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Kwyndig
Sep 23, 2006

Heeeeeey


edit: totally beaten

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Maldraedior
Jun 16, 2002

YOU ARE AN ASININE MORT
I guess why I like this strip is because Xykon epitomizes why I'm so terrible as casters. The approriate way is to hang back, let the meatshields take thier hits and blast the crap out everyone. But eventually I just go gently caress THIS poo poo I'm a high level caster what the hell are a bunch of lower level semis going to do to me? Which leads to this happening:


Dude, this is gonna be awesome


wait, ow


OH poo poo WHERE ARE MY MEATSHIELDS

at this point, I usually die, and Xykon would too, except that he convices the paladins beating his rear end to turn around (oh god the extras don't kill the bad guy when they have the chance because they stop and talk to him CALL THE CLICHE POLICE)

and as long as I'm spending way more effort than is really necessary for this discussion, a fair number of paladins either don't look at the ball or pass all of their will saves. O'Chul, Not-Miko, and Halbard Paladin seen above seem to be the only ones at the front still fighting, but there's also


Flying Paladin(Cleric?)


Cloaked Paladin and


Pirate Paladin

all who are a bit preoccupied to do much good. plus once Xykon get a bit of separation from the melee fighters, he goes back on the offensive starting with


Finger of Death


a Bluff check :downs:


Magic Missile and


Lightning Bolt

So it's not like he wiped out a room full of paladins with one gimmick, he tried to wipe out a room full of paldins with one gimmick, nearly got killed in the process, then reverted to epic caster to clean up the mess. in summation: rar rar agree with my opinion about a webcomic!

clockworkjoe
May 31, 2000

Rolled a 1 on the random encounter table, didn't you?
I would think an epic level lich versus a room full of prepared paladins and clerics would be a dramatic, even awesome battle. But the rubber ball trick is pretty lame, after the previous fights we've seen in the battle. And it is offensive, because throwing a symbol in someone's face is forcing them to look. He used it to attack the paladins. That's what offensive means. Symbols are meant to defend or protect a location. Do you think the game designers wanted an 8th level spell being vastly more powerful than 9th level attack spells like meteor swarm? No. Use common sense.

So, as a fantasy story, this failed, because it isn't well..fantastic. It's just cheap.

NorgLyle
Sep 20, 2002

Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

clockworkjoe posted:

I would think an epic level lich versus a room full of prepared paladins and clerics would be a dramatic, even awesome battle.
But does anybody, and I'm including people who aren't me and are not sick and tired of the whole Azure City, want to read a weeks+ worth of strips featuring characters we don't know at all fighting Xykon?

I mean, who gives a drat since we know that the Not-PCs aren't going to defeat him no matter what. It would be like adding an extra hour of footage to Return of the King dedicated to the fall of the garrison at Osgiliath.

Zooloo
Mar 30, 2003

just wanted to make you something beautiful

clockworkjoe posted:

It's just cheap.

It's only cheap because you know the rules and try to make story predictions with them. For the rest of us, it was amazing. Turn off your gamer sense and look at it from a purely imaginary perspective. This was a fantastic strip.

Heresiarch
Oct 6, 2005

Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Soonmot posted:

I thought Roy was LG?

And in case anybody missed it, from #231:

Only registered members can see post attachments!

Heresiarch
Oct 6, 2005

Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

clockworkjoe posted:

So, as a fantasy story, this failed, because it isn't well..fantastic. It's just cheap.

I bet you got into arguments about what level magic-user Gandalf was.

Sam Hall
Jun 29, 2003

All this rule lawyering BS make me glad I don't know poo poo about D&D beyond what I picked up from Planescape Torment.

IT'S A GOOD STORY AND XYKON'S AN AWESOME VILLAIN OKAY YOU JERKS

clockworkjoe
May 31, 2000

Rolled a 1 on the random encounter table, didn't you?

Zoolooman posted:

It's only cheap because you know the rules and try to make story predictions with them. For the rest of us, it was amazing. Turn off your gamer sense and look at it from a purely imaginary perspective. This was a fantastic strip.

I am looking at from an imaginary perspective. The rubber ball isn't really that fantastic to me.

Zooloo
Mar 30, 2003

just wanted to make you something beautiful

clockworkjoe posted:

I am looking at from an imaginary perspective.

You have the imagination, but you aren't inclined to approach the story from the same angle.

The rubber ball is beside the point. I don't care about it or the paladins' stats or the technical rules for symbols or whatever.

Up until now, Xykon was a sucky villain. The best thing he'd done for Team Evil was employing Redcloak. Otherwise, he was snarky and silly--even while murdering no-names. In 447, when he flew up to the throne room, Redcloak said, "What the hell is he doing?" This implied that Xykon was making a fatal mistake. We expected that the Sapphire Guild would rip Xykon to shreds. But in two pages, Xykon proved that an army of mid-level paladins was literally a joking matter for him.

That was an amazing, concrete revelation. It validated Roy's death for me, because until now, I'd thought Roy had died only because he'd fought alone. Now, I understand that if Roy hadn't gone solo, the entire OOTS would've been wiped with him. Xykon was simply that powerful.

What we have now is a puzzle story. The Throne Room is probably lost, but the war isn't over. If the remaining OOTS can destroy the gate-sapphire and escape with their lives, Xykon loses this round. The question is, how do they break the sapphire without being wiped by the lich? I suspect we're going to see O-Chule momentarily healed, giving him the second he needs to finish his swing and smash the gate. How will the OOTS manage this? I don't know. That's why the story remains so exciting.

