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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4799540" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 120: April 1987part triforce/5First impressions are deceiving: Say hello to the Charlatan. Not quite as comical as the Jester, but even more annoying, this lovely thief variant makes money via social fraud and flashy legerdemain, taking advantage of people's greed and stupidity to get something for very little. Minor magicians, and capable rogues, they aren't too brilliant in a dungeon crawling situation, but as a social character, they can really bewilder and bamboozle. With several quirky D&D'isms, this isn't a perfect class either in design or organization of powers, and seems very likely to cause player tensions if handled wrong, but it's still an entertaining read, and doesn't seem too overpowered either. Once again, I get to add another class to my big list of ones I'd like to try out at some point, both as NPC's and PC's. I think I'll skip the maniacal laughter this time, as that might tip people off that something is amiss. <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=";)" /> Let's just move on, shall we :whistles innocently: Don't check your backpacks. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Bazaar of the Bizarre: Yet another quick little article here, as they try and clear out stuff from one of their contributors. The ring of rapid regeneration gives you healing on a combat useful scale, which is pretty scary really in this era. The rings of para and quasi elemental command offer substantial abilities related to each of these 12 subplanes. As pure extrapolations of existing items, there is very little creativity involved in these, making the article as a whole thoroughly mehsome. Filling in all the symmetries is one of the easiest ways to make up page count. So it goes. Still, crunchy filler like this is still useful in game, so it's not a total waste. The ecology of the gas spore: Now this is one of the more amusing D&D creatures. As I said earlier, it's amazing the niches they can fill. A fungal monster which imitates one of the deadliest monsters in D&D as a form of protective camouflage? It makes perfect sense, really. Ironically, the tactics that work well on beholders are probably the best thing to deal with Gas Spores as well. Keep well away, spread out, and pepper them with missiles from all sides, preferably with some cover as well. Do not let them corner you, or rush in hacking, for this never ends well. Try talking before you attack, as this will help you figure out if you're dealing with the real thing or not. Ed doesn't call in any help to finish things off this time around, but as with beholders, this is one of his below average entries in this series, relatively predictable, and not really giving us any cool new ways to use the monster. Becoming a line developer is definitely eating up a lot of his creative energy these days, and these articles are feeling the fallout. He's moved on to bigger and better things, and it's looking increasingly like he's no longer going to be dominating the magazine the way he once did. Oh well. All things must change. Lets hope there'll be some more shining stars along to fill his rather large shoes. Higher aspirations: Hmm. Rules for apprentice druids and their orisons? That's a double rehash. Len did the first one in issue 51, while Orisons were tackled last issue. And the rules are incompatible as well. Peh. Oh well, they did say they were going to provide alternatives. If you weren't down with the humorous material components of the last one (Um, er, wait a minute. Do you think they put these two in the wrong way around? That might have made more sense Roger.) or simply want to slow down our most overpowered class a bit, (but not as much as len did) then you may choose to use this one instead. And you can probably mix and match the cantrips anyway. Still a bit tiresome from my perspective though. Who watches the Watchmen, a module for DC heroes. Hmm. I smell a tie-in. Isn't this interesting. Can it live up to it's source material? Plane speaking: Another eagerly awaited upcoming book finally gets talked about. And as they had so many universes to cover, they do have some leftovers. Here we have info on the materials and pitches of the tuning forks you need to get to a particular plane and layer. Just the thing to slow down adventurers who want to go bouncing all over the universe, as they need to do proper research and quite possibly commission expensive stuff from a skilled smith. (who makes gold tuning forks for any other reason? ) Don't just generate random chords, because odds are this will send you to an equally random layer of the abyss, where death is quite probable. I can see why they cut this out, as it is rather tedious crunch, that would only be useful in the kind of games where the DM tracks all the food rations, number of arrows, spell components and other little bits and pieces of the adventuring life, and delights in screwing over players who don't keep themselves stocked for every eventuality. (while of course making sure they suffer full encumbrance penalties if they do) That playstyle is definitely starting to go out of fashion. Still, at least we got to see it in this form, even if I'm unlikely to ever use it. Going extraplanar shouldn't be a cakewalk, or everyone would be doing it. GURPS has horror, bestiary, oriental, space and horseclans books planned for this year. And they're on their second printing. They seem to be doing quite well for themselves. Let the supplement treadmill grind ever onwards.</blockquote>

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