Doing the Impossible
Today’s page marks the end of the Paladin/Necromancer arc we began back here. Having decided to make a go of simultaneous do-gooding and necromancing, we now leave our mistress of undeath to contemplate her alignment, while our master of Lawful-Stupidity does what he does best. Whether he will ever succeed in 1) performing enough impossible tasks to impress our big blue goddess (who really ought to get a proper name); 2) satisfy the requirements for divine heraldry; and 3) use the fringe benefits of demigod status to write his own paladin code… is anybody’s guess. It’ll be fun to watch him try though.
As long as we’re talking about impossible tasks (again), let’s spare a moment for that unhappy fish. Maybe I’m the weirdo here, but I always thought that cutting down the tallest tree in the forest with a herring ought to be possible. Like… Couldn’t you tape it to the other end of a two-handed saw? Sure it’s not much fun for the herring, but it ought to be possible. Or what if you go for the linguistic shenanigans? Just dump your l’il fish buddy in a bucket and let him supervise. Suddenly you’re cutting down a tree with a herring! And even if you’ve got to literally use the fish in the cutting process, couldn’t you use fish oil to sharpen a proper axe? Or let its tiny fish bones lightly score the trunk? (You didn’t say what percentage of the tree I had to cut down with the herring!) Or in a pinch you could even [insert crazy bullshit from today’s comments section].
The point is that players will come up with a “clever” workaround. And as you might guess from the my brilliant ventures in fish-based deforestation, “clever” gets the quotation marks for a reason. You see, it doesn’t matter if you believe your wish was adequately worded. Or if your alternative answer to the sphinx’s riddle technically meets the requirements. Or if your familiar could conceivably—in some universe—actually help you with the Help action. What matters is convincing the guy behind the GM screen that it works that way. And as much as the Clerics of the multiverse might favor hard and fast rules, this shit is always open to interpretation.
Bottom line is this. When your brilliant idea might or might not work, and when the deciding factor is the necessarily-subjective opinion of an overworked nerd with all the plates of an other-world spinning through their brain, you can never be sure what’s impossible. You just have to go for it. And that is precisely why this guy has a catch phrase.
So while I have no doubt that goddess names and herring debates will dominate today’s comments, what I’d really like to hear from you guys is “attempts at the impossible.” When have you tried something that really shouldn’t work, but you managed to do the deed anyway? Was it genuinely clever Aslaug-ing, or total fast-talking bullshit? Whatever the flavor, tell us all about those times you convinced your GM to permit shenanigans down in the comments!
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How many shrubberies has poor Paladin here already been forced to acquire for this quest?
At least two. I especially liked how the second was slightly higher so you get the two-level effect with a little path running down the middle.
I liked the Laurels particularly.
Me too, bro. Me too.
Awww.
Improvised weapons are still valid for SMITE in 5e. If Pathfinder, well let’s hope it’s an evil tree.
Even if it’s not…even if the DM rules it does 1 base damage, wood only has a hardness of 5. If he’s 5th level, has Power Attack, and his Strength is 16, that’s 4 net damage per attack.
The tree only looks to be somewhere around 20 feet thick, which is 240 inches, which is 2,400 hit points. So Paladin would need to make 600 attacks. If he only made one attack per round, that would only take an hour—and his BAB should be high enough that he can make two!
Of course, this number goes down if we assume Paladin has a higher Strength or BAB. (Example: +11 BAB, 18 Strength, and Power Attack gives three attacks per round at 10 net damage each, requiring only eight minutes.) But however you crunch the numbers, Paladin should be able to cut down this tree!
…if the wet herring actually does damage. But it should, it’s in the rulebook!
You can punch a warrior clad in full plate to death with bare hands and not suffer any injuries yourself, saying that you make no damage with herring is just GM being pissy. And very much dependent on the rules we use, 5th doesn’t have BAB.
Also if the gm starts arguing that herring isn’t as hard as tree and thus has no effect I would just go on to say that any sword cuts do no damage to my full plate, no not even Katana, actually any non blunt damage is reduced and even stabs need to be aimed at points not covered by plate. And insist that shield bash should do a lot more damage. Seriously, what’s up with that?
Point 1: The Hendbook-verse is pretty consistently PF1-esque, as evidenced by characters like Oracle, Magus, Summoner, and Kineticist, based on classes that exist in PF1 but not 5e (or 3.5 or PF2, for that matter). So I used PF1 rules.
