Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 312: October 2003


part 6/9


The ebon maw: Back to the attempts at vile darkness, with one of those all-in-one articles that tries to provide a complete package of setting material and mechanics to back it up. An all-new demon lord, plus details on their cult, servant demons, unique spells and magic items? After all, starting with hints of cultists, and then ending the campaign with a pitched battle to prevent the demon lord himself from escaping the abyss, or if he does, to defeat or banish him before he consumes the world is a classic campaign arc that could well span the full 20 levels. Complete with humanoid form and collossal "true form" (which looks more impressive, but isn't actually that much more powerful) in classic video game styleee. This is a fun article, even if it doesn't feel much like the old demon lords. But then again, you want variety from the abyss, so complaining it's not in the original gygaxian style is stupid anyway. And it does have some very unusual and cool mechanical touches like the ability to gain infinite hit points if it eats enough, which means it feels like a properly epic monster, not some nerfed for balance creature that's nothing but a combat challenge. And it is different. We could definitely stand to see a few more new creatures covered like this, essentially giving them a full Ecology's worth of info in one article, instead of more disconnected monsters that are likely to never be seen again.


The ecology of the drider: Ahh, Lolth's angstium batteries. Nice to see them getting the spotlight again. They provide lots of fun for all the family, yet are unable to ever have a family of their own. Since they are outcasts, they have to be tough and self-reliant. Since they are nearly all at least moderately skilled spellcasters, traps and treachery are the order of the day in encounters with them. And since they can climb walls easily, they can put themselves in positions where they can attack you, but you can't get them fairly easily. As is their current formula, this has lots of tactics for both the creature, and people facing them. The length of the ecologies seems to be gradually declining, as if they find it harder to fill up this format than the fiction heavy one. And similarly, I'm finding it harder to find interesting things to write about them, despite their being competently done. That's the problem with following formulas too strictly.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 312: October 2003


part 7/9


Rogues gallery: Like most of the old regular columns, this has been pretty light in appearances recently. And like many articles, it's also focussing much more on the statistical side of the characters than their personalities.

Dyrr the lichdrow is a 26th level master spellcaster who's stats take up a whole page, and his items near that again. He's the very model of a hard to keep track of 3rd edition character, and probably took ages to build as well. I do not envy the DM who has to play him as intelligently as he really needs to be played.

Ryld Argith is the master of Menzoberranzan's fighting academy. He has a couple of levels in rogue as well, which probably hasn't hurt his way to the top, since social skills are as important as actual skill once you get past a certain level. Since he doesn't have a family name to add prestige, he really had to fight for this, and probably deserves it. If you fight him, don't expect him to fight fair.

Valas Hune is the kind of neutral drow who isn't exactly an angsty outcast, but does tend to keep his distance from the political aspect of menzoberranzan society. He also has quite the selection of magic items, including several unique ones. Whether you end up killing him or not will obviously depend on the circumstances in which you meet him.

Halistra Melarn is another morally ambiguous individual, reminding us that the 3e cleric rules allow evil gods to have neutral clerics. Ironically, this means she feels guilty about not being nasty enough to be a proper head of a Drow noble family. Lolth may be a cartoon villain, complete with giant robot spider base, but that certainly doesn't mean all her worshippers are.

And so this column draws to a close, one of the many phased out quietly over the last couple of years. Well, there's only so much they can tell us about their characters, and it does seem to be one of the less popular things they can do. New characters are better placed in the context of full adventures and sourcebooks which give us a clear purpose or place in the world for them.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 312: October 2003


part 8/9


The play's the thing: Playing with people around the world has really evolved over the years, and here's the latest check-in. The internet has reached a form recognisable in the modern day, but the actual specific websites are very different. It's a lot harder to get someone to reveal their real identity, which means if someone drops out and disappears, it's really hard to find them again. Newsgroups and email lists are still a thing that many people use, and aren't too terrible at running games in as long as you have some form of dice roller you trust. Cartography and battlemap software are options, but they will set you back a fair amount, and require you to be a techie sort. Actually, this raises an interesting point in that the DM will also be expected to be the person who chooses and knows the ins and out of the technological platform you're using, and how this could be offputting to someone who isn't. The age of iDevices and touchscreens bringing a new leap in casual user-friendliness is still a few years away. It's the little differences that'll really catch you out. So this is one of those looks at the outside world that come less and less frequently these days. As such, it's pretty welcome.


