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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6120552" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 315: January 2004part 3/8Defilers of athas: Drow may be unpopular, but they still have a reasonable amount of glamour as well. Defilers, on the other hand, are not glamorous, because they make a big, obvious and unsightly mess wherever they go. In 2e, their big balancing factor against preservers was lower XP costs, and a slightly easier time socially in the big cities controlled by the sorcerer-kings. In 3e, everyone has a standardised XP cost, so you need to offer them other benefits to make up for the problems they cause. The solution here? Throw out the distinction between defilers and preservers as a class, and let any arcane spellcaster get free metamagic feats if they're willing to tap the environment a little too hard. When the enemy is pulling out quickened spells every turn because they don't give a damn, the temptation to pull a little more just to keep up is pretty strong. Only the threat of turning into an undead creature if they take too much in one go now keeps a selfish sorcerer from overtapping. Which means that the results in play will be pretty different from 2e, (but then, there were two quite different systems there already, depending on if you were using defiling at the casting or memorising point. ) and probably more dramatic, making defilers very scary villains. So i think the question will be if reshaping old campaigns is a good thing, or if you should try and keep them consistent, and only make changes if they move the setting and rules closer together. In this case, I remain ambivalent, as it is a pretty drastic change. Angry dead gnomes and sinister walking sharks: Now that's a good title. Taladas always did have some cool stuff that got overlooked because regular Dragonlance was so irritating. Death obsessed gnomes, and shark cultists who like to wear shark skins and act in an appropriately predatory and bloodthirsty way. Each get their own prestige class, with appropriate transformations taking place over the course of 10 levels, culminating in becoming undead, or being able to go into a blood frenzy on a whim. They both definitely tend towards the darker end of things, but at the same time aren't always outright evil. It's a good example of the slightly greyer morality there compared to Ansalon. I'm not even sure if this is new material or a direct updating of old stuff, unlike most of these, but the material is pretty good and it reminds me that even after all these years, my knowledge of old D&D settings isn't completely encyclopedic. This is why settings should stay alive and moving forward. If you stop, it's much harder to get going again, because people complain more if anything changes. Bozak Draconian characters: The actual Dragonlance article is pretty self-explanatory. PC stats for said draconians. With 4 HD and an LA +3 modifier on top of that, they're pretty expensive, but since they automatically get 4 levels of sorcerer and dragon HD and skill points for their racial HD, they're definitely worth at least a level or two more than their HD, unlike many monsters. Question is what classes you should take after all your racial levels to remain competitive. I think a good bit of abjurant champion'll do the job. Surprised they didn't do the other two draconian types as well though. It's like they're inviting further submissions by leaving things open this issue.</blockquote>

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