That would be awesome, if Burlew went that way. Do we all think that the gloves Belkar’s wearing might be weapons themselves? Or are they just gloves, worn because it’s friggin’ cold out there?
It also looks like the Goliath is a vamp, and not some other form of undead like a wight. It’s clearly undead, with its red eyes. Burlew’s rendered wights before as creatures with all white skin and visible bottom fangs. Vampires have usually kept their skin tone, but with red eyes and top fangs. The Goliath has the same mottling on the face when we see him in 994, as we do now. Plus he has top fangs, so I’m betting he’s another vampire. Could he be a mere Spawn though, instead of a full vampire?
Whole lot of mojo in that staff, if Darkon was able to kill all of the Creed of the Stone, and fast-vamp them all as thralls with that staff. I’d think daylight might be an issue for them, but the sun can’t be up that much longer during the Solstice, at that latitude, can it?
I think they’re just gloves. At least he hasn’t been shown acquiring any special gloves. OTOH, Belkar wasn’t shown acquiring whatever FeatherFall item he has until the flashback in this strip. That’s kind of cheating in my opinion, but I’ll give him a pass for now. I hope Burlew doesn’t make it a frequent practice, although I think he’s done similar things before.
The staff should not be able to hold more than 50 spells total. This was Malack’s staff and it looks like he uses a Heal from the staff in 718 and one in 724, and then “a few charges from your staff each” for the 6 mummies in 858. Assuming few = 3 (I don’t know why it’d require 3 spells, but I don’t know how mummies are made in D&D), that’s 20 spells right there, so there can’t be more than 15 each of PfD and Insta-Vamp. If he did the entire Stone Creed, I would expect it’s pretty well exhausted by now. However, I doubt that Rich is bothering to count the number of spells.
The Godsmoot was supposed to start at noon and that’s about the time the Mechane got there. We don’t know what the latitude is, but I’d expect at least a couple hours until sunset.
Per a calculator like this, about four hours of daylight if we think the Smoot’s held at the latitude of London, about 3 if Oslo. About two and a half for Fairbanks.
We know they’re below their world’s Arctic Circle, at least.
I don’t think the gloves are weapons either—I’ve not seen Belkar do anything open handed—but they might add like +1 BAB or something.
I agree that Rich is cheating here, but I’m giving him a total pass because what he’s doing is teasing his readers. We know that Belkar is due to die soon, and being thrown out of a tower down a mountain is absolutely sufficient as a cause of death, so by tossing him out that window and then cutting the action to follow Roy, Rich was leaving open the possibility that Belkar had died offscreen. It’s the same as when Belkar was left without hit points after he fought Malack and Durkula drank his blood; in each fight from then until he was healed up, there was the possibility that this might be it for him. Thus he was left to kick up sand in the crater left after the explosion of the pyramid when Tarquin’s men attacked them (and there was the sly humor from V casting Protection from Arrows on him, then an arrow bouncing off that shield in the next comic).
Which makes me think this fight between Belkar and the big vampire may end quickly. We’ve seen Belkar has been preparing and we know he was expecting to confront a high-level vampire. So I think we can assume he’s got anti-vampire weapons on hand. My guess is he’s about to clear all of Durkon’s vampire minions off the board.
Not that anyone believed it. Well, someone probably did but the common wisdom was “Yeah, he’s fine” with just speculation on how he survived.
I don’t think so. Belkar monologued that he needed to retrieve his daggers from the temple before confronting Durkon. I think he’s basically unarmed right now. I think his plan wasn’t much more advanced than relying on the amulet to stop the Domination effect and stabbing Durkon a lot.
True, but I’m getting a little tired of it. Every time Belkar gets into any kind of fight or danger, the Belkar-is-Dead crows come out of the woodwork and start cawing. That’s been happening ever since the prediction and it’s getting old. Burlew must like it, though, because he’s put the Belkster into lots of danger in that time.
Eh, the entire party is getting put into a lot of danger. That’s why they call them “adventurers”. It’s no reason to clamor on every time about “OMG THIS IS IT FOR TEH BELKSTER!”.
Yeah, and Belkar has always been a risk-taking fighter. I don’t think there’s anything odd about his being in danger all the time. That was true before the prophesy. And I don’t think there was anything unfair about his survival this time, either. His reason for having “featherfall” is pretty strong. It’s not like Burlew pulled that out of thin air.
Yes, but the FeatherFall item was not strictly required. As pointed out in several threads on the GitP forum, Belkar had enough HP to survive. True, he did have some damage, but if that threatened his survival, he could have drunk a potion on the way down. And then some more after the fall (cleric’s Featherfall without the cleric.) Since they have a source of healing potions, that wouldn’t have been at all unfair.
I don’t know how Rich plays it, but I know DMs who would declare you dead after a fall beyond X height, regardless of whether or not there was a damage cap.
Actually, Belkar’s fall was exactly the sort of situation where you’d expect a record-breaking survival, even in the real world: He fell onto a steep mountainside covered in snow.
Those DMs are bad DMs. Not allowing a high level Ranger/Barbarian to survive anything an Expert 5 could not is as stupid as declaring that your Wizard isn’t allowed to cast spells because magic doesn’t really exist.
What a silly thing to say. Those DMs may not be running a game you would want to play, but that doesn’t make them bad. Falling damage house rules are extremely common in D&D.
Any game is going to operate according to the rules of its own internal logic. When I run a game, I operate under “cinematic action” logic. That means that falling off a mountain is probably going to kill you, yes. If it didn’t, there would be no drama inherent in hanging by your fingertips from the edge of a cliff.
Running a quick calculation to figure out that your non-magical character can fall an infinite distance and survive does not jive with the internal logic of most fantasy settings. There are some where it would, such as a wuxia or anime-themed game, but not so much in a generic fantasy setting.