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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8150759" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 41: May 1988part 2/5Fun in Games: Rick takes the piss out of Jeff's attempt to give fighters more to do a couple of issues ago. You know what they need? Spells! He then lists a selection of entirely mundane actions like attack and defence in spell format. A standard April fools style article, that introduces an idea as a joke, to show their scorn for it. The real irony here is that hindsight has shown it's actually a pretty good idea when taken seriously - giving a fighty class a selection of special maneuvers that are selected and tracked in a similar way to spells worked excellently in Arcana Evolved, was adapted officially to 3e in the Book of 9 Swords, and then all the classes got basically the same AEDU power system in 4e regardless of power source. So it turns out the joke is on Rick in the long run. His other ideas are more intentionally useful beneath the humour. A secret society of female spellcasters disguised as a sewing group? Perfectly reasonable in a patriarchal society where they're not taken seriously. Using items of food as improvised minis? Also quite effective, if also somewhat messy. Once again it looks like there are solid ideas under the veneer of ridiculousness he seems to coat everything with. I  might be able to grow to tolerate him yet. Arcane Academe: In an interesting co-incidence, Jeff also gives us a bunch of potential new powers. There are plenty of things thieves really ought to be able to do that aren't currently covered by the rules, but unlike spellcasters, no mechanism for them learning them other than outright giving them new powers. So I guess that's what he's got to do. Say hello to Appraise, Streetwise, Ransack and Infiltrate. All are pretty self-explanatory, and most will folded into the nonweapon proficiency/skill systems in subsequent editions. So this is an idea that they'd return to again in Dark Sun, adding a selection of extra thief skills, then slightly improved in balance by the discretionary skill point system, before realising the distinction between what was a thief-specific skill and what was a general nonweapon proficiency was pretty arbitrary anyway, and improving on the whole system again in 3e. A mildly historically significant article that's also a good reminder of the things that have gradually improved over the years in game design. It takes a lot of effort, and the process of experimentation often seems like 10 steps forward, 9 back, but some things do definitely work better than others and stick. I guess that's evolution for you.</blockquote>

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