#and the expectation from the group Ashton was gonna kill the wizard

[malaismere]

thinking about 4-sided dive and Taliesin talking about Bells Hells being npcs and like...

Reality itself works so different for PCs and NPCs. There’s the obvious class level things but also like. Death saves are a PC thing - it’s an optional rule for NPCs and honestly not widely used. Unless they’re the big bad, or it’s specified nonlethal, basically anyone the main characters knock to 0 is instantly dead, whereas you usually have to work to kill a PC permanently.

There are a lot of fallacies that dnd parties tend to fall into as they get higher levels and less attached to the world. Getting super rich and just giving away gold like it’s nothing when it’s a full days labor. Expecting to find high level magic items for sale in backwater towns or get someone to cast spells for them. Being surprised that the random townie they hit has <5 hp.

Main Characters get to live in the cartoon logic world where they can get stabbed in the gut and be better with a good nights rest, versus everyone else living in this grimdark world where all of these attacks cause serious, permanent injuries, and even if they do get brought up from 0 they’ve got months of recovery.

Every other member of the Bells Hells has either always been close enough to Adventurers that they got caught in the bubble (Orym, FCG) or have been weird long enough they forgot it’s not normal (Chetney, Laudna, Imogen) if they ever knew (Fearne). But Ashton? Ashton feels like they still view the world the way they did as an npc thug.

Of course you run and leave people behind. The only healing you have is potions, and once someone’s down chances are even that won’t bring them up. What’re you gonna do with a corpse, bury it? That’s not worth a life, you leave them behind, no second thoughts...

And going from cartoon world to grimdark world is scary af, suddenly realizing what you do leaves scars - but it’s nothing compared to the reverse. Going from violence having consequences to it all being fixed in the morning. Learning that this could all have been fixed so easily but instead you were watching people be hurt - learning that it’s relatively cheap to bring people back from the dead. That’s horrifying.

#critical role #Ashton greymoore #bells hells #cr meta #this is very ramble but is like 2am I’m justified #something about the hells saying you never leave someone behind to the cut purse who tried to run #while they had everyone else dead on the ground and outnumbered 8 to 1 #and the expectation from the group Ashton was gonna kill the wizard #and instead they just rifled through their pockets and stole their shit like a cutscene reset #def projecting some of my favorite tropes here but #it’s the way adventuring parties don’t internalize the fact that what they do is just murder #vs the POV of someone deeply aware of the fact #and like he’s fine with it but he’s kind of worried that they don’t get it