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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6166546" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 329: March 2005part 2/7First watch: The climate splatbooks continue, with Sandstorm. The harsh desert produces some badass race variants and prestige classes. Just the thing for if your DM's a hardass who likes tracking rations and water. They also give substantial promotion for various minis, including official ones based upon the recent MM3 creatures. On the third party side, Todd Mcfarlaine's representation of Conan, and a rather large dragon seem pretty decent, but it's Rackham's black paladins that get their top marks. Seems like everything comes prepainted these days. Quite a few cool D20 books this month too. The best of Grimtooth's traps gives you another chance to get your sadist on. Now if there's one thing this magazine hasn't done enough of in terms of crunch, it's traps. Monte Cook does everything a little more refined, in Arcana Evolved. A whole new set of classes and magic, feats and worldbuilding, all fitting together a bit more neatly than regular D&D. I do rather like this. There's also another epic book. Full metal fantasy: Iron kingdoms world guide. Another world comes into the OGL fold, so you can crossover with ease. Another game aid designed for quick ease of play. Green Dragon release not only more stamps for marking objects on your battlemaps, but little rollers as well. So cute! I can see why they picked this one to promote. Our computer game this month is another D&D one. Dragonshard brings Eberron to the screen. Mass combat as well? Interesting. Don't remember hearing much about this one. Was it any good? And finally, we have a movie. A Sound of Thunder. Ray Bradbury provides the inspiration for a tale of time traveling weirdness. Only spun out quite a bit. And not done very well, if reviews are to be believed. Oh well, the original story is still here. The beasts of beowulf: Beowulf is definitely very good source material for D&D, as it showcases not only adventuring material, but also the other stages of the adventurer lifecycle, cascading plots as the consequences of your actions come back to haunt you, and settling down with a realm of your own at high level. (until an even bigger threat comes along to finish you off for good) It surprises me little to learn that this particular set of myths was dug from the archives and repopularised by none other than a certain J. R. R. Tolkien in the early 20th century. Being a teacher at a prestigious university and a cunning linguist lets you have access to rare source materials like virtually no other position, and it makes me wonder what else is lying forgotten in those dusty halls, ready to be liberally stolen from and repurposed, since it's all well in public domain by now. I certainly know there's quite a few cool stories in the bible that get neglected compared to the same old set of adam, noah, moses and jesus that get brought up again and again. But anyway. This article gives us pretty straight mechanical conversions of Beowulf, and his three biggest adversaries. Beowulf is a 15th level fighter, and they set Grendel so he's a challenge, but not an extreme one, Grendel's mum so she's a tough but achievable challenge for him, and of course the dragon so he can't really beat it by brute force on his own. That's pleasingly joined-up thinking by the writer and editor, and a huge improvement on old-school articles full of sample NPC's with illegal abilities. He would be more optimal mixing a level or two of ranger with his fighter ones so he could get those wilderness skills without going cross-class though. Oh well, can't expect miracles of charop every time, can we?</blockquote>

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