OOTS #1219 - The Discussion Thread

[Ruck]

Spoiler: Spoilers for "Number the stars"

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This involves a powder mixed from rabbit blood, to attract the dog, and cocaine, to numb their sense of smell.

Spoiler

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Cocaine: Is there anything it can't do?

[locksmith of lo]

and... there is the small difference that haley is temporaily bypassing the trap, not disabling it nor letting it trigger. i wonder if this is important too, since team evil probably either just charges in or takes a moment to disable repetative trap.

[Bunny Commando]

if I understood correctly, Haley said it resets at every individual passage.
also true the 'if then' block of pseudocode triggered by the trap, if is at every individual passage, need a timeout to expire internally, if activate something in the maze.
without a timeout, it would have now been triggered since the first step, from the bugbears, years ago.
and/or, if the effect it is associated to the individual, like an invisible mark, that might have an expiration time.

well now I believe it is likely related to the mysterious character of the book.

You are right, thanks for pointing out that detail to me.

[Fishman]

And now Belkar is useful as a ranger???

We don't know if Belkar is being useful as a RANGER. After all, the SRD makes no mention of this as a ranger ability specifically, and Belkar is a terrible tracker. Given that Roy knows the abilities of a ranger and expected Belkar to actually have those abilities (and he didn't), his disbelief that Belkar has this ability may be confusion as to why Belkar can do this when it isn't part of his class ability set at all.

It is likely something that he has learned outside of being a ranger, like his abilities as a chef, because it's not part of the ranger skillset.

[Charity322]

Lies! Belkar doesn't know how to track!

[Goblin_Priest]

We don't know if Belkar is being useful as a RANGER. After all, the SRD makes no mention of this as a ranger ability specifically, and Belkar is a terrible tracker. Given that Roy knows the abilities of a ranger and expected Belkar to actually have those abilities (and he didn't), his disbelief that Belkar has this ability may be confusion as to why Belkar can do this when it isn't part of his class ability set at all.

It is likely something that he has learned outside of being a ranger, like his abilities as a chef, because it's not part of the ranger skillset.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/ranger.htm#track

Rangers get Track at level 1...

[danielxcutter]

Also Survival is one of the skills that can be used untrained(if poorly) IIRC.

[Shining Wrath]

Haley Rogue abilities FTW.

Belkar ranger abilities FTW.

Durkon and Minrah raising the issue of tracking - well done.

The team is teamworking well.

EDIT:

A sadistic trap would be one that, if the gate can be reached via this entrance, rearranges the dungeon so that the path no longer exists.

A good tribute to strength (and dwarves) would be to seal the Gate inside a few hundred feet of rock that has been enchanted against being removed magically. The only way in is with a pickaxe.

[ratfox]

On a meta level, I'm thinking of the reason they open one door, and then go through the other one. Not from their point of view, from the narrative point of view; as in, why did The Giant wrote it this way. It could be simply that Team Evil will assume they went through the first door (since they didn't close it). But much more likely is that it is to establish that every door has a similar line of runes. And indeed, checking 1216, we can faintly see a similar line behind each door.

Great narration!

[Goblin_Priest]

Has anyone considered that maybe the trap at the start, since it has no blatant effect, is what conceals the gate? That one can only access the gate if the traps are bypassed?

[danielxcutter]

Has anyone considered that maybe the trap at the start, since it has no blatant effect, is what conceals the gate? That one can only access the gate if the traps are bypassed?

It's too soon to say, but I think it's safe to assume it has something to do with how the dungeon works.

[Peelee]

Has anyone considered that maybe the trap at the start, since it has no blatant effect, is what conceals the gate? That one can only access the gate if the traps are bypassed?

Yes, many people so far.

[elros]

Further proof that the party has moved forward: Roy used to think they were doomed when Belkar would act like a Ranger.

[Fyraltari]

It's too soon to say, but I think it's safe to assume it has something to do with how the dungeon works.

I don't see why. It might just trigger a fireball to soften the intruders for the monsters. Or something of that effect.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I don't see why. It might just trigger a fireball to soften the intruders for the monsters. Or something of that effect.

We have seen TE walk both in and out of dungeons repeatedly, and no massive fireball has been seen so far. Nor any other indication that they are aware of any deleterious trap about to hit them.

GW

[Shale]

We can also be pretty sure it's not a mind-altering effect, since that would get obvious pretty fast with a lich crossing the threshold side-by-side with a team of living cohorts.

[danielxcutter]

And if it requires a save, then it eventually wouldn't have worked on at least one of the members of Team Evil; trap DCs tend to be low and most of them can get pretty high save bonuses after buffs anyways, not to mention that someone could roll a nat 20.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

not to mention that someone could roll a nat 20.

*Nat 1, I'd imagine, since we are talking about missing a saving throw.

