Book 2 – Page 48

[Rizban]

thus, it wasn't so much a "fall" as it was... "uncontrolled vertical flight"

I'm pretty sure it was a fall:

He and the dwagon actually were falling unnaturally slowly. But definitely falling, not floating.

It was just a bizarre fall with what appears to be less than usual natural Shockamancy (Parson got some scrapes, but no bones broke from the impact).

Falling off your mount is a "fall." Parson didn't appear to take any damage until he rolled off of Banana. I suspect it was as was stated earlier that the laws of the universe simply don't account for a heavy on a flying mount, causing them to become grounded without "fall" mechanics.

...and the Warlord-in-a-portal trick. How would Tram have been able to know either of those were even possible?

This was explicitly stated in Charlie's notes to Tram.

Hobgobs are a largeish normal unit, although the knight-class K.I.S.S. (not all the Hobgobs are knights!) may be bigger than normal hobgobs (which could make them heavies!). do we have an upgrade tree (normal - heavy - knight) for the hobgobs?

No. It must be possible to be a knight without being a heavy or KISS couldn't have ridden dragons to the Battle of the Pass.


and the other knights couldn't have ridden spidews into the tunnels at GK.

The KISS weren't a special type of unit. They were just the best of the best (highest level?) trained to be Stanely's personal guards. Think of them as Navy Seals. They're still part of the Navy's "regular" units, they just have much better training.

[Ytaker]

thus, it wasn't so much a "fall" as it was... "uncontrolled vertical flight"

I'm pretty sure it was a fall:

He and the dwagon actually were falling unnaturally slowly. But definitely falling, not floating.

It was just a bizarre fall with what appears to be less than usual natural Shockamancy (Parson got some scrapes, but no bones broke from the impact).

Falling off your mount is a "fall." Parson didn't appear to take any damage until he rolled off of Banana. I suspect it was as was stated earlier that the laws of the universe simply don't account for a heavy on a flying mount, causing them to become grounded without "fall" mechanics.

Parson sat up, with some pain. He had scraped up his hands, elbow and forehead fairly badly.

He had some minor damage done to him. The universe did account for what he did.

[joosy]

now that you mention it, where are the elves?

Loading up Santa's sleigh with all my prezzies if they know what's good for them.

[CaesarVH]

Erfworld is in many many ways like a strategy game I've been quite addicted to: Rome Total War...
Destroying production buildings in battle indeed did make the defending side suffer great financial losses, and one could go into a negative amount of money..
what we need to remember though is that Charlie has put a price on the Archons' heads.. I don't know how much financial damage GK forces will do this turn but just going for their upkeep could prove disappointing if they suddenly have enough smuckers again to maintain their troops

[effataigus]

They had some kind of elves who could do healomancy. Those elves were natural allies though, and we didn't see any at Spacerock. If you mean other healer units, then i don't know.

Yeah, what did happen to these? Wanda should've decrypted at least a few, but apparently none were taken on the attack, despite their being pronouncedly low on healing scrolls.

now that you mention it, where are the elves?

Elves and marbits, if I remember correctly, cannot serve on the same side as gobwins. Perhaps this applies to decrypted ones as well?


Regarding how hardcore Duke Antium is... have we seen evidence that any unit aside from Parson (and Jillian under torture) can feel pain? Webinar seemed to be having hard time talking after being battered, I suppose. I ask because, in a world where you heal fully a dawn, pain might not be all that great of an adaptation.

[Direcoyote]

If that were the case, then something would happen vis a vis the Hobgobwins. From what info we're given from Vurp's angle, he has no problem working with Gobwin's Knob and even feels that the ally system is justified. IIRC since GK has no living Gobwins amongst them, it's more a matter of finding a living tribe to repopulate their ranks.

[Ditto]

Elves and marbits, as natural allies, *won't* ally with a gobwin-allied side. They make a choice. Nothing says they *can't* - especially when decrypted. Ansom "won't" ever join GK - but he did, didn't he!

And obviously, all of the eager elves are out on the front, while the tardy elves were due to be protecting Spacerock. Bad plan, that.

Off-turn units can defend themselves when attacked, provided they do not violate the other rules governing their zero-move status. That means they cannot torch or sonic across zones - but if a unipegataur flew over and punched Sylvia, Sylvia could punch it back. Moral of the story: Don't punch Sylvia. Archers & casters are allowed to attack across city zones, but GK units cannot.

Edit: Caesar was hurting pretty bad when he retook that city in a summer text update. He was lying there in pain all night waiting to heal up.

