Don’t Dwarves have a -2 racial CHA penalty ? 12 CHA is somewhat customary for point-bought human clerics, but an effective 14’s a bit much for a stat that’s not really essential.
Also, Durkon can use Bolster Undead just as Malack did.
Depends upon how undead-focussed you are.
I wonder if this thread will make it 500k views before the book ends and we start a new one.
I don’t know if Hilgya could control Durkon but it seems to me that the alignment clash - and his issues with her abandoning her family - may be resolved (although that seems more like a Lawful thing than a Good thing). They could end up as a couple just because he doesn’t care about her “issues” anymore.
Actually, it’d be just like Burlew to have Hilgya show up again in some capacity. She didn’t really get any denouement in the same way that the druid and wizard in Cliffport did. She just ran off crying, never to be seen again…yet.
Another possibility: She reacts more like Belkar and is horrified. She doesn’t consider Vampire Durkon to be Real Durkon at all; she decides to try to “kill” Vampire Durkon so she can resurrect the living Durkon. All sorts of potential drama there.
Redcloak controlling Durkon seems like more of a threat than Hilgya doing so given that he’s more powerful and they’re 100% likely to bump into Redcloak again.
There’s a bajillion reasons why it’d be a bad idea to try it casually but, if it came down to Redcloak’s motivations for the Snarl vs Xykon’s, could Redcloak control Xykon? I’m sure someone on the OoTS forums has already crunched the math on his odds.
Redcloak is only powerful enough to rebuke Durkon, not control him.
Redcloak is 17th level. Xykon’s 27th level or so. Redcloak can’t even Rebuke him.
Thanks for both answers. Given the people talking about Hilgya, there’s no reason to think she’s more powerful than Redcloak so her chances of controlling Durkon have to be nil.
I has assumed (for no reason) that Redcloak and Xykon were closer in level but that’s why I ask people who know better 
Redcloak’s plan for disposing of Xykon (and rest assured that he does have a plan for it, and intends to use it the moment the ritual is completed) is more likely to involve Heal (or Mass Heal) and Disintegrate, both of which are quite effective versus undead. Oh, and Death Ward, Energy Resistance (Fire), Energy Immunity (Lightning), and a few other choice protections to nullify most of what Xykon’s got.
What’s your source for those levels?
I wonder if Redcloak will destroy the phylactory at that moment or has already done so. Probably not, but who knows? Maybe.
For the record, I didn’t assume Redcloak’s plan would involve turning/rebuking/etc Xykon (don’t base your entire plan around a single dice roll), I was just curious about the potential mechanics of it as a last ditch effort or somesuch.
When he crushes the resistance, Redcloak casts a 9th level spell and remarks that it’s a new spell level. Ergo he’s a 17th level cleric. He’s shown no sign of any other classes.
Xykon’s level is my own estimation. The class & level geekery thread on the OotS forum says he’s 21st level+ but I peg him significantly higher. When they were fighting on the dragon, Xykon told Roy he had more than 8 levels on him, which puts him at level 24+, and I put him higher based on metamagic use.
Or that makes Roy level 21-8 = 13th level. Although Xykon guessed he was 7 or 8 levels higher than Roy. No idea how you’d guess Roy’s level some other way, since he doesn’t cast spells.
Up until the Battle of Azure City, all of the Order of the Stick went on the same adventures and met the same encounters, and on multiple occasions were shown leveling up at the same time. Between these two facts, that means that they were all the same level. And during the battle, Vaarsuvius uses mass spells on exactly 13 soldiers, even when more were available, implying that e was 13th level at the time. Ergo, Roy was also 13th level at the time. This is the main evidence for the lower estimates of Xykon’s level. The difficulty is that Xykon doesn’t necessarily know Roy’s level, and even if he does isn’t necessarily being honest, and so his statement of being 7-8 levels higher than Roy must be taken with a grain of salt.
The main evidence for a higher level is Xykon’s performance in his fight vs. Darth Vaarsuvius, especially his use of metamagic on high-level spells. The simplest way for him to do what we saw is by repeated use of the Expanded Spell Capacity epic feat, which requires a level of at least 27. But it’s also possible that he could have gotten a similar effect through a variety of other methods (metamagic rods, sudden metamagic feats, feats or prestige classes that reduce the cost of metamagic, etc.).
It is also possible that he was only 20 or 21 at the time of the Battle of Azure City, but leveled up significantly before the fight with Darth V. For a PC, this much level gain would be implausible, but as the main villain, he gains XP at the speed of plot.
The only thing we can say for certain about his level is that he’s at least 21, since he’s known to be able to cast epic spells. No upper bound is known for his level.
