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Affi posted:I'm going to post here to make people believe there is an update just like I thought there was one when there were 3 replies. It's important to stay ahead of the Erfworld standard. Oh God a Goblins update, that should keep the pangs down.
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Mar 26, 2009 21:12
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Halloween Jack posted:It's important to stay ahead of the Erfworld standard. You know Erfworld just updated, right?
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Mar 26, 2009 22:25
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I know, it's weird. The bar has been raised. The low bar.
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Mar 26, 2009 22:30
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http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0640.html OOTS is updated and the site has slowed to a crawl.
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Mar 26, 2009 23:34
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team overhead smash posted:http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0640.html And for your viewing pleasure: 
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Mar 26, 2009 23:36
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drat. That's...really, really evil.
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Mar 26, 2009 23:40
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V's coup-de-grace of the situation, or the IFCC for falsely implying that she won't be in control of her actions?
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Mar 26, 2009 23:44
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I liked the joke about the Monster Manual; made me pull out my MM to make sure Burlew got it right  Also apparently there are a lot of black dragons in this campaign, considering what one poster said there should be around 240 (or there were, before V killed a quarter of them)
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Mar 26, 2009 23:45
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Cabbit posted:V's coup-de-grace of the situation, or the IFCC for falsely implying that she won't be in control of her actions? The latter. Showed some nasty insight into human(and elf) nature.
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Mar 26, 2009 23:50
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Aaaaaahhhhhh.John Wilkes Booth posted:I liked the joke about the Monster Manual; made me pull out my MM to make sure Burlew got it right For comparison, Forgotten Realms 3.5 had a city of like 60 epic level serpentmen liches (the sirrusks).
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Mar 27, 2009 00:23
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John Wilkes Booth posted:Also apparently there are a lot of black dragons in this campaign, considering what one poster said there should be around 240 (or there were, before V killed a quarter of them) That would be heavily slanted towards younger ones, mind. I'd say it's a fair number. Low enough to keep them rare, high enough to make them not completely legendary. There are a lot of swamps in the world. Also that's assuming that we saw all the creatures affected by the spell. Squint at the bottom of #649; the spell effect continues to the bottom of the panel there too. I'd bet the death toll (and population) is at least a few notches higher. quote:For comparison, Forgotten Realms 3.5 had a city of like 60 epic level serpentmen liches (the sirrusks). And the Epic Level Handbook had Union.
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Mar 27, 2009 00:26
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my favorite part is where all the infernal creatures have the "holy poo poo!" eyes. They just let Suvie off the leash and even they are surprised at the outcome.
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Mar 27, 2009 01:05
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The thing is, is any of what V is doing that evil? Think about what the dragon threatened V with, the horrible and slow killing of his family and then the concurrent soul binding of his children. Now, even though I obviously, have never been in V's situation (imagine that), I can atleast say that everything that V has done is understandable. Despite what he may have felt like doing to the dragon the only really malicious act he did was mock the black dragon, all the other black dragons he killed (which are all evil correct?) was done extremely quickly. And there is logic behind his actions too. Killing off the bloodline will ensure noone takes their revenge out on V's family again. So knowing this, I would imagine V would only get a slight hit to his alignment (for the mocking of the black dragon as well as undeadening her to let her know what V just did). Or am I completely off my rocker on this?
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Mar 27, 2009 04:15
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If you dissect V's actions, then no, they may not actually be that evil. But people have pointed out that he seems to be delighting in it - was there really any reason to lord his actions over the dragon? He's gloating, and makes a point of wanting it to suffer. If V had done the same basic things but with a different demeanour, it wouldn't be as bad. But he doesn't seem thoughtful or somber about the task at all. And importantly, he didn't bother to, you know, hug his injured children or try to heal his beaten partner, he took just barely long enough to make sure they weren't going to die before embarking on his revenge. I seriously doubt a tide of Black Dragons was going to show up in the five minutes it would have taken him to see to his family.
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Mar 27, 2009 04:26
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tazman posted:The thing is, is any of what V is doing that evil? Think about what the dragon threatened V with, the horrible and slow killing of his family and then the concurrent soul binding of his children. Revenge can be considered an evil act in and of itself. I thought we realized by now OotS does not have a simple view of Good vs Evil. Miko's line about killing dragons waaaaay back further shows this, since her entire view on right and wrong were shown to be completely false as the strip went on. Actions have consequences in OotS, and nothing is black and white in this universe. We'll find out exactly how this effects V's (Are we really going to start calling the character by his/her lover's pet name now? Really?) alignment down the road.
