(un)reason
Legend
Improved invisibility is only a 4th level spell, and he'll have blown his load and teleported away before it wears off.
TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon
- Thread starter (un)reason
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(un)reason
Legend
Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 100/159: July 2003
part 6/10
The Lich-Queen's Beloved: Not content with already having the 1st and 2nd largest adventures ever in here, Chris Perkins takes the 3rd place as well with this 44 page monstrosity, pushing Monte down to 4th. After thousands of years of scheming, draining the life force of powerful githyanki and using them to cast wishes (if she’d skipped that part she’d probably be high enough level to match the gods in power anyway so more fool her) the lich-queen appears to be close to achieving divinity. This would probably be bad for the multiverse and even some githyanki are secretly against the idea, including the Sha’sal Khou, a secret society of all kind of gith dedicated to ending the great rift and reunifying the races. (then wiping out all mind flayers because there are still limits to their niceness) If the PC’s are githyanki, they’ll be reaching the level where the lich-queen wants to drain their life force, and hopefully amenable to the idea of a new regime where they don’t have to die. If they’re a regular adventuring group, they’ll still be high enough level that their exploits are becoming known beyond their own world and worth reaching out to. Either way, we’re off to Tu’narath to try and get into the Palace of Whispers and kill the lich-queen for good. You could just go in the front door and head for the throne room for a straight ahead assault, but since she’s at her most heavily guarded there a more sneaky approach might be better. (plus you’ll still need to find the phylactery elsewhere for the death to stick) To finish this off for good you’ll need to go inside the dead god the palace is built upon, where things get twisty and weird. There’s plenty of other optional bits to explore along the way, as being the nexus of the githyanki empire obviously involves a lot of logistics.
So while there are some suggested story elements, the bulk of this is a big nonlinear site-based old school dungeon filled with very high level monsters that you can mostly kill and take the stuff of guilt free. It gives you the opportunity to make a real long-term difference to the multiverse and feels more epic in scope than the two actual epic level adventures that appeared in the magazine, since it’s connected to established characters and setting elements rather than making up all-new ones just for the adventure. (although there’s still plenty of interesting new details to add to gith lore here that you could use outside the adventure) It is definitely the kind of thing they’d never accept from a freelancer, but it’s well written enough that I don’t mind this time. A quite satisfying way to push beyond their usual limitations for the big occasion.
part 6/10
The Lich-Queen's Beloved: Not content with already having the 1st and 2nd largest adventures ever in here, Chris Perkins takes the 3rd place as well with this 44 page monstrosity, pushing Monte down to 4th. After thousands of years of scheming, draining the life force of powerful githyanki and using them to cast wishes (if she’d skipped that part she’d probably be high enough level to match the gods in power anyway so more fool her) the lich-queen appears to be close to achieving divinity. This would probably be bad for the multiverse and even some githyanki are secretly against the idea, including the Sha’sal Khou, a secret society of all kind of gith dedicated to ending the great rift and reunifying the races. (then wiping out all mind flayers because there are still limits to their niceness) If the PC’s are githyanki, they’ll be reaching the level where the lich-queen wants to drain their life force, and hopefully amenable to the idea of a new regime where they don’t have to die. If they’re a regular adventuring group, they’ll still be high enough level that their exploits are becoming known beyond their own world and worth reaching out to. Either way, we’re off to Tu’narath to try and get into the Palace of Whispers and kill the lich-queen for good. You could just go in the front door and head for the throne room for a straight ahead assault, but since she’s at her most heavily guarded there a more sneaky approach might be better. (plus you’ll still need to find the phylactery elsewhere for the death to stick) To finish this off for good you’ll need to go inside the dead god the palace is built upon, where things get twisty and weird. There’s plenty of other optional bits to explore along the way, as being the nexus of the githyanki empire obviously involves a lot of logistics.
