OOTS #1243 - The Discussion Thread

[Peelee]

Two.

Five!

Theres the Avoirdupois pound, London pound, Merchant Pound, Tower pound, and Troy pound.

If we focus on the Avoirdupois pound for simplicity, then we have seven pounds to the nail, two nails to the stone, two stones to the tod (well, two stones to the long tod. Twenty five pounds to the short tod), and, of course, thirteen tods to the sack. Couldn't be simpler!

Correct me if you dare.

[Riftwolf]

To get back to the original Mending topic; do the parts have to be correctly placed or could you just sweep up Haley and cast Mending/Make Whole on the pile?
Or for a different analogy; could Mending complete a 5000pc jigsaw in 6seconds?

Five!

Theres the Avoirdupois pound, London pound, Merchant Pound, Tower pound, and Troy pound.

If we focus on the Avoirdupois pound for simplicity, then we have even pounds to the nail, two nails to the stone, two stones to the tod (well, two stones to the long tod. Twenty five pounds to the short tod), and, of course, thirteen tods to the sack. Couldn't be simpler!

Correct me if you dare.

There's also the Great British Pound (GBP) which causes some confusion (someone I went to school with worked on a cheese counter, got asked for half a pound of cheese so she cut 50p worth)

[Squire Doodad]

Yes! And also, the first half of the fight was frustrating because the party was entirely incapable of fighting back properly if Sunny hadn't made a mistake. If they weren't completely doused in a small room, so they tried to escape and Sunny used Telekinesis to drop rocks in front of them to block the way, that'd have been cooler. Instead, the Order was basically doing... not much until Elan managed to make Sunny blink.

Personally I'm fine with the party having to wait for Elan to talk his way into them getting some light, though it seemed like it was extremely one-sided until then.
The inability of the order to get around the AMF didn't need to be that firm, I'd have been perfectly happy if, say, Durkon's hammer managed to bruise Sunny. Something that doesn't scream "unwinnable encounter" sort of a thing.
It's not that the party is falling victim to trump cards that neuter their abilities, but rather that they're falling victim to all of them with few chances to make good headway. A chain of turnarounds may be accurate sometimes, but it isn't particularly fun to watch after a while.
I'm hoping we're done with those for the moment though, and are getting back to good and proper smackery.

[Fyraltari]

Five!

Theres the Avoirdupois pound, London pound, Merchant Pound, Tower pound, and Troy pound.

If we focus on the Avoirdupois pound for simplicity, then we have even pounds to the nail, two nails to the stone, two stones to the tod (well, two stones to the long tod. Twenty five pounds to the short tod), and, of course, thirteen tods to the sack. Couldn't be simpler!

Correct me if you dare.

You are making some of those up, aren't you?

[Peelee]

There's also the Great British Pound (GBP) which causes some confusion (someone I went to school with worked on a cheese counter, got asked for half a pound of cheese so she cut 50p worth)

Also, campaign to change the name to the British kilogram sterling.

You are making some of those up, aren't you?

My inventiveness for silliness got nothin' on the British.

ETA: I did skip over the fact that there's seven thousand grains to the pound and twenty grains to the scruple but the scruple doesn't technically translate to the pound because the drams are different (16 drams to the pound).

[Doug Lampert]

You are making some of those up, aren't you?

Nah, he's leaving off a bunch. The unit goes back to the Roman Empire (prior to the split) and was used EVERYWHERE in western Europe with local definitions and (as things got organized) a local reference weight.

From Wikipedia I get the following:
Avoirdupois, Troy, Tower, Merchant, London, Metric, Imperial Standard, Jersey pound, and Trone pound.

Based on the same Roman units you also have all of the following:
Byzantine litra, French livre, German and Austrian Pfund, Russian funt, Skålpund, Portuguese libra and arrátel

I would not assume Wikipedia to be anything close to complete.

Edited to add: If you meant the non-pound units, again no, any application might have made up a weight unit that was convenient to that application, as things were regularized they were all made into more or less even fractions and multiples of other stuff.

[Peelee]

Nah, he's leaving off a bunch. The unit goes back to the Roman Empire

It was a very silly place.

[DavidSh]

Spoiler: More on customary units

Show

Tods and Sacks I don't know about, but if I recall it's eight stones to the hundredweight, and twenty hundredweights to the ton. I'm not sure how the stone got inflated from the 12.5 pounds this implies to 14 pounds.

