Red Mage Plans.

[Xshu]

A while ago I mentioned having created this list of all of Red Mage's failed and successful good/horrible plans, and then I didn't check the topic again until recently. It turns out Brian asked to see the list, so here it is. Note that I decide fairly arbitrarily what should be concidered a good or a horrible plan, or even what should be concidered failure:

Failed Good Plans

1. Red Mage's plan to defeat the werewolves failed because nobody else brought silver equipment or had any idea what the holy hell he was talking about.

2. Red Mage's plan to defeat Garland failed because he didn't remember Black Mage's spell limit, and then because Thief's arms were tired, and then because Fighter is Fighter.

3. Red Mage's plan to defeat the fire dragon with weapons failed, but really, can you blame him for trying? Weapons are indeed designed to inflict damage.

4. Red Mage's plan to defeat Kary using an ice spell failed horribly. Seemed like a logical move, though.

5. Red Mage's plan to surprise attack Muffin backfired when nobody tried to help him. Also, according to Dragoon, it would never have worked because dragons are very fast. Still, the plan in and of itself wasn't bad.


Failed Horrible Plans:

1. Red Mage's plan to defeat the giant by convincing it that it didn't exist failed because that's just stupid. On the other hand, everything he said made sense on a technical level.

2. Red Mage's first plan to escape Elf prison failed because nobody was willing to provide any dag.

3. Red Mage's "sidequest" to get sammiches failed either because there was no sidequest or because there was a bug in reality keeping him from making sammiches. Although it was nice of him to get all that stuff for everyone.

4. Red Mage's plan to prevent the group from worrying about freezing half to death ever again, by lighting himself on fire, was...not a good idea.

5. Red Mage's plan to make a raft out of chocobos failed because, apparently, chocobos do not float.

6. Red Mage's plan to make an airship out of chocobos failed because chocobos cannot fly.

7. Red Mage's plan to make an air orb by blowing glass failed because he doesn't know what glass is made of.

8. Red Mage's plan to get to the sky castle by waiting for gravity to stop working failed because Thief came up with a better idea before it could work.


Successful Good Plans:

1. I'm not sure it's technically good, but Red Mage's plan to push Garland off of the ship was not what I'd call a terrible plan. It wasn't very good, but it didn't suck.

2. Red Mage's plan to escape the crashed deathtrap using an immovable rod, a portable hole, and a bag of holding succeeded. It's a shame we have no idea how he did it, but do we know how he does anything?

3. Red Mage's plan to disguise everyone as dwarves using an illusion spell worked...eventually.

4. Red Mage's plan to have Theif steal Lich's soul out of the Earth Orb was pretty good, I thought. It worked for them in the end, since you can't technically go to Hell if your soul is stuck somewhere else. I assume that's the case, anyways.

5. Red Mage's "plan" to attack the fire dragon's innards with ice worked out just fine. I can't say it's technically a bad idea to fire off magic at the insides of something that's eaten you. After all, he just said it bleeds acidic lava, so stabbing it from the inside would likely result in death.

6. Red Mage's plan to defeat Kary with Ice 9 worked out great.

7. Red Mages' plan to effectively destroy an entire plane of existence to be free of it worked out as planned, and the less I know of how that worked the better.

8. Red Mage's plan to ask the other warriors where the Air Orb was seemed good to me, and the map they drew for him wasn't technically wrong.

8.5. Now, I'm going to go ahead and say he was lying when he said this was a plan, but just in case he wasn't: Red Mage's plan to fool Muffin into thinking the Light Warriors were bungling idiots worked rather well.

9. Red Mage and Thief's plan to have Black Mage read the datasphere did not succeed in the sense that it killed him or drove him sane, but it did succeed in the sense that it got him out of their hair for a while, which is apparently what they were after.

10. Red Mage's plan to snap Black Mage out of his coma with the promise of huge knockers succeeded. While a stupid plan in and of itself, it makes perfect sense factoring in Black Mage's Black Mageness.

11. Red Mage's plan to have Fighter kill all the dragons in the Temple of Fiends by showing him the "Glorious Chainsaw Method" card was a stroke of genius. Note that Red Mage's plans involving taking advantage of his own stupidity I'm counting as horrible, but his plans taking advantage of his party members' quirks are good. It makes sense to me, and it's my list.


Successful Horrible Plans:

1. Red Mage's plan to trick Bikke into telling him where Matoya's crystal ball is worked for some reason. It might be that he told them on purpose. Bikke is something of a trickster, after all. On the other hand, he's also an idiot.

2. Red Mage's plan to escape the giant spider web by giving himself a +20 in Escapology after he escaped was the first of many plans that succeeded for reasons no man can fathom.

3. Red Mage's plan to un-frog himself with a die worked, only for Matoya to re-frog him as soon as it did.

4. Red Mage's plan to defeat Vilbert by stabbing him with the armoire worked, although it failed to kill him.

5. Red Mage's plan to fool the other warriors with a map worked out once paired with his lie about having a cold.

6. Red Mage's idea to construct a machine to help him out in the Castle of Ordeals...apparently worked out great. This goes here for involving his character sheet, but is otherwise fairly normal for RM.

