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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6141470" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 321: July 2004part 3/8The way of the guns: One of our most frequent topics ever pops up again. Issues 28, 57, 60, 70, 124, 176, 199, 232 and the 2001 Annual not enough for you? (plus who knows how many of the Polyhedron minigames these past couple of years) Better get ready to duck, because Iiiiiiiit's firearms time again! Where the last one had lots of interesting setting material, this is on the dry historical side, providing stats for lots of different gun variants, along with a bit of information on where they come from, and of course how much they'll cost you in D&D land. The fact that they're all exotic weapons means characters who just come across them won't be able to make best use of them, which is a pretty obvious balancing factor. So this is another case where the mechanics are probably improved from previous editions, but the flavour is rather lacking, so you'll have to plunder the archives or inject it yourself. They may have more setting stuff this year than last, but there's still too much stuff that's been made consciously generic to the point of boredom. Our second themed article is another sequel. Planar Dragons get a second article, also focussing on the neutral and upper planes. It's nice to see them filling in symmetries, but it does not fill me with confidence as to the quality of their ideas at the moment. I guess it's more stuff that's useful but not thrilling then. I wish they'd do more epic articles and get these ideas out of their system in one go. Adamantine Dragons are the one preexisting type here, and anyone sufficiently geeky will already know they're from Bytopia, and that last edition there were only a flat 2 of them, one for each layer. So much for that, as they're given standard age categories and family setups here. Their adamantine natural weaponry makes them particularly good at penetrating DR, grappling, and sundering the weapons of others, so despite their scary appearance, they can actually go for the nonlethal option to end a fight quite easily. Which makes complete sense given their role. Gnomes can rest safely in their beds knowing these guys are nearby.  Arboreal Dragons take their cues from fey, which also makes perfect sense. They breathe thorns, and are also rather good at polymorphing. You can expect to see a good few half-dragons based on them pop up in the future then. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Axial Dragons are from Mechanus, and are all perfectly symmetrical, polished and exactingly focussed on whatever their goals are. Their magical abilities aren't particularly impressive, but the ones they have are pretty tightly applied, and if anyone can navigate the bureaucracy of Nirvana to get assistance in their schemes, it'll be them. Beast Dragons are pretty much the opposite, covered in spikes and horns and lethal hunters who won't necessarily spare you just because you happen to be good as well. The circle of life has plenty of leeway in maintaining the balance, especially on the plane where nature is at it's strongest. Concordant Dragons are also Rilmani, and like all Rilmani, they're based on a particular type of metal (which does kinda conflict with the general D&D tendency of metallic dragons to be good. ) Still, uranium is such nasty stuff that I suppose you can forgive that. Their breath weapon has no effect on true neutral characters, while being devastating to the extreme alignments, and their magical skillset is focussed on divination and antiscrewage. If the aurumachs need to bring out the big guns to protect the universe, who better to call?In addition, they have a template for Archdragons, who devote themselves purely to a single alignment, and get quite a few extra magical tricks as a result. Once again, the stat changes follow logically on from the remit, which leaves me with little to complain about, but little to thrill to either. Now, will they fill in the other third or so outer planes sometime in the future?</blockquote>

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