Durkon's spell

Sep. 27th, 2006 at 3:17 PM

So, anyone have any ideas what spell Durkon is casting here? It's not straight up Control Weather — that spell can't do damage... None of the Call Lightning variants can do sonic damage... And besides, those are druid spells. Sound Burst is way too weak to account for the damage we're lookin' at there.

We haven't seen any feats or spells from expansion books, yet; we have reason to believe Burlew is sticking to materials from the SRD. So no Energy Substitution feat (it was off a scroll, anyway...)

Ideas?

Comments

( 11 comments — Leave a comment )

hakamadare

Sep. 27th, 2006 07:26 pm (UTC)

but the spell isn’t doing damage; the completely natural side-effect of the magical lightning is doing damage. it’s just like, say, using Gust of Wind to blow someone off a cliff; the damage they receive once they arrive the bottom will not be magical damage.

-steve

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srakkt

Sep. 27th, 2006 07:31 pm (UTC)

I'm with

hakamadare, here. Lightning is lightning is lightning, and though Durkon may not be able to directly and precisely control where it strikes, it *is* a reasonable cinematic/plot-driven thing for the DM to say that the trees get struck (along with lots of other things) by lightning.

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chenoameg

Sep. 27th, 2006 08:04 pm (UTC)

They don't get struck by the lightning, that's the point. The lightning strikes off shore. They get struck by the sonic effect of the thunder.

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hakamadare

Sep. 28th, 2006 01:40 pm (UTC)

exactly. Durkon could just as well, say, have used magical means to conjure and inflate a giant paper bag, and then pop it; the resulting loud noise could have damaged the trees, and it would have been nonmagical damage.

-steve

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firstfrost

Sep. 27th, 2006 09:27 pm (UTC)

What are the trees? They're not actual monsters, like ents/treants, right? Is there anything useful in the description of "animate tree" that might say something like "you have to define one thing that your animated trees are extra-damaged by" ?

In Champions terms, as a GM, I'd let control weather and thunder set off a susceptibility to sonic (takes damage from something that doesn't normally do damage) but not a vulnerability to sonic (takes extra damage from something that does damage).

Of course, Champions is mostly irrelevant here. :)

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gorgo

Sep. 27th, 2006 10:37 pm (UTC)

They seem to be trees animated through druid spells, so they're functionally treants while the spell is active. The reason Durkon is working on generating sonic damage is that previous strips established that the druid had cast protection spells on his trees that make more common types of energy (fire, lightning, etc.) mostly useless.

So, it's not that these trees are extra-affected by sound, it's that if you get a sound loud enough to cause physical damage, the other protection spells on the trees won't stop the damage. Sort of like needing a mace against skeletons because slashing weapons don't hurt them much.

My best guess is that either the writer is playing fast and loose with the system here, or that Durkon's gotten his hands on a scroll of miracle, and is using that to control the weather in a way that causes actual damage.

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crs

Sep. 28th, 2006 02:34 am (UTC)

Given how much reliance on the letter of the D&D rules is the bread and butter of this comic strip, I choose to believe something other than "playing fast and loose with the system."

A scroll of miracle could do it, true... hmm...

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crs

Sep. 28th, 2006 02:40 am (UTC)

See? bread and butter. Reliance.

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crs

Sep. 28th, 2006 02:32 am (UTC)

Ah, in this comic we can see that the druid has protected his animated trees with resistances to nearly all the energy types... except the dreaded sonic!

The backstory is important to unraveling this mystery :)

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firstfrost

Sep. 28th, 2006 02:56 am (UTC)

Right, right, but that only explains why the trees weren't immune to the thunder damage. The question of why the thunder gets to cause that much damage in the first place is the puzzling one. :)

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