Yeah, Rich has grown over the years. He’s not going to use such a cringe unfunny joke like that these days.
There’s nothing unfunny about that joke. I was a good strip with a funny joke. The tenor of the strip has changed, so it would no longer work, but that strip was good for what it was back then.
I wonder whose side the IFCC is on, other than their own?
I agree. I liked this step when it was published, but it would be inappropriate today.
Slightly more recently, the High Priest of Azure City might have killed Redcloak if he didn’t do the math wrong and eat a Destruction he had saved against.
(Azure City was a million user years ago at this point but was after the strip’s more plot-based switch than just “D&D is silly” gags)
22 might still have failed, though. We don’t know by how much a 21 failed.
Eh, then there’s no joke.
That’s not quite the same joke, though - that’s lampshading the dichotomy between in game narrative and player (not character) behavior. Almost everyone who plays D&D has had a “I miss. No, wait, I forgot I had a +1!” moment., and the joke is, “What would this table-top behavior look like if it were represented in-game?”
Calder suddenly keeling over dead when someone brings up the familicide spell isn’t the same joke, because, “Oh, I forgot that this NPC should have been killed before you even got here,” isn’t a common experience for D&D players. It would work if the gimmick of the comic was, “A D&D world run by an incompetent GM,” like the old DM of the Rings webcomic, but that would be badly out of tune for this comic, where their existence as D&D characters mostly only comes up as throw-away gags and filler strips, and not as the resolution to major plot arcs or serious threats.
Is a red dragon likely to be the offspring of a black dragon?
I’m thinking about how this half-arc will be resolved. Options include:
a) Calder kills Serini in battle and flees afterwards.
b) Calder flees.
c) Calder dies.
d) Oots fleas.
e) Calder is force caged or otherwise constrained.
f) Diplomatic negotiations succeed, lead by O’Chul.
g) Something involving familicide.
h) Calder joins Team Evil.
i) Team Evil joins Calder.
My take is that Stick-world isn’t big enough for Calder and Serini, so Calder has to die. Which is disappointing, because I kind of like the villain. Calder could be killed then resurrected, but Oots doesn’t need a recurring villain.
Different colored dragons represent different sub-species, largely distinguished by what sort of breath weapon they have. Red dragons breath fire, black dragons breath acid, white dragons breath frost, etc. Dragons are interfertile with literally everything, so there’s nothing preventing a black dragon from mating with a red dragon, but the offspring would probably be some novel melding on the two, like a red and black dragon that breathes napalm, rather than just a regular red dragon.
By the rules, the first generation crossing would be a dragon with the half-dragon template (though the rules are silent on whether it would be a half-black-dragon red dragon or a half-red-dragon black dragon), and it would have both a fire and an acid breath weapon (one considerably more powerful than the other, depending on the previous question).
That’s just the first generation, though. That cross-dragon could then go on to breed with a normal red dragon, and its offspring with another red dragon, and so on for as many generations as you like (or at least, as many as the age of the world allows for), with the end result being an almost-pure red dragon with just a touch of black in its ancestry. Such a creature might show no mechanical trace of its black heritage, or might just know a few extra acid-themed spells, or the like.
This is my vote. Calder has been written as a sympathetic character. It would be more interesting if that goes somewhere.
Calder dissed Bloodfeast. He’s toast.
I dunno, Calder was an evil megalomaniac before being imprisoned and seems to be one now. Letting him go means he goes off to start more evil dragon cults full of people who immolate themselves at his command. Sucks to be him for being imprisoned but I don’t know if I’d call it sympathetic.
More to it though, the fewer side-spurs off the actual story between now and the end of the story, the better in my estimation. Burlew is already likely to be eaten by a tiger or fall down a well before this wraps up as it is. I’d be perfectly happy if they just poked Calder with pointy bits of metal until the main plot restarted.
Err, no. Understandable is not the same as sympathetic.
1303 - Flight Risk
Fair enough. And he certainly wasn’t sympathetic in this strip.
Roy’s not wrong, but Calder isn’t a dedicated spellcaster, and certainly not a wizard who can scour libraries for buffs and counters to layer. He’s a monster who dabbles in sorcerer spellcasting. He has a limited number of spells available to him, which he uses to supplement his other (formidable) capabilities. If he encounters a countermeasure to his magic, his plan is to fall back on his breath weapon, or his physical prowess, or his other innate abilities. It’s not a bad plan; there’s a reason why dragons are the apex monster of D&D.
He’s not even all that understandable. I mean, sure, we can understand why he hates Serini specifically, but his villainy in general is basically “just because he’s evil”. This is in contrast to Redcloak, say, or Miko, who are also villains, but their whole villainy is entirely understandable.
That’s specifically what I meant.