As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
open/close all folders
Episode 48: Homeward Bound
- When Laura asked what color a cat in Nicodranas' bookshop is, Matt answers almost instantly.
- Beau and Caduceus managed not only to get an audience with the mage in the tower, but to strike up an alliance with this powerful figure.
- When it really counts, Nott rolls ridiculously high; rolling a 29 let her break an arcane lock and then follows it up by no-selling a poison trap with a 19. Talk about the dice playing into the scenario!
- On top of that, we have Sam's masterful acting as Nott as she comes to find out what happened to a dear friend and drops the bomb shell of having a kid. Whether this kid is biologically hers or not doesn't matter, she obviously sees herself as Luc's mother and will do anything for him and his father Yeza.
- The end of the episode weaves together details from several characters' backstories, earlier episodes and the over-arching war plot. The sheer level of planning that goes into Matt's worlds and campaigns is on full display here.
Episode 49: A Game of Names
- Nott's time on the sea is retroactively this: she's not just afraid of water, the reason she's afraid is because she was drowned in a river before being transformed into a goblin. And yet, she stayed on the ocean (even diving into it) for three months. It's even lampshaded by Beau, with the whole party commending her.
- Veth not only managed to save her family from the goblins but also took down their leader.
Episode 50: The Endless Burrows
- The Fire Giant encounter is one of the tensest encounters the party has faced in a while, with the Mighty Nein formulating a plan to get across a chamber occupied by a pair of Fire Giants on guard, with a river of lava flowing through the center, knowing there's no way they can fight them head on.
- When the initial plan to use a Major Image of a raging manticore to distract the giants fails due to a high Investigation check on their part, Caleb polymorphs the closer of the two giants into a cow, thus rendering its damage output mostly inert for the time being.
- This pulls the trigger for the Nein to get moving, starting with Beau who is carrying Sprinkle the crimson weasel, and Caduceus (polymorphed into a dragonfly), who proceeds to sprint right across the bridge over the lava, and zooming past the second giant without stopping or incurring an Attack of Opportunity, straight to safety in the tunnel on the other side. She then quickly "splats" the dragonfly, allowing Caduceus to return to his normal form and be able to do something on his own turn.
- Jester proceeds to grab Caleb and carries him through a Dimension Door to the other side with similar ease.
- Nugget the Blink Dog just dashes straight across the bridge and teleports to safety like a Good Boy.
- Fjord is the first to have trouble, as while holding Thunderstep for Yasha to grab on, he takes a fiery boulder from the second Fire Giant head on, followed by being gored by the Cow!Giant, but he just barely succeeds in the first Constitution save then rolls a Natural Twenty the second time and thus keeps a hold of the spell long enough for Yasha to finally grab on, and they Thunderstep across, with the only negative side effect being the Cow!Giant reverting to normal upon taking damage, which would turn out to be a problem for...
- Nott is the last in the initiative order, so everyone else has already made it across to safety by the time her turn rolls around. The plan involved her casting Invisibility to sneak across; having already prepared it and having no other options she has to still go with this plan. The giants are onto them by this point, thus turning her crossing attempt into the most tense stealth mission the campaign had seen thus far. It even nearly ends with her death when she falls in lava but between Cad having a held Healing Word to bring her up to 17 HP after that and Beau having a held action to run over there and grab up Nott (both of them being on fire as a result) and then rushing back, she makes it!
- Adding to the tension, Caleb goes out to help and stays out despite being a squishy wizard due to being worried for his "goblin mom". He helps out by turning the second Fire Giant into a giant octopus - which has only a 10 foot movement on land - but is at risk for damage from the other Fire Giant. However, come Jester's turn, she takes advantage of her illusory double she put out before and manages to successfully hit the Fire Giant with a 3rd level Inflict Wounds, which upsets the Fire Giant enough that, tied with it not realizing it's an illusion, it wastes his action that turn trying to kill her illusion and is too far away to get close enough to Caleb, allowing him to run when it comes to his turn again. Cad then uses Stone Shape to block the entrance and buys them just enough time to escape!
- It bears noting that falling into lava normally incurs 18d10 damage! Under normal circumstances Nott would have taken about 90 damage on average, and at her current health would have instantly died! The only reason she survived was thanks to her Ring of Water Walking, which prevented her from submerging, thus reducing the damage to 9d10 instead, which only knocked her out!
