Dragon Issue 291: January 2002


part 4/10


The little-limpics: While James tried to balance the whimsical and serious sides of gnome life, Robin Laws embraces the playful, with this fluff piece on gnome athletic games. Tracking burrowing animals, boffer games, trying to pick up balls on unstable platforms while being pelted with fruit, this is amusing stuff that owes a fair debt to the Gladiator TV show that was popular in the 90's. As such, it's an entertaining read, but not likely to get as much use as the last article. If your players spend some time in a gnome community, they might try them once or twice, but otherwise, you're not going to miss not incorporating this article at all. Still, nice to see them still doing niche stuff that could never support a whole product.


Abuse your illusions: This one isn't gnome specific, but we all know what their favored class is. (at least, until 3.5 changes that) And it looks like we won't be seeing the same kind of interminable debate that surrounded illusion powers in previous editions. While there's still some ambiguity over exactly when you can justify making will saves to disbelieve an illusion, everything else is a lot clearer. Plus many illusions produce semi-real effects that make the whole disbelief thing less significant anyway. So this old problem becomes less so, but creating subtle spellcasters is somewhat harder. When you have this many options, even illusionists get to mix plenty of real with the trickery. It's another little sign of the decrease in sense of wonder as time goes on. The new spells are also very specific in their mechanical effects, leaving the GM with no worries about adjudication, but the players with little opportunity to use them cleverly. So despite this article's title, your opportunities for abusing illusions get smaller and smaller. Where's the fun in that?

Dragon Issue 291: January 2002


part 5/10


Bazaar of the Bizarre: Gnomes finally get their own magic item collection to themselves, instead of having to share like they did in issue 262. Expect whimsy, misdirection, and small burrowing animals. Course, they could buck the stereotype, but given the previous articles this month I doubt it.

Badger Armor lets you turn into a badger. See, what did I tell you? Better get digging.

Warfox Harnesses let you turn a regular little woodland animal into a dire fox for the riding. Just the thing for fighting goblins riding wolves. Once again you get to show them who the real brains of this operation is.

Mushroom Caps let you turn into a mushroom, which has obvious stealth applications in underground situations, but may also result in you being picked and eaten. The usual risk of making yourself small to spy then.

Neuroshield helms not only shield you from illithid mind blasts, but can store them and reflect them back later. I suspect gith would pay quite highly to get their hands on some of these.

Blasting Pellets are another basic magical explosive. They seem designed to create neat chain reactions like bombs in zelda games. I'm sure this will reward clever players suitably.

Doppleganger Armor is another shapeshifting trick that has quite substantial provisos attached. T-t-t-t-t-touch me. I wanna feel dirty.

Portable breaches are basically your own personal passwall spell. Just go through, and pull it off the other side. Way to wreck nearly any dungeon's linear flow

Bracers of Wands are an excuse to have far too many belts on your character. Just slot a whole bunch of wands in and you can use them with but a word, without even having to waste a few seconds drawing them. Nice to see they're not neglecting the techy side of gnomes.

Reading Snuff makes obscure languages comprehensible when sprinkled over it. What happens if you apply it nasaly is not specified. I guess I'll just have to use my imagination.

Alad's Fire Extinguisher is another one that shows blatant real life imitations aren't dead. Spray it on fire elementals or down the throat of a red dragon for handy results. Yawn.

Trapfinder Armor reduces your need for a rogue. Unfortunately, it doesn't do so by setting off all the traps in a spectacular but harmless way, but that doesn't keep me from making a variant that does.

Spellfast Medallions are a nasty method of triggering spells. Slap them on an enemy, and watch them suffer. Heat, cold, speed, gravity, all can be fucked with to your pleasure.

Flash-bangs are of course perfectly normal fireworks. So a dull end for rather a mixed bag of items. I wonder if you could pick out which writer wrote which ones.

Dragon Issue 291: January 2002


part 6/10


You can pick your friends: But you can't pick your family? With random tables so the GM can determine it for you? Yeah, heard that one before. After all, we got a pretty extensive bit of Oriental Adventures devoted to randomly deciding what kind of ancestors you had, and how they've influenced your reputation. however, the world is big enough for multiple takes on an idea like that, and this manages to do so by concentrating on the forest where the other one focussed on the individual trees, as it were. A relatively small number of rolls to determine the overall size and shape of a character's family, and lots of potential adventure hooks that you can pull out easily enough make this one of those articles you can drop into your campaign pretty easily in bits and pieces. After all, many of your players will have already thought about their family when creating their character. All these articles to direct your thought are just for those who haven't thought them through already.


