Dragon Issue 285: July 2001


part 6/7


Sage advice turns it's eye on the new psionics rules. Hopefully they won't be quite as much of a hassle as the last ones.

Are psionic AC boosts effective against touch attacks (depends what type the bonus is )

Does inertial armor block disintegrate (no)

Can you stack natural armour, inertial armour, shields, and bracers of armour (Mostly no. Type stacking rules apply as usual. )

Can you spend extra points on psionic fist for even more damage (No. Maybe we should.)

Can you combine stand still and hold the line to twinky effect (Oh yes)
And can you also stack stand still and combat reflexes (Yup. You are learning well, young padwan)

Where's the rule about nonpsionic characters being mostly immune to psionic attacks (page 42!)

Can you choose to not make a defense against psionic attacks (If you like. Isn't that a nice change from last edition. And then for an encore, you can hold your hand in a fire, you silly person. )

If you spend all your PP's, can you use the nonpsionic line for defense (no)

Is there a limit to the number of points you can blow on psychofeedback (No. Skip will consider if this is another thing that should go on the nerfing list. )
Can metaphysical weapon be used on unarmed attacks (No. Poor little multiclass monks. )

Can you use float on yourself. (As long as you're not too fat)

Can you do psychic chirurgery on yourself (Physician, heal thyself. Yes. )

How does inflict pain work (Erroneously. Cast Official Errata time! )

What level is the highest level psionicist in a community (Not as high as most classes)

Can psionic creatures without PSP's use items that require them. (No)

Can you use trigger power with metapsionics (yes)

I don't get the bonus power points table (Add it together. )

What power list do the prestige classes use ( Psion)

Do psionic attacks provoke attacks of opportunity (yes)

Does inner strength count towards meeting prestige class requirements (no)

There are powers that say psychic warriors can have them, but aren't on the main list (Cast Official Errata! Skip's really starting to enjoy that. Who's da sage, Who's da sage :snoopy dance: )

Does apopsi lock or remove powers. Can you learn new ones (It's verry brutal. They're gone until you get the special healing powers to restore them.)

Why can't undead use psychometabolism when that's based on strength. How do they use psychokinesis ( Because they have no metabolisms. Substitute Cha for Con, like you do with concentration. )


The play's the thing: Robin's advice this month skews rather more towards the well duh side than the mindblowing. If a character is just a stereotype, they can be all too boring and predictable. But creating a complete personality from scratch can take quite a while. A good compromise is to start with a stereotype, or archetype if you want to sound more dignified, and then add a twist or two, until they feel like 2 dimensional characters at least, if not quite full 3D. Doesn't that sound easy. And familiar as well. Sorry, not breaking any new ground this time. Next!


PC Portraits: Halflings get a turn here, as you'd expect. They're all surprisingly skinny really, which ironically does not make them look short. Chalk that up to the way that our brains parse perspective when there aren't enough environmental cues. It doesn't dungeonpunkify them as much as some of these, but there are some attempts to make them gritty that don't quite work. Plus there's waay too much facial hair. So this is a bit awkward. You can't rewrite our conceptions as easily as that. Let's hope they do a little better when they get round to gnomes.

Dragon Issue 285: July 2001


part 7/7


Dungeoncraft: Homebase time again. Having spent quite a while discussing the larger scale stuff, Ray goes back to this topic, to give us somewhere halfway safe for our PC's to come from. And he goes for the classic route of making it a casablanca in a hostile world, a place where people of all tribes and races can meet up in an uneasy peace. Gotta have one of those in your world, even if it is a few orders of magnitude smaller than Sigil or Waterdeep. And has bloody high taxes too, charged each time you enter, which is designed to keep the players from just popping in and out every time they need a healbot. So here you see him juggling the essential needs of a game, with the desire to make his new world non-stereotypical. Which means this is different from the first time around, and probably a little better. You'll be able to assemble a decent set of equipment, but even once you've got a few levels up, you'll still have to work to get in and out of here, and uncover it's secrets. And the world outside will remain big and hostile. Let's try and get that challenge rating just right in the next instalment.


Role models: Most of this column is devoted to how you paint and otherwise customise the base of your minis. After all, we've covered people and creatures, but a good base really finishes a model off. Of course, it also makes them look stupid if you put a particular terrain type on the base, and then use the mini in a different context. But that's only a problem if you have a limited supply of minis and space. That's the advantage and disadvantage of specialisation. Varnishing, on the other hand, makes your minis look cooler and last longer, so it's kinda a no-brainer. So it's the part that's more likely to be a problem that gets the most attention. Which makes sense, I guess. This column is still building on it's previous instalments nicely, but talking about finishing up makes me wonder where it's going to head next. They've introduced a lot of new columns recently. Will this one be on the chopping block or retooled again?


DM's toolbox: Ah yes, shifting the focus from adventures, worlds, or campaigns to Encounters as the basic building block of your play. I was wondering when that was going to start. Here we kick off the process that would eventually lead to D&D Encounters being one of the cornerstones of their organised play. This does have advantages in that smaller blocks are more modular and able to be inserted into an existing game. The problem becomes when those blocks are almost exclusively combat encounters, and the DM doesn't put effort into building them into part of a larger continuity in their own campaign. So this article approaches adventure building from a different perspective than we're used to here, and is notable as a historical landmark. But I also have a sense of forboding about this. They've already reduced their coverage of settings by a fair chunk. And I'm quite aware that they can do a lot more on that front.


Dragonmirth applies real world analogies to fantasy tropes again. What's new gets  JRR Tolkien in. Ya Srysly. Hilarity ensues.


