Video Game / Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms

Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms is an Idle Game by Codename Entertainment, best described as Crusaders of the Lost Idols meets Dungeons & Dragons. Like its predecessor, it has a party formation mechanic where characters buff other characters depending on their positions, as well as an equipment mechanic that boosts the capabilities of your characters.

It's notable for containing characters from web video roleplay games, such as Force Grey, Dice, Camera, Action!, Acquisitions Incorporated, High Rollers (2016), and Critical Role, for starters.

---

Tropes present in this game include:

• Abandoned Mine:
  • Unearthed Evil involves a mine that's been taken over by goblins (and other monsters).
  • Hopelessly Lost has your characters trapped in the Undermountain; at one point, you enter an abandoned mine where Trenzia's Flameskull and undead constantly harass you.
• Accidental Misnaming: Everyone except Celeste keeps messing up the name of the Ahghairon's Day event, calling it things like "Egg Heron's Day" or "Agamemnon's Day". Only at the end of the campaign does Bruenor actually get it right.
  • Lampshaded in Year 2 of the event, with the variant adventure Spelling "Bee" adding Spelling Bees relating to the struggles. A weekend chest named after Egg Heron's Day has also been released.
• Action Initiative: Ishi Snaggletooth's attack speed is always 0.25 seconds faster than the fastest champion on the field.
• A Day in the Limelight: Many Events have one variant that involves the Event Champion — they're a Required Party Member and/or gain a huge bonus during said variant. A few of the campaigns also focus on one character more than usual:
  • Jarlaxle takes center stage during the Dragon Heist campaign. (He's a major NPC in the original campaign, so it makes sense.)
  • Arkhan also gets a bit more dialogue in the Descent into Avernus campaign. (Again, like Jarlaxle, Arkhan features in the original campaign as an NPC.)
  • During the Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaign, Nat gets the most focus out of the three Waterdeep Orphans.
  • Likewise, in the Light of Xaryxis campaign, Squiddly gets more focus (the other two get put on a ship near the beginning).
• Adaptational Wimp: Several Dungeons & Dragons monsters have their offensive or defensive capabilities nerfed in this game. For example, the normally-incorporeal Shadows can be harmed by anyone, even those without magic weapons.
• Adaptational Villainy: Although the game uses 5th Edition modules, where Jarlaxle is considered Chaotic Neutral, the game lists him as Neutral Evil. His behavior does imply the former alignment, at least. And you could interpret his alignment from the book source material either way, depending on what game edition's standards you use.
• Affably Evil: Many Evil champions are pretty easygoing for being evil; heck, plenty of them even have the "Selflessness" feat.
• All There in the Manual: Celeste and Makos (and, later, Sgt. Knox) are from the Neverwinter PC game. During one storyline in the game, Celeste gets raised as a zombie, thanks to Makos, which explains why she has a zombie skin in Idle Champions. The game does not say this in their bios.
  • If you haven't read the Legends of Baldur's Gate comic books, then some context relating to Delina (such as mentions of her brother) would be lost.
• Almost Dead Guy: Azaka, after being badly injured by Yuan-Ti in the A Grand Puzzle adventure. They have a moment to say a few words to you before they pass away, despite Celeste's efforts.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Any changes you make to a Modron Core don't actually save until you close out of the Core, so if an intermediate step when changing the layout ends up tanking the buffs, your team doesn't get destroyed before you can fix it.
  • Gold chests have a "pity timer" for Epic Gear; the base odds of getting a piece of Epic Gear from a gold chest is 1/8, but if you open 9 gold chests in a row without getting an Epic piece, the 10th chest is guaranteed to give you one. For Event champions and their respective Chests, this timer starts already decreased to 4 Chests for the first round, and they have their own pity timer in freeplay; if you get 3 Silver Chests in a row from hitting level 50 in their respective freeplay, the next chest is guaranteed to be gold.
  • Speaking of Gold Chests, they only drop equipment for Greenhorn champions; Event champions have to rely on either their own Chests or Electrum Chests for their gear. However, Feats for Event Champions can drop from normal Gold Chests, instead of having to hope you get lucky with their own Gold Chests.
  • If you don't collect all three Gold Chests before closing a Time Gate, you'll get one or two Time Gate Pieces back. That way, if you open a Time Gate and life prevents you from completing it, you at least get something back.
  • Automatic Resets via Modron Cores only kick in in Freeplay mode, so as not to reset you prematurely in Adventures or Variants with a target level larger than what your reset level is set to (if you forgot to turn Automatic Reset off, anyway).
  • If you fail to finish a day in the Trials of Mount Tiamat, the next day the level goal will stay the same, and that day's restriction will be rerolled to hopefully make it easier to complete next time.
  • Weekend Chests will always apply to at least one Core champion, usually two, even if they don't fit the theme; this is just so everyone, even those that just joined, will get something useful from them.
