History TabletopGame / CriticalRoleTaldoreiCampaignSetting

** The Armor of the Valiant Soul is breastplate armor made from the scales of a green and black dragon and is ironically possessed by another dragon, J'mon Sa Ord, implying he slew members of his own kind.

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: The first sourcebook leaned into this with goblinoids and orcs, portraying both as menacing, primitive bands of inherently-warlike beings that other sentient races treat with appropriate hostility. However, as of ''Tal'Dorei Reborn'', [[RetCon this has been walked back]], with both goblinoids and orcs being completely-accepted members of civilization with no inherent inclination towards evil. This is partially [[HandWave hand-waved]] by these races coming to Tal'Dorei's defense against the Chroma Conclave, and thus helping them overcome old prejudices.

* FourElementEnsemble: The Ashari are a collection of four tribes dedicated to guarding four portals to different dimensions, one for each classical element. In keeping with that theme, each tribe has developed elemental magic corresponding the portal they guard, as reflected in the stat-block each Ashari has in the end of the book.
** The Zephrah Ashari are known as Skydancers and can fly using artificial wings known as a sky sail.
** The Terrah Ashari are known as Stoneguards and have a special ability to turn their skin to stone as a reaction, halving all non-magical damage against them.
** The Pyrah Ashari are known as Fire Tamers and can actually grow into ten-feet tall behemoths made of fire.
** The Vesrah Ashari are known as Wave Riders and can transform into sharks or octopi in addition to being able to talk to marine life.

* GodsHandsAreTied: The Betrayer Gods caused all sorts of chaos and misery when they ran amuck on Exandria. When the gods of good sealed the Betrayers away, they enforced this trope to avoid the risk of the Betrayers being freed. They applied this rule to themselves, so that gods are generally restricted to granting powers to clerics and other mortal servants. The gods of good are very touchy about anyone breaching the barrier between them and mortals, since it could release the Betrayer Gods again. This is one reason Vecna's attempted ascendsion was so dangerous, since he could have potentially freed the Betrayer Gods.

* InNameOnly: Ashari player characters start out with the cantrip Prestidigitation, but of the five different functions of that spell, the Ashari can use 0 of them. Instead, they can create a minor effect related to one of the four elements, having more in common with the cantrips form Elemental Evil that are copyrighted and not legally allowed to be used in the campaign guide.

** Obviously, most of it's abilities only work on creatures with blood. This is weird because no official player options affect these creatures and there's no official clarification on which ''Dungeons and Dragons'' monsters have blood or not. People using this class in their games will just have to make judgement calls based on what seems appropriate.

** The Remnants are a secret society that worships Vecna, an undead wizard who attempted to become the god of secrets. Most members of the cult lead double lives, with their leader acting as an middling jeweler during the day while organizing a ritual of mass EyeScream at night. Even those personally selected by Vecna are only contacted in moments of silent meditation, when he comes in hushed whispers in order to ensure no one can detect his plots.

* UnholyHolySword: One of the adventure hooks in the book involves a the rusted sword of a demon prince that pretends to be the bejeweled sword of the rightful king of Tal'Dorei. It sends visions to a player character and tries to tempt them to overthrow the Council of Tal'Dorei and set themselves up as the new king. Mechanically, the sword deals acid damage, but any creature without TrueSight perceives the damage as holy.

** Carried over into WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfVoxMachina where Vecna is still known as the Whispered One. Subverted though in the official Wizards of the Coast tie in books ''Explorer's Guide to Wildemount'' and ''Call of the Netherdeep''where as official D&D products they can carry the official D&D names AND their Exandria specific names (for example "Vecna, the Whispered One" in the Wildemount book). Sarenrae as the Everlight though coming from Pathfinder is still known only as the Everlight in the Tal'Dorei books and the official D&D material refers to her as Raei.

* CripplingOverspecialization: Each of the Blood Domain Cleric's features only work on creature's with blood. In a campaign where characters are fighting ghosts, robots, or demons, you might as well not have a cleric sub-class at all.

** ''Tal'Dorei Reborn'' furthers this by including references to Marquet and references to the legendary hero the Alyxian, features of the official ''Call of the Netherdeep'' adventure which was released a few months after ''Tal'Dorei Reborn.''

** Averted with the release of ''Tal'Dorei Reborn'', which not only gives updates on the lives of Vox Machina twenty years after the end of their campaign but stats to allow them to be used as NPCs.

** Averted with the release of ''Tal'Dorei Reborn'', which gives updates on the lives of Vox Machina twenty years after the end of their campaign.

* WolverinePublicity: Most of the book's largest illustrations show the main cast of ''Critical Role'' posing as a group, which makes sense given the book is a supplement to that show. However, the book barely mentions these characters in anything more than passing references and a few of these characters (namely Pike and Taryon) are never mentioned in the text of the book once.

** This trope is now Averted has the sword was updated in Tal'Dorei Reborn to fix these issues being upgraded to be a finesse weapon giving beterr benefits for the more dex heavy weaponry of the bard class and it no longer is tied to cutting words for the disadvntage and is simply when you use a bardic inspiration aginst an enemy.

