Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 318: April 2004


part 1/8


87(108) pages. Whitespace strikes again! That never ceases to feel lazy of them. Not that you could see the background much even if it was there, given the quantity of promotional blurbs. And it looks like this is another issue where they split the theme between a whole bunch of things, not giving any of them the depth they deserve. Still, at least it's a funny set of themes. Ninjas · Pirates · Dinosaurs (oh, and monkeys too). It's a memetastic combo of awesome things, showing this issue is definitely going to try harder than last year's to amuse the audience. Let's see if this will be sufficiently far-out and groovy, or if it'll feel like weasels and stoats ripping my flesh to get through it.


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


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: You don't have to be mad to work in the WotC/Paizo offices, but it helps. While their output is more sensible than it's ever been, the process by which they get there is still filled with weird little moments of creativity and inter-office riffing. And that's how we got this issue's theme. Each element is cool on it's own, but they didn't think it could carry an entire issue. Put together, on the other hand, you have something for nearly everyone. And then you replace the law-chaos and good-evil alignment axe's for pirate-ninja, and monkey-dinosaur, and let the fun begin. As usual, I wish more of this stuff would make it to the final release, instead of being filtered out to give us what they think we want. They could at least do blooper reels of stuff that's amusing, but they wouldn't want to be considered canon because it's unbalanced or breaks the feel of the setting.


Scale Mail: We kick off with a protest at the recent change in editors. It's a scary business, especially if they've been here a while. But creative sorts have to pursue their dreams. You can't expect them to churn out the same old same old year in year out.

More amusing and issue appropriate is a letter about the humour in the magazine. Should they go for lowbrow toilet humour or something a little more intellectual? They'll take the high road and you'll take the low road, and we'll be toilet-diving in glasgae by tomorrow.

Issue 315 continues to get praise, with requests for more updating of old stuff. They tell us that Castle Greyhawk will hopefully be out soon to satisfy that itch. Haha. I wish. Why can Gary's estate not get it together to publish something when there are so many people eager to give them money for this?

Another thing that gets praise is the recent Draconomicon. It's one of their few non-FR books that has any serious amount of fluff in, and they wish there was more. The editor agrees that maybe they swung too far in the direction of pure generic crunch recently, and need to head back towards a balance. Thank god for that. :breathes out heavily:

Following on from that we have praise for Council of Wyrms. Unsurprisingly, they'll have a little sumpin sumpin for those who want Dragon PC's in the birthday issue this year. Look forward to it.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 318: April 2004


part 2/8


Zogonia can't even deal with a giant skunk. How do they expect to deal with a dragon? Particularly an intelligent one. They are so screwed.


Up on a soapbox: Gary has a very appropriate comedic story this month. The interplay of Gary and Rob was responsible for many things, and one of them was a whole rash of silly names in the characters. Gary started off by giving characters names that were anagrams of his, and reverses of other common names. Rob responded by incorporating Bigby, Zigby, Rigby, Sigby, Nigby and Digby into the adventuring party. And then Gary got revenge by naming his next set of apprentices after disney ducks. Silliness begets silliness, and even the people who roll their eyes at it wind up getting sucked in. Also, this is a reminder that stories have multiple threads running concurrently. These little player dramas were parallel to the dungeoneering bits, taking place over the course of quite a few sessions. Keeping your games multilayered is another way to ensure your players stay interested and stick around.


Nodwick is the only person who doesn't give up when faced with ninja pirate dinosaurs. Dork tower has more incredibly stupid relationship problems. Oh, for crying out loud. Have you no common sense at all?


The ninja: In 3.0, they steadfastly refused to make a ninja core class, saying that Rogue and various interesting prestige classes in OA allowed you to fill that skillset quite well enough. For 3.5, on the other hand, they've caved to public demand, allowing you to create a character that has supernatural ki powers boosting their stealthiness from 1st level, while not being restricted to lawful alignment like the monk. That is an interesting development. Instead of their various powers being usable a set number of times per day, they have a number of ki charges equal to half their level, and some powers cost more than one, giving them resource management similar to psionics but with fewer powers and points to spend them on. They also have nearly the skill points and sneak attack capability of a rogue (which works in all conditions but flanking, weirdly enough) So I think that puts them slightly above rogues and below bards in overall power and flexibility. Not a position where they'll be causing any balance problems. The important thing is that they'll feel different in play, and will be able to fight magical monsters even if unarmed, unlike boring old fighters and rogues. But will you be able to find them and persuade them to join the party?