So while there are some suggested story elements, the bulk of this is a big nonlinear site-based old school dungeon filled with very high level monsters that you can mostly kill and take the stuff of guilt free. It gives you the opportunity to make a real long-term difference to the multiverse and feels more epic in scope than the two actual epic level adventures that appeared in the magazine, since it’s connected to established characters and setting elements rather than making up all-new ones just for the adventure. (although there’s still plenty of interesting new details to add to gith lore here that you could use outside the adventure) It is definitely the kind of thing they’d never accept from a freelancer, but it’s well written enough that I don’t mind this time. A quite satisfying way to push beyond their usual limitations for the big occasion.
(un)reason
Legend
Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 100/159: July 2003
part 7/10
First Watch: Erik has trumpeted the coolness of the Fiend Folio several times in the past. It might have been a bit hit and miss, but one person who’s entries were all hits was 16 year old Charlie Stross, who contributed the Gith, Slaadi and Death Knights. Now Death Knights are a generic enough idea that if he hadn’t written them up, someone else inevitably would have at some point, but the other two are pretty unique, combining distinct sets of powers with personality quirks that give them depth beyond being just obsessed exemplars of a particular planar ideology. Since then, they’ve become a valuable part of D&D’s IP, being built upon by multiple other authors in various books and getting more complex and distinct along the way. Curiously enough, Charlie himself knew nothing about this, having stopped playing D&D when he went to college, and only coming back on people’s radars when he became a proper published author outside the RPG sphere. He’s gratified by this, as it shows his efforts toward coming up with things that were otherworldly but still made sense in their own twisted ways have been appreciated, but also a little baffled that people still mention them more than more recent books that he spent far more time and effort creating. (and actually makes money from if you buy) Another of those reminders that while talent and hard work may help, what becomes a hit and what lounges in obscurity still has a strong element of luck. In another universe the Dark Stalkers could have been the angsty fangirl favourites or the Dire Corbys the low level staple monster most groups fight multiple times before outgrowing. Ultimately, we’ll never know.
Global Positioning is pretty similar to last issue, taking us to a fast food restaurant. Like a bar, you can easily see trouble breaking out there, quite possibly started by the PC’s themselves so this is still useful even if slight diminishing returns are already setting in.
Knights of the Lich-Queen: 44 pages of gith goodness not enough for you? It’s time to look at things from the other side. After all, githyanki can also wander the planes, seeking knowledge, treasure and glory. Why shouldn’t they be allowed as PC’s? So what we have here isn’t a whole new minigame meant to be played standalone, but more a Player’s guide, as were popular in the 2e era. The intro is less than half a page of writing, which doesn’t leave me with much to say, but with James Wyatt at the helm this has pretty decent odds of turning out good.
A Brief History of the Githyanki: Most of this will be familiar to those of you who’ve read their monster manual entry, just padded out to a page and a half. The gith were illithid slaves until Gith herself managed to organise a grand revolt. Once they were free they had disagreements about their future path and split into the githyanki & githzerai, who hate each other. (but still hate illithids more and are smart enough to fight them first if they all run into each other at once in the underdark) They’re all strongly atheist, but the githyanki have a deal with Tiamat that means they have red dragon allies on the prime material. There is some new stuff though. In recent years, the lich-queen has started breeding an elite force of half-dragon warriors. With their ranks swelling, they could take over another world soon! Which one could it be? A familiar one, as detailed in Dragon, or the brand new realm of Pharagos. This is also short and quite conservatively written, not making any big changes to their existing lore. So far, not a lot for me to form an opinion on, good or bad.
