What exactly is Marisha playing in Critical Role Campaign 3? (And other as yet unsolved mysteries of Campaign 3 characters)

So far I am entirely all in for Campaign 3 of Critical Role, and I very much enjoyed the first session. But at the same time, the obsessive nerd in me is dying to know things that haven’t been revealed yet. Exactly what is Laudna, Marisha Ray’s new character? What subclasses is everyone playing? Though we’ll learn more as the series goes on, right now a lot of these questions  have been living rent-free inside my head since Thursday’s first episode of the campaign.

Here’s some speculation about the unanswered questions of Critical Role Campaign 3’s brand new characters.

Who (and what) is Laudna?

For example, Laudna, the amazing Warlock/Sorcerer played by Marisha Ray, seems to me to be one with an Undead patron. She specifically said she was using Form of Dread, the 1st level Undead patron Warlock ability. That’s a pretty safe leap in logic, even if it isn’t confirmed by the cast just yet.

But that doesn’t change the fact that as of right now, we have no idea if she’s a Human — perhaps she’s actually one of the Gothic Lineages from Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft like a Reborn or Hexblood or even a Dhampir. I’ve seen some folks say they think she’s a Shadar-Kai, and it’s a cool idea, but as of right now it’s simply not something we know. I mean, we also don’t know how many levels of Warlock she has vs. how many Sorcerer, but at 3rd level that’s not all that important.

We do now know, based on Episode 2 of Campaign 3, that Laudna appears to be a Hollow One — a special supernatural gift that can be found in the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount. Hollow One isn’t a race — you could be a Hollow One Elf, or Dwarf, or Human — but it means that at some point, Laudna died, and when she came back it wasn’t all the way back. Her use of Unsettling Whispers is what tipped people off. Does this mean whatever her Undeath patron is, that it brought her back as a Hollow One for reasons of its own? Well, maybe we’ll find out in Episode 3.

Imogen also has her secrets

For starters, Laura Bailey, Imogen’s player, said that she was Human, which — considering some of the things she did in the session — made me wonder. A lot of her character’s behavior and powers would be well suited to a Kalashtar, especially the part about trying to read people’s minds. However, it would also work for an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer, a class that debuted in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. The 3rd level of Aberrant Mind gets Detect Thoughts as a Sorcerer spell, and that would work almost exactly as we saw Imogen attempt to sense minds and thoughts around her. Combining that with the 1st level Telepathic Speech class feature, and you’d have what we saw Imogen do. Her use of objects as weapons would fit the description of Catapult, a 1st level Sorcerer spell, and we saw her cast Witch Bolt.

Aberrant Mind seems the most likely path for her Sorcerer, especially if she is Human.

Does Ashton follow the Path of Wild Magic?

Taliesin Jaffe is notorious for his quirky, unusual character choices — the Owlbear during the Darrington Brigade comes to mind, as does Mollymauk or Percy or Caduceus Clay or — well, pretty much everything he does. Ashton Greymoore is no exception, an Earth Genasi with a cracked glass skull and his gold inlay repairs similar to the Japanese kintsugi repair technique. Of course, we’ve barely scratched the surface of each of these characters, and know little of any of their backstories. But while we know some basics about Ashton — clearly he’s a rough and tumble character who enjoys money and strong drink — one thing we don’t know is very simple.

What Barbarian path has Ashton chosen? I’ve had arguments with people about this, with them arguing he can’t be a Wild Magic Barbarian because the powers he demonstrated weren’t the same as the Tasha’s class. I’m not so sure — character description and creative license have extended into this kind of thing on Critical Role before, and nothing I saw Ashton do seems outside of the Path of Wild Magic to me. But I admit, we don’t actually know yet — there could be some kind of homebrew path, similar to the ones we saw used in Campaign 2. Wild Magic is often a choice Earth Genasi make, so we’ll see.

Edited 10/26: Both Taliesin and Sam are playing custom Subclasses, according to this tweet thread from Matthew Mercer. So our speculation that Taliesin is using a homebrew subclass turns out to be the case.

There are some other things still up in the air — what’s Sir Bell actually up to, how did Fresh Cut Grass come to be, why are Fearne and Oryn in Marquet — but we’ll presumably learn all of that in time. I’m looking forward to it.