OOTS #1177 - The Discussion Thread

[danielxcutter]

Who says Haerta was in the 30s? Familicide is pretty much DM-fiat, and remember, the archfiends' saying that a triple-Spliced V would be the strongest arcanist in history... means with all three Soul Splices. That doesn't even count as deception; it's not like they specifically planned that V would lose Haerta a bit before fighting Xykon or something after all.

[factotum]

Who says Haerta was in the 30s? Familicide is pretty much DM-fiat, and remember, the archfiends' saying that a triple-Spliced V would be the strongest arcanist in history... means with all three Soul Splices.

Er, yes, so Haerta plus two other people is more powerful than Haerta alone. That doesn't tell us anything about how powerful Haerta was on her own--she could have been two or three times the level of the others and everything we saw would have happened exactly as it did.

[danielxcutter]

Er, yes, so Haerta plus two other people is more powerful than Haerta alone. That doesn't tell us anything about how powerful Haerta was on her own--she could have been two or three times the level of the others and everything we saw would have happened exactly as it did.

I'm not saying she couldn't have been that powerful. I'm saying there's no real proof either way.

[Squire Doodad]

All 3 are epic; all 3 plus a level teen wizard becomes a ludicrously powerful mage. The thing is, the minimum levels of the splice itself is level 60, meaning that even if they were all barely Epic they still would have vastly more power than anyone else around regardless of Vs level. Of course, this isn't the sheer power a level 70 something character would have, but the "strongest mage ever" bit is probably completely accurate.

[Emanick]

I'm not saying she couldn't have been that powerful. I'm saying there's no real proof either way.

According to the fiends in #641, Haerta "was the most powerful of the three by a fair bit." And given the DC for casting a spell that slays that many people, I don't think it's plausible that she was anywhere close to level 21 anyway.

[D.One]

As Thor points out to Loki in this last strip, maybe Haerta, albeit stronger than the other two, wouldn't add that much firepower against Xykon, given many of her Necromancy spells might be innefective agains an undead (except, maybe, for some undead controlling/destroying uberspell).
(It's nice when the derailing stays within OotS :-))

[danielxcutter]

All 3 are epic; all 3 plus a level teen wizard becomes a ludicrously powerful mage. The thing is, the minimum levels of the splice itself is level 60, meaning that even if they were all barely Epic they still would have vastly more power than anyone else around regardless of Vs level. Of course, this isn't the sheer power a level 70 something character would have, but the "strongest mage ever" bit is probably completely accurate.

...no, levels don't work like that. Why do people think that triple-spliced V's caster level would be the sum of all four mages?

[Schroeswald]

...no, levels don't work like that. Why do people think that triple-spliced V's caster level would be the sum of all four mages?

Because its a reasonable assumption? Why wouldn't it? (I presume this is from RAW of which I know nothing of so I imagine you are correct)

[Squire Doodad]

...no, levels don't work like that. Why do people think that triple-spliced V's caster level would be the sum of all four mages?

Um, not the caster level, but the effective level of the entity? There's probably difficulties with barred schools and what not, but wouldn't the level of the being be the sum of the levels that compose it, assuming there isn't a specific rule in place? (I was under the impression that the Soul Splicing was highly homebrewed).

Like, if you have a level 15 fighter, and you SS 2 level 25 fighters to them, wouldn't it be a level 65 fighter? There are differences with skills and feats and stuff, but the fighter is still a level 65 fighter, right?

[Snuffbear]

Because its a reasonable assumption? Why wouldn't it? (I presume this is from RAW of which I know nothing of so I imagine you are correct)

I don't know about RAW, but it seems like that might be an overpowered way of determining "net level": splicing together 18 first-level wizards wouldn't net an 18-level wizard, I wouldn't think :)

If I were DM'ing the situation, I would say soul-splice would result in a level equal to the sum of the experience points of the various splicees ... that might still be overpowered but not AS overpowered

[Emanick]

Um, not the caster level, but the effective level of the entity? There's probably difficulties with barred schools and what not, but wouldn't the level of the being be the sum of the levels that compose it, assuming there isn't a specific rule in place? (I was under the impression that the Soul Splicing was highly homebrewed).

Like, if you have a level 15 fighter, and you SS 2 level 25 fighters to them, wouldn't it be a level 65 fighter? There are differences with skills and feats and stuff, but the fighter is still a level 65 fighter, right?

