OOTS #540 - The Discussion Thread

[The Giant]

New comic is up.

[Nychta]

First time I've been on for an update!

Also, Celia is...uh.. freakishly responsible, and law-abiding.

[Kanthalion]

Yeah...I'm wondering if Celia is even a bit law abiding, stick-in-the-mud goody two-shoes for Roy.

[Ave]

First time I've been on for an update!

Also, Celia is...uh.. freakishly responsible, and law-abiding.

I always liked her, but she just talks nonsense. Haley is the only sane character in this strip :)

[Alex Warlorn]

Greeeeeeat. Looks like a "Now shut up" moment for here at OoTS.

I didn't think Celia would be quite like that.

I hope that the author isn't going to turn Celia into another Miko.
Then again, Miko would have killed Belkar where he stood. (Yeah she was nutso and none too rational, but at least she had solutions).

I say Dominate Person the SOB. Then order him to be nice and kind to the vunerable. His will save is so awful he won't be able to resist the commands.

[Dark Wolf]

Been done, the victim can't do anything he wouldn't usually do. So it only works on Belkar if you tell him to do something he would normally do.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0383.html

though I don't know, are Charm and Dominate the same?

[Krytha]

haha I'm really enjoying this party implosion.

[Drascin]

Been done, the victim can't do anything he wouldn't usually do. So it only works on Belkar if you tell him to do something he would normally do.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0383.html

though I don't know, are Charm and Dominate the same?

No, actually they aren't. Charm is a bit of a magical compulsion that makes people listen very much to what you got to say, but nothing else. Dominate is the one who turns people into puppets - they are forced to do everything you command then, and even if they're forced to do things that are utter anathema to them they simply get another TS and if they fail it they do it anyway. And I'm pretty certain we know how high Belkar's Will save must be...

[deworde]

Why don't they just repeatedly cast Owl's Wisdom on Belkar, taking it off only when they need to kill? Except that Rich's Rule applies (That if the characters do everything right, there's no story).
Oh, and for those saying "Celia wouldn't act like that", let's be clear. We've seen her once, and she was presenting a court case. It's not like /
Also, if you were going about your normal business and one of your friends' friends stabbed a guy right in front of you? I think you'd be a little preachy. That or shut up through fear.

[Frosty]

I wonder if Roy would like this anal side of her, even if he is lawful and agrees in principle with a lot of things she said.

[Phase]

I knew there was a reason I couldn't sleep tonight.

Ahh, fate...

[sun_tzu]

Guys, she just saw Belkar murder an innocent person with no provocation. Frankly, I'd think less of her if she hadn't reacted this way.

[Dark Wolf]

True. There was that Paladin recently. It'd be funny having Belkar go through a village being nice and saying Damn each time he was kind.

[factotum]

Hmmm. Apparently Belkar is quite okay being referred to as a horrid little bastard--guess he's got no illusions about what he is!

[RubberBandMan]

It seems to me that Celia is standing on the princibles of justice, being a lawyer and all. Haley is standing on Pragmitism, which is, 'make the most of what you can do', and Belkar... well, I think he's a wee bit evil.

Celia is trying to show it matters to do the right thing, even if its harder for you personally, hence the candy bar. Haley is trying to show her hands are tied, and Belkar... sees a senseless waste, which is kinda ironic.

[Alex Warlorn]

Been done, the victim can't do anything he wouldn't usually do. So it only works on Belkar if you tell him to do something he would normally do.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0383.html

though I don't know, are Charm and Dominate the same?

Nope. Dominate is stronger and goes by different rules.

[Rad]

OK, getting worried over fuzzy animals is probably a bit too much...
On the other hand, getting the chocolate bar back is not that much work when you have wings.

[Nychta]

OK, getting worried over fuzzy animals is probably a bit too much...
On the other hand, getting the chocolate bar back is not that much work when you have wings.

Yeah. The fact that she uses her wings to get chocolate doesn't concern me. What DOES concern me is her motivation. I mean, what kind of reason is "The cute fuzzy animals could get hurt otherwise"?

[Rethorn]

What if Mr. Scruffy eats the chocolate? THAT would be Karma.

[Tundar]

A horrid little bastard?
Haha, fitting discription :D

And I'm surpriced he didn't go all ballistic over haley taking away his chocolate.

[RosesOnConcrete]

Celia's showing signs of annoying-ness (I remember someone a few days ago calling her a Mary Sue), but Haley's great in this one. She's the realist now, huh?

[SPoD]

First time I've been on for an update!

Also, Celia is...uh.. freakishly responsible, and law-abiding.

Responsible, yes. Law-abiding...not freakishly so. She's worried about the lives of the animals, not about, say, littering laws. An overwhelming value placed on life is not a Lawful trait, it's a Good trait.

At any rate, I don't know why people keep saying, "Why don't they just cast Spell X?" How about because Celia is the only spellcaster, and she only has sorcerer levels equal to her Hit Dice (probably around 6)? There's no way she can cast Dominate Person, it's too high level. And she probably only knows about 10 spells, so the likelihood of having Owl's Wisdom is very low.

Yes, they may have more options once they get to a city, but right now, they can't get to a city any faster than they are traveling!

[SPoD]

(I remember someone a few days ago calling her a Mary Sue)

Celia is anything but a Mary Sue in this strip: She didn't get anything her way, and she was made to look foolish for her philosophical P.O.V.

[FujinAkari]

Clearly Celia is an evil doppleganger sent to infiltrate the party. After all, Celia is a spunky chick who thinks nothing of blasting helpless captives (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0070.html) with lightning at only slight provocation!

I'm kidding about the doppleganger thing... but seriously... does Celia have a cruel side she's trying to hide?

[Niknokitueu]

Heh - Just last night I was saying just the same thing as today's comic.

(My Rich-Fu must be strong...)

Loved the comic, please sir, can we have some more?
(Sorry - lots of recent advertising for "I'll do anything" is starting to have an effect on me. Just hope I do not find a Nancy...)

Have Fun!
Niknokitueu
Edit: As a ps, "I'll do anything" is the most recent public search for a lead member for a west-end show. This time it is "Oliver!" (their emphasis, not mine), and they are letting the audience choose the role of "Nancy"...

[Turcano]

I don't know why, but that was just awesome.

Haley: Throwing away candy bars for great justice!

[pasko77]

I wonder if Roy would like this anal side of her, even if he is lawful and agrees in principle with a lot of things she said.

I'm sure that Roy LOVES her anal side...
sorry, i just couldn't resist.

[Courier]

Yikes. Poor Haley, stuck with those two!

[Iberiel]

Okay.. That made me laugh out loud.

The horrid little guy is being naughty - Take away his candy!
How logical.

[Yendor]

Bad Belkar! No chocolate!

Really, Haley hasn't got a lot of options available to her.

[plainsfox]

Heh. Scary thought

What's stopping Belkar from killing them right now? I mean, Slash slash and they're dead....as Belkar isn't within a city right now. Belkar takes Roy's corpse and lives the life of a bandit in the forest.

I prefer Pritchard's solution to the Steuben problem (If anybody reads David Drake) to matters such as Belkar. "Hey Joachim, old buddy! " *BANG*

[dogmac]

Haley, Haley, Haley...

MILK chocolate with almonds? Taking that away is no kind of punishment. If it had been DARK chocolate, however.....

[carais]

I prefer Pritchard's solution to the Steuben problem (If anybody reads David Drake) to matters such as Belkar. "Hey Joachim, old buddy! " *BANG*

Wasn't it Theisman or so who, err, abbreviated Saint Just's further career? Or are you talking of her revolutionary days? (I'm as far as 'At All Costs', but main line only).

Celia sounds like a good druid to me. Maybe she should consider a career change? ;) OK, it might collide with her current alignment since she's LG and a druid nowadays has to have at least one 'neutral' somewhere.

[Vargtass]

Lawful-Good, Chaotic-Good, Chaotic-Evil... perfect portrayal!

[JessmanCA]

Alignment Conflictilicious :)

I am enjoying this sequence, I hope the arguments continue actually. I loved in Baldur's Gate when Xzar kept arguing with you for doing good, until finally a fight erupted.

[Demented]

Haley, Haley, Haley...

MILK chocolate with almonds? Taking that away is no kind of punishment. If it had been DARK chocolate, however.....

GAK!
Dark chocolate is a step too close to baking chocolate for my tastes.
Then again, milk chocolate is like soft crude butter with sugar.

...Aren't candy bars packaged in strangely-modern materials?

[HOLEkevin]

Man. Celia better be useful in a fight, because she hasn't shown much use anywhere else.

[Winterwind]

Lawful-Good, Chaotic-Good, Chaotic-Evil... perfect portrayal!I agree on the Chaotic Evil. Celia is more like Lawful Obnoxious here, and Haley has, in my eyes, earned having her 'Good' status revoked.


Man. Celia better be useful in a fight, because she hasn't shown much use anywhere else.What about getting the group past the hobgoblin post?


Hmmm. So it seems Haley is going to simply ignore Belkar's deed. There goes all my respect for her. :smallannoyed:

[warmachine]

Who reckons Haley and Celia will split? Who reckons Haley will call Celia a 'bitch' or a 'skank'. Vote!

[Aretelio]

Nice. Just read the entire strip this weekend. Love it, love it.

[pendell]

Heh. Scary thought

What's stopping Belkar from killing them right now? I mean, Slash slash and they're dead....as Belkar isn't within a city right now. Belkar takes Roy's corpse and lives the life of a bandit in the forest.

I prefer Pritchard's solution to the Steuben problem (If anybody reads David Drake) to matters such as Belkar. "Hey Joachim, old buddy! " *BANG*

Where exactly did that happen? I thought I'd read all the Hammer novels and didn't see that particular thing occur. I know that Steuben shows up in 'The Sharp End' under an alias, but I hadn't seen the events before that and after the end of the original 'Hammer's Slammers' novel.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Saph]

I'm actually starting to like Celia more than Haley now.

Strips like this remind you that Belkar really is just as bad as Xykon. Which raises the question of why the 'heroes' are still hanging out with him . . .

- Saph

[Adeptus]

Celia is great.

Rich is making a point about how abnormal the black-and-white kill-the-bastards-and-let-the-gods-sort-it-out morality of D&D characters really is. Due to the experience point system and levelling D&D has always been about wholesale slaughter, with Alignment thrown in to say who it is and isn't ok to murder for exp.

Celia's comments may sound odd in a D&D world, but in the real world I sure hope most readers are more like her than Haley (not to mention our beloved amoral Belkar).

[Adeptus]

By the way, if you can find it:

http://www.finnstyle.com/fazer-chocolate-bar.html

You'll never knock milk-chocolate again.:elan:

[shylocxs]

Hmmm. Apparently Belkar is quite okay being referred to as a horrid little bastard--guess he's got no illusions about what he is!

Milk chocolate justice. With almonds.

Hehehe... darn right, that the Belkster has no illusions... but at least he has good taste in candy!

[ref]

Who reckons Haley and Celia will split? Who reckons Haley will call Celia a 'bitch' or a 'skank'. Vote!What? Haley vs Flying Bitch IV?

Poor Haley, can't do much else. She's in dire need. She could tie up Belkar, she has eight ranks in Use Rope, after all. But then they're ambushed and she's toast, so it's a bad idea. Will have to endure this little horrid bastard.

[Haruspex]

Okay, Celia is beginning to bug me just a little. She calls for Belkar to suffer consequences, can't do it herself, and then complains over Haley's handling of the situation. True, Belkar did murder a stranger for his donkey, and being upset about that is quite normal.

Instead of passing the gripe to Haley though she should have sorted it out with Belkar personally. Sticking to her ideals is admirable, but not when she expects someone else to champion those ideals for her.

If she can't, perhaps because Belkar is an unrepentant killer who would stab her if she annoyed him, then she has deal with it. Even though Belkar's not the sort of guy you'd introduce to your parents, he's an asset on a dangerous trip like the one they're currently on.

But then again this may be just an example of how mixed-alignment groups can go wrong. Without some serious compromise, the OOTS would have split up ages ago. And now the new group is having trouble holding together as Celia is not an adventurer, Belkar is unrestrained, and Haley is new at leading. I wouldn't put it past Rich.

[hajo]

More than four weeks (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0532.html) to Cliffport ?
If group-dynamics like this continue, I doubt they will get there :smallannoyed:

[Lunaya]

My respect for Haley is growing with every update. Anyone else would probably have given in and strangled both of them by now. Still, say what you will about Belkar, at least he knows that he's a "horrid little bastard". It just doesn't bother him.

As far as Haley not punishing Belkar properly, try taking away my chocolate bar and see what happens. :smallamused:

[factotum]

Hmmm. So it seems Haley is going to simply ignore Belkar's deed. There goes all my respect for her. :smallannoyed:

What exactly are you expecting her to do? Hand Belkar over to Xykon as the nearest higher authority? Great, an extra high level evil minion for him--he'll be over the moon. Tie Belkar up and hand him in at the next town? What if they have to, you know, FIGHT anything between here and there? Belkar is about the only meat shield they have! Please, if Haley's solution isn't good enough for you, enlighten us as to what you think she should do...

[Bleen]

I think this strip is the defining moment of "Nope, Celia's not a Mary-Sue. She's just a polar opposite of Belkar with a Wisdom score put in roughly the same place as his."

[pendell]

Well, I'm disappointed in Haley. Not disappointed in the Giant, or the Strip. He's writing true to her character. But still disappointed in her.

Fundamentally, she's failing as a leader. A leader has to take responsibility for the entire group, not just for her own actions. Her refusal to take responsibility for Belkar's actions is a dramatic failure of leadership, and her final decision ... punishing a cold-blooded murder by taking away his candy -- pleases no one. It's the sort of half-measure a weak an ineffective person would do. Note also that it has no effect on deterring Belkar, who is already looking forward to the next gnome.

This is not an effective group dynamic. Either Haley must find a way to reign in Belkar, or the group is going to break up.

Unfortunately, that breakup cannot occur without bloodshed. Both Celia and Belkar have an interest in Roy's corpse. They will fight over who gets it, and one of them will die. That will probably be Celia.

This reminds me of some elementary school situations I have seen, where you've got a bully of a young child terrorizing the playground while the hapless teacher desperately exhorts everyone to "play nice" without doing the one thing that would make that possible: Punishing the bully.

I'm also looking in vain for a funny moment in this strip, and not finding it. I don't think "punishing" murder with loss of chocolate to be funny, and Celia's whining about dead animals and chocolate isn't funny, just irritating.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Moechi_Vill]

Haley will pitch in and kill Belkar if there is a fight over the corpse. Problem solved. She's chaotic good, but I expected her to lug the gnome around. I guess I was right about her poor morals after these few years, but I still expected her to not be so horrible as to not set herself responsible for Belkar's murders.

*sigh* Belkar is going to die.
I wish he'd win and kill them both since I like him as a character, but it is not going to happen.

[HUMVEE Driver]

Ha! I said it first! Little Bastard!!!

[Prince Gimli]

I agree on the Chaotic Evil. Celia is more like Lawful Obnoxious here, and Haley has, in my eyes, earned having her 'Good' status revoked.

What about getting the group past the hobgoblin post?


Hmmm. So it seems Haley is going to simply ignore Belkar's deed. There goes all my respect for her. :smallannoyed:

There's not much she can do about it. As she says in the last panel, she needs Belkar. And as mentioned earlier in this thread, tying him up or knocking him unconscious isn't an option.

As far as I can tell, there's not a damn thing she can do about it, and her frustration at her powerlessness is showing in her face. Celia is preaching morals, but there's no practical way to enforce them. This is demonstrated by the candybar incident, which is really all Haley can do to punish Belkar at the moment. For the sake of their mission and thus the greater good, they must get to Cliffport and they need Belkar along. Haley realises this, but she isn't happy about it. Not at all.

Correct me if I'm wrong of course.

[TroyXavier]

Haley's probably thinking right now that perhaps she made the wrong career choice. I'm expecting by some point Belkar and Celia will have it out once and for all. Things are going to get a lot more interesting if they continue developing this way.

[Prince Gimli]

I agree on the Chaotic Evil. Celia is more like Lawful Obnoxious here, and Haley has, in my eyes, earned having her 'Good' status revoked.

What about getting the group past the hobgoblin post?


Hmmm. So it seems Haley is going to simply ignore Belkar's deed. There goes all my respect for her. :smallannoyed:

There's not much she can do about it. As she says in the last panel, she needs Belkar. And as mentioned earlier in this thread, tying him up or knocking him unconscious isn't an option.

As far as I can tell, there's not a damn thing she can do about it, and her frustration at her powerlessness is showing in her face. Celia is preaching morals, but there's no practical way to enforce them. This is demonstrated by the candybar incident, which is really all Haley can do to punish Belkar at the moment. For the sake of their mission and thus the greater good, they must get to Cliffport and they need Belkar along. Haley realises this, but she isn't happy about it. Haley sums it up nicely in the fourth panel.

[Hinotori]

This whole arc is somewhat disappointing for me.

Yes, Belkar has always been horridly evil, but his antics here aren't even at least funny to me. They're just cruel and pointless, and the fact that he has little to no reason for this act leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

This is made all the worse by the fact that the only responsible character in this strip is played as a completely uncompromising, impractical stereotype which also fails to get any laughs due to her total inability to see reason.

And Haley is most disappointing of all for not even caring about the crime committed beyond her momentary gasp of horror at its occurrence. I agree with other posters that she really loses whatever "good-ish" tilt she had on the alignment scale, her actions in this scene being completely, wholeheartedly neutral. She's not just being "practical." She absolves herself of any responsibility in controlling Belkar (clearly differentiating herself from Roy), and it's plain in the last panel that she sees both Celia and Belkar as almost equally frustrating, which highlights her overall indifference to the moral accountability of the situation.

I feel like I don't really have anyone to root for here anymore, and that's sad.

Sorry to complain. I think I can safely say that I've enjoyed every arc so far except this one. Here's hoping the next few strips make me eat my words.

[Iranon]

I really liked Haley's portrayal in the strip, and think she has grown a little as a character - as she stated, she takes responsibility for herself at least.

She's acting like an acting leader - taking direction without trying to reinforce her position or style of leadership. She has no interest to take responsibility of Belkar in any, lacking both a hold on him (contractual obligations) and an ulterior goal ('redeeming a villain').
Haley is in many ways not a people person... she's not the type to form a closely-knit party and worry about things like group cohesion; she's just taking over and doing what needs to be done until Roy is back.

Also, Belkar sees it as a challenge when someone tries to keep him under tight control. If Haley tried, not having the inclination or the experience of doing so as the more Lawful types, she might do more harm than good.

[Faramir]

Nice to see that Lawful Good can be just as annoyingly funny as Chaotic Evil :).

Haley will be so happy when Roy gets raised...

[Laurentio]

Wow. I started ignoring Celia, then finding her annoying but necessary, now I just find her disgusting. She wants to see Belkar punished, but as she clearly fears him, is bugging Haley into doing the hard (and dangerous) thing. Pretty cowardly, in my opinion.
Ok, she is actually a sane mind, compared to the typical PC (that is sociopathic as a class feature). Really, almost anyone of us REAL people would think her way. But with time, you are supposed to understand that the world is a mean, dangerous place. And cope with things you don't like.
SHE started the trip, and blabbed about taking the corpse and Belkar with her. I would pay to see how would her had managed to pass the guard place with Belkar, without having a hobs massacre.

Silly silly airy head... without Haley presence, Belkar would use you as a flying mount, with a skeleton warrior stuffed somewhere. And please, mind somewhere. I don't want to know what a maniac that find amusing pooping into a living skull could do to a fairy whose skull is filled with moral issues and law knowledge.

Waiting for Celia departure. My best hope on Roy's return to be her "farewell ki(ck-in-the-a)ss". If she manage to survive up to that moment.

Grats to the Giant. Irritating character are hard to be made on purpose. This is one of the best comics of the many I read.

Laurentio

[Blaznak]

Hee hee hee! I don't know what brand of Coffee Rich is drinking lately, but I want some. He's writing some of his best stuff, in like, forever!

"Milk Chocolate Justice. With Almonds." Hee hee hee.

"Would I be travelling with a horrid little bastard like you if I didn't need all the help I can get?" Hee hee hee x2

Very funny stuff...

Later!

[Behold_the_Void]

Good stuff. Celia's reactions are quite believable, as are Haley's. It's a clash of worlds.

[zillion ninjas]

...Aren't candy bars packaged in strangely-modern materials?

Meh. It could be worse, ye know. They could have magic trains (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0344.html).

And for those who complain that this page wasn't funny enough, or that it didn't have a good enough "hero" to cheer for, just consider that not every page needs to be like that. This one was more of a character study, probably as a set-up for a more dramatic confrontation later.

Personally, though, I thought Belkar's "next gnome I kill" comment was funny enough anyway. :smallamused:

[yoshi927]

Pacifism, I can appreciate. But Celia really doesn't seem to appreciate the urgency of this journey. Suppose that Roy is five minutes too late to the final gate and the Snarl destroys the world. Those are the five minutes it would take to find that candy bar.

[Milandros]

Why don't they just repeatedly cast Owl's Wisdom on Belkar, taking it off only when they need to kill? Except that Rich's Rule applies (That if the characters do everything right, there's no story).
Oh, and for those saying "Celia wouldn't act like that", let's be clear. We've seen her once, and she was presenting a court case. It's not like /
Also, if you were going about your normal business and one of your friends' friends stabbed a guy right in front of you? I think you'd be a little preachy. That or shut up through fear.

Owl's Wisdom has a duration of one minute per level. Even with V casting it, it would last less than quarter of an hour. If V stuffed all his higher level spell slots with it, you might get a few hours of the day covered, but then that's all he could do. If V and Durkon did nothing else but follow him around casting Owl's Wisom every 13 or 14 minutes, maybe you could get him through most of the day, but still...

[Calemyr]

Folks, folk, folks... remember one thing, kind friends, before you complain too loudly about Celia: she's a college student. Is she vocal, opinionated, and convinced that she knows better than everyone else? Do her ideals FAR outweigh her practical experience, to such a degree that she plays the activist without the slightest clue how things really work? Is she literally filled to the point of bursting with ineffectual good intentions? Yes. Those are practically class features for a college student, the closest thing the real world has to a paladin class. I'd also give her a slight break on the whole kill-or-be-killed thing because she approaches that conflict from the opposite side as our intrepid adventurers, being employed as she was as dungeon denizen. You develop a slightly different perspective on things when you're the one being killed for no better reason than "because you're there".

As for Haley, she's not a leader. She never wanted to be leader, and she never suggested she'd be good at it. She's the best second-in-command a leader could hope for, but the skillset of a good wingman is very different from the skillset of a good leader. She's also in a position of responsibility with none of the power that's supposed to come with it, and she's not of the disposition to play against a stacked deck. She kinda reminds me of Cameron Mitchell from the last seasons of Stargate SG1: "She's the same rank as me, he's a civilian, and HE's an alien. I figured out a long time ago that I don't give orders - I give suggestions that MAY be followed as long as it suits them".

[Jarawara]

Hmmmm... you know, after reading these last couple of strips, I'm beginning to think... and I know this might be viewed as controversial... but I am seriously beginning to consider the possibility that Belkar might have some measure of evil in his overall alignment.

I'm mean, don't get me wrong, I'm sure this is just a phase he's going through, and all will be revealed that the Gnome was really a villian, and Belkar used his Paladic's power of detect evil, and thus saved Celia from the gnome's evil intents, but still, from an outsider's point of view, his actions did seem... well, less than his usual neutral good.

In fact, I do believe that is his 'evil' charade continues, I predict that in the future there might be threads popping up debating Belkar's alignment, as ridiculous as such an idea might sound. :smallwink:

[Lorde]

The whole strip seemed about "alignment conflict" but I dread this concept.

I don't care if Belkar is chaotic evil, chaotic neutral or boringly maniac. I am more concerned Haley was little miffed by the act. One would expect more reaction from a cold-blooded kill.

Isn't she worried about her safety by the way? Who gives she isn't the next? She may have a candy bar too...

And there is a huge deal of work to make the poor faerie unlikeable. Nothing against preachy characters, but the candy thing was a stretch. A smart person would stay shut over to avoid more conflict.

[Meshakhad]

I'll give Celia a pass on her behavior. She isn't an adventurer. Nor does she understand why they let Belkar walk free.

Roy will give her a better explanation when they rez him.

[Winterwind]

What exactly are you expecting her to do? Hand Belkar over to Xykon as the nearest higher authority? Great, an extra high level evil minion for him--he'll be over the moon. Tie Belkar up and hand him in at the next town? What if they have to, you know, FIGHT anything between here and there? Belkar is about the only meat shield they have! Please, if Haley's solution isn't good enough for you, enlighten us as to what you think she should do...I'm not even so much disappointed by her actions here, as her reactions.

An unspeakable, horrid crime has been commited before her eyes, and she has nothing better to do than to mock Celia, who is quite rightfully shocked by what just happened? Any good character would be shocked and disgusted by Belkar's murder - he just extinguished an innocent life, for crying out loud! - and she is already acting oblivious to it and scorns Celia for not being able to stomach this so easily?!

She is not even consistent here - first she seems to represent what some people here called "D&D morals" - the heroes being justified and, in fact, obliged to fight and destroy evil - and now she just tolerates it? If she ever was justified to kill anyone (including the hobgoblins she fought before), she is even more so justified to kill Belkar right on the spot.

And about her needing him... for one, I don't exactly see why, and for second, they are rapidly approaching the point where the ends do not justify the means anymore in my eyes.

Still, I am neither saying she should fight or expell Belkar (as if that was possible). I am not even saying she should have spent the entire next 10 strips shouting at him, though I frankly would have expected her to; being reasonable enough to see that this would not have any effect in the face of a terrifying deed like this does not speak well of her. But no good person could stay as calm as she does after that happened. That she scalds the one person who does not stay as inhumanely calm and displays a shimmer of Good instead is just the icing on the cake.

Too bad. Until this strip, she was one of my favourite characters. Fascinating how a single strip can pretty much reverse it. :smallfrown:

[Laurentio]

Named NPC. Is there anything they can't solve?


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2040/2339937191_364ed162ab_o.gif

No, I'm not going to open a Hate-Celia Temple. I'll just devote the rest of my life hoping to killing real people that have a too strong resemblance to her. Wings included.

Laurentio

[Forealms]

Heh. "Milk chocolate justice, with almonds" :smallbiggrin:

Okay, now I'm starting to get annoyed by Celia. I wonder when Haley will give in to the Dark side and go on a bloody rampage... specifically against a sylph and a halfling.

[White Rook]

Folks, folk, folks... remember one thing, kind friends, before you complain too loudly about Celia: she's a college student. Is she vocal, opinionated, and convinced that she knows better than everyone else? Do her ideals FAR outweigh her practical experience, to such a degree that she plays the activist without the slightest clue how things really work? Is she literally filled to the point of bursting with ineffectual good intentions? Yes. Those are practically class features for a college student, the closest thing the real world has to a paladin class.
Hahaha, smartest post in this whole thread. A+ analysis!

[Grey Watcher]

Yeah. The fact that she uses her wings to get chocolate doesn't concern me. What DOES concern me is her motivation. I mean, what kind of reason is "The cute fuzzy animals could get hurt otherwise"?

The kind of logic that makes me wonder just how old Celia is. I mean, she's a college student. What's more, she's apparently already gone through school to get a degree and has had time to start college over in a new field (or is she actually in law school). Her reasoning lately is more along the lines of something I'd expect from a 12-to-14-year-old, not a grad student.

EDIT: To be fair, I've known and heard of a few stunningly naive grad students.

[Haruspex]

I'm not even so much disappointed by her actions here, as her reactions.

An unspeakable, horrid crime has been commited before her eyes, and she has nothing better to do than to mock Celia, who is quite rightfully shocked by what just happened? Any good character would be shocked and disgusted by Belkar's murder - he just extinguished an innocent life, for crying out loud! - and she is already acting oblivious to it and scorns Celia for not being able to stomach this so easily?!

She is not even consistent here - first she seems to represent what some people here called "D&D morals" - the heroes being justified and, in fact, obliged to fight and destroy evil - and now she just tolerates it? If she ever was justified to kill anyone (including the hobgoblins she fought before), she is even more so justified to kill Belkar right on the spot.

And about her needing him... for one, I don't exactly see why, and for second, they are rapidly approaching the point where the ends do not justify the means anymore in my eyes.

Still, I am neither saying she should fight or expell Belkar (as if that was possible). I am not even saying she should have spent the entire next 10 strips shouting at him, though I frankly would have expected her to; being reasonable enough to see that this would not have any effect in the face of a terrifying deed like this does not speak well of her. But no good person could stay as calm as she does after that happened. That she scalds the one person who does not stay as inhumanely calm and displays a shimmer of Good instead is just the icing on the cake.

