Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5423258" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 218: June 1995part 2/8Tanzin the Gray: Straight after the advert is our first proper birthright article. And like all the other important players in Cerilia, they're rare and individual in their stats, not just part of some generic subrace. And here's one of the oldest and most well known. Unsurprisingly, he gets personally connected in to all the big events of the setting, which is a bit mary-sueish, but since they've only just released it, they probably haven't filled in the minor details of the world enough yet. And lets face it, a great wyrm should be badass enough to participate in world-shaking events, especially when they're one of maybe a dozen on the entire continent. And he is suitably badass,  Aside from the major artwork fail ( a purple dragon where he's described as grey, and it's way too small as well) this fits the bill. He's sufficiently morally ambiguous that he could serve as an ally or an enemy for the party, and he has some rather good reasons to want to interact with the world rather than snoozing the centuries away. So this is pretty well designed stuff that fills exactly the niche they intended, and is quite useful for your game, but isn't particularly surprising. By this point, they've designed so many worlds in quick succession that there is quite a bit of following the formula and going through the motions involved. Dragon Intrigues: An article encouraging you to play your dragons proactively and intelligently? We had one of those last year. Still, this is substantially longer and has more specific examples than last time, which is a definite plus. Greg Detwiler once again shows that he's one of our more reliable workmen, with an article that's low on originality, but high on game usefulness. A lot of emphasis is put on their power to manipulate the environment and order various creatures around. Sure, they might also change shape and infiltrate human society, but really, they're dragons. They ought to be taking a wider view of control than just looking at the effects of a single species. So this is a little iffy from the perspective of a long time reader, but excellent for more recent arrivals to the magazine. For all that they appear in the name of the game, you see dragons surprisingly rarely in actual play, so this kind of advice does come in handy. Dragon dweomers: Another topic we've seen before. Spells by dragons, for dragons, and in many cases unusable by other creatures, be it due to magical restriction or mere practical physiology. Guess it's going to have to be another case where I judge on the specifics, not the generalities. Aerial Acceleration alliteratively augments your airborne abilities for fantasticaly functional flight. In flight movie not provided, but if you're in the middle of combat, that would be a bad idea anyway. Aura of Terror enhances your fear aura. This is obviously useless if you don't have one in the first place. But you wouldn't put it past a Lich to nick this one for their own  pleasure. Maybe a mummy too. Blast Jewel is a variant on fire trap that does substantially more damage. It also ruins any stuff around it, making sure thieves can't profit from their ill-gotten gains. Sour grapes or what? Dragons really can bear grudges for a long time. Focus Fear allows you to reduce the area of your fear and increase it's intensity. I'd just breathe on them and watch them die horribly. It'd be a far more efficient use of your action for the round. One for the metallic dragons who don't really want to kill casually then. Hoardguard lets you glue all your treasure together into a great immovable mass. Whether this makes it more or less comfortable to sleep on is not revealed, but at least it makes it harder to steal. It's duration isn't too long though, so if they come back the day after killing you, they'll be fine. Will they figure that out though, or waste tons of time on complicated curse removal methods? Pseudodragon lets a dragon summon mini-me's. This is one that is completely useless to nondragons then. There's a whole load of speculation as to where these come from, since they don't resemble regular pseudodragons. Schrodinger's summoning, I guess. Best not to think about it too hard or you'll destroy the universe. Razorfangs gives you near vorpal teeth. Careful with them, for limb severing makes a lifelong enemy if you don't finish them off. Shadow Scry is only dragon specific because it relies on your connection with your lair to work. That's a trick that shouldn't be too hard to emulate. And then you can track people from anywhere there's a shadow. And since this is your lair, you can probably make sure there's plenty of shadows everywhere. Shadow Dragon lets you turn into a shadowy form that's near impossible to hurt save by light, and can still breathe and use spells on you. Unsurprisingly, it was developed by a shadow dragon, and fits their sneaky modus operandi to a tee. Be ready for calls of unfairness from players. <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" />Sharptooth is the less powerful relation of Razorfangs. Even the dumbest white dragon can get use out of this one. And you know those extra points of damage add up over a battle. So there's quite a few spells here that could be a staple of your dragon's tactics, and enough of them are usable by PC's that they won't feel totally gypped. Once again, I'm going to have to return a result of competent but not thrilling. This birthday set hasn't been nearly as distinctive and quirky as last one.</blockquote>

Verification