Taliesin Jaffe


 * This page is about the actor. For the character from a one-shot campaign, see Taliesin Jaffe (character).

Taliesin Jaffe is a voice actor, voice director, and a member of the main cast of Critical Role. He plays Ashton Greymoore in Campaign 3.

In previous campaigns, Taliesin played Percival de Rolo, Mollymauk Tealeaf and Caduceus Clay. He was also the Game Master for several special episodes.

Pre-Stream
In the first session that the original group played together, Taliesin played a dragonborn paladin. Because he was one of the more experienced players at the time, his purpose for that first game was to try to ensure that everyone else stayed alive. When the players decided to continue playing past the first session, Taliesin created a new character and chose the gunslinger Pathfinder class, because it was interesting to him and he felt it could fill a role that did not exist within the group. Percy was based on the short story that Taliesin had written with inspiration from the movie Plunkett and MacLeane.

When converting the campaign from Pathfinder to 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons in preparation for beginning the Critical Role livestreaming webseries, Matthew Mercer had to create a custom martial archetype for the fighter class, since Percy was a gunslinger. Matt and Taliesin spent a full day to convert the character's class and all of his stats and abilities.

Main Campaigns
Taliesin is known for rolling frequent critical successes, which earned him the title of "Anti-Wheaton" by other members of the cast. Perhaps his most impressive roll was a 02 on a percentile die during, which allowed the resurrection of his former character Mollymauk. The resurrection had previously failed when Matt rolled a natural 1, but Taliesin's successful Divine Intervention countered it.

During Percy's resurrection ritual in, Taliesin was watching from another room. After the ritual succeeded, Matt revealed that Taliesin was the one who ultimately decided if Percy would want to come back, depending on the actions of Vox Machina and their players during the ritual.

Taliesin came up with the idea of his Campaign 2 character Mollymauk as a backup for Percy in the first campaign. When Mollymauk died, he had to come up with his next character, Caduceus, within one week.

With the exception of Caduceus, every character played by Taliesin in a main campaign uses a homebrew subclass created by Matt Mercer.

Player characters
See also: Player characters played by Taliesin Jaffe

Main Campaigns

 * Percival de Rolo, human gunslinger (The Campaign of Vox Machina)
 * Mollymauk Tealeaf, tiefling blood hunter (Campaign 2: The Mighty Nein)
 * Caduceus Clay, firbolg cleric (Campaign 2: The Mighty Nein)
 * Ashton Greymoore, earth genasi barbarian (Campaign 3)

One-shots and miniseries

 * Mezek, goblin monk
 * Taliesin Jaffe (character), human warlock ( and )
 * Waffle, bear
 * Bundle, dwarf priest
 * Andy, human fighter
 * Arthur Fizzlebottom, Christmas elf rogue
 * The Owlbear, human barbarian/rogue
 * Jamie Wrenly, human witch
 * The Marauder (Krill), marauder
 * Mallory Klaxton, dunmer sorcerer (The Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood)
 * Dr. Ramsey Wiser, computer scientist

Other works
&rarr; See also: Taliesin's IMDb profile Taliesin began his career as a child actor at the age of six, and quit the industry around twelve years old. As an adult, he took up voice acting, voice directing and screenwriting in the anime dubbing industry. He has since worked on several projects for video games and western animation.

Personal life
Several of Taliesin's family members worked in the film industry. His mother, Nina Axelrod, is an actress; his father Robert Jaffe is a producer; and his grandfather, George Axelrod, was an awarded screenwriter, director and producer.

Taliesin's first role playing experience was the Generic Universal RolePlaying System (GURPS) in high school when he was thirteen years old. He also hosted a Rifts game, a World of Darkness game, Paranoia, and HoL: Human Occupied Landfill. He gave HoL core rulebooks to now-dungeon master Matthew Mercer for his birthday.

Before Mercer's Pathfinder-based Exandria campaign (which evolved into 5th edition-based Critical Role), fellow voice actor and player Marisha Ray and he were in another pen-and-paper RPG game together.

Trivia

 * His second name, Axelrod, is the surname of his mother, the American actress Nina Axelrod, daughter of the screenwriter, producer, playwright and film director George Axelrod.
 * On Talks Machina, the host Brian Wayne Foster likes to "#ThankMyGuests" with names that are either mispronounced or wordplay that sounds close to their names. Here are the names for Taliesin Jaffe so far:
 * Taliesin is bisexual, similar to his character Mollymauk.
 * Taliesin has an essential tremor.
 * Taliesin officiated Matthew Mercer and Marisha Ray's wedding.
 * Taliesin's chosen drink for his Between the Sheets interview was a blonde manhattan.
 * Every Halloween, the cast of Critical Role dresses up in costume for one episode. Taliesin has dressed up as Quentin Quire (2015), Clarota (2016), Ezio Auditore (2017), Sherlock Holmes (2018), Barry Allen (2019), Archivist Zeenoth (2020), and Liam O'Brien (2021).
 * The cast often jokes that Taliesin is an immortal eldritch being, who is hundreds of years old.