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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4858149" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 130: February 1988part 2/5Arcane Lore: Len Carpenter takes the reins of this column for the second time in a row. And once again, they are ensuring that it's not just wizards that get the cool toys. This one is all about figuring out which of the new spells detailed in Oriental Adventures are suitable for converting back into standard cleric and wizard ones. Some of them are culturally inappropriate, and should be left out or modified to reflect those differences, while others are less thematicly appropriate, and should be left out or increased in level to ensure that the oriental classes have their own niche and special strengths. So here's several pages of lists, which do exactly that. Seems a reasonable enough premise, and if my characters head east and want to learn the cool new spells from the natives, this seems like a good set of guidelines, so I don't have to make up my own. Perfectly decent, but not hugely interesting. From the creators of Dragonlance comes the Darksword trilogy! Honestly, can't you tell a story in less than three books? It's just a marketing strategy anyway. I'll bet that in terms of total length they come to considerably less than War and Peace. Tolkien's original publishers have a lot to answer for. Hold onto your illusions!: Illusion adjudication. One of the forum's biggest topics of late. Looks like we have a second article springing from that little controversy in quick succession. Thankfully it takes a completely different tack than the one in issue 128. Where that was all about chances of resisting, this is more about just what images illusions can produce, how they do it, and your chances of spotting an error which would lead you to try and save. The further you try to create things that have multiple complicated moving parts, skills you don't know, or of things you haven't seen, the more likely there are to be obvious errors, and the bigger the bonuses they get to save. Seems fairly logical, but like the previous one, also pretty dull, particularly where it gets statistical. Let's hope there's at least one more interesting article in this themed section. What there isn't is the article referred too at the end of this article. (checking ahead, it appears in the next issue) Sloppy editing there Roger. The faces of magic: This is more like it. A cool bit of fiction, and a guide to mimicking the identities and abilities of other classes by using wizard spells. Given the dangers they face, some pretty handy advice. After all, if you go around advertising your wizardliness, you'll be the first target of any tactically inclined enemy party, for low HP and high damage output means you should be permitted as few actions as possible. It's also a good demonstration of just how redundant thieves can become after the first few levels, with magic able to duplicate most of their skills, often more reliably as well. There's more than enough spell overlap to imitate clerics as well, it's only fighter that may be a problem, and if you're multi-classed, even that disappears easily enough. Like the tactical advice earlier, this is a strong encouragement to use your powers sneakily, twisting them to ends above and beyond what is intended. It's also a good demonstration of the power of bluffing. With the right illusions, you can pretend to be far more powerful than you are, and given that those spells do actually exist, it wouldn't be too implausible if you actually did them. I approve. Subverting archetypes and applying powers creatively is a good thing in my book. Better living through Alchemy: Oh, here we go again. What is this, the 4th time they've tried to give us alchemist characters? (Checks, yup, issue 2, 45, & 49, and Roger got his external references wrong again. :Shakes head and sighs: ) Guess like Witches, they think that 7 years is a long enough gap to validly revisit this topic.) Curiously though, the writer does not draw from the previous versions in the specifics of the design, despite having been a reader and contributer back then.  And it is probably an improvement over them in terms of design rigour and formatting. However, they are still grossly underpowered when compared to standard wizards and priests, while also having higher XP costs, and far more inconvenient material requirements to utilize their powers. They really aren't competitive as PC's, so unless you ban regular spellcasters and use them to play a gritty game where all magic requires substantial preparation and ritual of some kind or another, they won't get much use. I do wonder why they bother sometimes, knowing this.</blockquote>

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