Class and Level Geekery XIX - Nobody Cares about that Stuff Anymore

[danielxcutter]

I dunno, Shoulder Pads Guy seems like a frontliner too. Tarquin seems a more lighter-armored combatant with pretty good Dex in comparison.

[woweedd]

Depends what you're mirroring - not everyone reflects one character, after all. Tarquin is definitely the fighter of the VL - not a secondary caster - after all, regardless of personality/interaction comparisons.

Yeah, to be clear, i'm talking combat roles, in which Tarquin fills the Belkar role of "lightly-armored agility-focused secondary fighter". Obviously, narratively, he has more in common with Elan, but that's his personality and interactions, not his fighting style.

[danielxcutter]

I think it's safe to say that there are a variety of roles that are distributed differently for each party. Comparing the Order of the Stick with the other groups:

• The Vector Legion has seemingly more of a sharp contrast between melee combatants and casters. Shoulder Pads Guy is probably a heavy-armored frontliner, and what little we've seen of Jacinda in combat suggests she's also a melee build primarily. Lirian and Miron are obviously the unarmored ranged/support caster type, and while Malack isn't a complete wuss in close quarters either he seems to prefer to use spells and his vampire abilities. By contrast, the humanoid members of the OotS except for V are all somewhat capable of melee combat, and even their melee combatants all have or gained ranged attack options (Belkar's always been throwing daggers almost as often as swinging them, Roy and Durkon have their weapons, Durkon, Elan, and Minrah are also casters).
• The Order of the Scribble, if anything, is even more melee-focused than the Stickers; Dorukan's a standard wizard build, yes, but Serini's more a skirmisher than a markswoman, Lirian had access to the ridiculously powerful Wild Shape class feature and Shapechange, Girard was a TWF combatant, and Kraagor and Soon were fairly straightforward beatsticks. However, what we've seen and heard of them suggest they were rather inflexible and quite specialized, which left them with pretty big weaknesses once the party split up; the Order of the Stick on the other hand are still team players but also have experience in employing tactics outside their immediate niche and improvising.
• The Linear Guild are... well, it's a bit harder to make a general comparison because of how much their members fluctuate. But they're generally much, much better at punching down than up. Meanwhile, the Order has been dealing with enemies far, far over their weight class for basically most of the comic. Oh, and I suppose that their shortcomings aren't as covered as well by the rest of the team, but that's kind of what's going on for everyone besides the Order of the Stick anyways.
• Team Evil are essentially two extremely powerful casters, the MitD, and a handful of other allies, most of which are summoned or otherwise joined up because of Redcloak. This isn't much of an issue in combat, since these allies tend to fill in the martial roles even before accounting for the MitD and both of their casters have enough raw magic to make up for that anyways. Not having a skillmonkey has been biting them in the metaphorical butt though; that's why they've been held up by the first layer of defense for this Gate in the first place. The Order, by contrast, have become very good at finding force multipliers now.

I'm probably missing a lot of things, but I think I've gotten the broad strokes down.

[Kardwill]

Yeah, to be clear, i'm talking combat roles, in which Tarquin fills the Belkar role of "lightly-armored agility-focused secondary fighter".

Really? The man is a good fencer, but he has grey (steel?) armor, spiked shoulderpads, grey (steel?) armored boots, and a huge spiked closed helmet. And he wielded his own 2-handed giant axe when he "replaced" Thog. A good Dex and Int feel like they fit him, sure, but he still looks like a heavily armored frontliner, to me.

[danielxcutter]

I would like to point out that his armor is glamoured so it can look basically however the heck he wants. Considering he took zero damage from Malack's Flame Strike though I'd imagine he has Evasion and it's a mithral breastplate.

[woweedd]

Really? The man is a good fencer, but he has grey (steel?) armor, spiked shoulderpads, grey (steel?) armored boots, and a huge spiked closed helmet. And he wielded his own 2-handed giant axe when he "replaced" Thog. A good Dex and Int feel like they fit him, sure, but he still looks like a heavily armored frontliner, to me.

We see when he fights as Thog, his style is super-defensive, more dodging or redirecting then direct attacks, and he's a lot more mobile then Roy tends to be.

[Metastachydium]

Also, Soul Muncher aside, his weapon of choice would, in fact, appear to be a little dagger (I mean, it's a +5 dagger of Collision; if it's really just an emergency spare thing, that's a bit going overboard with the enhancements even for him).

[ti'esar]

Also, as the original point was saying, the appearance of Shoulder Pads Guy (and that's pretty much all we have to go on about him) implies even more strongly that he's a tanky frontline fighter.

And I can't imagine Tarquin would be part of a party without character speciation.