Let's read the entire run

Dragon Issue 301: November 2002


part 5/10


From Field to Cauldron: Another article of the uses of mundane alchemy? You surprise me. Yup folks, herbalism is actually getting a decent amount of attention this edition, so someone who maxes out their alchemy skill can feel like it's a valuable contribution to the party arsenal. It's certainly a lot cheaper than the stuff in the previous article, although since you'll be paying each time, it might add up over the course of an adventuring career. While more limited than actual spells, this stuff is actually pretty cool, with tricks like ice adhesive, waterproof ink, and several different types of specialised injury relief that make hunting down these herbs very worthwhile for tactically astute adventurers. They may not ever become as ubiquitous as flaming oil and 10 foot poles, but these are another solid bit of stuff to fill up your backpack with.


The ecology of the troll: The new fashion for dry, encounter-focussed ecologies continues in this issue. While there is some info on their lifecycle and mating habits, the majority of the article is once again about fighting them, just like the vs articles. Might as well not use the old name for this one. This one doesn't provide a lair, but puts quite a bit of attention on their potential class capabilities. Yes, we get it now. Nearly anything can become anything in 3e, but some things are better suited to some classes. Ho hum.


Guild secrets: Another thieves guild for this column, this time focussing on long-term scheming. This is helped by the fact that the leader is an elf with dragon blood, which gives him a pretty extended lifespan in which to gradually develop ideas, pick the right people, and groom them for greatness. Course, this kind of long term planning means they're actually pretty vulnerable to a direct application of force, and a high level party with decent divination spells might be able to get the resources together to do it. Since a group can go from 1st to 20th level in a matter of months if they're lucky in 3e, blindsiding them and leading to a dramatic ending where the villain goes "NOOOOO!!!! This can't be happening!!!" definitely sounds like fun to me. Plus since they're good investors, I'm sure the haul you can get from this adventure'll be huge. So this column is short, but pretty usable.


Dork tower fails to realise why it's contributing to the problem.

Dragon Issue 301: November 2002


part 6/10


Elminster's guide to the realms: Sometimes Ed's characters play it smart. Sometimes, though, they're just dumb, and kept alive by fiat. Such as this one. Another character that's given special powers because Ed wants a more literary feeling character than the D&D rules accommodate. Let's face it, D&D diviners are THE most badass speciality of one of the most badass classes, especially at high level, where they're the kings of xanatos gambit long plans and always having the right counter to any challenge. No, it's just a woman who has visions when she touches magical items, and any attempts to majorly inconvenience her have resulted in obnoxious feebleminding direct from Mystra herself. Really, what can you do with a setup like that. It automatically turns the character from an adventure in themselves to a mouthpiece for the DM to give you cryptic plot hooks. So yeah, this is the kind of railroading plot device character I really wish we'd outgrown by now. Sure, the Realms has a whole load of legacy ones baked in, but you don't need to keep adding more! Sigh.


Fiction: Cause and Effect by Paul Kemp. Our other bit of Realms material this month, on the other hand, is pretty good. Paul once again brings a darker, more morally ambiguous edge to the Realms. While the high wizards may be pretty much untouchable, the cities are still full of rogues and scoundrels both guild affiliated and independent, and they're constantly engaged in backstabbing power games with permanent gruesome consequences. Still, as with the Erevis Cale stories, he doesn't make the protagonist of this an outright monster. He may be sorely tested, but in the end he takes the merciful path. Of course, that may come back to bite him in the ass later, because no good deed goes unpunished, but that's a story for another time. In the meantime, it sets up another character who has a good deal of potential, and shows you how to create a good story with minimal dialogue. I object to neither of those things.


The ad free scan fails to excise everything. The complete guide to dopplegangers by goodman games gets a rather entertaining before and after picture.

Dragon Issue 301: November 2002


part 7/10


Campaign news: Still trying to maintain a degree of continuity between adventures here, despite the headaches it causes. Advancing the metaplot based on the average of the module results, while making sure that characters don't become unplayable forever if they did things out of order, and changing the rounding rules so groups wind up even closer to the correct challenge level for their size and composition. Pretty dull stuff really. The big ship requires constant small corrections, to make sure it doesn't go off course and wind up in big trouble later. Let's see what feature they've cooked up this time.