[Whispri]

I wonder, will the Hobgobwins still be Hobgobwins after their promotions? Or will they become Bugbears or Great Gobwins or something? They're all just Goblin varients in the end and it does seem like a good excuse for a, for want of a better term, Gobwin type upgrade.

Regarding how hardcore Duke Antium is... have we seen evidence that any unit aside from Parson (and Jillian under torture) can feel pain? Webinar seemed to be having hard time talking after being battered, I suppose. I ask because, in a world where you heal fully a dawn, pain might not be all that great of an adaptation.

Yes, Wanda started suffering from head heart and stomach pains after Kingsworld was cast. And really, without the ability to feel pain, they could be brutally stabbed to death by Ninja over the course of several minutes without ever noticing the ever growing number of knife wounds, so...

[kagato23]

I think in this world pain is more of a mental factor then what it is in our world. I think it'd be interesting to know if people can pass out or not (I'm hoping I'm not forgetting somethign here), at least through non magical means. It seems here that while pain still exists, and can certainly act as a disruptive factor in your ability to do a job, that because of how obedience works in this world, units will continue to attempt tasks even while in great pain unless actually incapacitated.

I imagine part of it is because it doesn't act as a warning to continued function, this world doesn't seem to have bleeding so unless an action is actively costing you hits, you won't compond your wounds further (such as dragons with huge chunks of their flesh torn off still flying in the area, a reasonably strenuous activity that one in our world would be ill advised to attempt with giant gouges due to dying shortly thereafter of blod loss).

so while, I'm sure that say, duke antium might be more distracted from the pain of his missing limp and could not focus as easily as he may be able to on a better day (I'm hoping he survives so we can see if units can actually lose limbs, or if those heal at turn start), He won't collapse from pain but continue serving as ordered untill something hapens that makes him no longer able to.

Elves and marbits, as natural allies, *won't* ally with a gobwin-allied side. They make a choice. Nothing says they *can't* - especially when decrypted. Ansom "won't" ever join GK - but he did, didn't he!

Differnt rules though, I think. In theory, any one of the human units could turn to another side. And decrypting is kind of an exception to the rules anyway. For all we know though, the natural allies, much like the way move is, could be literally incapable of joining up with such as side.

I'm guessing that it could be one of two things:

A. Natrual side tribes work against each other in a state like unled infantry encountring unled infantry from another tribe: automatically have to attack. So if un-allied marbits and gobwin stacks discover each other in the same hex they will fight untill one is dead. This then applies to allied sides as an extention: so if un-allied marbits encounter gobwin knob forces, even ones not engaged in hostile action who have no gobwins or hobgobwins with them, they will attempt to croak them because they are allies of gobwins and thus fall under the rule. This would make negotiation with an unallied side impossible once you had an alliance with one of their natural enemies.

B. Much like a unit can't move to another hex when it's not their turn, they simply cannot join, no workaround. Even if they actually attempted to do so, nothing would happen. So if, hypotheically, a deceptive side attempted to recruit both by hiding the facts from each, or you had some very progressive minded chiefs who wanted to give it a try, after one joined the other would find that they simply couldn't.

Or, C. Both, so in the hypothetical situation above, as soon as the first ally joined, the other side wouldn't be able to, and then realize through natural think/sign/whateveramancy that this side was now allied with and thus had become one of their enemies, and try to fight.

Wanda skips this becuaase her decrypted are first and foremost that, and not whatever unit they once were. Though I'd love to see (though doubt we'll get) a text update dealing with, say, a dycrypted marbit and gobwin both assigned to mining duty having to work together and dealing with the conflicting perspectives they'd have about that, on the one hand having a certain inherant dislike of each other but also the common purpose as servers of their arkentool.

[zilfallon]

I imagine part of it is because it doesn't act as a warning to continued function, this world doesn't seem to have bleeding so unless an action is actively costing you hits, you won't compond your wounds further (such as dragons with huge chunks of their flesh torn off still flying in the area, a reasonably strenuous activity that one in our world would be ill advised to attempt with giant gouges due to dying shortly thereafter of blod loss).

this made me remember DnD. A tough enough fighter can jump from stratosphere (since the maximum damage of a fall is 20d6. 20d6 avarage means 70 damage, and most mid-to-high level characters have that amount of hits), then stand up and continue cleaving thousands of enemies, even if he had 1 hit remaining.

Even more..."strange", if a halfling gets trampled by a colossal dragon, he can "survive" and continue doing what he could do at full health.

But really, i don't blame the system for this, since rules which make combat realistic almost always favor monsters But Erfworld is a strategy game, so every player can have "monsters", so, a wound system wouldn't make things imbalanced for players.

