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Elan is definitely about to make a swashbuckling save, swinging down from above, grabbing the sword, and swinging up the other side of the ship. With a quip.
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Mar 10, 2017 21:02
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Oh, I'm sure Élan will do something spectacular, and simultaneously goofy.
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Mar 10, 2017 21:12
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Toplowtech posted:Pretty sure he also needs it to even use the ability he just sunk a feat in. Basically half his character damage ability development just plunged to its death this time, so it's half a progress. I can see some relevance to the 'power is power' theme.
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Mar 10, 2017 22:36
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I'm not sure if that counts, Roy almost certainly earned his specialized anti undead ability through his character development and build. Losing it now is meant to be a temporary way of adding tension, not to reveal some sort of weakness about Roy. e: I really do wonder if some sort of deliberate contrast is going to be drawn here between how Roy handles set backs due to the failures of people under his command versus how Xykon handled it. I can see it going any number of ways. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Mar 10, 2017 |
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Mar 10, 2017 22:45
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Personally, I'm secretly hoping that Roy's reaction here will end up being a callback to the end of the first book when Xykon destroyed his sword and he flipped his poo poo and beat Xykon down barehanded before hurling him at the Gate.
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Mar 11, 2017 00:02
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Throwing a giant may prove more difficult than throwing a regular-sized skeleton. Edit: I know it's not his speciality and "Elan is useless at fighting" is a running joke, but this might be a decent time for Elan to take over fighting the Giant. Failing that he could always just throw Roy his sword, it might not be as good but it'd probably do.
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Mar 11, 2017 02:36
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Dolash posted:Throwing a giant may prove more difficult than throwing a regular-sized skeleton. He's probably about the same strength, and a higher bab than a frost giant. Not a terribly difficult grapple check. A single lucky roll could do it
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Mar 11, 2017 21:24
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ikanreed posted:He's probably about the same strength, and a higher bab than a frost giant. Not a terribly difficult grapple check. A single lucky roll could do it The giant is large, which gives it +4 on grapple checks vs Roy. Size modifiers is part of what makes grapple stupid as poo poo in 3.5e.
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Mar 11, 2017 21:38
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Colonel Cool posted:The giant is large, which gives it +4 on grapple checks vs Roy. Size modifiers is part of what makes grapple stupid as poo poo in 3.5e. I prefer Dwarf Fortress grappling rules. A bunch of pointless details, too, but with a refreshing dash of "you are now pretzel" as the final result.
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Mar 11, 2017 22:17
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my dad posted:I prefer Dwarf Fortress grappling rules. A bunch of pointless details, too, but with a refreshing dash of "you are now pretzel" as the final result. Dwarf Fortress grappling is ideal because it has all the aforementioned pointless details but then it just tells you the result immediately without having to roll any dice yourself.
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Mar 11, 2017 22:46
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Basically video games can get away with arcane and bizarre math because the computer does it for you. Look at a Final Fantasy game's damage calculations. There's so much random multiplication and division you're wondering what the gently caress the programmers were thinking. PnP games don't have that luxury, so all these fiddly bits take time to figure out and generally slow everything the gently caress down.
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Mar 12, 2017 00:14
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my experience of getting older while playing nerd games is my tolerance for endless rules bullshit has vanished. haha we used to play rolemaster and you get experience points for every point of damage done and received, every crit and mile traveled, every dog patted, etc. we would spend half an hour every couple of weeks adding it up and it always worked out that we gained a level every 3-4 sessions. one day someone said 'why don't we just level up every 3-4 sessions?' and there was a communal lightbulb moment. that said rolemaster is built on an incredibly slick and fun combat/skills engine, the skills bit fits on an a4 page.
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Mar 12, 2017 00:21
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sebmojo posted:my experience of getting older while playing nerd games is my tolerance for endless rules bullshit has vanished. A healthy mix can be entertaining, like watching various Youtubers who play D&D.
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Mar 12, 2017 00:37
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Colonel Cool posted:The giant is large, which gives it +4 on grapple checks vs Roy. Size modifiers is part of what makes grapple stupid as poo poo in 3.5e. No, size modifiers were Good.
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Mar 12, 2017 01:05
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My tolerance for crunchy rules depends entirely on how good those crunchy rules are. Something like Burning Wheel is fairly complicated, but it's not "tedious bullshit" like keeping track of 20 different tiny modifiers in certain editions of D&D.
