Fayeth talking to Lucius made me realise something, of all the party, really he's the greatest of them You have Aila, the chosen of Thor; Quil, champion of H'esper; Nova, who wields one of the greatest eterna ever; and Sentinel Prime, a borderline deity. Next to them Lucius, really, is only mortal, a powerful mortal, but mortal all the same, and ultimately unimportant were it not for where he happened to be one fateful day. And even so, he's as much a hero as any of them, if not more so. This mortal man stands among champions and gods, seemingly outclassed, and tries all the same, and what's more he holds his own.
@@tumbleweed1551 I think that is just because he is a sorcerer and all magic kind of stems from her. The reason he gets those visions is that that magic is technically in his blood. At least I think that's where the connection comes from.
I would not be surprised to learn that Lucius is a descendant of Ciasca. At this point, hes basically one of the, if not just the most powerful wielders of magic on Aerois, and that includes Quill.
I’d be very surprised if Lucius doesn’t turn out to be a champion of Siasca, it’s been hinted a few times but he’s so focused on his teammates and their goals he’s never pursued those leads. Lucius is awesome, would be good to see the rest of the party start buying him things and focusing on his goals given how often they comment on the fact he never spends on himself. Poor guy blew his entire family fortune on an airship for the party and they haven’t even offered some of the group funds to improve it!
I love getting to see faeth interacting with luscious. I kind of forget about her being “technically” married to him, but she’s very sweet to see interacting with him
The content of that dialogue makes me wonder whether Lucius contends to a degree with Imposter Syndrome. It is great that he has Fayeth with whom he can calibrate his reality.
@@rknowling I think it's safe to say he does have a degree of imposter's syndrome. With his family life it was his twin who was the family prodigy. So that history plus some recent events like the dragon turtle probably has him doubting his ability and purpose with the group, especially in contrast to the jumps in power some of the others have gotten like Sentry becoming the prime, Ayla's belt, and Quill's spear
@@jaybenjamin2404 It's a rare treat to see their interactions, I think. But in a way it plays to the strengths of that particular relationship, having it be more of a quiet thing working in the background. It works for the characters in that way. Though I would, of course, not be opposed to seeing more of their interactions in the future.
@@BaronOfHeid Honestly, I think those are both hallmarks of a good dm. A good dm will look at their npc and realize that there is no narrative reason why they wouldn't drop a meteor swarm and try to knock the party out of the air, even if the dm themself realizes that it could very likely result in the deaths of pcs or npcs. A good dm can also say "Hey, this is 100% what the npc would do here and I would be doing the character and you all a disservice by not staying true to that, but I don't want you guys to all die or lose your entire crew. Let's see what we can do."
It's a bit of a gaff on his part. They were leaving after a very intense fight. They knew she might be coming so they really couldn't spare the time to rest. I do agree that it very much in character for Xarkira to do this but in the sense of the game it's very likely to kill them and ruin the game. It's just an oversight and he scrambles to fix the mistake but he doesn't take it back. As long as they survived it I'm not going to quibble though.
@@Darkdirewulf If anything I'm arguing on Mark's behalf and suggesting that nobody should let it bother them. You just said that I was expressly on the other side of the argument however.
Episode Start at 0:00 Announcements at 1:04 DUN DUNS at 4:14 Recap starts at 5:15 Recap ends at 7:08 Real recap end at 9:00 Break start at 1:27:30 Sponsors at 1:27:53 Break ends at 1:42:19 Gameplay ends at 2:33:59 Ending donos at 2:36:05
My god what a clutch call what some 30 plus games ago on the back up engine , u drop pc out of the sky one time they learn . Golf clap for the ship everyone ,it an ayla's fear of falling allowing this to happen.
That was awesome. I am a little confused that the backup engine is only running at 50%. I don't recall it being inferior to the main engine. Maybe it was kind of damaged????
Yeah, I think when Sentry went down despite having the resistance, he got a little nervous. Also he basically admitted that he forgot to take into account that none of their defensive abilities worked at that range. I wonder how he would have ruled it if the airship had crashed? Two failed death saves?
I've done that before. It honestly comes down to the players not remembering their abilities but I was to blame for the most part. It's really hard to judge encounters at higher levels.
@@shawnm7246 Meteor storm is crazy. It has 1 Mile range whereas counterspell's range is only 60 feet. What's the counter play? Just have a ton of HP and soak it?
I am worried Trott will try and pull a Sam and remove Lucious from the campaign, but Mark making the super secret base for the party only accessible by an Elenasto was great. Though Trott asking for a hole for access under Gusthaven is worrying in that regard.
@@deriznohappehquite That I did forget. Not sure if they would have much use for that armor for their own characters now, but maybe someone in the crew at least could use it
Fayeth talking to lucius felt like she was talking to me as a manager. In the past few weeks I've been in a depressed state and haven't had the energy. And I need to hear this.
Was it really necessary? Meteor Swarm? A 9th level spell with like 15 NPC and a 30.000 gp ship owned by a party who came straightt from a Big Boss fight, well...