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Mar 27, 2009 04:34
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Let's look at the SRD Good Vs Evil axis and see where V's actions would fall:SRD "Good" section posted:"Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others. SRD "Evil" section posted:"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.
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Mar 27, 2009 04:39
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Don't Paladins kill bad guys out of duty to THEIR deity? EDIT - Not trying to be a dick, just having a nice debate over an internet web comic VVVVVVVVVVVV Fair enough, I suppose i'm just splitting hairs at this moment. It's like rules lawyering, except with alignment. tazman fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Mar 27, 2009 |
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Mar 27, 2009 04:47
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Burlew seems to be pretty lax on strict enforcement of alignments. The entire part where Roy was being processed at the pearly gates, about lawful v chaotic, reeked of heavy interpretation. V was exacting a preemptive strike on dozens of dragons who had nothing to do with the conflict, and took too much pleasure in the entire thing. She had an alternative plan laid out in front of her that would have worked fine. She dealt with infernal beings in the first place. In terms of the comic: she's doing it for "all the wrong reasons". Plus the imp and the IFCC are talking as if her actions are evil. We should assume they have a pretty good handle on the universe and that those actions ARE evil.
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Mar 27, 2009 04:51
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tazman posted:Don't Paladins kill bad guys out of duty to THEIR deity? I had a big write up but basically the whole Miko v the... other dude paladin debate: You can't be a dick and pre-emptively strike. They have to DO something evil in order for you to start killing them. Being a paladin in service doesn't mean being a crusader. (I'm pretty sure that's some other class  )
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Mar 27, 2009 05:02
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bison wings posted:Burlew seems to be pretty lax on strict enforcement of alignments. The entire part where Roy was being processed at the pearly gates, about lawful v chaotic, reeked of heavy interpretation. But see if I were DMing and my player laid it out to me this way with a strict interpretation of these three paragraphs (And whether or not I thought the player was being a dick and trying to run my game)...
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Mar 27, 2009 05:09
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Neito posted:Let's look at the SRD Good Vs Evil axis and see where V's actions would fall: Ahh, now this part makes sense to some extent. The act that brought this on in the beginning was V slaying an evil dragon to take it's treasure, in and of itself not that evil of an act. Neutral at worst. In response, the dragon's parent threatened some very evil acts upon his family, which it was fully capable of carrying out and was in the process of doing so before it was stopped. The dragon has obviously demonstrated that family members of a black drgaon are willing to go to great lengths to avenge slain family, so the only way V could be certain of stopping further attempts on his family was to remove all direct family members, plus their direct family members from the equation. This prevents further vengeance in two ways. One, there's no family members left to do the avenging. Two, anyone who tries to gently caress with his family will have obviously heard of this and will think very carefully before doing anything to V's family. Done properly, this could be construed as an neutral act, depending on how much V knew about black dragons. Maybe his knowledge of chromatic doesn't extend beyond "Big, evil, shoots fire or some other burning poo poo at you". V may not know that this is just personal, and not something every black dragon would do in this situation. You could argue, at least up until the making the dragon undead to watch was nothing more than a safety precaution. A safety precaution against (for the majority) evil creatures that involves their death isn't really evil, more neutral, at least the way I see it. After the undeadification though, gently caress that. Evil as poo poo, the fight was over. He could have waited a couple minutes while he fixed up his kids and life partner. No raising of the dead spell can't wait 5 minutes. And I need to stop staying up so late, it brings out the D&D dork in me.
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Mar 27, 2009 08:25
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seaborgium posted:He could have waited a couple minutes while he fixed up his kids and life partner. No raising of the dead spell can't wait 5 minutes. Eh, it makes sense that he wants to make sure to get everything requiring epic magic done before the soul splice runs out.
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Mar 27, 2009 10:33
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Karma Guard posted:I had a big write up but basically the whole Miko v the... other dude paladin debate: You can't be a dick and pre-emptively strike. They have to DO something evil in order for you to start killing them. Redcloak's backstory from Start of Darkness involves paladins killing entire goblin villages to keep them from being a threat to the Gate; it's preemptive and doesn't cause the paladins involved to lose their paladin status, much less change alignment. Killing evil beings who haven't done evil you're aware of does not seem to be evil in this campaign world.