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Mar 12, 2017 01:07
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Raenir Salazar posted:I'm not sure if that counts, Roy almost certainly earned his specialized anti undead ability through his character development and build. Yes, good points from you and sebmojo, just the sort of discussion I had in mind. Perhaps a contrast between this and Xykon losing his phylactery, huh? Maybe-not-coincidentally where the "power is power" theme was spelled out. Roy could handle Andi and the rest more magnanimously than Xykon handled Redcloak, but perhaps learn a new source of power such as "power from my friends" or more direct game-literal "I summon SSJ power from myself, not the sword" and that would compare to when Xykon schooled V that power can be +skill checks as much as it can be spell levels. I just reread the whole thing from V taking the deal to the team arriving at Sandsedge, stopped there. Plot detail: do we know whether Xykon knows that Redcloak swapped the phylactery?
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Mar 12, 2017 21:02
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As far as we know, Xykon has no idea.
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Mar 12, 2017 21:28
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SuperKlaus posted:
There was no strip where he figured it out, so it's safe to assume he has no idea. I guess we can't definitively rule out that Xykon figured it out off-camera but chose to let Redcloak keep the real phylactery, but that would be weirdly out of line with both Xykon's established temperament and with the way Rich was setting it up as a future plot device.
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Mar 12, 2017 22:48
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There is no way X knows. At this point, he would straight up just blast redcloak and make a new RedCloak.
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Mar 13, 2017 00:05
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Johnny Aztec posted:There is no way X knows. At this point, he would straight up just blast redcloak and make a new RedCloak. Hah, I wonder if that's one more of Redcloak's more closely-guarded secrets. Just kill him and throw the cloak at another goblin, voila, new goblin cleric who knows about the Plan.
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Mar 13, 2017 00:14
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DoctorTristan posted:There was no strip where he figured it out, so it's safe to assume he has no idea. I guess we can't definitively rule out that Xykon figured it out off-camera but chose to let Redcloak keep the real phylactery, but that would be weirdly out of line with both Xykon's established temperament and with the way Rich was setting it up as a future plot device. It was made clear that Zyklon doesn't really trust Redcloak any more, and it's possible there will be a AHAHAH reveal that he knew all along, but given there's already a deeply buried trap involving the phylactery (involving Mr In The Shadows) it seems inelegant. Certainly the evil gang falling apart at the end because they don't trust each other and the good gang winning because they've been through hell and trust each other implicitly is nicely in line with the core themes.
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Mar 13, 2017 00:45
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Johnny Aztec posted:There is no way X knows. At this point, he would straight up just blast redcloak and make a new RedCloak. I disagree, I firmly believe that X knows. Sure Red Cloak cast all kinds of magic to fool Scrying and made an exact replica and everything.... But at the end of the day it's X's Phylactry. It's his soul hidey place. His soul is inside it. He should instantly feel if his soul is inside it or not. I can see this being the type of thing that Red Cloak gets owned by simply because he has no way of knowing this or never considered that X would care at all about this.
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Mar 13, 2017 13:10
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I don't see Xykon as the kind of villain who would keep his knowledge of a betrayal by his right hand guy a secret. He would zap Redcloak without any delay or concern to who would replace Red because that's how X rolls.
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Mar 13, 2017 13:17
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Nenonen posted:I don't see Xykon as the kind of villain who would keep his knowledge of a betrayal by his right hand guy a secret. He would zap Redcloak without any delay or concern to who would replace Red because that's how X rolls. Well I went back and checked the archive (it was from 2012 around strip 800.) The time when X and Red get back the Pylactry is when X sent that Necromancer to steal the Divine half of the ritual to control the Snarl. When he found out she died (and Red knows that X sent the Necromancer.) Clearly X realised he was down a Divine spell caster and if he killed Red Cloak there and then he'd have no Divine Caster. And he likely would have to look for where the Divine half of the ritual was hidden. (Not realising that it's not written down.) In short now wasn't the right time to kill Red, even if he knew that he was being betrayed.
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Mar 13, 2017 13:28
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The Question IRL posted:I disagree, I firmly believe that X knows. I think if that were the case Xykon would have had a much easier time finding his phylactery. He cannot feel it or detect it by any other means; he had to look for it by hand. The only way he can find out Redcloak betrayed him is if he dies and finds himself reviving in the wrong place. Or someone gives the game away to him, obviously.
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Mar 13, 2017 13:57
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Tenebrais posted:I think if that were the case Xykon would have had a much easier time finding his phylactery. He cannot feel it or detect it by any other means; he had to look for it by hand. I'm not saying that he has a Phylactry sense that allows him to detect it for miles and miles. I'm just saying that as soon as he looks at the exact duplicate of the Holy Symbol he would know it's a duplicate. He'd recognise instantly what is and isn't his Phylactry. It's not a standard magic item that you could duplicate or even create an illusionary double of. It's his soul. It's litterally a piece of him. The most important piece.
