The Order Of The Stick / Tropes D to F

Tropes A to C | Tropes D to F | Tropes G to I | Tropes J to L | Tropes M to O | Tropes P to R | Tropes S to U | Tropes V to Z

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The Order of the Stick provides examples of the following tropes:

D

• Damned by Faint Praise: Blackwing pulls this, seemingly by accident, when attempting to defend Vaarsuvius's actions during the Soul Splice.
  Qarr: Check it out! It's history's worst mass-murderer and his dim-witted bird!
  Blackwing: HEY! History isn't over yet, mister!!
  Vaarsuvius: sob!
• Damsel in Distress:
  • Discussed in "Leaving Azure City": Haley is in trouble and Elan wants to rush off to rescue her. However, Durkon stops him, explaining that she is able to take care of herself. And that he is not. If he tries to rescue her, he will just get himself killed, and that would make her very sad once she gets back on her own. Elan is forced to leave Haley to her fate. And yes, she does save herself. And Belkar. And Roy's corpse, so it can be resurrected later.
  • When fleeing an ambush by Tsukiko's wights, Haley angrily notes how irritating it is to find herself in the role of "the bimbo who runs down the alley away from the monsters."
  • Roy also calls Celia his Damsel in Distress when noting this is getting frequent for her.

• Darker and Edgier:
  • Things have gotten a turn for the dark starting around comic #823. First, The Resistance falls arc, as the survivors of Azure City who could not flee are trapped and massacred, with the only survivor being the messenger that the Resistance sends to Hinjo. Then the race between Team Evil, the Order and the Linear Guild for Girard's Gate reveals that the entire Draketooth family is dead, and not only is Varsuvius responsible for it, but has also unwittingly slaughtered thousands of other innocents. Then Nale is killed by Tarquin, another gate is destroyed, Durkon has been turned into a vampire, Tarquin is now obsessed with his son Elan killing him and making him into a story, and Varsuvius finds out that the entities they rented their soul to can take control of them at any time.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Invoked by Belkar after Haley assumes that V's new black robes, glowing eyes, and evil whispers mean that they've turned evil. Belkar, too, is convinced of that, but defends Vaarsuvius with this argument just to mess with everyone's heads.
• "Darkness von Gothick" Name:
  • When she was a gloomy goth teenager, Haley called herself Dark Mistress Shadowgale.
  • When Celia disguises herself as an evil necromancer, she uses the name Darkblood Gloomgloom.
  • There's also one authentic necromancer, Haerta Bloodsoak, the most powerful of the mages involved in the Soul Splice.
• Daywalking Vampire: Justified with Malack and the vampirized Durkon due to a protection from daylight spell. Malack doesn't last half a minute in direct sunlight without it.
• De-aged in Death: Zig-zagged in the Lawful Goodinvoked Heaven, where spirits appear as their ideal version of themselves. Roy's mother looks like the 19-year-old looker she was in her youth, but his father is the same Grumpy Old Man he always was at heart.
  Roy: Um, no. My mother has a grey bun hairdo and osteoporosis, not pigtails and a rack.
• Deader than Dead:
  • The fate of everyone killed by the Snarl is to be so dead that they don't appear in the afterlife because their soul has been destroyed.
  • Nale is killed, disintegrated, and his ashes scattered to the wind to make sure that nobody can ever ressurect him.
  • Similarly, Redcloak has wights eat Tsukiko's body, then eat each other, then the final remaining one burn himself to death, to make sure there's no way Tsukiko can be resurrected to rat him out to Xykon.
• Dead Guy Puppet: Lord Shojo uses the skeleton of one of his wizards as a macabre puppet, in order to make a point that it's the heroes' fault that the wizard is dead. He is planning to bring the dude back to life.
  Roy: Okay, fine! You're right, we'll head to Girard's Gate right now.
  Lord Shojo: Great idea! Here, I'll have my best wizard teleport you! [with the skeleton "puppet"] "Sure thing, Lord Shojo! Teleport!" [throws skeleton at Roy]
  Roy: Gah!
  Lord Shojo: Oh, look at that. It didn't work. I guess you'll have to wait until we're done resurrecting him. Come back tomorrow.
• Deadly Bath: Crystal on the end of one when Haley interrupts Crystal's shower to kill her before leaving the city. While Crystal does keep her magical dagger and items in the bathroom with her, she isn't smart enough to actually equip herself with anything but a Modesty Towel before answering the door and being sneak attacked by Haley, who finishes off Crystal by slashing her with her own magical dagger (and then taking said dagger for herself).
• Deadly Dodging:
  • Inverted when Roy confronts a half-ogre who uses ainvoked Game-Breaker from the 3.5 rules to attack him twice a round while dodging backwards. The half-ogre eventually falls off a cliff.
  • Roy dodges an eldritch blast from an annoyed warlock by leaning down, and it ends up hitting Ganji in the back, precipitating the already-brewing Bar Brawl.
  • In "Five Rows Down, Three Columns Over", Roy tricks his Dumb Muscle Evil Counterpart Thog into crashing into a series of columns in order to bring part of the roof down on him. Although it's not exactly dodging, since the D&D rules of Thog's attack specify that it cannot do any arena damage unless the attack works.
    Roy: That's how I use my Intelligence score in combat, dumbass!
  • Attempted, but averted, when Belkar is fighting a Goliath vampire without weapon: he's planning on tripping it and sending it tumbling down the mountain; even if it's unlikely to kill it, it would get it out of the way for Belkar to enter the temple. But Roy just shows up without warning and cleaves the vampire in half, followed by Vaarsuvius flying by and incinerating the vampire completely.
• Deadly Scratch: When Therkla, a powerful Ninja, turns against her Evil Mentor, he waits for a distraction and scratches her In the Back with a Poison Ring. The poison incapacitates her immediately and kills her on the next page.
• Deadpan Snarker: Most of the characters fall into this at some point.
  • Roy Greenhilt is probably the most prominent due to him being the Only Sane Man of the Order (e.g. him threatening someone into line by saying "I'll crush you like every word out of Elan's mouth crushes my spirit!").
  • Vaarsuvius comes only second to Roy in the snark and, being The Spock, is even more deadpan. For instance, here is a below conversation between V and Belkar on the subject of Vampire Durkon from near the beginning of Utterly Dwarfed:
    Belkar: I just told you that he tried to kill me!
    Vaarsuvius: Oh my, what a completely unprecedented reaction to spending more than ten minutes in your company.
  • And V's raven familiar Blackwing seems to take after his wizard, as evidenced below when Roy loses his sword again during Utterly Dwarfed:
    Blackwing: This is why I only rely on my deadly razor-sharp talons in combat.
    Vaarsuvius: I have watched you try and fail to pierce the skin of a potato.
    Blackwing: Sure, but I never made a whole B-plot out of it.
  • Belkar is also no slouch in the snark department, with practically every other turn of phrase out of his mouth being a cynical jab at his teammates.
    Minrah: Thanks for coming and asking me about spells and stuff. I don't think Roy really knows what to do with me yet.
    Belkar: [dismissively] Yeah, but Roy needed to go to college to figure out what to do with a sword.
  • As quoted above, Lord Shojo has Roy easily beaten in Snark-to-Snark Combat.
• Death Flight:
  • Big Bad Xykon once killed Roy by levitating off of the flying undead dragon the two were fighting on and then blowing said dragon up with Meteor Swarm.
  • Tarquin's Card-Carrying Villain squad acquired a Magic Carpet by snatching it out from under its previous owner in midair.
• Death Is Cheap: Not literally; coming Back from the Dead is actually rather expensive, requiring 5000 GP in diamonds as a material component — plus whatever mark-up the priest casting the spell might charge you for to make a profit. But price aside^note And even the price is usually a non-issue, given that everything adventurer PCs like the Order runs into is statted out to drop treasure and in a pinch they can portal to another elemental plane to grab some gems, it's usually not all that difficult, except when the plot requires it to be, as in Roy Greenhilt's case, or in special situations like being killed by the Snarl or dying of old age. One of the gateways to the Afterlife is a revolving door.
  • This is lampshaded to the extent that a character calling for reinforcements (Haley in Old Blind Pete's cellar) suggests they bring the wherewithal to resurrect her and her friends.
  • Also, you can apparently do the old "challenge Death to a game for your life" thing. And you can pick Wet T-Shirt Contest as your game.
  • In Durkon's case, not only does he come back from the dead within a week or so in-universe — about 5 years of real world time — but he's immediately killed again, with the killer responding to the angry and incredulous looks of the others with, "Oh calm down. I'm rich now, I can just raise him again." In other words, Death Is Expensive.
• Death Is the Only Option: Attempted in #783: Gannji and Enor are being forced to duel with each other as part of a gladiator tournament. Gannji decides there's no way out until there's a definite victor in the fight, so he tells Enor to kill him, cut off his tail and use it to resurrect him later on. However, Belkar provides them with another option, allowing them to escape without killing each other.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit:
  • Kubota announces his intention to do this to Therkla. V, of course, interrupts by disintegrating him.
  • Redcloak frames Tsukiko for treachery as an excuse for why he killed her — when in fact, he killed her for knowing that he is the one betraying Xykon.
• Deception Non-Compliance: After Durkon became a vampire, he tried to do this to the spirit impersonating him by being vague with the memories he lets him see (with little success, since it can review them almost instantly).
• Declarative Finger: Both Elan and Vaarsuvius are fond of this, for being dramatic or explaining something (respectively); even Blackwing has been known to raise a Declarative Feather Finger.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Belkar Bitterleaf is one for the Token Evil Teammate, with the comic showing why a mostly good party would put up with someone like him along with occasionally exploring the kind of tensions this situation can create. While his Comedic Sociopathy is pretty hilarious most of the time, it's also shown to have lasting consequences in-story that frequently come back to bite both him and his teammates in the ass. Furthermore, him being a raging Jerkass results in him being The Friend Nobody Likes, to the point where he eventually comes to the sobering realization that if he doesn't at least pretend to be nicer than he really is, than his guildmates will eventually get fed up with his antics and let him get Killed Off for Real just so he won't bug them anymore. Finally, his actual character build being primarily designed to let him indulge his Blood Knight habits as resulted in him being a Crutch Character who's only effective against large groups of disposable minions; against any enemy of either the same level as him or higher, Belkar usually gets defeated in short order because he hasn't invested almost any effort in any valuable skills not dedicated to killing and/or tormenting people (except for gourmet cooking).
  • Miko Miyazaki, as she develops, touches on how frustrating, frightening, and even legitimately dangerous it would be to have a Lawful Stupid Knight Templar around, with it even being implied that Miko is the way she is in part from her Dark and Troubled Past causing excessive paranoia.
  • General Tarquin eventually turns out to be one for Genre Savvy villains. While it means he can plan very well and follows the plot and its intricacies as easily as Elan does, he also has a truly chilling tendency to treat people like plot devices and cannot see beyond his own story to where he does not see the larger narrative of the world being at stake (which he dismisses as a "sidequest").
  • The Dark One, the god of goblinoids, is gradually shown to be one for the Übermensch. While his defiance of the natural order for the sake of his people is certainly admirable, his refusal to cooperate with the other gods and insisting on his own path is proving to be a terrible idea. Namely, that he's making assumptions that he can survive the world's destruction only for it to be revealed that his lack of devoted followers in both quality and quantity means that he ain't gonna be able survive to try and reshape the next world with the other deities.
  • Speaking of the Dark One, Redcloak is slowly shown to be a deconstruction of both the Anti-Villain and the Determinator. While he has a very tragic Freudian Excuse and is still a fascinatingly deep and complex character, his more sympathetic moments are used to highlight his genuine evil actions and behavior, with several moments showcasing his pettiness and vindictiveness. Having noble intentions does not justify any of his atrocities, and it gradually becomes more apparent that his aforementioned "noble intentions" are in part him trying to avoid confronting his own faults and mistakes. Coming off of that, his sheer determination and will to ensure The Plan's success is ultimately just another extension of his aforementioned moral cowardice, to the point where he eventually dooms the Plan's ultimate goals out of sheer unwillingness to admit that he's wrong and everything he's sacrificed to get where he is was All for Nothing.
  • Soon Kim, the leader of the the Order of the Scribble, is weirdly enough a deconstruction of The Leader. It's eventually revealed that Soon valued his goals far more than he valued his teammates, which caused them to lose faith in him and lead to the group splitting apart. While the Order of the Stick have their issues between teammates, they can always place trust in Roy to help them mitigate teir arguments and discuss their personal problems. In contrast, Soon let resentments foster which lead to hatred not only of him, but between the different members to the point where almost none of them wanted to see each other again.
• Deconstructed Trope:
  • invoked The mere idea of a predetermined Character Alignment system is thoroughly deconstructed in Start of Darkness and many of the later strips, particularly with the characters of Belkar, Redcloak, Miko, the Monster in the Darkness and Malack. Redcloak is especially offended by the concept of his entire race being Always Chaotic Evil whether they want to or not, and the comic increasingly notes that most people are too complex and multi-faceted to have their personality easily summed up on a nine-box morality chart.