ObOOTS: What Haley was doing with the bow wasn't so much as fake as what chess players call a "fork". If Sunny lets go of the bow she gets the bow as a weapon. If Sunny doesn't, she gets it as a trapeze.

[elecampane]

They are entering a dungeon that was designed to challenge literally the most powerful people on the plant (like Xykon), and you think a beholder multi-eyed thing was "too powerful"?

I would like to point out that Xykon is specifically not challenged by this dungeon, he cuts through it like butter and the only thing it takes is his time. But that's beside the point.
My complaint is that
either:
a) Sunny is extremely powerful, far more than an adult beholder should be. It makes sense from the defense of the gate point of view, but does not from either game design point of view or storytelling point of view. It's weird to introduce an overwhelmingly powerful opponent only to have it loose due to catching several idiot balls. By the end of 1241 when my dissatisfaction with the fight culminated it seemed that over next couple of rounds it should be over, since Sunny can repeatedly blast with rays for several more rounds (and it would be over if not for the sudden rush of incompetence). That would not be very satisfying plotline to me.
or
b) Sunny is no stronger that a regular beholder, but extremely lucky, which is also weird. At the level the Order was failing checks they should've made, I would expect a divine intervention similar to one in 200&201, when Miko attacked them in the storm -- and that would be perfectly ok with me, but I don't think we're getting that

I guess when the comic is released as a book those concerns won't be that important, but since we're having to wait couple of weeks for the next strip, we vent our frustration in the forum. And then other people call out said venting, and here we are having this conversation.

<...>That, and Haley's absurd AC. Like, how can she dodge so many missiles in an antimagic field? Even if she has 21 AC (10+6 Dex (rolled 18+all the points up to lv16 in Dex)+2 leather armor+1 Dodge+2 fighting defensively), she is fighting an epic-level rogue! Seini's to-hit bonus should be higher than her AC! Even if Serini is only level 21, even if she only has 14 Dex (which is extremely implausible), and if her crossbow isn't masterwork or magical (even more unlikely) and she hasn't any magic item to boost her aim, she should have a +18 to hit. 85% chance to hit. Haley dodged 2 darts and 5 arrows inside the antimagic field! If Serini isn't proficient with a blowgun (I'm better with the crossbow), she has 65% chance to hit. Haley had less than a 1 out of 100,000 chance to evade all that! And if Serini has at least 18 Dex (as she obviously should), that becomes 1 in 51 millions! That's an uncomfortable amount of natural ones that she rolled here....

Serini for sure had some unlucky rolls, but your calculations are off.
First, I think the first blowgun dart was directed at Durkon, so Haley dodged the second one.
Second, you're forgetting that each subsequent attack in the same round has a cumulative -5 penalty, so that 5th arrow would have -20 to hit on top of the attack bonus.
I don't think you lowballing Serini is that far off, since although she's epic, she's also elderly. If she's as far as venerable, that means -6 to her Str, Dex and Con compared to her adventuring days, and we don't know if her troll grafts had any impact on her agility.
Would also like to point out that Haley could've taken total defence action instead of fighting defensively (but since she'd shot an arrow immediately prior to dodging, she probably didn't), gaining +4 to AC instead of +2. She could've also just dropped to the ground, since prone targets gain +4 to AC against ranged attacks, but she probably didn't do that too, unless Rich chose to use her jump in the last panel of 1239 to represent that. Had she done both, her AC in AMF would jump to ~27.

You realize this isn't a game, right?

Yes, it's a web comic. About a game. Unequivocally and explicitly about a game. Like, characters all have classes, feats, refer us to a specific ruleset, reference common game tropes, combat takes turns and so on. When someone creates a comic about a game, is it that untenable that people look at it from the gameplay angle too?
And I know that Rich had said that the comic narrative part comes strongly first, that he would bend the narrative framework of the game for a benefit of the storyline. But it's not like I'm coming to the author with "Hey! That doesn't make sense in the game, don't do that"; I explicitly prefaced my comment with the fact that I like the comic and don't have problem with it in general.
The portrayed characters are a party of adventurers. Since I long play D&D as a member of a party of adventurers or as a DM guiding a party through adventure, I empathize with them and feel represented in the comic. And as with any representation in media when I feel the characters are put in an unfair situation, I experience frustration, and so I feel appropriate to express it in the dedicated reaction thread of the dedicated forum. Because in the comic that usually blends game storytelling and comic storytelling so well, this particular instance strikes me as not working from the game point of view at all.

