Dragon #345

[D.Shaffer]

Plus!
The Ecology of the Rust Monster.

Is it sad that I'm looking forward to this more then anything else?
I've always loved these little blighters, even being the grudge monsters that they are.

 

[Arnwyn]

Impiltur: The Forgotten Kingdom
by George Krashos
No kingdom sleeps quietly in the forgotten realms. Learn what heroism shaped this country's war-ravaged past, what plots threaten its current tenuous peace, and who guards its uncertain future.

Very, very cool. I know that George has been fiddling around with Impiltur for a few years now, so it's nice to see some more information coming out.

And Impiltur has always been woefully under-developed (read: virtually not at all).

Awesome.

 

[Zaukrie]

This is a great issue. The demon articles continue to shine. The Ecology of the Hag was very good. I enjoyed everything in the article, but I think that the monsters in the class act section were too short. You can hardly get a feel for them in that format.

Great, great issue.

 

[Razz]

What do the new Tactical feats do?

 

[RangerWickett]

I got my issue today. With the underdark animals, I agree that they are pretty brief, but the Class Acts are only two pages, and I'm perfectly fine with them cutting one of the critters to make room for the illo. Drow on giant poison velociraptors. *grin*

If you compare it to the Monster Manual entries for animals, they're about the same. Of course, with the core animals, we're all pretty familiar with what they look like. Are you telling me you aren't familiar with what an elgonn is?

 

[RangerWickett]

What do the new Tactical feats do?

One involves blinding foes and taking advantage of that. Another does deafening. A third lets you fatigue and exhaust foes.

 

[Shade]

I've been wondering when that article would appear. Congrats RangerWickett!

Seconded. It's been a long time coming.

 

[RangerWickett]

Seconded. It's been a long time coming.

I was curious what sorts of changes they might've made to help me better suit my submissions to their needs in the future. Mostly it was shifting around some phrasing and adding those nifty italicized critter descriptions that come after the statblock. But there was one error I noticed.

The Elgonn is described as having wings, and it has the Flyby attack, but it doesn't have a fly speed listed. I don't know if that was intentional, but they did seem to reduce a lot of the abilities of the critter from the submitted version. (I originally might've gone a little overboard with a flying, swimming, climbing, blindsighted, tremorsensing dinosaur with poison, improved grab, and rake. *grin*)

I'll see if I can get Mike McArtor to come by and answer on the issue.

 

[Jason Bulmahn]

I was curious what sorts of changes they might've made to help me better suit my submissions to their needs in the future. Mostly it was shifting around some phrasing and adding those nifty italicized critter descriptions that come after the statblock. But there was one error I noticed.

The Elgonn is described as having wings, and it has the Flyby attack, but it doesn't have a fly speed listed. I don't know if that was intentional, but they did seem to reduce a lot of the abilities of the critter from the submitted version. (I originally might've gone a little overboard with a flying, swimming, climbing, blindsighted, tremorsensing dinosaur with poison, improved grab, and rake. *grin*)

I'll see if I can get Mike McArtor to come by and answer on the issue.

Well.. I can answer that one for you. I thought we had scrubed the wings out of that one.. because.. well it was just a bit too much. Unfortunately, it appears that we removed the fly speed, but left the other trappings. It is simple enough to fix. Simply remove the wing reference and swap the flyby attack for Power Attack.

Sorry about the mix up. Your submission was pretty solid and we had to make few changes to get it in line.

Keep up the good work.. that goes for the rest of you too.

Jason Bulmahn
Managing Editor of Dragon

 

[RangerWickett]

Well.. I can answer that one for you. I thought we had scrubed the wings out of that one.. because.. well it was just a bit too much. Unfortunately, it appears that we removed the fly speed, but left the other trappings. It is simple enough to fix. Simply remove the wing reference and swap the flyby attack for Power Attack.

Sorry about the mix up. Your submission was pretty solid and we had to make few changes to get it in line.

Keep up the good work.. that goes for the rest of you too.

Jason Bulmahn
Managing Editor of Dragon

Thanks for the info. I also got this reply from Mike McArtor, and he said I could pass it along:

Oops! The elgonn originally had a fly speed, but in the development process we felt having a Large flying mount in the Underdark seemed inappropriate and stripped the elgonn of its ability to fly. The Flyby Attack feat is a ghost of earlier edits. There are two ways to fix this incongruity: 1) Agree with us and replace Flyby Attack with another feat (I might suggest Improved Initiative) or 2) Disagree with us and give back the elgonn its flight (at which point you should probably also increase its CR and the druid level equivalent of it).

I haven't had much of a chance to read the rest of the issue, but I'm really interested in the Excursion article. Also, this issue's Nodwick strip was one of the funniest ever.