Ugly Sweater Cloakers
Happy Holidays from Handbook-World! Or at the very least, I hope yours are happier than Team Bounty Hunter’s. Getting mauled by ugly sweater cloakers is not my idea of a good time. Then again, this is exactly what the people wanted. Asked to vote for an appropriately festive encounter, our Quest Givers over on Patreon settled for these monstrosities. Better luck next year to all the nutcracker golems, black figgy puddings, Christmas treants, present mimics, and wendigos that didn’t make the cut. Also better luck next year to Team Bounty Hunter. They just can’t seem to get the hang of Yule.
Of course, this entire situation could have been avoided if Magus was a little more willing to metagame. I guess she gets points for sticking to the oblivious catgirl shtick, but come on! Your partymates are dying! Maybe assume that you made your Notice Stuff check and help them!
If we’re being fair though, it isn’t always so easy. That’s because the player isn’t necessarily the one who gets to decide what they notice. Just consider the situation at hand. A couple of creepy crawlies have popped out of the wrapping paper and thrown themselves at our beloved bounty hunters. Clearly, the unsuspecting adventurers getting attacked know exactly what’s going on. But what about the character sitting five feet away? Maybe Magus just thinks that Inquisitor and Ranger really, really hate the pattern. Maybe their cries of alarm are just cries of revulsion from a pair of hard-to-shop-for heroines. These shenanigans make a nice gag in a comic, but it has the potential to be obnoxious in a game.
This is exactly the sort of situation where GMs ought to be careful. Asking for a Perception or a Sense Motive here is redundant. If animated knitwear wants a piece of me, I’m guessing that my buddies will understand I’m not performing a sudden and violent piece of improv puppetry with my new pullover. I’m being friggin’ attacked! The same logic applies to invisible enemies, mental attacks, and spotting McGuffins in the midst of melee. Tacking on an extra roll to glean information about the environment may seem logical. But in these kinds of situations, it can just come off as arbitrary, especially since your allies can just explain what’s going on. Worse, it really slows down the flow of play. Nobody likes being told that they don’t get to act for the round because they’re suddenly, inexplicably oblivious. What I’m saying is that surprise rounds can be a lot of fun, but only when they’re uses responsibly.
Question of the day then! Have you ever been victimized by an unnecessary Notice Stuff check? What was the very-obvious information in question? Tell us all about those irksome unneeded Perception checks down in the comments!
ADD SOME NSFW TO YOUR FANTASY! If you’ve ever been curious about that Handbook of Erotic Fantasy banner down at the bottom of the page, then you should check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Twice a month you’ll get to see what the Handbook cast get up to when the lights go out. Adults only, 18+ years of age, etc. etc.
Happy 555th comic! Because what else could one celebrate on this festive day? 😀
Well in that case, it’s traditional to get comic writes expensive and highly-fungible gifts on the occasion of a 555th comic. I shall wait beside my post box. >_>
Ahh, this made me laugh. ^_^
Thank you, Laurel and Colin.
And Merry Christmas, everyone.
I think the Quest Givers chose wisely on this won. And Merry Christmas back atcha.
Merry Christmas and other December celebrations and holidays everyone! May you be spared a visit from Dragon Claus. He sees you with his blindsight, you’ll know when he’s awake. He cares not if you’re bad or good, so just run for your lives sake!
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oO2Nww
Dang. That’s a good art.
I think this comic is an example of a fascinate effect being used on Magus. Sadly that effect would break from any obvious combat, making it one of the most useless abilities Bards and most monsters get unless you get a perfect situation where you need to distract someone or prevent someone attacking without the effect being broken by immediate combat.
I hated having to explain to my paladin buddy how Litany of Eloquence actually does.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/l/litany-of-eloquence/
Dude was extremely disappointed.
Don’t worry Magus, the Holiday Spirit is waiting for you to go to sleep to start draining those levels from you to sustain it’s unholy, incorporeal existence.
Holiday Spirit? Naw. That’s just The Evil Party:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/christmas-spirits
Poor Ranger. She was hoping for a big present with airholes and chains. No pet Rust Monster, Aurumvorax or Disenchanter for her this year.
I should go back to her being an animal-lover, shouldn’t I? It was cute the first time:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/monster-adoption
Ima make a note.
Situational awareness has never been a thing with Magus…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/betrayal
Tarkin.exe
Of course, the question now becomes: did the sweater cloakers mail themselves to Team Bounty Hunter… or did someone send them as a ‘special present’?
…
Heck, maybe it was the Krampus-cosplayer Magus stabbed last year.
Do cloakers understand the nuances of the postal service?
