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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6160363" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 326: December 2004part 8/8Sage advice: How many HD does a 1st level pixie rogue have (2. He's at a big disadvantage in an ECL appropriate party, yess. You stab him, he goes splat, teeheeheehee)If a spectre hits him, does he lose 2 ECL's, or does he die (He dies. Ssserves him right, collins collins.)How do you deal with the LA from gaining a template mid game. (You won't gain any more levels until you pay it off. But you get to be stronger than your friendses for a while.)Do creatures with special powers increase their DC's when they gain class levels (No. Less and less useful, collins collins. Thats why there's the buyoff option in unearthed arcana) If you shapechange into a creature with special powers, how do you calculate the DC (Usual creatures HD, collins collins. )Can a half celestial gain the dragon type from dragon disciple (No, its lower on the type hierarchy, collins collins. Still get all the special powers though.) Why do things get ECLs higher than their CR. (Many abilities are more useful when PC's have them. Very annoying, collins collins)How do CR's for traps work. Why don't they go above 10. (ssame challenge as similar monsters, yess. Hard to make traps above CR 10 without making them instantly deadly, or too easy to a prepared party. Too much swinginess bad in encounters, yesss? ) How much XP is a EL 5 encounter worth. (Depends what's in it ) Should you increase a monster's CR if it has powerful magic items (Maybe, collins collins. Not too much, though. ) Coup de grace: Player Tips and Adventurers Tricks breathed their last last issue, and this column ironically gets the coup de grace delivered to it this one, showing that they're already starting to struggle to maintain the same set of little columns every single issue. Maybe they're regretting showing what's behind the curtain, because this is one by Mike Mearls on how he became a professional writer. Basically, there's three steps. Treat it like a real job, sit down and write a certain amount every day, no matter how rubbish it is, and then clean it up in editing. (or put it in magazine articles anyway and let it cause massive nerdrage <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" /> ) Remember to make time to actually play, as it'll stoke your creativity, and make sure the new stuff you come up with gets stress tested. And make sure you submit your work to anyone who's remotely likely to be able to use it, and then pay attention to their feedback and try again regularly even if they turn you down. As with most of the other times they've talked about this, they make it quite clear that natural writing talent is secondary to drive, persistence in the face of adversity, and ability to connect with the right people, and that getting on the first rung is probably the hardest part of getting a job. Whether that gives you hope for your chances or not is very much up to you. Looks like things are already starting to change again around here, as they react to feedback on their new format, just as they did with the more dodgy fonts and layout choices immediately after 3e's release. That gives me hope that even if the individual columns remain hit and miss, and often very formulaic, the overall presentation of the magazine will continue to improve, so they can go out on a high. Let's see what surprises the last three years hold for me, if any.</blockquote>

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