I'm either a cleric from the Abbey of St Whatever passing through Heroshire in my way to hunt monsters in Vampsylvania, or a spellcasting hermit of dubious sanity living in the Witchy Wood.

Awesome as usual, and bonus points for the bad guy's sucker punch attack actually hitting a main weak point in plate mail.

I also like that Angela throws a hand axe. I've seen a lot of people with melee focused martial characters hauling around multiple javelins as a backup ranged weapon because they do slightly more damage. When they announce in the middle of a fight that they're throwing one or even several in a single turn I always think, "Just where were you carrying those multiple long hafted spears while fighting with both hands this whole time?" Mechanically a high strength character can handle the weight but those things aren't exactly throwing knives you can conveniently slip a half dozen of into your belt or strap to your thighs or arms. A nice tomahawk or two, on the other hand, you can have tucked until your belt.

Short answer, no. There is a lot of nitpicky fine print and "nuance" involved but while you cannot copyright rolling a twenty sided die you can copyright a bunch of distinct and organized thoughts and specific groups thereof, such as the collection of rules that make up a class or subclass. If that class, subclass, spell, made up monster with a specific name and abilities, etc is published in some work that is sold for profit then legal action can occur.

Anything under creative commons effectively becomes public domain. If it appears in a WotC book, digital content, etc and is not specifically under CC, like say spells and subclasses from any supplement not included in that (such as Xanathar or Tasha), it is copyrighted and WotC can and will sue you if you republish it.

So what are the chances the two damned souls fighting Angie are actually Redwen's parents, trapped by some infernal contract loophole because they tried to not pay? Or they tried to offer themselves in their daughter's place but the devil just said he'd take the whole set? It would add an extra layer to them thanking Angie for protecting their child.

Don't overcomplicate things. Not every single NPC you meet demands a half hour RP session. I'm Bob, this is Sally, the guy in clerical robes is Father Steve, and the dude in the plate is Sir Dinglus of Berryvale. Yeah, he has a weird name but that's apparently normal where he's from. Off to the southeast somewhere. You folks have a nice day.

I now want to make a Glory paladin from the Church of Macho Madness.

The "twist" was pretty clearly telegraphed to anybody familiar with the genre, but the delivery was good and we didn't have to wait long to get there. Also the cleric and paladin were pretty on top of his smooth talking game, which explains him apparently deciding to just cut straight to the inevitable fight. Because it's pretty clear what bargain he's referring to. Well told and bravo, sir. Now let's see some holy butt kicking!

You know you're in the fun religion when your ecclesiastic superiors tell you to up your card shark skills.

The biggest problem with homebrew is that most of it is unbalanced crap made up by people who think rule of cool is an appropriate substitute for learning why those numbers in that book they barely skimmed are arranged the way they are. Yes, there's some good stuff out there but like the internet in general Sturgeon's Law is usually a generous assessment.

A great example was in a game I briefly played the DM allowed a homebrew class with seven different class features, most of which could be used in the same turn combined to great effect, at first level. Why? Because the DM didn't know half the rules to the basic system, the class came from a pretty website that was designed to look like an official source book, and the abilities sounded really cool. Nevermind that it made one PC more powerful than the other four party members combined.

Take homebrew with a large grain of salt or everybody will end up very salty.

Not at all, Konsi. Your skin is a very healthy shade of green.

He seems nice. And it absolutely isn't suspicious at all that those Gnoll raiders left the cart alone after hauling off the dead horse with no obvious blood spatter or drag marks. Just a simple traveler in mild distress. No need to put your guard up or have any abjuration spells ready with names that include words like "protection," "dispel," or "evil."

As a tall person I can confirm that using a short girlfriend's head as an elbow rest is a gesture of affection. I also do this with platonic friends, to mixed results. My favorite recollection is walking up to a college friend on campus who was talking to someone else, she introduced me and I did the armrest thing while joining the conversation. After a minute the other person said "Um, are you gonna..." And my friend said "Nah, he'll get bored with it eventually and I'm used to it. I have a lot of tall friends."

The only thing that little fence will accomplish is guaranteeing that when the inevitable cat to tree contact occurs it will be at speed and above the tree's center of gravity. Those furballs can jump.

Isn't the cleric supposed to have the best wisdom score in the party?

How about we discuss those heros in the foreground? Conan-core "armor is for wimps" beefcake/cheesecake aesthetic featuring brown hiphugger jeans, and all illustrated by someone who has no clue how to world a real weapon. Also wtf is the woman even posing with (because I am not going to suggest she's"wielding "it)? Maybe it's a staff and her ridiculous pose can be attributed to somatic casting, at which point maybe the one in the middle is a bard doing a stripper sword dance with that terrible stance. Left dude still needs to choke up with his right hand if he wants any kind of power on his swing.

Love this comic, as always. Though I do wonder where Angela's shield went between panels 4 and 8.

The example in the op says nothing about whether it was ever possible to diffuse the bombs in the first place, so it's unclear if there is any element of agency at all, let alone how difficult the scenario is to win if that's even feasible.

If the DM is asking for a blueprint of your home to battle map scale during character creation, you really should have seen this coming.

"I know not from whence thou came, but thou art no child of mine."

YEET

You want mental damage? I just got my first dose of rural Florida about an hour ago. I didn't get out of the car but it kinda felt like I was driving through a haunted forest on an alien world.