Web Video / Critical Role: Campaign One

Campaign One of Critical Role began airing on March 12th, 2015. It follows the adventures of Vox Machina, a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits band of mercenaries that work their way into becoming saviors of their city, continent, and finally the world. This campaign concluded on October 12, 2017.

On March 4, 2019, they launched a Kickstarter to fund an animated special. This in turn raised over 11 million dollars from a 750 000 dollar goal. Prime Video became the distributor for what now had become an animated series, with the first season depicting the Briarwood arc, and was later renewed for season 2 and 3 in order to depict the Chroma Conclave arc.

The cast for Campaign One:

• Matthew Mercer as the Dungeon Master.
• Liam O'Brien as Vax'ildan, half-elven rogue and twin brother of Vex'ahlia.
• Laura Bailey as Vex'ahlia, half-elven ranger and twin sister of Vax'ildan (accompanied by Trinket, her bear companion).
• Ashley Johnson as Pike Trickfoot, gnome cleric.
• Travis Willingham as Grog Strongjaw, goliath barbarian.
• Taliesin Jaffe as Percival "Percy" Frederickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III, human gunslinger.
• Marisha Ray as Keyleth of the Air Ashari, half-elven druid.
• Sam Riegel as Scanlan Shorthalt, gnome bard, and Taryon Darrington, human artificer.
• Orion Acaba as Tiberius Stormwind, dragonborn sorcerer. (Left the show after episode 29.)

Together, they fight monsters, and are pretty damn funny doing it.

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Tropes:

