Dragon Issue 324: October 2004


part 2/8


Scale Mail: We start off with a goofy request for a swimsuit issue. Issue 144 sorta does what you want. To be honest, they're closer to doing it than they were in the 90's. But it'll still take a fair bit of fan support to get off the ground. Send in your, err, sample artwork now!

Completely unsurprisingly after last issue, we have a complaint that they're putting too many blatant tie-ins and shill pieces again. We're already customers, you do not need to push it in our faces like you're desperate, and find it off-putting. As long as they're owned by WotC, there's not much they can do about that.

In contrast, we get a short letter from someone who thinks 3.5 is a substantial improvement over 3.0, and people are right to stick with WotC through the years.

Flipping back to the negative, we have someone who is seriously cynical about the relaunch, and wishes they'd cover older editions as well. They say as long as the majority of people play the most recent edition, they're going to stick with that. They're going to have to eat those words, 10 years later.

The huge map in issue 322 gets praised. Great, another cool feature I didn't get to see. :sigh:

And finally, we have another request for Chromatic Dragon PC progressions. Probably next birthday, given their current leadup times. Oh well, 8 months will seem far shorter for me than people waiting at the time.


Player initiative: This column looks at girls in gaming again. Despite the proportion of female roleplayers remaining fairly low, there are more games aimed at a female market now, and they're getting more attention in mainstream media. And of course, they're forming relationships. They detail two geeky weddings, complete with photos, which is very amusing. Life goes on, and people raised on RPG's and video games show few signs of abandoning them as an entertainment form as adults. And if they have substantial amounts of purchasing power to make big statements of their fandom like this, that's definitely a positive sign for the future. So it looks like this column does have interesting things to say about gaming that aren't just self-promotion after all. Knowing where we are as a hobby isn't just about what's being released this month. It's about who we've become as people, and a society. (and if you don't understand that, how can you hope to sell successfully to us) )


Under command: Time for a good old round of power escalation here, as they release a set of monsters that can beat 100 point warbands singlehandedly, and give you the option for 200 point games as a result. Now you can incorporate things like Vrocks, Erinyes and (medium sized) Elementals into your team. Which still means you're only seeing the mid level monsters, not really impressive guys like pit fiends, great wyrm red dragons or the tarrasque. Maybe next year, if people keep on buying the game and the minis. There's a lot of D&D monsters in the books, and they could gradually add new figures for years to come without hitting diminishing returns if they pace it right. Just got to make sure you mix up the themes and power levels from one pack to the next. I wonder what's next on their agenda.


Silicon sorcery: This month's computer game conversion is the Rune Magic system from Gothic II. This is basically an enhanced version of D&D scroll creation, encoding spells into one-shot symbols that can be put on any object and used by anyone, rather than being limited to the appropriate class and anyone who stacks up on Use Magic Device. Which also means they're slightly more expensive to make, but I suppose that's an appropriate balancing factor under the 3.5 rules. (as well as the greater possibility of your enemies stealing your stuff and turning it against you. ) Since you can encode pretty much any spell you know, the tricks you can get up too with this are limited only by your imagination. I can definitely see the value in buying this one, as it'll let you give appropriate spell-like abilities to each member of your party to maximise their effectiveness. Form factor and accessibility does make a real difference, and sacrificing a few xp in the short term will let you earn more faster in the long term.

Dragon Issue 324: October 2004


part 3/8


A novel approach: American Gods! That's a pretty cool one to see covered, especially in light of the recent TV show announcement. And since gods generally have some pretty nifty tricks and gear, even if they're weak ones with not many worshippers left, there's plenty here to convert. From the prosaic stuff like Chernobog's warhammer, which is only magically enhanced at night, to weird tricks like a lapel pin that turns into a tree, there's some neat stuff here, most of which is not combat focussed for a change. Like many of the computer game conversions, this is a cut above because it doesn't stick to their usual rules, which gives it far more value than backconversions of their own games and novels. It's just a shame that the nature of the nature of these columns means they can't mine short story collections, which can have even more concentrated amounts of awesome to draw inspiration from. Then they could really get a ton of mind-blowing stuff from Neil's work.


Zogonia faces the dread snow golem. Beware it's chilling touch. Nodwick faces the paranoia of his own party. If they kill him, they're doomed. Dork tower faces whatever was in the randomised mini's set. That really isn't a good way to generate a challenge.


The shadow over D&D: H.P Lovecraft has been a perennial good seller all through the lifetime of D&D. It's not at all surprising that ideas from his works have bled through into D&D. Indeed, the very first new monster in the magazine, mindflayers, have a fairly strong cosmic horror vibe if used correctly. And it's even less surprising that James Jacobs is hugely influenced by his works, looking at the monsters he's written for the magazine over the years. What's also interesting is the parallels between the mythos and the D20 licence. Instead of suing anyone who mentioned their creatures and backgrounds, they actively worked to build up a common set of references, which gave individual books more resonance, and encouraged people to seek out works by related authors to get the whole picture. Which both makes you better liked by your peers, and contributes to the longevity of your work. (there's tons of pulp writers and characters who are long forgotten and very hard to find these days, while new cthulhu stories keep on coming, and even if they aren't all great, they still add to the stature of his legend. ) Of course, D&D had it's issues with this, as the 1st edition Deities and Demigods showed, so it's not all free sharing. But with the old stories firmly public domain now, and Cthulhu D20 out, those problems seem to be nicely in the past. This is another look at the influences surrounding gaming that feels both refreshing and very welcome after the past few years. By talking more about where we came from, and giving newer readers a sense of history, they definitely help us help ourselves more than highly specific bits of pure crunch that actually constrain creativity when delivered in large amounts. Read it, grok it, add to it, make your literary ancestors proud.  


