Tabletop Game / Critical Role: Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting

Critical Role: Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting is a 2017 book written by Matthew Mercer and James Haeck to help fans of the Dungeons & Dragons-stream Critical Role run their own D&D games in the world Mercer created for that stream. More briefly, it's The Book of The Stream of The Game.

The book details just about everything that Critical Role mentions about Tal'Dorei, the fictional continent the first campaign is set on. It's a place with the dwarves and elves typical of fantasy settings in addition to incredibly dangerous firearms and a Divine Gate which keeps gods from solving every problem. It details mythic battles that shaped the world, powerful organizations and governments eager to hire adventurers, gods that remain nameless for legal reasons, and some sub-class options and magic items for D&D players more interested in doing a lot of fake damage than fake history.

A lot of it details lore you'd never know after watching all 340 hours of Critical Role, but some of the characters and events described in the book are basically summaries of their appearances on Critical Role up to episode 94, so prepare to get spoiled if you haven't seen the show.

In July 2021, Critical Role's Darrington Press announced Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn, a revised and expanded version of the book. It was released on January 18th 2022.

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Critical Role: Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting provide examples of:

• Alternative Calendar: The book includes the calendar used in Critical Role which is an eleven-month, 328 day solar calendar. The book mentions that the names they use for months and days are the elven names, which are apparently commonly used throughout Tal'Dorei, but regional variants do exist.
• Always Chaotic Evil:
  • 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, 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 hand-waved by these races coming to Tal'Dorei's defense against the Chroma Conclave, and thus helping them overcome old prejudices.
  • Tal'Dorei Reborn has another aversion: not every chromatic dragon is evil and follows the way of the Scaled Tyrant. A passage even mentions how Westruun received a sizeable donation from a young red dragon who used to admire Thordak, but became appalled by his disregard for the lives of others.
• Anti-Structure: The Juggernaut sub-class gives Barbarians the Siege property, allowing them to do double damage to objects. Uniquely, the Juggernaut also gain a randomly-determined bonus to damage against against animate objects, robots, and other artificial creatures.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Mythcarver in the original campaign guide was this trope, it 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:
  • 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 swinging a sword.
  • 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 have a higher Dexterity than Strength, which often makes them more accurate and effective with a mundane shortsword than with this legendary weapon.
  • Third, Mythcarver's most powerful feature, being able to impose disadvantage on saving throws, can only be activated by using a feature called Cutting Words. 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.
  • Lastly, the final upgrade to Mythcarver, the one that let's you make four attacks in a single round, also gives you a point of exhaustion. Exhaustion is a mechanic which gives you disadvantage on ability checks, which wouldn't be terrible except that Bards are the Jack of All Trades that have several of their features dedicated to making them better than anyone at ability checks. In particular, the first and last powers of the Lore Bard sub-class are dedicated to making them really good at ability checks, meaning this weapon makes the one sub-class it was designed for worse at what's supposed to be their greatest strength.
  • Now averted with the updates in Tal'Dorei Reborn to fix these issues. Mythcarver has been upgraded to a finesse weapon, giving better benefits for the more dex-heavy weaponry of the bard class; the disadvantage it grants to an enemy is also no longer tied to Cutting Words, rather being applied whenever the player uses a bardic inspiration against them.
• Barrier Warrior: The sorcerer sub-class Runechild can manifest magical runes on their bodies that they can use to reduce any damage they take. At higher levels, Runechildren can transfer these runes onto others or use them to cause all spells to do half-damage to them.
• Blood Magic: The Blood Domain is a Cleric sub-class centered around manipulating the forces that control one's body and connects it to the soul. These clerics can channel divinity to control the blood within creatures and force them to make attacks against allies or use samples of the blood of a creature to learn their location or even take control of their senses for a short time.
