Dragon 326

[DungeonmasterCal]

Paizo is in no danger of my dropping my subscription (as I don't have an FLGS and the chain store where I get game stuff has stopped carrying Dragon and Dungeon). I do get very frustrated, however, at the recent spate of late arrivals to my mailbox. Out of the last 6 issues, I've had to call the offices and have copies of three of them remailed to me. Paizo has been very gracious and quick to put a replacement in the mail for me, but this is getting out of hand.

 

[Richards]

Since I didn't see any other thread covering this yet, here you go:

DRAGON 326 CONTENTS

• Dungeon Delver's Guide by Mark A. Hart and Jayce K. Purvis: The quintessential guide to dungeon crawling! Find out who and what to bring (and what not to bring), the spells to prepare, and the tricks you need to survive.
• Down the Drain by Chris DeKalb and Jacob Steinmann: It's a crappy job, for sure, but when the pipes start backing up somebody's got to go down there. Find out about sewage, sanitation, and survival under the city.
• Get Lost! by Kyla Ward: Lose yourself in the wonders of our world's historical mazes, from the grand Nekromanteion to the labyrinthine gate of Shuneh.
• Gladiator Pits of the Mad Overlod by Mike Mearls: An "Under Command" article featuring a variant D&D Miniatures skirmish game.
• World of Warcraft by F. Wesley Scheider: 4 feats from the World of Warcraft computer game.
• The Rite by Richard Lee Byers: A "Novel Approach" article, this features 2 NPCs from the FR novel of the same name (and by the same author!).
• The Ecology of the Rakshasa by Eric Cagle: This despite the fact there's already been an "Ecology of the Rakshasa" in the pages of Dragon before.
• Cantrips and Orisons of the Academy of Apprentices[/b] by Kieran Turley: 7 0-level spells.
• Nature Unleashed by Kieran Turley: 9 magic items related to nature.
• Chaos Feats by Julian Neale: 4 new chaos-based feats.
• The Shaper of Form by Monte Cook: A 10-level prestige class.
• Born of Fire by Jonathan Drain: A 3.5 update to Half-Elemental classes.
• Class Acts: Two Swords are Better Than One by Joshua Cole.
• Class Acts: Flaws for Clerics by Richard Pocklington.
• Class Acts: The Necromancer's Primer by Mark A. Hunt.
• Class Acts: Optional Special Abilities for Rogues by Hal Maclean.
• Class Acts: Strong Strategies by Christopher Campbell.
• Class Acts: The Wild Side by Joshua Cole.
• Class Acts: The Well-Equipped Sorcerer by Mike MEarls.
• Class Acts: Optional Ranger Combat Styles by David Schwartz.
• Class Acts: The Historical Holy Knight by F. Wesley Schneider.
• Class Acts: A Matter of Style by F. Wesley Schneider.
• Class Acts: Magic & Music by Mark A. Hart.
• Sage Advice by Andy Collins (this time focused on Hit Dice, Effective Character Level, and Level Adjustment).
• How to Write D&D Stuff for a Living by Mike Mearls: 3 steps to becoming a successfull RPG designer.

And the previews for next issue:

DRAGON #327

• The Plunderer's Handbook by Mal Maclean: Find out how to scrape eevry copper out of a dungeon, haul out all the loot, and keep it safe until you can spend it.
• Tomb Raider by Kyla Ward: "Grave robbing" is such a dirty term. Think of it as wealth recycling. Learn about tombs - their locations, traps, and treasures - from real-world examples. Design better tomb dungeons and keep them from becoming your PCs' graveyard using the advice form this article.
• With Friends Like These by Joshua Cole: The goodie-two-shoes paladin, the ne'er-do-well rogue - they're fun characters to play, but as anybody who's played with them knows, they can cause a lot of trouble in an adventuring party. Yet after reading this article, you'll know how to play any kind of cleft-chinned character or antihero PC without causing your friends grief.
• The Silverfish by Richard Lee Byers: Richard Lee Byers, author of several Forgotten Realms novels, presents a stirring short story involving characters from The Rite, second book in the Year of the Rogue Dragons series.
• Plus! The Ecology of Grimlocks, Class Acts, First Watch, Gaining Prestige, Heroic Feats, The Magic Shop, Sage Advice, Spellcraft, comics, and more!

Johnathan

 

[thalmin]

As soon as I get it at least on the same *day* my FLGS gets their pile, I'll discuss the creative content. As it is, I'm too pissed off that I'm subscribing to something only to save a few bucks.

Here's how you fix it: Send out the subscriber copies a week *before* shipping it to store distributors. Simple. You can thank me later.