Not one of their better issues, as halflings prove to be a tricky subject to build an entire issue around. While they have refined their art style in recent issues, they are probably still trying too hard to be cool and modern rather than timeless and classic. No matter how you try, halflings will never be as ubiquitous as elves and dwarves. Just accept it, and give us a good few years before you do this topic again. So, what's next? O_O Broooooooooooooooksssssssssssss! :shakes fist:

Dragon Issue 286: August 2001


part 1/7


114 (116) pages. :fingerclicks: Shananana na na na nara, shananana na na na nara. [/60's girl group] Oh yes, They're doing a themed issue on Terry Brooks' Shannara series. I wasn't expecting that. And I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. Is this born of genuine admiration, or cynical marketing synergy? Will the characters work well under D&D rules? Once again, it's looking like it'll probably be easier to model their idiosyncrasies under 3e than previous editions. And it'll certainly be different. After all, it's even more specific than Robin Hood, and the writer is still alive. Still, next thing you know, they'll be doing a whole themed section on a video game instead of just a single column. That idea doesn't appeal to me at all. So I open this issue with considerably more trepidation than usual.


Scan Quality: Moderate, unindexed.


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: Well, at least one of the staff is a huge Shannara fan. That makes me more optimistic that this issue was done for the right reasons. And interestingly enough the important thing he's taken from it is that the heroes are all ordinary people, or at least start off that way. They don't set out looking for adventure; like Tolkien's protagonists, it comes to them, and they have to deal with it. Which I have no problem with as a concept, but it does require that the DM put a lot of effort in to keep the players engaged, or players who are willing to metagame a little to make sure their characters do wind up on the adventure despite their supposed reluctance. What works well in a novel might not be so easy to accomplish in a game. So this already tells us more than a little about how we'll be approaching this  topic. That good ol' zero to hero journey is going to play a big part. I don't think you'll be getting many players taking NPC levels as a result of this though. Maybe if you just give them one free one at the start for flavour.


Scale Mail: We start with a letter of praise for the idea of using National Geographic for inspiration. it's hardly some obscure publication that'll really surprise or baffle people if you pull it out. Now, if you were using Playboy for the articles, that might be a little more ... unique.

A good ol' errata complaint. James Wyatt still isn't the greatest crunch writer on the team, and needs a firm editorial hand to make the most of his talents.

An equally familiar bit of historical quibbling. THIIIISSS IIIS ACCURRRACY!!!!!

And let's not even get into the morality of the greek gods. The only reason Zeus gets a Good on the alignment scale is because he's enough of a bawss to bully the arbiters.

A whole bunch of gods they missed out also get statted here. Your egyptian pantheon just wouldn't be complete without them.

And the Realms proves popular, but also controversial, with one negative letter, but four positive ones filling out the end of this section with people's opinions on the new columns. If that ratio is representative of the overall volume of letters, it's no wonder they're going to keep giving Ed regular columns for years to come.


Nodwick spreads the word of his mighty and heroic deeds.


Previews: They change the format again, with another gimmicky column setup. Things are all compressed onto one page, as befits their shrinking number of releases. Heart of Nightfang Spire is this month's generic adventure. A year has passed, and it seems quite likely that more than a few groups have made it to 10th level, given the way the new XP system works. So let's get a-caterin.

The Realms continues to provide splatbooks above and beyond the generic ones, such is it's popularity. Magic of Faerun is another big load of power-creepy crunch. Sheer goob factor? What are the writers on? Well, I know Ed Greenwood is on another cocktease kick in Elminster in Hell. We know he's not going to really kill him off. You can watch him squirm for a bit though.

Dragonlance gets Brother of the Dragon by Tonya C. Cook. Off we go to see history sweep by again. Not that technology overall will advance, but at least some things change.

Dragon Issue 286: August 2001


part 2/7


Up on a soapbox: And so Gary concludes his series on what we want in our roleplaying by talking about all the other possible elements that people have said they want. Most can be filed as subdivisions of the categories that he already suggested, while the social rewards of playing RPG's can be applied to any game with multiple players. Having a system for character advancement in game, however, is an important one that definitely deserves it's own category, since nearly all RPG's have it, and most other games with less continuity don't. Roleplaying's great strength, and weakness, is the sheer amount of depth you can create with it, and how hard that can become to keep track of. To get the payoff, you need to invest. And to get lots of people involved, you need to diversify. Really, it's not that surprising it isn't a more mainstream hobby, especially when there's so much competition. The best thing we can do to attract new people is to keep the existing fanbase from going toxic. After all, D&D grew pretty rapidly the first time around. If it weren't for the reputation of the existing fanbase, it might be able to do it again. You think that might be a good idea?


The dork tower crew go conventioneering. Will they get back alive and intact? What terrible stories will they have to tell?


The world of Shannara: To get all of us who haven't read the books started, here's a little geography and history primer. Since this series already has quite a few books, and Brooks isn't afraid of going multigenerational with his story, this takes a fair sized article. And it soon becomes apparent that while it may have started out with much the same ingredients as Tolkien: elves, dwarves, reluctant heroes, terrifying wraiths, mysterious spellcasters and dangerous magical items, it soon took it's own direction. Since there are regular skips of centuries between the books, and quite a lot of dangerous locations, there's plenty of room for a GM to create a game without the players feeling overshadowed by constant encounters with book characters, and their deeds. So it seems that this world probably is quite suited to D&D gaming, certainly moreso than Robin Hood was, and doing a special on it wasn't a bad idea at all for the magazine or the author. My skepticism is being won over, and I'm interested in seeing what the subsequent articles make of the world.


