Best of Dragon Magazine 2


part 6/6


Tesseracts: This introduction to four-dimensional thinking is still very cool and relevant to any fantastical (and many sci-fi) games. As reading Flatland reminds us, there are a whole bunch of unexamined assumptions in our lives, and by changing a few of them, we can tell very interesting stories indeed. We can also write very interesting adventures too, when you change the rules and then work logically from the new ones. We can't leave the dungeon behind entirely, and still say we're playing D&D, but the definition of dungeon can get pretty broad. A transdimensional maze certainly qualifies.


Which way is up?: Continuing directly on, we examine what happens when you not only have dungeons with dimensions beyond the normal three, making linear mapping impossible, but you can also get into the same place, but with gravity in a different direction. This makes things even more interesting, because there are a number of exploits you can pull with objects that have weight in a different plane to everything else. (although keeping hold of them may prove tricky long-term, for things flying into space as soon as you let go outdoors is a pain.) This is one case where collecting the two articles in their original format is definitely for the better, since they were by different writers, and it's good to see people building on the inspirations of others. And when you're working in four dimensions, you just know there are going to be a lot of perspectives on the same thing.


The politics of hell: This article, on the other hand, is not universal, and indeed, seems very much of it's time. Since it's intimately linked to real world history, using it in D&D worlds is a bit of a problem, even more so than the various polytheistic pantheons from Deities & Demigods, as a single supreme creator deity constrains your cosmology options substantially. It's no surprise that when Ed Greenwood did the 9 hells article, he didn't use material from this. It still remains interesting, but feels like a dead-end branch on the evolutionary tree, since the 4th wall has gradually got more solid between fantasy worlds and the real earth. Funny how that's worked out.


Poison: from AA to XX: Save or Die on every hit was never going to be sustainable game design if you want to play long-term campaigns. Even by the release of the 1e DMG, there were already some monsters that didn't just wipe you out straight off, instead paralysing you or just doing extra damage if you failed. This article continued that trend, giving us the letter system that they'd use in the 2e corebooks. (even if it's purely dedicated to dealing damage rather than other more interesting debilitations) As such, it does seem nicely influential, and very much deserves to be here in hindsight. Sometimes you want to be cruel, but you do need those other shades in between for it to have full impact.


The nomenclature of pole arms: We finish with one of Gary's other little fetishes, the many different types of historical polearms. This still seems pretty boring in hindsight, especially after the weirder dimensional stuff and monsters. As with the editorial rants, it seems that while he may have created the game, after a certain point he was holding it back as well, keeping it focused on the small-unit dungeoneering experience when other people wanted to do more with it. It's a bit of a pain really that most people don't actually want accurate information about the medieval world in their escapism, they want something that looks cool and resonates emotionally with them. And given the competition, polearms really don't cut the mustard. (to say nothing of how awkward it is to spread it on your bread afterwards with one.) When you only have limited space in your mental inventory, it's hard to find room to pack one.



Pretty disappointed with this one. With two chapters that feel like misfires, and the final one remaining pretty hit and miss, it does indeed feel like they jumped the gun releasing a second best of so soon after the first, and should have waited a bit longer to reload. It definitely makes me wonder if there'll be even more diminishing returns in the next three, or it the broadening submissions base and less reliance on the same few writers will let them pick better. Let's see what they thought was worth repeating in the next collection.

Best of Dragon Magazine 3


part 1/6


82 pages. Well, at least they're using a different dragon for the cover this time even if it's still recycled from other products. I suppose that's the point, really. As with the last one, they have a bunch of themed chapters, and I shall have to see if there's enough good material within each for them to make sense, or they should have held back a little longer again. After all, the more best of's they do, the more esoteric the topics will have to become.



FINISHING THE RACES: Last issue, Gary got a whole chapter dedicated to his writings. This time, it's Roger Moore's turn, as his series expanding on the various demihuman races and their gods proved quite the hit. By collecting and reprinting them just a year after they first came out, they ensure that these guys would be a mainstay of the D&D cosmology for many years to come, until 3e wiped the slate again and focussed on just the head honcho of each race. Since I mostly liked these first time round, I'm definitely more optimistic now than I was going into the last best of. Let's see if they've held up with age and don't look too dated or cheesy like many childhood favourites from the 80's.



The dwarven point of view: Dwarves have appeared in a fair number of books and movies before D&D, and so while dwarves do have a racial stereotype, it's a fairly nuanced one. They might be serious and hardworking, but they also love a good drink. They might be sensible and reliable, but they can have their head turned by shiny things and corrupted by greed. They're suspicious of and resistant to magic, but also produce a quite a few really cool magical items, and more that might as well be magical to anyone else. It means you have plenty of options to choose from for your own character without it them seeming completely uncharacteristic. And fortunately, Roger had enough room to talk about them all here, as well as giving his opinion on the great women with beards debate. (he's all for it, gives you something to hang onto) This still feels both useful, and seasoned with enough lighthearted humour to make entertaining reading, and right away, I can quite understand why they wanted to reprint these.


