Dragon #276

Okay, now that we've finished with the Monster Manual and the core rules in general, I now have...five days to get the rest of the month's stuff done, and there are three things left plus online stuff. So, I'm going to dive right in and get the whole Dragon #276 done tonight. Ready? Let's go!

The focus of this issue, obviously, is monsters, since it came out alongside the Monster Manual. But it's also a Hallowe'en issue as is tradition for October mags. So I'm willing to bet we get some horror-type monsters within, as well as that subtle prestige class named on the cover. And, the part I'm really liking, is the article with step-by-step instructions to create a new monster. Let's do this.

Ad, ad, cover art, table of contents, ah, editorial. This talks about using your subconscious, through your dreams, give you game ideas. I like the part about dreaming that everyone else in the world had vanished, and he was all alone, and he put that into a game and freaked his players way out. Such a great idea for inspiration.

Ad...ad...more ads...Scale Mail and Up on a Soapbox with Gary Gygax. The letters are all about the new edition, since they are reactions to Dragon #274 and the Player's Handbook that came out two months earlier. I know it's a weird idea for younger people, but there actually was a time where you couldn't get instant feedback from everyone. Even in 2000, the internet was still very young and not accessible to everyone, so the magazines gave us opinions and thoughts from around the continent (and, sometimes, the world) so we could see what other people thought about something a couple of months later.

Gary, meanwhile, is talking about naming characters appropriately and running a more role-playing rather than hack-and-slash type of game. It's an argument that probably goes back to the playtesting days before the original box was even published, and we've seen Gary's opinions on it many times before. Nothing new here.

Skip Williams gets the profile this month, since he is not only the Sage, but also the monster guru who was responsible for picking out what monsters made it to the new edition and making them work. Well, someone had to do it. Skip was certainly a good choice for it, although I'm sure people at the time were freaking out about why their own favorites weren't included in the book. I was holding out for the flumph, myself. But then, I'm weird.

Incidentally, there were four full-page ads in that part of the magazine before we get to the monthly Convention Calendar. And two more afterward, including one for the greatest computer game of all time: Baldur's Gate II. I still haven't finished it, but it's on my bucket list. We then get the October previews, which include the Monster Manual, of course, Into the Dragon's Lair (I don't have a physical copy yet), and a quick overview of the contents of the next Dragon and Dungeon magazines.

And then, after another ad for a Baldur's Gate II guidebook, we get...the Countdown to the Forgotten Realms. This is the introductory one, and there's a bit of line art to give a feel for the setting's characters, but mostly it's just a 'we're changing things, and we'll tell you about them over the next few months' spiel. They also say that there are going to be lots of new rules to include in the game with this setting, since they are drawing on twelve years of published material to update things. So there will be new prestige classes, regional feats, and of course spells and magic items. There are always more spells and magic items; it's the nature of the beast.

Ad...comic...ad...Game Insert. Well, I haven't seen these for a long, long time, but this is a complete game called 'Dead and Breakfast' that just needs dice to play; the rules cover a mere two pages, and there is a fold-out board glued in, just like in the olden days of yore. I'll have to try this at some point. It looks spooky and scary, apropos for Halloween.

Next up, without any ads to interrupt, we have our first actual article on page 36. This one is Black Cats and Broken Mirrors, and it's about superstitions. These are real-world superstitions that people truly believed were potent and could affect your life. Well, in a D&D game, they can! There are tables for good luck effects and bad luck effects, and the different superstitions will have different effects. For example, knocking on wood three times gives you a 10% chance of getting a 'good luck table' roll that lasts for 1-4 days. That's cool. DMs are encouraged to include any or all of these in their games, and even invent their own. However, using these ones would give players a more immersive experience, since most of them will be quite familiar even to modern people.

Ah, here we go! How to Create a Monster! Skip is the author, of course, and the article does a great job of breaking down the process of making a monster. He starts out by giving four brief descriptions of classic monsters, challenging the reader to figure out what they are. They aren't difficult, of course; that's the point. Make a monster that can be described in a few short words, and you've got a winner. All seventeen types are explained in brief, and each one has a table that can be used to generate the basic characteristics of any creature of any size based on its type.

