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A Fate Worse than Death
  • Did someone say "Bonus Konsi"?

  • A Fate Worse than Death

    This comic follows on from the Previous comic which will almost certainly provide context.

    You can follow this comic series from the start Here. Make sure to start at the bottom (oldest comic) and work upwards.

    8
    Nothing in the rules that says contacting "a deity" means it has to be YOUR deity...
  • I think it was something like 10d8, plus poisoned condition until removed.

  • Nothing in the rules that says contacting "a deity" means it has to be YOUR deity...
  • You could absolutely just put 25 gold pieces in a pile and cast the spell, but Konsi's such a tryhard...

  • Nothing in the rules that says contacting "a deity" means it has to be YOUR deity...
  • I think this largely comes from being a protagonist in a DnD campaign for a long time, especially a roleplay heavy one. DnD characters naturally build a portfolio of exploits that any NPC character would think insane to accomplish.

    If you want the true gigachad energy though, the spell she used to contact Talona was Divination, which requires a sacrifice to the deity in question, worth at least 25gp.

    Konsi thinks it's good etiquette to make your sacrifice something the deity would approve of. For example, when she contacted Selune, she crafted some art-piece quality functional navigational tools out of silver and used those as the component in the spell.

    As Talona is the goddess of poison and decay, Konsi decided that a suitable "sacrifice" would be a bottle of lethal, slow acting poison. She spent a few days gathering appropriate herbs and mushrooms, made the poison, then promptly drank it to sacrifice it.

  • Nothing in the rules that says contacting "a deity" means it has to be YOUR deity...
  • I took a bit of a break from comics over October, so there wasn't updates then. (Although this is where the bonus Konsis are coming from)

  • Nothing in the rules that says contacting "a deity" means it has to be YOUR deity...

    This comic follows on from the Previous comic which will almost certainly provide context.

    You can follow this comic series from the start Here. Make sure to start at the bottom (oldest comic) and work upwards.

    Some people suggested that breaking up tall comics into two images within the post body would help readability in their client, so here's that.

    ! !

    We're over the exposition hump now, so hopefully following comics will have smaller/fewer speech bubbles.

    17
    Now he has to figure out how to court her
  • (Please be aware I'm talking about 5.0 here. Everything I say here is wrong for 4.0 and 3.5, and I don't know anything about the new edition.)

    It's a little complex.

    5e wasn't really designed for multiclassing, the original intention was to disallow multiclassing altogether, and the feature was only added last minute after playtesters complained. They didn't really try to balance it other than trying to make it weak enough that most players would be dissuaded from taking multiclass levels.

    The main cost of multiclassing is that it delays your class features for a level, for some classes, such as primary casters, this is a big deal - a wizard doesn't want to wait until level 6 for fireball. For other classes such as rogues and monks, they might not really care as much about higher level features. Once a rogue (played by a player who is minmaxing for power) has reliable talent, they often multiclass into something that'll give them new features (Paladin is quite popular as it increases your damage, gives you a better hit die, and adds new spells and abilities.)

    One of the biggest reasons to multiclass, or refrain from multiclass is roleplay - as this is entirely based on a character's narrative and the story being told, the consideration of whether or not to multiclass for story reasons is essentially a personal choice.

    For players looking to maximize their power, it's important to consider whether the features you'd be taking in your new class are useful in your campaign. I mentioned Mask of Many Faces, but that's a useless ability in a pure dungeon-crawler style "fight a new monster each week" style campaign.

    It's also important to think about the scope of your campaign. Many people look at the level 20 capstone abilities, which can be extremely powerful, and will argue that multiclassing is never good because it locks you out of those abilities - but consider how long you're going to be playing your character and at what levels. Most campaigns that even get to level 20 wrap up after a couple of encounters, so is that exceptional power, for two sessions, better than taking a new feature that will last you for tens of sessions?

    Most character classes, especially martials are very front-loaded. The first 5-10 levels contain most of the core features of your class, and before you've unlocked those, it's often tough to justify multiclassing - but once a monk gets access to stunning strike, do they care about other Ki powers? If a campaign is planned to end on an even level, does a full caster care about that last level when they're not getting any new spells?


