Wofano Wotanto
Hero
Pity. Always thought this one sounded like a fun set of rules. Pretty typical of my own experiences with live online play, though. I prefer play by post when I can't get face to face myself because of that.
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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon
- Thread starter (un)reason
- Start date
(un)reason
Legend
Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 100/159: July 2003
part 1/10
166 (180) pages. Ah yes, the githyanki incursion. I remember being quite impressed just by the Dragon side of that, so I’m very interested in finally getting to read the rest, over a decade later. The size of the issue seems a little less impressive this time though, as while it’s larger than any issue of Dragon, it’s no larger than any of the double issues of Dungeon we’ve been getting all last year. Let’s find out how long it’ll take to get through all the content in here and how contented I’ll be afterwards.
Editorial: No matter how long they do this, every issue could be somebody’s first. So despite this being a massive milestone issue, this is just your basic reminiscing on the staff’s first gaming experiences. It might not have been the very first time they played, but nearly every one of them has a key memory of the first time they realised this was awesome and they wanted to make it a big part of their life. Often the other people playing were crucial in this, as RPG’s are a social activity and a group who also takes this the right level of seriously is key to making it all click in people’s heads. If you haven’t had your ideal gaming experience, keep on looking for a better group rather than sticking with people you wound up playing with simply due to proximity. Nothing too surprising or outstanding here.
Prison Mail: First letter wants more Spelljammer material and is also disappointed that they stopped reprinting the cover art sans blurbs inside. They are, just before the adventure it’s connected to. A third time would be redundant.
Second is very pleased about the new adventure path, and just wishes the instalments were coming fast enough. They were planning on doing them every other issue but life got in the way. It is going to take a while to finish this and better late than done badly.
Third is irritated by the recent rash of sexualised covers. Can’t you sell the magazine without them? Maybe, but they don’t want to. All that prudish code of conduct stuff is soooo 90’s.
Fourth is another letter irritated by the whole dual magazine thing. Those just keep on coming, huh.
Finally, someone very pleased by the big Greyhawk article in issue 98. The Dragon LG section never did those and it’s nice to see them stretch themselves again.
Nodwick can’t keep an orc in a 10x10 room alive long enough to get through the exposition before the others kill it. If it weren’t for fast breeding rates they’d be an extinct species long ago.
part 1/10
166 (180) pages. Ah yes, the githyanki incursion. I remember being quite impressed just by the Dragon side of that, so I’m very interested in finally getting to read the rest, over a decade later. The size of the issue seems a little less impressive this time though, as while it’s larger than any issue of Dragon, it’s no larger than any of the double issues of Dungeon we’ve been getting all last year. Let’s find out how long it’ll take to get through all the content in here and how contented I’ll be afterwards.
Editorial: No matter how long they do this, every issue could be somebody’s first. So despite this being a massive milestone issue, this is just your basic reminiscing on the staff’s first gaming experiences. It might not have been the very first time they played, but nearly every one of them has a key memory of the first time they realised this was awesome and they wanted to make it a big part of their life. Often the other people playing were crucial in this, as RPG’s are a social activity and a group who also takes this the right level of seriously is key to making it all click in people’s heads. If you haven’t had your ideal gaming experience, keep on looking for a better group rather than sticking with people you wound up playing with simply due to proximity. Nothing too surprising or outstanding here.
Prison Mail: First letter wants more Spelljammer material and is also disappointed that they stopped reprinting the cover art sans blurbs inside. They are, just before the adventure it’s connected to. A third time would be redundant.
Second is very pleased about the new adventure path, and just wishes the instalments were coming fast enough. They were planning on doing them every other issue but life got in the way. It is going to take a while to finish this and better late than done badly.
Third is irritated by the recent rash of sexualised covers. Can’t you sell the magazine without them? Maybe, but they don’t want to. All that prudish code of conduct stuff is soooo 90’s.
Fourth is another letter irritated by the whole dual magazine thing. Those just keep on coming, huh.
Finally, someone very pleased by the big Greyhawk article in issue 98. The Dragon LG section never did those and it’s nice to see them stretch themselves again.
