Order of the Stick book 7 discussion thread

Crochet and basket weaving. The dwarves are going to re-weave the snarl.

Please use spoilers for the first few posts after an update. Just in case.

My quatloos on giant bees attack the team, pacified by O-Chul.

Edit - actually, I’ll bet on all of the mentioned skills are used at some point.

I love the total meta nature of that first panel, with added poke at the OOTS forum types by O-Chul.

You talkin’ to me? I didn’t think anything I wrote really counted as a spoiler, as I was deliberately vague. Thought maybe the part at the end where I mention Roy learning from Elan?

Or are you just suggesting spoiler tagging any replies just after an update, regardless of whether they contain spoilers, just in case? I’d be fine with that, if that’s the norm.

O-Chul can use his bee knowledge to direct Lien to blow calming smoke at them thus, I dunno, mitigating an Insect Swarm, I guess. Which are locusts in 3.5e but I’m trying to make this work here.

I’m talking to everyone.

Hence, “just in case.”

That’s exactly what I said. Just in case.

It was not clear what you meant by “just in case.” You could have just meant “just in case someone accidentally reads it.”

FWIW I prefer no spoilers in the thread for comics that have been published.

I read the comic text as “experienced barkeep” and was quite confused by this statement .

Personally, my immediate thought was Crochet will be important.

That IS what I mean. It’s possible to catch a glimpse of the next post without meaning to, and ANY comment is potentially a spoiler. Put it in a spoiler box, just in case someone sees it, and just in case it’s a spoiler.

New one is there.

1269

I think the only reason I saw it first is because it’s not at the top?

Oooh, Belkar. Never change…

Off playing with Sunny aside, it feels like Elon should be in on the “What skills do you have?” conversation, having already surprised everyone with his horse riding ability. I don’t know if 3.5e bards were the same skill monkeys they are in 5e.

Nothing in 5e is as much of a skillmonkey as 3.5 bards and rogues were.

And this guy naps.

Yeah, I didn’t think so but didn’t want to authoritatively say “Elon should be there because 3.5e bards are skill monkeys and he probably knows lots of stuff”

Bear in mind that in 3.5 Intelligence gave you bonus skill points (something sorely missed in 5, IMHO, making INT the dump stat), and while Elan may have leveled this ability score up a bit, I doubt he’s getting many points per level. If anything, Roy has more skill points than he does, despite being a fighter.

Eh, Roy probably doesn’t have more than Elan: There’d need to be a 10-point gap in their Int scores for that to be the case. More likely, it’s an 8-point (tied) or 6-point (Elan slightly ahead) gap.

On the other hand, even if they’re tied in number of skill points, Elan is still probably slightly ahead, because fighters have very few class skills, but bards have almost all of them. When Roy wants to learn something esoteric like Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering), he has to pay twice as many skill points for it.

On the other other hand, though, bards have a sort of “skill point tax” that they have to pay: Many of their abilities require them to keep at least one Perform skill maxed out, possibly multiple (for instance, Elan is probably maxed out on both string instruments and singing, plus at least a few points on kazoo).

Oddly, in 5e, the Bard doesn’t really need Perform. Maybe due to the complaints?

6 weeks now. Too bad, even if it’s because of Rich’s health issues.

In some ways worse if it’s his health. That’s unlikely to improve at this point.