Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 274: August 2000


part 6/7


Forum becomes pale green. Their new question is obviously what you think of 3e, now you have your grubby little mitts on it. I think the new look is a bit of a legibility hit compared to the last one.

Nathaniel Broyles enjoyed his historical norse campaign, but knows variety is the spice of life. Next time, the players'll be going through something quite different.

Joe Giammarco points out stories other than Tolkien that also used adventuring parties, dungeons, and elves. Yes, but Tolkien put them all together and did them better. It's like saying shakespeare stole most of his plots from older sources as well.

Rich Haton found using books as inspiration worked better when he twisted them round a bit, and let the players take the story in different directions. Without imagination, the best sources can be made dull and constricting.

Jim Castlebury pretty much got rid of resurrection, but still allows reincarnation. That way, death still involves huge changes to your character akin to Dr Who, and is not to be taken lightly. Interesting spin to put on it.

Seanchai! I didn't know our long-banned mod interrogator managed to get a letter published in here! He's purely positive in this one too, heaping praise upon the sorcerer. It's easily the best part of the new edition. You can finally play dumb spellslingers. Woo!

Eric Wessels is bewildered by Scott Wylie's attitude to the rules. It sounds to him like he's had very bad and irritating players. You probably need to fix them more than you do the rules.


PC Portraits: Weirdly enough, although this column isn't in colour, the backdrop is, and it looks like they set the filter to semitransparent when they overlaid the pictures. Since that makes them an odd grey/purple colour, that does hurt their customisability a bit. The artwork is by Todd Lockwood, and is very dungeonpunk indeed. This seems like them consciously trying to make a break, and maybe going a bit overboard. You shouldn't have to sacrifice the practical aspects of the layout just to be different. I suppose like punk sacrificing technical skill on the altar of youth disaffection, it'll only be temporary. The novelty will wear off and people will want to get back to doing practical stuff.


Role models: This column decides to take the edition neutral approach. But it is heavily promoting their new minis, which are 3e flavored (celestial eagle in the first set only makes sense if you know the rules' quirks. ) Ral Partha? Grenadier? Games Workshop? They can take care of themselves. We're doing it for ourselves now. And you still have to put them together yourself. How very Thatcherite. So this is moderately distasteful, and doesn't have nearly the fun factor of the earlier promotional material. Give us all your money, and then get to painting, peasants! Why has this column started sucking so badly? Are they trying to get it cancelled like they have so many other decent ones? Ugh! I don't want to deal with this.


Sage advice: Skip leaps onto 3rd edition without hesitation. Guess he's already been getting questions based upon the teasers. That or he's fabricated what he thought would likely be some of the first questions. No, Skip wouldn't do a thing like that. Skip is a sage with integrity. That's not going to stop him from adopting a new outfit, with all the belts, pouches and buckles a proper 3rd edition character should have though. Guess he thinks it looks cool too.

How does a multiclassed character calculate skill points. (Only multiply by 4 for your first level, not the first level of each class. Yes, that means if you take rogue first, you'll be strictly better than if you did it the other way around. Skip views this as a feature, not a bug, as it encourages twinking. )

If I have a dwarf Ftr6/Rog1 and add a level of cleric, I don't suffer a penalty, do I (no)

Why do half orcs have a net penalty to their ability scores. (because high strength is sooo much more important than int or cha. Again, feature, not bug. )

What exactly does refocus do (you give up this round's action to go first next round. It's not usually worth it. )

Isn't readying an action more useful than refocusing (both have their uses. A tactically astute player should be able to figure that out. )

Do full attacks all go off at the same time (yes. It's easier that way, especially now initiative is cyclical.

How do you move away without suffering attacks of opportunity (oh, let Skip count the ways. So many tricks you can pull. Tactics are fun.)

Do you have to ready an action to disrupt a spellcaster. (No. Ahh, the wonders of attacks of opportunity. Grappling is also very effective, as most spellcasters suck at it. )

Do you need to make a concentration check if an attack against you misses (no)

How does two weapon fighting interact with iterative attacks (add one at your highest base, then subtract the two-weapon penalty from everything. )

Are natural 1's & 20's automatic misses and hits (For some rolls, but not others)

What are the new rounding rules (Down, unless specifically said otherwise, minimum of 1. )

Why don't empowered magic missiles shoot more missiles (because that's not a variable number)

Can you use detect magic or evil to detect invisible things ( Not easily, just like in previous editions. )

Can spell immunity make you immune to detect magic (no)

Can you take improved critical in unarmed strike (it would be just mean to nerf monks like that, so no)

Why doesn't your movement rate change as much when you're overloaded (Greater realism :teeth ting: We were tired of quarter speed plate fighters keeping everyone else from retreating)

