Yep, like that. Nale and Sabine have talked many times of ritual dark sacrifices of innocents. Sure, we never see any of those in-frame, but this is also the guy who committed 53 random murders for no reason other than to draw an arrow on a map.
New one’s up.
Boy, I wouldn’t have wanted to be in Nale’s shoes…
Was the ‘wooosh!’ in panel 4 Nale dodging Malecks ‘Inflict’ attack?
Looks like it. He didn’t seem to have any new wounds at least.
OK, time for a ‘noob’ gamer spell-casting question: I get that Maleck’s “inflict moderate wounds” was a touch attack, therefore dodgeable, right? But what about the “quickened” ? what does that add? We’ve seen various spells cast as “quickened”, “superb”, “epic”, and so forth. Also “mass”, which seems self explanatory. But the other modifiers not so much.
I get the pattern, mostly. “Teleport” teleports a couple of people. “Epic Teleport” teleports a fleet of ships. I got that. Does “quickened inflict moderate wounds” just inflict lots of moderate wounds? In the same way, would “epic inflict light wounds” flay someone’s skin off from a zillion paper cuts, or give a thousand people a single paper cut (if you could touch attack a thousand people simultaneously, I suppose)?
“Quickened” makes the actual spellcasting side of the spell faster. Each turn, your average creature has one Standard action, one Move action, one Swift action, and any number (within reason) of Free actions. Casting most spells is a Standard action or a Standard+Move action, meaning you can usually only do one each turn. Quicken Spell lets you turn a Standard action spell into a Swift action spell, meaning you can cast two spells or cast a spell and do other things in the same turn.
So basically, Maleck was hitting Nale with two spells in the same turn, to try to kill him before he had time to do anything like teleport away or use the wand.
I’ll admit my theory that Malack is Nale’s secret ally is looking unlikely at this point.
Where can Nale go? The SRD states that Dimenisonal Door has a range of 400 ft plus 40 ft / level (is that caster level, or character level? Getting rusty at the rules). He must also visualize the place in his mind.
I reckon he’s still somewhere in the palace, a secret place they are operating from.
So it’s not over yet.
I think /level durations/aoe/etc are always caster level for whatever caster class the spell is from. His sorcerer caster level isn’t very high, I don’t think, since he’s multi-classed.
That never seemed likely.
Well, his sorcerer level is at least 8, given that he’s able to cast Dimension Door at all. He might plausibly be as high as 10 or 11 sorcerer. So he went somewhere within 720-840 feet away.
I’m acclimated to WoW levels now, but making the adjustment to D&D, I suppose 8th level isn’t LOW, really. What’s the pre-Epic level cap, 20? So around mid-level.
“How’s the family?” Awesome. After that line, Nale should have a clanging effect follow him wherever he walks…
Surprised Malack didn’t lead with Dictum, though I guess doing so might have hurt Elan pretty badly too. In hindsight, a cleric of Death having Harm memorized is pretty obvious.
Any bets that Nale’s hidey-hole is related to some of Girard’s illusions? Only way that I can see that such a close hiding place wouldn’t have been ferreted out already by an enemy as competent as Tarquin.
Which is why it was possible. Burlew enjoys defying our expectations.
Advice to Elan: Less talk, more stab.
<Tuco>when it’s time to shoot, shoot!, don’ talk.</Tuco>
Talking is a free action, a fact that Elan’s prestige class shamelessly exploits. 
And his stabbing wasn’t doing any good, so why not talk?
Dictum also wouldn’t have done a thing to Nale, who is after all his primary target. His only reason for enmity with Sabine is that she’s helping Nale.
I had thought that Nale was NE or CE, and Dictum would have therefore have at least deafened him, while having a good chance of booting Sabine out of the picture for 24 hours. Then again, a death cleric probably walks around with a good-sized Death Ward or similar, and there goes most of the risk fighting Sabine. I will be the first to admit though that I have no idea how to power-game, and especially not in 3.5.
I sure did love Harm when I played clerics in 2 and 3.0 though (before the spell was nerfed). Had to raise their THAC0/attack roll first, but after that, it was great. (Was it 3.0 or 3.5 that made the spell operate off the target’s Touch AC?) One-shotting 400-some odd hit points of the ancient white dragon in NWN made my day.
Nale is Lawful Evil. Proof: 57 Inevitable Betrayal? Check. - Giant in the Playground Games