Let's read the entire run

Dragon Issue 292: February 2002


part 7/10


Bad seeds: We continue to make the wilderness more dangerous by updating a whole bunch of plant monsters from previous editions that they left out the monster manual. After all, when you're slimming the accretions of 11 years down to 256 pages, the less popular creature types only get a few examples each. You can only use them so often before the players get bored, especially as they don't normally gain class levels like humanoids. So what do these add to our wilderness trekking experience?

Death heads trees are a very familiar face from Ravenloft, creeping people out, then spitting their seeds into them. Fortunately, they aren't very mobile, so if you see one, bombard it from maximum range and hope you can outpace any heads that detach and float after you.

Greenvises are one I don't remember, but wouldn't be surprised if they're in some obscure old book. They emit acidic gas to weaken a party before they strike, which looks like it'd mow through a weak group. Once again, steering clear is a good option, made harder by their skill at camouflage.

Myconids are another one I'm surprised didn't get in the new monster manual. But then, they have a very complicated and interesting ecology that it takes quite a bit of space to describe, plus they're not particularly aggressive, so the back to the dungeon types wouldn't want them putting too much ambiguity into the game. Bah.

Needlemen are also familiar, and of course ranged fighting is their schtick, so the boot may be on the other foot if you get lost in alpine forests. And since they can pincushion you pretty effectively, you'd better have some good artillery or be good at using the trees as cover.

Orcworts are like yellow musk creepers, only they grow their own humanoids to attack things and turn them into fertiliser instead of taking over existing creatures. This does mean you'll face more of them at once, and they'll be in better condition, which makes them a good variant for higher level parties. After the body horror loses it's shock value, you just want to get to the fights.

Red Sundews are much more mobile than most large plant monsters, so you can't just leave behind the problem of a giant sticky tentacle monster eating up everything in it's path. So this is mostly old monsters, but they're still goodies. It's all too easy to forget plants, when they're such an important part of our environment, and you can make them into interesting challenges quite easily.


Nodwick gets shown up by the forces of nature.


Elminsters guide to the realms: Ed gives us another out of the norm minidungeon for adventurers to visit, explore, maybe find a few cool items, and then come back too later and find new secrets each time. A mysterious floating rock with several different hidden rooms in it, each with their own challenges and rewards, this is the kind of place that probably won't kill you, but may well leave you befuddled, and if you push your luck and try to destroy the whole thing, teleported hundreds of miles away without your companions. Intermittent rewards and interesting but nonfatal challenges. Sounds like exactly the sort of thing that irritates people, and makes them all the more determined to unravel the puzzle. and of course, that kind of teleportation gives the DM a great excuse to drop players in whatever other plot they have percolating in the back of their mind, until they're high enough level for easy scry/teleport solutions to get back together. Ed's writing continues to be both fun and whimsical, which will probably make for entertaining play, as long as your players don't take things too seriously.

Dragon Issue 292: February 2002


part 8/10


Campaign news: More elaboration on how they try to keep organised play fair here. While you can get more money than the recommended amount in the DMG if you get lucky in adventures, you can only spend that quantity on magical items, any excess will have to be saved until you level up again. Plus as they don't want people knowing all about the adventures from their friends, or letting them get too dated, they're putting use-by dates on them and keeping up a constant churn of scenarios for the duration of the edition. Another reminder just how much (probably poorly paid) work keeping the RPGA running is. Obviously the limits on how many scenarios a character can participate in in a year'll keep them from experiencing every adventure, but it's still very possible to stretch the limits of the system, and they have to constantly work to make sure it doesn't break. Credit to all the volunteers who are responsible for hammering out the details of that thankless task.


