Dragon Issue 314: December 2003


part 9/9


Sage advice: Do animal companions get bigger as they gain HD (Do you? No, you don't. They're more badass from skill, not physical bulk. )

Can you do nonlethal attack with a sneak attack (Only if it would do nonlethal damage anyway. A good cosh is a great addition to a rogues arsenal, especially if you fancy a bit of kidnapping.)

Surely that means rogues ought to be proficient in the sap, despite it being a martial weapon. (Correct! We have already erratad that, so worry ye not! )

Can you sneak attack while raging (Yes, weirdly enough. )

Do prestige classes still ignore multiclassing penalties. (Oh dear. I guess that like the point buy system, we forgot to keep that in. It's still an Official Rule though. You'll just have to keep your 3.0 books around to be on the safe side, in case the incompetent updaters missed anything else important out.)

What happens if you try a coup de grace with nonlethal damage (It knocks them out if it would normally kill them. )  

Many animated objects have hardness affect, if any, will an animated objec on spells used against the animated example, an animated wooden table nes wou affec fire bol arre and (I'm sorry man, you're breaking up. Skip can't answer your question now. Call back later. You will still be charged the full cost for this call.)

If you suffer a mishap using a scroll, is it used up (Yes. Talk about adding insult to injury)

Can you take 10 or 20 when casting a scroll (No, neither are applicable. This is what happens when you mess with forces beyond your ken.)

How does Rary's Mnemonic enhancer work (If you're retaining, straight away. If you're adding, you've still got to take a time out. Does anyone use retainers these days? Skip will laugh at you if you do. Retainers are soooo 80's. It's almost as bad as shoulderpads.)


Dork tower messes up and prints the same strip twice in a row. Nodwick goes oriental adventuring. Nothing changes but the names. It's the circle of life.


And so with a 5th issue of shallowly skimming formulaic crunchy stuff in a row, I'm forced to conclude 2003 has just won the title of most boring and formulaic year in the magazine's history away from 1998. Hopefully it'll hold onto it for a few years, not surrender it straight away to 2004, but I'm not making any bets. In any case, Paizo either are not enjoying any more creative freedom than they did as part of WotC, or are still too busy finding their footing running the practical aspects of a business to be properly adventurous with their article topics and stylings, and it really makes reading multiple articles in one go an absolute chore, even when individual ones are good. More Incursion, less 6 flavor in one breakfast packs please.

Dragon Issue 315: January 2004


part 1/8


100 (116) pages. Even Strahd says raar and forgets to cut his hair in 3.5. So much for all the cunning and dignity he aspired too when written by P. N. Elrod or Tracey Hickman. Plus this graveyard is ridiculously cramped. I see the art of setting things a little further back so we can get proper scale and perspective is still a lost one for the magazine art department, despite the issue's theme being the revival of old campaign settings. One that definitely inspires mixed feelings in me, as while it's more exciting than the class collections, it still makes this the 6th issue in a row where they're shallowly covering a whole load of topics that more than merit entire issues to themselves. Maybe this'll remind Paizo and WotC that just because they were never as popular as the Realms, doesn't mean plenty of people didn't love them, and still do to this day. They ought to give them a little more love if they want to avoid doing sequels to splatbooks just a year or two after the originals.


Scan Quality: Good, Unindexed.


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: The editorial makes it very clear just why settings got such short shrift last year. While WotC originally killed them purely on economic grounds when they took over, there's now a substantial crop of newbies (and 1st ed comebacks who missed that era) who have no real knowledge of or attachment to them. This includes our current lead editor, who is shocked just how enthusiastic people were when given a chance to write some new official material. This explains a lot about why I've been so bored since he took over. With no finer appreciation of the many weird settings their past contains, it's no wonder the material he picked for publishing got samey faster than any editor before him. Let's hope this is a turning point for them then, not some cheap updating that completely fails to capture the varied spirits of the originals.


Scale Mail is very short and homogenous this month, with every single letter apart from one being unstinting praise of issue 313. Why is it the eras I hate the most that get the most sycophantically positive letters in the magazine itself?  The only critical one that gets through is an editorial double-booking they didn't follow up on. So instead they'll just cancel it for the forseeable future, reminding us again that Paizo really doesn't have the easy access to interdepartmental resources TSR or WotC did when they want to run a competition or put out a special. It's going to be a long hard fight for them to get to the point where they start challenging WotC in sales, and right now, they still aren't quite up to it.


