The Stick's worst blunder: vote now!

[Keltest]

My vote goes with Roy trying so hard to get Xykon to remember Fyron that the teenage goblin was able to warn Xykon of the disjunction on Roy's blade. Im not clear on the disjunction rules so Im not sure if that would keep xykon from coming back but it certainly wouldnt have given redcloak time to get away

The short version is, it would only have worked because Rich hadn't decided on a set level for Xykon yet. It requires the caster's level to be greater than or equal to the hit dice of the undead struck by the weapon, and still grants them a will save. Xykon, being epic leveled and a lich, would quite possibly not even have taken damage from the actual sword hitting him, depending on its stats and Roy's damage roll.

[Kish]

Talking is a free action and Roy was battling through Xykon's minions the whole time he talked.

[ChillerInstinct]

I'd say Roy made the biggest blunder when he phrased his second question to the oracle. Soon's gate should never have been lost.

Yeah, probably this. A lot of the factors that ultimately resulted to the fall of Soon's Gate would have been MUCH better if the Order knew Xykon was coming. Heck, the plot would have largely been wrapped up by the end of War and XPs, with Xykon dead (more than likely Redcloak as well), only two Gates destroyed, etc.

Familicide is the clear runner-up, though. If absolutely nothing else, the Draketooths would have still been alive, which would have made his Gate much more likely to have survived BRitF, possibly avoiding the need for the Moot, so on, so forth. Plus, you know, mass murder.

[TRH]

It seems hard to top standing by and doing nothing while Miko executed their patron, upon whom Azure City's political stability depended. And it's not like they didn't have a fair amount of warning or anything to distract them, either. Roy just froze.

[The Pilgrim]

Stick's worst blunders...

Roy: Jumping on the Zombie Dragon in order to fight Xykon.
Haley: After murdering Crystal, leaving the Thieves' Guild instead of going straight to murder Bozzok too.
Elan: After the split at the conclussion of the Battle for Azure City, failing to assume responsibility as leader of his half of the team.
V: Killing the Young Black Dragon. It accomplished nothing and only brought huge amounts of trouble later.
Durkon: Trusting Malack.
Belkar: Openly acting like a deranged murdered until Roy and the rest of the party ceased to worry about his future survival.

[Kurald Galain]

Roy: Jumping on the Zombie Dragon in order to fight Xykon.

Arguable, but based on their last encounter Roy had reason to believe he could beat him; and note that Roy's action saved Vaarsuvius from certain death.

Haley: After murdering Crystal, leaving the Thieves' Guild instead of going straight to murder Bozzok too.

She is good-aligned, you know. Not murdering someone in cold blood can hardly be called a blunder.

Elan: After the split at the conclussion of the Battle for Azure City, failing to assume responsibility as leader of his half of the team.

Now this one is just silly. Elan is entirely incapable of being a leader, and everybody knows it.

V: Killing the Young Black Dragon. It accomplished nothing and only brought huge amounts of trouble later.

Meh, killing monsters is what adventurers do.

Durkon: Trusting Malack.

Yes.

Belkar: Openly acting like a deranged murdered until Roy and the rest of the party ceased to worry about his future survival.

How is that a blunder? Belkar hasn't faced any consequences from Roy and the party.

[Snails]

As for Roy's question to the Oracle, to paraphrase Jessica Rabbit, I would say Roy is not that stupid, he is just drawn that way.

Any author who includes accurate prophecy in his story has the tricky problem of finding excuses for important characters not using the power of prophecy effectively. Roy is thick in the particular way that he has trouble accepting advice from others, and the Giant went with that in a way that made for a good joke.

[Peelee]

As for Roy's question to the Oracle, to paraphrase Jessica Rabbit, I would say Roy is not that stupid, he is just drawn that way.

Any author who includes accurate prophecy in his story has the tricky problem of finding excuses for important characters not using the power of prophecy effectively. Roy is thick in the particular way that he has trouble accepting advice from others, and the Giant went with that in a way that made for a good joke.