    As a very very rough rule of thumb, full-casters often want to avoid multiclassing altogether, or if they do multiclass, they want to take a single splash level of another class once they have the spells they care about. For most of those classes, that's either level 6 or level 14. Martials are often more flexible, as higher level features often amount to more choice in abilities rather than mechanical power. Swapping to a different class offers different choices, and certain builds can by synergistic.

    Rangers always want to multiclass, because ranger sucks. /j

  • Now he has to figure out how to court her
  • One level of warlock buys you eldritch blast and mask of many faces.

    One level of artificer buys you the ability to cast cure wounds with your spellslots, and the ability to use medium armour.

    They're real popular splashes.

  • "Media interest" is a much higher risk than any level-appropriate encounter.
  • I did a little digital trickery to make this work. It'd be possible to try and do it with blending pencils, but for a daily drawing challenge I figured it'd be a lot faster to draw the reflection faintly, and then chop it out of the image and add it as a transparent layer.

    I'm happy how well it worked!

  • "Media interest" is a much higher risk than any level-appropriate encounter.

    Apologies for tall comic again, I don't see a way in the lemmy interface to let me upload multiple images in one post (which would let me break it up.) - in the web interface, if you keep clicking on the image it'll become full size eventually, or you can open in a new tab and zoom in, or look at it at one of my other places

    This comic follows on from the Previous comic which will almost certainly provide context.

    18
    House rule: If it's in the expanded rules, NPCs don't have access to the spell.
  • Addis explained in an earlier strip - the people making the accusations are not interested in whether or not the accusations are true, they're interested in manufacturing a scandal.

    When people with an agenda are pushing conspiracy theories, there is no test or proof you can administer that will satisfy them. They will just move the goalposts. "She found a magic way to cheat the zone of truth, that's how awful she is." "She's so corrupt she doesn't consider what she did to be cheating." "The church cheated for her and she didn't notice". "The person casting Zone of Truth is part of the conspiracy."

  • Glorious
  • I think the only 7 in here is PIGFEED. There's an 8 which is almost certainly the OP's joke.

  • "And, would you believe it, you find *another* rickety rope bridge over a pit of lava..."
  • the odd stop signs told us to stop, but the even stop signs told us to stop stopping.

  • House rule: If it's in the expanded rules, NPCs don't have access to the spell.
  • Fortune's favour would be pretty useless in this kind of situation, as it takes a minute to cast, you can't subtly re-up it during the game. You could pre-cast it and get one favourable outcome, but that's not enough to win a tournament with, and the 100gp cost would mean you're probably just wasting money. On the plus side, it's not concentration, so you could put the buff up on top of enhance ability or borrowed knowledge.


    As for the house rule, what's happening here is tomfoolery and japes.


    As for Konsi's access to this spell in specific, most of the spellcasting NPCs in our setting were created and had their spell lists defined early in the campaign. EGtW came out after they were already long established - the party actually knows Addis' spell list (it's a static list, consisting of a subset of the full cleric list). Konsi's sudden acquisition of a new luck-based spell, as an outcome/reward of her completing a major goal of her goddess, does make some kind of sense as a "special" situation.

    As to whether or not Konsi is a "chosen" it's a little ambiguous. Tymora already has a defined chosen in canon (Curran Corvalin.) Gods normally only have one chosen at a time.

    Tymora hasn't explicitly made it clear to Konsi that she's chosen, just that she has a mission to fulfill, favour and support. Likely, Konsi's on the path to becoming Tymora's chosen, but she's not there yet, she's just an important priestess that's going places.

  • House rule: If it's in the expanded rules, NPCs don't have access to the spell.
  • As October has recently passed, here's a bonus Konsi

  • House rule: If it's in the expanded rules, NPCs don't have access to the spell.

    This comic follows on from the Previous comic which will almost certainly provide context.

    The spell Konsi's talking about is "Fortune's Favour" - it's level 2, consumes a 100gp pearl to cast, and lets you re-roll a single D20 within the next hour. It's in Explorer's Guide to Wildmount.

    It's been a little while due to drawtober, and my website is (mostly) functional again, so if you want to read all the Konsi comics from the beginning, you can do so on my website at this link. Please be advised that these posts are presented in reverse chronological order, so start at the end and work backwards.