Obviously, there are no actual rules for this sort of thing, so we can't definitively say how it works. But I don't think it should work that way.

If you multiclass, even if it's into a poor build, you at least get hit points, skill ranks, feats and saving throw advancement when you get those new class levels. V didn't get any of those when s/he received the Soul Spice. So I don't think it makes sense to give hir the same Effective Character Level as a level 14 wizard who also added like 25 levels in sorcerer, 30 in wizard and 25 in whatever the heck Jephton the Unholy was (I don't really remember and can't be bothered to check).

You might say that only the spells really matter, but obviously hit points and saving throws can make a big difference, as do ranks in Concentration. So I don't really know how to eyeball V's ECL while Spliced. I think Snuffbear's idea for handling it makes as much sense as anything else.

[georgie_leech]

5e has a system where you calculate overall CR based on both effective Offensive CR and effective Defensive CR. In this case, having all the spellslots of several Epic casters would inflate the CR a lot because of the offense, but the Defensive CR of an mid-level elven wizard would seriously drag it down.
I'd have to dive into the Class and Geekery thread for actual numbers, but eyeballing it... somewhere between high 20''s and mid 30''s, depending on the specific spells available. Immediately squashed way down after that first level drain.

3e has nothing like this sort of system of course, and Soul Splice is effectively Homebrew, so none of this is RAW of course.

[Squire Doodad]

Obviously, there are no actual rules for this sort of thing, so we can't definitively say how it works. But I don't think it should work that way.

If you multiclass, even if it's into a poor build, you at least get hit points, skill ranks, feats and saving throw advancement when you get those new class levels. V didn't get any of those when s/he received the Soul Spice. So I don't think it makes sense to give hir the same Effective Character Level as a level 14 wizard who also added like 25 levels in sorcerer, 30 in wizard and 25 in whatever the heck Jephton the Unholy was (I don't really remember and can't be bothered to check).

You might say that only the spells really matter, but obviously hit points and saving throws can make a big difference, as do ranks in Concentration. So I don't really know how to eyeball V's ECL while Spliced. I think Snuffbear's idea for handling it makes as much sense as anything else.

Okay, I threw around the wrong word there.

[Particle_Man]

And this is the world of "self-aware parody stick figures" so they could realize that they are the first generation without their brains imploding.

As for elves, I wonder how many live long enough to die of old age?

Why would anybody’s brain implode by virtue of being the first generation? That would be what’s normal for them.

I worded it poorly. If they were the first generation, and they were given enough false memories (of previous people existing) that they did not know that they were the first generation, then there is a possibility of cognitive dissonance upon any of them finding out that they were, in fact, the first generation. It would be a little like you finding out right now, definitively, that the universe was, in fact, created five minutes ago, complete with false memories and false "evidence" (from fossils to film footage).

But if they are self-aware parody stick figures they could humorously refer to the false memories *as* false memories from day 1, and treat it as one more joke for a strip, and thus be aware from the start that they are the first generation, just with false memories of earlier generations. A little like the Neil Gaiman character Death in Death: The High Cost of Living referring to the cute photos of her human family (that did not actually exist, but the universe created photos of them, just because).

[goodpeople25]

Don't the Gestalt rules give at least a rules baseline for the soul splice?

[Resileaf]

The fiends state that V's effective level is too high to get experience off anything they kill during the soul splice. Seems to me like the levels are additive.

[mjasghar]

The closest example is various cooperative magics
Of the top of my head I recall the FR high elven rituals and maybe stuff from Netheril campaign
To put it simply it’s not purely additive - lower mages can add lower level spell slots which can be used to lower spell DCs

[Doug Lampert]

The fiends state that V's effective level is too high to get experience off anything they kill during the soul splice. Seems to me like the levels are additive.

For earning XP, almost certainly it's simply additive and V's ECL is the sum of all the involved levels, why would a fiendish deal be a better deal than the worst reasonable interpretation?

But in terms of actual power, the V has hir own defenses, and the single strongest offensive action V take in any round will be something that one of the individual casters could manage as an individual. As a practical matter, V's offense will be only very slightly more powerful than the strongest single character (at best).

