Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4914248" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 140: December 1988part 3/5Fantasy clerics and clerical fallacies: Gregory Detwiler gets statistical on us to point out that clerics wouldn't completely remove the risks from everyday living, even if there were a lot of them. They'll always be a small fraction of the population, with numbers decreasing exponentially for each level increase. Spells are decidedly limited commodities, you need to be pretty high level to get the ones that are most useful for a community, and even then you can only cast them a few times a day. Even if you filled up all your slots, there's no way you could save or raise everyone who needed it. And if you want to increase your power, you've got to go adventuring, which means you won't be available if an emergency happens while you're absent. A good example of the rules of the game are the physics of the universe style thinking, which is something I generally enjoy. Lest you forget, PC's are seriously exceptional in D&D, able to cope with threats that would mow down hundreds of peasants. But they can still only be in one place at a time. There's a big world of mundanity out there between the spectacular creatures and places. Don't completely gloss over it, or the special ceases to be so. As the cleric turns: A nice little revision here, smoothing out the undead turning table, and extending it to cover higher levels. There's been a lot of new creatures introduced since the first monster manual, and many of them have had turning difficulties not in sync with their overall power level. Fixing that, and extending the turning tables so they scale better is a small thing, but this looks like it would improve your game a bit, particularly if undead are regular encounters. No objection here, especially since the article pays attention to similar revisions in earlier issues of the magazine. Specialization (cut down to size): The two Len's gang up on us to once again present the case for nerfing weapon specialization. The primary problem seems to occur when first level characters are permitted to double specialize. They're too powerful when they can use their chosen weapon, and near useless when they can't, because they don't have other stuff to fall back on. Seems to me that the problem isn't the precise numbers, as the Master set BD&D rules for weapon mastery are far more powerful, but the allowing it at 1st level. Looks like it's one of those well-meaning but tiresome articles that winds up letting spellcasters eclipse the fighters even more. Seen it before, will see it again. Yawnaroo. The beastie awards: Our computer columnists finally have enough people voting to present awards for the best games they've covered. Might and Magic wins comfortably overall, with Bards tale coming second. Unsurprisingly, most of the other big votes also appeared in the column over the year. Next year will be bigger and better! Be ready, folks! Hrum. Before you know it, this'll be business as usual too. Roll on!: When they invented the supertwinked method V for Unearthed Arcana, they didn't include numbers of dice rolled for all the various multiclass combinations. They said there wasn't the space. Well, what is the magazine for if not supplementary material like this. And since it only takes them 2 pages, I'm not sure if it was a problem in the first place. Not that I was ever very keen on the idea of 9d6 for prime stats in the first place. I think I'll leave this one alone as well. Fiction: Flesh and blood by Mary Frances Zambreno. Fighting over children. There's something you see quite often in stories, but not so often in RPG's. When romance and breeding are kept largely in the realm of GM fiat, it's no surprise that the games wind up not focussing upon them. Apart from Pendragon. Maybe exalted DB's. I'm sure there are others. But I digress. This is one of those stories that starts off simple, but rapidly gets complicated, with the protagonist not being particularly heroic. Once again, it's the job of the fiction to remind us of the moral greys that your game can contain.</blockquote>

Verification