Note to observant and/or longtime readers: Yes, I did retcon Kilanio's descriptor just a tad, from "City of Towers," to "City of Seven Towers." Why? Two reasons: 1) It sounds cooler this way, and 2) seven towers are a lot easier to draw than an entire city of them. :) Besides, there's already a City of Towers in the Eberron campaign setting.
Also, there were some comments recently about what game system MeatShield is modeled on. For the record: I don't have any one game system in mind when I write the strip, although obviously D&D would be the frontrunner. However, it could just as easily be Dungeon World, Hero System or GURPS (Okay, maybe not GURPS). Jaine casts Fireballs because she came upon some bat guano (the material component for that spell) and cast it because it helped the story along. Story trumps (I hate using that word now) everything, including game system accuracy. That's also why, although Ch'p is a monk, he's not that good at healing and has never cast a clerical spell in his life.
Take care,
~Rob
Makes sense.
On Ch’p: Well, that actually fits most D&D monks. “Monk” in D&D usually means a Shaolin-inspired martial arts monk than a divine spellcaster – actually having healing on a D&D monk, apart from a little self-healing, is fairly uncommon.
*nods in agreement with Stardrake*
In addition, in RL monks are not considered clerics unless they actually take the time to get priestly training and then get ordained as priests. The lay brothers are merely very devout laymen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk
So any choir monk who can cast clerical spells would be a relative rarity and the DM would be justified in asking “And why are they letting him wander outside a monastery when he should be leading services there?”. @_@
I read somewhere that the original inspiration for the Monk class, way back in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was The Destroyer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Destroyer_(novel_series)
The class was SERIOUSLY underpowered in good ol’ AD&D, being a front-line combat class with d4 HD, AC fixed at or worse than 11-[level], and damage around 2d2 to 2d3 for around the first 5 levels or so, IIRC. On top of that, going to levels above 9 (or so) required defeating one of a very limited number of characters in order to advance.
Don’t worry about using “trump” as it was intended. The man bearing the name isn’t accountable for being given that name. Yes, he’s rough around the edges but he may surprise us all.
apparently Trump’s family name was Drumpf originally.