Tag: d&d

#149 Reposted 30nov17

Loki, god of fire! God of Tricksters! God of Quantum mechanics! Quantum? Well, who else would switch photons between waves and particles when you’re not looking?

Many moons ago, one of my re-enactor friends had a silly pet peeve about the Frisian hats that people were wearing for their norse personas. He went on for several minutes about how the cultures were distinct and the right hats for everyone. Therefore, I ensured that Loki was wearing the wrong hat just for you, Mike!

#147 Reposted 24nov17

I found the right one this time!

Why is it that the monsters never just step on the power rangers while they’re morphing? Why don’t the monsters attach while Sailor Moon is getting changed? Sure, it fills time and saves on animation, but there are certain logical problems.

Trying to draw Elf with a more feminine shape was very difficult because, at that time in my life, I didn’t have much experience with the female shape. Most fantasy artists clearly have never seen a woman up close in real life.

Fencer’s first line is sung to the Final Fantasy victory music. https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/164193?id=164193

#146 Reposted 16nov17

Psionic brains-in-a-jar are deceptively easy to defeat. It is a known law of physics that wizards have much lower HP than fighters. This is partly due to game balance in RPGs, where every bonus needs a trade off. In Skyrim, you can break this system if you use the right skills and see how it gets too easy.

It is also re-enforced by the idea of the mind/body split good old Rene Descartes liked to talk about. The idea is that mind and body being distinct things, and our spirits wear bodies like pilots in a giant fighting robot. (Probably not how Descartes thought about it, but much cooler).

We see it all over popular media that nerds must be weak, and pretty people must be dumb. It’s supposed to be a shock if the pretty person happens to be smart, or it makes them into a super hero.

I manage to buck this trend by being both ugly and dumb*, take that society!

*joking. I’m adorable. But if I was half as smart as I like to think I am: I would have better things to do than posting old comics on tumblr.

Don’t forget to follow me and click the notifications gizmo so you can catch these comics as I repost them. Watch them improve over time, then crash again when I try to make new ones.

#145 Reposted 14nov17

And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

The sun and I do not get along. I think I have gotten a major sunburn every year for…ever. Even through SPF50+ sunscreen it gets me. Must be the Irish side of my family showing through. When I got smart enough to stay covered and stop burning so much that’s then the heat stroke started.

I once had heat stroke for about a week straight in Basic before it took me down. That’s one major reason I’m not in the army today. Vindalf is a dwarf, evolved for living underground in Svartalfheim. The sun is always trying to kill him, and me; the sun is just a deadly maniac and best avoided.

Don’t forget to follow me and click the notifications gizmo so you can catch these comics as I repost them. Watch them improve over time, then crash again when I try to make new ones.

#144 reposted 9nov17

HEMA types on youtube can devote hundreds of hours to the usefulness and historical accuracy of throwing knives. The skill of throwing a knife seems to be mostly a sport or carnival trick. In combat, you would almost never want to let go of your weapon, unless you were definitely going to have an advantage. Sometimes, a distraction is all you need to get in your winning strike. More often, you end up short a knife and exposed.

That dagger is based on one Fencer used to own. It never threw very well. Yes, we tried.

#143 reposted 7nov17

I think of the games I’ve played, Diablo 2 was the worst at awarding better weapons. The problem was that they gave you too much gear for randomly killing monsters. There was no point every buying a new sword in town, when you’ll just get a better one in five minutes.

Collecting weapons in Skyrim can be useful until you learn the smithing skill.Then you’re mostly just gathering junk to trade in for raw materials. That’s how I play anyway, other people might have their own style.

Loot in D&D is always a difficult to award. All the weapons do about the same damage and you can’t just hand out a +15 sword. I’m currently DMing a campaign and trying to calibrate the fights is a nightmare. Just this week, we faced a platoon of raiders and walked all over them. Before that, a simple elemental could have trashed the party. Next week, who knows?

#142 Reposted 3nov17 (yeah, late, I know)

Someone needs to program a video game where being a maniac to the NPCs has a negative effect. Maybe the merchants should stop letting you in the store if your hero keeps going around stealing everything and murdering the stock-boys for their pants. If the hero massacres one city, the next should lock the gate. Obviously, all the bandits and dark wizards are ok to murder, they have it coming.

So many players would find themselves banned from town because they’re sociopaths towards fictional people. Maybe there would be a game branch to become the bad guy? If I could program past “Print: Hello World” I would start working on that.

#139 Reposted 19oct17

Yes, they speak Klingon in Valhalla.

A proper adventuring group should be between 2 and 8. 4 is about the best to mechanically cover all your bases: Fighter, Wizard, Healer and Rogue/Thief. If you have a fifth, make it a Bard (Heart!) 4 ninja turtles, 5 planeteers, 6 power rangers if you include Tommy. Too many makes it hard to keep track.

Like 13 dwarves, a wizard and one hobbit is too many. You won’t be able to remember anyone’s name or character traits. Can you remember all of the dwarves from The Hobbit?

1.Dwalin 2. Balin, 3. Kili, 4. Fili, 5. Thorin Oakenshield6. Oin7. Gloin8. Bifur9. Bombur10. Doc11. Sleepy12. Grumpy13. Blitzen?