Dungeoncraft: If you're going to be spending a lot of time in dungeons, you really need to give them plenty of variety. Here Monte gives us lots of example environments and how they'll affect the play. Caves go off the grid and slope and twist unpredictably. Ruins have irregular walls and substantial open areas. Water and Sky dungeons open up all manner of 3D possibilities. Going extradimensional lets you give the finger to Euclid, and quite possibly Newton as well. (Einstein goes without saying, since I've never seen relativity used properly in an rpg, and I'm not even sure it's possible. ) And you can combine several ideas as well, having a partly submerged ruin in a volcanic caldera on a flying island, for example. Like last issue, most of these ideas are familiar, but they haven't all been gathered in one place before. The real world on it's own is full of rarely used hostile terrains to steal, and there's plenty of others to add. Whether the players will think of them as the dungeon, or the wilderness you travel to get to the dungeon is very much a matter of presentation. And I think with this number of ingredients you can combine them to create a unique challenge or two.

 

[(un)reason]

5 years. I've been doing this for 5 years now. Half a decade. Seems pretty ridiculous, doesn't it. And at the rate I'm going at the moment, it still looks touch and go whether I'll be done in a year's time, especially since my old cutoff point looks increasingly outdated with another 60+ electronic issues under their belt now. I guess we'll just have to see then. Typing fingers, don't fail me now.


Dragon Issue 312: October 2003


part 9/9


Sage advice: Sorcerers can't use metamagic as counterspells, because it extends the casting time. (Are you suggesting that Skip, the Ultimate Sage, is fallible?! How dare you! Skip is never wrong! Skip will cap you if you ever mention this in public! )

When do full round actions take place (In your turn, just like everything else. You'll just have to accept the abstraction inherent in this.)

Can you explain the glove of storing's effects. ( Nothing to see here. Perfectly standard passage of time and item suppression rules. Move along.)

Can you scry on locations as well as creatures. (Depends what spell you're using. Some are more versatile and useful than others. As ever, read the books. )

How does disable device work. (Abstractly. Player intelligence and ingenuity plays no part, nor should it. That would give some people an unfair advantage. It also saves the DM the trouble of figuring out exactly how a trap works.)

What happens if you don't notice a trap, trigger it, and it misses. (Exactly that. How it misses is purely flavour text. You may describe it as seems appropriate to the trap and situation. )

Does a rope really have a break DC of 23. Characters with str 16+ could break through it by taking 20 (Feature, not bug, Skip thinks. Creatures should always have a decent chance to escape when captured, otherwise the players may be stuck in unfun situations for quite a while. Note that multiple knots and loops of rope mean this may take a lot longer. )

When do you save against blade barrier (When it hits you.)

How many times a day can a cleric regain spells (Once. It's just the time that's variable.)

Can you fire a repeating crossbow with one hand or not. We've been arguing for ages about this. (A debate? Skip cannot tolerate this! Skip will settle this argument definitively! Yes, but you cannot reload it onehanded! There! It is settled!)

What order do you grapple in? How quickly can you do it? (The right order. One action per action you have. Multiple attacks are very handy. )

Can you use escape artist to escape a grapple (yes. Better max it out if you wanna go that route.)

