Ranking the defence of the gates

[gbaji]

The thing with Lirian's Gate is that its defenses weren't weak only against the undead, they were weak against any conventional army. They were weak against any non-caster. Tarquin for example would have crushed its defenses, even if he couldn't have taken on Lirian herself solo. Any regular warlord with a sufficiently strong army would have won that battle - and by the looks of it, the army in question wouldn't have needed to be all that big.

I completely disagree. One of the massive strengths of druids is that they can effectively wipe out virtually unlimited numbers of low to mid level opponents without even putting themselves in danger. Armies get eaten by druids, especially if they have to march any reasonable distance to get to where the druid is, and may be observed along the way (which was absolutely the case here). The combination of even simple spells like entangle, fog, and various spike and swarm spells will just wipe away most warrior types with them having more or less zero chance of survival. And that's before getting into some of the higher level druid spells that you'd save for the actual powerful opponents. You attrition an army down to nothing if they're coming for you. You don't wait for them to get on your doorstep.

Combined with many methods for even mid level druids to travel quickly and unseen through forested environments, set up spell combos and traps, and then disappear before anyone knows anything other than (OMG! Why is everyone in our formation/camp dying?), makes large armed forces a real no-no when coming after a druid. You just advertise your intent (can't hide an army), and you wont have one left once you get where you're going.

What percentage of Taquin's army was over 5th level? 1%? Probably lower. They all just die. All that's left by the time you get where you're going (the gate in this case) is your core group and maybe a small handful of folks lucky enough and with enough hps to survive. And you're probably depleted on spells by the time you get there. That's assuming 90% of your army didn't just fail a morale check and flee a day or two ago (which just allows the druid and allies to focus even more on hit and run on the more powerful folks remaining).

Now yes, apparently Lirian did just sit there and wait while the enemy wandered through the forest for two days getting to her, but that was frankly a startlingly poor showing for any druid (again, I'll point to reverse plot armor here). The tactics aren't even that hard to noodle out. Just look at the druid spell list and think about how you'd defend a single static location in a forest if you had say two days warning that an enemy force is coming for it. Protip: The answer is not "wait until they get here and then direct attack them with spells while my allies attack physically". That's how a wizard defends a static location. That's now how a druid should do it.

Again though. This was pre written prologue. Which is why it happened as it did. If we assess the defenses based on what they actually were, and not how they were actually implemented in the comic, her defenses *should* have been incredibly successful. They weren't, but purely because she basically ignored her own classes most powerful abilities.

[Carl]

Yeah. As written in SoD, you are almost certainly correct. I guess I just have a hard time letting the world-builder in me go. I've been a long time GM, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how various structures and organizations must work in a game world to actually, you know, work. So to me, it's almost nails-on-the-chalkboard like to have an elven druid, in a forest that certain seemed to have elves in it, not actually take advantage of that fact to some degree. But yeah. Dismiss that as me idly speculating on "what should have been". Clearly, it's not what actually happened. She clearly did put secrecy above security in this case, only trusting the defense of the gate to her own followers and forest friends, and not leveraging anything else.

Oh when doing my own worldbuilding i default to the same behaviour. But i also spent a good bit of my youth watching star trek and trying to come up with consistent internal explanations for the technobabble. So i have a fair bit of ability at both. Nothing wrong if thats not somthing your used to though.

But a weakness to Liches and Vampires is still a pretty huge problem given that those were two of the main villain factions in the present day (and this is something she ought to have anticipated - if there were gaps in her knowledge, that's a problem, especially since she had a good relationship with Dorukan. The two of them should have, together, been the expert on supernatural threats.

I'd assume from what happened that we saw that Durokan was as lacking in undead knowledge as Lirrian. That said yes the two biggest threats have turned out to be Lich's and Vampires. But as shown by how little anyone knows about them they're not common. It's a weakness but the odds of anyone exploiting it are incredibly low in reality.

I thought I'd raise a bit of a defence for Dorukon's gate here



Dorukon's gate was also almost successful, so seems a bit silly to rank it low too.

All three gates were destroyed. Soon's and Dorukon's came close to killing Xykon (Xykon himself says his battle with Dorukon was a near thing), and Lyrian's arguably came close to keeping him imprisoned.



You mention three things that Kraagor's gate had - trickery, monsters and magical defences. Dorukon's gate also had all three of those defences, and others besides. Arguably the monsters in Kraagor's were stronger (the Order being higher level now), but those monsters seem still mostly easy for Xykon.



Soon's gate may have taken more resources, but Dorukon's gate is the one that had taken vastly more time than the others - and Xykon still hadn't cracked it when the Order showed up.



Agree about this - but also relevant to Dorukon's wards which required good aligned persons (so even narrower than Soon's good or neutral).


We have no way of knowing how difficult the dungeon was for Xykon - we didn't see that. We only know that Xykon vanquished it. As he has vanquished all Kraagor's dungeons and Lyrian's monster defences.

But putting that aside, the dungeon was not his only defence. But I expect we will come to those below.



A delaying tactic like Lyrian's virus or Serini's trickery at Kraagor's gate? As a delaying tactic it fared longer than Lyrian's virus, and much longer than Serini's trickery has so far. Who knows how long it would have kept him had the Order not intervened.

It also did have something that posed a threat to Xykon - Dorukon himself. A greater threat than anything we have seen at Kraagor's gate for sure. Granted Xykon did vanquish him, but Dorukon was probably the greatest threat to Xykon we have seen at a gate other than Soon's ghost paladins.



Good point that it may have been part of Soon's and Lyrian's strategy to destroy those gates. It was also part of Dorukon's, hence the self destruct.

Xykon got physical possession of the gate, but he didn't crack its defences. That is because Dorukon's gate is the only one we've seen so far to have defences that continue to apply after a baddy has captured it.



Nope. Dorukon was only one layer. Even after Droukon died, it had at least as many layers of defence as any other gate (for example, it still had monsters, trickery and magic defences like Kraagor's). And even after he died, it hold the record for the gate that held out the longest.



We didn't see what defences there were because Xykon probably killed them all. For all we know Dorukon's dungeon might have had equally strong monsters to Kraagor's but Xykon killed them. All we know is that Xykon was ultimately successful, but that is true at every direct defence of a gate so far.



Nope. The way he went about his fight against Xykon (whether you think it intelligent or unintelligent) he was a threat. Xykon said so. Who else has Xykon fought at the gate who he would say made it a near thing, other than the ghost paladins? He was even playing with Lyrian in their clash, and Serini is too afraid to engage him even with all her pets.



It is worth comparing Dorukon's gate to Soon's, because those two are the contenders for the best defended gate.

All of that only matters if it almost destroyed Xykon. And aside from his duel with Dorukan none of it was important enough to even show to us. The wards slowed Xykon down, but they where never going to permanently stop him and there was nothing intentionally on it's way to come along to stop him.

