One of the most shocking moments in Critical Role's 4th D&D campaign was planned from the jump—yet with enough left to chance that Alexander Ward 'did leave the table thinking I'd really f*cked up'

Critical Role 4's Overture is officially all wrapped up, and we'll be moving onto the three-group, 13-player campaign that's had me salivating ever since it was announced. As confirmed during the last episode's cooldown, one of its most shocking moments had been pre-planned. Kinda.

As confirmed then—and re-emphasised now—enough was left up to chance that even the person it was happening to thought the dice had led him astray. That's per a Fireside Chat on Beacon with Alexander Ward, who plays Occtis. In case it wasn't clear, I'm getting into spoiler territory for Episode 4.

Here's some context: In Episode 4, House Tachonis manned a red-wedding style assault on House Davinos, showing up with an overlevelled sorcerer and an entire gaggle of ghouls. During the melee, Occtis, himself a youngest son of Tachonis, was pinned to a table by said gaggle and stabbed to death by his brother. Then he had an ancient artefact shunted into his chest for good measure.

This was, per Ward's comments at the time, a pre-planned storybeat with Dungeon Master Brennan Lee Mulligan—Ward had initially intended Occtis to be an undead necromancer who'd been slain by his family, and Mulligan asked him if he'd like to do it at the table. With the understanding that, if the dice disagreed, Ward would be consigned to the terrible fate of playing, like, a normal human wizard. Or straight-up dying.

The exact details, though, were completely unknown to Ward—to the point where, as doubly confirmed in that Fireside chat, he "thought I'd actually fucked up."

See, being the scion of a house so thoroughly linked to death, and being killed in a mystery ritual, Occtis got to make some rolls and checks on the other side. But "when Brennan told me that my spirit, like, faded away and disappeared … I thought I messed up Brennan and I's plan by rolling poorly, and Brennan just killed me. So I did leave the table thinking I'd really fucked up.

"I was already brainstorming new character ideas when that happened, because I walked off-set and Marisha was looking at me like 'what happened?' and I was like 'I don't know'."

Later in the chat, Ward also describes some of the cast's reactions, such as Luis Carazo (Azune) who "was so concerned that I was upset and it was very sweet." Marisha Ray (Murray), however, had some choice words: "Brennan brought us into a side-room and was like 'okay great, the plan worked', and Marisha went 'what do you mean?'" After finding out about the ploy, "She went 'oh, you piece of shit!."

Honestly, that fourth episode was a great little example of how to make a pre-ordained story beat still have stakes at a TTRPG table. For one, Ward could've absolutely rolled high on initiative and—as he said after the episode—skitter out of there with a Spider Climb spell. But seeing Matthew Mercer and Aabria Iyengar fighting for their life in a horde of undead was just as nail-biting and, more than once, nearly went so very wrong.

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