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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4766003" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 114: October 1986part 2/4Traveller: 2300! New state of the art edition! Oh, this will result in flamewars. The elven Cavalier: Like the barbarian cleric, it seems we have another example of forbidding something resulting in people creating a whole new class to fill that void.  So yeah, the elven cavalier, the exemplar of the idea of mounted bowman, riding through the forest, singing tra la la lally and <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />ing any evil creatures who intrude on their land right up. As is far too often the case with fan-made elf stuff, they gain rather more powers than they sacrifice, when compared to their human counterparts. This is a definite sign of their new commitment to immediate cool stuff over game balance. I find myself pretty much obliged to disapprove. You carry on at this rate, and all the races will have access to every class, ( <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=";)" /> ) only slightly different for each one, requiring tons of annoying checking to keep track of the differences. And don't even try and sell me the idea that purely fluff based roleplaying hinderances balance out mechanical advantages. I may have fallen for that when I was 15, and the swashbuckler from the complete fighters handbook was all the rage, but I'm not falling for it again. I call twinkitude! Get out of my sight! Turtlemania rages on! Palladium pimp their primary line at this point strongly. Many kinds of money: Economy, economy, you will be the death of me. A simple currency, based on metals of the highest purity? Such as simple idea could never be allowed here. For if a government wants to control the economy, they must maintain control of the money. And the best way to do that is to separate it from real, objectively measurable things like the gold standard, and create a currency based purely on fiat, trickery, and demand, who's only value is what people agree it's value is. Slightly trickier when you have magic that demands specific values of specific objects (or at least, specific quantities.) and even tricker when you have magic that provides an objective assessment of an object's value that isn't index linked to the local markets. Anyway, the point that this article is making is that having gold, silver, copper, etc pieces that are all exactly the same size and weight, accepted everywhere, is incredibly unrealistic. Oriental Adventures has proved popular enough to prove that gamers are capable of accepting the concept of multiple currencies in their fantasy. So go for it. Put in as much complexity to this as you think you and your players can stand. Remember also that counterfeiting is a rich ground for adventures, on both sides of the law, so you should consider that as a plot hook as well. One of those articles I both approve of, and am wary about actually using, as it could wind up being very dull if done wrong. Eh, I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't like a challenge. The ecology of the Remorhaz: Welcome to our third collaborative ecology (lest you forget, beholders and centaurs also got co-written.) This is not particularly epic, but does have plenty of depth, creating a creature that probably could just about exist in the real world. Of course, making it's metabolism work realistically does involve nerfing it a bit, but unless your players are the sort who like hit and run tactics and harrying their enemy into submission over long periods of time, this is unlikely to be an issue. And if they do try tactics like that, you probably ought to be rewarding them for doing so anyway. There's plenty of stuff here for those who like to capture creatures or harvest them for their organs. Another solid bit of ecological work here. Combined generation: Ahh here we see one of the reasons they decided to do a new edition. Due to the not particularly brilliant organization, looking up all the tables for character generation has grown increasingly unwieldy as new supplements are introduced. Of course, compiling them in a magazine article may not be the best way to fix it, but they've had the idea, and by gosh they're going to do it, because the page count needs padding at the last minute. Or something, because this feels very much like a filler article, with it's word count and shape edited to fit around the number of adverts. Meh. Class struggles: Welcome to another rehash. Training to gain levels presents a substantial problem at low levels. You also need to be able to train yourself at higher levels, otherwise it would become impossible to to advance and the state of knowledge would gradually degenerate over generations. It also suffers from D&D's ridiculous union carteled price fixing. This is one case where I have always ignored the rules as written, and the game has not suffered from this at all. This alternate system is slightly more generous in general, but also divides costs up so you have to determine the price for each ability separately. It makes some rather dubious decisions, such as escalating costs for weapon proficiencies (how are they to know what level you are? ) which abilities count as innate, and even the levels at which proficiencies are gained. So yeah, I disagree with both the premise and many of the specifics of this article, and do not intend to use it in any form. Bleah.</blockquote>

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