How Matt Mercer Handles Resurrection Magic - Vox Machina, Ep. 44 | Critical Role Demystified 

What’s the worst NPC name you’ve heard (or delivered) in your own campaigns?

purvan walked so mike hunt could run

I still think it's very funny that when she rolled the 1 everyone was like "lol instant death. Death! Instant death!" and then it happened and everyone's faces dropped

My harengon rogue recently died in our campaign. I designed her to have a heavy theme of being lucky a la lucky rabbit feet, her whole family imbued with almost supernatural luck, so she has the Lucky feat. Long story short, the BBEG, the Mad Mage, caught her alone at the end of a long day when she went back to our ship by herself to sleep while everyone else went to the tavern to drink and party. The Mad Mage killed her to keep her from warning the rest of the party about what he was doing on our ship. It was one bad roll on my part to save against hold person after the Mad Mage had started a fire onboard with a fireball spell (easily avoided with Evasion). Got burned alive basically. Resurrection ritual failed. DM was describing my character wandering through the forests near her home, coming upon her childhood house, where the Raven Queen awaited her. She told her it was time to go, etc etc. My character asked if there was no way to go back, since she felt she needed to warn the others at minimum. The Raven Queen asked what I would offer in return for the chance to go back. Not expecting anything I offered would be enough, I felt I had to rp and try anyway. I gave some offers that didn't seem to interest her. Then, it hit me. I offered my luck. The whole table went so silent in shock since it was such a big thing for my character, even our DM. The Raven Queen took my luck and used it to reroll the resurrection and rolled a nat20, bringing me back to life very poetically. I can never take the Lucky feat again, and my magic item (good luckstone) got drained of power. It's been great for RP since. Afterward, our DM told me there was nothing I could have offered that the Raven Queen would have been interested in... until I offered my luck. He loved the idea and what a sacrifice it was.

Brennan bringing back Purvon was incredible

"Does that bring you below zero?" is an insanely scary question to hear

One little addition to the 'Scanlan misreads Vax and Kash' scene I'd like to put in there is that him not realising Vax's sexuality is another indicator that Scanlan doesn't actually know what true genuine love looks like, and that the confident bravado he's putting forward is a bit of a shield and smokescreen. Scanlan is one of those characters who you always have to analyse what they're doing at any given moment because there's a ninety percent chance Sam is laying the foundations for something that'll shatter your heart.

Vex fails at haggling and has to pay full price for an item: "This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me."

Something Sam and Travis both do well throughout the campaign is playing to the "strengths" of their low ability scores *without* causing the party any harm, nor interfering with the other players' fun.

One roll changed everything. I often think about another universe where Vex didn't die and what kind of trajectory the campaign would have went, especially towards the end.

I love how the LoVM show almost exactly ripped their first reaction to the purvon name from the table

I have to wonder, if in that moment that Liam as Vax says “take me instead you Raven bitch” if Matt decided to change the figure from Kash’s patron to the Raven Queen. I know I wouldn’t be able to think on my feet that fast, but I bet Matt could

To build off of the "say your NPCs names out loud" Share the names with other DMs. Too often it's just that WE don't see it, but anyone else will pick up on it.

As we saw from "Mikunt," Matt never learned his lesson with NPC names.

On the matter of silly names, I recommend researching inuendos aswell because I once named a great cavalier "The stallion of the east". They leaned into that so much that I just made it canon.

Matt has a lot of moments later where he looks and points at the camera and says "AND THAT'S HOW I'M RULING IT IN MY GAME" and i genuinely think that helped the backseat DM'ing problem a lot.

This sort of thing is where TTRPGs can really shine. Pure randomness of the dice rolls can throw an entire story down a new and exciting path when they hit at the right (or wrong) time. Youd be hard pressed to replicate that feeling in other forms of entertainment and storytelling.

One thing I took away from that scene is the pause Matt makes when he realises the trap killed Vex. Not just to create drama, but to acknowledge the heaviness and panic the players are about to feel. It sort of subtly indicates what’s about to happen gives him no pleasure and he’s with them, but what’s about to happen next is the will of the dice.

The episode that broke the Critters. TWICE.

This one bad roll really pulled me into the fandom deeper as I had heard the Deathwalkers ward was supposed to go to Percy and I tried to dive deep into the what ifs…

Honestly, there's so many incredible moments in this episode, but the one that haunts me the most is the moment when Laura realizes, like Matt's silence and the stunned faces as everyone at the table slowly realizes what's happening... Still gives me chills, what a powerful moment.

