Is Thog in some sort of barbarian-class berserker state? How does that work? Thanks, I don’t know beans about RPG rules.
You have to remember that the Guild spends its time planning how to defeat the order, while the Order spends its time planning how to save the world.
I like the bit with Roy’s sword: ‘THOG fan 4 life.’ Whoops!
Paraphrasing a poster at the OOTS forums, “Who knew that barb rage also gave you Monk levels?” I gotta’ say, while I don’t think Roy is dead—although, that’s a good way to get the Order indebted to Malack or Tarquin—I’d think he would be after getting pulped by that boulder.
And, since this Gate is guarded by illusions, when are illusions going to make a significant appearance? Do we even have the slightest idea where Girard’s Gate is? I’m sure I’ve read, but have forgotten already, but do we even know that the Gate is somewhere in the Empire of Blood? And if so, how?
Amazing how much emotion and subtlety Burlew is able to convey with such deliberately primitive art.
I wonder if Burlew is annoyed, like he seems to have been with “Belkar-is-not-evil, just-misunderstood” fanboys, with people who can’t get it through their heads that Thog is not a nice guy, and isn’t meant to be a sympathetic character. Even with liking puppies.
I read the panel as a deliberate “Take that” to such fans. (TVTropes deliberately not linked to.)
Getting impaled by a bastard sword is usually pretty fatal, too, but Haley pulled through. Roy’s down for the count, most likely, but I don’t think he’s departed for the distant shore just yet.
Barbarians have a rage ability, that grants them a temporary bonus to their strength (which gives them bonuses to hit and to damage) and to their constitution (which increases their hit points, allowing them to take more damage before dying). The rage lasts for a number of rounds based off their constitution, after which they’re left weakened and exhausted.
In this comic, Burlew is overstating the advantages of raging for dramatic purposes. It generally wouldn’t allow a barbarian to suddenly dominate a superior opponent so thoroughly.
Thanks for the explanation!
So all we need to save Roy (assuming he’s still alive) is to distract Thog for a few rounds until his rage-fest wears off? Anybody got a puppy?
Another point about rage is that, unlike some other ways of gaining extra hit points, the damage still counts when the extra hit points wear off. That is to say, if you do enough damage to kill a non-raging barbarian, but he’s raging, he’ll still die eventually when his rage wears off, if he hasn’t been healed before then. Death is just delayed, not prevented. So, in game terms, we could get a situation where Thog kills Roy and is still going strong, but then calms down and he collapses from his wounds, too. In game terms, at least-- I don’t think that’s going to happen here, both because I don’t think it would really fit the story, and because it doesn’t look like Roy has managed to do significant damage to Thog.
As was mentioned on the OOTS forums, it’s questionable if Roy is a superior opponent. He’s been dead for quite a while, while Thog has been gaining experience. And Roy doesn’t have his sword anymore.
On the other hand, he was kicking Thog’s ass seven ways to Sunday before Thog hulked out on him.
I think it was more likely a joke. That guy probably didn’t realize when he put on that shirt he literally was going to be a Thog fan for the rest of his life.
Is it just me, or does it look like Thog is returning to his usual colour in the last panel?
Look closely at some of the other panels; that’s just what it looks like when the dust obscures part of his skin.
Isn’t this a call-back to Roy’s “You broke my sword!”?
Isn’t there also a Barbarian prestige class that turns the relatively meh regular rage into something altogether nastier ? ISTR something like that from NWN2. Raging Berserker, something like that ? Huge whopping STR buff when frenzied, can keep fighting even when your hitpoints are below 0, turns power attack to 11 ? Typically the kind of thing Thog would take.
Besides, don’t Barbs get damage resistance at high levels ? 'cause without his sword, Roy is only doing 1d3+STR nonlethal with his piddly punches.
So does Thog I suppose, but then Thog has a much higher +STR (natural +2, at least +6 from raging - and that’s assuming both started out with the same 18 base, which is questionable since Roy didn’t use Int as a dump stat). And a large STR difference also translates to better grappling !
Frenzied Berzerker. I don’t think Thog’s one of those, if only because one of the defining features of the class is that your frenzy makes you prone to attacking your allies if you run out of enemies (prompting the invention of a variety of ways to neutralise your own barbarian), which is exactly the sort of thing that would have had a joke or two in the comic.
“Frenzied Berserker” I think? At least that’s what people on other forums have mentioned as a possibility.
EDIT: Ninjaed! Also, someone on the OOTS forums mentioned a feat called Reckless Rage as well.
As several people have noted, this is clearly a callback to 114. Roy is not a barbarian so presumably whatever Thog is doing is not a barbarian-exclusive feat.
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Thog in the presence of his allies-- He could have picked it up since then.
And what Roy did, anyone pissed-off could do. That didn’t have any in-game effects, or at most something like a +1 morale bonus. Thog, though, is enjoying significant bonuses from his rage. It’s not a barbarian-exclusive feat or something he had to choose to take: It’s something all barbarians get automatically, and pretty much the defining ability of the class.