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Author Topic: A question about Golems
Harkael
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posted November 27, 2002 08:14 PM      Profile for Harkael   Email Harkael    Edit/Delete Post
doh! i meant that rand notes that it doesnt protect him from saidin.......oops

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dscrank
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posted November 27, 2002 08:37 PM      Profile for dscrank      Edit/Delete Post
Rand thinks Mat's medallion doesn't protect him from the one power. He's mistaken. Jordan has directly stated that it does, citing as evidence Halima/Aran'gar's failed attempt to channel at him. The reason it didn't protect him from Rhavin was that the lightning was an indirect effect.

And specifically, Mat said, "I want a way to be free of Aes Sedai and the Power." Emphasis mine.

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Moridin00
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posted November 27, 2002 11:18 PM      Profile for Moridin00      Edit/Delete Post
Harkeal, Rhavin doesn't weave saidar. Really.

I'm not sure where you got your info from; I think a couple of wires got crossed there.

Mat's medallion will protect him from any OP weave; that includes saidin and saidar, but excludes the TP.

The medallion's influence extends to protecting the wearer from weaves that target him; or weave-effects left in his path (e.g. air hardened in his path).

Natural lightning will pass through, rocks can hit him, etc.

It's that simple.

From: Cape Town, SA | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged
Eosin_the_Red
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posted November 28, 2002 12:12 AM      Profile for Eosin_the_Red   Email Eosin_the_Red    Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Mat's medallion will protect him from any OP weave; that includes saidin and saidar, but excludes the TP.

Where did you get the True Power part? I think it is possible but I have not seen anything to indicate the truth of that assertation one way or the other.

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From: Norman, OK, USA | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Xythlord
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posted November 28, 2002 08:27 AM      Profile for Xythlord   Email Xythlord    Edit/Delete Post
Hey Crank, do you have the book and page number where Halima/Aran'gar's failed attempt to channel at him? I always thought that Rhavin was able to affect Mat because the amulet didn't protect against Saidin. I must have forgotten that part.

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From: Denver, Co | Registered: Mar 2002  |  IP: Logged
dscrank
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posted November 28, 2002 09:33 AM      Profile for dscrank      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Xythlord:
Hey Crank, do you have the book and page number where Halima/Aran'gar's failed attempt to channel at him? I always thought that Rhavin was able to affect Mat because the amulet didn't protect against Saidin. I must have forgotten that part.

Sure, Xythlord. It's in Lord of Chaos, the chapter's called the "Color of Trust," and the incident's on pp. 554-5 in the Hardcover edition.

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drothgery
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posted November 30, 2002 09:44 PM      Profile for drothgery      Edit/Delete Post
One other FYI...
I was rereading aCoS this weekend; the Gholam knocked Mat's power-wrought Andrashei away before Mat could do anything with it. So it's not conclusive that they're immune to power-wrought weaponry.

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From: San Diego, CA | Registered: Mar 2001  |  IP: Logged
Malcom the wanderer
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posted December 15, 2002 06:00 PM      Profile for Malcom the wanderer   Email Malcom the wanderer    Edit/Delete Post
Just some general advice for killing Gholams. Try hitting it with the elements, anything not made with the one power that is either fire, cold, acid, or lightning based should do it, failing a lot of things of that sort running is a very good idea, but one which is only a temporary solution. In WOT I would use illuminators rockets, if you can afford them, or plain old torches is nothing better presents itself. Maybe you can find a machine at the academies that can help you. Good luck, you'll need it.

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"Mad: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independance" Little Washu

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The Great Gray Skwid
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posted December 16, 2002 09:00 AM      Profile for The Great Gray Skwid   Email The Great Gray Skwid    Edit/Delete Post
I can't believe no one's linked to this yet, that I've noticed, but there is always the "50 Ways to Kill a Gholam" section of the WoTFAQ.

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From: The Big D | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
Heron_Marked_Blade
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posted December 16, 2002 10:01 AM      Profile for Heron_Marked_Blade      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gray Skwid:
I can't believe no one's linked to this yet, that I've noticed, but there is always the "50 Ways to Kill a Gholam" section of the WoTFAQ.

That link's not working for me, for some reason... Screwy computer...

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"Suravye ninto manshima taishite."

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The Great Gray Skwid
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posted December 16, 2002 11:25 AM      Profile for The Great Gray Skwid   Email The Great Gray Skwid    Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Heron_Marked_Blade:
That link's not working for me, for some reason... Screwy computer...

