OOTS #1041 - The Discussion Thread

[Pseudo_Nym]

This.

Guys, if you think the MitD isn;'t hurting Team Evil, or is actually helping them, just think to yourself: What would happen if he marked every single door? They would have to start over from scratch, which clearly would hurt them.

Now think about what happens if he just paints every door but 1. Assuming there are 100 doors, there is a 1/100 chance Team Evil will chose the correct door the next morning, otherwise they will have to start over.

The numbers go down from there, but the overall premise is obvious: the more doors you paint, the greater the chances are that they miss the correct door and start over.

Interestingly, if running out of doors means they start over, it's best to paint exactly half. Painting 1 door of 100 gives a 1% chance of wasting 99 days, and all but one is a 99% chance of wasting 1 day. A 50% chance of wasting 50 days is over 25 times better.

[Porthos]

I'm not convinced that he knows he's doing sabotage.

Maybe it's just:
"We're stuck here somehow until we went through all the doors. Let's hasten our progress."

What would make it clearer?

He intentionally asks to do the paint this time.
He makes a comment that "finding the Gate is what we all want, right" in a bit of dramatic irony since it is fairly clear he is splitting away from Team Evil and doesn't really want to find the Gate.
He then intentionally makes a comment that paraphrased says "Okay, I'm gonna do what I said I was gonna do. Nothing suspicious here. No siree bob."
He then makes sure NOT to leave tracks at the two doors that weren't investigated.

One of the long running threads of the comic is that the MitD is slowly, sometimes very very slowly, learning to think for himself and, well, grow up. If this isn't a sign of that I'd be shocked.

[Murska]

It's pretty clear that statistically MitD is sabotaging the search. However, I think it's possible he's actually speeding it up for another reason - that is, if I were trying to hide the Gate, sure I would create a ton of doors that lead to dangerous dungeons filled with monsters, but the Gate would definitely not be behind any of them.

[dancrilis]

Isn't it more likely that they finish, see that all the doors are marked, and then start re-thinking in terms of bluff and double-bluff? Start trying to go down the Haley route?

That could take weeks in and of itself.

Imagine you are standing where Xykon is standing in the last panel of 1039, now imagine you are you are standing there again the following evening - do you think you would notice the difference?

You might, you might not - but you presumedly do not have a racial +8 to spot checks or a high level clerics wisdom, remember Spot if not something that you actively have to use if something noteworthy is persent there will be chance you note it.

The bottom corner of that area has moved from having 2 doors to having 6 doors marked from where Xykon is standing (excluding doors off panel).

Also assuming that they only do one/two doors a day they may well remember not climbing up to some of them.

Might not happen (anything could) but it is a risky move by the Monster.

[littlebum2002]

It's pretty clear that statistically MitD is sabotaging the search. However, I think it's possible he's actually speeding it up for another reason - that is, if I were trying to hide the Gate, sure I would create a ton of doors that lead to dangerous dungeons filled with monsters, but the Gate would definitely not be behind any of them.

You're not the first person to bring this up.

In fact, a LOT of people have brought it up.

In fact, SO MANY people have brought it up that I would venture to bet that the absolute first thing any adventuring party would do (except for an army of Paladins maybe) would be to check the surrounding environment for any hidden gates.

Which makes it a pretty bad con.

[skaddix]

Honestly, I don't think Xykon cares too much. How long it takes to find the Gate isn't really an issue for him. Redcloak is more on the clock then Xykon is. Especially when you consider Xykon is actually gaining XP. I am not surprised Xykon hasn't noticed. Redcloak not noticing is more shocking. But I suppose much like our favorite Mystic Thuerge underestimated Redcloak, Redcloak is doing the same.

[IntelectPaladin]

I see everyone here asking "why?". And this is troubling, to me.
He isn't that little mindless fellow we saw in the early strips, people.
He's changed for the better.
O-chul was a good influence on him,
and he's become intelligent enough to know the stakes.

