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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6065328" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 302: December 2002part 8/10Masks of iron: Another organisation and associated prestige class here this month. Johydee is one of Oerth's more obscure gods, apart from one fairly famous artifact, she hasn't done much over the years. OR HAS SHE? Yup, these guys are another group of harper wannabees, secret do-gooders working behind various aliases and making the world a better place with trickery and careful information gathering. Perfect PC material, really. The prestige class is an all-rounder with a mix of roguish skills and clerical magic, going up to 5th level spells (with a fairly limited selection) at 10th level. Since they gain both magical and mundane information gathering and deception techniques, they should actually be pretty good at that, not foiled by the first high level diviner who takes an interest, and since they're pretty versatile, they seem a good choice for a solo adventure. Plus they make great mysterious mission giving mentors at lower level. I think they definitely have their uses. To make sure the truth gets out (without dying in the process), you have to know how the liars hide it. Dungeoncraft: Monte gets into the swing of Encounter centric advice with some on the right way to run large combats. The important thing here is not to let things turn into a grind. Make sure you have the basic details down nice and tight, so you don't get bogged down by looking up rules, and then get a rollin. Don't sweat the small stuff, don't let anyone spend too much time obsessing over tactics, as after all, in a real pitched battle you don't get much time to think, and adrenalin does make people do silly things, and don't fudge rolls, because fights are more dramatic and tense when the players know they're both in real danger, and can win quickly if they pull off a clever masterstroke against the enemies. And when it becomes obvious who's winning, don't let it degenerate into a grind to the death, let people surrender, run away, or other such ideas that are more likely to result in interesting plots further along the line. Since Monte is one of those writers who still finds time to play regularly as well, I think we can be pretty sure that this approach works for him. Previous editions worked best with playing a little fast and loose with the rules because you'd find contradictory bits that locked up the game if you tried to apply everything literally, while 3e works better with a little looseness because otherwise it slows to a crawl at higher levels. Both are results you need to avoid if you want a long-running campaign. So we're starting to get some useful specific advice here, and a decent new perspective. Looks like there may be life in the old column yet.</blockquote>

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