• Anti-Rage Quitting: A variation. If you join a Trials of Mount Tiamat campaign that lasts longer than three days but contribute 0 DPS, even if that campaign is completed, you won't unlock the next difficulty tier.
• Arbitrary Mission Restriction:
  • This is what stage variants are all about. A special restriction is imposed on you that usually negatively impacts your gameplay, forcing you to use different strategies and formations to complete.
  • It's also the main challenge in Trials of Mount Tiamat; every day you're able to progress, a new restriction is added to make reaching the new level goal harder. Depending on your available champions and previous restrictions, they can range from a mild annoyance to completely impossible to work around.
• Armored But Frail: Inverted. Enemies with segmented or armored hit-based health can only take that number of successful hits to go down. However, this often makes them more durable than other mooks, which are often killed in fewer hits.
• Art Evolution: In accordance to her new look from Descent into Avernus, the boss Zariel got her entire look changed from her Tome of Foes self to her 5E self.
• Attack Pattern Alpha: It's possible to save formation setups and use them at the click of a button.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Bruenor's horned helmet has a broken horn, which changes sides if he's shown on the right of the dialogue message (or journal). Jarlaxle's eye patch works similarly.
• April Fools' Day: On April Fools 2019, an announcement was made announcing Spurt the Kobold Inventor as a "new champion". A later stream revealed that he really was planned to be added to the game, mainly due to how hilarious the concept was.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Spurt the Kobold was a one-off guest Joke Character in Critical Role, where he died very quickly after angering a Fire Giant. Here, he's an actual Champion in and of himself.
  • Nat, Jenks, and Squiddly from the Dragon Heist adventure play a bigger role in the Wild Beyond the Witchlight adventure, with the plot being kickstarted by the latter two getting lost.
• Asteroids Monster: In the Great Modron March event variant Division, any Modron higher than a Monodrone will split into two copies of the tier under it when killed. A Tridrone, for example, would split into two Duodrones on defeat, which each split into two Monodrones upon defeat.
• Attack Speed Buff:
  • Desmond's attack rate is based on which phase of the moon is active.
  • Evandra attacks faster when attacking with the enemy's mechanical arm.
  • Fen increases the attack speed of all Warlocks in the formation.
  • Merilwen can improve attack speed of adjacent characters when in wild shape.
  • Strix's polymorph staff sometimes doubles the attack rate.
  • Virgil increases the attack speed of adjacent Champions.
  • Widdle makes the attack speed of all adjacent Champions equal to the attack speed of the fastest-attacking adjacent Champion, effectively doing this.
• Automatic New Game: After the title screen, the game either automatically loads an existing game, or creates a new one if the player starts playing on a new account. The game does display a summary of gold collected while offline.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Artemis' Observation ability allows him to copy the moves of other DPS characters in the formation by copying the Status Buffs granted to them onto himself.
• Balance Buff:
  • Most of the twelve Core Champions received one to allow them to catch up with Power Creep.
  • With the first Season revolving around the Heroes of Aerois, every champion under that umbrella was retooled in some way, mostly revolving around how Aerois Synergy works. The same thing happened with the second Season, this time focusing on the Companions of the Hall and their Legends of Mithral Hall buff.
• Big Bad Ensemble: The villains for ''Waterdeep: Dragon Heist'' are The Xanathar, the Cassalanters, and Manshoon, giving three of the campaign's four villains a spotlight. Why not the fourth? Well, it definitely can't have Jarlaxle as one of the villains working against you, since he's in your party.
• Bird-Poop Gag: Bird poop (usually seagull poop) appears in a number of levels, such as a cliffside coated in it or having to destroy a log covered in the stuff. Naturally, Jarlaxle - who holds his self-image in high regard - hates having to deal with it.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: The Giant Intellect Devourer in the Starve Them Out Greengrass variant has a massive amount of armored hit-based health, makes all normal enemies invulnerable to damage when it's alive, and appears in every regular area. Your only saving grace is that it loses 10 maximum HP for every point of Intelligence lower than 12 on an individual Champion.
• Bullying a Dragon: In the Festival of Fools event, the Hornfirth villager Beirn thought that it was a good idea to burn the Frost Giant Wrendor's foot as 'the greatest of all pranks'. It does not end well for him, or the entire town of Hornfirth.
• Butt-Monkey: Jarlaxle is usually the one who gets into comedic hijinks at his expense. Examples include being pushed in front of the group when confronted by a huge Yeti, getting his clothes dirty due to bird poop, and others.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Of a sort. Sisaspia has a feat that increases her healing ability, and the flavor text on it states that "You are no good to me dead. Get up and fight the enemiess".
• The Cameo: Nordom the Modron appears in the Modron Assistance Variant as the only Planescape: Torment character in the game thus far. As of 2022, he's a playable character and is unlocked in the Modron March event.