Cue the people ranting about how the Oracle doesn't actually have any prophetic powers, or has inaccurate prophecies.

[Jasdoif]

Cue the people ranting about how the Oracle doesn't actually have any prophetic powers, or has inaccurate prophecies.

What if the Oracle has inaccurate prophecies, and uses his prophetic powers to identify and withhold them in advance?

[Peelee]

What if the Oracle has inaccurate prophecies, and uses his prophetic powers to identify and withhold them in advance?

Well, clearly, his inaccurate prophetic powers would not always identify the inaccurate prophecies, so he would inaccurately withhold some prophecies, which may or may not be inaccurate.

If that were the case, I'd agree the the Oracle isn't a straight shooter.

[Snails]

Well, clearly, his inaccurate prophetic powers would not always identify the inaccurate prophecies, so he would inaccurately withhold some prophecies, which may or may not be inaccurate.

If that were the case, I'd agree the the Oracle isn't a straight shooter.

I think the Oracle gives the Giant kickbacks to cover up the failed prophecies.

[Lacuna Caster]

Edited to add: Tarquin's stability decreases the quality (and duration) of life for his people; Ian Starshine would, if able, bring more Chaos into the Western continent (and thus improve everyone's fate). I know you've seen this before, so my question has now become...

I would be cautious about quoting the author verbatim during the middle of heated arguments, particularly on topics to which he frankly admits to giving no thought whatsoever.

[Forum Explorer]

Actually, you don't remove a tyrant without having a power structure to replace them.

If you remove a Saddam Husein, and don't have anything to replace the power vacuum, you might get an ISIS.

---

If you think that sending people into war just to make conflict is unique to this, consider the history of the USA, just the last century. I'll open with Vietnam. Starting a war to raise the popularity of one president to increase re-election chances, not to mention using lies as a negotiation tactic, basically telling one of the two sides to trust us and then backstabbing them to make the war. I'm approximating / summarizing, probably to the point of some error, but our history is not a kind and decent nation, but a nation of changing tyrants with occasional good guys in-between.

---

Watch yourself, I can't actually discuss what you've said because it will violate the forum rules.


Ideally, yeah, you can replace a tyrant with an actually reasonable ruler. And fiction wise, it's pretty common for adventurers to become the new royalty after they overthrow the evil ruler. Either by marrying the princess, or just taking over. Tarquin doesn't even have that excuse though, there is an existing ruler. They are just playing puppet master, and the 'puppets' would still be in power with them gone. Okay, the Empress of Blood would be a problem because she is very much an evil red dragon, but the other two rulers might be alright. We know that in the past, otherwise reasonable rulers ended up with very evil regimes as a result of the Vector Legion's guidance.

[Spellbreaker26]

Ideally, yeah, you can replace a tyrant with an actually reasonable ruler. And fiction wise, it's pretty common for adventurers to become the new royalty after they overthrow the evil ruler. Either by marrying the princess, or just taking over. Tarquin doesn't even have that excuse though, there is an existing ruler. They are just playing puppet master, and the 'puppets' would still be in power with them gone. Okay, the Empress of Blood would be a problem because she is very much an evil red dragon, but the other two rulers might be alright. We know that in the past, otherwise reasonable rulers ended up with very evil regimes as a result of the Vector Legion's guidance.

Succession is one of the most difficult problems any society has to face - to take a slightly less hot-button example, the Roman empire would undergo a brutal civil war every time a dynasty fell and sometimes even when there were specific safeguards in place to stop a civil war (see Diocletian). We also have reason to believe that succession in the Western continent in a similar fashion - the constant rise and fall of nations mentioned by the mapmaker. This is hardly going to be a Phoenix on the Sword situation.

