Let's read the entire run

[Sanglorian]

Dragon Issue 284: June 2001
But I'm still not going to get to review whatever's on the bonus CD.

I remember it had a dungeon generator and the 3E character generator demo; maybe it had some other things as well. I thought the dungeon generator was amazing at the time; in retrospect it was a pretty conventional generator. The character generator demo was attractive and saved a lot of time, though the options were quite limited.

Wyrms turn: The editorial is a little look back at what the magazine was like in the past. Which reminds us just how long Kim and Roger were in charge, and that Dave took quite a while to grow to fill their shoes, what with the various problems the company was facing when he was promoted. It's also a good reminder that they covered a greater variety of stuff back then, which I definitely miss. This is the trouble with sticking too close to the middle path, because they want to please as many people as possible with every single article. And the magazine is never going to recapture that sense of openness and possibility, no matter how many cool D&D articles they produce. Looking back is only really fun if you feel that you might be able to do better still at some point. Not a great start.

Later on, Polyhedron was the magazine that had that excitement for me: pulp heroes one month, planetary romance the next, a battle of the bands the month after. But that would be some years later.

Countdown to the forgotten realms reaches zero, but is still going.

Look at the list of races on page 22: 'gold dwarves, gray dwarves, shield dwarves, drow, sun elves, wild elves, wood elves, deep gnomes, rock gnomes, ghostwise halflings, strongheart halflings, aasimar, genasi and tieflings'. Imagine you're reading the magazine for the first time and with little knowledge of D&D. What an exciting list of races! And what a shame that in practice they often boiled down to nothing more than a different set of ability score bonuses.

I think it took until Eberron to make me excited about sub-races again. The Valenor and Aerenal elves in particular are distinct and interesting.

Dork tower presents the non-history of dragon magazine. Look how thing's have non-changed.

THIS baffled me. I could tell that Dork Tower was partially tongue-in-cheek, but was it parodying real events? Who was this 'Piffany' who sued for defamation? Weren't they worried that by rudely representing her in this comic she might sue again? Did Phil Foglio really finance the magazine?

Draconian Tactics: This is an even more familiar topic, that's mainly enlivened by the fact that as their first birthday under 3e, they can go into plenty of detail on specific tactics that the new rules support or discourage, and it'll be fresh this time around.

As a newcomer, I found the non–rules-based parts of this the most valuable: what traps the dragons might use, where they commonly lair, and so on.

Run for your Lives: Time for the usual kind of advice about running a dragon and keeping it scary.

This article introduced the concept of foreshadowing to me, and the example of a dragon's shadow being cast on the party is still what I think of when I think of foreshadowing. In addition, the table for what dragons always and never do ('always acts like royalty'; 'never loses a game of chess') is damn useful and concise advice: much more useful than advice on what character class to add to your dragon, to use an example from Draconian Tactics.

Taste test: Robin Laws goes into psychoanalyst mode again, trying to break gamers down into useful categories, that'll then allow you to ensure they all get a chance to do the things they love. Make sure there's fighting for the hack-and-slashers, talky bits for the roleplayers, and challenges that utilise any idiosyncratic special abilities characters might have. I'm thinking if you need to think like, you aren't putting enough effort into making your setting solid and detailed enough that players can apply whatever tools they prefer to get a result anyway. While it is important to make your game fun, if the players feel you're pandering to them, and everything comes too easy or is only solvable by their specific combination of stats and equipment, the world loses verisimilitude. So yeah, this is a bit too far into the narrativist side of the GNS triangle for my tastes. Kinda losing me here.

I don't think that's what Laws is suggesting here at all. He's not suggesting that you create adventures that give each character a chance to shine (as a narrativist might do), but rather create adventures that interest every player.

This isn't necessarily achieved by your suggestion of making the setting solid and detailed. The casual gamer would just be overwhelmed by that; it's hard to see how a detailed world necessarily helps the steam venter or the power gamer. Even if your setting manages to have facets that interest all players, it's still up to the GM to ensure that those facets are present in each adventure: it's not enough that the kobolds in the south can be slaughtered by the steam venter and the half-orcs in the north can be converted by the method actor, since what you want is for both the steam venter and the method actor to be engaged by either location.

I also think he's missed out at least one category, what I'd call the explorer. The explorer enjoys learning more about a coherent and fantastic world and its inhabitants.

