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2020-12-05, 10:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
If it is a permanent Gate then it would transport anyone who walked through it without a save - under that assumption Haley would have deactivated the Gate and it would now be resetting.
We don't know if Familicide allowed a save.
Edit: A more direct example is Teleportation Circle does not allow a save.Last edited by dancrilis; 2020-12-05 at 10:13 AM.
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2020-12-05, 10:09 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
Redcloak's amazing deduction skills kinda scared me a bit, at first.
He's so close to the solution, that I started worrying for the MitD, thinking he might be in trouble.
Then again... is he?
Can Redcloak and/or Xykon be a threat to the MitD?
Because, if they can hurt him but they can't kill him, by finding out about his ruse, they would accomplish only two things.
The MitD would leave Team Evil (and either side with O-Chul's side or just leave) and Xykon will know that they wasted time.
But that last thing is not an issue anymore.
Stalling them has worked. The OotS is here.
And even if they found a way to figure out which entrances they didn't cover (unlikely)... it wouldn't change anything.When in doubt, set it on fire, right?
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2020-12-05, 11:05 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
'Utúlie'n aurë! Aiya Eldalië ar Atanatári, utúlie'n aurë! “The day has come! Behold, people of the Eldar and Fathers of Men, the day has come!" And all those who heard his great voice echo in the hills answered, crying:'Auta i lómë!" The night is passing!"
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2020-12-05, 11:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
It is more the eyebrows that I am noticing.
For instance Durkon's expression here (panel 8) is very similiar (not exactly the same) but without the eyebrows, and in theory he was getting ready there also.
The Giant seems to use eyebrows (and other eye related lines) to convey a lot of emotion - and he included them on Durkon and Roy on panel 6 but on nobody else.
Now maybe I am seeing author intention that is not present and it is unlikely to ever be spelled out 'they were frowning at each other' but my thinking is we have not heard the last of Durkon's venture into diplomacy and the is The Giant is including a subtle hint here to that discussion.
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2020-12-05, 11:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
Is it possible that rather than a teleport or a portal, the trap does some other kind of "spatial manipulation to connect regions of multidimensional stone" that doesn't permit a save, and is generally non-obvious to a high-level lich and cleric? Such that the properties of the multidimensional stone don't interfere with people being within range of Telepathic Bond?
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2020-12-05, 12:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
I suppose a portal-type would work. Probably not Gate since that explicitly only opens up to another plane and I don’t think Serini had enough resources to make several dozen demiplanes.
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2020-12-05, 12:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
Remember, Xykon is an epic-level (i.e. level 21 minimum) PC build with a +4 LA template and full appropriate wealth. That means he's a minimum of six (effective) levels higher than the sub-epic OOTS PCs. That is not a fight that is supposed to be winnable by standard CR rules.
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2020-12-05, 01:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
We don't know if Familicide allowed a save. Remember, V used Disjunction on the Dragon's Anti-Magic Field without a second thought, and that only has a 1% chance per caster level of working on those.
All Durkon did there was one Heal spell, and he had the eyebrows when he was looking back to see if Team Evil was following them yet, but not when he turned back to Roy.
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2020-12-05, 01:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-12-05, 01:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
I disagree with several of this associations.
We could categorize them by their D&D In Combat party role, or by their TVTropes Five-Man Band roles, and we would get different grouping.
There are clearly similarities between the members of each party, and the thing is you can find similarities between one member f a team and several members of another team. Tarquin for instance is the party leader (apparently) and the big melee fighter of his team, just like Roy, but has an outlook like Elan, and a morality closer to Belkar.
Level doesn't directly translate into CR.Que tous les anciens dieux et les nouveaux protègent la France.
Resistance Data in MM, Volo's, MToF. -- -- Petrocorus's 3.5 Paladin Builds List. -- -- French vs. EnglishOriginally Posted by King Louis XIII in The Musketeers
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2020-12-05, 01:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
You're absolutely right, but then again, that is the point, isn't it? The evil opposites thing wasn't that good of a fit in the first place, and Nale would have been able to spin reality the same way for it to apply at least as well to any Evil party he had put together.
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2020-12-05, 01:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
Which is why I went by both to get them with whoever they have more in common.
There are clearly similarities between the members of each party, and the thing is you can find similarities between one member f a team and several members of another team. Tarquin for instance is the party leader (apparently) and the big melee fighter of his team, just like Roy, but has an outlook like Elan, and a morality closer to Belkar.
Edit:
Yup.Last edited by Fyraltari; 2020-12-05 at 01:52 PM.
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2020-12-05, 01:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2019
Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
You probably meant to say level adjustment doesn't translate into CR, which is true. Because levels in any PC class do translate into CR on 1:1 basis. So we are still looking at 21+ from character levels and 2 more from template.
As usual that doesn't mean that any creature with CR of 23 is incredibly hard for the party as presented, but power and defences of Xykon has been already addressed above without reference to his CR.
