Dragon Issue 292: February 2002


part 9/10


Command points: Speaking of offbeat creature combos, that's exactly what the second Chainmail column covers. 4 sample warbands for you to try out, with analysis of their statistical pros and cons. All are fairly small, thinking on the skirmish scale rather than large engagements, and most of them have some variant ideas so you can field almost the same team again without it being too predictable. This once again reminds me of how they handled spellfire, and the way that was responsible for introducing CharOp thinking to the TSR offices back in the day. And now it's gone from something that was looked down upon, to something that they actively encourage amongst their players, and regularly do themselves. You can get a near unlimited amount of columns from examining statistical minutinae, as the Ecologies prove. So this column has found a niche that they should be able to stick with as long as the game stays supported, especially if there's more supplements coming regularly to keep upsetting the balance. Question is if people'll get bored with twinking advice or not. Surely not. They eat that up on the forums.


Sage advice: Can you get a synergy bonus for a skill you lack (Sure. Dig that picked up peripheral maan.)

Can you get intimidate bonuses for being ugly (Never, ever, make a penalty a bonus save in a plot sense. This is absolutely against the game's design philosophy. The rules nazis will beat down your door and drag you off to our slave camps if you dare. And Skip will watch you and laugh. )

Do you have to jump the full distance you can (no)

Which modifiers stack on jump checks (Calculate Base speed first, then add other stuff onto that. Type bonuses apply as usual.)

What happens if you jump farther than your speed. (You pause in mid-air until next round. I'm sure there's an order of the stick strip riffing off that.)

How high do you go in a broad jump (1/4 the distance leapt. Basic law of parabolics. Well, it is in D&D anyway. Speak not to Skip of Realism! Watch you don't bump your head on the way out.)

If you jump in the air, do you take damage from falling. (only any extra beyond the up)

Can you do multiple tumbles in a move (sure. You still won't go as far as if you walked. )

What's a caster level check (Roll d20, and add only your appropriate caster level. Self-explanatory much?)

What's the DC for the caster level check needed to use high level scrolls (The Scrolls Caster level + 1. Essentially, 5% chance of failure per level below the one needed to cast normally. Behold our clever mathematics.)

How does a bard cast wizard spells from scrolls (If it's on their list as well, no biggie. If it's not, you'll have to get your use magic device skills out)

Can anyone use a wand of bulls strength if they know the trigger (no)

Can you use arcane legerdemain with more than one skill (Yes. Choose a new one each time. No you can't use masterwork tools with it. Skip has answered that one already.)

Do barbarians automatically become literate if they multiclass (Unless it's to totemist. Oops. Skip can't know that yet. Retcon time! )

Are mounts automatically proficient in Barding. (No. Only if they're war trained. )

Dragon Issue 292: February 2002


part 10/10


Silicon sorcery: A double bill of conversions this month, making up for the more fluffy advice last month. Monsters from Kohan Immortal Sovereigns, and feats from Evil Islands. Once again they're trying to do the genre emulation thing, and convert video game tropes to D&D, only in a more balanced fashion than some of the previous attempts. Outright save games may be more than a little silly, but the ability to carry more than your strength score would otherwise indicate, or roll to avoid the worst of a critical hit are pretty reasonable uses of a feat slot. Similarly, the new monster is a reasonable enough mid-level demon, that has some magical abilities, but not as many as a D&D demon of similar toughness. You can incorporate both into your games without any problem I can see. So this column is still a good supply of interesting and slightly leftfield ideas to add.


DM's toolbox: Creating a newszine for your campaign world? There's an idea we've seen before, sometimes taken way too seriously. It's all too easy to get into worldbuilding for the sake of worldbuilding, creating things that'll have no use in actual play, or that'll eat up so much time that they actually impede your ability to prepare and run good games. Fortunately, this column is back to being both snappily written, and very specific and practical indeed in it's advice. Short, consistent amounts of information delivered on a regular basis, with decent formatting that you can reuse between issues, which makes things look more professional and take less effort at the same time. Deciding whether the info is IC or OOC and sticking to that writing style appropriately is a good idea, and allows you to present fallible or incomplete information to your players as appropriate. And of course coming up with a decent brand name really helps to give your campaign a strong identity. I approve of all this advice.


