Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 316: February 2004


part 8/8


Sage advice: Can Bob the rudely awakened fighter grapple Grog the orc without provoking an attack of opportunity (Skip denies your request. He's prone, and unarmed. If he don't have good feats, Bob's gonna be terminally unconscious again pretty quickly. )

Do you have to pay extra again for every power you put in a cold iron weapon (No, for each time you put enhancements in. Better do them all in one go for economy's sake. )

When exactly do you start getting cover from your mount when you try and do so (Right away, any time. Let your horse take the damage, then you can have horses for courses after the battle. Fightin's hungry work, and horses are mighty tasty. )

Can you use weapons other than those on p159 for trip attacks (If it says so in their description. Buy lots of supplements, see what cool stuff you can get :teeth ting

Does the bane properly negate damage reduction (no. It just does extra damage. This still may not be enough. Just be a double weapon power-attacking fighter, that should enable you to blow through most DR's and not worry about the golf bag of weapons problem.)

When is a weapon a two handed weapon (When you're using it in two hands. Dumb questions make the Eternal Sage cranky)

I still don't get it, and I have lots of other questions about weapon qualities. I have good money. (Sigh. Skip guesses it's pretty table time. Time to make like Thomas Dolby and blind you with Science! )

Can you make a shield with spikes Bashing (Yes, but they're mutually exclusive. Still, if you're facing a mixed group of skeletons and zombies, being able to alternate between bludgeoning and piercing damage is pretty handy.)


Dork tower finds miniatures actually encourage roleplaying. So much for that supposed dichotomy.


This issue is definitely one case where I compare old and new and find the new preferable. The spying advice is more focussed and better organised than the stuff in issue 231, and the other articles are far less annoying. And of course they can talk about James Bond's sex life. So for a nice change, I get to appreciate the things they've gained over the past few years, rather than the things they've discarded. So the question is what new things they'll take on, and if they'll be more than they cut out in the future. I guess next month is the logical place to start.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 317: March 2004


part 1/8


93(108) pages. Weretigers again? I don't recall us ever getting a wereboar or bear on the cover. Also, the sheer quantity of promotional gumph on the cover makes it impossible to tell what the most important part is here. Looking at the contents doesn't make it any clearer, apart from a vague trend towards wilderness stuff. Exotic heroes? That's even less informative than monsters of power, or just magic as a theme. Could mean nearly anything in practice. Well, at least it's player focussed, so they can continue to appeal to most of their audience. Let's see if anyone has submitted anything genuinely weird and wonderful.


Scan Quality: Excellent, unindexed, ad-free scan.


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: Unsurprisingly, the editorial this month is a justification for adding so many new races and classes in the magazine these days. One thing they've noticed in their years of playtesting is that if people play the same splats repeatedly, they will tend to play them in the same way. They build up stereotypes and bits of received wisdom about how to best use their powers that can gradually turn into playing by rote. The introduction of new classes, races and monsters, even if they're not actually that different mechanically, breaks that pattern for a while, as they don't have the same stereotypes associated with them, so you have to actually work to figure things out. Of course, if you introduce a new monster of the week every episode, people will eventually become numb to that, and stop caring enough to explore their nuances anyway. I can't escape the feeling that the magazine has swung a little too far in that direction at the moment.


Scale Mail: The campaign revival in issue 315 gets an absolutely rapturous response, with 5 letters gushing over it, and probably plenty more like them in the slush pile. This should make it absolutely clear to the editors that they ought to publish more stuff like this. Dark Sun gets particular attention in nearly all of them as well, which I find very curious. Is this why it was the first old setting that got revived in 4e?

It's not all revivalists though, as we end with a whimsical request to do a campaign components: travelling circus article. The editor is very dubious you could make a whole campaign out of that. Maybe next april, if someone sends something really good in. It simply wouldn't fit any other month.


Zogonia settle their personal differences with sudden violence. Good to see that working for a change. Now, can they beat the dragon as well?