    • invoked Coming off of the above, the idea of entire species being Always Chaotic Evil and serving as glorified XP fodder for adventurers is repeatedly shown to be a horribly cruel cosmic joke in the grand scheme of things, with Roy even leaving the original Jerkass adventurers he joined in On the Origin of PCs because they wanted to kill a group of orcs casually waiting for a concert to open just because their species is "Chaotic Evil". Furthermore, both Redcloak and the Dark One were filled with such righteous outrage upon learning that all non-PC monster races were created solely to help the clerics of Jerkass Gods level up fast enough that they have hatched a lengthy Rage Against the Heavens.
  • Haley's character arc throughout both No Cure for the Paladin Blues and War and XPs is a deconstruction of The Unintelligible. Haley's inability to communicate properly with her team is a genuine hindrance, and almost leads to a situation where a bad guy frames her and she can't defend herself since no one understands what she's saying. In general, her disability is easily taken advantage of and she's only able to banish it by finally moving past the lingering traumas and secrets that were keeping it intact.
  • The Monster in the Darkness is one long deconstruction of The Reveal; specifically, what kind of life one would have to live to remain completely hidden from the heroes and readers before the big moment, and the effect it has on its personality. The Monster's inability to contribute despite its great power has destroyed its self-esteem (more so than simply being a minion would have), and never having a chance to practice evil results in an inevitable F.
• Deconstructive Parody: For Dungeons & Dragons, with a lot of the comic's humor comes from noting just how bizarre a lot of the game mechanics for D&D would look in a more "realistic" setting. One particular example is the Running Gag regarding the 25-word limit for sending, which results in amusing situations like Nale's Evil Gloating to Roy over having kidnapped his younger sister Julia anti-climatically cutting in and out in a similar manner to someone being in an area with poor cell reception.
• Defector from Decadence: Parodied. An exasperated Thor, unable to convince his Dwarven worshippers that trees aren't evil, resorts to explaining the presence of trees in Valhalla with this trope.
• Defiant Stone Throw: Ganji chucks a spear at Tarquin when he and Enor escape. It's debatable whether or not he thought the move would have had any chance of scoring a killing blow, but Tarquin using the attack as the denouement of another The Bad Guy Wins speech still makes it fall under this trope.
• Defied Trope:
  • Carrying the Antidote in "Another Choice".
  • Good Is Dumb, repeatedly; Haley even has to remind Elan that Good Is Not Dumb.
  • Roy himself is a defied case of the Dumb Muscle human-fighter.
• Deity of Human Origin: Well, humanoid origin at least:
  • The elven gods and Dvalin the dwarf demigod were once ordinary mortals who ascended through the sponsorship of the Western and Northern pantheons, respectively.
  • The Dark One was The Paragon of the Goblinoid races, who ascended to godhood through the devotion of his followers after he was assassinated in a peace conference. He's cosmically unique in having ascended without help from other gods, which technically makes him his own new pantheon.
• Delayed Reaction: When Roy announces that they can resume stopping the forces of Evil from bringing the apocalypse, Nale (disguised as Elan) at first just approves by reflex, before ticking.
  Nale-as-Elan: I couldn't agree more, Roy!
  Wizard Guy: TELEPORT!
  Nale-as-Elan: Wait, what did you just—
  POP!
  • Roy also gets two of these: one after the verdict of the Order's trial in Azure City, and one in the prequel book when someone (Haley) finally agrees to join his party after a long Terrible Interviewees Montage.
• Deliberately Monochrome:
  • The prequel books are fully in greyscale. According to the author, this is to give them a "nostalgic" feeling, since these are the "home movie" of the OotS characters. Which is mostly a joking explanation, the primary reason being costs.
  • Dwarven Darkvision is also rendered in greyscale.
  • As well as the Fiends' hypothetical scenario.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: The dwarven race values dying heroically so your soul goes to Valhalla instead of Hel. When Durkon's Uncle Kandro bites it thanks to a Death Worm, Haley and Blackwing are shocked, but Kandro's family cheers him on and says they thought he'd never die heroically. Blackwing sums up that "dwarves are weird."
• Demanding Their Head: When the Arc Villain Kubota learns that his minion Therkla rescued one of the heroes opposing him, he appreciates the Loophole Abuse with which she justifies it, but unambiguously orders her to kill the hero and deliver his head next time.
• Demon/Devil Distinction: Inherits its classification of Celestials and Fiends from Dungeons & Dragons. Haley initially isn't sure if Sabine is a demon, and thus vulnerable to cold iron, or a devil, and thus vulnerable to silver. (She turns out to be a demon, and in one strip takes offense when Malack calls her a devil.)
• Dénouement: Several examples at the end of the Don't Split the Party arc, starting from around "But Seriously, She Won't".
• Department of Redundancy Department: A staple of geographic features of the OOTS world, such as Wooden Forest, Gulf Bay, Port Harborage, Marine Ocean, and Rainforest Jungle. This pokes fun at the intentionally generic nature of the setting.
• Depth Deception: In "A Matter of Perspective", the starmetal appears huge at first but is really smaller than a fist.
• Description Cut: Many, many times. This is a popular trope in the comic.
  • "Thog like breaking stuff."
  • Lampshaded and Exploited here; the very fact that they noticed a cutaway panel after the cleric's Tempting Fate previous line puts them on the defensive against an inevitable betrayal.
  • Lampshaded and subverted in "And They Got Extra Credit For It, Too", where the team all get a distinct feeling that there's going to be a cutaway panel after something Roy says, but there's just a Beat Panel instead. In the strips previous to this, there were several such cutaways to an unconscious V lying at the bottom of a pit trap every time something relating to the elf was said.
  • After Tarquin kills Nale, he mentions that he can't think of anyone else who wouldn't have at least considered it. The very next panel shows Sabine, extremely cheesed off that her boyfriend was just murdered.
  • In #1224, Roy and Elan talk about how O-Chul and Lien would understand that the Order can't come to their rescue, followed by a cut to Lien hoping for a rescue:
    Roy: —but the paladins would understand that we need to put saving the world ahead of rescuing them.
    Elan: I guess you're right, Roy. They are all noble and selfless like that.
    [cut to O-Chul and Lien chained up somewhere]
    Lien: I think the key thing here is that help is on the way.
• Designated Girl Fight: At one point Haley lampshades her tendency to get shackled with slutty (and flying) rivals. "I should take a level of ranger so I can choose Favored Enemy (Airborne Tramp)". And that's before we meet her (thankfully non-flying) arch-rival Crystal (in the main series: she'd been around since On the Origin of PCs). Lampshaded again after she befriends Bandana: "Well, historically speaking, it was either that, or we try to murder each other while hurling offensively gender-charged insults."
• Designated Villain: Invoked. In the side stories from Snips, Snails and Dragon Tails, the wolf from their retelling of Little Red Riding Hood gets nearly blasted, beat up, and eventually bound without his permission to be a druid's animal companion, all because he tried to steal some muffins (said muffins did have stolen goods smuggled in them, but the wolf neither knew nor would care about such things). He did tie up a wizard in the process, but only after the wizard tried to blast him. Belkar of all people is the only one who sympathizes with him.
• Destination Defenestration:
  • In the prequel book Start of Darkness, Xykon is strangling Right-Eye, but after Redcloak stands up to him, he merely throws him into Redcloak, who is standing in front of a window. They fall out, covered in cuts from the glass.
  • In "Sore Loser", Roy is fighting Sabine when all her magical enhancements wear off. She surrenders and attempts to seduce him instead, telling him he can do anything he wants with her now, so he cheerfully uses the privilege to toss her out of the warehouse to the street below.
  • Haley gets knocked out of a window by Tarquin in "Block and Tackle... who later apologizes for her defenestration.
• Destructive Saviour: Dorukan's Dungeon, the Weary Travelers Inn and Tavern, Azure City... few places seem to survive contact with the Order of the Stick. And now Girard's Pyramid can be added to the list; this time it is fully intentional, though, the Order having no other choice.
• Deus ex Machina:
  • In an early strip, the Order is totally surrounded by goblins, when Elan suddenly summons the one-shot Joke Character Fruitpie the Sorcerer, who distracts the goblins, allowing the Order to escape.
  • During the siege of Azure City, Roy beheads Xykon's undead dragon. The head crushes a Death Knight that is overwhelming Vaarsuvius; V later complains that it was a lame "deus ex machina".
  • During one arc, Elan is stuck in Cliffport after Nale frames him for his (Nale's) crimes, but is able to get from Cliffport back to Azure City, where the rest of the Party is, after fortuitously meeting the Sky Pirate Julio Scoundrél, who offers to take Elan there in his Cool Airship (and gives him some off-the-cuff mentoring into the bargain).invoked Word of the Giant is that the author needed a way to get Elan out of Cliffport, and the strip itself humorously lampshades this. For good measure, Scoundrél's ship is named the Mechane.
  • When V cast familicide on an ancient black dragon in "If They Pull a Knife...", the first victim is a black dragon currently battling against a pair of adventurers — who are left wondering just what the heck caused their opponent to inexplicably drop dead in front of them.
  • The MitD plays this role in "The Path of Least Expectation", teleporting Vaarsuvius and O-chul to safety.
  • invoked Roy gives Elan a skeptical look when he reveals that he'd arranged (in a conspicuously secretive manner, to invoke the Unspoken Plan Guarantee) for Julio Scoundrél to arrive at the last possible second and rescue them from Tarquin. He replies "Don't look at me like that, there was a ton of foreshadowing on this one."
• Developer's Foresight: If you type in a comic page URL that doesn't yet exist, Belkar will show up to tell you Rich Burlew does not post strips in advance.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • "You know, the first two, I probably should've seen coming. The leprechaun costume? Not so much."
  • "What? They're cheap to summon and have a ton of hit points."
• Didn't We Use This Joke Already?: Horace in #600 jokes that the readers were probably expecting a big climax to mark the occasion when in fact it was a very mundane progress strip. Roy points out they used that exact joke 500 strips ago when #100 also turned out to be an anticlimax.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?:
  • O-Chul and the Monster in the Darkness.
  • Also Haley, Belkar and the MitD.
  • Durkon with Malack.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • Near the end of Dungeon Crawlin' Fools, Roy beats the crap out of Xykon and throws him into Dorukan's Gate. If it wasn't for his phylactery, Xykon would have died.
  • The Order of the Scribble successfully sealed away the Snarl behind the five gates.
• Diegetic Visual Effects: In strip #751, the background goes dim when Genre Savvy Tarquin makes a foreshadowing. Apparently, it's because he had dimmers installed for dramatic effect.
• Dine and Dash: In strip #389, Elan plans to pay for his drink with a "30 ft. per round movement rate".
• Disaster Dominoes: The well-oiled machine bit from the On the Origin of PCs book.
• Discreet Drink Disposal: Durkon with the bloodwart tea. Though it's not so much of "disposal" as it is "diluting it with alcohol".
• Disintegrator Ray:
  • The disintegrate spell. A favorite of Vaarsuvius.
  • Also used by Redcloak thanks to the clerical domain Destruction.
  • Laurin Shattersmith masters a psionic version.
• Dispel Magic:
  • As the comic is based on Dungeons & Dragons, several dispelling spells are seen used: dispel magic, disjunction, superb dispelling and greater dispel magic. Usually done to negate ongoing buffs, covering the Status-Buff Dispel Sub-Trope as well.
  • Elan also gets to use a bardic ability, the "Song of Freedom", to free Belkar and Mr. Scruffy from Girard Draketooth's most powerful illusion.
  • Zz'dtri demonstrates that greater dispel magic can be deadly if the subject is a vampire and the spell dispelled is the one that protects it from the rays of the sun.
  • In "Dispelling Misconceptions", a volley of dispel magic and greater dispel magic is used to shut down all the magic buffs of the Order of the Stick. Although the vampire spawns they were fighting are caught in the wave, and are promptly fireballed since they no longer resist fire, for the heroes it means they lose all of their protection against the master vampires' Hypnotic Eyes. This turns the tide of the battle very fast.
• Disposing of a Body:
  • Redcloak is thorough in his disposal of Tsukiko's body, ordering her wights to devour her and then each other, and then requests that the remaining wight set himself on fire^*"In the fireplace, please" once he is done eating his companions.
  • Vaarsuvius disintegrates Kubota and then uses a wind spell to scatter his ashes, both disposing of Kubota and making sure he doesn't return.
  • Laurin Shattersmith does the same on Nale's corpse.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • This is the main motto of Nale and the Linear Guild, even mentioned on their business cards.
  • Vaarsuvius kills a quarter of the black dragon population (and everyone descended from those black dragons) after one tries to murder their family. They initially consider their actions equal to the mother dragon's crime.
  • Tiamat is promised five good dragons dead for every black dragon killed by V.
  • General Tarquin offers to give the pair of bounty hunters 8,000 gp for their trouble in accidentally bringing in Elan instead of Nale. Gannji then demands 50,000 instead because he has a thermal detonator (which is actually a soup can — he was just keeping up a Running Gag). Tarquin then "misplaces" some court paperwork, leaving the bounty hunters sentenced to die in the arena for attempting to extort him in front of his son.
• Distracted by the Sexy: It's usually the first idea of Elan when it comes to using illusions. It usually doesn't work.
