Let's discuss upper bounds: a tricky branch of mathematics

[Anarchic Fox]

I know that the stat-geekery thread has conclusively established lower bounds for all pertinent attributes of the party (Minrah included, as an obvious addition; disregard what the Giant says in the book). However, it has not yet conclusively demonstrated upper bounds. Please consider this thread a fun place to do so rigorously, given unlikely interactions among extreme stats, for example an Int of 4 and a Wis of 17. The 1st Edition and Basic sourcebooks are obvious places to look for the pertinent semantics.

Edits:

Rule 1: Only The Hypertext d20 SRD may be used as a source of rules, except where additional ones are referenced in the comic.

Suggestion 1: Always assume that every character optimizes builds to the best of their ability, given their in-comic limitations.
Suggestion 2: Artifact discussion should follow the rules and conventions of the lower-bounds threads.

[ShadowSandbag]

I suppose the easy place to start is this; We know that Redcloak is non Epic Level so must be, at most, level 20. I don't have the exact panel off hand but I do believe that is correct.

[arimareiji]

I suppose the easy place to start is this; We know that Redcloak is non Epic Level so must be, at most, level 20. I don't have the exact panel off hand but I do believe that is correct.

How does that old quote go, again?

...oh yeah: "Strips, or it didn't happen." (^_~)

[Anarchic Fox]

Do we know that? He may have taken an unrelated level or three before first donning the cloak. And the prior Redcloak fakes his death in a manner that allows him to choose the current Redcloak as successor. That implies some level of respect.

Also, he's been on multiple challenging adventures with a mid-Epic lich. Seems odd to only reach level 17 recently. In the gorge, Xykon notes how rare it is for him to get XP nowadays. If the places can provide XP to mid-epic Xykon, seems like Redcloak would be drowning in the stuff.

Maybe The Plan included a mandatory character build that detours through rogue or barbarian or what have you. Redcloak has decent Sense Motive (interrogating O'Chul, who wove a decent lie) awfully high Concentration (I've never seen him fazed outside the prequels) and epic Bluff (as witness Tsukiko's death and the return of the fake phylactery).

Finally... we know that Xykon crafts, while Redcloak relies on his people to do so. I wouldn't be surprised if he's wearing an Eyepatch of Wisdom or something.

[Fyraltari]

the prior Redcloak fakes his death in a manner that allows him to choose the current Redcloak as successor. That implies some level of respect.

Huh no? The previous Bearer of the Crimson Mantle was grounded into paste by twenty-odd paladins. Dude's as dead as you get.

And he literally chose Redcloak because there was not other options, all the other Clerics were being slaugthered.

[Quartz]

I suppose the easy place to start is this; We know that Redcloak is non Epic Level so must be, at most, level 20.

Actually, we don't. We have yet to see Redcloak cast an epic spell or display an epic feat. That doesn't mean he's not level 21+.

Anyway, several of the entries in the Class & Level Geekery thread have upper bounds. Immediately visible is Roy's Int which is listed as 14-17.

[Ephemera]

As we're already seeing, it's gonna be pretty tough to establish upper bounds--it's much easier to establish that someone does have an ability than that someone doesn't, since they can always just be rolling really poorly or making sub-optimal choices of action. In fact, I'd argue that the Geekery thread isn't even really doing lower bounds, per se, just whatever can be established by that thread's rules, and that happens to be more lower bounds than upper.

In any case, if this is supposed to be more than a spazzy speculation thread (not that there's any problem with that), you'll need to establish some ground rules about how this is supposed to work in terms of the heirarchy of rulebooks and what's considered a reasonable assumption. The geekery thread has pseudo-specific rules about how to balance house rules, splatbooks, and what's evidence--are you adopting the same ones or new ones?

[BaronOfHell]

Is it not possible to be too low level to get any meaningful XP from an encounter?
I don't know the level difference between Xykon, and RC, but when RC said in strip 704 that Xykon sometimes disappears for a period of time and then comes back with a new trick, I figured it meant he gained a new level without RC's involvement.

