The Order of the Stick

[Naurgul]

V is actually not barred from casting those completely. He's barred from casting them to replicate divine spells. Also, new comic is out. The plot is on a slow-motion collision course even more now.

[Will]

V is actually not barred from casting those completely. He's barred from casting them to replicate divine spells.

Which is basically how you use wish to resurrect someone.

[SecondTalon]

Haley : More Hardcore Than You

[Belial]

I love how V had to have this long, drawn out, angsty devil's bargain to fall to evil.

Haley does it like it's just not even a thing. "Whatever. You pissed me off. I'm evil now. Have some cold-blooded murder"

[Yakk]

I love how V had to have this long, drawn out, angsty devil's bargain to fall to evil.

Haley does it like it's just not even a thing. "Whatever. You pissed me off. I'm evil now. Have some cold-blooded murder"

Is killing someone who is demonstratively evil, from years of evidence (and some of it recent), evil?

Doing so from surprise, breaking an agreement to do it, and not letting the target defend itself isn't very lawful.

But, suppose you found a rock that, when shattered, would kill the BBEG. . .

[Belial]

I think murdering a helpless opponent who is not threatening you is generally considered evil, yeah.

[Yakk]

I think murdering a helpless opponent who is not threatening you is generally considered evil, yeah.

The opponent was threatening her -- not immediately, admittedly.

She was not going to follow the agreement, and the thieves guild was going to hunt her down and kill her: in particular, the person she killed was going to. This isn't an immediate threat, but it is a threat.

I'd hold that it is "not good", but that isn't the same as "evil" -- this wasn't just some random person. It was an enforcer of a guide of thieves that she is about to give a bloody nose to (and she fully expects to go after her in response), and who engages in murder for hire regularly. She knows (and remember, as a chaotic person, personal knowledge is more important than proof in a court of law) that Crystal has murdered, and will murder, people at the drop of a hat.

She waited until the target wasn't armed and equipped to fight back: because she's a chaotic rogue, not a lawful knight.

Lawful Good (procedure, society and good are all important) isn't good in D&D. Someone who is judge, jury and executioner in the real world is an evil bastard in the real world (the lack of checks and balances generates evil, in the real world experience) -- in D&D, they could or would be chaotic good.

[Will]

I'm more or less with Yakk--codes of honor have more to do with Law vs. Chaos than Good vs. Evil. Ambushing a helpless opponent is an extremely rogue thing to do--not just because rogues don't tend to care about fair fights, but because their skills are designed *specifically* towards tipping the scales in their favor.
Now, she's certainly acting as much out of hatred for Crystal as any other motivation, which certainly pushes her more towards the Evil end of the GvE spectrum, but it's hardly the same as making a deal with the powers of Evil.

[Belial]

She was not going to follow the agreement, and the thieves guild was going to hunt her down and kill her: in particular, the person she killed was going to. This isn't an immediate threat, but it is a threat.

Wait, did she know that? Because, yes, that would push it toward neutral.

As it is, it looks a lot more like she killed Crystal entirely based on vague suspicion, hatred for crystal, and a non-desire to pay thieves-guild dues. And maybe a healthy measure of pride.

Which are generally pretty evil reasons for killing someone.

[Yakk]

She wan't going to pay the dues. She feels no obligation to do it, and it gets in the way of her saving her father. She feels no obligation to continue to pay the thieves guild dues in order for the thieves guild to not want to kill her. And I wouldn't hold that contempt for agreements entered into on her behalf (with an evil organisation) to be an evil act -- it is a chaotic act.

Given that she wasn't going to pay the dues, she knows that the thieves guide will try to kill her. It nearly did so just recently, and it is their stated policy. And she is about to piss them off even more by causing yet more loss of face.

Is killing someone because they attempted to murder you an evil act? With the extra information that, if that person sees you again, they will attempt to murder you? And there is a definite possibility that they will actively hunt you down and seek to kill you? Where the person in question is definitely evil, an assassin for hire who enjoys killing people and will kill nearly anyone for cash? In the D&D morality system?

I agree with "not a good act".

[Sir_Elderberry]

It's a CN, maybe CE act. Haley herself probably still doesn't clock in as evil. Élan wouldn't approve though, which is the real plot significance.

[Yakk]

It's a CN, maybe CE act. Haley herself probably still doesn't clock in as evil. Élan wouldn't approve though, which is the real plot significance.

Agreed. Elan is the CG

Spoiler:

deity in the pantheon they are going to form

party member. (and no, I'm not kidding about the spoiler)

[Kizyr]

Lawful Good (procedure, society and good are all important) isn't good in D&D. Someone who is judge, jury and executioner in the real world is an evil bastard in the real world (the lack of checks and balances generates evil, in the real world experience) -- in D&D, they could or would be chaotic good.

Yes, definitely--at the very least, anyone who's an extremist with being lawful good. This is one of the reasons that Miko was my favorite villain: I really liked seeing how Rich made a paladin, still following all the rules of being a paladin, into a clear-cut bad guy.

