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Ponsonby Britt posted:At least on-panel, V never explained why zhe was absent or where zhe was. Just that it involved "shockingly poor moral character" on V's part. V says "I'm telling you now so that it is done," but that doesn't mean that V is actually done; redemption requires an ongoing effort to be a better person, and can never actually be "done". I think that's meant to be another teaching moment as V realizes that. I think by "it" V just meant "telling him", not the incident as a whole. Based on the conversations with Blackwing at least, V is aware that there isn't a quick solution to the situation. However, it's highly unlikely that more was explained off panel given what was happening at the time, so presumably it might be worth revealing a bit more about what happened, especially given the whole "I might disappear for 23 minutes at an incredibly vital time" aspect.
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Jan 16, 2014 09:48
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So Durkon still has Malack's staff, an item which we know contains Protection from Daylight as well as a spell to cause vampirism to take effect instantly. He also mentioned that he thought Roy was the only one in the party who would be able to resist a vampire's domination. What's stopping him from draining Roy dry when he drinks from him and then dominating everyone else, then bringing them all back as vampires? Even if this isn't a front and he really is still friends with them as a vampire, he might think they'd be less likely to turn on him if they were vampires as well. Or even that they'd be happier, or more able to save the world with the additional power.
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Jan 17, 2014 21:34
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Ponsonby Britt posted:Couldn't the party just use a helm of opposite alignment or something to make Durkon Good again? There would still be an ethical dilemma (is it right to forcibly change someone's alignment), but as a practical matter the helm would be way cheaper and easier than finding a high-level, sympathetic cleric, and the party would get to keep using Durkon's vampire strength to help out against Xykon. I don't think V has ever been shown to have any ability to craft magical items, and you usually can't just find a particular special item like that from merchants.
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Jan 18, 2014 00:33
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Sir Kodiak posted:Think of the soul (in D&D) like a power source and backup storage for a mind. The evolving condition of the physical mind (the brain and such), in a normal creature, results in corresponding evolution of an attached soul, which becomes the entirety of one's being after death (the destruction of the physical embodiment of the mind). Creating a vampire diverges this normally-paired evolution, such that Durkon's body and Durkon's soul are becoming different creatures (like how Malack is no longer the shaman he once was). The vampire mind has no backup (everything is lost on true destruction) and is powered by evil magic instead. Speaking of that, does D&D have an answer to that question Roy posed when the evil adventurers shifted into his afterlife? "Can I even die in this form?" seems related to this talk about souls in D&D. Random Stranger posted:It'll be deliberate. The end of the next book is going to be the lowest point for the Order so I'm expecting Durkon to betray everybody at the gate, reveal that he's been playing them the entire time, and then murder Belkar as a final twist of the knife. Taciturn Tactician fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 23:11
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I don't know why people are assuming Ian is actually forgiving and totally okay with this betrayal. He's a rogue. He's really good at lying. I don't think it's safe to assume his forgiveness is genuine just yet, give it a strip or two for him to stab him in the back.
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Jan 29, 2014 14:06
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Mniot posted:Were they non-combatants? I'd have thought that anyone without PC class levels would be smuggled out of the city. It's not like you need non-PCs to survive in the world of D&D where you can magic-up food and healing. It's a resistance where they're outnumbered and outpowered, I don't think they're going to be sending away anyone with NPC levels who offers to help.
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Feb 9, 2014 19:09
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You know, it did always seems a bit weird that no one was much worried about enemies having control of the rifts when it was supposedly super important to seal them with gates. I guess that's finally coming back to bite them in the rear end.WarpedLichen posted:So any speculation on what Snarl eyes are? Will we see Lauren as a avatar of the abandoned god in a later strip? It seems most likely to me that she's dead. Touching a godkilling abomination with your mind is probably unsafe.
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Feb 15, 2014 21:13
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Pseudoscorpion posted:I'm kinda getting the impression that it isn't that someone was close enough to get in; after all, there've been at least two times where that easily could have happened. I'm thinking it may be more what Laurin is: a psion. My guess is that that's actually a real planet in there, and the Snarl is effectively it's god or guardian deity. Why lash out at Laurin in particular, and not Blackwing or Roy and co.? There are really only two major differences between them: alignment (and I'm not gonna go there because Blackwing and the order both only looked in, Laurin reached in with her mind. A better question is why it reacted to Laurin amd not all the humans Redcloak threw in to the rift for research purposes
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Feb 16, 2014 05:22
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) and their abilities. So the Snarl senses something it doesn't recognize outside of its domain, and attacks it. And it doesn't recognize psionics.
