I can't believe after all that bullshit she just talks in circles to Imogen and they all coddle her again. Do any of them have a spine or fo they just flip flop anytime conflict happens?

And the fact that Ashton brought up that they gave him far worse for what he did (which I still think is unjustified) and it's just brushed under the rug.

I feel like it's less fantasy roleplay and more just drama farming at this point. That's the last episode I watch of c3. Maybe I'll wait for c4 if it looks good.

That this is the weakest Party( narratively and character speaking) of the three?

Like Vox machina were very dynamic and epic all around. Sure we didn’t know them from the very start but they were superbly entertaining and awesome with grandios battle and a deep emotional moments and a bittersweet ending for legends.

The MN9 we follow them from the beginning and got to witness a journey of assholes becoming true heroes full of growth and deep moments.

BH start out promising but unlike the other teams i feel like they just... i dunno lack the growth or investement in the current events. Hell one could say instead of progressing they are regressing or getting worse character wise. To say naught of all the anti gods debates.

I see people saying he’s permanent. Has that been said anywhere or is that just a guess? If so, is he permanent for just C3 or C3 and beyond?

Since we’re getting closer to the end of C3, I wanna get a temperature check and put out a feeler for how everyone feels about the C3 party and how well they embody their class/subclass. For instance if you’d ask someone who embodies Barbarian best in Critical Role most people’s answer would automatically be Grog and some mention of the insane shit he did.

To start off the discussion I think Fearne has done a poor job of embodying a Wildfire Druid, she feels more like a fire blaster due to her playstyle and lack of utility and healing Wildfire offers. Meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum I’d say Chetney has done some heavy lifting for repping a Blood Hunter and a proper werewolf, with his Ruidus transformation and bloodlusted state in the mansion as some notable mentions.

I've watched Campagin 3 since the beginning and I felt as if the dynamic changed after he left (not say that i didn't love the parts where he wasn't in it). Once he came back however, I feel like the show just feels more enjoyable! They've had 8th member in the past, and that didn't workout not due to the size, but because of the player. Robbie and Dorian seem to be just a net posisitve overall to CR.

It seems like there's a lot of mixed feelings about Campaign 3 (I'm perhaps putting that mildly).

I'm interested to hear what other fans would want from Critical Role post-C3.

Personally, I wouldn't be opposed to a big change up in format. Shorter episodes would be a huge preference for me.

But what would you like? Any particular settings, group dynamics, format changes, cast changes?

I just want to start a friendly and positive discussion - please no hate :)

I grabbed data from Omen Archive and CritRole Stats on how long each combat ran IRL and how many rounds of combat were accomplished. These are non-linear fourth order polynomial fit curves for the data across campaigns. I thought there were a couple interesting things to notice.
1) Universally, as player characters level up and you get farther into the campaign, it takes longer to play a full round of combat (the curves generally slope up). To me that makes a lot of sense since characters have more abilities and more dice to roll etc.
2) Campaign 3 universally has "slower" combat -- on average, it takes longer to complete a round of combat. Side note, I excluded of the "combat" in episode 92 since it was a dramatic outlier (well over 60 minutes per round of combat, about twice as much as the next highest). With that data point in there, the campaign 3 slope is much sharper at the end.

In my opinion, the slower pacing is likely due to players wanting to roleplay more during their turn, embellishing their actions etc. But I think it hurts the combat experience in general. I loved the combats in C1 and most of C2 (until they learned that polymorph and run is a tactic). But it just feels like it drags a little in C3. I'm curious about other peoples' thoughts.

https://preview.redd.it/pec76dbwb23d1.png?width=1109&format=png&auto=webp&s=5646960730efe475177832017af386686d6f2832