Podcast / Critical Hit

They get them sometimes.

"Until next time, listeners, here's hoping all your dice rolls are... Critical Hits"

— Stephen Schleicher, at the end of each episode

"Uh... whut?"

— Torq

If you came looking for the Game Mechanic which results in high damage, that's over here.

This page is for the Actual Play podcast Critical Hit, a Spin-Off of the Major Spoilers Podcast, in which the hosts and a couple of their friends play in a 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign. The team is made up of gamers who are completely new to Dungeons and Dragons, those who have been playing since Third Edition, and even one guy who's been playing since the AD&D days. The show itself is a pastiche of learn-by-example play, nerd humor and old-time radio serials.

The main campaign, "Void Saga", follows a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits trying to stop a group of Insane Gods from invading their plane of existence. It started at level 1 and ran several years before concluding in 2020.

The podcast occasionally answers listener questions about D&D or tabletop games in general, and a set of episodes focuses on Game Mastering 101. Between seasons, they often run other game systems besides D&D 4e.

You can find the episodes here or download them from iTunes.

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This podcast [rovides examples of:

• Animated Adaptation: The party's antics have inspired several of these from fans, most notably the famous "Pumpkin Incident" from Season 4.
• As Lethal as It Needs to Be: The players can declare that their attack merely knocked the enemy out instead of killing as they land a final blow, at no penalty and regardless of the type of attack
• An Adventurer Is You: It's a D&D Game.
• Buffy Speak: Matthew has a habit of calling things "frammistats" when he can't immediately think of the word he wants. There's also a lot of terms like "fighty fighty" and "talky talky", usually from Torq's direction.
• Catchphrase: The main one is Torq's "Uh... whut?", but Randus' "Indeed" is a close second.
  • In the third season we appear to have Ket's "I don't cheat; I very rarely bluff" as a new one.
  • Rodrigo often has NPC's say "I see" in response to the party's shenanigans.
  • Torq also seems to have taken a shine to "I duck." in response to any attack made against him. It usually doesn't work.
  • Trelle's Stare.
  • Rodrigo has 'Anyway' when trying to get everyone back on track.
• Cliffhanger: Episodes frequently end that way.
• Critical Hit: Torq scores these often, interestingly enough, and Matthew is one of the players playing remotely. He gets paranoid that people will think he's cheating and has offered to have the DM roll for him.
• Critical Failure: Brian has these often. Steven joked a couple times about offering a service to listeners, where they could get some dice cursed by Brian's hands for $200. Brian eventually aquired a pop-o-matic d20 dice roller, so he didn't have to touch the dice to roll them, and it's somehow improved his rolls.
• Don't Explain the Joke: Rodrigo says this word-for-word to Matthew on at least one occasion.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first gameplay episode had sound effects added in post for Orem's battle. Steven quickly realized that such a thing would not scale well, and the sound effects were dropped the very next episode.
• Game Master: Rodrigo for the Void Saga. Stephen, Brian, Sam, and Rob all have their turn as the DM for other games.
  • Matthew, while an old-school Game Master, has outright stated that he doesn't expect to ever run a game for Critical Hit, partially due to rules issues and partly due to trying to stand in Rodrigo's long shadow.
• Genre Savvy: The players, for sure. Not so much their characters.
• Good with Numbers: Rob definitely is, and correcting the math of the other players is what he does.
• Hit Points: Since this is a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, absolutely.
• House Rules: Rodrigo has his own house rules when it comes to Skill Challenges.
  • The concept of critical hits and critical misses for skill checks is actually one of Rodrigo's house rules, and the players usually have to remind themselves of this when not playing one of his games.
• Hurricane of Puns: Several times.
  Orem: (drinking nectar infused with soda water) "It gives me a lot of pep, see?"
  Orem: (presenting fruit pods enchanted to hold recordings of their adventures) "Behold these pods, that I have cast."
  • When Ket gains feathers over his body the puns span multiple episodes.
  • When Rodrigo introduces an enemy made entirely of blood, the blood-related puns bleed through the rest of the show.
  Matthew: "Why do you have to B Negative?"
  • When facing off against swarms of books.
  Steven: "Oh, they kicked me in my appendices with their footnotes!"
  Rodrigo: "I am in a hell of my own design..."
• In and Out of Character: There's a lot, especially when the guys go off on a tangent. Matthew usually does a voice for Torq, at least.
• Innocent Bystanders: Sometimes present during the fights, and add an additional complication. If they are present, expect at least a couple to get sliced down or eaten.
• Lampshade Hanging: A lot.
  Rodrigo (as an Innkeeper): "Sorry, that was my lampshade going off...."
• Large Ham: Matthew is this 9/10ths of the time. Stephen also qualifies when playing Orem, and ESPECIALLY as a DM. GM Rodrigo has been known to ham it up a bit with some NPCs.
• Never Live It Down:invoked Even over 300 episodes later they keep bringing up trying to diplomacise the horses during an early skill challenge.
• Previously on…: "Last time... on Critical Hit!"
• Promoted Fangirl:invoked Adriana listened to Critical Hit a lot before she was invited onto the show by Rodrigo in season 4. The guys often joke about the extensive notes that she has on previous episodes, and she usually recalls details the other players have long forgotten.
• Rules Lawyer:invoked Rob is a Lawful Neutral example, pointing out all the rules that apply, all of them, whether it is to the benefit of the party or not.
• Rule of Cool: Referenced by name as the reason why the Game Master allows some things and not the others.
• Running Gag:
  • Matthew rolling 20's and Brian rolling like crap.
  • "That was my one."
  • "Last time on Critical Hit."
• Shout-Out: Considering this is a show with 5-6 nerds, pretty much every episode contains a few references to movies, whether it's something one of the players say, or something within the campaign itself. Matthew is particularly egregious.
• Talking Is a Free Action: As per Dungeons & Dragons rules, it is. The characters do not usually abuse it and restrict themselves to a few short sentences (and if they don't, then the Game Master will step in). The players, however, are another matter, with quips, references and tactics discussions spanning the majority of the combat time.
• Title Drop - As the quote at the top of the page says, it's at least once an episode, plus whenever someone (Torq) scores an actual Critical Hit.
• Tropes Are Tools: Referenced by name several times (especially by Matthew) in the question and answer sessions.