Elder druid: As we found last article, most D&D classes map into Shannara reasonably well. Druids, on the other hand, are quite different. They do have a little in common with 1st edition hierophants in that they use hibernating sleep to extend their lifespan. But other than that, their special abilities are quite distinct. Speaking all languages and perfect memory make them able to step outside their culture and become universal diplomats, while their ability to use magical fire, charge weapons to smite things, and supercharge themselves at the cost of their lifespan means they make decent straight combatants. (if not quite as effective as shapeshifted D&D druids) So this is a fairly powerful prestige class, but still not quite as good as a straight CoDzilla, and it's quirks may trip players up in an interesting way in the long run. It seems like it could be used in another game world without too many problems.


Heroes & Villains: Next we have the dramatis personae. Because of the multigenerational nature of the stories, only the villains get full-sized writeups, while the heroes only get familial ones, talking about their general personality traits, with lots of abbreviated statblocks. This means I find myself more interested in the villains and what drives them. If so much of the heroes personality traits are hereditary, then what does that say about free will around here? Are people destined to keep on going through the same challenges, and making the same mistakes? That would be terribly depressing, even if individually they generally win them. That's one of the things I found most annoying reading the bible, seeing subsequent generations forgetting the lessons God taught the previous ones, forcing him to smite them all over again. It's not really the kind of thing I want in my escapism, true to reality as it is.

Dragon Issue 286: August 2001


part 3/7


Creatures of the four lands: Now we get to the meaty stuff that's most plunderable for use in other games. Monsters and items. Let's see if these are sufficiently different to add to your D&D game, or just reinventing the wheel with a different paintjob.

Skull Bearers are corrupted druids, although they've become outsiders rather than undead. They can fly, use a good selection of spells, generate terror, and are a bugger to detect magically. At low levels, they're big boss material, but there's also enough of them that you could wind up facing a whole team of them at higher level.

Mordwraiths seem suspiciously like ringwraith expys. They're cloaked so you can't see what's underneath, scary, can sense you without using sight, and use green fire in all sorts of unpleasant ways. Sounds fairly familiar, apart from the green fire bit. Why mess with a winning formula?

Moor Cats look suspiciously like Cringer from He-man, and can blur themselves to become even harder to spot and hit than regular cats. Like most cats in fiction, they're mysterious, smart, and may obey you if they feel like it, but can never truly be tamed. Good luck staying on their good side.

Rock Trolls fill the role of the big and tough looking, but ultimately dumb mook enemies a PC will soon be able to mow down as they level up. They're all about the honorable combat, which is pretty easy to exploit. You'd probably have better luck trying to maintain a friendly relationship with a tribe of them than you would orcs, and that's something.

Shadowen are another unpleasant supernatural beastie. They're the product of magical experimentation, possess people, drain their life-force, and are all-round unpleasant when they do take over. Since they have fast healing and incorporeality, it's near impossible to fight them without magic. So when they take over, they of course make magic illegal and promote witch-hunts against those who use it. That's a sensible evil plan if I ever heard one.

Mwellret are shapeshifting lizard men. While not stupid, they're one of those races that thinks they're inherently superior to everyone else, and this means they might not use their powers as smartly as they could. This is alway a flaw worth exploiting.


Relics and artifacts: While the monsters can fit into a D&D game and not feel out of place at all, the magical items of this series are a little trickier to incorporate. Most are artefact level by D&D standards, and even the weaker ones have dangerous side-effects. This makes it clear that it's not a place where you can just load up with an arsenal of bling and expect to solve your problems that way. Let the players beware if they encounter any of these in their game.

The Sword of Shannara is the namesake of the series, bringing truth to all around it by detecting lies, piercing illusions, and forcing people to accept themselves for what they truly are. Which is ultimately a good thing, but not particularly pleasant for those who have to go through it. As a macguffin to drive stories, it seems quite a good one, as anyone who's even slightly morally ambiguous is going to have something they don't want made public, and be wary of it's wielder.

The Black Elfstone is another exceedingly powerful device, able to detect, absorb and reflect magic fairly reliably. However, gaining all a creature's magical powers is very bad for the sanity indeed, so a sensible user will skip that part. These items all look like they're going to be balanced primarily by danger, rather than limited in power like D&D ones would in the new edition. Giving them to your players may well take them out of play before too long.

Blue Elfstones come in trios, and only work with one of each, and even then they only work for elves, with a 50% chance of working for half-elves. They also have a fair chance of burning you out with repeated use. God, magic can be finicky. I find myself longing for the reliable touch of science.

The Mirrorshroud is exactly the kind of thing the sword of Shannara is designed to deal with. A cloak that lets you shapeshift into someone the target trusts and read minds to help you keep up the facade? Very little good and a lot of unpleasantness can come of giving someone the power to do that. Even knowing it exists and people are willing to use it will be corrosive to the trust that keeps a community together.

The Stiehl is one of those lovely intelligent weapons that takes over it's wielder, using them to fulfil it's perpetual bloodlust by sharing some of the lifeforce it drains in an addictive manner. Unless you're a skilled professional assassin, this is very unlikely to end well for you. But to the weapon? No biggie. There's always another sucker who thinks they can handle it.

The Sword of Leah is very similar, only working for the other side. It's special powers are all about kicking demon ass, but it's still addictive, and with a tendency to make you go berserk. If there's no-one to talk you down, you'll probably sacrifice yourself saving the world, or wind up killing your friends when you run out of enemies. Designing intrinsically good things is a lot harder than making evil ones around here, it seems.

Dragon Issue 286: August 2001


part 4/7


Fiction: Antrax by Terry Brooks. And so we finish off the themed section with an excerpt from the next novel in the series. Like many of the fiction pieces by WotC staff, this is primarily advertising, setting up the story and introducing you to some of the characters, but not resolving anything, so you have to spend more money if you want any satisfaction. And the writing is pretty annoying, telling rather than showing, and spending more time sketching out characters than actually having them do anything. Despite the cool stuff that the writers have plundered and converted from his world, I don't feel the desire to follow that up and read further. I'm left with rather mixed feelings about this theme.


