January 9, 2017 - LOL

[ASFreefall]

http://www.goblinscomic.org/01092017-2/

Well, it looks like I was wrong - they were able to loot everything, and both the ring and the pendant appear to be pretty useless.

As far as it goes, I'd say the axe they got was the most useful of the objects, followed by... I'd say, the coin, the wand (if the party had a druid...), and the cloak - as long as you put it on just before combat. Otherwise, it seems like a pretty eccentric (read: useless) group of magic objects.

[Hjerne]

Scenario 1: The Axe Hole will be used to clamp down on the pearl limiting the explosion.

Scenario 2: The more likely scenario. The beams of light that are already in the room are the same as the beams of light that will destroy all magical items pulled from the wall. They will be used to destroy the pearl.

Scenario 3: It will be months before we see either of these scenarios because the next comic will cut back to Forgath.

[WearsHats]

Scenario 4: They run out of the room and close the door.

I do like that the staff predicted a critical failure. Nice touch.

[SamWiser]

For those that don't want to bother reading all of those, I'll transcribe them, best as I can, here.

Panel 3:
The Drool Sword: A +2 short sword that provides the owner with an unlimited supply of "water".

Panel 6
The Leafwand: This wand allows a druid to will an arbutus tree to instantly grow from any non-living surface. The height of the tree is equal to the druid's level in feet.
Scream Regre[t]: This +8 hook (treated as a hook in combat) causes any creature killed by it to re-form from the dead, one month later as an extremely, over-powered, wight, with an obsession to kill its murderer.

Panel 6.5 (kind of in the middle)
The Gimm[?} Coin: Similar to a [bag of] holding, this coin absorbs any coins that touch it. All absorbed coins can be easily shaken out at will.

Panel 7
The Ring of Objective Empathy: This ring grants the wearer +3 to intelligence, but also causes them to feel a deep sense of compassion for inanimate objects as though they were living things.
The Amu-Let's Talk:This amulet grants the wearer a +2 combat bonus against [??] they've conversed with [for at least] one, uninterrupted [minute].

Panel 8
The Pain Cloak: This cloak protects the wearer from all non-magical damage but causes them constant, immeasurable, physical pain. Although the pain doesn't do damage, it will likely drive the wearer mad, if worn for long enough.
The Crit Window: This staff predicts whether the next crit in the party will be a success of failure. A 1 means a critical fumble while a 20 means it will be a critical success.
The Echo Glove: If the wearer of the glove points at a creature who speaks their language, that creature is cursed. For the next hour, they can only say the last word the wearer said before pointing.

Panel 12:
The LOL Pearl: This Pearl is about to explode. The explosion will do enough damage to kill anyone in this room and will shine beams of magical light that will destroy every item that's been pulled from the wall. LOL.

Did the best I could, but there might be some mistakes.

Also, it's still difficult getting used to the new art. It kinda feels like Goblins fanfiction. Really good Goblins fanfiction, but still. I really like the update speed, though. I'll gladly take the art style change if the story keeps moving this quickly.

[Krulle]

As far as it goes, I'd say the axe they got was the most useful of the objects, followed by... I'd say, the coin, the wand (if the party had a druid...), and the cloak - as long as you put it on just before combat. Otherwise, it seems like a pretty eccentric (read: useless) group of magic objects.

I find the droolsword useful.
All the "water" you need, and you do not need to carry it around, nor find it.

I find that a pretty handy adventuring tool.
Although I do ask myself why the water has been put between "quotation marks"...

[Shardstorm]

Scream Regre[t]: This +8 hook (treated as a pick in combat) causes any creature killed by it to re-form from the dead, one month later as an extremely, over-powered, wight, with an obsession to kill its murderer

Pike not hook. *Edit: I'm dumb. Pick as pointed out below.*

All the "water" you need, and you do not need to carry it around, nor find it.

I find that a pretty handy adventuring tool.
Although I do ask myself why the water has been put between "quotation marks"...

Because it's drool...

[Krulle]

I guessed so, yet...
If the drool appears as my own drool inside my mouth, that may still be handy, except if I cannot control the drool flow.
Most of these weapons have harsh drawbacks.
The Scream Regret would be one I'd never use.
The Leafwand might be useful to break down walls, if you're a strong druid.
Objective Empathy would be hard to play. Imagine a stick of wood breaks/is broken in your presence.... (chances for RolePlaying XP here!)
The Amu-Let's Talk: good for those who are talkative, and then murder their own party members.
The Crit-Window will cause you to think maybe too long about whether you even want to throw dice. But you have only a one-tenth chance of throwing a crit anyway (1 and 20 out of 20). But we now know that we will not see a critical success (a 20) in this party, until the DM used his fumble chart again. So, we have a one-nineteenth chance of the next dice throw being a critical fail. but still 18/19th chance of no critical.
The Echo Clove: sounds like it'll be hard to use effectively. But does it need to be a conscious pointing, or will unconscious pointing cause this effect too?

The Gimme Coin is nice to steal coins. When playing card games in a tavern, place the bag on the stack of coins in the middle, apologise for the error, pick up and leave.

The explosion of the LOL Pearl is non-magical?
Put on the cloak, suffer the pain, until the explosion is over.
Will save at least one. And since most dungeons and their loot have been created before these small Goblins became eligible to be adventurers, it may well be that the cloak is large enough to save most of them. But the madness-save throw might be difficult, especially knowing that the next crit is a critical failure. And under pain, Complains of Names could suffer enough to be transformed fully into a demon.