part 7/10
First Watch: Erik has trumpeted the coolness of the Fiend Folio several times in the past. It might have been a bit hit and miss, but one person who’s entries were all hits was 16 year old Charlie Stross, who contributed the Gith, Slaadi and Death Knights. Now Death Knights are a generic enough idea that if he hadn’t written them up, someone else inevitably would have at some point, but the other two are pretty unique, combining distinct sets of powers with personality quirks that give them depth beyond being just obsessed exemplars of a particular planar ideology. Since then, they’ve become a valuable part of D&D’s IP, being built upon by multiple other authors in various books and getting more complex and distinct along the way. Curiously enough, Charlie himself knew nothing about this, having stopped playing D&D when he went to college, and only coming back on people’s radars when he became a proper published author outside the RPG sphere. He’s gratified by this, as it shows his efforts toward coming up with things that were otherworldly but still made sense in their own twisted ways have been appreciated, but also a little baffled that people still mention them more than more recent books that he spent far more time and effort creating. (and actually makes money from if you buy) Another of those reminders that while talent and hard work may help, what becomes a hit and what lounges in obscurity still has a strong element of luck. In another universe the Dark Stalkers could have been the angsty fangirl favourites or the Dire Corbys the low level staple monster most groups fight multiple times before outgrowing. Ultimately, we’ll never know.
Global Positioning is pretty similar to last issue, taking us to a fast food restaurant. Like a bar, you can easily see trouble breaking out there, quite possibly started by the PC’s themselves so this is still useful even if slight diminishing returns are already setting in.
Knights of the Lich-Queen: 44 pages of gith goodness not enough for you? It’s time to look at things from the other side. After all, githyanki can also wander the planes, seeking knowledge, treasure and glory. Why shouldn’t they be allowed as PC’s? So what we have here isn’t a whole new minigame meant to be played standalone, but more a Player’s guide, as were popular in the 2e era. The intro is less than half a page of writing, which doesn’t leave me with much to say, but with James Wyatt at the helm this has pretty decent odds of turning out good.
A Brief History of the Githyanki: Most of this will be familiar to those of you who’ve read their monster manual entry, just padded out to a page and a half. The gith were illithid slaves until Gith herself managed to organise a grand revolt. Once they were free they had disagreements about their future path and split into the githyanki & githzerai, who hate each other. (but still hate illithids more and are smart enough to fight them first if they all run into each other at once in the underdark) They’re all strongly atheist, but the githyanki have a deal with Tiamat that means they have red dragon allies on the prime material. There is some new stuff though. In recent years, the lich-queen has started breeding an elite force of half-dragon warriors. With their ranks swelling, they could take over another world soon! Which one could it be? A familiar one, as detailed in Dragon, or the brand new realm of Pharagos. This is also short and quite conservatively written, not making any big changes to their existing lore. So far, not a lot for me to form an opinion on, good or bad.
Wofano Wotanto
Hero
Took me a good twenty seconds to remember the D&D monster and stop wondering why you were talking about a random fighting game franchise from Japan. In my defense, it's early here, I haven't had my coffee, and some Darkstalkers characters probably do have angsty fangirls. Sure are enough cosplayers for them, anyway.
(un)reason
Legend
Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 100/159: July 2003
part 8/10
Githyanki Characters: Time to finally get to the meaty stuff, with 17 pages of new options for every stage of character creation. The spell-like abilities they get have been slightly nerfed compared to their previous appearances in the psionics handbook and manual of the planes, with clairvoyance completely removed and the others only coming into play when they reach the level that they would be able to cast them anyway as a spellcaster. Despite this, they retain the same ECL+2. If you want to play a Duthka’gith, all those half-dragon bonuses on top of the gith ones put you at ECL+5, which may cause issues at low levels when everyone else has 4HD and you only have 1, even with those con bonuses. While they’re forbidden from worshipping anyone other than the lich-queen, they’re pragmatic enough to hire clerics of other races for extra healing, so that gives you an easy excuse to include all kinds of other evil races in their forces. Any other class is allowed, although monks don’t get much respect due to that skillset being favoured by the githzerai and bards are very rare indeed. In a foreshadowing of the kind of class feature substitution that will become common in 3.5, Duthka’gith sorcerers get to trade their familiar for becoming even more draconic as they level up, reflecting the strength of their bloodline. Blackguard is a very popular prestige class amongst those who can reach high enough level to qualify for it, and they can substitute knowledge (the planes) for religion as a prerequisite. There’s also 5 new prestige classes for high level specialists, all of which can theoretically be qualified for by 6th level so you can have the full 10 levels of it before you reach “retirement” level, but some are much easier than others in terms of multiclassing finickiness.
