Let's read the entire run

Dragon Issue 286: August 2001


part 6/7


Sage advice: When an arcane spellcaster gets a domain, do the spells count as arcane spells (As long as you're the one casting them. Other people haven't put the work in, so they don't get that privilege. )

When you get extra spell slots from prestige domains, do you need to fill them with domain spells (well, duh. But only divine casters get that bonus.)

If you have more than one spellcasting class, can you choose which one prestige classes stack with (Maybe. Read the individual descriptions.)

If prestige classes have separate spell lists, do you have to track them separately (yes)

Are all spells sacred fists cast restricted to touch range (No, We decided that was dumb in the development process. Cast Official Errata time! )

What spell levels do sacred fists get domain spells for (The ones they can cast anyway. Meh.)

Do sacred fist's unarmed attacks stack with their monk levels (no)

Do their evasion and uncanny dodge stack? (Yes, actually)

What 0 and 5th level spells do sacred fists get. (None. Cast Official Errata!)

Do hospitalers get cleric spell levels that stack, or separate ones (Stacking ones. Cast Official Errata! )

Does hospitaler undead turning stack (yes, at -2 level. Cast Official Errata! Maybe Skip should retrain as a sorcerer. All this erattaing is sure using up Skip's high level spells.)

Just how fast do horses really go? What about when they're encumbered (What time is it? It's table time! Let's spread out the jams!)

How many vampires & ghosts can a master of shrouds summon. None. More development bumpfh we didn't erase. Unfortunately Skip has used up all Skip's erratta spells for the month, so this one will have to stay unofficial. )

What does the battle rod give bonuses too. (Saves against fear)

Can the knight of the chalice affect lower planar creatures other than demons. (No. We'd say if it did. )

Can rangers and paladins worship gods of different races and alignments (I guess)

Can a wizard/cleric's familiar deliver cleric spells by touch (Yes. This does not stretch to psionics, though. )

Can you use spells from one class to affect spells from another class (Yes unless we say no)

Can you multiclass as two different cleric classes (No more than you can specialize in more than one wizard school. Yes, we're no fun, Skip knows.)

What counts as an attack for the purposes of protection from evil (Anything that will have a direct negative effect aimed at you. Intention counts for a lot when morals are involved.)


The play's the thing: Robin's article this month is a direct riff off last month's one. Where that talked about breaking stereotypes on an individual level, this talks about individual cultures breaking with racial stereotypes. Which is very similar indeed, but on a broader scale. In this case, you'll probably want fewer traits that outright defy their racial tendencies, as we're talking about a substantial aggregation of individuals here, and more that add a twist to them, or are simply orthogonal to what we already know. Otherwise you fall into the other problem of asking why they're that race at all. This again smells like padding, saying the same thing again in a slightly different way to fill time and space until another new idea comes along. Is he working on something else as a main project now, and just dashing these off to make a little extra money? Zzzzz.

Dragon Issue 286: August 2001


part 7/7


Dungeoncraft: Meanwhile, while Ray might be repeating himself, he's once again doing it better than last time round, giving us new angles on building a homebase that shows he's learnt from the last time he did it. Careful consideration of scale for the map, sketching out the mechanical details of the area, and a refinement of the taxation system introduced last time all fill out information about the world. This reveals that while 1st level characters won't have much chance against the guards, they will rapidly outpace them, and I'm pretty sure they'll be running roughshod over the security measures by 10th level. I suppose that's another thing about 3e many designers haven't picked up on. Because advancement is so much faster and there's NPC classes to choose from as well, it's easier to justify having a range of levels in your everyday folks, making them less fragile and easily exploited. If he gets to do this a third time with the benefit of a decent amount of actual play, this will probably turn out differently again. So really, this shows that some things lose impact with repetition, while others improve, and worldbuilding definitely rewards repeated practice. There's so much to learn, and so many different ways to go about it that it shouldn't get boring, even after you've made dozens of different worlds. So put the work in to get better if you want to be a great GM.