Nodwick can’t keep an orc in a 10x10 room alive long enough to get through the exposition before the others kill it. If it weren’t for fast breeding rates they’d be an extinct species long ago.
(un)reason
Legend
Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 100/159: July 2003
part 2/10
Agents and Allies: An adventure can not run on enemies alone. To complement their critical threats, they’re now accepting submissions of less hostile NPC’s. (although still having some moral ambiguity makes them more useful) The first one is a perfect example of that. Derthan Kaderas is a dwarf with some spontaneous sorcerous talent. Although any race can become any class now, most dwarves still stick to stereotypes, so his odd powers left him ostracised as a kid and growing up with a bad mix of superiority and inferiority complex. This eventually culminated in him killing another dwarf in anger and becoming an exile. Moving to more cosmopolitan places where people are less likely to pick on him has gradually made him a nicer person, but he still carries the emotional scars from years of having to live off his wits, often on the wrong end of the law (and an extensive rap sheet) so he’s still pretty easy to make an enemy out of. His tactics make good use of both his fighting & spellcasting skills and he’ll often pretend to be just one or the other before using the hidden ones to good effect. He’s definitely both usable and very relatable, making this a strong start to the series. Now we just have to see if it catches on at all.
Critical Threats: Adding a new thing doesn’t mean they’re going to be neglecting this column though. Say hello to Master Thest. Initially he just looks like another rich obnoxious merchant who’ll charge whatever the market will bear for his goods and use the profits to wallow in the pleasures of the flesh. Unfortunately, he’s actually a weretoad and one of his biggest delights is getting people alone and then swallowing them whole. So this is basically a riff on the same concept as Mystaran Devil Swine, an urbane beast of massive appetites who has some superficial charm, but get in their way and you’ll soon find they aren’t bound by the rules of civil society at all. You might be able to expose him and get the force of law on your side, but it’ll take concrete evidence, which is tricky when there’s no video cameras and the way he kills leaves no incriminating remains, and trying to secretly blackmail him with the threat of exposure will probably just result in you becoming the next meal unless you’re pretty combat capable. He definitely falls into the irredeemably loathsome class of villain players will love to hate if they have to interact with him more than once. All in all another pretty usable entry for a wide variety of campaigns, including the Hijinx ones from last issue.
part 2/10
Agents and Allies: An adventure can not run on enemies alone. To complement their critical threats, they’re now accepting submissions of less hostile NPC’s. (although still having some moral ambiguity makes them more useful) The first one is a perfect example of that. Derthan Kaderas is a dwarf with some spontaneous sorcerous talent. Although any race can become any class now, most dwarves still stick to stereotypes, so his odd powers left him ostracised as a kid and growing up with a bad mix of superiority and inferiority complex. This eventually culminated in him killing another dwarf in anger and becoming an exile. Moving to more cosmopolitan places where people are less likely to pick on him has gradually made him a nicer person, but he still carries the emotional scars from years of having to live off his wits, often on the wrong end of the law (and an extensive rap sheet) so he’s still pretty easy to make an enemy out of. His tactics make good use of both his fighting & spellcasting skills and he’ll often pretend to be just one or the other before using the hidden ones to good effect. He’s definitely both usable and very relatable, making this a strong start to the series. Now we just have to see if it catches on at all.
Critical Threats: Adding a new thing doesn’t mean they’re going to be neglecting this column though. Say hello to Master Thest. Initially he just looks like another rich obnoxious merchant who’ll charge whatever the market will bear for his goods and use the profits to wallow in the pleasures of the flesh. Unfortunately, he’s actually a weretoad and one of his biggest delights is getting people alone and then swallowing them whole. So this is basically a riff on the same concept as Mystaran Devil Swine, an urbane beast of massive appetites who has some superficial charm, but get in their way and you’ll soon find they aren’t bound by the rules of civil society at all. You might be able to expose him and get the force of law on your side, but it’ll take concrete evidence, which is tricky when there’s no video cameras and the way he kills leaves no incriminating remains, and trying to secretly blackmail him with the threat of exposure will probably just result in you becoming the next meal unless you’re pretty combat capable. He definitely falls into the irredeemably loathsome class of villain players will love to hate if they have to interact with him more than once. All in all another pretty usable entry for a wide variety of campaigns, including the Hijinx ones from last issue.
