I don't get what Xykon meant in his power=power speech

[Darth Paul]

Really simple. Power is earned. There's no shortcuts to real power.

Again, ironic, considering that Xykon was told in

Spoiler: Start Of Darkness

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by Dorukan that "You have not earned your magic, it came to you in your blood."

So Xykon himself has been berated, right or wrong, for not "earning" his own power.

One wonders how many of his speeches are "take thats" to all the people in his past who put him down.

[Peelee]

Again, ironic, considering that Xykon was told in

Spoiler: Start Of Darkness

Show

by Dorukan that "You have not earned your magic, it came to you in your blood."

So Xykon himself has been berated, right or wrong, for not "earning" his own power.

One wonders how many of his speeches are "take thats" to all the people in his past who put him down.

I've always hated how wizards typically look down on sorcerers for that. Like, even if you're taught to play guitar by Joe Satriani, you're still not gonna be as awesome as Jimi Hendrix. So why do wizards who have to study and learn to control magic feel superior to sorcerers who are naturally gifted at it? It seems like it should be the reverse - "pitiable wizard, you had to study for years to accomplish what I have been doing for years."

[Keltest]

I've always hated how wizards typically look down on sorcerers for that. Like, even if you're taught to play guitar by Joe Satriani, you're still not gonna be as awesome as Jimi Hendrix. So why do wizards who have to study and learn to control magic feel superior to sorcerers who are naturally gifted at it? It seems like it should be the reverse - "pitiable wizard, you had to study for years to accomplish what I have been doing for years."

Well, I think the point is that it is stupid and petty. But it is understandable. The wizards put in actual work to get their magic. They study their butts off, and the spells are their reward. Sorcerers though just get handed those same spells without doing anything special.

[Peelee]

Well, I think the point is that it is stupid and petty. But it is understandable. The wizards put in actual work to get their magic. They study their butts off, and the spells are their reward. Sorcerers though just get handed those same spells without doing anything special.

I mean, I can understand the resentment. But at the same time, that's like saying the blonde dude in the bar was better than Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting because he worked his way through an Ivy League school while Will was able use his natural math powers to go all "Fields Medal Contender" on the world.

Yes, I know Will did a lot of learnin' on his own in the library. Doesn't matter. His natural gifts were why he was able to understand all that and still go above and beyond. I mean, fluff-wise, even Sorcerers have to learn to harness their natural powers to exert fine control over them. This is pretty equatable, I think.

[littlebum2002]

I mean, I can understand the resentment. But at the same time, that's like saying the blonde dude in the bar was better than Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting because he worked his way through an Ivy League school while Will was able use his natural math powers to go all "Fields Medal Contender" on the world.

Yes, I know Will did a lot of learnin' on his own in the library. Doesn't matter. His natural gifts were why he was able to understand all that and still go above and beyond. I mean, fluff-wise, even Sorcerers have to learn to harness their natural powers to exert fine control over them. This is pretty equatable, I think.

And how did the blonde dude at the bar treat Will? Just like a wizard treats a sorcerer.

[Peelee]

And how did the blonde dude at the bar treat Will? Just like a wizard treats a sorcerer.

Touché. Sometimes I don't think when I rant. I should probably rant less.

[GloatingSwine]

Power is whatever makes you win.

Whatever gives you an edge in the current circumstances and lets you beat an opponent is power, as long as you realise that you have it and make good use of it. So, a +8 racial bonus to listen checks is power, if your opponent is invisible. The physical strength to throttle your opponent is power, if you're both out of spells.

That was V's error, he simply assumed that having lots of magical grunt was "power", but got into a situation where it wasn't and barely escaped alive.

[Jay R]

Well, I think the point is that it is stupid and petty. But it is understandable. The wizards put in actual work to get their magic. They study their butts off, and the spells are their reward. Sorcerers though just get handed those same spells without doing anything special.

My experience is that the people who have to study hard to make A's are always kind of dismissive of those who make A's easily. It may sound like sneering, but I think there's a lot of envy and/or resentment involved.

[Darth Paul]

My experience is that the people who have to study hard to make A's are always kind of dismissive of those who make A's easily. It may sound like sneering, but I think there's a lot of envy and/or resentment involved.

Just as there is often a lot of dismissiveness, resentment, and/or envy among those who didn't study at all, towards those with a lot of education who are then perceived as being in the "ivory tower"; it's just usually expressed as contempt for someone with no "real life experience". In essence, sorcerors are blue collar, wizards are white collar (in this point of view); both work hard, but don't recognize what the other does as "proper" work. You can certainly see that between Xykon and Dorukan, Xykon and Fyron, there are probably other examples. (Xykon and the civilized world?)