The gods of the dwarves: The gods of the dwarves still look pretty solid too, showing us the good, neutral and evil sides of their nature. Whether they're fighters, miners or merchants, there's plenty of opportunity for them to get involved in adventures, so a priest of any of them save possibly the token female home goddess fits in pretty well with an adventuring party. Even Abbathor's servants make a pretty good addition to a group focussed on killing and taking of stuff, as long as they accept they have to share to some degree for greater long-term profit. So these remain useful as both protagonists and antagonists, even if you have a dwarf in the party, since dwarves are hardly united as a race. Definitely already happier about these than I was about last issue.


The elven point of view: While elves do have a fair amount of variety, with a load of subraces, it's all presented in a far more glowing light than dwarves. There's always been the temptation to make them into mary-sues, and Roger was no exception. Their long lifespan gives them the time to have fun, laze around and flit between lots of different projects, because they know they still have the time to get things done. They do have some sadness in their life, because they see so many thing around them die or fade away, but they're equipped to deal with it. So not only are they Better Than You, they make it look easy. It's no wonder they get a fair bit of backlash as well. It's unfortunate to be reminded that Roger is part of the problem in this case.

Best of Dragon Magazine 3


part 2/6


The gods of the elves: You know, if you say elves have lots of gods, you're inviting people to send more in, when as we've found, people need no encouragement at all to give elves cool new stuff for free, because they're just sooooo pretty. :vomits in pot plant: Indeed, we got follow-ups for this in 155, 176, 191, 236 & 251, most of which gave their speciality priests lots of cool bonus powers. Once again, the fact that these articles were pretty influential is even more apparent now I've gone through the whole magazine and seen the long-term repercussions. For better or for worse, these guys are going to be with us for a long time.


The halfling point of view: While elves and dwarves have a ton of inspirations to draw upon, Halflings are still intimately tied to the LotR series, for better and for worse. In this era, it's probably for the worse, as Roger can't seem to stop himself from playing up their boring aspects. Yes, a large quantity of them may be homebodies, but even in LotR, there were plenty of hints that they got up to more fun than they let on, with the Tooks getting their fortunes from adventuring. (and being gossiped extensively about in the process) And it's not as if they can't be pretty deadly, as stealth and affinity with missile weapons is a great combo for beating stronger enemies without them being able to hit back. So in hindsight, the 3e refocussing towards them being roguish nomads might have been a little irritating, but it made a lot of sense when you consider what they'd had to deal with in previous decades. When you want to get back to the dungeon, you need to slay a few sacred cows for supplies, and those plumptious little ones looked mighty tasty.


The gods of the halflings: It's interesting that Halflings are the only race here that have more female deities than male, and are presented as female-dominated. And I suppose it's one way they do differ from the Tolkien portrayal, where the focus is very much on the guys. (and religion works completely differently anyway) Still, even if the women are in charge, they still have the same traditional gender roles as humans, where the men go out, and the women stay at home. We still have some serious automatic assumptions going on here. I guess fantasy is often about an imaginary past, and so parochial tendencies are to be expected. But it is funny to see just how dated these articles appear in this respect.


The gnomish point of view: Gnomes are still very much the 5th wheel as a D&D race. However, this has given the writers a freedom to change them dramatically with less complaint from players. Tricksters, animal-lovers, miners, crafters, talkaholics, bards, they have a whole bunch of hats that they can wear, and it seems quite likely more will be added in future editions if they ever go back to creating settings. Even back in the early 80's, there was plenty of nuance to their portrayal, which contrasts to the love-in of elves and the somewhat boring halflings. They can sometimes be pains in the ass, but overall, they're a valuable asset to a party, with their social skills, sharp senses and wide selection of classes. They're much better in your party than out.


The gods of the gnomes: If you were in any doubt as to how Gnomes are differentiated from Dwarves, their selection of deities makes it very clear. Aside from their greater connection to nature, the way they go bad is very different indeed, becoming skulking murderous tricksters instead of greedy drunken assholes. Plus, they often have sidekicks, which is ironic when the short races are more likely to be considered the secondary characters in stories told by humans. These guys still seen pretty interesting to me, even if the all-male nature of the pantheon seems a little more grating after three more decades of pushing gender equality. Maybe next edition, as I keep on hoping, although it seems unlikely at this particular point in time.

Best of Dragon Magazine 3


part 3/6


The half-orc point of view: Now, if Gnomes are the 5th wheel, Half-Orcs are the red-headed stepbrother that the family keeps "forgetting" to invite to parties. They've been in and out of the corebooks from one edition to the next, and if they don't show up straight away, they often pop up later. Because you have to learn to be tenacious when you're stuck between two cultures and struggle to fit into either. The funny thing is, despite their intelligence penalty, they often learn to be cunning because it's their big advantage when compared to full-blooded orcs. But then, racial differences are always a matter of degrees and contrasts. Orcs have shorter lifespans than humans, which have shorter lifespans than halflings, then up through dwarves, gnomes and elves, which are dwarfed by treants and dragons, who in turn can't compare to the eons immortal outsiders see. Similarly, differences in intelligence, aggression, size, etc, it's your neighbours that are important. Orcs aren't that different from humans, but those differences are enough and they're common and expansionistic enough as a race that those differences get shoved in your face. And so they're stuck with the role of villains, at least until a bigger threat comes along and forces them to ally with humans against rampaging dragons, even faster-breeding and dumber gibberlings, slime molds that can only be hurt by specific damage types or extraplanar threats to the laws of physics. It's a shit life, as this makes very clear. And that's one thing that certainly hasn't changed over the years and settings. They might not be the eternal underdogs like kobolds, but they get no respect and they're never on top for long. See ya, wouldn't want to be ya.


