Belkar's Wisdom

[cheesecake]

We know now Belkar's Wisdom. He has a neg -2 ability score to his profression which is based off of wisdom :-D

[Glorfindel]

I think he is referring to the -2 penalty for improvised tools.

[Spiryt]

Damn, threads like that were unavoidable...

Read carefully. He says that every -2 (from Imrovised tools), counts, beacuse he has only 4 ranks and ability score penalty. He didn't say how big is penalty.

It looks like he has 8 - 9 Wisdom, despite 58 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0058.html). But we don't really know.

[cheesecake]

His words were "I have 4 Ranks and an ability score penalty EVERY NEG 2 COUNTS"


My thoughts are he has a Neg 2 to his ability score as well. Otherwise he would of said every negative counts. Not EVERY 2 NEG COUNTS!

[Spiryt]

His words were "I have 4 Ranks and an ability score penalty EVERY NEG 2 COUNTS"


My thoughts are he has a Neg 2 to his ability score as well. Otherwise he would of said every negative counts. Not EVERY 2 NEG COUNTS!

What are you talking about?

Haley says that she get along with -2 from IMPROVISED TOOLS just well.

Belkar says that he has 4 ranks and ability score penalty.
So " every -2 counts"

[cheesecake]

what i am talking about is. She tells him to take the -2 for improvised tools. He says I only have 4 ranks and a neg ability penalty. So therefore EVERY neg 2 counts. MEANING HE ALREADY HAS A -2 AND THUS GIVING HIM A -4.

[Closet_Skeleton]

what i am talking about is. She tells him to take the -2 for improvised tools. He says I only have 4 ranks and a neg ability penalty. So therefore EVERY neg 2 counts. MEANING HE ALREADY HAS A -2 AND THUS GIVING HIM A -4.

It's implied but by no means definate.

[Tredrick]

People, do not make me diagram the sentence. Nobody wants that.

Anyway, it cannot properly attach to any part of the sentence and should be set off with a semicolon or formed into a new sentence.

[Dusk_Rider]

Let's just settle at "low".

[Kreistor]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4912&page=39

Guys, this topic is already underway.

For those that don't get the details of the earlier reference to strip #58, in that strip, Belkar is given Owl's Wisdom to cast Cure Serious Wounds, which requires a Wis of 14, as a 4th level Ranger spell. Owl's Wisdom provides +4 Wis in 3.5, so Belkar's Wisdom should have been exactly 10, since an 11 would give him 1st level spells already.

With strip 475, Belkar states that his Wisdom has a penalty. That means he could never have used the scrolls. So, we have a conflict.

The typical conclusion would be that the Giant thought that Cure Serious Wounds was a Level 3 spell, making Belkar only needing to reach 13 Wis and setting his natural Wis to 9. This provides the penalty he mentions, and a reasonable excuse for the mistake.

I don't see any reasonable error allowing Belkar's Wis to be as low as 7 and still result in #58. Though you can interpret "every -2 counts" to mean that his Wis penalty is -2, it is not the only way to interpret that phrase. He might be referring to other -2's that might come from other sources at other times. We cannot draw a conclusion from #475 that will completely invalidate another strip's evidence like #58. We have to find a conclusion that retains the maximum evidence from all strips, and so the only reasonable conclusion is that Belkar's Wis is 9.

[Accountant]

There are no hard-and-fast stats for the characters. I find that if I were to ever commit exact stats to paper, I would feel limited in what I could have these characters do in the future. For example, I might want to make a strip spoofing a particular feat, only to find that I didn.t give it to any of my characters. As a result, there will never be official game statistics for Roy, Elan, and the rest.

I think what we really need to know is that The Giant can use his supernatural comic-making abilities to alter the stats of his characters at will.

If the ability score shifts a point or two over a 400 comic span, even if it goes down somehow, it really doesn't matter that much. The characters don't have definate stats, thus there's no reason for The Giant to keep track of minor details such as "but if he could cast a 4th level spell then..."

I agree with the Dusk_Rider.

[Nomadic]

I think what we really need to know is that The Giant can use his supernatural comic-making abilities to alter the stats of his characters at will.

If the ability score shifts a point or two over a 400 comic span, even if it goes down somehow, it really doesn't matter that much. The characters don't have definate stats, thus there's no reason for The Giant to keep track of minor details such as "but if he could cast a 4th level spell then..."