Blood golems of Hextor: Well, that's a title that's completely self-explanatory. And the article doesn't disappoint, with a suitably gruesome monster that unfortunately requites regular topping up, so you can't just leave it in a dungeon for centuries to guard a room. As it also has a slow speed like many golems you could probably lure it away and wear it out if the priests aren't paying attention and giving intelligent orders. So this is a decent monster to fight, but PC's wouldn't want to bother creating and maintaining one themselves when they could go for a regular stone or iron golem that'll last for lifetimes. Also in the same article is another monster, the Marodin. Pacifistic humanoid plant creatures, they seem to have been included mainly to showcase the fact that the narrator, Enchiridon the Fiend-Sage, is not a nice creature at all, and will engage in all sorts of cruel experimentation in the name of gaining knowledge. So the framing device works quite well this time, and sets them apart from Elminster and Volo's basically benevolent investigations. When an article is presented in character, it does raise the question of the reporter's agenda. And you should definitely watch out for that in a war-torn world like Oerth.


Playing Pieces: To balance out the two new monsters, we have two new half-elf characters here. A female Druid, and a male Ranger/Arcane Archer. Both have animal companions, and the typical half-elf problems fitting in, so they're more comfortable in the wilderness than social circles. Which means they're exactly the sort that you'll run into, and maybe end up fighting or needing help from. They're well integrated into specific parts of the setting, and seem to be pretty tightly done mechanically. These are a definite improvement on most of the old articles introducing new characters. If you complain enough, the writers do eventually listen, even if they don't always do what you want because of all the conflicting voices. I don't think anyone wants more errata though. Can we get a consensus on that of all things?


Chainmail: This month, it's the goblinoid horde we find out more about. Not too surprisingly, they're led by a hobgoblin, even though hobgoblins aren't the most powerful of creatures, but they're organised, and close enough to human shape that they can use all the really awesome magical gear conveniently. Indeed, their leader got to be in charge by owning a magical axe and slaughtering his way through anyone who questioned his right to wield it. As usual, they have a wide variety of stuff to field. Orc Druids particularly add to to their firepower and ability to survive in harsh terrain, and they also have trained animals such as the savage war apes to serve as shock troops. Looks like they have less self-control issues than the gnoll forces, which is very interesting to note. (although almost definitely more than the undead, which we have yet to see) Plenty of variety while still maintaining a solid theme once again seems to be the watchword, so even when you're facing a particular side, you won't always be able to predict what creatures you'll face and what tactics will be best. Which I still approve of quite a bit.

Dragon Issue 292: February 2002


part 9/10


Command points: Speaking of offbeat creature combos, that's exactly what the second Chainmail column covers. 4 sample warbands for you to try out, with analysis of their statistical pros and cons. All are fairly small, thinking on the skirmish scale rather than large engagements, and most of them have some variant ideas so you can field almost the same team again without it being too predictable. This once again reminds me of how they handled spellfire, and the way that was responsible for introducing CharOp thinking to the TSR offices back in the day. And now it's gone from something that was looked down upon, to something that they actively encourage amongst their players, and regularly do themselves. You can get a near unlimited amount of columns from examining statistical minutinae, as the Ecologies prove. So this column has found a niche that they should be able to stick with as long as the game stays supported, especially if there's more supplements coming regularly to keep upsetting the balance. Question is if people'll get bored with twinking advice or not. Surely not. They eat that up on the forums.


Sage advice: Can you get a synergy bonus for a skill you lack (Sure. Dig that picked up peripheral maan.)

Can you get intimidate bonuses for being ugly (Never, ever, make a penalty a bonus save in a plot sense. This is absolutely against the game's design philosophy. The rules nazis will beat down your door and drag you off to our slave camps if you dare. And Skip will watch you and laugh. )

Do you have to jump the full distance you can (no)

Which modifiers stack on jump checks (Calculate Base speed first, then add other stuff onto that. Type bonuses apply as usual.)

What happens if you jump farther than your speed. (You pause in mid-air until next round. I'm sure there's an order of the stick strip riffing off that.)

How high do you go in a broad jump (1/4 the distance leapt. Basic law of parabolics. Well, it is in D&D anyway. Speak not to Skip of Realism! Watch you don't bump your head on the way out.)

If you jump in the air, do you take damage from falling. (only any extra beyond the up)

Can you do multiple tumbles in a move (sure. You still won't go as far as if you walked. )

What's a caster level check (Roll d20, and add only your appropriate caster level. Self-explanatory much?)

