July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

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Sessine
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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Sessine » Tue Jul 25, 2017 11:30 am

redfeather wrote:
LarsenSan wrote:This however poses a problem: if Fumbles survives he will be extremely powerful compared to his companions.
Do *you* want to have a character 10 levels higher than you, with a history of catastrophically screwing up everything he does, in your party?
LOL... Yeah, there's that!
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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by thinkslogically » Tue Jul 25, 2017 11:47 am

Bear in mind that Fumbles can get super plot-powers without necessarily becoming mechanically op. Getting 15 imprints may make him the greatest teller who ever lived, but I bet there's a trade-off, and I bet it's not as simple as suddenly getting 15 levels of cleric to play with.

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Re: Has to work...

Post by DoesNotRiskTraining » Tue Jul 25, 2017 12:48 pm

WhispersToSquirrels wrote:
DoesNotRiskTraining wrote:The Staff of Notangle sounds as if it would break the Axe of Prissian, if the Axe was really was the prison-Prissian that Big Ears believed it to be.
Isn't that what happened here: http://goblinscomic.com/comic/04132016-2
It seems to be, which suggests that everything Big Ears worked out in http://goblinscomic.com/comic/09182016-2 is wrong.

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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Belzera » Tue Jul 25, 2017 1:15 pm

redfeather wrote:I think Fumbles's history of surviving torture is likely to make a big difference to how the fifteen spirits will affect him. I figure it's a case where the pain of being flooded with so many angry spirits and their memories is what normally kills the greedy teller-to-be. Imagine having fifteen people constantly yelling into your ear; most people would go catatonic after such treatment, but Fumbles has deal with worse.
LarsenSan wrote:This however poses a problem: if Fumbles survives he will be extremely powerful compared to his companions.
Do *you* want to have a character 10 levels higher than you, with a history of catastrophically screwing up everything he does, in your party?
Haha, actually I'd play that Campaign with a good GM, but then again with my character track record I'd be that superpowered character. I swear my current character has some of Fumbles luck with rolls.

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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by RUMBLETiGER » Tue Jul 25, 2017 3:40 pm

Hm... so Fumble's fast healing after all hell broke loose is not connected to the staff. We still don't know the source of his healing from the shoulder wound, and I'm betting whatever is behind that will also help him survive this.

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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Hjerne » Tue Jul 25, 2017 7:17 pm

Everybody keeps talking about how incredibly overpowered Fumbles will be if he survives. I say nonsense.

Remember. Tellers who absorb lots of spirits become powerful... for a goblin. Goblins are incredibly weak creatures that a level 1 adventuring party will have little trouble against if it is a one on one situation. The only reason they present any danger at all to low level parties is that they tend to come in large groups. A teller who has one or two spirits is probably like a cleric who only has cantrips (or whatever you call zero level cleric spells). A teller who managed to absorb 5 spirits might become the equivalent of a level one or two cleric. That would make them overpowered so far as goblins are concerned but still weak compared to adventurers. So if Fumbles absorbs 15 spirits then he might become a level five or six cleric and wind up being boosted to the point being a level or so above the rest of the party instead of lagging far behind them because of his multiclassing.

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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by speakslittle » Tue Jul 25, 2017 8:35 pm

ForgetsOldName wrote:I've been confused about this strip since Thunt put the preview on Patreon.

We haven't seen the staff of untangle before. It's also unclear to me how one untangles a bunch of souls attacking you. Binding is not the word I would think of to describe this ceremony. More like possession or absorption.

Did Fumbles untangle Thac0 and free the spirits to flow into Fumbles? That's how it looks. If the staff doesn't do anything, then the story isn't moved forward by this update and its weird item at all. So something must have happened, I'm just not sure what.
That's just because he failed.
He wanted to break the tethers that appear to be binding the spirits to the underworld. In essence, he was trying to auto-end the ritual; what that would lead to is anyone's guess. Certainly, even Fumbles himself didn't know; he just had an idea that it could be possible to change the game. If it had worked? Maybe the newly freed spirits just GTFO (probable, if we assume they're actively afraid of the flea demons and that's why they're amping up and charging the goblins so aggressively; there's a certain reading of the last few scenes that implies these spirits may be afraid and want this ritual to end NOW), maybe the newly freed spirits just dissipate, maybe they even become allies and help fight the flea demons for a time. But in any event, Fumbles logic, his idea, I believe, was to break the thing that ties them to the underworld, thus ending the ritual. If that happens and the spirits disappear, great. If they stick around, well they still don't have the ritual's rules and power in play anymore, so they presumably become less dangerous. Heck, maybe breaking the tethers on those spirits doesn't even END the ritual. But it MIGHT remove the threat of those 15 spirits about to dogpile Thac0.

