Powers of Perception
Poor Thief! She finally manages to break her bad luck curse long enough to make a very difficult check, and her only reward is social awkwardness. Girl can’t win for losing. Of course, this unfortunate situation exists outside of the I’m-the-only-one-who-knows-your-love-interest-is-secretly-a-horse particulars of today’s comic.
Any time you utter the phrase, “Everybody make a Perception check,” you risk a similar crisis. This is metagaming 101, and most gamers are quick to outgrow the disconnect between character knowledge and player knowledge. However, I can remember a time before my group made that transition. Story time, kids!
So no shit there we were. It was a high school game and I was a greedy rogue. I mean, the word “rogue” was right there at the top of my character sheet, so QED I must have been greedy. At least, that’s the inference my colleagues at the table made. You see, we were of an age when stealing from the party coffers seemed like a good idea. Surprisingly enough however, I wasn’t the one doing the stealing. That honor went to my pal the ranger. He had a solid little move silently score, and he thought it would be a good idea to skim a little off the top. Unfortunately for him, my spot skill was even better.
So there he was, shoveling furtive fistfuls of coins into his pack. And there I was, lying still within my bedroll, eyes half-lidded as precious gold glinted in the light of our campfire. I was the only one who had made the check to notice, and all eyes were upon me.
“I make no move. I pretend to sleep.”
The feeling of disappointment at the table was palpable. My buddies had expected alarums and accusations. Surely a greedy rogue wouldn’t stand for this sort of thing! But I bided my time and waited for the next night.
As expected, the ranger returned to the scene of the crime. Once more he rooted around within the loot chest during his watch, this time taking one of the pearls we’d plucked from a river troll’s hoard. And once again, I was the only one capable of beating his move silently check.
“I make no move,” I said. “I pretend to sleep.”
But inwardly I grinned. That’s because everything was going to plan. You see, I was a greedy rogue, but I was also a smart one. I had plans to gather evidence against this inexpert burglar. I would present him with proof of his wrongdoing, and so make him my cats-paw.
“You’ll continue with this thieving business,” I would say. “But you’re going to cut me in for 80%. Otherwise I’m afraid I’ll have to present the good Sir Smitesbury with certain proofs of your duplicity, and we both know how he loves to make an example of criminals.”
It was deliciously in-character. It would be a masterstroke of skulduggery! It wasn’t meant to be.
“Hold on,” said our DM. “I don’t think you understand what’s going on here. He’s stealing from the party treasury. From you.”
“Yeah,” said Sir Smiteby. “You’re a rogue. You’re all about gold and stuff.”
“Honestly,” said the ranger, “I feel like you’re misplaying your character.”
Remember folks: we were in high school. We had like… three sessions of experience between us. And being an extremely mature teenager, I blew up at my friends and told them exactly how wrong and dumb they were. I believe we proceeded to kill some goblins and then not play together again for the rest of the semester.
And if that seems like an unsatisfying anecdote to you, then you might understand how I felt playing through it. We all grow up one session at a time.
I understand now, many years later, that it’s tough to sit on your hands and watch another player decide to do nothing with a perfectly good plot hook. If you’ve ever heard tales of do-nothing players deciding not to warn the team that they spotted an incoming dragon, discovered an important clue, or overheard a critical NPC conversation, then you know how frustrating it can be.
That brings us, in a roundabout way, to the question of the day! When your character is the one holding the plot hook, do you feel compelled to share with the rest of the table? Or do you like to sit on that information and bide your time? Does Thief have a responsibility to confront Lumberjack Explosion about his secret superhero identity, or should she wait and and watch the ill-fated romance play out? Let’s hear your learned opinions on inactive PCs and un-taken hooks down in the comments!
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I’m so happy, is this the second time we’ve seem Thief’s eyes? I feel like I know her better now!
If you go through the backlog and catalog each appearance of Thief’s eyes, I will give you +250 XP and advantage on your next comment.