• Cast Herd: Certain characters fall under various groups, such as the Companions of the Hall, Force Grey, the Waffle Crew, Acquisitions Incorporated, Heroes of Aerois, etc. Notably, they may also have abilities that buff those within their groups.
• Catch and Return: Rosie Beestinger's Deflect Missiles ability allows her to deflect any ranged or magic attack against her or nearby allies, causing her to attack the sender with their own attack.
• Color-Coded Item Tiers: The progression of equipment rarity is as follows: Common (Brown), Uncommon (Green), Rare (Blue), and Epic (Purple). Furthermore, any equipment can be found as Shiny (usually from buying chests via real money, but a Potion of Polish also works, and there's also a .1% chance to get one in a Silver or Gold Chest) which increases their effect by 50%; then there's also the rarer Golden trait, which increases their effect even more but can only be obtained by spending real money (with the exception of a few that can be bought from Patron shops).
• Combat and Support: Although there are six individual roles that the game can assign to a Champion (DPS, Gold, Healing, Speed, Support, and Tanking; Champions always have at least one role, usually more), most formations can be broken down to this. A standard setup is a Tanking Champion in the front, a single powerful DPS Champion somewhere in the formation, and the rest of the formation providing Support of some kind.
• Curse: Warden's main gimmick is based around Hexing the enemies they attack, which causes a potent Damage-Increasing Debuff. Upgrades to it include being able to stack four times, and another that causes it to spread to nearby enemies when a Hexed enemy is killed.
• Damager, Healer, Tank: Generally, you want a Tank character like Nayeli, Gromma, Tyril, Evelyn, Aila, Walnut, or Sentry in front to absorb incoming damage, a healer/shield provider like Celeste, Donaar, Nerys, Barrowin, Calliope, or Qillek to make sure the tanks stay alive when they're mobbed by enemies, and one or two damagers to take out the enemies quickly. The Tank, the Healer, and the rest of the characters who aren't the Damager also fall into support roles by buffing the Damager's damage with their outgoing effects.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: There are a lot of Champs that do this. Orkira's Elemental Fire, Gromma's Spiked Shell/Freezing Breeze, Warden's Hex, Aila's Storm Aura, Strix's Poor Hygiene, Krull's Pain plague... the list goes on. There's even a formation strategy known among players as "Click-Debuff" that involves filling your formation with Debuff Champions and just letting the ever-increasing Click Damage pop everything.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • A good number of Tiefling, Drow and Kobold Champions are Good-aligned instead of Evil-aligned.
  • Nerys Kathon is a Cleric of a death deity and is one of the Good-aligned champions. It helps that said deity is Kelemvor.
  • Downplayed with Black Viper. She's a Legacy Character to a notorious thief, but is Chaotic Neutral instead of Evil-aligned.
• Dark Is Evil:
  • Almost all the Evil champions are of Evil races or part-Evil races, such as Makos (Tiefling), Jarlaxle (Drow), Krond (Half-Orc), and Spurt (Kobold).
  • Arkhan, a chromatic Dragonborn who worships Tiamat, is Neutral Evil.
  • Warden. They're a Warforged Warlock who uses a hexblade to curse enemies, can summon a sphere of dark tentacles as their ultimate, and are appropriately enough Chaotic Evil thanks to the Eldritch Abomination that's now in control of them.
• Deadpan Snarker: Several characters will engage in heavy snark every now and then. Especially Jarlaxle.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: In most adventures, Champions who die will be revived at full health once you move to another area. Should your entire party be wiped out, you'll simply be sent back to the last area you cleared.
• Disaster Dominoes: At higher levels, the loss of a single Champion will cause this, as Champions stop providing any outgoing buffs or debuffs when dead. This can (and will!) drastically lower your DPS by orders of magnitude, possibly causing your progress to come to a sudden hault.
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: Deekin Scalesinger is all about this, being true to his source game. His "Story of Doom" gives him a huge "DOOOOOM" over his head that fills up over time and gives a multiplicative damage buff as it fills, but decreases when enemies are killed. His ultimate attack is called "DOOOOOOOM!" and has him shout DOOOOOM at the enemies, which both deals huge damage and sets his Story of Doom stacks to max for 30 seconds.
• Dual Boss:
  • Escort To Waterdeep has a huge bear and a dire wolf that are fought together. Bruenor even lampshades this by asking if they were friends.
  • You have to fight two Kamadans as the boss of Shagambi's Shrine in the Forbidden City, and two Basilisks in the Fane of the Night Serpent.
  • In Hopelessly Lost, one of the boss battles is against Trenzia's Flameskull and a Flesh Golem. Every time the flameskull uses its electrical attack to hit everyone else by shocking the floor the combatants (except the flameskull) are on, it heals the golem.