• Came Back Wrong: The book presents an optional rule to make death in D&D more than a nuisance called "Didn't Come Back Right." The rule states that any character that returns from the dead must roll a d20 and add their Wisdom saving throw bonus. If their total is lower than 20 minus the level of the spell used to revive them, the creature gains becomes mad for days or possibly weeks. A harsher variant in the book has the madness last indefinitely unless removed by magical means.
• Captain Ersatz:
  • All of the deities from Critical Role copyrighted characters from Dungeons and Dragons books with one exception: a copyrighted-character from a Pathfinder book. As such, none of the gods mentioned in the campaign guide are given proper names and instead referred to by titles. So, Asmodeus is called "the Lord of the Hells," Sarenrae is "the Everlight," and the Raven Queen is "the Matron of Ravens."
  • The cultists and minions of the one-eyed, one-handed wizard Vecna have a few stat-blocks in the book. However, because Vecna is licensed by Wizards of the Coast, these cultists that each have one eye and one hand are instead just following a guy called the Whispered One.
  • Carried over into The Legend of Vox Machina 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.
• Cast from Hit Points: The Blood Domain Cleric has an ability called "Sanguine Recall" which allows them to instantly recover a spell slot by injuring themselves. The more damage they take, the more powerful the spell slot they recover.
• Cataclysm Backstory: The continent of Tal'Dorei has three defining wars that shape the civilization:
  • The first is called "the Calamity," an oft-referenced war involving Physical Gods and magical cities that takes place eight hundred years before Critical Role and gets mentioned in the show throughout both of its seasons. Basically, an arms race between evil gods and wizards let to a third of humanity being destroyed, so the good gods stopped the war by creating a huge gate that kept any gods from traveling into the world of mortals. Now no god, evil or good, can directly interfere in the affairs of mortals anywhere in the world due to this "Divergence," thus explaining why gods don't solve problems with a Deus ex Machina in games in the setting.
  • The second is the Scattered War, a continental war between elves and men that doesn't have as large of an influence on the web-show. It mainly involves an incredibly brutal line of tyrant kings that explain why Tal'Dorei is in the process of becoming a republic, rather than your typical fantasy monarchy.
  • The third is actually an event depicted in Critical Role, the conquest of Tal'Dorei by a group of five dragons called the Chroma Conclave. The rampage of the dragons throughout the countryside has created a lot of fresh ruins filled with treasure for adventurers to excavate and explore.
• Classical Elements: 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.
• Covers Always Lie: The cover art for the book shows Vox Machina doing battle with a massive green dragon, with the the Gunslinger Percy right in the foreground. Not only is this particular battle not described anywhere in the book, but the book also doesn't include statistics for dragons or the Gun-slinger class. You'll need to get a Monster Manual for dragon statistics and then go the GM's Guild website to see Matthew Mercer's gunslinger class.
• Crash Course Landing: A adventure hook for a mountain region forces the players to learn how to ride wyvern-mounts or freeze to death in a blizzard. Since the hook is called "The Impossible Task," it seems to be written for characters that don't have dragon-riding as part of their backstory.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Each of the Blood Domain Cleric's features only work on creatures 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.
• Cultural Chop Suey: The book briefly summarizes other continents and cultures in the world apart from Tal'Dorei and lists at least two or three real-world inspirations for the architecture and life-style of each place.
  • Issylra is populated by Norwegian cities if they were built around Mesopotamian artifacts.
  • Marquet is a blend of Turkish metropolises and smaller Palestinian villages.
  • The Shattered Teeth is a series of Japanese islands run by the a fantasy-equivalent of the British East India Company.
  • 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 its borders you get.
• Damage Over Time: The spells of the Blood Domain Cleric sub-class mainly inflict Status Effects 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 Damage Over Time effect that slowly chips away at the health of hostile creatures.
• Death Is Cheap: The book identifies this trope as an element of high-level Dungeons & Dragons, where characters can die and be brought back at the cost of a bit of gold. The book offers a few optional rules for Dungeon-Masters hoping to avert the trope in their own campaign by playing into tropes like Came Back Wrong or Resurrection Sickness.
