OOTS #639 - The Discussion Thread

[The Giant]

New comic is up.

Also, a new Erfworld, in case you didn't notice.

We're going to try keeping the boards up during this, but expect that to change if the server gets too slow.

[carebearbecky]

Oh my word... Thats not good!

Now I think that's revenge on a far greater scale than anybody expected to see.

:smalleek:

[J.Gellert]

Awesome!

Before anyone says V is really evil now, let me point out: He saved the bunny!

[Tricia]

...oh, dear.

*is stunned*


Also, very interesting pet name V's spouse has. :D

[Mr._Blinky]

I do believe that this is the first time that I've actually found myself honestly horrified by something I saw in a webcomic. And considering that OOTS was the one to do it, you can count me doubly surprised.:smalleek::smalleek::smalleek:

[Darius Midnite]

Epic indeed! :smallbiggrin: Great comic.

[Senex]

As a secondary effect, Familicide causes all comic readers to sit in stunned silence for 2d4 minutes, trying to absorb the magnitude of the event.

[Porthos]

Holy!
Crap!
:smalleek::smalleek::smalleek::smalleek::smalleek:

[keeganknorr]

my avatar died =(

[nli10]

Wow - I think that the Giant has spent the past few weeks drawing Black Dragons. Nicely avatar sized ones there too!

Nice display of revenge, do dragons have ghosts that could be a big problem in the future?

[Behold_the_Void]

Whoa.

Just.

Whoa.

[tomaO2]

Since the forums shut down for a half hour anyway at 4am. Posting during this period would seem to be the perfect time to do this. Gives a little pause... I think.

That or it would give just enough time for everyone to wait the half hour out and then rush in like mad.

Also, did V just kill every black dragon in the world? No saving throw? How... How can a spell do that?

EDIT: No, wait, I get it now. It killed every blood relative the black dragon had, no saving throw.

[wzeller]

Uh..... Wow!

Well, I guess in game terms all black dragons are evil by definition - so V has just ridded the world of a great deal of evil (all the affected dragons appeared to be black). Whether that's an evil act or not depends on if you judge it subjectively or objectively. Objectively, Good has won a great victory this day and it was a Very Good act. Subjectively, V's motivations were quite evil.

Perhaps V has turned Evil in the commission of a great Good. That would be nice irony.

But mostly, just... Wow!

w

[Nokonoko]

Interesting to see part of the earth in OOTS.

It’s looking worse and worse for V, though. I wonder if his/her mate will be able to snap him/her out of it?

[MissHeartless]

Pure evil. I still hope V is going to give up the power once he's over with the dragon. :(

[Jooky]

Well that was interesting.

[Brauley]

V has really lost it this time..... Reanimating a head to kill it's whole family everywhere in the world......

Rich, the emote you used is very appropriate for this strip.....

[Shakalooloo_Doom]

And the spell also gets half-dragon centaurs!
:smalleek:

[Gitman00]

Gah! Now that's what I call disproportionate retribution (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisproportionateRetribution)!

[Xentropy]

I do believe that this is the first time that I've actually found myself honestly horrified by something I saw in a webcomic. And considering that OOTS was the one to do it, you can count me doubly surprised.:smalleek::smalleek::smalleek:

I was equally horrified when Xykon tossed the super bouncy ball into the room of paladins, letting them kill themselves rather than having to do it directly himself. That and this are just so very EVIL.

[Tricia]

A friend and I were just discussing the nature of epic spells...and the thought occurred to me that epic spells often (or almost always) have equally epic backlash.

...this could end very badly for V's family.

[Nerdanel]

Wow, V is evil.

I wonder if "taking on" every black dragon in the world at once gives him XP.

[Vaeasir]

:smalleek:

Epic Evilness...

Wont Tiamat or whats her name strike hir down for this?

[cocked_brow]

V is chasing the dragon... All the way back out of hell!

[Brauley]

V's in trouble!

[X2]

Epicness...

My only complaint is that I had to stop watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 to read it...

Oh well, no harm, no fowl.

[Drascin]

Since the forums shut down for a half hour anyway at 4am. Posting during this period would seem to be the perfect time to do this. Gives a little pause... I think.

That or it would give just enough time for everyone to wait the half hour out and then rush in like mad.

Also, did V just kill every black dragon in the world? No saving throw? How... How can a spell do that?

It just killed every one related to her. It's just that dragons are horndogs, so that's a whole lotta people. As for "no saving throw or distance limits"...

Epic Inside. Simple as that. Epic magic can do anything, provided you take the time to research it.

Anything.

Yes, even know why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch or create a square circle.

[thubby]

depending on exactly what that spell does, wouldn't that attempt to exterminate all dragon kind? if I remember my dragon lore right.

Vaeasir, i don't think there is a deity with the HP to survive a level 90-something character.

edit: they probably do get a save, but we're talking about super V here, the odds of anyone saving are 5%, assuming this epic spell doesn't have some kind of work around for that.

[Amarsir]

Is anyone else stuck on the thought that now there's a whole bunch of unguarded treasure out there? :haley:

[Crod]

Are all of those dragons her offspring or related? That seems a bit much, more
like genocide, or that it is powerful enough to slay even distant relatives by
backtracking in the family tree.

Nothing good can come out of tipping the balance like that.

[Moonself]

So much for the "the dragoness could have won the fight" argument, I guess.

[Zanaril]

After having jumped off of the slippery slope, where is there left to go?

Here's your answer.

[Zenos]

Oh wow. Epic spell, indeed.

[Atelm]

If that spell goes far back enough on the line it could potentially wipe out all black dragons from the OOTS-world; as it kills black dragons even remotely related to the mother black dragon.

I really felt sorry for the mother black dragon there, she may have been evil, but at least she could've deserved peace in the afterlife with her family. I hope V lets her have rest after this, though I doubt it. :smallfrown:

[Alexandurs]

I've been reading this webcomic for a long time but i never thought I'd actually post in the forums even though I'm lurking all the time.

This strip is seriously worth my first post, that was pure awesome evil from V, i love it. :smallbiggrin:

[Erutaron]

so whats the XP like on.... *counts quickly* .... 63 Black dragons?

[liuzg150181]

Darth V deserves an "Imperial March"~~~:smalleek:

[Angrox]

Omg Omg Omg! V what are you doing! Even the eggs of the unborn are killed.

Assuming that the spell kills any offspring (who know how many generations backward) there could be no more black dragons in this world :smalleek:

[FoE]

That ... was evil even by my standards. V not only killed scores of dragons who had never heard of her, but ... she slaughtered hatchlings and even eggs, dragons that had not yet even been born ...

[Elder Tsofu]

I've always liked V - up until this. Not even I can defend that action. :smallfrown:

[Caractacus]

I would hope (as in regarding the spell, not as in 'wish') that it wiped out all her progeny and not ancestors, because then there is the legitimate expectation that it can follow the family tree up, along and down every root and branch. We come to the idea of whether there is a single Black Dragon ancestor.

I assume (though it's not important, and spells and the game we know the strip based on are often arbitrary), that it shouldn't have got every Black Dragon - if it did (on the grounds of being related), does the idea that different types of dragons are related to each other mean that the spell should then continue up and down other dragon types? As we see that it doesn't do that, I reckon that it is only her part of the family tree. Even if the dragons only have a few offspring at a time (there's a clutch of eggs shown), the mother dragon's considerable age may well have allowed many, many clutches. (Though there's always the possibility that the first hatchling eats the others in their eggs...)

But this is not a good thing for V or the party.

[Porthos]

I think this is almost guaranteed to....

Attract the (most unwanted) attention of a certain God. I mean, you just don't slay that many dragons in one feel swoop without divine notice of some sort.

And, if as we presume, the OotS is next headed to the Western Continent where The Gods of the West (including Tiamat) hold sway...

... Oh my. NOT good at all for the future of the OotS. Not good at all. :smalleek::smalleek::smalleek:

[Ashenai]

Uh..... Wow!

Well, I guess in game terms all black dragons are evil by definition - so V has just ridded the world of a great deal of evil (all the affected dragons appeared to be black). Whether that's an evil act or not depends on if you judge it subjectively or objectively. Objectively, Good has won a great victory this day and it was a Very Good act. Subjectively, V's motivations were quite evil.

No. The spell indiscriminately killed at least three half-dragons as well, who are most definitely not evil by definition.

This was a horrifyingly Evil act, on par with the things Xykon does.

[Eerie]

The most awesome part of this strip is:

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/8007/23884288.jpg

[RebelRogue]

I do believe that this is the first time that I've actually found myself honestly horrified by something I saw in a webcomic
I suppose you haven't read Sexy Losers, then :smallwink:

But wow, that was pretty damn epic. I wonder what the spellcraft DC of that one is...

[Porthos]

BTW, anyone else here think that this might qualify as a Vile spell? You know, the sort you would see from the Book of Vile Darkness? I can't recall if it had any epic spells in it or not, but this might just work.

[FoE]

I suppose you haven't read Sexy Losers, then :smallwink:.

There's a difference between "grossed-out" and "horrified". :smalltongue:

[Hugh Bliss]

We all have to remember that this isn't all V's doing, of course. He's possessed by some pure evil minds and isn't doing everything by his own will.

[Ashenai]

Uh..... Wow!

Well, I guess in game terms all black dragons are evil by definition - so V has just ridded the world of a great deal of evil (all the affected dragons appeared to be black). Whether that's an evil act or not depends on if you judge it subjectively or objectively. Objectively, Good has won a great victory this day and it was a Very Good act. Subjectively, V's motivations were quite evil.

No. The spell indiscriminately killed at least three half-dragons as well, who are most definitely not always evil.

This was a horrifyingly Evil act, on par with the things Xykon does.

[werik]

And so the plot relevance of the epic necromancer comes forward. Other than to help build up the Ultimate Arcane Power, I was wondering what specific necromantic spells would be used. I am now horrified to find the answer to that question.

[Drascin]

No. The spell indiscriminately killed at least three half-dragons as well, who are most definitely not evil by definition.

This was a horrifyingly Evil act, on par with the things Xykon does.

As I see it, it's still less Evil than humiliating and slaughtering a hundred paragons of Law and Good as Xykon did... but yeah, it's still a horrible, horrible evil act that must have sent V's alignment all the way to hardcore evil.

[Pepz]

In the words of everyone's favourite dead seer:

"Oh...Oh my."

I did not expect this, I can usually find some good in revenge but this is just too disproportionate. And I can't believe that it's not 4 words yet! Familicide should have been it as far as I'm concerned :smallannoyed:

[Etiainen]

so whats the XP like on.... *counts quickly* .... 63 Black dragons?

Check strip #634 ;)

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Lemme see... the Contact seed to contact related dragons (DC 23), +100 DC to contact the 100 closest related, the Slay seed to add 2d4 negative levels (DC 25), +80 DC to add 20d4 more negative levels, the Dispel Seed to dispel possible protections (19 DC), +20 to the dispel check for +20 DC.

So an Epic Spell that kills the 100 closest family members of the target (the target provides the required familiarity for the spell to work) has a base spellcraft DC of 267. A 30th level caster can easily get up to DC 100 with items/nonepic buffs/feats. So mitigating factors for -167 DC can be backlash 60d6 (-60), 10 minutes of preparation (-20), costly material component (a living or undead member of the family in question, ad hoc -7 DC), 8.000 XP cost (-80).

That is for a spell that is sure to kill even 40 HD creatures (via negative levels) even though they might have protections against death magic. A cheaper spell would use just a death effect and would not dispel possible protections.

[FoE]

We all have to remember that this isn't all V's doing, of course. He's possessed by some pure evil minds and isn't doing everything by his own will.

Those voices suggest. They don't control. Ultimately, this is all V's doing.

The IFCC may have agreed not to condemn V's soul to the Hells, but with this action she has done so on her own.

[Sebastian]

Wow, between this and erfworld today is really Awesome Day. :smalleek:

This isn't gonna be good, if it kill only the black dragon relatives then what about all their mates and non-related parents? and if it kill all black dragons, the evil dragons deity is gonna be pissed.

also black dragons are usually evil or always evil (don't remember) in the MM, but in D&D terms even "always evil" mean that some of those black dragons/dragonborn/hybrids were bound to be neutral or even good.

[Trazoi]

At least it was V-like logic that powered the, uh, "necessity" of using that spell. If you've ticked off a family feud with a dragon, this pretty much is the most efficient way to end the feud and protect your own family.

So thumbs up from me for V-flavoured, logical evil.

[Voyager_I]

That's gonna be one awkward family reunion...

[derfenrirwolv]

Wow.

Break out the kilonazi scale, V just passed belkar. Lapped him, did an endzone dance in his face, returned the punt for a field goal and did it again.




Are all of those dragons her offspring or related? That seems a bit much, more
like genocide, or that it is powerful enough to slay even distant relatives by
backtracking in the family tree.

That was full on Genocide.

Well, they're not her offspring. The dragon has reffered to her son as her only child. So those have to be brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews at the least. Whether or not the spell would arc to get in laws, and the descendants of inlaws, and the aforementioned uncle who knows.

But yes, that was full on genocide. The only thing keeping that from being V's Go strait to hell, do not check in with the auditor do not consult the great flaming book in the sky is the fact that the black dragons are, in fact, almost 100% evil.

I don't think V's going to be sending MBD back to her family. He's either going to bury the head somewhere it can bemoan her separation from her family, or bind her soul and toss the gem into orbit.

[Kylarra]

Well... I guess that answers the question of which spellcaster was mindraping solars for breakfast before they died... :smallfrown:

[BobVosh]

Lemme see... the Contact seed to contact related dragons (DC 23), +100 DC to contact the 100 closest related, the Slay seed to add 2d4 negative levels (DC 25), +80 DC to add 20d4 more negative levels, the Dispel Seed to dispel possible protections (19 DC), +20 to the dispel check for +20 DC.