* AwesomeButImpractical: Mythcarver is one of the signature weapons of a character from ''Critical Role'' and is notable for allowing the one who wields it do a number of things very few items and abilities allow in this edition of ''Dungeons and Dragons''. The magical longsword deals damage that almost no monster in the game resists, allows it's wielder to do as more attacks in a single turn than anyone but a Fighter of the highest level, and most notably of all, forces enemies to make saving throws with disadvantage, all but assuring that they will be unable to successfully resist whatever spell was cast on them. However, the item was clearly written with the character of Scanlan Shorthalt in mind, making it difficult to use for other characters for a variety of reasons:

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: The first sourcebook leaned into this with goblinoids and orcs, portraying both as menacing, primitive bands of inherently-warlike beings that other sentient races treat with appropriate hostility. However, as of ''Tal'Dorei Reborn'', [[RetCon this has been walked back]], with both goblinoids and orc being completely-accepted members of civilization with no inherent inclination towards evil. This is partially [[HandWave hand-waved]] due to orcs and goblinoids coming to Tal'Dorei's defense against the Chroma Conclave, and thus overcoming old prejudices.

* FantasyGunControl: Gaming groups can optionally do this with Percy's gun technology. The book notes that Percy wants his gun knowledge to die with him, and advises that home games can assume this happens if they don't want to deal with any potential complications guns cause.

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: In Tal'Dorei, goblins are the mutated creations of a god of hatred that are only kept from devolving into wild beasts due to the tyrannical orders of higher goblinoids. They build no cities, breed like animals, and only respect the "kill-boss" who lead them on their deadly raids against men, elves, and dwarves. Just about the only thing all three races can agree on is that goblins are horrid and inhuman.
-->''"Goblins are like vermin."''

In July 2021, Critical Role's Darrington Press [[https://darringtonpress.com/announcing-taldorei-campaign-setting-reborn/ announced]] ''Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn'', a revised and expanded version of the book released on January 18th 2022.

In July 2021, Critical Role's Darrington Press [[https://darringtonpress.com/announcing-taldorei-campaign-setting-reborn/ announced]] ''Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn'', a revised and expanded version of the book due to release in late 2021/early 2022.

* ALoadOfBull: Instead of being the results of bestiality or demonic rituals, the minotaurs of Tal'Dorei were artificial beings created during the Age of Arcanum to guard the great treasures in elaborate labyrinths and mazes.

* OverusedCopycatCharacter: The adventure hook "A Lesson in Tropes" pokes fun at the D&D cliche of making a character based off the fantasy hero [[Literature/TheLegendOfDrizzt Drizzt]]. In it, a dark elf ranger with a panther pet turns out to be a heartless spy hoping to assassinate an elven official with little more than a dashing smile and his beautiful eyes, much unlike the heroic Drizz't.

* DamageOverTime: The spells of the Blood Domain Cleric sub-class mainly inflict StandardStatusEffects like poison, sleep, enfeeblement, madness, slow, and paralysis that allow the Cleric to wear down enemies over time rather than focusing on healing allies or blasting groups of enemies. The Blood Cleric's final feature emphasizes this role even more by giving them a 30-foot radius DamageOverTime effect that slowly chips away at the health of hostile creatures.

** Second, Mythcarver is specifically a longsword, a weapon that relies on Strength for attack and damage rolls. The problem with that is that Bards rely on a different attack stat, Dexterity, to determine how hard they are to hit and how to use nearly every other weapon with which they are proficient, so most Bards are going to have a lower Strength than Dexterity and are going to be less accurate with this legendary weapon that with a standard shortsword.
** Third, Mythcarver's most powerful feature, being able to impose disadvantage on saving throws, can only be activated by using the Cutting Words feature on the enemy. Cutting Words is a feature only available to one of the seven published Bard sub-classes, making Mythcarver's signature feature unusable by most Bards. What's worse is that Lore Bards are perhaps the Bard sub-class that is the worst at using weapons and the best at casting spells, meaning they'll do more damage casting spells than using their legendary weapon passed on by master bards for generations.

** First of all, only a bard can use the weapon's magical properties. Since Bards are a spellcasting class, the longsword's bonuses to damage and the number of attacks you can make are largely going to be unused since even with the sword's bonuses, most Bards are going to be better off casting a spell than using Mythcarver.

* AwesomeButImpractical: Mythcarver is one of the signature weapons of a character from ''Critical Role'' and is notable for allowing the one who wields it do a number of things very few items and abilities allow in this edition of ''Dungeons and Dragons''. The magical longsword deals damage that almost no monster in the game resists, allows it's wielder to do as more attacks in a single turn than anyone but a Fighter of the highest level, and most notably of all, forces enemies to make saving throws with disadvantage, all but assuring that they will be unable to successfully resist whatever spell was cast on them. However, the item was clearly written for the character of Scanlan Shorthalt in mind, making it difficult to use for other characters for a variety of reasons:

** Lastly, Wildemount is a continent of gradient inspirations. The closer to the center of the Dwendalian Empire you are, the more the continent resembles 15th-century Russia, while the Empire appears more and more Spanish the farther towards it's borders you get.