Greyhawk's beggars union: We've already had a thieves guild this month. Including a beggar's one too feels a little overspecialised. But then maybe that's the point, since swashbucklers are urban adventurers and likely to encounter both, and if the two conflict, it makes for good adventures when you're caught in the middle. And with plenty of history to draw on, the history of the City of Greyhawk beggars & thieves guilds turns out pretty interesting, with plenty of back and forth and ambitious gambits. It even includes the first canon gay Greyhawk character as far as I know, which is definitely something you wouldn't have seen in the TSR days. While this could have been longer, the fact that it's interesting, sneakily progressive, and well tied into existing history makes it pretty cool. They'll never catch up to Exalted (or even the Realms for that matter) in terms of pansexual antics, but at least it's something. Kudos to Erik Mona for doing that when he really didn't have too.

Dragon Issue 301: November 2002


part 8/10


Dungeoncraft: This column, like DM Toolbox, returns after a break and changes hands, showing that some of the staff did not go along for the ride when Paizo was formed, and probably won't be appearing in the magazine anymore. And just like the rest of the magazine, they're cutting out the fluff and larger scale setting detail to concentrate on encounters and modular parts that you can quickly slot in any fairly generic D&D world. Once again I have cause to worry about their decline in variety of material. Particularly as this is basically just Monte Cook just repeating and elaborating on his own writing in the DMG, reminding us how the scaling math works in 3e, and what exactly a balanced encounter is for various sized parties. As usual with a lineup change, it feels like a reset to square one, which is always pretty tedious for me, and the best I can hope for is that by heading in a different direction to Ray's material, it will start covering interesting new ground at some point. For now this is just another bit of filler that tells me nothing I don't know already.


What's new mocks the swashbuckling tropes, along with thievery in general.

Dragon Issue 301: November 2002


part 9/10


DM's toolbox: The advice here, on the other hand, is some quite handy stuff on pacing. Encounters of exactly your ECL all the time are BORING! You do need to switch things up with harder ones, easier ones, explorey bits, puzzles, interactions, the occasional cut scene. So far, so good. What I do find amusing is the idea that the average DM would find running published adventures goes more smoothly than their own stuff, when i've had so many experiences that are the precise opposite. Be it because they're trying to run the module without reading it first, or simply feel less free to improvise than when they've created their own adventure, I can think of quite a few experiences where the module bits have ground more than the self-created plots. (this applies even more to the WoD, where as much as I love the games, most of the modules suuuuuck.) So while the solution is perfectly decent, they're arriving at it by a road I haven't travelled down, which makes it more interesting by context. And that does raise an important point. Games get changed from edition to edition based on what problems actually get reported. And the ways a system breaks, or not, depends on how a group plays it. As we discovered over it's lifespan, 3e demonstrated problems when released into the wild that the playtesters never would have found no matter how long it was tested, because of the parameters they were set when testing. Which is why testing by people completely unconnected to the designers can be so beneficial. Once again, the lesson both IC and OOC boils down to "It's good to have variety."


Against that bloody misspelling, nodwick fights in vain.

Dragon Issue 301: November 2002


part 10/10


Sage advice: Does lightning bolt work underwater. (Does it say it doesn't. Don't you start quoting real world physics at me. Skip has no truck with that crap.)

Can you fly underwater (Generally, no. Some magic may alter this. )

Can you cast spells from inside an apparatus of kwalish (Not without opening the hatch and making yourself vulnerable. This is why mobile fortresses have high up balconies where the wizards can rain death while being out of range of mundane missiles )

Do rings need an action to activate (Standard. S-s-s-s-s-s-s standard action. Jellybean standard. )

Can you become invisible, attack, and become invisible straight away (See the last question. Or, in other words, NO!!!!! )

How many points can monks heal in battle. (As much as they want, up to their limit. Best to wait until you've taken enough damage to use it in one go, or they'll waste their actions.)

Does hide in plain sight require a standard action (Not necessarily.)

