TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 90/149: Jan/Feb 2002



part 6/12



First Watch: Flip the magazine around, it says Polyhedron on the back cover, but is it really a continuation of the old newszine? Not reeeeally, if the contents pages and editorial are anything to go by. Even with the expanded page count, the d20 minigame still took up so much space that they’ve completely cut the old RPGA stuff out this time and even next time it’ll only be a small portion of the issue. Anyone who got Polyhedron specifically for the Living material will definitely feel a bit cheated. Still, they are pretty enthusiastic about what is coming, evidently they’ve had a bit more time on their hands to plan things out, having only released one issue in the past 6 months. It’s not just going to be little standalone D20 games, they’re also using it to test drive their big upcoming project D20 Modern. But we can’t escape that even more than the Dungeon side, this is a complete format change, heck, even more than the transition between SPI ARES and TSR ARES magazines. Since it only lasts for a couple more years in this form, it can’t have been hugely successful, but it might well have more useful crunchy material than the old format. On balance, I’m definitely going into this final phase with a fair bit of trepidation.



Bolt & Quiver: New format, a new attempt at regular comics as well. Our eponymously named elf and halfling duo are definitely on the more genre aware side of things, so first call when short of cash is the quest-giving corner of the local tavern, where there is indeed a mysterious cloaked figure ready to exposit. Will we see their adventures in the Tomb of Doom next time, or will it be purely continuity free gag setups?

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 90/149: Jan/Feb 2002



part 7/12



Release Roundup: Over in Dragon, the number of 1st party D&D books has slowed from its mid 90’s peak to a mere one or two per month, leaving the Previews section looking increasingly marginalised. Over here, they can fill a full page with shrunken font and still probably only scratch the surface of the D20 boom. Unlike the old reviews column, all of these are basically recommendations, without any real critical analysis. (and since they’re future releases, they haven’t even read many of them yet, because even as WotC insiders they can’t keep track of everyone in the industry.)

Anyway, Alderac Entertainment release War, another self-explanatory book with a singe word title. Atlas give us a book full of Backdrops for your battles. Avalanche Press take us off to see the Pirates of the Caribbean a good year before Disney get around to it. (and make it much harder for anyone else to do something on the same topic without copyright naughty word) Bastion Press give us plenty of both Arms & Armor, and Villains, two more simply named books that let you know exactly what you’re getting. Eden Studios are slightly more eloquent with their naming conventions, giving us Secrets of the Ancients and Liber Bestiarius. (which are once again adventure location and monster books) Fantasy Flight Games release the first books for Dragonstar, their take on D&D IN SPAAAAACE that’s quite different from Spelljammer. Firey Dragon Productions are thinking the same way as Dungeon, releasing a set of counters, only there’s is a full 450 different ones rather than just a few dozen that are appearing in the current issue. They also have a couple of adventures: Gates of Oblivion and Beyond All Reason. Green Ronin releases a big hardcover sourcebook for Freeport so you have more freedom to simply wander around in it rather than going straight to one of the adventures. Malhavoc continue to be where official WotC writers put their excess ideas, with The Demon God’s Fane, the psionic-centric adventure If Thoughts Could Kill and the Book of Eldritch Might II. Mongoose are by far the most prolific D20 company, churning out Quintessential Fighter & Rogue books, Chaos Magic, Ships of the Elves and the Slayer’s Guide to Sahuguin in just the next two months. Necromancer Games aren’t far behind them though, with What Evil Lurks, Tomb of Abysthor, Maze of Zayene II and most famously, part 3 of Rappan Athuk, for those of you who want to take the fight to Orcus (and probably die horribly doing so) after encountering him in last issue of Dungeon. You could probably run a whole campaign with just the material from these releases and not use it all.

