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An argument about the word "level".

Cast[]

Transcript[]

Panel 1

Roy (thinking): At last! The stairs down!
Haley (thinking): Oooh! That Goblin Cleric was worth 1000 XP!

Panel 2

Roy: Time to go down a level!
Haley: Time to go up a level! (in unison)

Panel 3

Roy: Up a level? But we already did that.
Haley: Sure, now we do it again.
Roy: Why, what's up a level?
Haley: More sneak attack!

Panel 4

Roy: What?? We'll get sneak attacked if we go up a level??
Haley: No silly, just me.
Roy: You want to go up a level so you can get sneak attacked?
Haley: Naturally.

Panel 5

Roy: No way. That's too dangerous. We should go down a level instead.
Haley: Down a level? Wouldn't you need like a vampire or something for that?
Roy: Huh?

Panel 6

Haley: Anyway, what do we get if we go DOWN a level?
Roy: Tougher monsters!
Haley: You want to go down a level AND face tougher monsters?
Roy: Of course.

Panel 7

Haley: Wouldn't it make more sense to go UP a level before facing tougher monsters?
Roy: No, we already finished that level. We should go down.

Panel 8

Haley: Up!
Roy: Down!
Haley: Up!
Roy: Down!
Vaarsuvius: Aha! A new spell level!
Roy: L-E-V-E-L.
Vaarsuvius: Huh?

Panel 9

Roy: I spelled "level".
Vaarsuvius: But you're a fighter, you can't learn spell levels.

Panel 10

Roy: Can't spell? Is that another "Fighters are dumb" crack? That's it, we're going down a level.
Haley: Up a level!
Vaarsuvius: But if we go down a level, I will lose my spell level.
Roy: L-E-V-E-L.
Vaarsuvius: HUH???
Belkar sits on the panel frame, extending outside the page, breaking the 4th wall.
Belkar: How much crap do we have to go through on a daily basis because no-one at TSR looked up "level" in the thesaurus?

D&D Context[]

  • Character levels in standard D&D range between 1 and 20. Spells are divided into levels between 1 and 9, with casters having access to different numbers of spell slots of each level based on their character level. As a wizard, Vaarsuvius gets access to a new spell level every odd character level (spell level 1, 2, 3 at character levels 1, 3, 5 respectively, and so on). Since, according to The Giant, the Order was level 8-9 at the start of the story, and this is only comic #12, it is possible that V has advanced to level 9 here, unlocking spell level 5.
  • The gag in this comic of the mixup from "character level", "spell level", and "dungeon level" is reminiscent of a discussion in the AD&D 1st Edition Player's Handbook that brought up the idea of using "rank" to refer to character level, "order" to refer to monster level, and "power" to refer to spell level (i.e. a 9th-rank character casting 4th-power spells on a 7th-order monster on the 8th level of a dungeon). This was discarded for being inconsistent with the established terminology in Basic, and requiring more terms than necessary.

Trivia[]

  • The dungeon level/character level/spell level joke continues as a running gag throughout the comic.

External Links[]

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