Too bad. Until this strip, she was one of my favourite characters. Fascinating how a single strip can pretty much reverse it. :smallfrown:

Belkar is the only living member of OOTS that she has with her. Murderous bastard he is, that has to count for something especially after three months (was it three months?) of constant guerilla warfare in a city which until recently didn't have a unified resistance movement. The time period was glossed over, but fighting side by side for that long, not counting the time before the comic started, builds bonds that are not immediately evident in the often semi-parodic nature of the strip.

The impact of his murderous and immoral behaviour is thus very much dulled by the time they reach Strip 540. It's like expecting Haley to sigh loudly every single time Vaarsuvius talks for too long or Elan acts dumb. She knows it's wrong/unecessary/dumb, but she's grown used to it. So yeah, no indignant outrage or anything like that.

Why she needs him? It's a potentially dangerous trip and a killer by your side, on your side, is better than just an idealistic slyph and a corpse. Belkar would take the cat with him if it came to that.

[Keldaria]

Named NPC. Is there anything they can't solve?


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2040/2339937191_364ed162ab_o.gif

No, I'm not going to open a Hate-Celia Temple. I'll just devote the rest of my life hoping to killing real people that have a too strong resemblance to her. Wings included.

Laurentio

Woot thats what i wanted to see.

Now I'm really hoping for Celia to be Miko 2.0 complete with a near alignment changing moment where she wants to kill belkar of her own free will... I sence the Force is strong with this one, strike him down and take your place at my side young one. Oh and did i mention the Candy Bar?

Yes i siad it .. and i'm that sick and demented.. I want a Miko 2.0 momment complete with chase scene but with lighting instead of swords :smallamused:

[Rastaban]

Hmmmm... you know, after reading these last couple of strips, I'm beginning to think... and I know this might be viewed as controversial... but I am seriously beginning to consider the possibility that Belkar might have some measure of evil in his overall alignment.

I'm mean, don't get me wrong, I'm sure this is just a phase he's going through, and all will be revealed that the Gnome was really a villian, and Belkar used his Paladic's power of detect evil, and thus saved Celia from the gnome's evil intents, but still, from an outsider's point of view, his actions did seem... well, less than his usual neutral good.

In fact, I do believe that is his 'evil' charade continues, I predict that in the future there might be threads popping up debating Belkar's alignment, as ridiculous as such an idea might sound. :smallwink:

I doubt that, clearly the gnome was a choclate smuggler and so his death was completely justifiable.

Rich excellent comic, I was laughing in the first panel at belkars "Mmmm, tasty." Such complete wilful disregard to the fact that the others are seething.

[Vulion]

I loved both Celia and Haley's reaction, Celia the normal person thrust into a situation with a, quite frankly, amoral sociopath and Haley the leader that doesn't want to lead.

I been reading a lot about people complaining about Celia being to anal about this, or too unrealistic in her attempts to see Belkar punished, but I must ask. I this a bad thing? Celia is a person that isn't used to seeing someone killed in cold blood before her, and I don't think anyone should get used to that. I see the pragmatism argument but if you're gonna use that, wouldn't it also be pragmatic to get rid of a person that has in the past shown total willingness to both betray and kill his fellow comrades and probably would in the future?

[shakes019]

I think Rich is doing a great job with this comic.

Regarding Haley's reaction to Belkar being a murder: A couple of things, the first of which is spoiled for Origins.
Haley never had any problems dealing with murderers in her pre-OOTS adventures. At least none that arose from her distaste for murder. She had a rivalry with the Thieves' Guild assassin, but she was okay with the guy who ran the "Rob-U-While-You-Sleep" Inn.
In addition to that, she's known Belkar for years, and she knows him well enough that while she doesn't necessarily like him, she generally knows what battles to fight where his behaviour is concerned. I think she's acclimated to his behaviour over time, and now she has a higher level of tolerance for him as a result.

As to Celia's reaction, I think she's just as believable. She lacks a certain sense of scope, but that might just the ongoing culture shock that she's been experiencing.

My theory on how this plays out:
She sticks with the group long enough to get Roy restored, but the stress that she undergoes overwhelms her. She and Roy get a poignant scene in which she expresses her regret that she can't bring herself to accept his vocation, and goes her own way.

[Haruspex]

I loved both Celia and Haley's reaction, Celia the normal person thrust into a situation with a, quite frankly, amoral sociopath and Haley the leader that doesn't want to lead.

I been reading a lot about people complaining about Celia being to anal about this, or too unrealistic in her attempts to see Belkar punished, but I must ask. I this a bad thing? Celia is a person that isn't used to seeing someone killed in cold blood before her, and I don't think anyone should get used to that. I see the pragmatism argument but if you're gonna use that, wouldn't it also be pragmatic to get rid of a person that has in the past shown total willingness to both betray and kill his fellow comrades and probably would in the future?

At the moment it's more practical for Celia to get used to it rather than have Belkar gotten rid of. Celia's reaction is very human and probably the one I would have shown in the same situation. But I'm not a professional adventurer nor would I have a place in a party of one. Once they get to a civilised law-abiding area Haley can have Belkar kicked into an adamantine cell if she feels it is appropriate (highly unlikely, for reasons I have stated in my previous post), but for now her hands are tied.

[Moechi_Vill]

I agree on the Chaotic Evil. Celia is more like Lawful Obnoxious here, and Haley has, in my eyes, earned having her 'Good' status revoked.

What about getting the group past the hobgoblin post?


Hmmm. So it seems Haley is going to simply ignore Belkar's deed. There goes all my respect for her. :smallannoyed:


I lost all my respect for her long ago and doubted her alignment, especially when she was nasty to Miko. I definitely believed her to be CN the moment she left the Gnome's corpse behind.

[Blanth]

Ahh Celia. You are Ultra Lawful Good.

Wonder what "anti-littering" contributes towards Charisma?


/Milk chocolate justice with almonds will be served!

[raichi]

I must disagree with throwing the candy bar being the only safe solution, assuming she had the spells of course, granted yes haley wouldn't know either but could've asked, she could've had celia just use charm or dominate person, then ta-daa problem solved they still gots a meat shield for incoming monsters, and belkar wont kill any more gnome's. other than that as another note i don't think celia will go miko 2.0 because she takes a fair more logical approach to lawful goodness, where as miko was far more rash and acted more upon impulse and quickly drawn conclusions. any who thats my thoughts other than that other than the overly harsh throwingness away of chocolate good comic.

[Surfing HalfOrc]

For those freaking out on Haley, I ask one thing: What could she do about it at the moment?

Belkar killed Solk so fast that no one could have stopped him. And Belkar isn't afraid of Haley the way he is of Roy. So now Haley has the choice of killing Belkar where he stands, or enduring Belkar until they get Roy back. What do you think the odds of Haley taking down Belkar, even with Celia's help?

I had a longer post on Belkar on another thread, but it ended up as the final post of a page, so I don't know if it will be read much. But to me, this is the beginning of the end for Belkar. All of his actions so far have been against armed opponants, or just threats and bluster. This is his first true killing of a helpless innocent.

I'm thinking the Oracle's Prophesy is about to come true, and Rich doesn't want us mourning a "misunderstood" character. Belkar is now Evil, instead of just evil. Karma, Instant or otherwise is about to catch up with Death's Little Helper.

[Aristeidis]

Celia is too much caring and not law-abiding as I see it. Someone must teach Belkar a lesson and since Haley doesn't do anything, let's hope that Celia might!
Nice to see someone stand against Belkar in a way other than just words. A pacifist and an enviromentalist message in the same strip!

(Oh my God! A +3 chocolate bar is coming towards me!)

[Shalewind]

I’m all for the Celia as a naïve college student angle. Her bizarre actions seem to be more a product of inexperience rather than hard-core alignment or lack of intelligence.

I was on the punish Belkar wagon, but I’m jumping off. Haley has an extremely good point. She needs to get Roy rezed and save the world. That calls for drastic action. Sometimes you need to ally yourself with evil characters to stop a greater evil. This isn’t an ends justifying the means, or sacrificing your morals for pragmatism – it is a simple fact of survival.

Haley has now indicated that she clearly needs Belkar to push forward. As Belkar is a little ball of hate and destruction, I can see the need.

All goes back to the age old question, can “Good” sacrifice an innocent to save the world if there is no other way? I say yes. Others say that “Good” should try another way and die trying if necessary.

Haley’s “Good”, but she knows her task is important. The gnome was a casualty that clearly angered and shocked her, but it doesn’t change her predicament. She still needs Belkar. The only thing I see changing the Status Quo here is if Belkar becomes a threat to her life (which at present Belkar seems pretty content to be with her).

[Woof]

Thank you Celia. From all the puppy lovers in this world. ;D

[Dentarg]

Please, please not another Miko...

ANYTHING but another Miko! We already had enough strips about it! :smallfrown:

I have to admit though, punishing Belkar by taking away his candy was pretty funny.

- Dentarg

[Craig1f]

I don't see why everyone is ragging on Celia.

How would you all react to this situation? I'd be freaking out. And damn right I'd be scared of him, and expect the person that I thought had a moral compass, to deal with it.

Belkar SHOULD be in jail. He SHOULD be killed. He's not because it's FUNNY and ENTERTAINING, and because he's a popular character.

In a fight between Haley and Belkar, Haley would get a sneak attack, which is not enough to kill him at his level. Then he'll close to melee range, and she won't be able to use her bow, and he'll throttle her.

But that will never happen, because the comic is funny with him in it.

Belkar could also probably kill Celia in one round. That probably also won't happen, because then the party will never get back together, and Belkar is funnier with the group then he would be on team evil.

Rich is putting a lot of effort into making Belkar excessively and blatantly evil right now. He might be setting up for something, which might include Belkar putting on a cursed item that changes his alignment to the opposite alignment. Or maybe not, I don't know.

[Winterwind]

Belkar is the only living member of OOTS that she has with her. Murderous bastard he is, that has to count for something especially after three months (was it three months?) of constant guerilla warfare in a city which until recently didn't have a unified resistance movement. The time period was glossed over, but fighting side by side for that long, not counting the time before the comic started, builds bonds that are not immediately evident in the often semi-parodic nature of the strip.

The impact of his murderous and immoral behaviour is thus very much dulled by the time they reach Strip 540. It's like expecting Haley to sigh loudly every single time Vaarsuvius talks for too long or Elan acts dumb. She knows it's wrong/unecessary/dumb, but she's grown used to it. So yeah, no indignant outrage or anything like that.Are you seriously comparing the murder of an innocent person with Vaarsuvius' wordiness or Elan's occasional lapses of reason?

If she has reached the point where she does not care about the death of an innocent anymore, her alignment indeed doesn't have anything to do with Good anymore.


Why she needs him? It's a potentially dangerous trip and a killer by your side, on your side, is better than just an idealistic slyph and a corpse. Belkar would take the cat with him if it came to that.Due to the Mark of Justice, Belkar cannot leave anyway.


I had a longer post on Belkar on another thread, but it ended up as the final post of a page, so I don't know if it will be read much. But to me, this is the beginning of the end for Belkar. All of his actions so far have been against armed opponants, or just threats and bluster. This is his first true killing of a helpless innocent.

I'm thinking the Oracle's Prophesy is about to come true, and Rich doesn't want us mourning a "misunderstood" character. Belkar is now Evil, instead of just evil. Karma, Instant or otherwise is about to catch up with Death's Little Helper.Hmmm. Good point. This seems quite likely indeed.

My theory was that this is a set-up for Roy triggering the Mark of Justice, since he is watching and Belkar did step over the line, not only getting rid of the monster, but also showing Celia and Haley that he is aware of them and that they might want to try and find a way to communicate with him somehow; but on the other hand, it seems unlikely that an OotS member would perish in such an unspectacular way.

[Daibhid C]

I'm actually starting to like Celia more than Haley now.

Strips like this remind you that Belkar really is just as bad as Xykon. Which raises the question of why the 'heroes' are still hanging out with him . . .


Haley says in the last panel that the only reason she's hanging with Belkar is she's out of options. A rogue and an NPC (even one with spell levels, and especially one who doesn't "get" adventuring) aren't an effective adventuring party.

Roy gave his reason for associating with Belkar at Mount Celestia's reception desk; basically, it's so he can stop him killing random gnomes, a responsibility Haley is unwilling to take.

[Daibhid C]

I'm actually starting to like Celia more than Haley now.

Strips like this remind you that Belkar really is just as bad as Xykon. Which raises the question of why the 'heroes' are still hanging out with him . . .


Haley says in the last panel that the only reason she's hanging with Belkar is she needs *someone* to accompany her, and she's out of options.

Roy gave his reason for associating with Belkar at Mount Celestia's reception desk; basically, it's so he can stop him killing random gnomes, a responsibility Haley is unwilling to take.

[Qov]

Masterful.

As three pages of discussion have already shown it's a good, meaningful strip about alignments, and leaderships, and D&D morality, but I can barely believe that some people didn't find it simultaneously hilarious. There is a laugh in almost every panel, and the artwork is superb.

Celia wasn't bothering me, but the activist college student mentality explains it completely. It's a bit like some pink-wearing activists in Berekely recently--I can't say what they were protesting because of the restrictions on the board--but even if you agreed with their cause you must have laughed at their naïvité if you saw them interviewed.

I assumed that his immunity to Blight Evil, waaay back in one of the first strips, meant that Belkar was evil, and the joke there was that the party just didn't want to think about it, but I've begun to wonder if he isn't really Chaotic Good, but under some odd curse. Between the Blight Evil, traditional lead sheet and legal restraining order, Belkar's alignment has become almost as much a running joke as V's sex. I guess there is some possibility that he is Chaotic Neutral, but it just seems that too much effort has gone into not confirming that he is evil for him to simply be evil and that's it.

[SteveMB]

Roy gave his reason for associating with Belkar at Mount Celestia's reception desk; basically, it's so he can stop him killing random gnomes, a responsibility Haley is unwilling to take.

To be fair, it may be a question of ability, not willingness. Belkar seemed to have a grudging respect for Roy that limited how far he'd get out of line; he doesn't feel so constrained with Haley (remember the bandit-camp incident).

[Eric]

A grab bag of thinks here, so I apologise if this gets far too long.

Belkar. He's evil. Always has been. "Oh, he's CN because he does whatever he wants". But does he ever help somone? Does he give anyone his last Rolo? No. He kills people and he's ALWAYS *enjoyed* killing people. That's evil. Amoral is either because they are not thinking creatures (animals have no or little moral compass, so are all True Neutral) or because they are a very pure form of evil (ANYTHING they want is all the justification needed. "Do as thou wilt is the whole of the law". Sound like "Good" or even "Neutral" to you?

So he's evil.

Hayley is CG. As a thief, *any* form of good tends toward the "Neutral" edge: morality must be malleable to a large extent if you're a thief. Her working with the Azurites has made her more good because she's had to think of how *she* can help *others*. If anything,overlooking Belkar's murdering brings her closer to her alignment she started with.

Celia. I think she's naive. Extremely naive. However if you want to state it in OOTS terms, she's a new PC played by someone who's read the rules and is saying "But it says "Lawful good" here, so I can't allow that to happen" and yet knows enough about the game to know that if they themselves do anything, they'll be rolling a new PC DDQ. Her demands on Haley are not properly Lawful because Celia is making demands that Haley behave as Celia wants her to.

As to why? Well, I'd say that it's to show how effective a character Roy is. Face it, as far as his dad's concerned (and the rest of the party, to be honest), he's failed big time to do anything helpful: he died rather than killing Xyklon. Without this issue (and I suspect Roy will have to "fix" V's self esteem too), they wouldn't realise that the party needs him.

And, although Belkar doesn't get as much killing as he likes, he wants them there to at least show off to, and, being PC's, he's likely to get a lot of killing done anyway within the party. As part of Team Evil, he'd not be able to sass Xyklon because he'd burn his skinny ass to the ground and, let's face it, he'd be a bit-player and unable to show off like he can in OOTS. The rest of the OOTS party need someone who can meld them together. None of the others can.

Lastly, as to X vs B: They BOTH love killing others. But that's all they really have in common. Belkar doesn't have any long term goals, quite enjoys the companies of the rest of the party and loves to bitch, sass and annoy the hell out of Roy (and V, of course). Xyklon doesn't like being sassed and will kill people who seem not to be completely subservient to him. IMO, Xyklon has a HUGE inferiority complex which is allied badly to his enjoyment of killing and raising the dead. Belkar takes Haley's assessment of his bastardy as a truth that can't be argued with but of little importance to his self image. Can you imagine Xyklon accepting that sort of frank assessment?

[Morgan Wick]

Clearly Celia is an evil doppleganger sent to infiltrate the party. After all, Celia is a spunky chick who thinks nothing of blasting helpless captives (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0070.html) with lightning at only slight provocation!

I'm kidding about the doppleganger thing... but seriously... does Celia have a cruel side she's trying to hide?

Well, this may be explaining why that burst of lightning only singed them a little...


I agree on the Chaotic Evil. Celia is more like Lawful Obnoxious here, and Haley has, in my eyes, earned having her 'Good' status revoked.

Hmmm. So it seems Haley is going to simply ignore Belkar's deed. There goes all my respect for her. :smallannoyed:

I was going to say that, with Haley, you were getting your Lawful/Chaotic and Good/Evil axes mixed up and repeat Factotum, but then I reread the strip.

Haley basically says that, since she can't be an effective leader where Belkar is concerned, she's going to ignore everything he does... despite the fact that what he does goes beyond the bounds of whether or not Haley's his "leader".

You cannot tell me that Haley is just going to let Belkar kill NPCs left and right, be they hostile or non-hostile. (Of course, if Celia had brought up that possibility instead of trying to talk about the law with a chaotic character, maybe she could have spurred Haley into doing something. Hmm, maybe Roy will make another attempt to contact Haley soon?)

Haley could tie him up and simply untie him when she needs him.


Pacifism, I can appreciate. But Celia really doesn't seem to appreciate the urgency of this journey. Suppose that Roy is five minutes too late to the final gate and the Snarl destroys the world. Those are the five minutes it would take to find that candy bar.
Does she even know about the urgency of the journey?

For those people who are seriously wondering why Haley doesn't just kill Belkar and don't see his utility... even if Haley doesn't feel any loyalty to him, I think she fears that she'll never hear the end of it from Roy if she kills him. That, and Celia may be getting to her.



I'm thinking the Oracle's Prophesy is about to come true, and Rich doesn't want us mourning a "misunderstood" character. Belkar is now Evil, instead of just evil. Karma, Instant or otherwise is about to catch up with Death's Little Helper.
If that's the case, I severely doubt it'll be Celia or Haley to deliver the killing blow.

I assumed that his immunity to Blight Evil, waaay back in one of the first strips, meant that Belkar was evil, and the joke there was that the party just didn't want to think about it, but I've begun to wonder if he isn't really Chaotic Good, but under some odd curse. Between the Blight Evil, traditional lead sheet and legal restraining order, Belkar's alignment has become almost as much a running joke as V's sex. I guess there is some possibility that he is Chaotic Neutral, but it just seems that too much effort has gone into not confirming that he is evil for him to simply be evil and that's it.

I think much of what Rich has done with Belkar recently, back to the kilonazis joke, has been a reaction to this misinterpretation. Remember, Belkar's lead sheet was to keep Miko from learning his alignment and coincided with, and was part of, a plot that only could have worked if he was evil.

Celia is officially getting annoying now, as of "Do you have any idea how cute fuzzy animals can die from ingesting chocolate?" I have a feeling they'll barely get anywhere before being captured. I wonder if Celia attempts to line up some sort of pact to get these three conflicting sides to agree to some ground rules. More likely, I wonder if Celia just up and leaves of her own accord, possibly as soon as the end of this strip.

[Shale]

Okay, seriously, people need to give the "Belkar isn't really evil" thing a rest. We have the Word of God (okay, deva) confirming his alignment as Chaotic Evil, not to mention all the Detect Evil shenanigans and his desire to kill, maim and humiliate innocents - with a particular disdain of Good innocents like paladins. If he's Neutral, so was Miko.

[David Argall]

I didn't think Celia would be quite like that.
Celia wasn’t really. But as a girlfriend, she was kinda generic and dull. So she needed something to conflict with the party [Roy in particular] over. Making her a wooly minded pacifist-animal lover works quite nicely.
Recall here that we are talking comedy. That pretty much means everybody involved is idiotic, crazy, and/or confused. So we need aspects of Celia where we can feel superior. Her failure to understand adventuring and bleeding heart thinking works nicely.


I hope that the author isn't going to turn Celia into another Miko.
Well, not exactly another Miko, but she needed some fleshing out, and we need to have her annoy the party.


I say Dominate Person the SOB. Then order him to be nice and kind to the vunerable. His will save is so awful he won't be able to resist the commands.
Celia almost certainly can’t cast Dominate Person. Now She may well be able to cast Charm Person and may well try it as a way to control Belkar. This could have interesting consequences. Charm Person makes him friendly, and so Belkar might easily become Friendly. One thing worse than having to associate with Belker would be having to associate with a Belkar trying to court you.



Hmmm. Apparently Belkar is quite okay being referred to as a horrid little bastard--guess he's got no illusions about what he is!
Belker revels in what he is. He’s the one who objected to not being charged with murder.

I join those asking what they expected Haley to do. Her ability to beat Belker up is doubtful, and he will be quite useful if they meet any monsters, which seems quite likely. [Tho we in Living Greyhawk have suggested there is a D&D rule that makes a party safe until it reaches the minimum party size of four.]

[osyluth]

You know, Giant, updating OotS to fourth edition would give you a whole new set of rules to make fun of. Most of the 3.5 rules jokes have been exhausted.

[The Hop Goblin]

Belkar had been responsible for killing over a dozen people in a tavern brawl in "Origin of the PCs", he's completely pathological. He's akin to a gun that likes killing people. Useful when pointed in the right direction.

I think back to an old proverb when I think of Belkar - though if you pardon me, I may be misquoting the finer lines of it.

A scorpion wanted to cross the river, but he couldn't swim, so he asked a frog for a lift. The frog replied "How do I know you won't sting me", the scorpion said "If I sting you, then you will drown, and I will drown with you". The frog agreed to give the scorpion a lift. Halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog, when the frog asked why, the scorpion replied "It's my nature".

It is simply Belkar's nature. He simply doesn't understand right nor wrong. "You can't kill that guy," generates the inevitable response of "why?" His low Wisdom apparently inhibits his basic understanding of right and wrong.

However, if he gets another shot of Owl's Wisdom we may see a resurgance of "Nice Belkar". Wouldn't that be scarey, in a character-basis-destroying-way.

[Saint Nil]

Hate to break up the whole seriusness here, but I just thought it was a funney comic. "You know whats posionus to dogsbut not that humans can't shoot lightning?" Now that's just great.


And by the way, Belkar is evil. We all know it, so no more crap about him being "misunderstood". If the Deva isn't enough proof, then reread the whole comic. There is plenty of proof.

[The Hop Goblin]

You know, Giant, updating OotS to fourth edition would give you a whole new set of rules to make fun of. Most of the 3.5 rules jokes have been exhausted.

Why has there been an innumerable amount of responses about 4E lately? I see 2-3 topics a week posted about it (And yes, I realize its coming out relatively soon. Luckily old copies of 3.0 and 3.5 are still in abundance)

[Charles Phipps]

Actually, I tend to side with Haley here. I don't think that people in my area, certainly, WOULD pass the buck in the wake of there being no law enforcement. If I wanted Belkar punished, then yes I'd risk taking the law into my own hands (and being who I am----I'd probably die horribly).

I would have put down Belkar if I was Haley but I understand where she's coming from.

[plainsfox]

Where exactly did that happen? I thought I'd read all the Hammer novels and didn't see that particular thing occur. I know that Steuben shows up in 'The Sharp End' under an alias, but I hadn't seen the events before that and after the end of the original 'Hammer's Slammers' novel.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

A former Slammer has a short talk with Joachim in the book "Cross the Stars" in "Hell". A powergun shot to the back doesn't seem too survivable...if I'm reading the book correctly. I'm combing it for more references...but it seems that Steuben's only appearance is as a ghost.

[harvard]

I love Hayley, and I love Belkar. :smallamused:

That's all there is to say really.

[Kish]

I assumed that his immunity to Blight Evil, waaay back in one of the first strips, meant that Belkar was evil, and the joke there was that the party just didn't want to think about it, but I've begun to wonder if he isn't really Chaotic Good, but under some odd curse. Between the Blight Evil, traditional lead sheet and legal restraining order, Belkar's alignment has become almost as much a running joke as V's sex. I guess there is some possibility that he is Chaotic Neutral, but it just seems that too much effort has gone into not confirming that he is evil for him to simply be evil and that's it.
Huh? Tell me you're joking. "Effort has gone into not confirming that he is evil"? What strip have you been reading? His evil has been clear and unambiguous from very close to the start.

[plainsfox]

In addition, hasn't Rich said that Belkar is unequivocabally evil in these very forums?

[EntilZha]

Funny, I thought the Lawful Stupid character bit the dust back in #464.

[Lira]

I guess there is some possibility that he is Chaotic Neutral, but it just seems that too much effort has gone into not confirming that he is evil for him to simply be evil and that's it."Not confirming?"

The Deva saying "You've been adventuring for a year with a Chaotic Evil halfling who is constantly trying to murder anyone who gets in his way! (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0489.html)" is not confirming it?

[fractal]

Poor Haley. Trapped between Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil, and somehow expected to lead.

[Llelldorin]

Originally posted by Winterwind:
An unspeakable, horrid crime has been commited before her eyes, and she has nothing better to do than to mock Celia, who is quite rightfully shocked by what just happened? Any good character would be shocked and disgusted by Belkar's murder - he just extinguished an innocent life, for crying out loud! - and she is already acting oblivious to it and scorns Celia for not being able to stomach this so easily?!


Different worlds. Haley's lived a pretty grim life--she's a thief, her father has a 200,000gp ransom, and she's only borderline good to begin with. Murder of an innocent really isn't that shocking to her--she's seen it many, many times before, and while she'll prevent it if she can, it's not going to fill her with lingering horror. It's not that she doesn't care--she does, clearly--it's that she's long since learned that she can't always prevent evil acts. Grim stoicism in the face of evil that she regards as unavoidable isn't the same thing as not being good, by a long shot. She's mocking Celia because she--quite correctly, by her lights--views Celia's idealism as impractical and unlikely to actually help anyone.

Celia, by contrast, is college-aged us. Her reactions are what ours would be if we were suddenly in an AD&D universe--death is viscerally shocking to her in a way it simply isn't to Haley or to Belkar.

[John Campbell]

Owl's Wisdom has a duration of one minute per level. Even with V casting it, it would last less than quarter of an hour. If V stuffed all his higher level spell slots with it, you might get a few hours of the day covered, but then that's all he could do. If V and Durkon did nothing else but follow him around casting Owl's Wisom every 13 or 14 minutes, maybe you could get him through most of the day, but still...

Y'know, there's a magic item that provides a continuous owl's wisdom effect. A periapt of wisdom would even give Belkar access to one of his powerful but neglected class features - he'd be able to prepare spells.

On the other hand, Enlightened Belkar would be a lousy character.

[reignofevil]

Ok alot has been said so I wanna throw myself into the fray.
The Haley has lost all of my respect etc group
Honestly, she never wanted to be leader, and she never asked to be leader. And you all seem to fall to the cliche "Well its been thrust on you so grow into the role" situation that happens SO often. Thats not how life works sometimes. She spent most of her life looking out for #1 (And :elan: but he isnt here right now) and now she just got done leading a large group against 3 other large groups in the city. Except she has less power now then she had IN the city. She doesnt want the role, she isnt a leader. She is a self serving rogue.
OMG Haley didnt punish belkar and just accepted the murder group
She kills things for a living. Not things on the side of good, but things with hopes and fears and the same thoughts as the gnome. Accept it. She is used to the idea of death. As for punishment, please tell me how? Kill him? She is a rogue of the same level as him. WHAT will she do after he sneak attack hits? Die thats what. Maybe your high level warrior with a +10 sword of righteous halfling death can. She really cant. Tie him up? That will go swell in the next random encounter where he slips free when the monster attacks him. Suddenly they are fighting a group of monsters AND one very miffed PC.
Make him leave the party, MOJ.
Anyone else have bright ideas? Cuz im out.
WTF Belkar is evil!?!?!
Yes our favorite halfling actually DOES enjoy doing the things he has spent 540 strips talking about enjoying. He is evil, but this time I think his motivations were different. Go back and read the dialog.
"One less hobgoblin for the resistance to have to kill" Haley told him he didnt do anything wrong. He isnt smart. He thought she meant THAT he killed, not WHO he killed. Thats why he used the same reasoning for the gnome. He just figured it was a "Get away with murder free pass" if he understood the logic behind it ill eat my d12.
Celia is so annoying
She is a pacifist NPC who has been sheltered for god knows how long, and is hanging out with an amoral rogue and a death obsessed halfling. I rest my case.
Sorry if this sounds ranty but these people are getting on my nerves.

