‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 466

Colors by Audrey. Everything else is by me.

Bye bye.

83 Comments

I love Kats face in panel 3.
She needs to get used to actually speaking those one-liners, pleasing the fans, instead of just whispering them.

So many people will end up underestimating Kat because she is Erbana, not realising that she is as much a power player as the Bandit.

I think its probably good she whispered, just because she’s literally interrupting the Mani’s sentence, so such a long thing really wouldn’t sound as great as it would if said after a moment of silence.

dude gave her an opening by being a major distraction and disrupting her influence ability. and we all know how effective kat can be with a big opening.

Bandit: “Erbana hasn’t been played right for years.”

I think the gamers that played back in the day before Erbana became near impossible are going to cringe at memories of what happened to the newbie Mortos and Manis that thought the experienced Erbanas that were by themselves were easy targets.

Makes sense though that Kat is good with the playstyle. Her preferred alignment was Demoli, or destructive spell caster. While Erbanas may be healers, it seems that similar to the Demoli’s they can make their attacks count. Kat is good at setting herself up for making those hits count. Add in that her father played Mani, and you can see where she has the background to immediately make use of the distraction. Kat is not the healer of the group, she is the red mage with a deep bag of (nonlethal) tricks.

There is a very old bit of wisdom when it comes to MPOG games that perfectly applies here. Geek the mage first.

I don’t see Demoli and Erbana being that similar. Let me explain: As a veteran PG player I always see roles in 4 boxes, since most RPGs and indeed most games have this roles under different names, and indeed even the ones that don’t are just skipping one of the boxes and keeping 3 (normally control or support are the ones getting the cut).

-Tank: That’s the guy that eats the blows. Think your warrior or Paly in a bigass armor. Slow, lumbering, meatshield.
-Hitter: (Or Heavy Hitter) basically the rogue/ranger, attacks fast and hard, capable of dealing massive ammounts of damage to a single enemy, but in huge problems against multiple enemies or enemies that can defend themselves well enought.
-Control: (Wich comes from “crowd control”) either has skills that can destroy multiple small enemies at once, such as fireballs, or has skills that can put bad effects on enemies, such as ice spells. So basically your everyday mage.
-Support: This encompases both healers and other skills wich help making other players better, such as buffs. The cleric is the stereotypical one.

So, in “the game” we have 6 roles. That’s weird at first, until you realize one thing: T-H, T-C, T-S, H-C, H-S, C-S. A lot of games use 6 boxes, having 6 classes that each have the parameters of 2 of the normal roles, and is something inbetween, wich allows for far more flexibility. So with this parameter:

-Erbana so far seems to be a mix of control and healer, so C-S.

-Mani is already showing a lot of signs of being a more icemage style control class, and seeing as how it has such a powerful defense (1-it can control you if you’re too close, 2-if it predicts your attack it’s an instafail) I’m willing to bet its T-C

-Demoli is a ranged attacker, that seems to have area attacks, so it’s C,but seeing how Bandit threatened Jane successfully (when a control doesn’t have single-enemy damage) I’d say it’s going full firemage combo, that is H-C.

-Morto seems to have good defense and attack, so it’s your archetypical fighter, that is T-H

-We know very little about Cardista and Kesty, the two last ones, so it might be better to check what we have left: T-S and H-S, so defense+support and attack+support. It really seems like a dousy, you’d expect kesty to not be support at first seeing as how Saisuke goes alone, HOWEVER, there’s 3 things to consider there:
a) Saisuke has a dragon pet that could be a helping AI, so he could be supporting such a pet.
b) It does make sense that, since there’s 3 good alignments and 3 roles with support, they would coincide.
c) Actually Paladins are T-S, and they are known for going very well solo, as the “Support” part is used more for self-buff than anything else.
As such, kesty could be a “paladinesque” role, wich saisuke might implement with an pet AI, making kesty the T-S.

-And that would leave Cardista with H-S, hitter support. About the support part is actually kind of obvious, cards have been shown to act as boosts, so of course it’s support. About the hitter part: Dude said something about extreme violence but I think he was hinting at his special needing violence to activate. So that wouldn’t be of much help, still that’s talking about the special in the tournament, not a cardista special. It could be that cards could act as the “wands” from d&d too, or that cardista comes with some kind of attacks. I don’t know really.