The thing with Lirian's Gate is that its defenses weren't weak only against the undead, they were weak against any conventional army. They were weak against any non-caster. Tarquin for example would have crushed its defenses, even if he couldn't have taken on Lirian herself solo. Any regular warlord with a sufficiently strong army would have won that battle - and by the looks of it, the army in question wouldn't have needed to be all that big.

Tarquin would have been crushed. A treant, (or animated tree which treants can animate upto 2 at once at will), is pretty much the perfect creature for crushing his army, they can kill a couple of dozen tightly packed soldiers a round if they're low level and packed densly enough. That just leaves Tarquin and the rouge lady as actual threats. And the latter unless she has bracers like Right Eye did, (admittedly likely given how much into preparation Tarquin is), isn't much of a threat to a treant either.

It wouldn't take a lot of caster firepower to take down tarquin at that point.

Obviously malack being an immune spellcaster from a physically powerful race would be a hell of a trump card, (i think Lirian herself could have coped with him but probably not much else), but that circles back to the weakness to intelligent undead with spellcasting, which seems to be a rare thing to run into.

[brian 333]

The numbers say this and that, but the fact is, no perfect defense is proof against someone with both resources and time. Xykon had both. After supposed months occupying Dorukon's Dungeon he didn't find a way into the gate. It was far easier to destroy than unseal. We still don't know why.

The vaunted power of druids excludes the possibility of cadres of assassins and skirmishers mowing them down from hiding or from crossbow range.
The weakness of Ghost Martyrs is to anyone who can banish them. Ironically, had Xykon come equipped for dealing with incorporeal undead, the Throne Room battle would have gone differently.
The supposed weakness of illusions is discussed by V and Elan as they hold off the hobgoblins at the dock. Having living defenders would have made a huge difference in the pyramid's defense.

Any possible defense plan has strengths and weaknesses. Dorukon's was not fatal but nearly impervious to Xykon. Lirian's was fatal but fragile. I'm virtually certain nobody planned their defense with the idea that somebody would go from gate to gate blowing them up.

[Liquor Box]

Yes, Dorukan's wards slowed Xykon down. But I don't think this means much because as soon as Dorukan himself died, none of the defenses were actually capable of killing Xykon. It was complete luck that an adventuring party arrived to kill him (Roy was there because he wanted revenge, not because of anything Dorukan did.) There was no alarm system, no backups, etc.

None of any of the other gate's defences, except Soon's, has been shown to be capable of killing Xykon.

If Roy hadn't randomly wandered in, Dorukan's other defenses wouldn't have mattered at all, because Xykon basically had as long as he wanted to analyze and dissect them. Dorukan himself was the only layer of defense actually capable of winning. The poorly-thought-out self-destruct button demonstrates this - you say it shows he had other plans, but, again, what use is the self-destruct button when there's nobody there to push it? As soon as Dorukan died all his other stuff went on autopilot and became mostly useless, capable of slowing Xykon down but not really doing anything meaningful beyond that (and, crucially, with no plans that we saw that could actually take advantage of the time they theoretically bought.)

Again, if Dorukon was the only part of the defence capable of killing Xykon, than is still more than we've seen from Lyrian's, Kraagor's or Girard's.

I don't agree that he almost won. The fight we saw was pretty one-sided, and his defenses didn't actually do anything except make Xykon win more slowly. His gate is currently the only one that was captured by the enemy intact - that's the worst showing of any of the defenses we've seen.

Xykon himself says it was a near thing. From what we have seen nothing at Girard's, Kraagor's or Lyrian's came closer to killing him.

The gate being captured is meaningless if Xykon was unable to use it. Well not meaningless, because it puts it at risk of being destroyed, but then that is just like all the other gates.

All of that only matters if it almost destroyed Xykon. And aside from his duel with Dorukan none of it was important enough to even show to us. The wards slowed Xykon down, but they where never going to permanently stop him and there was nothing intentionally on it's way to come along to stop him.

The duel itself came as close to destroyign Xykon as anything else we've seen from the gates except the paladin ghosts.

People may differ as to whether barriers which don't come close to destroying Xykon, and only slow him down, matter. I was replying to someone who raised the monsters in Kraagor's dungeon as a positive of that gate defence, so i felt it appropriate to point out that Dorukon's gate had a dungeon too - although we haven't seen either seriously threaten Xykon. People have argued that the deception in Kraagor's gate or the virus in Lyrian's gate were postives in those defences, despite each only slowing Xykon down (the assumption being that he would solve all problems eventually unless there's a threat to him), so appropriate to point out that Dorukon's dungeon was at least as great of a problem for Xykon.

[Squire Doodad]

I think it's pretty clear that both Dorukan and Soon's gates were "successful" at stopping Xykon, with the failings not being a flaw of their own power.
Granted, Xykon could have probably gone and kidnapped some heroes then put them in appropriate prisons to "escape" such that they would end up unlocking it, but the fight with Dorukan almost got him killed and getting heroes to touch the seal almost got him killed by a mid-level party.
Soon on the other hand I would call a complete success with Xykon not merely needing an entire army to take the city and get to the room to begin with, but also struggling with and giving up against the army of Sacred Watchers present. Even assuming corruption/no attempt to stop it from Azure City itself and a worst case scenario, the Sacred Watchers being able to take out an Epic Lich and a high-level Cleric is very impressive, especially since I believe they would respawn daily if the walls fell and castle itself was put under siege.

Sure, neither of them actually stopped Xykon outright, but they only failed because of wild cards that could not have been realistically predicted and were independent of Xykon's own actions. (Miko's...thing and Elan hitting the self-destruct are not normal things to plan for, particularly the latter.)
Defenses of a gate can be perfectly capable and "a good defense" even if it ultimately fails.



Xykon wasn't present at Girard's Gate, though arguably his overreliance on illusions likely would have made it a lot easier for a Lich to storm even with a living clan of capable and class-diverse heroes to fend off (assuming none were Epic).
Meanwhile, Lirian's Gate is the only clear loser here with several flaws that, despite its impressive showing, fails terribly against an undead army which is a very common threat in this world.

[RatElemental]

4. Durukon's gate. He made a dungeon that was 100% dependent on his own power to defend it, and (apparently) made zero plans for said defense after his death. The only defense after that was the glyphs/sigils, which only coincidentally happened to delay team evil (because they were evil). I'd question the creation of a magical defense that just requires "someone of good alignment" to bypass, but I also put this into the prologue section of the story, so that's just the way things are. Again, the world-builder in me would have expected him to create an order of wizards to follow in his footsteps, train them, and key the gate glyph to only open for the highest ranked member(s) of that order. Would prevent anything short of a Saruman level betrayal from ever penetrating the gates defenses. But that's just what I would have done. Maybe he was anti-social and/or paranoid or something. But in any case, as actually implemented, his defenses were by far the least likely to actually protect his gate for any longish period of time. His gate basically had a relatively low MTBF even if no one powerful ever attempted to gain access to it.