What's the DC for the caster level check needed to use high level scrolls (The Scrolls Caster level + 1. Essentially, 5% chance of failure per level below the one needed to cast normally. Behold our clever mathematics.)

How does a bard cast wizard spells from scrolls (If it's on their list as well, no biggie. If it's not, you'll have to get your use magic device skills out)

Can anyone use a wand of bulls strength if they know the trigger (no)

Can you use arcane legerdemain with more than one skill (Yes. Choose a new one each time. No you can't use masterwork tools with it. Skip has answered that one already.)

Do barbarians automatically become literate if they multiclass (Unless it's to totemist. Oops. Skip can't know that yet. Retcon time! )

Are mounts automatically proficient in Barding. (No. Only if they're war trained. )

Dragon Issue 292: February 2002


part 10/10


Silicon sorcery: A double bill of conversions this month, making up for the more fluffy advice last month. Monsters from Kohan Immortal Sovereigns, and feats from Evil Islands. Once again they're trying to do the genre emulation thing, and convert video game tropes to D&D, only in a more balanced fashion than some of the previous attempts. Outright save games may be more than a little silly, but the ability to carry more than your strength score would otherwise indicate, or roll to avoid the worst of a critical hit are pretty reasonable uses of a feat slot. Similarly, the new monster is a reasonable enough mid-level demon, that has some magical abilities, but not as many as a D&D demon of similar toughness. You can incorporate both into your games without any problem I can see. So this column is still a good supply of interesting and slightly leftfield ideas to add.


DM's toolbox: Creating a newszine for your campaign world? There's an idea we've seen before, sometimes taken way too seriously. It's all too easy to get into worldbuilding for the sake of worldbuilding, creating things that'll have no use in actual play, or that'll eat up so much time that they actually impede your ability to prepare and run good games. Fortunately, this column is back to being both snappily written, and very specific and practical indeed in it's advice. Short, consistent amounts of information delivered on a regular basis, with decent formatting that you can reuse between issues, which makes things look more professional and take less effort at the same time. Deciding whether the info is IC or OOC and sticking to that writing style appropriately is a good idea, and allows you to present fallible or incomplete information to your players as appropriate. And of course coming up with a decent brand name really helps to give your campaign a strong identity. I approve of all this advice.


Dungeoncraft: While the toolbox keeps things short and snappy, Ray is really building up the the finale of his lost world campaign setting. We finally get to see some characters that PC's couldn't beat at starting level, and big secrets that could last them the length of the campaign. Not too many though, for as Ray reminds us, you shouldn't make more work for yourself than you have to, and statting up a 17th level ghost wizard intelligently would definitely qualify here. Save the hours long optimisation fests for shortly before the fight, because if you do them a year in advance at the start of the campaign you may forget the details, or find the players are the wrong level when they do meet them, and that matters a lot more in the new edition. It's important to work smart as well as hard if you want to get many things done. Now let's finish this for good.


What's new sheds their inhibitions. Not a good place to do so. Things will eat you.


One of those issues with a decidedly lackluster themed section, but a decent set of regular articles. There's also more rehash than there has been for a while, with two of the articles devoted to providing stats to things from previous editions. After last year's clean slate, that's vaguely tiresome, but I guess there is a lot of material from back then that people do want to see. Still, hopefully they'll keep adding new ideas, and not just drown in nostalgia for a while longer. Let's see what next month has to offer.

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 1/10


94 (116) pages. Worldbuilding is this month's topic, and the cover reflects that in a literal, yet nonstereotypical manner. You wouldn't want to piss off this earth goddess knowing you could be smitten with a power drill the size of Ireland. There's not a reflex save high enough to dodge that below epic levels. Still, a creation myth like that should encourage people to start developing technology early. Pierce the heavens with your mighty drill indeed. Let's se if the worlds they encourage you to make this time around are particularly generic or unusual.