Who knows? It can be surprisingly convenient at times, and employees are happy to hell a paying customer… Especially one who tips and listens attentively.
Help. They are happy to help a paying customer.
There’s a reason one of the basic rules of good GMing is “never ask for a Perception check that you can’t afford for the player to fail.” If they need to spot the odd bloodstain indicating the secret door, flatly mention it to them. The Rule of Dice Rolling indicates that the players shalt always roll 1s on such a check, and then you’re in a bind.
About the only time I actually have PCs roll a Perception where there’s an actual number in my mind (as opposed to the “that sounds good enough” scale) is against enemy Stealth rolls, for surprise rounds, and against certain traps. If you’ve failed the surprise round check, it’s not that you haven’t noticed that your friend was just punched by a bugbear leaping out of a closet, it’s that you were facing the wrong direction and need to stop thinking about whatever you were thinking about and get into combat mode. (Though even this can be annoying – I once got surprise rounded by a spectre, which hit me with a flat-footed touch attack that caused 2 negative levels, then it won initiative and hit me with ANOTHER flat-footed touch attack for 2 MORE negative levels. Total dick move, evil tortured spirit. Very bad manners.)
Though there was once a fun time when a PC got KO’d and dragged into the kitchen during a social sequence when the party was scattered about the building, and all the players knew but none of the PCs did. Fortunately(?), the enemy was just about ready to spring their trap to attack the rest of the PCs, so there wasn’t too long they had to sit there and pretend everything was fine when they meta-knew it wasn’t.
We always talked about this business in our Firefly game. It was during social scenes rather than combat though. Two people would be having a private conversation on the ship, and somebody would just drop into the scene as if they were supposed to be there.
When called out on the sudden intrusion, the running gag became, “I ascend back up to the ceiling on wires,” thus returning to the stealth ninja point of origin and letting the conversation resume its proper course.
Related note, “Never ask for a Deception check you’re not prepared for the player to succeed.” And for that matter, “Never attempt a Deception check you’re not prepared to succeed at.”
TL;DR: A player wanted to get the ball moving on the plot instead of spending two hours planning how to sneak in, so he walked in the front door and bluffed his face off. He rolled a twenty, and a second natural 20 when the DM declared disadvantage. For build reasons, this took two of our five PCs out of action (they didn’t succeed well enough to be allowed unrestricted access to stuff), and a third committed stupicide shortly thereafter.
On the bright side, planning with only 40% of our resources gave us a much smaller possibility space to consider.
Happy holidays for you all. May your wishes come true and you get happiness and health. 😀
By the way, is obvious Magus know what happens and that she is in secret league with the Evil Party 😛
You aren’t proposing that we try a party-swap, are you?
I still say Team Bounty Hunter needs that 4th member. Tough part is finding a so-far-unassigned partial caster to be the next member. Bard, Alchemist, and Summoner have already been done (and I wouldn’t want ANY of them to join our trio here). Bloodrager, Hunter, Investigator, Skald, and Warpriest from the ACG haven’t been done yet, to my knowledge. Medium, Mesmerist, Occultist, and Spiritualist from OA haven’t been done either. Then again, we could always just add in our favorite female freelancers Pug and/or Street Samurai.
What about Gunslinger?
He’d be overjoyed to join, and he’d be incredibly loyal to any party that would have him.
Team BH, funnily enough, does have a fourth member in the Patreon version of the comic!
I could see Succubus infiltrating team Bounty Hunter for nefarious reasons, posing as Magus. And then getting ousted when she ends up being too competent/focused (or lacking her other handbook traits).
Meanwhile, Magus is either kidnapped (something she’s not wholly against) or lied to stick around with tem Evil, where Magus proves to be far more competent / horrifying / destructive / lovable than Succubus ever was, making them want to keep her.
I’ve never fallen victim to any unnecessary “notice stuff” checks, but just recently fell victim to some very obvious schmuck bait in the form of three extremely cursed weapons and a haunted scroll. Still figuring out the fallout to that whole mess.
Well go on man. Tell us about the curses!