Edit: Now that i think about it, such a system would favor sides like GK who has more "monstrous" units and put sides using swarms of light units at a huge disadvantage. It would be pretty hard to make such a system balanced, so maybe that's why the Titans skipped it?

[Raza]

Yeah, what did happen to these? Wanda should've decrypted at least a few, but apparently none were taken on the attack, despite their being pronouncedly low on healing scrolls.

now that you mention it, where are the elves?

Elves and marbits, if I remember correctly, cannot serve on the same side as gobwins. Perhaps this applies to decrypted ones as well?

Iunno. If the absence of decrypted elves is intentional, this seems like the least unlikely direction in which to look for an explanation... but it really does seem like decryption should bypass a mechanic like that.

My bet is still on them being silently elsewhere to facilitate Jack's incapacitation mini-arc, or just forgotten like the living soldiers were in the Battle for Gobwin Knob.

[valce]

now that you mention it, where are the elves?

Well, it is almost Christmas...

[Rizban]

I'm pretty sure it was a fall:

It was just a bizarre fall with what appears to be less than usual natural Shockamancy (Parson got some scrapes, but no bones broke from the impact).

Falling off your mount is a "fall." Parson didn't appear to take any damage until he rolled off of Banana. I suspect it was as was stated earlier that the laws of the universe simply don't account for a heavy on a flying mount, causing them to become grounded without "fall" mechanics.

Parson sat up, with some pain. He had scraped up his hands, elbow and forehead fairly badly.

He had some minor damage done to him. The universe did account for what he did.

Yes, he took damage when he fell off of Banana after landing.

[Terah]

You can promote hobgobwins to heavies? That's a bit... counter-intuitive.

[DoctorJest]

Erfworld is in many many ways like a strategy game I've been quite addicted to: Rome Total War...

A bit closer to Medieval II, but I've made the Total War comparison more than once myself.

[Selexor]

I imagine part of it is because it doesn't act as a warning to continued function, this world doesn't seem to have bleeding so unless an action is actively costing you hits, you won't compond your wounds further (such as dragons with huge chunks of their flesh torn off still flying in the area, a reasonably strenuous activity that one in our world would be ill advised to attempt with giant gouges due to dying shortly thereafter of blod loss).

...something I just remembered as striking me a while back, but what Kagato said brought it back to mind. I'm sure by now we're all more than familiar with Parson And Banana's Excellent Adventure.

Well, take a close gander at the last little bit...

Parson sat up, with some pain. He had scraped up his hands, elbow and forehead fairly badly. A dozen concerned pikers were standing in a circle looking down.

One of them handed him a handkerchief. "Lord?"

Parson looked up at the circle of small men. "I bet you think that was really stupid," he said to them.

No-one said a word. He put the handkerchief to his bleeding elbow. "Well, yes," he admitted, "yes it was." He grinned. The faces looming over him were suddenly hilarious. "But you gotta admit, you gotta admit! I learned something today!"

When Parson fell off Banana's back, he injured himself and he started bleeding. Something that Erfworld units don't seem to do under any circumstances. Now, this could simply be nothing - an Erfworld unit might have recieved a bloodless gash, and Parson's only bleeding because he's from Earth.
On the other hand... this also suggests that the fall damaged him in a way that it would not damage any other Erfworld unit. Which raises a few nasty implications for the Gobwin Knob units that are trying to use The Banana Exploit right now, if we don't know what it will do to them...

[Goshen]

It's maddeningly inconclusive, but Jillian's wound way back in
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0030.html
looked kind of red. It didn't seem to bleed a lot, but it was probably quite superficial.

I think the whole Erfworlders bleeding or not bleeding is a red herring.

[Selexor]

Well, we've seen wounds that show up as red cuts. We've seen bruises and scrapes and bumps. We've even seen units missing large chunks of skin and flesh that expose the bone and tissue beneath.

But we've never seen so much as a single drop of blood. That seems unique to Parson, and to him alone.

[Oberon]

1. I think people are being too hard on Tramennis. He knows much less than we do. If you ignore what we know about Parson and his Plan, it would appear that Parson's trying to provoke an emotional response from Jetstone. And that's exactly what he gets from Slately. Tramennis appears to be level-headed and reasonable compared to Slately, not stupid. IMO

Well, let's talk this over and see about that.

FACTS (I can provide citations from the strip for all of these conclusions)
Tram knows that GK beat a coalition of royals (you know, those chosen by the Titans to rule?) which had it outnumbered 25 to 1.
Tram knows that Parson is the CWL of GK.
Tram knows that Charlie, the enigmatic mercenary Overlord, calls Parson "the most dangerous being in Erfworld."
Tram knows that Parson is able to enter the MK.
Tram knows that Parson is "some kind of" mathamancer.
Tram knows that Parson killed Ansom during a parley, using trickery.

