Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6129639" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 317: March 2004part 7/8Under command: Summoning already presents some interesting balance issues in regular D&D, as it screws with the action economy and gives you huge amounts of versatility with a few spells. When you're playing with minis, you have the additional problem that you need enough appropriate, or at the very least, appropriately sized minis to represent whatever you summon. And since the D&D minis game is new, and slated towards low-mid levels, there's a serious shortage of higher level monsters. So this is a big fat wodge of patches for both systems, giving us alternate summoning lists that comprise creatures they've already released, advice on how to use summoned monsters in a tactically effective way without it slowing down the game too much, and building warbands that have a summoner amongst them. It makes me feel vaguely annoyed, because it involves altering the rules not just for the sake of balance, but also marketing. And tweaking the game specifically to sell more minis, rather than make it more fun to play definitely sticks in my craw, like some of their previous blatantly commercial tie-ins. I think I'll stick to using my imagination. Expanded psionics preview 3: Only a month before release, and unsurprisingly the drop the biggest teaser yet. While not everyone will use the new races, or go to the trouble of buying lots of feats that key off psionic focus, everyone will get use out of augmenting powers, even if it's just to keep your damage output equal to the wizards. It means that the point system actually means something significant, instead of just being a flat total of manifesting x powers per day that approximately adds up to a wizard of the same level. This can be further enhanced by taking the overchannel feat, which allows them to boost their power above their level by taking damage in the process. Of course, it also gives them an advantage in situations where you aren't expecting multiple encounters per day, as they can pour more resources into each round and then get away to recharge, further encouraging 15 minute workdays. It's a case where they definitely improved the game in the sense of making the classes more fun to play, but not necessarily in terms of balance. Oh well, that's certainly better than not improving it at all. Nodwick's party tries to sex itself up. Nodwick ruins things for the rest of them. The play's the thing: Over the past few years, we've had a fair number of articles that would appear in Unearthed Arcana, polished and ready to enhance the gaming experience of a wider audience. Weirdly enough, even though it was released last month, this continues here, with Mike Mearls talking about putting together a party that lacks one of the iconic elements. This would appear in the Players Handbook 2 in a couple of years time, along with a similar amount of talk on 5th members and how having 2 members of one class type affects group dynamics. It looks like this is going to be spread out over quite a few issues though, as he only talks about how to compensate for the lack of your warrior or skillmonkey here. So while this isn't actually rehashed, it's not as ambitious as the old article on single-class groups in issue 217, and does feel very familiar to me. I guess it's symptomatic of their attempts to fine-tune the game that they now feel one party member too few or many is a big thing that needs talking about. I suspect I may want to snooze through this column in the next few issues.</blockquote>

Verification