The gods of the orcs: It's notable that while most of the good demihuman races have a token evil deity for when they turn to the dark side, monstrous races don't have a token good god, and the thing that they fear and only propitiate to keep away is even worse than their regular gods. In Orc's case, an unspeaking embodiment of disease that strikes or leaves you alone as it pleases, because they don't have the smarts to figure out hygiene. It's not as if the other gods in the pantheon are particularly united either, with plenty of room to play them off against one-another. In the end, their inability to plan ahead or co-operate for long periods of time will be their undoing, just like their followers. So this brings the chapter to a close in fairly interesting fashion, giving you plenty both to work with and think about for your games, in a far less confrontational way than Gary did.



BREATHING LIFE INTO DRAGONS: At this point, they'd formalised the three regular themes that would remain throughout most of their lifespan. April for comedy material, June for Dragon related stuff, and October for horror. Since the comedy stuff proves pretty controversial, I find it unlikely they'll be putting much more of that in their best of's, but collecting the dragon related stuff makes perfect sense, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a horror one sometime in the future, given the quality of submissions they generally got for that. Let's keep their namesake in the limelight, even if they sometimes struggled to get enough good submissions for them.



That's not in the Monster Manual: Gem Dragons have certainly more than proved their worth over the years. Someone would probably have introduced a neutral dragon type eventually, since there was an obvious symmetry there, but it might not have been as cool as our enigmatic psionic friends. Since they can be both allies and adversaries, they've done their share in many adventures. Arthur Collins can feel proud of himself for adding them to the canon, and for writing them strongly enough that despite a few mechanical tweaks as the editions progressed, their core tricks and personality traits remain the same. Good to be reminded that they got their start in the magazine.


Hatching is only the beginning: Even in the very first D&D books, they made dragons more than just combat encounters, as the rules for subduing illustrate. There were certainly plenty of precedents for them as silver-tongued roleplaying encounters. However, that doesn't add the kind of comedy that trying to raise a baby dragon adds to your game. If you think trying to raise a human baby is tricky, bringing up something that has a decent chance of disemboweling or frying you when less than a year old is fraught with pitfalls and scenes of mayhem, especially with a type naturally aspected towards chaos or evil. This article still seems very applicable to any game with supernatural monsters that breed normally, not just D&D, and full of fun variants. Had enough of killing monsters? Try running a shelter for them. (after all, we wouldn't want them to go extinct and leave the next generation of heroes nothing to do, and it's a good solution for all those paladins who balk at killing babies, no matter how likely they are to be a problem in the future) Every day will be an adventure.

Best of Dragon Magazine 3


part 4/6


Self defense for dragons: Anything that has a lot of attention put on it tends to increase in power over the years. This definitely applies to dragons, which got tons of new spells, magic items, tricks, tactical advice and so forth. Adding wing buffets, tail lashes and rear claw kicks to their repertoire is a pretty obvious addition, and one that caught on right away, being added officially in both AD&D 2e and the D&D Companion set. Similarly, the tactical advice here is easy to implement, unlike the more esoteric long-term planning advice that would show up later. You don't need to be a genius to know when it's a bad idea to use your breath weapon, especially when you have centuries to practice, and move yourself into a position where you can't be ganged up on and taken down by weight of numbers. It's nice to reminded where the ground floor is, and that a lot of groups wouldn't even be able to win against them at that level.


The faerie dragon: Here's another one that's remained with us throughout the editions, much to the exasperation of many players. After all, prankster monsters are frustrating enough when they only have a few tricks, like Sprites. When they have a full complement of spells from two class lists, and near immunity to magic themselves at higher age categories, you're left just praying that you'll get off lightly, as it's not easy to turn things back on them. Still, it's nice to know exactly who to blame, and that it wasn't one of the usual suspects this time around. Random submitters could still contribute something that remained influential in those days.


Two tough foes: This one, on the other hand, has pretty much faded away, with the Steel dragons most players think of being the Forgotten Realms' friendly shapeshifting poison-breathers, and Gray dragons not catching on at all. (it is a boring colour, let's face it) They also suffer by comparison to the hugely upgraded stats of dragons in later edition, not being particularly impressive in terms physically, magically, or in terms of personality detail. The colour wheel dragons may have got upgraded and remained current, but these guys? Sorry, no dice. Can't get it right every time.


Evil dragons make good armor: This one, I remember being disappointingly weak and fiddly, given just how much effort it took to kill dragons. The resulting scale mail is no better than normal unless you engage in a whole load of expensive preparations to give it a fraction of the resistance that the original dragon enjoyed. When you compare that to what you got in 2e ( AC 4 worse than the dragon, which could mean a base of -8 if you killed a great wyrm) it seems pretty pointless. But then, they did upgrade the dragons themselves a good deal in each edition change as well, so if you did beat them, it really felt like a hard-won victory. This is one instance where working harder to balance things actually felt like an upgrade rather than a nerf. So this is one article that can remain discarded, outmoded technology.



