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Efreet saiid posted:It's a huge cliche. The knights/paladins who get completly ruined or generally being clueless is a cliche. The uberpowerful badguy is a cliched. The NPC's never being able to even dent the villain is a cliche. Siezing the plot device is a cliche. But...the paladins weren't clueless, Xykon isn't "uberpowerful" (see that fight against a silver dragon), and Xykon was absolutely "dented" severely by those paladins who were able to attack him. All of his actions have been pretty "realistic" given the rules of the gameworld. And there's basically one outcome when a bunch of low-level warrior-type characters fight a high-level wizard type character. quote:Of course he can mind control you all to do whatever he wants, he's a Ventrue elder! Of course Elminster can spend a whole adventure loving with you, he's an epic level mage! Look, it makes sense to take issue with the fact that the villain of Order of the Stick is an epic-level sorcerer, but it doesn't make sense to take issue with the fact that an epic level sorcerer uses his powers in a reasonable way. Xykon's ability to cause wide-scale magical destruction has thus far advanced the plot, so it doesn't make any more sense to say that he's "too powerful" than to say that Vaarsuvius "isn't powerful enough". How powerful are they supposed to be? If you're playing a vampire game that contains a powerful Ventrue elder as an NPC, there needs to be some good reason for why he doesn't just solve his problems by controlling everyone's minds. Otherwise him putting up some neonate's lip without kicking their rear end breaks suspension of disbelief, and he should've simply not been included at all. quote:By rights he doesn't even need the snarl, he's the most powerful character on the planet from what we've seen. He obliterates silver dragons and angels and entire orders of paladins, nothing comes even close to stopping him, why doesn't he just wipe every city off the map with epic meteor swarms and call it a day? Well this is just shameless hyperbole. He obviously doesn't obliterate everything on the planet without any problems, he's gotten the crap beaten out of him twice now and has basically prospered through a combination of sheer nerve, fortunate accumulation of allies, and possession of an extremely smart advisor. He can't just randomly destroy cities or whatever because, well, he just can't - meteor swarm has a radius measured in feet, not in city blocks. quote:Maybe we're not the ones with the attachment, mr owns-the-boardgame! I have an attachment to the comic as a whole but not any particular resolution of a given narrative conflict  quote:Actually it would have been loving awesome. I would have loved it if the comic had two panels, one big battle scene with him going to town and quipping about how quickly the battle will be over, and then a small inset with him back in redcloack's medalion telling him that they'll have to resort to plan B. Oh yeah a "They're not gonna get me on that bicycle!" scene wouldn't have been cliched at all. It's possible to argue that any given resolution to the Xykon/Paladin Swarm fight would have been cliched because most things have been done in some form somewhere. The correct procedure is not to attempt to do whatever has been done the least up to the point in time where you are writing your story, but to attempt to do what would make sense in the context of everything you've written so far and bring the story closer to its conclusion.
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May 5, 2007 23:54
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Also his name is X-Y-K-O-N there is no L in there 
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May 6, 2007 00:10
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Efreet saiid posted:They were literally honor-bound to complete ignorance. But everyone is completely ignorant except for the PCs and Xykon. And I guess Shojo and Roy's dad's ghosts and Hinjo? quote:See you go from saying he's not uberpowerful to saying his victory was the only possible outcome. the reality is, the writer chooses the outcome. If Xykon fought a goblin, he wouldn't need to be "uberpowerful" for the outcome to be preordained. All of the paladins in that room were, by the comic's current standards, weak! The Order probably represents the strongest characters there at roughly level 12 or 13 or so. Miko was stronger than any of them individually at, what, 16? Hinjo, the second best paladin, wasn't as powerful a character than Roy. The rest of the sapphire guard, while certainly powerful compared to standard soldiers, weren't more than half of Xykon's level. Of course he beats them - two level ten characters do not equal a twentieth level character, especially when that twentieth level character is a caster. And it's not like any of the clerics were high enough level to cast heal, let alone close enough to use it. In short I think it can be argued successfully that by the facts established in the comic (how strong the paladins in the Sapphire Guard generally are, how strong Xykon is) that Xykon should have won that fight, just like what we know about Miko and Roy suggests that Roy should have been able to hand her rear end to her after she fell. quote:It's not reasonable, symbol spells don't work that way. They cannot be used offensivly. There is totally a weasely rules argument to be made that they can be used in the way that Xykon used them, since he wasn't really thrusting them at someone, although I wouldn't allow his strategy to work in a game I was running. Overall, I'm not bothered because driving them insane like that was a cool and evil thing to do, and it's not like Xykon couldn't have won with a more standard strategy if Rich Burlew cared about cleaving really strictly to the rules for that encounter. quote:You can't have it both ways, do the rules matter of don't they? Becuase if they do, he's way outside of the CR limits and none of the good guys have enough magical loot. And if they don't, as is the case, then it's the writer's call. There's no D&D rule that says "PCs may only encounter enemies whose CR matches their level." quote:Well, maybe the