Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 335: September 2005


part 4/7


Fiction: Game of Change by Elaine Cunningham. The third biggest name in Realms books (after Ed & R.A. Salvadore) shows up a second time this month, giving us another story with some familiar characters. It starts off in lighthearted fashion, with a little cheating at gambling, which then progresses into a far more serious plot dealing with the nature of magic in the Realms, with a serious helping of elven racism on the side. The whole thing is surprisingly morally ambiguous, with a fair amount of cold-blooded murder committed by the protagonist and no comeuppance at the end. This reminds me that since they got rid of the TSR code of conduct, the writers are free to tell darker stories, even if they usually don't. And having recurring antiheroes and bad guys does help the Realms from seeming quite so cheery and safe. So this story does manage to hold my interest and avoid being cheesy or cliched, which I haven't always been able to say about her work. It's good to be able to look in on characters at various points in their life when they're not doing the typical hero's journey stuff.


The ecology of the lizardfolk: Another monster I'm vaguely surprised hasn't got an ecology sooner. Like kobolds, which it's quite likely they're related too, lizard men (damn you political correctness! ) are one of THE go to monsters for a certain level of adventurers, appearing in absolutely tons of modules and sourcebooks. However, unlike kobolds, which may be of average intelligence, but are portrayed as cunning, inventive, and punching above their weight by use of those characteristics, lizardfolk are generally played dumber than their statistical intelligence, preferring to rely on instinct whenever they can get away with it. As is often the case in D&D, it's largely the fault of deific intervention. Their default god is a lazy bugger only concerned with eating and mating. Curiously, although he's a well established part of D&D continuity, this ecology chooses to completely ignore the other god they commonly worship, his lizard king creations, the way they interact with normal lizardfolk, and attempts to corrupt the race. This is a very glaring omission indeed, and seems even more odd when you consider the number of supplements they do reference in this one, including some crunch which you need to have got recent books to understand. These two very black marks against it mean that I'll have to give this one a well below average mark, despite having a few cool feats and lifecycle notes. I do not approve of whitewashing.


Wormfood: Hirelings and cohorts! They really are kicking it old skool in this series! A step up from the dull worldbuilding of the previous installments as they take the time to show us their characters as they were at 4th level, and talk about how you can use them in your game.

Gar Blitzhame is a local dwarf fighter/mage. He has a bunch of personal connections to the rest of the setting, giving you an easy in to certain plot events if you meet him. We also get details on his fighting tactics, which is particularly useful for a multiclass character.

Daejin Moon is a taciturn and snide elven ranger. If you can't match up to her in skill and tactics, you'll be getting more than a few barbed comments over the course of your adventuring. Just the thing for sarcastic DM's to have fun playing out.

Tassilo Vinese is a cleric of Heironious, who tries hard to be a team player, serving as both healer and fighter as a cleric of war should. You can rely on him to give his all in a pinch to save the rest of you. Glad to have him on board. This lot should come in handy, even if you aren't playing the adventure path.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 335: September 2005


part 5/7


The Charlatan: They brought back the Jester 4 months ago. now they update another old class from the pages of the magazine as a Prestige Class. Charlatans first appeared in issue 120, where they combined a reasonable selection of thief skills with the ability to fake spellcasting to a modest degree. Since multiclassing and learning magic in general is much easier in 3e, it's hard to see why a rogue wouldn't just take a few levels in wizard or bard rather than going to the considerably harder effort of learning how to fake spellcasting. They'd have to be even better than the real thing in some respects to be balanced overall. And since this is only a 5 level prestige class, but lets you fake a few spells higher than 3rd level (ignoring magic resistance, which is especially nice) I think I can say they achieve that goal. It still can't compete with just going 20 levels in Beguiler, or prestigeing into Arcane Trickster for combining rogue skills with magical versatility, but it at least holds it's own against regular rogues while offering a different set of tricks, and it's definitely better at general social stuff than the 1e version, thanks to the more codified skill system of 3e. Watch out when someone tries to sell you something rare and valuable on the cheap. It could still go horribly wrong, believe me.


Bazaar of the Bizarre: Along with the lizardfolk ecology, we have a set of swamp based magic items from the same author. And some fiction too. Been quite a while since we had that around here. Despite the previous article not being great, this still seems promising.

The Baleful eye of Bad Juju is your basic curse inflicting evil eye. Duration has once again been substantially reduced compared to previous incarnations of this principle.

Black Salt Rods detect supernatural nasties and offer minor protection against undead. Once again Sting is the primary influence, and I'm not talking Don't stand so close to me here.

