Originally Posted by
jere7my
In my experience, arrows that strike stone at a glancing angle go skittering off downrange.* Haley wanted the smokestick to get into their midst and stick. I imagine her thought process went something like this: "How can I do that? Oh, right, the jerk in the helmet will catch any arrow he sees coming at him. Ha!" Hence the title of the strip. She didn't have to think about to-hit chances; she just had to have a psychological handle on not-Thog, to know he wouldn't dodge or deflect the arrow. If she'd wanted to maximize her chances to hit, she could've aimed at someone less heavily armored.
* Note that the smokestick went off a few seconds after Tarquin caught it, so it doesn't seem to be impact-triggered; we have no reason to think it would've gone off if it had struck the wall. We also don't know whether the trigger required that the arrow be caught — we don't know what the mechanism was.