And then Arkhan proceeded to get bullied by adventurers all over the world while vacationing in Avernus.

Like he says in the whole bit about good and evil teaming up to fight a bigger evil - they knew he was a champion of Tiamat. Perhaps a more likely 'wait, what?' would have been someone saying 'you're going to destroy that indestructible artifact .... with an axe?'. But then an obvious reply would have been 'gotta try'.

@@rickcarson591 As Matt famously says: "There's only one way to find out..."

i dont watch this show but even when I heard him say tiamat i thought, wait a minute.

They knew he was a paladin to tiamat.

@bradnm495 I know! But Joe must've known that perhaps that bit of information may not have sunk in for them, or may have been forgotten in the chaos of the battle, otherwise, why did he mention it again except for dramatic purposes? It was probably an excellent last-second reminder of who exactly they were dealing with before the betrayal.

EXACTLY, he HAD to, now they're forced to move on or deal with him later. I really like the idea they cant get back.

he did it so fast and caught everyone by suprise didnt have time to react

Even if they wanted to, I don't think that they could have stopped him. They were beat to shit and anyone who could have counter-spelled the teleport was out of spell slots.

@@twohorsesinamancostume7606 They absolutely could, simply by citing the rules. In order to use the Hand of Vecna's teleport you need to be attuned to the hand, which would have have taken a short rest to do. Plenty of time for a group of 7 to deal with one person, even if everyone is badly injured. In the end, it just worked better for the story so no one wanted to. EDIT: Just reread the rules, and apparently people are right that to attune to the hand you just need to do what Joe does, cut off your own hand and put vecan's on. Oops

Thw way Matt reacts, maybe Joe told him beforehand, which would make sense to check with the DM before the game

@KineticOcelot And you gotta think that Joe likely planned out what he was going to do and knew that the attunement was instant.

Joe, Jo is his sister

The issue is, Arkhan became an official D&D character with his own lore and campaign book. Critical Role / Vox Machina deliberately distance themselves from official D&D names and lore so having Arkhan show up would need them to legally deal with WotC. I absolutely hope it happens, I just have my doubts

I've noticed TLoVM tends to change and tweak small things. I look forward to watching what they change/keep in regards to Akhan.

​@@Jed_Rowahnnthey always adapt the storyline

@@bradnm495 They're DND adjacent so that they do not need to concern themselves with licensing or future issues. Although they are partnered to a certain degree, or where, with WOTC, that's different when it comes to TV deals with amazon.

Absolutely love it!

alot of people hate it because they see it as a player decision and not a lore one. he takes the hand puts it on heals it and uses teleport from the hand. That is multiple turns and a atunement. No one could even react to it. People have issues with it because its not a Npc its a player by passing rules that the others must follow to get what he wants. Interms of players vs player i agree but i see archan as a Npc that it happens to be played by a person, just like any npc by matthew, but still i understand peoples hate. Its like " his a famous actor and gets to skip basic rules so he can have his moment" also he kinda took a bite out of the ending of a 5 year campaing, that was it and they defeated the big bad, but nah ima take his hand and dip you failed. So ye

ofc its a player decision - if your talking about lore; arkhan was made way before CR (I believe Arkhan is as old as 3.5) and staple character of joes for several campaigns of his own so clearly not an NPC - hes a legit PC that he introduced into matt's world. Joe had Arkhan's plan WAY before the battle and executed it! He does discuss this plan in a interview on YT and you can tell hes a passionate DND player just by the way he talks. He didn't go into the fight to just "Help" and came up with the idea on the fly...he has contingencies and is a evil character. But i would be surprised if any of the CR cast besides matt even knew vecna's hand and eye was an item or had any significance before the death happened and was left behind- I would put my money on 90% of the fanbase didn't know either. So you all got blindsided so fair play to him even more. If the argument is "action economy" then you've already realised this is OOC during the roleplaying of characters and a level 15+ paladin could easily do this with 6 seconds. If the cry is about "attunement" then watch matt's reaction to it happening, he clearly allows it. In matt's world the hand might not be "Attunement" - Matt has various homebrew rules within the game anyway? I dont see anyone arguing those lol - As soon as 0:48 happens, matt allows it with his phasing of words "You guys watch..." And just FYI, many DND players have obtained these items in their own campaigns, he's just the first on stream with loads of people and wizards of the coast noticing... I got vecna's eye in '94 from a 3.5 campaign and a staff of the cosmos from defeating a prismatic dragon :) Personally I think the CR fanbase is salty for the moment and I advise you all to watch the Joe Manganiello with "D&D Beyond" interview about him doing it, so even the makers of the game thought it was awesome.