[ref]

I can only hope that all this pressure warrants another trip inside Haley's brain. I loved the other one!

[FoE]

Grim stoicism in the face of evil that she regards as unavoidable isn't the same thing as not being good, by a long shot.

My ears are burning. :smalltongue:

Boy, you people whine a lot over one dead gnome. Is the comic still funny? Was Belkar's killing of the gnome hilarious? Yes, it was. 'Nuff said.

[Tharr]

The strip was great espical Saint Patricks drunk and the flumphs beware.

[Qov]

"Not confirming?"

The Deva saying "You've been adventuring for a year with a Chaotic Evil halfling who is constantly trying to murder anyone who gets in his way! (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0489.html)" is not confirming it?

Thanks, I missed that, probably because at the time I read it, I was still certain he was evil, so it was not new information. I actually originally posted "he's obviously evil" but then knowing how much people argue over things that aren't confirmed, admitted that one could argue about it. So now this much is certain:
(a) Belkar is evil.
(b) The latest strip is funny.

Do you think Roy knew Belkar was evil before the Unholy Blight immunity (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0011.html)? Are we witnessing him come to that realization?

[RosesOnConcrete]

longpost is loooong, but awesome

Thank you. I've been watching everyone bitching about Haley and Celia and alignments and whatnot, and going "IT'S JUST A COMIC, TAKE A PILL AND CALM DOWN!" Fan Dumb (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FanDumb) indeed.

[Winterwind]

Thanks, I missed that, probably because at the time I read it, I was still certain he was evil, so it was not new information. I actually originally posted "he's obviously evil" but then knowing how much people argue over things that aren't confirmed, admitted that one could argue about it. So now this much is certain:The Giant confirmed Belkar's evil alignment in a post long ago (rather mystified by people discussing the possibility that he was not).

[Gamerlord]

Haley, Haley, Haley...

MILK chocolate with almonds? Taking that away is no kind of punishment. If it had been DARK chocolate, however.....
no no no taking away milk choclate is punishment enough...

[Haruspex]

Are you seriously comparing the murder of an innocent person with Vaarsuvius' wordiness or Elan's occasional lapses of reason?

If she has reached the point where she does not care about the death of an innocent anymore, her alignment indeed doesn't have anything to do with Good anymore.

Wait, rewind that. I never thought Haley was Good, is this confirmed anywhere in the strip? You have an argument for alignment shift, I suppose, if she indeed was Good-aligned. A Good person should have responded differently, I agree with that. I always figured on CN for Haley, but that's just me. I'm also not sure what alignment has to do with this, but yeah, there it is.

It's not that wordiness and dumbness are the same as murder, no. It's that when dealing with people you tend to gloss over their negative points in order to keep the group together. And as leader that is one of her responsibilities, isn't it? Belkar's killing ability is very likely what kept him in the group despite his lack of traditional ranger skills. As has been mentioned before her ability to control/discipline a killer halfling ranger/barbarian of equal level (would Celia even agree to enspell him?) is limited and is likely more trouble than it's worth.

Haley is a killer in her own right, maybe not of innocents but killing is killing. The very point Celia was trying to make, though the concept was lost on Haley and Belkar. I doubt that Belkar's actions will cause her to suddenly have an epiphany or change jobs.

[jdude8220]

Ok, so Belkar's evil. I don't really get what the big deal is, it's not like it wasn't completely, in-your-face obvious the entire run of the strip. While I, myself probably wouldn't have killed a gnome just for the hell of it (mind you, I did say probably) I don't think we're supposed to really care about the gnome. I mean, I wasn't surprised when Belkar killed him, so I think it's really just a plot device to show that Celia has a yardstick up her ass when it comes to adevnturing. I always compare Belkar to Black Mage from 8-Bit Theater (Anyone read that besides me?) Both of these guys are evil, Black Mage frequently doing things like plotting assassination, murder, genocide, or all of the above, but they're just so out there with it that you have to find them funny. It's like "Hell yeah, I'm evil. So what?"

Also, I really doubt that Roy would like this side of Celia, he seems way too laid back in a Lawful Good way to care about the puppies. I mean, he would have yelled at Belkar about killing the gnome, but probably wouldn't have put him in jail.

Although to be fair, I don't know whether I'm saying that because I don't see Roy doing that or because I don't see that happening in the future plot.

[ChaoticEvilGuy]

Okay I could put up with Celia's crap before. BUT NO LONGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:smallfurious:
SHE'S NOW THE MOST ANNOYING CHARACTER IN OOTS EVER!

[Charles Phipps]

And as leader that is one of her responsibilities, isn't it?

Haley leads the resistance, not Belkar.

[FoE]

Do you think Roy knew Belkar was evil before the Unholy Blight immunity (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0011.html)? Are we witnessing him come to that realization?

In Origin of PCs ...

... when Roy is "auditioning" adventurers, Belkar berates a Lawful Good monk who was ahead of him in the line until he bursts into tears, and then offers to kill everyone in the tavern as a display of his fighting skills. So yeah, I think he had some idea of Belkar's alignment. :smallbiggrin:

[the_tick_rules]

celia is a bit uppity lately. Maybe she needs some type O treasure.

[The_Weirdo]

(Celia)'S NOW THE MOST ANNOYING CHARACTER IN OOTS EVER!

Maybe so. And if you, with no experience in that life Haley leads, were thrust into an adventuring group, under conditions and witnessing actions that were completely alien to you, you would be just as annoying. Because what MAKES her annoying isn't her USUAL behavior, it's her behavior when facing a reality she never knew. In the court, when talking to Roy, even when talking to Haley before starting the journey, Celia wasn't annoying. A bit naive and culturally shocked, but not annoying. She became so when she, who is essentially us with wings, started witnessing the ugly side of adventuring.

[Prowl]

Methinks the priority for Celia right now should be "don't piss off the murderous halfling".

[The_Weirdo]

Methinks the priority for Celia right now should be "don't piss off the murderous halfling".

Not in her nature.

[Laurentio]

Methinks the priority for Celia right now should be "don't piss off the murderous halfling".

Not in her nature.
And this will be her dismissal. Ok, we all agree that she HAVE to be that way, because she is a normal college girl, etc etc. Fine, we can cope with this.
But still annoying, an probably going to die, or go back to her plane, in a short time. And I'll enjoy that moment.
Came on people... it's not that we hate Celia, it's just that she wears a bulleye on her spleen. Anyone acting that way in a adventurers party is so going to die.

Actually, I hate her. But it's personal, because I know real-life Celias...

Laurentio

[The_Weirdo]

And this will be her dismissal. Ok, we all agree that she HAVE to be that way, because she is a normal college girl, etc etc. Fine, we can cope with this.
But still annoying, an probably going to die, or go back to her plane, in a short time. And I'll enjoy that moment.
Came on people... it's not that we hate Celia, it's just that she wears a bulleye on her spleen. Anyone acting that way in a adventurers party is so going to die.

Actually, I hate her. But it's personal, because I know real-life Celias...

Laurentio

Meh. I don't think she's going to die - if only because she has survival methods of her own, due mostly to, yes, her species. She won't go back to her plane until she sees Roy resurrected, that's for sure. And if I knew a real-life Celia I might just date her. ;)

ESPECIALLY if she was a fae.

[orrion]

Was a bit too lazy to read through all of this and see if someone else got it first, but..

I doubt casting Owl's Wisdom on Belkar will ever happen again, or if it does it'll be completely different. That's because one reason to cast it was to help heal Elan, but the far more important reason was the comedic effect of seeing Belkar's personality with a decent Wisdom score, and then having V remove it and Belkar going back to his normal murderous qualities.

[Lumenadducere]

Heh, I enjoyed that last little bit. I wonder when Vaarsuvius is going to try to use a spell to contact Haley again. It'd be good to have 'em get back in touch and figure out a plan.

[David Argall]

We look to be in a series here and the next several strips will continue with our threesome. A few points.

We haven't seen the cart close enough to rule out they are taking the gnome with them.

Our next strip may feature Celia trying to save some puppies from that nasty candy bar... wolf puppies, and their parents won't approve. Haley and Belkar may have to come to the rescue. If so, Celia will blame them for hurting the poor animals.

I like my idea of Celia trying Charm Person on Belkar in hopes of controling his violence, and getting a "boyfriend", whose attentions are not at all desired, but can't be resisted as much as she would like for fear of ruining the spell.

The party may end in jail at the next town due to the dead gnome.

[factotum]

Wait, rewind that. I never thought Haley was Good, is this confirmed anywhere in the strip?

Yes, it is. When Elan breaks into the tavern to rescue her from Nale, Nale tries to convince Elan that Haley has been working with him all along and is actually evil. Haley, in her obfuscated speech, says, "I'm Chaotic Good. Ish!".

[silvadel]

Um -- Celia was Summoned -- doesnt that mean if she dies she just goes back home and cant come back for a while? In that case she has nothing to lose.

[Haruspex]

Haley leads the resistance, not Belkar.

The blue moustache paladin leads the resistance now. As of Roy's death Haley is the leader of OOTS, of which Belkar is a member (as I recall).

[Dode]

I don't know. Haley's not the leader because she can actually enforce any sort of obedience out of Belkar through violence. She's the leader because Belkar is incapable of planning anything beyond the next kill. All this talk about how Haley is reprehensible because she didn't beat him up or kick him out doesn't consider the very real possibility that Belkar, the more combat-oriented character, may very well win such a fight. And in that case, Roy, herself and possibly the entire planet may be doomed. When faced with the choice of letting one gnome's death go unpunished or let the entire planet die, it's a quick choice for Haley.

But I don't think it's the decision she made that's getting everyone mad as much as the flippant and dismissive attitude she rationalizes it with.

[Opeth_Freak]

10 $ that in the next strip Celia will fight 'cute fuzzy animals' like wolves. :smallsmile:

It would be even better if she would defeat them by this candy bar. Surely it would somehow prvent Celia from those comments, that are annoying even to me (and i'm a very patient person) ;]

[Niknokitueu]

celia is a bit uppity lately. Maybe she needs some type O treasure.
Well, Haley's got a stiff... :smallredface:

Have Fun!
Niknokitueu

[Forias]

I'm not even so much disappointed by her actions here, as her reactions.

An unspeakable, horrid crime has been commited before her eyes, and she has nothing better to do than to mock Celia, who is quite rightfully shocked by what just happened? Any good character would be shocked and disgusted by Belkar's murder - he just extinguished an innocent life, for crying out loud! - and she is already acting oblivious to it and scorns Celia for not being able to stomach this so easily?!
I think you need to remember the context of the last comic. Haley is "quite rightfully shocked", she is "shocked and disgusted" and she is "crying out loud".

It is Celia who appears to have nothing better to do than mock Haley. She is the one who starts off the sniping at each other instead of working together to deal with Belkar. And Haley responds in this strip as she is obviously still angry at Celia.

Now, to be honest, I have no problem with either Celia or Hayley, here. I think they are both great characters, because they are tremendously flawed, because, despite having good intentions, they don't make the right choice in every single moment of the strip.

As for an ideal solution, I would probably have adopted the only control-Belkar solution that has ever worked, which is threatened violence, and made him dig a grave for the gnome. Not the best punishment, and probably futile, possibly even dangerous if it antagonised him enough - but it might begin to satisfy Celia's desire for justice. He needs to know that senseless killing will make life unpleasant for him. That's the only hope at all of dissuading him from doing it in the future. The irony being Celia might not even agree to help Haley force him to do it because of her dislike for violence.

[sun_tzu]

I am...baffled by the people who seem to suddenly despise Celia.
She just saw a criminal murder a random innocent ofr the heck of it...and she's to blame for not being okay with it?
...

[Shadowcaller]

I am...baffled by the people who seem to suddenly despise Celia.
She just saw a criminal murder a random innocent ofr the heck of it...and she's to blame for not being okay with it?
...

That I can agree with.
And some people are taking this dissusion a bit too serious, Belkar murdering a gnome was taking a step too far..but hey in some level it was funny also. (its just a comic)

[The Hop Goblin]

That I can agree with.
And some people are taking this dissusion a bit too serious, Belkar murdering a gnome was taking a step too far..but hey in some level it was funny also. (its just a comic)

People... on this forum... taking things too seriously?

Um... did anyone remember the dozen or so people tearfully raging against Rich's morality over this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0448.html) strip?

Or how about those practically destroyed by this event (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0464.html), and needing councelling?

Lets not forget people vowing to never again read OOTS after this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0443.html).

You look at real world events and the state of nations and then people's reactions to the comings and goings of stick figures... I dunno, man... I can only say something about common sense and priorities.

[JosephHeller]

Yes, it is. When Elan breaks into the tavern to rescue her from Nale, Nale tries to convince Elan that Haley has been working with him all along and is actually evil. Haley, in her obfuscated speech, says, "I'm Chaotic Good. Ish!".That means she COULD be CN...

[Kilarny]

You know, the whole strip becomes even funnier when you remember to imagine a bunch of people playing this as a tabletop game. I like the subtle hint of metagaming thought that creeps into the actions and dialogue.
It's a like being able to watch what is happening in the game world when a group of PCs comes through.
I love this comic. I will read it as long as Rich keeps writing it (*sends Sabine to whip Rich into drawing faster :smalltongue: ). I will buy anything OOTS he publishes. I will obsessively check the site for updates.
MORE OOTS PLEASE :-D


P.S. Oh, and Haley clearly states why she doesn't do more to Belkar as 'punishment:' She needs all the help she can get to help ROY. That's her motivation. She appears to be willing to go to great lengths, even stealing the +5 Air Freshener of Pineness, in order to get him back to Durkon and then back to Alive status.

[Eric]

A scorpion wanted to cross the river, but he couldn't swim, so he asked a frog for a lift. The frog replied "How do I know you won't sting me", the scorpion said "If I sting you, then you will drown, and I will drown with you". The frog agreed to give the scorpion a lift. Halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog, when the frog asked why, the scorpion replied "It's my nature".


But the scorpion did not *enjoy* killing. It wasn't an option for the scorpion to NOT kill.

If Belkar could not help killing, he would have killed and set of the MoJ. If he didn't ENJOY killing, he wouldn't be kvetching about the MoJ stopping him from killing.

As low as Belkar's Int and Wis are, he's still more than a scorpion.

[Eric]

That means she COULD be CN...

If, when given an action that helps someone or hurts them, which would she choose:

Help: Good
Hurt: Evil

I think that Haley would pick help.

Belkar? Hurt. Easy.

[Korota]

I think everyone in the comic is wrong. Celia is wrong for preaching at Haley about not killing in an extremely dangerous situation, Haley is wrong for being so unsympathetic about Celia's totally legitimate and understandable desire to not kill things when there are other alternatives, and Belkar is wrong for... many things... so many things...

...

...WHY ISN'T HE JOLLY??? D:

:tongue:

[slb]

From the nitpicking department:

We already knew that Rich had no idea how a boat is moored to a dock (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0481.html), but it seems that he also does not know that one use a bridle and certainly not a collar to properly handle a donkey.

[nybbler]

And Haley is most disappointing of all for not even caring about the crime committed beyond her momentary gasp of horror at its occurrence. I agree with other posters that she really loses whatever "good-ish" tilt she had on the alignment scale, her actions in this scene being completely, wholeheartedly neutral.


Her actions aren't in any way contrary to Good. Rather, they merely emphasize that she's Chaotic; as she points out in no uncertain terms, she's not responsible for Belkar.

[Craig1f]

Her actions aren't in any way contrary to Good. Rather, they merely emphasize that she's Chaotic; as she points out in no uncertain terms, she's not responsible for Belkar.

Adding to that statement, I'd say that if she'd had time to react, she would have had to intervene to maintain her Good status.

However, Belkar killed the gnome in a surprise round. At this point, there's nothing she can do. Since she's non-lawful, and there's nothing she can do at this point to save the gnome, she's not really obligated to do anything. However, if she comes across another traveler, she should do whatever it takes to prevent Belkar from killing again.

[David Argall]

I still don't see much of anything in the way of suggestions as what Haley can do that is at all effective. We can agree it's a horrid situation, but what is she to do about it?

Celia also should be cut some slack. We have enough people on this board who are more or less running around in circles insisting something be done without any idea of what. Why sceam at her for being nuts?


From the nitpicking department:

We already knew that Rich had no idea how a boat is moored to a dock, but it seems that he also does not know that one use a bridle and certainly not a collar to properly handle a donkey.

The rope cut seems have been to an anchor rather than to the dock, but yes, one should not depend too closely on the artwork in a stick cartoon.

[atteSmythe]

I was hoping that Belkar would keep the hat for a little while. Ahwell.

These last few strips have been just gut-wrenchingly funny, IMO. I've enjoyed OOTS through its entire run, but recent strips have a style of funny that I think we haven't seen in far too long. Good times...

[shakes019]

Yeah, I thought the hat was pretty cool as well.

On the subject of leading the donkey, I just assume that Belkar has put as many ranks into Animal Handling as he has into Search.

[MyrddinDerwydd]

Being horrified that Belkar killed the gnome: expected.

Justification of not punishing Belkar: giggles.

Stealing candy from Belkar: pretty dang funny.

:haley: "Milk chocolate justice. With Almonds." : Priceless.

[Faramir]

Is she vocal, opinionated, and convinced that she knows better than everyone else? Do her ideals FAR outweigh her practical experience, to such a degree that she plays the activist without the slightest clue how things really work? Is she literally filled to the point of bursting with ineffectual good intentions? Yes. Those are practically class features for a college student


Love this observation.

[Nevrmore]

So...Flanderization (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization) of Celia began at comic 540?

[Ikialev]

Haley the punisher.

[David Argall]

So...Flanderization (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization) of Celia began at comic 540?

No. a-It would have begun several strips earlier.
b-it is happening entirely too fast to be deemed Flanderization.
c-She hasn't really shown bleeding heart fuzzy thinking goodness
up until now, so it's hard for this to be an exaggeration of a previous quality.

[Nevrmore]

No. a-It would have begun several strips earlier.
b-it is happening entirely too fast to be deemed Flanderization.
c-She hasn't really shown bleeding heart fuzzy thinking goodness
up until now, so it's hard for this to be an exaggeration of a previous quality.
So then what's the trope where some character quality is pulled out of nowhere and then horrendously inflated to absurdity?

[Alfryd]

I hope that the author isn't going to turn Celia into another Miko.
I have been finding her increasingly intriguing.

So then what's the trope where some character quality is pulled out of nowhere and then horrendously inflated to absurdity?
Irony sense tingling.... (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1224753&postcount=26)

[Korota]

Maybe the reason Celia is being so unrealistically "Good" is because she's an outsider. Outsiders tend to be 'always' some alignment, so she's, like, physically incapable of rationalizing this situation and going overboard on the goodness as a result.

...unless she's a fey. Dammit, I can't remember.

[Bitzeralisis]

Chocolate will kill puppies, you know. Never feed a dog chocolate!

[The Hop Goblin]

But the scorpion did not *enjoy* killing. It wasn't an option for the scorpion to NOT kill.

If Belkar could not help killing, he would have killed and set of the MoJ. If he didn't ENJOY killing, he wouldn't be kvetching about the MoJ stopping him from killing.

As low as Belkar's Int and Wis are, he's still more than a scorpion.

Not to make this oversimplified, but.... It is in Belkar's nature to 'ENJOY' killing.

Or, if you prefer; It is in Belkar's nature to kill, and his emotional coping settings to apply pleasure/enjoyment to the act. Very few serial killers RL did the deed while screaming and crying and saying "NO! I DON'T LIKE DOING THIS!".

It is rather amusing that within, what... 150 comics or so - He's gone from the "SEXY SHOELESS GOD OF WAR" to something so despised.

[Nevrmore]

Irony sense tingling.... (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1224753&postcount=26)
The overreaction was understandable up until she was like "Oh God chocolate's not biodegradable and it's going to kill an innocent puppy you horrible woman, you!" Then it was obvious that the overreaction was horrendously exagerrated for the sake of having a punchline.

[ArmorArmadillo]

I'm really kind of dissapointed by how much slack Haley's getting here.

Belkar murdered someone in cold blood to appease his bloodthirsty soullessness and Celia is being dismissed as uptight and whiny because she objected. Haley, however, is being praised as "pragmatic" for ignoring the whole thing.

I'm sorry, that's moral dissonance to the illogical extreme. Belkar can't just get a free pass on everything because he's funny. Xykon is also funny, and frankly Belkar is becoming disturbingly like him.

As for Haley, saying there's "Nothing she could do" for the gnome is not an excuse. She is being presented with overwhelming evidence that Belkar is a dangerous sociopath who will kill innocents whenever possible and takes absolutely no action to stop him or punish him, other than a token gesture to get the "whiny" Celia off her back.
Yes, she can't save this Gnome. But by ignoring it, she's ensuring the death of all the people who Belkar gets a free shot at in the future.

Celia isn't being uptight, she isn't being anal, she's standing up against a serious injustice.

[Alfryd]

I would just like to say I am in complete and emphatic agreement with you on all points. (Which, frankly, is kinda new for me.)

Belkar has demonstrated a near-total absence of loyalty to anything but his own indulgent whims, willingness to kill without the slightest provocation or substantial benefit, and all the self-restraint of a heroin junkie- all of which combine to make him a break-even proposition as far as benefits to his team-mates go. (Not that this is anything new, really, it's just that recent events have eliminated any remaining shred of doubt on the subject.)

Which is where Haley is wrong, of course- she doesn't need Belkar's 'help', because Belkar isn't a 'help'. He is a mixed curse- capable of killing things, but incapable of restraining himself from killing things in order to serve his own long-term interests, let alone anyone else's.
(That's assuming he doesn't brutally murder you in your dreamless sleep (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0125.html) and loot your corpse for magic items (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0285.html).)

Haley can't claim that Belkar's actions are no reflection on her, because (A.) Haley apparently has no problem with profiting from them, and (B.) has gone out of her way to keep Belkar relatively hale and hearty. If Haley wanted to have fate deal with him, all she had to do was leave him to the hobgoblins in Azure City. But she didn't. As long as Belkar is around, Haley is basically saying she's okay with the idea innocent people will die for no particular reason in her immediate vicinity, provided it serves her purposes.

And frankly, Haley implying that confiscating a candy bar is an adequate response to cold-blooded murder is both tasteless and insulting to the gnome's memory on her part.

I should also point out there's a perfectly practical solution for punishing Belkar in a ...comparatively... humane, yet effective manner- stuff Roy's corpse into the Bag of Holding and/or transport it more than a mile from his current position. (It's not like Haley doesn't have enough ranks in hide/move silently. Personally, I don't see what's wrong with slitting his throat.)


The overreaction was understandable up until she was like "Oh God chocolate's not biodegradable and it's going to kill an innocent puppy you horrible woman, you!" Then it was obvious that the overreaction was horrendously exagerrated for the sake of having a punchline.
Celia wasn't overreacting beforehand. And afterwards it's quite funny.

[MyrddinDerwydd]

I'm really kind of dissapointed by how much slack Haley's getting here.

Belkar murdered someone in cold blood to appease his bloodthirsty soullessness and Celia is being dismissed as uptight and whiny because she objected. Haley, however, is being praised as "pragmatic" for ignoring the whole thing.

I'm sorry, that's moral dissonance to the illogical extreme. Belkar can't just get a free pass on everything because he's funny. Xykon is also funny, and frankly Belkar is becoming disturbingly like him. etc. etc. etc.

Uggh. This discussion has been going on for how long? 3? 4 comics? I'm pretty sure the response follows something like "Hayley is chaotic good. She is not obligated to prevent/right every wrong that happens like Roy is. She is also not in charge of Belkar, and the only reason he's coming along is because of the Mark. So she is also not obligated to punish Belkar, and has not willingly chosen an [insert description of evil horrible mis-construed Belkar] as a travelling buddy.

[Alfryd]

...has not willingly chosen an [insert description of evil horrible mis-construed Belkar] as a travelling buddy.
Firstly, there is nothing misconstrued about Belkar being horrible and evil. Secondly, she has willingly chosen him as a travelling buddy, since she could both ditch him and travel more safely by stuffing Roy in her bag of holding, and then not having to bother with the cart. Keeping Belkar along and healthy is the only reason she's had to attract hobgoblin attention in the first place.

[Korota]

This is kinda silly, but I'm going to contradict my previous post about how everyone in the comic is wrong, and say that they're also right. Celia is right that the killing of other sentient beings shouldn't be taken so lightly, and Haley is right that there's really nothing she can realistically do to punish Belkar for what he's done. Belkar is still wrong, though.

And I think Celia is going to end up having a bit of a rude awakening in the comic soon. She's heading away from the others, and she's going to be alone. I'm betting she'll probably end up getting attacked by some evil people/monsters/sentient beings and without Haley and Belkar around to do the things that have to be done that she's against, she'll have to either kill or be killed.

[Alfryd]

Haley is right that there's really nothing she can realistically do to punish Belkar for what he's done.
Great googly-moogly! It's. Right. Here.

...stuff Roy's corpse into the Bag of Holding and/or transport it more than a mile from his current position.

Is there something not practical about this?

[Nevrmore]

I'm really kind of dissapointed by how much slack Haley's getting here.

Belkar murdered someone in cold blood to appease his bloodthirsty soullessness and Celia is being dismissed as uptight and whiny because she objected. Haley, however, is being praised as "pragmatic" for ignoring the whole thing.

I'm sorry, that's moral dissonance to the illogical extreme. Belkar can't just get a free pass on everything because he's funny. Xykon is also funny, and frankly Belkar is becoming disturbingly like him.

As for Haley, saying there's "Nothing she could do" for the gnome is not an excuse. She is being presented with overwhelming evidence that Belkar is a dangerous sociopath who will kill innocents whenever possible and takes absolutely no action to stop him or punish him, other than a token gesture to get the "whiny" Celia off her back.
Yes, she can't save this Gnome. But by ignoring it, she's ensuring the death of all the people who Belkar gets a free shot at in the future.

Celia isn't being uptight, she isn't being anal, she's standing up against a serious injustice.
Again, I don't have a problem with her overreacting to Belkar's murder in cold blood. It's just annoying that Rich had to reach so far for a punchline as to extenuate on her objections and turn it into sheer ridiculousness by having her get all angry by how Haley is going to poison a dog or something.

[Ganurath]

Great googly-moogly! It's. Right. Here.

...stuff Roy's corpse into the Bag of Holding and/or transport it more than a mile from his current position.

Is there something not practical about this?She'll need to get the corpse for when they raise him. It'd be easier if Celia buffs Belkar so he can pull the cart and Haley knocks off the donkey.

[Ikidre]

Chocolate will kill puppies, you know. Never feed a dog chocolate!

A dog must eat quite a lot of milk chocolate (with or without almonds) to be killed by the amount of theobromine, relative to its body weight. Our hypothetical puppy would have to weigh under 3 pounds to reach fatally toxic levels from even a king-size bar of milk chocolate. So I would agree that Celia's overreacting a bit, and I don't expect the candy bar debacle to proceed to subplot status.

Now dark chocolate justice ... that's another story.

What's that you say? Why, yes ... yes I did read this entire thread and register solely to make this point. Go figure. (http://bash.org/?847598)

[David Argall]

Great googly-moogly! It's. Right. Here.

...stuff Roy's corpse into the Bag of Holding and/or transport it more than a mile from his current position.

Is there something not practical about this?

a-Belkar is not a forgiving type. If she gets caught doing this, she gets killed.

b-It is her professional opinion that she needs Belkar to make this trip. And she is highly likely right. Even ignoring that she is supposed to be the expert on cross-country travel dangers, Haley has already been shown to be pretty indifferent at melee, and Celia is not a meat shield. She can do reasonable as an archer/rogue backstabber, but Haley needs a front line fighter like Belkar or she has to hope any monster she meets is slow and not interested in a snack of slightly ripe bones.

Haley is pretty much limited to appealing to Belkar's better nature, which might have a hope if he had one.

[Alfryd]

She'll need to get the corpse for when they raise him. It'd be easier if Celia buffs Belkar so he can pull the cart and Haley knocks off the donkey.
The corpse can still be removed from the bag of holding afterward.

a-Belkar is not a forgiving type. If she gets caught doing this, she gets killed.
Look, all Haley has to do is wait until Belkar is asleep at night, go into stealth mode, stuff Roy into the bag, and hand the bag to Celia for immediate transport (since there's jack squat Belkar can do to harm an airborne target.) Haley grabs what she needs and rendezvous with Celia a few miles up the trail. It's already been established that Belkar's spot/listen checks can't beat Haley's hide/move silently in broad daylight when she's standing 5 feet away (see Dungeon Crawling Fools,) let alone by night when she's fleeing cross-country.

Yes, there is a slight chance that things might go wrong during this operation. That's not a legitimate excuse for letting Belkar commit atrocities and get away scot free.

b-It is her professional opinion that she needs Belkar to make this trip.
As I have already elaborated, her professional opinion is most likely wrong, regardless of Belkar's combat ability.
1. Keeping Belkar on the team is slowing her down and making her a more conspicuous target, since she has to bring along the cart.
2. Belkar will happily betray her at the drop of a hat if it suits him.
3. Belkar's impulse control problem has made him a liability at the best of times, and matters have not improved.

