Things That Adaptions Have Robbed Us From #5829:

the scariest toughest goodest boy ever

Juri Arisugawa🌹🧡

someday, together

something of a redraw of this from 4 years ago and a complimentary piece to my cg one ^^

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Cutie-pie of the sea (x)

Michael jumpscare

fantasy costco is a front for garfield's true passion: illegal cloning

Critical Role: The Mighty Nein — A Long Rest

idk what it is about the mighty nein but the cast plays them so strategically.

like maybe it was the sandbox nature of c2 and the fact that they weren't getting legendary items as much as vox machina.

at level 20, they have:

higher hp (collectively. caleb is still squishy)

less combat indecision

more battlefield movement and ways of not grouping up.

a well planned collection of buffs. plus paladin aura for saves.

a good split of ranged and melee attacks, both martial and magic.

ways of incapacitation (beau)

movement/terrain control through spells and sentinel

ways of mitigating damage

better action economy

a collection of twos: 2 casters with counterspell, 2 martials with sentinel, 2 clerics that cover healing, 2 (technically 3) people with evasion, 2 hp tanks, etc.

the ability to come back from bad saves/good adversary saves.

like even when they didn't make the most optimal decisions, they still were at a point that their prior planning prevented a lot of damage and potential issues. the heroes' feast and mind blank carried.

more thoughts under the cut

on the ranged thing: vox machina has more martial range, but less magic range. percy and vex are optimized for that, but if anyone whacks on vex she's squishy.

bells hells has magic range, but not martial range. i think chet has a shortbow now, but other than that it's melee (and orym's air blades) or bust. if they're out of range they're dashing in (or using boots).

maybe its a me thing. but i find mighty nein combat the easiest to watch of the three groups, followed by vox machina and then bells hells. and i'm a noted combat enjoyer.

little more of a rant:

it feels like they get stuck in indecision so much in c3. i think it's the caster split between parties; as i see it, travis and liam process and plan out their turns the quickest, then taliesin and laura, then sam, marisha, and ashley.

sidenote: the clerics in any given campaign flip back and forth between fast turns of mostly healing and slower turns of other stuff. i would say in terms of speed as clerics it goes: taliesin, laura, ashley, sam.

with the mighty nein, the process is optimized:

liam, taliesin, and laura as the primary casters, with liam for utility, buffs, and dps, taliesin covering healing and buffs/debuffs, and laura doing secondary healing, dps, and general battlefield chaos.

travis and sam in the mixed martial area, with veth covering big damage ranged hits as well as utility magic, and fjord covering quick teleports, disparate hits with eldritch blast, and some melee with smites & hexblade, also tanking with hp.

marisha and ashley as full martial, with marisha getting info, inflicting stun to grant advantage, and serving as a dex/ac tank, while ashley covers big damage, and serves as a con/hp tank.

their turns generally proceed at similar paces, unless there's a significant misunderstanding in play, and they have time for strategy and unconventional solutions in the mix. the faster players are playing longer turns as casters, but generally come in with their spells planned. liam fired off a time stop with 5 rounds and got through it in a little longer than a normal turn.

with vox machina, it's a mix.

travis and taliesin are full martial, but have action surges and thus sometimes take longer. percy also takes longer for gun reasons.

liam and laura fill the mixed martial area, but they're pretty efficient as a rogue duo.

ashley, marisha, and sam fill out the casters, but as they are with vm, they have higher efficiency.

pike is focused on healing, buffing, and tanking

keyleth has spells but spends a lot of time in wildshape. her spells also tend to run over rounds, so there's progressive damage.

scanlan has a standard progression as a lore bard, with a leveled spell per turn, bardic inspiration bonuses, and his reactions are his clutch moves. also his longer turns get filled up with improv singing, so it doesn't feel like combat indecision.

whereas with bells hells, it's not as optimized.

liam and travis are full martial, so even given shenanigans and descriptions, their turns go quicker. they're tanks, but the enemies move away from them after getting hit 6 times a turn/by blood curses unless there's maneuvering in place.

robbie is in the mixed martials as a swords bard, but as a full caster and one of the healers now, he's been more on the casting side in recent memory

taliesin takes longer in c3 due to the path of fundamental chaos and the adjustments he has to make with each rage. he tanks, but ashton has so much nonsense going on that you never know what's going to happen with them.

sam is now in the mixed martial area and has faster turns, but started the campaign as a full caster and thus had longer turns. fcg also had action economy issues as part of their subclass and by virtue of sam not wanting to play a cleric like the other clerics, so it took awhile.

the witches all have long turns, but in order as far as i recall it usually goes laura, marisha, ashley, in terms of the amount of time. with two sorcerers and a damage focused druid/rogue, they hit a lot of combat indecision. they specialized so much that if they hit a point where they run out of the standard options, it just drags on. lots of spell attacks and saving throws, and quicken spells, and familiars (gun monkey, bone rat, and shadow dog) and form changes, and on and on.

it means that combat runs long because they take awhile to decide on what they're doing and then longer to adapt to changes on the battlefield. they also have limited options for range, standard movement for the most part, the witches are all pretty squishy, and when they're up against enemies with easy transport around the field, they get hit hard, because the tanks can't be everywhere.

bell's hells just gets beat up more.