The Order of the Stick

She might not have cast them at the same time. The time limitation on Raise Dead is that the person cannot have been dead for more than 1 day per caster level.

Nothing's stopping a 12th-level Cleric from raising those three we see in the panel and then taking a break for the day and coming at it tomorrow with fresh spell slots. Or, indeed, enlisting other clerics to help.

EDIT: I don't think she's the High Priest of Thor today. This cleric has brown hair. The High Priest has red. It's a subtle but visible difference.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 21st 2018 at 7:45:44 AM

Surely she only has to be level five to resurrect one person each day for five days? She might not be that note worthy in the grand scheme of things.

Is Revive Dead a spell a cleric can even have at level 5?

But she might be more than that by now. Probably not as powerful as the Order, but if she suddenly appears and casts, say, a Mass Cure Whatever on the party, then the day may be saved. I doubt that would be the resolution, though.

You need to be at least level 9 to cast Raise Dead.

Well, talk about cliffhangers... well written, my friend, well written.

We can definitely see she cast Raise Dead at least twice. I'm not sure where Tobias sees the third one, however.

The fact that she had Raise Dead already prepared helps explain why the church would consider Sigdi's contribution a real donation, however. If the church has a policy of wanting to Raise Hel-bound dwarves to give them another chance at an honorable death, then someone who enables that by providing the expensive material components for the spell would indeed be a donor.

I'm assuming she was planning to hit that miner in the background once she finished with the current one. Only three of the five miners are visible in the panel. The other two could be just off-panel, or they could already have been taken away to wherever they're going to be stored while she waits for her spell slots to recover.

No reason to just leave corpses you aren't planning on resurrecting today to lie on the floor and gather dust, after all.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 21st 2018 at 4:39:52 AM

I personally would assume that the greatest temple to one of the most popular gods would have, on staff, at least 2-3 people capable of casting raise dead, and they just all worked together to do it.

I am curious how level demographics work in the setting.

How many epic people are there per 10,000 people of population? How many people above level 10?

On a different note, is the plot going to cut away now to different characters? Are we going to see the paladins and team evil up in the North?

For all X < 20, 20% of people of "at least level X" are also "at least level X+1"

is my completely made up guess

e: i should not post drunk but if you want to discuss based on this go ahead but if not ignore this

Edited by wingedcatgirl on Jul 21st 2018 at 6:47:16 AM

Hailey and co. couldn't even find anyone level 17 or above after months of searching. Not concrete data, but it tells you they're not exactly common.

you mean

Abundance = a5^(20-level)

For unknown coeffient a.

Because that means of a society with one level 20 caharcter, there'd be 5 level 19, 25 level 18 and so on and so on until you have 95,000,000,000,000 level one characters.

Yes that's right, I did the math, that's one level twenty person for every ninety-five trillion level one people.

You need to multiply it again to account for the level 0 civilians.

see and my first guess was 10%

at least i was correct in that seeming too small

...so, this is something I just realized and now it's kinda bugging me.

This comic runs on Dungeons & Dragons rules and has canonical PC/NPC statuses, even if it's not literally taking place in a Dungeons & Dragons game, right?

What kind of D&D game has the PC trapped in their own mind with no mechanical escape possibilities? If it was straightforwardly "Durkon is an NPC now" that'd be one thing but, like, it doesn't seem like that's the case. It seems like Durkon-the-PC is trapped inside Greg-the-NPC.

Like, that's the kind of situation where there should be something to roll dice for, surely?

The obvious point of comparison, thinking about it, is Roy's death, but in an average game, that's all stuff that could be filled in with backstory—Roy has no ability to influence current events until he returns to life. But Durkon does, even if it's just a little, even if it's just by talking to Greg.

Edited by Wackd on Jul 21st 2018 at 12:47:37 PM

Not really, not in this case. What's going on is fairly straightforward in principle, though complex in application.