The first we came across was the haunted scroll. It was RIDICULOUSLY obvious that it was haunted and cursed (literal drops of blood popping into existence on it as my character approached), but I saw a scroll and went “OOH SHINY!” and grabbed it. It’s only due to my character’s exceptionally good will save that he’s not literally crawling like a worm. The weapons we found about five minutes later after a fight with yet another horrible undead thing that nearly killed me with a pain based attack and absolutely would have if one of my fellow players hadn’t taken a pain nullifying spell for flavor ages ago. After beating the undead thing, we found what appeared to be a +2 “berserking” greatsword that seemed great for our bloodrager (it gives the benefits and drawbacks of rage in combat without consuming rounds of rage), a +2 spiked chain, and a +2 shortspear. I handed over the greatsword and held onto the other weapons as we’d expended most of our resources for the day over several difficult fights. Bloodrager takes a practice swing with the sword and… it turns out that a berserking weapon makes the wielder go into a rage and attack the nearest creatures until they’re all dead or the wielder is. Not ideal. Made worse in that when my character went to draw his sword, he drew the spiked chain instead, which is apparently cursed to force the carrier to grab that instead of any other weapon they’re carrying if they go into combat. Oh, and it’s not a +2 spiked chain. It’s a -2 spiked chain. Joy. Finally, the short spear has a chance of stabbing you if you screw up an attack. We’re gonna see how combat goes against our bloodrager in permanent rage mode this Tuesday. It’s gonna be fun.
Best rollover text? Perhaps, who knows? Not me, my memory isn’t that good. Still, cracked me up.
Happy Holidays!
On today’s topic, I’m not at all surprised that the concept of the idiot ball is just as annoying when you’re being subjected to it by a person as it is when you’re being subjected to it by your entertainment.
In my mind today’s comic is happening at a good table and Magus’ player is doing this intentionally and the rest of the team is laughing along with their character’s struggles. Maybe it was even another player’s suggestion.
Credit where it’s due: I crowdsourced this one to my buddies when the poll was still live. A game with clever dudes. 🙂
I think that was more the case back in “Frickin Laser Beams.”
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/frickin-laser-beams
Though I could definitely see it playing out like that here too. In my mind though, this is one of those obnoxious, “You were facing the wrong way. Make a Perception check at the start of each combat round to see if you notice,” type situations.
In my experience, a deliberate idiot ball being held by a PC for humor’s sake is a lot more palatable than when your friend holds an idiot ball personally. At least, in the moment—stupid decisions are often hilarious a couple years down the line.
I actually fell victim to this in a seasonal one-shot, resulting in my second PC death in 5E, and my first TPK. (Two man party so it barely counts as the latter) We were going around Santa’s village collecting thematic plot-devices to decorate a tree to seal Krampus away. We had tried to kill Krampus before that, but he retreated. While the Lore Bard was at the tree in the center of the village, my Githyanki Psi Warrior was spending his short rest eating the reindeer he slaughtered in the previous encounter. The Krampus invisibly attacked the Bard from behind, paralyzing him. Paralyzed creatures cannot scream for help. I sat there for an embarrassingly long time eating Dasher and Prancer before I made my perception check.
Critical piece of information: How far from the action were you?
Inside a stable (Where we fought the reindeer) where I didn’t have line of sight. 60′ total movement away, so as soon as I made a perception check I rushed over.
Raggamoffyn attack!
Blame D&D for the pile-of-clothing construct that attempts to possess a host by wrapping around it.
I have a cordial hatred (and possibly some PTSD) from this bastard:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/animated-object/animated-object-medium/animated-straitjacket/
Merry Boxing Day!
I dunno what it says about my group that I find it easier to think of times when someone deliberately scuffed a roll for comedic effect than times when we’ve been unperceptive enough that we missed something serious. (Possibly that we just don’t bother rolling to Notice Critical Stuff unless it’d be funny to fail.)
It says you’ve got a good GM for one thing. Also that you’re a bunch of comedians.
Honestly though, I think the thing I’m warning against in this comic is relatively rare. It just happens that it can be pretty irksome when it does come up.
I think the most surprising surprise round I’ve sprung on my players came in the form of a boss from Strange Aeons who had the dimensional assault feat line.
A ghast monk sitting on his throne, talking to the party, when out of the blue, he just appears in the center of the party and starts throwing hands. No one had any way to realize he was casting until it was already too late.
(For the uninitiated, the Dimensional Assault feat line lets you use the Dimension Door spell in place of the movement half of a Charge action, and at higher levels, lets you make your full turn of attacks out of it instead of just a single attack like a normal Charge would allow for.)
Though on the topic of unneeded perception checks… did my investigator tracking an ettercap really need a perception check to think to look up for webs? Did she really?
It used the wrong email on me, I didn’t get my pharasma icon 🙁
I may have a comic coming up that plays on this. 😛
I can’t think of any perception checks to notice obvious stuff; but I always remember the perception check in the Carrion Crown to glimpse an eldritch horror and go mad.
Isn’t that the one the made everyone go “let’s maybe not use the madness system?”