Zooloo fucked around with this message at 08:29 on May 6, 2007

Efreet saiid
Jan 29, 2006

by Lowtax

Ferrinus posted:

If Xykon fought a goblin, he wouldn't need to be "uberpowerful" for the outcome to be preordained.
But the writer still decides to set him up against a goblin.

quote:

In short I think it can be argued successfully that by the facts established in the comic (how strong the paladins in the Sapphire Guard generally are, how strong Xykon is) that Xykon should have won that fight, just like what we know about Miko and Roy suggests that Roy should have been able to hand her rear end to her after she fell.
The writer decided to make them weak and set the situation up so they would fail.

quote:

There's no D&D rule that says "PCs may only encounter enemies whose CR matches their level."
I'm not going to start quoting the DMG to you. But it's right here, ok, I can go there any time I want. Just so you know. *Firmly taps DMG for emphasis even though it's actually in the closet downstairs*

My point is that the rules are a tool, and the GM decides how to use them. Saying "it's by the rule" sidesteps the reality that the rules serve the writer.

quote:

They should only be excised from the story if their unrestrained power impedes the advance of the plot rather than facilitates it. From where I'm standing Xykon the twentieth level lich sorcerer has made the strip better, not worse.
Leaving aside actual tabletop play, because this is where the analogy fails since plot in rpg terms should not mean the same thing as plot in a story sense, I just disagree that this makes the plot better, or that "move the plot forward go go go" is a valid excuse. Hack writers move their plot "forward" with crappy plot devices all the time, but that doesn't make those plot devices a good thing. I'm not saying he's doing that, but that is the response i'd give to your criteria.

Rather I think he had an idea for a cool scene, but failed to realise that everybody else has already had the same 'cool' idea and it's actually kinda lame. He came to these conclusions based on the same things other people do, such as seeing paladins as having an in-built character arc - oh hey look they're jerks and they can fall so they must do so immediatly!.

quote:

I don't get the rest of your suggestions. Yes, he can do that stuff. So, quite frankly, can Varsuuvius, substituting fireballs for Symbols of Insanity. D&D isn't Exalted - twentieth-level characters can't just cast a spell and finish off a city, they have to apply their powers and resources intelligently...which Xykon is doing.
Since when is he doing things inteligently? That's a very selective characterisation, when before this people have been talking about how goofy he is or how he almost got beaten and so on. And the reality is that if you gave me an epic level lich, with azure city what it is, i'd have it flattened after a week of game time and a half-hour of real-time, not counting the hour the DM would spend sulking about it.

quote:

More hyperbole! Xykon doesn't have "no limits". He's just really powerful. He's gotten seriously damaged twice now.
Redcloak's amulet has never been threatened and his wounds have always had a trivial outcome. He's never even broken his stride, except for the evil recruitment bit that also conveniently healed him, wich I have no problem with because it was funny. But this scene didn't work for me.

quote:

I think you have your Cliche Detector tuned too strongly, honestly. A bunch of weak guys getting killed by a strong guy isn't automatically the Clueless Guys Who Always Lose, and honestly a powerful evil character taking out a bunch of weaker good characters who want to stop him isn't at all outlandish or stupid.
It really is one of the top cliches. And as noted, it comes on the heels of his other cliches about these characters. His mindset about this subset of the plot is poor.

quote:

I've never read those books, but I feel really sorry for you now happyelf :(
Yeah where was your sympathy when my TG thread in QCS tanked? Huh? Huh?? It only got to six pages!

I didn't actually read that many of them, but people talk a lot and I have read a few by accident, for instance when I bought NWN they tossed in a copy of "Thronhold" for free and oohh godd it was painful and aparently not even the worst. The one's i've read to the point of masochism have been the dragonlance ones, and I skipped the summer of chaos trilogy in wich the solamnic knights get completly steam-rolled by an invincible plot army not once, but twice in three books. But the FR books are equally bad if not worse, several of the writers really do push paladins as stupid jerks who only cause trouble, wich then requires a GC anti-hero type or a loving wizard to come in and fix things.

'Everybody' knows this stuff, it's one of the common rpg/fiction cliches, just the same as "hey guys technology is evil and our cool nature powers are way cool" and "oh look it's a fantasy church that claims to be good- but it's actually evil and corrupt like all religions in the real world!".

Actually scratch that last example, you'd probably love that stuff <:mad:>

There are threads right now on RPG.net or ENworld wich i'm sure you could find examples of this, I even spotted one the other day.

I'm not saying these concepts are horrible in all cases, but people go back to them again and again and they do that because they have a pretty unoriginal and uninteresting take on things. They follow a certain train of thought to what they think is the inevitable result, but it's always the same dull combination of dissing authority and using the establishment as a prop and the heroes have to be on their own like frodo and the law is dumb and so on and on. He doesn't have that problem broadly, but in terms of this subset of the plot it's right there.

quote:

Again, though, I think you've just become so used to bad writing that you're seeing it wherever you look, like a soldier suddenly having visions of Charlies In The Trees. It's possible for a bad guy to kill a bunch of good guys and have it not be bad writing!
Yeah but considering other plot decisions he's made and his approach to the system, I think in this case he's fallen into the same traps that far lesser writers do when they talk about these kinds of characters in this kind of setting.

Zoolooman posted:

If I might speculate, I think the people who are complaining have too much emotional investment. That seems like a strange thing to say--naively, one wonders how emotional investment could be a bad thing--but in a fundamentally comedic story, stepping to close to the page can make you feel frustrated, because fundamentally, even in their most dramatic moments, comedies never make sense.
I don't think anyone's emotionally invested in this debate zool. It's just nerds typing a shitload of words. If anybody is really having their fun spoiled by this discussion i'll be happy to stop. I'm avoiding a lot of replies for much the same reason.

