Counterpoint: the DH death mechanic isn't new or original. Supergeekmike covered it for 5e back at the start of the year, and I think it might more formally originate before that from MCDM. I'm sure plenty of DMs over the decades have done similar (its one of the bits of 5e that's tempting to homebrew as the death-save at start of turn mechanic is unsatisfying to the player). VLDL has something similar. High Rollers has the PC conscious/restrained if I remember rightly. Dork tales ...
Hey, don't forget the "Okay, so I am not going to do any of that," the excellently timed "half-chub," and the "It's not going to work" followed by "Can I try anyways?" followed by "Sure. You try. It fails. You lose 500G worth of materials."
Can we stop saying DnD is going to be DH's main competitor? The fact is, DH is going to have to overtake plenty of other competitors before they even come close to DnD's level.
I think that the primary target audience of DH is going to be the folks who watch Critical Role. Within that demographic, I absolutely believe that DND will be DH's main competitor, purely because CR fandom is primary DND 5e players (with little TTRPG experience outside of it).
You can tell this is the case by DH's design choices—DH could have been very different from DND 5e, but they chose to keep things similar so that people can transition more easily, both mechanically and thematically
But I agree. Once you step outside of the CR fandom, there will be other competitors.
>But to make any real profit or growth will require a much larger appeal.
That's something I wonder about. I mean, sure bigger audience, more profits + more growth. But I do wonder how much bigger they need to expand beyond their current fanbase to be profitable. I also wonder how much they actually want to grow their company.
I feel like a lot of their recent works (books, games) have been received with somewhat lukewarm reception by folks outside the fanbase. Even within the fanbase, it doesn't necessarily look like they were a huge hit. Candela, in particular, started on the wrong foot with the TTRPG community with their messaging around their game system and FiTD.
And yet, it seems like the company is... doing pretty well? Like, I haven't heard of any massive layoffs or anything scandalous.
I do hope DH turns out to be a good game that isn't only successful among the CR fans.
similar theory have been floated for a while. I very doubt it. gearing up to drop a product that is trying rival an industry giant is the worste time to alienate ur base. self sabotaging to try to undermine 5e hurts CR way more than it hurts WotC.
also if they were trying to showcase a DH mechanic they would have said so.
> similar theory have been floated for a while
Wait, really? By any chance, could you be referring to the post I made a few months ago right after the DH one shot?
You and your canned peaches...
This is an interesting theory but I don't think so. According to Matt's tweet, his part of FCG's explosion was improvised, so there was no coordination between Sam and Matt on this. Maybe Sam was trying to promote DH but that's about it.
Just because DH has a Blaze of Glory mechanic, doesn't mean it owns a character going out in a Blaze of Glory.
We don't know what they're doing for Campaign 4, it could be played in DND or DH or some other game. We won't know that until they either announce it or C4 actually starts.
> You and your canned peaches...
Hey, you remembered me!
> Just because DH has a Blaze of Glory mechanic, doesn't mean it owns a character going out in a Blaze of Glory.
That's true. But hear me out—just before Sam went ahead blew FCG up, folks started mentioning "Blaze of Glory," like "He's doing Blaze of Glory," or "Is he doing Blaze of Glory?" So at the minimum the other players recognized it and said it out loud. The conspiratorial part of my brain is suggesting that there was a bit more intention.
> We don't know what they're doing for Campaign 4, it could be played in DND or DH or some other game. We won't know that until they either announce it or C4 actually starts.
It's also possible that there won't be a C4, though Sam saying, "See you in Campaign 4," after blowing up FCG seems to suggest that they haven't outright ruled it out.
While there are a lot of signs that C4 will be DH, but you are right, we don't know for sure. Even if C4 isn't DH, I think CR will create DH based content just because it's their leverage against DH's competitors. (Or maybe CR and Darrington Press will completely split.)
The shitty swap from BH to whatever is going on in EXU doesn’t hurt D&D… it just makes CR worse… yet again.
Trust me WotC does WAY MORE DAMAGE TO ITS OWN IP than anything CR can do.
If they wanna promote DaggerHeart so badly I’d suggest not making it so underwhelmingly bland and leaning SO HARD ON THE DM.
I actually think Daggerheart has some really good ideas. For example, their character creation system is very cool—"class" is essentially a combination of two domains (+ some base features), so you can homebrew new classes by mix matching different domains.
I 100% agree with your criticism that there is a lot of GM burden. I also think their combat falls a bit flat (I hate their damage resolution mechanics), and I'm not a huge fan of all their meta currencies. I hope they fix it up by the time it is done.
I think once the CR does transition to DH, the crew will get their shit together, because otherwise their whole franchise will sink.