More interestingly, they have a full page preview for D20 Call of Cthulhu with stats for Nightgaunts. They’re only a CR 4 monster so experienced D&D PC’s shouldn’t have too much trouble with them, but of course CoC ones are not only weaker, but have to worry about SAN loss with every interaction and things like being dropped off a tall building or tickled for hours can be quite traumatic for them. It’s a different set of assumptions and probably not suited for a system where you wind up 20 times as tough as you started after a few years of play, but they’re going to try anyway because this is the middle of the d20 boom so everyone’s doing it.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 90/149: Jan/Feb 2002



part 8/12



Pulp Heroes - Introduction: David Noonan kicks this off by talking about the sheer range of the pulps they’re drawing inspiration from. More a medium than a genre, there are still a number of things that showed up quite frequently in them that you don’t see so often in modern stories. Some were purely mundane fiction, some were supernatural and many occupy that vague middle ground in between where action heroes engage in feats and survive cliffhangers that are merely extremely improbable. So they’re trying to cover a wider part of the Noir-Wahoo! spectrum here than White Wolf’s Adventure!, which is firmly focussed on the extremely badass normal to mildly superhuman section of it. Since they’re also trying to do this in only 50-odd pages rather than a full book, that’s not as much room for depth. But do you really need particularly heavy rules for what is generally quite a fast-paced medium due to the limited page counts in the original comics? Well, I think that’s a decent note to leave things hanging on as we head to the next section.



The Sinister Origin of Professor Prometheus: There’s no real consistent species other than human in the pulps, and even in the early 2000’s the writers are smart enough to know that giving mechanical differences to real world human races would be widely considered a bad move and make a lot of people very angry. Instead they list 6 Origins that are more based on social class than country or skin color. All-American, which despite it’s name can be applied to anyone of regular working or middle-class upbringing, and gives the same flexible bonus feat & skill points as being a human in D&D. Aristocrat, for those who want their character rich and socially connected but a little soft. Cloistered, for your monks, nerds and people raised from birth by a secret organisation, with specialist training but a general weakness in regular social skills. Cosmopolitan, for people who’ve travelled many lands from childhood and grown up able to switch codes & languages easily. On the Run, for your criminals, refugees and other people who are also regularly on the move, but not by their own choice. And of course, :sighs: Primitive, for anyone who’s grown up outside of so-called civilisation entirely and is used to living off the land. None of these have anything particularly surprising mechanically, and I think the base human template probably turns out most powerful overall, as that extra skill point per level continues to stack up, unlike the mild bonuses and penalties to specific skills the other ones offer which become less and less important to your build at higher levels.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 90/149: Jan/Feb 2002



part 9/12



A Dame with class ….. and a .38: Classes work pretty similarly to regular D&D, with the base XP, feat & ability increase table reprinted here despite the number of people needing it because they don’t have the D&D corebooks probably pretty low. There are some differences though, most of which will also appear in D20 Modern. There’s an intermediate save category which starts at +1 and gains 2 every 5 levels, so they can make resistance all-rounders without them being overpowered. Plus they have escalating defence bonuses & reputation scores in the same way as D20 modern characters, since most characters won’t be wearing armor. The numbers on these are generally slightly higher than their D20 modern counterparts though, which is interesting to note. Defence has good, medium and bad categories of +4/ +1 per 2 levels, +3/ +2 per 5 levels and +2/ +1 per 3 levels while reputation is either +1 per 2 or 3 levels. Taking 1 level in lots of classes will definitely result in a disproportionately high defence bonus, although you won’t be able to break saves as much as regular 3e and BAB will suffer in the usual way.

The individual classes are 20 level ones, rather than the 10 level ones that encourage you to go into a prestige class as soon as possible that both D20 Modern and Adventure! used. Since we only have limited space, there are only 7 of them and they’re pretty broad archetypes.

Explorer, the all-rounder with 6+int skills, medium BAB, saves and defence bonus, but the highest reputation in the set, lots of bonus languages and Uncanny Dodge for last moment escapes from all those traps they’ll likely trigger.

Gangster, which focusses on the social aspects of being a rogue more than the D&D class, but is otherwise pretty similar, with medium BAB & defence, good reputation & reflex saves and special abilities that alternate between improving sneak attack, adding more underworld contacts and accumulating favours. The kinds of powers that aren’t very useful if you regularly wind up in dungeons or strange otherworldly realms where you don’t know anyone and have to start building relationships from scratch all over again.

Martial Artist, which is just a nerfed D&D monk, with all medium saves instead of good ones, no special unarmed combat BAB or increasing movement speed and fewer powers in general. The only thing that’s better is their defence progression, which is the best in the game, starting higher and increasing far faster, but that’s not nearly enough to compensate for everything else, so they’d almost definitely lose a white room fight to a 3e monk of equal level.

Mystic, which mashes all the D&D spellcasting & psionic classes into one simplified package with weak BAB & reflex, medium fort, good will, and an overall power level that will be very dependent on what powers you let them select, as they don’t have space to include a proper list of recommended ones from other books in here, let alone descriptions.