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Mar 27, 2009 15:56
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The whole "do evil before killing" thing only applies to humans.
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Mar 27, 2009 16:11
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Sefer posted:Redcloak's backstory from Start of Darkness involves paladins killing entire goblin villages to keep them from being a threat to the Gate; it's preemptive and doesn't cause the paladins involved to lose their paladin status, much less change alignment. Killing evil beings who haven't done evil you're aware of does not seem to be evil in this campaign world. That's why I prefer the subjective approach to good/evil rather than the objective. Let's say you have a human paladin and a goblin paladin, both the pinnacle of their races' respective faiths. They both Smite Evil on each other. Should the goblin automatically fail because of the alignment restrictions? In Redcloak's case, the paladins just walked in and wiped out his village. They are the evil barbarians laying waste to his home, not vice versa. At least, not until Xykon raised the army and did just that.
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Mar 27, 2009 16:18
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Vicissitude posted:That's why I prefer the subjective approach to good/evil rather than the objective. Let's say you have a human paladin and a goblin paladin, both the pinnacle of their races' respective faiths. They both Smite Evil on each other. Should the goblin automatically fail because of the alignment restrictions? In Redcloak's case, the paladins just walked in and wiped out his village. They are the evil barbarians laying waste to his home, not vice versa. You're forgetting that Redcloak is evil. Smite evil only works against people who are evil, not merely from an evil village. Redcloak's home village was an evil organisation, their leader being the bearer of the crimson mantle who would want to sieze the gates. The paladins have a special ability to detect evil, and if they hadn't detected that the goblins were evil then they would have lost their paladin status. Even Miko was careful to detect evil before she attacked.
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Mar 27, 2009 16:37
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One thing I don't think has been mentioned yet is that as of Start of Darkness, the GODS THEMSELVES endorse the view of 'always evil' creatures as nothing but walking trophies for their chosen (PC) races to slay and gloat over (and get XP from). Also consider that the Sapphire guard apparently massacre villages of humanoids, including noncombatant children, on a regular basis but don't lose their paladin powers. Considering that Miko has said in the past that she loving killed anybody who ever set off her 'detect evil', she probably killed an enormous number of monsters and such who didn't REALLY deserve it, and yet the 12 Gods didn't give a drat until she killed someone important to them, I think that the current divinely-ordained system of morality is pretty forgiving when it comes to murdering 'evil' creatures, which Redcloak's ultimate goal is to try and change by giving his recently-risen goblin god the power of the Snarl. WE can all see that Suvie has gone over the line, but I think that the 'powers that be' within the comic will be all to forgiving of her vengeful actions, which will help us see that Redcloak's cause is worth sympathizing with, even though he is still evil due to his actions edit: Now that I think about it, considering the 'black dragon 9/11' angle of the whole thing, Redcloak might be able to parlay some black dragon allies out of the deal. Liberal_L33t fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Mar 27, 2009 |
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Mar 27, 2009 17:11
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Several people are criticizing V for making the dragon watch by bringing it back from the dead, but I was under the impression that it had to at least be undead for the Familicide spell to work. I know its made up and all, but it would be weird if you could just cast it at a dead body and have its entire family line destroyed.
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Mar 27, 2009 17:11
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Noonsaliwah posted:You're forgetting that Redcloak is evil. Smite evil only works against people who are evil, not merely from an evil village. Redcloak's home village was an evil organisation, their leader being the bearer of the crimson mantle who would want to sieze the gates. From a certain point of view, young padawan.  Like I said, I prefer the subjective approach. I didn't say that OoTS was utilizing it. If a Paladin walks down the street detecting evil at will and finds someone who happens to be evil eating ice cream and talking about the big game last night and kills him, is that itself a good act? The paladin has no knowledge of the man's past crimes and no suspicions that the man is up to any evil at the moment. So is it murder or not? Using the rules as written, no it's not. But say two Lawful Good societies go to war, unlikely as it is. If one side is the aggressor and the clear 'bad guys' in this case, would smite evil work on them, even if their enemies see them as evil? Again, not according to the rules. Which is why I think Detect Evil should be removed from the paladin's abilities or should be rewritten. Rhere's a reason Sense Motive is a class skill for paladins. DE shouldn't be used as a way to smite without just cause. Some creatures, mostly extraplanar, have good/evil or law/chaos imbued in their very beings. Celestials and fiends, obviously, but for living creatures, it's all a point of view. A man raised in a lawful evil society probably doesn't codify himself as such. He's just an average guy living the way he was brought up. Even if he doesn't do any major evil in his life, Smite Evil would affect him as fully as any demon or devil.