i did watch the interview and i have no real issue with him doing waht he did, but yes the people in the campaing knew it was a item, if you watch the campaing literaly scanland almost put the eye on himself, and pelor destroyed it, and percy knew of the hand. they knew they where items. And yes he planed all of it, but the reason people hate on it ( i dont i thought it was cool) is that he did things outside of the rules, he used a spell fro ma item he did not have attuned and did 3 actions in 2 secunds, you even see Talisen and Travis ask if they can do anything about that and matther goes "no it just happens his gone" they wanted to act but matthew had already talked with joe about it so it was pre planned, but the players had no power of it and that makes people kinda mad. @@Hatori64

@@neonproxyx3982Rule of cool, dude. It works because it makes for a better ending.

Well, being an actress she must have said many times.

I think he was lawful no?

@@paawan3764When you attune to the hand or the eye of Vecna your alignment changes to neutral evil.

​@@paawan3764 no he became lawful evil afterword. before he gets the hand he was natural.

still out their? man he became straight up canon

@@kevind3974 he slows up very briefly in the decent to avernus module, so yeah he having vecnas hand is canon to the lore at this point

He also was Deathstroke-for about 30 seconds.

"You guys watch... Arkhan..." he said, still stunned himself

I’ve been thinking about them bringing him back. Considering how fucked planetary magic has been since the Applebee’s soul cycle I can see how he may turn up from wherever he is to get a piece of the action

It’s tricky because his character became official D&D and critical role stays away from working with WoTC because of all the rights issues. But another appearance would be a win for all involved so it could always happened. But it would be a business deal now not just a guy who loves D&D showing up for an epic moment.

for me, if you want to interrupt someone elses turn you need to actually state that you're doing so, the world isnt going to pause itself for you to take actions, you react in real time. You could argue he took 3 actions which should give them 18 seconds but we all know they just sat there the whole time too stunned and *actually* surprised to really do anything about it. Besides, the only action they could've stopped was him using his healing on himself and even that, like, theres no counter spell for that.

@@Kugrox Here's the thing: you can't cut your hand off with an axe and then have a hand free to attach the hand. You NEED to drop the axe or stash it safely. THEN attach the hand. This process requires time. Then adding the casting of a healing spell, that'd be a bonus action if he has healing word, otherwise another action and good luck with that. Edit: oh and most importantly, HOW did he teleport. A scroll? Because yeah, ANOTHER action.

​@@Galf506 Teleport is one of Hand's spells and healing is redundant, 'cause hand automatically attaches when you place it on the stump "To attune to the hand, you must lop off your left hand at the wrist and the press the artifact against the stump. The hand grafts itself to your arm and becomes a functioning appendage. If the hand is ever removed, you die." and this is one of the items with specian attunement proccess. So it depends of DM, if you attuned at the moment when hand is grafted, or it's usual 1 hour. After all, if following action to action. All of that takes 1 or 2 rounds at max. 1 round: Readied action - chop hand off Free/object interaction action - attach hand of Vecna (I've never seen a DM who would rule that dropping something (here an axe) is cost a free action) Heal is redundant as i mentioned before Action - teleport using Hand charges. 2 rounds: Action - chop hand off Free/object interaction action - attach hand of Vecna (I've never seen a DM who would rule that dropping something (here an axe) is cost a free action) Heal is redundant as i mentioned before Next round action - teleport using Hand charges.

@@Galf506 Guess you got more studying to do

At my table, this would be considered an out of combat sequence, so initiatives, and actions per turn aren't really in play anymore. So Joe's completely in his own right to do all of this, especially if nobody in the party is there, or able to stop them. Any interruptions could have come during the set up, hell I would've even asked if anyone is willing to try. Chances are nobody would tho, cuz the fight was already taxing enough before this, not sure they'd wanna do it again lol

😂😂 the unfair advantage, not only they're used to several types stories and have a sense for progression and patterns but more importantly they're expert liars.

