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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4731890" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 108: April 1986part 1/4108 pages. Larry Elmore delivers another of his particular brand of fantasy images with rather dated hair. It doesn't co-ordinate with your helmet dear. Tie it up before you get tangled up in something. Notable by it's absence this year is the april fools section, because people are still pissed off at last years tricks. Man, their joke detectors must have been on the fritz. Maybe next year. Instead, this one isn't quite a gamma world special, but comes pretty close, with a second Mutant manual, another article, plus some stuff on postapocalyptic gaming in general. They really ought to get back to doing proper themed issues. Just a matter of time. <img src="http://paizo.com/image/product/magazine_issue/dragon/108/cover_500.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />In this issue:Letters: A letter about applying The Laws of Magic to a modern setting. What's happened to all the akasa. Whatever you decide, dear. It's your game. A letter asking if nonhumans can adopt any of the new flavours of paladin. They were going to let them, but changed their mind. Any references are editing snafus. How very galling for all concerned (except the human lovers) Some more annoying quibbling about the physics of different types of invisibility. Kim tells people to stop being so damn pedantic. It's no fun for anyone. Just let the magic be magical. The forum: Lyle P Wiederman III and R. W. Clark think that high level magic-users taking days to relearn all their spells is an important part of keeping them balanced. A smart spellcaster of that level shouldn't get themselves in situations where they blow their entire load regularly. If you really must reduce the time taken to learn each spell, it ought to be based on level rather than intelligence, otherwise you're simply deferring the problem for a bit. Or you could just have a flat time, regardless of level or number of spells rememorized. Nahh, that's a terrible idea. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Mark Morrison thinks that centaur cavalry is a stupid idea. You can't use saddles with them, and they're not very disciplined. For most nations, regular horses would be far less hassle. This is where elves and other faeish creatures that are closer to their mindset have a definite advantage. As malkavians show, when you have a group with the same kind of chaos, things get very scary for everyone else.Jim Mackenzie reminds us that right and wrong are not always the same as good and evil, particularly the D&D definitions of good and evil. Is there no escape from these damnable questions of morality? Dan Preece thinks that people ought to be exposed to the unfun side of excessive power, so they come to appreciate low level gaming all the more. It doesn't always work like that. In fact, I am deeply dubious of that conclusion. Norman Shapiro has an alternate explanation for why low wisdom clerics are more likely to suffer spell failure. Remembering every little tenet your god has in your daily life is a rather tricky business. J. M. Talent talks about the maedars stone to flesh power, and what happens if you apply it to things that were never alive in the first place. Hmm. Does the function follow the form, or will destoning a sculpted statue just produce a gross lump of vaguely human shaped meat? Depends what kind of GM you have. Leomund's tiny hut: Len takes a look at monster advancement. They aren't born with all their HD and powers. And it's certainly possible that some might end up even tougher. And dragons shouldn't have a completely fixed number of HP per age category, as this encourages gamism. You can also upgrade monsters without actually changing their stats by judicious application of terrain features, magic items, team tactics, and so forth. He also introduces a new XP system that puts more weight on the individual monster's hit points, so the credit you get is for the work you actually do. Once again he is an inveterate tinkerer, house-ruling the game substantially, and quite possibly for the better. AD&D applying all the house-rules he's shown us in this column over the years would be quite a different beast, and that seems like the kind of thing that would be interesting to try for a one-shot (probably playing Secret of bone hill. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ) It's business as usual in Len's final appearance in these pages. Another case where we don't get to see the drama behind their departures, if there was any. So long. I might not have agreed with everything you wrote, but I'll still miss you. The role of nature: Oh no. D&D doesn't have enough rules for environmental hazards! How am I supposed to properly play wilderness adventures if I don't have detailed rules for frostbite, heat exhaustion, equipment rot due to swamp exposure. and all kinds of weather effects. Yawnarama. A rather long and dull article. They do seem to be doing more of these lately. The ecology of the pernicon: Now there's a monster I don't remember. Whatever happened to it? Anyway, these seem to be carnivorous locusts. A pretty scary prospect, when you consider how dangerous swarms of regular locusts are. They have water detecting antenna, which can be a definite help for desert nomads who harvest them and keep the antenna. Extra-helpfully, we get a full set of revised stats for them. The first non-Ed ecology in quite a while, this is rather more dry and scientific than most of his, but still manages to be quite an interesting read, giving me a good idea of how encounters with these little bastards would play out, as well as plenty of info on their lifecycle. A nice change of pace that should help to keep up the reputation of the series as one of the strongest parts of the magazine.</blockquote>

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