Up on a soapbox: Don Kaye's death in 1975 was something that had a pretty significant influence on the fledgeling development of TSR. Yet after his obituary in SR issue 2, he's hardly been mentioned in the magazine. So this is really the first time we find out anything about his playstyle and characters. Turns out he was the one who originally played Murlynd, gunslinger and general tech guy. And indeed, the story here has him using his items in a clever way to get the drop on the enemy and win easily. Of course, as we saw in previous instalments, a clever trick may work once, but word gets around, and next time, the enemies will develop a counter, so you can't just cheese your way through the game indefinitely. That kind of arms race is an integral part of the fun when you're playing adversarially. As this isn't another one involving the same cast, it retains it's interest, particularly as we also get to see that the characters that would later become Greyhawk gods and legendary heroes do actually retain personality traits and signature moves/items from when they were PC's. But will we ever get any first-hand Arneson stories, or have they all gone to the grave with him?

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 317: March 2004


part 2/8


Dork tower has relationship issues. Two gamers with girlfriends in the same group? Surely not!


Countdown to Eberron: Last teaser covered the role of all the standard classes, and the new one in Eberron. Not too surprisingly, this one does exactly the same with Races. All the regular ones are there, plus some more new coolness. Curiously enough, they leave out the warforged, which were ironically the most popular once the game came out, to focus on the LA+0 doppleganger and lycanthrope variants, which are slightly less imaginative. The fact that the core idea isn't completely original doesn't stop the implementation from being both interesting, and very mechanically fine-tuned though, as they've gone to a lot of effort to integrate them into the setting, and create race-exclusive feats that (hopefully) allow you to develop your innate abilities and remain balanced for your level. Some of them scale quadratically, with the power of the feats determined by the total number of heritage feats you possess. It all shows a definite refinement in their understanding of the 3e ruleset. If they didn't have to put everything core in, maybe they could have made the setting mechanically balanced and still interesting? Nah, it wouldn't sell as well. This teaser keeps my interest, once again showing what they're doing differently from the old days. It's all about the flexibility and inclusiveness, at least when it comes to races.


Xenophilia: Our first proper article follows directly on from the teasers with another helping of new races. Let's see if they're as exotic as the issue's theme would like, or just another load of mysterious grimdark novel bait with angsty pasts.

Adu'jan are somewhere between elves and treants, human-sized plant creatures with incredibly long lifespans, although they root as they get older. They tend to be even more serious about the connection to nature thing than elves, and are good at social stuff due to their control of pheromones, but can also be naive about realpolitik, and need plenty of sunlight to stay healthy. Dungeoneering isn't the best career path for them, but a few younglings will try it anyway.

Gruwaars are evil fae that seem to be naturally disposed towards epic trolling, devoting themselves to agendas on a lark, and then dropping them just as suddenly. The important thing is the drama, not the cause. Which means they're likely to join up with an adventuring party, but trusting them will be another matter. Will you share the lulz with your party, or keep them all for yourself?

Golemoids have the same basic idea as warforged, but different specifics. Originally created by gnomes as domestic servants, they eventually got turned into real boys and girls by Garl Glittergold, and now have a regular lifespan, and ability to breed more little golemoids. How twee. They're less mechanically interesting than Warforged as well, so I think these could safely have been cut by the editor knowing what's coming soon.

T'kels were once your basic savage marauding humanoids, but now they've learned how to live in harmony with nature, and are advancing technologically pretty rapidly. This means they still have to deal with people who arre used to their old stereotype though, which is an interesting roleplaying challenge for both PC and DM. They get claws and a swim speed, which are basic enough abilities that they remain LA+0, but still useful. So while these races have quite interesting backstories, ability-wise they aren't particularly strange. I suppose they want the appearance of exoticism while not actually making them a problem to play in a group. Compromises, compromises.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 317: March 2004


part 3/8


Urban druids: The memory of the update issues, where they gave us tons of class variants in quick succession is still fresh in my mind. So I can't help feeling a little relief that this time they're going to give a whole article to a single variant instead of cramming a load down to a page or two each. And indeed, urban druids also get a somewhat more radical reworking than most of those, which is pleasing. Also pleasing is that the flexibility they lose in terms of shapeshifting into animal forms is made up for by the ability to assume the shape of humanoid races and inanimate objects, which makes them slightly less powerful offensively, but even better at spying and infiltration. At 20th level, they can even turn into a house, which is both amusing and has many possibilities for an ingenious player, and their bonusses at fighting within a cramped space, affecting buildings and dealing with various races make them better suited for dungeoneering than a regular druid. So this is pretty tightly balanced with regular druids overall, making it a viable option, but not a no-brainer, and the two are sufficiently different to co-exist in a party and have wacky debates about nature unfettered vs cultivation and civilisation. I've definitely seen far worse.


