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[Criptfeind]

I mean, an 'important' combat beat like that did in fact happen off screen. The stake disappeared and the knife moved from out of her back to halfway though her neck. Clearly SOME time passed. I purpose that on panel 12 (covered by the dwarf head monologue) he jammed the stake into her back and heart and then grabbed her head as he moved the knife around to her throat and started slicing.

It's also not really that important that we understand how he killed her, simply that he does so. So, in that sense, nothing important really happened off screen.

[Akura]

Spoiler: Possible hastily-done calculations on that kill (click to show/hide)

Yes, Belkar has 1 level in Barbarian, taken right after the first dungeon. This allows him to RAGE once a day. Note however, his favored enemy has so far been given as kobolds(specifically "Humanoid(Reptilian)"), not undead, unless he recently reached 15th-level Ranger(probable, since everyone is at least 16th total levels) and used that to add undead to his favored enemy list - given that level-up would have occurred around the time Belkar was under a Mark of Justice preventing him from harming the living and their arch-enemy is a lich, that would seem prudent.

Rage adds +4 STR/+4 CON/+2 morale bonus to Will saves/-2 AC. The CON bonus also adds 2HP per level - the SRD does not specify whether this is per Barbarian level or per character level. Presumably the latter, since we don't know how much nonlethal damage he took before going down. The increase in HP pushed his HP above that of his nonlethal damage allowing him to act. What doesn't make sense is how he was able to activate his Rage while unconscious. Perhaps it's because Rage is listed as an "extraordinary" ability, which don't require a specific action to trigger.

Two-shotting Ponchula is mathematically unlikely as well. The first attack panel he's wielding a dagger and stake, and a few panels his right hand is empty - this suggests that he planted the stake in her back which would have neutralized her, then her destruction made permanent by the subsequent decapitation. I would assume that being staked turns them into a corpse item, which is fare easier to decapitate than a functioning vampire.

PRE-EDIT: Of course, 10 new replies before I finish...

[Rolan7]

The rage bonus of +4 to CON does add 2HP per any level, or by "hit die" really.  It's like any other modifier to CON, it retroactively applies your new CON modifier to every hit die you have.
...Though it says those HP don't go away "first" like temporary HP, so I guess he doesn't fall back unconscious once the rage ends.  Maybe.  I don't really know for sure.

Pretty sure cutting the head off a vampire should take a full-round-action like a normal coup-de-grace would, but artistic license.  Staking then slicing like that looks cool.

[Criptfeind]

In order of the stick damage amounts and enemy hp always seems to be pretty handwavy to be whatever the story requires, and not always even remotely realistic for what the players are and who they are fighting. So I wouldn't let that worry you too much.

On some barbarian stuff, the con bonus from raging applies to all levels, although more properly it's all HD (although characters with HD that don't match their level are pretty rare) since you gain your con bonus times your hit dice in health naturally already, so that's really how it works, +4 Con means your Con bonus is 2 higher, so you get 2 more hp per HD you have. (Also ninja'd by Rolan. Although to Roland, when it says they don't go away first, that means you loose that much hp when you stop raging, unlike temp hp, which if you have 10 temp hp, take 10 damage, then your temp hp spell runs out, you don't loose 10 hp because the 10 you lost were temp. With a barbarian, if you have 30 rage hp, get knocked down to 10 hp left, then stop raging, you instantly go to -20 and die.)

As for activating rage well unconscious, you can't do that as a normal barbarian, it has to be something you actively do. Which is sorta why I think he wasn't actually unconscious, just dominated into "staying down". However, there's of course plenty of ways (of course there is, this is 3.5, game of 1000 splatbooks) you could in fact activate rage when unconscious if you weren't a normal PHB barbarian. Alternate class features and prestige classes and such. So that's a possible (although imo unlikely... I think more unlikely then just "it's not part of the rules, but just part of the story") answer to how he got up.

[Akura]

Relevant previous comic.

Who knows? Some other vampire who was made-to-order for a different dwarf might've done as Roy suggested and rejected Hel's plan from the start.

[Arcvasti]

Belkar made some kind of comment about "Getting really good at killing undead" earlier. This kind of implies he took undead as a favoured enemy while with the Resistance in Azure City.

[MrWiggles]

Well, I didnt see Belkar waking up pissed off. I quite liked how Durkon wrestled control of his body.
I would say, that every good memory, double as acting good for the vampire. And the vampire aligment changed. Now now that Vamp didnt want malice, in the world and instead overall wanted to do the world rigt and had all of Durkon memory, there is no meaningful seperation. They will come to similar enough conclusions on what to do, that it wont cause debate.
I will guess that the Vampire will leave Durkon body on their own accord.

[hops]

Given that the vamp was a negative energy being I think Durkon basically annihilated his being and substituted it with himself.