• Distracting Disambiguation: Very common, since Talking Is a Free Action is in full force.
  • Roy trying to remind Xykon of the murder he's actually pursuing him for...
  • There are frequent inane discussions in the middle of fights about D&D rules (like with the half-ogre munchkin).
  • Even outside of melee, a dramatic revelation can easily wander into this trope and just spoil the effect:
    Eugene: Xykon is alive!!
    Roy: What??
    Eugene: Well, I don't mean actually alive. Technically, he's still dead, just not, you know, DEAD-dead.
    He's undead, right, so he's up and moving around, even though he's still life signs: negative. But it's not like he just spontaneously came back to life.
    I mean, he DID come back spontaneously, but back to, uh, undeath, I suppose.
    Roy: Just curious, do you get XP for killing this dramatic moment?
  • While Tarquin blames their helmets that offer No Peripheral Vision, a pair of gladiators and a guard are also distracted by arguing whether or not his hand gesture is a historically accurate signal for "Finish Him!", too much so to notice the Allosaurus he was in fact siccing on them.
  • Even a pun-fight isn't safe from this.
    Elan: —and I'll foil your evil plans!
    Tarquin: Then I wonder what I've begotten into.
    Also, "foil" is less of a pun than it is a word derivation. We say someone "foiled" a plan because they defeated them — as with a foil.
    Elan: Really?
    Tarquin: No. The etymologies are unrelated. *kaTANG!* [disarms Elan]
• The Ditz:
  • Elan, when he's not The Fool, or both simultaneously.
  • Thog; the first comment we get concerning him is that Intelligence was his Dump Stat.
  • Celia has her moments, explained in part by her status as an Outsider and therefore someone not familiar with the customs of the Material Plane. She's also from the Elemental Plane of Air, making her an "airhead".
  • Crystal. She once asks a blind ex-rogue (one whom she had blinded, no less) if he has seen who she's looking for.
• Divine Punishment: When Miko violates her paladin oath by executing her liege lord for imagined crimes, the Twelve Gods personally appear in the sky to strip her of her powers. At first she blames Roy for "making" her do it, then she becomes convinced that it's all some secret test for her.
• Diving Save:
  • Played straight in "Change of Direction".
  • Subverted in "Neutralize Elf" — Haley pushes Elan out of the way of a poisoned bolt, only to have it hit V.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Here, Crystal treats her not being murdered by Belkar like someone being angry that they're not being propositioned for sex.
  • Malack's plans to make the process of human sacrifices more efficient and orderly by developing "some sort of special chamber" is meant to evoke Soylent Green. However, plenty of readers saw a different parallel.
  • Start of Darkness features Redcloak's village being brutally destroyed, complete with Death of a Child, and this line:
    Paladin: Exterminate the rest.
  • The Vector Legion's control over half of the Western Continent through invoking The Creon in the Empires of Blood, Sweat, and Tears carries heavy undertones of The Mafia, what with them pulling the strings of (somewhat) legitimate organizations behind the scenes, having an emphasis on putting business before pleasure, and keeping as few people in the loop as possible regarding their Manipulative Bastardry. It's cemented by Laurin referring to the group as "this thing we do", similar to how mafia members in Real Life refer to the organization as "our thing".
  • A more innocent and lighthearted case can be seen with most of the comics that deal with the gods; these comics have them discuss the OotS universe as though it were a tabletop role-playing game campaign (or really, any form of art made through collaborative means), with them trying not to bicker over which elements should be included or debating whether or not they've gotten enough fun out of it to just end the whole thing.
  • Another more comedic example is the use of the sending spell; due to the hard 25-word limit for sending, many characters who are particularly long-winded have their speeches cut in and out with sending, like someone trying to talk on the phone with bad reception.
  • A less comedic one would be Tarquin's insistence for Elan to become the leader and main character, regardless of the fact that Roy is fit for the job and Elan clearly lacks the skill or experience to lead the team. Race and gender is never brought into the equation in-comic, but the author commentary of Book 5 states that Tarquin's reactions are symbolic about how he literally can't consider anyone else than his son — a white heterosexual man — to be the leader of the team.
    In this way, Tarquin is also symbolic of an older time when stories were likely to be more formulaic or clichéd — and less diverse. It's no accident that he's a wealthy old straight white man losing his marbles over the fact that the tale he is experiencing doesn't focus on the other straight white man at the expense of the black man, the woman, the genderqueer person, and even the Latino guest star.
  • "Loose Ends". Remember, they're talking about killing paladins.
    Redcloak: It was less satisfying than I remember.
    Xykon: Yeah, that happens when you get older sometimes.
    Demon Roach: I think they have a pill for that now.
  • Durkon and Roy's discussion of how and why the goblinoids are in a disadvantaged position compared to other humanoids ("I Mean, Geez") mirrors debates about systemic racism:
    Roy: It sounds like you and I are both better off today because our ancestors got a better deal back then.
    Durkon: ...Dwarves, humans, elves, even halflin's... we dinnae ask ta be given more. But at a certain point, dinnae we need ta take respons'bility for our part inna bad set-up? Now tha we know... dinnae we haf ta help change it?
• The Dog Bites Back:
  • Two for the price of one for Bozzok. For starters he gets a Betrayal by Inaction from Grubwiggler, who's never liked the way the Guild treats him under Bozzok's leadership; mostly, however, applies to Crystal, who he's constantly undermined and abused, has recently brought back as a flesh golem which he specifically requested would retain her mind to make it more vicious, and then continues to berate, even specifically calling her a rabid dog. Bad idea.
  • Strip 1295 reveals that before she resorts to volunteer guardians, Serini press-ganged an old red dragon to guard her Gate. Said red dragon manages to break free, is hostile, and has a bone to pick with her.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu:
  • After locking up the Snarl inside the new world, Thor taunts it, even kicking the new world-prison for good measure. To which Loki says:
    Loki: Dude, don't taunt the god-killing abomination.
  • Amusingly, this gets a Call-Back in Start of Darkness when Redcloak is explaining The Plan to Xykon.
    Thor: Crap! Loki was right about not taunting it after all!
• Don't Explain the Joke: Belkar in "Incoming!"
  Hobgoblin priest: FIRE!
  Belkar: Don't mind if I do! [fireballs the hobgoblins]
  Get it? Because he said, "Fire!", and then you used a "Fire"-ball, and now they're all dead!
  Skullsy: Yes, sir, very funny, sir. Please don't hurt me.
• Don't Touch It, You Idiot!: When confronted with the "Threads of Creation", Elan cannot help being fascinated and attempts to touch them. Serini immediately bonks him in the head with her staff to stop him, even though she has no idea what it would do (only that it is dangerous). Considering those threads are the same materials that make the Snarl, who is known to cause Cessation of Existence, Serini can only be praised for acting swiftly.
• Donut Mess with a Cop:
  CPPD Chief: I have NEVER seen so many cops standing around doing nothing since that time the Donut Chariot was an hour late!
• Door Fu: Thog breaks through a door and immediately uses it as an improvised weapon.
• The Door Slams You:
  • In On the Origin of PCs, Elan makes his grand entrance in a Bad Guy Bar by slamming the door into one of the patrons, who then calls for a "Cleric!"
  • "Kaboom" Redaxe gets a door in the face with the entrance of "Roy's Angels".
  • Also, there's "The Door Knocks on You", where Thog batters Haley into submission with a door.
  • Daigo gets hit by a door twice in "Entrance Qualifications" (and then sprayed with glass from Elan's dramatic entrance). Two strips earlier, he was not actually hit by the door but by the ninja flying through the now-open door, but it's close.
  • In "Resisting a Rest", Geoff gets hit by a door Gannji opens without warning. Enor is of the opinion they should have knocked.
• Dope Slap:
  • In the prequel book On the Origins of PCs, after a fair warning to Vaarsuvius (who was getting annoying), Haley performs a "Sneak Attack Upside the Head".
  • Nale dope-slaps his twin brother Elan in "The Semi-Secret Origin of Elan & Nale". Apparently, that's a reflex from early childhood.
  • "Invisibility: The Lazy Artist's Friend" features a rare aversion of the dope-slap.
    Roy: [probably — he's invisible] ...You're lucky attacking ends the spell, or I would smack the crap out of all of you.
• Double Entendre:
  • "It's a Type of Boat"
    Lien: This is your junk.
    Hinjo: But why aren't there any citizens aboard it yet?
    Lien: Your uncle was a very private person, sir. He forbade anyone from touching his junk.
    Hinjo: Well, that ends now. My uncle may have kept his junk to himself, but my junk will be for the people!
    Are there still evacuees waiting to board a ship?
    Lien: Oh, yes, sir, I imagine I'll have no trouble finding people willing to get aboard your junk.
    It should be able to hold many passengers.
    Hinjo: I agree, my junk appears to be quite long...
    Roy: Wider than I would have expected, too.
    Hinjo: Very well, Lien, you hold my junk here until it is fully loaded.
    Lien: That could take some time, Lord Hinjo...
    Hinjo: I don't care how long it takes, I don't want my junk to launch prematurely.
  • Also, the hotel room scene in "Double Your Entendre, Double Your Fun".
  • And the scene between Roy, Belkar, and Tarquin in "Slash Attack".
  • Bandana commenting that she never felt the need for a Magic Wand would be innocuous if not for the little detail that she's a lesbian.
• Double Meaning: Wrecan's line "SNEAK ATTACK FROM BEHIND — is a thing I absolutely cannot do, because it would be against the rules." He can't directly attack vampire Durkon because it would break the Godsmoot's rules and allow other priests to help him. But also, he's probably not a rogue, so he can't make sneak attacks at all by D&D rules, and even if he could, vampires, as undead, are immune to sneak attack damage.
• Double-Meaning Title: Almost every title for the individual strips have a double meaning.
• Downer Ending:
  • Start of Darkness ends pretty badly for Redcloak. Also, The Monster in the Dark loses his tacos!
  • War and XPs ends with Roy, Lord Shojo, and Miko all dead, the Order separated, the majority of the Azurites left as War Refugees, and Azure City itself put to the torch after being conquered by Team Evil.
• Down the Drain: "Obligatory Sewer-Themed Labyrinth."
• Draco in Leather Pants: invoked Given a Take That! in "A Vexation or Irritation".
  Tarquin: It's weird, no matter how many people he kills, the audience still thinks he's lovable.
• Dracolich: Xykon rides an undead silver dragon during the Battle of Azure City.
• Draconic Humanoid:
  • Enor the bounty hunter is an hybrid of ogre and blue dragon, giving him wings, breath weapon and largely draconic appearance.
  • The illustrated family tree of Girard Draketooth shows three individuals of this type being the result of a coupling between a human and a black dragon (presumably one with the power of Voluntary Shapeshifting). This second generation all possessed varying combinations of human and dragon features. However, from the third generation onward, family members appear completely human.
• Dragon Ancestry: The Draketooth illusionist clan has a black dragon in a distant point in their ancestry. Revealed in horrifying fashion when the Order arrives at their stronghold to find the entire clan dropped dead, and Vaarsuvius realizes it's because of the the "Familicide" arch-spell they cast on the ancient black dragon, which apparently was a relative.
• Dragon-in-Chief:
  • Within the Empire of Blood, General Tarquin holds this position: the Empress (an actual dragon) is more concerned about where her next meal is coming from.
  • Tarquin's band of six adventurers fills this in various places all over the western continent. Each of them prop up governments and switch around as the situation demands.
  • Also deconstructed in the prequel book Start of Darkness, which shows what happens when a villain is nominally subservient to a Well-Intentioned Extremist. Xykon is initially The Dragon to Redcloak: despite being more brutish and less intelligent than his "boss", over the course of the story he evolves from The Dragon to Dragon-in-Chief to Big Bad, by virtue of his total lack of moral compunction. Except Redcloak revealed that he's been manipulating Xykon for years, so this trope still appears to be in effect.
    • Xykon and Redcloak have a decidedly complicated relationship: Redcloak is the one Xykon's hobgoblin army recognizes as their leader, despite Xykon being more powerful and the de facto boss. And there are definitely hints that Redcloak will turn into The Starscream once their goals irreconcilably diverge. On the flip-side, Xykon is far more powerful, dangerous and evil, and might be more intelligent than Redcloak gives him credit. Further, Redcloak is visibly horrifed when he realizes he's becoming more like Xykon, and regards working with him an extremely unpleasant necessary evil. Also, Redcloak himself is The Heavy for The Dark One, his God of Evil, so he is technically The Dragon to somebody else.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap:
  • As Roy points out in "A Seasoned Woodsman", the Order is usually at some disadvantage when they fight their Evil Counterparts. Despite Roy's caution, it happens again when Vaarsuvius gets themself incapacitated by a trap right before the Linear Guild attacks.
  • Ultra-powerful soul-spliced Vaarsuvius is literally the most powerful mage to have ever existed... as long as they hold on to the splices. Good thing the most powerful one slips away before the elf goes to fight the Big Bad, Xykon, or else the series could have ended in a curb stomp.
• Drama Queen: Blackwing, when he thinks he's dying:
  Vaarsuvius: You are not injured. You have a slight smudge of dirt on three of your feathers.
