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There's also the double bluff possibility of forcing Elan to get directly into the fray instead of strum a lute in a corner by presenting "unbeatable" odds. Tarquin does have a point that Elan should be in the fight, dude has a combat based prestige class.
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Sep 6, 2013 03:53
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^^ or summon a montage to get them to dusk sooner. Does anyone know what skills Belkar likely took? He has cooking, and probably a fair number of points into bluff/intimidation, but would he have hide/parry? As a ranger he should probably be able to hide/camouflage to avoid a lot of the combat, but he might also be able to survive a lot longer by parrying his way out (with opposed combat rolls against level 1 fighters he should probably win every time.)
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Sep 6, 2013 04:00
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W.T. Fits posted:I just noticed Mr. Scruffy's helping Belkar kick up sand in panel six of page two. Cats are very well suited to kicking up sand and sand like materials to cause a mess. Probably gets a bonus to the amount he kicks up because of it.
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Sep 6, 2013 04:18
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Goffer posted:^^ or summon a montage to get them to dusk sooner. As a ranger he should also be able to track, but...
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Sep 6, 2013 04:34
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3.5 has no "Parry" skill.
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Sep 6, 2013 04:42
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Dolash posted:Although that's getting a little too by-the-book. Narratively, the army's a big danger and could kill them any comic now unless something happens to save them (which it will). This is almost certainly the case, but it would be pretty loving metal if the Order followed through on Plan A and literally held off the entire army until dusk, leaving hundreds of corpses in their wake 
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Sep 6, 2013 05:03
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Goffer posted:^^ or summon a montage to get them to dusk sooner. One of Belkar's jokes it that he's a terribly built character. I wouldn't assume he's going to get anything useful out of his skill points.
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Sep 6, 2013 05:05
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fool_of_sound posted:One of Belkar's jokes it that he's a terribly built character. I wouldn't assume he's going to get anything useful out of his skill points. On the other hand, a terribly built character is likely to have skills that are hardly ever useful. They are in a situation right now that hardly ever happens. Maybe this is the vanishingly rare situation where his skills come in handy? It's a one in a million chance, but it just might work.
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Sep 6, 2013 05:19
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fool_of_sound posted:One of Belkar's jokes it that he's a terribly built character. I wouldn't assume he's going to get anything useful out of his skill points. He's gotten use of his Profession (Gourmet Chef) multiple times. The 'Only When It's Funny' rule applies.
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Sep 6, 2013 05:23
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What do you think the chances of Sabine proposing some sort of deal to Vaarsuvius, to have V take out/injure/make a go for Tarquin when released in exchange for Sabine's help in some way? Because once Tarquin gets back to that city he's gonna be a hell of a lot harder to depose, and it'd be narratively clunky to do so, so this is their best chance.
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Sep 6, 2013 05:52
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MarquiseMindfang posted:What do you think the chances of Sabine proposing some sort of deal to Vaarsuvius, to have V take out/injure/make a go for Tarquin when released in exchange for Sabine's help in some way? Because once Tarquin gets back to that city he's gonna be a hell of a lot harder to depose, and it'd be narratively clunky to do so, so this is their best chance. Solid, that would be a nice twist.
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Sep 6, 2013 06:10
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fool_of_sound posted:One of Belkar's jokes it that he's a terribly built character. I wouldn't assume he's going to get anything useful out of his skill points. Well he's put ranks in Move silently, Hide and I guess Intimidate? Plus the four ranks in Gourmet Chef.
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Sep 6, 2013 06:13
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MarquiseMindfang posted:What do you think the chances of Sabine proposing some sort of deal to Vaarsuvius, to have V take out/injure/make a go for Tarquin when released in exchange for Sabine's help in some way? Because once Tarquin gets back to that city he's gonna be a hell of a lot harder to depose, and it'd be narratively clunky to do so, so this is their best chance.
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Sep 6, 2013 07:54
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Dallan Invictus posted:I'm pretty sure "obliterate the army that's threatening the party" would also fall under self defence IF the fiends send him back in time. Note that V specifies "low-level" support spells. All the high levels are probably still evocations. 
