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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6040103" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 297: July 2002part 3/10Up on a soapbox: Here we get to hear about Gary's first experiences as a player. Yrag the Fighter was his PC in Rob Kuntz's game. And one of his memorable early adventures was when they introduced the Ring of Contrariness into the game. Because who doesn't love suddenly inverting the obvious aspects of their character's personality and being a pain in the ass to other players when the DM gives them a reason too? Gary certainly did, as it let him stretch his roleplaying muscles, and the others had to do some careful puzzle solving to figure out how to deal with the problem. Another reminder that those were rough and tumble times, where your character was much more likely to die or be screwed over in the course of the adventure, so you learned to roll with the punches, and make fun out of your own misfortune. But I think we already knew that. Now the main draw is the specific anecdotes for all the old school obsessives out there. I think we may be starting to get into diminishing returns territory here. Everquest D20 Roleplaying game? Feel the circle of conversions go round and round. Sentinels of the shoal: Time to get down to the meat of the epic level features, and hope some of it's more palatable than the skin. Here's a big feature that's not only tied in with the book, but also a parallel adventure in Dungeon magazine. Gotta collect 'em all, etc etc. From the looks of things, it involves the conflict between two epic organisations, one which is devoted to maintaining the cosmic balance and keeping undeserving people from becoming Epic, and the other comprised of  assassins following the secret orders of a really powerful but imprisoned monstrosity. Classic grey vs black conflict. They give us the usual grab-bag of stuff to fill it out. Scarily high CR stats for the leaders of the two organisations. A prestige class for each group. 5 new epic spells, and 8 new epic feats. Most of these are pretty neat, and valid expansions on the stuff in the epic level handbook that improve your power in interesting ways. Seems like James Jacobs has managed to make the best of a tricky situation, and come up with appropriately epic material to tie in with the release. It may still be unwieldy, but there are good stories in there if you're willing to do the math and play with the big boys. That's a relief to see.</blockquote>

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