Order of the Stick

[Krulle]

Yeah, very unusual for OotS the fight is very much prolonged...

[Zathyr]

They've had long fights before, and this is important since it's inter-party conflict. There's a lot more going on that just the fight here.

[SamWiser]

For a second, I thought the potion was speaking. I was very confused until I got to the next panel.

Also, can an experience D&D player help out some of the non-players? How accurate would this fight be in-game? Who would most likely win between a fighter and a vampire cleric? Also, what effect would Hel's Might have on Durkula? (Other than the size increase, of course)

[Zathyr]

High level clerics definitely have an edge in general, as they can heal themselves and put up buff spells that put them on par with fighters offensively. And that's without the vampire stuff. There's still an issue of action economy - clerics are much better when there's time to prepare and have an occasional break in the combat. Roy stopping to drink a potion vs. Durkula casting Hel's Might (which is likely Righteous Might) leans the advantage more towards Durkon, because IIRC, Roy's sword isn't a holy weapon (and therefor good-aligned, which would be required to bypass the damage reduction likely picked up by the spell). So now Roy is doing less damage and Durkon is doing more damage, has better reach, and still has plenty of spells left to heal himself with. If you're fighting a cleric, you generally want to keep the pressure on them and try not to give them the chance to heal right in the middle of a fight. That Spellsplinter maneuver Roy picked up probably helps even the odds a bit, but I'd still say things are stacked in the vampire's favor. But Roy's a bright guy and just maybe he has a larger plan in motion - there's always possible factors that can swing the advantage one way or the other, and of course random factors in the form of dice rolls.

[nikohl]

Vampire -anything- way outclasses an equal level plain fighter. Hell, even a vampire BARD would do well (especially given that the saves on a vampire's spoopy mind powers are Cha-based.)

They retain everything they had before unless it can't be used by an Evil character, they gain +6 Strength, +4 Dexterity, +2 intelligence, +2 Wisdom, and +4 Charisma, their Hit Dice are automatically increased to d12s (even retroactively), they gain a bunch of low-level but vaguely useful combat feats (like Improved Initiative and stuff) and +8 racial bonuses on a bunch of skill checks, they gain +6 Natural Armor, DR 10/magic (which is irrelevant at this level because everything's magic, but still), Resistance to cold and electricity/10, Fast Healing 5, permanent spiderclimb, plus the ability to Energy Drain two negative levels off an enemy each turn and heal themselves in the process, can summon animals to help them, turn into mist or an animal at-will, dominate at-will, and drain Constitution (and again, heal themselves) with a bite.

Now most of all that is secondary, because biting things is notoriously awkward and summoning wolves as a distraction is blah and being a bit better at Bluffing isn't super useful in a straight up fight, but in Durkula's case? Adding "tanky hit points and bonus armour", "heals itself every turn without trying", "oh god don't let it touch you", "your friends might not be your friends" and "suddenly ninja mobility" onto something that could already cast some of the best spells in the game? Roy better have a better plan than talking to it :/

[Krulle]

Talking may be the very best option.
If Durkon is able to pass a will save, even this late, it will help better than anything.
And talking may cause Durkon to grab his last efforts against Durkola.

[thesilence]

(No spoilers? Well okay....)

Luckily, it is already an established plot point that [Deity's] Might doesn't improve movement speed....

Also, can an experience D&D player help out some of the non-players? How accurate would this fight be in-game? Who would most likely win between a fighter and a vampire cleric?

"CoDzilla" (CoD = Cleric or Druid) is a cliche for good reason. Sadly, the Fighter stops being relevant about the same time the Cleric starts to be more than a low-yield healbot with passable combat skills (and the Wizard stops being a barely-competent stick figure), which is roughly in the level 5-7 range. Most importantly, though, Roy and Durkon were roughly comparable in level - Roy may even have been trailing a bit due to the time he spent dead - but Durkon just got an incredibly powerful template thrown on him. Give the two characters some time to grow in tandem, and the fight eventually might become fair again - Roy can gain most of the eight levels he's missing in the time it'll take a level 15 vampire cleric time to earn a single epic level, and if he tailors his feat choices and magic item acquisition specifically to beat undead spellcasters with abilities like Gaseous Form, he can eventually become capable of dealing with the threat. But right now, the recently-turned vampire has a HUGE (pardon the pun) advantage over his erstwhile peers, even if you discount the fact that, as written, a vampire can just create a limitless number of Spawn minions with no restriction and very easily conquer the entire world. (Malack did not do this for roleplaying reasons, and Durkon because of the plot; if you allow vampire characters or other undead-spawners in your campaign - this includes any creature who grants negative levels, as a seldom-remembered rule indicates that the victims ALWAYS rise as wights; think about that the next time you include a succubus in your game - then you need to either need to take similar plot and/or character measures to prevent a Spawnocalypse, or simply house-rule away the Create Spawn ability for the sake of not having it entirely take over your gameworld.)