Wofano Wotanto
Hero
Having the sleazy promoter turn out to be a cannibal weretoad would be quite a twist for Hijinx, I'll give it that.
(un)reason
Legend
Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 100/159: July 2003
part 3/10
100 issues of Dungeon Magazine: This is pretty similar to the retrospective in issue 300 of Dragon, looking at the ups and downs, although as they’re younger and have had fewer editors it’s easier to get them back. Only Anthony & Michelle are missing, and they were only here for a few issues anyway so who cares? Roger Moore tried to take some of the workload off the games division, only to wind up with more than he bargained for in the chaos of Kim Mohan’s departure. After a couple of years they found Barbara and the two of them became a solid tag team for nearly a decade, doing most of the work on a magazine each and helping out with the other one where needed. Eventually she needed an assistant too and they lured promising freelancer Wolfgang Baur into the office. He didn’t stay long, but his time at the slush pile gave him a new appreciation of how few the good submissions are and how to spot them. Dave Gross reminds us that a good adventure starts with a map, so you know what’s out there if the players don’t follow the story and try something else. Chris Perkins reminds us just how many adventures he submitted that didn’t get published, and lists 10 of them, mostly on the sillier end where it’s quite clear why they rejected them, plus a mammoth Planescape one that would have filled two entire issues that they might have liked, but just wouldn’t have worked in those pre-adventure path days. All are pretty clear that Dungeon is a team effort not only between the staff, but the many people who submit adventures. Even the slews of bad ones show how many people care and want to be involved and without the competition they wouldn’t be able to keep the magazine as good as it is. All fairly heartwarming. Like Dragon, they show all the previous covers in miniature along the edges of the pages and like Dragon, this does make the modern ones look worse by comparison due to all the annoying promotional stuff they now put on the covers. Not all their decisions are good then, but enough to keep the place going and new readers coming in.
Old Embers Never Die: It has been many years since we fought Flame, possibly even centuries IC, so it’s very unlikely you’ll be fighting him for a third time with the same characters. Nevertheless, this adventure remains in continuity with the previous ones, coming up with an amusingly convoluted reason for his return. In fact, he’s back twice! Firstly, a kobold priestess unearthed and animated his skeleton. Secondly, he left a small piece of his flesh with the githyanki for cloning, so now there’s a younger version of him missing a load of memories newly arrived on the prime material trying to amass another hoard. You could encounter either individually, but of course it’s more fun if you wind up doing both in the right order and finding out about the lore connecting them.
So you’ll be chasing the troublesome kobolds of the Bogwoods, which involves going through swampy terrain filled with lizards, oozes, ghouls, will o’ wisps and other such unpleasantness. Eventually you’ll get to the kobold lair, which is a short, linear dungeon that culminates in an encounter with a gargantuan dragon skeleton in a room with no exits large enough for it to get out of. (unless they can temporarily de-animate it and carry the bones out individually or something.) So straight away, they’re making a basic design error that the original adventure avoided and whether that’s IC stupidity on the part of the kobolds or OOC bad writing I’m not sure. Since you’ll find out if you search the place properly afterwards that the kobold priestess has been engaging in a bunch of failed experiments to give the skeleton it’s intelligence and memories back I’ll be charitable and go for the one where she’s a dumbass meddling with forces she doesn’t understand. (and might well kill her even if she succeeded. ) This exposition will also give you the rough location of Flame’s previous lair, which she planed to visit in the hope of collecting “spiritual residue”. This leads you to the Western Mountains for the second half of the adventure, which is your basic silver anniversary return to the x format where you have the same map, but new monsters, including several different types of half-dragons, as apparently Flame got lonely during his time there. Explore it and you’ll eventually reach Flame himself, who is smaller than in the original adventure and only has a fraction of the treasure, (but still enough to be a logistical challenge getting home and spending) but is still a higher EL than in 1e because dragons in general are much more powerful now.