Dungeoncraft: While the toolbox keeps things short and snappy, Ray is really building up the the finale of his lost world campaign setting. We finally get to see some characters that PC's couldn't beat at starting level, and big secrets that could last them the length of the campaign. Not too many though, for as Ray reminds us, you shouldn't make more work for yourself than you have to, and statting up a 17th level ghost wizard intelligently would definitely qualify here. Save the hours long optimisation fests for shortly before the fight, because if you do them a year in advance at the start of the campaign you may forget the details, or find the players are the wrong level when they do meet them, and that matters a lot more in the new edition. It's important to work smart as well as hard if you want to get many things done. Now let's finish this for good.


What's new sheds their inhibitions. Not a good place to do so. Things will eat you.


One of those issues with a decidedly lackluster themed section, but a decent set of regular articles. There's also more rehash than there has been for a while, with two of the articles devoted to providing stats to things from previous editions. After last year's clean slate, that's vaguely tiresome, but I guess there is a lot of material from back then that people do want to see. Still, hopefully they'll keep adding new ideas, and not just drown in nostalgia for a while longer. Let's see what next month has to offer.

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 1/10


94 (116) pages. Worldbuilding is this month's topic, and the cover reflects that in a literal, yet nonstereotypical manner. You wouldn't want to piss off this earth goddess knowing you could be smitten with a power drill the size of Ireland. There's not a reflex save high enough to dodge that below epic levels. Still, a creation myth like that should encourage people to start developing technology early. Pierce the heavens with your mighty drill indeed. Let's se if the worlds they encourage you to make this time around are particularly generic or unusual.


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: Ah, the joys of canon. Keeping games up with continuity changes in books has caused more than a few arguments around a game table. But really, unless you're playing in the RPGA or the Camarilla, it shouldn't, for you can change the world at your whim as long as you maintain internal continuity with what's happened to the PC's. Canon can go to hell as long as the game remains fun. So a simple message from the editor this month, reminding us that the rules are different for the official writers and you, and you shouldn't hold yourself to the same standards they need to be kept too. Sensible. it should be a game for you, and a job for them, and not the other way around. But will this stop people from sending annoying letters in? Even a little bit? Anyone? :crickets chirp:


Scale Mail: Our first letter is praise for articles that they basically use as an excuse to point out that they misattributed the author of one of them. Who gets the credit? You won't unless you speak up.

The demise of Dragonmirth gets noted with dismay. They say it isn't gone for good, but promises are flexible things in the world of media. What was said to be originally a one-off for space reasons can become regular schedule messing around, leading to cancellation due to "declining popularity" that was caused by their own executive meddling in the first place. We've definitely heard this story before.

Another letter also involves proper crediting, this time for the cover artist of issue 290. If you get stuff like this wrong, you may well not get repeat projects. Even more than not being paid, people don't like it if they don't feel appreciated.

Completely unsurprisingly, converting only some of the planescape factions to 3e results in an immediate clamour for the rest of them. An unfilled symmetry is like a nagging pain to many people, and they will not shut up until it's sorted out. Just get on with it, will you.

On a different note, we have someone annoyed about the mechanics of leveling up magic items. Turns out they've misinterpreted them anyway. It's the maker who pays the heavy cost. Keeping it's powers appropriate with your level after that is relatively easy.

Their creative decisions in Oriental Adventures get defended. It's easier to put crossovers in afterwards than take them out if they're baked in. Any halfway decent DM can do that, especially in a fairly robust system like 3e.

Still, some people really loathe 3e. we have one writer who thinks it's totally kiddified and all the changes suck. Since their readership overall is up, I don't think they're going to be changing things back to please the holdouts.

And finally, we have someone unhappy about the reduced size of recent issues. They pass the blame onto the advertisers. I know in many magazines they actually provide more money than the customers, and wind up having more say in what gets put in. Anyone know what kind of ratio Dragon had in that area?

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 2/10


Nodwick goes vertical. That means extra pressure from the weight of objects above. That's gotta hurt.


D&D Previews: Not a lot going on again. Bastion of Broken Souls brings their adventures up to 18th level. And it looks like it'll get you to epic levels, if you can survive to the end of it. Good thing the rules for that are pretty imminent. If you do that, perhaps you've got a hope at derailing the Realms' current metaplot, as the Wizardwar reaches the end of it's trilogy. Maybe not, but it's the thought that counts.