Living nightmares: Directly following the last article, Keith Baker has definitely been taking influence from Lovecraft's Dreamlands in this one. Dal Quor is Eberron's plane of dreams, inhabited by all sorts of weird creatures that can make your nights pretty nightmarish. Fortunately, most of the time, that's all they can do, merely waking you up unsettled if they kill you in the dream. But there are some things that are all too real, and want to feed off you or manipulate you into doing things in the waking world. The most dangerous are those Quori who actually possess people, who can get at you in both worlds and do some real long-term mischief. This is another article that reminds us that Eberron manages to have everything and the kitchen sink and then some, yet still manages to have a flavour of it's own, and it's easy to incorporate at any point in your campaign, or just ignore as you choose. Sometimes the scariest things can be those that are inside your own mind, and that certainly applies to adventurers who are used to fighting things head-on.

Dragon Issue 324: October 2004


part 4/8


Exorcising equipment: We've had plenty of helpings of undead related magical items over the years. Here's another helping of things to help you hunt them. Some are purely mundane but ingenious, such as blood thickeners to ruin a vampire's evening, or a reinforced weapon sheath that lets you switch from slashing to bludgeoning easily at no extra weight. Others are mildly supernatural, such as a holy candle that boosts your turning attempts, and little mites that can strip the flesh from dead things in rounds while ignoring living ones. All are cheap enough for you to buy and use in quantity after the first few levels. Similarly, they have some advice on how to get the most out of existing equipment like fire, mirrors and rotted meat, which seems pretty cogent. If you can't make the best use out of mundane tools, do you deserve to get the really cool magical goodies? I think I approve of this one.


Chilled to the bone: A helping of arctic monsters? We haven't had one of those this edition, so this might not be original, but comes as welcome. Let's see if they're appropriate to the month by being chilling in both senses rather than just one.

Black Ice Golems are infused with negative energy by gruesome sacrifices, letting them drain levels on top of their already inconvenient cold aura and immunity to most magic. You can outrun them, but you can't outclimb them, making getting away a dicey business as well. Combine that with Reach and a decent grapple score, and they can really generate the lockdown if given smart orders.

Icy Prisoners are undead created by drowning in freezing water. They lurk underneath the ice, and then break through and drag you under to join them forever. Sounds like a pretty dull unlife. At least these ones won't be able to take over the whole world with their spawn cascading, given their environmental restrictions.

Steaming Soldiers also died from the cold, but go the other way, venturing out into the world to feed off the heat of the living. They too spawn cascade, and their ability to screw with visibility makes them a pretty scary antagonist in groups. You wouldn't want to stumble across a whole converted village, that's for sure.

Winterlings are mischevious fae that like to cause avalanches, snowstorms, fog, and similar cold-based environmental fuckery to annoy travellers. With flight and very high hide scores, it'll be fairly tricky to have a straight-up fight with them. Muahaha. These lot all feel pretty iconic, which is a good thing, as it lets you get more than one use out of them before they get boring.


Get more bang for your bones: Before we get to the regular columns, we have another article that's basically a single idea stretched to just over a page. How do you get the most bang for your buck when casting animate dead, since you can only control a very limited number of them at once in 3e. The answer seems to be larger monsters with lots of multiple attacks. While they might lose intelligence and spell-like abilities, things like hydras, dragons and mariliths still retain the ability to chew through large amounts of lesser enemies in a single round. And if you add templates that boost their abilities without affecting their HD you can cheat a bit to add even more power. Now you just need to figure out how to kill them without ruining the bodies. I suppose since you can only have so many, you've got no incentive to stockpile, throwing waves of zombies at enemies and then raising their replacements as you go makes more sense than spending months gravedigging. A fairly amusing little bit of charop fun, good for both players and DM's.


The ecology of night hags: Ahh, hags. We had greenhags way back in issue 125, which touched on night hag mating habits a little. This does take a slightly different tack, making it surprisingly difficult for them to create offspring, or at least new night hags, as who could say what their children might become if they can't complete the ritual transformation described here. Still, that's probably for the best, since they are fairly powerful, and utterly selfish, with no trick too foul in their eternal struggles to get more larvae and dominate other creatures. Quite flavourful, and with plenty of ingenious tricks to help you make the most of their powers, this is a fairly good ecology, encouraging mobile scenarios full of tense negotiations, hit and run attacks, and similar evil fun. Should make for some good adventures.

Dragon Issue 324: October 2004


part 5/8


Spellcraft: Another book of illusion spells, courtesy of a gnome illusionist. I thought we'd outgrown that since 3.5 arrived. Evidently not, as no less than Rich Burlew gives us a typically mischievous bit of history design. He's managed to make a whole university the suckers with this book.

Chalkboard is another handy cantrip for making your point better, via visual ornamentation. Keep finding uses for those 0 level spells, people. I guess teaching archmages have to keep on going back and relying on their low level spells to get through their day's classes.

Delusions of Grandeur makes you complacently overconfident and smug. Seems slightly better suited to enchantment than illusion, but there's always these edge cases, aren't there.  

Phantom Foe manipulates the flanking rules in a very specific manner. You might have seen spells with visuals like this before, but the mechanics are new. Another sign of their greater attention to those kinds of details these days.

Sensory Deprivation is another one that stretches the limits of the illusion school. All senses removed? That's a bit powerful for a 3rd level spell. It may only have a short duration, but this seems like the kind of brutal battle ender they're moving away from now.

Shadowy Grappler is another one that removes all the fun ambiguity of general illusions, and just goes for a very specific effect. Curious business.

Soliptism is nothing like the ToM spell of 2e of the same name. Instead of imagining stuff into existence, this makes the victim believe nothing is real, again leaving them vulnerable to whatever you want to try, in a manner that will really frustrate their mates. This is an interesting collection, both in descriptive terms and in tracking the progression of rules trends.


Magic shop: This column also gives us a previously seen theme. items that are beneficial, but have a price or drawback attached to their powers. One that always makes for interesting play, whether the players accept the price of doing business, or look for some rules exploit that'll enable them to mitigate or bypass it. Either way, it increases their investment in the character and setting more than getting cool stuff for free.

Heironius's Mercy gives your basic healing others by transferring the damage to you trick. A problem, but definitely a surmountable one, thanks to other effects like a ring of regeneration.