Capotes of Dragonfly Wings keep bugs away and give you insect like reactions. This may make you slightly creepy, but is generally a beneficial thing. A nice contrast to the generally problematic but with a few desirable features ones of recent issues.

Eggsucker Staves bring new life, and have very cool visuals. Very useful, but I wouldn't like to be the person who collects all those eggshells that make it up.

Mudwalker Rings are probably more useful against lizardfolk than for them. They can already navigate swamps faster than they move on dry land, after all.

Shaker Staves of the Quondam give all your allies guidance from their ancestors, and also look really creepy. Typical buff effect with good fluff really as before.

Star Tortoise Shields protect you from being decapitated, for some reason. Anyone know the origin of this one?

The Visard of Semuyana lets you deliberately sacrifice your intellect to get better connected to nature and your god. Since Knowledge (Nature) is an int based skill, this doesn't work too well in D&D. No wonder lizard men are a dying race.

A Vivifying Bacalo animates any corpses that may be hanging around underwater and turns them into temporary ghouls for you to send against the enemy. A surprisingly careful bit of planning. After all, undead breaking free of your control and stinking up the place is always an almighty pain in the butt.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 335: September 2005


part 6/7


Spellcraft: An interesting themed Bard collection, seemingly aimed at lovers of swashbuckling. (and we know there's still plenty of those around.) It's another one who's setting stuff is set in the Realms too, fitting the issue's theme. All your rockstar fantasies, with magic powers on top. Say hello to the Songsabers. They have some cool signature items that make them a lot more versatile than most spontaneous spellcasters. Get hold of a few of these and you'll be both cool and dangerous.

Animate Instrument lets you fly your guitar, harp or whatever, to play appropriate music while you get on with the buckling of swash. Always a fun business, adding accompaniment to a scene.

Ever Armed is your basic weapon conjuring spell, bard style. As usual, it gets more plusses as you level up.

Harmonic Void s up magical verbal components while still allowing regular speech. Nasty. Course, this'll be just as big a problem for Bards, as they can't get rid of those components with metamagic so easily.

Loresong is another, quite good skill booster, that really does let Bards be Jacks of all trades. With this kind of stuff, they handily beat rogues overall, despite the skill point gap.

Tune of the Dancing Weapon makes your weapon a dancing one. Combine that with the instrument playing one, and you can just sit back and relax while the whole scene gets taken care of automatically. It almost seems too easy, doesn't it. Don't let yourself get flabby. No-one likes a flabby swashbuckler, and the narrative may well kill you in response.


Sage advice: Does profciency in light armor let you use a mithral breastplate (Andy isn't ssure. Probably, becausse andy doessn't want to upssset you.)

Do all expensive special materials get charged by the piece (yes)

How much should mithral chainmail barding cost (Lotsess. 16,000 gold piecess)

How much does a nonweapon item made of thinaun cost (It doesn't matter, becausse it won't give you the sspecial benefit, collins collins)

Can magic items be enhanced again after creation (The DMG wouldn't have pricess for it if you couldn't)

How do you figure out the cost for increasing the AC on a robe of wizardry (Andy doesn't know. Making new magic items iss complicated, collins collins. Ssorry.)

Are magic items usable by only one class cheaper. (Ssometimes. More to ssell than to make, becausse there's less demand.)

Can sudden metamagic feats be used to make scrolls or wands (yes)
do you have to be high enough level to make an item anyway if you use another magic item to make it (no)

Can you make +1 gloves (No. They aren't weapons, so it's not applicable)

Can an item be both magicaly and psionically enchanted (Yess, oh yess)

If an item bonus has a fixed price, does that boost it's effective plusses (no)

Can epic level characters boost ancestral relics further (Sseems like a good idea if you don't want ssamurai to end up ssuboptimal like ssorcerers. Andy will sshow you how to do the ssums to keep thiss balanssed, yess. )

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 335: September 2005


part 7/7


Class acts: Barbarians get Nasty Brutish, and Short. This is not advice about halfling and gnome barbarians, contrary to expectations. Instead, this is their turn on the background wagon. Nothing hugely surprising here, given their increasing love of reskinning.

Bards get a pair of new magic items. The Bamboo flute, and the Gypsy cloak. One basic buff item, and one flavourful one with both benefits and drawbacks. Fairly decent.

Clerics get their turn for patronizing spell choosing advice. Since they have lots of spells, this is rather harder to be certain about than rangers and paladins. Still, a dispel magic or two rarely goes amiss, I must say that.