PC Portraits: This column isn't part of the theme for a change, as using named characters would kinda miss the point. Instead, they set a fairly big name free to do whatever he likes. And the result sure does have a lot of ear and nose rings. And a slightly feline looking pope. With the overall emphasis on savagery and tribal dressings, most of these would be pretty appropriate for the world Ray's developing at the moment. So it does seem pretty fitting with the overall direction of the magazine at the moment. Let's keep things punk for a little while longer before moving on entirely.


Role models: This column has a sudden attack of executive meddling, being tied into their new Chainmail minis game. And so they give you advice specifically aimed at those minis, and large scale wargaming in general. If you're going to paint 'em all in a reasonable period of time, you'll need to start practicing those mass production techniques, doing one part on each model, and then moving on to the next one while letting that bit dry. So this is somewhat more advanced advice than they've done before, but it also has very cynical motivations promoting the latest product. Guess this column continues to have a fairly unstable position in the office making it the first in line when they want to shuffle things around. I am very dubious about it's prospects for long-term survival.


DM's toolbox: This column isn't quite as obviously promotion as the last one, but it does have a commercial agenda. Making you feel that you need all sorts of physical widgets to make your game run better, so they can sell you something in the future. Aka the health & beauty mag approach to manufacturing demand. People might want something, but they don't know it yet, and you make them want it by social pressure and advertising, telling them they're incomplete without the latest style, and their friends will look down on them. Buy buy buy! Fill your room with knick-knacks! Preferably official ones, but 3rd party products are better than nothing. Whatever happened to using your memory? This isn't a direction I'm keen on.


Dragonmirth is very topical indeed. That's what happens when you assign value to intangibles. What's new rules the world. What a fun job to have. Put aside your tears and fears and go for it.


This definitely qualifies as an interestingly different issue, even if it isn't that great overall. And it does make them feel like they're more connected to the outside world again, experimenting with novels outside the company, and miniature wargaming again. If they can couple that with good writing, they can continue to avoid the repetition that plagued the late 90's quite nicely and broaden the magazine's appeal along the way.

Joe410
has no status.

Registered User

Join Date: Jul 2012
Posts: 8
Novice (Lvl 1)

Click to expand...

Reported

Sorry I haven't added any comments lately, unreason. I still read and appreciate this herculean effort, but I've been busy and stressed from work, planning a move, upcoming Gen Con plans, and getting my books revised.

I don't remember being too impressed with this issue. It didn't help that I never read these books. And wow, that forum message. I'm not surprised that the forums days are numbered after this sort of thing.

Dragon Issue 287: September 2001


part 1/7


82 (116) pages. For a while now, since 3e started, the covers have been closer focused on the characters rather than the backdrop. But this is the first one that outright neglects it, showing nothing but the action pose. That kind of laziness hasn't been seen since the 70's. Not a pleasing development. On the other hand, the fact that this month's topic is the planes is pretty pleasing to me. I always love a good otherdimensional trip. Will they seem as fantastical under 3e as they did before?


Scan quality: Medium, unindexed, ad free scan. From this point on, the ad free scans really start becoming prevalent.


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: Looks like it's time for another change of editors, as Dave Gross takes a sideways jump to edit other magazines. This always fills me with trepidation. All the more so because unlike Tim, Kim or Roger, who you could tell were running out of steam before they left, Dave has slowly and steadily improved since he got the job, and this last year has easily been his best. So it seems likely there's going to be more format changes in the near future. The only true constant is change. But will it be for better ……. Or for worse? As this point it could well go either way. Better get ready to roll on that initial encounter reactions table, and hope the result is friendly, not attack on sight.


Scale Mail: Good god, the attempts to sex up halflings gets a lot of responses. They publish 5 of them, and make it clear there's a lot more where that came from. Two are negative, and three are positive, showing that this has split the fanbase right down the middle, and may run for a while. People don't like it when you meddle with the classics in a disrespectful way, even if your intentions are good. You don't have to be misunderstood to be disliked.

Speaking of the classics, we have a request for more historical period specials. That's another idea that would allow them a good few years without repeating themselves, especially if they avoided the overdone ones that already have lots of full books.

Some good old mechanical errata proves that fact checking everything on time in the fast-moving world of periodicals will never stop being a pain in the ass. It's no wonder editors burn out.

