Grog dies, drowning and eaten by a kraken, only to return as a warlock sworn to some eldritch aquatic entity. Hmmmm

Can't wait to see the all rogue battle where everyone just silently texts Matt.

I'm just watching this and I can't be the only one who noticed how Grog, Scanlan and Vax died in ways that basically formed their M9 backstories. Grog in the water with tentacles, Vax and the fire and Scanlan face down in water.

Sam is so committed to not meta-gaming that even after they all found out about the healing area, he kept spamming Healing Words on himself and never tried to go to the top of the tower. :P

2:58:55 Travis splashes into the ocean, sinking into the embrace of a Kraken...And wakes up on a beach a few weeks later as Fjord.

the SECOND she started reseting every wildshape shift they should've made an alliance against her...

I love how everybody sends everything in on a rouge in a lvl 20 PvP but barley touch an all powerful druid with an essential infinite health pool

I love how matt was hinting RIGHT at the start that they should probably kill Keyleth first. "You've heard tale of certain powerful arch-druids that could wild shape as many times as they want" HINT HINT

God bless Sam Rigel for taking shit in stride and keeping the mood up.

If I were Scanlan, I would have "wished" for Grog to appear directly behind Keyleth, and then ended my turn and pointed out that Grog's combat turn comes directly after Scanlan's. : )

Travis: "Probably not kill the other caster"... what I was thinking the whole game.

OOOOOHHH, Mr Percival I-never-rely-on-magic de Rolo III getting hit by the anti-magic thing and being not completely, but pretty crippled is the funniest thing.

I get why the table doesn’t like Liam’s text gameplay, but he’s honestly got a point: Being stealthy is all he’s got.

Wish they could have gotten Matt Colville or Pat Rothfuss to DM this one so Matt could have played as Gilmour.

If you felt this was boring, anti-climactic, slow or dissatisfying, this took less than 3min of real time. So, play it at 75X speed and you'll get the genuine experience

Timestamps 9:10 Ultimate shirtception 10:45 Cloaked figure 12:30 Let's begin ! 15:10 Crazy initiative 17:55 Teleporter 24:50 First blood (other than the door) 29:14 Texting starts 30:45 No deck tonight 31:40 Magic dispelled, ruining Percy's stuff 34:00 What happens if Vax dies ? 40:20 First crit 45:12 Irresistible dance 51:00 Percy gets his stuff back 52:10 The door doesn't take psychic damage 53:52 Matt always has a dragon at the ready 55:35 M'lightning bolt 59:10 Mime 1:04:10 Here's that crit for real this time 1:10:30 Matador pun 1:23:30 Playing it safe 1:36:08 Liam's RP is on point 1:41:40 Reverse gravity 1:44:00 Yoyo 1:50:27 LAPD 2:10:40 Break ends 2:18:02 Vax is still stealthing 2:20:50 Rogue song 2:23:40 Who dis ? 2:42:50 First blood on the rogue ? 2:46:14 Uncanny dodge rules check 2:50:20 Still no damage 2:55:30 Some actual verbal instructions from Liam ! 2:57:05 Planeshift 3:02:25 Manners 3:08:00 Vax finally attacks 3:14:30 Caster solidarity 3:18:09 Feeblemind, 2nd attempt 3:24:00 Prediction 3:34:20 Let's break the tower 3:42:00 Player down 3:57:30 Death 4:04:19 Sam and Marisha bond over what could have been 4:15:30 Third unconscious 4:17:10 Third death 4:33:00 Percival sandwich 4:34:01 Bye Percy 4:37:00 The Feeblemind Queen

04:08:07 "Weirdly taking away all of Keyleth's intelligence has made her a more effective fighter"

Rewatching this god bless Sam and Travis for being the only people who took their crap at face value with little anger or frustration and kept the mood light and fun and god bless them for not scoping other peoples HP and doing meta stuff these two are absolute treasures of players please lord give us more like them

Man, I haven’t seen Travis’ face this upset since a certain Sorcerer needlessly assisted Laura’s 36.

"Jumping around all your booms" is the best description of a rogue ever. Our rogue in our last campaign routinely rolled in the 30s for stealth; we joked that we didn't actually know if he was still with us, we just assumed because we never saw him.

