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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6146183" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 322: August 2004part 7/8Faiths of Faerun finishes off as it started, with a double bill, as the revamp approaches, and evidently they don't want to waste already written material before giving it the axe. Since it was never particularly regular, nor really settled on what it wanted to actually do with itself, even though it did manage to come up with some cool stuff along the way, I suspect this is one of the less mourned of the departed columns, along with The Current Clack and Dastardly Deeds & Devices. We only have a limited page count, so it goes to those who push hard and regularly to ensure they're included. No time for the shy and reticent, even if they do often have better ideas. Our first article is Nether hounds of Kiaransalee. Hang on, didn't she get killed by Orcus after he came back to life? Death for gods is an awkward thing, especially now the Realms is in a different cosmology, despite sharing a lot of the old gods and events. Continuity becomes such a headache once retcons come into the equation.  It's too much bother for me to unpick at the moment. Our new crunch is a vicious new template, for turning things into said Nether Hounds. Slavering undead monstrosities, they're the kind of thing that relish ripping you apart with their bare hands, and with terrifying yowls, excellent senses, and high movement rates, they're well suited to hunting you down over a desolate moor or labyrinthine dungeon. Since it's a template, you could add them to anything from ghouls, to frost wights, depending on how scary you want the encounter to be. Not the most ground-breaking idea these days, but pretty well implemented. Our second one is for another prestige class, the Deathstalker of Bhaal. Now he's definitely dead. It's a big plot point actually. Yet ironically, in some ways this has actually increased his popularity, and there's a worrying number of people who want to see him back and are willing to devote themselves to this prestige class to see it happen. It's only a 5 level one, but it culminates in them become exceedingly difficult to finish off permanently, with autoraising as standard. For a solitary villain without a party or villainous organisation to back them up, that's a huge advantage, normally only achievable by wizards with complex contingencies set up. The other abilities put them midway between cleric and assassin, which makes sense, but may require a bit of careful management for optimum power. I'm sure you're used to it by now. Ironically, it's quite an impressive end to this column, which could definitely have gone on longer if managed better. Oh cruel fate! :wipes forehead: Why must you taunt us so with unfulfilled promises, yet punish us so harshly if we fail to fulfil ours! Dungeoncraft is off to Dungeon, appropriately, but at least Monte finishes off this particular topic here so he can start a new one there, and not confuse people who only read one magazine or the other. Having spent two issues on building personalities, he asks the question: Does a character still have a personality if they aren't interacting with anything? Which is pretty deep, really. People are very much defined by their relationships to others, and most change how they act depending on who they're with. You can spend ages designing some platonic ideal of their personality, only to have in-game events push them in a very different direction. So when you make a character, think about the other people you've already designed in the area, if they'd know them, and what their relationship with them is. A few distinctive relationships transform a cardboard cutout into a unique character with surprising speed. So having slightly fewer characters, but thinking about them more will make each more interesting, and hopefully they won't get killed off so quickly. As is too often the case, the longer a series goes on, the more distinctive it becomes, and I'm irritated that they're ending here just after telling us something new for a change.</blockquote>

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