Up on a soapbox: So why the hell did dwarves gain an ability to detect sloping passages in D&D? A general benefit to mining stuff you could understand, but why that weirdly specific power? Well, that is an interesting story, and stems directly from one of Gary's more sadistic little tricks. A dungeon complex that gradually sloped in such a way that players wound up going round in circles as they went down the stairs, round and gradually up the corridors, and then back down again. Obviously they got wise eventually, and so the arms race started. I think that's a good example of how the smaller an environment is, the more idiosyncratic the things that evolve there. The feedback from a few campaigns in the 70's is going to have far more random bits shaping the game's evolution than thousands of groups worth of playtesting in the 3e. And that's obviously why, for better and for worse, 3e is a more universal system, designed to resolve everything the players may think of trying with the same framework. Years of input from different writers will gradually expand and homogenise anything.


Profiles: Ray Winninger doesn't get a photo, but does get a longer profile than usual. He's definitely had quite an interesting career, mixing computer game design with pen & paper RPG's, and actually making a decent bit of money from both, which I think demonstrates quite handily how much bigger the RPG market was in the 80s and early 90s. His first game, Underground, still has a cult fanbase despite being put on ice by the company, and pretty much abandoned. He has a whole bunch of other campaign worlds and game mechanic ideas, many of them unpublished, which also look quite interesting. Obviously, given his interests, he sees the gap between RPG's and computer games blurring in the future, with programs to facilitate roleplaying, and games with sophisticated enough AI to allow some meaningful communication with NPC's. And as is often the case, history shows progress has been slower than you'd hope. All we can do is keep plugging on, and hope we aren't too set in out ways to appreciate them when they get there.

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 3/10


Wills are tough to make. Particularly when they're not being done by the deceased, as in Zogonia.


At the table: Oooh, they actually remembered to scan in the bonus stuff this month. Nice. So here's a whole bunch of little gridded locations for your PC's to wander and have fights in, presumably scaled to the size of the current D&D minis line. That could come in handy. Course, printing it out I'd have to be careful about getting the scale right, but I think that's a solvable problem. That adds a mark or so to this issue.


Dork tower does nothing to improve the image of gamers in the eyes of their SO's.


Small gods: Animistic cosmologies are pretty common in fantasy universes. Being able to talk not just to big gods, but a whole range of smaller demigods and lesser spirits that extends all the way down to ones of individual objects that a starting PC could beat up no trouble opens up a lot of plot opportunities. It also makes the world feel literally alive, as you know there's always a ton of things surrounding you, watching. In that kind of environment, superstition can thrive, because particular gods are not omniscient or omnipresent, so you might get a result for your observances and offerings, but then again, you might not. You also have to constantly do your research to keep up with the local spirits, which means the DM may need to do more improvising to answer the players questions. So while some writers may set it as default, getting heavily into animism does take quite a lot of work. So the main value of this article is that it's one of those ones that can get you to examine your unconscious assumptions, and play with them deliberately. What will you make of this idea, and how will it differ from the standard stereotypes?

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 4/10


T.V. Structure: Designing your campaign more like a TV series than a simulation or a novel? Yup, Robin Laws is up to his usual tricks. Stuff like series bible, concept sketches, episodic stories with an overarching plot for each season and putting the spotlight on different members of the ensemble in particular episodes can all be used in an RPG, and will hopefully result in a faster-paced campaign than just setting them loose in a sandbox. Of course, there is the omnipresent danger that either the players or the dice might not play along and he warns you against making your plans too precise. You can't expect them to do a hot springs episode when there's a world that needs saving in a few months time. Nor can you make one person the star indefinitely without destabilising the game in the long run. You'll almost definitely benefit from discussing the character generation and rough season arcs collaboratively, rather than making it up on your own and expecting the players to play along when they don't know which direction you thought they'd take. As this both gives you a cool idea and warns you of it's pitfalls beforehand, I think it counts as one of his better ideas. Just don't try and model your campaign on a painting, lovingly detailed, but ultimately completely static. I don't think that would turn out so well.


Countrycraft: Meanwhile, Ray still thinks that creating a setting with a whole bunch of characters and plot hooks, and then letting stories happen organically, is preferable than trying to force players into a particular plot. Still, as he's pointed out before, creating a setting and keeping it alive can be a lot of hard work. So any mechanical help is always welcome. Such as a 3e updating of the Birthright domain management rules, taking advantage of the new skill system to improve the amount of control PC's have. There's still a fair amount of bookkeeping involved, but the character sheet for a nation is smaller than that for a PC, and the war system is pretty quick to resolve. So obviously this is less innovative than the previous article, but it still has the aim of creating a fun game. Worldbuilding is definitely one area where one size doesn't fit all. And 3e could definitely benefit from bringing back domain level play, so I approve of this.