So an Epic Spell that kills the 100 closest family members of the target (the target provides the required familiarity for the spell to work) has a base spellcraft DC of 267. A 30th level caster can easily get up to DC 100 with items/nonepic buffs/feats. So mitigating factors for -167 DC can be backlash 60d6 (-60), 10 minutes of preparation (-20), costly material component (a living or undead member of the family in question, ad hoc -7 DC), 8.000 XP cost (-80).

That is for a spell that is sure to kill even 40 HD creatures (via negative levels) even though they might have protections against death magic. A cheaper spell would use just a death effect and would not dispel possible protections.

radius of Earth = 20 925 524.9 feet
Change area to 20-ft. radius +2
Increase area by 100% +4
Thats a huge addition to dc, unless contact negates that.

Just noticed it was you Belial, so if you say so it probably is as far epic goes.

However, 10 minutes prep time wasn't taken, and 'Suvie definitly didn't take 60d6 backlash, or any backlash for that matter.

Is there a way to remove saves? Because out of all those dragons none saved apparently. Judging by the Xs for eyes, of course.

[Tundar]

One word:
Epic!

And another:
Wow!

[Dreadon]

I have been lurking on this forum sense page 300 or so and this strip has finally made me come out. all i have to say is

HOLY BOOP!

I have been a GM for more the 8 years and have come up with some vile and nasty plots but this one takes the cake and kills the baker too. I mean killing every family member in the hole tree that is alive that is far from revenge, this is genocide. well
V welcome to the dark side.

"Way to go elf buddy,:belkar: you just topped me on most on screen kills!"

[Fabuloso]

I took the full 2d4 rounds of stunning from this strip.

Now, I'm assuming for the sake of plot awesomeness that the spell DOES indeed kill every relative without fail. That's just too awesome (in a twisted and evil way) not to be.

Question is: does this spell considers lovers and such?

Because, you know, I have a lot more people caring for me than just blood relatives. And a bunch of them can put up quite a fight.

(Actually, I have a bunch of blood relatives that would very gladly see me dead, but that's a whole different story)

I will dare say that, if Familicide considers relationships and bonds as well as bloodline, we could have just witnessed the complete wiping of the black dragon race from OOtS world, with a bunch of specimen from other races as an added bonus.

Whoa.

Then there is the question: will dragons in the afterlife know? As things are now, the only dragon knowing WHY they have all been slaughtered is mama dragon. If V somehow erases her memory, of if undeath prevents your dead soul to remember what happened during such undeath, none of those dragons could ever know why they died. No chance of retaliation ever.

But, as we saw with Roy, creatures in the afterlife retain most of their abilities they had in life, especially arcane magic. So, some of those dead draginz COULD have, in the afterlife, enough power to discover why they are now dead for no apparent reason at all. Then some other dragon could be powerful enough to somehow contact the duringlife [1], and trouble ensues.

Heck, maybe the necrolady died just this way: she familicidied the wrong family, and got retaliated. Heavily.

To sum it all up, this has been a pretty epic action on V's part, but I verily doubt that it's the end of the matter altogether.

Also, awesome.

[1] you know, as opposed to the afterlife (when you're dead), and the beforelife (when you're not yet born).

EDIT: Oh, how silly of me to forget about the Oracle of the dragonkin.

[LurkerITP]

Man oh man (worth delurking for)!
This is such a Nethack moment!
Nothing like those blessed scrolls of genocide - all creatures of type "D" - poof.

Wonderful comic, a bit shocking chapter really, but I love the series.

[Asta Kask]

I think Rich was just tired of the discussions along the lines of "Is V evil?"

I wonder what the Oracle thinks. He already knew that this would happen, of course, but still...

[Axl_Rose]

And so V has dropped from my favourite #1 character in the strip for 2 years running - all the way down to #267.

[Starscream]

It's official - Vaarsuvius has topped Xykon on my list of horrifyingly evil webcomic characters. The bouncy ball of insanity had nothing on this. Neither did any of his acts in the prequel book.

And V wasn't even on the list before. It was Xykon, Trudy from GPF (pre-heel face turn), Black Mage, The Dark Lord of Ubersoft, and Tycho that in that one strip (http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2006/20060410.jpg). Now V is number one out from nowhere.

I'm gasted flabber. I'm founded dumb.

I wonder what his/her reaction will be when he/she is rid of the souls and realizes what happened.

[The Minx]

I think this is almost guaranteed to....

Attract the (most unwanted) attention of a certain God. I mean, you just don't slay that many dragons in one feel swoop without divine notice of some sort.

And, if as we presume, the OotS is next headed to the Western Continent where The Gods of the West (including Tiamat) hold sway...

... Oh my. NOT good at all for the future of the OotS. Not good at all. :smalleek::smalleek::smalleek:

I concur. I think a certain dragon goddess would have a thing or three to say about it. And I wonder, did the Oracle not know this would happen? It seems incredible that he did not, but perhaps he's bound somehow and not able to change anything.


We all have to remember that this isn't all V's doing, of course. He's possessed by some pure evil minds and isn't doing everything by his own will.

Yes it is: the fiends were very specific about V being in control of the gestalt entity.

[harami2000]

Wait, I hear the sound of little feet (and they ain't halflings :smallbiggrin:)

Lemme see... the Contact seed to contact related dragons (DC 23), +100 DC to contact the 100 closest related, the Slay seed to add 2d4 negative levels (DC 25), +80 DC to add 20d4 more negative levels, the Dispel Seed to dispel possible protections (19 DC), +20 to the dispel check for +20 DC.

So an Epic Spell that kills the 100 closest family members of the target (the target provides the required familiarity for the spell to work) has a base spellcraft DC of 267. A 30th level caster can easily get up to DC 100 with items/nonepic buffs/feats. So mitigating factors for -167 DC can be backlash 60d6 (-60), 10 minutes of preparation (-20), costly material component (a living or undead member of the family in question, ad hoc -7 DC), 8.000 XP cost (-80).

That is for a spell that is sure to kill even 40 HD creatures (via negative levels) even though they might have protections against death magic. A cheaper spell would use just a death effect and would not dispel possible protections.
From now on you'll be history.
You'll be history, you'll be history, you'll be history.
(... and so on... ^^)

Now someone will have to explain how the world survived to the start of the story line... :smallsmile:

[Wolf_Plague]

Those voices suggest. They don't control.
Actually, those souls are powerful enough to cause even appearance change. "The Evil Laugh" immediately after splice was clearly not V's and also there is admitted "alignment feedback".
Look closely at 10th panel - do you see something strange?:smallamused:

[EPIK HAET]
And speaking about BDs killing - you, humans, have no idea how I wanted to do the same exact thing for a long, long time!:smallfurious:
Sure there could be some neutral or good BDs, but same can be said about those hobgoblins, mercilessly slaughtered by those Sapphire Guards, without even a thought, that some of those warriors could have family or children.:smallyuk:
[/EPIK HAET GRRR!]

[King of Nowhere]

CRAP! I'm horrified! That act is on par with Xykon!

[billtodamax]

so whats the XP like on.... *counts quickly* .... 63 Black dragons?
Well correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there some rule that you need to have a challenge to get XP from things? like squashing an ant wouldn't get a regular person XP.

[Vyperhand]

Awesome comic - spelling error in an early panel.

It's "Telekinesis"

[Estrosiath]

Hahahaha... Oh my god. That was simply beyond anything I could have imagined. Epic spell indeed - don't even want to think about the DC of something like that.

As for gods intervening... Well. Probably. Don't know if that necromancer had tried it before dying, or if she had tried it only on humans, but killing 60+ dragons in one round is bound to get some evil deity pissed... And I think I remember seeing Tiamat in one comic. Or maybe the spell will go all the way back to Tiamat and zap her too... Who knows? And if gods in this setting are dependent on followers for their power, Tiamat just fell so hard, she left cracks on the floor.

Then again, at the moment V could probably take on a god and win. Let's face it - these casters aren't "just" epic. To cast something like that they need to be above and beyond anything ever imagined.

[revolver kobold]

Wow.

Evil V is the best.

[B9anders]

Either V is insane and this is not actually happening or rich just broke the game.

Cool development for V, who took a definitive alignment change to evil here. Imo, it would be no less epic with a dozen dead dragons and also more believable (I know its fiction but it has accepted D&D as working reality for itself and I don't see this as possible within the rules).

At any rate, V just bested Xykon in the evil department. Yes he killed a bunch of paladins, but he, evil as it was, had good reason for it. They stood between him and his goal and meant to stop him or die trying.

V's action was unmitigated evil as it was completely over the top and unnecessary, killing a lot of creatures that had no beef with him/her at all. In fact, V had already killed the dragon's son, so you would think the score was even by now.

[Duma]

I'm stunned and horrified at V's act. That's the most evil thing this strip has (will?) ever seen, even Xykon's acts are kids' play compared to this. Good job, I'm not the kind that gets easily impressed.

Also, I wonder how much that would be in KILONAZIS? :smalltongue:

[Ripped Shirt Kirk]

God, I was just jumping from thread to thread in the forum's and I scrolled up and saw it. This is JOIN THE DARKSIDE! worthy! This was my train of EMOTES :smallconfused::smallsmile::smalleek::smallfurious ::smallfurious::smalleek:

[Shwepie]

What makes this truly even isn't the fact that V killed, possibly, every black dragon in existence. It is the fact that V raised the mother black dragon back to unlife to bare witness to the act.

Kind of like killing a parent in front of their childern, raising the parent, killing the childern and then killing the parent again.

[Nenec]

It's official - Vaarsuvius has topped Xykon on my list of horrifyingly evil webcomic characters. The bouncy ball of insanity had nothing on this. Neither did any of his acts in the prequel book.

I'm stunned and horrified at V's act. That's the most evil thing this strip has (will?) ever seen, even Xykon's acts are kids' play compared to this.

Yeah, what they said.
My mouth is still opened for shock, and I didn't have time to accept the previous one yet. Now really Xycon looks like a lamb compared to V. And at least his evilness has humor too, but now...comic is more than serious :smalleek:

[Cyradoc]

I have been reading the comic for a few years now (and loving it), and this one was by far the most stunning - really, I got hit by those 2d4 rounds of secondary stun effect, and I still feel a bit dizzy.
And I really didn't expect that in the slightest :smalleek: !

I agree that this act was more evil than anything Xykon has done before (Xykon always manages to be funny about it), or at least this is how it looked today. I mean, the bouncing ball of insanity was kind of a funny moment... I really wouldn't have wanted those paladins to defeat my favourite bad guy, I really had no reason to like them.
Xykon was engaged in combat with them, he just came out with a new way of demonstrating that he couldn't be defeated by a bunch of low-lvl meatshields who were being thrown into the grinder by their masters just to weaken him.
I think they were lawful to the extreme, and just a wee tad into the good camp, and it's amazing how much an overabundance of law can work against good.

Conversely, the poor black dragons were engaged in their daily activities - they presented no immediate threat to V. As far as I can remember, 'Always chaotic evil' means that up to 90% are chaotic evil, while the remaining 10% can be of different alignment. Halfbreeds do not even share this rule, as far as I can remember. Uh, I am surprised that there was NO saving throw allowed :smalleek: !


Besides, I have a feeling that V might stay like this for a while... (having one from the party turn into a major villain tends to work great for pathos !)

[CallingCtulhu]

Methinks Tiamat will NOT be pleased that V slew at least a fifth of her Followers...Future plot point maybe? ;)

[dogmac]

V, please stop being evil now!
Please!!!

I agree, that is well beyond Xygon's imaginings.

[thubby]

Yeah, what they said.
My mouth is still opened for shock, and I didn't have time to accept the previous one yet. Now really Xycon looks like a lamb compared to V. And at least his evilness has humor too, but now...comic is more than serious :smalleek:

is what he did really all that evil? I mean obviously there is an element of disproportionate revenge here, but he nuked a bunch of black dragons. they are inherently evil.

[revolver kobold]

V, please stop being evil now!
Please!!!

I agree, that is well beyond Xygon's imaginings.

Why? Evil V is AMAZING.

[Cicciograna]

Oh.

My.

Goodness.

V is the Adolf Hitler of the black dragons...:smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfuriou s:

And you know what? I think...that V'll let mama survive...to savour the sorrow of the dead of ALL her relatives...with just a pinch of "being an undead head"...

Horrifying.:smalleek::smalleek::smalleek:

[Werekat]

And the most interesting here - that it is damn logical in its own twisted way. "This will not happen to me, not ever, not again." Not minding that something else may well happen as a result. Epic spells have epic consequences.

Power + head not screwed on straight. The deadliest combination for any mage. They die from that.

Hang on, V. You're going to need it.

[Fabuloso]

What makes this truly even isn't the fact that V killed, possibly, every black dragon in existence. It is the fact that V raised the mother black dragon back to unlife to bare witness to the act.

I'm not sure THAT is the reason for the reanimation. Rather, it's apparent from the strip (well, it's apparent to me at least) that the epic necromancy spell required some sort of material focus to know which bloodline is to be slaughtered.

(I don't want to think of a spell that can instakill a whole bloodline without saving throws, all with just a thought on part of the spellcaster...)

Also, I'd like to think that V wouldn't go that far out of his way to accomplish a task. But that's just me, mebbe.

[KIDS]

The shrinking effect was breathtaking. Very awesome.

[Greep]

know what would be beyond awesome? If V's partner was a breeded out half dragon so much that the partner appeared normal. Making V's children part dragon as well.