• Dispel Magic: The Remnant Chosen have an ability called "Eye-Seeing Eye" which allows them to instantly dispel any illusion spell of 4th level or lower. They don't need to know the spell, they don't need to roll anything, they don't even need to use their action to do it, they just destroy the magic with a glance they learned from Vecna himself.
• Disposable Pilot: "The Impossible Task" adventure prompt is written so that no matter what your character does, the wyvern-rider who rescued you from the mountains will be killed by a goblin mid-flight. There's no attack roll, death saving throw, or even an ability check for the rider to spot the goblin, that pilot has to die for the adventure to continue.
• Eldritch Location: Gatshadow is a mountain that seems unusually tall and thin because it's dimensions were distorted when the priest of an Eldritch Abomination summoned his master into the mortal world. The very presence of this mad god created seemingly-endless labyrinths around the mountain and stretched the rock itself "like puddy."
• Enemy Scan: Cobalt Soul sub-class published here allows a Monk to spend a ki point to force an enemy to roll a Constitution saving throw if the Monk hits the enemy more than once on a turn. If they enemy then fails, then the Monk must can choose to extract knowledge of one aspect of the enemy's game statistics. This version of the ability is notably more complex than later versions Matthew Mercer published online, which he developed after having one of his players pick up this sub-class.
• Evolving Weapon: Each of the Vestiges of Divergences have an Awakened and Exalted State that can only be reached if a creature wielding the item overcomes an extreme personal challenge. This causes the offensive Vestiges to give a +2 bonus to attacks and damage when Awakened that increases to +3 when Exalted, while also increasing the size of any damage die the weapon adds to damage rolls and increasing the difficulty of any rolls enemies have to make resist the effects of the weapon. There are a host of other unique bonuses detailed in Critical Role proper or, for those Vestiges not featured in the stream, right here:
  • Agony, a torturer's flail, is unique is that it has a +2 bonus to attacks while Dormant and upgrades to a final bonus of +4. On top of that, the Awakened Agony allows it's wielder to make an additional attack when the weapon brings someone to 0 Hit points and gives any creature struck on it disadvantage on Strength rolls until the end of their next turn. When Exalted, it's so fearsome that a creature struck by a Critical Hit from it becomes frightened.
  • The Condemner only provides two Trick Arrow options until it is Awakened, when it can fire a paralysis arrow. Then, when it's Exalted, it can fire an arrow that contains a miniature blight inside of it.
  • When awakened, the Pyremaul can be used to cast the Area of Effect spell Burning Hands and can knock enemies on their back when it lands a Critical Hit. It does even more on a critical hit when it's exalted, dealing an additional 3d6 fire damage on top of the 6d6 fire and 2d10 bludgeoning damage it would normally do.
  • When the Wraps of Dyamak are awakened, a monk wearing them can teleport a short-distance once and can use that ability again if they score a Critical Hit. When exalted, the wraps allow their wearer to turn one of their punches into a Ravenous Strike that gives them a hit point for every point of damage they do.
• Evil Makes You Ugly: The Circlet of Barbed Vision is a magical item created by an evil spider-goddess that morbidly twists the appearance of anyone who wears it to amuse the evil goddess. In practice, this means only characters who aren't good can use the Circlet and when used, it reduces the character's Charisma by 2 points.
• Eye Beams: The Cinderslag Elemental has a form of heat vision that not only burns whoever it gazes it at, but also causes one of their possessions to either melt away or turn to ash.
• Fantastic Drug: A sidebar called "dangerous contraband" details three magical and illegal substances that have mind-altering effects obviously modeled off real-world drugs.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Gaming groups can optionally do this with Percy's gun technology. The first sourcebook 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.
  • Tal'Dorei Reborn shows that Anna Ripley has spread the secrets of gunpowder throughout Tal'Dorei, and Whitestone has trained an elite rifle corps for defense in the meantime. It advises that groups should feel free to just ignore this if they want to keep technology at a strictly-medieval level.
