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I thought the Xykon/V fight was an interesting illustration of the difference between "experience" as in "levels and raw power" and experience as in tactics and preparedness, while V had the edge in levels, he was clearly outmatched by Xykon's superior experience, as we understand it in the real world.
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May 17, 2009 22:06
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Hentaikid posted:I thought the Xykon/V fight was an interesting illustration of the difference between "experience" as in "levels and raw power" and experience as in tactics and preparedness, while V had the edge in levels, he was clearly outmatched by Xykon's superior experience, as we understand it in the real world. Did V have the edge in levels? I don't think there's any evidence of this at all.
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May 17, 2009 22:13
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He had himself, who's fairly high-level, plus the souls of two epic-level spellcasters. One high-level wizard plus two epic casters > one epic caster.
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May 17, 2009 22:59
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Wanderer posted:He had himself, who's fairly high-level, plus the souls of two epic-level spellcasters. One high-level wizard plus two epic casters > one epic caster. Yeah, but the question is how epic. One high level caster plus two low-epic casters >/ one currently clocking in at around 30th level epic caster.
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May 17, 2009 23:10
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Why are you all debating richlich's power leve? he won because he's the favorite character of the writer, at no point was he presented as a 30th level character before this point or anything similar it's pretty typical in webcomics, he's the badass dude that people like, and the writer likes too much, and while we're ok with him now, once the story has gone around and around a few more times everyone will b sick of him Sick_Boy posted:Well, I happen to think that having certain well-developed NPCs actually adds to the roleplaying experience, as my players know that they can engage in conversation with characters and figure out their motivations, their preferences, their opinions; and it will be coherent, enabling them to feel empathy towards the NPCs. As far as storytelling goes, having real characters and not two-dimensional cut-outs is essential. quote:But if you want to have such deep, rewarding NPCs as "Shopkeeper", "Blacksmith" and "Guy who gives us quests", it's your prerogative. Lord Commissar posted:No I'm not, I just don't play D&D, because it's not really based on roleplaying. That's why you earn XP for killing poo poo instead of playing your character. There are a lot of games that claim to be better at roleplaying than D&D, a lot of them have some cool tricks, but when you get right down to it, you can rp with pretty much any system, and systems that boast about 'styrtelling' are often the worst offenders when it comes to bad desgin getting on the way of RP. speak of the devil: Sick_Boy posted:I know I'm biased on this, but the oWOD system has a very heavy emphasis on roleplaying, since in most games non-combatant characters tend to make up a large chunk of the party. quote:The character creation demands an elaboration on the character's personality and backstory that D&D tends to gloss over, and social / roleplaying-affecting powers and abilities are a large part of the possibilities for character "leveling". quote:As a rule of thumb, I tend to distrust any game that devotes more pages in the handbook to combat than it does to character creation and setting. quote:This also illustrates the importance of well-crafted NPCs in your world, too. happyelf fucked around with this message at 23:26 on May 17, 2009 |
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May 17, 2009 23:21
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happyelf posted:Why are you all debating richlich's power leve? he won because he's the favorite character of the writer, at no point was he presented as a 30th level character before this point or anything similar Because that's the minimum level he normally needs to be to do what we just saw him do. This is a d20-based comic; dissecting these things is part of the fun.
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May 18, 2009 00:01
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happyelf posted:you should never value your NPCs more than your players, and that's pretty much what your initial post was saying wether you admit it or not. I don't value NPCs over PCs. Many, many time has a NPC died or been killed by the party without his/her history coming up. The point is, the story has to be there in case the players investigate or chat with the character. Motivations can't be "just because I like it", and characters PC or NPC should be that, characters. happyelf posted:speak of the devil: No, they rebooted because the game was becoming too action oriented, and was losing its "personal horror" motif. And yes, you can powergame in OWOD, but unlike D&D the game is not made for the "munchkins". And in the case of the Vampire powers you cited, they can make for very interesting roleplaying ethically, as they are pretty much mental and emotional rape; the consequences have to be addressed. But I agree Presence in particular has to be dealt with very carefully, as Majesty is pretty close to a gamebreaker. happyelf posted:As a rule of thumb anyone singing the praises of OWOD, talking about it encouraging roleplaying, is full of it.
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May 18, 2009 00:02
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Sick_Boy posted:No, they rebooted because the game was becoming too action oriented, and was losing its "personal horror" motif. You have it precisely backward. The OWOD got better as time went on, and the books that came out between 1999-2003 are far superior to most of what came before. The reboot was in part to allow them to do stuff at that level of quality without having to deal with the horrible pre-Revised poo poo. I mean, seriously, how did it take eleven goddamn years for The Gilded Cage and Dead Man's Party to come out? Books on undead intrigue and influence peddling should've been among the first to come out for Vampire, and not among the last.