7. Red Mage's plan to defeat the dinosaur by convincing it that it didn't exist succeeded because that's just brilliant and could never fail on anything ever.

8. Red Mage's plan to breed chocobos worked out just fine. As the plan itself was actually rather crafty, this was only a horrible plan in the moral sense.

9. Red Mage's plan to fire Black Mage at the rage turtle worked as he has expected, although I still have no idea why.

10. Red Mage's plan to cure the horrible injury he sustained after being shot out of a cannon by dropping a potion to land on himself at the apex of his jump worked out great. The plan would have been great, except that it shouldn't have worked due to potions normally being purely oral in use.

11. Red Mage's plan to save everyone from the frost dragon by freezing his own group solid in a huge block of ice succeeded.

Unexecuted Plans:

1. Red Mage's plan to escape from the acid was not executed because the mostly likely result of it involved acid-related death..

2. Red Mage's second plan to escape from the acid was never formed because he rolled his die into the acid.

3. Red Mage's suicidal dragon plan was never put into action because there were no dragons in Matoya's cave.

4. Red Mage's "Quantum Mechanics Plan Alpha" to get the armoire off of Fighter by redescribing its weight was, in the end, not needed.

5. Red Mage's plan to build a town hall only made sense as far as WarCraft III is concerned...I think.

6. Red Mage's plan to attack Bikke's pirates wasn't needed, what with the scurvy and all. Looked like a good enough plan, though.

7. Red Mage's second plan to escape Elf prison was horribly undetailed and they never tried it.

8. Red Mage's plan to travel without an airship/deathtrap by having Black Mage propel them into the air with a hadoken was never attempted because it would have killed them all.

9. Red Mage's plan to mail everyone to Gurgu was just stupid, and actually might have worked, but only because at this point in the story Red Mage's horrible plans had recently started working for no reason.

10. Red Mage's plan to build a bridge over lava was not attempted because there was already a land bridge there in plain sight.

11. Red Mage's plan to save everyone from the second deathtrap crash was never attempted because fighter kept interrupting him until there was no time to try the plan.

12. The "Cold Fusion" fiasco.

13. Red Mage's plan to mime himself into building an airship was not attempted because it doesn't work like that.

14. Red Mage's plan to open a box with possibly a spark plug in it and hope an airship was now inside was a new level of idiocy.

15. Red Mage's plan to run from the leg-breaking "legitimate business man" was not attempted.

16. Red Mage's plan to have everyone kill themselves and then run from the leg-breaking "legitimate business man" was also not attempted.

17. Red Mage's plan involving splitting into several groups that all involve Fighter never really got off the ground before Black Mage killed all of the guards.

18. Something involving inexplicably turning clumps of rock into starmetal. I didn't really understand what he was talking about, but it never came up again.

19. Red Mage's plan to crash the sky castle, fix it, and then use it to find the nonexistent invisible sky castle was never attempted because just hearing the plan put BM out of action.

20. Red Mage's plan to keep himself on fire while constantly bringing himself back to life with a spell that he doesn't know (which is apparently okay, because he knows that he doesn't know that, or something), and then use this on Muffin's internal organs, was not attempted because he burned to death before he could be eaten.

[Nuklear Waste]

Awesome job.

Also, would this count as an unexecuted plan: http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=061010? He never gets around to revealing the only weakness of "your basic krakenoid."

[Xshu]

Nah. I reread the comic from start to finish, so anything not in there I must not have considered a plan. If he HAD stated the weakness, but then nobody had taken advantage of it, that would have been an unexecuted plan.

Also: Yes, I do split hairs and play semantics a lot when I make lists.

[Kurosen]

That's quite a list. Thanks for the effort!

[Truce]

What about this plan? Does it count?

http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=040113

[Xshu]

What about this plan? Does it count?

http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=040113

Does what count? He never explains Plan Awesome, he's just playing rock paper scissors in the next comic. Was that his plan? I suppose I could have put it in the unexecuted plans list, but what if his plan was to play rock paper scissors? The whole thing was bugging me, so I just left it out. The other plan was BMs idea, so that doesn't count. If Brian could give me some confirmation on whether Plan Awesome was to use a natural twenty in rock paper scissors, that'd help, otherwise I don't know where to put it.

As for Selfi's offer, once I see some people vouch for you, I'd be happy to get that hat. I have a PO box address all ready. If you are indeed in Canuckistan, you won't even have to mail out of the country.

[Snm]

This IS an impressive list. Good job.


Also, I'm jealous of the hat. I totally want one.

[Kurosen]

"Plan Awesome" is exactly what Black Mage described. Red Mage decides to go with a different plan so that he doesn't have to admit that Black Mage was right.

[Ryong]

Red Mage's ramble on the impossible plan that would work no matter the result of each individual step doesn't count or I didn't read the list correctly?

[TheSparrow]

Great List.

But shouldn't 'Unexecuted Plans' have Sigma-Omega-Four? Its Got Lightning. And Explosions!