[Barebarian]

Woohoo! Nice split Haley!

These explanations pretty much never hold up to scrutiny, though. Then again, what does in fantasy? And also raise the question of why your story needs your universe to be prejudiced.

Demons being evil isn't prejudice.

[Fyraltari]

Demons being evil isn't prejudice.

Are demons characters? Can they change? Are they evil by choice or by birth?

Edit: Just to be clear we are on the safe side of Da Rulz, we are talking about demons as a fictional group within a constructed world inside a work of entertainment not as religious entities.

[hamishspence]

Fiends are Outsiders with the [Evil] subtype. Demons are a subset of Fiend (those native to a specific plane, the Abyss). [Alignment] subtype creatures tend to be Outsiders, but there are exceptions.

Ruleswise, what the [Evil] subtype does, is ensure that, if such a creature does change alignment, it will still be treated as its original alignment (as well as its new one) for certain specific mechanical purposes.

If you cast Detect Evil on a nonevil fiend it will detect as Evil. If you are a paladin and smite it, your smite will do full damage. And so forth.

[Quizatzhaderac]

Five!

Theres the Avoirdupois pound, London pound, Merchant Pound, Tower pound, and Troy pound.

Have the London, merchant, or tower pounds been used in the modern era at all? Wikipedia isn't mentioning anything after 1526 for them.

If we focus on the Avoirdupois pound for simplicity, then we have seven pounds to the nail, two nails to the stone, two stones to the tod (well, two stones to the long tod. Twenty five pounds to the short tod), and, of course, thirteen tods to the sack. Couldn't be simpler!

Correct me if you dare.

A nail was a unit of distance, not mass.

There's also the Great British Pound (GBP) which causes some confusion

A Great British pound is worth 2.4 Lesser British pounds, right?

[elecampane]

The description of alignment subtypes indeed suggests that aligned outsiders can change alignment, but as beings tied to their native planes will continue to be associated with the alignment of that plane.
At the same time the 3.5 Book of Exalted deeds says in the part about redeeming villains

Of course, good characters recognize that some creatures are utterly beyond redemption. Most creatures described in the Monster Manual as "always evil" are either completely irredeemable or so intimately tied to evil that they are almost entirely hopeless. Certainly demons and devils are best slain, or at least banished, and only a naïve fool would try to convert them.

(it later states that evil dragons have only a bare glimmer of hope, but creatures that are usually evil, such as goblins or orcs, can be redeemed, and gives an example of a redeemed mind flayer)
From yet another standpoint, I think that existence of fallen angels (such as erinyes) proves that aligned outsiders can change alignment along with the associated plane and subtype. And if it can happen in the downward direction, it may be not impossible to happen in reverse.

[Petrocorus]

To get back to the original Mending topic; do the parts have to be correctly placed or could you just sweep up Haley and cast Mending/Make Whole on the pile?

Make Whole on the pile should work fine.

Or for a different analogy; could Mending complete a 5000pc jigsaw in 6seconds?

Nope, because those are 5000 different objects. But one single drawing torn apart in 5000 pieces would be repaired by Make Whole and maybe Mending depending on the mass (less than 1 lb, don't ask me what kind of lb).

There's also the Great British Pound (GBP) which causes some confusion (someone I went to school with worked on a cheese counter, got asked for half a pound of cheese so she cut 50p worth)

Five!

Theres the Avoirdupois pound, London pound, Merchant Pound, Tower pound, and Troy pound.

If we focus on the Avoirdupois pound for simplicity, then we have seven pounds to the nail, two nails to the stone, two stones to the tod (well, two stones to the long tod. Twenty five pounds to the short tod), and, of course, thirteen tods to the sack. Couldn't be simpler!

Correct me if you dare.

At this point this is masochism.

ETA: I did skip over the fact that there's seven thousand grains to the pound and twenty grains to the scruple but the scruple doesn't technically translate to the pound because the drams are different (16 drams to the pound).

How many grains to the ounce and how many ounce to the pound?

Byzantine litra, French livre, German and Austrian Pfund, Russian funt, Skålpund, Portuguese libra and arrátel

From what i remember, there were several French livres before the metric system. This dates back to the middle-age when different market places used different pounds, and a third of nowadays France was probably using Holy Empire units to some extend.

[Peelee]

Have the London, merchant, or tower pounds been used in the modern era at all? Wikipedia isn't mentioning anything after 1526 for them.

