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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JustinA" data-source="post: 3501786" data-attributes="member: 51618">And nothing makes for riveting drama like several panels of exposition to establish exactly what magical preparations were made in this room... right?The last panel in strip 447 tells us all this: The Sapphire Guard was prepared for Xykon. It was told to us visually in a single panel. We don't need the complete breakdown.Sure, if Xykon is a frickin' wimp. My 10th level sorcerer has a Charisma of 20. I'm betting the high-level lich is a little bit better off.If the DC is set at a reasonable 28, your paladins only succeed on their saving throw 10% of the time. There are a total of 37 characters shown in the final panel of strip 447 (some of whom are spellcasters). That would indicate 4 characters would make their saves on average.In strip 448 a total of 5 characters are shown as having made their saving throw. Conclusion? Rich got it right.Of the 32 we know failed their saves: 10% attack the caster (or move closer). 10% act normally. 30% babble. 20% flee. 30% attack the nearest creature.(Brief segue: Now we get into an adjudication issue. Does the "attack the caster" in the case of a symbol of insanity mean "attack the guy who cast the spell" or does it mean "attack the symbol"? In the case of this scenario Xykon is available, but that obviously wouldn't be the case in the typical scenario where a symbol of insanity is encountered.)So: 3 people attack the caster. 3 people act normally. 9 people babble. 6 people flee. 9 people attack the nearest creature.We don't see the whole room, but we do see some people acting normally (some of whom may have made their saves, but some of whom may simply have that reaction this turn). We do see some people trying to attack Xykon. We don't see anyone babbling, per se, but we probably don't really need extra word balloons.What we do know is that the violence will quickly propagate through the room: Anyone under the effects of the spell who is attacked will automatically return the attack on the following round (ignoring the normal roll to see what they do). So once you've attacked, you'll likely be attacked -- which will lock the two of you in a perpetual attack sequence. And anyone who wasn't already locked in an attack sequence has a 30% chance each round of initiating one themselves (and a smaller, but significant chance, of being targeted by one and being pulled into an attack sequence that way).In a large crowd like that, I would expect the entire room to be killing each other within 2-3 rounds (12-18 seconds).Conclusion: Rich got it right again.If by "badly written" we mean "got the rules wrong" and if by "got the rules wrong" we mean "got the rules right"... yeah, that was badly written.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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