The Ring of the Mystical Elite gives you impromptu specialisations, boosting the number of spells you can cast per day, but giving you a random different forbidden school each time you put it on. Once you get one you don't use much anyway, best to stick with it to get the most out of this.

The Skin of Kaletor is a poorly preserved bearskin that boosts your wild-shaping abilities, but inflicts a huge social penalty against anything with a sense of smell. You can only get so close to nature before it starts to mess you up. Balance in all things.

The Fool's Plate is both a shield and a serving tray, and can confuse both you and your opponent. Better buff up your will save so the joke is more likely to be on them then.

Shadakhar's Swift Wind are cheetah-print sandals that boost your speed, but reduce your dexterity due to constantly being on edge. Well, with a tacky fashion statement like that, I'm not surprised it eats at your confidence

The Mantle of the Winter Witch gives you cold resistance and fire vulnerability as if you have the subtype. Better hope your wizard isn't so enamoured by the cool new force and sonic spells to forget to put fireball in their spellbook then.

Agustinius's Folly lets you give inspiring speeches, but has your basic 10% chance to backfire, and do the opposite of what it was intended too. Every performer chokes sometimes. You've just got to figure out how to survive it and try again.

The Mask of Fury requires you to smear your blood on it to activate it's powers. If you aren't already bleeding, this'll hurt a little bit. If you are, go right ahead and Rage, as you've paid your dues.

The Hammer of Skill gets more annoyed with you each time you miss, subtracting from your further chances to hit, but adding to your damage if you do connect. This either forces you to shape up fast, or it'll rapidly become too unwieldy to use at all. Definitely sounds like a frustrating one to have in the backpack.

Dragon Issue 324: October 2004


part 6/8


Heroic feats: This one also returns to a previous topic, that of feats that represent inherent traits from birth, that are slightly more powerful than other feats, but balanced by the fact that you can only take them at 1st level, which means unless you load up on Flaws or find some other cheaty exploit, you'll only ever have one. Funnily enough, most of these aren't actually specific to a particular race, instead being things like unusual fatness or thinness for your race, acute senses, or minor innate magical abilities that make sense for anyone. It's all pretty basic, and I must admit I find it a bit grating that only 2 issues into the new direction, they're already filling up the regular columns with tons of rehashed topics.


Gaining prestige: We've had several prestige classes already that are focussed around hunting a particular monster. Here we get the generic version. The Sworn Slayer, a 5 level class for those of you who feel Ranger isn't letting you slaughter your nemeses fast enough. At 5th level, you'll have an extra +8 to damage and skill checks against them, and +4 to saving throws to resist their powers, plus full BAB progression as normal. As usual with these sorts of things, whether it'll be worth specialising to that degree is very dependent indeed on the campaign and DM. But since they're a primary fighter sort that's pretty lacking in noncombat powers, I'm not that enthusiastic about taking it. You may win the battles, but you'll lack the tools to really engineer an extinction level event and finish the war. Maybe you can use your buffed bluff and gather information to infiltrate and trick them into destroying themselves, which would be pleasingly ironic.


Winning races: Grippli! There's an old race that well deserves a PC writeup. Indeed, they did get one last edition in issue 262, along with a load of other little races. As there, despite not being stupid, they aren't particularly technologically minded, and this is represented by automatic illiteracy despite class choice. As small creatures, they gain the usual bonuses to stealth and more besides, which is further enhanced by their froglike bonuses to climbing and jumping. They may not be the fastest on level ground, but in trees or mountainous terrain, they can handily outmaneuver their enemy and pepper them with missile weapons. in addition, they're mildly resistant to poison, and gain attack & AC bonuses against vermin, which were not in their old writeup, and makes them seem more similar to dwarves and gnomes. So this isn't the most faithful of conversions, but is interesting to see nonetheless. They can indeed have a valuable position in your team if they use their natural talents wisely.

Dragon Issue 324: October 2004


part 7/8


Class acts: Fighters get From battleground to background: 5 new backgrounds, each of which grants a +1 benefit to a specific roll. Power creep, but such a tiny amount that it's not really worth mentioning.

Clerics get Peace Out: Some advice on playing a pacifist cleric. You can still make a valuable support member of the team while eschewing violence. Just don't try to get the rest of the team to do so as well.

Wizards get a new variant class, the Filidh. A tribal wizard variant, they sacrifice a wizard's bonus feats and familiar for slightly better weapons, bardic knowledge, and the ability to cast divination spells at a higher caster level. Once again, they're the ones getting the kickass crunch.

Rogues get A rogue of a different color: Just like last issue, this is advice on the skills and feats to select if you want your rogue to fill a slightly different role. But no actual new stuff.

Barbarians get Barbarian Culture: What kind of tribe does your barbarian come from? Once again, it's pure roleplaying advice for these guys. Meh.

Druids get 9 new Flaws. Another variant on illiteracy. (ahh, for the days of 2nd ed, where illiteracy came as standard) personality traits and origin effects. As with last month, these are useful for other classes as well.

Sorcerers get some advice on picking feats and prestige classes. If you take the right one, you're essentially getting something for nothing. Nothing new, but if you aren't the optimizing kind, it might help.

Rangers get the Wild Defender. They sacrifice favored enemies, stealth, and their weapon feats for rebuking nature, smiting evil, druid's nature travelling powers and slightly increased spell ability. Curious. Not sure if that'll be an overall increase or decrease in power, but it'll definitely be a quite different character. An excellent example of UA style feature switching.

Paladins also get a spread of 8 flaws. Most of them are pretty specific behavioural restrictions that wouldn't make much sense for other classes, and some of them encourage being an irritant to the rest of the party. Definitely ones to consider carefully before taking.

Monks get the Wild monk. They sacrifice a load of the usual monk abilities for druid wild shaping. Unlike the ranger one, I don't need to go over this to know that this is a good deal. Exchanging a load of powers from one of the most underpowered class for the most powerful class feature of the most powerful class? No brainer, really.

Bards get yet another 8 flaws. Now these are tremendously irritating. Coward. Loudmouth. Fool. Just the thing if you want to be rewarded for acting like a jackass. Put the annoying paladin and the annoying bard in the same party and you have a perfect comedy duo.


