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Tear down that wall!

- At egscomics 

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Ellen was THIS CLOSE to admitting this in the previous comic before getting interrupted by George.

Amateurish Mining

Some miner reading this is going to be appalled by their pickaxe form. Genuinely, you risk hitting yourself in so many ways with their form.

I actually played Skyrim to get a bit of reference. I ran into a mine, shot arrows at what I hope were bandits, and observed the animation used for mining with a pickaxe. The axe is off to the side with the dominant hand, and swung in a way that won't result in too much regret if you swing harder than you should.

A video game might not be the most accurate of reference, but given what I saw wouldn't result in you accidentally pickaxing yourself, whereas what I drew could, I'm saying Skyrim has the high ground.

The reason I decided to go with inaccurate, amateurish swinging was because I wanted them to all be comically swinging next to each other in a way that fit well in a panel.

On that note, don't swing axes of any kind while that close together.

Actually, don't base ANY of your axe-swinging methods on anything read in a comic.

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Comments

AstroChaos

Damn shame the wall is made of adamantine

Anonymous

I improvised a lot of stuff like that when I ran D&D. My instinct here: there's a dimensional portal on the other side to the land of fantasy Ancient Egypt. The PCs are drawn helplessly into it and ... curtain, pick up next week.

Sleep

The easiest GM response is "you have just destroyed a priceless historical artifact that was carved into the living rock of the mountain." If you're a grumpy GM, many people have had time to regain consciousness and call their friends, whereas you are quite tired from all the pickaxing.

Viktor

Never make a wall out of adamantine. Because the wall isn’t mounted to adamantine, which means they can destroy the mounts, take the wall, and sell it to a blacksmith. Adamantine is worth a LOT per lb.

Viktor

Options: “Cool. I’m going to get a soda, back in a minute.” “On the other side of the wall is an Earth Elemental. Roll init.” “The first crack releases an odd smell. Roll knowledge…yeah, explosive gas. Do you continue?”

Thisguy

You break down the “wall”, you see a confused looking girl sitting at a table in a comic shop. Congrats, you just broke the 4th wall.

Thisguy

Ok, to break down the wall I’ll need at least 2 of you to make a DC20 strength check…

Otter Annason

Or, "The map for the intro adventure in the book ends here, so it'll take you until next week to get through the wall, and for me to write further into the story"

PhaineOfCatz

To be fair, they are not skilled with pickaxes, so their form can be expected to be poor

AstroChaos

Not on this attempt... and they'll need two more walls to take down before then as well.

Anonymous

I learned how to fold fitted sheets from a comic. How bad could pickaxing be?

Narzain

"We've been workin' in the coal mine, goin' down down down..."

Anonymous

No kidding... 'Hey, this "Mona Lisa" thing is interesting and a lot of people seem to care about it. There must be something really important behind it! Let me get my knife and slice through it to get to the good stuff.' If they're going to Heinrich Schliemann their way through ancient artifacts, the least they could do is make a rubbing, first.

A Red Mage Named Blue

But as a Dwarf, surely Rich the Paladin should know how pickaxes are used?

Anonymous

As a game master, I would say: "Ok wow, it's already been four hours? I hope you had fun. If you want to, we can make this a regular thing. Let's meet again in two weeks". And then I would have two weeks to come up with ideas for the next adventure (including what's behind that wall).

Ed Abrams (aka The Superdak)

Sometimes a wall of hieroglyphs is just a wall of hieroglyphs. In fact, most of them are.

Some Ed

If I remember correctly, my grandmother said she learned from Mary Worth, so I may have learned how to do so indirectly from a comic. But doing a quick web search, I see there are now a lot of comics out there that teach this valuable skill. Some better than others.

Foradain

As Quasitling noted, it would've been nice if they'd taken a rubbing or otherwise made a copy. OTOH, maybe they're not taking down the wall to find what's on the other side, maybe they're taking down the wall to make sure it can't be read by the Bad Guys. In which case, it should later turn out that the information that was on the wall could have saved the world, and Marik the Cleric was going to get it translated, kill the translators as needed, and then have the wall torn down so he could hold the world for ransom. ^_^