  • "Resolve Amongst Chaos'' has your party ambushed by a pair of hellhounds.
  • The drow matron Bailiearyl Tavebent and the Huge Spider Queen fight together as the final bosses of the Brightswords event.
  • D'hani's Doubling Down variant of Highharvestide doubles the requirements of every area, turning every boss fight into this.
• Duck!: In The Templar's Camp, "Boar!". Bruenor says there's no need to be insulting...
• Enemy Mine: In The Lost City of Omu, you help free some Red Wizards of Thay from the Yuan-Ti who captured them. They return the favor in the Fane of the Night Serpent when you're captured by the Yuan-Ti in the next mission. Also in the Fane, you make an uneasy alliance with Fenthaza after beating her up, since she also wants Ras Nsi dead.
• Escort Mission: The Festival of Fools has a variant where you need to escort a cart of pastries that takes up three slots in your formation. During the level, armored vermin will try to attack the cart; if the cart is smashed, you fail the area and are sent back to the previous one.
  • Other escort missions feature characters such as Volo. They don't attack; all they do is limit the Champions you can place in the formation.
• Excuse Plot: Zig-zagged. The overall campaigns are mostly adaptations of plots that appeared in the tabletop game's adventures, but the individual levels will have the Champions killing 25 of pretty much anything for pretty much any reason.
• Evil Versus Evil: Certain Campaigns have two opposing evil factions fighting each other, such as the Zhentarim and Xanathar Guild, or Demons and Devils; of course, both of them are happy to gang up on the player's party. It's also taken to another level with certain quest variants, where one faction grows stronger and another faction grows weaker when members of the latter are killed, and vice versa.
  • If you have any Evil-aligned champions in the formation while fighting Evil-aligned enemies, it's technically this.
• Expy: A number of Champions are very similar to Crusaders from spiritual predecessor Crusaders of the Lost Idols:
  • Bruenor Battlehammer is an expy of Jim the Lumberjack, both being stocky bearded men who use axes as their weapon of choice and are the first DPS champions you unlock. In terms of abilities, Bruenor's Inspired increases his damage for each adjacent champion just like how Jim's Buddy system did, and his Rally buffs the damage of Champions in his column just like Jim's Sharpen Party did.
  • Nayeli is an expy of Sasha the Fierce Warrior, both being tough female warriors who focus on tanking in front and have an ability to buff allies in the column right behind them (Aura of Courage for Nayeli, Bulwark for Sasha).
• Face–Heel Turn: Krond's original status as a Memetic Loser plays into his rebalance; hardened by a year of disrespect during his travels, his alignment has shifted from Chaotic Neutral to Neutral Evil.
  • Arkhan has this in his bio, as he is a fallen Paladin.
• Final Death Mode: The Tomb of the Nine Gods variant The Soulmonger Calls has this as its Arbitrary Mission Restriction. Any Champion who dies will be permanently unusable for the rest of the adventure, as the Soulmonger will take their soul.
• Flavor Text: Every gear and feat card includes a quote from the character it's associated with.
• Forced Transformation: Jim Darkmagic's Wand of Wonder ability has the chance to transform enemies into weak Abyssal Chickens.
• Foregone Conclusion: Jarlaxle Baenre cannot be the arc villain of the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign... because he's in your party.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In the Grand Revel event, Birdsong has been captured by a hag and must be rescued by the party. While you do have to complete it once to unlock her in the first place, there's nothing stopping you from using her in your party on replays.
  • In general, most Champions you unlock via completing part of a campaign will be this; for example, Azaka dies during the Tomb of Annihilation campaign and is unlocked via completing the Azaka's Procession - Part 2 variant... but there's nothing stopping you from replaying that variant and having her guarding her own dead body.
• Good Versus Good:
  • A few of the bosses you face are Overzealous City Guards who mistake you for bandits or monsters and attack you.
  • Other times, you will fight good fey, i.e. pixies.
• Guide Dang It!: Buffs that rely on distance away aren't calculated by physical distance, but how many formation slots that buff has to travel through to get to the champion. This is so unintuitive that it actually got submitted as a bug report wondering why K'thriss' buff was applying to Zorbu and not Drizzt or Havilar in this image◊, despite Zorbu seemingly being much closer; the answer given by a dev was that, since the buff had to travel through five slots to get to Zorbu versus 4 for Drizzt and Havilar, Zorbu was considered further away.
• Healer Signs On Early: The first Champion you unlock (after Bruenor Battlehammer, who you start out with) is Celeste the Cleric, who has the ability to heal party members ahead of her. Her Ultimate Ability heals the entire group to full HP.
• Health/Damage Asymmetry: Most Champions have few, if any, ways to increase their health... but their damage is constantly increasing, so DPS characters will eventually have more digits in their damage output than they have hit points. Meanwhile, enemy health rises dramatically with each new area, but they'll usually deal less than a hundred damage per hit.