A-E

• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: Episode 22 is a good example of this, because it contains Keyleth's explanation of her vision of her death, which is a heavily dramatic moment, sandwiched between two pretty epic fights.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Occurs at the start of Episode 43 when the party is unable to wrangle more than a few healing potions from the Slayer's Take even when the literal fate of the world is at stake.
• A Lady on Each Arm: Invoked/Parodied by Percy, Keyleth, and Vex while entering the Luck's Run Casino in Marquet. They keep it up for all of five minutes before Keyleth gets caught cheating and is literally kicked to the curb.
• All Animals Are Dogs: Trinket the bear is often treated like a pet dog.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Let's see...
  • Gilmore is in love with Vax, who ends up turning him down because he (Vax) is in love with Keyleth. Keyleth herself has been in love with Vax for a long time, but never thinks to act on those feelings. In the days after the Chroma Conclave attack, Keyleth has been getting more acclimated to Vax's companionship and seriously considered loving him. But Vex's death and Vax's deal with the Raven Queen causes the bond between them to become a lot more difficult to handle, and Keyleth finds herself unable to allow herself to love due to her fears of watching Vax and the rest of the party die, as becoming the Headmaster of the Air Ashari will effectively make her The Ageless. It's not until Episode 65 where she finally makes her choice, allowing herself to confess to Vax her true feelings for him.
  • Scanlan is in love with Pike, who grows complicated feelings for him but also nurses a crush on a not-Scanlan member of Vox Machina (whom Ashley admitted was Percy in the post-campaign wrap-up. Scanlan even proposes to her but rescinds the offer not long after, realizing that he was more in love with the idea of Pike than Pike as an actual person, and asks if they can be friends. It takes Scanlan's death and resurrection and leaving and coming back for Pike to really sort through her feelings for him. After everything is over Scanlan asks her out for a drink, Pike admits she was about to ask him the same thing, and later on she ends up asking him for his hand in marriage.
  • Tiberius was in love with Allura, who Matt's playlist insinuated had some great life-altering not-Tiberius love in the past (who may or may not have been Kima of Vord) that didn't end well since she's now living in her Ivory Tower alone and all. Things got better for Kima and Allura as they end up getting married during the Time Skip.
  • Ever since receiving her first custom arrow from Percy, Vex'ahlia has been feeling something for the gunslinger due to his numerous acts of kindness, affection that she had been lacking growing up in Syngorn, but never considers telling him how she truly feels.^note Laura herself admitted on Talks Machina that if Percy hadn't died, she never would have said it. Percy, on the other hand, definitely has feelings for her which at times leads to said acts - creating said custom arrows, calling her his "favourite", addressing her as "dear", and even making her a noble just to help her with her confidence issues and spite her father - but he never acts on them and instead chooses to push those feelings deep down within himself because he sees himself as being unhealthy for her. Due to that, Vex and Percy flirtatiously dance around each other for over fifty episodes without making a move. In Episode 69, during Percy's resurrection ritual, Vex confirms she's in love with him despite Percy not hearing her confession, but thereafter suffers from a serious case of Cannot Spit It Out, and it's not until after he is resurrected that Percy starts truly considering reciprocation towards her. The slow burn of their relationship is resolved in Episode 72, as Percy gives Vex The Big Damn Kiss to end the episode.
• All There in the Manual: Since the first campaign had been running for two years prior to streaming, everything from small details to major plot elements are explained somewhere outside the recorded shows, as are backstory elements of the characters themselves. Some questions have been answered either on Twitter or in the Q&A episodes, and the group also did an online summary.
• Alliterative Family: Vax'ildan and Vex'ahlia Vessar, as well as their adorable younger half-sister Velora.
• Ancient Artifacts: The Vestiges of Divergence, powerful weapons and armour pieces from a previous epoch. After the Chroma Conclave attack, Vox Machina learn that these devices may hold the key to defeating the dragons. Initially only knowing where two of them are, they head out to find out where the rest may be found. As of Episode 76, all of their Vestiges have been retrieved: the Deathwalker's Ward for Vax, Mythcarver for Scanlan, the Titanstone Knuckles for Grog, Fenthras, Wrath of the Feywarden for Vex, Cabal's Ruin for Percy, Whisper for Vax, the Spire of Conflux for Keyleth, and the Plate of the Dawnmartyr for Pike. In fact, they can be awakened or exalted for even more power.
• And I Must Scream: Implied to be the fate of the victims of Orthax. When Percy is killed by Ripley in Episode 68, he spends twenty-four hours trapped by Orthax as the shadow demon feasts upon his soul. After he's freed and revived, he reveals it was not a pleasant experience, and he has no sense of how much time has passed.
• Anyone Can Die: All of the original eight members of Vox Machina have died at least once during the campaign, though all but one (Tiberius) have been brought back.
  Matt: (to Pike) I was so worried you were going to die again!
  Matt: (after Grog's resurrection) Stop dying!
• Art Evolution: The character avatars are given an upgrade in episode 32. Kit Buss discussed how much she's improved on drawing them in 6 months.
  • The final portraits are beautiful to look at.
• Ask a Stupid Question...: During the Trial of the Take arc, Kashaw gives one to Vax.
  Kashaw: Oh, you have a sister?
  Vax: I have a twin, yes.
  Kashaw: What does she look like?
  Vax: (points at himself)
  Kashaw: Oh...
• Asshole Victim: After killing Sir Stonefell in Episode 29, the group decides to let his lackey Vook live — but not before Percy brands him with a red-hot gun barrel and Grog rips out his tongue. Vook was, by his own admission, part of the coup against the de Rolos, and Vox Machina first encounters him oppressing the peasantry on the Briarwoods' behalf, so it's really hard to feel sorry for him.
• The Atoner: All of Vox Machina (save Percy) in Episode 26, after they realize their actions in Episode 25 may have been getting too brash. Scanlan even lampshades it, pointing out that their foes are getting good treatment because they're trying to be nicer.
• Badass Boast: Remarkably common. The most frequent users of them are Grog, Tiberius and Percy.
• Badass Bystander: The put-upon citizens of Whitestone help Vox Machina fight the Briarwoods' undead minions when the uprising finally begins.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Episode 80. Raishan escapes alive with Thordak's corpse and two of the dragon eggs, with Vex and Scanlan both temporarily dying due to the fight, Keyleth nearly dying instantly from falling in a river of lava, and the entire party overall having been thoroughly outmatched despite their numbers against her.
  • Episode 102 — Vecna is revived successfully, and upon realizing they have no chance against him, Vox Machina Plane Shifts to the Feywild.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • It seems like Episode 24 is all set to be a confrontation with the Briarwoods. Instead, the entire first half is just Vox Machina screwing around in the week leading up to their arrival. Episode 25, however, makes the wait worth it.
  • In Episode 43, Matt makes it sound like the party will be saddled with proving their worth to a champion of Bahamut that they've never met. Then Lady Kima knocks him out from behind, and insists that she'll go with them instead.
  • Guest star Arkhan (played by Joe Manganiello) prepares to destroy the hand of Vecna after the final fight. No, wait- he cuts off his own hand and attaches Vecna's to it, then teleports away, setting up the possibility of a future villain for the next campaign to face.
• Bears Are Bad News: Averted with Vex's companion, Trinket. As long as you're on Vox Machina's side, of course.
• Bedmate Reveal: An infamous one involving a bathtub instead, which is somehow so huge and sudsy that Vax'ilidan can climb in with Percy and never realise that Vex'alia is already in there.
• Big Bad: K'varn, for the first arc. Thordak for the fourth, as it's made clear he's the de-facto leader of the Chroma Conclave.
  • Ultimately Subverted in Thordak's case as it's revealed that Raishan is The Man Behind the Man.
  • As of the fifth and final arc, Vecna, The Whispered One fills this role. Previous arc Big Bads Sylas and Delilah Briarwood even serve as his Co-Dragons.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Lord and Lady Briarwood, in the third arc.
  • Technically they are also the Big Bad (Delilah) and The Dragon (Sylas) of a villainous group which includes Sir Kourian Stonefell, Professor Anders, and Dr. Ripley.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Hotis and Rimefang (a Rakshasa and a White Dragon) serve as the two "final bosses" of the Vasselheim arc for when the group is split and share no other connection.
• The Big Damn Kiss: There are a lot of friendly or funny kisses on this show, but at least three are played as romantic and dramatic enough to warrant the title:
  • In Episode 21, Kashaw kisses Keyleth as he leaves the Slayer's Take.
  • Episode 33 sees Vax kissing Keyleth after he nearly dies during the fight with Professor Anders, complete with an abrupt Love Confession.
  • Episode 72 has Percy kiss Vex right as the episode ends.
  • Episode 77: After multiple hints and much raised eyebrows both from the fandom and the players alike, Kima and Allura kiss following an attempt on Allura's life
• Big Eater: All the players to an extent, but Orion/Tiberius actually streamed buying doughnuts from a Krispy Kreme nearby the studio.
• Bittersweet Ending: Far more sweet than bitter, but at the end of the campaign, Vox Machina defeats Vecna after a long and hard battle, saving the world. However because the group couldn't find a way around Vax's deal with the Raven Queen, Vax dies for real, and Arkhan had attached Vecna's hand to his body and gotten away, with Matt already confirming that the story will have a follow-up down the road. On the bright side, most of members of Vox Machina get a happy ending to some degree, including Pike and Scanlan finally getting together, and Vex and Percy having children. It's bittersweet for fans as well, who've watched 115 episodes and now have to say goodbye to Vox Machina.
• Black-and-White Morality: Compared to Campaign 2, the first Campaign leans heavily in this direction, something commented on by Matt on Talks Machina sessions. While Vox Machina is an Anti-Hero Team and each member has their issues, every arc of the first campaign has clear-cut heroes and villains and has more of a Heroic Fantasy tone.
• Black Comedy: After coming across The Sun Tree in episode 28, where the Briarwoods hung seven people (and a bear) who look like the team from the tree, using a child to represent Scanlan, Sam's question? "Was he handsome?" (He didn't realize he was talking about a kid until Matt pointed it out, after which Sam's reaction says it all.)
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Pike, Vex and Keyleth respectively - also, Ashley, Laura, and Marisha, since their hair colors match those of their characters.
• Book Ends:
  • Episode 16 is Keyleth's first mention of the Fire Ashari, and is the episode where Pike leaves the party. In Episode 22, Pike returns and Keyleth completes the Fire Ashari's trial.
  • Episode 17 is when the party remains in Vasselheim and Grog has a match with the current champion of the Braving Grounds and loses. In Episode 23, Grog has a rematch with the champion and wins, and they finally leave Vasselheim and return to Emon.
  • Before leaving Emon, in Episode 14, Percy tells the council to keep him notified if the Briarwoods should return to the city in order to "surprise" them. Upon returning to Emon in Episode 23, Percy's notified that the Briarwoods are indeed returning within a week, and thus he begins planning for his "surprise". In Episode 15, immediately after he learns about the Briarwoods, Percy mentions that he's thinking of making a tazing implement. He finally builds an electro-gauntlet named "Diplomacy" in Episode 24, which is the episode in which the Briarwoods arrive. The first time he uses Diplomacy in a fight is against Sylas Briarwood in Episode 34, which is also the Episode where both Briarwoods are defeated, although Delilah doesn't die until Episode 35. The next time he uses it in a fight is against Kynan Leore, during a fight with the last person on his List, Dr. Ripley.
  • In Episode 35, in Whitestone, Vax decides to give Keyleth the time she needs so that she can determine her answer as to whether or not she can allow herself to love due to her fear. In Episode 65, in Whitestone, Keyleth finally gives her answer and admits that she loves Vax, that her fears were ultimately unfounded due to being based on a future not set in stone yet.
  • In Episode 42, Vox Machina ultimately abandons Emon to search for allies and the Vestiges of the Divergence so they can defeat the Chroma Conclave. In Episode 78, they return to Emon much more powerful than before to finish their war against the Chroma Conclave.
  • The episode immediately preceding the Chroma Conclave arc is called "A Musician's Nostalgia" and has Scanlan deal with the discovery he has a daughter. The episode immediately following the Chroma Conclave arc is titled "A Bard's Lament" and is another Scanlan focus episode, where he dramatically leaves Vox Machina to spend time with his daughter.
  • Vox Machina's first adventure ended with them fighting a (fetal) undead deity, and their final adventure put them up against a much more powerful undead deity.
  • The first streamed episode of Critical Role has the party arriving in the bustling Dwarven City of Kraghammer. The Very Definitely Final Dungeon of the first campaign is a ruin of a once-great dwarven civilization.
  • Critical Role as a show (and the first campaign) began as a home game designed by Matt as a gift for Liam, and Liam's character of Vax was created for that game. Campaign 1 closes upon the permanent death of Vax.
• Bottomless Magazines: Vex never seems to run out of arrows, and is never seen fletching or buying them (outside of the special arrows created for her by Percy). It's revealed in the campaign wrap-up that Vex simply bought about a thousand arrows pre-stream and chucked them in the Bag of Holding. She only begins to run low at the tail end of campaign 1. Averted with Percy, who has to make his own bullets with varying success because there are (initially) only three people in Exandria who has even heard of black powder.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In Episode 45, Grog asks a sleep-deprived Percy if he'd like a coffee or an enema, followed by Keyleth suggesting a "coffee-enema".
• Breather Episode:
  • The lighthearted D&D tutorial episode came between the battle with K'Varn and Clarota turning on Vox Machina, forcing them to escape Yug'Voril. After the latter came another breather episode, half of which was spent shopping.
  • Episode 36 was a well deserved breather from the very dark Whitestone arc, and doubled as a Christmas episode.
  • Episode 43 provides some much needed relief after the Chroma Conclave destroys Emon. The party has arrived in Vasselheim and encounters some old friends, and hilarity ensues.
  • Episode 56 is right off the heels of the climactic fight with Umbrasyl and is noticeably less tense than the previous few episodes.
  • Episode 65 picks up right after the events of the previous episode which detailed the aftermath of the destruction of Draconia and the discovery and burial of Tiberius Stormwind. Right out of the starting gate, we have a Love Confession and a Relationship Upgrade, some lighthearted infighting between Vax and Grog, and the party's long-awaited journey to Marquet in search of the next Vestige. Aside from plot moments, utter hilarity ensues throughout including a walk of shame, Scanlan seeking a "drug deal", and Keyleth and Percy getting instantly day-drunk due to sampling a local drink.
  • Episode 72 is the first real break after Percy's death and the subsequent fight against Vorugal and involves a lot of looting of shiny objects, Vax getting drunk on Scanlan's wine, Keyleth turning into an elephant and wrecking part of Scanlan's magnificent mansion, and it all ends with a long-time-coming The Big Damn Kiss between Percy and Vex.
  • Episode 81 serves as a welcome respite from the battles with Thordak and Raishan before Vox Machina moves on to finish things with the Diseased Deceiver. Cards are drawn, drugs are smoked, surprises happen in the bath, and a haircut is given.
  • Episode 95 begins with a one-year time skip after completing the Aramente and ending Hotis for good. The entire second hour is spent detailing Beach Episode shenanigans, notably Vax's Shakespearean "exit pursued by a bear", then Pike's family visits and starts making their own messes.
• Brick Joke: In episode 115, Sam Riegel makes an off-hand that one of the character's lost an arm during a Time Skip. In the middle of the Search of Grog one-shot set during that Time Skip, Matt has a group of bugbears appear out of nowhere and rip that characters arm off. No checks to see them coming, no saving throws to stop them, they just show up and rip it off clean.
  • It's only after the campaign wrap-up that Vex realizes that when Vax was taken by the Raven Queen, he took his Boots of Haste with him. Right when he leaves again after her wedding, in the one-shot that was run over a year later, she only remembers the boots a split-second after he disappears.
• Call-Back:
  • In episode 19, Grog goes into a Rage to counteract Rimefang the white dragon's fear-inducing roar, encouraged to kill a dragon like Pike did, referring to when the cleric killed a dragon of the same ilk some time prior to the start of the stream.
  • Also, in the same episode, Scanlan masquerading as "Burt Reynolds" gets one as well.
  • Tiberius "encourages violence" in Episode 6, which leads to Grog absolutely slaughtering a duergar torturer. In Episode 23, Tiberius "encourages violence" again, and Grog immediately charges off to face another opponent - Kern the Hammer.
  • Vox Machina has used the codeword "Jenga" four times to indicate that something's going horribly wrong. Vax first does it after being caught by the Briarwoods in Episode 25, again in Episode 33 when he sees Professor Anders about to slit an NPC's throat, again in Episode 55 when he ends up bumping into an invisible boss monster, and again in Episode 58 when he found himself cornered, unarmored, and weaponless against a revived enemy.
  • In Episode 42, before leaving Greyskull Keep behind after their failed negotiation with the Clasp, Vax goes to Keyleth's door saying that he doesn't want to be alone for the night, and then she lets him in after saying that she feels the same way. Then in Episode 64, after mourning the death of Tiberius, it's Keyleth who goes to Vax's door in Castle Whitestone, asking if she could spend the night with him, and then he lets her in without a word.
  • Vex refuses Saundor's offer in Episode 63 because her "heart is someone else's". In Episode 69, she reveals who it is when she speaks to Percy during his resurrection ritual:
  Vex: I should have told you. It's yours.
  • In Episode 44, Percy uses shards of residuum (condensed whitestone) to aid in bringing back Vex'ahlia when she died, although his attempt fails. Then, in Episode 69, Vex does the same for him during his resurrection ritual (and even confesses to him and kisses him) and succeeds with a Natural 20.
  • In Episode 42, before abandoning Greyskull Keep, Percy assures a distraught Vex that they will return home one day. In Episode 78, they do return.
  • Episode 89 is full of these during Vax's resurrection ritual:
    • Vex'ahlia brings up the battle with K'Varn in the Underdark in Episode 11 and the book she obtained that is about the Raven Queen and her feud with Orcus in Episode 44 in addition to the deal her brother made to spare her life.
    • Keyleth brings up her hand to match the scar of her handprint that she placed on Vax's back in Episode 42, mentions the promise she and Vax made to return to Zephra together in Episode 81, and even echoes his original confession to her from Episode 33: "You know I'm in love with you, right?"
    • Grog reminds Vax of what he had said to him in Episode 25: "No one kills you but me." He also remembers Vax saying how much he loves Grog in Episode 84, and replies in kind, "I love you, too."
