OOTS #1270 - The Discussion Thread

[Peelee]

Thanks for the clarification. It seems the effect I am thinking of is closer to a portal, but even that would not work according to RAW.

What I am thinking of can easily be explained with two coins and using the front and back sides to explain why certain scenes are being viewed. It seems such an effect doesn't exist within the Dnd system though.

Are you imagining something like a portal without the edges being necessarily on surfaces? Or, to use your coin analogy, like a coin standing up?

[mashlagoo1982]

Are you imagining something like a portal without the edges being necessarily on surfaces? Or, to use your coin analogy, like a coin standing up?

More like coins standing up. I believe the game Portal still required a solid surface for the portal to appear.

My memory could be off, but I think something similar to a MUCH LARGER effect can be found in Forgotten Realms 3.5 City of the Spider Queen adventure. I don't have the book on me now, but I will hopefully remember to check it out later.

Near the end of the adventure, I believe there were also swap-over like instances similar to what is occurring in the comic.

[Quizatzhaderac]

Also wouldn't RAW, permanent, teleportation circles cost 45K a pair? I'm not sure how much money an epic rogue is supposed to have, but several dozen seems like a lot of money.

There's also the visual effect; if these were teleportation circles and some kind of illusion true seeing or detect magic should be able to uncover that.

Which makes me think that light is actually travelling through the portals.

[Fyraltari]

More like coins standing up. I believe the game Portal still required a solid surface for the portal to appear.

Indeed. Portals that aren't anchored to anything are usually portrayed as spheres.

An example of "swap-overs" would be the teleportation doors in The Matrix 2.

[Peelee]

More like coins standing up.

So the problem with that and why you don't really find it popular in games is the "what happens at the edges" question. With Portal-like portals or the effect we see in the comic here, that's a non-issue - the edges are always on some form of surface so it doesn't matter. With RAW Teleportation circle, it also doesn't matter - if any part of you touches the surface inside the circle, you're teleported.

With the standing coin portal, what happens if you try to place your palm up to the edge from the outside and move it forward? Or from the inside? What happens if you're passing through the portal and part of you happens to graze against the edge? Without the entirety of the edging being on a surface, this becomes ugly immediately, and games which are usually designed for ease of play typically completely ignore this can of worms by simply having the edging always be on surface. As does the effect we see in the comic.

[mashlagoo1982]

So the problem with that and why you don't really find it popular in games is the "what happens at the edges" question. With Portal-like portals or the effect we see in the comic here, that's a non-issue - the edges are always on some form of surface so it doesn't matter. With RAW Teleportation circle, it also doesn't matter - if any part of you touches the surface inside the circle, you're teleported.

With the standing coin portal, what happens if you try to place your palm up to the edge from the outside and move it forward? Or from the inside? What happens if you're passing through the portal and part of you happens to graze against the edge? Without the entirety of the edging being on a surface, this becomes ugly immediately, and games which are usually designed for ease of play typically completely ignore this can of worms by simply having the edging always be on surface. As does the effect we see in the comic.

The edge would have a physical barrier around it like a ring of metal or something like we see in the comic.

Breaking the ring would cause the portal to cease functioning.

[RatElemental]

Most games I've seen with the "standing coin" style of portal just ignore the edge question and have you go through the portal anyway.

If I had to guess the swapovers seem like modified gate spells. For all we know the dungeons are in a pocket dimension, but being intraplanar instead of interplanar might lower the cost to make a permanent one from "absolutely ridiculous" to "something an epic rogue can afford."

[danielxcutter]

As V said, if it was on another plane then Blackwing wouldn't be able to communicate with them through the Telepathic Bond.

[Tzardok]

We have another precedence case for an intraplanar portal-like ability: the Wormhole psionic power used by Laureen. Sadly we don't have RAW for it, as it is apparantly based on a 2e power that was never converted.

[danielxcutter]

Stuff like that is why I personally lean towards her being a Nomad, though in general with how the class works there really isn't much hard proof.

Really I have a feeling that Rich was kinda obscuring the specific class levels of the Legion on purpose. Though Tarquin totally has Swordsage levels, I'm dying on that hill if nothing else.

[Ionathus]

The logistics of Sunny getting from the Dungeon of Dorukan to the North Pole does feel a bit awkward here, but I don't mind. Like some other retcons in this comic, I tend to extend the goodwill that I extend to the first 100 pages to anything that tries to incorporate material from those first ~100.

Maybe if you're currently writing a very tightly-plotted narrative, going back to your early looser continuity is a risky play. But that's outweighed for me by the delight I feel seeing earlier scenes from a different angle.