She doesn't have to worry so much about carving up monsters if she can sneak about or dupe them instead, something both she and Celia seem have a significant talent for. Belkar makes this difficult.

And last but not least, regardless of alleged practical benefits, keeping Belkar on the team is wrong. If inaction doesn't make Haley guilty, all she has to do is not go out of her way to babysit Belkar's interests- as she is doing now- to permanently neutralise Belkar as a threat to sentient life everywhere, and make her life much easier. But letting your own team-mate get away with a regular habit of first-degree murder is not legitimate Good behaviour.

[Eric]

I am...baffled by the people who seem to suddenly despise Celia.
She just saw a criminal murder a random innocent ofr the heck of it...and she's to blame for not being okay with it?
...

That isn't why people are pissed at Celia.

Haley isn't OK with what Belkar did.

But Celia, rather than do something wants Haley to do what Celia doesn't want to do. Celia should be doing the deed she seems to think necessary to punish Belkar. If she doesn't want to kill or beat Belkar (because it would make her no better than him), it isn't any better getting a hired killer to do it (she considers Haley a killer too and wants HER to off Belkar). If offing Belkar isn't what she wants, then why is she only saying to Haley "No, you can't do that to punish him. Do something else".

[SPoD]

But letting your own team-mate get away with a regular habit of first-degree murder is not legitimate Good behaviour.

OK, then Haley isn't engaging in Good behavior. So what? She's only ever described herself as "Chaotic Good-ish" which could mean "Chaotic Neutral with Good tendencies". Talking about whether her actions are "wrong" implies that she has the same values that you do, and she clearly does not.

[Eric]

Not to make this oversimplified, but.... It is in Belkar's nature to 'ENJOY' killing.

Or, if you prefer; It is in Belkar's nature to kill, and his emotional coping settings to apply pleasure/enjoyment to the act. Very few serial killers RL did the deed while screaming and crying and saying "NO! I DON'T LIKE DOING THIS!".

It is rather amusing that within, what... 150 comics or so - He's gone from the "SEXY SHOELESS GOD OF WAR" to something so despised.

Unless chemicals are produced by the smell of blood causing a euphoria, Belkar very definitely isn't required to enjoy killing. Except that that is the definition of Evil alignment. Enjoying killing.

So you are right that it is in his nature to enjoy killing because his nature is evil.

A fall from 100feet onto pointy rocks will kill you. Neither the height nor the rocks will feel any joy or misery from your untimely death. They are amoral forces.

A lion will hunt you and kill you because they are hungry, but they will not attack you if they are full. They are neutral.

Someone who decides to kill you because they feel like it is evil.

[Eric]

Unless chemicals are produced by the smell of blood causing a euphoria, Belkar very definitely isn't required to enjoy killing. Except that that is the definition of Evil alignment. Enjoying killing.

So you are right that it is in his nature to enjoy killing because his nature is evil.

A fall from 100feet onto pointy rocks will kill you. Neither the height nor the rocks will feel any joy or misery from your untimely death. They are amoral forces.

A lion will hunt you and kill you because they are hungry, but they will not attack you if they are full. They are neutral.

Someone who decides to kill you because they feel like it is evil.

I should add that even if the cliff were bulldozed and that action had been decided with "if someone else dies from falling off there, we'll remove the cliff", the cliff, fall and rocks would all still see you dead when you fall off.

Belkar did stop killing living creatures because he knew that he would be hit by the MoJ. He could override his impulses then and so it is not in his nature to kill and enjoy it. If it were, he would have no choice and then, yes, he would be some form of neutral.

[Alfryd]

OK, then Haley isn't engaging in Good behavior. So what? She's only ever described herself as "Chaotic Good-ish" which could mean "Chaotic Neutral with Good tendencies". Talking about whether her actions are "wrong" implies that she has the same values that you do, and she clearly does not.
Well and good, as long as we're clear that Haley has earned herself a black mark alignment-wise.

If it were, he would have no choice and then, yes, he would be some form of neutral.
Quite so. The issue of whether Belkar enjoys killing isn't really relevant. Lions very probably enjoy stalking and devouring their prey, but since they lack insight into the suffering of others, starve if they don't eat them, and have only a limited ability to repress their instincts, lions are morally neutral- they don't have a meaningful choice in the matter. Belkar does.

[David Argall]

Look, all Haley has to do is
Risk her life, Roy's chance of return and who knows how many others that Belkar might kill on his own.


Yes, there is a slight chance that things might go wrong during this operation. That's not a legitimate excuse for letting Belkar commit atrocities and get away scot free.
When your life is on the line, 400-1 odds in your favor are not very good odds.


As I have already elaborated, her professional opinion is most likely wrong, regardless of Belkar's combat ability.
We know we are amateurs on the subject, and in particular ignorant of dangers she would be aware she will be facing, so the odds favor Haley being right.


1. Keeping Belkar on the team is slowing her down and making her a more conspicuous target, since she has to bring along the cart.
If Belkar is slowing the party, he can ride the cart.
We are talking a journey of about 1000 miles, which means the cart likely is necessary to carry supplies whether or not Belkar is present.


2. Belkar will happily betray her at the drop of a hat if it suits him.
There seems very little chance it will happen here.


3. Belkar's impulse control problem has made him a liability at the best of times, and matters have not improved.
And Belkar's ability to be a melee monster makes him a massive bonus.


She doesn't have to worry so much about carving up monsters if she can sneak about or dupe them instead, something both she and Celia seem have a significant talent for. Belkar makes this difficult.
Haley's ability to sneak past monsters assumes she has a good spot so she can see them first. On the available evidence, she has little hope of that.


And last but not least, regardless of alleged practical benefits, keeping Belkar on the team is wrong. If inaction doesn't make Haley guilty, all she has to do is not go out of her way to babysit Belkar's interests- as she is doing now- to permanently neutralise Belkar as a threat to sentient life everywhere, and make her life much easier. But letting your own team-mate get away with a regular habit of first-degree murder is not legitimate Good behaviour.
Once is hardly a regular habit. And with luck they will not meet any more. Even if they do, she can take actions to reduce the risk.
Oh definitely there are risks, major risks, in such reasoning, but the alternative rapidly leads to paralysis. Every option leads to evil. The ends do not justify the means, but the results do.

[Alfryd]

We know we are amateurs on the subject, and in particular ignorant of dangers she would be aware she will be facing, so the odds favor Haley being right.
Oh, I see. So, by the same token, you would also argue that Haley was completely justified in hanging around Azure City for 3 months after the team split- am I correct? Because clearly, she must have known her own business.

We are talking a journey of about 1000 miles, which means the cart likely is necessary to carry supplies whether or not Belkar is present.
Bags! Of! Holding! Nigh-unlimited all-but-weightless storage space! Cripes, people, pay attention!

Haley's ability to sneak past monsters assumes she has a good spot so she can see them first. On the available evidence, she has little hope of that. ...And Belkar's ability to be a melee monster makes him a massive bonus.
Yes, there are potential benefits to having Belkar along for the ride- they simply don't outweight the equally serious practical drawbacks. Haley said it herself- Belkar doesn't listen to her at all. How can he possibly be relied upon as an ally in a tight spot when he clearly has no regard for the safety of his teammates, no inclination to follow orders, and will happily switch sides at the first sign of an NPC able to cast Remove Curse?

There seems very little chance it will happen here.
Irony sense tingling... (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4078165&postcount=184)
When your life is on the line, 400-1 odds in your favor are not very good odds.

Seriously- David- think before you open your mouth. Only Roy's knowledge of the command word managed to keep him in check beforehand, and Haley doesn't have that.

Once is hardly a regular habit. ..The ends do not justify the means, but the results do.
There is overwhelming evidence that only the threat of direct personal harm has kept Belkar from commiting first-degree murder for no good reason on many prior instances, and complete certainty that his lack of discipline has severely endangered his own team on multiple occasions. He's not an asset, he's a liability. Keeping him on the team by this point is not just immoral, but irrational.

[David Argall]

So, by the same token, you would also argue that Haley was completely justified in hanging around Azure City for 3 months after the team split- am I correct? Because clearly, she must have known her own business.
Quite the reverse there. We were considering facts known to her and to us from which she should have drawn a conclusion that she deemed immediately obvious once she had been informed of the Cloister spell. From that we might argue she is highly stupid and doesn't know her own business, which is always a possibility in a comedy.
But whereas in the city we knew the facts, in the countryside we don't. We don't know at all what troubles she will be facing [all of which may happen off stage now] and she does. She has been doing a notable amount of adventuring and this is stuff she knows better than we do.


Bags! Of! Holding! Nigh-unlimited all-but-weightless storage space!
That is only relatively. The smallest bag of holding is still 15 lbs. and Haley may have several of them. Count the stuff she must keep out and she can still end up heavily loaded. We might note that Haley shows a serious reluctance to put Roy in the bag for one thing.


Yes, there are potential benefits to having Belkar along for the ride- they simply don't outweight the equally serious practical drawbacks. Haley said it herself- Belkar doesn't listen to her at all. How can he possibly be relied upon as an ally in a tight spot when he clearly has no regard for the safety of his teammates, no inclination to follow orders, and will happily switch sides at the first sign of an NPC able to cast Remove Curse?
He protects his teammates by use of the saying "The best defense is a good offense". Belkar attacking the monster is a superior defense here, and "Kill!" is a command belkar is happy to obey. And what are the chances of his meeting an NPC willing to cast Remove Curse, and willing to have Belkar on his staff? Look at how easily Belkar messed up his last "job interview". This risk, we can pretty much dismiss.


There is overwhelming evidence that only the threat of direct personal harm has kept Belkar from commiting first-degree murder for no good reason on many prior instances, and complete certainty that his lack of discipline has severely endangered his own team on multiple occasions. He's not an asset, he's a liability.

He's both, but he is more of an asset. We have Roy, among others, telling us that. And he is going to be even more vital now.

Let us look at what we do know. The countryside is dangerous, and there is a lot of it. Standing watch on watch is a definite strain, and you definitely want somebody on watch. Much better to spit the load 3 ways.

In any confrontation, Celia will be a minor help, but probably nearly useless in cases where Haley needs help. And Haley is an archer. She needs somebody to keep the foes off her. Belkar is highly useful in such a role.
Both Celia [directly] and Haley [by not disagreeing] tell us she expects to be attacked by several foes of considerable power along the way. So Belkar is close to vital.
And what actually is the risk of Belkar being too much trouble? While Belkar kills freely, he still requires an excuse, paperthin tho it may be. So it is not too hard to keep Belkar away from potential victims by simply having him take the rear, or maybe ride the cart. We are also in the outback and don't expect to see many people.

It's not a good situation, as Haley notes, but it's better with Belkar.

[Alfryd]

We were considering facts known to her and to us from which she should have drawn a [different] conclusion...
Absolutely. Just like here.

Count the stuff she must keep out and she can still end up heavily loaded...
David, there is exactly zero evidence that the cart is being used to haul supplies or that Haley would have any shortage of space for her daily iron rations. (Beside which Miko hardly needed a cart to haul the Order over similar distances.)

We don't know at all what troubles she will be facing [all of which may happen off stage now] and she does.
There is exactly no evidence for Haley being any better informed than we are.

He protects his teammates by use of the saying "The best defense is a good offense"... Much better to spit the load 3 ways.
David, you're not listening. However proficient Belkar may be in combat, all that counts for exactly nothing when he disobeys orders in battle to indulge his short-sighted adenaline-junkie hijinks, or actively work against his party's best interests. I don't want that person at my back when I go to sleep. I want him several hundred miles removed from my position, and preferably dead.

We have Roy, among others, telling us that [Belkar is useful].
Where, exactly?

So it is not too hard to keep Belkar away from potential victims by simply having him take the rear, or maybe ride the cart.
David! Belkar does not follow orders! Belkar cannot be relied upon to do anything consistently! He's Chaotic, for frackssake!

I'm sorry, the Order is simply out of excuses by this point. Even if we supposed that Belkar was, in purely practical terms, slightly more of a help than a hindrance, and could be relied upon not to backstab his own team, he just murdered a defenceless spice merchant in plain sight for all to see with no provocation at all. This is going waaaay beyond the threshold of reasonable doubt so far as Roy's oh-so-precious ethical strictures on loyalty are concerned. And what do you think will happen once they get to Cliffport?
Do you think he's just going to sit put and clean out the litter-box when he could be tracking down the Warthog's academy headmaster and hurting him until he accomodates his special needs? This may be the Order's last chance to be rid of Belkar safely without endengering all other sentient life on the planet, and Haley is going to flush it down the crapper because she's simply too chicken**** to face up to her alignment's responsibilities.

[Kish]

It is rather amusing that within, what... 150 comics or so - He's gone from the "SEXY SHOELESS GOD OF WAR" to something so despised.
I doubt the same people apply both of those labels. However, I concur (can I say concur, when you didn't actually say this and I'm just inferring you mean it?) that it's very strange that some people seem to think Belkar's changed, when he's just demonstrated that he's the same psychopath he's always been.


Do you think he's just going to sit put and clean out the litter-box when he could be tracking down the Warthog's academy headmaster and hurting him until he accomodates his special needs?

I think if he attempts to torture a wizard high enough level to be the head of that school while he can't do lethal damage without incapacitating himself....Let's just say I think it will be a self-correcting problem if he does.

[Alfryd]

I think if he attempts to torture a wizard high enough level to be the head of that school while he can't do lethal damage without incapacitating himself....Let's just say I think it will be a self-correcting problem if he does.
True enough... though you can inflict a surprising amount of pain without leaving a mark. In general however, the folks of Cliffport may not quite have the rigorous ethical standards of Azure City, so the principle stands.

[David Argall]

Absolutely. Just like here.
Nope. There we knew the facts. Here we don't.


there is exactly zero evidence
We can automatically assume you are wrong when you say this. The evidence will often be weak, if for no other reason than there is limited space in the comic, but the very fact somebody got the [quite possibly wrong] idea means there is some evidence.


that the cart is being used to haul supplies or that Haley would have any shortage of space for her daily iron rations.
But why is there a cart at all? Technically the answer might be that there should not be, that it should have never been in the story. But having been around this long, we pretty much have to assume its presence makes sense, that alternate ideas to get along without it do not work for reasons we may not be able to see.


(Beside which Miko hardly needed a cart to haul the Order over similar distances.)
Miko also had 2 horses [or horse and pony] to help haul supplies.


There is exactly no evidence for Haley being any better informed than we are.
This is something so obvious that we hardly even need evidence. Haley is living her life. We just get a few views of that life. She knows a fantastic amount of information we can only guess at. [What is the name of her mother?]
On the more particular point, what do we know? We know what we know that Haley knows and we can find some possible information from MM, but we are looking at a blank on the map, and the map is out of focus to boot. Haley is not an expert on the area since she asks directions, but she knows more than that Cliffport is a thousand miles to the North as the Succubus flies.


you're not listening.
I'm listening. I'm just not agreeing.


However proficient Belkar may be in combat, all that counts for exactly nothing when he disobeys orders in battle to indulge his short-sighted adenaline-junkie hijinks, or actively work against his party's best interests.
But other times he does work for their best interests. Note again Roy's estimate that the party owes him. He has been a trial to have around, but on balance he has been a help.


I don't want that person at my back when I go to sleep. I want him several hundred miles removed from my position, and preferably dead.
Definitely advantages to that, but recall here Haley's last words [so far]. Haley is desperate for any help she can get. She seems to [probably correctly] feel that without Belkar, the trip is not possible. You can't be fussy about your companions in such a case.


Where, exactly?
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0263.html


Belkar does not follow orders! Belkar cannot be relied upon to do anything consistently! He's Chaotic, for frackssake!
Chaotic does not mean entirely unpredictable. And even without orders, which he has been known to obey, a "suggestion" such as it would be more comfortable riding in the cart would have a quite reasonable chance of working.


I'm sorry, the Order is simply out of excuses by this point. Even if we supposed that Belkar was, in purely practical terms, slightly more of a help than a hindrance, and could be relied upon not to backstab his own team, he just murdered a defenceless spice merchant in plain sight for all to see with no provocation at all.
The Order has known Belkar's nature for a long time. This crime really shouldn't make any difference. Reasonable doubt is not a concern here. They know he kills when not supervised closely. They have to be prepared for the consequences.


And what do you think will happen once they get to Cliffport?

Well, I'd like to find they were carrying the gnome's body and they take him to be raised, on Belkar's dime.
More likely, I expect Nale to still be hanging around town for some reason and learns that Haley is contacting Elan. So we get an ambush set up.


Do you think he's just going to sit put and clean out the litter-box when he could be tracking down the Warthog's academy headmaster and hurting him until he accomodates his special needs? This may be the Order's last chance to be rid of Belkar safely without endengering all other sentient life on the planet, and Haley is going to flush it down the crapper because she's simply too chicken**** to face up to her alignment's responsibilities.

Belakr has shown little interest in using non-fatal tactics even when it was a good idea. So the idea of him forcing a powerful spellcaster to do his bidding is unlikely to work. Now he might be able to pay for the spell to be cast, either with coin or services, but force is pretty much out.
As to getting rid of Belkar, that will just have to wait until they have a chance to get Roy raised.

[Alfryd]

Nope. There we knew the facts. Here we don't. ...We can automatically assume you are wrong when you say this.
David, I've just spent several posts elaborating on exactly the set of facts available to both us and Haley which would be pertinent to the decision. You have spent several posts conspicuously failing to elaborate on pertinent information available to Haley-but-not-us. Because there's no evidence for it.

But why is there a cart at all?
To carry Roy's corpse without the possibility of triggering Belkar's mark of justice! Where have you been for the last hundred strips!?

Miko also had 2 horses [or horse and pony] to help haul supplies.
But no sign that they did!

This is something so obvious that we hardly even need evidence. Haley is living her life. We just get a few views of that life...
Exactly and precisely the same logic applies to her decision to stay in Azure City for three months. There are obviously various details of her experiences of which we are not aware. This doesn't mean she wasn't behaving irrationally. Being detached from her immediate surrounds can grant exactly that- detachment, impartiality, an ability to assess the situation rationally.

I'm listening. I'm just not agreeing. ...But other times he does work for their best interests.
Yes, so that cancels out. Once you toss in the likelihood of outright betrayal and his propensity for butchering hapless strangers on the flimsiest of pretexts, that's a net loss for his own team- particularly a more-or-less Good-aligned team.

Haley is desperate for any help she can get...
Then she needs to ditch Belkar!

Chaotic does not mean entirely unpredictable.
In the sense that no-one can be perfectly Chaotic, yes. But that's prettty well what Chaotic alignment consists of- exhibiting or promoting inconsistency/unpredictability/randomness.

...riding in the cart would have a quite reasonable chance of working.
David, as we've over before, When your life is on the line, 400-1 odds in your favor are not very good odds. And ditching Belkar would involve tempting fate once. Failure to ditch Belkar is tempting fate over and over again.


The Order has known Belkar's nature for a long time. This crime really shouldn't make any difference...
For my own, part, I would agree- they should have slit his throat while he slept a long time ago- but the Order has apparently been willing to give Belkar the benefit of the doubt thus far because:
A. He didn't entirely follow through on any blatant atrocity for no reason right in front of them, and:
B. He'd never indicated a sincere desire to betray them.
Those pretexts for loyalty have now evaporated.


Well, I'd like to find they were carrying the gnome's body and they take him to be raised, on Belkar's dime.
Sure, good luck with that.

Belakr has shown little interest in using non-fatal tactics even when it was a good idea....
Belkar has shown a capacity to be suprisingly inventive when he puts his mind to it.

As to getting rid of Belkar, that will just have to wait until they have a chance to get Roy raised.
No they don't. All they have to do is stop babysitting the little ****er, and karma, in the form of the MoJ, will take care of itself!

[factotum]

For my own, part, I would agree- they should have slit his throat while he slept a long time ago- but the Order has apparently been willing to give Belkar the benefit of the doubt thus far because

You forgot C: because most of the Order are Good-aligned, and Good-aligned people don't slit people's throats in their sleep! The only one who might be inclined to do it is Vaarsuvius, but in his case he would presumably consider it an insult to have to deal with a problem using a mundane weapon rather than his magic.

[Alfryd]

Good-aligned people don't slit people's throats in their sleep!
Except, that is, when they have green skin and fangs (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0011.html).

[FujinAkari]

Except, that is, when they have green skin and fangs (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0011.html).

<Devil's Advocate>They aren't slitting throats there :P</Devil's Advocate>

On a more serious note, attacking after incapacitating an enemy (i.e. via a sleep spell) is morally -very- different than slitting their throat when they're sleeping. Good aligned creatures typically won't do assassinations, though night raids are a viable option.

[Alfryd]

Well, if you prefer do it in broad daylight with the help of Hold Person or the like, be my guest. They wind up just as dead.

[hamishspence]

It's not the first time Haley has been in charge and Belkar has misbehaved: bandit camp. Evn after being told not to, several times, he still sets a tent on fire. When Haley yells "don't worry about outrunning the bandits, worry about outrunning ME!" he replies "now if you'd shown me that kind of discipline a minute ago we wouldn't be in this situation"

Haley needs to tighten her control over him in some way if she is to prevent further trouble. How, we are not sure, maybe working with Celia? A quiet word with her might help to fix the deteriorating relations between the two.

If that isn't possible, Belkar needs to go.

Concerning Good characters and assassination, there is a Exalted Deeds prestige class designed for this, the Slayer of Domiel, who is specially supposed to kill powerful evil characters. Doing this without breaking the Exalted Code is tricky, maybe sneaking in, waking enemy, and challenging them.

Arilyn Moonblade in Forgotten realms was a similar "honorable assassin" whose approach involved a challenge rather than killing a helpless opponent.

[David Argall]

You have spent several posts conspicuously failing to elaborate on pertinent information available to Haley-but-not-us. Because there's no evidence for it.
The evidence for it is simply overwhelming. The problem is determining how important it is. We are facing not only information we don't know, but information we don't know we don't know.

Prior to 531, we didn't know where Greysky city was, and would likely have put it North of Cliffport on a guess. Haley did know. We learn in 541 that she does not know the precise route, but she still knows a great deal we do not know, and some of it we don't even realize we don't know it.


To carry Roy's corpse without the possibility of triggering Belkar's mark of justice!
This does not logically work. For a large area, they did not need to move Roy at all. And we see Haley and Belkar having no trouble moving Roy [& O'Chul for awhile]. So there are any of a number of more mobile ways to move Roy around if all we want to do is move the body [which is now decomposed to where it would fit in a pack.] So then they were using the cart to transport additional needed equipment as well as Roy [Quite possibly stolen food on the trip back] or some other additional purpose.


But no sign that they did!
We are talking hammerspace here. The fact it is not pictured in no way means it is not there.


Exactly and precisely the same logic applies to her decision to stay in Azure City for three months.
No. There we know the relevant factors, and have Haley's agreement that her decision was wrong. [She might well make the defense that she didn't know, but she has to confess she didn't even suspect.] Here, we do not know the relevant factors, and aren't too sure of what they are. So we are on shaky ground when we assert her decision is wrong.



Yes, so that cancels out.
Most unlikely. There is a near certainity of a net in one direction or the other.


Once you toss in the likelihood of outright betrayal and his propensity for butchering hapless strangers on the flimsiest of pretexts, that's a net loss for his own team- particularly a more-or-less Good-aligned team.
Again, you are arguing from your conclusion.
If they are going to meet 20 hostile monsters and 1 innocent traveller, Belkar will be highly useful. If they meet 20 travelers and 1 monster, he will be a bother. We don't know which she meets yet, but have good reason to deem the 1st possible, if not a certainity.


Then she needs to ditch Belkar!
She needs help and she should ditch someone who is obviously useful in situations which she may encounter?


In the sense that no-one can be perfectly Chaotic, yes. But that's prettty well what Chaotic alignment consists of- exhibiting or promoting inconsistency/unpredictability/randomness.
As has been noted before, Chaotic is far from pure random in D&D. The chaotic PC is nearly as likely as the lawful to cross a bridge rather than jump over a side. Belkar, unfortunately, has consistent violent tendencies, but the mere fact he is chaotic does not mean they will not be able to find tactics that will limit his crimes.


When your life is on the line, 400-1 odds in your favor are not very good odds. And ditching Belkar would involve tempting fate once. Failure to ditch Belkar is tempting fate over and over again.
Both are tempting fate several times [exact number uncertain]. In essence, we tempt fate the same number of times either way. We can [try to] ditch Belkar or keep him at any time. One way we avoid risk of monsters. The other we avoid risk of Belkar being a monster. There is no inherant reason to deem either number larger.


For my own, part, I would agree- they should have slit his throat while he slept a long time ago- but the Order has apparently been willing to give Belkar the benefit of the doubt thus far because:
A. He didn't entirely follow through on any blatant atrocity for no reason right in front of them, and:
B. He'd never indicated a sincere desire to betray them.
Those pretexts for loyalty have now evaporated.
These pretexts should have never existed, or should still be valid. He has been stopped from following thru on ideas of killing his fellow party members at least twice by threats of violence and it's doubtful any of them have assumed he wouldn't betray them if he got the chance.
For you & Celia, it may have been an unexpected shock to see him kill the gnome. For Haley, it was a danger she should have been more alert to, and presumably will be in the future.


Belkar has shown a capacity to be suprisingly inventive when he puts his mind to it.
But for the issue at hand, he has already had a chance to be inventive, and only did so when almost forced to. So there is a major chance he won't be that inventive during the trip.


All they have to do is stop babysitting the little ****er, and karma, in the form of the MoJ, will take care of itself!

But then they have to deal with the problem of getting past the monsters to reach the city.



most of the Order are Good-aligned, and Good-aligned people don't slit people's throats in their sleep!
As already noted, Roy, our standard of Good, does just that.
And the standard is just set too high. One should be squeemish about killing someone in their sleep, but one should be squeemish about killing, period. The sleep just doesn't make any major difference here. In some cases, it is deemed a mercy.



On a more serious note, attacking after incapacitating an enemy (i.e. via a sleep spell) is morally -very- different than slitting their throat when they're sleeping.
The moral difference is trivial. Now there is a practical difference in that we know the incapacitated enemy is an enemy whereas the mere sleeper is not so easy to identify as such. But if we see an enemy on guard duty, it doesn't matter whether we found him sleeping or used a spell to put him to sleep. Either way, we need to keep him silent and we decide on that basis whether to just slip past and hope he never notices us [for obvious reasons not reporting his violation of orders], tie him up so he can't report us, or kill him. Whether he fell asleep with or without our assistance is just not a concern.


Good aligned creatures typically won't do assassinations,
And this is because of, not a cause.
The chief justification of killing is self defense, and assassination almost by force negates that defense. One can still justify some assassinations, but we have a much tougher job. It's not that we won't do assassinations, but that we won't find many acceptable.

[Alfryd]

The evidence for it is simply overwhelming.
If, by overwhelming, you mean 'absent.' If you have anything to back up your assertion, you need to show me the money.

Prior to 531, we didn't know where Greysky city was...
No, David, that's something both we AND Haley now know about the situation. Also, I don't see how it bears particularly on the discussion. And, again, if we assume that Haley were conspiciously ommitting factors relevant to her decision to keeping Belkar, exactly the same logic applies to staying in Azure city for 3 months.

This does not logically work. For a large area, they did not need to move Roy at all...
David! Pay attention! ( http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0523.html )

Your idea of 'logic' here has thus far failed to bear any correlation with reality.

The fact it is not pictured in no way means it is not there.
David, you're trying to demonstrate something is true, not that it's impossible.

I mean, seriously, we've had the party travelling over many leagues of territory without the benefit of mounts or carts well before now. Conjuring this 'they need a cart to haul supplies' argument is completely and utterly unfounded and spurious.

...she should ditch someone who is obviously useful in situations which she may encounter? ...the mere fact he is chaotic does not mean they will not be able to find tactics that will limit his crimes. ...If they are going to meet 20 hostile monsters and 1 innocent traveller, Belkar will be highly useful.
Yeah, unless it proves more prudent to go around those monsters without attracting attention, or unless one of them happens to make it known they can cast Remove Curse, in which case Belkar will be very much worse-than-useless.

You're still missing the point. Belkar cannot be relied upon to help, and there is a very serious danger he will actively screw the team over. He limits tactical options, and he butchers innocent lives. "He might, statistically speaking, be useful in situations where all you need to do is point and stab" is simply not good enough anymore. And going out of your way to limit the damage is, in itself, an encumbrance. The fact this mission is critical for Haley only makes dumping him more urgent.

These pretexts should have never existed...
Again, I agree, but the Order apparently had a different take on the issue. And previously, Belkar was at least a hair's breadth away from being caught red-handed. So no, not any more.