• Call-Forward: In the Darrington Brigade spinoff, Laura plays a new monk character who uses the "pop-pop" that was popularised by Beau... over 10 canon years later. Marisha is justifiably proud.
• Casino Episode: Episode 66 has Vox Machina visit the Luck's Run casino in Marquet. They play a few games, and Scanlan meets someone to buy two heaping bags of fusaka spice thinking that it's drugs.
• Cast as a Mask: Used in Episode 99, where Matthew Mercer plays the crimelord "Aes Adan" like he would any other NPC, until he's revealed as a disguised Scanlan, upon which his actual player takes over.
• Casting Gag:
  • Sam is no stranger to Quirky Bards, seeing as he once voiced one of the most famous ones of all.
  • In "Adventures of the Darrington Brigade", Taliesin, who previously played the first gun-user in Exandria (Percy), is now the Owlbear, a Captain Ersatz of the best known anti-gun superhero of all.
• Catchphrase:
  • Grog's "I would like to rage", stated with varying degrees of emphasis depending on the situation at hand. Occasionally modified, replacing 'rage' with some other action.
  • "Hi! I'm Tiberius Stormwind, from Draconia!" for... well, you know. The current record is eight times within a single session, five of those within the span of eight minutes.
• Central Theme:
  • Family. Both the one you're born with and the one you make of your friends and loved ones matter, and only misery and solitude await those who shun both.
  • Vengeance as a concept is a deeply flawed one that only serves to make monsters of people who seek it. The true path to redemption lies in turning away before you become what you hate.
• Cerebus Call-Back: Inverted with "What's my mother's name?" After first being said in a very dramatic and tragic context (Scanlan's mental breakdown and exit from the group), it gets frequently used in more comedic contexts thereafter.
• Character Alignment: invoked For each member of the group, according to the second Q&A session.
  • Vax: invoked Chaotic Good
  • Vex: invoked Neutral Good until Episode 46, at which point she shifts to Chaotic Neutral after selfishly stealing a flying broom from a friendly guest. In episode 75 she shifts again to Chaotic Good, with her display of sympathy towards a pair of aasimar slaves being the act that finally causes the change.
  • Pike: invoked Chaotic Good
  • Grog: invoked Chaotic Neutral
  • Percy: invoked Chaotic Good
  • Keyleth: invoked Neutral Good
  • Tiberius: invoked Chaotic Neutral (changed from Chaotic Good after Episode 25, when he uses an improvised telekinetic buzzsaw to execute an enemy who had already been rendered unconscious by Scanlan's casting of eyebite while she was attempting to flee. An old woman at that.)
  • Scanlan: invoked Neutral Good
  • As for non-player characters, K'varn is, unsurprisingly, invoked Chaotic Evil according to his character sheet. Kevdak, Grog's uncle, is Neutral Evil, and according to a brief glimpse of Matt's notes in a DM Tips video, Saundor is Lawful Evil.
• Chekhov's Gag: Vex makes the joke in Episode 30 that "only one person" would know how to say Percy's Overly Long Name in full - Percy himself. Percy asks if anyone else in Vox Machina can do it, and they all get it wrong, including Vex. In Episode 35, Vex does remember his full name, and says it to stop him from being possessed by Orthax.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • In episode 2, Travis mentions a stash of platinum in the Bag of Holding he forgot about. 12 episodes later, he puts it to proper use at Gilmore's.
  • In episode 22, Grog ends up trading a lot of dragon pieces for a potion of Stone Giant Strength (he actually trades more than what the peddler asked for, much to the chagrin and frustration of Vex'ahlia). In the next episode, it proves to be the right choice in hindsight since it gives Grog a boost in strength so that he could take on "The Hammer" in a rematch and win! Bonus points; the team actually gains (after bets were placed) 1,570 gold from the whole convoluted exchange.
  • Remember the reward that was promised in Episode 2 in Kraghammer if Vox Machina had solved their little monster problem? They finally go back to get it in episode 24.
  • Clarota's metal skullcap is first mentioned in Episode 3. It comes back in Episode 27, when Vax gets it magically identified at Gilmore's. Turns out it protects the wearer from mental influence which is useful, considering that Vox Machina's next opponents end up being vampires.
  • Similarly, Sherrie identifies a potion that Scanlan picked up "like a year ago" as a potion of fire breath in Episode 24. In Episode 31, Scanlan is charged with burning down a house in Whitestone as a distraction. He has no fire spells, but at the last minute, he remembers the potion of fire breath and uses it to torch the house (and a couple of guards).
  • In Episode 3, the party takes a Wand of Magic Missiles off a defeated duergar, which goes into Scanlan's inventory and is apparently forgotten until it is finally put to use for the first time in Episode 30.
  • Vex takes a Potion of Flying from Doctor Anna Ripley once they arrive at her room in Castle Whitestone. Said potion gets used in Episode 34 which helped in surviving the acid trap beneath the castle and against the Briarwoods in conjuction with her Skirmisher Stealth skill. It lasts long enough to finish the battle — until the failed ritual in the Ziggurat resulted in an anti-magic black hole that instantly nullifies the effect of the potion, resulting in her falling.
  • Pike retrieves a necklace from her room in her house in Westruun in Episode 53 and later gives it to Percy in Episode 58. Said necklace's function is triggered in Episode 68 when Percy is shot dead and is revived, causing the necklace to shatter. It doesn't save him the second time, though.
  • In Episode 96, Taryon gives Vex a coin with Revivify cast into it. It's not needed in the next battle, but comes in very, very handy in the next episode, when Keyleth tries to swan dive dramatically off a cliff and dies instantly, and Vex is the only one who sees this happen and the only one with any chance of getting to her body before the tides wash it away.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Episode 14 makes a passing mention of something connected to one of the backstories: the Briarwoods — who had killed Percy's family — had recently passed through Emon. Percy picks up on this and tells the person responsible to keep him updated. He gets one in episode 23.
  • Dr. Dranzel, Scanlan's mentor, was mentioned in another backstory and makes a proper appearance in episode 37.
  • In Episode 39, when Thordak appears, Vox Machina realize that most of them narrowly stealthed past the exact same dragon in the Fire Plane during episode 22.
  • Hotis, the Rakshasa that Vax slays in Episode 21, returns in a very sinister way in Episode 58 to exact his revenge on the rogue.
  • Vox Machina fanboy Kynan from episode 23 returns in episode 68... but allied with Dr. Ripley. Orthax has also formed a pact with Ripley, and is bent on revenge.
• Chekhov's Skill: Just before the party heads off to Whitestone to take on the Briarwoods, Vex asks Seeker Asum to teach her a new skill. He does so and teaches her how to use Skirmisher Stealth. She puts said skill into practice against the Briarwoods in Episode 34 in conjunction with a Potion of Flying.
• Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends: Kashaw and Keyleth have a talk about their First Kiss. Kashaw states that while he was glad it happened, he was sorry that he stole it. Keyleth in kind informs him that he didn't have to apologize, and that she didn't want to hurt him, emotionally.
• Clear My Name: The third arc begins with Vox Machina attacking the Briarwoods, a pair of villains with good publicity, at "their" castle and murdering an old woman, and as a result they are ejected from the Council of Tal'dorei and placed under surveillance. They're not actually arrested or exiled, but their reputation certainly needs some work. Uriel apologizes for the whole mess and returns the team's status in episode 37, though Percy, the guy who wanted the Briarwoods dead to begin with, admits that they had acted a bit rashly themselves.
• Co-Dragons: Now with literal dragons! It seems that the other members of the Chroma Conclave report to the ancient red dragon Thordak the Cinder King. There are three such subordinates: Vorugal, an ancient white dragon; Umbrasyl, an ancient black; and Raishan, an ancient green.
• Cold-Blooded Torture:
  • When the group finally finds Lady Kima, it seems she's been subjected to this for longer than any living being should have to endure. Impressively, she's not only still alive but has plenty of fire left in her.
  • Percy does this to a servant by shooting off a few of his fingers in Episode 25.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Kern, the Vasselheim pit fighting champion, positively enjoys getting his face smashed in by Grog. Just as much as he enjoys returning the favor.
• Convection, Schmonvection: It zigzags in the Kraghammer arc. Vox Machina hangs out next to rivers of lava and they take heat damage if they get too close In fact, Vax falls unconscious during their escape from the Emberhold and almost dies. The straight version comes in when Vax's foot is submerged in lava for several seconds and he only gets disadvantage on stealth and such until he gets serious rest.
• Cool Shades: Travis Willingham dons a great pair while Grog is catatonic in the third episode.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Shale (Chris Perkins) and Jayne (Liam O'Brien), along with about half of Matt's characters.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Matt grants the HDYWTDT to the entire group when they kill Anna Ripley, in vengeance for Percy's death. Keyleth strings her up with vines, Vax cuts off her arm, Scanlan carves a symbol into her forehead, Vex shoots her through the heart and in the mouth, and Grog slices her in half.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Four in favor of the party:
  • Episode 18, the group blows through an ambush of orcs with minimal effort. This is also the battle where Percy rolls three crits in two turns. The dice were very much in their favour that day.
  • Episode 25, they slaughter The Broker and his cronies after taking barely any damage.
  • Episode 29, the group ambushes Sir Stonefell in his home - which means Vox Machina gets a full round of attacks before their enemies can do anything, and they wreak havoc.
  • Episode 41, Vox Machina fights off a group of mundane looters raiding using sentient weapons to suck their blood, sicking a bear on them, and calling down lightning strike son top of them. Poor bastards never stood a chance.
  • Episode 102, has Vox Machina on the receiving end of one of these. Vecna utterly trounces the party when they confront him in the Shadowfell. He first casts Hold Person to paralyze nearly half of the party, uses Power Word Kill and Disintegrate to instantly kill Vex (later revivified) and turn Vax to ash respectively, nearly kills Pike when he tries to use Disintegrate on her (and she would have died were it not for her armor) and all the while barely taking any damage, and able to dispel several of their powerful spells with barely any effort. Vox Machina quickly realized that they stood no chance against him, and plane shift to the Feywild the moment the opportunity presents itself. The only reason they succeed is because Scanlan was able to counter Vecna's Counterspell, and even then they left with Vax still a pile of dust.
• Darkest Hour: Arguably, they've had three:
  • Episode 39, narratively speaking, in which the Chroma Conclave arrive to take over Tal'Dorei. Cities are destroyed, thousands of people (including some vital allies) are dead, and the path to defeating the dragons and reclaiming their home is unclear. The next thirty-plus episodes are spent dragging themselves out of this situation.
  • Episode 68, emotionally speaking. Anna Ripley, assisted by Orthax, attacks the party, nearly causes a TPK, and kills Percy. Vox Machina defeats Ripley, but they are hundreds of miles away from anyone who could resurrect Percy, and unlike Vex and Grog, who are resurrected almost immediately, Percy is still dead by the episode's end.
  • Episode 102, which makes sense since it's the start of the Grand Finale. Vecna is reborn and utterly trounces Vox Machina. Killing Vex, disintegrating Vax, and trying multiple times to do the same to Pike. Our heroes have no choice but to flee.
• Dead Man Writing:
  • In Episode 50, Scanlan gives Pike a note, saying to only open and read it if he should die. Pike reads it the moment Scanlan is out of sight. It's not revealed what it says until the 'campaign wrap up' episode of Talks Machina, but judging from Ashley Johnson's reaction, it was emotionally powerful.
  • Having predicted his demise at the hands of Anna Ripley, Percy has a note on his person for the rest of the party.
  • Vax's note to Vex, hidden in his armor: "Take these wings and fly." Also, his letter to Scanlan in Episode 81, which basically said, "You were right".
• Death as Game Mechanic: Matthew Mercer introduces his own homebrewed game mechanics about death into Dungeons & Dragons. When player characters die, sometimes gods and otherworldly entities will appear to them and offer to bring them back to life as part of a deal. Namely, one hero gains Resurrective Immortality from a god (Vax from the Raven Queen), which he exploits to take suicidal risks and bargain with fairies who get off on choking people.
• Deep-Immersion Gaming: Seen in the second opening sequence, when the gang acts out a battle scene dressed as their characters, until it's revealed to be an Imagine Spot while they're at the gaming table.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: After Grog beats Kern in the arena, the two become friends.
• Dénouement Episode: Episode 35, appropriately titled "Denouement", is this for the Briarwoods arc. There's still 80 episodes after that though.
• Did They or Didn't They?: In Episode 42 Vax calls at Keyleth's door at night saying he doesn't want to spend the night alone, and is let in. That's all we ever see. It's certainly implied they had sex, but we may never know for sure. The end of Episode 64 is set up as a Did They or Didn't They? cliffhanger, but Episode 65 immediately starts with Keyleth telling Vax she's ready to love him, and Vax tackle-hugging her onto the bed.
• Disappointing Heritage Reveal: While Vax and Vex always knew they were half-elven (the pointed ears made it rather obvious), getting sent to live with their elven father in Syngorn after their human mother's death earned them a rather cold reception from the other elves, leading them to hate Syngorn and run away the first chance they got.
• Disproportionate Retribution: A comedic example in episode 10. Tiberius' response to Vax giving him a silly nickname is to cast a silence spell on him.
• Down to the Last Play:
  • The pit brawl between Grog and Kern the Hammer in episode 16 goes down to the last hit point. Kern wins, largely because Travis Forgot About His Powers and Matt didn't.
  • Happens again in Episode 23 during their rematch where Grog wins this time!
  • Grog's fight with Earhbreaker Groon in episode 85 also counts. The Earthbreaker actually brings Grog down to zero hit points, but Grog wins when his Relentless Rage abilities allow him to keep fighting.
• Dragon Rider: Several wyvern riding bandits accost the party in episode 15. The party themselves also ride on a brass dragon on the way to the final fight against Vecna in episode 109.
• Dragons Versus Knights: The Platinum Knights are an order of paladins who swear an oath to protect the holy city of Vasselheim and kill any evil dragon they find in honor of their patron, Bahamut, lord of all good dragons. Their most notable member is Lady Kima, a little hafling woman whose platinum plate armor and her magical two-handed sword allow her to help the heroes more than anyone else in their battles against the ancient dragons bent on destroying human civilization.
• Due to the Dead: Vox Machina gives Tiberius a burial in the ruins of Draconia in Episode 64 after finding his frozen and impaled corpse outside of Vorugal's lair.
• Duel Boss: Grog gets several of these. His two fights against Kern the Hammer, and his second fight against Earthbreaker Groon. He also attempted to fight Kevdak this way, before calling for Vox Machina to help when he realized he was outmatched.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Matt made a point in the first episode to say that short rests would be only 10 minutes instead of the usual hour. This was dropped within 20 episodes.
  • Pike doesn’t appear until Episode 4.
  • Episode 12, being a side episode where Matthew Mercer gives tips to aspiring Dungeon Masters and then runs a one-shot adventure for three new players. Content like this would later be relegated to side shows, rather than being a numbered episode of a campaign.
  • Campaign 1 was a continuation of a private home game, so it begins with the party as Level 8 veterans of multiple adventures and already familiar with eachother. While it starts at the beginning of a new Story Arc, the players and characters still reference pre-stream events, and a recap video was later made to avoid Continuity Lockout. (And even later, the pre-stream adventures were adapted into comic books) Later campaigns would have the audience following the characters from the very beginning.
  • Campaign 1's home game was originally run in Pathfinder, resulting in a few items, mechanics and gods being ported-over to 5e D&D. While Pike's deity Serenrae slotted into the setting easily, several party members still have "Keen" weapons (a Pathfinder mechanic that allows a crit on rolls lower than 20).
  • Early in the show, the city of Port Damali in Wildemount was spoken about as though it was part of the Dwendalian Empire, which itself was referred to as the "Kingdom of Wynandir". In Campaign 2, Port Damali was shown to be part of the Clovis Concord, a nation that was unmentioned during the first campaign.
  • In episode 38, Gilmore claimed that Vecna attempted to ascend to godhood "600 years ago". Later episodes would establish that the campaign is set between 810 and 812 PD (Post-Divergence), and that Vecna's attempted apotheosis happened in the Age of Arcanum, centuries before the Divergence.
  • In general, a lot of the first campaign unfolded before CR truly exploded in popularity and became a multimedia empire, so the players didn't take it quite as seriously as they would come to and the production values weren't as impressive as they would come to be. Ashley is gone for a big chunk of the early campaign, and Travis once skipped a game so he could see an Avengers movie.
  • Orion Acaba is a cast member through the first 27 episodes. He would leave the show at that point, leaving CR's core gang of seven behind.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Most of Vox Machina, save Tiberius and Vax. Vex/Percy and Scanlan/Pike marry, Grog lives with his two best friends, Keyleth continues to lead her people and eventually becomes one with the land, and Tary not only fixes his family's name but he also finds Lawrence.
• Epic Fail: In Episode 29, due to several very poor rolls, when the group of Percy, Vax and Scanlan try to enter the temple of Pelor through the front door (prevented from being opened only by a simple, if large, bar of wood) they spend several minutes trying to open it. In the process, Scanlan actually gets injured and also wastes three spells before the door is finally opened.
• Escape Sequence: After Vox Machina defeats K'varn and frees the illithids from his control, the illithids turn on them and try to have the party for lunch. Fortunately, the party had enough flying magic to escape the city and Tiberius had a spare teleportation circle to get the party back to Emon.
• Everyone Can See It: A more literal example than usual. Every member of Vox Machina is present when Vex confesses her love for Percy during his resurrection ritual. This means that everyone knows about her feelings except him. Though Percy does later admit to Vex that he heard her as well, which was why he reciprocated by acting on his feelings for her.
• Exact Words: Garmelie wants "a piece of a Syngorn threshold crest", meaning a fragment of the magical devices that allows the whole city to travel between the Material Plane and the Feywild, but never explicitly specifying it as such. What Percy gives him is a piece of a crest which Keyleth molded out of the threshold of the door to their guest room in Syngorn, using the Stone Shape spell. Much to Garmelie's dismay, he has to accept this deal as fulfilled.
• Eye Scream: The events surrounding Delilah Briarwood's second death: First, she is killed by being shot in the eye by Percy. Then, Vox Machina take the body with them and remove the other -Vecna's- eye, which itself is described graphically. Then, this eye magically compels Scanlan to gourge his own eye out. (Thankfully, Pike stops him before he can finish.)