Campaign classics: Ironically considering they're covering more settings than any other issue, including many that have never got an article in Dragon before, they start off by apologising they couldn't fit in everything. Since a good chunk of the missing settings are licensed ones that have expired like Lankhmar, Conan and Diablo, I don't think anyone's going to be sending in vitriolic letters for them. Similarly, those "settings" that were just a single boxed set or sourcebook, in many cases covering a part of some larger campaign world anyway, I find it hard to count as full campaigns, so I'm not surprised if they couldn't find anyone to write for them. The only one that feels like a big loss is Spelljammer, which apparently they did a 50 page 3e update on in Polyhedron a year and a half ago, so it's already properly catered for mechanically. Still, this is a positive start because it shows just how incredibly comprehensive they're being in their research. Now I just hope the individual articles won't be too small and shallow because they're trying to fit so many in.

Dragon Issue 315: January 2004


part 2/8


The return of Strahd: Ravenloft's problem was always the conflict between the weekend in hell style players, and the ones that wanted to make an internally consistent setting that just happened to be ruled by and filled with horror monsters who were themselves prisoners in their own way. In the first, the PC's can roll through and beat the Darklords before rolling out again. In the second, metaplot bogs everything down, and the writers wound up making many of the darklords either literally unkillable or only defeatable by complex and obtuse weak points. Funny that it's the second style that gained supremacy in the full books then. But here, they're going for the toolkit approach, giving us both I6 style stats for Strahd and souped up Lord of Barovia, second biggest and most powerful darklord in the Domain of Dread ones as well. They also provide the map for Castle Ravenloft too, which virtually lets you play the adventure. (who cares about or remembers all the other monsters in the module? ) So this is pretty pure rehash, giving us nothing new apart from 3e stats. Since this is one of the easiest modules to find online or second-hand, I can't really get excited about it.


Sundering Ka: The Hollow World, on the other hand gets all-new material that examines some of the assumptions of the setting. As it's essentially a preservation zoo for the destroyed cultures of Mystara, and they're magically forbidden from advancing technologically, that means newer cultures have serious tactical advantages against the older ones. If it weren't for the same immortal interference preventing them from being wiped out entirely, this static setup would not be viable at all. But that doesn't mean they can't cheat a little, as this article shows. By stealing a little bit of Immortal essence, they transform themselves into dinosaur hybrids, which offers a pretty substantial power boost while not violating their cultural restrictions. Goes to show how change is inevitable, and even gods can only do so much to prevent it in the long term. A lesson every setting designer should keep in mind. So this is a pretty interesting article, that reminds us just how weird they got in the past, and what you can do when you build on odd premises logically. Maybe this issue will be worth it after all.


Sin eaters of Eilistraee: Even in this issue, the Realms is effectively going to wind up with more than it's fair share, since they're counting the other continents as whole settings in themselves. Nice accounting trick if you can pull it off. What's the betting Earth'll do something similar if we ever get extraplanetary colonies going, since even if we do, it'll be centuries before it's population isn't bigger than everything else put together.

But anyway. Here we have an attempt to put a bit of pacifism into the Realms. The Silverhair Knights are followers of Eilistraee who try to convert other drow by being living examples of the benefits of not being a backstabbing bastard, and refusing to kill them no matter how annoying they are. This means any special powers they get which make it easier to survive and convert people are very much needed. Ironically, they still get full BAB, even if they'll be mostly using it to deal nonlethal damage. (which they get sneak attack-like boosts if they use that are not to be sneezed at.) They also get 3/5 spellcasting progression, and magic which inflicts guilt overloads on enemies, making them more amenable to alignment changes. It's fairly heavy-handed in achieving it's goals, but at least they're trying something different. Even most of the Exalted Deeds prestige classes are still all about the killing. The only problem will likely be getting the rest of the party to play along. Even Paladins will tend towards killing drow after the third betrayal. Good luck trying to overcome racism in a world where it's entirely justified.

Dragon Issue 315: January 2004


part 3/8


Defilers of athas: Drow may be unpopular, but they still have a reasonable amount of glamour as well. Defilers, on the other hand, are not glamorous, because they make a big, obvious and unsightly mess wherever they go. In 2e, their big balancing factor against preservers was lower XP costs, and a slightly easier time socially in the big cities controlled by the sorcerer-kings. In 3e, everyone has a standardised XP cost, so you need to offer them other benefits to make up for the problems they cause. The solution here? Throw out the distinction between defilers and preservers as a class, and let any arcane spellcaster get free metamagic feats if they're willing to tap the environment a little too hard. When the enemy is pulling out quickened spells every turn because they don't give a damn, the temptation to pull a little more just to keep up is pretty strong. Only the threat of turning into an undead creature if they take too much in one go now keeps a selfish sorcerer from overtapping. Which means that the results in play will be pretty different from 2e, (but then, there were two quite different systems there already, depending on if you were using defiling at the casting or memorising point. ) and probably more dramatic, making defilers very scary villains. So i think the question will be if reshaping old campaigns is a good thing, or if you should try and keep them consistent, and only make changes if they move the setting and rules closer together. In this case, I remain ambivalent, as it is a pretty drastic change.