    10
    Tonight we play!!
  • For DnD, I normally aim for six players, and I run if there's at least four present.

    Knowing that the game will go on anyway without you is really good motivation to not flake out (I speak as someone who flakes out a bunch.) - and DnD is a very easy game to just have someone be not present for a week.

  • Setting the bar far too high
  • One time I built an arena out of kinetic sand, with shaped obstacles and dunes and stuff, then scraped a grid into it for battle. I built some working pit-traps into the sand itself that only collapsed with enough weight was placed on them, and I glued small weights to the bottom of the player minis to trigger the traps, while using light plastic kobold minis for the monsters, which did not trigger them.

    The next week my girlfriend responded by running her game with a functioning sewer system with variable water levels.

  • If you want healing so much, get your complaining butts back here.
  • alright, I'll send her over...

  • Stop in next week for more spellcasting tips from Advice Goblin.

    You can seem 1 foot shorter or taller and can appear heavier or lighter. You must adopt a form that has the same basic arrangement of limbs as you have. Otherwise, the extent of the illusion is up to you.

    19
    "They said my power was petrifying gays, but it works on straight people fine?"

    I'm always cleaning up murder scenes... they all say that they want the gore gone.

    ---

    Okay, jokes are done, continue with your day.

    18
    If magic was real, we'd probably use different idioms.

    This comic follows on from the Previous comic which will almost certainly provide context.

    Just enthralled. Completely spellbound. Beguiled, charmed, under your spell.

    26
    Look, if you ask an NPC to solve the plot for you, you're going to get bad solutions.

    This comic follows on from the Previous comic which will almost certainly provide context.

    This is peak political strategy, we all know it.

    22
    When you're high level, people notice you. Shock!

    This comic follows on from the Previous comic which will almost certainly provide context.

    You might not wanna be famous, but when you're level 10, every organization within a mile is watching what you're doing.

    52
    When everything is going TOO well

    This comic follows on from the Previous comic which will almost certainly provide context.

    Zero consideration given to the possibility that Konsi realized this herself and said it deliberately.

    7
    Prove you're not a Warforged

    Both of the guards have a handle. If the guard that always lies pulls his handle, then the minecart will divert to the second track. If both guards pull their handle, the prisoners will be released. One of the handles is covered by a wooden box, where half of the wooden planks of the original box have been replaced by new ones cut from a tree that fell when nobody was around. If guard A is taller than guard B, are we getting paid for this quest?

    32
    Spice up your adventures by making side-bets on whatever's happening.

    This comic follows on from the Previous comic which will almost certainly provide context.

    Zero consideration given to the possibility that Konsi realized this herself and said it deliberately.

    9
    Why are our characters the protagonists everywhere they go?

    This comic follows on from the Previous comic which might help provide context.

    Audience entry cost is a silver piece, which you flip. You get to keep it if you call the flip correctly.

    14
    Gambling can be Deception vs Insight, or Sleight of Hand vs Perception... or raw INT, or Strength (if it's arm wrestling) or Intimidate or-

    This comic follows on from the Previous comic which might help provide context.

    Why would Konsi play with such a handicap?

    1. Growing up as a street urchin, she never really had access to lots of clothes. When not wearing armour, or dressing up for an event, she’s still most comfortable wearing just a simple robe.

    2. She’s trying to practice keeping her cool under pressure, and that’s not effective if you have a lot of safety.

    19
    When you get your ideas from the Bards' Guild

    This comic follows on from the Previous comic which might help provide context.

    Technically any poker depicted in a comic strip qualifies for this.

    15
    Crawford won't answer my calls.

    The rules, in this case are pretty clear. The spell never mentions mirrors or reflections, it “summons illusory duplicates." Spell names aren’t indicative of their mechanical effect. See Chill Touch.

    There’s also vampire wizard statblock that has Mirror Image on its spell list.

    It would be funny if the spell just failed though.

    28
    Hey, it fits the brief...

    That's just... all goblins, right?

    15
    ahdok Ahdok @ttrpg.network

    I make comics sometimes: https://linktr.ee/ahdok

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