In a way I think it is cool to imagine that an epic character of Xykon's caliber would be involved in several epic level plots simultaneously, but it kind of goes against Xykon complaining about him being bored sitting on his bony behind, not to mention the IFCC kinda making a similar comment.

[Doug Lampert]

Is it not possible to be too low level to get any meaningful XP from an encounter?

The XP table goes from eight levels lower to eight levels higher (treating levels 1 and 2 as the same as level 3 for this purpose).

The situations are not symmetric, the minimum is because at some point even hordes of low level foes cease to be a real threat and aren't worth XP.

The maximum is there because there's no set award for an level+9 CR encounter on the explicit basis that if you beat something that much tougher than you are, there was probably a special circumstance that should adjust the XP award and so the GM should ad-hoc it to represent that special circumstance. It never says that such encounters aren't worth XP as is done for the too low case.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Is it not possible to be too low level to get any meaningful XP from an encounter?
I don't know the level difference between Xykon, and RC, but when RC said in strip 704 that Xykon sometimes disappears for a period of time and then comes back with a new trick, I figured it meant he gained a new level without RC's involvement.

In a way I think it is cool to imagine that an epic character of Xykon's caliber would be involved in several epic level plots simultaneously, but it kind of goes against Xykon complaining about him being bored sitting on his bony behind, not to mention the IFCC kinda making a similar comment.

I think that if Readcloak meant "level", he would have said "level". In that specific instance, the trick turned out to be Xykon having built a fortress in the Astral plane. There is another instance in SOD, but I'm not in a position to look that up at the moment.

EDIT: He found Serini's diary. And a bunch of Ogres.

[littlebum2002]

Huh no? The previous Bearer of the Crimson Mantle was grounded into paste by twenty-odd paladins. Dude's as dead as you get.

And he literally chose Redcloak because there was not other options, all the other Clerics were being slaugthered.

I'm pretty sure they are getting that strip confused with this one

[Chronos]

As of when Redcloak finished off the Resistance, he was exactly 17th level, because he mentioned having just gotten access to a new level of spells, and used 9th-level spells in that fight.

Is it possible that he's leveled up off-panel since then? Sure. It's also possible that he's leveled up off-panel even since his last appearance a few strips ago. It's possible he's done it multiple times. So we can't really put any hard upper bound on his level.

[Anarchic Fox]

In any case, if this is supposed to be more than a spazzy speculation thread (not that there's any problem with that), you'll need to establish some ground rules about how this is supposed to work in terms of the heirarchy of rulebooks and what's considered a reasonable assumption.

Nah, I won't. However, a good place to start would be an introductory philosophy class.

I'm pretty sure they are getting that strip confused with this one

Nope. Redcloak The Prior gets stabbed by twenty-some katanas, but has not yet died. He plays possum long enough for Redcloak to take the Red Cloak. That's called "faking your death." Or, it would have been, had Redcloak not messed up The Plan by turning back, thus allowing the paladins to see that the Red Cloak was, in fact, the Red Cloak.

As of when Redcloak finished off the Resistance, he was exactly 17th level, because he mentioned having just gotten access to a new level of spells, and used 9th-level spells in that fight.

There's this snazzy new thing you may not have heard of yet. It's called multiclassing.

[hroþila]

He didn't fake his death, he appeared to Redcloak as a very dead ghost.

[Ephemera]

Nah, I won't. However, a good place to start would be an introductory philosophy class.

Ah yes, philosophy, that branch of thought notable for how people prove things and then agree on them.

I mean, I know you're joking about math, but there's a reason that, for instance, in geometry, you have to start with axioms before you can prove anything. Make your geometry non-Euclidean and you prove an entirely different set of things that appear to be completely at odds with what you can prove in a Euclidean system.