Druids get Totem druids. Another attempt to trick you into nerfing yourself, these guys sacrifice their regular wild shaping for more frequent and powerful shaping into a single animal only. Not on your nelly mate.

Fighters get Cultured Combatants II. Four more feats based upon variants of the perform skill. What is all that about then? I must admit it has a good deal of style though.

Monks go completely the opposite direction, with Chaos Monks. Just the thing for your Githzerai frustrated by his awkward favored class conflicting with his racial alignment, and perfect for putting in a party with a wild mage.

Paladins get Paladin Lore. As a servant of both Law and Good, it's important you know how to fight corruption, who is corrupt, and which targets you have a chance of beating. Awkward business, when some appear to be upstanding pillars of the community, and you can't assemble enough evidence to prove their wrongdoing. Sometime you wish your god would just turn them all to pillars of salt, then you can sprinkle them on your fish and chips. But no. Gotta be good gotta be wise gotta be strong, gotta stay together. Love won't save the day unless you kick the ass of people standing in it's way.

Rangers get Favored Enemy Feats. 4 feats that do exactly what they say on the tin, allow you to take down your favored enemies even more brutally. Why should cleric class features get all the love.

Rogues get A Second Skin. Disguising yourself is something that needs a little thought. Methods, consequences, types. Includes a feat that lets you disguise yourself better, unsurprisingly.

Sorcerers get Aquatic Fey Kin. Of all the strange things you could get your powers from. Who'd make this one up? Still, it does have a quite substantial benefit and drawback, so it does seem tempting and amusing. It's certainly not a useless idea.

Wizards get Disposable Arcana. Just as they can have other ways of recording their spells, they can also use other kinds of single use items as alternatives to potions and scrolls. Another way to add flavour to your game, and make the players less likely to realize the value of everything they find straight away.


Nodwick shows that conning old folks gets even easier when they're millennia old. Dork tower's mini's face the wrath of cats. They're doomed. Zogonia get themselves in another fine mess through their own stupidity.


Pretty pleased by this one overall, as both the feature and the regular columns are now going back in a direction that I like, and Erik is taking steps to make sure they'll go further in the future. Let's hope that the improvements from practice outweigh the effects of diminishing returns for a while yet, and they get the chance to revisit setting ideas and expand upon them.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 336: October 2005


part 1/7


83 (132) pages. Just don't make clothes like they used too. Spend a few hundred years asleep, and then when you wake up, you're inadvertently turned into fanservice. Someone is definitely going to pay for this. As ever for the october issues, it looks like they're going to try and tell us something new about the undead. Since one of those is the long-neglected spawn of Kyuss, tying in with their Dungeon adventure path, they might well manage it. Let's stake a look at this issue and see if anything in it is worth using in a game without adaption decay messing everything up.


Scan Quality: Slightly fuzzy, indexed, ad-free scan.


In this issue:


Editorial drops the extra words, because really, who needed them? A little dictionary hunting will hurt no-one. Indeed, as we've said before, a little challenge in getting hold of and understanding the books will just add to the temptation. Lure your audience with shiny forbidden stuff, then challenge them and force them to think about and debate your work if you want them to be long-term fans and spread the word to their friends. This is also why trying to forbid things can turn out to be counterproductive, as you effectively wind up creating free publicity in the form of debate and rumours. So this editorial shows that more than one person came to D&D through the same kind of process, and courting controversy remains a good way to boost your profile. And on an artistic level, if you aren't pushing the boundaries in some way, are you actually even being creative, or just going through the motions? What's the benefit in giving the world something it already has plenty of? So let's hope they actually give us something challenging in the articles.


Scale Mail: We start off with a letter grumbling about family-unfriendly covers and too much setting material. Since people complained when they went the other way as well, this definitely seems like a case where I shrug and say from my perspective, the more variety the better. Swinging from one extreme to the other will be far more interesting than following basically the same formula every issue.

Next is a letter from someone who is planning on converting the Bloodstone adventures to 3e. In this system, getting to 100th level seems a lot more reasonable, curiously enough, as you never run out of suitable challenges when you can stack templates and class levels onto monsters.

As they reintroduce more complex backgrounds to the magazine, they inevitably face the complaint of someone who finds them hard to read. Once again, it's very much about maintaining a sufficiently high degree of contrast so both text and backdrop can be easily distinguished, without making it boring. A well calibrated monitor is definitely your friend when doing design work.

