The Annotated Order of the Stick - A Companion Guide

[TheWombatOfDoom]

In 3.0, Small characters could use Medium weapons. They would just use them differently (it would be treated as a weapon one size larger). So Belkar was wielding Medium daggers, but they were treated as a Small Shortsword. When they updated to 3.5, his Medium daggers became Small daggers, which are smaller and weaker.

Added parts of this to the OP, thank you!

Not sure if this is how this works but:

Here, Belkar notes he failed a spot check, which is a dice roll in D&D 3.5 that determines whether or not a character sees something. It is one of the more common rolls players (or their DMs) make during a gaming session, and often if a player rolls (or hears rolled) dice when entering a room or traveling, but nothing happens after the roll, there is a sense that you "missed" something, even though the character should not realize a check was failed.

Alertness is a feat that provides bonuses to listen and spot checks. In 3.5, so long as your familiar was within reach, you gained the benefits of this feat. although meant to be magical assistants/companions for wizards, players would often forget they were around, and so they would "pop up" whenever their abilities were needed, thus giving players a reason to describe their location/activity.

A listen check is identical to a spot check, except that it represents the ability to notice a sound, rather than to see something. It creates the same "dice rolled, but no new information" issue that spot checks create. As noted above, alertness provides a bonus to listen

I cut it down some, to attempt to make it shorter and not bunchy. How does it look? Too cluttered?

I can confirm based personal experience that players of Wizard or Sorcerer PCs in 3.X would take a familiar for a minor mechanical benefit (a bonus to a skill, extra hit points, a bonus to a saving throw), and then never mention it again. (I know that my Sorcerer was just as guilty... until my Viper familiar saved my party from a TPK when all of us were paralyzed by a Kopru. I remembered the Viper just in time to argue that it deserved a saving throw as well, which it made. And it kept making saves against the Kopru's attack and it crit on it's bite attack, killing the Kopru with it's poisonous bite. For those unfamiliar with the Kopru, they resemble tiny crustaceans with psychic attacks.)

Haha, I generally run the rule that if you don't remember your familiar, it stays at the place you last remembered it, or in the vicinity. So when the group teleported miles and miles away, there was no chance of having it on hand. There ended up being a side quest to rescue the familiar, that someone had captured.

Your note for update 485 is slightly incomplete. Eugene is making a Dragonball Z reference.

Goku, the main character, is killed protecting the Earth from the first wave of a three-man invasion. While he is dead, he trains with King Kai, a martial arts master, to become stronger while his friends gather the seven Dragonballs in order to wish him back to life to help fight off the other two members coming to finish the job.

Fixed that. The update was written before I had a form going for these. I've changed it to match and echo your contribution.

No Cure for the Paladin Blues - I'm assuming it's a reference to the song "(No Cure for the) Summertime Blues", originally by Eddie Cochran, but also covered by The Who and a heck of a lot of other people besides.

The Update 575 about Giro. It's an anagram of Igor, not an acronym (if it were an acronym, it would be something like "Grubwiggler's Igor Random Operative" )

Added in the No Cure reference, and also fixed the wording for Igor, and added some information.

Sense Motive is a Wisdom-related skill check usually made in response to a Handle Animal, Diplomacy, or Bluff check. The check is rolled in opposition to one of those three. It is in practice, a roll to see through being manipulated by the other roller. A successful check means that the individual rolling Sense Motive saw through the manipulation, or was not swayed (depending on how much the roll was beaten by.)

Elan is singing about his new skill points is a mechanical thing. Between 3.0 and 3.5, Bards went from 4 + INT Mod skill points per level to 6 + INT mod skill points per level. Elan is assumed to be Level 9 at the time, meaning he got 18 Skill Points (and a chain shirt) from the transition. (Considering how he could have 12 Ranks max in any one skill, this is enough to master a whole new skill, and get decent profiency in a whole new one.)

I'll be adding some of these details once I get a wording on "Inspire Competance", but thank you for the submissions thus far. Used some of your explanation on Elan's singing.