Truenames and fetishes: Ah yes. Here's a literary tradition that D&D hasn't done enough with yet. Fiends may have several weaknesses that key off someone knowing their truename, but it's not a common thing for PC's to use.
Here's an article that aims to make taking a truename a cool option for PC's, that has both extensive benefits and risks, and keep it all mechanically balanced. A pretty tall order really. But one they come far closer to pulling off than I would have thought possible, with a whole bunch of little mechanical nuances like the process to change your truename being incredibly costly, but offering benefits beyond just resetting the clock on the number of people who know it. The difficulty to puzzle and research someone's truename is suitably tricky, and the benefits suitably devastating, becoming more so the higher level they are. Since on rereading this I find a bunch of design nuances that contribute to the effect, I hope this one will work out in actual play, as incorporating this stuff into a storyline will still take a fair bit of work. I'll let myself be optimistic for a change though.


Using power components: This old chessnut, on the other hand, will be pretty easy to incorporate into your campaigns, since It's quite possible you're doing it already. It's basically a list of monster parts that are good for making magical items, and how much money and XP you'll save by going out and hunting them down yourself instead of abstracting things away and just crossing the money and xp off your sheet. Since many PC's part with their stuff only slightly more readily than a tiger parts with their teeth, and going out to hunt monsters will get them even more XP and treasure, most parties will take to this with great enthusiasm. It also includes some similar components that are good for spells and nonmagical items, and plenty of advice on how to create your own, setting scaling guidelines for how much a creature of a certain CR will benefit you. This seems like one you can pull out and use again and again, far more than articles with new monsters or magic items, so It's a second one in a row I strongly approve of.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Truenames, yet another reason for characters to have their parents killed at an early age!

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 317: March 2004


part 4/8


Body of knowledge: When you're trying to get exotic, transformative prestige classes are an obvious path to take. Separate yourself from humanity, (or dwarfity, or whatever) and overcome your biological limitations, and then you're much freer to become deeply deeply weird. The previous articles haven't set the bar that high. Can this clear it?

Osteomancers gain all sorts of gruesome tricks with their own skeletons, plus the ability to paralyze and possess others by manipulating theirs. If you're a Tzimisce fan and want to bring a bit of that to your D&D experience, this is about as close as you're gonna get.

Flux Adepts are also on the gross side, gaining conscious control of their blood and glands to pull tricks like feigning death, acid blood, pheromone boosted persuasiveness and eventually full-on regeneration. They definitely feel like a good solo class, as they get stuff useful for spellcasters, fighty sorts, and social characters. The question is if they'll remain competitive in a group environment with their split focus.

Cerebrex fill out the symmetry by focussing on the brain and nervous system. They get tons of skill points, which is unusual for a spellcasting class, and get tricks like perfect memory, immunity to mindreading, and Scent & Rage too, oddly enough. Once again, these fall into the category of prestige classes that look nice, but are almost definitely weaker than the 8th and 9th level spells you're missing out on by sacrificing 5 spellcaster levels. Still, at least they can't be taken away by destroying your spellbook, which is always a fear for wizards. Will you sacrifice flexibility for baked in, undisruptable power?


Magic's high notes: New magical musical instruments, aimed primarily at Bards? That's definitely not an exotic idea. Course, some of the individual instruments might be, depending on how far they're roaming culturally. Any untapped ideas here then?

Autonomous Harps animate and both attack and keep playing on their own, making them essentially like an animal companion that adds an extra flanker and the aid another bonus to your perform checks simultaneously. As long as the enemies don't decide it's the main threat and smash it up it should be pretty handy in combat.