I'm too tired to post the exact hows and whys, But I still have something to say:
I still fear a tragedy, Giant, but this is something I'm happy to see.

Thank you for reading, this, and I hope you have a better day!

[Porthos]

I understand your point. The question I'm asking is why he painted 4 doors instead of only 2 (the one they went through and the one containing the gate)

Better chance to cover his tracks? As long as the real Gate is marked off, it doesn't particularly matter if he marks one more or not. Just as long as he doesn't cover so many doors that he gets caught immediately.

Now this theory does depend on the MitD actually knowing which one is the Gate, but as long as he doesn't keep doing this, it shouldn't be immedately apparent what he did.

If he does this more than once, then, yeah, my theory is pretty much blown out of the water. But I didn't see anyone else bring up the thought and I thought I would at least mention the possibility that the MitD intentionally marked off the area with the Gate.

[Windscion]

Unless the monsters behind the doors respawn fairly quickly, Monster-san's sabotage will NOT delay the search. They can just bypass previously-cleared areas regardless of the presence or absence of paint on the door. (Think about it: are they gonna call of the day's hunt because a door is empty? No, they'll go on to the next one. RC claims, presumably accurately, that his healing is the limiting factor on their progress.) But by the same token, there is no need to paint the doors unless the monsters respawn quickly enough to matter. Conclusion: the monsters respawn quickly enough to matter (i.e., on average before Team Evil can clear out the full set.)

However! Nothing says Monster-san has worked all of this out. He may be making incorrect assumptions or faulty jumps of logic. From what Oona said, the door-monsters respawn (1039, panel 8), but it sounded like a while before they did so.

[DaggerPen]

What I want to know is how the MitD got UP to that one door, actually. Climbing with an umbrella, paint can and paintbrush without attracting attention is no small feat.

[Cirin]

A potential issue here. He cant have been doing this for long, as there is no way both redcloak and bone boy are so stupid as to not notice there are three times as many X's as there should be, but even if he just now started doing it, nice work! On the one hand, it may make the bad guys miss the right entrance. On the bad side, without knowing which is correct, he may just be speeding up the search by accident. Also, short of our team showing up just as redcloak and crew enter what (of course) turns out to be the right entrance, how will THEY find the right one? Do they even care anymore? I honestly dont recall if they have a plan past "Stop lichy mcgee and his posse of merry murderers"

The OotS, strictly speaking, doesn't have to ever find the gate. . .they just have to make sure Team Evil never gets there.

If they popped in and had a huge throw-down and destroyed Xykon and Redcloak. . .they win. They can look at the wall of entrances, realize that gate is still defended, and work to re-seal the gates like the Order of the Scribble did so long ago.

. . .it would be horribly anti-climactic, but the OotS popping in right as they are coming out of a dungeon, with Redcloak and Xykon tapped on spells would be a way they could have something more akin to a fair fight where they might plausibly be able to win.

[Kish]

Unless the monsters behind the doors respawn fairly quickly, Monster-san's sabotage will NOT delay the search. They can just bypass previously-cleared areas regardless of the presence or absence of paint on the door. (Think about it: are they gonna call of the day's hunt because a door is empty? No, they'll go on to the next one. RC claims, presumably accurately, that his healing is the limiting factor on their progress.) But by the same token, there is no need to paint the doors unless the monsters respawn quickly enough to matter. Conclusion: the monsters respawn quickly enough to matter (i.e., on average before Team Evil can clear out the full set.)

However! Nothing says Monster-san has worked all of this out. He may be making incorrect assumptions or faulty jumps of logic. From what Oona said, the door-monsters respawn (1039, panel 8), but it sounded like a while before they did so.

Wait what?

What do you think the marks represent? Because your argument seems to be that the paint doesn't mean anything and so the paint doesn't mean anything. If a door is marked they'll think they've explored it thoroughly or it wouldn't be marked. That means if a door is marked they won't look behind it.

