The OotS thread

[Crazedwraith]

Hahahaha. Awesome. You think they'd have worked out better phrasing for that sort of thing.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Ha, "Those Don't Take Over Until the Graveyard Shift"

[Raesene]

Hydra Burgers - with Gouda....

Good to know the Elven troops found the Resistance.

[Sriad]

A principle which breaks down in mass combat. Player characters against an army never ends well, and even a Kobold Warren if properly designed would be a nightmare of circumstance penalties, traps and sneak attacks from monsters with a CR of 1/4.

Also, new comic. #705

Party only against an army sure, but once you get into the teens a party heading an army can swing a rout on one side onto a rout on the other. They can singlehandedly win any section of the battle, from breaking pike formations to teleport-vaporizing divisions of archers, singlehandedly destroying cavalry charges...

With regards to the comic, I'm glad to see attention being paid to the elven resistance, and nice to see we'll probably get some action comics again.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Awesome, the hydra burgers guy is back!

Also, the only thing a party of adventurers can't survive is massed fire. Sooner or later some shots are going to hit. This was proved to me once when my party of level 18 adventurers was killed by thirty thousand orcs and a random number generator.

[Raesene]

Awesome, the hydra burgers guy is back!

Also, the only thing a party of adventurers can't survive is massed fire. Sooner or later some shots are going to hit. This was proved to me once when my party of level 18 adventurers was killed by thirty thousand orcs and a random number generator.

Protection from normal missiles was your friend in AD&D, 2nd edition; total immunity to nonmagical missiles

[The Yosemite Bear]

I remember a 2ED Bard walking right through mased automatic gunfire.

And then decapitating the SS Totenkoff officer

[CaptainChewbacca]

Awesome, the hydra burgers guy is back!

Also, the only thing a party of adventurers can't survive is massed fire. Sooner or later some shots are going to hit. This was proved to me once when my party of level 18 adventurers was killed by thirty thousand orcs and a random number generator.

Protection from normal missiles was your friend in AD&D, 2nd edition; total immunity to nonmagical missiles

Yeah, but then they started throwing SPEARS.

[consequences]

Awesome, the hydra burgers guy is back!

Also, the only thing a party of adventurers can't survive is massed fire. Sooner or later some shots are going to hit. This was proved to me once when my party of level 18 adventurers was killed by thirty thousand orcs and a random number generator.

Protection from normal missiles was your friend in AD&D, 2nd edition; total immunity to nonmagical missiles

These days you have to work harder at it. Armor with the invulnerability function and roaring cuts it down to max damage crits being the only thing that does damage(from nonmagical missile weapons doing no more than eight damage on a normal roll anyway). It also reflects back every missile attack doing ten points of damage or less at the shooter(which means fifteen or less with the DR).

Of course, said armor sets you back 49000 gold, but that's a small price to pay for catching all the arrows with your chest and simultaneously butchering an entire orc horde. I personally recommend having a cleric on hand though, because the 144-160 hit points of damage you'll statistically take doing this is going to sting a little.

[Solauren]

Mass Arrow Fire?
PFFT......

Reverse Arrows
p114 (Magic of Faerun), p175 (Spell Compendium), p143 (Anauroch: The Empire of Shade)
Sorcerer/Wizard 3, 1 standard action.
Summary: You get DR 10/Magic. Any arrow that the DR stops, is turned back to whoever fired it.
Once stops 10/level damage (max 100), spell ends.

Protect 10 people with that, and watch enemy archery formations pincushion themselves.

I'd recommend using Stoneskin, and possibly Dragonskin (PHBK, Spell Compendium respectively) with it, just to be on the safe side for the arrows that get through.

Having it several wands of 'Reverse Arrows' would also be a good idea.

[Raesene]

Awesome, the hydra burgers guy is back!

Also, the only thing a party of adventurers can't survive is massed fire. Sooner or later some shots are going to hit. This was proved to me once when my party of level 18 adventurers was killed by thirty thousand orcs and a random number generator.

Protection from normal missiles was your friend in AD&D, 2nd edition; total immunity to nonmagical missiles

Yeah, but then they started throwing SPEARS.

Still a nonmagical missile

My last mage (D&D 3.5) got himself a permanent protection form arrows, and stoneskin to be safe against leakers. WE didn't face massed battles, but it was helpful several times

[Raxmei]

It isn't the most common thing to plan for but it is possible to make a high level D&D character pretty much immune to mundane armies. For example Xykon is invulnerable to massed archery. DR15/Magic and Bludgeoning can't be bypassed by arrows at all and you'd need +8 bonus to damage to possibly get any damage through it with a bow. He's also immune to critical hits. As a lich he's immune to cold and lightning and he's made himself immune to fire. It might be possible to hurt him with acid. A very strong and lucky person with a two handed weapon and power attack could imaginably inflict a couple hitpoints of damage to him. Good DR and immunity to critical hits go pretty far all by themselves. Magic also can do wonders if you expect to have to fight an army. In an ideal scenario a warlock with Fell Flight and Tenacious Plague could fly out of arrow range and drop locust swarms until he got bored. A more conventional spellcaster has access to his various mass destruction spells and some means of disengaging at will.

[Crazedwraith]

706 Is up!

Dancing Knights! Is that a real spell?

[Rogue 9]

706 Is up!

Dancing Knights! Is that a real spell?

No. No it is not.

[Spekio]

I can tell you for sure that it has been homebrewed.

[LadyTevar]

706 Is up!

Dancing Knights! Is that a real spell?

Dancing Lights is an Illusion spell... so the joke is the guy did the wrong illusion.

[The Yosemite Bear]

you should have seen my Bard that invented "Voice of Thunder" illusion spell.

nice little megaphone be heard everywhere spell... (with biblical refrencies)

[Lord Relvenous]

707 is up!

Heh, I like his style.

[open_sketchbook]

As has long been a theme in Order of the Stick, Good =/= Nice.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Well the Fae and the Firbolg have a history of animosity/genocide....

[Crazedwraith]

Ok, that's less 'Awesome,' than 'fucking asshole' Don't trust him? You don't have to take him.

[Solauren]

If they didn't kill him, he could reveal that there are now elves helping the human resistance movement.

Therefore, the Resistance now has magical support (wizards).

That's not an intelligence item the resistance would like the Hobgoblins to have.

Seeing how the resistance could go from 'annoying' to 'Uber-Lich has decided to remove them as an issue'.

[Anguirus]

It's obvious that they killed the hobgoblin for fun. There were any number of nonlethal ways to shut him up, it's D&D. At the very least the wisecracking makes that a clear-cut Evil act if you accept the thesis that goblins = people.

[Rogue 9]

It's obvious that they killed the hobgoblin for fun. There were any number of nonlethal ways to shut him up, it's D&D. At the very least the wisecracking makes that a clear-cut Evil act if you accept the thesis that goblins = people.

There's a reason they pointedly felt no need to tell the paladin...

[Elessar]

It's obvious that they killed the hobgoblin for fun. There were any number of nonlethal ways to shut him up, it's D&D. At the very least the wisecracking makes that a clear-cut Evil act if you accept the thesis that goblins = people.

I agree from a realistic viewpoint, especially since we've seen that the goblins do have a functioning society.

From within the D&D world, this seems like the usual 'good guy banter' (Yippee ki-yay!) and their usual black and white kill-all-monsters approach to morality.