Dragon #280, Part 1

Finally. This took longer than I wanted it to, but life happens. This issue is about magic and sorcery, rather than having a racial theme as the previous two did. So, this should be an interesting change of pace. It's the first issue of the 3e era to focus on magic, too. The cover art is pretty straightforward; there's a sorceress casting a spell while a dragon of some sort coils itself around and near her, not squishing her like Kaa in the Jungle Book.

The editorial talks about the price increase in the magazine and how you really shouldn't be worried about that extra dollar. A dollar is quite a jump for a magazine in that time. But at least the subscription price hasn't changed...yet.

In Scale Mail, among other things we get a discussion of fonts, a promise that the iconic characters from the Player's Handbook will be statted out later this year in Enemies and Allies, and an RPG version of the 2000 presidential election (Gore vs. Bush). Which is about as coherent as you would expect.

The Profile article isn't about a designer, but rather an artist. Specifically, Aaron Williams, the genius behind the Nodwick strips. It's an interesting read, but has no gaming relevance. Although Nodwick still takes a beating, because of course he does.

Gary Gygax continues to explain what an RPG is; I think that twenty-six years on, most people who play have the general gist of it figured out. Then we get a Nodwick strip that explains the advantages of wizards over sorcerers. Artax gets his moment to shine.

Previews gives us a heads-up that there will be a d20 Wheel of Time game coming out in the fall. It will be fairly D&D-esque, but it will have plenty of stuff that's unique to Robert Jordan's epic series. I'd be curious to see what's in there, since the series was only nine books (plus a prequel) finished at the time this was published, with six more novels yet to go. I think the biggest problem with putting out a game based on a series like this is that the big epic quest is already being taken care of by NPCs; what's left for your characters to do?

As to what WotC is publishing for their main game, we have the Monsters of Faerûn to go over later this week. It will contain 85 monsters, 18 of which are new, as well as eight templates and a monster prestige class (the beholder mage). The cover looks like a continuation of the core books. There are also miniatures, which I don't cover, and a Dragonlance novel by Douglas Niles. Also, in March we're getting Psionics. Alright, then.

Then we have the Forgotten Realms Countdown, which gives us quite a few bits of information. First, there will be 33 new domains in this book, which is 50% more than the Player's Handbook had. They include racial domains for each of the demihumans, including drow, and a bunch that look really specific and niche (Cavern, Planning, Nobility, and Rune, for example). We also get more details on nine of the Realms gods (one per alignment): Auril (NE), Azuth (LN), Mystra (NG), Cyric (CE), Finder Wyvernspur (CN), Loviatar (LE), Oghma (N), Selune (CG), and Torm (LG). We get their power level, alignment, favored weapon, symbol, domains, and portfolios. And there are going to be over a hundred different deities when the book comes out. Yikes.

After that is a new prestige class for holy warriors, the Divine Champion, This is basically a paladin for different alignments. It's a five-level prestige class that gets some bonus feats and paladin-like abilities. There's also a list of the Player's Handbook deities and a conversion chart to show which Realms deity is an adequate substitute if you suddenly place your game in the Realms.

Dork Tower discusses the tendency of players to achieve goals outside the adventure's parameters...poor princess.

Finally, we get to the subject of this month: Sorcerers. The first article, "Your Sorcerous Life", is a checklist. Or a quiz. It's a way to put together your character's background. Are they the first sorcerer in the family, or are they descended from a line of sorcerers? Did you know your family were sorcerers? Any omens at birth? Other signs of your sorcery? And so on. Kind of dry, really, but it might help newer players get a handle on their character's background. Still, I think the space could have been better used. We do, however, get a list of fantasy sorcerers including Merlin, Harry Potter, Thomas Covenant, and Polgara the Sorceress. Source material is always nice.

Ah, polymorph. That nightmarish spell that, from what I understand, got multiple revisions over the years to try to get a handle on this spell without making it obscenely overpowered. I don't know if they ever got it right, to be honest. This article discusses different uses of polymorph spells and how to run them. We also get a new spell, swarm form, which turns you into a swarm of bugs. Yeah, not great. And we get the first of the official rewrites of polymorph other, too.

Magic in the Blood describes different possible origins for sorcerous ability. Later on, this will basically boil down to, 'someone in your family tree had sex with a dragon', but here there are five different options. We get Experimentation, Fey-Touched, Magical Pacts, Dragon Ancestry, and Forgotten Crafts. Each of them has different tweaks and quirks to make them stand out. Good stuff.

Then we switch gears and go to Better Living Through Alchemy. Alchemy in 3rd edition is different from how it was treated in 1st and 2nd editions. Here, it's a skill that any class, even barbarians, can learn. Here we get a couple of new uses for the skill, as well as several new alchemical items that can be found in your local apothecary such as soupstone (drop it in a bowl of water and you get soup), ice crystal (a portable ice cube that only gets cold in liquid and doesn't melt), powdered water (I knew it existed!), and slippery oil. So...regular oil, then?

Ah, here we go with something very near and dear to my heart: Mastering Chance, Building a Dungeon with Random Tables. I love using random tables in dungeon creation, just because it makes you think of 'how the heck does this fit in to what I already have here?' and the answers you can come up with are awesome. Sadly, this is just a two-page article with no tables, just advice. Meh.

And that will get us roughly halfway into the magazine, so I'll continue this next time. See you then.