Campaign Corner [...] This seems like it could stay interesting for a while.

It could, but I think it only lasted for one or two articles!

Class acts: Monte turns his attention to a topic he would later revisit in greater depth in Arcana Evolved. The dragon kith, a person who gains draconic abilities by swearing fealty to one, and then performing rituals that bond them together.

I think the dragon kith are a good example of a concept that were forced into the format of a prestige class. They really would have worked better as a LA +1 or +2 template or a feat chain (or, perhaps, a 5e theme); no one is going to bother meeting the requirements to take what is a collection of unexciting and uncoordinated abilities.

Faiths of Faerun: [...] The reality, unfortunately, is rather less glamorous. Fluff expansion is completely eschewed in favour of taking a rather anally detailed look at multiclass clerics, and how to best achieve the crunch matching the flavour of two cleric orders, Azuth's Magistrati and Helm's Watchers. As with so much of the multiclass path stuff, this all feels like discredited design that will result in suboptimal characters compared to a straight cleric. Another case where the kinks of the format definitely need ironing out. Send feedback!

To be fair, the two cleric orders are given as examples so that players can go away and do the same thing for lots of other 2e kits instead of demanding prestige classes. The multiclass paths are definitely suboptimal, but without prestige classes like the mystic theurge any cleric/wizard or cleric/fighter multiclass would be suboptimal.

Cities for the ages

A terrific column, and a shame it didn't continue for longer. I didn't appreciate it at the time, but in retrospect it was a fantastic ideas mine and—like a lot of roleplaying resources—subtly taught the reader at the same time.

The bestiary: Johnathan M. Richards shows that not everyone is keen to leave the excesses of late 2e behind, by giving us the same birthday gift he did 2 years ago. More Greater Drakes. More little attempts to find rational biological excuses for breath weapons, and give low level characters the chances to ride dragons without it completely breaking the game. It's not as bad as getting socks, but it does seem a little played out, especially now you could add half-dragon to all manner of riding beasts and have your flying, firebreathing mounty fun that way. Yawn.

I'm surprised by your lukewarm reaction! At the time, I was totally enchanted by the different varieties of drake and their strange and unique breath weapons. Even now that I have quite a few monster books, I find the greater drakes a refreshing alternative to the 'water drake', 'fire drake', 'earth drake' and 'air drake' that weren't interesting the first time, and yet have been done hundreds of times.

A dragon that breaths mead ... what's not to love? Ron Spencer's illustrations really help here as well: only the vallochar looks like a stereotypical dragon, and even that looks a lot better than the dragonnel!

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 284: June 2001


part 5/7


Miscellaneous Mishaps: This looks like it could be a new regular column, but actually isn't. It's one of those random D100 tables they have fairly frequently these days. Going into a pub, and the DM hasn't decided what's going on? Roll on this one. Most of the results are fairly mundane, with a few that are obvious adventure hooks, like slipping stuff into someone else's drink or a violent interrogation taking place. If you're a hero, you'll probably want to do something about that. Just make sure you have some generic NPC stats ready if they do choose to fight them, for there's nothing worse than not being able to follow up your cool plot hook and watching the adventure stall. Another brief and fairly handy system free article.


Bazaar of the Bizzarre: The bazaar gets in with the theme this birthday, as it does sometimes, but not as often as the bestiary does. More specifically, this is a bunch of unique items in a specific dragon's hoard. This implies lots and lots of setting detail.

Letrathe's skin is a set of armor made by the dragon's half-ogre daughter. It absorbs fire damage and allows you to possess people. She then tried to possess her dad and got killed for her troubles. And now he has her armour. Family eh. Who'd have them.

Scalebreaker is an axe designed to slay dragons. It obviously wasn't good enough.

Beguiler of Wyrms is a mandolin with hypnotic powers on dragons. It WAS good enough, but then their buds had to spoil everything by attacking, and the bard responsible left it behind during the subsequent slaughter.

Frosthaven is a magical shield which radiates cold. This is of course extra effective against red dragons in the new edition. It's user still got ripped to shreds, but this also permanently crippled our star. He's still probably badass enough to take on your party.

Houn's Grand Compendium volume VIII is a volume on the optimal tactics for fighting red dragons. It's wizardly wielder managed to survive longest of all, and inflict another crippling wound upon him. So we got to see a whole story gradually built up through this collection. A very cool idea indeed, making excellent use of fluff and crunch. Top marks.