Angry dead gnomes and sinister walking sharks: Now that's a good title. Taladas always did have some cool stuff that got overlooked because regular Dragonlance was so irritating. Death obsessed gnomes, and shark cultists who like to wear shark skins and act in an appropriately predatory and bloodthirsty way. Each get their own prestige class, with appropriate transformations taking place over the course of 10 levels, culminating in becoming undead, or being able to go into a blood frenzy on a whim. They both definitely tend towards the darker end of things, but at the same time aren't always outright evil. It's a good example of the slightly greyer morality there compared to Ansalon. I'm not even sure if this is new material or a direct updating of old stuff, unlike most of these, but the material is pretty good and it reminds me that even after all these years, my knowledge of old D&D settings isn't completely encyclopedic. This is why settings should stay alive and moving forward. If you stop, it's much harder to get going again, because people complain more if anything changes.


Bozak Draconian characters: The actual Dragonlance article is pretty self-explanatory. PC stats for said draconians. With 4 HD and an LA +3 modifier on top of that, they're pretty expensive, but since they automatically get 4 levels of sorcerer and dragon HD and skill points for their racial HD, they're definitely worth at least a level or two more than their HD, unlike many monsters. Question is what classes you should take after all your racial levels to remain competitive. I think a good bit of abjurant champion'll do the job. Surprised they didn't do the other two draconian types as well though. It's like they're inviting further submissions by leaving things open this issue.

Dragon Issue 315: January 2004


part 4/8


The exiled factions: The factions have already got a partial 3e updating in issue 288. This continues, but doesn't complete that process, with prestige classes for the Harmonium and Revolutionary League. The Harmonium Peacekeeper is a fairly straightforward 5 level paladin variant, with a particular emphasis on the mount and the smiting parts. The Anarchomancer is a somewhat stranger one that sacrifices three spellcasting levels for some extremely powerful and flexible magical rituals that do things even 9th level spells can't pull off. The nearly undetectable cover identity power at 1st level alone is very tempting, because it lets you do a "and now, I will reveal my true form!" moment with great ease and real mechanical impact. Meanwhile, the Athar, Guvners and Doomguard each get a couple of new magical items, and the Fated get stats for their current factol. As it has both updatings and new material, this is pretty cool, if very incomplete. The planes have got more attention under WotC than most of their old settings, and it's good that they're still providing new, non rehashed information as part of it. Let's hope there's some more to come.


Regional feats of Oerth: One problem Greyhawk has had ever since being brought back in 1998 is the feeling that it's trying to play catch-up with the Realms, providing the same kind of nearly generic information in similar formats, just in smaller quantities. Not for lack of trying though, since apparently these 38 feats are only half of what Erik Mona wrote for this issue. As with the Realms regional feats, the benefits from these are slightly more powerful than equivalent regular feats, many of them providing multiple semi-connected benefits around a theme. Many of them are applicable to more than one nationality, and the various demihuman races don't get ignored either. It's all pretty high density. I'm sure someone'll get a use out of this, particularly if it gets allowed in the Living Greyhawk campaign, but I somehow doubt I will.


The bloody swords: Ghostwalk? I don't even remember them mentioning that in the releases, let along getting any articles. Googling says it was only released 6 months ago, after they stopped doing previews in the magazine, and as one of the last things released for 3.0, it probably got lost in the cracks for most people. And meanwhile Savage Species was getting follow-up after follow-up ad nauseum. I am nonplussed and vaguely irritated by their promotional decisions.

The new material here is a cult of Orcus pretending to be just a regular bloodthirsty mercenary group. They aren't particularly big, but they do have a nice line in zombie servants to make up the numbers, and some custom magic that lets their undead regain hit points by cannibalising others in classic zombie movie style. Makes more sense for a chaotic evil cult than spending tons of time on preservative and enhancing spells. It also means things are less likely to spiral out of control, as you can't both eat someone and turn them into another undead creature in classic spawn cascade stylee. Oh well. It still means players have plenty of reasons to run into them, get annoyed by their antics and try to kill them. Once again, while there may be a few setting specific easter bits, this is usable pretty much anywhere there's undead and demon lords. They may be trying a little too hard to keep everything modular.

