OOTS #851 - The Discussion Thread

[Murray]

Dwarf tossing? Looks like Tarquin really is trying to be as tasteless as Thog.

Do DMs usually house rule in order to rectify this?

The most common house rules are probably things like doors, buildings, trees and other obstacles, such as melee-centric PCs. With encounters in swamps in the dead of night, or crowded city streets, my rogue had a lot more success with thrown knives than he ever did with his bow, and the melee characters are the ones who had a much easier time of it. Another DM was so lousy at any loot that wasn't obviously beneficial to melee fighters, my wizard felt underpowered, and the party's ranger defaulted to melee combat.

In my experience, the interpretations of the DM make or break some classes or weapons.

[Aquillion]

i always figured bows were next to useless since there damage didnt scale with the player so the higher the level the less relative damage you do as the opponents have higher DR/health pools

Remember: If you can attack the opponent from range and they can't reach you (and can't catch up to you), you win automatically. That's a pretty big advantage at any level (though, granted, higher-level opponents are harder to pull those tricks on.) If it were easy to do melee-class damage at high range, this would change to "being exposed at long range is guaranteed death", which is not desirable.

[Burner28]

Good strip!

[Emperordaniel]

I just realised that this strip is exactly 600 strips after #251, where Miko goes 1v5 (alternatively: 2v5, 2v4, or 1v4, depending on how you look at it) on the Order and wins. The exact details of the fight, which didn't appear in the strip (for lack of space, I believe) can be found in Rich's post here.

Is it a coincidence that the comics are exactly 600 strips apart? I think not.

[Omergideon]

he couldnt possibly, ring of regeneration doesnt help you in combat unless that combat lasts for an hour or more (or you take non-lethal damage then its marginarly useful)

So what are the stats on a ring of regeneration then? How effective are they?

[hamishspence]

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems...m#regeneration

Regeneration
This white gold ring continually allows a living wearer to heal 1 point of damage per level every hour rather than every day. (This ability cannot be aided by the Heal skill.) Nonlethal damage heals at a rate of 1 point of damage per level every 5 minutes. If the wearer loses a limb, an organ, or any other body part while wearing this ring, the ring regenerates it as the spell. In either case, only damage taken while wearing the ring is regenerated.

[RustyVenture]

I wonder what Mr. Scruffy is up to. Perhaps he'll find V and let Durkon know that V is in trouble. And then perhaps V's detect magic will show that Girard isn't actually dead, and his corpse is an illusion.

Or maybe Team Evil shows up finally. At any rate, the action should be good for the next bunch of strips.

[thepsyker]

as long as two charater form a straight line through a target the target is being flanked and the two characters are flanking it

judging by the direction of the arrows it most likely is a sneak attack unless shes 31+ feet away


i wouldnt really know as much as i love the game i can never find a group to play with so i havent played it much but ive read the rules enough to understand them at least

Yes and what does that have to do with the fact that the rules I just quoted clearly state that to get a sneak attack it isn't enough that the target be flanked, they have to be flanked by the rogue getting the sneak attack.


edit:sloth ninja'd

[Peelee]

Yeah... Haley is almost certainly not within five feet of Tarquin in any direction, which would be necessary for her to be flanking him. Not only is she not in the shot with the rest of the people, indicating that she's farther away, but her arrows have diverged to such a point when they hit Tarquin that she would almost certainly have to be farther away than five feet when she shot them. And even if none of those things were true, it wouldn't matter, because you need to threaten the opponent's square to flank, and you can't threaten an adjacent square with a ranged weapon. So Haley, having her bow out, wouldn't flank Tarquin even if she were standing right next to him across from Roy. Heck, making a ranged attack provokes an attack of opportunity if you're adjacent to someone capable of making a melee attack, so if Haley were flanking him somehow, Tarquin would have gotten an attack of opportunity against her.

edit: Now that I think about it, Elan doesn't have a melee weapon out either. I don't think Tarquin is flanked at all in this scene.

Aha. Apparently I forgot about the 5-foot rule. It appears you are correct, sir.

[Skyner]

Dwarf tossing? Looks like Tarquin really is trying to be as tasteless as Thog.



