Obsessed with the fact that at Aguefort they usually “take [students] into the woods so they can fight low level monsters + experience their first battle injury safely” meanwhile half fully DIED and Adaine literally /murdered/ an /actual person/ with a ladle on their first day of school
@@Mr.Bubbles42Of the principal who snuck into heaven and then knocked a God's lights out cause it would be fun, and the guidance counselor they really could've used at that moment. At least there's Jawbone.
I think what would make a really satisfying denouement of this rivalry would be when the Rat Grinders and Bad Kids have to face off in battle, and it's revealed that the Rat Grinders are all super powerful and dangerous in a theorycrafting white room calculations way, but they each also have some unique glaring weakness that they never addressed because they spent all of their time fighting low CR monsters that couldn't exploit them, and that they lack party synergy because they've never been forced into a difficult position where they have to rely on their teammates to succeed. Something like their Barbarian can deal massive amounts of damage, but can't make a Wisdom save if their life depended on it, but their Bard never gives them Bardic Inspiration to help because they're too busy using them all on something like Blade Flourishes or Cutting Words. Or their Rogue has an insane burst opener, but has no sustained follow-up because she's never fought a creature that can tank her first attack.
I think that wouldn't make for entertaining villains though. Like, a flashy fight full of typical moments, but a decent party of players could deal with that, especially if that party kept assuming things about the world within the confines of a standard DnD setting. But in this world, the NPCs are all aware of DnD rules and stats and fears (in a general war, as Brennen said). So they shouldn't make themselves vulnerable in that way. I think it would be immensely satisfying, especially within character arcs, if the Bad Kids fight the Rat Grinders but don't win (a stalemate or loss is fine), and realize that they've been unserious about the world they live in (classes, divinity, jobs, responsibilities) and the Rat Grinders, though resentful, aren't entirely wrong. But then maybe that resentment and other consequences (like lack of faith for a cleric, or fulfilling a warlock pact) gave room for the big bad to take form and the baddy destroys the Grinders who try valiantly to stop it. The the bad kids have to grow as characters to weaken the baddy and defeat it in glorious battle. I think Brennen has the smarts to pull that off, and he knows story well enough to make something like that. At least, I think I'm seeing the seeds of it.
Best part is Brennan getting caught early on his XP vs Milestone beef (seeded in one of the earliest Adventuring Academy episodes), but being absolutely delighted at his own cleverness. 10/10, never change.
I understand Kipperlady’s fairness is about the bad kids always getting the best quests, but the fact that they speak about fairness when they have NO actual experience??
Exactly. Like, if they were trying to get quests like that, that's one thing. But it seems like all they've been doing is grinding without even trying to go on quests
I understand the stuff about fairness too, but respectfully, they’ve saved the world 3 times. Twice in a year. If they were being treated BADLY, I’d get it, but the kids who literally stopped the apocalypse 3 times by the time of their junior year getting a little special treatment is not really a big deal imo
This is so fitting for a campaign in which all the D&D classes one can take are...literally classes one can take. The best thing about Fantasy High was always how self-aware and meta it was, even down to the name. I love it, this is amazing
I suspect that eventually the big bad will be some Pay 2 Win organization that's powerleveling the low level noobs in the tutorial dungeon while they sleep or something.
Riz losing his mind over it is justifiable. But Copperkettle is trying to argue that "fairness" of quest distribution when they haven't gotten themselves into any situation that would require them to go on the quest lines.
Rats give 10xp, spiders give 10xp, and Twig Gremlins are a thing I think Brennan made up, but I’d assume they have CR 1/8 and so probably give 25xp. 10th level characters, like the Bad Kids, have 64,000xp, and there’s no way the Rat Grinders are a lower level. So, if the Rat Grinders have killed equal amounts of rats, spiders, and twig gremlins, then they have killed a minimum of 1,423 each
Given that Brennan said they'd logged 80,000 kills, if there's 6 rat grinders (a foil for each bad kid) then that's what, 13,333 kills per person? If you say that's an average of 15xp per kill that's almost 200,000xp per rat grinder. Level 16?
@@Ciara_Turnerassuming Aguefort is like the US and there’s 180 days, and they grind for 3 after school, that’s 540 hours. Add in 9 hours on the weekend (assuming that’s per weekend, not per weekend day), for about 36 weekends that’s an additional 324 hours. Assuming they actually take their seasonal breaks, that’s at a minimum 1,728 hours over the course of two school years. If they’ve killed 13,333 each over all those hours, that means that each Ratgrinder kills about 7 rats an hour… which means it takes about 600 rounds of combat to kill a collective of 42 SINGLE HIT POINT RATS So not only are they farming, THEYRE REALLY FUCKING BAD AT IT
@@nateridgely6778 I'll point out that if they're the kind to spend 9 hours a weekend grinding rats, they definitely did not stick to just farming rats during the school year. Summer break? You better believe we're putting in overtime.
@@SophiaAphrodite and also the impressive part was being able to get six teenagers to focus and work together AFTER school for 3 hours EVERYDAY, that is lowkey impossible
I love how dedicated to the idea that The Rat Grinders are the bad guys the entire cast is. These are just other teens trying to get through school. Like, the bad kids school experience so far is Insane, and theyre Obsessed with these other students who are just like. Doing their own thing, entirely Unrelated to them.
The Rat Grinders are literally picking this fight. The most infuriating thing is that these kids actively haven't tried anything until it was a near guarantee they'd succeed. Kipperlily starts her student council run only when she has the entire school year to herself, having "found" the rogue professor. Rouge class is the only one that has an instant ace condition for a year, and likely why she is one. Ruben released his grungy sophomore album while Fig is too busy stopping the Night Yorb to release hers. It hasn't been stated if he made a freshmen one, but Fig had made a successful one, hence why her not making the next one has been a big deal for her. Mary Ann trys out for the bloodrush team in her junior year when she's finally strong enough to tackle a half orc to the ground. All three of the boys tried out freshman year regardless of their own strengths, and based on her attitude it may not even be something she wants to do.