F-I

• Facepalm: The reaction of Taliesin/Percy to... pretty much everything that the others do.
• Failed a Spot Check: With a Rogue and Ranger in the party constantly scouting ahead and checking traps, you wouldn't think this would happen at all... Vex suddenly dies from a trap from the Raven Queen protecting its legendary armor in episode 44 when Percy interrupts her while she's checking for traps.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Once it was discovered she was a Tiefling, Sovereign Uriel didn't really speak of Lillith kindly. It's probable it was partly because she had been disguised as one of the castle servants in her attempt to evade her sisters though.
  • Grog experiences this first-hand from the refugees in Episode 48. Somewhat understandable, since their city had been ransacked and occupied by a horde of Goliaths very recently.
  • The tailless Ravenite Dragonborns were enslaved under the tailed Draconians until the fall of their country.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Percy is the only character seen with a gun, which he designed and built himself. Eventually, Dr. Ripley copies his invention, and sells his designs to a handful of other tinkerers.
• The Farmer and the Viper:
  • In the Underdark, Vox Machina only rescue two untrustworthy figures, an exiled Humanoid Abomination named Clarota and a traumatized zealot named Kima. Each tells the party that the other will betray them, but in such a dangerous enviroment, the heroes ultimately decide to trust both and brace themselves for one or both betraying them. Ultimately, Clarota turns on the party as soon as he is welcomed back into Mind Flayer society.
  • The Fire Ashari are on the receiving end of this with a young woman they took in as one of their own. She was actually Raishan, the ancient green dragon, using them to get close to the Fire Plane and free Thordak.
• Fingore: A couple of examples:
  • Percy shoots the fingers clean off the Briarwood's carriage driver's hand in Episode 25.
  • Keyleth gets her hand crushed by a roc in Episode 26.
• Finish Dialogue in Unison: The infamous "Hello, I'm Tiberius Stormwind! I'm from Draconia." line was repeated so much that Sam and Marisha would finish it in conjunction with Orion.
• Flat Joy: Percy, Vex and Scanlan's reaction to first meeting Lyra.
• Forgot About His Powers:
  • Travis had never used Grog's Goliath racial ability Stone's Endurance, allowing him to shrug off up to 16 points of damage^note 1d12 plus the character's Constitution modifier before episode 22. It costs him against both K'varn (though fortunately not permanently) and Kern the Hammer.
  • Also occasionally happens with the rest of the party as well - Laura constantly forgets to use Hunter's Mark and Taliesin, once Percy learns it, keeps forgetting to use Hex. Sam has also been known to forget to direct Scanlan's bardic spells through his Handcone of Clarity, which would make them more effective.
• Foreshadowing:
  • A pre-series example in the form of General Krieg who the party eventually discovered to be the Blue Dragon, Brimscythe. A secret cavern connected to Krieg's home contained a room with four strange orbs which seemed to be some kind of communication devices. More than a year later, the players (and the audience) learn just who Krieg was speaking to: the Chroma Conclave, an alliance of ancient Chromatic Dragons.
  • Episode 8 has Lady Kima drop the first syllable of Thordak's name before stopping herself and saying, "that scourge dragon", when talking about how long she has known Allura for. About twenty episodes later, Vox Machina nearly gets spotted by that scourge dragon while traveling through the Plane of Fire.
  • Doubling with Meaningful Background Event: As soon as he hears that Sovereign Uriel is communicating with Lord and Lady Briarwood, Taliesin/Percy starts blinking rapidly and sits back in silence with a Thousand-Yard Stare. As we find out in later episodes, the Briarwoods took over his home and killed his family.
  • While it may or may not have been planned, Vax'ildan has been shown to possess a strangely powerful connection to the Gods. This begins cropping up as early as the Whitestone arc where he utilizes a symbol of Sarenrae sewn into his glove to summon an avatar of Pike. Later, after the party acquires the Deathwalker's Ward, his Sarenrae symbol cracks and the Raven Queen begins to take particular interest in him. This leads to his eventual acceptance of his fate as the Queen's champion, coupled with a multi-classing into Paladin.
  • Matt's unusually downcast demeanor when the group goes to Draconia, Keyleth being unable to scry on Tiberius in Episode 64, as well as the fact that Lockheed isn't with him, are all signs that he's dead. If you watch their faces, about half the party figures it out - most obviously Laura.
  • Seeker Asum's story when he returns to the party in Whitestone has a few holes in it. Namely, he mentions the name of a minor character (Brom Goldhand) who is confirmed to be dead and speaks as if they are alive, and also claims to have taken a teleportation circle to Whitestone when there are no teleportation circles in the city. It's because Asum is actually a green dragon in disguise.
  • As soon as Kashaw decides to resurrect Vex, cawing can be heard in the background, hinting at the appearance of the Raven Queen, rather than Vesh.
• For Want Of A Nail:
  • As of Episode 35, it looks like Percy's whole backstory and the entire Whitestone Arc happened for one reason: Sylas Briarwood died, and Delilah made a deal with Vecna to resurrect him. The price of that deal was conducting the ritual under Whitestone, so had that deal not been made, the Briarwoods would have had no reason to seek out the ziggurat, and the de Rolos would still be alive.
  • Percy opening the tomb of Purvan Sul, without waiting for Vex to finish checking for traps, changed a lot for Vox Machina. Vex died instantly, and Vax made a deal with the Raven Queen to save her. Through this, Vax became the Raven Queen's champion, radically altering his and Keyleth's character arcs and eventually resulting in his Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence at the end of the series.
• Formula-Breaking Episode:
  • For Episode 12, many of the regular players weren't able to attend, so the episode consisted of Matt giving beginner's advice to new D&D players as well as a demonstrative one-shot with Zac from Geek & Sundry and two of his friends with no connection to the main story. The Vox Machina storyline resumed the following episode.
  • Episode 20: Trial of the Take, Part 3: It begins differently compared to the first team's hunt, as it turns into a murder mystery, complete with questioning of witnesses and going undercover.
• Fortune Teller: Percy, Vex and Keyleth visit one in Ank'Harel. He's a card reader, and he makes four predictions for them, all of them laden with juicy Foreshadowing:
  • Percy asks after Cabal's Ruin first. The fortune-teller says the garment in question is "moving". This is because Anna Ripley has taken it from its previous owner, and she's sailing North for Glintshore.
  • Percy then says they are searching for the man who has Cabal's Ruin. The fortune-teller claims it is not a man they seek. They're looking for a woman. At first, it appears to be Mistress Asharu, but eventually it's revealed to be Dr. Ripley.
  • Then, Percy asks more generally about the "inevitable conflict" they run towards. This one hasn't really occurred yet, but the fortune teller claims "the path will change" and shows them pictures of the earth cracking and a skull. The final arc sees Vox Machina doing their best to save the world from Vecna, a lich whose emblem is a skull with a single glowing eye.
  • Finally, Vex asks if she "made the right choice" in refusing Saundor. The fortune-teller says she created an opportunity for "unity and a new dawn," and turns over a card depicting a sun rising over a mountain range. It's possible this refers to her relationship with Percy. In Episode 72, she explains that Percy's decision to forgive Ripley led Vex to try and forgive herself for her shortcomings, and others for their betrayals, which had been bothering her since speaking with Saundor (making this a "new dawn" for her as a character). In the same scene, Percy kisses her, ending many, many episodes of romantic tension with a new kind of "unity". In addition, the symbols of the sun and the mountains are recurring motifs of Whitestone and the de Rolo family. In this case, unlike the others, it seems that Matt merely predicted where their subplot could lead, instead of giving hints towards answers he already had.
• Four Is Death: Episode 44 sees the party entering the sunken tomb to a Champion of the Raven Queen, a goddess of death. Matching the twin 4s in the episode number, the twins get into trouble: Vex died and Vax made a bargain of said death goddess to bring her back.
• Funny Background Event:
  • Episode 9 has a Call-Back on the blackboard that refers to Scanlan pooping on the bed from a few episodes before.
  • In episode 10, the blackboard says Hunter's Mark to remind Laura/Vex'ahlia to use her ability of the same name.
  • As Scanlan talks about his fondness for hats in Episode 60, the rest of the group mimes putting on their various hats behind him.
• Forgotten Birthday: At the end of episode 15, on the part of the VA who had one coming up in a few days. Cue a completely blindsided Dungeon Master.
• Gargle Blaster: In Episode 65, Grog purchases two bottles of highly expensive alcohol from a merchant in Ank'harel, but lets Percy and Keyleth have the first sips. The effects are powerful, to say the least. Grog is later horrified to learn that it's made using excreted fluids from an ankheg (a giant, acid-spewing insect), and decides to hold off on drinking it himself.
• Genki Girl: Vex'ahlia can sometimes be as excitable as her actor, Laura Bailey.
• Gladiator Games: The first half of Episode 17 was Grog challenging Kern in a pit fight. The first half of Episode 23 is the rematch.
• Global Airship: Percy invokes this trope, wanting to steal a skyship so that the party can travel around Exandria while fighting the dragons of the Chroma Conclave. Besides Scanlan, none of the other members are on board with the idea, pointing out that the dragons could just knock the ship out of the sky.
• Got Volunteered: Zac suggests doing something "crazy" if the subscriber count reaches 4,000 by the night's end. He completely shoots himself in the foot by saying Vox Moronica (from episode 12) will do a rap video if the channel gets 4,000 subs (which it naturally does). At the show's end, he laughs at himself while saying that he has to inform Dan Casey and Ify Nwadiwe about "the work I volunteered them for".
• Graceful Landing, Clumsy Landing: In episode 25, three characters jump out of a window in quick succession. Vax, the lithe and dexterous rogue, lands with a tumble and quickly gets up and running. Lord Briarwood, the strong and muscular fighter, executes a perfect Three-Point Landing. Lady Briarwood, the graceful and refined Lady of Black Magic, botches her roll and lands flat on her ass.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • Orcus, the god of undeath. His horn indirectly caused the entire catastrophe with K'varn in the Underdark, and a second horn still exists in the world somewhere. However, being a god, it's unlikely the party will confront him directly.
  • Orthax, the entity with which Percy made his vengeance pact three years before the stream started. Comes to a head in Episode 35, but had been pushing Percy towards revenge and slowly corrupting him for years before he realised his dream wasn't just a dream.
• Guest-Star Party Member:
  • In the first ten episodes, the party temporarily gains the aid of a morally ambiguous Mind Flayer named Clarota and a paladin named Kima. They take part in most of the battles the party has in this arc and even use actions and class features normally only available to player characters.
  • Played more literally after the team is divided up, as the guild members who joined them for their bounty hunts were played by other actors — Mary Elizabeth McGlynn and Felicia Day for Vex's team, Wil Wheaton and Will Friedle for Vax's.
  • Episode 25 has Kit Buss, one of the official artists, guest starring as her artist avatar Lillith.
  • Jason Charles Miller appears in episode 41 as a Half-orc member of The Clasp thieves guild.
  • Mary and Will return in episode 43, to much rejoicing. Later in the episode Kima also rejoins the party, just as badass as ever.
  • Episode 46 has Chris Hardwick join the group as a candle making necromancer who travels around with his undead thralls (Carol, Coral, Fatty Arbuckle, and Stimpy).
  • Episode 55 has Chris Perkins playing Shale. A tougher-than-nails Goliath crone who was once part of Grog's herd.
  • Patrick Rothfuss joins the fun in Episode 56 as Kerrek. A blacksmith/community leader with the patience of a sage, that Vox Machina comes across outside the gates of Westruun. He returns about 30 episodes later in time to join the heroes in venturing through the dungeon of an exiled necromancer named Opash.
  • Nate Stevenson in episode 93 as Tova, a Dwarven Blood Hunter separated from her team.
  • Jon Heder in episodes 99 and 100 as Lionel/Chod, a Half-Orc ducklingual Bard-barian that unintentionally arouses resentment and envy in Grog just by being another dumb Barbarian.
  • After a brief cameo at the end of episode 21, Darin De Paul makes a proper guest appearance in episode 105 as Sprigg Brokenbranch, a Gnomish Arcane Trickster who is the key to Ioun's domain.
  • Episode 113 sees Joe Manganiello join the party as the Red Dragonborn Paladin/Barbarian Arkhan. Him, combined with Travis/Grog...
• Gun Twirling: The first thing Scanlan does when he gets his hands on Dr. Ripley's gun is to twirl it, which promptly results in the rest of the group deciding it's a bad idea to allow him to handle a firearm. ^note He actually pulls the trigger while he does this. Thankfully the gun wasn't loaded at the time.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Three of the party are all the half-elven flavor of this trope.
• Hated by All: The Trickfoots as a family appear to have this; it's repeatedly emphasized that they run into trouble wherever they go and are generally looked upon as crooked and untrustworthy, and are very rarely able to safely stay in one place for long as a result.
• He Knows Too Much: Desmond, the Briarwoods' carriage driver, is captured by Vox Machina and not a day later is nearly assassinated by invisible air monsters working for his former employer. Thankfully, Vox Machina anticipated this and save him in time to get more information about the Briarwoods from him.
• He Who Fights Monsters: In Episode 25, there were a number of... acts bordering upon excessive violence, to the point where Keyleth called the entire group out on it at the beginning of Episode 26. They're even pulled off the Emon Council by Uriel for their actions. As the Whitestone arc continues, it worsens, with the team executing prisoners, torturing them or cutting them down as they run away.
• High-Altitude Battle:
  • Episode 5 gives us one of these, though it doesn't end in the best circumstance. Nevertheless, any one that you can somewhat walk away from, isn't a failure.
  • Episode 10 gives us a flying creature, called a cloaker, chasing a boat with our heroes in it.
  • Episode 15 has one atop an airship surrounded by wyverns and a griffon (all with riders).
  • Episode 67 features the time skydiving from a skyship onto a boat, using flying brooms, magical wings, and various spells that turn people into giant birds to take the ship from above.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: Liam indulges in this occasionally as Vax. Every so often, he says he'll play "tiefling's advocate" or, when trying to choose something, recites the rhyme "Eenie menie mynie moe, catch a druid by the toe."
• Holy City: Vasselheim in the second arc. Of the Multi-Deity flavor. The deities within the city are:
  • Bahamut, the god of metallic Dragons, justice and nobility and Lady Kima's patron deity.
  • Kord, The god of Strength, Warfare, and Storms. A traditional D&D god.
  • Erathis, the goddess of civilization and the muse of great invention, founder of cities, and author of laws.
  • Melora, goddess of the wildlands and seas.
  • The Raven Queen, goddess of Death and Vax'ildan's patron deity after he became her champion.
  • Ioun, Mistress of Knowledge, has a hidden temple where Osisa resides and guides the Slayer's Take.
  • Finally, there's Sarenrae, Pike's patron deity, and a deity of healing, the sun, and protection. Interesting in contrast to Kord, as she's from Pathfinder's setting.
  • Percy's hometown of Whitestone is revealed to worship the sun god, Pelor. Whitestone is also home to a temple of Erathis. Percy later arranges for the creation of a shrine to the Raven Queen for Vax.
  • The Platinum Sanctuary High Bearer was initially concerned that the Chroma Conclave's attack on Emon was caused by Tiamat, sister and rival of Bahamut.
• Hope Spot: In at least two episodes:
  • Episode 68 has Percy die, but be revived with Pike's necklace. A second KO follows, but he's once again healed. However, Ripley has been focusing on him the entire battle, and finally kills him a second time. Notably, this is the first onscreen death that wasn't resolved the same episode, and the players are visibly unable to keep themselves together.
  • Episode 102 has Vax outright Disintegrated by Delilah's spell, but Sam successfully argues for a couple of retroactive checks to allow Scanlan to pull off a clutch Counterspell. However, Matt just has Vecna use his next action to Disintegrate Vax anyways, leaving no body to revive.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Three major examples:
  • Episode 13: The Elder Brain of Yug’Voril, a huge sack of hit points that was constantly getting stronger and summoning more and more mind flayers. The party quickly realized they needed to get out of there rather than try to fight an entire city.
  • Episode 39 and 40: The Chroma Conclave, a group of four ancient dragons, attack Emon. Grog attempts to engage one, but the party immediately realizes they need to run when one of the dragons slaughters an entire crowd of people. In the next episode, they are set against the white dragon Vorugal in a desperate fight to buy time for civilians to get into their keep, and are only saved from destruction by the timely intervention of the larger red dragon sending its underling away.
  • Episode 102: The first battle against Vecna is this, full stop. The lich has support from Delilah, already proven to be an incredibly formidable opponent, and a death knight, an evil undead paladin that is one of the most dangerous undead in the game. The battle ends with Delilah dead, but the death knight barely fazed and Vecna hardly even scratched (for reference, Vox Machina did 275 damage to Vorugal in the above encounter. They barely did 50 to Vecna.) Meanwhile, Vecna killed Vex (temporarily) and Vax (less temporarily) and forced the party to flee to another plane.
• Hot Springs Episode: Episode 56 "Hope" starts as one of these, as Scanlan decides his version of Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion contains a working hot spring, in which the party relax after their lengthy battle the episode before, as well as having a Mundane Made Awesome cannonball competition.
• House Rules: Percy's "Gunslinger" class does not exist in D&D, so Matt made a special homebrew version for him.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Since it's a D&D game, this is usually averted since all the abilities and effects are written down. On rare occasion is it played straight, like when Keyleth cast Wind Walk, a 6th-level traversal spell, in the middle of a fight. Or when Vex'Ahlia tried to figure out the enchantment on the flying broom, which she nicked from a temporary party member played by Chris Hardwick.
• Hungry Weapon: Craven Edge, Sylas Briarwood's sentient greatsword, perpetually hungers for the blood of its victims. In the final arc, the group recovers the Sword of Kas, which is sentient and always seeking to be bathed in blood as well as hungering for the death of Vecna specifically.
• I Ate WHAT?!: Taryon and Keyleth don't respond particularly well to realizing that the intoxicating powerstones they've inhaled energy from for a quick buzz actually contained fragments of damned souls!
• Implied Death Threat: Percy (in disguise) tells the Briarwoods about how Vox Machina killed a previous ally, an Illithid, for betraying and attacking them. He's obviously alluding to the fact that the Briarwoods betrayed and slaughtered his family, and that they'll one day meet the same fate as Clarota.
• Indy Escape: The mini-dungeon under the Velvet Cabaret in episode 20 features the classic sloped tunnel and rolling boulder.
• Interesting Situation Duel: During Scanlan's solo mission to cause a distraction during the group's assault on the new nobles of Whitestone he has a brief but impressive confrontation with Duke Vedmire: A gnome fighting a goliath on the roof of a burning building during a thunderstorm!
• Ironic Echo:
  • In episode 24 at the feast with the Briarwoods, the trope is used interestingly - a disguised Percy, after getting some key information, proposes a toast to "gracious hosts". It was as their hosts threw a feast in their honor that the Briarwoods began the brutal massacre of Percy's household and family, and the information he obtained was the story of how they made their "inheritance" of the castle and lands look legitimate.
  • The carriage driver, during his interrogation in Episode 26, claims that "an enemy of an enemy doesn't necessarily make a friend." Keyleth's response is "no, but it can make them allies." It's not word for word, but Keyleth is actually echoing Clarota, of all people. And we all know what a great ally he turned out to be.
  • Vax gives one to Percy in Episode 29, parroting his "Your soul is now forfeit!" killing blow from Episode 25:
    Vax: (to Percy) Your soul need not be forfeit, Percival.
  • Percy excitedly telling Vax, "Vax? I have a sister!" in Episode 32 gets echoed in the next episode, after the party finds and rescues Cassandra, and she proves to be an Annoying Younger Sibling:
    Keyleth: Percy! You have a sister!
    Percy: (clearly irritated) Oh, god, I do.
  • Cassandra de Rolo betrays the party in Episode 34, saying that because she was left for dead by Percy, she's a Briarwood now. However, in the next episode, a dying Delilah Briarwood stares up at Cassandra and says "You could've been my daughter." She retorts coldly, "No. Cassandra is a de Rolo. And you took them away from me. And now I'm taking everything away from you!" and stabs her dead.
  • Percy's infamous line to Ripley in Episode 33 "You are the luckiest woman in Whitestone, do you know why? Because you're at the bottom of my List." receives a pseudo-echo from Ripley herself, who says "another name off the List" when she kills Percy in Episode 68. This same line gets echoed again by Keyleth in reference to Raishan, with Percy turning it around for her:
    Keyleth: But she's at the top of my list.
    Percy: I don't recommend lists.
  • Tiberius coins the phrase "I encourage violence" in Episode 6, and it becomes something of a Running Gag. All the way in to Episode 72, it comes back as the complete opposite when Scanlan uses "I encourage peace" as the epitaph on Tiberius's memorial.
  • Episode 39, when Scanlan, Percy, and Keyleth are talking about how she should travel to Whitestone to talk to Allura about the skull, she complains that she'd be wasting a sixth-level spell just to be a glorified messenger and Scanlan retorts that she wasted one for no reason, referring to the Wind Walk fiasco. In Episode 78, Scanlan ends up doing the exact same thing, complaining that he wasted a fifth-level spell for no reason when he has to drop his Seeming spell to demonstrate the party's prowess to potential allies.
  • In Campaign 1, Percy (played by Taliesin) makes an iconic and inspiring speech around the line "Life needs things to live" arguing for the party to help a city under siege by assisting with their supplies and logistics. The slightly goofy line gets echoed and called back several times. In Campaign 2, Caduceus (played by Taliesin) makes an iconic and inspiring speech around the line "Life doesn't need things to live", arguing that the party should help the people of a community in danger of extermination evacuate even if it means having to leave all their possessions behind.
• Irony: When Percy interrogates the carriage driver in Episode 25, he begins listing off the names of his family members to confirm their deaths, because Delilah's taunt, "be nice of you to visit your family once in a while", makes it sound like they might still be alive. The only name Percy doesn't say is exactly who Delilah was referring to: Cassandra de Rolo, whose death he witnessed himself.
• It's Personal:
  • Not that Vox Machina lacked reasons to hate the Chroma Conclave, but when they discover their murder of Tiberius it's obvious the group is struck to the core, and the quest becomes a vendetta.
  • Also applies individually to Percy towards the Briarwoods, Keyleth towards Raishan the green dragon, and to the twins towards the dragon who killed their mother and razed their hometown.