Private Eye, another skill focussed all-rounder of slightly different flavour: the only one that gets 8+int, plus the ability to turns cross-class ones into class ones so they can specialise in whatever they want without multiclassing, good reputation progression, a moderate number of bonus feats, some favours but not as many as the gangsters, and the equivalent of bardic knowledge. Their saves are pretty weak though, with two moderates and one bad, but since they can reroll a bad result once per session they can still probably keep up overall.

Scientist, which is essentially a spellcaster which needs crafted items to access all their powers. Since they have to pay xp for each one and they break after 50 uses that definitely puts them way down in power compared to regular D&D ones long term.

Soldier, which are just D&D fighters with a medium defence bonus progression added, putting them at easily the lowest effort in terms of design differences. (which will still let them easily win in a white room fight against a fighter with equal equipment & level)

So overall, each of these classes is weaker when compared to its closest D&D equivalent except the fighter one, which just serves to illustrate how crap 3e fighters are. You should definitely be conservative with the challenge ratings of encounters when using them, particularly at higher level where they’ll lack the expected collection of magic items. When you take into account that they’re using Star Wars style Vitality points rather than hit points on top of that, so no matter how high level you get, one bad hit can still take you down, the default settings here are definitely on the grittier side than the high fantasy we’re used to. This is also the most poorly edited section, with multiple obvious formatting errors in the tables, plus mentioning multiclassing but either forgetting to include the rules for that or cutting them for space but not removing the reference, so you’ll have to houserule whether they have XP penalties and favored classes for origins like D&D or just cut that bit out entirely like D20 Modern and many other D20 variants.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 90/149: Jan/Feb 2002



part 10/12



A Thousand Skills, A Thousand Kills: The number of skills gets a mild pruning from 44 to 39. Drive, Pilot and Repair are added, Heal is replaced by Treat Injury, Pick Pockets is replaced by the similar but more general Sleight of Hand, Use Magic Device is replace by Use Invention, the types of knowledge are switched up, Animal Empathy, Appraise, Decipher Script, Innuendo, Intuit Direction, Read Lips, Spellcraft and Use Rope all wind up on the chopping block. So the changes in here are pretty incremental, we’re still dealing with standard 3e levels of crunch rather than a lighter variant like True20, but at least they’re in the right direction.



Feats of Daring in the Palace of Peril: Feats are also unchanged in implementation, and there’s 4 pages of new ones. This could probably have been cut in half if they’d turned all the ones which just add +2 to two skills into one generic feat. In response, Skill Focus is bumped from +2 to +3, which is another change that’ll filter through the ecosystem into future books. Leadership is split into Minions and Sidekick, which means you need to spend two feats to get the same effects as one in regular 3e. Toughness provides extra wound points rather than vitality, which means it’s actually a significant difference that isn’t eclipsed by level gains. Quick Draw is extended with Quick Reload, which is pretty self-explanatory at increasing your rate of fire in extended combats. Metamagic feats are replaced by Invention ones, which definitely seem worthwhile for your Scientist characters who want to cut XP costs, create items that can be used by laymen, don’t wear out after a limited number of uses, etc and generally make the whole group stronger. Several personal feats now have vehicular variants for the stunt drivers among you. (they really should have had a class dedicated to that, since both Adventure! and D20 Modern did) Actually new and interesting feats are Fame & Secret Identity, for manipulating your reputation score in different ways, Heroic Surge, which gives you extra actions in a pinch since you won’t have spells for that, Neck Hairs Rise, which gives you a chance of being able to act in a surprise round and Fingers Crossed, which gives you more rerolls to get out of emergencies. Once again these are definitely useful, but not pushing the envelope as far as their Adventure! counterparts. Hey, at least it’s consistent.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 90/149: Jan/Feb 2002



part 11/12



Into the Pulp Era: Given our limited page count, the roleplaying advice is predictably speedy, also fitting into just 4 pages. But since in depth characterisation and consistent continuity over many years is not something the pulps were noted for that’s just fine. Instead you should concentrate on giving your character a snappy one line description and a few other distinctive traits. Don’t be afraid to use stereotypes, completely mangle real world science into meaningless buzzwords, depict the consumption of cigarettes, alcohol & other drugs and other things that various parts of society would call politically incorrect now. Technology is both awesome and terrifying, the future is wide open between the potential utopias it offers and the horrors of war it threatens. So don’t waste time angsting and refusing the call, get that fedora on, (oh man have the social connotations of wearing those changed over the past century) get out there and punch evil in the face with both fists! Sounds about right, albeit more aimed at the newbies than someone like me who’s already seen multiple takes on the same idea over the years.