Soonmot posted:

I thought Roy was LG?
The CG character I was referring to was the old guy with the cat.

And have you ever wondered why so many people on the OOTS boards inexplicably consider him a big mean bossy jerk?

Heresiarch posted:

I bet you got into arguments about what level magic-user Gandalf was.
Gandalf was pretty clearly a Paladin.

No, really! Think about it!
He even summoned a horse!

Efreet saiid fucked around with this message at 10:51 on May 6, 2007

Factor_VIII
Feb 2, 2005

Les soldats se trouvent dans la vérité.

clockworkjoe posted:

I would think an epic level lich versus a room full of prepared paladins and clerics would be a dramatic, even awesome battle. But the rubber ball trick is pretty lame, after the previous fights we've seen in the battle. And it is offensive, because throwing a symbol in someone's face is forcing them to look. He used it to attack the paladins. That's what offensive means. Symbols are meant to defend or protect a location. Do you think the game designers wanted an 8th level spell being vastly more powerful than 9th level attack spells like meteor swarm? No. Use common sense.

So, as a fantasy story, this failed, because it isn't well..fantastic. It's just cheap.

If Xykon had simply flown in with Greater Invisibility and Stoneskin on and started repeatedly casting Horrid Wilting and Wail of the Banshee, then the fight would have indeed ended as one would expect based on D&D. However that would have been too predictable in my opinion. Having a bouncing ball that drove all the paladins to slaughter one another was much more inventive than that and thus more interesting.

Zooloo
Mar 30, 2003

just wanted to make you something beautiful
Look. I think everyone needs to take a step back and just enjoy where the comic is going. If you scrutinize it, it will break. It simply isn't coherently plotted. It wasn't meant to be. It's a comedy with dramatic moments. Just suspend as much disbelief as you can manage and move on.

Edit: If I might remind you, characters in this strip break the fourth wall and disobey common sense in order to knowingly execute genre cliches. Compared to that, two pages dedicated to making a comedic villain look especially nasty are hardly mistakes on the part of the writer.

Zooloo fucked around with this message at 11:40 on May 6, 2007

Vicissitude
Jan 26, 2004

You ever do the chicken dance at a wake? That really bothers people.

Caselogic.com posted:

No, it was done away with in 3rd edition. It wasn't all that useful in 2nd either, the radius was 10 feet and was nullified if the paladin forced an evil creature into it. IE, charging towards something.

All they got now is an aura of courage, giving allies within 10' a +4 on saves vs fear.

AlexG
Jul 15, 2004
If you can't solve a problem with gaffer tape, it's probably insoluble anyway.
I think that reading some of Burlew's articles, especially Villain Workshop, will give some insight into the OOTS plot and the character of Xykon.

A few points regarding Burlew's apparent preferences:
  • The villain's plot may not be what we think it is; even when villains appear to be allied (Xykon + Redcloak) they may have different, contradictory goals. Villains have motivating emotions that may work against them (for Xykon, probably some combination of laziness and greed, leading to arrogance).
  • Characters may encounter the villain before they are able to defeat him. They probably won't defeat him by just having a big fight: some additional element is needed. Additionally, going up against the villain without knowing his true plan won't do any good - investigation always pays off, whereas brute force applied unintelligently leads to heavy losses.
  • Burlew is fond of "interesting" consequences of interactions of various rules.
  • He seems to enjoy misdirection.

At this stage, the OOTS shouldn't be able to stop Xykon, and not just because of his personal power, but because since they don't know what's really going on (as he hinted to Roy on board the dragon) they can't counter his plot effectively. Shojo's long introduction of the Snarl and the gates may well be true, but he could easily have been wrong about what Xykon and Redcloak are really up to.

In terms of the plot, Xykon right now is undefeatable, at least in terms of being able to smack him around with swords and spells. Later, the Order will be able to stop his evil plan, and the events of this arc may be what makes them realize that they need more information about their enemies (as well as to grow in strength themselves). There's an element of railroading here but it's very far from Xykon being a Mary Sue; if anything, Burlew's world and plot is what he wants us to adore, rather than the character.

Lurdiak
Feb 26, 2006

I believe in a universe that doesn't care, and people that do.


The paladin girl killing herself due to guilt at the end was just too much for me. :(

NorgLyle
Sep 20, 2002

Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

Efreet saiid posted:

I'm not going to start quoting the DMG to you. But it's right here, ok, I can go there any time I want. Just so you know. *Firmly taps DMG for emphasis even though it's actually in the closet downstairs*
Well, I'm enough of a pedant.

Dungeon Masters Guide, pg 49-50 posted:

Sometimes, the PCs encounter something that's a pushover for them. At other times, an encounter is tooo difficult, and they have to run away. A well-constructed adventure has a variety of encounters at several different levels of difficulty. Table 3-2: Encounter Difficulty shows (in percentage terms) how many encounters of a certain difficulty an adventure should have.
...
5% Overpowering EL 5+ higher than party level
...
Overpowering: The PCs should run. If they don't, they will almost certainly lose. Encounter level is five or more levels higher than the party level.
It is one of the biggest, and most common, misconceptions about the CR system to think that the PCs should encounter only level appropriate foes and that every encounter should be one where the PCs can "win" through combat.

Efreet saiid posted:

Gandalf was pretty clearly a Paladin.

No, really! Think about it!
He even summoned a horse!
One more reason to use the gestalt character rules from Unearthed Arcana.