I feel like when Sam says "Vax doesn't fly that way" I took it as him lying to protect Vax and Keyleth's relationship, not that he'd forgotten Vax and Gilmore had a thing going for a while.

Considering what happens in Bells Hells, Vax's death is arguably the most important in two campaigns.

The jokers "one bad day" monologue but its "one bad roll"

I remember this episode so distinctly because I was caught up by this time, so could watch live, but being on the east coast that was pretty late for me. I went to bed as it felt like the episode was wrapping up, as it was a really long one already, thinking, what else could possibly happen in the last ten minutes? I woke up the next day to an emotionally broken fandom and learned A LOT. A LOT COULD HAPPEN IN THE LAST TEN MINUTES ACTUALLY. I borrowed a friend's twitch account JUST so I could watch what I had missed immediately LOL. Definitely one of my favorite moments in the entire game.

first purvon, then mike hunt, now the perineum flower

I won't spoil the two next campaing, but damn this roll has big consequences even now!

The natural one heard around Exandria.

Just so you know, Megaphone Man has seen this shout out and really appreciates it. He can’t really watch the video though since he’s on episode 26 haha. If you ever have time on Monday or Wednesday nights though, it would be sick to have you stop by sometime.

I'm still surprised Sam's Pedobear joke about Purvon got adapted for Legend of Vox Machina.

One of the most fun aspects of running Pathfinder 2e is the lack of opportunity attacks. I can't tell you how often I hear an indignant "hey!" From my players when a monster (especially a boss) moves out of their mosh pit of doom!

That episode was... damn. I was watching *years* behind, and the emotions... I don't think I slept after watching this one.

My Dnd campaign I was playing in fell apart over half a year ago and I’m still bummed about tbh to the point I don’t really consume as much dnd content as I used to. But this series and your videos are an exception. They are always so high quality and entertaining. I do hope to dip my toes back into dnd again in the future. thank you for all your hard work and being so respectful to what is dnd. I always find your takes well thought out and thought about so to speak.

I just love Matt's face when Vex mentions her hp is zero... He was so scared....

As a game where dice plays a factor. This episode shows how the game is played even with the twists and turns. Changing the narrative...where even the DM may have to re-invent the story.

What a packed video! - I hope you have a great honeymoon! I'm glad you finally get to have it. - When I think about having fun at the table, especially when it comes to Liam, it's more often than not emotionally devastating. And that's a great thing! A testimony of the friendship at the table. D&D can be very emotionally cathartic. Hopefully everyone is on the same page with it, and it's clear that this table is very in sync. - at the same removed video, iirc, Matt talked about the gift he gave Liam later within the story. I won't do spoilers here but the threads are indeed golden. Matt is such a generous DM and friend, I respect his gift giving so much.

2:55 I love it when my feed does a cross over! MILDRED 😊

When you were talking about how cr does movement in their fights all i could think of is (slight spoiler) Sams "thats why i moved closer" moment

Was legit surprised when I saw a Thought Slime clip and then I was like "Oh nevermind that makes sense!" haha, keep up the great work! May Lord Oculon cast its gaze upon you!

I think this is definitely in contention for being the most impactful roll in Critical Role history. Now, Ive not watched past e20 of C2, or past e74 of C3, but I did watch all of C1, and I cant think of any that come close. Any others spring to mind?

was not prepared for the thoughtslime clip

Wow a Thanksgiving episode! I will b watching this while making food I hope those who celebrate enjoy themselves & those who don't, enjoy ur random Thursday ❤😁