And finally, Dungeoncraft gets some praise, and some questions. Ray answers them no problem. That kind of audience interaction should keep him popular with the fans.


Previews: In conjunction with the issue, our big release this month is the Manual of the Planes. Jeff Grubb returns to not only give the planes another rejig, but encourage you to create your own cosmologies. Well, such is the nature of D20. Twisting it into all kinds of odd directions is part of the fun.

The Realms gets no sourcebooks, but a double bill of novels. Baldur's gate II: Throne of Bhaal and Temple Hill. So the crossover between computer games and game products is still proving a reliably lucrative business.

Dragonlance continues to fill in setting as the timeline advances, with Bertrem's guide to the War of Souls. Will he have time to share any cooking recipes in all this cataclysm?


Nodwick is about to go plane-hopping. Remember, this is not a tourist trip.

LordVyreth said:

Sorry I haven't added any comments lately, unreason. I still read and appreciate this herculean effort, but I've been busy and stressed from work, planning a move, upcoming Gen Con plans, and getting my books revised.

I don't remember being too impressed with this issue. It didn't help that I never read these books. And wow, that forum message. I'm not surprised that the forums days are numbered after this sort of thing.

Click to expand...

I expect things'll pick up when we get to the last year or two before they finish. This has been going on so long I'm not surprised people run out of things to say.

(un)reason said:

I expect things'll pick up when we get to the last year or two before they finish. This has been going on so long I'm not surprised people run out of things to say.

Click to expand...

I'm still here too, but you've gone beyond where I stopped reading the zine.

Dragon Issue 287: September 2001


part 2/7


Up on a soapbox: Gary's finished trying to find out exactly what a role-playing game is to all of us. Now what? Ancient actual play stories! Why, he remembers it like it was yesterday. Well, as someone who's read through all the issues from back in the day now, I can safely say that the amount of contemporary written material is way smaller both in number and size of books, which leaves obsessive old schoolers forever hungry for more information to sate their curiosity. So here we get to hear about what was possibly the very first recurring villain in a D&D game, an evil dwarf with boots of speed and a repulsion ray shooter, which allowed him to escape and have multiple encounters with the players before being finished off for good. Which of course made them hate him all the more. This is a good demonstration of how if you want monsters to survive more than a single encounter, you need to build them accordingly, because D&D does not make it easy if you play by the RAW. But it can be done, and it can be made fun. And let's face it, it's the things that were hard to pull off that we remember most. They had to step out of their comfort zones to make and publish D&D in the first place. We still ought to be doing the same in our games.


Dork tower switches genre, but the violence remains.


Dreamlands: We start our planar articles with one emphasising the toolkit elements of the new MotP. Where should the plane of dreams go in your cosmology if you have one? Jeff Grubb manages to find justifications to fit it in all 4 of their classifications, with fairly substantial differences between each of the versions. In your multiiverse, are dreams little universes you create when you sleep that end when you awake, or are you tapping into something big and universal, that may or may not have a ruler, and may or may not be that easy to visit physically. So this shows off a fairly substantial change between this and 2e. They've well and truly abandoned one true wayism and big convoluted metaplots (Forgotten Realms aside) to encourage you to build your own setting instead. So this is very cool indeed, and jam packed with ideas to steal, mix and match for D&D or another system. I think it fully deserves to be a leading article.


When celestials attack: One problem we've encountered before is trying to make many of the planes good for adventuring in. Too much conflict, such as the instant lethality of some elemental planes, and an adventure is difficult to keep going. Too little conflict, and it never starts in the first place. But still, it's not that hard to come up with reasons for conflict in the upper planes. There's tons of celestial beings of varying alignments, power levels and priorities, and I'm sure the PC's can manage to get on the bad side of one of them by doing something morally ambiguous or short-sighted. The weaker ones can be dogmatic and inflexible, while the more powerful ones have complicated sets of priorities as they try to do the most good over the long term, and sometimes sacrifices need to be made. So this looks at a broad spread of celestial beings, and what their particular triggers are likely to be. It does a pretty good job of reminding us that they're not a homogenous group at all, and your experiences should be quite different depending on where you are and who you talk too. The kind of stuff that provides plenty of non rehashed adventure hooks, and shows us what we can do with all these fantastic universes out there. Which hopefully'll get some more people using them, instead of popping off to the abyss for another slaughterfest. And I do value variety.