Hmm. Looks like the server might be down.

Here's Google's Cache:

http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:hsrpUfK7fAIC:www.linuxmafia.com/jordan/1_dark/1.3_how-work-dark/1.3.2_gholam.html+site:www.linuxmafia.com+foxhead &hl=en&ie=UTF-8

[ December 16, 2002, 11:27 AM: Message edited by: The Great Gray Skwid ]

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Evan "Skwid" Langlinais
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From: The Big D | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
Kossuth
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posted December 17, 2002 03:35 AM      Profile for Kossuth   Email Kossuth    Edit/Delete Post
Very interesting article.

I keep wondering if the reason that lightning affected Mat wasn't so much the fact that it was indirect but because it was natural.

You harness the natural storm and move it into place with the weave. Then you coax it to fire a lightning bolt into an area. The initial targeting is with the weave but the bolt itself isn't under constant guidance and remains a natural (but deadly) attack. Its not like say a wall of fire which can only stay in place with the weave.

That was certainly true in the major battles where it was used but I can't remember if it was when Mat died.

(Sorry if this has been discussed to death already!)

From: United Kingdom | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
The Great Gray Skwid
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posted December 17, 2002 06:49 AM      Profile for The Great Gray Skwid   Email The Great Gray Skwid    Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Kossuth:
I keep wondering if the reason that lightning affected Mat wasn't so much the fact that it was indirect but because it was natural.

Fire is natural as well, but it can be unnaturally generated using the OP, as you point out.

However, we know that normally lightning is not a direct effect of the Power, we know so because Jordan said so (see the FAQ section on Mat's Medallion).

[ December 17, 2002, 06:51 AM: Message edited by: The Great Gray Skwid ]

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Evan "Skwid" Langlinais
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http://www.thehumblest.net/
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From: The Big D | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
Kossuth
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posted December 17, 2002 07:04 AM      Profile for Kossuth   Email Kossuth    Edit/Delete Post
Yeah, that rather fits with what I was thinking though. In the battle between the Aiel and Rand etc when they were overlooking the battlefield on platforms they pulled the lightning from the clouds didn't they?? Wouldn't that remain natural? As a contrast if you just created a lightning bolt or fireball from a weave it cannot be natural as it wouldn't have existed w/o the weave. As a contrast if you coax one from a storm its just getting it to trigger earlier rather than later isn't it? Its the sme lightning bolt as would fall later??

Not 100% convinced myself either but its a very borng day at work and I'm surreptiously re-reading book 2 while monitoring the boards!

[Wink]

Can anyone tell me if the description when Mat died gave the weather/sky condition? I have a horrible feeling it included the words "clear blue sky"!

That would certainly knock that theory on the head!

[Big Grin]

Raene

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The Great Gray Skwid
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posted December 17, 2002 08:33 AM      Profile for The Great Gray Skwid   Email The Great Gray Skwid    Edit/Delete Post
Not really. Lightning doesn't require storm clouds, or much in the way of visible clouds at all, really. All that is required is a static differential between two points, and I can easily see the OP producing that differential and the lightning being the effect that is produced...

Always keep in mind that RJ has a degree in Physics. He likes things to make sense, and usually you can rationalize out the way the OP works pretty well.

--------------------
Evan "Skwid" Langlinais
The Humblest Mollusk on the Net
http://www.thehumblest.net/
Ask me for information about the Texas Darkfriends!

From: The Big D | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
Heron_Marked_Blade
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posted December 17, 2002 09:44 AM      Profile for Heron_Marked_Blade      Edit/Delete Post
And it follows that extended fiddling-about with magnetism and polarity (hazy recollection of Physics in high school...) would affect weather conditions. Rand's extended battle outside Cairhien and all the lightning that was thrown around might very easily have drawn the storm clouds, although I think I recall them mentioning that the storm was moving in anyways...

Tangent: It kind of reminds me of the Belgariad and Garion fiddling with the weather; it threw his many-times-greatgrandfather into a rage because it messed up the weather patterns all over the world. Not exactly related to this, but...

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Kossuth
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posted December 18, 2002 07:41 AM      Profile for Kossuth   Email Kossuth    Edit/Delete Post
I'll bow to your wisdom now I realise I know nothing about lightning!

I was in fact thinking of exactly the same incident as you HMB.

