The Order of the Stick

Prestige classes don't seem terribly common either. Aren't there a couple that could take Roy's stats and experience and turn him into a total monster?

Yes, but prestige classes are analogized in the story to advanced degrees, and Roy's family couldn't afford (or didn't want to pay) the college bills.

They're also for munchkins, or possibly clerics.

Saw it pointed out somewhere recently that, ironically, the character most optimally statted for their class is... Elan. And he's the only one with a prestige class, which lets him use his best stat in combat. *cough*munchkin*cough*

"Resurrection can only be cast on things that were parts of the character's body at the moment of their death/destruction. So pre-mortem hair clippings would not work."

And I'm pretty sure that's exactly the loophole abuse they had in mind with that Obvious Rule Patch. "Oh, Gary fell in the volcano? Alright, I'll get the emergency toenail clippings out of my pack."

Yeah, but Elan's a 3.5 Bard, so he'd pretty much have to munchkin it up to be on par with his teammates.

Aren't 3.5 bards pretty much mid tier? As in nowhere nearly as godly overpowered as clerics, druids and wizards, but far better off than fighters and barbarians.

I kind of assumed after his first encounter with Julio all his further levels were in Dashing Swordsman.

At least one of them was in Bard

No, he states that he's taken at least one more level in bard since then. That was when he picked up his healing spells.

Actually, didn't he only get Mass Cure Light Wounds then? And he's used Cure Critical Wounds since, if memory serves, so he must have been continuing to level in bard.

Kind of, yeah, because in a lot of respects 3.5 ends up putting spellcasters way ahead in effectiveness than non-casters. Bards can cast spells, not as well as clerics or wizards or sorcerors, but that would still put them above the classes that can't cast at all. But since they can't cast as well as other casters, and they can't fight as well as dedicated melee fighters, they're kind of considered a joke.

edited 19th Sep '17 7:36:22 PM by shigmiya64

I'm not sure Elan has taken any levels in Dashing Swordsman since then. Maybe his attack running off his charisma was enough for him.

Quite a few prestige classes are front-loaded, with the best game-changing abilities in the first level or two. Combine with the fact that it's unlikely Elan would be able to reach max level in Dashing Swordsman (he was somewhere around level 14 when he first got the class, most prestige classes have ten levels, and getting past 20 total levels is impossible unless your GM lets you use epic rules), so even if the class does have some awesome capstone ability, he'll never be able to get it. He might have just decided that the first level or two was enough.

tl,dr; Yep, Elan's a munchkin.

To be fair, OOTS does have epic characters.

I mean, we are using Epic rules. Xykon is explicitly an Epic-levelled Sorcerer.

'd.

edited 19th Sep '17 8:47:11 PM by TobiasDrake

Dead Roy once spent like half a strip complaining that Haley and Celia misunderstood the epic spellcasting rules.

Elan is a munchkin by chance, though. After taking his first level in Dashing Swordsman for narrative reasons (he met a mentor), he took the following level in Bard for narrative reasons too (he wanted to become a better healer after Therkla's death).

Or maybe his player is just a munchkin who likes to contrive narrative reasons for his character's build choices.

There are no players. This comic is set in a world where Dn D rules apply, but not in an actual Dn D game.

I don't think that selecting class features to make you effective is in itself being a munchkin. That's something that comes naturally when you go adventuring: you want to be good at what you do, especially when your life (heck, the fate of the world) depends on it. A munchkin is someone who specializes in one thing to the degree of sacrificing everything else. Taking levels in dashing swordsman made Elan, a bard and support character, actually effective in combat, essentially increasing his versatility. That's actually the opposite of being a muhckin. The one in the Order who is a munchkin is V. She is so much specialized in magic that she is pretty much unable to solve problems with anything else than magic.

Well, let's not mix concepts. A munchkin exploits the rules to make their character stronger in specific ways at the expense of other things, usually pursuing some theoretically optimal build.

It's been pointed out on various occasions that V is not optimized as a wizard: specializing in Evocation severely restrains hir full potential. Blaster-mage is powerful — s/he is the strongest character in the party by far — but it's not the most effective way to play the class by a long shot.

If you want to see a munchkin, you have to look away from OOTS and go to Goblins, where the aptly named Minmax has sacrificed things like his ability to rhyme for combat bonuses. Currently, he's a third-level character who can easily wreck characters four or five levels higher. Or you could look at Darths & Droids, where Pete traded off his ability to speak intelligibly and have arms to have the highest possible repair and hacking skills (he played R2-D2, natch).

Nobody in OOTS comes even close to that.

edited 20th Sep '17 7:02:30 AM by Fighteer

Then a bard is not a munchkin by default, because that's a suboptimal class to begin with. Not to mention it being difficult to play to its full potential. Fighter or barbarian is a good choice for a munckin (especially a beginner who is not very familiar with the rules), because they are pretty straightforward to minmax. Dump all stats except STR and CON, give them heavy armor and big ass weapons, and take all feats that makes them hit harder and able absorb more damage. Wizards and clerics can be very powerful, but they need more afterthought to play effectively and they will be weak at lower levels, but later on, even a suboptimal wizard (like V) can be pretty effective. So an inexperienced munchkin player may chose to make a blast-wizard, as they can still be much more powerful than a fighter and requires less thought than a really optimized wizard.

Then again, being a munchkin is a player behavior, and OOTS doesn't have real player, so maybe the whole discussion is moot to begin with. If we want to give a good definition of munchkinism in-universe, the best one could be someone whose build is legal by the rules, but defies common sense. By this, I can find none remotely like this in OOTS. The most powerful characters here are ones who simply has enough XP for that (Xykon). The best example may be Darth V. She was ridiculously powerful, but that required a Deal with the Devil and was temporary. It's typically something a munchkin would do.

As for Minrah, she doesn't necessarily have fighter (or even warrior) levels to be a guard. She is a cleric who works at a temple. Clerics have decent fighting capabilities, which makes them suitable for guards without any levels in a primarily melee class.

The closest thing we've seen to the kind of thought process that underlies a munchkin is Nale's explanation of his overly complex multiclassing so that he'd have abilities that roughly match Elan's. Of course, being Nale, that didn't quite work out as well as he'd hoped.

edited 20th Sep '17 7:06:26 AM by Fighteer

There was that ogre with the chain that fell off a cliff.

Oh, right! I totally forgot about that. Yes, the ogre was a classic munchkin.

Are you guys forgetting Thog and his last battle with Roy?

Only bad guys minmax.