Sometimes, you can weave in the sort of drama that normally doesn't work in an RPG.
Campaign 3 of Critical Role has only had its third episode, but already I feel highly invested in this new troupe of characters. Granted, as we've seen, the new troupe is not entirely new. Fully half the table is characters we've seen before - three of the members of the Crownkeepers from Exandria Unlimited arrived in Jrusar (possibly looking for Dariax, Matt Mercer's character) and Travis Willingham brought in Sir Bertrand Bell, the charming charlatan from The Search for Grog one-shot.
Um, spoilers.
Sir Bertrand was always a little odd - first off, he started at level 5, while the rest of the party was level 3, despite the fact that he had been level 18 during the Search for Grog (to be fair, that took place 30 years earlier, when he was merely 50.)
Bertrand has been a fun character, but other than his getting the party in touch with Lord Estehross, who seems to be a genuinely awesome dude who will serve as something as a group patron, he's been practically more of a liability than an asset.
This episode saw them fighting some kind of evil dwarf assassin (I'd guess a duergar or even a derro) with several Darkling minions, and Bertrand's one move was to accidentally hit the bard, Dorian, with a rather painful slash (to be fair, it was in magical darkness and was an honest, if reckless, mistake.) Though the Darklings (or Shade Creepers, though I think they were mechanically darklings) were killed, the dwarf escaped.
Despite being a boor and a scoundrel, Bertrand was still a fun character to have, and likable in his own way.
Toward the end of this episode, he generously got everyone rooms at a tavern and several rounds of drinks, and then decided to take a walk through the city, insisting that Dorian stay. There was a melancholy to the character, with hints of a history in earlier adventures that didn't go so well.
And then, while out on his walk, after finding an alley to relieve himself in, the evil dwarf found him and killed him.
Now, this wasn't the biggest shock - tonally, there was a feeling of doom coming on as the night went on, and the aberrant mind sorcerer Imogen had notably started what seemed to be a fairly innocuous dream right before the scene, clearly setting up something horrible about to happen.
Also, the fact that no attack rolls were made and no initiative was rolled made it clear that this was planned.
Still, it's sad to see him go, and also raised some questions about Travis' role in the campaign.
However, once the episode aired (recall that these are all now recorded in advance,) Matt Mercer came on Twitter to explain: Travis Willingham will be playing a different character, but wanted to have them join the party a little farther down the road, citing classic JRPGs as a model (which often have you start with just one character, actually, and build up the party over time.) The agreement was that Bertrand would die, but Willingham wouldn't know when.
And so, before the team has even gotten a name (other than the very egocentric ones that Bertrand was suggesting... which, honestly, now that he's dead, I think actually stand a far better chance of being the team's name) they've lost a member.
I'm super excited to see what Travis actually plays - having another melee fighter when you have Orym (who's dex-based but still sword-and-board) was a bit redundant. I'm still waiting for the day that anyone in a Critical Role campaign actually wears heavy armor (actually, I guess Pike did - we just haven't had a strength-based fighter or a person who actually starts off as a paladin from level 1).
Currently, the season 3 crew (including Dorian, who sure seems like he's a part of the permanent cast at this point) has:
A Cleric, with the homebrewed Empathy Domain
A Druid, Circle of Wildfire
A Fighter, Battlemaster
A Sorcerer, Aberrant Mind
A Sorcerer/Warlock, with what appears to be 1 level of Shadow Sorcery and 2 levels of Undead Patron
A Barbarian, with an as-yet-unnamed homebrew subclass
and a Bard, College of Swords (I think? He hasn't used any of his flourishes, I think).
So, there's no Artificer, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, or Wizard. I'm skeptical he'll go for paladin given that Travis' character in the second campaign had three levels of that class. We'll see!
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