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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6255806" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 357: July 2007part 4/6Defiled monsters: We continue the nature themed section of the magazine with some good old fashioned eco-froofery. The idea that nature has some ideal natural balance that humans are ruining with pollution, and eventually it will strike back may be less fashionable than in the days of captain planet, but people still love a good ironic revenge story. So here we go again with some monsters we created ourselves, and now have to figure out how to deal with in turn. Oh well. From the adventurer's perspective that just means twice the XP. It's the Ciiiiiiircle of life. And it most definitely moves us all. Beastwraiths are composite ghosts formed when large numbers of animals die traumatically and aren't properly eaten or buried. If the cause of the deaths was MAN, this will probably get hazardous for anyone trying to pass through the area in the future. Not sure what they'll do if it was just natural fire or disease, but it'll probably look pretty spooky too. Bloodlances are what happens if you saw off a unicorn's horn, but leave it alive. They grow a grotesque imitation out of cartilage and scar tissue, and go quite quite mad. This will probably bite you in the ass later along the line. If you're going to go evil, you can't half-ass it. Don't let them go, Chain them up in the dungeon and keep harvesting the faux horns. I'm sure you can use them to make some spectacularly nasty magical items. Deadwood Revenants are pissed off undead dryads. They retain the ability to control animals, and can also curse people quite effectively. Stuff like this is why D&D retains so much untouched wilderness, as you have to fight so hard and lose so many people for every acre you clear and build upon, and even the survivors may have problems for the rest of their lives. It's a good thing at least some gods are on our side, eh? Arcane botanica: We've done animals, now for a bit of plant based material. A dozen more magical plants to add to the D&D ecology may not be a game-changer at this point in time, but it's still not unwelcome either, as there's plenty of ground to cover here with only half a dozen or so articles in the magazine's long history. (82, 108, 137, 167, 211, 292 are the ones that I can find) They're split between extraplanar ones and magically created plants, mostly done by wizards as druids tend to like things just as they are. The more powerful ones are increasingly difficult to keep alive, with the most powerful one (which grants wishes when it flowers at rare, irregular intervals) requiring DC40 gardening checks to care for and harvest properly. All of them have tricks that adventurers could definitely make use of, so this definitely isn't like the old school mundane herbalism articles they've done before. So they're still combining solid, balanced mechanics and decent setting material in their current articles, even as the magazine draws to a close. That's very pleasing to see. The ecology of the titan: Ahh, Gods vs Titans. Now there's another thing that's definitely been on the up recently. Exalted, Scion, Scarred lands. It proved popular enough that the whole gods vs primordial thing got hard coded into one of the most important cosmological dichotomies in 4e. This is an interesting bit of foreshadowing. Only in this ecology, it's the other way round to usual. The gods created the titans, then successfully smacked them down when they tried to rebel. Not sure what lesson to take from that. Probably that temperamental spoiled brats who get every advantage handed to them on a silver plate really don't deserve to be in charge. Still, despite their defeat, there are still very few creatures that can deal with one on equal terms, so they never really learn restraint. They also tend to be fickle as a way of staving off the boredom of living eternally. Not too surprising on the fluff front then. On the crunch side though, they get some kickass stuff. Two variant titan types. And incredibly badass stats for Cronus, almost as powerful as a hecatoncheires. Now that's an epic opponent. This in itself makes this ecology worth it. We do not see nearly enough creatures on that scale, and it'd definitely be interesting, if probably rather long-winded, testing out how he actually compares to the gods as published in Deities and Demigods.</blockquote>

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