@@OseEigbobo Admittedly, none of what I said does. I'm simply pointing out the most aggravating aspect of them to me, which is their absolute refusal to take risks. However, Kipperlilly has made it very clear from her dialogue towards the Bad Kids that she believes them to be getting special treatment and is indirectly coming after them for it. Ruben has spoken to Fig in a sparky and condescending manor upon literal first meeting. Mary Ann really hasn't demonstrated anything of the sort, which is why I think this conflict, much like her bloodrush tryout, is something she's just going along with.
Kipperdoggygirl complaining about fairness when the bad kids earned their quests- they weee the only ones who stayed to FIGHT Kalvaxus! Like I would side with her if it weren’t for that
I'm kinda hoping one or two things. 1. That when the enevetable Bad Kids vs Rat Grinders happens, we actually get an exchange where someone points out the flaws of the other side and becomes pretty much the whole Milestone vs XP argument. Riz: "BEING SAFE ISN"T ADVENTURING. YOU NEED TO RISK YOUR LIFE!" Kipperlilly: "WE'RE STUDENTS NOT SOLDIERS WE SHOUILDN'T BE TAKING UNNECESSARY RISKS TO OUR LIVES!" Or 2. The Bad kids find out that Rat Grinders want to be safe for other reasons such as Mary Ann not wanting to go on adventure where her teammates will abandon her because she's a kobold, like what happened to her adventuring father, kinda hitting home with Riz who , On a history check or something, knows that Goblinoids and Kobolds have often been overlooked and dismissed and discriminated in adventruing parties. He just happens to have made a lot of good friends. MA: "No one cares about the little monster adventurers. They'd rather save their scales than help us."
This is SO brilliant - making the central tension in the campaign an argument that actual DnD players have about how to play this game (XP Leveling vs Milestone). GOD I love d20 ❤
Listen when the game stresses xp system, you will kill everything and anyone to level up, and you my friend, look just enough to get to level 3, I NEED MY SUBCLASS COME HERE
XP is fine as long as the System limits your ability to earn it off of considerably weaker opponents. PF2e, for instance, where anything less than 3 lvls below yours gives you 0 XP.
You get XP for overcoming challenges. Like when I used to run beginner games to teach, I didn't care much how they did it. Put the mob to sleep, trick them, negotiate, bribe. You still defeated the mob and get XP. Exploration my not do it by itself, but the DM can reward using skills and being innovative doing it. Using cartography or some kind of divination to map the dungeon. The problem is people being trapped in old styles of gaming while complaining about old styles of gaming.
I am calling it now based on a comment Brennan made to Matt Mercer a year ago, Kristin's brother is going to join the rat grinders and become the most powerful cleric of the god of the sun in about 3 weeks in game time because of the forest with a bit too many monsters and is a match for demon generals
Unfortunately, Kristen's brother is a Paladin, not a Cleric. Narratively that'd be crazy, but he's also a freshman and the rat grinders are juniors by this point
@@mintmittens The strongest paladin of the god of the sun. I thought the Rat Grinders would do something like it to mess with Kristin's campaign like an even her brother isn't voting for her kind of thing
Despite the Butt Crushers(or whatever their name is) being at an estimated level 13-15, they would get *slaughtered* by any of the big bads from this series
This is a brilliant… BRILLIANT plot device. I’m always in aw of Brendan, Aabria, Matt, and their co-writers (shout out to the co-writers who deserve more credit) ability to tell a story. ❤❤❤
4 that we know of, but the four Rat Grinders that we know of are a foil to a Bad Kid in some way, so it's more likely there's 6 of them and we haven't met the ones who are a foil to Fabian and Adaine yet. For 6 adventurers, off the top of my head, I believe that was like 133k, or level 13? I didn't feel like pulling up the xp table or doing the math again but it was somewhere around there.
I think there is a really interesting potential here that I hope Brennan is leading up too. He's made a few comments on the sort of meta nature of this world and it's premise, and I wonder if he's setting up the bad kids and their relative consequence free life style as being the point of conflict "the villian to everyone else's pov) The Rat Grinders could be a consequence of the Bad Kids living the PC glory, the new principal and the FBI bird; consequences. What happens to Cassandra, consequences. Now all the homework and class load and requirements to pursue "multi class" characters. All of that, plus what Brennen said about how he heard junior year described by friends when researching this season... Everyone is talking about fairness, from the Rat Grinders, Cassandra, the new principal, the FBI bird even represents it... Fairness. The players are in a DnD world where everyone is aware of the nature of their world. So in a meta way, acting like PCs in a normal dnd world while living in a world aware of DnD, would make people resent you and the world of authority and consequence come down on you. I think it would be brilliant.
I had to do some math after Gorthalax said what they've slain. Even if it's highballing, 80,000 rats/spiders is 800,000 XP which is twice the amount you need to go from level 1 to 20. Even if it's a tenth of that, that's still enough for them to reach level 10....... This season is going to be insane
I’m looking back at this post campaign… and the fact that Jace was showing off their logs to show “yeah these kids have sure only been grinding in the woods killing rats” when we know what’s *actually* been happening and why they’ve been doing that- presumably to get attention off him and Porter - is a really great bit of “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” that I honestly didn’t notice til now.
So the Ratgrinders spend 24 hours a week farming xp. That comes out to 14,440 rounds of combat, every week, for 104 weeks. At one rat kill a round, 10 xp a rat, it takes under 3 weeks to hit level 20. Even if they don't get a rat per round, once you factor in spells like fireball and aoe moves, these guys might have hit level 20 before the end of freshman year. They might have casted the time stop in the assembly room!
You caught with Riz insight at the end right? I am curious because Brennan linked it with the need to write 10 page essays. Like, all the bad kids are stripped from time.
@@StilltheAp0llyonYeah, *something's* up with that. To provide those kinds of numbers, there'd have to be a frigging *rat factory* hidden somewhere in those woods.