So there is a major chance he won't be that inventive during the trip...
David, anything short of 100% certainty is toying with innocent lives.
Tempting fate, and tempting fate...

But then they have to deal with the problem of getting past the monsters to reach the city.
That would be pertinent if Belkar were consistently useful in doing so. He plainly ain't.

[Alfryd]

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0263.html
And where, exactly, does Roy say 'Belkar is useful' here? Because I have some fairly compelling evidence that his performance in Durokan's dungeon was a (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0107.html) mixed (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0048.html) bag (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0021.html).

[David Argall]

And where, exactly, does Roy say 'Belkar is useful' here? Because I have some fairly compelling evidence that his performance in Durokan's dungeon was a (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0107.html) mixed (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0048.html) bag (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0021.html).

263- "I owe him that much for helping to defeat Xykon." So Roy does say Belkar is a net help.
We also have 139, where Roy must actively try to keep Belkar with the party. This is after he witnesses Belkar trying to murder Elan for XP. So Roy's attitude is pretty clear. Belkar has lots of drawbacks, but he is in net a useful member of the party.

Quote:
The evidence for it is simply overwhelming.


If, by overwhelming, you mean 'absent.' If you have anything to back up your assertion, you need to show me the money.
You are pretty much asking me to show you what nobody outside our writer knows. We don't know what is behind the door. But we do know that Haley came from that door, and she has some idea of what is back there beyond what we know.

Quote:
Prior to 531, we didn't know where Greysky city was...


that's something both we AND Haley now know about the situation.
Are you wanting to contend she didn't know it in 530 and earlier? That really should strike you as absurd. But otherwise, you are acknowledging that there are facts, important facts, that Haley knows and we don't, which puts in the superior position to decide if Belkar is needed. [Alternately, if we say the facts are unknown to her until stated, she has now stated that she needs Belkar, so same result.]


if we assume that Haley were conspiciously ommitting factors relevant to her decision to keeping Belkar,
She is not omitting factors, except in the sense that factors are always omitted by combining them in larger groups. She has said that she can use all the help she can get, and that is really all the analysis we need. On the face of it, that analysis is reasonable. She is going thru a thousand miles of unknown territory about which we can only say there are no major population centers [or they would not have to travel that far]. So the idea this is highly dangerous is our default assumption.


exactly the same logic applies to staying in Azure city for 3 months.
Quite the contrary. Haley tells us that leaving the city was a good idea. It's just that she had not considered the idea communication was blocked. [That she worried she would find Elan was gone is a worry she overcomes rather quickly, so we can't really consider it a major blocking factor.]

Quote:
This does not logically work. For a large area, they did not need to move Roy at all...


David! Pay attention!
I think you are quoting the wrong part of my statement here. For a distance of 1 mile, they didn't need to move the body at all, and that's a pretty big area. presumably you mean "So there are any of a number of more mobile ways to move Roy around if all we want to do is move the body" to which 523 might present a challenge. However, a careful reading shows there is no conflict. Haley does not say they need the cart to carry Roy. She says they need Roy to allow Belkar to be present. The cart then is merely one of a great many possible ways to carry Roy, and on the face of it, far from the best choice. It makes much more sense for them to already be using the cart to haul the wounded and stolen food back to their base or other such ideas, and so just tossing Roy onto the cart than it does for them to use this great big cart just to haul Roy around.




we've had the party travelling over many leagues of territory without the benefit of mounts or carts well before now. Conjuring this 'they need a cart to haul supplies' argument is completely and utterly unfounded and spurious.
So why do they have the cart? It's not to carry Roy. He's a bundle of bones and fits nicely into a pack. They have the cart because they need the cart, and we just have to guess why.

Now as to why the party has not had pack animals, etc in earlier strips, a-they are just extra work to draw and thus get left out. b-they may have been in slightly more settled territory, or territory where they knew how to harvest enough food that they did not need to carry much. If Haley is going into territory less known to her, she needs more supplies simply as a safety measure.

Quote:
...If they are going to meet 20 hostile monsters and 1 innocent traveller, Belkar will be highly useful.


Yeah, unless it proves more prudent to go around those monsters without attracting attention,
It is likely much easier to go around any innocents they will meet along the way.


or unless one of them happens to make it known they can cast Remove Curse, in which case Belkar will be very much worse-than-useless.
What are the odds? Critters who can cast Remove Curse are rare. Those who might want to team up with Belkar rarer yet, and those cases where Belkar won't screw up the hiring interview... You are talking about something that is too rare to worry about.


Belkar cannot be relied upon to help, and there is a very serious danger he will actively screw the team over.
All of this is entirely known to Haley to the extent it is true. You are continuing to assert that what you don't know and she does is understood better by you than by her.


The fact this mission is critical for Haley only makes dumping him more urgent.
It seems to be her estimate, which seems quite reasonable, that she can't complete the mission at all without Belkar.

Quote:
These pretexts should have never existed...


Again, I agree, but the Order apparently had a different take on the issue.
Their take being that Belkar was in net useful, and that opinion has not changed.


And previously, Belkar was at least a hair's breadth away from being caught red-handed. So no, not any more.
He's been caught several times about as red-handed as you can get. Belkar is pretty honest about his vicious tendencies and this latest crime doesn't really change anything.


anything short of 100% certainty is toying with innocent lives.
Tempting fate, and tempting fate...
We virtually never have 100% certainity, and we routinely have to toy with innocent lives. It becomes a question of the relative risks. Here we risk Belkar misbehaving [which he may have few chances to do and may harm very few people] vs the chance of dangerous monsters [which is likely a very high chance, and will not only kill Haley and Celia, but will doom Roy, and likely the anti-Xykon effort.]

Quote:
But then they have to deal with the problem of getting past the monsters to reach the city.


That would be pertinent if Belkar were consistently useful in doing so. He plainly ain't.
Rather obviously he does not have to be consistently useful. In fact he need only be useful one time if that one time is a foe they can beat no other way.
To put in math, let us say there are 10 incidents which he cuts the chance of success in half, and one that he is the only means for success. Casually we take an 80% of success, which makes our math
.8x.8x.8x.8x.8x.8x.8x.8x.8x.8x0.0 = 0, zilch, nada, nothing.
.4x.4x.4x.4x.4x.4x.4x.4x.4x.4x any positive number no matter how low = a positive number, greater than zero.

[Alfryd]

Well then, I'm simply going to have to differ with Roy's assessment here. I suppose one might hypothesise that Roy's deep-seated emotional issues have led him to cling to the present team lineup despite rather obvious deficiencies in what they bring to the table... Oh, wait. I don't have to hypothesise. It actually says that in Origins.
(I should point out that Elan was against rescuing him, but I guess his opinion doesn't count for much.)


You are pretty much asking me to show you what nobody outside our writer knows.
This may well be true, but I'm sorry, it doesn't constitute reasonable evidence for your position. No, Haley has not explicitly come out and said "...and that is everything I know that would impact my decision on whether to visit Cliffport." But you can't just make **** up out of thin air and then pretend that constitutes positive evidence for your position.

Are you wanting to contend she didn't know it in 530 and earlier?
...You are continuing to assert that what you don't know and she does is understood better by you than by her.
I'm virtually certain, by definition, that what she knows and I don't- the colour of her nail polish, what she got for her 16th birthday, hwo to bum a smoke in the slammer, etc. etc.- is better understood by her than me- there's simply no evidence whatsoever that it's relevant to the argument here.

As for my understanding the mutually available and relevant information on the topic better than she herself- conceivably, yes.


It seems to be her estimate, which seems quite reasonable, that she can't complete the mission at all without Belkar.
On what basis does it seem reasonable? You have presented exactly no evidence that Belkar's presence is required, or even profitable, (quite aside from the indescriminate trail of bodies in his wake.)

It's just that she had not considered the idea communication was blocked.
Yeah, because she was behaving irrationally. And yes, she changed her mind later- hopefully, (though it's a small hope,) this will also prove the case with Belkar. But I'm not going to take Haley's mere adoption of a given position as positive evidence for that position being correct, when there is every good reason to suppose otherwise.

If Haley is going into territory less known to her...
Doesn't that kind of contradict the idea that Haley is intimately acquainted with the road ahead in ways which she has not seen fit to share with us?


He's a bundle of bones and fits nicely into a pack...
A 100-pound bundle of bones the size and shape of a grown man in full plate armour! And strength is Haley's dump stat! What kind of packs do you wear!!?

I think you are quoting the wrong part of my statement here...
"... the only reason we have to lug around Roy's smelly digusting corpse is because YOU can't travel more than a mile away from it without triggering that stupid Mark of justice."

It is likely much easier to go around any innocents they will meet along the way.
Yeah- and they've done a great job so far.

We virtually never have 100% certainity......Here we risk Belkar misbehaving [which he may have few chances to do and may harm very few people...
What are the odds? Critters who can cast Remove Curse are rare.
"When your life is on the line, 400-1 odds in your favor are not very good odds."

This is particularly relevant when other people's lives are on the line. Risking your own neck is one thing, risking that of all Belkar's future acquaintances is quite another. If you want to deal in terms of cost/benefit ration, consider the scores of future innocents that will be massacred should Belkar manage to cut loose when they hit Cliffport. That is the greater evil to consider here.

He's been caught several times about as red-handed as you can get. Belkar is pretty honest about his vicious tendencies and this latest crime doesn't really change anything.
Oh- so you would be comfortable with Belkar massacring unarmed spice merchants on a daily basis- simply because it's a logical extension of his previous behaviour- and the Order doing diddly squat about it? Look, I'm perfectly aware that keeping Belkar on-team this long was both illogical and dangerous, but I'm not the one that needs convincing- the Order have concocted their own rationalisations, right or wrong, the extremely generous standards of which Belkar has now violated.
Just because you're wrong doesn't mean you can't get wronger.

...vs the chance of dangerous monsters [which is likely a very high chance, and will not only kill Haley and Celia, but will doom Roy, and likely the anti-Xykon effort.]
This is not within the threshold of reasonable ends-justify-means assessment. Belkar does not show a clear preponderance of combat utility over damage to his own team- however much certain members of the Order may feel otherwise- will betray them once he gets a better offer, is actively hindering safe travel, and entails unacceptable levels of collateral damage.


To put in math, let us say there are 10 incidents which he cuts the chance of success in half, and one that he is the only means for success. Casually we take an 80% of success, which makes our math...
I can equally well hypothesise at least one incident whereby the only way they succeed is by not having Belkar in tow. I don't have any terribly clear and compelling expalantion for how such a scenario could arise that wouldn't seem contrived and unlikely in practice, but hey- jinx!

[Alfryd]

Look, if Haley might grace us with some press statement to the tune of-

:haley:
"If I know anything about what's in store on the road ahead- which I do, in dizzying and gratuitous detail- then we'll need Bitterleaf to stand even a snowball's chance in hell, despite the fact he doesn't give a rat's ass about me, my mission, or my orders, eats nachos from the hollowed skulls of unborn babies and would probably switch sides over liquorice..."

-then yes, I would be satisfied that Haley may have some pertinent data on upcoming attractions she has not deigned to share with lesser mortals that might, conceivably, clear the unrestrained psychopath groupie. But not before.

[David Argall]

Look, if Haley might grace us with some press statement to the tune of-

:haley:
"If I know anything about what's in store on the road ahead- which I do, in dizzying and gratuitous detail- then we'll need Bitterleaf to stand even a snowball's chance in hell, despite the fact he doesn't give a rat's ass about me, my mission, or my orders, eats nachos from the hollowed skulls of unborn babies and would probably switch sides over liquorice..."

-then yes, I would be satisfied that Haley may have some pertinent data on upcoming attractions she has not deigned to share with lesser mortals that might, conceivably, clear the unrestrained psychopath groupie. But not before.
But within the limits of comic space and human ability, that is what Haley has said in the last panel of 540.


Well then, I'm simply going to have to differ with Roy's assessment here. I suppose one might hypothesise that Roy's deep-seated emotional issues have led him to cling to the present team lineup despite rather obvious deficiencies in what they bring to the table...
Such is a dangerous, and generally fallacious, way to argue. For example, it opens you up to charges of demanding his ouster for reasons of personal anger. And Roy does in general show good judgment.

Origen
It actually says that in Origins.
Can you point to where? A page from the end/beginning, Roy has to be talked out of dumping the lot of them.


No, Haley has not explicitly come out and said "...and that is everything I know that would impact my decision on whether to visit Cliffport." But you can't just make **** up out of thin air and then pretend that constitutes positive evidence for your position.
But we know quite well that Haley does know things we don't, a huge amount of stuff actually. And some of it is relevant to the point at hand. We can't guess too closely how much, but it does put Haley in the position of expert on the point at hand.


I'm virtually certain, by definition, that what she knows and I don't- the colour of her nail polish, what she got for her 16th birthday, hwo to bum a smoke in the slammer, etc. etc.- is better understood by her than me- there's simply no evidence whatsoever that it's relevant to the argument here.
As usual, when you say things like "simply no evidence", you are simply wrong. The evidence may be vague and limited, but it is there. Haley has spent about a year adventuring and, according to currently popular theory, several years not far from these mountains. We have a great deal of uncertainity about exactly what she knows and how accurate it is, but it is a given that she knows something.


As for my understanding the mutually available and relevant information on the topic better than she herself- conceivably, yes.
"Conceivably yes" means "realistically no". Our conceivable theory is one we can't disprove, but assume it will be disproved. It's what we might follow when we simply don't know what else to do, or when we fear the consequences of that 100-1 shot actually happening. [In the current case, that also argues for not doing much about Belkar. If it is conceivable he will be necessary, Haley would be risking her and several other lives by eliminating him.] But for routine cases, we ignore the merely conceivable. Conceivably, the guy with the murder weapon in hand standing over the still bleeding body didn't do it. We arrest him anyway.

Quote:
It seems to be her estimate, which seems quite reasonable, that she can't complete the mission at all without Belkar.


On what basis does it seem reasonable? You have presented exactly no evidence that Belkar's presence is required, or even profitable, (quite aside from the indescriminate trail of bodies in his wake.)
Let's see. On known wanderings, the party has consistently encountered hostile monsters. That makes Belkar's chance to be useful about 100%.


I'm not going to take Haley's mere adoption of a given position as positive evidence for that position being correct, when there is every good reason to suppose otherwise.
Rather obviously not. You are going into wilderness, you have loads of good reason to think a melee ranger is going to be useful.

Quote:
If Haley is going into territory less known to her...


Doesn't that kind of contradict the idea that Haley is intimately acquainted with the road ahead in ways which she has not seen fit to share with us?
There is no claim she is intimately acquainted with the road ahead, merely that she knows it better than we do.

Quote:
He's a bundle of bones and fits nicely into a pack...


A 100-pound bundle of bones the size and shape of a grown man in full plate armour! And strength is Haley's dump stat!
Bones are about 20% of your total weight, and Haley and Belkar are shown easily able to move Roy around before he went on an extreme diet. On the available evidence, he's packable.
Nor does he need to maintain the shape of a grown man. He can be taken apart with fair ease to fit into a pack.


"... the only reason we have to lug around Roy's smelly digusting corpse is because YOU can't travel more than a mile away from it without triggering that stupid Mark of justice."
Which does not explain the cart. There are a variety of other ways to move Roy, many of which have major advantages over the cart if all one wants to do is move Roy. The cart's only obvious advantage is that it can move more than Roy, which would be useful here if Haley had expected to carrying back more food than anybody could lift.
So if Haley is still using the cart, it seems there is more than Roy in the cart.


Risking your own neck is one thing, risking that of all Belkar's future acquaintances is quite another.
Strictly speaking, that is incorrect. Whether A or B is killed is a lesser issue than if either should be.
Now as practical advice, there is a point. Risking your own life, you have incentive to value it correctly, and not foolishly throw it away. You often lack the same incentives with regard to other lives. However that can be reversed since one often refuses to sacrifice one's own life even tho that will save several others.



If you want to deal in terms of cost/benefit ration, consider the scores of future innocents that will be massacred should Belkar manage to cut loose when they hit Cliffport. That is the greater evil to consider here.
Certainly to be considered. But so far, we don't have much worry that he will cut loose. He expects to be freed by Hinjo and is used to being held back by Roy. Something else may well happen, but the odds are reasonably low and so we assign a low value to this risk.

Quote:
He's been caught several times about as red-handed as you can get. Belkar is pretty honest about his vicious tendencies and this latest crime doesn't really change anything.


Oh- so you would be comfortable with Belkar massacring unarmed spice merchants on a daily basis- simply because it's a logical extension of his previous behaviour-
It's an illogical extension. Or simply an attempt to ignore several of the factors in the decision. As the law often says "Every dog gets one bite." A little we can ignore, a lot we don't. At some point, we or the party would have to say enough is enough and get rid of him. We have trouble finding that point from our position, but we have grounds for thinking zero is the proper border.



I'm perfectly aware that keeping Belkar on-team this long was both illogical and dangerous, but I'm not the one that needs convincing- the Order have concocted their own rationalisations, right or wrong, the extremely generous standards of which Belkar has now violated.
What makes you think he has? I'm pretty sure the party gave him no instructions based on whether they could see his crimes or not.


This is not within the threshold of reasonable ends-justify-means assessment. Belkar does not show a clear preponderance of combat utility over damage to his own team- however much certain members of the Order may feel otherwise- will betray them once he gets a better offer, is actively hindering safe travel, and entails unacceptable levels of collateral damage.
Again, you are saying that you, the amateur outsider who knows very little about the situation, is correct while the expert on the scene and knows all of this better than you, is wrong. The odds are just poor that you are right.

Quote:
To put in math, let us say there are 10 incidents which he cuts the chance of success in half, and one that he is the only means for success. Casually we take an 80% of success, which makes our math...


I can equally well hypothesise at least one incident whereby the only way they succeed is by not having Belkar in tow.
Irrelevant. Your claim was that Belkar had to be consistently useful to be useful. So the demonstration that he can be useful even when normally a drag is enough to refute your premise. That there may be a situation where he will be a deal breaker does not change this. That possibility refutes different propositions, such that Belkar is useful in all conditions.

[Alfryd]

But within the limits of comic space and human ability, that is what Haley has said in the last panel of 540.
Give or take about 98% of the actual statement, sure, yeah.

Can you point to where? A page from the end/beginning, Roy has to be talked out of dumping the lot of them.
David, your powers of selective observation are truly stupefying. Yes, he's talked into keeping the team aboard for the precise reasons I stated.

For example, it opens you up to charges of demanding his ouster for reasons of personal anger.
Yes, I am definitely pissed at a supposedly good-aligned adventuring party's persistant tolerance of an unequivocally evil character's penchant for homocide. Guess what? That don't invalidate the argument. Try to argue the facts, rather than second-guessing my motives or expertise.


But we know quite well that Haley does know things we don't, a huge amount of stuff actually. And some of it is relevant to the point at hand.
See- there, again- is the making up of **** out of thin air.

The evidence may be vague and limited, but it is there.
David, you can conjure 'vague and limited' evidence for just about anything, which is rather the problem, because 'anything' contains the overwhelming subset of 'things that never exist'.
I mean, seriously- 'your honour, I have vague and limited evidence that the defendant may be innocent, in that certain witnesses may not have testified in such as way as to directly contradict the possibility. Also, my defendant clearly knows better than you. I call for a dismissal of all charges.'


"Conceivably yes" means "realistically no". Our conceivable theory is one we can't disprove, but assume it will be disproved.
Uh, David, I don't know about you, but my conceivable theory actually has plenty of backing evidence, so I'm not assuming anything about it being disproved by this point.

It's what we might follow when we simply don't know what else to do, or when we fear the consequences of that 100-1 shot actually happening....
What the hell are you talking about? Because I honestly can't make any sense of what you're saying, apart from this- it is at least as 'conceivable' that Belkar will butcher passing innocents, hamstring his team through incompetence, or actively switch sides- all potentially fatal scenarios- as that he will prove helpful to complete the trip. And that's before he gets to Cliffport.

Let's see. On known wanderings, the party has consistently encountered hostile monsters. That makes Belkar's chance to be useful about 100%.
Well, yes, hostile monsters carefully calibrated to match the preferred challenge rating of the available party... And as I've been over, his statistical usefulness in such situations is countered by other factors.

You are going into wilderness, you have loads of good reason to think a melee ranger is going to be useful.
That would be great if BELKAR WERE REMOTELY COMPETENT AS A RANGER.

There is no claim she is intimately acquainted with the road ahead, merely that she knows it better than we do.
So... she knows it better than we do, but less well than on previous journeys to other locations, where she was clearly not especially well-informed about ambient hazards? I don't really see how this is helping your case.


Bones are about 20% of your total weight, and Haley and Belkar are shown easily able to move Roy around before he went on an extreme diet. ...He can be taken apart with fair ease to fit into a pack.
Oh, wait hang on a second.
Again, you are saying that you, the amateur outsider who knows very little about the situation, is correct while the expert on the scene and knows all of this better than you, is wrong. The odds are just poor that you are right.

Y'know, this thread is eventually going to get to the point where I can actually counter all of your obfuscating nonsense simply by quoting some of your other, contradictory, obfuscating nonsense.

Minus the cart, they had to drag him along the ground or carry him in tandem! I'm sure that'll work wonders for your touch AC! Hell, if it weren't for Belkar, all they'd need to do is transport a fingerbone and burn all the other remains. Either way, avoiding Belkar's MoJ constraint makes life simpler for all concerned.


Which does not explain the cart.
...Absolutely breathtaking.

:haley: "Belkar, since the only reason we have to lug around Roy's smelly digusting corpse is because YOU can't travel more than a mile away from it without triggering that stupid Mark of Justice curse, why don't YOU pull the cart?"

David, this is a direct implication that the only reason the cart is being hauled around in the first place is to accomodate Belkar's unique needs.

So if Haley is still using the cart, it seems there is more than Roy in the cart.
Really? Then show me the evidence. Because every strip so far has shown nothing in the cart but dead Roy, freeloading Belkar, pine freshener, or mr. scruffy. I'm sure the last item will have vital tactical significance.

No, I actually am sure. Sorry if it sounded sarcastic. But the pine freshener... eh.


Strictly speaking, that is incorrect. Whether A or B is killed is a lesser issue than if either should be.
Oh, right. We should just assume they'll all deserve it. Because that's definitely been the case thus far.

Something else may well happen, but the odds are reasonably low and so we assign a low value to this risk.
Why are the odds reasonably low? Because during the course of the strip there have been literally dozens of occasions where Belkar's either mauled the undeserving, crippled his own team, thought to switch sides or actively sought to violate parole. And I'm sorry, you do not have the right to play russian roulette with the barrel against other people's heads- Scores of them- unless you really have an overwhelming, ironclad justification. Not, 'statistically speaking, it might work out better with Belkar along, if we assume Haley knows better than all available evidence would suggest.'

It's an illogical extension. Or simply an attempt to ignore several of the factors in the decision. As the law often says "Every dog gets one bite."
What the hell does the law have to do with Belkar's decision-making?

Again, you are saying that you, the amateur outsider who knows very little about the situation, is correct while the expert on the scene and knows all of this better than you, is wrong. The odds are just poor that you are right.
So, logically, by this argument, Haley must have been justified in remaining in Azure City for 3 months beforehand, where after all, she probably had access to information about the situations that we don't. Is that not correct?


Irrelevant. Your claim was that Belkar had to be consistently useful to be useful.
Your claim was, not that Belkar was useful on average, but that Belkar would be strictly neccesary if they ran into even one situation that- *gasp* -made him strictly neccesary! Which isn't even a tautology- it's just a restatement of what you're already trying to conclude, couched in numbers you've hauled from your ass and strung together with twine in an attempt to obfuscate your meandering rationalisations. But please- I have all the time in the world.

[David Argall]

Give or take about 98% of the actual statement, sure, yeah.
You are disagreeing here without giving evidence or explanation.



he's talked into keeping the team aboard for the precise reasons I stated.
Now I see what you are referring to, which produces two points.
a-"Cling" is highly misleading here. Roy is not trying to keep them. Durkon we might say was clinging. Roy is only not trying hard to get rid of them.
b-The point at issue is Roy's judgement, not his decisions. He evaluates the situation accurately as far as we can see & Durkon does not really dispute it, rather he expresses hope they will get better. So the example supports the idea that Roy's judgement of Belkar as useful was correct, tho it might question whether his decision to break Belkar out of jail was correct.



Yes, I am definitely pissed at a supposedly good-aligned adventuring party's persistant tolerance of an unequivocally evil character's penchant for homocide. Guess what? That don't invalidate the argument. Try to argue the facts, rather than second-guessing my motives or expertise.
I do, but here you are trying to argue that Heley's judgement must be ignored because of her emotional state, and what is sause for the goose is sause for the gander. We have no grounds for thinking her more insane than you or I.



See- there, again- is the making up of **** out of thin air.

'your honour, I have vague and limited evidence that the defendant may be innocent, in that certain witnesses may not have testified in such as way as to directly contradict the possibility. Also, my defendant clearly knows better than you. I call for a dismissal of all charges.'
Well, when we look at the real world, we do find this. A patient of a doctor has died. The doctor says it was just one of those things. We accept his position unless we can find evidence to the contrary.
Here Haley is the expert at hand. She knows far better than we do what the risks of the journey are. When she says she needs Belkar, we should accept her opinion until we can find evidence to the contrary, and we simply have no evidence. [That Belkar kills the gnome is evidence of his moral depravity, but not of the safety of the trip.] So Haley's evaluation of the danger stands as the best available evidence of the danger.



my conceivable theory actually has plenty of backing evidence, so I'm not assuming anything about it being disproved by this point.
Well, either you are [unlikely] using the wrong term when you use conceivable, or you should provide that backing evidence, which would seem to be impossible since we are largely talking about areas the comic has simply never explored. We don't know how many mountains are ahead, how rought the road is, what monsters live there... All of which Haley knows to some extent. We can question the extent-it's clearly not perfect. But she has lived near this area for years and presumably adventured in it. But the idea we know better than she does avoids being dismissed out of hand only by a small margin.


What the hell are you talking about?
Imagine you are trying to make sense of some weird event. Somebody says "Maybe Sam was driving by to pay a traffic ticket, when Mary turned to look as Jane because she was wearing a red dress, and Jack was bending down to pick up an Indian Head Nickel, while Adam was..." Everybody looks at him like he has lost his marbles, and he defends his theory with "Well, it's conceivable."
Such is the normal use of "conceivable". It may be a better explanation than nothing, but we are highly skeptical of it. It's a house of cards we expect will fall down with a very slight push.
Normally we simply ignore such unlikely ideas. But sometimes, we have little else to go on and we somewhat pay attention to them. But even then, we work on the theory they won't pan out. Our example above might end with showing Zeke was guilty, and we would look closer at Zeke, but we don't go out and arrest Zeke because the idea is merely conceivable.



it is at least as 'conceivable' that Belkar will butcher passing innocents, hamstring his team as that he will prove helpful to complete the trip.
Again you are trying to assert your opinion on a subject you have to be ignorant of is superior to the expert on the scene.


Well, yes, hostile monsters carefully calibrated to match the preferred challenge rating of the available party... And as I've been over, his statistical usefulness in such situations is countered by other factors.
Countered, but not overcome.


That would be great if BELKAR WERE REMOTELY COMPETENT AS A RANGER.
That competent he is by the mere fact of having 10 or so ranger levels.


So... she knows it better than we do, but less well than on previous journeys to other locations, where she was clearly not especially well-informed about ambient hazards? I don't really see how this is helping your case.
What she knows poorly is what we do not know at all.



Minus the cart, they had to drag him along the ground or carry him in tandem! I'm sure that'll work wonders for your touch AC!
None the less, they were well able to do that. 477 shows them carrying the body, and for a time 2 bodies, at a run. Entirely possible by the comic. And you are still trying to say "cart or nothing". There are simply all sorts of alternatives and most of them make more sense if the cart is there only to transport Roy.


Hell, if it weren't for Belkar, all they'd need to do is transport a fingerbone and burn all the other remains. Either way, avoiding Belkar's MoJ constraint makes life simpler for all concerned.
Simplier does not always mean better.


:haley: "Belkar, since the only reason we have to lug around Roy's smelly digusting corpse is because YOU can't travel more than a mile away from it without triggering that stupid Mark of Justice curse, why don't YOU pull the cart?"

this is a direct implication that the only reason the cart is being hauled around in the first place is to accomodate Belkar's unique needs.
A-it is, at most, an indirect implication. "I paid for your dinner. Why don't you pay for the books?" Same sort of structure, but we can see there is no necessary connection between the reason offered and the duty requested.
b-But the cart is entirely too large and inefficient for that purpose. It can hold 3 people [and a cat] and likely more.


Really? Then show me the evidence. Because every strip so far has shown nothing in the cart but dead Roy, freeloading Belkar, pine freshener, or mr. scruffy. I'm sure the last item will have vital tactical significance.
Haley and Thant have also added to the load. And our artist does not draw everything. Hammerspace is in full operation. The absence of something in the picture does not mean it is not there.