Blackweave Warlocks are necromancy ultra-specialists, becoming very good at killing you and raising your body at the expense of any other kinds of spellcasting. One of those prestige classes that might be good to have around in a straightforward fight, but will probably turn out suboptimal anywhere else compared to a more flexible spellcaster.
Ghustil are hr’a’cknir that specialise in converting astral energy into healing. Since they have no divine spellcasters and the timeless nature of the astral plane prevents natural healing as well, this makes them important to githyanki society to a degree well in excess of their rather limited powerset. You probably don’t want to play one as a PC though, unless you don’t mind being overshadowed and mainly a support character.
Gish Mindslayers are a depsionicised version of the prestige class in the psionics handbook, since they want to keep everything in here accessible to the core only readers. The special abilities remain the same, but since they now advance your existing spellcasting level rather than having their own independent progression, plus they don’t need a power point reserve for their special powers to keep functioning this version is more powerful.
Holocaust Warriors specialise in inflicting large amounts of fiery death, both ranged and with flaming sword. They’re obviously particularly favored amongst the Duthka’gith and anyone else who feels a particular bond with their red dragon companions.
Sword Stalkers are the elite guys sent after anyone who gets their hand on a githyanki Silver Sword. With full BAB, all good saves and a decent set of interplanar scrying & tracking powers on top of that, they’re pretty decent, but that top level power is purely theoretical for them unless you can find a core class that has both good BAB and full spellcasting progression. Maybe the Lich-Queen will give special dispensation for a group when the thieves are epic level ones that have already defeated multiple retrieval parties.
Finally, we have 14 new feats, most of which are further upgrades on existing feat chains. Even better combat reflexes, disarming, combat casting, the ability to move while casting spells, several ones that upgrade their innate spell-like abilities, upgrading a blackguard’s fiendish servant to a Nightmare mount, being better at severing silver cords, a martial arts style that lets them deflect arrows with their weapon. Most of these play up that gith are mobility and sneakiness based fighters. They work at their best when they’re hitting the enemy from odd angles, sweeping through their ranks, disappearing and then doing it all over again once they let their guard down. Standing there and trading blows is not the way you should be playing them as a DM or player, particularly when they’re trying to take over a world who’s defenders vastly outnumber them. While there are a few suboptimal choices here, at least they’re suboptimal in a way that matches the flavour text.
part 8/10
Githyanki Characters: Time to finally get to the meaty stuff, with 17 pages of new options for every stage of character creation. The spell-like abilities they get have been slightly nerfed compared to their previous appearances in the psionics handbook and manual of the planes, with clairvoyance completely removed and the others only coming into play when they reach the level that they would be able to cast them anyway as a spellcaster. Despite this, they retain the same ECL+2. If you want to play a Duthka’gith, all those half-dragon bonuses on top of the gith ones put you at ECL+5, which may cause issues at low levels when everyone else has 4HD and you only have 1, even with those con bonuses. While they’re forbidden from worshipping anyone other than the lich-queen, they’re pragmatic enough to hire clerics of other races for extra healing, so that gives you an easy excuse to include all kinds of other evil races in their forces. Any other class is allowed, although monks don’t get much respect due to that skillset being favoured by the githzerai and bards are very rare indeed. In a foreshadowing of the kind of class feature substitution that will become common in 3.5, Duthka’gith sorcerers get to trade their familiar for becoming even more draconic as they level up, reflecting the strength of their bloodline. Blackguard is a very popular prestige class amongst those who can reach high enough level to qualify for it, and they can substitute knowledge (the planes) for religion as a prerequisite. There’s also 5 new prestige classes for high level specialists, all of which can theoretically be qualified for by 6th level so you can have the full 10 levels of it before you reach “retirement” level, but some are much easier than others in terms of multiclassing finickiness.