Monsters with class: We already opened 3e monsters up to becoming PC's almost universally. And we saw LA adjustments introduced soon afterwards. Now they give us LA adjustments for nearly all the existing monsters in the MM. Of course, the problem with these is their tendency to overestimate power levels, resulting in creatures that are actually unplayably weak at their supposed LA, especially if they choose class levels that don't complement their racial abilities. Trying to create a balanced game when you have creatures with an enormous variety of capabilities is an exceedingly tricky task, especially as levels are a fairly granular measure of power. So this is a reminder that they're trying for game balance in their design at this point, but still a long way from getting it perfect. This is going to be a long rocky road, isn't it.

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 5/10


The elemental planetouched: Tieflings and Aasimar were popular enough to be put in the new MM. Now we update their elemental counterparts, in one of those articles where they use the magazine to get feedback before putting them in a book and making them fully official. These are pretty straight conversions, with the same ability modifiers (albeit doubled to fit the 3e formula) and innate spells as their 2e versions. All are LA+1 to match with the existing planetouched. The main forward development is the idea of racial feats that allow you to enhance your natural abilities, which is definitely something that catches on and becomes more common before being made core next edition. So this is another article that shows their progression through history, and the magazine's integral part in that. The official books would look different if they didn't have this to test out and fill in details.


Campaigning with class: Right back at the start of 3e, we had an article on the point of prestige classes, and how the selection the DM allows should be used to define your campaign world. This is basically a repetition of that, with the benefit of a year of supplements to draw on for examples. You want a particular types of game? Here's the existing prestige classes that would be good for that, and the books where they can be found. (gotta collect em all!) So this feels like a slightly cynical bit of rehash, designed to get you using their prestige classes, albeit not all of them at once, and hopefully playing multiple D&D campaigns instead of moving to another system once you level up to 20+ and finish one. Even if they're no longer supporting tons of different campaigns at once, they recognise that players need a certain amount of variation to sustain interest. But you'll have to do some of the customising yourself. Not getting much helpful from this I'm afraid. Moving on then.


Nodwick's party help design a universe. Design by committee makes it far worse than any of them could have done individually.


Elminsters guide to the realms: Another inn that adventurers would probably rather enjoy staying in this month, as it has plenty of potential to lead to adventures both within it and elsewhere. The Missing Minotaur has Harper links, and like any place that deals with troublemakers, the innkeeper has a number of tricks to deal with patrons who get rowdy. While the notes are as interesting as ever, the map is one of the less useful ones in the series, with it's perspective not being as clear about the layout as most. It's al about picking the perspective, and side-on doesn't work quite as well as top down or isometric. Oh well, it's not as if we're short of maps of inns to steal, mix and match. Just can't get the help sometimes.

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 6/10


Bestiary loses it's definite article. From three words to one. Next thing you know they'll start clipping syllables. Anyway, this month's theme is a return to wolves. Since they last showed up as a topic halloween 1991, they're well due a revisiting. As it should be, they take a different theme to the last time. Where that was horror oriented, this draws upon native american style animistic spiritualism, merging wolves with various elements. Goddammnit, didn't I say that this is exactly the kind of thing you should be using templates to cover. And I must admit the combination of wolves and animism feels more than a little played out after 10 years of W:tA. So this provokes negative amounts of enthusiasm in me. The fact that these are all aways chaotic or neutral evil further dampens my mood.

Thunder wolves appear in storms, and then go again when the weather clears. They are, of course, immune to electricity.

Mist wolves feed off your fear, and hit and run from mist, making them perfect for Ravenloft. Since they're also incorporeal, quite a few parties'll be defenceless against them.

Sea wolves are coated in matted seaweed, and fight you on the beaches. They don't seem to keen on attacking actual ships though, unlike the lycanthropic seawolves.

Shard wolves are all jagged bits of rock, and appear out of fissures after earthquakes. As usual, their digging ability means they may well disappear just as mysteriously when things turn against them

Magma wolves come from lava, and rather like burning stuff. They'll destroy the plant life if they hang around for any time, so get them away from the village before they ruin the crops.