J-M

• Just a Stupid Accent: The party members play it safe with either Received Pronunciation (Vax, Vex, Percy, Scanlan), an East London accent (Grog), or their own, mostly Midwestern American accents (Keyleth, Pike).
• Karmic Death:
  • Anna Ripley's. After she pursues vengeance against Percy and kills him, the rest of Vox Machina take their own vengeance immediately afterwards.
  Scanlan: Percy's killing you right now. Not us.
  • Raishan's. For someone who compared Vox Machina and all of Exandria to ants, she clearly underestimated them all as she suffered a twofold death: the death of what defined her (her intellect, cunning, and pride) due to Keyleth's Feeblemind, and the death of her own physical body at the hands of Kerrek, who represented the very people she mocked. As icing on the cake, Keyleth strikes her corpse with the Spire of Conflux, accelerating and finalizing Raishan's disease, completely destroying what remains.
  Keyleth: You should know, Raishan, I've stepped on plenty of anthills in my day. Those that don't die, revolt. And guess what? There's some pretty nasty stings from some ants out there. The strength of a colony is stronger than the individual of one great, diseased foot.
  • Vax lands the killing blow on Thordak, avenging his mother, as he was the Vessar sibling most devoted to keeping her memory alive.
  • Grog does this by killing his abusive uncle, yelling "For Strongjaw!" and slamming his axe through him in such a way that he's almost bisected.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • The duergar queen attempts this on the party when things start going south, by blowing open the ceiling and letting magma pour into the room. The party manages to escape without losing anyone, but Vax is wounded badly enough to require several episodes of magical healing.
  • Tiberius tries to kill the Hydra in episode 17 by double-casting Fireballs... unfortunately, he also blasts some of his own by accident.
  • Scanlan is able to pull it off after gaining a Wand of Fireballs, albeit it did kill two innocents during the battle with Kevdak.
  • Keyleth also pulls it off in Episode 42 with her 7th-level Fire Storm spell, managing to kill a majority of enemies in one battle. She pulls it off again in Episode 77 with the Spire of Conflux, using two castings of Fireball to roast twelve lizardfolk.
  • Attempted byDr. Anna Ripley when she tried to send a Fireball spell towards several clustered party members, but narrowly avoided thanks to Scanlan's Counterspell.
  • Pike can use Flame Strike to summon a pillar of divine flame, which she uses the immolate the demon Hotis.
• Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: Every spy sent to Whitestone has either resigned or vanished, presumably because the Briarwoods don't want any information about their activities leaving the town. Kicked up a notch in Episode 27, where they send a pair of invisible stalkers to kill their carriage driver, who is in Vox Machina's custody. Luckily, Vox Machina foils the attempt.
• Kill the God: With Vecna's revival in episode 101, the story transitions to this for the final arc. There is also a deal in place to kill Orcus when the time comes, though it seemed to have been forgotten since.
• Kissing the Ground: In Episode 13, Keyleth does this as soon as the party steps outside into Emon. For context, not only have they spent the last week in the Underdark, they've just narrowly escaped an entire city of mindflayers, immediately after fighting and slaying a beholder possessed by the Horn of Orcus. The fact that they all survived and have now teleported to safety is very much worth celebrating.
• Knight, Knave, and Squire: Percy, Grog, and Scanlan fit this trope pretty well.
  • Percy (Knight): Insightful, well-read, Blue Blood.
  • Grog (Knave): Kills without much forethought, Blood Knight, morally and ethically ambiguous.
  • Scanlan (Squire): Most light-hearted during tense situations, rarely uses physical weapons, typically surprised when getting a killing blow.
  • Vax'ildan most identifies with the Knave, as befitting his Class.
• Lame Pun Reaction: In Episode 43 when Scanlan says the sphinx "gave us a lot to sphinx about," the rest of the table reacts with groans and Vanessa off-screen starts a sarcastic Slow Clap.
• Land, Sea, Sky: Not an obvious example, but Vex'ahlia represents Land, with her favored terrains, Pike represents Sea, having spent time after her pre-stream death on the Broken Howl to toughen herself up, and Keyleth representing Sky, as that she is an Air Ashari Princess. A case could be made for swapping Keyleth and Vex'ahlia too. Keyleth's connection to nature through her druidic magic (and her tendency to take the form of an Earth Elemental) makes her a perfect fit for Land, while Vex'ahlia's love for flying works well for Sky.
• La Résistance: Vox Machina form this against the Briarwoods during the Whitestone arc. The good people of Whitestone eventually help them fight the Briarwoods' undead minions during a final uprising.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • The duergar torturer who had been subjecting Lady Kima to the Cold-Blooded Torture noted above gets this when Grog rushes him onto a rack of his own tools, impaling him. Unfortunately for the dwarf, that's only the beginning of what Grog has in store for him... and then the victim he was torturing escapes and grabs a weapon...
  • King Murghol ends up subject to this whe he's decapitated by Scanlan, whom he'd previously felled. He didn't stand on his head, so Scanlan took it.
  • For turning on the team and trying to eat Scanlan's brain as soon as K'varn was defeated for good, Clarota gets his own brain blasted out by Percy.
  • The Rakshasa in episode 21 threatens to kill the second group's loved ones (Vex'ahlia, Keyleth's father Korren, House Stormwind, and Thorbir's daughter) and then attempts to escape his demise... only to have his Plane Shift spell neutralized by Tiberius' weaker Counterspell. He then attempts to flee the room only to plummet down thanks to a dagger thrown by Vax and then gets his throat slit, preceded by Vax telling him "Talk about my sister again..." And then after its pieces are harvested, Thorbir stabs the demon's empty eye socket with a jeweled dagger, saying "You will NEVER... harm my daughter".
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting sourcebook spoils a number of major plot points from the campaign, canonically starting sometime during or after the one year Time Skip, mentioning events such as Scanlan being the one to kill King Murghol, the Chroma Conclave's attack on Emon and Sovereign Uriel's death, Vox Machina's Enemy Mine with Raishan, the eventual defeat of Thordak and the Chroma Conclave, Vex becoming a noble of Whitestone and its rebuilding after the Briarwoods defeat, and Keyleth completing her Aramente.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Vax trying to find his lost snake belt in Episode 26, because "it's on all the fan art, so it really makes sense to have it."
• Libation for the Dead: Grog pours one out for Tiberius in episode 64, but uses water instead of alcohol because Tiberius was The Teetotaler.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Episode 18 and 19, Grog and Percy were the only two without access to spells. Averted somewhat, since Grog and Percy are still rather nasty with their damage dealing. This is no doubt in large part thanks to D&D's 5th edition combat Power Creep in various ways.
• Literal Metaphor: Victor the crazy old black powder merchant measures a hogshead of powder by filling a literal hog's head with it. ^note  It may be an example of Matt simply not knowing what a hogshead, as a unit of measurement, actually is since the hog's head Victor offered was smaller than a barrel, while a real hogshead is significantly larger. It may also be an example of Victor's Mad Scientist personality trait.
• Love Potion: Vax'ildan slips a Love Potion into Scanlan's Drink in Episode 109. Unfortunately, Percy is the target of his affections. Fun was had by most.
• Love Triangle: Gilmore (A) is in love with Vax'ildan (B) who is in love with Keyleth (C) who isn't sure about Vax, and presumably doesn't have feelings for Gilmore.
• Magic Carpet:
  • The group acquired one before the show started. Unfortunately it can carry neither Grog nor Trinket. It is lost in episode 21 due to passing through a pair of anti-magic sigils and then taking a dunk in an acid pit. They were able to make it into a carpet again, but the enchantment is gone. Re-enchanting the carpet is now something of a sidequest for the party.
  • After defeating Thordak and narrowly surviving their battle with Raishan, the party began to loot Thordak's underground lair. Among the vast amounts of loot was a new flying carpet, even better than the one they lost previously.
• Meaningful Echo: In Episode 40, Vax asks Vex to "not go far from him", even if she's out of earshot, out of fear of losing her. The echo hits in Episode 44, when he protests as she momentarily heads off from getting Vax out of a pit to inspect a sarcophagus that turns out to be trapped resulting in her death, and Vax is left wondering where she went.
• Mentor in Queerness: The only character who ever really had an angsty coming-out storyline was Taryon, late in campaign 1. When he came out to the Vox Machina group (episode 94), the gang immediately took on a bit of a mentor role towards him, if only by convincing him that he's perfectly justified in hating his homophobic and emotionally abusive father and doesn't owe the man respect in return. (There isn't really anything like a separate queer subculture to introduce him to in Tal'Dorei, since this fantasy setting is largely free of homophobia as a social norm.)^note  (Which makes sense if you consider that the goddess of law/civilization and the goddess of nature are in a romantic relationship with each other. So calling same-gender attraction "unnatural" or creating laws to persecute queer people would be blasphemous in most countries. Taryon's father's issues with his son's homosexuality were probably the result of toxic masculinity expectations and a narcissistic desire to raise his son as a mini-me copy of himself.) Especially Vax'ildan (in-character, because he's the most obviously queer character in the Vox Machina group, while Liam hadn't really come out to the audience yet) and Percy (semi-in-character, because Percy was played as mostly straight, but Taliesin was already making his bisexuality quite obvious^note  (mainly through his purple mohawk/undercut; he publically came out a couple of months after this episode) and he probably has the most contact with the LGBTQ+ community in real life, so he was the first to realize where Sam was going with this improv scene and started feeding him leading questions to help ^{(Related out-of-character info about the queer character's player)} (However, while Sam has never indicated that he identifies as anything other than straight despite his joke-flirting with and deep affection for his BFF Liam, he does have an older sister who has been out as a lesbian ever since he was a child, and a younger sister who played a queer teenager with a much-written-about coming-out storyline on a daytime soap, back when this was still very unusual in the mainstream media - so it's not like Sam didn't know what he was doing with his gay character's storyline.)), who both immediately offered their moral support and told Taryon not to base his identity on queer-erasing media. (In this case, biographies of famous adventurers he was trying to emulate, thinking that he needs to become a ladies' man because he had never read about a male hero who's attracted to older men.)
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: The greatest magic-users are all notable for their ability to open wormholes to summon arcane meteors to devastate their opponents. The genius dragon Raishan begins her first real fight with this maneuver just to show off her power. The final battle goes further beyond, as the boss uses this ability three times.
• Mind Screw: In Universe example. Poor Grog suffers a bad one when Kima tries to invoke "lying is such an ugly word".
  Kima: Mr. Vord starts coming around asking questions? ...Tell him you haven't seen me.
  Grog: Lie?
  Kima: No, no... Just tell him you haven't seen me.
  Grog: But I have seen you.
  Kima: Tell him you haven't.
  Grog: (Turns to the others for help, the expression on Travis' face sending everyone into helpless laughter.)
• Moe Greene Special: Vax frequently goes for his opponents eyes. Vex and Percy also score kills this way, occasionally.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • Episode 24, twice. It starts with Percy's tearful recounting of his backstory, then jumps almost immediately to three hours of Vox Machina comedy shenanigans...and then ends with a tense dinner scene with the Briarwoods.
  • Foreshadowed in the title of Episode 26, "Consequences and Cows". Begins with Keyleth playing The Conscience and lecturing them about Tiberius killing an unconsciouss old woman and Percy torturing a prisoner, goes on to them being summoned before Sovereign Uriel, being read the riot act, divested of their council seats and effectively being put on probation then peaks with their prisoner, the coach driver for the Briarwoods, giving a heartrending tale of what life in Whitestone is like under the Briarwoods and their henchfolk. Then Tiberius gets hilariously drunk followed by...Vox Moochina.
  • In Episode 34, Keyleth disintegrates Sylas Briarwood with a Sunbeam, and Vox Machina starts celebrating. Vex calls out "How's that feel, Lady Briarwood?" Then Matt describes her screaming for her husband and bursting into tears, and the whole table falls quiet.
  • Most of episode 44 is mostly silly and lighthearted character interaction...and then we find out what a tribe of Kuo-Tuas have been worshipping. Things get worse when Vex suddenly dies after the battle, and Kashaw pulls an apparently risky Revivify to bring her back.
    • The second event is especially abrupt. One moment, everyone is goofing around and teasing Vax because he's stuck in a hole. Less than a minute later, Vex is dead on the ground, and Vax is the last to find out because everyone is too shocked to help pull him up.
  • In episode 45, after Keyleth tearfully recounts to Vex the events that led to her revivification, we smash cut to Scanlan and Grog, cheerfully goofing around before Grog decides to have a shit and talk to his sword.
  • Episode 64: The beginning has a humorous aftermath that comes from coming back from the Feywild. The end has the discovery of Tiberius's death.
  • Episode 66: For most of the episode, other than the battle with a cobalt golem, the party is enjoying themselves in Ank'Harel. And then at the end of the episode, they discover that Mistress Asharru is dead, Cabal's Ruin has been stolen, and the perpetrator... is Dr. Anna Ripley herself.
  • Episode 69: It begins with Percy being taken back to Whitestone, Vex confessing her love to him (even though he may not have heard her), and the resurrection ritual managing to bring him back to life. Then, celebration occurs with the party gets shit-faced in a tavern where heartwarming talks and letter reading are done. Then the episode ends with the reveal that Raishan has been among the people of Whitestone all this time under the guise of Seeker Asum, and now she seeks an alliance with Vox Machina to slay Thordak.
  • In the middle of grieving for Vax in the final episode, Grog decides to pull a card from the Deck of Many Things. He draws one of the worst possible cards he could get (The Void), which results in the five remaining members having an offscreen trip to Pandemonium to get his soul back.
• Morton's Fork:
  • The party is faced with this in episode 27 — stay in Emon as ordered to find evidence but likely end up guilty, or attack the source of the problem in Whitestone with an equal chance of them becoming outlaws. They ultimately choose to do the latter.
  • It happens again in Episode 81. They either go in to fight and kill Raishan while both sides are wounded and spent where there is a higher risk of people in the party dying, or wait until they are fully rested and then go in the evening and hopefully catch her unawares before she herself fully recovers. Keyleth ends up being the one who has to make the choice for the group. She chooses the latter.
• Mundane Made Awesome:
  • The arm-wrestling contest in Episode 36 - Matt plays the regular battle music to go along with each bout.
  • The cannonball contest in Episode 56, which sees every member of Vox Machina breaking out absolutely ridiculous tactics to win. The victor is Percy, who wins by diving into the water with a kettle full of raw sodium.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members: Matt gave the party a choice between taking Gilmore or Allura to the Thordak fight. After trying (and failing) to pawn the decision off onto them (and hence Matt himself) or other NPCs, they eventually decide on Gilmore.

