OOTS #1241 - The Discussion Thread

[TRH]

It looks to me like they saved against Hilgya's Chaos Hammer in #1117 as well. I know it deals half damage on neutral creatures, but it seems like V made their Will save and took only half of that.

That's still kind of conjecture. #935 I'll concede is more likely, but it's unclear what effect that was supposed to be, so I'm holding on to my headcanon that V has Saving Throws: No to go along with having no stat besides Int that's higher than 8.

[Wysper]

I see the Order's saving throws remain slaves to the plotline . . .

They've never met a Saving throw they couldn't fail.

[Alexandrite]

Yeah, I've no problem with the heroes losing fights or being on the ropes, it can make for good storytelling. But it gets pretty egregious when their biggest problem is "oh, we all failed our saving throws again"

[KorvinStarmast]

It could very well be that Rich looked up the 5E mechanics for the beholder

Bet the under, if you are taking that one to Vegas.

[KorvinStarmast]

We ALL want to see Bloodfeast, but I have to give it to the Giants, narratively Belkar getting his lizard out but then being denied is funnier.

that joke takes us back to strip 0001. Retreads are rarely funny.

Short term anyway.

See strip 0001.

This is a chekhov's gun waiting to go off.

I see your theme ... it's not working.

There's absolutely no narrative benefit to the Order winning here because it wouldn't change Serini's mindset about their abilities.

Yep. She's an old lady, and her mind's made up. Reminds me of my mother in law. (Except I kinda like Serini ...)

Yeah, pull the other one."

There's that theme again ...

This whole fight only serves to prove Serini's point that the Order should not be here

Sam Gamgee, take three. (See about time 0:26)

...Serini mentioned them being supposed to get amnesia brew instead of killing them.

Which means Serini is not evil, just stubborn.

I think getting the rules exactly right matters less to the author than the story, and two different effects instead of two variations on the same effect may have better suited the story he’s telling. It looks to me like Elan is enervated, not charmed.

I think you missed the point I was trying to make. Rich is not gonna drag 5e stuff into this, and has stated that he's not D&D'd for a long time.

[danielxcutter]

I think getting the rules exactly right matters less to the author than the story, and two different effects instead of two variations on the same effect may have better suited the story he’s telling. It looks to me like Elan is enervated, not charmed.

Getting hit with Enervation would only give him a few negative levels, not Charm him.

[TRH]

“Enervated” means weakened, tired, without willpower. To me Elan looks enervated, not charmed.

He's literally advocating surrender for no reason. What about that screams tired more than charmed? Also, how do you get from weakened and tired to "without willpower?"

That's not touching on how Durkon got Enervated back in BRITF and that didn't result in a sudden bout of defeatism from him.

[TRH]

If you lost all your energy (i.e., became enervated) in the middle of a fight, sitting down and quietly giving up might seem pretty appealing. On the other hand, suggesting to a charmed person that they stand still and weakly convince their team to surrender seems like a waste of a charm spell.

Well, again, we have precedent: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0806.html

Missing: the Enervation victim meekly lying down and embracing death and encouraging his friends to join him in suicide.

Also missing: any reason this leap of logic in interpreting how Enervation works is somehow a better description of what's going on with Elan than him getting charmed...again, as he himself said to Sunny last strip: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1240.html

[TRH]

Gag > precedent.

Nobody’s disputing that Elan was charmed previously, when Sunny had him do something useful. If he’s charmed now, why isn’t he grappling someone, or attacking like Scruffy?

It’s not a leap of logic, it’s an interpretation of a scene in a story. If you interpret it differently that’s fine.

The hell does that mean? Which instance of Enervation is the gag in this context, just for starters?

