Order of the Stick: September I

[Techonce]

grrr...I missed footnote 1:
1 Regardless of the action, if you move out of a threatened square, you usually provoke an attack of opportunity. This column indicates whether the action itself, not moving, provokes an attack of opportunity.

This was a point that was brought up in our group. OUr general consesous was that the creature did not get an AoO and we felt that this was WotC's thought as well (but we may be wrong). The charge description doesn't say a creature get the AoO and there are no feats that would allow you to remove the AoO. Improved Trip, Sunder, Disarm, etc all remove AoO from those special attacks, yet Charge is left out.

On the other hand... I just read through anything I could find on this subject t the WotC site and they manage to never actually say anything. THere is a blurb about Ride y Attack and Spring attack being there to avoid the AoO, but they also have the character leaving the area as well...

I must think about this...

[Jades]

I take one day off from checking and I have to read forty posts in one thread.

Now, as for Elan in ogre form having three arms, yes he does. You can see Elan completely AND the ogre. When his arms protrude from the ogre body - voila, three arms!

[Techonce]

Perfect Explanation for the three arms:

Elan mistakingly cast a 3.0 spell in a 3.5 world! THis probalbly caused the problem.

One day Rich will get rid of the extra arm and no one will ever notice...

[Reptile]

Now, as for Elan in ogre form having three arms, yes he does. You can see Elan completely AND the ogre. When his arms protrude from the ogre body - voila, three arms!

In panel 6, you can see three arms for the ogre in addition to Elan's two.

I'm not saying Rich made a mistake, though--Elan probably just hasn't practiced the spell enough... ;)

[Jades]

Eep... didn't notice that one. I think its Elan's fault too, not The Giant's.

[GreyRat]

Poor Haley has discovered one of the rules of Boyfriend Behavioral Conservation: every time they do something cool, they will compensate by doing something really stupid. ;)

So, what are the chances that in the excitment of the fight, their loot-wagons were broken into by an irate landlord? :-/

[Mercutio01]

Awesome!

[Ilaun_Undil]

Not sure about that, but I'm thinking Elan... Haley, alone in Cave.... anyway, Just wonder what Belkar is up to.

[evileeyore]

Going by previous behavior, I would presume Belksar is...
Harvesting kidneys...
Killing things bigger than him...
Something petty and selfish that will end up costing his team...
Assaulting a team mate over something stupid...
Any combination of the above.

[Mal_the_Mad]

Belkar-- Miko's horse?
Haley and Elan alone in a cave.... just when it starts to get interesting Belkar arrives?

V.. doing something gender unspecific.

Roy and Miko flirtatious banter being rebuked by naivety.

Durkon doing cleric type stuff..

[themunck]

known as: spellcasting

[The Giant]

Comic will be up in about two hours.

[Sylvius]

Thanks for the update, Giant. We hadn't even started whining yet.

[reaperbryan]

The charge in itself is not a "distracting act" and does not qualify for a "distract-AoO". If the charge-move makes one leave a threatened square somewhere along the way that still makes one a viable target for a "movement-AoO".

My concern was more that the Ogre received 2 attacks of opportunity against 1 Target, claiming Combat Reflexes. Combat Reflexes clearly states that you may receive an additional # of A's of O = your DEX modifier, but you may still only make 1 A of O per target, regardless of how many actions provoke the A of O. So even if we assume that the Ogre threatens 2 quares and gets an A of O for Elan entering Sq1, he takes it. The Elan leaves Sq1 and enters Sq2, an action that as above probokes an A of O, because Mr. Ogre had already taken 1 A of O against him, he may not take a second A of O.

The debate of whether Elan gets an A of O for entering Sq 1 - My 2¢ is that he would not, though moving to Sq 2 would provoke one.




Off topic and as an Aside - Mr Burlew: I would like to thank you on behalf of Reaper Miniatures for your kindness to our staff and our Demo Team members during GenCon.

[Malachi, the Lich King]

Comic will be up in about two hours.

Sweet. One fix, coming up....

As a side note, due to the holiday on Monday, my gaming group got together for an impromptu session and used it as an opp for people to try out the new stand alone classes in the 'Complete' series or new PrC. We took a break specifically to read the new strip and that prompted a tangent on OotS that must have lasted 30 minutes. I also brought the 2 OotS books I got at Gencon and that spurred some 'discussion' as well. Ah, good times. ;)

[HailSpork]

This was a point that was brought up in our group. OUr general consesous was that the creature did not get an AoO and we felt that this was WotC's thought as well (but we may be wrong). The charge description doesn't say a creature get the AoO and there are no feats that would allow you to remove the AoO. Improved Trip, Sunder, Disarm, etc all remove AoO from those special attacks, yet Charge is left out.

Charging itself doesn't get an AoO unless the person you're charging has Hold the Line; there is no feat to bypass HtL. Barring HtL, there is still the possibility of taking AoO from leaving threatened squares. There's no feat to bypass this, but the Swashbuckler ability Acrobatic Charge probably will. Mobility will help in this case.