Who else was hoping Scanlan would wish back grog

Sam was right, Keyleth was going to win unless everyone ganged up. Nice Feeblemind though

That was depressing to watch.Travis sitting there for majority of the episode after getting shafted that hard is crazy and the fact that the other 3 really stayed there to watch Keyleth wild shape away all her damage... It makes me wish Laura had been there to stick keyleth in the necklace.

1:51:25 Matt is so awesome! Taliesin says he is proud of what he's done so far, and Matt acknowledges what he said by saying, "I know." Then he replies to Marisha, who said she thinks she's been playing aggressively by saying that "You have been...You and Scanlan both have been doing pretty well."

"I'm sorry... WHAT?" the one time I feel like Matt really lost his shit. And that was three hours in. He's so patient.... LMFAO

Travis was at sac anime and signed my brother's Fullmetal Alchemist poster as grog by accident

Scanlan: 'never seen someone so disappointed by stairs before'. Sounds like Sam hasn't played Borderlands2 yet.

Matt’s “I’m sorry, WHAT.” is perfect. it’s terrifying. its the snapping point.

Level 17 battle royale was much more entertaining. There was actually a fight there. The argument of "We didn't go after Keyleth together because this is a Battle Royale not a Boss fight" holds no ground, they were pretty much doing PvP inside a Boss room, killing each other while the boss was just looking and healing itself. It's not a boss fight if you take down the most dangerous enemy first then turn on each other, it's just strategy for survival, otherwise you are just handing the game to the Boss. Also: Int 18 Keyleth = Goldfish Int 1 Keyleth = Professional Tactician Soldier Math Professor

I wish they showed Liam's texts on-screen

Fighting a 20th Level Moon Druid: basically the one time you don't regret taking Power Word Kill.

When talisan says "this is not how i wanted to go out" did anyone else just immediately think what about Travis?!

Travis got soooo bored / feel so bad for him

Man I can totally relate to Travis as a player, he cracks me up with his frustrations.

The look on Marisha's face when she heard that Evasion has unlimited uses

I'm going to pretend that Keylith actually did send Grog to the Fae wild where he happily lives the rest of his days with his beloved water nymph

I came to watch Grog smash things... :(

I had some fun thinking of ways to defeat lvl 20 Keyleth with Freedom of Movement cast on herself. Take away her ability to Wild Shape (to stop her from basically regenerating her HP every round). You'd have to incapacitate her to do that. The conditions "paralyzed", "petrified" and "stunned" cause "incapacitated", meaning she can't do any actions (that includes bonus action Wild Shape). Freedom of Movement makes her immune to "paralyzed" and I can't think of any player ability or spell that causes "petrified". (Well, except for polymorphing into a basilisk, maybe? Not sure about CR restrictions there.) That leaves "stunned". There is "Power Word: Stun" at lvl 8. Scanlan could cast it using his Wish spell. The target's HP have to be 150 or less, that's the case for all her elemental forms and afaik also for Keyleth herself. She gets to make con saves at the end of each of her turns, but her con saves aren't huge, so there's a good chance it stays for a while. Still, Scanlan isn't exactly a huge damage dealer, so while he could cast the control spell, the others would have to help with damage, otherwise she probably does get to save before she's down. The only other way I could think of is to do more damage each turn than her elemental forms have. Those range from 90 to 126. Grog and Percy could technically deal that much damage *if* they were able to reach and hit her on a consistent basis. Without getting planeshifted, otherwise controlled or outright killed, that is. TL:DR: I really think they would have had to work together to defeat Keyleth. Archdruids, man. Edit: Also gotta respect Travis' patience here. This can't have been fun for him. His table manners are excellent, love to see it.

I love Sam's commitment to not meta game Matt after Scanlan suffered 106 or something damage even placed the bronze dragon in front of him saying well I will just keep it here as if to say remember true polymorph Sam? Yet he didn't do it.

Seriously no one attacks the druid who is OP but kill each other

Scanlan was the only one that could defeat Keyleth...also poor Travis just sitting there.

Coming to this after watching the lvl 17 one wasn't a great idea.

This is the first time that Liam really got on my nerves. Just play the game like a friend. Is a social game, with thousands (or millions) of people tuning in to watch. Just play the game and trust your friends not to meta game

Last battle Royale Matt called out the plane shift, saying until everyone is dead no one wins, so if you just shift people you can't win until you kill them, they are still there you just displace them until you're ready to fight them, that's what should of happened.