So this is two short adventures, which put together aren’t terrible, but aren’t as imaginative as the original, with less depth of personality or thought put into the tactics of the creatures that you’re encountering, how they relate to their environment and much longer statblocks filling up the space instead. It feels like nostalgic pandering by someone not quite as smart as the original writer. Another case where commissioning a tie-in from a staff writer results in something not quite as good as the adventures which fought their way out of the slush pile on merit alone. It’s still competently done enough to be usable, but no-one would be getting excited about it if the serial numbers were filed off and it was presented as an all-new adventure.
Nodwick has the unenviable task of trying to get Flame to pay child support.
part 3/10
100 issues of Dungeon Magazine: This is pretty similar to the retrospective in issue 300 of Dragon, looking at the ups and downs, although as they’re younger and have had fewer editors it’s easier to get them back. Only Anthony & Michelle are missing, and they were only here for a few issues anyway so who cares? Roger Moore tried to take some of the workload off the games division, only to wind up with more than he bargained for in the chaos of Kim Mohan’s departure. After a couple of years they found Barbara and the two of them became a solid tag team for nearly a decade, doing most of the work on a magazine each and helping out with the other one where needed. Eventually she needed an assistant too and they lured promising freelancer Wolfgang Baur into the office. He didn’t stay long, but his time at the slush pile gave him a new appreciation of how few the good submissions are and how to spot them. Dave Gross reminds us that a good adventure starts with a map, so you know what’s out there if the players don’t follow the story and try something else. Chris Perkins reminds us just how many adventures he submitted that didn’t get published, and lists 10 of them, mostly on the sillier end where it’s quite clear why they rejected them, plus a mammoth Planescape one that would have filled two entire issues that they might have liked, but just wouldn’t have worked in those pre-adventure path days. All are pretty clear that Dungeon is a team effort not only between the staff, but the many people who submit adventures. Even the slews of bad ones show how many people care and want to be involved and without the competition they wouldn’t be able to keep the magazine as good as it is. All fairly heartwarming. Like Dragon, they show all the previous covers in miniature along the edges of the pages and like Dragon, this does make the modern ones look worse by comparison due to all the annoying promotional stuff they now put on the covers. Not all their decisions are good then, but enough to keep the place going and new readers coming in.
Old Embers Never Die: It has been many years since we fought Flame, possibly even centuries IC, so it’s very unlikely you’ll be fighting him for a third time with the same characters. Nevertheless, this adventure remains in continuity with the previous ones, coming up with an amusingly convoluted reason for his return. In fact, he’s back twice! Firstly, a kobold priestess unearthed and animated his skeleton. Secondly, he left a small piece of his flesh with the githyanki for cloning, so now there’s a younger version of him missing a load of memories newly arrived on the prime material trying to amass another hoard. You could encounter either individually, but of course it’s more fun if you wind up doing both in the right order and finding out about the lore connecting them.
So you’ll be chasing the troublesome kobolds of the Bogwoods, which involves going through swampy terrain filled with lizards, oozes, ghouls, will o’ wisps and other such unpleasantness. Eventually you’ll get to the kobold lair, which is a short, linear dungeon that culminates in an encounter with a gargantuan dragon skeleton in a room with no exits large enough for it to get out of. (unless they can temporarily de-animate it and carry the bones out individually or something.) So straight away, they’re making a basic design error that the original adventure avoided and whether that’s IC stupidity on the part of the kobolds or OOC bad writing I’m not sure. Since you’ll find out if you search the place properly afterwards that the kobold priestess has been engaging in a bunch of failed experiments to give the skeleton it’s intelligence and memories back I’ll be charitable and go for the one where she’s a dumbass meddling with forces she doesn’t understand. (and might well kill her even if she succeeded. ) This exposition will also give you the rough location of Flame’s previous lair, which she planed to visit in the hope of collecting “spiritual residue”. This leads you to the Western Mountains for the second half of the adventure, which is your basic silver anniversary return to the x format where you have the same map, but new monsters, including several different types of half-dragons, as apparently Flame got lonely during his time there. Explore it and you’ll eventually reach Flame himself, who is smaller than in the original adventure and only has a fraction of the treasure, (but still enough to be a logistical challenge getting home and spending) but is still a higher EL than in 1e because dragons in general are much more powerful now.