Water, water everywhere: Skip Williams continues to create official add-ons to the rules above and beyond Sage Advice. Such as an expansion on the rules for underwater combat, showing just how inconvenient it is for landlubbers pulled in, but also how you can prepare to mitigate these problems. There's a very good reason why fishermen use spears and harpoons rather than axes or hammers to hunt fish, and although their range still isn't great, crossbow bolts fare better than regular arrows underwater. Visibility ranges are dramatically lower than in air, especially when the water is full of muck. Fire is mostly a waste of time, unless you have a knowledge of chemistry that very few D&D characters can access. Lotsa boring realism stuff a la the old Wilderness survival guide, basically. Not the kind of thing I've seen for a while, since they went to the effort to make the new core rules more comprehensive, and the kind of thing that's always going to be a niche market. So this feels like health food, necessary, but not really that welcome. Is the real reason many sailors never learn to swim because they don't want to go to the bother of dealing with the underwater combat rules?


Fiction: Troupers by Neal Barrett jr. Ah, time for a good old-fashioned bit of whimsy where we find out how creatures in other dimensions live, and how hard it is to relate to them, even despite good old rule 34 coming into play. When you find yourself in a universe where all the rules are different, you can either adapt, or blunder around in perpetual befuddlement and get nowhere fast.
And so we find ourselves in a alice-in wonderland situation, only with a slightly smarter protagonist, who manages to get out and bring one of the creatures from the other world with him. Which means he can look forward to enjoying the culture shock thing from the other side as well. Could definitely be worth a follow-up.


Nodwick goes up against the internet and wins. Shock horror.

Dragon Issue 291: January 2002


part 7/10


Elminsters guide to the Realms: This column covers a slightly larger adventure location than usual, with a full cave complex full of adventuring opportunities. Most of the individual caverns have cool names as well, and each has their own interesting bits of history and adventure ideas put in. If this were doubled in size so he could put a few stats in, it'd be a great little module, and even as it is, it's another good example of just how much information you can cram into a few pages, and how good he is at whipping up cool little plot hooks. There's more here than many old modules, and each could be expanded out quite a bit. As usual, it seems like he has a mainline to amounts of inspiration that none of their other writers can come close too, and can use it on throwaway articles like this without worrying about running dry. I do envy him quite a bit.


Class acts: Yet another specialist fighter type this month, (well, I guess they do need more customization love than the spellcasters ) the Gnome Giant killer. Distinguished from the dwarf giant killer, which is an equally viable archetype, by their love of being a taunting asshole who skitters around being nearly impossible to hit. From a roleplaying perspective that seems like a good deal of fun. But I do fear these guys may be a little too specialized, with no abilities that also have some applicability to monsters outside their speciality. Still, at higher levels you generally do face lots of really big monsters, so unless the DM deliberately screws you by sending monsters your characters are weak against, they should be useful.


Campaign News: The RPGA news this month has lots of little bits of information, but the one that really stands out is an amusing bit of errata that ensures any PC's permanently crippled by a particular adventure get that problem retconned out sharpish. I'm guessing there were probably quite a few complaints about that, as this kind of screwage become much less popular when your tournament adventures aren't one-shots with pregens. Other than that, it looks like business as usual, with new adventures, incorporation of new feats & prestige classes from splatbooks, tedious little rulings about how often your character can change regions in game, and italian translations showing that they have a fanbase around the world, who are busy pushing the limits of what you can do within the framework and the designers are responding accordingly. As long as they keep on responding, the game can't get too broken.

Dragon Issue 291: January 2002


part 8/10


Demogorgon's champions: Lots more death knights detailed this month, showing just how different you can make them now they advance using the same class levels as players. Straight fighters, fighter/mages, a fighter/rogue, fighter/bard, cleric, and of course the iconic fallen paladin/blackguard choice that everyone thinks of when you say Death Knight. Of course, all of them are complete bastards, but not all of them are comfortable with that fact, not all of them have any loyalty to demogorgon, their nominal creator, and their levels of competence and sanity vary hugely. Still, none of them are really suitable challenges for a starting level party, and most have a decent amount of magic items and followers on top of that, so killing them all off for good will be the climax of a long and challenging campaign. This article looks like it could provide you with lots of adventures, and be reskinned for other campaigns fairly easily, so it's been a pretty decent ride. All you need to do is provide the locations.