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: Ah, the joys of canon. Keeping games up with continuity changes in books has caused more than a few arguments around a game table. But really, unless you're playing in the RPGA or the Camarilla, it shouldn't, for you can change the world at your whim as long as you maintain internal continuity with what's happened to the PC's. Canon can go to hell as long as the game remains fun. So a simple message from the editor this month, reminding us that the rules are different for the official writers and you, and you shouldn't hold yourself to the same standards they need to be kept too. Sensible. it should be a game for you, and a job for them, and not the other way around. But will this stop people from sending annoying letters in? Even a little bit? Anyone? :crickets chirp:


Scale Mail: Our first letter is praise for articles that they basically use as an excuse to point out that they misattributed the author of one of them. Who gets the credit? You won't unless you speak up.

The demise of Dragonmirth gets noted with dismay. They say it isn't gone for good, but promises are flexible things in the world of media. What was said to be originally a one-off for space reasons can become regular schedule messing around, leading to cancellation due to "declining popularity" that was caused by their own executive meddling in the first place. We've definitely heard this story before.

Another letter also involves proper crediting, this time for the cover artist of issue 290. If you get stuff like this wrong, you may well not get repeat projects. Even more than not being paid, people don't like it if they don't feel appreciated.

Completely unsurprisingly, converting only some of the planescape factions to 3e results in an immediate clamour for the rest of them. An unfilled symmetry is like a nagging pain to many people, and they will not shut up until it's sorted out. Just get on with it, will you.

On a different note, we have someone annoyed about the mechanics of leveling up magic items. Turns out they've misinterpreted them anyway. It's the maker who pays the heavy cost. Keeping it's powers appropriate with your level after that is relatively easy.

Their creative decisions in Oriental Adventures get defended. It's easier to put crossovers in afterwards than take them out if they're baked in. Any halfway decent DM can do that, especially in a fairly robust system like 3e.

Still, some people really loathe 3e. we have one writer who thinks it's totally kiddified and all the changes suck. Since their readership overall is up, I don't think they're going to be changing things back to please the holdouts.

And finally, we have someone unhappy about the reduced size of recent issues. They pass the blame onto the advertisers. I know in many magazines they actually provide more money than the customers, and wind up having more say in what gets put in. Anyone know what kind of ratio Dragon had in that area?

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 2/10


Nodwick goes vertical. That means extra pressure from the weight of objects above. That's gotta hurt.


D&D Previews: Not a lot going on again. Bastion of Broken Souls brings their adventures up to 18th level. And it looks like it'll get you to epic levels, if you can survive to the end of it. Good thing the rules for that are pretty imminent. If you do that, perhaps you've got a hope at derailing the Realms' current metaplot, as the Wizardwar reaches the end of it's trilogy. Maybe not, but it's the thought that counts.


Up on a soapbox: So why the hell did dwarves gain an ability to detect sloping passages in D&D? A general benefit to mining stuff you could understand, but why that weirdly specific power? Well, that is an interesting story, and stems directly from one of Gary's more sadistic little tricks. A dungeon complex that gradually sloped in such a way that players wound up going round in circles as they went down the stairs, round and gradually up the corridors, and then back down again. Obviously they got wise eventually, and so the arms race started. I think that's a good example of how the smaller an environment is, the more idiosyncratic the things that evolve there. The feedback from a few campaigns in the 70's is going to have far more random bits shaping the game's evolution than thousands of groups worth of playtesting in the 3e. And that's obviously why, for better and for worse, 3e is a more universal system, designed to resolve everything the players may think of trying with the same framework. Years of input from different writers will gradually expand and homogenise anything.


Profiles: Ray Winninger doesn't get a photo, but does get a longer profile than usual. He's definitely had quite an interesting career, mixing computer game design with pen & paper RPG's, and actually making a decent bit of money from both, which I think demonstrates quite handily how much bigger the RPG market was in the 80s and early 90s. His first game, Underground, still has a cult fanbase despite being put on ice by the company, and pretty much abandoned. He has a whole bunch of other campaign worlds and game mechanic ideas, many of them unpublished, which also look quite interesting. Obviously, given his interests, he sees the gap between RPG's and computer games blurring in the future, with programs to facilitate roleplaying, and games with sophisticated enough AI to allow some meaningful communication with NPC's. And as is often the case, history shows progress has been slower than you'd hope. All we can do is keep plugging on, and hope we aren't too set in out ways to appreciate them when they get there.