• Homefield Advantage: One of the Variants that takes place in the Fane of the Night Serpent is called this trope word-for-word. In this variant, all Yuan-Ti enemies gain increasing amounts of health and damage overtime throughout the level.
• Hugh Mann: Hew Maan, described as "a definitely human champion and not at all three kobolds in a trench coat".
• Hunter of Monsters:
  • Both Minsc and Zorbu are Rangers with the "Favored Enemy" ability. This makes all enemies of the selected category take immensely increased damage from anyone in the party, not just Minsc and Zorbu alone.
  • Ezmerelda's abilities buff Champions in her column when attacking Undead, with a Specialization choice that allows her to switch her favored enemy type to Fiends, Humanoids or Monstrosities.
• Increasingly Lethal Enemy:
  • Bosses receive a damage multiplier if they aren't killed quickly. There is one that doesn't, only because she summons her pet golem rather than attacking directly.
  • Most enemies will also receive a damage multiplier if they begin stacking up, although at a slower rate than bosses.
  • In the "Home Field Advantage" Variant, every Yuan-Ti enemy will gain attack damage and health per second, turning them into this trope eventually.
• Interface Spoiler: In the character sheet, hovering the cursor over the affiliation name may show additional characters not yet in Idle Champions (e.g. Lae'zel's affiliation "Absolute Adversaries", and gives Astarion as another character). This may also apply to event characters appearing in a new affiliation.
• Interspecies Romance: During the Grand Revel event, there's revealed to be one between female Tabaxi Birdsong and a female human Templar.
• Insecurity System: The built-in security that Ulkoria "installed" for your manor on Trollskull Alley summons hostile fire elementals should the manor come under attack (like the fireball necklace attack outside the manor), which promptly start burning the house and attacking the characters.
  As a defensive strategy, fire elementals leave a lot to be desired.
• Involuntary Group Split: The first two times you lose party members in Never Split the Party, they're voluntarily splitting up to accomplish multiple things. The third and final time, a cave rockslide is what splits everyone.
• I Shall Taunt You: In one variant for the Tour of the Realms campaign, Strahd taunts the first 9 Champions in the formation. He does the same in an Rhime of the Frostmaiden variant as well.
• Killer Rabbit:
  • Minsc has his pet miniature giant space hamster Boo. His Ultimate Ability "Go for the Eyes!" has him sic Boo on up to five enemies, causing them to take some serious damage.
  • An expy of the Trope Namer Rabbit of Caerbannog appears as a boss in an event, and it's not just the only bunny that's killer. A number of stages feature actual, non-expy-of-Caerbannog bunnies as enemies, and if they're high leveled enough they're perfectly capable of ganging up on and taking your team down.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In the The Forbidden City adventure, you save a group of Thayan Red Wizards from the Yuan-Ti and let them go despite them being your enemies. Very shortly later, you're captured and imprisoned by the Yuan-Ti... until a Doppelganger sent by the Red Wizards sneaks in and breaks you out of prison.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In Wild Beyond The Witchlight, when Nat's crocodile egg starts sparkling and she asks Minsc what could be happening, he comments that looks like it purchased a new skin and asks Nat if she gave it any gems.
  • At one point, the Champions comment on how they always collect 25 of an item.
• Lethal Joke Character: Spurt the Kobold Inventor. He's based off a Critical Role character whose sole purpose was to die hilariously, and his abilities include using centipedes to buff his allies' damage and wasps to attack enemies. His ultimate is even more ridiculous, causing him to re-enact his canon demise by provoking an off-screen fire giant to smash him with its hammer, which damages all enemies and "kills" him, turning him into a spirit which greatly increases the effects of all his buffs. His centipede buffs, however, are actually rather strong as they start stacking multiplicatively whenever he's "dead". Furthermore, his getting squashed now counts as a "death", buffing other Champions' abilities that scale off dead Champions (like Strix's Haunted and Desmond's Lament the Lost).
• Limit Break: Each character has an Ultimate Attack, which deals a lot of damage and often has other useful effects. They're all offset by having long cooldowns, although that can be lowered via having the correct equipment.
• Loot-Making Attack: One of Azaka's ultimate attacks will cause the enemy to drop gold when struck, leading to the Azaka Farm tactic to maximize the gold reward multiplier if only for one attack.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: The level Déjà Vu has the champions placed in a fantasy Waterdeep courtesy of the Mind Flayers.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: This game contains characters from not only Forgotten Realms but several notable D&D roleplay campaigns, as well as other D&D-based media such as Eberron, Ravenloft, Planescape: Torment, Dungeons & Dragons (1983), and others. Most bizarrely, there are also Nerds candy mascots.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter:
  • Spurt's Ultimate causes him to die and turn into a spirit. While in spirit form, he gives a slowly-stacking buff to your formation until his Ultimate comes off cooldown, but is unable to attack. Additionally, he is the only character whose "Ultimate Cooldown" item increases the duration of the cooldown.