Episode 51: Xhorhas
- The party's encounter with a Xhorhasian patrol and the end result. The Muck Men are mostly cut down with only a few survivors, and while the Kryn soldiers lose some gnoll grunts they do narrowly make a clean getaway.
- Thanks to some quick thinking, the party manages to avoid the sharp perceptive eyes of a giant roc that goes on to attack a pack of bugbears.
Episode 52: Feral Business
- Matt's description of entering the city of Asarius. The descriptions of the giant war turtles and other assorted siege beasts not only cause every one's faces to be in awe, but makes everyone one wonder how the Dwendalian Empire managed to last as long as they have against the Kryn Dynasty.
- A special mention must go to his description of the inhabitants as well. The party keeps asking questions about whether they feel enslaved by the Kryn, or if the Kryn are an occupying force, and are met with an impression that subverts some of the usual stories told of the people of Xhorhas. This first-hand impression of life beyond the border has the Mighty Nein beginning to question many things, including who the real bad guys may be in this war.
- The Mighty Nein encounter their first demonic rift, and not barely closing it with a 20.
Episode 53: Cornered
- The four-way pit fight in The Four Corners is a cool setup to begin with, but the Awesome part comes as Beau and Jester were rather outmatched by an ogre and a high-level drow monk. Even with admitted gameplay errors such as mistakenly rolling d6s instead of d8s for damage, Beau only lost to the other monk when said monk was at 2 Hit Points!
- However, the truly Awesome part comes right after, at the end of the episode. The monk (still at two health) is now willing to talk with Beau and Jester outdoors, and leads them to an alley so they can chat privately. Then she drops her Alter Self, revealing herself to be Expositor Dairon, the Empire spy they were told about in the previous episode and Beau's instructor! Had the dice fallen differently, or had Caduceus chosen to block either or both of Dairon's Natural 20s on Beau, Dairon would have been knocked out instead, having lost her disguise, and she would be in deep trouble with the Kryn...
Episode 54: Well Beneath
- Crosses over with Funny, Caleb's Bad "Bad Acting" impressions of the other party members' accents. Liam in real life is genuinely good at accents, and yet here he has to play a man with an accent failing badly at imitating other accents, and he does it very convincingly. Even more impressive considering this whole scene was improvised and something Liam couldn't have predicted.
Episode 55: Duplicity
- Caleb, in a - sort of - villainous moment of awesome: while charmed by the succubus, he is a serious danger to the party by himself, seriously hurting them with a fireball and a wall of fire (Jester in particular thinks she's going to die), and resisting their initial attempts to break him out of it with very high saving throws.
- Jester provided two clutch moves at key points in the battle.
- First, casting Dispel Magic on the rift and sealing it up. This meant that no further enemies could come through and potentially outnumber the Mighty Nein. It also meant the pit fiend, incubus and succubus couldn't flee when the tides of battle finally turned against them.
- When Caduceus suffers a third failed death saving throw from Nott's explosive arrow, Jester uses her Pearl of Power to recover a spell slot so she can cast Revivify and save him, narrowly averting another death in the party.
- Beau gets the HDYWTDT on the minotaur fiend and rips out its heart, which is the size of a basketball.
Episode 56: The Favor
- The big clutch move was how Caleb chose to react to the guards swarming in on the Nein. The rest of the group was unanimous in choosing to surrender peacefully, but Caleb spoke up saying they had something to return to the Bright Queen. A Persuasion check of 16 allowed him to do so, and he pulled the power move of presenting the Beacon to the Kryn Empress - not only did it leave her and the court speechless, it turned the Nein from prisoners-to-be into heroes with a single move, and caused Matt to end the episode early after only about three hours. A cliffhanger for the ages.
Episode 57: In Love and War
- Yeza's release was secured without the Mighty Nein performing a single hostile action from the moment they entered Rosohna. For half the cast, that's notable Character Development to put diplomacy and surrender before retaliation or flight.
- Caleb being the one to suggest "We end a war". He began the campaign as the absolute most unwilling to get his name attached to anything, and in the bottom two for doing anything worth notability. He happily followed the group as they repeatedly chose not to get involved with the war - and now he's the one to suggest they do something that would make them heroes, something that involves going far out of his way doing things completely unrelated to his goals. "He looks hopeful", indeed.