I could also simply be overthinking it. Cardista definetelly seems the odd one out, but the rest do fit in nicelly with a conventional six-derivation sistem of the four rpg archetypes. And we know nothing about cardista right now, so it could perfectly be like this.

Btw: My whole point was that erbana and demoli, being one C-S and the other H-C, have one similar part. So yeah, it kinda could be, but not much, it likelly comes from kat just being that good at the game. After all she’s supposed to know it head to toe.

“I could also simply be overthinking it. ”

Yes, I think you are. Aneeka doesn’t seem to be basing the Game on any conventional RPGs, most of which are derivations of one another. While there are certain features common to many games that you can draw comparisons to, I think your “standard four types” system is fairly limited and doesn’t map to the Game well at all. Even in tabletop RPGs, things have evolved quite a bit since the days of Fighter/Thief/Mage/Cleric, never mind that the Game is merging character class and alignment much more thoroughly than most games do.

“I think your “standard four types” system is fairly limited and doesn’t map to the Game well at all. Even in tabletop RPGs, things have evolved quite a bit since the days of Fighter/Thief/Mage/Cleric.”

Actually I urge you to point tabletop games that have roles that do not fall within the 4 system.

I know the game is more complex than this. HOWEVER:

A) Table top games have definetelly NOT advanced past this system. If there are classes you can bet that they all follow either 1 of the roles or a standard deviation where a class follows 2 of this roles. The ONLY two deviations from this are the jack-of-all-trades (fulfills all roles partially) and the so-called “skillmonkey”, that being a character that specializes in something different than combat. But even then this is overlooked because it doesn’t affect the combat, and EVERY skillmonkey class is actually 1 of the four roles + skillmonkey (the most common examples being the support-skillmonkey artificer and the hitter-skillmonkey rogue) so ultimatelly it can easily be overlooked. If an RPG is going to have combat, and it’s not a non-class based rpg (such as AFMBE) it WILL have this system in some version or another. This is because:

B) It’s “simple” for the same reason that Newton’s laws are. If you try to emulate combat those are the 4 actions you can make.
-defense
-damage
-support
-non-damage attacks
It’s litterally all there is. That’s why it’s so unavoidable, you simply can’t get away from it if you have combat. Even in no-class rpgs if there is combat archetypes WILL appear that can be applied to this system. So please, don’t condemn as too simple a commonly used, widespread explanation that’s still useful.

C) Actually, Aneeka said herself that the alignment mostly controled specials. Meaning that it’s basically the same thing as D&D’s classes, only that they actually are affected by your actions. This also means that they basically mostly affect how the characters act in COMBAT. Classes in combat. Guess what system will be unavoidable. Furthermore, I think you’re actually not taking into account one thing: One of the major pitfalls when designing things is not taking into account the knowledge accumulated from other people. Tropes are tropes because they work. Simple systems like this arise because they can easily explain really complex systems by combinations. I already mentioned the 6-slots standard deviation, wich is the most commonly used version of this system. I’d say that if you wanted to create something complex that still holds up it’s better to start by having a simple base that has been proven with time and then upgrading it and changing it slightly when needed. That tends to work, and Aneeka has shown to be intelligent enought to take into account RPG systems before. The game is complex, true, but so far it’s been so with a reason, as it should be.

What could happend is that the alignment system could be imbalanced. And that can be fine, there’s game that have a deliberatelly imbalanced system. But even then it would end up being easier to explain it with the role system. Because it has explanatory power. For instance “realistic, modern” games take to overlook the tank role, for quite obvious reasons, opting for a system mostly based in hitter+support+jack-of-all-trades. This does up the tension a notch or twelve. Tho I gotta say I hate “realistic” rpgs, be it WW2 or modern ones. I dunno they just seem so boring to me.

Anyway: I hope I didn’t come across as angry or pushy in the comment. I just tried to explain a complex issue as best as I could. I would want however some discussion about this, of the civilized kind mind you, because I do see the system working more than fine for all but 2 of the game’s archetypes, and that doesn’t seem like a coincidence. And summarizing: simply saying “that’s too simple” doesn’t really get me as a good answer because:
a) it’s not. It’s a simple system at it’s core, but it gets complex results in terms of variations.
b) simple doesn’t mean wrong, and if it fits, wich it seems to do, that doesn’t change it.