power level could be more balanced, so he simply can't waltz his way over any obstacle, and only be impeded at the contrivance of the writer? To throw your words back at you, everything is impeded at the contrivance of the writer. And again - the word "balanced" sound crazy when it's being said about a story that completely lacks actual player input. What's it even mean? Varsuuvius and Elan aren't really "balanced" - is that a problem? quote:Yes, you're right, he shouldn't be included unless his powers are restrained. OTOH, we have superlich, who is included despite his power not being restrained. They should only be excised from the story if their unrestrained power impedes the advance of the plot rather than facilitates it. From where I'm standing Xykon the twentieth level lich sorcerer has made the strip better, not worse. quote:Isn't he an epic level lich? They can make their own spells. Either way, if he can flatten and entire order of paladins on their home turf, there is no stopping him. Why didn't he let a few of those bouncy balls loose in a market place, crash the economy? I'm sure he'd find that very amusing. Or he could poison all the wells, or start a ghoul plague. Even if he's just limited to meteor swarms he could demolish a city in quick order, flying away to safety after every barrage. He sort of has a ghoul plague, if you haven't noticed. There's a shitload of ghouls in his army! I don't get the rest of your suggestions. Yes, he can do that stuff. So, quite frankly, can Varsuuvius, substituting fireballs for Symbols of Insanity. D&D isn't Exalted - twentieth-level characters can't just cast a spell and finish off a city, they have to apply their powers and resources intelligently...which Xykon is doing. quote:This is my point. When you have a character like this, who has no limits, it just points the reader directly to the author, and shatters all suspension of disbelief. It's not about a story you're looking in on, it's about watching some guy deciding what happens next. More hyperbole! Xykon doesn't have "no limits". He's just really powerful. He's gotten seriously damaged twice now. quote:It's not that they lost, it's how they lost, and who they are. They're the clueless guys that always lose. It's lame. I expect better of him. I think you have your Cliche Detector tuned too strongly, honestly. A bunch of weak guys getting killed by a strong guy isn't automatically the Clueless Guys Who Always Lose, and honestly a powerful evil character taking out a bunch of weaker good characters who want to stop him isn't at all outlandish or stupid. quote:Maybe you aren't familiar with it, in wich case I envy you even more than just about the baordgame, but it's really common. I've never read those books, but I feel really sorry for you now happyelf  Again, though, I think you've just become so used to bad writing that you're seeing it wherever you look, like a soldier suddenly having visions of Charlies In The Trees. It's possible for a bad guy to kill a bunch of good guys and have it not be bad writing!
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May 6, 2007 01:30
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Efreet saiid posted:But the writer still decides to set him up against a goblin. Yeah, and? Most of the paladins in the Sapphire Guard were too weak to take on a lich, and due to how the battle unfolded they ended up doing it anyway, so they lost. It was spelled out for us at the beginning of the battle that the Order of the Stick was basically there to try and engage Xykon and hold him off, because (to paraphrase Roy or someone else) "A high level sorcerer isn't really at the level of engaging enemy units, he just reworks the whole course of the battle." quote:Rather I think he had an idea for a cool scene, but failed to realise that everybody else has already had the same 'cool' idea and it's actually kinda lame. He came to these conclusions based on the same things other people do, such as seeing paladins as having an in-built character arc - oh hey look they're jerks and they can fall so they must do so immediatly!. Again, years of reading terrible fantasy fiction has turned you into the books-about-elves equivalent of a hardened soldier who spins, pulls a gun, and yells "freeze" at anyone who taps him on the shoulder. It's possible for an evil guy to take out a bunch of weaker good guys and have it be a good addition to the story. It's possible for an ostensibly good character's rigid moral code to make them into an antagonist and be a good addition to the story. Your complaints just look silly in the context of the entire story. "Ugh a paladin falling is so cliched!" The strip's other ~forty paladins remain upstanding members of society! "Ugh a bunch of soldiers dying to the main bad guy is so cliched!" We have been aware that the bad guy was capable of this for an extremely long time now, and the whole objective of the battle was to prevent it from coming to pass! Quit being super-jaded! Also the ball thing isn't explicitly legal but it's very, very arguable. As others have said, what the spell means by saying a symbol is used "offensively" is spelled out very clearly, and chucking an item with a symbol on it into the air doesn't qualify. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 03:29 on May 7, 2007 |
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May 7, 2007 03:27