[Selene]

I... that was... :smalleek:

V just won the evil game.

[Nevitan]

Ooooh my goodness.

I can't believe V did that.
Oooh man.
Great word Giant, that literally left me stunned, I won't be able to think about anything else all day.

[NeoVid]

Wow, V is evil.

I wonder if "taking on" every black dragon in the world at once gives him XP.

Aw, sonuva...

You just made me think... the three fiends said that it was almost impossible for V to gain XP during this, since there was virtually no chance that anything could provide enough XP to be noticable.

As in, there was virtually no chance of V wiping out a fair percentage of one of the most powerful species in the world.

[B9anders]

is what he did really all that evil? I mean obviously there is an element of disproportionate revenge here, but he nuked a bunch of black dragons. they are inherently evil.

Since it was motivated by a desire to inflict further pain on the already dead dragon, I'd say it was a very evil act.

And as already mentioned, the killing was completely indiscrimate to whether they were evil or not.

Also, killing creatures for no other reason than that they tick they 'evil' box ih the MM is not a justifiable reason for killing them. The fact they do indicates that they are likely to be adversaries but it is not a de facto 'agent of darkness' sticker.

There are plenty of examples of people and creatures whose evil is restricted to 'I will do as I please without regard to the law or concerns of others' but who nonethess do not inflict much harm on others or even aid the cause of good because their personal goals are aligned in that direction.

[Robert Paulson]

Uh..... Wow!

Well, I guess in game terms all black dragons are evil by definition - so V has just ridded the world of a great deal of evil (all the affected dragons appeared to be black). Whether that's an evil act or not depends on if you judge it subjectively or objectively. Objectively, Good has won a great victory this day and it was a Very Good act. Subjectively, V's motivations were quite evil.

Perhaps V has turned Evil in the commission of a great Good. That would be nice irony.

But mostly, just... Wow!

w

Not subjectively evil. Practical. This is straight Machiavelli.

[B9anders]

I'm not sure THAT is the reason for the reanimation. Rather, it's apparent from the strip (well, it's apparent to me at least) that the epic necromancy spell required some sort of material focus to know which bloodline is to be slaughtered.

(I don't want to think of a spell that can instakill a whole bloodline without saving throws, all with just a thought on part of the spellcaster...)

Also, I'd like to think that V wouldn't go that far out of his way to accomplish a task. But that's just me, mebbe.

'the pain ended too soon', 'we have only begun to bring misery'.

V: 'I concur.'

[aka Argent]

is what he did really all that evil? I mean obviously there is an element of disproportionate revenge here, but he nuked a bunch of black dragons. they are inherently evil.

Evil killing Evil in an Evil manner does not make something Good. And in Rich's world, nothing is inherently good or evil, actions and intents are what make something good or evil. V killed innocents - creatures that had no quarrels with hir. V took an evil act that was going to be perpetrated on hir family, spun around, and performed a greater evil act.

I'm wondering just how bad of a hole V has dug for hirself once the splice is taken down. Rich doesn't do this sort of thing willy-nilly and he likes to deal out immediate punishment to his characters, so I'm thinking we'll see V get handed some very painful twists in the next two to three episodes. Alienation from hearth and home is a near certainty.

[Shwepie]

I'm not sure THAT is the reason for the reanimation. Rather, it's apparent from the strip (well, it's apparent to me at least) that the epic necromancy spell required some sort of material focus to know which bloodline is to be slaughtered.

(I don't want to think of a spell that can instakill a whole bloodline without saving throws, all with just a thought on part of the spellcaster...)

Also, I'd like to think that V wouldn't go that far out of his way to accomplish a task. But that's just me, mebbe.

I agree, that it needed a material focus for decerning the bloodline. I, however, doubt that it needed the sentient conciousness of a being to do the decerning when genetic material, like a severed head, will suffice. Especially when you see how many dragons were killed; it makes genetic materials as a material focus more likely. How many people can you think of that you are related to off the top of your head?

There is more evidence suggesting that the undeadification was purely to make the MBD suffer further. V's own words, "Because I am not done with the dragon." The spirits then chime in with such wonderful lines like, "The pain ended too soon", as well as, "We have only begun to bring misery" and finnaly, "There is still so much we can do." V promptly agreed and then cast Create Greater Undead.

Lines like, "I assure you, you will see your kin again shortly" and the continued ramblings about future actions also help to cement V's motive for the CGU ressurection in place. Though it makes me wonder, is V going to kill the dragon again or does the spell allow one to see those that die? What better way to make someone suffer than have them realise they are your instrument of distruction against their family.

EDIT:


Since it was motivated by a desire to inflict further pain on the already dead dragon, I'd say it was a very evil act.


Thank you!



Also, killing creatures for no other reason than that they tick they 'evil' box ih the MM is not a justifiable reason for killing them. The fact they do indicates that they are likely to be adversaries but it is not a de facto 'agent of darkness' sticker.


I agree with this statement. Yay for paladins engaging in diplomatic discussion with devils!



'the pain ended too soon', 'we have only begun to bring misery'.

V: 'I concur.'


Thank you...again!

Although this time it boarders on the level of ninja, so I will have to kill you. *stab*

[VariaVespasa]

There's a difference between "grossed-out" and "horrified". :smalltongue:

Not if you do it right! :P

[B9anders]

I have been reading the comic for a few years now (and loving it), and this one was by far the most stunning - really, I got hit by those 2d4 rounds of secondary stun effect, and I still feel a bit dizzy.
And I really didn't expect that in the slightest :smalleek: !

I agree that this act was more evil than anything Xykon has done before (Xykon always manages to be funny about it), or at least this is how it looked today. I mean, the bouncing ball of insanity was kind of a funny moment... I really wouldn't have wanted those paladins to defeat my favourite bad guy, I really had no reason to like them.
Xykon was engaged in combat with them, he just came out with a new way of demonstrating that he couldn't be defeated by a bunch of low-lvl meatshields who were being thrown into the grinder by their masters just to weaken him.
I think they were lawful to the extreme, and just a wee tad into the good camp, and it's amazing how much an overabundance of law can work against good.

Conversely, the poor black dragons were engaged in their daily activities - they presented no immediate threat to V. As far as I can remember, 'Always chaotic evil' means that up to 90% are chaotic evil, while the remaining 10% can be of different alignment. Halfbreeds do not even share this rule, as far as I can remember. Uh, I am surprised that there was NO saving throw allowed :smalleek: !


Besides, I have a feeling that V might stay like this for a while... (having one from the party turn into a major villain tends to work great for pathos !)

There is much wrong with this post.

Xykon being funny about it doesn't make it any less evil. On the contrary, delighting in evil is perhaps even more evil.

You having no reason to like the paladins doesn't make it any less evil either.

You don't know those paladins and have no way of knowing if they were just 'a little good' and more lawful or the other way around. Even if it were an overabundance of law, they were protecting a gate that could potentially destroy the universe. There is no question of either working against the other - The paladins were absolutely in the right in standing up to xykon and his hordes wanting to take over the city just because of a stupid gem.

Xykon's act was evil and there are no two ways about it.

[Oslecamo]

And so kids, that's the reason why you NEVER let an adventurer escape alive after threatening to kill their family. Specially if said adventurer is a wizard.


So, since all black dragons are related, wouldn't this mean that an entire chromatic species of dragon was wiped out from existence? This is, there can't be that many black dragons in the world in the first place and V just slaughtered dozens of them.

[HOLEkevin]

Possibly a bit of an overreaction.

Still, way to free up a page in the Monster Manual!

[LazyJoe]

I was listening to Take A Bow by Muse whilst reading the comic, and it became that little bit more epic...

[Cyradoc]

Keeping his family safe was a pretext for unleashing that epic spell.
As if killing so many blacks is not going to anger the remaining ones. I know chaotic evil is supposed to be selfish evil, but still, a self-respecting draconic kin cannot suffer so badly from the workings of a 'mere' humanoid without revenge. Unless every single black dragon in the world got 1-shotted in one instant.

[pdwalker]

Epic!

Well done.

[BlueWizard]

I think vaarsuvius is going to create some problems with his/her partner.
That last spell is downright chaotic evil.

[Deadly]

Wow... that's horrifying...

Not sure if this has been suggested, but...

I wonder if this warrants a response from the dragon god who also gave the Oracle his powers. The fiends did mention that V's new powers could lead to feelings of pure omnipotence, so maybe we'll see a battle between V and this god. And... assuming that V could win that fight, perhaps doing so would weaken the fabric of reality and create another rift for the Snarl to escape through, bringing this plot all the way back to the original plot.

[Cyradoc]

Xykon being funny about it doesn't make it any less evil. On the contrary, delighting in evil is perhaps even more evil.

You having no reason to like the paladins doesn't make it any less evil either.

You don't know those paladins and have no way of knowing if they were just 'a little good' and more lawful or the other way around. Even if it were an overabundance of law, they were protecting a gate that could potentially destroy the universe. There is no question of either working against the other - The paladins were absolutely in the right in standing up to xykon and his hordes wanting to take over the city just because of a stupid gem.

Xykon's act was evil and there are no two ways about it.

I'm not debating over how much evil the act was, but over how evil it looked.
Of course laying waste to Azure City was evil, but it's just about what we expect from a traditional evil mastermind, and Xykon always tries to be unconventional about it :smallwink:
Today we were shown what it actually is, to 'casually end lives with but a thought'.
Besides, I am not taking myself seriously, :smallsmile: of course the campaign is about saving the world, I was just talking about how spoiled most paladins are these days, don't tell me you liked Miko. :smalltongue:

[Arachu]

Three emotions, to respond here

:smalleek: HOLY!!! That was just... Holy damn!!! Even Zykon could never aspire to this evil! DUUUUUDE!!!

:smallannoyed: If Familicide killed everything you were related to, and wazzername used it on a human, there would be no more humans. Elf? No elves. Half-orc? No humans or orcs. Etc. There should be at least some black dragons left...
...Unless, if she had used it on a person, and opted not to unmake every -humanoid race- on earth. If that is the case, V may well have killed 'em all...

:smallconfused: If you're going to get all technical about it, this is basically a larger-scale version of what ABD was trying to do to V. A. Way. Larger. Scale. But close to similar in concept. Admittedly, he could have just as easily soul-bound the ABD in a gem of some sort, and dumped her ass in some unoccupied plane...
Then again, that wouldn't be as... Entertaining for V...

Oh, and Tiamat will flay V's ass...

[MisterLeirus]

Oh... Oh my...

He did not use Epic magic to kill the dragon, but this...

All the Black kin, including half-dragons... wow. Will this stop here? Would other Dragonkins try to retaliate? Or have the three friends unleash a circle of blood which could potentially end the OotS world? Magic wars are a nasty business...

[Shwepie]

I'm not debating over how much evil the act was, but over how evil it looked.
Of course laying waste to Azure City was evil, but it's just about what we expect from a traditional evil mastermind, and Xykon always tries to be unconventional about it :smallwink:
Today we were shown what it actually is, to 'casually end lives with but a thought'.
Besides, I am not taking myself seriously, :smallsmile: of course the campaign is about saving the world, I was just talking about how spoiled most paladins are these days, don't tell me you liked Miko. :smalltongue:


Spoiled? When was the last time you ended up defending the demon from the crazy people that wanted to kill it? While defending the people from the crazy demon that wanted to kill them? Without killing anything or letting anything die? Just to set things right? Through the whole campaign? *has issues*

[Horizon]

...you pull out a nuke. Apparently.

You know, if Varsuuvius is really serious about making sure that dragons will never threaten her family again, s/he's going to have to hold on to the Soul Splice forever.

There's no way V can be sure that every single dragon has been wiped out. The magic system is too vast and diverse, and the dragon family is large enough, that the odds are very good that some dragon somewhere had some special protection or ward or immunity and wasn't killed by the Familicide spell. And even if every single dragon was wiped out, the spell couldn't have killed everyone who knew or liked those dragons--and if it had, then it would have to kill everyone who knew them, and so on until everyone on the planet is dead.

The end result is the same. Some Black Dragon somewhere will survive, or someone will resurrect one of those dragons, and then the dragons are going to war. All of them. And they'll probably bring a god or two along. After today, dragons of any color simply cannot afford to leave Vaarsuvius alive.

Today's strip rings the Order of the Stick world like a gong, and the reverberations will be felt forever.

[Itous]

just remember it was FAMICIDE not GENOCIDE i think the spell only killed the other dragons with its blood line or in other words in the same family.

what i would like to see now is V take those 2 scrolls of soul bind and bind the dragons soul to him, then using the epic necromancer chicks power cast soul bind on himself 3 more times to keep these souls attached to itself, personaly i like V this way he's way more badass and more powerful than Xycon.

also did you see the monster in the shadows with the eyes crossed out, could that be the monster in darkness darkness being killed off? or just a coincidance?


--edit--
i mainly think the reason why black dragons would still be alive is because as i mentioned before it is called famicide, i know blackdragons are essentially one giant big assed family but to destroy thier whole species thats genocide famicide i would of said kills those with the same blood line, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, neices, nephews, grandparents, grandkids. due to thier life span it wouldn't be uncommong for a blackdragon to have a large outstand family and its no suprise so many died as i said due to the size of the family caused by such a long life span.



as i said before i would like to see V cast soul bind to keep the dragons soul or maybe even cast some kind of epic soul bind to bind ALL the dragons souls to him and also binding those other three souls to him to make him all bad ass.

[Aotrs Commander]

As a secondary effect, Familicide causes all comic readers to sit in stunned silence for 2d4 minutes, trying to absorb the magnitude of the event.

Undead are not affected by this effect but are instead out for 2D4 minutes laughing hysterically.