The Void Saga

The plot of the main campaign (called the "Void Saga") follows a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits as they try to stop The Void, a group of Insane Gods, from invading their plane of existence. The first and second seasons had them racing to keep the Moon from smashing into the Earth, and in the third season, they've been recruited by a Higher Power to help cleanse a part of the Astral Sea of the remaining Lunar Monsters. For the fourth season, the party heads to the Feywild, Orem's home plane, in order to restore the balance that was upset by the unnatural lunar activity of previous seasons. The fifth season has them take a detour to the Southern Continent after they discover there's more to their world than just their batch of planes.

The group includes Orem Rivendorn of the Eladrin, Halston Thorkelson aka "Torq", Randus du Thane, and Smith the Sorcerer, who has since been replaced by Ket H'zard the Half-Elf Warlock. In Season Four, they're joined by an elf ranger, Trelle. Season five sees them joined by Little Sparkle and Sekhar Obleea replacing Torq and Trelle.

The Void Saga General

• Adventure-Friendly World: The world is being attacked by insane extraterrestrial gods, who send their monstrous creations to attack, as well as having built towers on the Earth and the moon to draw them together. And even after that's been dealt with, there are plenty of quests they're needed for.
• All There in the Manual: Rodrigo was kind enough to do exit interviews after each arc. ( Season 1&2, Season 3, Season 4, Season 5) He also answers questions about Critical Hit in the same forum, and has a series of world building articles posted [1]
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The game master put the party through it several times in How The Other Half Lives and How The Other Third Lives segments, each time providing them with the characters that differed from their main ones in key aspects.
• Badass Normal: Torq definitely counts, being nothing more than incredibly tough and strong in a party of magic users. At least initially, until he multiclasses into a cleric and becomes a magic user in his own right. Trelle and Little Sparkle also qualify.
• Bag of Holding: Technically, the gang has a Handy Haversack, but it's basically a bag of holding in backpack form.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Torq is a half orc fighter with almost no skills... except killin' things. In this he excels.
• Camp Straight: Orem often falls into this, with him paying close attention to his appearance, and the softness of his hair.
• Can't Argue with Elves: Stephen constantly plays Orem as disdainful of Elves and condescending towards all non-Eladrin. No one seems to be disturbed by this. This is explained early in the show as a hypertrophied version of the trope when Rodrigo describes the Eladrin to Stephen for the first time: "Eladrin are to regular elves as elves are to humans."
• Combat Medic: Randus, who has a Magitek crossbow and some offensive spells.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Whenever the party successfully deals with the monsters as a part of skill challenge
• Dumb Muscle: Torq.
• The End of the World as We Know It: The party is tasked with averting this on at least 3 separate (though related) occasions.
• For Science!: Evoked by Randus occasionally, and The Queen's Rebellious Daughter.
• Friendly Fireproof: Averted viciously, as per Dungeons & Dragons rules. Torq in particular has lost count of how many times he was set on fire by his allies, but he is far from the only one to be on the receiving end of an ally's area of effect spell.
