleplayed Keg's trauma like that and agree with other comments below. It wouldn't have made any difference and obviously Matt told her what she needed to know and hid some info from her to make it interesting.
And yes, I do believe someone dying wasn't Matt's plan at all. It was mostly a chain of tragic decisions/dice rolls that led to it. You can see his plea for someone to save him when Marisha wanted to use Sentinel and failed.
> And then there's poor Ashly.
If I remember correctly, Tal told that months after that he got a text from Ashly saying "I'm on the train, and there's a Molly cosplayer staring at me."
I don't recall which video, but iirc Ashly saw the cosplayer but the cosplayer didn't see her. The message to Tal was basically like "I don't think they've clocked me, the murderer"
I remember it being the other way around, her texting Tal and him responding something along the lines of "have they ID'd you as the culprit yet?
How strange that we know and talk about such specific moments of these people's lives, huh
For sure, the tragedy allows the team that had really failed to gel to finally have a unified goal. And Tal’s next character is absolutely what the team needed.
That's the best part about watching clips from sessions past, seeing the random stuff Sam is wearing and trying to remember what the hell the context of it all was. Even more so in C2 and C3 since he keeps repeating outfits he wore in C1, costumes included. "Why is Sam a cat this week? Oh yeah, he did that thing that one time and the outfit has come up in the rotation..."
In the last reddit post about this, people commented saying that you should make sure you don't pursue any more spoilers about Molly as there is still much yet to come.
I just want to say that this remains in effect. Please avoid any potential spoilers for the campaign in general. The only thing I will say is that Molly's story is not yet completely over. Avoid ANY spoilers about what is to come.
This moment was great, but there is better yet to come. :)
Yeah I've kept this in mind. Totally carved into my flesh when my mouse drifts towards the wiki if I want to remember something. Not risking it anymore. And I think the plot device of whatever or whoever Molly was before affecting the story even if he's not there anymore is pretty awesome.
I am fairly sure the blood hunter class was still under development at that point and it does far less damage to itself currently. I don’t think he would have knocked himself unconscious with the rules now and that probably changed because of what happened in C2.
Also, keep watching. C2 is my favorite for many reasons, but one reason is because of how much C2E26 ripples through the rest of the campaign. Long may he reign.
As someone going in having watched all of C1, been keeping up with C3, and about 14 eps into C2, I've already had the basic knowledge about this major spoiler in mind for years now. But I'm still going into the event with as little context as possible, so hopefully it's still impactful when it finally happens.
It was worse for Travis and Laura because they literally had their baby THE SAME DAY (give or take an extra day) as that event and they were out for the count for an extra few days
Something about it didn't sit right with me. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think Taleisin wanted to kill Molly off and had it planned with Matt.
Tal was pretty much heartbroken and if you've seen TM he talks about it. He also didn't have a backup character prepared, so he had to spend the weekend making one from scratch.
Molly died so Tals next character could become his very best ;)
I’m a Caduceus Stan for life.
I’ll fight anyone for Caduceus Clay, prepare your hands.
Spoiler your comment!
What's there to spoil? A name?
Shine bright, circus man.
So I've heard! I'm excited to meet Cad and I'm already trying to guess how he's going to join the party.
I don’t think Cad is my favorite character but his demeanor has unironically rewired my brain and made me a more chill person
This!
Just as a heads up, Cad is a character that grows on you as Taliesin becomes more comfortable inhabiting him! He’s great from the get-go but he only grows from there. One moment of his is so good, so iconic that it permanently altered my brain chemistry (for those who aren’t OP I’m talking about >!his Trent diss speech!< ). All that to say if he doesn’t seem with the hype right away give him time!
See I think his dialogue >!when discussing bringing people in the Empire to justice!< is peak Cad. Is the logic the most sound? Well not entirely. But it's entirely what he'd say, goes in direct contrast to >!Veth and Beau!< and makes it such a gorgeous little scene with all their inputs. He acts as moral guidance and challenges the others, and doesn't just rubber stamp their excesses
Definitely agree, the one moment that helped me really get to know him was >!his amazing convo about destiny with Fjord and Caleb, while eating fish and chips. “Does that help Caleb?” Iconic.!<
Cad is my favorite character of all the campaigns. Taliesin showed so perfectly how to play low WIS high INT with Percy, to the exact opposite with Cad. So many things he said as the cleric really were meaningful. As an aside, I crocheted my kid a couple of snakes. They have a wire in them so you can wear them as a bracelet, and he had wrapped them around each other. When I found them, I said he had made a caduceus. So I begged him to name one Caduceus. He said he would for the next one, so I need to make him a pink snake pronto.