Do magic weapons have to be masterwork first (yes. The spirits will turn their nose up at you otherwise)

Can you turn a normal weapon into a masterwork weapon (You can shave a pig and put it in a dress, but it's still a pig, no matter how much makeup you put on. )

What level do magic items work at (caster level, or minimum needed to cast the spells into it. Not much change from last time)

What skills can you take 10 or 20 on (The ones that don't matter too much. )

Also notable are the power play's scattered throughout this section, by Sean K Reynolds. Here we see more evidence that this time round, the designers explicitly encourage you to search for combos of powers that optimize your capabilities, where a few years ago, they would look down on this kind of rules-lawyerly behaviour. That's a definite sea-change in gaming philosophy, and fuel for people who said 3rd ed was a game for twinks and munchkins. That is interesting to note.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 274: August 2000


part 7/7


Dungeoncraft: This column goes black and red, making it indeed look like a dungeon where a certain amount of torture has taken place. But the writing isn't torturous at all, as this is one of those issues where he gives several subjects short essays rather than going on about one. First, there's the basic question of whether you'll run your game in 1st person or 3rd person perspective. Now that's the kind of obvious question that most people'll simply answer unconsciously, when learning to control it could make a real difference to the tone. True genius. It's something you can do instantly at virtually no effort. The other two parts, timekeeping and pacing, are more complex and connected. Coming up with a way of keeping track of time, particularly if the party splits up, is always a good idea. And keeping things moving at the right speed to engage the players is crucial. We've had articles giving advice on both of these before, sometimes quite good. Ray uses a fairly simple method of marking the amount of time each action takes as you go using a scratch pad, which works pretty well when the party is all together, but as I've said, you'll need to push the envelope a bit if the party separates for an extended period of time. Still, two simple, unambiguous and easy to implement solutions to problems in one article? That's worth the price of admission. Why waffle when you can get things done instead.


Silicon sorcery: Our topic this month is a problem that's fairly specific to D&D and the CRPG's that descend from it. Inventory bloat. Something about the structure of D&D and the way it awards treasure and XP leads players to acquire ever growing lists of stuff that many players wind up never using, and sometimes struggle to keep track of at all. You never see that in Vampire, even if the characters do have hundreds of xp. Fortunately, there are ways to manage this a little better. And computers certainly do help. When everything is automatically in one place, alphabetised and searchable, it instantly makes referencing way faster than thumbing through a whole bunch of supplements, trying to find which actually has the item and tells you what it does. This provides several other methods to speed play as well, which gives you a decent amount of choice. And then it backconverts a bunch of new magical items from the new Pool of Radiance game. Most of them are combat based, but they do have some quirks to them, based on what monsters you're likely to be facing in the game. And at the moment, we need magic items and monsters badly. So this is another article that covers a couple of topics in a small space, and that'll be handy both in the long and short term. This magazine is really proving itself valuable again.


What's new also covers robin hood. Man, it aint easy being a hero in D&D land. The snail is also back again.


I'm not that keen on the new visuals, but most of the articles this issue are very good indeed, striking a good balance between showing us the new system, and providing system free material that'll still be useful for any game. Plus the general feeling of grind that pervaded the last few years of the magazine is gone, with the writers being genuinely enthusiastic about the new edition and all the things they can do that they couldn't before. Even knowing about the flaws in 3e that only became apparent with longer play, it's hard to not be swept up by that enthusiasm. So here's me hoping that takes a few years to wear off, and heading off to the next issue with a whistle and a spring in my step.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 275: September 2000


part 1/7


132 pages. The price drops back, but not quite all the way, to $4.99. Sneaky. How much more are you going to get from those 4 cents an issue? 50-60,000 copies an issue, that's maybe a couple of thousand dollars, less when you consider the subscribers won't feel the raise until later. But anyway, it looks like this issue'll be show off how much better fighty types have it under the new edition. Or at least how many more options they have, which is almost the same thing. Let's enjoy our Half-Orc paladins and whatnot while they remain novel, before people slip back into the habit of sticking with classes their racial ability modifiers synergise with.


Scan quality: Good, unindexed.


In this issue:


Wyrm's turn: No surprise that defying cliches, and the new edition's support of this is the subject of the editorial. You have vast amounts of new shinies! Take advantage of them! But seriously, it's not just about the powergaming. 3e offers opportunities to make your characters different from other members of the same class and race and subvert stereotypes in a way previous editions simply couldn't. And they're going to keep working to make sure the visuals match that mood. Basically, they're playing up the punk aspect of dungeonpunk this month. All you prog rock dinosaurs can go off and play with your flowers, maaan. Your story has totally been told already. Well, this certainly looks like it could be either amateurish or contentious, both of which are fun for me to look at. And if they can produce good stories while avoiding stereotypes, then they'll definitely deserve praise.