Elminster's guide to the realms: Elminster comes up with a little something that feels like a holdover from the Wyrms of the North days this month. A dragon who schemes to control the economy of the Realms via cryptic clues and adventure hooks placed in the treasure caches she creates (while keeping the majority of her horde safely away from these plots, I presume) The map is of a good example one of them. While there is some treasure here, it's easily replaceable, and much of it is in the form of information, and magically enchanted so she can track it, and eventually retrieve and reuse it. This is another demonstration of how you can have dungeons that get visited and cleared out regularly, but still get replenished so other adventurers can use them, and why some powerful creature would go to the effort of maintaining and restocking them, while making sure that the challenges are set at a difficulty PC's have a good chance of overcoming. It illustrates how much of the adventurers life is a set-up, and how they can be tricked into fulfilling someone else's agenda without ever even speaking to them. Man, it can't be easy making a world both internally consistent, and able to sustain a high proportion of it's population being adventurers indefinitely. And Ed still does a better job of it than anyone else out there.


Cities of the ages: Venice! Now that is an interesting city. It's a great example of how humans can completely screw up their environment, yet adapt and survive to the changes. Massive subsidence as a result of industrial pumping sinking the city? We'll use canals instead of roads as our primary means of transportation. I don't think we're in any danger of extinction if we can pull tricks like that. Their history is pretty fascinating as well. The amount of adversity they faced both in building it and from their neighbours over the centuries results in more civic unity than the average town, but there's tons of room for politics, making money, and having fun here, and some spectacular architecture. It seems like another rather good choice for this column, as there's really no other city quite like it. Course, in your world, that might not be the case, particularly if the sea/land ratio is even higher than on earth, and stable building space is at a premium everywhere. Then you can have several dozen variants on the floating city theme.


Faiths of faerun gives us another prestige class, the Nightcloak of Shar. Another one that seems pretty badass. Take a single level of Rogue (preferably the 1st one, given the way 3e multiclassing rewards that) and enjoy your substantially increased powers of deception and spells that manipulate darkness. They do have one minor issue, in that like blackguards, they have some required skills that they then don't get as class skills. But still, once again, I think this will be one that turns out an overall positive compared to straight clerics, and gives you lots of flavorful abilities as well. As usual, the Realms gets the best toys to play with.

Dragon Issue 286: August 2001


part 6/7


Sage advice: When an arcane spellcaster gets a domain, do the spells count as arcane spells (As long as you're the one casting them. Other people haven't put the work in, so they don't get that privilege. )

When you get extra spell slots from prestige domains, do you need to fill them with domain spells (well, duh. But only divine casters get that bonus.)

If you have more than one spellcasting class, can you choose which one prestige classes stack with (Maybe. Read the individual descriptions.)

If prestige classes have separate spell lists, do you have to track them separately (yes)

Are all spells sacred fists cast restricted to touch range (No, We decided that was dumb in the development process. Cast Official Errata time! )

What spell levels do sacred fists get domain spells for (The ones they can cast anyway. Meh.)

Do sacred fist's unarmed attacks stack with their monk levels (no)

Do their evasion and uncanny dodge stack? (Yes, actually)

What 0 and 5th level spells do sacred fists get. (None. Cast Official Errata!)

Do hospitalers get cleric spell levels that stack, or separate ones (Stacking ones. Cast Official Errata! )

Does hospitaler undead turning stack (yes, at -2 level. Cast Official Errata! Maybe Skip should retrain as a sorcerer. All this erattaing is sure using up Skip's high level spells.)

Just how fast do horses really go? What about when they're encumbered (What time is it? It's table time! Let's spread out the jams!)

How many vampires & ghosts can a master of shrouds summon. None. More development bumpfh we didn't erase. Unfortunately Skip has used up all Skip's erratta spells for the month, so this one will have to stay unofficial. )

What does the battle rod give bonuses too. (Saves against fear)

Can the knight of the chalice affect lower planar creatures other than demons. (No. We'd say if it did. )

Can rangers and paladins worship gods of different races and alignments (I guess)

Can a wizard/cleric's familiar deliver cleric spells by touch (Yes. This does not stretch to psionics, though. )

Can you use spells from one class to affect spells from another class (Yes unless we say no)

Can you multiclass as two different cleric classes (No more than you can specialize in more than one wizard school. Yes, we're no fun, Skip knows.)

What counts as an attack for the purposes of protection from evil (Anything that will have a direct negative effect aimed at you. Intention counts for a lot when morals are involved.)


The play's the thing: Robin's article this month is a direct riff off last month's one. Where that talked about breaking stereotypes on an individual level, this talks about individual cultures breaking with racial stereotypes. Which is very similar indeed, but on a broader scale. In this case, you'll probably want fewer traits that outright defy their racial tendencies, as we're talking about a substantial aggregation of individuals here, and more that add a twist to them, or are simply orthogonal to what we already know. Otherwise you fall into the other problem of asking why they're that race at all. This again smells like padding, saying the same thing again in a slightly different way to fill time and space until another new idea comes along. Is he working on something else as a main project now, and just dashing these off to make a little extra money? Zzzzz.

Dragon Issue 286: August 2001


part 7/7


Dungeoncraft: Meanwhile, while Ray might be repeating himself, he's once again doing it better than last time round, giving us new angles on building a homebase that shows he's learnt from the last time he did it. Careful consideration of scale for the map, sketching out the mechanical details of the area, and a refinement of the taxation system introduced last time all fill out information about the world. This reveals that while 1st level characters won't have much chance against the guards, they will rapidly outpace them, and I'm pretty sure they'll be running roughshod over the security measures by 10th level. I suppose that's another thing about 3e many designers haven't picked up on. Because advancement is so much faster and there's NPC classes to choose from as well, it's easier to justify having a range of levels in your everyday folks, making them less fragile and easily exploited. If he gets to do this a third time with the benefit of a decent amount of actual play, this will probably turn out differently again. So really, this shows that some things lose impact with repetition, while others improve, and worldbuilding definitely rewards repeated practice. There's so much to learn, and so many different ways to go about it that it shouldn't get boring, even after you've made dozens of different worlds. So put the work in to get better if you want to be a great GM.