Blackweave Warlocks are necromancy ultra-specialists, becoming very good at killing you and raising your body at the expense of any other kinds of spellcasting. One of those prestige classes that might be good to have around in a straightforward fight, but will probably turn out suboptimal anywhere else compared to a more flexible spellcaster.
Ghustil are hr’a’cknir that specialise in converting astral energy into healing. Since they have no divine spellcasters and the timeless nature of the astral plane prevents natural healing as well, this makes them important to githyanki society to a degree well in excess of their rather limited powerset. You probably don’t want to play one as a PC though, unless you don’t mind being overshadowed and mainly a support character.
Gish Mindslayers are a depsionicised version of the prestige class in the psionics handbook, since they want to keep everything in here accessible to the core only readers. The special abilities remain the same, but since they now advance your existing spellcasting level rather than having their own independent progression, plus they don’t need a power point reserve for their special powers to keep functioning this version is more powerful.
Holocaust Warriors specialise in inflicting large amounts of fiery death, both ranged and with flaming sword. They’re obviously particularly favored amongst the Duthka’gith and anyone else who feels a particular bond with their red dragon companions.
Sword Stalkers are the elite guys sent after anyone who gets their hand on a githyanki Silver Sword. With full BAB, all good saves and a decent set of interplanar scrying & tracking powers on top of that, they’re pretty decent, but that top level power is purely theoretical for them unless you can find a core class that has both good BAB and full spellcasting progression. Maybe the Lich-Queen will give special dispensation for a group when the thieves are epic level ones that have already defeated multiple retrieval parties.
Finally, we have 14 new feats, most of which are further upgrades on existing feat chains. Even better combat reflexes, disarming, combat casting, the ability to move while casting spells, several ones that upgrade their innate spell-like abilities, upgrading a blackguard’s fiendish servant to a Nightmare mount, being better at severing silver cords, a martial arts style that lets them deflect arrows with their weapon. Most of these play up that gith are mobility and sneakiness based fighters. They work at their best when they’re hitting the enemy from odd angles, sweeping through their ranks, disappearing and then doing it all over again once they let their guard down. Standing there and trading blows is not the way you should be playing them as a DM or player, particularly when they’re trying to take over a world who’s defenders vastly outnumber them. While there are a few suboptimal choices here, at least they’re suboptimal in a way that matches the flavour text.
(un)reason
Legend
Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 100/159: July 2003
part 9/10
Culture and Gear: While there is a fair bit of crunch in this part as well, there’s also quite a bit of philosophical thought over the course of these 9 pages. While they might be evil overall, the githyanki are not ravening monsters who treat even their closest family cruelly, but people who have a very strong in and out group distinction and a society that is still heavily shaped as a conscious reaction against generations of slavery and selective breeding. While in theory the lich-queen is an absolute dictator, they have near total freedom in terms of day-to-day things like freedom of speech, association, movement, fashion choices, sexuality, etc. As long as you don’t worship anything or go above 16th level you can get away with a lot, and since it’s easy to leave with their powers you can probably get away with those as long as you slip away quietly and don’t come back to the astral plane, letting them assume you died on an expedition. Since you don’t need to eat on the astral, their society has few day to day needs and would be weirdly utopian if they weren’t also so xenophobic and warlike. They contrast very sharply with the average prime material humanoid, for whom life is short and a constant scrabble for the basic necessities of life, giving little opportunity for developing more sophisticated culture. There’s plenty to think about here even before we get to the new mechanics, an NPC class for the Mlar, who turn astral energy into clothes, tools and other handy solid objects, making them useful in an everyday sense but just as underpowered as their healers. Bladed armor, making you considerably less pleasant to grapple. Several new weapons, mostly variants of existing things with more offensive parts like double-bladed swords and triple-shooting crossbows so you can do lots of attacks per round if you’ve taken the feats to mitigate the penalties. Finally, stats for several of their flying ships and the magical items they can use to make them even more dangerous. So the fluff bits of this are more interesting than the crunchy ones, but both are useful and remain consistent with their existing depiction while building further on it.