  • Interestingly, Sekhar joined the Critical Hit crew with a hefty fire immunity.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Randus and Thony.
• Gunboat Diplomacy: Ket employs Torq as his support in this from time to time when trying to get information from others.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Ket is a Half-Elf, and Torq is a 3/4 Orc (his mother was a full Orc and his father a Half-Orc).
• Healing Potion: It is a Dungeons and Dragons game, after all. Potions seem less potent than the characters' own healing abilities, though
• In-Series Nickname: Introducing the Torqletones!
• Indy Ploy: The Torqletones are really just making it up as they go along.
• Last-Name Basis: Ket usually addresses the characters by their last name while giving orders in battle, in a marked contrast with everybody referring to the party by their first names in other situations.
  Ket: "Thorkelson, hit it with a axe!" (too many times to count)
• Leeroy Jenkins: Torq has pulled this once or twice.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Orem, in spades.
• Magic Knight: Orem is steadily moving in this direction, even though he remains relatively squishy.
• Magitek: While not ubiquitous throughout the setting, there is definitely some of this stuff, from Randus' crossbow and familiar to The Exilarchy of Cogs.
• Malaproper: Torq malaprops multisyllabic words at LEAST once an episode.
• Mr. Fixit: Randus has to retool a lot of stuff, including himself which crosses over with his role as Combat Medic - just with spanners as well as syringes.
• Our Monsters Are Different: GM Rodrigo loves taking monsters from the books and changing what they look like in order to give them an Eldritch Abomination feel.
• Power Fist: Randus early on loses an arm and replaces it with a metal one, it becomes his melee weapon.
• Professional Gambler: Ket, who gets his powers by gambling for souls. Aside of the magical applications, gambling is his favourite pastime, but he is not addicted to it and is exceptionally good at it.
• Proud Scholar Race: The Eladrin of the Feywild, or downright snotty in the case of young graduate Orem Rivendorn.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Many NPCs qualify, especially Bao Bel Bina, who functions as a helpful and competent handler for the player characters through the majority of the 3rd season.
• Robot Buddy: Randus's assistant and Thony's raven.
• Running Gag: Torq jumping out windows.
  • "Uhhhhh, funnelcake?"
  • "Listen to these pods I have cast!"
• Talking Weapon: One of Orem's swords, that he never uses (well, until he has to). Because all it does is tell him to kill his friends.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: A rare heroic example, as it is the source of Ket's powers.
• Wizarding School: The Cerulean Academy of Magic.
• Weapon Specialization: Each of the player characters has at least one.
  • Orem: At first he uses a Magic Wand, but later decides to opt for a Cool Sword, appropriate as he's the closest thing the party has to a leader. Interestingly, he only started actually hitting people with it after some coaching by Torq.
  • Randus: A Crossbow, with lots of crazy attachments and gizmos. By season 3, he's also been using his Robotic Arm as a weapon.
  • Torq: A Great Axe, fitting his status as The Big Guy.
  • Smith: Daggers, though he doesn't fit the trope as he uses them to channel his magic rather than cut people.
  • Ket: A Whip, fitting his status as a swashbuckling rogue.
  • Trelle: Uses two types of weapons; either longswords, or bows.
  • Sekhar: Duel-wields a matched pair of swords.
  • Little Sparkle: An infinite number of daggers^note really just one that returns instantly to her hand that she can throw when needed.