  Blackwing: LO, THE ICY TALONS OF DEATH APPROACH!
• Dramatically Missing the Point: At the end of his plot arc, Tarquin complains that Elan hasn't lost anything and hasn't changed. Of course, we've seen that this isn't true — he lost his brother (literally), his father (symbolically), and a great deal of his idealism, as he just demonstrated by letting Tarquin fall.
• Dramatic Curtain Toss: Somewhat parodied in "Curtains for You", where the Monster in the Darkness is tasked to pull a curtain.
• Dramatic Drop:
  • Malack drops the tray with bloodwart tea he was carrying at the sight of Nale.
  • Firuk Blackore, upon hearing that the the lead vampire besieging the Firmament Temple of Thor is/was Durkon Thundershield, drops a tray of beers in shock. For a dwarven brewmaster to waste perfectly good beer, that certainly means the situation is serious.
  • In a memory of Durkon's first day as a cleric, his mother Sigdi drops her spoon when her son reveals he saw her name on Thor's temple's Wall of Donors.
• Dramatic Irony: Used several times throughout the comic, many times in the form of a Cutaway Gag.
  • The end of Book 1 has the order celebrating their various victories while the comic cuts to various scene showing how little they actually achieved.
  • Near the end of Book 5, the Snarl is shown escaping from Girard's gate without the Order noticing.
  • The real nature of Durkon's vampirism is revealed on the last page of Book 5, but the Order doesn't know this until much later in Book 6.
  • "A Heartfelt Moment" ends with Belkar shouting, "And that's how you kill a vampire cleric without dying, MORON!" Given that Durkon just took control of his body back from the High Priest of Hel for the sole purpose of allowing Belkar to kill it, it's more like a demonstration of how to kill a vampire cleric by dying.
  • Elan and Belkar reason that Xykon must be able to taste things like ice cream because otherwise, it would suck to be immortal. Start of Darkness established that Xykon in fact lost his sense of taste when he became a lich and it made him even viler from resentment.
• Dramatic Necklace Removal:
  • Xykon retrieving the crown that Roy has been wearing around his neck.
  • O-Chul removing Redcloak's holy symbol, thus in a single stroke crippling the cleric's magical abilities and forcing his retreat, and taking possession of Xykon's phylactery.
• Dramatic Thunder: Very heavily lampshaded in "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night".
• Dramatic Wind: Done in "It Takes a Thief", where Haley's hair, Roy's crown and Belkar and Hinjo's capes all flutter dramatically in the wind because the wings of Xykon's zombie dragon mount are beating to the point where it's causing wind.
• The Dreaded Pretend Tea-Party: The Monster in the Darkness has one with a stuffed dragon doll, a Demon Roach, O-Chul's paralyzed body and Roy's corpse.
• Dream Deception: In the prequel "On the Origin of PCs", Haley accidentally makes enough noise to awaken a sleeping guard. She convinces him that he's dreaming.
• Dream Within a Dream: Elan refers to an illusion-induced Dream Sequence as a "double-fantasy": a fantasy-within-a-fantasy-comic. When Roy thanks Elan for breaking them out of the illusion, Elan is convinced they're trapped in another level of dreamworld — "TRIPLE FANTASY!!"
• Dr. Genericius: Vaarsuvius, Aarindarius. And then subverted by Inkyrius, an apprentice baker. Parodied early on when Elan plays with the idea of taking a level of wizard, and dubs himself "Elanicalicus."
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: The gladiator warden is a particularly Genre Savvy one, who drops hints for the prisoner's experiences during a Gladiator Games plot.
• *Drool* Hello: Although it's not technically drool in "Good to the Last Drip" (just salt water from the ocean), it's still Vaarsuvius's first clue that a monster has approached from behind.
• Duality Motif: Tsukiko has a blue eye and an indigo eye. This reflects her dual-caster prestige class, the color of her aura when casting spells being blue for divine magic and indigo for arcane. As a joke, it carries over as a theme to her slippers too.
• Due to the Dead:
  • Elan's lament over Roy's death.
  • Not to mention the rather impressive gravestone he gave to Therkla.
  • Durkon cries for joy on hearing that his dead body shall be returned home for proper burial.
  • The gods made a monument, an unmarked grave for the first world destroyed by the Snarl, also to serve as a reminder of what is at stake if they don't play nice. As well for the second, third, fourth, up to the millionth world, if not more.
• Dumb Blonde:
  • Zig-Zagged. Elan is The Fool of the group, and his hair is a golden blonde. However, he's a Genius Ditz when it comes to metanarratives and storytelling. Out of the entire group, he's the most Genre Savvy, which comes handy in the world they live in.
  • Xykon mockingly describes Lirian as being this trope in Start of Darkness.
• Dumb Is Good:
  • Elan may be the only straight example in the comic.
  • Subverted with Thog. He's seemingly very charming with his idiotic nature and love for puppies, but he's just as bloodthirsty as the rest of the Linear Guild.
  • Inverted with Belkar, who briefly becomes a much nicer person when his Wisdom is boosted.
• Dumbass Has a Point: Elan points out to Haley that it's unfair to assume Tarquin is evil just because he's ignoring that people are in danger, considering she's insisted they not tell him that (because she doesn't trust him, because she thinks he's evil).^note Of course, Tarquin is evil, but it was still a good point...
  Haley: Am I drunk enough yet that later, I won't remember getting out-logicked by Elan?
• Dungeon-Based Economy: A town gets wind of adventurers about to arrive and hurries to put inflated price stickers on everything they might be interested in buying (including on an old guy in a rocking chair offering "cryptic ramblings from an old man").
• Dungeon Bypass:
  • Early in the comic, the Order uses a service stairwell to skip two levels of the Dungeon of Dorukan.
  • Invoked again in comics #649-651, where Haley breaks through the Fourth Wall for a spell component and Vaarsuvius teleports directly into Xykon's throne room.
• Dungeon Punk: Being based in a world heavily inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, the comic falls into this territory with how sorcery and the supernatural are used to where most of the ''OotS world has a standard of living relatively close to the modern day, as evidenced under the series' entry for Schizo Tech.
• Dying as Yourself: Defied, if not outright inverted, when Durkon offers to cure Malack's vampirism.
  Malack: Bringing me back to life is just a complicated way of annihilating the person I am today. Save your diamond dust and stake me instead.
• Dying Declaration of Hate:
  • An unusually subtle example in Start of Darkness. Redcloak's brother considers being called by the title of "Redcloak" rather than his real name demeaning. So when he dies and refuses to call Redcloak his brother, only calling him "Redcloak"... well...
  • A more overt example when Haley kills Golem Crystal, who screams as she falls into a lava pool: "Hate you Starshine! Hate you forever!"

E

• Early-Installment Weirdness: A lot of things weren't yet well-established when the comic was still a gag-a-day strip, and some details may clash with the later story.
  • In #10, the first comic in which we see goblins talk, they're speaking what appears to be their own language. In all subsequent appearances, goblins speak Common.
  • In Eugene's first appearance, he complains that Roy hasn't used speak with dead to check in with him and Roy's mother. It's later established that his Blood Oath prevents him from reaching the afterlife and as such he would have no idea if Roy had any contact with his wife. Additionally, his relationship with Roy and his family in general is later depicted as so cold it's bizarre that he would complain about Roy not speaking to him.
  • For example, the decision that conjuration was one of V's barred schools came after the wizard casting "Evan's Spiked Tentacles of Forced Intrusion", which would be a conjuration spell.invoked The Giant has stated that this spell won't ever show up again (although for a variety of reasons, the above being the least of them).
  • Another example is Roy defeating Xykon at the end of Book 1 by picking him up with his bare hands and tossing him into Dorukan's Gate. This appears to be a bit far-fetched given that Roy is a mid-level fighter at this point, and the prequel book Start of Darkness establishes that Xykon has been epic level for some time. However, the author does a good job explaining this one: Xykon wasn't going all-out on the Order, because he was trying to manipulate them into touching the Gate and unlocking it for him. The Gate itself was crafted by an epic wizard, and probably has epic spells defending it.
  • Another early strip has Roy and Haley dividing up the group as they split up to explore the dungeon, and Haley picks Belkar over Elan. In nearly the entire rest of the comic's run, not only can the rest of the Order barely stand Belkar, but Haley turns out to have been in love with Elan, making this part very strange.
  • In one early strip, the male characters all stare at Haley because her method of searching for traps involves a lot of... flexibility... and make her do it again, just so they can keep watching. In another, they attempt to listen in on Haley and V when they think something sexy is happening. While this is in character for Belkar, and maybe Elan to an extent, it's very odd for Roy, the extremely professional leader, and Durkon, the moral center of the team.
  • Earlier comics were full of jokes very specific to version 3.5 of D&D and how they differed from 3^rd edition, to the point of being obscure within a few years and incomprehensible a few editions later. By the second book this kind of humor was mostly gone. It was lampshaded during an in-universe recap in Utterly Dwarfed that even Elan doesn't think the early stuff holds up.
• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • Invoked and Subverted in "If You Want Something Done Right".
  • Invoked by Tarquin when he tells Elan that it's too early in the story to have a dramatic, final confrontation with him, and that he's not going to take a dive for Elan.
• Eastern Zodiac: The 12 signs of the Chinese Zodiac act as the Southern gods, and they are whom the Azurites worship.
• The Easy Way or the Hard Way:
  • In Cliffport City:
    Roy: Hey gnome! There are two ways this can go down: the easy way or the hard way.
    Leeky: Druids always pick the hard way; it encourages natural selection.
  • Later, the final pages of the second confrontation between Roy and Xykon are titled "We Can Do This the Easy Way..."
• Eats Babies:
  • Defied by the Monster in the Darkness. Xykon still tries to feed him some every so often, but he just kinda pushes them around on his plate before dumping them in the trash (don't worry, the kids survive).
    MitD: I'll eat pretty much anything they feed me anyway. Except babies.
    O-Chul: Excuse me??
    MitD: Oh, I don't eat babies or kids. That includes veal. It just feels weird.
  • According to the over-templated snail from Snips, Snails and Dragon Tails, a blackguard can be made to resist a domination effect if he's made to eat babies... without mustard.
• The Echoer: This happens when the zombified members of the Draketooth family echo some of the words that are spoken around them (not necessarily to them). When one of them falls in a trap that Vaarsuvius had fallen into previously, V freaks out as the mummy (repeating Nale's previous words) tell "your fault", reinforcing V's guilt that V is responsible for their deaths.
• Elemental Embodiment:
  • Parodied when Redcloak starts summoning elemental spirits based on the modern periodic table; Titanium — "just as strong [as Earth], and 40% lighter." —, Chlorine, Osmium (one of the hardest natural metals, twice as heavy as lead) and Silicon.
    Redcloak: I mean, fire shouldn't even count. It's a chemical reaction!
    
    Vaarsuvius: Does he not know that the classical elements are classics for a reason??
  • It gets weirder: Embodiments of salad dressing, apparently the native inhabitants of the Semi-Elemental Plane of Ranch Dressing.
• Elemental Plane:
  • Varsuvius is once magically transported to "The Semi-Elemental Plane of Ranch Dressing".
  • A cutaway gag apparently depicts the plane from which Redcloak is summoning all his Periodic Elementals, with a Gold Elemental looking horrified to be presented with gold coins by a trader.
• Elfeminate: A large part of the reason Vaarsuvius and kin get stuck with the Ambiguous Gender gag.
• Embarrassing but Empowering Outfit: Haley's boots of speed, which she is reluctant to wear because they are lime green, and don't match her skin tone or outfit. She gets around the problem by finding a merchant who dyes them brown to match the rest of her armor, but they still glow green whenever she uses them to trigger a "haste" effect.
• Emergency Transformation:
  • In Start of Darkness, Xykon willingly undergoes the transformation into a lich after contact with a magical disease robs him of his magical abilities.
  • Serini Toormuck was turned into a half-troll after nearly being killed by Xykon's spell — turns out troll flesh always regenerates even when it's been attached to a halfling.
• End-of-Series Awareness: The final Dragon magazine strips.
• Enemy Mine: Cliffport decides to support Gobbotopia's claim to nationhood, because Cliffport has a long-standing trade war with the elves, who in turn oppose Gobbotopia on behalf of their own alliance with the Azurites.
• Enemy Rising Behind: Belkar rises out of the mist in the 4th panel of this strip, just as his unaware foe says "...I don't expect any trouble".
• Enemy Summoner: Popular with lots of divine casters, but Summon Monster is a particular Signature Spell of Redcloak's (especially his unorthodox habit of using periodic table Elementals). Exaggerated when he takes on the Azure City Resistance — in order to keep the details a secret from Xykon, he attacks with nothing but summoned fiends and elementals, and then expresses relief that the only other goblin present died in the fight so he didn't have to kill him himself.
