Core Values
Wait a minute. You mean that when you introduce continuity to a comic you’ve got to pay off your storylines? What a hassle! I don’t know how Rich Burlew puts up with it.
For serious though, given the amount of “what does Thief think about all this?” comments we’ve received since Wizard’s transformation, I’m pretty sure we’d have been lynched if we didn’t hurry up and release this comic. I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but even if this brief dalliance with an ongoing storyline has been fun, I look forward to a return to the usual joke-a-day style. There’s something to be said for a comfortable status quo, you know? I mean sure, Fem!Wizard is here to stay, but that doesn’t mean that anything else is changing.
For me, Thief’s equanimity in the face of Wizard’s sudden character growth is reassuring, but it’s also instructive. I think that has something to do with the constancy of the Thief/Wizard romance.
For certain characters, there are attributes that are core to their identity. Thief loves Wizard. Inigo Montoya pursues revenge. Gromit is loyal to Wallace. Gollum is addicted to the precious. These are defining traits, and changing them is almost unthinkable, even in the face of overwhelming opposition. I first came to understand this truth that one time Laurel grabbed hold of an Exalted campaign and dragged it off the rails.
Here’s the situation. I was serving as ST for that campaign, and the usual crew of heroic exalts had just escaped a Deathlord auction down in Stygia. Proper nouns aside, the important plot point is that Laurel’s love interest had been sold into the service of the campaign’s BBEG. Somehow evading capture after a botched rescue attempt, the group was on the run down in the underworld. Everyone in the party wanted to head back to base and regroup, and I’d even handed them an underworld map so that they could find their way back to the land of the living. Laurel’s adorable spectacled owl lunar had other ideas.
Specs: “Can I hold the map?”
Suspicious Crocodile Lunar: “Why? You’ve never shown an interest in navigating before.”
Specs, Lip Trembling: “It’s just… That map is the last thing my love interest gave me. It’s all I have to remember him by.”
Increasingly Suspicious Crocodile Lunar: “It’s also our only way out of here.”
Specs, Weeping: “I just… I miss him so much. Waaaaaah!”
Suffice it to say that she got the map. The campaign took a hard left from there, and the group tromped off through literal hell so that an extremely determined owl girl could go win back her lover. In my mind, there’s a little bit of Specs in Thief. It doesn’t matter that Wizard is doing her best impersonation of a bodice-ripper book cover. Thief is not giving up on her romantic subplot, no matter what.
What about the rest of you guys though? Do you have any characters with strong core values? Have they ever been put to the test? Let’s hear all about your trials and tribulations down in the comments!
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I like that Wizard was looking forwards to a tragic breakup. And that we probably all understand Wizard well enough to know that this doesn’t have anything to do with their feelings toward Thief.
I also like that Thief understands this and doesn’t take it personally.
Well in my Curse of Stradh game we recently had a scene where our characters risked going into a big fight under-prepared just to try and save the remaining character who got left behind previously. (Just prior to the Blood Bowl scene in fact.)
When the character commented on it to thank them, our characters just gave an “Of course.” And that was honestly how they felt about it.
Which OOC was hilarious because the various scenes had been so tough on our characters that we’d seriously discussed what each of us was likely to re-roll as and how all of us were pretty accepting of the idea of any of our characters dying in those scenes.
So apparently our characters, who have only been together a few days, are a lot more attached to each other than any of us are irl, even though for us it’s been almost a year we’ve had with them.
They were made of each other!
Also, grats on surviving the Death House. I’ve heard so much about it even though my CoS group skipped it…. Maybe I’ll get to try it as a one-shot one day.
lol, I suppose that’s true. Though lots of characters are in the literal sense “made for each other” and make much worse matches. Like y’know… most characters in any romance novel or fantasy novel’s romantic subplots really. In fact, I find Wizard and Thief’s relationship much more relatable than most fictional romances since they… y’know…. actually understand each other… at all. As opposed to their entire lives revolving around the fact that they have over-exaggerated reactions to fundamentally not getting each other and failing to even attempt to communicate problems before they become life destroying disasters somehow.
Heh. Amusingly it wasn’t Death hHouse. Just a particularly nasty house in a later stage of the module.