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Mar 27, 2009 17:40
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Liberal_L33t posted:edit: Now that I think about it, considering the 'black dragon 9/11' angle of the whole thing, Redcloak might be able to parlay some black dragon allies out of the deal. I think Zykon is more likely to "parlay" some allies out of this deal, thanks to Create Greater Undead. Who needs black dragon allies when you can have black dragon zombie allies that will never turn on you? Hey, why not create a dracolich or two?
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Mar 27, 2009 18:48
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First off:  Secondly: So is Suvie LE or NE now? I can't tell.
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Mar 27, 2009 18:51
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Kuroshi posted:First off: She was true neutral before, so probably went to neutral evil. There wasn't anything particularly lawful or chaotic in her actions either way. And yes, I'm firmly in the 'V is evil as all get out' camp. Even before this, she killed Kubata simply because he was an inconvenience, not out of any desire to protect others from him or render judgement for his crimes. This situation is simply ramping those tendancies up to 11, since she now has her power ramped up by a similar degree. The fact that black dragons are evil has absolutely no bearing on V's alignment in this situation. That zombie dragon Xykon was using as his mount, are people going to call the lich a good guy for killing that dragon? Does a Pit Fiend becomes more good when it kills a Balor? Of course not - evil creatures are fully capable of loving over other evil creatures to a horrifying degree.
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Mar 27, 2009 19:58
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Shyrka posted:She was true neutral before, so probably went to neutral evil. There wasn't anything particularly lawful or chaotic in her actions either way. The dragon was a white dragon I believe which is good. (ooops! Wrong. He killed a Silver Dragon, which is a good creature) HKR fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Mar 27, 2009 |
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Mar 27, 2009 20:10
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All chromatic (color) dragons are naturally evil; the metallic ones are good. White dragons and nasty bastards who live in icy caves and breathe ice at you. He is a King whom emperors have served. I am content to serve him.
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Mar 27, 2009 20:15
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Halloween Jack posted:All chromatic (color) dragons are naturally evil; the metallic ones are good. White dragons and nasty bastards who live in icy caves and breathe ice at you. My bad. No Cure for the Paladin Blues, page 194A. It's a silver dragon.
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Mar 27, 2009 20:21
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honestly, as far as DnD 3rd edition goes black dragons should be even MORE acceptable to randomly kill than goblins and ogres, since they're ALWAYS chaotic/lawful/neutral evil rather than 'often' or 'usually'. That may mean that, though sentient, their behavior is magically enforced, like demons. not that this makes them incapable of love, or emotion, obviously.
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Mar 27, 2009 20:53
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That doesn't mean there aren't exceptions, FR had a LG red dragon.
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Mar 28, 2009 00:41
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Shyrka posted:
It does have a bearing on the situation in that we know killing random evil creatures is not an evil act. If he'd just killed a bunch of good creatures for no reason, it's be evil; killing a bunch of evil creatures, though, is at worst neutral.
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Mar 28, 2009 00:56
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Taking a step back from the handbook -something every GM that considers herself a storyteller has to do every once in a while- and looking at this from a narrative standpoint, I think V's action could very easily construed as evil. I feel in this case intent is more important than the natural alignment of the victims. While it's true that the familicide does work as a pre-emptive measure against revenge, it's also true that there is malice imbued in V's actions. Her facial expressions and gloating show not only a lack of remorse or consideration for the morality of her actions, but sheer joy. She's killing a quarter of a specie's population and she's enjoying it tremendously.
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Mar 28, 2009 02:15
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bison wings posted:my favorite part is where all the infernal creatures have the "holy poo poo!" eyes. They just let Suvie off the leash and even they are surprised at the outcome. And, yeah, what Sick_boy said about the malice. That old Discworld comparison comes up again: the difference between a good and an evil man is that an evil man will linger, just to enjoy it, whereas a good one will kill you dead immediately. If V had only been motivated by paranoia about family safety, a case could be made for neutral, or even chaotic good in the "ruthlessly getting poo poo done" vein. But V was enjoying it way, way too much, monologuing her little elfy rear end off, and demi-genocide was NOT the only option for a spellcaster with near-unlimited arcane power.
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Mar 28, 2009 02:39
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