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 3/10


Wills are tough to make. Particularly when they're not being done by the deceased, as in Zogonia.


At the table: Oooh, they actually remembered to scan in the bonus stuff this month. Nice. So here's a whole bunch of little gridded locations for your PC's to wander and have fights in, presumably scaled to the size of the current D&D minis line. That could come in handy. Course, printing it out I'd have to be careful about getting the scale right, but I think that's a solvable problem. That adds a mark or so to this issue.


Dork tower does nothing to improve the image of gamers in the eyes of their SO's.


Small gods: Animistic cosmologies are pretty common in fantasy universes. Being able to talk not just to big gods, but a whole range of smaller demigods and lesser spirits that extends all the way down to ones of individual objects that a starting PC could beat up no trouble opens up a lot of plot opportunities. It also makes the world feel literally alive, as you know there's always a ton of things surrounding you, watching. In that kind of environment, superstition can thrive, because particular gods are not omniscient or omnipresent, so you might get a result for your observances and offerings, but then again, you might not. You also have to constantly do your research to keep up with the local spirits, which means the DM may need to do more improvising to answer the players questions. So while some writers may set it as default, getting heavily into animism does take quite a lot of work. So the main value of this article is that it's one of those ones that can get you to examine your unconscious assumptions, and play with them deliberately. What will you make of this idea, and how will it differ from the standard stereotypes?

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 4/10


T.V. Structure: Designing your campaign more like a TV series than a simulation or a novel? Yup, Robin Laws is up to his usual tricks. Stuff like series bible, concept sketches, episodic stories with an overarching plot for each season and putting the spotlight on different members of the ensemble in particular episodes can all be used in an RPG, and will hopefully result in a faster-paced campaign than just setting them loose in a sandbox. Of course, there is the omnipresent danger that either the players or the dice might not play along and he warns you against making your plans too precise. You can't expect them to do a hot springs episode when there's a world that needs saving in a few months time. Nor can you make one person the star indefinitely without destabilising the game in the long run. You'll almost definitely benefit from discussing the character generation and rough season arcs collaboratively, rather than making it up on your own and expecting the players to play along when they don't know which direction you thought they'd take. As this both gives you a cool idea and warns you of it's pitfalls beforehand, I think it counts as one of his better ideas. Just don't try and model your campaign on a painting, lovingly detailed, but ultimately completely static. I don't think that would turn out so well.


Countrycraft: Meanwhile, Ray still thinks that creating a setting with a whole bunch of characters and plot hooks, and then letting stories happen organically, is preferable than trying to force players into a particular plot. Still, as he's pointed out before, creating a setting and keeping it alive can be a lot of hard work. So any mechanical help is always welcome. Such as a 3e updating of the Birthright domain management rules, taking advantage of the new skill system to improve the amount of control PC's have. There's still a fair amount of bookkeeping involved, but the character sheet for a nation is smaller than that for a PC, and the war system is pretty quick to resolve. So obviously this is less innovative than the previous article, but it still has the aim of creating a fun game. Worldbuilding is definitely one area where one size doesn't fit all. And 3e could definitely benefit from bringing back domain level play, so I approve of this.


Monsters with class: We already opened 3e monsters up to becoming PC's almost universally. And we saw LA adjustments introduced soon afterwards. Now they give us LA adjustments for nearly all the existing monsters in the MM. Of course, the problem with these is their tendency to overestimate power levels, resulting in creatures that are actually unplayably weak at their supposed LA, especially if they choose class levels that don't complement their racial abilities. Trying to create a balanced game when you have creatures with an enormous variety of capabilities is an exceedingly tricky task, especially as levels are a fairly granular measure of power. So this is a reminder that they're trying for game balance in their design at this point, but still a long way from getting it perfect. This is going to be a long rocky road, isn't it.