PC Portraits: This column isn't part of the theme for a change, as using named characters would kinda miss the point. Instead, they set a fairly big name free to do whatever he likes. And the result sure does have a lot of ear and nose rings. And a slightly feline looking pope. With the overall emphasis on savagery and tribal dressings, most of these would be pretty appropriate for the world Ray's developing at the moment. So it does seem pretty fitting with the overall direction of the magazine at the moment. Let's keep things punk for a little while longer before moving on entirely.


Role models: This column has a sudden attack of executive meddling, being tied into their new Chainmail minis game. And so they give you advice specifically aimed at those minis, and large scale wargaming in general. If you're going to paint 'em all in a reasonable period of time, you'll need to start practicing those mass production techniques, doing one part on each model, and then moving on to the next one while letting that bit dry. So this is somewhat more advanced advice than they've done before, but it also has very cynical motivations promoting the latest product. Guess this column continues to have a fairly unstable position in the office making it the first in line when they want to shuffle things around. I am very dubious about it's prospects for long-term survival.


DM's toolbox: This column isn't quite as obviously promotion as the last one, but it does have a commercial agenda. Making you feel that you need all sorts of physical widgets to make your game run better, so they can sell you something in the future. Aka the health & beauty mag approach to manufacturing demand. People might want something, but they don't know it yet, and you make them want it by social pressure and advertising, telling them they're incomplete without the latest style, and their friends will look down on them. Buy buy buy! Fill your room with knick-knacks! Preferably official ones, but 3rd party products are better than nothing. Whatever happened to using your memory? This isn't a direction I'm keen on.


Dragonmirth is very topical indeed. That's what happens when you assign value to intangibles. What's new rules the world. What a fun job to have. Put aside your tears and fears and go for it.


This definitely qualifies as an interestingly different issue, even if it isn't that great overall. And it does make them feel like they're more connected to the outside world again, experimenting with novels outside the company, and miniature wargaming again. If they can couple that with good writing, they can continue to avoid the repetition that plagued the late 90's quite nicely and broaden the magazine's appeal along the way.

Dragon Issue 287: September 2001


part 1/7


82 (116) pages. For a while now, since 3e started, the covers have been closer focused on the characters rather than the backdrop. But this is the first one that outright neglects it, showing nothing but the action pose. That kind of laziness hasn't been seen since the 70's. Not a pleasing development. On the other hand, the fact that this month's topic is the planes is pretty pleasing to me. I always love a good otherdimensional trip. Will they seem as fantastical under 3e as they did before?


Scan quality: Medium, unindexed, ad free scan. From this point on, the ad free scans really start becoming prevalent.


In this issue:


Wyrms turn: Looks like it's time for another change of editors, as Dave Gross takes a sideways jump to edit other magazines. This always fills me with trepidation. All the more so because unlike Tim, Kim or Roger, who you could tell were running out of steam before they left, Dave has slowly and steadily improved since he got the job, and this last year has easily been his best. So it seems likely there's going to be more format changes in the near future. The only true constant is change. But will it be for better ....... Or for worse? As this point it could well go either way. Better get ready to roll on that initial encounter reactions table, and hope the result is friendly, not attack on sight.


Scale Mail: Good god, the attempts to sex up halflings gets a lot of responses. They publish 5 of them, and make it clear there's a lot more where that came from. Two are negative, and three are positive, showing that this has split the fanbase right down the middle, and may run for a while. People don't like it when you meddle with the classics in a disrespectful way, even if your intentions are good. You don't have to be misunderstood to be disliked.

Speaking of the classics, we have a request for more historical period specials. That's another idea that would allow them a good few years without repeating themselves, especially if they avoided the overdone ones that already have lots of full books.

Some good old mechanical errata proves that fact checking everything on time in the fast-moving world of periodicals will never stop being a pain in the ass. It's no wonder editors burn out.

And finally, Dungeoncraft gets some praise, and some questions. Ray answers them no problem. That kind of audience interaction should keep him popular with the fans.


Previews: In conjunction with the issue, our big release this month is the Manual of the Planes. Jeff Grubb returns to not only give the planes another rejig, but encourage you to create your own cosmologies. Well, such is the nature of D20. Twisting it into all kinds of odd directions is part of the fun.

The Realms gets no sourcebooks, but a double bill of novels. Baldur's gate II: Throne of Bhaal and Temple Hill. So the crossover between computer games and game products is still proving a reliably lucrative business.

Dragonlance continues to fill in setting as the timeline advances, with Bertrem's guide to the War of Souls. Will he have time to share any cooking recipes in all this cataclysm?


Nodwick is about to go plane-hopping. Remember, this is not a tourist trip.

Dragon Issue 287: September 2001


part 2/7


Up on a soapbox: Gary's finished trying to find out exactly what a role-playing game is to all of us. Now what? Ancient actual play stories! Why, he remembers it like it was yesterday. Well, as someone who's read through all the issues from back in the day now, I can safely say that the amount of contemporary written material is way smaller both in number and size of books, which leaves obsessive old schoolers forever hungry for more information to sate their curiosity. So here we get to hear about what was possibly the very first recurring villain in a D&D game, an evil dwarf with boots of speed and a repulsion ray shooter, which allowed him to escape and have multiple encounters with the players before being finished off for good. Which of course made them hate him all the more. This is a good demonstration of how if you want monsters to survive more than a single encounter, you need to build them accordingly, because D&D does not make it easy if you play by the RAW. But it can be done, and it can be made fun. And let's face it, it's the things that were hard to pull off that we remember most. They had to step out of their comfort zones to make and publish D&D in the first place. We still ought to be doing the same in our games.


