OOTS #1189 - The Discussion Thread

[Peelee]

Several wants?

And quite a few needs!

[sillymel]

I'm liking this Undertale of the Stick idea.

I second (third?) this.

[bunsen_h]

Me too. It's clever without being too much of an ass-pul.

I like it too. It's a possible reason why O-Chul might be "in demand": he appears to have the inner peace that could be key.

Inner peace might also permit someone to approach the Snarl without triggering it, as it's something of an avatar of conflict.

[Riftwolf]

Yep, +1d4+con Mod HP; +1 to caster level; 3+Int Mod skill points (human bonus applied); and +1 to Will saves.

We'll all notice the effects of that one when it hits.

Geez, put it in the spoiler tabs, some of us are still reeling from that.

[msoulforged]

That's an impressive poison if it can get through O'Chul's ridiculous Con score AND paladin resistance

Maybe more clues to hint that the source is divine?
Btw in the third box from the last, is it a top view where they are lying on the ground or are they falling? At first I thought they are rolled down the cliff but then I realized it might be a top view as well.

[Peelee]

Maybe more clues to hint that the source is divine?
Btw in the third box from the last, is it a top view where they are lying on the ground or are they falling? At first I thought they are rolled down the cliff but then I realized it might be a top view as well.

Not really, since paladins don't have resistance to poison.

Also, it's the same angle as the preceding panel where Lein is collapsing. It's a view of them lying in the ground.

[Draz74]

Count me in the group that thought (initially) that the green voice was Serini.

But with the resigned-to-not-existing comment, I'm not so sure.

[msoulforged]

Not really, since paladins don't have resistance to poison.

Also, it's the same angle as the preceding panel where Lein is collapsing. It's a view of them lying in the ground.

Oh. right. It was disease immunity, wasn't it? It has been many a year since I have played any D&D stuff.

I think I have miscounted by including the 'see you in february' panel. What I meant was the panel with the speech bubble

Spoiler: spoiler

Show

I guess we're finally doing this, huh?

Their arms and cloaks on this panel look like they are moving but I realize that it is more like them being carried than falling.

[Peelee]

Oh. right. It was disease immunity, wasn't it? It has been many a year since I have played any D&D stuff.

I think I have miscounted by including the 'see you in february' panel. What I meant was the panel with the speech bubble

Spoiler: spoiler

Show

I guess we're finally doing this, huh?

Their arms and cloaks on this panel look like they are moving but I realize that it is more like them being carried than falling.

Ooohhhhhh, I getcha. Yes, they're being carried, almost certainly by the legs. You can see the ledge they were on just beside them - if the Paladins are Australia, the ledge is New Zealand.

[Dion]

Count me in the group that thought (initially) that the green voice was Serini.

But with the resigned-to-not-existing comment, I'm not so sure.

But do you know who doesn’t exist?

Kraagor. Also... Soon’s wife Mijung.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Maybe more clues to hint that the source is divine?

It could be a ravage instead of a poison, if Rich feels like opening that particular can of worms.

[Aquillion]

Not really, since paladins don't have resistance to poison.

They do have the Divine Grace bonus to saving throws, though (although O'Chul may not get anything from that due to low cha.)

[MossyMeow]

Ooohhhhhh, I getcha. Yes, they're being carried, almost certainly by the legs. You can see the ledge they were on just beside them - if the Paladins are Australia, the ledge is New Zealand.

This isn’t the strangest metaphor I’ve ever heard, but it just might be in the top ten.

[Petrocorus]

They do have the Divine Grace bonus to saving throws, though (although O'Chul may not get anything from that due to low cha.)

Yep. O-Chul stated that Charisma was his dump stat. He may actually have a Cha penalty and hence zero bonus from Divine Grace.

[Jasdoif]

It could be a ravage instead of a poison, if Rich feels like opening that particular can of worms.

Ravages only damage evil creatures, anyway.

[Rogar Demonblud]

There are other ravages that are insta-paralysis "poisons", which I'm pretty sure were made just to get around the whole "heroes fight heroes" trope. Think they were published in one of the last print Dragon issues.

