Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5530810" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 230: June 1996part 2/8The orbs of dragonkind: Roger Moore once again tries to give us something significant and impressive for our birthday. A collection of magical items with a well defined history and theme? We've had quite a few of these before. But this is unusual in both it's level of detail, and how specific the adventure hooks it gives are. It's fairly firmly set in Greyhawk, and while you could move the items, it would be quite tricky to translate all the plot details to another setting. It ties in quite closely to existing modules, and having them would help you understand and run this article quite a bit. It's all pretty distinctive. So yeah, 8 dragon-controlling orbs of escalating power and danger levels. All are sentient, and like intelligent weapons, will try and take control of their user. And even if that is resisted, they have curses which will make their owner's lives a misery and eventually be their downfall. (presuming they don't get killed by other fools seeking the orbs first) This does indeed seem like the kind of article that could drive a whole campaign, as various people seek awesome power, and cause considerable amounts of unpleasantness in the process. You've got to love that kind of adventure design, as it's essentially self-perpetuating until someone has the wisdom to drop the items into a volcano and get rid of them for good.  Beyond the actual items, there's some rather interesting stuff here. We've always known Roger was fairly up to date with the web, having published stuff on it way back in 1987. Now we see he's corresponding with the guys on the Greyhawk board, and even getting help from them in keeping track of obscure bits of setting detail. The internet knows all, especially when there's helpful people like Iquander on it. So this is another article from him that's not only cool, but also quite historically significant. Very pleased to see he can still pull spectaculars like this off. Dragonslayers: New kits focussed around kicking the butt of dragons? It's about time. Lets see, we had one in council of wyrms, one in the complete paladins handbook, and one in issue 205. That's not a huge collection. I think there's room for a few more, don't you. Dragonslayers are the straight attackers. Double damage, breath weapon resistance, and the ability to call out dragons so they don't just fly away or deathtrap you from a distance. Their benefits aren't as versatile or well developed as the council of wyrms one, and they don't play well with others. I think this is a case where the previous implementation was better done.  Black Arrows are obviously based upon the hobbit, and get to make extra damaging called shots upon dragons just as in that story. Course even with this bonus, they won't be inflicting 1 hit KO's very often, but that's D&D for you. In return though, they have a -1 to all melee attack rolls, which is a small number, but such a broad penalty compared to the very narrow application of their bonus that it will probably actually make them a net negative, especially if you wind up going the campaign without encountering dragons anyway. Georgians are based on St George, mounted paladins able to call out dragons, and not only resist their attacks, but also impart the same protection on their mounts. They do lose quite a bit of general utility power, but since they can proactively seek out their foes easily, they're less vulnerable to DM screwage making their benefits pointless. Dragon Lords turn smooth talking back on the wyrms. As long as they don't screw them over, they can wind up with a draconic cohort, and you know how handy something like that is. As usual, the wizards have far greater options than the warriors, and can make a problem into an opportunity instead of just applying violence to stop it. As the best of this lot, I can't see dragons being in any danger of extinction with challengers like this. Dragons of legend: If feeling a bit lost, go back to your roots. They've been saying basically that for the past year, and here they encourage us to do likewise with our portrayals of Dragons. Question is, which set of source material will you choose? One of the many ancient myths from around the world? Victorian whymsy? Tolkien's silver-tongued engines of destruction? One of the many many modern novels featuring dragons of one kind or another. The choice is yours. I recognise most of the sources too, as even the ones I haven't read have been mentioned (and in many cases reviewed as well) in the magazine. So this is actually moderately nostalgic, making me think of stuff I haven't in quite a while. And while I do complain about basic advice, sometimes a look back at exactly what your original intentions were can be invaluable. So I quite like this one.</blockquote>

Verification