VS Dragons: Well, we had advice on how dragons fight under 3e rules earlier. Now we have a parallel one on how to fight them. Here, the archetype of the solitary dragon-slayer is in reality one of the worst possible things you can do. They're smart, mobile, have multiple attacks, and are frequently well-prepared. So to beat them, you've got to be able to overwhelm those preparations. Even centuries of meticulously arranged traps will be worn out faster than they can be replaced if you have enough minions, and you can keep on harrying them until they run out of spells. So get as much help as possible, and attack in a spread out pattern that'll keep them from wiping out everyone with a single breath. More quirky is the revelation that since many dragon types have strong elemental connections, clerics with the appropriate domains can turn or rebuke them. (although you'll need to be pretty high level to do so reliably) And of course the fact that creatures can't move if they're taking the full attack option means you'll benefit quite a bit from hitting and running if you take the anti-AoO feats. So lots of good and very specific advice here too, that won't be applicable in other editions. That just leaves the question of how they'll keep next year's birthday features fresh. Cross that bridge when we get to it.


Nodwick also gives us some non-history of dragon magazine, and their lives and times. Lots of special guests make a non-appearance.


Forum: Jean-Phillipe Suter continues to dig himself into a hole in the sexism debate. Men deserve to not be patronised and degraded too! Consistently using the same pronoun makes for stronger writing! Me me me me.

Dorothy V. McComb reminds us that while men may be stronger, women are longer lived and generally more resistant to disease. Perhaps a bonus to Con is in order. And the lifespan tables ought to be adjusted accordingly too.

Kerry R. (what happened to the surname? ) wonders why having the ability to bear children is such a great power anyway. It's not as if you can use it in combat unless you're a deepspawn, and I think they're hermaphroditic anyway. We ought to have grown out of balancing fluff advantages with combat disadvantages and vice versa by now.

Dino Sorrele thinks that if women get a -2 to str, they ought to get a +2 to dex, int, wis and cha to compensate. After all, it's only realistic.

Richard Keehn wonders what Jean-Phillipe is trying to accomplish. Does he want to drive away female players? Discourage male players from playing female characters? Neither seems particularly good for the overall diversity and fun of the game.

Alexander H. Macleod IV wonders if people are still facing harassment from people who think D&D is satanic. Along with sexism complaints, that's the other big thing the forum's refocussing on edition change really killed off. Does that mean it's faded away in the wider world too?

Jason Gaddle has found his group swelling from 5 to 20 with the new edition. Thank you so much WotC! Now that's what you call a success story at bringing in new people. Shame the new edition is less friendly to actually being run with large parties.

Robert Kloeckner thinks despite the edition change, wizards are still wimps in combat. If anything, even more so, because fighters can now get tons more bonuses to damage, and keep them up all day. But they still smoke fighters in utility. And as we'll discover soon, combat lengths are usually a lot shorter than you think, especially when parties start doing the 15 minute workday thing. This is a more complicated issue than it first appears.

 

[Sanglorian]

FYI there is a thread in RPG.net that does exactly this. Perhaps you can look it up for a different perspective and inspiration.

That thread was also started by (un)reason: he posts the same content to both.

 

[(un)reason]

:snip:

I love the smell of bot in the morning, especially when they can't even link to their spam correctly.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 284: June 2001


part 6/7


PC Portraits: Half-dragons are the subject of this month's portraits, once again showing that they're actually fairly common nowadays. The artist makes sure that there's plenty of variation in how much they take after each side, and indeed, what their humanoid side is, with dwarves, elves, halflings and orcs clearly represented. So this is a pretty strong entry, and one that's not likely to be repeated too. Pick a character, any character, and see if they can overcome prejudice to find a place in the world.


Role Models: Having put plenty of attention to painting people, now we turn our attention to monsters. The bigger ones, you'll often have to assemble yourself, which is a whole new can of worms for an amateur to screw up. So rather than just glueing fiddly bits and hoping they'll set in the right position, you can use little metal pins to fix things more securely. Scales, feathers, claws, and other things get short pieces of advice on how to paint appropriate textures, This feels like it's a case where they need to do some more expansion to really cover the topic in a satisfying manner. Otherwise it's a case of humanocentric worldview, and I'm not that keen on that. Let's see if they move on next month, or go over this some more.


