Class and Level Geekery IX: the thread levels up again!

[dps]

I would be very surprised to learn that any two of the nine* adventurers currently making up the Order of the Stick and the Linear Guild are different levels**.

*If Tarquin, Malack, and Kilkil are Linear Guild members, Redcloak has a bridge to Terebithia to sell you.
**ECL for Sabine may interfere with this. But something--either her actual class level or her ECL--is the same as the level of Nale, which is the same as the level of Haley, which is the same as the level of Roy, etc., etc.

It's been explicitily show that not all members of the OotS level up at the same time. Even if they happen to all be at the same level right now, they haven't been throughout the whole story.

I don't know about this honestly.

I think too much stock is being put into a one-off joke about a bit-part villain.

Beyond that, Crystal and Haley were shown to have been rivals long before the events of the story start--it's part of Haley's backstory. Nale and Elan only became rivals during the course of the story--Elan wasn't even aware of Nale's existance, and while Nale knew of Elan, he did offer Elan the chance to join up with the Linear Guild.

If, hypothetically, you rolled up a high-Int Fighter in a party with a Wizard, and that Wizard cast Blade Barrier in a fight (using the OotS method of shouting "Blade Barrier" to make it obvious to all and sundry), and a few days later the Fighter saw the same spell in effect, having already been cast by the same Wizard, would you make him roll Spellcraft to identify it?

The rules are contingent on how a reasonable DM would use them. It is entirely reasonable for a DM to rule that Tarquin recognizes Blade Barrier without a check in this case. And since the burden of proof rests firmly on those seeking to add information to the OP, I don't have to provide my own evidence; I only have to subject yours to a reasonable doubt. Which is a reasonable rule, as 'Tarquin doesn't necessarily have ranks in Spellcraft' is not a claim that can be proved with evidence, yet it is the counterclaim to yours.

I agree. In gameplay, knowledge checks are supposed to be used to see if a character has knowledge of something based on their background and out-of-game training, not things they have learned about in-game. For example, if an adventuring party has never encountered a bugbear in-game before, a knowledge check is appropriate to see if any of them know enough lore to recognize the creature they are encountering. If one of them does, and tells the others, "That's a bugbear" then from then on, all of the party should recognize a bugbear if they encounter one again, without any knowledge checks (baring things like having their memories wiped, etc.).

In the context of a story, rather than in gameplay, if the author decides that a character has seen his teammate casts a specific spell before, and recognizes it, then the character does so.