I like the LOL pearl. It's so small, that likely only the very greedy would find it. Or those who over-analyse and hope that the smallest items are the strongest items.

[Gurkenglas]

Swallow the pearl, put on the cloak.

[Krulle]

I like your idea, Spreewalder.

And open your mouth. Wide. You will burp a bit...
Luckily, in-game you're just a sack of hit points without critical organs.

[spiderwrangler]

the wand (if the party had a druid...).

But they do! And he'd be able to grow a teeeeny tiiiiny little tree...


There is a hole in the right wall that might be low enough and close enough for Complains to drop everything and toss the pearl through, out of the room...

[kida]

The Echo Clove: sounds like it'll be hard to use effectively. But does it need to be a conscious pointing, or will unconscious pointing cause this effect too?

Probably the best item there. Very useful if you're fighting a spell caster.

[WearsHats]

A +8 hook could be very useful. As long as you use a different weapon for the finishing blow.

A staff capable of holding coins could be useful, as long as no one else knows that's what it does. Much less likely to be pickpocketed, for example.

I think Minmax grabbing the pearl counts as the crit fail. Unless someone fumbles the pearl on the next page.

[locastan]

Pike not hook.

It reads like "pick" in the panel from what can be seen, though. Is there a "pick" weapon class in DnD 3.5?

Also there seems to be at leastone item that didn't get explained by the voice from the off: in the first panel of the previous page there is a hammer that I can't find now.

[BioYuGi]

Made an account just to ask this. What's with the red stuff that's covering all the panels now? I don't get it and it's obscuring some of the artwork.

[Guus]

It's the coming of hell on their plane of existence.

Also: welcome

[j-prime]

What color was Minmax's gauntlet the last time he grabbed Oblivious? Maybe he can use the sword to destroy the pearl if they all react quickly enough.

[Glemp]

Made an account just to ask this. What's with the red stuff that's covering all the panels now? I don't get it and it's obscuring some of the artwork.

It's the coming of hell on their plane of existence.

Also: welcome

Indeed, you can see the corruption spilling out of the Axe and into the page borders here: http://www.goblinscomic.org/comics/20160728.jpg
And it starts here: http://www.goblinscomic.org/comics/20160412.jpg

[Yrutan]

Note that "killing" an undead or a construct will "instead" destroy it.

[RocketScientist]

The Echo Clove: sounds like it'll be hard to use effectively. But does it need to be a conscious pointing, or will unconscious pointing cause this effect too?

Probably the best item there. Very useful if you're fighting a spell caster.

Good thinking.

[Never Finishes Anyth]

No matter how slow and smart they had managed to be, they still would have ended up having to deal with the pearl.

[WearsHats]

No matter how slow and smart they had managed to be, they still would have ended up having to deal with the pearl.

No, they could have just left it untouched. Not many parties would, but it was an option.

[Strawberrycocoa]

Swallow the pearl, put on the cloak.

Ha ha ha, I hope this is what they do, that'd be hilarious.

[Krulle]

It would indeed be fun, but I fear that the explosion is magical.
How else would a mechanical/chemical explosion create beams of magic light?
And the cloak only protects against non-magical damage.
I see room to convince the DM either way.
A magical explosion may still only do physical damage, as the damaging shockwave caused by the (magical) explosion is non-magical in its effects.

[ForgetsOldName]

I suspect that they can put the items back in the wall by reversing what they did to get them out.

Not sure exactly how it would work, but possibly Maxo would reach his hand in, have it come out the other side, then Complains would hand Max the pearl, Maxo pulls back through to his side, where it would turn vaporous and then could be shoved back into the wall.

I'd prefer it if it they lost all the other items as well, but who knows?

A more interesting question to me is how this is continuing the theme of insanely overpowered yet not exactly useful artifacts in the tradition of the Anymug, Yumyuck moss, the self-reloading crossbow, and half of Goblinslayer's body. Can you imagine what it would take to make a +8 weapon with the limitation that it creates an overpowered wight? Just making an artifact that creates overpowered wights would be insanely difficult, and frankly, incredibly useful--I really disagree with those of you who are calling it useless. You just give it to your worst enemy and sit back and watch! You could wipe out an entire civilization with that thing.

The pain cloak--find a psionic to help you out. The echo glove? Take it with you next time you and your rival have to stand before the king. Okay, it also cancels all spellcasting. Also useful. Use the "Create Water and/or Drool" spell to open doors, flood citadels, drown armies. The ring--just make sure your friend pulls it off of you when you don't want the bonus. And a plus two bonus against anyone I can trick into talking for one minute? Sign me up!

These are fantastically overpowered items. They just have to be used in the right place at the right time.

[SpeaksManyLanguages]

The pearl explosion is not purely physical. Even if we'll drop the fact that things like this are usually phys + magical fire, the description unambiguously says that there will be magical beams that will destroy all the items. So, your pain cloak cover will be destroyed and the explosion will continue outwards.

Also, I read the intent of that part of the description as that the magical beams would *seek out* the items. They would not be stopped by something silly like walls. So no use to run with the items through the door.

One of the things suggested on RU forums: have Minmax summon his sword and throw the pearl into the opening. That gives them a lot of time to deal with things and come up with a good plan.

I don't think Tarol would go that way, though. More likely that indeed putting the pearl into those sunbeams will destroy it. Or I suggest touching it with the point of the staff that Fumbles have. We think it destroys magical items, so...