[Ruck]

Better chance to cover his tracks?

The more doors he paints, the more likely it is someone else will notice that too many doors have been painted.

[Keltest]

Wait what?

What do you think the marks represent? Because your argument seems to be that the paint doesn't mean anything and so the paint doesn't mean anything. If a door is marked they'll think they've explored it thoroughly or it wouldn't be marked. That means if a door is marked they won't look behind it.

The argument is that once all the doors are marked, they can just open one, see it doesn't have monsters in it, know it was falsely marked, and move onto the next one within 10 minutes.

[Faramir]

Not quite. He's adding an extra variable in the mix, the possibility that the door is marked but not searched. Assuming there are D doors, X of them explored and Y of them marked without exploring, there's now a Y/D possibility of Team Evil never reaching the right door until all of them are marked, and having to start the search over (and, assuming MitD keeps marking four doors at a time, Y increases faster than X). Sure, next night they'll choose from a pool of D-(X+Y) doors rather than D-X, but the chance of any individual door being the right door stands at 1/D, so Y has no effect there.

That's, of course, basing this entirely on pure chance. Since this is a story, and dramatic tension rules it, then yeah, there's very little chance of the MitD actually marking the right door. But then again, the drama rule states they'll find the door just at the right time, so it also doesn't matter how many Xs there are, they'll always take just as long as needed for the convenience of the plot.

EDIT: Actually, the math in here is over-simplified and has some glaring mistakes, and I don't currently have the time to calculate the actual odds, but the important thing is how adding a chance of completely skipping the right door does lower Team Evil's chances of overall success.

Exactly, there is now a chance that they will never find the correct door with the gate. That didn't exist before (other than the possibility of being killed in one of the dungeons).

[ellindsey]

If the monsters don't respawn, then there's not much point in painting the X's on the doors at all. They can simply look behind a door, see that it's empty, and move on to the next one. So we can assume that the monsters behind the doors do respawn, and do so quickly enough to make marking the doors that don't contain the Gate worthwhile.

I ran some simulations with a python script to see just how much the MiTD is sabotaging them.

Assuming 100 doors, and no sabotage by painting extra marks, it takes on average 50.5 door openings to find the right one.

If the MiTD marks exactly one extra door, the searches fail to find the right door 1% of the time. When they succeed, they find the right door after 50 door openings on average, but if we assume that in the case of a failure they have to go back and check every one again, then the times which the MiTD marks the right door increase the overall openings before success to 51 door openings.

If the MiTD marks one excess door for each door checked, then half the time they will fail to find the right door before running out of doors When they succeed, they will find the door after an average of 25.5 door openings, but in the 50% of the cases where they fail and then re-check every door they will have to try an average of 100.5 doors (50 for the first round, plus an average of 50.5 for re-checking every one again) before being correct. That works out to an average of 63 door openings before getting the correct one.

Now this assumes a few things - that the monsters respawn 100% of the time, and that after running out of doors that they will then try all of them again with some different method of not trying the same door twice. It also assume that the MiTD is marking doors randomly and is no more likely to pick the right or wrong door than random chance. But given these assumptions, there is no condition where marking extra doors will cause them to find the right door faster on average.

[dtilque]

I'm sure you guys probably already noticed this, but the 'What is the MitD' crowd might want to note that he didn't leave any tracks in the snow... levitation ability?

He also X-ed a door that was not on the ground level. Even if he'd left prints, he must have some kind of levitation/fly ability to do that.

[Goblin_Priest]

Oh no, MitD, why!? How will the Dark One slay Hel before Durkula dominates the dwarven elders to save the world, now!?!

[Goblin_Priest]

Exactly, there is now a chance that they will never find the correct door with the gate. That didn't exist before (other than the possibility of being killed in one of the dungeons).

Actually... if they end up with all doors marked, they can just begin anew with a new system.