The Play's the Thing: Robin gives us another bit of advice that seems completely obvious and common sense once you know it, but might not think of it independently. Don't make characters that have no connection to one-another or the DM's world. Create them in a group session, so you can trade ideas and give them good reasons to know each other and work together in game. I've gone on about the benefits of collaborative creativity over solo before, and this is an excellent example. Even if the final product isn't always better, you usually have more fun with the process in a group, and you're less likely to spend hours ground to a halt. (unless some people are having TOO much fun at the expense of concentration. ) And since with gaming, the amount of fun you have, not the quality of the final product is your real metric of success, this is definitely a medium that benefits from this kind of thinking. Simple, elegant and positive. That's the way to get people following and imitating you.


The DM's Toolbox: Another advice column primarily aimed at DM's? Interesting. They have been decreasing the frequency of their old regular columns, which shows they're aware that they've become a little played out. And since DM's are more likely than players to buy the magazine regularly, and need more help in general, they do need to make sure a fair proportion of their page count is focussed on them. In contrast with Robin's one, this starts off by examining not something to do with how you play, but the environment you play IN. Even something as simple as the seating arrangement can make a difference in how the group communicates and relates to one-another, especially when it's a large one. Course, some people may not take kindly to being told where to sit and who to sit next too, so trying to control this stuff consciously may backfire on you. Similarly, saying you should make sure any distractions are turned off or out of the room is common sense, but can be easier said than done in today's technology filled world. (one valid argument against keeping everything on your computer. ) So this has one rather interesting idea they haven't suggested before, along with several they have. It's nice when a column works straight away, instead of flailing around for a few months while the writer finds their feet. Let's hope they can keep it up.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 284: June 2001


part 7/7


Sage advice: Is spell resistance affected by negative levels (On the attackers side, not the defenders. P'chau. )

Would a fireball destroy all your mirror images (No. It's gonna hit you anyway, so it's not a giveaway when it does. )

Can you choose who is affected by mass heal (Thankfully.)

Do you need to be able to see the target of a spell (If it has the target keyword. See the wisdom inherent in the system! )

What level of cover blocks line of effect (Only 100%. Note that mini's are not necessarily proper representations of their game volume. )

Do your allies block spell effects if you're shooting from the rear (Quite possibly. It's a hard life, being a wizard.)

Can multiclass spellcasters add levels together to get feat prerequisites (No. They are definitely suboptimal. Now we discover the repression inherent in the system. )

How do enlarge and empower spell affect lightning bolt. (Not as much as you think. Don't make Skip get all technical on you. Skip will use the socket wrench, if you know what I mean. )

Does desecrate penalize both the roll to turn undead and the roll determining the amount turned (no)

Can you use shocking grasp through a metal object. (No. That would be a waste. )
Does magic armour reduce your spell failure chances (no)

Can you befriend a summoned creature and make it stick around, or come find you after the spell wears off. (No. That's the kind of logical can of worms we try and avoid these days. Best to treat it as if they have no life at all when not summoned.)

What happens when you scry for a polymorphed creature (You find them. You may think you got a wrong number though.)

Can discern location overpower mind blank (no. It's too powerful. )

Does spell immunity block metamagiced spells (It's still the same old spell, (do de do do))

Are your items disintegrated with you (Not anymore. The wizards committee were tired of not being able to take complainants stuff after they killed them, so they modified it for the new edition)

Does mage armour stack with normal armour (No. Remember the type stacking rules. )

How many people can fit in a cube of force (4. How convenient that that's the number of a normal party these days.)

Does dust of appearance work the same way as dust of disappearance (No. You need far less precision to make things appear again.)


Silicon Sorcery: Asheron's Call! They've been advertising that for a while, haven't they. Looks like it has some fairly typical MMO traits, characters can't die permanently, and can switch equipment instantly even in the middle of battle. So this article does some amusing lampshading, providing feats and magical items that'll let your PC's do that, should you actually want to give your game an MMOish feel. Attune to lifestones and you'll respawn whenever you die, with no greater penalty than a temporary negative level and the loss of your most expensive single item to your killers. Take a feat which lets you absorb massive damage without complaint even more than regular D&D characters. And another one that lets you swap armour at high speed. Highly amusing, really. Of course, they're probably not quite balanced with regular feats, but when you're playing MMO style, that's part of the fun. And being brazen about these things rather than jumping through hoops to try and make them sensible appeals more to me at the moment. So this little article definitely pleases me.


