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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6079511" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 306: April 2003part 5/9Urban Traps: Someone was la-ate submitting their material for the urban theme last issue. However, since that someone is Penny Williams (nee Petticord) one of our very long running writers and editors, they're letting it through anyway. And I'm glad they did, as this is one of those fun ones that both stretches their mechanical ingenuity and has nice framing fiction to boot. Unlike dungeons, with urban traps, you really don't want to make them lethal, as that causes no end of hassle in any normal legal system. Ironically, that means you have to be even more ingenious in setting up something that'll stop troublemakers, but won't be a problem to the owners. So lots of attention is put here no only on designing the traps, but also representing them mechanically, figuring out how much they'd cost, and most importantly, what kind of person would actually like to buy each one. Which means with old school diabolic ingenuity, 2e setting building and characterisation depth, and 3e mechanical rigour, this article is satisfying to me on every level. First time I can say that they've surpassed the very first ultra-lethal traps they included in here in coolness. 3.5 Revision Update: This month, they cover the fairly substantial reworking of damage reduction in 3.5, talking in detail about why it was a problem in previous editions, and how they think the new version has fixed it for sure, honest! Their big issue with the old version is that it created a feeling of "you must be this tall to go on this ride" and victory or failure could hinge on a single person having the right gear or power. So they've got rid of the specific plus requirements, and replaced them with generally smaller DR numbers that require specific materials to bypass, so even without their weakness a party can probably still kill them by brute force at the expected CR, it'll just be harder. Of course, if the old version didn't feel sufficiently mythic, the new one's tendency to make players carry golf bags full of different weapon types isn't a huge improvement in long-term play. It's fortunate that they decided to talk about this in the same issue Gary mentioned old school swarm tactics, because this once again illustrates exactly how they're trying to standardise the play experience over time so that challenges are always fair, everyone always gets to contribute, and players never have to run away from a fight they can't handle. Which yeah, does make things fairer, but also makes them less scary as well, which isn't what you want for monsters. So while I do think the 3.5 system is a slight improvement on the 3.0 version, I also think that standardising the DR system to this extent is a bad idea in itself. The D&D rules are flexible enough to handle a wide range of resistances, immunities and vulnerabilities too (which more monsters really ought to have in my opinion) and all three forms of weapon resistance are entirely capable of coexisting in different monsters without the system or setting breaking. Don't let your pursuit of balance keep you from going to the extreme as well. You just need to make sure you cover the extremes in all directions, not just one.</blockquote>

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