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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6277037" data-attributes="member: 27780">Best of Dragon Magazine 4part 6/6Repair or Beware: Another obvious follow-on from the preceding article, Arthur Collins is proving to be quite the editor's favourite, since this is a pretty short one that certainly didn't stand out to me the first time around, and with a 1 in 10 chance of some kind of damage happening, seems even more of a pain in actual play than the previous one, even if it doesn't involve a table, and the breakage is a more gradual process. I'd really rather not use either of these, if it's all the same to you. Wounds and Weeds: Kevin J. Anderson, huh? I'd forgotten he contributed here as well as doing gaming tie-in novels and terrible Dune sequels. Well, at least you can say he does his research, since herbalism is full of esoteric little details about the nature of plants, where you find them, and what they do. This still looks pretty solid mechanically, in terms of making sure they're useful, but still not more powerful than basic healing spells. The framing fiction part of this is still pretty decent as well, reminding us he can be a pretty good writer when not cranking out formula to a tight deadline. It's a shame what having to make a living can do to your creativity. Runes: To those incapable of it, preparation can seem like magic. The same certainly applies to writing, and it has a long history of being treated as amazing and scary by the illiterate. For example, the Norse emphasis on rune magic. It was just another alphabet, albeit somewhat better suited to carving in rock or wood than modern rounded scripts, but it built up it's own fascinating set of mythology, and list of spells you could do with them. How much more could you do with the idea in a universe where they do have real power. While largely historical, there's still plenty of ideas here to steal for your games, especially as this is largely system free, so it still looks useful to this day. Make a record of the magic you use, because it would definitely be a shame if you lost it, given how hard it is to develop. Runestones: Following straight on from the last article, Ed Greenwood's more specific take on the same topic works excellently as a way to round out this issue. The system of dwarven runes he introduces here will be used in the artwork of several Forgotten Realms supplements, sometimes with amusing easter eggs in what they're actually saying. That's very worth keeping indeed, as it forces you to reference back to here whenever you see them to figure out what's really going on. If you wind up flicking through some other articles as a result, then they've done their job well. This definitely has the historical weight to deserve it's inclusion. Once again, the rules gradually become more solid as we go along, with the classes in particular improved substantially from a few years ago. Also notable is the far greater emphasis on worldbuilding, which also jives with my perceptions of the magazine at the time. At this point, they'd run out of things to do down in the dungeon and were seriously looking around to keep their roleplaying interesting. The result is very worth noting. So what changes will the final best of bring? Let's ring the bell and call out "TIME! LAST ORDERS PLEASE!" on this unbelievably lengthy journey.</blockquote>

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