Dragon Issue 315: January 2004


part 5/8


Ancestor feats and martial arts styles: While Greyhawk is trying to put a little more emphasis on where you're from, Kara-tur remains firmly focused on who your ancestors were. And like the western Realms, the new feats are just that little bit more twinky than the generic D&D material. Rokugan? Bunch of pikers. Our courtiers are more refined, our nomads are tougher, our monks are more enlightened, and our traitors are more backstabbing. The new martial arts styles vary widely in power, with the 5 Stars one easily the most powerful, and the Southern Fist really deadly if you're willing to plough all your feats into it. So this definitely falls into the use with caution category of articles that are actually pretty rare these days. I suppose with the large number of settings they have to cover, they take what they can get.


Cinnabar, red steel and the red curse: Oriental Adventures was pretty twinky even back in the 1e days. Red Steel, on the other hand, was curiously non twinky despite offering quite substantial extra abilities to players, because the price was high, ongoing, and continued to be an issue even if you left the savage coast and lost the powers you gained while there. And since they actually double the ability score cost for powers here, so each new legacy you gain comes with a concrete reduction in mundane capabilities, that continues to be the case in 3e. While somewhat abridged, this is a pretty straight conversion, giving rules for legacies, including becoming an inheritor (which is a lot less restrictive under 3e) or afflicted, and racial stats for Tortles for good measure. This manages to put the weird aspects of the setting front and centre, so I'm pretty happy with their treatment of it this time. Obviously I'd prefer it bigger, but oh well. That's just what you've got to live with here.


Bloodlines for 3.5: Red Steel has fairly substantial balancing factors for the extra powers it gives characters. Birthright, on the other hand is very much built around the idea that some people are just better than others because of an accident of breeding, and to try and balance that out goes against the whole theme. They try though, playing up the idea that it is possible to work up your bloodline score by killing your way up the ladder, highlander style, and encouraging DM's to start everyone out at the same rating. So this is definitely one of their more frustrating update attempts, as the setting and the ruleset are even more in conflict than 2e. The highly limited list of bloodline powers also leaves me unsatisfied, with only 7 options to take, as unlike Red Steel, they have to scale each of them with bloodline strength as well. Needs more work.

Dragon Issue 315: January 2004


part 6/8


The return of the Sha'ir: Ah yes, one of THE most inconvenient classes to fit into the 3e mold. Sha'ir in 2e could only cast one spell every few turns, but could go on like that all day, and access a far wider variety of spells on the fly than regular wizards, including cleric ones if they were willing to risk it. In combat they were pretty shit, but in exploration and social situations, they were the wiz with the shiz. And actually, I expected a more severe rewriting than the one we get. Unlike psionicists, they're still very much the same as they were, only with two key differences: their total spells per day is limited in a more conventional manner, and they can "hold" more than one retrieved spell at once, allowing them to be conventionally useful in a fight if they have the chance to prepare. They still have a short list of spells they can get quickly and easily, and can then get their mitts on any other wizard spell they want with slightly more difficulty, and a small number of priest spells if they're willing to wait hours and face a high DC check. The real benefit they have over both standard wizards and sorcerers is still in being able to pull out utility spells and appropriate metamagic with just a few minutes free time. And probably in having a maxed out Diplomacy rating, since their powers key off that, so they'll also be pretty handy as a mundane face for the party. So this is actually usable, yet not completely stripped of it's old flavour. I'm fairly happy with this, even if that skill dependency feels like a bit of a tax. Better not give them an int penalty, otherwise they'll have to choose between Diplomacy or Concentration, and how viable a spellcaster will they be then?


Guardians of the Docrae: Like Ghostwalk, Blackmoor has had hardly any mentions, and no actual articles in the magazine before this. Actually, it never got properly detailed as a setting back in the old days full stop, with only 4 adventure modules and no real corebook. The d20 treatment is both bigger and mechanically more different from straight D&D, which is mildly pleasing. Also fairly pleasing is that this article decides to give halflings some love, showing how they're different from regular ones. As they haven't had comfortable lives like Tolkien hobbits, they've spent a fair bit of effort developing a combat style that works well against bigger enemies. It seems to owe a bit of a debt to capoeira, as it's a dance style as well as a martial art, and gives them much needed bonuses with trips, throws and grappling, as well as a nice instadeath strike at 10th level. It seems pretty decent for a monk prestige class, which means it still isn't the most flexible, but gets lots of neat looking tricks, and doesn't make you reliant on equipment. It's also nicely nongeneric, which counts for quite a bit in my book. I think this is another one I can give a positive result too.