Seasons 1 & 2: Four Against the Void

• Achievement In Ignorance: The only thing Torq is trained to do is fight. However, Matthew often rolls incredibly high on skill checks, so this is the result.
• Action Girl: The Queen's Rebellious Daughter is a scientist who uses resonance to zap things. She's pretty handy in a fight.
• Adventure Towns: Moonhold, The Exilarchy of Cogs' city, Diamond Throne
• Affably Evil: The Thing That Shatters the Sky.
• A God Am I: The Thing That Shatters The Sky pulls this on all the other Gods of The Void.
• Alien Sky:
  • After The Void's first attempt to smash the moon into the Earth, described by Rodrigo as constantly red, filled with clouds and roiling lightning.
  • When the heroes are transported to the moon, described as a bubble surrounding the atmosphere with a blurry view of the planet itself.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Thoney's Airship floats because its hull is coated in "Astral Brine".
• A Wizard Did It: Well, technically some Insane Gods did it - the moon is explained to be livable only due to the will of The Void.
• Big Damn Heroes: When the Torqletones shut down the tower in Episode 7.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Void are gods who see no problem with creating and destroying entire races at their will, and constantly vie for dominance over one another, not caring who gets in the way.
• Body Horror: Plenty of examples, which is to be expected in a campaign full of Insane Gods.
  • Some of the cultists who worship The Void allow themselves to become hosts to creatures from the moon that do this.
  • There's also the little white creatures Orem and Smith fight - their eyes are misshapen, and their limbs are all different sizes, to the point where some walk on one hand and one leg because those are the two limbs who touch the ground.
  • Smith himself, randomly spawning magic items from various points on his body. Painfully.
• Cool Airship: Thony's Proud Baroness.
• Cursed with Awesome: Smith "suffers" from some unique side-effects of the moon nearly crashing into the Earth.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The End of Season 2 has our heroes defeat The Thing That Shatters the Sky.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Void are a group of insane, evil Gods who inhabit the Campaign World's moon, plus the countless number of creatures they create and destroy on a whim, often sending them to fight the heroes.
• Healing Factor: One of the side effects of Smith's... issues is that he regenerates while bloodied in battle. A misreading of the rules in an early fight caused it to go up to eleven for that fight, rendering him nigh-unkillable. Various monsters the party encounters also have regenerative capabilities
• Heroic Sacrifice: Poor Smith
• High-Altitude Battle: With the Lunar Dargon in Episodes 27 and 28.
• Killed Off for Real: Smith at the end of season two.
• Lunacy: The Void is a collective of insane moon gods, which fits the trope.
• MacGuffin: The Four-Facet Key for the first story arc.
• Mooks: The Lizard-Monkeys, our first introduction to lunar monsters.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The names of some of the Lunar Gods: She Who Slumbers In Agony, The Thing That Shatters The Sky.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Smith goes through various states of wolf, but most notably when bloodied in battle.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Thony casually hands one of these to Orem. Well, it was casual until Rodrigo hung a lampshade from it.
• Unexpected Successor: Orem becomes this in the eyes of Torq when Moonhold's entire town guard with the exception of Torq die.