Chainmail: Unfortunately, we've already covered the Gnomes story in the Chainmail wargame, so they decide to shine the spotlight on the dwarves instead. Amusingly enough, they've wound up with a communist state, after a long unpleasant stint under a tyrant king. As with most dwarves, they have a long-standing rivalry with the elves of the setting, which started through a stupid lack of communication, and now mainly carries on just because. To supplement their natural mining talents, they also have alliances with earth elementals, which gives them an excuse to put bigger, more interestingly shaped troops on their teams, just as Gnolls have their demons, and Humans have their Gnomish war machines. So this is a mix of the stereotypical with the quirky, showing once again that they put a decent amount of effort into the setting-building for this game, not all of which was just justification for more fights. There may not be an unambiguous good guy in this game, but this team comes closer than most, should that matter to you. This column is still making pretty good reading as well, even if it's not in theme.


Command points: A second Chainmail article? Well, the minis column was pretty heavy on it for the last few months, but they've decided to kill that now, so I guess this is the replacement. And while breezily written, this is basically just a promotional piece about their upcoming additions to their armies, that won't be of any use once you have them. And in depressingly traditional form for supplements, there's power creep used as a selling point, with particular units having higher ratings in certain abilities than anything from the core set. This makes me sigh a bit. It's going to be Dragon Dice all over again isn't it? A strong start, marred by lack of quality control in the follow-ups and too high expectations. Oh well, it was fun for a while.

Dragon Issue 291: January 2002


part 9/10


Sage advice: Can you use ethereal spells on the outer planes (no. This does not affect stuff that has only peripheral effects on it.)

Can I access the astral plane from the ethereal (You can now. More cosmological chop and changing)

Can you access the astral plane on the astral plane (well duh)

Where can't I use extradimensional stuff ( Good question. Nowhere in the standard cosmology, but we wanted to keep the option open. )

Will extradimensional items still rupture a bag of holding (yes. Any combination makes the same mess.)

Does the gate created when extradimensional items rupture stay open (No. One way only. )

Can plane shift take you to any plane (Any you know about. Mind you don't get trapped.)

What happens to the equipment created while astral if you go to another plane and lose it. (The real stuff stays with your body. If you lose the projected stuff, no biggie. It goes poof when you do. )

Are ascended monks affected by banishment (Only if they're not on their home plane. Do we have the native outsider subtype yet? We ought to.)

If you leave your home plane, can you be banished (Yes)

What happens if you use holy word off your home plane. What's the point of outsiders having it. (You lose the special benefits. It's like a cosmic immune system response, clearing out things that "do not fit")

What's the difference between gate seal and seal portal (Parallel evolution.)

Do the Great wheel outer planes mirror the Faerun cosmology (Not really. Don't whine, don't try and compare them, pay no attention to any of the old books. Retcon, retcon, retty retty retcon.)

Come on, there's got to be some way to get from here to there (The plane of shadow. We've certainly given that a big upgrade in importance this edition. Grimdark, Ho!)

If I do go to the FR planes, what characteristics do they have. (A chance for Skip to make a major updated add-on to a book based on another book. Skip hasn't really done that in ages. Time for the private sage to really put the pages in the mages. Oh yeah. Kickin' it.)

Dragon Issue 291: January 2002


part 10/10


DM's toolbox: With Dungeoncraft on vacation, this column takes up the slack with some slightly more ambiguous advice than usual. How to handle bluffing NPC's. As  I've said before, when the DM is the sole source of information, presenting false info without giving the players a chance to figure out if it's false can make them pretty grumpy. Interestingly enough, this article encourages you to play it straight, act your characters exactly as they would act in game. If that means they're a good liar, let the players be convinced, only rolling sense motive checks and rolling for clues all is not what it seems if they actually ask for it. As soon as mechanics come in, you've already lost to some extent. Which isn't advice I was expecting from this source. It can be all too easy to pidgeonhole people based on a few impressions. Still, it keeps this column interesting, and makes me wonder more what they'll have for us next month.


Silicon sorcery: This month's column is another left-field turn, a study in game mechanics and how they can reflect reality, or in many cases fail too. The example used is Stronghold, a tactical wargame who's rules do not encourage you to use tactics that would work in reality. This isn't to say that it's a bad game, and indeed, it might be more fun than trying to build, maintain and defend a real castle. But it does serve as an illustration of just how different things can be in a game, and how even small inaccuracies can have cascading effects on the emergent properties of a simulation. So no crunch conversions this time, but a very interesting topic that's worth further studying. You can encourage certain playstyles in a game not by telling people they should or shouldn't do things, but setting it up so the mechanics reward or punish them as a natural consequence of following through the math, and this seems preferable to me than just saying something should be so and expecting people to do it without incentives. This applies to board and computer games as well as RPG's. Learn how to do math, and apply that skill wisely, and an imaginary universe is your oyster, or something.


What's new puts it's own distinctive spin on gnome culture. And ranger bears. Hee.


