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art of mishi by toff mazery!

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currently experiencing 'little Verin carries little Essek home after Essek hurts his ankle' brainworms

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I was working on a significantly longer post, but I wanted to give a very high level summary of why I think the Mighty Nein are the mechanically best party and Bells Hells the weakest across the three main campaigns. I'm not sure the longer post will be helpful or effective, but if you are interested in seeing, let me know! I might also just post the first page or so which covers the three intro bullets here in much more depth.

Mechanically good is to an extent a subject measure but I believe that a good character build is either incredibly versatile (easily capable of most if not all of melee, ranged, and area of effect damage; healing capacity; buffing/debuffing; and tanking; as well as having significant prowess in at least one or two areas of out of combat utility, eg, transportation spells, highly valuable skills like charisma-based skills, navigation, or stealth, etc) OR a pinnacle of specialization (extraordinarily high damage output per turn/extremely high HP and AC tank). As you can see this is not limited to combat.

Party mechanics include composition; five very high damage output characters with no healing is not a good party, even they are individually good mechanically. A good party has a balance of the combat skills discussed above as well as the ability to find things out both magically (things like identify, scry, detect magic, legend lore, comprehend languages) and nonmagically (language proficiencies and skill proficiencies); ability to infiltrate both through stealth/small creatures and through social engineering/subterfuge; and ability to travel of their own power across long distances and planes).

Mechanics are situational: all rogues is good for a heist but not for open field combat against a horde of undead (hence my prioritization of versatility). In general, overlap/redundancy is good (two healers means you’re fine if one is down) but exact replication is not.

The Mighty Nein are able to do pretty much everything given that all characters but Yasha have at least one mental stat at or above 16 and they cover all three mental stats; the women of the party all have impressive physical stats; two clerics and a heavily support-based wizard plus a strong melee line plus a paladin multiclass plus a rogue covers all the combat skills. Caleb and both clerics have transportation spells (teleportation circle, teleport, word of recall, plane shift), Jester has Scry, and she and Caduceus both use Commune, covering forms of information gathering. Caleb has a familiar, both Veth and Beau are extremely good at stealth, and several party members have Polymorph should they need to infiltrate; nearly the entire party has Disguise Self as well. Given the heavy focus on versatility across the board, there are few if any D&D situations in which the Mighty Nein would not excel, despite having fewer magic items than either of the other parties for much if not all of their campaign. Ashley’s absences early on were noted, but Fjord and Beau held up the melee line and served as tanks (HP and dodge respectively) and Jester was able to handle strength-based tasks. Caleb also meant the party nearly always had a relatively safe place to stay.

Vox Machina, due to an arcane caster being played by a dickhead and subsequently being asked to leave, and due to Ashley’s frequent absences were also down a cleric much of the time. I have frequently praised Sam and Marisha’s immense versatility in how they adapted Scanlan and Keyleth to fill as many gaps as they could. Vox Machina lacked a number of core arcane spells and did not have the redundancy that the Nein had, and because Keyleth often had to serve as melee/secondary tank in wildshape that meant they were often without AOE. However, they too had good representation across all mental stats and physical stats; two extremely strong ranged damagers plus a shorter ranged damager plus Grog on melee and as an impressive tank; and a heavily support-focused character in Scanlan. Keyleth was able to fill nearly any role in combat as needed. Out of combat, she also served as their primary ride, with Plane Shift, Wind Walk, and Transport Via Plants. Scanlan was able to handle a great deal of social infiltration scenarios, and Vax, Vex, and Percy all could as well. While they lacked someone who could cast Comprehend Languages, Vex’s polyglot ranger build covered a great deal. And, notably, Vox Machina’s build worked for their story - they did not need the same degree of arcane knowledge because they were able to outsource that organically to Allura and Gilmore, with whom they had built deep relationships, and instead focused on hunting down artifacts, tracking down dragons, and dungeon crawling, for which the twins especially were well-suited. While I think Vox Machina would have struggled through Aeor, I think they could have managed admirably if they’d been able to take Allura.

