Results 1,471 to 1,491 of 1491
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2020-12-04, 12:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2009
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- Birmingham, AL
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Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
I agree, but I'm just noting it's possible that they don't need to.
Also, paladins aren't connected to deities at all. They can be, but there's nothing in mechanics or fluff that states anything about a connection to a deity. Most of the Sapphire Guard we've seen were, but then I suspect that's more of an Azurite trait than a Sapphire Guard trait.Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 2
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2020-12-04, 02:14 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2015
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- Alamogordo
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Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
I know it's a facetious argument, but seeing as people were trying to argue that we couldn't properly argue that Minrah was included in the casting of Telepathic Bond on the basis that we didn't explicitly see her targeted by its effect (and even argued against that assumption despite the tendril of magic reaching out of frame in her presumed direction)...
Shouldn't we also assume that none of the party is affected by Mass Death Ward on account of Durkon's magic not affecting other party members? Especially since every instance of Mass spells being cast (that I can recall) shows the IME hitting everyone (the Mass Inflict vs Mass Cure during the Vamp fight, for example)?
P.S. wow that is a ridiculously fast time for the creatures to be skinned and carved (things having been taken off of them). And I guess this serves as concrete confirmation for some of the mechanical aspects of the dungeons, in that they respawn monsters every few months. Or was that already known from an earlier page.Characters I've enjoyed playing for more than four sessions:
Falgar the Swiftblade
Revain Sumeth, Whip Fighter Extraordinaire
Malvin Firel, Cleric of Corellon, Destroyer of Undeath
Vongur Dorent, Primeval Champion of Poverty
In defense of the Vow of Poverty
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2020-12-04, 02:36 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2009
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2020-12-04, 02:59 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2014
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
"You can't take any of this seriously unless you like aggravation" is also a decent thread title, but not as good as "Everyone's an Expert."
As far as the Telepathic Bond discussion, and ignoring a lot of the argument over what standards we do or don't use (for my money, we actually have an implicit and healthy bias towards making assumptions that actually let us measure things, otherwise we wind up with no stats at all and...everyone is just an Expert):
Since we clearly see Blackwing as part of the bond from more than 5 feet away, that means that Haley, Elan, Roy, Belkar, Durkon, Blackwing, and V are all targets. The simplest explanation until we hear Minrah "talk" this way is that there are 6 targets and V is level 17.
That said, this would be a little weird, and V's use of "all" in 1220 would be suspect, plus Minrah does look to be casting and wouldn't have known the plan that V mind-spoke to everyone in 1221. I don't think anyone will want to push for a "V is level 20" explanation, and I would say that while there is definitely precedent for ignoring the number of targets of a spell, I don't think we have enough information to say whether that's more or less likely than a house rule about Blackwing either being able to share spell beyond 5 ft (definitely would be a house rule, the SRD text is clear).
If there were 6 targets for sure, I would vote for it being good enough evidence of V being 17 that we should take it, but given that there are likely 7 targets (maybe we'll know for sure in a few panels or maybe not) we are probably left with a situation where don't have enough evidence to invoke a house rule, let alone know which house rule is in effect unless someone wants to propose a non-outlandish way for V to have included an extra target.
If we want to know what Rich was thinking, we still can't know whether he doesn't remember or don't know about the rules, but my guess would be that he knows the rules pretty well and maybe even looks up a spell description if he's not super familiar, so it's totally possible he decided to ignore the number of targets (since as noted he doesn't much care about that sort of thing), but I would slightly lean towards him either mis-remembering or handwaving the share spell rules.
However, authorial intent is pretty clearly _not_ the goal of this thread. I like to think that Rich reads this thread just for kicks, but he probably doesn't and definitely doesn't care what we think about details.
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2020-12-04, 03:07 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2013
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
Go back and reread the strip where V casts Force Cage against the vampire spawn. I'm fairly certain that line about giving too much information was aimed at the Forum.
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2020-12-04, 04:09 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2015
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- Alamogordo
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Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
I mean, it wouldn't really give too much information, since the statement that they only have two Mind Blank spells would pin them down as being level 16+, which is not that different from 16 (without the plus).
Characters I've enjoyed playing for more than four sessions:
Falgar the Swiftblade
Revain Sumeth, Whip Fighter Extraordinaire
Malvin Firel, Cleric of Corellon, Destroyer of Undeath
Vongur Dorent, Primeval Champion of Poverty
In defense of the Vow of Poverty
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2020-12-04, 06:10 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2020
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
I'd still argue for level 17+, which allows us to include the possibility of level 20 (pending more proof in upcoming strips), and means we only have to handwave 1 rule at most (familiar distance) not 2 (caster level). The prima facie assumption should always be the rules are in effect, and so far there isn't one example we can't explain away (not Shojo's wizard, not Tsukiko, not Durkon), and we've seen explicit evidence that caster level is not handwaved. Not when it's used to peg the duration of V's forcecage, and not when V can cast on exactly 13 pikemen and no more (if the rules were just ignored he'd have been able to cast on however many he felt like). We've seen more evidence caster levels are tied to spell effects than we have familiar rules being obeyed tbh. If we're going to handwave one rule, that'd be the better candidate.
