Boastmanship
Poor Woolantula! Having narrowly escaped the menacing bristles of The Broom, our canonically non-binary little spider spider demon must have skulked about The King’s Arms for days! No doubt she hid in corners and under beds, trying desperately to survive on an unfamiliar plane while searching for a likely helper. After all, if BBEG is plotting something nefarious, the Heroes are going to want to know about it! Too bad their boasting has left the l’il guy in mortal terror! One wonders what else he overheard while skulking about the premises?
This is not a difficult concept. If one sees a monster, one slays said monster. Well and good for our philosophers to debate the merits of some purely hypothetical ethical necromancy. Sadly, such things are theory, not fact. And I for one won’t put my trust is walking horrors.
Yes! Very yes. Only good monsters is dead monster! Fun to kill, and make satisfying pain sounds when bones break. Or exoskeletons. Whatever. Pug does not have ranks in Knowledge (anatomy).
Look, are we doin’ demon body count or not? And if so, I hope ye aren’t going by killin’ blow only? I’ve kept meticulous notes o’ average damage per round. It’s a much better model. If we sort it by creature type… Let me make some pivot tables.
Now hold on a moment. I agree that demons ought to be slain on sight. Extreme prejudice, show no quarter, etc. etc. Preferably make it hurt. But are we only speaking of demons here? Or are we doing evil outsiders in general? Because I have a mythos monstrosity that ought to count for at least five.
Who cares what we kill? All I know is there’s something coming. Something we all ought to band together to stop. It doesn’t matter what setting you’re from. There are some things you just can’t reason with.
Are we quite certain that making friends with monsters is out of the question?
For the last time YES!
Can’t say I particularly blame our poor spider-bro for making themselves scarce. Life is hard out there for a monster, and especially for one loaded with the “evil” and “outsider” subtypes.
So for today’s discussion, why don’t talk about the times we’ve seen this play out in our own games? Has your reputation as a do-gooder ever excluded you from the Thieves Guild? Did your mercenary work for King A prevent you from allying with King B? And were there ever any monsters that refused to play nice purely on the basis of your monster-slayer rep? Tell us all about the times you scared off potential allies down in the comments!
Enby little spiderfiend climbed up the tavern spout…
Story wise in our Mummy’s Mask campaign, playing a redscale Kobold made it a bit tricky to be recognized as the leader of our PC group of tomb explorers.
And in our most recent game, I’m certain the infamy/disrepute mechanic and the fact we’re playing as the leaders of a band of pirates is gonna cause some non-pirate factions to be miffed by our presence eventually.
…Heard, “Split in twain!” which bummed the spider out…
Poor Woolantula. Seems like team Bounty Hunter is their best bet so far – given it has Magus (who’d recognize the star-stickered little helper), Vengeance (who likewise might know her ex-boss’s butler or association with the Demon Web-Pits), Ranger (who adores ‘cute’ monstrous creatures, and Woolantula is huggable/marketable plushie status). Only Inquisitor might be tricky to convince.
Or they could go out on a limb (or eight) and team up with Gunslinger / Inventor, both of whom would not murder them on sight (one out of desperation, the other out of pacifism).
Dang, thought of another possibility – the formation of a ‘Monster Party’ of monster PCs, not unlike Rusty and Co.
Considering half of Team Bounty Hunter are the ones scaring Wooly in this comic I don’t think so (Antiantipaladin was thenone who beat up DQ and Magus was the one who killed the Krampus [theoratically]).
The Swashbuckler Duo might be a safer bet, though they are the ones who set off this coming disaster.
I would not wish the idiot duo on Woolantula…
I’m just happy folks remembered who is who. It’s such a long-running comic at this point, I was scared folks wouldn’t remember about Krampus.
Mayhaps they don’t see/recognize the people behind the glass.
Another potential PC to join forces with Woolantula: Alchemist! They’re immune to poison via alchemist class features (and in fact, likely would benefit from being able to ‘gather’ Woolantula’s potent fiendish venom) and are already confirmed to be a weirdo who’s fond of unsettling things on account of his tumor familiar and stimulant (ab)use.
There’s dubious potential of teaming up with Snowflake (who probably doesn’t care about working with a fiend so long as it advances her goals of killing Elf Princess), and Ninja (employed by Snowflake, can benefit from poisons Woolantula provides… assuming they don’t poison themselves in the process).
There’s also Drow Priestess, the only person who might adore Woolantula’s spidery aspects. Possibly Druid too, lover of all things animal-ish?
Joining the evil party is another possibility (they’re missing two members now, and are fiend-receptive), though Woolantula may have trouble pitching their goal as something beneficial to team evils more selfish/self-centered members.
Also, Succubus hates Demon Queen, so it’d be a really hard sell.
Depends on if they hate DQ more than they would hate BBEG.
I’m now imagining Gunslinger being outside the Adventurer Mixer building door, unable to reach the door handle or being prevented from attending for some other unfortunate/comedic reason.