If the bad kids had been left alone to be mediocre students, they probably wouldn't feel so aggrieved though. Their pathologies are gained through their families and environments, and they didn't ask to be forced into a growth journey in which they save the world three times, lose relationships friends and loved ones, have existential crises and are all in various ways heinously tortured - but they stepped up and grew through it.
i dont count killing a shit ton of enemies that you only kill because you know they arent any actual challenge to you "training". its exploiting a loophole in the system plain and simple
@@bestaround3323 but you do need variety. no one would call playing the very first level of a game over and over to be truly learning the game any better after a certain point. if they are only battling the same 3 types of low level monsters, they arent learning the team synergy and ability to adapt to situations that an adventuring team that went on actual adventures will. and i dont even mean "save the world" level adventures that the bad kids did. even just the regular mandatory quest that students are supposed to go on (iirc) would have provided them with more varied and realistic adventure experience. i mean, its literally a school for adventurers, this would be the opportune time to learn and risk BECAUSE you still have the school supporting you. instead of coasting through on an easy ride, to get thrown out to the world of true dangerous and deadly quests, with no actual experience of what to do when things don't go easy and perfect. like it isnt even "they arent doing what the bad kids did so its bad" they arent even doing what ANY of the other students seem to be expected to do.
Would find it hilarious if they ended up fighting, and even though the rat grinders are all way higher level, all of their spells are AOE and perfect for 1 hp opponents. Meanwhile, they have no healing spells because they never get hurt and the second they do get hurt they panic and fall apart.
XP vs Milestone the great debate of why shouldn't I burn this village down when I'm done for the extra numbers and does my DM feel like we've earned it?
Kylolightsaber Coldplaykegel could have just as easily become obsessed with The Seven. Both groups were put through the Klavaxus ringer and leveraged it for greater adventures.
These cats out there grinding low level monsters meanwhile our protagonists on their very first day of school had to fight lunch and two of them died, albeit temporarily.
If the Grinders each chose a terribly disadvantaging dump-stat to max a specific advantage, they'd need to stay in beginner areas to survive the inevitable crits; Special-Ed-Grinding to fill-in gaping-voids in their core-stats.
I had to do some math for the XP levelling, lets assume that the rat crushers are level 9, that would mean they had to get 64000 XP to get from level 1 to level 9. - Twig Blight are 1/4 challenge rating giving you 25 xp, - Rat Swarm has a challenge rating of 50 xp, and - Giant Wolf Spiders (classified as a medium creature) are a challenge rating of 1/4 giving 50 xp. In order to level from 1-9 you would need to kill 2560 Twig Blight or Giant Wolf Spiders, or 1280 Rat Swarms. This isn’t impossible, but it is very much tedious and levelling to higher and higher ranks doing just that, would be boring. How many rats can you kill before you’re just tired of doing that.
0:35 "like 80 thousand" even if we just take Twig Blights, that's 2 million xp, lv 20 is only 355 thousand. Now if he misspoke and meant 8 thousand we can still say 200k, which is just above level 16, throw in some Rats and Spiders and you have a level 17 group easy.
@@SatinFoxxthat is disgusting, that is so much, and I get that you would learn some stuff from fighting such small monsters but like they have no experience in creating a plan, or strategy, when you fight the same monsters over and over again you can reasonably get to level 20 but you wouldn’t know how to do anything else. How do you take on a world ending evil if you don’t know how large enemy’s fight?
Its so funny as well as being in both a milestone campaign and a xp campaign they are also different energies. Milestone you chill and vibe with the story. XP turns you into a feral room cleaner who focuses on killing every single xp source available.
The fact that Brennen found away to make Murph genuinely upset after like 5 years of Dimension 20 is actually really funny. Brennen really wanted him to feel rage this season 😂
Id love a game where 1 player sit with them early on. And just say im not going on the adventure with them. Then just hang out for like whole game playing on a phone. At points letting them pop in to do things. Like a npc. Then when there at the end they pop back in. Saying they were grinding xp the whole time. And play it off as the DM been keeping track on them on there own.
Somebody did the math somewhere else in the comments and it was like you’d have to kill 680000 rats to get to 20. I don’t know how many rats real life exterminators kill in their career but I don’t known if it’s that high.
@@startingfromlevelone9510 It was a bit of hyperbole, but exterminators, cattle/pig/chicken processors, or anyone that kills animals for a living would be high level by the logic of the Rat Grinders.
@@StilltheAp0llyon I think it would depend on weather or not there's a distinction between animals and monsters, and if that distinction means that animals don't give XP. If neither of those things are true, than yes, people who slaughter animals for a living would eventually become super high level. But their class would probably still just be that of a normal NPC.
Shrimpapalooza Chronology is so much more antagonizing than most BBEGs can ever dream of being. Not grand, scheming, or uniquely evil, just INFURIATINGLY LAME and COMPETENT
A rat is 10 xp (wtf: seriously 5E makes no sense.) Assuming that other similar level enemies give similar xp we are sitting at 800,000xp In previous editions the party would cap out around level 6, as cr1/4 would stop providing xp after this. But... I cannot find any similar ruling in 5E. So, assuming a party of four these guys are level 16.
I did the math. Assuming they spend half the time looking for things to kill in the forest, a person following this schedule would get around 460k exp every school month so over the course of 2 school years thats 8,262,000 xp even if we only take 1/4th of that, thats more than enough to get to level 20
I understand Riz cause I also get so mad when I learn other kids cheat with their projects and get high grades for it cause it defeats the purpose. I get so mad.
I don't know if anyone has already pointed this out, but I fully picture Matt Mercer thinking he landed a zinger in 'you're not a tyrant, you're just not paying attention.' And Brennan's fully there being 'I'll show you not paying attention....' Probably not why, but still very funny to think about.
I think a really neat campaign setting would be something akin to “oh these adventurers are trophy hunters by necessity” considering that monsters can be a finite resource so, you have to fight other low levelled parties in order to fight a larger monster.