Player tips: Teamwork, muthafuckas, do you use it? Yup, it's another one of these, giving you basic advice on how to work together, and beat groups of the same individual power levels that don't have the same co-operative skill. Communicate with one-another, pick classes and character concepts that fit together, rather than making trouble or filling the same niche repeatedly, and know how the mechanics of your own and other people's powers work so you can make valid suggestions on what to do mid-combat. Completely common-sense stuff that ought to be one of the first things taught in the player's handbook. After all, can't have bickering in the middle of deadly dungeons, can we? So from one perspective this is perfectly good, if a little basic advice, from another, it denies a huge chunk of the roleplaying experience, the pleasures of interpersonal machinations  and disputes. Either way, it's a bit unsatisfying.


Adventurer tricks: This column continues on from last month, talking about traps, and how best to deal with them without a rogue. First up, detect magic will show up a huge proportion of things you might want to examine closely, particularly at higher level. Then you can figure out if you're going to try a careful disarming, or buffing up and ploughing through the problem. In fact, you can use magic to help with that too. In fact, the whole thing seems designed to show just how quickly and easily spellcasters can take that job and do it better once they've got a few levels under their belt. Oh well, it's their game. If they want to point out the flaws in it, more power to them.

Dragon Issue 324: October 2004


part 8/8


Sage advice: If a cleric rolls badly, and only turns 0 HD undead, do you round up to 1. (No. Ssorry, preciouss.)

How do you know when a cleric can prepare spells. (You choosess at character generation, yess. Same time each day. No need to ssleep first.)

How do favored souls regain spells (same way as ssorcerorss, yess.

Do you have to drop your weapons to cast spells (Only has two handsess, collins collins. Needs a hand free for ssomatic componentss. Put it in your pocketsess or use a buckler.)

Can a cleric of pelor use a wand of holy smite without the good domain (No, not on your spell list, collins collins. Sstupid cleric, doesn't kmow how powers work.)

Can a sacred fist wear armor (Yes. Lose monk abilities though. You chossse if it's worth it, yess, collins collins. )

Can a multiclassed cleric/wizard use divine metamagic on their arcane spells (No. Ssorry, precious. Pleasse don't ssmite poor little Andy.)

Can you use divine metamagic to perform effects that would normally be too high level for you. (Yess. Very usefull power.)

What's the ocean domain. (Itsss from the Forgotten Realms. Editors did nassty ssloppy copypasta, didn't put it in complete divine. Andy hatses sloppy copypasta. It always flickses around and stains your shirt, collins collins. )

Does unyielding roots prevent you from turning round as well as moving, making you easy to flank. (No. Not unlesss you're using unearthed arcana, collins collins.)

Does vigor's max duration override extend spell (Yess.)

Can you use persistent spell on mass lesser vigor (Yess.)

What's a Check Toee and why does Tharzidun have it as a favored weapon (Ssilly editors didn't finish the book properly. They didn't even copypasta from the temple of elemental evil like they ssaid they were going to.)

Does exalted strike apply to grapple, sunder disarm and trip attempts (Nassty vow of poverty. We hatses it, collins collins. Mosst of them, yess.)

Are you allowed to keep class-defining stuff like holy symbols, samurai swords, that would be forbidden if you take vow of poverty. (No, teeheeheeheehee. You don't get preciouss power for nothing, collins collins. Got to sacrifice important stuff, yess. )

Can saints deal nonlethal damage with holy touch. No! It always burnses, collins collins. Poor andy. Keep nassty ssaints away from poor little andy, collins collins.)  


Coup de grace: Andy Collins takes a second column in a row to elaborate on the WotC R&D process. Once the designers have turned over their first drafts, the developers are set loose on them to give the mechanics a good kicking. Every single bit of mechanics gets individually examined and tweaked for balance. A few broken things may still slip through, especially in smaller products, but even the iffy ones will be less powerful than your basic single class CoDzilla. Which I think says it all. They did introduce a few underpowered core classes in 3.5, with the Tome of Magic ones in particular not quite measuring up, but even the new primary spellcasters like erudites and spirit shamen don't have quite the same flexibility as druids, clerics or wizards. The problem is that they only introduced this process in 2003, midway through the edition, and you can see a noticeable change in flavour around that time. It shows up the problems both in making incremental changes, and throwing the whole ruleset out and starting again. In one, you have to live with all the legacy stuff, while in the other, you won't know how the system really holds up in actual play for a few years. And if you try and get rid of the broken bits without creating a whole new system, the people who rely on those exploits will be pissed off. This is why you can't please everyone. Some people want a system that has loopholes and imbalances, so they can be on top. Question is, are they an important enough part of your market that you can't survive without them? The past year or two says they may have decided that is indeed the case. I really don't know, and it's a frustrating set of questions to end an issue on.


As usual, october is one of the best months of the year, full of interesting material to make your game a little more gruesome. The irritation of the little basic columns is more than made up for by the interesting articles that look at the context of gaming and how it's developing. Let's hope they can push this new direction a little farther with some articles that really take advantage of gaming's history and surroundings.

Dragon Issue 325: November 2004


part 1/8


108 pages. An old-school wizard, with the hat and everything, and not a single belt? (although you do wonder how they hold their robes together then. ) No surprise that there's a fair amount of magic to be found in this issue. Will they offer intriguing new tricks, or just more blasty effects in different shapes and energy types? Let's crack open the books and get memorising.


Scan Quality: Moderate, unindexed.


In this issue:


From the Editor: The editorial involves Matthew talking about how he got this job, and what he did before that. Working a fair share of crappy low-paid things like packing, retail and dishwashing really lets you know just how far you'll go for money, and what level of bullshit you simply can't put up with. It also illustrates that the best way to get a good job is to never stop looking, even if you already have one, because that's when you're in a better position to negotiate for a good deal. Talent matters less than persistence and learning from your mistakes. Having got this far through the magazine entirely through persistence, I'm inclined to agree with him. In the real world, waiting for your destiny to reveal itself will leave you alone and eventually dead without accomplishing anything much. You may not power up exponentially in the real world the way you do in D&D, but experience can still make a real difference. Unfortunately, you can certainly wind up not getting a job because they think you're too experienced as well, which maps roughly to not getting XP from a challenge for being too high level. Oh well, I guess that's a learning experience too, even if what you have to learn is when to lie and when to tell the truth.