If you define your categories broad enough, they will cover everything almost by default. That doesn’t make them that useful.

Look at league characters. ADCs clearly count as hitters — they are all about sustained single target damage. Assassins also count as hitters — they are focused on single target burst damage. However, ADCs and assassins fill completely different roles in a team comp. The adc’s job is to burn down tanks, while the assassin’s job is to kill enemy squishies. Completely different targets, completely different playstyle, same “role”.

For another example, look at Mass Effect 3 (specifically me3 multiplayer on harder difficulties). There are 1.5 characters that can eat a useful amount of damage, and neither are seen that often. In practice, tank isn’t a useful category. Support is similarly useless — there are very few allied buffs, and the ones that do exist don’t have a massive impact. Control vs hitter is also a pretty useless distinction. No one has a useful number of debilitating effects, and aoe vs single target isn’t actually an important distinction.

The biggest distinction people generally make is between mook killers and boss killers. This is very much not “control vs hitter” — some aoe focused characters are best against bosses (flamer characters), while some single target focused characters are far better against mooks (n7 shadow).

Your roles are definitely common in standard fantasy rpgs, but they aren’t useful everywhere.

i agree that most classes fit with in those main four but what i think storyteller meant was that both erbana and demoli wait for chances and use them well. they wait for openings in order to cause the most powerful effect.

That is what I meant. And more so that for all that Kat is trying to play as an Erbana, her style in doing so is still closer to Demoli. As Bandit shows, the style is all about doing the most damage in the least amount of time. While he showed his roots as a hero by tipping the island without killing NPCs, Kleya is showing her previous experience with precise, efficient and decisive movements.

Or to put it otherwise, she did the most damage she could to the team, (non lethally) in the shortest amount of time/movements necessary.

It just so happens that Erbana uses tools that are similar to Demoli’s.

storyteller,
you’re right on that at least, erbana is a punisher, not a “hide behind my shield until you leave” turtle

Well let’s analize your examples shall we? After that I’ll tell you why you’re wrong about the roles themselves, and specially your decring of AoE vs single-target damage.

LoL: Well this particular game actually had very well explained, separate roles in the past. Now it doesn’t, instead it has this: Assassin Fighter Mage Support Tank Marksman

And litterally nothing else. ADC doesn’t exist now. Don’t ask me why I actually preferred the old system, but they had to meddle with what was useful. Let’s still analyze it:

-So TANK is the most obvious. Let’s just get that one out of the way. It’s primary tank. It can be secondary something else, but it’s primary tank.

-Support is also primary support, can be secondary something else, but if it’s support it has to be at least partially support.

-Assassin and Marksman are actually quite obvious hitters, it’s just the long range hitter and the melee hitter, but nothing else.

-Mage is an obvious primary control. Nothing more nothing less. They just had to give it a name that didn’t sound like it because they were too pretentious to use an existing system.

-And finally fighter: that one is basically T-H, that’s really it. They could have simplified the system by using just 4 names and combinations of them really. And in the begining of the game, where terms like AC and ADC where used, that’s what they were doing. Don’t ask me why they changed it besides to give an impression of being more that they actually are.

Now let’s go towards Mass Effect:

That has basically 3 roles and 3 combinations of 2 of the roles. A good old classy 6 pack. Let’s see the roles:

-Engineer is primary tank. There’s litterally nothing more to it. It has skills that delve into other roles, specially support and control, much less hitter, but it’s primary tank. It’s your bog standard paladin actually.

-Biotic is litterally a sci-fi wizard, that is, primary control. Again “primary” means it’s not “solely” control, but it definetelly is primary control.

-And fighter is basically an H-T, mostly hitter, has parts of tank more than the other roles, basically H-T.

Besides that the 3 combos in ME are actually kind of weird.

-Sentinel actually leans to tank even more than engineer.

-The invisibility one (can’t remember the name) is actually much more of a primary hitter than fighter.

-And the red-blue combo really is what you would expect when control and hitter get mixed.

So in the end both are really easy to explain with your good old 4 system. Been used since always, will probably be used a lot in the future.

Furthermore, TF2 also has a pretty standard combination of roles in it’s 9-pack, with a leaning towards tank and away from support but quite the obvious 4-system combos actually.

Now about the distinction between hitter and control.