Given the fact that Girard died of old age long enough ago to be a skeleton while Dorukan was still kicking it as recently as the in comic current year, I always just assumed he had found a way to become immortal. Even without going that far, epic magic does have built in legal ways to boost your maximum age, and once the DCs got too high to let him keep going with that he had an epic druid girlfriend who could reincarnate him as a young adult.

[brian 333]

Question: Why is the metric of a gate's defense now "Kill Xykon"?

Dorukon's defense held off Xykon without killing him. I consider that a successful defense.

[Sapphire Guard]

Lirian's defence being flammable is not a weakness, that's part of the defences, it prevents attackers from using literal scorched earth tactics if they want the gate. Every dungeon has factored in that it is better to destroy the gate than have someone seize it.

There is a weakness to undead, but everything in the Stickverse is weak to undead, high level undead mages are so rare that almost nobody has any knowledge of them, even a conclave of high level clergy didn't have perfect knowledge of what Durkula was.

It doesn't quite gel with also being a setting where characters can literally look up the rulebook, but here we are.

It's very difficult to judge many of them, because we don't get to see the defences operating at full capacity. Girard's dungeon's defences would depend on how his relatives were statted, we see how with a mid level party could set up a very effective ambush against a higher level one using an ambush in the right place, and that is without most of the illusions.

We don't get to see Dorukan's dungeon's defences in action. and we also don't see Kraagor's, because the dungeon crawls happen off panel. We don't see Girard's defenders because V killed them.

From what we see Soon's is the strongest, but there is a lot we haven't seen.

[Carl]

The numbers say this and that, but the fact is, no perfect defense is proof against someone with both resources and time. Xykon had both. After supposed months occupying Dorukon's Dungeon he didn't find a way into the gate. It was far easier to destroy than unseal. We still don't know why.

The vaunted power of druids excludes the possibility of cadres of assassins and skirmishers mowing them down from hiding or from crossbow range.
The weakness of Ghost Martyrs is to anyone who can banish them. Ironically, had Xykon come equipped for dealing with incorporeal undead, the Throne Room battle would have gone differently.
The supposed weakness of illusions is discussed by V and Elan as they hold off the hobgoblins at the dock. Having living defenders would have made a huge difference in the pyramid's defense.

Any possible defense plan has strengths and weaknesses. Dorukon's was not fatal but nearly impervious to Xykon. Lirian's was fatal but fragile. I'm virtually certain nobody planned their defense with the idea that somebody would go from gate to gate blowing them up.

Whilst the general point is true your examples are not the best honestly. Assassins and skirmishers would have suffered badly against Lirian and we saw another cleric besides RC try the whole turn thing and not be high enough level to make it stick.

None of any of the other gate's defences, except Soon's, has been shown to be capable of killing Xykon.


Again, if Dorukon was the only part of the defence capable of killing Xykon, than is still more than we've seen from Lyrian's, Kraagor's or Girard's.


Xykon himself says it was a near thing. From what we have seen nothing at Girard's, Kraagor's or Lyrian's came closer to killing him.

The gate being captured is meaningless if Xykon was unable to use it. Well not meaningless, because it puts it at risk of being destroyed, but then that is just like all the other gates.


The duel itself came as close to destroyign Xykon as anything else we've seen from the gates except the paladin ghosts.

People may differ as to whether barriers which don't come close to destroying Xykon, and only slow him down, matter. I was replying to someone who raised the monsters in Kraagor's dungeon as a positive of that gate defence, so i felt it appropriate to point out that Dorukon's gate had a dungeon too - although we haven't seen either seriously threaten Xykon. People have argued that the deception in Kraagor's gate or the virus in Lyrian's gate were postives in those defences, despite each only slowing Xykon down (the assumption being that he would solve all problems eventually unless there's a threat to him), so appropriate to point out that Dorukon's dungeon was at least as great of a problem for Xykon.

Question: Why is the metric of a gate's defense now "Kill Xykon"?

Dorukon's defense held off Xykon without killing him. I consider that a successful defense.

Pardon me for lumping you together but there's a common thread thats relevant for both of you. By and large we're using "kill" because it's the primary permanent way of ending a threat to a gate. Lirian had a non-lethal method that barring an extremly freak set of circumstances was as good as killing them.

There's a big difference between a defence that manages to have it's opposition at it's mercy and then has victory snatched away by a freak occurrence it never saw coming, and a defence that comes close but never actually has the opposition at it's mercy.

Lirrian and Soon fall into the first category, Dorukan falls into the second, Girriad is unknown to some degree, (more on that in a second), and Kraegors is yet to be determined.

The thing with Girriads is we might not know exactly how it would have performed but against anything but the most unknowledge-able of foes it comes down to a caster fight between a family of casters and whatever they're up against. it's straight force vs straight force with no fallback. They're biggest fanciest defence could be beaten by a simple mind blank spell. Lirrian and Soons required a lot more raw power to overcome, (remember Soon was so high HD RC couldn't touch him), and where a lot better hidden from discovery.

Given the fact that Girard died of old age long enough ago to be a skeleton while Dorukan was still kicking it as recently as the in comic current year, I always just assumed he had found a way to become immortal. Even without going that far, epic magic does have built in legal ways to boost your maximum age, and once the DCs got too high to let him keep going with that he had an epic druid girlfriend who could reincarnate him as a young adult.

It's certainly possibble but Sereni is also still around and we really don't know their relative ages. Where not so far from the Scribbler days that he couldn't have survived on his own as an old man.

[gbaji]

The vaunted power of druids excludes the possibility of cadres of assassins and skirmishers mowing them down from hiding or from crossbow range.

Those assassins and skirmishers would be hiding where exactly? In the bushes and the underbrush? From a druid?

You get that druids can literally use the plants as senses, as well as animals. They can pass undetected through the forest. They know where you are. You don't know where they are. You can set up all the physical defenses you want, but if you are traveling through their forest, the first sign you will get of a druid attack is when people start screaming and dying in large numbers. And even after that starts, you will never actually see the druid that's casting the spells at your army. All you can do is try to reduce the death rate. And in most cases, by the time you are even aware that and attack is happening, large numbers of people are already dead. Efforts to find and defeat whatever just attacked fail, because the druid is already gone, only to wait some random amount of time and repeat the process. Marching in formation, or camping in traditional military defensive positions, actually makes you more vulnerable to druids, not less.

It just surprises me when people suggest that a large army is a weakness for a druid. It's not. It's what they are best equipped to deal with. Single or small groups of very high level people are the thing that druids are most vulnerable to. And even then, in most cases, they can avoid direct conflict (obviously not the case here since she's defending a gate).

Large number of low to mid level opponents is literally what the druid spell set is designed to handle. Overwhelmingly in most cases.

[gbaji]

The thing with Girriads is we might not know exactly how it would have performed but against anything but the most unknowledge-able of foes it comes down to a caster fight between a family of casters and whatever they're up against. it's straight force vs straight force with no fallback. They're biggest fanciest defence could be beaten by a simple mind blank spell. Lirrian and Soons required a lot more raw power to overcome, (remember Soon was so high HD RC couldn't touch him), and where a lot better hidden from discovery.