Scale Mail: Our letters this month are pretty much unanimously in praise of the new edition. The first one praises pretty much everything but the reduction of ecology info in the monster statblocks, but particularly the back to the dungeon attitude. They say there'll still be plenty of ecologies in the magazine to make up for this. And the old notes continue to be useful whatever edition you're playing. It's the new players who never read them you'll have to watch out for.

The second one is all about how awesome the new rules look. They can't wait to collect ALL THE RULES! Who are we to stop them?

Next we have one looking back instead of forward, praising issue 272 and most of the articles therin. They must admit the new Bahamut & Tiamat look a bit daunting though. Muahaha. Yes, they are pretty powerful. Set a bunch of optimised 20th level PC's against them and they'll still go down in a few rounds.

And finally, we have a lengthy and verbosely written letter about the study of history. One that thinks ancient people might have been smarter than modern ones, which is a bit amusing. There is still a lot we don't know about history though. That much is true. Best thing we can do is record as much as we can now, hope future generations learn from our mistakes.


Up on a soapbox: This month Gary celebrates two things that I'm sad to say the new edition cuts down on. Low level fragility, and support for long term play. If you have it too easy from the start, you'll never learn how to play it smart and not throw tantrums when you lose like a responsible adult. And if you always win at combat you'll never learn that negotiating or running away can often be better solutions. Plus if you get rewarded too easily, you'll get bored with the game sooner and move onto another one. So this is half valid life lesson, half darn kids, gitoffa mah lawn, and very worth thinking about. Teaching your kids that the world is often hard, and you have to work for unreliable rewards is a better life lesson than handing everything to them on a plate, and then suddenly forcing them to sink or swim at some point when you can't or don't want to support them any longer. And adventures that have multiple solutions, including leaving things open for trying tricks the writers didn't think of are more engaging in play than linear ones that break if you don't follow the rails, and offer more learning opportunities that can be applied to real life. Course, you don't have to make all your play training for reality, especially after you're an adult, and deal with that crap day in day out, but still, better to use time efficiently than not. I approve of this message.


Profiles almost completely decapitalises. Monte Cook is another of the primary architects of the new system, and is obviously full of praise for it. Plenty of familiar elements are hinted at here. His desire to produce a campaign world based on The Land from Stephen Donaldson's books, which would become Arcana Unearthed/Evolved. That he runs two games a week in his own setting, which was used as one of the primary playtesting places for 3rd edition, and is of course Ptolus. And the usual stuff about his history working for I.C.E, and then on the Planescape line. Unlike some of our employees, who are too busy working to play the game they're actually working on, he's got plenty of actual play experience to help him hone his rules design skills, develop his settings in useful ways, and keep his enthusiasm going. It's a formula that works for Ed Greenwood, and it's one that works for him. There must always be time for fun, no matter how hard you're working. If there isn't, you're in the wrong job.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 275: September 2000


part 2/7


Nodwick comes this close to snapping.

Once again, a huge chunk of adverts are put near the front, before we get to see any actual features. This is a rather silly development. We're just going to skip through them.


Previews: You know what's first up this month. The Dungeon Master's Guide. Essential corebook and all that. No need to go into detail on this one. Also unsurprisingly, this month's peripherals are connected to that. A DM's screen. And our first official 3rd ed adventure. The Sunless Citadel. So now it gets a little easier to actually play the game, particularly since you have at least all the monsters in there statted out. Hopefully that'll keep you from going mad 'til next month.

Our various settings also get a reasonable amount of love. Greyhawk gets reaffirmed as the core setting for this edition with the D&D Gazetteer. Course, it's done by Skip Williams, and if you've been reading this thread, you know what crap he's put in here before. No more comedy relief gargoyles, ok? The Realms and Dragonlance enjoy their usual quota of novels. The Nether Scroll by Lynn Abbey and Children of the Plains by Paul Thompson & Tonya Cook. Things continue to get set up for the rules changes in the game. Baldur's gate II also gets novelised. Surprised they haven't done a module based on it too. Probably too big and combat heavy if strictly converted.


Dork tower takes advantage of the edition change to upgrade their characters.


Unusual suspects: So all classes are open to all races now? This is a fairly substantial change, and needs some following up. So they take what used to be the most restricted classes - Barbarians, Paladins and Rangers, and give us a wide range of concepts for all the various demihuman races to show how they could fit into the classes if you so desire. They're being consciously inclusive and can-do, inviting us to try things they would have sneered at officially a few years ago, and unlike the introduction of Power Plays and character optimisation as a game in itself, this is entirely to be welcomed. It may not seem like such a big deal now, but it was resisted for quite a while, so they do need to make that extra effort to get everyone on board. Down with fantasy Racism! Up with equal opportunities! The punk aspect seems ever more appropriate here. Which means this is entertaining, and needed at the time, but not so useful in retrospect.