Awesome, V, awesome! Round of applause. Go to the top of the class my good Elf! I take back (some) of the things I've said against Elves in the past. Superlative!

As a fellow Evil Epic caster (and a necromancer as well), I must commend you on your efforts. Funnily enough, that's pretty much the way I like to deal with feuds like that. Completely annhilate in totality one (or both) sides. Ends the feud right there. The trick is, of course, to get enough raw power at your disposal to asure a 100% kill rate. Which V apparently has.

Cold, logical and efficent. And completely effective. I whole-heartlessly approve!

Genocide from the win!

I really must learnt that spell and work out how to apply to Vampires. And then cast it on every world I can find. Huzzah!



Still, from a brutally pragmatic (and possibly nongood) perspective, that's an awful lot of Evil creatures eliminated in one fell swoop. So there might be a few nonevil casualties among there, but I'd term them as acceptable losses in liu of what V has accomplished1.



1'Course I am a LE Lich...

[Tingel]

At any rate, V just bested Xykon in the evil department. Yes he killed a bunch of paladins, but he, evil as it was, had good reason for it. They stood between him and his goal and meant to stop him or die trying.

V's action was unmitigated evil as it was completely over the top and unnecessary, killing a lot of creatures that had no beef with him/her at all. In fact, V had already killed the dragon's son, so you would think the score was even by now.
You misunderstand the comic because you didn't read it carefully enough. Killing the black dragon's family was not about "settling the score". He just wanted to make sure that there won't be another black dragon who comes for revenge (just like the black dragon mother did) and threatens the elf's family again. Killing all relatives of the dragon was prophylactic; it was not about revenge.



What makes this truly even isn't the fact that V killed, possibly, every black dragon in existence. It is the fact that V raised the mother black dragon back to unlife to bare witness to the act.
This is a claim not supported by the strip. It rather seems as if the undead dragon is the "material component" of the familicide spell. "Raising" the mother dragon was not pure cruelty, it was a necessity.

[Pronounceable]

Wohooo! There's no kill like overkill! Wooot!


Though the act was horrible, I still find myself filled with joy because the atrocity has been inflicted upon effing dragons. Good riddance. If only it'd keep going and destroy the whole lot of arrogant reptiles... Oh well. Hate effing dragons.

Though I kinda wonder about the Oracle. Probably he's as helpless as Cassandra before his own prophecies.

[Bloodrage]

Well... V shoudn't do this but... who cares of evil dragons! Haha! Victory for the V!

[snafu]

Wow.

That is absolutely awesome.

But I wonder if V's thought this through? Let's say her spell has killed, oh, a nice round number - the 128 nearest relatives of the dragon. OK: but then there are dozens of fairly distant relatives of the dragon who have just been killed and whose nearest loved ones have not. V may have just gone from having one dragon out for her blood to having many dragons angry at her.

I can but hope that she has just exterminated the entire black dragon race from the face of the world. It's not an unreasonable supposition. Dragons are apex predators, so they cannot exist in great numbers, and they are long-lived, so they must breed infrequently. Encounters with dragons are usually infrequent and major events in an adventurer's career. And since black dragons are only one of many races of dragon, it's quite possible that in all the world they number only in the hundreds.

And since the target of V's spell was an ancient dragon, it's not impossible that the entire currently extant black dragon race consists of her own clan. There may have been many generations gone by, and bloodlines mix over time.

However, V must realise that it is possible that there are surviving black dragons who will demand to know who is responsible for this massacre. Therefore there is one more thing to do before this mission is complete.

She must go and destroy the Oracle.

[factotum]

I'm absolutely stunned...and it isn't the strip that did it. What stuns me is that there are still people who are somehow trying to justify this as being "not evil" because all the targets of the spell are supposedly evil. This is completely ignoring the fact that some of the targeted beings were half-dragons, who are not inherently evil by any means, or that "Always Chaotic Evil" doesn't actually mean that 100% of black dragons are CE--it's always possible to find one that isn't, even if it's fairly unlikely. It's also completely ignoring the fact that what V just did amounts to genocide. It doesn't matter how evil or otherwise the targets are, V just annihilated a whole bunch of creatures who had no quarrel with him and had never harmed him in any way.

The fact is, it's behaviour like that which got V and his family into this mess in the first place--killing the young black dragon when he had no particular reason to. Just how badly is THIS going to rebound on him once he no longer has the three epic casters spliced to him?

[Shwepie]

This is a claim not supported by the strip. It rather seems as if the undead dragon is the "material component" of the familicide spell. "Raising" the mother dragon was not pure cruelty, it was a necessity.


Look, a post ten posts before yours! It can be found here. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5903574&postcount=99) It was writen by me also further detailing my reasoning in face of the unbelievers! If I come off as rude, sorry, lack of sleep due to...things.

[Trixie]

At least it was V-like logic that powered the, uh, "necessity" of using that spell. If you've ticked off a family feud with a dragon, this pretty much is the most efficient way to end the feud and protect your own family.

So thumbs up from me for V-flavoured, logical evil.

No, it is the most efficient way to draw attention from several Great Wyrms, Avatars of the Evil Dragon Gods, Divine Rank 0 Dragons, and event the big bad Dragon Goddess herself :smallamused:

Oh, and for the most horrible deaths of the persons responsible.

By the way, I love how these dragons were sorted by age categories, from Ancient to poor little ones :smallfrown:

Oh, and I find a few site slowdowns infinitely more preferable to having the best part of it down for 24 hours :smallsigh:

[Tingel]

You, Mister Shwepie, made the claim that reanimating the head was unnecessary in said post, an unsubstantiated claim I do not agree with. Your pseudo-scientific reasoning is irrelevant for Haera's spell (as magic is obviously not biotechnology), and even if it wasn't irrelevant, it still wouldn't be more than guesswork.

Since my guesswork differs from yours considerably, I do not quite understand why you felt the need to point out the seniority of your post.

[Strega]

I haven't played since second edition, but I do try to keep up a bit on the iterations of D&D. People have argued for years that mages are stupidly overpowered in 3.5 (they were in 2.0 at high levels), and this really cements the fact. The very thought that one person, with minimal effort, could wipe out so many powerful creatures at a distance is just...stupid. Why would anyone ever bother playing a fighter? Jesus.

[Eleshar]

Has Vaarsuvius just kill 63 black dragons?!?!?!

[Mauve Shirt]

Holy cow. "Suvie's" family isn't going to like that. :smalleek:

[Trazoi]

No, it is the most efficient way to draw attention from several Great Wyrms, Avatars of the Evil Dragon Gods, Divine Rank 0 Dragons, and event the big bad Dragon Goddess herself :smallamused:
Yes, but they're more likely to be just interested in V. The theory is sound. :smallbiggrin:

What I meant was that I'm glad that, while V is being evil, V is being evil in the style of V. A lot of the rumours and speculations being fired off in this forum were that V was going to turn into some witless cackling moustache-twirling fiend, doing vile things for no rhyme and reason other than to prove V's evilness. I'm pleased that this act, while repugnant, has a very V-like logical basis behind it.

[kivzirrum]

....That is F'ED UP. o____o


Bravo.

[Assassin89]

That was one powerful spell against a bunch of black dragons. I think that mother black dragon could have been lying about having only one descendant, as the younger black dragon could have multiple half-siblings.

[Shwepie]

You, Mister Shwepie, made the claim that reanimating the head was unnecessary in said post, an unsubstantiated claim I do not agree with. Your pseudo-scientific reasoning is irrelevant for Haera's spell (as magic is obviously not biotechnology), and even if it wasn't irrelevant, it still wouldn't be more than guesswork.

Since my guesswork differs from yours considerably, I do not quite understand why you felt the need to point out the seniority of your post.

My guesswork that V was just beings a **** has more evidence backing up it, as opposed to your guess work of V needing specifically a 'Sentient Undead Head' related to the people she wishes to target with the Familicide spell, as a material component.

As for the pointing out the seniority. I did that because it is my belief you did not fully read the thread before posting. Which I consider a big no no when the thread isn't even five pages long. But that was a **** move on my part and I do appologize for it.

Sure, I'll agree that magic isn't biotechnology. But the magic of DnD shows the power to do thinks our biotechnology can't even begin to facilitate! It doesn't that much of a stretch of the imagination that magic could be used for perterinity tests, especially if it is a epic spell.

Also, there is a reason why phrases like, "We are not related by blood" and "Blood reletives" exist; familiy trees are often refered to as bloodlines. The concept of being related or tied to another person by blood or passing on your 'blood' from generation to generation is a very very old one. I am willing to even go so far as to say that the material component, if any, for the Familicide spell is the blood from someone in the familiy you want to target. Not a sentient undead head, or any other body part, of someone in the familiy you want to target.

Ever hear of Ockham's Razor? It's not just for shaving! *copies this post to the clipboard before losing it and having to type it over again*

[SPoD]

I haven't played since second edition, but I do try to keep up a bit on the iterations of D&D. People have argued for years that mages are stupidly overpowered in 3.5 (they were in 2.0 at high levels), and this really cements the fact. The very thought that one person, with minimal effort, could wipe out so many powerful creatures at a distance is just...stupid. Why would anyone ever bother playing a fighter? Jesus.

Uh, you do know that this isn't something wizards can actually DO in D&D, right? I mean, it's a story. It's a made-up spell (well, MORE made-up than everything else in D&D).

No wizard has ever cast this spell in an actual game, I assure you. You'd have to be like 500th level to pull this off, and at that point, a 500th level fighter will be doing things like slicing planets in two.

[Mauve Shirt]

Wait, is that a black dragon centaur? :smalltongue: I find that hilarious for some reason.

[pendell]

....

Vaarsuvius, hand me your character sheet.

Well, that answers a lot of questions.

Is V damned? Emphatic yes.

V just did in one round what the real-life Nazis tried and failed to accomplish
over a period of twelve years. That puts hir at least in meganazis, possible
in the giganazi scale.

And yes, V has to be nerfed somehow in a very few strips. As it stands,
this gestalt entity is the single most powerful non-divine being on the planet.
One who can inflict mass death in a single round.

V is the greatest threat to OOTSverse outside of the Snarl itself.

Heck, I don't see how Vaarsuvius can even stay in the strip any longer.
Tiamat and all the dragons of the world should take notice to put a stop
to him. Heck, the entire pantheon and followers might come together to
take hir down.

And you know what .. IT MIGHT NOT BE ENOUGH.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[quick_comment]

I'm not so sure that V's actions are evil so much as practical.

Ignoring the fact that every black dragon is by definition evil, this was done in defense of his family. He ended what could have been a long and costly blood feud and has created an effective deterrent against any being from harming his family ever again.

Good or evil, most people would do everything within their power to keep their family safe. V's power just happens to include epic level spells.

[Blanth]

Man oh man (worth delurking for)!
This is such a Nethack moment!
Nothing like those blessed scrolls of genocide - all creatures of type "D" - poof.


You were a wizard.
You genocided one species.
You were stridently aligned.
You were an atheist.
You were a wisher.
You were evil.
You were dead.

[Fabuloso]

The very thought that one person, with minimal effort, could wipe out so many powerful creatures at a distance is just...stupid. Why would anyone ever bother playing a fighter? Jesus.

I'm quite sure that an high-level, non-epic fighter, with three VERY high-level, very-epic evil melee fighters' souls grafted onto his own soul, could swing a sword at the planet and split it in two, then swing it another time and split in two half of your pantheon. In the same round. With a wooden sword. While complaining that his life is boring and he's useless at anything that's not swinging a sword... DUH!

Is everybody in this forum forgetting that V is ten times as epic as ANYTHING else we have seen so far?

(Ok, maybe only three times, but it's still VERY high level epic.)



I agree, that it needed a material focus for decerning the bloodline. I, however, doubt that it needed the sentient conciousness of a being to do the decerning when genetic material, like a severed head, will suffice. Especially when you see how many dragons were killed; it makes genetic materials as a material focus more likely. How many people can you think of that you are related to off the top of your head?

Except that you seem to forget that the story happens in a world where soul > genetic material anytime. A world where we need material components for their trascendental power, not their material one. Or else you would be able to resurrect somebody from the hair they cut two days before dying, or the limb that got severed a month before dying - which is completely not the case.

Thus said, since this particular spell is completely homebrew, we don't know the inner workings behind, so anything that we say is complete guesswork. And mine is as good as yours. Only time and fate (who goes by the name of Rich, in this case) will tell. BUT! To assume that the hey-i-need-your-soul-back-here-even-if-undead-and-only-for-a-couple-of-rounds spell was unnecessary, and just for the sake of cruelty, is just a theory. A plausible one, maybe, but a theory, and not a fact, unless Rich makes it so.

Also, prolly ninja'd.

EDIT: some quoting and better wording.

[Trixie]

I'm not so sure that V's actions are evil so much as practical.

Ignoring the fact that every black dragon is by definition evil, this was done in defense of his family. He ended what could have been a long and costly blood feud and has created an effective deterrent against any being from harming his family ever again.

Good or evil, most people would do everything within their power to keep their family safe. V's power just happens to include epic level spells.

Yeah, so if I kill you, your parents, siblings, etc. take their stuff (which won't be stealing, because it is ownerless now! - another brilliant thought gem from some people defending V) - and if I sold this stuff to make my family fed and safe - it won't be an evil act.

No sirre, it will be goodest of the goodest acts, a very practical one :smallsigh:

And a certain A.H. from thirties was a paladin in a shining armor in disguise, who almost saved Europe :smallsigh:

Oh, and let us ignore the fact, that V now had not a single, but dozens of even more powerful beings pissed at him to see how "practical" that was :smallsigh:

[Theodoriph]

The material component theory is far more likely than the cruelty theory at the moment.