Return to the lost city: Ah yes, B4. Unlike B2, this didn't get revisited in the silver anniversary nostalgia trip, and still has enough obscurity to seem fresh to me. And interestingly, Mike Mearls tries to expand on it rather than just rehashing it, despite not having much room to work with. He gives us a map of the immediate surroundings of the pyramid, and tries to add a bit more ecology to the melange of competing cults so even though the population may be drugged out and declining, regularly ravaged by sacrificing to a giant monster, there's still some degree of stability there, and it'll last a few generations more if left alone. Zargon itself is thoroughly upgraded, gaining a batch of spell-like abilities that makes it the equal of most powerful Fiends, and making the conditions to kill it permanently considerably stricter. It may be a little too sensible, but at least it gives us new material that's useful for converting back to basic D&D, which you can't say for most of these. Don't just feed off nostalgia, give something back to it as well.

Dragon Issue 315: January 2004


part 7/8


The new (fantasy) World: Kara-Tur and Al-Qadim can be transplanted to other game worlds without too many problems. Maztica, on the other hand, was heavily built around the fact that the old world discovering it was the Realms, and the metaplot of invasion and exploitation would have gone differently if it wasn't the priests of Helm leading it. Disappointingly, they decide not to progress the timeline those 20+ years forward here, but simply update the Eagle and Jaguar Knight kits to 3e prestige classes. Both have their spellcasting and shapeshifting accelerated somewhat compared to their 2e counterparts, while retaining full BAB progression and 4+int skill points, putting them on the same kind of level as Rangers, Paladins or Assassins. Since the original separated out the Knights and the specialists in hishna & pluma magic, this is one case I don't really feel they captured the spirit of the old setting. Still, at least I can't say they nerfed them this time around. Instead, they've turned things up.


The light in the darkness: In the late 90's, James Wyatt was the guy still submitting Red Death articles to the magazine when it seemed no-one else gave a damn. Looks like that's still the case even now. Well, at least it keeps the tone consistent. This is our shortest article, at only 2 pages, and it's another prestige class. La Lumiere were one of the cabals trying to fight the Red Death and bring peace and enlightenment to Gothic Earth. Their update takes that fairly literally, letting them inspire themselves and others to take down monsters with their intellect, despite their distaste for violence. Being a pacifist is a mugs game in D&D, as we've seen so many times before, and it's interesting that people are still trying to fight against that in-setting. So I guess the ex-pastor is still swimming against the tide here, and not making much headway. Will roleplaying as a whole ever escape the need to kill things and take their stuff?


Soldiers of the last order: As we draw to a close, a welcome surprise is that they've decided to count the Chainmail setting in the continent west of Oerth as it's own thing, like all the FR and Mystara regions that got their own independent treatments. In the process we get to find out that this was another case where the setting was originally intended to be its own independent world, but was bodged onto Oerth for marketing reasons. The days of upper management issuing orders that cause big headaches and sudden changes in direction for the creative people isn't over, and even the Realms will be subject to that dickery again next edition change. (and the one after, and who knows after that) And now it's gone, probably never to be revived at the current rate. So I'm left feeling a little disappointed that all we get is yet another prestige class in an issue that's been ridiculously heavy on them. The Boge of Nomog-Geya are leaders of a hobgoblin cult that's grown tired of sharing with those undisciplined lesser goblinoids, and wants to exterminate them so they can better conquer the world. Since the smaller goblinoids breed faster, this seems like a tall order, but at least it's a different one with interesting flavour. And since they get full cleric spellcasting plus favoured enemy bonuses and a fairly powerful social buff at high level, I wouldn't put it past them completely if they can get the help. Plus it creates a very interesting enemy of my enemy situation where the players may have to decide which side is the lesser evil to support for now. If you're going to overload us with prestige classes, better interesting ones like this that come with strong plot hooks like this.

Dragon Issue 315: January 2004


part 8/8


Countdown to Eberron: Having provided articles for so many old settings, they would seem a little remiss if they forgot to keep in the teaser for their next one. So while they have cut out most of their regular columns, this remains to keep the fires burning. They're still being pretty damnably vague about actual specific NPC's, monsters or geography, but they're very specific indeed about the tone and inspirations. The influences are largely cinematic rather than literary, with pulp and swashbuckling dominant, but not forgetting the medieval stories. After all, even if the world has advanced to this magitech place with huge cities and bullet trains connecting them, it's still built on a D&D fantasy world, with a corresponding history.  In fact, that's a good encapsulation of their approach in general. It's not only everything in the house including the kitchen sink like the Realms, it's everything and the kitchen sink, and then they raided the toolshed afterwards on top of that. Mechanically, this is the case as well, with all the regular classes, spells and monsters being there, plus new stuff like action points from d20 modern, and a class devoted to handling magic item making better. Like Shadowrun, 40k or Rifts, this is going to be an expansive setting that you can fit all kinds of stories and playstyles into, rather than a tightly focussed one. The time for specialisation is over. They've got to try and please everyone or go home. Which means we leave this issue with me pretty certain they won't be returning to those days of many settings supported simultaneously, no matter how well this gets received. As long as their marketing department prizes unity over diversity, that's how they'll have to market things.


