4th edition is rubbish.
I have to admit that after almost three years of playing 4E, I decided it wasn’t for me and have gone back to 3.0/3.5/PF instead. I like some of the concepts of 4E but not the execution.
I’m really torn on DND Next. I play tested the first rules package and it didn’t impress me. Again, some neat ideas but I’m not convinced they will execute it well.
I think 2E would have been better named 1E: Revised and Expanded but that’s me. The 2E era gave us a lot of awesome game worlds, though, including Dark Sun, which I using with Alternity as it’s rules. So, I keep waiting for the Dim Sun PDF!
Getting back to the strip, I’m torn on it. As the DM, I find it funny that they teleported away. I have obviously used that a lot because when I even hint or joke that they are about to teleport away, my players do everything they can think of to stop it from happening! It’s fun to watch! But, yes, it would have been nice to have seen a casualty from the well done ambush.
More directly to the strip, it gave rules for drow as PC characters right as the Icewind Dale trilogy was coming out with a very powerful drow protagonist. The gaming world was soon choked full of dual-scimitar-wielding Drow outcasts throwing Faerie Fire and Darkness spheres around. Many of them even had miniature onyx statues that turned into animal companions.
Also, those who owned the Unearthed Arcana probably remember that it was bound using pixie dreams and unicorn breath. All the pages would start falling out after about the third day.
Ok, now I’m trying to think what he goofed it up into, r.e. “Drinking Fountain”.
Suggestions?
Some other hand gesture that resembles spurting liquid, I imagine.
Clever Rich – I read the title before the strip and expected to see Tarquin get smacked around. Okay, so this grouping of the Linear Guild all survived this battle, but: Sabine will be out of commission for at least a short time, Q’arr disappeared at the first sign of real trouble, Malack has been separated from the group, and the rest have retreated from the scene and will need time to heal up and make a new plan. Not bad, Roy.
And Belkar’s line counts as one of his very best!
Sooooo … where is V, and where’s the Gate?
Oh, and I didn’t want to say anything before, because it felt unseemly to appear to gloat, but I’ve been admiring my signed art print for quite a little while now, along with all the fun extras that came with it. The coloring book is such a hoot!
You’re missing a few steps in the middle there. Specifically, where TSR went completely bankrupt due to horrendously mismanaging their fiction line (to mention one of the more minor idiocies, they stopped buying from R. A. Salvatore because he was too popular); if Wizards hadn’t bought them out then, well, someone probably would have, but it wasn’t like they were going to keep existing as an independent company.
There’s ‘doing well’, and then there’s ‘No matter what strategy you come up with, I’ve thought of it first, and happen to have the perfect counterstrategy or tool for it.’ It’s the latter that I think Tarquin is exemplifying and I think it’s obnoxious. I get that a near-Epic character who’s been playing for a long time is going to have a lot of skill and tricks, but between the mask, subduing/stunning Belkar with a thrown ax—in the nick of time!—knowing Drow sign language perfectly, et al; for me, it’s getting ridiculous.
Now that I’ve thought about it some more, I think that among the goals of writing the character of Tarquin, is that he’s meant to satirize the so-called, “DM’s Favorite Character” (either PC or NPC). The PC that always manages to get away, figure out the puzzle, find the plot coupon, or single-handedly negotiate with the Big Bad: the guy who does all of the stuff that the other player’s characters should be doing, and who does it with coincidences bordering on ass-pulls. So, no, not a Marty Sue (I don’t think), but similar.
Among other things, I’d like it if the various Teleport spells required that you know your starting point very well (through something like Discern Location or weaker Divination) or suffer the consequences of not knowing your destination. Bringing back the “You get chunked if you screw up Teleport too badly” penalties would help bring the spell back into balance, IMHO. Or make the casting time a couple of rounds or something. (Of course then, everyone would just make Helms of Teleportation or some other item where the spell’s pre-cast.)