• God's Hands Are Tied: 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 ascension was so dangerous, since he could have potentially freed the Betrayer Gods.
• Good Republic, Evil Empire: Tal'Dorei's history under Drassig Dynasty is rule is marked by devil-worship, racism, and tyranny, while in modern times, it is an enlightened republic that serves as the home to heroes who fend off ancient evils and fight for the forces of good in the world. Since so many of the dungeons and monsters you'll face in Dungeons and Dragons come from the distant past, in some ways the campaign guide is setting up adventuring parties to serve as champions for Tal'Dorei's democratic present against the infernal legacy of it's imperial past.
• Hyperactive Metabolism:
  • An optional character features presented in the book is called Rapid Drinker, and as the name suggests, it allows you to rapidly chug a drink in the middle of combat while still having an action to throw daggers, cast spells, or run at full speed without a second thought.
  • An optional rule in this book allows every character in a setting to chug drinks on their turn without spending an action, allowing characters to fight without any encumbrance from drinking copious amount of healing potions. The rule is explicitly meant to make healing potions useful for games with a large enough number of players that drinking that potion may be one of two or three actions you take in combat, making rapid mid-combat chugging an Acceptable Break from Reality.
• In Name Only: 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 from Elemental Evil that are copyrighted and not legally allowed to be used in the campaign guide.
• Instant Runes: Runechildren are born with magical glyphs hidden under their skin that begin to glow whenever they collect enough magical energy. In addition to the runes on their body, Runechildren also have the ability to make any hidden magical writing glow if it's close enough to them.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The book by it's very nature describes the most world-shaking events that happen in Critical Role so fans can have all the information they need to come up with their own characters and storylines in Tal'Dorei. Even the cover is a spoiler, since it shows the cast of Critical Role being swarmed by dragons in the capital of the continent!
• Life Drain: At their full power, the Wraps of Dynamak allow a Bare-Fisted Monk wearing them to unleashed a Ravenous Strike, which deals about 20 necrotic damage and heals the monk for as much necrotic damage as they dished out. This strike can be used again after a short rest, making it source of healing for Glass Cannon Monks up to 3 times a day.
• Living Battery: The Rune Children are people randomly born with magical runes covering their bodies that naturally conduct magical energy. During the days before the Great Offscreen War, almost all of these people were enslaved to serve as power sources for influential wizards, causing the few that are still born to cover up their true nature.
• Living Lie Detector: The Cobalt Soul sub-class for Monks has an ability where they can attack the pressure points of a creature and use Ki Manipulation to make it impossible for that creature to tell a lie for a minute.
• Lovecraft Lite: Illithids, aboleth and other monsters from beyond the stars lurk within the depths of Tal'Dorei, and are as malevolent as their equivalents in other settings. While they're dangerous, their plots can still be foiled and they are still vulnerable to man-made swords and spells.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: The Fate-Touched Background comes with a unique benefit, Fortune's Grace, which allows a player character to re-roll one of their rolls on a d20 once per day. This is meant to express the character's ability to manipulate destiny and adds to the pool of re-rolls a character gets from the "Lucky" feature available in standard fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons.
• Magical Accessory: The Kiss of the Changebringer is just an emerald connected to a silver chain, but when worn, it provides a bonus to every saving throw, immunity to up to four status conditions, the ability to enter another dimension, and even the ability to manipulate fate.
• Magic Is Mental: Some of the features in this book allow characters to break the rules of spellcasting are described as being the result of intense study, meditation, and focus.
  • The Dual-Focused feature comes as a result of strenuous mental exercises and allows a spellcaster to focus on two different incantations at once.
  • Flash Recall allows spellcasters to violate the normal rules of Vancian Magic by using their keen memory to prepare a spell in an instant rather than having to spend hours right after waking up preparing a whole list of spells.
  • The Spelldriver feature allows a character to cast a spell of 2nd level or lower as a bonus action and still cast any level of spell as an action due to "intense focus, training, and dedication," even though such a thing is impossible in the base rules of Dungeons and Dragons.