Not quite as good as the last few issues, this still has lots of useful articles, both in and out of the themed section. The demise of Dragonmirth and minis coverage is a little worrying though, and makes me wonder what they'll change next. We haven't had any ecologies in a while either, and I'm starting to miss them. Once again, the magazine is gradually getting more serious and focussed, and while that has some definite good points, it also means their vision continues to get narrower when compared to the old issues. That can only go so far before you lose people because they're not getting enough variety. So let's see what's introduced or put on the chopping block next issue.

Dragon Issue 292: February 2002


part 1/10


87 (124) pages. Raar says the giant weasel. Scowl goes the rider, and I can quite understand why. Trying to cling onto such a low-bodied creature with your legs bareback while keeping your torso upright for any length of time does not sound comfortable to me. Oh Wayne Reynolds, why must your attempts at badassery be so easy to pick apart. Still, at least it's in theme with the issue, which is barbarians and other savage nature related stuff. Let's see how savagely I feel like treating the articles.


Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed, ad-free scan.


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: Our editorial this month is in praise of one-shots. Not every idea you come up with merits an entire campaign, and you'll get more of them accomplished if you boil them down to just the best bits and keep their execution snappy rather than stringing them out and adding a load of filler material. Plus when it's a one-shot, you have a lot more leeway in slaughtering your way through the PC's without spoiling the game. Fully agree with all that. Extra interestingly, they recognise that zombie games make many of the best one-shot scenarios, although they don't actually mention All Flesh Must Be Eaten by name, which is a bit of a shame. Still, this is a pretty fun way to kick things off. You don't always have to start at 1st level and run things for years, and a quick break now and then to experiment with different characters and systems can actually keep a group more healthy. It's not a marriage for life, after all.


Scale Mail: Our readers this month are in a particularly contradictory mood. First up, it's a dueling pair on the quality of the oriental issue. While both are very much in favor of the idea in principle, they disagree on how well it was handled. I must agree that putting a piece on paris in there was a bit incongrous. They'll make up for that this issue.

Second, we have one person who was deeply disappointed by the d20 special compared to their normal annuals, while another found it even more useful than a regular one, and helpful in making purchases. Still, I think the lack of a follow-up next year shows which way the wind blew overall. That or office politics. Sometimes all it takes is one person in the right place to really hate something to bury it for decades.

Next we have one person who is generally happy with the current layout and mix of articles, while another really isn't, and says they're going to stop reading because of it. Still, they don't seem too worried. You win some, you lose some.

And finally, we have some tedious bureaucracy problems involving international shipping. Just be glad we don't have to worry about interplanetary postage costs, as that would just suck on an epic scale.

Dragon Issue 292: February 2002


part 2/10


Forum comes to an end, having been literally marginalized to the point of obsolescence. By very little coincidence at all, the vbulletin forum code that rpg.net, Enworld, and tons of other modern forums now use first came out last month. The internet has now well and truly taken over that role, so trying to continue it here would just be a waste of page count. Still, let's see what the last few people have to say.

Flavian Stellerine ends us off on a low note with another roll playing vs role playing rant. The two are not incompatible. Stop presenting them as some great dichotomy.

Mark Sims praises them for their recent MA and Gargantua articles. This too isn't very surprising. Still, at least it ends this column on a positive note.

Well, so much for that then, 18 years and 211 issues later. To bring things to a close, let's compile a list of our top forumites over the years.

In joint 7th place, with 5 posts each, are Gregory Detwiler and Eyal Teler.

In 6th place is Toby Myers , with 7 posts.

Number 5 Is David Carl Argall, with 8 posts.

At number 4 is David Howery, with 9 posts. Frequent forumite, similarly prolific article writer (which has in turn stirred up more forum action ), and now regular poster on these threads, he's remained involved in various capacities long after most people have drifted away. Pleasure to talk to you personally.

Ed Friedlander is at number 3 with 12 posts.  

Anonymous is at number 2, with 14 posts. This comes as little surprise. Despite their general policy against publishing stuff without a name, there's always going to be a few letters that are good enough despite format errors, or who's names need to be redacted for personal reasons, be they because they're actually a part of TSR and don't want to be sacked for openly criticising them, or because their gaming group reads Dragon too, and doesn't want the drama. And they can actually wind up getting more prestige as part of the collective than they could individually. Here's to everyone who's been Anonymous over the years, here, in /b and elsewhere.

So who could be at number 1? Who has the strength to go against the massed forces of Anonymous and win? Well, If you guessed S. D. Anderson, well done. Despite not posting since 1993, he managed to be sufficiently prolific in the early years of the forum that he still has a substantial edge on anyone else, with a full 20 posts stretching from issues 82 to 200. If you're still out there somewhere, congratulations. I hope you're happy to hear that.