Black market shop idea (or regular market depending on towns morals) for XP boosters where players walk in and they see a bunch of higher powered creatures in cages/containers barely alive with 1-2 HP with status effects to make them even weaker. Buyers can purchase the final hit to gain XP and rewards with 99% of the work done already. Rich kids getting super strong as parents pay for safe leveling. The under belly backroom of the market is just workers continuously damaging the stock to prevent them from healing enough to ever fight back and harvesting of the recently dead for materials. Essentially let people pay to butcher an animal and harvest the materials so just a slaughter house for rare animals
I feel like the advantage the Bad Kids have is being seasoned adventurers with practical experience, while the Rat Grinders are just strong with little actual skill or team building strength, and that’s what’s going to make the Grinders lose. Because no number of high levels spells can compensate for the knowledge of when and where to use them
You know what the best way to actually power level is crab fishing I did the math and you could have everyone in a 4 man party level 20 in less than a month
Emily and Murph’s relationship is exactly the kind of love I strive for ❤ Edit: I also did the math and if every monster is roughly 10xp, and they’ve killed 80,000 of them, that’s 800,000xp. Which would bring them to roughly level 15 (or level 14, and 3400xp from level 15) so about 1.5x the level of our beloved heroes ❤😂
ironically the problem of grinding low-level mobs in beginner regions is a problem solely found in RPG video games. XP leveling can work in tabletop play since you can't really stay in one location and kill 80,000 rats. A smart DM would turn your party into NPC exterminators. A smarter one would slowly lead the party into a horror quest against a rat king or some other eldritch horror.
@@romxxii It doesn't happen now because games are run differently, but back when store games were the default thing people absolutely did this by just cycling their same character through otherwise all new groups' demo-games until you slingshot past everybody like fucking gandalf.
I use xp as a DM and I've never had an issue. Grinding isn't something people really do in TTRPGs, that's a video game thing. My players couldn't go out and grind for xp even if they wanted to because I control the flow of encounters they have.
Hi comment section from three months ago, I bring plot developments from the future. JACE showed Gorthalax the Rat Grinders' adventure logs...so he faked them. They aren't killing rats, they're killing giant monsters that Jace teleports to the woods and Porter stunlocks...so they're still cheating but it's even worse.
![The Saga of Conor Counterspell | Fantasy High Junior Year [Ep. 5 Compilation]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3MvGQDjUyYM/mqdefault.jpg)
![The Saga of Conor Counterspell | Fantasy High Junior Year [Ep. 5 Compilation]](/img/tr.png)
Obsessed with the fact that at Aguefort they usually “take [students] into the woods so they can fight low level monsters + experience their first battle injury safely” meanwhile half fully DIED and Adaine literally /murdered/ an /actual person/ with a ladle on their first day of school
"Do I have to use the ladle? It's a bit triggering for me."
It just shows they did not have a normal first day. Don't forget there was also a murder-suicide
That's why they're his favorite 🤣
@@Mr.Bubbles42Of the principal who snuck into heaven and then knocked a God's lights out cause it would be fun, and the guidance counselor they really could've used at that moment. At least there's Jawbone.
I think what would make a really satisfying denouement of this rivalry would be when the Rat Grinders and Bad Kids have to face off in battle, and it's revealed that the Rat Grinders are all super powerful and dangerous in a theorycrafting white room calculations way, but they each also have some unique glaring weakness that they never addressed because they spent all of their time fighting low CR monsters that couldn't exploit them, and that they lack party synergy because they've never been forced into a difficult position where they have to rely on their teammates to succeed.
Something like their Barbarian can deal massive amounts of damage, but can't make a Wisdom save if their life depended on it, but their Bard never gives them Bardic Inspiration to help because they're too busy using them all on something like Blade Flourishes or Cutting Words. Or their Rogue has an insane burst opener, but has no sustained follow-up because she's never fought a creature that can tank her first attack.
That would be awesome, and a good way to write villains with exploitable weaknesses
This is great, especially with the concept of dump stats 😂
Those builds that can do 200 damage to one enemy at level 5, but they've blown all their resources until the next long rest because of that one round.
I think that wouldn't make for entertaining villains though. Like, a flashy fight full of typical moments, but a decent party of players could deal with that, especially if that party kept assuming things about the world within the confines of a standard DnD setting. But in this world, the NPCs are all aware of DnD rules and stats and fears (in a general war, as Brennen said). So they shouldn't make themselves vulnerable in that way.
I think it would be immensely satisfying, especially within character arcs, if the Bad Kids fight the Rat Grinders but don't win (a stalemate or loss is fine), and realize that they've been unserious about the world they live in (classes, divinity, jobs, responsibilities) and the Rat Grinders, though resentful, aren't entirely wrong. But then maybe that resentment and other consequences (like lack of faith for a cleric, or fulfilling a warlock pact) gave room for the big bad to take form and the baddy destroys the Grinders who try valiantly to stop it.
The the bad kids have to grow as characters to weaken the baddy and defeat it in glorious battle.
I think Brennen has the smarts to pull that off, and he knows story well enough to make something like that. At least, I think I'm seeing the seeds of it.
Im just waiting for cassandra to pull the most insane shit
I love the look on Ally's face as they discover XP grinding for the first time, after _years_ of playing D&D with the gang.
Well, killing basic creatures in the starter area is more of a video game thing than a DnD thing.
And in a world of DnD aware NPCs, it makes sense that it's a known strategy, just not a well respected one.
Dimension 20 basically always uses milestone leveling. XP is fussy as fuck
I don't know who's more mad, Riz or Murph lol
Murph. Definitely Murph. His DM brain is screaming for blood.
@@Birthday888 100% 😂
@@Birthday888 I love when he snaps at Kipperlilly in that fight.
yes
"The real XP was the friends we made along the way.... and also all the monsters we killed. Oh BOY did we kill a lot of Slimes."
The wizard who has been stabbed by goblin twice😅
Best part is Brennan getting caught early on his XP vs Milestone beef (seeded in one of the earliest Adventuring Academy episodes), but being absolutely delighted at his own cleverness. 10/10, never change.
Brennan's delivery of the cheeky "whoops, sorry" always cracks me up
I understand Kipperlady’s fairness is about the bad kids always getting the best quests, but the fact that they speak about fairness when they have NO actual experience??
They would die so quickly on an actual quest
Exactly. Like, if they were trying to get quests like that, that's one thing. But it seems like all they've been doing is grinding without even trying to go on quests
I think the Rat Grinders are all of the worst DND player stereotypes. You have the rules lawyer, the edgy one, the one that won't rp, etc.
