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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6026029" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 294: April 2002part 4/10Words to live by: Robin Laws follows up on the goofiness in the editorial with a piece on catchphrases. This is basically the same idea as his piece on proverbs in issue 278, only reskinned, showing once again he has no problem recycling ideas if there's a pagecount that needs to be filled. Only this time, it's sillier, to fit in with the april theme. So here's a whole ton of catchprases general, race, and class specific, along with advice on when to use them. (and not overuse them) Many of them are instantly recognisable from various media sources, and a lot of them are more than a little silly. If you do pick one, make sure you don't use it more than once or twice a session. As a half-serious article, there is some use to be got out of this, but there's also the real possibility of it being wrong for your campaign, and spoiling the tone if incorporated. So mixed feelings here, as befits the mixed result of this article. Adding injury to insults: This, on the other hand, I don't have a problem with, as Robin trying to create a social combat system that works with the existing D&D rules and doesn't completely gimp characters who aren't built with it in mind is an interesting challenge. Fortunately, 3e does have a reasonable number of social skills to key it off. But unfortunately, he requires you to take a whole new subskill to become really good at skewering another's reputation, and includes a lot of feats that will be completely useless if you aren't using this new subsystem, which creates the kind of problem psionics suffered in 2e, but avoided in 3e - that of old characters winding up defenceless against new ones. Still, it does have some really neat bits as well. Making gaining and losing reputation work on a monthly scale, with a limited number of attacks allowed per month makes it fairly difficult for one person to completely ruin someone else on their own which reflects real social dynamics. You'll need to persuade others to gang up on them if you want them to become complete outcasts. Plus the penalty for doing it unprovoked discourages being generally bitchy just for the hell of it. (of course, a real social wizard can always engineer a failure to then take advantage of. ) And the death spiral means it's difficult for someone who's reputation is ruined to effectively hit back, which I think fits with modern tabloids as well. While it has it's balance issues, I'm overall inclined positively towards this one, as it has enough cool bits to interact with that it'd be pretty interesting in play, while not being overcomplicated. It's nice to have articles that are more ambitious than just more spells, monsters and prestige classes. Nodwick has a particularly epic adventure this time, but in the end, the status quo is reset, just as ever. Class acts: And here's the other half of the nightsong equation, the Infiltrator. While the enforcer gains better combat abilities at the expense of their skills, these guys sacrifice their backstabbing for better defensive abilities and ninja-esque enhanced skills at sneaking, breaking and entering. The two complement each other well, and are best used as part of the same guild. When Monte created prestige classes, one of his design goals was to help give campaigns more flavour by tying special groups of abilities to specific organizations, and this is a good example of him leading by example. They get reprinted in splatbooks for both 3.0 and 3.5, and fit in pretty well to Ptolus. If you're playing an underworld focussed campaign, they come recommended.</blockquote>

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