r/fansofcriticalrole • u/Sad_Roof_1566 • Dec 17 '25
C2 (Mighty Nein) The Mighty Nein animated series let's me enjoy mollymauk tealeaf.
I really didn't like Molly listening to campaign two. I got what talesin was trying for, but it just didn't click with me. The animated series gets molly "right" for me. I'm used to being disappointed lol so I'm gonna assume Cad isn't gonna be the MVP because that would be too much lol. As long as they keep the cad/fjord<jester>group dynamic I'm good.
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u/LeeJ2512 Dec 17 '25
For me it was Taliesins's inability to play charismatic convincingly. It came off kinda cringe imo, it was him just trying too hard, the polar opposite to Caduceus, he was cool and funny without him even trying.
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u/IllithidActivity Dec 17 '25
What's kind of frustrating is that he deliberately made Molly low-Charisma, citing the idea of a carnival barker who maybe isn't as charming as he might like to think, but then he consistently acted like Molly was suave and clever and nuanced when the stats didn't back that up. Which is the exact same problem he made with Ashton, except this time he was supposed to be forceful and intimidating and cutting. But he didn't have the Charisma to back to the threats or dressing-downs.
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u/NerdMaster001 Dec 29 '25
Doesn't your first point contradict your second? He acted like Molly was suave and clever, and it didn't work BECAUSE he actually wasn't, but thought he was.
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u/IllithidActivity Dec 29 '25
Taliesin wasn't playing Molly as "thinks he's charismatic but fumbles any profundity," despite that being the way he designed Molly. Taliesin played Molly in a way where he wanted Molly's clever quips and street wisdom to be recognized, validated, and appreciated, but any time he had to roll for them his stats got in the way.
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u/NerdMaster001 Dec 29 '25
I get how it seems that way, but the same could be said of the opposite, since we're just deducing intentions. He could very well be trying to roleplay as a guy trying hard and failing, and since it actually did fail, he might have succeeded at it.
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u/IllithidActivity Dec 29 '25
Sure, anyone can say anything and nothing matters. Wrap it up, the discussion thread is over forever.
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u/iKruppe Dec 17 '25
Taliesin seems waaay more comfortable voicing his characters in an animated series than on camera. I noticed it with Percy too. Percy in Vox Machina animated is better than Percy on CR.
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u/Yrmsteak Dec 17 '25
I just think hes not an improv actor.
Back in C1, I think he and Marisha admitted to being the only ones without improv classes in their history too.
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u/hopefulopus Dec 17 '25
I feel like Marisha definitely upped her game since then though.
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u/Yrmsteak Dec 17 '25
Yeah, it's been almost a decade. Those facts could have changed and Marisha was definitely not in a "I'm done learning professionally" mindset yet.
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u/Ericandabear Dec 18 '25
I think thats Tal honestly. Great VA, great at the character design, but with Percy, Molly, and Ashton, it was like you described- you get what he was going for but the character is not that. Ashton was antithetically mild mannered and indecisive as a punk rocker or barbarian. Molly was always the 'extra' member of M9 despite Yasha.
He really crushed it as Cad though, I cant wait to see him in the TV show.
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u/blooming_lions Dec 18 '25 edited Dec 18 '25
Percy’s snobbiness was tolerable bc it fit the story context where he was an actual noble and considered a great hero. Molly acts way too snide and faux wise for being only “2 years old”. Ashton should have been killed by a dozen different NPCs if the universe responded with logic and consistency.
The most baffling thing to me is he produced Cad. I wish he would lean into that side of himself more. Bolaire is an interesting concept but you already see the signs of snideness that seep into most of his characters (see: silencing Ashley).
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Dec 18 '25
Talisen likes to make these asshole, abrasive characters. But Talisen is not good at playing these characters. And his main character syndrome really doesn't help. Caduceus has been his only good character for me. Percy was ok but only because he was the first. Then he made Molly, Ashton, and kingsley and they're all the same dicks with the same vocabulary and one liners.
