Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 309: July 2003


part 1/9


86 (116) pages. So we've reached the 3.5 revision. We only had half the warning time we did with the full edition change, which seems appropriate. No great stylistic change here though. Wayne Reynolds is still producing dubiously proportioned characters with a ridiculous number of belts going Raar. Or maybe WAAAAAAUUUUGGGHHH!!!!, which is the theme of the issue. Not just any war mind you, war against the Githyanki in particular. That's a pretty unique topic, that obviously no-one else can cover. (gith are Product Identity, after all ) With any luck, this changeover might be genuinely special. On we march then, keeping up discipline despite spotty morale in the ground troops.


Scan Quality: Good, indexed, ad-free scan.


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: In the real world, war is something the average person is increasingly detached from these days, with even soldiers able to do a lot of their work through supersonic aircraft or drones that removes a lot of the risk. Of course, the other side is still looking at a decades long cleanup process, as the messes in Iraq and Afganistan have shown all too well over the past decade. Of course, being detached from the reality of war just means we can enjoy it in our escapism all the more, without worrying about triggering someone's PTSD. And really, it is probably better for us to at least explore these ideas rather than pretending the world is a clean happy shiny place all the time. That way we won't be surprised when it all goes to , even if the full details don't hit you until you experience them.

 

[Echohawk]

A link to this news seems appropriate for this thread!

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 309: July 2003


part 2/9


Scale Mail: We start off with a letter wishing the new spells in issue 304 would appear in the new corebook. Sorry. They might still show up in a supplement though. More than a few will.

The problem of monster CR's is brought up, particularly ones with templates. Yup, results in play can vary widely based on party composition, tactics and terrain. This is never going to be an exact science, despite serious efforts by some designers to push it into shape.

The readers continue to be in a critical mood, with someone deeply annoyed at Gary's love of adversarial play. Sssh. He secretly wants them to win, but don't let them know that or they'll get overconfident.

And we finish with a letter pointing out that one of Mearl's power plays from 307 uses an inaccurate interpretation of the rules. I am shocked that there is gambling in this establishment. Truly shocked, I tell you.


3.5 Update: Time to get into these changes big time, get them over and done with. Nerfs to spell durations I already know about. I'd rather fix them by upping the component cost than cutting the duration and effectiveness, but I can quite understand why they went down this route. The skill revisions, on the other hand, I have no problem with. Folding overly narrow skills into other ones, and generally reducing restrictions on who can take what definitely feels like a good change to me. Similarly, the minor changes to weapons, armor, and racial abilities, with the possible exception of gnomes losing their illusion speciality are all good. Giving classes better high level abilities is a definite good idea, even if it doesn't really catch the nonspellcasters up with good ol' CoDzilla. So looking through this, I'm surprised how many of these changes make perfect sense and were adopted without complaint, with only a few of them going the wrong way for my preferences. Guess it's a case of taking for granted what works and blowing the things that don't out of proportion. In any case, this leaves me feeling far happier than most of the teasers did, after being reminded of the little changes that just made things smoother. It's those ones that resulted in 3.5 mostly superseding 3.0, to the point where it's even harder to find a specifically 3.0 game than a 2e one these days, (but you can get the books really cheap) while 3.5 and pathfinder both have strong playerbases devoted to them. There are benefits to a playtester base of millions, you just need to make sure you filter out the noise correctly.

 

[(un)reason]

A link to this news seems appropriate for this thread!

Interesting. Well, that's 3 more Polyhedrons for my collection, 20 left to go. Hopefully they'll appear at some point in the future.

 

[Echohawk]

Interesting. Well, that's 3 more Polyhedrons for my collection, 20 left to go. Hopefully they'll appear at some point in the future.

Which ones are you still missing?

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 309: July 2003


part 3/9


A brief history of war: Not too surprisingly, our themed material starts off with a system-free, historically focussed warm-up to ease us in. It's an ugly business, and one that has changed a good deal over the years, but the basic rules remain the same. The pitched battles between armies are actually one of the smallest parts of the process. Far more important is applying your force to the enemy's weak points, and keeping control of supply chains, communication between units, and information about the enemy. Really, it's rather funny that over the editions, D&D became more focussed on building the game around those "fair" fights, and less on the dangers of exploring, logistics of having the right equipment vs encumbrance limits, and killing things you can't beat in a fair fight by clever use of terrain and magic. So like the ASoI&F special, this gives us a wider perspective than their usual bits of crunch, and reminds us exactly how humans got to be on top of the food chain. It wasn't by head-on battles, that's for sure. This isn't a spectacular beginning, but it does prepare you for the idea that the gloves are going to come off if you go down this path. Will your sadistic inventiveness be greater than your enemy's? If it's a full team of players vs one DM, I'll wager they can still manage it, even if they are working with substantially fewer resources. Let's hope they can keep it fun despite being horribly unfair.