Sage advice: Can you cast beneficial spells on a golem (Not if they allow SR. They aren't smart enough to let down their immunities.)

Can you dispel Evard's black tentacles (Yes, thankfully. Always remember your safe word, kids. )

Do the tentacles have miss chances. Where are they. (Not from cover or concealment, because they're everywhere. Fear the eruption)

Can you use metamagic feats on spells from a staff (No)

Can you use high arcana powers on staff spells (Not in general. There is one little exception. Course, if you're an archmage, you can build your own custom staff with automatic inherent metamagic. Don't be lazy. Customize your build. It's so much more satisfying.)

Does damage from Harm risk the massive death rule (Skip recommends no. The whole point of the spell is to leave them barely alive and at your mercy. If they're dead, then you can't torment them further so easily. Where's the fun in that?)

 Do you have to pay 5,000 xp every time you use a wish (At the very least. Wishes are like horses. Always look them in the mouth, because they do not come cheap, and a wish is a terrible thing to waste. )

Can clerics use spells in items from domains they could have chosen, but didn't (Nein. Das ist Bloody Stupid, ya. You are crap rules lawyer, ya. YOU VILL GROVEL FOR FORGIVENESS ON YOUR KNEES BEFORE SKIP, YA?! Mmmm. Das ist Gut.)  


Dork tower can't switch off the gaming urge.


Well, this issue was certainly a substantial improvement on the last 5, with a considerably more interesting theme and quirky articles, but it was still very much a mixed bag, much of which was frustratingly shallow. Still, it shows both ambition and variety, both of which are very welcome indeed, and it reminds us just how many fans these settings have. Overall, it's a good start to the year. Let's see if the rest of it is also an improvement on last year.

Dragon Issue 316: February 2004


part 1/8


87 (108) pages. 6 months of shallow dipping finally comes to an end with a themed issue on spying. Since the last issue which did that was 231, the issue that got me to stop buying back in the day, I definitely think there's room for improvement here. Let's see if 3.5 is better suited to the james bond playstyle than 2e. Roll the dramatic theme music.


Scan quality: Excellent, unindexed, ad-free scan.


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: What examination of spying would be complete without mentioning James Bond? They talk about the various people who have played him, and the preferences of the people in the office. This reminds me that it's still a good year before Daniel Craig takes the role, and Bond gets hard rebooted for the first time, instead of simply playing fast and loose about if he's the same guy who gets plastic surgery and the like to stay useful, or if the name is merely a code for whoever holds the 007 job. The franchise was once again in danger of being seen as a dinosaur, but they managed to pull through by stealing from the best ideas of other recent films and capture a new audience. A lesson that D&D is currently struggling to emulate, with an aging fanbase and strong interest in older editions keeping things more static than the developers would like. Is the way to keep the game alive to pander to the fanbase, or go out looking for a new one? Is it possible to do both at once by supporting more than one edition at once? After all, they don't stop selling old films because a new one in a series came out. The new material acts as promotion for the old stuff in a way, making them more long tail money. But WotC currently seems to want to have a few high selling products rather than a wide range of moderately selling ones. It's all vey frustrating, and I wish i know what lesson to take from it.


Scale Mail: Our first letter is from someone who saw they were bringing back old campaigns, and got massively overexcited. As usual, they have to council moderation, for they do not have unlimited resources or creativity, and are always paying more attention to game balance than the old days. It's a pain having to be the sensible ones.

Second is a request for smaller, more condensed format corebooks and character sheets. Their ties to WotC prevent them from mentioning that Mongoose has done exactly that. They confirm that ironically, they have even less freedom as a separate company than they did as a WotC department. Not very helpful.

Drow have got a special this edition. But where's the Duergar love? Now this is one you, the reader could fix by sending in something good. It does have to be said that they'll never be as cool as Drow though. Elves and Vampires, there's no overtaking their popularity.

Also interesting is a letter saying that maybe you ought to restrict the types of monsters in your campaign, to create a stronger theme and give the ones you use greater depth. Curiously enough, the staff council against that, as they're all about lots of options and broad appeal at the moment. Let the players choose what monsters they face. Next thing they'll be encouraging DM's to give players whatever magic items they ask for. ;p

We had a request for more duergar love. now we have a request for more halfling variants. They remind us that with the current number of templates, you can create all the variants you'll ever need and more. Not that this'll stop them from adding to them. They have a supplement treadmill to keep up with after all.