PC Portraits: We've already had some fighter centric portrait collections, such as issue 257. But of course it's a new edition, and new art stylings. Which means people have more asymmetrical outfits, tattoos, piercings, braids, straps, and similar interesting adornments that will make them stand out, but not necessarily be practical. So once again, this is oh so very of it's time, and reflects that they did feel the need to exaggerate the break from what came before and establish a new identity for themselves. The characters will remain useful whenever you feel the desire to add a little dungeonpunk to your setting. Only you can decide if you want that though.


How to design a feat: Ah yes, feats. One of the most contentious parts of 3e design. The point buy character design method attempted in Skills & Powers had proven not too popular, and maybe took the focus away from class archetypes too much. (as well as being an open invitation to min-max the hell out of the game. ) Yet they did want to make 3e characters more flexible customisable and balanced than old ones. So feats occupy a kind of middle ground in terms of complexity. You don't have to worry about crunching vast numbers of points or saving up to buy an expensive ability, it's always one feat per slot. And they aren't class specific, although many will be useless unless you are a particular class, like the metamagic feats. But some are almost definitely better than others, and you will have to do quite a bit of planning ahead to get hold of the ones with complex prerequisites. But those are my thoughts in hindsight. Their discussion of what you do with feats, how you create them and how you balance them has some different concerns, such as designing it with the most abusive cases in mind, not the average player, and making sure something isn't better just because it's more specific. This is very high density, and there's a lot to analyse, cite, and use as fuel for internet arguments. Plus it includes two new feats that will make it into future books. So it's a good peek into the thoughts of the official writers, and like the last two articles, valuable as a historical artifact. It's very worthy of noting for later reference.


The right tool for the job: No surprise that we have an article on exotic weapons, now the distinction has been introduced. Of course, to justify spending a whole feat slot on one, they need to be more useful in some reasonably significant way than regular simple and martial weapons. And taking a look at these, it's mixed bag. Boomerangs only come back if they miss the enemy, Sais are great at disarming, Scourges do three little attacks per round, great scimitars extra damage compared to 2 handed sword will add up quite a bit over time. They are useful, just maybe not useful enough. This illustrates another thing that would evolve over the course of 3e. Realising that 7 feats over 20 levels just isn't enough, more and more classes included bonus feat selections, and many D20 variants increased the progression to 1 per 2 levels, or even faster in the case of True20. In the meantime, we have quite a few speedbumps and newbie traps to work though, some unintentional. Quite a bit of this fits that bill, I'm afraid.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 275: September 2000


part 3/7


Miscellaneous mishaps: We've delved into the intricacies of the new rules enough for one issue. Now it's time to cater to the people who want general articles suitable for any edition, or even other games. And if you guessed from the title that this is another random encounter table then you are absolutely right. This one is a fairly mundane one, giving you two tables, one for travelling along roads, and the other for rivers, and all the encounters are people of various classes or natural animals and phenomena. Probably the most interesting part is the bits to determine what's in a random barrel or crate, which can stump a DM who's otherwise well prepared for an adventure on occasion. This seems like a good one for a DM who wants a few more mundane encounters to break up the monsters, and make a place seem less deadly. After all, you can't have a sustainable civilisation when the chance of meeting man-eating monsters on the road is more than 25% per day of travel. Everyone would stick to grotty walled cities which tried to be as self sufficient as possible. Which doesn't sound like my idea of fun.


Instant heraldry: Time for another returning topic. Issues 53, 154, and 199 had articles on heraldry of various kinds. Now it's this decade's turn to shine the spotlight on a small but significant part of medieval knighthood. Hell, everyone apart from rogues enjoys having a good logo, and even they can have gang symbols they spray on a joint when they aren't being all secretive. Since it's been 7 years, we're starting off with one of those articles aimed at absolute beginners, getting them involved as quickly and easily as possible. How to accomplish this? Pregens! Yup, it's 48 basic backdrops for you to select from, and some random tables to determine what creatures and objects go on top. That'll get you in the game in just a couple of minutes, especially if the players just inherited their coat of arms from their parents, rather than getting to pick an appropriate one for themselves. Plus it'll give them extra motivation to get out and make a name for themselves. Can't go letting the family down, can we? So this is another article that'll be instantly useful for any edition of D&D, and quite a few other games (especially Pendragon or WHFRP) as well. They're definitely getting the balancing act right so far.