When he asked if anything was being counter-spelled and no one said anything, then he realized Lucius couldn’t absorb the spell, he knew at that moment that he went a little overboard. Yeah the fact most of them were pretty weak already the PCs should be down and probably dying. Ariya and the medic are both half orca so their racial abilities rung them back to 1 hp when hitting 0. But then the ship is disabled and Ariya wouldn’t be able fix the helm and the engine so it crashes and everyone dies. He really stretched shit to keep them alive. That should it ended campaign 2 right there.
I enjoyed this, thanks. I prefer if danger wasn't nerfed in games and to see it feel dangeroous at times really makes me feel more invested. You guys did well. Merry Christmas/Happy New year from Canada.
While it is fun to see a real risk, I don't think this was one of those moments. Mark said himself that he didn't realize how bad it was going to be and he went through every option with each person to minimize the damage.
That was a TPK...pure and simple. The barbarian got to activate a rage as a reaction. Nova would have taken all 139/2 (69) damage prior to the tomb activating...it all happens at the same time. Every NPC would be totally destroyed if they were in the area of effect which was 2 80' diameter spheres. Mark did mitigate it as best he could...but it's his game and the group seems to accept this, as this is only slightly a bend of the RAW.
@@michaelpeterson5545 for sure you could see mark scrambling to figure out ways for the party to survive after he read the damage, it really sucks the danger out of the series because it goes to show he will do everything he can to avoid deaths, if you are gonna taunt a level 20 enemy then expect it to have dire consequences. Granted it's nowhere near as bad as crit role in that regard, Matt mercer's villains are literally reduced to punching bags since the idiots of the party taunt them so much and Matt can't retaliate or it would be a TPK, Raishon and Lucien both being great examples.
@@michaelpeterson5545 she was meant to be extremely intelligent, said if they did anything to betray her she would kill them with the traps she set up. Tal proceeded to try to stab her, played it off, then revealed her identity. On top of all the horrible baby rants from Keyleth berating her constantly and Raishon just took it all cause Matt couldn't TPK.
This would be a pretty good episode for a newbie to join on. Tense, rapid action, to interesting emotional conversations, leading forward to future cool events. Only problem I have is they didn't include the hilarious false start with Trott's possessed computer!
I just had a thought! I don't know how it would work mechanically, but what about the forge?? Isn't that in the same land that the storms were in? I remember that construct thing stating that the power they used would replenish over time, so couldn't they go there to fix the ship, as well as upgrade it??
But if I recall correctly, that required the sacrifice of one or more magical items in order to power it? That would be losing a lot of things they have- and value- in order to repair the ship. Also, the ship would not fit inside the forge chamber? So probably the shipyards of Gusthaven are the best "fit" given that they have plenty of gold.
Richard Knowling no it doesn’t require a sacrifice of magical items Edit: but the amount of energy it requires to fix that would make it impossible Also yes the ship wouldn’t fit Also it would take to much time to get there and then go to the meeting
@@wierdpeopleotherdude1422 Kalus gave them an item containing the power of a star, which is what they used to resurrect Sentry. That's what I was thinking of.
Other than the fact that it requires magical items/valuable materials as sacrifices, I don't think the ship could be fixed/upgraded with it, it's simply too big
I wonder though, if all of the animals and plants on this continent were adapted to the storms, suddenly not having constant storms will cause evolutionary challenges and probably wipe out some species, plus the people will essentially have to learn to rebuild their towns in new ways to adapt to the new weather
Personal opinion: I think Mark needs to think things through better when designing his encounters. This episode and last episode encounters were only survived because he fudged rules in a way that shouldn't have happened. That Meteor Swarm was a TPK. Not just because the party were on low health from the previous episodes encounter, but also because even at quarter of *average* damage it should have been an instant kill for all the crew. Now I will add that I don't know the crew's stats so maybe they've been beefed up a bit, but generally hirelings don't have much hp (they're little more then commoners in terms of stats). Certain "expert" combat based hirelings may have better hp, but none of them except maybe Penny have really been described as such. So with this information I would expect them to have roughly the stats of a Guard, which is a grand total of 11hp... maybe more, but I wouldn't expect much more. The *average* damage of a Meteor Swarm is 140 (I don't understand how Mark claimed he was surprised at rolling high when he actually rolled under the average). Assuming successful saving throws from the crew that gets reduced to an average of 70 damage, and assuming the entire crew was somehow within Sentry's aura it gets reduced to 35... Still way more then enough to insta-kill what I would expect the crews stats to be! And that's assuming best case scenario!!! Realistically the crew had no chance of making their saving throws, and there was no way Sentry's aura could protect them. Which means he would have to beef them up to over 70hp just to have a chance to survive, and that's almost at the same level as the party (Lucius has the lowest at 77hp). I just don't see this as possibly being the case. Mark screwed up big time here, and not just because he forgot the ranged of counterspell and Lucius' gauntlet. The previous encounter was absolute murder, between forcing stacks of corruption, forcing wisdom saves which he must know the party isn't very good at, and the high damage it did every turn that was basically unavoidable... There was no way they could have realistically killed the Nightmares in such a short space of time before he allowed Johan to twin spell chain lightning. That psychic damage from the corruption was simply too much to take for another 2-3 rounds even for Aila. And since Johan was the only one who could take them in or out of the dream, when he died it would be game over. Sentry and Quill were the only ones realistically capable of tanking the wisdom saves (Sentry did though not in the dream), and they were the only ones that could heal which was required outside of the dream so they couldn't have done both sides at the same time. As it is the Dragon almost broke free thereby failing the encounter, and they barely managed to survive and finish in time with the added help of DM rule fudging and some really lucky rolls in their favour. The general encounter design was great and all, but the lack of awareness of damage nearly ruined it. All in all I think Mark is a great DM, but he needs to be more aware of his damage output. These aren't the first instances where he has grossly underestimated his output, or overestimated the PC's (or NPC's) survivability. They've gotten away with it in the past through sheer luck, and maybe that's given him a false impression. But having to intervene these last two episodes really showcases how badly he's misjudged things, and I hope he can learn from it and adjust so the party can survive (and succeed) without him needing to intervene and fudge rules. If they fail and die because of bad luck or bad decisions, well that's just how it goes sometimes and is not on him. But if they die because he threw an impossible or near impossible to survive encounter at them, that's absolutely his fault.