And finally, the last letter tempts Erik into talking a little more about his own city-centric campaign. It might have been set over a smaller area, but it still took plenty of preparation and used published adventures to bulk things out. Even (especially?) official writers don't have the time and energy to do it all themselves.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 336: October 2005


part 2/7


First watch: Heroes of Horror. A definite case where the third party D20 products covered a topic better than the official WotC attempt. Straight D&D has never done horror very well, largely due to the massive power increases characters enjoy. And this problem has only got worse over the editions. See experienced designers, including a couple of White Wolf alumni, struggle over it here.

Eberron gets Magic of Eberron. On we slouch to another proven solid seller. New magical crunch for all! Oh, and some psionics too, so you don't feel left out. Keep on buying, dudes.

And they also issue a package set of the Races splatbooks (at least, the generic ones, they decide to skip the ebberon one for whatever reason. ) in a nice slipcover. If you skipped them first time, will that tempt you? Anyone?

D20 stuff this time is mostly updates. Mutants & Masterminds gets a 2nd edition, and the old Wilderlands setting from Judges Guild gets updated to D20, which is very fitting, considering it's history. In a boxed set too. Yay for third party products!

White Wolf release their big crossover citybook, Chicago by Night. With an emphasis on the big. More than enough info for all three main gamelines here, to say the least.

Our boardgame this month is Midevil. Aka the Army of Darkness boardgame with the serial numbers filed off. Kick the ass of tons of skeletons and get back to the present. Another entertaining way to fill a few hours.

Minis this month include more official underdark monsters from WotC. Oh, and Artemis Enteri. Canon Pairing! Hot Drizzty buttsecks! Man, that never gets old. There's also Cthulhu creatures courtesy of SOTA, a limited edition gothic fortress full of mini furniture, and steampunky mecha stuff for Iron Kingdoms. Tick tock fill up your box.

WotC also chooses to sell off a whole bunch of D&D and M:tG art in limited edition, signed format. I see coffee table conversation pieces are still popular enough to justify their existence.

In play aids, we have the Flip-Mat. Another easily erasable gridded, fold-up bit of card to represent places on. Seems like there's quite a bit of competition in this market.

In video games, we have Black and White 2. God sims have a long history, and they continue to advance with new technology. And obviously given the title, being a sadistic bastard is very much an option for long term play. Muahahahaha.

Finally, we have Horrific, the card game of horror movie archetypes duking it out and terrorising a village as they do so. This also sounds pretty entertaining and replayable.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 336: October 2005


part 3/7


Not for the living: We've had plenty of templates for monsters over the past 5 years, with undead definitely getting more than their fair share. After a couple of articles turning various types of undead into templates for ever greater flexibility in monster design, I have to wonder what new spin they can add on that this year. Well, it looks like they're extending their love of templates to inanimate objects. (man, they really do breed anything with anything in 3e ) mechanically codifying various types of haunting so you can design even this type of encounter quickly and easily. Which is all to the good if it leads to DM's putting more noncombat challenges in the game that you solve by roleplaying and cleverness.

Bad Place is the kind of incredibly generic name that only Steven King characters can pull off without seeming silly. And indeed, the mechanics show a definite Shining influence in the way anyone who lives there gradually goes mad, and then homicidal, and also in the steps needed to clear the place out. All work and no play does indeed make Jack a dull boy, which I can quite empathise with at this point in my writings.

Dreamscapes draw on the also popular Nightmare on Elm Street stylings, giving anyone who sleeps there nightmares that you don't wake up from if you die in the dream. Again, you need to play it smart to sort out the force behind the nightmares, and don't get complacent, for they may come back again, and again, and again.

Eidolon let you use the basic principles of the Ring series in a world without videotape. Hallucinations, odd compulsions, and the ghost coming out of the bonded objects to mete out a horrible death if you don't do what they desire. Muahahahaha!

Entitys are haunted places directly bonded to a particular powerful ghost. If you can take out the ghost, the rest is relatively simple. But anyone who's ever played a Ravenloft adventure will know that what sounds simple in theory is very much not in practice as their power levels and degree of angst mounts up.

Planar Cankers are a more self-explanatory name. Intrusions from other universes are a fairly common thing in D&D, (after all, we had another set of rules for them just this april) and there's plenty of fun you can have depending on what other universe a bridge is forming between. We definitely have such sights to show you this time around.

Primeval Scars are the most powerful and hard to fix of these, causing animals and plants to be overgrown and hostile and anything unnatural to simply vanish mysteriously after a few days. if you stray into one, things will turn into survival horror of the scariest type. Good luck, you'll definitely need it. Once again James Jacobs has pulled off a winner of an idea in style.