Point 1b: 5e doesn’t have Power Attack, either. Drop that and Paladin’s in trouble.
Point 2: There’s RAW and then there’s common sense. Common sense says a herring can’t cut down a tree.
Point 3: Shield bashes have low damage because their real-world disadvantages are tough to model in D&D mechanics. Shields aren’t supposed to be primary weapons, they’re supposed to be shields.
Common sense also says that when shield makes an impact you drop, end of discussion. And if they are supposed to be what shield is for why such a nonexistant bonus to defence in most games? Patfhinder and DnD have what 1-2 for non magical ones. Warhammer Fantasy, Praedor and even the d20 Game of thrones have more respect for shields.
Actually, RAW is on the side of can’t cut it down, too. A little-known rule is damage type vs hardness. Like a sword won’t cut stone; you need a hammer or pick for that. Wood would need slashing damage or a truly immense strike.
By this time next year, all four of those classes should be in PF2e~
Katanas are thrice as sharp as European swords and thrice as hard for that matter too. I’m pretty sure a katana could easily bisect a knight wearing full plate with a simple vertical slash.
Aren’t you confusing the katana with the odachi, which could probably go through a mounted knight and his horse, too? 😉
That’s it. I’m sick of all this “Masterwork Odachi” bullshit that’s going on in the comments right now. Katanas deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that….
etc. etc. copypasta etc.
@Rock …that’s the only problem you see with the copypasta?
I figure freezing the Herring might make it easier. Or just find an evil tree so you can smite it for absurd amounts of damage.
Does the paladin class have access to fish-freezing magic?
Evil tree it is! I hear there’s some in Middle-Earth, though Tom Bombadil tends to soothe them to sleep.
I propose we call the Goddess one of the following: Beh’loo, Bandonka, Nay’vee, Her Blueness, Hostess of the Realm of Slow Mice and Infinite Cream (unless that’s a Ratfolk deity), Big Winged Godly Gal (BWGG).
This is going to be a LONG multiple choice list on the Patreon poll.
“Her Blueness, Hostess of the Realm of Slow Mice and Infinite Cream”
Wolf Speaker, right?
I think Magus would be happy worshipping her.
Are we ever gonna see the rest of the Godly cast? Maybe see how they interact for a bit? I imagine their divine interactions would be not dissimilar from that of PCs.
“What do you mean your divine domains are ‘Cheese’ and ‘Mice’? Didn’t you pick any combat-useful domains when you ascended?”
“Yeah, our pantheon could really use the healing domain right now…”
Bring Dionysos, Bachus or any alcohol related god And I will happily pick any domain they come with, as long as I get either skills to brew my own or cast “Create beer” spell.
Pathfinder has that with Cayden (see the unique spell rules for clerics).
https://www.aonprd.com/DeityDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Cayden%20Cailean
You already got Tyr and Lathander. Why more do you want?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/god-shopping
I vote for calling the blue goddess Diva.
In Latin, it literally means “goddess”, so it suits the comic’s nam8ng conventions, and the Latin gives it a bit of the exotic. 🙂
It does make her sound like a bit of a prima donna, though.
Well, she’s a goddess. For most of them, it comes with the territory…
It’s certainly getting crowded with Divas up in here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/diva
So far, I like the blue lady better than drama queen Wizard. :p
I was always partial to Malibu Wizard myself.
I dig the idea of having the herring there in a bucket, playing foreman. ^_^ Me and my herring buddy, getting the job done! ^_^
Finally found a use for the quipper stats:
https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Find%20Familiar#content
I reckon use a sandblaster with added chunks of herring.
The bitch is that the quest text specifically said “a herring.” You’ll have to collect and reload the guts friggin’ constantly!
Use the Herring as bait to catch a larger animal. Then sell the larger animal at the market and use the proceeds to buy a really big axe.
Red paperclips are among the mightiest of items.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_red_paperclip
Huh. TIL.
This is fantasy, you need to lean into that with your solutions! Extend fins, and then cast stone to flesh (from a scroll most likely)! Instant stone saw!
I would like to put forward the name Azure for the goddess. It has a nice ring to it, and there is no need to get too fancy
I like this idea. In fact, I’d approve of naming all Handbookverse gods (that aren’t obvious expies of other fantasy deities) after colors; makes them feel otherworldly, compared to the class/role-based names (most of) the mortal cast has.
This is my favorite solution thus far for herring-based arborism. Well done!
I also quite like Azure, and will make sure it goes on the list for this month’s Patreon poll.