I believe my intent on being silly was apparent.

A nail was a unit of distance, not mass.

An archaic usage of the term nail is as a sixteenth of a (long) hundredweight for mass, or 1 clove of 7 pound avoirdupois (3.175 kg).
I did warn about trying to correct me.

A Great British pound is worth 2.4 Lesser British pounds, right?

Spoiler

Show

[Vikenlugaid]

Okay, but...how high level is Haley? The Order has to be in their late teens, right? In order for Haley's Uncanny Dodge to work, Sereni can't be more than 5 levels higher.

And it's not like Sereni doesn't have anything putting her at a disadvantage here. Sunny's distracting her in multiple ways, and she's clearly not had this big a challenge in a while.

Haley is, for 99% sure, the member of the order with highest level. She never died so she is for sure higher than Roy and Durkon, and when the party was splitted she fought like hell while Elan, V and Durkon weren't doing so much fighting, and presumably Belkar did far less than the leader of the resistance, specially being uncapable of hurting living beings in the city.
My guess: Haley is level 18 or close.

[Riftwolf]

A Great British pound is worth 2.4 Lesser British pounds, right?

Pretty sure there's a joke I could make about a British currency thing, but I think it'd be straying into real world politics so will leave that alone.

[The MunchKING]

when the party was splitted she fought like hell while Elan, V and Durkon weren't doing so much fighting,

On the contrary they were fighting the Aquatic Subtype's Greatest hits out there. Pretty much any monster Quar could Charm or Dominate. They even called it out for being far MORE encounters than average.

[Gusion]

Even if she has 21 AC (10+6 Dex (rolled 18+all the points up to lv16 in Dex)+2 leather armor+1 Dodge+2 fighting defensively), she is fighting an epic-level rogue! Seini's to-hit bonus should be higher than her AC! Even if Serini is only level 21, even if she only has 14 Dex (which is extremely implausible), and if her crossbow isn't masterwork or magical (even more unlikely) and she hasn't any magic item to boost her aim, she should have a +18 to hit. 85% chance to hit. Haley dodged 2 darts and 5 arrows inside the antimagic field! If Serini isn't proficient with a blowgun (I'm better with the crossbow), she has 65% chance to hit. Haley had less than a 1 out of 100,000 chance to evade all that! And if Serini has at least 18 Dex (as she obviously should), that becomes 1 in 51 millions! That's an uncomfortable amount of natural ones that she rolled here....

I don't know why you think she has leather armor worth only +2. Non-magical leather armor is worth +2. She's likely rolling in +4/+5 leather armor (since strip 675) for a total of +7. Add another +2 for complete defense not fighting defensively. That brings her to an AC of 28, not including equipment reasonable for a 16-18 level rogue to have... like an amulet of natural armor, gloves of dex, etc. She could have had an effective AC of over +30 pretty easily when outside the anti-magic field.

Serini likely does have magic equipment of her own too, of course. So accounting for her age, maybe around Attack (missile): +23/+18/+13 = 15 [base] +1 [epic] +6 [dexterity] +1 [small]. I'm sure her bow is +5 on top of that and probably has her own +dex gear that counters Haley's.

So Haley going full defense and Serini's advanced age makes it a lot more of an even battle than you're suggesting. She still got some very lucky rolls while in the magic field though, for sure.

[danielxcutter]

Personally I'm fine with the party having to wait for Elan to talk his way into them getting some light, though it seemed like it was extremely one-sided until then.
The inability of the order to get around the AMF didn't need to be that firm, I'd have been perfectly happy if, say, Durkon's hammer managed to bruise Sunny. Something that doesn't scream "unwinnable encounter" sort of a thing.
It's not that the party is falling victim to trump cards that neuter their abilities, but rather that they're falling victim to all of them with few chances to make good headway. A chain of turnarounds may be accurate sometimes, but it isn't particularly fun to watch after a while.
I'm hoping we're done with those for the moment though, and are getting back to good and proper smackery.

Precisely! It’s why I liked the Dining Room Fight better(despite the Order getting their asses stomped in the end) than this fight - even with the entire party down or dominated, Roy could still fight back and did until he took the Flame Strike to the face.

I do suspect the scales are tipped a bit less now, though.