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Efreet saiid posted:And so it's his call, it's got nothing to do with the rules. Just like it's the GM's call if they drop a red draogn on a 1st level party, they can't use the rules as a defence. No one is invoking the rules to defend the setup of the encounter, just the outcome of the encounter. Sure, Rich could've had the throne room defended by a single level 3 commoner or a trio of ancient golden dragons, but instead he put in about twenty low-to-mid level paladins. And epic lich vs. lots of low-level melee guys has only one outcome! quote:This wasn't that, this was falling paladin #978. Really? Is that how it usually happens? Miko fell because of her near-hysterical anger at having been lied to her entire life, incredible ability to make excuses and justify anything she does, and general bloodlust. She found her lord had been corraborating with a bunch of people she utterly, utterly hated, decided that the lot of them must have been working with the Big Evil Badguy, and let loose instead of talking things through. It didn't strike me as some Holy poo poo Never Been Done Before Ever series of innovative events, but it was certainly appropriate to the situation and the characters as they'd been established and produced a lot of good strips. The only other falling paladin storyarc I'm familiar with is Arthas from Warcraft 3, who basically sacrificed everything he had to kill a demon he had a vendetta against. Oh and I guess Aribeth from Neverwinter Nights to who threw in with the bad guys to get back at the city of Neverwinter for unjustly executing her lover? Actually, those all sound pretty good. What exactly is wrong with "ostensibly good person is driven to do bad by personal concerns" again? quote:And then die. See? That's the other side of the cliche. They're either going to end up bad or they're going to die. They're useles, see? That's the point. Authority and the establishment always fails. Oh, that's just dumb. Roy is Lawful Good and law-abiding he's the star of the strip. (Well, I guess he got killed recently, but still.) Hinjo is lawful good and he's constantly portrayed as intelligent and effective. And those paladins who got their asses kicked were cool - there was a pirate paladin and a scary samurai armor paladin and a grizzled veteran paladin, they weren't just consciously-made-to-be-idiots caricatures of authority figures that some hack writer was using to get back at the police for arresting him for speeding. quote:Ok fine, then the next move should be for the OOTS to spend a few comics pouring boiling water down ants-nests to get lots of extra XP. I would not have thought it amiss if there was an early strip about that gambit, actually.
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May 7, 2007 15:14
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Efreet saiid posted:Again, he set things up like that. It's still a cliche even if it was contrived to a degree you found acceptable. You can say that about anything! quote:See, those came out within a year of one another, and that should tell you something about how common this idea is. Yeah? Well both of those games also had the undead in them. And evil wizards who wanted to take over things. And orcs. "Common ideas" are what make things part of a genre! quote:There's a lot of different caues but ultimatly people think that paladins are a character with a built-in character arc- they fall, that's what they do. Paladins don't have a built-in character arc, they have a built-in visible indicator of an extremely common and universal character arc. There's tons of stories about good people being driven to do bad things. poo poo, Roy's done bad things - remember him abandoning Elan to die? It's just that if you're a fighter and you do something bad, you're still a fighter, whereas if you're a paladin and you do something bad there's some pyrotechnics. Your immense distaste for poorly-written fantasy has blinded you to the fact that "the good person who falls from grace" is actually a pretty good story trope! It's certainly used badly in many places, but it's being used well here. The strip is better for containing Miko than it would be if she was just replaced with some generic hired mercenary/enforcer who beat up the Order, dragged them to Azure City, and didn't say a word. quote:And this is the same thing. Miko and the guard were set up from the start to reach that point where the CG old guy came into conflict with her. Miko was always set up to fall. I'd go so far as to say that he's wiped out the saphire guard in part because he has no use for them after that, since their main purpose was that plot and the introduction of the snarl/gate stuff. I don't get it, it looks here like you're complaining that Rich Burlew has planned out his plot in advance? Anything that happens was set up to happen. quote:It's not that vague. It's paladins falling over and over again, assuming they aren't being jerks without falling. It's like all these guys used to play D&D and never really got past the cliche phase, at least when it comes to that one class. It is that vague. A "The Paladin has fallen!" storyline is a "A good person's turned evil!" storyline with more obvious special effects. It's dumb to write off every instance of a Paladin A) falling or B) dying as a stupid whiny teenager lashing out at authority. quote:And again, seriously, i'm pretty sure part of why people inexplicably bitch about Roy and call him a jerk so much is because he's LG. HappyElf, I absolutely agree with you that this attitude exists within a distressingly large part of D&D's/this comic's fanbase (as well as fantasy writing as a whole.) But, like, it doesn't stop a paladin falling from having the ability to be a good part of a good story, and Rich Burlew definitely doesn't have this attitude himself. quote:One guy. He's the exception, just like when he was initially introduced, purely to reassure the readers that the writer didn't write all paladins as cliche jerks. What? Every paladin but Miko was written as not a cliched jerk. Miko was included in the strip specifically as "the wrong way to play a paladin", just like Belkar is "that guy who just wants to kill everything". To complain that Miko is an insult to paladins is like complaining that Belkar is an insult to rangers. Think about it - for you to be satisfied with the strip's portrayal of paladins, every single one would have had to be morally and intellectually perfect! Because otherwise, uh oh, looks like someone's just dredging up that boring old "Paladins suck!" cliche. (Since all non-paladins in the strip are portrayed as competent and rational, right?) quote:And then they all died because he wanted them to die. Their designs just make it worse. He may have drawn them like interesting characters, but he didn't treat them like that. I can sympathize with "Those characters look cool, I wish they'd lived so we could see them be cool some more!" but it has little to do with the whole is-this-a-horrible-cliche angle.
