The Order of the Stick

"I'm not attacking you! I'm just installing a skylight! What's wrong with that?"

No more staff is good news. Means no more instant Vampire swarms. Although, it'll probably take a few days for the Order to catch up with him, and that's long enough to make new minions.

If researching the staff taught Durkula Protection from Daylight, wouldn't it be reasonable for him also to have learned the Instant Vampire (Just Add Water) spell too?

Probably, but the staff has (had) charges on it, so it limits the amount of new vamps Durkula can create. And more importantly stops his spawn (who don't know the spell) from using the staff to create spawn and cast Protection From Daylight on themselves.

well

he might not have had time to prepare them though.

Do vampire clerics get vampire-based spells the same way Good Clerics get healing and Evil clerics get Inflict? That seems logical for a vampire to have

Vampire clerics get Inflict because they're Evil. Durkula can convert any spell into an Inflict spell of equivalent level.

edited 8th Feb '16 11:44:21 AM by TobiasDrake

It's a shame they don't automatically get a control undead spell or something...

Like as a Vampire ability. That would be so cool

They do. Evil clerics get Rebuke/Control Undead in place of Turn/Destroy Undead, in addition to having Inflict conversion instead of Cure conversion. It's a class feature, not a spell.

edited 8th Feb '16 11:48:25 AM by TobiasDrake

Tobias: What you remember when you're on the clouds is treated differently from what you remember of the true afterlife. His memories of the Spellsplinter feat amount to 'Hey I had a neat idea' not 'Someone taught me how to do this thing.' Maybe he only remembers the home cooking because he took his mom's jambalaya down to the cloud layer with him.

Anyway breaking the staff is largely meaningless as far as Durkon goes. He didn't take it with him, so he wasn't going to be using it anyway.

Roy is still the best.

It's funny, I had been predicting that Roy would impale Durkula with the staff, so it's amusing to see him casually break it (as if it were not at all sturdy) and then hit another vamp in the face with the fragments.

As far as learning spells goes, Durkula picking up on Protection From Daylight from the staff is one of those Awesomeness by Analysis things that is part of how magic works (unless I'm forgetting and he got it directly from Hel). While Clerics don't use Vancian Magic per se, the process is reflective of that.

Impaling a vampire dressed in heavy armor on a blunt instrument would be pretty hard to pull off.

That said, I've seen sillier attempts.

I'm still trying to figure out how you "forget" a spell you've been casting all your life just because you didn't spend last night reviewing it.

Or how you forget it after you just cast it six times because that's how many times you read it last night.

I just head canon that a wizard prepares a spell by writing it on a paper then rolling it up then keeping it on their pocket or something. And the incantation just released the spell from its written form on the scroll.

Divine spells are simple because they're requests from your deity. Every spell is a pre-ordered miracle your god has agreed in advance to bestow. You're merely the vanguard of your god's will, pointing out wherever you think divine intervention would most benefit the cause.

Preparing arcane spells is a bit more confusing.

edited 8th Feb '16 12:06:16 PM by TobiasDrake

That's more of a topic for the rules discussion, but in a nutshell, preparing a spell for casting is more than just knowing the arcane formula, or recipe. A wizard must know a spell in order to prepare it at all, whether it's in their spellbook or on their list of spells they no longer need one for.

Preparation involves charging yourself with the magical energy of the spell, going through its incantations and formulae until you are ready to release it with a few simple phrases and gestures (or sometimes, more complex ones). It's akin to loading a gun. Once cast, that energy is expended and must be refilled in order to cast the spell again.

A wizard or cleric in D&D is like a gun with a set of chambers. Each chamber holds one spell. Preparation loads the spells into the chambers, and casting them expends the ammunition. A sorcerer, by contrast, carries around a limited assortment of ammunition that he can load on the spot.

edited 8th Feb '16 12:10:09 PM by Fighteer

That makes it even more amusing when a cleric "runs out of spells"

"Nah fuck you. I'm done helping you for the day. Get back to me tomorrow."

Tomorrow, eh? After the orcs are done picking pieces of me out of their teeth, would that be a good time then?!

but any given gun can only fire one calibre of bullet

edited 8th Feb '16 12:11:57 PM by blkwhtrbbt

Sorcerers, meanwhile, don't have to prepare spells because their magic is an innate power that comes from their blood and bones rather than their knowledge. They're always charged with it and are instead limited by what amounts to metaphysical stamina; exhausting their physical ability to use their supernatural gifts instead of running out of bullets.

edited 8th Feb '16 12:13:44 PM by TobiasDrake

Clerics are god wands wizards are an arsenal of guns and sorcerers are tasers

Got it

A deity isn't supposed to be a cleric's "get out of jail free" card. Clerics are entrusted with a certain amount of power based on their proven ability to use it. If you get yourself into a stupid jam because you overextended yourself, your deity isn't going to intervene, because that would pave the way for all the other deities to intervene whenever their clerics are in trouble.

The whole thing is part of a divine non-interference pact that is specifically intended to make battles occur between mortals playing by defined rules rather than gods tearing shit up.

edited 8th Feb '16 12:16:24 PM by Fighteer

What if you're defending your patron's temple?Can they not give you an exception?

A Lso how do the Godless clerics work?

If the temple falls, the clerics didn't do a good enough job defending it. If Thor steps in and smites the invaders, what's to stop Hel from smiting invaders of her temples? The principle extends all the way.

Godless clerics worship and draw their power from a concept or principle. Otherwise they function as any other cleric. Of course, they don't literally worship a metaphysical being that grants them power; it comes from the shared belief of all that concept's clerics, or from some raw source of universal power. The idea is rather nebulous, mechanically speaking, and it feels to me as if it's something of a cop-out for a player who doesn't feel like having their spell selection be subject to DM veto.

edited 8th Feb '16 12:23:55 PM by Fighteer

Why should Hel not defend her temple? Also my question was specifically about number of spells. If your clerics are overwhelmed because the deity was spell pinching, doesn't that place some of the burden on the Patron?

That makes sense about the godless clerics. Clap Your Hands If You Believe, or if you reaaaaally want something to be true

edited 8th Feb '16 12:25:35 PM by blkwhtrbbt

Hel can always get her followers to build a new temple, but if she starts directly smiting folks, it opens the gates for a divine war. None of the deities want that. The reason for the strict limits on clerical power is that the only way to ensure that the game is played fairly is to have all its players agree on a set of rules. As soon as one deity finds out that their enemy cheated and granted their clerics a few 'bonus' spell levels, the jig's up.

edited 8th Feb '16 12:28:39 PM by Fighteer

Because when the Gods start acting too directly, the world quickly becomes a much shitter place for mortals.

Even if the smitees aren't affiliated with any church?

H: So uh hey Thor some dwarves are sacking my temple....

T: they're not mine.

H: well given that i have lik 0 clerics, it's really feikkin hard to rebuild imma just buff the hell out of my level 2 wights guarding the place...