That said, my own feeling is that the goddess ought to be in keeping with our current crop of eldritch entity naming conventions (i.e. Archfey and Demon Queen). That’s not for me to decide though. 🙂
Taking this naming convention in mind, I suggest “Big Blue Goddess” as a name for the big blue goddess.
I really feel like I ought to point out that it would be flesh to stone, not the other way round, but that’s a pretty good solution!
Yeah, writing that, I kept thinking “Make sure to say flesh to stone, not stone to flesh!” Still failed my roll
I can neither add nor detract from the permutations of piscine pine pruning listed above.
I will say that my proudest moment of finagling was convincing the DM that since a) Goggles of Minute Seeing (in 3.5) are steampunk aviator specs that are worn on the face/head, and b) Eyes of the Eagle remain magical contact lenses like the eye cusps in Jack Vance’s “Eyes of the Overworld,” the former should count as either head or eye wear and could be worn simultaneously with the latter, so long as the wearer didn’t wear any other helm/hat/crown/mask item.
The icing on the cake was beginning my argument with “Oh, that? Remember when you said…” The DM may or may not have ever said such a thing before that session, but he was willing to let it go forward.
Gain 50 xp.
I may have a new Occultist comic lined up now. Gamesmanship indeed!
So Wikipedia lists several notable people by the name of A. Herring. Given the theme of doing the impossible, my favorite candidate would be the biostatistician Amy Herring, who published a (tongue-in-cheek) 2013 paper “Strange Nativities” concluding that the rate of virgin births in a surveyed population was 0.5%.
If Paladin asks Dr. Herring to take one end of one of those big two-person crosscut saws, he’ll have an (actually quite efficient!) way to cut down the mightiest tree in the forest with A. Herring.
I always wondered if Common tracks 1:1 with English.
Judging by the puns made at every D&D game I’ve been part of? Even excluding the ones made by me, it’s gotta track pretty close.
(Also, if it’s not then the handouts in every adventure have been pre-translated for player convenience.)
I would suggest The Goddess Ekke Ekke Ekke Ekke Ptang Zoo Boing (formerly Ni).
lol. Onto the list it goes!
I lol’d. Then Laurel vetoed it, which made me lol harder.
Truly an overreach of executive power if ever there was one.
If we drop the “a” we could easily make a succession of somewhat flimsy saws either from the herring bones or by freezing them solid
If we also drop the word “cut” part it becomes very simple to do. Decomposing flesh releases explosive methane and hydrogen sulfide gases and so with enough dead herring, some sealed containers, and an ignition source you could create an explosion to crack and/or knock over the tree
Somebody get Adam Savage on the phone right damn now!
For your second option, I feel like it’d be easier to use ‘be not’ on the herring from a safe distance
“Cut down the tallest tree in the woods with a herring.”
If you cut down all the other trees first, the remaining saplings become defacto “the tallest trees”, making the tallest sapling a much easier target than the Ancient Red …ummm… wood … that pally is currently hacking at with a herring.
So we’ve reduced the difficulty of the task with an incredible amount of prep, and/or a phonecall to sorcerer for some rented firepower.
Now that the enemy has been debuffed, we work on our weapon.
A herring is an oily fish mostly from the Clupeidae family, they rarely get over 18 inches long, however they are also often called “Silver Darlings” as well, meaning that our fish is likely masterwork, being silvered, and available for enchanting if so. “but wait” I hear you saying, “the fish is not a masterwork weapon, it is an improvised weapon”.
“Very well,” says I, “It was worth the attempt at lawyery.”
Instead, we shall use the Paladin’s Divine Bond feature
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/Core-classes/paladin/#Divine_Bond_Sp
we can give our fish an enhancement bonus equal to one plus another one per three paladin levels past five AND some special effects. I recommend “flaming”. These last for one minute per paladin level.at the minimum to use this ability, that’s five minutes. Fifty rounds of enhanced fish weapon attacks, even with a miniscule damage die from a less-than-foot-long-fish, those enhancement and fire damage bonuses add up over fifty rounds of swinging…
…at the tallest remaining sapling in the woods.
So that’s what Sorcerer was up to!
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/damage-type
One could always reanimate the herring and buff its damage output. Not sure if giving Necromancer a call would go against the letter of Paladin’s task.
Just have Necromancer cut the tree herself. She ascends to demigodhood, designs a paladin code compatible with dating a necromancer, problem solved. Probably.
