OOTS #1220 - The Discussion Thread

[Zhorn]

No telepathic bond is complete without that one party member doing an inner monologue.

Great work, Giant.

[Eurus]

Why would an evil team not have a rogue smart enough to bypass a trap? It would seem strange that this skill is the key to finding the gate.

Unless it requires a particular method of trap disabling, and Serini’s method of key- design and Hayley’s method of trap disabling just coincidentally match?

Well, "why" is hard to say. My guess would be that Xykon and Redcloak assume that their magic is strong enough to deal with any obstacles and getting a rogue on board would be time consuming. Whatever the reason, they don't have a rogue, and non-rogues can't find or disarm magical traps iirc.

[Morquard]

Okay, by RAW, V couldn't have cast Telepathic Bond on that many creatures. We see seven other creatures affected beyond V: Roy, Durkon, Elan, Haley, Belkar, someone offscreen to Belkar's right (presumably Minrah), and Blackwing. By RAW, this would require V to be at least level 21.

V may have more than just the ioun stone/ring that increases his caster level for certain spells. Or you know the Giant ditched the rules like he said he'll do in a heartbeat if it makes for a better story. Or that he didn't care.

[Linneris]

Maybe he skipped Belkar?

The spell effect in panel 3 includes Belkar, as well as someone else off panel.

This is probably indeed just a case of story over rules, yes.

[danielxcutter]

I’ve not had that much experience with playing 3.5e much, but I don’t find “villains looking for the Gate might not have Trapfinding” too farfetched. There aren’t going to be many actual adventuring parties looking for it; the Linear Guild is honestly an outlier.

[Raven777]

Seems unlikely to me that disarming the trap of "any door" leads to the right pass.

I mean, it means that anyone with a good enough rogue can find the right pass at first try? Not buying it.

Well, Serini is/was a rogue. It would be reasonable that her dungeon would incorporate having rogue abilities as a component for success. Plus, if she had a similar mindset to Haley and Girard, layers of obfuscation could definitely be at play. A few threads back it was even discussed that layers of deception were a recurrent theme in the comic (Xykon's body doubles, for exemple).

Beyond there being a portal, my theory is that not disabling the trap puts you in "Kraagor mode", where the dungeon is a series of combat challenges that need to be brute forced through Barabrian style, as anyone tracking the gates while being aware of their lore would expect... But those are only to keep you busy until whoever watches the gate can observe and intervene.

Disabling the trap puts you into "Serini mode", which might be more tuned to the skillset of a rogue, or at least a balanced party that includes one. That would play into Serini's possible mindset too: wishing for a functional whole party in order to overcome a holistic suite of challenges, rather than how her beloved group ended up fracturing with everyone focusing on their own preference for their dungeon. In Serini's mind, being worthy of reaching the gate might demand a whole cooperating party, not a single kind of skills.

[Thecommander236]

I swear, within 1 minute, there's already 2 pages of chat. How can I ever get a word in edge wise?

Also, we thinking they gave Belkar enough time to cover their tracks or not?

[Segev]

Belkar did not get to finish hiding their tracks. That will come back and bite them ...

Meh, it could just as easily fuel distrust and/or paranoia in TE, since they lack a rogue and are unlikely to see the purpose of the rat head.

Belkar not saying anything over the link and being busy doing something - casting the spell to hide their tracks? - when yoinked definitely will be important later. Not entirely sure how, but....

[M.A.D]

Why would an evil team not have a rogue smart enough to bypass a trap? It would seem strange that this skill is the key to finding the gate.

Unless it requires a particular method of trap disabling, and Serini’s method of key- design and Hayley’s method of trap disabling just coincidentally match?

Team E's former method was to throw underlings to their deaths until they whittled down all the defences. Now they just throw themselves, but that brute-force method seems to suit with Serini's belief in strength.

Unless, of course, she expects everyone to think so and do something completely different, like designing traps that would render the brute-force method useless, and that which would have required someone more perceptive to notice the finer details, like Haley.