[Psyren]

Well, I think the point is that it is stupid and petty. But it is understandable. The wizards put in actual work to get their magic. They study their butts off, and the spells are their reward. Sorcerers though just get handed those same spells without doing anything special.

There's also the fact that, in-universe, sorcerers have about as much control over what powers they get as we do over what art forms we are gifted at. Most of us would choose to have great singing voices if we could, but the reality is that some of us get that and the rest don't.

Put another way, sorcery is rare, and sorcery that results in truly useful magic is rarer still. If you luck out and become a sorcerer, but your blood bestows Hold Portal and Detect Undead on you as your first level spells, you might decide to hang the whole business rather than develop your talents further. Xykon himself got some kind of reanimation spell as his intro to sorcery, an effect both powerful and very overt that encouraged him further down that particular path.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Wizards vs sorcerers is like the difference between someone working hard to get rich vs someone being born into a wealthy family.

A wizard might say that the sorcerer has done nothing to deserve their powers besides being born lucky, and chances are they don't really know what they're doing with their power anyway because they didn't earn it themselves.

[Quild]

Wizards vs sorcerers is like the difference between someone working hard to get rich vs someone being born into a wealthy family.

A wizard might say that the sorcerer has done nothing to deserve their powers besides being born lucky, and chances are they don't really know what they're doing with their power anyway because they didn't earn it themselves.

Well, when you are born with wealth, someone got it for you I guess. What about if you played lottery for years until you win the big score? Did you "earn" that?


I've always been upset about how Jonathan Kent asks Clark not to play sports, because even if he can manage not to hurt anyone and not to show his powers being just barely better than them, it wouldn't be fair for the others. Same for Dash in Incredibles, who is finally allowed to make sports.

Sport is about training but is also about being gifted. Sometimes, there is no level of training that can make a difference.

So maybe you don't deserve much credit for winning. And I don't think that Xykon claims any credit. But you still win. I like to think that Xykon is the kind of guy who can accept to be outmatched by someone else. The way he behaves in #462 surprised me.



Unrelated: I like when sometimes the habit to read some names backward isn't wasted.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

I've always been upset about how Jonathan Kent asks Clark not to play sports, because even if he can manage not to hurt anyone and not to show his powers being just barely better than them, it wouldn't be fair for the others. Same for Dash in Incredibles, who is finally allowed to make sports.

In those cases, there's also the issue that if they do show off their abilities, they draw attention to themselves and sooner or later someone will come along and try and find out exactly what gave them those abilities. In Dash's case in particular, super-powered individuals are very tightly controlled, and, while it's not completely put out there in the movie (mainly as it's from Disney), presumably there's some officially sanctioned body that's responsible for enforcing those controls, which may include Cape-Killers.

[Psyren]

The movie explains that actually - the supers caused so much collateral damage back in the day that they were forced to use secret identities or else get stuck with the less-than-grateful city's repair bill. So Dash's alter ego being uncovered would have led to Mr. Incredible being uncovered and dealing with a ton of liability over his past battle as well as the current one.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

The movie explains that actually - the supers caused so much collateral damage back in the day that they were forced to use secret identities or else get stuck with the less-than-grateful city's repair bill. So Dash's alter ego being uncovered would have led to Mr. Incredible being uncovered and dealing with a ton of liability over his past battle as well as the current one.

I know - they're actually in something more like Witness Protection, and IIRC, the film implies that the family's had to move at least once before because of something that came close to revealing their identity.

But all that only really works for the superheroes who're willing to play ball - there might have been others who were less cooperative and would have had to have been shut down (say, if there was an Incredibles-verse version of someone like Wolverine).

[Sylian]

Kubotas power was relative, just as Xykons is.

I agree, but would Xykon?

"Power, it isn't something that you put on or take off like a jacket. It's something you just ARE. If you can lose it by blowing two Will saves, you never really had any power in the first place, see what I mean?"

I think both of these statements are false. Power isn't something you are, it's something you have, and it's very much situational. Kubota had political power, but that power was worth nil against a morally ambiguous elf with a trigger happy index finger.

Xykon admits that he has no problem accepting help from his allies, that gives him power (of friendship).