VS Celestials: Having come up with plenty of reasons why you could end up in a fight with celestials, it's time for the mechanical advice on how to deal with it. They assume that you'll want to stay on the side of light, and take them down without killing them, which further affects the tactics they advise. They tend to have fewer weaknesses than their evil counterparts, so this is a fairly tricky one to advise upon. Disrupting their vast array of spell-like powers does seem like a good idea though. And if you're neutral or evil, then using those spells that are super effective against good creatures will make things easier (particularly protection from good's enforced pacifism thing. ) Still, don't expect it to be easy. Best advice is to outnumber them, given how many more evil creatures there are in the monster books than good ones.

I also am still reading and appreciate your amazing dedication to this task.

Sent using Tapatalk 2

Dragon Issue 287: September 2001


part 3/7


Fractious Factions: Yay! Stronger mechanical support for Planescape Factions. Just the sort of thing 3e ought to be doing with it's ruleset. Course there's the issue that they were originally intended as minor adjustments to your character suitable for any class, and making them full 10 level prestige classes with substantial requirements to get in goes against that, making the prestige class the most important part of your build. I'd have kept them as 5 level ones at the most. But hey ho, let's see how these hold up mechanically and in faithfulness to the original flavour.

Athar have the same issue as Blackguards. The ones who get the most respect are the ones that converted from the other side, rather than just starting out ambivalent. And since the best course into them is cleric or druid, I think you can safely say that they'll be pretty effective once you get over the two dead levels at the start, and will kick the ass of other CoDzillas with ease with their resistances to divine powers.

Ciphers, on the other hand seem a bit superceded, now that everyone gets initiative modifiers, and the powers they get are basically a variant monk set - individually cool, but not hugely impressive when considered as a whole package. Still, at least they're pretty good at resisting and escaping situations. Proactivity, though? Not gonna bring it.

Sensates get enormous bonuses to their sensory skills, which is appropriate, and very useful indeed for adventurers. That +20 at 10th level should let them spot all the ambushes and secret doors a fair DM throws at the party, and scent and blindsight are just generally handy, aren't they. Sometimes the spellcasters just don't have the time to get their defences up, and you need to rely on the guys who've honed it into an innate power.

The Doomguard are another one that seem a bit underpowered, mainly because they don't get the full BAB progression that would really make their combat boosts worthwhile. Their spell list doesn't really match up to an assassin or blackguard's either. There are definitely more efficient ways of becoming an agent of entropy than this.

The Fated prestige class isn't particularly underpowered, but it does miss the point a bit by having a power that's sole purpose is to buff others. The whole point of the faction is that they don't do anything for anyone for free, or ever accept something for nothing. They do get to be highly competent skill-monkeys, with enough healing, combat and generalist skills to make a good solo character, which does seem fitting. Just trade off the dodgy ability for a couple more skill points a level.

Xaositechts are as fun as ever. Lawful creatures will find them tremendously frustrating and difficult to deal with, while other chaotic creatures will simply roll with it and do better. So while it has made some alterations, this is mostly faithful to the 2e incarnations of the factions, while leaving room for you to develop similar prestige classes for the other half of them. And I'm sure there's plenty of people who'll do that and submit them to the magazine or post them up online, so that gap won't go unfilled for long.


Expand your mind: Bruce Cordell continues to be lead Psionics guy, writing both OGL expansions to the system, and sending in magazine articles for it. This time, it's 16 new feats. Some, but not all of them will appear in the 3.5 psionics handbook as well, often with some further tweaks. So this is the kind of article that's significant because it shows us that they're creating new stuff, trying them out in their homebrews, and getting feedback so they can tweak them before making them official and releasing them to a wider audience. That's the way the creative process works best. And the fact that some of them didn't make it in means this is still interesting and possibly useful once you have updated, if you don't mind slight balance issues.