Also, as mentioned before, footnote 1 on page 141 says that they get an AoO for moving reguardlessly.

Anyway, the main difference between maneuvers like tripping and grappling getting a feat to remove the AoO and charge getting a feat is that you can easily charge without provoking an AoO; just not so easily against someone with reach. In the same reguard, it's not easy to get up to range to trip or grapple somebody with reach without provoking an AoO.

[Olivine]

In panel 6, you can see three arms for the ogre in addition to Elan's two.

I'm not saying Rich made a mistake, though--Elan probably just hasn't practiced the spell enough... ;)

I like to think that it is a blurry-motion effect. Elan's waving his arms about, utilizing his natural ogre-impersonation (would that be imogreation?) ability. :)

~Olivine

[NEO|Phyte]

The ogre guarding the cave kinda looks like Roy.

[Roy]Is that another "Fighters are dumb" crack? That's it, we're going down a level.[/Roy]

[StarWarz2]

This was a point that was brought up in our group. OUr general consesous was that the creature did not get an AoO and we felt that this was WotC's thought as well (but we may be wrong). The charge description doesn't say a creature get the AoO and there are no feats that would allow you to remove the AoO. Improved Trip, Sunder, Disarm, etc all remove AoO from those special attacks, yet Charge is left out.

On the other hand... I just read through anything I could find on this subject t the WotC site and they manage to never actually say anything. THere is a blurb about Ride y Attack and Spring attack being there to avoid the AoO, but they also have the character leaving the area as well...

I must think about this...

Here's an idea (though this should be over in Gaming). The charge, against a medium creature w/o reach does not generate and AoO (straight line to closest point and you never leave a square threatened by the target). In Roy's case, the 1/2Ogre has reach and is large, so in order to reach the target w/ his Greatclub, he has to leave a threatened square. Hence the movement generated AoO by the 1/2Ogre.

[Lilly]

The Fairy Modmother: No more discussion of the AoO rules in the monthly comics thread please. There has been another whole comic almost two since then, please take it over to gaming. Which is where the other thread on the topic is going too. They've been sitting around for almost two comics after the fact, it's gaming time now.

Edit: New rule! Lilly isn't allowed to use bbcode with a migraine.

[The Giant]

New comic is finally up.

[Brother_Hood]

Anyone know if that rule applies in Real Life? Sure sounds like an excuse to get older to me. :)

Great Character, Rich.

[AtomicKitKat]

*Snicker*

[Brardos]

OMG!!! It almost brought a tear to my eye remembering how many times i ran parties through "The Keep on the Border lands" While I was learning how to GM. Just remember people "Bree Yark!!" means I surrender in Goblin <snicker>

...And Palace of the Silver Princess had all my favorite art by Erol Otis. Oh wow the memories.

I am sooo stinking Old!!!

Great comic Giant as usual

[Baatezu]

Excellent comic, as always, but...

Border on the Keep & The Silver Princess were D&D adventure, not AD&D.
D&D had no NWP (correct me if I'm wrong), but something introduced in the gazeteers and creature crucibles called "Skills", which is a simplified form of NWP.

But then again, who cares? it's funny!

[BiggusGeekus]

Brilliant!

Not only are old people better-sighted, they're SEX-AY!!!!!!

[MrMage]

Yet again something very strange in the world of D&D.

[Nihility]

Huzzah for NWPs!

[King_Troll]

"And we liked it that way!"

Ahh, reminds me of an old SNL (or was it SCTV?) skit.

[Sebastian]

Yes, well, doing implausible things with extremely high skill scores can be handled in several ways;
- The GM says: That's implausible. You can't do it. Suck it up.
- Everyone around the table accepts it as a balancing issue.
- Since the world is magical (and therefore implausible in itself), extremely high skills border upon magic - very clever Escape Artists actually make their bodies partly liquid, allowing them to trickle through keyholes. Not by magic as such but by "mind over matter"; In a world where forty-tonne animals can fly around, and not consume the entire world's population of animals to keep this up, "implausible" gets a whole new meaning.
- Players (and the GM) thinks it's fun that some characters can have the skills of Chiun (from The Destroyer books/comics) or Li Mu Bai (from the well known Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon movie), for instance.

Beside I don't even found it so unplausible?

nobody ever accused ogres to be smart (they have a -4 INT penalty for god's sake, they are not humans smart they are dumb monkeys smart), plus that was a bluff attempt where the target wanted to believe it,(guarding prisoners that you can't eat is boooring) and not put him to risk, that mean from a -0 to - 5 penalty (or bonus depending on how you put it) and to conclude Sense motive is not a ogre class skill nor a fighter or barbarian class skill, If I was a GM and the situation happened in my game I would have handled it exactly that way.

And about squezzing into a keyhole/walking on cloud is worth noting that those are around dc 50/dc 100 skill checks, if a GM let these level of skills into his game he should not complain if someone use them.