Becoming a vampire, in the author's interpretation of D&D rules, involves having your physical body possessed and operated by a spirit, while your soul is trapped helplessly inside and forced to divulge memories so that the vampire can maintain authenticity. (Note that this is a departure from traditional D&D, in which becoming a vampire corrupts the spirit of the subject: it really is them, just with a layer of Evil paint applied that presumably washes off if they're destroyed and resurrected.)

There is no roll to resist this possession because you already failed the roll(s) to avoid being drained of life by a vampire in the first place. Once you're dead, you no longer get to make saving throws or opposed rolls. Durkon cannot resist what is going on, because that's fundamental to his current condition.

That said, we don't know that Durkon's spirit isn't making Bluff checks against Durkula. For all we know, they're rolling dice all the time in a contest to see how effectively Durkon can conceal or manipulate information, but seeing those rolls being made would just be a distraction from the story. In fact, from a storytelling perspective we've already moved well beyond having everything mechanically governed by D&D rules.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 21st 2018 at 12:54:28 PM

That's fair. I guess it's more like...as someone who's been playing/GMing games for a while now, but who wasn't when this arc started and so never really gave it much thought—"you can only talk to this one NPC, whose actions you have a very slim chance of influencing, and there's nothing you can do to save yourself" seems like a fundimentally boring way to do this.

But again, it's not a literal game, so *shrug*

Edited by Wackd on Jul 21st 2018 at 1:00:50 PM

Though the vampire isn't really Durkon, I wonder if after absorbing all of Durkon's memories he'd consider himself to be. It seemed that way with Malack at least, though that easily could have been to just muddy the waters on how vampirism works here.

Well, yeah, if this were a real game, the DM would take the character sheet away and run them as an NPC, regardless of the mechanics of being undead. Or, if they are really trustworthy and good at RP'ing, the DM might just let the player run their vampire character instead.

I don't see how Durkon's current condition could be made to work in a real game, not unless the player is really patient. And if I were going to pull such a gambit, I'd let them make Bluff and Sense Motive checks to conceal or manipulate the information they reveal. The biggest problem is that, if they're sitting around the same table as everyone else, there's no way to prevent the other players from knowing what's going on.

Malack's portrayal continues to bug me, but after hundreds of years as a vampire, it's possible that the possessing spirit started Becoming the Mask.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 21st 2018 at 1:06:04 PM

Greg does consider himself to be Durkon, sort of. "I'm you on your worst day" and all. I mean, that's why he has a genuine grudge against the dwarves and another vampire might not.

Malack probably considered himself that old lizardman shaman but simultaneously recognizes that he wasn't always that person. He refers to the lizardmen he killed as his brothers with fondness but also states that that long ago living person is a different person. More literally than we thought, but still.

Overall the picture seems to be 'I'm you! Sorta! But you're also you, and different from me.'

If this were a real game, one of two things would happen here:

1. The DM would take Durkon's player aside and talk to him about what the deal with Greg is, away from the rest of the play group. He'd have all the inside knowledge about Greg, and would be playing "Durkon" while hiding the fact that he's actually playing against the rest of the party.
2. Durkon's player would be allowed to roll a new character to join the party, either on a permanent basis or as a temporary "This is who I'm playing until we resurrect my character" thing.

Or a combination of both. Durkon's hypothetical player if this was an actual campaign might play Greg right up until the big reveal, then turn over the character sheet to the DM and either roll up Minrah or be given Hilgya's sheet to play. This way, the reality of the character not truly being Durkon is hidden from the play group until that big moment.

I mean, how evil can he be if John's still playing him, right?

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 21st 2018 at 11:25:42 AM

If this was a real campaign, I'd expect that Durkon's player stopped being avaliable to take part in the main sessions, but has been meeting up with the GM and discussing what his character is experiencing as a victim of a vampire spirit.

1129: Reasons Why

Edited by sgamer82 on Jul 23rd 2018 at 11:36:28 AM

...Huh. Well, this certainly does seem to be having an impact.