Season 3: Celestial Crusade

• Action Girl: Bao Bel-Bina is a tiefling Avenger who serves Erathis.
• Affably Evil: Brian namechecks this in relation to Ma and Pa.
• Adventure Towns: Sha Lai
• All Just a Dream: Used to devastating effect, not once but twice, in the Demonweb.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Many of Randus' ship designs are heavily powered by "Elasma", which can be vented, etc.
• Big Eater: Torq. 17 Funnel cakes, to go!
• Body Horror: Gets turned up to eleven in this season, [[Squick much to Matthew's chagrin]].
  • D&D Brian namechecks this trope when the Torqletones fight the Candle Heads for the first time.
• Celestial Bureaucracy: Season 3 takes place in the goddess Erathis' City in the Astral Sea, which is definitely run by bureaucrats.
• Cool Versus Awesome: Bahamut the Platinum Dragon teaming up with Gruumsh the orcish god to fight She Who Slumbers In Agony the world-destroying Eldritch Abomination. Personally and up close.
• Critical Failure: Due to Brian rolling one of these at a crucial moment, Randus became unstuck in time, and can now decide to remove himself from the time stream as a minor action.
• Deal with the Devil: Asmodeus tries to strike a deal with Ket, Torq, Seven Owls Wise, and Albrecht Ghostbeard. Asmodeus makes a different deal with Ket, becoming his sponsor in the Kobold Alley competition.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: There are evil gods and other antagonistic forces in the series. However, when the Void, while not technically evil, are going to destroy the world as we know it, nobody is pleased by such development, including the forces of evil.
• God of Evil: Five of them. Interestingly enough, none of them is the Big Bad of the season.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: A big chunk of season 3 consists of this. Unusually for this trope, the allies the players are trying to recruit are of less than savory kind, as the players need help of all the gods, including the evil ones, in order for their plan against the Void to succeed.
• Killed Offscreen: Bao Bel Bina dies when her ship is destroyed by She Who Slumbers in Agony.
• Kiss Diss: Orem shares one with an Eladrin named Simmy in episode 84.
• Never Split the Party: Discussed and Defied. Despite the party's best efforts to stay together, the gods force the main party to split up to achieve their goals more quickly. Fortunately, the players already had characters from How the Other Third Live to add to the split party, and so most of the second half of the season is alternating between the two halves of the split party.
• Religious Bruiser: The cast of How The Other Third Live has those in spades too, especially Brenzin the Bold and Seven Owls Wise.
• Sneaky Departure: Ket repeatedly during the adventure. It's implied he did this a lot off-screen, but it becomes a problem once he loses the favor of his goddess.
• Taken for Granite: One of Ket's powers, which he uses in combat to sometimes great and sometimes disastrous effect. Petrification is not supposed to be permanent and usually lasts a few turns at most.
• Wizarding School: Discussed and averted with the Sha-Lai University - Orem and the party assumed that it was a Wizarding School, which it was emphatically not, and in fact focused on civil engineering. Too bad that the party unwittingly led a bunch of monsters there hoping for a backup...

