Headscratchers / Critical Role

As a Headscratchers subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Campaign 1

• What happened to the Bastions that Keyleth walled up in the fourth Trial of the Take episode? They went down the corridor that the group had just come up and then she put up a wall of stone to stop them coming back up it and running into the group, but after the group defeated the Rashasa, Matt said they left via the way they came in, ie through that corridor. And as they went that way to avoid the difficulty of going through the prison and no one came after them they couldn't have run into the two trapped Bastions. Did the Bastions go into the refuse pit and climb out via the chute, or was there another way out that the group was unaware of?
• Does the carriage driver know who Percy is or not? In episode 25, when Percy is interrogating him, he says "your family is gone." But in episode 26, when he asks the rest of Vox Machina to keep Percy away from him, he asks, "who is that?" Maybe just a minor continuity error on Matt's part?
  • Alternatively he's in shock from having his hand blown off (and scared out of his wits of the Briarwoods coming after him) so maybe he's just not in the right frame of mind to think straight at the moment?
• In the one off vid D&Diesel with Vin Diesel, Laura and Travis play their Critical Role characters Vex'halia and Grog. Do the events of D&Diesel take place in the Critical Role timeline or is it completely separate and they just used the same character names, races and classes as a nod to Critical Role? And if it is in continuity is there any chance of the other characters/players crossing over to Critical Role for guest appearances (probably in something similar to the Slayer's Guild arc)?
  • It is possible that D&Diesel, is canon. Matt has said that there was a period of six months of in-universe time between the last session of pre-Critical Role, and Episode 1. Given that Vex'ahlia and Grog are level 8 in D&Diesel, and level 9 during Episode 1. This could explain part of what happened in the interim. In Vex'ahlia's intro into D&Diesel, she states that she separated from Vax'ildan, which does seem to contradict the events of Episode 17, where the two of them stated that they don't split up. This could be an instance where they did split up, since it would be impossible for anyone to stay closely together 24/7, 365 days a year. So, based on this information, it is completely plausible that D&Diesel is canon, though unlikely. And if it is canon, we know that Pike was on a ship known as the Broken Howl for about 6 months. Which makes me wonder what everyone else was doing during that time. ....yeah, what WAS everyone else doing in that 6 months period?
    • What we know, is that Pike was on the Broken Howl, helping out the crew there in an effort to toughen herself up after her untimely death and resurrection.
    • Percy spent most of that time designing, and building the Bad News.
  • Keyleth visited the Earth Ashari.
• If the "sphere of annihilation" under Whitestone is canceling every magic in the room, including divine magic (as seen when Pike tries to heal an unconscious Vex), how was Pike able to remain there? Technically, she was only there in her astral form thanks to some kind of divine favor or intervention. That magic should have been cancelled right away and Pike would have disappeared.
  • The fact that Pike was there in an astral form at all was to have a reason for Ashley Johnson to rejoin the party, since having her appear in person would have been harder to explain. Pike's astral form not enduring the Sphere's anti-magic power would have meant having her disappear for a segment of the episode for (seemingly) no reason. They probably felt that would be unfair on Ashley, so Handwaving it would be the easier option.
    • Sarenrae works in mysterious ways?
• Where would Dr. Ripley have even crossed Kynan Leore's path? Before The Reveal in Episode 68, the first and only time we met the little scamp was in Episode 23; which would have been just before the start of the Briarwoods Saga. So, what happened to him that would make following her a good idea, and how long have they been in each other's company?
  • Well, Vax did go back and try to find Kynan afterwards, only to find out he'd run away from home, presumably to some other part of the city. Not long after, Vox Machina tussle with the Briarwoods and make their way to Whitestone. It's possible Kynan heard that they had left and attempted to follow them, but elected not to go into Whitestone itself after he saw what was going on. A few days later, the Briarwoods get overthrown and Ripley escapes. If Kynan was still in the area, they could have likely met on the road or in another nearby settlement. Ripley could then have easily played on his still hurting emotions after she found out that he knew Vox Machina, and her being Percy's counterpart could have fed Kynan's desire to be one to Vax.
• Why did Hotis the Rakshasa send assassin’s after Pike, Kima, and Alura. He wouldn’t have known who they were!
  • Seeing as rakshasas are telepathic and Hotis was able to find out who Vax, Tiberius, and Keyleth cared for, he easily would have known who they were, that they were powerful and therefore dangerous to himself and so needed to be eliminated as quickly as possible.
• Why one of Percy's middle names always written as "Klossowski" but spoken as "Kowalski"?
  • Whitestonian dialect, probably. English as it is has some truly weird things, like "Cholmondeley" pronounced "Chumly", so it's not unthinkable that spelling and pronunciation drifted over time.
• How did Pike become Grog's runner up in the trial forge, if you take away all of her spells, armor, weapons and magic items, which is what happens in the trial forge, Pike as a monster would only have challenge rating 2, I did the math. Even Bo or Yasha could demolish her.
  • does any one know what this is referring to? If your talking about when he faced the trials against the monk, why would he not choose his best friend? and why are they mentioning campaign 1 characters with campaign 2 characters, they are a 100+ years apart?
    • It was either in the timeskip or the epilogue, but Grog and Pike went back to the same pit fight where Grog fought Kern the Hammer. Grog got first place and Pike was the runner up. In retrospect - yeah, she really shouldn't have been able to pull that off.
• I understand Travis is playing Bertrand as a massive blob of incompetence, Gilderoy Lockhart style, because it's funny, but... he's level 18! In the world of D&D, that's objectively a mighty hero. How does that work?
  • He is in his late 50's-early 60's, so he's had a fair amount of time to slowly gain experience that isn't quite as intense a slope as what Vox Machina did. He's also not a slouch in actual combat, see the damage inflicted to the Empyrean. He's just...only average intelligence and wisdom that blusters and exaggerates.
  • Also, sometimes, numbers are just there for the sake of balance rather than narrative sense. In Taryon's first appearance, he was level 13 which by D&D standard is already a quite accomplished adventurer, yet at this point, Tary is a buffoon with close to no real fight experience. Sam could simply not realistically jump into a level 20 party with a level 1 adventurer.

