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Who Is Ellen - 66 - HD (Patreon)

Published:
2022-12-01 04:00:02
Imported:
2023-01

Content

The first suspect.

- At egscomics 

Commentary

It's entirely possible George is just suggesting Larry the Bard handle questioning because Larry's high charisma might be good for that, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Considerate Guard

I hadn't originally written the bit about the mask, but writing this in 2022, this character being out and about with a cold just made me want to give him a mask.

And it's MY comic, so... I did.

Missing Spell

Once again, I'm curious if this is a spell one might actually have in most Tabletop RPGs (particularly at a low level). It seems overpowered (narratively, if nothing else), but so does throwing around magic fireballs, so your guess is as good as mine.

Files

Comments

davidraziel

In most D&D versions I’m familiar with a paladin would actually never have access to the remove disease spell. Clerics, Druids and Rangers are usually the only ones who can cast it, and even then they need to be 5th level or higher to manage that. Also I’ve almost never had it come up that someone who is just sick with the flu or similar need to have it cast on them, its mostly something you use to deal with specific debuff effects that are given by specific monsters, like mummy rot.

Haunted Hermit
>>96674024

At the same time, in 5e, a Pally can use 5 points of Lay on Hands to cure a single disease or neutralize a single poison affecting a single person… an ability given at first level with a pool of points equal to Paladin level x 5. 😅

Anonymous

Yay masks! :) Mine keeps my nose nice and warm in winter.

wargrunt42

If Dan would like some reference material, here is the D&D 3.5 spell list: http://dndsrd.net/spellsAtoZ.html The SRD is a completely free online resource for D&D 3.5. Though it's not the latest edition, a lot of the same spells carried over to 5th Ed. Both Remove Disease and Heal can accomplish this effect, but they're both higher level spells the party wouldn't have access to at first level.

Viktor

So, disease falls into 4 categories in games: Random bad luck. "You rolled a 2 on a d100 after waking up, now you have the sniffles and a -5 to Cha checks". This isn't fun and few games ever do it. Enemy-induced. Mummy Rot, vile sorcerer's Curse of Plague, etc. This is a debuff and both the effect and the removal should be balanced against other debuffs. Plot-relevant, targeted. "The king is ill, no healing magic works on him, go on a quest for the Saint's Used Kleenex." Plague. "Oh, you have 10 Cure Disease castings? Cool, we have 150 smallpox victims coming in each day. Which ones do you save?" Problem is, the ease of disease removal for each of those needs to be balanced differently. Some of them can be roughly close to each other, but not always. Most games decide (correctly) that disease is annoying, and err on the side of making it easy to get rid of, but that can mess up times when DMs want to use disease in their story.

davidraziel
>>96674024

Still mostly stick to Pathfinder these days so I was not aware of that. Good to know.

Anonymous
>>96676079

OTOH 5e has "Lesser Restoration", a mere 2nd level spell that could be cast at I assume 3rd level, removing one disease. If it were prepared, and if the party had a 3rd level cleric, or any clerics. OTOH again, as mentioned a paladin could do it. But I figure Ellen's game is a mishmash of stereotypes about AD&D and 3e.

Opus the Poet

I was in a game that had Warlocks with a cure disease spell that was basically "sickening blast" backwards. It had a 50/50 chance of working for a ChaG alignment or a 1 in 20 chance for all other alignments. basically a d20 throw with crits curing completely for ChaG or pretty much everything for everybody else. Glitches were exactly like casting "Sickening Blast" for all alignments. One of the prerequisites of the spell was having used "Sickening Blast" successfully at least once before trying to learn "Healing Blast".

KC

Honestly it would be a tossup between the Bard and the Sorceress for any charisma based checks, but it is true that Bards are somewhat stereotypical for having absurd persuasion and/or deception skills. And yes, every group I know that can learn something equivalent to Cure Disease (the modern DnD equivalent is "Lesser Restoration"). More often than not because such a spell also gets a 2 for 1 in curing poison as well, and poisons in TTRPGs poisons are abundant

Anonymous

Wait, what about the friendly cleric that mysteriously appeared in the last strip? Doesn't he have "cure disease"? If there are clerics who are willing to just randomly cure "I fell down the stairs and got hurt" things like that, why do people have colds in this setting (or most D&Dish settings) at all? This seems a bit strange, unless cold germs come with their own magic that resists healing -- and that seems like just the thing they would do -- that makes them rather harder to cure than falling-down-stairs bruises and damage.

M.

Ellen's getting good at DMing very quickly if she can make her hair change based on an NPC's appearance. :)

William Green

FYI: Cure Disease is a standard clerical spell, but it is not a low level one, in the older D&D versions at least.

Stephen Gilberg

To me, charisma is the funniest stat in a tabletop RPG. It's one thing for a pipsqueak to play a brawny warrior or for a klutz to play a dexterous archer, but if you suck at tactful talk in RL, that's going to be reflected in your character no matter how high the alleged charisma.

Diego Rossi
>>96685553

"I can cure disease two times a day, if I devote all my 3rd level spells to that. I should use one for your cold? Or I will use it for that girl suffering from pneumonia?" D&D and similar games are at the technological level of late Middle Ages or early Renaissance. Mortality from disease is rampant, depending on period and location, 1/3 to 1/6 of the children die before being 5 years old. A cleric of a wealth or greed good could cure a cold and leave someone to die, but he would require a lot of money. Even more important, Create food and water is a 3rd level spell in D&D and Pathfinder, and famine is a even worse killer than disease. Most good priest will prepare Create food and feed orphans.

Daryl Sawyer
>>96707267

You just have to have a DM that is willing to imagine you delivered that line much better than you actually did. We typically gave a circumstance bonus for a particularly well acted bit, because our table valued that sort of thing, but if you're hella socially awkward? Just convey what you want to say and roll.

Anonymous
>>96685553

Right, that all makes sense as a possible world-condition ... but if all that's the case, then why would the random cleric spend a spell on healing all the PCs from falling down the stairs?

Anonymous
>>96707267

Yup, that's how my groups have generally done it as well. Then again, we're not heavy on the acting; "I try to convince the shopkeeper to lower his prices" is as common as "'Three gold? Does anyone fall for that? I'll give you one.'" It's a similar issue with intelligence, to some extent, though IME that's harder -- "I think my character is smart enough to come up with a good plan here, even though I personally don't have any ideas" is something you could roll on, but then you're sort of stuck with what to do if you roll a success. The GM could maybe give you a plan, but that's less fun, and what if the GM doesn't have a good plan either?

Anonymous

Meanwhile, thinking back to the original reason they're playing this game: It seems like Rich and Larry are having fun, and I am wondering if Ellen may have accidentally worked herself into GMing a regular game.

Crissa Kentavr
>>96707267

Intelligence as well - someone who isn't good at puzzles just isn't going to be as good at playing the Sherlock Holmes character.