Belkar Bitterleaf

This is a list of characters from the webcomic The Order of the Stick (OOTS). Celebrating and satirizing tabletop role-playing games and medieval fantasy, this tale of the eponymous fellowship of adventuring heroes is written and illustrated by Rich Burlew in a stick-figure style.

Taking place in a magical world that loosely operates by the rules of the 3.5 edition Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), the comic follows the sometimes-farcical exploits of six adventurers as they strive to save the world from an evil lich. Much of the comic's humor stems from these characters either being aware of the game rules that affect their lives or having anachronistic knowledge of modern culture, which in turn is often used by the author to parody various aspects of role-playing games and fantasy fiction. While primarily comedic in nature, The Order of the Stick features a continuing storyline serialized episodes from one to four pages.

Although it is principally distributed online at the website Giant in the Playground, seven book collections have been published, including several print-only stories. Among these collections are "On the Origin of PCs", "Start of Darkness", and "Snips, Snails and Dragon Tales". An alternate version of the strip appeared monthly in Dragon magazine for 22 issues. These strips, among others, are collected in "Snips, Snails and Dragon Tales".

Several minor characters got stand-alone comics on their backgrounds as a result of the stretch goals in its Kickstarter campaign. Burlew attributed the interest of readers in these secondary characters to the continuous, interconnected plot of the comic.

Time magazine and Black Gate praised the comic characters for their expressiveness, even if they are drawn as stick figures. Lev Grossman of Time said that Burlew sometimes "imbues them with a weird epic majesty".

This section deals with characters that are members of the Order of the Stick. According to Rich Burlew, the author of the strip, the characters are roughly 7th to 9th level when the comic begins, though the characters have displayed abilities that require them to be 13th to 15th level since he made that statement. The characters are mostly book-legal Dungeons & Dragons version 3.5 characters. Burlew, however, has stated that he does not wish to limit the characters by making concrete character sheets for them. The characters in the strip have occasionally mentioned feats, spells, skills, and templates which do not exist in the default D&D rules, usually for comedic purposes, such as "Summon Plot Exposition", "Craft Disturbing Mental Image", a paladin ability of "Summon Conscience", and "Evan's Spiked Tentacles of Forced Intrusion", a parody of the spell "Evard's Black Tentacles".

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Wikipedia