Is that 250 XP per pair?
Sure, why not? Let’s Monty Hall this shit!
Does this one count, too?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/con-con
+375 XP to Ryubbert_Narraetsor!
We’ve seen Thief’s eyes at least twice that I can think of: once in the big reveal, and once where she was ticked off enough that they were glowing through her hair — I don’t remember the exact strip number, but I’m pretty sure it involved Summoner and Rouge, so that should help narrow it down.
Oh, and once more in the twinkly anime episode.
Links or it didn’t happen. 😛
I HAVE RETURNED FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE ARCHIVES REPLETE WITH SPOILS
So far, we have seen Thief’s eyes in:
–The big reveal
–Not technically her eyes, but the full complement of eye sockets is pretty close
–Thief shows off her darkvision
–In-universe convention fanart
–Thief expresses her excitement for a celestial phenomenon (in a bonus panel)
–Meeting Summoner and Rouge for the first time
–The anime episode (so kawaii)
–Summoner being his usual charming self again
-And the elegant, finely crafted image on this very page.
Well damn. I’m sure as shit not going back through the whole thing, so Ima call this the definitive list, lol.
That’s 2250 bonus XP to spudwalt! Is there any boon you would ask of me, Hero?
Sweet, another couple quests like that and I can take a prestige class!
A boon, you say? Well… How about that cast page update? If necessary, I’d be willing to delve back into the archives to compile a list of characters that have yet to be added.
At the very least, you misspelled “libido” in Summoner’s entry.
Aha! I knew I would find this comment one day!
So in case you didn’t notice: The cast page has been updated. 😀
Oh, beans. I just realized that most of the links I tried to make don’t actually link anywhere. Take 2!
–The reveal
–Thief’s skull
–Thief’s darkvision
–Convention fanart
–Thief likes eclipses
–The introduction of Summoner and Rouge
–The anime episode
–Summoner being summoner again
-This very page
–And now we can also add weird mirror-dimension shenanigans to the list!
It depends on the type of plot hook, if that makes sense? My group has been gaming a long time, and we’ve had several people do odd characters like “I’m secretly the daughter of a super villain” or “I’m secretly involved with the head of the thieves’ guild”, what we call “Character specific Arcs.” So I’ve been known to sit those out and not tell the rest of the party, and occasionally have a character give another character a knowing smirk when I catch them in the lie to cover it up. ( I tend to have a good Perception and Sense Motive in many of our games.)
On the other hand, the party was giving me the OOC stinkeye when I picked the pocket of the “poor old man” we found in the dungeon until I pulled out a Holy Symbol of Lamashtu. The GM passed that information to me in a Paranoia note so that I could continue just smugly smiling. Later, when the “Old man” tried to cast a spell to help his fellow cultists, he reached into his pocket and looked confused. My rogue replied, “You should consider a change of religion”, then readied an action to attack him if he did anything but breathe. My GM laughed at that one. Then, after the rest of the cultists were dead, I tossed the irate paladin the holy symbol and said “He’s all yours.” I got dirty looks again, but that’s because the Paladin declared the old man a prisoner.
Why did you decide not to tell the party about the symbol?
That character was very subtle manipulation themed. Her favorite saying was “an Ambushed Ambush is no fun.” The best way to beat your enemies is to find out what they are planning, make a counter-plan that involves them not knowing you know, then throw a wrench in their plans and murder them during the chaos. I had done plans in that theme with the party before, which annoyed me when I suggested we not trust that old man and the paladin (who in his defense, was new to the party) shrugged me off like he didn’t trust me. So I used it as an “I told you so” moment.
It set up an interesting dynamic between the Paladin and I were he disapproved of my sneaky, manipulative, tricky tactics, but also was very confident that I wasn’t evil.
Something tells me Rogue would very much prefer if Elven Princess didn’t do anything with this particular plot hook.
Thief doesn’t want to see this comic get shut down over obscenity laws.