NorgLyle fucked around with this message at 15:03 on May 6, 2007

Efreet saiid
Jan 29, 2006

by Lowtax
Ah-ha, nerd trap! You see everyone? It is NorgLyle who is truly the nerd!

...

But I mean think of it, Gandalf doesn't cast many spells, most of the time it he kills something it's using a melee weapon, he's a servant of the gods, he's fearless and inspiring, and he has a pokemount. He's an Assimar paladin, or at most a paladin/sorcerer. And plus clearly he's the GM's pet.

NorgLyle
Sep 20, 2002

Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

Efreet saiid posted:

Ah-ha, nerd trap! You see everyone? It is NorgLyle who is truly the nerd!
I am, without question, the biggest nerd here. (Well, aside from in total weight since I'm one of those skinny nerds rather than the :btroll: types)

Empress Theonora
Feb 19, 2001

She was a sword glinting in the depths of night, a lance of light piercing the darkness. There would be no mistakes this time.

Lurdiak posted:

The paladin girl killing herself due to guilt at the end was just too much for me. :(

Yeah. :smith:

Jesus, to think that a couple of months ago people were arguing that somehow Miko was the most unsympathetic of the villains.

Fuego Fish
Dec 5, 2004

By tooth and claw!

Rincewind posted:

Yeah. :smith:

Jesus, to think that a couple of months ago people were arguing that somehow Miko was the most unsympathetic of the villains.

Miko doesn't wisecrack enough.

ZorbaTHut
May 5, 2005

wake me when the world is saved

Rincewind posted:

Yeah. :smith:

Jesus, to think that a couple of months ago people were arguing that somehow Miko was the most unsympathetic of the villains.

I dunno. Xykon's a dick but he knows he's a dick. Miko thinks that she's a shining beacon of holy goodness. Does anyone really believe that Miko wouldn't have gladly chosen a strategy that ended with goblins killing themselves once they see the true meaning of their actions?

And then she'd gloat about how she helped their souls regain purity.

Honestly, I'd rather have a beer with a self-admitted rear end in a top hat any day.

gothfae
Mar 28, 2004

There seems no plan because it is all plan. There seems no center because it is all center.
Okay, honestly, he could have tossed a big silver platter with the symbol on it into the middle of them, that's not an offensive use of the spell. Years of 'Sage Advice' on the D&D website and in Dragon and Dungeon magazines have pretty much clear where the line between offensive is and where it isn't. That particular action would not have broken invisibility, as it directly affected no one, therefor it was not offensive. He could have inscribed the damned thing in the air in the same panel he tossed the ball. The ball was comic effect.

Secondly, it only affects, as of 3rd ed, this may have changed in 3.5, 150 hit points of creatures. It affected, as far as I can count, at least 15 unique paladins, the highest level ones, not being affected.

There is not one Mount in that room, given the amount of area, you'd think the someone of high level would have summoned theirs. Unless no one in there is above 4th level (see my note about 150 hit points)

No matter how Xykon did it, that room would have been a cake walk, he just chose to do it in typical Xykon style instead of "mwah ha ha, I have an evil plan." And dumping the room full of cloudkills and chain lightning.

Hinjo has a mount, no one else seems to, except Miko. Miko is high level cause she's an rear end and was sent on missions as far away and as dangerous as possible to keep her out of people's hair, while everyone else trained and rousted the occasional pickpocket.

TheFuzzyLumpkin
Sep 15, 2003

But you are a person, and I can't say I'm awfully fond of that.
I said all this before! :mad:

As per the spell description, you don't have to look at the symbol to trigger it. You can set it so that it goes off by alignment, but here's the thing: once one person activates it, it's active for a radius of sixty feet. So even if you're not looking for it, if you're 60 feet away when someone activates it you have to make a save.

So long as you're in the radius, you have to make the will save every round. That's every six seconds. Eventually you're gonna make a bad roll and fail it, especially since a saving throw against Xykon's spell can't be that easy. That room isn't that much bigger than sixty feet, and getting out of the radius in a crush of insane paladins would kill you with AoOs anyway.

It was a good plan, it was totally within the spell description and system rules, and there is nothing wrong with it. The bouncy ball was for humor; he could have used virtually any other object to toss.

Martian Manhumper
Apr 12, 2005
Symbol of insanity specifically has no hit die limit anymore.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/symbolofInsanity.htm

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

Samedi
Aug 26, 2003

I turn evil.

TheFuzzyLumpkin posted:

I said all this before! :mad:

As per the spell description, you don't have to look at the symbol to trigger it. You can set it so that it goes off by alignment, but here's the thing: once one person activates it, it's active for a radius of sixty feet. So even if you're not looking for it, if you're 60 feet away when someone activates it you have to make a save.

So long as you're in the radius, you have to make the will save every round. That's every six seconds. Eventually you're gonna make a bad roll and fail it, especially since a saving throw against Xykon's spell can't be that easy. That room isn't that much bigger than sixty feet, and getting out of the radius in a crush of insane paladins would kill you with AoOs anyway.

It was a good plan, it was totally within the spell description and system rules, and there is nothing wrong with it. The bouncy ball was for humor; he could have used virtually any other object to toss.

Looks like somebody failed his spot check:

"A creature need save against the symbol only once as long as it remains within the area, though if it leaves the area and returns while the symbol is still active, it must save again."

Anyway, I don't mind when Burlew tweaks the rules or whatever. What I'm not liking is that Xykon is being written contrary to all his previous characterization. Suddenly the chaotic, lazy, supremely confident lich is being written as ruthless, efficient, and foresighted. I don't like it.

