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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5577502" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 235: November 1996part 6/8Forum: Rick Bruner flaunts his noncanonicality, and invites the jackbooted TSR enforcement that may come. <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" /> We will face it with pride, and fight them using optional rules. They'll never take us alive with these bleeding out rules! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Rasmus Juul Wagner suggests another thing the next edition will take up. Get rid of exceptional strength. It'll make things so much easier. Athas already shows us how. Follow eeeet. Follow eeeeeeeeet! Keith Houin goes back to another hot topic, that of transferring PC's from one campaign to another. Surely you can come up with some IC reasons why they lose powers or items, rather than just fiat retcon, and only change the bits that'll actually be a problem. The personalised approach is usually best. The ecology of the troglodyte: Another inventive ecology here. Last time, we had a rather neat tale of uncontrolled body invasion. Here, we have another riff on that theme, that of a wizard who in the course of his researches, gets stuck in the body of the creature he was investigating. Still, he gets to find out a good deal about them, and why they are such backwards, smelly, unsophisticated seeming creatures. Having senses that are too acute can actually be a pain in the butt, as it prevents you from using certain kinds of technology. In the footnotes, we also get the spell used to do so, which is rather powerful for it's level, but also exceedingly risky to use. Ahh, the fun of experimental technology. It also puts quite a few more interesting new spins on the creatures, making them seem increasingly plausible and usable as a culture. While not quite as good in sheer impact as the roper one, the footnotes are considerably better, and the whole thing is much cleverer in both design and pacing. Seems like we really are in a golden age for ecologies, even as everything else goes wrong. Guess stress can do that for you. Arcane Lore: A third set of spells this month? Another good example of how they're falling back on the regular columns a lot more these days.  This also feels heavily reminiscent of the recent set of Dragon-only spells. Spells for the various reptilian humanoids, dependent on their physiological quirks to work? That'll be mildly irritating to players when they loot their enemies. I'll bet they're just exaggerations of things actual reptiles do in real life as well. Barble lets you grow extra long vicious spines for offence and defence. I'm sure we already have a version of that usable by everyone, probably in one of the forgotten realms books. Yawn. Serpent Tail turns your tail into a snake capable of independent attacks, chimera stylee. It'd be more fun if you could do it to your enemies, but I'm sure I can figure that one out on my own. Camouflage is another one I'm sure there are generic variants of. Chameleon skin is just too obvious a power to miss for rangers and druids. Scale Blade turns a reptile scale into a weapon with special powers based on the creature it came from. You should be able to get a few hundred components from a good dragon to power this for a while. Skin of the Salamander makes your skin burst into fire with painful results for your enemies. We've already had two variants of that in the magazine. This is just too <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />ing tedious. Moltings lets you turn your shed skin into a mini-me. You can then use it as a slave, or engage in self-cannibalism to restore your HP. Finally, something a bit interesting. The rest of this is still rubbish though.</blockquote>

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