• Enigmatic Empowering Entity: Of the scam artist kind. The IFCC takes on the role of Enigmatic Empowering Entities when making their deal with Vaarsuvius, but subverts the role to snare the wizard. V is manipulated into accepting a price they don't understand and is tricked to believe that they have an excuse to let their more destructive tendencies run wild without accepting true responsibility for the havoc. Also, the power they give is tainted and fatally flawed in itself, not at all what V had imagined "Ultimate Arcane Power" to be.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • Durkon at one point concludes that the storm Miko ambushed the Order of the Stick in was sent by his patron god, Thor. He reasoned if there hadn't been a storm, the Order would have destroyed Miko before she even got in melee range with arrows and flame spells. She wouldn't have told them why she was following them, or figured out that her "detect evil" power had been getting a false reading. The storm also cleared just as soon as Durkon noted this. Turns out, Thor was just drunk.
  • In one comic, Roy concludes that if there were no raise dead or planeshift spells (meaning death was permanent, and you didn't even know for certain there was an afterlife), nobody would have wars.
  • When we finally meet Haley's father, he severely misunderstands his daughter's place in the Order.
    Roy: Actually, your daughter works for me, Mr. Starshine, not the other way around. I'm the leader of the Order of the Stick.
    Ian: Oh, I see. [sotto voce, to Haley] Good work, Kitten. Always let the stuffed shirts think they're in charge. This way, you can subtly manipulate them into doing what you need without them realizing that you arranged it all from the shadows.
    Haley: No, Dad—
    Roy: And for that matter, we didn't come here to rescue you. We're here in this region on a totally unrelated mission. It's just sheer coincidence that we happened to get thrown in the same cell block as you.
    Ian: [sotto voce, to Haley] Wow. You've gotten good at this.
  • Later, Tarquin recounts how his ninth wife Penelope had, when she was younger, had a child with a man who turned out to be a member of Girard Draketooth's family, and that the latter had spirited the child away with him to rear her amongst his own. Penelope died soon before she had the chance to hire adventurers to help her follow up on a lead that could have reunited her with them. Upon learning this, Haley, Durkon and Elan came to the conclusion that, since Nale seemed to have knowledge about the Gate that the Draketooths were guarding, that he had Sabine discreetly kill her to prevent anyone else from learning anything more about it. A perfectly reasonable outcome, though the truth turns out to be something they couldn't have known. Vaarsuvius's then-recent Deal with the Devil culminated in their casting of Familicide, which they had intended to scourge the world of any Black Dragons related to the one that had attempted to take revenge on V, as well as any related to her. V had, at the time, failed to take into account that this would also apply to any Half-Human Hybrids (or, indeed, any other crossbreeds) that were related to any affected Black Dragons, and, as the Draketooth family were Black Dragon-descended, Penelope had been caught in the crossfire of the spell by dint of mothering a child of their blood.
  • Inside Kraagor's Tomb, as the Order is lured into what they know is clearly a trap, Roy is thinking their ambushers have used a darkness spell when they are suddenly plunged in the dark. That is not the case, though (as the party's dwarves can still use their darkvision); what happened is that a beholder hiding close to the ceiling opened its central eye and directed the Anti-Magic cone at them, suppressing all of their magic, including V's light spell.
  • Redcloak notices there are far too many monsters inside a dungeon that had already been cleared and marked off by Team Evil in the not-too-distant past. While some monsters were expected to return due to the mechanics of how Kraagor's Tomb works, there were more than there should have been. He incorrectly concludes that the respawn rate has increased because of Team Evil's presence, and uses the appearance of Durkon and Minrah to oppose him as evidence. He brings up the real reason as a possibility — that the Monster in the Darkness "messed up" the marking of the doors — but seems to discard it in favor of the other explanation. And even then, he fails to recognize the possibility that the Monster in the Darkness would do so deliberately, which is in fact what is happening.
• Episode Zero: The Beginning: The first prequel released, On the Origin of PCs, is numbered zero on the spine to show it takes place before the main series compilations. Then when Start of Darkness came out, it was given the number -1 to show it covers events going back even further than the previous prequel.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: The Lawful Evil Empire of Blood employs humans, lizardfolks and kobolds indiscriminately, from the lowliest foot soldiers or slave drivers to the upper echelons of society, including the Empress' main counselors (with a human general, a lizardfolk high priest and a winged-kobold chancellor).
• Escalating Brawl: The argument between Roy, Gannji and Enor ends up in a serious pub brawl.
• Eternal Recurrence: If the Order fails to stop Team Evil, then the Snarl could be set loose and destroy their world, just like it did to the very first world. And the second world. And the third, and over and over and over again.
• Ethnic God: The world was created as a joint effort by the Norse Gods, the Mesopotamian pantheon, and the Zodiac animals, who claimed dominion over the Northern, Western, and Southern continents and their peoples. However, the elves worship a pantheon of ascended mortals and goblinoids worship the Dark One, who was a goblin warlord who managed to unite the assorted goblin races in life. Also, despite being one of the Western Gods, Tiamat is revered by dragons and kobolds worldwide.
• "Eureka!" Moment:
  • "It's Battlicious!", where Redcloak gets the idea as to how to distribute his soldiers for The Siege of Azure City from Xykon's "March up to the walls and blast away" attitude.
  • Elan has one during the Lotus-Eater Machine in #889, when Nale refuses to interrupt the ceremony.
    Nale: This is what you want, right?
    Elan: Yeah... this is what I've always wanted. But that... that doesn't make it right.
  • Wrecan has one when he realizes that, while Roy cannot attack any of the other priests, there's nothing preventing him from attacking his own priest (the High Priest of Hel) and halt Hel's plans.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Redcloak loved his brother — just not quite enough. More broadly, his entire motivation stems from seeing his parents and baby sister slaughtered by paladins when he was a youth.
  • Nale and Sabine. Sabine is an evil personification of lust, and Nale is a backstabbing schemer out to destroy the Order. Despite that, they genuinely love each other, even if the foundation of their relationship is a little bit built out of evil. When Durkon's holy word banishes Sabine to the Outer planes, Nale is horrified — and in turn, Sabine is enraged enough by Nale's death to assist Vaarsuvius in getting revenge against his killers.
  • That black dragon was pretty pissed that Vaarsuvius disintegrated her son.
  • Tarquin's teammates are similar — Laurin mentions that her daughter thinks she has a mundane job as an interior designer, so that she doesn't have to deal with the life she leads.
  • Gannji and Enor are bounty hunters working for the Empire of Blood, and they're Only in It for the Money. But they care about each other deeply, emphasized when the two are forced to fight each other in the gladiatorial arena. Gannji tries to sacrifice himself just so Enor can live another day, and Enor breaks down and cries at the thought of killing Gannji.
  • Belkar is a lecherous, invoked Chaotic Evil psychopath who only travels with the Order to inflict death and destruction wherever he goes, but he genuinely loves Mr. Scruffy. Just don't say it to his face.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The two hired assassins after who they think is the King of Nowhere (but is Roy, due to a mix-up) could have simply blown up the inn killing everyone including the King/Roy, and when they threaten to do so, are unable to actually do it.
  • There are things that not even Nale is willing to consider doing to Elan.
  • Notably, Xykon is known to mock Redcloak for having standards about whom they can crush and how much evil they can do in their efforts to conquer the world and bring equality to goblinkind.
  • Although even Xykon does have some small standards — namely, he's not a "disgusting biophiliac" and is squicked by Tsukiko's crackfic-worthy fantasies.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep":
  • The Monster in the Darkness; the Oracle of Sunken Valley; the Chief; the Rookie...
  • Having no name of his own to use, the High Priest of Hel is referred to as such even when he's technically abdicated that position.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • Played straight by several characters, especially Xykon, Nale, and Belkar.
  • Discussed when Roy accuses Belkar of Crying Wolf regarding Durkon's vampirisation. When he says that Durkon's last words were a plea for his friends' safety, Haley believes him because "I don't think Belkar's capable of inventing someone doing that."
  • Tarquin can't understand why Elan feels so bad about the fact that Tarquin killed Nale right in front of him.
  • In "End of the Line", as he hangs from the edge of the Mechane, Tarquin thinks that Elan will save him to prove the hero is better than the villain. Elan refuses and abandons his father, turning this trope into Evil Cannot Comprehend Good Is Not Dumb.
  • In "Giving Up Hope", the High Priest of Hel's inability to comprehend Character Development leads him to think he can break Roy's spirit by blaming him for the death of his brother, Eric. This completely backfires because he mentions having "always wondered" how many pieces Eric's body was in — something that the real Durkon would never even begin to think about — which blows his cover to Roy.
    Roy: Oh. I understand. YOU'RE NOT DURKON AT ALL!! [breaks free of the High Priest's grip and crits him across the chest]
  • In "Better Days", the High Priest of Hel's inability to understand Character Development, total shock over how Sigdi (Durkon's mother) used her worst day to fuel her best days and how Durkon learned from that bites him in the ass when Durkon floods him with all the happy memories of his life with his mother and their Family of Choice, turning the High Priest of Hel into Durkon (doing to him what he was planning to do to Durkon).
• Evil Counterpart: The Linear Guild's main purpose; this is actually mentioned in-universe when The Order of the Stick and the Linear Guild first meet. Justified as Nale specifically recruited his guild members to fit the "evil opposites" theme.
  • Roy/Thog (and later, Tarquin)
  • Elan/Nale
  • Haley/Sabine
  • Belkar/Yikyik — replaced by his son Yokyok and then the unrelated Yukyuk after the deaths of the first two.
  • Vaarsuvius/Zz'dtri (and later, Pompey)
  • Durkon/Hilgya — replaced by Leeky, and Malack, though Hilgya and Malack are both Affably Evil.
  • Furthermore, Tarquin has Elan's obsession with narrative events turned to Genre Savvy behavior.
• Evil Is Not a Toy:
  • Vaarsuvius was already aware of this, chose to ignore it, and is beginning to pay the consequences in the Girard's Pyramid arc.
  • As revealed in the Start of Darkness prequel, Redcloak's plan, hatched by the god of goblinoids, the Dark One, to have a powerful divine and a powerful arcane caster manipulate the Gates to control the Snarl without completely releasing it, and then use the Snarl to force the other divine pantheons to give equal rights to the goblinoids and other humanoid "monsters" solely created to be experience point sword fodder for fighters and adventurers of the other, older races. Redcloak is well aware that this might end with the death and unmaking of himself and Xykon, but is still determined to go through with the Plan.
  • Similarly, in Start of Darkness, Redcloak learns the hard way that Xykon is not a toy, or even a tool. Subverted, as it turns out; Redcloak still thinks of Xykon as a tool, just one which takes a little more skill than most to use. Whether or not this assumption will come back to bite him in the arse again, time alone will tell.
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family: Even though it's the Trope Namer, subverted constantly. Evil characters don't care about the alignment of other characters, only whether or not they will help or hinder them in achieving their goals.
  Lee: Don't be silly, why would we want the lich to win?
  Qarr: Because we're evil?
  Cedrik: And that makes us all one big happy family? Screw that!
  • Though the IFCC, despite defying the trope in the above quote, also play it completely straight, since their long-term goal is to forge a truce which will unite the warring fiends in an alliance against the forces of Good.
  • Redcloak reacts similarly when his lieutenant, Jirix, expresses surprise that Redcloak would hide things from Xykon, since Xykon is on their side. Redcloak makes it clear that while Xykon might be an important ally, he doesn't give half a damn about the goblin people and would joyfully slaughter them all without a second thought if he felt like it.
• Evil Lawyer Joke: In "Plotus Interruptus", Samantha's father states that the bandit clan used to prey on the wealthy and universally despised. Cut to a flashback of the clan threatening the two lawyers.
  Mr. Jones: Get back! I have a restraining order and I'm not afraid to use it!
• Evil Parents Want Good Kids:
  • Tarquin's psion colleague Laurin has kept her true line of work a secret from her daughter, who's a plumber and believes her mother is an interior designer for Queen Shvitzer.
  • Tarquin is a bizarre case. He's delighted that his son is a big hero... but only because it means he'll inevitably have a dramatic confrontation with his Archnemesis Dad. He was also proud of his Evil son, to begin with, and only lost patience with Nale when he proved on too many occasions to be Stupid Evil.
• Evil Plan: The Dark One's scheme for Redcloak is literally called The Plan.
• Evil Power Vacuum: Defied; Celia convinces Haley not to kill Bozzok, leader of Greysky's thieves guild, in order to stop a power vacuum from being created.
• Evil Sorcerer:
  • Xykon, the main villain of the comic and a lich who wants to rule the world, at least until he gets bored.
  • Nale, Elan's twin brother, who multiclassed as fighter/rogue/sorcerer specializing in enchantments (instead of being a bard like Elan... though his multiclassing gives him the same abilities as his brother);
  • Samantha, the spoiled sorceress daughter of the leader of the bandits of Wooden Forest;
  • Tsukiko, the evil mystic theurge (technically she is both a divine and arcane caster);
  • Qarr the Imp, a Lawful Evil manipulator who can use sorcerer spells.
  • Jephton the Unholy, one of the evil mages used for Vaarsuvius's Soul Splice, is identified as a sorcerer and brags, "I don't need to prepare spell slots!"
• Evil Tower of Ominousness:
  • Xykon has one in the Redmountain Hills, previously belonging to the wizard Dorukan.