Now I feel bad about calling a cartoon character a wrong name. I’m not sure what this says about me.
It says that you care, and that you’re a good person. And also that Thief accepts your apology and won’t do a retaliatory thiefing of your doubloons.
Just a normal thiefing of your doubloons then?
I had been given a good amount of freedom in changing and creating backstories for my players, and so seeded in several plot hooks into everyone’s backstories, with many “shared hooks” that tied everyone’s backstories together. The party had very different alignments though, with a NG fighter, a LN monk, a CN rogue, and NE bard, so I knew that it would take some time before everyone trusted each other.
And so we began. The NG fighter, being fairly new, quickly decided that he didn’t trust the NE bard. The party went off on their first adventure, which didn’t have much plot, just a little foreshadowing and setting up the scene. Throughout the early levels, the bard, not fully understanding why the fighter mistrusted him, worked to gain the trust of the fighter, and after learning polymorph and turning the fighter into a T-rex, the fighter was fully won over by the bard’s charms.
With the party now trusting each other, I decided to start adding in some shared backstory content. In the next level of the dungeon, I dropped in various content that would get the players talking about their backstories, and would get the ball rolling on revealing secrets. The problem occurred when the bard and fighter had a disagreement about who should get a magic item, and the bard ended up using a charm spell on the fighter. While in-character the fighter didn’t know this had happened, out of character this had set fighter-bard relations back to square one. So, when the fighter and bard both recognised one of the hooks in the dungeon, the fighter refused to answer any of the bard’s questions. Even when the bard tried using charm magics, the fighter suddenly developed the wisdom save of a cleric, not rolling below a 15 and constantly refusing to answer any of the bard’s questions. It took around a dozen expended spell slots and who knows how much roleplaying before finally the bard managed to get his answers. (And then proceed to do nothing with them…)
Friends don’t mind-whammy friends. Especially if we’re talking 5e Charm Person, you run face-first into PVP:
There’s no way that doesn’t end in pummeling. And if Mr. Fighter happens to make his save, he just saw Vocal and Somatic components directed his way. He felt a pull on his emotions. And that’s going to result in pulling out the greatsword.
Sounds to me like you guys might want to have a come to Gygax moment and develop a new PVP policy. At the very least it will prevent “a dozen expended spell slots and who knows how much roleplaying” from taking up table time on a non-issue.
During my 3rd time playing Pathfinder with almost-novice friends (we got the Beginner Box, so the adventure was Black-fang cave) I rolled a Neutral Desna Cleric. My thoughts were that I could keep them alive without actually spoiling the surprises / fun of this set.
I decided that my main objective was to restore and protect the to-be-encountered wellspring and, in time, to build a proper shrine in or near that dungeon. So, I collected almost no loot during the campaign, content with the simple fortifications my group erected around the magical wellspring instead.
During the final encounter our rogue had brainfarted and decided to dash into the treasure pile, not spotting the sleeping dragon on top of it. By the time I exhausted my arsenal of healing spells and buffs, most of our group were either in negatives or struggling on death’s door. Our fighter managed to roll a crit and immediately fell unconscious. As the last man standing, I successfully hit the dragon in its underbelly, finally dealing enough damage to drive it away.
Looking on my unconscious and bleeding comrades and then on a pile of gold…
I decided to take a stroll through the dark side. I patched the wounded, stabilising them. I singlehandedly carried them to the wellspring chamber. And then I took the final treasury riches all for myself. With the help of the wellspring waters and a prayer to Desna, the group was healed enough to travel back to Sandpoint. I told them that I barely managed to drag them out of the fight alive, and that the dragon is still roaming around its hoard.
Other players were both surprised and frustrated in equal measures. Fighter hunts my cleric to this day (although DM said he can’t prove anything, only suspect me), and the Desna Shrine has successfully been erected in the Blackfang Cave.