As-is, it's a fun sidebar for me. If it were an extended rehash of early material, especially if it were obviously written to paper over plot holes (looking at you, Ender's Shadow), I'd feel more yanked out of the story and annoyed as a result. But I think Rich has said he doesn't intend to do that, and wants to let the earlier strips stand on their own for the most part.

[bunsen_h]

Dunno. Doesn't explain the hallways and squeezing the dungeons into such tight spaces while the normal explanation does, so I'm on the fence with this. We'd have to further speculate some other effect going on with the stone of the dungeon itself (interdimensional stone maybe), such that each doesn't physically interfere with the others. But honestly, that's the point at which it does pretty much fall into "this is getting more complicated than it's worth" territory.

My feeling is that it's all done with the "multidimensional stone", with separate sections of dungeon packed independently into a higher-dimensional volume. What the "trap" does is to affect how the sections of dungeon are connected, higher-dimensionally. With the "trap" in one state, walking down hallway A leads you to room B. Toggle the "trap" state, and hallway A goes to room C instead. What I have in mind is something similar to Heinlein's "—And He Built a Crooked House—".

We already know that there's multidimensional stone, whose properties we don't know. It can explain the effects we see without needing to posit another unknown item, i.e. a novel spell or magical effect to create vertical portals.

[danielxcutter]

Also Sunny is still a useful ally due to their variety of eye rays and also I don't think she'd leave them on their own when they can defend themselves.

Edit: I'm 99% sure that "multidimensional stone" just means "prevents dimensional travel through it" due to how teleportation works in D&D. Also, it wouldn't be the first time Rich has fudged the rules for the sake of PWOT^TM.

[Ionathus]

Also, it wouldn't be the first time Rich has fudged the rules for the sake of PWOT^TM.

Pass WithOut Trace?

People Who Own Turnips?

Paintings Weeping Orange Tears?

[Tzardok]

Paladins Wanting Other Things.

[Peelee]

also sunny is still a useful ally due to their variety of eye rays and also i don't think she'd leave them on their own when they can defend themselves.

Edit: I'm 99% sure that "multidimensional stone" just means "prevents dimensional travel through it" due to how teleportation works in d&d. Also, it wouldn't be the first time rich has fudged the rules for the sake of PWOT^TM.

PWOT™?
PWOT^TM™?
PWOT™^TM™™?

Fear my ability to mark trades.

[Ruck]

The logistics of Sunny getting from the Dungeon of Dorukan to the North Pole does feel a bit awkward here

The same way Serini did. What's awkward about that?

[gbaji]

I've considered the idea that the actual dungeons are all over the world. That would allow their inhabitants to forage, farm, whatever, without having to rely upon what is available in the North.

Except that there doesn't appear to be any exit inside the dungeons (at least from the inside). If the monsters could get out to forage or whatever, then anyone exploring that dungeon should also be able to travel the same route and find themselves "somewhere else" in the world.

It's quite possible that there are other teleportation circles/portals/whatever placed around the world (in or near monster lairs), but that these are one way only, so monsters will find themselves wandering along and "poof" they're in the dungeon. That could explain how the hollow dungeons respawn over time. What's still not really explained is where food/water comes from (but I suppose "magic" could handle that), nor why the monsters never seem to actually leave their respective dungeons through the doorway to the north pole area.

The first point is fairly strong. The only rebuttal I can think of is that she had already used up a first batch doing it repeatedly and is brewing a second batch for the paladins and the Order, but this has some holes in it - most notably that if she was done with the paladins, she could have already made 'em forget and cut them loose. Unless she wanted to do all the people at once.

The second point, however, is very weak. Just because she's not doing them at that point doesn't mean she didn't do it before.

Or we don't assume she's just now finishing up brewing the potion. You've never stirred something after it's done cooking? Although one would assume if the potion was completed, you'd usually take it out of the cauldron and put it in other smaller containers for dosage use and whatnot, so that does lead us to your initial rebuttal probably being more in the correct direction.

We can speculate about the specific details in terms of numbers of batches and specific timeline, but that still leaves us with the highly improbable problem of the paladins taking two days to recover from the sleep potion she hit them with. Either that was pretty amazingly strong stuff, or they should have woken up earlier.

So, everything else aside, we have two paladins who wake up two full days after being hit with sleep potion, with no memory of anything having happened to them in the time between being hit with the potion and them waking up. We're then told that Serini has amnesia potion in the cauldron. I'm not sure there's much else needed to noodle out what's been going on for the previous two days. We have a very clear and very simple explanation for everything we've been shown right in front of us in the comic itself. We should leave any other possible explanation well on the speculation back burner.

