Let's read the entire run

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 7/10


Places of mystery: Greyhawk gets it's counterpart to Ed's current column, describing new places for you to adventure in. Of course, they don't have the same art budget here, so it's just descriptions. A cursed castle in an area infested by orcs, and with who knows what horrors in the lower dungeon levels, and a hidden citadel full of advanced Shadows that can teleport between any shadow they choose, meaning you're never truly safe once you've aroused their ire, no matter how far you run. As with Ed's recent works, these are presented as challenges too big for a regular party to clear out in one go, so you can have multiple parties exploring the same dungeon complex, and monsters replenishing themselves regularly. (which'll certainly happen if you face Shadows and aren't properly equipped) Since they're both surrounded by hazardous terrain, you can't expect to be able to run to the surface, rest up and go shopping whenever resources start to run a little low, or for the monsters to stick in their rooms whenever you're not around, and you'll have to plan accordingly. While you'll have to fill in all the layout details yourself, these are fairly flavourful little sketches that nudge you towards making brutal old school adventures that'll take sessions to solve and kill plenty of characters in the process. If you want to make stories that your players'll talk about the way Gary did back in the day, pay attention, because they're trying to show you the way.


A splintered sun: We've had stuff aimed at the DM, now for something a bit more player-centric. A knightly prestige class that puts a specific spin on paladin style virtue, with a test for entry? You can have plenty of those, and having them makes it more likely you'll have conflicts between good creatures who've simply prioritised one virtue over another. In this case it's physical and moral fortitude beyond normal endurance, and they get a special power that boosts their constitution when they drop to 0 HP, allowing them to press onwards for a little while longer and then die, or get away to get some healing before it wears off and they collapse again. Their mental disciplines include taking 10 on skills in stressful situations, and the ability to take a partial action even if surprised. So they will play a bit differently from regular fighters or paladins, while still being front-line melee combatants. Of course, the real meat is in the setting detail, not only telling us about their history, code of conduct and initiation rites, but also providing some sample NPC's of various ranks in the organisation. So this really demonstrates the advantages of designing your prestige class for a specific campaign rather than keeping it generic, and making your own, not just allowing whatever ones from official books your players ask for. At the very least, you should adapt them a little and give them places within your world.

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 8/10


Chainmail: While the big factions in the Chainmail game stick to one or two big races, you can also choose to mix it up with the free states, with a combination of humans, demihumans and humanoids to taste. I suppose people would do it anyway, so you might as well make it canon within the setting. As with the rest of this, it looks like they've gone to a fair bit of effort to come up with setting details to justify their combinations of creatures, and there's a whole bunch of different little city states that make up this area, so they could well be fighting amongst one-another as well. Basically, it's for the same sort of people who like playing Catiff in Vampire: the Masquerade. You get more flexibility in terms of powers, but considerably less social support, as members of an outgroup don't necessarily have the support of other minority outgroups, yet alone anyone else. Course, in a wargame where everyone is balanced by point buy, and setting is merely a backdrop, that isn't really much of a disadvantage unless there's some rules details I don't know about. Once again it seems likely that this is going to go the way of Dragon Dice, diluting it's strong original ideas in the follow-ups, and players choosing mixed teams of maximum nastiness over staying in theme. It's the CCG way. That's the difference being taken over by a company that had it's big break in another field makes.


Command points: Our tactical minis advice this month is another one that encourages you to go against type. Dwarves aren't noted for their ranged attacks, and since they don't have high mobility, hit and run tactics aren't their forte. But apparently they do have one unit with a powerful one-shot ranged blast, and if you time it right it can make a real difference. So you need to make it count by spreading out so you can shoot without worrying about suffering the penalty for firing into melee, and focussing your fire on the nastiest members of the other team so you can take them down quickly, which then lets you gang up on the remaining enemies when you close into melee. Sounds like it might work. Once again it feels like they're showing the influences from also playing M:tG, creating lots of highly specific monster variants just for the Chainmail game that have unique strengths and weaknesses to exploit. So this is good if you like that kind of highly tactical play, and growing annoyingly inescapable if you don't, as the longer they run a column like this, the harder it'll be to find players who don't think like that. What are ya gonna do? :shrugs:

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 9/10


Sage advice goes oriental again. Ahh, Skip remembers when this ate up years of questions back in the late 80's. Sweet nostalgia.