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Sep 6, 2013 08:06
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mmkay posted:Well he's put ranks in Move silently, Hide and I guess Intimidate? Plus the four ranks in Gourmet Chef. I don't think intimidate is a D&D skill (it IS a Neverwinter Nights skill though). Likely hide, move silently, tumble, jump... and maybe balance? He's pretty nimble all around. Profession: Chef isn't out of the equation as far as 3.5 rules go. D1Sergo fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Sep 6, 2013 |
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Sep 6, 2013 08:10
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fool_of_sound posted:Suffice to say that Roy (with Great Cleave) could reasonably kill several hundred soldiers on his own, though he would be slowly worn down. So basically Roy's playing Dynasty Warriors right now as much as he is DnD. ...so, heh, what are the odds of the battle raging on long enough that Tarquin turns around and discovers his entire brigade is gone?
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Sep 6, 2013 08:26
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MarquiseMindfang posted:What do you think the chances of Sabine proposing some sort of deal to Vaarsuvius, to have V take out/injure/make a go for Tarquin when released in exchange for Sabine's help in some way? Because once Tarquin gets back to that city he's gonna be a hell of a lot harder to depose, and it'd be narratively clunky to do so, so this is their best chance. V already made a deal with the devil/demon once, turns out it wasn't worth it. I really doubt V would go for such a thing again.
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Sep 6, 2013 10:07
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nimby posted:V already made a deal with the devil/demon once, turns out it wasn't worth it. I really doubt V would go for such a thing again. Maybe she'll make Sabine sell her her soul in exchange for some grade A evocation directed at Tarquin 
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Sep 6, 2013 10:31
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Sabine doesn't have a soul, she is powered by the essence of her plane of existence. If she dies she just merge back into the plane of... Hades? Baator? Man its hard to remember all this stuff.
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Sep 6, 2013 12:09
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Vorgen posted:Sabine doesn't have a soul, she is powered by the essence of her plane of existence. If she dies she just merge back into the plane of... Hades? Baator? Man its hard to remember all this stuff. The Abyss, since she's a demon. Baator is literally hell and where devils live.
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Sep 6, 2013 12:58
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Vorgen posted:Sabine doesn't have a soul, she is powered by the essence of her plane of existence. If she dies she just merge back into the plane of... Hades? Baator? Man its hard to remember all this stuff. She works for Director Lee and is therefore assumed LE, right? Baator is the LE Hell. I guess there's a small possibility she could link to the nearby lower planes of Acheron and Gehenna, though they're more neutral. (edit: or the above post, I'm not well-versed on demon/devil origins.) jng2058 posted:He really doesn't mind. His troops are just numbers in a his ledger as far as he's concerned. They don't have names, just the gold piece value it takes to train and equip a replacement. I think this is what clearly distinguishes Tarquin's leadership from Redcloak's despite their similarities. At least Redcloak eventually realized that sending his troops to their obvious mass death was morally wrong even if he's evil. It's definitely chaotic, or "blatant sociopath" for the "alignment discussions are Awful Stupid" crowd.
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Sep 6, 2013 13:01
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Vorgen posted:Sabine doesn't have a soul, she is powered by the essence of her plane of existence. If she dies she just merge back into the plane of... Hades? Baator? Man its hard to remember all this stuff. She can still be revived with true resurrection. Celia too. Malack couldn't be resurrected as a vampire, however, and if he's been a vampire for as long as he says, then Durkon's offer to resurrect him as a mortal lizard/snake person wouldn't have worked (Durkon would need to be at least level 20 to resurrect someone who's been dead for 200 years). Those are purely a  tangent. I am not expecting the issue to be raised. If Sabine is killed, I expect it'll stick.
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Sep 6, 2013 14:05
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D1Sergo posted:I don't think intimidate is a D&D skill (it IS a Neverwinter Nights skill though). Likely hide, move silently, tumble, jump... and maybe balance? He's pretty nimble all around. Profession: Chef isn't out of the equation as far as 3.5 rules go. Intimidate absolutely is a D&D skill, it's one of the Sacred Cows of the system, persisting into even 4e, where Skills were super-condensed.. Intimidate, Sense Motive, Bluff, Diplomacy, and Gather Information are the "Social" skills.