First watch: A return to more familiar splatbook territory this month. Complete Arcane! For all your wizardly and sorcerous needs! Most notable for introducing warlocks to us, which of course would prove so popular they got to be one of the primary classes next edition. Plenty of more forgettable crunchy bits as well, as is the nature of these things.

Eberron starts filling in it's regions with Sharn: City of towers. This of course means it's set up to be the default homebase for tons of adventures, just like Waterdeep, Greyhawk City, Specularum, Huzuz and Sigil before it. Another thing that seems to work, so we'll consciously make a formula out of it. To top off the sales pitch, they remind us that it's got lots of crunch that can be extracted and used even if you aren't playing in their world. Shill shill shill.

Once again, we see them expanding their remit in odd ways here. This month, it's clothes. O_o Who's idea was this? Anyway, there are now a whole bunch of amusing t-shirts and hats for the geek who isn't afraid spend money on fashion to broadcast their geekiness. Seems slightly contradictory, really. Oh, and it's Erol OTUS, you complete hack. Whoever wrote this was obviously insufficiently geeky.

They also choose to cover a computer game, Baten Kaitos: Eternal wings. A combination of card game and RPG, where you fight battles by choosing which cards in your hand to play, and forming combos for greater power. Interesting mechanic, and one which could work in tabletop as well. Has any game tried that?

And finally, they add Undefeated to the list of magazines that they're doing previews for. My, Paizo are busy bunnies at the moment. Can they break out of their dependency on WotC licenses and the RPG market? No? So much for that plan.

Dragon Issue 325: November 2004


part 2/8


Scale Mail: Unsurprisingly, we start off with a letter from someone who's really happy with their new direction. They might even subscribe after more than 20 years as a regular reader. Do you realise how much money you'd have saved over the years if you just did it in the first place?

Another regular subscriber intends to keep it up, which doesn't have quite the same ring to it. You've got to keep reaching out if you want to grow your market.

On the other hand, two people are annoyed by Samurai vs Knight, which had no solid conclusions and no gaming material in it. One person really liked it, but It still means it's touch and go if they'll do any more articles like this soon.

Another point of contention is the new title font for the magazines. Designing it for maximum readability means it loses a little of the atmosphere of previous versions. They make no apologies for that.

Similarly, they make no apologies for trying to get people buying both Dragon and Dungeon, for renaming Bazaar of the Bizarre as Magic Shop, or getting rid of the society of monster hunters. Dry, clear and packed with mechanical info are their targets at all points in the process now. It'll take some pretty serious complaining to get them to shift on that.

On the other hand, when people point out factual errors, they're still willing to take them on board. That's good to see.

In years past, it wasn't easy to get a truly anonymous letter into the magazine, and with the advent of email, it's even harder, since they always have a return address. However, not everyone gives their actual location. This is a bit of a pain for the staff. I'd send in a physical letter anyway. It's more likely to be published because it'll stand out.

And finally, we have two letters from people who are skeptical about D&D changing to modernise itself, but still interested in Eberron. D&D has always followed the fashions in fantasy. If it didn't it wouldn't have hobbits, dwarves and elves in a form that was published less than 2 decades prior. You're just noticing it now because you're not a kid any more, and new stuff is being added that isn't so familiar. This stuff never stops moving forward, even if it claims to be going backwards as part of the marketing.


Player initiative: We're reminded in here that it's the US elections this month. You may not be able to be a big damn hero and singlehandedly rid the country of tyranny and corruption, but voting is still important, and being politically active in your own community even more so if you want to live in a decent place. Don't get too engrossed in fantasy worlds because it's the easy option and forget to make a difference to reality. Also, don't get too worked up about the RPGA ranking systems. There's always going to be some obsessive who goes to more cons than you, and gets more player and DM points. The important thing is that your recreation remains fun, not beating everyone else, especially since there's no financial reward no matter how good a gamer you are.


Under command: With the power levels doubled in minis land, it's the perfect opportunity to talk again about running a campaign with character development and continuity using the system. This does mean assigning one person as the DM, and letting them dictate the rough course of the campaign, but if you've played regular D&D I'm sure you can make that concession. You also have to accept that even more than 3e, the advancement under this system will be relatively closed-ended, and should plan your campaign around this advancement rate, with the scoring of victory conditions setting the pace. Still, you will probably get to change your warbands more between battles than most PC groups, given the greater numbers of pieces and corresponding attrition rate, which'll give you a chance to experiment with different group compositions and tactics within a single campaign.  Just don't expect to get any credit if you come up with a nonviolent solution to the campaigns problems, unlike in D&D.

Dragon Issue 325: November 2004


part 3/8


Silicon sorcery: Dungeon Siege introduces an interesting idea that upsets the usual D&D game assumptions. Spellbooks that you can actually share, instead of each wizard writing their own idiosyncratic variant of magical notation that takes a fair bit of effort to decode? Unheard of! Sky falling, cats and dogs living together, etc etc. Course, they only manage that by being minor artifacts in their own right, that give you additional powers if you use them heavily, which means if people know you have one, you can expect a lot of people trying to be your friend and/or kill you and take your stuff. In addition, the powers key off the number of spell levels you have memorised, which creates the same kind of dynamic as reserve feats, making you think carefully about whether to keep using your low level but consistent powers, or burn your big guns and face the next challenge weaker. This is very interesting, but does also take a fair bit of bookkeeping, which means it's for people who really like to consider their tactical and strategic options, and plan their spell selections and character build carefully. Anyone who prefers sorcerers should steer well clear.