I agree with the Dusk_Rider.

So then you imply that the Giant is in fact red mage from 8-bit theater? Now there's an interesting concept.

[mockingbyrd7]

Look. Roy is strong, and he is smart, and he is hardy. Who CARES what the heck his strength or intelligence or constitution is? Belkar is strong, he's fast, he's foolish. Who CARES what the heck his strength or dexterity or wisdom is? Elan is nimble, charming, and stupid. Who CARES what the heck his dexterity or charisma or his intelligence is?

[Thexare Blademoon]

So then you imply that the Giant is in fact red mage from 8-bit theater? Now there's an interesting concept.

No, he's Red Mage without a negative Wisdom modifier. :smallamused:

[JaxGaret]

For those that don't get the details of the earlier reference to strip #58, in that strip, Belkar is given Owl's Wisdom to cast Cure Serious Wounds, which requires a Wis of 14, as a 4th level Ranger spell. Owl's Wisdom provides +4 Wis in 3.5, so Belkar's Wisdom should have been exactly 10, since an 11 would give him 1st level spells already.

With strip 475, Belkar states that his Wisdom has a penalty. That means he could never have used the scrolls. So, we have a conflict.

The typical conclusion would be that the Giant thought that Cure Serious Wounds was a Level 3 spell, making Belkar only needing to reach 13 Wis and setting his natural Wis to 9. This provides the penalty he mentions, and a reasonable excuse for the mistake.

Cure Serious Wounds is a level 3 Cleric spell. The scrolls of CSW that V had were very very likely to be Cleric scrolls, not Ranger scrolls.

Therefore, he could have had a 9 Wisdom, boosted to 13 via Owl's Wisdom to be able to activate the scroll.

[Draz74]

Since Belkar acts consistently very low-Wisdom, and there have been several jokes about his Wisdom before, I have always assumed it had a penalty. In fact, a -1 penalty doesn't seem like nearly enough. I'd put his Wisdom at 7, at the highest.

This strip just confirms what I have long been sure about anyway -- that Belkar's never even approached a 10 in Wisdom.

Now, how do I explain #58 then? Easy. Houseruled Owl's Wisdom spell. Clearly for the sake of the joke, V had a version of Owl's Wisdom that added more than 4 to Wisdom.

"But wait!" you say. "You can't just go around explaining everything in the strip away by making up houseruled versions of spells!"

Um ...
- Evan's Spiked Tentacles of Forced Intrusion (even though V has banned Conjuration).
- Zz'dtri's version of Fly with a long duration.
- V's version of Invisibility Sphere from the discount bin, with a tiny radius.
- Xykon's Moderately Escapable Forcecage.
- Control Weather that (if the deity wants) can deal a large amount of sonic damage in a specific area.
- spells that at least have their names changed (Thor's Might, Thor's Lightning -- and that's assuming Thor's Lightning isn't a completely homebrewed creation!)
- Cat's Grace available to Clerics.
- Disrupting Weapon that had any chance of hurting a lich? (Possibly just an error on the PCs' part.)

Clearly, many spells are heavily homebrewed in the OOTS-verse. It's practically a revision of the whole magic system. So I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that Owl's Wisdom can do what all the other spells do.

[Yeril]

he has 9 wisdom.

its stated he can't cast spells at all, so thats a maximum of 10.

a +4 bonus lets him cast a 3rd level spell so that must mean his wisdom HAS to be at least 9 or 10.

he states he has a ability score peanalty, so it must be 9.

[Oberon]

I think what we really need to know is that The Giant can use his supernatural comic-making abilities to alter the stats of his characters at will.

If the ability score shifts a point or two over a 400 comic span, even if it goes down somehow, it really doesn't matter that much. The characters don't have definate stats, thus there's no reason for The Giant to keep track of minor details such as "but if he could cast a 4th level spell then..."

I agree with the Dusk_Rider.

If you REALLY need to rationalize it (not you Accountant, but the people you were talking to) you can just assume that Belkar's "player" shifted some stats around to make Belkar's character make more sense on paper. These kind of minor post-creation alterations are not uncommon, especially when made for roleplaying reasons.

[Siwenna]

Given how Belkar usually acts, I would definately agree that his wisdom is less than 9, which is only slightly below average. Yes, one occasion points to his wisdom being at least 9, but virtually everything else he has done points to a lower wisdom than that.

