There was a Julio Scoundrel story in one of the books. SS&DT, I think. Not the kickstarter reward. That’s probably what you’re thinking of.
Because it matters now:
Any nonevil creature within the area of a blasphemy spell suffers the following ill effects.
The effects are cumulative and concurrent.
No saving throw is allowed against these effects.
Furthermore, if you are on your home plane when you cast this spell, nonevil extraplanar creatures within the area are instantly banished back to their home planes. Creatures so banished cannot return for at least 24 hours. This effect takes place regardless of whether the creatures hear the blasphemy. The banishment effect allows a Will save (at a -4 penalty) to negate.
Creatures whose Hit Dice exceed your caster level are unaffected by blasphemy.
So basically the Evil version of Holy Word?
I wonder what Nale’s home plane is now.
Ooh, word for word, nice callback!
Hence the “I owe you this one anyway” comment.
Minrah doesn’t seem to be affected. Should we be worried?
Minrah has shocked eyes and posture. Serini & Belkar seem to be standing firm though.
I’m more worried about the effects on Minrah as she is lower level than anyone else.
Shocked at seeing the spell, yes. But she doesn’t seem to be suffering directly from it.
A low to mid level cleric, but she was a fighter first. She’s tough.
So what should we expect?
Serini no effect (level)
Belkar no effect (alignment)
Sunny: paralysed, weakened and dazed
Everybody else: dazed or weakened and dazed
Mr Scruffy should just die? (or maybe saved by alignment)
He’s an animal companion, so should be neutral i.e. non-evil, and should be affected. Certainly looks like he is, though, based on the spell FX.
Which is just going to piss off his decidedly non-non-evil owner.
Sunny should be unaffected by RAW. But the FX indicate there is an effect.
I’ll just say one thing:
“What’s the color of the boathouse at Hereford?”
What is Mr scruffy’s level?
So 22 strips in 2025, so at least there has been no further slippage (after 21 and 22 in 2023 and 2024 respectively).
Plus Dim Sun.
He’s a class feature, so technically he doesn’t have a “level.” But he does have Hit Dice, which is what Blasphemy targets. House cats normally have 1/2 a HD, but animal companions gain bonus HD based on the level of the character they’re attached to. But Belkar gets his animal companion through his ranger levels, which brings up some problems. Rangers only get half their level when determining how strong their animal companion is (compared to druids, who use their full druid level for this calculation). Assuming everyone is 15th level (minimum level to cast blasphemy, and Nale is usually at parity with the Order on character level) that would give Mr. Scruffy 4.5 HD.
But it’s actually worse than that, because Belkar isn’t a full ranger, he’s a barbarian/ranger multiclass, so Mr. Scruffy has even fewer HD, depending on how Belkar has split his levels between ranger and barbarian.
Conclusion: Rules as Written, Mr. Scruffy is super dead.
Secondary conclusion: Ranger’s animal companions in 3.5 are ass.
Nope, donkeys aren’t an option. Animal companions can be horse or pony, though.
Blackwing, meanwhile, would be affected the same as Vaarsuvius. Familiars are based on creatures with even fewer HD than animal companions, but they have a special feature that, for anything that cares about number of HD, they’re treated as having the same as their master.
And the only reason why a beholder wouldn’t ordinarily be affected is alignment, but despite beholders being “always evil”, Sunny is an extremely unusual beholder and probably isn’t.
Mimi is the most likely one to be killed, aside from Scruffy.
I’m kind of surprised that Lien and O-Chul stayed in the background in this strip. You’d think two paladins would have stepped forward to argue strongly against allying with devils.
Roy is Lawful Good and the group leader and never really entertained the idea of Nale joining so I could imagine the paladins (who would realize they don’t have the background here) staying quiet and deferring. Had Roy been “Hell yeah, infernal allies!” then they would have probably needed a bit of convincing.
While the final panel is cool, it does feel over the top for what’ll likely be a single round daze (plus maybe a weaken) effect for most of them 