Oh, right. We should just assume they'll all deserve it. Because that's definitely been the case thus far.
Incorrect. But largely irrelevant to the point at hand. We were discussing the ethics of risking your life vs that of a random stranger.


Why are the odds reasonably low? Because during the course of the strip there have been literally dozens of occasions where Belkar's either mauled the undeserving, crippled his own team, thought to switch sides or actively sought to violate parole.
Based on the pictured cases, you have difficulty getting into dozens, even when you pad the the list of crimes. However observe that there are people out there claiming this gnome killing is some kind of unique event that Belkar has never done before. Quite wrong, but they do tell us that Belkar's crimes have something of an upper limit. He has accepted that the limits the party imposes on him are a tolerable burden and we can reasonably predict he will continue to tag along with the party and more or less follow their rules. The odds are he is not going to cut loose.


And I'm sorry, you do not have the right to play russian roulette with the barrel against other people's heads- Scores of them- unless you really have an overwhelming, ironclad justification.
That brings up the "Would you go to bed with me for $1 million, cash?" "Well, I suppose..." "How about for $20?" "What do you think I am?" "We have already settled that. Right now we are haggling about price."
You have acknowledged the principle that it is justifiable to play Russian roulette with other people's lives. The rest is just math. And at the moment, Haley knows several of the values in the formula better than we do.


What the hell does the law have to do with Belkar's decision-making?
You were asserting an exaggerated picture of Belkar's crimes. I was pointing out that Belkar's crimes were not that large, and might fall under a standard of tolerable.


So, logically, by this argument, Haley must have been justified in remaining in Azure City for 3 months beforehand, where after all, she probably had access to information about the situations that we don't.
In Azure City, we are not unaware of any relevant factor as far as we can tell. Haley based her decision to leave on factors she either knew or should have guessed. [She did not have enough information to justify abandoning the area, but she did have enough to make a short trip outside the city.] So we can challenge her thinking as mistaken.
In the case of getting rid of Belkar now, we are aware we are unaware of some major facts. We don't really know if the road is heavily protected highway where any protection Belkar provides will be trivial or barely a trail with monsters behind each of the many rocks and absolutely no hope of success without Belkar. [We have hints that the more dangerous is the more likely, but nothing solid.] So we are on very dubious grounds when we claim she is wrong.
[We are on much better grounds when we argue that Haley, as Belkar's "keeper", should be trying to do something to eliminate the moral debts, past and future, but that does not mean she should immitate Celia and do something foolish.]


Your claim was, not that Belkar was useful on average, but that Belkar would be strictly neccesary if they ran into even one situation that- *gasp* -made him strictly neccesary! Which isn't even a tautology-
It is, however, a demonstration your position is false. That is all it needs to be.

[plainsfox]

*munches down on popcorn*

This is really entertaining.

Belkar is a Ranger outweighs the fact that Belkar has wisdom penalities and no ranks in survival as of this strip http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0213.html ?


How grossly inept and incompetant do you need to be before you are considered a hinderance at your chosen vocation?

[Alfryd]

You are disagreeing here without giving evidence or explanation.
Because it's self-evident. Haley just doesn't say what I specified. It's just not there.

"Cling" is highly misleading here... The point at issue is Roy's judgement...
Fine- then argue Roy's judgement on the basis of available facts, not the mere fact he judged it.

We have no grounds for thinking her more insane than you or I.
Apart, of course, from the irrational behaviour.

The doctor says it was just one of those things. We accept his position unless we can find evidence to the contrary.
Great. I have lots of evidence to the contrary!

...at the moment, Haley knows several of the values in the formula better than we do.
Again you are trying to assert your opinion on a subject you have to be ignorant of is superior to the expert on the scene...
She knows far better than we do what the risks of the journey are...
I'm sorry, but there's no particular evidence for this, and no evidence that, if such information were at her disposal, that it justifies keeping Belkar on-side.

...or you should provide that backing evidence, which would seem to be impossible since we are largely talking about areas the comic has simply never explored.
No David, Belkar's past history of collateral damage/friendly fire/casual butchery/latent treachery are all pretty well documented by now.

Our example above might end with showing Zeke was guilty, and we would look closer at Zeke, but we don't go out and arrest Zeke because the idea is merely conceivable.
....I still don't see what that this to do with the subject at hand.

That competent he is by the mere fact of having 10 or so ranger levels.
Yeah, except that he never invests any ranks in wilderness-survival-related-skills and suffers a Wis penalty in the first place. That neuters just about all his ranger class features related to said wilderness-survival aside from the track feat, which we've seen him use exactly once, when he was bribed with hookers. So, good luck with that. Of course, none of this will be especially useful in any case, since BRINGING ALONG THE CART obliges the party to stick to the roads regardless!

b-But the cart is entirely too large and inefficient for that purpose. It can hold 3 people [and a cat] and likely more...
There are simply all sorts of alternatives and most of them make more sense if the cart is there only to transport Roy.
Again, you are saying that you, the amateur outsider who knows very little about the situation, is correct while the expert on the scene and knows all of this better than you, is wrong. The odds are just poor that you are right.

A-it is, at most, an indirect implication.
David, if the cart had been brought along for any other purpose than hauling Roy about, Haley couldn't have singled out Belkar for hauling-duty.

The absence of something in the picture does not mean it is not there...
But you can't use the mere possibility as positive evidence for your position.

What she knows poorly is what we do not know at all.
Yeah, but what we both know in voluble depth and certainty is that Belkar is a very real and present danger, as opposed to a hypothetical, uncertain one down the road.

Countered, but not overcome...
Based on the pictured cases, you have difficulty getting into dozens, even when you pad the the list of crimes.
In approximate chronoplogical order-

Non-specific:
General gross under-optimisation of build and utter failure to make effective use of available class features, persistantly fails to even attempt use of nonlethal damage in combat when afflicted by mark of justice, avail of animal companion, etc. etc. etc.

OtooPCs:
Murder of brawlers + barmaids
Murder of guard
Plans to kill team-mates, once tied up in melee

3...

DCF:
Kills Trigak the chimera
Gets involved in brawl with Yik-yik
Leaves position in mid-battle, causing V's paralysis
Declares intent to harvest kidneys of helpful NPC
Butchers surrendering opponents

8...

NCftPB:
Attempts to kill Elan
Professes desire to hunt down and brutally murder fellow villagers
Butchers members of barbarians' guild in nonlethal contest
Launches daggers at Roy for his sole amusement
Reveals position in bandit's camp despite direct orders to the contrary
Declares desire to have bandits fight to death for personal amusement
Offers to sell sam into slavery for personal profit, (hoping to corrupt Haley)
Vows to inflict prolongued suffering and death upon Windstriker
Attempts to kill non-threatening NPC lawyer
Triggers destruction of Inn during attempt to kill said non-threatening NPC
Kills low-level azure city guard when nonlethal damage would have been trivial
Violation of corpse of said low-level azure city guard
Orchestrates an elaborate attempt to induce a paladin's Fall, willingly risking tremendous personal pain and injury in the process, for the sake of his sole personal enjoyment, without concern for the wellfare of other party members or even escape
Acknowledges killing team-mates and looting bodies for magic items would be an idea

24...

War and XPs (or later):
Tries to find azurite caster to remove mark of justice
Relates how he was restrained from killing people during senior prom
Fails to realise that constructs are not living creatures, thus hobbling damage output
Falls victim to low-level charm spell which induces him to try and butcher fellow party members, despite known restraint of mark of justice
Requires Roy remain outside bag of holding over mark of justice, thus hobbling mobility, perhaps leading to loss of O-chul
Abandons Thanh and other resistance members for sake of personal errand, Thanh is dominated by Tsukiko and other team-member becomes wight
Indicates perfect willingness to work for Xykon and ambitions for large-scale mass murder
Assumes freed azurites are for his personal use as slaves
Instructs resistance to fight to death for personal amusement
Kills non-threatening, defenceless gnomish spice merchant for sake of mount to pull cart

37.

Sure, I may have padded a wee bit here and there, but some of them have got to count extra. There must have been a dozen casualties from the bar-room brawl, for starters, and going after Miko was in league of it's own.

However observe that there are people out there claiming this gnome killing is some kind of unique event that Belkar has never done before.
Yes, it is, in that Belkar has actually followed through completely on an unprovoked act of evil in plain sight before a fellow party member.

He has accepted that the limits the party imposes on him are a tolerable burden...
He accepts nothing of the sort, as his eagerness to switch sides and have the mark of justice removed clearly demonstrate.

...I was pointing out that Belkar's crimes were not that large, and might fall under a standard of tolerable.
Yeah, they did fall under the party's standards of tolerable, because:
A. He didn't entirely follow through on any blatant atrocity for no reason right in front of them, and:
B. He'd never indicated a sincere desire to betray them.
Those pretexts for loyalty have now evaporated.

The odds are he is not going to cut loose.
From a purely storytelling-related perspective, I can say with near-total confidence that Belkar isn't going to cut lose, because Rich has taken great pains to establish him as a protagonist, and that the party will concoct excuses to stomach his myopic, bloodthirsty turncoat outbursts regardess of how outré and specious their reasoning may become. That won't make them objectively right or rational about it.

In Azure City, we are not unaware of any relevant factor as far as we can tell. Haley based her decision to leave on factors she either knew or should have guessed. [She did not have enough information to justify abandoning the area, but she did have enough to make a short trip outside the city.]
Wait, just a moment:
In [Haley's trip to Cliffport], we are not unaware of any relevant factor as far as we can tell.

[We have hints that the more dangerous [scenario] is the more likely, but nothing solid.]
...So we are on very dubious grounds when we claim she is wrong.
But on entirely solid grounds when we claim there is little evidence that her decision to keep Belkar is (on balance) justified, but a good deal of evidence to suggest the contrary, and may conclude, on the basis of available evidence, that Haley's decision is, very probably, irrational/immoral.

[We are on much better grounds when we argue that Haley, as Belkar's "keeper", should be trying to do something to eliminate the moral debts, past and future, but that does not mean she should immitate Celia and do something foolish.]
Personally, I would simply prefer it if future 'debts' could be avoided in the first place.

It is, however, a demonstration your position is false.
No, David, because it doesn't actually prove what you are aiming to establish. There is no particular likelihood that a situation will arise that makes Belkar strictly neccesary, and if there were, I can posit an equally plausible situation which makes dumping him equally urgent. Not that this matters, because a possibility of a certainty is not much different from the certainty of a possibility- it all boils down to the same odds probabilistically. Unless you have evidence that a situation will- not may, but will arise- that makes Belkar indispensible, then this avenue of argument leads nowhere new.

[David Argall]

Because it's self-evident. Haley just doesn't say what I specified. It's just not there.
It is not there in the sense that what you specified is insanely specific. It is there in the general sense.

"If I know anything about what's in store on the road ahead- which I do, in dizzying and gratuitous detail- then we'll need Bitterleaf to stand even a snowball's chance in hell, despite the fact he doesn't give a rat's ass about me, my mission, or my orders, eats nachos from the hollowed skulls of unborn babies and would probably switch sides over liquorice..."
vs
540-"Would I be travelling with a horrid bastard like you if I didn't need all the help I could get?" The statement implies a knowledge of what lies ahead and an opinion that Belkar will be useful in dealing with it. The difference is that you want to demand impossible precision.



Fine- then argue Roy's judgement on the basis of available facts, not the mere fact he judged it.
But we know that Roy's judgement is in part based on many incidents that were not deemed worthy of the honor of appearing on camera. Looking at the available evidence, we see enough evidence that Roy is correct. We of course also see evidence that Belkar is a drawback, but we just do not have all the evidence, and Roy does. We just can't go against his judgement in such a case.
Moreover, Roy is pictured as the sensible member of the party. All take their turn as fools of course, but Roy has fewer such times, and such are generally rather blatent. So again, we find that if Roy says something, it is so.


I have lots of evidence to the contrary!
Present it. [No, you can't validly say you have already done so. Copy-paste is pretty easy.]
It would seem, however, that your evidence is not to the point. You have lots of evidence that Belkar is a slime, which is stipulated. What we need is evidence on how dangerous the journey will be, on which we merely know Haley's opinion.


there's no particular evidence for this, and no evidence that, if such information were at her disposal, that it justifies keeping Belkar on-side.
You are simply asserting this. Or rather, denying the obvious. She has spent a lot of time in or near the area in question according to our best estimate. She has also spent a good deal of time in situations similiar to what she is likely to be facing. The idea that she knows better than we do is the default.


Belkar's past history of collateral damage/friendly fire/casual butchery/latent treachery are all pretty well documented by now.
But, as already noted, this is not to the point. We are in essence paying out $20,000. Is that getting us a car[maybe a reasonable deal]? A house? [highly likely a great deal] Or a bicycle? [we got robbed] We really have no idea of any value.
We take Belkar along with us despite the drawbacks. Is that going to be a mixed bag where he helps and hurts about equal amounts? A vital element that saves us from lots of monsters? Or an extra weight in the cart when he isn't getting us into trouble?
The fact we know he is trouble just does not settle the issue. We have to know the rewards too, and the only one with any knowledge about that is Haley, who feels he will be worth the trouble.


....I still don't see what that this to do with the subject at hand.
Our subject at hand here was the definition of conceivable. I was pointing out that there are definite limits to what we would do based on a conceivably correct idea.


Yeah, except that he never invests any ranks in wilderness-survival-related-skills and suffers a Wis penalty in the first place. That neuters just about all his ranger class features related to said wilderness-survival aside from the track feat, which we've seen him use exactly once, when he was bribed with hookers.
In #22, he was persuaded to do some tracking to avenge an "insult".
In 474, he tracks the MitD in order to find Roy.
The hooker case must be one I can't find. Possibly you mean strip club in 154.
In 213, Belkar is eager to do the tracking. That eagerness may be more related to a chance to attack Miko than a love of tracking, but it does make it quite possible Belkar has used the tracking feat many times offstage.


Again, you are saying that you, the amateur outsider who knows very little about the situation, is correct while the expert on the scene and knows all of this better than you, is wrong. The odds are just poor that you are right.
You try to compare apples and oranges here. We know little or nothing about the number or type of monsters in a mountain range with a magic ecology. We do know a fair amount about carts in general, and know several facts about this particular cart to boot. They surely know more about the cart, but our point of issue is that to transport the body, they only need a sub-compact instead of a SUV. So the use of the SUV means they are transporting something else as well.


if the cart had been brought along for any other purpose than hauling Roy about, Haley couldn't have singled out Belkar for hauling-duty.
Entirely not true. Haley's statement can be generalized "You owe a debt, so you can pay it X way." There is no logical connection between the particular debt and the means of paying. There often is a connection. It makes for a clearer evidence of the debt and gives the debtor incentive to pay up. But this is not at all a necessary condition.


But you can't use the mere possibility as positive evidence for your position.
It is not being used as positive evidence. It is being used to counter the claim that nothing was there.


Yeah, but what we both know in voluble depth and certainty is that Belkar is a very real and present danger, as opposed to a hypothetical, uncertain one down the road.
Which means very little. I buy auto insurance [mostly because the law demands it, but..] That is a very real of present hit on my wallet, to avoid a hypothetical uncertain risk of an accident. It is a good or bad idea depending on just how bad that uncertain risk is, and I may well have no idea of that until too late.

In approximate chronoplogical order-


Non-specific:
General gross under-optimisation of build and utter failure to make effective use of available class features, persistantly fails to even attempt use of nonlethal damage in combat when afflicted by mark of justice, avail of animal companion, etc. etc. etc.

Well, these do not qualify under the charges you make [mauled the undeserving, crippled his own team, thought to switch sides or actively sought to violate parole.]
. Crippling your team requires active measures, not merely failing to act in the most efficient manner. But you don't count them in the total..

mixed quotes and answers
OtooPCs:
Murder of brawlers + barmaids
Murder of guard
Plans to kill team-mates, once tied up in melee
This does not seem to qualify. He needs to put it into action to cripple the team, and he is not thinking of switching sides.

3.../2

DCF:
Kills Trigak the chimera
This is story flaw, not team flaw.
Gets involved in brawl with Yik-yik
Yik-Yik's fault
Leaves position in mid-battle, causing V's paralysis
Declares intent to harvest kidneys of helpful NPC
The NPC was "helpful" only under intimidation and since Belkar was prevented from killing him, he tipped off Xykon about their plans.
Butchers surrendering opponents

8.../4

NCftPB:
Attempts to kill Elan
Again, does not fit your list
Professes desire to hunt down and brutally murder fellow villagers
Ditto
Butchers members of barbarians' guild in nonlethal contest
Launches daggers at Roy for his sole amusement
Reveals position in bandit's camp despite direct orders to the contrary
Declares desire to have bandits fight to death for personal amusement
Ditto
Offers to sell sam into slavery for personal profit, (hoping to corrupt Haley)
Ditto
Vows to inflict prolongued suffering and death upon Windstriker
Attempts to kill non-threatening NPC lawyer
your list does not cover attempts or thoughts of damage
Triggers destruction of Inn during attempt to kill said non-threatening NPC
This qualifies as an accident
Kills low-level azure city guard when nonlethal damage would have been trivial
Violation of corpse of said low-level azure city guard
This is double dipping
Orchestrates an elaborate attempt to induce a paladin's Fall, willingly risking tremendous personal pain and injury in the process, for the sake of his sole personal enjoyment, without concern for the wellfare of other party members or even escape
Acknowledges killing team-mates and looting bodies for magic items would be an idea
Again, not on list.

24...12

War and XPs (or later):
Tries to find azurite caster to remove mark of justice
Relates how he was restrained from killing people during senior prom
not a sin from your list
Fails to realise that constructs are not living creatures, thus hobbling damage output
incompetence of this level is also not on your list
Falls victim to low-level charm spell which induces him to try and butcher fellow party members, despite known restraint of mark of justice
Again this does not fit your list.
Requires Roy remain outside bag of holding over mark of justice, thus hobbling mobility, perhaps leading to loss of O-chul
Something Roy proposed and Belkar objected to, and you want to blame Belkar?
Abandons Thanh and other resistance members for sake of personal errand,
Again, this does not fit any of your forms.
Thanh is dominated by Tsukiko and other team-member becomes wight
Indicates perfect willingness to work for Xykon and ambitions for large-scale mass murder
Assumes freed azurites are for his personal use as slaves
Not on your list
Instructs resistance to fight to death for personal amusement
ditto
Kills non-threatening, defenceless gnomish spice merchant for sake of mount to pull cart

37. 15


Sure, I may have padded a wee bit here and there, but some of them have got to count extra. There must have been a dozen casualties from the bar-room brawl, for starters, and going after Miko was in league of it's own.
But we still see the list of actual sins is not that long, and that the party was largely able to limit it. So Haley can expect that a revived Roy will be able to keep Belkar within limits.



Yes, it is, in that Belkar has actually followed through completely on an unprovoked act of evil in plain sight before a fellow party member.
That is like arguing "He's been shooting at people for a long time, but this is the first time he has hit."


He accepts nothing of the sort, as his eagerness to switch sides and have the mark of justice removed clearly demonstrate.
He has rarely had a chance to switch sides or to have the mark removed, so something like 99% of the time he accepts.


Yeah, they did fall under the party's standards of tolerable, because:
A. He didn't entirely follow through on any blatant atrocity for no reason right in front of them, and:
He didn't because they stopped him. This time Haley just didn't act in time.


B. He'd never indicated a sincere desire to betray them.
That requires a special meaning of betray. Your list above contains several items that qualify as betrayal under normal definitions.


[i]In [Haley's trip to Cliffport], we are not unaware of any relevant factor as far as we can tell.
We do not know the condition of the road, We don't know the opposition... Plenty of vital factors we can only guess at.


But on entirely solid grounds when we claim there is little evidence that her decision to keep Belkar is (on balance) justified, but a good deal of evidence to suggest the contrary, and may conclude, on the basis of available evidence, that Haley's decision is, very probably, irrational/immoral.
This is an incorrect balance of known and unknown. The great amount of evidence on Belkar's bad behavior merely allows us to quantify that figure closely. Continuing an example above, we can say Belkar will cost $10,000 instead of a range of $1000-$100,000. But no matter how precise and by how massive this evidence, it only determines one figure in the formula. We are asked the question "Is X larger than Y?" When we are told X is 10,000, we still have little idea whether that is smaller or larger than Y. The lack of any evidence about Y does not mean we decide that X is larger.
Instead we use what little evidence we have to estimate Y. For that, we are aware of the party frequently facing major combat opponents in the countryside and we are aware of Haley's opinion. We still have only a vague idea of what Y is, but it seems to be large.


Personally, I would simply prefer it if future 'debts' could be avoided in the first place.
A good general idea, but not always the best policy.


There is no particular likelihood that a situation will arise that makes Belkar strictly neccesary,
There doesn't need to be. Your statement was
"That would be pertinent if Belkar were consistently useful in doing so."

All that is needed to refute that is a possible way Belkar could be useful, but not consistently useful. It does not matter how many alternate ways there are for him to be a drag. The statement remains refuted.
And we have demonstrated that Belkar could be useful without being consistently useful.

[Alfryd]

The statement implies a knowledge of what lies ahead and an opinion that Belkar will be useful in dealing with it.
This is just rephrasing your 'take Haley's word for it' argument.

But we know that Roy's judgement is in part based on many incidents that were not deemed worthy of the honor of appearing on camera.
No... we don't.

We just can't go against his judgement in such a case.
Watch me. No, seriously, if Roy said 2+2=5, I'm not going to take his, or anyone else's, word for it.

Present it. [No, you can't validly say you have already done so. Copy-paste is pretty easy.]
David, your inability to concede error does not constitute a refutation of my previous points, however easy you yourself may find it. I have already outlined in great detail exactly why Haley is wrong.

You are simply asserting this. Or rather, denying the obvious. She has spent a lot of time in or near the area in question according to our best estimate.
So... she knows it better than we do, but less well than on previous journeys to other locations, where she was clearly not especially well-informed about ambient hazards? I don't really see how this is helping your case.

But, as already noted, this is not to the point.
What could possibly be more to the point of forecasting Belkar's likely utility than extrapolating from prior performance?

We have to know the rewards too, and the only one with any knowledge about that is Haley...
Actually, I'm perfectly aware of the potential rewards for having Belkar along, I just don't think they're enough to justify the risk to both his party and sentient life in general. And unless/until Haley cares to share your theorised secret voodoo knowledge with us, I don't see that opinion altering any time soon.

Our subject at hand here was the definition of conceivable.
Was it? I must have missed the memo. My usage was intended to connote rough likelihood.


In #22, he was persuaded to do some tracking to avenge an "insult".
In 474, he tracks the MitD in order to find Roy.
You are quite correct. My bad. However, sticking to the road will, as mentioned, render this point academic.

We know little or nothing about the number or type of monsters in a mountain range with a magic ecology.
I'm pretty sure the monster manual would beg to differ. Permit me to enlighten you.
http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/monsters.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/intro.htm#environment

...to transport the body, they only need a sub-compact instead of a SUV. So the use of the SUV means they are transporting something else as well.
David, I have no idea where you suddenly extricated this distinction from, or how you would identify cart type A from cart type B in reality, leave alone how this diagnosis could translate to a comic based on stick figures. I therefore fail to see how this helps your case.

Haley's statement can be generalized "You owe a debt, so you can pay it X way"...
If the cart were being hauled around for purposes other than keeping Roy's body to hand (as you assert,) Belkar clearly wouldn't be owing any particular debt.

It is being used to counter the claim that nothing was there.
But not the claim that there is no evidence for anything else being there. Because there isn't.

I buy auto insurance [mostly because the law demands it, but...]
Yeah, except that in this case, if you have an 'accident', other people wind up paying for it.

With regards to your critique of Belkar's list of crimes, I would point out that my main purpose was to illustrate that both the party and ourselves have abundant evidence for Belkar being an active threat to other sentient creatures, and that reports of his value to the team have been greatly exxaggerated. I will point out that attempting to kill, or just contemplating killing, other team members (even under a charm spell,) is certainly evidence for hobbling his own team or hoping to switch sides, and abandoning your post in mid-battle certainly hampers your own team's performance. (Also, the goblin teenager was neither under intimidation or went to Xykon. While I'm at it, I'll toss in Belkar's threats to feed the Oracle his own lungs, and actively hoping to cause the deaths of Roy and V.)

Haley can expect that a revived Roy will be able to keep Belkar within limits...
That's no good if Belkar manages to escape by then, and it still doesn't excuse taking the risk of repeat performances. There's simply no good reason to keep Belkar on the team anymore.

That is like arguing "He's been shooting at people for a long time, but this is the first time he has hit." ...Your list above contains several items that qualify as betrayal under normal definitions.
Again, I pretty well agree, but the Order apparently had a different take on the issue. You're kinda preaching to the choir here.

He has rarely had a chance to switch sides or to have the mark removed, so something like 99% of the time he accepts.
Given the alternative is, oh, I don't know- triggering the mark of justice- this is hardly surprising. It does not connote 'acceptance' in any meaningful sense, ...and I believe we've touched on the subject of 400-1 odds.

We do not know the condition of the road, We don't know the opposition... Plenty of vital factors we can only guess at.
Yeah, but there's no particular evidence Haley is better informed, or better informed in such a way as to justify Belkar's presence.

Continuing an example above, we can say Belkar will cost $10,000 instead of a range of $1000-$100,000.
David, I have no idea what X amount of dollars is supposed to correlate with in moral terms, but I suspect you're hauling numbers from your ass.

We still have only a vague idea of what Y is, but it seems to be large.
No David. You're assuming it's large, and using that to justify Haley's position, then using Haley's position to justify assuming it's large. ...I won't even call it circular logic.

A good general idea, but not always the best policy.
I see no compelling reason to suppose an exception to the rule.

"That would be pertinent if Belkar were consistently useful in doing so."
All that is needed to refute that is a possible way Belkar could be useful...
The 'possible way' also needs to be pertinent- i.e, impact the expected odds. You didn't meet that standard.

[factotum]

Yeah, but there's no particular evidence Haley is better informed, or better informed in such a way as to justify Belkar's presence.


I think you're kind of arguing against yourself there. If Haley is not very well informed about what dangers they're going to encounter along the road then she needs to keep Belkar as insurance, in case there's something there that is too much for her and Celia to handle alone. It's only if Haley *IS* fully informed of the possible dangers she might face that she could consider dropping Belkar.

[David Argall]

I think you're kind of arguing against yourself there. If Haley is not very well informed about what dangers they're going to encounter along the road then she needs to keep Belkar as insurance, in case there's something there that is too much for her and Celia to handle alone. It's only if Haley *IS* fully informed of the possible dangers she might face that she could consider dropping Belkar.
A point, but Alfryd's basic position here is that if Haley doesn't know of the dangers [and tell us of them], there aren't any dangers, a distinctly optimistic basis.


This is just rephrasing your 'take Haley's word for it' argument.
Yup, and she is our best source of information

Quote:
But we know that Roy's judgement is in part based on many incidents that were not deemed worthy of the honor of appearing on camera.


No... we don't.
You seem to be denying the obvious here. Roy and Belkar spend a lot of time together which is not on stage. You really want to argue that this time had absolutely no effect on his opinion of Belkar? Our writer has a duty to show us the big effects, but he can't show us all of them.

Quote:
We just can't go against his judgement in such a case.


Watch me. No, seriously, if Roy said 2+2=5, I'm not going to take his, or anyone else's, word for it.
But Roy is saying 2+2+X=5, and we find he is often right in saying X=1. So in cases where we can't do the math, we are wise to assume the same.

Quote:
Present it. [No, you can't validly say you have already done so. Copy-paste is pretty easy.]


I have already outlined in great detail exactly why Haley is wrong.
Then it should be quite easy to repeat that.
[I might note that I have had a number of critics who were in fact unable to produce that outline at all, much less in any detail. That is one reason not to accept a claim it has been done.]

Quote:
You are simply asserting this. Or rather, denying the obvious. She has spent a lot of time in or near the area in question according to our best estimate.


So... she knows it better than we do, but less well than on previous journeys to other locations, where she was clearly not especially well-informed about ambient hazards?
We don't know whether she knew previous journeys less or better. A plausible case can be made that she knows the current risks better.
[If we are correct in thinking she was part of the Greysky Thieves Guild, she would have had years of learning of the area she is now going into. But unless she was returning to Greysky after leaving the dungeon [rather unlikely], she could easily be in territory she had never entered before and had heard very little of.]

Quote:
But, as already noted, this is not to the point.


What could possibly be more to the point of forecasting Belkar's likely utility than extrapolating from prior performance?
But that too is not to the point, or rather is part of a larger point. We are comparing two risks, danger with Belkar and danger without, and want to know which is the larger. That we know precisely the size of one of them does not allow us to make a decision with any confidence. Knowing more, or less, about the more known factor just doesn't change our decision. We need to know about the other factor.

Quote:
We have to know the rewards too, and the only one with any knowledge about that is Haley...