Because charm is not dominate: he won't attack his teammates because that would violate his morals. I mean, he's Elan. Again, precedent, in case you place any stock in such whatsoever: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0383.html

When you arbitrarily assume a spell has an effect that has no basis in rules as written and was not shown the last time the spell in question was used in the comic, because you've dismissed the far more likely possibility that was literally just used, then yeah, you're going a fair bit further than just interpreting a scene. I could interpret this whole sequence such that Sunny is just an illusion and all of his powers are actually Serini using wands/staves, and I wouldn't have to trash nearly as much of the 3.5 rulebook or prior strips of this comic as your interpretation to do so.

[Svata]

Yeah, this is really clearly a Charm Person situation, especially because we know Sunny can charm people and there is no evidence for him having an enervation eye. And because Charm isn't Dominate, it means Elan won't hurt his friends. Also "more useful" than completely removing someone from the fight and making them be in the way and distracting? That's pretty useful!

[Elkad]

Charm Person is not Dominate. It just makes Sunny Elan's friend. The rest of the party is also his friends.
So he's trying to convince them to stop fighting, because you don't want your friends to fight one another.

Mr Scruffy is defending Sunny, and he's a cat, so friendship is fickle anyway.

Belkar should flee, but he has nowhere to run (door blocked), so he Cowers instead.

[TRH]

If charm wouldn’t make Elan attack like it did Scruffy, I’m sure Sunny could think of something more useful for him to do than stand there telling his friends to do something they’ll never do.

Like what? Sunny seems like a child, and if you don't have something specific spring to mind immediately that doesn't involve hurting his friends, then he probably wouldn't either.

[Ruck]

Bet the under, if you are taking that one to Vegas.

That's not what an over/under is.

(Not to pick on you, but as an ex-pro gambler, one of my pet peeves is people using "over/under" when they just mean a simple yes/no question.)

[TRH]

Also, jere7my, you posit that Enervation saps the victim's will as a result of extreme fatigue. What in this strip shows Elan as the slightest bit fatigued or lacking in energy as opposed to self-control?

The evidence for the enervation eye comes from the fact that 5e beholders have one, and the concept of enervation accounts for Elan’s desire to quietly sit down better than being charmed. There are a lot of useful things you can tell a charmed person to do, as Scruffy demonstrates in this strip.

I don’t think it’s “really clearly” either, and having competing interpretations of a work of fiction is perfectly fine.

You don't think it's "really clearly" because you've decided that whole internal consistency thing is entirely superfluous and anything can be twisted in whatever direction you want...all of this, ultimately, because you don't think Sunny's getting enough use out of a potential Charm Person.

This line of argument is literally "OMG the OOTS are compleat scrubs, git gud, y'all!" to the Nth degree, when it comes down to it.

[TRH]

It’s just a comic, mate. No need to get worked up if we disagree!

I'm just saying, you're going through a lot of mental gymnastics entirely because you refuse to believe a Charm Person spell would be used this sub-optimally. Your argument stems from an extremely faulty premise, to the point where I don't even care about your interpretations anymore, so much as the assumptions they're in service of.

[jere7my]

I'm just saying, you're going through a lot of mental gymnastics entirely because you refuse to believe a Charm Person spell would be used this sub-optimally. Your argument stems from an extremely faulty premise, to the point where I don't even care about your interpretations anymore, so much as the assumptions they're in service of.

OK. Thanks for the comments.

[Svata]

Also, Elan has Swirly Eyes, which is, and always has been, a sign of being forced into actions. Charm, Dominate, and Fear have always done swirly eyes, and nothing else ever has. Including the time Enervation was used before.

[RatElemental]

I'm not convinced Vaarsuvius has made a single successful saving throw in the entire comic. They may as well not have save bonuses.

Well they managed to not lose their spell here, they might have made their save here (the spell just does extra damage and a chance at total freezing on fail), and they weren't one of the ones that got dominated here.

I think getting the rules exactly right matters less to the author than the story, and two different effects instead of two variations on the same effect may have better suited the story he’s telling. It looks to me like Elan is enervated, not charmed.