How are ability affecting enhancements affected by ability drain. ( They aren't. When your base score goes to 0, you're in the , no matter how many add-ons you have)

If a dragon has cleric spells, do they count as arcane spells (yes. They get it from their own power, not any devotion to someone else.)

Can you make a wand of empowered magic missiles that are still cast as if 1st level (no)

Can you counterspell spellfire (no)

Does negative energy ray allow a save (yes)

Can you make an attack of opportunity with a spell (No. But any spells already cast can still contribute. )

Do summoned red slaad implantations vanish when the spell expires (Yes. Hey, gang rape with no evidence. What a wonderfull..... Er I mean, if Skip catches any muthaa exploiting that rule, Skip will cap that sonofabitch in the nuts to make sure they never do it again. And lo, it will be righteous! )

Can a summoned monster summon other monsters. (No. We lost several planets to fiends due to summon cascades back in the last edition. No way we're making that mistake again.)

Can I teleport a petrified companion away (Yes, but he's gonna be a lot heavier. This may cause problems.)

Can you coup de grace trolls (Only with attacks that can do normal damage to them. This doesn't help, does it.)

Can you kill a troll with phantasmal killer. (If it believes it's dead, all the regeneration in the world won't save it)

Does bigby's forceful hand trigger an AoO (No)

Can unseen servants fly, Can they run, Do they take up space (Recycled question, no, no. In a lot of ways they might as well not be there.)


Hmm. A character sheet, and a spell area template in the back. Intriguing.


After the irritating but interestingly bad stuff of last issue, this issue returns to a fairly even split of competent, and competent but dull. The combination of sticking strictly to formula, and the generally low-key nature of the new crunch means it does not evoke the atmosphere the theme demands, and the sloppy looking artwork in the issue exaggerates it further. It feels like the edition is growing staler even as we speak. It feels far less surprising in hindsight that they wound up accelerating the revision cycle. I'd get sick of it too if I was forced to stick that strictly to a formula. :v Let's see if they shake up anything more significant than a snowglobe for christmas.

Dragon Issue 302: December 2002


part 1/10


119 (120) pages. Finally, a decent cover for the first time in half a year, even if the colour scheme is a bit XTREEEME!!!!! and pretty much the opposite of christmassey. Like certain previous december issues, they've decided to go with the general theme of magic, which always gives them tons of leeway to pick articles. Hopefully that means they'll give some new freelancers a chance to prove themselves and add new ideas to the pot. The game does need regular stirring up, it seems.


Scan Quality: Colours somewhat oversaturated, indexed.


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: To warm up for the issue, we build anticipation. Sometimes, the anticipation turns out more exciting than the main event. Jesse certainly finds that the case with D&D combat. While it can be exciting sometimes, once the battle has got underway, you soon burn through the big trump card abilities and get an idea of how the conflict is going to go. This is one area where system really matters hugely, with the amount of tactical options you have (and are readily usable without causing the user headaches) varies quite a lot. Plus there's the question of overall swinginess, how unpredictable the dice are and how much a single action can change the overall course of a battle. So there is a decent amount to think about here. Does the build-up to a battle being more exciting than the battle itself mean the system is a problem, and in need of overhaul? Or is it an inevitability when you run a game with a fair amount of actual roleplaying between fights? Opinions?


Scale Mail: Issue 300 gets four letters devoted to it, three of them negative. So with votes running a 1 positive, 2 outraged and 1 who simply found it tremendously underwhelming in it's attempts at controversy, they're left a bit unhappy. I do agree with the editors that the material wasn't actually that more gruesome than any other, it was merely hype. THAT WAS THE PROBLEM!!! Really, they deserve all the criticism they get for that issue, even if not all of it is entirely accurate, simply because it was that annoying.

The mummy ecology gets some real world historical elaboration. After all, they were so popular around this time that Mummy: the Resurrection got a players guide covering other cultures after originally being intended as a one book thing. Any mention of them will get the attention of the obsessives, who love to correct you if you get it wrong.