The people trying to take the Vectors down are totally unsuited to cope with the aftermath - I have huge qualms with Ian's competence (or lack thereof) in general, but even if he's as good as he says he is his personal philosophy leads him to be totally unsuited for power. The general lady, maybe, but we don't have a clear measure on how competent she is. Someone's got to try and take over from the Vectors and prove Tarquin wrong that Lawful has to be Evil.

[Murk]

The people trying to take the Vectors down are totally unsuited to cope with the aftermath - I have huge qualms with Ian's competence (or lack thereof) in general, but even if he's as good as he says he is his personal philosophy leads him to be totally unsuited for power. The general lady, maybe, but we don't have a clear measure on how competent she is. Someone's got to try and take over from the Vectors and prove Tarquin wrong that Lawful has to be Evil.

We really do not know enough about their plan to judge. Even "trying to take the Vectors down" is an unknown. They have a secret plan to solve the "problem", and that's about all we know.
Maybe they plan on brewing a potion of niceness to turn Tarquin into a benevolent ruler? Maybe they plan to be advisers to the (nicer) already existing rulers? Maybe there are some hugely popular past rulers that they plan on reinstating? Maybe they plan on a public referendum to build a democratic society?
I don't know. We don't know much about the state of the nations before the Vector Legion, we don't know much about various rebel groups that might already exist, we barely know anything about the current civilian sentiment, and then there's also magic.

So who knows if their plan is a good one? Who knows if they've blundered? Maybe the plan is a majestic, good and solid way of reforming the state without creating all the troubles you foresee?

[Lacuna Caster]

The people trying to take the Vectors down are totally unsuited to cope with the aftermath - I have huge qualms with Ian's competence (or lack thereof) in general, but even if he's as good as he says he is his personal philosophy leads him to be totally unsuited for power. The general lady, maybe, but we don't have a clear measure on how competent she is. Someone's got to try and take over from the Vectors and prove Tarquin wrong that Lawful has to be Evil.

I'm not sure if we have a great deal of evidence regarding Ian's competence, and not a whole pile regarding his political philosophy (aside from being unable to escape prison, unwilling to risk going back, and possibly being daft enough to argue civil rights with Tarquin to his face.) Or have I missed something?

If we're discussing real-world examples, I do think there are some plausible historical analogues, but the OOTSverse is a strange place where medieval institutions and renaissance technology rub shoulders with steampunk zeppelins and post-modern sexual politics, in ways that may or may not be strictly coherent without appealing to magic, ad-hoc contrivance and/or the 4th wall. I don't think the author is particularly aiming for a scholarly magic-realist critique of either ancient or contemporary geopolitics- OOTS is mainly a soap opera focused on personal bonds and grudges while wrestling feverishly with D&D's mechanical assumptions. So historical comparisons may have limited utility, and I suspect the author is deeply uninterested in exploring the topic beyond, well, say-so pronouncements. It's undecidable.

[Ruck]

The Empire of Blood is a brutal, oppressive regime whose justice system is corrupt and hands out effective death sentences for the most minor of offenses, uses legal chicanery and bureaucracy to destroy lives, and whose leaders regularly torture and kill people for minor or even perceived offenses.

I think anarchy would be closer to Good than the Empire of Blood.

[Lacuna Caster]

The point I was making was that people tend to forget (or have never learnt) what an absolute meatgrinder the ancient world was, so if this were reality I could say that Tarquin's policies do not appear to be outstandingly cruel by the general standards of, say, 500 BCE (along with various later periods.) Whether that's a good analogue for the OOTSverse in general or the Western Continent in particular is much harder to determine.

None of which exactly makes Tarquin non-evil, but it's just conceivable you might need Cyrus the Great to do a less terrible job.