What this game taught me is that an evil lvl 20 Druid makes for a great final boss of a campaign^^

Sam Riegel, always the smartest player at the table "Hey guys everyone attack her at once!". Nobody listens..... Literally the only way to beat an Archdruid in this situation, otherwise they're too broken and take the fun out of it

RIP my guy Travis man, so much fucking hostility and complaining this episode jesus. Props to you Travis and Sam for being cool sports with everything.

4:12:16 Pretty much sums up the entire episode. It was a bit entertaining for the first bit but after the realization that Archdruid Keyleth can Wild Shape despite Feeblemind made it all a foregone conclusion and dull. At least they weren't really playing for anything and they said they had fun. The Talks Machina for this is gonna be real interesting to see the questions they pick from the community.

If I recall feeble mind was used previous episodes and Matt called for the characters to be too dumb to use any spells or sort of intelligent actions. Scanlan with feeble mind should have knocked out Keilith game over. Also scanlan was a class act not to use wish and win the game. Really lvl 20 bards can take a Druid out and bypass the hit points, he just didn’t want to cheese it.

"I'm an archdruid!!" - Sums up Marisha's thought process through the whole game. Sam pretty much sums up the fight of what most of us think and are questioning to various degrees "Weirdly, taking away all of Keyleth's intelligence has made her a more effective fighter" I'm salty, I can admit that, but whatever. Sam will forever wear the crown of Kings, long may he reign!

You check your pockets and notice all of your potions are gone. The druid will have infinite health btw

Percy could have won this if he isn't so bent on destroying Scanlan.

Disappointing, could have been better if: - Pike and Vex were there too, might have evened out Keyleths' abilities - Bring in Kashaw and Zahra. - Percy wasn't on some personal vendetta against Scanlan - Plane shifts were impossible from the arena (since also a player could shift to somewhere safe, keep all of their HP, before coming back to defeat the only person left).

“Wiping the inside of your eyelids” Dammit, Mercer. I’m never going to get that image out of my head.

Gonna try and keep this constructive: 1) the whole concept of this battle royale is very meta as why wouldn't the first thing everyone does is gather around keyleth so she can plane shift everyone home? Because they want to kill each other. But narratively, plane shift should have been dispelled to prevent everyone from escaping. 2) I have no problems with a feeble minded keyleth being able to wild shape but I do question the occurrences of it as Int impacts reasoning so I don't think she should have been able to do it just because she wanted to heal back up. 3) Like Sam said, this was not a feebleminded archdruid, this was an archdruid who ran out of spell slots. Marisha was putting WAY too much thought into everything she was doing at that point. 4) I would put forward that a feebleminded archdruid would attack in their shifted form until it gets dropped, then could shift again, maybe unless there is a life threatening instance like a fire elemental being forced into water?

Not sure if they had any 'win' conditions... but judging by the number of rounds that passed and Grog's Constitution of 20 (+5), he could hold his breath for 60 rounds; which is more than enough to have survived until transported back into the arena after Percy's death. I also categorically refuse to believe that a mere Kraken could kill Grog, most especially while off-screen. Therefore, it is with great certainty I declare Grog and Keyleth joint winners of the level 20 Battle Royale.

watch the lvl 17 one if u haven't seen it this one is just a bunch of sitting around.

40:31 I love that Matt can be a stinker sometimes! He waits till Taliesin is about to throw a ton of dice because he's going to use all of his Cabal's Ruin against Keyleth, before he says...

4:12:15 Sam summarized this match up nicely lol. I loved this battle though, was hilarious! (if they had attacked Keyleth while Scanlan had her forced dancing, the other PCs might have had a chance for sure though.)

Just a request for the next battle royalle, can we rule out other planes? Whatever god (All praise Matt Colville) trapped them there, should have a barrier from other planes too.

im sad to say I hate how this entire battle went, like the moment she started transforming i cant fathom why they never worked together even till the very end to tackle her togather CAUSE THERES NO POSSIBLE WAY TO SOLO HER!

I'm confused at them not wanting to team up against Keyleth, yet last time they were completely fine with teaming up against Grog because he was the strongest. It's legitamately upsetting to see half the table accept defeat before the game even started. This felt like a bully throwing their weight around because they are the biggest kid on the playground.

