(un)reason
Legend
Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 99/158: June 2003
part 6/8
That Thing You Do: The skills section is considerably more interesting than usual, both in what they include and what they very intentionally leave out. Forgery, Repair, Wilderness Lore and Sense Motive exist in setting, but aren’t class skills for any of the musician classes because you aren’t supposed to be any good at those, particularly the last one as the leads in these cartoons can never spot the obvious villain until they show up in a monster costume. Animal Empathy and Disguise are expanded on and considerably more useful than otherwise. Innuendo and Read Lips are actually really useful for communicating mid performance. H4XX0r obviously indicates your skill with computers. Plus there’s another new skill called Scram, which is a class skill for all classes, that determines how effective you are in those comedic chase scenes. The decisions about which skills are in or out of class for which classes seem pretty arbitrary though, chosen more for comedic reasons than conforming to real life musician stereotypes. They could stand to be tweaked a bit if you want more accuracy.
Feats Don't Fail Me Now!: You already used that joke back in issue 144. What is this, a covers band? Unusually, the feats section is less interesting than the skills one. There’s a lot of feats that are just regular D&D combat ones given new names appropriate to the context. On the plus side they’re no longer filling space with big lists of +2 to two skill feats. The ones that are interesting and not just a straight refluff include one for Harmonica playing, which apparently doesn’t merit a full class specialising in it but is pretty useful as a secondary instrument. Pedal Air, which means spending a round running in place before moving actually gives you an advantage in those wacky chase scenes. Pet and its upgrade feat, which functions quite differently from D&D familiars. And nine archetype feats, each of which gives you a particular skill permanently in-class and some other minor benefit, although since this is based on 70’s cartoons, one of these is unfortunately “The Ethnic One”. Such are the perils of being accurate to the source material and you’ll have to decide how to deal with that in your own game.
part 6/8
That Thing You Do: The skills section is considerably more interesting than usual, both in what they include and what they very intentionally leave out. Forgery, Repair, Wilderness Lore and Sense Motive exist in setting, but aren’t class skills for any of the musician classes because you aren’t supposed to be any good at those, particularly the last one as the leads in these cartoons can never spot the obvious villain until they show up in a monster costume. Animal Empathy and Disguise are expanded on and considerably more useful than otherwise. Innuendo and Read Lips are actually really useful for communicating mid performance. H4XX0r obviously indicates your skill with computers. Plus there’s another new skill called Scram, which is a class skill for all classes, that determines how effective you are in those comedic chase scenes. The decisions about which skills are in or out of class for which classes seem pretty arbitrary though, chosen more for comedic reasons than conforming to real life musician stereotypes. They could stand to be tweaked a bit if you want more accuracy.
Feats Don't Fail Me Now!: You already used that joke back in issue 144. What is this, a covers band? Unusually, the feats section is less interesting than the skills one. There’s a lot of feats that are just regular D&D combat ones given new names appropriate to the context. On the plus side they’re no longer filling space with big lists of +2 to two skill feats. The ones that are interesting and not just a straight refluff include one for Harmonica playing, which apparently doesn’t merit a full class specialising in it but is pretty useful as a secondary instrument. Pedal Air, which means spending a round running in place before moving actually gives you an advantage in those wacky chase scenes. Pet and its upgrade feat, which functions quite differently from D&D familiars. And nine archetype feats, each of which gives you a particular skill permanently in-class and some other minor benefit, although since this is based on 70’s cartoons, one of these is unfortunately “The Ethnic One”. Such are the perils of being accurate to the source material and you’ll have to decide how to deal with that in your own game.