Also, what effect would Hel's Might have on Durkula? (Other than the size increase, of course)

SRD entry for the spell

[nikohl]

...even if you discount the fact that, as written, a vampire can just create a limitless number of Spawn minions with no restriction and very easily conquer the entire world...

Actually, RAW is "at any given time a vampire may have enslaved spawn totaling no more than twice its own Hit Dice."

Admittedly there's no rule against the Vampire Spawn Pyramid Scheme; in fact the rules specifically state that an enslaved vampire can create spawn of its own, and they'd all answer eventually to the top dog... but, as written, your assertion is wrong. There is a limit to how many minions a vampire can maintain control over.

[RocketScientist]

Vampire Spawn Pyramid Scheme

Sadly, that is too long for an effective band name. Gonna have to be an album title.

[Krulle]

Something like:
"Vampire Spawn" - "Pyramid Scheme"

Your choice of "band name" and "song-title/album name".

Edited to add:
a band named "pyramid scheme" already exists: a youtube video. There are more bands with similar or even same names.
Did not find "Vampire Spawn" though, although a low of music from "Spawn vs. Vampire"

Found also a song name "Pyramid Scheme" (this video has it's moments, Tai-Chi running out of hand! - Music is-meh).

[thesilence]

Admittedly there's no rule against the Vampire Spawn Pyramid Scheme; in fact the rules specifically state that an enslaved vampire can create spawn of its own, and they'd all answer eventually to the top dog... but, as written, your assertion is wrong. There is a limit to how many minions a vampire can maintain control over.

We stand corrected in this instance. Sadly, not all creatures with Create Spawn abilities are thusly restricted.

[nikohl]

There are plenty of gamebreaking critters out there, yeah... even with the spawn restriction that Vampires have, they're perfectly capable of causing absolute havoc. As enemies they're quite good though!

[thesilence]

There are plenty of gamebreaking critters out there, yeah... even with the spawn restriction that Vampires have, they're perfectly capable of causing absolute havoc. As enemies they're quite good though!

A thing that we wish the books explicitly stated - the Vampire template is suitable for creating Dracula Himself (you'd probably start with a level 20+ character built out of various combinations of Aristocrat, Rogue and Fighter levels, perhaps with a few more esoteric things tossed in to cover anything weird mentioned in the novel or other lore-sources), and utterly fails at creating even a mid-level undead antagonist, let alone a character who is the antiheroic protagonist of a narrative meant to show character development and personal evolution in a morally conflicted plotline. As a veteran of Vampire: the Masquerade and similar games, we figuratively weep at the template's failure to do justice to the potential of vampire PCs, even accounting for the difference in setting (VTM is "gothic punk" on 20th-century earth, while D&D is the exact opposite of all those things; I cannot think of a single factor they have in common, aside from both being roleplaying games and having the most basic mechanical commonalities that any two RPGs almost invariably must - and even there, they are far more divergent than it is possible to be). The only greater conceptual travesty is the use of Far Realm abominations to parallel the Call of Cthulhu experience, when simply being D&D makes resembling Call of Cthulhu functionally impossible...the closest approximation is still so far off as to constitute a mild insult to HPL's memory. (Better than the existence of, say, "Cthulhu Plushies", but not by much.)

Vampire PCs do not need to AUTOMATICALLY gain the ability to inflict negative levels with a PUNCH, summon swarms of rats, transform into a dire wolf, transform into a bat, turn to Gaseous Form, fly even without turning into a bat or going to Gaseous Form (okay, they don't actually get that one, but I can easily believe it was considered; MTG shows human-formed vampires hanging in midair for no visible reason, and the same company is behind both properties), enslave the minds of the weak-willed, AND create vast armies of mindless minions who create mid-sized legions of mindless minions who create modest battalions of minions who create small gangs of minions who each create a minion or two of their own. (To say nothing of the fact that, yes, one single possessor of this template CAN single-handedly turn the entire world...he just has to give up direct control of old minions as he acquires new ones, and have some way of ensuring that the first few spawn he frees this way do not immediately kill him...eventually his power base becomes functionally unassailable and even the tiniest amount of risk involved vanishes entirely). Dracula should have those powers and more besides; every single member of his "species" (hell, "phylum" is more appropriate for template-based creatures) should not.

