OotS #417 is up!

[Jürgen Hubert]

Reinforcing the grim outlook of their situation doesn't do anything to help ratchet up discipline, it just decays morale further.

"Hey, we're doomed. Even if by some miracle we do prevail, you and many people you know are still going to die. It's inevitable.

... now let's get out there and give 110%!"

He wasn't talking like that to the rookies, and it is unlikely that he would have talked that way within earshot of them. He was talking to Haley, who is not within his chain of command but might make things difficult with her attitude.

Besides, it's not like Haley was saying 'chill out' in the kick-back-with-umbrella-drinks sense. She was saying stop being so afraid and unsure of yourself, because the deck isn't totally stacked against us.

"You just chill out and leave the heavy fighting to us." This does sound like she is suggesting that they "take it easy".

Baldadin is just being pissy and bitter.

No, he wants his soldiers to be focused on the tasks they were assigned to in battle instead of putting all their possibly foolish hopes into a motley band of adventurers. Now Haley might talk smack, but if she and her companions fall in battle it might have a terrible effect on morale. "She said they would take care of it, and now they are gone!" It's better for their side if they just concentrate on their task instead of watching the Order of the Stick.


Frankly, if I were the military commander in such a situation, I also wouldn't appreciate if some adventurers go around telling my soldiers to stay in the back because "they will take care of things".

 

[jasin]

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0417.html

(Sniff.)

Needs more funny. :\

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Yeah "I'm stressed out, so I need to stress everyone around me" is not a leadership strategy I find impressive. This guy has access to a high level adventuring party who could very easily skip out but is there to help turn the tide of the battle, and he does his damnedest to get one of them to see it as a bad idea to stay. And he does so with bad rules knowlege ignoring the advantages of cover and concealment against arrows and the fact that those attacking the walls will be climbing and probably provoking at least one AoO each as they try to jump from the ladders to the fortifications. Oh yeah, and the clerics.

Bad strip, only slightly redeemed by the cuddle at the end.

 

[DaveMage]

I just hope this battle reveals the creature in darkness....

 

[diaglo]

live for today. for tomorrow we may die.

i see Rich is holding out for the release date of "300" before he posts the battle.

 

[Prince Atom]

Well, what if the adventurers are people that the common soldier looks up to? If the adventurer thinks the battle's not going to be tricky, wouldn't that give hope to the soldier? "Yeah -- we can win this thing!" It's akin to Aragorn talking to the young boy just before the seige of Helm's Deep; I'm sure that made the boy feel better.

I think that bald guy needs to look on the bright side. They're the ones inside the fortress.

EDIT: And another thing. Because of what he said to Haley, she stopped helping Roy and went to be with Elan. Don't you think that general would be responsible, at least in part, if there were something that Haley neglected to do, that affected the outcome of the battle? Yes, all she's doing is distributing arrows at the moment, but perhaps there was some other task Roy was counting on her doing. Now he's going to have to hunt Haley down.

I don't think Redcloak is going to get Xykon killed. I think he's going to arrange for a decoy, somehow, and try to sneak himself, Xykon, and the Creature into the throne room while everyone's trying to kill the false lich.

That's how I'd do it, anyway.

TWK

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Well, what if the adventurers are people that the common soldier looks up to? If the adventurer thinks the battle's not going to be tricky, wouldn't that give hope to the soldier? "Yeah -- we can win this thing!" It's akin to Aragorn talking to the young boy just before the seige of Helm's Deep; I'm sure that made the boy feel better.

Lifting the spirits of the troops is one thing. Pretending that things will be easy is not.

Or to put it otherwise:

Good: "Together we can pull through this!"
Bad: "It will be easy! Just stay in the back and watch as we do our thing!"

The latter is akin to Lord Rust saying that the Klatchian armies will flee "once they taste our cold steel" - it is a dangerous misinterpretation of the seriousness of the situation, and once the troops realize that their superiors have lied to them about the difficulty of the battle, morale will plummet.

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

I don't think castle walls are that powerful when you have spellcasters blasting them down -- sort of highly mobile artillery. 10 to 1 is a real-world figure. I would guess that the multiplier is low enough in a D&D world to be legitimately worrisome. Of course, that begs the question of why one bothers to build castle walls in D&D, given the expense...although magic probably makes it cheaper to build them, too!

 

[kenobi65]

I'm having trouble seeing why the defense situation is so grim myself. Azure City appears to have a large supply of Paladins and plenty of Clerics given how freely Shojo tossed around ressurections.

Except that, in #414, an awful lot of them seemed to have walked out on the battle.

 

[Victim]

I don't think castle walls are that powerful when you have spellcasters blasting them down -- sort of highly mobile artillery. 10 to 1 is a real-world figure. I would guess that the multiplier is low enough in a D&D world to be legitimately worrisome. Of course, that begs the question of why one bothers to build castle walls in D&D, given the expense...although magic probably makes it cheaper to build them, too!

Conventional blasting isn't particularly effective against walls, since they have lots of HP, hardness, and most energy damage is halved. Power Attack generally goes through walls much faster. So a caster going against walls needs anti-material spells - which means fewer spells to otherwise nuke your troops, control weather, protect himself, etc.