Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5452019" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 221: September 1995part 3/8The little wish: As with Kobolds, you really shouldn't underestimate cantrips. They might not be able to inflict direct damage, but given a few levers and a bit of preparation, a tiny push in the right place can cause an avalanche. And yet, they don't get used nearly enough, as to get access to them requires sacrificing a 1st level spell slot, which is pretty valuable for a low level wizard. This article tries to solve several birds with one stone by making cantrip use a proficiency, allowing wizards to pull off extra little magical tricks if they want too, but not reliably, and allow members of other classes to be dabblers in magic without going through all the rigamarole of multi-or dual classing. I suspect this article may have influenced their decision to include 0 level spells next edition, so even 1st level characters always have a decent selection of options up their sleeve. So this is quite nice from a mechanical viewpoint, and also from a flavour one, as it helps make the game more literary and playful, rewarding creative thinking. Add in the historical significance, and I think this qualifies as one of the closest things to a classic article from this year, along with paths of power and the demiplane of shadow. The ley of the land: More tales from the coalface about Birthright's nifty realm magic system. Getting hold of that magic and maintaining those ley lines takes a fairly substantial amount of planning and resources. And if you have any enemies, then they can disrupt any leylines if they can get into a territory that they pass through. This means that you have to make a choice between having multiple lines that cost more to maintain, or a few long ones that have more chances to be broken. Either way, it's important to keep track of where they all are, because otherwise it makes the domain stuff pretty pointless. This article points out the ambiguities in the rules as presented in the core box set, but instead of giving them a straight answer, decides to give us four different options of how they could be interpreted, in roughly increasing order of power and flexibility. Which means you can figure out if you want wizards to dominate domain play as they do many other arenas, or if the fighters have a far easier time in this sphere. This results in an article that is quite interesting, but also pretty ambiguous. Like the Player's option stuff, this is very much left open for individual groups to customise, and may well lose easy buy-in due to that. Birthright is already a fairly hard sell to a group given it's theme and the number of active worlds it has to compete with. Making the new rules vague and open to interpretation only makes that worse. Arcane lore: Hmm. Rather depressing to realize that in more than 12 years of Arcane Lore and Pages from the Mages, this is only the third spellbook by a female writer revealed in the magazine. (and the other two were both written by Ed.) Once again the bias inherent in people's assumptions is thrown into sharp relief by the few exceptions. Still, this little collection has 9th level spells in it, so a few women are managing to follow the seven sister's example and go all the way to archmagedom. Say hello to Zala and her book of barriers. Looks like they're going to be filling in abjuration, which is also one of the more neglected schools. How very pleasing. Zala's Icejacket coats you in a mobile barrier of snow. This is moderately versatile and protects you against both mundane and magical heat. Plus you could break a bit off to suck if you don't have a cleric to provide water. Compose Mind protects you from mundane distractions, and low level magic ones too. If I had that, I'd be getting all this writing done a hell of a lot faster. <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" /> Zala's Lifeforce Guardian keeps your soul safe. This protects against some quite powerful magics for such a low level spell, such as energy draining. You're unlikely to regret learning this one. After all, a life ends, but your soul should be forever if you look after it properly. Yet far too many people take it for granted. Take care of your soul. Zala's Forcebuckler gives you generalised AC and spell protection. It's another one that burns itself out after absorbing an attack. Is that going to be a general trait of this collection? Zala's Amberhelm counters psionics. They won't get inside your mind. It can be overloaded, but it's a lot trickier, as the levels mount up. Repulse Metal is of course perfect for dealing with those plate-clad lummoxes. And unlike a rust monster, it won't ruin their equipment. Keep them at a distance and use your wizardly blasting powers to their full potential. Thunguul's Preservation squirrels some of your hp away for a rainy day. Another trick enemy wizards can use to escape insufficiently zealous heroes and get revenge later. Zala's Deception combines blink and mirror image to make your location indeterminate for an entire combat. The images don't disappear and your real location teleports between them. This should increase your survivability quite a lot. Zala's Disruption causes everyone around (including the caster) to forget a load of the spells they've memorized. Like any AoE spell, this needs to be applied wisely. After all, it's not often you face large quantities of low level spellcasters, unlike warriors, and you could wind up hurting your own party more. Tobian's Ultimate Circle is completely invulnerable from one side only. Course, if you cast two of them, that little problem can be fixed, and you have a completely impenetrable warding circle that'll outlast the world. Now that's the kind of thing you should be doing with 9th level magic. Another strong entry in this series.</blockquote>

Verification