The lowest-level vampire mook has all the abilities of a boss, and this is a huge problem (curable through liberal use of "monster classes", but a problem nonetheless). Of the special attacks and special qualities built into the vampire template, the only ones which are necessary to make your vampire a vampire are "Blood Drain", something akin to the Damage Reduction and Energy Resistance (depending on the rules-set involved), and maybe "Create Spawn" (it is potentially overpowered, but at least it's unarguably fitting as part of the mythos). All these various abilities (except, oddly, Spider Climb) can be approximated in the VTM system, but in virtually every case, they are character options rather than inevitable built-in parts of your basic, run-of-the-mill member of the "race"! The template is also burdened with virtually every mythological weakness that a vampire could have (except the single most defining one, according to Fox Mulder; let us know if you need an explanation of that reference), and because the weaknesses partially balance the strengths, and the template's CR and LA are calculated based on an attempt at the resulting balance, the entire system is absurdly difficult to tinker with, unless you just fudge everything and take the risks involved in abandoning the CR/LA guidelines completely.

As you can see, we are passionate on the subject.

[nikohl]

I'm not as verbose as you, but I'd say that one of the reasons D&D sucks for building a tortured antihero a la World of Darkness is that it's D&D, not World of Darkness. The game was designed for dwarven fighters and elven rangers and so on, everything else is bolted on...with varying degrees of success and due care. Hell, the game falls apart at just after mid-level for a bog standard human wizard because they get world-bustingly powerful...it wasn't ever made to stand up to a carefully created vampire PC specced to create an army of minions.

[thesilence]

I'm not as verbose as you, but I'd say that one of the reasons D&D sucks for building a tortured antihero a la World of Darkness is that it's D&D, not World of Darkness.

You are creating a false dichotomy. The tortured antihero is not exclusive to WOD any more than the crazy munchkin is to D&D (a supplement exists for WOD that specifically discusses how to accomplish the latter if that's your preference, albeit I believe it was distributed for free rather than sold, and is distinctly tongue-in-cheek; the name is "Dudes of Legend").

The game was designed for dwarven fighters and elven rangers and so on, everything else is bolted on...with varying degrees of success and due care.

The Hero System was designed for playing superheroes, but it "bolts on" functionality that allows it to be used for any other genre. WOD bolts on fantastical settings with the "Mirrors" supplement; Call of Cthulhu was designed to be the 1920s forever, but "bolts on" the modern era, so that you can chase Nyarlathotep around the globe on a 747, or download the Spawn of Azathoth as computer viruses from www.thekinginyellow.com, using rules that were written on the assumption that you lived in a time when there were barely such things as telephones or automobiles. Gurps and Palladium, from what I understand, "bolted on" freaking everything (though whether the original base system was deserving of such an honor is open to debate). Every game can have things "bolted on" with greater or lesser degrees of success. They do not depend on what you're bolting to what; they depend on how much time, effort and care you put into the engineering of the joins.

Hell, the game falls apart at just after mid-level for a bog standard human wizard because they get world-bustingly powerful...it wasn't ever made to stand up to a carefully created vampire PC specced to create an army of minions.

This is a separate issue which has nothing to do with the Vampire template's flaws. The Wizard class should be extremely powerful, although it should not be "bog standard" about it - because of what the Wizard represents, making an optimized one ought to be completely possible, but extremely difficult, requiring the level of optimization knowledge which is instead devoted to making almost anything that isn't a primary spellcaster effective. The problem with Wizard is largely one of text efficiency; Wotco cut corners and made spells too general in their applicability, too easy to circumvent the intended balancing drawbacks of, simply due to limitations of page count and such. Thusly, the way to fix the Wizard is to add more text. Give more spells costly material components, restriction clauses, and potential disasters a la Planar Binding; add prerequisites out the wazoo for everything. The result of doing enough of this sort of extra writing is that, while you can still make a wizard godly powerful, he'll be so complicated that you practically have to take a full semester of college courses to be capable of piloting him. This obviously impairs gameplay, but so does having him be that broken in the first place; the point is that this is the correct mechanical implementation of the wizard concept, because it puts the wizard's player in much the same paradigm as the wizard himself, where he carries books everywhere and has to exert his mind to the fullest in order to come up with just the right solution for every specific problem, with none of these options being versatile enough to substitute for one another, so that the class's potential to dominate with proper preparation is exactly mirrored by its vulnerability when caught unawares.

