OOTS #1161 - The Discussion Thread

[Grey_Wolf_c]

What second save? Durkon made his first save successfully.

I thought he had not, but I went back and checked: yes, he did. You can see him frowning and looking back when Belkar's sentence is interrupted half way, and you can see him changing expression from that when the rock hits them. He was never paralyzed in the first place, as you said.

Grey Wolf

[GreatWyrmGold]

V, there's politely listening to your friends' ideas and thinking about whether they're good or not, and then there's taking them seriously even when they're completely stupid. You're in a party with Elan and Belkar, you should have figured this out ages ago. Or at least pages.

[Arkku]

By the way, is this the first time a "regular" earth elemental appears (or, at least, is fought by the party), as opposed to Redcloak's atomic elementals?

[Resileaf]

By the way, is this the first time a "regular" earth elemental appears (or, at least, is fought by the party), as opposed to Redcloak's atomic elementals?

Now I actually wonder what would happen if Redcloak summoned an uranium elemental.

[bc56]

By the way, is this the first time a "regular" earth elemental appears (or, at least, is fought by the party), as opposed to Redcloak's atomic elementals?

I think this is the first time a non-periodic elemental shows up.
Although I don't want to reread the entire comic to be sure.

[Fyraltari]

What second save? Durkon made his first save successfully.

Why didn’t he dodge the rock, then ?

Now I actually wonder what would happen if Redcloak summoned an uranium elemental.

It would be very tiny in order not to exceed critical mass and instantly explode.

[i6uuaq]

They're having a little more trouble with this fight than I thought they would. With the relative power levels available, I thought it would be a curbstomping.

[hroþila]

Why didn’t he dodge the rock, then ?

He appears to have been distracted by Belkar suddenly stopping mid-sentence and everybody just freezing (plus I imagine it wasn't his turn), but note that he's clearly moving his eyebrows in that panel and the rest of his body in the next one. There's no room (or need) for a second save.
edit: I too thought he had been paralyzed like everybody else at first.

[RickDaily12]

Oh man. I don't know why exactly, but Elan's face in particular when the boulder smashes the party is hilarious

It's just so calm and casual under the circumstances.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Why didn’t he dodge the rock, then ?

Because in D&D there isn't a "dodge" check? You might as well ask why the worm didn't dodge the hammer. The elemental throwing the rock got a high enough "to hit" roll that it exceeded Durkon's AC, and thus it was a hit. Or if it is a AoE, Durkon missed his reflex save, which is hardly surprising for a dwarven cleric in heavy armour.

Grey Wolf

[Jaxzan Proditor]

Oof, poor Roy. For a moment there I thought that was going to go much worse.

[Fyraltari]

He appears to have been distracted by Belkar suddenly stopping mid-sentence and everybody just freezing (plus I imagine it wasn't his turn), but note that he's clearly moving his eyebrows in that panel and the rest of his body in the next one. There's no room (or need) for a second save.
edit: I too thought he had been paralyzed like everybody else at first.

Oh, okay.

Because in D&D there isn't a "dodge" check? You might as well ask why the worm didn't dodge the hammer. The elemental throwing the rock got a high enough "to hit" roll that it exceeded Durkon's AC, and thus it was a hit. Or if it is a AoE, Durkon missed his reflex save, which is hardly surprising for a dwarven cleric in heavy armour.

Grey Wolf

I mean, wasn’t the worm’s spell there to help the elemental boulder them? I had assumed they would have avoided that without it.

[danielxcutter]

Evil says it's "not fair" when they lose fairly, but they never say that when they win UNfairly. Of course that's because the are Eviiiil.

To be fair, that kind of thing is somewhat alignment-independent unless someone pulls major BS

Because in D&D there isn't a "dodge" check? You might as well ask why the worm didn't dodge the hammer. The elemental throwing the rock got a high enough "to hit" roll that it exceeded Durkon's AC, and thus it was a hit. Or if it is a AoE, Durkon missed his reflex save, which is hardly surprising for a dwarven cleric in heavy armour.

Grey Wolf

This.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I'm actually surprised the universe didn't provide V with another chance to use the cat-retrieving version once more (by, say, having Roy fall while holding the cat, and the hand grabbing them both).

Or having them knocked off in the same direction.

I'm not well versed in game mechanics, but shouldn't it be hold person instead?

