Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6163883" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 328: February 2005part 2/7First watch: Halflings? In Races of the Wild? Specious. As. <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=":)" />. Categorisation. Raptorians? Right up there with Shadowdark, Wilden and Razorclaw as a crap name. Skip Williams still can't do fluff to save his life, apparently. Anyway, another splatbook series winds it's way merrily onward. Seems like more than half their releases these days fit into that category. Lost empires of faerun, of course, takes us back to all those places that went through their own personal apocalypse. As we've seen repeatedly, especially in the late 90's, they certainly do have a lot of them. I'm betting that gives plenty of room for magic items, and quite possibly unearthable prestige classes. Just the thing to give your players rope to hang themselves with. Also getting quite a bit of attention are White Wolf's licenses of old D&D properties, Ravenloft and Gamma world. One an ok-ish continuation of the existing setting and metaplot, the other a reboot that changes lots of things and tried to make them more serious and community focussed, with painful results. It's odd to have them supported, but not appearing in the official magazine. Wonder who was responsible for that decision. Two more handy dandy game aids this month. A bunch of markers that you can use to track status effects without scribbling on your sheet every damn time. And a line of molds, providing another solution to the problem of never having enough pieces for your big dungeons. Guess quite a few people are experimenting in this area. Boardgames as well? Seems like every month, they're covering something new. Navia Dratp seems to be a mecha oriented variant of chess. It's certainly pretty. Can you find the time and space to give it a shot? And a card game too. Grave Robbers from Outer Space. Cheesy B-movies get affectionately lampooned. If Munchkin is losing it's shine, perhaps this will make a good replacement. Videogames also get in on the action. Devil may cry 3 brings the bishiness and the huge swords with aplomb. And the cut-scenes. Gotta have the extensive cut scenes. And on top of that we see that computer games are experimenting with the subscription based model, rather than buying games individually. The internet really does change everything. Paragons of the Kindred: Using Kindred as a collective term for the demihuman races? Sorry, doesn't work for me at all, since both incarnations of Vampire have so thoroughly appropriated it as a euphemism. A collection of prestige classes based upon racial stereotypes doesn't sound particularly appealing to me either. If they tried that with real world ethnicities we'd never hear the end of the flamewars. Chimeric Champions of Garl Glittergold let gnomish clerics also become exceedingly effective illusionists, gaining more deceptive spell-like abilities and the ability to create magic items with illusionist powers so all your buds can get in on the gag. As the only one of these with full spellcasting progressions as well, they're easily the most powerful of these, presuming they don't make so many items that they never advance in level, and kick ass if extended into epic levels. Itinerant Warders of Yondalla mix priestly spellcasting with roguish agility and halfling sociability, making them pretty flexible, but almost definitely drifting towards a support role. Many players may wind up passing them by because of that. Justice Hammers of Moradin gain some buffs to their combat abilities and general spell-like tricks, but with only 3/4 BAB and 1/2 spellcasting progression, they won't be able to make the best use of them overall. Mystic Keepers of Corellon Larethian also try to mix priestly progression with elvish stereotypes and general protective powers, which means they don't do any one of those particularly brilliantly. Once again, trying to be a generalist is shown to be suboptimal in 3e. Not particularly impressed with this collection.</blockquote>

Verification