The Order of the Stick

Who said anything about magic? It's all about execution.

Sorry, I meant magically in the sarcastic sense, like it'd be a Deus ex Machina. I realise in the context of a fantasy series with real magic that that wasn't very clear wording

New Comic

The rider is certainly female bodied. You can just see their breast bump. They also seem to have log shaggy black hair under their mask.

I'm not yet convinced of their size.

Pretty clever move Liane (Liene?).

Lien.

I don't owe you anything.

The swapping of the ring between them is pretty smart. Rules-wise, it would even work.

What, so the next time I say O-Chul, someone's going to answer with "gesundheit"?

How long can people hold their breath underwater?

Quite a few rounds; I believe it's based on a Constitution check. Essentially, you get X number of rounds and then have to start passing increasingly difficult Con checks; failure means you start drowning.

I'd be more concerned about the cold, but Lien's ring protects against that too.

I think the world record is about ten minutes.

I meant mechanically in D&D.

@Fighteer: It doesn't help her while she's not wearing it. O-Chul has his own magical item of cold resistance, so it doesn't matter for him, but Lien is probably taking cold damage every few rounds here.

edited 3rd May '16 6:39:48 AM by TotemicHero

So it's not a permanent solution. I wonder what their plan is. It won't be too hard for their pursuer to find them if they resurface nearby.

I think the idea is that the pursuer assumes they're dead now, because they fell into icy water and didn't resurface for a long period of time. While if they're conducting routine patrols of the area they might be found again shortly, it should at least buy them some time, and frankly I think it would be somewhat hard to spot someone in a blizzard.

edited 3rd May '16 6:47:15 AM by Clarste

I think they could keep this up indefinitely, or at least for quite a while, if they keep swapping the ring every time one of them comes close to drowning. The only major issue is Lien losing heat whenever she doesn't have the ring, but that could be staved off for a whole with the healing from Lay on Hands.

That doesn't seem especially pointful though. Even if they could stay underwater indefinitely, that doesn't bring them any closer to their destination. There's no reason to do that.

It's as much of a "plan" as "sit at home and ignore Xykon forever." You can keep it up indefinitely!

edited 3rd May '16 6:55:42 AM by Clarste

Yeah, cold damage from water immersion takes place over a few rounds and swapping the ring would "interrupt" it and reset the counter. They could stay there indefinitely, or at least until they start to suffer from hunger. The point is that they stay under until their pursuer gives up, and then climb out and resume their trek, but with more caution against flying patrols.

edited 3rd May '16 6:55:42 AM by Fighteer

Realistically speaking... her lung are still full of water when she takes the ring off. Water she now can't breathe. Shouldn't she start drowning immediately?

Please don't get realism confused with D&D mechanics.

While the body would certainly kick some violent reflexes into gear once water gets into the lungs, it's not actually directly harmful. You still die from oxygen deprivation, not water poisoning or whatever. As long as she switches the ring before her blood starts running out of oxygen, she would be fine.

And frankly you'd probably start "drowning" the moment water got into lungs even if you can breathe it. Rats have been kept alive is super oxygen-rich water, although they didn't like it very much.

edited 3rd May '16 7:00:26 AM by Clarste

You can compare O-Chul and the attacker's respective heights to the ice block he falls off. It looks about as long as O-Chul is tall, and later it looks like it comes up to the attacker's chest. Dunno if that's deliberate though.

The spell simply says "you can breathe water freely". Meaning that yes, there's water in your lungs. The drowning rules refer to "holding your breath". You don't have any breathe to hold in that case. It would not be an unreasonable ruling IMO.

Yeah, the pursuer assumes they're dead. We see it in the last three panels.

• Panel 18: Pursuer with weapons raised, ready to kill some shit as soon as they surface.
• Panel 19: Some time later, pursuer still watching but the adrenaline's worn off and she's getting bored.
• Panel 20: More time later, still no sign of the targets, she's given up and is flying away on her yrthak.

Reasons for the buddy system...