  • Xykon also has a backup tower in the Southern Mountains — which is infested with Good-aligned creatures by the time he gets back to it.
• Evil Versus Evil:
  • As noted above, the bad guys are not "one big happy family" and often have vastly different goals. This is Roy's justification for keeping Belkar on the team — at least this way, he's pointed at people even worse than himself.
  • Mentioned and defied by Tarquin — while he, too, wants to prevent Xykon from taking over the world, he intends to sit back and let Elan take care of it because everyone knows when villains fight villains, it's always a toss-up.
• Evil Weapon: It is revealed in a bonus strip from the printed version of book 5 that Tarquin's axe is an evil, intelligent weapon named Soul Muncher. It causes pain to the good-aligned member of the Order when they try picking it up, and immediately dominates Belkar when he picks it up (Tarquin was too strong-willed to fall victim to it). Roy gets rid of it down a pit trap.
• Exact Words:
  • Elan tries to appeal to Thog's better nature and Thog admits he wants all his friends to just have fun together getting ice cream. He then proceeds to clobber Haley with a door, since she isn't one of his friends.
  • Hieronymus Grubbwiggler promises he's not creating undead — which flesh and bone golems are not under D&D rules.
  • O-Chul employs this in order to Never Speak Ill of the Dead in "Or Mention That He's Getting Too Old for This".
  • Durkon also uses this occasionally to avoid lying.
  • Haley employs this to hide her connection with Durkon when the latter refuses to lie to Malack.
  • Everything Redcloak says when explaining to Xykon why he brutally killed Tsukiko is true — he just neglects to mention the part where she figured out that Redcloak has been deceiving Xykon about the purpose of the "Snarl Control" ritual.
  • Tarquin is very fond of this too.
    • For example, he offers to send 500 of his troops to "join the battle" between the Free City of Doom and the Empire of Tears. He avoids mentioning which side his troops will be on. He even lampshades later that he was worried the envoy from the Free City of Doom would catch on too soon from how he phrased it.
    • On another occasion, he re-assures Elan that a stolen magic carpet belonged to a very rich man who owned six others, adding that he didn't miss it for very long. The art, however, shows that Tarquin's rogue swiped it while the rich man was riding it at considerable altitude.
  • While watching the Order struggling to fight a Silicon elemental and a pair of fiends, Nale makes a comment about how much he's going to enjoy watching his most hated enemies die shortly. He's actually referring to Malack, who burns to ash a few rounds later when Nale disarms him of his staff and Zz'dtri uses Greater Dispel Magic to rob him of his Protection from Daylight effect.
  • Said Silicon elemental also suffers from this, as it is ordered to kill "The human with the green-hilted greatsword." Haley takes advantage of this and gets the golem to attack her instead of Roy, as she is now the human holding said sword.
  • Nale orders Vampire Durkon not to drink Zz'dtri's blood. Vampire Durkon decides to break Zz'dtri's neck.
  • Vaarsuvius attributes being able to defeat the psion Laurin Shattersmith to "a combination of observations, calculations, and superior intelligence" — not mentioning that "superior intelligence" in this case refers to "having been given a full briefing on her abilities by Sabine".
  • When the High Priest of Hel is in the middle of his Villainous Breakdown after seeing the memory of how Durkon's mother sacrificed a fortune to save five strangers and being completely incapable of understanding it or dealing with the resulting emotions, Durkon offers to give him the memories that will help him with that. What Durkon neglects to mention is that those memories are all of his memories, which overwhelms the High Priest and turns the vampire spirit into another Durkon.
  • Durkon asks the Oracle whether he'll ever return to the dwarven lands, and the Oracle responds that he'll do so posthumously. Durkon is content with this, assuming he'll die with honor and be buried with his ancestors there. However, this being a setting where resurrections are just a diamond and a cleric away, you can die and be brought back to life, making all your subsequent actions technically posthumous. There's also the matter of Durkon returning as an undead; specifically, a vampire.
• Exactly What I Aimed At:
  • Roy throwing his broken sword manages to cut Elan's, Haley's and V's hanging ropes, but it misses Belkar's, who complains... till he sees the executioner is hit.
    Belkar: Oh, nice one, Roy. Good job there!
    [the sword shard hits the executioner in the chest]
    Belkar: I take it back! You're the best! That was perfect!
    [the executioner falls dead, pulling the doortrap lever with him]
  • Haley, throwing her (or rather Crystal's) distinctive knife into a wanted poster instead of the guy holding it. Finding her knife in a bounty poster with Nale's face on it told Roy all he needed to know to find them.
  • Elan fires a ballista bolt into the ground next to his father, who jumps to the obvious conclusion. As Julio Scoundrél cuts the rope and gets pulled out of the fight to safety, he calls back "I think that's half your problem, T — You always think everything that happens is about you!"
  • Double subverted in these two comics. Durkon throws his newly acquired hammer at the ceiling of the council chamber, allowing a shaft of sunlight to strike the Exarch... who steps out of the way. The hammer boomerangs back (as it was shown to do earlier), returning through the breach, striking the ceiling again, this time dropping a massive stone down, straight onto the conference table, which splits in two. At first the Exarch thinks that Durkon was trying to smash him with said rock, but it turns out that Durkon was aiming to smash the table — because according to the council meeting rules, the meeting can't allow votes to be cast without a table made from a single unbroken piece of wood, that is also large enough for everyone to sit at. By breaking the table, Durkon has suspended the vote taking place.
• Excuse Me While I Multitask:
  • Xykon conducts a job interview while storming the Azure City castle.
  • In the hypothetical scenario the archfiends suggest to Vaarsuvius instead of accepting their offer, V's master Aarindarius is shown defeating a powerful dragon while reading a book, not even bothering to look in its direction. Earlier, when ruling out V sending a message to Aarindarius via Qarr, it's pointed out that Aarindarius would do the same thing to Qarr.
• Exotic Entree: The banquet that Tarquin holds in Elan's honor. Poor Elan, not being the sort to enjoy such dishes, loses his appetite rather quickly.
• Expanding Thrown Weapon: One of the magic items owned by Roy is a Bag of Tricks - The user reaches into it, pulls out a small fuzzy ball and throws it, transforming the ball into a random animal. During a fight with a bandit captain in strip #167, he tries to throw a ball, but the bandit captain rebounds it at him with his swords. The ball then transforms into a rhinoceros and squashes Roy.
• Expecting Someone Taller: Invoked verbatim (with a halo and wings) by Redcloak when Durkon tells him that he should have known one of the gods would send an emissary to try to talk him out of his plans.
• Expert in Underwater Basket Weaving: In "No Skill Point", Roy asks the group about any possible talents or skills that could come in handy for the fight against Team Evil. Predictably, they're all pointless talents like blowing smoke rings, beekeeping or basket-weaving.
  Roy: Uugh.
  Haley: You were hoping for something more useful?
  Roy: No, I'm just pre-emptively annoyed that one of those is going to end up saving the day later.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!:
  • In "They've Had Time to Train, Too", Haley is about to fight a hobgoblin spellcaster, whose choice of spell is...
    Haley: "Dancing Lights"? That's like a 0th-level spell! Geez, what kind of low-level, lame-ass spellcaster are you? You've got one chance before I perforate you, and you choose... Dancing... Lights.
    [hobgoblin points upward; Haley looks up at the bright red signal alerting evil forces all over the city of their position]
  • In "The Comics Must Flow", Belkar is chugging spice in the middle of the desert. Seeing his eyes change color, Haley insists he read the warning label to avoid getting sick.
    Belkar: No, it doesn't say anything about eye color change. Just a disclaimer that the distributor is not liable for any gruesome violent deaths resulting from consuming this product in an open desert. So, see? It's perfectly safe for— ...Ah, crap.
    [cue giant sandworm bursting from sand]
  • In "Collect Call", when Roy and Belkar get arrested for not having proper entry papers, Durkon contacts them with sending. After three sending discussions, Roy tells Durkon to find the others, saying that he hopes Durkon has enough sending spells. Durkon sends again, telling Roy not to worry as he had prepared four sending spells... before he realizes that he just used them all up.
    Belkar: [to Roy] I don't know what just happened, but I feel a sudden urge to help you come up with 25 synonyms for "buffoon".
  • In "Rising Suspicion", when the Order is walking around a bunch of fresh corpses that have been killed by vampires, Belkar comments that he hopes they don't turn into more vampires, but Roy tells him that it won't be a problem as a person doesn't become a vampire until three days after they died and he had broken the staff that had the spell to speed up the process. It's then that Haley realizes that Vampire Durkon's time spent researching the Protection from Daylight spell wouldn't make sense if he was going to be invading a subterranean city and that he had actually been learning the spell to speed up a vampire's rise.
• Exploited Immunity:
  • Xykon has no problem using his area-of-effect Meteor Swarm spell at point-blank range because he has a magic item that makes him immune to fire damage.
  • During a fight between Vaarsuvius and a Black Dragon, the dragon deploys an Anti-Magic field which robs them both of their spellcasting. Vaarsuvius, being a Squishy Wizard, becomes completely useless within the field, while the dragon retains all of her brute strength.
  • A minor example occurs in "Rock the Boat", when Elan attempts to sink Kubota's rowboat. When Kubota complains that he's going to drown both of them, Elan reminds him that he isn't wearing any movement-hindering armor (unlike Kubota, who's wearing a breastplate), so he has a better chance of swimming to safety.
• Exploiting the Fourth Wall: The cast page shows Haley Starshine (the party thief) holding a huge diamond. When in need of a diamond in the strip, Haley steals it from herself there. And then the cast page got updated, too: now instead of a diamond Haley holds a note that reads "I.O. me one big-ass diamond".
• Explosive Breeders: According to Thor, goblinoids were just the latest iteration from Fenris' playbook. The God of Monsters always creates humanoid races like this, with the idea they could Zerg Rush the enemy. He eventually gets bored with them and focuses on the "cooler" monsters.
• Explosive Instrumentation: The Mechane is struck by lightning in the last panel of "Behind the Eyes". In the next strip, "Method Doctor", a control panel bursts into flame in Felix's face (giving Elan a chance to demonstrate his new role as backup healer).
• Extradimensional Emergency Exit: Knowing that the planet is in danger of destruction, Hilgya the Cleric is prepared to jump to another plane via a dimensional travel spell at the first sign of trouble.
• Extraordinary World, Ordinary Problems: A common theme in the comic is dealing with the mundanity of life despite still being focused around an epic quest to Save the World in a Standard Fantasy Setting. For instance, after Team Evil conquers Azure City, Redcloak and his assistants have to try and juggle both the mundanities of setting up a functional government in conquered territory and their Ax-Crazy Evil Overlord's murderous rampages.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: Crystal inflicts this on her boss Bozzok after realizing that he had used her for his own gain and paid a wizard to reanimate her into a hellish existence as a flesh golem. She's furious enough to punch through his chest — and doesn't stop there.
• The Extremist Was Right: Despite being one of the main antagonists of the whole comic and being definitely evil, Redcloak is completely right that the non-PC races really were set up for suffering, death and an utter lack of opportunities, and the Jerkass Gods probably won't bother to rectify the matter without a serious fire being lit under their backsides.
• Eye Colour Change: Happens to Durkon after he is turned into a vampire, with his eyes changing from black to red.
• Eyepatch After Time Skip: Elan tries to invoke the trope.
• Eyepatch of Power:
  • Right-Eye in Start of Darkness;
  • Redcloak as of comic #699.
    Xykon: I like you this way. It's like we have a grumpy pirate on the team.
  • One nameless member of the Azurite Resistance. The eyepatch obviously makes an impression on the others, since she reappears in the fantasy sequence in Girard's pyramid.
• Eye Scream:
  • "Smite -- Evil." O'Chul hits Redcloak with an improvised spear.
  • Not to forget:
    Hobgoblin cleric: *sniff* I think... I think there's something in my eye.
    *SPLORTCH!* AAAH!
    Belkar: Got it out for you.
  • This is the reason why Old Blind Pete is known as such. The worse part is that he used to be called "Eagle-Eye Pete". The even-worse part is that he got his eyes stabbed out again as soon as he paid a cleric to heal them after the first stabbing!
    Old Blind Pete: A word of advice; if you're gonna do business with criminals, don't pick a nickname based on any body part you can't afford to lose. *sigh* I shoulda listened to Appendix Steve when he tried to warn me...
  • Roy giving Thog a faceful of broken glass. *keeysh!* "RRAWWRR!!"

F

• Face Death with Dignity: Miko, Thanh, and Durkon.
• Face Doodling: Elan and Belkar do it to Roy when he's paralyzed by a poison trap.
• Face–Heel Turn: Averted in "The Power of Immediate Gratification", where Belkar, of all people, gives up the chance to join a cause that'll let him do all the killing he wants. Admittedly, Belkar leaves something to be desired as a "face", but the other side is even worse, so....
• The Faceless: The Monster in the Darkness, as well as the fiends of the Inter-Fiend Cooperation Commission.