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 318: April 2004


part 3/8


Oriental adventures update: They nerfed the monkey! Waaah! What kind of people advertise that, only for it's actual appearance to be a single dismissive line! I'm speechless. Not that they didn't need tweaking, as we've found out a bonus to 2 mental stats is more than equal compensation for a penalty to strength. But fixing these in the dullest way possible and leaving half-orcs underpowered sticks in my craw. That said, this is another of those revisions where most of the changes seem eminently sensible, and it's only a few annoying little bits that I don't want to adopt. Damage reduction gets reworked to fit 3.5, with 2 new, more setting appropriate penetration types. Shamen, Sohei, shadow scouts, shapeshifters all get slightly powered up, while Wu Jen lose the ability to master more than one element, but are no longer built around the assumption of a limited spell list. Spells, magic items, monsters and feats also get plenty of tweaks, some upwards, and some down, and all the appropriate 3.5 subtypes added to their description. It's 16 pages long, rather dry, and I must admit to zoning out when I try to examine the minutinae of the changes. No real laughs to be had here, I'm afraid.


X marks the spot: So now it's pirates' turn. And it looks like the humor is remaining purely in the editorial combination, rather than the individual articles, as this is your basic Campaign Components treatment of pirates, looking at each of the core classes and how they fit into a historical or fantastical game, and then following up with a bunch of new magical items, many of which are updates of ones seen in previous editions. (particularly the replacement limb stuff, which we had whole Bazaars on in 2e. ) While more interesting than last article's updates, this is still a whole load of formulaic stuff with a few neat touches, (squid tentacle peglegs? that's a new and creepily amusing idea) that leaves me mostly unmoved. The enthusiasm they might have had in the offices really isn't carrying through into the actual writing, unlike 4 years ago.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 318: April 2004


part 4/8


The wickedest city in the world: Our second piracy article is far more interesting to me, mainly because it's highly specific, and grounded in real world historical info. Port Royal in Jamaica was once one of the biggest hives of scum and villainy in the world, providing a place where pirates could rest up and sell their ill-gotten goods with the consent of the British government. One might well say that the internet Pirate Bay was named after it, and it demonstrates how illegal activity is often enabled by governments and corporations, whether openly or tacitly, because the potential profits are enormous, and besides, it's a dog-eat-dog world out there, so you might as well do unto them before they do unto you. This is particularly the case for underdogs, who then turn around and try to go legit, then enforce their own rules when they get a decent amount of power, which we're also seeing quite a lot of on the internet at the moment. Adventurers thrive on the boundaries between wilderness and civilisation, be it venturing out to pacify untamed lands, or seeing what lurks in the cracks underneath the neat facade. Remove the boundaries and frontiers and the world becomes substantially less interesting. This article not only provides me with plenty to philosophise about, but also good adventure hooks, and a demonstration of how these kinds of places change over time. They will eventually either become settled, or be destroyed. It's the stuff that happens in between that's the exciting part, and you've got to hope you can ride the wave, and get off before it crashes.


Dungeons & Dino's: We've had the ninjas, we've had the monkey, we've had the pirates, now it's time for the dinosaurs. At this time, archaeologists were increasingly becoming aware that dinosaurs weren't just scaled creatures, they actually have closer surviving relatives in birds than lizards, and many of them probably had feathers. (which would enable them to cope with warm climates better than modern-day reptiles even if they weren't fully warm-blooded) This article has a good mix of well-known and slightly obscure dinosaur types, and gains extra points for not being afraid to make up ecological details for them too, making them feel more like fleshed out fantasy monsters than real ones we still don't know a lot about. It also includes a fair few creatures that aren't technically dinosaurs, but lived around the same time, and also make interesting encounters, whether on land, sea or air. While this obviously can't match the multiple articles from previous editions for quantity, it does pretty well for quality, not just being another collection of statistics, and including rules for making them familiars or animal companions. (which also means this article is good for both players and DM's) Yet again James Jacobs manages to produce high quality material with a distinctive voice.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 318: April 2004


