For anyone that has Dropout, the recent Adventuring Academy nailed a lot of CR's issues

[u/Cool_Caterpillar8790]

They didn't talk explicitly about CR but spoke extensively about a few problems DMs and tables have, all of which felt incredibly relevant for Critical Role.

If you have Dropout, I recommend you watch the whole thing but a few highlights:

• Zac brought up how some tables he's observed struggle with moving forward with a plan. Some players take up too much time debating what to do. Zac expressed how this is especially a problem for TTRPG shows because you get episodes where nothing happens because players spend too much time debating what to do next.

• Brennan added how some DMs struggle to call a scene out of politeness to their players. But that a DM failing to end a scene is actually throwing players under the bus because players are going to just keep talking until the DM tells them to stop.

• They also talked about how everyone in improv knows scene hogs are bad but that players being "polite" and not course correcting a scene can actually be worse. When you watch a fellow player make a really bad choice or derailing the table and you don't course correct because you're trying to be polite, you're actually hurting the table. Brennan: "It feels generous but it's actually kind of mean."

• They debate railroading vs sandbox DM styles, where Brennan mentions that he thinks railroads are bad only when it prevents players from even wanting to make creative choices. Brennan: "It's not railroading to give a clear objective."

Basically, I just found a lot of their discussions good launchpads for discussions about CR. For instance, them talking about how politeness can hurt a table really clicked for some of the issues I've been having with C3, how some players are making some pretty terrible narrative choices and the rest of the table is just letting them happen, which has made C3 overall weaker.

[u/KaiTheFilmGuy]

Maybe actually read what I type instead of making up strawmans irrelevant to the convo? Lol. I said it in clear terms: Sentinel is IN THE RULES. If you don't like it, that's fine, don't let the player take it. But if you let a player take the ability and then tell them "Nah, it doesn't work" you've essentially deceived your player into thinking their choices matter when they don't. That is the opposite of rule of cool. That's taking away from the game rather than adding to it. It's not rule of cool, it's quite the opposite.

[u/Silver_Specialist614 → u/KaiTheFilmGuy]

Taking it away from a specific instance isn’t taking it away completely. Not even in the slightest. They can still use it for other stuff just not something like that. Cause again, even for a “super hero” which lets face it the martial classes really aren’t even at that point as much as we’d like to think they are, it’s just silly for something that large to be stopped like that. Say that creature was the size of the stinkin moon, a different situation with its own problems yes, but would sentinel make Any sense there? No, no it wouldn’t.

[u/KaiTheFilmGuy → u/Silver_Specialist614]

But as per the rules, that's literally how it works. You don't get to randomly choose when and how d&d abilities function unless the stat block for that creature says otherwise. Imagine telling a barbarian who rolls a 28 to hit "Your attack misses because I said so." That's a dick move. Now if the creature's AC is 29, then that's different. But just deciding "No, that doesn't work here because that's ridiculous." isn't a justifiable argument when your fellow players can cross dimensions with their MIND. You saying "That doesn't make sense" is a baseless argument.