• Faceless Masses: Sometimes used, especially in Azure City, on Hinjo's Junk, during the parade in Bleedingham, and in the Empire of Blood's arena. Lampshaded, naturally:
  Elan: Excuse me, huddled masses! Pardon me! PC coming through! PC coming—
• Facepalm: "The Great Roy Greenhilt & Everybody Else Facepalm Count"
• "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner: Tarquin has ordered his army to kill Roy, Durkon and Belkar. The latter (already a scratch away from death) has something to say.
  Belkar: [to Roy] Can't we go back to dealing with your daddy issues?
• Failed Attempt at Drama:
  • In "The Future Is Forged in the Fires of Today", after a lengthy Forging Scene, Roy is handled his reforged ancestral sword, good as new, and he takes the opportunity to solemnly renew his oath of destroying Xykon. But then he drops it while yelling in pain, because the sword is still damn hot.
  • An Azure City officer is dramatically stating that he and his men might die today, but with HONOR... only to be vomited upon by an airsick Roy.
• Failed a Spot Check: Belkar does this so often it's become a Running Gag, which the characters hang lampshades on.
  • He's missed armies of ninjas while they were talking to him. To his credit Haley and V failed their spot checks as well, and Belkar is alerted to the presence of something because while he's not aware of the ninjas, he's aware of his own failed spot checks.
    Belkar: Wait! I think I just failed a Listen check!
  • By the rules, ninja are hard to spot (and automatically considered hiding regardless of circumstances). Belkar can't even spot the ninja panel in the bonus page about the Pirates vs. Ninjas controversy.
  • And shortly after Belkar finally succeeds on a spot check, the bad guys fail.
  • Then Celia takes her turn.
• Fake High: In "Madness", a being from the Lower Planes explains why Vaarsuvius (under the effects of a "Soul Splice") appears to have shifted more towards Evil on the character-alignment scale by presenting a college-university analogy: "It's like if you were at a party where someone has been drinking beer that they didn't know was non-alcoholic: They might seem drunk anyway, just because they were expecting it."
• False Flag Operation: Tarquin places his allies as advisers and uses them to manipulate rulers into conquering the western continent.
• Family Extermination: Vaarsuvius uses their borrowed epic magic to cast "Familicide" to wipe out an entire bloodline of black dragons, on the basis that since the current one attacked them to avenge the death of her child, someone else from the family would try to avenge her death unless V wiped them all out in one fell swoop. The victims turns out to include the dragon-blooded Draketooth clan of humans, who would otherwise have been allies (if uneasy) of the Order.
• Family of Choice: The five dwarves Sigdi Thundershield helped resurrect became this for her and her son Durkon.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: The comic's simple art style allows for some really gruesome deaths that would otherwise have readers reaching for the barf bags.
  • Miko gets torn in half.
  • ...And an ancient black dragon gets torn into much smaller pieces from the inside.
  • A first-level commoner gets disemboweled by a housecat.
  • Commander and Lieutenant of Team Peregrine get Imploded by Redcloak; the Resistance leader with the topknot and kimono gets ripped in half by a diabolic being. All in one convenient comic!
• False Utopia: Azure City, in both its incarnations.
  • It started out as a "divine" city; with the highest number of Paladins per capita in the world, it was directly favored by the Twelve Gods themselves... and was also swamped with corruption, as the nobles evolved to develop abilities and systems that could fool every Paladin in the world. Azure City became a nation of raiders, where nobles suckered their Paladin vassals into holy crusades that committed genocide on innocent tribes of monsters, and then left the Paladins holding the bag when the Gods got pissed off. Eventually, one of their victims (Redcloak) turned evil and easily sacked the city, through a combination of one of its Paladins being driven insane and assassinating the Regent, constant infighting between nobles, and an entire mountain of pissed-off hobgoblins. (It's so bad that the mostly-civilian refugees, after months of dying off and barely making it to a small island, end up finding that they have developed a better lifestyle than what they once had, and have even considered letting the goblins keep their miserable blue rock.)
  • Redcloak then builds a new country on the ruins of Azure City, Gobbotopia, that is meant to be a utopia for goblin races. He fails; Paladin rebels frequently slaughter the civilians, the country becomes increasingly racist towards non-hobgoblins, and it lets Xykon do whatever the hell he wants. Just when things seem to be turning around, Redcloak appoints a seemingly benevolent ruler (Jirix), only for said ruler to immediately start murdering some of the friendly servants because they were insectoids.
• Famous for Being First: Strip #314 has Elan constantly saying "Blah, Blah, Blah" in the background. It initially appears that Haley's just not listening to what he's saying (as the focus of the strip is on her inner dialogue with her own self-loathing), but no, it turns out Elan just wanted to be the first person ever to say "blah" 497 times in a row.
• Fanservice: Lampshaded during Haley's bath sequence in On the Origin of PCs.
• Fantastic Race Weapon Affinity:
  • Soberly downplayed and discussed when the elf wizard Vaarsuvius runs out of spell slots in the middle of a battle and is left useless. The RPG Mechanics of the setting give elves proficiency in bows but, as Vaarsuvius notes, there's a significant difference between being proficient with a weapon and being good with it.
  • In a parody, the sociopathic halfling Belkar exploits halflings' well-known proficiency with slings and thrown stones to terrorize people with a pebble.
    Human: He's a halfling. With a PEBBLE ... Do you know how many bonuses he could have with a thrown rock?
    Lizardfolk: I heard a halfling once poked out both of a guy's eyes with the same sling stone!
    Kobold: I knew a a guy whose cousin was hit by a rock thrown by a halfling. Three months later, he was eaten by a tiger!
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Basically Redcloak's motivation both ways. His family was slaughtered because paladins don't consider his kind to have the right to exist, so he blames all humans for the actions of that group and kills them freely. Except they actually attacked his village because it was hiding the Crimson Mantle, which the Paladins knew contained knowledge of the Gates.
  • Classism: Wizards in general and Vaarsuvius in particular seem to look down on the other magic-using classes. Sorcerers are usually the targets, but being called a warlock is a dire insult. At one point, V denigrates Durkon's divine spell casting as not "real magic".
• Far East: (Or Far South, as the case may be.) Azure City would be a Fantasy Counterpart Culture for Japan, if it were at all consistent. Instead, names like "Miko Miyazaki" stand side by side with names like "O-Chul", and the people worship the Twelve Gods, the animals from the Chinese zodiac. This, naturally, is a pastiche of D&D's Oriental mishmash settings, most specifically the Oriental Adventures sourcebook.
• Fascinating Eyebrow: All characters can do this, to express either fascination or puzzlement.
• Fastball Special:
  • Well, "Tetherball Special", anyhow. That one's even called "Wolverine, Eat Your Heart Out".
  • Also, what happens when you sit on Durkon's head as he casts Thor's might.
• Fast-Forward Mechanic: Invoked in "Time Is on My Side".
• Fatal Flaw:
  • The pride and inability to admit that their magic can't do everything of Vaarsuvius, as pointed out by the fiends in "The Wrong Reasons". See also "First Step in the Process":
    Blackwing: Mistakes were made all around, but the important thing is that this needless conflict is now over WITHOUT the loser's entire family line getting totally eradicated. So, you know. Progress.
  • On the Origin of PCs has Roy claiming that belief in the complete supremacy of arcane magic is a common flaw among spellcasters.
  • Thinking he knows more about a situation than he actually does is Roy's flaw. If Roy had known that liches can regenerate from a phylactery from the very beginning, he could have made sure Xykon was Deader than Dead and wouldn't have been able to return, so he has to kill him again. This also lead to Miko becoming wrongfully suspicious of Roy, with disastrous consequences. In a Too Clever by Half moment, he also believed he had outsmarted the Oracle, when the latter was more than happy to just tell him which Gate Xykon was headed towards next. Later, he dismisses the Celestial's warnings about V's Deal with the Devil because he thinks she's talking about Belkar.
  • Redcloak mentally locks himself onto a single course of action and then refuses to deviate from it, no matter what changing circumstances intervene. His end goal is "get the goblin races a stable power base, land that isn't worthless, and diplomatic recognition so that we can have a level playing field". He got that hundreds of strips ago, but because his original plan involved using Xykon and the Gates to get it, he's still fixated on doing that. Because that is The Plan, and if he deviates from it then all the sacrifices he's made were pointless, and it can't be pointless.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • The Ancient Black Dragon intended to bind Vaarsuvius' children souls to her forever, and Xykon has a fondness for trapping the souls of important enemies in gems. This is subverted when he imprisons Dorukan in the same gem as Lirian.
  • A slightly more humorous example: after willingly being abused and used as a weapon by Belkar in order to not be destroyed, the head of the "Eye of Fear and Flame" (one of Xykon's three decoys) finally draws the line when the latter announces his intentions to eventually use him as an "emergency chamber pot".
  • Another humorous example: Kobold Kitty Litter.
    Durkon: Uh... wait. Aren't ye gonna, y'know, kill the kobold first?
    Vaarsuvius & Belkar: No.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • Xykon. Redcloak even lampshades it in a conversation with a hobgoblin goon.
  • Tarquin is so affable that a few people think that even after kicking a few dogs he's only True Neutral.
  • The Giant seems to enjoy playing with the Faux Affably Evil trope in general: Redcloak averts it, both before and after his My God, What Have I Done? (before it, he doesn't bother to show the slightest concern for the hobgoblins, and after he genuinely does care about them), and Miko inverts it via Good Is Not Nice.
• Faux Horrific: Elan is appalled at the terrible choreography of the opening act of the gladiator games.
• Faux Yay: "Slash Attack" — by Belkar and Roy, after seeing Tarquin's face for the first time, to explain their surprise as they recognized Elan's traits on him.
• Favouritism Flip-Flop: Inverted in "The Prisoner Dilemma".
• Fear Is Normal: Inverted in Strip #372, "Pot v. Kettle", in which Redcloak gives a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Miko. He argues that fear is one of the most natural and basic instincts, and since the blessing of Miko's gods has made her immune to fear, she's every bit as much an unnatural abomination as Xykon.
• Feather Fingers: While he rarely uses them as hands (though he's seen doing it a couple times with a scroll), Blackwing is fond of gesturing with his wingtips, including Giving Someone the Pointer Finger.
• Fertility God: In a Flashback, we see Thor being chewed out by Loki for having impregnated another goddess (presumably from a one night stand), without noticing that the woman with flowers growing on her hair and bluebirds flapping around her head is a fertility goddess.
• Field Power Effect: The Azure City throne room is consecrated. Notably, it makes any attempt by an evil cleric at "turning" the Ghost-Martyrs of the Sapphire Guard more difficult. It takes one as powerful as Redcloak to have any chance of succeeding.
• Fighting Fingerprint: Roy is familiar enough with Thog's fighting style to correctly guess that the warrior the Order is fighting in strip #852 is actually an impostor.
• Fighting for a Homeland: Redcloak sees claiming a goblinoid homeland as a secondary goal to his service of Xykon. Once Azure City is taken, he founds the nation of Gobbotopia and appoints one of his lieutenants as its leader.
• Filler Strips: Lampshaded (see Fourth-Wall Mail Slot).
• Final Boss Preview: Both Xykon (to Roy) and Tarquin (to Elan) lampshade the fact that if they attack them too early, they'll only be defeated and forced to retreat so they can train for the real final battle.
  Tarquin: We just met. The tension needs to build more. [...] So, you go finish up your little plot and come back in, say, ten years?
  Elan: Dad, I can't let you hurt all these people for ten years!
  Tarquin: Well, if you want, you can force the confrontation early... but the way these things go, you'll probably end up losing a hand or an eye or something.
• Final Solution: Vaarsuvius's partner and children are threatened by a vengeful dragon. Channeling the magical power of the three most powerful mages in the Lower Planes, Vaarsuvius finds a solution to the problem: Vaarsuvius kills not only this dragon, but also any dragon that is in any way related to it — a quarter of the Black Dragon population — to stop any threat to their family.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Blackwing resents being Vaarsuvius's familiar, due to V's neglectful behavior towards him for most of the comic. But when they're forced to work together in an attempt to destroy Xykon, they put aside their differences and learn mutual respect for one another.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • In the pyramid, Xykon calls Roy by his name, which is evidence that he's just a figment of Roy's imagination.
  • In #1101, Haley does some spitballing about the spell Vampire Durkon had supposedly been trying to learn. She points out that, given their new knowledge of the character's plans, their prior assumption about the spell's identity doesn't make sense. Just as she completes this thought, the corpses around them rise as vampires, revealing that the actual spell was the one to hasten the rise of a vampire.
  • In #1203, Durkon is facing away from the rest of the Order while windwalking. The next strip reveals he went to parlay with Redcloak.
  • In #1249, Serini assumes Lien is trying to slip out of her manacles and escape. No, she was retrieving her paladin mount's Pokéball.
• Five Stages of Grief: The immediate reaction of Roy to the news of Durkon being Turned is Denial and Anger aimed squarely at the Bearer of Bad News (at swordpoint, no less). Durkon is soon back and walking around as a vampire, reunited with the Order, and Roy's willingness to accept this situation and make allowances for Durkon's "condition" could be seen as Bargaining, or as denial regarding how much of his former friend is left inhabiting his undead body. Acceptance comes loud and clear with the line "Oh. I get it. You're not Durkon AT ALL!"