First thing I want to say about this episode. For being the 1-year anniversary, I think it's one of the first times the cast uses the term "Critter" on-stream, Sam working it into one of his Inspiration songs. "Friends, I don't mean to sound bitter, But a year ago, life was a shitter, 'Till I picked up some dice, With some friends, it was nice, And now, ah, I'm a Critter." This was kind of the point where the cast realized how big the show was getting, but also how much it'd changed the lives of so many people. It's a nice moment that I always remember from this episode, even alongside the... other crazy events. I love how most of the cast's reactions to Purvon's name made it into the animated series almost verbatim. The whole "your fun is wrong" thing, it plays into what I feel is a strength of TTRPGs: unlike a videogame, where you need complicated mods or hacks to "change the rules", you have the freedom to make up new rules or ignore existing ones on the fly, if you think it'll make things more fun. Perfect example: Matt ruling that Keyleth in Water Elemental form can't catch fire "because that's stupid". (It's one of the Pyrah visits but I forget if it's the previous or next one) Not only is that weird logically, but Keyleth specifically turned into a Water Elemental because they were fighting Fire Elementals, punishing her for it would've ruined the fun Marisha was going for. That conversation with Percy and Vax. Not accidental ominous foreshadowing at all. I still think it's hilarious that the rest of the cast never realized Scanlan had a low Wisdom modifier until literally the final battle. To which Sam replied: "Why do you think I make terrible decisions all the time?" "We thought you were just an asshole!" Sam was so good at roleplaying a bad stat that the other players never even realized that's what it was, it instead became "that's just Scanlan being Scanlan." (Another interesting aspect of this scene is I think it implied Scanlan was exclusively into women, but later episodes would establish that... well, to quote a comment I once saw, "Scanlan's sexual preference is 'yes'." I think this is just a consequence of the characters, especially those of Campaign 1, being developed as they played rather than fully conceptualized from the start) Oh man, speaking of "one bad roll", if Kash had failed one more saving throw and been petrified... that would've REALLY changed things. Speaking of Kash, while the animated series handled this moment very, very well for the most part, one detail you miss is the fact Kash had to risk drawing Vesh's attention to resurrect Vex. I totally agree with the decision to cut Vesh out of the show because it would've required too much exposition for something that ultimately never plays into Vox Machina's story, but knowing about her adds a little more to this choice. And yeah, you covered it. Liam was going through depression in real life when this happened and I can't imagine how it must've felt to play a character who just happened to go through trauma at the same time. We know from other videos that Matt made Vax "Fate-Touched" (not exactly a spoiler since it's canon to the game from this moment but I don't think it's directly brought up for a while) because Liam was going through a tough time and Matt wanted to give him some light. Still, I remember a lot of people getting on Liam's case for making Vax too brooding, when there were not only in-character but also irl circumstances behind it.

Really great video, Mike - as always. I had shivers just seeing the clips from this episode again.

She Purvan Mike hunt till I jumanji Costco. [*insert face of sams first Mercer shirt*]

This is a good channel. This is a good series. I like Mike.

I've never been able to muster the energy to watch the actual series for longer than a couple episodes, but your recaps and lessons are super palatable and engaging, so I'm looking forward to whatever happens as a result of this.

So many years later and I still get chills...

Great episode! I am already watching the episodes along with Megaphone Man and then coming back and rewatching this series and it’s very cool. Awesome you gave him a shout out! Def feels like I’m getting story telling and DM insights in combo from you both!

Your work is concise and valuable.

I appreciate your observations so much. ❤

That roll was just so amazing. What a scene.

Hey mike thanks for including megaphone man in the video, I had never heard of anyone just reacting to the entirety of critical role completely blind from the beginning, and the fact he's an experienced DM makes it so much better, I've already binged a couple of streams and I've been loving it, great recommendation

with the latest episode of CR3, Travis has solidified for me as being the most adaptive RPer of the group. And you can see it all the way from campaign 1.

Yay! New episode!

Alright, can’t wait for a nice overview of a shopping episode!

I've been watching Vox Machina for a couple months now, and I always use your videos as a recap before starting the next episode. I'm finally caught up, and able to watch this on the day it released! But now I have to forge on into the VM playlist, alone...

As cool as the resurrection rituals are, and as iconic as some of those scenes have become, I think I've become slightly sick of them in recent years? There are only so many "hey, we really need you to come back right now/we can't do this without you" scenes I can watch before they start to become stale. Combine this with the fact that I don't think any of the rituals have actually failed (campaign 2 has some special cases, but ultimately I'd call them all successful), and the tension isn't really there for me anymore. I do, however, enjoy it when bringing the character back is a quest in itself, as it might have been here had Matt rolled lower. Again without spoiling too much, the most recent resurrection in campaign 3 was excellently done. It wasn't just the same ritual rolls, they actually had to find the right people, persuade them, and do some cool and difficult stuff to get it to work. I found that way more interesting than pretty much any of the resurrections beforehand.

