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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5574977" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 235: November 1996part 3/8The dragon's bestiary:  Another helping of aquatic monsters. As ever, they're hardly rare, but certainly not in proportion to their frequency in reality. As with the underdark stuff this year, we shall have to see if they avoid rehash the hard way. Octo-jelly may sound comical, but they can certainly eat you up. Who'd want to hybridise octopi and jellyfish? Mad wizards once again proving their insanity, I guess. Hide do exactly that, camouflaging themselves on the ocean floor and eating anything that comes on by. Seen that plenty of times on wildlife documentaries. Gulpers, like snakes, make a living by swallowing creatures that it would seem rather improbable for them to do so. Make sure you have a dagger ready to cut yourself out. Angler fish are another real life creature scaled up for fantasy purposes, but otherwise largely unchanged. Since we've seen a variant on this before in here, i yawn at this. Viperfish are also converted pretty straight from reality. If one of these gets it's teeth into you, you're going to lose a big chunk of flesh, win or lose. Man, it's hard being an adventurer underwater. Death minnows are easily both the funniest and scariest creature in this collection, with a cartoon-esque trick that'll disconcert your players. My sadism gland is already secreting away at this. A good end to a mostly mediocre collection. Arcane Lore: Following on from the second take on sea magic, and more aquatic monsters, we have another set of nautical spells barely a year after the last one. This is not a very thrilling prospect to me, as you might expect. Once again they drive me away by repetition and lack of imagination. Foul Rigging tangles all the enemies ropes, slowing them down for hours. That'll win you most races if you don't get caught out there. (I hate this job so much right now) Land Call lets you know the direction to your destination. If you got blown off course, this is very helpful as usual. Mind there's nothing in the way. Map is one that would be rather useful on land too. (if it worked) Just enchant it and it draws your travails for the next few days, no mess no fuss. True Compass is a pretty direct bit of recycling from issue 220. Yawn. Eagle eyes is also one I'm pretty sure I've seen variants on before here. No dice, dude. Fantar's Shoal, on the other hand, is a new variant. It's essentially hold person on a ship scale. Temporary grounding with invisible planes of force is another mean trick for pirates to pull. Flame Resistance is another one that's oh so very rehashed from last time. Leomund's many life Preservers creates buoys for the crew. How very goofy. I wonder if Len would approve or not. Morning Glory is an equipment only large scale burning hands. Careful who you spend time with in port sailors. Running away naked is rarely a fun experience. Plug Leak provides short term relief so long term repairs can be implemented. Roll on higher levels so you can just summon a complete ship out of nothing. Buoyancy allows you to save your stupid party fighter who insists on wearing plate armor on board and fighting the giant sea serpent in it. Rather a relief to have really, especially as it's rather open to creative applications. Watch those poor sahuguin try and escape now. Fantar's Reef is a more vicious version of his previous spell, not only trapping a ship, but doing serious damage to it's underside. Leomund's Lifeboat see's our tiny hutmaker's name aliterated in vain again. Well, I suppose he is from the Lendore Isles. He's got slightly more reason to research nautical lifesaver spells than Mordenkainen. Wizards and lusty wenches first! Mentap's Mine makes you wonder why delayed blast fireball is 7th level. If it weren't for it's highly specific need to be attached to a ship, this would be almost as useful at half the level. Hmm. This is worth considering. Legacy issues can be a right pain. Narcomb's Battened Hatches is another quick way of making sure sudden changes in situation don't ruin your ship. It is not idiot proof, however. Make sure you don't have a foolish and superstitious crew to mess things up. Amgig's Rowers is one of those spells that will help you replace the human element. I'd prefer the undead touch, frankly. They last longer and can be used for other jobs as well. Call Wind is another one that appeared in issue 220 as well, only this time it's lower level and a lot more convenient. Once again this writer is being quite generous with their spell's capabilities. Ironside is your basic durability enhancer. No extra weight, no downsides apart from the duration. And a few more levels and you'll be able to fix that part. Y'know, we ought to have a special on magical ships at some point. The princess Ark shouldn't be alone in these pages. Otiluke's Screen is a protective device, pretty similar to his sphere only larger and mobile when centered on a ship. It probably ought to be applicable to other vehicles too. Shields up, cap'n. Repair Breech is a basic ship healing spell. If ironside's protection isn't enough, you use this next. Spectral Navigator is essentially a shipbound version of Find the Path. It'll get you where you want to go safely, assuming you aren't hopelessly lost. Raise Vessel brings a sunken ship to the surface. It won't fix the structural problems though, so you'd better get busy before it's duration runs out. More amusingly, it's reversible, which is a quick and brutal way to ruin your enemies day. So there is plenty of useful stuff here, as there's more actual spells than last time, and less ruminating on specialists. The two could well be combined to good effect.</blockquote>

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