Dungeoncraft: Ray dealt with the gods last issue. Now he makes some quite interesting changes to Clerics to make them fit the world better. Turning undead is replaced by turning dinosaurs. (although I think rebuking/controlling them would make more sense even for good clerics. ) Dimension travel, undead affecting and easy food creation spells are eliminated from their spell list, keeping things local so the kitchen sink doesn't get in, but quite a few new spells get added to replace them. As before, it's not quite as radical as the changes they went through in Dark Sun, but pretty interesting, and in much the same vein, reflecting that this is a savage world where the gods are very much present, although they can be a bit hard to understand from a human perspective, which gives PC clerics some leeway in how they fulfil their remit. It definitely feels like Ray's having more fun this time around, and this willingness to change things will make the resulting campaign more memorable. The world continues to build depth and plot hooks quite nicely. Now, what will he do with the other classes?


Dragonmirth has a particularly high quality and variety of artwork.


HARN gets computer modules. Intriguing.


What's New takes a skewed look at marriages. They don't have to involve a ball and chain, you know.


The magazine has already felt rejuvenated for a while now, and this cements their renaissance with a whole load of interesting new experiments. Even the updates of old topics are once again more interesting than they've been in a while. I do think keeping next year's birthday fresh might be a little trickier though, but we'll cross that bridge when we get too it. In the meantime, let's see which new features stick around next issue, and which are already struggling to get material.

 

[Sanglorian]

Dragon Issue 284: June 2001

Silicon Sorcery: Asheron's Call! They've been advertising that for a while, haven't they. Looks like it has some fairly typical MMO traits, characters can't die permanently, and can switch equipment instantly even in the middle of battle. So this article does some amusing lampshading, providing feats and magical items that'll let your PC's do that, should you actually want to give your game an MMOish feel. Attune to lifestones and you'll respawn whenever you die, with no greater penalty than a temporary negative level and the loss of your most expensive single item to your killers. Take a feat which lets you absorb massive damage without complaint even more than regular D&D characters. And another one that lets you swap armour at high speed. Highly amusing, really. Of course, they're probably not quite balanced with regular feats, but when you're playing MMO style, that's part of the fun. And being brazen about these things rather than jumping through hoops to try and make them sensible appeals more to me at the moment. So this little article definitely pleases me.

I like this article too. The feats are lackluster, but that was true of plenty of feats from 3.0's release to 3.5's demise. I thought the lifestones were handled nicely: they'll have an effect for perhaps one adventure, but since they're stationary they're unlikely to be of much benefit after that.

Dungeoncraft: Ray dealt with the gods last issue. Now he makes some quite interesting changes to Clerics to make them fit the world better. Turning undead is replaced by turning dinosaurs. (although I think rebuking/controlling them would make more sense even for good clerics. ) Dimension travel, undead affecting and easy food creation spells are eliminated from their spell list, keeping things local so the kitchen sink doesn't get in, but quite a few new spells get added to replace them. As before, it's not quite as radical as the changes they went through in Dark Sun, but pretty interesting, and in much the same vein, reflecting that this is a savage world where the gods are very much present, although they can be a bit hard to understand from a human perspective, which gives PC clerics some leeway in how they fulfil their remit. It definitely feels like Ray's having more fun this time around, and this willingness to change things will make the resulting campaign more memorable. The world continues to build depth and plot hooks quite nicely. Now, what will he do with the other classes?

I was left after this article wondering what I'd do as a cleric in the setting. I can turn and destroy dinosaurs related to my deity—not exactly a worthwhile swap for turn undead! I also found the cleric's relationship with his or her god uninspired: they have a mysterious psychic bond, inexplicable and compelling.

I would have preferred a more interesting reason, like people turning to the dinosaur gods after desperation or only in times of great need.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 285: July 2001


part 1/7


120 pages. Hello to the halfling that sparked a thousand guilty fantasies. Yamara's bitchiness is visible from half a decade away. Yup, they're getting the themed issue all to themselves for the first time since 1982. And they're absolutely determined to degoofify them. If that means trying to sex them up, so be it. This could go so very very wrong. Will this issue get the pedobear seal of approval, or will it somehow manage to make this topic just another day at the office?


