1.11.5
on January 15, 2021
at 3:00 am
falst knows a thing or two about party comp, and that thing is “tanks are the only class that matter”
Aurora
A fantasy webcomic. Updates M-W-F.
falst knows a thing or two about party comp, and that thing is “tanks are the only class that matter”
Falst is, once again, the voice of reason.
(Sorry for hijacking this comment Coolio)
Anyone from Red’s new video on “The Snow Queen”?
Please tell us in the comments, and welcome to Aurora! =D
I didn’t even know that there was a comic strip until like 2 or 3 days ago where I found out while browsing TropeTalks
I wonder if this is foreshadowing.
Also Falst is such a rogue haha.
OH MY WORD… you hit it on the nose. Falst is a rogue tank. And when he tanks, fights FEEL like a rogue is tanking, lol!
It’s a great idea, actually: “I’m not a defensive specialist by any stretch, I’m just capable of surviving a lot of damage… so I’ll tank.” Fortunately, the Auroraverse isn’t an MMO, so this can work fine as long as everyone keeps it in mind.
In advance, sorry for talking at you,
I was thinking of a lancer big guy character. In most ways more personally competent, strong, and durable than the leader, but lacking social skills or the abele ability to properly communicate. The leader, being so very charismatic even if they aren’t better than the others at a respective role, is the one in charge, while the big guy takes and deals big hits. Any thoughts or suggestions?
“tanks are the only class that matter” I’m sorry, didn’t you say you played dnd 3.5!? Spellcasters can basically to everything alone past level 8 and all other party members are useless.
Mages can do anything given time to prepare, knowledge of what is about to happen, and something to get hit in their place when things go pear-shaped. X times per day. I love playing Wizzards in 3.5, but nothing beats the security of a min-maxed fighter halfway between you and the scary thing and a rogue slightly behind it.
You’re joking right? Wizards have the ability to rend reality apart like a toy if played correctly. A direct-damage focused evoker is literally the weakest way to play a wizard. Try checking out “That Guy Destroys Psionics” to see how overpowered they can be. Meanwhile a fighter can choose between different ways of whacking a guy.
Everybody knows that the healer class pocketing the tank class with the rogue watching the back is the best combo
Is it weird that I’m liking this mostly-just-character-interactions chapter more than just about any other chapter so far? Like, the most exciting thing happening is a nap, but I really dig these characters getting a moment to shine *outside* of life-or-death danger!
YES YES YES
Character interactions uninterrupted by fights to the death give me LIFE. Good characters don’t need risky situations to shine–although those situations obviously don’t hurt–they just do it by having fun together.
“Having fun together” aka “driving each other crazy.”
A fight scene in a comic can only be so spectacular… so a comic can live or die off the strength of the characters and their interplay
Adding a new member to the team has the weird effect of making someone who was kinda the outcast in the last arc–Erin–a part of “we” more. Alinua categorizing herself with Erin would’ve been harder to imagine before Falst joined. But now that Falst is the “new guy” and Erin is a member of the “old team”, Alinua feels closer to him, even thought nothing about Erin and Alinua’s relationship has changed. It’s interesting.
Or maybe I’m just reading too deep into a little linguistic quirk. But it stood out to me.
I wonder who the next addition to the crew will be, and how they’ll help merge Falst into the “we”.
No, you’re absolutely right. I’m not sure how to word it, but something or someone unfamiliar to two groups can bring those groups together just because they’re more familiar with each other than with the newest group. You’re smart; you get it.
Anyway, I suspect that anytime a new team member appears, they’ll go through the same temporary alienation until the next one comes along. And eventually the last member might merge into the group proper via some common enemy.
It’s just a nice little detail that reminds me how exceptional Red’s writing is.
Totally, seems unfair tho.
Something worth noting is that everyone in the group was a loner EXCEPT kendal
Come on, Alinua! Are you going to just sit there or go with him? I WANT YOU TO BE FRIENDS DAMN IT.
big page of oof
is this foreshadowing about Life Mum ?
Unclear. If I had to guess, it’s the first bit of foreshadowing towards a ‘My Powers Are Gone!’ arc for Alinua, Erin, or any other mage that we meet before the time comes.
Also, everyone is talking about Tynan showing up; have we forgotten the Archangel Floof? They seem faster than a storm, right?
And don’t forget the inciting incident 😉
He was also on the opposite side of the planet; even jets take time to travel that far, and I don’t think he can fly as fast as one.
How does Red keep track of all the different characters and story arcs? I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast yesterday.
Because she’s spent years conceptualizing this story and its characters.