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!!
May 31, 2006

Samedi posted:

Looks like somebody failed his spot check:

"A creature need save against the symbol only once as long as it remains within the area, though if it leaves the area and returns while the symbol is still active, it must save again."

Anyway, I don't mind when Burlew tweaks the rules or whatever. What I'm not liking is that Xykon is being written contrary to all his previous characterization. Suddenly the chaotic, lazy, supremely confident lich is being written as ruthless, efficient, and foresighted. I don't like it.

He's always been those things.

Look at it this way. Redcloak sees the world the way a normal person would. He's concerned with siege engines, armies, supply chain, tactics.

Xykon doesn't care. He knows that hey, push comes to shove, there's not a whole hell of a lot anyone can do if he decides he wants to do something. He sees the world the way a D&D player does. "Wow, that's sure an impressive army. You know, hypothetically, a single Great Cleave could take out EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM."

Xykon's chaotic and lazy because he's supremely confident. He's supremely confident because when push comes to shove he still is ruthless, efficient, and (a little bit) foresighted.

gothfae
Mar 28, 2004

There seems no plan because it is all plan. There seems no center because it is all center.

Samedi posted:

What I'm not liking is that Xykon is being written contrary to all his previous characterization. Suddenly the chaotic, lazy, supremely confident lich is being written as ruthless, efficient, and foresighted. I don't like it.

What part of those two descriptions can't co-exist?

He was still chaotic. It was only Roy's interference that forced him to make a change in plans. Redcloak had no idea what he was doing. That's pretty chaotic.

He took a bit of a beat down so that his enemies would kill each other. That's pretty drat rear end lazy when he could really have done it himself.

Ruthless.. well he's always been ruthless. Dead followers are just as good as live ones and talk back less.

Efficient, foresighted and Supremely confident, He's never been shown as a cackling, deluded megalomaniac, and he _did_ manage to be foresighted enough to turn himself into a lich. Not to mention his magical gadgets. he just doesn't particularly worry himself with people who aren't a threat. Like that Greentree guy. As for efficient... there were more efficient ways of handling this whole battle. Fortunately Redcloak handled the tactics or there would have been no planning at all. There were more efficient ways of handling a room of Paladins. Efficiency and Foresight has your major villain scribing Summon IX scrolls in advance of the attack, things like that, not casting Overland flight and spending 10 minutes etching a rubber ball with symbol of insanity.

He's just never had a reason to even live up to a fraction of his potential before. And that's all this was.. a fraction of his potential.. if he weren't so chaotic, lazy, and generally uncaring of anything he doesn't perceive as a threat.

His whole speech to Roy was "This is how you play the game, I know how to play the game. You can't beat me until you know how to play the game too."

And Xykon just proved he can play.

gothfae fucked around with this message at 21:36 on May 6, 2007

Spaz mk. 2.0
Apr 19, 2005

Shank 'em if ya got 'em, fellas!
He has always been that way. He came up with that plan to find out where the Sapphire gate was on the spot when he met Miko, I have no idea how you were thinking he wasn't ruthless, and as far as efficiency goes, he's as efficient or inefficient as his violent sense of humor dictates at any given moment.

Edit: eh, as far as the planning the battle goes, why should he bother with it? An evil overlord has minions that do the grunt work for him. Those hobgoblin generals weren't just going to zerg the city walls with no planning ahead whatsoever you know. They're a race that places high value on military discipline.

Spaz mk. 2.0 fucked around with this message at 20:44 on May 6, 2007

Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

"Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

gothfae posted:

What part of those two descriptions can't co-exist?

He was still chaotic. It was only Roy's interference that forced him to make a change in plans. Redcloak had no idea what he was doing. That's pretty chaotic.

He took a bit of a beat down so that his enemies would kill each other. That's pretty drat rear end lazy when he could really have done it himself.

Ruthless.. well he's always been ruthless. Dead followers are just as good as live ones and talk back less.

Efficient, foresighted and Supremely confident, He's never been shown as a cackling, deluded megalomaniac, and he _did_ manage to be foresighted enough to turn himself into a lich. Not to mention his magical gadgets. he just doesn't particularly worry himself with people who aren't a threat. Like that Greentree guy. As for efficient... there were more efficient ways of handling this whole battle. Fortunately Redcloak handled the tactics or there would have been no planning at all. There were more efficient ways of handling a room of Paladins. Efficiency and Foresight has your major villain scribing Summon IX scrolls in advance of the attack, things like that, not casting Overland flight and spending 10 minutes etching a rubber ball with symbol of insanity.

He's just never had a reason to even live up to a fraction of his potential before. And that's all this was.. a fraction of his potential.. if he weren't so chaotic, lazy, and generally uncaring of anything he doesn't perceive as a threat.

His whole speech to Roy was "This is how you play the game, I know how to play the game. You can't be me until you know how to play the game too."

And Xykon just proved he can play.

This post pretty much sums up everything I was trying to say. Xykon is a really, really great villain.

Efreet saiid
Jan 29, 2006

by Lowtax
The ball thing is not legal, I don't get why people are defending it based on the rules when the rules don't support it. For instance, he'd certainly lose invisibility for doing something like this. That said, I didn't have a problem with Thor's exploding tree thunder spell because it was cool, so I can totally see people using the same reasoning here. That's fine. But trying to defend it under the rules is weak as.

Samedi posted:

Anyway, I don't mind when Burlew tweaks the rules or whatever. What I'm not liking is that Xykon is being written contrary to all his previous characterization. Suddenly the chaotic, lazy, supremely confident lich is being written as ruthless, efficient, and foresighted. I don't like it.
I don't think it's that much of a change, I just think the implications of his mindset haven't been shown until now.

