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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4851698" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 129: January 1988part 1/5108 pages. Another month, another return to familiar themes. Back in 1982, we had a whole series of issues devoted to the various demihuman races. This time, they're all getting lumped together, and being given a special collectively. Well, at least it's not a straight off rehash. Since Roger was responsible for writing the originals, that means the contents probably won't be a straight recycle either. And it has been 6 years, so it wouldn't be too unreasonable if they did reuse a bit. Can they surprise me this time? Onward, through another year. In this issue:Letters: A letter asking two basic questions about the contents of the magazine. Yes, we do have an article on running a business. No, most of our short stories are self-contained works. A letter asking for Top Secret mini's. Use GI joes! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> A question on the winners of previous year's Origins awards.  Also, what does the S.I in the new top secret stand for? Special Intelligence, apparently. And we finish off with some of the amusing titles people sent in for issue 127's cover. Ha. Unfortunately, none of them really tickle me. Forum: Scott Whitmore is not happy with the restrictions on weapons and armour faced by wizards, finding them illogical. Clerics are almost as good at spellcasting, and they still get to wear heavy armour and be fairly capable in combat. It can't just be because of game balance. A passionate argument, but not enough to overcome decades of design inertia, I'm afraid. Kurt R A Giambastini, on the other hand, warns against powering up wizards. Anything you do to make them balanced at lower levels will result in them outclassing everyone else even more at higher ones, unless you do a complete redesign. Not to deny that tweaks aren't needed, but if it were that simple to balance them someone would already have done it. Larry Madden is also against the idea of powering up magic-users further. They really do not need it, especially when played cleverly. Ironically, he suggests as a joke, and then mocks, ideas that would go on to be taken seriously in 3rd ed, such as allowing higher level casters to use certain lower level spells at will. The joke's on you sir. Bruce Johnson also has amusing contributions to make on the power of magic users debate. Overall, it seems people do not want it powered up further. Keith Sutton, on the other hand, thinks that they should be allowed to wear armour, but suffer chances of spell failure on spells with somatic components. How very visionary. Once again we see that quite a few things that would become actual rules in 3rd ed were being used as houserules in people's games long before. Elizabeth Atwood takes a tangent, picking apart the ridiculous size and thickness of magic-user spellbooks. How the hell are they supposed to carry these things? What exactly are they made of. Even the biggest real life books aren't that big. Yes, but real life books don't let you cast spells. Maybe if we did make books of those dimensions, they would. <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=";)" /> Douglas M Burck picks holes in the arguments of several other recent forumites. Oh, Globbits. Stephen C Paylor dislikes the idea of putting a character in jail for things that they probably would have logically done, but their player didn't explicitly say they did. One of those cases where both sides have a valid argument, and I'm really not sure which to support. Arcane Lore: Once again Len Carpenter takes this series away from covering the same old wizardly tomes, with some discussion of, and new spells for dwarven clerics. You certainly can't expect them to regard and apply their spells in exactly the same way as humans. So this is approximately 45-55% advice on existing spells and new spells. Since most of them are designed for the underground lifestyle, they are generally pretty useful for adventurers as well. After all, detecting precious materials, extending your senses through the ground, and healing your siege fortifications can lead to great profit. As it also includes optional rules removing some spells from their list, but also adding some appropriate MU ones in turn, it definitely helps differentiate dwarven clerics from other races. Since this is pretty good, both mechanically, and flavourwise, this is one I would rather like to incorporate into my own game. Another strong choice to kick off a section with. Children of the spider goddess: Ahh, drow. One of the great jackass prettyboy races. Even more so than regular elves, they attract a certain kind of fanbase. When you combine the dominatrix females, the brooding outcasts, the spider fetishism, and the quite considerable amount of magical tricks and powers they have up their sleeves, it's no wonder people flock to them. But how do they hold together as a society, when they're so arrogant, backstabbing and chaotic? The answer, of course, is ego, and tribal loyalty. By constantly competing to prove their family superior, they ensure their individual badassedness, and even if a family dies, the race survives. This is one of the articles that probably increased the frequency of good Drow PC's quite a bit, as it talks about them as an entirely viable PC option, and goes into detail on the way they tend to approach each class, and other races. The awesomeness of Drow rangers is mentioned (Drizzt is coming, Drizzt is coming!) and we get plenty of roleplaying hints. So another pretty solid article, that has something to say that hasn't been detailed before. Course, they get whole books on them later, so it will be said again, in far greater detail. Such are the rewards of notoriety. Give demihumans an even break: Hmm. UA included twinked new ability generation methods, but restricted them to humans. Of course, some people aren't happy with this, even though they did get a substantial boost to their class capabilities, and want yet more equality. Once more unto the power creep here, as they give a new optional system for ensuring your various races have appropriate high stats, with a few wiggle dice to allow you to customize for your desired class. Sigh. No thanks.</blockquote>

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