Critical Role Campaign 4's best combat episode so far was a total surprise

Intelligent combat is best combat

Despite being only 21 episodes in, Campaign 4 of Critical Role has provided fans with a number of amazing fights, from the gritty bar brawl against the Crow Keepers in episode 3, “The Snipping of Shears”, that epic Thimble vs Casimir stand-off during episode 8 “Fanged Revenge”, and even the Seekers have had a pretty monumental “last stand on a bridge” against the demonic sisters of the Candescent Creed episode 14, “A Bridge Too Far.”

However, the latest episode following the Schemers — affectionately nicknamed the "Employed Table" by players Taliesin Jaffe, Luis Carazo, Marisha Ray, and Liam O’Brien — has proven that, despite their declared focus on political intrigue, the players in this group are far from being slouches when it comes to combat. But living up to their name, the way the Schemers handle Dungeons & Dragons combat is very different from what we’ve seen with the Soldiers and Seekers.

[Ed note. This article contains spoilers for Critical Role Campaign 4 episode 21.]

In the latest episode, “The Point of No Return,” the Schemers uncover the whereabouts of Desmodus Blix, a student at the Penteveral, a magical academy, who recently went missing under suspicious circumstances. They discover him in the clutches of the Crow Keepers in the Dol-Makjar sewers and try to rescue him.

However, there are some very big problems. The first, as discovered by the use of Tremorsense by Murray (played by Marisha Ray), is that they are vastly outnumbered. Second, there’s a scary “mold spirit” in the room, conducting a shady deal with the Crow Keepers. Finally, the four Schemers are recognizable figures in the city of Dol-Makjar. Murray is the bursar of the Penteveral; Hal (Liam O’Brien) is a renowned theater director and the brother of the recently executed Thjazi Fang; Bolaire (Taliesin Jaffe) is a curator of the Lloy wing at the Archanade museum; and Azune (Luis Carazo) is one of the few arcane marshals left in the Revolutionary Guard. If they are discovered, there’s a good chance all their schemes will unravel, and they’ll find themselves in the crosshairs of Sundered Houses such as Halovar, Tachonis, and Einfasen.

Speaking from experience, often D&D players prefer to dive into combat and deal with the consequences later. However, the Schemers are forced to take a creative approach, and the result is (literally) magical.

Campaign 4’s Dungeon Master Brennan Lee Mulligan has played a tad loose with the rules as written when it comes to 5.5e. We’re not complaining, not when it provides us with one of the most dynamic approaches to handling enemy combatants in Campaign 4 yet.

Thanks to Murray’s Tremorsense, the group can pinpoint how many enemies are in the room ahead of them. Because of this, and using a combination of spells and roleplay flair, Bolaire, Hal, and Azune team up to try to lead at least a handful of them away. First, Bolaire uses Phantasmal Force — a spell that crafts an illusion in the mind of a creature you can see. He shapes it to look like a group of guards, and with Hal using Thaumaturgy and Azune using a rock to hurl it into the sewage, the group creates an illusion good enough to trick a handful of guards down a sewer tunnel and away from the target.

However, the Schemers are still eager to handle the fight as carefully as possible. They go up a level and are able to see into the main room, where the mold spirit and Zagi, the new leader of the Crow Keepers, are conversing. In front of them, on a table, lies an unconscious Blix. It’s here that Murray takes advantage of the tensions between the two parties involved in the deal to conjure up a Mage Hand and throw a dagger towards the spirit. This immediately sours negotions, and a fight erupts between the Crow Keepers and the spirit, leaving the Schemers an opportunity to swoop in and grab Blix.

While the fight doesn’t go perfectly (the group later runs into trouble due to a natural 1 roll), the Schemers are able to avoid a much worse fight than they would have faced if they had charged in. Most party members are full casters with Murray a wizard, Hal a bard, and Bolaire a warlock. Only Azune, a sorcerer/paladin hybrid, would have been able to withstand the martial might of the Crow Keepers, but veteran D&D players know how dangerous it is to face a group of rogues that can rain down Sneak Attack damage.

That’s why, true to their reputation as the Schemers, the group chose to bend the rules and find more inventive ways to deal with the Crow Keepers, resulting in a captivating episode of combat. While I’ve thoroughly enjoyed fights that combined the environment with siege combat — such as the long, precarious bridge and ballistae threatening to one-shot players in “A Bridge Too Far” — I found the Schemers’ more careful, precise way to deal with the Crow Keepers in the sewers worked best for me. For one thing, there’s additional narrative context about who the player characters are and what they stand to lose. It’s not just their lives at stake, but also the people who are close to them and the livelihoods they’ve built for themselves. You see this mostly in Hal, who, unlike characters like Azune, Bolaire, and Murray, struggles to participate in the violence the Schemers table meted out.

Additionally, the careful approach gave the Schemers the opportunity to show off their abilities in ways that aren’t just about dealing damage. Sure, Bolaire’s Phantasmal Force also deals damage, but he used it in a creative way that gave the table the opportunity to make their move without putting them in the heart of combat. While it’s always fun to see how much damage a character can do, the Schemers leaned into what makes their table unique and gave us some of the most intelligent approaches to combat we’ve seen in Campaign 4 so far. I can’t wait to see more of it.

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Campaign 4 is available to watch live on Twitch, YouTube, and Beacon.tv on Thursday nights at 10 p.m. PDT. If you can’t catch the episode live, don’t worry — Critical Role posts the episode to YouTube the following Monday at 3 p.m. EDT/12 p.m. PDT.