Actually, I'm perfectly aware of the potential rewards for having Belkar along, I just don't think they're enough to justify the risk to both his party and sentient life in general.
But what is this opinion based on? except a well-justified dislike of shorty?

Quote:
Our subject at hand here was the definition of conceivable.


Was it? I must have missed the memo. My usage was intended to connote rough likelihood.
Well, you may have done that, in that conceivable more or less means highly unlikely.

Quote:
We know little or nothing about the number or type of monsters in a mountain range with a magic ecology.


I'm pretty sure the monster manual would beg to differ. Permit me to enlighten you.
http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/monsters.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/i...tm#environment
And you criticise me elsewhere for depending too much on the official rules.

These entries tell us about what a particular danger might be, but not whether that danger will happen in a particular mountain range. We are down into DM discretion here. A particular world may have mountain range X the home of Red Dragons [& the mountains are pretty much suicide to enter] while mountain range Y is full of Silver Dragons [and is more or less a walk in the park], and Z has giants instead. This is all under routine DM discretion and duty.

So our Monster Manuals, etc give us no useful knowledge of what risks Haley is running by entering these mountains.

Quote:
...to transport the body, they only need a sub-compact instead of a SUV. So the use of the SUV means they are transporting something else as well.


I have no idea where you suddenly extricated this distinction from, or how you would identify cart type A from cart type B in reality, leave alone how this diagnosis could translate to a comic based on stick figures. I therefore fail to see how this helps your case.
A cart can be of any size. PH gives a standard size, but carts obviously exist in all sorts of sizes for all sorts of needs. You need a small cart for going shopping. A street merchant needs a large cart to bring the store to you.
We are talking about a city of a half a million by one estimate. The number of carts and their variation has to be huge. [Haley is also shown talking to a cart inspector, who is almost certainly competent to build a cart.] So they have a cart of the size they need.
But the cart they have is way too big if their only need is to haul Roy around. So since they use it, and not the smaller one they could easily get, they have a need for something beyond moving Roy.


If the cart were being hauled around for purposes other than keeping Roy's body to hand (as you assert,) Belkar clearly wouldn't be owing any particular debt.
Does not follow. If you had a car that could carry 4, but you had only yourself and 2 passengers, you could carry "Roy" in the empty seat quite easily, but you would still insist that "Roy" pay for gas or otherwise help out.
And since we are assuming a somewhat infinite variety of carts here, we also have the chance that they have a cart that is too large for their normal use [they seem to make no fuss about Haley taking it], but this size is needed because Roy makes the maximum load larger.

Quote:
It is being used to counter the claim that nothing was there.


But not the claim that there is no evidence for anything else being there. Because there isn't.
That is precisely what it counters. It says this lack of evidence is meaningless. Whether or not something was there, we would see nothing.


With regards to your critique of Belkar's list of crimes, I would point out that my main purpose was to illustrate that both the party and ourselves have abundant evidence for Belkar being an active threat to other sentient creatures, and that reports of his value to the team have been greatly exxaggerated.
But these things are largely known to the team, and their verdict is that Belkar is useful, particularly in the current situation. Now if we were shown that he was actually an agent of Redcloak or something, we have grounds for overruling their verdict. But we don't have that. We have the party knowing all we know and more. That's not a situation where we have good grounds for rejecting their opinion.


the goblin teenager was neither under intimidation or went to Xykon.
Got the teenagers confused. It was the other one who warned Xykon, but yes, the kid was intimidated, by Elan, in his own special style.

Quote:
Haley can expect that a revived Roy will be able to keep Belkar within limits...


That's no good if Belkar manages to escape by then, and it still doesn't excuse taking the risk of repeat performances.
That depends on just how high the risk is, and the risk of Belkar escaping seems trivial. He has just spent 3 months in walking distance of a sorcerer and cleric who were well able to remove the Mark and he made no effort to make a deal with them. Even when he lucked into a chance, he forgot all about that and ruined his chance. Now he is in an area with no known source of the needed spell. And he has no resources to get such a spell with when he finally finds a caster. So the odds just don't seem serious.

Now more gnome killing is definitely more or a risk, but how much? On the face of it, it would seem it can be kept low. If Celia flies ahead of the party, she can make sure Haley is warned so she can block Belkar and/or Celia can just ask the visitor any questions out of the range of Belkar's blades.

Quote:
We do not know the condition of the road, We don't know the opposition... Plenty of vital factors we can only guess at.


Yeah, but there's no particular evidence Haley is better informed, or better informed in such a way as to justify Belkar's presence.
Saying there is no particular evidence here means we have to be cautious. It does not mean we don't have ground for not thinking Haley is better informed. We do have such grounds. They are merely presumptive and could be refuted by very little evidence. But until and if they are, they are the best we have, and we make decisions based on them.

Quote:
Continuing an example above, we can say Belkar will cost $10,000 instead of a range of $1000-$100,000.


I have no idea what X amount of dollars is supposed to correlate with in moral terms, but I suspect you're hauling numbers from your ass.
Of course. These are example figures, meant to illustrate the logic. They make it easier to show the point. There is no claim of their precision. Now try to focus on the logic.
That we know well the danger of Belkar does not mean the unknown danger is the lesser. Indeed, the old saying argues for the known danger over the unknown.

Quote:
We still have only a vague idea of what Y is, but it seems to be large.


You're assuming it's large, and using that to justify Haley's position, then using Haley's position to justify assuming it's large. ...I won't even call it circular logic.
a- The party has met several wandering monsters that strained the entire party, and over a distinctly limited amount of time. Haley now has way less than half of the party's power, so it is hardly circular logic to suspect she will meet creatures that are very difficult to overcome even with Belkar helping, and quite hopeless without.
b-and what "logic" is there to your position that there is no danger?

Quote:
"That would be pertinent if Belkar were consistently useful in doing so."
All that is needed to refute that is a possible way Belkar could be useful...


The 'possible way' also needs to be pertinent- i.e, impact the expected odds. You didn't meet that standard.
But of course I did. Without Belkar in the example, the chance was zero. With him it was a positive number. If you want a particular positive number, it merely requires changing the numbers a little.

[Alfryd]

If Haley is not very well informed about what dangers they're going to encounter along the road then she needs to keep Belkar as insurance... It's only if Haley *IS* fully informed of the possible dangers she might face that she could consider dropping Belkar.
Since I'm of the opinion that Belkar's average usefulness is either marginal or negative, no, I don't think that follows. It's only if Haley has some outstanding reason to believe that Belkar's presence will be key to survival to keeping him aboard makes sense.



Yup, and she is our best source of information...
She hasn't given us any information apart from "I think so".


You seem to be denying the obvious here... You really want to argue that this time had absolutely no effect on his opinion of Belkar?
I want to argue that there is exactly no evidence for it's significance to the argument. I can just as easily suppose that this time offf-camera featured Belkar being even more rapacious and erratic than when we see him on-stage, which would make Roy doubly irrational, but there's no particular evidence for it, so I don't see how it impacts the argument.

(I might well suppose, however, based on storytelling conventions, that it's unlikely the characters have been doing much of anything critically interesting off-camera. But again, this is beside the point.)

But these things are largely known to the team, and their verdict is that Belkar is useful...
I would be more inclined to say 'tolerable', but again, this is beside the point. Available evidence heavily contradicts their tacit position, which is exactly why I am criticising them for keeping it. Saying the 'the Order says so, therefore the Order is right', is flatly absurd, not to mention sycophantic. They're hardly infallible, as the comic as taken great pains to show.
David, this is exactly the same argument we've had over Haley's hypothetical pertaining expertise. It leads nowhere.

So in cases where we can't do the math...
David, this is another way of saying that, in the absence of evidence to support your position, you're going to make **** up out of thin air and then pretend that backs you up. It doesn't. Roy, and Haley- and the entire Order's- opinions are exactly that- opinions. Opinions are like *******s- everybody has one. If evidence contradicts an opinion, you discard the opinion, not the evidence.

And you criticise me elsewhere for depending too much on the official rules.
Where, exactly?

These entries tell us about what a particular danger might be, but not whether that danger will happen in a particular mountain range. We are down into DM discretion here...
GM discretion could just as easily make things easier for Haley as harder, and again, there is no evidence that Haley is sufficiently better informed on this point than ourselves.

It does not mean we don't have ground for not thinking Haley is better informed.
We have no grounds for assuming her information is adequate to justify keeping Belkar aboard.

We do have such grounds. They are merely presumptive and could be refuted by very little evidence.
Great. Because I have a damn sight more than a 'very little evidence.'

The party has met several wandering monsters that strained the entire party...
Well, yes, in that they were carefully calibrated to do exactly that by the DM... But again, this is assuming that Belkar's statistical usefulness outweighs his prevalent drawbacks here, which I don't believe to be true.

... That's not a situation where we have good grounds for rejecting their opinion.
But what is this opinion based on? except a well-justified dislike of shorty?..
Then it should be quite easy to repeat that.
I find it quite difficult to believe you have suffered a sudden lapse in recollection on this recent point, so I really don't see why the burden of effort should be on me here. I will refresh your memory.

...There is overwhelming evidence that only the threat of direct personal harm has kept Belkar from commiting first-degree murder for no good reason on many prior instances, and complete certainty that his lack of discipline has severely endangered his own team on multiple occasions. He's not an asset, he's a liability. Keeping him on the team by this point is not just immoral, but irrational.

...However proficient Belkar may be in combat, all that counts for exactly nothing when he disobeys orders in battle to indulge his short-sighted adenaline-junkie hijinks, or actively work against his party's best interests. I don't want that person at my back when I go to sleep. I want him several hundred miles removed from my position, and preferably dead.

...Yes, so that cancels out. Once you toss in the likelihood of outright betrayal and his propensity for butchering hapless strangers on the flimsiest of pretexts, that's a net loss for his own team- particularly a more-or-less Good-aligned team.

...Belkar cannot be relied upon to help, and there is a very serious danger he will actively screw the team over. He limits tactical options, and he butchers innocent lives. "He might, statistically speaking, be useful in situations where all you need to do is point and stab" is simply not good enough anymore. And going out of your way to limit the damage is, in itself, an encumbrance. The fact this mission is critical for Haley only makes dumping him more urgent.

We don't know whether she knew previous journeys less or better. A plausible case can be made that she knows the current risks better.
Ah, then clearly, there is no reason to suppose that she needs to bring along a cart for the purpose of hauling supplies, as you had argued earlier, given that she was able to secure provisions easily enough on other such journeys.

We need to know about the other factor...
In the absence of contrary information, I will assume that Belkar will continue to behave in more or less the same fashion he's done beforehand, which makes dropping him the rational and moral decision.

PH gives a standard size, but carts obviously exist in all sorts of sizes for all sorts of needs...
I don't consider this obvious at all. For all we know, this is the minimum size of cart. And where's the evidence they could easily get another? Y'know, given that the hobgoblins are running more or less the entire city, and bulk supplies are hard to come by? There is nothing close to adequate backing for your position here.

Oh, also:
Again, you are saying that you, the amateur outsider who knows very little about the situation, is correct while the expert on the scene and knows all of this better than you, is wrong. The odds are just poor that you are right.

Does not follow. If you had a car that could carry 4... ...Roy makes the maximum load larger.
Irrelevant, David. Since Roy isn't even alone in the cart at that point, there is no reason to single out Belkar for hauling duty unless he is solely responsible for having the cart along in the first place.

And there is absolutely no evidence that the cart was intended to haul supplies, either then or later.

It says this lack of evidence is meaningless. Whether or not something was there, we would see nothing.
Actually, since we have seen inside the cart beforehand, and saw NO SUPPLIES, that's what I'm going to go with actually being there. And I'm sorry, you're still not entitled to arbitrarily assume that supplies are present and take that assumption as positive evidence for your position. That is simply not how valid reasoning works.


...the kid was intimidated, by Elan, in his own special style.
I fail to see how this justifies killing him.

That depends on just how high the risk is... the odds just don't seem serious.
David, as we've over before, When your life is on the line, 400-1 odds in your favor are not very good odds. And ditching Belkar would involve tempting fate once. Failure to ditch Belkar is tempting fate over and over again.

...This is particularly relevant when other people's lives are on the line. Risking your own neck is one thing, risking that of all Belkar's future acquaintances is quite another. If you want to deal in terms of cost/benefit ration, consider the scores of future innocents that will be massacred should Belkar manage to cut loose when they hit Cliffport. That is the greater evil to consider here.

I can regurgitate previous points here as easily as you can, David, I just won't assume that readers are too stupid to notice.

...the old saying argues for the known danger over the unknown.
Right. And belkar's prediliction for pointless slaughter, ineptitude and backstabbing is a very well-known danger.
...what we both know in voluble depth and certainty is that Belkar is a very real and present danger, as opposed to a hypothetical, uncertain one down the road.

But of course I did. Without Belkar in the example, the chance was zero.
That would be relevant if the chance of the example were 100%, and if there weren't counter-cases of equal likelihood. We've been over this.

He has just spent 3 months in walking distance of a sorcerer and cleric who were well able to remove the Mark and he made no effort to make a deal with them...
Well, strictly speaking I should point out there is merely no evidence that he made an effort to make a deal with them, but unlike certain people, I'm not going to conjure a hypothetical attempted-but-failed meeting out of thin air and pretend that backs my argument. Instead, I will point out that prior to his meeting with Tsukiko, he had no reason to suppose he would be greeted with anything other than a well-aimed meteor swarm, which is understandable enough given that he was on the team that tried to, y'know- kill Xykon and Redcloak.

If Celia flies ahead of the party, she can make sure Haley is warned so she can block Belkar and/or Celia can just ask the visitor any questions out of the range of Belkar's blades.
How does Haley block Belkar, exactly?
Also, while Celia is doing scouting duties, why not use her to warn Haley of approaching monsters so she can sneak past them, or simply carry Haley with her while she flies to Cliffport? Oh that's right- because they have to bring along a cart for Belkar's convenience, thus limiting stealth and mobility, despite his doing absolutely nothing to entitle him to such consideration. Y'know, I think that suggests a logical course of action. It starts with 's', and ends with 'litting his throat.'

Failing that, simply fly off into the sunset, and leave the mark of justice to do it's richly deserved work.

[David Argall]

Since I'm of the opinion that Belkar's average usefulness is either marginal or negative, no, I don't think that follows. It's only if Haley has some outstanding reason to believe that Belkar's presence will be key to survival to keeping him aboard makes sense.
Again we see an attitude of I am right unless categorically shown to be wrong, which is about impossible to do with the limited information from the strip.


She hasn't given us any information apart from "I think so".
And that is all we need to make a presumption she is right.
Note here that when a member of the party is wrong, they are generally shown up right away. Roy opens a door, saying "How bad can it be?" We get to see all the really bad stuff that is going to happen in the same picture. The party speculates about what is waiting for them with Xykon in his throne room, and the next picture each time shows them quite wrong. They go after the star metal, and we get told even as they leave town that they are being side-tracked by Nale. They ask what possible use is there of a hydra, and we immediately get shown a use.
So if Haley was wrong in her estimate of the danger, we would get some hint of that.


I want to argue that there is exactly no evidence
Again with the excessive precision.


I can just as easily suppose that this time offf-camera featured Belkar being even more rapacious and erratic than when we see him on-stage,
Of course, but then you would still be saying that these relations had an effect. And it could be a very big one. Recall here all of Origen. This was, until published, matter that happened off camera. But it matters much in how we view these people. So we say the off-camera items did have an effect.
Now we can't say in advance what way they had an effect. Positive, negative, whatever. But they lend an element of doubt and we then have to defer [more] to the writer's opinion, as expressed by the characters.


(I might well suppose, however, based on storytelling conventions, that it's unlikely the characters have been doing much of anything critically interesting off-camera. But again, this is beside the point.)
This is the way to bet, but it is a bet. It's common enough for some off-camera event to be the start of something big. Jane has never appeared before, but now she shows up and we finally hear about the great time the hero had 9 months ago ... Roy & Durkon visited the Oracle off camera. We hear about that about 350 strips later.


I would be more inclined to say 'tolerable',
Roy actively attempts to keep Belkar with the party when after the star metal and to kill the ogres. That is a good deal more than toleration.


Available evidence heavily contradicts their tacit position,
Belkar kills a lot of stuff in the dungeon. He kills the Hag on the side trip. He slices up an ogre or two in that fight. He slices up the hydra. In the war, he kills a hill of foes and then rescues the party with his new toy. In the resistance, he rescues Haley.


this is another way of saying that, in the absence of evidence to support your position, you're going to make **** up out of thin air and then pretend that backs you up.
What we have is a shortage of evidence, and we have to make the best of it.


Roy, and Haley- and the entire Order's- opinions are exactly that- opinions. Opinions are like *******s- everybody has one. If evidence contradicts an opinion, you discard the opinion, not the evidence.
So where is the evidence contradicting their opinion? You have evidence confirming it.


GM discretion could just as easily make things easier for Haley as harder, and again, there is no evidence that Haley is sufficiently better informed on this point than ourselves.
You keep on saying that, and keep on ignoring the evidence we do have. It may be scanty, but it definitely suggests Haley does know more than we do.


We have no grounds for assuming her information is adequate to justify keeping Belkar aboard.
We have entirely adequate grounds. We merely have limited demonstration of that evidence.


But again, this is assuming that Belkar's statistical usefulness outweighs his prevalent drawbacks here, which I don't believe to be true.
Such is your opinion. But that is the opinion of the outside amateur.


...There is overwhelming evidence that only the threat of direct personal harm has kept Belkar from commiting first-degree murder for no good reason on many prior instances, and complete certainty that his lack of discipline has severely endangered his own team on multiple occasions. He's not an asset, he's a liability.
He is not as useful as he could be. That does not mean he is not useful. Threats have been effective in limiting or eliminating his murderous tendencies. He has of course endangered the party, but has also saved it.


...However proficient Belkar may be in combat, all that counts for exactly nothing when he ...
Not at all. We see him do a number of useful things and the balance is distinctly in his favor.



...Belkar cannot be relied upon to help, and there is a very serious danger he will actively screw the team over.
None the less, he helps more often than not.


"He might, statistically speaking, be useful in situations where all you need to do is point and stab" is simply not good enough anymore.
Why not? On the face of it, that is precisely what Haley is likely to need in the near future.


And going out of your way to limit the damage is, in itself, an encumbrance. The fact this mission is critical for Haley only makes dumping him more urgent.
The fact this mission is critical is why she does not dare dump him. In just about any melee situation, his help will be vital. And she is very likely to face several of those. Belkar is distinctly unlikely to do anything that will stop the mission. He needs it to succeed too. The death of the gnome after all increased the chance of its success. Given his bad judgement, we can't say he won't screw it up, but we can say he won't be trying to.[/QUOTE]
And as has been noted often before, all this is criticism of Belkar, and doesn't tell us a thing about the risks and trials that lie ahead. But if we don't know those, we simply can't make a judgement. You are taking the position that since we don't know for sure a monster waits, Haley can blithely proceed on the assumption there is none. Haley and I take the position that there has been one every time before, and we had best be ready for it.



Ah, then clearly, there is no reason to suppose that she needs to bring along a cart for the purpose of hauling supplies, as you had argued earlier, given that she was able to secure provisions easily enough on other such journeys.
Does not follow. We don't know that she was able to secure provisions easily on these journeys. We just know she didn't starve to death. Also she may have been in territory where a cart was impractical, or the cart may have broken down off camera, or ...


In the absence of contrary information, I will assume that Belkar will continue to behave in more or less the same fashion he's done beforehand, which makes dropping him the rational and moral decision.
Moral, quite possibly. Practical, not at all until we know the risks ahead. There are too many monsters Haley's only effective tactics are a meat shield or running away fast.


For all we know, this is the minimum size of cart.
Oh go look at some carts. They vary from a tenth that size to twice or more.


And where's the evidence they could easily get another? Y'know, given that the hobgoblins are running more or less the entire city, and bulk supplies are hard to come by?
On the available evidence, they can simply build one if they need to. And an invaded city has lots of leftovers lying around. The city had to have thousands of carts, and the resistance can get one, rebuild one, or steal one [See air freshner+5 to see that is quite possible.]


Oh, also:
[i]Again, you are saying that you, the amateur outsider who knows very little about the situation, is correct while the expert on the scene and knows all of this better than you, is wrong. The odds are just poor that you are right.
But I am saying the expert is right here. They know their needs and are using the right sized cart, which means it can't be just for hauling Roy around.


Since Roy isn't even alone in the cart at that point, there is no reason to single out Belkar for hauling duty unless he is solely responsible for having the cart along in the first place.
This just does not follow. He does not need to be solely resposible to have a duty. We might posit a rotation. That it was Thant's turn would not release Belkar from a duty not that Thant is out of it. Or any of many other possibilities.


And there is absolutely no evidence that the cart was intended to haul supplies, either then or later.
Again with the absolutes where they don't belong. We can call the evidence weak, but there is definitely evidence, starting with its size.


Actually, since we have seen inside the cart beforehand, and saw NO SUPPLIES,
We have seen its inside when there would probably be no supplies no matter how much it is used to carry supplies. Any supplies would have been unloaded and taken elsewhere, not to mention that due to an unsuccessful raid, there may have been none this time.


And I'm sorry, you're still not entitled to arbitrarily assume that supplies are present and take that assumption as positive evidence for your position. That is simply not how valid reasoning works.
What is invalid reasoning is closing your eyes and insisting that if you don't see any supplies, there are none. We know that all too often, things we don't see are there.


I fail to see how this justifies killing him.
It doesn't, but it means he does not classify as one of the crimes you list.


And ditching Belkar would involve tempting fate once. Failure to ditch Belkar is tempting fate over and over again.
Both are the same number of chances, as far as our ignorant view is concerned. We are tempting fate every time some innocent comes by, but we have no idea how many of those we will face. And we are tempting fate every time we might encounter a monster. We just don't know which of those will be more common.


...This is particularly relevant when other people's lives are on the line. Risking your own neck is one thing, risking that of all Belkar's future acquaintances is quite another. If you want to deal in terms of cost/benefit ration, consider the scores of future innocents that will be massacred should Belkar manage to cut loose when they hit Cliffport. That is the greater evil to consider here.
So what is the chance that Belkar will manage to cut loose? On the available evidence, quite low. He has limited resources, a limited ability to plan, and assumes he will get freed of the mark by just following Haley and sorta obeying her. Plans do fall apart, but on the face of it, Belkar in Cliffport is pretty harmless.


Right. And belkar's prediliction for pointless slaughter, ineptitude and backstabbing is a very well-known danger.
...what we both know in voluble depth and certainty is that Belkar is a very real and present danger, as opposed to a hypothetical, uncertain one down the road.
A popular gameshow of the moment is Deal or No Deal. You select a briefcase that may have a sum of money from $.01 to $1 mil. You are then offered a definite amount of money for that briefcase. The offer is entirely definite. The money you might get is hypothetical, but you are routinely better off refusing the definite money and hoping for a better offer later.

Same thing applies here. Belkar is a definite danger, but that does not mean he is more important than the uncertain danger.


That would be relevant if the chance of the example were 100%, and if there weren't counter-cases of equal likelihood. We've been over this.
Apparently not adequately enough.

Your statement was
"That would be pertinent if Belkar were consistently useful in doing so."
That is an absolute statement. If it is right 99 times and wrong once, it is wrong. Period. The chance of the example does not need to be 100%. It does not even need to be 1%. It merely needs to be possible. There can be zillions of counter-cases or zero. It just does not mater.

So the one case, whether rare or common, that shows Belkar might be useful means the statement is wrong. Since we have that one case, the case is closed. The statement is wrong.


prior to his meeting with Tsukiko, he had no reason to suppose he would be greeted with anything other than a well-aimed meteor swarm, which is understandable enough given that he was on the team that tried to, y'know- kill Xykon and Redcloak.
None the less, he apparently didn't try, at least not very hard. So it is a strike against any idea he is going to try to escape his "jailers".


How does Haley block Belkar, exactly?
Any of a number of ways, depending on circumstances. A quick flash of her chest might keep Belkar distracted. Or maybe she just keeps the cart a long way from the visitor, so that it's too far for the easily distracted Belkar to reach him before he gets bored. Or ...


Also, while Celia is doing scouting duties, why not use her to warn Haley of approaching monsters so she can sneak past them, or simply carry Haley with her while she flies to Cliffport?
There is the possibility of flying monsters of course, and while Sabine was able to carry Thog and Nale, Celia may well have a distinctly lower ability to carry a load. Indeed, we would assume so. Sabine really shouldn't be able to carry the two. So it's quite possible she can't carry Haley for any serious distance.

[FujinAkari]

Again we see an attitude of I am right unless categorically shown to be wrong, which is about impossible to do with the limited information from the strip.

Which is -completely- different than your attitude of "Well, my opinion is right regardless of how often the comic contradicts it as long as I can facsimilate some exceedingly improbable sequence of events that allow both."

Both of you refuse to admit to being wrong unless God Himself descends from the Heavens to deliver said refutation, so this objection (from you) seems preposterous.

[factotum]

Both of you refuse to admit to being wrong unless God Himself descends from the Heavens to deliver said refutation, so this objection (from you) seems preposterous.

In the case of David Argall not even that is enough...he was still arguing that Haley should have known about Cloister after the strip where it was proved categorically that she did NOT know about it.

[Alfryd]

Again we see an attitude of I am right unless categorically shown to be wrong, which is about impossible to do with the limited information from the strip.
I think I'm right because there's strong evidence to suggest that Belkar is a dangerous liability, and little or nothing to indicate that Haley has adequate justification for keeping him on the team.

But I am saying the expert is right here. They know their needs and are using the right sized cart, which means it can't be just for hauling Roy around...
And that is all we need to make a presumption she is right.
Why on earth would I presume that Haley is right when are plenty of reasons to suppose she's wrong?

Note here that when a member of the party is wrong, they are generally shown up right away...
So if Haley was wrong in her estimate of the danger, we would get some hint of that.
Oh, so now we're shifting the argument from 'Haley is always right', to 'Rich is always obliging enough to make it clear when they are wrong', also known as- 'Rich is always right, and I can also reliably predict how Rich will behave'. Oddly enough, I don't find that argument massively compelling either.

We can call the evidence weak, but there is definitely evidence, starting with its size...
Again with the excessive precision...
David, at this point I would settle for any precision.

Now we can't say in advance what way [unknown events] had an effect. Positive, negative, whatever. But they lend an element of doubt and we then have to defer [more] to the writer's opinion, as expressed by the characters.
'The characters' would include Bitterleaf. Are you going to argue that Rich is really in full sympathetic agreement with Belkar, now?

It's common enough for some off-camera event to be the start of something big...
Great, let me know when theres some evidence for said off-camera event, unfolding in such a way that it would justify Roy/Haley's position, as opposed to retroactively assuming it transpired for your own convenience.

He has of course endangered the party, but has also saved it...
We see him do a number of useful things and the balance is distinctly in his favor...
Belkar kills a lot of stuff in the dungeon. He kills the Hag on the side trip. He slices up an ogre or two in that fight. He slices up the hydra. In the war, he kills a hill of foes and then rescues the party with his new toy. In the resistance, he rescues Haley.
Yeah, but as the strip has gone to great pains to show, generally because his short-sighted bloodletting antics miraculously coincided with the party's best interests at that point in time. I mean, seriously, he was about a hair's breadth away from selling out to Tsukiko, and only his glaring ritalin deficiency turned the situation about. I'm far-from-convinced that the balance of utility is in his favour, certainly not to the degree that a Good-aligned party could really stomach the collateral damage he inflicts with a clear conscience.

As just one example where he landed his team in hot water- which I missed earlier- Belkar gets involved with pursuing hobgoblins, thus giving away his and Haley's position, despite the mark of justice, and again, only a miraculous confluence of circumstances manage to save their bacon. And the list goes on- he's a disaster waiting to happen. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

What we have is a shortage of evidence, and we have to make the best of it.
I don't recall a particular shortage of evidence on my part.

Belkar is distinctly unlikely to do anything that will stop the mission.
So where is the evidence contradicting their opinion? You have evidence confirming it.
I went through a list of several dozen instances on which Belkar has demonstrated precisely how he is at least as much of a liability as an asset. Explain to me how this is not evidence -in terms other than 'the Order say so.'

Such is your opinion. But that is the opinion of the outside amateur...
You keep on saying that, and keep on ignoring the evidence we do have. It may be scanty, but it definitely suggests Haley does know more than we do.
No, it suggests only that Haley thinks she knows enough to justify keeping Belkar aboard. As it happens, I'm pretty certain that I do, in fact, know more about Belkar than she does in certain respects, given that we've had access to Belkar-related scenes in the comic where Haley was not present.

Why not? On the face of it, that is precisely what Haley is likely to need in the near future.
What Haley needs is to get to Cliffport ASAP without attracting undue attention. An ungovernable psychopath who slows them down, gives away their position, or threatens to switch sides in mid-battle is not a reliable help there.