Historical Heraldry: Having done the quick-play article, we have a second, rather longer and more involved heraldry article. This is definitely an instance where their greater degree of colour and printing precision helps them do better than the previous articles decades ago, letting them not only explain all the various patterns, shapes and adornments, but clearly illustrate them all in full colour and quite a bit of detail. It shows how coats of arms will be altered based on your deeds, and your position in the family. I definitely found this more interesting than the previous attempts at covering this topic, quite a bit of which can be attributed to the artist, but also to the comprehensiveness of the research. Despite being a fairly long article, it still feels very densely packed indeed, trying to tell us as much as possible. (after all, they're probably trying to condense several books worth of information. ) Between the two articles, I definitely think we have a more solid grounding in the topic than we used to. And now back to the fantastical stuff.


Hooked: Robin Laws encourages you to blur the roles between player and DM a bit more. Why should the DM decide what the adventures are? Create characters who have a mission, who's desires are more specific than kill things and take their stuff, and simply by pursuing those goals, they'll make things easy for the DM because all they have to do is set suitable obstacles in the way. The main problem then comes if characters have desires which conflict with one another, or one player winds up getting most of the spotlight because their character is simply more interesting and proactive than the rest. I think this illustrates pretty well why some types of games work better with small groups, and others with large parties, possibly with players playing multiple characters. And once again, what he's saying here will be influential, with indie games (and exalted) where your character's motivations are actual stats on your character sheet and you have mechanical effects for following, fulfilling or going against them. So for several issues in a row, he's been hitting it out the park now and this continues that run of thought provoking influential articles. It's great to see how this stuff got introduced into the mainstream. (or as mainstream as roleplaying gets, anyway)


The definitive D&D soundtrack: An article combining music and roleplaying? Aww hell yeeeeah. This is relevant to my interests. I really am very surprised that for all the many mentions of music in the past, they never did one one on just using it as a background to your game. And it is no surprise at all that Led Zeppelin are right on top of the recommendation list. While there is a definite emphasis on music of the 70's and 80's here, which I think shows the age of the author, they do talk about both older classical music, and modern electronic music as well. With a two page colour coded list of all the artists recommended, and where their music would be most appropriate, this does feel like quite a bit of though and effort was put into it's design. The fact that they have a column just for hellish music, along with the general lighthearted tone of the article makes it entertaining as well. So this is another rather cool article that's suitable for either edition, and isn't rehashed at all. I'm starting to think they were intentionally overdoing that in the last few 2e issues so it would come as more of a relief when they stopped.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 275: September 2000


part 4/7


Fiction: Songbirds by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. As we've found before, the problem with powerful inscrutable supernatural creatures is that they often do have motivations other than just dicking around with humanity, and idiosyncratic weaknesses that we don't share, it's just that they aren't particularly inclined to explain themselves. And given what resourceful bastards we can be, that's quite justifiable. So it proves here, in a story when humans are entirely deserving of what's being done to them (or at least, their ancestors were, and arguing matters of collective culpability between species that have dramatically different lifespans is another interesting moral issue that has a lot of interesting stories in it.) and the fact that they don't know why this is happening means they're all the more likely to make the same mistakes again. The result is going to be a tragedy for someone, possibly everyone. And since this does go for the harsh ending, while dropping hints all through about what's been going on, I think it is pretty well written. I find myself wishing it was longer, so it had time to build the message up a bit more subtly, which is definitely a good sign.


Nodwick & co make it down to D2, the home of the drow. Things get worse from there on in. All they can do is press onwards, and hope they wind up in D3, not D02 know no limit. The abyss doesn't know what's going to hit it.


Arcane 7ore is another column suffering from the new attempts at cool, in the process looking ironically dated. The individual spells look like they've been torn out of a book, which does make them easier to distinguish, but also makes it feel more like a scrapbook than a professional product. It is a bit iffy. Since this is a new edition, it's back to the basics without shame in topic. Combat spells! Forget fashion, let's kick ass muthafunkers!

Mass Strength is bear's strength for your whole party. Seen you before, and going to see you standardised in the future. Finally, they're connecting back up to the big threads.

Weapon Shift is another updating. Slashing bad against your current enemy? Go bludgeoning instead. Simple and easy.

Rapid Strikes is a cut down version of haste. You get extra attack. That's it. A reminder that haste was only really nerfed critically in 3.5. Enjoy your revamped capabilities while you have them.

Burning Sword is one of your basic energy type damage adders that'll be so popular in neverwinter nights. More power! Bypass those annoying damage resistances!

Diamondsteel adds to your equipment's AC and Hardness. It's actually fairly unimpressive for it's level, but since it's on your stuff rather than you, it'll likely stack, which is pretty important now. For the dedicated defence specialist then

Lesser Spell Immunity is another one fairly unchanged from the old edition. ignoring one 1st or 2nd level spell? Not to be underestimated, but requires very careful choosing.

