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Colonel Cool posted:I always wonder if Xykon really is as clueless about people like Roy as he makes it seem. Does he actually not remember him at all or is he just faking it because it's funny and pisses him off? He is very old and has killed thousands of people. It is quite possible he looks at new individuals as "types" not people. Besides, fleshy faces all look alike.
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Mar 25, 2013 22:07
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rotinaj posted:So, the logical end result of the story is that Xykon's gonna die, somehow, someway. Mr. Scruffy.
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Mar 28, 2013 17:45
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Despite being evil, Durkula knows about the gates and the Snarl and that the gods might unmake the world if they need to build a new prison for the Snarl. Most evil people like the world, and do not want it destroyed. If they understood the situation it is quite possible for evil characters to help the OotS purely out of self-interest. If he knew everything even Tarquin would likely prefer for the whole gate situation to just go away, because he has the power he wants.
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Apr 11, 2013 02:14
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NihilCredo posted:Dude we've talked about it for over a page, no need to spoil-tag stuff. Inside the illusion the runes are not glowing. In reality, outside the illusion, the runes are glowing. The runes started glowing when the illusion started, but since we've only been seeing the inside of the illusion we have no way to judge when they started glowing in reality.
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May 6, 2013 01:46
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RentACop posted:I'm going to guess they'll have a (possibly individual) internal hallucination with character-development-as-will-save check. Thingy. Or maybe V just shows up and solves it somehow You know who else isn't in the final frame all spinny eyed? Mr. Scruffy.  There is also no sign of a pile of emaciated mice and bugs who wandered into the trap and zoned out, so maybe the trap doesn't work on normal animals. Mr. Scruffy saves the day.
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May 6, 2013 02:13
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fool_of_sound posted:I wonder if Shojo's appearance in Belkar's fantasy means that Belkar has a death wish. His fantasy didn't appear to involve violence/adventuring, which tells me that watching Durkon sacrifice himself to save his life may have changed Belkar's priorities quite a bit. I have to wonder if the big punch line is that Belkar is going to die no longer wanting to have anything to do with the adventure, or that his death wish will lead him to try to make a heroic sacrifice to save his teammates. A perfect life fantasy can be pretty convoluted. In the Scruffy/Belkar fantasy Shojo may have been alive. The three of them take off and open a restaurant somewhere.
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May 26, 2013 05:09
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nimby posted:Between Belkar and Elan, this illusion trip was worth it for all the character growth. drat Burlew for redeeming Belkar with a cat, now I sympathize with the little halfling from hell I imagine he's quite like a cat, if cats could talk. Cats really aren't very nice people, except to their friends.
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May 26, 2013 09:14
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Maybe the OOtS universe is so non-sexist, that "oval office" and "dick" are equally insulting. We just think oval office is more insulting because we're from a backward society.
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May 29, 2013 01:02
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Spiderdrake posted:I hope they bump into a Xykon trapped in an illusion that some how works on him and they're totally baffled at him mumbling 'oh yesss, such delicious coffee' over and over I bet liches do miss having organs and glands. Sure, you're a nearly immortal being of immense power, but you never again get to masturbate.
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Jun 2, 2013 02:06
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Dolash posted:Eeesh, I know Rich tends to be pretty wordy, but that's usually okay since he's covering a lot of ground and everyone's having interesting conversations and banter. This one felt longer than it needed to be, though, and with a lot of recapping. I guess maybe he was trying to build tension up to that last panel or remind everyone of what the stakes are, but it felt a tad inelegant. It looks that way, but I'm not certain about their motives. V's attempt to stop the destruction the gate wasn't very effective. If they took over and added power, they could give V a passwall spell or whatever to get into the gate room and stop the destruction of the gate, OR to destroy the gate more efficiently. Roy may not even be able to destroy the gate on his own.
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Jun 28, 2013 15:19
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Danzou posted:OOTS is kinda TVTropes-caliber in a lot of ways, especially earlier on. You take that back. 