So this is two short adventures, which put together aren’t terrible, but aren’t as imaginative as the original, with less depth of personality or thought put into the tactics of the creatures that you’re encountering, how they relate to their environment and much longer statblocks filling up the space instead. It feels like nostalgic pandering by someone not quite as smart as the original writer. Another case where commissioning a tie-in from a staff writer results in something not quite as good as the adventures which fought their way out of the slush pile on merit alone. It’s still competently done enough to be usable, but no-one would be getting excited about it if the serial numbers were filed off and it was presented as an all-new adventure.
Nodwick has the unenviable task of trying to get Flame to pay child support.
(un)reason
Legend
:scrappy-doo voice: He swallowed Daphne! Spit her out! Let me at 'im! Let me at 'im!Having the sleazy promoter turn out to be a cannibal weretoad would be quite a twist for Hijinx, I'll give it that.
Wofano Wotanto
Hero
Pretty sure the designer meant to do that. It falls into the same trope as the mad scientist who builds his giant death ray in an underground lair that he can't possibly get it out of without taking it apart again.
Also reminded of the villain in the old Cerebus comic who transmigrates his soul into a gigantic golem and then realizes he's several stories up in a tower and none of the stairs or other floors have sufficient reinforcement to support his new body, leaving him stuck but good.
To be fair, she's by far the tastiest member of the group in the dark days of Scrappy-Doo. Two of them are covered in fur (blech) and heaven knows when the stoner's clothes were last washed, let alone the rest of him. OTOH, he might qualify as a marijuana edible.
(un)reason
Legend
Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 100/159: July 2003
part 4/10
Agents and Allies 2: Looking ahead, it turns out this column doesn’t catch on after all, so these two are all you’re getting. At least it is another interesting one. Lone Tooth is a monk who joined the Sacred Order of Man-Beasts and was permanently transformed into a Dire Lion. The solitary lifestyle suits him and so he’s quite happy wandering the wilderness, but anyone who tries to despoil it will find it has a powerful protector with a very different set of tactics from the more common ranger or druid. A fairly basic gotcha encounter then, where you think you’re getting a basic lion encounter, then the lion starts talking and busts out some sick kung-fu moves. If he doesn’t consider you a mortal enemy, he’ll even reincarnate anyone killed in the fight as a random dire beast as well so no hard feelings. That definitely has the potential for very interesting long-term ramifications in a campaign. Just the kind of thing I like.
Woe to Mistledale: Oh bloody hell. While the previous adventure wasn’t brilliant, it was at least a sequel to two good adventures, so you can see why there would be public demand for further instalments. Who on earth wants more Skip Williams adventures?! Nevertheless his position at WotC is secure enough that he can force this scenario on us, a sequel to Raiders of Galath’s Roost from issue 87. Once again the Zhentarim are causing trouble in the Dalelands and guess who’s got to deal with it. First of course you’ve got to figure out who’s responsible in the first place, as they’re trying to make sure the humans think it’s the elves and vice versa, so they’ll fight and do half their work for them. The humans get a wagonfull of trolls sent careening into the centre of the village to cause havoc. Meanwhile the elves have to deal with loggers disguised as a local trading company cutting more trees than their quota allows, in places they shouldn’t even be at all. When the PC’s investigate the Zhents will pretend to be just regular brigands or loggers and harry them further. Plus the Drow are also busy with their own raids, completely unconnected to these schemes and happy to attack humans or elves regardless of their allegiances. So while their scheme is a bit scooby-doo, it’s not Hijinx levels of wacky, the plot does actually make sense and the PC’s are in genuine danger. Even once you know who it is, you won’t be able to just tie them up and deliver them to the authorities with nothing but an “and I would have got away with it if it weren’t for those pesky kids!” (although the adventure does strongly encourage questioning your enemies rather than killing them all straight away to solve the problem.) This isn’t actually that bad after all for a scene based, plot driven adventure, letting you do many of the scenes out of order and have a significant impact on how they play out rather than just going from one to the next. It’s not any kind of masterpiece, but it is at least about average for an adventure in here, putting it well within the playable quality range. Who knew he had it in him.
