Let's read the entire run

Dragon Issue 297: July 2002


part 7/10


Class acts: Monte finally gives us a spellcasting prestige class that can stand up to a straight spellcaster. The Master of the Secret Sound. Quite a tricky one to get into, your best options are as a straight bard, or a wizard with a couple of levels of rogue, and mastering it before epic levels will require some seriously finicky character building. (bard/ur priest combo for the win again.) However, doing so will be worth it, as it lets you replicate the effects of 9th level spells without the components or costs. Daily Wishes without your XP being drained? Not to be sneezed at. The other characters'll have to do some serious optimizing to keep up with that. It's also generally useful before then because it's effects don't require somatic or material components, so if you're captured and all your stuff taken away, you'll be way more effective than a standard wizard, still able to pull plenty of tricks. So before 10th level, it's a fairly flavorful and balanced class.You'll have to consider carefully if you want to nerf that pinnacle power a bit, so it still requires you to at least pay the XP and expensive material component costs of the spells you replicate.


Guild secrets: This looks like it's going to be a regular column for a while, and gets in the themes as well, with a guild that's small because it has fairly stringent entry requirements. On top of that, their entire purpose is making sure only "worthy" people get to epic level, as if it's an in setting conceit rather than just a system one. While that can work in some settings, like the forgotten realms, where the system and setting are pretty tightly integrated, I'm not so sure I want that in my generic D&D. I think it's more the implementation than anything, as they managed to sell Druids only having limited numbers of top guys in earlier editions. But the layout here is just reams of text in not very appealing colour combinations, and the red on brown headers aren't very easy to read. There might be room in D&D for a world spanning organisation that preserves the balance and looks kickass while doing so, but this ain't it, especially as we got a better one just a few articles ago. The editor should have junked this and sent them back to come up with a different idea to prevent rehash within the same issue.

Dragon Issue 297: July 2002


part 8/10


Elminsters guide: Most of these guides are illustrated in friendly nature tones, greens, blues, yellows and browns. This month we go for a rather starker palette, a snowbound cavern in the far north. Given the hostility of the surroundings, you might well take shelter in it on the way to somewhere else, which leads to more complicated adventures. Especially if your players take the prophecies delivered by the cryptic oracle at the bottom seriously. That will only have funny results for they are very much false. Once again, the fact that Ed is the only one with enough detail in his worldbuilding to hide amusing red herrings amongst the significant parts of his world and have it feel natural is fairly significant really. What other settings have managed this kind of detail. Maybe I should look into the more obscure supplements for Glorantha or Tekumel, since it's been a long time since either of them appeared in the magazine, and I know they've had tons of development over the years. Surely someone else is managing the same kind of detail, albeit with a different flavour, and I think I'd like to sample that for the variety.


Campaign news: They continue to tweak the Living Greyhawk rules, in some ways becoming more restrictive, and in others less. The rules on living in a particular real world region to run an adventure in a particular Greyhawk one are causing problems, so they won't be strictly enforced for large conventions. However, magical items are now a bit trickier to make, requiring you to actively collect appropriate ingredients in your adventures, and the number of adventure formats is being reduced. Shows once again that they don't always get it right, and a living game needs constant adjustment to stay functional. For the moment, the overall trend is towards more rules. Will that ever reverse? Looking at most governments, it seems unlikely.


Champions of vengeance: Our other greyhawk article this month is another prestige class, along with the extra history and sample characters they can get away with thanks to it being anchored in a specific world. The Knights of the Chase are basically chaotic good rangers (although it's pretty easy for other classes to get in too) who specialise in tracking and punishing miscreants when they catch them. Basically divinely empowered bounty hunters, they gain two appropriate animal companions, enhanced throwing skills, and the ability to magically enforce their punishments. They seem decent enough, especially since their spellcasting at 10th level is equal to a 20th level paladin or ranger, giving them plenty of room to get a few levels into another prestige class before hitting epic levels. After all, every group hates it when an adversary repeatedly escapes and becomes a recurring villain, especially if they use cheaty tricks to accomplish it. I can definitely see players wanting to specialise their builds in making sure that doesn't happen again.

Dragon Issue 297: July 2002


part 9/10


Command points: Chainmail is missing this month. However, we're still getting some minis coverage, with a bunch of new scenarios, using the extra rules in their latest release. Yup, it's the usual tie-in thing. The interesting thing is that with advancement rules, and the option of troops coming into a scenario injured and fatigued, they further narrow the gap between the RPG and the minis wargame. This further increases my interest in buying it, as it shows they're pushing the boundaries of what they can do in the format, and making it even easier to blend the two. The individual scenarios are pretty sketchy though, and don't really grab my attention. Mixed feelings, but at least some of the stuff is again proving cool. Could be a lot worse, as the mid 90's showed.


Nodwick becomes a third wheel as Yeagar goes epic. At least, until Phil Foglio shows up. Now there's a real epic level character, even without his hat.


