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If you have a 25 INT villain who could predict your moves. And you had to tell him exactly what you were going to do and do it. How would that affect say…. Grog, with an INT of 6. Who is illiterate, stupid, and doesn’t even know what he is going to do. Would that be a boon? No matter how smart you are can you predict an idiot?
Hah, Keep on the Shadowfell, like, my first D&D game our GM ran that one.
5 Party members, 3 of us walked through the gate.
the other 2 died to Calarel.
Calaril.
Cala- Cal… Ca- Fuck it.
Vile Man.
@Matthew Colville How would you feel about instead of erasing the Heroes Feast, corrupting it? Vecna transforms the spell so that it subtly poisons the party, makes healing ineffective/harmful for a certain period of time or corrupting it so that the food turns to ash in their mouths granting penalties instead of buffs.
Mind swap is brilliant!
Two PC deaths “Thats how i run epic bad guys”
Holyfuck. In the middle of Critical Role, thanks for spoiling. >< for fuck's sake, no warnings.
Awesome video, great ideas…..really makes me excited to get my players to a point where they can encounter the BBEG!
From like 25mins in, you just give us some absolutely diabolical ways to screw with our player characters, my favorite being the character sheet swap. Thank you again Matt.
Ive been watching your videos, when I have a moment, for about a week now. Until this video, I was taking notes on how to be a better DM like the rest of the commenters here. THIS video truly inspired me to use more homebrew (currently running a 5th lvl campaign, 4e and using module stuff) and to WANT to be a better DM. Thank you for these videos! I love watching them, and hope to catch a stream sometime!
Dude! SPOILERS! But I guess I should be just watching the second campaign for Critical Role. I skipped your previous video for this exact reason.
“may the viewer beware” in latin = “caveat videntium” (which I believe preserves the appropriate subjunctive?)…
What about “Vecna Reborn”?
I want there to be more like buttons for this video…
Id expect someone who talks a mile a minute to annoy me, but he doesnt bother me at all. He keeps me hooked on each word. I need to learn how to talk like that haha
Ohgods. When you went “You cast what?” Made me remember an NPC my sister’s character had an encounter with. She did some stuff, saved the realms, but her actions lead to the later destruction of the whole plane, so in order to prevent that she enlisted through diplomacy and fame the brother of the greatest archmage ever lived. You know. The guy, who is good, ever supporting and still always overshadowed by others.
Sis told him that this is his chance to shine and they can save the world according to a prophecy.
They left together, battled demons high in the skies to reach the point where the asteroid would collide and it was Alvin Magnuses chance to shine. A single Wish stopped the asteroid. Actually the they decided to make the prophecy and the curse undone.
The NPC was erased.
When sis’ char, Norg returned to the big brother, the Archmage to give his condolences for the lost brother, I just said to her: “Alvin what? Who are you even talking about?”
It wasn’t masterful DM-ing on my part, giving the heroics to an NPC but I certainly did not wanted to sacrifice my sis’s epic level and greatly loved character, but she sometimes mentioned Alvin Magnus, the Neverborn brother.
Erasing things fron a campaign gives a sense of utter dread and gives goosebumps.
I absolutely love the idea of using the terrain as a sentient enemy. I’m gonna use it sooner or later
Will you be uploading your streams to YouTube after you stream them, similar to critical role? I’d love it if you did! I don’t know if I could watch your streams live, but I’d definitely love to watch them on YouTube if I could
WARNING: Do Not Fall Asleep While Watching This Episode……. Dude, I dreamt of something so crazy, It wasn’t so much what was going on (which I swear was part of a game that I never finished playing) somehow I was used to that but every time I made a mistake I died and respawned and had to try it all over it again and again and again. lmao. Love these videos, okay gotta rewind (a word us older people use) and watch it again.
I don`t have people to play D&D, but never the less listening you talking about all this is awesome experience. I heard about robe of Vecna in Baldur`s gate series, and so much background information about all this is just mesmerizing.
It’s not “Die Vecna Die!”, it’s German for “The Vecna. The.”
Have you made a video with fantasy book suggestions? Is that something you would consider doing?