Nodwick gets taste classified. I guess henchmen are going to end up monster chow anyway, so why not facilitate the process.

Dragon Issue 292: February 2002


part 3/10


D&D Previews: Our final class splatbook is Masters of the Wild, covering the three remaining classes. Always a pain having an odd one out. You know the drill by now. What big releases will they provide now these slots are filled.

The Forgotten Realms get a new DM's screen. I remember when every gameline got one of these for free in the boxed set. Now this is the only world still getting the full load of products. Sigh.

Dragonlance continues to be novel only, completing the Icewall trilogy. Doug Niles is still doing this stuff, 18 years later. How much longer can old guard like him carry on?

Greyhawk also continues to self-cannibalise. The Tomb of horrors is the latest old module to get a novel. I do hope the body count is suitably excessive.


Up on a soapbox: This month, Gary switches things up by telling us a sadistic trick Rob Kuntz came up with when he was in the DM's seat. Turnaround is fair play, and he turns out to be a good sport, diving into the strange situations with gusto, and being quite willing to laugh at the results. Eating from a table full of food just set out in the middle of a dungeon sounds like an invitation to all sorts of chemical or magical trickery, but he's not here to play the game in paranoia mode. Life's too short, and besides, as long as they're regularly trading off roles, if one person gets too uppity in the viking hat, they'll just set themselves up for a more humiliating turnabout next time. Tomb of Horrors style slaughterfests were the exception, not the rule, and as we saw in the early issues, they tended to take things less seriously than later on, when they had to think about keeping the business side running, and catering to new players who didn't have a wargaming background, and were more in it for the storytelling. So this is a reminder that the original crew did play in a particular way that many later players wouldn't, and the game was tweaked around those experiences, such as large groups augmented further with hirelings, regular trading of DM's and non fixed parties depending on who turned up that week. And above all, it was just a game, and stories were what happened in play, not scripted beforehand. I should stop now, shouldn't I, because I'm sounding more soapboxy that he does this issue. Dunno why he keeps the column title.


Dork tower forgets the essentials of role playing games. How can you play a character without those?


Outlanders: More multiclass combinations? Still trying to keep that non-starter of a topic alive? I think we've already proven that the charop boards have a better handle on creating effective and interesting characters than the official writers. Even splits of two just don't cut it by comparison, even if they don't have to worry about XP penalties. The roleplaying advice part is also pretty basic, having a very high fantasy view of barbarians and ignoring the grimy day-to-day bits. So this all feels a bit shallow, one of those initial articles that's a warm-up rather than a big spectacular opener. I do wonder why they pick those sometimes.


Lords of the lost vale: Saurials! There's a welcome returnee, even if appearing here means they're unlikely to appear in official Forgotten Realms books this edition. But then, after their big role in one book series, they got relegated to an easily ignored background detail, since they only have a settlement in one small part of the Realms, and we never got to see their original homeworld. ( That would be a step too far into the exotic even for the TSR of the mid-90's. ) Still, they were pretty decent as PC's even back in the 2e days, and one of the most idiosyncratic races in the complete book of humanoids. I'm not surprised they still have a few big fans, and it seems very appropriate to revive them just as Dungeoncraft's lost world setting builds up to it's finale. They retain their distinctive senses, weakness to cold and difficulty communicating with regular humans, which is pleasing to see. They all have 2 racial HD and the appropriate LA adjustment, which means they'll be a bit crap at skill-heavy classes though, but for fighters & spellcasters, their natural weapons and armor boosts should keep them from being too vulnerable for those first few levels. So this is a pleasingly faithful conversion I can see myself using. Dinosaur people could fit into all sorts of games.

Dragon Issue 292: February 2002


part 4/10


Arcane lore returns after a good year away. Like the ecologies and most of the other once regular features, it looks like they're trying to cut down on them. Still, we've in theme here, with some savage dinosaur related druidic spells. That definitely sounds more exciting and idiosyncratic than 273's plant based selection. James Jacobs does come up with some of the coolest topics these days.  

Dinosaur Stampede is exactly what it sounds like. Extended AoE damage over a quite a decent area, with cool visuals. Good luck having resistance to this damage type.

Dire Hunger makes the poor victim hulk out and eat everyone around them, friend or foe. Even more than Confusion, that'll make them feel awkward when it wears off, especially if one of their party die from it.

Enhance Wildshape is a quite versatile buff for a druid. You can stack the different variants too, so it can really make you scary if you have time to build up. Lets do those epic boss fights.