N-P

• The Necrocracy: Whitestone is run by the Briarwoods (one of whom is a vampire, and the other a powerful necromancer of some flavour) and policed by six stone giant zombies as well as a number of unidentified undead minions. Also, the entire town, down to the soil, has been polluted by some kind of undead corruption.
• Nerf:
  • After episode 17, the homebrew rules for Quicken Spell received a noticeable downgrade (now only casting up to 2nd level spells). Considering the damage Tiberius had done to the Hydra at full power, quite justified. This is still a more powered up version than the one you'll find in the Player's Handbook, which only allows for a cantrip to be cast as a Quickened Spell.
  • This also applies to Percy as his Trick Shot was quite overpowered as shown during the battle with K'Varn and over time, his archetype was given several tweaks to make him more balanced.
• Never Split the Party:
  • Episode 3, The team debates whether to explore an apparently dangerous side route. Vex and Keyleth are in favor, but the rest of the gang opposes. The ladies decide "the hell with it" and go off on their own anyway, as the others assume this trope is about to hit in full force. The two actually end up discovering Clarota, who shortly after becomes an ally.
  • Episode 17, Vax'ildan and Vex'ahlia are very apprehensive when they are forced to split to create two teams. Being how they're twins, and have been together most every day of their lives, this was bound to happen.
  • Episode 25, Vax's decision to sneak up on the Briarwoods by himself nearly gets him killed.
  • Episode 29: Vax, Percy and Scanlan investigate a local church of Pelor to seek assistance from its Good Shepherd, while Keyleth focuses on reviving the Sun Tree while Grog and Vex guard her (because Laura and Travis hadn't arrived yet. This results in Percy falling unconscious while Vax and Scanlan are almost overcome by a banshee.
  • Episode 30, Scanlan splits off from the party to set up a distraction, while the other players attack a different opponent across town. Subverted, in that Scanlan's solo rampage turns out to be one of the greatest (and most successful!) things that has ever happened on Critical Role.
  • Episode 33, Percy calls Vax out for going off on his own again, because Vax acting on his own nearly leads to Cassandra's de Rolo's death. Despite Matt later revealing that the attempt on her life was a trick, it still counts as Vax himself nearly died yet again at the hands of Professor Anders, a dominated Grog, and two Helmed Horrors.
  • Episode 111 follows the party's journey through The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. A particularly dangerous passage prompts them to spend some time making complex plans to split into two groups and take the enemies ahead by surprise... until Sam suddenly remembers that the Macguffin allowing them to sneak into dungeon doesn't work if the party is ever 60 feet apart from each other. Matt, who has been maintaining a poker face the whole time, subtly gestures that he was this close to screwing them over.
  • Episode 112: Ultimately done when the party is looking for the Sword of Kas, with Vex making a terrible mistake: by using oil to make herself ethereal, she is no longer able to grant the effect of her anti-divination ring to the party, leading Vecna to immediately find about Vax and Keyleth, and Vax, in a panic, directly leads him to where Scanlan's mansion door is. It doesn't take long for the Briarwoods to zero-in their location, dispel the mansion and ambush them (all the while, Percy and Keyleth were really asking for that to happen by claiming that they were "relatively safe" inside the mansion). Were it not for Delilah failing her Counterspell on Keyleth's Plane Shift, they would have been in quite a pickle.
• Nobody Here but Us Statues: The Goblins one-shot - when human guardsmen come close, the goblins all get the idea to stay still and act like garden gnomes. Despite still looking like goblins. The guards buy it.
• No One Gets Left Behind: :In episode 88, Tary is struck down as the group is in the process of fleeing after a grueling battle with a giant monster. Grog, the only other one left in the fight, looks behind him and sees Tary fall...and runs away. Furious at him for leaving an ally (and a MacGuffin) behind, Percy casts Friends on Grog to make him go back and retrieve Tary. It nearly kills Grog, but both he and Tary make it out, and Tary is quickly given a healing potion to bring him back to consciousness.
• Noodle Implements: Before venturing out to Whitestone, Tiberius had a plan that involved buying every mirror he could get his hands on. Since Orion left the show before they could confront the Briarwoods, the specifics of this plan were never revealed.
• Noodle Incident: Many, considering the campaign had been going on for two years before the show began. For example, we still don't know the context in which Scanlan summoned a pony so Grog could decapitate it. Other incidents — like Keyleth killing a child or the reasons for Percy's imprisonment — have been de-noodled as the show goes on.
• Official Couple:
  • Sylas and Delilah Briarwood, a murderous and married vampire and necromancer respectively who madly love each other.
  • Vax'ildan and Keyleth as of Episode 65. It took them 2 months in-game consisting of 30 episodes (from Episode 35: Denouement to Episode 65: The Streets of Ank'Harel) but it finally happened with Keyleth confessing to Vax.
  • As of Episode 72, it seems that Percy and Vex may follow suit, as she's confessed to being in love with him and he's given her The Big Damn Kiss. Episode 78 flat-out confirms it when they spend what may be their last night together.
  • Although they were a couple before the campaign ever began and they had separated for reasons, Lady Kima of Vord and Arcanist Allura Vysoren rekindled their love for each other off-screen after they were reunited. They even get married during the one-year time skip.
  • Despite Kashaw technically being married to his own god, he still falls in love with Zahra.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted - there are now three Non Player Characters named, respectively, Shaun, Shane, and Shauna.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Played a little straighter with Vax and Percy, in Episode 24 - when Vax offers to help Percy get his revenge, he promises he'll let Percy deliver the final blow.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: Most of Vox Machina (not Grog; he bursts out laughing) has this reaction in Episode 16 when, in the Temple of Bahamut, guards escort Keyleth in shackles to the rest of the party. It's strongest with Tiberius, though:
  Tiberius: Seriously? Again? Your Highness, what is your problem?
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • In Episode 41, when Vex tries to offer Jarrett a bonus of 100 gold, the rest of the cast is stunned.
  • In Episode 109, when Vex suggests that the fate of the world is more important than saving a few hundred gold, everyone gasps and Scanlan implies she might be unwell.
• Overly Long Name: Greetings, I am Percival Frederickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III (but you can call him Percy).
• Patrick Stewart Speech: Percy, fittingly, delivers a moving one to Keyleth in Episode 56, as he justifies rebuilding Westruun rather than simply relocating the survivors.
  Percy: This place is the human soul. It's what we have built with our tiny moments. To lose a place like this... We don't feel it immediately, but it would ruin everyone, in small ways.
• Prophet Eyes: Happens to Keyleth and Allura temporarily as they're scrying on Raishan.
• Player Headquarters: Greyskull Keep serves as this for Vox Machina, gifted to them by Sovereign Uriel after they saved Emon from a demon invasion in the pre-stream. After the Chroma Conclave destroys the city, they are forced to abandon the keep and Whitestone becomes their new go-to base.
• Pooping Where You Shouldn't: Scanlan is fond of pooping in random places (like hideouts of his enemies) as part of his crude humor. It actually becomes usefull after he buys a potion from Gilmore that allows him to scry through his feces.
• The Power of Friendship:
  • Episode 22 is chock full of this trope since its focus is the group supporting Keyleth on her Aramente both emotionally and by force of arms.
  • Played with by Percy in Episode 30. Keyleth asks if his quest in Whitestone motivated by revenge, altruism or friendship, and Percy says that any answer that was not revenge would be a lie. Still, he later implies that Vox Machina's friendship is the only thing stopping him from becoming as bad as the Briarwoods.
  • Played straight by Earthbreaker Groon in Episode 43, during his fight with Grog:
    Groon: Where do you get your strength?
    Grog: From my friends.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Before any given fight, Grog will always yell "I would like to rage," signifying that he's about to do just that and begin Hulking Out.
• Primal Scene: Two instances of this occur in Episode 89, where Pike makes the mistake of asking a very literal robot to sketch a bunch of characters in the middle of the night, resulting in the robot coming back with sketches of several people naked, in bed, and in various degrees of discomfort.
• Public Execution: The Sun tree in the middle of Whitestone proper is a once beautiful, but now dead symbol of the Sun god, Pelor. Now, it's simply used to hang seven people (and one bear) who are dressed up and painted to resemble the members of Vox Machina. Most likely to call attention to what fate would befall our intrepid heroes.
• Pun-Based Title: Several episode titles:
  • Episode 72 is called The Elephant in the Room, which refers to both a metaphorical elephant in the room (whether or not Vex will address her Love Confession during Percy's ritual) and the fact that Keyleth literally turns into an elephant in Percy's workshop.
  • Episode 81 is called What Lies Beneath the Surface, referring to not only Thordak's lair beneath Emon, but also Vex hiding beneath the surface of the water in a bathtub that was also being used by Percy.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Pike had to leave after episode 16 as Ashley Johnson was cast in Blindspot on NBC in New York.
  • Tiberius had to leave after episode 29 as Orion Acaba had to leave for personal reasons. He's given an official sendoff in episode 37...which turns into a Bus Crash when the Chroma Conclave destroy Draconia.
  • In episode 85, Scanlan leaves Vox Machina after his resurrection to spend more time with his daughter. However, Sam Riegel stays on the show playing his new character Taryon.
• Putting the Band Back Together: After four episodes, in Episode 22, Vox Machina is finally back together. And there was much rejoicing.