[Dorsidwarf]

Anyone want to bet that this confrontation is what gets Belkar killed? Or is the arrival of his timely demise being pushed back to the Orders final hunt for Xykon?

[JoshuaFH]

Anyone want to bet that this confrontation is what gets Belkar killed? Or is the arrival of his timely demise being pushed back to the Orders final hunt for Xykon?

This scene has already spent up a lot of different Chekov's guns, it'd be odd to have every prophesy fulfilled back-to-back-to-back in the same confrontation.

[Lord Shonus]

For general interst, since not everybody here reads the OOTS forums, The Giant posted a thorough explanation of why Durkon's plan worked.

[Dorsidwarf]

For general interst, since not everybody here reads the OOTS forums, The Giant posted a thorough explanation of why Durkon's plan worked.

Link leads to a blank page on mobile for me, can you quote him here?

[Digital Hellhound]

For general interst, since not everybody here reads the OOTS forums, The Giant posted a thorough explanation of why Durkon's plan worked.

Link leads to a blank page on mobile for me, can you quote him here?

Here goes. It's nice of the Giant to offer an explanation this in-depth, I think. I particularly like his analogy of the 93 gallons, heh.

I'm not reading this whole thread for details on everyone's questions/arguments, but to try to give a broad answer to the thread title that doesn't spoil anything:

First, the main difference between Durkon's situation and other vampires is the speed at which everything happened. A standard vampire gets three days in the grave to absorb the lion's share of memories, and then takes months to slowly assimilate the rest. This vampire didn't get any of that, and so they were overwhelmed. A vampire who absorbs the memories in the "proper" way will not be overwhelmed. It could easily be argued that this would be a "balancing factor" in Malack's swift-rise spell, if I was going to stat it up for actual D&D play (which I'm not). And that's an aspect that Hel and her newly-created minion wouldn't necessarily know about, because it was Nergal's spell.

Second, unlike the other vampires, he needed to access those memories right away because he needed to impersonate Durkon. The Exarch is not going to be in as much danger of something like this because nobody cares what spirit is in charge. He can (in theory) just put off even looking at all but the most basic of Gontor's memories until this whole thing is over, and then sip them slowly over years.

Third, I doubt everyone has a single memory that could surprise and shock the vampire spirit like that. Because it's not the speech about "worst days" that does the real work here; that's mostly just Durkon psyching himself up by telling the spirit that they're wrong. No, the workhorse is the memory itself and how it makes the spirit feel. And I just don't think most people have a single ten-minute memory that completely changes the context of their entire life, before and after.

And finally, this would be the sort of thing that would take a very strong will to pull off successfully. Even if you explained this entire procedure in advance, I doubt someone like Haley or Elan could make it work. They just don't have the mental strength. They could show the spirit the memories, but without the unshakable resolve to back it up, the spirit wouldn't be as affected by the emotional content. In purely game terms (which I usually don't like to discuss but this is good to use as an analogy), Durkon is a high-Wisdom, high-Will-save character who possesses an unimpeachable Lawful Good alignment. That makes him unique. He may, in fact, be literally the single strongest willpower character who has ever been vampirized, ever. It's not a thing that usually happens to Lawful Good clerics in their mid-teen levels; Malack would have been much lower level (and not LG) when it happened to him.

The best way I can put this, overall, is that a human needs about half a gallon of water a day, or about 93 gallons over the course of 6 months. But if I poured 93 gallons of water down your throat today, you would die. That is not a significant design flaw in the human body that needs to be addressed! It's just a circumstance that doesn't come up enough for us to spend all of our time worrying about whether or not we are in imminent danger of swallowing 93 gallons. And if someone offered you a drink, you wouldn't think about, "But what if they suddenly whip out a fire hose?" before accepting.

So, is it a thing that could have happened to other vampires? Sure, maybe, once or twice, just as I am sure people have died from drinking 93 gallons of water. Is it common enough for Hel to mention it in her five-minute orientation of the vampire spirit before stuffing it in Durkon's corpse, when she has an entire scheme to explain as well? No. At best, she would have said something like, "Keep an eye on the host spirit, don't let it get control," and the vampire would have said OK. And then still walked into Durkon's trap because it was incapable of connecting the dots on its own beforehand.

(Also, fair warning: I'm not going to get into a back-and-forth on any of these points. If you still don't want to accept that this is a pretty rare set of circumstances, I don't know what else to tell you.)

[Darkmere]

I don't think I like it much. It feels exactly like a deus ex machina or some kind of way out-there rules lawyering for drama's sake.

[Scoops Novel]

A evil guy magically not understanding a (admittedly stupid even under that logic) benevolent decision just feels cheap. Cryptfiend, even if important people are more likely to afford diamonds, the fact that the OOTS didn't have any to rub together for a while kinda indicates this ain't a guarantee.