Efreet saiid fucked around with this message at 22:27 on May 6, 2007

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition

Samedi posted:

Anyway, I don't mind when Burlew tweaks the rules or whatever. What I'm not liking is that Xykon is being written contrary to all his previous characterization. Suddenly the chaotic, lazy, supremely confident lich is being written as ruthless, efficient, and foresighted. I don't like it.

He was ruthless enough to end a labor dispute by killing and zombifying a bunch of ogres; he was efficient enough to frame his killing the ogres as a net positive; and he was foresighted enough to give Redcloak the baseball speech at the end of the first arc ("...you gotta suck it up and realize it's the season that matters..."). This is just the first time he's been in a strip where his badassery wasn't done off-panel.

NorgLyle
Sep 20, 2002

Do you think I posted to this forum because I value your companionship?

Efreet saiid posted:

The ball thing is not legal, I don't get why people are defending it based on the rules when the rules don't support it. ... But trying to defend it under the rules is weak as.
Possibly because the people attacking it don't seem to have the best grasp on the rules, so someone who was hazy on the point could make the judgement "Well, they were :pseudo: on point X, so it stands to reason that there would be some :pseudo: on point Y as well."

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Efreet saiid posted:

But the writer still decides to set him up against a goblin.
The writer decided to make them weak and set the situation up so they would fail.

Yeah, and? Most of the paladins in the Sapphire Guard were too weak to take on a lich, and due to how the battle unfolded they ended up doing it anyway, so they lost. It was spelled out for us at the beginning of the battle that the Order of the Stick was basically there to try and engage Xykon and hold him off, because (to paraphrase Roy or someone else) "A high level sorcerer isn't really at the level of engaging enemy units, he just reworks the whole course of the battle."

quote:

Rather I think he had an idea for a cool scene, but failed to realise that everybody else has already had the same 'cool' idea and it's actually kinda lame. He came to these conclusions based on the same things other people do, such as seeing paladins as having an in-built character arc - oh hey look they're jerks and they can fall so they must do so immediatly!.

Again, years of reading terrible fantasy fiction has turned you into the books-about-elves equivalent of a hardened soldier who spins, pulls a gun, and yells "freeze" at anyone who taps him on the shoulder.

It's possible for an evil guy to take out a bunch of weaker good guys and have it be a good addition to the story.

It's possible for an ostensibly good character's rigid moral code to make them into an antagonist and be a good addition to the story.

Your complaints just look silly in the context of the entire story. "Ugh a paladin falling is so cliched!" The strip's other ~forty paladins remain upstanding members of society! "Ugh a bunch of soldiers dying to the main bad guy is so cliched!" We have been aware that the bad guy was capable of this for an extremely long time now, and the whole objective of the battle was to prevent it from coming to pass! Quit being super-jaded!

Also the ball thing isn't explicitly legal but it's very, very arguable. As others have said, what the spell means by saying a symbol is used "offensively" is spelled out very clearly, and chucking an item with a symbol on it into the air doesn't qualify.

Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 03:29 on May 7, 2007

Efreet saiid
Jan 29, 2006

by Lowtax

Ferrinus posted:

Yeah, and?
And so it's his call, it's got nothing to do with the rules. Just like it's the GM's call if they drop a red draogn on a 1st level party, they can't use the rules as a defence.

quote:

Again, years of reading terrible fantasy fiction has turned you into the books-about-elves equivalent of a hardened soldier who spins, pulls a gun, and yells "freeze" at anyone who taps him on the shoulder.
Don't even joke about that, man! You don't know what they did! The things they did the things I read. . . there were plot devices, endless, they made no sense!

They made tanis half-elven travel back in time to meet his mom and then carve a huge mural on the side of a mountain! Why? Why did he do any of that?? One guy did a book about the knights that just ripped off the entire plot to "Sir Garwain and the green knight", only he got the best bit backwards! And where the hell did the knights of takhisis come from? There were like 40,000 of them all of a sudden and the whole continent is smaller than Australia! Did they have cloning tanks? And that's not even mentioning the star wars ones! Wait- what's that in the trees? Oh god it's Kevin J Anderson fire fiiiiire-

quote:

It's possible for an evil guy to take out a bunch of weaker good guys and have it be a good addition to the story.
Yes, but that wasn't that for me.

quote:

It's possible for an ostensibly good character's rigid moral code to make them into an antagonist and be a good addition to the story.
This wasn't that, this was falling paladin #978. And as I said, it's not one then the other, it's all of these little bits in series.

quote:

Your complaints just look silly in the context of the entire story. "Ugh a paladin falling is so cliched!" The strip's other ~forty paladins remain upstanding members of society!
And then die. See? That's the other side of the cliche. They're either going to end up bad or they're going to die. They're useles, see? That's the point. Authority and the establishment always fails.

quote:

"Ugh a bunch of soldiers dying to the main bad guy is so cliched!" We have been aware that the bad guy was capable of this for an extremely long time now, and the whole objective of the battle was to prevent it from coming to pass! Quit being super-jaded!
If i was super jaded I would not complain. But I want better from this guy. I like his work and I don't like it when it sucks. And as I said, I don't have a problem with what this guy is capable of. I just had a problem with the execution.

quote:

Also the ball thing isn't explicitly legal but it's very, very arguable. As others have said, what the spell means by saying a symbol is used "offensively" is spelled out very clearly, and chucking an item with a symbol on it into the air doesn't qualify.
Ok fine, then the next move should be for the OOTS to spend a few comics pouring boiling water down ants-nests to get lots of extra XP.

