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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6162162" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 327: January 2005part 4/7With friends like these: Or surviving your group turning into jackass central, and still having a functional game. Both unbendingly good characters who refuse to pay attention to the realities of a situation and compromise, and nasty ones who either engage in PVP or act like brooding loners can be a real problem. This kind of conflict is incredibly important in creating a good narrative, but not so great when you need to have all your resources working together at maximum efficiency to get through a dungeon. Trouble is, the kind of people who are good at finding exploits to create ridiculously powerful characters are also the ones likely to hog the limelight and get away with being a pain, as you need them. Unfortunately, this article isn't so much about solutions, as simply presenting the diversity within these two categories, with examples for every class to show how they could become annoying in either direction, which means people are actually more likely to create problematic characters after reading this rather than less. Oh well, it wouldn't be too terrible to go back to the 2e ways for a bit, as long as we know there's other places to go as well these days. Variety is important, after all, and it would be dull if all characters had blandly nice personalities. Oop. I've managed to spot another statement of ownership. Looks like things have declined quite a bit in the past year, as they've dropped below 60,000 again. That's not good. No wonder they wanted to do a revamp last year. The ecology of the grimlock: Ooh, good old sonarfaces. Not hugely smart or tricksy, their complete lack of eyes, and reliance on other senses still makes fighting them seem distinct from the other hordes of low level humanoid races. Also distinctive is that they seem less prone to the "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal! :shakes fist:" syndrome, regularly forming symbiotic relationships with illithids, aboleth, medusae and other oogy horrors of the underdark. And they certainly have the potential to be more, with their ability to develop art and culture with their enhanced senses that most creatures couldn't really appreciate. They can be a fun race to pit against players. Another decent but unexceptional, highly formulaic entry in this series. Winning races: Diaboli! Now there's a turnup for the books. Also one that's never going to survive the transition to 3e unnerfed. Complete immunity to magical effects from creatures native to the normal 3 dimensions? That aint going to fly. They even take away their other signature move, the double speed cartwheeling trick, which hardly counts as gamebreaking, and nerf their poison tail. (which was already incredibly weak by BD&D standards) I think those two could easily have fit in if they were willing to make them an LA+1 race. But no, it seems they're prioritising being sensible over being unique. The setting detail survives slightly better, with the changes to the cosmology presented as gradual things rather than retcons that create more plot hooks. (even creatures from the dimension of nightmares are scared of the Far Realms' sanity destroying oogyness) So this could have been worse, but definitely isn't my favourite updating, as it makes an incredibly interesting race with tons of plot potential slightly less so. Disappointing.</blockquote>

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