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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4821466" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 124: August 1987part 3/5Flying the Friendly(?) Skies: And unsurprisingly, we have our third common method of getting airborne. Flying mounts are another thing that requires substantial upkeep, and if they cause trouble to the game having them killed or stolen is entirely an option. But although this article assumes them as the default method of getting up there, this is really more concerned with the fun you have once you've made the grade, and are now soaring through the stratosphere. Wind, clouds, and other weather issues become very important considerations, as does maneuverability in combat. This obviously requires some tables, lists of penalties, and other such inconveniencing rules. While less interesting than the previous two, someone's got to do the dirty work, and at least it's kept pretty short and efficient, rather than bogging down in endless frequently recalculated modifiers. Roger's editorial hand ensures that the other articles are referenced, but not overlapped with, and the whole thing doesn't look like it'd be much more time consuming for a DM than designing a regular dungeon adventure. They seem to have made this topic work. The wings of eagles: And we finish off our themed section with a new PC race. Aarakocra have been around for a few years now, and as flying creatures which don't have huge amounts of HD and special abilities, plus some special disadvantages, they're about as close to a balanced flying race as you're gonna get. With not particularly brilliant class abilities, they'll be quite effective at low level, then fall behind, as other characters get the ability to fly as well via spells, only without the claustrophobia and hollow bones. So it's a typical AD&D balance by campaign, rather than by encounter. If you want to make them work, you'll need to adapt the game around them to a certain extent. Much the same as they would later appear in the complete book of humanoids, this is another example of their current upsurge in new classes and races. As with UA and the forgotten realms, the magazine is probing the way, looking for good routes for future books to follow. Another interesting, if not completely satisfying article. Kicks and sticks: Speaking of new classes, Oriental Adventures continues to get new goodies this month. The Escrimador, practitioner of a variant set of martial arts designed to function with primarily wooden weapons in a hot jungle environment analogous to the real world Philipines. Since OA focusses strongly on china and japan in the main books, this is a pretty cool add on, giving you a chance to introduce an interesting new NPC when they venture afield, and possibly then having one join the party. Cultural Homogeny does get tiresome. (Hegemony of homogeny? Now there's a tongue twister for you) Somewhere between a monk and a conventional fighter in terms of abilities, they get plenty of tricks to help them kick butt with, which they'll need, because their weapons and armour aren't the greatest. Not sure if they're balanced overall, they seem quite strong, but as we know, monks look good on paper but are actually problematic in both 1st and 3rd ed. Guess it's another one to test out, find out the fun way. Front-end Alignments: Hee. Looks like we have an april fools article that got away, or was simply too good to be forced to wait until next year. People have often referred to games players as having various joke alignments. But this writer has taken it upon himself to codify most of the commonly recurring ones, and then submit this stuff to the magazine. And it got accepted too. How very droll. Lawful Bored, Lawful Liar, Lawful Serious, Lawful Goody-goody, Lawful Ignored, Lawful Idiot. Neutral Absent, Neutral Confused, Neutral Puppet, Neutral Self-centred, Neutral Montyhaul, Neutral Dietosser, Neutral Wound-wailer. Chaotic Crybaby, Chaotic Stupid, Chaotic Diehard, Chaotic Hotshot, Chaotic Everywhere and Chaotic Suicidal. 19 personality stereotypes, mostly negative, arranged into a rough diagram of related types. (and how to deal with them.) This is amusing, useful, and has me seriously tempted to adapt it to use as a new outer-planar cosmology and/or pantheon. Muahaha and all that. Definitely a classic article, even if only a few of these alignments are really famous in modern day forum discussions. Still relevant though, as after all, it isn't tied to the old system. Arcane Lore: Another mage gets their personal spellbook rifled through, and the unique spells that they spent years developing laid out for all to see. This month, it's the mage Odeen. Not quite an archmage, he still developed at least 5 new spells that your players can hunt down. Odeens magic cloud is a versatile little bag of tricks that can be used for offense, defense, utility or entertainment. Odeen's impenetrable lock is a more powerful magical warding for your doors and chests. Welcome to the arms race, because Knock just won't cut it against this baby. Odeen's magic tailor lets you customize your clothes quickly. Odeen's secret word is another advanced warding spell. Dispel this one rather than using the password, and it'll erase the stuff it was hiding. How evil. Odeen's sounding stick is yer basic dowsing rod spell, adapted for the special needs of adventurers. One of these'll massively increase your odds of clearing out the dungeon and getting all the treasure. So no blatant blasty spells, but lots of stuff that adventurers will find exceedingly handy nonetheless. While there is a bit of power creep here, making higher level variants of existing spells is a perfectly reasonable thing that would happen in a real world, so I don't have a problem with that this time.</blockquote>

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