Headscratchers / The Gamers: Dorkness Rising

• Towards the end of the sequel, the party was unable to resurrect Flynn because the staff was out of charges. But he wasn't being resurrected by the staff- Leo had 50 identical backup bards. We didn't see him die 50 times, so why did they suddenly need the staff to bring him back?
  • He died 50 times offscreen.
  • He also didn't put his employees to work making those character sheets until after that first session.
  • I was under the impression he was reserving the 50 character sheets for large combats with multiple villains, not the one-on-one boss fight. Plus, it's not like bards would just be roaming around a dark and abandoned mine at random moments...
  • He did use them. He kept flipping out new sheets, he started because the staff of resurrection was causing too much level loss (third edition, each resurrection brings your character back one level lower.) And they were all indeed roaming about in the same area because the sorcerer hid behind a pile of Leo's dead Bards to prepare a spell.
  • They also never actually say that the staff has 50 charges.

• Why does Lodge always seem to go for Leo's character? Granted a fair few times he gets killed by accident but when Lodge needs a character to attack he almost always goes for Flynn. Granted Leo could be an annoying jerk but he was arguably the least annoying out of him, Gary and Cass.
  • Rule of Funny. He was the designed Butt-Monkey after all.
  • It's possible, at least at first, that Lodge just got into the habit of targeting Leo's characters first, since he normally plays meat shield fighters. Since he's a bard (and Leo doesn't really get the class, at least at first), attacks that would have been mostly annoying were fatal. It quickly became rule of funny, though.

• Why doesn't a party starting at 9th level have more magic items? Basically the only one they had was a glorified wand of Resurrection, which a single character could afford at level 9 with standard WBL.

• How is "Hide behind the mound of dead bards" a thing? The bards that weren't hauled away by zombies were disintegrated/eaten alive by the death demon's bug swarm things.
  • DM fiat. Lodge thought it was funny, so it was allowed.

• How did Countersong work on the Death Demon's fear aura? Doesn't it only work on sonic effects?

• This troper really didn't get the complaints about Sir Osric's alignment of Lawful Good. Daphne has the same alignment, and since monks have to have one of the three Lawful alignments (and Silence hasn't actually done something evil), Brother Silence would most likely be either Lawful Good, or Lawful Neutral. I mean, sure, it's unfortunate that Sir Osric wouldn't allow the dishonorable actions the party performed (such as the torture they had the Death Demon endure), but the way they talked about his class made it appear that Lawful Good was Lawful Stupid.
  • They were exaggerating the stereotype of Paladins being either Lawful Stupid or Stupid Good for the sake of humor.
  • There's also an argument to be made that they were simplifying matters by conflating in the strictures of a Paladin's oath with a Lawful Good alignment. To keep being Lawful Good (or at least, maintain his Paladin status and powers rather than becoming essentially a Fighter-with-no-bonus-Feats), Sir Osric needs to keep to whatever oaths, creed and/or tenets he swore to Therin. While we don't know the exact details of Sir Osric's oath, I wouldn't be surprised if Therin, goddess of light, healing and virtue, took a rather dim view of one of her Paladins torturing (or being party to the torture of) someone. The bigger issue, however, is that in that edition of D&D, not only were Paladins required to maintain an alignment of Lawful Good or risk falling, they could also fall if they associate with someone who persistently commits acts which would cause the Paladin to fall- which technically includes any character that is not also Lawful Good. Thus, simply by including Sir Osric in the party, Lodge was trying force his players to choose between playing their characters as written, or keeping their party's access to abilities like Lay On Hands, Turn Undead and so on.