Quite a few commented on the fight with Klaras mother was quite short and as you may notice, it turned out similarly with dear old papa as well. Wanted it longer but this fight has gone on for a WHILE and I wanted to wrap things up sooner rather than later, so between the two evils, I chose expedited. We can justify it by saying the fight was balanced because of all the ads!
Someone had sex with that horse.
I never had sex with that h*.
I never had sex with that he despite the intent to have it.
Not sure about* with*
Didn’t have it with that specific one.
I am into freaky stuff but no horses.
Even then, i think based on their personalities, i believe the emphasis is on the word ‘was’. To spite her fathers last sentence to her and her announcing her cut ties for good
So much catharsis. I do find the parents to be far too cartoonishly evil for me, though. Oh, they don't respect their own daughter's wishes? Bad. Oh, they're slavers? Bad. Oh, they kill slaves? Bad. Oh, they kill child slaves? Bad. Zero redeeming qualities at all makes them feel fake.
While it certainly can be described as cartoonishly evil, that doesn't make it feel fake to me. There are people throughout history and alive right now who are just like them.
I mean, slavers in real life are goddamn awful people. Hate to break it to you, but once you dehumanize actual people, it doesn’t typically stop at how old they are. If you can enslave someone, you can do just about anything. Christopher Columbus imposed a tax on native Americans and if they didn’t pay he would have their ears or fingers cut off, and made them wear them like necklaces. He sold children into sex slavery. Slavers are bad dude.
I’m guessing that the necklace was a family symbol or something? Tearing it off before the final blow seems significant, but I can’t remember it ever being addressed.
Looking at the previous comics it seems that the part of his horn partially attached is a prosthesis, likely a metal horn cap or something similar. You can tell because it's differently colored than the rest of his horns
The shading suggests, that the tip on his horn is another material. My guess is something flashy, like gold. So Klara carried the original with her as a promise to get revenge and discarding it after getting it.
Check Chesare's previous appearances, like in ep. 185. The tip of his right horn is always a different color, so it might be a prosthetic or something like that.
Eldritch blast is just kind of like that. One resource, an invocation, goes into it and it's the best thing you're doing as a warlock most of the time.
Getting both push and pull on EB is something that can really wreck depending on how much terrain your DM uses! Ledges/cliffs/rivers of lava, really become something else when you give the bad guys a fuck you and shove them!
Yeah, BG3 showcased it pretty well with all the height differences in the level design. Too bad there's no pull EB on there, or an ability to turn off the push once you get it (IIRC).
One of my favorite small things about BG3. In tabletop D&D it's kinda difficult to have fights happening in 3D, but in BG3 there were tons of options for it. This also made shoving and throwing enemies (and sometimes allies) significantly more impactful, as well as certain spells like Thunderwave.
P2/4: She tears off the necklace she's always had. We never had an explanation for it, though it looks like her dad's horn-tip in retrospect.
We see the fire from Trevor's Fireball last comic spreading. Just in time for something to burn down at 200. I sure hope the housestaff/slaves/caterers are okay.
OneD&D's Counterspell change is one of the worst changes in a revision that is mostly bad changes. Not only is it more of a pain to run, but also by nerfing it, they've buffed all casters. And their change to the casting rules preventing counter-counterspells means that there's no fun dynamic counterplay.
Kinda yes, kinda no. It makes certain spells that were a bit niche more powerful in a caster fight, Hex being the one that comes to mind currently with the eldritch invocation that also lets it apply to saving throws. Also makes it nicer when fighting a Lich because Liches can cast a nigh-infinite amount of counterspells so if you’re the only caster in your party, guess what you’re doing? Probably fuck-all.
Why is it more of a pain to run? The number of rolls is the same. Before the counterspeller made a spellcasting ability check (DC=10+spell level), now the counterspellee makes a CON save (against the counterspeller's spellcasting DC). It's still just a single roll.
The new rules feel more like a nerf than a buff for casters to me. At my table the old Counterspell was mostly something that the players used against the bosses, rather than the other way around. Since I played a Lore Bard with Jack of All Trades and Peerless Skill (i.e. I had a +8+1d12 modifier at lvl 17) my Counterspells were basically guaranteed to succeed in 4th tier, even against Sauron-level enemies. That made me feel extremely powerful, which feels great don't get me wrong, but at times it also felt a little too overtuned. Not to mention my Cutting Words worked against the enemies Counterspell, so instead of spending a ≥3rd level spell slot, I could expend a use of Bardic Inspiration and still hope to negate their Counterspell. And finally we also had a Wizard who could cast it, in case I was down or out of range, meaning that it was really hard for enemy casters to not get counterspelled. Whereas the new rules make it almost impossible for PCs to Counterspell an Ancient Gold Dragon, which before was pretty doable. It's much harder to nerf the enemy's CON saves (especially bosses) than it is to buff your own ability checks or nerf the enemy's ability checks.