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Jul 14, 2013 07:59
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Heatwizard posted:I suspect the first thing he's going to do is rush down to help the rest of the Order. Durkon probably still has Planar Ally prepped, and the Deva he was planning on bringing in has Plane Shift as a spell-like, so they could jump straight to the last gate right behind Xykon. The spell summons the entity but doesn't compel them to do what you want, would a Deva work for a vampire?
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Jul 29, 2013 08:42
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Dr Pepper posted:Holy crap Nale. Simple plans are the best plans. It did take some planning and coordination. When it was time to act, he and his wizard had to act together instantly, before the powerful 200 year old vampire could react.
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Jul 29, 2013 09:16
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peak debt posted:All this Durkon talk about free will is why you can't let most players keep playing their characters after they turn evil. Becaues they're always going to try to rule-lawyer themselves into basically staying as they were before instead of properly acting out the new part. He's evil, not psychotic. (Well, he might be psychotic right now what with going through vampire puberty, but that's temporary.) He is evil, but he has no experience being evil. He isn't in the habit of being evil. All his memories will be telling him that cooperation is useful. Plus he's probably Lawful Evil, not Chaotic Evil. The comic has shown us plenty of evil people capable of cooperation. Belkar is Chaotic Evil and quite enjoys murdering things, but still hasn't tried to massacre the Order because they are fun and useful to him. The bigger problem is that Roy is a stick in the mud, and will quite likely try to kill Durkon as soon as he can. Killing him and having him resurrected later could easily seem like a better idea to Roy than letting his friend slide further into evil. Durkon is going to need to eat, and I doubt his friends will be okay with that. (Being new he's probably a messy eater too.)
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Jul 29, 2013 16:09
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peak debt posted:It's not even that much about his alignment, but also about the nature of vampires. A vampire doesn't ally with food. Malak did.
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Jul 29, 2013 16:39
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PFlats posted:A thought: Do clerics have to learn spells like wizards now? I thought clerics got access to all the spells of their religion's spheres automatically, but I haven't read the rules since 2nd edition.
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Jul 31, 2013 21:19
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e X posted:Yeah, but Malak said that he created that spell himself, hence his huge magical library, so i doubt it's something all Vampire casters have access too. Unless these sphere work as some kind of clerical wikipedia. Well, it wouldn't be a vampire cleric spell, it would be a Nergal cleric spell. A cleric of Thor might not be able to learn it at all.
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Jul 31, 2013 21:45
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my dad posted:He could have done a billion things to save himself if he saw this particular sequence of events coming. In fact, he had a staff that protected him from sunlight and two copies of a spell that did the same, which is more than adequate 99.999% of time. He did not expect losing all three and didn't bother preparing even more contingency spells. Then he died. Plus it happened in the middle of the flat open desert in full daylight, without a structure or even so much as a tree in sight. No one expected the giant pyramid to explode that day. It was a very unusual situation.
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Aug 1, 2013 23:20
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jng2058 posted:I called out Roy for a reason, though. But you're right on one hand that Roy does accept Belkar on the "use evil to fight evil" clause, and should accept vampire Durkon under the same clause. On the other, it occurs to me that Durkula may not want to rejoin the Order. He likely considers himself a monster and, because of the bloodlust, a threat to the rest of the team. Durkon could easily become one of those modern emo vampires who wants nothing more than to become Heck, if they can find enough diamond dust Durkon can immediately cast Restore on anyone he feeds off of. 
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Aug 2, 2013 19:26
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Colonel Cool posted:I really hope he does not become Durkon the LG vampire now. I have no issues with him working with the Order again but he better drat well be LE while doing it Xykon, Nale, Belkar, and Tarquin all enjoy being evil. Glory in it. But cackling evil isn't the only face of evil. Lots of "evil" in RL people claim that it isn't their fault, that they try to be good but they just can't control themselves. That something or someone else made them do the bad things. For example, that guy who was recently convicted of kidnapping raping and torturing three young women for 10 years claims that he couldn't help himself because he was abused as a child and he has a porn addiction -- it isn't his fault he didn't want to do it, he was regular church goer, had always held down a job, and had no criminal record growing up. Guys, guys, I'm a good person. I just have a sickness. I'm as much a victim here as, well, my victims. For Roy, trying to be Lawful Good was enough to keep him from being kicked down to the Neutral Good afterlife, but that won't work for Durkon. No matter how hard he tries to be Good, he is Evil and will do Evil. He just won't have as much fun doing Evil as a Belkar. If Durkon does want to be returned to life, he has to find a high level cleric. But they don't really have time for a side quest right now. The most pragmatic thing to do is travel with him as is to the dwarven homelands, hoping that the high priest there can fix him.