I'm not familiar enough with D&D to know what the modifiers are, but with a 9 I don't think it would be all that much. Certainly not enough to warrant Belkar acting as stupid as he does. FOr example, forgetting that he was supposed to be tracking the Chimera, setting the tent on fire in the bandit camp, allowing MIko to get up rather than killing her, forgetting about the cost of Raise Dead, and so on.

I'd agree that his wisdom is 7 at the very most, but more like 4-5.

[Spiryt]

I think Belkar "stupid" deeds were often connected with his character, they just appeal to him. We can't assume that all deeds of creature are beacuse it's wise/stupid.


I think that Belkar has 8-9 wisdom and it's anyway LOW, especially for adventurer.

Judging on this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48995), 10 isn't average :smallwink:

[Porthos]

Look. Roy is strong, and he is smart, and he is hardy. Who CARES what the heck his strength or intelligence or constitution is? Belkar is strong, he's fast, he's foolish. Who CARES what the heck his strength or dexterity or wisdom is? Elan is nimble, charming, and stupid. Who CARES what the heck his dexterity or charisma or his intelligence is?

There are a lot of DnD nerds aficionados on this board. Of course a lot of us are going to care about things like this. How else would this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4912) be one of the most popular threads on the board? :smalltongue:

This is a comic on the internet that is based on DnD.
People on the internet like to deconstruct (i.e. pick apart) things that they like.
DnD geeks (and I'm one of them) really like to pick apart things to see how they work.
And message boards tend to be a great place for said geeks to hang out and compare notes.

So I don't find it odd at all that a internet hosted comic that caters to DnD would, *gasp*, *horror*, have people attempt to look at it through DnD eyes. :smallamused:

And before you think this is limited to this board, I invite you to check out the OotS discussions on any board that has one. Each and every one of them has this sort of geekery going on in it. It's just a nature of the beast.

PS: Lest you think this is limited to DnD, I would remind you, hust as one example, of the various (lovingly tounge-in-cheek project) Nitpickers Guide to * out there. :smalltongue:

We're geeks. This is what we do. :smallcool: And it's a perfectly healthy, worthwhile way to pass the time. As long as, you know, we all remember to have fun with it and not let it get too serious.

[David Argall]

- Control Weather that (if the deity wants) can deal a large amount of sonic damage in a specific area.


The comic tells us Thor cheated on that one, and got called on it by the Southern Gods.

[Kurald Galain]

Obviously Belkar's player lost his character sheet, or got beer stains all over it to make it illegible, and had to redo it from scratch and from memory, and his memory isn't flawless.

In other news, who cares? :smallwink:

[Draz74]

The comic tells us Thor cheated on that one, and got called on it by the Southern Gods.

So? Still means that in OotS, spells often don't do what the RAW say. Deific intervention is just another form of houseruling.

That never made sense to me anyway - why did the Southern Gods care what Thor did up in Cliffport?

[factotum]

Well, presumably Cliffport is in the Southern Lands, not the northern ones. I doubt the area ruled by the 12 gods consists entirely of Azure City and a little bit of coastline either side...

[Raeden]

Belkar could've cast cure serious wounds from a scroll with a wisdom score of 13, since they're most likely clerric scrolls and not ranger scrolls, and for clerrics cure serious wounds is a third level spell.
There's no DC for emulating a different class with a use magic device check. There is s a DC for emulating an ability score one would need to cast a spell while emulating the apropriate class to cast that spell, but since he already had that wis score of 13 he didn't need to roll for that. Otherwise he'd probably have failed. I assume he has no ranks in use magic device, and we all know his charisma sucks.

EDIT: and Durkon can't cast cat's grace, that was just a bluff to make Elan get dressed, I mean look at his facial expressions (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0027.html) (and don't give me that Durkon can't bluff 'cause he's lawful good, he sort of bluffed off Miko too, and if bluffing is not allowed by the LG allignment then neither is running around naked when there's a girl around.)

[Bogardan_Mage]

Why do people think Thor was refering to the weather control thing? He just says "bend the rules", which I interpreted as being in the 12 gods' "turf" rather than something that happened numerous strips ago and wasn't explicitly mentioned.

Putting my two cp into the actual topic, it's a commonly used figure of speech to repeat something specific someone else has used as though it were nonspecific for the purposes of humour or emphasis. For example:

A: Hey, this machine ate my $3!
B: It doesn't matter how many $3 you put in, it never works.

