Dragon #347

OK, if you've got it - spill it!

at least two people have posted that they have it, so there must be more of you out there somewhere...

Right behind ya BOZ!

Spill them beans, people! Tell us about the Archomentals, Class Acts, and the other articles. Along with the previews of the next magazine (Dagon is obviously one of them, I am sure)

So. Many. Yummy. Tidbits. In. The. Archomental. Article.

That's a summary of it all in my opinion, gripes about the 3e standard for stats that you have to work with aside. You did a very nice job picking up from where RttToEE, Inner Planes, and the PSMC III left off with those guys. The mention of Azgeroth was nice, and the name dropping of some of the non-archomental para and quasi-elemental lords was cool.

Kudos all around.

And I'll spare a repeat of the couple of minor nits I picked over on WotC initially. Not enough to bother with given the rest of the article. Lots of fluff = happy me.

Lots of inner planar goodness in this one.
Editorial - Tales from the Tavern - Eric talks about the cliche "you all meet in a tavern" adventure set up and hints that his new WotC project features an inn pominently
There's a 3/4 page tribute to artist Tim Hilderbrandt
Off to see the Wizards - a tour of the WotC offices and a run down of what Development does in a day. Very interesting read.
Princes of Elemental Evil - History, plans, and stats for the 5 best known archomentals. The lesser known archomentals are named, but not detailed. Cryonax, Imix, and Olhydra are CR22, Ogremoch is CR24, and Yan-C-Bin is CR21. This article rocks!
Elemental Hazards - Natural hazards and features of the inner planes
Paraelemental Paragons - Ice, Magma, Ooze, and Smoke Monoliths and Creature Templates
Ecology of the Elemental Weird - Besides detailing 3rd Ed. weirds, also presents old school weirds
Bazaar of the Bizarre - Elemental themed items
Spellcraft - Scripture of Elemental Evil - Evil elemental spells, many of which are dual schooled
Sage Advice - magic questions
Class Acts -
Adventurer - Wilderness Markers
Arcane - Archaelogists feats and fluff
Divine - Lost Ones - divine casters who've lost their faith
Warrior - Ranger Guide - tips and tables for ranger players
All the usual comics

a happy Shemmy is a happy me.

as for the archomental stats (for those who like that sort of thing), at the time we wrote the article we only had access to the BoVD, BoED, and maybe the first one or two of the Demonomicon article. we were figuring they should be about as powerful as the lower-end (not the bottom of the heap, but sort of in the lower-middle) of the archfiends and celestial paragons. thus, they are between CR 21-24.

kilamanjaro said:

Ecology of the Elemental Weird - Besides detailing 3rd Ed. weirds, also presents old school weirds

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woohoo! you mean the snakey guys?

I do mean the snakey guys!
Dragon 348 -
Variant Vampires - 3 new blood-sucking fiends
Bestowed Curses - alternates for the most vile curse
Horrors of the Daelkyr - 6 new twisted monsters
Core Beliefs - Vecna!
Plus!
Savage Tidings Adventure Path Tie-in
Ecology of the Wight
Spells of Ravenloft

Shemeska the Marauder (on the WotC boards) said:

Good stuff: Showing that Akadi/Kossuth/Grumbar/Istishia let them war so long as they didn't overgrow their proper place, that was a good line to include. The linking of them to the Elder Elemental God, and thus Tharizdun was good to see. It pimps where Monte went with that whole idea in some of his stuff. Was Bwimb II in there as well, or did you just stick with the archomentals who claimed a link to the Elder Elemental God? Cryonax did claim such a link, but it always seemed that he had far less solid of a claim to archomental status than Bwimb.

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i'm glad the kept the elemental gods' reference, as that was one i really wanted to have in there.

sorry, but not a lot of mention of Bwimb and the other paraelementals (besides Cryonax of course). we like those other three, but we wanted to focus on the most well-known of the archos and saved all the space for them. perhaps if we, or someone else, can think of a good article that would detail those fellas it might just see print.

our main sources for the article, in no particular order: 1E Fiend Folio, Planscape Monstrous Compendium III, The Inner Planes, 1E Manual of the Planes, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and Egg of the Phoenix.

we also tried to follow some hints that Erik Mona had left, such as how he felt that all of the archomentals should have had a role in the conflict between Law and Chaos.

Shemeska the Marauder said:

I'm really digging all of the references, and expansions of some of those plot threads from 'The Inner Planes' and PSMCIII. Very cool. I liked the Moloch/Hag Countess references, along with Gazra getting a mention.

However I didn't see any "altra..." mentions, they must not have survived the editing process. Maybe I can sneak something into an article myself...

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we figured the Evil Princes needed to be more involved in planar politics, so we tossed in some alliances and enemies which seemed to make sense. i think we said something about Dagon and Demogorgon for Olhydra, and i'm pretty sure we mentioned Bubonis and Cholerix in one of the entries. we definitely tried to mention a lot of the awesome flavor from the Inner Planes book, such as Kaylef and other minions like that.

http://paizo.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Store.woa/wa/browse?path=dragon/products/issues/2006/347

and congratulations to Shade - he was really busy this month.

I've been looking for more on archomentals for a long time, so I loved the article. Elemental Hazards is also a very interesting read for inner planes encounters, which it just so happens I was in the middle of thinking up. The paraelemental creature templates in Paraelemental Paragons are great, because even going back to 2E there are only 10 or so unique creatures for each of the paraelemental planes. Ecology of the Weird gave me reason to use those creatures (though I still think they're no good as enemies). I haven't really read the magic items or spells yet, but so far it's a really excellent issue, more interesting than the last, and I liked the last a lot.