Plus the fly joke, the sombrero callback, and the cameo reference. Lots of punchlines for what’s primarily a plot advancing strip.
Druid spells aren’t shitty, provided you have an animal companion. There’s a reason the primary tank in my group is a three pound raven. Once I lard her up with enough buffs, that’s not a bird anymore: it’s a flying buzz saw. One that screams “Eyes! Eyes!” when she attacks.
Even revealed the size of the Kickstarter donation, for the benefit of those who might have missed it the first time around.
Name’s Hitchcock, right?
Eh, that’s debatable, really. Generally speaking I reckon any given Druid spell is worse than an equivalent level Cleric or Wizard spell trying to do the same thing, with a handful of notable exceptions - Barkskin is aces, Faerie Fire can be very handy, and Creeping Doom is nasty as hell. But if you compare, say, Call Lightning to a miserable Scorching Ray, it’s pretty sad for the Druid.
Nature summons in particular are really bad in comparison - you’ve got a handful of strong outliers like Dire Tiger which can rock monsters’ world for a few levels, but at higher levels you just can’t compare a Druid that summons a handful of elementals (that take up all of the space, too) to a cleric/mage summoning demons/angels/spirits with a list of abilities longer than my arm, not to mention their own spells.
All of that is balanced by the fact that, yeah, animal companions and wild shapes are pretty fricking rad, and the specialty buffs for those are indeed above average. Which goes back to my point : Spirit Shamen are *really *bad because they have neither :).
Just fyi, the plural of shaman is shamans.
I thought it was Shyamalan
oops!
I’d expect Durkula to trigger Haley’s spidey sense at some juncture.
Huh. I clicked earlier and I could swear there was a panel about how Haley figured Durkon would keep casting ‘endure elements’ so no need for new winter gear, kthanks. The current comic omits this.
You’re right. It was definitely there.
I don’t remember if 970 had these original lines. It’s possible Burlew just forgot he had written them and reused them in the new strip. Then when it was pointed out, he went back and revised it (and made a joke about how long ago this morning was in strip time).
There was a similar glitch over Andi’s name that got revised.
In fact, it was there immediately before I submitted my last post. A mere 2 hours ago.
From Rich’s twitter feed: [INDENT][INDENT] 4h New OOTS! #988, Much Less Swordfighting: 988 Much Less Swordfighting - Giant in the Playground Games …
3h Apparently, getting hit in the head a lot caused Haley to completely reverse her position on winter gear from 18 strips ago. Oops.
2h OK, I’ve waved my magic retcon wand and the dialogue is now consistent with the older strip. [/INDENT][/INDENT] …though it doesn’t flow quite as well. 
lol. I read it the other way last night, and I didn’t remember that had come up before, either.
989[SIZE=“6”][/SIZE]
Cats. They rule us all.
Not-Tiger-Wrangler pulling a Linda Blair in panel 3.
Yeah, that threw me - I couldn’t tell whether he turned around (in which case why was the shield at the front?) or whether his head was on backwards. But I try not to criticize the free funnies directly to their creator.
Also, the shield looks like a big button.
Thog not get reference. 