OOTS #658 - The Discussion Thread

[aboyd]

For me personally, I'm assuming that both of them had a few dozen HP.

But that is not enough to stay above zero.

Yeah, it is. A "few" is a variable number from 3 upward. 5 dozen HP is 60 HP. That would survive the Meteor Strike, and that's in line with what 3 potions of Cure Serious Wounds would do.

You've been shown ways that these characters could still be alive, mathematically and following the rules. Now it appears you simply want to be upset because it would have been "long odds" for them to roll well. Go ahead and be upset, but stop saying that three potions is "not enough" to survive a Meteor Strike. It is. Not only that, but if the off-panel potion was a Healing Salve, then it's possible that at least one of the characters could survive another Meteor Strike in the next comic. I don't think that will happen. I think O'Chul dies in the next comic. But if O'Chul instead survives one more huge damaging spell, I still won't see reason to complain.

Stories about heroes are supposed to be about the ones that succeeded against the odds. They are not stories about the 100 people who had bad luck before the heroes arrived. Most of us have experienced both sides in our own lives. Most of us have down-on-our-luck stories about bad months/years in our lives when every setback that could happen, did happen. And then most of us (hopefully) also have stories about times when we won even though the odds of winning were slim.

Good and bad luck happens in real life, so I'm not sure why it's prohibited in a cartoon.

In a D&D game that I play, we had terrible luck recently. We lost a fight and were about to die. The DM had rolled SIX natural 20s in a row, all crits. However impossible or unlikely, it nonetheless happened. The Sorcerer had a scroll of Greater Teleportation, to get us out of a miserable situation. The scroll was above her level, so she needed a spellcraft check. The only way she could fail would be to roll a one, which she did! The whole group screamed and jeered and bemoaned the bad luck, while the DM nearly hyperventilated with glee from his extreme good fortune.

The odds have been reversed, with our group dishing out amazing rolls over & over again, while the DM repeatedly rolled 1s. Those situations usually caused cheers and roars of laughter to erupt at the table.

This is what is fun. This is beating the odds. This is what makes a story good -- not average characters who perform at their statistical norms, no more, no less -- but rather the underdogs who overcome misfortune at great risk to themselves.

To quote Karen from Parenthood, "I happen to LIKE the roller coaster, okay?"

I have no problem with this.