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Aug 2, 2013 19:53
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V might be able to make a similar spell though. Unfortunately V filled all her spell slots with silly homebrew scrying spells to try to break through the Cloister.
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Aug 2, 2013 20:23
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Presumably Protection from Daylight would prevent a normal person from getting a sunburn. Would it also prevent them getting a suntan?
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Aug 2, 2013 21:56
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Lucky that the dwarves live underground. He won't need the staff once he gets home.
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Aug 3, 2013 01:26
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I also haf potions. They might talk things out more later when they aren't being attacked by a giant elemental, but for now no more evil than Belkar is good enough. Even if the party is cool with it, having Durkon around could hurt them socially. Belkar was evil, but most people won't expect a halfling to be evil. Everyone expects a Vampire (and his companions) to be evil. It is going to be basically impossible to work with the paladins with Durkon around. Or nearly anyone else who can easily detect that Durkon is undead.
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Aug 6, 2013 04:07
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Carrasco posted:Unless becoming a vampire made him chaotic for some reason, Durkon's alignment is now diametrically opposed to Thor's. He may bend the rules to have Lawful followers, but they won't bend that far. Thor is Chaotic. He has no time for your alignment rules.
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Aug 7, 2013 02:57
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e X posted:I guess in praxis this is handled the same way as ammunition. Who really has the nerve to keep track of every character's nourishment. It only makes sense to worry about starvation if you are in a desolate area. If you are in a normal town or lush wilderness, you can probably just handwave it away because keeping your rations stocked up won't be challenging. Even when dungeon crawling you are killing plenty of animals that are probably edible, plus all the humanoid monsters must have a supply of food and water down there it just isn't mentioned because it isn't noteworthy.
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Aug 7, 2013 16:20
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This is the worst derail. The worst because it naturally leads to wondering, "how do you even have sex with a lich?" Nothing good can come of it.
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Aug 8, 2013 06:41
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Ponsonby Britt posted:In the sixth panel, Haley asks, "Is that Durkon helping us?" and Roy answers "Looks like. Get ready to shoot." Roy is smart enough to realize that vampire Durkon isn't exactly the same as his old friend Durkon. Roy is also smart enough to realize that it is best to deal with one enemy at a time. They've had a few long minutes of continuous action what with avoiding the LG, destroying the gate, running from the exploding pyramid, seeing Red Cloak, fighting an elemental, fighting a couple demon things, and then having Durkon drop in. All that happened in, what, like less than 20 minutes? If he isn't attacking right this second, Durkon is a problem that can wait while they catch their breath.
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Aug 9, 2013 05:46
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Who What Now posted:I'm surprised that Haley and Elan seem to have no problem with Durkula but Belkar rightly points out that the cleric they have now isn't the Durkon they once knew. Haley and Elan are optimistic and they love Durkon. They don't want Durkon to be dead and gone. Until they see him do evil stuff, it's just Durkon with minor art changes. Normally Belkar might not give a gently caress, he certainly didn't mind V's dip into the deep end of the alignment pool. Belkar only cares because a little while ago Durkon was trying to eat him. Once he gets healed up he won't mind so much. If he gets to see stodgy old Durkon do evil things to other people he might even like it.
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Aug 13, 2013 04:21
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I think he'd still get a giggle if Durkon ate a kobold. Belkar is no paladin.
