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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6223651" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 345: July 2006part 4/6Sea Serpents: It's not just humanoids that can grow to enormous sizes in D&D. Snakes can do the same. Indeed, in mythology, many dragons are more serpentine than reptilian, writhing through the water or undergrowth rather than flying. So this article would have been just as appropriate last issue, as it gives us new dragon types. We can always do with new underwater creatures, especially since the last article increased our odds of going on an ocean voyage anyway. Let's see how these big beasties measure up to Kraken and Dragon Turtles in a fight. Crested Sea Serpents produce music through the frills of their quest. This gives them both sonic blasts and hypnotic capabilities, so they're quite capable of accumulating a fair amount of political influence. Engaging one in conversation will be as tricksy as any true dragon. Lantern Sea Serpents also have some hypnotic capability with their dangling lure, but their secondary powers are more visually based, with prismatic spray at higher level. They're exceedingly bossy, doing their best to impose order on all the inhabitants of their territory. You can be sure one will be a pain for people on the coast, especially if they have minions that can survive out of water for extended periods of time. Spiked Sea Serpents are the least socially capable, with a combination of poison and insanity inflicting powers. They can still be pretty cunning, but are more likely to cause havoc than impose any kind of formal leadership over others. And while they might be slightly weaker physically than the other two, they're still a dragon, with all the epic level scaling that implies. I think these three manage to be as interesting as the regular dragons in the MM, rather than just being rampaging beasts good only for a physical fight, like the last few variants on the draconic theme they gave us in the magazine. The ecology of the annis: Man, F Wesley Schneider really has a hard-on for hags, doesn't he. Hag based items in 300. Night hags in issue 324. Greenhags in issue 331. And now these girls.  And it looks like he has more planned as well. Eeech. What's all that about. I find this vaguely worrying. He brings back another neglected 2nd ed deity, (man, there's a lot of them) Cegliune, the hag goddess, and draws on lots of folklorish sources to create a solid, but not particularly surprising ecology. Once again, the formulaic nature of these articles becomes a bit tiresome, making it feel like a computer could write them if you fed it the right data. How am I supposed to come up with interesting things to say under these conditions?</blockquote>

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