How about her wanting Thor to beg her to vote to save the world?
Though if the world was suddenly unmade, there would be a lot of Dwarven souls instantly dead with no chance to get into a battle, therefore Hel’s property.
If I read the HP of Odin’s pronouncement “The statement upon which we shall convey our patron’s Yea or Nay is as follows” right, they all are.
Someone above said something about Veldrina getting a vote, but that’s probably not right. Chances are she’s just there to transmit the vote from her pantheon’s Godsmoot, which I suspect is meeting at the exact same time as this one. Ditto for the representative from the Southern Pantheon and perhaps other representatives. (There’s a halfling there; is he a high priest or a representative of a Halfling Pantheon?)
Was the term Godsmoot coined by Rich? The most familiar use of the suffix is, “of little or no practical value or meaning; purely academic” and “Chiefly Law. not actual; theoretical; hypothetical.”
But it also means the following:
- open to discussion or debate; debatable; doubtful: a moot point.
- to present or introduce (any point, subject, project, etc.) for discussion.
- Archaic. to argue (a case), especially in a mock court.
- an assembly of the people in early England exercising political, administrative, and judicial powers.
- an argument or discussion, especially of a hypothetical legal case.
- Obsolete. a debate, argument, or discussion.
I thought the gags in the last strip were pretty good. (How does he do that?) I’ve also noticed that at times the plot of this strip moves at lightning speed: I mean we just entered the great hall!
Ok, back to Chekov’s amulet: Rich notes that magic often has a technological feel in RPGs: i.e. it’s fairly predictable. But he seems to have a preference for imbuing magic items with idiosyncratic effects. Roy’s sword glows in the presence of the undead. Gates collapse with earthshattering kabooms (which admittedly is basically canon in these situations). Ok, that was a reach. And I can’t think of another example. Oh well.
At any rate it feels right to me that an evil creature would have difficulties with a Protection from Evil amulet and visa versa for a good creature. d20 rules notwithstanding.
Both the golden glow and the smokey stream were on view when Belkar first acquired the magic item. Yellow glow indicated pain, white streams indicated the end of the same. Seemed different in the more recent comic. 969 It's Only His SECOND Favorite Cuisine - Giant in the Playground Games
OBTW, is there a primer on d20, Wizards of the Coast and the market shares of various RPG systems? This wiki article on d20 is somewhat byzantine.
Also, I’d recommend setting aside the ancillary discussions for the first 24 (36?) hours following the posting of a new comic. Then return to them! The idea is to extend the discussion a little between updates. Not worth policing though, even informally. Not even sure if the idea is worth bothering with frankly.
A moot is a court/tribal council. Medieval term. As for coining it, possibly but it’s not a first : Game of Thrones has a “kingsmoot” at one point.
I just figured he’d cribbed it from Tolkien’s Entmoot, after looking up what the word ‘moot’ means.
:smack: How could I have forgotten that one ?
The basic gist of the d20 system is that every roll to determine success or failure of an action is determined by rolling a d20, adding bonuses and subtracting penalties, and comparing the number to a target number for the task, called the difficulty class for that task. The modifiers will almost always include a modifier for a relevant ability score, and will usually include something that scales with level in some way.
For details, you want the SRD. Which still doesn’t quite include everything, for legal reasons, but it includes most of it.
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it before, but I don’t remember where. Googling it, I see someone on the GoodReads message board in 2013 using it in quote from a fantasy novel he’s writing. Probably not where Rich got it, but the term’s been used before it showed up in OotS.
There was also a Shire Moot for hobbitses.
Which Tolkien got from real life (errmm, not the hobbit bit, obvs)
998 is up.
Heimdall championing the end of the world, and Loki being taking point for saving it is not where I would have bet my money at all.
I like that Loki is the spokesman for saving the world. Kind of reminds me of Spike switching sides in the second season of Buffy.
Bold of Roy to call out the gods. Too bad it meant nothing.
Then again, knowing what’s at stake, it would be hilarious for him to get the high priests of every major deity to pop in on Xykon at once. Narratively unsatisfying, which is why it won’t happen.
Yeah…for a traditionally silver-tongued trickster, Loki didn’t really seem to bring his A game.
How can it be that gods can only hear other gods? Certainly they can hear clerics. And, one assumes, they can hear prayers.
Also, the only reason the gates are being threatened is that Xykon is wandering around. Wouldn’t it be much more efficient to destroy him rather than the whole planet? Or at least provide a little occasional divine intervention at appropriate moments, like when your cleric is duking it out with a vampire?
I think he meant the summoned proxies at the Godsmoot can only hear each other, not that gods in general are incapable of hearing anything other than another god.
[QUOTE=Finagle]
How can it be that gods can only hear other gods? Certainly they can hear clerics. And, one assumes, they can hear prayers.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think they can.
Prayer is a spell. Commune [with the gods] is a spell. It’s, literaly, magic. In very literal terms, the gods are not of this world - they live on a separate plane of existence. A physical plane. Magic can open conduits to this plane, be it for the purpose of communication or travel ; and there are also natural “wormholes” to travel there and back ; but your basic worshipper simply isn’t in contact with their deity. That’s why priests have their place in society.
Yeah, but that would go against the whole no-direct-intervention agreement they’ve got going. Gods popping down to solve problems - and then duking it out with each other - destroyed the world once already, didn’t it ? Or am I just channeling Forgotten Realms wank ?
There is a spell called Prayer but I don’t think that translates backwards. Most people don’t pray for a “+1 luck bonus on attack rolls, weapon damage rolls, saves, and skill checks”.
“Dear Lady of the Harvests, this is Janie. Mom says you’re the goddess of farm animals so please let me get a puppy for Harvest Day Giftfest”
“Eeehh… can’t do prayers for puppies. I can give you a +1 to your attack rolls, how does that work out for you?”
Durkon prays in a non-spellcasting sense for Thor to watch over the party after his death and seems sincere in thinking that Thor is listening even if it’s not in his plan to divinely intervene with the whole Malack thing.
On a day to day basis, I’d assume there’s too much prayer noise for deities to deal with it and thus restrict themselves primarily to listening to their priests (and the old Deities & Demigods said that lower level divine spells were in fact granted by divine lackeys for the real gods rather than Odin personally healing every light wound) but it’d be reasonable to think that they might be paying attention to the Godsmoot.
Interesting that the gods talked very circumspectly re: the Snarl. Though they did mention the rifts.
OK, so presumably, the gods aren’t going to destroy the world at this time, because that would be dramatically unsatisfying. And maybe the gods didn’t hear Roy’s speech… but their clerics did. So, given that the gods won’t destroy the world, what’s going to stop the clerics from joining Roy’s quest? Obviously something, because again, drama. But what?