Essence of the Raptor lets you move scary fast and smell scary well. This will boost your jump speed too, of course. Get some decent claws from elsewhere and maybe a haste spell to really take advantage of this.

Hungry Gizzard is one of those gross tricks only James could come up with. A giant disembodied stomach materializing directly around the victim and getting all digestory? Genius. Better hope you have some buds to help cut you out.

Spirit Jaws is a less impressive attack spell. Still, it grapples as well as hurts. That has it's definite merits, if also some inconvenience.

Starvation is a fairly nasty damage inflicter and debuff. One of those ones that makes becoming undead seem quite tempting. You just want to escape this kind of crap.

Thundrous Roar is a nicely flavourful bit of sonic damage. Shout too generic? Deafening dinosaur roars'll keep the punters amused and/or running away.

Transmute Rock to Lava takes us all the way up to 9th level, ready to inflict 20d6 points of damage per round to large number of creatures for extended periods. Even the Tarrasque can be put out of action for a few centuries if you position this one right. Sounds about right. This collection certainly brings this column back with a bang.

Dragon Issue 292: February 2002


part 5/10


Stone, road, and tusk: The initial crop of prestige classes were all 10 level ones. But people soon realised that there were some concepts that simply didn't justify spending half your career on them. Here's some more interesting ideas that are designed for you to dip into, to customise your character rather than define them. All are specific to a particular demihuman race, while not being completely obvious, and all are roughly nature themed, making them a bit niche, but still appropriate for the issue.

Cave Stalkers are dwarves who get to know the ecology of the places they're mining instead of converting it all into neatly organised stripped and shored up tunnels. This lets them meld into stone to hide, and get even better darkvision than regular dwarves, plus a bit of sneak attack to take advantage of that stealth and awareness in combat. With moderate spellcasting progression as well, they seem like a good option for quite a few different class builds, if you want a competent generalist.

Fiend Binders are orcs who can create fiendish animals and keep them as pets or unleash them upon the wilderness to cause havoc. While a bit underpowered, compared to full spellcaster, they're a good diversion for orc spellcasters who don't have the primary stats to cast high level spells anyway, and want to gradually build up a menagerie of trouble for the players to face.

Prairie Runners are halflings that overcompensate for their normally low speed so they can deliver the news and make great hunters. Since they also get to share it with their buds, and haste themselves in combat, they seem like a good addition to a team that doesn't have a buffing specialist. Definitely a case where going against stereotype makes sense.


Class acts: Straight after, we have a 4th prestige class, the Darkwood Stalker. They're certainly trying to build up our selection to overtake kits this month. They're elven rangery sorts who specialise in kicking orc butt. Even more than most specialists,. this means they may well find their unique talents not being used to their full potential, especially at higher level. After all, demons and dragons both have tons of variants that scale to epic levels nicely. Orcs, not so much. While they might gain some class levels, they just don't make world-threatening forces on their own, and this skillset doesn't even extend to goblins or ogres. So it's another one I can't see many people taking, unless it's largely for flavour reasons. Sure you may hate orcs, but most adventurers have bigger fish to fry. And by the time you've got to the levels where you can take prestige classes, it's already too late really. If only they's broken out of their formula and made one you could get too by level 2-3 for a change.


Cities of the ages: A japanese city? Even if it is the obvious choice, Tokyo. (or at least Edo, which would later be renamed Tokyo) This column is stepping outside it's comfort zone a bit. And a good thing too, because the city goes against modern japanese stereotypes a fair bit. Instead of being polite and tradition-bound, it's a rowdy port city that grew up really rapidly, and was a real hassle for the samurai to keep under control. It's always the way once the merchant class starts getting out of control, surpassing the aristocracy in wealth because people are more willing to trade for amenities than they are to give up a big chunk of their crops in taxes for "protection" and be drafted into the army. Young folks lose all sense of respect, cats and dogs start living together, people start eating corn products rather than rice dishes like momma used to cook. Goes to show, what we think of as immutable ancient traditions are often less than a lifetime old, and other countries change just as rapidly, and have just as many internal variations as your own. Which is all the better for adventuring in. Given their regular problems with fires and earthquakes, you have plenty of leeway to cause massive amounts of damage, which is then industriously rebuilt in surprisingly little time, and allows you to change the layout when you feel like it. As usual, there's both fun to be had here, and lots of ideas to steal, mix and match for your own fantasy cities. The world is a huge, varied place, and you ought to make your own campaign worlds big and varied (within a theme) as well.