@@Eligio1234567 For sure!!! Im still new to the game so i barely understand the levels. Im also 5'6! And i think basketball is more than size - especially modern one - and 5'6 doesnt seem that bad, competition (or everything in life) depends on sooooo many factors that is actually mindblowing like your level, style, mental and physical state, the limitless strategies that might go around. But it seems to have a limit tho, the Goldilocks Rule of difficulty, where in a certain point the task become literally impossible - like a baby fighting an adult, it's just not fair - It doesnt mean it's going to be like this forever but at this point it is. Or me running a marathon, right now is literally impossible, i might finish some days after everybody but not win but give me some months to prepare and i can at least not be THAT behind. Core A gaming talk about this in his EXPERT video on SF5 Accessibiliy. Sorry for writing all this and still simplifying a lot, is just that im studying this right now and your answer got me excited.

I think you mean around 0:40?

Ashley was acting in New York, attended many shows via Skype.

As a busniess man myself, I see no problem

Yeah he did

He came up with the idea and proposed it to Matt ahead of time.

I'm willing to bet that he ran through the events with Matt to make sure that it was good to go rules-wise. I mean taken in context, Arkahn would have had to cut off his own hand (as an Attack Action), put the Hand of Vecna on (as a free interaction with an unresisting object), heal himself (as a Bonus Action?), and then teleport out (maybe as a Contingency spell set to activate at that moment?). If he couldn't do ALL of that, the jig was up.

@@Comicsluvr It could be 2 turns worth of resources because there is no way that move doesn't get a surprise round.

​@@Comicsluvrlay on hands is an action unless you're the new UA Paladin. Paladins don't have access to contingency.

Matt could have ruled that it has a special attuning rule in his game. You need to sacrifice your hand and attach it to complete the whole attuning process. No need to wait for the 1 hour.

@@ShaddoII that's how I read it, since it has a specific attunement rule it overrides the normal rule.

Either that, or rule of cool. A legendary artifact like the hand or eye of vecna have a sort of intelligence of their own, so it would want to escape with any evil aligned person that came along. I think he’s established precedent before of artifacts and vestiges immediately attuning to the weirder when obtained.

Aren't the eye and the hand self attuning? Pretty sure the heal wasn't even needed.

@@DrHDoofenshmirtzphd throwing in a heal made it more cool for the scene

Even if they attempted to do something, it would be initiative based and he would have "surprise" on his side. If you want to anal about it, the entire thing would happen in a second or two. Axe goes down, hand goes in, teleport. No matter if you try to view it, "realistically" or if you tried to do an rpg "initiative" approach, the element of surprise here would make it very believable that none of them would be able to react in that 1 or 2 seconds window.

@@naosou921they also are all performers, and know how cool that moment is so why would they try to stop it

They just depleted nearly all their resources stopping Vecna, are physically and mentally drained and losing their close companion. I don't think they cared enough

counts as 2 rounds and it started with them in a confused state. first round was to put the hand on, second was to teleport. they could not react as he was gone by the time they even knew what was up

But that's within battle right? or am i wrong? Outside of battle he can do everything he just said as the people around could have done what they want like stopping him if they wanted to.

Realistically, it would only be 1 or 2 rounds as the "attack" was done before combat or initiative started, so it wouldn't count as a round. The party would be surprised, so he would get the first action which he would just use to teleport away. Or heal then teleport on the next, non-surprise turn. They weren't going to one shot him.

@@impulseace6307 oh absolutely, out of combat you can do whatever you want. It's just likely that stealing such a powerful artifact like the Hand of Vecna would usually trigger a response from the players which is likely to end in combat in this scenario, but they were all so exhausted that they could barely understand or react, and Matt let it happen as is. Matt could've asked them "aren't you gonna stop him? Sam, are you doing a Counterspell on the teleport? Anyone rushing in to attack?" But he didn't, which is good, it made that moment as epic as it was.

​@obsidianchilly well also sam was out of spells at that point if I remember correctly

If the players wanted to they could have said something, but they didn’t. That’s not the fault of either Matt or Joe.

They thought it was cool, why would they stop their friend from enjoying himself? It isn't a competitive game and clearly none of them take it too seriously lol

@@Michael-bn1oi Sure sure, but their character's wouldn't at all.

Their chance to stop him was the real time period while Joe was talking. It's about ~10-12 seconds from his betrayal into him leaving the table and about 20 seconds total until Matt starts narrating his escape. You can see Joe pause for about five seconds waiting if anyone will interject. Because of Joe's heelturn mid-narration, I have no problem believing the cast (and characters they're playing) genuinely just didn't process what he was doing until it was too late. Interpreting "lightning reflexes" as infallible and ready to go 24/7 is a very silly way of thinking about fictional characters. I also don't think those kind of "real time" moments in tabletop are really unfair at all when they happen outside of combat.