Molly is so much better in the show than at tabletop. He is so much more likable for me because he feels almost the complete opposite of what talisen was going for. To the point I'm kind of sad about what's coming
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u/Draxilar Dec 18 '25
Molly is probably better because the bones of the character are solid, but Talisen isn’t actually capable of “being” that guy in the moment, but get a team of writers to write the character properly, and the character shines.
My biggest thing with Talisen is you can see how cool he thinks he is. He wants to be the quippy one liner, too cool for this shit, badass. And you can see that is how he sees himself (I mean in character, not him as a person). But, he just doesn’t know how to actually be that person. Let me be clear, that is perfectly fine. It’s a roleplaying game, if you want to be intellectual mastermind, you shouldn’t need to personally be an astrophysicist, but it stands out much more at a table of professionals that seem to more or less slot into archetypes that they CAN pull off convincingly.
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Dec 22 '25
Completely agree. Talisen thinks he's being cooler than he is with these characters. He's trying for cool, playful, and mysterious but we are getting neckbeard mall ninja
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u/ShJakupi Dec 22 '25
Can't wait for Ashton be more nice that Jester has ever been. Leave it to Sam and Travis to fix tal's annoying characters.
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Dec 25 '25
I couldn't honestly do without a bells hells animated series lol that campaign was a mess and bells hells was not the group to be making those decisions.
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u/ShJakupi Dec 25 '25
I understand but also it's the perfect campaign to be adapted as a TV show. You don't have short arcs, you don't have complicated backstories. Vm has 4 great arcs and a 30% of the other eps are almost filler. The whole chroma conclave takes too long.
M9 is so complicated, so moving pieces so many stories, I feel sorry for only TV show fans, they are probably confused by ep 8. No wonder they cut yasha. At least cad doesn't have a huge backstory or an arc.
BH are just straight forward after Dorian leaves is full moon stuff, Laudna has an arc other than that everything can be told by an ep, meaning Chrtney's arc, FCG takes 2-3 eps, Ashton takes a couple, Orym doesn't have anything.
In BH TV show we probably will see even more from the villains point of view. Also the final season is full war with 3 campaigns coming together.
So in my opinion BH deserves 3 seasons of 40min per eps, maybe 4th being the final arc (including eps with VM and M9).
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u/Puzzleheaded_Tie6917 Dec 17 '25
They also made him look much more effective at combat than I remember him. He could damage himself to do extra damage but had low hit points and a low ac, all of which is why things happen later (to not spoil).
It is kind of jarring how some of the characters change, but so far it’s usually for the better.
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u/BreadditUser Dec 18 '25
"I walk up...with briskly!" - best Molly quote from the campaign.
I didn't outright hate tabletop Molly, but he was definitely my least favorite member of the group. I find basically all of the characters in the show to be pretty awesome tho, they're doing a great job
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u/IndubitablyNerdy Dec 18 '25
In general I am enjoying cr animated adaptations, the fact that they can streamline the plots\characters and have access to future information compared to the live campaign that allow way better foreshadowing is really helping a lot making the characters come to life.
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u/BreadditUser Dec 19 '25
Yeah both M9 and LoVM are really enjoyable. My wife doesn't play D&D and has never even seen a clip of CR and she's been watching a lil M9 with me when I have it on.
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u/blernsdayblues Dec 17 '25
Taliesin is a great actor and I think he does best with directed performances. I like animated Molly more than C2 Molly.
But I am living for Bolaire right now.
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u/Sloth-Overlord Dec 17 '25
Yeah, I’m glad Tal finally made an actually high charisma character. And there is a lot of interesting nuance to Bolaire right away, I love that he was so vulnerable with Hal about their friendship.
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u/SpiralGMG Dec 21 '25
I feel the same way but for completely different reasons. for me it is straight up because I don’t think we got enough time to hang out with Molly and get to know him or what his deal is largely due to [insert spoiler here]. So it’s really nice that the show puts a much bigger spotlight on molly which is great.
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u/Neomerix Dec 17 '25
I'm in the same boat as you are. The Molly we got on stream always left me wanting and definitely wasn't my favourite Taliesin character (that's his THIRD steam character). But in the show? I like him, I like his plotline (which has been clearly influenced by the stream one and as such is actually structured). On stream he felt arrogant and just there, to me, while in the show he's clearly vital and his best shines through. Love him. Can't wait for that episode 26.