Shells of Amplification are basically a modern microphone and amp all in one, although they don't have the power to project to a full stadium. Not sure how you can attach one to a stand though, so you'll have to keep hold of it and work that crowd.

Drums of the march let everyone who hears it substitute the perform check for their con rolls. This ensures that the weak links don't fall behind, and should let an army go for a good few days longer than usual before they absolutely have to rest. Simple and strategically handy, this is why even fantasy armies keep marching bands around.

Ventriloquists mouthpieces let you cast your voice at will, completely unimaginatively. As with the last one, it's basic function following form material.

Chromatic Flutes produce lightshows to accompany your playing. If you're good, you can generate illusions with them, although the music might be a giveaway that not everything is on the level. I suppose there are quite a few items that summon monsters. They won't know it's a bluff the first time.

Flutes of Shrieking force you to play discordantly until you die from exhaustion or starvation. Unlike say, a ring of weakness, if you don't have someone on hand with the power to break the curse, you'll have to get out the dungeon and move fast, as you'll get the unwelcome attention of everything along the way.

Snake Charmers are another old one that simply never got put in the new books, for whatever reason. Too many exotic monsters these days for snakes to seem scary enough to specialise in.

The Horn of the Planes is one of those amusing devices that has a pretty good chance of sending you to the wrong plane if you don't do the research and play the tune just right. Good to see those haven't been chucked out with the edition changes yet.

The Organ of Souls is another gothic cliche, calling to people across the miles, and slowly drawing them to the villain's lair, where their souls will be sucked out and imprisoned forever, or at least until released, maddened, to possess bodies and wreak havoc. It really could do with a bit more versatility in what you can use trapped souls for, otherwise what incentive do you have to use it, but pure cackling villainy? Definitely a whole load of wasted potential here.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 317: March 2004


part 5/8


Bestiary returns after a substantial gap, as they seem to be putting monsters under other names most of the time now. This continues their grab bag of articles this month with one on Aztec monsters. Not a region we've seen much on in a while. And indeed, the names seem pretty unfamiliar. Guess once again, we've found an unscraped barrel, hidden away in an obscure corner. Let's consume these well matured little beasties.

Cipactli are theoretically able to carry the world on their back, but you only get the 300 foot long versions. Like world snakes and turtles from other myths, they're exceedingly tough, and quite capable of biting you in half or swallowing you whole if annoyed.

Chaneque are another set of mischevious faeries who become invisible and shapeshift, luring you places and generally being a pain. Seems like they also show up everywhere. Damn parallel evolution.

Quinametin look like they were also the inspiration for Jungle giants. Tall, thin, fairly attractive humanoids who've largely forsaken civilisation to go around naked getting close to nature. Hmm. Why am I also thinking of Na'vi from Avatar. I suspect these could be quite popular if someone made a movie featuring them.

Thunders are exactly what they seem, thunder spirits who control the weather. If you can't fly, good luck fighting them. Once again, this all seems very predictable. Fewer unmined ideas than we thought.

Xilob look like badly designed people with their backwards hands and feet, foul smell and inability to properly empathise with others and respect their boundaries. This means that while not actively malicious, they are exceedingly unpleasant neighbours, and living around them will probably involve lots of stuff being broken or stolen, parties at unsociable hours, and all those mundane irritations we know from real life, only magnified. Muhahaha. So many plots opened up. I like this one.

Xtabay finish things off with another predictable entry. Just another hag variant, with blood draining, minding gaze and shapeshifting. Guess their myths aren't that different from anyone else's in their archetypes, so it's more repetition and barrel scraping.


