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pinegala posted:And now I need the pig joke explained It's a warty hog. My Lovely Horse posted:Pretty sure that was just the corpse of Innocent Draketooth Clan Member creatively interpreting the definition of "rift", as per the unwritten rules of using "you get n questions" spells to gather actually useful information. I also wouldn't put it past the Draketooths to name some local geographic or architectural feature "Girard's Buttcheeks" to throw people off.
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Mar 4, 2013 18:41
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pinegala posted:And now I need the pig joke explained 
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Mar 4, 2013 18:44
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Call Now posted:Nice to know he's been always doing the That's the one design element that's common between this drawn style and the vectorial stick figure design. Cat Mattress fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Mar 4, 2013 |
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Mar 4, 2013 18:57
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faces.
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Colonel Cool posted:Clerics of Oghma in FR can be any alignment, as a counter example. Maybe Thor just allows "any good" or something else along those lines. Not a big deal. The only D&D Thor reference I have at hand is my 1e Deities and Demigods. It says of Thor, "Worshiper's Align: All alignments, especially warriors, beings needing certain weather, or ones wanting fair play". Assuming later editions didn't change this, I think the last bit would include Durkon.
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Mar 4, 2013 20:14
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MikeJF posted:Oh christ, I just went back and read #333 and it's not a coincidence, either. Son. Of. A. Bitch.
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Mar 4, 2013 20:21
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You don't need to fall over yourselves explaining how Malack's drain blood is a unique effect. Vampire blood draining causes constitution drain, which is explicitly prevented by Death ward. More explicitly...srd posted:The subject is immune to all death spells, magical death effects, energy drain, and any negative energy effects.
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Mar 4, 2013 20:22
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Mystic Mongol posted:You don't need to fall over yourselves explaining how Malack's drain blood is a unique effect. Vampire blood draining causes constitution drain, which is explicitly prevented by Death ward. More explicitly... The death ward is gone at this point though.
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Mar 4, 2013 20:30
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Mass Death Ward would have been so useful against I-Love-To-Energy-Drain Xykon. 
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Mar 4, 2013 20:30
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CapnAndy posted:Mass Death Ward would have been so useful against I-Love-To-Energy-Drain Xykon. One of his epic spells is a dispel so... Mystic Mongol posted:You don't need to fall over yourselves explaining how Malack's drain blood is a unique effect. Vampire blood draining causes constitution drain, which is explicitly prevented by Death ward. More explicitly... The vampires con drain is an extraordinary ability. As such, it is - Not a spell (death or otherwise) - Not magical - Not an energy drain (those drain levels) - Not powered by negative energy (evil cleric channeling) Just as death ward won't protect you from con poison, it won't protect you from someone sucking out your blood. peak debt fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Mar 4, 2013 |
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Mar 4, 2013 20:49
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peak debt posted:One of his epic spells is a dispel so... So memorize it twice!
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Mar 4, 2013 20:51
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greatn posted:So memorize it twice! Xykon doesn't need to memorize. He can allot his spell slots on the fly. He almost certainly can cast Dispel more often than Durkon could cast Mass Death Ward. But that's a moot point now.
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Mar 4, 2013 20:58
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Man sorcerers suck.
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Mar 4, 2013 21:00
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greatn posted:Man sorcerers suck. That's the trade off. Sorcerers can cast more spells per day and can do it on the fly from their whole list. Wizards get more powerful spells earlier in their career and have vastly more spells to pick from, but have to memorize the right ones that morning or else get caught with their robes down, like V did here. That's something that's a running theme for Xykon, especially in Start of Darkness, the sheer power of a Sorcerer vs. the flexibility of a Wizard. Me, I tend to play Sorcerers...gimme the power!
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Mar 4, 2013 21:35
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jng2058 posted:That's the trade off. Sorcerers can cast more spells per day and can do it on the fly from their whole list. Wizards get more powerful spells earlier in their career and have vastly more spells to pick from, but have to memorize the right ones that morning or else get caught with their robes down, like V did here. That's why O-Chul getting Xykon's spell list was such a big deal- Sorcerers can't change their spells like wizards can, so it's possible to plan ahead for everything he can do. Of course, epic displelling makes it really hard to make any of your preparations stick unless they're on magic items, and an anti magic zone would probably be more useful than all of the specific preparations.