In fact, we didn’t do the Death House stuff. (Which is ok by me since I’d seen a group of people play it on youtube so it wouldn’t have been new content for me anyway.)
But if you haven’t experienced it or had it spoiled for you yet, I would recommend it. It’s a pretty need side questy thing.
I like Thief’s new hair. It looks quite fashionable, and three-dimensional, also.
@:-}
Gods damn it, Thief! Everyone knows that the standard romance story goes like this:
1) Meet cute
2) Hate each other
3) Like each other
4) Getting together
5) Bad stuff happens, breaking up
6) Issue gets resolved, getting back together
7) Happy ending
You are CLEARLY at stage 5! If you really loved Wizard, you would stop getting in the way of the bloody plot!
Thief and Wizard’s relationship started of breaking the Standard Romance Story Plot. I mean, they didn’t even do the thing were they’re both secretly in love with each other, but don’t realise it, and when they do realise it, they don’t realise that the feeling is mutual, and are afraid to state their feelings for fear of rejections. Then one of them accidentally makes the other think that them hate them, so that rejectee, feeling lonely, turns to someone else for comfort. And then when the accidental rejector final musters up the courage to state their feelings, they suddenly discover that the rejectee is with someone else, so they, heartbroken, throw away the roses, with tensions growing between the two and them growing to hate one another. But then, the pair eventually do discover that they in fact do love each other, that the feeling is mutual and that the other is the One. And then,
….wait a minute, how do I know this stuff?
I imagine, though, that Wizard planned for this to be the first break-up of two. This one was to be the one in which they get to start their relationship properly. The second break-up would be to carry out steps 5-6. Intelligence, and the ability to plan in advance, is the forte of wizards, after all.
Or, in other, for more concise word: I agree. Really Thief, you are getting in the way of multiple dramatic, interesting, and definitely unique plot lines here. I just can’t believe her.
..As I recall, the romance started with the highly unrealistic and not-dramatic-at-all method of the two going on a date, and then liking it enough that they went on more dates together.
How bad at writing this stuff can you get?
I agree! Whoever writes this crap should be bludgeoned to death with a sack full of “Love Actually” DVDs!
…
Wait…
Thief: “Nothing’s changed. You’re still you, and I’ll still sneak GPs out of your purse when you’re not looking”
Wizard: “Aww, thanks – wait, what was that last bit?”
Thief: “Nothing.”
You see? The comfortable familiarity of the status quo.
I had previously mentioned how in my old city campaign with my old group, one of our players, mordred, was playing as a murderhobo in a urban setting where that often doesn’t fly. However, he wasn’t just some character who murderhoboed only when appropriate, no, he was a dedicated murderhobo. If guy pisses him off, and he isn’t strong enough to defend against mordred, he is going to die, even if everyone is on a stealth mission. If a half of a city doesn’t allow mordred enormous obvious great sword, then he will not go to that half of the city under any condition. Being a murderhobo for mordred was a one of the strongest core character traits I had ever seen in a character, ultimately leading to his death when he barged into a room full of wizards to attack one of them. Honestly, it was just impressive that he hadn’t died or gotten anyone else killed earlier with all that. Well, one of us killed of course, he got plenty of innocents killed.
I love the idea of this “Dedicated murderhobo”. Out of game, of course. If I was actually in that seemly hilarious game, then my character would be screaming in terror and running while trying to organise the entire military against that guy. Because when a PC goes murderhobo, and survives for enough time to level up a bit, it’s going to take a lot of force to bring them down. (Such as, for instance, a room full of mages, or them “just happening” to stumble upon the annual archmages’ picnic.
I’ve got to know man: How self-aware was this guy? Was he consciously trying to push murderhobo to the extreme as a joke character, or was it more of a disruptive sort of thing?
It was fairly self aware, we all agreed ahead of time that if his character went too far or did something too stupid, we would just leave him to die. Multiple times he nearly did die because his character caused things to start early and he had to tank every enemy for a few rounds while the rest of us finished getting there or setting up. I would say he was less self aware with most of his previous guys, as up till our tomb of annhilation campaign, every guy he made was a chaotic or neutral evil murderhobo to a reasonably strong degree. With that campaign his guys were alot less so, though they still occasionally showed some elements of it until the last quarter where he didnt really. Mordred was sort of a joke based on those older characters.
