#mq&a

[masterqwertster]

Hey! What’s your thoughts on the legend of vox machina? What do you like and dislike about it?

Season 1 is great. Season 2 is pretty good too. But I think I have to go with the serious Campaign 1 lovers that Season 3 fell down on its face in several regards as an adaption. Perfectly good tv, but messed up on keeping several important parts in line with the source material.

Keyleth and Vax both got character alterations that weren't great from centering their romance too much. Plus Vax's sort-of animosity with the Matron of Ravens in the show vs actually being devout in the campaign. Bard's Lament was somewhat understandably cut given they didn't know if Seasons 4+ were happening at the time and didn't want to end on that sour note, but there was a really good fan pitch on here about how to run the "Scanlan leaves in anger but comes back" of it all within Season 3. The handling of Ripley kind of undercuts how all of Vox Machina helped avenge Percy, and has denied Percy his Vestige of Divergence, which I feel all of VM having at least one kind of helped the Legendary Heroes status of the party. The special bloodline that Zerxus picked up on in Pike and made Vecna themed comments on is intriguing, but I'm not really sold on her abandon the Everlight storyline they started.

Overall, the animation is great. And until more so the back half of Season 3, it was a very fun adaption with interesting rearrangements and adjustments from the source material with plenty of fun easter eggs. Not to say there wasn't some cool/good stuff in the back end of Season 3 (seeing zombie-Thordak!Raishan was pretty cool), but it does get undercut by the worse changes.

Still excited for Season 4 and to see how well Tary will run with it all.

[masterqwertster]

Hey. I was wondering if you could please draw what you think Termina looks like?

Not really. Mostly because I don't have a very solid idea for how I'd want to style Termina.

By canon descriptions so far, we just know that Termina is black clay and that she is obviously of the same style as Bolaire since Thaisha and Hal were able to draw that connection despite her broken state in the Overture.

But the thing about theatre masks is that the details and appearance are based on who/what they're meant to portray. And while we've learned a fair bit more about the mechanics of the Panto Play, we still know basically nothing about its story or what any of the individual Panto's character archetypes are. Even for Bolaire we only have guesses on what kind of character he was/is. With the main guesses being Tragedy for the carved tear tracks or Comedy because Lathalia is close to Thalia, Greek muse of comedy. Which are more genre than character archetype, to be honest.

I would guess that Termina doesn't have any high contrast color accents or details, simply because that feels like it should have been part of her descriptions, that some of the fragments are not black.

I think that to some degree it makes sense for Termina to be rather plain. She's Rauwyn's prison. The one who will be seen (directly) the least by the goddess for whom the play was meant to be performed. So where Termina pinned Rauwyn down (meta)physically, the other Panto are the ones that need to grab attention, be flashy and distracting from what is right on Rauwyn's face.

To get a little more headcanon territory, I wouldn't be surprised if Termina is a little more skull-like in her shape. A death's mask. Termina, terminal, terminate. The vengeance of the halflings upon their Shaper.

But that's about all I've got at the moment.

[masterqwertster]

You know how you wrote a story about Ashton sinking because he's made of rock? How will they get around that in the liveshow, if at all?

Honestly, they're probably not going to make it an issue in the liveshow.

I think that firstly because it has not shown up when Ashton has actually had to swim in the campaign. What particularly comes to mind is fording a river in the Shattered Teeth, and even more so the cave diving on Ruidus to find the water source/Rai'Doin portal. Ashton was never given extra mechanics or penalties to worry about while swimming for either of those.

Which, from a pure D&D mechanics perspective, makes sense. There's no extra penalties for swimming based on build in D&D. It slows you down enough on basic underwater mechanics without adding more on top of that. Could they role play/add it? Sure, but it's more work for the GM too to add extra mechanics/penalties for one player.

However, it's a fun thing to explore in fic where you can mess around with all the biology that is inherent to people being literal different species, and fic is a format where you don't have to worry about slowing down game play or detracting from the players' fun by being nitpicky.

Daggerheart's rules on underwater travel are to use a Countdown for characters holding their breath and taking action, with a Stress marked each time they act after running the Countdown to zero, as well as Disadvantage to attack unless they are aquatically adapted.

D&D has a handful of spells made for aquatic travel, Daggerheart does not. Though Daggerheart does have some items to help on that front (Gill Salve), and then Ribbets and (probably. not finalized yet) Tidekin are Amphibious.

