Actually, that’s where Xykon being a Sorcerer bites them in the arse - had he been a Wizard he could have prepped dozens of castings of Arcane Eye and mapped the whole thing in a week.
(For those who don’t play D&D, Arcane Eye is a floating, discorporated, invisible eye that zooms about pretty fast, is hard to notice even for people who can see through invisibility and acts like a remote camera. It’s a great utility spell, but not essential enough for Sorcerers to pick…)
Third row up from the bottom, third door from the left.
To my mind the cross is very clearly on the right, even if the tail slightly encroaches into the left.
Yeah, I don’t see how a systematic search could be an improvement, either. If the world really does run on mathematics, then any search order should be equally good, so long as they keep track of the failures (which they are doing). And if the world runs on narrativium and/or quantifiable luck (both of which are known to be present in D&D), then picking at random is better.
Which is why if they just keep picking doors at random, they will keep doing so until their opponents arrive for a climatic battle. What they need is somebody like Tarquin, who could reframe the narrative and come up with a plot-based reason why they would find the gate before the heroes arrive.
Realistically, you have to wonder why Xykon doesn’t just order the bugbears to divide up and each open a door while he observes the results. Sure, the bugbears would all be killed but Xykon has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to send his minions off to die.
It’s not the door, it’s the dungeon behind it, I assume. They need to be super buffed just to get to the end of each tunnel to confirm that it is or isn’t the one leading to the gate, right?
That’s probably true. But when has Xykon cared about the facts? He’d send all the bugbears off to their deaths on the off-chance that he might find out something useful.
Redcloak doesn’t stand for that behavior anymore. He’d figure out a way to keep Xykon from doing that and manipulate Xykon into thinking it was his own idea not to send the bugbears in.
Since when has Xykon cared about finding things out? He has people to do that for him. The simplest explanation for why Xykon doesn’t do any particular course of action is that he finds it boring. Watching a bunch of bugbears go into doors and not come out again? Boring. Figure something else out, eyepatch.
I dunno. If they are operating in conventional 3D space, then the way the passage ways loop should tell you something about better and worse search doors. Making a map of the place as you go along might permit you to rule out certain doors. Or circle back and X them off. The mapping process might also clue you in to the possibility that the cliff of doors is just a feint. I think Redcloak has the right idea: study a problem long enough and eventually it will yield. But such a stance has no answer to Xykon’s insecurities and math anxiety.
Even if there are spacial warps in the mountain, I suspect those could be studied, mapped and mined for hints about best search routines.
The weird thing is, Xykon’s fingers don’t look at all short.
I think this is too complicated. Redcloak is lawful evil. He likes order in how he does things. When things are random, it makes him itch.
My guess would be the MitD getting too enthusiastic about X-ing doors.
He cares when it comes to the location of the last Gate. This is something he wants to know.
As for boring, we know Xykon lacks patience. Which is exactly why he’d send in the bugbears. It’d be the possibility with the highest body count but it’s also the only possibility that has the potential of finding the Gate quickly.
So Xykon would sacrifice the entire bugbear population first on the slight chance if might accomplish his goals. If it failed - which it probably would - and all the bugbears were dead then he’d try the slower course of checking all the doors one by one himself.
Redcloak’s boots have individual toes because goblins have individual toes. Look at comic #11. Notice that Elan, Vaarsuvius and, Durkon’s feet are all single lines, but the goblin’s feet are tripartite. Presumably boots designed for goblins are shaped differently than boots designed for humans, elves and dwarves because their feet are shaped differently.
But Elan, Vaarsuvius, and Durkon’s feet all look different from Belkar’s, too. Most civilized races (other than halflings) wear shoes regularly, and so the single line just represented a shoe. But halflings and the savage races regularly go barefoot, and so we see their actual feet.
I don’t see what good sending in the bugbears would do. They already hunt in the caves as deep as they can go and don’t know about the Gate. Sending them in deeper would just result in zero bugbears coming back out judging by the condition Team Evil returned in. What are a bunch of 3HD bugbears going to do against foes that rough up an epic level sorcerer lich and one of the highest level clerics in Stickworld? Keeping them alive at least gives you scouts and a small army to throw against annoying paladins or heroes.
Plus it doesn’t really sound like these bugbears are as tractable as the goblins & hobs.