part 4/10
Agents and Allies 2: Looking ahead, it turns out this column doesn’t catch on after all, so these two are all you’re getting. At least it is another interesting one. Lone Tooth is a monk who joined the Sacred Order of Man-Beasts and was permanently transformed into a Dire Lion. The solitary lifestyle suits him and so he’s quite happy wandering the wilderness, but anyone who tries to despoil it will find it has a powerful protector with a very different set of tactics from the more common ranger or druid. A fairly basic gotcha encounter then, where you think you’re getting a basic lion encounter, then the lion starts talking and busts out some sick kung-fu moves. If he doesn’t consider you a mortal enemy, he’ll even reincarnate anyone killed in the fight as a random dire beast as well so no hard feelings. That definitely has the potential for very interesting long-term ramifications in a campaign. Just the kind of thing I like.
Woe to Mistledale: Oh bloody hell. While the previous adventure wasn’t brilliant, it was at least a sequel to two good adventures, so you can see why there would be public demand for further instalments. Who on earth wants more Skip Williams adventures?! Nevertheless his position at WotC is secure enough that he can force this scenario on us, a sequel to Raiders of Galath’s Roost from issue 87. Once again the Zhentarim are causing trouble in the Dalelands and guess who’s got to deal with it. First of course you’ve got to figure out who’s responsible in the first place, as they’re trying to make sure the humans think it’s the elves and vice versa, so they’ll fight and do half their work for them. The humans get a wagonfull of trolls sent careening into the centre of the village to cause havoc. Meanwhile the elves have to deal with loggers disguised as a local trading company cutting more trees than their quota allows, in places they shouldn’t even be at all. When the PC’s investigate the Zhents will pretend to be just regular brigands or loggers and harry them further. Plus the Drow are also busy with their own raids, completely unconnected to these schemes and happy to attack humans or elves regardless of their allegiances. So while their scheme is a bit scooby-doo, it’s not Hijinx levels of wacky, the plot does actually make sense and the PC’s are in genuine danger. Even once you know who it is, you won’t be able to just tie them up and deliver them to the authorities with nothing but an “and I would have got away with it if it weren’t for those pesky kids!” (although the adventure does strongly encourage questioning your enemies rather than killing them all straight away to solve the problem.) This isn’t actually that bad after all for a scene based, plot driven adventure, letting you do many of the scenes out of order and have a significant impact on how they play out rather than just going from one to the next. It’s not any kind of masterpiece, but it is at least about average for an adventure in here, putting it well within the playable quality range. Who knew he had it in him.
(un)reason
Legend
Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 100/159: July 2003
part 5/10
Critical Threats 2: Despite 3e being built around “fair” fights, there are a lot of rules exploits you can pull to make them very unfair indeed. Jonathan Tweet decides to demonstrate one of the easier ways to cheese your opponents using only stuff from the corebooks. Hungash is a hobgoblin wizard who specialises in fly & fry attacks. He becomes invisible, casts ghost sound to create ominous drums that cover his incantations and make it harder for the PC’s to pinpoint him, then rains fireballs & ice storms down until he runs out of spells, at which point he teleports away, still invisible. Unless you have something to counter invisibility and either flight or long range attacks of your own, you won’t even be able to touch him, and he can deal several hundred points of damage over the course of a minute and then be back the next day fresh as a daisy if that wasn’t enough. Scattering and diving for cover may save some of you, but any survivors will need to up their game fast if they want to have a chance long term. He’s not completely optimal - given how much his build revolves around memorising multiple copies of the same spells he’d be even better as a sorcerer or specialist wizard, but he could still TPK a whole party of the same level as him if they don’t have the right gear or tactics to cope with this kind of surprise attack. So this is pretty interesting because it’s one of the designers of the game showing you how to break the game. A reminder that 3e was designed by people who also worked on CCG’s, and they brought the same mentality of encouraging optimisation and including some deliberately bad “trap” options in the class and feat selections. Subsequent editions would crack down on these kind of things quite a bit, making building a character around stacking powers in this way a lot harder. The usability of this article will obviously depend heavily on if you’re the kind of DM who likes putting sadistic and unfair encounters in every now & then and letting the PC’s die if they aren’t sufficiently paranoid & prepared.
