Order of the Stick - Book 5 Discussion Thread

Cafe Society
2482

To cast Plane Shift you need to have a focus specific to the target plane, so just thinking of anywhere wouldn’t cut it. So, since Z had to have a focus aligned with the Semi-Elemental plane of Ranch Dressing, we’ve got three possibilities:

  1. Z makes forked metal rods when he has the time and uses plane shifts just to see where they go. He had one he hadn’t tried before, and hit V with it rather than risk going to an unknown plane himself.
  2. Z knew this focus was aligned with the Semi-Elemental plane of Ranch Dressing, and picked it just to annoy V.
  3. Z really did have salad the previous night and for some reason still had a salad fork on his person. The spell required a forked metal rod as a focus…
2483

Z and V are both elf-types. Of course they had salad the previous night!

2484

Z’s a drow, though, so his salad was probably composed of vegepygmies and myconids.

2485

Salad’s always better when it screams.

2486

Salad scream? No thanks - I’ll stick with the ranch.

2487

Are you thinking of the butterscotch pudding monster?

2488

Am I really the first to notice that a new strip is up?

2489

Interesting that Roy was getting the upper hand before the dog “arrived.” Thog’s rage must have been wearing off before it was re-ignited.

2490

Link.

2491

Haley will, of course, notice that one of her shineys is missing.

2492

I forget, How did haley end up with Roy’s gear? Wasn’t it confiscated when he was arrested?

2493

Roy told her to pick up his and Belkar’s equipment when she left him last, in the gladiator barracks.

2494

Oh, and this one does explain how V ended up on a plane so relatively innocuous (albeit humiliating), rather than someplace that would kill em instantly. I had been rather wondering about that.

2495

Improved Grapple is actually a pretty good feat, though it’s not likely Roy has the dex for it. Fighters do have feats to play with, and he seems the type to go for the ‘when it’s useful, its’ awesome, but most of the time it’s not’ feats trees. (Great Cleave?!)

Or maybe it’s just some twaddle about the human spirit and the strength of righteousness.

–
Oh, and BELTS OF GIANT STRENGTH DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!! (in 3.5) Mr. Scruffy with said belt would still only have a strength of 9. That’s about equal to your average kobold, wizard, or Justine Joli. (They DID work that way in previous editions, as any Baldur’s Gate player can confirm)

2496

Rule of Cool trumps all.

2497

Improved Grapple isn’t that good; the problem is that many big bads are big (getting up to a +16 size modifier) and superhumanly strong, or otherwise bad to grapple. You can certainly abuse grappling to do horrible or hilarious things to the enemy (like one character who could stop a charge with a one-handed chokeslam), but you generally need things like Improved Grab, size modifiers or grafts to make it work.

2498

And it’s entirely possible that the subject will come up and Roy or V will toss off a line like “Oh? It must have been left over from a previous edition.”

2499

Yup. Playing a monk these days (well, a monk/druid) and I’m being made painfully aware of the fact that while grappling is on paper super awesome to disable the enemy cleric or wizard, in practice the enemy cleric or wizard is more often than not an enlarged Stone Giant. With an empowered Vampiric Touch pre-cast.

The rat bastard.

2500

Given that Roy’s big bad is medium-sized, has a poor BAB, and isn’t ludicrously strong, Improved Grapple might actually be a good choice, for him.

And Mr. Scruffy didn’t knock the hole in the wall; that was one of the holes Thog made. Mr. Scruffy just shoved Sir Scraggly through it. It’s plausible for a 9 Str cat to pull that off, if the wolf isn’t expecting it.

2501

And wolves aren’t good with saving throws. Their paws have a hard time gripping the dice.