Dragon Issue 292: February 2002


part 6/10


Xarcallons Fane: Another collection of magical items connected not by theme, but by common history. In a story that obviously derives inspiration from the paladin in hell artwork, we have a whole bunch of magical items both holy and profane and the reason they all wound up in one epic battle on Baator, in a bloodbath which killed the heroes, but took down a hell of a lot of devils in the process. Do your heroes have what it takes to go there and bring these back to feature in your game? Would they want to anyway? Let's see if the risks are worth the rewards.

Kyptal's Black Mantlet is a magical shield that can also create a wall of stone effect on command, giving it pretty solid tactical applications for creating cover and aiding your retreat. At least, presuming you aren't facing things that can teleport without error at will. I guess you can still use it to get the drop on them while they recover from the jump.

Batons of Faith are your basic alignment linked clerical ass-kickers, that hurt most if they're in the hands of someone of exactly the right alignment, facing a creature with the diametrically opposed one. No particular flashy special abilities, but it's good to know for sure you're killing and taking the stuff of the right people.

Fiendrender is an intelligent morningstar made to kick baatezu ass. So now your cleric can keep up with the fighters when it comes to bickering with your own weapon. Surprising that we don't see more intelligent staves for the wizards as well. Maybe they're too egotistical to share like that.

Guardian Bracelets are designed to shield you against a particular type of creature, and automatically activate to protect you when they come near, which means they also serve as a way of detecting disguised or hidden monsters. Shame they won't let you sting back as well. Still, forewarned is forearmed.

The Staff of Banishment gets rid of extraplanar thingies. It doesn't have any other uses, so when you're not dealing with teleporting, dimension travelling monstrosities it's pretty useless. Stow it away in the bag of holding when you're not expecting to need it.

Waymaker is a magical shield that gains an extra bonus to bull rushes. Pretty obvious idea really. People will improvise this stuff, and you ought to be able to keep up with it.

The Gauntlet of the Maimed Lord is for people who think emulating vecna is a good idea. It withers the hand it's put on, and gives it lichlike abilities to terrify and drain the lifeforce of those it touches. So, um, I think you'll be masturbating with the other hand from now on. Awkward, especially as you just know that's the kind of dirty little secrets Vecna would keep track of as part of his godly duties.

Gravetongue is a sickle that turns anyone it kills into a Shadow under control of the user, without the usual HD limit of undead control in 3e. So you get a now rare opportunity to spawn cascade and TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!! if you have this. Better sleep lightly and keep a tight hold over it, because you really don't want to be in the middle of an army of thousands of shadows if you can no longer control them. So most of this collection is pretty low-key and sensible, but it has a decently spectacular plot device finish. I think you can lure players in with that.


Miscellaneous Mishaps: Our random table this month is over a hundred little flavor encounters for watery adventures. You don't always want giant monsters attacking. Maybe the odd abandoned lighthouse, mysterious bit of floating jetsam, seagulls following you hoping for scraps, or food spoilage will keep the players from feeling the world is just a static backdrop for their adventures. And hey, running low on supplies is a great reason to stop for a while before you reach your destination, and run into more adventures, so this is another decent enough little article for the DM to pull out every now and then.

Dragon Issue 292: February 2002


part 7/10


Bad seeds: We continue to make the wilderness more dangerous by updating a whole bunch of plant monsters from previous editions that they left out the monster manual. After all, when you're slimming the accretions of 11 years down to 256 pages, the less popular creature types only get a few examples each. You can only use them so often before the players get bored, especially as they don't normally gain class levels like humanoids. So what do these add to our wilderness trekking experience?

Death heads trees are a very familiar face from Ravenloft, creeping people out, then spitting their seeds into them. Fortunately, they aren't very mobile, so if you see one, bombard it from maximum range and hope you can outpace any heads that detach and float after you.

Greenvises are one I don't remember, but wouldn't be surprised if they're in some obscure old book. They emit acidic gas to weaken a party before they strike, which looks like it'd mow through a weak group. Once again, steering clear is a good option, made harder by their skill at camouflage.

Myconids are another one I'm surprised didn't get in the new monster manual. But then, they have a very complicated and interesting ecology that it takes quite a bit of space to describe, plus they're not particularly aggressive, so the back to the dungeon types wouldn't want them putting too much ambiguity into the game. Bah.

Needlemen are also familiar, and of course ranged fighting is their schtick, so the boot may be on the other foot if you get lost in alpine forests. And since they can pincushion you pretty effectively, you'd better have some good artillery or be good at using the trees as cover.

Orcworts are like yellow musk creepers, only they grow their own humanoids to attack things and turn them into fertiliser instead of taking over existing creatures. This does mean you'll face more of them at once, and they'll be in better condition, which makes them a good variant for higher level parties. After the body horror loses it's shock value, you just want to get to the fights.