Hitter kills the big guys, as you said, boss killer. But even against little guys he can basically kill one a turn, so that’s ok, what we’re concerned with is that he’s the “carry” of the game, he does a lot of damage quickly.

Control is more defined by doing bad effects, such as freezing, than actuall AoE, it is definetelly the most AoE class, but that’s just because Areas are the easiest way to put bad effects on all enemies at the same time, that’s why fireballs ended up being asigned to control roles, because negative non-damage effects are too hard to separate from AoE, so it’s ok seeing as how no other role goes AoE really.

Now: you said, and I quote: “If you define your categories broad enough, they will cover everything almost by default. That doesn’t make them that useful.”

The problem with that is that:

a) This is not “Broad enought”, each category is a main way of affecting the battlefield, and they don’t overlap unless you start making 2-combos, wich is more than common. If you need to start with “primary X” and 2-combos, you know it’s not too broad, because if it were too broad you wouldn’t need to do so.

b) As show above, they ARE useful, mostly because, as stated above, there is no way of affecting the battlefield that won’t fit one of them, and there’s no way of taking an action that will affect multiple of them unless it’s an overly complicated action with multiple effects. It has served RPG, and not only fantasy ones mind you, for ages. And other games constantly copy it, see XCOM for instance. The ones that don’t still end up using some imbalanced form of the system anyway, they are a good standard.

Besides that: I don’t see you saying anything that would prove me WRONG. You’re all attacking the mere idea of the system, but none have tried to say why it wouldn’t apply to this game. So please, can we focus on something useful. Even if you were right it still would gladly appear in fantasy RPGs, wich is exactly what the game is, so you know, how about we focus on seeing if it’s correct.

I say that because actually being capable of pinning the alignments down by their inspirations would help us all a lot understand the comic more, I’m trying to help here but you keep diverting attention towards what doesn’t matter to this discussion, can you please focus. I’m known for derailing myself and you’ve managed to outderail me.

cricricri13 makes good points. I think you’re overfocusing on the details, retief. The whole point of models, which is what cricricri13 is doing, is to create a system of categorization that can best explain most accurately, and most broadly, observable phenomenon.

It’s like how in Newtonian physics we generalize that Force due to gravity is gravitational acceleration times mass. Then we learn that g is more accurately expressed as GM/r^2; it only being described as a constant it’s a close-enough approximation AND to make things simpler

And honestly, LoL still fits into this paradigm; your argument of separating out Assassins and ADCs as specialized Hitters do not exempt them from Hitter exclusion. It just means that they’re specialized hitters with preferred optimizations. Same with Mass Effect 3.

The model is great precisely because it is broad enough to be a useful paradigm and lens for analyzing these games. Maybe you deemphasize certain aspects of the model, but that doesn’t make it any less valid.

Going back to the physics example:
For force due to gravity, one could use GMm/r^2 for a broader application (ie cricricri13’s model). However, for an object falling 20 feet around sea level (where distance of object from center of earth is not significantly different from radius of the earth), using calculus to take an integration of that equation is, while doable, not preferable, and not really a good match. Instead, we can, for these smaller range of situations (ie for LoL or ME3), we can just deemphasize aspects of the model and simplify gravitational acceleration as a constant of 9.81m/s^2.

Because what you pointed out wasn’t actually a true counterexample, but rather describing specialized Hitters, it was like trying to use a specific subset (F=gm) to argue against a broader subset (F=GMm/r^2).

I’m just waiting for Aneeka to come and read all of this and think “wow, I didn’t think about it that way” and come and tell us that she didn’t base them off of the 6-role thing at all and we’re all just looking way too deeply into this 😀 but seriously, great theory with the 6-role thing. It does fit quite well here, but I agree that some games don’t follow the “role” thing at all and I’m glad they don’t. If all the games you played had exactly the same mechanics, we’d never play any new games because it would be just like the old one with new flavor. Now I know that’s not exactly what you meant, but it proves my point. The facts are though that many, MANY table-top rpg’s follow this (and I’m talking LOTS, like all the ones I’ve seen have one form or another of this) and it’s a simple and common explanation that fits here, whether Aneeka purposefully used it or not.

I’m just waiting for Aneeka to come and read all of this and think “wow, I didn’t think about it that way” and come and tell us that she didn’t base them off of the 6-role thing at all and we’re all just looking way too deeply into this.

