Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6116045" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 314: December 2003part 3/9Dust to dust: Weirdly enough, it's the earth organisation that's most easily presented as an antagonist group here. They worship earth to the point where they're almost a genocidal apocalypse cult, trying to wake a slumbering earth god who'll bring the element to it's proper place of total cosmological supremacy, and wipe out all other elementals and anyone who doesn't give Earth it's proper respect. Very much the kind of credo that comes from someone valuing stability over genuinely making things utopian, and then attaching onto a half-baked idea to create their ideology. And thus it seems all too plausible in a fantasy universe, particularly one where we've already seen the temple of elemental evil put through it's paces several times.  Unsurprisingly, most of their new spells and items are oriented towards defence. The standard resiliency boosts and resistance to things like disarming, knockdown and bull rushes. Not that terrain control can't be turned to offensive ends too, particularly the more powerful ones like the staff with a full array of earthshaping spells. But this seems more likely to make them a bugger to finish off than actually win them the fight. If any group deserves to be the losers, it's this one. Masters of the four winds: In 1e, Monks had highly restricted numbers of high level characters, with very particular titles, including Master of the X season or direction wind. Those were scrapped for 3e, but no idea dies completely, especially not if it was in the corebook. And so here we have a prestige class for each cardinal direction. Each is designed as a hybrid of monk and some other class, requiring you to be near 10th level and have at least 4 levels of monk to get in (which also means you'll need to plan your multiclassing points carefully) All gain full progression of their basic monk powers, some form of spellcasting, and add the Air domain to their spell lists at some point, which means they all look superficially similar. Hopefully the 4 combined will be well suited for promoting harmony throughout the world, as like the winds themselves, staying still is not their path to enlightenment. Masters of the North Wind combine monk and druid powers, progressing their shapeshifting and spell powers, and gaining the ability to assume gaseous form, which is always a game-changer. They really can go anywhere and survive there, which makes them very independent indeed. Masters of the South Wind mix rogue and monk, getting full sneak attack progression and 6+int skill points, plus a decent selection of stealth and air based spells that make them easily the equal of assassins in the stealthy killing stakes, only on the side of the good guys, and hopefully able to resolve problems more mercifully. Enlightenment lets you speak softly and carry a big stick. Masters of the East Wind mix monk and wizard, predictably enough. With full spellcasting progression and 1/2 familiar progression as well, they look pretty spiffy. They will have to sacrifice 4 spellcaster levels to get in though, which more than makes up for it. Still, stick with it a few more levels into epic and take practiced spellcaster to make up the penetration, and then you can really show off the results of patience. Masters of the West Wind are the cleric hybrids, completely unsurprisingly, and get exactly the same deal, only with partial turning progression. Since clerics get better BAB, Armor, etc than wizards, this doesn't seem like quite so good a deal. Freedom to use your monk unarmed bonuses, or wear heavy armor makes both slightly suboptimal, ironically.</blockquote>

Verification