[littlebum2002]

Unless the monsters behind the doors respawn fairly quickly, Monster-san's sabotage will NOT delay the search. They can just bypass previously-cleared areas regardless of the presence or absence of paint on the door. (Think about it: are they gonna call of the day's hunt because a door is empty? No, they'll go on to the next one. RC claims, presumably accurately, that his healing is the limiting factor on their progress.) But by the same token, there is no need to paint the doors unless the monsters respawn quickly enough to matter. Conclusion: the monsters respawn quickly enough to matter (i.e., on average before Team Evil can clear out the full set.)

However! Nothing says Monster-san has worked all of this out. He may be making incorrect assumptions or faulty jumps of logic. From what Oona said, the door-monsters respawn (1039, panel 8), but it sounded like a while before they did so.

If the monsters take that long to respawn, then yes, the paint is useless and painting extra doors doesn't do anything.

But then again, like I said, the paint is useless, and every evening they can just keep picking doors until they find one that isn't empty.

The argument is that once all the doors are marked, they can just open one, see it doesn't have monsters in it, know it was falsely marked, and move onto the next one within 10 minutes.

Why can't they do that every night and just not use paint?

[StupendousMan]

Note that when MiTD enters the dungeon, he is carrying a can of paint without a lid. There is some paint in the can.

When he leaves the dungeon some time (hours?) later, he is carrying what appears to be the same can, still without a lid. The can still contains plenty of paint.

During the encounters which took place inside -- encounters serious enough to damage all the (other) party members significantly -- he was able to maintain the can in its upright position and prevent at last most of the paint from spilling out.

I conclude that he has either so many hit points, or such a high armor class, that he doesn't need to dodge any attack ... or that nothing is able to attack him.

Either way, he is at least in some ways a more formidable foe than Xykon.

[hroþila]

Why can't they do that every night and just not use paint?

Because that'd be a tedious waste of time. Doesn't mean it would be an insurmountable obstacle.

That said, I do think the doors respawn/resupply themselves one way or another in less time than it'd take to go through them all.

[phantomreader42]

Actually, I don't know if MitD did it on purpose or just forgot the right door. I mean, "oh snap, I don't know which one it is, guess I'm gonna paint three or four to get it right". But if it's on purpose, the million dollar question is: WHY?

Also, "bitter fruit of eternal despair". Greyview is a philosopher indeed.

My first thought was that the doors were rearranging themselves so the ones that were previously painted were in different places, because that kind of thing would hide the gate better and a limitless supply of respawning monsters would fit with the idea of honoring Kraggor's wish to guard the gates with physical might.

[Knight.Anon]

I don't think that the phony door marking will change anything. Its more complicated than "find the right door." The gate could have a gate, and that gate could move around. So they always have a 1 in X chance. They're also using a lot of spells just to stay alive, so they can't do much divination. Logically the gate must be hidden as well because none of the wandering monsters has found it in almost a hundred years.

Who says that Serini played fair and the gate is accessible at all. It could be buried under hundreds of tons of stone, and none of the doors leads to it ever. There's no good reason to access the gate, so why not seal it away forever? This complex was designed by a rogue in honor of a warrior, but the rest of her party could have helped as well, so there could be illusions, magic, druid tricks, going on. If Lord Shojo gave Serini some ideas, the whole thing is some sort of recursive fraud, that you loose by trying to solve it.

Team Evil has to transform the situation into something more favorable to their terms.

As for MiTD, I think hes an amnesiac epic shape-changer. Maybe cursed? So he's hidden from others in multiple ways and even hidden from himself, his adopted form is probably stupid, and kept him from figuring things out for who know how long. As he gains XP he's becoming more true to himself.

[Tricky]

Think so?

Here's the way I see it.

Let X be the total number of doors. Let Y be the number of doors the MITD paints.

The probability that he will paint over the correct door is therefore (Y/X), where Y << X , correct?