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2020-12-05, 02:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
If Familicide allowed a save, wouldn't one of Girard's group have rolled a 20?
Also, narratively, the spell is counterproductive if it allowed a save. Let's kill everybody who could have conceivably been related to an enemy of mine, so I can be safe...except for 5 percent of that vast pool of entities, all of whom now are titanically pissed off at me, for really good reason.
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2020-12-05, 02:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
I think Tarquin is more akin to their PR guy while Shoulderpads is more of the battlefield leader
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2020-12-05, 02:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-12-05, 03:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
Haha.
It occurs to me that a key weakness of Familicide as a defense is that someone doesn't need to be related to your target, or one of their relations, to be motivated to avenge or resurrect them. It's ... i don't think ironic is the word, but interesting that Girard's defense had the exact same weakness (dependence on blood relations), which made it all the more effective against him.
Very natural, considering the narrative purpose of Familicide, and that its narrative purpose is its only purpose, but i hadn't noticed that particular element before."Are the gods not just?"
"Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were?"
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2020-12-05, 03:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
SpoilerI Am A: Chaotic Neutral Human Sorcerer (5th Level)
Ability Scores:
Strength - 11
Dexterity - 16
Constitution - 11
Intelligence - 15
Wisdom - 12
Charisma - 11
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2020-12-05, 03:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
Once the Order sorts out the whole "one Gate barely holding a reality-slaying monster at bay" thing, they can leave Xykon here to dungeon-delve to his heart's content.
Unless Roy wants to do something about that blood oath I guess.
Fyraltari was presumably referring to Oona's comment about "having new monsters behind a door," which Redcloak described as "regenerating," which makes it sound like the monsters are either being generated magically or trolls.
There are a certain number of roles that need to be filled, and only so many ways to fill each. Combine with characterization needs—both in terms of how each character's personality needs to fit their role in some regard (whether it's embracing it a la Thog or rejecting it a la Roy) and in terms of intra-party dynamics—and this level of similarity isn't all very surprising...especially when you consider both rough fits (e.g. Hilgya and Malack, or the leaders we know anything about) and the fairly obscure characters (e.g. half of the wizards and the leader we don't know anything about)
Also, one of those six was initially constructed in deliberate opposition to another, which makes the set as a whole lot more cohesive than it would be otherwise.
Spoiler: Explanation
Imagine that the Stick, Scribble, and Sinister parties were each 1 cohesive with each other. (Yes, quantifying something like that is kinda silly.) The average cohesion would be (3*1)/3=1. Obviously.
Now imagine that we add the Linear party, saying that it also has 1 cohesive with the Scribble and Sinister parties, but 7 with the Stick party. There are six ways to compare two of these four parties, five of which have a cohesion value of 1 and one with a cohesion value of 7. The average would be (7+[5*1])/6=2.
Obviously, if we were to assign such similarity/cohesion values to all six sets of parties the results wouldn't be that extreme, but extreme numbers make it easier to see what the eff this crazy guy is talking about.
An interesting idea. It doesn't work well with the saves most teleportation spells allow (even if Team Evil didn't have demigodlike saves, they'd roll a 20 eventually), but it's neat.
Reminds me of Something Witty Entertainment lamenting that everyone thought their use of "sus" in SAOA episode 15 was an Among Us reference, even though they wrote the script months before Among Us was really a thing.
That's not how level adjustment works.
A human level 21* sorcerer would have an ECL of 21 (meaning they gain XP and whatnot as a 21st-level character, since they are one) and a CR of 21. The lich template's +4 LA means that a human lich with 21 levels of sorcerer would have an ECL of 25 (gaining XP more slowly than a 21st-level character), but the template only increases CR by 2, for a CR of 23. The level adjustment is higher than the CR adjustment because many lich abilities are (theoretically) more useful to a PC than a monster.
Spoiler: *I'm of the opinion that maximized energy drain was probably cast with a 12th-level spell slot rather than a 9th-level one and an invisible metamagic rod, but that would require him to take Improved Spell Capacity three times, for a total of four known Epic feats, requiring at least 26 levels of sorcerer (21st and 24th level, plus bonus feats at 23rd and 26th). But most people consider that a few levels too much, as if a 21st-level lich is a more suitable opponent for a mid/high-level party.
Anyways, I think a more likely ECL/CR for Xykon would be 30/28.
Were all of their levels added together? I assumed that V just used the caster level of whichever individual spirit they got a given spell from.
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2020-12-05, 04:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
It is good to see Xykon again, he is a very entertaining big-bad. I know he's been in a few strips recently, but this group, Xykon, RC, Oona and Greywind play off each other nicely. They're just really good villains and I love this comic
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2020-12-05, 04:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
That's only assuming that the actual purpose of the spell (both why Haerta researched it and why V cast it) was to kill all your enemies so you'd be safe from retribution, but there's reason to question that. Even without a save, the spell completely fails to do that: non-blood relations of all kinds are spared. Tarquin for example survived and would potentially (if he was a different person) have been perfectly capable of seeking revenge for Penelope. Friends are entirely unaffected, no matter how close. Simply put, the spell can't do what V claimed they wanted it to do (ensure safety by preventing revenge).
