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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6215763" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 343: May 2006part 3/6Creature catalog V: This time, it's not just pure nostalgia in our second expanded collection of monsters this year, but some new stuff as well. Not that they couldn't have, given the number of unconverted monsters still languishing in the OotS vault, but the creativity of the modern writers will not be denied! If it's any good, on the other hand, is a different matter, as usual. Chupacabra haven't appeared in the magazine before, which is surprising when you consider how many vampire variants have turned up over the years. They aren't too badass in combat, but the fun is really in hunting them down before they suck too much of the livestock. Not very surprising really. Hex Dragons are an unpleasant, magically powerful lot who are more likely to act in disguise and do the whole Xanatos gambit thing than regular dragons. Curses and cheating, they seem like a nasty one to fight. Tome Dragons are slightly more pleasant, but still exceedingly cerebral. They do like a good cuppa though, so bring your own if you want to talk ancient lore with them. Nice to see someone still likes that kind of whimsy. Rune Golems seem curiously familiar, but I can't remember from where. Oh well, so many golem types over the years. They're suitably intelligent and magical for their name, with several druidish powers and quite a nice look to them. Gray Shivers are what you get when you don't clean up a lich's remains properly after killing them and smashing their phylactery. Any bug taking up residence in their skull gets bombarded with megalomaniacal memories, with hilarious results. That's both inventive and funny, and reinforces the fact that they're near impossible to get rid of. I like this one a lot. Hellchain weavers are gigantic spiders made of chains that scare even Kytons. They'll turn a whole area into a chainy nightmare realm, and then pick you off, proving surprisingly adept at hiding despite their size. It'll take godzilla to stomp on these, and he'd probably hurt his feet. Living Walls are one of our notable missing monsters from old editions. Despite what Skip has said in the past, they decide to make them undead now rather than constructs, which seems more intuitive. They are however an almighty pain to stat up decently now, since you have to individually detail all the things absorbed into it.  Needs a more streamlined method. Malfera are originally from the D&D Companion set, and an awesome disturbing monster I'm quite pleased to see again. They get all the powers they used to, and a few more too, like being able to enter people's dreams and turn them into nightmares. They seem like a good candidate for being made into an affably evil recurring NPC, curiously enough. Norkers were the 1+2 humanoid variants, placing them just above hobgoblins on the pecking order. In conversion, they retain their natural armor bonus, but get substantial mental penalties to their stats. Whether they're worth it as a LA+1 race is debatable. Nuckalavee are vastly more powerful than sahuguin, but occupy a similar niche, aquatic reptilian humanoids who are also reasonably dangerous for short periods on land. Not very similar to their previous incarnation, for some reason. Warturtles, like warhorses, do exactly what they say on the tin, only for aquatic riders. They have spiky shells, so they can do the good old fashioned barrel rush and hurt lots of enemies at once. White Harts are the generic version of the mary-sue leader of Blue Rose, elven connected, quite powerful magic deer that you have to be very nice indeed to ride. Don't we already have unicorns for that job? So overall this is a bit better than the last one, but still has it's daft moments. Still plenty of usable stuff though, and I guess that's what counts. Keep spoiling me with options right till the end.</blockquote>

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