First date!
They make a cute couple don’t they? All bashful, awkward conversation, one wants to kill the other. Perfectly normal!
Re: Dellyn’s plant parts -
I think THunt took that from the Eberron campaign setting. The supplement Magic of Eberron introduces a new modification called “grafts”, where a character can have enhancements grafted onto his body. Some of these are “plant grafts”, including this one in particular:
Though it does’t say anything about being able to generate weapons, so I assume Dellyn got that ability from something else.
It’s been a long time since I went through the Goblins archive. What’s this about Forgath thinking the goblins want to destroy the world?
Is it a call-out to The Order Of The Stick?
After the initial clash between the Goblins and Forgath, they read a scroll from the goblin witches hut, which hints at the ‘white terror’. So, of course, he’s assuming it’s referring to the goblins they fought, and therefore all goblins are evil (when in truth it’s a warning about this other goblin tribe.)
And besides, the White Terror is only a menace to the world because the world menaced her first. She tried to coexist peacefully, and lost a wing for her trouble.
Very sweet-looking encounter with Minmax and Kin.
But what happened to Kin’s full, pouty green lips?
New comic is up. Predictably enough Minmax is struggling to find any “normal” traits about Kin. Also it seems that she is still carrying the scars of her recent experiences with her.
I imagine she’ll be carrying those scars for a long, long time. Healing potions don’t fix everything.
Actually, that’s an interesting question: How would healing magic interact with psychological trauma? The Heal spell can explicitly cure things like insanity; what effect would it have on a rape victim?
I seem to recall a spell that specifically heals mental/emotional trauma, but it was probably in one of the many supplements I own and it would take a while to look it up.
The Goblinslayer said that he kept a lot of healing potions around, because “You got to keep your toys looking good, am I right?” I imagine that Kin’s emotional scars were part of the thrill for him.
They’re only 2nd level, so Heal’s a long way off.
Kin’s not insane. She’s having a very normal reaction to a severe ongoing trauma. She’s able to deal with most things in a calm, rational manner, she’s capable of making plans, she can make alliances, she can offer her allies something that they want in return for helping her get what she wants, she’s even capable of having a normal (well, somewhat normal) conversation with MinMax without seeming to want to slap him upside the head. She just doesn’t want him to TOUCH her, and I’d say that her reaction to that is pretty normal, given her recent experiences. She just hollers at him, she doesn’t go into instant attack mode.
I don’t think that a Heal spell is going to erase the trauma. I think that the current thinking is that most, if not all, insanity (in the real world) is because of chemical imbalances. Kin isn’t chemically imbalanced. I think that getting that collar off of her would do more good than a Heal spell. Right now it’s possible for someone to grab that leash and enslave her again.
Certainly, her reaction is normal, given what she’s been through. But that doesn’t necessarily imply that it’s healthy.
I think that her reaction is as healthy as can be expected. It’s not healthy for a female who hasn’t gone through what she’s been through…but she only starts hollering when she gets touched. Otherwise, she seems willing to interact with males without acting like she expects them to rape and abuse her.
I really like Kin, and I think that she fits in very well with the premise of the comic, which was “Goblins: Life through their eyes”. She shows that “monster” races can have goals and feelings. Remember the old “You open the door to find a 10’ x 10’ room. Inside is an orc guarding a treasure chest” standard? The orc has no reason for existing, other than to guard the chest. He doesn’t get relieved, and apparently he never eats or sleeps. Any sensible group of beings would have the chest in a better guarded room, with guards that change periodically. Kin, however, had a community before she was captured, she was on a quest when she was captured, and now that she’s free, she wants to resume that quest. She doesn’t just exist to give MinMax something to get pissed off about.
I fully expect THunt to kill her off, though. Possibly by Kore.
A-ha! Found it! From Book of Exalted Deeds:
Heart’s Ease
Enchantment
Level: cleric 3
Duration: Permanent
Heart’s Ease cures emotional wounds in the same way that heal wipes away physical ones. The subjects are cured of any fear effect, despair effect (such as the crushing despair spell), or similar mind-affecting condition, excluding charms and compulsions (such as charm person, dominate person, and similar spells). **It removes any lingering psychological effects of torture **(including the increased effectiveness of torture devices, as described in the Book of Vile Darkness). I cures confusion and insanity, restores 2d4 points of Wisdom damage ( but not permanent Widsdom drain), and leaves the targets feeling refreshed and at peace.
(bolding mine)
Since it’s a 3rd-level cleric spell, Forgath could conceivably learn it when he reaches 5th level. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for a DM to rule that the psychological effects of rape are covered under the “psychological effects of torture” mentioned in the description. However, since the spell can’t remove charms or compulsions, I suspect it can’t do anything about the effects of the collar. The collar is going to require dispel magic to disenchant it, or else Kin would need to enter the area of an antimagic field to render the collar nonfunctional and have it physically removed while in the antimagic field.
OK, that’s an odd spell. First, one would expect it to be Conjuration (Healing), not Enchantment, and second, it should be instantaneous, not permanent. The way it’s written implies that the Heart’s Ease could be dispelled and leave the subject as they were before it was cast.
Still, a 3rd level spell is low enough that it’s reasonable to expect Forgath will be able to cast it some time during the storyline. And he wouldn’t even have to “learn” it: He’d just have to ask his deity/the DM (the same, in Forgath’s case) whether it was available in the campaign setting.
Good points. I didn’t post the full “school” line, for brevity’s sake, but here’s the whole line:
Enchantment (Compulsion) [Mind-Affecting]
That suggests that they chose Enchantment because, as far as I can recall, there aren’t any (Compulsion) or [Mind-Affecting] Conjuration “sub-schools” (though it’s been a while since I’ve played or studied my books, so I could be remembering incorrectly). Mental repairs do imply that the [Mind-Affecting] is necessary.
Speculation: it’s the effect that’s permanent, not the spell itself. Rather than magically blocking or removing the pain, the spell “compels” the recipient’s mind to actually sever the neurochemical ties that make them remember their trauma, and once severed, they stay severed. So the spell causes the brain itself to perform a physical “repair”, in much the same way, say, a fireball spell is magical, but the effect is physical. Once it magically sets something on fire, that thing is physically burned. You can use another spell, like mend to reverse the damage, but you’re not magically “un-fireballing” it.
If you like Goblins, you’d love Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic
Check the archives.
Dungeons & Denizens is nice too, but doesn’t update often enough to suit me.