A couple of days ago I was involved in a conversation about what would happen in the comic’s storyline. When I mentioned that the group would trick Perky into letting them join her in the quest quest to destroy Fiddlebutt’s Wan(g)d, I was asked how exactly that would work – in the game. Of course, the person involved in the conversation was simply interested in learning more about the game mechanics and how something such as Elf’s big fat lie would be resolved. So I taught her about “bluffing” – and so today’s comic came to be.
For those who are not familiar with the game, to “bluff” is when your character lies to anybody within the game. A bluff can be verbal (i.e. a lie), but it can also be physical, like feinting in a fight. When these things happen, we use dice in order to determine if the other character believes it or not (modifying the results depending on each characters traits and all that). And so far everything would seem simple enough.
But when you have a player with an elf that’s basically the equivalent of Satan’s afterbirth, equipped with incredibly high charisma and intelligence stats, what you get is a character that can basically convince every NPC he comes across of anything he wants. Of course, the game rules specify that some lies are so absurd that the NPCs just won’t believe them, no matter how high a result they roll with the dice. But having seen in reality just how gullible people can be, I normally let my players lie their way through any situation they can handle. In the end, it not only makes for good role-playing, but it also gives us some pretty good laughs.
Good hunting;
O
And the back! She must be freezing! No wonder she’s easily convinced, probably her brain is frozen.
That grin on the 5th panel :p
Another great comic, O. Thanks ^^
I ha a character in GURPS Supers, once. He was pretty and charming, although not superhuman such. His superpowers involved luck. Basically, if he ever misse a Roll, he could try again (3 times). If This still didnt get him what he needed, he could dictate one Roll, every hour.
Eventually, the World at large Grew onto the fact, that something was wrong. And he Got killed by a chainsaw-wielding lunatic.
But much fun was had, up to that point.
Love the facial expressions in this one. Carlos’ lying faces, Perky’s naive, dimwitted one and your unconvinced one. All great.
The 5th panel is amazing, O!
elf and carlos’s expressions are PRICELESS!!!!
)
this is why I always put at least five ranks in bluff ;D
say…are your RL adventures like this? if so, you are truly a cool DM
(taking a big assumption here. for all i know you can be a total bitch at the table
Carlos’ face tells it all. I also let my players talk their way out of almost anything if they can handle it. I tell them to roll in situations when their lies are something the NPC could figure out if he gave it a good thought. This lead to a situation:
Players in a room, lords’ advisor next to them with sword drawn, lord lying on the table bleeding out, sword of one of the PCs covered in fresh blood, guardsmen who heard noices come in.
Player: It’s him (pointing at the advisor). Roll – 01 (in warhammer it’s more or less the same as a 20 in d&d). That was quite hard to handle without laughing our as*es off
To Nordic: No, that’s not fishnet with nothing at the back. If you try looking at her cleavage area very carefully, you can see that O had drawn cloth folds across her bossom, which means those fishnets are backed (with coincidentally flesh colored cloth)
For some odd reason, the eyes on Perky looks a bit off – something wrong with the shadowing and angle (sorry again for nitpicking, O). However, Carlos’s eyes said it all and is spot on. Live on, Mack da knife.
To O: Yes, I understand your comments from the last strip. But do please keep in mind that with more angles comes great responsibility (wait a minute, that didn’t come out right
). It’s tricky to pull off chicks with angles consistently correct with different perspectives throughout, as a drawing enthusiast I could attest to this (and I’m horrible at perspective to boot). And more shading and contrast makes drawing a mere comic a complicated chore very quickly. Again, do be careful.
(constructive crit: her left eye should be more left from her face)
For the rest of you, bring O the love – stuff like this are hard to draw!
I had a priest once that, when the whole group got arrested for starting a fight, he convinced the head guard to not put him in the dungeon, because he was simply trying to wave off the attacks (I had rolled a 1 on my attack so I missed horribly) and felt so bad that he was unable to succeed.
The DM was laughing so hard he didn’t even have me roll
And lets face it, if the mesh in the front wasn’t backed with fabric, O would have to put those little hearts over Perky’s hm-hmmms
My favorite bluff which a PC rolled a 20 bluff and my NPC rolled a 1 sense motive (opposed checks) was “That wasn’t me! That was my twin brother. You can tell because my twin brother has a horrible scar across his chest, which I clearly lack” (The character then lifted his shirt to show his unscarred chest; it didn’t matter that the eye witness who saw him earlier had no way of seeing his, or his “brother’s”, chest at the time.)
Good Times
What a scamp! And with a nat 20. Panel 4 is missing a t from regrettable. <3
laughter are the only important things in D&D.
Oh carlos, you are my new hero !
And the last pic kill me…
atf343, thanks for pointing that out, that’s a relief for me. I hate to see a sister suffer, and men are always so unsympathetic towards freezing female parts.
Oh, and the way you show background in the 1st panel and the way characters look on top of it reminds me of the old Disc World’s games
awesome
That second last panel, D20 included, was the first time in ages I got a realy good laugh outta this comic. Good stuff, O.
Did anyone else notice the hovering ninja in the first panel?
That panel with Carlos and Elf matching up their smug expressions with the natural 20 is just outstanding. I want something like that in an avatar or background or something.
Thanks for the comic, O. Your artwork and writing are really appreciated.
hey there o
love the completely out of the blue bluff
reminds me of my own experience convincing a king of an international empire that he was only sitting the throne in place of me and to hand me back the crown and become my double for “social appearances”. hooray for the natural 20.
when are you going to finish off the zombie survival guide?
and could you release it as a pdf?
Our resident sorcerer also is a notorious liar. Actually he is so much of a liar the only skill he’s got ranks in, is bluff (well if it weren’t for that one rank spent on linguistics in order to learn to speak and understand Common). He’s playing a drow sorcerer with an intelligence score of 8, that’s why he has only this one skill he puts ranks in usually, while the drow charisma bonus and racial bonus to bluff make his lies terribly effective. In theory at least. A lot of sense motive rolls made against him resulted in natural 20′s so far.
Last session he convinced half of the party that the goblins they just killed are actually undead goblin skeletons in disguise.