• Magikarp Power: The Runechild sub-class has all of it's features heavily tied to Sorcery Points, which makes them able to use their signature abilities only a couple of times per day at early levels when they only have a couple of sorcery points. Even then, they can only reduce damage done to them by 1d6 at the cost of not being able to use spells like Shield or Counterspell for a round, when those spells can potentially reduce all damage done to the Runechild. Yet, by the time they reach 18th level, not only do Runechildren have a massive pool of points to power their abilities with, they also gain the ability to halve all damage they take from spells, heal themselves every time they use magic, and most powerful of all, raise their spell save DC to 21 in a game where the normal maximum is a 19.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: The Blood Domain sub-class for clerics is odd in a couple of ways.
  • 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 judgment calls based on what seems appropriate.
  • The sub-class also breaks the trends that nearly every official cleric sub-class follows at eight and seventeenth level. At both levels, official clerics get an upgrade that they can use nine times out of ten during the day, with the feature at eight level specifically upgrading either their attacks or their spells that don't expend any resources. The Blood Cleric, however, gets two abilities at these levels that can each only be used once a day. The eighth level feature is especially odd in that it doesn't upgrade the Blood Cleric's abilities that don't use spell slots, but instead gives the Blood Cleric the ability to gain extra spell slots. So at 8th level, the Blood Cleric gets an ability incentivizing them to use more spell slots while all other Clerics get abilities that incentivize them to do anything else.
• Mystery Cult:
  • 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 jeweller during the day while organizing a ritual of mass Eye Scream 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.
  • Other cults try to rediscover the magical rites that the Raven Queen used to become a goddess and that Vecna nearly successfully used, or figure out how to free the Betrayer Gods from their planar prisons.
• Nemean Skinning:
  • 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 they slew members of their own kind.
  • Ashari Firetamers wear armor made from red dragon scales, a testament to their role in preventing red dragons from escaping from the Elemental Plane of Fire and their historic battle against the red dragon Thordak.
• Our Minotaurs Are Different: The minotaurs of Tal'Dorei were artificial beings created during the Age of Arcanum to guard the great treasures in elaborate labyrinths and mazes.
• Overused Copycat Character: The adventure hook "A Lesson in Tropes" pokes fun at the D&D cliche of making a character based off the fantasy hero Drizz't. 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.
• People Puppets: The Blood Domain Cleric can briefly turn anyone with blood into a Blood Puppet, making them move and fight as the cleric pleases. They're even more effective at controlling sleeping or unconscious people, since they have no chance to resist before the cleric can turn them into a lethal marionette.
• Poke in the Third Eye: The Remnant Cultist enemy has a trait called "Unknowable Secrets" which causes any attempt to read their mind or magically monitor them to fail while the telepath or spellcaster takes about 20 points of psychic damage. As the followers of a self-proclaimed god of secrets, it's a very fitting ability.
• Precision-Guided Boomerang: The Thrown Arms Master feature makes it so that any time you miss an attack with a light weapon, it will always return to your hand without fail.
• Pressure Point: The Cobalt Soul Monk specializes in attacking precise points on a creature's body to learn the nature of it's anatomy. At level 17, they can use this knowledge offensively by striking these points to inhibit the creature's fortitude, causing them to take double damage from the next attack that hits them.
• Prison Dimension: The setting's equivalents to Hell were initially created to trap evil gods who had betrayed the pantheon and despaired of creation. They were imperfect prisons that the Betrayer Gods managed to escape, only to be banished again and then permanently sealed away by the Divine Gate, which prevented any god from leaving their home dimension. This essentially turned even the good afterlives and Heavens that the good gods dwelled in into furnished prisons for them.
• Production Foreshadowing: The book included a sub-class for Monks called the Way of the Cobalt Soul just three months before a player character on Critical Role was introduced as a monk trained by and working under the Cobalt Soul.