Cloud wolves are obviously the most likely to show up anywhere. Fly down, zap you with breath weapons, blow you over. Still meh.


Class acts: Monte returns to the driving seat with one of his more interconnected creations, the Nightsong Enforcer. Taking the general idea of thieves guild that is common to fantasy settings, and giving it his own spin, this is the first of the specialist classes associated with the guild. They're combat focussed rogues, designed to work in teams to get into places and take out enemies of the guild with great prejudice. They'd be a good addition to an adventuring party, especially if there's another rogue in the team to play off. After all, it's not possible for a rogue to specialise in all their class skills, so having multiple thiefy types can be very handy and not niche stealing if they focus on different abilities.

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 7/10


Places of mystery: Greyhawk gets it's counterpart to Ed's current column, describing new places for you to adventure in. Of course, they don't have the same art budget here, so it's just descriptions. A cursed castle in an area infested by orcs, and with who knows what horrors in the lower dungeon levels, and a hidden citadel full of advanced Shadows that can teleport between any shadow they choose, meaning you're never truly safe once you've aroused their ire, no matter how far you run. As with Ed's recent works, these are presented as challenges too big for a regular party to clear out in one go, so you can have multiple parties exploring the same dungeon complex, and monsters replenishing themselves regularly. (which'll certainly happen if you face Shadows and aren't properly equipped) Since they're both surrounded by hazardous terrain, you can't expect to be able to run to the surface, rest up and go shopping whenever resources start to run a little low, or for the monsters to stick in their rooms whenever you're not around, and you'll have to plan accordingly. While you'll have to fill in all the layout details yourself, these are fairly flavourful little sketches that nudge you towards making brutal old school adventures that'll take sessions to solve and kill plenty of characters in the process. If you want to make stories that your players'll talk about the way Gary did back in the day, pay attention, because they're trying to show you the way.


A splintered sun: We've had stuff aimed at the DM, now for something a bit more player-centric. A knightly prestige class that puts a specific spin on paladin style virtue, with a test for entry? You can have plenty of those, and having them makes it more likely you'll have conflicts between good creatures who've simply prioritised one virtue over another. In this case it's physical and moral fortitude beyond normal endurance, and they get a special power that boosts their constitution when they drop to 0 HP, allowing them to press onwards for a little while longer and then die, or get away to get some healing before it wears off and they collapse again. Their mental disciplines include taking 10 on skills in stressful situations, and the ability to take a partial action even if surprised. So they will play a bit differently from regular fighters or paladins, while still being front-line melee combatants. Of course, the real meat is in the setting detail, not only telling us about their history, code of conduct and initiation rites, but also providing some sample NPC's of various ranks in the organisation. So this really demonstrates the advantages of designing your prestige class for a specific campaign rather than keeping it generic, and making your own, not just allowing whatever ones from official books your players ask for. At the very least, you should adapt them a little and give them places within your world.

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 8/10


Chainmail: While the big factions in the Chainmail game stick to one or two big races, you can also choose to mix it up with the free states, with a combination of humans, demihumans and humanoids to taste. I suppose people would do it anyway, so you might as well make it canon within the setting. As with the rest of this, it looks like they've gone to a fair bit of effort to come up with setting details to justify their combinations of creatures, and there's a whole bunch of different little city states that make up this area, so they could well be fighting amongst one-another as well. Basically, it's for the same sort of people who like playing Catiff in Vampire: the Masquerade. You get more flexibility in terms of powers, but considerably less social support, as members of an outgroup don't necessarily have the support of other minority outgroups, yet alone anyone else. Course, in a wargame where everyone is balanced by point buy, and setting is merely a backdrop, that isn't really much of a disadvantage unless there's some rules details I don't know about. Once again it seems likely that this is going to go the way of Dragon Dice, diluting it's strong original ideas in the follow-ups, and players choosing mixed teams of maximum nastiness over staying in theme. It's the CCG way. That's the difference being taken over by a company that had it's big break in another field makes.