A novel approach: This column takes on an old favourite instead of a new release for a change. The Dune series has been going for a good while, but the original book is still the best selling and most critically praised. So they convert the obvious hallmarks of the series, Spice, and Sandworms. If you want to transform into a gigantic bloated psychic monstrosity, it'll be pretty expensive, and since it's addictive, remaining an adventurer yourself doesn't seem very viable afterwards. Best to keep that for the NPC villains, really. Statistically, sandworms are simply reskinned Purple Worms with a more interesting treasure type, and the caveat that you might want to avoid killing them and just follow them around so as to get more long-term profit selling their byproducts. Which I have to say will definitely be a different challenge for most D&D adventurers, so this is another conversion that more than justifies it's appearance here, even if the spice won't be quite as invaluable (and therefore expensive) in a world where most high level spellcasters can teleport and plane shift anyway. On the other hand, putting this in d20 modern/future would probably work very well indeed. Just because they don't mention that option in the magazine, doesn't mean you can't use it.


Zogonia meets that dungeon staple, an orc in a 10x10 room with a pie. Nodwick keeps his party from making over their wizard. Beard and hat combos never go out of fashion. Dork tower tries to sell loaded dice. That's a bit worrying.


Hometown heroes: The Play's the Thing may be gone, but it's legacy remains in this article, another one that aims to get you building interesting characters more quickly and effectively by directing your thought processes and asking relevant questions. In this case it's where they came from that's the area of focus. What it was like, who lived there, Parents, siblings, teachers, local pub, first crush, local bully that they fully intend to teach a lesson once they've gained a few levels, it's these everyday things that shape a young person's character, before they're old enough to venture into the world and try to be something they chose for themselves. Not every character can be an orphan who's survived on their own wits and skill ever since they can remember, and the game is probably far more interesting for it. Plus if you say all the characters are approximately the same age and from the same place, you can do collaborative character creation and make everything more fleshed out while also providing good reasons why the characters are adventuring together. Since this isn't crammed into the 2 page regular column format, it makes for better reading than those, even if the bright yellow formatting is a bit garish. We can all do with being reminded where we came from, and that other people came from very different places all around the world.

Dragon Issue 325: November 2004


part 4/8


Arcane ancestry 2: They're not just doing sequels more frequently, they're actually putting it in the actual title of the article. I'm not sure if I should be amused or exasperated. Well, at least it's honest. As with the previous one from issue 311, they present a whole load of possible ancestries for your sorcerer, each with two feats, plus a few extra ones any of them can take. You could have powers derived from lawful, chaotic or ethereal outsiders, Illithids, Yuan-ti, undead, or plants. People really can have sex with ANYTHING in 3e with interesting consequences. Most of them are pretty standardised, offering an extra spell at each spell level, at the cost of an opposed subtype of spells being restricted. Since specialist wizards can get that for free, while this costs sorcerers a feat, it's still obvious who comes out on top in the long run due to sheer flexibility. Once again, I think covering fewer types of ancestry with more feats for each one would be the better way to go, so you can really develop your character's innate abilities in interesting ways. Trying to think of too many different power sources has just lead to sex with trees, and I don't really think my game is enhanced by including that as part of my character's backstory.


War magic: Here's another topic that they talked about just over a year ago, in issue 309. Not surprising, since blowing up large quantities of enemies in one go before they can hurt you is a very tactically sound thing to do. Instead of introducing new spells though, this is all about the parameters of the exiting ones, particularly in a party situation where you can wind up hitting other players if not careful. In that situation, fireball and other burst spells are actually the most hazardous, (although still less than previous editions where fireball distorted it's shape if confined and lightning bolt bounced off walls) while line spells allow you to fire through ranks of enemies at minimal risk to your friends. Call lightning isn't really AoE, but has the chance to catch multiple creatures above you. Meteor Swarm's big advantage is the large amount of aiming options it offers you in one go. So this is the kind of charop stuff that reminds us that they put more emphasis on playing to a grid this edition, partly because of more tightly codified rules, and partly because they want to sell more minis. All the different shapes and energy types ensure that you always have to think tactically about which spell is best for your current fight, and I'm still very aware not everyone can make the best choices on their own.


A surge of theurgy: Mystic Theurges were one of the more controversial bits of the 3.5 update, with many people complaining that they were completely broken. However, when the dust settled and the numbers had been crunched, if anything, they were often underpowered, as while they had more staying power and flexibility at high level, they didn't have the raw power a single-classed spellcaster could enjoy, and at low-mid level you had to make real sacrifices to get in. So some feats that make multiclass spellcasters a little less suboptimal isn't a bad idea. Most of them are pretty dull though, simply allowing you to add your levels in the two classes together in certain situations. There's ones for most combinations of two classes, particular types of magic, and some class features like wild empathy and paladin mounts can also benefit from this. Just think, if you were playing an Arcana Evolved character, you'd get most of these benefits automatically. Knowing that, and also the way in which 4e sidestepped this problem, this feels more like highlighting an issue than solving it. I suppose stuff like this in the magazine is a good incentive for their developers to get busy with the next big change.


The ecology of Duergar: Ahh, these gloomy buggers. Always nice to spend a little time around people even more miserable than I usually am. Still, gloom is no impediment to egocentricism, and as is often the case, they get given a creation myth that has them a the first and most important race in the world, with nothing at all to do with those other, lesser dwarven deities, or their actual history as shown in the old Monster Mythology. The story parts eat up a relatively large amount of the ecology this month, with less emphasis on the tactical advice. It's still not a patch on the old fiction heavy ecologies, but it does the job, just as it's subjects do. It also emphasizes the sneaky aspects of fighting them. Seems like they've been doing that with every ecology this year. Does nothing engage in a stand-up fight anymore? Another thing that's worth thinking about. Was this kind of tactical advice reflected in your actual plays of the time? Or was it just boring old, I hit, he hits back.  All anecdotes welcome.

Dragon Issue 325: November 2004


part 5/8


Spellcraft: This month's spell selection is for the roguish sorts, with most of these available to Assassins and Bards. There is the usual attempt at setting detail, but it feels rather perfunctory these days. Ominous looming thieves guild, yadda yadda yadda. Let's get to the spells, shall we.

