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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6122584" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 315: January 2004part 7/8The new (fantasy) World: Kara-Tur and Al-Qadim can be transplanted to other game worlds without too many problems. Maztica, on the other hand, was heavily built around the fact that the old world discovering it was the Realms, and the metaplot of invasion and exploitation would have gone differently if it wasn't the priests of Helm leading it. Disappointingly, they decide not to progress the timeline those 20+ years forward here, but simply update the Eagle and Jaguar Knight kits to 3e prestige classes. Both have their spellcasting and shapeshifting accelerated somewhat compared to their 2e counterparts, while retaining full BAB progression and 4+int skill points, putting them on the same kind of level as Rangers, Paladins or Assassins. Since the original separated out the Knights and the specialists in hishna & pluma magic, this is one case I don't really feel they captured the spirit of the old setting. Still, at least I can't say they nerfed them this time around. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Instead, they've turned things up. The light in the darkness: In the late 90's, James Wyatt was the guy still submitting Red Death articles to the magazine when it seemed no-one else gave a damn. Looks like that's still the case even now. Well, at least it keeps the tone consistent. This is our shortest article, at only 2 pages, and it's another prestige class. La Lumiere were one of the cabals trying to fight the Red Death and bring peace and enlightenment to Gothic Earth. Their update takes that fairly literally, letting them inspire themselves and others to take down monsters with their intellect, despite their distaste for violence. Being a pacifist is a mugs game in D&D, as we've seen so many times before, and it's interesting that people are still trying to fight against that in-setting. So I guess the ex-pastor is still swimming against the tide here, and not making much headway. Will roleplaying as a whole ever escape the need to kill things and take their stuff? Soldiers of the last order: As we draw to a close, a welcome surprise is that they've decided to count the Chainmail setting in the continent west of Oerth as it's own thing, like all the FR and Mystara regions that got their own independent treatments. In the process we get to find out that this was another case where the setting was originally intended to be its own independent world, but was bodged onto Oerth for marketing reasons. The days of upper management issuing orders that cause big headaches and sudden changes in direction for the creative people isn't over, and even the Realms will be subject to that dickery again next edition change. (and the one after, and who knows after that) And now it's gone, probably never to be revived at the current rate. So I'm left feeling a little disappointed that all we get is yet another prestige class in an issue that's been ridiculously heavy on them. The Boge of Nomog-Geya are leaders of a hobgoblin cult that's grown tired of sharing with those undisciplined lesser goblinoids, and wants to exterminate them so they can better conquer the world. Since the smaller goblinoids breed faster, this seems like a tall order, but at least it's a different one with interesting flavour. And since they get full cleric spellcasting plus favoured enemy bonuses and a fairly powerful social buff at high level, I wouldn't put it past them completely if they can get the help. Plus it creates a very interesting enemy of my enemy situation where the players may have to decide which side is the lesser evil to support for now. If you're going to overload us with prestige classes, better interesting ones like this that come with strong plot hooks like this.</blockquote>

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