Do objects take half damage from unarmed attacks (No, but they're often immune to subdual damage. Also, watch for bruised fists)

Does sneak attack and iajutsu focus stack. (Probably not, since they know you're there. Maybe if your second stands behind them and distracts them at the crucial moment. How dishonorable.)

How often can you use falling star strike (Once per round, up to your stunning strikes limit.)

Does improved grapple let you do more damage (Not inherently. But surviving longer certainly helps.)

What happened to the great throw feat (Oops. Create Official Errrrfft: Oh maaaan. This has never happened to Skip before. Guess Skip will just have to use Skip's hands and sort this out manually.)

Where's the Isawa school spell list (They can choose any of the elements. Generalists rock.)

Can hengeyokai assume big animal forms (No.)

What does a bird hengeyokai look like in hybrid form. (Hands at the end of the wings. It looks goofy, but they can still fly.)

Do hengeyokai ability boosts apply to animal form (no, only human & hybrid)

Can nezumi attack with a weapon and bite at once (If they have a hand free. Yes. this might not make complete sense.)

What AC penalties do masterwork Dastanas and Chahar-aina have (None)

Can you combine them with elven chain (no)

If they have an enhancement bonus, do they stack with regular armour (No. Only the best, as per usual stacking rules.)

Why does a kappa shell weigh more than a living Kappa (Um, Er, Um. Cumulative swamp gas! When they die, they fart lots of helium! )

Would a monk with 2 tonfas have any extra attacks (No)

Do Shugenja element foci stack with wu jen elemental powers. (no. )

Do multiclass shugenja element forbiddances also apply to other classes (no)

Can a wizard learn wu jen spells (no. Nor vice versa.)

Do maho-tsukai cast water to poison using int or taint (taint)

What good is being a eunuch warlock for sorcerers (Good question. It's probably not worth it.)

How can wu jen become blade dancers with incompatible alignment (Oh dear. It's errata time. )

Can you use ki whirlwind with iajutsu strike (Oh yes. Talk about lawnmower. )

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 10/10


DM's toolbox: We've already talked about formats to build your campaign, and then record the things that happened in it. Now we talk about building a website for your campaign. This is one case where the advice already seems a little dated, despite it only being 10 years ago now. This is still before the rise of wikipedia, and the corresponsing rise in creative commons driven collaborative creation. So while the things that you want to do might not have changed, the tools you have to do them with have been radically reworked since then, and that changes the assumptions of how you go about this. The garish custom pages of geocities or myspace have mostly faded away, although you can still find a few old examples cached away if you know the url to put in. So the generalities here are still handy, but the specifics, less so. Unless you deliberately want to go retro with your webpage design, which is very much an option for flavour.


What's new tries to quit the fantasy for modern day comedy, but just can't get away. Sigh.


Looks like things are starting to go downhill again, with the amount of rehashed material rising rapidly, and some half-assed ideas and artwork rounding out the issue. Still a fair amount of interesting experimentation though, and it feels like they're actually reacting to the feedback they got from 3e's release in developing their new articles. But how much of what they're learning will be retained when it's time for the next rules revision? Well, that'll still take a while to reach anyway. In the meantime, let's see how funny the latest april issue is.

Dragon Issue 294: April 2002


part 1/10


116 pages. Beefcaaaaaaake! Yup, it's a good ol' shirtless sun deity for the female readers on this month's cover. Well, it's not as funny as Phil Foglios cheesecake last year, but you can't have everything. And at least it's appropriate, as the other theme this month is deities. So it's pretty obvious they're not going to go for full-on zaniness this issue, but they may have a few jokes slipped in. Let's see if the fun and usefulness will be segregated or integrated (or maybe diffracted) this year.


Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, some page foldback visible.


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: Another tale of the staff deliberately playing their characters stupid, and finding this actually makes the game more fun than being taking it all very seriously. Finding an obvious, easily imitable speech pattern and then using it until everyone is thoroughly sick of it. We've definitely covered that before. As a staple of 80's cartoons, I think I speak for all of us when I say that's insmurfably smurfitating, and also somewhat resmurfed. While last time I was in the mood to indulge this, this time I'm not, especially as it was an official playtest. We've all seen what happens when you let the whimsy levels get too high when creating modules. You end up with crap like WG7 or 9, and hurt the credibility and continuity of your established campaign worlds. (unless we're talking dragonlance, where another bit of comedy goofiness would be just a drop in the ocean) We all have to let off steam sometimes, but you don't want to do so in a way that messes up your future prospects.


Scale Mail: Our first letter is quite happy to have more plant monsters to throw at the enemies. I'm not objecting to that at all either.

The second is rather grumpier, being very cynical about the way they brought back the Saurials in the magazine, and suspecting they're going to try and sell them to us again in a book in a few years as well. Money for old rope. They point out how little rehashing they actually did in the past year. They only brought stuff back when there were multiple letters asking for it. But if that's what the people want, then eventually they'll have to give in.

The next letter proves that point, with someone who loved the saurials, and has read all the novels featuring them. Get Jeff Grubb to write some more!

Rather more up to date is someone asking for Chainmail tactical advice. Still probably sent a few months though, since they already started doing that. Smartasses.

We have two letters supporting the magazine's overall direction and mix of article types at the moment. There may be more complainers than a few years ago, but they shouldn't let that bring them down, especially with the increased readership. It just shows they haven't become an echo chamber.

A request for a Githyanki language primer. Unfortunately they've phased that regular out, and don't plan to bring it back, as they didn't feel it was popular enough. Oh well. Can't please everyone.

A rather amusing suggestion that you play a one-shot using characters from your real life, only secretly involved in secret and often outlandish schemes to take over the world. Yeah, that could definitely be fun. It'd be like playing World of Darkness in your home town turned up to 11. Just don't let the stories get back to those parodied, or you'll never hear the end of it.

And finally, we have another amusing letter afraid that Paul Kidd's novel versions of the old dungeon crawls are now the official way those happened in Greyhawk, and Lolth is dead for good. I think she's now a little too iconic for them to kill off for good, even for the most zealous of metaplotters. They only did it with Takhisis because Dragonlance wasn't selling enough to get it's game books renewed, so they didn't expect to have to keep on moving the timeline forward after that.

Yay, we're finally back to physical copies that I still own and haven't vanished over the years of moving. :happydance:

Dragon Issue 294: April 2002


part 2/10


Yeagar gets judged by the gods on his cruelty to nodwick. Apparently, they aren't too bothered.


D&D Previews: Another sign of gearing up for epic level, we see tons of gods statted out in Deities and Demigods. This does not work as well as in 1st ed, partly due to the general inflation of power, and partially because 3rd ed makes constructing your own legal god stats an almighty amount of mathematical work. Not one of their finest hours.

The Realms gets a double bill of books. Realms of Shadow shows us the aftermath of the archwizard's return. And another magic heavy series starts up. Spellfire: Shandril's saga by Ed Greenwood. The rules of the universe being changed IC and OOC can drive quite a few stories.