[ORione]

Yes, it's a web comic. About a game. Unequivocally and explicitly about a game. Like, characters all have classes, feats, refer us to a specific ruleset, reference common game tropes, combat takes turns and so on. When someone creates a comic about a game, is it that untenable that people look at it from the gameplay angle too?

It's tenable to, say, point out that the Order was incredibly unlucky to have all of Sunny's eye beams work. But you were claiming that Rich was being unfair to his players. He doesn't have players. He has an audience. A scenario that would be a **** move when presented by a GM in a game can be exciting drama when presented by an author in a story. Complaining that OotS doesn't make a good game strikes me as silly. Like complaining that a rocking horse isn't good transportation.

Unless what you were trying to say wasn't "This is a problem," but "This would be a problem if it were a game," in which case fair enough, and I apologize for the misunderstanding.

[Ruck]

It's tenable to, say, point out that the Order was incredibly unlucky to have all of Sunny's eye beams work. But you were claiming that Rich was being unfair to his players. He doesn't have players. He has an audience. A scenario that would be a **** move when presented by a GM in a game can be exciting drama when presented by an author in a story. Complaining that OotS doesn't make a good game strikes me as silly. Like complaining that a rocking horse isn't good transportation.

Unless what you were trying to say wasn't "This is a problem," but "This would be a problem if it were a game," in which case fair enough, and I apologize for the misunderstanding.

Agreed with bolded, and what I want to add is that, in a story, it's not necessary to have what is most statistically likely to happen in a D&D game happen for the story to be good. All that's necessary is that what happens is plausible-- and, of course, that it has the appropriate dramatic impact.

[danielxcutter]

I think it's fair to say that if this was a real game, all the players would have walked before we even got to Blood Runs In the Family. From the "if this was a game" viewpoint, Don't Split the Party arguably reads as the DM being sick of the game and trying to kill them all off and deciding to yank the wizard's chain after that.

[DavidSh]

A Great British pound is worth 2.4 Lesser British pounds, right?

Spoiler: More off-topic ramblings

Show

These days Less Britain uses the Euro, and immediately before that, the French Franc. While some merchants are likely to have accepted Great British pounds at poor exchange rates, I'm not aware of any pound coins or notes issued in Brittany. (Though I've seen notes issued in Jersey denominated in pounds.)

[KorvinStarmast]

Not at all. I'm pointing out how easy it is to reduce any storytelling to "tropes" if you try hard enough, and what a reductive way that is to look at stories.

Thank you.

Sunny has 9 eyes to see Serini, doesn't need to use the central one.

I wasn't gonna say anything.

[Barebarian]

Are demons characters? Can they change? Are they evil by choice or by birth?

Edit: Just to be clear we are on the safe side of Da Rulz, we are talking about demons as a fictional group within a constructed world inside a work of entertainment not as religious entities.

"de•mon dē′mən►
n. An evil supernatural being; a devil."

[Noted!]

[danielxcutter]

Are demons characters? Can they change? Are they evil by choice or by birth?

Edit: Just to be clear we are on the safe side of Da Rulz, we are talking about demons as a fictional group within a constructed world inside a work of entertainment not as religious entities.

When it comes to OotS and D&D in general, yes, usually not a whole lot, and honestly nature is probably the bigger factor in this case, in that order.

Personally I think I've seen Keith Baker say that outsiders can't really be seen as free-willed in Eberron and that kinda makes sense, being literally made of supernatural Evil.

Of course this varies widely between settings/franchises; I've seen at least three separate works where "demon" is a wide brush used for most or all sentient races that aren't allied with humans.

[hamishspence]

From yet another standpoint, I think that existence of fallen angels (such as erinyes) proves that aligned outsiders can change alignment along with the associated plane and subtype. And if it can happen in the downward direction, it may be not impossible to happen in reverse.

Yup. And, indeed, angels can change alignment without "falling all the way" and changing subtype and home plane as well. The Elder Evils splatbook had a fallen planetar, with an Evil alignment, that still had the [Good] subtype - the foremost servant of a demon lord Elder Evil.

Personally I think I've seen Keith Baker say that outsiders can't really be seen as free-willed in Eberron and that kinda makes sense, being literally made of supernatural Evil.

Eberron has a few outsiders that changed alignment. The Quori are an [Evil] outsider race - yet some turned good, and the kalashtar were the result. In Explorer's Handbook (an Eberron book written by Rich Burlew) there is a True Neutral Yugoloth ship captain.

[danielxcutter]

Those tend to be extremely uncommon though, for what it's worth.