This one wasn’t me, but a player of mine:
She was playing a paladin. He was the sort of guy to try and redeem the traitor they’d discovered in their midst. His goddess was on the stricter end of things, and leaned towards punishing the traitor instead.
Well, the group’s witch decided to ensure that he didn’t have any paladin troubles with the goddess… by going behind his back and freeing the traitor guy with a “Don’t make me regret doing this” warning.
There was a rather heated argument about whether it’s okay to make decisions on each other’s behalf. Ultimately, the paladin declared that his goddess’s code said to trust your allies, so he was going to trust that she’d made the right decision, but she was absolutely not to go behind his back and make decisions on his behalf in the future (unless absolutely necessary), even if it was to be helpful.
…Well, some half-dozen or so levels later, they faced a similar situation. The witch let the paladin make his own decision this time: Stick to his morals, or obey his goddess.
Where last time his ally had chosen neither route, he chose both. Punish the bad guy with supervised community service and general do-gooding that was good enough for the goddess, but not so harsh that the villain wouldn’t at least listen to some redemption talks, and sincere offers of help.
…And I love that as a GM, I didn’t threaten his paladin status once. It was a divine crisis that the players made up themselves, and resolved themselves.
Best way to play a paladin: play up your own inner conflict so the GM isn’t tempted to do it for you.
Today’s question reminds me of a human paladin of mine that I made, who I named Thaco because I couldn’t think of a name. He was my third character that I have ever played, but he was my first “real character”. That is to say, when I started playing D&D, I didn’t know how to make characters, so for my first two characters, I essentially wrote “neutral good”, gave them a short backstory, and called it a day. But for Thaco, I went and gave him a one-and-a-half page backstory, and decided to make him neutral Good, someone who would do anything to save others and do what is right, and would sacrifice his life to save others. I also decided to make him nigh-unkillable, so that he could stay in the front lines and defend his friends for as long as he could.
At first, I did well at standing to me ideal of being Good. I dropped everything to help a farmer, didn’t ask for payment, and charged at a pack of wolves to save a single sheep. I even tried to catch a falling minotaur friend in order to minimise the damage. This, above all, turned out to be the most dangerous out of them all, even the wolves, because the minotaur had rolled crazy on his check to jump, so I was set to take 28 points of damage at level 1 if he hadn’t made the check to half his fall damage. Even then, I still went from full hit points to pancake paladin in an instant, but regretted none of it.
There was a point, however, when I was faced with a great dilemma. Our party was tracking through the mountains, and we wanted shelter. We found a cave, only to discover that it was already occupied by a group of dwarven merchants. We still had the minotaur PC with us, so tensions were high between him and the dwarves. The dwarves insisted that the minotaur find another cave, and I agreed with them, saying that we still had many hours of daylight left with which to find another cave. If he still wishes to stay, I was willing to diplomacy with the dwarves to ask that they overcome their prejudice and let the minotaur stay with them. However, the minotaur’s pride was insulted, so not only did he refuse to leave the cave, he decided to evict the dwarves. By force. Initiative was rolled, and I had to decide what side I was one. The rest of the party, not wishing for PVP, sided with the minotaur against the dwarves. I had to make my decision. Do I stick to my character, and stand against the party in PVP? Or do I stand with the party, abandoning the tenants of my first true character for the sake of, paradoxically, avoiding conflict?
This question was answered for me, however. I was last in the initiative order, which revealed two things. First, that the dwarves were no match for my party. Second, that the party was killing, not knocking out, the dwarves. I realised that if I stood against the party, there was nothing I could do to stop the slaughter. However, if I stood with the party, I could knock out any dwarves at low hit points. And so, I ended up having to fight the dwarves to save them.
And so continued the tales of Thaco the paladin, trying desperately to aim this ostensibly chaotic neutral fighting force at the villains, rather than at innocents.
Sticking to your ideals is tough, but it sounds like you did a better job than I have historically. Nice job figuring out a way to minimize the damage! It always seems to be one’s own party that is the enemy of good and righteousness, eh?
Minor quibble. The Underworld is not literal hell in Exalted. That is a totally different and far more alien place. ;p That being said, the owl was right. Exalted is all about that melodrama! She wouldn’t have been worthy of Luna’s Kiss had she not gone back.
