So Belkar is basically ECL 24 at this point?
And he might have a higher Str score than Roy?
Wow.
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So Belkar is basically ECL 24 at this point?
And he might have a higher Str score than Roy?
Wow.
Well... sort of. I mean, sure, this means he's up in epic territory (suggesting that Tarquin is as well. Which, now that we're actually *saying* it doesn't seem like a surprise given how impressive he's been along with the de facto ruler of an empire. But then I'm in the "Tarquin is awesome" camp), but he's nowhere near a match for Xykon. Yeah, he's tricky to kill and has some fun side abilities, but in terms of sheer power he's a lot weaker than a straight-up level 22 caster of any sort. Xykon, and probably Redcloak, would mop the floor with him.
On the one hand, sure, if this means Tarquin's party is all low 20s, that makes them a pretty powerful bunch and probably a match for Team Evil (just like the Scribblers were). On the other hand, I'm a little shocked that Team Tarquin would carry around a cleric so horribly underpowered for his ECL.
Keep in mind this isn't a tabletop game where you can leave a party member behind and someone of his same level will conveniently fill the void. And Malak probably didn't choose to be a Vampire. It is still smart to travel with him. He is still likely one of the most powerful persons in the world.
Lizardfolk have a level adjustment of one, Malack has +11 Levels of Cleric, +8 for Vampire. Am I missing something or is that 20?
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lizardfolk.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/vampire.htm
Yes, you're missing the lizardfolk racial hit dice.
Lizardfolk have a challenge rating of one, and a level adjustment of one... and also have two levels of humanoid. My bad.
...wow those guys are poorly balanced. Two levels of humanoid (giving them basically nothing) AND a +1 Level Adjustment?
Isn't that basically a +3 Level Adjustment in exchange for a +5 Natural Armor bonus?
In the immortal words of the Dark One, THOSE RULES ARE CRAP AND YOU KNOW IT!
Doesn't this reveal bring us closer to knowing Malack's domains? The SRD states that a vampire cleric has access to two out of Chaos, Destruction, Evil or Trickery.
Assuming the priest of a god of Death and Destruction has destruction as a school, and assuming chaos is not the other due to the fact he appears to be lawful, that leaves Evil or Trickery.
Obviously, those guesses are based purely on character stuff, and I'm nowhere near familiar enough with clerics to be able to make a final judgement, but I thought it was worth mentioning as I hadn't seen anyone else bring it up, and I'm sure people who know the rules better can narrow it down further.
In the latest Giant comment, he reveals that Malack floats. AFAIK, this is not related to being a vampire...
Tarquin can definitely be a lower level than his ally. We have seen Tarquin team up with Nale (who is clearly lower level) and Kilkil (who is much lower still). We have also seen Nale team up with Leeky (who, regardless of level, was clearly more of a threat than Nale was) and Pompey (who was, what, level 5 at the time?). We even know that Roy has a lower level than Belkar does.
So yeah, in the comic we can see that being in the same team doesn't say anything about what levels characters are.
Are there any cleric of death prestige classes that grant vampirism as level cap bonus? Considering Mallack's choice of god, and him calling Nergal his master, that would be really fitting.
Not that I can find.
Reading the mood of the thread I do think I was hasty slapping evil on Malack, so I've taken it off.
As for surviving in sunlight, I'll wait and see if it's discussed in the comic at all before having a stab at explaining it in Malack's entry. Malack may have a magic item that Belkar may end up inheriting, or maybe Rich is houseruling that it's no big deal.
{{scrubbed}}
A good problem i see here is that Detect Evil read undead as Evil whatever they are evil or not.
Nale's longsword should be removed from his inventory, since Belkar prevented him from retrieving it.
Yes, but by Malack's ECL, he could easily have his alignment hidden from detection. Hell, my Good PCs hide their alignment because of our tendency to use Detect Alignment to find people.
Undead can ping up to three alignment spells (Good, Evil, and either Chaos or Law), Outsiders can ping all four in the right circumstances. You'd have to have two subtypes, and then convert to the opposite alignment (such as a former Taa'nari becoming a Paladin) but it's possible.
Not sure why by RAW it must be one of the two, would you mind explaining? Can you hide alignment with illusions?
Also, there is a third option: that Rich, as the author, dislikes blanket alignment assignments (which we know to be true) and by having already established Malack to be a half-way decent dude, has indicated that the rule for "all vampires are evil" does not apply in OotS (which is open to discussion, but I believe to be at least a valid possibility).
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In other business, RMS Oceanic: you may want to update the link to the MitD thread. The new thread is here.
Grey Wolf
Don't forget that the whole point about the IFCC is that even Outsiders have necessarily a set Alignment, since it's based on allowing more Chaotic Devils, more Lawful Demons and less Neutral Daemons, as Rich has said.
According to the SRD, vampire clerics can only choose from a pool of four domains, Destruction, Chaos, Evil or Trickery. I may be reading it wrong, but since we know he's almost certainly not chaotic and he's cast spells from the destruction domain, that would imply his other domain is either Evil or Trickery, which is primarily illusion spells.
Like I said, I might be reading it wrong, it might be that he gets those as bonus domain choices, but the wording doesn't indicate that to me. Article is here, the relevant bit is under Vampire Characters in the Clerics section.
Malack's vampirism actually grants Tarquin and co a lot of advantages in the empire building business.
If he's not evil then he can't have the evil domain.
"A cleric who chooses the Trickery domain adds Bluff (Cha), Disguise (Cha), and Hide (Dex) to the list."
Granted nothing stops him from having Disguise cross-class, but I think a decent Disguise rank would deal with this whole "doesn't look or sound like a Vampire" thing pretty nicely.
It's thin, but he's likely Destruction + Trickery.
I'm not sure about this, but if he was a cleric before he became a vampire and had like, Law and Destruction as his domains, does that mean his domains vanished and he needs to pick two out of the four mentioned here, or just that he lost his Law domain and now he has just one?