Birth of the dead: Many undead are capable of reproducing by turning creatures they kill into minions, which then gain independence when their master dies. But that doesn't answer the question of where they came from in the first place. Just saying a god or wizard did it every time gets very tiresome indeed, especially when you don't have the specifics of what spells they used and how much it will cost as a PC to do it. So here's 26 bits of nanofiction and explanation to differentiate the many many different ways you could come back after dying in D&D land. (not one for each letter of the alphabet though, unfortunately) Some simply require you die in a particular way, some require deliberate and often very complex effort, and some are restricted to certain nonhuman races anyway, so you only have to worry about being killed BY them. The whole thing shows a combination of extensive research and making up new details to fill in the gaps that's pretty pleasing to me. If you want to build upon a setting, you have to be aware of and respect the things that came before so it makes a consistent continuity. While this might not have quite the depth on a single creature an Ecology can manage, it does make a good reference for whenever too many monsters start to blur into one and you need reminding why we have them all.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 336: October 2005


part 4/7


Fiction: Bandits in the paths of Fame by James Lowder. Been a long time since we saw Mr Lowder contributing to the magazine. Given all that he went through in the TSR years, being cynical about the whole heroic adventurer thing would be quite understandable. And indeed, that's exactly what this story is about, saying that while there may be a few true heroes out there, there's a lot more self-interested bastards who are only in it for the money and fame. Any brief shining moments of hope will eventually be crushed, and things will return to banality in the end. And then we die. Depressing, but unfortunately pretty realistic. Is it possible to get old and remain idealistic, especially if you don't succeed after a few tries? I know a few people that have managed it, but it's not easy. All I know for sure is that I'm not going to give up on you guys at this point, after all we've been through together. A few depressing stories are just a drop in the ocean by now.


The ecology of the spawn of kyuss: No great surprise that they'd do an ecology for these guys when they've just started an adventure path focussing on them. One of the scariest bits of body horror in the book, these guys are even nastier than rot grubs because they go for the brain rather than the heart, so you have more time to feel things slipping away and your facilities being destroyed. And death doesn't end things, soon you'll be back up again and spreading the corruption around with great generosity. As you'd expect for an important tie-in like this, they put in lots of extra effort, both in the illustrations, descriptions and crunch. They include a new template that I expect we'll be seeing quite a bit more in this adventure path, the favored spawn of kyuss. Retaining more memories and powers than a regular kyuss zombie, and having wider and more versatile vectors of contagion, you want to take these guys out from a long range, because if they get within hand to hand distance, or even close, you are in deep danger of joining their ranks. Brr. Clerics are going to have to work overtime in this one, especially if the other players don't fight smart. I quite approve, and look forward to seeing what other tie-ins this series will spawn.


Wormfood: Things pick up some more in the tie-in department as we head from the small town to the big city. If you've done things right, you'll be approaching mid-levels, which means a whole new load of options in what your characters are capable of. This also means they have the freedom to live how they want to a greater degree. They don't have to be obsessives who spend their whole time adventuring or looking for leads to the next big haul. So let's look at some more fripperies that are irrelevant to the direct adventure, but still help you quite a bit in the worldbuilding department. You can slot them in fairly easily whatever city you set this part of the adventure in. Prices, mechanical benefits you can get from frequenting them, and owners are also detailed, which'll encourage players to use them, and hopefully not just slaughter the joint.

The Blueberry Theatre is a high class joint with a penchant for subversive political commentary in it's performances. Sound like the kinda place I'd enjoy frequenting. Gotta keep your cynicism levels up.

The Checkered Circle is an illegal fight club, moving constantly to avoid the law. If you've got the underworld moxie, you can risk your life and money, and really make a killing. At your current level, you'll be able to breeze through the early rounds, but don't get complacent. You never know when you'll wind up bareknuckle fighting with an owlbear.

Honest Axebeard's House of Dice is a nicely furnished casino, including VIP areas the players can splash out out on if they want to play playas. It's another good place to go if you want to hear rumours too. You've got to speculate to accumulate.

Josiel's Bathhouse is a supremely relaxing massage parlor. So much so that it boosts your healing rate. Another one that makes it tempting for adventurers to live large on those ill-gotten gains. If you're going to go out there and save the world, you might as well do it with a straight back and pedicured feet.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 336: October 2005


part 5/7


Bazaar of the Bizarre: Looks like we're getting icky-bad in here as well this month. But not in an undead way, curiously enough. Instead, it's a more fiendish slant again. So look forward to more stuff that the enemies can use with impunity, but PC's may regret.