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Aug 13, 2013 04:34
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Do psions still recover PSPs continuously like they did in 2E? That always seemed like it would be a hassle to track in a pen and paper game. For those who missed the 2E Psionics Handbook,code:
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Aug 18, 2013 17:56
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Dolash posted:My money's on Nale dying, since 'family business', and Tarquin makes a better final antagonist for Elan's plot arc without losing anything Nale imparted to it - he's really just a better continuation. If the Order gets the "murdered in a pit" treatment (which they might, since Tarquin specifically asked Haley to get out of the pit too), V will reappear just in time to save them. Evil or not, part of having a noteworthy Dynasty is having grandkids. Elan and Haley are more likely to have kids than Nale and Sabien. Tarquin has been playing some Crusader Kings II and wants to make sure his heirs aren't a bunch of losers.
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Aug 18, 2013 20:09
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peak debt posted:Redcloak heard a similar story from the dark one though. And that guy doesnt have that much of a motivation for lying to his own high priest. Where did the Dark One get the story though? He wasn't a god when the Snarl was created and imprisoned.
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Aug 22, 2013 20:59
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The Snarl was a baby the last time the gods saw it. A big angry baby that destroyed the world, but still a baby. Imagine if the only human you had ever seen was a toddler throwing a temper tantrum, and you thought that was the whole of human behavior. The Snarl is literally supposed to be made of the stuff of creation. The threads of creation tangled by petty gods. I wonder if it hurts to be tangled? After destroying the world and striking out at one fourth of its parents, the Snarl got to watch the remaining gods weave its prison, weave a new world around it. If it was more than merely a force of mindless destruction, then it is possible that it was learning as it watched. Time passes. Is the entity inside the prison still a tantruming child? Nobody knows.
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Aug 23, 2013 16:15
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Mystic Mongol posted:You can't critically hit objects, though. The gates are alive!
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Aug 23, 2013 20:47
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"Give them a chance for some melodrama." Tarquin understands stories, but I'm not sure he understands people at all.
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Aug 26, 2013 16:16
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Speedball posted:Heh, that's a good way of putting it. However, unlike Kubota, several people actually give a poo poo about THIS little poo poo who died. Given the culture of the Azure City nobles, his heirs are happy to have him out of the way so they can assume power.
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Aug 27, 2013 12:24
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Kajeesus posted:Well, it's ultimately up to the DM. I think a heroic sacrifice can outweigh quite a lot of evil. If they play by MUD rules (or videogame rules in general) he may already have done a lot of "good". In most MUDs every mob has an alignment and killing Evil things is always Good (likewise killing Good things is always Evil) regardless of why you are doing it. So if you are trying to play a Neutral character you occasionally have to go murder an orphanage full of kids just to keep your alignment from swinging too far to the Good from killing random Evil monsters. Belkar doesn't care what he kills or why, he just loves killing, so he has killed quite a lot of Evil creatures. Certainly since joining the order he's killed mostly Evil creatures. He's killed a few Good creatures and conspired to make a Paladin fall and various other Evil things, but he has killed hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Evil creatures. If he gets a judge that weights actions rather than intent (like a dumb computer game) his love of killing could be a net Good. Unfortunately it seems the judges do weigh intent.
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Aug 27, 2013 21:11
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thespaceinvader posted:The more important thing 4e did was pretty much entirely nuke alignment actually making any mechanical difference, which forestalls an awful lot of the stupid it produces. When Detect Evil isn't a thing any more, it becomes less of a problem to have the Paladin and the evil vizier in the same room together without arguments about why they didn't figure him out... Still pretty stupid, the vizier is always evil.
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Aug 27, 2013 23:41
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ImpAtom posted:To be honest I'd like to play with the Paladin who tries to find a home for lost lizardfolk more than the one who leaves them to die because The correct answer is to humanely euthanize the baby monsters with an axe. Even if you can find some orphanage willing to take in despised evil races, you know those kids are just going to end up enslaved or something -- in both RL history and nearly every medieval fantasy setting orphanages are not happy places. If you leave them on their own they will probably slowly starve to death which is cruel. Plus there is a not insignificant chance some of them will manage to survive, but grow up with a huge grudge against humans and cause far more mayhem than their parents ever did. No. The proper thing to do is to dispatch them as calmly and humanely as possible. Don't be cruel, don't laugh and make sport of it, just do what needs to be done and move on.
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Aug 29, 2013 00:51
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