Strip 34 - A Clever Escape


I'm pretty sure it's obvious by now that's exactly what he would do, and be standing outside ready to shoot anyone who escapes.

And hey, who knew that 17th century pirates had "noob" in their vocabulary?

Strip 35 - Change of Pace


Surely she doesn't want to do any of those things. Where would be the adventure in that?

Strip 36 - What a Trope-ical Island


Why yes, cat scares are a horror trope. Surely they won't be any horror elements in this story.

We make it to the second session with these previous three strips, and it seems that the players have all arrived at different times. It's usually detrimental to the GM, as he has to wait for everyone to arrive before beginning, but here it gives him a chance to deal with the players individually.

We also learn that he has an audio track ready for this session. It's something I've always thought I'd like to do, but I never set aside the time to do it.

All images used are owned by Disney, which does not endorse this parody.

Strip 32 - An Incontrovertible Argument


As role-players know, any merchant you try to rob will inevitably be a high-level hero, which seems to make no sense. Why is a lowly village blacksmith able to take down the entire party with one blow?

But if you think about it, maybe it's not so surprising. In a world like D&D, prices for magic items are increasingly ridiculous. Just adding the simplest level of enchantment to a weapon requires a spellcaster of some skill and is worth 40 pounds of gold. The use of platinum pieces does alleviate this somewhat, but only by a power of 10. Most people realistically won't have a gnome's weight in coins, so maybe such transactions are done in barter. But who's going to have expensive magical items for trade? Level 1 Commoners? Only other adventurers (or wealthy nobles) should have anything like what the PCs are carrying around. Thus, pretty much any shopkeeper the group will deal with should either be powerful themselves or have some crazy powerful friends. From the DM's perspective, it's much easier to have the former and immediately teach the party a lesson.

Besides, they'll learn not to steal and be better people that way. :-)

Strip 33 - The Element of Surprise


And so the group comes to the end of their first gaming session. It's not entirely clear how much time has passed otherwise, though most sessions usually last a few hours.

In contrast, Darths & Droids finished their first session in 16 episodes. I wonder if that means I'm ahead or behind.

All images used are owned by Disney, which does not endorse this parody.

In the movie, this fight actually goes on quite a bit longer than I've abbreviated, but I felt it was time to let it go. It's usually the case that D&D battles don't last more than a few rounds, and it gets tiring if you're not involved in combat like most of the group here.

Also, those sneak attack dice can really add up. I guess the smith figured he'd get as good skills as a Rogue as he would taking an NPC class.

All images used are owned by Disney, which does not endorse this parody.

Well, even if no one's commented on those yet, here's another batch to consider myself caught up.

Strip 27 - Control, Alter, Escape


Generally in D&D, feats are something you add to your characters to make them better in a particular aspect or enable them to do something they otherwise couldn't. But you never spend feats, so the group here is using something more akin to Action Points (a la Eberron) or Hero Points, like we used in the World of Warcraft RPG.

Critical fumbles are also an aspect of D&D which has support in some groups and violent hatred in others. Typically, rolling a 20 on the 20-sided die is a success. On an attack roll, it also threatens a critical hit. In contrast, a 1 is a failure on an attack or saving throw, but a variant rule that was introduced is to have a 1 be some kind of worse penalty than a simple miss. A lot of people think it penalizes attacks too much, but we've always used them (I blame John, though I kept the practice as DM). And at the very least, I tell them to roll again just to see what they'll get--only if they fail again (or fail really badly again, i.e., another 1) does something unfortunate happen.

My argument for critical fumbles isn't based on fairness, exactly. But just as an awesome critical hit that saved everyone is memorable, so too are the critical fumbles I've witnessed memorable. A great one came from a campaign John DMed, when our half-orc barbarian attempted to grab a villainous soldier in his office. Three ones later, he crashed out the window and was clinging to the sill, while I (the cleric again) and our ranger had to battle the guy and his minions. In our campaign last semester, fire elementals had bottled the group into a mineshaft, making them climb up to try to attack. They'd already gotten the dwarf up, and the scout was making his way up behind, hoping to shoot arrows at the creatures. When he got to the top, he rolled 5 ones within 6 rolls. On the last one, he shook his head, looked at me, and asked if he could just take one for the team. Instead of fumbling and firing into the dwarf, he fell down the shaft.