[Malloon]

That would play into Serini's possible mindset too: wishing for a functional whole party in order to overcome a holistic suite of challenges, rather than how her beloved group ended up fracturing with everyone focusing on their own preference for their dungeon. In Serini's mind, being worthy of reaching the gate might demand a whole cooperating party, not a single kind of skills.

I find that idea so compelling and so well tied into the themes of the story and the arcs of the characters that I believe and support this idea immediately and completely.

[Rogan]

I swear, within 1 minute, there's already 2 pages of chat. How can I ever get a word in edge wise?

Also, we thinking they gave Belkar enough time to cover their tracks or not?

Even if he could not cover all their tracks, they are now behind a magical trap. A trap which will be active again when Team Evil tries to follow. So, chances are, they will end up in a different dungeon than the heros, even if they take the same door.

[Thecommander236]

Seems unlikely to me that disarming the trap of "any door" leads to the right pass.

I mean, it means that anyone with a good enough rogue can find the right pass at first try? Not buying it.

I concur. Also, I doubt that the tribe of Bigbears who have been attacking this Dungeon for years, if not decades, or even generations never noticed this trap especially if it flashes light like that at the people who aren't the ones who set it off.

Haley doesn't seem to have "disarmed it" so much as she set it off using the object rather than setting it off herself. It seems the trap affects the environment of the not the person or object that triggers it. Even then, I'm not even sure what she was hoping to accomplish by setting it off at all. If you're going to set it off, why does it matter if it hits the first person to cross it or an inanimate object when it doesn't affect the person at all?

Furthermore, TE isn't stupid. It's very clearly a line drawn onto every floor in every tunnel. SOMEONE would have to notice it and RC is not the kind of person to 1. miss such an obvious detail and 2. not investigate it with every single magic possible. He tried literally every school of magic to try and dig up hidden information from O'Chul's mind out of sheer paranoia. He almost caught onto Durkon and Minrah's trick from a few pages ago. There's no way he hasn't been obsessively looking into those lines for weeks on end.

Plus, if all you have to do to set it off is throw an object through it, Xykon definitely threw a super bouncy ball through it at least once just to shut RC up.

[Thecommander236]

Why would an evil team not have a rogue smart enough to bypass a trap? It would seem strange that this skill is the key to finding the gate.

Unless it requires a particular method of trap disabling, and Serini’s method of key- design and Hayley’s method of trap disabling just coincidentally match?

To be fair, Serini was a rogue. Her journal (*cough* diary *cough*) says that she built the Dungeon to represent Kraagor's ideal of strength being everything and wrote that in code.

People seemed to be assuming that she is double bluffing like Haley would. Serini wrote that the temple represents strength and willpower, but that the Dungeon's real entrance is hidden by her roguish nature. Possible, I grant you. It would make sense, but again, if all you have to do to set the trap off is put an object through the trap, then why didn't Xykon just throw a bouncy ball through the damn thing?

There's no way in hell, in my opinion, that TE didn't notice this and no one lollygagged behind at least once so that they could see the very obvious flash of light when the first person stepped over the line. I do believe that Serini used her rogue skills to hide the portal even harder than just using brute monsters to do it. For instance, one of the tunnels may have a secret room or multiple tunnels have multiple secret rooms with switches, levers, puzzles, etc. that must ALL be solved to reveal the true path.

[isamaru]

Disabling the trap puts you into "Serini mode", which might be more tuned to the skillset of a rogue, or at least a balanced party that includes one. That would play into Serini's possible mindset too: wishing for a functional whole party in order to overcome a holistic suite of challenges, rather than how her beloved group ended up fracturing with everyone focusing on their own preference for their dungeon. In Serini's mind, being worthy of reaching the gate might demand a whole cooperating party, not a single kind of skills.

I like this theory. Not only it makes sense in the world, but such dungeon also allows for a more interesting comic, with the whole gang participation.

[M.A.D]

Well, Serini is/was a rogue. It would be reasonable that her dungeon would incorporate having rogue abilities as a component for success. Plus, if she had a similar mindset to Haley and Girard, layers of obfuscation could definitely be at play. A few threads back it was even discussed that layers of deception were a recurrent theme in the comic (Xykon's body doubles, for exemple).