Beast of Burden: We finally have a full-length adventure that isn’t a sequel. It is following current trends though, as it’s another giant monster one. You go years without any at all and suddenly several turn up within a few months of each other. Your basic vaguely saurian kaiju has been captured by gnolls who’ve built a bunch of howdahs on its back. Like the recent giant golem adventure, you’re nowhere near powerful enough to fight it head-on so you need to figure out how to get close and then on top of the beast without being swatted and beat its handlers to get the situation under control. Now with extra balance checks because a giant lizard is considerably less stable in motion than a giant robot and you’re still on the outside. (unless you were swallowed, which probably won’t go well as a way of stopping it) So this is the kind of adventure which is basically one massive extended action scene with very few opportunities to rest up between fights, as unless you managed to get on there stealthily the enemy will be constantly pressing the attack and trying to get you off the creature where you can be stomped. People used to delving puzzle dungeons and pulling 15 minute workdays will have a tough time of this. If you like a more action movie style of play this does look pretty cool though as long as you aren’t having to create a custom battlemat to move your minis three-dimensionally. The kind of thing that got Mike Mearls to write Iron Heroes specifically to make tweaked rules & classes that handle this playstyle better. Not an all-time classic, but another adventure that’s very interesting in a thought-provoking way.
part 5/10
Critical Threats 2: Despite 3e being built around “fair” fights, there are a lot of rules exploits you can pull to make them very unfair indeed. Jonathan Tweet decides to demonstrate one of the easier ways to cheese your opponents using only stuff from the corebooks. Hungash is a hobgoblin wizard who specialises in fly & fry attacks. He becomes invisible, casts ghost sound to create ominous drums that cover his incantations and make it harder for the PC’s to pinpoint him, then rains fireballs & ice storms down until he runs out of spells, at which point he teleports away, still invisible. Unless you have something to counter invisibility and either flight or long range attacks of your own, you won’t even be able to touch him, and he can deal several hundred points of damage over the course of a minute and then be back the next day fresh as a daisy if that wasn’t enough. Scattering and diving for cover may save some of you, but any survivors will need to up their game fast if they want to have a chance long term. He’s not completely optimal - given how much his build revolves around memorising multiple copies of the same spells he’d be even better as a sorcerer or specialist wizard, but he could still TPK a whole party of the same level as him if they don’t have the right gear or tactics to cope with this kind of surprise attack. So this is pretty interesting because it’s one of the designers of the game showing you how to break the game. A reminder that 3e was designed by people who also worked on CCG’s, and they brought the same mentality of encouraging optimisation and including some deliberately bad “trap” options in the class and feat selections. Subsequent editions would crack down on these kind of things quite a bit, making building a character around stacking powers in this way a lot harder. The usability of this article will obviously depend heavily on if you’re the kind of DM who likes putting sadistic and unfair encounters in every now & then and letting the PC’s die if they aren’t sufficiently paranoid & prepared.
Beast of Burden: We finally have a full-length adventure that isn’t a sequel. It is following current trends though, as it’s another giant monster one. You go years without any at all and suddenly several turn up within a few months of each other. Your basic vaguely saurian kaiju has been captured by gnolls who’ve built a bunch of howdahs on its back. Like the recent giant golem adventure, you’re nowhere near powerful enough to fight it head-on so you need to figure out how to get close and then on top of the beast without being swatted and beat its handlers to get the situation under control. Now with extra balance checks because a giant lizard is considerably less stable in motion than a giant robot and you’re still on the outside. (unless you were swallowed, which probably won’t go well as a way of stopping it) So this is the kind of adventure which is basically one massive extended action scene with very few opportunities to rest up between fights, as unless you managed to get on there stealthily the enemy will be constantly pressing the attack and trying to get you off the creature where you can be stomped. People used to delving puzzle dungeons and pulling 15 minute workdays will have a tough time of this. If you like a more action movie style of play this does look pretty cool though as long as you aren’t having to create a custom battlemat to move your minis three-dimensionally. The kind of thing that got Mike Mearls to write Iron Heroes specifically to make tweaked rules & classes that handle this playstyle better. Not an all-time classic, but another adventure that’s very interesting in a thought-provoking way.
Wofano Wotanto
Hero
How is he still invisible after casting a bunch of offensive spells?
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