Third thought (closely related to my first): maybe this is a counter, but of a very simple type: it counts how many people are crossing the threshold at the same time. And if it is more than 1, you are out of luck to get to the gate. This is a Temple of Personal Might. No teams allowed.

Grey Wolf

[Fyraltari]

We have seen TE walk both in and out of dungeons repeatedly, and no massive fireball has been seen so far. Nor any other indication that they are aware of any deleterious trap about to hit them.

GW

That's a good point but it could also be that side-stepping this trap has become routine to them and so not worth mentionning anymore.

[KorvinStarmast]

The 3.5 Scent rules ... and as a DM or reader I would find this idea attractive enough to agree to.

concur.

Sort of the opposite of none of them being the door- they are all the door, and the existence of the choosing game is the sleight of hand.

It also allows whomever seeks the gate to keep wasting time and not find it until they grok that there's a game being played ... quite a meta joke, come to think of it.

I can't speak for anyone else, but given that the bug ear village has been there for quite some time,

While I realize that this is a typo, I have a new headcanon: Oona, leader of the Bug Ear Tribe.

... Serini's back door system ...

The front door is the back door ... yeah, I like that.

Hell, I never understood why O'Chul seemed to want to find the gate.

Hinjo told him to.

Probably the idea is "If I can get there first, I can be better prepared to defend it"

And that.

Wait, so Roy was asking Elan for advice in the last strip and actually listened to him... And now Belkar is useful as a ranger??? Folks, we are still in the illusion! Nothing of the last 330 strips was real!

Lack of purple frames harms this concept ...

Third thought (closely related to my first): maybe this is a counter, but of a very simple type: it counts how many people are crossing the threshold at the same time. And if it is more than 1, you are out of luck to get to the gate. This is a Temple of Personal Might. No teams allowed.

Neat idea, and opens the door for O-Chul to find the gate. Or, MiTD, going in all alone.

[danielxcutter]

*Nat 1, I'd imagine, since we are talking about missing a saving throw.

Third thought (closely related to my first): maybe this is a counter, but of a very simple type: it counts how many people are crossing the threshold at the same time. And if it is more than 1, you are out of luck to get to the gate. This is a Temple of Personal Might. No teams allowed.

Grey Wolf

No, I did mean nat 20. Because if the trap prevents TE from getting to the Gate somehow(such as illusions or teleportation) and it offers a saving throw, then someone should have realized what was going on by now. But that didn't happen, so it's very likely the "trap" has nothing to do with actually affecting the people who enter in the first place.

[Metastachydium]

Has anyone considered that maybe the trap at the start, since it has no blatant effect, is what conceals the gate? That one can only access the gate if the traps are bypassed?

Yes, many people so far.

Also, it would not be a very good idea. „You cannot beat the dungeon unless you have a high level rogue with you, who'll automatically let you find the McGuffin of cosmic importance” is not what I would call a sound defense strategy. I mean, whoever enters a dungeon without one of those (other than Team Evil, that is)?

[danielxcutter]

To be fair, there's a certain limit as to how well you can protect stuff from high-level characters. You can make it hard for them to get in, but making it impossible can't really be done without DM fiat or literal divine influence. It's not like Serini or any of the Scribblers are that much higher level than the Order anyways.

[Grey Watcher]

To be fair, there's a certain limit as to how well you can protect stuff from high-level characters. You can make it hard for them to get in, but making it impossible can't really be done without DM fiat or literal divine influence. It's not like Serini or any of the Scribblers are that much higher level than the Order anyways.

Do we know for sure? All we know is they hit epic levels, which could mean anything from "they each have exactly enough XP to get to Level 21" to "literally Level 50." (Yes, the latter is highly unlikely, but theoretically possible with the info we have so far.)

[Goblin_Priest]

Also, it would not be a very good idea. „You cannot beat the dungeon unless you have a high level rogue with you, who'll automatically let you find the McGuffin of cosmic importance” is not what I would call a sound defense strategy. I mean, whoever enters a dungeon without one of those (other than Team Evil, that is)?

Well it was designed by a high level rogue.

And nobody suggested it would automatically reveal the gate. I don't get why so many people have the reflex to jump at "no you can't have this safety mechanism because X could defeat it". Stacking defenses just makes things tougher.

As it stands, we know: Sirini was an epic rogue with likely mastery of traps, she made this dungeon, she filled it with big tough monsters as a tribute but in no way should we expect "be bigger and tougher" to be the key to the gates, she seemingly put a trap on each door, and these traps have no overt effect that we can see.

So "triggers something else further down off-screen" is a pretty likely explanation. Another one is that it's an alarm. There could be other explanations, for example, the trap might be what actually fills the dungeon with monsters.