Efreet saiid fucked around with this message at 10:16 on May 7, 2007

ZorbaTHut
May 5, 2005

wake me when the world is saved

Efreet saiid posted:

Ok fine, then the next move should be for the OOTS to spend a few comics pouring boiling water down ants-nests to get lots of extra XP.

I'm pretty sure that if killing hordes of hobgoblins doesn't give XP, neither does boiling anthills.

Seriously, "I do not approve of the way he's interpreting the rules" doesn't translate into "he is clearly ignoring D&D rules and thinks that anything no matter how crazy should work". Judging from Spaz's reply, I agree that I like his interpretation. It might not be how you'd do things, but that doesn't mean he's wrong.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Efreet saiid posted:

And so it's his call, it's got nothing to do with the rules. Just like it's the GM's call if they drop a red draogn on a 1st level party, they can't use the rules as a defence.

No one is invoking the rules to defend the setup of the encounter, just the outcome of the encounter. Sure, Rich could've had the throne room defended by a single level 3 commoner or a trio of ancient golden dragons, but instead he put in about twenty low-to-mid level paladins. And epic lich vs. lots of low-level melee guys has only one outcome!

quote:

This wasn't that, this was falling paladin #978.

Really? Is that how it usually happens?

Miko fell because of her near-hysterical anger at having been lied to her entire life, incredible ability to make excuses and justify anything she does, and general bloodlust. She found her lord had been corraborating with a bunch of people she utterly, utterly hated, decided that the lot of them must have been working with the Big Evil Badguy, and let loose instead of talking things through. It didn't strike me as some Holy poo poo Never Been Done Before Ever series of innovative events, but it was certainly appropriate to the situation and the characters as they'd been established and produced a lot of good strips.

The only other falling paladin storyarc I'm familiar with is Arthas from Warcraft 3, who basically sacrificed everything he had to kill a demon he had a vendetta against. Oh and I guess Aribeth from Neverwinter Nights to who threw in with the bad guys to get back at the city of Neverwinter for unjustly executing her lover?

Actually, those all sound pretty good. What exactly is wrong with "ostensibly good person is driven to do bad by personal concerns" again?

quote:

And then die. See? That's the other side of the cliche. They're either going to end up bad or they're going to die. They're useles, see? That's the point. Authority and the establishment always fails.

Oh, that's just dumb. Roy is Lawful Good and law-abiding he's the star of the strip. (Well, I guess he got killed recently, but still.) Hinjo is lawful good and he's constantly portrayed as intelligent and effective. And those paladins who got their asses kicked were cool - there was a pirate paladin and a scary samurai armor paladin and a grizzled veteran paladin, they weren't just consciously-made-to-be-idiots caricatures of authority figures that some hack writer was using to get back at the police for arresting him for speeding.

quote:

Ok fine, then the next move should be for the OOTS to spend a few comics pouring boiling water down ants-nests to get lots of extra XP.

I would not have thought it amiss if there was an early strip about that gambit, actually.

Efreet saiid
Jan 29, 2006

by Lowtax

ZorbaTHut posted:

Seriously, "I do not approve of the way he's interpreting the rules" doesn't translate into "he is clearly ignoring D&D rules and thinks that anything no matter how crazy should work". Judging from Spaz's reply, I agree that I like his interpretation. It might not be how you'd do things, but that doesn't mean he's wrong.
No, he is wrong, it clearly would not work under the rules and i'm sure were I so inclined I could prove it via sage articles and the like, but i've got no interest in widening this debate over such a trivial issue.

That doesn't stop it from being a cool idea in the comic but that in turn doesn't change how weak it is for a writer who aparently takes pride in suprises and like playing with cliches, to drop a series of predictable plot points like this. Really, the bouncy ball, the paladin splash page, and Roy dissing Miko have been the only redeeming features of that little bit of the strip. But as I said, i'm not carrying this over to the rest of the strip. It's still good.

Ferrinus posted:

The only other falling paladin storyarc I'm familiar with is Arthas from Warcraft 3, who basically sacrificed everything he had to kill a demon he had a vendetta against. Oh and I guess Aribeth from Neverwinter Nights to who threw in with the bad guys to get back at the city of Neverwinter for unjustly executing her lover?
See, those came out within a year of one another, and that should tell you something about how common this idea is.

Granted, in the case of Arthas they were doing the arc based on part on the death knights, who were in WC2 as well, but it's still typical of the hack writing that so much of WC3 relied on- it's actually an odd combination of good ideas and hack cliches, but a falling paladin who kills all the other paladins? Yawn. And Aribeth, god, we're talking about the NWN OC, wich was notorious for how rushed and contrived it was. In each case the mindset and logic leads to the same place. There's a lot of different causes but ultimatly people think that paladins are a character with a built-in character arc- they fall, that's what they do.

And this is the same thing. Miko and the guard were set up from the start to reach that point where the CG old guy came into conflict with her. Miko was always set up to fall. I'd go so far as to say that he's wiped out the saphire guard in part because he has no use for them after that, since their main purpose was that plot and the introduction of the snarl/gate stuff.