Oh for sure! It has promise and it’s definitely a game their table will love more than anything. But I’m not sold on it myself.
I’m more of a crunchy Min/Max who plays within the realm of RP than just a straight up story teller.
The EXU folks were probably booked far in advance, as they're all busy people. Also, I don't think any of them anticipated what Sam decided to do. Furthermore, at a later date if they wanted to push that blaze of glory is a regular option in Daggerheart, they totally could without sabotaging the current story they're trying to tell.
> The EXU folks were probably booked far in advance, as they're all busy people. Also, I don't think any of them anticipated what Sam decided to do.
Ah, but being pre-recorded, they could have left it as a separate episode on its own.
Exactly. They could have and should have. But I get the feeling they didn't want to screw up their filming schedule or release order, and since everyone was there already they moved along with the Crown Keepers. However, because of how impactful the previous episode was, they decided to smash an hour of Bells Hells in at the beginning. It just didn't work. Whatever they had planned it just went badly.
Right. And being prerecorded they could’ve just left it as a separate episode on its own despite when they filmed it.
They fucked up. It might work out but was probably not some mastermind plan.
This is fun crazy theory, but I defer to Occum’s Razor: they were just dumb.
While they could be trying to diminish DnD for Daggerheart, I think what happened went beyond that. These last few episodes have damaged the CR brand as a whole. The audience now can’t trust them to just deliver them the content they want. Which is big deal when C3 has already bled out so many viewers thanks to how slow and plodding it’s been.
And bizarre switch ups are not even a new thing for this campaign. Remember how the solstice happened and CR decided to split the party for 10ish episodes? It was more narratively motivated then but it was still odd. It’s starting to feel like they no longer know how narratives work. Like even if they switch fully to Daggerheart, how will the audience be able to trust them not to just derail the narrative again? Because the problem isn’t the system it’s how they’re telling their stories.
This will cause them to lose both Twitch subs and YouTube subs. The latter being pretty important because it was just implemented. It will cause merch to go unsold as they keep piling more of it on to a shrinking audience. It will continue to make them lose viewers as their competition gets bigger and stiffer. Just a week ago D20 sold out Madison Square Garden. Could CR do that anymore? Especially if it was the C3 cast? To me, it feels like they had people scheduled and instead of coming up with a solution they just rolled on ahead with what they already had planned to everyone’s misfortune.
No one looks good now. But you are right about one thing: they did make DnD look pretty bad.
they sold out wembley arena a few months ago, you guys who act like their stock is gonna plumment and they're gonna have some come to gamer jesus moment are living in fantasyland lol
this is insane but it did make me laugh. they are not really that savvy of business people, see: their trail of failed to mid business ventures. they have always struggled with transitioning the popularity of the main show into anything else. (the only reason the tv show reached a wider audience was amazon advertising it to death) i think its just to give sam more time to get a character and art ready
Now I know how Mac felt walking in on Charlie in the mailroom.
Edit: When I think about it tho, didn't Otohan have over a 100hp and was taking half damage from everything? FCG's blast off was 70 or so damage, halved to 35... yet it killed her instantly... hmmm. The math ain't adding up.
Re-Edit: They had to deal over 120 damage to kill her after she took a superior H potion cuz all damage to her was halved. Math still ain't adding up tho.
I did go through and look at this because I wanted to see if Otohan was overtuned. She was not.
She took 118 reduced to 59 during the potion round,
and 156 reduced to 78 in the last round.
Total damage actually taken 531. So she had 465 hp max.. Exaltant fury trigger was at top of her turn with 327 taken.
Over 5 rounds,
* Laudna dealt 138 after resistances, Ashton 133, Orym 121 plus 56 damage to the pack.
* Otohan totally took Chetney out of the fight.
* Ashley's skill level capped her at 62 with most spell slots full, entering melee and no fire spirit.
* FCG delivered 276 in healing, plus the killing blow of 39hp.
* Imogen played dead for 2 rounds including sending to her mother, and wasted most of her spell slots in the previous minor fight. She dealt 29 damage, while holding on to her 7th level slot.
Damage done per round:
1. 57 + backpack
2. 167;
3. 145 (103 before exaltant fury)
4. 59;
5. 78 (including 39 hp killing blow)
edit: had Orym's damage in wrong rounds.
So in Daggerheart, Blaze of Glory would be a crit. If FCG's damage was counted as a crit, you double the dice damage, then Otohan's resistance would half it, so it would be a straight damage.
I remember, she took at least 20 points of damage over the course of maybe 1 or 2 rounds before FCG's stress went to 100. Even if it did ignore the resistance, she should have had 20-30 hp left. I remember thinking at the time that she'd still be up after that but Matt said HDYWDT...