I’m thinking the Ring of Negative Energy Protection he got off Tsukiko is going to play a pretty big role too. Saves him having to cast Death Ward. He’d better not get into melee with Xykon though, with that whole “strength to crush your windpipe with his bare phalanges” thing.
Xykon’s as powerful as he needs to be for the plot. (Edit: as already said by Chronos, above.) I like the idea that he’s at 27th Level+, but it’s hard to imagine how he was able to get enough XP in Stickworld to get there. And wouldn’t a mid 20s lich sorcerer have been able to waltz through the Ancient Silver Dragon that nearly took out both him and RC?
The thought of Redcloak rebuking Durkon is pretty hilarious.
I have to imagine Xykon being significantly higher than level 21. He’s been around for over 100 years, probably half as human and half as lich. And those weren’t sit around and study 100 years. Those were “let’s see how much shit we can fuck up” 100 years. He’s had plenty of opportunities to level.
I’m with Mr Shine. As I’ve posted (and as usual, was promptly ignored, but that’s okay, I’m used to babbling to an audience of myself!), while Roy is the leader of the party and the original catalyst for the adventure, we’ve seen 933 strips now and of those, the majority of important character arcs and emotional moments have revolved around Elan. Roy has barely developed throughout the entire story, aside from learning not to be as snarky to his teammates, and realizing that he doesn’t need to keep arguing with his dad; big whoop.
He had a grand total of maybe four strips that had any real emotional resonance (those involving his little brother, and I suppose the strip where he was declared dead–but even that was primarily moving because of Elan’s song–I mean, we all knew he was gonna be rezzed). Yes, the group screwed up without him when he was dead. All that means is that he’s an important leader. That doesn’t make him the story hero. A hero needs a journey, and this stopped being Roy’s journey a long time ago. The quest for “revenge” against Xykon for killing his father’s mentor isn’t exactly the stuff of a Hero’s Journey. Roy didn’t even know or care about the mentor, he just followed through on the requirement because he’s Lawful Good and he knew he had to. It’s now equally everyone else’s quest to save the world.
Then there’s his connection to others. Burlew has given Roy few connections to care about: Celia and Durkon, that’s about it. Did anyone care about his romance with Celia? Did anyone care when they broke up? Roy didn’t even care! And when it was revealed Durkon was a vampire, Burlew chose to have that revelation glossed over with and gave Roy no time/space to grieve. I highly doubt we’ll see it in this book or the next; Roy just isn’t… he’s not an emotional guy and there’s very little that resonates with him. There’s just no there there to his character, and I think Burlew, for all he may call Roy the center of the story, knows it.
I can’t claim to read Burlew’s mind, but I do read his strip, and I know much about story structure and character development. The author of this particular story is clearly most interested in investing screen time and development efforts on an entirely different character: Elan.
The moment Elan was stabbed by Nale was pretty much the first time the strip took a turn for the serious and emotional. Elan had the first recurring villain, and also the first love interest (and most pertinently, it’s a love interest within the party itself, not some recurring character). Haley’s big storyline involving her love for Elan and inability to speak ran parallel to Elan’s story, because he was off being cruelly framed and captured by his nemesis, and had to mount a rescue and so on.
He also had the Therkla story (which resulted in significant character development, with major stakes surrounding life and death choices); he was also the voice of reason when Vaarsuvius killed Kubota and showed strength of moral fiber when he didn’t try to stop V from leaving.
Of course we’ve now spent an entire book on the whole Tarquin arc, which included the death of his brother and the realization that his father is a horrific murdering dictator. Even with the end of this book–unless something further happens–Tarquin will remain on the table as a likely return villain.
So Elan’s got the romance, the painful family revelations that he has to work on, the continuing character growth that shows no sign of stopping. Roy? Has none of this. He’s static while Elan keeps developing. I can’t think of any equivalent tale where the hero gets no real growth or captivating storylines, while a member of the supporting cast gets all the emotional, dramatic beats.
Burlew may have started this strip and laid the foundations of it around Roy–he had to, of course, since none of the others would have been able to create the group. But as a writer he has shown time and time again that the moral and emotional heart of this adventure lies in exploring and developing Elan as at least an equivalent hero to Roy.
If not, he’s doing a remarkably bad job at making his hero’s tale very gripping. And I don’t think Burlew is so inept a writer.
(And I’m not saying all this because Elan is my favorite character, since he isn’t; Vaarsuvius is. But Elan is certainly second for all of the above reasons. What can I say, I like angst.)
Wait, what? I didn’t think they broke up. Last I saw they’re just in a long long distance cross-plane relationship while Celia is off at law school and Roy is chasing Xykon.
No opinion on Elan being the story center, but you make very good points.