Darth-V probably wasn't even as strong as Hereta alone had been in life, because he lacked her defenses and gear and his best attacks were largely to let her cast a spell for him. But V had "more arcane power" in some sense (mostly in that V had more slots).

[Emanick]

The fiends state that V's effective level is too high to get experience off anything they kill during the soul splice. Seems to me like the levels are additive.

Not necessarily. Pretty much any sensible system for calculating Soul Splice ECL that I can think of would result in a situation where V's effective level is too high to gain XP from even Xykon.

For earning XP, almost certainly it's simply additive and V's ECL is the sum of all the involved levels, why would a fiendish deal be a better deal than the worst reasonable interpretation?

You might be right, but I don't think the fiends would get to decide how XP or ECL was calculated. That's up to either the gods or the basic physics of the multiverse.

In other words, while the fiends are certainly ill-intentioned, I don't think that has anything to do with how XP would be calculated.

[RatElemental]

Darth-V probably wasn't even as strong as Hereta alone had been in life, because he lacked her defenses and gear and his best attacks were largely to let her cast a spell for him. But V had "more arcane power" in some sense (mostly in that V had more slots).

Possible support for this exists in the comic.

"Your soul shenanigans are real flashy, but they had one weakness: they were shackled to your lame mid-level ass!"

[factotum]

Another thing that might give the soul splice more offensive capability is that the four components of it are individual people and you'd think they could all cast spells simultaneously, thus quadrupling their effective actions per round. The fact Darth V still used Time Stop to set up their buffs when fighting the ABD suggests against that, mind you.

[Ruck]

As Thor points out to Loki in this last strip, maybe Haerta, albeit stronger than the other two, wouldn't add that much firepower against Xykon, given many of her Necromancy spells might be innefective agains an undead (except, maybe, for some undead controlling/destroying uberspell).
(It's nice when the derailing stays within OotS :-))

Did I miss something last strip or is this a joke?

[ijuinkun]

In a large enough world with plenty of migration, yes, Familicide doesn't finish the job. In a smaller world, for instance one with tightly-knit tribal clans, it'd wipe them off the map, like, yknow, what happened in-comic to the Draketooths. For Emperors and Kings, it'd be a horror show, especially if the 'target survives' clause is true (as someone stated, sample size of 1 isn't big enough to know the exact details); then you'd get Scar making deals with Haerta to wipe out Mufasa, Simba, and possibly every other lion on Pride Rock.

In a world with lots of international travel, and in which royalty heavily intermarries with foreign royalty (like in our world's Europe), Familicide could possibly wipe out all royalty of all major world powers simultaneously. Good news for any powerful Republics which are ready to conquer the now-vulnerable countries . . .

[Cerlis]

you just have to pay attention to the rest of the rules. (some things i'm making up here because i dont have time to get all the specifics)

a trex is like CR7, an ogre mage is basically a trex thats size smaller but with multiple spells equivalent to a spellcaster of half its levels, and its only a few crs. meanwhile a Trex is only a few CRs higher than other large animals like a tiger with the same hitdice because the only advantage it has is its size modifier which directly benefits its combat ability (i.e. improved grab and swallow whole meants it can dispose of creatures as a free action while using its main form of attack utilizing its greatest strenght, its str and size modifier to grapples)

a lvl 18 mage can duplicate almost any spell with that high lvl wish spell, an epic level caster can do things like 20d6 of dmg, perfect teleportation, or bringing back the dead in a few minutes perfectly (as opposed to several minutes). So while V's CR is GREATLY increased by the epic level magic, its not that much more increased by the additional splices. a 26th lvl mage who can cast spells like familicide's power isnt that much greater just because they can also cast a bunch of lower level magic that is made moot by a single epic level spell.

