I don’t think undead get negative HP.
I am totally using that. Vself.
Well, huh. They don’t. Not subject to Massive Damage, though.
I dunno about whining, but I’d be annoyed if V died here and there, and we get another 100-odd strips about him being judged, seeing the light and Son Goku-ing in the afterlife until the rest of the Order finally gets hold of hir’s body and rezz hir, more powerful than before.
Once for Roy was OK and fun, twice’d be boring.
Also, the rule-monkey in me wonders how Xykon lifted that huge hunk of wall.
Lastly, I just re-read the last comic and I just noticed Tsukiko’s Xykon doll. That’s adorable 
Yes, but maybe he was too dumb to realize he was doing a bad thing.
(Thog is possibly my favorite OOTS character).
Does anyone know why they are “The Order of the Stick”? In the FAQ Rich says that the real world explanation is that they are stick figures, but that there was also an in character explanation, which is apparently in one of the books
Roy named them after a stick on the ground. It was better than all of Elan’s suggestions.
It was explained in On the Origin of PCs. Roy had recruited a bunch of adventurers to confront Xykon. As they set out, Elan said they needed a team name. Various suggestions like the Sacred Order of the Tavern, the Cloudy Day Guild, and Handsome Halfling & Company were made. Roy said these were stupid ideas based on random objects and said “You might as well call us the Stray Rock Guild because there’s a stray rock over there or the Order of the Stick because there’s a stick on the ground.” And of course everyone else missed the sarcasm and thought the Order of the Stick was a great name.
Gee…I wonder who came up with that one…
Oddly enough, V.
I was using “Stickworld” to mean the world in which the comic takes place, not the predecessor to that world that only lasted for 27 minutes.
And Thog is smart enough to have class levels, and therefore also smart enough to have an alignment. He’s Chaotic Evil. An easily-suggestible Chaotic Evil, to be sure, and he might eventually turn good if he hung out with Elan more instead of Nale, but for the moment? Evil.
A death is coming, though, unless Rich has another cheat planned. The Oracle said “Belkar will draw his last breath–ever–before the end of the year.” Now, the linked comic is a restatement of something he said previously, before the side-trip to Cliffport where Nale did his switcheroo with Elan. Back then, of course, Kazumi wasn’t even married, and now she’s very pregnant indeed. In fact, Kazumi was said to be “eight weeks pregnant” four months after Hinjo and the gang left Azure City, and now she’s about to pop. So, even assuming that the Oracle made his prediction in January, it would seem that Belkar has perhaps two in-story months to live.
Now, I’d be all for a side-story in which we explore the Abyss with Belkar. That’d be fun.
Demogorgon doesn’t stand a chance.
Speaking of…is there any canonical treatment of what the 666 (or whatever it is now) layers consist of? I can find tons of fanwank sites that include all kinds of :dubious: stuff, like a series of layers ruled by Gothmog.
Canon now is that they’re actually infinite. There have been particular layers attributed to particular demon prince(sse)s, but I can’t remember them offhand. The big names in demons are still Demogorgon, Orcus, Frazz’urblu, Juiblex, Zuggtmoy, Baphomet, and Grazz’t, but the Abyss has evil gods scattered around, also. There are realms ruled by balor, but I think any official use of “Gothmog” would attract the gimlet eye of the Tolkien estate tout suite.
Actually, let me rephrase…canon as of 3.5 and that edition’s “Manual of the Planes” is the above. I don’t have a single piece of 4th Ed. material in my possession, nor have I read any elsewhere, so I have no idea if they changed it.
This may sound strange, but as fascinated with D&D as I used to be, I never really cared that much about actually playing. I can remember being a kid and seeing the original Monster Manual at a bookstore. I picked it up, and was immediately immersed in this enormous mythology about which I had no previous knowledge. I eventually obtained most of the hardbacks, and yes, I DM’ed and played, but still, the most interesting things to me were the mythological aspects of it…the artifacts and relics, the pantheons of gods, the monsters, the planes (and the mysteries thereof…what does the 381st layer of the Abyss actually look like?)
I’m sure I’d get more enjoyment out of role playing these days, though.
I’m actually the same way. I can probably count the number of times I’ve actually played or DMed D&D or AD&D on two hands, but I was forever buying sourcebooks throughout the 80s and early-to-mid-90s because I liked READING them. I’m a semi-expert on Forgotten Realms pre-4th ed. I know the pre-Chaos-War Krynn like the back of my hand. I yearn to find all the Spelljammer materials in a yard sale somewhere for $5. I actually had all of the D&D sets (Basic, Expert, Master, Companion and Immortal) and most of the Known World Gazeteers. I’ve read probably 30 years worth of Dragon Magazine (in random order) and I’ve ordered mixed boxes (packing boxes) of back issues from eBay. I’m a source material whore.
And I wish to GOD I still had all of them packed away somewhere.
Hmm. Last breath doesn’t mean out of the picture. I could see a vampire Belkar or some such.