Dork tower switches genre, but the violence remains.


Dreamlands: We start our planar articles with one emphasising the toolkit elements of the new MotP. Where should the plane of dreams go in your cosmology if you have one? Jeff Grubb manages to find justifications to fit it in all 4 of their classifications, with fairly substantial differences between each of the versions. In your multiiverse, are dreams little universes you create when you sleep that end when you awake, or are you tapping into something big and universal, that may or may not have a ruler, and may or may not be that easy to visit physically. So this shows off a fairly substantial change between this and 2e. They've well and truly abandoned one true wayism and big convoluted metaplots (Forgotten Realms aside) to encourage you to build your own setting instead. So this is very cool indeed, and jam packed with ideas to steal, mix and match for D&D or another system. I think it fully deserves to be a leading article.


When celestials attack: One problem we've encountered before is trying to make many of the planes good for adventuring in. Too much conflict, such as the instant lethality of some elemental planes, and an adventure is difficult to keep going. Too little conflict, and it never starts in the first place. But still, it's not that hard to come up with reasons for conflict in the upper planes. There's tons of celestial beings of varying alignments, power levels and priorities, and I'm sure the PC's can manage to get on the bad side of one of them by doing something morally ambiguous or short-sighted. The weaker ones can be dogmatic and inflexible, while the more powerful ones have complicated sets of priorities as they try to do the most good over the long term, and sometimes sacrifices need to be made. So this looks at a broad spread of celestial beings, and what their particular triggers are likely to be. It does a pretty good job of reminding us that they're not a homogenous group at all, and your experiences should be quite different depending on where you are and who you talk too. The kind of stuff that provides plenty of non rehashed adventure hooks, and shows us what we can do with all these fantastic universes out there. Which hopefully'll get some more people using them, instead of popping off to the abyss for another slaughterfest. And I do value variety.


VS Celestials: Having come up with plenty of reasons why you could end up in a fight with celestials, it's time for the mechanical advice on how to deal with it. They assume that you'll want to stay on the side of light, and take them down without killing them, which further affects the tactics they advise. They tend to have fewer weaknesses than their evil counterparts, so this is a fairly tricky one to advise upon. Disrupting their vast array of spell-like powers does seem like a good idea though. And if you're neutral or evil, then using those spells that are super effective against good creatures will make things easier (particularly protection from good's enforced pacifism thing. ) Still, don't expect it to be easy. Best advice is to outnumber them, given how many more evil creatures there are in the monster books than good ones.

Dragon Issue 287: September 2001


part 3/7


Fractious Factions: Yay! Stronger mechanical support for Planescape Factions. Just the sort of thing 3e ought to be doing with it's ruleset. Course there's the issue that they were originally intended as minor adjustments to your character suitable for any class, and making them full 10 level prestige classes with substantial requirements to get in goes against that, making the prestige class the most important part of your build. I'd have kept them as 5 level ones at the most. But hey ho, let's see how these hold up mechanically and in faithfulness to the original flavour.

Athar have the same issue as Blackguards. The ones who get the most respect are the ones that converted from the other side, rather than just starting out ambivalent. And since the best course into them is cleric or druid, I think you can safely say that they'll be pretty effective once you get over the two dead levels at the start, and will kick the ass of other CoDzillas with ease with their resistances to divine powers.

Ciphers, on the other hand seem a bit superceded, now that everyone gets initiative modifiers, and the powers they get are basically a variant monk set - individually cool, but not hugely impressive when considered as a whole package. Still, at least they're pretty good at resisting and escaping situations. Proactivity, though? Not gonna bring it.

Sensates get enormous bonuses to their sensory skills, which is appropriate, and very useful indeed for adventurers. That +20 at 10th level should let them spot all the ambushes and secret doors a fair DM throws at the party, and scent and blindsight are just generally handy, aren't they. Sometimes the spellcasters just don't have the time to get their defences up, and you need to rely on the guys who've honed it into an innate power.

The Doomguard are another one that seem a bit underpowered, mainly because they don't get the full BAB progression that would really make their combat boosts worthwhile. Their spell list doesn't really match up to an assassin or blackguard's either. There are definitely more efficient ways of becoming an agent of entropy than this.

The Fated prestige class isn't particularly underpowered, but it does miss the point a bit by having a power that's sole purpose is to buff others. The whole point of the faction is that they don't do anything for anyone for free, or ever accept something for nothing. They do get to be highly competent skill-monkeys, with enough healing, combat and generalist skills to make a good solo character, which does seem fitting. Just trade off the dodgy ability for a couple more skill points a level.

Xaositechts are as fun as ever. Lawful creatures will find them tremendously frustrating and difficult to deal with, while other chaotic creatures will simply roll with it and do better. So while it has made some alterations, this is mostly faithful to the 2e incarnations of the factions, while leaving room for you to develop similar prestige classes for the other half of them. And I'm sure there's plenty of people who'll do that and submit them to the magazine or post them up online, so that gap won't go unfilled for long.


Expand your mind: Bruce Cordell continues to be lead Psionics guy, writing both OGL expansions to the system, and sending in magazine articles for it. This time, it's 16 new feats. Some, but not all of them will appear in the 3.5 psionics handbook as well, often with some further tweaks. So this is the kind of article that's significant because it shows us that they're creating new stuff, trying them out in their homebrews, and getting feedback so they can tweak them before making them official and releasing them to a wider audience. That's the way the creative process works best. And the fact that some of them didn't make it in means this is still interesting and possibly useful once you have updated, if you don't mind slight balance issues.