Spoilers In retrospect, I like to think that in rp, every time that Nova has used Mislead, it's a preview of the power that eventually lets her be Nova-Tiangong with the switching places with her dupe!
i love the fact that they are all more considerate to their crew now legit first trip out they cause an explosion on the ship that kill some of the wolf pack and now Lucius is sacrificing absorb elements to tell his crew to brace. this little dnd group of characters are growing up XD
Imagine the crew showing up like "hey we're here with the Prince of Gusthaven" in this ship where the helm is basically scaffolding holding up splinters, the sails are torn to shreds and burned, the hull has two enormous chunks taken out of it, and everyone in the crew is all bleeding and burned and limping around, beaten to shit. "Yeah sure the Prince is right this way".
Also I did like that "100 years from now" discussion. Sentry will still be alive of course, probably as a city leader for New Solwynn, the City of Guardians. Quill would probably either pull some favours to stick around as a religious leader, or he'd be a prolific (but dead) author on the subjects of magic and understanding. Maybe he'd team up with Nova for something like that. Nova would probably go out exploring space, visit Tiangong's homeworld and eventually return to Aerois, maybe to become a lecturer at that big college she and Pyri went to, or maybe she'd take up permenance residence on that Genassi planet and learn more about the cultural heritage. Lucius would probably want the quiet life and return to Gusthaven. I don't think he'd be interested in restarting the Elenasto family business, so maybe he'd become an advisor to the Prince, and maybe start a family of little elves with odd coloured eyes running around, throwing colorful spells all over the place.
Mark said he originally planned to make one but he accidentally made the world so unbelievably huge that it would be not feasible to make a sourcebook :(
1:07:50 Do you know how EMBARRASSING it would’ve been if she didn’t dispel it? 😭 she just did a badass speech and then just fucks it up, just standing there
I haven’t finished the episode yet but correct me if I’m wrong. Didn’t Lucius change some of his money from losing his family fortune and trade into jewels worth 7,000 gold or so? Also didn’t they unload the magictek bike and the other stuff onto the ship once they got back?
Forget, maybe? Marked on your character sheet though would be the more important determiner. Katie still has plans for that "wish" coin from so long ago.
Don't worry you didn't put the crew at harm your self Meanwhile the party literally having just poked the bear Yep not are falt at all *nervous whistling*
Spoilers for end of campaign Nova's "you will pay for what you've done...I will see to it" really hits different after seeing how mercilessly she kills Xarkira, damn
when i listened to the podcast and my eyes just kept widening in public jabdjbajubidi you guyyyss omg!!! . . . . on god when you hear the barbarian say 'im down', i thought this was the end TT and lucius saved the crew omg
Why on aerois would Love choose to loose more hit points and be stuck in the tomb of levistas? Especially 'working out' that she could do that. No insult on Kim, it was a stressful situation, Nova is a silly billy though Edit: Nope, Nova's an f'ing genius
I prefer elves living for centuries over Wizards's homogenization of "Every race that isn't dwarf, tortle, arakokkra, gnome, or elf lives as long as humans!" It just makes the choice of race/species seem like it's just cosmetic and makes the world seem too anthropocentric.
Agreed! One of my least favorite things about this campaign and world! I prefer on my worlds for Human lifespan to be the shortest possible of ALL races. (minimum human across the board) and I have many that live much longer Elves on most of my worlds live even longer than standard PHB unless killed.
I personally find every race living centuries longer than humans homogeneous myself. It makes every race superior to humans at least superficially and kinda doesn't fit with how deadly the world is. Not to mention how if you play in different time periods all races but humans will have practically the same culture over thousands of years.
@@mme.veronica735 Changelings, tieflings, aasimar, dragonborn, goblinoids, lizardfolk, kobolds, tabaxi, half-orcs, kenku, aarakocra, goliaths. These all live around the same amount of time as humans, less than humans, or slightly more than humans. Where did you get the idea that "every race" lives "centuries longer" than humans?
