I’m surprised that transform didn’t break Calder’s jaw. But spot damage isn’t even a thing in D&D is it? I remember Haley getting a broke arm, and Belkar getting sunburnt, but that’s about it. All other times someone collects a bunch of red hash marks on their body until dead or healed, and until then they are otherwise unchanged in capability.
I think spot damage is left to the DM’s discretion, but is unusual.
Random thought that it’d be amusing if the fight with Calder gave some party members the xp they need to level up and those new abilities/spells were instrumental in stopping Xykon.
What does not kill me only earns me XP.
In the first panel, Calder is using his breath weapon to attack Belkar. Red dragon’s breath weapon is a cone of fire. However, some of the other members of the Order are not in that cone, but still take damage. Well, I can’t tell about Roy, you can barely make him out behind the flames, although it looks like he’s in the cone. (He may be shielded by Calder’s leg, though.) Durkon may be in the cone, but Elan and Vaarsuvius are definitely not, yet they’re still taking damage. Looks like Burlew took some liberties with the rules.
Is it possible that V’s Greater Dispel Magic suppressed Calder’s defence against cold attacks? I don’t see any magical aura that indicates that it did, but since Bloodfeast was in Calder’s mouth, you’d expect the Dispel to also affect Calder.
I see Serini has finally gotten into the battle.
Having run many a high(er) level campaign, I completely laughed at a named dragon being an obstacle to the real bad guy.
I also like interrupting villain speeches or changing things up to make it fun!
It took me a second to remember V’s villainous turn.
I’m reminded of Tarquin insisting that he’s the main antagonist of the story and Xykon is a secondary villain.
Now that the new one’s up and I won’t be raising false hopes by bumping, I’ve been meaning to say for a while that trying to eat Bloodfeast was a really bad idea on Calder’s part. There’s no way it could have ended well for him, because polymorphed creatures resume their original form if they die. If he continued to chew his food thoroughly, he’d eventually have still ended up with his jaws dislocated by a dire allosaurus, with the only difference from this case being that he’d have spent a bunch of rounds with his mouth occupied. And if he swallowed him whole, it’d be even worse, because then Bloodfeast would eventually die from his digestive juices/gizzarding, and reverted inside his stomach. Further, Calder is a high-level spellcaster: He really ought to have known how polymorph works.
Who thinks Vaarsuvuis will ask Calder if they’re related to the dragon in the starmetal cave, and when they say “yes” the Familicide spell kicks in? Besides me?
No, the spell is not dependent on what V knows otherwise she would not have been so shocked when confronted about the extent of the damage. Any plot point requiring V’s knowledge of a relationship to activate it, especially as it wasn’t even really her spell, would make no sense
But it would be hilarious! And it’s not so much that it requires V’s knowledge of the relationship as that it would be like Elmer Fudd not realizing that he’s running on air until Bugs tells him to look down.
In addition to the technical issue that colinfred pointed out, I feel this wouldn’t work from a narrative viewpoint. The familicide spell was used to show Vaarsuvius becoming aware of the dangers of extreme levels of magical power. This reversed Vaarsuvius’ previous view that all problems could be solved by a sufficiently high amount of magic. They now realized that large amounts of magic could be abused and any use of magic had to be tempered by a moral code. This was a major step forward in their character growth. To have Vaarsuvius now casually use the spell would undercut that point.
But they wouldn’t be using it again. The spell would just be noticing Calder and realizing it missed them the first go-around.
Even for a stick-figure comic based on a role-playing game, that would be way too silly and genre-breaking. No way Rich would do that. Sorry.
Or rather, he wouldn’t do it these days. It is, however, the kind of joke he used to do.
I don’t think magic spells work like that in D&D.
Sigh. I guess it’s too soon to use that joke again.