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Mar 4, 2013 21:53
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Sefer posted:That's why O-Chul getting Xykon's spell list was such a big deal- Sorcerers can't change their spells like wizards can, so it's possible to plan ahead for everything he can do. Of course, epic displelling makes it really hard to make any of your preparations stick unless they're on magic items, and an anti magic zone would probably be more useful than all of the specific preparations. They can, at least, try to plan around his capabilities. That's a pretty big advantage. Xykon's whole schtick is that there comes a certain level of force that will overcome any barrier. If they can take away some of his power, he may no longer be above that threshold and become vulnerable.
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Mar 4, 2013 22:07
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jng2058 posted:That's the trade off. Sorcerers can cast more spells per day and can do it on the fly from their whole list. Wizards get more powerful spells earlier in their career and have vastly more spells to pick from, but have to memorize the right ones that morning or else get caught with their robes down, like V did here. The real gulf is that a wizard who memorizes the wrong spells is crappy for one day but a sorcerer who learns the wrong spells is crappy for life. Granted, sorcerers are still full casters so they're still very high up on the 3.5 ladder, but wizards have a considerable leg up on them, all things considered.
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Mar 4, 2013 22:17
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inthesto posted:The real gulf is that a wizard who memorizes the wrong spells is crappy for one day but a sorcerer who learns the wrong spells is crappy for life. ENERGY DRAIN ENERGY DRAIN ENERGY DRAIN MAXIMISED ENERGY DRAIN sebmojo fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Mar 4, 2013 |
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Mar 4, 2013 22:24
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sebmojo posted:ENERGY DRAIN COUNTERSPELL COUNTERSPELL COUNTERSPELL (This is actually one of the things about Burlew's views on D&D that baffles me. He loves counterspells despite the fact that they're incredibly situational and almost never come up in a campaign unless the DM is intentionally dicking over the party's casters.)
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Mar 4, 2013 22:25
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Xykon also showed both in a Start of Darkness fight and against V that he was a lot more willing/capable to use tactics and attacks beyond simply relying on his spell list.
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Mar 4, 2013 22:27
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inthesto posted:COUNTERSPELL Wouldn't you need to burn three energy drains of your own? Is that how it works? I think he likes them because they're dramatic. And they indicate a prepared or smart caster.
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Mar 4, 2013 22:28
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sebmojo posted:Wouldn't you need to burn three energy drains of your own? Is that how it works? Yeah, counterspell requires either you to use up the same spell you're counterspelling. You can also use Dispel Magic to counterspell any spell, but that requires a dispel check
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Mar 4, 2013 22:31
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Red Metal posted:Yeah, counterspell requires either you to use up the same spell you're counterspelling. You can also use Dispel Magic to counterspell any spell, but that requires a dispel check Right, so Xykon just casts another one. Maybe that is the point then? Refinement and flexibility vs thuggish persistence? You could draw a parallel with early Redcloak and 'is there any problem that sacrificing minions won't solve?'. vvv yes I did have that in mind sebmojo fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Mar 4, 2013 |
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Mar 4, 2013 22:38
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sebmojo posted:ENERGY DRAIN Fixed that for you.
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Mar 4, 2013 22:43
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inthesto posted:(This is actually one of the things about Burlew's views on D&D that baffles me. He loves counterspells despite the fact that they're incredibly situational and almost never come up in a campaign unless the DM is intentionally dicking over the party's casters.)
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Mar 4, 2013 22:51
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Xykon is really amazingly well written villain, especially for one that is so incredible simple at his core. I don't know that much about D&D3.5, but the whole sorcerer deal really fits his personality like a glove.
e X fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Mar 4, 2013 |
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Mar 4, 2013 22:56
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This whole strip doesn't have a bad character in it, far as I can tell (does it?). So loving good. Incidentally I was doing the colouring book with my 4 year old daughter and noticed V's find-the-word letter square is full of words like androgynous, arrogant and familicide. Oh, and Katya advises V is a girl because she has a ponytail and a dress. So that's sorted then.
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Mar 4, 2013 23:14
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I did not care for Therkla. Did not care for her one bit.