And finally, a complaint that they've gone a bit too far towards pure crunch in their recent issues. They ought to be providing stuff we can't get from hundreds of other D20 publishers. They remind us that fluff and crunch shouldn't be opposed, but complementary. It's just that they're not currently in the business of creating whole campaign settings for you, just giving you the tools to do it yourself.

Dragon Issue 316: February 2004


part 2/8


Zogonia has another false alarm. Choose life. Choose adventuring. Choose excitement. Choose a different adventuring party, because this one is not giving you the respect you deserve.


Up on a soapbox: Rob Kuntz's story this month is about the comedy that can ensue when you have a ring of spell turning, and wind up with both sides partially charming each other. What should be a ruthless cutthroat negotiation turned into each side trying to out-nice the other, that only ended when it wore off for one of them, which they then took full advantage of. It's very much the kind of scenario that would play out in a looney tunes cartoon, only with the prospect of permanent death, and is yet another reminder how silly gaming could be back then. As usual, I am left feeling that people who want to make some kind of sacred canon out of old school play are really missing the point, and possibly have blinkers on. it doesn't have to be all silly fun, but at the same time it can't be all fantasy fucking vietnam paranoia or death either. Variety is very much the spice of life if you want to keep gaming fun.


Nodwick has a cunning plan and follows it through without anyone dying. Apart from the villain. Maybe this adventuring lark aint so bad after all.


License to kill: We start off our spying material by looking at various character concepts, and how to make them fit D&D classes. As stuff like ocean's 11 shows, there's plenty of subdivisions within the heist/espionage process that a character can specialise in, so putting together a team is a very good idea, especially if you're a government, and want to make sure no one person has too much power without oversight. You never know when one of your operatives is going to go rogue or turn out to be a double agent. They detail 9 different roles, and then go into the classes and prestige classes best suited to them. Every class apart from Paladin can find their place easily enough, and they don't neglect the obscure stuff from splatbooks and the magazine either. Whether you want to seduce your way into the hearts of high-ranking officials, or covertly blow up government buildings, you can probably find a skillset here that'll do the job. It feels like a pretty good intro, even If i can probably predict what the next articles will contain with 90% accuracy.

Dragon Issue 316: February 2004


part 3/8


Covert ops: Having given players advice on building their characters, the next logical step is DM advice on building a campaign, or inserting an espionage adventure into a previously more straightforward game. As with the previous article, this isn't generic advice, instead talking a fair bit about how D&D monsters and magic would fit in. (watch out for mind flayers, because both your secrets and loyalties are incredibly vulnerable around them. ) You'll want a good selection of organisations for the players to belong too, oppose, or maybe both at once if they're double agents. While there will be dungeons, you probably won't be striding in and killing everything indiscriminately, and should instead set the difficulty so they have to use stealth and disguise, and actually talk to (or at least stalk) the enemies to locate and retrieve the phattest loot. This is one playstyle where keeping the sides morally ambiguous and giving the players plenty of choice will produce more interesting (and probably more explosive) results than trying to tell a predetermined story. Once again, while the way they're approaching this is pretty formulaic, it still beats the 2e treatment, particularly as they can actually talk about sex this time around, which was a glaring absence in issue 231, given it's omnipresence in the genre. They can also be more inclusive thanks to 3e's more flexible class system, and talk in a more sophisticated way about genre emulation. Following this advice seems like it'd result in a more fun spy game than the 2e way.


Cloak & Dagger: If there's one thing spies and dungeoneers have in common, it's their love of gear. Both spend vast amounts of money and time on cutting edge stuff that adds cool tricks to their arsenal and may save their life in a pinch. The main difference, apart from being powered by technology rather than magic, is that spy devices are more likely to be one-shots, that solve a situation once and are used up or destroyed, so they can have a different selection of gadgets in the next mission. There's certainly a fair share of that stuff here, but also some things that might last if you take care of them, and don't let yourself get captured or fleeced. There's a wide variety of flashbangs, concealed weapons, and devices that aid breaking and entering, including plenty that are obvious lifts from recent movies and tv shows.  Similarly, some of the magic items are rehashed, but since we're less than a year into the new edition, I'll forgive them that, because the way they're implemented makes them look fun to play with. Magic items which give you new tricks are much more interesting than ones that merely buff ones you already have.