Negative energy attacks (such as enervation) tend to appear as black lines that might be wrinkles or just charred looking wounds, not swirly eyes. Also, to think that Elan getting a few negative levels would make him, in his completely lucid, genre-savvy, knowing the fate of the world literally is on line self say "Yeah let's surrender" is terrible misjudgment of character IMO.

[danielxcutter]

Also, Elan has Swirly Eyes, which is, and always has been, a sign of being forced into actions. Charm, Dominate, and Fear have always done swirly eyes, and nothing else ever has. Including the time Enervation was used before.

Nitpick, but Confusion effects also have swirly eyes. It's a general indication of mind-whammy effects.

Does 5e even have Enervation?

[ORione]

Maybe Elan was hit by a disintegration beam, and it disintegrated his willpower.

[BriarHobbit]

Well, this is why beholders are so dangerous. They are a pack of flying spell casters compressed into a single high hit point package plus the anti-magic beam, of course. This was a great double issue. I'm not sure why Roy isn't waking up. There is no reason that Durkon did not get his spell off, and classic sleep poison doesn't do damage. It just puts the target to sleep. I look forward to the next issue.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

It's all right Belkar, I'm sure you'll get to unleash the fury eventually. Don't worry, we can all make fun of Belkar for you. Also, I kind of feel bad for Sunny here. They seem pretty hurt and I hope they'll be okay afterwards. Durkon's done a great job today of partially? resisting saves.

[Falontani]

Alright, I'm not a D&D player. Can someone please explain to me what got used on Belkar, Elan, and Haley's bow?

Late to the post but as a stout 3.5 player with years under their belt, I believe I can shed some light on what is happening.

First off I will talk about Sunny! Sunny is a Beholderwhatchamacallit. They are normally a decent challenge for a party of 4 level 13s, the same level that V got access to Prismatic Spray. With a single class level given to Sunny we can raise the DC of the rays from a meager 18 to a DC of 23 without doing any funny business, like changing out what feats a standard whatchamacallit has access to, or using obscure classes. This could be done with a fighter level if Sunny so chose. Continuing whatchamacallits generally have 10 ray attacks in addition to their antimagic cone. Sunny seems to only have 8 eyestalks however, implying that Sunny is not a traditional whatchamacallit regardless of class levels or not, so plot is indeed the correct decision to decide on the difficulty saves of the rays. In order to target and hit a ray Sunny has to make a ranged touch attack against each of the party members. Of the party, only Belkar, Haley, and Mr. Scruffy should have good armor class against such an attack, as the attack ignores traditional armor, and most buff spells that a wizard usually has employed. Again a normal whatchamacallit's ranged touch attack modifier is a lousy +9, but would be more than enough to hit both clerics, Elan, and V. Again with a single level and still doing the above thing for the DCs, we boost our ranged touch attack, to a +12, enough to usually hit Belkar and Mr. Scruffy. All that is left is hitting Haley... which it didn't do, it targeted the bow, which has a touch AC considerably lower than Haley probably would have.

With that out of the way; from left to right:
V: Slow, will save; V has a decent chance to save against it. If we consider the party around level 15 (a very high level, and in line with what we have seen) V should have roughly a +9 from class, a +1-5 from equipment, and a +1-3 from wisdom, putting V at ~+14, meaning with my projection above V would have a 55% chance to succeed on the save. Good chances, but well within reason for a failed saving throw here.

Durkon: Flesh to Stone, fortitude save; Durkon has the +9 from class, the +1-5 from equipment, but should have a +4-6 from constitution at this point, putting him at ~+17, or a 70% chance to succeed on the save. This is without talking about that he has been shown to be very hardy, possibly even considering other dwarves, so having the feat for an additional +2 fortitude wouldn't be out of line.

Minrah: Sleep, Will save. We don't quite know her level, but her wiki page says she is a multiclass fighter/cleric and I have seen her cast I believe 4th level spells. So if we say she is roughly level 13 (the maximum level of a cohort for a level 15 character) that would be 7 cleric and 6 fighter, a roughly even split. So she has a +7 will from class, a +1-4 from equipment, and a +2-5 from wisdom, putting her at ~+12, or a 45% chance to succeed on the save.