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Mar 4, 2013 23:22
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inthesto posted:The real gulf is that a wizard who memorizes the wrong spells is crappy for one day but a sorcerer who learns the wrong spells is crappy for life. Which is why you're very careful what spells you get as a Sorcerer. Yes, you lose flexibility. Not having Knock, or Passwall, or Protection from Obscure Bullshit From a Sourcebook You've Never Heard Of1 means you can end up off guard and unprepared. But that matters a lot less than one might think. For every time you're glad the Wizard had advance warning enough to prep and cast Water Breathing so you could hunt down the Kua-toa, there are ten times that you wish the loving Wizard had just one more Fireball, but no, all he's got left is Protection from Energy. Or Invisibility. You see, Wizards are strategically flexible, but Sorcerers are tactically flexible. Which means that, yes, when you know exactly what you're facing, when you'll be facing it, and can craft the perfect spell list for your opponent, you're drat hard to beat...though not impossible, as it turns out. On the other hand, Sorcerers have access to every spell they know from the moment they wake up in the morning. That means that, as long as they picked their spells with some degree of foresight over the long haul, they have their whole arsenal available and never guess wrong on a daily basis on what to bring. And the thing of it is? In most adventuring scenarios, tactical is more useful than strategic. Most times you don't know exactly what you'll be facing. Oh, maybe you can guess that the Kobold Caves are full of kobolds, but unless you've got great advance intelligence, nothing's going to warn you about the green slime in east cavern. Hope you still have a Fireball left by the time you get there. On the other hand, the Sorcerer's always got one left as long as he's got even one third level spell left at all...which is more than you can say for the Wizard who decided on Invisibility Sphere. What's more, a Sorcerer is better for party balance. One of the problems in 3.x is the Gizmo-Wiz. That is, a Wizard who can substitute for any other member of the party, and thus render that person irrelevant. What do you need a rogue for if you've got Knock on hand? How about Tenser's transformation or a Polymorph Self to out fight the Fighter? And so on, and so forth. On the other hand, a Sorcerer can really be good at only one or two things, tops, and those things are usually slotting into the role of team fire support. That makes who does what easier to figure out. So yeah, if your Wizard gets to plan for a week to take out my Sorcerer, you might win...but in the more likely scenario that we meet without advance notice in a dungeon corridor somewhere, you'd rather be the Sorcerer. 1=Not a real spell. jng2058 fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Mar 4, 2013 |
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Mar 4, 2013 23:26
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Xykon's deal is that everyone expects him to be the spell casting equivalent of a barbarian - completely lacking in subtlety and simply blasting everything with powerful damage spells (usually an inferior tactic, since damage spells are generally the less powerful spells in 3.5). However those same people fail to realise that (a) he's a lot cleverer and more devious than he may first seem, and (b) he's powerful enough that "blasting everything until it's dead" is still an effective tactic against almost any opponent.
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Mar 4, 2013 23:33
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Colonel Cool posted:I did not care for Therkla. Did not care for her one bit. You just don't understand the mysteries of her heart.
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Mar 4, 2013 23:34
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Well, the good guys are a little stale. Durkon really doesn't have that much personality (yet), Belkar and Elan is pretty much walking punchlines, Haily is pretty much your run of the mill rogue and prior to their mental breakdown, V was a pretty standard elven wizard. That doesn't mean that any of them bad characters, quite the opposite, but none of them is really that unique. But I'd say that Xykon, Tarquin, Redcloak and now Malak are outstanding in their characterization. The Giant really goes out of his way to explain why his villains act the way they do and as a result, we got some incredible unique, well developed antagonists. I once read somewhere, I think it was superhero related, that a good villain is more important to a story than a good hero, because your audience tends to identify with the hero by default, while you need to put some effort into selling the villain. This is definitely true for OotS. I don't dislike the Order, but what makes the story more than just your usual fantasy tropes parody comic are definitely the villains. e X fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Mar 4, 2013 |
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Mar 4, 2013 23:34
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jng2058 posted:1=Not a real spell. At this point, it probably is. That's why Clerics and Wizards win out.
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Mar 4, 2013 23:37
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sebmojo posted:This whole strip doesn't have a bad character in it, far as I can tell (does it?). So loving good. I realize it's spoiling the joke but I've never been able to not hear V's voice as Doctor Orpheus.
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Mar 4, 2013 23:47
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e X posted:Well, the good guys are a little stale. Durkon really doesn't have that much personality (yet) Except for Hilgya way back when, he's the only one that's never really had a storyline of his own. He's always been the most empathetic member of the team, which is endearing, but in retrospect that just makes him even more of a supporting/plot device character than he already was. Nonetheless, the first prequel was, at least to me, his story more than anyone else's.