Up on a soapbox: Pit traps! Now there's something that needed inventing that you can easily overlook when it isn't there. Hell, you can easily overlook them when they are there, because the whole point is to surprise people and make them suffer. Amusingly enough, that only came afterwards, once Gary had introduced open pits and let the players get used to that idea. And after that, he rapidly progressed to increasingly sophisticated combinations of spikes, monsters and secret doors within the pits themselves, falling blocks to make sure you don't get out, and all those other devious mechanical contrivances we eventually got an article on back in the late 70's. A good reminder that the exploration part of the game was given more attention in the early days, dungeons had lots of nonlinear stuff that you might not encounter on your first pass through, and obstacles that would kill you in one fell swoop if you were careless or unlucky were a lot more common as well. Making dungeons fair or safe? What's my motivation as an evil archwizard to do that? Unless you actually want people to come in and get enough out of it that they tell their friends and come back as part of some longer plan, which is always a possibility, and how the big long-lasting dungeons in the Forgotten Realms are obviously set up. A strong reminder that back then play was more adversarial, and less concerned with creating a coherent world behind the challenges you created for your players. Whether that's a good or bad thing is very debatable, but it once again put the lie to recent letters who claim 3e D&D is more hack and slash oriented than the old days. More than 2e, yeah. More than OD&D and 1e? Nope, no dice.


Epic level countdown: Woo. D&D gets the top taken off it's progression. Be it 20th, 30th, 36th, or 40th, they never managed to truly escape the level caps before. But now they can. Unlimited power! Clunky little execution. Get ready for DC 100 skill checks that have effects a wizard could achieve with a 1st level spell, some epic feats that actually do cool stuff, while others merely increase your ability scores by a point, and an epic spellcasting system that causes wizards to draw even further ahead of other primary spellcasting classes the farther you push it. The bigger you make the numbers, the more obvious the drastic differences in flexibility between the classes become, and the more any mathematical trickery can open a gulf between characters of the same level in terms of actual competence. They really ought to playtest the higher level stuff at least as much as the low level stuff, because it's obviously so much harder to get right. Well, at least they tried. And if they're doing a full 6 month lead-in, we'll get plenty of time to look at the bits which were more and less effective individually. Should be a decent amount to talk about here.


Kev is not pulling his weight in zogonia. You need a strong stomach to be an adventurer. Dork tower makes player choice irrelevant. Seems a bit ironic for a muskrat to face a marmot.

Dragon Issue 294: April 2002


part 3/10


Kev is not pulling his weight in zogonia. You need a strong stomach to be an adventurer. Dork tower makes player choice irrelevant. Seems a bit ironic for a muskrat to face a marmot.


Beings of power: Our first article in the theme is a bunch of leftovers from their latest book. Sigh. As Iuz, Pholtus, Rao and Tharizdun weren't in the corebook, but do play fairly substantial parts in Greyhawk's history, they decided not to include them in Deities and Demigods, and give them to the magazine's readers, who are probably more likely to be aware of D&D's wider history. And there'll certainly be plenty of people still annoyed at what happened in the Greyhawk wars who'd want to kick Iuz's ass in a fair fight. Which since he's only a rank 3 demigod, is within the bounds of possibility for a non-epic party if they can catch him without his entourage or take an army along to engage them in turn. The others, not so much, unless you can pull the kind of trick that makes CR irrelevant. So this feels like an attempt at a cross-promotional article that'll alienate as many as it sells, revealing just how horrendously unwieldy deity statblocks are in 3e, so they know what they're getting into before they spend the money. In that respect, you could call it a public service announcement. At least that's better than a vague or misleading advert that'll only reveal the problems after you've paid the money.


Ramming speed: In a rather leftfield turn, we have an epic article that isn't part of either of their nominal themes this month. An 18 page treatise on vehicle building and combat in D&D? They ought to have put that at the front, not the cuttings from their latest book, and found a couple more articles to complement it. Marketing fail.