Shieldbearer makes the shield float around you, allowing you to get the full bonus of even a massive one, while still using both hands for weapons. Yeah, you really can have your cake and eat it. Wizards can cut through the knottiest impasse.

Heroics gives you a bonus fighter feat. This means they can smoke an unassisted fighter in terms of targeted versatility. Wizards might be supreme, but a party of multiple classes working together still smokes a monoculture.

Battle Hymn isn't a particularly impressive buff for it's level. Ought to have made it properly synergistic if they join in, like old versions.

Dolorous Blow gives you better crits. The making this subsystem a default opens up a whole new avenue for overlapping buffs to exploit. Yay.

Bristle gives your armor nasty spikes. This is actually scarier than last time, as they attack as well as defend. As they're pretty low level too, that's quite a nice one to add to your repertoire, especially for a multiclass fighter/mage.

Indomitability gives you a temporary reprieve of death. Make sure you have a good cleric in the team if you don't want it to be a noble sacrifice eventually.

Hurl lets you boomerang your daggers and stuff. Invaluable if you have expensive magic weapons. One that could become a staple if you use thrown weapons at higher level. Yup. I think the back to basics approach worked this time round, even if I can spot where the spells have been done before last edition.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 275: September 2000


part 5/7


Bazaar of the Bizarre: Earlier this year, we had armour made by abyssal lords, intended for the foulest of mortal villains to wear. To redress the balance, here's some suits intended for the use of Paladins. They aren't as interesting unfortunately, but at least they don't have maddening or lethal side effects.

Drachensgaard is for those paladins who would also like to be dragonslayers. Bonus to saves vs breath weapon, climb bonuses, and the ability to speak Draconic. (which won't quite compensate the heavy armour penalty. ) All seems pretty logically themed.

Hellshield helps you resist both the temptations of fiends, and the privations of their home planes. Once again, the benefits of the new skill system are very apparent. Course, if the character hasn't put points into it, they still don't have much chance of resisting a specialist monster.

Humillianthir is a paired set of armour for you and your horse. It lets you teleport straight into the saddle. Ready for action! Brupapa pa pa dum diddydum diddydum.

Praesidum Luminata sheds magical light that buffs your buds and reveals invisible and shapeshifted creatures. As I have said many times, that's an invaluable power.

Spellcease absorbs enemy spells, although it has a fairly easy to exhaust limit. Still, you only need a few rounds, really unless they've artificially boosted their AC and hp. It'll be a lot more effective against wizards than sorcerers.

Truedeath is of course designed to kick the butts of undead. That's still one of their core competencies, so they'd be remiss if they neglected it. Still, no great surprises here. They aren't helping paladins break out of their mold much.


The adventures of Vo7o also gets 1337153d. It's all very lame. Ed gives us another quirky adventure seed for you to flesh out this month. It's pretty close to waterdeep, too, giving it yet another reason to be adventurer central, and a big city despite being miles from other civilised places. The crumbling stair is yet another abandoned place with a few monsters to kill and mysteries to plumb. The fact that many of the ghostly inhabitants are whimsical, sometimes just watching from a distance, sometimes leading you into trouble, and only occasionally attacking allows you to scale this one easily, and make revisiting it be a different experience each time. And the fact that many of the treasures encountered here are faulty or incomplete means that players may well leave behind much of what they find, keeping it a vibrant dungeon ecology. In an adventurer heavy world, the dungeons that survive and become really renowned are the ones that don't give it all away to the first schmucks who come along. Draw romance analogies as you will. Once again, despite the format change, there's no real difference in writing or usability. This could have been done any time in the past decade really.


Class acts: Our second instalment in this series drops the preamble and gets straight into the crunch, with the Duelist. Swashbuckler is always a popular archetype, and none of the base classes do it brilliantly. This is a fairly easy one to get into, with multi-classed fighter/rogue being the quickest option, but you could go single classed if you're willing to drop a load of cross-class skills to getting in, or wait a few levels longer. While not brilliant, it makes being a fast-witted mobility fighter or more combat focussed rogue a pretty viable option. It would seem a bit redundant in a campaign which included the swashbuckler or unfettered core class, but it's certainly way better than the mystic. Remember, you've got to control which classes you allow into your game to influence the tone and style of it.