• Flashback:
  • Eugene remembers why he cast the Blood Oath against Xykon in "Unfinished Business".
  • Haley sympathizes with teenage goblins in "Teenage Wasteland".
  • Haley remembers why she hates Crystal with a burning passion in "Mean Girls".
  • Roy remembers learning the tactical advantage of surprise in Fighter College in "And They Got Extra Credit for It, Too".
  • Tarquin describing his and Nale's history.
    Elan: But what I really don't understand is how you came to be working for a red dragon in the first place.
    Tarquin: Brilliant set-up for my inevitable backstory, my boy!
• Flashback Nightmare: Vaarsuvius in "Running Away".
• Flat-Earth Atheist: When the Order finds a message left by Girard Draketooth for Azurite Paladin Soon Kim, he disdainfully comments on how logic is "the part of your brain that weeps every time you kneel down and pray to a glorified petting zoo". Not only is Gerard in a typical fantasy setting where the gods are real and bestow genuine power on those who take Divine classes — like Paladins — but the message concerns him guarding a gate to a creature that he knows for a fact was created when the gods made the world, including Soon's Twelve Gods.
• Flipping the Bird:
  • When Redcloak annoys a regenerating Xykon:
    Xykon: Hey, look, I just regenerated a finger. Guess which one.
  • (Off-panel) "Bugsby's Single Expressive Digit!"
• Fluffy Cloud Heaven:
  • The coexistent demiplane from which the Upper Planes denizens come to watch mortals. Eugene is stuck there because of his Unfinished Business.
  • Double Subverted when Durkon & Minrah die — first there's a That's No Moon reveal when it's shown that the white fluffy stuff they're walking on is in fact a building-sized Thor's fur-lined boots. But then we see that he himself is standing on a cloud with a great view of Valhalla.
• Fluffy Fashion Feathers: After they accidentally teleport into a giant bird's nest, Belkar is briefly shown wearing a pimp hat adorned with a giant red feather that's as big as him.
• Flynning: The fight between Elan and Tarquin is full of it.
• Foil: The relationship of Tarquin and Malack mirrors that of Roy and Durkon. Both sets are fighters whose Number Two and best friend is the team's cleric, and to drive the mirror further Durkon is now a vampire too.
• Fog Feet:
  • A djinni in the flashback of Celia's job interview has a wisp of smoke for legs.
  • The visual representation of the Wind Walk spell is for the characters' legs to be replaced with vapor trails.
• Following in Relative's Footsteps: Listening to stories about his heroic adventurer grandfather inspired Roy to become one himself. A snippet of an argument with Eugene is Roy holding the Greenhilt family sword and saying "Don't you know we come from a line of fighters?"
• Follow the Chaos:
  • When Elan has Durkon Send a call for help to an ally, he phrases it with this trope in mind:
  Durkon: [in flashback] If'n ye wanna fight an evil villain bent on conquest, go ta Windy Canyon an' look fer tha big explosion.
  Roy: [in present] The explosion? Elan, there was only going to be an explosion if we totally screwed up defending the Gate!
  Elan: Well, yeah.
  • Xykon assumes that anyone who would want to track him would simply follow the trail of corpses, making him suspicious as to why Redcloak would have gone to the trouble of figuring out a way to do it with a low-level spell like detect evil.
• Fool's Map: The co-ordinates the Sapphire Guard have for Girard's Rift lead to a completely random spot in the desert, with a magical message that Girard programmed to activate and mock Soon Kim if it detected him at those co-ordinates trying to find the rift.
• Foul Ball Pit: Strip 750 shows Elan playing in an extremely deep ball pit with skeletons at the bottom.
• For the Evulz: Largely averted (although Xykon tends this way when he's bored), and discussed at length by Roy when he's trying to figure out the High Priest of Hel's motivations:
  HPoH: Why am I doing this? Gee, I don't know... Maybe it's because I'm an Evil vampire now?
  Roy: [...] So what? Xykon is an Evil lich. Tarquin's an Evil human. Neither one of them wants to actually destroy the world. Heck, Belkar is an Evil Halfling, and he's like 70% towards wanting to save it. You need to have some underlying reason for supporting this scheme.
  HPoH: My mistress Hel desires it. That is all I require, now.
• For the Lulz: Invoked by Loki at the Godsmoot: "Humiliating Thor is not enough of a reason to do this, Hel. It's a pretty funny reason, sure, but not enough of one."
• Force Versus Discipline: Sorcerers (force) vs. wizards (discipline).
• Foreshadowing:
  • Haley's father's imprisonment in Tyrinaria is mentioned early on. It has set up a surprising twist later.
  • After defeating a black dragon, the party realizes he was just an underling of the real guardian of the cave. The real guardian of the cave? His mom. Uh oh. Plus, the black dragon in the cave mentions his mother while talking to V. For extra fun, read V's dialogue in "Tactical Priorities". Spoilers, ahoy!
  • "Then I will die, but not today."
  • Belkar correctly predicts how Miko's interactions with the Order of the Stick will ultimately end, though not for the right reason.
  • Julia thinks Nale would be kinda cute if he shaved off that stupid beard.
  • "Only the honor of a paladin is unbreakable — even by death itself."
  • A minor one, but look at the hair belonging to the new aspect of Haley's personality in strip #319. Now go to any strips between #610 and #752 involving the party.
  • The Oracle saying Roy and Elan are late for a pair of family reunions.
  • Nale says, "This disguise won't work forever. Except maybe for the halfling."
  • This won't be the last time Belkar sees through an imposter's ruse.
  • Nale accusing Tarquin of killing his wife, when Tarquin thought it was Nale hints something went very wrong. Tarquin being Genre Savvy, most certainly caught on to the fact that "4-6 high-level adventurers showing up on his doorstep" matches the timeframe of this event, and that something bigger is at work. Then strip #843 happens and explains it all for us.
  • Durkon learns from the Oracle that he won't return to dwarven lands until he is dead. He returns as a vampire.
  • In #932 Roy notes that he should really start lashing his sword to his hand
  • In 399 a conversation between Haley and Vaarsuvius about binding Nale's Soul foreshadows the elf's decision to accept the IFCC's Soul Splice
    Haley: I mean there's probably some ubermagic that would bind his soul or something... but that's kinda on the Evil street if you ask me.
    Vaarsuvius: And what, exactly, would the problem with that be?
  • In #733, Durkon happens to have four castings of sending memorized on a day they had no expectation of trouble and no explanation. In #1152 it turns out he uses it to call home every week, and he cites the incident as a reason Roy really should have known that.
  • An exchange between Andi and Bandana in "Weather or Not" subtly foreshadows the problems Andi will cause later due to not respecting Bandana as the new captain.
    Andi: Okay, Bandana, I've got—
    Bandana: Captain.
    Andi: Right, Captain, now.
  • In "Half Expected", there are little crayon doodles on Serini's wall that show a big lumpy circle with stalks coming out of its head next to someone significantly shorter than it. "See It Coming" reveals that the "lumpy circle" is a beholder named Sunny, who drew those images.
  • V offhandedly notes they have a scroll of passwall; it comes in handy ten strips later.
  • After Julia snarks at Roy on the Mechane, he states "Oh, there you are, Dad. I didn't see you hiding in my sister's entire personality like that." It was in fact Eugene all along, using an illusion to impersonate his daughter.
• Forging Scene: Appears with the reforging of Roy's greatsword intercut with shots of other characters preparing for the upcoming story arc. Although some of the dramatic power is reduced when Roy is handed the sword just after it is finished... and promptly drops it screaming, because, well, it's just been forged and it's still really hot.
• Forgot About His Powers: Done several times, usually played for laughs as a parody on such happenstances in D&D games.
  • For example, one early comic has a goblin get more and more damaged as Durkon remembers the various bonuses he is able to add to his attack.
  • Additionally, V has a raven familiar (Blackwing) who would literally appear and disappear as V demands (and usually only upon reminder from other characters) as a riff on the way that many D&D players would forget about their familiar (or simply not mention them) unless they were getting a concrete bonus.
  • In a retroactive case, while falling to his death Roy desperately tries to save himself, and is shown having two potions (shillelagh oil and delay poison) he had completely forgotten about. Those two potions were the exact ones that could have helped in a previous situation, to save Elan from poisoning and turn a broom handle into a decent weapon. Meaning that the whole arc where Roy had to use a Belt of Gender Changing could have been avoided if not for this trope.
• Forgot to Gag Him:
  • Haley, the party's rogue, manages to talk down some bandits by pointing out the economic issues with their chosen profession.
  • Averted when the Order is dragged off to face trial in Azure City in chains: Miko has the sense to gag Vaarsuvius, the party's wizard, so they can't cast spells.
• For Inconvenience, Press "1": "Hello! And Welcome to ThorPrayer^TM."
• For Science!: In "Breaking Up", one of the motivations Grubwiggler cites for accepting Bozzok's commission to turn Crystal into a sapient flesh golem, despite the fact that, as he says, this course of action "gives up the main benefit of creating a golem", is that he was curious about what would happen afterward. (The other one is that he was paid extra for it.)
• Fourth Wall: Broken, smashed, and plowed under by a steamroller.
• Fourth-Wall Mail Slot:
  • The Order does one in "Mail Call" and later in "The Return of Mail Call".
    Belkar: Here's an idea: Let's never do this again.
    Haley: Yeah, like we're never gonna need filler again. Dream on, shorty.
  • A pair of expendable hobgoblins then take over in "Son of Mail Call".
• Frame Break: Sometimes played with.
  • Haley gets knocked into the next strip in the fight with Tsukiko. (The strip in question is called "At Least It Wasn't the Fourth Wall This Time.")
  • In "Threadbare", the visible "Threads of Creation" (the raw materials making out the plane, as well as the Snarl), a sure sign that reality is getting frayed around the edge, are seen bursting through the usual panel dividers of the strip.
• Friendly War: We have three desert empires that always struggle against each other. However, they are secretly allied with each other. The conflict between them is merely an excuse to take over other nations, as well as a safeguard to keep the other peoples from uniting against them.
• Frivolous Summoning: Xykon has his Dragon summon a dead Mook's spirit with Necromancy to tell him where to find his keys.
  Xykon: Thanks! The conjuring of his immortal soul saved me the inconvenience of digging out the spare set I keep in my desk.
• From a Single Cell:
  • Xykon can resurrect from nothing as long as his phylactery is intact.
  • Roy is Resurrected from just a skull, being the biggest bit of him left after the Bone Golem made from his corpse is destroyed. Resurrection could possibly bring someone back from the dead with just a single drop of blood, as noted in "Operation Desert Inform".
• From Bad to Worse:
  • Things get continually worse throughout the prequel book Start of Darkness, especially for Redcloak. And considering that the book starts with his mother, uncle, mentor, older brother and younger sister being massacred by paladins, you know it's going to get pretty bad.
  • When the Order reaches Girard's pyramid, they find everyone is dead. Then, Vaarsuvius realizes it was them that killed them with Familicide. Later, the Linear Guild arrives. Then, it turns out that Malack is a vampire and turns Durkon into one. Next thing, Roy destroys the Gate to prevent it from falling into someone else's hands, while V gets pulled out of action by the IFCC. Then, after Nale kills Malack, Tarquin appears with a large army, bent on killing most of the Order. And finally, when we thought everything would be OK, Durkon's body is actually being controlled by the High Priest of Hel, who intends to destroy the dwarves.
• Full-Name Ultimatum: In a flashback, Durkon gets one from his mother, in which the reader learns his middle name: Durkon Allotrope Thundershield!
• Funetik Aksent: To the point that there is a spell in-universe (Comprehend Inconsistent Languages) to translate the speech bubbles written this way. Durkon is the poster child for this.
• Funny Background Event:
  • In "Saved Game": The Hobgoblin general falling after Redcloak dismisses the summoned hell-mammoth.
  • Panel 4 of "It's Where the Cool Kids Swim". Look at the text of the "Safety a Close Second!" poster.
  • In #1149, the first three panels shows Kudzu totally entranced by the diamond his mother is using as a casting component, then being disappointed when it's obliterated.
  • "Hel Polls for Thee": As Roy dramatically jumps down from a balcony to fight the High Priest of Hel, Hoder's high priestess is facing the wrong way.
• Fun with Acronyms: The Book of Odad^note Oh! Original Dungeons & Dragons!
• Fun with Homophones:
  • Hulk Speak delivered by Thog: it makes perfect sense written down while being utterly incomprehensible when spoken. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo etc.
    Thog: not nale, not-nale. thog help nale nail not-nale, not nale. and thog knot not-nale while nale nail not-nale. nale, not not-nale, now nail not-nale by leaving not-nale, not nale, in jail.
  • In "The Name of the Windy", Durkon omitted to prepare Control Winds although they were going to the WINDY Canyon, because he thought it was called the Windy Canyon, as in full of winding passages. Vaarsuvius lampshades the fact that it shouldn't have happened because the words are heteronyms with different pronunciation.
  • Belkar learns that vampires are vulnerable to stakes, so he rustles up some T-bones.
    Belkar: No, you're a homophone!
  • The entrance to Passage Pass has signs warning against "Falling Rocks" as well as "Falling Rocs".

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