Again, as has been noted before, can anyone think of a paladin or paldin-like character who isn't either a huge jerk or a walking corpse? All I can come up with is big ears from goblins(early days yet!), a strip wich also has Kore, the nastiest 'paladin' ever.

quote:

Actually, those all sound pretty good.
Aribeth turned because her moron boyfriend was executed for being in league with an obvious villain, but later on she admits she never really liked him anyway. Arthas was just a mindless pretty boy who AFAIK became an empty husk for the lich king to inhabit. Both characters were dominated by almighty power of plot, their characterisation was never really coherent. I didn't mind Arthas's progression but it still comes off as a bit odd.

quote:

What exactly is wrong with "ostensibly good person is driven to do bad by personal concerns" again?
It's not that vague. It's paladins falling over and over again, assuming they aren't being jerks without falling, or dying in droves. It's like all these guys used to play D&D and never really got past the cliche phase, at least when it comes to that one class.

quote:

Oh, that's just dumb. Roy is Lawful Good and law-abiding he's the star of the strip.
As I said, I don't juge the strip by this, just this subplot. And again, seriously, i'm pretty sure part of why people inexplicably bitch about Roy and call him a jerk so much is because he's LG.

quote:

Hinjo is lawful good and he's constantly portrayed as intelligent and effective.
One guy. He's the exception, just like when he was initially introduced, purely to reassure the readers that the writer didn't write all paladins as cliche jerks.

quote:

And those paladins who got their asses kicked were cool - there was a pirate paladin and a scary samurai armor paladin and a grizzled veteran paladin, they weren't just consciously-made-to-be-idiots caricatures of authority figures that some hack writer was using to get back at the police for arresting him for speeding.
And then they all died because he wanted them to die. Their designs just make it worse. He may have drawn them like interesting characters, but he didn't treat them like that.

I guess it's possible he can pull a real twist, like maybe the one under the robe is Miko and she'll pull something, but that's doubtful and ultimatly they're just typical cannon fodder good guys who die just like the those guys always die.

quote:

I would not have thought it amiss if there was an early strip about that gambit, actually.
I expect better. Anyway I think i've said my peace, if you want to take this further, maybe we could move this discussion to TG? Hahahahha, just kidding. About the TG bit, I mean.

Efreet saiid fucked around with this message at 17:00 on May 7, 2007

greatn
Nov 15, 2006

by Lowtax
I think the main problem is that plot twists and resolutions seem hollow without foreshadowing. They seem like deus ex machina. Even though Xykon is certainly capable of making a symbol of insanity it seems like a deus ex without foreshadowing.

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Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Efreet saiid posted:

Again, he set things up like that. It's still a cliche even if it was contrived to a degree you found acceptable.

You can say that about anything!

quote:

See, those came out within a year of one another, and that should tell you something about how common this idea is.

Yeah? Well both of those games also had the undead in them. And evil wizards who wanted to take over things. And orcs. "Common ideas" are what make things part of a genre!

quote:

There's a lot of different caues but ultimatly people think that paladins are a character with a built-in character arc- they fall, that's what they do.

Paladins don't have a built-in character arc, they have a built-in visible indicator of an extremely common and universal character arc. There's tons of stories about good people being driven to do bad things. poo poo, Roy's done bad things - remember him abandoning Elan to die? It's just that if you're a fighter and you do something bad, you're still a fighter, whereas if you're a paladin and you do something bad there's some pyrotechnics.

Your immense distaste for poorly-written fantasy has blinded you to the fact that "the good person who falls from grace" is actually a pretty good story trope! It's certainly used badly in many places, but it's being used well here. The strip is better for containing Miko than it would be if she was just replaced with some generic hired mercenary/enforcer who beat up the Order, dragged them to Azure City, and didn't say a word.

quote:

And this is the same thing. Miko and the guard were set up from the start to reach that point where the CG old guy came into conflict with her. Miko was always set up to fall. I'd go so far as to say that he's wiped out the saphire guard in part because he has no use for them after that, since their main purpose was that plot and the introduction of the snarl/gate stuff.

I don't get it, it looks here like you're complaining that Rich Burlew has planned out his plot in advance? Anything that happens was set up to happen.

quote:

It's not that vague. It's paladins falling over and over again, assuming they aren't being jerks without falling. It's like all these guys used to play D&D and never really got past the cliche phase, at least when it comes to that one class.

It is that vague. A "The Paladin has fallen!" storyline is a "A good person's turned evil!" storyline with more obvious special effects. It's dumb to write off every instance of a Paladin A) falling or B) dying as a stupid whiny teenager lashing out at authority.

quote:

And again, seriously, i'm pretty sure part of why people inexplicably bitch about Roy and call him a jerk so much is because he's LG.

HappyElf, I absolutely agree with you that this attitude exists within a distressingly large part of D&D's/this comic's fanbase (as well as fantasy writing as a whole.) But, like, it doesn't stop a paladin falling from having the ability to be a good part of a good story, and Rich Burlew definitely doesn't have this attitude himself.

quote:

One guy. He's the exception, just like when he was initially introduced, purely to reassure the readers that the writer didn't write all paladins as cliche jerks.

What? Every paladin but Miko was written as not a cliched jerk. Miko was included in the strip specifically as "the wrong way to play a paladin", just like Belkar is "that guy who just wants to kill everything". To complain that Miko is an insult to paladins is like complaining that Belkar is an insult to rangers.

Think about it - for you to be satisfied with the strip's portrayal of paladins, every single one would have had to be morally and intellectually perfect! Because otherwise, uh oh, looks like someone's just dredging up that boring old "Paladins suck!" cliche. (Since all non-paladins in the strip are portrayed as competent and rational, right?)

quote:

And then they all died because he wanted them to die. Their designs just make it worse. He may have drawn them like interesting characters, but he didn't treat them like that.

I can sympathize with "Those characters look cool, I wish they'd lived so we could see them be cool some more!" but it has little to do with the whole is-this-a-horrible-cliche angle.

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