Q-V

• The Queen's Latin: Despite the actors being American, all of their characters have quite prim Received Pronunciation, apart from Keyleth who retains Marisha Ray's usual voice most of the time, Pike who uses a cutesier version of Ashley Johnson's regular accent, and Grog who has a bit of London Gangster about his voice.
• Ragtag Band of Misfits: Three half-elves, two gnomes, a goliath, a human, and a dragonborn (plus a bear) make for an odd, if effectual, group. Add in an illithid and a halfling, albeit temporarily, as well as the myriad of interesting characters that cross their paths, and this is taken even further.
• Retirony: Sovereign Uriel steps down in Episode 39, claiming the city will be safer in the care of the council. Literally while he is making his retirement speech, four ancient dragons swoop in and start tearing Emon to shreds. It was unknown if Uriel survived their attack, until Gilmore later confirmed that he saw Uriel die.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Debated in the first part of Episode 30, in Whitestone. Scanlan and Grog think violence and intimidation are called for; Vex and Percy agree to a point, but think the violence has gotten out of hand; and Vax and Keyleth really don't want to go down that road.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • In episode 11, Matt flat-out refuses to let Laura knock K'Varn's horn off as part of the flavor of an attack. It's rare for Mercer to deny a player's request so bluntly, but it makes much more sense after seeing what the horn does later in the episode and realizing that it's placement wasn't just a fashion-statement.
    Laura: I wanna shoot him where the horn meets his head and knock it off of him.
    Matt: No.
  • Liam knew Vax was in love with Keyleth ever since the Underdark arc, but doesn't reveal this until Episode 33. Re-watch the second half of the Slayer's Take arc knowing this, and you'll see Vax is noticeably uncomfortable whenever Kashaw flirts with Keyleth.
  • In Episode 64, you can see exactly when Taliesin learns about Tiberius's fate. Taliesin is visibly saddened, but keeps quiet for about twenty minutes.
  • In Episode 65, the group informs Matt that some of his notes are showing at one point, being good sports and letting him hide them. Sam jokes "there's a Vestige on there!" and Matt replies "not anymore there isn't." With knowledge of the next few episodes, you'll notice Matt was giving a Sarcastic Confession: the Vestige they seek in Ank'Harel really was gone at the time they arrived.
• Running Gag:
  • The party members continually confusing Vax and Vex.
  • Whenever Grog uses the Dust of Tracelessness, Travis describes his eight-foot tall mass murderer throwing dust behind his back like a flower girl. It finally pays off when Grog actually became the flower girl at Vex and Percy's wedding.
  • In one of the early episodes, Vax badly burned his foot in some lava and the healing process required Pike to perform a healing spell on it once a day for several days in a row. Every time it was time for Pike to administer the spell, Liam insisted on putting his real-life foot up on the table, much to Laura's dismay.
  • The party loves to plug Glorious Gilmore's Goods during inappropriate situations. It starts out as part of their deal with that magic shop, but long after they stop needing to advertise for money, they keep on mentioning it to people with no chance of going to the store.
  • Vox Machina and doors don't get along. On several occasions, doors prevent the team from accessing areas, in some cases even causing damage. Put to rest with extreme prejudice in Episode 95:
    Taryon/Sam: *demonstrating his chime of opening* I can open any fucking door.
    Laura: *pose of rapture*
  • The servants in Scanlan's extra-dimensional mansion serve whole chickens for every meal every time the party rests there.
• Saintly Church:
  • As Sarenrae/The Everlight is the goddess of healing and redemption, her clerics are pleasant folk. Her temple in Emon, for instance, is always open to those in need. They charged 100 gold for a Greater Restoration on Tiberius but only to cover the cost of the spell component (diamond dust) and nothing at all for diagnosing/disinfecting Vex's vampire bite or the bit of glissfoil Keyleth requested.
    Cleric of Sarenrae: We're happy to heal.
  • The Platinum Dragon/Bahamut is more about sending out his paladins to smite evil For Great Justice. His Platinum Sanctuary is nigh-unanimously recognized as the safest place to seal away dangerous artifacts like the Horn of Orcus.
• Schmuck Bait: Matt seems rather fond of giving the party objects or letting them visit places that would almost certainly kill any character who touches / uses / visits them. Though he generally is fair enough to have an NPC point out that doing so would be a very bad idea (as with the Githyanki skull or the theatre in the Fey Wild) and usually the party is good about resisting temptation. (Except in the case of Percy handing Lord Briarwood's sword to Grog, fully knowing how bad an idea it is to handle sentient weapons and having just finally been released from his own Deal with the Devil; while Grog himself did specifically ask for the sword and offered to trade it for the Dragon Slayer Longsword, he also has too low an intelligence / wisdom score to not keep it after it revealed it was sentient and still stay in-character.^note Travis, out of character, was also making it extremely obvious that he really, really wanted the weapon and the roleplaying opportunity that came with it, and its stat card showed that it would be a very effective weapon in Grog's hands.) Though sometimes, they only survive because of sheer dumb luck, like when Keyleth touches the mini black hole under Castle Whitestone—Matt later revealed she basically only survived because she rolled a natural 20. The hugely powerful necrotic damage trap that one-hit-killed Vex (she got better) because the party didn't examine the high-level loot carefully enough before taking anything can probably also be counted in this category.
• Secret Identity: Scanlan Shorthalt, on many occasions, refers to himself as "Burt Reynolds".
• Sequel Hook: At the end of the final battle with Vecna, Arkhan steals Vecna's severed hand and attaches it to his arm after severing his arm, and teleports out before anyone can stop him. Given Matt has already stated his intent to continue the story a generation later, the sequel already has a Big Bad lined up.
• Serial Escalation: Makes sense for a D&D campaign. Each arc (counting the first four: the Underdark, the Trial of the Take, the Whitestone arc, and now the Chroma Conclave arc) manages to outdo the previous in terms of enemies, danger, and emotional investment on the part of the heroes. The escalation can basically be summed up in a single contrast between Episode 19 and Episode 39. How many monsters in Episode 19? One adult white dragon. How many in Episode 39? Four ancient chromatic dragons. The villain of the final arc? Vecna, a literal god.
• A Simple Plan: Scanlan is tasked with creating a distraction for the rest of the party. Highlights of the ensuing events, thereafter dubbed "Scanbo", include a spree of triceratops-based vandalism, the demise of numerous guards, a fight with a Goliath on the roof of a burning mansion, and a dramatic leap from a rooftop.
• Simple, yet Awesome: For all the impressive magical powers that Vox Machina brings to the table, their most damaging and effective attacks usually involve Grog hitting people with an axe or Vax repeatedly stabbing people with his daggers.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Doors. Scanlan in particular mentions that "me and doors don't get along really well."
  Scanlan/Sam: These fucking doors in this kingdom!
• Spin-Off: "Adventures of the Darrington Brigade" is a textbook example, not only turning Guest-Star Party Member Taryon Darrington (Sam Riegel) into the lead character but giving all the regular players the Darrington treatment ie. playing as completely new characters within Vox Machina canon.
• Spoofy-Doo: Critical Role released an April Fools' Day video in the middle of their Kickstarter, titled an "Animatic Sneak Peek!", that depicted the Vox Machina characters in the Scooby-Doo style solving a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax. Trinket the bear, who can normally only be heard by Vex using a spell, becomes a talking animal for the occasion.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Episode 24 was meant to give Percy his Day in the Limelight with the history of his character brought to the forefront; however, the rest of Vox Machina occupied most of the screen time with zany adventures during the pre-break.
• Status Quo Is God: A minor example, Pike summoning an Angelic Deva to fix Greyskull Keep, restoring it to a polished luster, after Vorugal's attack.
• Super Window Jump: To escape the Briarwoods, Vax jumps out of a second-story window. Due to a successful Acrobatics check, Matt says he uses Le Parkour to avoid damage from the glass or the wall. Then Sylas Briarwood jumps after him and scores a "perfect Three-Point Landing". His wife is not so graceful.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Percy's gun is something he designed and made on his own, which also means that he has to fashion his own ammo and mix his own gunpowder. In episode 23, Matt notes that most smiths know nothing of the latter or consider it a useless byproduct.
  • As it turns out, the leaders of Emon are pissed when Vox Machina attacks two nobles — the Briarwoods — during a formal event in their name, causing civilian casualties and property damage. The team as a whole is stripped of their position on the Council of Tal'dorei as a consequence. They're later reinstated after Uriel realizes he had been put under the effects of a charm spell.
  • Similarly, as it turns out, Scanlan has at least one illegitimate child because of his frequent casual sex in a medieval-based, contraceptive-less setting.
  • As Vax and Keyleth learn pretty harshly in episode 80, trying to take on an Ancient Green Dragon right after everyone has burned most of their more powerful resources taking on a red dragon means that Raishan is easily able to hold them off long enough to escape, even with the aid of several allies.
  • Goldfish are not magnetically attracted to water; it's advisable to turn into a flying creature when swan diving off a cliff. Keyleth learns this in episode 97.
• Sustained Misunderstanding:
  • When the group travels to Ank'Harel, their Marquesian guard Jarrett, who misses his homeland, asks them to bring back some fusaka spice. Due to the slightly evasive way in which he asks, the party misinterprets it as a request for illegal drugs, which leads to Scanlan spending hundreds of gold pieces and nearly getting arrested... but it really is just an exotic flavoring.
    Sam: What am I— am I just buying saffron here?!
  • When introducing himself to Grog, Taryon Darrington says, "Friends call me Tary, Jumbo." Grog, of course, starts calling him Tary Jumbo.
• Swallowed Whole:
  • Played with in Episode 54, where Vax and Scanlan teleport inside the ancient black dragon Umbrasyl the Hope Devourer. They manage to survive by way of crawling out of a gaping wound Grog inflicts on the dragon's belly from outside in the next episode, but it is described as a thoroughly disgusting and terrifying experience.
  • In Episode 88 Tangled Depths, Grog is swallowed and spat up by the Kraken a total of three times, and Keyleth and Vax once each.
• Tactical Withdrawal:
  • The High-Altitude Battle in Episode 10 was caused by Vax calling a retreat, the withdrawal in episode 13 was confirmed later by Matt to be required — Vox Machina had to get out of Yug'Voril.
  • Episode 39 has the team fleeing Emon as the Chroma Conclave launch an assault.
  • Episode 102 — the team Plane Shifts the heck out of the Shadowfell to the Feywild when it's clear they're no match for Vecna.
  • One last time in episode 112, when cornered by the Briarwoods after having retrieved the Sword of Kas. Getting back from this situation (which was on a time limit) involved parleying favor from Artagan.
• Take a Third Option: After being thrown off a dragon in mid-flight, Vax and Grog are plummeting through the sky. Scanlan, clinging to a hovering Bigby's Hand nearby, only has time to save one of them. In true Scanlan fashion, he figures out a way to save them both - by grabbing Grog, polymorphing him into a giant eagle, and diving peregrine-style after Vax.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: While the group convinces Clarota and Kima not to try to kill each other for the moment, it's each hates the other and they take every private moment they have with the other members of the group trying to convince them that the other should not be trusted.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Episode 7. When the first attack roll Vax'ildan makes is a natural 20, Marisha makes mention it was going to be a good day. Then, many more Natural 20s get rolled, much to Matt's frustration. :Turns out he was true to his word, because by the end of the episode... it turns out less than good.
    Matt: I will kill all of you.
  • In the same episode, Pike decides to slit an unconscious duergar's throat with her mace. When she tries to justify what she did and ask if Sarenrae would get mad at her, Matt simply says, "We'll see." And then in the next episode, her holy symbol gets a crack in it, signifying that her deity is indeed mad at her.
  • The first Q&A has Marisha wonder if they're ever going to face a Beholder. It was planned before that, but six episodes later one was revealed as the Big Bad of that arc.
  • During Percy's shooting rampage in episode 18, Taliesin commented that so many bad things are going to happen to him after the battle (which causes a nod to the camera from Matt). :Rimefang comes very close to killing Percy in the next episode... and then his backstory comes into play in Episode 24, which indirectly leads to many bad things, including Vox Machina being thrown off the Tal'Dorei council and Percy beginning to lose his grip on stability. It's like he's still paying for it.
  • In episode 19, Vex is frustrated that the other group was handed the flying carpet to use. Her fears are justified in episode 21, when the carpet loses its enchantment following a dip into an acid pit.
  • Matt reminds Vox Machina that they've got a dungeon in their keep in Episode 24, should they ever need to take anyone prisoner... which they do in the very next episode.
  • Just like K'Varn, planned beforehand (for about 2 years!), but a strange coincidence that a few large dragon minis were sent to Matt the week before Emon is attacked by a bunch of them. Even made more ironic when Vax rants to Vex about him not having a purpose in life... only to find one after the Conclave's attack through becoming the Champion of the Raven Queen.
  • In Episode 44, almost 10 episodes after the Whitestone arc ends, Percy mentions that he's finally starting to imagine and work towards a better version of himself. A few hours later, he accidentally kills Vex by touching an artifact without checking for traps first. He's... got a bit of an uphill battle ahead.
  • Similarly, Kashaw makes a wisecrack the group frequently makes when they find themselves messing with unknown objects: "...and you die instantly [upon touching the thing]". He definitely didn't suspect that to be exactly what happened.
  • In episode 97, Keyleth says "It's fine. We're gods!" and then jumps off a cliff and instantly dies.
  • Episode 88: The cast starts singing "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story", led by Liam, as Percy successfully leaps through the door out of the Water Plane. Exactly one minute later, Vax goes unconscious, gets swallowed by the Kraken, and dies.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
  • Percy to The Broker in episode 25, to the tune of unloading every remaining bullet he had into the guy's chest and blowing a hole clean through, trying to continue firing even after the gun empties and jams, then reaching to pull out Bad News before reclaiming his composure.
  • Zahra scores the killing blow on a boss monster in episode 44 with a Natural 20 5th level Witch Bolt (a spell with the largest damage die in the game) when it was only several HP away from dying anyway.
  • Nearly every member of Vox Machina describes in horrific detail how they individually help to kill a single, incapacitated enemy in episode 68. The enemy has their arm severed by Vax, a sigil into their forehead by Scanlan, their navel bisected by Grog, their neck crushed by Keyleth's Grasping Vines, and for the final blow, an arrow shot her into their heart and throat by Vex. Matt doesn't even have them roll for damage.
• The Three Faces of Adam: Grog, Vax'ildan, and Percy loosely fall into this:
  • Grog (Adventure): Cares little for authority, or much anything else if it isn't the two great loves of his life: Combat, women, and Ale.
  • Vax'ildan (Authority): Usually takes point when faced with combat situations (sometimes to the chagrin of everyone else), and usually takes a leadership role with Vox Machina.
  • Percy (Wisdom): Book-learned, quieter and more thoughtful than his male counterparts, very utilitarian in his combat style.
  • Scanlan actually has shades of all three faces, more balanced in him than the other three.
• The Three Faces of Eve: The main female characters loosely fall into this:
  • Keyleth (Child): Idealistic and a little naive.
  • Pike (Wife): Devoted, kind and wise.
  • Vex (Seductress): Passionate, slightly flighty and the occasional butt of Fanservice jokes.
• Time Skip: It happens. Usually in the name of keeping the game moving.
  • An entire year passes between Episodes 94 and 95.
• Toilet Humor: Scanlan's stock-in-trade (the scrying poo is the least of it) but Matt also described Keyleth's Gust against the cliff as "like a gentle fart".
• Took a Level in Badass: Not just the PC's - this also applies to NPCs as well as Kern multiclassed to Monk before his second fight with Grog. Tiberius lampshades this when he first assumes a dodging stance, yelling that "He Monked up!".
• Trapped in Villainy: The River Maw tribe were conquered by Kevdak and forcibly assimilated into the Herd of Storms. Shortly after Kevdak's death at Grog's hands, the River Maw's spokesman tells Zanror that they're leaving, and Zanror lets them because he can't afford causalities before fighting Umbrasyl.
• True Love's Kiss:
  • Invoked by Vex'ahlia kissing Percy after confessing her love as part of the ritual to bring him back to life. She rolls a Natural 20 to boot.
  • Likewise invoked pre-stream by Scanlan during the ritual to revive Pike, albeit it is still unrequited in terms of Pike towards Scanlan...at least until the epilogue.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: At the end of episode 17, the group is divided into two teams to be used in this way in the following four episodes.
• Underground City:
  • Kraghammer in the first streamed story arc.
  • There's also the duergar city and the illithid colony of Yug'Voril deep in the Underdark.
• Understatement: At one point, when asked why he looked so uncomfortable upon hearing the name 'Briarwood', Percy says "I've had dealings with them before. I find them... untrustworthy."
• Unusual Euphemism: Scanlan asks Kashaw about his...ahem...'preferences' by asking whether he'd go for "the rogue or the ranger." ^* In reference to the fraternal twins, rogue (Vax) meaning male and ranger (Vex) meaning female. The Critters ran with this, with bisexual fans claiming they "multiclassed" and asexual or aromantic fans calling themselves "clerics."
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Vecna's terrifying mobile fortress, the city of Thar Amphala carried upon the shoulders of an immense undead Earth Titan. The final episodes of the campaign concern Vox Machina making their way through the titan's innards, sneaking through Thar Amphala, and scaling the tower of Entropis at the heart of the city, to at last confront Vecna in the Final Battle at the peak of Entropis.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Some of the characters have more strained friendships than others. Tiberius and Scanlan tend to clash, as do Vax and Grog. Despite that, they're still utterly loyal to each other and everyone else in Vox Machina.
• Voiceover Letter: In Episode 69, courtesy of Patrick Rothfuss.