[DeliaP]

Chipping in my thoughts: a blunder, for me, needs to be something that seems like a good idea at the time, but with a little better foresight could be seen to be a bad idea, and in fact turns out to be a bad idea and could have been done differently. So something that is straight up wrong (e.g. familicide) is not really a blunder - it's far far worse than that. And something that seems a good idea but has bad consequences that couldn't possibly have been foreseen from the information available (e.g. agreeing to take Veldrina to the Godsmoot, thereby allowing the HPoH to also show up) is not exactly a blunder either. And also things that it's hard to see how they could have even been avoided don't count (e.g. getting on Miko's bad side to such an extent that she lost all contact with reality)

So here's my list of biggest blunders, in no particular order of importance:

- Elan activating the self-destruct rune in Dorukan's gate. OK, the party didn't know the full consequences, but everybody else could see it was a bad idea, and with a little more time to hang around, some party members like V could conceivably have started asking just what is that big glowy gate thing anyway, and why would anyone trap it with a self-destruct rune?

- Roy out-thinking himself with the Oracle's question.

- Belkar getting himself carried away on the hell hound. Sure it was chasing Mr Scruffy, but Mr Scruffy was actually capable of taking care of himself, and it split the party which he should have known not to do.

- Durkon going after Belkar and Roy letting him. Yeah, it might seem like not leaving a colleague separated, but it split the party even further. They should have waited until either Belkar returned or Haley finished the door, and they could all have gone after Belkar.

While they couldn't have known just how bad the results of splitting the party were going to be, what happened immediately to Belkar, and then Durkon, is exactly the kind of reason why you don't split the party.

Incidentally, each one of those contributed, in different measures, to a gate being destroyed. If Roy had known that Azure City was next on the list of gates, and got that information back to Shojo asap, then it's conceivable the City would already have been on a high-alert war-footing by the time Miko arrived. A lot of things might have played out differently under those circumstances. If Durkon hadn't been vamped, then the Order's original plan for defending the gate against Xykon could still have been viable, once they had reunited with V.

Although in none of those cases could it have been realised in advance just how bad the consequences would be, they were clearly decisions that seemed OK at the time, but with a little more thought were clearly bad decisions, and led to the kind of bad results that could be expected from such decisions (and some then further bad results that were way beyond what might be expected!).

Other reasonably big blunders, for me, are also:

- Roy jumping on the zombie dragon. Seriously, it wasn't a very clever tactical move.

- Not searching, all together, for Vaarsuvius after V ran off into the pyramid. They had quite a while, without any immediate danger, before the Linear Guild turned up. While it's not clear they would have found Vaarsuvius, they should at least have tried looking once Belkar pointed out V was still missing.

- Roy, Haley and Elan accepting Durkula into the party.

Again, all three led to the kind of bad consequence that could be foreseen (Roy falling to his death; the party not having its most powerful member when facing attack; vampire manipulates party to fulfil sinister plot) if not the full extent of how bad that consequence would get.

If I had to pick the biggest? It would be Durkon getting sent after Belkar. Don't split the party when you're on unfamiliar ground.

[DeliaP]

Here's one, though it's not really the Order's blunder....

Not turning around after panel 3 and telling Kubota that he's quite right and that clearly the City needs him to personally lead the diplomatic mission to negotiate with Xykon.

Even if Kubota makes it back alive, he can hardly then blame Hinjo for the failure of the mission.

[littlebum2002]

Here's one, though it's not really the Order's blunder....

Not turning around after panel 3 and telling Kubota that he's quite right and that clearly the City needs him to personally lead the diplomatic mission to negotiate with Xykon.

Even if Kubota makes it back alive, he can hardly then blame Hinjo for the failure of the mission.

Good idea.

Let him go try his luck, in exchange for convincing his and all the other nobles' bodyguards to fight for the city should he fail. If he succeeds, he gets to claim 100% of the success of saving the city.

[Kurald Galain]

[isURL="http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0414.html"]Not turning around after panel 3 and telling Kubota that he's quite right and that clearly the City needs him to personally lead the diplomatic mission to negotiate with Xykon.[/URL]

Kubota is savvy enough to not fall for that one so easily. He'd either send an underling (e.g. Therkla) or would arrange for Hinjo to do it, in the hopes of getting him killed. Roy is entirely out of his element when it comes to political manipulation.