The Deadliest Equipment Money can buy: After that bit of light relief, it’s back to the crunchy stuff. But not too crunchy, because they’ve really slimmed down the money system, even more than the d20 modern wealth rating. Instead, you simply have 7 ranks from destitute to billionaire and buying anything below your ranking is effortless. There are a few little bits on pooling your wealth if you want to buy something big collectively and windfalls from adventures but they’re pretty simple too. The equipment list is similarly streamlined so they fit all of this into a mere 3 pages. That makes this easily the part where they depart most from the standard D&D assumptions of tracking every coin and adding up the weight of everything you’re carrying to see how encumbered you are. After all the previous sections stayed pretty conservative in their changes that’s pleasing to see.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 90/149: Jan/Feb 2002



part 12/12



Johnny's Combat Aces - Chasing the Sky's Wrath: They aren’t going to reprint the full combat rules, just do a quick list of how they differ from regular D&D. HP are replaced with Vitality and Wound points, which means a lot more potential for sudden reversals of fortune. People are more likely to engage in fisticuffs instead of going straight to lethal weapons, so unarmed characters threaten attacks of opportunity normally. However, shooting pistols at close range does not automatically trigger AoO, unlike bulkier ranged weapons. You can ready actions even outside of combat. Plus a couple of pages on chase scenes and vehicles in combat, which once again use ideas that they’ll develop further in D20 Modern. So even more than the previous sections this feels pretty incomplete and doesn’t work standalone. Any nongamers who picked it up on the merits of the cover would be starting to get a bit perplexed about how to fill the gaps at this point.



The Discoveries and Powers of Prof. Prometheus: Even more than the combat section, this is very incomplete, as lists of powers can be as long as a piece of string. Scientists get to build items using any of the spell lists in the PHB, which at least makes up somewhat for the slow way they access them. Mystics choose powers from the Psionics Handbook, because Gotta Collect ‘Em All! Without that, you’re limited to a choice of 10 1st level powers, which will last you the first three levels before you really need those outside sources. Which does of course beg the question of how many people actually tried to play these minigames, if they did, how many sessions it lasted and when they stopped was it due to running into issues with incompleteness of the rules, lack of suitable adventures or just the usual scheduling malaise that is a challenge for every group? Not one I can answer, save by playtesting and reporting back about my findings.



An issue in which the most interesting things about it are the new features, as the adventures are competently done but very samey indeed. The rest is full of intriguing possibilities, even if it doesn’t feel like a continuation of the old Polyhedron at all and needs a bit of kitbashing due to the editing issues. Then again, after the 3e corebooks being mathematically fine-tuned in a way that discourages house-ruling, it’s refreshing to see them release stuff that pretty much requires it again. So I’ve got mixed feelings about these changes, but at least they’re fresh and it’ll take a few more issues before they get into a routine again. Will the minigames improve with practice, or grow stale like so many experiments before them before gradually petering out? Time to see if this April will deliver any reasons to laugh or cry.

 

[(un)reason]

Pulp Heroes recruitment thread is up.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 91/150: Mar/Apr 2002



part 1/12



155 (180) pages. Robots can’t scowl, but I suspect this one would be if it had any facial articulation. Still, at least it’s positioned in a way so all the promotional blurbs go around it. Let’s find out if it’s human scale, something you pilot, or something seemingly unstoppable your best option is to outrun, as well as all the other things this issue has to offer.



Editorial: They already did some pretty dramatic format changes last issue, but they’re not finished yet. This time they’re switching up the trade dress to make the magazine look more like the interiors of the 3e books. A little consistency in design makes putting all the stuff that works together well on the shelves just look right, y’know. I’m not going to argue with that. The quality of the presentation might not be as important as the ideas, particularly when you’re coming from an old school perspective, but it doesn’t hurt either. I can’t argue with the other topic in the editorial either, reminding you that a good villain needs a motivation. They may occasionally do a massive static dungeon where the enemies just sit in their rooms waiting for you for nostalgia’s sake, but the majority of their content for the foreseeable future will be more plot-driven and that’s what they encourage you to submit. 3e may be less ecology and worldbuilding driven than 2e, but it’s never going to be as spartan as those early years. Nothing much to say in response here then. Let’s fastforward to the action, as this exposition doesn’t have any important info you wouldn’t be able to play the game without.