There are too many monsters Haley's only effective tactics are a meat shield or running away fast...
In just about any melee situation, his help will be vital. And she is very likely to face several of those.
As long as Belkar is along, yes, I imagine she will, because he makes it difficult to avoid melee situations in the first place. This strikes me as one of the many reasons for downsizing in the halfling department.

And we are tempting fate every time we might encounter a monster. We just don't know which of those will be more common...
But if we don't know those, we simply can't make a judgement. You are taking the position that since we don't know for sure a monster waits, Haley can blithely proceed on the assumption there is none.
I'm saying nothing of the sort. I'm arguing that even in situations where monsters/hostile NPCs do await, Belkar has a distinct tendency to muck things up badly enough that the team would be as well or better off without him getting involved. And that's without considering the prospect of outright betrayal, friendly fire- (and I do mean fire-) and/or parole violation.


Any of a number of ways, depending on circumstances. A quick flash of her chest might keep Belkar distracted. Or maybe she just keeps the cart a long way from the visitor, so that it's too far for the easily distracted Belkar to reach him before he gets bored. Or ...

Does not follow. We don't know that she was able to secure provisions easily on these journeys. We just know she didn't starve to death. Also she may have been in territory where a cart was impractical, or the cart may have broken down off camera, or ...
...Go on.
...No, please, go on. I believe you were saying something funny.

Oh go look at some carts. They vary from a tenth that size to twice or more.
In 21st-century reality, yeah, I imagine they do. How does this translate to a stick-figure fantasy webcomic, again?

On the available evidence, they can simply build one if they need to...
What available evidence?

[See air freshner+5 to see that is quite possible.]
...right, that was merely the most dangerous mission they'd ever undertaken.

We have seen its inside when there would probably be no supplies ...We know that all too often, things we don't see are there.
Yes, they're just an infinitesimal minority next to the things-we-don't-see-that- *gasp*- aren't there!

None the less, he apparently didn't try, at least not very hard....
So what is the chance that Belkar will manage to cut loose? On the available evidence, quite low.
Belkar has taken every viable chance to escape the mark of justice- such as those that didn't involve dying horribly- that he had time and opportunity to pursue. When your life is on the line, 400-1 odds in your favor are not very good odds.
A Good-aligned character simply does not have the right to make that kind of cost/benefit analysis unless s/he has an absolutely ironclad justification. For which, thus far, on Haley's part, there is no significant evidence.

Same thing applies here. Belkar is a definite danger, but that does not mean he is more important than the uncertain danger.
There's just no evidence for it. There isn't. It's not there.

The chance of the example does not need to be 100%. It does not even need to be 1%. It merely needs to be possible. There can be zillions of counter-cases or zero. It just does not mater.
Yes it does if you want to demonstrate that it impacts the odds. If it doesn't, then it's irrelevant- not pertinent.

There is the possibility of flying monsters of course, and while Sabine was able to carry Thog and Nale, Celia may well have a distinctly lower ability to carry a load...
Unless 100% of the monsters they meet are airborne, given that Celia was evidently able to ferry Roy about with ease I don't see how tranport by air is anything less than a win-win scenario.



Both of you refuse to admit to being wrong unless God Himself descends from the Heavens to deliver said refutation, so this objection (from you) seems preposterous.
All I'm asking is some direct evidence for Haley actually knowing what the hell she's talking about, in a way that would justify letting Belkar get away with murder scot free and remain on the team. It isn't there, so naturally, David can't find it, but, equally naturally, it'll take him several pages of recalcitrant debate to avoid admitting it.

Elan is barely tolerable- he at least means well (for whatever that's worth)- but by this point, Belkar is only marginally more useful in combat, far less trustworthy, and unabashedly evil in just about every way that it's possible to be. He really does have no significant redeeming character traits at all- no loyalties, no remorse, no ulterior motives, no tragic background, not even a well-honed sense of self-preservation- just the unquenchable thirst for indescriminate pointless slaughter.

Haley can't claim that she's a passive, uninvolved spectator here, because she could do what needs to be done faster and safer without Belkar tugging on her coat-tails, and even if Belkar were the neccesary means to an end, the means to an end still reflect on her. All that is needed for evil to prevail is that good women do nothing.

[David Argall]

I think I'm right because there's strong evidence to suggest that Belkar is a dangerous liability, and little or nothing to indicate that Haley has adequate justification for keeping him on the team.

[QUOTE=Alfryd;4127763]Why on earth would I presume that Haley is right when are plenty of reasons to suppose she's wrong?
There are plenty of reasons to suppose she is right too. [See trail of dead monsters.] And there are plenty of reasons we simply don't know the value of either reasons for or against.


Oh, so now we're shifting the argument from 'Haley is always right', to 'Rich is always obliging enough to make it clear when they are wrong', also known as- 'Rich is always right, and I can also reliably predict how Rich will behave'.
Given I have criticized the author often enough, including quite recently, I can hardly plea that. However, it is rather obvious that our writer can easily show the presence of Belkar to be vital or a drag, and do so without us being able to point to any gross flaw [like designing a grossly overpowered, and rather misdesigned and useless, spell].
My bet is the next time we will be seeing Haley & company will be as they arrive at Cliffport grumbling about how rough the trip is. Now the idea of a strip of Belkar bragging about all the times he was useful while Haley and Celia describe times he was definitely not does sound attractive, but any sort of balance like that argues in Belkar's favor.]

However, the point would remain the same. Belkar is written as definitely useful to the party. A powerful drawback as well, but, on net, useful. Compare to Elan who is clearly labeled useless. We can question whether your view of his pictured actions is simply wrong, or the artist has done a poor job, but the general picture is clear enough. Belkar does a number of useful things and it is no great stretch on our part to assume that the net is that Belkar is useful.


at this point I would settle for any precision.
I note several cases in this post where you demand the absolute.


'The characters' would include Bitterleaf. Are you going to argue that Rich is really in full sympathetic agreement with Belkar, now?
Such as right here. The writer is never in full sympathy with any of the characters. Wanting a claim of full sympathy is just a distraction. None the less, each will act as his voice at times.


Great, let me know when theres some evidence for said off-camera event, unfolding in such a way that it would justify Roy/Haley's position, as opposed to retroactively assuming it transpired for your own convenience.
If there is evidence of an off camera event, it is no longer off camera. But we still know a huge amount of off-camera events have happened, and that many of them have influenced the story. We just do not know what ones or how.


Yeah, but as the strip has gone to great pains to show, generally because his short-sighted bloodletting antics miraculously coincided with the party's best interests at that point in time.
Nothing miraculous about it. The party effectively pointed to the foe and said "kill".


I mean, seriously, he was about a hair's breadth away from selling out to Tsukiko, and only his glaring ritalin deficiency turned the situation about.
And it is a good bet the idiot will mess up any future chance to change sides as well.


I'm far-from-convinced that ...
One is far from convinced about many things about a story. Often you have to cut the writer some slack.


I don't recall a particular shortage of evidence on my part.
We have two boxes and are trying to determine which is heavier. We have no shortage of information on the one box, but we lack that information on the other. And our knowledge of the 1st box does not mean it is the heavier. We know all about Belkar, but we need to know all about the threats ahead.


I went through a list of several dozen instances on which Belkar has demonstrated precisely how he is at least as much of a liability as an asset.
Now since you have barely considered the cases where he is an asset, you certainly have not demonstrated at all that he is a net liability, much less demonstrated precisely.


Explain to me how this is not evidence -in terms other than 'the Order say so.'
Of course it is evidence. It is simply not all of the evidence and the more complete evidence is more favorable to Belkar.


No, it suggests only that Haley thinks she knows enough to justify keeping Belkar aboard. As it happens, I'm pretty certain that I do, in fact, know more about Belkar than she does in certain respects, given that we've had access to Belkar-related scenes in the comic where Haley was not present.
But those scenes do not really alter our view of Belkar. They simply add to the picture of him liking to hurt & kill people, etc. If you told them to Haley, she would not gasp in shock. Rather, she would say "So did you really expect different?"
She might also say "I already knew that." Belkar is not much for keeping secrets and may well have bragged about most of his evil deeds to the party. We do know the rest of the party learned of his taking a level of barbarian for example.

By contrast, what do we know about what waits on the road ahead? The effective answer is we have no idea. We can make some guesses, but we have no confidence in them. We can point to likely monsters where Belkar will be useless and ones where he will be vital. So we are quite in the dark.
But Haley may know. If she knows even to a minor degree, she is far better able to judge the value of Belkar than we are.


What Haley needs is to get to Cliffport ASAP without attracting undue attention.
Neither limit seems at all certain. She assumes she will have to wait weeks before she can be contacted. While the trip is assumed to take longer, she can't be sure of that, and so is probably in no great rush to arrive. And if Celia's theory of rich aggressive monsters is correct [by the way, a reason to have Belkar along, tho we have our doubts of Celia's knowledge], Haley wants to be noticed during the trip so she can collect the coin needed to contact Durkon or V, and/or raise Roy.


An ungovernable psychopath who slows them down, gives away their position, or threatens to switch sides in mid-battle is not a reliable help there.

But one that can slaughter hundreds of hobgoblins, kill hydras and hags, etc is.


I'm arguing that even in situations where monsters/hostile NPCs do await, Belkar has a distinct tendency to muck things up badly enough that the team would be as well or better off without him getting involved.
Yet that does not seem to match the party experience, or available evidence. In the dungeon, he rescues the party from Unholy Blight, and in general is killing things. He disposes of the Hag. He takes out the hydra. In the seige, he kills lots of enemy and rescues the party from the archers. On the face of it, the party would not have survived without him. [Now, they might well have done better with a different #6, but his positive contribution seems clear.]


In 21st-century reality, yeah, I imagine they do. How does this translate to a stick-figure fantasy webcomic, again?
Carts have been around for thousands of years, quite possibly 10,000. And they have been of all sizes even within a culture. So they are simply part of the background of the culture.


What available evidence?
What not evidence? We are talking about a task the average untrained worker can manage. We have a city where cartmakers are a recognized profession. [true of any big city, tho the cartmaker doesn't always specialize in that] We have Haley and her subordinate acting as if cart checking [and thus repair and creation] is a routine task.
You are asking for evidence where it is not needed.


...right, that was merely the most dangerous mission they'd ever undertaken.
Which means the task of getting a cart would have been much easier.


Yes, they're just an infinitesimal minority next to the things-we-don't-see-that- *gasp*- aren't there!
Apples and oranges. The things that aren't seen, but are there are the plot related and the stuff that would be there if they were not too much bother to draw. The point is that what we don't see is not what we can say is not there.


A Good-aligned character simply does not have the right to make that kind of cost/benefit analysis unless s/he has an absolutely ironclad justification.
Good aligned or not, you simply can't avoid making such a cost/benefit analysis. You can disguise from yourself that you are doing so, and likely mess it up as a result, but you are still doing it.


There's just no evidence for it. There isn't. It's not there.
As has already been noted, many times, that does not mean we ignore it. Evidence of the monster is not there, but the monster is.


Yes it does if you want to demonstrate that it impacts the odds. If it doesn't, then it's irrelevant- not pertinent.
Where are we saying we want to demonstrate it impacts the odds? Your statement was that Belkar could only be useful if he was consistently useful. The math showed this was not necessary. End of story.


Unless 100% of the monsters they meet are airborne, given that Celia was evidently able to ferry Roy about with ease I don't see how tranport by air is anything less than a win-win scenario.
Not easy to see off hand, but recall here that the story derives facts from conclusions. Haley & Celia flying to Cliffport is dull. Therefore it is not going to happen and either they are too dumb to figure out the idea, or it is not actually practical for some reason we don't know. Here we can speculate that Celia can't really fly for all that long. She is good for short flights, but she would be exhausted by the extended journey in mind here. Alternately, we might guess that there are monsters that attack fliers. It doesn't matter. Once a reason becomes somewhat plausable, we can no longer say confidently our alternative is superior or even possible.


All I'm asking is some direct evidence for Haley actually knowing what the hell she's talking about, in a way that would justify letting Belkar get away with murder scot free and remain on the team.
See how you keep on adding restrictions.
If Haley knows what she is talking about, she has justification for letting Belkar get away with murder. There is no need for evidence. It's there. You just have not been told it.
We have Haley as an experienced adventurer who is well aware of Belkar's behavior, and who seems to have a better idea than we do what lies ahead. The idea that she knows what she is talking about seems entirely reasonable.


Elan is barely tolerable- he at least means well (for whatever that's worth)- but by this point, Belkar is only marginally more useful in combat, far less trustworthy, and unabashedly evil in just about every way that it's possible to be.
And yet Roy eagerly recruits Belkar while treating Elan as somebody he doesn't have the heart to tell to go away. It would seem Belkar is much more useful in melee than you would make out.

[Alfryd]

And yet Roy eagerly recruits Belkar...
There is no need for evidence. It's there. You just have not been told it...
By contrast, what do we know about what waits on the road ahead?
Of course it is evidence. It is simply not all of the evidence...
We know all about Belkar, but we need to know all about the threats ahead...
And there are plenty of reasons we simply don't know the value of either reasons for or against.
This, again, is rephrasing your 'take Haley's/the Order's word for it on the basis of no evidence' non-argument. The Order. Are. Wrong. And Haley is even wronger, since she has even more direct evidence for Belkar's true dispositions. (Beside which, between various disastrous episodes and the mark of justice, along with poor build decisions, Belkar has steadily shown himself to be more dangerous and less useful as time goes by.)

Now since you have barely considered the cases where he is an asset...
In the dungeon, he rescues the party from Unholy Blight, and in general is killing things. He disposes of the Hag. He takes out the hydra. In the seige, he kills lots of enemy and rescues the party from the archers. On the face of it, the party would not have survived without him.
He kills lots of CR 1/2 hobgoblins, which as it happens made approximately no difference to the battle's actual outcome (though I will note it might if he had thought to actually go and reinforce V's position -like that was going to happen.) So what if he kills a few monsters that Roy or Durkon could dispose of with ease and V, most likely, by sneezing? Or spares the party a few shaved-off-HP here and there? That's what I call marginal utility- and comes nowhere close to making up for his more egregious cockups.
It's time they found a replacement.

You need to prove a strong balance of practical utility in Belkar's favour, known mutually by ourselves and Haley, before you can claim justification for her keeping him on the team despite the equally strong, mutually known risks of betrayal, escape, or butchered innocents in his path.

However, it is rather obvious that our writer can easily show the presence of Belkar to be vital or a drag... Belkar is written as definitely useful to the party. A powerful drawback as well, but, on net, useful.
This, again, is rephrasing your 'Rich is always right, and I can also reliably predict how Rich will behave' non/argument. Unless, of course, you're referring to the sequences of events in the strip itself, in which case, the balance of evidence indicates nothing of the sort.

My bet is the next time we will be seeing Haley & company will be as they arrive at Cliffport grumbling about how rough the trip is...
Probably, but given the trip might be far less eventful if they didn't have Belkar in tow in the first place, what about it?

Not easy to see off hand, but recall here that the story derives facts from conclusions. Haley & Celia flying to Cliffport is dull. Therefore it is not going to happen and either they are too dumb to figure out the idea, or it is not actually practical for some reason we don't know...
What the hell does this have to do with the basic rationality of Haley's position?


I note several cases in this post where you demand the absolute.
Yeah- Absolutely anything.

The writer is never in full sympathy with any of the characters. Wanting a claim of full sympathy is just a distraction. None the less, each will act as his voice at times.
Right, and it will just so happen to be the character that supports David Argall's position at this particular point in time.

If there is evidence of an off camera event, it is no longer off camera.
This may well be true, but irrelevant. You still can't retroactively asume it transpired for your own convenience.

But one that can slaughter hundreds of hobgoblins, kill hydras and hags, etc is...
Nothing miraculous about it. The party effectively pointed to the foe and said "kill".
He only paid attention to what the party said because he wanted to kill the foe at that particular point in time regardless. His definition of 'foe' will adjust accordingly when working with said party is no longer in his best interests. Actually, given he actively lusts for the death of several co-workers, I'd say it already has.

However proficient Belkar may be in combat, all that counts for exactly nothing when he disobeys orders in battle to indulge his short-sighted adenaline-junkie hijinks, or actively work against his party's best interests.

And it is a good bet the idiot will mess up any future chance to change sides as well.
Yeah, not to mention any future chances to assist his own team. But in the first instance he only needs to beat the odds once- the party have to do so over and over again. Again, from a storytelling perspective I know full well that Belkar won't escape the team anywhere in the nar future- but that doesn't make the PC's decisions objectvely right or rational.

One is far from convinced about many things about a story. Often you have to cut the writer some slack.
I'm not criticising the writer here; I'm critising the Order. (Of course, if Rich genuinely agrees with their position here, or blithely expects us to arrive at the same conclusion based on available evidence, then I would, indeed, be criticising Rich- but that's not in evidence. Lords know it took long enough for him to finally drill Belkar's alignment into readers' heads.)


If you told them to Haley, she would not gasp in shock. Rather, she would say "So did you really expect different?"
Again, I pretty well agree, but the Order apparently had a different take on the issue. You're kinda preaching to the choir here.
The point being it's absurd to argue that Haley is intrinsically better informed about Belkar than we are, simply because she's been around him when we weren't, given that we were "around him" when she wasn't. We have to make decisions about others' justification on the basis of mutually available information.

Haley wants to be noticed during the trip so she can collect the coin needed to contact Durkon or V, and/or raise Roy.
Again, victory in combat is something Belkar hinders as often as he helps by this point. Against ground-based monsters, an airborne team has distinct advantages- and heck, Haley can always loot items from Belkar's corpse/inventory to pay for later expenses. Plus- she's a rogue. Financing herself in any large city should be a relatively straightforward affair- it's what the class revolves around, for frack sake. If worst comes to the worst she can simply sell some of Roy's items. She can use her damned imagination, for once!

Carts have been around for thousands of years, quite possibly 10,000. And they have been of all sizes even within a culture.
I dont recall the ancient egyptians hauling around little red wagons when they went shopping, David- I imagine, that, say a basket might be more practical- but... this is beside the point.

The idea that she knows what she is talking about seems entirely reasonable...
Once a reason becomes somewhat plausable, we can no longer say confidently our alternative is superior or even possible...
What not evidence? ...You are asking for evidence where it is not needed.
See, here, I think we can find the root of our basic divergence in approach. In the absence of evidence to actively contradict your position, you conjure whatever you need to back your stance out of thin air (optionally hauling some numbers from your ass,) wrap it all up in self-obsfuscating semantic pendantry and present it as proof positive for your so-called "argument."
There is no evidence that there's a cart-maker among the refugees, no evidence that they have the materials, no evidence that this would be their priority, and no evidence that Haley even thought to consider a smaller cart in the first place. There is no evidence that flying monsters will be encountered, no evidence that Celia would get tired, and no evidence that this would somehow outweigh all the practical dangers of a longer overland journey. There is no evidence that Haley has outstanding knowledge of future hazards, no evidence for a need to haul supplies, and no evidence for Belkar being vital to success. You are compounding vacuous supposition upon vacuous supposition upon vacuous supposition ad nauseum and fantasizing that this all makes for a reasonable defence of the patently indefensible. Who, exactly, are you kidding here? Just because people get bored of arguing with you doesn't mean that you've convinced anyone- you must, at minimum, adhere to certain standards of positive evidence, error-admission, and consistency.

Which means the task of getting a cart would have been much easier.
Evidence? Oh, that's right. You don't have any.


The things that aren't seen, but are there are the plot related and the stuff that would be there if they were not too much bother to draw.
It's not related to the plot, it's related to your flailing delusions of esoteric plausibility.

Good aligned or not, you simply can't avoid making such a cost/benefit analysis.
What, toying with innocent lives? I don't recall that consideration cropping up when I butter toast.

Your statement was that Belkar could only be useful if he was consistently useful.
I said it would only be pertinent if he were consistently useful. Your argument was, and remains, irrelevant.

See how you keep on adding restrictions. ...If Haley knows what she is talking about, she has justification for letting Belkar get away with murder.
Then I'm hardly adding restrictions, am I?

[David Argall]

This, again, is rephrasing your 'take Haley's/the Order's word for it on the basis of no evidence' non-argument.
Or to put it a different way, on the basis of the lack of evidence against her position. [As has been noted before, evidence against Belkar is only part of the problem, and quite possibly not the important part. We need to know the challenge ahead before we can measure how useful or useless Belkar will be, and that is what Haley knows better than we do.]



The Order. Are. Wrong. And Haley is even wronger, since she has even more direct evidence for Belkar's true dispositions. Belkar has steadily shown himself to be more dangerous and less useful as time goes by.)
But we see no change in party attitude. They deemed Belkar a useful monster hundreds of strips ago, and still do. We get no hint this is wrong on their part. So the default is that there has been no change in Belkar.


He kills lots of CR 1/2 hobgoblins, which as it happens made approximately no difference to the battle's actual outcome
That can be said of the entire party. On a more doing his share basis, we note that Belkar's hob slaughter is deemed serious enough to be reported to the enemy commander.


So what if he kills a few monsters that Roy or Durkon could dispose of with ease and V, most likely, by sneezing? Or spares the party a few shaved-off-HP here and there? That's what I call marginal utility-
Marginal utility is what each member of the party provides. Each party member has been vital at different times.



and comes nowhere close to making up for his more egregious cockups.
Again you are putting your judgement against that of the professionals on hand. Roy [and most everybody else] thinks Elan is pretty useless and he is more or less merely not forced to leave. Everybody deems Belkar a vicious monster. They don't deem him a drawback on the battlefield. We have Roy actively recruiting him despite full knowledge of his behavior.


It's time they found a replacement.
Which is what Haley has no way to doing at the moment. Replacing him when they get to Cliffport may be possible, but everybody within range is incompetent or hostile.


You need to prove
Your base position is "Haley is wrong", which means you need to prove that.


a strong balance of practical utility in Belkar's favour,
Rather clearly, any balance in his favor would seem to be enough, and unless you are using a detailed definition here, even a balance strongly against him can still leave his as highly desirable.



[i]known mutually by ourselves and Haley,
Not in the slightest. We routinely depend on story characters to summerize evidence that is not presented to us. [A case from the comic would be Miko going crazy. Based on what we actually see of her behavior, it is distinctly out of character. So we have a rather large amount of testimony from various characters that it was in character.]



despite the equally strong,
But what equally do we in fact know? This seems another case of your slipping in your judgement.


mutually known risks of betrayal, escape, or butchered innocents in his path.
The first two seem to be rather trivial risks. On the available evidence, there is going to be nobody to betray the party to, and no desire on Belkar's part to escape. If we meta-game, there is virtually no chance will be killing innocents any time soon either. Our writer likes to vary his jokes and that means brutally and casually killing an innocent bystander once is funny, but doing it again... not so much. So there is a serious chance this incident is not going to happen again.
Staying within the game, we have an unknown, but rather clearly substantial, chance the party simply won't encounter any more innocents. Indeed, they have never encountered any before the gnome in all their wanderings. And as noted a more alert Celai and Haley may well be able to prevent Belkar from killing more. [And Belkar may not be as dangerous after this. While Belkar does not need much of an excuse for his killings, he does need one, and since he has a mule now, he is short his most immediate excuse.]


Probably, but given the trip might be far less eventful if they didn't have Belkar in tow in the first place, what about it?
You are deriving your facts from your conclusions again. We don't know that it would be less eventful, and it may not even be possible.


What the hell does this have to do with the basic rationality of Haley's position?
Because facts set by our writer that are unknown to us can be well known by the characters. Haley can easily know that Celia can't fly for more than an hour a day, or know these mountains are full of flying monsters that eat fliers, or ... We, by contrast, do not know these things until the author tells us. And until the author tells us, we generally have to assume the character is acting rationally.


This may well be true, but irrelevant. You still can't retroactively asume it transpired for your own convenience.
Nor can you assume it did not happen. Which of course leaves us back with Haley being the expert we must trust until we find different.


He only paid attention to what the party said because he wanted to kill the foe at that particular point in time regardless.
But he has also obeyed when the party has said "Don't kill" even when he wanted to kill. Of course the reason has often been because of threats to kill him if he didn't, but we still have that he obeyed.



Yeah, not to mention any future chances to assist his own team. But in the first instance he only needs to beat the odds once- the party have to do so over and over again.
There seem to be very few cases of the first instance vs quite a few of the 2nd, which are not particularly linked. Each time he does help, he is useful.


I'm not criticising the writer here; I'm critising the Order.
Both. The party members are speaking as the writer in these cases. Note the several cases where we see a statement immediately show to be wrong by a cutaway scene, or in conversations where another party member contradicts the speaker. Subtract these and you pretty much have the rest as the writer speaking thru the character.


The point being it's absurd to argue that Haley is intrinsically better informed about Belkar than we are, simply because she's been around him when we weren't, given that we were "around him" when she wasn't.
But the information we have when Haley wasn't around doesn't really change any views about Belkar. He [mis]behaved about the same as he did with Haley around. So Haley is in a better position to judge Belkar than we are.


We have to make decisions about others' justification on the basis of mutually available information.
As said, no. We routinely read stories where we find ourselves making judgements based on statements of the various characters rather than any mutual knowledge. The dramatic case would be like O'Chul and the shark tank. O'Chul didn't have any choice, but often we see the hero tell a lesser figure something like "Cover me. I'll charging the impossibly defended position." and does so after the 2nd banana protests this can't be done. He then procedes to successfully do this feat that we had no idea he could do, beyond that he said he could.


Again, victory in combat is something Belkar hinders as often as he helps by this point.
And again, this assertion simply goes against the evidence.


I dont recall the ancient egyptians hauling around little red wagons when they went shopping, I imagine, that, say a basket might be more practical-
You don't seem to be challenging the basic points here, that different sized carts exist within a culture.


In the absence of evidence to actively [i]contradict your position, you conjure whatever you need to back your stance out of thin air (optionally hauling some numbers from your ass,) wrap it all up in self-obsfuscating semantic pendantry and present it as proof positive for your so-called "argument."
And such is frequently valid logic. Note you concede the lack of evidence contradicting the position.


There is no evidence that there's a cart-maker among the refugees, no evidence that they have the materials, no evidence that this would be their priority, and no evidence that Haley even thought to consider a smaller cart in the first place.
And there is also no evidence of the reverse. [Actually there is some in favor of the cart since Haley is demanding somebody inspect and repair it.]

We do not conclude from a lack of evidence that there is evidence of a lack. We ask if these things are reasonable, and at each point, we get the answer yes.


You are compounding vacuous supposition upon vacuous supposition upon vacuous supposition ad nauseum and fantasizing that this all makes for a reasonable defence of the patently indefensible.
But you have rather totally failed to show anything of the sort.



Evidence? Oh, that's right. You don't have any.
And you have presented none that makes us think the cart presents a problem.


What, toying with innocent lives? I don't recall that consideration cropping up when I butter toast.
It would be rather in the background. But you bought that toast and butter in all liklihood without asking if they were made in safe ways that didn't endanger workers or bystanders. In fact, you in some trivial degree likely increased the danger by insisting on the low price, which limited the money that could be spent on safety. So you were indeed toying with innocent lives.


I said it would only be pertinent if he were consistently useful. Your argument was, and remains, irrelevant.
But as the argument demonstrates, he does not have to be consistently useful for it to be pertinent. The trip can be entirely impossible without him while possible with him even tho he is a drag most of the time. Something that is vital to success rather easily meets the definition of pertinent.

[hamishspence]

in the real world, not every decision is based on a cost-benefit analysis, and failure to do so is not automatically bad. There is a long continuum between making decisions based entirely on subconciously compiled information "hunches" and those based on pure logic.

That said, Belkar has been getting the Order in trouble for a very long time and not being kicked out despite this (setting fire to tent- mess up rescue, chase lawyer- accidently trigger explosion of hotel, etc)

So I would not expect any changes. Haley's control over him is far weaker than Roy's, so it would not surprise me if they got in trouble again due to his impulsive and vicious personality. Combat prowess should never be the only factor in deciding whether to keep him, and the vast majority of D&D parties would not keep an ongoing troublemaker.

I'd say the only good reason for Haley NOT leaving him is that he would probably cause more evil on his own, plus she has no realistic chance of beating him without resorting to stealthy murder, which would also be evil. Currently it is negligence, rather than actively commiting an evil act. Her attempt at discouraging him from doing it again, while pretty tiny, is still an attempt. Belkar himself has claimed (bandit camp) he can be forced not to misbehave.

Roy knew Belkar was dangerous from the way he was acting and talking, and his hint that he was wanted by the law, when he hired him. the question was, was he trying to minmise the trouble Belkar was causing by threatening to kill people to get on the team, self interest in getting a tracker, or both? Probably a bit of both.

His claim to the deva that he feared the trouble a free Belkar on the loose would cause, could be after-the-fact justification, or it could be the truth. Is it possible for Roy to tell outright lies to an Official of Celestia and not get caught? Not very likely I would say.