I don't know what it is - but that scene, in both the anime and live action takes me to the verge of tears every time. Even when its described its not nearly as vivid as it could be - but its enough. IDK if that makes sense though. I never watched Campaign 1 - I had no connection to these characters. I Only started watching in C3 but that scene man

One of my favorite "your fun is wrong" moments from a different campaign is from an episode of Oxventure from Outside Xbox. One of the players was trying to influence a tournament he was spectating, but wanted to do it subtly, and this conversation happened: Player: Can I use Mage Hand to punch the minotaur? DM: Let me check the rules ... "You may not use Mage Hand to make attacks" ...That's stupid, I'm ignoring that, make a spell attack Oxventure has always been a pretty rules-light game, but it was still very funny in the moment.

I was not expecting that thoughtslime jump scare.

12:42 This reminded me of something that Sam did in campaign 2

This was phenomenal. Ps. I'm going to have little free time for the nest 8-9 months, so sorry if I'm late in the vids

Didn't expect the Thought Slime cameo in the video. That was a fun crossover suprise.

This was so good!!!

I was in a campaign that went on for a couple of years in college. One of the first NPCs my party met was a very wealthy merchant named Alpeen. A couple of semesters later, through the party's actions, Alpeen ended up in a political marriage to Lady Merris Iswood. Most of us didn't realize what was happening because we always referred to her as Lady Merris. And then at the end of the session the party's resident troll fell out laughing. (He had been the driving player behind the effort to get the two married. At the time we thought he was getting into the political plot that some of the other players really loved - boy were we wrong). And then he pointed it out. He had engineered the character's name change to: Lord Alpeen Iswood which was pronounced like Lord Ole P****wad.

I remember watching this. At the time I was the only Critter at my table. Now with the show the rest of the table saw this. We were a group of the ones who went out and watched the show in the theater. I love how they split it between episodes 2 and 3 leaving Vax holding Vex. People in the theater who didn't know what was happening were going "Is that it? Wait when's the next episode."

I for one welcome and celebrate a Thought Slime Mildred reference in your videos.

This is such a heavy episode. And I am very much looking forward to your videos on handling character death. This is still the thing that I struggle with the most as a new DM. I find myself fudging roles so characters can just barley live, though they don't know that quite yet. I just need characters' stories to matter because that's what's important to me. Its especially difficult because the game I am running, Dragon Age, doesn't have access to spells like Revivify, and i would want this one last chance that carries a heartfelt story like seen here. I hope to learn things from your upcoming videos that can help me find a balance I am happy with.

dang, that's a wild flippin' episode! :O but we got through it together :D

Happy Thanksgiving to you and all! I hope you get to enjoy time with family, friends, and all those you are most thankful for.

I paused in the middle of this video to go to bed & dreamt I was facing a Beholder irl

Congrats on the honeymoon! Save travels!

Was not expecting a clip of Thought Slime when I clicked this video.

"in a video no longer accessible for entirely unrelated reasons" ahhhh yep forgot all the BtS stuff is gone -_- Kinda glad that bit of Liam's experience was worth bringing up in the context of this moment, since all I could recall from his interview was iirc some joke about growing up in Weehawken lmao EDIT: now I'm just generally impressed with how much background analysis u do for putting key moments in the context of minor IRL factors (not even the whole parental death aspect, but just "yeah the technical difficulties & the hiatus made everyone a lil punchy, the guests had to go & they just had a wild combat encounter so there was a lax attitude towards looting all the spoils").

I'm not sure if this was the most important death in this campaign (I'm thinking of other one that shattered the team), but as the first one and the way it happened is undeniable the impact it had. I suffered a lot!!!

When i get too many people trying to do too many things all at the same time, i occasionally tell them to roll initiative In my mind, initiative is to be used whenever individual acts, their degree of success, and their timing matter critically to the overall outcome of a situation. That's usually combat, but not always.

9:02 Freaking Sam is such a chaos gremlin!!! Totally hilarious improv. from both of them. This keeps up whenever they see each other and i they just gets funnier.

Six words that changed _everything._

Loved this video. Instant follow. I think I'm a pretty good DM but I'm eager to learn more to run better games and tell better stories. I'm looking forward to learning more through these videos!

I remember how Vax/Liam was planning his "redemption", leaning into a shared worship of Sarenrae with Pike. I think about what things would be like if things had been different - not only in the latter half of campaign 1, but also *now* in campaign 3. What would the current story look like? No spoilers for C3, but it's safe to say that Vax is tangentially related to the current story.

