(un)reason
Legend
Dragon Magazine Issue 199: November 1993
part 2/8
Crude, but effective: Tuckers kobolds time yet again, reminding us how even dumb creatures become a lot scarier with basic tactics. Albeit with quite a bit of 4th wall breaking humour. Say hello to the Hobgoblin Elmonster. The kind of obvious rip-off character that would be more at home in the april issues. But the actual advice is as useful as ever, and include a few they didn't come up with last time. Traps, tricks, interesting synergies of relatively mundane monsters, even basic things like alarm systems and missile weapons. Use the damn things, for they will save lives, and help you kill enemies better. Even the dumbest of things don't want to die, except maybe bob-ombs. So this is a familiar topic that manages to justify itself by an excellent bit of tongue in cheek framing.
The dragon's bestiary: Trolls certainly aren't short of a few variants, including quite a few that appeared first in this magazine, such as issue 41, 51, 129, 141, more than their fair share of the minis review columns and tons of Wormy. Looks like that's not ending any time soon either, with the internet about to give their profile a further boost. Here's a few more.
Trollhounds show it's not just dragons that engage in pervy hybridisation. Basically just regenerating, extra ugly wolves with diseased bites, they're certainly not unbeatable or particularly strange. But since basic worgs managed to be pretty scary in The Hobbit, I guess it's how you play them that counts.
Phaze trolls operate on a similar principle to phase spiders. Mobility and misdirection make them the challenge they are. If you're extra unlucky they'll be psionic as well. I can definitely see them as a mid-level big bad or high level mook, so they're reasonably versatile enemies.
Gray Trolls have a poisonous bite, just to make things a little trickier, and uncommonly long range infravision, for some reason. They can assume gaseous form, and are burned by sunlight. That's what you get for hanging round with vampires. Another one you'll need a damn god lore roll to spot.
Stone trolls are tougher than normal trolls and have a unique weakness that you'll need to work quite hard to exploit. Still, their regeneration is slower than normal trolls, and they give lots of XP. Take wands full of healing and blasty effects to keep up with them long enough to finish them.
Fire trolls, unsurprisingly, are immune to fire, but have other weaknesses, although not exactly what you'd expect. (unless you watch lots of cartoons) On top of that, their acidic blood destroys metal weapons that hit them. They're big and tough enough to be a challenge even to name level adventurers. Probably best to have your spellcasters stock up on AoE blasty spells if you want to get out of this one alive too. A brutal ending to a collection obviously aimed at rather higher level parties than most of these.
Fiction: One-eyed death by Jonathan Shipley. A mystery story where the mystery is never really solved? Those can be pretty frustrating. Still, there's plenty of clues here. You'll just have to draw your own conclusions from them. Trouble is, it's nearly all loose ends. There are large amounts of vague worldbuilding that really need other stories to fill them in before this one can make satisfactory reading. Which if it was ever published, it wasn't in here. So this isn't terrible, but doesn't really work for me as is, needing some expansion. Writing truly self-contained short stories is actually a surprisingly tricky art.
The known world grimoire: Heraldry. Our third time round this topic. (see issue 53 and 154. ) And here we're reminded that Mystara is the only world that still uses alignment languages, and all the setting weirdness that goes with them. People know exactly where they stand on the major moral issues, and are generally not afraid to flaunt it either. Not that it matters, for obtaining nobility initially is entirely predicated on your ability to kick ass, rather than moral character. It may affect exactly what kinds of followers you attract though. This is a rather mixed up article, simultaneously trying to tackle real world history, and possible ideas for both D&D and AD&D game worlds. How you get them, what they look like, what different classes might do with them, it's very much a grab bag of options that you'll need to customise for your own campaign. The ideas for mechanical bonuses conferred by heraldic animals are pretty decent, and would work very well in a dominion style game. (transplanting to birthright shouldn't be hard at all. ) Plus it crosses over well with David Howery's article earlier on by talking about the medieval mythical connotations of real animals. Overall, I think I like this, despite not really wanting too. It gives us plenty of pointers without hemming things in too much, and reminds us just how weird you can make D&D by playing it's rules' logical consequences completely straight.