The probability that he has painted over only false doors, by contrast, is (1-Y)/X. If Y << x, then 1-Y/ is much, much closer to X. In other words, a much higher probability.

So the probability that the MITD will mark the correct door as false is very low -- the probability that he is eliminating additional false doors is very high. Thus, absent some truly remarkable fortune, he is inadvertently helping team evil.

This assumes that MITD does not actually know where the correct door is already through his preternatural senses -- in which case the plan is perfectly sound.

Question for the math types: I suspect there's a curve of diminishing returns as X decreases over time where marking off additional doors makes it more likely we will eliminate the correct door -- that being directly tied to the probability we will find the correct door in the first place. But I should think this wouldn't make sense until you'd already covered most of the search space.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Why is Y << X? Looks like Y = (0.75)X or higher.

Regardless of what fraction Y/X is involved, there is literally no way that MitD is helping Team Evil find the door sooner, except by random chance.

On any given day, if Team Evil has already searched k doors, the odds that they'll find the right door is 1/(Y-k). That's true whether MitD is writing any X's or not. And it's independent of the value of X. The effect of drawing extra X's is to deceive Team Evil into thinking they've searched all the doors.

If they run out of doors (which will happen with probability Y/X), then they'll (probably) have no information about anything, and they'll have to start again from scratch. If they then use a better search algorithm, the change will mean that MitD has forced them to waste X-Y days.

[Tricky]

Actually... if they end up with all doors marked, they can just begin anew with a new system.

But they would have wasted all the time spent on the first search.

While there is a possibility that the dungeons behind the doors will not have repopulated, there is still the waste of time of searching possibly large dungeons just to verify the fact that they've already visited that door. There would be a benefit since Red Cloak wouldn't have to waste any spells, and they could do more than one door per day. But it would still slow them down.

I think the biggest benefit would be the confusion added to the process. And fostering distrust.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

I really do love seeing the MitD again. His actions sure do throw a bit of a wrench in the plans of Team Evil.

I like the little side note that Xykon may have gained XP. Really gives a scale of what's in those dungeons.

[Tricky]

Interestingly, if running out of doors means they start over, it's best to paint exactly half. Painting 1 door of 100 gives a 1% chance of wasting 99 days, and all but one is a 99% chance of wasting 1 day. A 50% chance of wasting 50 days is over 25 times better.

Case 1: expected number of wasted days = .01 x 99 = ~1
Case 2: expected number of wasted days = .99 x 1 = ~1
Case 3: expected number of wasted days = .5 x 50 = 25

Yep, you've essentially maximized the function x*(1-x)*100 over the interval (0,1).

Can do this with Calculus but it's such a simple function you don't even need Calculus to find its max.

[Goblin_Priest]

But they would have wasted all the time spent on the first search.

While there is a possibility that the dungeons behind the doors will not have repopulated, there is still the waste of time of searching possibly large dungeons just to verify the fact that they've already visited that door. There would be a benefit since Red Cloak wouldn't have to waste any spells, and they could do more than one door per day. But it would still slow them down.

I think the biggest benefit would be the confusion added to the process. And fostering distrust.

Yes of course. But my point was that his actions do not add the possibility of them never finding the right one, because it only screws this round of searches at most. When they complete the first round, someone will notice that they have not truly went through them all, and thus suspect foul play. Then Redcloak will finally insist on a more logical approach (do them all in order, for example). Whether or not the monsters respawn quickly changes nothing to the end result, it only changes how much time is required to reach it.

[Kish]

Every word in that post is an assumption. Considering the number of people on this forum who suggested that Xykon and Redcloak should be looking somewhere other than the doors before they ever went into a door on-panel, I don't know why you're so certain that, if they get to the end and haven't found the Gate, they will immediately start right over searching the doors, or why or how you would think they'd notice they haven't been through them all and suspect foul play (though in light of your name, avatar, and expressed sympathies, I admit I rather suspect wishful thinking).