Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6087584" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 308: June 2003part 4/9Dweomered dragon scales: The onslaught of dragon based crunchy stuff comes to an end with one that is primarily focussed at players. Dragon scales are one of the few magic item components you can extract from them while leaving them alive, so you can possibly get one by making a deal with them, or even sneaking into their lair and looking for any sheddings. Unsurprisingly, the powers they grant are heavily based on the type of dragon they come from, with one from each chromatic, metallic and lung species, plus 5 miscellaneous ones like shadow, deep and brown. I'm a bit irked by the lack of gem dragons, but the items are decent enough, if very formulaic, granting some of the resistances and spell-like abilities that the various dragons possessed. At least the various ways they're mounted for wearing shows some inventiveness. allowing you to have them in rings, shields, collars, hats, amulets, cufflinks, basically, at least one for each body slot if you were so inclined to buff yourself that way. And let's face it, there are far worse themes to pick for your character's powers, as this'll net you a broad range of resistances and not many weaknesses. So it looks like this year's presents have all fell into the high crunch, efficient, player-friendly and formulaic mould they're keen on at the moment. One or two like that is cool, but when it's every article, it gets very tedious indeed. Let's hope there's at least some variety in approach in the rest of the issue. The ecology of the ironmaw: Skip contributes an ecology for the first time in well over a decade. Nice to see he's not completely consumed by fulfilling his regular duties. This is a fairly good example of the current ecological trends, although rather longer in it's descriptive section than the previous two, it's still entirely OOC, and focussed upon combat over the uses of the creature in general campaignery and interactions with other creatures. There's quite a bit of story potential in a plant from the abyss gradually taking over a prime material world through being nastier than the local fauna, and that could be better put across. Still, it is probably an improvement on last year's crop. Now, if they could get the frequency back as well. Are they not getting the submissions, or is this a deliberate decision to cut this kind of stuff out? Either way, this is one area 3rd ed is quite a bit worse than 2nd. Tactical Terrors: Skip contributes a second article in quick succession, a direct sequel to one from issue 288. Yup, here's 14 more encounter ideas wherin you combine multiple monsters that complement each other in interesting ways. Be it one riding the other, a group of minions and a leader, open attack and a stealthy counterpart, or just equal partners, there's a huge number of combinations you can try, see if the challenge level is more or less than the sum of it's parts. So like transformational prestige classes and transforming existing monsters into templates, this is an idea that shows a little bit of diminishing returns in it's return, but still has plenty of room for further expansions. The main way it's inferior to the previous one is the quantity, only 14 ideas compared to the original's 20, and the formatting, which has white writing on a bright red background, not the most legible combo. Still, the content is decent enough, it's just not surprising anymore. Now they've taken the idea and made it standard in ecology articles, it's no longer new and cool.</blockquote>

Verification