The set of rulebooks is rich enough and loosely enough related to the actual strip that without deciding on some ground rules, this is really more like theology, and that means it will devolve quickly into the equivalent of arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin (hint: there's more than one supportable answer and the text can't tell you conclusively which one is correct).

I'll be the first to say that the rules in the Geekery thread are fairly arbitrary, but it's in support of the notion that any system has to make a choice between arbitrariness and confusion. You wanna embrace confusion, that's totally fine, just don't expect to reach any conclusions in particular.

That's not even really a criticism, by the way, just an observation about where this can go (and the only place it can go) if you don't want to lay any groundrules.

[Silly Name]

There's this snazzy new thing you may not have heard of yet. It's called multiclassing.

Why would we assume Redcloak is anything but a straight-classed cleric? He doesn't even use weapons despite having the proficiencies, he never casts a non-cleric spell, nor uses any ability that requires being another class.

I mean, we can assume everyone has, I don't know, 20 levels of Expert on top of what their actual build is. But that's not an useful assumption, nor in any way grounded in evidence.

Redcloak is at least level 17 because he can cast 9th level spells and he's a cleric. who get 9th level spells at level 17. We also know he's pre-Epic, so he's level 20 at most.

Even if he's been hanging around Xykon for a lot, he doesn't often engage directly in conflict, and even when he does he may simply be facing challenges that don't provide enough XP. Hell, hanging around Xykon may even be detrimental to his progression, since the Epic lich sorcerer raises the party's ECL, meaning they get less XP.

[Quartz]

How do we know he’s pre-Epic? Just because he hasn’t demonstrated any Epic abilities doesn’t mean he’s not Epic level.

I don’t expect him to be Epic level but we’ve not seen proof that he isn’t.

[Silly Name]

How do we know he’s pre-Epic? Just because he hasn’t demonstrated any Epic abilities doesn’t mean he’s not Epic level.

I don’t expect him to be Epic level but we’ve not seen proof that he isn’t.

We can safely infer that Xykon is the only epic level character on Team Evil, as he's the only one who ever gets referred as Epic.

In any case, as long as Redcloak doesn't show anything that suggests he's epic level, it's safe to assume he's not. Again, we can say he's potentially level 100 and spent all his feats on Toughness, but that's neither likely nor a good way to go around establishing potential upper bounds for the statistics of OotS characters.

[Ephemera]

In any case, as long as Redcloak doesn't show anything that suggests he's epic level, it's safe to assume he's not. Again, we can say he's potentially level 100 and spent all his feats on Toughness, but that's neither likely nor a good way to go around establishing potential upper bounds for the statistics of OotS characters.

I don't think that's what "upper bound" means in any reasonable interpretation though. If we want to take this (semi-) seriously, you can't prove that Redcloak isn't Pun-pun, or deity of your choice masquerading as a 17th-level Cleric (or that he is an Epic Expert with a 17-level dip in Cleric), therefore those possibilities are within the upper bound of what his abilities are.

[Silly Name]

I don't think that's what "upper bound" means in any reasonable interpretation though. If we want to take this (semi-) seriously, you can't prove that Redcloak isn't Pun-pun, or deity of your choice masquerading as a 17th-level Cleric (or that he is an Epic Expert with a 17-level dip in Cleric), therefore those possibilities are within the upper bound of what his abilities are.

Strictly speaking, sure, but I don't think there's much sense in any discussion where we take that kind of logic as valid. An analysis of what the OotS' characters capabilities are should be based at least on some level on what's shown in the comic, not purely on "ah, but you can't prove that X is false!" gotchas.

For example, V is a wizard who has been proven to be able to cast 8th level spells, but has yet to cast or imply the ability to cast 9th level spells. Based on this information, we can assume V is likely to be either level 15 or 16, as those are the levels at which wizards are able to cast 8th level spells but not 9th level spells. And since there's nothing indicating V has skills, proficiencies or class features a single-classed elf wizard couldn't have, there's little merit to any hypothesis which assumes V has levels in any other class or is secretly not an elf.

