T w e n t y S i d e d
Shawn Says:
I think I am officially going to mark this comic as the turning point of us finding our footing and hitting our stride. I think this one pretty much works perfectly. I love panel 2, and Ivy in the last panel just makes me happy.
Shamus Says:
I’ve just spent 20 comics bemoaning my inability to do three-panel jokes, and here we pull one off. And panel two is silent.
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Okay, this is by far the best episode yet. :)
Yeah, this comic has gotten better.
To be fair, that’s only the first room. It’s not like he spoiled the content of the whole dungeon (or I guess he did by calling it the goblin cave).
And did Josh’s claymores always have those poop shaped ends?
Heh heh heh ha ha ha hahahahaha!
Well, at least they’re not Kobolds.
I respect Ivy’s intuition.
Her eyes still creep me out, though.
How so? She just has thick glasses.
“Ivy in the last panel just makes me happy.”
Yeah graphically this comic is probably the best one yet. I really like the subtle changes in characters’ expressions, and the fact that Beardguy just stays the same.
Go in anyway and stop metagaming, you cheats! You can take it!
…or, Casey could just scrub that last bit and re-arrange the dungeon so there isn’t an ambush waiting. If, you know, here were a competent DM.
I also love panel 2. It might be up there with ‘No LARPing!’ for my favorite punchline so far.
Better yet, he should have played it straight and pretended Josh spotted them due to his check, might have even lampshaded it with something like “clearly they suck at staying hidden”.
Casey — improvise?!
Oh sure, I get that this is part of the point, just saying that things like letting an information slip are mistakes that GMs make routinely and very often just straightface it without the players realising.
EVERY GM knows how to improvise via bait & switch.
The obvious answer to the situation is that the fireball clears out the hidden goblins…but the real encounter consists of a few golems, 1 of which is each wall, and they are activated via a high DC trap, which is tied to the door. The door is actually hinged between one golem’s legs.
The fireball actually prevented the players from hearing the goblins chanting: “Gorignak! Gorignak! Gorignak!”
Also: Casey definitely knows how to improvise. He did so during the warg rider encounter in DMotR, when he got Aragorn to ride off the cliff.
Why does this remind me of some encounters in Dragon Age: Origins where you can see the NPCs arranged in an obvious ambush, so you place your mages and archers at a distance and your rogues behind them before having the Warden talk to the leader triggering the cutscene and combat encounter, and then as soon as the cutscene ends your whole party has spawned right in the middle of the killzone?
Oh God, getting flashbacks now.
*sees big ’empty’ room behind door up ahead*
*carefully positions mages and archers around doorway, casts protective wards*
*very carefully nudges door open*
*cutscene instantly begins, showing character casually strolling into middle of room*
*cutscene ends, leaving my party RIGHT IN THE CENTRE of inevitable ambush*
*smashes face through monitor screen in frustration*
And completely out of formation.
If you’re lucky, the cutscene won’t dispel buffs.
I definitely noticed that the pacing clicked here. I love the silent panel
Joining in pacing with beat panel and the subtle distinctions are great. This is really a moment that could be inflicted on any tabletop group.
A 17? How can it possibly be that low? I’d be invoking the houserule that a “1” on a skill check is an auto-fail….
I had mentally put a plus sign in front of the 17, indicating it was the bonus before touching the dice. By now, even Casey would know that Josh’s character is going to succeed at mechanical challenges.
I figure Josh’s skills are actually only average- skill systems in D&D are rarely important or complex enough to be worth munchkining. They’re “good enough”, because if he REALLY needs to get through a door he can just bash it down.
He has a listed Dex of 22, which in D&D from 3.0 onwards translates to a +6 Dexterity modifier. So either he rolled an average-ish d20 roll (an 11 if he doesn’t have any bonuses to lockpicking, or something more like a 7 if he has a couple of bonuses to it), or the 17 was his naked d20 roll without modifiers, or the D&D&D system these guys are playing in uses something more like the very specific and weird percentile-based rogue skills from 1st & 2nd edition.
This is definitely the best strip so far :D
Also, since standard graph-paper dungeon cartography uses 5×5 foot squares… 10×20 room, 8 pillars, um… where are the goblins hiding? The room is completely full of pillar….
(I suppose it could be 10×20 *squares* but that is less fun to visualize in my head :P)