Editing Order of the Stick (section)

===The Party===
The titular Order of the Stick, named first for the artstyle, then retconned into a nearby object.  All of their builds are purposely terrible (on Burlew's part) to both A) make the fight scenes last longer than two panels, and to B) emphasize reliance on clever tactics and teamwork to win.  The exception, impossibly enough, being Elan.

* Roy Greenhilt, the party's [[fighter]] and leader. Despite avoiding the whole "INT is a fighter's [[dump stat]]" thing, he still spends most of his time hitting things with his green-hilted (get it?) greatsword, putting up with the party's bullshit and, for a good chunk of the comic, being dead.  Comes up with the plans and gives out the orders too, if they'd transitioned to 4e he'd be a [[warlord]].  Or a tactician archetype in [[Pathfinder]].  Or a battle-master in [[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition|5e]].  Or... well, let's just say that he's playing in the worst edition possible for his particular class and archetype.  There was a gag about him not going for [[warblade]], a class he'd probably excel at, because his bitter old wizard father didn't want to shell out for a ''doctorate'' from Fighter College.  Late in the story he starts taking levels in a homebrew prestige class (or at least obscure but legal actual feats) that lets him unlock new powers from his ancestral weapon.
* Haley Starshine, the party's [[rogue]] and second in command. [[Blood Ravens|Will steal everything that isn't bolted down, then steal the bolts, followed by stealing the thing that was bolted down.]] Besides her extremely literal money fetish, has an actual reason to do so: to pay off her father's life-sentence in prison. Then, when she met him he wanted nothing to do with her because she was snackin' on the rapier of the son of the man who put him there. Whelp. (They made up eventually.) Wields a bow and is comfortable with fighting as dirty as possible to win. Despite her greed and cynicism she is a loyal party member, and manages to stay "[[Chaotic Good]]-ish."  Dating Elan after a messy incident involving her being unable to speak for about a hundred comics and him meeting a Final Fantasy character. Note... Haley's speaking in aforementioned incident is actually in a cryptogram, but it CHANGES EVERY STRIP, which is fine in 2005 when you have a week to work on each one before the next comes out, but is just a waste of like, an hour when you have a hundred to go through and went in with the assumption that they all used the same code.
* Elan, the party's [[bard]]. He is the living embodiment of every derpy character you ever rolled up just to screw with your friends. He's as thick as a loaf of fine [[meatbread]], sucks at barding duties (often resulting in "wacky" hijinks) and has a homebrew [[Prestige Class]] that forces him to make bad puns as he fights.  As the story goes on, he starts to suck less, and it helps that he's the ONLY member of the team with an optimized build.  (Maxed CHA for everything bard-related, plus that prestige class adds it to his attack and damage, meaning that he doesn't suffer from [[MAD]] as much as a typical bard.) He also goes through some honest-to-God character development to be more aware of his actions and their impact on other people, without becoming noticeably more cynical or intelligent overall. Apparently, if Haley can be trusted, that maxed CHA is also worth a good deal "under the hood." As a bard consciously aware that he exists in a fantasy story, Elan is the character most "narratively equipped" to deal with the environment and is often able to use rules of traditional storytelling to predict, even manipulate events. In other words, he's a metagamer. As per the Oracle, is going to get a happy ending for himself, though this explicitly does not extend to the rest of the team.
* Durkon Thundershield, the [[dwarf]]en [[cleric]] of [[Thor]]. Gruff, dutiful and honorable, as all good dwarves should be.  Pretty stereotypical and solid in his support of the team, although he has had extremely subtle character development over time highlighted by a major story arc focusing on him. Has an accent so thick that it affects the way his dialogue is spelled, despite no other dwarf family in the comic talking like him- except for his mom, who he lived with for most of his life before his exile. His clan had a vision that his return would herald a great cataclysm, so they sent him away and told him they'd tell him when he could come back and never did, because no one in fantasy stories has ever read a fantasy story. Was turned into a [[vampire]] and secret pawn of the goddess of death for 200 strips until he got staked, died, got resurrected, died ''again'' 30 seconds later after an ill-advised marriage proposal, then got resurrected for real. Received a hell of a plot dump from Thor while dead, and was tasked with convincing Redcloak and his dark god to betray Xykon, lend their aid, and save the world(s), which is going the exact opposite of swimmingly. (What do you expect? He's a dwarf; he sinks like a rock.)  Also now wields a powerful lightning hammer which Thor gave him directions to find. (Password's "Loki sucks.")
