Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6117555" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 314: December 2003part 6/9Revised Psionics preview 1: With the 3.5 corebooks well out of the way, one of the first things on their agenda is fixing psionics. Unlike the D&D minis articles, which seem to have decided Chainmail is a failure from the past they Shall Not Speak Of Again, here Bruce Cordell freely admits that there were some serious mistakes in their mechanical design in 3.0, and so they're changing things more than they did with the core classes. They're making it bigger, giving a whole bunch of psionic races PC writeups, eliminating MAD, letting you scale powers by spending more points on them, and downplaying psionic combat. Apart from the last of those, these are all things I can be unreservedly positive about. While I haven't been that keen on the changes in approach to settings and articles around this time, I can't deny that most of the rules changes have been for the better, and that continues here. What's also pretty pleasing is that the new crunch isn't something that'll appear in the book, (although it will eventually be published again in the Complete Psionic splatbook in a few years time) adding another interesting race to the mix. This time, they've definitely learned the right lessons from their mistakes. Under Command: The D&D minis article also takes the form of a grab bag of crunchy stuff, which makes it difficult to stir for it after forcing down 5 articles of elemental crispies. A couple of sample warbands, which can be used nicely both in the minis game, and as antagonists in a D&D one. More interestingly, a mini dungeon for them to inhabit. Hang on, isn't Monte doing one of those this issue too? Dungeon really must be getting as sloppy as the complaining letter says if Dragon is doing not just one but two of those this issue. Moving them to monthly must come with some growing pains for Paizo. They ought to move this Encountersey stuff over there. In any case, the supposed extra variety this column provides is completely negated by the fact that it's written in exactly the same formulaic manner as the rest of the articles. You should get a different writer in specifically to do stuff like this regularly, then give them the freedom to build instead of passing it between the regular staff again. That didn't work for the old minis columns either.</blockquote>

Verification