Not if you wanted to target Mr. Scruffy. (Or if your stat block only gives you hold monster, and I'm not sure what this giant death-worm's stats say.

The Exarch cast a non-standard Invisibility Purge. When he ran through the orange barrier, it would have dispelled a standard Invisibility Purge, which is centred on the caster, so Haley's and V's Invisibility would no longer be suppressed.

I just checked. All versions of invisibility purge I checked (3.5, PF, 5e) say that the sphere negates all forms of invisibility, but only the 3.5 and PF versions specified that the invisibility was merely suppressed while in the area. (5e allows a save, but rogues aren't proficient in Wisdom saves and Blackwing is kinda foolish, so that's only one bad roll required.)

I think this is the first time a non-periodic elemental shows up.
Although I don't want to reread the entire comic to be sure.

We've seen non-periodic elementals in cutaway gags, at least. Like that ranch elemental V spent time adventuring with.

Why didn’t he dodge the rock, then?

Because his Dexterity isn't that good, I assume. He has plate armor for that; besides, you don't even add your Dexterity modifier to AC anymore in heavy armor.

It would be very tiny in order not to exceed critical mass and instantly explode.

It depends on details like shape and isotope. A spherical uranium element in a vacuum would have a critical mass between 15 and 52 kg, depending on isotope ratios; non-spherical elementals would have higher critical masses because it's harder to get neutrons from one end of the creature to the other.
A human body (the archetypical Medium creature) is roughly 0.06 to 0.07 cubic meters (60-60 thousand cubic centimeters) in volume; one made of solid uranium would weigh over a ton (either kind). Going from Medium to Tiny would reduce volume by a factor of 64, reducing mass to roughly 18-20 kilograms—which is safely below U-235's critical mass, but just above U-233's. A sufficiently spindly Tiny U-233 Elemental could probably avoid exploding, until it curled up into a ball.
...Actually, that sounds like a pretty potent summon. A uranium elemental just above its spherical critical mass, but shaped in such a way that it doesn't go critical until it wants to?

[Peelee]

Now I actually wonder what would happen if Redcloak summoned an uranium elemental.

Given the range limitations, I don't think we ever see a uranium elememtal.

[Kish]

proficient in Wisdom saves [...]besides, you don't even add your Dexterity modifier to AC anymore in heavy armor.

Gah, 5ed .

[Peelee]

Kish gets double proficiency bonus with advantage on any OotS post mentioning 5e.

[Giscard76]

Some Great Punch lines lately!

We have a cleric again, we can fix stuff like this!!

Ah, yes, of course.

[Kish]

Kish gets double proficiency bonus with advantage on any OotS post mentioning 5e.

I hate you.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I mean, wasn’t the worm’s spell there to help the elemental boulder them? I had assumed they would have avoided that without it.

Some of them might have, like Belkar. You are also assuming that the worm possesses perfect information, which I don't see a reason why it would have.

Grey Wolf

[Peelee]

I hate you.

Too bad, still like you.

[Fyraltari]

We've seen non-periodic elementals in cutaway gags, at least. Like that ranch elemental V spent time adventuring with.

And a Gold Elemental who gets all worked up when people offer them pieces of their relatives as payment, for some reason.

It depends on details like shape and isotope. A spherical uranium element in a vacuum would have a critical mass between 15 and 52 kg, depending on isotope ratios; non-spherical elementals would have higher critical masses because it's harder to get neutrons from one end of the creature to the other.
A human body (the archetypical Medium creature) is roughly 0.06 to 0.07 cubic meters (60-60 thousand cubic centimeters) in volume; one made of solid uranium would weigh over a ton (either kind). Going from Medium to Tiny would reduce volume by a factor of 64, reducing mass to roughly 18-20 kilograms—which is safely below U-235's critical mass, but just above U-233's. A sufficiently spindly Tiny U-233 Elemental could probably avoid exploding, until it curled up into a ball.
...Actually, that sounds like a pretty potent summon. A uranium elemental just above its spherical critical mass, but shaped in such a way that it doesn't go critical until it wants to?

First, I’m proud to have accidentally gotten the right D&D size classification.
Second, that sounds awesome, if very dangerous for the caster. The Elemental would also have some kind of permanent poisonous area of effect too, no?

[Sniccups]

Kish gets double proficiency bonus with advantage on any OotS post mentioning 5e.