Reminder that everyone gets to play dnd how they want. If you want to power game and grind rats for hours, you should be allowed to do so.
I understand the stuff about fairness too, but respectfully, they’ve saved the world 3 times. Twice in a year. If they were being treated BADLY, I’d get it, but the kids who literally stopped the apocalypse 3 times by the time of their junior year getting a little special treatment is not really a big deal imo
This is so fitting for a campaign in which all the D&D classes one can take are...literally classes one can take. The best thing about Fantasy High was always how self-aware and meta it was, even down to the name. I love it, this is amazing
...how did I just realize the pun in the name 🤦♂️
@@pizzadragon2699 ?
@@bat8046 Swap the words
So instead of capitalism being the bad buy this season is xp vs milestone leveling 😂 I love it so much
I suspect that eventually the big bad will be some Pay 2 Win organization that's powerleveling the low level noobs in the tutorial dungeon while they sleep or something.
XP leveling is the season's big bad. Capitalism is the over arching big bad.
Brennan ran out of societal ills to make into BBEGs so now he’s airing his grievances about how DnD is best played 😂
@@tim.noonanthe best kind of campaign.
i can make this about capitalism
Riz losing his mind over it is justifiable. But Copperkettle is trying to argue that "fairness" of quest distribution when they haven't gotten themselves into any situation that would require them to go on the quest lines.
I love Riz's anger
"THAT'S NOT THE POINT OF ADVENTURING!"
It really shows ya Riz's love of being an adventurer.
Rats give 10xp, spiders give 10xp, and Twig Gremlins are a thing I think Brennan made up, but I’d assume they have CR 1/8 and so probably give 25xp. 10th level characters, like the Bad Kids, have 64,000xp, and there’s no way the Rat Grinders are a lower level. So, if the Rat Grinders have killed equal amounts of rats, spiders, and twig gremlins, then they have killed a minimum of 1,423 each
The twig gremlin. Might just be the twig blight
Given that Brennan said they'd logged 80,000 kills, if there's 6 rat grinders (a foil for each bad kid) then that's what, 13,333 kills per person? If you say that's an average of 15xp per kill that's almost 200,000xp per rat grinder. Level 16?
@@Ciara_Turnerassuming Aguefort is like the US and there’s 180 days, and they grind for 3 after school, that’s 540 hours. Add in 9 hours on the weekend (assuming that’s per weekend, not per weekend day), for about 36 weekends that’s an additional 324 hours. Assuming they actually take their seasonal breaks, that’s at a minimum 1,728 hours over the course of two school years. If they’ve killed 13,333 each over all those hours, that means that each Ratgrinder kills about 7 rats an hour… which means it takes about 600 rounds of combat to kill a collective of 42 SINGLE HIT POINT RATS
So not only are they farming, THEYRE REALLY FUCKING BAD AT IT
@@nateridgely6778 I'll point out that if they're the kind to spend 9 hours a weekend grinding rats, they definitely did not stick to just farming rats during the school year. Summer break? You better believe we're putting in overtime.
@@nateridgely6778they're probably spending more time finding them than actually fighting them.
"It's really hard to do the same thing for 3 hours everyday"
Everyone with job suddenly wept a single tear and they can't explain why.
AFTER school. So imagine doing something for 3 hrs AFTER work
@@SophiaAphrodite and also the impressive part was being able to get six teenagers to focus and work together AFTER school for 3 hours EVERYDAY, that is lowkey impossible
Murph is justifiably upset.
If monsters were real, and you could XP level, I would be tempted to grind on low level mobs to give me the extra advantage though.
Brennan getting a little shy that the elevator pitch if this season was figured out makes me so happy
Em and Murph mind-melding lol
That instantaneous shared look of horror is truly relationship goals.
I love the look Emily and Murph share at 00:44 literally soulmate behavior
I love how dedicated to the idea that The Rat Grinders are the bad guys the entire cast is.
These are just other teens trying to get through school. Like, the bad kids school experience so far is Insane, and theyre Obsessed with these other students who are just like. Doing their own thing, entirely Unrelated to them.
found the guy who XP farms in the tutorial dungeon.
The Rat Grinders are literally picking this fight. The most infuriating thing is that these kids actively haven't tried anything until it was a near guarantee they'd succeed.
Kipperlily starts her student council run only when she has the entire school year to herself, having "found" the rogue professor. Rouge class is the only one that has an instant ace condition for a year, and likely why she is one.
Ruben released his grungy sophomore album while Fig is too busy stopping the Night Yorb to release hers. It hasn't been stated if he made a freshmen one, but Fig had made a successful one, hence why her not making the next one has been a big deal for her.
Mary Ann trys out for the bloodrush team in her junior year when she's finally strong enough to tackle a half orc to the ground. All three of the boys tried out freshman year regardless of their own strengths, and based on her attitude it may not even be something she wants to do.
How does any of this indicate that they are picking a fight?@@Hypersaiyanike
@@OseEigbobo Admittedly, none of what I said does. I'm simply pointing out the most aggravating aspect of them to me, which is their absolute refusal to take risks.
However, Kipperlilly has made it very clear from her dialogue towards the Bad Kids that she believes them to be getting special treatment and is indirectly coming after them for it. Ruben has spoken to Fig in a sparky and condescending manor upon literal first meeting. Mary Ann really hasn't demonstrated anything of the sort, which is why I think this conflict, much like her bloodrush tryout, is something she's just going along with.
It’s about the principle of the thing.
Kipperdoggygirl complaining about fairness when the bad kids earned their quests- they weee the only ones who stayed to FIGHT Kalvaxus! Like I would side with her if it weren’t for that
My exact thought! They've been doing this since freshman year, so where were they when Kalvaxus came back? Cowards.
To be fair, freshman don't go to senior prom
@@agiddyseaThey were all freshmen, they're the same age.
I'm kinda hoping one or two things.
1. That when the enevetable Bad Kids vs Rat Grinders happens, we actually get an exchange where someone points out the flaws of the other side and becomes pretty much the whole Milestone vs XP argument.