The thing about fighters is that, unlike paladins, they don’t care about proof. Let’s hope he doesn’t multiclass into Ranger and develop some tracking skills!
Plot hooks are meant to be shared. Ultimately, its a team game with (hopefully) friends, so theres no real benefit to just sitting on it yourself. Most frequently all that does is make the DM spend a lot of extra time running a solo adventure for your character while the other players watch in boredom. Even if the other players don’t actually care about your personal goals at all, the fact that youre in a party and theyre important to you, personally, should be enough to get them involved, at least a little.
This is why I prefer the standard “fantasy bros party” to the “edgy backstabbers guild.” The form of the game — cooperative problem solving — lends itself to the former.
Of course, that’s if we’re talking standard D&D. If you’ve set your game up for betrayal and shenanigans (cough Paranoia cough) then the calculus changes.
I should point out that Perception is seeing things, inferring information from what you see (Such as that the man before you has hooves and is quadrupedal meaning he is in fact an equine) would be Investigation. “Oh you wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you’re not a man; you’re a chicken Boo.”
This is why I prefer to use passive perception. Players who actively search get to roll perception.
We can only assume that Thief was suspicious: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/disguise
https://66.media.tumblr.com/232b7a9419a75a0520a9a78d7c327d9c/tumblr_mzzb1j2GQh1rpbikxo6_500.png
In a campaign with my cousins, our fighter rescued a fair maiden from the dungeon who, next time we settled down for a night’s rest, was eyeing the fighter’s bedroll he was unrolling out meaningfully. So I, being a helpful but rather chaste paladin, handed her my bedroll (meaningfully) and walked off.
Unsurprisingly, late that night she switched over to the fighter’s bedroll. Even less surprisingly, she turned out to be a succubus. I was the only one who made the listen check to hear the sounds of struggle; and decided my character thought the sound was a different sort of struggle, rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.
We all had a good laugh at the whole situation; probably helped by the DM throwing us a 2nd check or something so we finally rescued the poor fighter.
Ah man… That mess is so rough. On the one hand, you know it’ll make a good RP moment. On the other hand, your boy is getting rolled by a Hell slut.
At the end of the day you’ve got to ask yourself: is the good RP moment worth a character death? Sounds like the GM made that call for you this time around, but I struggle with it as a player sometimes.
Lol, the Fighter should have known. If you’re Charisma is abyssmal, the only Woman after you similar inclined Creatures. Either that, or they want to eat you. Afterwards, if you’re lucky.
This is one of the Reasons i like to play Butt Ugly, low Charisma Characters, if someone is head over heals for you after Meeting you a Minute ago, you know somethings up.
Looks like those multiple eyes finally paid off! Unfortunately, she’s going to need to pluck out/bleach/modify memory a few of them now that she is cursed with the mental image of Princess & Vigilante featuring in the other handbook.
On the plus side, now she has all the blackmail material she’ll ever need!
I love Horsepower/ Elf Princess! But I must admit, that ship is…problematic…over on the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy. I’ve honestly yet to solve that particular squicky problem.
Well, if love can bloom between swords… https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/hot-sword-on-sword-action
I’d say the transmutation school has some answers (including a few spells/items of a certain Jackal-faced deity). Also, their relationship would explain a certain sorcerer bloodline…
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/sorcerer/bloodlines/bloodlines-from-paizo/unicorn-sorcerer-bloodline/
Nope. Nope nope nope. I henceforth ban all further speculation on this topic, lol
This can only end in centaurs
ಠ_ಠ
Ah… Reminds me of when this ship first came up, I mistook Elf Princess for Druid and was like “You know what… Wild Shape can fix this problem!”
More importantly, this opens up the possibility of a Unicorn Bloodline Sorcerer coming into the comic from far in the future and making everything awkward.
Wait… screw that, make him a Bloodrager! (Do it, Colin!)
No! No unicorn Cable. Do you wand Deadpools? Because that’s how you get Deadpools.
