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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6148905" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 323: September 2004part 5/8Spellcraft: Another renaming and resurrection here. Arcane Lore hasn't been around for a couple of years now, but it looks like people want their regular infusions of new spells back. Exactly why they chose to rename it I'm not sure, but better here than not. So this time, our topic is Force spells. One we haven't covered before, simply because it was only formalised as a power type with it's own specific benefits in 3e. And now it's virtually a new element, running neck and neck with sonic effects as the weapon of choice for the discerning spellcaster who wants to bypass immunities as often as possible. Already a viable option, let's exploit it a little more, encourage people to develop resistances, and so move the cycle onto a new energy source. Chain Missiles isn't as badass as chain lightning, but that's the thing about being lower level. Same basic principle. Emerald Planes will give you cover from physical and ethereal creatures. Weightless, near indestructible walls always come in handy for redecoration, regardless of color. Force Chest is another rather hard to hurt bit of kit. You can even make it semi-transparent, taunt people with the contents. Frankly, you're asking for heroes to come in and kill you, take your stuff if you do that. Force Ram is a bit weedy as an attack spell, but it is a druid one. Raw magic energy isn't really their forte, is it. Mass Mage Armor is a pretty obvious extrapolation. Buff your whole party. Filler, really. Shard Storm is another moderately nasty blasty effect. Relatively Small AoE and damage, but lasting lots of rounds, it'll help you keep up with the warlocks. Tenser's Greater Floating Disk is another bit of unimaginative filler to make page count line up. That's only getting worse, if anything, despite the revamp. Gaining Prestige: So this is the new prestige class column. What, was Class Acts not good enough for you? <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" /> This is one where the format remains fairly similar though, apart from the all-white background making it faster to read. The Spirit Speaker is our first offering. A secondary spellcaster in the Assassin mould, with a fairly substantial selection of other tricks built around the idea of going into trances and getting spirits to buff them up, they seem designed to make an interesting play experience, but not necessarily for maximum effectiveness, since they can only apply one buff at a time, and they only last for one round per level. The do get all good saves and an excellent skill selection though, so they do have their merits compared to full spellcasters. As a generalist, they'd make a good 5th member to a team or solo character, but get outperformed by specialists in their field. Magic Shop: Bazaar of the Bizarre actually gets it's name shortened in the clarification process, which is an improvement in one way, if not in terms of being interesting and vocabulary expanding. It's another one where you can't really change the format that much though. And the topic is dwarf-made items, which certainly isn't a new one. Is their ingenuity endless, or will the items themselves be ones seen before. Armor of Thror gives people hitting it electric shocks. Seen that one before in the D&D companion set. Nice to see it back again. Breastplates of Hardiness absorb damage, effectively giving you temporary hit points at the start of each fight. Low key, but I'm sure the benefit will add up over a campaign. Gauntlets of Bashing are your basic punch enhancers. Noting to see here, move along, move along, and if you don't, the knockback'll make sure you do. Mugs of Clear-headedness are fairly amusing, showing some self-awareness in a race that isn't always known for it. Unfortunately it only has a limited number of uses per day, so it can't sober up a whole team if trouble crops up suddenly. Being a cool head in a crisis will hopefully still count for something. Rings of Spelunking boost your basic dungeon knowledge, and let you shrink your way out of a tight spot in a pinch. If you have this one, you can expect to wind up going first in the marching order all the time. The Statuette of the All-Father effectively adds the Strength Domain to your spell list if you fit the criteria. Fairly banal mechanically for such an interesting description.</blockquote>

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