If Paladin could just call up Necromancer to hang out, this tree business wouldn’t be a problem.
In my first game, when I was just a child, we had gotten ahold of a scroll that could transform a party member into a dragon. We used it to defend our half-build castle against a siege, by transforming the fighter. After the fight I realized that this was the perfect opportunity to get some great crafting materials (My character was a hobbyist sword smith). So we chopped off the fighter dragons tail, before he transformed. Gaining several barrels of dragon blood, a bunch of scales and some bones. The fighter did take massive
damage, but that was a sacrifice we were all willing to make.
Later in the same game I got kicked to death by my donkey, that I insisted on trying to ride, because the GM didn´t want to make rules for riding. Happened again after they raised me from the dead, because I had spent a fair amount of money on that donkey and I wanted a mount, dammit. So I guess exploiting polymorphs is okay, but riding a donkey was a step too far for the DM.
I always heard about the cutting off bits of transformed party members thing as a (non-serious) way to avoid starvation. Never occurred to me that it could be actually useful as a mat farming scheme. Well played!
I mean, if you aren´t crafting weapons and armor out of your party members (And yourself) are you even trying? Gotta have that personal connection.
Besides, it allows the Cleric to cast regenerate and if there is one thing I know about Clerics (Mainly from playing one) then it is that they love to cast regenerate.
An oldie but a goodie: So the Tomb of Annihilation module is written to assume Acererak either kills your party but you thwarted his plans anyway, or you kill him and are triumphant but he gets to be recurring and marketable because Lich. My Dwarven Devotion Paladin knew that killing is a temporary solution, so he resolved to Captain Kirk the situation by containing Acererak.
Plan 1: There’s a **Mirror of Life-Trapping** in the Dungeon. We schlepp it around, and if we encounter him we pin him down in a **Silence** spell and make him stare at it. Night Hags swooped in to smash it before going ethereal and getting out.
Plan 2: There’s a Beholder in the dungeon. Prey upon its natural paranoia and egomania to convince it Acererak wants to betray it so we can get the Beholder to petrify him. Ended with a dead Beholder and a disintegrate’d Wizard.
Plan 3: One of the NPCs who was in the mirror from plan 1 was a local, and she said “If we go any deeper we’ll hit lava”. My genre-savvy Kirk-Dwarf realized this meant there would be lava in the final battle. He had all the tools he needed: A Dao we had rescued from elsewhere in the Dungeon, an Evocation Wizard, skill at wrestling, a final battle in catwalks over lava, and the guile to put it all together. Acererak was thrown into the lava, the Wizard solidified the top layers into obsidian with **Cone of Cold**, and our Dao flew down and extracted him via **Stone Shape** before his prison melted away.
Trapped in his obsidian prison he was unable to move or speak, rendering him incapable of using his potent magic to escape. As a Lich he could not suffocate, starve thirst, or die of exhaustion. He couldn’t even sleep, so he couldn’t dream. All he could do is sit in his hellish sensory-deprivation-chamber and stew on the words of the Dwarf who put him there:
(Read the following in a proper Dwarvish New York accent) “How does it feel Asscrack; to know you brought every part of this upon yourself? How does it feel; to be stupid!?”
Sounds like a GM who REALLY wanted their big bad to stick around.
it is not super creative, but RaW, the Sentinel feat allows you to stop any creature that attempts to move away from you if you hit them with your reaction… ANY creature.
So far, I have stopped three ancient dragons and I can’t remember how many giants from leaving my space by smackin them.
Our group calls it our anime moments XD
I’ma leave this link right here:
https://i.imgur.com/I69beX1.jpg
Paladin here should consider himself lucky, at least the herring is blue. If it were red he would really be in trouble.
And if the herring is green, he should accelerate through the tree at a safe speed.
For Paladin : just get some high level caster to polymorph any object the herring into a saw, you’re welcome. (at least in pathfinder, theyt made it clear that polymorph only change the shape but the thing stay the same type etc.)
as for impossible, in a game i run the party had to go to the other side of the world which no-one has ever been able to do so (magical storms that destroyed anything that tried to move through and prevented movement and teleportation etc.) in the end they had to resort to an ancient ritual that took them out of time itself and came back into time after the worlds made half a cycle around itself. getting back was even worse as they missed the land line and got back in the ocean.
Nicely done! I hope you didn’t meet any absolutely-immovable-rods on your way through orbit. Those things play merry hell with low-earth travel magic.