This week, the Mighty Nein planned with an unexpected ally, Beau had a one-on-one duel, and the party fought a strangely beautiful duo. On top of all this, Matthew Mercer provided an in-universe explanation for providing some mechanical tweaks to one of the homebrew subclasses one of his players was using in-game.
Art by Lauren Rowlands (@larn_draws)
Episode Summary
Previously on Critical Role, the Mighty Nein investigated Asarius, the City of Beasts, for an imperial spy. After throwing down with a mysterious dark elf in the Four Corners tavern, Beau learned that the spy was actually her previous mentor: Expositor Dairon of the Cobalt Soul!
This week, the Mighty Nein tried to encourage Dairon to travel incognito with them to Ghor Dranas, but she flatly refused. She worked alone, and she would not budge, no matter how fiercely they cajoled her. She did, however, remark to Beau that her fighting impressed her. It was powerful, but it still needed refinement. She asked Beau to meet her after sundown to train, just like they did back in Trostenwald, so many months ago.
The Nein spent the rest of the day continuing their investigation of Asarius, searching for the Abyssal portals rumored to be popping up around the city. Despite speaking with several suspicious bugbears, and Jester judiciously using detect evil and good, they ultimately learned precious little of importance, and retired back to their rooms in the inn. While the others slept, Beau scurried out and sparred with Dairon. Their secret training unlocked new knowledge in Beau’s mind—and allowed Matt to give Marisha a few playtest-driven updates to her Way of the Cobalt Soul monk subclass.
The next morning, they continued their investigation and climbed down into a bugbear den. There, they encountered a seductive duo of fiends, an incubus and a succubus that had been charming the bugbears and filling their dreams with strange thoughts. The battle quickly turned against the fiends, and they fled deeper into the earth. The Mighty Nein steeled themselves and leapt down after them, into darkness, and wound their way deep underneath the City of Beasts.
Spotlight: Modifying the Way of the Cobalt Soul
This episode featured more of the fun and unique NPCs we’ve come to expect from the grim-yet-quirky city of Asarius, but the real standout moment of this episode was Beau’s sparring match. In a game where characters tend to gain new powers for no concrete narrative reason (only linked to the game mechanic of gaining a level), Matthew giving his characters specific, in-narrative ways to enhance her monk powers is a welcome treat. Fjord gained new warlock powers when he consumed the orbs of Uk’otoa during his chapter exploring the Menagerie Coast, and Beau has now twice gained new power by sparring with a mentor.
This is a tool you can steal for your home game to help weave your mechanics and narrative together in a more cohesive manner. It requires you to be very cognizant of what your players and their characters want, and it also requires for your players to be forthcoming about their motivations. Beau’s Way of the Cobalt Soul subclass grants her character an instant link to an organization with specialized powers, while Travis’s Hexblade patron also provides an instant narrative link. A paladin’s Sacred Oath subclasses also provide a similarly instant narrative hook, but you may need to do a little more work to create a narrative niche for other classes to feel like their powers are grounded in your campaign setting.
Beau’s sparring was especially interesting because it gave Matthew a narrative way to not just grant Beau a new power, but to buff a power that he had originally made too weak. Since the Way of the Cobalt Soul is a monk subclass of his own creation, it’s up to him to tweak its power and make sure that it has mechanics that are fun for both him and his players to play with. He had the added benefit of seeing this subclass published in the Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting and receiving community feedback on these class features for the past year and a half, which has allowed him to refine and iterate his core concept. And while the book isn’t going to receive any revisions (probably), he can make changes for his own table. This is no sin; even the D&D designers at Wizards of the Coast modify their own rules and homebrew new ones for their home games to better fit the game they’re trying to play!
Don’t be afraid to tweak homebrew content that you’re using in your game. Your homebrews don’t have to be perfectly balanced in the way that official D&D content ought to be, since your homebrew only needs to apply to your game. Official content needs to be reasonably balanced enough (and generic enough) to be used by hundreds of thousands of gamers around the world. You don’t have to worry about that, and you also don’t have to go through the arduous process of submitting revisions and playtesting—your game is your playtest! Embrace that, and feel free to constantly make changes.
Grounding your homebrew tweaks in your game’s narrative isn’t required, of course. If you or one of your players created a homebrew item, it might actually be a better idea to hash out your changes together, so that you don’t surprise your player with an unwanted and irksome nerf. Since a character’s class abilities are essentially divorced from their character concept already, most players can simply suspend their disbelief and ignore how a character suddenly lost a few powers and gained some new ones in their place. You could also take both roads at once, and have a conversation with your player, and then create an in-game scenario to explain away the altered class features.
Have you ever made homebrew changes in the middle of a campaign? How did you weave it into your story? And… is it Thursday yet?
Unless otherwise credited, all images in this article are courtesy of Chris Lockey and Critical Role.
James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, the DM of Worlds Apart, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He loves watching Critical Role and wants everyone he knows to get into it, too. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his partner Hannah and his very own Frumpkins, Mei and Marzipan. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
No mention of the kickstarter on this site?