Appraising Touch boosts your appraise skill substantially. Well, it's less of a toe stepper than the old spells which just worked.

Dead End is essentially an urban variant of pass without trace. Yawn.

Marked Man lets you track things via sympathetic link. Seen you before too.

Serene Visage boosts your Bluff score equally substantially. This is one that ought to be a general formula.

Shock and Awe causes substantial initiative penalties for the enemy if cast just before combat. This'll hopefully let you get off two full rounds of sneak attacking before the enemy ceases to be flat-footed, which'll put a serious dent in their HP. Quite nice, really.

Spontaneous Search lets you instantly take 10 without spending the whole turn actually rooting around. Once again with the very specific, integrated mechanics. This change really is becoming standard making everything seem very pinned down and codified, not like the old days.


Magic Shop goes egyptian. We've had several articles on their gods before, but not one on their magical items. Given how long they lasted, I'm sure there's something worth plundering in those pyramids if you avoid the cursed bits.

The Belt of the Camel lets you survive without water and resist the desert heat. You might still starve to death, but pulling a 40 days and 40 nights jobbie seems quite possible if you have a high con score.

Canopic Jars of the Guardians let you turn a dead priest into an undying guardian and servant. The reward for a lifetime of loyal service? You get to carry on doing it FOREVER.

Carrion Gauntlets let you drain lifeforce by touch at will. Prey on the weak and dying and you can go a long way with all those temporary hit points. Just watch you don't drain your friends by accident.

Cartouches of Imhotep let you imitate their namesake by buffing your Craft skills. Fair enough.

A Cloak of the Desert lets you blend into sandy environments easily. Combine with the camel belt and you can really hide out from everyone for an extended period.

The Eye of Horus lets you both hunt down and hide from evil creatures. Horus is obviously smart enough not to sacrifice his followers in futile battles, which is nice to see.

The Keepers Guide helps you spot and disarm traps. whether this is put to legitimate uses by priests adding to tombs, or not so legitimate ones by grave robbers is all up to you.

River Sandals let you walk on water, and leave no tracks on land. Jesus might have turned this trick to good, but it has plenty of sneaky applications too, and you can bet followers of Set will use it to full advantage.

Robes of the Burning Serpent let bad guys turn into giant snakes, and kill horribly any good person who puts them on. You may kill Amon-Thoth, but taking his stuff remains a problem.

Sand of Set turns into snakes when sprinkled on the ground. Should put a scare into most low level adventurers.

Scarab Charms turn into a swarm of beetles that'll strip the flesh from your bones. Better make sure you have a good throwing arm to make sure it takes out an enemy and not you or your friends.

Scorpion Bracers help you resist poisons. Somehow, that doesn't seem as impressive as it did last edition.

Tiaras of Bast let you speak with cats, and maybe even get them to like you enough to herd them. Even the most arrogant feline is susceptible to bribes and flattery.

Vestments of Judgement let you bring people back from the dead ... if you're worthy, and in very limited amounts. You can't save everyone, so exercise your mercy carefully where it'll be most effective.

Dragon Issue 325: November 2004


part 6/8


Heroic feats: Not surprising that this column is in theme, with 9 feats that enhance various magic specialities. Make your shadow magic more real, your charms more charming, your protective spells tougher, and your buffs more buffy. Each of them requires that you be a specialist in the appropriate school, with enchanters getting one for each subschool, and the others getting one each. They aren't that impressive numerically, but if you've already taken spell focus, and want to squeeze a little more of an edge out of your area of concentration, they're a logical next choice.


Gaining prestige: Mounted Archery is one of those styles of combat that's particularly tricky to master, requiring you to combine two disciplines that are hard enough in their own right. A prestige class that specialises in it makes perfect sense. As mounts tend to become fragile at higher levels, they gain the ability to substitute their own saves for their mount's one, making it a little harder to ruin their day with a quick charm. They also get dodge bonuses, improved crit ranges, and the ability to ride-by attack everyone in their movement path with ease, plus their own barbarian horde at 10th level. Seems legit, and very reskinable to different races and cultures. It's just a matter of seeking out adventures that don't take you into cramped spaces too much.


Winning races: Even more than Grippli, Lupins are incredibly PC friendly, with their abilities remaining LA+0 without any effort at all. A load of smell related bonuses to things, a bit of a bonus to listen checks, and the ability to root out and savage werewolves with great brutality. As good team players with a strong sense of right and wrong, an adventuring band is a perfect environment for them. This is a pretty straight conversion, although it skips all the nuances in issue 237's larger article with tons of different breeds. It does focus on the more savage lupins rather than the civilised, french-accented ones, but I suppose that just fits their current policy of making things as generic as possible. The old mystara whimsy really isn't their style, which makes this far less exciting than it could have been. Workmanlike, not thrilling.

Dragon Issue 325: November 2004


part 7/8


Class acts: Fighters get Tools of the Trade, a bit of advice on choosing your weapon. Will you go for damage, reach, special effects, types of damage, lots of attacks? The choice is yours, and you have the feats to back it up. Yawn.

Clerics get More Faith, less Fight. A bit of roleplaying advice plus a how to on building characters that statistically match their personality. This may involve taking cross-class skills. Oh well. Them's the breaks. Real people are usually suboptimally built, for optimally statted and trained all their life for a purpose people wind up like Michael Jackson, deeply weird.

Wizards get Apprentice tricks, some advice on the clever uses of cantrips. One of those things we've seen before, done better and in greater depth in 2nd ed.

Rogues get The Multiclassed Rogue. What classes would make a good dip to complement your array of skills? A level of barbarian is easily the best choice, as speed and extra dodging makes up for the slight sacrifice of sneak attack, and you can soon bring most of your skills back to max. Fighter and bard can be pretty good too. Interesting thoughts here.

Barbarians get 7 new flaws. All but 2 revolve around their rage ability, making it more of a pain in the ass. Hulk smash indeed. Take a couple of these at 1st level and multiclass out of barbarian at 2nd for much twinkitude.