Oh, no, no, I’d never do that; I love reading fans’ theories and arguments (as long as they stay still civil, of course)! I find it fascinating to see how people think 😀

Not a table-top game, but GuildWars 2, at least as initially released, had 8 classes, which could be roughly defined as:
8 multi-purpose classes.

No dedicated tanks. No dedicated hitters. No dedicated clerics. No dedicated supporters. Each class had skills that could fill each of these roles to some extent, but you would have a hard time of making any one class a full on stand-up role-specific player. Any one of them might tank a big bad for five or ten seconds… and then drop like a rock, and their performance in other roles was similar.

My read on the game here is that it doesn’t play by the normal rules or stereotypes.

Ultimately, Aneeka isn’t creating a game here. She’s creating a story about a game. That gives her more options in how the game is designed than she might otherwise have. Box your mind in with preconceptions at your own risk.

She’d better have actually made the game (at least the playstyles), or it’s not gonna be fun!
(Erfworld was designed by a master game designer)

Off the top of my head:
Shadowrun
Any of the Battletech RPGs
Most nWOD White Wolf splats don’t fall too well into the 4 classes(except werewolf)
Through the Breach
Somewhat Iron Kingdoms

On the video game side
Divinity: Original sin

Ultimately it’s a useful but limited way of looking at games. Especially here where the Game doesn’t seem to adhere to many most modern day game theory. That said, if this interpretation works for you, then as you said Demoli and Herbana would both have aspects of the Control box which works with what it sounded like Storyteller was saying.

Pardon, but this is simply idiotic.
You have “ranged attackers” — their ability is to target people being shielded.
You have “shields” — their ability is to take damage and keep going (Platemail!)
You have “Glass Cannons” — dish a lot, but can’t take it.
You have “Strategists” — they get the slow spell, they warp spacetime, they change the playspace.
You have “stealth and speed” — this is thief, but it’s also ninja, and ranger in the wood.
And then you have the f***ing wildmage, who doesn’t know what he’s going to cast next. Hide.

cricri,
Mentalists of all freaking sorts in rolemaster.
How about illusionists? Their main strength is in creating new realities. If you make an illusion real enough, it is indistinguishable from reality…

There’s more to the alignments than just the role thing, though. Most classes are usually neutral, not strictly “nice” or “evil”, aren’t they? The only class requiring a specific alignment I can remember on the spot is paladin.
And here, we have hero and villain alignments (though they ironically do look pretty neutral – just look at Kat’s evil face). One might argue the loss of neutrality for the classes doesn’t change much, but it does for people like me. I mean, look at me. If I play games with alignments, I go for the nicest and most harmless ones, but if I play games without alignments, I go for the classes that allow me to take my enemies out without running or hiding, and take them out faster than they can kill me. Clear difference, don’t you think?

Actually, in D&D and pretty much all the D&D inspired RPGs, most if not all classes have preferred alignments, tho I think the fighter doesn’t but don’t quote me on that, by default pretty much all the divine guys will be found in good and/or lawful, the primal guys in chaotic, normally chaotic good and the warlocks evil. Because apparently making pacts with cthulhu makes you evil. Now sure it’s just preffered and not required, except for pallys and other god-bound classes, but I’m fairly certain that, for instace, playing a lawful good rogue will end up with you being too restricted.

Furthermore, if you go for D&Ds prestige classes, that is the advanced ones, you find really stupid things. For instance assassin requires you to murder people for no good reason and with no motivation. The class with that weird mechanical arm requires you to join a certain organization and then betray them just to get it, etc. They all specifically instruct you to do something kinda weird just to join them, and to keep some kind of consistency or else leave the class, much like how in some editions palladins “fall from grace” and monk’s cant return to their class if they start multiclassing. That’s an obvious paralell right there… Tho it does seem more coincidental than anthing, I hadn’t thought of it till now XD.

And I do think that some of the game’s alignments could be classified as neutral actually, not in the game’s parameters but in how you use them. Cardista more concretelly seems to not have any inherently nice or evil part it’s just a guy that loves cards. I guess it’s classified as nice for compensation more than anything. Kesty in the same vein HAS to complete quests, wich could be “evil” deeds depending on what the quest is, tho it is mostly nice I guess. The evil alignments however are all clearly evil. I mean mani could be kinda seen as not that bad because it doesn’t inherently kill anyone, but even then you’re wrestling control away from people. That’s not nice. Kat would not approve :p

…the feeling when never got to play D&D.