And finally, we have a letter that mirrors one of my observations, that the current format for covers neither looks as good on average, or has as much variety as the stuff from around 83-95. They just take things so much more seriously, and that's not always a good thing. In any case this is another case where they don't plan to change in the near future. They think giving us the hard sell on the covers, and keeping the badass gurning will work better than a larger scale clean image. This makes me a sad kitty. Apple have proved that you can still sell very well with minimalist packaging. Marketing people need to remember that elegance is more important than quantity.

Dragon Issue 302: December 2002


part 2/10


Zogonia takes the pragmatic approach to dealing with niche protection.


Up on a soapbox: Gary reminds us why enforcing encumbrance is important. It's so when the players come across hauls of thousands of coins, the adventure doesn't end smoothly there. Instead, they have to figure out how much they can carry, and how much they should leave, for while they're weighed down, they're vulnerable to further attacks and not able to run away as easily. Dragon hoards filled with copper and silver? Often not worth the hassle, especially at higher level. And if they leave them unguarded, chances are someone else'll come along and snag the leftovers. The whole thing was built so there would always be more challenges to throw at the players and make sure they didn't get complacent. And the good thing is that until they get high enough in level to teleport without error and manufacture their own bags of holding, you can always reintroduce problems like this, even if you've glossed over it in the past. They might not be ready for the tomb of horrors to be a fair challenge, but you're never too weak to not be inconvenienced by encumbrance. This is the kind of advice you won't be seeing from Robin or Johnn, and the different perspective remains very valuable.


What's new moves even further forward in the magazine. And refuses to acknowledge their past. Well, it wasn't pretty, was it.


The summoners circle: Ah yes, summoning. Now there's one of those powers that's a real headache for those who want a strictly balanced system. If you can summon any creature you like within a certain power level, then the conjurer winds up a ridiculously flexible swiss army knife, even if individual creatures are considerably lower level CR than their summoner. Older editions often balanced that by making maintaining control a risky business, with fatal consequences if disrupted, but that's been made less common in 3e. Here's another variant system that attempts to further increase balance in the summoning system by making individual spellcasters less flexible, but spellcasters as a whole more, by giving them each small customisable selections for their Summon Monster * spells that they can expand a bit with research. So you can give your spellcaster a themed selection, or more likely, a deliberately contrasting selection of monsters for maximum flexibility, with characters in the same party avoiding taking the same options, if I know my charop at all. So like the bard masterworks last issue, this is a system experiment I find interesting, but I'm also ambivalent about, because you can see them trying to gradually reduce the number of options each character has, which is one of my least favourite parts of 4e. Oh well, it's only a magazine article, which means it's easily ignored if you want to stick to the conventional selection of celestial dire badgers and whatnot.

Dragon Issue 302: December 2002


part 3/10


Dork tower takes try before you buy to quite disturbing heights.


Class acts: An exceedingly long and in depth class act for a change, as they give us what is not just a single prestige class, but a whole load of customizable ideas and plot hooks. The Tainted, people who for whatever reason, have become bonded with some kind of lower-planar creature, and must deal with their new urges and powers in whatever way they choose. This is a rich ground for roleplaying, and along with the stats, (which eat up a huge amount of space, as they detail the powers you get for bonding with 21 different types of fiends, (plus progressions for both warriors and spellcasters, which is a definite help), and encourage you to detail the effects for other monsters as well) we get plenty of advice on how you can wind up in the class from a setting point of view, especially if you want to play a character unwillingly bonded with a demon and struggling against it. See, this is the kind of thing the book of vile darkness should have had more of, instead of going Look at me! I'm so Eeeevil!!!! I eat human flesh and spider-kittens with my pierced genitals and manipulate people's cancers! This is definitely the most ambitious class act so far, and one that could accommodate an entire party of people, bonding them with different fiends appropriate to their personalities, (although this could turn into an 80's cartoon if done wrong) and showcasing the different ways they handle their changes. I strongly approve.


Arcane Lore: Ahh yes, cantrips. One of the things originally introduced in the magazine, way back in issue 59. Man, it's been a long time. We've had several experiments with them over the years too, including the rather good one in issue 221. Good to see people still proving that imagination is more important than raw power if you really want to be an effective spellcaster.

