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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4955492" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 148: August 1989part 2/5Sage advice moves officially to 2nd edition. The whole set is out now, so people can play games by the book without having to refer back to the old edition. And they've had it long enough to send questions in. But because the new edition is actually pretty similar to the old one, people are more likely to be caught out by the small differences. Which means nit-picking. Yay for us. How much fire can a fire-producer produce when a fire producer produces fire ( 1 per level. Quantity /=/ quality. )What is the surface area of the average man. (Skip cannot be bothered to calculate this. Get some cling-film and find out at home kids. (TSR is not responsible for any suffocations caused by being wrapped in cling film. ))Can halflings become clerics (couldn't they anyway. Why do you ask?) Does taking mountaineering boost your climb walls chance (yes. Fear the synergy)Are strength bonuses multiplied when backstabbing. (Still no, despite what page 40 says) How much does chain penalize your thieving skills 5% worse than elven (note the name change from 1st ed) in all respects) Are multiclassed bards allowed (Finally. No more stupid lockstep class switching) Do paladins and rangers need more than one stat at 16+ to get xp bonuses or not (I'm afraid so. )What happened to double specialization. (Too broken, man. Go play BD&D if you want to get really really good with one weapon. )Can you specialize in more than one weapon. No, but you don't have to pick your speciality right at the start, unlike last edition. ) Do demihuman fighters get extraordinary strength (yes)Does armour affect animal empathy (Man what? No. Some people ask the dumbest things.)Ranger's spellcasting sucks now! (Only by comparison. Be thankful they still have it at all. They won't forever.)Can rangers use elven chain mail without penalty (No) What do favoured enemy bonuses apply to (only attack rolls) Can paladins dual class (as long as they don't violate their principles. If they do, they become fighters anyway, so the point is moot) Why can't wizards learn all the spells around (because that would make them even more powerful compared to other classes. We don't want that. )What's the minimum intelligence for specialist wizards (Same as for any other )What happened to Write ( It was wrong for the game. Nothing personal, you understand. So we parted amicably) What's the material component for spectral hand ( Don't ask. If we forgot to require one, you don't need one. )Does enchanting your weapons break invisibility (Buffs are not attacks. Take advantage of this fact.)Does delayed blast fireball have a limit ( same as regular one. Yes, that means you're already at the cap long before you can cast it. Not good game design)Spells are missing from appendix 5. (And you are surprised about this why?)Can any race be a diviner (any race that can be a wizard. This will not continue to be the case as more races are added. ) What happened to cantrips. (They were folded up. Now you can use them spontaneously. It's not quite sorcerer level yet, but it's a start. )Can mages automatically read and write common (no)Fireballs can detonate early and backfire (no change there. That's the thing about artillery. It isn't very discriminate. )A ring of three wishes only radiates faint magic? Surely shome mishtake! (Nope. It's judging on criteria of quantity of powers, not quality. ) Always wear your best suit: Ahh, yes. This is fitting given some of the stuff they just discussed in the forum. One of the primary ways you can distinguish one fighter from another is what they're wearing. In the real world, people spend substantially more on one thing over another due to their cosmetic appearance, rather than their pure capabilities. Putting jewelery, odd ruffles, extra large shoulderpads, spikes, various colours, etc, is another way you can customize your character. Course, unless you actually have some kind of visual representation of your characters, people are unlikely to bother with this, so they also give another set of ideas for special materials, so you can pay loads extra for minor mechanical benefits. All in all, it's pretty dull. They'd need to get in someone like Ed to keep me awake through this bit of the syllabus.  Tracking down the barbarian: Looks like they aren't abandoning the old edition straight away. The barbarian may have been probably the most problematic of the UA classes (not being allowed to associate with spellcasters is probably more harmful to a D&D party than the cavalier's moral code.) but plenty of people still like the archetype, and want to see it done justice in AD&D. David Howery, one of our more frequent forumites, is amongst them. So he gives them a mild nerfing, massaging away their more egregious powers, while also making them more integrated into their native variety of wilderness, with better designed skills. I'm generally not very keen on nerfings, but I do like this one, which seems rather better thought out than the original version. Definitely worth considering, although if this brings them in line with the likes of the paladin and ranger, you might want to drop their XP requirements similarly.</blockquote>

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