If power is something you are, then isn't that "friendship" part of what Xykon is? And something he couldn't lose by blowing two Will saves, or, perhaps, a bunch of ghouls getting turned, leading to Tsukiko dying and thus Xykon losing some power. Sure, you could argue that it wasn't Xykon that messed up there, but it's not too hard to imagine a scenario where he failing two Will saves would lead to Tsukiko's death. Imagine this:

Imprisonment spell on Xykon. He fails his save and is imprisoned "in a small sphere far beneath the surface of the earth". He thus cannot protect Tsukiko, and she's killed. Or we could go back to when Xykon was still a human. "Dominate Person" followed by "Kill Tsukiko" could make him lose Tsukiko and thus "the power of friendship", couldn't it?

I also wonder if the "fail two Will saves" part also works with Fortitude saves. Level drain is a thing, as he surely must know. Granted, it doesn't apply to undead. Does Xykon believe that only undead can posses power? Or "be" power, since power isn't something you have, it's something you are, if we are to believe Xykon.

[veti]

Xykon is saying - rightly or wrongly, I don't really want to get into that - that power isn't like "a thing that you can buy in a store" or "a trick you can learn", it's something intrinsic to you that can't be separated. Something you have to grow for yourself. In a word, it's XP.

"Hell, the idiot paladin understands that better than you do, 'cause he got every one of those hit points I burned off him the hard way: he earned them."

And the phrase "power equals power", in this context, means that there is no substitute, no shortcut to that - the only way to get "power", in Xykon's eyes, is "to earn it".

I also wonder if the "fail two Will saves" part also works with Fortitude saves. Level drain is a thing, as he surely must know. Granted, it doesn't apply to undead. Does Xykon believe that only undead can posses power? Or "be" power, since power isn't something you have, it's something you are, if we are to believe Xykon.

Yes, it would certainly apply to any number of any kind of saves. If you fail your saves against level drain, you don't lose the power, you just have to score a Restoration within the time limit to get it back, which shouldn't normally be too hard. In other words, there's a whole pile of circumstances - not "just" a failed save - that have to combine against you to make you actually "lose" the power.

[Darth Paul]

Or maybe Xykon was trying to say that, even in a circumstance where something like Energy Drain hits you, it's taking off levels you yourself actually earned, not levels that you're borrowing from a pair of dead spellcasters the way Vaarsuvius was at that time. For one thing, it will take a lot more than two saving throws to strip away that much power from a caster who really has all those levels inherently.
I fall back to the thought that a 20th level caster, having earned his power a step at a time, is intimately familiar with all of his options and knows instinctively what to do in the worst-case scenario; whereas V had to grapple with a host of powers s/he had never had access to before and just went with the big, flashy stuff. As V said later, s/he used the power like a cudgel; when a scalpel was the proper approach (IMO). A high-level wizard or sorceror or cleric in V's shoes at that moment would have fared much better- not won, necessarily, but made a better showing of it. As the Giant points out in the book commentary, it's not until V is forced to rely on his/her own spells that the battle goes V's way.

[Quild]

I know - they're actually in something more like Witness Protection, and IIRC, the film implies that the family's had to move at least once before because of something that came close to revealing their identity.

But all that only really works for the superheroes who're willing to play ball - there might have been others who were less cooperative and would have had to have been shut down (say, if there was an Incredibles-verse version of someone like Wolverine).

For Dash it is indeed a matter of trust. Bob and Helen are afraid that he would get caught. At the end of the movie, they trust him (yet, his performance and the way they shout him to be close second aren't very smart).
I don't think that Dash ever get caught, it's Bob who tend to throw poor little insurance guys through a few walls.
For Clark, the reason that is sometimes given is that it would be unfair.

I fall back to the thought that a 20th level caster, having earned his power a step at a time, is intimately familiar with all of his options and knows instinctively what to do in the worst-case scenario; whereas V had to grapple with a host of powers s/he had never had access to before and just went with the big, flashy stuff. As V said later, s/he used the power like a cudgel; when a scalpel was the proper approach (IMO). A high-level wizard or sorceror or cleric in V's shoes at that moment would have fared much better- not won, necessarily, but made a better showing of it. As the Giant points out in the book commentary, it's not until V is forced to rely on his/her own spells that the battle goes V's way.

Isn't it the kind of thing that are said to Xykon by Wizards? It's also Laurin thing to use big guns first.


I really like Xykon speech, and I don't really want to think about what's wrong in it. Xykon is more powerful than V, sure, but if V is given enough time (V may be older than Xykon though), V can compete. While alive, Xykon had been defeated by Lirian. So I don't really know what to make of this.