PLAYING WITH CLASS: The last two best of's both had quite a few articles introducing new classes. Now they've got a fairly substantial collection, they're instead doing a chapter expanding on or revising existing classes, in a similar vein to the races collection earlier. Makes sense. They might have refined the rules a little over several editions of D&D, and the creation of AD&D, but they are still pretty clunky in many ways. It's not surprising that people would remain dissatisfied with them and continue to send stuff in.



The thief: a special look: Last best of, Len essentially did a Sage Advice for the Vampire. This time, they've decided to revive his similar piece on rogue abilities. Since rogues are somewhat less powerful than vampires, the degree of nerfing is less, but there is some. Thankfully, it's counterbalanced by Len giving them a couple of extra tricks, which comes as welcome. To be a successful thief, you really do need a fair amount of common sense to apply your powers properly, especially at low levels where you have little chance of success, which is ironic as they encourage you to use wisdom as their dump stat.  Really, this reminds me what a huge improvement discretionary skill points were for Rogues in 2e, letting them choose which skills they wanted to develop, and become useful at them even at low levels, while ignoring ones they wound up not needing entirely. It just made them so much more practical while not changing their overall power level.

Best of Dragon Magazine 3


part 5/6


The druid and the DM: Bizarrely enough, people tended to underestimate the druid in the old days, thinking that they were only useful outdoors, not for dungeoneering. This is not the case at all, even before many supplements expanded their spell list and corresponding flexibility, as they had both shapeshifting and a high charisma to take advantage of. In hindsight, this article has some irritatingly niggly specifics, but that comes with the old school territory. It also feels a little outdated as it's from before Gary added on the Hierophant levels, and all the cool wider scale stuff that came with them. I certainly don't feel the need to use all the little optional rules here, but the general advice is still good to see. Don't forget, they got called CoDzilla for a very good reason once the CharOp people got a good look at them.


It's not easy being good: Sigh. Given how many times they had to pontificate about paladin morality, I knew I wasn't getting out of here without at least one more reiteration of it. Yes, they can have a sense of humour. Yes, they can have sex and indulge a little in their off-hours, but if they do naughty things in the pursuit of it, they have to face the consequences. Yes, they can kill neutral things, especially if it's them or you and there's no better options to hand. No, they shouldn't be arrogant pricks to people of lower classes, or slaughter everything that pings evil. No, they don't have to kill themselves in the pursuit of impossible goals, as that would result in less long-term good being done. They're supposed to have a wisdom prerequisite, use it, for god's sake. How many times do we have to repeat it for it to stick? I suppose all it takes is a small minority to perpetuate the stupid stereotypes. In any case, I am so very very VERY tired of this, and look forward to leaving it behind for good.


He's got a lot to kick about: At first glance, Monks look overpowered, since they have a pretty long list of special powers, and no equipment requirements, unlike most classes. However, this is not borne out by actual play, as they only have a few tricks while spellcasters have loads and can swap them out day-to-day, and their social limitations in 1e were pretty onerous. So while this is still an unequivocal upgrade compared to the PHB version, it feels more welcome this time, giving them more room to grow before they have to get into the challenge business, and giving them exactly one new trick per level, which means there's no dead levels and you get to discover and get used to their powers gradually. Plus of course, saying there's more than one monk order, so there isn't only one grandmaster of flowers in the entire world, and having to deal with the big question of how that order communicates worldwide with D&D technology. While this doesn't solve all their problems, it is an improvement, and so it is welcome in hindsight.


Singing a new tune: Bards also proved problematic, particularly after Gary got through with them, and this redesign into a less roguish and more positively aligned order is pretty interesting. Unlike the Monk one, it isn't so much an upgrade as simply an alternative, as it sacrifices some things for others, and the different versions are capable of co-existing and each having their own niche. (and quite possibly having cross-order conflicts about the true way, which is always fun. ) It's still fairly powerful and versatile, but hey, it's in good company. Better everyone be cool than no-one.


Cantrips: minor magic: Three quarters of the way through the issue, and this is our first contribution from Gary. That really does rub in just how much he let go of the reins when he went off to LA to do the D&D cartoon. Still, the ones he has remain pretty influential, given how cantrips became incredibly handy in 2e and ubiquitous in 3e. There is something to be said for your wizard always being able to pull off minor tricks that don't really do any damage, but simply make things more convenient and help you maintain a suitably mysterious reputation, while still only having a few big guns to unleash per day. This definitely feels like a positive addition to the game, all these years later.

Best of Dragon Magazine 3


part 6/6


Cantrips for the illusionist: Even more than regular wizards, illusionists benefit from having an array of tricks that are low-key, but incredibly useful when applied cleverly. So this little symmetry filler also comes as welcome here, even if the tendency to make spell components into bad puns does date this a little. If you want to avoid them seeing through your tricks, you will need to practice the art of misdirection, or make sure you're safely offstage while an accomplice draws all the attention and looks like they're doing miracles. Just the way it should be, really.


