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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6151740" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 324: October 2004part 4/8Exorcising equipment: We've had plenty of helpings of undead related magical items over the years. Here's another helping of things to help you hunt them. Some are purely mundane but ingenious, such as blood thickeners to ruin a vampire's evening, or a reinforced weapon sheath that lets you switch from slashing to bludgeoning easily at no extra weight. Others are mildly supernatural, such as a holy candle that boosts your turning attempts, and little mites that can strip the flesh from dead things in rounds while ignoring living ones. All are cheap enough for you to buy and use in quantity after the first few levels. Similarly, they have some advice on how to get the most out of existing equipment like fire, mirrors and rotted meat, which seems pretty cogent. If you can't make the best use out of mundane tools, do you deserve to get the really cool magical goodies? I think I approve of this one. Chilled to the bone: A helping of arctic monsters? We haven't had one of those this edition, so this might not be original, but comes as welcome. Let's see if they're appropriate to the month by being chilling in both senses rather than just one. Black Ice Golems are infused with negative energy by gruesome sacrifices, letting them drain levels on top of their already inconvenient cold aura and immunity to most magic. You can outrun them, but you can't outclimb them, making getting away a dicey business as well. Combine that with Reach and a decent grapple score, and they can really generate the lockdown if given smart orders. Icy Prisoners are undead created by drowning in freezing water. They lurk underneath the ice, and then break through and drag you under to join them forever. Sounds like a pretty dull unlife. At least these ones won't be able to take over the whole world with their spawn cascading, given their environmental restrictions. Steaming Soldiers also died from the cold, but go the other way, venturing out into the world to feed off the heat of the living. They too spawn cascade, and their ability to screw with visibility makes them a pretty scary antagonist in groups. You wouldn't want to stumble across a whole converted village, that's for sure. Winterlings are mischevious fae that like to cause avalanches, snowstorms, fog, and similar cold-based environmental <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=":)" /><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=":)" /><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=":)" /><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=":)" />ery to annoy travellers. With flight and very high hide scores, it'll be fairly tricky to have a straight-up fight with them. Muahaha. These lot all feel pretty iconic, which is a good thing, as it lets you get more than one use out of them before they get boring. Get more bang for your bones: Before we get to the regular columns, we have another article that's basically a single idea stretched to just over a page. How do you get the most bang for your buck when casting animate dead, since you can only control a very limited number of them at once in 3e. The answer seems to be larger monsters with lots of multiple attacks. While they might lose intelligence and spell-like abilities, things like hydras, dragons and mariliths still retain the ability to chew through large amounts of lesser enemies in a single round. And if you add templates that boost their abilities without affecting their HD you can cheat a bit to add even more power. Now you just need to figure out how to kill them without ruining the bodies. I suppose since you can only have so many, you've got no incentive to stockpile, throwing waves of zombies at enemies and then raising their replacements as you go makes more sense than spending months gravedigging. A fairly amusing little bit of charop fun, good for both players and DM's. The ecology of night hags: Ahh, hags. We had greenhags way back in issue 125, which touched on night hag mating habits a little. This does take a slightly different tack, making it surprisingly difficult for them to create offspring, or at least new night hags, as who could say what their children might become if they can't complete the ritual transformation described here. Still, that's probably for the best, since they are fairly powerful, and utterly selfish, with no trick too foul in their eternal struggles to get more larvae and dominate other creatures. Quite flavourful, and with plenty of ingenious tricks to help you make the most of their powers, this is a fairly good ecology, encouraging mobile scenarios full of tense negotiations, hit and run attacks, and similar evil fun. Should make for some good adventures.</blockquote>

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