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May 18, 2009 00:24
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Pope Guilty posted:You have it precisely backward. The OWOD got better as time went on, and the books that came out between 1999-2003 are far superior to most of what came before. The reboot was in part to allow them to do stuff at that level of quality without having to deal with the horrible pre-Revised poo poo. You may be right. As I said, I don't do modules. I got the action thing from somewhere else on the web, can't remember exactly where. I spoke out of place there.
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May 18, 2009 00:29
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Sick_Boy posted:I think you have a pretty terrible GM in your mind and are confusing bad GMing with the actual games and their spirit. He's happyelf. Don't mistake anything he says at any point for rational discourse.
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May 18, 2009 00:40
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Happyelf is a professional troll; the best course of action is to just put him on ignore and enjoy your newly improved quality of life.
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May 18, 2009 02:12
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Cabbit posted:Happyelf is a professional troll; the best course of action is to just put him on ignore and enjoy your newly improved quality of life. I had never encountered him before. I'll put your advice to good use.
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May 18, 2009 02:24
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Anytime an NPC plays a major role in a game, and you post about it, on a roll of 1-99 happyelf appears to explain that you are having fun incorrectly.
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May 18, 2009 06:00
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I always love it when people who lost an argument elsewhere come out of the woodwork to call me a troll. Why aren't you guys calling me a troll in TGD? Kinda backlashed, as I recall.Donraj posted:Because that's the minimum level he normally needs to be to do what we just saw him do. This is a d20-based comic; dissecting these things is part of the fun. As it is, the way he uses or does not use stats and rules are simply an expression of his writing, and in his writing Xykon owns and will keep owning and sooner or later him owning is going to get really boring. I don't care if he's dressed it up as a moral lesson, the lich's posse made a token contribution at best, and like somebody said, he just beat him by out-magicking him anyway. V could have dropped a buiding on the tower or done any number of other things, instead he walked up to Xykon, bennt over and asked him to kick his rear end. Because that is what people do when they take on the writer's favorite character.
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May 18, 2009 06:55
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Actually, it seems pretty clear to me that we don't get shown all the action. There's no reason to assume that the other PCs have their thumbs up their butts while we're not watching - this isn't a transcript of a play session. In fact, Rich seems to encourage the readers to fill in the parts that he leaves out for narrative purposes, like how Haley etc got into a resistance movement, for example. I think of the OotS strips as highlights of an accelerated game - look at how much people complained when he focused mostly on V for 30 strips (out of 600+), imagine what it would be like if the plot-important parts of the story were constantly interrupted by strips about how many Remove Poison spells Durkon was prepping that day. I just assume the other PCs are taken care of, and I think that's fair.
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May 18, 2009 08:06
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happyelf posted:I always love it when people who lost an argument elsewhere come out of the woodwork to call me a troll. Why aren't you guys calling me a troll in TGD? Kinda backlashed, as I recall.
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May 18, 2009 15:24
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 So much for getting a sweet-rear end paladin to replace your antisocial grumpy wizard. Oh well, I guess he wasn't all that funny a character, anyway.
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May 18, 2009 20:07
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Now I'm wondering what's up with the roaches. Poof? I'm guessing it's a hint that they are outsiders of some sort. I dunno if this was hinted at earlier.
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May 18, 2009 20:14
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Seftir posted:Now I'm wondering what's up with the roaches. Poof? I'm guessing it's a hint that they are outsiders of some sort. I dunno if this was hinted at earlier. They're demon roaches. Apparently they follow Xykon around, when he was alive because he was a messy eater. Now they follow him around because the thing in the box is a messy eater.
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May 18, 2009 20:20
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A good man? 
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May 18, 2009 20:53
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The Cockroaches don't have any real significance, but they are outsiders. Tiny Start of Darkness spoilers- The cockroaches come from an Evil Diner. They came through a portal which was used to summon ingredients from the Abyss for 'authentic evil ethnic food'. They have no real motivation, just an ability to break the 4th wall and dissapear when things get too dramatic.
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May 18, 2009 21:02
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Ashenai posted:A good man? Sure. He lives in a world of multiple sentient races; being a "man" doesn't have to mean "human." It just means you possess certain qualities. Man, O'Chul rules. He just managed to pull off a fairly adept manipulation while being lawful good the entire time. If Xykon hauls off and obliterates O'Chul, the Thing in the Box is going to go batshit.
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May 18, 2009 21:13
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This motherfucking update..... I am just chomping at the bit for the next strip.
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May 18, 2009 22:29
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Thanh and the other resistance members might show up to investigate the giant crash noise caused by V's initial teleport in. 2 Paladins plus a various assortment of other classes might cause enough commotion for V to escape (or they could smash and grab her). Plus that opens up the possibility for closure with the character if she needs to face all those Azurites after abandoning them during the siege. I don't really think V will end up rotting in a prison cell. But I am almost certain O'Chul is going to die.
