Eugene vs. Xykon

[TheCoolThatguy]

I'm not that familiar with D&D rules, so I was wondering about somethin'.

Eugene's specialty with magic seems to be illusions. In terms of offensive power, that doesn't seem especially useful, yet he's always ragging on his son about his inability to be Xykon without magic. Illusions don't seem to be to be anymore effective against a Lich than a big metal sword.

Would Eugene's class give him other equally powerful abilities, or what?

[SadisticFishing]

Wizards always have a lot of different spells they can cast - even an illusionist can do some cool, damagey things. He could also possible counterspell.

Good point though, most of the real Illusions that are painful are Mind-Effecting, if I remember right.

[RMS Oceanic]

It kinda depends on what other schools he's barred. As far as I know, though, Illusions are generally not that useful against intelligent undead, so his specialty wouldn't help very much.

I totally agree with you, Eugene wouldn't have lasted much longer against Xykon than Roy did.

[Tempest Fennac]

It largely depends on his other spells; we know he has access to Transmutation from SoD and the comic where he was ranting about the sword being useless and if he can still cast Teleport, that suggests he didn't bar Conjuration. Transmutation would provide Eugene with Disintigrate and he could learn the Orb spells as well as some other powerful battlefield control spells (such as Black Tentacles), as well as summons,if he has access to Conjuration). On the other hand, to our knowledge, he's no higher then level 11 (Eugene used Perminant Image to create the illusionary Belkar), which would put him way below Xykon's current power level, and, based on the spells we've seen him use, he may have only ever bothered with learning utility spells (the report-burning suggests he has at least 1 combar spell, though).

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Just because a wizard specializes in Illusion doesn't mean he can only use illusions, but even if he were limited to illusions he could use them to good effect by concealing himself against Xykon's minions to get to him and using Shadow illusions (partially-real illusions) to duplicate Conjuration and Evocation spells at reduced effect.

Keep in mind also that he's saying Roy should have become a magic-user, not that Eugene's magic is what's needed. Just because Eugene specialized in Illusion doesn't mean Roy wouldn't have gone with some other school--or more likely would have gone with another school because Eugene likes illusions.

[Undead Prince]

I'm not that familiar with D&D rules, so I was wondering about somethin'.

Eugene's specialty with magic seems to be illusions. In terms of offensive power, that doesn't seem especially useful, yet he's always ragging on his son about his inability to be Xykon without magic. Illusions don't seem to be to be anymore effective against a Lich than a big metal sword.

Would Eugene's class give him other equally powerful abilities, or what?

Eugene's class gives him any number of enormously powerful abilities. And I'm not even going into prestige classes open to a Wizard.

His specialty in the Illusion School merely means that one of his prepared spells for each spell level has to be an Illusion spell. Basically, that's it. Considering that even an unoptimized Wizard of Eugene's approximate level gets from 3 to 7 spell slots for each of his spell levels, this limitation is largely irrelevant.

He also has to give up access to 2 out of the remaining 6 Schools. But that's true for any specialist wizard, and he can choose any 2 Schools to bar.

As to the usefulness of Illusion spells against a lich sorcerer, normally not so much, but Xykon sure made a fool of himself against V's Invisibility, so it might come quite handy when facing an opponent who never bothered to imbue himself with a (readily available) power of seeing through illusions.

Against regular undead, particularly of the mindless variety, illusions can be quite effective. Mindless undead, AFAIK, can't ever "disbelieve" illlusions and rarely have any means of seeing through the glamers (such as Invisibility or Project Image), so are often easily fooled.

[Random832]

He also has to give up access to 2 out of the remaining 6 Schools. But that's true for any specialist wizard, and he can choose any 2 Schools to bar.

3.0 illusionists only need one prohibited school of Abjuration, Conjuration, Enchantment, Evocation, or Transmutation; or both Divination and Necromancy. We know that V didn't change prohibited school (from Conjuration, one of the two one-prohibited-school choices available to 3.0 evokers) in the edition conversion, and Eugene died before the conversion anyway.

If he's old enough and if this is applicable, 2nd edition illusionists had three prohibited schools: Necromancy, Evocation, and Abjuration.

[Lukraak]

I'd personally suspect Eugene would not be all that good against Xykon.
From what we can gather from the stories he's spent most of his life doing more research wizardry than anything truly combat based.
Yes, there was the time where he hunted Xykon, and he probably has some reasonably combat related spells from there, but both the main story and the extra books suggest that was only a short period in his life, after which he went back to his passion of being a lab-wizard.
So if anything he's optimized to deal with fellow illusionists in inter-wizard competitions and his spell lists/feats will be geared towards other things than 'fighting to the death' that combat wizards take.

Kinda like some academics might be experts on all kinds of military tactics, but that doesnt mean you want them on the actual battlefield.

[Optimystik]

I doubt Eugene was 2e, since Sorcerers didn't exist back then and Xykon was born quite a bit before he was.

As for whether he was 3e or 3.5, that depends on whether the joke in issue 1/Origin was a prevailing state of affairs or just a throwaway. If he WAS 3e, then he could have banned conjuration since Teleport was Transmutation back then.

[Random832]

I doubt Eugene was 2e, since Sorcerers didn't exist back then and Xykon was born quite a bit before he was.

Didn't Baldur's Gate have a 2e Sorcerer class?

[Optimystik]

Didn't Baldur's Gate have a 2e Sorcerer class?