part 5/8


Children of Ka: A second Hollow World article after the campaign special? Cool! It's by the same writer and on a related topic to the previous one too, allowing them to get a sneaky bit of continuity into the magazine for a change. While that showed us what happened when a god's power was secretly tapped and corrupted, this sees Ka and his followers hitting back, developing a whole range of new druid spells to defend their lands and maintain the balance of nature. One of them is directly dinosaur related, giving you tricerotops horns and the thick skull to use them in a charge to keep up the theme, while most of the others are particularly useful in watery/swampy environments, which makes them highly appropriate for their Lizardfolk creators. In addition to the spells and organisation details, there's also stats for Troodons, which we believe to be one of the smartest dinosaurs back then, and a PC progression for lizardfolk, (and I don't think they really merit LA+1 on top of their HD with such low skill points and unimpressive racial powers. ) making this one of those grab-bags that tries to do it all. And since it's both entertaining, and far more specific than most of them, it does indeed please me. More solid stands on setting details instead of just saying "it's up to you" is very welcome around here.


Fiction: The kalif's coffin by Thomas Harlan. One more instalment to go, and the plot is finally all revealed. The bad guys are trying to get all these magical doodads to do a good old-fashioned raising of the dead. And while that was a miracle when Jesus did it, it's an abomination in the hands of anyone else. There's still a lot of conflict between the Christian idea that all magic-users are evil and should be summarily killed, and the more nuanced view that people who actually use magic hold. (and since this is a fantasy story, it's pretty obvious which side the author is on. ) There's a good bit of action in this, but they still have to pause for exposition now and then, and the characters retain their sense of humour despite the seriousness of the situation. It's nearly all over bar the shooting. Now it's just a matter of who lives and dies in the finale. Let's see if this series'll end on an upbeat note or a tragic one.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 318: April 2004


part 6/8


Countdown to Eberron: So as they said last issue, Warforged are important enough to get a teaser all to themselves. They've obviously had a lot more thought put into their development than last issue's golemoids, with careful examination of exactly which construct traits would be game-breaking for an LA+0 race, and which can be included straight, or in a modified form. They don't need to eat, sleep or breathe, but they don't heal naturally, and magical healing aimed at organic creatures only restores half, so what you gain in logistical ability will be made up for by the need to have someone with an appropriate craft skill in the party. They can't wear armor, but automatically get the equivalent of light armor, and have two mutually exclusive feats that can only be taken at 1st level that reflect how they were built and give you the equivalent of medium or heavy armor, which means they have to choose carefully, and will be a feat behind most equivalent builds in other races. They can try to figure out how to fit in with the organic races, or take racial feats which further emphasise their mechanical side. It's all very interesting from both a mechanics and setting point of view, to the point where the PHB races seem a little dull in comparison. After all, they're not giving specific races their own Complete splatbooks this edition to really flesh them out. Oh well, you've probably played them many times before. Why not create a party entirely comprised of new classes and races, see how they do. These teasers continue to do the job of selling me on the setting.


Expanded psionics preview 4: The psionics previews continue to be interesting, but not as finely tuned as the Eberron stuff, which shows who's getting the lion's share of the development budget. This time, it's a couple of new psionic monsters that once again, won't be appearing in this book, but will a couple of years down the line. Larval Flayers are what happens to illithids that aren't implanted in someone's brain cavity soon enough, turning into their own squirmy thing, and raising very big questions about their evolution process and lifecycle. Shadow Efts are less interesting. Shadowy monsters that feed on emotion, and will therefore hang around scaring and draining victims rather than actually killing them if possible. Now there's a literary cliche that turns up again and again, although more in horror stories than fantasy ones. In addition, they've introduced a psionic subtype with which to label monsters, although it doesn't really do much. What's the point of it then? About the same as the goblinoid or native outsider subtypes. All it does is make it easier to say if a creature is resistant or vulnerable to certain special powers. Oh, the joys of codifying things that most of us got along just fine without bothering to pin down. That's what years of Sage Advice does to you.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 318: April 2004


part 7/8


Under command: After 6 months of little general expansions, they decide to risk taking about campaign play again. They might not have a setting behind the game anymore, but that doesn't mean you can't have a storyline, setting and continuity between your skirmishes. They skip the general advice, which hopefully you know by now, and go for a sample adventure arc, and lots of little bits of crunch to advance your warband with, particularly the group leader who will hopefully develop into a unique character by adding levels and magic items over the course of a campaign. This does ram home just how simplified the skirmish rules are, allowing them to fit a lot of information into just a few of pages. In that way, it's a good callback to the very early days of the magazine, where they could cram a dozen spells onto a single page and have half-page wargaming articles that contributed something meaningful. It's a positive development, and I hope they won't axe the column immediately after this. :/


