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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5837716" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 267: January 2000part 2/7Forum wonders what level you actually consider the cut-off point for high level. Is name level where you peter out, or is everything below 20th purely mundane? This is one I'm sure will vary widely. Bryan Cooper reminds us that there is a substantial distinction between players and their characters. You shouldn't lie to players, but you should lie to characters frequently. You must maintain trust OOC, otherwise the game will cease to be fun. Jacob Schwartz shows us how evil characters can work together to great effectiveness. A little cruelty and a united front, and the world will fall at your feet. Squeeze it like an orange and drink the sweet sweet juice. Jason F. Smith makes the point that most creatures, even chaotic evil ones, will band together to deal with a common threat. The Tanar'ri's organisations are almost entirely based on that principle. Necessity makes for unpleasant bedfellows.  Justice McPherson (awesome name) gives us his method for improving ability scores as you gain levels. A certain amount of randomness is involved. Well, it could have been taken up. Profiles goes to allcaps this time. But you can still tell the F is even more capitalised. Mutter mutter <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" /> Anyway, last month we had a book editor. This month, we have a games editor, Miranda Horner. Another person who followed their dreams, and after a few diversions, including a brief stint at West End Games, managed to make it into TSR. She's tried her hand at a bit of writing, but found she prefers figuring out how to make other people's ideas the best they can be. A viewpoint that I'm coming to understand. It certainly involves a lot less pressure on you than pouring out your heart and soul, and then seeing it twisted into horrible shapes by the meddling of executives. And as long as you enjoy your job, chances are you're producing better work as well. Up on a soapbox: Hey hey! After giving contributions to the 97 & 99 annuals, it looks like Gary's been persuaded to come back to the regular magazine. Man, with Profiles, the Bestiary and the Bazaar making regular appearances, it's just like old times. Only now he has a degree of ironic self awareness about the floridity of his prose style. Like trying to reclaim the term Fanboy from it's pejorative status. Which totally didn't work, as we know a decade later. As was often the case before, he presents a valid case, but in a hyperbolic fashion using elaborate vocabulary that makes his writing instantly identifiable even if it wasn't signed. You know, I'm surprised more people don't imitate that form of writing. It's just so much fun to write in. So this is a very welcome return, promising the return of the kind of controversy that the past few years have been pretty light on. Although he may not be wielding the same kind of power he used too, he's still got plenty of respect. When he says stuff, people will listen and take it seriously, even if he possibly didn't intend it to be serious. Let the responses come, and may they be snarky in turn! Alternative underdarks: Or how you could make the land beneath your feet just that little bit weirder. Although the one ruled by Duergar would actually be comparatively boring and well organised, but hey, having a monolithic threat that could burrow up any time, anywhere does tend to focus the mind somewhat. This is one of those articles that has some nice ideas, but isn't long enough, and doesn't back up it's ideas with mechanical support. Although given the mechanical clunkers James Wyatt has made in previous articles, maybe that's actually a bullet dodged. So this is a pretty mediocre way to start things off. Countdown to 3rd edition: 7 months to go. Ah yes, the enormous upgrades the cleric got in 3e. While on one hand part of their design goals was making the classes more equal, on the other, they recognised that priestly sorts were considered the least cool of the classes, so they intentionally made clerics slightly overpowered. Their spell selections and granted powers are no longer vastly variable in power from god to god, which is a good thing, but they now get to choose from pretty much their entire spell selection at will, which isn't so good, as said spell selection is now pretty much as powerful as a wizard's, plus they still have the advantages of better combat skills, better armour, and far less limited weapon selections than before. They might still be the support class, but they have no difficulties stepping out of that role and doing the wizard or fighter's job, quite possibly better than they can with the right buffs. This was probably not the perfect way to do it. Still, at least it defuses most accusations of power creep, as you can compare nearly any new base or prestige class from the supplements to a straight cleric or druid progression and find it wanting. That's pretty helpful in it's own way, and certainly a big difference from previous editions.</blockquote>

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