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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8016298" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 17: Mar/Apr 1984part 3/6The Incants of Ishcabeble: Part 6 of the prophecy of Brie delivers another round of alliteration, riddles, puns and puzzles, as the PC's try to get to the top of a wizard's tower. Even more than last time, you'll need both your puzzle brain and your tolerance for bad jokes fully functional if you're going to get anywhere beyond the ground floor. Whoopee cushions, extremely specialised magical items, a combination of long & deadly fights and surprisingly easy fakeouts, this is pretty irritating, and definitely not one I'd want to be involved in as a DM or a player. I'm definitely starting to see why they cancelled them as standalone modules. Just …… no.The Fighter: Having spent a whole load of time telling you what your characters shouldn't look like, they decide positive reinforcement is as important as negative, and set out to give us an example of what a medium-high level character SHOULD look like. Or at least, what their trappings should look like, as they go into great detail about his personality, equipment, history, likes and dislikes, but not his actual statistics (although given that he has followers and a keep, and counting up the amount of money he'e earned in his adventures, he's probably in the 12-14th level range.) It's quite interesting, and shows that friendships and favours won over the course of your adventures can be just as important rewards as riches and magic items, especially if you make them unique and fleshed out in their own right. That's how you set a good example. They could do a lot more of this without it getting repetitive than nagging columns about game balance, so I definitely prefer it. Two New NPC's: Having spent two pages describing a single character, they then decide to switch up the approach and give both the stats and personalities of two more in a single page. This obviously means somewhat less depth, but also more immediate usability in your own game. They're the same class, level and alignment, but differ a fair amount in their other stats and items, serving as a good example of how even in this edition, characters can wind up being customised in play. Put together, this shows a definite agenda, to demonstrate that even the most vanilla class in the game can be interesting if properly played, and you don't need to constantly add new ones to be cool. Nice effort, but that's a battle you're going to lose in the long run, with subsequent editions racking up the customisability of every class. The average player wants a little more mechanical choice and less randomness than the designers are giving them at the moment, and it'll take the company dying and being taken over before they properly cater to it.</blockquote>

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