Riz: "BEING SAFE ISN"T ADVENTURING. YOU NEED TO RISK YOUR LIFE!"
Kipperlilly: "WE'RE STUDENTS NOT SOLDIERS WE SHOUILDN'T BE TAKING UNNECESSARY RISKS TO OUR LIVES!"
Or
2. The Bad kids find out that Rat Grinders want to be safe for other reasons such as Mary Ann not wanting to go on adventure where her teammates will abandon her because she's a kobold, like what happened to her adventuring father, kinda hitting home with Riz who , On a history check or something, knows that Goblinoids and Kobolds have often been overlooked and dismissed and discriminated in adventruing parties. He just happens to have made a lot of good friends.
MA: "No one cares about the little monster adventurers. They'd rather save their scales than help us."
This is SO brilliant - making the central tension in the campaign an argument that actual DnD players have about how to play this game (XP Leveling vs Milestone). GOD I love d20 ❤
Dimension 20 is some of the best streaming entertainment out there.
I feel ya, Riz. I feel ya.
I watched a stream game use the xp system and they turned into monsters
Listen when the game stresses xp system, you will kill everything and anyone to level up, and you my friend, look just enough to get to level 3, I NEED MY SUBCLASS COME HERE
XP is fine as long as you give lots of XP for exploration and social.
XP is fine as long as the System limits your ability to earn it off of considerably weaker opponents. PF2e, for instance, where anything less than 3 lvls below yours gives you 0 XP.
@@hawkname1234 sounds like milestone a little bit if you get xp for exploring since the only way to gain xp is to kill in 5E
You get XP for overcoming challenges. Like when I used to run beginner games to teach, I didn't care much how they did it. Put the mob to sleep, trick them, negotiate, bribe. You still defeated the mob and get XP. Exploration my not do it by itself, but the DM can reward using skills and being innovative doing it. Using cartography or some kind of divination to map the dungeon. The problem is people being trapped in old styles of gaming while complaining about old styles of gaming.
I am calling it now based on a comment Brennan made to Matt Mercer a year ago, Kristin's brother is going to join the rat grinders and become the most powerful cleric of the god of the sun in about 3 weeks in game time because of the forest with a bit too many monsters and is a match for demon generals
Unfortunately, Kristen's brother is a Paladin, not a Cleric.
Narratively that'd be crazy, but he's also a freshman and the rat grinders are juniors by this point
@@mintmittens The strongest paladin of the god of the sun. I thought the Rat Grinders would do something like it to mess with Kristin's campaign like an even her brother isn't voting for her kind of thing
Despite the Butt Crushers(or whatever their name is) being at an estimated level 13-15, they would get *slaughtered* by any of the big bads from this series
This is a brilliant… BRILLIANT plot device. I’m always in aw of Brendan, Aabria, Matt, and their co-writers (shout out to the co-writers who deserve more credit) ability to tell a story. ❤❤❤
So a rat is challenge 0, 10 xp. so about 800k xp. But they are 4, so 200k for each one.
They are at least level 16, that takes 195,000 xp.
4 that we know of, but the four Rat Grinders that we know of are a foil to a Bad Kid in some way, so it's more likely there's 6 of them and we haven't met the ones who are a foil to Fabian and Adaine yet.
For 6 adventurers, off the top of my head, I believe that was like 133k, or level 13? I didn't feel like pulling up the xp table or doing the math again but it was somewhere around there.
I think there is a really interesting potential here that I hope Brennan is leading up too. He's made a few comments on the sort of meta nature of this world and it's premise, and I wonder if he's setting up the bad kids and their relative consequence free life style as being the point of conflict "the villian to everyone else's pov)
The Rat Grinders could be a consequence of the Bad Kids living the PC glory, the new principal and the FBI bird; consequences. What happens to Cassandra, consequences. Now all the homework and class load and requirements to pursue "multi class" characters. All of that, plus what Brennen said about how he heard junior year described by friends when researching this season...
Everyone is talking about fairness, from the Rat Grinders, Cassandra, the new principal, the FBI bird even represents it... Fairness. The players are in a DnD world where everyone is aware of the nature of their world. So in a meta way, acting like PCs in a normal dnd world while living in a world aware of DnD, would make people resent you and the world of authority and consequence come down on you.
I think it would be brilliant.
This bit was so hilarious to me. I love the immediate outrage.
I had to do some math after Gorthalax said what they've slain. Even if it's highballing, 80,000 rats/spiders is 800,000 XP which is twice the amount you need to go from level 1 to 20. Even if it's a tenth of that, that's still enough for them to reach level 10....... This season is going to be insane
But that's the amount of rats killed by the full party. Wouldn't they each individually get 1/6th of that? Still an insane amount of XP but yeah
They've got the grindset mindset, man.
I’m looking back at this post campaign… and the fact that Jace was showing off their logs to show “yeah these kids have sure only been grinding in the woods killing rats” when we know what’s *actually* been happening and why they’ve been doing that- presumably to get attention off him and Porter - is a really great bit of “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” that I honestly didn’t notice til now.
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” - Bruce Lee
Emily's witch cackle at Brannan's opps face is delightful 😂
i am very much looking forward to the compilation of kipperlily's various names
I gotta say this is cathegoricaly the best content of Sophmore Year on this side of the paywall
So the Ratgrinders spend 24 hours a week farming xp. That comes out to 14,440 rounds of combat, every week, for 104 weeks. At one rat kill a round, 10 xp a rat, it takes under 3 weeks to hit level 20. Even if they don't get a rat per round, once you factor in spells like fireball and aoe moves, these guys might have hit level 20 before the end of freshman year. They might have casted the time stop in the assembly room!
Well you also have to keep in mind that they would have to spend time finding them. And also, they would be much slower at the start.
Anyone else think they're using chronomancy to get more time in the day to grind in the woods?
They'd need to make the creatures grow faster. They're killing 300+ creatures every week. That's unsustainable.
You caught with Riz insight at the end right? I am curious because Brennan linked it with the need to write 10 page essays. Like, all the bad kids are stripped from time.