part 2/8
Crude, but effective: Tuckers kobolds time yet again, reminding us how even dumb creatures become a lot scarier with basic tactics. Albeit with quite a bit of 4th wall breaking humour. Say hello to the Hobgoblin Elmonster. The kind of obvious rip-off character that would be more at home in the april issues. But the actual advice is as useful as ever, and include a few they didn't come up with last time. Traps, tricks, interesting synergies of relatively mundane monsters, even basic things like alarm systems and missile weapons. Use the damn things, for they will save lives, and help you kill enemies better. Even the dumbest of things don't want to die, except maybe bob-ombs. So this is a familiar topic that manages to justify itself by an excellent bit of tongue in cheek framing.
The dragon's bestiary: Trolls certainly aren't short of a few variants, including quite a few that appeared first in this magazine, such as issue 41, 51, 129, 141, more than their fair share of the minis review columns and tons of Wormy. Looks like that's not ending any time soon either, with the internet about to give their profile a further boost. Here's a few more.
Trollhounds show it's not just dragons that engage in pervy hybridisation. Basically just regenerating, extra ugly wolves with diseased bites, they're certainly not unbeatable or particularly strange. But since basic worgs managed to be pretty scary in The Hobbit, I guess it's how you play them that counts.
Phaze trolls operate on a similar principle to phase spiders. Mobility and misdirection make them the challenge they are. If you're extra unlucky they'll be psionic as well. I can definitely see them as a mid-level big bad or high level mook, so they're reasonably versatile enemies.
Gray Trolls have a poisonous bite, just to make things a little trickier, and uncommonly long range infravision, for some reason. They can assume gaseous form, and are burned by sunlight. That's what you get for hanging round with vampires. Another one you'll need a damn god lore roll to spot.
Stone trolls are tougher than normal trolls and have a unique weakness that you'll need to work quite hard to exploit. Still, their regeneration is slower than normal trolls, and they give lots of XP. Take wands full of healing and blasty effects to keep up with them long enough to finish them.
Fire trolls, unsurprisingly, are immune to fire, but have other weaknesses, although not exactly what you'd expect. (unless you watch lots of cartoons) On top of that, their acidic blood destroys metal weapons that hit them. They're big and tough enough to be a challenge even to name level adventurers. Probably best to have your spellcasters stock up on AoE blasty spells if you want to get out of this one alive too. A brutal ending to a collection obviously aimed at rather higher level parties than most of these.
Fiction: One-eyed death by Jonathan Shipley. A mystery story where the mystery is never really solved? Those can be pretty frustrating. Still, there's plenty of clues here. You'll just have to draw your own conclusions from them. Trouble is, it's nearly all loose ends. There are large amounts of vague worldbuilding that really need other stories to fill them in before this one can make satisfactory reading. Which if it was ever published, it wasn't in here. So this isn't terrible, but doesn't really work for me as is, needing some expansion. Writing truly self-contained short stories is actually a surprisingly tricky art.
The known world grimoire: Heraldry. Our third time round this topic. (see issue 53 and 154. ) And here we're reminded that Mystara is the only world that still uses alignment languages, and all the setting weirdness that goes with them. People know exactly where they stand on the major moral issues, and are generally not afraid to flaunt it either. Not that it matters, for obtaining nobility initially is entirely predicated on your ability to kick ass, rather than moral character. It may affect exactly what kinds of followers you attract though. This is a rather mixed up article, simultaneously trying to tackle real world history, and possible ideas for both D&D and AD&D game worlds. How you get them, what they look like, what different classes might do with them, it's very much a grab bag of options that you'll need to customise for your own campaign. The ideas for mechanical bonuses conferred by heraldic animals are pretty decent, and would work very well in a dominion style game. (transplanting to birthright shouldn't be hard at all. ) Plus it crosses over well with David Howery's article earlier on by talking about the medieval mythical connotations of real animals. Overall, I think I like this, despite not really wanting too. It gives us plenty of pointers without hemming things in too much, and reminds us just how weird you can make D&D by playing it's rules' logical consequences completely straight.