…..aaaanywayyy, yeah, I did say in my earlier comment that these alignments feel pretty neutral. Kesti’s more like a mercenary, and what about fighting to protect people? But the thing is, in Game mechanics these all count as specifically hero or villain.
By the way, I’d say Mani actually is the most evil one out of the three. There’s more to evil than just taking lives, you know.

I will never understand that. Why would mani be more evil than the others? I’d say it’s far, far less evil. It doesn’t need to kill at all, so that’s already a big contrast. But besides that one… You say there’s more evil than taking lives. Ok, fair enought. I’d say we could describe evil as “causing damage or preventing happyness or reparation.” Now… What’s mani really doing that’s so bad there?

We know that it makes more money for what bandit said. But it’s obvious than that refers to NPC merchans, so no damage done there.

We know it not only doesn’t need to kill people, it’s actually fairly good at preventing DAMAGING them. D***, that’s g-d d*** erbana right there, finding non-violent solutions should be regarded as good, even if they’re not conventional ones. I’d say it’s better to manipulate an enemy than to ram him with a sword. Wich incidentaly is something Kesti has been shown doing, so right there mani just tresspassed kesti in non-evilness.

The only thing mani does that can be considered evil is wrestling control away from people, but again, I prefer that to killing them, and also it can be used to manipulate mortos and demolis into helping other people and could stop an open comfrontation with cero deaths. I’d say it has potential to prevent a lot of damage, and preventing or restoring damage is good not evil.

In 3.5 D&D, the non affiliated core classes are: Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, Wizard, Sorcerer, Cleric. The affiliated classes, with their alignment, are: Barbarian (nonlawful), Bard (nonlawful), Druid (At least partially neutral), Monk (lawful), Paladin (lawful good).

For those that don’t play D&D – nonlawful is kind of like a weaker version of representing chaotic tendencies – you don’t have to be chaotic, but you can’t be lawful. Interestingly, that means chaotic classes are less restricted in being chaotic. Druids can’t be too unbiased and thus are required to be partly neutral.

Also, prestige classes aren’t all so restrictive. Some are famously easy to qualify for – Bear Warrior for example requires only Power Attack, high BAB and rage – all core parts of being a barbarian already.

Well that’s leaving aside all the supplement classes. Specially the whole “villain” segment. But yeah, good summary for the basic ones. And frankly I don’t feel like going to check every g-d d*** expansion and am pretty sure no one feels like it, so it’ll do XD

Read that Hitter first as Hilter XD

I would argue your four roles are a valid categorization, but not the best one. I’ve always been irked by the existence of “crowd control” in League being used to refer to single-target stuns, and empowered-maximized-born-of-three-thunders-explosive-ice-substitute-snowcasted fireball (aka tons of damage in a 20 foot circle) casters calling themselves “control”. It’s not useful to say “hey that guy’s a control caster” when it could mean slinging fireballs or entangling one target. You could argue that “control” covers -only- area of effect, but then what does single-target debuff fall under?

Love Kat’s smile in the last panel! 😀
Although Bandit will recognize this smug attitude. 😉

Well, during the 1st quest (find glowey stone :P) what we saw was pretty much what the audience saw, so while not all of these shots would be seen by the viewers (I’m guessing some would be just for us, unless our highly capable Creator says otherwise), it is possible. I can see old Paddy doing this with the camera to build interest in the team. Just as long as they don’t blow Kat’s cover (she can see the code, so she’d know WHERE Paddy’s put the camera), I can see her letting them work the camera angles like this…

That is a phenomenal facial expression.

Let’s hope the game camera got it, it would make a fantastic poster for Kat’s fans.

One enemy trump card: Neutralized.

Never underestimate the power of a running screaming man to be a distraction.

If he had the right skills/abilities/equipment, he could then use Kat’s move as a distraction & take 1 or 2 down from the rear…

Love it! And that smirk. Hehe.

“Be a cute thing and go fetch some plants, hmm?”

Took a while, but found the reference. I bet Kat’s been eagerly waiting for THIS little event to happen…

Oh, thanks for the link, I was wondering about this!

