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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6276518" data-attributes="member: 27780">Best of Dragon Magazine 4part 5/6A PC and his money: If your PC's have more money than they can spend, then you probably haven't done enough worldbuilding to create things that they want. I certainly know that given unlimited resources, I'd have no problem thinking of things I wanted to do and create, that would probably involve years of work and vast sums of money that would eventually improve everyone's lives. In the meantime, you have all manner of minor expenses, taxes, regulations, unexpected delays, etc that ensure you always wind up spending more and taking longer than you budgeted for. This reminder that there's always more challenges out there even if you save the world (it's just that many of them are boring ones) should keep the DM going when they players get to the end of an adventure, and they haven't had time to think of another big one yet. (plus, they want to make sure they have incentive to go out again instead of retiring. ) The care of castles: Given how frequently she showed up and how much she was praised for a few years, it's surprising how little of Katharine Kerr's work has been referenced in the later years of the magazine. Unlike Ed, Len, or Roger, she didn't add new monsters, setting details, classes or magical items that could really be incorporated into the D&D canon, being more concerned with making real-world historical and mythological stuff work in game. Which is definitely a bit disappointing, since she was their highest-profile female writer, and later moved onto becoming a proper author in her own right. Still, this isn't the best example of her work, it still feels pretty dry and lacking in the abstractions that'll let you run this complicated logistical stuff without it eating up your entire campaign. Given that they gradually moved towards faster-paced, more combat focussed material, I can understand why stuff like this fell out of fashion. Saintly standards: D&D clerics already have more supernatural powers than the average mythological saint, so saying there's another, NPC only class of people who get even more special powers than you can definitely feels like the kind of restrictive old-school thinking they've since done away with, letting you become nearly anything if you take the right prestige class, templates and feats. That said, the specific saints detailed are fairly interesting, and ripe for updating to later editions. This certainly isn't bad, just dated. These are the breaks: We've already had articles on realistic finances and logistics. One on weapon breakage seems to fit with that kind of mood, and shows what their current areas of focus are. And like critical hit tables, this still feels like a load of extra work for negative fun, and I'm quite pleased that they eventually gave up on trying to put that in our D&D, settling for abstract critical hits, and weapons & armor only breaking if you actively target them. This is one bit of history I see no value in reclaiming for the modern age.</blockquote>

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