Command points: Our tactical minis advice this month is another one that encourages you to go against type. Dwarves aren't noted for their ranged attacks, and since they don't have high mobility, hit and run tactics aren't their forte. But apparently they do have one unit with a powerful one-shot ranged blast, and if you time it right it can make a real difference. So you need to make it count by spreading out so you can shoot without worrying about suffering the penalty for firing into melee, and focussing your fire on the nastiest members of the other team so you can take them down quickly, which then lets you gang up on the remaining enemies when you close into melee. Sounds like it might work. Once again it feels like they're showing the influences from also playing M:tG, creating lots of highly specific monster variants just for the Chainmail game that have unique strengths and weaknesses to exploit. So this is good if you like that kind of highly tactical play, and growing annoyingly inescapable if you don't, as the longer they run a column like this, the harder it'll be to find players who don't think like that. What are ya gonna do? :shrugs:

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 9/10


Sage advice goes oriental again. Ahh, Skip remembers when this ate up years of questions back in the late 80's. Sweet nostalgia.

Do objects take half damage from unarmed attacks (No, but they're often immune to subdual damage. Also, watch for bruised fists)

Does sneak attack and iajutsu focus stack. (Probably not, since they know you're there. Maybe if your second stands behind them and distracts them at the crucial moment. How dishonorable.)

How often can you use falling star strike (Once per round, up to your stunning strikes limit.)

Does improved grapple let you do more damage (Not inherently. But surviving longer certainly helps.)

What happened to the great throw feat (Oops. Create Official Errrr:pfft: Oh maaaan. This has never happened to Skip before. Guess Skip will just have to use Skip's hands and sort this out manually.)

Where's the Isawa school spell list (They can choose any of the elements. Generalists rock.)

Can hengeyokai assume big animal forms (No.)

What does a bird hengeyokai look like in hybrid form. (Hands at the end of the wings. It looks goofy, but they can still fly.)

Do hengeyokai ability boosts apply to animal form (no, only human & hybrid)

Can nezumi attack with a weapon and bite at once (If they have a hand free. Yes. this might not make complete sense.)

What AC penalties do masterwork Dastanas and Chahar-aina have (None)

Can you combine them with elven chain (no)

If they have an enhancement bonus, do they stack with regular armour (No. Only the best, as per usual stacking rules.)

Why does a kappa shell weigh more than a living Kappa (Um, Er, Um. Cumulative swamp gas! When they die, they fart lots of helium! )

Would a monk with 2 tonfas have any extra attacks (No)

Do Shugenja element foci stack with wu jen elemental powers. (no. )

Do multiclass shugenja element forbiddances also apply to other classes (no)

Can a wizard learn wu jen spells (no. Nor vice versa.)

Do maho-tsukai cast water to poison using int or taint (taint)

What good is being a eunuch warlock for sorcerers (Good question. It's probably not worth it.)

How can wu jen become blade dancers with incompatible alignment (Oh dear. It's errata time. )

Can you use ki whirlwind with iajutsu strike (Oh yes. Talk about lawnmower. )

Dragon Issue 293: March 2002


part 10/10


DM's toolbox: We've already talked about formats to build your campaign, and then record the things that happened in it. Now we talk about building a website for your campaign. This is one case where the advice already seems a little dated, despite it only being 10 years ago now. This is still before the rise of wikipedia, and the corresponsing rise in creative commons driven collaborative creation. So while the things that you want to do might not have changed, the tools you have to do them with have been radically reworked since then, and that changes the assumptions of how you go about this. The garish custom pages of geocities or myspace have mostly faded away, although you can still find a few old examples cached away if you know the url to put in. So the generalities here are still handy, but the specifics, less so. Unless you deliberately want to go retro with your webpage design, which is very much an option for flavour.


What's new tries to quit the fantasy for modern day comedy, but just can't get away. Sigh.


Looks like things are starting to go downhill again, with the amount of rehashed material rising rapidly, and some half-assed ideas and artwork rounding out the issue. Still a fair amount of interesting experimentation though, and it feels like they're actually reacting to the feedback they got from 3e's release in developing their new articles. But how much of what they're learning will be retained when it's time for the next rules revision? Well, that'll still take a while to reach anyway. In the meantime, let's see how funny the latest april issue is.

Dragon Issue 294: April 2002


part 1/10


116 pages. Beefcaaaaaaake! Yup, it's a good ol' shirtless sun deity for the female readers on this month's cover. Well, it's not as funny as Phil Foglios cheesecake last year, but you can't have everything. And at least it's appropriate, as the other theme this month is deities. So it's pretty obvious they're not going to go for full-on zaniness this issue, but they may have a few jokes slipped in. Let's see if the fun and usefulness will be segregated or integrated (or maybe diffracted) this year.


Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, some page foldback visible.


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: Another tale of the staff deliberately playing their characters stupid, and finding this actually makes the game more fun than being taking it all very seriously. Finding an obvious, easily imitable speech pattern and then using it until everyone is thoroughly sick of it. We've definitely covered that before. As a staple of 80's cartoons, I think I speak for all of us when I say that's insmurfably smurfitating, and also somewhat resmurfed. While last time I was in the mood to indulge this, this time I'm not, especially as it was an official playtest. We've all seen what happens when you let the whimsy levels get too high when creating modules. You end up with crap like WG7 or 9, and hurt the credibility and continuity of your established campaign worlds. (unless we're talking dragonlance, where another bit of comedy goofiness would be just a drop in the ocean) We all have to let off steam sometimes, but you don't want to do so in a way that messes up your future prospects.


Scale Mail: Our first letter is quite happy to have more plant monsters to throw at the enemies. I'm not objecting to that at all either.

The second is rather grumpier, being very cynical about the way they brought back the Saurials in the magazine, and suspecting they're going to try and sell them to us again in a book in a few years as well. Money for old rope. They point out how little rehashing they actually did in the past year. They only brought stuff back when there were multiple letters asking for it. But if that's what the people want, then eventually they'll have to give in.

The next letter proves that point, with someone who loved the saurials, and has read all the novels featuring them. Get Jeff Grubb to write some more!

Rather more up to date is someone asking for Chainmail tactical advice. Still probably sent a few months though, since they already started doing that. Smartasses.

We have two letters supporting the magazine's overall direction and mix of article types at the moment. There may be more complainers than a few years ago, but they shouldn't let that bring them down, especially with the increased readership. It just shows they haven't become an echo chamber.

A request for a Githyanki language primer. Unfortunately they've phased that regular out, and don't plan to bring it back, as they didn't feel it was popular enough. Oh well. Can't please everyone.

A rather amusing suggestion that you play a one-shot using characters from your real life, only secretly involved in secret and often outlandish schemes to take over the world. Yeah, that could definitely be fun. It'd be like playing World of Darkness in your home town turned up to 11. Just don't let the stories get back to those parodied, or you'll never hear the end of it.

And finally, we have another amusing letter afraid that Paul Kidd's novel versions of the old dungeon crawls are now the official way those happened in Greyhawk, and Lolth is dead for good. I think she's now a little too iconic for them to kill off for good, even for the most zealous of metaplotters. They only did it with Takhisis because Dragonlance wasn't selling enough to get it's game books renewed, so they didn't expect to have to keep on moving the timeline forward after that.

Dragon Issue 294: April 2002


part 2/10


Yeagar gets judged by the gods on his cruelty to nodwick. Apparently, they aren't too bothered.


D&D Previews: Another sign of gearing up for epic level, we see tons of gods statted out in Deities and Demigods. This does not work as well as in 1st ed, partly due to the general inflation of power, and partially because 3rd ed makes constructing your own legal god stats an almighty amount of mathematical work. Not one of their finest hours.

The Realms gets a double bill of books. Realms of Shadow shows us the aftermath of the archwizard's return. And another magic heavy series starts up. Spellfire: Shandril's saga by Ed Greenwood. The rules of the universe being changed IC and OOC can drive quite a few stories.


Up on a soapbox: Pit traps! Now there's something that needed inventing that you can easily overlook when it isn't there. Hell, you can easily overlook them when they are there, because the whole point is to surprise people and make them suffer.   Amusingly enough, that only came afterwards, once Gary had introduced open pits and let the players get used to that idea. And after that, he rapidly progressed to increasingly sophisticated combinations of spikes, monsters and secret doors within the pits themselves, falling blocks to make sure you don't get out, and all those other devious mechanical contrivances we eventually got an article on back in the late 70's. A good reminder that the exploration part of the game was given more attention in the early days, dungeons had lots of nonlinear stuff that you might not encounter on your first pass through, and obstacles that would kill you in one fell swoop if you were careless or unlucky were a lot more common as well. Making dungeons fair or safe? What's my motivation as an evil archwizard to do that? Unless you actually want people to come in and get enough out of it that they tell their friends and come back as part of some longer plan, which is always a possibility, and how the big long-lasting dungeons in the Forgotten Realms are obviously set up. A strong reminder that back then play was more adversarial, and less concerned with creating a coherent world behind the challenges you created for your players. Whether that's a good or bad thing is very debatable, but it once again put the lie to recent letters who claim 3e D&D is more hack and slash oriented than the old days. More than 2e, yeah. More than OD&D and 1e? Nope, no dice.