Strip 28 - Foresight and Cunning


"Taking 20" is what a character can do when no penalties for failure exist and they can keep trying until they do a task as well as they're going to do it. But by the rules, it takes 20 times as long, as it represents the idea of you rolling every number on the 20-sider over 20 rolls. Strength checks are actually a good thing to take 20 on, as are Search checks. If your character can possibly break it or find it, he or she will.



Strip 29 - Dice Karma


I don't know if it'd do any extra damage, but that flaming sword looks cool. Apparently the GM has a habit of reusing maps in his or her campaigns, which is at least efficient.

And don't laugh at your teammates who roll poorly, either--it'll be your turn eventually.



Strip 30 - I really don't see what the big deal about grappling is.




For someone else's take on this subject, see the comic here: http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0232.html
as well as the follow-up on the next page:
http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0233.html.

Shamus Young also considered doing a comic on this subject, but he decided to target Attacks of Opportunity instead (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=792, see also the annotation for this strip: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=691).

Now, I'm going to skewer the sacred cow of complaining about grapple rules, but I find them sensibly written, although Step 4: Maintain the Grapple sounds kind of silly as an extra step. It seems the designers of 3.5's grappling actually thought through almost everything you could want to do while wrestling with an opponent. And they even formatted the grapple actions with their own boldface headings. Granted, grappling becomes messier when you don't have two humanoids facing off, but monster entries always have their grapple modifiers listed, as do character sheets. Hopefully a player who wants to grapple or grapples frequently will also be kind enough to turn to the section in the handbook to help out the GM.

No, what really annoys me is the less well-written Trip and Disarm rules. They're almost identical to each other in concept, and most weapons that can disarm can also trip. They both involve opposed attack rolls with bonuses based on size categories. If you fail one, your opponent gets a free trip or disarm attempt (whichever you tried) against you. And if you use a weapon, you can drop the weapon to avoid the counter. But not all tripping weapons can disarm--see sickle-shaped bladed weapons--and most disarming weapons get some kind of bonus on disarms but not trips. Also, disarming takes penalties or gives bonuses based on the size of the weapon(s) involved. They're just similar enough to make it confusing to figure out the exact modifiers on whichever one you're trying at a given moment. Also, the Improved Trip feat is much better than Improved Disarm, considering it gives you a free attack on the prone opponent if you succeed on the trip. Pathfinder avoids this by lumping them all into a "Combat Maneuver" category, from what I've heard.

Bonus points for nerds: without looking at the SRD or a handbook, which attack can avoid attacks of opportunity if you use a melee weapon instead of your hands? Trip or disarm? This is another dissimilarity between the two.

All images used are owned by Disney, which does not endorse this parody.

Strip 23 - Please GM Don't Hurt 'Em


Here Will illustrates one of the difficulties in having the party split up--it takes forever for the GM to remember you exist.

And thanks to John for help with the last panel.



Strip 24 - Moral Dissonance


Where could Jack have possibly been hiding that Will didn't see him? Maybe his hat has some sort of hypnotic power...



Strip 25 - The Inevitable Conflict


In our very first campaign, one of our players decided he wanted to be a ninja. Well, the fact that we were playing in a medieval setting wasn't the biggest problem with this ninja. Even the fact that his name was chosen as Swanky the Cunning wasn't the biggest problem. No, the biggest problem with this character was that he wanted to be Chaotic Evil and one day join an assassins guild.

But our DM took it fairly well, even encouraging him to follow his dreams, after a sort. You see, to become a member of the assassin prestige class, a character needs to have killed someone. That wasn't a problem for his moral compass at all; his execution was a different story.

A local farmer was having problems with something killing his livestock, and our party's Paladin (a Lawful Good, i.e., opposite of the ninja in alignment, character) had agreed to help him solve the problem. Our party cleric (me), another Lawful Good type who followed the god of justice and retribution, decided to join them in staying the night at the farm. And...the ninja went with us.

No sooner had we gotten out of town than he decided it'd be a good time to shoot the farmer with a crossbow bolt. It did not go over very well; he was left bleeding to death in the road with a mace imprint in the side of his head. Unfortunately for the world, he survived, came back, killed the Paladin in the middle of a dungeon, killed the farmer after fleeing the party's wrath, and died to a lightning bolt brought by a vengeful Dungeon Master.

And that's why party conflict is always such a wonderful thing.



Strip 26 - The Obligatory Monkey Island Reference


Man, Monkey Island. Does anyone remember that game? If so, enjoy the comic. If not, you're probably lost.

All images used are owned by Disney, which does not endorse this parody.