It's outside the box thinking. I love it! I think it's exactly the kind of thing I could see a desperate player coming up with in the heat of the moment. I can easily imagine a DM Rule-of-Cooling it in, and giving it an honest chance to work.

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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Caowyth » Tue Jul 25, 2017 9:00 pm

I'm willing to bet that his partial level in every class is what will allow him to survive this.

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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Chaomancer » Tue Jul 25, 2017 11:15 pm

Whatever the cause for victory will be, there's reason to hope that Fumbles will survive this: color. Note that in all the panels until the last three of this comic, the spirits have been boldly colored from head to streaming tail. For example, in the center panel here, we can see that near Thaco there's an orange tail, a cyan tail... heck, the blue and purple ones are even pretty dark. But in the last three panels, when the spirit tails are latching on to Fumbles, they all become white... the color of Fumbles' IME. They're not a separate magic any more; they belong to Fumbles.

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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Morgaln » Wed Jul 26, 2017 12:48 am

Tofu wrote:Excitement! We get to see how many classes can be enhanced magically by the accumulated experience of all the previous tellers lives ... Fumbles is going to be an impressively powered up magical cleric from now on, that is my prediction and it is as good as a prediction as everyone elses' up until I am proven false.

Good spot on how the Axe of Prissan was sundered - It is a magical binding on the axe that was broken, although the wielder is probably Big Ears, and not the entity bound into the axe, so I am a little perplexed as to how a MAJOR artifiact like the Axe can be broken but I presume it was an accumulation of many things. The attacking of a good character (Fumbles) by a Paladin, the staff and the attack on a member on one's own party (even if it was through magical means) it means that there is a lot of confusing stuff that probably accumulates to a mess of inappropriate non-paladin like activity. Hence 'Boom' to the Axe.
Except whatever Big Ears was fighting when the axe broke, it was not Fumbles and the staff. Fumbles is a paladin, the axe would have passed through him and the staff harmlessly. Since it didn't, whatever those things were, they weren't the real goblins.

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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Krulle » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:12 am

Fumbles is part-Paladin. An 11th of 2 eleventh or so.
So the Axe would have partly moved through Fumbles.

Also, the Axe does not go through weapons wielded by Paladins.
[edit]I went to dig a bit in the Archive, to back up this claim.
Big Ears and Saral Caine never cross axes, thus their fight does neither prove or disprove the claim.
In their second go, Saral breaks BE's axe on the armour, but at that point in time Saral fights without weapon, and only the Axe of Prissan is used against BE, and Saral is no Paladin, so the fight is irrelevant in that regard.
In the Battle of Brassmoon City, starting with Fumble's execution, only BE wield the Axe, and he does not fight against Paladins.
In their fight against Kore, the Axe of Prissan also never hits a weapon wielded by Kore.
But here, Big Ears attacks Forgath, the dwarfen Paladin Cleric, and the magical hand-weapon of Forgath deflects the Axe-attack.
So, yes, finally I can rest. The Axe does not go through weapons wielded by Paladins.[/edit]
Edit 2: some strikethroughs and changed words due to an error of mine a fellow forumite pointed out.
Last edited by Krulle on Wed Jul 26, 2017 4:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by GathersIngredients » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:46 am

Forgarth is a cleric, but I'm assuming that any person can block the axe of Prissan with their weapon, paladin or not.

However, iirc. the axe only passes through the Paladin if they WILL it to (or the other way around, it's only solid for them, if they WILL it to be). Now for the "evil" Fumbles to be able will the axe of Prissan to be non-solid, he would have had to know it -was- the axe of Prissan. Which he might have learned as soon as he touched it (as that is one of the properties of the axe, that it "introduces itself" to any paladin it touches), but he didn't in said fight.