Narratively, I don't see a point to adding a trap that calls a dead or insignificant third party, or spending the time to disable a useless trap.

Option 1 could lead the heroes directly to the gate, I see no other reason for it. Option 3 could help the tide of battle by allowing the order to hunk up in the dungeon and then having monsters come and flank Team Evil as they trigger it. It could work whether or not the gate is through this door.

[Metastachydium]

To be fair, there's a certain limit as to how well you can protect stuff from high-level characters. You can make it hard for them to get in, but making it impossible can't really be done without DM fiat or literal divine influence. It's not like Serini or any of the Scribblers are that much higher level than the Order anyways.

For sure, but building a huge system of dungeons where EVERY SINGLE DOOR leads to the prize if you have a good enough rogue to dismantle one trap at the entrance… Now, that would mean the one who built the place wasn't even trying or worse yet, wished to sabotage her own efforts.

[Wildstag]

Further proof that the party has moved forward: Roy used to think they were doomed when Belkar would act like a Ranger.

Eh, it's been clear he's moved forward when he started to rely on Belkar as a person to actually have a heart-to-heart with. Besides, Roy was annoyed when Belkar snuck off to make a buttload of skill checks, but he also felt confident enough in Belkar's ability to be a Ranger that he was even brought along to the Godmoot.

My personal hope is that the line trap is actually a reoccurring thing in the dungeons. Basically, if you walk over the runes without disarming them, they create a mystery dungeon that has a randomly generated set of rooms and monsters. If you disarm the trap and continue disarming each following trap, it is instead the pregenerated Gate dungeon with rooms and monsters and features specific to defending the gate. But to actually disarm the traps consistently, you'd need to be a high level PC.

It's not technically a shell game (since if it were, the gate would be in another castle), but an endless dungeon.

[Goblin_Priest]

Do we know for sure? All we know is they hit epic levels, which could mean anything from "they each have exactly enough XP to get to Level 21" to "literally Level 50." (Yes, the latter is highly unlikely, but theoretically possible with the info we have so far.)

I don't think it's possible to legit level to lvl 50. When the CRs are too distant you just don't get any XP. It's already hard to gain XP at levels below 30, I'm not even sure there's any monsters with a CR above that. Just reaching level 30 requires insane amounts of time chasing extremely rare opponents. For level 50, you could go kill all the gods and still not be close to your target.

For sure, but building a huge system of dungeons where EVERY SINGLE DOOR leads to the prize if you have a good enough rogue to dismantle one trap at the entrance… Now, that would mean the one who built the place wasn't even trying or worse yet, wished to sabotage her own efforts.

Who said any door would lead to the prize? Stacked defenses. Pick the right door AND disable the trap, nor OR. Even if it was, though, it'd still be a better ruse than "the gate is under the statue".

[danielxcutter]

Do we know for sure? All we know is they hit epic levels, which could mean anything from "they each have exactly enough XP to get to Level 21" to "literally Level 50." (Yes, the latter is highly unlikely, but theoretically possible with the info we have so far.)

Considering that Lirian and Dorukan both got their asses handed to themselves by Xykon, who is the final boss for a party only just in their late teen levels, they can't be that high.

Though to be honest, if you get a Death Ward effect and fire resistance you've essentially protected yourself from like 75% of what the big X can do. He's extremely powerful, but at the same time I could probably do a bit better with his build. Of course, Rich probably wouldn't do that even if he did remember enough of 3.5e to optimize heavily and he's already a bit too stronger than the Order if you ask me. Like, seriously, an epic version of Redcloak would be "extremely powerful, but can be taken down if you're good enough". Xykon is "you literally can't use 95% of your abilities to do crap to him, and your wizard can get yanked out of the battle at any moment" which is why I'm betting on "he gets shoved into the Rift and the Snarl eats him".

[Goblin_Priest]

Considering that Lirian and Dorukan both got their asses handed to themselves by Xykon, who is the final boss for a party only just in their late teen levels, they can't be that high.

Though to be honest, if you get a Death Ward effect and fire resistance you've essentially protected yourself from like 75% of what the big X can do. He's extremely powerful, but at the same time I could probably do a bit better with his build. Of course, Rich probably wouldn't do that even if he did remember enough of 3.5e to optimize heavily and he's already a bit too stronger than the Order if you ask me. Like, seriously, an epic version of Redcloak would be "extremely powerful, but can be taken down if you're good enough". Xykon is "you literally can't use 95% of your abilities to do crap to him, and your wizard can get yanked out of the battle at any moment" which is why I'm betting on "he gets shoved into the Rift and the Snarl eats him".

The other 20% being lighting (electric), and 5% being magic missile (force).

Death Ward, Resistance to Fire, Resistance to Electricity, Shield, and you are pretty well covered.

That's why he's got Superb Dispelling, though.