For example, aberrations all have d8 HD and attack bonuses equal to a cleric. Their good save is Will, their skill points are double their Int score, and they get as many feats as their Int modifier plus one for every additional four hit dice. Any special abilities are also listed, and then the size part of the table is given, from Fine to Colossal. The monster's Str, Dex, Con, HD, and damage ranges for Slam, Bite, Claw, and Gore are given; obviously, not all monsters will have all four attack types, but this gives you an appropriate range to work with when defining the monster.

At the end of the article is a chart to help estimate the creature's CR. You can always just compare it to a monster in the book and go from there, but this uses the creature's hit dice and special abilities to get a good number as well. This article, like the ones on designing feats, designing prestige classes, and the fundamentals of the basic game mechanic, should have been included in the core books. That's how useful these are.

That gets us to almost the middle of the magazine; next we have our fiction entry, which is by Margaret Weis and Don Perrin. Would you be shocked to learn that this is a Dragonlance story? It's focused on a group of draconians and their efforts to retrieve a great treasure from a lost dwarven stronghold. The twist at the end is not entirely unpredictable, but the story is good and gives a nice feel for life on the draconian side of the War of the Lance. I liked it.

No ad, but we do get our monthly two-page Nodwick comic, this one about the Queen of the Demonweb Pits and how they completely ruin that adventure, too. Then we get ads. After that, it's the Ecology of the Sheet Phantom. This was a monster from the original Fiend Folio. Here we get a lengthy tale of how a sheet phantom happens, and how it morphs into a sheet ghoul. It's a rather gruesome story, as can be expected from a Halloween issue. Suffice to say, the mortals do not fare well. We get extensive footnotes in the story, as well as 3rd edition writeups for both the phantom and the ghoul. The phantom is a CR 1 Undead with 3 HD; the ghoul has 4 HD and a CR of 2. The phantom chokes out its prey and gets itself absorbed into the victim, turning them into the sheet ghoul. A fun horror story monster. How's that for a contradiction in terms?

After another ad, we get more from the wandering Volo. This is an article about people to get in touch with if you're new to Cormyr and how they can help you navigate the various social strata of that kingdom. There are seven of these people of various levels and abilities, and there do appear to be some times to something called 'the Abraxus Conspiracy', but I'm not up enough on Realmslore of that era to know what Volo is talking about. This one is definitely for the Realms geeks; there's no gaming information to make it useful to gamers in other worlds.

Next up we get the promised prestige class, the Hunter of the Dead. This is a prestige class that requires the ability to turn undead, so they're all going to be clerics or paladins to some degree, unless there's another prestige class that allows you to turn undead without those two base classes. I haven't seen one yet, though. The hunter of the dead attacks and saves like a fighter, but can also cast some minor spells. They can't be evil, and one of the requirements to get this class is that you have to have lost one level or ability score point to an undead. It's not clear if this is a permanent drain or if a temporary one will suffice. I would probably rule that it has to be a permanent one, since the text states that 'This is the scar of unlife that all hunters of the dead carry.' Pretty straightforward, in my ever-so humble opinion.

The special abilities are undead related, of course. This is a character who basically goes around re-killing undead things. Their spell list is limited, but effective enough; they get spells up to 4th level. All in all, it looks like a well-balanced class that will be useful in a game that has lots of undead. Otherwise, don't bother with it.

Then we have an article on how to fight zombies. It's really not hard; they have no AC, and you just chop them up into little pieces until they can't hurt you anymore. Power Attack is recommended, since their AC is so low that losing five points of your attack bonus isn't going to hurt your chances much, and the additional damage helps with the little pieces part. Don't use weapons with high critical ranges, since undead aren't affected by those. Instead, just pull out those mighty greatswords and the like and chop away. Since zombies are so slow, use reach and ranged weapons, too. Or use Mobility and Spring Attack feat combos. Damaging spells are good, too, especially area of effect ones that can affect multiple targets at once. Pretty standard advice here.

Ad, and then we get more monsters, specifically from the Wormcrawl Fissure in the Rift Canyon of Greyhawk. Kyuss gets a shout-out here, and the monsters herein are almost all related to that unholy bastard. Apparently, Dragon #270 had more information on this location, but I didn't look through it when I was doing the Countdown articles. There are five of these monsters here. The avolakia is a nasty Large Aberration with 10 HD and a CR of 10. It is a very gross combination of a worm, an octopus, and a bug. They're quite intelligent, and worship Kyuss. Their favorite food is...undead flesh. Not dead, not alive, but somewhere in the middle. So they would absolutely love Big Macs, then. They have several spell-like abilities, as well as a will-sapping venom (Wisdom drain) that makes their suggestion power easier to operate. They regenerate and have several immunities, as well as spell resistance 18. And they advance by character class, especially as sorcerers who focus on necromantic magic. Their leaders, however, are all clerics of Kyuss with the Death, Evil, Magic and Trickery domains to choose from (most choose Death and Evil).