Sign: Must be at least 21 to enter the tavern.
Gunslinger: But… but..
That’s what you get for wasting slots on useless flavor feats.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/childlike
Gunslinger could be Woolantula’s first recruit!
He will join any team that lets him in, so long as his life isn’t being directly threatened.
Woolantula’s pouty face is adorable.
I think that’s a mixture of horror and terror. ^^;
Woolantula’s EVERYTHING is adorable.
Even their special abilities that require a Con/Fort save?
The cutest widdle venom sacks!
Ha… my current character doesn’t have that problem… she gets on well with everyone she has a chance to talk to, even when they’re trying to kill her. So when it comes to spider demons knocking at the door, she’d probably invite *Lolth* in for tea, never mind someone as un-threatening as Woolantula.
The rest of the party might have some objections, mind you…
I’ve been meaning to play an upsettingly nice character. How do you keep up that energy even when you’ve got to kill baddies though?
Yeah, that’s a challenge sometimes. It helps that she’s a bard, so she’s not really expected to be a hard hitter… if she gets stuck in melee, her preferred strategy is to become a distraction… flourishing a sword, bantering with a foe, and generally handing advantage to her allies. And it’s also an excuse to pick spells which might not be damage-dealers but which can be fun to find good uses for… enchantments, illusions, etc. I’m enjoying it… it’s a change from the backstabbers I often play.
Knowing that fighter *did* in fact speak Aklo makes that situation even sadder.
There that spider-thing thought the best of him and assumed that it was all just a tragic case of inability to communicate, when really Fighter was just murderous.
Truly, Fighter is the best of us.
As DM, I once had a group of PCs make the *right* decisions on one adventure (halting the diplomatic marriage between a *nice* landlocked kingdom and a *not-so-nice* seafaring kingdom) only to later find themselves needing transportation to a tiny island for a subsequent adventure.
To their surprise, they found a ship willing to take them. The vessel transported them to within *sight* of their objective, then ordered them to swim for it. (The island was reportedly beset with sea-devils and the captain didn’t want to risk going nearer.) The heroes bartered some of their hard-won treasure from earlier adventures and managed to get a longboat they could row to shore, along with a pinkie-swear that the ship would come back for them within three days if they sent up a signal of some kind.
The last they saw of that ship was when it ran up the colors of the rival kingdom and sailed away, leaving them in the open ocean on a tiny boat within sight of a monster-infested resort.
Natural consequences are cool so long as they’re not punitive. Must have been a great “oh shit” moment at the table. 🙂
While I haven’t quite had the experience described in today’s strip, I am in a sci-fi sort of game. I’m playing the captain and one of his convictions is that he doesn’t like using force.
Which is a bit of a problem when everybody else has military background.
I may or may not be the problem.
Read this a few hours ago first thing in the morning. My groggy ass was all like, “Why would you spend on your points building a Jedi and then not use the force?”
Hell, I know plenty of military and ex-military folks in real life who don’t like using force. Doesn’t mean they’re not GOOD at it, but they don’t like it…
Does it have to be a deserved reputation?
Because there was this dread doppelganger cleric who took a cruel delight in wrecking our shit by lying to a village’s worth of Barovian peasants, Diamabel, and then a village’s worth of Akiri peasants. In each of these cases, it ruined our reputation by making out that we were something we weren’t, respectively:
A) indiscriminate murderers (we had reasons, dammit!)
B) scam artists in league with the doppelganger, out to con Diamabel out of money by necromantic murder (no way in Ravenloft!)
C) in league with an occupying force of Falkovnians (*sounds of vomiting*)
We almost got lynched. We were at ground zero for a Darklord’s wrath. ‘Inconvenient’ does not fit the bill. Not when ‘terrifying’ and ‘infuriating’ are available.
I feel a bit cheated. My Ravenloft game was great, but it was so heavily reflavored that, even though I’ve played the campaign, I have NO IDEA who any of these people are.
You wouldn’t, unless your campaign took you all the way out to the Amber Wastes Cluster and you got your hands on some secret lore:
https://www.fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Category:The_Amber_Wastes
As for Falkovnia…
https://fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Falkovnia
“Look, are we doin’ demon body count or not? And if so, I hope ye aren’t going by killin’ blow only? I’ve kept meticulous notes o’ average damage per round. It’s a much better model. If we sort it by creature type… Let me make some pivot tables.”
He’s almost right: It’s not damage, but just general contribution to your team succeeding. Grappling a threat so that your skirmishers can get to the target in the back is impossible to quantify, so instead you just count the overall success of your team. You’re a team, and you succeed or fail as a team.