To answer your question: One incident comes to mind. It was a game in which the DM unfortunately was trying to kill a PC. I don’t know if he was targeting a specific PC, or just wanted a PC death without concern for which it was. The situation was that the PCs were staying in an Inn, and were attacked. The battle-area consisted of several rooms and the hallway that connected them. One of the PCs cast “Sickening Radiance” in the hallway – even though it hit several PCs, because it hit all (or nearly all) of the enemies, and then that PC retreated into his room – meaning that he no longer had a clear view of the hallway (nor all of the PCs that were in the AoE of his spell). My character was in the hallway, on one end, in melee combat. One of the PCs went unconscious – they were in a doorway between the hallway (at the far end) and a room. To be precise, their 5′ square ranged from the doorway threshold to 5′ into the room. When it came to my character’s turn, I reasoned I could see that my buddy was laying on the floor, so I told the spellcaster to drop concentration. The DM intervened, and said that I could not see that the dude was unconscious/laying on the floor. Clearly, through the arcane art of 4th grade geometry, I could certainly see a small – but nonzero – portion of the unconscious dude’s square. It was definitely much less than 50% – but how much would you have to see in order to see that a body was laying on the floor? I declined to argue the point with with DM. Thus the spellcaster kept Sickening Radiance going, and then eventually it came to the turn of the unfortunate unconscious PC. He had to make a death save, and also had to make a Con save vs the Sickening Radiance – failure would result in an auto-failed Death Save (which would put him a 3 fails, killing him). Well, this DM, being the utter cretin that he was, said that the PC would auto-fail the Con save because he was unconscious. Another player (not the player of the unconscious PC) protested – explaining to the DM that while Dex and Str save would be autofailed, Con saves would not be. The DM maintained his position. I spoke up and calmly told the DM that this situation was important enough for him to pause the game, look up the conditions in the back of the PHB, and see for himself that the Con save would most certainly not be auto-failed. The DM – apparently sensing his chance to kill a PC and not willing to relinquish it – still, in the face of a flat-out contradiction to the rules, refused to budge. The player of the now-dead PC was remarkably calm, polite and accepting of the situation. I think in his place – faced with such blatant abuse of power – I would have refused to allow the game to continue. But, since he accepted the obviously wrong ruling, I went along with it also.
It was around that time that I decided my participation in that game was likely going to end sooner or later, but I persisted for several reasons. One was I knew that DM was in the wrong, and it didn’t seem right for me to quit because someone else was wrong. Another was that I did not want to throw away all the effort I had already put into that game. Still, the writing was on the wall – sooner or later, the DM would try to cheat me directly, and I was determined to stand up to him.
Anyway, I’m no longer in that game. Glad to be out of it. I’m convinced that DM had some sort of mental problem. I guess different people DM for different reasons. For a very few, its about control of others – a chance to do a more socially-acceptable version of pulling the wings off flies.
When life and death are on the line, I tend to call the close ones in the players’ favor. This mess is why.
For my money, the bigger question about the unconscious PC is whether it should be obvious that they’re merely unconscious or already dead from X feet away in combat and at a bad angle. Still, what with 5e being 5e and death saves being a thing, I wouldn’t be too happy with that argument either.
GJ getting out of there.
I agree. When I DM, I’d much rather err on the side of being too nice to the players than err on the side of cheating them. Also, when I DM I try to give the players the biggest voice I can in the narrative – and I’ve never regretted that. That is, more than running their own characters, I also allow player-awarded inspiration, treasure points that players can use to select desired magic items, etc. The players & DM should be partners in crafting a cooperative narrative, not adversaries.
Regarding the merely unconscious vs already dead, either way – regardless of my character’s certainty regarding that question, it would be quite sensible for him to call for the Sickening Radiance to be dropped. The game started at level 1, and at the time of this combat the party was level 8, and this was our first PC death. It wasn’t that unusual for PCs to get knocked unconscious, but to this point we had avoided deaths by always looking out for each other, and doing whatever necessary to see to it that everyone survived every fight. Thus, I’d reason my character would have by default treated an uncertainty in whether the other party member was still alive as an imperative to take life-saving measures.
I enjoy the Handbook of Heroes – thanks to both of you for all the work you put into it, and have a happy New Year!
I’m pretty sure I took this stance before, though perhaps with different words:
If there’s an excuse for a player to know, learn of, or even just coincidentally wander into the aid of their fellow players, then allow it. Make it happen unless they SPECIFICALLY feel that their character would have avoided or been oblivious to the situation. Even then, call for a role to PUSH them into the situation.
1 round of being oblivious can be character moment, 2 rounds can be played up for comedy, but when Home is burning while Hero fiddles, they can set aside their character quirks for a few moments to play the damn game with everyone else.