@@mme.veronica735 I'm not saying every race should live longer than humans, I just think that there should be more variety in the age ranges than around half the races in the books just saying "lives as long as humans". Make more of those ones live for 150 years, or 200, or 60, or 50. It won't really affect the players in any way (other than RP purposes), but it'll make the races feel more varied and have implications on their civilizations.
Um , Mark. I know this is over and done with but isn't Oriya a half orc with relentless endurance? Or is that not a thing in Aerois? Just curious. Keep up rhe amazing work, you mad man!
Ok noone will probably see this and the campaign has ended. I would suggest arming the next ship with Quantum Torpedoes and a Cloaking Device. And say 12 Disruptor Banks.
Poor Howard is coming apart at the seams, shoulda gotten off at Gusthaven. And wow Trott, RPing impostor syndrome like a champ! So different from Hat Films, you sure your not a professional theater actor? And Nova just casually contaminating a Medieval/Renaissance magic civilization with "post space-age" military tech, but I guess the situation is dire, between annihilation and runaway reverse-engineering, I guess its fine.
Why am I just now realising that quill is technically a bird of pray lol
You realizing that just opened my eyes and I thank you for it! 😂
You have seen the hidden truth an seen fit to reveal it on to us, and for that, we think you
Bless you for this.
Thanks I hate it
*Groan*
Fayeth talking to Lucius made me realise something, of all the party, really he's the greatest of them
You have Aila, the chosen of Thor; Quil, champion of H'esper; Nova, who wields one of the greatest eterna ever; and Sentinel Prime, a borderline deity. Next to them Lucius, really, is only mortal, a powerful mortal, but mortal all the same, and ultimately unimportant were it not for where he happened to be one fateful day. And even so, he's as much a hero as any of them, if not more so. This mortal man stands among champions and gods, seemingly outclassed, and tries all the same, and what's more he holds his own.
I loved how touching that scene was. But honestly, you have added a while other dimension to it. Beautiful insight.
@@matthewward1346 Eh. He seems to have a very particular connection to magic, and creations of Ciasca.
@@tumbleweed1551 I think that is just because he is a sorcerer and all magic kind of stems from her. The reason he gets those visions is that that magic is technically in his blood. At least I think that's where the connection comes from.
I would not be surprised to learn that Lucius is a descendant of Ciasca. At this point, hes basically one of the, if not just the most powerful wielders of magic on Aerois, and that includes Quill.
I’d be very surprised if Lucius doesn’t turn out to be a champion of Siasca, it’s been hinted a few times but he’s so focused on his teammates and their goals he’s never pursued those leads. Lucius is awesome, would be good to see the rest of the party start buying him things and focusing on his goals given how often they comment on the fact he never spends on himself. Poor guy blew his entire family fortune on an airship for the party and they haven’t even offered some of the group funds to improve it!
I love getting to see faeth interacting with luscious. I kind of forget about her being “technically” married to him, but she’s very sweet to see interacting with him
The content of that dialogue makes me wonder whether Lucius contends to a degree with Imposter Syndrome. It is great that he has Fayeth with whom he can calibrate his reality.
@@rknowling I think it's safe to say he does have a degree of imposter's syndrome. With his family life it was his twin who was the family prodigy. So that history plus some recent events like the dragon turtle probably has him doubting his ability and purpose with the group, especially in contrast to the jumps in power some of the others have gotten like Sentry becoming the prime, Ayla's belt, and Quill's spear
@@keeperscripts and huge kudos to Trott for bringing out such nuanced character development with sensitivity and diagnity :)
I wish they would interact more, but I guess that might takeaway from Fayeth's character a bit. idk *Shrug*
@@jaybenjamin2404 It's a rare treat to see their interactions, I think. But in a way it plays to the strengths of that particular relationship, having it be more of a quiet thing working in the background. It works for the characters in that way. Though I would, of course, not be opposed to seeing more of their interactions in the future.
Rich boy, dead parents, secret cave.. Guess Lucius now really is Batman
So I guess that makes Quill Robin
Id say his sister is closer to being batman especially with the whole secret identity thing
More of an Alfred/Jimmy Olsen equivalent with his goofy posh demeanor.
@@BlackIronHero quistion is, witch robin?
Instead of Catwoman, he has wolf woman
I like mark using a meteor strike on the party and immediately going crazy looking for every possible way for them to avoid it
Like he accidentally tpk'd the whole party and NPC's then had to back-pedal lol
@@BaronOfHeid Honestly, I think those are both hallmarks of a good dm. A good dm will look at their npc and realize that there is no narrative reason why they wouldn't drop a meteor swarm and try to knock the party out of the air, even if the dm themself realizes that it could very likely result in the deaths of pcs or npcs. A good dm can also say "Hey, this is 100% what the npc would do here and I would be doing the character and you all a disservice by not staying true to that, but I don't want you guys to all die or lose your entire crew. Let's see what we can do."
It's a bit of a gaff on his part. They were leaving after a very intense fight. They knew she might be coming so they really couldn't spare the time to rest.
I do agree that it very much in character for Xarkira to do this but in the sense of the game it's very likely to kill them and ruin the game.