  • Havilar's Ultimate has a fixed timer; unlike the vast majority of Ultimates, hers is mainly a buff-changing ability. When used without her Imps, it summons two Imps - who give different buffs depending on who was summoned - and has a 20-second cooldown. When used when her Imps are out, said Imps use a Suicide Attack, setting the Ultimate to a 10-second cooldown.
• Monsters Everywhere: No matter where you go, there'll always be monsters attacking you. Yes, even in cities, villages, and taverns, no less.
• Musical Assassin: Calliope uses Vicious Mockery as her main attack, while Paultin may sometimes also use it as a secondary attack (Murderbot/Simon shoots poison darts as his primary). The other Bards avert this — Deekin uses a crossbow, Vlahnya uses the Mage Hand spell, and Birdsong uses dual blades.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members: Each of the twelve formation slots holds a set of mutually-exclusive characters. Champions who share a slot can't be used together, but you can swap between them at any time.
• Never Mess with Granny: Asharra, Gromma Nander, and Rosie Beestinger may be elderly, but that doesn't stop any of them from kicking enemy ass with their Wizard, Druid, and Monk abilities respectively.
• Never Split the Party: The focus of an adventure with the same name, whose entire storyline is based on A Simple Plan to find some lost children being interrupted by a series of increasingly unlikely added problems forcing the player to split up their champions (without getting to pick who goes where). While having an interesting storyline which both progresses a few of the rare overarching plot threads started near the game's beginning and its premise allowing a number of the more quiet champions to speak and interact, the adventure is disliked by many of the newer players due to being an entryway into the game system for actually running multiple parties and thus something they feel compelled to complete as soon as possible so they aren't missing out on gain and efficient grinding, long before completing it has become the formality it was designed to be.)
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The character Warden is a Warforged Hexblade Warlock infested by an Eldritch Abomination, and they've made their way from Eberron to the Forgotten Realms via realmspace. They're also one of only four characters categorized as non-binary.
• No Gender: Warden the Hexblade Warlock. Not only are they a Warforged (with No Biological Sex), they're also nonbinary and as such do not qualify for gender-based conditions. This, however, does mean that they aren't blessed with the bonuses from Womanly Wiles or Showmanship.
• Nominal Hero: Any Evil Champion in your team still fights against the enemies for their own reasons. Champions in this category include Jarlaxle, Makos, Arkhan, Krond, Warden, Spurt, Korth, and many more.
• Non-Indicative Difficulty: The difficulty rating of adventures is based only on your current Divine Favor, not other factors. A variant with a crippling Arbitrary Mission Restriction can be marked as "Easy" long before you're ready for it; conversely, a strong party with plenty of items, synergies, and other bonuses might breeze through an adventure while it's still considered "Deadly".
• Not Me This Time: At the start of the Light of Xaryxis adventure, the Champions beleive that the Xanathar is responsible for the tremors in Waterdeep, so they pay him a visit to confront him about it. The Xanathar states that he isn't responsible and states that he lives underground, so he wouldn't want to cause tremors anyway.
• Not the Intended Use: Arkhan is a DPS/Tanking champion who doesn't have any support abilities. However the interaction between his Get Buff or Usurp Power specializations and Artemis' Observation ability means that the buff multipliers form Arkhan's specializations get passed on to Artemis allowing Arkhan to indirectly function as a Support champion in formations where Artemis is your primary DPS.
• One-Hit Kill: Several, usually held by enemies.
  • Specters in the The Haunted Jungle variation will move slowly towards your front line. If one reaches them, it will instantly kill your frontmost Champions before disappearing.
  • The Devourer boss of the Midwinter event instantly kills a random Champion as its opening attack, and will do this every 10 seconds after its initial use of the skill (down to 8 seconds in the More Like the Scream Team variant).
  • In The Lost Heir of Omu, the final boss is a pirate captain who comes in with a huge cannon. Should it fire, it will oneshot any Champion it hits.
  • The Pirate's Night variation for the Liar's Night event has a drunken sailor entering each area with one of four special abilities. One of them is a cannon similar to the one mentioned above.
  • The Sea Hag in Enter the Sargauth has a Sea Hag Death Stare attack; this attack has a chance to stun Champions it targets based on their Wisdom, with Champions who have a WIS of 11 or below always being stunned. This lasts until another Champion is stunned by the attack. If this attack targets a character who it currently has stunned, it instantly kills them.
  • The stealthy Drow Pickpocket assassin in the Midsummer event variation Drow Deception takes this up to eleven. If he manages to reach your formation in any way, your entire party is killed and forced to go back a level.