[Jasdoif]

It could be a ravage instead of a poison, if Rich feels like opening that particular can of worms.

Ravages only damage evil creatures, anyway.

There are other ravages that are insta-paralysis "poisons", which I'm pretty sure were made just to get around the whole "heroes fight heroes" trope. Think they were published in one of the last print Dragon issues.

Oh, you meant the dire can of dire worms of using not-in-a-sourecbook-even-if-it-was-official stuff.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Rich is about the only person I trust to make the Book of Exalted Deeds something other than drek. I just don't think he deems it worth the effort.

[danielxcutter]

Yep. O-Chul stated that Charisma was his dump stat. He may actually have a Cha penalty and hence zero bonus from Divine Grace.

He could have put points into it, and have a bonus from a Cloak of Charisma or something similar. Still won't be a high bonus from Divine Grace, but on the other hand both Fighters and Paladins have good Fort saves and the Giant has said O-Chul has a Con score somewhere in the mid-20s... Must be a pretty high DC.

[Seward]

but on the other hand both Fighters and Paladins have good Fort saves and the Giant has said O-Chul has a Con score somewhere in the mid-20s... Must be a pretty high DC.

Or he rolled badly, or a 1. I mean we saw a high level cleric blow an easy will save not very long ago (to the point where Minra used the embarrasment of that to score a point against her).

Honestly Rich usually is way off base on how saving throws usually work - generally on the side of "you will always fail unless you have both class and characteristic bonuses in your favor then you will always succeed). In the real game being bad at a save usually means you fail about 2/3 of the time and being good at it you fail 1/3 of the time, although at higher levels you will have characters that will only fail on a 1 or will only succeed on a 20 if they've optimized or dumped on build+gear.

In the Utterly Dwarfed arc he's done a little better at showing a broader range of save outcomes than in prior arcs, but the bias is pretty much that "likely to fail = fail, likely to succeed = succeed". So actually the occasional botch from somebody who you would expect to normally fail helps it seem more "real" to me than his usual writing.

Now if he would only write a "mass hold monster" that actually only got about 2/3 of the folks with lower saves instead of all of them, that would be nice too.

As an aside I also like the "drow poison" theory as very few poisons would actually incapacitate a fighter quickly, they'd just weaken his stats a bit. Drain/damage on a fighter usually has to work against a mental stat to incapacitate them quickly (maybe it was really a charisma poison?). It is kind of weird in 3.x D&D, when older versions most poisons were save/die or save/unconscious with nothing inbetween. They went a little too far in the other direction. No "con poison" can incapacitate without killing (unless the person has some nonlethal damage and the hitpoint loss caused by con loss drops them under the nonlethal damage inflicted), and none do enough damage to chip away at 25ish Con that quickly (most do like 1/2d6 damage, or 1d6 at most).

[Peelee]

Honestly Rich usually is way off base on how saving throws usually work.... In the real game

Nope. That would be correct if he were trying to portray an actual game, but he's not. Oots is not a game, and it functions on the rules of drama and storytelling just as much as it relies on the rules of the game it's based on.

In a real game, the odds of Qarr summoning such a massively powerful fiend would be enormous. In OotS, the odds are remarkably good, because a million to one chance means it's practically a sure thing. You cannot equate game statistics to story probability.

[Kris Moonhand]

Oh dang, that's right... it's Monks who are immune to poison, Paladins are only immune to disease!

[Rogar Demonblud]

Or he rolled badly, or a 1. I mean we saw a high level cleric blow an easy will save not very long ago (to the point where Minrah used the embarrassment of that to score a point against her).

Easy? More like 30% chance of failure once we crunched the numbers (maybe 25%, if she's a level higher).

[danielxcutter]

Easy? More like 30% chance of failure once we crunched the numbers (maybe 25%, if she's a level higher).

Yeah, unless you've been pumping your saves a lot, the chance of failing saves does tend to be more than 5%. Maybe not that much, but still.

[Seward]

Yeah, unless you've been pumping your saves a lot, the chance of failing saves does tend to be more than 5%. Maybe not that much, but still.