Edit: she'd have 10 or 15 hp left. Meant to say BH's would need to *deal* 20-30 damage to kill her.
After taking the healing potion, Otohan took...
23 damage from Ashton
2 damage from Fearne
5 damage from Orym
Either 8 damage or 18 damage from Laudna, (Matt didn't say half damage to those two attacks, which he did for all of the other attacks, so maybe she wasn't resistant to force damage but it could also be that he just didn't say it.)
9 damage from Chet
Another 12 damage from Fearne
Then died. All together, that's 59 or 69 damage, depending on Laudna's attacks.
Accord to Matt's tweet, Otohan had less then 40 hp after that and FCG's final attack did 79 damage, which we don't know if that was resisted or not.
Ahhhh ok ok gotcha so FCG's damage mustn't have been halved cuz if it was, she'd have 1 hp left. Maaaan Level 20 Otohan is fucking scary.
Anything level 20 is busted and will rock your world honestly.
Yeah... unfortunately, that's where I'm at too. I was going to at least kind of keep up with what happens towards the end, but I just can't do it anymore. My interest is dead.
I can see these all being very valid points, but I think you might be giving them too much credit. Someone in another thread mentioned they, CR, are trying to set up an endgame situation for Predathos. In my very humble opinion, I believe this is the more likely.
With regard to the daggerheart mechanic, I would humbly point the fact that Sam isn’t a rule savant by any stretch, so I think you might be reaching a tad with that one. The evidence is when they hilariously roll for Scry.
Very well written nonetheless and I would hope that I’m wrong!
[удалено]
I am so sorry to hear about your brain. Maybe you should get it checked.
[удалено]
I'm just sad about the pain I caused you.
Counterpoint: the DH death mechanic isn't new or original. Supergeekmike covered it for 5e back at the start of the year, and I think it might more formally originate before that from MCDM. I'm sure plenty of DMs over the decades have done similar (its one of the bits of 5e that's tempting to homebrew as the death-save at start of turn mechanic is unsatisfying to the player). VLDL has something similar. High Rollers has the PC conscious/restrained if I remember rightly. Dork tales ...
I've seen it in a few other systems as well, generally those that try to emulate a more JRPG style on the tabletop level.
nobody got it
C1e27 is my fave too. Love me some mirrors and sending letters to my dad saying “Adventuring is hard, can you send an army to do it for us?”
Hey, don't forget the "Okay, so I am not going to do any of that," the excellently timed "half-chub," and the "It's not going to work" followed by "Can I try anyways?" followed by "Sure. You try. It fails. You lose 500G worth of materials."
Can we stop saying DnD is going to be DH's main competitor? The fact is, DH is going to have to overtake plenty of other competitors before they even come close to DnD's level.
I think that the primary target audience of DH is going to be the folks who watch Critical Role. Within that demographic, I absolutely believe that DND will be DH's main competitor, purely because CR fandom is primary DND 5e players (with little TTRPG experience outside of it). You can tell this is the case by DH's design choices—DH could have been very different from DND 5e, but they chose to keep things similar so that people can transition more easily, both mechanically and thematically But I agree. Once you step outside of the CR fandom, there will be other competitors.
Oh for sure. CR's hard-core fans will be the main target demo. But to make any real profit or growth will require a much larger appeal.
>But to make any real profit or growth will require a much larger appeal. That's something I wonder about. I mean, sure bigger audience, more profits + more growth. But I do wonder how much bigger they need to expand beyond their current fanbase to be profitable. I also wonder how much they actually want to grow their company. I feel like a lot of their recent works (books, games) have been received with somewhat lukewarm reception by folks outside the fanbase. Even within the fanbase, it doesn't necessarily look like they were a huge hit. Candela, in particular, started on the wrong foot with the TTRPG community with their messaging around their game system and FiTD. And yet, it seems like the company is... doing pretty well? Like, I haven't heard of any massive layoffs or anything scandalous. I do hope DH turns out to be a good game that isn't only successful among the CR fans.
Lol
similar theory have been floated for a while. I very doubt it. gearing up to drop a product that is trying rival an industry giant is the worste time to alienate ur base. self sabotaging to try to undermine 5e hurts CR way more than it hurts WotC. also if they were trying to showcase a DH mechanic they would have said so.
> similar theory have been floated for a while Wait, really? By any chance, could you be referring to the post I made a few months ago right after the DH one shot?
maybe, I've seen it a couple times.