I'll also point out about Girard's gate that just because Girard focused on illusions, and set up some powerful illusionary tricks and traps in his pyramid, and his family followed in his footsteps, does not mean that the only thing they can do is illusions.

Having specialization in illusion does not prevent you from casting other types of spells. And with enough different casters, even if we assume every single one also specializes in illusions, they can all pick different barred schools, meaning that literally any and all MU spells may be deployable. So folks saying things like "liches are immune to mind affecting spells", or "true seeing totally stops illusions" are really missing the point. The illusions are cover. The real power there was an entire group who could collectively cast a whole lot of different spells at any enemy who decided to show up. This is in addition to the epic illusion hiding the pyramid itself and the section in the canyon that the pyramid is even in. Heck. We can't even assume that every member of the family committed to a spell casting class. We know that at least some did (we saw the spell list), but there could very well have been members who were skilled at physical fighting as well. We just don't know.

I still think there were serious gaps in his defensive approach, but it's not nearly as weak as many assume.

[brian 333]

Those assassins and skirmishers would be hiding where exactly? In the bushes and the underbrush? From a druid?

You get that druids can literally use the plants as senses, as well as animals. They can pass undetected through the forest. They know where you are. You don't know where they are. You can set up all the physical defenses you want, but if you are traveling through their forest, the first sign you will get of a druid attack is when people start screaming and dying in large numbers. And even after that starts, you will never actually see the druid that's casting the spells at your army. All you can do is try to reduce the death rate. And in most cases, by the time you are even aware that and attack is happening, large numbers of people are already dead. Efforts to find and defeat whatever just attacked fail, because the druid is already gone, only to wait some random amount of time and repeat the process. Marching in formation, or camping in traditional military defensive positions, actually makes you more vulnerable to druids, not less.

It just surprises me when people suggest that a large army is a weakness for a druid. It's not. It's what they are best equipped to deal with. Single or small groups of very high level people are the thing that druids are most vulnerable to. And even then, in most cases, they can avoid direct conflict (obviously not the case here since she's defending a gate).

Large number of low to mid level opponents is literally what the druid spell set is designed to handle. Overwhelmingly in most cases.

It astonishes me how often I see arguments for this or that based on raw numbers with nothing else.

For about a decade I played a halfling ranger skirmisher/magekiller. No druid would have ever seen him without true sight, and even then he would have hard to not be hiding, which he almost always did. The perfect hard counter to high level spells is 6 melee attacks per round. Very seldom did any of his targets detect him before they were at sword point, and then it was too late.
Evrin Strongbow got his name because I tried to make a sniper character at the start. He had a crossbow that could hit a target at 150 yards. I could never get deadly poisons for the bolts, so I'd snipe, move, hide, wait, snipe...
Very effective. Casters never had a chance. But that success was based on actual gameplay, where planning, strategy, and exploiting the weakness of the enemy is possible.

[Liquor Box]

Pardon me for lumping you together but there's a common thread thats relevant for both of you. By and large we're using "kill" because it's the primary permanent way of ending a threat to a gate. Lirian had a non-lethal method that barring an extremly freak set of circumstances was as good as killing them.

There's a big difference between a defence that manages to have it's opposition at it's mercy and then has victory snatched away by a freak occurrence it never saw coming, and a defence that comes close but never actually has the opposition at it's mercy.

Lirrian and Soon fall into the first category, Dorukan falls into the second, Girriad is unknown to some degree, (more on that in a second), and Kraegors is yet to be determined.

The thing with Girriads is we might not know exactly how it would have performed but against anything but the most unknowledge-able of foes it comes down to a caster fight between a family of casters and whatever they're up against. it's straight force vs straight force with no fallback. They're biggest fanciest defence could be beaten by a simple mind blank spell. Lirrian and Soons required a lot more raw power to overcome, (remember Soon was so high HD RC couldn't touch him), and where a lot better hidden from discovery.

No problem with lumping us together, except in doing so I think you have misread my post. I have a lot of sympathy for the idea that destroying Xykon is the only way to stop him getting a gate, because given time he will very likely solve any other non-lethal obstacle unless another party intervenes.

My point is that it was only Soon's gate that came closer to killing Xykon than Dorukon's. If the criteria is how lethal the gate defences were, then Soon's is first, Dorukon's second and probably Serini's last from what we've seen.

To be clear about Lyrian's gate, it was not at all lethal to Xykon. It placed him in the prison without his magic, which was just another delaying tactic. It was just another problem for him to overcome, like Serini's deception, like Dorukon's wards on the gate. Xykon was not 'as good as dead', Xykon's escape was not a freak set of circumstances - it was no more difficult to for Xykon to get around Lyrian's disabling of him than Dorukon's wards (less difficult based on how long he spent on each).

Comparing Dorukon's defences directly to Lyrian's, Dorukon's outperformed hers both in the potential for their attacks to actually destroy Xykon, and in how effective the defences were at delaying. Whether you think lethality or delay is the gold standard - Dorukon outperformed Lyrian.

[RatElemental]

It's certainly possibble but Sereni is also still around and we really don't know their relative ages. Where not so far from the Scribbler days that he couldn't have survived on his own as an old man.

Halflings can live to be 300 years old. And she's looking venerable, so Dorukan would definitely have been dead by then if he wasn't boosting his max age somehow.

I should also point out that Soon also died of old age long enough ago for a young child to get old enough to start worrying about his maximum age too.

[Gurgeh]

Halflings have a maximum age of 200 in 3.5 (100 + 5d20).

There is some overlap in the venerable age ranges for humans (70-110) and halflings (100-200); it's also clear that Dorukan was younger than the rest of the scribblers, so it's not out of the question for him to have "only" been thirty or thirty-five years older than Shojo and nearing - but not exceeding - the maximum human lifespan by the time he's killed.

[Carl]

It astonishes me how often I see arguments for this or that based on raw numbers with nothing else.

For about a decade I played a halfling ranger skirmisher/magekiller. No druid would have ever seen him without true sight, and even then he would have hard to not be hiding, which he almost always did. The perfect hard counter to high level spells is 6 melee attacks per round. Very seldom did any of his targets detect him before they were at sword point, and then it was too late.
Evrin Strongbow got his name because I tried to make a sniper character at the start. He had a crossbow that could hit a target at 150 yards. I could never get deadly poisons for the bolts, so I'd snipe, move, hide, wait, snipe...
Very effective. Casters never had a chance. But that success was based on actual gameplay, where planning, strategy, and exploiting the weakness of the enemy is possible.

What your describing is a relatively well leveled character, an extreme rarity in OOTS verse. A group of skirmishers or assassins is going to have an even lower average level.

No problem with lumping us together, except in doing so I think you have misread my post. I have a lot of sympathy for the idea that destroying Xykon is the only way to stop him getting a gate, because given time he will very likely solve any other non-lethal obstacle unless another party intervenes.