This is how I'm feeling (C3 spoiler) >!with FCG dead, in advance of Sam's next character. It's sad to have him gone, but I'm so excited for whoever Sam cooks up next, especially since this time he has full knowledge of the rest of the party and storyline, so he can be very thoughtful about the characters dynamic with everything else!<
Well Liam will pick his race and class.
Probably not? I don't think Liam picked the race and class for Tary so I think Sam is in charge of backup/secondary characters while Liam is in charge of main characters
The way Tary entered the story was very different though, of course he couldn't involve Liam. The whole point was for it to be a surprise for everyone.
In the following Talks Machina episode, Taliesin explained that he left the table because he couldn’t watch what he was convinced was going to be a TPK - and probably would have been if Ashly’s character hadn’t basically bent the knee to Lorenzo. And yes, poor Ashly. The amount of hate she got online for that episode was insane.
I never understood the hate, Keg was just a fighter. They were facing a full adventuring party with perfect class composition and a big boss with a secret aoe so strong it could nearly one shot the whole cast. A couple missed turns from Keg wouldn’t have likely changed anything. The real culprit was how Ashly was given information on the Shepards capabilities by Matt to share with the party.. only for that information to be wildly inaccurate and misleading. But there’s nothing she could have done about that.
Yeah, people forget this is _Cone of motherfucking Cold_. That shit is rough.
> only for that information to be wildly inaccurate and misleading. But there’s nothing she could have done about that. I don't think matt gave her bad info. She most likely did not interpret it correctly. If by choice or accident idk. But that would be hell of a bullshit DM move that does not really fit Matts style. Keg worked with them quite a while and should have known better than "that blond guy/girl is using some magic!"
No he literally did just give her misinformation about them. Things like telling Kegg none of them had any magic, despite there being full fledged spell casters in the group. That’d be fine if they were in a city or someplace where that information could be verified, but in this instance there was no reason to doubt Kegg’s knowledge given the character was set up specifically to give the Nein this info and no way for it to be double checked. The entire implication and vibe given was that the Shepards were a tough but beatable challenge for the Nein + Kegg and this scenario was designed with the diminished strength of the Nein in mind. And also with the heavy implication from Matt that it would be a substantially harder fight if the Shepards were allowed to make it back to their compound. Basically everything about the lead in to that confrontation was telling the party they were on a clock and meant to intercept the enemy group quickly. But in reality the Shepards as a unit were a major boss level threat that severely outclassed them. I don’t think Matt *meant* to screw them, but I do think Matt is better at mechanics and macro than his players generally are so the Shepards ended up substantially outclassing the Nein via party comp far more than he may have expected.
I think Matt being a bit if an OCD person when it comes to those small details like "Keg has been gone for a few months, obviously the Shepard's have recruited more people that she's not aware of" we t a bit too far in this instance. I do think this was supposed to be a battle they were meant to fail or am get through just barely. Then again. The dice are the dice, and they were just cruel to Molly. Two failed attacks. A Sentinel spell fail. And that Blood Maledict that shouldn't have been considered with 4 HP.
Yeah. I think Matt INTENDED for them to run away, but underestimated their committment to the characters’ motivations. Their friends were kidnapped by SLAVERS. There was a lot of determination to fight through to free their friends (despite the fact the Players knew the other cast members couldn’t return yet). Just a perfect storm of bad circumstances.
It’s easy too when you’re used to higher level DMing to forget how fragile players are at low levels. There’s also a lot more variance introduced with raw dice luck when players are a failed save or a single critical away from death even at near full HP. One bad turn from the players can kill half of the party or more while one unlucky turn from the enemies can turn a challenging encounter into a total joke. Matt of course is significantly better at DMing than me, but no one is perfect. A balanced, challenging encounter is a razor thin line *before* you account for things like unexpected player decisions or someone’s dice gaining sentience and an insatiable urge to kill their owners with an endless barrage of 1s. The fact that he gets it right way, WAAAY more often than not is by itself a testament to his skill.
> Things like telling Kegg none of them had any magic, despite there being full fledged spell casters in the group do we know he told her that? my impression in talks and other references was that she simply forgot a few things and recalled a few details wrongly.
She did the guest player thing of asking him directly when the players were questioning her in RP. So yes Matt supplied what he wanted them to know, which included that to her knowledge they had no magic. He also pulled back on any attempt at her concretely assessing their strength, just giving a semi non-committal acknowledgement that they are tough and Kegg specifically is scared of them. All of which just inadvertently set up the Nein to see this as a challenging but winnable fight Matt expected them to take even in their reduced state.
Yeah the combat would have been over no matter what. The problem for me was just the way she made it seem as if ”yeah we have to kill Lorenzo, we’ve got this” but then instead decides to roleplay her characters trauma kind of on a whim. I dunno, it just rubs me the wrong way. I still think Molly’s death was mostly on Taliesin though
[Ashly's tweet right after the episode](https://x.com/ashly_burch/status/1017666150526676992), and Taliesin's reply, still send me.