If something with reach grapples you, how is the movement handled (They come to your space, or you go to there's with improved grab. This costs neither of you movement points, with is definitely exploitable. )

How can a creature with 0 reach flank (you can't. Nor can you gain benefits from an ally. Sorry, Mr Ratty. Guess rogue wasn't such a great class choice after all. )


Nodwick has a clip show. Well, we have been doing this for a while. You've gotta play with the format to keep it interesting:

Exalted gets to go on the back page. Guess what. They've just completed their fatsplat collection. Now that really takes me back. GUTB, where are you now?


And so for a third issue in a row, I find myself pretty damn bored. The evil classes stuff is better mechanically than the vile darkness stuff last year, but it's also very formulaic and far less mockable, which means it still isn't particularly thrilling. So I find it very strange that one of the best issues in the magazine's run is immediately followed by three of the worst, almost matching the little red triangle ones in redundancy. I seriously hope the next issue has something very different to offer us.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Congrats on five years of hard work, and thanks again. A lot!

 

[jonesy]

Does a rope really have a break DC of 23. Characters with str 16+ could break through it by taking 20 (Feature, not bug, Skip thinks. Creatures should always have a decent chance to escape when captured, otherwise the players may be stuck in unfun situations for quite a while. Note that multiple knots and loops of rope mean this may take a lot longer. )

Ah yes, the eternal struggle between the DM to tie the PC's into whatever plot he wants them to fall into and the dislike of players to be railroaded into something they have little to say for. Rope, what? Oh.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 313: November 2003


part 1/9


114 (116) pages. Another whitespace closeup of a monster going raar. I R unconvincing badass. Those teeth can't close properly. And either part of the torso is unfinished, or that's the tightest corset a lycanthrope ever did wear, and he's currently posing at a 45 degree angle like Rhianna. Either way, I do not feel in the slightest bit threatened. Who likes this stuff? Still, it is appropriate to the theme at least. Monsters of Power? Strange way of phrasing it, but the contents make it pretty clear. Lycanthropes, mind flayers, beholders, undead, elves, dragons? The cool kids, in other word. Hmph. All of those apart from beholders have had whole themed sections to themselves before. It looks like the shallow dipping into many topics they engaged in the last three issues is continuing. Don't make me return a negative result for 4 issues in a row. They didn't manage that even in the mid 90's.


Scan Quality: Erratic page widths, unindexed.


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: The editorial, unsurprisingly, tries to sell covering more things in less detail in a positive way. After all, it's not as if we use the same monsters in game for an extended period of time. A few new tricks for lots of them mean you're more likely to actually use a decent proportion of them in-game. Plus certain monsters, Dragons and Beholders in particular, are so intimidating statistically that they don't actually appear much in most campaigns. Dragonlance was created specifically to big up the Dragon part of D&D over the Dungeon part, and look how that turned out in the long run. Valid points, and a strong reminder that most people don't want to examine things in the level of detail I enjoy, so covering lots of topics decreases the odds that someone will find the issue completely useless. Obsession can be very unhealthy for you.


Scale Mail: As usual, even when I didn't like an issue, there's a fair number of readers who did. This is certainly the case for the classes trilogy, which does have tons of easily usable crunch whether you find it a good read or not.

The endless list of D&D pop culture references continues. By the time the next issue comes out, someone'll probably have made another one. That's just how we roll now geeks have gone mainstream.

Also usual is the panic when a regular feature is skipped for a couple of issues. Afraid What's New really is gone for good though. They'll have to replace it with something that actually IS new.

Somewhat more usual is a request that they create a new D&D campaign world in the magazine, preferably one that actually follows D&D physics in a logical fashion. Well, they gradually built up the Realms for 6 years before releasing it properly. They could do it again if the will and ideas were there. But that would require someone with the drive and vision of Ed to come along and make a successful pitch, and the odds of that with the magazine more established and set in it's ways look increasingly slim.

And finally, we have yet another instance of someone needing help finding players. If only they had some way of finding people in the same area. You know, the internet has a whole bunch of resources for just that. Get too it.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 313: November 2003


part 2/9


Zogonia has another double helping of increasing ed-uppedness. What is going on here? This humour is getting downright mean spirited. I worry about the writer.