Zap Trap'll inflict a single point of static'y nastiness on people touching your stuff. Enough to keep the other students off your stuff, but hopefully not killing them even if they are 1st level wizards. And frankly, if they're dumb enough keep poking where they shouldn't, let cumulative applications wear them down, they don't deserve to gain any more levels.

Deftness is about as useful as aid another. +2 bonus to a skill roll may seem small, but is not to be underestimated in a pinch. You have all these cantrip slots, better to use something like this than waste them.

Perfect Pitch is another example of how a tiny spell can have huge real world benefits. A lot of musicians would kill for this, given how annoying it is training for years and then having some upstart outshine you without even trying.

Thunderhead is another one that inflicts tiny amounts of electricity damage, but in intimidating style. I think using boom boom as the punchline to this joke is actually appropriate for a change.

Coin of the Realm is a cut down fools gold, only disguising a single coin at a time. This may not let you get hold of magic items, but you should be able to manage more than your fair share of rounds at the pub.

Flag lets you send out a signal without all the bother of drawing on and stringing up your hanky. Again, the little things make life run much smoother.

Mirror similarly allows you to attend to your vanity at a whim. What use is poor faithful Jerome now? Make him do The Walk of shame.

Stench is obviously for comedy purposes. Student wizards are still students, and that means twattery. He who smelt it dealt it.

Footpad's grace means 1st level wizards may be able to beat similar level thieves. The usual problem there then.

Glittering Razors is another very weak combat spell. An extra point of damage? Well, that may be all you can afford sometimes. Direct damage really isn't the most efficient use of these slots.

Heat Water, on the other hand is both invaluable on an everyday basis, and may be a lifesaver. We can all do with a good cuppa now and then.

Resize is handy for any wizard of size or shape that makes buying clothes tricky and expensive. Now you can stuff your face with even greater impunity. The ankh-morpork guys'll be all over this.

Yell is another no brainer for a wizard who wants to get stuff done. We can't all have the natural projection of BRIAN BLESSED! I think this has been a pretty likable collection. Once again, the reasons why wizards beat sorcerers in the long run is made very clear.

Dragon Issue 302: December 2002


part 4/10


60 Magical side-effects: Ah yes, adding quirks to magical items to make them more memorable. We've seen articles on you in issues 34, 163, and probably one or two more I can't find at the moment. Roll on the table for instant fun, which may be beneficial, but more likely will simply be a minor pain in the ass, particularly since this one is focussed on potions, which are generally one-shot items, so you don't have a chance to get used to them. Overall, this one is better than the one from issue 34, with better formatting and more solid mechanics, but not as good as the ones from issue 163, which are longer, more comprehensive and broader in targeting. But still, all have plenty of fun in them, and aren't too hard to convert back and forth. This is one case where more options are still a good thing, as the topic hasn't been done to death yet.


Bestiary loses it's The again, this time for good. Darn kids these days, no respect. :shakes stick: This time we go back to golems. Last given a special in issue 209, (and the 96 april fool one as well, but we shall not speak of that. ) And hey ho, they walk straight into the trap that last time so effectively averted, that of just picking a bunch of materials, and making a golem based on them. Not every lesson of the past has been taken to heart.

Web golems pretty much force you to learn the grappling rules. That in itself'll probably dissuade many DM's from using them. Still, at least they're vulnerable to fire.

Alchemical golems are made from the runoff of your magical experiments over the years, making them ecologically sound to make, and rather unpleasant to hit. Waste not, want not, so collect the corpses of things they kill and use them for making undead in turn.

Mud Golems are like incredibly souped up mudmen. They make you slip, they make you drown, they're completely immune to piercing & slashing weapons. That is indeed going to be a pain to beat.

Rope golems also grapple you, and cut off your air supply. This is going to be an issue in actual play. You really aren't selling me on these things.

Puzzle Golems are one big man that can split into lots of little interlocking stone men, like a particularly elaborate transformers team. That's actually a pretty cool idea, and makes them very versatile at dealing with teams of adventurers. So this certainly hasn't been a complete waste of time. Just the usual filtering process as we deal with Sturgeon's law.