I didnt write down the codes for voetforsam / voteforliam discount codes for the market place. Now I have to wait until next week to hear them again.
ISUPPORTLIAM
ISUPPORTSAM
I suppose I could, but it's doing pretty damn well on its own.
Thank You! DewOnTheGrass
That is more then fair enough. Thank you for replying and thank you for your encounters of the week, I've used a few of them and they fit very nicely into 3 hour sessions.
seeing as matt did an up date for the way of the cobalt soul is there anywhere i can find this update, I play a way of the cobalt soul monk in a friends saturday game
I've never been much of a sports fan, so I never really understood sports fans yelling at the TV until I discovered Critical Role.
I've never researched the Cobalt Soul subclass. The only knowledge I have about it is from watching CR. At one point during the training Beau used the Extract ability to learn the Constitution score of her opponent and then used that information to make a strike that had already hit a stunning strike. Is that how the ability was originally intended to be used, or was Matt invoking the rule of cool?
I'm not trying to be the fun police, but it seems like the rules get tweaked quite a bit when Marisha takes her turn. I'm not suggesting that Matt shows her favoritism, in fact it seems quite the opposite. Matt often seems frustrated that Marisha doesn't seem to understand how certain spells or abilities work, and he just quickly makes a decision to keep the game moving. This was much worse during the first campaign when Marisha was playing a spellcaster. The reason I bring this up is because it tends to break my immersion in their narrative.
As a DM who has homebrewed at least one sub-class, I totally get the concept of constantly changing the features. You want the class to be fun, but still balanced. I'm looking at ways to improve my homebrews for that simple reason. You don't want it to be too powerful, but also make it interesting enough that players will want to use it. Having your players use your homebrews is a great way to work out any of the kinks that they might still have, as long as they're willing to have the features get switched up every now and then.
I'm constantly tweaking and adjusting my homebrew spells. So far, the biggest culprit has been prophetic action, which was more or less a straight rip from the 4th edition version. I've since changed it from a spell attack to a saving throw and further changed the name to prophetic insight. It's meant to give seers, diviners, and other 'sage' type characters the ability to have some more of 4th Edition's "Leader" role abilities. I generally do this between sessions based on player feedback. The first iteration of my version of prophetic action left the player casting the spell feeling like if they could have hit with a spell attack, they should have just hit with a damaging spell effect, so I buffed it by adding bonus damage. While this felt good, it didn't fix the original problem of low satisfaction on miss. Next was to change the spell to require a saving throw. This was better but no longer felt like it matched with the spell's original power curve and also had a weird interaction with weapon damage on a successful save.
The latest version ties the saving throw more to the caster's ability to perceive or even control their target's destiny and less to the capacity of the caster's allies to immediately capitalize on the spell's effect. The effect is more in line with what I want in terms of flavor and mechanics and my players are happy with it, but I think the language mechanics are a little murky still. There's at least one more revision in me at this point. :D
I haven't had as much trouble with subclasses, but that's probably because I hew pretty close to the standard executions and I've probably watched too much of the Happy Fun Hour.
One of my players is play a deaf autumn Eladrin ranger. He wanted them to be from the feywild and we decided their panther companion would be a fey panther (from 3.5, I think) but with the stipulation that we might modify it if it's too broken. We already modified a few of the gunslinger's abilities so it's less overpowered. My players are really good about being fair and it's been such a help in my first foray as DM.
Thank you James Haeck, Very cool
The main change i make, and have since 3.0, is that Paladin is a Prestige class. It had/has to be earned through playing, not simply pick and you're done. Just too many years of having to strip PCs of their status for their actions/deeds/failure to follow strictures. It is nice that they are no longer restricted to Lawful Good, as this lets them come in several varietis. but as the chosen warrior of something, shouldn't you have to prove yourself worthy of being chosen?
@Aldero
Extract Aspects (Cobalt Soul) keys off of hitting with a strike from the Flurry of Blows ability. Stunning Strike (Monk Class ability) keys off of hitting with a melee weapon attack, for which Flurry of Blows would qualify, and then spending a Ki point. I don't see any reason you couldn't do both off the same strike as it is written. Neither uses up any type of action, it's just based on hitting the opponent.
I don't think he shows any favoritism, rather I think Matt practices a form of DMing I prefer, which is when there is any doubt about what is possible rules-wise, give the benefit of the doubt to the player and let them do something cool. I think he does that with all of the players. That's not to say he never says no, if they try to do something clearly not allowed.
If you do a google search for Way of the Cobalt Soul, you can find a tweet from Matt himself with the updated abilities.
Or at least the other page they mentioned so we could pay things forward, maybe?
He posted the revisions on twitter through a dropbox link
Ahh, ok well i don't have twitter. :(
cool, thank you
I support Sam.
The kickstarter can always use more love.
and the analysis here on Homebrew is solid advice.
Thanks!