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<blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5758147" data-attributes="member: 27780"><p><strong><u>Dragon Magazine Issue 258: April 1999</u></strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>part 4/7</p><p></p><p></p><p>Mage vs Machine: Hmm. This might not be as long as last issue's special feature, but it is considerably more special. We've had the odd intrusion of sci-fi into D&D, but not for a while. And this has the potential to fill quite a few more sessions than Barrier Peaks, despite being only half the size. Machine life appearing from another planet or dimension and trying to take over the world may not be inherently evil, but it is going to cause substantial disruption to the natural order, and make druids and rangers in particular rather pissed off. This gives you one of two options. You can declare them anathema, and do your best to eradicate them from the world, or you can figure out how to have organic and technological things live alongside one-another, and hybridise into cyborgs and cool stuff like that. I'd obviously incline towards the cyberware option, but this gives you the option for either or both to exist in your campaign. They detail 4 different kinds of machine life, 3 low level and one massive robotic destroyer, with the intent that they form a larger hive structure and work together to explore and tactically defeat organic life. And on the player's side, we have two new wizard kits, one dedicated to destroying them, and one dedicated to understanding them, and never the twain shall share a party; 7 new nonweapon proficiencies to allow you to understand how they work and take advantage of that, 7 new spells to help you detect and interfere with them, and 9 technological artifacts for players to salvage after defeating the creatures. This is both a substantial and rather pleasing article, that does stuff they haven't done before, but still leaves room for further expansion. I think this actually counts as a classic article, that opens up new avenues for them. That definitely deserves some pretty strong praise. </p><p></p><p></p><p>Wizard societies: Didn't we just have some secret societies 2 issues ago? Well, I suppose this theme is suitable for all classes, except maybe clerics, who's loyalty to their god is supposed to supercede anything else, and unless they're a particularly strange god, they want everyone to know openly so they can get more worshippers. Still, there is the issue of diminishing returns here. There's also the issue that this isn't as mechanically robust as the previous set of examples, and most of them are obviously intended purely as NPC adversaries rather than useful for PC's. So this is one of those articles that isn't terrible, but does suffer quite a bit by contrast. I prefer the previous implementation, plus this feels like another good example of their willingness to rehash lately, so I'm not satisfied by this. </p><p></p><p></p><p>Nodwick gets a two page spread featuring the Little tomb of horrors (bop she bop, trangalang lang, look out, out out Look OUT!, etc) Can you guess who gets screwed over the most? Can you? I think you can. He really ought to switch sides. At least Acererak is a decent conversationalist.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="(un)reason, post: 5758147, member: 27780"] [B][U]Dragon Magazine Issue 258: April 1999[/U][/B] part 4/7 Mage vs Machine: Hmm. This might not be as long as last issue's special feature, but it is considerably more special. We've had the odd intrusion of sci-fi into D&D, but not for a while. And this has the potential to fill quite a few more sessions than Barrier Peaks, despite being only half the size. Machine life appearing from another planet or dimension and trying to take over the world may not be inherently evil, but it is going to cause substantial disruption to the natural order, and make druids and rangers in particular rather pissed off. This gives you one of two options. You can declare them anathema, and do your best to eradicate them from the world, or you can figure out how to have organic and technological things live alongside one-another, and hybridise into cyborgs and cool stuff like that. I'd obviously incline towards the cyberware option, but this gives you the option for either or both to exist in your campaign. They detail 4 different kinds of machine life, 3 low level and one massive robotic destroyer, with the intent that they form a larger hive structure and work together to explore and tactically defeat organic life. And on the player's side, we have two new wizard kits, one dedicated to destroying them, and one dedicated to understanding them, and never the twain shall share a party; 7 new nonweapon proficiencies to allow you to understand how they work and take advantage of that, 7 new spells to help you detect and interfere with them, and 9 technological artifacts for players to salvage after defeating the creatures. This is both a substantial and rather pleasing article, that does stuff they haven't done before, but still leaves room for further expansion. I think this actually counts as a classic article, that opens up new avenues for them. That definitely deserves some pretty strong praise. Wizard societies: Didn't we just have some secret societies 2 issues ago? Well, I suppose this theme is suitable for all classes, except maybe clerics, who's loyalty to their god is supposed to supercede anything else, and unless they're a particularly strange god, they want everyone to know openly so they can get more worshippers. Still, there is the issue of diminishing returns here. There's also the issue that this isn't as mechanically robust as the previous set of examples, and most of them are obviously intended purely as NPC adversaries rather than useful for PC's. So this is one of those articles that isn't terrible, but does suffer quite a bit by contrast. I prefer the previous implementation, plus this feels like another good example of their willingness to rehash lately, so I'm not satisfied by this. Nodwick gets a two page spread featuring the Little tomb of horrors (bop she bop, trangalang lang, look out, out out Look OUT!, etc) Can you guess who gets screwed over the most? Can you? I think you can. He really ought to switch sides. At least Acererak is a decent conversationalist. [/QUOTE]
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