I was playing a Goblin Kensei Monk, and another player was playing a Dwarf Fighter. He really wanted to start a Legolas/Gimli rivalry with my character with counting kills and the like, but I kept being too much of a team player with the whole “We succeed or fail as a group” thing. He also kept challenging me to downtime exhibition fights, which I kept telling him “I’m not going to bother with such things, but know that it won’t be fun for you if we did.” Eventually he got mind-whammied and he got his fight, only to learn that he had very little to deal with a Monk with **Mobile** who refused to stay in his melee range. Like I said “know that it won’t be fun for you. if we did.”
Spoken like a man without a high demon body count. 😛
Well D&D Demons don’t leave bodies unless killed in the Aarbys, so that term is a misnomer. You can’t kill most fiends on the material plane, but you can “Poof” them.
I feel ya. People talking about damage numbers or kill counts tend to lead to less effective groups as it devalues other important contributions to victory.
Just last session I had to spend a lot of effort convincing our cleric that the Heroism they cast was good and useful – and that was something where I could point to the 2 hits and 2 extra crits (it was a pf2 game so + to hit is also + to crit) it gave us without even counting the bonus to saves and skill checks.
When I’m a bard, I always like to pipe up with, “That damage is mine!” whenever somebody hits AC exactly.
While it wasn’t my game, I do remember reading an Eberron PbP where the party wound up accidentally selling the rights to their story to a trashy pulp rag, and having their adventures retold in lurid format based on a single encounter the writer had with them. The villains proceeded to use this to get intelligence on them, although it did lead to some major misunderstandings (notably that everyone was written to be EXTREMELY stereotypical–the wise warforged paladin Lightbringer, basically the group’s spiritual guide, became a clueless construct named Torchholder who didn’t understand emotion, the Shadow Marches ranger became a swamp hick, the cool-headed Karrnathi wizard became an evil necromancer who wanted to raise them all as undead when they died, etc).
“Look out! That one will raise you as undead!”
“I’ll what!?”
XD
Dwarf Cleric ” I’ve kept meticulous notes o’ average damage per round. It’s a much better model. If we sort it by creature type… Let me make some pivot tables”.
Are you, perchance, familiar with the Dwarf character from the French audio series/graphic novels/video game “Donjon de Naheulbeuk”?
This is the sort of things he would say.
Then, again, he is a typical Dwarf.
Never have I believed so hard in Plato’s World of Forms.
“… were there ever any monsters that refused to play nice purely on the basis of your monster-slayer rep?”
Yes, but on the inverse. In a 3e D&D “Night Below” campaign we got the rep as a group who preferred to avoid combat, because I was the party leader, and I had a really good Diplomacy, and I preferred to talk first, squash second… so at one point some Derro decided we must be push-overs, so they decided to open the parlay meeting by gakking me.
By the time our Deepgnome druid finished burning their fortress to slag (and every Derro in it) and I’d crawled slowly, invisibly, back to our ‘fallback point’… well, the Derro were written off as potential allies. I mean I know our Svirfneblanana-fe-fi-fo-fanna Druid wasn’t going to be down with allying anyway, but I was just trying to bypass fighting them for now, leave them for their ancient enemies, our allies the Smurfnibblins to deal with later.
So, after that our foes were more inclined to accept that we did indeed come in peace and that they should accept it or we’d leave them in pieces.
fe-fi-fo-fanna, lol
I’ve seen that strategy before:
https://y.yarn.co/aef07d23-5320-4048-8c16-e4cef9dd4c55_text.gif
Yes, the Sparta anti-madness strategy.
Sometimes my group will refer to a plan as “anti-Spartan”, because it truly is madness.
I try to keep track of all the merits and offense the players perform toward intelligent creatures. i even sometimes give them titles for it. but not always.
it’s always fun to surprise the players with a reaction from creatures they offended..or pleased.
One of my players was shocked when the local Kobold tribe greeted him with cheers while yelling “here comes the trap-tester!”
I, recently, had a character who was pretty pro-monster and anti-humanity. Not evil, but generally just predisposed to believe and trust the idea that civilized human folk didn’t trust things that looked and acted differently than themselves.
So when my character met a bunch of adventurers they hid their face not wanting to be accused of being a monster and put to the sword. They were shocked when, on our first adventure, the party went through great lengths to spare a bunch of man eating goblins that were raiding and slaughtering a nearby town, and slightly confused when said adventurers tried to force the humans to just kind of accept these evil worshipping cultist goblins as their new neighbors.
Cut to like, a few months later when we’re in another small backwater town, and another monstrous race of people – orcs this time – are being accused of capturing and slaughtering humans in droves! Except this time the entire party just immediately wants to hunt them down and murder them all, wipe them off the map. My character spoke up, asking in short “what the fuck?” only to be told, out of character, that the only reason they spared the goblins was because they’d done that part of the adventure once before and just wanted to see what would happen but they just wanted to kill these orcs without having to think about complicated morality stuff.
My character sat out that entire segment of the game, but that was basically the moment I gave up on that entire group. Playing with people who were cool with just having their characters flip their entire morality and ethics on a dime because they felt like it just killed my enthusiasm for playing with them.