My point is that it was only Soon's gate that came closer to killing Xykon than Dorukon's. If the criteria is how lethal the gate defences were, then Soon's is first, Dorukon's second and probably Serini's last from what we've seen.

To be clear about Lyrian's gate, it was not at all lethal to Xykon. It placed him in the prison without his magic, which was just another delaying tactic. It was just another problem for him to overcome, like Serini's deception, like Dorukon's wards on the gate. Xykon was not 'as good as dead', Xykon's escape was not a freak set of circumstances - it was no more difficult to for Xykon to get around Lyrian's disabling of him than Dorukon's wards (less difficult based on how long he spent on each).

Comparing Dorukon's defences directly to Lyrian's, Dorukon's outperformed hers both in the potential for their attacks to actually destroy Xykon, and in how effective the defences were at delaying. Whether you think lethality or delay is the gold standard - Dorukon outperformed Lyrian.

I hard disagree on Lirrians imprisonment just being a delaying tactic. Not only does the caster need to eb of a fairly high level, but they have to know how. Without RC around Xykon would never have known how to do it. Likewise a less powerful caster wouldn't have been able todo it, (i think the giant still fudged some stuff btw, i doubt they had 120,000GP of items just lying around). Knowledge of Lich's is clearly pretty rare too.

The key difference between Lirrians setup and Dorukans is that with Dorukans Xykon had full access to his abilities, outside access to whatever resources he wanted, (research text, GP supply, minions, e.t.c.). With Lirrians he had to rely on what was at hand and if RC wasn't such a nerd he'd have been boned, (pun intended).

[Liquor Box]

I hard disagree on Lirrians imprisonment just being a delaying tactic. Not only does the caster need to eb of a fairly high level, but they have to know how. Without RC around Xykon would never have known how to do it. Likewise a less powerful caster wouldn't have been able todo it, (i think the giant still fudged some stuff btw, i doubt they had 120,000GP of items just lying around). Knowledge of Lich's is clearly pretty rare too.

All it did was delay him, so it was absolutely just a delaying tactic.

We don't know whether there were other ways out of the prison, or for Xykon to recover his powers - lichdom was just the solution they thought of first. If Redcloak wasn't there, Xykon might have thought of another idea.

The key difference between Lirrians setup and Dorukans is that with Dorukans Xykon had full access to his abilities, outside access to whatever resources he wanted, (research text, GP supply, minions, e.t.c.). With Lirrians he had to rely on what was at hand and if RC wasn't such a nerd he'd have been boned, (pun intended).

The difference is that Lyrian's gate delayed him four months before he solved it. Dorukon's gate had already delayed him six months (and hadn't been solved in that time) AND there was a lethal threat Xykon in addiiton (Dorukon himself)

If Redcloak hadn't been there, we can only guess how long it might have taken Xykon to solve Lyrian's prison. Just like we can only guesshow long it might have taken Xykon to solve Dorukon's ward if the Order hadn't arrived. Or whether he would have been able to in either case. All we can go on is how big of a challenge each gate's defences actually presented - and the wards were a greater challenge to him than losing his powers and being imprisoned - before you even take account of the Dorukon battle.

[Carl]

All it did was delay him, so it was absolutely just a delaying tactic.

We don't know whether there were other ways out of the prison, or for Xykon to recover his powers - lichdom was just the solution they thought of first. If Redcloak wasn't there, Xykon might have thought of another idea.



The difference is that Lyrian's gate delayed him four months before he solved it. Dorukon's gate had already delayed him six months (and hadn't been solved in that time) AND there was a lethal threat Xykon in addiiton (Dorukon himself)

If Redcloak hadn't been there, we can only guess how long it might have taken Xykon to solve Lyrian's prison. Just like we can only guesshow long it might have taken Xykon to solve Dorukon's ward if the Order hadn't arrived. Or whether he would have been able to in either case. All we can go on is how big of a challenge each gate's defences actually presented - and the wards were a greater challenge to him than losing his powers and being imprisoned - before you even take account of the Dorukon battle.

Without magic he wasn't getting out of Lirians prison, ever. Turning himself into a creature type that was immune to disease or getting a healing spell of adequate power where his only ways of doing that. Without something like the Crimson Mantle and a powerful enough caster wearing it, (which RC wasn't), the latter isn't an option, and Lich is the only way to do the former i can think of without a vampire allready on hand.

That the difference. Without outside interference Xykon would eventually have figured out a way through the wards, (in fact he already had by the time the OOTS showed up, he just needed to arrange for it to actually hapen), but without outside interference he was completely at the mercy of the pure random luck of having a major nerd travelling with him who knew of what was the only way out.

It's a huge difference in the threat level presented. One of them was never going to permanently stop him. The other could have and only didn't because of sheer hapstance.

[Liquor Box]

Without magic he wasn't getting out of Lirians prison, ever. Turning himself into a creature type that was immune to disease or getting a healing spell of adequate power where his only ways of doing that. Without something like the Crimson Mantle and a powerful enough caster wearing it, (which RC wasn't), the latter isn't an option, and Lich is the only way to do the former i can think of without a vampire allready on hand.

That the difference. Without outside interference Xykon would eventually have figured out a way through the wards, (in fact he already had by the time the OOTS showed up, he just needed to arrange for it to actually hapen), but without outside interference he was completely at the mercy of the pure random luck of having a major nerd travelling with him who knew of what was the only way out.

It's a huge difference in the threat level presented. One of them was never going to permanently stop him. The other could have and only didn't because of sheer hapstance.

There is no basis for thinking that Xykon would never have solved Lyrian's prison if RC hadn't thought of Lyching him. The story implies a Heal spell would have worked had RC only been higher level. If Xykon had already been undead, it wouldn't have worked. A clever crafter might have been able to craft an explosive or acid from the pharmacy of plants in the prison. The many goblins might have chiseled their way out. The only thing we know about the prison is that it was made of stone, and many people have escaped from stone prisons plenty of times without magic (usually by digging through the stone).

Your 'huge difference' is literally just a guess by you that the prison was harder to solve than the wards. And a guess that is contrary from what actually happened in the comic where Xykon did solve the prison, and not the wards.

[gbaji]

It astonishes me how often I see arguments for this or that based on raw numbers with nothing else.

For about a decade I played a halfling ranger skirmisher/magekiller. No druid would have ever seen him without true sight, and even then he would have hard to not be hiding, which he almost always did. The perfect hard counter to high level spells is 6 melee attacks per round. Very seldom did any of his targets detect him before they were at sword point, and then it was too late.

First off, let's recall that I specifically said that groups or single high level characters are the threat that druids have the most problem with. So you're not really countering anything at all. Anyone with a "special set of skills" is going to be difficult to deal with. That's not what you get with an army though. That's a large number of mostly low level mooks who are only powerful because there's a large number of them. I was responding to the idea that any random warlord who could raise a large army would just smash Liriran's defenses. I find that laughable. Druid spells and abilities are almost tailor made to repel large numbers of relatively low level folks from their forests. The last thing you want to do if you're going after a druid on their home turf is to bring an army. Unless, I suppose, the entire point of the army is just to distract the druid while you and a small group of people attempt to sneak in from another direction.