  • Tal'Dorei Reborn furthers this by including references to Marquet and references to the legendary hero Alyxian, features of the official Call of the Netherdeep adventure which was released a few months after Tal'Dorei Reborn.
• Put on a Bus Tal'Dorei Reborn concludes with stat blocks for all the major members of Vox Machina so they can be used as non-player characters in a campaign, excluding Tiberius Stormwind who's player Orion Acaba left the original campaign mid-series; leading to the character being later killed off. Seeing that Tiberius would be long dead at the time of Tal'Dorei Reborn its not totally surprising he is missing from the stat-blocks though.
• Reduced to Dust:
  • The legendary hammer Pyremaul incinerates any creature it kills, leaving nothing but ash and making it nearly possible to bring them Back from the Dead.
  • If the Remnant Chosen reduce a creature to 0 hit points with their withered hand, the creature's body is disintegrated, much like the spell of the same name. Since their hand does 57 damage on average, it's a real risk when facing the Remnants.
• Resurrection Sickness: An optional rule called "The Taxing Returns" provides a game mechanic to represent a person's body deteriorating each time they come Back from the Dead. Each time a person is revived, their Constitution score (which determines a creature's hit points) is reduced by 1, and once they reach 0 Constitution, their body is too frail to sustain life and they cannot be revived again.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The gods of hatred and tyranny were once trapped in dimensions constructed for the sole purpose of containing them, but these evil gods corrupted the prisons to their own purpose and used the gateways that the good gods used to escape into the mortal realm. After a great battle, the evil gods were thrown into their prison dimensions again and now are unable to escape due to a powerful barrier that cuts off all divine access to the mortal realm, forcing the both evil and good gods to only influence the world through emissaries and champions.
• Sealed Good in a Can: The good gods of the setting are unable to leave their divine homes and enter the mortal plane, only able to aid their creations by sending small amounts of power to individual champions. Any attempt to free them is futile, as doing so would also release the gods of evil and end the world.
• Serial Killer: One of Vecna's cultists is the most prolific mass murderer on the continent of Tal'Dorei, Ixrattu Khar. She's a half-demon vampire who also escaped from the continent's highest security prison when it was attacked by the ancient red dragon, Thordak. Apparently, she still at large, building up Vecna's cult in hiding and presumably raising her body count, which numbered in the hundreds by the time she was arrested.
• Shield Bash: The legendary shield Honor's Last Stand has a special feature that allows it's wielder to immediately shove anyone who misses them with an attack, presumably using the shield to knock them down right after using it to block an attack.
• Stone Wall: The Path of the Juggernaut is a Barbarian sub-class whose features mainly involve making the Barbarian immune to status conditions, imposing status conditions on enemies, and destroying environmental hazards rather than increasing the Barbarian's damage output in combat.
• Super Mode: When they reach 18th level (of 20), the Runechild's sub-class can enter their Arcane Exemplar Form, where they become "a being of pure magical energy." As with a lot of super modes, they gain the ability to fly, a bonus to the power of the spells, a regeneration factor, and enhanced durability (specifically to spells.)
• Sympathetic Magic: Blood Clerics have a Tracking Spell that can only be used if they have a sample of the blood of whoever they intend to track.
• Tracking Spell: Blood Clerics can focus on a sample of blood and instantly know the location, distance, and even the health of whoever the sample belongs to. Focusing further can even allow the Cleric to take over the creature's sense, giving them further insight into their location
• Trick Arrow: The Condemner is a legendary crossbow that can turn crossbow bolts into delivery mechanism for spells instead of doing damage several times a day. One bolt-effect creates a fog cloud, another creates an area where no sound can be produced or heard, another paralyzes the target for the minute, and at it's fully power, the Condemner can release a precise, targeted blight into a bolt that instantly kills any plant it touches.
• Unholy Holy Sword: One of the adventure hooks in the book involves a the rusted sword of a demon prince that pretends to be the bejewelled 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 True Sight perceives the damage as holy.
• Wolverine Publicity: 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.
  • 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 non-player characters.