Silicon Sorcery: Ico! Now there's a distinctive game to steal from. Minimal design, stark visuals, and a small selection of monsters that nonetheless present some very interesting challenges, especially as the primary objective is not fighting them, but getting the princess to safety over various obstacles, rearranging the landscape so she can reach the door to the next area. The shadow creatures from the game are slow, but resistant to normal weapons and inflict lots of knockback. So this is another instance where converting as directly as possible from a video game results in a creature that doesn't play like any D&D monster pre 4e, which is very interesting to note indeed. Powers which cause knockback/shifting open up a whole load of interesting tactical considerations, that can definitely make for a fun game, and it's nice to see them implement the idea in an easy to understand and use form here. Whether this is actually one of the influences for the greater emphasis on powers that move you around in the next edition I'm not sure, but it is a good foreshadowing of that.

Dragon Issue 297: July 2002


part 10/10


Sage advice: Can an oozemaster bring their equipment with them when they malleate ( Yes indeed. This may not be pretty. )

What can you do while in ooze mode (Normal speed, squeeze through 1 inch cracks or greater, normal senses, lack of manipulators may be a problem.)

Does going malleable provoke an attack of opportunity (no)

Can you share malleability (If you have the share spell power)

Are animal lord companion HD restrictions lifted (no)

Do tamer of beast levels stack with druid and ranger ones (oh, very much so. )

Do druid shifters get any more animal companions (no)

Can shifters change type before 10th level (no)

What abilities does greater wildshape grant (physical stats, natural and extraordinary powers. Not brilliant, but still highly abusable.)

Can you mimic a particular person with greater wildshape (not perfectly, but you can get a pretty good disguise bonus with it.)

How familiar is familiar for the purposes of shifting. (Any complex action where you get a good all over look at their body, like fighting, or the other F word. )

If I morph into an orc, do I get their standard equipment (No, but your regular gear reskins itself to fit in. If you have greater wildshape, you can get playful with what melds and what doesn't.)

If you use greater wildshape, can you lose body parts and not have them revert. Does this let you use poison (Yes and yes. This has it's limits though.)

Does faster healing actually penalize you if you take complete bed rest (No. God, Skip wishes someone hadn't nicked his Create Official Errata spell from his spellbook. )

Will infusions with long casting times take ages to take effect (No. Preparation kicks ass.)

How much money can you save by growing your own herbs (All of it. Given the money you can make adventuring in that time, this may not be a long-term saving. )

How does languor work ( Verry brutally. At high level, this is a quick path to incapacitation. )

What damage does thunderswarm really do (A total of 16d6. Probably not to everyone though.)

Can forsaker inherent bonuses stack with others or exceed 5 (no)

Does rancor work on ranged weapons (Yes, at any range. Sniper rifles ahoy! )

Can you stack foe hunters SR with other items and inherent bonuses (Yes, with some awkward restrictions. Go go mathematical weirdness. )

Can geomancers use spell versatility to help them prepare spells (No, only casting them is aided by that. Skip will have to be strict with you on this one. )


What's new shows us what changes, and what stays the same as you advance in level. Thankfully phil got reset, so he can enjoy the climb all over again.


Well, that issue was definitely a struggle, with a few good bits and cool ideas weighed down by the sheer weight of numbers. Appropriate really. It's very frustrating to see them trying really hard, and sometimes succeeding, yet still failing overall because of the flaws in the framework they're working within. And of course, the closer the problem is to the core of the system, the harder it is to fix. Guess they'll have to live with it for the next 5 years, and do what they can. Or just try and keep things below 20th level in 99% of their articles. Suppose I'd better read on, and see just how often they reference and add to the epic material in the rest of this edition.

Dragon Issue 298: August 2002


part 1/10


116 pages. The dodgy covers continue. Man, those dark elves have been whitened up even more than Beyonce. Can't a sista get a realistic positive role model these days? Yup, it's time for another themed issue on the ever-popular drow and their underdark homes. The various core demihumans have been updated to the new edition with various degrees of grimdarking. Will drow be left unchanged, since they're already fairly dark and have a full wardrobe of fetish gear, or will they try and go even further to make them interestingly eeeevil. Guess I'd better turn the pages and be thankful they can't make razor edged ones on electronic books.


Scan quality: Slightly fuzzy, unindexed,


In this issue:


Wyrms Turn: This column is still shrunk to the point of inconsequentiality, and gives us another piece on the joys of reskinning. Change the name and colour palette, and you can make even the most played out monsters seem fresh, at least for an encounter or two. This certainly applies to Drow, who have enough unusual fiddly bits that changing, say, their spell-like abilities or giving them tremorsense instead of darkvision will make an actual difference to the way they play. I guess as usual, the devil (or maybe the demon ) is in the details. But there's not enough detail here to make this satisfying reading. Jesse's editorials don't seem to be improving with time at all. If anything, they're getting worse. You know, you could just skip them if you don't have anything to say a particular month. You don't have to bind yourself that tightly to formula if you aren't being forced too by upper management.