I'm not just looking at raw numbers, stats, spells, etc. I'm looking specifically at how those would be used, if the character is at all using them intelligently. I suspect in your example character, you the PC were using your abilities maximally, while the NPCs were not. Which is why you were so successful. And yes, while I agree that a stealthy character is hard to stop (in either direction), I'd still say that even a stealthy character alone would have a hard time penetrating a well defended druids territory. It would certainly be more difficult than breaking into someone's castle/dungeon/whatever.

Yeah. You can hide. You can conceal yourself. But you have to sleep, right? You're still walking through the forest for two days to get to the gate. Druids have animals and plants that act as their spies. That fern you passed 5 minutes ago? Just reported your position. Random bird flying by? Might be a spy. There's no way to know *what* you need to be hidden from. Unless you're completely invisible 100% of the time, you will be detected. And even if invisible, your character never urinates or defecates for the entire journey? Never stops to eat? Doesn't disturb the underbrush while moving? It's not enough to just look at a druids spell list, but think about the fact that druids will use them over time to actually mold the forest into a defense itself. They will intentionally set up sections of forest with heavy underbrush and steep terrain, with no way around, and drop an animated plant/tree friend there to use a detection systems. They will intentionally set up areas that look like great places to stop and rest, but are designed for druidic style scry and die positions (if needed).

And the closer you get to the druids actual center of power (in this case, the gate she's defending), the harder it will be to have any chance at all of approaching undetected. Only very powerful magical means of travelling and/or bypassing the terrain along the way will work. And once detected (even very vaguely), spells like commune with nature allow them to know exactly who's in a given area (fairly large area in fact). They can hide in the trees and plants and spy on *you* figuring out who you are and what you are doing, and if they decide you are a threat, you will never see them. And no amount of hiding will protect you from large area affect spells that will blind you, slow you down (or just stop you cold), and deal ridiculous amounts of damage to you over time). Doing this to a single stealthy person is not an efficient use of druidic power, but can still be employed.

Evrin Strongbow got his name because I tried to make a sniper character at the start. He had a crossbow that could hit a target at 150 yards. I could never get deadly poisons for the bolts, so I'd snipe, move, hide, wait, snipe...
Very effective. Casters never had a chance. But that success was based on actual gameplay, where planning, strategy, and exploiting the weakness of the enemy is possible.

It's admittedly an interesting comparison. Super stealthy assassin type character against a druid in the middle of a forest. But I suspect that even if you managed to get far enough in to get that first shot at the main druid, you'd better take them out in that one shot. There is no "move, hide, wait" once a druid is aware of your presence and you're in their forest. Druids spend a lot of time and effort making friends of the plants and animals in their forests (or creating/activating them). It's not like taking a shot at a wizard while studying rare tomes in his home, or something. The druid, if not taken out, will escape immediately (there's a ton of spells they will have to do this), and you'll be immediately targeted and attacked by dozens of angry treants, animated trees, animals (some could be *very* large), human/elf followers, etc. Druids are not solitary like a lot of high level casters may be. They build communities around them. You have to deal with that as well.

It's interesting because it's really only if you just look at the direct on paper skills/spells that a druid appears weak. Give them an environment they are protecting any a length of time to set up the protections, and they are insanely difficult to attack. If it's just you and a druid on an empty plane with nothing else just dropped into place to fight? You'll win every time. In the druids own forest? I doubt it. Not if the GM is playing the NPC druid even semi intelligently.

I hard disagree on Lirrians imprisonment just being a delaying tactic. Not only does the caster need to eb of a fairly high level, but they have to know how. Without RC around Xykon would never have known how to do it. Likewise a less powerful caster wouldn't have been able todo it, (i think the giant still fudged some stuff btw, i doubt they had 120,000GP of items just lying around). Knowledge of Lich's is clearly pretty rare too.

The key difference between Lirrians setup and Dorukans is that with Dorukans Xykon had full access to his abilities, outside access to whatever resources he wanted, (research text, GP supply, minions, e.t.c.). With Lirrians he had to rely on what was at hand and if RC wasn't such a nerd he'd have been boned, (pun intended).

Yeah. And I think I mentioned this before. Lirrian's defense *should* have killed them. She chose to imprison them instead. Durukan never had the opportunity to make that choice. He was just straight up defeated (admittedly because he was foolish, but that's another issue). She straight up defeated Team Evil, and then decided to let them live which gave them time to escape and come back after her (more powerful than before as it happened).

And even with that mistake on her part, when you look at the sheer unlikely set of circumstances that had to be involved, it's something we really can't chalk up to a "weakness in the defense". You had to have not just a powerful cleric who knew how to create a lich, but he also had to be wearing an artifact that allowed him to still cast spells despite the poison she'd afflicted them with, so he could do it in the first place. If they had just found a way to escape, they'd still be back to the same issue as to trying to attack her and capture her gate. It was only the combination of the cloak and making Xykon into a lich that worked.

One can also argue about "post defeat" defenses, and conclude that Lirrian's worked better. Her treants destroyed the gate. One can actually argue that short of another powerful druid she had actually made it completely impossible for her gate to ever actually be captured (if we're assuming "destroyed" was considered preferable to "captured", which does seem to have been the case). While Durukan left in some pretty large holes in his gates defenses. It was only due (again) to a fairly improbable set of circumstances that Xykon was not able to capture the gate.

[brian 333]

Anyone who has an army will have skirmishers, snipers, and troubleshooters. As for high level characters, let's look.

A squad is 3-5 troops (level 1) lead by a corporal (2) or sergeant (3).

A platoon is 3-5 squads lead by a sergeant (3-4) and a 2nd or 1st lieutenant (1-3)

A company is 3-5 platoons lead by a senior sergeant (5) and a captain or major(3-5).

A battalion is 2-5 companies lead by a major or lt colonel (5-7).

A regiment is 3-5 companies + support units of various kinds such as quartermaster, artillery, signals, etc. lead by a colonel (8)

A division is 3-5 regiments + support units lead by a brigadier or lt. general (9-10)

A general leads 4096 troops plus support equaling another 1000 or so troops, with a minimum of 3-5 level 8 characters in the chain of command. This is a band of raw recruits. As battles progress they will be gaining levels.

It is not unlikely that elites will be noticed and placed in special units which are given more difficult tasks, such as Forgotten Realms' Royal Corps of Monster Hunters in the army of Cormyr. In a very short time, the army will consist of at least one company outside the normal chain of command which gets all the really juicy exp. Such a unit might have dozens of characters over level 10.

Redcloak and Xykon are horrible generals. They think of troops as cannon fodder rather than assets which can be grown. Most military generals aren't that stupid. (Political generals, however...)

[Aquillion]

The only reason Lirian's defenses didn't kill Xykon is because Lirian specifically chose not to kill him. That's clearly far better than Dorukan's gate.