 

[(un)reason]

Which ones are you still missing?

026, 030, 044, 051, 053-055, 057, 061-066, 125, 129, 130 & 133-135.

 

[Echohawk]

026, 030, 044, 051, 053-055, 057, 061-066, 125, 129, 130 & 133-135.

Drat. I have a number (about twenty) duplicate print copies, but unfortunately none of them overlap with this list

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 309: July 2003


part 4/9


Bestiary: Our timeline of violence continues along the bottom of the page, while a whole bunch of little sidebars fill us in on the changes 3.5 has made. Swarm subtype monsters! Yay! Bonus HP for constructs. A somewhat kludgy solution, but needed. Craft Construct feat. Yawn. Sickened condition. Ok then. Clear delineation of bonus feats. Probably a wise idea. And oversimplifying & regimenting the monster size/space/reach rules. Boo. Probably more good changes than bad, but certainly not all perfect. Let's see about the monsters.

Crawling Slaughters are giant undead spiders. They smell vile, and they can still produce web fluid, curiously enough. Someone's been to the same school of battlefield control as Exalted's deathlords and the twat who wanted to put giant spiders in Superman, but had to settle for putting one in Wild Wild West.

Death Hurlers are dirty great animated siege towers with the ability to shoot up to 6 times a round if someone's got the ammo. Another one build to plough through the battlefield, spreading mass devastation as they go and crushing enemies underfoot.

Golem Swarms take a different tack to mass combat, showing that lots of little men can be a real pain to fight as well. This shows off their new material type based DR system, which is another thing that would come to be a bit of a pain. Oh well, it's only DR5, you can blow through that with two-handed power attack.

Guardian steeds also do exactly what they say on the tin. They bond obsessively with someone and stay with them until death. They have magic powers that also protect their rider too. Useful but dull.

Wardrakes are relatively small, dumb dragons, maybe a bit larger than Greater Drakes, that are also perfect for riding on. They have a sonic based breath weapon that wrecks equipment as well as hurts, so a good strafe over enemy lines'll do what it ought to.

Well, that wasn't a bad collection of monsters, but they sure do have terrible names. Looks like the people who will give things purely descriptive faux-badass names like hulking hurler and foulspawn destroyer have started working here now. There should be room for some more derision at their lack of imagination by the time this is over.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 309: July 2003


part 5/9


Shut up and roll!: Most of the regular columns are off for the issue, so this little article is the only bit of general roleplaying advice. And yeah, the title is completely accurate. It's all advice aimed at speeding along combat. Learn the rules, memorise your character's stats, work out what you're going to do before your turn, and then declare it and roll it right away when your go comes around. Faffing is the bane of exciting action, particularly in large groups. Some of these ideas are very familiar, like not allowing takebacks, and instituting a timer that causes them to lose their action if they can't make their mind up in a couple of minutes or so. Others, such as rolling your attack and damage dice simultaneously (making sure you know which colour is which) and annotating your character sheet so you remember what all your powers do are newer, and mean this one is good even for experienced players. While not directly connected to the theme of the issue, it is advice that becomes increasingly important as battles get larger scale, so it does feel very relevant. If you can't keep discipline and focus amongst a group of half a dozen people around a table, you've got no hope of managing an army.


The art of D&D: The timeline returns, managing to cover the era between 1.500,1,000 BC, which reminds us just how much things changed back then, even though it's easy to think of it all as just generic pre-civilisation history. Similarly, the advice is very much a continuation of the introduction's tone, applying the advice of Sun Tzu to your roleplaying campaigns (as last seen way back in issue 154) Know yourself, know your enemy, and make sure they play to your tune rather than the other way round. Master your emotions while exploiting their's. Strike fast and beat them before they've even finished planning. Make sure you don't win the battle but lose anyway because it costs you too much. Once again, this is very much a reality check, cutting through the crap of CR's and game balance and making things all feel very ruthless, while not denying the value of human emotion either. (he specifically calls out how stupid brooding loner badasses are, and that they'll be first on the chopping block even if they are more competent than any of your regular soldiers, because they don't have any support structure. ) It highlights how Rangers and Rogues actually have more useful skillsets than Fighters for larger scale wars, so it's not completely system-free, but it is easily applied to any game. Hopefully this means that as with the 3.0 changeover, there'll be more system-free stuff over the next few months as the freelancers catch up as well. This issue continues to build up steam. Will it be unstoppable by the time it hits the enemy?