[Cicciograna]

"With great power comes great responsibility."

V, you've been utterly irresponsible. You'll regret, in a way or another.

[Tingel]

Ever hear of Ockham's Razor? It's not just for shaving! *copies this post to the clipboard before losing it and having to type it over again*
You appear to be misusing the Franciscan's blade here. Consider this:


Fact: Vaarsuvius is using Create Greater Undead before casting Familicide. The artwork strongly suggests that the undead dragon is involved in the casting process of the epic necromancy.


My theory: The undead dragon is a requirement for casting Familicide.

Your theory: Vaarsuvius could have casted Familicide anyway, and has reanimated the dragon head for different reasons.


Ockham's Razor tells us to choose the simpler theory if several theories can explain the facts we encounter. The only valid way for you to use Ockham's Razor against me is to claim that my theory is unnecessarily complicated compared to yours. Such a claim can obviously not reasonably be made. Therefore your attempted use of the monastic blade fails.




The material component theory is far more likely than the cruelty theory at the moment.
Exactly.

[Shwepie]

I haven't played since second edition, but I do try to keep up a bit on the iterations of D&D. People have argued for years that mages are stupidly overpowered in 3.5 (they were in 2.0 at high levels), and this really cements the fact. The very thought that one person, with minimal effort, could wipe out so many powerful creatures at a distance is just...stupid. Why would anyone ever bother playing a fighter? Jesus.

Yes casters are generally over powered at higher levels in 3.5e. However, the power the Suvie wields isn't normal level power. It comes from combining the power of three casters, all over lvl 20, and adding it to Suvie's own power. So our little Suvie is, bare minimum, a 74th lvl caster.

[snafu]

I'm not so sure that V's actions are evil so much as practical.

Ever played Planescape: Torment?

For those of us who have, the description of someone as practical sends a shiver of fear down the spine...

[Theodoriph]

"With great power comes great responsibility."

V, you've been utterly irresponsible. You'll regret, in a way or another.


Wizards are Batmen...not Spidermen. :smalltongue:

[quick_comment]

Yeah, so if I kill you, your parents, siblings, etc. take their stuff (which won't be stealing, because it is ownerless now! - another brilliant thought gem from some people defending V) - and if I sold this stuff to make my family fed and safe - it won't be an evil act.

No sirre, it will be goodest of the goodest acts, a very practical one :smallsigh:

And a certain A.H. from thirties was a paladin in a shining armor in disguise, who almost saved Europe :smallsigh:

Oh, and let us ignore the fact, that V now had not a single, but dozens of even more powerful beings pissed at him to see how "practical" that was :smallsigh:

I did not say V's actions were good. Just that they weren't necessarily evil.

Could V's actions have pissed off even more powerful beings? Very possibly. But those powerful beings now know that if they even attempt to mess with V's family, their own families are very likely toast. The benefits outway the disadvantages.

As for the part about stealing, this is a world where people can walk into a black dragon's lair, kill it for it's loot, and still be considered "good". So yes, if your motive for killing a dragon is not to take his loot, but merely to feed your family, that is not an evil act.

[snafu]

I'm quite sure that an high-level, non-epic fighter, with three VERY high-level, very-epic evil melee fighters' souls grafted onto his own soul, could swing a sword at the planet and split it in two, then swing it another time and split in two half of your pantheon. In the same round. With a wooden sword. While complaining that his life is boring and he's useless at anything that's not swinging a sword... DUH!

Fuuuuuuu....

Shiiiion....

.... HA!

Er, so, yeah. V vs Gokuu, who wins? :-)

[Pantler]

I enjoy reading about evil like The Lord of the Rings. You know, when Nazgul sneak into a tavern and stab the beds instead of burning the whole building to the ground.
Reading this was not pleasant.
I mean, the story is getting more and more awesome, drama-wise. But that scene I did not enjoy.
Call me a wuss if you must.

[Zanaril]

I think the whole point was for it to be unpleasant and almost unredeemable.

I'm sure there's still some who don't yet believe Suvie is evil, but I think some of them could justify V destroying the whole of the OOtS world and releasing the Snarl.

PS: Nazgul = ninjas.

[otakufan]

The word "Damn" comes to mind... Then repeats itself over, and over, and over...

That was unquestionably awesome. "My 3 Fiends'" student has learned well. I'll be honest here, I kinda want V to stay like this (Evil, not Spliced (though Spliced helps :smallamused:)). Shi was always awesome, but this arc has magnified that awesomeness a hundred-fold.

That said, while killing one or two dragons might not draw Tiamat's attention, I think V's erasing an entire bloodline of black dragons most certainly would.

[harami2000]

So yes, if your motive for killing a dragon is not to take his loot, but merely to feed your family, that is not an evil act.
Splitting hairs on "personal" motivation and sounds like a somewhat lame excuse for killing sentient critters when one could be toiling honestly in the fields: anyone who can kill a hoardworthy dragon can certainly feed their family by other means. :smallwink:

[Shwepie]

You appear to be misusing the Franciscan's blade here. Consider this:


Fact: Vaarsuvius is using Create Greater Undead before casting Familicide. The artwork strongly suggests that the undead dragon is involved in the casting process of the epic necromancy.


My theory: The undead dragon is a requirement for casting Familicide.

Your theory: Vaarsuvius could have casted Familicide anyway, and has reanimated the dragon head for different reasons.


Ockham's Razor tells us to choose the simpler theory if several theories can explain the facts we encounter. The only valid way for you to use Ockham's Razor against me is to claim that my theory is unnecessarily complicated compared to yours. Such a claim can obviously not reasonably be made. Therefore your attempted use of the monastic blade fails.




Exactly.

Guess I just see my view as simpiler than yours then. EDIT: Or we are weighing different facts. Matter of perspective, no point arguing that.

Undead dragon is a requirement for casting Familicide? Why an undead dragon specificly? Why cast Create Greater Undead specificly if undead dragon is need, as opposed to, sentient undead dragon? I also only see a undead dragon head but that is splitting hairs.

My theory is based on the fact that everything immediately prior to and after Suvie, (Man I love this nickname! Equally feminate and masculant at the same time, awesome!), casts Create Greater Undead on the dragon's head. Namely, stating Suvie wasn't done with the dragon yet, the voices saying not enough pain, suffering, misery, Suvie promptly agreeing. Suvie boasting before casting Familicide, then using the MBD as the means to an end. That isn't to say the head is a material component of the spell or that the spell even has one, it is epic after all.

But thing about it, if you wanted to cause someone alot of pain and suffering AND kill their whole familiy. Why not kill their familiy in front of their eyes, or better yet, make that person your method of killing their family? Like say Dominate Person to get them to repeatidly stab their child to death? Although this is really more of a Saw type thing where the person has no choice but to go along with it.

[Niley]

Hah! Now THAT's Evil! Suck it hard, Xykon!

[whatchamacallit]

"NO! No, I surrender!"

Ah, too little, too late. <inserts evil laugh>

On the bright side new black boots and designer belts for everybody!

[CrimsonAngel]

"NO! No, I surrender!"

Ah, too little, too late. <inserts evil laugh>

On the bright side new black boots and designer belts for everybody!

You make me laugh *gives cookie*

[banjo1985]

As expected V is enjoying his newfound powers way too much. Nasty little androgynous bugger that he is...mind you, maybe now he's powerful enough to take out Xykon on his own? He definitely has a better chance than Roy ever did.

[CapedLuigiYoshi]

Okay... That is unnecessary mega-overkill.

[deanphilo]

V killed the ABD's child. When that child ambushed the Order.

In response the ABD tried to kill V's entire family, bind the children's souls and flee to another plane. Understand that the ABD was exiling itself forever merely to deny V the company of loved ones for eternity.

THAT is disproportionate. Nothing V has done has been evil or even unreasonable in light of this. Do not confuse the voices from the soul splice with V's own thoughts. V says "I concur" in response to "There is still so much we can do".

As the Order discussed previously when they captured the Linear Guild, there is concern that simply killing will not end the threat of a determined foe. If a very powerful foe had openly declared a vendetta against my children.... to the point of denying me their company in the freakin AFTERLIFE... then familicide is entirely called for. I would not be surprised at all if V uses some further epic power to ensure that no dragon can scry the source of the familicide.

V seems determined to end the threat NOW, not even taking the time to tend to his family until the job is done. My guess is that V will not prolong the splice more than strictly necessary.

The spell is called familicide, and there is no reason to think that all black dragons everywhere are now dead. 63 black dragons on the entire planet? I should think there are many more. Hopefully now only ones with no ties to the ABD who brought this upon herself.

V's actions have been shockingly powerful, but are entirely appropriate coming from a loving parent. Do not confuse efficiency and lopsided power with evil. People like a fair fight. This fight is not fair, but that does not make V evil.

[marquiz]

An enjoyable page admittedly, that definitely shows the style that one cannot easily confer on animated/live action story telling. Here is hoping that the spell either works on undead or the dragons dont have any dracolich relations... or mob connections...

Though there is one spell that I cannot understand, despite my considerable amount of d&d knowledge... pray tell what does "telekinisis" do? It seems similiar to "Telekinesis".

[hajo]

Wow, between this and erfworld today is really Awesome Day. :smalleek:
And in Erfworld, they are just starting their spell :smallamused:

[Zevox]

Holy *censored* *censored*! Did V just wipe out the entire species of Black Dragons?! (And apparently some weird hybrids thrown in for laughs, like that Centaur-Dragon and the bipedal Dragon dressed like a wizard...)

Damn. Now that is epic. Hardly fair, but freakin' epic.

Zevox

[whitemane]

Wow... Putting aside the fact that V has taken a serious turn down the darkside, I doubt that s/he has stopped to think about how Parent is going to respond to Vs new power and where s/he got it. Even if V lies about where s/he got it, it isn't hard to figure out...

More terrifying is what Vs response will be when Parent responds, especially with all those evil arch-mages floating around in Vs psyche...

[jameslt0]

I do not normally comment on the comic...but that is just wrong!

[Castamir]

Heck, maybe the necrolady died just this way: she familicidied the wrong family, and got retaliated. Heavily.
Or perhaps familicided someone she unknowingly was related to.

[MammonAzrael]

I've only read the first two pages so far, so apologies if I'm repeating.

I've noticed people thinking that this a horrendously evil act, which I disagree with (in D&D terms, not RL). While it is possible that some of those killed were not evil (most likely the half dragons and such), the Good Gods will likely consider that an acceptable sacrifice for such a shift in power by killing so many powerful Chaotic Evil creatures. While some people have mentioned Tiamat taking notice and messing up V, I wouldn't be all that surprised if at the same time V got a personal thank you and aid from Bahamut. Remember that with objective terms for good and evil, killing an always chaotic evil race will always be a good act (though not an exalted one).

The reasons behind the act are twofold, I feel. The first is undeniably evil, in wanting the ABD to suffer more. The second is an extremely logical call of protecting his family by ensure there are no vengeful relatives left (after all, V is a PC, and savy enough to know that killing someone always seems to get their family on your tail). So while there could very well be new beings after V because of the spell, they will likely focus on the perpetrator of this act, V, and completely ignore V's family (which was the point).

This brings me to the epic spell, Familicide. While its very doubtful we will ever know its exact abilities, I have some assumptions

It offers no save
It offers no spell resistance
As epic magic, it specifically bypasses AMF.
I don't think it kills with negative levels, as that could potentially leave very high level targets alive.

Questions about Familicide:

Is it a death effect, and can it get through protection from death effects?
How far up and down the family tree does the spell hit? Does it consider life partners?
Is it possible that a relative with access to their own Epic magic is still alive?
Or maybe a relative protected by something like Cloister?
Is there any way to protect yourself from Familicide, aside from a specifically created epic spell?


On a different note, it's pretty clear that V's life partner is not thrilled with V's new sexy look.

And don't f*** with Vs family. Ever.

Overall, I can't wait to see how the ABD, the IFFC, and the world in general responds to this turn of events. :smallbiggrin:



Oh, and on the question of whether or not V needed to have the undead ABD around for Familicide, I'm inclined to think that V needed the dragon's soul there, as a component or focus, so the spell knew which family to destroy. The ABD could just have easily been alive as undead. (Though that doesn't explain why V would just start off with the spell, aside from dramatic effect)

[Estrosiath]

Wow... Putting aside the fact that V has taken a serious turn down the darkside, I doubt that s/he has stopped to think about how Parent is going to respond to Vs new power and where s/he got it. Even if V lies about where s/he got it, it isn't hard to figure out...

More terrifying is what Vs response will be when Parent responds, especially with all those evil arch-mages floating around in Vs psyche...

His mate is an apprentice baker. I wouldn't put my money on her having sense motive. He could probably say he found it in a Kinder egg, and have a good chance of her believing him.

And as for the rest... So far V has spoken elven with his mate, but common with the dragon. And so far he has done nothing but save them. And despite his frightening appearance has done nothing to harm them (although, had I been V, I would have simply shapechanged back into my "regular V" form, instead of going back to the way he looks now. The spell allows it).

[Estrosiath]

I've only read the first two pages so far, so apologies if I'm repeating.

I've noticed people thinking that this a horrendously evil act, which I disagree with (in D&D terms, not RL). While it is possible that some of those killed were not evil (most likely the half dragons and such), the Good Gods will likely consider that an acceptable sacrifice for such a shift in power by killing so many powerful Chaotic Evil creatures. While some people have mentioned Tiamat taking notice and messing up V, I wouldn't be all that surprised if at the same time V got a personal thank you and aid from Bahamut. Remember that with objective terms for good and evil, killing an always chaotic evil race will always be a good act (though not an exalted one).