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May 7, 2007 17:13
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rantmo posted:I like the webcomic where the stick figures do funny things and quip in amusing ways. Who's with me? stop having your discussion RIGHT NOW EDIT Oh, in case anyone is interested: Rich Burlew wrote a little on his personal opinions of the Paladin class in "No Cure for the Paladin Blues." Basically, he said that while he thinks the shining white knight is a great trope that always has a place in fantasy, the Paladin class as-written is kind of prone to causing dysfunction between players because it seems to give one player the imperative to try and police all the others. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 18:30 on May 7, 2007 |
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May 7, 2007 17:45
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Efreet saiid posted:hahaha, nobody ever reads the last post, I win! Oh, gently caress those guys, I'm going to keep talking about this purely out of spite. "How dare people have a discussion in the discussion thread that goes on for more than three posts?! I want to go back to waiting in silence for the next comic and possibly posting  and  !"quote:But to me, this stuff is stale. Falls from grace are predictable when they're like this. It's always the straight and narrow person, the establishment figure, who falls from grace. It's dull. This guy, for all his trappings of tropes, tends to do a lot better. That's sort of because the Straight And Narrow person has grace, isn't it? Like, a neutral or chaotic good character is probably not liable to sweep away everything they once stood for in a gigantic stroke of murder purely because they never particularly stood for any grand supposedly-unassailable principles or codes of conduct. If someone like Haley "fell" it'd be more like quietly sabotaging the other PCs for a gigantic payoff, not committing one crime and suffering divine retribution - because only paladins are dramatically weakened if they violate their own code a single time in the first place. quote:As an example . . . are you familiar with the Clan Malkavian? Look, we can go back and forth on whether an overly-righteous paladin committing murder and falling is cliched or tediously predictable, but it's not actually gratingly annoying - unlike vampires with teddy bears who play "pranks" on people. quote:A lot of people have that attitude about Paladins, that the premise leads to inter-party conflict, but i'm a bit dubious. It strikes me a bit like the alignment system, a lot of people talk about it being broken, but it's not the rules that are the problem, it's the assumptions people attach to them. Well, the Paladin is the only one that actually has to police the actions of everybody else in order to keep their class features. Roy's a pretty good Lawful Good fighter, but he couldn't cut it as a paladin in his exact situation simply because associating with Belkar would probably strip him of his powers - even though, under his guidance, Belkar's endless psychopathic rage is generally channelled towards things that deserve it. I guess a cleric is the second most problematic class after paladin because a cleric who fails to cleave to his code will lose his powers too ("George, unless your evil cleric sacrifices one of the PCs on a desecrated altar within one week, you will lose your ability to cast spells") but it's not spelled out so explicitly and it's easier to tailor a cleric's divine mandates to fit any adventuring party.