Bells Hells had similar problems to Vox Machina in combat, except with 8 people rather than 6. FCG and Fearne both could heal, but FCG’s subclass and Fearne’s temperament both worked against them, as FCG’s subclass naturally drove them towards tanking damage - however, there were three other tanks, and a full-time healer who did not need to stop healing to deal damage to avoid taking damage would have been more useful with this party comp. Imogen and Laudna both primarily focused on single-target damage with almost complete overlap of their skill area, and Laudna especially had a build heavily focused on keeping herself up; this is not inherently bad (Caleb also had Blur and Shield) but sorcerer is also the caster with the least versatility. FCG and Fearne rarely used AOE (somehow, despite two people having it, Bells Hells cast fireball less than Caleb, and FCG rarely used Spirit Guardians). The party was also, in a heavily lore-focused campaign, lacking in any high intelligence characters and frequently were unable to make basic history, religion, or arcana checks. Fearne’s choice to take levels in Arcane Trickster were good character beats and even added some useful basic skills (Identify, Disguise Self) but as a result of her never taking levels in Druid above 10, she did not gain access to Transport Via Plants nor Plane Shift. If Imogen or Dorian took Teleport they did not use it, and neither Imogen, Laudna, nor Dorian took/used Teleportation Circle. Bells Hells were entirely dependent on the Staff of Dark Odyssey, which could only cast Teleport once per day and which had both a physical penalty and, it was implied, a higher chance of malfunction. In short: almost all of the party focused on damage output, without much in the way of buffs or debuffs Ashton’s abilities were unreliable; Orym and Chetney, despite being primary tanks/melee damage in a party with 4-5 primary casters ended up doing most of the debuffing through battle maneuvers and blood curses. There is a reason why it feels like so much of Bells Hells’ story is them being lore-dumped upon and ferried around; it is because they did not have the means to discover information or travel on their own power.

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Lilo&Stitch reference

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Travis deserves a ton of credit for the creative choice of having Fjord file down his tusks as a way to try and mitigate the racism he experiences as a half-orc. Like, it's purely fantastical but fits into the same mold as real world cosmetic procedures such as hair straightening, skin lightening, epicanthal fold surgery, and some forms of rhinoplasty (to name a few examples off the top of my head) in terms of being a fully cosmetic body modification meant to remove ethnic features and bring the appearance closer to that of the hegemonic ideal, in hopes of receiving better treatment in a society that upholds that ideal. It's such a small detail overall but it adds so much to Fjord's narrative.

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Can you be evil in the morning?

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God Fjord is SO kind in this conversation with Nott. He of course doesn't know that she hates being a goblin because she used to be a halfling (who was murdered by goblins) and wants to be a halfling again. And because Fjord doesn't know this, he's approaching it form his own context of experiencing prejudice as a half-orc and modifying his own appearance (he hints here for the first time that he files down his tusks) to try and avoid some of that. He sees someone else who is of a race that experiences prejudice because of what she is and tries to connect with and reassure her that she's not alone and he understands

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Nott: you know, I think Fjord IS grumpy, but he stands next to Beau so much that he looks happy

Brjeaus corner, already very strong:

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that one targeted elbow into Verin's side told me everything i needed to know about that sibling relationship (i know they love each other)

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Episode 11: Zemnian Nights

The Mighty Nein finally make it into the Tri-Spire, exploring the upper echelon of Zadash and investigating the Knights of Requital’s claims of corruption within the government...

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one Verin Thelyss in his bug armor <3

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I found an old post where I mentioned that Verin Thelyss seems like he's surprisingly well-adjusted given his entire deal, which must take such a severe force of will, and honestly, very funny in hindsight. Yeah, he's relatively well-adjusted the same way he's relatively a himbo—stand him up next to his brother and he seems very normal, but move him next to anyone else and suddenly you realize he is, in fact, fucking unhinged.

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Long time no post because of semester end but here’s a commission I did a few months back for a Fic @blorbologist is writing

I’ve read bits and pieces and it’s sort of a Percy/vex age of arcanum AU, so if that seems interesting maybe go check it out

This was very fun to work on :D

https://archiveofourown.org/works/51394138/chapters/129872569

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[ID: A digital illustration of Vax'ildan from Critical Role. He's facing to the left, a neutral expression under his raven skull mask. He's wearing the armour from his C3 official art. End description.]

He's under that mask, somewhere

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VOLLSTRECKER

Had insomnia the other night and drew this in about an hour and a half (so excuse the wonky anatomy) at 2am so that i could finally sleep: an AU where Caleb never leaves Trent Ikithon and becomes a Scourger. 

This was inspired by kimchidraws on twitter and their expositor!beau and vollstrecker!caleb au piece.