The play's the thing: Unsurprisingly, this time Mike examines what a party that's missing an arcane or divine caster feels like. Equally unsurprisingly, it's the lack of a cleric that really reduces the staying power of a party. It's not that you won't feel the pinch from the lack of a wizard as well, especially if you come up against similarly magical and intelligent monsters that use their powers to no-sell straight-up attacks. But healing and magical food creation (if you track rations anyway) make a huge difference ALL the time, as they're significant in every adventure where there's any kind of physical challenge or journeying. And while magic items may replace spell-casters to a degree, the healing ones are much more likely to be limited-use, forcing you to pay for them again and again over the course of a campaign. It's ironic that the class you miss the most if it isn't there is also the one people are most likely to not play because it isn't "cool", and this really is a big flaw in the game design that they have good reason to worry about. (and made a valiant attempt to fix in 4e. ) Course, in 3e, there are tons of classes that don't fit neatly into the striker/defender/controller/leader boxes, and even more prestige classes that consciously combine roles, so you can get by if you try. You'll just have to work a bit harder when the char-op no-brainers are removed.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 318: April 2004


part 8/8


Sage advice: Can a monster with a disease affect other things with the same disease (No. If they've got it, they've got it. If they're already immune, you are wasting your time.)

Save DC's for disease attacks are based on con? That can't be right. Tough things are resistant to disease. ( Wrong way round! The tougher they are, the meaner the disease has to be to live in them. They're frickin typhoid marys. )

Why do afflicted lycanthropes have lower damage reduction and no chance of passing on lycanthropy. Surely some mistake (Wrong again! We want them to be weaker. Plus, did you forget all the hassle we had with summon cascades? Well it's the same principle. Monsters like that cannot be permitted in this game anymore!)

Can you use dispel magic to suppress a creature's supernatural abilities (no, and you can only deactivate spell-like ones, not stop them from casting in the first place. )

What happens when a monster uses a weapon plus it's natural attacks in the same round (Nothing much. This works just fine, albeit with the usual secondary weapon penalties. )

What happens if a monster doing this is high enough BAB to get iterative attacks (They get them with the primary weapon, as usual. Come on, give Skip a hard one. )

Does the weapon have to be the primary attack (Skip is afraid so. It takes the most concentration. Tarrasques probably shouldn't bother. )

What happens if you use a secondary weapon as your primary weapon (You can't. Even if that's your only attack, you still take the penalty. It's like fighting left handed. If you don't have ambidexterity, you'll always suffer the penalty)

Do you have to use your primary natural weapon to trip or sunder. (No way. In many cases, using a tail or something for that makes more thematic sense. You still suffer the penalties though.)

Do you have to use your primary weapon when making an AoO. No, but it's a good idea. No sense taking pointless penalties. )

How exactly does poisoning work again? (Ah, another open ended question that gives Skip a chance to pontificate for ages and make loads of money. Skip loves the dumb ones. )

Do you have to save every time a paralyzing creature hits you. What happens if they overlap (Yes. Carrion crawlers are brutal buggers. The durations run concurrently. )

How do nagas cast spells with somatic and material components. (By sinuously swaying their serpentine coils. )

Can you disjoin a Golem (No. It may be magically animated and nonintelligent, but it's still a creature, not an object. Intelligent magical swords ought to form a union and protest about this blatant bias. )


Well, in the battle between ninjas, pirates and dinosaurs, I can definitely say the fight goes to the guys with scales and millions of years of experience. I am more than a little disappointed that they didn't squeeze in at least one joke article, but hey, it's still an improvement on last year. Let's hope that they can come up with more complementary gestalt themes as well, rather than ones that just feel shallow. But for now, let's get back to the proper big themes. Next up, Dark Sun! (and psionics in general, which is an obvious complementary combination) Good to see the resurgence in settings isn't just a one-off.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 319: May 2004


part 1/8


91(108) pages. While the Realms may have by far the most material, it looks like Athas is still on top in the number of specials it's got in the magazine. And for all that food is supposed to be scarce on Athas, they sure do manage to produce some serious beefcake. I suppose no matter how tough the world, the people on top will always be able to commandeer an amount of resources orders of magnitude greater than the huddled masses. Whether they use it for good or evil is another question entirely. And of course, there's the question of how much they'll focus on the gritty aspects of the setting, given that 3e is generally less interested in fine setting details and low powered NPC's. Guess it's time to brave the harshest wilderness of all again, and hope we can sniff out water before the defilers ruin the remaining oases.


