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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8808855" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 124: October 1996part 3/5Vecna Lives! In Ravenloft: Ah yes, time for this bit of metaplot again, in which Vecna & Kas get sucked into Ravenloft and given their own domains for a few years, only to break free in Die Vecna Die, in the process ascending to a full god & vestige respectively and transforming the universe from 2e to 3e rules. Bet the Dark Powers weren't expecting that when they started this. As usual for Ravenloft, even though the domains are brand new, they act like they've been around for centuries, with a full complement of oppressed peoples with stuff that makes no sense if they've always lived in this little two-domain island in the mists. Vecna lives in Cavitus, a volcanic wasteland where there's no night or day due to the omnipresent ashy glow, while Kas rules Tovag, a mildly more pleasant hilly land then made worse again by his endless futile wars on Vecna throwing people into the meatgrinder and everyone ageing at double normal rate so he can replace them faster. (not that that makes sense either if the domain has only just been created) Despite the new corebook trying to make Ravenloft a place where people live and you can run a whole campaign with the natives, there are still some domains that make no sense save as a highly specific prison custom designed to reflect but also torment their darklords. Even if you can spot the plot holes as an outsider, that won't make the danger you face in these places any less real. It's all a bit of a timey-wimey headache, but I think you can probably get a good adventure out of these places, particularly if your PC's are from Oerth and have reason to know the legends about what Vecna & Kas got up to centuries ago, maybe even their recent defeat back in 1990. Just not the actual published adventures as written, which are railroady even by mid-90's TSR standards. Victorian Knights: To keep up the october horrorfest, it's time for a few more Masque of the Red Death kits. Will they get any powers that make the scares seem trivial, or will they remain as weak as the ones in the boxed set?Cowboys get access to three proficiency groups, but have a reaction penalty when first meeting anyone not in the trade due to their rough & ready mannerisms. If you can get past that, they can definitely be loyal and useful companions when vampire-hunting. Servants are trained to be politely unflappable in the face of obvious danger, getting a save against fear checks, but this repression makes them vulnerable to the more subtle long-term psychological damage caused by horror checks. Useful in a one-shot, but balances out over the course of a campaign.Gnostics are technically wizards, but subscribe to a certain ancient religion anyway. This limits the sources they can learn spells from, but lets them cast the ones they do know at a level higher than normal. The kind of thing that's as much of a hindrance in actual play as the DM makes it. Dilettantes are the cleric kit, and gain access to twice as many spheres at usual, at the cost of requiring slightly more XP to gain each level. That's still a pretty substantial benefit overall, presuming you don't pick lots of spells that require powers checks and wind up screwing yourself over. They're easily the best of these, even if they're still at a disadvantage compared to regular clerics from other campaigns until they hit double digit levels.</blockquote>

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