Class acts also returns after over a year off, with the ranger knight of Furyondy. Iuz is still causing huge amounts of hassle in Oerth, decades later, and war technology has evolved accordingly. With regular forces worn down by the endless hordes of monsters, guerilla forces with speed and stealth become increasingly desirable. Why should paladins get all the horsey goodness? Although billed as a ranger prestige class, any fighty class could take it as long as they're willing to sink a few cross-class skills. These guys are exceedingly dangerous at mounted combat, a speciality that may cause problems if your group engages in lots of dungeon crawls. Still, that's the standard problem of any specialist. You've got to make sure you seek out appropriate challenges for your strengths, rather than letting your enemies attack your weak spots. Despite the greyhawk fluff, this is pretty easy to reskin. Another perfectly decent prestige class.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 317: March 2004


part 6/8


Silicon sorcery: This column is in self-promotional mode again, as they do an extended article for D&D Heroes, their offering on the new XBox console. The designers couldn't resist creating new spells, magic items and monsters, and now it's backconversion time. As is often the case, it's a mixed bag. The new blasty spells are higher level, same damage and smaller AoE than the standard fireball and lightning bolt, making them not particularly optimal choices. On the other hand, we get an updated version of Sticks to Snakes with better scaling, which is cool. The new magical items are more interesting, with stuff that mimics the auto resurrect and return to base trick that you see in computer games, a really neat one-shot mass heal effect, and a collect the widgets system for upgrading your key magic items that lets them scale with you through the campaign. The new monsters are fairly neat looking visually, but nothing too unusual stat-wise. An undead elven archer that peppers you with arrows, including an extra nasty vampiric arrow that lets them gain the hp you lost from an attack. A golem made of ice that can disguise itself as just a lump of ice, and shoot shards of ice at creatures too quick to engage hand to hand. And a giant spider that can emit a cloud of poison gas to weaken it's foes. Good to see they have some tactical tricks instead of just running up to you and hacking 'til they drop. This stuff all seems very usable in-game.


Faiths of Faerun has a double bill of articles this month. The first is a regular prestige class - The Battleguard of Tempus. They're another full BAB, half spellcasting progression one. Ironically, they get an extra domain they won't be able to master unless they only dip into this prestige class. (and I think mass healing and teleportation are more useful to an army than the ability to analyse magical weapons and armor) It does feel very much like just another day at the office.

The second one does something different. Not a prestige class, and new spells aren't the primary focus. No, this time, it's a whole new god. Evidently the Red Knight didn't get converted to the 3e books, probably due to lack of space. So this means that the column is finally doing what I hoped it would in the first place, providing a decent amount of descriptive detail along with the new crunch. Not that it's lacking in that either, with new feats being their primary area of concentration, providing benefits for not only clerics, but the fighters serving under them too. And there are two new spells that are quite interesting too, particularly Knight's Move, which is amusingly metagame in the way it allows short-range teleportation, but only to positions that an actual Knight could move on a chessboard. You'll need to think carefully to make best tactical use out of that. This is quite a likeable little article, balancing the various bits and pieces in it nicely. Overall, it feels like a complete package. I approve.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 317: March 2004


part 7/8


Under command: Summoning already presents some interesting balance issues in regular D&D, as it screws with the action economy and gives you huge amounts of versatility with a few spells. When you're playing with minis, you have the additional problem that you need enough appropriate, or at the very least, appropriately sized minis to represent whatever you summon. And since the D&D minis game is new, and slated towards low-mid levels, there's a serious shortage of higher level monsters. So this is a big fat wodge of patches for both systems, giving us alternate summoning lists that comprise creatures they've already released, advice on how to use summoned monsters in a tactically effective way without it slowing down the game too much, and building warbands that have a summoner amongst them. It makes me feel vaguely annoyed, because it involves altering the rules not just for the sake of balance, but also marketing. And tweaking the game specifically to sell more minis, rather than make it more fun to play definitely sticks in my craw, like some of their previous blatantly commercial tie-ins. I think I'll stick to using my imagination.


Expanded psionics preview 3: Only a month before release, and unsurprisingly the drop the biggest teaser yet. While not everyone will use the new races, or go to the trouble of buying lots of feats that key off psionic focus, everyone will get use out of augmenting powers, even if it's just to keep your damage output equal to the wizards. It means that the point system actually means something significant, instead of just being a flat total of manifesting x powers per day that approximately adds up to a wizard of the same level. This can be further enhanced by taking the overchannel feat, which allows them to boost their power above their level by taking damage in the process. Of course, it also gives them an advantage in situations where you aren't expecting multiple encounters per day, as they can pour more resources into each round and then get away to recharge, further encouraging 15 minute workdays. It's a case where they definitely improved the game in the sense of making the classes more fun to play, but not necessarily in terms of balance. Oh well, that's certainly better than not improving it at all.