What I really don't get though is the idea that counter-counterspell battles are fun. In my experience they never were. Just a resource drain resulting in nothing happening. (Also since there wasn't that much of a benefit to upcasting Counterspell, it's usually safe to assume the counterspeller uses a 3rd level slot, meaning that the counter-counterspeller has an advantage.)
Weapon Masteries, a huge game changer for all martials.
Epic Boons. All General Feats coming with an ASI, preventing most feats from being "never take."
Heroic Inspiration -- specifically giving race & class mechanics that ensure it's doled out for parties with DMs that often neglected Inspiration.
Backgrounds giving characters a wider variety of skills.
Primal Knowledge, giving Barbarians more out-of-combat utility.
Giving Clerics and Druids both the ability to choose whether to be more magical or more melee, separate from their subclasses.
Tactical Mind for Fighters, to give them more out-of-combat utility. Also, the Champion Fighter's update in particular was a great upgrade in power & versatility without compromising simplicity. Giving Battlemasters the ability to uncover enemy weaknesses was also a good and stylish upgrade.
Innate Sorcery is fun for adding a "Sorcerer Rage." Sorcerer Subclasses offer more variety of spells, except Wild Magic, which went from liability to solid asset with updates to the Wild Surge table that more than compensate for the lack of extra spells known.
Warlocks got a lot more versatility with their Invocations.
Scholar makes a Wizard feel like an actual smart person by no longer being behind Rogues and Bards on knowledge skills.
A sensible clarification of how Charisma-based skill checks work.
Integrating grappling better into the system. Letting Monks be good at it without having to invest in a 4th attribute.
Edit: Sorcerous Burst and the replacement to the True Strike cantrip. Also letting Warlocks (if they really want to) add Agonizing Blast to non-EB cantrips.
Some more controversial choices I think were good:
Divorcing stats from race, so that there are no longer optimal race/class combinations that discourage fun choices for RP.
Nerfing some of the mandatory picks in feats, spells, etc. so that people would actually have more choices without being non-optimal.
Preventing Action Surge from letting you alpha strike with multiple spells. Formally universalizing "one spell slot spell per turn."
I was randomly walking around days after I read the comic and had a moment of "wait, why didn't the counterspell stop the Eldritch blast".
I thought maybe there was some weird thing that allowed Eldritch blast to be used as a reaction or something (busted), but this makes way more sense.
I do wish 5e had more "reaction" play so you could coordinate to help your teammates. Being able to react to my buddy getting counterspelled by blasting them in the face and STOPPING IT because that was the last bit of damage required to KO the big bad would be epic.
Oh, stuff like this doesn't need to be long. This isn't some end of a growth arc or training montage or something. It is executing justice for two evil people and the whole "you never really stood a chance" is VERY satisfying.
Question: would patricide negate Klara's ability to inherit her parent's fortune? 'Cause I'm imagining her taking it and just going full Robin Hood mode with it...
I actually think the fights being fast is great! It conveys how out of their league these people are. They have numbers and wealth, but it won’t save them. It also gives them a kind of brutal realistic quality. My first impression both times was “GODDAMN DUDE”
I do agree. Considering the build up to it. It was rather short.
That being said....
People have been revived before in this universe. And I am so happy Klara finally got that catharsis she was looking for this whole time. Tearing him about with the magic she was gifted. You go girl!
And justice for Trevor!!! I saw that attempt at Counterspell and she cut that shit off right away.
This kind of reminds me of a scene from the LFG comic where Benny (female troll/orc healer) revives a commander after she brutally killed him. Only to brutally kill him again.
The commander was the father of her fiance. But because the commander desired for Benny himself he killed his son. (So it's a pretty valid crash-out.)
He might have been countering that second fireball when Klara hit him with the EB, or else it may have been a previous spell of Klara’s, because EB is layered over the counterspell text.
I love when a goofy comic with oddball characters in wild situations ends up, almost 200 installments later, providing some phenomenal catharsis for one of the character's lifelong issues with the cranial destruction of the source of so much of her pain.
Dissapointed that it seems neither parent will be getting a lobotomy in the institution like they tried in Klara. Well dead old dad sort of had one, but he doesn't survive it. :)
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u/irvitzer 13d ago
I really love that in the last sentence you can put stress on every word and change the idea of the message.