Scan Quality: Poor, fuzzy, low resolution and with marks on pages.


In this issue:


Wyrm's turn: So yeah, they're trying to sex up halflings. And they're trying to prove they're not alone in that desire by looking for reference materials. They remind us of Fineous Fingers, where the halflings might not be sexy, but they're certainly not nice or cuddly either. They then start to run out of ideas. They find one in the pregens for the A modules, and that's it. I guess it's up to the future to satisfy their desires, rather than getting stuck in the past. But this looks like it might take a fair bit of effort to get people to come along. Not a particularly good sign. Things tend to catch on if there's already a demand for them, people just don't know it yet. It doesn't look like that's the case here.


Scale Mail: Our first letter makes the rather interesting observation that many real world gods have multiple aspects, and priests may concentrate on one of them. This is a good excuse for a wide range of alignments while retaining their spells, and valid ecumenical conflicts within a broader framework. I approve.

The article on movies provokes some debate, of course, getting two letters. It's very much a matter of taste, so favourites and loathed choices will vary widely. The question is simply how many letters like this they can be bothered to publish before growing bored and moving to the next topic.

And to round things off, we have someone who likes the champions of virtue article, but recognises that it also has some fairly significant balance issues. Carefully grading their spell progression ratio to the amount of powers they get rather than just using half and full ones is the way to go there.


Nodwick resolves the whole thing without any violence. Rather a dull experience for them, really.


Previews: They realize that the splatbooks are by far the biggest sellers, and give Tome and Blood, the arcane spellcaster splatbook, a full page spread. There is a quite alarming amount of smugness from Bruce and Skip over what they've achieved. Trust us, once you've got it, it'll be an essential part of your game. Roll out the prestige classes, give everyone enough to build the character they want. There's also the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. The edition change hasn't removed their desire to capitalize upon their old properties. Monte Cook'll help us find out who's moved in since the last lot got kicked out. You've got to raze the damn place, or new monsters'll occupy it in no time. Haven't you learned that now?

Their novel lines chug along happily. Dragon's Bluff by Mary H. Herbert continues the interlocked generational saga Krynn has become. Servant of the Shard by R. A. Salvadore does much the same for Drizzt and co, only without the generational stuff. Although maybe it ought to, given the amount of time that's passed IC. Oh well, that's the advantage of elves.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 285: July 2001


part 2/7


PROfILES drops back to a single page, and returns to covering writers. David Noonan is a fairly recent arrival, but has already worn the writer, designer and editor hats on various projects. His most prestigious work to date is the new manual of the planes, but really, he's just part of the big team. And he seems to prefer it that way, bouncing ideas off the other people in the office, everyone being energized by everyone else. Seems like another one where they try and promote their big
new thing, and play up how much of a big happy family the current WotC team is, at least as long as you're working 12 hour days for them. Not our most interesting profile. I think this feature is on it's way out again, as they seem to be running out of current big names to cover.


Dork tower gets back to the shop. And the useless geeks. No wonder they avoided it for so long.


The secret life of halflings: In the attempt to make halflings more exciting, it's time to completely rewrite the setting stuff. Gone are the good old tolkien style shires full of stay-at-home gossipy folks, replaced by semi-nomadic commonwealths where social class is largely irrelevant. There are still a fair amount of holdovers from the old representation, including Roger Moore's gods, and their love of riddles, so this doesn't feel like a total departure, but it does feel like changing things for the sake of change, or quite possibly a craving for greater commercial success, or just to make sure their IP is distinct from Tolkien's. Who knows for sure. But in any case, it's quite telling that I can think of more negative reasons for them to change things around than I can positive ones. And I'm reminded of the old adage that the harder you try to appear modern, the more dated you'll seem in a few years time. So I'm not sold on this at all.


Little wizards: So yeah, in 3e, halflings make really good wizards. This wasn't planned, but an emergent property of the rules governing size changes, their ability modifiers, and facility at staying out of the way. Meanwhile elves actually make better rangers than wizards, despite their default favoured class. It's a good thing we have the CharOp board to examine this stuff, so next edition's classes and races can be much more focussed on one thing. Or maybe it isn't, as it destroys the organic feel of the game if all their features are focussed towards a single goal, leaving them definitely suboptimal at everything else, at which point you might as well have the restrictive class selections of earlier editions anyway. It's definitely one of the more thorny questions the design team has to deal with. So this shows how much they've learned already since 3e was released, and how much they'll change the game in response to it in the long run. They may not release new editions as quickly as M:tG, but the era of it being years between significant new books and rules revisions is now over. Mind you don't get left behind in the moves.