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 5/10


The elemental planetouched: Tieflings and Aasimar were popular enough to be put in the new MM. Now we update their elemental counterparts, in one of those articles where they use the magazine to get feedback before putting them in a book and making them fully official. These are pretty straight conversions, with the same ability modifiers (albeit doubled to fit the 3e formula) and innate spells as their 2e versions. All are LA+1 to match with the existing planetouched. The main forward development is the idea of racial feats that allow you to enhance your natural abilities, which is definitely something that catches on and becomes more common before being made core next edition. So this is another article that shows their progression through history, and the magazine's integral part in that. The official books would look different if they didn't have this to test out and fill in details.


Campaigning with class: Right back at the start of 3e, we had an article on the point of prestige classes, and how the selection the DM allows should be used to define your campaign world. This is basically a repetition of that, with the benefit of a year of supplements to draw on for examples. You want a particular types of game? Here's the existing prestige classes that would be good for that, and the books where they can be found. (gotta collect em all!) So this feels like a slightly cynical bit of rehash, designed to get you using their prestige classes, albeit not all of them at once, and hopefully playing multiple D&D campaigns instead of moving to another system once you level up to 20+ and finish one. Even if they're no longer supporting tons of different campaigns at once, they recognise that players need a certain amount of variation to sustain interest. But you'll have to do some of the customising yourself. Not getting much helpful from this I'm afraid. Moving on then.


Nodwick's party help design a universe. Design by committee makes it far worse than any of them could have done individually.


Elminsters guide to the realms: Another inn that adventurers would probably rather enjoy staying in this month, as it has plenty of potential to lead to adventures both within it and elsewhere. The Missing Minotaur has Harper links, and like any place that deals with troublemakers, the innkeeper has a number of tricks to deal with patrons who get rowdy. While the notes are as interesting as ever, the map is one of the less useful ones in the series, with it's perspective not being as clear about the layout as most. It's al about picking the perspective, and side-on doesn't work quite as well as top down or isometric. Oh well, it's not as if we're short of maps of inns to steal, mix and match. Just can't get the help sometimes.

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 6/10


Bestiary loses it's definite article. From three words to one. Next thing you know they'll start clipping syllables. Anyway, this month's theme is a return to wolves. Since they last showed up as a topic halloween 1991, they're well due a revisiting. As it should be, they take a different theme to the last time. Where that was horror oriented, this draws upon native american style animistic spiritualism, merging wolves with various elements. Goddammnit, didn't I say that this is exactly the kind of thing you should be using templates to cover. And I must admit the combination of wolves and animism feels more than a little played out after 10 years of W:tA. So this provokes negative amounts of enthusiasm in me. The fact that these are all aways chaotic or neutral evil further dampens my mood.

Thunder wolves appear in storms, and then go again when the weather clears. They are, of course, immune to electricity.

Mist wolves feed off your fear, and hit and run from mist, making them perfect for Ravenloft. Since they're also incorporeal, quite a few parties'll be defenceless against them.

Sea wolves are coated in matted seaweed, and fight you on the beaches. They don't seem to keen on attacking actual ships though, unlike the lycanthropic seawolves.

Shard wolves are all jagged bits of rock, and appear out of fissures after earthquakes. As usual, their digging ability means they may well disappear just as mysteriously when things turn against them

Magma wolves come from lava, and rather like burning stuff. They'll destroy the plant life if they hang around for any time, so get them away from the village before they ruin the crops.

Cloud wolves are obviously the most likely to show up anywhere. Fly down, zap you with breath weapons, blow you over. Still meh.


Class acts: Monte returns to the driving seat with one of his more interconnected creations, the Nightsong Enforcer. Taking the general idea of thieves guild that is common to fantasy settings, and giving it his own spin, this is the first of the specialist classes associated with the guild. They're combat focussed rogues, designed to work in teams to get into places and take out enemies of the guild with great prejudice. They'd be a good addition to an adventuring party, especially if there's another rogue in the team to play off. After all, it's not possible for a rogue to specialise in all their class skills, so having multiple thiefy types can be very handy and not niche stealing if they focus on different abilities.