Red Sundews are much more mobile than most large plant monsters, so you can't just leave behind the problem of a giant sticky tentacle monster eating up everything in it's path. So this is mostly old monsters, but they're still goodies. It's all too easy to forget plants, when they're such an important part of our environment, and you can make them into interesting challenges quite easily.


Nodwick gets shown up by the forces of nature.


Elminsters guide to the realms: Ed gives us another out of the norm minidungeon for adventurers to visit, explore, maybe find a few cool items, and then come back too later and find new secrets each time. A mysterious floating rock with several different hidden rooms in it, each with their own challenges and rewards, this is the kind of place that probably won't kill you, but may well leave you befuddled, and if you push your luck and try to destroy the whole thing, teleported hundreds of miles away without your companions. Intermittent rewards and interesting but nonfatal challenges. Sounds like exactly the sort of thing that irritates people, and makes them all the more determined to unravel the puzzle. and of course, that kind of teleportation gives the DM a great excuse to drop players in whatever other plot they have percolating in the back of their mind, until they're high enough level for easy scry/teleport solutions to get back together. Ed's writing continues to be both fun and whimsical, which will probably make for entertaining play, as long as your players don't take things too seriously.

Dragon Issue 292: February 2002


part 8/10


Campaign news: More elaboration on how they try to keep organised play fair here. While you can get more money than the recommended amount in the DMG if you get lucky in adventures, you can only spend that quantity on magical items, any excess will have to be saved until you level up again. Plus as they don't want people knowing all about the adventures from their friends, or letting them get too dated, they're putting use-by dates on them and keeping up a constant churn of scenarios for the duration of the edition. Another reminder just how much (probably poorly paid) work keeping the RPGA running is. Obviously the limits on how many scenarios a character can participate in in a year'll keep them from experiencing every adventure, but it's still very possible to stretch the limits of the system, and they have to constantly work to make sure it doesn't break. Credit to all the volunteers who are responsible for hammering out the details of that thankless task.


Blood golems of Hextor: Well, that's a title that's completely self-explanatory. And the article doesn't disappoint, with a suitably gruesome monster that unfortunately requites regular topping up, so you can't just leave it in a dungeon for centuries to guard a room. As it also has a slow speed like many golems you could probably lure it away and wear it out if the priests aren't paying attention and giving intelligent orders. So this is a decent monster to fight, but PC's wouldn't want to bother creating and maintaining one themselves when they could go for a regular stone or iron golem that'll last for lifetimes. Also in the same article is another monster, the Marodin. Pacifistic humanoid plant creatures, they seem to have been included mainly to showcase the fact that the narrator, Enchiridon the Fiend-Sage, is not a nice creature at all, and will engage in all sorts of cruel experimentation in the name of gaining knowledge. So the framing device works quite well this time, and sets them apart from Elminster and Volo's basically benevolent investigations. When an article is presented in character, it does raise the question of the reporter's agenda. And you should definitely watch out for that in a war-torn world like Oerth.


Playing Pieces: To balance out the two new monsters, we have two new half-elf characters here. A female Druid, and a male Ranger/Arcane Archer. Both have animal companions, and the typical half-elf problems fitting in, so they're more comfortable in the wilderness than social circles. Which means they're exactly the sort that you'll run into, and maybe end up fighting or needing help from. They're well integrated into specific parts of the setting, and seem to be pretty tightly done mechanically. These are a definite improvement on most of the old articles introducing new characters. If you complain enough, the writers do eventually listen, even if they don't always do what you want because of all the conflicting voices. I don't think anyone wants more errata though. Can we get a consensus on that of all things?


Chainmail: This month, it's the goblinoid horde we find out more about. Not too surprisingly, they're led by a hobgoblin, even though hobgoblins aren't the most powerful of creatures, but they're organised, and close enough to human shape that they can use all the really awesome magical gear conveniently. Indeed, their leader got to be in charge by owning a magical axe and slaughtering his way through anyone who questioned his right to wield it. As usual, they have a wide variety of stuff to field. Orc Druids particularly add to to their firepower and ability to survive in harsh terrain, and they also have trained animals such as the savage war apes to serve as shock troops. Looks like they have less self-control issues than the gnoll forces, which is very interesting to note. (although almost definitely more than the undead, which we have yet to see) Plenty of variety while still maintaining a solid theme once again seems to be the watchword, so even when you're facing a particular side, you won't always be able to predict what creatures you'll face and what tactics will be best. Which I still approve of quite a bit.