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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5665117" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 244: February 1998part 2/8Forum's first big question is what races the next edition should contain. I wonder what kind of turnaround times these questions will have. In the meantime, let's enjoy the last few unfocussed fora.  Dan Cross gives some advice on preparing your game and keeping it running. Nice to see they can still do mini-articles as well as rules revisions here. Harry Pratt points out that Lord Soth has powers beyond a regular Death Knight. The others should be powered up too. Um, that's like saying every wizard should be as twinked as Elminster. It'll remove all their specialness. Chris Reeves is not at all keen on the SAGA system. It's simplistic, expects you to know most of the setting detail already, and has some seriously arbitrary crap. Not amused at all. Chris Merritt actually prefers the SAGA system. It gives you more choice of actions and goes faster. It's definitely a better choice for introducing new players. Nice to see someone prefers it. Simon Fung sings the high level blues. How many things did you kill to get there, and how many monsters must their be to maintain a decent number of high level characters in the world. The math is a bit iffy. Maybe that's another thing that needs adjusting. Sage advice: Waaah! I still don't understand how the symbol spell works! (You're not the only one. In fact, we've had so many questions on this matter that we're gonna completely rewrite the spell to clear this up, covering nearly 2 full pages. There may be some nerfing involved, as we try to cover all the eventualities. )Can spellcraft identify magical items. (Not very well, if at all. It's SPELLcraft, not ITEMcraft. )Can you cook fish you caught (Yes. Everyone can do basic cooking in D&D. (Ha. That's like saying everyone in a modern setting can read, drive and use computers.)) How do you succeed at casting Nahal's reckless dweomer. (get 100 or better, or one of the results that shows cast x spell with y modifier ) What's the difference between the bladesong fighting style and the bladesinger kit. (Bladesong is something any elf can learn, bladesinger is for when they want to really specialize in it. )Out of character: Mr Adkison once again reveals his enthusiasm for a system element that'll make it into the next edition. This time, it's having a universal resolution mechanic. Well, it is pretty fashionable these days, and is one of the things making AD&D look like a dinosaur compared to smaller, faster, more flexible systems. If you want to fix things, start from the bottom. But this isn't just long-term systems discussion, it's also blatant promotion of Alternity, their current hot new thing. Now that's more like something Gary would have done. <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=":)" /> It also reminds us that Alternity's mechanic was a good deal more swingy and unpredictable than the d20 one would eventually become, with the target number remaining the same, and the difficulty being represented by adding bigger dice.  So this second column from him isn't quite as pleasing as the first one, but is still both interesting and historically relevant. Hopefully it'll take a while longer for him to settle into a routine and start to become formulaic, as happens to most of their columnists at some point. For now, his writing is still a breath of fresh air against the general backdrop of the magazine.</blockquote>

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