So just like a trex's CR doesnt go up much if you give it imp trip (since its high cr is based around grappling, meaning the bonus to str applies to both, it cant really use both attacks at the same time, and the danger is in losing a single role) So too does a lvl 26 ish epic lvl caster's challenge rating would only go up a few since it can cast 6 disentigrates and superb dispelling or whatever. while a single splice triples the dangerous things V can do, an Additional weaker splice might only increase the things spliced V can do by 30% and a 3rd splice....frankly its good V had things like sudden metamagic feats and already prepared metamagic because it would take them half a day to cast all their spells. And even if thats dramatic the point is that you can at most cast 2 spells per round, save timestop, which itself is limited, meaning it doesnt matter if V has 50 spells or 500 other than the increased options the additional spells dont help V at all.

thats why a few spells greatly increase any characters power level. thats why the mytic theurge character's only real advantage is spell slots, thats why an epic level caster only has to be a few lvls higher than a non epic lvl to breach the line between "physics killing spells" and "reality killing spells" and thats why in official 3.5 rules Gods who can cast dozens of spells at will, are immune to damage, regenerate instantly, and have omnicience within their domain are only like... lvl 60. a mortal is "unto a god" at lvl 20. a mortal is ACTUALLY comparable to what mortals would think of as a god at lvl 30 and a mortal is basically a low lvl god at 40.

No V isnt lvl 60 cus as that person said thats not how lvls work. beyond lvl 25 or so each additional spell and metamagic feat increases their power rating bya hundredth of a CR, And V's power rating is greatly decreased by having a mid lvl wizards attack bonus, saves, skills and HP.

and of course thats not how hit dice works either. it didnt for V, who had an abysmal save and HP, who got over this in the fight with the dragon with a shape shange (which regenerates) and defensive spells. V gets alot of benefit due to the additional spells. A fighter that got spliced with 2 fighters would be a fighter with a few additional CR added to them. their +hit is tied to their hit dice, so is their saves. all they'd get would be additional feats and any special abilities. a fighter that had a single epic lvl caster grafted to them would have great CR jump because suddenly that challenge rating 20 creature can cast 30 or so spells half of which could end the encounter immediately. Thats the hting about high CR encounters is they can do things like instantly kill you, mind control you, send you to another plane which could instantly kill you.

p.s. bringing up that its made up and thus anything goes is just redundant. We all know this.

[The Pilgrim]

I think the best way to approximate Darth V's Challenge Rating would be to calculate what the CR would be for a wizard of V's level, loaded with a ton of arcane spell scrolls of all levels up to Epic ones (epic spell scrolls do not exist, but you get the idea).

[D.One]

Did I miss something last strip or is this a joke?

"There's a chance of one-in-a-million of it being a joke"

[Doug Lampert]

In a world with lots of international travel, and in which royalty heavily intermarries with foreign royalty (like in our world's Europe), Familicide could possibly wipe out all royalty of all major world powers simultaneously. Good news for any powerful Republics which are ready to conquer the now-vulnerable countries . . .

In a world like ours, Familicide gets every living thing. All of them. Maybe the plants and bacteria get off by claiming not to be part of a bloodline or something. Maybe viruses dodge by claiming not to be alive in the first place.

But as far as anyone can tell, that fungus is related to you, just very distantly. The two of you have a common ancestor and share quite a bit of DNA coding.

In a world that was founded, say, 2000 years ago, and has frequent travel; Familicide on a pure blooded human gets every human and part human. If the human you hit was a part X, it also gets some amount of X.

So the Republics don't expand, being just as dead as the royals. Royals notoriously produced children who weren't royal.

(Note: 2,000 years is ~100 generations, you have 2^100 ancestors 100 generations back, except that there aren't 2^100 people who've ever lived, that's approximately 1,267,650,600,228,230,000,000,000,000,000 people. So most of those ancestors overlap as your various ancestors married relatives, if, say, 50 generations back, ONE of your ancestors was from Eastern continent, then that's ~1,125,899,906,842,620 members of the founding groups of Eastern continent who are your ancestors, again, almost all of them being hit many, many times because the founding generation simply wasn't many many times the population of the modern Earth. Then you trace back down and get EVERYONE descended from even one of those people; and then and only then, stage 2 hits to finish off anyone stage one somehow missed.)

[Agemegos]

That was my first thought, too. But then I reflected that maybe "shares a bloodline" might include only actual ancestors and descendants, not siblings. Then the first pass would get all the target's descendants and living ancestors, and then the second pass would get all living ancestors of the target's descendants and all descendants of the ancestors killed in the first pass. But it wouldn't get the descendants of the ancestors who were already dead before the first pass.