Remember: from his point of view he was just fighting some opponent wielding AN axe, so he wouldn't try for willing it to pass through him and/or his weapon (even if this is possible in the first place, for which we seem to have neither confirmation nor denial) ab initio. Therefore, I would assume that he would THINK the axe to be solid (as most people would presume about most weapons of their opponents), and that might have already counted as "willing" it to be solid. :idea:
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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Krulle » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:52 am

Thanks, my fault.
So still no prove if the Axe can pass a weapon wielded by a Paladin.

The Axe cannot hurt a Paladin, except if the Paladin wills it so.
http://goblinscomic.com/comic/08122007 wrote:The Axe would always pass harmlessly through any Paladin like a ghost drifting through a castle wall. There was only one way for the Axe to be solid for a Paladin and that were if he wished it so.
When deflecting an attack, you wish your weapon and the attacking weapon to be solid to be deflected. That happens unconsciously. But once the weapon passed your defense, you wish for it to not hurt you. So, likely the Axe will be deflected by weapons and shields wielded by a Paladin (IMHO).
[edit]: GI, did you edit your entry? Because I don't remember seeing the "thinking it is solid = willing it to be solid" before.
To a degree this is right, but the Axe of Prissan does have more failsafes, like switching to non-solid once it would do harm, otherwise Saral Caine would've killed Big Ears, as BE did not know the Axe would be ghost-like when it passed through his head.
And the next pages show, that Saral did not know of this property of the Axe, or he would've taken precautions...

Also, the Axe (and any attached equipment) may only pass through the Paladin, and not his equipment (like clothing, weapons, shield, armour, ...)[/edit]
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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by GathersIngredients » Wed Jul 26, 2017 3:46 am

Krulle wrote:Also, the Axe (and any attached equipment) may only pass through the Paladin, and not his equipment (like clothing, weapons, shield, armour, ...)
Well, to some extent yes and to some extent we don't know (but it might be no). We know that the axe (and the rope attached to it) could pass through Kore and his armour that he was wearing at that time. So that's the yes part.
We do not know - afai can remember - if it would pass through his shield and/or weapon. So what people (paladins) are wearing might count as part of themselves. Not sure that also applies to what they are wielding (weapons, shield, backpack....).

I might have edited, shortly after I posted, because I forgot to say something, but your post wasn't up yet. :shrug:
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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Krulle » Wed Jul 26, 2017 4:14 am

No issue. I just wondered if you ninja'ed me while I was writing my post. Yes, my post was not yet up when I saw the addition. I saw it when the page realoaded after adding my post. (And I posted just a few minutes after you.)
My comments seemed so weird, as if I hadn't understood your "thinking it is solid = willing it to be solid", while my post said the same in a different formulation.
GathersIngredients wrote:We do not know - afai can remember - if it would pass through his shield and/or weapon. So what people (paladins) are wearing might count as part of themselves. Not sure that also applies to what they are wielding (weapons, shield, backpack....).
Oh, and we know that the Axe does ghost through the armour and other equipment, this page shows, that the Axe flew through the shield and the helmet of Kore, and it also shows, that the shield has not been damaged by the Axe passing. The next page shows the helmet to be undamaged.
So, only bits learned. But if equiped shield and equiped helmet do get passed through, why would a wielded weapons react differently?
I think we'll have to wait to know more.

And I learned that I should contemplate a bit more on the pages I found, instead of skimming them. I would've seen the clear reference that Paladin-equipped armour and shields do not get damaged by the AoP ghosting through...
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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Afraidofdarkness » Wed Jul 26, 2017 4:42 am

I really want Fumbles to survive i am hoping for him. But none should survive that unless there is extream circumstances. Wich there might be

But i tell you one thing "IF" he survives Kore will knock on there door shortly after

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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Trisscar » Wed Jul 26, 2017 4:56 am