Up on a soapbox: Gary's already told a story about how when he was a player, his experience and paranoia proved too much for a scenario, and he missed the obvious solution. This was not a unique occurrence, and while last time it merely resulted in failing to find the best treasure, this time the whole party (bar one teleporting wizard) got squished by the classic descending ceiling trap. And the solution seemed so simple. (to him, anyway ) It's good to keep up your reputation as a player-killer, even if you don't actually do it that often. This all seems entirely consistent with his views from earlier stories, so we're not really learning anything new about him or the old days. And you can be fairly sure if he reuses this scenario now, the solution will be different. Or maybe it won't, just for irony's sake. Who knows, apart from the people who played with him at conventions in the final years of his life. Unless one of them weighs in, we're not going to get any definite answers here. Onward we go then.


Dork tower finally grasps the concept of the circle of life. This is less pleasing than it sounds.


Animal ancestry: Last month, Celestials got racial progressions for those of you who wanted to start them from 1st level. This time, it's Lycanthropes turn. Bear, Boar, Rat, Tiger and Wolf; all the basics, none of the many many other variants that have appeared over the years. Well, they've got to leave room for the follow-up in 6 months or so. All of them have a total LA of 3 above their HD, which oddly enough will hit wererats and wolves the hardest, since being 3HD down compared to the rest of the party is far more significant at level 4-5 than level 9. Everything else is pretty predictable here. The gradually escalating modifiers to ability scores, armour, damage reduction, etc. The only notable thing I see is that the ability to pass on lycanthropy is always the absolute last power they get, reminding us how much they hate spawn cascades this edition. So yeah, stats, a few new feats, basic roleplaying advice. Meharoo.

 

[Orius]

Still, the perserverence should be commended. How many other Let's Reads of this scope would have folded by now?

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 313: November 2003


part 3/9


Shrine war: Obviously with the new D&D minis game being gutted of setting, they can't spend a load of articles expositing on the histories of the factions and the colour schemes they should be painted in. Instead, they're doing what all the other articles these days are doing and providing you with crunchy stuff you can drop straight into your game. A new scenario, and the battle tiles to go with it? That's neither a bad idea, nor particularly rehashed, which is cool. Each shrine has a map and it's own special rules appropriate to it's alignment, mostly of the "certain squares have particular effects on those in or moving through them." Each is 8x5 squares big, which means you won't be fielding particularly large warbands, but there are rules for rolling reinforcements if you want a nice long battle. Even if it's not as colourful as the Chainmail articles, it still looks like they have a fair amount of ideas to add to this game, and the diversion from regular D&D is always welcome. I hope they have other things to sell us as well as scenarios and new status and environmental conditions.


Secrets of the illithids: In 2e, melding magic and psionics to create something greater than the sum of their parts was pretty exclusively an Athasian thing, and even then you had to be epic level to make much headway. In 3e, it's much easier, although you'll have to work pretty hard at it to be better than a single-classed wizard or psion of the same total level. Case in point, the Mind Mage Prestige class detailed here. It does get more interesting special abilities, but it has higher prerequisites and less advancement (8 levels over 10 for both sides) than the Cerebromancer that will appear in a few months time in the XPH. That means they'll effectively be a 13th level spellcaster/11 level psion at 18th level. (the earliest they can max out the prestige class) The usual MAD problems will be a pain in the ass. On the other hand, at epic level, the ability to add their prestige class level to their caster/manifester level will go from just about allowing them to keep up in terms of durations and spell penetration, to punching straight through creatures that would be immune to the spells of an unoptimised character of the same level. And the ability to spend power points to offset the level increases of metamagic feats will allow them to nova to a ridiculous degree. This essentially exaggerates the weak at low level, powerful at high level curve that makes spellcasters a problem, and as such, you should think very carefully before allowing it.