I really like Kat’s expression and pose in the last panel. So smug~

Amen. to both. Very nice artwork!

Hm, now that the mani is out of the way she can probably get rid of everyone else by giving them a quest to buy her plants in the harbor. She can offer healing as a reward, which they need.

Way to look like a villain even with a hero alignment.

Is there a such a thing as a sadistic pacifist?

I think Kleya may have just invented it.

Weeeeeeell I don’t know about sadistic pacifist but “Cruel Mercy” is a trope…

Yep, TVTropes confirms Cruel Mercy is indeed a thing…

Besides, why should the bad guys have all the cool looking stuff, including the bad*ss posses/looks, etc…

Have you read Worm? Its healer type character embodies this.

Kat. Still rubbish at acting heroic.

To me, it seems like less of a Good/Evil divide and more of a Lawful/Chaotic divide. I play tabletop RPGs fairly often, and although my GM makes my group play Good I just play Chaotic and get away with insane amounts of killing and such. Kat can’t kill, but she can play in a villain group.

Nice

BAM! That was so epic.
I also love how Kat is whispering all of that. Makes it extra unnerving.

Aw, why did Kat whisper that cool one-liner? Her fans would’ve loved it. Well, maybe they would’ve said “Wow, you’d be such a cool villain! I love it when you’re mean!”. 😀

Well, I guess we won’t get to know Bellatrice’s name any time soon. Or the names of the others for that matter.

Soooo, doing a head-count here: Kat and injured Danni vs. Albert, Haudrauf, Langusto, Betty and possibly Jane, because Kat wants to stay Nice. I’m still anxious to find out how that fight ends.

I guess it makes sense that many based plants on a mani based island include a CC option.

Of course now that Dominatrix Kleya was here, it will be only known as “Bondage Island”.

rofl, yeah, plant-BD is something that has been on my mind since forever. I wonder how many comments were censored within the last few months for going into more detail than you. I swear the last couple dozen pages were tempting me soooo often in this regard. Including her Mean Eater when it was _swallowing_ the _big_ Demoli attack. I am such a child sometimes. 🙂

I swear if her next plant has tentacles I will have to log out before posting so I won’t have to decide on whether it should be made public. In fact now that I think about it I’m logging out for this post as well.

@Aneeka: Thanks for making it public! 🙂

That’s….such a perfect name for it xD
Now I can only think of it as “Bondage Island”

LOVE IT! Kat is AWESOME! Such snark and smugness at a level only she can display and it still be cool.

I just love the abject terror on Mani girl’s face.

“My *one* weakness!”

Super aggressive the way she lands her lead foot *beyond* the foe in that first panel. Scary precision and boldness. Would not want to go toe to toe with Kat.

Kat did mention the plants in the local area were the wrong type for healing, guess what type they are good for though ….

Geared towards controlling of course. 🙂

I wonder if Kat has collected some mind control plants as well. Against big blue-haired guy a plant-wrap-up might not be enough.
Nothing brutal like mind controlling mushrooms (yes, mushrooms aren’t plants, I know), just some plants that can let you take a nap or make you chill out or something like that.

Mushrooms the make you chill out or take a nap? Aren’t there something like that in real life… 😛

That said, I know some games have had to edit out things like that because of the same thing in the real world…

Sure there are, but I refer to another type of mushroom that exists in real life, too. 🙂
Fantasy: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Parasect_%28Pok%C3%A9mon%29
Real: http://scribol.com/environment/plants/mushrooms-that-take-over-their-victims-minds

So in _some_ fantasy settings they aren’t edited out. 🙂

“And the clueless coward once again -” PUNCH IN THE FACE + PLANT MAGIC!

That’s basically how I want to respond to everyone who does nothing but talk big on the internet. Except the plant magic bit. I don’t have that. But I’m sure I’d use it if I had it.

Umm… For some reason, the comic doesn’t load properly anymore, it just appears pixelated as if it stopped loading part way. Yet I can tap and hold (I’m using a tablet) and open the image, it it loads fine. It’s just annoying having to open the image for every new page…. Any ideas?

This page and the last 2, I’ve had the same problem. I sometimes get blurred images if I hit something that cancels a load part way, and can’t fix it till the image falls off my tablets cache, but this last page I was very careful not to hit anything to abort the image load part way. Using an iPad here, had to move to a PC just to read the dialog.