Four in darkness: Ah yes, a tie-in article for their new product. Not a great surprise. The creatures of elemental evil aren't THE most iconic or expanded upon of D&D's creations, but they retain their own reasonably solid fanbase, thanks to the classic module. (and persistent eaten by a grue meme) This is definitely worth maintaining and building upon. So Monte updates their stats for the new edition, and also gives us a template for corrupted elementals, and 8 new spells giving elementalists lots of options to grief you, whatever your resistances and weaknesses are. So lots of useful material here, and a little bit of advice on how to use it. Evil creatures don't generally get along, so you can play one off against another, and maybe get a little extra profit for yourself into the bargain. A no-nonsense, well balanced article, providing some updated old stuff, some new stuff and some advice on how to use it? Sounds like a pretty decent combo to me.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 285: July 2001


part 3/7


Fiction: Enchantment by Ben Bova. The reign of Arthur might have been long and impressive in most versions, but it always inevitably has to end. No matter how many times Orion wins a battle, he only has to fail once. And while he can win the straight up-fights, he can't stop Arthur from having sex with the wrong woman, and producing Mordred, who we all know will eventually be instrumental in his downfall. This advances the overall plot by a fair chunk, but isn't as standalone as the previous stories in this series. Like Fool Wolf's story, I get the impression that this tale may reach it's conclusion in just a few more instalments, and then what will replace it? Still, at least the final twists and turns are likely to be pretty dramatic.


Campaign Corner: This month, we have a Zhentil defector in the Realms, some demons trying to retrieve a magic item on Oerth, some missing Factols in Sigil, and a piece of parchment that's diagonally upside-down, and unreadable at this resolution for Birthright. So while each of the plot hooks is once again fairly specific, most of them are easily adaptable, apart from the planescape one, which really needs that detailed factional structure. Maybe you could replace it with feuding guilds or religions in a place with a different focus. These hooks are too short to write about much, so like the portraits, I worry I may run out of things to say. I guess it all depends how specific they keep them as much as anything.


Class Acts: Monte takes an interesting tack to this month's theme. The lightbearer, bringer of the comforts of home, hearth and community to the dark places adventurers roam. Their abilities are primarily defensive, with all good saves, a bit of magical healing, a bit of ability to drive away evil creatures. If you want your halflings to feel LotRish, huddled in the wilderness and driving away nazgul by words rather than swords, this is actually a surprisingly appropriate prestige class to take. Obviously, in terms of combat power they're a bit weak, but they're so thematic that I can forgive them anyway. Perfect for that wandering NPC who doesn't get involved in the fighting, but still manages to save the day.


The Bestiary: More new school Greyhawk creepies this month, courtesy of James Jacobs. This time, we head to the Gnarley forest and the temple of elemental evil. If you're at all surprised they went around creating corrupted elementals and domesticating whatever weird creatures they found, you don't know evil cultists very well.

Breathdrinkers are formed from air ripped from people's lungs, and keep on killing in this fashion to sustain their existence. Another dark fairytale monster, as is very much this writer's wont.

Rukarazyll are another SAN lowering abomination that delights in assuming a human form and tricking you into various depravities and misfortunes. And then probably laughing in a deep distorted voice that sounds like a stereotypical anime tentacle monster. Yes, they're finally getting a proper foothold in D&D. Bad game designers! Baka no eechi! :thwacks with hammer:

Firetongue frogs aren't nearly as powerful, but they're still sadistic taunting creatures with tricks far in excess of their HD. Throw them in the drink to kill them.

Orlythys are another gross monster from the oceanic depths of the abyss. Ok, you're starting to get predictable now. Randomly distributed tentacles and other organs are losing their scariness factor. Please to be finding a new gimmick.

Tralusk also have far more eyes in odd places than they ought to, but are closer to a conventional body shape otherwise. They're also another one which uses music as a luring tool. Man, the number of monsters that do that over the years, you could make a whole orchestra with them.