Letters: First letter is annoyed by the duplicate monster tokens in issue 89. Some monsters are found in groups more frequently than others. There was some logic in their choice of which ones to duplicate.

Second found The Raiders of Galanth’s Roost a little easy for the intended level of characters. It was still fun to play though.

Third is annoyed by all their cover blurbs, but mostly likes the contents. What’s up with that half-dragon’s alignment though? Just because he wants to kill his father, doesn’t necessarily make him a hero. But fine, we’ll errata it from NE to NG if it’ll make you happier.

Fourth has lots of nitpicks about the rules gaps in Pulp Heroes. This is the problem with borrowing from multiple sources without referencing them all, or forgetting to remove references from things you copy-pasted.

Fifth isn’t a proper letter, but more rules questions about Pulp Heroes from the WotC message boards. Having both D&D and Star Wars rulebooks and just keeping it the same as they do there clears up a lot of them.

Sixth is irked by the flipbook format of the merged magazines. Turning it upside-down halfway through is just clunky. But without that, they wouldn’t get to have two full-color covers. Where’s the fun in that?

Seventh is irritated by the random Tengu encounter that had nothing to do with the plot and wants to see more steampunk adventures. Random wandering monsters can turn up in any setting in D&D, you just have to live with it.

Eighth is full of effusive praise for issue 90 in general, with some further suggestions how they could facilitate minis battles if they wanted.

Ninth wants more planar adventures, since they’ve finally got around to releasing the new edition’s Manual of the Planes. The editors agree. Submissions that take the heroes out there are always welcome.

10th thinks they should talk more about what was changed in response to playtesting. While that would be amusing in many cases, it would also eat up a load of space so they don’t plan to make a regular thing of it.

11th and finally, another letter praising the variety of adventures they do. More ones in specific settings would be very welcome.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 91/150: Mar/Apr 2002



part 2/12



Challenge of Champions IV: Many things have changed in the past couple of years, but the guild of adventurers still likes to hold regular competitions designed to test the wits of adventurers of all levels equally. It’s a little trickier to make work under 3e rules though. First is that parties are slightly less likely to fall into neat fighter/wizard/cleric/thief four man bands, between all the multiclassing, prestige classes with odd combinations of powers and alternate power sources like psionics & incarnum. Second is that rather than flat XP rewards and exponentially escalating XP requirements to gain levels, you need to assign an EL to each encounter and scale the XP you gain based on the average party level, which doesn’t really work with level agnostic challenges. But none of these are insurmountable challenges (and neither are the precautions against cheating the guild has) so roll right up, place a wager in the betting pool and get ready for another set of 10 challenges, each of which must be completed in 15 minutes or less, which means the whole thing should fit neatly into a single session with time to spare. As usual, they put extra attention to the illustrations so you have something to show your players, which are mostly in an isometric 3D style this time. There’s also incremental refinement by including a hint which the DM can drop if the players seem to be stumped. These continue to be an interesting diversion that do something different with the D&D rules, with the broader set of options you have spelled out in the new edition altering how the whole thing is handled in ways that are also interesting to compare and contrast. These are still worthwhile inclusions in the magazine and now I just wish they’d do some 3e solo adventures as well, to give people a good idea how you rebalance the difficulty levels of encounters for a single character under the new rules.



Critical Threats: Rather than a creature, our second one of these is an environmental hazard. A cave with a multiple shallow streams making the ground slippery, leading to a pit in the middle, which has an ominous vortex of dubious yellow-green liquid you probably don’t want to drink swirling downwards? You’d better not lose your balance. If you then populate the room with flying opponents or ones that use bull rushes, (or heaven forbid, a beholder with telekinesis) you have the potential for some quite scary and dramatic fights. This is particularly interesting because instead of giving just one answer to what’s going on here, it manages to fit several different suggestions suited to different character levels. So this is one you could easily put in any underdark based adventure, possibly even several times by switching up the contents. Modular setups save so much time and effort.