I used the resurrection ritual in one of my games few years ago. One of the most amazing sessions we've ever had. And I scared everyone silly, because i used a Pike d20 from the Vox Machina dice set - the symbol for 20 is Pike's mace, and it looks almost like a 1......

Lesson number 1 example: I had an Npc once that was named ‘Pinas’ Yep. I said that out loud in front of all my players.

Hot take: Purvan is a perfectly good name and if the DM is clearly showing distress at you laughing, maybe try to reign it in because DMing is soul-bearing enough as it is.

The battle map factor is so true - I quickly discovered that using "theatre of the mind" for combat renders a lot of characters abilities (especially extra speed and special movements) virtually worthless, because the DM can't keep track of everyone's location to the nearest 5 feet in their head, and even if they could, they can't describe it so that the players all have the same understanding.

I watched this episode on my only watch through of VM. I was at work when listening to, having caught up with Mighty Nein and waiting for Bells Hells to even BEGIN. I believe I had to turn down the volume a bit because of the mixed voices and the chaos after the fight lol. But I still remember my heart dropping when the trap went off, and the results. I had seen the Dalen’s Closet one shot already, so I knew Vex lived. But I didn’t realize what happened in that moment till it happened. It is one reason why, when exploring as a player, I try to be slow and cautious. I still feel bad for the one time I kinda stepped on toes, cuz we had even more people in call than usual (a guest player for a couple sessions). I partly hang back (or try to) when it comes to exploring so we dont have a moment like this. Which is definitely difficult when I’m the Rogue and scout half the time thanks to a ring of invisibility, lol. But I wanna avoid the sheer chaos of a moment like that which leads up to a trap that has fatal consequences.

Does anyone else make the Raven-Queen a Death Goddess? Or do you assign her a different role in your campaign cosmology? I personally am making her a Goddess of Memory and Dreams due to her collective nature. She works with the God of Death in that she preserves the memory of those who have died while They claim their souls. She also preserves secrets and will not relinquish them unless someone is willing to bargain a profound memory in return. One of those secrets being something she had managed to attain from the previous God of Memory: the secret to deification.

Yeah describing a statue of silvanus got my table giggling

And the point here that isn't made, when one bad role changes everything, strongly consider letting it. Or rather, when one bad role WOULD change everything, strongly consider honoring it.

With some of the names I've come up with it's less a case of them sounding lewd or weird and more a case of the being harder to easily pronounce. This did lead to a running joke of calling a mi-go "Steve" because no-one could be bothered remembering how to say his actual name ("mind if we call you Steve" "Yes, I do mind, but that isn't going to stop you is it?").

I love this. It's the good kind of meta gaming when experienced DM & players can temporarily dial it down for new players joining the group, whether temporarily or long term. Their PC might be whatever level, but the player is not, and they adjust and make it fun for all.

I'd be interested if you were to do a video comparing different character deaths in Critical Role across the campaigns, and how they were similar/different...

I hope you had a Happy Hunter's Holiday!

2:15 Here were are 4-5 years later and Matt still has not learned this lesson.

While the end of the episode drowns out a lot of my memories, I still remember feeling a bit exasperated about the book haggling. I get that it's Vex's thing to fret over money, but the players were OOC commenting how they've looted crypts for the little gold in question. And importantly, none of the other players were present in the bookstore to push back in-character (like in some of the Tiberius shopping moments). Maybe I'm overly sensitive because of experience at my table with "what my player would do" moments. But i feel like there's time economy in a session, and needing to weigh if you're actually going to drag out a scene just because you need to save 0.005% of the total party wealth.

And one note that wasn't brought up because I think Mike's talked about it before, but I love how when Keyleth checks if anything is wrong with Vax, Matt just says no. He doesn't call for a roll of any kind because if Marisha rolled low, she'd never believe Matt and just assume she'd have gotten the truth had she rolled higher

Learned this the hard way in Cuberpunk Red from an antagonist named Zemen

Great video. Considering the role-play possibilities that happened because of this homebrew revivify ritual I think I'd prefer having to do something like this to bring anybody back from the dead.

An episode on Thanksgiving? What is this, Christmas?

From the clip, it seems like Trinket should have died too, but Matt just glossed over it. Or did I miss something?