OOTS 652: No Respect for the Wicked

[Plane Sailing]

But as it stands, it comes off as "V is too dumb to live, how is it possible the elf made it to this point in the first place?"

Quite realistic in some ways - someone playing a character from 1st to 16th will often end up more effective than someone created at 18th and just thrown into play, because they are not used to the powers and stuff they can do.

V is experiencing some of that, in a way.

Cheers

 

[Rechan]

I doubted V would win, but it would have been nice to see Xykon get humiliated for once. Thus far, only thing that's come close is the sacred watchers.

Xykon all ready got humiliated once, when the holy ghosts handed his bony ass to him on a silver platter. The only thing that saved his undead bacon was Miko's idiotic move.

 

[Nymrohd]

Yup the epic paladin WTFPWNED Xykon. V is proving yet again why a mind flayer would rather eat Roy's brain than hers. Xykon is going to kick V's ass to the nether planes. And I am pretty sure he knows more about how a soul splice works than V does (and is familiar with the weaknesses). Not to mention that unlike V, Xykon has a powerful divine spellcaster that can constantly heal him and remove effects from him, so her only chance against him is a save or die effect (or to actually acquire basic tactical skills and kill the healer first).

Now I wonder how V will save herself. Cloister blocks teleportation and she only got in by means of a conjurer casting an epic teleportation spell which she now has probably lost. There is apparently an other way (Dorukan used it to Call Planar Escort . . . Ally) but that probably requires the caster's express permission.

 

[Buck Godot]

Now I wonder how V will save herself. Cloister blocks teleportation and she only got in by means of a conjurer casting an epic teleportation spell which she now has probably lost. There is apparently an other way (Dorukan used it to Call Planar Escort . . . Ally) but that probably requires the caster's express permission.

V can still port out if he wants to. Cloister only blocks people from coming in. So as long as the one of the Soul Splices has access to plain ol' ordinary teleport, V can still boogie on out.

Presuming he has the oppritunity, that it.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Xykon is the primadonna that can do no wrong and always seems to one-up everyone els,e all while being a cocky bastard about it. But because he's the BBEG he gets a pass on this, while V's derided for it. Such hypocrisy...

Jerk behavior in villains is a lot more acceptable than in player characters. If a villain has a really obnoxious personality, you will feel good once you finally beat him in the cinematic showdown, especially if your hatred of him has been built over many months of gaming.

On the other hand, you have no similar way of dealing with obnoxious player characters - campaign constraints usually means that you have to stick together no matter what.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

The problem with V's cockiness is that it hasn't been earned. At all.

Xykon has at least shown that he can back his threats up, but V so far has done almost nothing on it's own. Right now he's running blind, trying to fight against an epic character using someone else's spell sheet. Plus, V thought it could literally do nothing but just pop in, blast away, and be home in time for tea. It had literally nothing prepared beyond the Time Stop. Xykon is cocky because he's lost far less then he's won. V is just arrogant. I should also point out V's choice of spells. Chain lightning? Sunburst is a decent move but relying on pure damage? V has no idea how to fight the lich, and keep in mind, V still hasn't tranced since leaving the ship.

I don't think the problem is "V is just dumb." The problem is V's arrogance. Why bother looking anything up about liches if you're so sure that you can just pop in and fry them? Oh wait....

Oh, and I wouldn't doubt Xykon having Arcane Whatsitcalled for energy drain (the one that lowers metamagic slots) since it's his favorite spell, it seems.

 

[SPoD]

V should demand his time back from the fiends. The one spliced soul only has one epic spell available? That means he's at the very low end of epic.

Well, V is now down to effectively one splice. One of the splices lost its epic slots thanks to Xykon's first energy drain, meaning it was knocked down to level 20 or less.

No, you're both misinterpreting this. When you gain a negative level, you automatically lose your highest level remaining spell slot. The splices gained 2d4 negative levels right away, so an average of 5 lost spell slots. Since epic spell slots are the most powerful in the game, they are lost first. So even if the caster is still way above 20th level, they have lost their epic spells. For example, you would need to be a minimum 47th level sorcerer in order to have 5 epic spell slots, because your number of slots is equal to Knowledge (arcana) divided by 10.

So, the soul splices could be in their mid-40's, and a standard Energy Drain would still eat up their epic spell slots first.

 

[Dausuul]

No, you're both misinterpreting this. When you gain a negative level, you automatically lose your highest level remaining spell slot. The splices gained 2d4 negative levels right away, so an average of 5 lost spell slots. Since epic spell slots are the most powerful in the game, they are lost first. So even if the caster is still way above 20th level, they have lost their epic spells. For example, you would need to be a minimum 47th level sorcerer in order to have 5 epic spell slots, because your number of slots is equal to Knowledge (arcana) divided by 10.

So, the soul splices could be in their mid-40's, and a standard Energy Drain would still eat up their epic spell slots first.

Yup, just read the epic-level rules and was about to correct my earlier post... for some reason I had the idea that you got one epic-level slot per level past 20th.

So, the splices may still be able to fight effectively, but they've still had an awful lot of their spell slots eaten.

 

[freyar]

I just hope V has the sense to pull out a greater teleport before it's too late.

And, boy, Xykon sure does like energy drain, doesn't he?

Edit: I'm confused, how do Xykon and Redcloak know about soul splices? Are they supposed to be common things?

 

[Dark Dragon]

It seems that Xykon's typical behaviour has changed to some degree, IMO. In earlier strips his actions were funny to follow, despite being evil in the end.
Now he is suddenly simply effective and omniscient - in addition to the right back-ups (that nice runes that were cast right in time, for example, and Redcloak as a healer around...).

V's arrogance has obviously multiplied with the soul splice, while her/his INT seems to have been lowered or impeded (or whatever) somehow, so nothing really new here.

If a situation like this whould have occured in a D&D game, I'd call it strongly rail-roaded and would find it as a player (being involved with my PC or not does not matter) really annoying. As it is a comic with a story, I don't really like this strip because the overwhelming power of Xykon and his continual luck versus strong foes is too obvious (as it has been earlier for various situations).

So I'm wondering how a party like the OotS should be able to defeat an extremly powerful, effective, intelligent lich like this Xykon portraied in the recent strip. Unless Xykon suddenly shows some of his mannerisms again or some sort of artefact, magic, and/or pure luck is on the side of his foes.

Well, let's see...