T w e n t y S i d e d
From The Archives:
Why I Hated Resident Evil 4
Ever wonder how seemingly sane people can hate popular games? It can happen!
Silent Hill Origins
Here is a long look at a game that tries to live up to a big legacy and fails hilariously.
Silent Hill Turbo HD II
I was trying to make fun of how Silent Hill had lost its way but I ended up making fun of fighting games. Whatever.
Trekrospective
A look back at Star Trek, from the Original Series to the Abrams Reboot.
Lost Laughs in Leisure Suit Larry
Why was this classic adventure game so funny in the 80's, and why did it stop being funny?
Poor Gimli. At least he tried.
Gimli’s player feels like the only one of our characters that might fit in the roleplaying group we see in Darths & Droids.
Gimli’s player bringing up roleplaying here is rather funny considering he just metagamed his way into the Paths of the Dead in the last strip after the DM told him Gimli was paralyzed with fear: “Oh, I’ve played Call of Cthulhu, therefore I’m not scared by your description, therefore Gimli isn’t either – see you inside.”
Now there’s certainly a discussion to be had about whether a DM can tell you what your character is feeling, but Gimli’s player doesn’t even bother coming up with an RP explanation for why Gimli isn’t scared, just goes OOC to argue against it.
These players are all dummies! Even Gimli! Every seasoned tomb explorer knows that the FIRST thing you do is CHECK FOR TRAPS! ;)
That makes sense, both in the real(?) sense and in terms of metagaming (see Tomb of Horrors), but depending on which RPG rules we’re talking, there might be no point.
I believe when this comic was written while DnD 3rd or 3.5 was the current edition, both of which had a rule that only Rogues could find traps of certain difficulties (which in practice meant that in most adventures, only rogues could find traps). And they have no Rogues (I think?).
It was a rule meant to keep Rogues relevant, when Wizards could cast Knock and Unseen Servant/Summon Monster 1, I think.
I was about to say where is a halfling when you need one, but then I remembered that while Pippin found all the traps, he was terrible at disarming any of them…
There was also a cleric spell, Find Traps. No skill roll, you just know it’s there. At least it didn’t disarm them.
A lot of the published modules didn’t include any traps anyway.
The rules for backstab meant the rogue had to be positioned on the opposite side of an ally from an enemy. To do that, usually the rogue had to be in the middle of the enemy ranks. Since they had a lower AC and lower hit points than the fighter, this was a problem. Ranged backstab was also a problem.
There were a number of problems with rogues in 3/3.5. They did fix at least some of them for 5th.
Why yes, I played some rogues in 3rd. It sure wasn’t for power fantasy.
Preach it.
I think the Fighter/Barbarian was meant to go into the middle, and give flanking opportunities to the Rogue darting around the sides. But whether that actually happened is another question (Fighters preferred to stay still and full attack, and the mages wanted the meat shields between them and the threats).
And then you can throw in the issue of stealth not being very useful as a team skill if you’re the only one who has it.
And then all the monsters that were immune to Sneak Attack! First time I played a rogue, turns out that dungeon was all zombies and skellies :(
Those editions had a pretty bad divide between casters and non-casters, and rogues were low tier even for non-casters.