Thing is that Xykon is now very potent. The help he can get from minions is not necessary for him. He only need Redcloak for the control of the gate because he doesn't know that he needs Redcloak. And I'm not even sure of this since he understood somehow that the red cloak is more important than Redcloak (#662).
Xykon has power. Period.
Tsukiko's death? Doesn't care much.
Redcloak's death? Seems he's not afraid of that.
MitD? I'm quite sure he needs him just for the show, the same than the Zombie Silver Dragon.
Betrayal? Xykon made some checks against it in SoD (Also another use of MitD). Quite sure Xykon thinks he knows Redcloak better than Redcloak himself. I'm not even sure Xykon was fooled by the fake phylactery.
And the thing that really surprised me about Xykon, the thing that I think almost out of character... That moment in SoD when he translated Serini's diary. Man, he can even do that on his own.

[The Patterner]

I agree, but would Xykon?

"Power, it isn't something that you put on or take off like a jacket. It's something you just ARE. If you can lose it by blowing two Will saves, you never really had any power in the first place, see what I mean?"

I think both of these statements are false. Power isn't something you are, it's something you have, and it's very much situational. Kubota had political power, but that power was worth nil against a morally ambiguous elf with a trigger happy index finger.

If power is something you are, then isn't that "friendship" part of what Xykon is? And something he couldn't lose by blowing two Will saves, or, perhaps, a bunch of ghouls getting turned, leading to Tsukiko dying and thus Xykon losing some power. Sure, you could argue that it wasn't Xykon that messed up there, but it's not too hard to imagine a scenario where he failing two Will saves would lead to Tsukiko's death. Imagine this:

Imprisonment spell on Xykon. He fails his save and is imprisoned "in a small sphere far beneath the surface of the earth". He thus cannot protect Tsukiko, and she's killed. Or we could go back to when Xykon was still a human. "Dominate Person" followed by "Kill Tsukiko" could make him lose Tsukiko and thus "the power of friendship", couldn't it?

I also wonder if the "fail two Will saves" part also works with Fortitude saves. Level drain is a thing, as he surely must know. Granted, it doesn't apply to undead. Does Xykon believe that only undead can posses power? Or "be" power, since power isn't something you have, it's something you are, if we are to believe Xykon.

Good points, but it's slightly contradicted by:

"You know what does equal power?
Power.
Power equals power.
Crazy, huh?

But the type of power? Doesn't matter as much as you’d think. It turns out, everything is oddly balanced. Weird, but true.
For example: ..Right now, power takes the form of a +8 racial bonus to listen skill checks.”

Which supports the view that Xykon considers power to be relative. Add to that the next quote about how having a lot of spells does no good against an opponent with a lot of spells and high strength.

I seems Xykons perspective is something in between relative and absolute. Power is something real, V was powerful in a sense, but also weak since Xykon was stronger.

To give an example, I'm quite tall, a couple of months ago I went to a party and meet a really tall guy who was towering over me. Objectively I never stopped being tall, but comparatively I was short. V is objectively powerful, but comparatively weak.

I don't know if this makes any sense, I'm tired...

[Keltest]

Good points, but it's slightly contradicted by:

"You know what does equal power?
Power.
Power equals power.
Crazy, huh?

But the type of power? Doesn't matter as much as you’d think. It turns out, everything is oddly balanced. Weird, but true.
For example: ..Right now, power takes the form of a +8 racial bonus to listen skill checks.”

Which supports the view that Xykon considers power to be relative. Add to that the next quote about how having a lot of spells does no good against an opponent with a lot of spells and high strength.

I seems Xykons perspective is something in between relative and absolute. Power is something real, V was powerful in a sense, but also weak since Xykon was stronger.

To give an example, I'm quite tall, a couple of months ago I went to a party and meet a really tall guy who was towering over me. Objectively I never stopped being tall, but comparatively I was short. V is objectively powerful, but comparatively weak.

I don't know if this makes any sense, I'm tired...

I think it makes perfect sense. A given value of power doesn't necessarily mean that there cant be a higher value out there somewhere, and what your value of power is is as much circumstance based as anything.

[veti]

I think Xykon is expounding an impassioned defence of the D&D 'level' system, and to a lesser extent repudiating 'class tiers'.

What makes you powerful? Your own level. He makes two explicit references to "level" in that speech: to "the idiot paladin... earned [his HP]" and "your lame mid-level ass". "I've learned a lot since [I was alive]" - this is a nod to the ECL of becoming a lich.

"But the type of power? Doesn't matter as much as you'd think. It turns out, everything is oddly balanced. Weird, but true." Your arcane spells are all very nice, but I have this ECL ability that means this particular one doesn't work against me. And it's amazing how often that happens.