Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5902166" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 276: October 2000part 4/7Fiction: Kang's command by Margaret Weis & Don Perrin. Draconians have received a fair amount of humanising characterisation over the years. This makes that retroactive, with a story set shortly before the war of the lance, when they were still team evil's big secret. And it is a pretty strong indicator that their unpleasant nature is a result of nurture as much as nature, since they were treated as monstrous troops right from the moment they were hatched, only educated just enough to do the job needed at the time, and encouraged to be vicious and competitive. Breaking out of that kind of abusive setup is never easy, especially since they are vicious, greedy artificially created carnivores when you get right down to it. So yeah, fantasy racism is an awkward issue, especially when there are huge actual differences in capabilities and lifecycle, but you can make fun stories out of these problems. And indeed, I do find this story fairly interesting, and very D&Dish indeed in the group interactions, with tons of bickering and a good party dynamic where everyone gets to exploit their particular talents. You can play the monsters in the new edition, and have a lot of fun doing so, without the strict class and level limits you had to face before. Nodwick gets the last laugh at Lolth. Have they run out of classic modules to mock? We shall see. The ecology of the sheet phantom: Ooogie boogie boo. An amusingly schlocky monster from the fiend folio gets a stab at credibility, and an update to the new edition. Just the thing for a halloween issue. Formed when someone dies in bed, but wants to carry on existing rather a lot, they're a sheet of ectoplasm that then envelops you, suffocates you, and possesses your body. Not a nice way to go. Johnathan gets brutal for a change, killing both the heroes of this little story, and leaving the monster happily at large to haunt and kill some more, which definitely helps make it seem more of a credible threat. It'll never rival vampires for sheer cool, but as long as they're really easy to do as a costume, I guess they'll never truly die. Once again they use a strong, yet largely monochromatic art style that works pretty well for the subject. Nice to see the magazine helping to polish up old stuff that could well have got lost in the cracks. The adventures of Volo: The artwork improvements manage to penetrate in here for a change. Elminster, on the other hand, takes a break, as Volo also takes a break from exploring dungeons and weird locations, and goes intriguing and partying. An area our great sage has little interest in, so while this might still be unreliable, he isn't going to correct him. So we get to enjoy 7 not entirely flattering character sketches of people who hang around the Cormyran courts. You can bet some of those'll be out for his blood when this gets around. A reminder that this is yet a bloody nother thing he does really well (after all, the nine hells articles were chock full of this, especially issue 91's follow-up instalment) but hasn't really concentrated on in a while. Envy envy envy. Stop making everyone else look boring and one-dimensional by comparison! Goddamnnit, I know I should stop eating so much cheese, but he keeps on making me fall in love with him all over again. Class acts: Ahh, the hunter of the dead. Another prestige class that you can fit easily into most campaigns. After all, undead are a pain in the ass, especially if you don't have a specialist. Here we run into another problem with 3rd edition. CoDzilla is far better than nearly any prestige class, especially when you consider the tradeoff between 20th level casting vs 10/10 in two different progressions. So this is a perfectly serviceable option for a paladin who wants to concentrate on undead splatting, or a fighter who dips a level in cleric to qualify. But if you want to be a primary spellcaster, this is a bad idea. Also notable is that it doesn't progress your turn undead ability at all. Still, if you're an undead hunter, you don't want to just make them run away, you want to kill them. But like the blackguard requiring stealth to gain, but not having it as a class skill, this does result in another suboptimal ability. How very irksome.</blockquote>

Verification