Haley's Bow: Telekinesis, Opposed attack roll... ish. To do what was done with Telekinesis it makes most sense that Sunny disarmed Haley, as that is a normal use of Telekinesis. In 3.5 to disarm a foe the attacker and defender make opposed attack rolls with various bonuses and penalties. Haley has a +11 from class, +5-8 from dexterity (although a dm could easily decide that Haley needs to make an improvised weapon attack roll as if using the bow for melee, but I digress, in which case Haley would have a +1-3 from strength, and get a -4 on the check) and possibly a +1-4 from the bow itself giving Haley ~+20 (+11) against Sunny's ~+17. Haley has a 15% advantage, but it is very plausible that she could fail this check.

Belkar: Fear, Will save; +5 from class, +1-5 from equipment, +1-3 from wisdom, +5 from race for ~+15. 60% chance to succeed.

Mr. Scruffy: Charm Monster, Will save; ready for this? +1 from class, +1-2 from wisdom, +4 from Belkar, +1-3 from equipment for ~+8. Ouch Mr. Scruffy you only have a 25% to succeed. Odds were not in his favor.

Elan: Charm Person, Will save; +9 from class, -1 from wisdom, +1-5 from equipment. I think it should be lower than this, and could easily push it lower, but I'm being reasonable, Elan has no use for wisdom as a bard other than for the spot skill and the sense motive skill, which he hasn't been the best at. ~+11 for 40% to succeed.


So from a DM perspective in an actual combat scenario, having all of them fail is plausible. It isn't likely, but I personally have seen rarer things happen.


The missing rays.
There are 3 rays that a whatchamacallit should have that Sunny did not use:
Disintegrate, a powerful ray that deals ~91 damage on an average failed save.
Finger of Death. Yup. That is probably the ray that just wasn't used. Even on a successful save this thing does ~24 damage. Failed save means death, no ifs ands or butts (well I guess there are buff spells that Durkon definitely should be using a lot more often, due to how much it comes up)
Inflict Moderate Wounds. I was surprised this one wasn't used. 2d8+10 damage putting it at ~20 damage. On a failed save. ~10 on a passed save. Even Mr. Scruffy the (statistically) weakest party member would tank that. Haley wasn't herself hit with a ray. It just seems odd that Rich didn't have Sunny use that one. But again Sunny only has 8 eyestalks, and if we consider the ray with held to be the most lethal then it is either Disintegrate or Finger of Death, so I don't think Sunny has the Inflict Moderate Wounds ray. The third weakest ray just not even there.

Final notes: even if the one up there is about Xykon's (estimated) level, the party is still a dangerous foe to take on with just a whatchamacallit beside you. This is definitely becoming the endgame here, most campaigns I personally have run are falling apart by this point due to the sheer statistics of things going on. And this is discounting Roy the fighter somehow failing a fortitude save >.> Like c'mon man. Roy is probably level 15-16 by himself, and is a human fighter. He has more feats than he knows what to do with. His fortitude save is rivaled only by Durkon the Dwarf with the Great Fortitude feat. Speed of plot tells me that Roy simply rolled a 1 there. And even then, for a poison to lay him low like that tells me the poison is probably simply paralysis, meaning Durkon should have gotten him up, and Roy should have recovered.


Oh yea, Prismatic Spray. Great spell, very powerful, but it is SUPER random. A bad roll on V's part could easily have the spray doing some piddly amount of damage rather than some of the uber powerful effects that the spray could do. Like insanity. Which would have been terrible for the party, because as we just saw, Sunny is holding back ray 8, and our party is not great at resisting the effects of these rays >.>

[Kardwill]

Whatever else, I think it's safe to say the comic is no longer turn-based. Probably hasn't been for a while, if we're honest with ourselves.

