Dragon 402 & Dungeon 193 ToC Are Up

[Kelvor Ravenstar]

Unfortunately the TOC looks to have been removed, but before it was gone I noticed another interesting thing which was expanded upon by other forum users.
This upcoming month has some possibly important crunch articles written by new freelancers who some of you might already be familiar with. The Racial Utilities article is by Sarah Darkmagic blog author and the Tome Show podcast co-host Tracey Hurley, and the Weapon / Implement Expertise article is by James Auwaerter, (Herid Fel) writer of the swordmage handbook for WotC CharOp forum. I just checked his twitter to see if he commented on the article yet, but he hasn't, what was interesting though was to see Mike Mearls asking his opinion on suggestions for new Strength Cleric powers back in May.

Great to see WotC recognizing some of the talent that's out there in the online D&D community.

 

[Neverfate]

I'm hoping for Flail Expertise =

Standard feat bonus +1/ tier. Treat one flail as one other weapon group from Heavy Blade, Light Blade or Spear.

Add that you must retrain the selection or feat entirely so you can't double dip. This would rip through the fabric of space/time and give 3 years of support to a barely support weapon and really be right along WotC ally of saving design space. They'd never have to come up with a Flail feat again if it could borrow from a "parent" weapon category.

Also, a... Master at Arms feat for implements. Like Master at Implements (lame name I know), Just the +1/tier to hit and something along the lines as the swap as a minor that MaA gets.

Either way, I'm sure the people WotC freelanced to do this will be as great designers as they are members of the community so kudos to them.

 

[Kinneus]

As a guy who's favorite class is the Swordmage, I have to say I'm very excited about the weapliment expertise.

 

[bargle0]

I'm hoping for Flail Expertise =



Add that you must retrain the selection or feat entirely so you can't double dip. This would rip through the fabric of space/time and give 3 years of support to a barely support weapon and really be right along WotC ally of saving design space. They'd never have to come up with a Flail feat again if it could borrow from a "parent" weapon category.

That would be ridiculously powerful. Flails already have top-tier paragon support with Lashing Flail, qualification for the extra Rain of Blows attack, and the availability of good flails like the Spiked Chain, Ahulak, and Triple-Headed Flail. Flails just need a little help in heroic. The Flail shtick seems to be forced movement, so I would be satisfied with an expertise feat that extends pushes, pulls, and slides by one, or turns pushes and pulls in to slides.

 

[Scribble]

Did you guys see the "article" today where they want people to talk about how the magazines should be presented going forward?

(Also I put article in quotes because it was a pdf for some reason- not because I thought it was bad or something.)

 

[Pour]

Did you guys see the "article" today where they want people to talk about how the magazines should be presented going forward?

(Also I put article in quotes because it was a pdf for some reason- not because I thought it was bad or something.)

Yeah, that was a little puzzling when they've been HTML for at least a couple of months now. I wonder if they were making a point that PDFs are a hassle or something? For editorials they are, I think.

 

[Ferghis]

You can read them here and here.

The calendars are back up, in case anyone wanted to check them out.

 

[Shroomy]

Cool, the kuo-toa and sahuagin are getting the updates this month.

 

[Zaukrie]

Dungeon looks great this month. Really.

I also like the idea of swapping out class abilities for race abilities a lot.

Looking forward to the content.

 

[IanB]

Weapon and Implement Expertise, fi-nal-ly.

I'm not sure why dwarves, humans, half-elves, and halflings needed more support (dwarves?!). A better utility power article would have been for Gnomes, Minotaurs, Changelings and Shardminds. But I guess that wouldn't serve to the masses, because they need to support the strong, and ignore the weak.

More like support the popular, and ignore the unpopular. I don't think people play dwarves over minotaurs because of mechanical advantage, other than a small subset of players, they play dwarves over minotaurs because dwarves are dwarves and minotaurs are monsters.