The Order of the Stick

Maximising Meteor Swarm isn't an Epic Spell, it's metamagic shenanigans. Those are very different arenas, unless there's something for an effective spell level above 9th I've forgotten.

Seeing as Xykon was an old man sorcerer before becoming a lich, he's probably no stronger physically than Roy is (I don't remember if becoming undead would remove ageing penalties/bonuses) at the outside, so nah, even with lich buffs not super amazing.

Still, overthinking the rules is a moot point. Ambushing a high-epic level party with a mid-high level monster wouldn't work.

It doesn't help that half of a typical Beholder's eye rays wouldn't do jack shit against a lich.

In the comic, at least, there are spell levels past nine and you can get there with metamagic. V in Soul Splice casts Quickened Disintegrate with a tenth-level slot. Maximized Meteor Swarm would be a twelfth-level spell I think?

Edited by RaichuKFM on Jun 28th 2021 at 2:55:18 PM

Yeah, that's Improved Spell Capacity + (Optionally) Improved Metamagic. That doesn't interfere with the AMF rules as far as I'm aware, though; Epic Spellcasting is an entire thing unto itself.

(i.e., not "can a spell above 9th level be cast" but "does a spell above 9th level have special rules for AMF")

Edited by RainehDaze on Jun 29th 2021 at 8:04:43 PM

Ah, okay then.

Xykon can definitely use epic magic (ie: Cloister), but we haven't seen him use any offensive spells with it.

Edited by Clarste on Jun 29th 2021 at 12:12:43 PM

His spell list includes the +20AC epic magic armor spell, IIRC.

This is true, but only because Roy has a belt of giant strength. Xykon has demonstrated in-comic that he's immensely strong.

Roy's on par with a Frost Giant with his belt, meaning his Str is 23.

Xykon's Str is apparently "only" 15 or so. That's still strong enough for him to easily crush V's throat with his bare flanges.

And once you take away the belt, that puts Roy at about ~17-19 STR, so yeah, pretty comparable.

V just suffers from being a wizard with a STR penalty and levels lower than Xykon. Since STR and BAB both factor into your grapple checks: Xykon wins.

If you mean damage-dealing spells, yes. He finished the fight with V using Superb Dispelling and a large rock (thereby also demonstrating his Strength).

If it does come down to fisticuffs, we know that Roy could win against Xykon. While a big part of it was due to Xykon being surprised, Roy was able to overpower Xykon and hurl him away when Xykon pissed him off by breaking his sword.

Edited by M84 on Jun 29th 2021 at 5:59:15 PM

I'm not even sure how that was ever in question.

Unless Xykon pops that AC buff, in which case Roy has a 1/20 chance of hitting whilst Xykon very slowly and incompetently punches him to death. Unless Roy's got enough protection, at which point it's Padded Sumo Gameplay but the basic fighter advantages (more attacks by later levels, better weapon proficiencies, and Roy NOT being a skeleton with no CON modifier) win out.

In the first fight, Roy won by hurling Xykon into the Gate. He won by using Strength, but not by applying direct damage.

x...6? Actually, frost giants have 29 Str. Roy might just have been eyeballing it though.

Also, there... really isn't much way for the Order to fight back, unless Sunny's AMF cone doesn't cover the entire area. Either the dwarves say something that makes Serini stop and listen(unlikely), someone or something else intervenes, or she turns them into Swiss cheese with her poison darts. Serini's invisible, and the Order is completely incapable of using magic now.

Incidentally, would talking about how a lot of "boss fights" in Oot S wouldn't really work in an actual game be too off-topic or not?

Check the header; there's a thread for rules-based discussion.

I think it's a pretty common thing for narrative-based battles to not work as roleplaying challenges.

A good RPG challenge is one that the characters can solve in a multitude of ways, while a good narrative battle is one where everything seems lost until the characters figure out the trick or get the right piece of character development at the very last minute.

Oh I love the point someone made a page or two back about what happens should our resident lizard-dreaming-he's-a-T-Rex meet an Antimagic Field.

Someone asked about the interaction of a bag of holding with antimagic — the portal inside it is temporarily blocked, so it resembles a mundane bag for the duration and then works as normal afterwards. If the Order all run in opposite directions and the bag gets tossed to whichever of them is out of the cone, they might have a shot...

Edit: actually I just noticed it's a "tall cylinder room" and the stalactites suggest the beholder is near the top, so there probably isn't an "edge" of the cone they can reach. If Haley can shoot it in the eye they'd have a few moments to play with.

Edited by johnnye on Jun 29th 2021 at 5:22:04 AM

Someone asked earlier how Serini and Sunny could be lit when the Light spell is in the antimagic cone; I think it’s an esoteric interpretation of the effects of antimagic. It doesn’t dispel or end magical effects, only suppresses them, so the Light is still active and would reappear if Sunny looked away or closed their main eye. I think what’s happening is it’s still capable of lighting areas outside the antimagic cone.

It might feel more logical to assume that if Sunny looks at the Light itself there would be complete darkness, while it would be able to light up areas within the antimagic cone as long as it’s not itself within the cone, but this interpretation does have the advantage of providing a handy visual indicator for the area being affected by antimagic.

I have a question about that but I've asked it on the Rules Discussion thread

You know I really have to question the current utility of insisting on a separate thread to hold a subset of discussion when, at a glance, that thread holds not even 4% of the total discussion of the comic, and before today had been dead for nearly a year.

I think it's still useful if only to prevent arguments about stuff that doesn't really apply to the comic's plot.

Such strange spinoff threads generally come about because there was a point where the main thread was so regularly taken over than a new thread simply, had to be made.

As the local unasked for and unpaid thread historian, it was an emergency creation to keep this thread from being dominated by rules talk during the waiting periods, especially when it came to how Familicide worked with the Epic rules.

I think this thread is O.K with rules talk as long as it doesn't go on too long.

Edited by fredhot16 on Jun 29th 2021 at 1:02:33 AM

Back to the current battle, I still think the Order won't win this one. The Watsonian reason is because Serini specifically tailored her attack on them, and has already negated most of their advantages. There are multiple Doylesian reasons: 1. it is too early in the book to get to the Gate, 2. Serini specifically wants to capture and memory wipe them, which is a wasted setup if she just gets defeated now, and 3. it gives the Order an opportunity to finally meet up with the paladins.