@@darthvaderreviews6926 I've been a 5e DM for about 6 years now. What Joe did was a little monologue (free action) and about 2 actions (cutting off his hand, healing and teleporting out). This would have given the cast at least 1 round to react. Instead, after almost dying to stop Vecna they just stood there while a servant of an evil goddess stole Vecna's hand (which would slowly corrupt him into who knows what, another Vecna potentially). I'm all for rule of cool but it's not cool in my book to not let your party at least try to do something.

@@conflictdiamonds I would agree with that if a player said something and Matt told them no, but that didn't really happen. A player at the table said they were doing something, gave everyone a few seconds to interject, nobody did so DM narrated it happening uncontested. It was an extraordinary action, but a normal process.

He talked with him before it happend surprise is a hell of drug

@@christophertidwell2422 it literly a debilitating affect. you lose your turn. he started with initiative so got first move. their turn is skiped. his second move is teleport ya it falls under rule of cool but its also a legal set

Rule of cool

@@lieutenantbutter8934 Yes, but it’s not really that cool. It’s kind of like that one kid who runs up and licks the biggest cookie so no one else takes it.

The Hand instantly attaches to the limb and attunes at the time. The Eye has the same special rule as well.

@@LMVStudios So my next question would be; How many charges of the hand did Vecna use in this encounter? Teleport is 3 (I think). The hand has 8/day.

@@kjamesjr "The hand of Vecna" is not an artifact while it is attached to Vecna himself. It is just his hand. It is unreasonable to say that Vecna using his own hands would have exhausted the artifact charges.

If you want to rules lawyer it you can. Hold action to chop, so it uses reaction instead of action. Give a surprise round, attaching hand rule as free action, lay on hands is an action. then teleport as an action on non-surprise turn.

No. They weren't "in combat" or "in initiative". So at the very least, the "Chop" would have happened outside of the turn sequence. It wouldn't count as an action.

technically 1 or 2. the attachment would have been the first turn. surprise round for everyone else, and first real turn is him casting teleport. he was out before they could do shit

they were mourning Vex, gathered together at his corps on my table they would have a significant handicap on a perception roll to realize his behaviour at all.

They were like 6 actions? Those were more like 3 actions Raising the axe is flavor, first action cut hand, object interaction put it on Second action cure his wounds, saying is nothing personal Third action tp the fuck out Besides Vax was Dying, straigth up, of course they would not do anything Arkhan planned it, Joe Manganello said it

He wasn't just random evil character. Percy and Kyleth knew him before and considered him more or less trustworthy. He was helping him with Vecna. They were exhausted physically and emotionally as characters and players. Vax was gonna die any second. Some of their friends and siblings get injuredand almost killed. It was a perfect time for Joe to pull off his plan. Also, not all players are that competitive, i would've just applauded if my friend pulled out something like this. Good for him!

Yep. It may sound cool to Matt but this is just a very meh moment that doesn't even work imo. It would take three rounds to pull this off but inconsistent rule of cool ig.

Virgin mad because game didn't go how he wanted it to😡

@@josephjager9156 weird to assume someone is a virgin? Sir, it is a game of dungeons and dragons. Everyone that plays it is a super dork. Chill. If people don't like it. They don't. Period. Why are you so triggered by it?

everyone at the table loved it, why complain

@@Arnazisti because they're making a show. What an absolute dumb take. It isn't JUST about them. They're making an episodically released, years spanning show for the entertainment of people that IS profitable. You criticize what you consume. I don't understand how that very basic idea is beyond CR fans. That's like saying, 'why are you criticizing a movie? The film crew and actors had fun!'

DM allowed it so there's nothing wrong, at any point he could have intervened :)

Naaa it was done, i dont see Matt stopping the game at that point to deny Joe´s play, the campaign was over and no one was gonna chase Vecna again anyway xd

@@XDanuveX so you could say he's timing was perfect X'D

this moment was about him for him. he came with an objective as an evil character and followed through with it. It's probably my favorite moment in the entire first campaign. when guests just play as total side characters without really doing much it's boring. guests should be more like a firework with a payoff at the end at least instead of just "HEY XD SO QUIRKY FOR 1 DAY LOLXD" and have 0 impact.

no shit he was playing an evil character. he came for the hand and got the hand. he didnt give a shit about anyone else.