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May 7, 2007 19:21
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Efreet saiid posted:Ok see this? This is what results in people falling from grace. One day it's spite in BSS, the next you're hate-trolling self-styles "Theists" and "Deists", and before you know it we've got Evil Ferrinus zooming around with a giganting goatee glued to his hull, doing Mspaint threads in GBS about stupid retail customers, and running a Card Capturer Sakura PBP thread in TG. Only the law of the mods matters now! *decapitates ur avatar* quote:There are other factors also, but they follow a similar path- for instance some people think it's awfully clever and fresh to show that an order of knights or a righteous church has a seamy underbelly or is outright corrupt, but that is the cliche now, and has been for a long time. The basic problem here is that you're damning a story development for the author-motive you perceive motivated the story development. It may be that the Sapphire Guard got their asses handed to them because Rich just haaaates Paladins and wants to show them up at every opportunity, but A) that's unlikely given his treatment of every paladin but Miko and B) who cares? quote:Oh some on, i'm sure somebody could do it right! The menacing evil crazy uh.. . desperate for attention. . . loves disrupting the game... This example just isn't applicable because you're talking about the behavior of a player at a game table, but the conversation as a whole is abuot the behavior of a character in a story being told by one guy. Also, my problem with Malkavians is that they specifically encourage the sort of behavior you're referring to here (just like a Paladin sort of encourages policing the other players), and because they are ultimately pointless as a clan. You don't have to be a Malkavian to be an insane vampire, and therefore anyone who does play a vampire thinks they have to be defined wholly by the fact that they're insane. (And they have terrible pop-culture conceptions of "insane"). quote:I do think it's wierd, but are evil PC's really that common? Genuinly evil ones? And if there is a genuinly evil PC in the game, surely they'd be a tad more disruptive than a Paladin who responds to them? Well, Belkar is a pretty good example of how it could work out. You don't actually have to be out to conquer the world with an army of demons to be considered evil, you just have to have absolutely no qualms with killing and stealing from strangers. And sure, technically any Good PCs have an incentive not to associate with evil PCs or vice versa (same with lawful and chaotic, really.) But...well, Monk, for example, doesn't take away your Flurry of Blows if you hang out with a chaotic guy. I think Paladin is a good class, but I definitely buy the argument that it's more likely to disrupt party cohesiveness than the others. RE: NEW COMIC: ohhhhhh poo poo
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May 8, 2007 01:00
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Maldraedior posted:I guess why I like this strip is because Xykon epitomizes why I'm so terrible as casters. The approriate way is to hang back, let the meatshields take thier hits and blast the crap out everyone. But eventually I just go gently caress THIS poo poo I'm a high level caster what the hell are a bunch of lower level semis going to do to me? Which leads to this happening: By the way, this post is from way back on the last page but I just want to quote it because I think it's a brilliant summation of Xykon's problems. Xykon is like an impatient player going through a video game with an extremely high level caster. He's like, "Heh, I can do this, whatev- OW OW OW! Damnit! gently caress!" But he can't reload EDIT: Also, Xykon's expression in the last panel there is so perfect. It's like he's really really hoping to suddenly burst out laughing because what he's seeing is a giant practical joke. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 01:18 on May 8, 2007 |
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May 8, 2007 01:07
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Backdoor Blanche posted:Sure he can, Redcloak still has his phylactery! He can only respawn. But a true computer gamer would keep reloading his save so as to not even lose the encounter. It's a matter of honor!
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May 8, 2007 04:40
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gothfae posted:This is so many colors of awesome. That last panel is perfect. I so want to break out my Lazytown 'gently caress, Yeah' macro, but I'm holding myself back. Actually the last panel is pretty much a macro in and of itself. Observe: Some Poster posted:something really outlandish 
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May 8, 2007 04:50
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Robot Bastard posted:See, at least that fits with what we've seen so far. Yes, it's contemptuous, but at least it isn't "lawlz check out this loophole!" Haha, what? It'd be "contemptuous" for one character to kill some others in a webcomic? Who or what is it contemptuous of? Kahrytes posted:However, if they do, then I'll give it to them in part. Usually while saying "I loving hate you guys" with a huge grin on my face. This is the correct answer. However, it totally sucks to then go "Yeah well now the big bad guy sees you as a threat; you all die in your sleep from stealth assassins." I think the gentlemanly response is to make your players aware that if they try to do that repeatedly, you're just going to make the bad guys start using the same exploit against them.
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May 10, 2007 04:16
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Efreet saiid posted:Or you could just say "do not uset this exploit again" because you're the GM and that's your job, you don't have to negociate based on threats, you just tell them how it's going to be, and if they have a problem with that, the group can talk about it. Well, yeah, obviously. "You wouldn't want your enemies to do that, would you?" is a more or less shorthand explanation for why you think it would suck if the players kept using their previously-one-time gambit. It's meant as an attempt at persuasion, not a threat.
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May 10, 2007 06:16
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NutShellBill posted:There are remarkably few Trad Gamers in this thread, to the best of my knowledge. (Happy Elf doesn't count, he's been persona non grata for a long, long time. Also, I think his reputation proceeds him.) Yes, he's always had a pension for the dramatic.
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May 10, 2007 14:29
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Strudel Man posted:Penchant. A pension for the dramatic would be something rather different. No one corrects me! *equips vibroknuckles*
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May 11, 2007 03:34
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Vanadium posted:Then how did it not kill the entire city including Durkon and Vaarsuvius? Clearly the shockwave was more or less an expanding horizontal line and Durkon and Vaarsavius were both under it but it hit the treants at waist level! Also every building and citizen was magically warded against sonic attack EDIT: Vanadium, Vaarsuvius tried to burn and zap the trees to death but then the druid bragged that he'd magically immunized them against fire and lightning attack. Sound beams killed them because they weren't shielded against them. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 19:13 on May 11, 2007 |
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May 11, 2007 18:55
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Efreet saiid posted:hhahaha you fool, nobody is ever shielded against sonic! I'm sorry I can't hear you I'm shielded against sonic
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May 11, 2007 19:36
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gothfae posted:Boredom in a Friday night. You should've altered his last speech bubble to say something like "...so that's exactly what I did! Hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did!"