  • Vlahnya's Ultimate is Plane Shift, which teleports up to 10 non-boss enemies on the screen away, regardless of their HP.
• Only in It for the Money: Jarlaxle is usually only interested in his own personal gain, especially when it comes to wealth, which makes it quite easy for other heroes to convince him into doing things.
• Original Generation: A number of heroes are homebrew ones created for the game, and aren't from preexisting materials. At this time, these Champions are Gromma, Krond, Nrakk, Stoki, Warden, Zorbu, and Vin Ursa.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: The villain in the Festival of Fools event is Wrendor, a Frost Giant. He's so tall, his head doesn't fit on screen (unless you shrink him via Avren's Insignificance ultimate).
  • During the Rhime of the Frostmaiden levels, Frost Giants appear again, and they are a bit shorter so you can actually see them onscreen.
• Out-of-Character Alert: You can tell something's off in the Déjà Vu level by the way some of the Champions (and others) are acting.
  • Jaralxle is acting more civil and takes on a leader role (although he might have been more aware of what was going on in the first place).
  • Bruenor seems to be adopting a different accent.
  • Nayeli starts to obey Jarlaxle's orders.
  • Nat, who is mute, speaks Common.
• Overheating: If you manage to set up your Modron Core so that the output loops back on itself, this happens, shutting down all connected nodes to the bare minimum bonus until the loop is broken.
• Pet the Dog: During the Dragon Heist campaign, Jarlaxle teaches Nat (a mute orphan) drow sign language to help with communication better.
• Plaguemaster: Krull's main draw is his capability to inflict enemies with different plagues that stack and get more intense over time. Pilfer causes them to drop more gold, Pain makes them take more damage, and Traitor causes enemies nearby to take 10% per stack of the damage that the infected unit took. Furthermore, one of his abilities gives his plagues a chance to spread to other enemies when an infected enemy dies.
• Play Every Day:
  • The game sometimes makes an announcement for a twitch stream, which contains a code for an electrum chest. These codes expire after 1 week, requiring at least a minimal periodic check-in.
  • Seasons provide daily quests for season experience points, in turn leading to rewards. These require playing the game and performing specific tasks each day.
    • Later seasons toned this down with the main season and milestone quests beign permanent for the season. Although bonus quests are still time-limited.
• Power Equals Rarity: Epic (purple) equipment are often the rarest equipment type to find and they give very high bonuses to champions.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • Some of the cases (along with Teeth-Clenched Teamwork and Befriending the Enemy) of Champions with genuinely evil personalities and goals, beyond simply falling under the Evil alignment. They're still effectively loyal in everything the party's doing.
  • True to his source material, Jarlaxle especially. In Never Split the Party, once Bruenor, Nayeli and the other characters who usually "keep him in line" are finally no longer around to do so, Jarlaxle immediately becomes the de facto leader of his subgroup - and immediately adopts the exact selfless, Determinator standards they'd have in his place. This isn't because he's personally an idealistic hero bent on saving the world; it's because he expects everybody else to survive or be recoverable, and considers this the best option for himself, given that his entanglement with the Champions will continue.
• Precision F-Strike: During one event, Celeste refers to Umberlee as "the Bitch Queen", which is in fact one of Umberlee's official titles. Jaraxle lampshades it, of course.
• Puzzle Boss: Ras Nsi in the Serpent's Fane has a divine shield on himself that makes him Nigh-Invulnerable. To beat him, you need to destroy four pillars, which will cause the ceiling to collapse and defeat him by trapping him under rubble.
• Quirky Bard: Averted. Bards are extremely important Support Party Members, as they almost always have an ability to give a damage Status Buff to allies, making them vital in any formation. Some of them are even viable at being DPS themselves, such as Birdsong.
• Recurring Boss:
  • Several bosses flee the scene when beaten, or are merely illusions that dissipate when beaten, and are usually fought again after that.
  • The Resurrected Hero of the Vale is encountered in several quest campaigns, and all the characters lampshade having to fight him again.
• Refuge in Audacity: Due to several Human Wizards being released or re-released (i.e. Dynaheir, a rework for Dhadius) in a row, Gale Dekarios' release (and the last of the "Origin" characters) was delayed for variety's sake— meaning his first appearance in the game was as a severed hand Familiar available with The Dark Urge. A callback to when you first meet Gale as Dark Urge— instead of yanking him out of the portal you find him stuck in, "Durge" can rip his hand off.
• Running Gag:
  • Bruenor's pepperoni attracting the unwanted attention of hostile seabirds in A Mysterious Summons.
  • Overzealous City Guards mistaking the party as bandits/monsters/modrons/etc. in certain campaigns and attacking the party for it.
  • A pixie riding various animals, including a hellhound.