Nice! Although if the comic were to use 5e, the plot would have gone very differently, because there wouldn't be anything stopping V from learning teleport.

[137beth]

So easy to forget about Durkon after we spent all book getting him back!

[zimmerwald1915]

Oh, okay.


I mean, wasn’t the worm’s spell there to help the elemental boulder them? I had assumed they would have avoided that without it.

Mass hold monster, like its lesser cousins, imposes the Paralyzed condition. The Paralyzed condition, among other things, imposes an effective Dexterity score of 0 on a character. This means that instead of a character's normal Dexterity modifier, that character applies -5 to things to which they apply their Dexterity modifiers. Characters apply their Dexterity modifiers to, among other things, AC, which is the number that an attack roll must beat for the attack to hit, and Reflex saves, which are used to avoid area attacks. Characters using their Dexterity to avoid attacks, or making Reflex saves, is often portrayed visually in The Order of the Stick as their dodging the attacks. However, there is no Dodge action (though confusingly, there is a Dodge bonus type which also applies to AC and is distinguished from a use of Dexterity by the sound effect "dodge") - what is mechanically going on is that the attacker failed to hit a target number, or the character reacted unconsciously.

In other words, the spell-like ability did make it easier for the elementals to hit the Order, but you've got the under-the-hood mechanics backwards. Or maybe d20 does, and it should have made dodging an affirmative action.

[Sir_Norbert]

And a Gold Elemental who gets all worked up when people offer them pieces of their relatives as payment, for some reason.

Gold is not a non-periodic element.

[D.One]

The Exarch cast a non-standard Invisibility Purge. When he ran through the orange barrier, it would have dispelled a standard Invisibility Purge, which is centred on the caster, so Haley's and V's Invisibility would no longer be suppressed.

Maybe... but if only V and Haley were invisible, and if they were using regular 2nd level Invisibility instead of Improved 4th level one, the invisibility would have been dispelled anyway after they attacked for the first time.

Those are two big ifs. (Pun totally intended)

V has Improved Invisibility, and thus it seems reasonable to use it, at least on Haley, who benefits most with sneak attacks (I know the worm, if undead, is immune to that, but they didn't know exactly which kind of enemies they might fight besides the vampires when they devised the strategy).

On the other (non-Bigby) hand ("OTONBH"), they might expect for something like Invisibility Purge or Dispell Magic (since V remarks Invisibility is a tactic to be expected at their level), and thus conclude that it was better to save 4th level slots for other spells.

[Fyraltari]

Mass hold monster, like its lesser cousins, imposes the Paralyzed condition. The Paralyzed condition, among other things, imposes an effective Dexterity score of 0. This means that instead of a character's normal Dexterity modifier, that character applies -5. Characters apply their Dexterity modifiers to, among other things, AC, which is the number that an attack roll must beat to hit, and Reflex saves, which are used to avoid area attacks. Characters using their Dexterity to avoid attacks, or making Reflex saves, is often portrayed visually in The Order of the Stick as their dodging the attacks. However, there is no Dodge action - what is mechanically going on is that the attacker failed to hit a target number, or the character reacted unconsciously.

In other words, the spell-like ability did make it easier for the elementals to hit the Order, but you've got the under-the-hood mechanics backwards. Or maybe d20 does, and it should have made dodging an affirmative action.

Nah, it makes sense as it is. I didn’t think that dodge was a particular action (Haley wouldn’t need to Evade, then). But that was the best way to phrase that I could think of.

Gold is not a non-periodic element.

Duh. I should have stopped to think.

[denthor]

Why didn’t he dodge the rock, then ?

It would be very tiny in order not to exceed critical mass and instantly explode.

The mechanics.

When throwing a large rock you can hit a target (enemy ) and the armor class of the enemy or an area armor class 15 usually less then the enemy armor class.

Hitting an area affects everyone in the area.

[D.One]

On the other (non-Bigby) hand ("OTONBH"), they might expect for something like Invisibility Purge or Dispell Magic (since V remarks Invisibility is a tactic to be expected at their level), and thus conclude that it was better to save 4th level slots for other spells.

Aaaand I just now thought of a tactic for a Wizard:

Cast Improved Invisibility (or Invisibility) and cast a Contingency with Improved Invisibility that activates if the first Invisibility is dispelled (but that wouldn't work against Invisibility Purge, I think).