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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5979705" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 287: September 2001part 5/7Faiths of faerun: Looks like Bane is back, because this month we get a prestige class for his speciality priests. The Dreadmaster. Man, that's a name that says taking yourself too seriously and dressing with huge spiked shoulderpads and helmets with glowing red eyes. This is a relatively tricky one to get into, requiring you to be at least a decent way down the evil overlord road before you can even start on it. The benefits seem particularly cool for evil overlords, as you get to avoid the usual leadership penalties for going through your minions like water. This means you can enjoy multiple fights with them before finishing them off for good. And with favored enemies and bonuses to fear effects, they're no slouches in direct confrontations either. They seem to achieve their design ends most satisfactorily, even if they're more likely to be NPC's than PC's. Class acts: Having skipped a month, Monte is back with another fairly obvious theme. The fiend hunter, dark and brooding avenger who has taken on some of the traits of evil so as to better understand it and fight it. A perfect thematic choice for the fallen paladin, and monte is cool enough to add some mechanical incentives and discounts to them for doing it. (although they aren't quite as good as the benefits for ex-paladin blackguards, but then, continuing to fight evil should be harder than falling to temptation) Like the flame steward and psi-hunter, they get full BAB, and decent spellcasting that should keep them competitive even when not fighting their favored enemies. They also get a +1 bonus to armor per 3 levels, like many of monte's prestige classes. I wonder why it's always that number? Is there a game balance calculation behind it? This tendency has my attention, and I shall see if it continues. Nodwick brings life back to a deserted kingdom. Rejoice! Apart from you, icky-bad high necromancer. You need to be punished. Chainmail: So the gnomes have joined forces with the humans in the new wargame? I wasn't expecting that. Way to avoid the stereotypical pairing. Still, it makes sense in light of the history they're establishing. The humans handle the above ground threats, while the gnomes take the underdark, and they've got each other's backs in a pinch. They also share technology, of course, and that means the human armies have access to technological contraptions that the others don't. So there's some more fairly interesting worldbuilding going on here, making sure each of the armies isn't just a one-trick pony, and hopefully each side will both feel distinct and have proper strengths and weaknesses against the others. I do quite like these columns. Still, I do wonder how much of this information will be repeated in the products themselves. Is this bonus material, or will it be made irrelevant once you've spent the money. I guess I'll have to see if I can track a copy down. Forum: Jeffrey Ludwig thinks that charisma is better off than it used to be, but is still a bit of a dump stat, and the designers themselves are fully aware of this. Course, you can redress the balance a little by including more social scenes in your game. Josh Harrison is another person listing the ways in which a wizard may surpass a fighter, particularly out of combat. It's not just magic, their high int means they'll also smoke them skillswise, despite having the same base amounts. Robert J. Schwalb thinks rangers in the new edition are balanced, and the people complaining are just too used to them being twinky from old editions. You just can't take being equal, you have to be better. Leave it out. Mark Jackman thinks that psionics has turned out better than the preview watching naysayers said. Once again, we remind you to wait and get the full info before you deliver judgement. Anthony Gabriel thinks St Cuthbert ought to be lawful good, not LN. The real saint certainly fits that descriptor. You know, Gary did originally make him LG with LN tendencies, rather than the other way around. It is an interesting question why the 3e writers decided to flip that.</blockquote>

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