Next is the Riftjumper, a Medium-sized Magical Beast with 4 HD and a CR of 5. They live in the upper part of the Fissure on the cliffs, and are natural climbers. They basically look like...I don't know. Four-legged grasshoppers with the back legs being extra-long and the front pair being used as hands. Sure, that works. They are really, really good at jumping, and their legs are covered in spiny growths that hurt anyone that attacks them with a Small or Tiny weapon. Oh, and their bite is poisonous and slows you down and makes your muscles and skin brittle until you can't move, and if you're holding on to the cliff face at this time, you're going to make like Wile E. Coyote, except you aren't going to make a crater when you hit. But you will be tasty, so there's that. They can get up to Large size and 12 HD, so be careful rock climbing.

Next is the Nerephtys, which is a Large Earth Elemental that looks like a worm that is a flexible column of stone. With a maw filled with crystalline teeth, and...you know what? It's like the cave creature in the asterois in Empire Strikes Back. How's that? Just not as big, although they can get to Huge size and 18 HD. Their bite drains Str and Con as they feed on the minerals in your body. They have damage reduction of 10/+1, and plenty of immunities and spell resistance of 28. In short, they're very difficult to hurt. Oh, I forgot to mention that they have 6 HD and a CR of 7. That's important, too.

Then we have one of the contestants in the 'Most Disgusting Monster Ever' category: The Ulgurstasta. This is a Gargantuan Undead with 17 HD and a CR of 11. It looks like a massive, pale-yellow maggot that is filled with a whole bunch of skeletons that it can vomit out. Yeah, this is as gross as can be. Don't worry, though; it can replace the puked skeletons with PCs, swallowing them whole, too, and their stomach acid does 1d8 Con permadrain each round you're in there, and then you become a replacement skeleton. If they can't eat you, they'll breathe the acid on you in a cone that does 3d6 permadrain Con damage. It's also covered in pores all over its body, each of which contains a 40-foot-long hair that acts as a tendril, and when it's being attacked it will flail about with these to make themselves immune to things like arrows and slash for 1d12 damage. These things only have a CR of 11? Seriously? Less dangerous than a purple worm? Come on. I didn't even get to the 25/+3 damage reduction, spell resistance 21, or immunities that come with being undead. There's no way this thing should be CR 11. And it can advance to 51 HD and Colossal size, just to make it more fun.

The last of these beasts is the Ciruja Plant, which grows high on the ledges in the Wormcrawl cliffs, clinging like ivy. But this Small Plant can move around a bit, and it has 3 HD and a CR of 3. It can defend itself with its fronds, but its primary attack is a small sphere that explodes into a cloud of pale yellow glass and paralyzes its targets. Then the ciruja burrows into the victim's skin and begins to feed on their youth, aging the victim 1d10 years per round, and eventually killing the host. Fun. Large species with up to 9 HD have been discovered, too.

So, that's the new monsters. A nasty group of them, wouldn't you agree?

Okay...ads, comics...Forum! More discussion of the new edition from people who have finally experienced it for themselves.  Meh. A puzzle page and another cartoon. Ads. An article on using miniatures to visualize combat, which is fine for people who can afford them. That does not, and never did, include me. PC Portraits gives a few interesting pictures, nothing special. More ads, and Sage Advice. This time it's answering questions about combat, and there are some fun Power Plays sprinkled throughout. I like the halfling dart thrower and the gnome paladin, myself.

Dungeoncraft is a series I'm not really following, since it didn't restart with the new edition, so newcomers would be a bit lost. Other than that, there are more ads, and finally another edition of What's New with Phil and Dixie, in which Dixie chooses the dark side and gets an even sexier wardrobe to go with her new attitude. Cool.

And...that is it! Another successful run-through of a Dragon Magazine. Tomorrow I've got a Polyhedron to go through, and then I'll take a quick look at the Into the Dragon's Lair adventure before finishing off with whatever online content Wizards still had in October of 2000. Until then, my friends, stay sharp and for the love of God, stay away from the ulgurstastas. The smell alone will kill you first.