Dragon Issue 287: September 2001


part 4/7


Fiction: Deeper, Deeper dark. An interesting fairy-tale like story this month, telling the tale of how a greedy industrialist took over a town in search of resources, making himself rich while the population suffered, but eventually getting his comeuppance. So essentially a parable for real world industrialisation of the past few centuries, only with a happy ending instead of exploitation becoming the default, and the community being left hollow when their natural resources run out and the company moves on. So this story makes me sad because it's a good story, but also reminds me that you don't get easy resolutions and happy endings like that in the real world. If we did, would we bother to create all these fantastic otherworldly universes anyway? They say stories tell us monsters can be slain, but will capitalism ever be replaced by something better? I think we may be reaching one of those points where we're going outside my remit, so that's enough of that line of thought. Changing the world can wait.


Elminster's guide to the realms: Shadowdark? I wasn't expecting to see that particular portmanteau turn up this early. A little searching turns up earlier examples in Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue, and two Volo's Guides, so it looks like we can definitely blame Ed for it's creation, if maybe not it's becoming ubiquitous next edition. The amount of cheese he's responsible for just grows and grows.

But enough digression about the wider scheme of things. This particular tidbit of realmslore concerns a magic shop, it's cranky old owner, and it's contents. While it may not be standardised, there's a fair number of people who are willing to teach young spellcasters for the right price, and this is a good example one for your low-mid level players to encounter. They've got enough wards up that a casual attempt at robbery is unlikely to work, but clever trickery might do the job. The illustration does a good job of showing that the place is actually pretty small, with tons of magical knicknacks crammed in. This gives a GM plenty of leeway to have players find odd things with unexpected powers for a bargain that may be crucial to a plot later. All seems nicely literary really. Now if he could just do something about that name before people get ideas.


The bestiary: James Jacobs steps away from Greyhawk, and heads off to the planes that are the source of so many of his cthuloid gribleys. The Chaos Spire is your basic roaming corrupted artefact, lost in the astral plane and transforming those who enter it into scary aberrations. If you can get hold of it and clean it out, you can have a hellraiseresque giant fortress that folds into a teeny little puzzle block for your convenience. I think that's a nicely epic adventure for you.

Bonespitters are the basic form you'll be transformed into if this place comes your way unexpectedly. A half alive, half dead, half cyborg, all insane mass of limbs, mouths and eyes? With a surprisingly high hide and move silently scores? It must be a tuesday.

Chaoswyrd are multiheaded tentacled gorillas, the kind of things you'd get if Demogorgon and Cryronax mated. They're prone to fishmalk behaviour, so they may suddenly lose interest or apologise mid-battle if you're lucky.

The Tetramorph is the giant amorphous blob at the middle of all this. It's surprisingly low CR, but I guess we don't have epic rules yet. Touching it'll mutate you, and it destabilises reality in general, so a good cleric is once again vital for after the battle. So the monsters are a little predictable, but the article redeems itself with the unusually good plot hooks and overarching adventure idea behind them.

Dragon Issue 287: September 2001


part 5/7


Faiths of faerun: Looks like Bane is back, because this month we get a prestige class for his speciality priests. The Dreadmaster. Man, that's a name that says taking yourself too seriously and dressing with huge spiked shoulderpads and helmets with glowing red eyes. This is a relatively tricky one to get into, requiring you to be at least a decent way down the evil overlord road before you can even start on it. The benefits seem particularly cool for evil overlords, as you get to avoid the usual leadership penalties for going through your minions like water. This means you can enjoy multiple fights with them before finishing them off for good. And with favored enemies and bonuses to fear effects, they're no slouches in direct confrontations either. They seem to achieve their design ends most satisfactorily, even if they're more likely to be NPC's than PC's.


Class acts: Having skipped a month, Monte is back with another fairly obvious theme. The fiend hunter, dark and brooding avenger who has taken on some of the traits of evil so as to better understand it and fight it. A perfect thematic choice for the fallen paladin, and monte is cool enough to add some mechanical incentives and discounts to them for doing it. (although they aren't quite as good as the benefits for ex-paladin blackguards, but then, continuing to fight evil should be harder than falling to temptation) Like the flame steward and psi-hunter, they get full BAB, and decent spellcasting that should keep them competitive even when not fighting their favored enemies. They also get a +1 bonus to armor per 3 levels, like many of monte's prestige classes. I wonder why it's always that number? Is there a game balance calculation behind it? This tendency has my attention, and I shall see if it continues.


Nodwick brings life back to a deserted kingdom. Rejoice! Apart from you, icky-bad high necromancer. You need to be punished.


Chainmail: So the gnomes have joined forces with the humans in the new wargame? I wasn't expecting that. Way to avoid the stereotypical pairing. Still, it makes sense in light of the history they're establishing. The humans handle the above ground threats, while the gnomes take the underdark, and they've got each other's backs in a pinch. They also share technology, of course, and that means the human armies have access to technological contraptions that the others don't. So there's some more fairly interesting worldbuilding going on here, making sure each of the armies isn't just a one-trick pony, and hopefully each side will both feel distinct and have proper strengths and weaknesses against the others. I do quite like these columns. Still, I do wonder how much of this information will be repeated in the products themselves. Is this bonus material, or will it be made irrelevant once you've spent the money. I guess I'll have to see if I can track a copy down.


Forum: Jeffrey Ludwig thinks that charisma is better off than it used to be, but is still a bit of a dump stat, and the designers themselves are fully aware of this. Course, you can redress the balance a little by including more social scenes in your game.