… Sad thing is he’s not exactly wrong.
Just like that the wind comes in to make Ali’s hair that much pettier, how nice. … … Hold on. Is that wind from Tynan’s storm?!
I wonder if this will give Alinua the impetus to find out the identity of Ten-eyes/Life mum and how her powers are related to them. Maybe have Erin mention how V.D. referred to her as “Life’s vessel”.
another name of Life mum: Ten-eyes, green skin
Forget 20/20 vision. Life Mum has 200/200 vision.
(i’m dying send help)
Hindsight is 20/20
I love him ★↓★
That pretty Alinua final panel
Also I kinda wonder how “power that isn’t your own” hits when it’s not your ordinary magic. Telling a dead primordial “go this way” is one thing; but in Chimeric Plague, Primordial drive YOU.
Wow. geez. my birthday is on Monday, when did that happen
I’m excited to see what Aurora gives me for my birthday though
Probably another sleep tutorial.
My birthday is actually today and I get a nice little crisis for Ali to work through.
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday, Somebody!
Happy birthday!!!!! I hope you have a great day!
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday!
Thank you! This is honestly the kindest and most welcoming comments section I’ve ever encountered.
I love Falst’s addition as the blunt “normal dude” of the party
TL;DR: Kitty goes out to check for enemies, but not before giving spell elf something to think about.
I love falst.
I desperately need Falst to slap some goddamned sense into me as well
Agreed. Can I hire Falst as my there-to-give-common-sense-advice,-why-is-common-sense-so-hard-for-you,-you’re-supposed-to-be-smart,-why-are-you-such-an-idiot guy? I need a common sense advisor, and Falst seems like the ferin for that.
Falst plays D&D, apparently.
Eh, Kendal is less of a tank and more a high dex fighter as he rarely takes hits but when he gets hit he’s only slightly better than a normal person due to low AC.
Lets see, a Fighting-Man, one Magic User, a Druid(?), and a Thief. Needs a Cleric proper or another Fighting-Man.
How about we split the difference with a Paladin?
He’s build like a fighter yes, but given his tendency to put himself between his friends and danger he certainly acts like a tank.
Kendal? Not a tank? I’m to direct you to the pages where Kendal withstands the corrosive energy of the Void Dragon himself:
https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-5-17/
https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-6-8/
I don’t think Kendal is able to use the full extent of his body yet.
Remember that Vash demonstrated to be very reliant of his body, at least according to lore of his battle against Tynan.
If Vash’s body is destroyed it takes time for him to rebuild and recover, but with that same body he can punch a storm in the face. I don’t believe that Vash’s soul gives his body that huge of a power up.
It is vital to forging it but not so much in giving it extra power.
If Kendal learns to give that extra oomph to his fists he could be the heaviest of heavy hitters.
And it is unclear if Vash did or didn’t have some kind of magic prowess, for what we’ve seen he’s mor a stab-your-guts first type but it isn’t impossible that he has, and therefore his body is capable of, some kind of magic prowess.
Except in Alinua’s case, that power IS kinda hers…
Unless she pisses Life Mum off somehow. Life Mum can’t afford to kill or otherwise leave Alinua but she could revoke her privileges to untrained Life Magic.
“You have revoked your Life privileges.”
3.5 is uniquely messed up but for the edition specifically fighters are pretty useless. Fighters have a hard time accessing the more powerful battlefield lockdowns without some serious multiclassing. Without those, summons are going to outperform a single class fighter statwise by a huge margin. Summons are problematic due to their long casting times, short durations, and inability to operate in antimagic zones. Fighters share the antimagic susceptibility as they rely heavily on magic items. Ultimately past a certain level of optimization martial classes don’t really exist to protect backline mages and are instead a win condition and damage source.
So with all that shpeal about why mundane = bad what do you actually want to fill this niche with? A lot of solutions exist by my favorite is a clericzilla as a win condition, powerful defensive options on all your casters (break out the psionic contingency: temporal acceleration), and liberal use of minionmancy (animate dead, planar binding, cohorts, what have you).
Is that true because I’ve only played DND 5th edition
I’ve only played 3.5 in DDO (video game) format, but I spent 10+ years of my childhood poring over my dad’s 3E books, and I feel like a lot of things are messed up. The book art is pretty, but geez. Bards are underpowered, sorcerers are underpowered, there aren’t as many dragony things as 5E-
I‘ve only played The White Box, AKA 0e so I can‘t comment.
Can’t wait until the group bonds enough to unlock some of that sweet, sweet backstory
Ah yes, the time honored tradition of face-tanking something until it dies or until you die.
