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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5465756" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 222: October 1995part 7/8Who needs hit points when you have credit?: Building up and breaking down villains. Or in this case, both at once, with a side order of Tucker's Kobolds. Yup, this is about making level zero characters threatening to PC's. Something that certainly needs a little ingenuity, especially if the PC's are of the sort who's first reaction is to slaughter their way through any obstacle. Money certainly can't hurt, although it can make you a bigger target. Brains are pretty much a necessity. More powerful minions are very much an option, although you'll need good reasons why they don't just take over. Similarly, a neat magic item can be a great equaliser, but ones that have clever applications will work better than power adders, especially given how small the bonuses they offer are compared to character's natural scaling. It's all fairly tricky when you do the math. It will work better in some other systems, but even so, it's the kind of thing you'll want to do in moderation. So once again, they're encouraging us to fight against the rules to do something that makes dramatic sense. Something I continue to have very mixed feelings about. Make the rules better, and then they'll work with you instead of against you. Secrets of the sunless seas: Tie-in time again. The Night Below is our big adventure for the year. In fact, it's not so much an adventure, as an entire campaign in a box, with a load of expansion on the underdark that you can use even if you don't put the characters on the main adventure path. And here's a few more glyphs for the new magic system. Since we're unlikely to see it again in actual books, this kind of crunch expansion is generally welcome. Here's 11 new glyphs which you can place in your underdark locations, just to keep players paranoid and ensure the monsters don't die too quickly or seem too dull. They range in power quite a lot, and the upper ones are pretty much a death sentence if you fail your save. It's possible but difficult for a PC to learn these tricks, and they're clearly explained enough that it all makes sense even if you haven't read the actual book. So like the half-dragon article in issue 206, I think this is one of the better tie-in articles they've managed, being useful in it's own right while also selling me on further products. That's the way to do it. A slither in the dark: Oooh. A Call of Cthulhu article again. Interesting that this should be one of the last non TSR games they ever cover. It's popularity has been amazingly enduring, and if anything has gradually grown over the years. Course, that has come with a bit of dilution. In issue 162 they did an article on putting vampires into the game. This time, it's nagas. Since CoC already has fish-men hybrids, snake ones doesn't seem that much of a genre shift. And being able to swallow you whole is pretty scary even without the uncanny valley. With pretty decent ecology style fiction, with the usual san loss involved, this is quite entertaining, and of course, the new monster can be used for any BRP based system, not just Call of Cthulhu. I suppose that means they can also cater to a larger demographic than they would doing articles for most systems. I still wish they'd done World of Darkness ones at some point. Still, this is a pretty decent way to round off the issue's articles.</blockquote>

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