It's just an oversight and he scrambles to fix the mistake but he doesn't take it back.
As long as they survived it I'm not going to quibble though.
You did tho
@@MorinehtarTheBlue
@@Darkdirewulf If anything I'm arguing on Mark's behalf and suggesting that nobody should let it bother them.
You just said that I was expressly on the other side of the argument however.
Episode Start at 0:00
Announcements at 1:04
DUN DUNS at 4:14
Recap starts at 5:15
Recap ends at 7:08
Real recap end at 9:00
Break start at 1:27:30
Sponsors at 1:27:53
Break ends at 1:42:19
Gameplay ends at 2:33:59
Ending donos at 2:36:05
Thank you man😌
1:27:50 that's... quite the advertisement... and it isn't even Trott's fault
As always, top tier sponsorship advert.
Blessed be this official spelling of Zarkira
but baned be Zarkira herself right? Bane is really good for crippling tougher enemies.
Her Charisma save must be pretty good but sure
That's a good advertising for the ship builder: "Sprocket's ships, it's so sturdy that survives a meteor Swarm"
My god what a clutch call what some 30 plus games ago on the back up engine , u drop pc out of the sky one time they learn . Golf clap for the ship everyone ,it an ayla's fear of falling allowing this to happen.
That was awesome. I am a little confused that the backup engine is only running at 50%. I don't recall it being inferior to the main engine. Maybe it was kind of damaged????
Lucius, Faeth convo had me crying. I love DnD and all of you.
I love how mark is thinking “shit, did I just tpko”
Last episode ended on an epic W and this starts with scary potential for a L. Mark has us on the edge of our seats lol
Fucking Trott even without doing a sponsor bit he still had me dying on the floor. I'd just recovered when Tom showed up during the Dun Duns
Trott: You can buy Rhi on the store..
me: HOW MUCH FOR HER OMG
Spoilersish
I feel like when everyone said they went down when zahkira made those meteors mark was just thinking "I.... I might have messed up"
Yeah, I think when Sentry went down despite having the resistance, he got a little nervous. Also he basically admitted that he forgot to take into account that none of their defensive abilities worked at that range. I wonder how he would have ruled it if the airship had crashed? Two failed death saves?
@@Musikur oof, yeah lol. Maybe make a dex. Saving throw to try and make a crash landing so no damage is taken??
I've done that before. It honestly comes down to the players not remembering their abilities but I was to blame for the most part. It's really hard to judge encounters at higher levels.
@@shawnm7246 Meteor storm is crazy. It has 1 Mile range whereas counterspell's range is only 60 feet. What's the counter play? Just have a ton of HP and soak it?
@@jmbtsang 3 mile range, no?
I guess the move is to Teleport out of the way.
I am worried Trott will try and pull a Sam and remove Lucious from the campaign, but Mark making the super secret base for the party only accessible by an Elenasto was great. Though Trott asking for a hole for access under Gusthaven is worrying in that regard.
This went from zero to hundred pretty dang fast.
What happens when you dare the end boss to fight you, before you're meant to, think the answer was at 46min.
Zarkira is not the "end boss"
*you're
@@thefracturedbutwhole5475 thanks, tend to confuse the two
@@thefracturedbutwhole5475 Or is she? ;) We don't know what Mark has planned
@@Musikur What if brookstone was the final boss all along?
I like how we forgot about Arvile this whole time
I never forgot, I've been waiting for them to meet back up with him 😂
We forgot about the Wyvern armor.
@@deriznohappehquite That I did forget. Not sure if they would have much use for that armor for their own characters now, but maybe someone in the crew at least could use it
@@TheAratine Quill could use it. And it is light armor so he can still fly.
Yay, christmas eve gift
Fayeth talking to lucius felt like she was talking to me as a manager. In the past few weeks I've been in a depressed state and haven't had the energy. And I need to hear this.
Awe, i hope youre doing better 💕
Was it really necessary? Meteor Swarm? A 9th level spell with like 15 NPC and a 30.000 gp ship owned by a party who came straightt from a Big Boss fight, well...
It's also true that Mark is always ready with conssequences for stubborn behavior against Kalas or others baddies, but.... this is tough
When he asked if anything was being counter-spelled and no one said anything, then he realized Lucius couldn’t absorb the spell, he knew at that moment that he went a little overboard.
Yeah the fact most of them were pretty weak already the PCs should be down and probably dying. Ariya and the medic are both half orca so their racial abilities rung them back to 1 hp when hitting 0. But then the ship is disabled and Ariya wouldn’t be able fix the helm and the engine so it crashes and everyone dies. He really stretched shit to keep them alive. That should it ended campaign 2 right there.
I enjoyed this, thanks.
I prefer if danger wasn't nerfed in games and to see it feel dangeroous at times really makes me feel more invested. You guys did well. Merry Christmas/Happy New year from Canada.
While it is fun to see a real risk, I don't think this was one of those moments. Mark said himself that he didn't realize how bad it was going to be and he went through every option with each person to minimize the damage.