[Snails]

The point I was making was that people tend to forget (or have never learnt) what an absolute meatgrinder the ancient world was, so if this were reality I could say that Tarquin's policies do not appear to be outstandingly cruel by the general standards of, say, 500 BCE (along with various later periods.) Whether that's a good analogue for the OOTSverse in general or the Western Continent in particular is much harder to determine.

None of which exactly makes Tarquin non-evil, but it's just conceivable you might need Cyrus the Great to do a less terrible job.

One of the great achievements of modern civilization is the professional soldier, where a commander could reasonably expect an army to maintain effectiveness in a difficult campaign without waving the carrot of rape and plunder after a future victory.

Note that the feudal "nobility" were often the worst of the lot. As they were far away from home due to a legal obligation and paying a large portion of their daily expenses out of their own pocket, the only hope for someone less than well connected to get out of the red was captures of other nobles or plunder.

As for plunder, it is often more convenient to slaughter the locals, rather than endure their whining about the taking of their last bag of grain or their daughter. Nor did it win you points if a great flood of starving refugees annoyed your nearby friends with thieves and beggars.

The OotSverse is a historic mishmash. I see no reason to believe that Tarquin's cruelty is necessary. He appears to have many of the efficiencies of the early 20th century, including a disciplined professional army.

Massacres as punishment for genuine threats to stability were common enough. But Tarquin's gov't gives death sentences for first offenses like jaywalking. Even the Mongols could not make heads or tails out of that.

[137beth]

Kubota is savvy enough to not fall for that one so easily. He'd either send an underling (e.g. Therkla) or would arrange for Hinjo to do it, in the hopes of getting him killed. Roy is entirely out of his element when it comes to political manipulation.

I'm pretty sure Kubota had no interest in stopping the city from being taken--he was just trying to convince other nobles to turn against Hinjo.

[Goblin_Priest]

Still relying on mundane means of transportation at such high levels. ;)

[Lacuna Caster]

The OotSverse is a historic mishmash. I see no reason to believe that Tarquin's cruelty is necessary. He appears to have many of the efficiencies of the early 20th century, including a disciplined professional army.

That's true. I'm not really 100% familiar with this stretch of the strip, so it's possible I'm missing some of the key incidents, and it's not like we have hard statistics on how violent the continent was beforehand. It's conceivable than Tarquin is genuinely executing more criminals than would have died in retaliatory massacres among warring states (even before Malack gets started, which is pretty open-and-shut.)

Massacres as punishment for genuine threats to stability were common enough. But Tarquin's gov't gives death sentences for first offenses like jaywalking. Even the Mongols could not make heads or tails out of that.

I dunno. I've read enough of the Code of Hammurabi to consider this a mild exaggeration.

[Spellbreaker26]

Massacres as punishment for genuine threats to stability were common enough. But Tarquin's gov't gives death sentences for first offenses like jaywalking. Even the Mongols could not make heads or tails out of that.

The Mongols don't need you to be guilty to kill you. Ghengis Khan once seriously considered killing everybody in Southern China so that he could make it pastureland and was convinced otherwise because it would decrease his tax revenue.

The difference between them and the Empire is Blood is that it's almost impossible not to be guilty in the empire but for the Mongols it didn't matter.

Ask a group of historians whether the Mongols were a net-positive or -negative and you'll get a mess of answers, some saying one thing, some another.

[Jay R]

Yeah, the Order has made a lot of blunders that have led to the comic lasting longer, and therefore being more successful and more profitable for Rich.

What were they thinking?

[Kurald Galain]

Yeah, the Order has made a lot of blunders that have led to the comic lasting longer, and therefore being more successful and more profitable for Rich.

What were they thinking?

Haley obviously gets a big cut (just as she did for the kick-belkar-starter). The rest of the order, possibly not :)

[martianmister]

Belkar must too. Which explains so much about his actions.