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May 12, 2007 01:57
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I'm guessing that somewhere in Haley's family tree is a Celestial. Rich Burlew did say in the first compilation of comics that the animosity between Haley and Sabine went deeper than simple arbitrary catiness, but that it hinged on a secret that wouldn't get revealed until later. I wouldn't be surprised if Haley turned out to be an Aasimar or whatever the watered-down-an-additional-step version of an Aasimar is. Support for this theory: Animosity between Haley and Sabine, the fact that the angels Xykon slew en masse in his old tower actually had Haley's exact face and hair style ('cept their hair was green). Also, Redcloak can probably summon a fiendish mastodon on the theory that "Celestial Elephant" is on the Summon Monster 7 list and a fiendish mastodon is probably a rough equivalent in terms of power.
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May 12, 2007 19:41
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Aaaaarrrrgh what is happening with Xykon and the ghosts
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May 22, 2007 07:58
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RentACop posted:I know about the resting, but the mechanics, I mean, if he gets interrupted halfway through does he get half his spells, if he takes a cat-nap could he get one spell back that sort of thing. Basically I'm wondering whether V will be able to do anything before the seige is over. Standard D&D rules are pretty iron-fisted about this. Once a wizard has used up all his spells, he pretty much needs nine straight uninterrupted hours (eight of rest, one of staring at his spellbook) to get 'em back. He can opt to leave some of his spell slots "blank" and then fill them by just quickly ducking down and studying for fifteen minutes in the middle of the day, but he can't study for just one hour whenever he wants and restore one ninth of his spells. In fact, any spells he casts during his nine hours of rest/preparation (like, if he never cast a magic missile spell he had prepared and so he just fires it into the air for fun) that counts against his spells for the new day.
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May 23, 2007 20:01
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rantmo posted:That and Clerics have poo poo PrCs. Wait, what about Hierophant? I could technically be a Cleric 15/Hierophant 5 and give up five levels of undead turning and one net point of BAB in order to have an effective caster level of 25. Schwarzwald posted:Why would Tyr only let a cleric of his cast a spell only so often? I suspect that there's actually an element of being experienced at channeling divine energy for clerics - probably if a god tried to grant ninth-level spells to a level one cleric because, hey, why not, the cleric would just explode. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 12:38 on May 25, 2007 |
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May 25, 2007 10:06
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No Redcloak! Why can't you and Xykon be buddies and help each other
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May 26, 2007 20:20
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Efreet saiid posted:It's ok i'm sure they'll buddy up again once they clear the throne room. Oh yeah and only reinforce how totally overpowered they are  god why did they even make "Xykon" a playable character class
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May 26, 2007 21:06
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greatn posted:Xykon really should have been dead by now. It doesn't make much sense that spellcaster would survive in a room full of paladins he doesn't even know how to hurt for any length of time. He's undead, with like twenty d12 hit dice, so really he's just as durable as a death knight would have been in his place. I mean, sure, his AC could be better, but most of the paladin ghosts in that room are the ghosts of like level seven or eight characters.
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May 31, 2007 16:02
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High Altitude Hair Stylist posted:
Liches actually get an innate +5 natural armor, and then you factor in Xykon's dexterity and any items he may be wearing, and then you factor in stuff like Mage Armor or Shield. The big thing, though, is his massive innate damage reduction, which not a single paladin in that room is equipped to pierce. Liches get like 15/Bludgeoning and Magic, and every paladin in that room has some variety of katana!
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May 31, 2007 18:36
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Really? A 20th level sorcerer lich should have an AC of significantly above 18 or so, after spells and items.
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greatn posted:But there would be no damage reduction vs smite evil, right? Thiugh that AC does sound better now. Hilariously, there would. I mean, there's Damage Reduction pierced by "good" attacks (most demons have that), but 15/Bludgeoning and Magic doesn't care about the alignment of the attacker. Smite Evil would only "pierce" the DR in the sense that it vastly increases the raw damage dealt and so ensures that some eventually gets through.