That is my point. An "easy" save that fails isn't uncommon. A "hard" save still succeeds quite often, you don't tend to make plans assuming everybody will fail, you assume instead that a good chunk of your party will be incapacitated and it is the rest of the party's job to help them recover/protect them (which is why 4 person parties are much more fragile than 6 person parties but that's another discussion. The odds of really bad luck incapacitating everybody are much higher with 4 than with 6). You also tend to have a fallback plan for when the one guy who can easily undo an effect is fails an "easy" save, one that usually involves consumables like potions/scrolls or one-a-day uses of weird class abilities.

But in OOTS the odds of succeeding or failing usually approaches 100% based on what is more likely. Not always, but it just doesn't have the feel at all of how saves normally work in 3.X D&D. Now I grant that the rules of narrative often trump probability, and Rich is fine with playing fast and loose with rules to advance his story (eg, how effective Suggestion is in his "campaign" or how magic weapons don't affect mistformed vampires that are still at positive hitpoint totals) but it's really the one thing I've seen over the years that is often jarring, most recently in the "mass hold person" failure where nobody makes a save except Durkon.

Narratively it rarely matters, it's just a tic that makes people like me who have played hundreds of tabletop sessions in this "rules universe" get jarred out of immersion when it comes up. Similar I guess to unrealistic depictions of police procedure on TV would bug actual police.

If he didn't get so much else of the gaming experience right, it wouldn't be as jarring.

[Riftwolf]

Oh, you meant the dire can of dire worms of using not-in-a-sourecbook-even-if-it-was-official stuff.

Was there ever an official dire Worm in any version of d&d?
I know of a dire can. It contains Irn Bru.

[Jannoire]

@Seward: percentage and its perception is based on the experience that chances will approach the statistics in the long run.

There aren't as many saves in OotS as there are in an actual game. Heck, I had sessions with more saving throws than the entire story thus far.
What I mean is, it may feel like the Giant is just deciding saves based on the story, but with so few saving throws happening, I wouldn't suspect a loaded die of it were to happen to me...

[danielxcutter]

@Seward: percentage and its perception is based on the experience that chances will approach the statistics in the long run.

There aren't as many saves in OotS as there are in an actual game. Heck, I had sessions with more saving throws than the entire story thus far.
What I mean is, it may feel like the Giant is just deciding saves based on the story, but with so few saving throws happening, I wouldn't suspect a loaded die of it were to happen to me...

Uh... must have been making a lot of saves then. I mean, OotS certainly does have a lot less saving throws going on than even WotC's intentionally^* suboptimal low standards, but the entire story?

*While part of the suboptimal build choices of various monsters and NPCs probably are due to the balance inherent in 3.5e, there's also the fact that most tables probably aren't trying to min-max the heck out of their characters. They're "sample NPCs", not "highly optimized NPCs that are the closest to a statblock for falling rocks as we can get".

[factotum]

The simple fact is, while you would expect the rolls to tend toward the average over time, there's absolutely nothing in the rules of probability to say that you can't flip 100 heads in a row--it's incredibly unlikely, true, but it can happen. Also, the nature of random events means they tend to cluster together--the sequence of 6-sided dice rolls 6 6 2 2 2 1 has exactly the same probability of occurring as 1 2 3 4 5 6, after all.

In the case of the Mass Hold Person thing, that's a Will save, and clerics have high Will saves, while none of the other party members traditionally would have (Roy's exceptional mental stats for a fighter notwithstanding). It's thus entirely within the bounds of probability that only Durkon would make his saving throw.

[Ruck]

Nope. That would be correct if he were trying to portray an actual game, but he's not. Oots is not a game, and it functions on the rules of drama and storytelling just as much as it relies on the rules of the game it's based on.

I'm amazed how often this continues to come up, or the idea that OOTS would be better if it somehow hewed more closely to probability and the Law of Averages. This is a story; what happens in it is what's going to be the best for the story, not the most statistically probable outcome; c'est ne pas etc. etc.