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I might be misremembering, but I thought he'd said or implied that he'd already tried throwing people in the rift before the ones he was threatening O-Chul with.
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Feb 17, 2014 00:23
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Mniot posted:I think you're remembering Redcloak and Xykon killing goblins with the first gate (well, second, I guess). That's probably what it is. Still, that makes it so Laurin is the only one to do anything other than look with their eyes into the portal, since she was extending some kind of psychic tendril into it.
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Feb 17, 2014 01:16
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greatn posted:The party now has lawful evil Durkon, chaotic evil Belkar, neutral V, chaotic good Haley, neutral good Elan, and lawful good Roy elements. Clearly Bloodfeast is neutral evil.
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Feb 19, 2014 05:33
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Random Stranger posted:Does dying of vampirism count as "dying of sickness" metaphysically? Personally, I'd mark it down as "in battle" but who knows. That very comic has that exact argument, where Hel says the cause of death is sickness and Thor points it out it was a magical sickness contracted in battle.
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Feb 20, 2014 05:39
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My Lovely Horse posted:+1 caster level is one hell of a "subtle increase." I'd say it's fairly subtle since the utility depends on a few different factors. An unsubtle one would be some kind of flat or percentile benefit, an increase in oft-capped, spell-specific, situation-specific scaling is a little more difficult to pin down just by examining the effect. If you're high level, how much is +1 caster level going to do? Some spells would have capped out (Burning Hands caps at like caster level 5 or something), other spells would have no benefit (a bunch of illusion spells don't scale on caster level whatsoever), others would only show a benefit if they were facing some kind of opposed check (Otto's Irresistible Dance against spell resistance or something), etc. A lot of spells would just get a fractional range or duration increase.
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Nov 18, 2014 13:00
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It seems risky to base your entire evil plan on clerics failing Will saves. Even if they are a bunch of levels lower than you, clerics are really good at Will saves.
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Nov 21, 2014 18:42
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Kajeesus posted:Ahh, fair. That's only if the item itself is good. A clasp enchanted with Protection from Evil shouldn't be powerful enough to have an alignment.
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Dec 2, 2014 08:01
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Elan clearly has no idea what comic he's in, by the rules of OotS Obscuring Mist will be the one that becomes vital 150 strips later because it was mentioned off-hand and doesn't seem important.
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Dec 28, 2014 07:19
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Calaveron posted:Yeah but like, she was dead. Her death was very satisfying and concluded her dynamic with Haley nicely; Haley had undergone some character development and all that but she allowed herself to slip up a bit to kill her in cold blood to ensure that she wouldn't keep hounding her. Tarquin is possible but Nale would be a stretch considering how big a deal they made of his death being permanent ("Malek's never coming back, so neither is his killer")
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Dec 29, 2014 06:51
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Poison Mushroom posted:...did you just imply Belkar was loving? I mean, technically he's in the top four for relationships in the party when you consider Durkon and V's disastrous love lives.
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Jan 5, 2015 07:14
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Carrasco posted:
It's not necessarily damage resistance, she might have high natural armour and the arrows are succeeding for a touch attack but failing to overcome AC.
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Jan 13, 2015 01:29
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Who What Now posted:Longbow only does 1d8, so altogether it's only 1d8+5+1d6 Cold (and another 1d10 Cold on a crit). The cold damage is probably resisted or ignored outright, and 6-13 is easily ignorable on average for Damage Reduction 10. The biggest thing for +5 weapons isn't their bonus damage, it's helping you actually hit. +1 to Hit is always much more useful than +1 damage, especially for rogues who throw out more d6's than a lotto winner at a strip club throws out singles. Damage reduction is always overcome by sufficient magical weapons though, isn't it? So she should have like DR 10/+X and it's pretty rare for it to go above +5, a +5 magical weapons should basically null any damage reduction.
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Jan 13, 2015 02:09
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Mystic Mongol posted:Fine, fine. Holy Water is a piss poor weapon against the undead, dealing a miserable 2d4 damage as a touch attack. If young miss whatsherface can't do more damage than that with her melee basic, even against crit immune targets like undead or constructs, it's time for her to stop pretending she can help and run away. If they have so much DR/AC that Haley's arrows are bouncing off, an attack that does 2d4 and bypasses that would be pretty good actually.