The most common house rules are probably things like doors, buildings, trees and other obstacles, such as melee-centric PCs. With encounters in swamps in the dead of night, or crowded city streets, my rogue had a lot more success with thrown knives than he ever did with his bow, and the melee characters are the ones who had a much easier time of it. Another DM was so lousy at any loot that wasn't obviously beneficial to melee fighters, my wizard felt underpowered, and the party's ranger defaulted to melee combat.

In my experience, the interpretations of the DM make or break some classes or weapons.

I know that feel.

Than again, even with the rules how they are in 3.5, you could make a melee character unleash massive damage. I was in a campaign once where there was a hexblade as a the spell caster, don't think to hard on that, but the massive damage dealer was a rogue/fighter/warblade. He would average around 80-120 per turn.

So yeah, DM's could also see the rules as a guideline and say screw it and let the players do whatever. In fact, I hated that campaign since I had the most characters die in it. Didn't help that the DM encouraged bribery and player vs player, and really would help you when you made a smart choice. Ugh.

[Forikroder]

Durkon cast a spell in melee range, provoking an attack of oppurtunity (AoO 3, BTW this is one of the manners AoOs can be provoked that is least capitalized on), used Improved Grapple and Improved Grab, and maybe Great Throw to send Durkon way out of the picture.

wrong, if Tarquin got an AoO on Durkon it would ahve happened BEFORE the spell and the spell would have fizzled if he threw him, therefore he had to have attacked AFTER the spell on his own seperate turn therefore we know he had 2 turns at the very minimum (counting his surprise round)

I wonder what Mr. Scruffy is up to. Perhaps he'll find V and let Durkon know that V is in trouble. And then perhaps V's detect magic will show that Girard isn't actually dead, and his corpse is an illusion.

durkon used trueseeing on the corpse

[Barazon]

thog use con ... cont ... contr ...

thog start over

thog use apo ... apos ... apost ...

thog talky with words stuck to each other and letters left out?

[rewinn]

so you use a rogue, someone who lacks a gender completely, and the paladin who as soon as the cards turned against her tried to run?

One's inability to ascertain my gender is incommensurate with the establishment of any possible relevance of that issue unto tactics such as expedited retreat.
You don't use Rogues. Rogues use YOU!
Were I not both fictional and dead, we would see whether running like a girl affects my ability to SMITE EVIL!

... ring of regeneration doesnt help you in combat ...

I must admit that when I ran campaigns, RoR was revised to be an analog to Trollish regeneration, rather than the rather useless item you accurately describe. A "magic item" that functions like a Very Slow Healing Potion seems hardly magic at all, but that's the case with a whole lotta 3.5 stuff, e.g. +1 sword.

[rewinn]

thog use con ... cont ... contr ...

thog start over

thog use apo ... apos ... apost ...

thog talky with words stuck to each other and letters left out?

If the Order is given a moment to think about it, they'll realize that they aren't facing Thog at all.

But of course Tarquin may not give them that moment to think about it.

MEANWHILE: I'm waiting to see what those Bright Red Ax Runes mean. Perhaps there's a Munchkin reference?

[MeanMrsMustard]

thog use con ... cont ... contr ...

thog start over

thog use apo ... apos ... apost ...

thog talky with words stuck to each other and letters left out?

no. not-thog talk with words stuck together and letters left out. and use little line thingy. thog not understand little line thingy.

[Dudu]

I don't know a lot about the ToB stuff, but I was wondering if there was any particularly defensive based classes or builds, since that seems to be Tarquins whole shtick.

Tarquin seems the perfect Warblade, from ToB. High int, defensive maneuvers (including one to switch his will saves for conc check). The Warblade is very tactical, and even though builds can vary wide, most of them are roleplayed as gloryhounds. A gloryhound with a tactical mind, this is Tarquin IMO.

The other perfect warblade is Roy. But we know Roy is just pure fighter.

[Forikroder]

If the Order is given a moment to think about it, they'll realize that they aren't facing Thog at all.

But of course Tarquin may not give them that moment to think about it.