Beyond there being a portal, my theory is that not disabling the trap puts you in "Kraagor mode", where the dungeon is a series of combat challenges that need to be brute forced through Barabrian style, as anyone tracking the gates while being aware of their lore would expect... But those are only to keep you busy until whoever watches the gate can observe and intervene.

Disabling the trap puts you into "Serini mode", which might be more tuned to the skillset of a rogue, or at least a balanced party that includes one. That would play into Serini's possible mindset too: wishing for a functional whole party in order to overcome a holistic suite of challenges, rather than how her beloved group ended up fracturing with everyone focusing on their own preference for their dungeon. In Serini's mind, being worthy of reaching the gate might demand a whole cooperating party, not a single kind of skills.

One would thing the purpose of setting up all these traps is to keep anyone at all off the Gates, rather than to challenge the ables and the strongs.

[Thecommander236]

Rereading it, Haley does mention that she needed to cover a very specific part of the trap to "disarm" it, but I still find it hard to believe that RC hasn't noticed the line and researched it. People are seeing you have to be a Rogue to find it, but Roy can see it just fine once it was pointed out to him. People might also bring up that there was no flash of light when TE went into the other door and that the ight only flashes when you "disarm" the trap like Haley. I'm not sure what to believe, rethinking it, but I feel a simple spot check would reveal the line to non-rogues. If that's the case, RC wouldn't just let it go. Even if you need a rogue to even notice the line, they have so much detect magic spells, they would notice a dimensional portal even it sent them into a hell pit full of monster spawn.

It's possible that RC or Xykon just decided "meh, it doesn't hurt us so who cares", but RC devised the shell game. He would investigate those lines. Maybe they DID have a rogue from the bugbear camp that showed them how to disarm the traps, but he died in one of the dungeons before Team Paladin arrived. We don't know. It's not like the zombie that TE would make from his corpse would survive long in conditions where Xykon is gaining experience from "some of those ugly bastards".

[Riftwolf]

I concur. Also, I doubt that the tribe of Bigbears who have been attacking this Dungeon for years, if not decades, or even generations never noticed this trap especially if it flashes light like that at the people who aren't the ones who set it off.

Haley doesn't seem to have "disarmed it" so much as she set it off using the object rather than setting it off herself. It seems the trap affects the environment of the not the person or object that triggers it. Even then, I'm not even sure what she was hoping to accomplish by setting it off at all. If you're going to set it off, why does it matter if it hits the first person to cross it or an inanimate object when it doesn't affect the person at all?

Furthermore, TE isn't stupid. It's very clearly a line drawn onto every floor in every tunnel. SOMEONE would have to notice it and RC is not the kind of person to 1. miss such an obvious detail and 2. not investigate it with every single magic possible. He tried literally every school of magic to try and dig up hidden information from O'Chul's mind out of sheer paranoia. He almost caught onto Durkon and Minrah's trick from a few pages ago. There's no way he hasn't been obsessively looking into those lines for weeks on end.

Plus, if all you have to do to set it off is throw an object through it, Xykon definitely threw a super bouncy ball through it at least once just to shut RC up.

The flash was from the trap being temporarily disarmed; that's what the rat head and the fiddling about were for (apparently trap disarming uses similar mechanics to old point-and-click adventures). If they'd tripped it, there wouldn't have been a flash and the floor wouldn't have changed.
As for team evil not noticing the line; that's precisely how trapfinding works in 3.5. Only rogues (and a few spells and alt-classes. And ACFs and prestige classes.) can detect magic traps, so Team Evil (Sorcerer, Cleric, unknown monster, warg and Probably-A-Ranger-but-under-debate-on-C&LG-thread) wouldn't notice it, even if they were searching.

[Thales]

never noticed this trap especially if it flashes light like that at the people who aren't the ones who set it off.

Furthermore, TE isn't stupid. It's very clearly a line drawn onto every floor in every tunnel. SOMEONE would have to notice it and RC is not the kind of person to 1. miss such an obvious detail and 2. not investigate it with every single magic possible.

Plus, if all you have to do to set it off is throw an object through it, Xykon definitely threw a super bouncy ball through it at least once just to shut RC up.