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Jan 13, 2015 11:52
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Cornwind Evil posted:I know she's supposed to be a take on Lawful Stupid players, but there is a difference between a guy not understanding his class and a person who literally has a direct line to their gods who never say a thing until she falls off the cliff their presence put her on the path to. Miko failed as a paladin and a person, but the Twelve Gods ensured she would, just like any paladin who was left wondering why they had no powers after they brutally killed humanoids they had been told had no worth and that their gods wanted dead. Where is made clear that Miko has a direct line to the gods? Miko prays plenty and I don't recall any response, even at the end it was the spirit of Soon, not the gods, who spoke to her. Paladins don't come about from the gods descending from the heavens and giving the chosen one a sword, paladins choose to follow the gods and are given powers so long as they don't break the rules. It's not the gods' job to play psychiatrist to every paladin on the face of the planet and make sure none of them are thinking about doing something evil. Cornwind Evil posted:So yes, the Crimson Mantle wearer is mentioned...but the very first thing is 'You're all evil. Ergo you die to the last man, woman, and child.' Yeah, and Miko said the Twelve Gods told her to escape prison when the bar was weakened. Paladins always talk about their actions being justified by the divine because paladins who don't think they're doing the will of the gods generally stop being paladins.
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Jan 15, 2015 15:48
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Cornwind Evil posted:I consider 'empowerment' to be 'a direct line to the gods', as without them, she would not have her paladin powers. And while I don't expect the gods to micromanage every person who serves them, when someone who is an exceptionally strong servant of theirs who believes she has a special destiny in their service starts going down the wrong road pursuing that supposed destiny, even outright talking about it in her prayers, it seems horrendously lacking in responsibility if they remain completely silent until she passes the point of no return, at which point they take away her powers. She was empowered and emboldened by their silence. You cannot blame the gods for Miko being deluded. She is not the first paladin in history or the last, and she was 100% down with believing other paladins were wrong (and attempting to murder them) if they disagreed with her, so you can't say she was justified in thinking she was right all the time because she was a paladin. She just thought she was right all the time. The gods aren't "lacking in responsibility", it's just straight up not their role to control moral affairs, otherwise Thor would have just come down himself and killed Durkon or ordered his clerics to do it or something instead of just making a lightning storm to show he was mad. Being emboldened by their silence is purely her fault, because they've never previously told her or other paladins that we know of to stop when the paladins were acting against their wishes. Taciturn Tactician fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Jan 15, 2015 |
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Jan 15, 2015 22:38
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Carrasco posted:"That was one of her sloppy mistakes!" "Is that why you requested I retain her self-awareness? Because she's so skilled?" is such an incredible non-sequitur. And didn't Haley explicitly not give Bozzok her money? Grubwiggler was responding to Bozzok talking about "a waste of talent"
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Feb 2, 2015 23:51
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Ursine Asylum posted:I thought this was referring to Grubwiggler himself, and that the dialogue was just lovely. It was, and Grubwiggler made the leap to "if you had me rez'd with consciousness to not waste my talent, perhaps that is also the reason for bringing Crystal back with consciousness."
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Feb 3, 2015 02:40
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NihilCredo posted:What makes you think those tweets refer to Haley? 
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Feb 6, 2015 21:42
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MarquiseMindfang posted:I really want to make a character who does, in fact, have an axe caddy, now. A wealthy traveling axe collector who can chop heads with the best of 'em, on a quest with his collection of rare axes in search of more rare axes. The caddy is just a rudimentary construct shaped like a butler who carries all the axes inside a Golf Bag of Holding. Actually, there's a game that basically does that. It's called 7 Blades and the main character does in fact have seven various wacky swords, and he has a vassal that follows him around with a giant bag of swords and throws him whatever sword he wants to use.
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Feb 25, 2015 19:29
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Angela Christine posted:Lightning cannon is probably pretty good against most things. What if that jerk druid with all the resist elements spells shows up with his bloody trees?
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Mar 11, 2015 07:23
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OotS has always been more like the D&D campaign the players and the DM wish would happen. The DM is freakishly good at incorporating random things players did ages ago into the main plot and giving major actions real consequences, and the main characters don't run around doing stupid poo poo to derail the plot all the time. Plus there's actual asymmetry of knowledge rather than "let's all pretend that we don't know the wizard killed that innkeeper because our characters don't know" stuff.