Baldur's Gate was under 2e rules, but was released after 3.0 came out. Sorcerers were added as a specific exception, and noted as such in the game's manual.

[FeAnPi]

Euguene can cast conjuration spells, apparently (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0601.html).

And conjuration is a good fighting school, after all.

[Optimystik]

Euguene can cast conjuration spells, apparently (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0601.html).

And conjuration is a good fighting school, after all.

Those could be shadow conjurations - After all, Roy's will save isn't likely to be nearly high enough to overcome his father's spells.

[FeAnPi]

You may be right... or maybe I am. We'll see... or we'll never see, who knows.

[Inhuman Bot]

From what we can gather from the stories he's spent most of his life doing more research wizardry than anything truly combat based.

In start of darkness, he was shown to have been adventuring, and said he had done so for several years before he had given up trying to destroy Xykon.

[Red XIV]

In start of darkness, he was shown to have been adventuring, and said he had done so for several years before he had given up trying to destroy Xykon.
And I seem to recall it being mentioned that Eugene died and was raised several times before his final death. While it's obviously quite possible for non-adventurers to die by non-natural means, it's surely pretty rare for non-adventurers to die numerous times.

[Faceist]

At least one of his deaths, as mentioned during the appearance of Eric, was due to dangerous magical experimentation. It's not illogical to assume this was not an isolated incident.

[King of Nowhere]

We know for sure, because Roy mention it in otoopc, that Eugene was barred from divination. I don't think we know his other barred school, but it still leaves plenty of room for offensive.



As to the usefulness of Illusion spells against a lich sorcerer, normally not so much, but Xykon sure made a fool of himself against V's Invisibility, so it might come quite handy when facing an opponent who never bothered to imbue himself with a (readily available) power of seeing through illusions.


Knowing Xykon, it is fully possible that he was having fun with V, knowing he was no longer a threath, and didn't use something anti invisibility for that reason. I find very unlikely that an epic sorceror don't have anything against invisibility.

[Random832]

We know for sure, because Roy mention it in otoopc, that Eugene was barred from divination. I don't think we know his other barred school

As mentioned, under 3.0 rules, it'd be necromancy. And it has to be under 3.0 rules, because 3.5 doesn't allow you to bar divination.

I would've thought he would need divination to do the scrying thing up in Celestia - i guess Epic InsideTM circumvents that.

[alegollama]

I suppose he can also create the image of something (as shown here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0267.html)) that would just startle his enemy into falling off a conveniently placed cliff..:smalltongue:

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I would've thought he would need divination to do the scrying thing up in Celestia - i guess Epic InsideTM circumvents that.

He doesn't need to be able to personally cast that, though; it could easily be a property of the plane, a spell-like ability granted by an outsider, or some other non-spell divination--particularly since we don't know (or at least, I don't know if we know) whether he's epic level, and if not it wouldn't be him casting it anyway. Or he could take one of the abilities that let you cast something from your barred schools.

[Random832]

He doesn't need to be able to personally cast that, though; it could easily be a property of the plane, a spell-like ability granted by an outsider, or some other non-spell divination--particularly since we don't know (or at least, I don't know if we know) whether he's epic level, and if not it wouldn't be him casting it anyway. Or he could take one of the abilities that let you cast something from your barred schools.

I assumed you had to cast it yourself but the clouds acted as a sort of focusing lens that jacks the spell's effective caster level up a by a few dozen points. If the plane does it all itself, why can't Roy's Archon do it?

My other guess was that it's like a wand - which also wouldn't let Eugene use it.

[gibbo88]

Well, wouldn't it have to be something else apart from the clouds that let you do it, otherwise Roy would have been able to do it straight away, and Eugene was scrying on them pretty much the entire time from when he found out there was no "infinite one night stands" for him.

I always assumed there was a big ol' booster to caster level for the clouds themselves?

[Red XIV]

I suppose he can also create the image of something (as shown here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0267.html)) that would just startle his enemy into falling off a conveniently placed cliff..:smalltongue:
And maybe hide the actual position of the cliff, so they think they're stepping onto solid ground until they fall through. :smallbiggrin:

You can do some nasty stuff with illusions if you're creative.

[Assassin89]

And maybe hide the actual position of the cliff, so they think they're stepping onto solid ground until they fall through. :smallbiggrin:

You can do some nasty stuff with illusions if you're creative.

Factor one: Xykon knows overland flight, meaning no falling through for Xykon.
Factor two: Eugene could still be attacked by Xykon's minions
Factor three: Meteor Swarm

[Optimystik]

He doesn't need to be able to personally cast that, though; it could easily be a property of the plane, a spell-like ability granted by an outsider, or some other non-spell divination--particularly since we don't know (or at least, I don't know if we know) whether he's epic level, and if not it wouldn't be him casting it anyway. Or he could take one of the abilities that let you cast something from your barred schools.

Even off the cloud he can cast (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0292.html) divinations. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/DetectScrying.htm) The simplest explanation is that Roy was wrong (or more accurately, that he was right - technically, he said his father didn't bar Divination.) My money is on no, Divination wasn't a barred school.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Even off the cloud he can cast (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0292.html) divinations. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/DetectScrying.htm) The simplest explanation is that Roy was wrong (or more accurately, that he was right - technically, he said his father didn't bar Divination.) My money is on no, Divination wasn't a barred school.

Good point--I'd forgotten about those instances. The point still stands that a wizard can get around his barred schools if he really wants to, though.