Epic level countdown: Woo. D&D gets the top taken off it's progression. Be it 20th, 30th, 36th, or 40th, they never managed to truly escape the level caps before. But now they can. Unlimited power! Clunky little execution. Get ready for DC 100 skill checks that have effects a wizard could achieve with a 1st level spell, some epic feats that actually do cool stuff, while others merely increase your ability scores by a point, and an epic spellcasting system that causes wizards to draw even further ahead of other primary spellcasting classes the farther you push it. The bigger you make the numbers, the more obvious the drastic differences in flexibility between the classes become, and the more any mathematical trickery can open a gulf between characters of the same level in terms of actual competence. They really ought to playtest the higher level stuff at least as much as the low level stuff, because it's obviously so much harder to get right. Well, at least they tried. And if they're doing a full 6 month lead-in, we'll get plenty of time to look at the bits which were more and less effective individually. Should be a decent amount to talk about here.


Kev is not pulling his weight in zogonia. You need a strong stomach to be an adventurer. Dork tower makes player choice irrelevant. Seems a bit ironic for a muskrat to face a marmot.

Dragon Issue 294: April 2002


part 3/10


Kev is not pulling his weight in zogonia. You need a strong stomach to be an adventurer. Dork tower makes player choice irrelevant. Seems a bit ironic for a muskrat to face a marmot.


Beings of power: Our first article in the theme is a bunch of leftovers from their latest book. Sigh. As Iuz, Pholtus, Rao and Tharizdun weren't in the corebook, but do play fairly substantial parts in Greyhawk's history, they decided not to include them in Deities and Demigods, and give them to the magazine's readers, who are probably more likely to be aware of D&D's wider history. And there'll certainly be plenty of people still annoyed at what happened in the Greyhawk wars who'd want to kick Iuz's ass in a fair fight. Which since he's only a rank 3 demigod, is within the bounds of possibility for a non-epic party if they can catch him without his entourage or take an army along to engage them in turn. The others, not so much, unless you can pull the kind of trick that makes CR irrelevant. So this feels like an attempt at a cross-promotional article that'll alienate as many as it sells, revealing just how horrendously unwieldy deity statblocks are in 3e, so they know what they're getting into before they spend the money. In that respect, you could call it a public service announcement. At least that's better than a vague or misleading advert that'll only reveal the problems after you've paid the money.


Ramming speed: In a rather leftfield turn, we have an epic article that isn't part of either of their nominal themes this month. An 18 page treatise on vehicle building and combat in D&D? They ought to have put that at the front, not the cuttings from their latest book, and found a couple more articles to complement it. Marketing fail.

Even more interestingly, the rules here aren't the same as, and are quite a bit more involved than the vehicle combat rules that appear in d20 modern later this year. It covers sailing and flying, even underground diggers as well as land vehicles, and has a lot of examples, complete with construction details that show how much they cost to make and repair. (and you know that with the scrapes PC's get into, they're going to be spending a fair chunk in the chop shop if they want to keep their ride running, and even more if they want to customise it with the latest stat boosting accessories ) Which means this is the kind of article you can get quite a bit of use out of, especially if your players get into the optimisation game with their vehicles as much as their characters, and devote a load of time to making them as effective as possible with the money they have. Which makes it pretty appropriate for the 3e era really. It's always nice to see them go to the extra effort, especially it looks like they might not get the proper credit for it.


The windsinger: Following directly on from the last article is a ship based prestige class. The Windsinger is one of those highly specialised prestige classes that's pretty useful within their speciality, and a bit weak outside it. Weather manipulation is a pretty useful power, it has to be said. But considering by the early teens, wizards and druids can do all that, plus a ton of other stuff, this still isn't a particularly high tier prestige class. Still, it does get full BAB and an excellent skill selection on top of it's powers, so they aren't devoid of balancing factors, and make a decent nautical alternative to Rangers & Bards. And it does fit a common literary niche. So I'm not going to throw it overboard or make it walk the plank.