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May 31, 2007 19:24
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quote:Damage Reduction "Smite Evil" is a Supernatural ability, so it might actually be able to pierce DR. It's dicey, though, because you could argue about whether it is a supernatural attack in and of itself or just the supernatural ability to augment a totally normal attack with extra accuracy/damage. I would figure that DR's pierceability vs. supernatural attacks is there to make sure that DR doesn't stop breath weapons or magical death touches or whatever, and that Smite Evil doesn't count as a supernatural attack in and of itself.
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Jun 1, 2007 03:22
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bgaesop posted:Neither is magic, but that doesn't make the +1 go through. I'm not positive about this, but this is how everyone I know has ruled it in the past (but it very rarely comes up). I believe the "flaming" part of a +1 flaming longsword would actually bypass damage reduction, since damage reduction won't protect you from energy damage. You can't stab a lich, but you can burn him. The +1 bonus would definitely not get through, which is why I think Smite Evil wouldn't either.
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Jun 1, 2007 03:42
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Morand posted:Paralyzing Touch and a touch attack according to the Srd Yeah, a lich who touches you can paralyze you permanently, so wrestling one is not a good move.
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Jun 1, 2007 21:29
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Efreet saiid posted:These aren't low level paladins, the real newbies are guarding the city. I'm pretty sure the only paladin that isn't in the throne room right now is Hinjo. All the paladins who tried to take on Xykon (and are still taking on Xykon as reverse ghosts) are "low level" compared to Hinjo and certainly the Order, even if they're not "low level" in the sense of all having one or two hit dice.
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Jun 2, 2007 10:12
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This wouldn't have happened to Miko if she had been an atheist It is a good point that if she's a level four monk, she's actually equipped to take out or at least severely damage Xykon, though. Then again entering into a brawl with a lich is a really bad idea because of that 1d8 + 5 permanent paralysis touch attack they can throw around indefinitely.
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Jun 5, 2007 01:45
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Efreet saiid posted:Bollox. she's evil, or heading there. D&D alignment is not nearly as retarded and people pretend. This brings us back to the age-old question of whether deluded is the same as evil. Miko thinks she's doing the will of the gods and that Roy and co. were basically minions of Xykon and so on and so forth. The alignment written on her character sheet could easily still be "Lawful Good", there'd just be a bunch of assorted derangements written under it.
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Jun 5, 2007 07:45
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Efreet saiid posted:Yes but that's only if the DM is loving with her player or they're having an argument over it. But she doesn't have a player! Honestly, I think she's the example of the only way that a (Lawful) Good character can serve as an antagonist for a Good (or maybe Neutral) party - the Good antagonist is not in possession of all the facts and somehow prevented from acquiring them. Soonmot posted:Anyway, I think Miko isn't quite LE yet, she's LN. D&D alignment isn't supposed to work the way it does in most D&D RPGs. A Good character doesn't keep committing evil acts until their alignment shifts first to Neutral and then to Evil.
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Jun 5, 2007 09:48
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Lurdiak posted:If wanderer's theory is correct, a few more posts like this should make her kill and rape a few babies in the next few comics, followed by her sprouting horns and leathery wings and saying "I LOVE BEING LAWFUL EVIL OF MY OWN VOLITION". Hey, I don't think Miko is misunderstood or shortchanged or treated unfairly - by real-world standards, she's a horrible monster. But she's still "Lawful Good" until such time as she decides to stop trying to serve justice and the gods and so forth. Basically I see alignment as a statement of intentions, so there's no point in telling someone who (honestly, as far as they can tell) claims to be some alignment that they're really a different alignment.
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Jun 5, 2007 10:03
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Efreet saiid posted:Then she doesn't have an alignment Oh yes she does because players have to be able to use Protection from [Alignment] to evade her attacks! quote:I think there's a lot of ways you can send non-evil people up against each other, after all the facts only say so much. Not all good people have the same opinons- Well yeah, they can certainly serve as political antagonist or social antagonists or competing groups of adventurers or whatever. But the only way to have a Good antagonist as in someone who repeatedly attempts to kill you and your party is to make them believe you evil. quote:Anyway, i've lost track of the number of "neutral is the new good" plotlines and storylines wich centre around an ignorant do-gooder going up against pinfully cliche "moraly ambiguous" neutral protagonists. All of the protagonists are Good! Except for Varsuuvius and Belkar, and Varsuuvius doesn't actually care about helping people and Belkar is comedy relief. Anyway, you're trying to avoid storylines like that by bending too far into the other direction - you're saying that there's no way someone with the Good alignment can ever do anything bad while retaining the alignment, even by mistake. quote:Oh cool, hitler is LG! Yeah that's really useful. I saw that comparison coming from a miiiiile away. You can't call Hitler or a suicide bomber or whatever Good (even if you treat alignment as a statement of intentions) because he's completely willing to kill innocents to accomplish his aims. Miko isn't - the innocents she's killed have been people who she thought were conscious servants of Xykon. The Lawful Good alignment doesn't allow you to kill people because of their race or their politics, but it does allow you to kill people because they're conspiring with a lich to overthrow your city. If alignments were actually based on actions, and slowly changed as you took more and more actions in direction or another, then you'd be able to turn Belkar Neutral by locking him up in a cage for the rest of his life. Every day that passes without him murdering someone would slowly shift him farther and farther away from Evil! And I guess the fact that he hasn't got any laws to break means he'd stop being Chaotic, too. quote:I find that alignment is not nearly as wierd and counter-intuitive as people claim. Who's saying it is?