Even more interestingly, the rules here aren't the same as, and are quite a bit more involved than the vehicle combat rules that appear in d20 modern later this year. It covers sailing and flying, even underground diggers as well as land vehicles, and has a lot of examples, complete with construction details that show how much they cost to make and repair. (and you know that with the scrapes PC's get into, they're going to be spending a fair chunk in the chop shop if they want to keep their ride running, and even more if they want to customise it with the latest stat boosting accessories ) Which means this is the kind of article you can get quite a bit of use out of, especially if your players get into the optimisation game with their vehicles as much as their characters, and devote a load of time to making them as effective as possible with the money they have. Which makes it pretty appropriate for the 3e era really. It's always nice to see them go to the extra effort, especially it looks like they might not get the proper credit for it.


The windsinger: Following directly on from the last article is a ship based prestige class. The Windsinger is one of those highly specialised prestige classes that's pretty useful within their speciality, and a bit weak outside it. Weather manipulation is a pretty useful power, it has to be said. But considering by the early teens, wizards and druids can do all that, plus a ton of other stuff, this still isn't a particularly high tier prestige class. Still, it does get full BAB and an excellent skill selection on top of it's powers, so they aren't devoid of balancing factors, and make a decent nautical alternative to Rangers & Bards. And it does fit a common literary niche. So I'm not going to throw it overboard or make it walk the plank.

Dragon Issue 294: April 2002


part 4/10


Words to live by: Robin Laws follows up on the goofiness in the editorial with a piece on catchphrases. This is basically the same idea as his piece on proverbs in issue 278, only reskinned, showing once again he has no problem recycling ideas if there's a pagecount that needs to be filled. Only this time, it's sillier, to fit in with the april theme. So here's a whole ton of catchprases general, race, and class specific, along with advice on when to use them. (and not overuse them) Many of them are instantly recognisable from various media sources, and a lot of them are more than a little silly. If you do pick one, make sure you don't use it more than once or twice a session. As a half-serious article, there is some use to be got out of this, but there's also the real possibility of it being wrong for your campaign, and spoiling the tone if incorporated. So mixed feelings here, as befits the mixed result of this article.


Adding injury to insults: This, on the other hand, I don't have a problem with, as Robin trying to create a social combat system that works with the existing D&D rules and doesn't completely gimp characters who aren't built with it in mind is an interesting challenge. Fortunately, 3e does have a reasonable number of social skills to key it off. But unfortunately, he requires you to take a whole new subskill to become really good at skewering another's reputation, and includes a lot of feats that will be completely useless if you aren't using this new subsystem, which creates the kind of problem psionics suffered in 2e, but avoided in 3e - that of old characters winding up defenceless against new ones. Still, it does have some really neat bits as well. Making gaining and losing reputation work on a monthly scale, with a limited number of attacks allowed per month makes it fairly difficult for one person to completely ruin someone else on their own which reflects real social dynamics. You'll need to persuade others to gang up on them if you want them to become complete outcasts. Plus the penalty for doing it unprovoked discourages being generally bitchy just for the hell of it. (of course, a real social wizard can always engineer a failure to then take advantage of. ) And the death spiral means it's difficult for someone who's reputation is ruined to effectively hit back, which I think fits with modern tabloids as well. While it has it's balance issues, I'm overall inclined positively towards this one, as it has enough cool bits to interact with that it'd be pretty interesting in play, while not being overcomplicated. It's nice to have articles that are more ambitious than just more spells, monsters and prestige classes.


Nodwick has a particularly epic adventure this time, but in the end, the status quo is reset, just as ever.


Class acts: And here's the other half of the nightsong equation, the Infiltrator. While the enforcer gains better combat abilities at the expense of their skills, these guys sacrifice their backstabbing for better defensive abilities and ninja-esque enhanced skills at sneaking, breaking and entering. The two complement each other well, and are best used as part of the same guild. When Monte created prestige classes, one of his design goals was to help give campaigns more flavour by tying special groups of abilities to specific organizations, and this is a good example of him leading by example. They get reprinted in splatbooks for both 3.0 and 3.5, and fit in pretty well to Ptolus. If you're playing an underworld focussed campaign, they come recommended.