So there's probably going to be some homebrewing stuff going on if Bells Hells is expected to perform long travel underwater, as Gill Salve only lasts up to 10 minutes (1 minute per your level).

Either that or they're staying on a boat or the shore to fight invading mermaid/aquatic people.

And to be honest, if Bells Hells is going down to the Maelstrom Kingdom, sinking to walk along the ocean floor isn't the worst strategy. It would just mean that Ashton misses out on 3D maneuverability, which their Portal Rage/Unstoppable has a chance of countering.

[masterqwertster]

Another question, because Ashton can essentially 'see' (dream) other timelines, do you think he'd sometimes see something in another world when Bells Hells or whoever they're with are about to enact a plan/half-baked idea and gone "NOPE! NOT DOING THAT!"

Maybe.

We haven't gotten to see Ashton get an essentially prophetic dream of what could still happen, much less act upon it. But, Ashton has loosely trusted what he saw of an alternate timeline to be true when he glimpsed the "stayed Hishari" version of himself post-Spark.

So I think if they found themself in a current situation that paralleled/matched what they saw in a half-beacon brain dream, particularly one that went badly, Ashton would at least call to pump the breaks and reassess if that's really the plan/idea the group wants to go with.

[masterqwertster]

This may seem like an odd question but, do you think any or all the adventuring parties of Exandria would attempt something stupid if one of their most trusted companions asked them something? Like, hypothetically seeing if someone can cast lightning bolt and hit something or someone on the ground or in the distance. I know there would be ones where it could be argued against doing, but like... I doubt the rest of Exandria's leaders have a proper plan for dealing with a couple groups of very powerful individuals, a few of whom are in leadership positions, all because of self control. And there's at least one person who can see alternative timelines and can inform people that "it may sound cool, but many people will die".

I'll admit to being a little confused by the nature of the question.

Because it seems to start as "Can the Exandrian PCs be baited into doing dumb shit by their friends?" The answer to which is yes, and it has happened numerous times in canon. The Vox Machina cannonball contest. Mighty Nein's Eiselcross snowball fight. Bells Hells porno fake-out. The list goes on. And it's largely low stakes, only our own asses in the maybe-fire.

But then Exandrian leaders are brought up... which greatly changes the context of what kind of stupid we're talking about. This brings it more into the Jester and Nott deface a (Braius's) temple, or Grog and Tary threaten a shop keeper category. Which, again, it has happened some in canon. There will be fall out, a potential arrest. But it's nothing that can't be dealt with or fixed.

And as an aside, our PCs are hardly the only level 20 beings in Exandria. Plenty of archmages and high priests and retired adventurers (think Kima and Allura) around to counter or fix problems caused by others on their level. It's just the nature of a D&D campaign that we generally don't see these people in action since we're focused on the party. Not to mention just the trouble that a low level adventurer/PC can do compared to a normal person NPC. So in such a world, there should be some systems to deal with exceptional people being exceptional idiots and assholes.

And then you hit the "cool idea, could be mass murder though"... and that kind of stupid is where it's not going to happen just because. Firstly, a trusted friend of the parties is not going to suggest something that kills random innocents. Or if such a suggestion is made, the parties aren't going to act on it because none of them want to kill random innocents, thus why a trusted friend isn't likely to suggest it. So at this point it's more like getting tricked into doing something that doesn't appear on the surface to be a bad thing. Which is again, not what a trusted friend is likely to do, because that is breaking trust.

Or someone is inebriated in some form, and their judgement shouldn't be trusted anyways. Even more so if both ends are in that state.

I hope this answered your question.

[masterqwertster]

Item: A Set of Dice Rarity: ⏶ Common

Do you consider yourself a lucky person when playing?

Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.

My mom swears by my luck at board games. Mostly that I rarely am interested in playing but I usually win.

[masterqwertster]

Item: An Old Key Rarity: ⏶ Common

What games have opened doors for you in real life?

Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.

I made friends because of Pokémon

[masterqwertster]

Item: A Stunning Frame Rarity: ⏶ Common

What game has the best art style?

Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.

Maybe not the best, but Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise is very fun with its vibrant colors and designs. The one thing I miss about not having an Xbox anymore is that I can't play Viva Piñata.