  • The Accidental Misnaming of "Ahghairon's Day" in the Ahghairon's Day event by everyone else except Celeste, which happens throughout the campaign. Bruenor only gets it right at the very end of it.
  • Baeloth's facisination/obsession with red pandas.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Simpsons: Lazaapz's "I Got This...?" challenge requires champions with 14 INT or less (or Lazaapz herself), declaring them your "smrtest champions".
  • Several to Star Wars:
    • Ezmerelda's specialization choice to keep buffing attacks against Undead is "Stay on Target".
    • All of the NERDs specializations are named "<color> Leader Standing By!"
    • Vin Ursa has a feat called "High Ground" with the text stating "It's over—don't try it,". One of her event variants is even called A New Hope.
    • The achievement for collecting 12 shiny gear items is "Never Tell Me the Odds!".
    • A variant in the Xaryxis campaign has the champions getting attacked by random asteroids. The variant is called "3,720 to 1".
  • The area text for the huge bear/dire wolf Dual Boss notes that it "was only a matter of time before you ran into something larger than the average bear."
  • The Wild Beyond The Witchlight variant The Lutes of Loomlurch has the description "Follow these carefully laid out plans with Champions that make plans that fail.", and has the restriction of only allowing three non-Bard Champions.
• Significant Anagram: Lampshaded in the Running event - after Bailiearyl Tavebent betrays the party, Jarlaxle says he should have seen it coming because her name is an anagram of "inevitable betrayal".
• The Six Stats: Considering that the game is based on Dungeons & Dragons, it's present for all characters. Generally speaking, however, this usually determines a character's eligibility for receiving or providing certain buffs, whether they can participate in variants where a stat needs to be higher or lower than a certain amount, or how susceptible they will be to certain boss attacks.
• The Smart Guy: Quite a few, but Celeste (probably because she's the one players will definitely be familiar with) is the usual one seen actually studying things and providing exposition, especially on the topic of gods and religious rituals. Verging on lampshaded once when somebody notes that while it's normal for a priest to know something about other deities and their worshippers, Celeste seems unusually well informed.
• Status Buff: Several of them, provided by champions under different situations. This is, in fact, how you make your DPS and party stronger.
• Suddenly Voiced:
  • Well, not really, but Nat's sign language was untranslated in the Dragon Heist adventure, requiring Jarlaxle to communicate with her using drow sign language. In the Wild Beyond the Witchlight adventure, her sign language is fully translated. Possibly justified due to the other champions learning sign language to communicate with her.
  • At around the game's third year, events started getting minor revisions to add dialogue lines from event Champions (who previously were voiceless unless they had campaign variants with their own dialogue or appeared as NPCs), and subsequent main campaigns have also been including them with the presumption that even if the player playing doesn't have them unlocked, they're still "around in the background".
• Super-Toughness: Enemies with segmented health will only take one hit point per hit they take, no matter how powerful the hit was, but they make up for it with very low health. Enemies with armored health are even more severe, taking one hit point of damage only if said damage was above a certain threshold.
• Tag Along Kid: The Waterdeep Orphans sometimes occupy slots in the formation in variants. It's played straight with the Light of Xaryxis campaign, with Squiddly taking a permanent slot in the center of the formation for the entire campaign.
• Taken for Granite: The Periodic Petrification variant has a random Champion turn to stone every 15 seconds, lasting for a full minute. Thankfully, any enemies killed will reduce the duration by 5 seconds.
• They Killed Kenny Again: Spurt the Kobold Inventor's main gimmick is based on him dying and turning into a spirit via his Ultimate (where an angry giant smashes him with a hammer alongside with other enemies). He comes back to life once the cooldown on his Ultimate is nearly over.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Zig-Zagged. On one hand, some of the enemies you face are innocent but drunk townspeople, and you kill them in order to progress. On the other hand, they're all trying to kill you if you don't kill them first, so... Later levels avert this trope by making the innocent people run away instead of dying.
• Violence is the Only Option: Pretty much everything can be solved by beating up monsters, beating up people, or beating monsters and/or people up to collect something they drop.
• Voice for the Voiceless:
  • On Dragonbait's feats and gear, Deekin provides the dialouge for a few of them, since Dragonbait doesn't speak common.
  Deekin: "Deekin speaks for Dragonbait. Deekin understands bad smells"
  • For the Dark Urge, his butler Sceleritas Fel provides the dialouge.
• Your Brain Won't Be Much of a Meal: In the Greengrass variant Starve Them Out, a giant Intellect Devourer will show up as a miniboss. It has a massive amount of armored hit-based health, and makes all the other enemies invincible as long as it lives. Its maximum health (and hence the number of hits it needs) is reduced by 10 for every point of Intelligence less than 12 among your champions; for example, Bruenor - with 8 Intelligence - will reduce its maximum health by 40 if he's in the formation.