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Mar 20, 2015 11:52
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Zoe posted:So taking bets on how Crystal actually gets killed? Re-deaded? I'm not really sure if it's going to work like that, though. I don't think True Resurrection, the ultimate "death does not matter" spell, actually exists in the setting. Getting Roy's body back was something the party had to do rather than something that would make their lives easier, and when Nale got disintegrated everyone treated that as "Nale cannot come back ever". Even in this strip, Haley talks about only needing Raise Dead, not Resurrection, True Resurrection is never mentioned. I think once your body is gone you're poo poo out of luck in Ootsverse, so if Crystal Golem gets fried and they can't pick out enough pieces that are actually Crystal from the pieces that are golem, she's gone for good.
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Mar 29, 2015 11:20
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Poison Mushroom posted:I swear to God, I will red text into oblivion the first person to post Goblins.    I actually wanted to post a Jim C Hines one rather than Philip Reeve but none of them are actually named Goblins
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Apr 14, 2015 03:12
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Mikl posted:Not really, "posthumously" could be taken as "after he's died", it doesn't exclude coming back to life afterwards. Wait a minute, this strip just conspicuously brought up vampires not breathing. Maybe Belkar is going to become a vampire 
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May 5, 2015 05:07
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Pope Guilty posted:Belkar with vampire powers would be pretty bad- this isn't World of Darkness, so Belkar's use of Int as a dump stat isn't going to make his hypnosis powers lovely. I'm pretty sure Wisdom was his dump stat, although I doubt his Intelligence is very high either.
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May 5, 2015 18:02
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Cliff Racer posted:She worshiped Loki, not Hel. reignonyourparade posted:Former linear-guild lokicleric possibly could, being not QUITE durkon's rival but close enough that she might just get to be the same level as him, and also COULD have the motive to not want an evil spirit going around in a guy she kind of liked's body. But then again she also might not want to off her god's daughter's only high level priest.
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May 7, 2015 12:45
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Ponsonby Britt posted:The opposite of petty escapism is great escapism, as practiced by Steve McQueen. They could always phone up that resurrection service the Oracle uses.
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May 7, 2015 16:21
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Colonel Cool posted:The whole "pay ridiculous amounts of money to priests for vital spells" has always been something that D&D settings struggle to deal with. I always figured that was just a "foreigner adventurer bullshit is not covered by the church" thing. I don't remember anything in the rules specifying that normal people are paying these kinds of rates for spells.
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May 7, 2015 17:02
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Cliff Racer posted:Missed a decently easy throwing money to a blind person gag there, Rich. I wonder if he had it but cut it out to avoid pissing off whiners, whether the blind person catching it is the actual joke or if Rich just wasn't really thinking at all on it and the lame villain thwarting line was supposed to be the joke? For me at least the joke was she catches it and you're like "gasp! She caught it, despite being bad at not using her eyes before! Maybe this was all an act!" and then she goes "wait what vampire" and you go "oh nevermind she knows nothing." Taciturn Tactician fucked around with this message at 17:01 on May 14, 2015 |
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May 14, 2015 16:58
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Dolash posted:Really? He's kind of a flat character on his own. The experience of being vampirized is important to Durkon's arc, but unless we learn more about Hel and the vampire spirit turns out to be more than just some negative energy moulded into a Durkon shape there's not much to it. I'm not entirely sure that she doesn't. If you read what she says carefully, along with the bodyguard's question, it's consistent with both of them knowing what vampires are like but not realizing that Roy doesn't. The way Roy introduced it, they might think he's friends with Durkon as a vampire, not that Durkon-not-a-vampire WAS his friend. It's also consistent with her not knowing how vampires work, though, so it could go either way.
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May 22, 2015 11:46
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e X posted:Roy you fool, you never state your plan if you want it to actually work. Now they are practically doomed. Roy doesn't always seem to be aware of what's "on-camera" so to speak and what's not, and he does have to tell them at some point. I'm sure Elan would have done some exaggerated "Let me just whisper it to you off panel!" thing, though.
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Jun 2, 2015 14:14
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Alchenar posted:He's not fated to die, just to stop breathing. None of the prophecies have been straight. That's not quite true. Belkar's question to the oracle was honestly and straightly answered, despite the Oracle attempting to get a weasel answer. He did in fact kill one of the people on his list, directly. It's also implied that the Black Dragon got a straight answer to "Who killed my child?"
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Jul 20, 2015 16:23
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