Josh Harrison is another person listing the ways in which a wizard may surpass a fighter, particularly out of combat. It's not just magic, their high int means they'll also smoke them skillswise, despite having the same base amounts.

Robert J. Schwalb thinks rangers in the new edition are balanced, and the people complaining are just too used to them being twinky from old editions. You just can't take being equal, you have to be better. Leave it out.

Mark Jackman thinks that psionics has turned out better than the preview watching naysayers said. Once again, we remind you to wait and get the full info before you deliver judgement.

Anthony Gabriel thinks St Cuthbert ought to be lawful good, not LN. The real saint certainly fits that descriptor. You know, Gary did originally make him LG with LN tendencies, rather than the other way around. It is an interesting question why the 3e writers decided to flip that.

Dragon Issue 287: September 2001


part 6/7


Silicon sorcery: A trio of amusing items from Age of Wonders get D&D conversions this month. The most notable of these is the chicken shield, which boosts your AC and reduces falling damage by animating and flapping it's wings frantically. The benefits to making your enemies laugh mid-battle should not be underestimated as well. Stones that turn into boulders when thrown, and boots that make you untrackable and generate magical darkness aren't quite so innovative or funny, but they're useful and interesting, and haven't appeared in this edition yet. Seems like there's definitely some cool ideas worth stealing here.


Sage advice: What's the base DC on spot and listen checks (There are none. This isn't like 2nd ed. You have to pay much more attention to the specifics of the situation. )

Which should you use to avoid surprise. Entirely situational, blah blah trolls blah blah, tactics, light conditions and cover blah blah, line of sight blah blah.
How does hiding work (Opposed checks strike back! )

Why are there no rules for rate of fire (None is needed. We are unified. We need not exception based rules applied only to ranged attacks. Do not try to add more pointless crunch to the system. )

Can you make multiple grapples in a round (Only if your base attack bonus permits it. This ignores bonuses and creature natural weapons. Once again we ignore exceptions in the face of realism. Ha ha!)

Can you carry things away once they're grappled (What a good idea. Skip will pioneer a system for this! Truly, you are a visionary. )


The play's the thing: People change. Characters should as well, not just get more powerful or broad in their skillsets. So Robin's advice this month is on when you should break established character because you're changing, or adding extra nuance to their personality, rather than leaving it behind. Will it be a sudden one due to a traumatic event, or a gradual one as they're repeatedly exposed to situations formerly outside their ken. Will these changes be in personality alone, or backed up by spending XP in a new way as fast as the system allows? Just watch you don't get pulled into a cycle of ever-increasing trauma and grimdark, as is happening to far too many properties as the moment, and seems to be a particularly difficult change to reverse without doing an outright reboot. So the advice here isn't quite as topical as it used to be, as grimdark is finally starting to fall out of fashion again, but it's still quite useful, and hasn't been presented in this way before. This is an above average example of his work.

Dragon Issue 287: September 2001


part 7/7


Dungeoncraft: Still filling out that homebase, Ray makes sure that there are several places to provide adventures and secrets without leaving the relatively safe confines of Janda's Valley, thus once again making room for survivable low level adventures before they venture out to face full-sized dinosaurs. It also tells us exactly what's available in the shops round here, and a big secret that you'd better hope your players haven't spoiled themselves on if they plan to play here. So there's a pretty high density of information here. Even with all these instalments, Ray only has about as much room to play around with as the village of hommlet. Like those old modules, you've got to make every bit count, keep the whole thing tight and accessible, because there's a lot of casual readers that you can convert or alienate here. Still, I think with this performance we're winning more people than we're driving away.


PC Portraits: Our theme this month is characters with a low Charisma. Which gives the artist carte blanche to make their pictures interestingly unattractive. Ugly dwarves, ugly elves, ugly halflings, a half-orc with pigtails, and plenty of acne, boils,  and scars to go around. I can certainly see some players blanching about having characters that ugly, while others will love the idea. As usual, if you mix and match, the contrast may work to both sides benefit. So this is quite a fun collection really, and the dungeonpunk bits fit in well with the character's overall appearance.


Role models: Closely tied in with the Chainmail column, this also looks at the human & gnome faction, and talks about their colour scheme. Blue and white clothes, and light brown skin is the order of the day, to suit a mediterranean climate.  Well, that's mildly informative as well, and gives them an easy set of things to do to fill out the next 5 months. After all, each of the factions will have their own identifying features, and they wouldn't want to be accused of favouritism. A good bit of continuity like that'll let them get a bit of depth in, even in these tiny little columns. This tie-in continues to be better handled than the ones in the past.


DM's Toolbox: This column seems to be rapidly settling into a pattern of giving us crisp, bullet-pointed advice that's easy to follow, covering similar ground to Ray's column, but in a different writing style. How do you make a villain interesting and powerful? Figure out what they're trying to do, what they've got to do it with, how they'll keep themselves from losing it, and how they intend to get more. As is often the case, it seems easy when you phrase it like that. It also concentrates quite a bit on the noncombat aspects of building an enemy. After all, even if you are evil, a sensible creature will still see the value in having allies rather than enemies where possible, and the profit to be gained by clever negotiation. As this is focussed on political thinking rather than hack and slash, and presents it in an interesting way, I rather like this. It'll give you a chance to actually roleplay your villains before they get beaten.


Dragonmirth is captionariffic. What's new is affirmatively demonic.


Well, this was a pretty kickass issue. It's not often that I give every single article a neutral or positive result, but this managed it, with even the non-themed bits coming out pretty strongly. Silly that that would happen just as they change editors, and that might make me remember Dave a bit more positively than otherwise. So once again it's time to embrace that sting of uncertainty, see how long it takes the new guy to get the hang of things, and what changes they'll make.