It's a CN, maybe CE act. Haley herself probably still doesn't clock in as evil. Élan wouldn't approve though, which is the real plot significance.

Agreed. Elan is the CG

Spoiler:

deity in the pantheon they are going to form

party member. (and no, I'm not kidding about the spoiler)

Spoiler:

What, are we talking about Banjo here? He strikes me as more a chaotic silly deity.

KF

[Naurgul]

It's a CN, maybe CE act. Haley herself probably still doesn't clock in as evil. Élan wouldn't approve though, which is the real plot significance.

Agreed. Elan is the CG

Spoiler:

deity in the pantheon they are going to form

party member. (and no, I'm not kidding about the spoiler)

Spoiler:

What, are we talking about Banjo here? He strikes me as more a chaotic silly deity.

KF

Spoiler:

No, he's speculating that the end of the story will involve all members of the order of the stick ascending into divinity and forming their own pantheon.

[Yakk]

Lawful Good (procedure, society and good are all important) isn't good in D&D. Someone who is judge, jury and executioner in the real world is an evil bastard in the real world (the lack of checks and balances generates evil, in the real world experience) -- in D&D, they could or would be chaotic good.

Yes, definitely--at the very least, anyone who's an extremist with being lawful good. This is one of the reasons that Miko was my favorite villain: I really liked seeing how Rich made a paladin, still following all the rules of being a paladin, into a clear-cut bad guy.

Miko broke paladin rules.

I'm talking about the fact that to a chaotic person, there is no virtue in the process of the trial, other than as a form of argument to convince someone with power what the truth of the matter is (at best). If you, personally, know that X did Y, and have the power to deal with it, then you have as much right to punish X for Y as any judge of a state who, after long deliberation and investigation, found that X did Y.

There is the matter of certainty that impacts both the chaotic "vigilante justice" and the "system justice" of lawful: but what certainty does a judge really have compared to an eye witness.

The fact that it is after the fact generally makes it more ambiguous -- but in this case, H knows the assassin isn't likely to stop with her evil actions. And the only means H has (within the bounds of practicality) to hinder these evil actions is killing her (as H has legitimately bigger fish to fry -- saving the world from the menace of the snarl, and cannot afford to stay around and single-handedly dismantle the thieves guild).

Throw out the fact that H and the Guild where at nominal peace due to the agreement -- to H (and to the guild) that was a peace of convenience. Breaking that agreement is a law/chaos thing in D&D land.

Throw out that H didn't give the assassin time to defend herself: this isn't about behaving honourably. If "someone needs killing" to a chaotic person, it isn't evil to do it via being sneaky or via surprise.

The question becomes did the assassin "need killing"? The assassin was a professional evil-doer who has attempted to murder, and is likely to want to murder, H in the future. Even killing the assassin is unlikely to cause more than a financial harm to her (the expected resurrection). The killing being motivated by hatred does make it non-good, together with minimal attempts to go to lengths to avoid killing.

But if a Shinjo-clone in charge of the area sentenced the assassin to death for the myriad of murders she committed (and was likely to commit in the future if left alive), would that be strong evidence that the Shinjo-clone ruler was lawful evil? The lack of procedure in H's case is chaos, not evil.

It's a CN, maybe CE act. Haley herself probably still doesn't clock in as evil. Élan wouldn't approve though, which is the real plot significance.

Agreed. Elan is the CG

Spoiler:

deity in the pantheon they are going to form

party member. (and no, I'm not kidding about the spoiler)

Spoiler:

What, are we talking about Banjo here? He strikes me as more a chaotic silly deity.

KF

Spoiler:

No: they are playing with saving the universe from being overwritten by the snarl.

I suspect that this will end up with V having 'ultimate arcane power' (she doesn't right now) in the sense that V will be the deity of magic itself. They will form a pantheon.

This is just a theory, but it is a spoiler-ish one. Even the return of Durkon to the Dwarf lands prophesy sort of fits.

(still not kidding about the spoiler)

[Vaniver]

Spoiler:

Ending a campaign with apotheosis is sort of SOP, something they even made explicit in 4e. It wouldn't surprise me at all if that's how the story ends.

[Yakk]

Spoiler:

*nod*. And really, once Belkar became the barefoot god of war, how can he not become a god of war?

V would make a kick-ass deity of magic.

Elan a god of music and entertainment.

Roy of civilisation/law/justice.

Durkon of Beer, Duty and Dwarves.

Haily of fortune, luck and wealth.

Of course, it could easily end up with only some of them going that path.

[Luthen]

Spoiler:

Why are all the musings about the climax of the comic in spoilers?

[Naurgul]

Spoiler:

Because they think that the probability that it will come true is so high that this speculation is retroactively a spoiler.

[phlip]

Spoiler:

It's a convention from the OotS message board... on the request/insistance of Rich, all speculations about future strips are officially classed as "spoilers". The official reasoning being that, as mentioned in the FAQ, if he sees an accurate prediction, he's strongly tempted to change it so that the prediction's wrong... by marking predictions as spoilers, he knows not to read them, and thus doesn't have to worry about that temptation.