The reasons behind the act are twofold, I feel. The first is undeniably evil, in wanting the ABD to suffer more. The second is an extremely logical call of protecting his family by ensure there are no vengeful relatives left (after all, V is a PC, and savy enough to know that killing someone always seems to get their family on your tail). So while there could very well be new beings after V because of the spell, they will likely focus on the perpetrator of this act, V, and completely ignore V's family (which was the point).

This brings me to the epic spell, Familicide. While its very doubtful we will ever know its exact abilities, I have some assumptions

It offers no save
It offers no spell resistance
As epic magic, it specifically bypasses AMF.
I don't think it kills with negative levels, as that could potentially leave very high level targets alive.

Questions about Familicide:

Is it a death effect, and can it get through protection from death effects?
How far up and down the family tree does the spell hit? Does it consider life partners?
Is it possible that a relative with access to their own Epic magic is still alive?
Or maybe a relative protected by something like Cloister?
Is there any way to protect yourself from Familicide, aside from a specifically created epic spell?


On a different note, it's pretty clear that V's life partner is not thrilled with V's new sexy look.

And don't f*** with Vs family. Ever.

Overall, I can't wait to see how the ABD, the IFFC, and the world in general responds to this turn of events. :smallbiggrin:



Oh, and on the question of whether or not V needed to have the undead ABD around for Familicide, I'm inclined to think that V needed the dragon's soul there, as a component or focus, so the spell knew which family to destroy. The ABD could just have easily been alive as undead. (Though that doesn't explain why V would just start off with the spell, aside from dramatic effect)

No epic spell offers no save. They all do. You can modify it upwards, but still. There is always that pesky 5% chance of making the save.

It probably offers Spell resistance, but it doesn't matter. The CL was huge anyway, and even if you roll a 1 you do not fail to go through the SR of a creature if you are high level enough.

It cannot be a DEATH-related epic spell because of that same 5% chance of making the save. The negative levels is more likely - 40d4 negative levels will kill 50 HD on AVERAGE even with a save being made. That's a great wyrm black dragon with a few class levels to spare.

Familicide would not make any sense if it did not consider life partners and/or distant relatives.

Theoretically it is possible that someone with access to epic magic would be alive... But honestly, I think casting familicide is a way to tie up loose ends. Not create a conundrum.

Cloister does not protect you from damage, just from detection and transporting in/out.

And IF (of course, this is just my explanation) the spell grants negative levels as I believe it does, negative energy protection would suffice. Or... (drumroll) being undead would too. Maybe one of those relatives is a dracolich... or a vampire dragon... or a ghost dragon.

[U2QueenBee]

My guess is that V will not prolong the splice more than strictly necessary.

But s/he already has. The family is safe now; the ABD's entire immediate family (husband, son, herself) was dead and there is no indication that any of the other dragons affected by this spell had much, if any connection to that family per se. Certainly they may not all have been evil; and none (that we know of) had done or threatened anything to V, his/her family or anyone they know - some were not even born. Meanwhile, V's family is still frightened and upset and s/he hasn't given them a second thought, dismissing questions, concerns, etc. to focus on listening to the evil voices in his/her head.

As far as I'm concerned, V has gone way, way overboard here, partly out of a fear for his/her family, but also largely driven by a desire to have and use the incredible powers that the soul splice has provided. V was already physically and mentally weak when the dragon attacked him, and that added fear and despair may have been just about enough to break him/her. V's actual mind/self (which was already fractured enough to turn on his/her friends) is not strong enough to fight the souls, IMO, and they are now just running amok in V's body without much resistance or guidance.

My jaw hit the floor when I saw today's comic; I gasped audibly! V may have saved his/her family (though s/he doesn't seem to care much); but what, if anything, can save V now?

[Maurice]

I'm sure that Parent will think whatever Other Parent wants Parent to think, once Other Parent is finished casting spells. Which is maybe even creepier than the genocide, now that I think about it.

[Castamir]

"With great power comes great responsibility."

V, you've been utterly irresponsible. You'll regret, in a way or another.
I see that you do-gooders tend to be incapable of understanding the only true alignment. Some say "great insanity", but the truth is:

"With great power comes loud
MUAHAHAHAHA"

Oh, and Belkar, my #1 favourite character so far, just got dethroned. Go V!

[Maurice]

Unless, of course, V "protects" his/her family from retribution by preemptively disintegrating them.

Gaah! The more I think about it, the worse it gets!

[DigoDragon]

Yeah, that's pretty evil. Even in D&D terms it can be considered quite evil if your good gods don't believe in wiping out all evil without fair judgement. I'm sure not all good gods think alike so it's going to depend on which one you ask. :smallsmile:

Still, poor black dragons. I'm sure a few of them didn't deserve to die... so I wonder who else is related to this mother black dragon? Hmmm...

[malakim2099]

Holy booping boop!

I'm going to assume that was just black dragons (or half-dragons) related to Mom there.


Well, I guess in game terms all black dragons are evil by definition - so V has just ridded the world of a great deal of evil (all the affected dragons appeared to be black).

Not necessarily. It's likely most of them were evil, but there were quite a few halfsies there (which I guess means that momma got a bit experimental back in the day. :smallamused:)

So there might have been neutrals, possibly even good individuals killed too.

But the point is... this is an undeniably evil act. Slaughtering every member of a familial line just because one of them attacked you?

You know what I said about V maybe being in some sort of control with the not using of conjuration/necromancy? Um, nevermind... :smalleek:

[B.I.T.T.]

Geeze, V! It was all cool but you had to go and take it too far. Seriously.

Good comic.

[Werekat]

I guess this kind of needs to be said now. Spoiler'd for possible insensitivity.

Ghost dragon martyrs of the Tiamat Guard.... ATTACK!

[kunou126]

This reminds me of Ender's Game for some reason.

I wonder if V will become a speaker for the dead?

[Mr. Scaly]

I really wish that there was something original that I could add here, but the only way V might even possibly be redeemed in my eyes is if it kills Belkar and fulfills that prophecy so...yeah, I'm not forgiving my once favourite character ever.

[Oslecamo]

I really wish that there was something original that I could add here, but the only way V might even possibly be redeemed in my eyes is if it kills Belkar and fulfills that prophecy so...yeah, I'm not forgiving my once favourite character ever.

That would be a quite interesting change of roles.

B: Varsaavius old friend you've gone too far this time...
V:Fool, no one can stop me now!
B: I won't let you harm any more inocents! (charges)
V:ARGHHH!(a billion contigency triggers and obliterate Belkar as V dies)

[Bandanna Jones]

*whistle*

Talk about escalation.

[Quorothorn]

Pwned.

I approve of this decision.

[MammonAzrael]

No epic spell offers no save. They all do. You can modify it upwards, but still. There is always that pesky 5% chance of making the save.

I guess I can't really depend on the necromancer's forethought, but I sure wouldn't leave such a gaping hole in my spell designed for mass killing. 1 out of ever 20 targets, when I'm expecting to target dozens? I don't want anyone getting off with a lucky 20!


It probably offers Spell resistance, but it doesn't matter. The CL was huge anyway, and even if you roll a 1 you do not fail to go through the SR of a creature if you are high level enough.

True enough. I'm just worried about potential epic draons with pimped out SR.


It cannot be a DEATH-related epic spell because of that same 5% chance of making the save. The negative levels is more likely - 40d4 negative levels will kill 50 HD on AVERAGE even with a save being made. That's a great wyrm black dragon with a few class levels to spare.

On average, yes. But I wouldn't leave my spell of awesome to something like "on average." But again, I can't speak for the necromancer.


Familicide would not make any sense if it did not consider life partners and/or distant relatives.

Why? I expect it to hit distant relatives, but why would it hit life partners? They aren't related, and are family only in a social sense, not a biological one. Of course, this would probably be solved if we knew what the spell keyed off of (blood, love, soul, etc)


And IF (of course, this is just my explanation) the spell grants negative levels as I believe it does, negative energy protection would suffice. Or... (drumroll) being undead would too. Maybe one of those relatives is a dracolich... or a vampire dragon... or a ghost dragon.

I'm expecting something like this, where a relative survives because of some type of protection, be it a successful save, being undead, Epic magic, SR, or whatever. Perhaps even being on another plane, as we aren't given any reason to think this spell can cross planar boundaries.

[Kaytara]

.....

Gods... We probably should have seen it coming. After all, there was a very conspicuous absence of Epic spells in the battle that many have remarked on. It only figures that the first Epic spell to be used would be something like... this.

Interesting to note that even now, Vaarsuvius is still trying to justify everything he does - the Familiscide spell was rationalized as having had the purpose of protecting the family.

One one hand, it shows that Vaarsuvius still isn't quite evil for the sake of evil - not to the extent that the three souls are, anyway.

On the other hand, it shows that this is still very much V that is doing the thinking here. Very worrying. I can't wait to see how Rich will write himself out of that one.
Of course, we have admitted alignment feedback here, and the mere presence of the three souls was enough to drastically change V's appearance and cause a burst of evil laughter - from a character who has never laughed before, no less. And it's obvious that V's actual ability to resist the influence of the voices is close to nonexistant.
But the fact that Vaarsuvius is still technically in control is the killer here.

[Aaron]

Now that... that was epic and horible at the same time. V has gone WAY to far. Anyone else also notice that V's mate called V "Suvie" in Elven? Notice that V talks to hir family in Elven, so at least they didn't hear what evil-V has said to the ABD in the last few comics.

That was also the most panels I've ever seen in a comic.

[Andre Fairchilde]

An evil action, no matter the good consequences is still inherently an evil act.

Burning a village, and all it's occupants to stop one baby from becoming a monster is evil.

Of course, I believe in free will not predestination. But that leads to a religious conversation that I do not wish to enter here.

Another way to describe my feeling on this act is I believe behaviors are developed with both social and genetic predisposition.

As in, the Black Dragons (or Kobolds, Orcs, etc.) are not necessarily born to be evil, but the environment can lead to a greater predisposition to commiting acts society would call evil.

In other words - is the Black Dragon evil because he chooses to be evil? Or is the Black Dragon evil because he's born to be evil. I read an excellent review of the alignments in a 3d. Ed. open license supplement that described that perhaps dragons are evil because nothing can stop them from doing what they do. Want to burn a village? Do it! Want all the money in a kingdom? Extort it! Want to eat a herd of horses? Cook them and take them from the army of knights.

But V is choosing to commit evil acts out of self gratification - and there is almost nothing worse than commiting an evil act out of pleasure.

For those that say that the world is better for all the Black Dragons to be gone, or there is a tremendous good act in V's near genocide. We'll probably never know - because all the agents of acts, good or evil are now dead. They can't make a choice to repent their evil ways - because of the finality of death.

[JustRain]

...I sense a great disturbance in the Force, as if 63 voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...

[baerdith]

Re 639.

Um, damn?

Well, this should put the "V hasn't gone over to the dark side yet" people in their place. Even accounting for the splice, this will shift V to evil.

[Ikialev]

http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/thumb/9/9e/HA_HA_HA%2C_OH_WOW.jpg/500px-HA_HA_HA%2C_OH_WOW.jpg

Anyway.
Yay, I can see a whole planet from here =D
And a centaurblackdragonwithnecklace!

[Azzurus]

As a secondary effect, Familicide causes all comic readers to sit in stunned silence for 2d4 minutes, trying to absorb the magnitude of the event.

That effect still holds strong...

[silvadel]

Soooo many unguarded dragon hordes....

And somewhere an adventuring party gets inexplicably denied exp..

I cant help but think this will make a ripple through the cosmos and be very much noticed.

Lucky for V black dragons are color coded for your convenience. ANYTHING else and that spell would be enough for a pact inevitable. Even so using that is quite vile.

Just the create greater undead part might be enough for V's family to want nothing ever to do with V.

[blackspeeker]

I don't think you could find a way to disturb me more.


Please don't try...

[Siosilvar]

First reaction: Holy ****.

Second reaction: Is that all of the black dragons?

Third reaction: Holy ****.

[MuLepton]

.....
Interesting to note that even now, Vaarsuvius is still trying to justify everything he does - the Familiscide spell was rationalized as having had the purpose of protecting the family.

The thing is that while he rationalizes the use of the spell, it's not even a sound reasoning. He'd have to kill all relatives, all friends and, as has been pointed out, very likely a certain goddess to be really safe from retaliation. And he won't be able to hold on to the splice forever, so when someone comes after him or his family in the future, well...

[Estelindis]

Well, that was absolutely horrid. I am literally gobsmacked. V committed an incredibly evil act. :smalleek:

Upon reflection, I don't know if what V did was actually worse than what the mother black dragon was going to do... Because, although the number of family members who had nothing to do with the dispute killed by V was much greater than the number of family who had nothing to do with the dispute that the mother black dragon was intending to kill, V did not torture them first and neither did he or she trap their souls. I mean, it's still... appalling. I am not saying for a moment that a worse evil justifies a lesser one. But, personally, I regard torturing, killing, and then imprisoning a soul as much worse than plain killing. Anyway, the arithmetic of evil never really works out, so perhaps I'd better abandon this line of logic.

I wonder how things will go with V's family after this.

[enarch3t]

Remind me not to bother V until very very late in the day.

[Quorothorn]

As a secondary effect, Familicide causes all comic readers to sit in stunned silence for 2d4 minutes, trying to absorb the magnitude of the event.

Win post.


But V is choosing to commit evil acts out of self gratification - and there is almost nothing worse than commiting an evil act out of pleasure.

Not so. V stated her reasons quite clearly: essentially, "I will slaughter your race so no cousin, or whatever, of yours will ever fly in to attack me and mine ever again".