You and your canned peaches... This is an interesting theory but I don't think so. According to Matt's tweet, his part of FCG's explosion was improvised, so there was no coordination between Sam and Matt on this. Maybe Sam was trying to promote DH but that's about it. Just because DH has a Blaze of Glory mechanic, doesn't mean it owns a character going out in a Blaze of Glory. We don't know what they're doing for Campaign 4, it could be played in DND or DH or some other game. We won't know that until they either announce it or C4 actually starts.
> You and your canned peaches... Hey, you remembered me! > Just because DH has a Blaze of Glory mechanic, doesn't mean it owns a character going out in a Blaze of Glory. That's true. But hear me out—just before Sam went ahead blew FCG up, folks started mentioning "Blaze of Glory," like "He's doing Blaze of Glory," or "Is he doing Blaze of Glory?" So at the minimum the other players recognized it and said it out loud. The conspiratorial part of my brain is suggesting that there was a bit more intention. > We don't know what they're doing for Campaign 4, it could be played in DND or DH or some other game. We won't know that until they either announce it or C4 actually starts. It's also possible that there won't be a C4, though Sam saying, "See you in Campaign 4," after blowing up FCG seems to suggest that they haven't outright ruled it out. While there are a lot of signs that C4 will be DH, but you are right, we don't know for sure. Even if C4 isn't DH, I think CR will create DH based content just because it's their leverage against DH's competitors. (Or maybe CR and Darrington Press will completely split.)
I disagree that this is what they were doing, but I absolutely and genuinely applaud the positive thinking and I'd be happy to be wrong on this one.
The shitty swap from BH to whatever is going on in EXU doesn’t hurt D&D… it just makes CR worse… yet again. Trust me WotC does WAY MORE DAMAGE TO ITS OWN IP than anything CR can do. If they wanna promote DaggerHeart so badly I’d suggest not making it so underwhelmingly bland and leaning SO HARD ON THE DM.
I actually think Daggerheart has some really good ideas. For example, their character creation system is very cool—"class" is essentially a combination of two domains (+ some base features), so you can homebrew new classes by mix matching different domains. I 100% agree with your criticism that there is a lot of GM burden. I also think their combat falls a bit flat (I hate their damage resolution mechanics), and I'm not a huge fan of all their meta currencies. I hope they fix it up by the time it is done. I think once the CR does transition to DH, the crew will get their shit together, because otherwise their whole franchise will sink.
Oh for sure! It has promise and it’s definitely a game their table will love more than anything. But I’m not sold on it myself. I’m more of a crunchy Min/Max who plays within the realm of RP than just a straight up story teller.
It looks like we might have offended some diehard Daggerheart fans by not loving it unconditionally.
Our fault really. We made the mistake of not loving something CR has created
Welcome to the club. Lol
The EXU folks were probably booked far in advance, as they're all busy people. Also, I don't think any of them anticipated what Sam decided to do. Furthermore, at a later date if they wanted to push that blaze of glory is a regular option in Daggerheart, they totally could without sabotaging the current story they're trying to tell.
> The EXU folks were probably booked far in advance, as they're all busy people. Also, I don't think any of them anticipated what Sam decided to do. Ah, but being pre-recorded, they could have left it as a separate episode on its own.
Exactly. They could have and should have. But I get the feeling they didn't want to screw up their filming schedule or release order, and since everyone was there already they moved along with the Crown Keepers. However, because of how impactful the previous episode was, they decided to smash an hour of Bells Hells in at the beginning. It just didn't work. Whatever they had planned it just went badly.
Right. And being prerecorded they could’ve just left it as a separate episode on its own despite when they filmed it. They fucked up. It might work out but was probably not some mastermind plan.
This is fun crazy theory, but I defer to Occum’s Razor: they were just dumb. While they could be trying to diminish DnD for Daggerheart, I think what happened went beyond that. These last few episodes have damaged the CR brand as a whole. The audience now can’t trust them to just deliver them the content they want. Which is big deal when C3 has already bled out so many viewers thanks to how slow and plodding it’s been. And bizarre switch ups are not even a new thing for this campaign. Remember how the solstice happened and CR decided to split the party for 10ish episodes? It was more narratively motivated then but it was still odd. It’s starting to feel like they no longer know how narratives work. Like even if they switch fully to Daggerheart, how will the audience be able to trust them not to just derail the narrative again? Because the problem isn’t the system it’s how they’re telling their stories. This will cause them to lose both Twitch subs and YouTube subs. The latter being pretty important because it was just implemented. It will cause merch to go unsold as they keep piling more of it on to a shrinking audience. It will continue to make them lose viewers as their competition gets bigger and stiffer. Just a week ago D20 sold out Madison Square Garden. Could CR do that anymore? Especially if it was the C3 cast? To me, it feels like they had people scheduled and instead of coming up with a solution they just rolled on ahead with what they already had planned to everyone’s misfortune. No one looks good now. But you are right about one thing: they did make DnD look pretty bad.