Season 4: Lords of the Feywild

• Action Girl: Two this season
  • Trelle, an elf ranger that joined the party in the feywild, and the first Player Character.
  • Kammis, an Eladrin wizard specializing in familiars and Orem's sister.
• Arc Words: Ket: "I hate this place...", always under his breath, always punctuating an occurrence or explanation of something insane that is standard procedure in the Feywild.
  • "And they were never heard from again"
• Audible Sharpness: Invoked with the Hogba's Black Mistress battleaxe.
• Badass Adorable: Biium is a tiny, brightly colored colibri that can and will make the room explode. The Bravest Rabbit in his natural form is a small and rather adorable rabbit - and a competent fighter in his humanoid form.
• Badass Family: The Rivendorn/Grayborn family from which Orem hails. Both of his parents and his sister are extremely competent spellcasters, and that is to be the case for the generations before him. This is the reason why the family name carries some weight.
• Brick Joke: Torq is now a priest of Corellon. They joked about him multiclassing to Cleric back in season one.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: The second half of this season is full of this, until it's averted painfully when the team makes a return visit to Tuberville.
• The Fair Folk: All over Season 4, which takes place in the Feywild.
• Forest Ranger: Trelle, friend to all nature right up until it's killing her horribly.
• Friend to All Living Things: Trelle's interactions with all living creatures, Adriana refers to this as Trelle "Disney princessing it"
• Heroic Sacrifice: At the end of the season, Torq.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: At the end of the first half of the season, when the party fights Spud for the first time. This was one of the most controversial things Rodrigo had done, with a wide range of reactions from fans. He later defended his choice, stating that you couldn't manufacture the "soul crushing defeat" he was aiming for in any other manner.
  Rob: "Is there a door?" Rodrigo: "No." Rob: "Didn't think so."
• Idle Rich: Orem's parents. Though they say they have lots of stress and responsibility, given how they've sequestered their compound away from any danger, it's questionable how much this is true.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Mother Mantis is fond of wearing a fancy Renaissance-style dress. And of tearing enemies apart with her bare hands while wearing said dress.
• Killed Offscreen: Thony dies of old age sometime before episode 239.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: In the Fen of Winters, after a lot of debating about it.
• Meaningful Echo: Orem's sword saying "Kill your Friends!" becomes painfully meaningful during the first fight with Spud.
• Meanwhile Scene: Meanwhile... a fighting bunny, a pink mantis, a talkative hummingbird, a mangy jackal, an eladrin druid are in a crater...
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Orem accidentally breaking a small town's protective spell with an overuse of Prestidigation.
  • In Tuberville, the party healing one of the overworked citizens caused the kid to be put to death later for not working hard enough.
• Noodle Incident: When Torq goes on a Kitten Adventure in the Mootlands.
• Party Scattering: This becomes a common occurrence in the Feywild when the party tries to insta-travel between distant locations.
  • The Fields of Autumn in particular love to play with the party in this manner.
• Pregnant Badass: The queen of the Diamond Throne will not go down without a fight.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Trelle and Ket often act as red and blue oni respectively towards each other in most of their scenes together. With Trelle favoring impulsiveness, openness and emotion vs Ket favoring caution, decorum and observation. Trelle and Kammis also fall into red oni/blue oni (with Trelle yet again being the red) to a lesser extent. Elves and eladrin in general can be seen as a case of Red Oni, Blue Oni on the scale of the nation as well.
• Religious Bruiser: Halston Thorkelson, newest anointed priest of Corellon.
• Shipper on Deck: Orem for his sister Kammis and Trelle.
• Straight Gay: Trelle. She used to date Orem's sister Kammis, who this trope would also apply to.
• Take Your Time: Averted rather brutally in season 4. First the party accidentally wasted several months because of the time-manipulating Greater Fey. Because of that, the party's mentor concluded that their quest is lost, and succumbed to despair, which led to his death. Which, in turn, led to his own best friend going mad with grief and taking over the world. Second, at one point the party has about a year to prevent The End of the World as We Know It. Having to do it on tight schedule and having to decide which Side Quest to accept and which to abandon provides much tension through the season, as the party cannot afford to stop and save everyone.
• What Measure Is An NPC: Joked about in the fight to save a bunch of panicky gnome villagers.