That was a TPK...pure and simple. The barbarian got to activate a rage as a reaction. Nova would have taken all 139/2 (69) damage prior to the tomb activating...it all happens at the same time. Every NPC would be totally destroyed if they were in the area of effect which was 2 80' diameter spheres. Mark did mitigate it as best he could...but it's his game and the group seems to accept this, as this is only slightly a bend of the RAW.
@@michaelpeterson5545 for sure you could see mark scrambling to figure out ways for the party to survive after he read the damage, it really sucks the danger out of the series because it goes to show he will do everything he can to avoid deaths, if you are gonna taunt a level 20 enemy then expect it to have dire consequences. Granted it's nowhere near as bad as crit role in that regard, Matt mercer's villains are literally reduced to punching bags since the idiots of the party taunt them so much and Matt can't retaliate or it would be a TPK, Raishon and Lucien both being great examples.
@@a.garcha199 I did think Raishon should have killed them all...my favorite villain.
@@michaelpeterson5545 she was meant to be extremely intelligent, said if they did anything to betray her she would kill them with the traps she set up. Tal proceeded to try to stab her, played it off, then revealed her identity. On top of all the horrible baby rants from Keyleth berating her constantly and Raishon just took it all cause Matt couldn't TPK.
mark went back to the objectively superior haircut :D
His mercy must have been in his hair then. a 9th level dropped on them without having a chance to rest. He was asking for a TPK.
This would be a pretty good episode for a newbie to join on. Tense, rapid action, to interesting emotional conversations, leading forward to future cool events. Only problem I have is they didn't include the hilarious false start with Trott's possessed computer!
Going to be real I enjoy the fayeth/Lucius moments like that and want so many more of them honestly
Lovely Christmas Eve gift, thanks High Rollers!!
I just had a thought! I don't know how it would work mechanically, but what about the forge?? Isn't that in the same land that the storms were in? I remember that construct thing stating that the power they used would replenish over time, so couldn't they go there to fix the ship, as well as upgrade it??
But if I recall correctly, that required the sacrifice of one or more magical items in order to power it? That would be losing a lot of things they have- and value- in order to repair the ship. Also, the ship would not fit inside the forge chamber? So probably the shipyards of Gusthaven are the best "fit" given that they have plenty of gold.
Richard Knowling no it doesn’t require a sacrifice of magical items
Edit: but the amount of energy it requires to fix that would make it impossible
Also yes the ship wouldn’t fit
Also it would take to much time to get there and then go to the meeting
@@wierdpeopleotherdude1422 Kalus gave them an item containing the power of a star, which is what they used to resurrect Sentry. That's what I was thinking of.
Other than the fact that it requires magical items/valuable materials as sacrifices, I don't think the ship could be fixed/upgraded with it, it's simply too big
Richard Knowling oh that is still in the machine go back and watch the episode
I'm just now catching up on my High Rollers and that sponsor msg from Trot and Tom, priceless
Can we talk for a moment about how good mark's hair looks? I just thought that deserved some recognition
DM Mark hulmes attempts to slaughter his players with a meteor swarm.
OMG SO EXCITED! Thank you for this Christmas gift 💝
Spoilers!!
Mark- “can they tank a meteor swarm?
yeahhhhhh I’m sure they can”
I wonder though, if all of the animals and plants on this continent were adapted to the storms, suddenly not having constant storms will cause evolutionary challenges and probably wipe out some species, plus the people will essentially have to learn to rebuild their towns in new ways to adapt to the new weather
Their crew is so precious, I love them so much
and happy birthday Xaphyr! thankyou for so much amazing music! :)
Aw thanks friend!
high rollers are the best christmas gift
1:35:03 I can hear Tom thinking "I'll never tell!"
You can only be affected by one of the meteors and he still somehow rolled high enough to make it seem like two hit😭😭
“Who’s that in the distance? CONSEQUENCES”
_mark, no_
Also: 1:46:13 thank He’sper, finally
Personal opinion: I think Mark needs to think things through better when designing his encounters. This episode and last episode encounters were only survived because he fudged rules in a way that shouldn't have happened.
That Meteor Swarm was a TPK. Not just because the party were on low health from the previous episodes encounter, but also because even at quarter of *average* damage it should have been an instant kill for all the crew. Now I will add that I don't know the crew's stats so maybe they've been beefed up a bit, but generally hirelings don't have much hp (they're little more then commoners in terms of stats). Certain "expert" combat based hirelings may have better hp, but none of them except maybe Penny have really been described as such. So with this information I would expect them to have roughly the stats of a Guard, which is a grand total of 11hp... maybe more, but I wouldn't expect much more. The *average* damage of a Meteor Swarm is 140 (I don't understand how Mark claimed he was surprised at rolling high when he actually rolled under the average). Assuming successful saving throws from the crew that gets reduced to an average of 70 damage, and assuming the entire crew was somehow within Sentry's aura it gets reduced to 35... Still way more then enough to insta-kill what I would expect the crews stats to be! And that's assuming best case scenario!!! Realistically the crew had no chance of making their saving throws, and there was no way Sentry's aura could protect them. Which means he would have to beef them up to over 70hp just to have a chance to survive, and that's almost at the same level as the party (Lucius has the lowest at 77hp). I just don't see this as possibly being the case. Mark screwed up big time here, and not just because he forgot the ranged of counterspell and Lucius' gauntlet.
