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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6130047" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 317: March 2004part 8/8Dungeoncraft: Having done several articles on dungeon design, Monte decides to go all expert set on us and re-encapsulate the advice on wilderness adventures. These can serve as both a primary adventure in themselves, especially when you're exploring a new land, or they can function as a pacing mechanism, with the DM varying the frequency of random encounters, detail of weather, and general amount of landscape description as a way to speed the story along if they just want to get the plot done, or give them a chance to think of stuff while letting them wander and throwing a few monsters and terrain obstacles in their way. This all feels pretty basic, given we've had whole themed issues on wilderness adventures before, so I can't get excited here. Unless he's going to build up to some more significant points about the adventuring lifestyle, this one's for the newbies. Sage advice: Is sunder an attack or a special action (An attack. You can mix and match sunders with regular attacks in a full attack. This can get humiliating to enemies if you combine it with whirlwind attack)Do you need a magic weapon of equal or higher strength to sunder a magic weapon (No. The DMG is erroneous. Skip will have a little talking too with the writers.) What good is an admantine or mithral shield (Not really worth the extra cost. One reduces the armor check penalty by 1, while the other weighs half the usual amount. Only do this if you're an obsessive optimizer. Are cold iron weapons resistant to being enchanted temporarily by spells (No. You must be confusing D&D with Changeling. Shoo, ya dirty narrativist.)What does giving up all your attacks mean in the context of hiding behind a tower shield. How much does this protect you. ( You only get a move action that round. It will protect you, but only from attacks from the right side. Area effect spells may spill round the shield. There's lots of extra clauses, that Skip will give you as long as you keep paying. The Eternal Private Sage does not work for free.) Can you use a tower shield while mounted (Yes, but it won't protect your mount as well. )Just how big is the penalty for attacking with a tower shield while nonproficient (A whopping -12! You won't be toughing this one out any time soon. Any more questions on this subject? Oh, you're out of money. Next!) Can ghost touch weapons ignore enemy armor (No.)Ghost touch is worthless, isn't it (WRONG! What are you, retarded or something. I'm the goddamn Sage! It specifically says it counters the usual immunities. So it WORKS! Clear?) What happens when a personal permanent spell is dispelled. Does it return like a magic item effect. (No. You've gotta cast the spell and pay the XP again. Skip recommends inflicting painful vengeance on whoever dispelled it, and making sure word gets around that you're not to be messed with.) While the theme wasn't as weird as I was hoping, given my jaded tastes, they still had a couple of different and really useful articles, and the rest of the issue was pretty solid. It does seem they're improving again after last year's changeover doldrums. Now let's see if they can spare the time for a little laugh this year, or if their leash is still too tight to really relax and get off the treadmill of little generic crunchy articles for any length of time.</blockquote>

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