OotS examples of breaking the rules?

Voadam

Legend
I often hear people say in discussions how the Order of the Stick webcomic (www.giantitp.com) goes for story over D&D rules so don't expect everything to work the way it would according D&D rules.

I can't think of many instances where things did not work the way they would according to D&D rules however.

There is Durkon's call lightning shock wave , but that was immediately explained in the next comic as a god breaking the rules.

Are there others?
 

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Sometimes the expectations of character design are broken, rather than the rules.

V can't even cast his highest level spells when gooped by a tanglefoot bag ... that doesn't make sense for a "properly min-maxed wizard". He never seems to make Concentration checks, so maybe he forgot to max out that skill. He also virtually never casts defensive spells. That's all still following the rules, however.

V was able to talk while Polymorphed, despite the lack of a human-like voice. That's probably breaking the rules.

Belkar kicks a lot more butt than you'd expect considering his suboptimal character design choices.

Most of the "rules errors" are minor, however. (You can't speak with a ghost with the Speak with Dead spell, and even if you have access to the corpse, they won't remember being questioned, so Roy's father shouldn't expect the use of the spell to talk to him, as an example of a very minor "error". You can't sunder a sword by shouting at it, even if the sword is a flimsy rapier. There's nothing in the rules about hanging a halfling, so that could go either way.) It's only when they heavily interfere with the story that there's much of an outcry.
 
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(Psi)V was able to talk while Polymorphed said:
Actually, when V was talking as a lizard, the rest of the characters only heard hissing and "lizardy" sounds. Only the big black dragon could actually understand him.
 

MonkeyDragon said:
Actually, when V was talking as a lizard, the rest of the characters only heard hissing and "lizardy" sounds. Only the big black dragon could actually understand him.

Perhaps, but he was able to speak well enough to cast spells. (Doesn't Suggestion require you to have a humanlike voice to cast the verbal component, or did I misread something?)
 

(Psi)SeveredHead said:
Perhaps, but he was able to speak well enough to cast spells. (Doesn't Suggestion require you to have a humanlike voice to cast the verbal component, or did I misread something?)

No, suggestion is language-dependent, which requires you to phrase yourself in a language that tyhe target can understand - which was exactly what V did when talking to the dragon.
 


Storm Raven said:
No, suggestion is language-dependent, which requires you to phrase yourself in a language that tyhe target can understand - which was exactly what V did when talking to the dragon.

In fact, V even noted that he/she was limited to being able to cast the three spells that he/she knew without somatic components (due to not having hands to make the gestures). And, he/she also notes that suggestion was "nigh unto useless" due to the language-dependent issue:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0178.html
 

Pbartender said:
Redcloak casts animate dead to turn a silver dragon into a zombie... The youngest silver dragon large enough to act as a mount for Xykon would have too many hit dice to turn into a zombie.

There is that one. The 10 HD base creature limitation in the zombie description that is not in the animate dead spell description. It could possibly be gotten around by energy draining the dragon so it has fewer HD when killed but retains the big size, but this most likely looks like a rules error. I would guess it is more likely an overlooked rule as opposed to a deliberate attempt to use something for the story that consciously violates the rules though.
 

I think a lot of the discussion confuses what is "probable" with what is "possible". There are a lot of improbabilities in OOTS comics. For example, if you figure the likely saving throw of a Huge Titanium Elemental, if its anything like a Huge Earth Elemental, then it would be very unlikely for Vaarsuivius to successfully use Dismissal three times in a row, much less from a scroll (which would have a lower save DC). However, it is strictly POSSIBLE. A lot of things also fall under the, "My DM wouldn't do it that way, so it's breaking the rules" clause, such as V's very liberal interpretation of Suggestion when dealing with the black dragon.

Another possible issue is confusing artistic license in Rich's drawing style with a de facto statement about what is happening. This comes up a lot when someone decapitates a foe, everyone starts wondering if the character has a vorpal weapon, because that's the only thing in the rules that can decapitate. Except that it's probably just a way of depicting a sudden and complete death that is more visually interesting than drawing that little red mark that they get from a regular wound. Also, when V enlarged the soldiers, there was nitpicky talk of the fact that the soldiers looked a little taller than the strict doubling of height that Mass Enlarge Person would grant them, leading people to say that Rich broke the rules. More likely, Rich didn't measure it exactly and enlarged them to whatever size made the picture look good.

Yet another situation is when Rich doesn't explain what's going on until a later strip, like the Control Weather/Thor thing. Another example: Miko's Forcecage that didn't conform to the SRD (turns out Xykon researched a weaker version).

Some things I can think of that legitimately break the rules (other than those mentioned above):
1.) Belkar technically can't have the Scent feat, though it could have been houseruled.
2.) Roy knocking Xykon's skull off with his bare fists the first time they fought. That one was WAY off the chart in terms of rules-breaking.
3.) The Bag of Tricks can only be used once per day, and comes in three different disctinct varieties. Roy's version can be used multiple times at once and can create both rats and rhinos.
4.) Mark of Justice can be fairly easily removed, and even when triggered is no worse than Bestow Curse (which can also be easily removed). Whether or not the effects are being exaggerated to Belkar, he tried (off-screen) to have it removed and could not. However, we could be dealing with a special "Greater Mark of Justice" spell.
5.) If Roy's sword was magical, Xykon couldn't have shattered it with the Shatter spell.
 

SPoD said:
4.) Mark of Justice can be fairly easily removed, and even when triggered is no worse than Bestow Curse (which can also be easily removed). Whether or not the effects are being exaggerated to Belkar, he tried (off-screen) to have it removed and could not. However, we could be dealing with a special "Greater Mark of Justice" spell.

Does Belkar actually have a Mark of Justice? I get the impression that it's all in his head.
 

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