The previous encounter was absolute murder, between forcing stacks of corruption, forcing wisdom saves which he must know the party isn't very good at, and the high damage it did every turn that was basically unavoidable... There was no way they could have realistically killed the Nightmares in such a short space of time before he allowed Johan to twin spell chain lightning. That psychic damage from the corruption was simply too much to take for another 2-3 rounds even for Aila. And since Johan was the only one who could take them in or out of the dream, when he died it would be game over. Sentry and Quill were the only ones realistically capable of tanking the wisdom saves (Sentry did though not in the dream), and they were the only ones that could heal which was required outside of the dream so they couldn't have done both sides at the same time. As it is the Dragon almost broke free thereby failing the encounter, and they barely managed to survive and finish in time with the added help of DM rule fudging and some really lucky rolls in their favour. The general encounter design was great and all, but the lack of awareness of damage nearly ruined it.
All in all I think Mark is a great DM, but he needs to be more aware of his damage output. These aren't the first instances where he has grossly underestimated his output, or overestimated the PC's (or NPC's) survivability. They've gotten away with it in the past through sheer luck, and maybe that's given him a false impression. But having to intervene these last two episodes really showcases how badly he's misjudged things, and I hope he can learn from it and adjust so the party can survive (and succeed) without him needing to intervene and fudge rules. If they fail and die because of bad luck or bad decisions, well that's just how it goes sometimes and is not on him. But if they die because he threw an impossible or near impossible to survive encounter at them, that's absolutely his fault.
Spoilers
In retrospect, I like to think that in rp, every time that Nova has used Mislead, it's a preview of the power that eventually lets her be Nova-Tiangong with the switching places with her dupe!
i love the fact that they are all more considerate to their crew now
legit first trip out they cause an explosion on the ship that kill some of the wolf pack and now Lucius is sacrificing absorb elements to tell his crew to brace. this little dnd group of characters are growing up XD
I love how awkward the mascaped ad was. Perfect
How did they even get that sponsor? lol!
Imagine the crew showing up like "hey we're here with the Prince of Gusthaven" in this ship where the helm is basically scaffolding holding up splinters, the sails are torn to shreds and burned, the hull has two enormous chunks taken out of it, and everyone in the crew is all bleeding and burned and limping around, beaten to shit.
"Yeah sure the Prince is right this way".
Also I did like that "100 years from now" discussion.
Sentry will still be alive of course, probably as a city leader for New Solwynn, the City of Guardians.
Quill would probably either pull some favours to stick around as a religious leader, or he'd be a prolific (but dead) author on the subjects of magic and understanding. Maybe he'd team up with Nova for something like that.
Nova would probably go out exploring space, visit Tiangong's homeworld and eventually return to Aerois, maybe to become a lecturer at that big college she and Pyri went to, or maybe she'd take up permenance residence on that Genassi planet and learn more about the cultural heritage.
Lucius would probably want the quiet life and return to Gusthaven. I don't think he'd be interested in restarting the Elenasto family business, so maybe he'd become an advisor to the Prince, and maybe start a family of little elves with odd coloured eyes running around, throwing colorful spells all over the place.
@@BlackIronHero qillek has a lifespan of 30 years, so he'd probably be dead
The ad break on the break was like a fever dream
Loved this on twitch
Fuck...I havent been that tense since the Vox Machina fight against Raishan.
Too bad Larkin wasn't there to help them :(
Zarkira woke up and chose violence this morning. Holy cow what a Part 1.
The upside to me noticing this upload 6 days late, is that I at least won't have to wait as long for the next episode I guess
This started off so chaotic but part 2 has been so wholesome (so far..)
Omg the ad 😂😂😂😂
i need an Aerois Sourcebook on dnd beyond
While cool I think Mark has said that it'd be quite hard to make a sourcebook because of how wild things tend to get lol
Mark said he originally planned to make one but he accidentally made the world so unbelievably huge that it would be not feasible to make a sourcebook :(
This ad and that opening. Dear God what a Christmas gift
How funny would it have been if when xarkira tried to dispell novas illusion she failed and nova just stood there awkwardly for a second.
1:07:50 Do you know how EMBARRASSING it would’ve been if she didn’t dispel it? 😭 she just did a badass speech and then just fucks it up, just standing there
This is why I don't give speeches until after the result. My dice have screwed me over on that much too often.
1:57:58 Thank goodness for that. Also, hype for the new Stormlight Archive book
NINTY FIVE episodes its taken for him to raise his AC , is this the end ? Was this the goal all the time ?
Lol, Mark pulled "Rocks fall, everybody dies."
I haven’t finished the episode yet but correct me if I’m wrong. Didn’t Lucius change some of his money from losing his family fortune and trade into jewels worth 7,000 gold or so? Also didn’t they unload the magictek bike and the other stuff onto the ship once they got back?
