Actually I think it has been explicitly stated that the problem is the attached Forums. The GitP Forums pre-date the comic and average over two million posts a year, with avatars and graphic sigs allowed. In fact the comic was originally started as a method to boost traffic to the forums.
Reading just the comics there is similar to reading just the columns here. If that is all you do you are missing 99% of the total content. Not saying all the content is good, but the comics are a tiny part of the problem. And there is a great deal of work going on in an attempt to resolve the problems (they just did a purge of all threads over two years old for example).
Thank God. At last the end of the interminable whining about the Order being separated is in sight.
I’ll miss the other plotlines, but my monitor will appreciate the end of me trying to stab people who’re on the internet through it. Just as well the GitP forums have been so buggy, really.
Indeed. Remember, V’s whole schtick is proving the superiority of arcane power. Xykon represents arcane power, too, so his continued existence is not a threat to V’s worldview.
What’s really funny is that the OotS-style stick figure avatars on the forum predate the comic, too. Rich originally created them as a stand-in for miniatures in a game he was DMing, then adapted them as avatars for the forum, then decided to make a comic strip about the avatar characters.
Hey maybe someone who knows anything about D&D can answer this simple question for me.
Clearly, the loss of the necromancer was a plot device. At some point in the next couple of strips, V will be prevented from doing something because it is something only a necromancer can do. In the D&D universe, what can a necromancer do that none of the other classes can do?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say (based on the name: “necro-”) it’s probably raising the dead. Is that right? Can necromancers raise the dead, and can the other classes not?
If I’m right, it’s pretty clear V is going to have access to Roy’s body very soon.
I don’t think any type of mage can actually cast any form of Raise Dead (other than Reincarnate). It’s Durkon who’s going to have to do the heavy lifting with Roy. The necromancer could have raised Roy as a zombie/skeleton, but given that he’s already been reanimated as a flesh golem, that would be redundant.
Interesting. So what can necromancers do that other brands of mage can’t? I’m betting the answer to that question will tell us what the next few strips will be about.
It’s not what they can do for the most part, it’s what they can’t do.
D&D magic is divided into schools and if you specialize in one like necromancy then you get extra spells of that school but are not allowed to use any spells at all in your opposite school.
I want to say V specializes in abjuration. I know he/she has a barred school but I can’t remember the which type of magic it indicates that V uses…
V specializes in evocation, and is barred from necromancy and conjuration. That’s why he was offered souls who specialized in those schools.
The necromancer cast familicide, so there’s not clearly any reason for her to hang around. A few more teleports, and the conjurer will have served his purpose.
Necromancers specialize in creating undead, not in returning the dead to life. Raising the dead is a form of healing magic. Necromancers are pretty much on the opposite side of the spectrum from that sort of thing. They don’t restore life, they create twisted and unholy mockeries of life.
In D&D terms, restoring the dead to life is actually fairly trivial. Raise Dead is a mid-level cleric spell. Durkon could probably cast three or four of them a day.
A necromancer is just a sub-class, a specialist wizard who is a bit better at casting Necromancy spells, but can’t learn spells from two other schools of magic. There are other classes and prestige classes that would give a necromancy-themed character more options, but in Core there’s nothing a necromancer can do that a slightly-higher level wizard can’t.
I wouldn’t be shocked if it wraps up in the next ten to fifteen with most of the action occurring off screen. I predict V joining up just in time to nearly botch the golem retrieval then Roy being resurrected immediately. We need to check back in with team evil and maybe get a few foreshadowing updates for the end of the book and then we’re done. Going really fast that could be as soon as 650 but I think it will be a little longer than that.
The loss of the necromancer’s soul wasn’t a plot device – it was a way to emphasize V’s shock at the reaction from Kyrie.
As ultrafilter points out, V had already used what necromancy was needed for the story, so that was now the expendable soul of the three that could escape to emphasize that V was so shaken that the soulbind slipped. There is no reason to expect V will need to do some necromancy only to have a d’oh! moment in realizing the necromancer’s soul is gone.
I doubt we’ll see V’s family again, actually. And I suspect that the soul-bind won’t stay around much past the time that the Order is reunited – Haley and Roy may be able to argue convincingly on V’s own terms where Kyrie wasn’t able to.
I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Didn’t the fiends say something about the necromancer’s spirit being free, as opposed to being returned to the lower planes? I’m guessing having a bunch of malevolent ghosts with epic-level casting abilities hanging out on the Prime Material is going to cause issues somewhere down the line.
