A thought: Is it actually confirmed that Nale killed Malack’s “children”? I mean, yes, Malack certainly thinks he did, but there’s at least one blaringly obvious way that he might have been fooled, isn’t there?
So regarding the whole “take his last breath” thing, don’t vampires breathe?
My goodness. I did not see that coming, and I feel foolish because in retrospect it seems a bit obvious.
My first thought when I saw the final panel was “ooog, that is going to leave a mark!”
So in a second Belkar will wake up as… what? A vampire? Subservient to Malack? Is that what M means by “children”? How much independent personality will Belkarpire retain, if any? Will he have any free will?
And will he turn evil?
…er?
On the OOTS forum there’s a discussion on whether or not being a vampire will improve Belkar’s morality due to it boosting his Intelligence and Wisdom scores (like when he was under Owl’s Wisdom). That could be pretty funny.
Based on this strip, it appears that Nergal is one of the undead-friendly ones. Either that, or Malack is being very liberal with his god’s teachings. Which isn’t impossible, depending on how much he is bending the truth in this strip.
(On another note, I liked Malack’s character, so I’m very interested in how this goes down)
Poor Belkar, getting curbstomped by a second-level spell. Admittedly he may be about the most unlovable character imaginable, but dying like a punk seems harsh for all that.
Huh. I missed that while reading that exact page. I stand corrected!
For me, I think Malack is telling the truth when he says he doesn’t normally create undead. For him, creating undead seems to be a deeply meaningful, spiritual act. He calls them his kids, after all. If he looks at undead as his children, and he believes in ‘parenting’ them in a more human manner than the stereotypical reptile, I can see why he hasn’t created undead willy-nilly. Or he distinguishes between undead created through vampirization, and undead created through his staff/Create Undead spells. That said, he still cares about undead, even if they aren’t his kids (see the beginning of 858, where Malack is angry that the LG isn’t trying to fish one of the mummies out of the pit trap. Good thing he didn’t see Roy Great Cleave the rest of the them…)
I do have some questions. The vampire tolerating sunlight is an obvious one. “Oh, he has a magic item for that,” is narratively unsatisfying for me. As the forums pointed out, at least there’s isn’t much running water in a desert. Getting into a building without being invited by one with the authority to do so, is another. It will probably turn out that the fanwank at the GITP forums that Tarquin is the ruler of the country—and therefore is the relevant authority—is how he does it, but it seems cheesy. OTOH, if Malack knows the Draketooths before hand…but you’d think he’d be a little more surprised at the slaughter, if only for the sheer power it took to do it. Will the Order recognize that Belkar’s a vampire? Is it the sort of thing that would be apparent with a True Seeing spell?
Looking at it from a powergaming point of view, converting to a sorta self-willed (if Malack gets killed) undead is a great development for Belkar. All of those pesky low-Will weaknesses are now wiped away, plus he gets all of the bonuses to ability scores. Der Tris’s point about the Wisdom boost making him potentially less evil as a vampire than he was before, is a hilarious one.
Before I reread the SRD for vampires, I had the idea that Belkar could Energy Drain with each successful attack and shook my head. The gazillion attacks per round he had, each one draining two levels…eeek. Alas, he only gets one Energy Drain chance per round. I don’t know whether he can swap out one of his weapon attacks for a slam or whether it’s a case that he can use weapons or slam, but not both.
Still gives him better chances vs Xykon than he had before, especially if he gets anti-fire protection of some kind. The look on Xykon’s skull when he spams Energy Drain at the stabbing halfing will be something to see… There’s no way a vampire PC can use Consecrated or Disrupting weapons, can they?
Useful against Xykon, maybe. Useful against Redcloak, not so much.
Belkar’s not (un)dead yet.
He could be a “Vampire Lord”, who are only weakened by sunlight not destroyed by it.
Retroactively obvious foreshadowing in that strip: Durkon saying how “Only tha good die fer good.”
Do D&D 3.5 vampires breathe?
So Belkar is awake and aware, right, he’s feeling that he’s getting chomped on right now, correct?
He’s got to be pissed.
Yeah, being in his present situation and unable to do anything about it must really gnaw at him.
First words after he becomes un-paralyzed: “Man, this bites!”
It both bites *and *sucks.
As Vampires are Undead, they “do not breathe, eat, or sleep.”
I can’t decide whether Malack is the vampire lord mentioned by Der Trihs and at the GITP forums or whether he just relies on some Liber Mortis gunk+bauble and his cloak to ward off the worst of the effects. The vampire lord strikes me as Munchkin-like for some reason, “Let’s take a balanced monster from mythology, yank all of the weaknesses, and make a monster with it so my Epic party can have a workout.” (Or so my PC can be even more badass, 'cause Drow are so 1980s…) None the less, it’s official game content (magazine articles put out by Wizards are canon, right?) so it counts as a possibility.
Do we think the Oracle’s comments about Belkar to Roy, expanding on what the Oracle said in his trance state, are binding? The only thing I think the Oracle said in the trance was that Belkar was going to draw his last breath before the end of an in- comic year. The rest of it, the savoring of the birthday cake, the not long for this world, he shouldn’t bother funding his IRA: were observations the Oracle made outside of the trance (and they weren’t official Oracular answers either). The reason I’m asking is I’m trying to figure out how long “not long” for this world is, and whether it’s on the same timeframe as Belkar drawing his last breath.
Finally, at the end of Don’t Split The Party, Burlew says that someone will die in the next book. I don’t think he meant Tsukiko. And it doesn’t mean that two of the Order won’t die—I like the idea of V, Roy, or Haley killing a trapped Durkon before Malack can complete vampirizing him, thus preserving the option of raising him later as a normal dwarf. And I realize that a lot can happen in the five or so rounds it’ll take Malack to fully vampirize Belkar (aside, I love the observation I read at the forums that you can form Belkar’s name thusly: Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. Belmur or Belnau would work better, I suppose, if a little more obscure.), but a vampire Belkar ties up a few narrative ends and would count as the death that Burlew referenced, right?
But ghouls and wights eat, don’t they? And vampire have to feed on blood, right?