Order of the Stick

[ThroughTheWell]

2 page strip up.

Durkon could be acting more like a real person than a minmaxing player. In other words, the demonstarted wisdom of people was more important to him than any base saves. Call it lack of knowledge of the meta game if you want, but I don't have a problem with it. And I think it makes a better story than constantly making the characters hyper aware of all of the d&d rules that rule their lives.

[willpell]

Durkon could be acting more like a real person than a minmaxing player. In other words, the demonstarted wisdom of people was more important to him than any base saves. Call it lack of knowledge of the meta game if you want, but I don't have a problem with it.

Fair enough; it didn't occur to me the first time I read the strip, after all.

And I think it makes a better story than constantly making the characters hyper aware of all of the d&d rules that rule their lives.

Well but that's always been OOTS's shtick. Goblins does it a little too, but has been more consistent about moving away from it; OOTS just did it twenty strips ago (granted that was before the thumb incident so it was a long time IRL), with the whole smokestick/Holy-Word interaction being entirely dictated by game rules, thus shutting down Zz'ditri's otherwise-plotbreaking power. Going back a little further, we have Haley talking about what a Potion of Glibness can do; going back further than that, it hasn't been that long since characters talked about their own Attribute scores.

[ThroughTheWell]

Yeah, I know OOTS does rules humor, I just don't think Rich HAS to stick to that line of thinking all of the time. I like a story, with characters, with a loose adhearance to rules so that we can all speculate. I think "Durkon" stayed in character rather than asked to see everyone's char sheet to see who had the best save, or use metagame knowledge to figure it out.

[RocketScientist]

Yeah, the OotS characters are all specifically not minmaxed. Single class fighter? Wizard who can't teleport? Ranger who can't track? Elan?

[Arch Lich Burns]

I like how Elan is his own category

And don't forget Nale..., over convoluted multiclassing.

[SamWiser]

Elan is always his own category. No matter what you're talking about, Elan is his own category.

[ThroughTheWell]

Exceept for the fact that Elan is a bard, and that pun wielding PrC (like the guy he learned it from and his dad), has at least 1 brother, has parents, and is thus a part of a family, and is a member of the OOTS. But other than that, and being a clothes wearing human who sings like other singers, is ChG like other ChG, and has a high Ch like other people with high Ch, yeah, other than that, he is totaly in a category by himself.

[ThroughTheWell]

new 2 page strip up.

[RocketScientist]

YOU DON'T COUNT!

[ThroughTheWell]

Which is odd, since Elan counted better than Roy the last time they were (all alive and) at the oracle.

[Arydra]

Good thing I check here first so I do not have to keep checking the OOTS website to see when a new one is up. All of you guys must a time-zone or two ahead of my

[SamWiser]

It really is surprising that he can bring as much emotion as he does just using stick figures.

I really starting to like Belkar too. It's a pity he has to die soon.

[RocketScientist]

Which is odd, since Elan counted better than Roy the last time they were (all alive and) at the oracle.

Right? Even after the oracle kept trying to tell Roy to ask a better question.

[TinSoldier]

I like how Belkar shamed Roy. That was just... classic. Like 1980s movie classic.

[SamWiser]

You're kidding right? Elan must have at least a -2 penalty to his wisdom, have you ever seen how he acts?

Wisdom governs one's awareness of the world and one's place within it; it doesn't necessarily corellate to sensibility of behavior, or there wouldn't be Chaotic Evil clerics of destruction and havoc. (Granted we haven't seen many of those in OOTS - both our Evil clerics to date appear to be Lawful - but it can be more or less safely presumed that they exist.) I think Elan chooses to act in the way he does, rather than not knowing any better; his Intelligence is low but his Wisdom might be average, and anyway Bards have good Will saves, and the base save impacts the total far more than the Attribute does at high levels.

I know that you guys dropped this, but I was rereading the comic and found that Elan does have low wisdom scores, where as Roy has pretty good wisdom scores. High enough to become a cleric himself. They have gone up a few levels, so Elan might have changed his wisdom, but I doubt it.

[willpell]

What I find most hilarious about that scene is that, with a flock numbered at one, Banjo DID manage to "smite" Roy just a tiny bit. Apparently, while you need large numbers of worshippers to have *much* effect, one person is enough to produce a candlepower or so of free energy. Think of the socioeconomic implications!

[ThroughTheWell]

What I find most hilarious about that scene is that, with a flock numbered at one, Banjo DID manage to "smite" Roy just a tiny bit. Apparently, while you need large numbers of worshippers to have *much* effect, one person is enough to produce a candlepower or so of free energy. Think of the socioeconomic implications!

Clearly machines will put humans in pods to start harvesting the energy ala Matrix.

[willpell]

That would probably work poorly, as the God of Blowing Up Machines would experience a huge groundswell in worship....

[DrinksTooMuchCoffee]

New comic: 882 It's a Boy!.
A little early in the day for me to know if I should know what they're talking about in the last panel or if it's really a secret.

[RocketScientist]

I think it's really a secret. At the very least, I have no idea what they're talking about, either.

[willpell]

Good to see Kilkil's back in action. And Tarquin's description of Nale is hilarious.

[SamWiser]

Ok, I just thought of something. There were 5 gates. The Order eventually goes after the one in the desert, but they go to the wrong area, as the Sapphire Guard had the wrong location. Wouldn't Soon have known the location of the Gate, as he was in the original party to find/guard them? In that case, wouldn't the Guard know where the gate is? They know where the gate in the forest is, and where the other one is, but for some reason nobody knows where the desert gate is? They found it eventually, so it doesn't matter, but it seems like a plot-hole to me.

[willpell]

Soon made Girard do all the mapping; he knew roughly where the gate was, but not its exact location in a vast trackless desert.

[Zathyr]

Adventurers would really benefit from GPS and google maps.


(Also, there can be njustice, which is exactly in between. Like eating a sandwich, it is neither just nor unjust.)

[RocketScientist]

"I wrote it down so I wouldn't have to remember."