MEANWHILE: I'm waiting to see what those Bright Red Ax Runes mean. Perhaps there's a Munchkin reference?

even if they do realise its Tarquin thats not going to change there battle strategy unless Elans secret plan can come into action

[Skyner]

Tarquin seems the perfect Warblade, from ToB. High int, defensive maneuvers (including one to switch his will saves for conc check). The Warblade is very tactical, and even though builds can vary wide, most of them are roleplayed as gloryhounds. A gloryhound with a tactical mind, this is Tarquin IMO.

The other perfect warblade is Roy. But we know Roy is just pure fighter.

Thats what I've thinking, I mean he can switch between weapons, as shown in the comics from sword to axe to dagger with ease. One of the abilities for the warblade is to switch all the feats taken for one weapon to another as long as they trained with it for an hour. I don't have the exact ability name on me at this time, but I will shortly. Anyways, With the warblade you could easily add fighter and rogue levels and soon you could be dodging pretty much everything for the point cost, which as we can see will be high.

That is if he is a warblade, we haven't seen really any other classes from ToB yet, maybe he's the first. Though than again Elan took that one prestiage class. Or a really wild idea is that Tarquin is a custom class.

PS, is he wearing armor? I want to say yes.

[Bulldog Psion]

One big problem -- Tome of Battle isn't open content.

[the_tick_rules]

I love how Elan is embracing his own foolishness now.

[Skyner]

One big problem -- Tome of Battle isn't open content.

Yes, I suppose that would be an issue*throws books behind self* Custom class than or a fighter that picked his feats extremely well.

I still want to say he is holding out, one doesn't simply say 'magnificent' when challenged by a five on one.

[sims796]

I wonder what Mr. Scruffy is up to. Perhaps he'll find V and let Durkon know that V is in trouble. And then perhaps V's detect magic will show that Girard isn't actually dead, and his corpse is an illusion.

Or maybe Team Evil shows up finally. At any rate, the action should be good for the next bunch of strips.

I disagree. It's obvious that Mr. Scruffy will single handedly save the Order by defeating Tarquin in one on one combat, with feats never before seen by mankind.

[Forikroder]

I disagree. It's obvious that Mr. Scruffy will single handedly save the Order by defeating Tarquin in one on one combat, with feats never before seen by mankind.

mr. scruffy is obviously girard who polymorphed himself into a cat through the msot epic magic possible and went deep undercover to spy on the saphire guard from the inside

[sims796]

mr. scruffy is obviously girard who polymorphed himself into a cat through the msot epic magic possible and went deep undercover to spy on the saphire guard from the inside

It's a sign that one has spent far too much on this forum when that actually makes sense

[Forikroder]

It's a sign that one has spent far too much on this forum when that actually makes sense

ya its kinda disturbing that it actually does make sense in a really crazy plot twist sorta way

[ti'esar]

Yes, I suppose that would be an issue*throws books behind self* Custom class than or a fighter that picked his feats extremely well.

I still want to say he is holding out, one doesn't simply say 'magnificent' when challenged by a five on one.

Given what we know of Tarquin, I suspect that reflected more on the fight's "coolness" then on his actual chances (plus, he said it last strip).

[Bulldog Psion]

Yes, I suppose that would be an issue*throws books behind self* Custom class than or a fighter that picked his feats extremely well.

I still want to say he is holding out, one doesn't simply say 'magnificent' when challenged by a five on one.

Yes, it's too bad on the ToB, because I agree that Tarquin is 100% warblade from what we've seen.

Hm -- is mystic theurge open content, come to think of it? If Tsukiko provides a precedent, then the warblade theory may not be totally impossible.

[hamishspence]

Mystic Theurge is in the DMG, and the SRD.

[Bulldog Psion]

Mystic Theurge is in the DMG, and the SRD.

Ah, I'm thinking of the non-core spell she used. My mistake.

One spell is probably a lot easier to "get away with" than a whole class. So I guess warblade is still out. Unfortunate, since it's an excellent fit for Tarquin.

He's too good to be a fighter, though.

[Laroque]

I think this one was great. Tarquin's actually cooler than I expected and it's making for a good fight.