I had someone email me about this a couple of days ago. I don’t know what’s causing it (and it doesn’t happen on my devices so it’s hard to understand the problem), but they managed to fix it by updating their iOS. Maybe you could try that?

Also, it seems to only happen to apple devices, like the ipad and iphone.

I’m getting it on Android 5.0.1, using the Dolphin Browser. No, I’m not udating to 5.1 because on my device that prevents me from ever down reving into a rootable device.

Did a little poking with imagemagick, comparing an image from about 5 days back to current.
First, the obvious difference, the older image is not interlaced. The new image is.
Second and more subtle, the older image had a lot of other metadata set on it (dpi, orientation, exif details).
I’d wager the two were saved by entirely different programs (written by different authors/vendors).
Interlacing is the big obvious difference, but I don’t see that by itself causing trouble – I usually consider it a plus on large image files, and this is the first time I’ve seen interlaced images consistently fail to load. I’d say something else the newer program is doing is causing iPad devices to stop parsing the image early.

Hope this helps

The whisper is awesome, but that immediately makes me wonder: “Who was she whispering to?” I was under the impression that whispers had to have a destination…maybe that’s incorrect.

My current headcanon (which will likely be kverruked in the next comic but whatever) is that she’ whispering to the Mani girl she just pwned. To the girl who taunted her, the Ironic Echo taunts her back, showing how Kat was ready to take her dlwn practically from the start; to all the kthers, it looks like the pacifist got in a lucky shot.

HAHAHA! *Love* it!

Wait, is it my imagination, or is Kat developing a sense of humor? 🙂

We can hope. Her thought/ whisper would have been a good quip to make as the Mani hit the ground.

Nap time for arrogant, annoying Mani girl. Kat just needed a distraction. I am pleased. 🙂

…It worked!
IT WORKED!
The Dude saved us!! The Dude saved us!!

This. This right here is what I’ve been waiting for since we started this Game session.

The latest update inspired me to:
1) Reread NAVCOMIC.com from beginning to end to get all of the alt text.
2) Reread Magicience from beginning to end. http://tapastic.com/series/magience
3) Rewatch TVTome Adventures from beginning to end. http://kirbopher.newgrounds.com/movies/
4) Rewatch .Hack from beginning to end.
5) Start reading and watching Sword Art Online.
6) Replay .Hack games.

I have finished step #1 and #2 of my MMORPG simulator list. Gonna be a good week.

Ah, it’s like letting the newbie of a team run into the center of the battlefield as you close in and assassinate half the enemy team starting with high priority targets. The sudden loss of key players and confusion that two people can cause is one of my favorite things in competitive multiplayer…best part is, the person taking out the enemy ranks doesn’t even need to coordinate with the distraction, just watch until they draw attention.

I love how Kat seems to work. She’s like the dream teammate I’ve only seen a few times; you can trust them to follow up on a critical play when the opportunity presents itself, whenever it happens to be.

I think aside from Danni they are the dream team. At least for the level of play that we have seen in the game. From an execution standpoint I think Kat, Dude, Bandit, and Jane could synergize near perfectly with each other. That their Kat and Jane at the least are at complete cross purposes is the only real problem their high performers have.

I wouldn’t be so harsh on Danni. She’s currently clumsy for being a Newbie, but she’s down-to-earth, straight as an arrow, hard-working and very cooperative. She and the Dude seem more like people who follow orders while the other three seem to prefer giving them. The latter can be real problematic in any real life game group, especially when leaders are notoriously stubborn, so I think they’re far from being a dream team. Kat is special for having so much extra information and being very skilled, but that’s rarely the case with leaders.

A) MAKE THIS A REAL GAME. These roles are awesome.

B) 2nd panel, a very excellent “OH SHHII–” face if ever i saw one. :3

Hmm, nice and heroically done in true guile hero fashion. Also why is the heroes that won’t kill you get the scary expressions and laughs?

I really love the artwork, layout, and coloring on this page.

[…] Updates: The Dude ran away screaming from everyone else, but it was all part of an epic wombo combo plan between him and Kat! Score one for the peace-loving Erbana route! Also, gotta love that callback with Kat tossing her “cute one” designation back in her enemies’ faces. Tuesday Thursday […]

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 466