Blasphemous Figurines of the Void are the eevil variant on the usual ones of wondrous power. Although they're more Ancient spirits of evil, transform this decayed form into Mumm-Ra, the everliving! Braaaaaagh! than genuinely diabolical. Spoiling food? Who bothers with that if you're not in a siege situation?

The Brush of the Fallen Master lets you paint amazing paintings, but gradually kills you in the process. Don't waste it on redecorating the house. Probably the way to profit from this would be to become the agent of the person who owns the brush and profit hugely from them posthumously while passing it onto the next sucker.

The Carnivorous Tome sucks you in and writes out your life. Pretty sure we've had this one before. The visuals are recycled from Dahlver-nar's stuff, for no apparent reason. You don't want to give yourself away if you're an evil book.

Fiendish Elixir gives you the basic benefits of being devilish or demonic, but will of course also make you ping as horribly evil even if not. Watch for awkward misunderstandings.

The Mask of Endless Laughter warps things from happiness into joker-esque horror, and kills you laughing if you take it off. Poor jack. I knew him well. Oh well, on with the show.

A Parasitic Twin helps you get ahead in evil. No thanks. I've seen how this one ends, and it sure aint a happy one. Plus the whole no privacy thing. You really don't want something like that on your neck commenting while you're having sex.

Sacrificial Knives work like a death knell spell, letting you profit even more from slaughter. Not nearly as cool as the one which let you make other people pay your item creation costs though.

A Staff of Nightmares has a whole bunch of terror related spells available for various charge costs. Another one a wizard'll get a lot of fun out of before it runs out.


The demonomicon of Iggwilv diverts itself away from looking at demons, to look at the person behind actually writing the book. Our delightful witch queen is another of the people who goes right back to the early days of the hobby. Mother of Iuz, lover of Grazzt, and quite possibly a number of other powerful demons, she's one of the few people to not only deal with archdemons, but also mix business with pleasure and still come out even or better. Along with the history, we have 7 new spells (well, mostly old spells converted to the new edition, actually ) which you use to summon, bind, manipulate and discipline extraplanar gribleys. Substantially smaller than the last couple, this also feels as though less effort has been put into advancing it forward, merely recounting history rather than advancing it. Still, if you like a bit of vile darkness in your game, there's a fair amount of usable material in here, so it's still a decent entry, if not a great one.

 

[LordVyreth]

The ecology of the spawn of kyuss: No great surprise that they'd do an ecology for these guys when they've just started an adventure path focussing on them. One of the scariest bits of body horror in the book, these guys are even nastier than rot grubs because they go for the brain rather than the heart, so you have more time to feel things slipping away and your facilities being destroyed. And death doesn't end things, soon you'll be back up again and spreading the corruption around with great generosity. As you'd expect for an important tie-in like this, they put in lots of extra effort, both in the illustrations, descriptions and crunch. They include a new template that I expect we'll be seeing quite a bit more in this adventure path, the favored spawn of kyuss. Retaining more memories and powers than a regular kyuss zombie, and having wider and more versatile vectors of contagion, you want to take these guys out from a long range, because if they get within hand to hand distance, or even close, you are in deep danger of joining their ranks. Brr. Clerics are going to have to work overtime in this one, especially if the other players don't fight smart. I quite approve, and look forward to seeing what other tie-ins this series will spawn.

Ah, Spawn of Kyuss. One of my favorite D&D stories involve those jerks. It was back in the 2nd ed days, when they were called Sons of Kyuss and Lightning Bolts still rebounded. I played a plucky yet extremely clumsy wizard in a town under siege by unpleasantness, notably the Kyuss guys. Even worse, the attack had an effect on the world itself, warping it with wild magic. My character sensed this and took what he thought was the logical action (still remember my quote, too, "The very warping of the fabric of reality is MORE than enough for me to leave.")

Unfortunately, I got separated from my party and ended up in an abandoned building. A half dozen horrible rolls scuttled my attempts to snipe at some incoming Kyuss from above, so I got mauled and infected. With the Kyuss upon me, undead doom soon to come, and no allies on my side, I did the only thing I could. I fired a lightning bolt at the Kyuss at an angle that would have it rebound back into me! After all, if I took the electric damage, so would the worms! Amazingly, it worked. I killed the Kyuss, survived the lightning bolt myself barely, and the DM ruled that I atomized the worms. He later described it as one of the craziest things he ever saw a player do.