I wonder what Malack’s going to do now? The OOTS forums think it likely he joins up with the Order, but I don’t see it just yet. Word of Recall would probably just take him back to his study, and then he’d have to get to wherever Z teleported them. (Where do we think he Teleported them to, anyway?) Finally, I LOL’d at the Arcana puns, and was shaking my head sadly at my old gaming group’s budding Munchkin-itis as each of them just had to have a Drow. Although I never noticed the issue with the book falling apart. Guess I was one of the lucky ones.
How likely is it that Tarquin has something like Instant Summons (but castable by a non-Mage) on his axe? Pity that Kilkil didn’t show anything other than that he’s a glorified clerk.
Conversely, if That Thing Wot I Said In Spoilers Earlier happens to him, this all just heightens it. Here he is, beating the heroes singlehandedly and manipulating his evil son and companions for his own purposes with a plan to seize the gate or whatever his plan really is and being generally awesome and thenBLAMMO! Lich-slapped!
Or tongue lapping. 
I have some faith that Burlew is setting him up for a fall; I remember feeling similarly about Xykon after he pulled the bouncy-ball trick (which no DM ever would have let a PC get away with), and he got his comeuppance pretty quickly there.
My gut feeling is that Tarquin is well into the Epic levels, as is Xykon. Upper 20s, anyway.
The OOTS forums seem to think that he’s demonstrated the Epic Skill Stand on Mount. I am hazy about the rules, but Stand on Mount seems like a picayune thing to take for one’s first Epic Skill or Feat. Which implies, as your gut feels, that he’s at a high enough level that he can bump up the skills he doesn’t use that much (like Ride) to where he can do Epic stunts like that. I don’t think he’s demonstrated any other Epic Skills or Feats yet, though I’m certainly not steeped in the rules enough to recognize them if he has.
If any of you were 3.5 newly-Epic Fighters, which Epic Feats would be the first ones that you’d take? I guess we could then keep an eye out for those.
I agree with the OOTS Fora’s Class&Level Geekery thread’s logic that Xykon is at least Level 27. He’s thrown an awful lot of arcane artillery down range, in the fight with Darth V, if nothing else. Are there other Feats we’d expect to see from a Level 27+ Sorcerer?
Edit: I agree with Tom in that T’s going to get, what was the phrase? Lich-slapped? (LOL) Still, the most likely place for Z to Teleport them would be back to the main Castle, wouldn’t it? Which would be far away from where Team Evil are going to show, but I guess T and the gang could re-equip, Heal, and Teleport back in time to meet TE.
As a Sorceror, he’s quite likely to have gone for Spell Knowledge to increase the number of spells he can cast.
It may have been the first printing.
I remember taking one of those “How big of a gamer geek are you?” quizzes once with a question of “Have you ever used a manual so much it fell apart?” appended by “(First edition printings of Unearthed Arcanas and first edition Vampire: the Masquerade manuals don’t count)”. I owned both and, indeed, both suffered from extremely poor bindings and were soon held together with yellowing office tape.
If someone else is holding your weapon when you magically call it back, does that person get taken along for the ride? Because if that’s possible, than the reason for having T teleport out may be to bring someone unwanted to his safe place.
Or maybe the weapon just goes poof and the guy examining the cool axe his enemy dropped is left holding a whole lot of air. I don’t know D&D stuff.
I do think that Tarquin’s bad day is going to get even worse, however it happens.
__
Heads up for Kickstarterers- Rich says his next KS update will probably have the link for the Belkar story.
That definitely happened to mine. On the other hand, the binding to the 1E DMG was remarkably sturdy.
If the spell is instant summons, then someone holding the item negates the summons but informs the caster of who is holding their item and where they are. However, I doubt Tarquin couldn’t already guess that a member of the OOTS is holding their axe in the pyramid.
It would either fail or snatch it from their hands, almost certainly the former.
I liked the foreshadowing: ‘Nay lad, V normally has tha spell.’