Thanks for the clarification. It seems the effect I am thinking of is closer to a portal, but even that would not work according to RAW.

What I am thinking of can easily be explained with two coins and using the front and back sides to explain why certain scenes are being viewed. It seems such an effect doesn't exist within the Dnd system though.

Yeah. It does seem as though these swap overs seem to both work vertically over a space rather than a solid surface, and when active seem to show the view of what's on the other side. Also, does not seem to actually teleport so much as simply move objects seamlessly from one side to the other. Roy does not teleport when he sticks his head through. Half of him is on one side, the other half on the other (which teleport cannot do). Now, we could argue that the circle/portal where they were is inactive, but only has the viewing capabilities functioning (showing the two sides of the portal depending on the view you are on), but I'm reasonably certain that the same thing would happen if Redcloak had stopped halfway through the portal that took them from the entrance to the dungeon, and also looked back. Also, if we do assume the default (that back stage is what is "really" directly down the entryways, and the floor color change is just an art choice to indicate the position of the swap overs), then Roy was also sticking himself through an active portal. When active, the swap over connects the entryway to the dungeon in both directions, and the backside of the dungeon (the dead end) to backstage (also in both directions). The swap over seems to always show the entryway in one direction and the dungeon in the other, regardless of which actual physical "end" you are viewing it from.

It does feel to me like these are not so much teleports as somehow actually bending space to connect different ends of these tunnels together. The illusion would then only actually be on the "sides" one could access from backstage. This would have the advantage that one could not actually detect the fact that what they were seeing down the hallway in front of them (while in the entryway) was actually an illusion, since it's not actually an illusion at all. The illusion exists only on the portal that connects backstage to the dead end, and exists solely so that someone in backstage can see (and spy upon) folks traveling in or out of the dungeons without being noticed at all.

Makes sense, but yeah, requires some pretty specific custom teleportation and/or alteration magic. It's also why I've speculated that it may be using some property of the stone itself to do this (we know that it blocks divination effects, and ethereal stuff, and dimension door at least). Of course, that speculation somewhat invalidates the whole "portals around the world sucking monsters into the hollow" bit I mentioned earlier. Unless she had some of this same stone moved around to other locations to connect them in somehow to make things work. Dunno. I think any of this gets pretty far down the speculation highway no matter which way we go. Maybe it'll be explained at some point. Or we'll be left with "a wizard did it" and move on.

And having speculated about moving stones to make this work, I will point out that the Thaumaturgic Law of Contagion could absolutely work here (But D&D doesn't tend to use such things). The principle is that two things, once part of a single whole, are still magically connected. So you cut a ring of rock out of the hallway just inside the entryway (ring being vertical, so floor, walls, and ceiling), and swap it with another ring cut out where the dungeon is. The law of Contagion says that the stone at the entryway is still connected to the stone that's now at the entrance of the dungeon and vice versa. Then you activate them magically to re-establish the connection that was severed when you cut the stone and moved them apart. So, while the effect is active, the hallway continues right to where it used to before you moved one small section. There's no actual teleportation here, the hallway just now leads to the other side. Same deal with the section you cut out and moved to backstage. Both "ends" are now connected to each other. Just add some illusion magic on the backstage side, and the effect works as shown. Again though, this assumes the introduction of a form of magic that D&D has not historically utilized (but anyone who's read Master of the Five Magics should be familiar with).

[Liquor Box]

The first point is fairly strong. The only rebuttal I can think of is that she had already used up a first batch doing it repeatedly and is brewing a second batch for the paladins and the Order, but this has some holes in it - most notably that if she was done with the paladins, she could have already made 'em forget and cut them loose. Unless she wanted to do all the people at once.

She does say in 1229 that "I didn't go and brew a whole cauldren of amnesia potion for just two of you". If she had already used the first batch on the two of them, then she would indeed have used a whole cauldron on just two of them.

The second point, however, is very weak. Just because she's not doing them at that point doesn't mean she didn't do it before.

I don't think it's a very strong point - but her wanting to verbally spar with them and score points against them doesn't seem to resonate with her having already gone over this same ground in several previous conversations to get info. Also, if she had already got the information she wanted out of them in previous sessions, why re-dose them and talk to them again this time - why not just let them go when she'd finished getting the info.

Or we don't assume she's just now finishing up brewing the potion. You've never stirred something after it's done cooking? Although one would assume if the potion was completed, you'd usually take it out of the cauldron and put it in other smaller containers for dosage use and whatnot, so that does lead us to your initial rebuttal probably being more in the correct direction.