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May 18, 2009 22:34
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bison wings posted:But I am almost certain O'Chul is going to die. The odds are so ridiculously against O-Chul that I'm actually kind of expecting him to survive.
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May 18, 2009 22:59
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Wanderer posted:Sure. He lives in a world of multiple sentient races; being a "man" doesn't have to mean "human." It just means you possess certain qualities. Not manipulate, guide  I'm consistently impressed at how adept Rich is at writing Lawful Good characters. Bioware good learn a metric poo poo-ton from this strip. Come on box-monster help O-Chul 
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May 18, 2009 23:10
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Happyelf I really don't think you're on base about V losing solely because Xykon is the author's favorite character. Xykon is the main villain - the laws of narrative say that he'll win all solo encounters that come before the climax. And your example of V collapsing the tower on Xykon doesn't make sense - for starters, V is just itching to show off his arcane power after getting thwarted by his own party members. For another, V knows about the phylactery. Being buried under a pile of rubble won't stop Xykon from regenerating, and all that rubble makes it a bitch to find the phylactery to destroy it.
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May 18, 2009 23:49
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O'chul is really ridiculously badass. I'm sort of sad that his lifespan is probably measured in panels, not strips at this point. Although I expect if he does go out, it will be in a really interesting way.
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May 19, 2009 00:24
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Brannock posted:For another, V knows about the phylactery.
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May 19, 2009 01:04
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Yes. Roy's dad explains the gimmick to Roy and Haley in strip 293, and Roy seems to relay that to the rest of the party in strip 294. Edit: Do they still have Roy's sword? I did not see it in the most recent pages but I did also not see where they would have lost it. Vanadium fucked around with this message at 02:16 on May 19, 2009 |
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May 19, 2009 01:34
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That is so just incredibly badass, its everything a paladin should be. I've seen so many terrible paladins that I am just in awe of the last strip. If this was a PnP campaign and I was the DM, this is the sort of paladinly conduct which gets actual divine intervention  .O'chul = greatest paladin ever. Diogines fucked around with this message at 02:47 on May 19, 2009 |
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May 19, 2009 02:42
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Vanadium posted:Yes. Roy's dad explains the gimmick to Roy and Haley in strip 293, and Roy seems to relay that to the rest of the party in strip 294. Haley has multiple bags of holding, so the sword wouldn't necessarily need to be visible for them to have it.
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May 19, 2009 03:33
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Diogines posted:That is so just incredibly badass, its everything a paladin should be. I've seen so many terrible paladins that I am just in awe of the last strip. I think Rich just wanted to put in a paladin to show what a real paladin is capable of, rather than just showing a lovely paladin like Miko. He really is the ultimate paladin. Having a chance to escape, but instead staying to try and show what could be a very powerful evil minion that he can be good is loving badass. Sefer posted:Haley has multiple bags of holding, so the sword wouldn't necessarily need to be visible for them to have it. Hopefully they took the sheath, you really shouldn't put sharp objects in a bag of holding.
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May 19, 2009 07:00
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seaborgium posted:Hopefully they took the sheath, you really shouldn't put sharp objects in a bag of holding. I think they got rid of that in 3rd edition. Too many dick headed DM's deciding that your bag's would suddenly rip a hole and all your poo poo disappeared.
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May 19, 2009 09:32
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I keep hearing O Chuul's voice as Papa Smurf's. Is that odd?
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May 19, 2009 10:57
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If I ever play a paladin, this is the guide to go off of now. Also, I think we're missing the possibility that V ends up in even more despair because once again, his/her lack of power caused the suffering of Azurites. EDIT: Also, that typo in the strip is not going to stop bothering me. Neito fucked around with this message at 14:54 on May 19, 2009 |
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May 19, 2009 14:50
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Neito posted:Also, I think we're missing the possibility that V ends up in even more despair because once again, his/her lack of power caused the suffering of Azurites. V was never down because he 'caused the suffering of Azurites,' he did what he did because his magic failed to overcome the situation. This is about his wounded pride, not because he feels guilty over failing the people.
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May 19, 2009 16:18
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zeal posted:V was never down because he 'caused the suffering of Azurites,' he did what he did because his magic failed to overcome the situation. This is about his wounded pride, not because he feels guilty over failing the people. I'd say his nightmare says differently.
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May 19, 2009 16:29
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I think V was definitely affected by their cries for help and deathbed curses. She's fundamentally a good person (good as an adjective not as an alignment). In the past we've seen her as short tempered and superior, but she's also felt remorseful. This whole blitz for power maneuver was from a stress reaction.
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May 19, 2009 17:24
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Yeah, even good people are prone to poor judgment and nastiness sometimes.
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May 20, 2009 00:25
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