Well, this time subscribers got theirs before the stores. I don't expect ours to arrive until tomorrow.
Paizo shouldn't delay it either way. If the stores get it too much after the subscribers, we cut our autoships. If subscribers get it too much after the stores, subscribers drop their subscriptions.

 

[takasi]

Thanks Thalmin. You're always the first one!

325, 326 and now it sounds like 327 will have no Eberron material? No sidebars? I would really like to see more support for Eberron and even FR in the pages of Dragon. More Eberron though, since FR has had a wealth of material published in the past. It seems like Dragon is doing overkill on crunch for D&D (do we really need to have an article for every class every month?) and too much fluff for non-D&D (Dune, Warcraft, Final Fantasy?).

For example, what about Rakshasa? They are a huge part of Eberron. Do the Lords of Dust get any details in Dragon? What I find particularly disturbing is that Dragon has always attempted to put some "authority" on their ecology...actually, many their articles. For example, in the Duergar article in 325, here's a snippet:

"Duergar society revolves around the worship of Laduguer, and gray dwarves show no distinction between secular and religous authority."

This is just one example; there are several like this in that article. This material is setting specific material. What setting are they using? They don't say. Dragon is building their own campaign setting. "The Lone Craftsman" and the "Time of Perversion"?

If they aren't going to be completely generic and crunchy, at least attempt to put in some sidebars for porting these articles to Greyhawk, Eberron and FR.

 

[Patlin]

Threads like this one make me think that I wasted time getting that English degree, and that to really please our customers I ought to have instead spent a few years in the trenches at the local post office.

They wouldn't be so eager to get it if they didn't like it. It's sort of a compliment, really.

 

[Felon]

Hmm. The Rakshasa ecology is the only article that sounds really worthwhile. The articles concerning dungeon-delving, sewers, and labyrinths have the distinct smell of padding to them. Do these articles actually present any new content to use, in the form of actual rules, or is it just fluff?

Hate to say it, Erik, but I've lost faith in Dragon ever since that utterly pointless and useless knight-vs-samarui article. It's not so much that it was padding, but it was actually presented on the cover as the centerpiece of the issue.

The new Dungeon format is pretty awesome though.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Hmm. The Rakshasa ecology is the only article that sounds really worthwhile. The articles concerning dungeon-delving, sewers, and labyrinths have the distinct smell of padding to them. Do these articles actually present any new content to use, in the form of actual rules, or is it just fluff?

Crunch? Not much. There're a pair of magic items in the sewers section (both to avoid smells) and a pair of feats in the same section (Strong Stomach, which gives a +4 to Fort saves vs. Hurl (as in "I think I'm going to..."), and Tunnel Rat, which lets you squeeze more easily).

However, they're not random fluff. I actually rather enjoyed those three articles; the first is a decent primer on dungeoneering, the second is more for DMs (why a sewer would be there, what'll be in said sewer, why people might go down, etc.), and the third, while not particularly useful, is a fun and informative history of mazes.

It's a very nifty issue, as I said earlier. I'm quite pleased.

Brad

 

[Vecna]

[*]The Shaper of Form by Monte Cook: A 10-level prestige class.

Could you give more details please?

 

[thalmin]

325, 326 and now it sounds like 327 will have no Eberron material? No sidebars? I would really like to see more support for Eberron and even FR in the pages of Dragon. More Eberron though, since FR has had a wealth of material published in the past. It seems like Dragon is doing overkill on crunch for D&D (do we really need to have an article for every class every month?) and too much fluff for non-D&D (Dune, Warcraft, Final Fantasy?).

For example, what about Rakshasa? They are a huge part of Eberron. Do the Lords of Dust get any details in Dragon? What I find particularly disturbing is that Dragon has always attempted to put some "authority" on their ecology...actually, many their articles.

The Ecology of the Rakshasa actually does have a sidebar on "variant breeds." The first is Rakshasas in Eberron, the second is Rakshasas in Monster Manual III.

All in all, the issue is very generic. What is included could be used in just about any D&D without the need to tinker.

 

[IronWolf]

Hate to say it, Erik, but I've lost faith in Dragon ever since that utterly pointless and useless knight-vs-samarui article. It's not so much that it was padding, but it was actually presented on the cover as the centerpiece of the issue.

You know, when I first saw that article in Dragon I groaned and thought what is this!? It sounded so much like Jason versus Freddy or something like that. But then I read the article and the information in it was decent I thought. Talking about the different ways the swords are used, etc. Now they probably could have done the article better justice by renaming the title and not selling it as Samuri versus Knight which seems to have turned a lot of people off to the article, especially when it ends with an open, no questions answered ending.