We can speculate about the specific details in terms of numbers of batches and specific timeline, but that still leaves us with the highly improbable problem of the paladins taking two days to recover from the sleep potion she hit them with. Either that was pretty amazingly strong stuff, or they should have woken up earlier.

So, everything else aside, we have two paladins who wake up two full days after being hit with sleep potion, with no memory of anything having happened to them in the time between being hit with the potion and them waking up. We're then told that Serini has amnesia potion in the cauldron. I'm not sure there's much else needed to noodle out what's been going on for the previous two days. We have a very clear and very simple explanation for everything we've been shown right in front of us in the comic itself. We should leave any other possible explanation well on the speculation back burner.

Where do we get that they'd been asleep for two days when they woke up?

In any case, if you are looking for a explanation for why they slept for two days, I can think of two which are simpler that they'd previously been woken up and then given amnesia potion to go back to sleep. The first is that she kept redosing them with sleeping poison until the amnesia potion was ready to keep them docile. The second is simply that the sleeping poison lasted two days.

[Peelee]

She does say in 1229 that "I didn't go and brew a whole cauldren of amnesia potion for just two of you". If she had already used the first batch on the two of them, then she would indeed have used a whole cauldron on just two of them.

I use a smaller pan making food for two people than for a dinner party. I don't cook in the 14 inch skillet for two people but that doesn't mean I didn't use the 6 Incher to make breakfast earlier.

[Doctor West]

We can speculate about the specific details in terms of numbers of batches and specific timeline, but that still leaves us with the highly improbable problem of the paladins taking two days to recover from the sleep potion she hit them with. Either that was pretty amazingly strong stuff, or they should have woken up earlier.

This may be a silly point for me to delurk for, but I feel I should point out the sleep poison was strong enough to get through Paladin saving throws + O-Chul's ridiculous Con score. So either it *was* amazingly strong stuff or she got a really lucky roll.

[Liquor Box]

I use a smaller pan making food for two people than for a dinner party. I don't cook in the 14 inch skillet for two people but that doesn't mean I didn't use the 6 Incher to make breakfast earlier.

Why not make a cauldren from the start - then use it for the repeated paladin doses, and the remainder for the party.

If she had questioned the paladins and put them back to sleep three times, that is six doses, which is as much as she'd need for the Order. So if there were repeated questioning session she'd need a cauldron as much for them as for the Order.

I'm sure there are possible explanations. Perhaps the amnesia potion expires quickly so she had to brew a new small batch each time (like you would cook small portions of food for each meal). So I'm not saying that the repeated amensia potions is not tenable - It just doesn't seem very likely to me.

[Peelee]

Why not make a cauldren from the start - then use it for the repeated paladin doses, and the remainder for the party.

Maybe it doesn't last two days. Maybe she wasn't sure how many people she would need to prep the potion for. Maybe she was cleaning out her big cauldron from making the poison.

If it did happen, there may well be plenty of information we don't know yet that could have affected it. I'm not saying she did, I'm just responding to your reasonings that you think she didn't.

If she had questioned the paladins and put them back to sleep three times, that is six doses, which is as much as she'd need for the Order.

She needs ten doses for everyone, not six. The Order plus Minrah plus Blackwing plus the paladins. And if she did question and dose them prior, we don't know how many times.

[Quizatzhaderac]

PWOT™?
PWOT^TM™?
PWOT™^TM™™?

Fear my ability to mark trades.

People with outrageous trademarks?

[Peelee]

People with outrageous trademarks?

Ok that got a good laugh outta me.

[bunsen_h]

Pass WithOut Trace?

People Who Own Turnips?

Paintings Weeping Orange Tears?

Preventing Waste Of Time?

[danielxcutter]

In case nobody actually got the joke, that was just me saying "plot" in a facetious way, not an acronym.

[brian 333]

In case nobody actually got the joke, that was just me saying "plot" in a facetious way, not an acronym.

Oh, no. It's a thing now. We're gonna do this.

[mashlagoo1982]

I reviewed the adventure module City of the Spider Queen. Nothing really stuck out to me as being applicable to the behavior seen in this comic.

The part I was remembering occurs near the end and involves portals between the material and ethereal plane. The portals being used appear to be standard though.

[bunsen_h]

In case nobody actually got the joke, that was just me saying "plot" in a facetious way, not an acronym.

I was baffled. "PLOT^TM" would have been pretty clear; "PWOT^TM" not so much.