I guess I lost those kinds of notifications as well when I stopped the endless Kickstartermailathon, so thanks for the heads up.
Well, maybe not. From what we know Durkon on his own is probably not a match for Malack who is both a super high level cleric and a vampire.
It's not a completely insane amount of plotting. I figure it went something like this: "Okay, this character is a vampire, which I will reveal at a later date. He drinks bloodwart tea, which is a pun on bloodwort tea. The payoff to this pun will arrive around the same time as the aforementioned vampire revelation." To wait so long for the payoff is an insane amount of patience, though.
I'm rusty, but don't clerics get all sort of crazy anti-undead spells & abilities? I don't recall the evil side getting quite the same counters. I mean, yeah, they get like Harm and so forth, but the equivalent of Turn Undead for them is like Control Undead or something, right?
I believe turning undead gets much more difficult when the undead in question is way higher level than you. By the way, I'm not necessarily advocating spoiler tags here. I just didn't want to spoil a new strip in the same link that I posted it. I think anything after the post were new strips are linked is fair.
Pity for Belkar that Durkon is too stupid to just play quietly along and go get the rest of the party! He better hope Belkar rolls a 20 on his Will Save.
It's not directly in the d20 SRD either, but Death Ward is: so Mass Death Ward is clearly just a multiple target version of that. I presume Durkon used it even though he only needed to protect a single target because it is what he had memorised; that or he was close enough to obtain the benefits himself as well.
I'm rooting for Malack. Malack (and Tarquin to a certain extent) are the types of rational, forward-thinking villains that you just don't see enough of in fantasy.
Man, I started clicking around in that thread and re-read the Xykon vs. Super Saijen Vaarsuvius confrontation. That's still one of the absolute highlights of the strip. Good stuff.
He's not stupid. He's lawful good with enough intelligence to not rationalize that kind of face to face deceit.
Lawful Good characters can be mildly deceitful and evasive in the same way that Evil characters like Malak can have friends. Nothing about LG requires you to face clearly superior foes head on or let your emotions get the better of common sense. Durkon is just daft, see for example "trevenge", or not figuring out Malak was of Dubious Morale Character before the obvious was rubbed directly in his face -- nobody else was fooled. Int jokes have been made at his expense repeatedly; maybe he didn't dump stat Int as much as Elan, but he's not far off. He could just quietly have given non-commital answers to the first proposition: "If the halfling is your friend, I will leave him be." Hell, with some cleverness he could have negotiated completely above board and still walked out of there. It's not even clear to me that Malak is actually Evil -- he smacks more of Lawful Neutral, and I'd wager there's opportunity to drive a wedge between him and Tarquin. But none of this matters to Durkon, because he's lost his temper.
Which isn't to say that I don't like the character or that I'm surprised he's done it of course! Probably wouldn't be too much of a Cleric of Thor if he really thought things through or backed off from a fight. ;-)
All of Malack's suggestions, though, boiled down to "Step aside and let us capture the Gate, in order to preserve our friendship." Which he should know is a non-starter.
I love that Durkon warded the cat. I love that so much. It's so...him. And so practical, because you just know if he hadn't, someone would've used a vampire cat to peel Belkar off the party or something.
Ouch! Good Clerics definitely seem to have a leg up over Evil Clerics, assuming Death Ward doesn't get dispelled. And Heal is just brutal on undead -- even if you save that's 75 damage. Not exactly the most potent offensive spell but you'll always have it handy and it won't waste a slot. Is there a spell that stops Heal used on undead the same way that Death Ward stops Harm?
So what does Durkon mean by "You should have spent less time studyin' and more time adventuring?" I assume it has something to do with why Malack's dispel magic spell didn't work, but other than that I don't get it.