Campaign 2

• I am not sure if this is a head scratcher or just me not paying enough attention. If I remember correctly the only reason they the Mighty Nein kept going deeper into the laughing hands crypt was because they were tracking Obann. Everytime they passed a trial I remember them asking Matt, do we still see tracks, and every time he said yes. So at the end of that arc why do they blames themselves so much for releasing the laughing hand? Whether they showed up or not, it was going to be released. At least now they have a chance to stop it, and can now warn every one the the laughing hand has been released.
  • Certain actions the Nein took were proof that Obann hadn't gone all the way down. Had they not opened the final door, but kept the key with them, the whole plot would have been derailed since Dimension Door requires a line of sight that wasn't present at that time. They aren't 100% to blame, but they're far from blameless. It would probably have happened without them, but they did directly help unbeknownst to them.
  • Dimension Door does not require line of sight. If Obann had the spell, and the Nein turned around, he would've been able to enter.
• Is it me or is the timeline weird with Vilya's disappearance and return? The first campaign ended in the year 812, and the second one began in 835. That's a difference of about 23 years. Now Vilya said she'd been trapped on Rumblecusp for 25 years. This would mean she'd been there since 810, the year the Vox Machina campaign began. But Keyleth said her mother had disappeared when she was a very young child. So Vilya's disappearance either must have happened much later, or she was wrong about how long she'd been there.
  • Several possible answers: 1. Matt just simply forgot/miscalculated years. 2. Vilya forgot, due to the memory loss effects that were happening. 3. She really did arrive around about 810 Post Divergence. I don't believe it was explained how she arrived to Rumblecusp in the first place or what happened when she vanished during the Water Ashari trial.
  • Alternatively, the earlier parts of her Aramente took quite a while, and she only landed on Rumblecusp at approximately that time. Or she's estimating time, Vokodo doesn't seem like the type to keep calendars.
• So Trent Ikithon has been running a secret organization for who knows how many decades. Surviving court intrigue, the intrigue of the Cerberus Assembly, and basically being a schemer and an highly intelligent and dangerous individual. However his grand plan to deal with Caleb is to basically roll up with no research and planning and yell "come at me bro" and see what happens?
  • There was a reasonable amount of planning, putting two extra backups in place plus his strategic Time Stop nonsense. Caleb (and to a lesser extent Beau) was his only loose end that was of threat to him, and after all of Caleb's knockbacks and anti-scrying magic came to an end he probably thought taking them on in the middle of nowhere, with no credible or well-connected witnesses to see, would have been better than 1) Caleb bringing this to the greater court/governments's attention, or 2) having a public magic fight in somewhere like Rexxentrum for the greater public or political witnesses to see.
• Travis saying that Fjord's tusks keep growing and he files them down - do orcs have teeth like rodents, that keep growing through their life? Do they naturally wear down?
  • There is no official D&D material that states as much, but Exandria is Matt's world and if he considers that, in this realm, orcs and half-orcs' tusks continue to grow during their whole life, then that's canon. To be honest, it's probably not something that Matt decided but just a quirk that Travis threw in because he thought it was cool and Matt agree to roll with it.

Campaign 3

• In Campaign 3, episode 11, the party visits the Diamond Horizon, a luxury spa, and Fearne asks for a flea and tick bath for her goat-like lower half. An attendant is summoned who admits, with some surprise, that she usually only pampers the pets of wealthy guests. But Jrusar is a large, cosmopolitan city that's home to katari, eisfurra, minotaurs, and bugbears. Why would she bat an eye at a faun?
  • Theoretically the Diamond Horizon is an incredibly high end (think millionaires just to get in the door) spa. Maybe they don't get a lot of bestial/beast-kin type sentient beings?