Monstrous Allies: We’re well into a flow now and this is pretty much pure crunch. First up, monster stats for Dutha’gith. As is often the case, their CR as a monster is lower than their ECL, with a basic 1st level fighter being CR 3, which means a 1st level PC will probably be considerably weaker in actual play than their supposed 6th level peers. Then two more new monsters.
B’kallash Dreadnoughts are a hybrid of astral dreadnoughts and red dragons, in an attempt to create something more powerful and tractable to unleash upon their enemies. They’re still not going to win any awards for tactical acumen, but can at least follow single word commands and function beyond the astral plane. Unleashed on a prime world not used to fending off Godzilla level threats just one could win a battle for them.
Spectral Hounds (no relation to Stephen Innises version of Gith dogs from Dragon 117) are incorporeal canines that can track you nearly anywhere. They won’t kill you, but their bite carries a disease that gradually turns you incorporeal and sends you to the astral plane, which may well be a fate worse than death when the githyanki who dispatched it in the first place catch up with you. You could run a very interesting horror scenario using that idea, showing how horror often works better if you slow things down and use fewer monsters with unusual powers rather than relentless waves of attackers.
part 9/10
Culture and Gear: While there is a fair bit of crunch in this part as well, there’s also quite a bit of philosophical thought over the course of these 9 pages. While they might be evil overall, the githyanki are not ravening monsters who treat even their closest family cruelly, but people who have a very strong in and out group distinction and a society that is still heavily shaped as a conscious reaction against generations of slavery and selective breeding. While in theory the lich-queen is an absolute dictator, they have near total freedom in terms of day-to-day things like freedom of speech, association, movement, fashion choices, sexuality, etc. As long as you don’t worship anything or go above 16th level you can get away with a lot, and since it’s easy to leave with their powers you can probably get away with those as long as you slip away quietly and don’t come back to the astral plane, letting them assume you died on an expedition. Since you don’t need to eat on the astral, their society has few day to day needs and would be weirdly utopian if they weren’t also so xenophobic and warlike. They contrast very sharply with the average prime material humanoid, for whom life is short and a constant scrabble for the basic necessities of life, giving little opportunity for developing more sophisticated culture. There’s plenty to think about here even before we get to the new mechanics, an NPC class for the Mlar, who turn astral energy into clothes, tools and other handy solid objects, making them useful in an everyday sense but just as underpowered as their healers. Bladed armor, making you considerably less pleasant to grapple. Several new weapons, mostly variants of existing things with more offensive parts like double-bladed swords and triple-shooting crossbows so you can do lots of attacks per round if you’ve taken the feats to mitigate the penalties. Finally, stats for several of their flying ships and the magical items they can use to make them even more dangerous. So the fluff bits of this are more interesting than the crunchy ones, but both are useful and remain consistent with their existing depiction while building further on it.
Monstrous Allies: We’re well into a flow now and this is pretty much pure crunch. First up, monster stats for Dutha’gith. As is often the case, their CR as a monster is lower than their ECL, with a basic 1st level fighter being CR 3, which means a 1st level PC will probably be considerably weaker in actual play than their supposed 6th level peers. Then two more new monsters.
B’kallash Dreadnoughts are a hybrid of astral dreadnoughts and red dragons, in an attempt to create something more powerful and tractable to unleash upon their enemies. They’re still not going to win any awards for tactical acumen, but can at least follow single word commands and function beyond the astral plane. Unleashed on a prime world not used to fending off Godzilla level threats just one could win a battle for them.
Spectral Hounds (no relation to Stephen Innises version of Gith dogs from Dragon 117) are incorporeal canines that can track you nearly anywhere. They won’t kill you, but their bite carries a disease that gradually turns you incorporeal and sends you to the astral plane, which may well be a fate worse than death when the githyanki who dispatched it in the first place catch up with you. You could run a very interesting horror scenario using that idea, showing how horror often works better if you slow things down and use fewer monsters with unusual powers rather than relentless waves of attackers.
