The Order of the Stick

What did they manage to prepare? That just seems like an assumption on your part, because last I checked they were still mulling over things after their thought to be best gambit got preemptively ruined because they were talking too loud.

By prepare I simply mean not eating a surprise round(though they did prepare a good amount of dominate prevention).

Does Vi ever run with standard mage defensive spells or did she ban abjuration?

Conjuration and Necromancy, IIRC.

Mind Blank is an abjuration spell, and they've also used stuff like Protection From Arrows and Dispel Magic before.

Also, an old favorite, Explosive Runes, is Abjuration.

#1106: Answering the Callback. In which the party discusses Hilgya's story, and V jumps to the only possible meta-narrative conclusion.

I love how during the huddle, rather than the expected discussion of whether to trust Hilgya, all of the Order members are just interested in talking about Durkon being her baby daddy.

She must be level 14 or lower, otherwise she should've been able to find Durkon with a simple Discern Location spell.

But, she's blatantly Durkon's rival though right? So she should be the same level as him right?

I like Loki's involvement. Very Chaotic Neural. It's a plan orchestrated in such a way that the Order will be able to figure out the plan easily too.

So. Does Hylga not know that Durkon is a vampire? Has she been tricked by her trickster god?

If she didn't know he was vampire; it would possibly mean she hasn't got appropriate spells prepared for today, so this might not be the cake walk I first thought. She may not have level restore prepared for example.

edited 28th Nov '17 3:12:10 PM by Whowho

Depends on how the rival mechanics actually work. Does Durkon have to be aware of her and consider her to be a rival for her to be one? If that were the case couldn't I just declare Ao to be my rival and poof, insta-god?

I've suggested the rival angle in the past, but thinking about it, I don't think she is. The only rival we know for sure benefits from the status is Crystal, and she has a long and bitter relationship with Haley involving frequent altercations.

Hilgya had one bad experience once with Durkon and has never forgiven him, but she's not showing up every time Durkon turns around with another malevolent plot to do him in. She's his Evil Opposite from the original Linear Guild, but I don't think she counts as a rival.

"Being a rival" is not a game mechanics concept, but a narrative concept.

Didn't Haley and Crystal have a game mechanic rivalry?

Ah, I imagine she's under level 14 then. How big is that? What levels are our party at again?

Does the baby have object permanence!? That is what is most important here!

Yes, that's what I was talking about with regards to the mechanics. Crystal benefit from the fact that as Haley's official rival, she automatically gained levels without ever having to do anything so that she'd always be a level-appropriate threat for Haley every time they clashed.

It's not a DnD thing so far as I know, but a lampooning of a common RPG element in general where a recurring Rival villain will crop up for, like, four to six boss fights throughout the game and always somehow seems to be effortlessly keeping pace with if not outright surpassing the hero, even though the actions that produced the hero's gains are entirely circumstantial and not repeatable in the slightest.

Like, I just gained ten levels fighting abyssal horrors from beyond time and space in an eldritch dimension and punching out Cthulhu, and now I'm back on Earth and before I can take my shoes off, my Rival pops up out of nowhere like, "Bitch, please. I gained TWELVE levels while you were gone. Those were some killer push-ups."

edited 28th Nov '17 4:31:24 PM by TobiasDrake

Loki might have just refused to grant her Discern Location, she prayed every day for him to grant her the spell, and every day he refused until now.

Hell the spell says that only the intervention of a deity can stop it, Loki (or Odin, Thor or even Hel) might have been blocking her spell until now because they knew they’d need to hold her off until now.

edited 28th Nov '17 4:33:21 PM by Silasw

In Pokemon Red and Blue, the rival is explicitly more experienced than you, and so he shows up everywhere right before you go in to do a thing, having already himself done the thing and gotten the cool new toy as a reward for doing the thing.

They must have changed the dialog for the Yellow and the later fireleaf rereleases though, because the banter was a lot more playful, had useful tips, and seemed a lot more friendly. I seemed to have memories of dude being a serious asshole? But now he's all like, "hey that computer system you use belongs to Bill up north. Go say hi to him, and be sure to thank him!"

And then on the SS Anne, he's like, "eh the cut-master was just a seasick old man. Disappointing. Cut is really useful though, so you probably should go see the guy anyway."

He seemed downright sweet. Where's the asshole I hated as a child?

Sadly, asshole rivals in Pokemon games are a lost art. Silver in gen II came at you with no warning with his full-strength team at the end of Victory Road just as you saw a healing center in the distance, looking to prove his superiority and that being a tryhard dickhead is the way to Pokemon. Selena/Calem in gen VI let you know ahead of time they were going to fight you halfway through a fairly tame route and offered to heal your team themselves beforehand.

I like when he inexplicably turns up in a Team Rocket base. Like, he's not fighting Team Rocket. He doesn't offer to help take on Giovanni with you or anything. He's just there. To fight you. In the middle of a crisis. For some f*cking reason.

Last time I played through Blue (around the time Twitch Plays Pokemon was new), I remember thinking that he didn't seem all that dickish. I think it might have been the community conflating Gary in the anime with the rival in the games that gave the latter such a bad rep.

In Sun and Moon you play the rival. You have the starter whose type is strong against Hau's, you always beat him to every Island Challenge, and then you beat the Elite 4 first and he shows up to challenge you.

Dude that's awesome!

I was drawing a Pokemon comic for a while with that kind of premise. It riffed off all those standard OC fanfics that start with the protagonist showing up at the Professor's lab late with the originating joke being that she would show up to every event from Red/Blue 15 minutes behind the canon protagonist, who was reimagined as kind of a haughty dick, having let her status as The Ace go to her head.

Gladion sorta filled the "Asshole Rival" niche. He's technically a member of S/M's obligatory Team Rocket Expy, but he has his own theme music that's titled "battle_rival_bgm" (or something to that effect) in the game files. Shame you only battle him like three times.