Dragon Issue 316: February 2004


part 4/8


Smoke and Mirrors: Good old Scry and remote nuke or teleport. If anything will wreck espionage games, it's cheap and easy divination magic. Look what Google and cheap surveillance cameras have done to information gathering in the real world. If it weren't for the sheer volume of information and number of false positives, most people would be all too easy to monitor these days. So any D&D focussed look at spying has to deal with this problem. Fortunately, Mike Mearls decides to tackle this in a fair manner, encouraging DM's to tackle this in-game, rather than nerfing powers. (after all, that's his job ) After all, while there may not be as many counterspells as divinations, the ones there are tend to be broader in their application, to deal with a whole range of intrusions. The important thing if players are making intelligent use of divinations is to let the enemy have access to them too, and then fairly keep track of what each side knows about the other. Don't give the enemy an unlimited budget, but let them use what they have to it's full potential. Remember that you need to ask the right questions to get information that's actually useful. Take the sensible approach in a non sensible world, and hopefully you will still get a fun game. This all seems reasonable enough to me.


Spies like us: Weirdly enough, we finish with a second bit of basic PC focussed advice, talking about how characters of all classes except paladins can find roles to disguise themselves and use their skills to help pull off a heist. The main difference is that while that concentrated on making new characters for an espionage focussed campaign, this is for existing ones suddenly plunged into the world of intrigue and trying to figure out how to be the playas and not the suckas. There is a fair bit of overlap though, enough that I wound up with a sense of deja vu when going through it. I suppose it is an old teaching technique. Tell people what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them, and hopefully it sticks in their brain.

Dragon Issue 316: February 2004


part 5/8


Fiction: Hecate's ring by Thomas Harlan. This series is definitely building towards an end, as they put a previously on section at the beginning that tells us where all the previous instalments can be found. However, it doesn't escalate the overt magic, curiously enough, instead going into an investigation heavy story that's actually quite appropriate to the theme of the issue, as they have to figure out where in the big city their quarry is, and how to avoid all the other people who are after it too. The investigation turns into a high action chase scene at the end, leaving them in trouble, and the plot thicker than ever. With the next instalment listed for a couple of months time, it doesn't look like this story'll be left hanging, thankfully.


Elminsters guide to the realms: Dwarves may not get quite the attention of Elves overall, but Ed still makes sure there's plenty of Realms material for them. This is another of those articles that makes it very clear that he's done the real world research before adding his own embellishments, as he goes into quite a bit of detail about the grimy, backbreaking process of iron mining around Waterdeep. All those weapons and armor adventurers buy do not just spring into existence magically, there's a big supply chain behind them that can provide adventure hooks of it's own, especially since in a D&D world, any mines you make are likely to break through into underdark tunnels full of monsters at some point. Those picks aren't just for stone, you know. It's been a looooooong time since the magazine last did a feature on mining, and this is a good reminder of how important it is to adventurers, and how much fun you can have by incorporating it into your game. As usual, the fact that he's already put so much detail into the world lets him get away with things no-one else can, and that's why he's still good to have around.

Dragon Issue 316: February 2004


part 6/8


Expanded psionics preview 2: The big change they talk about this month is psionic focus, and the powers that key off it. They're hoping this will work better than feats that were dependent upon having a certain number of PSPs in reserve. It does move the tactical decision to gain benefits from holding, or benefits from unleashing your focus to a round by round thing rather than a whole day one, which will make your characters more dynamic. Along with the ability to spend PSPs to enhance your powers and go nova, this gives psionic characters a lot more options to customise their actions even before they buy a load of metapsionic feats. As with the last teaser, the new crunch won't appear in the XPH, and this time only some of them will appear in Complete Psionic in a couple of years time, which means this teaser actually retains it's utility as a standalone. With approximately half and half feats that involve holding or expending your focus, both options are decently catered for, (although since you gain all the benefits at once by holding, but only one particular one by expending, that seems like the better thing to specialise in) so this is a pretty good teaser.  


Under Command: The minis gaming column is split into 2 sections this month. Mushrooms, and Archery. (and never the twain shall meet, given the number of explosive spore releasing fungi in D&D. ) They introduce a new Mushroom Tangle terrain tile, and give three sample effects it could have on people that tread on them. Shriekers and Phycomids have some new company for the first time in a few years. I approve of this. The archery section, completely unsurprisingly, talks about how to create a ranged specialist unit in the minis game. It seems like only the chaotic good side is much good at this, as they have elves. (and you don't ) As usual, the big advantage is being able to hit the enemies when they can't hit you, and have everyone focus fire on one monster to take them down fast. You need to make smart decisions about whether to do one shot and move, or full attack the enemy and hope they'll go down before they reach you. And Terrain without too much cover will definitely be of benefit. Much of this is applicable to D&D as well, but this definitely points out the way they've limited both the types of creatures, and the size of the terrain in the minis game, making ranged combat harder to do than in D&D. That's a little dispiriting, but hey, at least they're maintaining differentiation between the sides. Wouldn't want this to turn into WW1 style trench warfare which grinds on for hours and is no fun at all.