I love Matt just having to change out Elemental figurines every round

For those who don't understand it, a lot of people who complain about the lack of genuine repercussions for Feeblemind aren't saying that we think Feeblemind prevents the use of Wild Shape. It is known that, RAW, it doesn't. However, look at the precedent that the Feeblemind ability has in the show - Allura was acting practically like a toddler, and Raishan like a feral animal. With an intelligence of one, you would not have any tactical knowledge. The thought of bouncing between forms to fight in the terrain was well beyond what she should've been with the stats. Personally, I would have ruled that, because her intelligence and charisma - her knowledge and personality - have been reduced to the lowest possible for a living being, she wouldn't know that she wasn't the elemental that she was when the spell was cast on her. I'm all for allowing things based on RAW, but give a decent explanation for it. If Scanlan had been effected by Feeblemind, I'm pretty damn curious how he would've even thought to use Cutting Words, much less how he would've done it.

Wow this is such a shame. The level 17 battle royal might have been my favorite episode of CR. I was really looking forward to the 20th level one, but it just ended up being 5 hours of boredom. If you haven't seen it yet, watch the level 17 battle royal. It's miles better.

How to beat a 20th level moon druid: Feeblemind, stun, Contagion: flesh rot, banishment, in that order. When they come out, they’ll either have vulnerability to all damage, or you’ll just have wasted several spell slots

Scanlan: Guys if we gang up on Keyleth we may have a chance! Percy: *unloads his entire clip into Scanlan* Scanlan: *insert "YOU WHAT?!" spongebob meme* No hate to Taliesin I just thought this was funny

Ok, I'm let's set aside the constant wild shape, I feel like that Plane Shift needed to be homeruled, in this context, it was a seventh level instant death spell which is not fair and had a near full health Grog be instantly killed. I know that that's just the spell but for this context, seems a little unfair

Percy nearly kills Scanland at the start. The round that he has clear view on Keylath's humanoid form and has action surge he doesn't shoot her once. Last game we ever got from Vax Machina probably. Such a dissapointment. Sorry Grog btw.

The real question... I could be wrong but the 2 players who didn't really care that Liam was texting his moves are Travis and Sam... Marisha and Talisen were giving him crap but that's cause they would have used it to meta game... Sam and travis don't meta game so they didn't care as much

The players sticking to their characters or playing to have fun were at a severe disadvantage.

ALSO, so glad Scanlan didn't just hide in his mansion and tried to play the game! You rule Sam!

lvl 20 druids are ridiculously op.

I felt bad for Travis during this whole thing, two hours of not getting to do anything

This was pretty painful to watch. Liam's normally brilliant but I've never seen him as insufferable as he was here. I get why he wanted to keep his movement under wraps but the players can play and not metagame like they always do. And not just the movement, but being a snarky dick to everyone too. And making Matt work so much harder than he had to (he's got the patience of a saint, but even his armour was cracking). But, for people going into campaign 2 who may be worried, he's nothing like this and is actually his usual brilliant self! This is just an off game for the one-shot it seems 👍

Recently, I’ve been playing Middle Earth: Shadow of War. And Travis plays some of the ors and uruks, and many of them are straight up just Grog Strongjaw, and it’s wonderful.

Was hoping the whole time that Sam would just wish Keyleth or Percy dead. It would've been a dick move, but with the obvious meta-gaming and the pure overpoweredness of a lvl 20 Druid, I think it would have made for a more interesting/fun experience for everyone. Seeing Travis and eventually Sam just sit there bored out of their minds was just depressing. Looking forward to the new campaign though, but this was overall just a dull last battle.

Poor Travis, sorry you had to suffer through this one buddy :(

This was the first Critical Role episode I ever watched and I have since gone back and watched every episode of Vox Machina and have fallen in love with D&D and I am starting my own group and taking up DMing thanks to Matts amazing talent. Thank you for introducing me to something I've heard of but never knew anything about.

*SPOILERS* A) This wasn't as good as the lvl 17 fight. 2 hours of people hiding B) This was a battle for 2nd place with Keyleth as the winner from the start. I got hopeful when Keyleth was Feebled I got hopeful for a real fight, but then Matt allowed her to continue playing EXACTLY how she was. I know how to drive, if I got the Int of a potato I'm pretty sure I'd forget I could drive. She shouldn't have been able to Beast Shape as strategically as she did, if at all. C) Scanlan was the ONLY one playing smart, calling for a truce to kill off the clear winner. Then not only was he ignored, he got unloaded on by Percy, effectively taking him out of the fight, further ensuring Keyleth's victory. D) Percy continuously backtracked on moves and metagamed all game, treating being called out on it as "I'll take the ____ if you want." Like they were the dick for seeing it. Was a stressful situation, but it was still annoying. E) Scanlan, Keyleth, and Grog(ish) were the only ones trying to win. Percy never entertained the idea, and Vax spent every other sentence to let us know that he wasn't going to win. F) Even though Vax CLEARLY thought he wasn't going to win, that didn't stop him from getting the saltiest out of any of them at the table. G) And even though I still respect the hell out of Matt, there were some BAAAAAD calls in this one. Him pointing out where Vax was, letting Keykey remain smart, and, I hate to play this card, playing to Marisha's favor in general. Just some criticism, doesn't mean I have any problem with the show, just thought a lot of things coulda been better/handled differently. Personally, if ALL of them had been there my money would've been on Pike.