I don't think this is correct. I think in the trap's normal functioning, it's pretty invisible. The only reason there was a big flash of light was because Haley effectively short-circuited it, something that required a lot of rogue skills to accomplish. Merely throwing an object through wouldn't visibly trigger it, nor would it have the same short-circuiting effect.

I also don't think Team Evil saw the line. It's very clearly a line to us, the readers. But Roy couldn't see it in 1219 even with Haley specifically pointing it out to him. Of the people currently on Team Evil, only Oona probably has ranks in Spot. Redcloak has excellent Wisdom as a cleric, but probably not enough better than Roy to see the runes if Roy couldn't even with the advantage of someone telling him about them. If Oona has noticed it, she noticed it long before Team Evil arrived, it didn't seem to do anything, and thus she didn't see it worth mentioning.

I suspect that Haley's overloading the trap may tip Team Evil off, however. The line may be really hard to see (and Team Evil is probably more than 20 seconds behind the Order and therefore the trap will be functioning again by the time they get there), but if Haley leaves the dead rat head there, it'll be clearly visible, and even if she doesn't, there's still the blast mark on the ground around it that marks the line. Redcloak and Oona can definitely put it together with a big clue like that.

[Dr.Zero]

I, personally, can't see a reason to believe that disarming the trap by triggering it should lead to the gate and not to one of the monster loaded instances of the dungeon without any gate in it.
In that case every lame team who triggers that not on purpose, would end up being transferred to the gate too.

If anything, disarming the trap without triggering it should do the trick. Which maybe requires a very high level to be done, so possibly only for an epic level rogue (like Serini).

[Xihirli]

Well, I can’t see Team Evil missing that, so we can assume they know about the trap, whatever it is.

[JessmanCA]

I'd say that Occam's Razor agrees.

Sure Occam has a razor, but Rube Goldberg has devices!

(which are more fun in a comedic story)

[Dr.Zero]

The flash was from the trap being temporarily disarmed; that's what the rat head and the fiddling about were for (apparently trap disarming uses similar mechanics to old point-and-click adventures). If they'd tripped it, there wouldn't have been a flash and the floor wouldn't have changed.

Since the rat head is clearly scorched, I don't see any reason to think that Haley didn't just trigger the trap, to disarm it.
A trap that makes damage after being properly disabled without triggering makes little sense to me.
Anyway less than a trap that hides itself as a damaging trap, can be easily seen and disarmed by triggering, and instead -aside the damage- is really a portal trap.

Random team with a rogue: "Oh, look, triggering it with a rat was enough to disable it, no worries"
Serini: "Yeah, sure!"

[Fyraltari]

Welp looks like the people who thought disabling the trap was necessary to reach the Gate were on the right track.

I'm looking forward to Redcloak discovering that Right-Eye is who he needed for this dungeon.

Oh god!

Spoiler: Oh god! (Spoilers for Start of Darkness)

Show

And then Xykon will blame him for murdering him.

Beyond there being a portal, my theory is that not disabling the trap puts you in "Kraagor mode", where the dungeon is a series of combat challenges that need to be brute forced through Barabrian style, as anyone tracking the gates while being aware of their lore would expect... But those are only to keep you busy until whoever watches the gate can observe and intervene.

Disabling the trap puts you into "Serini mode", which might be more tuned to the skillset of a rogue, or at least a balanced party that includes one.

Maybe this is like the service tunnels in Girard's pyramid?

That would play into Serini's possible mindset too: wishing for a functional whole party in order to overcome a holistic suite of challenges, rather than how her beloved group ended up fracturing with everyone focusing on their own preference for their dungeon. In Serini's mind, being worthy of reaching the gate might demand a whole cooperating party, not a single kind of skills.

Why would Serini look for anyone being "worthy" the point of all these defences us to not let anyone through.
Edit: Serini isn't a DM who crafted a dungeon that is meant to be overcome through sufficient skill, she's a guardian who built a trap designed to kill anyone who comes a-knocking.

[Peelee]

Why would an evil team not have a rogue smart enough to bypass a trap? It would seem strange that this skill is the key to finding the gate.

