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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6262997" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 359: September 2007 part 6/8Treasures of Greyhawk: Greyhawk might not have had an official column for quite some time, but it's still technically an active campaign setting along with Toril and Eberron. They're hardly going to leave without giving it a little love, especially since Erik is still lead editor. So here's another collection of named items who's owners we should all be familiar with, since they appeared in all the corebooks from 1e to 3e. This also gives them another excuse to tell us more about the people behind the magic, while still providing game-useful material. Will any of these be remembered like the originals? Unlikely, but I really don't think that's the point. Heward's Bell can summon or banish all sorts of things, depending on how you ring it. Disco dancers are not among those things, unfortunately. Heward's Lyre of Truth ( and isn't that a terrible pun name that'd fit right into Gary's original campaign ) lets you force people to tell the truth when played, detect lies by plucking a single string, and if you detune it, it lets you do the opposite and bend the truth to your advantage. That's both useful and full of flavor in how it works. Awesome. Keoghtom's Spidery Map lets you find nearly anything apart from it's creator. Building in back doors is a tremendously sensible thing to do for any creator, and it's good to see him keeping up that tradition. Keoghtom's Staff of Purification is a reversed Staff of Affliction that retains it's original sinister appearance. Even evil artifacts can be redeemed if you know how, as the magazine has shown on several occasions, and isn't that so much better than simply destroying them. Murlynd's Hat is of course a cowboy one, reminding us that Greyhawk has silly crossovers baked in from it's early days. It's abilities are relatively minor compared to it's sheer cool factor, and he regularly loses them and has to make new ones, so you never know what you'll get. But it'll probably be awesome in at least some small lifesaving way. Murlynd's Rattlesnake Whip lets you disarm people, grapple them, climb buildings and swing on chandeliers. Anyone with a remotely swashbucklerish bent would delight in having this. Nolzur's Orb slowly and continuously oozes his marvellous pigments, and has several other intriguing colour based effects as well. Make sure you don't just leave it in your backpack with everything else, or they're likely to wind up all sorts of odd colours and make a terrible mess. Quaal's Cloak provides you with a full 50 feather tokens before it gets too threadbare to work, and in the meantime gives you a constant feather fall effect to save your hide. Will you go for the long or short term benefits? Quaal's Surrependitous Armor of Expedience has 0 spell failure chance and gives you boosted movement rates and flight when you need it. Any multiclass warrior/arcane caster will be very happy indeed to be able to use both classes features to full effect. The Robe of the Mad Archmage reminds us that other magical items beyond weapons can be sentient. It's as mischevious as it's creator, letting you unleash quickened spells at a whim and store spare spell levels for an emergency so you always have a trick up your sleeve. Just don't be boring, and don't try to wear other magical clothing, or it'll get jealous. Tasha's Grinning Idol is surprisingly boring, simply boosting your mundane social skills and the DC of your Enchantment spells. Oh well, it's still a pretty flexible trick, even if it's not particularly inventive in itself. Yragne's Signet has some minor protection magics for the wearer, but it's main significance is unlocking a bunch of magically sealed buildings around Greyhawk City, thus opening up new adventure locations for the party that gets their hands on it. And since no-one else has been able to get in in centuries, they're pretty likely to have interesting stuff remaining in them. Happy treasure hunting. This is a pretty good ending to their magical item collections. Not only is the flavour far better than most, but the effects are also far more inventive and less "fair" than their recent Bazaars, with plenty of charged items and effects that aren't built around combat effectiveness or taking the obvious solution to problems. It's definitely nice that they feel they don't have to stick so closely to their usual design formulas for the final issue. One last evening with the wizards three: Another little plot thread is tied up here, courtesy of the hard work and suffering of Edward Greenwood. He's been contributing stuff for 28 years now, seeing others come and go, and if anyone deserves the most praise for making the magazine as good as it is, it's him. The wizards three last met on the magazine's 30th anniversary, a bit over a year ago, so they're relatively fresh in regular readers minds. Now we get to see all four of them, as Dalamar manages to get day release from Krynn. And of course, the new member and the old returnee have sarcastic words to exchange to one-another. The banter is as sharp as ever, with some additional metaness as they both lampshade Elminster's persistent mischievous lechery, and these very articles. Mordenkainen finally confronts El about their persistent observer (while not letting slip that he's been aware of Ed for ages anyway. (see issues 196 and 200) It's a slightly strange ending, and does feel somewhat truncated, as they don't include any spells this time. I guess even with the expanded page count, they had lots of things they wanted to fit in, and so the editors had to do a bit of pruning on this one. Still, it is both entertaining in it's own right, and a nice bit of nostalgia fanservice for the longtime readers. There's likely to a be quite a few people picking up this issue who haven't touched one in years, and this is for them. And maybe this'll appear in the electronic issues sometime as well. Let's make a toast to shared history. Elminster vs Raistlin: This again? Pff. Didn't issue 282 settle this one already. I guess not, since the battle was called off due to cheating. (as if anything could be called unfair in a battle of archmages. ) And once again, it's obvious that while Raistlin might just be able to pull a trick out of his sleeve and beat Elminster in an all-out fight, it's even more obvious that Elminster wins both in terms of raw power, and at life in general, as he actually gets to have friends and lovers and generally enjoy his long, interesting existence, while Raistlin's life is one trial and irritation after another. I'm definitely going to have to side with the guy who's been a huge help to adventurers everywhere with the info he shares over the one who almost destroyed the world. You should pick your role models based on what you want to be, not what you most closely resemble.</blockquote>

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