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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6211412" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 342: April 2006part 3/6Full frontal nerdity weirds out it's players. Who is responsible? Do de do do, do de do do, etc etc. They also have tons of other strips. This is rather disconcerting. Just how popular is Aaron?  Beyond the pale: Now this is a topic that's lain fallow for a little longer. Bringing back the dead last got a big article in issue 210, which did quite a bit to look at the logical consequences of it. This is related, but far more mechanically focussed, as is their wont these days, talking about ways you can tweak resurrection in your games to make it seem more consequential. Most of them are ways to make it harder to do, but some are interesting things that could happen to you mechanically or socially after coming back to life. Overall, i don't think it's quite as good as the 210 one, but the amount of overlap is small enough that they complement each other rather than turning into a rehash, so it's still a positive result in terms of adding to the magazine as an extended body of lore.  Core beliefs: Olidammara. Ah, the laughing rogue. The perfect justification for having a cleric/rogue in the party. And also, if this stuff is read wrong, an entirely reasonable setup for having a character who plays pranks on their companions on a regular basis, for part of their duties is making sure no-one gets too bogged down in habits or takes life too seriously. Damn good thing there's no kender on Oerth, or he'd be a scary powerful deity. Of course, there are certain other pranksterish sorts, and he has a rather interesting relationship with them. Zagyg imprisoned him for a while, but he managed to turn that to his advantage, and they're now more friendly rivals than mortal enemies. And like Boccob, he has his own demigod sorta-servant, Rudd, who's all about the fine line between luck and skill, and so seems another one likely to be popular with adventurers. As with last time, there's plenty of stuff for players to use, including a rather good new spell that gives them limited access to bard spells, while avoiding the twinkery that unlimited supplement access brings, and a slaad proxy who isn't a complete dingbat. It's all rather good. It may have taken quite a bit of perusal to assemble the scraps of info from the old Greyhawk books, but there was plenty of good source material to draw upon in this case, and Sean continues to tread the fine line between reverence and expansion well. The main worry now is that like the Demonomicon, this series may lose it's shine over time through sheer predictability. The power of faith: From feats that boost the powers of your domains, we go to feats that give you extra powers if you worship a specific deity. Clerics really are spoiled for choice when it comes to buffing themselves up and specialising in particular parts of their portfolio. Unlike the previous article, which was usable right from 1st level, these require you to be a 3rd level spellcaster or better to take, and the tricks they give you are somewhat more powerful. They still follow a pretty strict formula though. One special ability or a buff of an existing power, plus adding 3-4 spells to your regular spell list that are normally wizard ones or domain exclusive. (and in a few cases, are new spells only accessible through these initiate feats. ) Once again, this feels like it would be very easy to expand on, creating similar feats for the many other gods out there in D&D supplements, especially since so many of the spells are merely more powerful variants of existing ideas. I find it very hard indeed to be excited by this. Oh well, let's hope they work out well in actual play, like so many of these articles that don't make great reading, but have solid crunch behind them.</blockquote>

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