Unless it requires a particular method of trap disabling, and Serini’s method of key- design and Hayley’s method of trap disabling just coincidentally match?

Because they're not an adventuring party. They're a "take over the world" party - at least as far as the party leader is concerned. And they have Serini's diary. As far as they're concerned, they're good for what they need.

[Windscion]

Wait a minute. Maybe the purpose of the line is not to keep people out. Maybe the purpose is to keep monsters in! If that's the case, our analysis is flawed.

[Thecommander236]

I don't think this is correct. I think in the trap's normal functioning, it's pretty invisible. The only reason there was a big flash of light was because Haley effectively short-circuited it, something that required a lot of rogue skills to accomplish. Merely throwing an object through wouldn't visibly trigger it, nor would it have the same short-circuiting effect.

I also don't think Team Evil saw the line. It's very clearly a line to us, the readers. But Roy couldn't see it in 1219 even with Haley specifically pointing it out to him. Of the people currently on Team Evil, only Oona probably has ranks in Spot. Redcloak has excellent Wisdom as a cleric, but probably not enough better than Roy to see the runes if Roy couldn't even with the advantage of someone telling him about them. If Oona has noticed it, she noticed it long before Team Evil arrived, it didn't seem to do anything, and thus she didn't see it worth mentioning.

I suspect that Haley's overloading the trap may tip Team Evil off, however. The line may be really hard to see (and Team Evil is probably more than 20 seconds behind the Order and therefore the trap will be functioning again by the time they get there), but if Haley leaves the dead rat head there, it'll be clearly visible, and even if she doesn't, there's still the blast mark on the ground around it that marks the line. Redcloak and Oona can definitely put it together with a big clue like that.

Roy is looking right at the line in the comic you cited after its pointed out. Plus everyone could see the magical glyphs in Draketooth's Dungeon. Just because it's a trap doesn't mean the symbols aren't visible. The comic plays fast and loose with the rules sometimes. It looks like Roy can see the line well enough to know where he would have to step to cross it. Just because RC can't disarm traps doesn't mean he wouldn't expect the line to be a trap. Especially since it's universal to every tunnel.

Plus given how much Oona likes to talk, if she did spot the lines in the dozens, if not hundreds of times she went into the Dungeon, she would mention it at least once.

[gerryq]

Fascinating. That definitely does seem like the dungeon was changed. Unfortunately, Blackwing is stuck on the other side of it. Fortunately, so is Team Evil.

Also LOL at "use your inside-head voice"

I don't see how anyone is stuck on the other side. Belkar isn't, and he was outside the dungeon altogether. If there's a portal, surely it just changed where the corridor goes to, and everyone who enters the dungeon can come?

[Peelee]

Rereading it, Haley does mention that she needed to cover a very specific part of the trap to "disarm" it, but I still find it hard to believe that RC hasn't noticed the line and researched it. People are seeing you have to be a Rogue to find it, but Roy can see it just fine once it was pointed out to him.

Trapfinding is indeed Rogue only. And Roy can't see it - Haley has to point it out to him the second time too. He's looking down, but that doesn't mean he sees it (and the fact that she had to tell him the second time implies he can't).

Do you have a theory on how Redcloak, a pure Cleric, can somehow use trapfinding, a Rogue-only skill?

[Fyraltari]

All these people mind-linked with Belkar and it's Blackwing's stream of thought that's a bother? Who wouldnhave thought?

[Deuce]

Welp looks like the people who thought disabling the trap was necessary to reach the Gate were on the right track.


Oh god!

Spoiler: Oh god! (Spoilers for Start of Darkness)

Show

And then Xykon will blame him for murdering him.

Maybe this is like the service tunnels in Girard's pyramid?

Why would Serini look for anyone being "worthy" the point of all these defences us to not let anyone through.
Edit: Serini isn't a DM who crafted a dungeon that is meant to be overcome through sufficient skill, she's a guardian who built a trap designed to kill anyone who comes a-knocking.

No, Xykon will blame Red Cloak for him having to

Spoiler

Show

murder Right Eye..