Belkar saying "every -2 counts" is like this, he's not necessarily saying that there is more than one -2 involved, he's just repeating something Haley said.

[RocketBard]

I always thought that Belkar's wisdom would be extremely low because of that one strip that proved that Miko had a higher wisdom score than him (I forgot which one it was).

[meioziz]

Cure Serious Wounds (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/scrolls.htm) is a 3rd level spell, 375gp, when inscribed on scrolls. And let me quote:
some divine spells are different in level for clerics and druids than they are for paladins and rangers. Such spells appear at the level appropriate to a cleric or druid (considered the default because paladins and rangers typically don’t involve themselves in scribing scrolls).

There. So without modifying any rules, Belkar should have a wisdom of 9. Also, a wisdom score of 9 IS low. Sure, when you min-max a character, you could have ultra idiotic characters, but in OOTS, these characters tend to be more in-line with the RP. And nine is fine.

[Mordaedil]

... Can't you cast spells from scrolls regardless of your ability scores, same as a magic item?

Lemmings, in D&D has a wisdom score of 3 or less however. I assume he didn't chose ranger for the spells and that the wisdom boost only allowed him to think clearly enough to actually use the scrolls, and would have been the same way if he was say, a bard.

[Kurald Galain]

... Can't you cast spells from scrolls regardless of your ability scores, same as a magic item?

In 2nd ed, yes. In 3rd ed, no.

Also, technically, it appears that the user must first employ Read Magic or a tough spellcraft check to actually decipher the thing. I doubt most DMs use that but it's what it says in the SRD.


Oh, and while we don't know where Cliffport is per se, we know it's not that far flying by airship. Whereas it took Miko more than eighty strips to travel to the Northern lands.

[David Argall]

Why do people think Thor was refering to the weather control thing? He just says "bend the rules", which I interpreted as being in the 12 gods' "turf" rather than something that happened numerous strips ago and wasn't explicitly mentioned.
"Bend the rules" is Thor's biased version of the event, as in the English conguration game "I bend the rules, you break the rules, he cheats." Thor had "bent" the rules and so was challenged when it looked like he was about to do so again. We can't absolutely say he was refering to the tree incident, but it fits.
If we talk about physical turf, we do run into problems. Thor was and is fully able to grant spells to any cleric in Southern lands. So he is not being told to entirely stay out of the South.



why did the Southern Gods care what Thor did up in Cliffport?
2 possible reasons:
We are not sure where Cliffport actually is. It is likely in the North, but it might be in the South.
With the example of the Snarl before them, the gods are scared. They live by a set of rules designed to minimize snarl producing situations, and Thor's "bending" of the rules is dangerous. For various reasons, it may not have required immediate action, but Thor finds there are drawbacks. His comment about "Never let you live it down." suggests this is not the only time he has been told there are others watching his actions because they can't trust him to behave.

[Bogardan_Mage]

"Bend the rules" is Thor's biased version of the event, as in the English conguration game "I bend the rules, you break the rules, he cheats." Thor had "bent" the rules and so was challenged when it looked like he was about to do so again. We can't absolutely say he was refering to the tree incident, but it fits.
I'm not saying it couldn't possibly refer to the weather control thing because he wasn't bending the rules, I'm saying there's absolutely nothing to suggest it does. It's far more likely to be refering to an incident that is actually mentioned in the strip, and not an irrelevant one many strips earlier.


If we talk about physical turf, we do run into problems. Thor was and is fully able to grant spells to any cleric in Southern lands. So he is not being told to entirely stay out of the South.
"OK! OK! We'll stay up in the northern lands and leave you guys in the south alone." He pretty clearly is being told to stay out of the south in some capacity, so your argument makes no sense. Sure, he can still grant spells, but he can't do much beyond that, like the extra speed Durkon requested.

[Chronos]

Lemmings, in D&D has a wisdom score of 3 or less however.You're thinking of Int: Animals always have Int scores of 1 or 2. I've never seen D&D stats for a lemming, but all other animals have Wis scores in the vicinity of 10 or higher. For comparison, a bat (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/bat.htm) has 14, and a cat (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/cat.htm), rat (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/rat.htm), or weasel (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/weasel.htm) has 12. In fact, I can't find any animals listed with Wis lower than 12.