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Mar 13, 2017 14:36
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The Question IRL posted:I'm not saying that he has a Phylactry sense that allows him to detect it for miles and miles. There's nothing in RAW that allows him to do this (and Burlew does stick pretty closely to RAW despite sometimes claiming otherwise). Also if he did know about Redcloak's deception then that would imply that he's deliberately left his phlylactery and only real weakness in the hands of a known enemy, which would be completely counter to his established character.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:00
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Xykon did one time hold onto knowledge of betrayal back in Start of Darkness but I think the stakes were relatively low.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:07
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If you're referring to Right-eye, Xykon knew the betrayal was coming and decided to use it to test Redcloak's loyalty while also being prepared for it. I don't see how he could be motivated to sit back this time when it puts his phylactery at the same risk as the last time he lost it, and which he subsequently went to great efforts to avoid again.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:23
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Xykon would keep things secret if he thought it was funny and no risk to himself. He isn't a schemer, he's just an rear end in a top hat basically,
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Mar 13, 2017 15:48
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I'd say that it's all part of a larger game. If you look back at the strips with the fake Phylactry, he sends the Necromancer out to decipher the Arcane Ritual because X doesn't understand it. And he doesn't have the Divine ritual. It all adds up to X knowing that Red Cloak has things he wants. And sometimes the best play is to not let your foe not know that you know some of their tricks.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:50
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As a more general point, Xykon is also fairly genre-savvy. He has to know, at least in general terms, that bad guys only team up out of self-interest and will rapidly compromise their relationships if they see a better deal or some greater gain for it. He's gotta be expecting a backstab at some point.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:55
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Redcloak obviously believes that Xykon wouldn't be able to tell that the fake phylactery is a fake, and I don't see any reason to assume he would be wrong.
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Mar 13, 2017 16:13
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Isn't the soul not in the phylactery while Xykon has an intact undead body? That's how it seemed when he was just starting to regenerate, anyway.
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Mar 13, 2017 17:08
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Shugojin posted:Isn't the soul not in the phylactery while Xykon has an intact undead body? That's how it seemed when he was just starting to regenerate, anyway. This is correct. It's just a bauble while he has his undead body. If it was destroyed he can even make a new one. (Though that would be annoying and time consuming) Honestly losing it in an unclear place is worse then it being destroyed. When it first fell into the sewers the reason he rejected destroying his body to regenerate at it, was because of fear that some creature might eat it. Which would destroy his body when ever he started to regen.
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Mar 13, 2017 18:38
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Gwyneth Palpate posted:As a more general point, Xykon is also fairly genre-savvy. He has to know, at least in general terms, that bad guys only team up out of self-interest and will rapidly compromise their relationships if they see a better deal or some greater gain for it. He's gotta be expecting a backstab at some point. Hm... If only there was someone who said something on this subject somewhere relevant...
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Mar 13, 2017 18:38
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sebmojo posted:my experience of getting older while playing nerd games is my tolerance for endless rules bullshit has vanished. Until very recently the players in my game were leveling based on how much gold they managed to haul away from the dungeon. (Only adventurer related profits were scored, I didn't want to run investment banking by wizards the RPG). Worked great because everyone loves counting gold. Now they're leveling by trying to hit thresholds in resources for their burgeoning city state. Gotta admit, it's not working as well? But they are invested in their hellhound infested dwarf and lizardman theocratic necropolis.
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Mar 13, 2017 18:42
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Mystic Mongol posted:(Only adventurer related profits were scored, I didn't want to run investment banking by wizards the RPG). There's probably a good game system to be found in "Wall Street: The Gathering", where the size of your hedge fund translates to your arcane power.
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Mar 13, 2017 20:39
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Mystic Mongol posted:Until very recently the players in my game were leveling based on how much gold they managed to haul away from the dungeon. (Only adventurer related profits were scored, I didn't want to run investment banking by wizards the RPG). Worked great because everyone loves counting gold. we rejected level by gold out of hand when we were little nerdlings because it wasn't ~ realistic ~ but it's actually quite a decent system.
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Mar 13, 2017 21:43
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Last time I DM'd a game I did experience-by-encounter: I assigned an experience value to an objective (e.g.: "free the slaves", "obtain the magic item from the court wizard"...) and gave it out to my players no matter how they solved the situation (subterfuge, bargaining, kicking the door in and killing everyone...). Worked quite well, and it was low-effort.
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Mar 13, 2017 22:50
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