Nodwick's party tries to sex itself up. Nodwick ruins things for the rest of them.


The play's the thing: Over the past few years, we've had a fair number of articles that would appear in Unearthed Arcana, polished and ready to enhance the gaming experience of a wider audience. Weirdly enough, even though it was released last month, this continues here, with Mike Mearls talking about putting together a party that lacks one of the iconic elements. This would appear in the Players Handbook 2 in a couple of years time, along with a similar amount of talk on 5th members and how having 2 members of one class type affects group dynamics. It looks like this is going to be spread out over quite a few issues though, as he only talks about how to compensate for the lack of your warrior or skillmonkey here. So while this isn't actually rehashed, it's not as ambitious as the old article on single-class groups in issue 217, and does feel very familiar to me. I guess it's symptomatic of their attempts to fine-tune the game that they now feel one party member too few or many is a big thing that needs talking about. I suspect I may want to snooze through this column in the next few issues.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 317: March 2004


part 8/8


Dungeoncraft: Having done several articles on dungeon design, Monte decides to go all expert set on us and re-encapsulate the advice on wilderness adventures. These can serve as both a primary adventure in themselves, especially when you're exploring a new land, or they can function as a pacing mechanism, with the DM varying the frequency of random encounters, detail of weather, and general amount of landscape description as a way to speed the story along if they just want to get the plot done, or give them a chance to think of stuff while letting them wander and throwing a few monsters and terrain obstacles in their way. This all feels pretty basic, given we've had whole themed issues on wilderness adventures before, so I can't get excited here. Unless he's going to build up to some more significant points about the adventuring lifestyle, this one's for the newbies.


Sage advice: Is sunder an attack or a special action (An attack. You can mix and match sunders with regular attacks in a full attack. This can get humiliating to enemies if you combine it with whirlwind attack)

Do you need a magic weapon of equal or higher strength to sunder a magic weapon (No. The DMG is erroneous. Skip will have a little talking too with the writers.)

What good is an admantine or mithral shield (Not really worth the extra cost. One reduces the armor check penalty by 1, while the other weighs half the usual amount. Only do this if you're an obsessive optimizer.

Are cold iron weapons resistant to being enchanted temporarily by spells (No. You must be confusing D&D with Changeling. Shoo, ya dirty narrativist.)

What does giving up all your attacks mean in the context of hiding behind a tower shield. How much does this protect you. ( You only get a move action that round. It will protect you, but only from attacks from the right side. Area effect spells may spill round the shield. There's lots of extra clauses, that Skip will give you as long as you keep paying. The Eternal Private Sage does not work for free.)

Can you use a tower shield while mounted (Yes, but it won't protect your mount as well. )

Just how big is the penalty for attacking with a tower shield while nonproficient (A whopping -12! You won't be toughing this one out any time soon. Any more questions on this subject? Oh, you're out of money. Next!)

Can ghost touch weapons ignore enemy armor (No.)

Ghost touch is worthless, isn't it (WRONG! What are you, retarded or something. I'm the goddamn Sage! It specifically says it counters the usual immunities. So it WORKS! Clear?)

What happens when a personal permanent spell is dispelled. Does it return like a magic item effect. (No. You've gotta cast the spell and pay the XP again. Skip recommends inflicting painful vengeance on whoever dispelled it, and making sure word gets around that you're not to be messed with.)


While the theme wasn't as weird as I was hoping, given my jaded tastes, they still had a couple of different and really useful articles, and the rest of the issue was pretty solid. It does seem they're improving again after last year's changeover doldrums. Now let's see if they can spare the time for a little laugh this year, or if their leash is still too tight to really relax and get off the treadmill of little generic crunchy articles for any length of time.