I did that whole time limit thing for one of my campaigns too: “If the characters haven’t breached the line and killed at least one of the sacrifices, in eight turns the gate will open and Morshunun, Annalet’s Enforcer, will step through, absorbing the life essence from the sacrifices and leaving them dried husks. (Each sacrifice killed adds four turns to the gate’s time, and reduces Morshunun’s stats by 15%; if all of them die, the gate shuts down).”
It worked really well, as the players were uncertain whether killing the sacrifices would accelerate the countdown or not, and allowed me to unleash the final boss on them when they were already spent from fighting off a bunch of more minor opponents.
For the tactics of super-intelligence, especially if you’re justifying it by scrying the PCs beforehand, I would rather predict the players’ tactics using my own experience of how they’ve been playing up to this point.
Assume that a super-intelligent being knows everything the DM knows, and it suddenly becomes a whole lot easier to roleplay, and you don’t need to introduce any new mechanics.
Especially if the players actually discuss their plans out loud. :3
So… My evil goblin paladin who is working to create her army of super goblins is good. I like it. You rock!!!
i loved the book
I’m not a fan of looking at players’ sheets and deliberately trying to figure out how to thwart them. Part of the fun of DMing is seeing how your players come up with ways to deal with the threats that exist in your world. Creating them specifically to counter your heroes seems like it breaks the suspension of disbelief… like they’re against the DM instead of against a living, breathing world.
Don’t give gods stats… unless you’re running a God of War campaign. 🙂
That’s a cool idea! The whole erasing the spell idea, I mean. Wow. If I had loads of money, I would rip off the page from the PHB in front of the players. all those spells? Gone XD. I guess I could make a page prop into my phb and rip it off (ehehe)
Grog’s mind in Vex’s body and vice versa would have been beyond hilarious. That group is so capable of improv RP and that would have been such a fantastic platform for them to do so
Personally, I would make it so Vecna – god of lies – wouldn’t erase a spell from the universe, so much as _deceive_ the universe into believing it does not exist. The spell is still possible – in theory – but Vecna’s ability to _gaslight the universe_ is so great that the spell doesn’t work. Until, of course, some spell caster takes the time to independently research and develop the spell again, at which point the universe remembers it was always possible and things go back to normal.
Because I think it’s more…pleasing, thematically, that a god of lies shouldn’t be able to unmake a kind of magic, just cover it up. It still makes Vecna powerful as hell, but reduces him in a way that I think is appropriate. Makes him more pathetic, which I personally feel is tied directly into Evil. Evil is never as smooth as it likes to think it is.
Moreover, I would imagine that fooling the laws of magic into forgetting one of its spells should be easier than erasing that spell entirely. And even gods, in DnD, have limits. It would just be easier for Vecna to do that, because he’s the god of lies.
I suspect moorcock had a big influence on British roleplaying like games workshop
Did you ever get around to doing the Initiative video?
The timing of when to call for initiative is one of my biggest struggles as a DM, it just always feels wrong and I don’t understand why.
One of the worst curses I’ve ever put on a player: Swap your highest and lowest Ability Scores.
Matt Colvile: ” Bad guys should CHEAT”
I like that logic, I like it a lot.
So… when are you going to join Critical Role as a guest, Matt? 😀 I want this so badly. Oh, and you totally need to play YOUR style of Dragonborn.
Sour-on Sour-off.
I am confused… when you say “Matt took Vecna”… did you and Matt determine that you can’t use him or is that because of something WotC told you… or what? please explain.
43:02 should we go with ‘Caveat Vecna’ ?
I had a character who had worshipped Erythinul. We ended the campaign with my character using one of Erythinul’s artifacts to slay Erythinul himself. I was happy that day.
Those two books are AMAZING. tenouttaten. Anything Matt writes I wanna read, end of story. lol
Vecna Moriarty
What about lolth
30:32
Hey, this is crazy,
But you’re unconscious,
So zombie maybe?
So how do you deal with a player that insists that every NPC/ BBEG ability(even non-combat ones for narrative flair) be have actual stats?