The Gaming Den

Oh, that's awesome!

Good art, so many problems with what's happening in it...

is that comic a deliberate satire of 13th Age?

You know, I kind of wondered if it was 13th Age myself. But the artist tagged it only as D&D on tumblr. I think it's more just representative of bad dms using MTP for their players who don't know how to make good characters. It's for a comic anthology called Death Saves, which is apparently "about our favorite dead fantasy gaming characters."

13th age does not use the term "Challenge Rating". Is there an edition where owlbears have a CR of 4 and do over 25 damage with an attack?

Looking at 4th and 5th, no. Full Attack in 3e is a different case, but not in a single attack. No clue about 2nd and prior, and I don't care enough to go track down those stats.

to crosspost my tumblr response-
really not sure how I feel about this… For one thing, that’s how D&D should feel, but that is a terrible representation of Level 2. For another thing, while the DM here has a great rapport with his players…. his actual DMing is not stellar… Third- an owlbear would be an acceptable challenge for a four person 2nd level party, a difficult one, but an acceptable one.
And then…
I don’t know how things go in WotC’s latest load of fail, but in 3e (the least bad edition), a single hit from an owlbear couldn’t drop a 1st level barbarian. A first level barbarian in 3e would start with 12+Con mod hp. A single claw from an owlbear deals 1d6+5 damage. Even a barbarian built by someone who doesn’t know how hp works and puts a 10 in con walks in with 12 hp, and gains an average of 6.5 upon leveling up to 2. If he’s raging (which he should be), he gains 1 hp per level. So even a poorly built level 2 barbarian has, on average, 18 hp, plus 2 while raging. The average damage on an Owlbear attack is 8. Even assuming some damage taken previously, it’s unlikely one hit would drop Mike. A full attack—2 claws and a bite—could conceivably do it, with an average damage of 22, but all three attacks need to hit (possible, as Mike is stupidly going the Conan route on armour), but even so, if Mike is at full health, he’d be at -2 hp, still alive, but bleeding out and needing to stabilize (which barbarians should be decent at). He could come back next session.
The wizard probably cast Burning Hands, while her optimal choice would have been to cast Colour Spray, denying the Owlbear an action for a round allowing the rest of the party to hit it twice before it even got to act. Which most notably allows the… “Assassin”… to sneak attack twice, meaning he gets to deal 1d8 (I’m assuming Longsword)+1d6+str mod twice. Probably ~10-12 damage. Mike’s barbarian can deal 1d12+str mod with that great axe, because rage give +4 str, he’s probably averaging 11 damage.
And they have a fighter too, for… some… reason. Who… has some bullshit artifact sword, so who the fuck knows (the fact that fighters need that shit is all the evidence you need that the class is shit).
So Round 1- Erasmus casts Colour Spray, Owlbear saves vrs Stun, should fail on average. Drax sneak attacks for 11. Mike rages and swings with his great axe for 11. Baylen swings and we can assume deals something like 10 damage with what looks like a greatsword. Who knows what the fuck else it does.
An owlbear has 52 hp, and just took 32 damage. It loses it’s action because it’s stunned.
Now Erasmus casts Burning Hands for bullshit 5 fire damage, and the rest of the party repeats their actions dealing another 32 damage. Hell, the biggest “problem” is that Mike doesn’t get to attack again and might feel left out.
And that’s just looking at the characters as they are, and not an optimized level 2 party of a fighter, wizard, rogue and barbarian who could conceivably drop an owlbear in a single round.

Third edition invented CR. Previous editions, there was no measure of monster power. The fact that the story does not seem to be following the rules of any edition makes that sort of tactical analysis kind of moot.

At any rate, note that the owlbear appears in the middle of a fight with multiple opponents, so the party is not at full strength.

You're getting ahead of yourself with the fighters being shit. Fighters are fine in a level 2 party. The fact that the fighter has his Secret Class Feature at level 2 is part of the main aberration in the comic. The DM is appropriating the PCs, trying to trying to play power fantasies using them. Notice how he's the one talking excitedly about how awesome they are while the players are more reserved. Between the DM being so attached to and excited about the awesome backstories/destinies of the characters and the fact that after that incident the players all decided to "lose" their character sheets indicates to me that those things were to some degree his idea in the first place.

Ancient History wrote:That's terrifying. Have some rabbits.

erik counters with vulpes lagopus.



It's super adorable!

Political discussions on the internet in a nutshell.

Definitely going in my next dungeon

Ah, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus...

Occluded Sun wrote:Ah, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus...

You, like, don't even bother to click links and read stuff, do you?

Occluded Sun wrote:Ah, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus...

They are not even similar...

What am I even looking at? It looks kind of like a crustacean-obsessed space marine in full armor. Or maybe a new demon lord villain for the next Diablo game.

It's a crab samurai. Fuller treatment here. Not sure if it's a reference to either the Crab Clan of L5R or the Heike crabs, though.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:It's a crab samurai. Fuller treatment here. Not sure if it's a reference to either the Crab Clan of L5R or the Heike crabs, though.

Oh, okay. Although if we're going down that route...

Why not, indeed

After all, Zoidberg can, with the right treatment, look pretty hardcore

As your foe or your doctor, you're not walking away from an encounter with Zoidberg unharmed.

Ancient History wrote:

Looks like it just fell out of Onimusha.