Season 5: Legacy of Ghosts

• Action Girl: Little Sparkle is a Kenku rogue who joined the party for Season 5.
• Breaking the Fellowship: At the end of Season 4. It takes a Time Skip and several episodes to put the party back together. And some of them are gone permanently.
• Code Name: Once they get to into Coil territory, the party has to adopt code names. "Little Sparkle" is already her code name.
• Common Tongue: Justified in episode 372 when the Queen's Rebellious Daughter sits down for #Storytime.
• Dark Secret: Sekhar seems to have been hiding something from the party for quite a while. Matthew (who plays him) is even coy about asking advice on Sekhar's powers. But Sam might have it figured out...
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The way that Orem reacted to Sekhar admitting that he is part vampire to Orem and later to the others.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: Woah, when did timid, non-adventurer Tekiotl learn to summon a demon?! And when did Orem learn to summon a dreadnaught?! And why didn't they use that earlier?!
• Expose the Villain, Get His Job: In the Time Skip between Seasons 4 and 5, Randus has become a Lord of some of the lands of Diamond Throne, mostly because he uncovered the evil overlord behind the coup the party was part of last season.
• Guardian of the Multiverse: We find out that The Queen's Rebellious Daughter is part of an organization called "Oversight", tasked to prevent vertex hopping of any kind by any means necessary.
• Hide Your Otherness: Sekhar's "situational bluff check" is reveled to be given to him by his Dhampyr nature, which gives him a bonus to hide himself as a human. This is one of the hints that tipped Sam off to Sekhar's nature.
• Heist Arc: Once they get into the heart of Coil territory, the team must plan a heist into Coil Headquarters, which happens over the course of many episodes.
• It's the Only Way to Be Sure: The solution that Oversight suggests to solving the Coil problem. The party are flabbergasted by the suggestion.
• Interdimensional Travel Device: Professor Lec's odd little device.
• I Want Grandkids: Randus's mother has always wanted Randus to find a nice girl, but now that he's a lord of a region of Diamond Throne, he needs an heir to carry on the family name. She lets him know this as much as possible.
• Lost Him in a Card Game: That time when Ket bet Randus's assistant in a card game in order to get something they needed for their mission... and lost.
• Monster Town: The town used to have a different name before the Salamander's Coil used its residents for an experiment that turned them into monsters.
• The Multiverse: Professor Lec has discovered the existence of other "realities", and inadvertently sends the party on a Sliders-esqe adventure between several of them.
• Off the Rails: At end of this season, the GM had a denumont all planned out, but the players decided not to go anywhere near where it was happening, so as a result they didn't actually see how things wrapped up or who was left alive. Rodrigo said in the next episode that his mistake was giving the players the option to go somewhere else.
• Overly Long Name: "Sekhar Avata-Sokichi of Obleea, Lord Baron in absentia of The Shores..."
• Spider Tank: The Salamander's Coil uses Locust Tanks, with an appearance and maneuvering versatility to match their name.
• Time Skip: Five years have passed between Seasons 4 and 5.
• World Shapes: When the party is brought to Oversight Headquarters, we learn some of the world geometry of various vertices in the Critical Hit universe. They're just as varied as the vertices themselves.
  • As a bonus, there are 12 vertices in total, connected in such a way where they make up a 20-sided Icosahedron.

Other Games

Modern City Tales

The Major Spoilers crew sits down to play FATE Accelerated for a couple sessions (Episodes 289-305). They come up with "Modern City", a planned community full of superheros.

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• Badass Normal: Rumblebee, with a gadget bent.
• Cool Car: Jetstar in his 1965 Oldsmobile Jetstar Convertible (Candy Apple Red).
• Muggle Sports, Super Athletes: Free Agent is invulnerable, and plays (as his alter ego Joe Hossenfeffer) for the Modern City Cutters football team. It doesn't help him gain advantage in the game (specifically to avoid getting kicked off the team for cheating), but it does mean lack of concussions.
• The Merch: This particular off-season game was so well recieved, they made and continue to sell posters of their superhero characters.
• Secret Identity: With everyone playing comic book style super heroes, this is a given.
• Show Within a Show: Stephan produced several clips of radio news programs and advertisements set in the Modern City setting, and put these at the start of almost every episode of this miniseries.

Yellow Light

Dr. Brad is the GM for a Call of Cthulhu game (Episodes 382-390), set in Hollywood during The Roaring '20s. The player characters recieve a telegram from their Uncle Greyson asking them to meet him in Hollywood, but when they arrive, they're met by police asking if they can identify a body...

• Bedlam House: Being set in 1920s, this was the best they had for psychiatric treatment.
• Circus Brat: Rob and Amanda's characters, of the Flying Greysons fame.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: This game was experimentally recorded completely in "binural audio", and thus includes none of their usual remote players and all of the table sounds that normally get scrubbed from the audio. Some have said this adds to the eerie atmosphere of the game.
• Fortune Teller: Brian's character, who always wears the turbin that's part of his costume.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Early on, the GM expressed concern about whether the players were playing the game "correctly", but couldn't really say why. As discussed after the end of the game, it turns out the player characters were very much not the skeptical investigator types the GM was expecting, and consequently they trusted the Big Bads most out of anyone in the story. Given that, they missed a whole lot of clues and they were basically doomed to fail from the start.
• World's Strongest Man: Stephen's character, or rather his first one.

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"ON CRITICAL HIT!"