Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6164201" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 328: February 2005part 3/7Dwarves at war: When you're short and stubby, you have to use somewhat different combat tactics to be effective in battle with humans and even bigger creatures. For dwarves, this is compounded by their low breeding rates, which mean they can win most of the battles against goblinoids, but still lose the war if they're not careful. It's no wonder that they have to specialise in asymmetric warfare and move underground, where small size is an advantage if they want to survive. So this justifies some of their stereotypes, like wearing heavy armor as standard, and undercuts others, like the idea of them fighting honorably. That makes it pretty cool reading, as it shows how much the 3.5 rules do and don't reflect the source material. Plus the tactics here are good for adventuring parties in general, especially in a dungeon environment. I think it manages to balance the various demands on their writers at the moment quite nicely. Nobody's perfect: They've scrapped Heroic Feats, but this article reads like a condensation of 6 of those, with 4 flaws for each of the core demihuman races. Since they can fit 24 of them over 3 pages, this makes this article more efficient than that column, but it is another one that revels in the very worst of stereotypes, and doesn't leave me with much to say. They seem to be about equal with existing Flaws, so twinking out by taking several at 1st level won't be particularly easy, as you'll nearly always lose more than you gain. Once again, the shallow skimming leaves me pretty bored here, showing that being too general results in no-one getting a particularly great treatment. Gaining prestige: Force Missile Mage? That's a very narrow specialisation indeed, more suited to a feat than a whole prestige class. Indeed, they can only find enough tricks enhancing it to make it a 5 level one, and since you have to be at least 6th level to get in, it'll never be the primary component of your build. You sacrifice one spellcasting level at the start, which means you can still get 9th level spells and blow stuff up with far more impressive spells. Since being known to specialise in one energy type, even one that's relatively tricky to resist like force spells is an invitation for enemies to concentrate on nullifying your best tricks, and direct damage-dealing isn't the best use of a spellcaster's valuable time anyway, I think other wizards are quite justified in looking down upon them. Basic blasty spells might be a good way to start your career, but you really ought to be thinking bigger and working on controlling the whole situation once you have a few levels under your belt.</blockquote>

Verification