Dragon Issue 39: July 1980
Part 2/2
Sage advice returns, after a months break, with more rules quibbles and enforcement. Can I use a potion of gaseous form to get cursed magical items off me? (No. You can't get around curses that easily. You are now naked when you reform, with only the cursed item on. (Now, is it worth it wearing cursed robes or armour just for that minor benefit?))
Is there such a thing as a lawful neutral dwarven paladin? (no, stop breaking the rules immediately.)
Is a ranger in violation of his alignment for breaking a written contract? (That depends, is it an evil contract? If so, then he can and indeed should break it. )
Does every weapon require a separate proficiency slot, even really similar ones? (yes. Suck it up. This ain't the complete fighters handbook. You can't get benefits by appealing to realism here.)
Why can elven fighter/magic users wear armor and cast spells, when full MU's can't. (There is no in game reason, it's entirely an out of game balancing rule. Someone'll invent some stupid justification for it sometime, I'm sure. And then It'll be an article in here. Betcha ten dollars.)
Page 10 and 26 contradict one another on how many spells a magic user can have (there is a difference between how many spells they can know it total, and how many they can have memorized at one time. Is that so hard to understand? A brain's a brain, and it does what it can. If you don't like it, play a cleric instead.)
If I change my alignment to chaotic neutral good will I lose a level? (There is no such alignment. You could however be Chaotic neutral (good tendencies) and as long as you don't push over the actual boundary, you won't suffer any xp penalty. )
Can any race have psionics? (no, only humans, dwarves and halflings)
I've found the duration for ghoul paralysis. In T1, it says it lasts 3-12 turns (well spotted. Carrion crawler paralysis lasts the same amount of time, and ghast paralysis lasts twice as long. )
If someone is killed by poison, does have to be neutralised before you try and raise them? (no)
Which weapons are two-handed (here's the list(no, I can't be bothered to type it out))
Can centaurs read scrolls, have psionics, and be raised? (possibly, no, and hell no, do I have to give the whole no
ing souls screed again for you people?)
Can a ring of regeneration regrow limbs lost before you found it? (no, your body matrix is already fixed in its new form if you've already healed the hit point damage, or some such crap, so it can't fix old wounds. You'll have to keep your eyepatch and pegleg, I'm afraid)
Good hits and bad misses: Ahh, critical hits. How many attempts at putting you in D&D will we see before 3rd edition makes them stick in a form most people were happy with? This is one of those ones that involves several extra dice rolls, and then consulting a table for the specific effect the crit has. Increased complexity for decreased fun, in other words. Meh, meh ah say.
Uniformity, conformity, or neither?: A look at how D&D has increased in complexity over the years and editions, and looks like it's only going to get more complex and diverse, until it's impossible for any one person to keep track of, yet alone use all the options. Which means it's up the GM to ensure their campaign doesn't get bloated beyond their ability to handle. Welcome to the upward part of the complexity cycle. It's gonna be quite a while before D&D gets its first spring cleaning and streamlining. You'll just have to live with it.
Fiction(ish) The aliens frombeyond (sic) by Bryce Knorr: An exaggerated account of the dragon magazine research process, as the staff race to find out the origin of a particular set of miniatures before the magazine deadline hits. Which is amusing.
What are the odds: The probability of rolling a particular ability score using 3d6, and thus how common each one should be among the general population. A simple bit of statistics I calculated myself ages ago, but nice to see it here.
The electric eye: A computer terminology glossary. Which weirdly enough, gives me WoD corebook flashbacks.
Funny how unrelated things can have stylistic connections.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Lots of cool items this time around, from Cloud castles to Red dragon scale armor. And Ed Greenwood once again sneaks in some realmsian setting detail, with Laeral's storm armor. As does Richard Forsten for whatever his own setting was. (not that we're likely to ever know what that was, unfortunately.) Stuff that's usefull for every class here.
Research in Imperium: A table based system for modeling scientific research that realistically reflects how slow, tedious, expensive and unpredictable this process can be. File this under the same category as all those annoying spell research systems for D&D.
Reviews: The Beastlord, a fantasy boardgame. Intruder, a solo sci-fi boardgame based off Alien, where you hunt down an increasingly deadly metamorphosing monstrosity. They seem to have stopped doing little single line summaries of a load of further games along with the full reviews. Hopefully that'll return sometime.
Simulation Corner: The importance of graphics to a games success. Ahh, another classic refrain that never changes. Some companies put more emphasis on pretty cover pictures and miniatures than they do in making a game play well. And you can only tell if the game plays well after already buying it, so they've already made money off you. Includes plenty of specifics and information on how design technology has improved in recent years. One of those articles that gives me a good sense of history, and how it has and hasn't developed.
City state of the world emperor. The legendary Duck tower! (snerk) Hooray for interesting adverts.
Dragons bestiary: the Groundsquid. A good compliment to the landshark, this is an example of a real world monster adapted to the weirdness of the fantasy world. It has a very long and extensive desription, with lots of stuff on both its hunting tactics, and the uses its various organs and byproducts have. A very well written entry that could well become a major sideplot in a game to exploit. (trained groundsquid would be exceedingly useful in dungeon construction)
Yay for dragonmirth.
Fineous fingers, Wormy and Jasmine are together in the same issue for the first time. How often will that be the case, since neither JD or Tramp have been that consistent with their contributions.
Top secret gets a module, The Missile Mission. Eeexcelllllent :steeples fingers: Two teams of competing commies from russia and china try and get the scoop on a secret missile program simultaneously. Fun stuff happens, hopefully. As is typical for modules of this period, this is more location than plot based, which feels a little odder in a modern setting. But this still looks like it has the potential for much spy vs spy goodness.
They really pulled out all the stops for this one. Both size and quality are at a high, and despite its size, I don't feel the exhaustion and boredom I have getting through some of the recent issues. Hopefully that will continue to be the case, even as the issues get even bigger and more detailed. After all, I'm still only a small fraction of the way through this endeavour. The idea of spending 8/9ths of it bored out of my skull is not an appealing one.