Back in the days of Eberron, my changeling rogue had a surprising amount of those moments for a Chaotic Neutral on the sheet. Vixen was loyal to herself, her friends, other changelings, then anyone else in that order. Unfortunately for the party, getting to know Vixen was incredibly hard, since she obfuscated her true self in layers and layers of deception and the only way to actually begin to win her trust was to show trust to begin with.
Soon after joining the party, we were confronted by a highwayman known as the Crimson Mask. After defeating him in the fight, one of the party recalled his considerable bounty. While she was on watch, Vixen decided to chat with the guy. He revealed during the chat that he was a changeling who had turned to banditry to feed his kids. Vixen called him on his sob story. He laughed and replied that he enjoyed the adventure. She nodded, hid a knife on his person and went to check on the other side of the camp, stating that she knew how hard it could be. Never revealed herself as a changeling, just let him go. The party was angry, but none of them could beat Vixen’s bluff and having a hidden blade was just the kind of thing a highwayman would do, so they let it go.
Later in the adventure, we are taking down a group of Emerald Claw and this vampire shows up. Vixen, being ever prepared for such things, hits the vampire in the face with a vial of holy water and the GM goes pale, frowns at me, then says it does nothing. “Nothing?” I repeat. “Nothing.” He confirms with a sour expression. “But he’s a human with pale skin, fangs and cackling about how he’s going to drink our blood?” Gm nods. I nod. Gm and I stare at each other for a moment. Vixen drinks a potion of invisibility. Two rounds later, Vixen knocks the “vampire” unconscious with a sap sneak attack. Interrogation reveals that he is not a vampire, but a changeling pretending to be a vampire. Vixen does not interfere in his execution, but because she hates the Emerald Claw. She’s from Sharn, and did not take that whole tower dropping thing lightly.
Later, a slightly different party and a higher level Vixen are in Xen’drick, and we are hiding from a T-rex. Our cleric decides this of all moments is the time to heal himself, and the T-rex is on us in a second. The young warblade, who has stuck his head on the block for Vixen a number of times by now, tells us all to run and he will fight the T-rex and hold it off. The rest of the party follows his advice, because they are terrible and we were legit underleveled to fight the T-rex. Vixen refuses to leave her friend at this point though, and rolls an incredible tumble to get into flanking position, then reveals her Warlock dabbling with an explosive critical sneak attack/Eldritch Blast Hideous Blow that the warblade followed with a critical from a Tiger fang technique and we drop the T-rex. The Warblade doesn’t even question the explosion of violet fire, just stating that was an impressive magical rapier I had.
I will have you know that there was a not-inconsiderable amount of agonizing over this point. It’s always tough writing for a mixed audience, where half the people are fans and the other half have never heard of the IP. “The group tromped off through literal Labyrinth” just doesn’t have the same ring to it though, so I stand by my decision. 😛
GJ on that T-rex btw. It’s always nice to see the dice gods reward proper heroism.
I get you, and hence the emoji. “The group tromped through an underworld filled with screaming ghosts, monstrous undead and creatures that were never meant to die, but somehow were killed” is a bit wordy, though more accurate. I love the paradox of the Neverborn sitting in the Underworld going “We can’t be dead. We can’t die!”
Best Exalted play in my group’s history: dude used Zeal to convince the Neverborn that creation had been destroyed. Their fetters broken, the big bad ghosts vanished in a puff of logic.
“Core values” I main Paladin. That said, many more nefarious players will ignore your core values unless you use the bludgeon of “I have to”. It’s not actually that “I have to”, so much as it’s the right thing, but “I have to” stops the argument in its’ tracks.
Right on. Careful of relying too heavily on the tactic though! It’s one small step from “being true to the character” to becoming “it’s what my character would do guy.” Nobody likes that guy.
I actually think Gollum is a good role model here. He argued himself into giving up on he Ring, only he never gave up on it completely. In other words, he got to participate in the story by compromising without betraying his character.
All the horror stories of “It’s what my character would do” are aboot the character being an asshole. It’s rarely aboot the character being a good person unless it screws the group, and being good doesn’t mean being stupid despite popular belief.
