What D&D Alignment is EVERY Member of Vox Machina? (Critical Role) 

It's true but I'm sure Stuart knows this. The fact that the major points of this episode did actually happen within the rules of D&D doesn't necessarily mean the adapted version didn't still feel plot armor-y. This was a challenge the show had to face in pretty much everything it did. It can't assume it's audience understand the mechanics of D&D so it can't rely on them. In D&D we understand that characters have the mechanics of spell casting but in show it will seem like it comes out of nowhere in a very ex machina (irony isn't lost on me) manor. The show needs to establish what the characters can do and what they can't do. If the adaptation was verbatim this problem would happen a LOT. In general the show handled it well. With that particular incident I think there just wasn't a good way to translate it and still keep the scene in tact. So it was keep it and have it feel ex machina or remove the scene or alter it beyond recognition. They chose to keep it and that's a choice I agree with. But it does have heavy plot armor vibes to it in the show.

@@benjaminhilsdon2238 very true. I just wanted to point out how much fans loved that chaotic mess back in the livestream. It was basically the point where people started thinking “hey, Scanlan is a pretty competent character after all” as I recall.

@@animefan3794 ya it was too great to leave out even with the difficulty of adapting it

@@benjaminhilsdon2238 I feel like they especially made the situation more dire to Scanlan than it was in the original episode tho. During the stream, Scanlan *trivialized* Vedmire with Bigby's Hand and it was much more of a One Man Army trope than in the in show.

SCANBO!

The only real “plot armor” in that encounter was Matt forgetting to have Scanlan roll for concentration on his polymorph but Matt forgot to do that for like the first third of the campaign so it wasn’t him making a concession for scanlan in particular

@@craigstarbird6915 You role concentration when in polymorph?!...I mean...it makes sense...god damn it why did I always just assume it was like wildshape...Welp, I have made a lot of fights way harder than they had any right to be :P

Came here to say the same thing

@@bibbobella I never realized it either

And he had an easier time in the orriginal campaign.

yeah. it kinda feels like he wasn't paying very good attention to certain parts of the show.

I'm sorry, but what you're saying misses the point, too. The choice Pike had to make wasn't between "the church" or her friends. The Everlight doesn't even present the question that way (like, it's the complete opposite actually haha). Her message, and the thing Pike was struggling with, was that you shouldn't treat the separate parts of yourself like they're completely separated and at war with eachother. You need to be assertive in your conviction that the path you choose to walk will take you to a better place, and that it is the path you're meant to take, because that is where the separate parts of you can work together. Pike felt ashamed and thought her religious skills as a cleric were weak because she lived a wild life with her friends , which was a self-fulfilling prophecy that weakened her own faith. She also thought that focusing on her cleric duties and trying to figure things out made her a liability to her friends, which just created more self-doubt that was getting in the way of her ability so she actually became a liability. Her choice was to believe The Everlight when she said "any path can be a holy one" and took the middle path. The one where she doesn't have to worry that her faith to her patron and her loyalty to her friends will clash, because she is going to use one to strengthen the other and vice-versa. She chose the path that will lead to the ultimate version of herself that she wishes to become, and now that she believes that it's possible, she gets hella stronger and more confident as a result.

​@eliezeririzarry247 this, right here

I think Pike in Neutral Good

Well vedmire original stream version was allowed to live and atone for his crimes by helping whitestone rebuild

@@michaelliggett1622 well I watch this show first so I don't care

@@michaelliggett1622 00:53

So mob justice? That is why Lawful Neutral fits much better. But then again that is why alignment is often subjective and causes many fights with my friends. What one persons moral belief is is different then another.

@@psyberian In a medieval fantasy setting, mob justice is literally just how the justice of the land works. These people just had genocide attempted on their village, of course they're gonna hang the dude.

That's fair, but he's also one that stands for a fair fight, is genuinely a nice guy as long as you aren't a dick, and is the type to go the distance for others especially his friends. Maybe Lawful Good is a bit much, but he's at least Good aligned in this series.

@@Mrryn The way Stuart tracks alignment is going to make Grog good, because above all else, Grog loves his friends. The chaotic neutral portion of his character comes from the fact that he'd probably be fine if his friends were more morally grey or cruel, because his morals are mostly wrapped up in what his friends think is good or bad. If the group had decided to GTFO out of Whitestone, Grog would probably be fine leaving an entire city under the rule of an evil necromancer and vampire couple. So yeah, Grog is going to appear more CG because VM is mostly good aligned.

Yeah, that felt weird to me too (I've only just started the stream so I haven't reached this part yet). Like their parents randomly checking in and throwing out that line about "endangering the heirs" and their behavior seemed like they didn't actually like or trust him. Plus Percy and Cass both seemed a little uncomfortable when he called Cass up, and neither of them seemed surprised at all when he got rude and venomous after their parents left - like it was nothing new.

Ehhhh, a lot of nannys and professors are kind of mean and strict. Kids may not like them but they trust them to have their best interests at heart. He was obviously beloved enough that he felt free to address the royalty so personally about the residuim and they didn't think it was weird.

There's a big difference between being a venomous jerk, and actively aiding in the murder of innocents. Anyway, that flashback was to show his motives.

Yeah, the writing on the show is not as great as the critters might have everyone believe, which is weird considering they didn't HAVE to "fix anything" since they had a whole campaign to base this off from.

You forget the difference in how the events actually unfolded, what we saw, and how Percy perceived them. He saw the guy as his mentor who got into squabbles with his parents and sister not an evil murder.

