Check out these awesome previews of the Dragonlance Bestiary

Palin and Dalamar's stats are in the Age of Mortals hardcover companion currently on shelves, while Raistlin will be stat'd up in the upcoming War of the Lance hardcover due out this summer. :cool:
 

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Cam Banks said:
Yeah, that's my goof. My only defense is that Infernal is the alphabet shared by both the Abyssal and Infernal languages, but given they're chaotic creatures from the Abyss...

Can someone explain how the DL planes work in a post PS world?
 

Olive said:
Can someone explain how the DL planes work in a post PS world?

Krynn's cosmology is like a bubble of outer planes overlapping each other, with the Dome of Creation at the top (Good), the Abyss at the bottom (Evil) and the Hidden Vale wrapped around the middle (Neutrality). The material plane is in the centre of this bubble, encircled by the elemental planes (which touch all planes of existence within the bubble), and the transitive planes (astral, shadow and ethereal) coexist with the material plane. The positive energy plane extends out of the Dome of Creation to touch upon the material plane, while the negative energy plane extends up from the Abyss. The only real way out of the bubble is through the Gate of Souls, through which the endless river of spirits passes out, through the Abyss, Hidden Vale and Dome of Creation and to the Ethereal Sea beyond. Countless demiplanes orbit and manifest within the bubble, and aspected realities take shape within the outer planes of the Gods, but that's more or less it.

Cheers,
Cam
 

I have a question regarding the daemon warrior.

They've got a couple of weaknesses that mention critical hits (any hit by a set of weapons is an automatic threat, etc.); however, their type is undead, and there is no mention that they don't get the regular benefits of that type. One of those benefits, of course, is an immunity to critical hits. Is there a general exception listed elsewhere (in the Bestiary or in the main DL book) that lets undead be critically hit by certain (holy, blessed, etc.) attacks?

If not, I think the daemon warrior's writeup could use a "they can be critically hit by these attacks" note, for the sake of clarity, if nothing else.
 
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Cam Banks said:
The only real way out of the bubble is through the Gate of Souls, through which the endless river of spirits passes out, through the Abyss, Hidden Vale and Dome of Creation and to the Ethereal Sea beyond.

You could always hop through the Plane of Shadows to another cosmology as well, right? ;)
 

coyote6 said:
If not, I think the daemon warrior's writeup could use a "they can be critically hit by these attacks" note, for the sake of clarity, if nothing else.

Yes, that could have been phrased a little more clearly. This is an exception to the usual rule with undead, in that blessed weapons (or weapons wielded by somebody under the effects of a bless spell) automatically cause a critical threat when they hit, and their critical multiplier increases by one. Given the nature of undead, this is not immediately obvious - it may be better simply to have all attacks made with blessed weapons or weapons wielded by blessed individuals deal double damage to daemon warriors, but that's guaranteed whereas a critical threat isn't.

Sorry about that!

Cheers,
Cam
 

Alzrius said:
You could always hop through the Plane of Shadows to another cosmology as well, right? ;)

Strictly speaking, no. While the transitive planes of Krynn's cosmology are all in some sense tributaries of the boundless Ethereal Sea outside of the bubble, they don't really offer any means of traverse. The rules are fairly clear, in that progression out of the planes and to the Ethereal Sea may only be accomplished by passing through the Gate of Souls. Takhisis used it to steal the world, for example, and take it away from the bubble.

In your own campaign, there's nothing to say you can't treat Krynn's shadow plane like the shadow plane described in the DMG and Manual of the Planes (in other words, that it connects to all other cosmologies' shadow planes), but that wouldn't be the official view of it.

Cheers,
Cam
 

Cam Banks said:
Yes, that could have been phrased a little more clearly. This is an exception to the usual rule with undead, in that blessed weapons (or weapons wielded by somebody under the effects of a bless spell) automatically cause a critical threat when they hit, and their critical multiplier increases by one. Given the nature of undead, this is not immediately obvious - it may be better simply to have all attacks made with blessed weapons or weapons wielded by blessed individuals deal double damage to daemon warriors, but that's guaranteed whereas a critical threat isn't.

Strictly speaking, it's probably better to do what was done with the 3.5e rakshasa: get rid of the vulnerability to blessed crossbow bolts and instead give it high DR that only good & piercing attacks can bypass.

While the basic idea of giving powerful monsters some fatal vulnerability has strong roots in mythology, in gameplay glass-jaw creatures just lead to repeat-n'-rinse tactics (and the rakshasa used to be a prime example of that).

"OK, we're fighting Antaeus, so remember we just gotta pick him up off the ground and he's done for". See what I mean?
 
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Felon said:
Strictly speaking, it's probably better to do what was done with the 3.5e rakshasa: get rid of the vulnerability to blessed crossbow bolts and instead give it high DR that only good & piercing attacks can bypass.

True, but in this case it's any weapon blessed by a deity of any alignment, not just good. Chaos was the antithesis of all the gods, and so any of their servants who stood against his servants had a chance of dealing a potentially fatal blow. Not sure how DR 10/good or evil would work, either, since this doesn't help those who channel the neutral gods.

Your comments are appreciated, though. :) I think in the end I went with a quality similar to that demonstrated (on the offensive) by the Miniature's Handbook PrC, the skullclan hunter, whose divine strike lets him inflict sneak attack damage on undead. This is like that, only manifested as a vulnerability.

Cheers,
Cam
 

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