#again. im usually super duper chill about rules because truly who cares but man this kinda felt shoehorn-ish

[vethbrenatto]

okay im not usually picky about d&d mechanics because truly i am here for the narrative and the goofs with all my actual play shows i listen to or watch, but i gotta comment on this one.

in ep 27 of eldermourne, zirk is down with 2 death saves after rolling a natural one, henry is grappled, and it’s moxora’s turn. moxora seemingly holds her turn (not explicitly stated) to talk to henry while henry tries to barter for zirk, but using his deception, henry fails multiple deception checks AND fails to get out of his grapple. fia is far, far away and not really fully aware of the situation- murph allows for bukvar to be used to cast healing word with a successful arcana check even though it’s technically rule bending, which ultimately brings zirk back up.

it just felt kind of... stake-dropping i guess? like the team was just gonna get as many chances as it took to bring zirk back up until it worked. i have no problem with the actual rulebending, using bukvar and casting healing word, but the way moxora held when i feel like it would’ve made full sense with the way of the rolls for her to kill zirk in that moment. just a little :/

i think i’m ultimately probably just a little bit salty about it because i think zirk’s death here could’ve been really narratively impactful. we had just had a hugely zirk-centric episode where he finally stood up to his mother- how tragic would it have been to see stella react to losing her son after they had parted on that note of zirk throwing his top hat to the ground in defiance of her? 

i also think it wouldn’t have been hard to fit a resurrection ritual in there- a chance to bring zirk back (unless... and maybe this is where the real logic for murph’s ruling comes in, eldermourne resurrection doesn’t exist? it’s been a long time since i listened to ep0 and the eldermourne world building so maybe resurrection doesn’t exist or is very difficult in this world) after that hugely narratively impactful death. it kinda just felt like they didn’t want to get sidetracked from the “main quest” with irina and so therefore, zirk couldn’t die, they couldn’t get pulled down a different route, etc etc. 

anyway, i’ll shut up now, just wanted to word vomit all that