[ December 18, 2002, 07:44 AM: Message edited by: Kossuth ]

From: United Kingdom | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
Friend of the Dork
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posted December 27, 2002 05:44 AM      Profile for Friend of the Dork      Edit/Delete Post
Was the question here what a player should do if his character encountered a Gholam? Well, first of all how the hell does he know what a gholam is? Only the forsaken and a very few others knows of it's existance. There is no surviving record of it from the AoL, so only witnesses from AoL and they who beleive them knows of them.

And frankly, the DM shouldn't use the one in the books, it sucks. Even the forsaken think of them as unstoppable assasins, and if a power-wrought sword could harm them, they would know it as many of them were blademasters with power-wrought swords.

On the other hand, the GM shouldn't send a Gholam after the PCs unless he really wants to kill them. I would rather send a Forsaken, at least they don't kill you unless they can profit from it or they feel like it. They might simply ignore you. [Evil Smirk]

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Cha'aman
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posted January 02, 2003 04:17 AM      Profile for Cha'aman   Email Cha'aman    Edit/Delete Post
Rand's reaction to seeing Mat dead could be a mistaken thought, as stated, Jordan and other sources indicate that the medalion protects against weaves, another indication is that to the Eelfinn would still think of men and women channelers as Aes Sedai, even the Forsaken would be grouped as such.

Using a portal to try to cut it in half would have one of two effects:

1) the weave would fall apart, potentialy causing a hazardous secondary effect (explosion?)

2) the weave would not be able to finish closing, sliding along the Gholams body as he finished sliding through, it might slow him, a little, but nothing else.

personaly, I'm partial to number 2, if you could use gateways to sever a Gholam, they really wouldn't be that big a threat.

Opening gateways to other locations could be helpful, including skimming. Leave a trail of stepping stones, it might follow you in, but remember they are much older than the characters, and may be aware of how skimming works.

There are two ways to encounter Gholams:
You are targeted by Forsaken for death, or you are chosen to be harvested by the gholam.
If the forsakken puts you on a hit list, they will follow you, and kill you when they can, whenever there is an opportunity. If it chooses you, it may leave you alone for easier prey, though the only people a gholam is careful around are the forsaken and Mat. If you just happen to see it walking down the street, or sitting in a bar, there isn't likely to be an encounter, though it is a possibility.

Avoid using them, the RPG rates them as 'G', which makes them a simple encounter for 18-20, challenging for 15-17, and extreme for 12-14; the values are for a party of characters with an average level of the given value, a party is normally 6 to 8 characters. And the one given in the book is probably weakened to make it possible for a perty to defeat it.

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It's time to roll the dice
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Balthanon
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posted May 09, 2003 11:10 PM      Profile for Balthanon   Email Balthanon    Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by MyJhongKngF:
Okay. According to the rules, how can damage be done to it? c'mon...

Hit it moderately hard, not even very hard, but just moderately. Perhaps it's just because I'm used to D&D, but damage reduction 5 is almost nothing, even if you don't have a +1 weapon. A peasant with no strength bonus and a longsword has a chance of dealing damage against it. An adventurer with a better than even chance of hitting it should have very little trouble dealing damage.

Now if that 5/+1 is a typo and should be 50/+1 or perhaps the ter'angreal vulnerability forgot to put in the sentence about how it has regeneration against everything except that ter'angreal, then it might be a bit more trouble. As it stands though, it's a fairly easy opponent. Personally if my PCs ever run across one (triple 1's on a random encounter in the Blight maybe?) it will have both.

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Steve Russell
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posted May 09, 2003 11:53 PM      Profile for Steve Russell   Email Steve Russell    Edit/Delete Post
Ok lets get a few things straight yes mat protects him from saidin and saidar (the wall fell on him the lightning did not kill him in camelyn)

second the weaves work the same on Matt with ter'angreal as the do for the Gholam per elaynes discription (mat travels through gatways with a ter'angreal so on.)

so go read 50 ways to kill a gholam at Wotmania.com.

Also remember that Gholam are geneticly engineered creatrues and that a gholam nearly kills grendal.

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Whitewinds
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posted May 10, 2003 07:12 PM      Profile for Whitewinds   Email Whitewinds    Edit/Delete Post
If you can manage it, I'd recommend dropping it into a pool of lava. I can even see a way to get the lava you'd need, teh problem being that it requires preparation.
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lostone
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posted May 10, 2003 07:48 PM      Profile for lostone      Edit/Delete Post
First off, anyone that has made their own version of the Gholam, could you post a link in this forum so we can read it?