I feel like after 300+ comics of getting to know these characters, this scene went exactly how I was expecting it to go – and I love it. <3
I have a fewww characters with strong values – I don’t remember any times they came off particularly strong. Which is a shame. I love some good drama almost as much as Wizard does, but it feels off to chase after it… so it rarely happens. And the few times it has happened, my group has been less enthusiastic than I am to explore it. Sad times for my drama queen persona. :p
One day I wanna try a long-running game with, like, 80% strong roleplay. Gotta find the right group for it, though.
Somehow missed this comment! Thanks for the kind words. Getting it right caused a not-inconsiderable amount of anxiety. 🙂
Our party’s warlock has stated her mission is to corrupt our well-intentioned but clueless paladin in Curse of Strahd. She actually gave some fancy scrolls to the paladin after he lied to save the rest of the party, saying “Nice job. Didn’t think you were man enough to do that.” (Warlock was then throttled offscreen by Cleric for confusing Paladin, but I digress)
As the DM, I’m having a great time watching my PCs scheme and connive. 2 of them are already plotting on joining Strahd if they get the chance : )
I have to ask, what is Thief reading?
Warlock drama sounds amusing, but I’m always wary about that kind of drama spilling into real life. So just to double-check: everyone knows that PVP is kosher at your table, right? I don’t mind a little PVP, but I prefer to know it’s a possibility before getting blindsided. YMMV of course.
If you look closely you can just make out the title: “Wizards are from Mars, Rogues are from Venus”.
Yep, everyone is fine with PvP. Last campaign only one PC got turned into a handbag by the others, so this round everyone is on guard and eyeing each other suspiciously. Especially since they know Strahd is trying to turn them (against each other).
Well then fair ball, says I! That kind of paranoia adds a certain mystique in Ravenloft.
For some reason I read that title as “Wizards and their maps, Rogues artheft Venus” and was imagining an entirely different heist story for the book.
…That book sounds amazing.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… Lol 🙂
I think this is one of the most funny comics i have read in a while. Wizard crying and thief just, meh. That dress, that ridiculous “Little house in the prairie” dress. The “Wizards are from Mars, Rogues are from Venus”. Last but no least “My alignment goes both ways” 🙂
Aw shucks. You old flatterer you.
A bit of trivia for you: I’d actually meant to have Thief in the foreground reading her book back in this one:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/crossplaying
As Laurel explained however, making her large enough in the frame for the book title to be legible would have screwed up the composition. I gave up on the gag, but Laurel took it upon herself to add the book back in this time around, even though my script didn’t call for it. I’m happy she made that call. 🙂
Thanks for the trivia, I will sell it like in fifty years for some… fifty-years-in-the-future-currency?
Laurel make a good decision, i suppose that as an artist she is the more adequate to make that choices. Also she really can make a man like Wizard look nice in a dress after turning him in a… Woman? Queer elf? Well at least even when we know what would happen with Thief and his new old girlfriend, some mysteries remain.
We’re a creative team. Sometimes I’ll ask for a change in her art, sometimes she’ll punch up my scripts a bit. Usually the comic is better off as a result.
That is good. Being a good couple of artist can be difficult, but if the two of you complement and make the best of each other, then your work will be the best of both of you.
I’ma guess that Wizard is going to get the exact same amount of agonising over being an ‘inadequate lover’ out of this as before the ‘Lord Cragchin’ quest.
And Rogue still has the same ‘arcane implement’ jokes on stand-by.
Homegirl has craft skills:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/crafty-thief
It’s funny you should mention a campaign going completely off the rails in hell. I was playing a Changeling (Eberron Race) Wizard. She was morally grey when the campaign started, but eventually became attached – not romantically, mind you – to an ascetic monk named Asher the Joyous.
He was so set on saving the soul of a scourged paladin, that he marched right into hell to do so. We had to get to the 4th layer and the DM wouldn’t allow planar travel to bypass any layer. It was when he got murdered saving my life on the 2nd layer by a mythic assassin only known as the Jackal that I had to make a hard decision. Abandon ship or see it through even though it wasn’t my cause and my odds of survival were low. . .
We never got to finish that campaign, but she continued to march through Hell with such a single-minded purpose that even the Arch-Dukes took notice. It may not have been her value to start with, but she upheld the torch that her friend left behind.
Love it.