I think it never has been, at leats for movement. Even when they were still joking about failing perception checks, everyone was already moving at the same time.

Turn-based is a useful simplification for a tabletop game, but it's just terrible when you're telling a story, or worse, showing an action scene.
I mean, imagine how silly a turn-based chase scene would look like in OotS : Haley runs 60 feet, stops ; Goblin 1 runs 60 feet, stops ; Goblin 2 runs 60 feets, stops ; Elan runs 60 feet...

And that aerial combat scene is pretty much a chase scene, and would look just as stupid.

When picturing an action scene, initiative and turn-order are the fun-killers.

[danielxcutter]

I think it's been stated on this forum before, but beholders are kinda... weird to fight against. Even ignoring the fact that their two main powersets are mutually incompatible against the same target(aside from using Telekinesis to throw rocks at people in the cone), AMFs in general kinda shut down about 80% of the party's capability. It's not even "severe debuff level", it's "makes casters entirely useless and the martials can't do much either" level. And a beholder in such favored terrain with such a powerful ally... would honestly be a deathtrap for parties far more optimized than the Order.

[Peelee]

He’s not going to convert the strip to 5th Edition, but if he Googled beholder eye beams he might have found the 5e list more appealing than the 3e list. It’s a pretty arbitrary set of powers, so using one list is as good as using another, and if he thought an enervated Elan was funnier or read better than a charmed Elan I don’t see why he wouldn’t use it. It’s clear he’s using *a* canonical list of beholder powers, but “I don’t want two charmed characters” is a sufficient justification to use the list without two charm spells, imho.

“Enervated” means weakened, tired, without willpower. To me Elan looks enervated, not charmed. If he were charmed, there are more effective things he could be doing than suggesting they all sit down.

It seems like your theory is resting upon The Giant, who created his own entire D&D world that came within a hair's breadth of being official D&D property, wrote/cowrote several D&D books, and is largely incredibly knowledgeable about 3.5 and D&D in general; and who has written a flowchart detailing his current research that is basically "here is how I think I remember it, so there" - your theory is resting upon that person not only looking up an incredibly iconic monster's Stat blocks, but also looking up the wrong Stat block, and then also changing one of the effects from the mechanical game term definition to the dictionary definition. And also does not explain the swirly eyes, which are caused by mind-affecting spells.

The counter to this is that he correctly remembered the abilities, one of which exactly fits how Elan is acting.

[danielxcutter]

And like, we've seen someone Charm Elan. Judging by the color, it's probably Sunny's Charm Person or Charm Monster ray.

[Dion]

Why would Sunny need to shoot a *second* charm ray at Elan? Wasn’t Elan already charmed?

[brian 333]

In all my years as DM I never once had a beholder turn itself upside-down.

I rule that tactic brilliant!

(And now I wish I had thought of it back when my players were exploring the Winter Mountains Caverns. I put every kind of eye-monster I could find in there, then made the dungeon dark. There's a level of genius in that. I won't say what level.)

[TheNecrocomicon]

Pretty sure that even if Sunny reestablishes the AMF cone and happens to point it in Bloodfeast's direction -- because Serini and Sunny have no reason to know that he's actually a Polymorphed dinosaur -- he still can't reach high enough to snap at them, or they can just hover higher out of his reach in moments.

Also, what happens if parts of a Polymorphed dinosaur stick out of the AMF cone? Because that will happen as he closes in on Sunny and Serini. Would there be a chimera-like effect as bits extend outside the cone and briefly turn back into tiny lizard form? Because that sounds painful.

I pretty much think that the Order are indeed done here, and Serini is going to get her way and dump them somewhere far away (but plot-relevant) with magically-induced amnesia. It actually might make for a sort of "greatest hits" sort of theme (something not unheard-of in series finales) as the Order trek back through places they've been and people they've interacted with thanks to whatever clues they can deduce, piecing their overarching quest back together on their way to really ending the worldly and cosmic threats in the real dramatic climax of the book.