Spell books: Gary's given us a few enhancements. Now for the counterbalance, this piece spelling out exactly how expensive and inconvenient wizard's spell books are, how much of a pain it is to lose them (and how awesome it is to get hold of an enemy's one) and how much they will charge to cast spells for hire. (which if you're playing by RAW, they'll then have to plough into training costs and the creation of new spellbooks ) The tiresome stuff that keeps spellcasters from getting out of hand, you don't want to go into too much detail on it, but we've seen what happens when you remove it. Just the nature of the game. Sigh.



CREATING NEW CHALLENGES: We finish the issue with a half-hearted grab-bag of one new race, and two new classes. Not really one thing or t'other, but I guess they had a fixed page count and needed to fill it. Plus most of the new classes they'd done recently were the ones Gary did, and would later put in Unearthed Arcana. He obviously had bigger plans for them than just a magazine reprint.



The winged folk: Ah yes, the winged folk. Time has not changed just how ridiculously overpowered these guys look compared to standard demihuman races, with better ability scores, more innate abilities and higher level limits than even elves. If they'd been picked up and ran with by other writers, they could have been a real problem. Thankfully, the official writers continued to be conservative about creatures with natural flight or water-breathing becoming PC's, leaving the winged folk as just an interesting footnote in the annals of gaming. It's almost a relief really, given how much harder it is to design adventures when one of the PC's has powers like that.


The alchemist: Now if the winged folk were overpowered, the alchemist still looks amusingly underpowered compared to regular wizards, although this is compensated by their equally low XP tables. Still, at least they're a proper functional NPC class, which you certainly couldn't say for Scribes, and the things they make can be pretty handy in adventures. Ironically, their smaller XP tables means they'll actually be able to take more hits than a regular wizard of the same XP, and being able to get acid and flaming oil at trade prices is not to be sneezed at. But they're still best kept in the backline, as a secondary character or hireling in a large party, just as you wouldn't want to play a single-class aristocrat or expert in 3e.


The archer: Time has mellowed me in one respect, in that the Archer no longer looks so annoying in hindsight. While still slightly cooler than regular Rangers, the greater awareness of just what regular primary spellcasters do to the game at high levels make their bag of tricks seem like just another day at the office, with the main irritation being the hinky archer-ranger setup, which would also be used in the cavalier-paladin. Go ahead, pincushion a few enemies. You have my blessing.



Well, this was certainly an improvement on the second best of, bringing in contributions from a wider range of writers, and rules that are considerably more solid than the first two best of's. Goes to show how much evolving they did in the early 80's, as they expanded and brought in new fans. So it'll be interesting to see whether the next one sees the pace of change accelerate further, or slow down again. Time for another leapfrog forward, this time to the middle of 1985 to see what they considered worth keeping that time.

Best of Dragon Magazine 4


part 1/6


82 pages. Don't remember seeing this particular dragon before. Is it recycled, or did they actually pay for a new bit of artwork this time around. For a third time, they're giving us a bunch of loosely themed chapters, so they can compile the stuff they liked from the past couple of years, and maybe a few more old ones they missed previous goes around. How have their tastes changed this time?



IT TAKES ALL KINDS: One thing remains the same for all these best of's, and that's that there's a ton of demand for new classes. At this point, it feels like virtually every one they published in the magazine gets revisited in here, regardless of quality. I wonder if there'll be any design trends I can spot compared to the previous best of's then, since these will all be fairly recent articles.



The bandit: Bandits still look decent enough as an intermediate between ranger and rogue, giving you some thieving skills, some wilderness skills, and good basic fighting ability without adding the supernatural gubbins and strict alignment restrictions that makes rangers problematic for many character concepts. They're entirely suitable as both PC's and NPC's without causing any power balance issues. Absolutely no objection to using them in game.


The bounty hunter: Funnily enough, they decide to only reprint one of the three bounty hunter classes from the original issue. Even more strangely, they pick the one that was probably my least favourite, and was certainly the least naturalistic of the classes in terms of abilities, restrictions, and having a worldwide hierarchy with limited places at the top. Really not sure what to make of that decision at all. Goes to show how subjective taste is, and how much one person becoming a regular writer can influence the editors when it comes to choosing these things. Slightly irritating, really.


The cloistered cleric: Why would someone want to create a version of a class which is simply inferior to the existing one? It baffles me. I can understand more powerful versions, especially if they're balanced out by higher XP costs and behavioural restrictions, but this stuff? Is it really needed, and is anyone going to get any use out of it? We did get a cool and fairly balanced version of the cloistered cleric in 3e, so some good did come from this article in the long run. But still, this article on it's own is just boring. I remember being regularly irritated by Len's design decisions back in the day, and it looks like that hasn't changed here.


The death master: While the cloistered cleric isn't fully functional as a PC, the Death Master is. However the combination of not getting spells until 4th level, and even then, having a quite limited and specialised selection definitely leaves them looking pretty weedy. Until they can amass an army of undead, they're not much of a threat, and even then, they'll be no match for a wizard or cleric who's used their buffing abilities wisely. Once again, it only seems like they got through because their designer was a regular writer for the magazine, and it could have done with a thorough redesigning.

