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<blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4841525" data-attributes="member: 27780"><p><strong><u>Dragon Issue 127: November 1987</u></strong></p><p></p><p>part 3/5</p><p></p><p>No quarter: Looks like their writers are thinking in the same vein as me. Spell casters have got tons of cool new stuff over the years. Fighters, not so much. How can we fix that without just giving them a ton of no strings power-ups? How about giving them a load of combat maneuvers, and then giving them the ability to select a limited number? That allows you to mechanically differentiate your fighter characters a lot more as well. A rather forward thinking article, and another trick that they really could have adopted a lot sooner, instead of taking 20 years for it to become standard. And the actual powers detailed feel a good deal more naturalistic than the stuff in Bo9S and 4e as well. I very much approve, and would have no objection to incorporating this system into my game. Definitely one both useful in it's own right, and citing in the historical perspective fights. Woo. Let's let our fighters do some more rocking. </p><p></p><p>Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another bumper pack of magic items from many contributors this month. 18 magical bows, for those fighters who prefer to pick off their enemies at range, and with style. Do you want raw power. Do you want a blatant rip-off of the bow from the D&D cartoon. Do you want accuracy. Do you want range. Do you want rate of fire. Do you want elemental effects added on to your shots. Do you want to be able to attack underwater or from high in the air. Such a difficult choice. Better pray you're lucky, or has a DM who lets you choose your treasure, because you could also end up with the one that automatically misses and alerts the enemies to your position. So yeah, this is exactly the kind of articles that makes players go "Sweeeeeeeet. Can I have one?" And in my current mood, I would be pretty likely to say yes. Knock yourselves out. They seem to be hitting some good runs this time round. </p><p></p><p>Two hands are better than one: Ahh, hands. A vital part of the creation of human civilization. But you can only do so much, when you only have two of them. Here's a little reminder of that fact, that goes over the various weapons in the game, and exactly how many limbs you need to devote to operating them. Not a hugely interesting subject, and one you can mostly figure out using common sense. But there are many people who would prefer not to wing it, and for them, there is this article. Very much a filler article. Whether it's filler that will nourish your game and keep it healthy, or just make it bloated and sluggish is a matter of personal taste. </p><p></p><p>In defense of the shield: Another short article giving you a few more options for a part of your equipment usually abstracted away. While shields are often treated as just another part of your armour, there is actually quite a bit of skill involved in using them to deflect the greatest number of attacks. Do you want to sacrifice some of your number of weapons known to become a better shield user instead? Seems perfectly reasonable, as they make sure that getting the full benefit from the really big shields takes quite a bit of expenditure, keeping you from tanking obscenely at first level. But like weapon specialization, as long as the DM is generous in terms of granting magical equipment of the type specialized in, and not making you fight in precarious positions where you really need a hand free too often, this could become unbalancing. Remember, balancing factors are not unless you apply them properly. This is important, dammnit. Any system breaks if you use it out of context. </p><p></p><p>Fighting for keeps: Unsurprisingly for a fighter special, they decide to show the Battlesystem some more love. When you get to name level, you get the right to build a stronghold and go into the land management business. But what happens if all the nearby land is occupied, and the current owners have no desire to let you into their power structure, even as a subordinate? You'll have to either fight them and take it, or go out into the unclaimed wilderness, and pacify that enough that you can build a settlement there. Either way involves lots of violence, and more than a little social machination as you raise an army to fight for you. Rich ground for adventures. And here's a sample one for you, plus plenty of general advice on how to handle this kind of scenario. As ever, the more followers you have the more support they require, and the more costly additional specialists you need to have as part of your supply train. (don't forget the harlots) Sounds like fun to me. And we get such lovely opponents as Baron Demento and The Black Knight to conquer. So this article manages to avoid falling into the trap of dryness that these sometimes suffer. and gives us lots of helpful stuff to back up it's ideas. Another pretty sweeeeet article. </p><p></p><p>Heat of the fight: More tactics to differentiate one battle your weapon wielding characters face from another. While earlier we had selections of individual abilities, here we have a grab bag of mostly group based stuff such as ambushes, battle standards, and psyching your army up into one of three types of stat enhancing states. Overall, this is stuff that is probably more useful to the DM than players, as they rarely get the chance to plan ahead, hire help, and control the conditions of the fight like this. While hardly paradigm shattering, or particularly unified in terms of design, this is still useful, so I'll put it on the upper end of filler.