Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6115546" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 314: December 2003part 2/9Up on a soapbox: Remember, no matter how powerful you are, the DM can ALWAYS create something more powerful to deal with you. Even if you discover a game-breaking infinite loop like pun-pun, they can make a character that did it first, and has had more time to build up obscene levels of equipment and minions with it. Jim Ward told tales about stuff like this back in the old days, and Gary does so here. A 13th level Ranger is only half a dozen hits from a vampire away from being 1st level again if they get sloppy. And someone who didn't earn them the hard way is a lot more likely to be reckless and not use their powers to their full potential. Yup, it's this old canard. Ironically, I think these days the foot is more likely to be on the other boot, with plenty of people having played multiple characters to mid or high level before the game ends, and then starting a new one. Whether they've learned wisdom from this process though, and play the new low level ones smarter is another matter. But I do think this is less of an issue than 30 years ago. Course, if you're recruiting new players (which we all ought to try to do occasionally) it will come up again, and you need to balance keeping it fun for the new blood with letting them know this isn't a game where they'll always win. But still, times have changed, and Gary's experiences aren't as relevant as they were in this case. Zogonia puts it's main character through the wringer again. Is it another trip to reztown? Brotherhood of the burning heart: Well, it looks like our elemental features are indeed going to be pretty formulaic. Each has an organisation somehow devoted to the element serving as a framing device for various new spells, magic items, prestige classes, etc etc. If you want to put them all in your campaign as allies or rivals, this would probably work pretty well, as they're all of neutral or good alignments and friendly to being joined mid-campaign. It's not like the old campaign settings where things like fire wizards or silt priests could be hunted down for revealing their specialty. So our fire guys are a Bard heavy bunch who are more about fanning the fires of passion than literally burning stuff down, and both their spells and prestige class reflect that. Course, they can also have synergistic effects, like making a fire burn longer or brighter because it's feeding off the emotions of the people around it as much as the physical fuel, or a template which makes your fire spells blinding on top of inflicting damage. But the primary emphasis is on making your emotions stronger, last longer, and getting various buffs from that. This makes them even more focussed on being buffers and support characters than regular bards in combat, but they'll do it in such an overdramatic way that they certainly won't feel like part of the background. If you want a character who doesn't even have to work at this, they also have the fire-souled template, a LA+3 thang that gives you a substantial cha boost, Leadership (and all the devoted followers that implies ) for free, enough surplus passion to effectively Haste themselves, and most interestingly of all, the power to make enemies temporarily forget about their most advantageous combat options. Basically, the kind of messiah who gets hailed from birth, spoilt rotten no matter how unpredictable and temperamental they are, and wins against enemies in both the physical and social arena because anyone trying to fight them inexplicably acts dumber than usual. I can see players really loving to hate an enemy like that. Well, looks like the first article has managed to put a nongeneric spin on the elemental theme. Let's see if the rest can keep up the pace.</blockquote>

Verification