Alinua just sits there like dang
Man, Order of the Stick wizards would really snub their noses at the mages of this universe.
Yeahhhh
power that isn’t yours.
“Your heavy hitter”
Also Alinua: *can summon giant hands*
Still unrelated but I though about something.
Probably Void Dragon was lying when he said that the primordials sacrificed themselves in order to contain him.
Or-either it’s a half truth.
Because I guess he and the primordials work in a similar way, he can possess a vessel that he can try to control even if his body is far away.
But he is very much alive.
So, if we all agree that the thing calling to Alinua is the life primordial, since Void Dragon clearly recognizes her and Gleicann saw her as a figure of authority this means she must be alive too. Maybe not in a strictly breathing body kind of living but like the gods being a larger soul that manifests itself in a vessel. But since it’s so much bigger than a god it probably can’t just create one from twigs and grass but needs something capable of using life magic and surviving the huge amount that the mark allows you to weild.
And Alinua apparently is that combination of factors.
So, if Life is alive probably the others are too in the same way and are trying to find or have already found a vessel, and I could guess that we saw lightning already.
If the other primordial are in control the most logical move now would be to kill Erin, forcing VD to create another rune somewhere and waiting for the next elemental magus to come there and get possessed.
Which could take a lot of time.
So either VD knows how primordials work and was lying to Erin in order to not letting him draw the conclusion on what Alinua is and how a being that powerful could help him to get rid of the mark or he doesn’t actually know but it doesn’t make sense because he very distinctly recognized Alinua and though he seems to be aware of what is happening on the surface, and is able to communicate somehow with some gods, the twins for sure but it isn’t excluded that there might be others don’t personally think that someone less than a primordial would be that worrying for him.
“We saw Lightning already”
By that, if they’re alive, do you mean to say their avatar is the metal lady, or the dragon that she fought? From what I’ve seen of Red’s answers on the comic’s tumblr page, metal lady is something else entirely; she was struck by natural lightning (not elemental magic lightning) and gained the ability to use magic in the process. Plus, the other primordials are almost certainly dead, given that a set of Chimeric Plague-like circumstances haven’t happened with the other elements like it’s happened for Life.
I think he was talking about the dude we saw at the start of this chapter, who also isn’t lightning, tynan is a completely different god.
It’s hard to say. The Primordials never killed Voidragon, they just trapped him. Just because he’s alive doesn’t mean that the Primordials are. And we can’t use Life Mum as a template for the others because she’s intrinsically different; she is Life itself, not Stone or Water or Fire. It might be that she can never truly die on account of being the personification of Life (I’m thinking Princess Mononoke/Forest Spirit style), and that she has a unique connection to living things, which allows her to take a Vessel like Alinua.
I think the most important key to this puzzle may be Archangel Floof. He seems to have a god speaking through him the same way Life speaks through Alinua, so if that is another Primordial (like the Wind/Air Primordial) then it’s possible the others have indeed recovered.
So unless I’m very much mistaken, by D&D standards, the party is more or less a fighter, two casters, and a rouge. Pretty solid.
Alinua is absolutely the tank of the team
Wait, but Alinua is the heavy. Kendal is Worf.
Nah dude, Erin is the guy who gets worfed, when did he ever win a fight, he lost against Falst, a ferin with no magic, and got out shined by Alinua when fighting Dr. Jolon. He also got worfed dude to Shirii. The only powerful thing he ever did was enter the storm and overpower Vidi long enough to paralyze himself, I hope he gets to shine soon as we’ve yet to see him go all out. As for Kendal, he held his own against Falst and a giant chimera bear, destroyed the arm of a sentinel, saved Erin from the caves and has broken rock with his bare hands multiple times before, showing his strength, when has Kendal ever got worfed? Erin, on the contrary, is worfed all the time
Alinua’s expression just says “Never thought of it that way” and i love it
Falst with that dramatic exit
Kendal = Tank/Fighter
Alinua = Sorcerer/Warlock? Since she also gets power from Life who would kinda be her patron…?
Erin = Wizard
Falst = Rogue
alt text:
oops did that touch a nerve sorry SEEYA
OY THAT HAIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Alinua is an Elf druid cleric warlock multiclass
Erin is a Human Sorcerer (obviously)
Falst is a Shifter rouge
And Kendal is a Kalashtar paladin
Oh boi how did the trio even SURVIVE without Falst??
Image source: mages
First, RED DROPPIN TRUTH HERE ABOUT TANKS, second, Falst, she does own it though.
I mean I feel like Alinua has a closer connection to her element than most