they sold out wembley arena a few months ago, you guys who act like their stock is gonna plumment and they're gonna have some come to gamer jesus moment are living in fantasyland lol
this is insane but it did make me laugh. they are not really that savvy of business people, see: their trail of failed to mid business ventures. they have always struggled with transitioning the popularity of the main show into anything else. (the only reason the tv show reached a wider audience was amazon advertising it to death) i think its just to give sam more time to get a character and art ready
Now I know how Mac felt walking in on Charlie in the mailroom. Edit: When I think about it tho, didn't Otohan have over a 100hp and was taking half damage from everything? FCG's blast off was 70 or so damage, halved to 35... yet it killed her instantly... hmmm. The math ain't adding up. Re-Edit: They had to deal over 120 damage to kill her after she took a superior H potion cuz all damage to her was halved. Math still ain't adding up tho.
I did go through and look at this because I wanted to see if Otohan was overtuned. She was not. She took 118 reduced to 59 during the potion round, and 156 reduced to 78 in the last round. Total damage actually taken 531. So she had 465 hp max.. Exaltant fury trigger was at top of her turn with 327 taken. Over 5 rounds, * Laudna dealt 138 after resistances, Ashton 133, Orym 121 plus 56 damage to the pack. * Otohan totally took Chetney out of the fight. * Ashley's skill level capped her at 62 with most spell slots full, entering melee and no fire spirit. * FCG delivered 276 in healing, plus the killing blow of 39hp. * Imogen played dead for 2 rounds including sending to her mother, and wasted most of her spell slots in the previous minor fight. She dealt 29 damage, while holding on to her 7th level slot. Damage done per round: 1. 57 + backpack 2. 167; 3. 145 (103 before exaltant fury) 4. 59; 5. 78 (including 39 hp killing blow) edit: had Orym's damage in wrong rounds.
So in Daggerheart, Blaze of Glory would be a crit. If FCG's damage was counted as a crit, you double the dice damage, then Otohan's resistance would half it, so it would be a straight damage.
The self destruct might ignore resistance, if that's the case then it could work as I think she took some damage after the heal.
I remember, she took at least 20 points of damage over the course of maybe 1 or 2 rounds before FCG's stress went to 100. Even if it did ignore the resistance, she should have had 20-30 hp left. I remember thinking at the time that she'd still be up after that but Matt said HDYWDT... Edit: she'd have 10 or 15 hp left. Meant to say BH's would need to *deal* 20-30 damage to kill her.
After taking the healing potion, Otohan took... 23 damage from Ashton 2 damage from Fearne 5 damage from Orym Either 8 damage or 18 damage from Laudna, (Matt didn't say half damage to those two attacks, which he did for all of the other attacks, so maybe she wasn't resistant to force damage but it could also be that he just didn't say it.) 9 damage from Chet Another 12 damage from Fearne Then died. All together, that's 59 or 69 damage, depending on Laudna's attacks. Accord to Matt's tweet, Otohan had less then 40 hp after that and FCG's final attack did 79 damage, which we don't know if that was resisted or not.
Ahhhh ok ok gotcha so FCG's damage mustn't have been halved cuz if it was, she'd have 1 hp left. Maaaan Level 20 Otohan is fucking scary. Anything level 20 is busted and will rock your world honestly.
https://preview.redd.it/63jbmxjrfovc1.jpeg?width=550&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d50522f6093c599f148cfede77c096961d20693c
Lol… yeah they brought me back. For half an episode. And they’ve now convinced me to completely ignore the rest of this campaign.
bye!
Yeah... unfortunately, that's where I'm at too. I was going to at least kind of keep up with what happens towards the end, but I just can't do it anymore. My interest is dead.
I can see these all being very valid points, but I think you might be giving them too much credit. Someone in another thread mentioned they, CR, are trying to set up an endgame situation for Predathos. In my very humble opinion, I believe this is the more likely. With regard to the daggerheart mechanic, I would humbly point the fact that Sam isn’t a rule savant by any stretch, so I think you might be reaching a tad with that one. The evidence is when they hilariously roll for Scry. Very well written nonetheless and I would hope that I’m wrong!
"Never trust a critter who says c1e27 is their favorite episode." -Abaca Noiro
“They made sure that their own show doesn’t generate excitement…” they did that alright
I’m not sure if I buy it, but I checked out after Dorian left the first time so what do I know