Level 11: #4
Chapter: Level 11 — Castle Life
Rusty & Co.
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Re: Alt-Txt – pro-tip: if you do it, at least plan to do it just after the wizard goes to bed.
Definitively not in the morning when they just topped off their mana, spells and HPs.
Re: last panel “collapse the tower on them”
…
No, wait.
What do you mean by “collapse the tower”?
No-one told me that was an option. Can you do it? Can you do it more than once? I mean, with the same tower?
Only if you rebuild it. Which is why Presti realizes that annoyed though she is, probably they should try something else first.
That depends on how magical the tower is. Cf. “The Jewels in the Forest”, one of the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
” The story quickly turns into a puzzle as to what is guarding the treasure in the House of Angarngi. The note by Urgaan of Angarngi states that there is a guardian of the treasure, but that there are no deadly creatures in or out of the house, nor are there any traps of any sort. There are no devils or demons guarding, and that the house is completely bare.”
Yeah, it’s because it’s the house itself that guards its treasure, with its central tower animating like some sort of pseudopod and slamming itself hard at any trespasser.
Knowing Dori, collapsing the tower would probably involve a cascading series of “accidents”.
Hmm.
How many of you think this level will not end without her collapsing a tower?
“In the future, remind me to wait until late afternoon before insulting Vaarsuvius. At the earliest.”
Protection from arrows doesn’t have a size limit. :p
As it did until “but, 20-5=??? too difficluck” era.
I’m too latest edition to understand this meme (I got into Dnd with 5e)
But we still don’t know if the castle can be poisoned.
No, but this bolt seems to have been aimed high enough to hit the people on the castle rather than just the castle wall itself, suggesting that the bullywugs aren’t quite as stupid as last week’s commenters made them out to be.
I dunno, applying poison to a ballista bolt aimed at a person still seems to imply a level of negative stat modifiers in intelligence…
Against normal people, sure, a ballista bolt that hits the target should be lethal enough that poison would be pointless overkill. But adventurers often have ridiculous amounts of hit points that let them survive unrealistic levels of damage.
And then you put an explosive rune on the bolt so that when they look down to try and yank it out, it explodes.
And then there’s a Sphere of Invulnerablility with a Decanter of Endless Water inside the head of the bolt
Somewhere on the net’ there is a design for an arrow (more like a WMD) with a portable hole and a bag of holding fastened on its head…
Oh, you mean this old thing?
https://imgur.com/Gfq4q
A ballista is just a bolt, right? Oversized sure, but still a bolt.
No, a balllista is an oversized crossbow that fires rocks or bolts.
No, a ballista is a torsion machine.
But the bullywugs don’t know the difference.
In this case luckily the poisoner knew to poison the bolt, not the ballista as ordered…
Well at the same time.
Its an EXCEPTIONALLY pathetic balista bolt if it cant go through dr 10 / magic.
Yeah. For that reason, I actually thought this looked more like the Shield spell than Protection from Arrows. Shield just gives a 20% chance to deflect any attack that uses an attack roll, which isn’t a reliable defense, but it’s one that can work against attacks of any size if you get lucky.
Depends on the version… in 5e, Shield gives a +5 to AC (and immunity to magic missile). And since attack and damage aren’t linked, it really doesn’t matter how big the projectile is, as long as your AC is high enough.
The comic is based on 3.5e, where Shield only gives +4 to AC, but it costs a standard action to cast and lasts for several minutes, rather than being a single-round reaction like the 5e version.
Where does it say it’s based on 3.5?
Because it’s been running since 3.5 days, and they never updated to new editions because that’s unreasonable for an ongoing story. Same as Order of the Stick
‘Never’ may be too strong a word. In fact, the OOTS is an example where an ‘upgrade’ to a new version was played for fun in the very first strips — the ‘wawawawa’ of Belkar’s daggers shrinking to accomodate D&D 3.5 is a sound effect I won’t forget
That was the very first comic, though, so OotS was never really 3.0e except as a one-off joke. Besides, the difference between 3.0e and 3.5e is much less than the difference between 3.5e and 5e, so you can upgrade across them without completely derailing your character builds.
That’s a pretty good argument, but I still don’t see anything in the comic, site, or twitter that backs it up?
Hey there!
From the FAQ: https://rustyandco.com/frequently-asked-questions/faq/
Q: What edition are Rusty and his friends in?
A: The story isn’t tied to any specific edition or version.
This comic is based on the Rule of Funny.
Me, I thought it looked like Floating Disk. The perspective of panel 5 isn’t obvious, so the size and distance may or may not be all wrong.
I’m pretty sure Floating Disk is supposed to be a horizontal disk.
Or rather, a horizontal bowl, since it’s described as being concave and being able to carry 2 gallons of liquid. The “disk” name seems like somewhat of a misnomer.
Interestingly, the rules don’t mention what happens if someone tries to attack one…
Given Presti’s penchant for creative usage of spells, I can totally see her doing this.
and “if you get lucky” is infinitely better when you’re standing next to a luck cleric with a vested interest in you not being skewered by a poisoned ballista bolt
I also immediately assumed Shield based on the visual effect. I don’t think the D&D rules have ever been explicit about how Protection from Arrows actually works. But since it gives damage reduction rather than a deflection bonus to AC, I think it’s logical to assume that it doesn’t actually prevent the arrows from *hitting* you, it just magically soaks the damage.
(In AD&D 2e, Protection from Normal Missiles completely negated damage from regular-sized ranged weapons, but against siege weapons — like a ballista — it only reduced damage by 1 point per die.)
I figured that it saps projectiles’ momentum before they hit you. But not through a solid barrier (since stronger projectiles can still force their way through without breaking the spell), but more like a telekinetic repulsion effect, or maybe making the air around you thick and sludge-like. Melee attacks make it through unhampered because the attacker can continue adding force throughout the swing, making them less affected by a gradual momentum drain.
I like that interpretation.
I was thinking of casting teleport on the arrow and sending it back where it came from.
Until I noticed the “bink” sound effect, I thought that’s exactly what she’d done… opened a portal in the path of the bolt.
Maybe it’s temperamental and just a quarrel.
I just thought of something: If they had loaded that ballista bolt with dynamite, or made the bolt shaft a giant stick of TNT, that would’ve made it a serious threat. Especially if it had managed to fly into the doorway.
True, but these frogs seem like idiots. Using dynamite sounds like something a cunning lunatic like Anti-Madeline would do.
And the bright side of her being in the last level was that she can’t be in this one.
I mean, she’s got the belt, all she needs now is a convenient change to clone dramedy.
She WILL get the belt. The stories happen in parallel, at same time.
The *bright* side? I know we just had a chapter with her but I miss Minimaladine already. Somehow I got really attached to Little Ms. Thundercloud.
“Want me to collapse the tower on them?”
“Yes, but don’t”
Comedy gold right there XD
AND sound tactics. Using up (part of) her defense this early is annoying but no excuse to use up offensive spells.
Blind fighting works on spell casting? I didn’t know that.
Possibly she cast her buffs before coming out.
I can already tell that I’m going to like this party.
i just realized. cube is fighting with a spear. the ballista bolt is a gigantic poisoned spear. and presti just had an idea that involves cube.
i suspect cube is about to gain some levels in awesome. and the bullymongs are gonna regret delivering a new toy to him