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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5846398" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 268: February 2000part 3/7Countdown to 3rd edition. 6 months to go: Now, while Wizards do get some changes in 3e, they aren't on the same magnitude as Clerics. 0th level spells make them less problematic at low level, and schools are no longer arranged in an opposition diagram that I found thoroughly counterintuitive. (why would the two main combat schools be opposed? Or conjuration and divination, which are very thematically complimentary. ) The interesting changes - counterspelling, familiars and metamagic, are less significant. Familiars are still regularly ignored, and in later games, substituted for some other power, and I have never seen counterspelling come up in any game I played. Only metamagic feats really caught the public imagination, with tons of variant ones appearing in various splatbooks, and contributing to making all spellcasting classes more twinkable. So while they remain one of the most powerful classes overall, and lack the weaknesses they had at low level before, they haven't been as radically upgraded as clerics and druids. Still quite capable of stealing other people's niches though. Ill gotten gains: The last time we got a full article on taxation was issue 95, where Arthur Collins had quite an amusing take on how adventurers and taxation relate to one-another, with others in issue 36 and 74. So this is one final visit to that bit of old skool realism before the edition change. Adventurers shouldn't simply be able to accumulate wealth unimpeded. There ought to be plenty of people trying to remove their money from them by means legitimate and devious when they get back to civilisation, and cool things for them to spend it on. Some might even turn a profit if you invest properly and don't get swindled. This falls into the useful but dry category, especially when compared to the more playful writings of over a decade ago. This really is an area where a more playful and less verbose style of writing would help the medicine go down. What do you know?: What is the default character capable of, without spending any points on knowledge of an area? Now that's an interesting question, and one that can vary hugely from system to system based on how granular the skill lists are, and how many points you get to spend. In D&D, that means you probably need reasonable general competence that isn't covered by your proficiencies. Which is exactly what this article is about, mostly collecting stuff from obscure parts of the corebook and various supplements which describe what the odds of success an untrained person has at various basic tasks. Which is a strange little topic for an article, but not one they've done before, and one which could come in handy if you have the magazine to hand, but not a ton of books, and need to settle a rules dispute. So this might actually be worthwhile, particularly if you have it indexed on your computer. It's certainly informative as a way of testing how your default game assumptions measure up to the Rules As Written. That's interesting from an anthropological point of view. The Armory Annex: Some more weapons? Oh, do go on. We always need a little something to keep wizards from pulling so far ahead that they're out of sight. Unfortunately, the problem here is that there just aren't as many viable weapon shapes as there are spells, so it's a lot harder to keep from repeating yourself. And indeed, I can definitely pinpoint nearly half of these as appearing in various 2e sourcebooks, and wouldn't be surprised if I'd missed more, given just how vast 2e is. So this another case where they're simply running out of ideas that haven't been used before. Sorry, but this isn't particularly great use of their remaining time. Before the Bow: And they continue in the same vein with some more missile weapons, which again are mostly collected from existing sourcebooks. So this is something of a look back, compiling and maybe updating the info from a whole bunch of sources. That's not totally without value after all, especially when some of these are from 1e, and never appeared in 2e before. Seems like the kind of thing which deserves it's own book though, a best of 2e sourcebooks, just collecting all the useful crunch that's reasonably generic, and leaving out all the setting stuff. After all, the magazine still isn't really enjoying the sales it used too, and the monthly format makes the insights it delivers feel more transient than if they were in an actual book. Seeing a retrospective that is itself rather dated now feels doubly dated. Not the best use of their extra space. Secret of the brotherhood of true flame: Oooh, an Al-Qadim article. The brotherhood of the true flame were one of the big villains of the setting, and were responsible for more than a few devious plots in the published adventures. So this could be quite cool. Unfortunately, it turns out to be setting light, and mainly just another collection of magical items and spells you could really use anywhere. Another case of their current editorial policy causing them to fill an already over-saturated niche further. Many of them are fire based too, which is already a disproportionately popular topic for books and articles. And on further examination, this collection tends towards the underpowered compared to similar spells of the same level. (which I now have a lot to reference. ) So again, this isn't really adding much to my options, any more than another angsty Drow rebel would. Less filler please.</blockquote>

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