Critical Role founders reveal their favorite characters

Everyone has their favorite PC

Over the course of 10 years, the Critical Role web series has streamed three complete actual-play Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, and the latest game — Campaign 4, led by DM Brennan Lee Mulligan — started in October. The company’s adventures have also spread wider into the animated adaptations The Legend of Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein. Critical Role’s three previous campaigns were set in Exandria, with each campaign following different adventuring parties.

Any Dungeons & Dragons player will tell you that no matter how long you’ve been playing, or which campaign setting you’re using, everyone has their own favorite player character. Critical Role’s players are no exception. So we put the all-important question to Campaign 4’s returning Critical Role veterans Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, and Marisha Ray: If they had to pick a single character from all their Critical Role campaigns to play for the rest of time, who would it be, and why?

“I would probably pick Fearne.” Johnson told Polygon over Zoom. Fearne is a mischievous faun druid from Campaign 3: Bells Hells, who is well known for having sticky fingers that get her (and sometimes the rest of the party) in plenty of trouble.

Johnson’s other characters include the cleric Pike Trickfoot from Campaign 1: Vox Machina, Yasha Nydoorin, a barbarian from Campaign 2: The Mighty Nein, and the paladin Vaelus in Campaign 4. She says she’d choose Fearne, however, for reasons that go beyond aesthetics.

“I love Yasha so much, but I feel like Fearne gets me out of my head. Playing a character like that at a table, I think, is very beneficial for someone who can be shy, because you feel so outside of yourself.” Johnson says. “What I say, it's not as embarrassing, because you're like, 'Whatever, I'm a fucking weirdo. She's crazy. So who cares if I say something stupid?’ Everyone's going to be like, ‘Well, that makes sense for your character.’ So probably Fearne, because I feel so free when I play her.”

We posed this question to Bailey, who played the quick-talking elf-ranger Vex'ahlia in Campaign 1, the bubbly but naïve cleric Jester Lavorre in Campaign 2, the tortured sorcerer Imogen Temult in Campaign 3, and currently, the ass-kicking fairy-rogue, Thimble, in Campaign 4. Her answer was immediate: “I’d probably go with Jester, because she makes me very happy when I play her, and I like to be happy.”

However, Bailey’s choice came with a significant caveat, one that might not surprise fans who know how much she objects to playing a healer. “I would want to probably multi-class past the cleric so that I could just create some more builds with her. I love her personality, but with my level 20 cleric, I feel limited with healing. I want more damage spells so much.”

Combat effectiveness was also paramount in Ray’s choice. Ray previously played soft-spoken druid Keyleth in Campaign 1, the blunt-as-a-hammer monk Beauregard Lionett in Campaign 2, and the delightfully spooky Laudna in Campaign 3. She’s now in Campaign 4 as dwarven wizard Murray Mag’nesson.

“Beauregard. I love my badass shit-talking monk,” she says. “The good thing about monks is that your punch is always there. You can always just punch people, and you get a few opportunities at it every turn. So when in doubt, punch a bitch.”

However, like Johnson, Ray has personal feelings about her chosen character’s personality and morals that helped solidify her pick.

“I think Beau encapsulates a specific part of me that I rarely let out in my day-to-day life,” she says. “But when I do, man, it's so gratifying. So yeah, it's good to have someone in the back of your mind who's a piece of you that stands up to authority, doesn't take bullshit, and speaks truth to power. I think everyone needs a little facet of themselves like that in the back of their head.”

All of the Critical Role founders are part of Campaign 4, available to watch on Critical Role’s YouTube and Twitch channels, as well as Critical Role’s streaming platform, Beacon.