Also, reading a strip after reading an accurate prediction is often less fun... even if you read like 20 predictions, and the one that's right is only right by chance... yay for confirmation bias.

[Sir_Elderberry]

That was...ridiculously meta. Wow.

I'm having trouble actually believing that spell is going to get cast...

[phlip]

Check out the actual cast page too...

[Sir_Elderberry]

I did, and was impressed.

[hideki101]

dammit, did he change it, or was it that was since the beginning? I forgot.

[phlip]

Yes, it did used to have a diamond there. Comparing it with the earlier version (which I had saved, along with all the strips) shows that's the only thing that's changed. Also:

Code: Select all

$ curl -sI http://www.giantitp.com/Images/ootschar.gif | grep -i Last-Modified
Last-Modified: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 02:59:35 GMT

[Kizyr]

Check out the actual cast page too...

Knowing Rich, that's the first thing I checked. I actually would've been disappointed if it hadn't been updated. KF

[Sir_Elderberry]

You know, when I first read the strip I thought, "Eh. I'm not sure if I like being that meta when it comes to the actual plot, as opposed to just one-off jokes." (Cue someone showing me an earlier example in 5...) Then I realized that they actually should have had diamonds, but they were taken away solely to set up that quick joke which returned the plot back to its status quo. Well played, Mr Burlew.

[Yakk]

The joke-on-the-reader being "oh crap, another problem? I thought we where done with those problems?", and having it solved by crossing the 2nd wall (the one on the left(?) side).

[Maseiken]

I like how with Burlew, the Status Quo isn't god, it's a tantalising goal to dangle over the heads of your readers and then snatch away at the last possible moment. This is the equivalent of his twitching his arm to make us think he was snatching it away yet again.

[Luthen]

I'm afraid to check but how much of an uproar is going on because Roy called V a "him"?

Oh and V is probably going fail.

[TaintedDeity]

Oh, each of the characters has already decided whether V is male or female, they disagree, If I remember correctly.

[Naurgul]

Roy has called V a "him" many times in the past. There will be some newbies in the forums claiming that his gender was revealed again but nothing more. (ninja'd by TaintedDeity)

Also, I'll have to agree with Luthen: The way it's set up now, it sure seems that V is going to fail. An alternate theory argues that V may kill Xykon and take his place trying to unlock ultimate arcane power (for real this time) by controlling the Snarl. By the way, my previous expectations that V's Splice will make the story reach its conclusion pretty fast were wrong. My brother informed me that Rich Burlew said about 4 years ago that the story had at least 5 years to go. Some time after that, he mentioned that the story was moving slower than he anticipated. So, it seems that there's still a long way to go.

[telkanuru]

PS- Snarl can't be controlled. It can only be released or not. Also requires both divine and arcane magic to release/not.

[Will]

Xykon/Varsuuvius battle!
*makes popcorn*

Also, for those who haven't/don't read the news posts, GitP is upgrading their server this week, which should hopefully ease some of the slowness problems. Evidently Rich also plans to move to a multi-server solution that can actually *handle* GitP's traffic, but some of the site backend needs to be rewritten before that can happen.

[Jorpho]

There can really only be one outcome: the Soul Splice fails and V is spontaneously dragged into the lower plains, to mysteriously re-appear a few dozens strips from now.

[TaintedDeity]

Yeah, I was kind of hoping V would do some more butt kicking, maybe throw Xykon around a bit before they realised the soul spice was there.
Doesn't look like it's going well for V, to me...

[Belial]

I honestly just loved Xykon's verbal/logical smackdown.

"Oh you poor, dumb elf. Don't you get it? Be a vampire, or a ghost, or an immortal with a paint-by-numbers portrait in the rec room. Hell, even a brain-in-a-jar in a pinch. Anything to avoid the Big Fire Below. So what this tells me is you're channeling the "raw unlimited energies" of two chumps who didn't have the balls to stay in the game"

[Yakk]

"Oh you poor, dumb elf. Don't you get it? Be a vampire, or a ghost, or an immortal with a paint-by-numbers portrait in the rec room. Hell, even a brain-in-a-jar in a pinch. Anything to avoid the Big Fire Below. So what this tells me is you're channeling the "raw unlimited energies" of two chumps who didn't have the balls to stay in the game"

And then proceeds to smack them down by sucking the life essence of the thing that keeps her powerful dry.

Because as dumb as Xykon seems sometimes, that is the dumbness of not caring. Not, apparently, the dumbness of not knowing.

...

V is also being dumb. Dealing HP damage?! As a Wizard with access to 9th level spell slots? That's ~100 damage on a failed save.

I suppose V already used up a bunch of spell slots against the Dragon.

[Sir_Elderberry]

Man, Xykon was cool in this strip. He really is pretty frightening when he stops being comical.

[Naurgul]

New comic is out.

Spoiler:

Meh, Xykon wins (predictably). I was so hoping that V's contract would move the plot a bit forward but it seems that the elf being punished for his arrogance is more important, even if it means that things get even more complicated. Argh, am I the only one who got frustrated by this whole thing?