Ok a couple things that have been bothering me in this discussion, I'm replying to a lot of points that have been made so far.

The basic thing you need to understand about Aginor and his creating the shadowspawn is found in The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time (a book RJ wrote about the world and a good reference for anything not really understood, however it only covers the first 4-5 books and hints at other stuff). In there it says that Aginor "understood "the most basic structures of living things" better than anyone else in the Age" (of Legends, this is referring to genetics). So all of his creations he made by altering and/or combining the genetic structures of other creatures. This is why he doesn't like Fades, he didn't make them and may not understand why they are born from Trollocs. This is also the way he made Gholams, why he limited it to 6 could be for any number of reasons, but most likely because they are too dangerous or hard to control, but it could also be because it was difficult making the genetic structure that would block the one power.

As for Mat's terangreal, it does block both sides of the power (Aran'gar channeled at him and she channels saidin because her soul is Balthamel, who was male) and here is the reason why: Mat said he doesn't want anything to do with Aes Sedai, the Forsaken were and maybe still could be considered Aes Sedai (even the males), it could be argued they are the only real Aes Sedai in existence, since the current version with the White Tower is a pale reflection of what it was in the Age of Legends. Rahvin's lightning got mat because the lightning storm was caused by the one power, but the lightning struck randomly (much like when Rand uses Callandor on the Seanchan, he causes the storm but the lightning strikes where it wishes, the lightning itself isn't a weave, the storm is). This follows the same loophole as throwing an object with air at mat, the object can still hit him. Same idea with a gateway, mat can go through them because he isn't touching the edge of the hole where the weaves are. And when mat used it on the gholam it did not harm the terangreal, it still works fine. But it did burn the gholam like a human touching red-hot iron. I don't really understand why, but I'd be interested to know what happens if a gholam enters (or tries to enter) a stedding.

Now I want to respond to the idea of hurting a Gholam with a gateway. You couldn't open a gateway where a gholam is standing and hurt it, it would come into contact with the weaves and negate them before the gateway opened enough to hurt it, but if it was passing through a previously opened gateway and you cut the weave, the hole in the pattern would collapse and leave the gholam in two pieces, one at each area the hole linked.

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AvaronGansdell
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posted May 10, 2003 08:09 PM      Profile for AvaronGansdell   Email AvaronGansdell    Edit/Delete Post
or the simple way to defeat it...open the skimming portal. Kick it through the portal and let it fall in nothingness forever.
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Fisher-King
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posted May 10, 2003 09:58 PM      Profile for Fisher-King      Edit/Delete Post
Gholam
Medium-Sized Shadowspawn
Hit Dice: 15d8+80 (140)
Initiative: +9 (+5 Dex, +4 Improved Initiative
Speed: 50 ft
Defense: 20 (+5 Dex, +5 natural)
Attacks: Longsword +20/+15/+10 Melee
Damage: Longsword 1d8+5
Face/Reach: 5 ft by 5 ft/5 ft
Special Qualities: Damage Reduction 15, One Sense, Energy Resistance 15, Boneless, Weave Immunity, ter'angreal vulnerability, Fast Healing 20.
Special Attacks: Sneak Attack +2d6
Saves: Fort +12, Ref +10, Will +5
Abilities: Same as in the book
Feats: Combat Expertise, Improved Initiative, Power Attack, Dodge

Climate/Terrain: Wherever the Forsaken send it
Organization: Solitary. Very solitary.
Challenge Code: Off the scale
Advancement: None.

Ability Descriptions:
One Sense: Same as in the book
Energy Resistance: All damage from fire, cold, electricity, poison, or sonic energy sources is reduced by 15 points. In the case of continuing damage, the first 15 points every round is cancelled.
Boneless: Same as in the book
Weave Immunity: Same as in the book. You make your own decisions on whether or not Gholams can go through Gateways; I think no, and have no basis for that.
Ter'angreal vulnerability: When a Gholam is touched with any item that blocks the One Power (though not by another gholam), it takes 3d8 points of damage. This is not effected by the gholam's damage reduction or energy resistance - in fact, it's pretty much the only thing that's not. This damage cannot be healed by the Gholam's fast healing either.

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"You ain't gettin' me on your goal row!"

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