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I just saw Lou Zocchi's name in Dragon #2 while re-reading the original appearance of the remorhaz and thought "Gee, that name sounds familiar" -- how serendipitious to find out why so quickly!

I'm interested in making a spell that would let you make a touch attack to deal 1d4+1 points of Dexterity damage and gain that many points of temporary Dexterity for yourself. What level should this spell be? Have there been other spells like it published (and if so, are they OGC)?

The SRD specifies "Most reach weapons double the wielder’s natural reach, meaning that a typical Small or Medium wielder of such a weapon can attack a creature 10 feet away, but not a creature in an adjacent square. A typical Large character wielding a reach weapon of the appropriate size can...

OK, so a human with 5' reach can strike the adjacent squares with a non-reach weapon, and can strike the second ring of squares (but not the first) with a reach weapon. In this case, the diagonal doesn't count as two squares -- so the ring of squares threatened is a perfect square. What happens...

Thanks for the props, HM -- it's been really cool seeing what mighty oaks have grown from these seeds, and I'm proud to recommend this story hour to everyone I know in return!

Congrats Bret! I knew the author's name looked familiar when I checked out the Goodman preview - now I know it's because I've seen your posts here! Hope to see your name on covers again soon.

There's the hollow husk in A Swarm of Stirges -- the skin of a humanoid that's been bled to death by stirges, whose death agonies attract a spirit which converts its innards to negative energy & then animates the paper-thin skin. Stirge-riding necromancers then fill the hollow husks with...

I've got this on interlibrary loan and will probably wind up reading it despite the bad reviews out of a sense of duty -- it's interesting to pinpoint the moment when writing a D&D-derivative fantasy became a viable route for a potboiler! Thanks for the Greyhawk annotation link, grodog --...

No, what is sad is the sharp decline in monsterporn since the glory days of AD&D. Back in the day, there'd never had been any clothes on a nymph... (rolls percentile dice to check for the chance of Diaglo being summoned)

And then there's the category of "creatures that live in a cold land and deal with it by generating intense heat from within their bodies." Okay, right now that category has only one monster: the remorhaz, one of the oldest monsters that's original to D&D (having first appeared in 1976, in an...

That's what you get for starting out with LARPing! :) My two-and-a-half year old likes dice, but they're too distracting (rolling the dice tends to become the game itself, not just the game mechanic) so we do diceless freeform roleplaying called "Let's Pretend." All the props you used for...

As I commented last night re: John's review of A Swarm of Stirges, I think a critique at the level of detail he provides is a great boon to publishers. (It might be less useful to consumers in deciding whether to buy the book - but once they do, it makes great errata!) Any author who tells you...

I got Club Dumas for my birthday, yay! Currently finishing the Book of Jhereg by Steven Brust first, and then I reckon I'll actually read Three Musketeers first.

Does anyone know of other manga-format or A6 roleplaying game books? Behemoth3 has been invited to attend a game development conference in Korea, where (I gather) traditional roleplaying games are virtually unknown but everyone knows what manga are, so having some RPGs I could show off in that...

Thanks for a remarkably thorough and comprehensive review, John -- the kind every publisher hopes for because it helps make their next book better. In this case, it's going to make the same book better! Due to the problem with the ink on the inner covers, our printer, Express Media, is going to...

My Porttown campaign only meets about once a month, and while I wanted everyone to start at first level (since most of the players are new to 3E, and some have never played any edition), I also wanted to be able to ratchet up the challenges. So I use story-based XP awards along with regular...

Definitely the owlbear. From the classic Book of Ratings (links below): Monsters part 1 Monsters part 2 Monsters part 3

Berin Kinsman posted the following breakdown at the UncleBear site:

Another vote for the conjurer idea! I also like to have intelligent enemies use trained monsters as servants, hunting beasts, bodyguards, dungeon waste-maintenance units, etc. Anyone know of a good PrC or similar that would justify being able to train & command these monsters? As it is I often...

Sense of wonder: D&D showed me & all my friends how to have waking dreams together. Agony of defeat: There's nothing like the first time your character dies. Doors of perception: The world of D&D became more real than the world in which Trinette's mom was bringing us Cheetos and root beer...