Oooooooh... FIRST BLOOD

Keyleth had to make a melee spell attack against grog for the plane shift, he got screwed.

3:35:40 shout out to the camera operator for shaking the camera when the tower shakes!

I feel sorry for Travis as he tried to do stuff and Liam spent the whole game actively not doing anything... So much power to be used, and it never was. The only call that bugged me was the feeble mind, I think Keyleth would have be stuck in one elemental. Because she wouldn't know she could change form, she would believe she was what ever elemental she was when Scanlan caste the spell.

I feel bad for Travis. Having to sit through all that must have been painful. Hell, I found it bad and I wasn´t even there.

Travis: "I don't know . . . send me to, like, the Fey Wild." Marisha: "Noooo, that's to nice." Travis: "F@#k you!" 🤣

Love how Travis doesn’t get to do anything the whole time. So much fun ain’t it.

if only scanlan had true polymorphed into a beholder, keyleth would have been useless

Travis was treated like shit during this. Sat around unable to use any of his core kit, then just got plane shifted. DM should have kept the force field as no teleporting outside, then it would have at least kept him playing. Best character in critical role has the most boring death, and you can even tell Travis doesn’t even want to be there.

Much as I respect Matt as a DM, Keyleth having an INT and CHA of 1 should have ended her in the fight right there. Sure she has a stupidly high WIS, but that just means she can hear and see things very well. With an Intelligence score that low, she shouldn't have even been able to know what an Elemental was, let alone how to turn into one. Or know anything besides a grunty version of "bad people, must kill."

Late to the party, I know. But I think it was a fair call on Otiliks Dance vs Free Movement. It's a Charm spell. She just /wants/ to dance. It's not the call I would have made, and I think I would have been wrong.

(Spoilers... obviously) They shoulda listened to Sam. As soon as they started to do their own thing it was apparent Marisha would win and that, unfortunately, made it kinda dull. That's just an observation though, I appreciate that we're just looking through a window at people playing a game, they didn't set out to be entertaining and their decisions shouldn't be coloured by the audience. I would say though, I saw elements of meta gaming. Marisha still did things that could be interpreted as intelligent whilst feebleminded. Also, daaaamn, level 20 druids are basically unstoppable and easy to play, unless multiple or extremely powerful things get involved. Is there anything that can block the constant wild shape infinite HP pool?

You can't talk with 1 intelligence

It would have been so amazing if Scanlan had grabbed Power Word Kill and just instantly, without a save killed Keylith out of her elemental form, since they have less than/are so close to 100 hp.

i was so looking forward to this after finishing campaign one almost two years late. this just didn't do it for me, not at all, as col-veel would say, the juice, for me.

Last battle was way more interesting. Think the inclusion of Vex alone would have been a big change. And Pike would have made things real interesting. Percy just handed the win over focusing too much on Scanlan. And im not just saying that because I'm team Scanlan.

What on earth did Sam do to Taliesin to warrant the nonstop Scanlan focusing?

1:27:25 This is why I love this constellation. Travis points out that he might have disadvantage because he doesnt want to get a cheap shot in. Matt takes a moment to consult the rules, Travis repeats himself, Matt then lists the things Grog has disadvantage on to be clear and to not rule snipe Grog. And the rest of the table is just sitting there and listening.

Watching this made me feel so bad for Travis. Playing barbarian without so much ranged options facing all sorts of magic that prevents much opportunity for anything is frustrating. I know the Planar shift is what Keyleth would have done, but I would’ve probably not done that for the sake of a fun match. Maybe if I was Scanlan and if I had saw Keyleth try this I might have counterspelled it.

2:10:40 if anybody want to know when the break ends