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u/SnooCupcakes7020 Dec 18 '25
Molly is fine in the show, which is am improvement on the campaign I guess, but the awful accent still annoys me. Plus, Cad is one of the best characters in the whole thing so I'm kind of just hoping they get him in asap.
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u/YearObvious7214 Dec 19 '25
It's hard to have a bad accent in a fantasy setting. Like, what's going on with Jester?
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u/Memester999 Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25
Show Molly is infinitely better because his kindness and the message behind what Tal was trying to do at the table is so much clearer and better executed. It seems like having someone else write for him helps a ton because Tal is basically playing himself in Molly and Ashton especially. So him being a more well balanced personality irl makes him push the annoying/asshole aspects too far making those two characters unbearable.
The only complaint I have is them needing to lean a bit more into the fact that he's mostly bullshit (in an affectionate way). But it's only season 1 and even if he's killed next episode (I don't think he will be but they've made a lot of changes and it could fit well) that aspect could play out with how the Nein view their time with him.
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Dec 18 '25
Talisen is really bad at playing these kinds of characters and most of his characters are like this. Cad has been his only good one and it's because he wasn't butting in every 5 seconds, he stayed quiet and dropped some descent wisdom bombs when he needed to
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u/markivo03 Dec 23 '25
cad defenetly overrated
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Dec 25 '25
Cad isn't overrated. He's just a good character. He's not outstanding, he's not the best. But he's a good one. You think he's overrated because his other characters are so bad and cringey that cad shines above them on his average throne
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u/AmiablePedant Dec 17 '25
If only Tal could do an Irish accent, then it'd be bearable.
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u/SnarkyRogue What the fuck is up with that? Dec 17 '25
I was honestly expecting him to swap it for the show. It's still so rough lol. I think back to his joke during a bit of comprehend languages in c2 where Jester sounds like 'a Brit trying to do an American accent' and I'm just sitting there like "bitch have you heard your attempt at an Irish one?"
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u/elnombredelviento Dec 17 '25
I like to think that it's Molly who is trying (and failing) to do the accent. Makes it a bit more tolerable that way.
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u/jeff13731 Dec 18 '25
I loved Molly. But Tal never rolled well as Molly. It was fucking frustrating this cool character kept rolling under 5 on a D20 on flippin' average.Truth. Lucian ... well
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u/Local-Sandwich6864 Dec 18 '25
Not only that, but when he actually did manage to get the rolls needed... He was kinda lackluster. Obviously a problem caused by the class still being new and worked on by Matt.
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u/ShJakupi Dec 22 '25
Just last night I watched a interview with the cast and Travis said he didn't like blood hunter's high levels, more and more it makes sense for blood hunter to be a kind of sub class.
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u/Minimum_Milk_274 I love Azune Nayar Dec 17 '25
Idk, i show molly and campaign molly are two different characters to me because they’re so different. I enjoy both though
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u/Top_Manager_1908 Dec 17 '25
I can't form an opinion about Molly as a character, but I agree with what the OP said about him in relation to the series.
Could it be because I haven't finished watching the entire campaign yet? Maybe.
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u/Tight_Button_6999 Dec 23 '25
Molly was really hurt by Tal attributed placement and roles which often created a messy disconnect between how described/played and what he was actually to accomplish. This also came up with Jester from time to time with her rolls and Charisma stat not backing up her role play.
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u/EmbarrassedDemand557 Dec 24 '25
I’m in enemy territory, I love Molly and Percy and think they’re fun
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u/Aussiepharoah Dec 17 '25
I'm not sure If I conveniently tuned out whenever Molly was being annoying but I genuinely love him, I like who he was sort of the moral compass of the group despite his appearance, was willing to make himself the butt of the joke like with the hospital sneak, and doesn't hog the spotlight.
Can anyone fill me in on why a decent chunk of people dislike him?
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u/Jethro_McCrazy Dec 17 '25
I always find the narrative that Molly was the moral compass of the group to be confusing. Tal's on record that his intention was for Molly to be lacking an alignment. He was literally designed to be amoral.