[silvadel]

More likely the necrolady familicided someone whos brothers uncles cousin had an illicit relationship with her nephews grandfathers grandneice and it killed her as one of the relations.

I cant believe the oracle knew of this outcome or as bad as he has treated the oots would be NOTHING compared to what he would have done.

[T-O-E]

Epic spells make epic comics.

[snafu]

It occurs to me that there's a larger problem here than the mere death of a lot of dragons.

V may have just crashed the economy. The world runs on specie currency, after all. So putting all that gold back onto the market at once? Good way to trigger some serious inflation. And now the merchant bringing heavy machine parts from the city to repair the windmill in the small town wants to be paid a lot more gold for them, and so the miller has to sell a lot more flour away from the village, and so the price of bread goes up too... and somebody starves.

[Adeptus]

Unholy crap! :xykon:

Genociding a whole class of dragons and everything related to them? I would expect the most powerful ones to make their saves, even against epic magic though. But even if there is no save, what will Tiamat think of this slaughter of of it's children?

[Calmness]

Damn, that's just as bad as Xykon's slaughter of the paladins, if not worse.

Oh well, I'm sure V's soul will be put to good use in hell. :smallbiggrin:

[Wiffleboy]

And the spell also gets half-dragon centaurs!
:smalleek:

Now there's a back story I would like to know about.

[Kaytara]

The thing is that while he rationalizes the use of the spell, it's not even a sound reasoning. He'd have to kill all relatives, all friends and, as has been pointed out, very likely a certain goddess to be really safe from retaliation. And he won't be able to hold on to the splice forever, so when someone comes after him or his family in the future, well...

I know, I never said it was sound reasoning, either. The rationalization is a pretty shaky one. Vaarsuvius is rather obviously somewhat mad with power here.

I am now wondering if the comic actually showed ALL of the dragons affected by the spell, or just SOME of them. In the latter case, it would be interesting and horrible if V's spell affected someone he knows.

[silvadel]

I just noticed -- this spell almost seems to be moving along threads... Snarl threads...

I think that sound you just heard was the snarl waking up from its deep slumber and becoming active.

[Fabuloso]

I cant believe the oracle knew of this outcome or as bad as he has treated the oots would be NOTHING compared to what he would have done.

Remember that the Oracle knows very well the one thing that most Oracle in literature seem to forget:

If you have seen it happening in the future, then it is going to happen, no matter how hard you try to avoid it. Heck, maybe the very actions you take at avoiding it are what are going to CAUSE it in the first place.

The Oracle doesn't bother not to get dead, he knows he will die anyway, because he saw it in the future, so it's gonna happen, in a way or the other. Rather than avoiding the unavoidable, he arranges for said unavoidable to be undone later - and in a world with as much magic as this one, and with as much wealth as the Oracle as, and with as much support, and so on, it's not that hard.

Also, the Oracle seems a pretty selfish creature after all. He knows that he can't do much about what happens in the world, so just minds his business.

Even if he DID get to know about the "OMG, it's full of dead draginz!", he knows it's something far beyond his reach (he hasn't got player classes either), and something that was going to happen anyway.

So why getting involved?

[motub]

But the fact that Vaarsuvius is still technically in control is the killer here.
Of course it is. The fiends have had a fair amount of time to plan their approach and choose their tools, after all. It is, both literally and figuratively, a match made in hell.


First reaction: Holy ****.

Second reaction: Is that all of the black dragons?

Third reaction: Holy ****.

Ditto. Almost to the word.

But I just realized something. This act wasn't evil because it was created by the evil necromancer, because it was over the top (overkill, heh heh), or whatever-- the thing that made it Evil was doing it anyway after the ABD surrendered.

Yes, yes, of course the surrender didn't mean anything in practical terms, given that the surrender was given by a Raised Undead dragon head, but symbolically, it meant a whole lot.

On the most simple level, "I surrender" means, "You win; stop fighting now (please)." Which V ignored, in favor of a pre-emptive strike in a battle that did not exist (both because it would take place in the future, if ever, since it's unlikely that any of the dragons would have taken up the cause, with the possible exception of the "uncle" who's the only one who might have known anything about the issue and might have cared, and also because the current war was over because of the surrender, so essentially a pre-emptive strike is starting a new war).

On a deeper level, it's very interesting that when V turned the table on the ABD and threatened her with a very similar punishment to what she was going to do to V's family--- she immediately "showed her belly" as it were. Did not bluster, did not get mad, did not threaten some obscure divine/demonic/eternal pact of retribution-- begged for her family's life.

Yes, the Chaotic Evil creature surrendered immediately (yes, it was practically meaningless, but it was all she could do) at the overwhelming threat to her family.... while the Neutral creature then chose to decimate them anyway, generating what many of us thought to be an Extinction Level Event at first glance (and might indeed be when the chips are counted).

Which must say something about... something (V's true feelings about hir family, the nature of Evil, the nature of familial love transcending alignment, something). And to be honest, whatever it says, and whatever it says it about... it is definitely A Bad Thing.

I think we can all agree on that, even if we differ on the details of which Bad Thing or Things is or are being said (with an extra special shout-out to any Xena fans in the house, who must be feeling an special sense of dread, knowing that it's only a small step from "protecting Amphipolis" (check) to "taking surrounding villages as a buffer zone" (check) to becoming "Destroyer of Nations" (check back often)).

[MickJay]

Well, at least V has made the world a better place. On average. Probably. :smallbiggrin:

[Beren]

The one word that came to mind when I saw this strip was "bullsh!t." I don't care if the spell was "epic," you just shouldn't be able to kill sixty-two dragons (if you count eggs as dragons) all over the world instantaneously with a single spell. There has to be some rule or game principle against this sort of thing, and if there isn't, there should be. This just seems so hokey to me.

And yes, yes, yes, that IS just my opinion, but I'm entitled to have one.

[snafu]

Surrendering when you are a severed, undead head entirely at the enemy's mercy... well, that's a little something I like to call 'too little, too late'.

As a wise man once put it: 'Since when do you have to tell the enemy when he has won?'

[JoseB]

Epileptic tree time!! (take everything that comes now with a metric ton of salt :smallsmile: )

Oh dear me... Remember when Haley was telling Elan about her "secrets" in an attempt to get rid of her speech disorder? The secret that "not even V knew"?

"Elan, I am not what you might call...", what? Fully human?

OK, if Haley has some black dragon blood in her, and is remotely related to this particular black dragon...

Ow.

Just my 2 eurocent!

[aarondirebear]

I have been reading the comic for a few years now (and loving it), and this one was by far the most stunning - really, I got hit by those 2d4 rounds of secondary stun effect, and I still feel a bit dizzy.
And I really didn't expect that in the slightest :smalleek: !

I agree that this act was more evil than anything Xykon has done before (Xykon always manages to be funny about it), or at least this is how it looked today. I mean, the bouncing ball of insanity was kind of a funny moment... I really wouldn't have wanted those paladins to defeat my favourite bad guy, I really had no reason to like them.
Xykon was engaged in combat with them, he just came out with a new way of demonstrating that he couldn't be defeated by a bunch of low-lvl meatshields who were being thrown into the grinder by their masters just to weaken him.
I think they were lawful to the extreme, and just a wee tad into the good camp, and it's amazing how much an overabundance of law can work against good.

Conversely, the poor black dragons were engaged in their daily activities - they presented no immediate threat to V. As far as I can remember, 'Always chaotic evil' means that up to 90% are chaotic evil, while the remaining 10% can be of different alignment.

!)

1) So Xykon's brutality is "justified" by how funny it is?
2) You're confyuusing the words "Always" with "Often" or "Usually". Always means 100%.
3) Yeah, their daily activities of raping and devouring maidens (not always in that order), terrorizing villagers, and spawning more black dragons to commit MORE evil acts in the future...how dare she stop them?

[AtomicKitKat]

First: This. This is Willow flaying Warren evil.

Second: Please don't start flame wars about whether this is evil or not.

1. "Always" in alignment entries means with few exceptions. So while there may have been non-Evil Black Dragon relatives, it's by no means guaranteed. Likewise, it's not guaranteed that there were only Evil BD relatives.

2. Genocide is never acceptable for Good. Especially not when there's always a possiblity for redemption. Or the so-called "minority report".

[aarondirebear]

1) And as already mentioned, the killing was completely indiscrimate to whether they were evil or not.

2) Also, killing creatures for no other reason than that they tick they 'evil' box ih the MM is not a justifiable reason for killing them. The fact they do indicates that they are likely to be adversaries but it is not a de facto 'agent of darkness' sticker.


1) They were black dragons, not kittens, not paladins, not little girls named Becky Sue, not archons, not angels, and not farmers. I'd call that pretty discriminate.

2) Yes it IS a justifiable reason, and yes it IS an agent of darkness sticker.

[Porthos]

Why am I not surprised to see some people try to justify this act.

I know I'm a broken record on this subject, but Intent matters in DnD when it comes to alignment. While it may or may not at your own gaming table, one look at Rich's world should show that he subscribes to that philosophy. Remember the Celestial Deva's interview with Roy? If that didn't hammer home Intent Matters, I don't know what does.

Now Intent isn't the end all and be all of things, of course. But it's a factor.

And in this case, it was about revenge and suffering, pure and simple (look at the dialogue to see what I mean). No matter how "practical" V dressed it up, it was still designed to inflict the maximum amount of pain and suffering on the ABD possible.

And that is evil.

As for ridding the world of a lot of evil, I will simply say this: Each and every day, thousands of fiends die in the Blood War. Is anyone seriously going to tell me the people directing the killing are neutral? Or even Good?

I think not.

Should be... interesting.... to see the repercussions of this. :smallamused:

[Calemyr]

One thing that came to my mind was the question of how much either of them (V or Necrolady) knew, and how much Necrolady told V about the spell V was casting.

Option 1:
V: "Did I just do what I think I did?"
N: "That was incredible! Last time I did that it only killed twenty some. Wait, what's our effective caster level?"
V: "Rather high, I would imagine..."
Sorceror: "Do it again!"

Option 2:
V: "That wasn't supposed to happen! I was going after immediate family, not the entire species! I just wanted to stop them from coming after my family!"
N: "I would say you accomplished that, all right."
V: "But... but I didn't know it would do that! You never said anything about that!"
N: "You didn't ask, either."

Well, you get the idea, anyway. Combined, I wouldn't be surprised if the four had an effective caster level of 100, which might have alter the effectiveness of a level 21+ epic spell.

I get the feeling that what happens next is something neither the fiends nor V expects: the souls just got a taste of truer power than any of them knew individually, what do you think will happen when they discover they like it? How long do you calculate V could maintain the soul splice if all four were actively involved in holding it together?

[ottack]

This is bad!:smalleek:
I don't think V's mate will be happy about this

[Timberboar]

I wonder when the "Haley is a half-dragon!" crowd is gonna start sweating bullets...

[JJ48]

And...cue the choir from comic #635.

[ericgrau]

The one word that came to mind when I saw this strip was "bullsh!t." I don't care if the spell was "epic," you just shouldn't be able to kill sixty-two dragons (if you count eggs as dragons) all over the world instantaneously with a single spell. There has to be some rule or game principle against this sort of thing, and if there isn't, there should be. This just seems so hokey to me.

And yes, yes, yes, that IS just my opinion, but I'm entitled to have one.

+1. And as some have pointed out, this is a bit crazy even for the epic rules. Lately I've been trying to ignore questionable uses of the rules in favor of the story - which is most wonderful - but this is just getting silly. That much power screws up a world even in story terms, barring highly contrived limitations I'm afraid we'll see next. Hopefully those limitations will end all this, and we'll be back to our regularly scheduled story without major repeats of this kind of thing.

[Belkar Rocks]

Oh man oh man oh man oh man

This is terrible! Terrible! How could this happen! :smallfrown:

My man Belkar is no longer the evillest in the group!! :smallmad:

[Vibaom]

You you,.....
you really cant kill all the dragons from a "Dungeons & Dragons" world...

I mean whats left?

Dungeons & Lizards???

come on, let them to ressurect and give them an opportunity for revenge....

Could V manage a black dragons pack? (horde maybe)

[dps]

No. The spell indiscriminately killed at least three half-dragons as well, who are most definitely not always evil.

This was a horrifyingly Evil act, on par with the things Xykon does.

They may not have been half-dragons but rather black dragons using shapeshifting, though I agree that it is more likely that they were in fact black dragons.

Still, very evil either way.

[Silverraptor]

Oh...my...Gods... That is absolutely EVIL right there. Is every single chromatic dragon dead now?!

[Doc Roc]

Technically all dragons are related to Tiamat. By blood. Um.

[Renobarb]

Yeah, what they said.
My mouth is still opened for shock, and I didn't have time to accept the previous one yet. Now really Xycon looks like a lamb compared to V. And at least his evilness has humor too, but now...comic is more than serious :smalleek:

Good Lord people, drama much?

V isn't even as evil as the black dragon she just killed last episode!

V killed the black dragon's extended family. They, like she was before being recreated as undead, are in the afterlife now.

The black dragon was going to destroy the souls of 3 completely innocent people.

But yeah, killin a large swath of evil creatures surely puts her above Xykon's razing of a city and murder of an entire order of paladins. AmIRite???

[aarondirebear]

First: This. This is Willow flaying Warren evil.

Second: Please don't start flame wars about whether this is evil or not.

1. "Always" in alignment entries means with few exceptions. So while there may have been non-Evil Black Dragon relatives, it's by no means guaranteed. Likewise, it's not guaranteed that there were only Evil BD relatives.

2. Genocide is never acceptable for Good. Especially not when there's always a possiblity for redemption. Or the so-called "minority report".

