I think there’s a good chance that Bandana will join the Order. Otherwise why spend panels on her backstory?
I’m not sure it’s a good move. I don’t see her adding much to the comic. Certainly doesn’t seem to have much in the way of comic (humorous) interaction with the rest of the group or even by herself.
I doubt it. Her place is on the ship-- If she left it, whom would she leave in charge? Certainly not the mutinous Andi.
Plus, what does she really do? I don’t necessarily mean in terms of class-- Rich is unlikely to give that to us, since he’s lately been trying to steer the strip away from being specifically D&D. But even aside from class, you can still say that Roy and Belkar are warriors (and different sorts of warriors, at that), Haley is an archer and a sneak, V is a spellcaster, and so on. But we’ve never really seen Bandana do anything other than crew and/or command an airship.
It’s not certain there will be a ship to be on after this adventure.
Quite true. And at any time, Julio may return and want his ship back.
There was one place that it was implied she was a Rogue, although that’s probably irrelevant. I agree that she doesn’t seem to bring any new skills, or at least skills that would be useful in the Quest. Maybe she has some that haven’t been needed yet. Unless those come out or she develops more in some other fashion, I don’t see her as being a great addition to the party.
On the other hand, we’ve gotten two backstory panels for her and we rarely get those for random minor characters and then they’re usually a joke.
Haley refers to her as a “rogue type” and she has enough hit points to survive some punches from Crystal the Golem (and get some pokes in herself) so she must have some levels under her belt. But we haven’t seen her sneak attack or use any class specific abilities. I suppose she could fill the spot left by Belkar as a two-weapon melee type – it’s not as though Belkar’s accomplished much specifically as a ranger (Bloodfeast’s temporary role notwithstanding).
She’s a pirate. She’s been in fights before.
Bloodfeast’s temporary role is as a small lizard. Just let off one good Dispel Magic near him, though, and he’s right back to being a dire allosaurus. Right now, he’s sort of a Chekov’s Theropod.
Ok, Rich, it’s been two weeks since the last update and we’re rapidly approaching one full year on this damned boat. Either get to the point or at least distract us with a few panels on what other people are doing!
According to his last Kickstarter-related update he was this close to finishing the O-Chul story so I suspect he’s trying to get that wrapped up as well as drawing the next comic. Hopefully once that one is done we’ll get a spate of more frequent updates before he’s onto whatever side project he has next.
Just wanted to mention that I really enjoyed the Haleo and Julelan story, especially because of the massive cast.
I’m just curious, a la Chimera and **John DiFool’**s comments above, what the whole point is of exploring the intra-crew dynamics to this extent? Will it echo similar dynamics when the Order (finally) gets to the Dwarven Council meeting? Or will there be some similar loss of faith in the leadership for either Team Evil or the Order.
I’d have thought the experiences in Don’t Split The Party would nix the latter—Belkar and Haley both admit that her leadership was nowhere near Roy’s—but I’m perplexed for why Burlew would otherwise belabor this whole soap opera-y, “Who said what to whom when they were six,” melodrama. Or why we spent so long going through Durkon’s family life history.
I’m sure it’ll make sense in the finished volume; it’s just that I usually enjoy following the strip as it proceeds along to that end, and I’m not with this latest arc.
Still on the damned boat, going nowhere fast.
LOL. And I had just checked to see if he’d updated too.
That said: How many times does he need to drop that fucking sword before he (pick one or more): glues it to his gloves, tethers it to his wrists, gets V to scribe some sort of Recall Object rune to the damned thing. No wonder he didn’t train to be a Wizard, if he kept blowing Concentration checks that often.
The discussion among the Bridge crew about terrain clearance reminded me of this infamous Apache helicopter in-flight FLIR video. Though having Andi say, “Oh yea of little faith,” would be gilding the lily.
It’s good for a commander to be make quick decisions, even if they’re wrong, but when every member of your crew is telling you X, and you’re still believing Y…?
SWEET! Looking forward to six months of looking for Roy’s sword in the snow…
Mind you, they’d probably fly higher even with the lift gas loss if they didn’t also have two giants on board.
Hopefully Belkar / Haley / Varsuvius will find the damn thing.
Then we’ll get 6 months of them trying to get it back to Roy.
So Andi goes by the “alternative facts” style of leadership.
Seems to me that they are already pretty far away. The Order depended on them sticking with the path, as that’s what they thought they’d do.
The sword is gone until the next arc. Roy has to be nerfed so he’ll keep on fighting, making it plausible that he doesn’t figure out what happened with the boat and fix it. (Since he’s the only one fighting, it’s clear he’s much stronger than the rest of them.)
Roy could always jump out and get it and jump back in: he has a Ring of Jumping and the ship is at or near ground level, so there’s negligible falling damage.