Best of Dragon Magazine 4


part 2/6


The duelist: The new fighty classes continue to come out better than the spellcasters with the duelist, which does look slightly overpowered compared to regular fighters, but in a fun way, like Paladins and Rangers, adding on a bunch of little tricks while never reaching the sheer versatility primary spellcasters can muster. I suppose that's an indictment of just how little vanilla fighters can do, which makes inventing new classes that overlap with them much easier, and needed to fulfil many people's character concepts. With wizards, people just added new spells to the existing class if they want to do something new. With fighters, they'd have to wait until kits were introduced next edition to make little changes like that easy.


The jester: Now love or hate them, I think we can agree that Jesters don't overlap much with any of the existing classes, so while you might not want them in your party, if you did, you couldn't just say "reskin a rogue" and get a satisfactory result. And while annoying, they certainly are effective with their bag of tricks in both surviving and making enemies look foolish. The trick, of course is realising you still have to work with the other members of the party, and know when to temporarily get serious. They're one that I definitely appreciate more coming back, knowing just how much more serious the magazine became over the years. Their best april contributions combined humour and usability, and this fits the bill on that count, so it's good to see it again.


The scribe: Now, if the death master is somewhat underpowered when compared to regular PC's, the scribe is downright weedy. It is substantially improved mechanically from the version in the second best of, in that it is an actual class rather than an insult to our intelligence and excuse to bilk PC's out of money. But even Ed Greenwood can't make it interesting, or desirable to include in our games in anything but the most peripheral way. Weak. I do not know why they bothered to include it.


The smith: Smiths, on the other hand, still seem quite interesting, even if they use their own system of multiclassing that breaks the rules. (but then, with bards and ninjas, they're in fine company) While not really suited as a primary adventuring character, they're useful enough that they'd work as part of an ensemble party, and save the other PC's a good deal of money in the process. After all, Scotty rarely went on away missions, but he was still both an important member of the team, and interesting in his own right. You can definitely manage that kind of dynamic, especially if each player has more than one character.

Quote from: (un)reason;735597The cloistered cleric: Why would someone want to create a version of a class which is simply inferior to the existing one? It baffles me. I can understand more powerful versions, especially if they're balanced out by higher XP costs and behavioural restrictions, but this stuff? Is it really needed, and is anyone going to get any use out of it? We did get a cool and fairly balanced version of the cloistered cleric in 3e, so some good did come from this article in the long run. But still, this article on it's own is just boring. I remember being regularly irritated by Len's design decisions back in the day, and it looks like that hasn't changed here.

Simply because the original D&D cleric was more of a warrior, not the sort of cleric that would run a church.

I mean, he literally says so in the article

QuoteThe AD&D game models its cleric after the medieval fighter cleric, a la Templar or Hospitlar. Yet we are all aware that all clerics, then and now, do not meet that standard.

And it's a way of having a divine healer high enough level to cast spells PCs might need, without having a powerful enough combatant in the area that would make the PCs redundant.

Best of Dragon Magazine 4


part 3/6


PLAYERS PERSPECTIVES: Our other themes this time round are stuff aimed at the players, and stuff aimed at the DM, mirroring the division in the core book. Although I note no monster manual equivalent, and indeed, these best of's have been curiously light on reusing monsters from the magazine in general. I guess that shows just how much more dependent on the formulaic cranking out of new monsters, magical items and spells they became as they went along. So let's see what broader topics they thought would best serve the needs of adventurers everywhere.



Be aware, take care: The very first thing they thought worth repeating was advice on putting together a good group and making sure they prepare properly for the adventure at hand. This makes it very clear that combat, while important, is only a very tiny part of an adventurer's average day. Far more will be devoted to exploring, planning, supplies, keeping your gear in good nick, and possibly even communicating with monsters in a non-hostile fashion. The people coming from tactical wargames would already know that direct hack-and-slash is not the best way to actually win a fight, but they might still need a little work on customising and roleplaying individual characters, while the newbies have a lot to learn if they don't want to be stuck at 1st level dying repeatedly. At this stage, D&D played RAW is still pretty unforgiving, and this kind of advice makes perfect sense as a starter.


It's a material world: Material components, huh? Gonna do that again? Well, after one article which talks about the logistics of adventuring, another one would make sense if they're doing mini-themes within the larger categories. And as we have found all too many times, if you take away away these kind of concerns from spellcasters, they run rampant over the game, even at low levels. So this may or may not be an article you want, but it is one that we need, and one we probably deserve as well. Keep the players working and spending for their powers and they won't come to take them for granted. Good to see them not pandering to their audience.


Finish fights faster: Unarmed combat is something they seem to struggle to get the rules right for, and get lots of questions about in Sage Advice, so it doesn't surprise me at all that they'd recycle an article on it in the hope that more people will read it and stop pestering them. And since they simplified it down to three attack types, with even grappling less than a page long, it certainly still seems usable, if not enough to satisfy MA enthusiasts. Still, I think along with hit locations and criticals with specific effects, that's a level of detail best handled in a completely different system built from the ground up to cope with it. They're wise not to obsess over it, when weapons work better anyway.