The ecology of the darkmantle: Our first proper 3e ecology is a very fitting one. A creature that's new to 3rd ed, but harks back to the very first ecology in the nature of it's biology. A creature that steals liberally from many real world things. A creature that would really annoy hundreds of starting characters with their seemingly endless ambushes in region A of the Worlds Largest Dungeon. The bloody darkmantle. They fly! They stalk! They envelop! They're a hell of a lot scarier than the piercer ever was. But they're still dumb enough to make suitable foils for Javorik and Shandrilla. Johnathan takes considerable care in tying this ecology to the old stuff, showing that not everyone is throwing out all the old stuff for the new and shiny. And once again, the heroes and the monster spend quite a bit of time being described separately, only meeting up near the end. Seems like his formulas are still working in the new era. And they've improved the artwork a bit as well. Quite pleasant reading.


Vs Go6lins: This, on the other hand, is pure powergaming tactical advice completely specific to 3e. Not that goblins are that hard to fight in any edition unless the DM is playing them really smart, but they are tougher now than they used to be. This is only a single page long, and is blunt, no-nonsense stuff that's primarily aimed at fighty sorts, since they're the ones that need extra help getting used to being able to customise your character. And since even with whirlwind attack and great cleave, they won't be able to wipe them out as fast as a good fireball, I'm still a bit meh about this. Your optimum build choices will also rapidly once we have a few supplements up as well, so it's reusability is dubious. It's a sign of their shift in priorities that I'm not to keen on.

 

[Richards]

The ecology of the darkmantle: Our first proper 3e ecology is a very fitting one. A creature that's new to 3rd ed, but harks back to the very first ecology in the nature of it's biology....They're a hell of a lot scarier than the piercer ever was. But they're still dumb enough to make suitable foils for Javorik and Shandrilla.

This was a slightly irritating article to write, although I was pleased how it eventually turned out. I had been specifically asked to write an ecology article using one of the new monsters for 3E, but this was before the 3E's Monster Manual creature selections had been finalized. The pickings were rather slim in the monster document I had been given (I remember one critter was the "inviso-beetle," which didn't ever make it into the MM), but I recognized the darkmantle (then spelled "darcmantle" -- I convinced Skip Williams to change the spelling; all 3E monster articles had to go past him at that time) as an updated piercer and thought that was very apt, since as you mention the first ecology article ever had been about the piercer.

However, my idea of the darkmantle as a mutated offshoot of piercer that had resulted from a cave full of piercers being shunted through a planar rift into the Demiplane of Shadows and warped as a result was promptly shot down. At the time, 3E was seen as a "reboot," so I wasn't allowed to refer to anything that wasn't mentioned in the 3E core rulebooks (not all of which were available at the time this article was published, and none of which had been finalized when I wrote it, several months prior to publication). Piercers weren't going to be in the 3E MM, so I couldn't refer to them. (Apparently they retroactively never existed or something.) Likewise, they hadn't decided whether the Demiplane of Shadow was even going to exist as such (it later came out as a full-fledged plane of its own), so I couldn't refer to it either, which was a pity, because I had referenced an old Dragon article about the Demiplane of Shadow that specifically mentioned its fleshwarping properties. Plus, that explanation fit rather nicely with the creature's innate darkness spell-like ability, I thought. But whatever. I made the article a Shandrilla and Javorik one so I could have SOME continuity with the past, and also because they tended to be my Underdark explorers, and thus especially suited for the darkmantle.

Incidentally, this was the last published Shandrilla and Javorik ecology article. I wrote two more, but they were bulk-rejected when they redid the format of ecology articles and no longer wanted any fiction in the mix. For those interested, check out the "Chuul" and "Destrachan" links in my signature -- and read them in that order.

Johnathan

 

[Orius]

I never had a chance to play 3E, but I did get all the books (the MM was free, something I won in a drawing from somewhere), and I found it a mixed bag. I did like some of the stuff in it (particularly the revamped AC rules, the D20 base, dropping of percentile strength), was meh about a lot of it, and actively disliked some of it (the artwork especially). What really turned me off of it was the really goofy stuff in armor (spikes? Seriously?) and weapons (double headed axes/swords/flails). I've never been a stickler for realism in D&D, but that was just too much for me...

Funny. I agree completely about the spikey armor and silly weapons, and that kept from trying 3e for a year or two (I stuck with AD&D for about 20 years).

But when I finally tried it, I like it a lot, and I've never been tempted to switch, except to 3.5e.

In practice, spikey armor has never come up in a campaign I've run or played in. The double-headed sword has for an enemy NPC once . . . just think of it as a Darth Maul homage and drop it if it annoys you.

I kind of feel the same way. The rules structure of 3e was excellent, but I was always less than fond of what was the official look.

Dragon Issue 274: August 2000


part 3/7


Class acts: Ahh, now if any series defined third edition Dragon Magazine, it's this one, with it's continuous cavalcade of player character centric crunch.