CONCLUSIONS (I can provide citations from the strip for all of these conclusions)
Tram concludes that Charlie is afraid of GK. He is partly right.
Tram concludes that Charlie doesn't want Jetstone to parley with GK. He is partly right.
Tram concludes that Charlie is terrified of GK. He is partly right.
Tram concludes that Parson cannot "pull the same trickery that got Ansom." He is wrong.
Tram concludes that the best that the GK expeditionary force can do is to bomb the tower, and orders them off from it. He is wrong.
Tram concludes that the best move for Jetstone is to make an alliance with GK, linking the fate of a Toolist Side and a Royal Side. He is wrong.

REALITY (I can provide citations from the strip for all of these conclusions)
Tram concludes that GK can only bomb the Atrium in some kind of "tantrum." He is wrong.
Tram concludes that GK has only limited options in their present position. He is wrong.
Tram concludes "where's the harm in it, really?"
Tram concludes "honestly, what could they do?"
When Slately expresses doubts, Tram uses both his persuasiveness and his position as CWL to overrule those doubts. He is wrong.

Given what Tram knows, he is being completely stupid. He has been told, again and again, that he is facing a trickster deity, and he still chooses to believe that the "tantrums" he thinks that he is seeing have zero deeper significance, that the safe rule which he is sure of are all well and fine and cannot be changed. Despite that exact sort of change having been forced upon the RCC! Tram has deliberately blinded himself to information he has from multiple sources and multiple lessons: The RCC lost, this alone should be enough to spark a huge amount of interest in exactly how this fact came to be. And once you know that the same guy who beat 25:1 odds also killed your high level brother during a parley, then discounting his capabilities during a parley is not due to his limited knowledge within the strip, it is because he is holding the idiot ball.

[zilfallon]

1. I think people are being too hard on Tramennis. He knows much less than we do. If you ignore what we know about Parson and his Plan, it would appear that Parson's trying to provoke an emotional response from Jetstone. And that's exactly what he gets from Slately. Tramennis appears to be level-headed and reasonable compared to Slately, not stupid. IMO

Well, let's talk this over and see about that.

FACTS (I can provide citations from the strip for all of these conclusions)
Tram knows that GK beat a coalition of royals (you know, those chosen by the Titans to rule?) which had it outnumbered 25 to 1.
Tram knows that Parson is the CWL of GK.
Tram knows that Charlie, the enigmatic mercenary Overlord, calls Parson "the most dangerous being in Erfworld."
Tram knows that Parson is able to enter the MK.
Tram knows that Parson is "some kind of" mathamancer.
Tram knows that Parson killed Ansom during a parley, using trickery.

CONCLUSIONS (I can provide citations from the strip for all of these conclusions)
Tram concludes that Charlie is afraid of GK. He is partly right.
Tram concludes that Charlie doesn't want Jetstone to parley with GK. He is partly right.
Tram concludes that Charlie is terrified of GK. He is partly right.
Tram concludes that Parson cannot "pull the same trickery that got Ansom." He is wrong.
Tram concludes that the best that the GK expeditionary force can do is to bomb the tower, and orders them off from it. He is wrong.
Tram concludes that the best move for Jetstone is to make an alliance with GK, linking the fate of a Toolist Side and a Royal Side. He is wrong.

REALITY (I can provide citations from the strip for all of these conclusions)
Tram concludes that GK can only bomb the Atrium in some kind of "tantrum." He is wrong.
Tram concludes that GK has only limited options in their present position. He is wrong.
Tram concludes "where's the harm in it, really?"
Tram concludes "honestly, what could they do?"
When Slately expresses doubts, Tram uses both his persuasiveness and his position as CWL to overrule those doubts. He is wrong.

Given what Tram knows, he is being completely stupid. He has been told, again and again, that he is facing a trickster deity, and he still chooses to believe that the "tantrums" he thinks that he is seeing have zero deeper significance, that the safe rule which he is sure of are all well and fine and cannot be changed. Despite that exact sort of change having been forced upon the RCC! Tram has deliberately blinded himself to information he has from multiple sources and multiple lessons: The RCC lost, this alone should be enough to spark a huge amount of interest in exactly how this fact came to be. And once you know that the same guy who beat 25:1 odds also killed your high level brother during a parley, then discounting his capabilities during a parley is not due to his limited knowledge within the strip, it is because he is holding the idiot ball.

An excellent post! Exactly what i've been trying to explain to people who believed that Tram wasn't being dumb, but you did it better than I did, apparently