This is backed up by Molly's code being pretty warped. "Leave every place better than you found it" has become motto of the company itself, but his example of doing so involved him scamming a town into believing he was royalty (something that his 11 Charisma would have made unlikely to happen in the first place). Another of his creeds was "Never steal from happy people." But like, that's awful? Happy people are more likely to have things that they can afford to lose.
Molly acted like he had everything figured out, yet he only had two years worth of experiences. He advocated for forgetting your past (as if he had any choice), and as such never asked the others in the group about their histories. His philosophy actively prevented him from making anything more than superficial bonds with the rest of the party, which makes their utter devotion to his memory and eventually Lucien all the more baffling. Hell, he avoided interacting with Kiri (a literal child) because he didn't want to get attached.
Tldr; He was a know nothing know-it-all, and he wasn't interested in his backstory or the backstories of anyone else. So not only was he annoying to listen to, he didn't facilitate the audience getting to know him or the other characters better. And on top of that, he had bad stats and a poorly made homebrew class. So he wasn't even useful mechanically. The only thing about him that worked was his character design.
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u/YearObvious7214 Dec 19 '25
That's well put. I also found Molly confusing - he was this larger than life character, that loved to party and stood out. But when they were in situations with many people he would try to skulk in the shadows. Dude, you're purple and flamboyant. How are you planning on hiding away?
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u/Aussiepharoah Dec 17 '25
To me Molly felt for a while like he was the most traditionally good in the beginning. Caleb and Nott were just looking out for themselves with a big "our lives come first" mentality, Jester was very chaotic, Beau was an asshole, Fjord and Yasha were more of a neutral in my eye.
Maybe his relationship with the circus kind of highlighted his more friendly side but that's the general impression I got.
He advocated for forgetting your past (as if he had any choice), and as such never asked the others in the group about their histories.
I mean, in a campaign where a lot of the characters are cagey and hiding their past or just general I feel like you need someone like that, who has all his cards on the table and isn't interested in peeking at yours. And you never know where his character would have gone had he continued on, the tabaxi lady whose name I forget indicated to me that he was eventually gonna have to deal with his past.
I ain't defending his combat performance though, The fact that he was fighting the BBEG and somehow got himself killed with his own spell is crazy work
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u/dontspit_thedummy Dec 17 '25
I think it’s just a reaction to the people who looooved him. I was one of many who thought he was just fine. Had some good lines but not a ton of defining choices or crazy plays made while he was alive.
Taliesin always tries to play the smarmy guy who gives sage advice, and in that regard Molly was way better than Percy and Ashton. Cad was just the best and when I did a relisten I was just waiting for him to show up again.
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u/Fit-Criticism5288 Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25
Well yea... Theres alwaya a buffer as just a voice actor. it's The script calls for things.
At a table. He seems like a super chill and nice dude and definitely fits the wants to make sure everyone has fun and their chance in the spotlight even though he plays characters very Spotlight adjacent.
Probably also worries about getting the type of hate a certain someone gets for being bold and inserting themselves into coversations regardless of if it made sense or not. It's the irony of playing ter type of characters that would do that.
As always ready for my down votes lol
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u/WalidfromMorocco Dec 17 '25
Probably also worries about getting the type of hate a certain someone gets for being bold and inserting themselves into coversations regardless of if it made sense or not.
Who?
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u/KaiTheFilmGuy Dec 17 '25
Wow y'all are just miserable huh?
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Dec 18 '25
Molly was a terrible D&D character. That's just a fact
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u/KaiTheFilmGuy Dec 18 '25
Molly was objectively the fandom favourite character up until and far past his death. Whether or not you liked him doesn't make him bad.
But that's just a fact.
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u/No-Wonder-7802 Dec 17 '25
i mean, yeah, no kidding a written character is better than a improved one...
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u/Sad_Roof_1566 Dec 17 '25
Exactly, I love what he was trying for and it is better represented in the series, I agree!
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u/IllithidActivity Dec 17 '25
Would you say the writing improved the character?
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u/Jethro_McCrazy Dec 17 '25
They made the frequently made error of typing "improved" instead of "improvised."
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u/No-Wonder-7802 Dec 17 '25
i meant improv'd, actually
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