But more importantly - even with her choice to keep him alive, Lirian's gate would have held him forever absent an extremely unusual freak set of coincidences that allowed him to become a Lich, which had little to do with anything Lirian did.

Dorukan's gate would have inevitably fallen eventually outside of an extremely unusual freak set of coincidences that resulted in the arrival of an adventuring party capable of beating Xykon, which had little to do with anything Dorukan did.

By the time the OOTS arrived Xykon had already figured out the key element of the gate's magical defenses (ie. he needed a good person to touch it.) He decided to use the OOTS for that because they happened to be there, but if they hadn't been it would have been easy enough for him to grab someone good and harmless from elsewhere.

Like I said, Dorukan's gate was the only one that fell into the hands of the villains for any appreciable length of time. You can't even really say that his magical wards were unique - possibly the other gates had similar wards to prevent magical interference; we don't know because none of their defenses failed spectacularly enough to let Xykon get to that point.

Dorukan's gate is dead last, fullstop. The only thing that could possibly salvage it is giving more credit to Dorukan himself (ie. viewing Xykon managing to bait him out or defeat him 1v1 as a one-off.) I don't think the wards give it any points at all, and the fact that they were exposed to Xykon for so long, with absolutely nothing stopping him from examining them at his leisure, is a huge negative.

[Liquor Box]

The only reason Lirian's defenses didn't kill Xykon is because Lirian specifically chose not to kill him. That's clearly far better than Dorukan's gate.

Sure, every gate would have performed differently had its owner made different choices. Lyrian may have prevailed had she attacked Xykon and Reddy immediately upon executing her virus. Dorukon may have won if he has stayed inside his tower instead of coming out.

But more importantly - even with her choice to keep him alive, Lirian's gate would have held him forever absent an extremely unusual freak set of coincidences that allowed him to become a Lich, which had little to do with anything Lirian did.

Dorukan's gate would have inevitably fallen eventually outside of an extremely unusual freak set of coincidences that resulted in the arrival of an adventuring party capable of beating Xykon, which had little to do with anything Dorukan did.

By the time the OOTS arrived Xykon had already figured out the key element of the gate's magical defenses (ie. he needed a good person to touch it.) He decided to use the OOTS for that because they happened to be there, but if they hadn't been it would have been easy enough for him to grab someone good and harmless from elsewhere.

As I said to Carl, you have no basis for thinking that Xykon would never have solved Lyrian's prison if RC hadn't thought of Lyching him. The story implies a Heal spell would have worked had RC only been higher level. If Xykon had already been undead, it wouldn't have worked. A clever crafter might have been able to craft an explosive or acid from the pharmacy of plants in the prison. The many goblins might have chiseled their way out. The only thing we know about the prison is that it was made of stone, and many people have escaped from stone prisons plenty of times without magic (usually by digging through the stone).

You are just guessing by you that the prison was harder to solve than the wards. And a guess that is contrary from what actually happened in the comic where Xykon did solve the prison, and not the wards.

Like I said, Dorukan's gate was the only one that fell into the hands of the villains for any appreciable length of time. You can't even really say that his magical wards were unique - possibly the other gates had similar wards to prevent magical interference; we don't know because none of their defenses failed spectacularly enough to let Xykon get to that point.

It falling into hiss hands is meaningless if he can't use it. I see it as a positive for Dorukon's gate. All of the other gate's would have ben Xykon's to use if he had seized them, Dorukon's had an extra layer of defence whcih was, in the end, what saved the day.

Dorukan's gate is dead last, fullstop. The only thing that could possibly salvage it is giving more credit to Dorukan himself (ie. viewing Xykon managing to bait him out or defeat him 1v1 as a one-off.) I don't think the wards give it any points at all, and the fact that they were exposed to Xykon for so long, with absolutely nothing stopping him from examining them at his leisure, is a huge negative.

Saying 'fullstop' doesn't make you right. You have yet to demonstrate (other than your guess) why the virus and prison was any better as a delaying tactic than the wards. You have yet to address the fact that Dorukon himself was actual the second biggest threat to Xykon outside Soon's paladins, you have yet to give any reason at all why Kraagor's gate or Girrard's gate should be rated higher than Dorukon's gate.

[Ruck]

As I said to Carl, you have no basis for thinking that Xykon would never have solved Lyrian's prison if RC hadn't thought of Lyching him. The story implies a Heal spell would have worked had RC only been higher level. If Xykon had already been undead, it wouldn't have worked. A clever crafter might have been able to craft an explosive or acid from the pharmacy of plants in the prison. The many goblins might have chiseled their way out. The only thing we know about the prison is that it was made of stone, and many people have escaped from stone prisons plenty of times without magic (usually by digging through the stone).

You are just guessing by you that the prison was harder to solve than the wards. And a guess that is contrary from what actually happened in the comic where Xykon did solve the prison, and not the wards.

I think it helps to think in terms of probabilities here. Lirian's prison only didn't work because one of her prisoners both had a magical artifact that protected him from her virus and knew enough about the Lich-ification ritual to be able to improvise it from the materials on hand. That's almost certainly a very rare and unlikely confluence. We don't know how unlikely, but higher-level knowledge of undead seems pretty rare in OOTS-world from what we have seen. (Indeed, I think a better case against Lirian is how apparently unprepared for and un-knowledgeable she was about the undead.)

It's not irrelevant that it happened, but it makes more sense to think about how likely it was to happen in terms of evaluating how strong a Gate's defenses are.

(Maybe it's the poker player in me, but you put your money in as a 90% favorite, you lose 10% of the time. Doesn't mean the 10% you lost made it the wrong play.)

[RatElemental]

I think it helps to think in terms of probabilities here. Lirian's prison only didn't work because one of her prisoners both had a magical artifact that protected him from her virus and knew enough about the Lich-ification ritual to be able to improvise it from the materials on hand. That's almost certainly a very rare and unlikely confluence. We don't know how unlikely, but higher-level knowledge of undead seems pretty rare in OOTS-world from what we have seen. (Indeed, I think a better case against Lirian is how apparently unprepared for and un-knowledgeable she was about the undead.)

It's not irrelevant that it happened, but it makes more sense to think about how likely it was to happen in terms of evaluating how strong a Gate's defenses are.

(Maybe it's the poker player in me, but you put your money in as a 90% favorite, you lose 10% of the time. Doesn't mean the 10% you lost made it the wrong play.)

Haven't read SoD myself, but I imagine if Redcloak and Xykon were unsupervised enough to manage a complex magical ritual then they were unsupervised enough to dig through the walls or improvise something else.

[BloodSquirrel]

What? Soon's was objectively the hardest one to tackle - Xykon, an epic level undead sorcerer, needed a literal army in order to even have a chance to hold the Gate, attempted to bypass most of the defenses, and still would have lost and been completely destroyed (arguably the closest he's ever been to being destroyed), and his only saving grace was being saved by pure luck - an unhinged person who was lucky enough to escape prison, lucky enough to go to the throne room, lucky enough to miscontrue the situation in the throne room, lucky enough to neither see nor hear the founder of her entire order dealing the final blow to the lich she had been so terrified of and was basing all her decisions on up to that moment... Xykon only survived due to obscene luck.

