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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6032212" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 295: May 2002part 5/10Building a better rogue trap: And if the old school touch was evident in the last article, it's even more so in this one, where we have a whole bunch of sadistic traps framed by a narrative in which the salesman gets double-crossed by his would-be employer, only to be fully prepared to cross him right back. With fiction in general having nosedived this year, that kind of fun comes very welcome indeed. Still, even if they've got the flavour, the degree of lethality and inventiveness certainly isn't anywhere near those old 70's traps. The deadliest one on offer is only CR 10, and that's because teleportation requires a high level spellcaster to use rather than the ingenuity of where it teleports the victim too. Once again, their new mandate to try and keep the game balanced and fair keeps them from really cutting loose with their most sadistic ideas. The writers can make stuff that looks good, but how would they fare against an enemy who doesn't play fair at all? The cosmo-knights get their own splatbook for rifts. Man, they've been doing a lot of power-creeping when we weren't looking. With and without pity: Assigning an alignment to a person can be contentious enough at times. Applying one to a whole community is very much an exercise in fuzzy logic, especially when you're dealing with millions of people. Could you apply an overall alignment to New York, or possibly it's individual districts? Probably not. But Robin Laws can, because that's the kind of thing he does. Unsurprisingly, this shows how likely a community is to go along with it's ruler, particularly if they're of a dramatically different alignment to the average, and what a community of a particular alignment is likely to look and act like. Whether lawful communities are likely to also be more prosperous than chaotic ones I'm not certain, but it certainly doesn't seem impossible. Is there any data that shows the correlation between taxation percentages and crime rates? Basically, this feels like part of a continuing attempt to sneak back domain management into D&D via the magazine. Only the irony is that because the various bits and pieces are written by different writers, they interlock even more poorly than the old stuff if you were to try and use it all in one game. This is the kind of thing that really really needs a full book dedicated to it, because the magazine format just makes a mess of it. The way of the fist: As we saw in issue 289, there's tons of different concepts you can fit under the name Ninja. Similarly, there's a wide set of different disciplines you can fit under the umbrella of unarmed fighter, not all of which a D&D monk is appropriate for. So a trio of prestige classes that boost different types of unarmed fighting is a very valid niche to fill, as trying to build an unarmed brawler from a single class fighter will result in a very weak character indeed. Let's see if they can make the concepts nicely effective, or will merely be a minor band-aid to the system. Primal Ragers let barbarians grow claws when they rage, so they can do the Hulk Smash thing far more effectively than before. With extra damage reduction, and a quirky little power that lets them take a short break mid-rage without losing it entirely, they seem like a pretty valid diversion for a mid-level character who wants to reduce their vulnerabilities. Fierce Grapplers get the ability to do regular damage rather than subdual a little earlier, and their pinnacle power lets them knock out creatures if they can get a firm grip on them, so they may not have the flexibility of spellcasters, but they'll be good at neutralising them if they can get close. Some ranks in stealth skills would probably be helpful there. Brawlers are only really suited to an urban campaign, where their skill with improvised weapons and absorbing subdual & bludgeoning damage would be useful in the majority of encounters. Their other power, a substantial bonus when facing multiple opponents, is more universally applicable, but still likely to diminish in usefulness at really high levels. I don't see that many people taking them, to be honest.</blockquote>

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