Just thought I'd add in my two cents of a possibility on what's happening with Fumbles:
So the wall text says; This staff will destroy any magical bindings, thereby freeing the wielder. It has no effect on non-magical bindings, such as standard rope, etc.
I'mma temporarily ignore the idea that Fumbles might not have been technically bound to anything yet, and that might be a big part of why his plan didn't work (and the spirits nor Thaco aren't wielding the staff so why would it work on them in any fashion), BUT it may have done something due to color changes before he was shocked, if that isn't just a normal part of things attempting to merge since he dived through them all before the color difference appeared.
But since he dived through them and therefore may have triggered a binding of some kind in doing so before he started trying to untangle it, what if the staff IS doing something, just not what he wanted - ie dissipating the spirits or causing them to not bind with anyone or what have you. What if the color and shock aren't part of the normal ritual at all, and the result is far removed from any Goblin teller before him. I'm leaving my expectations open to anything from all the spirits suddenly gaining forms like they're that guy from Xmen with the clones, to multiple personalities, to LoL-Udyr stance changing shenanigans, to being just possessed because the spirits were freed from the rituals' binding but not it's compulsion, to temporarily moving completely off-plane due to the sheer amount of power gathered if this is the case.
I mean this is a ritual in a game with apparent Vancian magic and all the strictness therein, mixed with presumably whatever the hell the DM decides is cool. If the ritual isn't in any way affected by being run in a giant magical dungeon that's being pulled into hell and/or maybe the underworld, with a ton of demons being around, and having a stick that has great potential to fragment parts of it's formation if not negate it, that's going to be very odd to my mind.
But hey, next update will (hopefully) explain things more and my theories may all come to naught. Yay for when storytelling surprises you. :D

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Re: Has to work...

Post by Glemp » Wed Jul 26, 2017 8:03 am

DoesNotRiskTraining wrote:
WhispersToSquirrels wrote:
DoesNotRiskTraining wrote:The Staff of Notangle sounds as if it would break the Axe of Prissian, if the Axe was really was the prison-Prissian that Big Ears believed it to be.
Isn't that what happened here: http://goblinscomic.com/comic/04132016-2
It seems to be, which suggests that everything Big Ears worked out in http://goblinscomic.com/comic/09182016-2 is wrong.
Not necessarily. Ears is correct in that the Axe was intended to break, he just didn't know how specifically. This means that him attacking Kore from behind really had little to do with it...which means this staff is an incredibly powerful item to overcome the Axe.

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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Pyrotrap » Wed Jul 26, 2017 10:26 am

I don't think the staff broke the axe. I wouldn't say the axe qualifies as "bindings" just because it's imprisoning someone. Also the wall said that the staff frees "the wielder" from the bindings, so it still wouldn't make sense for it to be the cause of the axe's destruction.

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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by BombasticBean » Wed Jul 26, 2017 12:58 pm

Would the teller ceremony be considered a "magical binding"? Thaco said becoming a teller can't be undone, so it sounds "binding". Could the staff undo Fumbles becoming a teller or remove some of the imprints as he goes?

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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Adzscott » Wed Jul 26, 2017 1:07 pm

THUNT PLS NO :(

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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Aegis J Hyena » Wed Jul 26, 2017 3:04 pm

Let's see. Fumbles has a white IME, the wings Duv had were white... (I know, a stretch but I'd like to see Fumbles with wings)

What I want to see? A scene or two in Fumbles' head where he meets Maglubiyet (in the guise of an innocent goblin) and there's some dialogue about "life", "what's important" and Fumbles himself before he has the "monster" wiped from his forehead by Ol' Mags, then i's punted back to the material plane with "Oh, and don't forget never to craft a statue in Names' image... or else."
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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Mec » Wed Jul 26, 2017 4:18 pm

redfeather wrote:
LarsenSan wrote:This however poses a problem: if Fumbles survives he will be extremely powerful compared to his companions.
Do *you* want to have a character 10 levels higher than you, with a history of catastrophically screwing up everything he does, in your party?
Probably not.

I would, however, pay money to read about *someone else's* party with a character 10 levels higher than everyone else with a history of catastrophically screwing up everything he does. That's entertainment!

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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Augustavian » Wed Jul 26, 2017 6:57 pm

The Staff of Notangle:
This staff will destroy any magical bindings, THEREBY FREEING THE WIELDER.

This sounds to me like its ability to sever magical bindings is dependent on the wielder being entangled by the bindings to be severed. That would logically follow why it cut through when Fumbles got snared that second time. Thaco and Big Ears freed themselves and BE cut down Names, Minmax and Fumbles the first snare. It should also make sense why it did nothing when he tried severing the tails of the imprints, they hadn't bound him yet.

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Re: July 24th, 2017 - Has to work...

Post by Sinik17 » Wed Jul 26, 2017 7:49 pm

Remember the 1 on the crit window, waaay back on January 9th?

Here it comes.

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