Order of the Stick - Book 6 Discussion Thread

NEW ONE: #1040 - It Probably Would’ve Taken 30 Pages

ETA: Doesn’t Xykon need a negative energy spell (“Cause Critical Wounds”) to heal? Or am I misremembering?

Correct. But as somebody on the OOTS forum pointed out, you can see that the swirly spell lines for Mass Cure Critical Wounds don’t contact Xykon, but the ones for Mass Acid Resistance did.

Also, Xykon seems to have picked up some new shoes in the process.

I’ll laugh myself to death if the print version of this book actually HAS 30 pages of this dungeon crawl as an extra.

A quick gander at Burlew’s Twitter tells me:

  • Yes, Xykon needs a “Cause Wounds” spell to heal; the Cure spell is for everyone else;

  • Look - someone found some new boots in the dungeon!

  • Despite requests, he’s not writing a “Tomb of Kraagor Adventure Path” dungeon (especially not in 7th ed). No word on a book-only story although I suspect the answer is no since the lack of the story is the punchline.

ETA: As Der Trihs already said. Oh well. One out of three ain’t bad.

I wonder if the boots will be significant or are like the crown. Just worn to be “Badass.”

Suppose MitD was somehow throwing the pick or if he was in fact just picking randomly and the odds are obviously stacked against them? I lean more towards the second but his “Yeah, uh, hope so. Cause that’s what we all want, right?” could be taken either way.

Checkhov’s Galoshes?

Just what are they looking for in Kraagor’s Tomb/Monster Hollow, anyway?

The location of the final Gate.

I wonder if the monster dens are providing enough XP to level any of the villians? Not that Xykon needs any more epic levels, but Redcloak (and oona) could certainly use them.

From the looks of their injuries, they had a bit of a challenge, so one would assume they’re at least gaining decent XP. But we haven’t seen any characters gain a level in panel in quite some time.

Do you suppose MitD gets to fight in the dungeons or does he just sit under the umbrella and watch?

Edit: Doesn’t look like the heal spell touches him either so maybe he was unwounded.

The unbrella is a surrogate for his body as far as wounds go. That is, if he’s wounded, the effects show up on the umbrella. The only time that’s happened is when the pyramid went krackkakooom! He must have some real impressive DR.

The theory that it’s not in any of them is still the one I subscribe to. I guess it’s possible that MitD noticed the gate was, say, under the statue, but I don’t think he’s intentionally misleading them. They want him to pick a door, so he picks a door.

Though I doubt he knows. He had trouble seeing the first gate (well second, if you count the prequel books) when it was right in front of him. If he does know, he still has trouble connecting what he’s seeing with “gate.”

“The world is weird and stupid and doesn’t care about anything printed in your math textbooks.”

So true, so true.

Yeah, but kinda irrelevant. There is no systematic way of eliminating every possible location except checking out all of them. The order in which they do so is irrelevant, as long as they keep track of which ones they’ve tried–as they do by putting an X on the door. And they apparently need all of them and be highly buffed to survive the encounters within, so they can’t split up.

It actually kinda disappointed me that Redcloak didn’t know this. Even if it doesn’t care about it, the world does run on math–their world even more so. But this is entirely irrelevant in this case.

One of the doors actually has 2 Xs on it. I wonder what the story is behind that?

It’s a double door; both the other double doors that have been marked have clearly only maked one side. This would imply that each part of a double door leads to a separate dungeon area. I hadn’t noticed that before.

But there’s a double door with an X that goes over both doors.

Where? Not saying you’re wrong but I went back, had a longer look, and can’t see one.