Best of Dragon Magazine 4


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Two-fisted fighting: After unarmed combat, we have two-weapon fighting, which makes a lot of sense, since it's another thing people regularly try, so they need to work out all the edge cases for it ruleswise. This is also handled in a fairly simple and brisk fashion, without the extra complexities they would introduce next edition in the Complete Fighters handbook, letting you spend proficiency slots to remove the penalties even if you're not a Ranger or have high dexterity. Even before Drizzt, this is obviously still something many players thought about and wanted to try, as it's just cool imagery, however you slice it. (although not so many people use two bludgeoning weapons at once, funnily enough ) And if you can sort out the balance problems, why shouldn't the players have their fun?


The whole half-ogre: They recycled this article in the magazine, and a previous best of. Now they're recycling the recycling. Yo dawg, etc etc. Admittedly, Roger does add on some extra details compared to Gary's original treatment, but still, this is going for the easy targets at the expense of actually bothering to come up with truly inventive new material. I guess just like new classes, new races get an incredible amount of demand, so they simply had to include whatever they had in that department, even if it wasn't that impressive.


Riding high: Putting the article on aerial mounts in the players section pretty much indicates that they approve of you using this idea at higher levels, which is nice to know. Let's hope your DM will let you be as awesome as the system allows rather than nerfing things to fit prefab adventures. Even if the list of creatures here is very superseded, given the number of awesome and scary flying monsters introduced since then, this is still a pretty cool way to finish off the chapter.



CREATING CAMPAIGN(ing): If players are constantly hunting for the next new toy for their players, for DM's, it's far more of a necessity. They have to keep coming up with new challenges every week if they want a campaign to last. A little variety certainly doesn't hurt either. Let's hope this chapter isn't filled with retreads from the usual suspects at the expense of picking the best articles then.


Five keys to success: We kick off the chapter, completely unsurprisingly, with one of those basic list articles that showed up every few years. If you have these things, and follow this advice, you shouldn't have a problem coming up with exciting adventures, at least until you're tapped out of ideas and feel you're repeating yourself with everything you do. And these ideas have certainly been repeated many times, so they feel very familiar indeed. I guess that proves their value quite effectively, even if I don't find this that interesting on rereading.

Best of Dragon Magazine 4


part 5/6


A PC and his money: If your PC's have more money than they can spend, then you probably haven't done enough worldbuilding to create things that they want. I certainly know that given unlimited resources, I'd have no problem thinking of things I wanted to do and create, that would probably involve years of work and vast sums of money that would eventually improve everyone's lives. In the meantime, you have all manner of minor expenses, taxes, regulations, unexpected delays, etc that ensure you always wind up spending more and taking longer than you budgeted for. This reminder that there's always more challenges out there even if you save the world (it's just that many of them are boring ones) should keep the DM going when they players get to the end of an adventure, and they haven't had time to think of another big one yet. (plus, they want to make sure they have incentive to go out again instead of retiring. )


The care of castles: Given how frequently she showed up and how much she was praised for a few years, it's surprising how little of Katharine Kerr's work has been referenced in the later years of the magazine. Unlike Ed, Len, or Roger, she didn't add new monsters, setting details, classes or magical items that could really be incorporated into the D&D canon, being more concerned with making real-world historical and mythological stuff work in game. Which is definitely a bit disappointing, since she was their highest-profile female writer, and later moved onto becoming a proper author in her own right. Still, this isn't the best example of her work, it still feels pretty dry and lacking in the abstractions that'll let you run this complicated logistical stuff without it eating up your entire campaign. Given that they gradually moved towards faster-paced, more combat focussed material, I can understand why stuff like this fell out of fashion.


Saintly standards: D&D clerics already have more supernatural powers than the average mythological saint, so saying there's another, NPC only class of people who get even more special powers than you can definitely feels like the kind of restrictive old-school thinking they've since done away with, letting you become nearly anything if you take the right prestige class, templates and feats. That said, the specific saints detailed are fairly interesting, and ripe for updating to later editions. This certainly isn't bad, just dated.


These are the breaks: We've already had articles on realistic finances and logistics. One on weapon breakage seems to fit with that kind of mood, and shows what their current areas of focus are. And like critical hit tables, this still feels like a load of extra work for negative fun, and I'm quite pleased that they eventually gave up on trying to put that in our D&D, settling for abstract critical hits, and weapons & armor only breaking if you actively target them. This is one bit of history I see no value in reclaiming for the modern age.

Best of Dragon Magazine 4


part 6/6


Repair or Beware: Another obvious follow-on from the preceding article, Arthur Collins is proving to be quite the editor's favourite, since this is a pretty short one that certainly didn't stand out to me the first time around, and with a 1 in 10 chance of some kind of damage happening, seems even more of a pain in actual play than the previous one, even if it doesn't involve a table, and the breakage is a more gradual process. I'd really rather not use either of these, if it's all the same to you.