If V was shown to be able to cast 9th level spells that'd put V in the 17-20 level range (the same range Redcloak in), and if V was shown to be able to use epic magic and 10th-level slots we could place V in the 21+ level range along with Xykon. But neither has happened, so...

[Emanick]

We can safely infer that Xykon is the only epic level character on Team Evil, as he's the only one who ever gets referred as Epic.

In any case, as long as Redcloak doesn't show anything that suggests he's epic level, it's safe to assume he's not. Again, we can say he's potentially level 100 and spent all his feats on Toughness, but that's neither likely nor a good way to go around establishing potential upper bounds for the statistics of OotS characters.

Since we have strong evidence that he's gained lots of XP recently, I think it's no longer safe to assume that he isn't Epic. He may have reached level 21 extremely recently. Heck, the battle with Durkon might have put him over the top, assuming it counts as a win.

I think it's unlikely that he's Epic by now, but we can't be certain either way.

[Anarchic Fox]

That's not even really a criticism, by the way, just an observation about where this can go (and the only place it can go) if you don't want to lay any groundrules.

You're entirely right, so here's the first rule: Except where referenced in the comic, only the The Hypertext d20 SRD may be used as a source of rules. By "except where referenced in the comic" I mean stuff like Elan's prestige class and Tsukiko's overpowered spells.

I'll also add a suggestion: Always assume that every character optimizes both encounters and build, within their given limitations. So, for example, Elan's Int is low enough that he'll happily spend skill ranks on Perform (Kazoo), Roy is a pure fighter as a matter of pride, and Redcloak must adhere to The Plan, which might include mandatory multiclassing.

I'd prefer for any other rules and suggestions to be a matter of consensus, not decree.

[Anarchic Fox]

Why would we assume Redcloak is anything but a straight-classed cleric?

Because he's highly proficient in cross-class skills like Bluff and Sense Motive.

Hell, hanging around Xykon may even be detrimental to his progression, since the Epic lich sorcerer raises the party's ECL, meaning they get less XP.

Redcloak contributes most (all?) of the party's buffing spells, so it's safe to say he does more than just hang around!

We can safely infer that Xykon is the only epic level character on Team Evil, as he's the only one who ever gets referred as Epic.

If the comic never says it's so, it's not so? That makes sense for discussing lower bounds, but this thread is for upper bounds.

He didn't fake his death, he appeared to Redcloak as a very dead ghost.

Oops, I completely misremembered it then. My book collection is boxed up at the moment.

[Jason]

Because he's highly proficient in cross-class skills like Bluff and Sense Motive.

He has a high wisdom and an artifact with mostly unknown powers. The Crimson Mantle might give a bonus to any Bluff, Sense Motive, or Diplomacy check that forwards The Plan.

[Anarchic Fox]

He has a high wisdom and an artifact with mostly unknown powers. The Crimson Mantle might give a bonus to any Bluff, Sense Motive, or Diplomacy check that forwards The Plan.

Screw Occam's Razor, I'm calling in Occam's Dagger, an equally potent (though lesser-known) artifact.

Which is simpler, speculating about the build of a character or speculating about the powers of an artifact?

[Brumagris]

How do we know he’s pre-Epic? Just because he hasn’t demonstrated any Epic abilities doesn’t mean he’s not Epic level.

I don’t expect him to be Epic level but we’ve not seen proof that he isn’t.

Adding my 2 copper piece, considering my limited knowledge on epic spellcasting

Spoiler

Show

When confronting Durkon, he used implosion to try to kill him, instead of an OP epic spell. He didn't use a single epic spell in this fight, yet suggested Xykon to use his (superb dispelling).
Yes, the argument to this could be that he may have prepared suitable epic spells, however TE is facing several rough encounters daily. IF RC has access to epic level spells, in this situation, he would prepare combat ones, that could have been used against our lovely duo of Dwarven clerics