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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4877610" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 134: June 1988part 1/5108 pages. Birthday no 12. Another year, another batch of dragon related articles for your delectation. What new and terrifying adversaries will we face, what tactics will they deploy? Will you come home a great hero, or will you be served up crispy fried in foil? In this issue:Letters: A letter with some more last word suggestions. Very droll. A letter from one of their writers, pointing out a mistake he made in a recent article. D'oh! Another letter pointing out errors, which Roger examines and pronounces they are not errors at all. These are entirely legitimate uses of the english language. A non letter from the editors, thanking all of us, their loyal readers. 12 years and still going strong. They couldn't have done it without us. Aww. Forum: Tim Lieberg has his own rather extensive contribution on how to make low level wizards viable characters. Most of these are changes in emphasis rather than actual rules alterations. It's mostly a matter of how you play them that determines their viability. James A Yates rebutts the recent responses to his college of magic article. Yes, keeping a educational facility running is an expensive business, and you're unlikely to make a short term profit on it. This is very much a realistic reflection of real educational facilities, and the reason why they need government subsidies to stay viable. If the wizard you're playing really is as smart as his stats suggest, he'll find some other ways of wringing money out of the students and surrounding community. Ed Kruse is in favour of houseruling if you don't like the official rules. This includes the rules for XP. Getting XP for treasure is out, XP for using your class abilities constructively is in. Is that a foreshadowing I see? David Choi not only thinks that you shouldn't get xp for treasure, but if you fail to actively practice your class skills, you should actually lose xp. Pff. That never goes down well. Greg Pierson disapproves of the alignment restriction on thieves. Adversity can make even good guys resort to larceny. Another bit of foreshadowing. I suspect roger has a pretty good idea by now what's going to be in the next edition, and they're trying to soften us up to the idea of the changes.  Steve Kommrusch is in favour of the demographics of classes where each level is approximately half as rare as the one below. It's easy to calculate, and level 20+ characters become suitably rare as to retain their specialness. David Poythress disapproves of ability creep such as that demonstrated in the recent article on alternate dice methods for demihumans. If this carries on, the whole game will cease to be a challenge. And then where will the fun be? Paul Astle reminds us that there are many stories in which a lycanthrope reacts with horror to their transformations. You can have quite a bit of fun running adventures in which a character tries to rid themselves of this scourge, and the resultant fallout. Lucas McNeill tells the people writing in as pontificating sages to remember that the medieval conception of the world was rather different to the modern one. Similarly, the D&D universe does not run on real world physics anyway. So they shouldn't talk like modern day scientists. Len Carpenter rebutts his critics on the matter of jousting. It's been over a year, quite a few books have come out since then, and he's thought quite a bit about how to handle it better. He introduces a new, simpler and more integrated system here. He does not, however, address the matters of honour that some of the repliers have spun the debate off into. Hmm.  S.D. Anderson seems to be having a problem with proto-fishmalks. These degenerates refuse to take the game seriously, and constantly mess around with the other players, both IC, and OOC. Never let them get their hands on a Wand of Wonder. Rather amusing, really. That kind of player use whatever they can, no matter how you try and stop them. Gregory D Scott tries to give fighters a bit more depth. They don't just fight, they've also got to know military tactics and how to work with a group well. They might not have these abilities spelled out, but you should still apply them if you don't want to be outshone by all the other classes. Michael Anderson gives his opinions of the recent articles on illusions. One is very much better than the others. The dragon's bestiary gets back to basics, giving us some actual dragons for the anniversary. Aquatic dragons are exactly what they sound like. They swim! They attack your ship! They really ought to develop proper underwater paper out of pressed seaweed or something for spellcasting! One of those entries that feels flawed due to later developments in design technology. Ichthyodrakes are another underwater monstrosity. No shortage of those now, with dragon turtles, the various Lung dragons and the like. Well, if the fantasy world is more than 70% oceans like earth, there should be plenty of dragon variants for there that adventurers never see. Astral Dragons are our first otherplanar dragon species. This conception of them is substantially different from the 2nd ed version, but they are pretty powerful, and rather quirky. I think the astral plane is big enough for more than one dragon type. Weredragons are not contagious lycanthropes, thankfully, that would just be too scary. They aren't actually that badass in combat, but of course, not that badass for a dragon is still pretty deadly for normal humans. And their seduction and surprise capabilities are quite considerable. They certainly make for a nasty surprise. Fang dragons don't have a breath weapon, instead having a bite which can drain all your hit points and add them to it's total. Fortunately, this only activates on a natural 20, so really, they're less deadly than many creatures with save or die poison on every hit. And they don't have spells either. Bit of a paper tiger really, compared to most dragons. Sand dragons are snaky diggers with an instadeath breath weapon. Now this is a bit more like it. Blue dragons can take the desert sky, these guys'll rule the earth. Stone dragons look like piles of rock when not active. Now there's a trope familiar from TV that can be used to horrifying effect. With three different breath weapons, and a whole bunch of earth based magic, they can be pretty tricksy. A good one to make uneasy allies/enemies of.</blockquote>

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