(un)reason
Legend
Dungeon Issue 42: Jul/Aug 1993
part 3/5
Side Treks - Izek's Slumber: Two side treks in one issue? That's a mildly surprising first for the magazine. Despite the name, it's not a Lankhmar one, but a Greyhawk character that just happens to share the name. The aforementioned Izek is a Sueloise mage that escaped the rain of colourless fire by being put into suspended animation. Someone digs in the wrong place, he's released a thousand years late and very confused, which is not a condition you want to meet a powerful wizard in. Now he's wandering around the city of Greyhawk with a bunch of zombies looking for his ancient enemy. If any of the PC's speak ancient Sueloise it's possible to talk him down, but if they leave him alone after that to explore the present day without any guidance he'll wind up joining the Scarlet Brotherhood and show up again to be a pain further along the line. If you fight him, you get a demonstration of just how nasty high level spellcasters who've precast a bunch of buff spells and use smart tactics can be. They haven't done a huge amount of that so far, and it's definitely an idea that's on the rise, with debates in Dragon's forums about the brokenness of stoneskin and the number of spells wizards have to choose from increasing rapidly due to the rate of supplements. How do you balance between playing adversaries as smartly as they should be and not slowing things down with a ton of bookkeeping? Since this is just a single encounter that's easy to transplant elsewhere it doesn't get too unwieldy here, but I know it will become more of an issue in the future. So this is decent enough in itself, and also gives me plenty to talk about on a wider level. It gets my approval overall, particularly if I give into my more whimsical impulses and make it a little more Austin Powers in Greyhawk.
part 3/5
Side Treks - Izek's Slumber: Two side treks in one issue? That's a mildly surprising first for the magazine. Despite the name, it's not a Lankhmar one, but a Greyhawk character that just happens to share the name. The aforementioned Izek is a Sueloise mage that escaped the rain of colourless fire by being put into suspended animation. Someone digs in the wrong place, he's released a thousand years late and very confused, which is not a condition you want to meet a powerful wizard in. Now he's wandering around the city of Greyhawk with a bunch of zombies looking for his ancient enemy. If any of the PC's speak ancient Sueloise it's possible to talk him down, but if they leave him alone after that to explore the present day without any guidance he'll wind up joining the Scarlet Brotherhood and show up again to be a pain further along the line. If you fight him, you get a demonstration of just how nasty high level spellcasters who've precast a bunch of buff spells and use smart tactics can be. They haven't done a huge amount of that so far, and it's definitely an idea that's on the rise, with debates in Dragon's forums about the brokenness of stoneskin and the number of spells wizards have to choose from increasing rapidly due to the rate of supplements. How do you balance between playing adversaries as smartly as they should be and not slowing things down with a ton of bookkeeping? Since this is just a single encounter that's easy to transplant elsewhere it doesn't get too unwieldy here, but I know it will become more of an issue in the future. So this is decent enough in itself, and also gives me plenty to talk about on a wider level. It gets my approval overall, particularly if I give into my more whimsical impulses and make it a little more Austin Powers in Greyhawk.