1) Those exceptions always come in splatbooks with OTHER contradictions to the rules and lore. Show me a core source of exceptions to these rules that ISNT the book of exalted deeds. And for every theoretical neutral or good dragon, she killed 100x more guaranteed evil dragons.

2) So, you're saying that if given the opportunity, you wouldn't destroy a village of Vashar or Erinyes devils? Even if those Vashar or devils were planning to pillage a half-celestial village over the hill the very next day?

[chaosweasel]

Wow V not cool. Reminds me of:

"I didn't kill just one Husnock, or a hundred, or a thousand. I killed them all. All Husnock, everywhere."

obscure reference, I know

[AtomicKitKat]

1) Those exceptions always come in splatbooks with OTHER contradictions to the rules and lore. Show me a core source of exceptions to these rules that ISNT the book of exalted deeds. And for every theoretical neutral or good dragon, she killed 100x more guaranteed evil dragons.

Epic isn't core either. Besides which Rich's world, Rich's rules.


2) So, you're saying that if given the opportunity, you wouldn't destroy a village of Vashar or Erinyes devils? Even if those Vashar or devils were planning to pillage a half-celestial village over the hill the very next day?

I would only kill any obvious combatants. Non-obvious ones on a case by case basis. Killing the children accomplishes nothing(beyond the possiblity that they vow revenge).

Then again, I look at everything from the point of view of Balance. In this case, the spell was indiscriminate, killing even unborn eggs. Unless you think that just being born a member of an "always evil" race automatically makes one evil. It's never Nature OR Nurture. Majority of the time, it's both. And this is where I take my leave of this discussion, because any more and I fear I will just be repeating myself and getting stern reproofs.

[datalaughing]

Wow, did not expect V to pull a Kevin Uxbridge. Whatever, the Husnock black dragons were jerks and got what they deserved.

If V had spent 20 years with a high-level party of adventurers, hunting down 60+ dragons to take their hordes, and furthermore, they'd restricted their kills to black dragons, because they're always evil, no one would bat an eye. That's just normal adventurer stuff, perfectly acceptable, even admirable as the height of the good alignment even though they were just out to get rich. And even if the adventurers stomped a few eggs while they were there, it would just be for good measure, to make sure the job wasn't done halfway. Nothing wrong with that.

But when V does it all at once, not for personal gain but to protect family, it's the most evil act ever. If V had really done the killing for pleasure or just to torture the ABD further, why justify it as anything else? The family couldn't understand. The only people there were V, the ABD, and the spliced souls. Why make an excuse when there's no one there that you need to excuse yourself to?

[Lamech]

Holy crap V, Holy crap... I really hope Xykon doesn't have stuff like this lying around. That would be painful.

V certainly committed an evil act here. He risked killing people with only a bit of dragon blood who were not evil. He risked killing dragons who would never commit evil again and had retired somewhere. He risked killing a dragon that had become good or neutral.

Of course, this doesn't compare to the evil of Redcloak, Nale, or Xykon. They have all slaughtered countless people for evil reasons. Much worse than risking hurting a few innocents.

SoD
This is so much less bad than what the Sapphire guard did to Redcloak's village. They slaughtered a whole village of usually evils. V on the other hand slaughtered a family of always evils. That kind of makes them worse... (I suppose one could try to argue from a position of "greater good" and say neither V nor the Sapphire guard was evil.)
P.S. Half dragons have the same alignment as their dragon parent. So every person V killed on-panel had the always evil box checked.

[Porthos]

2) So, you're saying that if given the opportunity, you wouldn't destroy a village of Vashar or Erinyes devils? Even if those Vashar or devils were planning to pillage a half-celestial village over the hill the very next day?

Again, Evil killing Evil isn't Good. Or even Neutral.

Case in point, teh Blood War.

If one kills for evil and selfish reasons, then guess what? That act is, oh I dunno, evil.

IF V was doing this for pure and noble reasons, then we might and I stress might have a different debate. But he didn't. He did this for selfish and malicious reasons.

That is why it is evil. The fact that there may or may not (after all, what happens when Tiamat notices this nuke going off) good consequences doesn't make the act itself good. Or neutral. :smallwink:

[bluedolphin359]

That would be a quite interesting change of roles.

B: Varsaavius old friend you've gone too far this time...
V:Fool, no one can stop me now!
B: I won't let you harm any more inocents! (charges)
V:ARGHHH!(a billion contigency triggers and obliterate Belkar as V dies)

I would love this. LOVE this.

If nothing else, that would somewhat eliminate the chance of the souls abusing V while V is still alive.

[NeonRonin]

Ooooohhhkaayyyy...

I think V just got reclassified as an ICBM. An Intercontinental Bloodthirsty Magic-user. Killing off the entire Black Dragon subspecies because of the threat that ONE Black Dragon had posed to hir family? That's not just wrong, that's Mafioso wrong. V has just surpassed Vito and Michael Corleone, Tony Montana, Paul Cicero and Tony Soprano all at once. They only wiped out their opposition; Vaarsuvius just made a species extinct.

Excuse me, V, Dr. Evil is on Line 2, he wants some pointers. :smallannoyed:

[MickJay]

I wonder when the "Haley is a half-dragon!" crowd is gonna start sweating bullets...

...and here's the strip for reference: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0131.html :smallbiggrin:

[JJ48]

Why make an excuse when there's no one there that you need to excuse yourself to?

There IS someone there that he needs to excuse himself to. He needs to make the excuse to himself, to justify in his own head that the act was necessary. He KNOWS that what he's doing is evil, but the carnal part of him still WANTS to do it, so he's trying to justify it to allow it to happen. He has, in a sense, "abandoned reason for madness".

[aarondirebear]

1) Then again, I look at everything from the point of view of Balance. In this case, the spell was indiscriminate, killing even unborn eggs.

2) Unless you think that just being born a member of an "always evil" race automatically makes one evil. 2).

1)You mean the kind of balance thats SOOO important that you'd kill good creatures and spare evil ones in order to preserve some twisted, messed up ideal of balance? Allowing the gnolls to raze a village of elves for the sake of balance....bah when will you balance freaks realize that things like that are EVIL? Thuis is why the word balance really pisses me off. Oh and i'd like to point out they were black dragon hatchlings; intelligence 10 black dragon hatchlings already plotting their first evil schemes.

2) I don't think that, I know it. Vashar, demons, and chromatic dragons are always evil from the moment they are conceived.

[hamishspence]

Half dragons are not alweays of the alignment of the dragon parent- check Monster Manual.

Chromatic dragons can vary in the level of their evil, from "as malevolent as a fiend of hell" to the kind that has a truce with the neighbours, and is a potential ally against worse evils- check Draconomicon.

[sihnfahl]

Oh...my...Gods... That is absolutely EVIL right there. Is every single chromatic dragon dead now?!
No, just relations of the ABD.

Parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, cousins twice removed, cousins thrice removed, aunts, uncles, children of each...

[datalaughing]

There IS someone there that he needs to excuse himself to. He needs to make the excuse to himself, to justify in his own head that the act was necessary. He KNOWS that what he's doing is evil, but the carnal part of him still WANTS to do it, so he's trying to justify it to allow it to happen. He has, in a sense, "abandoned reason for madness".

If V's intent is what matters, which seems to be the argument for the "This is so evil" side, then the fact that s/he is justifying to hirself that the act isn't evil, would indicate that hir intent is not evil. If the intent was evil, there would be no need to justify it.

So is it the intent that makes the act evil or is it the nature of the act itself as you seem to be saying now? Because if intent doesn't matter, then killing tons of evil creatures is good. If intent IS what matters, then the fact that V isn't intending it as an evil act means that it's not.

[Ganurath]

My only objection to today's comic is that the name of the spell is deceptive. It should have been called Genocide.

[hamishspence]

if you go by BOED, a dubious intent can make any normally Good act into a neutral act, but no amount of good intentions will make an Evil act into a Neutral or better act.

Murder is an evil act, according to both BoVD, and FC2. While BoVD claims "slaying creatures of consummate, irredeemable evil is not murder" the half-dragons don't qualify for this, even if the chromatic dragons do.

And, since 3.5 came out, there have been non-evil, or only mildly evil, chromatic dragons described in various sources, from Draconomicon to Dragon magazine, not to mention the "no more evil than a selfish, monomaniacal old woman" red dragon Mist, in the D&D novel Azure Bonds.

[Meshakhad]

Did... did Dark V just render black dragons extinct?

I am officially declaring this her "Dark Willow flaying Warren" act, and predicting that a relatively weak member of the Order (probably Haley or Elan) will convince her to back down. The Dark Willow parallels are too strong.

Also, HOLY BOOP.

[Lunaya]

Really, when it comes down to it, do any of us know just how many blood relatives we really have? I can't even name all of my cousins in Arkansas and that's just my mother's side of the family.

I'm kinda scared to think of how many kilonazis V just earned.

[hamishspence]

it may be, that only family members within a certain closeness are affected. 15th cousins 10 times removed, or some similar distant connection, may not count as "family"

[M84]

Wow...just wow.

On the one hand, it's an unbelievable display of power, and it has at least guaranteed that no one else from the Black Dragon's family will try to avenge her (they're now too busy being dead). It was also pretty awesome, in the same way that a mushroom cloud is awesome.

On the other hand, there's no need to determine what alignment V is anymore; if making a deal with infernal powers (for what the comic all but screams was for all the wrong reasons) didn't already put him in the "Evil" camp, then killing every member of the mother Dragon's family tree due to the off-chance that one might try to seek revenge...makes him/her a little less sympathetic at least. If Black Dragons are always Evil in the way that Goblins and Hobgoblins are Always Evil in this setting (i.e. usually but not always Evil all the time), then V's actions are even worse.

It's also pretty stupid. Now every dragon V killed will have a huge grudge against V; it would only take one of them being revived as a Dracolich to endanger V's family again.

Not only is V going evil, he/she's not even being smart about it. Even Belkar is trying to be more subtle now.:smalleek:

At least we know that since V made a deal with infernal powers, all this is going to rebound on him/her hard.

[harami2000]

Well, at least V has made the world a better place. On average. Probably. :smallbiggrin:
*g*. Considering the fiends can call shots three times over as-and-when desired and at the very least, "force" Soul Splice and Familicide multiple lineages of good dragons on each occasion. Not that the game ain't larger than that, of course. :smalltongue:

Glad I'm not keeping the alignment book accounting on this one since unlike mortgaging a house where the terms are clear and failure to meet payment terms may lead to repossession, here that net result has already been freely yielded three times over. To voluntarily grant the ability to enact the three most evil acts one is capable of would be immediate red ink on the book IMC even before the music cued the action, since alignment is in the mind/soul as well as the actual deeds, and before those occur. (When has anyone in court put forth the defense that they were only evil /after/ they murdered someone?).

File for reference: this "selling the soul"/"rent-a-soul" lark is a rather larger deal in a high-magic world/multiverse.

d. :smallsmile:

[Particle_Man]

That last spell is downright chaotic evil.

I could see the evil part, but what makes it particularly chaotic?

[DreadArchon]

Lemme see... the Contact seed to contact related dragons (DC 23), +100 DC to contact the 100 closest related, the Slay seed to add 2d4 negative levels (DC 25), +80 DC to add 20d4 more negative levels, the Dispel Seed to dispel possible protections (19 DC), +20 to the dispel check for +20 DC.

So an Epic Spell that kills the 100 closest family members of the target (the target provides the required familiarity for the spell to work) has a base spellcraft DC of 267. A 30th level caster can easily get up to DC 100 with items/nonepic buffs/feats. So mitigating factors for -167 DC can be backlash 60d6 (-60), 10 minutes of preparation (-20), costly material component (a living or undead member of the family in question, ad hoc -7 DC), 8.000 XP cost (-80).

That is for a spell that is sure to kill even 40 HD creatures (via negative levels) even though they might have protections against death magic. A cheaper spell would use just a death effect and would not dispel possible protections.

Haha, well done.

[The Blackbird]

Please PLEASE! Tell me that, THAT comic ended all the "V is not evil he/she's neutral arguments!

[RandomEncounter]

He killed 62 Dragons at once, I counted.http://www.giantitp.com/forums/images/smilies/smallstick/smallbiggrin.gif Unless i misscounted

[Ruduen]

Just for those saying so:

Always evil does NOT mean a 100%, guaranteed, everything-in-this-is-evil rate. Don't know how well this will act as proof for some, but for me, this is confirmed by the epic spell Origin of the Species: Achaierai. See here: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/originOfSpeciesAchaierai.htm

The point I'd like to bring up is in its relatively short description. "A created achaierai does not possess the treasure, culture, or specific knowledge of a normal achaierai. If released to be among its own kind, it quickly picks up achaierai traits and alignment."

To me, that means that the alignment is at least partially classified under the culture of the species. In other words, it has very much to do with how the creature is brought up and raised, and having an "Always Evil" classification still isn't a guarantee, because the normal description of the species says that they ARE normally always evil.

As far as I'm concerned, that much killing with a supposed excuse of protection is rather strained, and it's a rather evil act. Even if it WAS guaranteed that all the targets were evil, it's hardly going to be a good act as far as I can see.

[hamishspence]

sadly no. Apparently, to some people, killing "always Evil" and even "usually evil" creatures (half dragons) is a good act, or the half dragons considered "acceptable collateral damage".

[Mortith]

I think every reader of OOTS had a moment of :smalleek:... Wow, I mean that's probably one of the most evil-aligned things I have ever seen a comic book character do, and the fact that one of the "good" characters was the one who did it makes it even more awsome.

I just cannot wait to see more of this comic now.:smallsmile: