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Chirios
2009-05-26, 03:11 PM
Seriously. For someone who doesn't like planning he really takes time out to protect himself and his facilities.

liooil2000
2009-05-26, 03:23 PM
Hello, Redcloak?

Ancalagon
2009-05-26, 03:24 PM
Xykon just does not like a certain level of planning and preparing. That does not mean he does not prepare to a certain level - and then stops because it simply does not matter anymore (in his opinion) to plan more.

But he's right: People underestimate him and think he is stupid because he does not care and does not *seem* to plan. He looks like a harmless, funny buffon (well, how kills a goblin here and there) but he's not that.

edit: Hehe, and yes, Redcloak is actually known to overplan things. ;)

shadzar
2009-05-26, 03:26 PM
Yeah, just give Xykon an entertaining reason to do something (pies filled with acid spitting beetles thrown into peoples faces) and he will do it.

Optimystik
2009-05-26, 03:51 PM
Yeah, just give Xykon an entertaining reason to do something (pies filled with acid spitting beetles thrown into peoples faces) and he will do it.

Technically, Redcloak did that...


Seriously. For someone who doesn't like planning he really takes time out to protect himself and his facilities.

If you mean the phylactery, that's one thing any lich would bend over backwards to protect. He doesn't have to be a tactical genius to know that warding it is a good idea, especially since he's already had to use it at least once.

NerfTW
2009-05-26, 03:57 PM
Xykon has a short attention span, but he's not an idiot.

"I'm just going to fly in and blast high level spells until everyone dies" does not necessarily mean
"I'm so scatter brained I'm not going to make sure that my phylactery is protected from being dropped on a hard surface, especially since we already had a close call with it months ago."

Also, he's stated that he's been finding ways to amuse himself since he can only craft magical items for eight hours a day. Which means he probably just created protection spells out of boredom.

shadzar
2009-05-26, 03:59 PM
Technically, Redcloak did that...

That was my point. RC can get Xykon to do things including planning when there is something in it for X.

Optimystik
2009-05-26, 04:05 PM
That was my point. RC can get Xykon to do things including planning when there is something in it for X.

Oh, you meant the planning. I thought you meant the pie itself. :smalltongue:

*whistles innocently*

Silverraptor
2009-05-26, 04:43 PM
Please don't confuse not knowing with not caring!

Dr.Desastro
2009-05-26, 04:47 PM
Sorry to mention this...can you be dumb AND an epic level spellcaster? Are there INT bonusses for being a lich? XP from years of evading death?
Maybe he has a small wisdom score? Or he is plain sadistic and likes his minions to despair. He does not live so maybe life (and all living creatures with their needs and thoughts) are a big joke for him. I wonder whether you get insane by becoming a lich...o.k., you had supremacy before...

shadzar
2009-05-26, 05:18 PM
I wonder whether you get insane by becoming a lich...

I tried telling people in other places that yes you do, but they wish to ignore the 3.5 MM.

"As a rule, these creatures are scheming, and some say, insane."

KingMerv00
2009-05-26, 05:28 PM
Sorry to mention this...can you be dumb AND an epic level spellcaster?

Liches get a +2 to Int. Not that it always matters. Bards, Clerics, Druids, Paladins, Rangers, and Sorcerers don't need intelligence to cast spells, epic or otherwise.

It would be pretty interesting to play an epic lich cleric with an intelligence of 5. :D

Mystic Muse
2009-05-26, 05:34 PM
I tried telling people in other places that yes you do, but they wish to ignore the 3.5 MM.

"As a rule, these creatures are scheming, and some say, insane."

notice that fact that the only part that is an actual rule of that is the scheming. it says people SAY they're insane

sanity is relative anyway.

and I wasn't aware that fudge was smart.:smalltongue:

Holammer
2009-05-26, 05:38 PM
Sorry to mention this...can you be dumb AND an epic level spellcaster? Are there INT bonusses for being a lich? XP from years of evading death?
Maybe he has a small wisdom score? Or he is plain sadistic and likes his minions to despair. He does not live so maybe life (and all living creatures with their needs and thoughts) are a big joke for him. I wonder whether you get insane by becoming a lich...o.k., you had supremacy before...

When he became a Lich he had +2 to INT/WIS/CHA but he was never the sharpest knife in the drawer to begin with.
Intelligence is hardly important for sorcerers like Xykon. Short story, for game mechanics sorcerers rely on charisma for their spells.

This is covered in extensive detail in the Start of Darkness book.

Shhalahr Windrider
2009-05-26, 05:43 PM
Are there INT bonusses for being a lich?
Yes. It seemed rather noticeable when Xykon was lichified in Start of Darkness, too.


XP from years of evading death?
Only if the lich is a PC (NPCs don't typically track XP, just levelling up when the DM says so) and if all those years provided significant challenges to provide the XP.


Maybe he has a small wisdom score?
Actually, Xykon seems to have the "Street Smarts" and "Willpower" aspects of Wisdom in spades. It's his Wisdom that people really underestimate all the time.

Also: Wisdom and Charisma both get boosts from becoming a Lich as well.


Or he is plain sadistic and likes his minions to despair.
Uh… yeah. Exactly.

bladesyz
2009-05-26, 05:45 PM
It's funny how people still think Xykon is dumb buffoon, and attributes all his successes to Redcloak, when the comic has demonstrated at every turn that Xykon is a lot smarter than people give him credit for.

Some people need to learn to look beyond the surface.

Murdim
2009-05-26, 06:03 PM
Well, Xykon got +3 Int/Wis/Cha from aging, AND +2 Int/Wis/Cha for becoming a lich. That means his mental abilities are at least 5 points higher than they were in his youth. Even if he had 7 in Intelligence and Wisdom in first place, he would end up with 12 in these stats. 7 is more-or-less the minimum in a mental ability for a non-mentally-challenged character. 12 is above-average, and high enough to give actual bonuses.

Kalbron
2009-05-26, 06:03 PM
I think possibly the main reason people struggle to understand Xykon is because his perception of time and reality have changed through his transition to unlife.

Sure, he may look like he's having fun all the time, but why not? Its not like he's going to die of natural causes at any point, so those days he spent dreaming up stupid & amusing tortures for O-Chul? In the scheme of things that's a pittance compared with how much time Xykon could "live" for.

NerfTW
2009-05-26, 06:12 PM
Please don't confuse not knowing with not caring!

Exactly.

We've seen time and time again that Xykon is not an idiot, most importantly in the finale to Start of Darkness. I cannot fathom how anyone can still argue that he's stupid. It's like arguing that Belkar isn't evil. There might have been some doubt early on, but there are plenty of instances since that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's perfectly capable of planning things out.

An Enemy Spy
2009-05-26, 06:13 PM
When you say Fudge, who do you mean? That guy from Harry Potter? He never seemed all that smart.

charl
2009-05-26, 07:00 PM
When you say Fudge, who do you mean? That guy from Harry Potter? He never seemed all that smart.

It's a PG-13 euphemism for another word that begins with F and is four letters long and references the act of human mating.

Prowl
2009-05-26, 07:08 PM
Good luck defining what 'sane' means to a lich.

Rainbownaga
2009-05-26, 07:18 PM
Bards, Clerics, Druids, Paladins, Rangers, and Sorcerers don't need intelligence to cast spells, epic or otherwise.

Wouldn't the int bonus come in handy making those spellcraft checks for epic level spells.

Admittedly with the crazy dc's and the stuff that's come out of char.op, i doubt a couple of ability points are going to make much of a difference

shadzar
2009-05-26, 07:24 PM
When you say Fudge, who do you mean? That guy from Harry Potter? He never seemed all that smart.

I think Cornelius Fudge and Xykon are close to the same competency level. For what that is worth.

Chronos
2009-05-26, 07:33 PM
It's funny how people still think Xykon is dumb buffoon, and attributes all his successes to Redcloak, when the comic has demonstrated at every turn that Xykon is a lot smarter than people give him credit for.Even granting that Xykon's no idiot, I do think that it's fair to say that Redcloak is smarter than him, and certainly wiser.

bladesyz
2009-05-26, 08:09 PM
Even granting that Xykon's no idiot, I do think that it's fair to say that Redcloak is smarter than him, and certainly wiser.

Very doubtful, unless you're just talking about D&D stats. Redcloak acts more cautiously than Xykon, so he comes off as being smarter and wiser.

However, you forget that Redcloak is a magnitude weaker than Xykon. An epic lich has power to throw around that a teen-level cleric can only dream about. Xykon acts more rash and reckless because he's got the power, and the smarts, to back it up.

Case in point, almost everyone thought O-Chul was going to destroy Xykon's phylactery. No one thought that Xykon would have warded it with magic.

wumpus
2009-05-26, 08:56 PM
I seem to remember that one of the critical parts of lichification is that you need to prepare a potion. You make it over a rather long time (standard Int buff spells aren't going to help), and make an Int check when you drink it. Make it and you're a lich. Fail and die.

I think these are TSR/WOTC rules, but am not certain. If Rich is "playing" with them, either X got lucky or could even do proper planing (and apply the needed buffs) before lichification

David Argall
2009-05-26, 09:01 PM
almost everyone thought O-Chul was going to destroy Xykon's phylactery. No one thought that Xykon would have warded it with magic.
Almost everyone thought O-Chul was going to try to destroy the phylactery. But a fairly large number of us felt he was going to fail. Since this was based on the feeling it was the wrong time and the wrong character to be destroying the phylactery, we didn't bother with the exact details of how he would fail. And the text description of a phylactery implies strongly that it has magical protections.

SadisticFishing
2009-05-26, 09:09 PM
I seem to remember that one of the critical parts of lichification is that you need to prepare a potion. You make it over a rather long time (standard Int buff spells aren't going to help), and make an Int check when you drink it. Make it and you're a lich. Fail and die.

I think these are TSR/WOTC rules, but am not certain. If Rich is "playing" with them, either X got lucky or could even do proper planing (and apply the needed buffs) before lichification

Not even a little bit in 3.5 :D

Xykon doesn't seem all that stupid, either. He's no wizard, but really, the difference between 14 int and 30 is that the 30 int character is better at math. 14 is enough to be extremely tactical.

shadzar
2009-05-26, 09:13 PM
I seem to remember that one of the critical parts of lichification is that you need to prepare a potion. You make it over a rather long time (standard Int buff spells aren't going to help), and make an Int check when you drink it. Make it and you're a lich. Fail and die.

I think these are TSR/WOTC rules, but am not certain. If Rich is "playing" with them, either X got lucky or could even do proper planing (and apply the needed buffs) before lichification

I know the potion is mentioned in Van Richten's Guide to the Lich. Called the Potion of Transformation.

shadowdemon_lord
2009-05-26, 09:58 PM
Xykon drank no potion to become a lich. But no, I would argue that RC has more wisdom then Xykon, and maybe more intelligence. Xykon didn't plan the assault on Azure City, RC did. Xykon sat around watching TiVO. RC is the kind of guy who would get promoted to be a leader, and at this point is the leader. Xykon has been relegated to the role of RC's trump card.

People underestimate Xykon because he's flippant, lazy, ADHD, and very easily amused. What they fail to understand is that Xykon is also exceedingly powerful, vicious, cunning, ruthless, and managed to live this long despite making enemies of basically anyone and everyone that has something he wants, up to and including RC.

glissle
2009-05-26, 10:19 PM
Xykon seems to have the "Street Smarts" and "Willpower" aspects of Wisdom in spades.

Per the SRD, liches have a huge +8 racial bonus on Sense Motive, Spot, and Listen checks, so he doesn't need a high Wisdom in order to be hard to fool.

This also means it might not be hard for Xykon to find the invisible V even without using magic, incidentally.

Interestingly, the SRD also says that liches have a skin & bones appearance, not just bones.

Real-life trivia from Wikipedia: Sokushinbutsu (即身仏) were Buddhist monks or priests who caused their own deaths in a way that resulted in their mummification.... For 1,000 days (a little less than three years) the priests would eat a special diet consisting only of nuts and seeds, while taking part in a regimen of rigorous physical activity that stripped them of their body fat. They then ate only bark and roots for another thousand days and began drinking a poisonous tea made from the sap of the Urushi tree, normally used to lacquer bowls. This caused vomiting and a rapid loss of bodily fluids, and most importantly, it made the body too poisonous to be eaten by maggots.

Duaneyo1
2009-05-26, 10:25 PM
Just like a post awhile back about his strength. X doesn’t have a character sheet but there is evidence to support that he has above normal strength and intelligence. He has shown several times that he has a devious intellect. He also has all time in the world to learn new things. Even if he can only stand to read 10 minutes at a time, He can afford to use the blow things up strategy because he is rarely in any danger. Plus just like the pc’s it’s bad for the story if they do everything 100% correct. Xykon as a super clichéd world ruling overlord wouldn’t make such a fun story.

Lord_Drayakir
2009-05-26, 10:35 PM
I've never thought of Zikon to be stupid. In fact, he's pretty damn intelligent for a Sorcerer. Think about it.

His overall plan speaks for itself. Your average villainous spellcaster, when he decides to take over the world, what does he do? He raises a huge army, gets to cast more spells, powers himself up, and so on. Think Voldemort, Emperor Palpatine, Ishmael (WoT), and so on. Cliche stuff.

Sykon, on the other hand, decided to use something that involves almost no energy investure from himself. He'll use a natural feature of the world (the Snarl) to take over it. That right there is smart planning. Not to mention his creative usage of the "Symbol" spell, his use of reverse psychology against the PCs, the gaining of a new strong ally (Tsukiko), and several other examples. He's anything BUT stupid.

I will agree that his Wisdom perhaps isn't that high- but we're talking about intelligence. And as a side-note, from the way he's portrayed... he doesn't seem to be very charismatic.

Kish
2009-05-26, 11:17 PM
How is it that you can spell Voldemort, Palpatine, and Tsukiko, but not Xykon?

SadisticFishing
2009-05-26, 11:27 PM
What!? He just DRIPS charisma. SHEER charisma. He is a magnificent bastard - just the silly sort. Still magnificent. Still a bastard.

Anyone know how to add links to text so I can send people at TvTropes? :D

JaxGaret
2009-05-27, 12:45 AM
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagnificentBastard

[URL="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagnificentBastard"]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagnificentBastard[/URL

and add a bracket at the end. Or click the button on the top that says "Insert Link".

SPoD
2009-05-27, 12:46 AM
I've never thought of Zikon to be stupid. In fact, he's pretty damn intelligent for a Sorcerer. Think about it.

His overall plan speaks for itself. Your average villainous spellcaster, when he decides to take over the world, what does he do? He raises a huge army, gets to cast more spells, powers himself up, and so on. Think Voldemort, Emperor Palpatine, Ishmael (WoT), and so on. Cliche stuff.

Sykon, on the other hand, decided to use something that involves almost no energy investure from himself. He'll use a natural feature of the world (the Snarl) to take over it. That right there is smart planning.

Except... (minor Start of Darkness spoiler):
...it's Redcloak's plan, not Xykon's. He more or less invented it, then recruited Xykon to go along with it because he needed a powerful arcane caster.

Lord_Drayakir
2009-05-27, 02:58 AM
Except... (minor Start of Darkness spoiler):
...it's Redcloak's plan, not Xykon's. He more or less invented it, then recruited Xykon to go along with it because he needed a powerful arcane caster.

Wait a mo's. I didn't read SoD, but what I garnered from the other spoilers and posts is that Psycon and Redcloak worked out the rituals, but RC intends to subvert it? Or am I wrong? In which case, my point still stands.


How is it that you can spell Voldemort, Palpatine, and Tsukiko, but not Xykon?

I'm bringing an old joke back, about how people would always mis-spell Xykon's name. Except I don't post enough to bring anything back, but eh...


What!? He just DRIPS charisma. SHEER charisma. He is a magnificent bastard - just the silly sort. Still magnificent. Still a bastard.

Anyone know how to add links to text so I can send people at TvTropes? :D

To be honest, I don't see it. I see him as a "blastermind" or perhaps a "blast-ificent blastard" because while I do see him as intelligent, he also has a lot of power which he uses rather intelligently. Kinda like Vetinari, from Discworld. Who is another person whom I do not see as charismatic. Maybe I'm missing a point here?

factotum
2009-05-27, 06:00 AM
Or am I wrong? In which case, my point still stands.


You are wrong. SoD spoilers:


The knowledge of how to control the Gates is Redcloak's, granted to him by the Crimson Mantle (an artifact of his god). In fact, he's misled Xykon as to what they can actually do--it will be the Dark One who has control of the gate, and his control will only amount to moving it somewhere else so the Snarl can attack through it; Xykon will not have any control whatsoever, which I doubt will please him any.

Optimystik
2009-05-27, 09:59 AM
I seem to remember that one of the critical parts of lichification is that you need to prepare a potion. You make it over a rather long time (standard Int buff spells aren't going to help), and make an Int check when you drink it. Make it and you're a lich. Fail and die.

I think these are TSR/WOTC rules, but am not certain. If Rich is "playing" with them, either X got lucky or could even do proper planing (and apply the needed buffs) before lichification

Libris Mortis doesn't have anything like that, and it's the most recent (3.5) authority on lichdom, AFAIK. All you need is Craft Wondrous Item, like the SRD says - It mentions neither the Brew Potion feat nor an INT requirement. In SoD, Redcloak mentions that it would be easy to craft the phylactery because all the mushrooms and bugs in Lirians organic prison "were like a pharmacy." If anyone did any potion-brewing, it was him.

Remember that we're already in houserule territory by having Redcloak do the brainwork for a phylactery that doesn't belong to him; Xykon's INT is unlikely to matter much at that point.

brilliantlight
2009-05-27, 11:38 AM
Libris Mortis doesn't have anything like that, and it's the most recent (3.5) authority on lichdom, AFAIK. All you need is Craft Wondrous Item, like the SRD says - It mentions neither the Brew Potion feat nor an INT requirement. In SoD, Redcloak mentions that it would be easy to craft the phylactery because all the mushrooms and bugs in Lirians organic prison "were like a pharmacy." If anyone did any potion-brewing, it was him.

Remember that we're already in houserule territory by having Redcloak do the brainwork for a phylactery that doesn't belong to him; Xykon's INT is unlikely to matter much at that point.

It is also possible that it only applies to the Ravenloft setting which would invalidate it another way. Ravenloft has always been a fairly modified AD&D game, no detecting good and evil for one thing.

Yoyoyo
2009-05-27, 11:42 AM
To be honest, I don't see it. I see him as a "blastermind" or perhaps a "blast-ificent blastard" because while I do see him as intelligent, he also has a lot of power which he uses rather intelligently. Kinda like Vetinari, from Discworld. Who is another person whom I do not see as charismatic. Maybe I'm missing a point here?


Xykon is very charismatic, note the rule exception for how one is percieved: "This ability represents actual strength of personality, not merely how one is perceived by others in a social setting."

Xykon's personality is virtually unstoppable (so are his spells) and he dominates a room like no other character in the strip. Yes, he is socially off putting to his minions, but that is keeping with his world view and off the charts charisma. It also may explain why he's so bored by others, they just don't bring it charismatically like he can or in a way that he likes. Like how Bobby Fisher played chess against himself as a teen because no one else was good enough to challenge him.

B. Dandelion
2009-05-27, 12:00 PM
I do not think Xykon is all that smart. I am even kind of frustrated that so many people -- possibly even the majority -- seem to think he is.

It's not that I think he's stupid. But almost every time people talk about how smart he supposedly is, they're using a relative value -- someone else's expectations. Which, as we've seen, have been pretty consistently low. He's definitely not as dumb as some people are quick to believe, but that's not really saying much. A kid who comes home with a D- from a class his family thought he would fail has "exceeded expectations." For this reason I think people wind up over-compensating against the perception of stupidity and merely create a new misconception that tilts in the opposite direction.

Although I'd see Xykon as bringing home something more like a C or a C+ against the expectations of failure. (B- maybe but we're pushing it.) He's creative and he acts decisively, which can make a huge amount of difference, especially if the people around him are of the more cerebral and vacillating sort. His weakness is in part his own ignorance -- unlike stupidity, ignorance can be cured, but Xykon doesn't fix his, which leads to idiocy like the business in the throne room where he wasted HOW many spells with a 50% miss chance? (see 459 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0459.html)) He's also somewhat easily distracted and doesn't prioritize things well, often putting his own immediate amusement above his medium- or long-term concerns, but I don't know that this is correctly called stupidity unless he would regret dying as a result. If it's all about the little things, really, maybe he wouldn't. But that sounds more like Belkar -- who, I'd like to point out, Roy (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0489.html) referred to as "clever in his own brain-damaged way" and Elan's genre-savvy perspective has been useful on occasion too, and we KNOW those two have low scores in Wisdom and Intelligence both. Xykon used to be that way, but I think his comments in recent strips indicate that he's changed.

The SoD line about not confusing caring with knowing is IMHO kinda... well, for one it'd be misleading if the audience is going to then assume Xykon knows EVERYTHING Redcloak's been keeping from him, or that him demonstrating indifference in the face of a lie means he knows that it is one but doesn't care, as opposed to just not caring either way. The first kind may demonstrate indulgence or superiority, the second kind demonstrates mere laziness and the lack of intellectual curiosity that is such a defining aspect of his character. It certainly doesn't mean that, even if it's conceivable that he knows he's being lied to, he's aware of the specific information that's being omitted. The very first question Xykon ever asked Redcloak was met with a lie -- he asked for Redcloak's name. Odds are good he knew "Redcloak" wasn't his real name but that doesn't mean he knew what that real name was.

For another, and we're getting into selective personal interpretation here I know, I think it was indicative of their personal relationship more than anything else. Xykon derides Redcloak's "nerd" tendencies with such frequency that it starts to look --to me-- like there's a certain unexpressed resentment going on. ("Just because sorcerers have no Knowledge skills doesn't mean you have to act like a high school science teacher.") Everything that Xykon is, he owes to Redcloak. It's his plan, it's his magic that made him a lich, it's even his army Xykon's currently sitting on top of. Furthermore, while Xykon could be replaced with any arcane caster, Redcloak's not interchangeable as the divine because he's the only person (that we know of so far) who knows the rituals. So Xykon needs him far more than the other way around, quite frankly Xykon's entire operation falls apart without Redcloak, and I think he's the kind of personality that would feel threatened or at the very least diminished by that. Throwing on top of it the fact that Redcloak is smarter than he is and he has the need not only to control him but demonstrate that Redcloak's intelligence can't be used to reverse their relative positions. So then it's about how Xykon has the bigger "balls" and he's eviller than thou and so on and so forth. He doesn't need to be incredibly smart, he doesn't need to be smarter than Redcloak, he just needs to be smart enough that his other strengths --and Redcloak's deficits-- can make up the difference.
I don't find him putting a bunch of spells on his phylactery to keep it shatter-resistant to be even remotely impressive. Come on, that's setting the bar... that's not setting the damn bar at all, you're leaving it on the ground and Xykon stepped over it. FLAWLESS VICTORY!! Uh, no.

Optimystik
2009-05-27, 01:59 PM
I don't find him putting a bunch of spells on his phylactery to keep it shatter-resistant to be even remotely impressive. Come on, that's setting the bar... that's not setting the damn bar at all, you're leaving it on the ground and Xykon stepped over it. FLAWLESS VICTORY!! Uh, no.

My point exactly, we've got people confusing basic survival instincts for a full-fledged Xanatos Gambit in this thread.

Kaytara
2009-05-27, 02:33 PM
I agree with Dandelion and Optimystik. The initial perception is that Zaikohn is dumb, so any evidence to the contrary is surprising enough that people completely overrate it and start hailing it as the peak of intelligence.

Like this example... So Zeye-con thought of heaping loads upon loads of defensive wards on his phylactery. Yet the fact that he freaked out at Soon's threat to it so much ("Redcloak! Stop waving that thing around and get out of here!") suggests that he had little protections on it back then beyond trusting that no one knew about it.
So yeah. He's been a Lich for years, and it takes an Epic-level ghost paladin nearly obliterating him and his plans once and for all for him to finally get a reality check and put some abjurations on it already.

It doesn't prove that Xicon is intelligent - at best, it proves that he isn't quite too stupid to, er, unlive. He's cunning, but if the situation becomes a puzzle rather than just something he can Energy Drain or Meteor Swarm his way through, he's lost without his lackeys giving him tactical advice.

(And incidentally, situations that he could NOT Energy Drain or Meteor Swarm his way through, like the silver dragon or the paladin ghosts? Both times, he survived by pure luck - a 3x critical scored by a goblin MOOK, and Miko's extremely convenient timing.)

Crossfiyah
2009-05-27, 03:27 PM
If we are to assume Xykon was born with a 10 in Int and Wis, which is, all things considered, average or slightly below it, he's at bear minimum a 15 in each.

It's reasonable to assume, being a powerful character in a world full of powerful characters, he probably has closer to a 16 or a 17 in each now.

That is not stupid. Not by any stretch of the means. If we are to assume 18 is peak human, he's a friggin genius.

B. Dandelion
2009-05-27, 04:06 PM
If we are to assume Xykon was born with a 10 in Int and Wis, which is, all things considered, average or slightly below it, he's at bear minimum a 15 in each.

Why would we assume that? In SoD we were immediately given evidence that he was below average and not insignificantly so. Not "dull normal" -- out-and-out dumb. I think that even Belkar (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0317.html) sets his sights higher. I mean, yeah, he got smarter after aging and then becoming a lich, but in life, he was STUPID.

Also, you can't be a bear (http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF037-Bear_Boy.gif). Although come to think of it, Xykon could well be that kid.
The word is "bare" and I'm not making fun of you for the typo, I just take any excuse to link to things like that because my sense of humor is completely warped


It's reasonable to assume, being a powerful character in a world full of powerful characters, he probably has closer to a 16 or a 17 in each now.

That is not stupid. Not by any stretch of the means. If we are to assume 18 is peak human, he's a friggin genius.

Oh, come on! I get how Xykon's cool and everything, but no. He's not. Demonstrably he is not, unless you want to dilute the meaning of the word "genius" to the point that being able to dress one's self in the morning and color inside the lines puts you on the fast track to Mensa.

Kish
2009-05-27, 04:17 PM
Yeah. For a first-level NPC a 10 in a stat is might be considered "average or slightly below it," but only if "slightly" means "0.5 points." Conversely, 18 is not "peak human," not in 3.anything; for a character Xykon's level 18 would be..."average or slightly below it."

Zombie Nixon
2009-05-27, 04:34 PM
Personally, it looks more like Xykon has decent intelligence but pretty poor wisdom

Cúchulainn
2009-05-27, 04:36 PM
Regardless of that, common sense is almost entirely forsaken for plot or gags, you can't judge a characters intelligence from that. The only way to pinpoint an intelligence score in this comic is to calculate spell slots or watch for clues; Roy appearing as a delicious roast and V being a (iirc) hamburger to the illithid doesn't mean he has a higher intelligence score because we know for a fact he doesn't. Smarter? Obviously yes. It's also evident that the wisdom score means much more to whether someone 'acts' smart, the only way I can justify V acting so stupid in the recent strips is a massive wisdom penalty from the splice, because having 3 of the most powerful magic users from you-know-where shackled to you means you're not lacking in intelligence.

Also Ziikon, Xikhan, Xylon, etc.

King of Nowhere
2009-05-27, 05:03 PM
I think Xykon is smart. Not dumb, not genius. Smart.
Probably he started with a penalty in int and cha and from aging and lich arrived at 13-14 (maybe he got a 10 in int ptherwise he couldn't have gotten all the skill points needed as prerequisite for epic spellcasting, but the story seems to point toward int penalty).
Xykon shows the level of cleverness I would expect from someone decently above average. He plans and can think his way out of big troubles, even if he's not showing a genius mind.




Like this example... So Zeye-con thought of heaping loads upon loads of defensive wards on his phylactery. Yet the fact that he freaked out at Soon's threat to it so much ("Redcloak! Stop waving that thing around and get out of here!") suggests that he had little protections on it back then beyond trusting that no one knew about it.
So yeah. He's been a Lich for years, and it takes an Epic-level ghost paladin nearly obliterating him and his plans once and for all for him to finally get a reality check and put some abjurations on it already.

I don't think Xykon didn't warded the phylactery before; but an epic level paladin may be able to smash it even with all the abiuration. If not, he may instruct the first human in the room in smashing the phylactery, and when this human fails because of the protection spells, call someone with the power to do so.
No protection is invulnerable. And with Redcloak dead, Xykon couldn't even regenerate; the phylactery would stand laying in the room, and when Xykon starts regenerating, SMITE EVIL! and Soon would shatter him again.



It doesn't prove that Xicon is intelligent - at best, it proves that he isn't quite too stupid to, er, unlive. He's cunning, but if the situation becomes a puzzle rather than just something he can Energy Drain or Meteor Swarm his way through, he's lost without his lackeys giving him tactical advice.

I think you're understimating him: the point of Xykon is exactly that he can puzzle a way when he can't meteor swarm something. He generally don't apply because he don't need it, but SoD shows that he can solve problems with wit if he's motivated enough to overcome his short attention span.


(And incidentally, situations that he could NOT Energy Drain or Meteor Swarm his way through, like the silver dragon or the paladin ghosts? Both times, he survived by pure luck - a 3x critical scored by a goblin MOOK, and Miko's extremely convenient timing.)

Well, that dragon was far more powerful than him, so it's not a matter of good tactic; out of luck, nothing would have worked.
Against the ghosts, not knowing the special qualities of some rare kind of creature is not stupidity, rather "not-being-nerd-ity". And, he figured a way: namely, "Redcloak! Get your green ass out of here!". It's just that Soon acted first. What should have Xykon done instead? Just because you lose against someone stronger than you, it don't mean you're stupid.

Optimystik
2009-05-27, 05:04 PM
Regardless of that, common sense is almost entirely forsaken for plot or gags, you can't judge a characters intelligence from that. The only way to pinpoint an intelligence score in this comic is to calculate spell slots or watch for clues; Roy appearing as a delicious roast and V being a (iirc) hamburger to the illithid doesn't mean he has a higher intelligence score because we know for a fact he doesn't. Smarter? Obviously yes. It's also evident that the wisdom score means much more to whether someone 'acts' smart, the only way I can justify V acting so stupid in the recent strips is a massive wisdom penalty from the splice, because having 3 of the most powerful magic users from you-know-where shackled to you means you're not lacking in intelligence.

The Giant has stated (and rightfully so) that Roy's brain looked so much more sumptuous than V's because his combination of Intelligence and Wisdom gives his mind more nutritional value than having just a high intelligence would.

V IS smarter than Roy, in a purely analytical sense. However, Roy has more common sense and perception, which is what wisdom represents. He's also not far behind V Int-wise, as OtOoPCs reveals.

Murdim
2009-05-27, 05:24 PM
Yeah. For a first-level NPC a 10 in a stat is might be considered "average or slightly below it," but only if "slightly" means "0.5 points." Conversely, 18 is not "peak human," not in 3.anything; for a character Xykon's level 18 would be..."average or slightly below it."If high-level characters have very high ability scores, that's because they are properly and legitimately superhuman, not because they need comparatively higher scores than lower-level ones to stay "average or better". Whichever level he is, a character with 14 in Intelligence will always be smarter than about 80% of the humanity and dumber than about 15%.

In return, while a level 30 guy with 17 in Intelligence is a genius by human standards, he clearly can't compete in the intellectual field with an optimised wizard of the same level (or even lower), who started as smart as he could be by normal human limits, and then specifically invested his bonus points to push his brain above these limits. That doesn't mean the former is not a genius anymore, just that real-life genius-level intellect isn't enough for an Intelligence-based character to be competitive at high levels.

All that text, just to say that the lich's above-average scores in Intelligence and Wisdom do make him, well, above-average intelligent and wise, no matter what outlandish scores can reach characters of the same level if they focus in one of these two stats.

That doesn't mean Xykon is able to pull a Xanatos Gambit, however. He neither has the smarts, nor the patience, nor the personnality to do this kind of thing. He is still a big improviser with a serious attention deficit, just... not dumb. Not dumb anymore, anyway, since he got this +5 total modifier from aging and "lichifying".

B. Dandelion
2009-05-27, 06:11 PM
Against the ghosts, not knowing the special qualities of some rare kind of creature is not stupidity, rather "not-being-nerd-ity".

Redcloak told him fire and lightning spells only had a 50% chance of working against incorporeal creatures -- you don't have to be a nerd to notice if the guy you're fighting is vaguely transparent and passes through solid substances. Redcloak had to be a nerd to figure out what they were to get HIS magic to work, Xykon shouldn't have. I actually would like to know how many spells he wasted in that throne room to complain about being nearly run out of slots -- he didn't use up many GETTING there. Also, even AFTER Redcloak told him fire and lightning was a crappy idea he was STILL firing off fire and lightning spells until Redcloak told him he'd have better luck with magic missile instead. Sheesh...

Kish
2009-05-27, 06:39 PM
Couldn't, unfortunately, find the old article by Rich where he talked about what he considers to implications of a Wisdom score in the 20s.



Probably he started with a penalty in int and cha
If Xykon's Charisma was any lower than 10 when he first appeared, he couldn't have cast even a cantrip. Only when he spells out which spell he's casting is it possible to derive from it a lower bound to his Charisma, but I doubt he ever had an average-or-below Charisma.

SadisticFishing
2009-05-27, 06:49 PM
Oh, I never said Xykon was good with people. He dominates the room, as another poster put it.

You NOTICE him. The dude's got presence, gotta give at least that to him!

On topic - intelligent, too lazy to use it. He knows that he doesn't need it. Charisma is also confidence - and he's oozing it. Overconfidence, some would say.. Those who wouldn't are wrong :P

King of Nowhere
2009-05-27, 06:58 PM
If Xykon's Charisma was any lower than 10 when he first appeared, he couldn't have cast even a cantrip. Only when he spells out which spell he's casting is it possible to derive from it a lower bound to his Charisma, but I doubt he ever had an average-or-below Charisma.

My bad, I meant "wis" instead of "cha". It's obvious that Xxykon started with a good charisma - probably 18.

On the other topic, was it really a bad idea to use fire and lightning against the spirits? Yes, it only has a 50% chance of affecting them, but given the area of effect, it still deal considerable damage. Magic missle is sure to hit, but it's just 5d4 + 5. We see Xykon using a lightning on 6 paladins, and three of them disappearing. A magic missle couldn't do that much damage, and was to be reserved against the leader.
The dialogue between him and Redcloak shows that Xykon's problem was that he didn't knew what kind of damage was effective against those things. Yes, he probably saw that lightning wasn't affecting all of them, but he didn't knew magic missle would work, and figured he was still dealing a considerable amount of damage.

Prak
2009-05-27, 06:59 PM
Sorry to mention this...can you be dumb AND an epic level spellcaster? Are there INT bonusses for being a lich? XP from years of evading death?
Maybe he has a small wisdom score? Or he is plain sadistic and likes his minions to despair. He does not live so maybe life (and all living creatures with their needs and thoughts) are a big joke for him. I wonder whether you get insane by becoming a lich...o.k., you had supremacy before...

yes, you can be. Xykon's a sorcerer, so his spells are based on Charisma, he can safely let his Int fall by the wayside, Lich only gives +2, and leveling doesn't increase Int unless you want it to. And yes, very frequently undeath makes one insane in one way or another.

B. Dandelion
2009-05-27, 08:15 PM
On the other topic, was it really a bad idea to use fire and lightning against the spirits? Yes, it only has a 50% chance of affecting them, but given the area of effect, it still deal considerable damage. Magic missle is sure to hit, but it's just 5d4 + 5. We see Xykon using a lightning on 6 paladins, and three of them disappearing. A magic missile couldn't do that much damage, and was to be reserved against the leader.

You may be right as far as strategy goes, it's probably unlikely I'd know much about it. My point though is that the knowledge Redcloak needed wasn't particularly obscure so I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that Xykon, a pure spellcaster, should have known which of HIS spells would be best. If he had reasoned that he was fighting efficiently with the somewhat limited resources he actually had on hand -- that'd be one thing. Sometimes all your options suck and a 50% miss chance starts to look like a steal at twice the price. But he didn't. He changed his tactics after Redcloak told him about magic missile. He just didn't know. He needed Redcloak to practically take him by the hand in order to cast his own spells the most effectively, even in a situation where his relative ignorance shouldn't have been a debilitating factor.


The dialogue between him and Redcloak shows that Xykon's problem was that he didn't knew what kind of damage was effective against those things. Yes, he probably saw that lightning wasn't affecting all of them, but he didn't knew magic missle would work, and figured he was still dealing a considerable amount of damage.

I think they might have done better against Soon had Xykon not been so wasteful with his spells. Of course I could be wrong. But that was my impression.

Berserk Monk
2009-05-27, 08:20 PM
Yes Xykon is as smart as fudge, the dessert, and not a cupcake smarter.

Zombie Nixon
2009-05-27, 08:25 PM
When did Xykon fight a silver dragon?

Kish
2009-05-27, 09:49 PM
Bonus page in No Cure for the Paladin Blues.

You can tell that he did in the online strip alone because he has a zombie silver dragon when attacking Azure City.

Mystic Muse
2009-05-27, 10:21 PM
people seem to be both over and underestimating Xykon. he's smart when he wants to be but is generally an idiot simple as that. there doesn't seem to be much here to actually discuss.

Trizap
2009-05-27, 10:30 PM
well first Xykon is a sorcerer.

therefore CHA is pretty much a given high.

also, Xykon seems pretty smart- he simply shattered Roy's sword, he had a good backup plan in case someone jumped onto his undead dragon and didn't die to his finger of death, there was also the bouncy ball of insanity which took out a bunch of paladins without him needing to cast a spell. then there was the time he got stuck in his phylactery where he started to become nice to his minions because he knew that he could be destroyed if he kept up the mean facade.

and then there was Xykon's commentary on those messenger orbs of the Azure city watchtowers, saying how they should have put them in different places in every tower instead of the same place every time. and he was easily able to beat V when he was just as powerful as Xykon himself

so that pretty much tells me Xykon has like mid-level int and wisdom, being smart enough to be practical and have common sense (clearly more than V has) and pretty much fight smart and be prepared but not enough to plan for every contingency and such, so Xykon pretty much comes from the Indy Ploy school of thought by just improvising and adapting to the situation
to the best of your ability rather than plan everything out, but then again, Xykon is Chaotic Evil, you wouldn't expect him to be a real big planner with that alignment, even if he was smarter, take a look at V, he/she clearly has an Int of 18 and yet was chaotic neutral and now chaotic evil, meaning V is even SMARTER than Xykon yet look where V is now......

Ancalagon
2009-05-28, 03:17 AM
Hrm... again, the general confusion seems to revolve around this mis-interpretation:
"Not dumb = very, very smart"

Which is plainly wrong.

Xykon is not dumb but that does not make him super-smart. As if people who are "averagely smart" or even "a bit above average" could not come up with cool and fitting ideas until they have int/wis 16+.

Xykon started out "dumb as bread" and ended up in average or probably somewhat above-average scores. Do not confuse that he has a few fitting ideas once in a while as "super-smart".

Kornaki
2009-05-30, 02:53 PM
Yes, Xykon is so smart he takes every possibility into account. Even the invisible wizard reviving the paladin