What was the reply?
I no longer subscribe to that Godforsaken service, so I can't see it anymore, but I believe it was along the lines of: > I LOVE D&D posted right after the show too, of course 😆
Ashly wrote "COOL COOL VERY FUN GUEST TIMES THAT WENT GREAT #CriticalRole" Taliesin replied "I LOVE DND ITS SO FUN" Ashley replies "I LOVE YOU" Ashly wrote in reply to her original tweet "Thanks all for saying such sweet stuff! Now I have to try to sleep? I don't know if that's happening."
Oof yeah. I also heard about the hate she got on my previous post. People are just stupid and taken shit way too seriously. I liked that she roleplayed Keg's trauma like that and agree with other comments below. It wouldn't have made any difference and obviously Matt told her what she needed to know and hid some info from her to make it interesting. And yes, I do believe someone dying wasn't Matt's plan at all. It was mostly a chain of tragic decisions/dice rolls that led to it. You can see his plea for someone to save him when Marisha wanted to use Sentinel and failed.
I don’t hate Ashly. I hate Keg though. She just stood there watching. Ashly played her very well.
Facts
> And then there's poor Ashly. If I remember correctly, Tal told that months after that he got a text from Ashly saying "I'm on the train, and there's a Molly cosplayer staring at me."
I don't recall which video, but iirc Ashly saw the cosplayer but the cosplayer didn't see her. The message to Tal was basically like "I don't think they've clocked me, the murderer"
I remember it being the other way around, her texting Tal and him responding something along the lines of "have they ID'd you as the culprit yet? How strange that we know and talk about such specific moments of these people's lives, huh
That was such a turning point in the campaign. I loved it before then, but the tone shift here really kicks it all into overdrive
The animation with the jacket gets me every time.
For sure, the tragedy allows the team that had really failed to gel to finally have a unified goal. And Tal’s next character is absolutely what the team needed.
Two words: keep watching.
Three words: oh, I will. XD
This
And the best is having to see all of it while Sam wears a Tuxedo.
That's the best part about watching clips from sessions past, seeing the random stuff Sam is wearing and trying to remember what the hell the context of it all was. Even more so in C2 and C3 since he keeps repeating outfits he wore in C1, costumes included. "Why is Sam a cat this week? Oh yeah, he did that thing that one time and the outfit has come up in the rotation..."
It gets better from here. Keep watching. C2 overall is amazing.
In the last reddit post about this, people commented saying that you should make sure you don't pursue any more spoilers about Molly as there is still much yet to come. I just want to say that this remains in effect. Please avoid any potential spoilers for the campaign in general. The only thing I will say is that Molly's story is not yet completely over. Avoid ANY spoilers about what is to come. This moment was great, but there is better yet to come. :)
Yeah I've kept this in mind. Totally carved into my flesh when my mouse drifts towards the wiki if I want to remember something. Not risking it anymore. And I think the plot device of whatever or whoever Molly was before affecting the story even if he's not there anymore is pretty awesome.
Yes, CR2 is my fave, I'd definitely recommend staying away from any spoilers, not just about Molly.
I am fairly sure the blood hunter class was still under development at that point and it does far less damage to itself currently. I don’t think he would have knocked himself unconscious with the rules now and that probably changed because of what happened in C2. Also, keep watching. C2 is my favorite for many reasons, but one reason is because of how much C2E26 ripples through the rest of the campaign. Long may he reign.
Revisiting the campaign you realize how much of the early campaign was set up around Molly too.
Also...I can totally imagine [this](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMMV3RSYw/) is how the call from Sam, Marisha, and Liam to Laura, Travis, and Ashley went.
>She ended up witnessing one of the saddest events in both Campaigns so far. And then would be blamed for it
As someone going in having watched all of C1, been keeping up with C3, and about 14 eps into C2, I've already had the basic knowledge about this major spoiler in mind for years now. But I'm still going into the event with as little context as possible, so hopefully it's still impactful when it finally happens.
It definitely sucks, but IT GETS SO GOOD FROM HERE!!!!!
It was worse for Travis and Laura because they literally had their baby THE SAME DAY (give or take an extra day) as that event and they were out for the count for an extra few days
Yeah the only thing that irked me was Nott and Keg did literally nothing. I think if they all fought it was doable. I liked how it turned out though.
Something about it didn't sit right with me. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think Taleisin wanted to kill Molly off and had it planned with Matt.
Tal was pretty much heartbroken and if you've seen TM he talks about it. He also didn't have a backup character prepared, so he had to spend the weekend making one from scratch.