@@StilltheAp0llyonYeah, *something's* up with that. To provide those kinds of numbers, there'd have to be a frigging *rat factory* hidden somewhere in those woods.
In story is kinda hilarious that that they're pissed of at group of people that trained more than they did.
If the bad kids had been left alone to be mediocre students, they probably wouldn't feel so aggrieved though. Their pathologies are gained through their families and environments, and they didn't ask to be forced into a growth journey in which they save the world three times, lose relationships friends and loved ones, have existential crises and are all in various ways heinously tortured - but they stepped up and grew through it.
i dont count killing a shit ton of enemies that you only kill because you know they arent any actual challenge to you "training". its exploiting a loophole in the system plain and simple
@@ashleyjohnson9651It is though. Training doesn't have to be risky
@@bestaround3323 but you do need variety. no one would call playing the very first level of a game over and over to be truly learning the game any better after a certain point. if they are only battling the same 3 types of low level monsters, they arent learning the team synergy and ability to adapt to situations that an adventuring team that went on actual adventures will. and i dont even mean "save the world" level adventures that the bad kids did.
even just the regular mandatory quest that students are supposed to go on (iirc) would have provided them with more varied and realistic adventure experience. i mean, its literally a school for adventurers, this would be the opportune time to learn and risk BECAUSE you still have the school supporting you. instead of coasting through on an easy ride, to get thrown out to the world of true dangerous and deadly quests, with no actual experience of what to do when things don't go easy and perfect.
like it isnt even "they arent doing what the bad kids did so its bad" they arent even doing what ANY of the other students seem to be expected to do.
training like that would normally have a cap like your not really gonna learn more after 1000 kills if rats and spiders
I love that Murph and Emily have the same realization at the exact same time 0:45! What a power couple being on the same wavelength!
first time i see that Murf really get angry and found a way that his character was angry
"Calm down, The Ball" I'm dying
Would find it hilarious if they ended up fighting, and even though the rat grinders are all way higher level, all of their spells are AOE and perfect for 1 hp opponents. Meanwhile, they have no healing spells because they never get hurt and the second they do get hurt they panic and fall apart.
Ally infecting the party with Hey Girly has been one of the funniest running jokes this season. Cracks me up every time.
XP vs Milestone the great debate of why shouldn't I burn this village down when I'm done for the extra numbers and does my DM feel like we've earned it?
As a staunch and uncompromising pro milestone leveling supporter, I highly support this approach.
Kylolightsaber Coldplaykegel could have just as easily become obsessed with The Seven. Both groups were put through the Klavaxus ringer and leveraged it for greater adventures.
Leave it to Brennan to make Xp leveling the Bad Guy. 😂😂😂 To continue to spite mercer over this just gave me reason to live. Thank you Mulligan
These cats out there grinding low level monsters meanwhile our protagonists on their very first day of school had to fight lunch and two of them died, albeit temporarily.
If the Grinders each chose a terribly disadvantaging dump-stat to max a specific advantage, they'd need to stay in beginner areas to survive the inevitable crits; Special-Ed-Grinding to fill-in gaping-voids in their core-stats.
Thanks Matt for the debate that resulted in this.
Matthew Mercer what have you done?
Brennan: i'll make some characters that're proto serial killers
Players: XP GRINDING!
I had to do some math for the XP levelling, lets assume that the rat crushers are level 9, that would mean they had to get 64000 XP to get from level 1 to level 9.
- Twig Blight are 1/4 challenge rating giving you 25 xp,
- Rat Swarm has a challenge rating of 50 xp, and
- Giant Wolf Spiders (classified as a medium creature) are a challenge rating of 1/4 giving 50 xp.
In order to level from 1-9 you would need to kill 2560 Twig Blight or Giant Wolf Spiders, or 1280 Rat Swarms. This isn’t impossible, but it is very much tedious and levelling to higher and higher ranks doing just that, would be boring. How many rats can you kill before you’re just tired of doing that.
0:35 "like 80 thousand" even if we just take Twig Blights, that's 2 million xp, lv 20 is only 355 thousand.
Now if he misspoke and meant 8 thousand we can still say 200k, which is just above level 16, throw in some Rats and Spiders and you have a level 17 group easy.
@@SatinFoxxthat is disgusting, that is so much, and I get that you would learn some stuff from fighting such small monsters but like they have no experience in creating a plan, or strategy, when you fight the same monsters over and over again you can reasonably get to level 20 but you wouldn’t know how to do anything else. How do you take on a world ending evil if you don’t know how large enemy’s fight?
murph and emily looking at each other and realising at the same time
1:36 maybe the rogue teacher is Master Splinter
Its so funny as well as being in both a milestone campaign and a xp campaign they are also different energies.
Milestone you chill and vibe with the story.
XP turns you into a feral room cleaner who focuses on killing every single xp source available.
My eyes hurt they are dilating so much. I feel that I am inside the fly on the walls brain that is Brennon's world. ❤
The fact that Brennen found away to make Murph genuinely upset after like 5 years of Dimension 20 is actually really funny. Brennen really wanted him to feel rage this season 😂
This show NEEDS to be made into a full on TV Show on Amazon Prime. I would gladly pay for that.
Id love a game where 1 player sit with them early on. And just say im not going on the adventure with them. Then just hang out for like whole game playing on a phone.
At points letting them pop in to do things. Like a npc. Then when there at the end they pop back in. Saying they were grinding xp the whole time. And play it off as the DM been keeping track on them on there own.
I haven't started the video and the fact I see the description for the rival party being called "The Rat Grinders" gives me all the knowledge I know.
Wouldn't this mean that every exterminator in the world is 20th level?
Somebody did the math somewhere else in the comments and it was like you’d have to kill 680000 rats to get to 20. I don’t know how many rats real life exterminators kill in their career but I don’t known if it’s that high.
@@startingfromlevelone9510 It was a bit of hyperbole, but exterminators, cattle/pig/chicken processors, or anyone that kills animals for a living would be high level by the logic of the Rat Grinders.
