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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6272821" data-attributes="member: 27780">Best of Dragon Magazine 3part 4/6Self defense for dragons: Anything that has a lot of attention put on it tends to increase in power over the years. This definitely applies to dragons, which got tons of new spells, magic items, tricks, tactical advice and so forth. Adding wing buffets, tail lashes and rear claw kicks to their repertoire is a pretty obvious addition, and one that caught on right away, being added officially in both AD&D 2e and the D&D Companion set. Similarly, the tactical advice here is easy to implement, unlike the more esoteric long-term planning advice that would show up later. You don't need to be a genius to know when it's a bad idea to use your breath weapon, especially when you have centuries to practice, and move yourself into a position where you can't be ganged up on and taken down by weight of numbers. It's nice to reminded where the ground floor is, and that a lot of groups wouldn't even be able to win against them at that level. The faerie dragon: Here's another one that's remained with us throughout the editions, much to the exasperation of many players. After all, prankster monsters are frustrating enough when they only have a few tricks, like Sprites. When they have a full complement of spells from two class lists, and near immunity to magic themselves at higher age categories, you're left just praying that you'll get off lightly, as it's not easy to turn things back on them. Still, it's nice to know exactly who to blame, and that it wasn't one of the usual suspects this time around. Random submitters could still contribute something that remained influential in those days. Two tough foes: This one, on the other hand, has pretty much faded away, with the Steel dragons most players think of being the Forgotten Realms' friendly shapeshifting poison-breathers, and Gray dragons not catching on at all. (it is a boring colour, let's face it) They also suffer by comparison to the hugely upgraded stats of dragons in later edition, not being particularly impressive in terms physically, magically, or in terms of personality detail. The colour wheel dragons may have got upgraded and remained current, but these guys? Sorry, no dice. Can't get it right every time. Evil dragons make good armor: This one, I remember being disappointingly weak and fiddly, given just how much effort it took to kill dragons. The resulting scale mail is no better than normal unless you engage in a whole load of expensive preparations to give it a fraction of the resistance that the original dragon enjoyed. When you compare that to what you got in 2e ( AC 4 worse than the dragon, which could mean a base of -8 if you killed a great wyrm) it seems pretty pointless. But then, they did upgrade the dragons themselves a good deal in each edition change as well, so if you did beat them, it really felt like a hard-won victory. This is one instance where working harder to balance things actually felt like an upgrade rather than a nerf. So this is one article that can remain discarded, outmoded technology. PLAYING WITH CLASS: The last two best of's both had quite a few articles introducing new classes. Now they've got a fairly substantial collection, they're instead doing a chapter expanding on or revising existing classes, in a similar vein to the races collection earlier. Makes sense. They might have refined the rules a little over several editions of D&D, and the creation of AD&D, but they are still pretty clunky in many ways. It's not surprising that people would remain dissatisfied with them and continue to send stuff in. The thief: a special look: Last best of, Len essentially did a Sage Advice for the Vampire. This time, they've decided to revive his similar piece on rogue abilities. Since rogues are somewhat less powerful than vampires, the degree of nerfing is less, but there is some. Thankfully, it's counterbalanced by Len giving them a couple of extra tricks, which comes as welcome. To be a successful thief, you really do need a fair amount of common sense to apply your powers properly, especially at low levels where you have little chance of success, which is ironic as they encourage you to use wisdom as their dump stat.  Really, this reminds me what a huge improvement discretionary skill points were for Rogues in 2e, letting them choose which skills they wanted to develop, and become useful at them even at low levels, while ignoring ones they wound up not needing entirely. It just made them so much more practical while not changing their overall power level.</blockquote>

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