Dragon Issue 294: April 2002


part 5/10


Bazaar of the Bizarre: A huge wodge of deific items here. Not particularly funny, but still useful. Just watch out for the bad guy's stuff. If anything's going to malfunction in your hands, it's god-keyed crap.

The Adjudicator goes from bow to sword at your command, and is a +4 weapon either way. Another minor space saver that'll be handy to a follower of any religion except maybe pacifists.

The Axe of Grounding is Moradin's way of making dwarves even more stolid. It soaks up electricity with great zest, then uses it on your next victim. Course, if it was from their natural attacks, they'll probably be immune to it. Hey ho. So it goes.

Bags of Fools Gold are another gnomish invention. They do keep themselves busy. Ready money anytime, as long as you're ready to be long gone before the consequences come due. Teach people greed doesn't pay.

Boccob's dust of maximisation is also pretty obvious. Sprinkle it around while casting for metamagicy goodness. Quite neat for low level characters.

Caps of Reason don't actually make you smarter, but they do give you a bonus to diplomacy, and amusingly a bonus to AC for if the diplomacy fails. So you should make a good negotiator anyway.

Ehlonna's Orb of the Earth is a charged item that casts a bunch of earth manipulating spells. No great surprises here. Trap 'em in the mud.

Gauntlets of Grummsh give you a strength boost and protection from good. No great subtle tricks here, as befits the target audience.

Girdles of Breath Weapon Resistance are Kord's idea. Not only do they protect you, but the rest of your party too. Way to be a team player dude. That'll really save the party.

Inquisitor's Whips are a tool of Iuz's oppression. They bring the pain quite satisfactorily. That means you can get them to agree to stuff they really shouldn't. Ahh, the joys of being chaotic evil.

Wailing Stones are similarly unpleasant, being magical maces endowed with fear effects by Erythnul. Still, they should kill you much quicker, with less suffering. Small mercies maaan.

The Mask of the Dead is of course Nerull's idea. it helps undead appear human, so it won't be much use to most PC's. Next!

Meersalm Salve is supposedly derrived from Heironius' skin, and grants damage resistance like his. Celestial sweat? You really will need to be humble and unconcerned with appearances then.

Mirrors of Overland Travel allow you to get a birds eye view of your surroundings. Now you can be Link, rather than the usual first-person fighter, which has it's advantages.

The Necklace of Soul Switching is Vecna's method of giving his favored immortality without lichdom. It makes a decidedly poisoned gift, as your body will become occupied by someone else. Should make for nasty intrigue plots.

Necklaces of Water Mastery are for Obad-hais worshippers, showing his versatility. Obviously, they're full of tricks for the seafaring, allowing you to breathe underwater, or play jesus as you please.

Flutes of Diversion are Olidammara's new item. They produce a whole bunch of sonic based illusory effects to help you trick your way out of a crisis. Not hugely surprising.

Hextor's Skin is nasty black armour that gives you a big boost to intimidation. Perfect present for that special Blackguard in your life.

A Ring of Recall are so elves can get back to their hidden homes unobserved, keeping secrets from even their co-adventurers. Always got some secret up their sleeves, don't they.

Pelor's Wrath is a staff with his spiky holy symbol on top, this means it makes a pretty badass weapon along with the magical tricks. Buff your buds and kick butt.

Starburst Insignia are Saint Cuthbert's method of keeping the clergy orthodox. Resist those blandishments, root out those heresys. He's as unlikable as ever, I see.

The Rod of Entropy is a device by Tharizdun that can open up a rift in reality. This is instadeath if you put people through it. A wingman and high strength would probably be useful to use it to it's full potential.

Wee Jas's Symbol of True Death offers a decent amount of passive protection against undead, but can also be used as a returning Shuriken. Just another reason why she's an awesome greater goddess.

Yondalla's cape of Halflingkind gives you social benefits and boosts halfling's racial bonuses some more. And that's your lot for now, in one of the more grindy selections I've had to deal with in a while.