@@StilltheAp0llyon I think it would depend on weather or not there's a distinction between animals and monsters, and if that distinction means that animals don't give XP. If neither of those things are true, than yes, people who slaughter animals for a living would eventually become super high level. But their class would probably still just be that of a normal NPC.
80000 rats at 10 xp a pop
spread out to a party of 5 (not sure how many there are in rat grinder)
Easily gets them to Lv14
Shrimpapalooza Chronology is so much more antagonizing than most BBEGs can ever dream of being. Not grand, scheming, or uniquely evil, just INFURIATINGLY LAME and COMPETENT
This is my favorite comedy season since the coffin run season
A rat is 10 xp (wtf: seriously 5E makes no sense.)
Assuming that other similar level enemies give similar xp we are sitting at 800,000xp
In previous editions the party would cap out around level 6, as cr1/4 would stop providing xp after this.
But... I cannot find any similar ruling in 5E.
So, assuming a party of four these guys are level 16.
"Riz has never been this mad."
Keep in mind that he has faced the being that killed his father and planned to kill all his friends and family.
I did the math. Assuming they spend half the time looking for things to kill in the forest, a person following this schedule would get around 460k exp every school month
so over the course of 2 school years thats 8,262,000 xp
even if we only take 1/4th of that, thats more than enough to get to level 20
Why would the in-universe explanation not be a personal duty to making sure those monster populations don't grow out of control?
A la Goblin Slayer? I dunno, I suspect that something about the woods must be artificial. That many monster spawns doesn't feel natural.
@@Brasswatchman I'm afraid I'm not familiar, but you do make a good point.
I remember Brennan talking to Matt Mercer about XP vs Milestone - so this is incredibly on brand lmfao
Just watched "Party Politics" tonight. _Almost_ choked to death laughing.
Brennan wrote this because of the argument he have with Matt and no one can tell me otherwise.
We need " it's 3:00 a.m. in a warehouse in LA" merch I NEED IT
I heard Twink goblins, and that is more interesting than twig goblins
Riz would be highly insulted, I suspect.
I understand Riz cause I also get so mad when I learn other kids cheat with their projects and get high grades for it cause it defeats the purpose. I get so mad.
Leave it to Brennan to have NPCs no-lifing it in the woods, against trash mobs, for power. Hahaha
I don't know if anyone has already pointed this out, but I fully picture Matt Mercer thinking he landed a zinger in 'you're not a tyrant, you're just not paying attention.' And Brennan's fully there being 'I'll show you not paying attention....' Probably not why, but still very funny to think about.
The bad guy is xp leveling is a future light novel
I think a really neat campaign setting would be something akin to “oh these adventurers are trophy hunters by necessity” considering that monsters can be a finite resource so, you have to fight other low levelled parties in order to fight a larger monster.
anyone who references a 2 foot big spider and classifies it as "not gigantic" is not allowed to take watch at night
Black market shop idea (or regular market depending on towns morals) for XP boosters where players walk in and they see a bunch of higher powered creatures in cages/containers barely alive with 1-2 HP with status effects to make them even weaker. Buyers can purchase the final hit to gain XP and rewards with 99% of the work done already. Rich kids getting super strong as parents pay for safe leveling. The under belly backroom of the market is just workers continuously damaging the stock to prevent them from healing enough to ever fight back and harvesting of the recently dead for materials. Essentially let people pay to butcher an animal and harvest the materials so just a slaughter house for rare animals
Imagine they are in no way involved to the villain(s) perse, but just really annoying people lol
It seems like it might have been what Brandon was potentially suggesting but he could have also just been trying to throw them off
Seems the Rat Grinders are just farming xp. Fucking genius. The future is now.
GIIRRRLLLLYYYYY!
Such a funny moment in the episode
I feel like the advantage the Bad Kids have is being seasoned adventurers with practical experience, while the Rat Grinders are just strong with little actual skill or team building strength, and that’s what’s going to make the Grinders lose. Because no number of high levels spells can compensate for the knowledge of when and where to use them
For a moment thought they were gonna fight the Xp to lvl 3 guys, oh well, maybe next time
I just commented "genius" on another rpg video, but jfc... that is GENIUS.
We just use mile stone points you can invest them in abilitys and group abilitys or just level up depending in the level
You know what the best way to actually power level is crab fishing I did the math and you could have everyone in a 4 man party level 20 in less than a month
JAYCE kept the records?! No wonder they never figured out they were actually getting the deathblows on poweful monsters weakened by Porter!
It is funny to me that Rizz was named Rizz before people started saying rizz, and when they said it it mean the opposite of what Rizz has.
Emily and Murph’s relationship is exactly the kind of love I strive for ❤
Edit: I also did the math and if every monster is roughly 10xp, and they’ve killed 80,000 of them, that’s 800,000xp. Which would bring them to roughly level 15 (or level 14, and 3400xp from level 15) so about 1.5x the level of our beloved heroes ❤😂
Milestone leveling is the only way to do it
ironically the problem of grinding low-level mobs in beginner regions is a problem solely found in RPG video games. XP leveling can work in tabletop play since you can't really stay in one location and kill 80,000 rats. A smart DM would turn your party into NPC exterminators. A smarter one would slowly lead the party into a horror quest against a rat king or some other eldritch horror.
@@romxxii It doesn't happen now because games are run differently, but back when store games were the default thing people absolutely did this by just cycling their same character through otherwise all new groups' demo-games until you slingshot past everybody like fucking gandalf.
I use xp as a DM and I've never had an issue. Grinding isn't something people really do in TTRPGs, that's a video game thing. My players couldn't go out and grind for xp even if they wanted to because I control the flow of encounters they have.
Hi comment section from three months ago, I bring plot developments from the future. JACE showed Gorthalax the Rat Grinders' adventure logs...so he faked them. They aren't killing rats, they're killing giant monsters that Jace teleports to the woods and Porter stunlocks...so they're still cheating but it's even worse.
This is exactly why most MMORPGs make newbie zone XP trivial after a while. Eventually you HAVE to move on.
80,000 rats.
800,000 XP.
Level 20 is just over 300k.
800,000 between 4-6 people, though. That means, at most, they're about 2/3s the way there, and at least a little under half.