Dragon Issue 298: August 2002


part 2/10


Scale Mail: Thomas Harlan's new short story gets some attention first off, with readers curious if there's any more to come. Why absolutely, my dears. Go buy his full books and stuff, and we'll see if we can get any more little stories out of him.

Our second letter isn't so positive though, being very pissed off at the mechanics of a particular prestige class. Requiring Rage and Expertise is a suboptimal and stupid requirement, and it's too specific for the concept. They remind you that more than one prestige class can fill the same concept in different ways, and the DM is also free to houserule mechanical details. This will not stop by the RAW obsessives, of course.

Two more letters think that the people getting upset about beefcake are silly and insecure. Like putting the odd bit of swearing in, there's a few people who are outraged, while the vast majority simply don't give a damn.

Rather more annoying is yet another sign of their slowly closing horizons. It used to be that they had fiction in the magazine virtually every month. Now they're cutting out even that little bit of non D&D material, and only publishing stuff set in their own campaign worlds, or by already published authors. And so the magazine will again become that little bit harder for me to push through without getting bored. At least there's still the minis stuff …… for the moment.

Another reminder than nearly anything could be given the chop is a request to bring back Role Models. They've moved it to the web where it's easier to find everything at once. Whether that's the real reason it was removed is another matter.


Zogonia shows at least basic competence this time. I guess they're learning.


D&D Previews: No D&D products this month, only novels. Once again, it's obvious where the company's priorities lie. Dragonlance gets two of these. The day of the Tempest by Jean Rabe and The Lioness by Nancy Varian Berberick. It may be a new age, but authors are still going to do quite a bit of prequeling in the previous ones. There's also The Living Dead, another straight D&D book, also by T. H. Lain. Is he a ridiculously fast writer, or is this a pseudonym or something?

(un)reason said:

Rather more annoying is yet another sign of their slowly closing horizons. It used to be that they had fiction in the magazine virtually every month. Now they're cutting out even that little bit of non D&D material, and only publishing stuff set in their own campaign worlds, or by already published authors.

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The same thing was going on with White Dwarf. In the early days I remember they had cool little stories between all the miniature and gaming stuff, but as years went by I noticed less and less of it.

(un)reason said:

There's also The Living Dead, another straight D&D book, also by T. H. Lain. Is he a ridiculously fast writer, or is this a pseudonym or something?

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It's a pseudonym. As I recall, there were something like four different authors writing that series, and the decision was that it would be best if they were all filed next to each other at the bookstore - hence, the same fake author's name used for each of the nine books.

Johnathan

Dragon Issue 298: August 2002


part 3/10


At the table: Well well. So this is where Paizo are created to take over the magazines. I was wondering. This is definitely one of those cases where they try to sell as a positive something that must have been tremendously worrying and stressful for all involved. Spinning off the magazine side of WotC into it's own company, so their successes and failures are now all their own puts them in a rather more precarious financial position. Which I suspect might have been the point. Given the rise of the internet, and the way the OGL has worked out for them, the idea of wanting to licence out the risky parts of the operation, keeping only the most profitable in-house does make sense. Of course, the interesting thing is that if that was their intention, it kinda backfired, given Paizo's success with Dragon, and the way they kept the 3e fanbase afterwards when WotC didn't. If this hadn't happened we wouldn't have Pathfinder as we know it, and whatever group did try to keep 3e going wouldn't have the legitimacy gained from years of monthly content and having once been part of the official WotC umbrella. Looking back, I can definitely say that this is one of those forks in history where things could have gone very differently if a few people in the right position had made different decisions. This is one of those cases where there was almost definitely some serious behind the scenes political stuff going on, and I'd be very interested to find out about that - what led up to this decision, how long it took, who was for and who was against it. Because after all, it shouldn't just be about the articles, but how they got there as well.


Flesh for Lolth: In which Robin Laws goes completely over the top in his description of drow society, making the degree of unpleasantness in the old Drow of the Underdark book and various FR novels seem tame. They aren't just evil, they're Eeeevil from before birth, with killing and eating the other foetuses sharing their mother's womb standard procedure! They need to make sacrifices equal to 1% of their city's population a week to keep Lolth happy! (which means they're always on the lookout for new supplies of slaves and traitors) Treachery is essential to advance in their society! (but it has to be the right sort of treachery) If they do manage to live long enough to die of natural causes, this is shameful, not respected. The whole thing goes through grimdark and out the other end to become funny, and I'm not absolutely certain if he's in on the joke and trolling the other magazine staff and readers or not. Funny how the cultural differences of 10 years ago can sometimes be more jarring than those of 30 years ago, because you don't expect them.

Richards said:

It's a pseudonym. As I recall, there were something like four different authors writing that series, and the decision was that it would be best if they were all filed next to each other at the bookstore - hence, the same fake author's name used for each of the nine books.

Johnathan

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Yeah, a list of who was involved (including Dave Gross, Dragon Editor) is on Wikipedia if you're interested.