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Mar 4, 2013 23:51
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e X posted:Well, the good guys are a little stale. Durkon really doesn't have that much personality (yet), Belkar and Elan is pretty much walking punchlines, Haily is pretty much your run of the mill rogue and prior to their mental breakdown, V was a pretty standard elven wizard. That doesn't mean that any of them bad characters, quite the opposite, but none of them is really that unique. I think it's telling that even the character that "really doesn't have that much personality" was able to make several people in this thread misty eyed with his death scene.
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Mar 4, 2013 23:57
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I think, ultimately, what hurt the PCs as characters was the shift away from "game related humor" to "plot driven epic". When all you're doing is poking fun at D&D, you don't need in depth, detailed characters. You need broad archetypes (or in Belkar's case inversion of one). So you've got the Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard, and Anti-Ranger. And that's fine, as far as it goes. But the minute you transition to a bigger story, the broadness of those archetypes becomes a problem rather than a boon. Now you need a way to differentiate your characters from a million other examples of the same characters. So Roy emphasizes his brains-over-brawn philosophy, gets a family and a girlfriend, and a fatal lesson in over-reach. Haley gets a family too, even if its just her dad and a dead mom, and a lesson that love may be more valuable than money. Elan gets to grow up some, and hell, gets a family too. Vaarsuvius gets a family and then loses it, and has the fairly awesome fall and redemption arc. Hell even Belkar got a pet and a new outlook on life. Meanwhile, Durkon got an aborted four page romance and got to cast a lot of healing spells. Which is why Durkon was the first to die....okay, second after Roy, but I think we're all pretty sure Durkon ain't getting lugged around in a cart to eventually have Raise Dead cast on him, right? For whatever reason, Rich was unable or unwilling to find a way to grow Durkon until now. So he's making his play here. Either Durkon's going to get a radical shift to Antagonist or he's going to get eliminated from the cast entirely. One way or another, the Durkon we've known over nearly 900 strips has to go, because he's the only one without any character growth. Passcode: "Evolve or die." Durkon did not evolve. The penalty for that was death.
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Mar 5, 2013 00:11
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jng2058 posted:I think, ultimately, what hurt the PCs as characters was the shift away from "game related humor" to "plot driven epic". When all you're doing is poking fun at D&D, you don't need in depth, detailed characters. You need broad archetypes (or in Belkar's case inversion of one). So you've got the Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard, and Anti-Ranger. And that's fine, as far as it goes. But the minute you transition to a bigger story, the broadness of those archetypes becomes a problem rather than a boon. Now you need a way to differentiate your characters from a million other examples of the same characters. So Roy emphasizes his brains-over-brawn philosophy, gets a family and a girlfriend, and a fatal lesson in over-reach. Haley gets a family too, even if its just her dad and a dead mom, and a lesson that love may be more valuable than money. Elan gets to grow up some, and hell, gets a family too. Vaarsuvius gets a family and then loses it, and has the fairly awesome fall and redemption arc. Hell even Belkar got a pet and a new outlook on life. Meanwhile, Durkon got an aborted four page romance and got to cast a lot of healing spells. I, for one, welcome our new vampire death priest overlord! Durkon is dead! Long live Durkula! On another note, Durkon was Ray's closest thing to an actual friend, with the possible exception of Haley. So this Durkula thing's gonna tear him up inside.
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Mar 5, 2013 00:15
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jng2058 posted:Passcode: "Evolve or die." Wow, that strip really emphasises how important Durkon was to the team as a safety net. And a plot device, I guess. This turn not only beats him with the Character Development bat, it also increases the general peril in the story.
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Mar 5, 2013 00:20
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Colonel Cool posted:I did not care for Therkla. Did not care for her one bit. Fair enough. How did you feel about Cryptogram Haley out of interest? I'd say they're both playing to a similar audience segment. e X posted:Well, the good guys are a little stale. Durkon really doesn't have that much personality (yet), Belkar and Elan is pretty much walking punchlines, Haily is pretty much your run of the mill rogue and prior to their mental breakdown, V was a pretty standard elven wizard. That doesn't mean that any of them bad characters, quite the opposite, but none of them is really that unique. That is an excellent point, and one I hadn't thought of in quite that way. Even the one shot villains like Mama Dragon have some depth to them. Though with the heroes I think he's done a very good job with Roy - he's cool, competent and sarcastic but not annoying and not (importantly) a Marty Stu. And he's Lawful Good (neutral tendencies, mebbe). sebmojo fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Mar 5, 2013 |
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Mar 5, 2013 00:21
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double post.
sebmojo fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Mar 5, 2013 |
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Mar 5, 2013 00:26
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