Two things, first: What problem you have with Thief? First you made her confirm a crit instead of just accepting her word, then you accuse her of being wasteful now she runs into a nut case in love of someone who isn’t interested. Look how sad and tired she looks. Maybe she would want to go to rest in the strong… well, puny elven arms of wizard, but now he is a girl with even punier arms. Second, does she know that the two identities belong to the same horse? What if she doesn’t know? Once in a game one of my friends choose to use the Vigilante class, but since we didn’t know his civilian identity we played that for laughs when without his disguise he sit on the table with us. It was like Bruno Diaz going to the meeting in the watchtower. But returning to Thief, poor dear, lets hide some gold purses for her to find and have a good time 🙂
I feel these issues tend to be a question of maturity. Not necessarily player maturity, though that always helps, but gaming maturity.
I remember way back when I first played D&D, with just a single battered copy of a tome whose cover bore the runic inscription: “the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players’ Handbook” along with a very promising illustration of a barbarian kicking down a door. Those first few games were a mess: we played five sessions before the designated DM announced with a worried look that maybe one’s Charisma score didn’t divide into 100% as a direct chance of convincing a character to do anything. But I digress.
The point is that we knew nothing, so the few things we thought we knew, we took very seriously. Sure enough, “I’m just playing my character” and “but your character surely must” were right in there. We had found some terribly written bit of text that implied alignments and classes to be rigid and unyielding, basically.
With gaming maturity, you learn the rules more completely, you see them in action and understand the consequences of how they are played, and hopefully you learn that the most important thing is having fun, and all the rules are secondary to that.
Player maturity helps in these situations (“I’ve got this, guys, don’t worry, I’m totally playing my character”) but gaming maturity teaches us that the situation isn’t as cast in stone as we might think.
My PC (drow cleric/necromancer) found out that the hometown of one of the warlock had been taken over by the BBEG. Thing is, we were just about to put a seperate secret plan against that villain into motion. I didn’t want us to tip our hand by haring off on a half-baked rescue mission, so I kept quiet.
The wizard’s npc girlfriend lives in that town, so he was an OOC drama queen about it for about 5 minutes. The others players mostly just seem curious about where I’m going with this.
In the 1e campaign I am a player in, all three PCs have secret backstories hidden from the other players, which I think has made the campaign a lot more interesting. One PC pretty obviously has PTSD from The War (and may have done some war crimes then). One PC I know because she showed up in another campaign is secretly a snakeperson in disguise who belonged to a clan of seducer ninjas but is currently estranged from them. My PC is literally two people sharing one body (one is dead, and her spirit tied to the other one), and they are both enemies with both of their families. The DM and I debated whether to tell the other players or not, and I think keeping it a secret has made for a better game. They’ve had plenty of hints as she swings from apathetic “I hate all of you” to “Oh my gods, are you okay? Let me heal you!”. DM and I have agreed that it shouldn’t be revealed until after both halves’ parents have come up in the story, and the dead character has been mentioned a few times. Our theory is that the reveal will be way more impactful that way.
On the other hand, I was once in a party where one PC was a fugitive and another PC was a bounty hunter tasked with finding her (but he was too dumb and she too disguised for him to figure it out). And as a result… he never figured it out and never did anything about her. (Though the fugitive character did have some fun roleplaying as she tried to deal with him, so it wasn’t a total waste.)
Okay, I don’t get this one.
So bottom left, Thief. Bottom right, Elf Princess.
Top-right, the absolute stud of a gentleman, Horsepower; masked vigilante and enemy of all evil that lurks in the heart of humankind. Hero with a rose and half-a-bag-of-oats-and-possibly-a-salt-lick-between-his-teeth. That guy. regular recurring character, Horsepower.
I’m scratching my head, here. Guess Thief just isn’t keen on those who are hot to trot cantering off with those she knows, and isn’t sure how to say it.
Every time we do a Horsepower strip, the flashbacks start to hit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03rP_O2k8XM