The only purpose that makes sense in practice is disproportionate retribution, and I think the comic makes it clear that this was V's actual motivation ("This—and no less—is the price of threatening my family"). All that stuff about protecting their family and ensuring it wouldn't happen again was just a rationalization.Last edited by hroþila; 2020-12-05 at 04:39 PM.
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2020-12-05, 04:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
Honestly I think the real purpose of the spell is to do as much destruction as you can because you can, as an ego thing.
That reminds me of the answer the villain of the French audio show Adoprixtoxis gave when asked why he blew up a planet when he didn't need to do that: "I had a brand new space station. I wanted to see how powerful it could be. When you buy a brand new sport car, it's not to drive at 50 km/h, you want to see what it's got under the hood, don't you?"Forum Wisdom
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2020-12-05, 05:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
So, save partially negates? Die if you fail the save, and deal 10d6 damage if you succeed?
It would make sense then for all of Girard's family to have died than, since it's reasonable that the 5% who rolled a nat 20 on their save couldn't take the damage. Of course, that means that 5% of the dragons targeted would have probably survived, but as someone else mentioned, I don't think V was actually worried about that bit.
Of course, that raises the question of what spell level that was... She was the strongest of 3 epic-level spellcasters, but I don't know enough about 3.5 epic rules to say more. Though, if she's level 25 (for sake of argument), the other two were level 22, and Varsavius was level 15, that puts the total ECL at 84, or 84% chance to break the antimagic field.I like heated water, not heated arguments.
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2020-12-05, 06:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
I feel like familicide seems way too drastic to allow for a save, but idk. I mean, V was pretty sure it would and that Black Dragon's whole lineage even though dragons tend to have really good saves.
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2020-12-05, 06:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2015
Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
Oona and Greyview probably don't care all that much. They've been repeatedly shown saying how much they don't care. Oona is specifically there to make sure TE doesn't succeed too much at clearing the dungeons. Greyview's just doing what he's told, with no apparent ambition or aspiration of his own. Neither are sufficiently motivated to think too hard about what's going on, they are just content to tag along and kill stuff.
Given the number of dungeons that have been cleared, and the fact that Xykon is gaining XP, I think it fairly likely that Redcloak might now be at least level 18. And if slain and called for a resurrect, I doubt TDO will go "yo, it's chill, you can just hang around here".Attention LotR fans
Spoiler: LotRThe scouring of the Shire never happened. That's right. After reading books I, II, and III, I stopped reading when the One Ring was thrown into Mount Doom. The story ends there. Nothing worthwhile happened afterwards. Middle-Earth was saved.
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2020-12-05, 06:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
Hypothesis: Ordinarily, the "trap" for each doorway maintains a spatial congruence within the multidimensional stone, connecting the entrance to a dungeon full of high-level monsters. This isn't a trap in the normal sense; there isn't a saving throw, and it isn't affecting beings who pass by -- it's affecting the dungeon.
Disabling the "trap" as Haley has done, using the skills of a rogue, changes the congruence, connecting to a different route within the multidimensional stone. We'll see what that contains.
Disabling the "trap" by brute force, such as by turning off all of the magic, either connects you to something like the Tomb of Horrors or sets you up in some closed dimensional pocket. Or causes multiple dimensions of stone to merge, with you in the middle with no magic. Oops.
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2020-12-05, 07:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-12-05, 07:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
The various groups are variations on each role
Malak was pure caster - practically a specialist priest, Hilgya is an attack caster (flame strikes), Durkon is heal/buff and then melee
Nale and Elan combine casting and unarmoured melee in different ways - sorc/fighter versus Bard. Ironically Elan is more optimised by taking a prestige class to up his melee whilst mainly being a support bard
Thog is a pure barbarian type who dumped Int - ironically this contrasts with Roy who used those extra feats to make himself a better fighter.
Sabine is a special case in that she has outsider casting abilities. It is worth noting that Haley is actually mirroring her by branching into using magical items.
The rest have appeared too rarely to be definitive about their methodology'Utúlie'n aurë! Aiya Eldalië ar Atanatári, utúlie'n aurë! “The day has come! Behold, people of the Eldar and Fathers of Men, the day has come!" And all those who heard his great voice echo in the hills answered, crying:'Auta i lómë!" The night is passing!"
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2020-12-05, 07:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2007
Re: OOTS #1221 - The Discussion Thread
Haley is truly a heroine, you go elan, unintentionally seduce the strongest woman in all OOTS!
Originally Posted by theinsulabot;Originally Posted by Roland St. Jude;
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2020-12-05, 08:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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