On a related note, it also marks a big shift to the magazine that started around this issue. Before 3e, Dragon was the DM's magazine. Now, it's clearly being aimed at DMs and players alike. Makes sense too, there's been declining readership over the years, and DMs are a smaller sub-set of D&D players. Making the magazine useful to all D&D players maybe was seen as a way to boost subscription rates.

This was a slightly irritating article to write, although I was pleased how it eventually turned out. I had been specifically asked to write an ecology article using one of the new monsters for 3E, but this was before the 3E's Monster Manual creature selections had been finalized.

It was a good Ecology. I used a darkmantle early in my 3e games, and I might have been partially inspired by this article in the way I ran it. The players certainly felt threatened by the sudden attack, which isn't always easy to pull off with experienced players.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 275: September 2000


part 6/7


Dragonmirth goes from happy to angsty on the spin of a dime.


Forum isn't !££7, but is grey, which hurts the readability even more than green. Contrast is important people. Bleah.

Thomas W. Overton is hocked and shorrified at the new edition. I've been stabbed in the back by Wizard$ of the Co$t! This isn't AD&D! Well, I knew there would be some. Good to see them getting front space airtime in the magazine.

Christopher Chung, on the other hand, is all like mmm, rools: Third edition. As usual, they have to put opposing viewpoints next to each other to help your decision making process.

Andrew Brown hopes that most of the old material will eventually get conversions to 3rd ed. Including Chronomancer. Good luck with that.

Jeff Herrin hopes the new edition means going back to publishing great adventures like temple of elemental evil or white plume mountain. Well, technically correct, but not in spirit. Splatbooks still reign supreme.

Russ Junkin isn't amused that so many players don't know how to play halflings & gnomes properly. Short ≠ comic relief, goddammnit. Give them their dignity back and stop irritating the other players.


Ro73 Mod375?! Honestly. I never expected you of all people to start writing in 1337speak. What kind of role model do you think you're being? Goblins have never been known for good literacy, and Volo has always been intentionally annoying, but you? I am disappoint. :shakes head: This is a really insubstantial article too, with the margins moved inwards to make it seem a little less so, talking about reskinning minis. You don't have to call them what the manufacturer does. That's only an issue if the manufacturer include a name and backstory with the minis anyway. Which you only just started doing with the D&D miniatures. So basically you're solving a problem you created yourself in the first place. That's the kind of thing that makes me want to not bother. They're really straining to come up with anything to fill this column that isn't just straight promotion.


Sage advice starts to have questions on the DMG slip in as well. It'll still be another month or so before the new core rules are complete. As enthusiastic as the changeover is this time, they're still held up by logistics.

Do you get strength modifiers when set against a charge (Hell yeah. Skewering something heading straight at you takes quite a bit of strength. )

Can a charging character make attacks of opportunity (sure)

Can a tripped character make attacks of opportunity (at the normal penalty)

Can you take and ready an action in the same round (only a move action. )

Can you ready an action to do a coup de grace. (No. You should be ashamed of yourself, trying cheap shots like that. )

How much temporary ability damage can you heal in a day. (Depends how many abilities you have damaged. )

Can you swim while affected by freedom of movement (Yes. Another thing that hasn't changed with editions, despite weasel rules lawyers wishing it had. )

Can you deflect arrows when surprised (no)

What skill do you roll to recognize monsters (None. You use your characters knowledge. This is 3.0, not 3.5.)

What's the difference between a craft, profession and knowledge ( Good question. Depends how theoretical or practical your knowledge is. )

Does death touch have a saving throw (no)

What's the use of quickdraw. (getting a full attack out on the first turn can make a lot of difference. You'd be amazed. )

Does it matter which class I take first if I multiclass (Not at all :stifles sniggers: Go right ahead.)

Can you raise elves (yes. They no longer get special soulular exemption. )

Can a paralyzed person hold their breath (yes)

How the hell do you use instantaneous touch based spells (hold the charge, luke)

How long does strength loss from chill touch last (same as any other temporary ability damage. No more tracking different monsters with their own arbitrary effects. Isn't 3rd edition great. )

What happens if you're webbed and someone attacks you. (You're in trouble. Nuff said.)

How does poison interact with magical healing (It keeps on pumping through your veins, and you just can't seem to break these chains. )

If an enemy scores a crit with a poisoned attack, do you need to make two saves (no)

Can you counterspell a spell-like ability (No, nor can you be counterspelled by one)

Can I read my own sepia snake sigil to attack someone else (What? No. That's one poorly written spell. Skip will use his new sagely powers to create Official D&D™ Errata! Tah Dah! Bow chikka wow, etc.)

Do you lose control of summoned monsters in the last round of combat (no)

Does a robe of the archmagi and holy aura's SR stack (no. Best only. Stacking rules, remember.)