If they forget then it didn't happen. Rules of dnd unfortunately :3
@@mushroomkaat2667 unless you have keen mind. Then the DM also has to keep track of everything from the last 30 days. Isn't that right Liam...
Forget, maybe? Marked on your character sheet though would be the more important determiner. Katie still has plans for that "wish" coin from so long ago.
Good news, we are still flying half a ship.
Don't worry you didn't put the crew at harm your self
Meanwhile the party literally having just poked the bear
Yep not are falt at all
*nervous whistling*
I love faith shes the best
What was mark thinking with that meteor 😂😂😂
I laughed at trots face when the gang returned to the elenasto estate
I've got an idea you could give that Bike to Lilly and Sprocket for upgrading I could imagine it would be priceless to someone in their profession.
Xarkira was there to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and she never carries bubblegum.
Woo hoo~ high rollers~
Spoilers for end of campaign
Nova's "you will pay for what you've done...I will see to it" really hits different after seeing how mercilessly she kills Xarkira, damn
when i listened to the podcast and my eyes just kept widening in public jabdjbajubidi you guyyyss omg!!!
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on god when you hear the barbarian say 'im down', i thought this was the end TT and lucius saved the crew omg
This is the episode i decided i love Lucius more than i love Ayla.
"Much better than Amaram" pretty low bar to clear there.
i love this show so much
Anybody else we Tom when at the beginning opening thing sequence thing
Nice1... merry Christmas
Why on aerois would Love choose to loose more hit points and be stuck in the tomb of levistas? Especially 'working out' that she could do that. No insult on Kim, it was a stressful situation, Nova is a silly billy though
Edit: Nope, Nova's an f'ing genius
My boy Lucious has grown so much
I swoon every time Oriya is mentioned.
I prefer elves living for centuries over Wizards's homogenization of "Every race that isn't dwarf, tortle, arakokkra, gnome, or elf lives as long as humans!" It just makes the choice of race/species seem like it's just cosmetic and makes the world seem too anthropocentric.
Agreed! One of my least favorite things about this campaign and world! I prefer on my worlds for Human lifespan to be the shortest possible of ALL races. (minimum human across the board) and I have many that live much longer Elves on most of my worlds live even longer than standard PHB unless killed.
I personally find every race living centuries longer than humans homogeneous myself. It makes every race superior to humans at least superficially and kinda doesn't fit with how deadly the world is. Not to mention how if you play in different time periods all races but humans will have practically the same culture over thousands of years.
@@mme.veronica735 Changelings, tieflings, aasimar, dragonborn, goblinoids, lizardfolk, kobolds, tabaxi, half-orcs, kenku, aarakocra, goliaths. These all live around the same amount of time as humans, less than humans, or slightly more than humans. Where did you get the idea that "every race" lives "centuries longer" than humans?
@@mme.veronica735 I'm not saying every race should live longer than humans, I just think that there should be more variety in the age ranges than around half the races in the books just saying "lives as long as humans". Make more of those ones live for 150 years, or 200, or 60, or 50. It won't really affect the players in any way (other than RP purposes), but it'll make the races feel more varied and have implications on their civilizations.
I have a manscaped and it's alright, still can snag, plus who needs smooth, other than smooth brains
So the party did not short rest and use hit dice before leaving the temple? 😬
Yessss My ship is sailing : D
Edit: Nova has dream. Can't wait for the fanfic writers or even Nova to actually use that fact
Do Quackling guns shoot ducks? please say yes!
If you're aiming at one but that's overkill I'd say. XD
Tsk tsk, obviously quackling guns are shot _by_ ducks
there's no way rogue/ranger Oriya has +0 to dex so surely her initiative would've been 17+ not just 17
Um , Mark. I know this is over and done with but isn't Oriya a half orc with relentless endurance? Or is that not a thing in Aerois? Just curious. Keep up rhe amazing work, you mad man!
Probably just not using a proper character sheet and made a mistake
That advert 👌
When mark realises he’s rolled a TTK!!!
Been there done that
Couldn't they just combine there magic Items so that they don't miss out on them like how the Guardian did
That costs gold I believe :3
Ok noone will probably see this and the campaign has ended. I would suggest arming the next ship with Quantum Torpedoes and a Cloaking Device. And say 12 Disruptor Banks.
What was mark thinking with that TPK at the start?
What version of an injury system do they use in this campaign? I've not really thought about it to much and have gotten curious.
If you reach 0hp you role a con save (DC is 10 or half the damage, whichever is greater) and then a d20 on the DMG injury table I think
They also have instances for massive damage but that hasn't come up very often
you can tell this ad was made before WW 1984 came out
i love you guys.
Wait…is quill’s Spell Save DC now 20?!
Trott is perfect d&d funny
Accidental TPK would have been fun.
That manscape act 🤣
Poor Howard is coming apart at the seams, shoulda gotten off at Gusthaven. And wow Trott, RPing impostor syndrome like a champ! So different from Hat Films, you sure your not a professional theater actor? And Nova just casually contaminating a Medieval/Renaissance magic civilization with "post space-age" military tech, but I guess the situation is dire, between annihilation and runaway reverse-engineering, I guess its fine.
That was so cool. Mark awesome dming