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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6243230" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 353: March 2007part 4/6Princes of elemental good: Well, looks like they're filling up this symmetry at last. 6 months after updating the princes of elemental evil to 3e, they're giving us stats for their long-hinted good counterparts. Well, it's not a perfect symmetry, as there's only the 4 of them. They didn't have to be for the same one, but maybe at least one para or quasielemental extra would be nice. Oh well. Let's see how these compare statistically, and what personality quirks they have. Ben-Hadar looks like a handsome humanoid male made of water with lobster claws, which means he probably has to deal with disturbing yet comedic advances from Blibdoolpoolp viewing him as the ideal mate. Oddly enough, he does get on with Rennbuu, the slaad lord of colours from issue 221, since he can create all sorts of prismatic prettiness. So this instantly shows that they've seriously done their research, if they're drawing on characters that obscure and thinking about their relationships to one-another. This looks like it might actually be more interesting than just a symmetry filler. Chan, like Yan-C-Bin, is naturally invisible, as is her home, built out of purest crystal. This naturally pushes people towards meditative thought and careful examination of their environment. She's the only one who's higher CR than her evil counterpart, and has far more allies than enemies, which means she might be able to win with some heroes to make a decisive move. Well, the plane of air always was the most liveable for people, even if you have to become skilled at controlled falling. Let's make this a better universe for you and me. Sunnis is the most powerful of them, making both the earth archomentals the bosses if they were ever to come to a full-scale straightforward battle royale. She lives in a gigantic endlessly pouring hourglass, and apparently used that time/sleep association to make the tarrasque sleep more than 90% of the time and not devastate the world. (and you don't want to find out what kind of prince is needed to kiss it to break this curse. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> ) That definitely adds to D&D's mythology, and her long list of allies and enemies gives you plenty of excuses to use her in your games. Zaaman Rul is the weakest of these at only CR 20. Given the number of evil creatures in the plane of fire, he's pretty beleaguered in trying to promote nondestructive government there. Well, at least melting the weapons of anyone who attacks you is a good start in promoting pacifism. For all that fire may not be inherently evil, it still has the biggest alignment skew in it's inhabitants. This will definitely take more work for the PC's to figure out. Well, it's good to have a range of challenges to give the PC's requiring different skills. So this article not only gives you some more good creatures to balance you the monsters, but actually gives you plenty to do with them, which is sometimes a problem with say, celestials and the upper planes. That's handy even if you aren't a D&D lore obsessive like the writers. The ecology of the keeper: Yay! It's the creepy guys who originated in Planescape, and seem even more appropriate now, post Men in Black and The Matrix. Gotta love that iconic trenchcoats and shades imagery. (Also gotta love the goggles doing nothing, nach) They appear, they ferret out secrets, and kill you for knowing too much. But what's the secret behind them? Where do they come from, what are they, and why do they do what they do? The answer given here isn't too unexpected. A wizard did it, and then they got out of hand and killed him because he was dumb enough to order them to eliminate everyone who knew the secret of their creation. Where have we seen that before? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Another fairly standard ecology, although it has to stretch a bit to allow hive mind creatures enough individuality to advance in class levels separately. A bit of a wasted opportunity really, when you consider the cool things that could have been done with them. Ho hum.</blockquote>

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