* Belkar Bitterleaf, the chaotic evil [[halfling]] [[multiclassing|multiclassed]] [[ranger]]-[[barbarian]]. A hard-drinking, hard-fighting, hard-fucking killing machine, Belkar is one of the best characters in the comic. [[Murderhobo|He kills what he can't fuck and he fucks what he can't kill, sometimes fucking things before he kills them]] (but not the other way around, ew). His style of fighting involves stabbing as many dudes as possible with as many knives as possible. Despite being able to steamroll regular enemies, his low Will means that any spellcasters he faces will kick his ass, and his effed-up build (barbarian-ranger is an unhappy marriage where XP is concerned, his low STR means he mostly has to kill minions with tricky maneuvering, his low WIS makes him useless at casting Ranger spells, and despite being a 3.5e ranger he didn't put <i>any</i> points into his tracking ability) means that bigger people (like Roy) can still kick his ass. Still, he is murderously awesome and the PC with the biggest body count thus far (or would be if it wasn't for the time a powered up Vaarsuvius cast an evil epic spell that unintentionally caused a far bigger genocide than they intended). He originally faked character development to milk roleplay XP, then kept faking it as he went from a low-functioning sociopathy to a high-functioning one so the party wouldn't keep cutting him loose, and since has realized that somewhere along the way he went from faking it to developing for real, something that makes him just as angry and defensive as everything else to realize. Has a pet cat called Mr. Scruffy, hurting him will cause Belkar to rip you inside out and feed them to you, and vice versa. Also has a motherfucking allosaurus (currently polymorphed into a small lizard). Has been prophesied to die for keeps within the next (in-comic) year by his nemesis the Oracle, which Roy and Haley are aware of but haven't shared with anyone else, and to be responsible for the deaths of a big swathe of characters, some of whom are still alive...
* Vaarsuvius, the [[elven]] [[wizard]]. Talks too much. V's undescribed gender is something of a running joke - emphasis on "something"- in the series, which makes you wonder what their voice must sound like for it to be of no help in the matter. They have a spouse at home who is  also of unknown gender, and it isn't even clear if they are the same or different sexes; both are likely a play on elven androgyny. (In setting, elves all seem pretty androgynous/non-binary and don't seem to care about gender either way.) V's primary M.O. is "use fireball", [[Meme|and if that doesn't work, "use more fireball"]] (fitting, given their name). They also like to prank people with the Explosive Runes spell, and other forms of blaster magic may or may not be prominent. The fact that this is probably the worst way to play a wizard in no way diminishes the fact that V is easily the most powerful member of the Order by a country-mile, able to turn the tide of entire battles unless some convenient dramatic device takes them out of the action for a while, which it often has. While they used to possess an ego befitting both an elf and a wizard, V was recently taken down a notch when they were forced to <Strike>sell</Strike> rent their soul to a [[Tanar'ri|demon]], [[Baatezu|devil]] and [[Yugoloth|daemon]] (all at the same time) to save their spouse and (adopted) children from a black [[dragon]]. They eventually [[RAGE|flipped the fuck out]] and [[powergamer|killed up to a quarter of all black dragons in existence through a nasty 'Familicide' custom spell]] alongside their direct non-blood related (read: non-dragon) families in order to posthumously spite said dragon, something with more or less instantly destroyed their marriage on the spot; they've been too busy trying to save the world to try to rebuild bridges with their spouse and kids and didn't even contest the divorce when papers were delivered. They are also further horrified when they realized the unintended consequences of this caused the deaths of countless innocent people with black dragon ancestry or even with no dragon ancestry who had relations to those people. Despite being put through the emotional wringer, they've developed to the point that they're getting better at using the right spells for the right jobs and being creative with their magic instead of treating it like a proverbial hammer and every problem as a proverbial nail.
* Minrah Elle Shaleshoe: A female Dwarf Cleric/Fighter multiclass who joins the party much later in the story as Durkon's cohort.  She first teams with them to stop an attack on the dwarven lands by vampires led by vampire Durkon, but at the end of that arc decides to travel with them permanently after learning about the threat of the Snarl while she and Durkon were both dead, refusing a guaranteed place in the paradisal afterlife to do it. Hasn't had as much of a chance to show off her stuff as everyone else, but she's apparently Durkon's cohort and a fighter/cleric multiclass, and has gotten in some absolutely sick burns on multiple main cast members, not least Redcloak.