While we're on the subject of caster levels, Durkon seems to have either proven he's level 14, or is very close to doing so given the spells he's cast today. Assuming he had to cast wind walk twice off panel, and given he just cast heal, he'd be level 14 to cast three 6th level spells. There's also the fact that he and Minrah were already Death warded and he just cast mass death ward again (Rich told us that his version of mass death ward is a 7th level spell, as he had no idea an official version existed). True, they could each have cast death ward on themselves, however even that will have some implications. I also query how that is even possible. Regular death ward is 1 minute per caster level. Could Durkon really have warded both of them prior to his chat with Redcloak and still have it in effect? Could Minrah, given the lower casting level? Minrah and Durkon have cast enough spells in the day that we're already pretty close to being able to say some things about their level regardless.Last edited by TooSoon; 2020-12-04 at 06:59 PM.
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2020-12-04, 07:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2012
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- Scotland
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Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
ISTM there's actually a solution to the Telepathic Bond problem. Remember that The Order were originally 3E, not 3.5E characters. I posit that V cast Telepathic Bond with the 3E version of Empower Spell. He probably used this before when casting Owl's Wisdom on Belkar (strip, someone?). We had a big discussion about it. The 3E version increased all numeric effects, not just variable numeric effects. So a 3E Empowered Telepathic Bond can affect ten people at 18th level, which neatly can include Mr Scruffy and Bloodfeast and uses an 8th level slot.
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2020-12-04, 08:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2020
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
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2020-12-04, 09:48 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2016
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- Earth and/or not-Earth
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Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
So what would you accept as evidence that a rule is not in effect, either in general or in this situation in particular? It seems to me that, given how many different scenarios in which we have to find some sort of rationalization, often a fairly contrived one, to explain how they are congruent with the rule, it's more reasonable to say that the rules for how many targets a friendly transportation or communication spell can affect are not being strictly enforced.
I made a webcomic, featuring absurdity, terrible art, and alleged morals.
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2020-12-05, 12:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2019
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- Cloudcuckooland, USA
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
Last edited by ByzantiumBhuka; 2020-12-05 at 12:33 AM.
A student by vocation, a D&Der by avocation (a wizard by evocation).
Order of the Stick Trivia XXIII: 50% More Entertaining than Speculating About MitD!
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2020-12-05, 12:37 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2020
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
There are ways we could see the rules were being ignored consistently; for instance, if people whose stat sheets we had a firm idea of were constantly breaking them (so if we knew Durkon's Mass Death Ward could only effect 3 people per level, but he was buffing 6 people and we had solid proof he was only level 14). Instead it's the other way around. The guys we have solid stat blocks for like V are hewing to the rules consistently (34 hour forcecage, 13 pikemen only for buffs, etc). It's a bunch of obscure examples of characters we don't even have stat blocks (or proper stat blocks) for that are wheeled out as examples, like Shojo's Wizard and Tsukiko (both of which perfectly reasonable explanations were trotted out for). Sometimes Rich actually tells us he's breaking a particular rule too (for eg, when the forum worked out Mass Death Ward was impossible for Durkon's apparent level, Rich came onto the forum and said "Jesus, I didn't even know there was a real Mass Death Ward spell that was 8th level... so mine is a homebrewed 7th, ok?!"
Here there is no specific evidence, just people hate levelling up certain characters. Nobody uses this sort of logic to argue against Miko or Hinjo or Hayley's levels based on attacks per round, because nobody cares about them enough. It's not consistent or fair. V apparently demonstrated level 17+ at least by the rules as written, arguably level 20+. He should get that until proof to the contrary is provided; not the other way around. If people are happy to argue for level 20 I'm willing to go with that too. Either 17 or 20 is more accurate than 16.
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2020-12-05, 03:02 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2019
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
V said she only added Telepathic Bond to her spellbook recently, in Tinkertown. So she didn't have it before the conversion to 3.5, and we can't assume that 3.0 versions of spells are available for purchase out in the world. (Sabine's Fly was explicitly a house-ruled exception.)
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2020-12-05, 03:08 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2009
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
The issue would not be on the spell Telepathic Bond but instead with the feat Empower Spell - but I would be inclinded to discount that possibility unless we are given reason not to.
Also it was Zz'dtri's fly spell.
In relation to a feat that would allow Vaarsuvius to cast as a level of 21 caster while still being level 16 as mentioned Pious Spellsurge does this fine.
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2020-12-05, 04:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2012
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- Scotland
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Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
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2020-12-05, 04:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2019
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2020-12-05, 09:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2007
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- Northern Ireland
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Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
"They couldn't know that the points from the mainline to the siding were frozen, and the signal should have been set at 'DANGER', but snow had forced it down."
- The Flying Kipper
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2020-12-05, 10:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2012
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- Scotland
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2020-12-05, 10:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
We are using Pompey being able to untie himself and Sabine as evidence of silent and still spell, however as animate rope has a duration of 1 round per level and he could have cast it to tie them up when Roy announced his presence and then untie them a few rounds later when Roy was in front of them it seems that his usage is not conclusive of his level or feat selection.
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2020-12-05, 12:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
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- Seoul
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Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
Cool elan Illithid Slayer by linkele.
Editor/co-writer of Magicae Est Potestas, a crossover between Artemis Fowl and Undertale. Ao3 FanFiction.net DeviantArt
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Currently playing: Red Hand of Doom(campaign journal)Campaign still going on, but journal discontinued until further notice.
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2020-12-05, 12:19 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2007
Re: Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...
And here's the expertly written new expertise thread for experts: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...ne-s-an-Expert
Guide to the Magus, the Pathfinder Gish class.
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