W-Z

• Wake-Up Call Boss: Umbrasyl is the first member of the Chroma Conclave to be killed, but gave Vox Machina their hardest victory yet, to the point where the party had to stop and rest in-between battles with the dragon before finishing him off. While his death did show that Vox Machina could kill the dragons, he was also able to kill dozens of Herd members, and the difficulty of the fight means that they wouldn't attempt to take on another Conclave member until they had found more Vestiges and leveled up more.
• Wham Episode:
  • Episode 7. The team, still aided by Kima and Clarota, storm Emberhold's throne room. They manage to kill the duergar king and most of his troops, but are forced to escape when the queen floods the room with magma. On top of this, one of the mind flayers and the queen teleport away - and worse, the queen took a mind-controlled Grog with her, who was carrying their bag of holding. Oh, and Tiberius and Kima are currently petrified thanks to the king's basilisks.
  • Episode 10 gives us the big reveal about K'varn — he's a Beholder, and he's been experimenting on himself in much the same way he'd been creating the monstrosities our heroes had been facing up to this point.
  • In Episode 16, the party successfully seals away the Horn of Orcus, then learns that a new holy path has been revealed... to a lost temple of Sarenrae, which Pike stays behind to help rebuild.
  • The end of Episode 17. As if having to say goodbye to Pike in the last episode wasn't enough, things get worse. When Vox Machina agrees to undergo a test to gain membership into the Slayer's Take to avoid being persecuted for the illegal slaying of a Hydra (which was already claimed by one of the guild's hunting parties), Huntmaster Vanessa Cyndrial decides to split the team into two separate groups to test how they fare with working with different people. This comes as a shock to the whole party, most notably Vax and Vex who had never been apart longer than a day since their birth. They try to ask the Huntmaster to reconsider, but she refuses. While Vex was able to mostly deal with the separation (or at least act like it), it's Vax who was the more broken of the two, as evidenced in Episode 20.
  • The end of episode 23. Percy is told that the Briarwoods are coming to Emon in a week's time.
  • The end of episode 24. The Briarwoods arrive in Emon. Through a series of mishaps, they manage to trap Vax alone with them in their room - and Matt's last line implies that they are a pair of vampires.
  • All of Episode 25. Vax is knocked unconscious by the Briarwoods, and his last thoughts are of Keyleth and his sister. Tiberius is hit with Feeblemind, which turns him into a primal lizard. Lady Briarwood possesses insanely powerful magic.^note  Feeblemind is an 8th-level spell, and she casts two 7th-level spells as well, which would make her a 20th-level spellcaster. The party is currently at level 12. Percy goes Ax-Crazy and shoots the hand off a servant of the Briarwoods. Kit's character Lillith appears, and she's awesome. And, of course, the Briarwoods have escaped.
  • Episode 34 hurts. Cassandra betrays the party, the Briarwoods charm Vax over to their side, Cassandra's name appears on the List, Keyleth kills Lord Briarwood, Vex is nearly killed (as in, she avoids death by a single hit point) by the Finger of Death spell, and Lady Briarwood performs some kind of ritual that stops all magic from working around the Ziggurat.
  • The end of Episode 39 single-handedly blows every single other episode of the series out of the water in the sheer scale of its wham. Sovereign Uriel abdicates and hands power over to the Tal'dorei Council... only for a quartet of ancient chromatic dragons to descend upon Emon and begin to lay waste to the city. Vox Machina is beset first by an ancient green dragon that grossly outclasses them, then an ancient black dragon, and finally the single largest ancient red dragon they've ever seen. Within seconds of encountering the dragons, Vox Machina realizes they have no option but to flee, and teleport back to their keep... just as the episode ends.
  • Episode 40 continues where the last left off revealing Thordak, the Ancient Red Dragon leading the destruction of Emon, is the same dragon who killed Vax's and Vex's mother when they were children. He was also the dragon they encountered in the Elemental Plane of Fire. To make it even whammier, Thordak's escape from the Elemental Plane utterly destroyed the Fire Ashari village, leaving the fate of its people unknown. Oh, and the other three chromatic dragons have moved East and destroyed Westruun.
  • Episode 43. While learning where they should head next, Vox Machina is informed that the dragons are moving east again and then get a live, as-it's-happening report of the Conclave's attack on Draconia. The attack leaves the country's armies utterly defeated and, to make matters worse, the floating islands upon which the country rests are pulled down by the Conclave, leaving the fate of Tiberius and his people unknown.
  • Episode 44: A Beholder appears out of nowhere during a fairly standard dungeon crawl - and that's not the worst part. After the Beholder dies, Percy sets off a trap that instantly kills Vex. It doesn't knock her unconscious - she just immediately dies in front of him. Thankfully, the party does manage to resurrect her, but at the cost of Vax making a deal with the Raven Queen, changing his destiny forever. In post-campaign discussions, DM Matthew Mercer feels this marked the biggest turning point in the story, one that even he never saw coming.
  • Episode 54 at the very end. Despite managing to pull off a successful trap against Umbrasyl, the black dragon still manages to break free, liquefy many members of the Herd of Storms, and flies away towards his lair within Gatshadow far out of reach of the party... with Vax and Scanlan inside him due to the rogue drinking a potion that shrunk him and Scanlan using Dimension Door to teleport into the dragon's body in order to attack him from the inside. Even worse, they are slowly getting crushed or digested. Oh, and Grog is dangling off the Bloodaxe embedded in Umbrasyl.
  • Episode 64. At the very end, Matt reveals that Tiberius died fighting Vorugal.
  • The end of Episode 66. Dr. Anna Ripley has returned, and she's killed Mistress Asharru and stolen Cabal's Ruin.
  • Episode 68. Not only had Ripley formed a pact with a vengeance-fueled Orthax, she also recruited Kynan to her side. By the end of the battle, Percy is dead.
  • The end of Episode 69. After Percy having been resurrected and Vex'ahlia having confessed her love for him in front of everyone earlier in the episode, it ends with Raishan revealing herself to have been masquerading as Seeker Asum ever since they returned from the Feywild. And now she seeks an alliance with the party to slay the Cinder King.
  • The end of Episode 76. After a grueling battle with a pit fiend, the party manages to annul their enslavement at the hands of a fire giant, obtain Pike's Vestige, and are given the ashes of Senokir's wife so she can be buried in Vasselheim. Then they Plane Shift home... only to see Fort Daxio, the place where they were planning to gather allies, under attack and falling, and they're still weary from their battle in the City of Brass.
  • Episode 80 is just one massive downward spiral. Raishan completely overwhelms an exhausted Vox Machina and friends, Vex and Scanlan are killed and resurrected during the battle, Vax and Keyleth both nearly die with no chance of revival, and worst of all, the Diseased Deceiver manages to escape with Thordak's corpse and a couple of dragon eggs in tow. They only survive due to Devo'ssa making their appearance, forcing Raishan to flee.
  • Episode 85. Scanlan leaves Vox Machina after giving them a brutal "The Reason You Suck" Speech, and at the end Sam introduces a new character, Taryon Darrington.
  • The end of Episode 88. The party just barely survives and completes the Aramente trial for Keyleth. But in the process, Vax dies.
  • Episode 102. Vecna is reborn and Vax is killed, possibly forever.
  • Episode 106. Vox Machina gains the knowledge and materials needed to seal away Vecna, but that's the only good thing that happens; Lady Briarwood has come Back from the Dead again and Vecna completes his ascension to godhood.
• Wham Line: There tends to be moments within episodes that just cause everything to change with just one sentence or a few.
  • In Episode 2, the party damage sponge is casually tanking some minor damage, but the whole party gasps as the DM reveals it's Intelligence damage. Suddenly, the party's strongest line of defense is comatose in a split second.
    Matt: Also, [Grog] takes 8 points of Intelligence damage, technically...you immediately fall unconscious.
  • In Episode 10, Keyleth deduces that the true identity of K'Varn, the villain of this first arc, and reveals to the audience that he's one of the most iconic Dungeons and Dragons monsters, letting the audience know that he's a force to be reckoned with.
    Keyleth: ...K'varn's a Beholder.
  • In Episode 11, a minute or two after Vex seemingly deals a killing blow to a boss monster, Matt says that the monster's turn is up next, proving that the boss's "death" was just a Hope Spot and that the three-hour battle still isn't finished yet.
  • In Episode 24, after racketing tension and some subtle suggestions, Lord Briarwood confirms his true nature by calling Vax "delicious," causing all the players to throw up their hands and scream that he's a vampire.
    Lord Briarwood: (to Vax, gripping his shoulder) Don't worry. You look delicious.
  • In Episode 39, the strongest member of the party takes a swing at an enemy that swooped out of the sky and rolls very well, getting a hit that would easily hit any Beholder, dragon, or vampire that the group has fought before. When the DM says the muscle man's attack misses, he gasps and says they have to leave, even though he's in the middle of an battle-rage. That reservation alone is enough to tell the rest of the group they have no chance in a direct confrontation with this new enemy, changing the focus of the show from charging bad guys to desperately trying to gain enough power to survive against impossible odds.
    Travis: 19 to hit.
    Matt: 19 misses.
  • Episode 99: A half-orc approaches Vox Machina to ask them for their help, telling them that he came with their long-lost companion, The Meat Man, AKA Scanlan, whom he is working for.
    Lionel: I'm with this guy. He's pretty big in our parts. You've heard of The Meat Man?
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In Episode 89, Vox Machina made a deal with The Raven Queen, they would hunt down and kill Orcus for her. The Raven Queen accepted and said she would call for them when it was time. This never got picked up on. Matt elaborated on Talks Machina that the Raven Queen never really took this promise seriously, as Vex had no idea how strong Orcus was at the time.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Tiberius and Vex call Vax out on his Cruel to Be Kind attitude towards their fanboy Kynan in episode 23. They turn out to be completely right, given that this led to Kynan being manipulated by Ripley.
  • Keyleth is so shocked by Percy's displays of Ax-Crazy in Episode 25 that she breaks her concentration spell and skips a turn.^note This was not imposed by Matt; Marisha simply decided to give up her turn for role-playing effect, probably because the group was already obviously winning.
  • The next episode, Tiberius is called out by at least three characters for killing incapacitated enemies and not really showing much remorse for it (though they do acknowledge they all do this from time to time). He seems to finally get the point when Allura made it clear she was disappointed in him.
  • Vax to Grog in episode 39 after he knocks Vax unconscious trying to rescue him inside a Purple Worm with Craven Edge. Grog refusing to back down and apologize combined with Poor Communication Kills about the portal causes Vax to leave for several hours, possibly losing faith in his ability to lead.
  • The episode after that, Keyleth calls out everybody due to said Poor Communication Kills leading to an in-party scuffle.
  • And then Percy returns the favour in Episode 42, after her inflexibility (and, in Percy's opinion, her ego) costs Vox Machina an alliance with the Clasp. Keyleth, however, doesn't back down and outright claims the exact opposite.
  • And then the shoe's on the other foot in Episode 50 when Percy gets called out on already knowing about Craven Edge and not keeping the party in the loop and with how his "cleverness" has led to bad situations in the past.
    Vax: Percy, you are clever. (Percy: I know.) It doesn't mean you're always right.
    Percy: I know.
    Keyleth: And you have this terrible habit of liking to push problems on other people.
  • Everyone to Percy for attempting to stab a disguised Raishan in the war room. Even if she was merely projecting herself to their location and she was then forced to reveal important information, it was still a very risky ploy.
  • Scanlan has a misguided one towards the rest of Vox Machina in episode 85 about him being brought back from the dead a second time and bringing Kaylie to possibly give her last respects despite promising her that he'd live, convinced the team doesn't care about him.
  • Vex to Vax, Grog, and Keyleth in episode 86 by sending Trinket to Cannonball them after they haze Taryon.
  • Literally the entirety of Vox Machina to Scanlan in Episode 99, but particularly Pike.
• Will They or Won't They?:
  • After his surprise confession, Vax and Keyleth spend about 30 episodes awkwardly negotiating their feelings and dealing with numerous complications before things are finally settled between them with Keyleth's confession in Episode 65.
  • Ever since the first custom arrow, Percy and Vex's Ship Tease had been going on for anywhere between twenty-four and fifty-four episodes ^* Episode 15 marks the first time Vex kisses Percy; Episode 45 is arguably the first indication that he has strong feelings for her. before Vex declares her love for him in Episode 69. As of Episode 72, they become a couple, after Percy gives Vex The Big Damn Kiss in the forest outside Draconia.
• "With Our Swords" Scene: The cast's characters frequently trade magical items after gaining new ones or before going into difficult fights.
  • Most notably, Vax has given his much-envied Boots of Haste to his twin sister on two occasions. In both instances, the two were facing impossible odds against dragons, the same creatures that killed their mother, and Vax put aside his childish feuding with Vex to give the group the best chance to avenge their mom.
  • Percy lends his Dragon-Slayer longsword to Vax for two dire dragon fights. Percy mainly uses his guns, but giving it up means Percy is defenseless if the dragons get up close and personal, which is the risk of his life.
  • In the face of the growing danger in their life and political intrigue, Vax gives up the Displacer Cloak he's had on for forty episodes to Keyleth, who he has come to love. This is right before they go to another continent to fight an ancient demon and a predator dragon in the middle of a snowstorm.
  • For the final battle, Percy gives up his beloved Boots of Spider-Climbing to his rival, Grog. Percy may be stuck-up and a bit of prick, but in the face of a flying necromancer, he's more than willing to swallow his pride to get a half-giant barbarian a better chance to get in close and finish the sucker.
• Won the War, Lost the Peace: A minor and subverted example: the end of the Chroma Conclave Arc. Vox Machina successfully collects all of the Vestiges of Divergence, kills all four members of the Conclave and liberates both Tal'Dorei and Draconia from their tyranny. However, at the end of it all, they inadvertently lose the trust of their beloved bard Scanlan Shorthalt, who then officially leaves the party to live a quieter life with his daughter Kaylie. In the grand scheme of things, this is undoubtedly a decisive victory for the free peoples of Exandria with little to lose for it, but Scanlan's departure is a nearly unbearable personal loss for Vox Machina.
  • A bit similar example happens at the end of the campaign, specially for Vex and Keyleth. Vox Machina has successfully saved Exandria by sealing Vecna, but Vax is gone forever, to stand with the Raven Queen.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Everybody assumes that Vax will turn into a vampire after getting bitten by one. Vox Machina drags him off to be blessed by a priest, who explains that vampires only turn their victims if they kill them with a bite. What makes it hilarious is that Vax plays up the effects of injury the entire time, so that when the priest explains that he's fine, he comes across as a bit of a hypochondriac. It also happens often at times with the rest of the party.
• You Mean "Xmas": The Winter's Crest festival serves as the campaign's Christmas episodes. The first one celebrated is summarized in comic form, and episode 36 has one in Whitestone (a much-needed Breather Episode).
• Zorro Mark: Scanlan kills a naga and efreeti in Episodes 1 and 46, respectively. Both times it's with the Lightning Bolt spell. Both times their bodies are branded with an "S".

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"What a nice story."
"Let's do it again!"

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