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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8191184" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 46: March 1989part 4/5The Bureaucrat: :sighs heavily: Why is it that the only time we see new classes in here is when they do joke issues? It's like they're actively mocking not only the subject of the new classes, but those players who persistently desire new crunchy stuff to play with. So here's the bureaucrat, an individually underpowered but collectively terrifying class that are definitely not functional as PC's, but I'm sure you can find a reason to use them as a DM. After all, in any society larger than a monkeysphere, middle managers will inevitably appear, and once they do, they'll take steps to ensure their position remains secure and properly compensated even if they don't actually do that much themselves. Exterminating them might be a pleasant fantasy, but it rarely goes well. This is the kind of parodic riffing on a real world thing that exaggerates for comical effect, but very little of it is actually false. It's decent enough on a writing level. On a mechanical level it could definitely have been a lot better though, as they've done joke classes that are also usable in a serious fashion before. I guess that proves that the writer isn't a part of the thing he's parodying, because otherwise they'd never have let that kind of imprecision get through into the final product. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Playing Illusions: We take a break from the joke articles once again for a revival of this old canard. The adjudication of exactly what you can and can't do with illusions varies enormously from table to table, especially in these older editions where the writing isn't so clear and precise. Here's yet another writer's take on how they should work. Unsurprisingly, the low level spells that only affect a few senses are by far the easiest to spot something's wrong with and make that disbelief roll. Complex things composed of lots of smaller things push the boundaries of what counts as a single object  Creating things you haven't experienced personally also makes the illusions considerably weaker and easier to see through. If they don't see through them though, the psychosomatic effects are quite capable of actually killing you, not just knocking you out with nonlethal damage that goes away after the scene is over. Neither the strictest or the most lenient interpretation I've seen, and a pretty boring read, particularly as it contrasts very sharply with the rest of this issue's content. Definitely one of those repeated topics that just gets more tiresome every time it repeats, unlike the more inventive ones like new classes, monsters and spells, which have a much larger amount of room to explore before running out of new combinations of flavour material and crunchy stuff.</blockquote>

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