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Sep 6, 2013 16:55
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Who What Now posted:Intimidate absolutely is a D&D skill, it's one of the Sacred Cows of the system, persisting into even 4e, where Skills were super-condensed.. Intimidate, Sense Motive, Bluff, Diplomacy, and Gather Information are the "Social" skills. Huh, my eyes must have glazed over it. Oops.
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Sep 6, 2013 17:30
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TunaSpleen posted:She works for Director Lee and is therefore assumed LE, right? Baator is the LE Hell. I guess there's a small possibility she could link to the nearby lower planes of Acheron and Gehenna, though they're more neutral. (edit: or the above post, I'm not well-versed on demon/devil origins.) No, she's definitely a succubus (hence CE); her alignment just doesn't match that of her employer. A similar thing happened during V's soul splice - the apparent alignments of each of the spliced souls didn't really match up with that of the fiend who supplied them. I'm not sure whether this is some clever Chekov's gun or simply that Rich hosed up the fiends names/colours early on but decided to stick with it.
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Sep 6, 2013 18:07
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Perhaps it was decided that letting those three go to the hell they'd normally go to would've been seen as a reward by... Someone? Yeah I got nothing
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Sep 6, 2013 18:40
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Rich said in one of the book commentaries that the whole point of the IFCC was that the three fiends don't align perfectly with their racial alignments. So Cedric is a lawful-ish demon, Lee a chaotic devil and who the hell knows what Nero does. The mixing of what flavor of soul or minion each has is almost certainly intentional.
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Sep 6, 2013 18:42
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It's almost as if the Alignment System doesn't hold up under scrutiny!
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Sep 6, 2013 18:46
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Regalingualius posted:Perhaps it was decided that letting those three go to the hell they'd normally go to would've been seen as a reward by... Someone? Yeah I got nothing Why wouldn't they be rewarded?
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Sep 6, 2013 18:52
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Green Intern posted:It's almost as if the Alignment System doesn't hold up under scrutiny! Are you actively trying to start an alignment debate? Alignment exists as a satired concept in OotS. The end.
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Sep 6, 2013 20:51
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Dolash posted:I don't mean he's got a soft spot for his soldiers, just that for someone so versed in dramatic conventions as well as knowing how strong adventurers are, trying to defeat a hero with a wave of rank and file warriors should seem guaranteed to fail - heroes are never killed by mundane soldiers grinding them into the ground without the involvement of major villains.  Incidentally, if you've never played Crisis Core... fix that.
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Sep 6, 2013 21:21
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It isn't even just Crisis Core. "The heroes go down to impossible odds they can't overcome" is a fairly common ending to a lot of heroic characters. You can point to someone like Musashibo Benkei or even something like Boromir in Lord of the Rings. You go down but you take a lot of them with you. Tarquin just doesn't care if a lot of his dudes die in the process.
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Sep 6, 2013 21:27
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ImpAtom posted:It isn't even just Crisis Core. "The heroes go down to impossible odds they can't overcome" is a fairly common ending to a lot of heroic characters. You can point to someone like Musashibo Benkei or even something like Boromir in Lord of the Rings. You go down but you take a lot of them with you. Tarquin just doesn't care if a lot of his dudes die in the process. To be fair, Boromir was killed by the biggest, meanest Orc who actually got a line or two. If some soldier with an especially fancy helmet starts striding toward Belkar, that'll be the signal.
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Sep 6, 2013 21:39
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Dolash posted:To be fair, Boromir was killed by the biggest, meanest Orc who actually got a line or two. If some soldier with an especially fancy helmet starts striding toward Belkar, that'll be the signal. Not in the book!
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Sep 6, 2013 21:48
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Dolash posted:To be fair, Boromir was killed by the biggest, meanest Orc who actually got a line or two. If some soldier with an especially fancy helmet starts striding toward Belkar, that'll be the signal. Given previous Elan tropes, it'll be when someone pops up and announces that they have a last name.
