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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9087321" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron issue 144: October 2000part 3/6Elminster's Everwinking Eye: Ed’s column is crunch free as usual, in sharp contrast to the previous article, and also as usual feels like it could have been written years in advance and who’d know the difference? We’re off to Oparl, which is essentially the Las Vegas of the Border Kingdoms. Propped up by an inflow of Calishite tourist money, it has the twin problems many desert cities have of getting in enough water for everyone and then disposing of it afterwards, with sewer system maintenance a definite problem when it’s regularly infested with monsters. But where there’s a will (and conjuring magic) there’s a way, which means it’s grown into a hodgepodge of glitzy palaces and their private gardens, each basically a law unto itself, which also frequently have monsters roaming the grounds to discourage uninvited guests. Another place that seems like fertile ground for adventurers, whether you treat these places as social challenges to get invited to parties at and do deals, or ones where you sneak in, kill monsters and try to get out alive with more treasure than when you went in. (or maybe both, because getting invited in gives you a good opportunity to scout things out for a future heist. As a DM that gives you free rein to have odd combinations of monsters and traps together without worrying about ecological concerns, as it’s all propped up by the whims of some rich eccentric keeping them as pets. As is becoming increasingly common, this is a multiparter, so it’s obvious more detail is still coming about both who’s in charge and what things are like in the poorer parts of town, but it already looks like this is another place you could easily have years of adventures in, then when you have enough money, build your own palace which you have to think up sadistically inventive ways to defend from other adventurers. That’s the great circle of life in this world, as we’ve seen before many times, expressed in different ways.Feats Don't Fail Me Now!: Feats are one of the biggest changes between the old and new editions, so a bit of basic advice for each class (that will rapidly become outdated once supplements come out and the charop boards really get to work stress testing what combos actually work well in actual play) seems an obvious way to fill a few pages. It’s mostly in alphabetical order, but puts fighters at the front and spends more than twice as long on them, since they get more than twice as many feats as any other class. Quick Draw is invaluable if you’ve packed multiple weapons for different situations. Spiked chains require substantial feat investment to get the most out of them, but become very dangerous once you do, combining reach, being usable on adjacent enemies as well and tripping. Lightly armored swashbucklers can be just as awesome as heavily armored tanks. Nearly everyone will appreciate improved initiative, but you should skip toughness unless you really need it as a prerequisite for something else. Remember you can select weapon focus for ray spells, which may well help out your low BAB score wizard. If you’re a full spellcaster, investing in item creation feats is a massive asset to the party and don’t worry too much about XP costs because the scaling CR system for XP means it’s hard to fall more than a level behind the other PC’s for any length of time. They’ve got a fairly easy job at this point so it’s hard for them to screw up the advice too much. The real tests will come several years later if they do another version of this.The Big Game Hunter: Following directly on from last issue, Greg Detwiler still has plenty more to say about hunting, only moving from the medieval era to colonial times. If spears, dogs and traps are a bit unfair to the quarry, muskets stack the deck to a ridiculous extent, turning it from something where there’s still a decent risk of getting hurt to a trip that rich kids treat like a big party, with the term Champagne Safari becoming a thing. (although part of that is because more sensitive alcohols didn’t travel well so champagne is all they had) Like golf, going on a big hunt in a foreign land became a way to meet other rich people and network. This went on through the whole victorian era and into a good chunk of the 20th century, only going out of fashion when big game became scarce and we had to actively work to preserve it to have any left at all. (which means banning it for the lower classes first and calling them poachers if they carry on, while rich tourists can still get away with it if they know which palms to grease) A reminder that the reason real life isn’t more like D&D is because we’re just too good at forming small groups and working together in a co-ordinated way to beat larger creatures, to the point where we run out of challenges and naughty word up the ecosystem in the process. Then we need to fight each other to get a decent challenge or make up increasingly elaborate fantasy games to channel that urge in a non-harmful way. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Speaking of which, this isn’t completely stat free this time, but includes stuff for building a big game hunter in the Call of Cthulhu system. Even if they can take on charging elephants without flinching, coming across a shoggoth or some byakhee while delving the jungle will remind them that who is the hunter and who is the prey can still flip in the right circumstances. A good reminder that this is definitely a milieu you can have a lot of fun adventures in, even if it’s not politically correct at all these days. Just got to keep your fantasies separate from reality. Hopefully you’re not wringing every cent out of your former friends IRL after playing monopoly, and you won’t be heading to Africa after this to bag one of the last few wild rhinos.</blockquote>

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