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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6125767" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 316: February 2004part 6/8Expanded psionics preview 2: The big change they talk about this month is psionic focus, and the powers that key off it. They're hoping this will work better than feats that were dependent upon having a certain number of PSPs in reserve. It does move the tactical decision to gain benefits from holding, or benefits from unleashing your focus to a round by round thing rather than a whole day one, which will make your characters more dynamic. Along with the ability to spend PSPs to enhance your powers and go nova, this gives psionic characters a lot more options to customise their actions even before they buy a load of metapsionic feats. As with the last teaser, the new crunch won't appear in the XPH, and this time only some of them will appear in Complete Psionic in a couple of years time, which means this teaser actually retains it's utility as a standalone. With approximately half and half feats that involve holding or expending your focus, both options are decently catered for, (although since you gain all the benefits at once by holding, but only one particular one by expending, that seems like the better thing to specialise in) so this is a pretty good teaser.  Under Command: The minis gaming column is split into 2 sections this month. Mushrooms, and Archery. (and never the twain shall meet, given the number of explosive spore releasing fungi in D&D. ) They introduce a new Mushroom Tangle terrain tile, and give three sample effects it could have on people that tread on them. Shriekers and Phycomids have some new company for the first time in a few years. I approve of this. The archery section, completely unsurprisingly, talks about how to create a ranged specialist unit in the minis game. It seems like only the chaotic good side is much good at this, as they have elves. (and you don't <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" /> ) As usual, the big advantage is being able to hit the enemies when they can't hit you, and have everyone focus fire on one monster to take them down fast. You need to make smart decisions about whether to do one shot and move, or full attack the enemy and hope they'll go down before they reach you. And Terrain without too much cover will definitely be of benefit. Much of this is applicable to D&D as well, but this definitely points out the way they've limited both the types of creatures, and the size of the terrain in the minis game, making ranged combat harder to do than in D&D. That's a little dispiriting, but hey, at least they're maintaining differentiation between the sides. Wouldn't want this to turn into WW1 style trench warfare which grinds on for hours and is no fun at all.</blockquote>

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