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


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: The editorial, as is often the case these days, seems to be actively going against the things they put in the articles. This time, it's giving the players fair, CR appropriate encounters. Safe to say that they sometimes get thrown into situations that are way above their power level, and are expected to actually pay attention to warnings of certain death. Another example of how they have to write 3e articles aimed at a different kind of play, and lower expected skill levels than they have themselves. Which is probably a frustrating business in general. They can't just make adventures and campaigns that they'd want to play if they were in our shoes. So we get to read about the fun they're having, and then figure out how much of the rules to ignore to get there. It's not surprising I get fed up with them having to deal with this.


Scale Mail: Our first letter is from someone who really enjoyed the Novel themed issues, and wants some more of them. They decide they'll go for greater quantity and less depth, and institute a regular column on converting book stuff to D&D in the same way Silicon Sorcery does. That way they have another easy method to get ideas and fill a few pages each month without wearing out their welcome.

Secondly, we have a letter complaining there's too much disconnected crunch in the magazine at the moment, and not enough expanding on existing things. We can only use so many prestige classes at once. They accept that yes, they may have gone too far in one direction, and will look towards swinging the other way this year. And so the wheel of creativity continues to turn.

Third, we have a generally positive letter that suggests they ought to do more fiction again. This they're slightly more cagey about. They intend to stick to stuff by established authors only from now on, so you won't be making any fresh young discoveries around here.

Finally, we get reminded that once upon a time, there was an AD&D Trivia Game. There were also colouring books and calendars, you know. They produced a lot of cheesy crap back in the day. Some, they still do.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 319: May 2004


part 2/8


Zogonia are still not getting along after last month's adventure. Maybe they'll get along better with the hot drow chick.


Up on soapbox: Gary's delivers his final story this month, the tale of how the first dual-class character was created. As is often the case, it involved a bit of exception based design that did not follow the rules that the books would later use. Erac's Cousin was forced to switch from magic-user to fighter when he was accidentally transported to Barsoom, where his magic didn't work, but his physical capabilities were superhuman compared to the low-gravity natives. Unlike the later rules, he got to choose which class he wanted to use and gain experience in for a particular adventure, rather than being stuck with the new one until it surpassed the levels of the old one. Once again, the fact that the rules were still being created allowed characters to do things they'd never get away with these days, unless your DM also isn't playing by RAW. So I guess we'll leave this by wondering if you'll have more fun not strictly playing by the rules. Unless you're in large scale tournament play, you'll get more out of the game if you put your own ideas into it as well. Be a creator, not just a consumer.


Struggling to survive in a savage world: Let's get this show on the road, because we'll run out of water if we hang around. First up, the races. We get all the ones from the old dark sun books, plus Elan and Maenads from the new Psionics handbook detailed. Like the old Dark Sun books, they aren't the same as standard ones, with even humans being beefed up into an LA+1 race. Combine this with the default starting level being 4, and this means most PC's start with 3 class levels like in the original, and eliminates a lot of the problems higher-powered races face in regular campaigns. So this is both fairly faithful to the original, and makes some effort to make them more balanced with each other, (which is an argument for higher default starting power level as it gives you more leeway as a designer) and while it does introduce some new stuff, it integrates it into the setting and doesn't try to cram in everything from the new XPH. And Gnomes are still extinct. So far, definitely so good.


Heroes of a dying world: The classes, on the other hand, get treated in a way that feels pretty half-assed. In 2e, clerics and rangers had very different spell lists, Bards eschewed spellcasting for encyclopaedic poison knowledge, and wizards, hoo boy. Here, nearly all of this gets blanded out, they don't go to any effort to explain how the setting is changed by the Sorcerer/Wizard divide in 3e, Paladins are plonked back in without thought to their power source, and they don't even bother to make a separate Gladiator class. It feels like no effort was put into this article at all, which is very strange given it has the same author as last one. I guess we know where David Noonan's priorities lie then.