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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6075789" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 305: March 2003part 5/9Fear the invincible blade: For a third time, Robin Laws tries to sell us on the fun of having catchphrases for our characters. This is becoming quite the thing from him, and I think it may be time to move on. These are times of character development and continuity in TV shows. Using the same transformation sequence every episode, hitting the reset button, and having every show end with the characters giving us a little PSA and laughing is very much on the out. This is further aggravated by the fact that he's selling this as a way to keep warrior attacks interesting. Which makes it a nice diversion, but to be honest, it's not going to make up for the far greater flexibility spellcasters have in actual play, is it. As this is both moderately silly and very rehashed, I'm afraid I cant rate it highly. Venom and coil: This, on the other hand, is fairly decent. Robin doesn't go in for the grimdark parody he pulled on the Drow, but a proper ecology style expansion on the Yuan-ti history, psychology and social organisation. Like Githzerai, they might have a chaotic alignment and goals, but their high intelligence and natural tactical bent means they can be alarmingly disciplined and co-operative in the way they pursue them, because everyone can work out the solution to a problem and agree to play a part in it of their own free will. Plus while they may not be quite as good at mind control as illithids, their mix of magic and psionics still makes them really good at social manipulation. On top of that, there's the potential for the good old innsmouth look storyline, where a PC finds out they actually contain some yuan-ti blood, and have to decide whether to embrace their monstrous side or run from it and become one of their most dangerous enemies. So this makes them a considerably more credible threat than their old ecology in issue 151. I think this is one people might actually reference in the future.</blockquote>

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