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Sep 6, 2013 21:48
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ImpAtom posted:It isn't even just Crisis Core. "The heroes go down to impossible odds they can't overcome" is a fairly common ending to a lot of heroic characters. You can point to someone like Musashibo Benkei or even something like Boromir in Lord of the Rings. You go down but you take a lot of them with you. Tarquin just doesn't care if a lot of his dudes die in the process. Butch and Sundance. Bill from Left for Dead. The end of Halo: Reach. Leonidas in 300 (and history). And so on and so forth. Getting drowned by a flood of endless inferior foes is what a last stand is all about! Also, in this case, it's actually sound tactics. Between Tarquin, Laurin, and Miron they probably have enough raw power to kill the Order. But there might be a heroic reversal, and they've already lost 1/6 of the team today. Far better to expend the army (crunch all you want, we've got more!) and if that isn't enough, step in yourselves when the Order's down to their last legs, low on hp and spells, and finish them off easily. That's what expendable mooks are for. You expend them.
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Sep 6, 2013 21:53
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jng2058 posted:and if that isn't enough, step in yourselves when the Order's down to their last legs, low on hp and spells, and finish them off easily. I don't know what Order you're talking about, but Durkon has no spells, Belkar has maybe double digit HP at best, and Roy is just one Fighter with probably sub-optimal gear for his level (is his armor even significantly magic?), with an Arcane Caster buried under a few tons of rubble, and with no surprise round or flanking for their rogue to take advantage of. Right now the Order isn't even good enough to be on their last legs, they are a limbless torso that has sand kicked in it's face.
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Sep 6, 2013 23:48
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Who What Now posted:I don't know what Order you're talking about, but Durkon has no spells, Belkar has maybe double digit HP at best, and Roy is just one Fighter with probably sub-optimal gear for his level (is his armor even significantly magic?), with an Arcane Caster buried under a few tons of rubble, and with no surprise round or flanking for their rogue to take advantage of. Right now the Order isn't even good enough to be on their last legs, they are a limbless torso that has sand kicked in it's face. Roy's at near full HP, Durkon IS at full HP, probably so is his devil, and Belkar's still alive. Give it ten rounds of attrition and you might be able to off Belkar, Roy will be down some, and a few lucky hits might weaken the devil and Durkon. Another ten after that and you might see Roy really wearing down, you're pretty likely to have killed Belkar, and if Durkon had any spells left he'll almost certainly have used them. Ten after that? Well, you've probably run out of soldiers, but by then Belkar's toast, Dukon's a little shot up and spell-less and Roy's either down or at least badly hosed up. Then you use Miron or Laurin to banish the devil, Tarquin kills Roy, and then it's three-on-one vs the pissed off vampire. To be precise here, Tarquin probably should attack right now, because V (to say nothing of Elan and Haley) is about to disrupt his plan, but the thing is Tarquin isn't as smart as he thinks he is. Even Elan can see that. Tarquin is that guy who goes to Vegas because he's got the "perfect system" and ends up taking the bus home because he busted out at roulette. It's what happened to him when he first tried to seize a nation for himself, and it's going to happen to him here, and like Nale before him, it will be his eventual downfall. But! Within what Tarquin knows and what he thinks he knows, using the army first makes sense for the reasons I listed above. It's going to bite him in the rear end, sure, but that's what hubris is for!
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Sep 7, 2013 00:08
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ImpAtom posted:It isn't even just Crisis Core. "The heroes go down to impossible odds they can't overcome" is a fairly common ending to a lot of heroic characters. You can point to someone like Musashibo Benkei or even something like Boromir in Lord of the Rings. You go down but you take a lot of them with you. Tarquin just doesn't care if a lot of his dudes die in the process. Well, there are dinosaurs involved, so Belkar going out via turning a magic item into a nuke would be pretty awesome.
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Sep 7, 2013 00:38
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Gotta say, tarquin's rant about order and people must obey his narrative is pretty great. Solid characterization and highlighting what a great LE character is, while still advancing the plot and pointing out his hubris
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Sep 7, 2013 01:16
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