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Jun 5, 2007 18:55
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bgaesop posted:But they were Jews! Everyone knows that the Jews are evil satan-spawn that could be Smite Eviled out of existence if Hitler had taken any levels in Paladin. Hitler was totally being a righteous LG character. Hey, the Good alignment has pretty straightforward guidelines - it's like, you have to help people in need and respect the well-being and dignity of sentient beings or whatever. You can't do that when you're rounding a subset of them into death camps based on who their grandfather was! The Good alignment allows for killing traitors and criminals but it doesn't allow for killing civilians. And Hitler is actually a pretty good example of why defining alignment by actions alone (rather than intentions) is silly. What, he started out Neutral, became Good as he started to use politics to pull his country together, started racking up evilpoints and sliding into Neutral again after he murdered all his political opponents, and then became Evil once he opened deathcamps? He was always the same person with the same intentions! And it's not like D&D has any mechanics for gradual alignment change in the vein of NWN/Planescape: Torment. ("You've murdered an orphanage - now you're ten points less Good, and might turn Neutral any day now! Watch out!") It has to be possible to be a Chaotic Evil character who's just been either too timid or too scared of local authorities to go on the killing spree he's always wanted, and it has to be possible to be a Lawful Good character that simply can't see that they're betraying their own ideals due to massive personality flaws in areas that aren't related to alignment. The Werle posted:NO SHE IS NOT! Get it through your head, she is serving her own sense of self-importance and delusion, not any sort of truelly noble ambition. Well, yes, she's an egomaniacal lunatic, but she's still attached to the idea of thinking of herself as Lawful Good, which means she is. If, for instance, a bunch of peasants came to her and begged her to save them from a marauding demon or something she would have to help them, because she thinks of herself as the good guy. If you could somehow beam the entirety of the comic strip into her head and thereby give her perfect knowledge of exactly how Shojo and the Order of the Stick related to Xykon, she would have to regret offing Shojo or else actually betray herself. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Jun 6, 2007 |
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Jun 6, 2007 03:22
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Sick_Boy posted:Actually, she would because she believes being a Paladin of the Sapphire Guard is the way her "great destiny" will be fulfilled, so tries to play the role to a T. The notion that she is somehow "chosen" by the gods is the only thing she truly cares about. "Good" doesn't mean "devoid of personality flaws". Good characters can and should (sometimes) be overly jealous or prideful or sarcastic or confrontational or whatever. Miko thinks she is singly chosen by the gods to do their righteous will in the world, which is quite frankly crazy because it's not like she's the world's only paladin, but being deluded and unlikable is not an evil act. Miko thinks protecting villagers from a marauding demon even at personal expense is the right thing to do, ergo she is "Good" (but still horribly flawed as a person and deserving of imprisonment and possibly execution. Please do not interpret me as "defending" Miko in some sense.) I might be persuaded to call her Lawful Neutral (because some of her dialogue makes it seem like she considers the vaunted Law Of The Gods an end unto itself regardless of the moral value of the orders the gods give, but...I'm pretty sure she was always like this, even when she was a fully-empowered Paladin. She's extremely angry and high-strung right now because nothing's been going her way, but I don't think she's fundamentally changed as a character. We're not seeing a shift in her personality - we're just seeing the worst parts of her already-extant personality come to the forefront.
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Jun 6, 2007 04:00
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Sick_Boy posted:The thing is, as I pointed out before, Miko interprets anything and everything as proof of the "will of the gods"... as long as it supports her "chosen One" mindset. Her reasoning in the strip before was PURE EVIL: "If I can do it, the gods want me to do it; therefore I am right" This line of thinking justifies pretty much anything she does, even if deep down it's a deeply selfish, even evil act. That's not "PURE EVIL" at all, it's just stupid and easily abusable. Pure evil entails eating babies or loosing demons or whatever. Shaky metaphysics and self-centered pride aren't Evil - they're just dangerous. I mean, at this point in the story her belief in her being Chosen By The Gods To Dispense Justice could easily lead to her defeating or driving off Xykon and Redcloak and saving Azure City's gate.
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Jun 6, 2007 04:34
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