(un)reason
Legend
Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 100/159: July 2003
part 10/10
The Invasion of Pharagos: The final couple of pages on the world of Pharagos and the plans to invade it are once again way too short to really do it justice. The continent level overview of its geography isn’t even as detailed as the intro to the Known World in X1. There is a good reason why the githyanki would choose to invade it though, as it was the original planet that the gith revolt got started on, and the ancient ruins hold the corpse of a dead god that the lich-queen plans to drain as part of her own attempts at divine ascension. Can her minions find it while keeping their objectives secret? Do they have the power to conquer the civilisations of the world, or at least keep them deadlocked and distracted enough to accomplish her real objectives using only a fraction of her forces? If you want the campaign to span the full range of levels, it’s not going to be a pushover in either direction, with the natives showing greater unity than expected and turning things into an extended guerrilla war despite the gith’s technological superiority. A tale familiar from many real world invasions such as Vietnam or Afghanistan, giving you plenty of sources to draw from. But while there’s a decent number of ideas here, implementing them mechanically is entirely up to you. So despite having got more than 100 pages of material over the course of both magazines, I can easily see how this could have been longer and I’m left wanting more. Maybe this should have been an adventure path. At least capping things at 16th level would avoid having to think about the game-breaking exploits players can pull with 9th level spells.
Downer tries to resign, but unsurprisingly finds that Manglecramps the beholder is not the kind of employer who’ll just let you collect what you’re owed and waltz out the door.
As with its counterpart in Dragon, the big Githyanki double feature is easily the best part of this issue, adding new lore and pushing at the limits of what the magazine can do, unlike the far less ambitious sequel adventures that fill the first half. Putting the parts together, this magazine probably isn’t going to be making the top ten in terms of quality, but it’s still pretty interesting and stands out from its neighbours. Still plenty more to go and hopefully some of them will continue to set new records. Let’s see if we can get to issue 200 in a little less time than the previous set.
part 10/10
The Invasion of Pharagos: The final couple of pages on the world of Pharagos and the plans to invade it are once again way too short to really do it justice. The continent level overview of its geography isn’t even as detailed as the intro to the Known World in X1. There is a good reason why the githyanki would choose to invade it though, as it was the original planet that the gith revolt got started on, and the ancient ruins hold the corpse of a dead god that the lich-queen plans to drain as part of her own attempts at divine ascension. Can her minions find it while keeping their objectives secret? Do they have the power to conquer the civilisations of the world, or at least keep them deadlocked and distracted enough to accomplish her real objectives using only a fraction of her forces? If you want the campaign to span the full range of levels, it’s not going to be a pushover in either direction, with the natives showing greater unity than expected and turning things into an extended guerrilla war despite the gith’s technological superiority. A tale familiar from many real world invasions such as Vietnam or Afghanistan, giving you plenty of sources to draw from. But while there’s a decent number of ideas here, implementing them mechanically is entirely up to you. So despite having got more than 100 pages of material over the course of both magazines, I can easily see how this could have been longer and I’m left wanting more. Maybe this should have been an adventure path. At least capping things at 16th level would avoid having to think about the game-breaking exploits players can pull with 9th level spells.
Downer tries to resign, but unsurprisingly finds that Manglecramps the beholder is not the kind of employer who’ll just let you collect what you’re owed and waltz out the door.
As with its counterpart in Dragon, the big Githyanki double feature is easily the best part of this issue, adding new lore and pushing at the limits of what the magazine can do, unlike the far less ambitious sequel adventures that fill the first half. Putting the parts together, this magazine probably isn’t going to be making the top ten in terms of quality, but it’s still pretty interesting and stands out from its neighbours. Still plenty more to go and hopefully some of them will continue to set new records. Let’s see if we can get to issue 200 in a little less time than the previous set.
ribeiroorafael
Villager
Hello guys, sorry bother all of you here, but does anyone recognizes this vintage art? Is this from Polyhedron?
(un)reason
Legend
I don't think so, because the distinctive borders around those illustrations don't fit their cover format, but it is really hard to know for sure at that resolution.
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