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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5731230" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 254: December 1998part 4/8The harder they fall: And now it's the player's turn. We've had plenty of tactical advice for fighting dragons, along with new spells, items and kits to complement this. Actually, this is about 50/50 advice for the giants, and for people who want to fight them, thus keeping the arms race relatively equal. Still, with a good 5 pages on each, and some genuinely inventive tactics, this ought to keep you very busy indeed. The diagrams are helpful, there's plenty of scientific principles involved, and existing information from lots of giant types is tabulated for analysis and quick reference. So this is one that's both fun to read, and very helpful, whether you play D&D or not, as while specific stats may vary, many systems have some kind of giant monster, and basic things like tactical positioning will work anywhere. It's not just kobolds that should play it smart to win against the PC's. With tactics like this to punch above their weight, giants should remain viable opponents at any level. If it had come earlier in the magazine's lifespan, this could well have been hailed as a classic article. Hell, I think I shall go out on a limb and proclaim it so! After all, one of the reasons I started doing this was to dig up under appreciated gems, and I think this qualifies. The measure of a monster: Here's another article that's very reminiscent of their october output. One about making singular monsters that are indeed very scary and monstrous. Making an existing thing really really big is an effective way of doing that, which ties neatly into the issue's theme, but that's certainly not the primary focus of the article. Really, what makes a monster monstrous is it's actions as much as it's appearance, which you can't say for things you just meet in dungeons and kill before you have a chance to find out anything about them, and certainly can't say for things that turn out to have societies pretty similar to humans, only on the opposing side. A truly terrifying monster also serves as a metaphor for some other issue, such as sexual violation for vampires, or disregard for the rules of hospitality in the case of Grendel. So if you want them to have a real impact, make them represent something with their appearance and actions. If that means scouring Debretts for an overlooked social protocol to violate, all the better. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Once again, this is exactly the kind of alternate perspective that can help you put together a distinctive new adventure, that your players will talk about even after it's over.</blockquote>

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