"Arrogant" as a con? All of the scribblers were arrogant. They all thought they could hold it. The Gate wasn't a target due to the Azurites. Hell, the Gate and the entire Sapphire Guard was almost entirely unknown to virtually everyone in the world. And they weren't particularly weak to magic, unless you consider "absolutely immune to any and all magic" to be "weak to magic", in which case that's also a trait shared by all the Gates defenses.

This is a wildly inaccurate assessment of Soon's Gate, IMO.

I agree. Soon's gate easily had the strongest defenses.

Especially considering that, unlike most of the other gates's defenses, they were designed to outlive Soon himself. Lirian and Dorukan's gates relied too heavily on the power of the Scribblers themselves. Kraagor's gate, without a scribbler, has no active measures to defeat an intruder (unless they're careless enough to get killed while dungeon diving), nor the ability to adjust to new threats or changing conditions. It can delay, but it will inevitably fall.

Other that Soon's, only Girard's gate had a plan to maintain an active defense once Girard was gone, and its defenders were fewer in number and weaker in resources.

Of the rest, Lirian's were easily the weakest. Yes, she almost defeated Xykon before he became a lich, but once he did she went down with barely a fight, and neither Dorukan nor Soon's defenders got the chance to face a pre-lich Xykon. Lich Xykon had the most trouble with Soon's gate, the second most trouble with Dorukan's gate, and the third most trouble with Kraagor's gate. Girard's gate is an unknown- by the time the Order showed up, they were already dead, and the illusions that required active maintenance had gone down.

Overall rank:

1. Soon
2. Girard
3. Dorukan
4. Kraagor
5. Lirian

[Liquor Box]

I think it helps to think in terms of probabilities here. Lirian's prison only didn't work because one of her prisoners both had a magical artifact that protected him from her virus and knew enough about the Lich-ification ritual to be able to improvise it from the materials on hand. That's almost certainly a very rare and unlikely confluence. We don't know how unlikely, but higher-level knowledge of undead seems pretty rare in OOTS-world from what we have seen. (Indeed, I think a better case against Lirian is how apparently unprepared for and un-knowledgeable she was about the undead.)

It's not irrelevant that it happened, but it makes more sense to think about how likely it was to happen in terms of evaluating how strong a Gate's defenses are.

(Maybe it's the poker player in me, but you put your money in as a 90% favorite, you lose 10% of the time. Doesn't mean the 10% you lost made it the wrong play.)

Putting aside the fact that one happened and one did not, what reason is there to think that solving the wards was a more likely outcome than solving the prison?

In answering, I encourage you to bear in mind two points:
- First, just because the solution Xykon/Redcloak came up with depended specific precursors doesn't mean that was the only solution, I expect there were many others, and I have suggested some others which may have been available.
- Second, the solution to the wards seems obvious to us because we were told about it and know what it was. Xykon did not, and I don't think it would be any more obvious to him than how to find his way through Serini's deception, or Lyrian's prison.

I mean I agree with you, that if he had a higher chance to solve one than the other within a given time than it was easier, but I just don't see any basis for saying the wards were more likely to be solved than the prison.

Haven't read SoD myself, but I imagine if Redcloak and Xykon were unsupervised enough to manage a complex magical ritual then they were unsupervised enough to dig through the walls or improvise something else.

I mean, yes! This is the most obvious answer. They were not supervised at all, and people who are supervised by guards still frequently manage to escape from stone prisons without the slightest use of magic.

Just because the story required an explanation for Xykon's lichdom, doesn't mean that complicated answer was the only way out of a stone prison.

[Carl]

Haven't read SoD myself, but I imagine if Redcloak and Xykon were unsupervised enough to manage a complex magical ritual then they were unsupervised enough to dig through the walls or improvise something else.

I'm going to reply to liquor box here and i'm going to invoke something pelee said previously.

But first for your benefit they're in an artificially constructed cave buried somwhere, (presumably under the glade), with a built in supply of water and plants to both eat and provide oxygen. It's a sealed room with no natural way in or out. They were either teleported in or stone shaped in.

Now i said i was going to invoke pelee from earlier. And by which i mean from a narrative standpoint it makes no sense to assume Lirrian would have deliberately built a cardboard prison. She left them with most of their gear which means attempting to dig their way out was absolutely somthing they could have attempted, which means it stands to reason she'd have allowed for that. Digging or blasting your way out isn't going to work in that case. And that same "assume lirrian actually did her best within the limits of her knowledge" really puts the kibosh on damm near anything i can think of that doesn't involve getting your magic back

[Liquor Box]

I'm going to reply to liquor box here and i'm going to invoke something pelee said previously.

But first for your benefit they're in an artificially constructed cave buried somwhere, (presumably under the glade), with a built in supply of water and plants to both eat and provide oxygen. It's a sealed room with no natural way in or out. They were either teleported in or stone shaped in.

Now i said i was going to invoke pelee from earlier. And by which i mean from a narrative standpoint it makes no sense to assume Lirrian would have deliberately built a cardboard prison. She left them with most of their gear which means attempting to dig their way out was absolutely somthing they could have attempted, which means it stands to reason she'd have allowed for that. Digging or blasting your way out isn't going to work in that case. And that same "assume lirrian actually did her best within the limits of her knowledge" really puts the kibosh on damm near anything i can think of that doesn't involve getting your magic back

A stone prison that delays someone for a long time, but is ultimately escapable (eg, by digging out) is not narratively useless. It is just about as useful narratively speaking as you can get, because it allows the tension of figuring out a way to escape. Also, blasting explicitly would work - Xykon says so.

The "cardboard prison makes no narrative sense" idea applies equally to both Lyrian's prison, and Dorukon's ward anyway. In both cases it makes no sense for the villain to simply be able to waltz past the obstacle. In both cases it makes sense for there to need to be some challenge involved, and in both cases there is.

[Emanick]

Putting aside the fact that one happened and one did not, what reason is there to think that solving the wards was a more likely outcome than solving the prison?

In answering, I encourage you to bear in mind two points:
- First, just because the solution Xykon/Redcloak came up with depended specific precursors doesn't mean that was the only solution, I expect there were many others, and I have suggested some others which may have been available.
- Second, the solution to the wards seems obvious to us because we were told about it and know what it was. Xykon did not, and I don't think it would be any more obvious to him than how to find his way through Serini's deception, or Lyrian's prison.

I mean I agree with you, that if he had a higher chance to solve one than the other within a given time than it was easier, but I just don't see any basis for saying the wards were more likely to be solved than the prison.

I think one reason why other people may be doubting the feasibility of escaping from Lirian's prison is that they may have read this post from The Giant, in which he basically says that Xykon becoming a lich was the only way they could have escaped. It also explicitly shuts down some other theories, like the idea that somebody could have teleported in to rescue Team Evil or that they could have used stone shape to escape.