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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5375796" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 210: October 1994part 3/6Forum: Adam Bickford tells us we've been underestimating the cleric all along. They're actually pretty good statistically, and their spells are far more accessible than wizard's. Add it all up and they blow them away. Melody Alder, in an amusing contrast, complains just how much her cleric is overshadowed by the wizards. Who is right?! This combination seems almost custom tuned to provoke further debate. :rubs hands together: Greg Detwiler decides to contribute to the forum, praising the idea of reskinning. Using that, we can make clerics even more obscene, by letting them have access to nearly every spell, only with the visuals reflavored to their religion. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Dear oh dear. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> Philip N. Toomey thinks the parrying rules are crap. Another opportunity for the forum to serve as an airing ground for house rules. Yay. Joel E. Moyer bigs up the old books on world and adventure building. They may be out of print, but their advice is still invaluable to the novice DM. There's tons of advice out there now if you know where to look. Lee Sutton disagrees with Joe Kutcherfield that there's too much roleplaying in roleplaying. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f635.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt="o_O" title="Er... what?    o_O"  data-smilie="12"data-shortname="o_O" /> Sure getting too bogged down in backstory and shopping is bad, but roleplaying is the name of the game. You ought to be doing at least some of it. Matt Lunak also find's Joe's assertion pretty ridiculous. Go and play a computer game! Then you'll get the reward you want for acting like a personalityless, relentlessly goal-focussed automaton. Zing! David Shanahan gives his experiences on putting superpowerful characters and their players in their place without making them leave the game entirely. Just put them on a bus to godhood and start with a new character. Easier than killing them, that's for sure. The game wizards: Spellfire expands rapidly as they try and play catch-up with M:tG. This means card sets for all their campaign worlds, including ones they're no longer producing books for. Each has their own distinctive abilities. Dark sun's toughness, Ravenloft's secrecy, Dragonlance's lunar cycles and the Forgotten Realms' random effects. Hopefully the extra cheese will balance out, making cards from all worlds viable choices. And if not, well, mixed decks are more likely to surprise enemies and use the best bits from everywhere to maximum synergy. Only chumps stick to obvious themes, as both the pokemon and yu-gi-oh cartoons show all too well. So this shows their marketing strategy for this game is pretty much what you'd expect. Exploit as much of their IP as possible, and hope that'll draw existing customers into the new market. That's the way to do it! (no it isn't!) Yes it is! Shut up you naysayers! This game's Not For You! Arcane Lore: Back to the life, times and quirky products of a particular wizard here this month. Drenal was one of those geeky guys who was unpopular because he was way too absorbed in his research, even in life-threatening situations for the party. This eventually wound up in him becoming a casualty while wandering off from the party. Let that be a lesson to all would be broody loners and badasses. The reason humans are social animals is because it offers substantial benefits. I know it can be hard getting along with those idiots fate has thrown you together with sometimes, but you have to try. Drenal's Annoying Poke lets you remotely jab someone with a needle. This gets incredibly irritating when done repeatedly. Wizards can be quite nasty bullies too when they put their mind to it, even with only cantrips to call upon. Drenal's Distraction is one of those spells that looks like it would work anyway with just the material components. Waving a flag onna stick and shouting at the enemy? Are you sure this isn't april? I'm not wasting a spell slot on that. Drenal's Dry Ink, on the other hand, is pretty useful if you have the kind of DM who likes to enforce equipment limitations and little stuff going wrong unexpectedly. No bursting, no smudging, just easy writing. That's the kind of utility spell more wizards should be developing. Drenal's Stone Flame turns fire to stone for a short duration. This is handy as a livesaver, illumination, and quite possibly as a good way of setting a trap. One for the imaginative player. Drenal's Amok Needles is a more powerful version of his Annoying poke. A whole bunch of flying needles stinging you 'till you drop. It might not have the raw killing power of fireball, but it's more likely to make the enemy cut and run. It's worse than wasps. Drenal's Eyesore sends the flying needle straight for the eye. Not nice, but also a way to win a fight without completely devastating the surroundings and ruining all their equipment. Drenal's Sound Barrier is a variant on silence 15' radius that may well be be more useful. You'll still be able to communicate with each other, but everything on the other side is blocked out. Another thing I'd rather appreciate having as a musician. I rather like this collection after all. It's spells may be slightly underpowered, but they more than make up their usefulness in finesse, so it all balances out.</blockquote>

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