The Cleric and Druid, for the record, ought to have different fixes, and the obvious one is much, much easier. Simply deny members of both classes any control whatsoever over their spells; both simply pray to their divine power for a miracle, and you as the GM decide whether one happens, either through a relatively simple mechanical subsystem such as a random-spell chart, by assuming the persona of the deity or divine force (ideally, anthropomorphizing the latter as little as possible - Nature never speaks and cannot be reasoned with, but does have something resembling a consistent agenda, so "roleplaying" Her is possible, and takes a very different form from roleplaying a nature-related deity) in order to decide however its (quasi- or actual) personality and principles dictate, or failing either of those more desirable options, by complete fiat, even at the risk of severe inconsistency. In any case, the result is obvious...the only thing the divine spellcaster decides is when to call Upstairs for help, how to word his request, and how to live with life as a person who is entirely devoted to the service (or subjugation) of others - no such thing as a "selfish cleric" should be possible, since you are investing all your character's power in something external to himself, so he naturally has to be "other-oriented" on an operational basis, regardless of his goals or ideals. Good characters in this paradigm are totally humble, in awe of the vastness of the resource to which they have only the tiniest access, and the player must truly feel the same trust in a larger power, every time he sits down to the table, that the character lives with every day, in order to render the experience remotely enjoyable. Conversely, evil or otherwise ambitious characters treat their ability to "call in an airstrike" as just one more resource to cleverly exploit; they experiment with their powers, carefully observing the result, and figure out the best way of capitalizing on the resulting havoc or opportunity. (Obviously, if you worship Selfishness Incarnate and request a Meteor Shower, it cannot simply obliterate you, but the DM can construct a logic for why the character's Nietzchean "overman" Self denies him pinpoint accuracy on his attempt to call down destruction on his foes, and he gets to puzzle out what this Higher Self is trying to tell him which he isn't consciously aware of, in order to pursue his journey to personal perfection. Maybe the fireball which seemingly "missed" has actually excavated a buried relic off in the hills, which no information source alive had any knowledge of, and only the character's transcendent level of arrogance enabled him to subconsciously divine its presence through the Akashic Record or the Planetary Morphic Field or whatever; now, while his spell "failed" to kill his foes and he had to bash them with his morningstar, he still got 9 spell levels worth of value after it, assuming he trusts in his power's effectiveness and goes to investigate the strike zone, finding the artifact and beginning a whole new adventure as he tries to unlock its secrets.)

[RocketScientist]

1009: Giving up Hope

► Show Spoiler

How did he figure it out? Did he not tell Durkon about his little brother? Or...?

[SamWiser]

► Show Spoiler

Possibly. Maybe he just thinks that using his little brother's death against him is too far, even for Durkula.

[Krulle]

► Show Spoiler

oh no, the beard!
That was a critical hit against any Dwarf, even vampiric ones!

[SpeaksManyLanguages]

ok, word of god

I think Roy is just realizing that this level of sadism doesn't fit "Durkon, but Evil," especially since he's claiming Durkon was a jerk retroactively ("one thing I've always wondered").

Yes, exactly. This is a tactical error on the part of the vampire, not a trick on the part of Durkon.

and from readers

if living Durkon had really wondered that, he had plenty of time to ASK and satisfy his curiosity. That little bit of sadism was out of character, and showed Roy that the being holding him not only isn't Durkon, he doesn't *understand* Durkon at all

[thesilence]

And now, perhaps we (the readership as a whole, not just this reader with his royal-pronoun affectation) can look forward to Roy unloading a Full Attack - which, perhaps combined with a little direct assistance from the deities on making all those "percent chance for Holy Burst" (or whatever the Starmetal Sword's property is called exactly) rolls, might cause enough damage fast enough, even through damage reduction, that Not-Durkon starts to panic about his "dead at 0 HP" self. This could lead to a further tactical mistake which allows Roy to press the attack and end this threat decisively...or perhaps it even causes Darkula's control over Durkon to falter for a moment? Maybe the vampire becomes ash, but the grateful deities True Resurrect the soul of Durkon (the rules may forbid raising a slain undead, but maybe in a case where the souls are explicitly separate, the relevant deity can rebirth the soul as an Outsider or imbue it into a Construct or something).

Basically, we (back to the affectation now) are just hoping that a post-vampiric Durkon returns to the strip. After all, unlike with Belkar's very explicit death-prophecy (which both specified "last breath" and a more explicit form of "exist no more", whose exact wording we cannot recall), Durkon has the ability to get out of this unscathed. He was prophesied to bring "doom" or "disaster" or something, "when he next returns home"; this has now been fulfilled, as he returned (a prisoner in his own head) to dwarven lands, whereupon he became a threat to all existence. And he did indeed return "posthumously" - "after dying" - as the Oracle stated...again, nothing about that prohibits him from *ceasing* to be dead after his return, any more than Odin's prophecy prohibits the doom he brought from being averted. (Although it was rather cowardly of the Odin-priest not to make any attempts at averting this himself, instead of simply evicting Durkon.)

[RocketScientist]

Good to know. Thanks, Speaks!

Yeah, I hope Roy Hulks out on Durkula, now.

[nikohl]

...that Not-Durkon starts to panic about his "dead at 0 HP" self.

Vampires don't die at 0HP, for reference. They turn to gaseous form and have two hours in which to get home and heal.

[RocketScientist]

Where would "home" be for Durkula? The ship?

[nikohl]

Wherever his coffin is; it would almost certainly have to be on the ship, since vampires also can't cross running water unless they're on a vessel and in their coffin.

[Krulle]

An ocean isn't necessarily considered to be running water....