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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6275435" data-attributes="member: 27780">Best of Dragon Magazine 4part 3/6PLAYERS PERSPECTIVES: Our other themes this time round are stuff aimed at the players, and stuff aimed at the DM, mirroring the division in the core book. Although I note no monster manual equivalent, and indeed, these best of's have been curiously light on reusing monsters from the magazine in general. I guess that shows just how much more dependent on the formulaic cranking out of new monsters, magical items and spells they became as they went along. So let's see what broader topics they thought would best serve the needs of adventurers everywhere. Be aware, take care: The very first thing they thought worth repeating was advice on putting together a good group and making sure they prepare properly for the adventure at hand. This makes it very clear that combat, while important, is only a very tiny part of an adventurer's average day. Far more will be devoted to exploring, planning, supplies, keeping your gear in good nick, and possibly even communicating with monsters in a non-hostile fashion. The people coming from tactical wargames would already know that direct hack-and-slash is not the best way to actually win a fight, but they might still need a little work on customising and roleplaying individual characters, while the newbies have a lot to learn if they don't want to be stuck at 1st level dying repeatedly. At this stage, D&D played RAW is still pretty unforgiving, and this kind of advice makes perfect sense as a starter. It's a material world: Material components, huh? Gonna do that again? Well, after one article which talks about the logistics of adventuring, another one would make sense if they're doing mini-themes within the larger categories. And as we have found all too many times, if you take away away these kind of concerns from spellcasters, they run rampant over the game, even at low levels. So this may or may not be an article you want, but it is one that we need, and one we probably deserve as well. Keep the players working and spending for their powers and they won't come to take them for granted. Good to see them not pandering to their audience. Finish fights faster: Unarmed combat is something they seem to struggle to get the rules right for, and get lots of questions about in Sage Advice, so it doesn't surprise me at all that they'd recycle an article on it in the hope that more people will read it and stop pestering them. And since they simplified it down to three attack types, with even grappling less than a page long, it certainly still seems usable, if not enough to satisfy MA enthusiasts. Still, I think along with hit locations and criticals with specific effects, that's a level of detail best handled in a completely different system built from the ground up to cope with it. They're wise not to obsess over it, when weapons work better anyway.</blockquote>

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