Druids get Druid Meets World. How does a druid fit in when not in the wilderness? Good question. Here's some possible answers. More fluff and tactical advice.

Sorcerers get Sorcerous Strategies. If you choose nothing but blasty spells, don't be surprised if you suck donkey balls and die. One blasty spell per spell level, making sure they're of different shapes and energy types, is more than sufficient to keep you competitive. The rest should be devoted to defense and utility. You want to get the greatest versatilty out of your limited selection, make sure you don't get caught with nothing useful. Pretty commonsensical, really.

Rangers get Tracking and Trailing. You can learn a good deal about a creature from looking at it's prints, beyond just where it's going. Another reason a few ranks in Knowledge (nature) don't go amiss.

Paladins get Dealing with friends and allies. It's important that your buds know what they can't be permitted to do without the paladin having to punish them. You want a real good guy on your side, you'd better make sure you're at least moderately righteous yourself. Another case of tackling a roleplaying issue that has been done before in much greater detail.

Monks get 4 new magic items. 3 weapons, and a magical belt, each of which has a special ability particularly useful to a monk. Pretty neat stuff to put in a treasure haul.

Bards get Skills and Knowledge. More advice on how to play them thematicly, and assign your skill points appropriately. Knowing what lies ahead is an invaluable asset, so use it and you could avoid an unwanted TPK.


Player Tips: Metagaming is one of those topics that pops up fairly regularly around here. Generally people are against it, as it reduces the verisimilitude of the world. This article takes the opposite approach. Instead of trusting yourself to not metagame, make sure your characters take appropriate knowledge skills so you can justify using your OOC knowledge. Much like saying don't create a character who's an asshole and then say you're just playing your character when it causes problems for other players, this is a solution that will work in many games, but not all of them. It's certainly not that well suited to D&D, where skill points are at a premium, and fairly specific to particular classes. I suppose it doesn't matter who has the metagame knowledge as long as at least one of the characters has the skills to back it up. It'd take a very churlish DM indeed to ban all OOC communication at the table. So this is interestingly different, but I can already see the potential problems in this approach. Still, at least they're trying new things, which is better than just churning out some old canard about building your personality.


Adventurer tricks: This column is also in a modernist mood, as it thinks about what your adventuring party can take from the organisation and tactics of real life SWAT teams. Which mainly means the joys of suppressive fire, good use of stealth and cover, and focussing on the most dangerous targets to take them down fast before they even get a chance to react. Even in 3.5e, there are substantial options which enable you to win fights without putting yourself in danger, especially if you can buff your spell DC's to the point where your save or suck effects outpace the save progressions of your enemies. Just make sure you set divinations up to prevent turnaround being fair play, because being ambushed and pincushioned while trying to sleep will let NPC's kill you despite being lower CR just as easily. Once you go paranoid, it's not easy to go back.

Dragon Issue 325: November 2004


part 8/8


Sage advice: It's too bright in here. All that white hurtses andy's eyses, collins collins. Andy hass piled up sskip's books to make niiiccce shadows. Much nicccer.

What's the difference between ethereal and incorporeal (One iss here but inssubstantial, the other is on another plane. Nassty spying thing can sse you when you can't ssee it. If Andy finds out andy will go there and wring it's nassty neck, collins collins.)

Whats the difference between a manifesting ghost and an ethereal one. (What nassty stuff they can do to you, yess.)

Can a ghost use it's abilities on other ethereal things. Can it see ethereal things while manifested (Only ssome of them. No. Other ghosts can ssneak up on it, yess. )

Can a ghost travel to other planes. (Yess, but it can't go ethereal on them. Sscary for them, teeheeheeheehee. )

Can you target an ethereal creature from the prime material plane (If you can ssee it and have force sspells. Nice force sspells. blast those nassty ghosties)

Can you hurt things on the prime material from the ethereal with force effects. (No. One way only. Have to research other special spells to do that, preciouss.)

Can ghost touch weapons hurt ethereal creatures (no)

What happens when a wall is built on the ethereal plane (Very tricky, yess. No ssolid matter there, so you have to import it all. If you do, its all ssolid, normal cover and concealment rules apply, yess.)

Does an ethereal object block force effects on the material plane.  (Yess. If they can't ssee ethereal things, this could result in a nassty surprise for the holder, teeheeheeheehee.)

Can an ethereal creature grapple someone wearing bracers of armor or vice versa (No, collins collins. Not a solid hold.)

How do I keep ethereal characters from wrecking my adventure. ( Nassty sneaky adventurers. Other high level sspellcasters will make defenses, yess. And roll for random encounters that'll eat their brainsess, yess. And at low level they won't be able to do it much anyway.

How does the plane of shadow keep mimicing the prime material when people change it. (It flowss sslowly and ssneakily when you aren't looking. Nassty shadows don't look exactly like the real thing, like evil shadow puppets. They givesses Andy the creeps, collins collins.)


Coup de grace: James Wyatt finishes up this issue with a little piece praising the idea of settings in general, while also talking about what made Eberron the best option for a new D&D setting at this moment in time. It uses all the old stuff, but in interesting new ways, and also adds new things on top of those. Plus it used good ideas from other settings submitted in the search, allowing them to make it more expansive, and less built around the ideas and quirks of one person. If they can only have a couple of settings alive at any one time, they might as well make them really good ones. Once again, this column puts the tensions between the creative and commercial into sharp relief, and shows that when large amounts of money are at stake, things naturally tend to turn into work by committee, as that lets everyone involved claim credit if something is a success, while denying responsibility if it isn't. Yet again this makes it very clear why the 3rd party D20 writers had plenty of clear space to do interesting things WotC couldn't at this time, and it's not certain which actually produces the better game. Oh well, I can liberally use both sources in my own campaign. The more diverse the options, the better.


Once again, this issue is a much easier read than the ones before they changed the format, giving me huge amounts of usable material, much of it good. The novelty may be wearing off, but they're still packing the content into every issue. As usual, let's see if they've been holding anything special back for christmas, or if the new formula will start to bore me by then.