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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5293217" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 198: October 1993part 2/6Beyond the Grave: From Pseudo-Undead to the real thing, as Tom Moldvay returns after 3 years to provide some more alternative takes on the traditional AD&D undead. Tracing back their names to various cultures, he shows how they largely stem from the desire to guard graves, and humanities discomfort at the remains of their dead. A primal fear manifested in many different ways around the world, and it's no surprise that they'll have quite different power levels and abilities, even if most have much the same goal. So let's see what he has to say about wights, wraiths and mummies. Ka are somewhat more benevolent than normal mummies, but still not to be trifled with. They can animate the statues from their tombs, and control people with magical glyphs. If you're including one, you really need to design a suitably cool tomb complex to go with them, for the extra resources, secret doors and traps are what'll really make the encounter special. Angreden are based on an icelandic legend, and have quite an idiosyncratic appearance. Their special power, that of cursing the person who defeats them, on the other hand is a pretty common legendary one. This is another reason why full parties work better than the solitary heroes you find too often in legends. The tall grass gets the scythe, and winds up with all the drama of death curses and blood feuds. An anonymous bunch of heroes can save the world and move on. King-wights take us to Norway for a little inspiration storywise, but mechanically they're pretty much what you'd expect, albeit with slightly more magical powers. They're load-bearing bosses too, which is awesome. D&D could do with a few more of those. Wraith-kings are fairly obviously based upon tolkien's ringwraiths. With the power to drain levels merely with a gaze, enslave people with ease, and a penchant for Nightmare mounts, they're pretty darn terrifying, and can make for quite credible big bads in themselves. Anything with the power to assemble 9 of them as lieutenants is going to take some serious levelling up to fight head-on. Vartha are essentially revenant variants, people reinhabiting and preserving their body because they have some important task that needs fulfilling. They can be of any alignment, so who knows what their goal might be. Probably best to get on their good side, for they're another creature with an extensive set of spell-like abilities with which to deal with you, many which are divinations for some reason. I doubt trying to trick them will go down well. This lot are well up to the standard of his previous instalments. When he finally gets round to finishing this series, it'll be a real standout of the middle years of the magazine. The marvel-phile: Our final instalment of this column this month, as it slips unheralded into obscurity, after a year in which the company didn't release anything for the game. Still they're going out not exactly with a bang, but a roar at least, as they cover a trio of giant monsters from the comics. Grogg, a massive horned scaly firebreathing horror. Why not just come out and say the word dragon? Taboo, a near indestructible ooze creature cast out from another world. And The Glop, another alien scouting the earth for potential conquering. They really shouldn't bother, but there you go. The heroes will triumph in the end, and the villains will be defeated in an ambiguous way that leaves things open for a future return. For if they aren't, a future writer will have to concoct an implausible twist or retcon to bring them back. This neatly leads us into our final little bit of pontification, as they talk about some name changes that people and creatures have gone through over the years. It feels very much like business as usual, which is ironic. Did the licence expire naturally, or did it get pulled suddenly for some reason? Either way, it means that despite their attempts to cover non D&D stuff more in the Dragon projects, they're losing one of their longest running and most reliably covered games at this point. Bit of a shame, but they have been struggling to fill it of late, with the information getting increasingly obscure and/or new as the years went by. All things must come to an end, and this has sometimes felt like it outstayed it's welcome over the last year. So long, superheroics, it's been a blast. Sage advice: How many slots does an out of group proficiency cost. (1 extra. If you want healing, that's gonna use up your whole selection ) Does call lightning really do that much damage. (Yes. Its powerful because the conditions you can use it in are bloody inconvenient. )Why isn't undead turning disrupted when you're attacked. Does this apply to other granted powers ( Because the gods wish it to be so. Yes. Granted powers don't require the complicated supplications spells do. )Do you still lose your spell if you save for half damage. (yes. Pain is painful. Don't get in fights.)How many languages can priests of Deneir speak (all of them! It may sound awesome, but once you have a universal translator, they get treated like a commodity, rather than a person. Then again, you are a cleric, so you should be used to it. )Also, Skip's generous contribution this month is the Aztec pantheon. Blood sacrifice. Rogar of Mooria approves.</blockquote>

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