Rich says here; I’ll add emphasis:
[INDENT]By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, one of my favorite techniques is taking real-world material and twisting it before inserting it into my world. The fact is, aspects of the setting that are reminiscent of history ring more truly than anything made up out of whole cloth. After a few thousand years of human history, it’s hard for an imaginary world to compete with the level of complexity of the real thing-so why not steal a little of that density of information? In particular, I find that looking to the real world helps me avoid accidentally writing the world’s history to be too logical and organized. What I mean is, from a dispassionate point of view, splitting your nation up among your sons is a recipe for political disaster, but it happened. Studying the real world helps put me into the shoes of the men and women who shape my imaginary world and think about how they won’t always (or even usually) make the best decisions. [/INDENT]
But that makes no sense from a OOTS perspective. A high level cleric of Thor would have high wisdom. You’d expect them to maybe make dumb decisions, but not unwise decisions. Wise + Lawful Good != “Abruptly throwing out into the snow”.
And, if you’re going to argue that Wisdom doesn’t work that way, look what happened to Belkar when he got Owl’s Wisdom.
So either we don’t know something about the prophecy or the Durkon being thrown into exile scene is inconsistent with OOTS logic, probably because when it was written,it was done for a combination of yuks and pathos.
Everyone rolls a natural one on the wisdom check every so often.
I had forgotten until someone upthread reminded me that this storyline came from On the Origin of PCs. But it made me remember that Rich had said this online comic will be a self-contained story. In other words, there books will help flesh out the characters, but there’s nothing contained within them that is necessary knowledge for the storyline of OOTS.
So for Rich to play back (for both Durkon and readers alike) what happened in an outside book is a huge signal that this information had to be conveyed in-story and is crucial knowledge for what’s coming next.
Which is why I think that Durkula might actually be Posthumous Hurak.
Wisdom doesn’t work that way. Like all D&D stats, it takes a hodgepodge of related real-world characteristics (perceptiveness, stubornness, ability to evaluate odds dispassionately, ability to read body language and voice tone, ability to give good advice, ability to commune with the gods, ability to make decisions that will lead to desired outcomes, etc.) and combines them into a single number. Some D&D materials through the year have called this out and talked about how an interesting character can be better at one aspect of a skill than another. So someone might be really good at reading body language and speaking with Thor, but not very good at foreseeing likely consequences of their decisions.
Or just any time a Frankish king died. They all split the kingdom (which was the king’s private property, legally speaking) equally among their sons.
All that aside, we’d better get a resolution soon or Roy’s heading for that revolving door again. I dinna think he kin take much more o’ this.
At home where I can re-read it, you’re right. I think I was misremembering based on the rough exit into the snow.
Also, it was the high priest of Odin who gave the prophecy and the high priest of Thor who exiled Durkon, both deceased. Well, we know the HP of Thor is deceased and replaced and there’s a different HP of Odin at the Godsmoot so I assume the old one died as well. But the Temple Brewmaster got the HP of Thor to say what happened so maybe that’s the link to Durkon learning the truth.
I love how Burlew will poke fun at fan speculation about where the strip will go next.
Even with the Hel’s Might, Roy still has time to chug a potion and move away. Especially since Righteous Might, which I assume is the same as <diety>'s might, doesn’t grant an increase to movement speed.
Interestingly, it looks like Durkula healed up, which is also not an effect of that spell (and he’d need another round to self-cast inflict serious wounds on himself).
The spell also doesn’t last that long-- only 1 round/level. I mean, that’s plenty of time to squish Roy if Roy’s dumb enough to hold still for it, but also short enough that Roy could quite possibly stay out of the way. I have no idea what ranged Cleric spells Durkula has left, though.
Nicely played, other-fighter-whose-name-I have forgotten!
Seeing Durkula so huge and standing so close to Roy, and knowing that we’ve seen Durkon bound by his own neurons within sight of one of his own eyes, is there any chance that Roy will be able to see him and realise that who he’s talking to is not just Evil Vampire Durkon but a different entity altogether? And how would that make a difference in his strategy?
Righteous Might only causes a doubling in height, and I think we can all agree this is much more of an increase than that (looks like at least 4x), so I don’t think it’s exactly the same spell.
The strip title is “Not to Scale”, obviously refering to Durkula’s height. I think Rich intentionally made him too large just to make that last panel more impressive. He may reduce the size in future strips.
Roy could just run away, since he has a speed advantage. But he may not know that he has one. So instead, he may attack the railing that Durkula’s hanging on, trying to make it fail and dump the Giant Dwarf back on the floor of the nave. He should be able to do that without coming within reach and thus avoiding another slam or touch attack.
Indeed, it’s funny how being 15 feet tall doesn’t make you run any faster
I think the size of Durkon when casting is just artistic license. So Roy could fairly easily avoid Durkula long enough to chug some potions. The trick is that Roy is on a timetable, because once the high priests of the demigods get there, they can vote to destroy the world.
I read the title as more that Durkula is no longer to dwarf scale - Rich doesn’t generally draw things out of scale that much, does he? Maybe his dragons, they always seem on the small side to me…
Made somewhat easier because there’s no one to fetch the high priests, because Durkula ate all the ushers.