So suppose that you cast it on my eldest niece. The first pass would kill my brother and his wife, but not my parents because they are already dead, and would kill my niece's sons. Then the second pass would kill all the descendants of my brother and sister-in law, and all the ancestors of my great-nephews. That is it would kill my niece's sisters and their children but not their husbands and parents-in-law, her brother, her husband, and her husband' parents but not his brother. And it wouldn't get me or my sisters or my other two brothers, nor my sister-in-law's brothers and sisters.

[Doug Lampert]

That was my first thought, too. But then I reflected that maybe "shares a bloodline" might include only actual ancestors and descendants, not siblings. Then the first pass would get all the target's descendants and living ancestors,

Stop right there, the first pass explicitly goes back to the creation of the world and doesn't care if the ancestor is alive or not. It gets ALL of the descendants of any of your ancestors, no matter how far back and no matter if the ancestor is alive or dead. Pass one kills EVERYTHING in our world.

[Jasdoif]

If we're actually digging into Familicide (again), here are the official words:

Step 1: Kill everyone with the original target's blood. This is a simple yes/no effect: Is a creature (the secondary target) related by blood to the original target at all, in any way? If yes, kill it. If no, move on. Number of generations or percentage of blood or direction doesn't matter.

Step 2: Kill everyone who shares blood with any of the people killed in Step 1. Think of it as killing everyone descended from (or siblings to) any and all still-living ancestors of each secondary target. So if Penelope had a grandfather on one side and a great-grandmother on the other side who were still alive, every person who could trace their blood back to either of those people would be dead, because Penelope's daughter carries both of their bloods. If a person can only trace their blood through (say) Penelope's already-dead great-great-great-grandfather, then they're safe. Thus cousins and second-cousins and the like are all dead, but more distant genetic relations are not. It is possible for some cousins to survive if all older generations were already dead, yes, but Vaarsuvius wasn't really likely to take the time to make that distinction while sobbing on a dungeon hallway floor.

Now for some anticipated FAQs:

That's not exactly what Vaarsvuius said when the spell was cast, though.
First, Vaarsvuius is prone to poetic word choice and had no particular reason to include various exceptions or inclusions while in the middle of punishing the dragon. Second, as the author, I also had an interest in not necessarily giving away the twist that the Draketooths would be killed two years ahead of time (leading me to choose words that maybe implied one thing while allowing for another). In other words, don't try to parse the language too precisely.

Wouldn't that spell kill everyone of the original target's species?
In our world? Maybe. The OOTS world is not ours, though. It was created fully populated, even with black dragons. So there could be 100 original black dragons who (as V noted) breed slowly over the relatively-short span of time the current world has been in existence, leading to one-quarter of them being wiped out. If it had been cast on a human first, it may well have taken half or more of the population with it, depending on how many Original Humans there had been and how much interbreeding had occurred. Good thing that's not what happened, right?

But if it worked like that, it would have [insert obscure effect proven with math]!
Yeah, well, it didn't. Why? I don't know. But it didn't. I guess that makes me a crappy writer because I didn't think of whatever implication you just thought of, but there it is. I'm not a biologist or a mathematician. If it makes you feel better, just assume that all the laws of heredity and genetics work differently because It's Magic™.

So, just to be clear:

1.) The people created at the moment of the planet's creation were all unrelated to each other, or perhaps only related in small groups—a family of 5 or 10 might have been created, but with no relation to all the other families being simultaneously created. Why? Because.

2.) There is no reason to think that just because the comic shows something that it is statistically likely, or that the number of panels I draw of something is intended to be a statement about the frequency of such a thing. I do not draw the comic based on statistics or demographics, I draw it based on what looks good.

3.) Yes, the proof that not all humans have the blood of that specific black dragon is the fact that they didn't all die. Things aren't errors just because they don't support your preferred assumptions. It just means your assumptions are wrong.

4.) Explicitly, I am going to say that no black dragon, ever, in the history of the world, ever mated with any human being until Girard's grandparents. Some black dragons mated with other species, and some other colors of dragon mated with humans. But black dragons and humans? One time only in the history of OOTS-world. That's canon now. Done.

It's now impossible for any humans to have died other than the Draketooths and the families they intermingled with in the last 5 generations. And since Step 2 of the spell requires a LIVING link to keep the chain going, humans that have no living ancestors with those people are safe.

So, yeah. The spell works exactly as I explained, it's just the world that works differently than assumed. Which is exactly what I said the first time I explained how it worked.