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="(un)reason, post: 4841525, member: 27780"] [B][U]Dragon Issue 127: November 1987[/U][/B] part 3/5 No quarter: Looks like their writers are thinking in the same vein as me. Spell casters have got tons of cool new stuff over the years. Fighters, not so much. How can we fix that without just giving them a ton of no strings power-ups? How about giving them a load of combat maneuvers, and then giving them the ability to select a limited number? That allows you to mechanically differentiate your fighter characters a lot more as well. A rather forward thinking article, and another trick that they really could have adopted a lot sooner, instead of taking 20 years for it to become standard. And the actual powers detailed feel a good deal more naturalistic than the stuff in Bo9S and 4e as well. I very much approve, and would have no objection to incorporating this system into my game. Definitely one both useful in it's own right, and citing in the historical perspective fights. Woo. Let's let our fighters do some more rocking. Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another bumper pack of magic items from many contributors this month. 18 magical bows, for those fighters who prefer to pick off their enemies at range, and with style. Do you want raw power. Do you want a blatant rip-off of the bow from the D&D cartoon. Do you want accuracy. Do you want range. Do you want rate of fire. Do you want elemental effects added on to your shots. Do you want to be able to attack underwater or from high in the air. Such a difficult choice. Better pray you're lucky, or has a DM who lets you choose your treasure, because you could also end up with the one that automatically misses and alerts the enemies to your position. So yeah, this is exactly the kind of articles that makes players go "Sweeeeeeeet. Can I have one?" And in my current mood, I would be pretty likely to say yes. Knock yourselves out. They seem to be hitting some good runs this time round. Two hands are better than one: Ahh, hands. A vital part of the creation of human civilization. But you can only do so much, when you only have two of them. Here's a little reminder of that fact, that goes over the various weapons in the game, and exactly how many limbs you need to devote to operating them. Not a hugely interesting subject, and one you can mostly figure out using common sense. But there are many people who would prefer not to wing it, and for them, there is this article. Very much a filler article. Whether it's filler that will nourish your game and keep it healthy, or just make it bloated and sluggish is a matter of personal taste. In defense of the shield: Another short article giving you a few more options for a part of your equipment usually abstracted away. While shields are often treated as just another part of your armour, there is actually quite a bit of skill involved in using them to deflect the greatest number of attacks. Do you want to sacrifice some of your number of weapons known to become a better shield user instead? Seems perfectly reasonable, as they make sure that getting the full benefit from the really big shields takes quite a bit of expenditure, keeping you from tanking obscenely at first level. But like weapon specialization, as long as the DM is generous in terms of granting magical equipment of the type specialized in, and not making you fight in precarious positions where you really need a hand free too often, this could become unbalancing. Remember, balancing factors are not unless you apply them properly. This is important, dammnit. Any system breaks if you use it out of context. Fighting for keeps: Unsurprisingly for a fighter special, they decide to show the Battlesystem some more love. When you get to name level, you get the right to build a stronghold and go into the land management business. But what happens if all the nearby land is occupied, and the current owners have no desire to let you into their power structure, even as a subordinate? You'll have to either fight them and take it, or go out into the unclaimed wilderness, and pacify that enough that you can build a settlement there. Either way involves lots of violence, and more than a little social machination as you raise an army to fight for you. Rich ground for adventures. And here's a sample one for you, plus plenty of general advice on how to handle this kind of scenario. As ever, the more followers you have the more support they require, and the more costly additional specialists you need to have as part of your supply train. (don't forget the harlots) Sounds like fun to me. And we get such lovely opponents as Baron Demento and The Black Knight to conquer. So this article manages to avoid falling into the trap of dryness that these sometimes suffer. and gives us lots of helpful stuff to back up it's ideas. Another pretty sweeeeet article. Heat of the fight: More tactics to differentiate one battle your weapon wielding characters face from another. While earlier we had selections of individual abilities, here we have a grab bag of mostly group based stuff such as ambushes, battle standards, and psyching your army up into one of three types of stat enhancing states. Overall, this is stuff that is probably more useful to the DM than players, as they rarely get the chance to plan ahead, hire help, and control the conditions of the fight like this. While hardly paradigm shattering, or particularly unified in terms of design, this is still useful, so I'll put it on the upper end of filler. [/QUOTE]
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