Wounds and Weeds: Kevin J. Anderson, huh? I'd forgotten he contributed here as well as doing gaming tie-in novels and terrible Dune sequels. Well, at least you can say he does his research, since herbalism is full of esoteric little details about the nature of plants, where you find them, and what they do. This still looks pretty solid mechanically, in terms of making sure they're useful, but still not more powerful than basic healing spells. The framing fiction part of this is still pretty decent as well, reminding us he can be a pretty good writer when not cranking out formula to a tight deadline. It's a shame what having to make a living can do to your creativity.


Runes: To those incapable of it, preparation can seem like magic. The same certainly applies to writing, and it has a long history of being treated as amazing and scary by the illiterate. For example, the Norse emphasis on rune magic. It was just another alphabet, albeit somewhat better suited to carving in rock or wood than modern rounded scripts, but it built up it's own fascinating set of mythology, and list of spells you could do with them. How much more could you do with the idea in a universe where they do have real power. While largely historical, there's still plenty of ideas here to steal for your games, especially as this is largely system free, so it still looks useful to this day. Make a record of the magic you use, because it would definitely be a shame if you lost it, given how hard it is to develop.


Runestones: Following straight on from the last article, Ed Greenwood's more specific take on the same topic works excellently as a way to round out this issue. The system of dwarven runes he introduces here will be used in the artwork of several Forgotten Realms supplements, sometimes with amusing easter eggs in what they're actually saying. That's very worth keeping indeed, as it forces you to reference back to here whenever you see them to figure out what's really going on. If you wind up flicking through some other articles as a result, then they've done their job well. This definitely has the historical weight to deserve it's inclusion.



Once again, the rules gradually become more solid as we go along, with the classes in particular improved substantially from a few years ago. Also notable is the far greater emphasis on worldbuilding, which also jives with my perceptions of the magazine at the time. At this point, they'd run out of things to do down in the dungeon and were seriously looking around to keep their roleplaying interesting. The result is very worth noting. So what changes will the final best of bring? Let's ring the bell and call out "TIME! LAST ORDERS PLEASE!" on this unbelievably lengthy journey.

Best of Dragon Magazine 5


part 1/4


82 pages. The pace of the best of's accelerates, as this one says May 1986, a mere year after the last one. While things may still be moving forward in the outside world, here, they're going back to the old school, leaving out the themes, and just picking the best articles still unrepeated from the magazine's past. Although it is very noticeable that where the first best of crammed 39 articles into 72 pages, this has only 20 in 80, showing how word counts have expanded in the last 7 years. If this series kept up, that would probably have changed even more in the long run, especially in the last few years when lengthy articles like the demonomicons increased in frequency quite a lot. But it was not to be. Let's see what they thought worth reiterating in the days just before Gary left for good and Lorraine took over, axing a whole bunch of things in her wake, including this series.



Thrills and chills: Ice age adventuring still looks like a pretty neat idea, making everyday survival and resource accumulation a bigger challenge. One series of cheesy CGI movies certainly hasn't exhausted all the many options you have to tell stories in a world like that, and there's a wider range of fantastical monsters that fit the bill than when this was originally released. A larger campaign setting exploring the vagaries of a frigid world in the same way that Athas showed us different dry, hostile climates is very much an option. Maybe some day, I'll get to try it out.


Mind of the monster: Getting inside monster's heads and playing them as smart as their stats dictate is also a good idea, one that's both been explored thoroughly since then, and equally often blatantly breached. So this bit of advice feels very familiar, as it's been built upon, and expanded in quite a few different directions, from the brutally tactical to the humorous. Don't mind being reminded of it at all.


The oracle: They seem to be running low on classes to rehash, so they can't do a full section on them this time around, but there's still this one. The old school divination specialist, and also pretty decent secondary healer for some reason, with their lengthy list of different real world divination methods. They're weaker than regular wizards or clerics, but hardly useless, even if they're probably better suited as NPC's. Once again, the problem is that the regular spellcasting classes have such a versatile and reliable selection, so it's difficult to make new ones that use the same memorisation rules without them feeling redundant. And as we know, that's still a long way in their future. Definitely a pain the ass overall.


Firearms: Some people want to present guns as a great world-beater, making other weapons and magic redundant. Ed Greenwood was smart enough to give us a more nuanced view back in the day, showing he's certainly not all overpowered cheesiness. Medieval guns were actually rather a pain in the ass, slow to reload, and prone to misfiring. They might be able to equal a fireball in damage-dealing potential, but they certainly aren't faster or cheaper than having a wizard on team in D&D. Which I think makes sense, otherwise introducing them ruins (or at least changes) the game dramatically. This still seems to strike the right balance between cool and challenging for long-term use.


A second volley: Ed's sequel a year later does not suffer from power creep at all. If anything, the opposite, as it's focussed on smaller, handheld weapons rather than the siege weaponry of the last one. It covers fewer weapons, but can go into greater detail on each of them, reminding us that the reason Ed seems to be a neverending font of ideas is that he does his research, and knows good sources to draw from. (and being a librarian doesn't hurt with that) He may have been trapped into endless Realms expansions in later years, but in the 80's, he did plenty of other stuff as well, and this kind of article is a good reminder of how versatile he was.