Honestly I think he got hurt more in the animation than the actual tabletop scene

fortunately. I have a spell that needs a will save. have fun lol

@@TheLoadingCrew I... WOULD LIKE... TO... Thank you very much for the response & on another job well done. I know the RU-vid scene can be a bit... RAGE inducing, so if it means anything, thanks for being the loading crew that could! P.s. you guys should totally do a video on the characters from the manga/anime Spy X Family (Loid, Yor & Anya Forger).

im not completely sure who this is about but im assuming keyleth so yeah i agree

@ItsNochi oh Pike. Sorry. I feel Kyleth also is lawful good to start. Her whole reason for becoming an adventurer is to become a leader for her people.

Too much Pike is Neutral Good

I thought Matt Mercer homebrewed a 5e gunslinger subclass for the games.

@@darienb1127 he did eventually for the stream. But the home game started as a Pathfinder game. Pike's Deity, Sarenrae, is from Pathfinder as well as the Gunslinger class. Matt decided to adapt the gunslinger rules for 5e instead of having Talesien roll a new character.

Later on sure, but they say at the start of the Geek & Sundry run that it started out in Pathfinder. The 5e swithc happened at the start of the G&S eps.

​@@Ozgarthefighter It's too bad Tasha's didn't come out until after Campaign 2 had started. I feel Percey would have better translated into a Battlemaster Fighter with the Gunner feat and some homebrew for crafting. Battlemaster maneuvers could basically replace the PF 1e Gunslinger's trickshots.

Not plot armor, the events in the mansion occured directly in the campaing not exactly 1 for 1 but pretty damn close. He left more injured in the cartoon than he did in the actual stream

It's weird that they wanted to make him more of a bard by taking away elements that come naturally for a bard, I feel like on the show they make him a generic magic user who happens to be music-based.

Isn't he a Duel Class character ? Bard and Wizard ?

@@shelbybayer200 no, he has access to other spell lists due to magic secrets which is a bard class feature. It's how he got counterspell.

It wasnt plot armor, the player actually pulled that off in the episode

Yeah…he chopped a guy’s hand off in a tavern fight he basically started. Love Grog, but he’s more of a chaotic neutral-leaning-good He cares about his friends, and he does have some sense of fairplay, but he uses Pike/VM for “to kill/not to kill” vs his own morality.

Why do people keep saying the first ep is bad?

@@JaelinBezel Well I remember basically nothing other than the intro. I'd say that in a show where everything else was pretty memorable that's a bad look.

Couldn’t agree more

Considering how pissed Orthrax gets at Keyleth and Grog kill-stealing Lord Briarwood, I doubt it. I don’t think it counts if Percy doesn’t kill them with The List.

Vigilante justice against a tyrant, chaotic for sure, neutral probably, depending on HOW evil the tyrant is.

@@dontmisunderstand6041 Mob justice is seldom justice, though the show does make a good case for why Vedmire deserved to die.

@@leonielson7138 Justice is a concept more along the law/chaos spectrum than good/evil. It's why I would never entertain the notion that vigilante justice is anything but chaotic. It spits in the face of law, demanding that law is whatever *I* would like to happen right now.

Where does Sam end and Scanlan begin?

@@gilessaint-loup2426 I don't know.

You are correct but, with Netflix vouching for a Pokemon DnD idea. I think they may be more receptive to the idea.

That's part of why it definitely IS plot armor. There's no longer game mechanics to justify what happened. Now it's just a story that made an improbable thing happen simply because the plot demanded it. Plot armor.

did you miss the torture?

Absolutely fair, there wasn't enough Trinket. Interestingly enough, the main reason for that is because the animators hate animating "horses", which (from my understanding) in animation doesn't only mean literal horses but also other animals like bears. Apparently they're a bitch to draw consistently, and why the horses on the show are CGI

@@carlotaperes1031 Also, it fits with the source material, since the party was *constantly* forgetting about Trinket until someone mentioned something.

@@Stray7 very true

He just became defenseless though. Also, Percy said his name wasn't on his list so choosing to spare him is actually lawful in action It's just coincidence the mob of villagers the dude tormented happened to be around for their pound of flesh.

it was pronounced different by all three different characters that said it

@@TheLoadingCrew I just rewatched the first episode just to make sure that I was not making a fool out of myself. In the first episode the say it twice and both times the they pronounce it tal-doh-ray. So unless someone with a dialect comes in and pronounce it an like you do, I really have a hard time thinking that the VO team are not making sure the name of the world is pronounced correctly.

I might have missed that part or just made a mistake. i'd not infallible

@@TheLoadingCrew true, you're not even capable

@@quietmousse dude wtf that’s such a dick thing to say

@@quietmousse calm down dude

oops! sometimes mistakes fall through. our mistake

"Not my problem" mentality is definitely leaning evil. And vigilante justice is inherently chaotic.

Really? Scanlan in C1 was one of the most powerful and creative casters in all of Exandria, while animated Scanlan looks more like a lucky charlatan. I understand they wanted to up the tension by making the characters weaker, but I think they over did it.

​@@SirSadness I think part of the "most powerful and creative casters" charm was from the player less than the character. Even in-game, the player was like "Oh I forgot I had this!" when looking through his character sheet, and in-character was like "I don't know what this does but bottoms up!" Then again, I'm a fan of the crouching moron hidden badass trope.

@@VirtuesOfSin Yeah, it was from the player, because it's a role-playing game... In the show, he's just another horny bard who can pull some tricks out of his butt. Both are cool characters, but the superior version is clear, and I cannot say the same about the others. It's a shame.

@@SirSadness "Just another horny bard" - should I tell this guy how much his horniness has been toned down from the podcast? lol

too much Pike in Neutral Good

:0

Or IPA, not Indian Pale Ale, but Iso-Propyl Alcohol. Hahahaha

Especially referring to Scanlan's manor fight as 'plot armor' when it actually happened...

Too much Pike in Neutral Good

Too much Pike in Lawful Good

mwahahahahah! MAXIMUM CTA!!!