Just curious -- what were among the best articles (be it a series or a single one) that ever showed up in DRAGON?
For my money, the Ecologies, the Demonomicon, and the various 'Giants in the Earth' (NPC write-ups for all sort of fictional characters, way back in 1st Ed.) articles were definitely some of the very best.
I would have to go with Sages Advice. While maybe not the most interesting, they where, hands down, the single most useful items in the book. They gave new ideas, answered a lot of good questions, and clarified things a great deal. Sometimes they where not so great, and not always useful, but the times they did help was usually a big deal.
After that, I'd have to go with the Class Features, (I think that is what it was called). These went a long way towards fixing and improving the game from all sides, and gave a lot of options in the same vein as Unearthed Arcana, (my personal favorate 3.5 book).
All the others, I sometimes like, sometimes though ok. The Ecologies can be good, but I always feel like they are a one time use sort of thing, or not really how I would want to use the creature, (for example, Kobalds have nothing to do with Traps or Dragons in my world, so 90% of that article was not usable). Not saying it was bad.
Was always against anything Eberron, and most Forgotten Realms stuff, but really liked pretty much any other setting materials.
Zuxius(Paizo Superscriber, Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber)
Back in the day, when I bought Best of Dragon in the early 80's. It was most certainly, The politics of hell. They stated out Satan, what can I say. The article on the Anti-Paladin was a close second.
The original Critical Hit / Fumble Tables by weapon type. Nothing as cool as rolling "00" and decapitating your opponent. Don't have handy what magazine they were in.
That's Certainly Un-Familiar from May '92. After casting find familiar at 1st level they never changed, much less improved, throughout a wizard's career. This article introduced a series of familiar enhancer I-VIII spells from 2nd-9th level that provided the familiar with cool spell-like abilities, turning them into exciting and useful cohorts. 3rd Edition took steps to marginally improve familiars, but failed to recapture this exciting element.
Pages from the Mages was a series of articles by Ed Greenwood in which Elminster told him about a variety of famous spell books found (or often lost) out there in the world, as well as the contents of said books, including details of unique spells. Much of what we now take for granted in our Player's Handbook came from those articles.
A Plethora of Paladins, from Feb. '86, because Paladin and Anti-Paladin aren't enough and other deities of other alignments need Holy Warriors, too. This article filled in the gaps in the other seven alignments.
In the era before Skills, there was an article that gave Rangers explicit survival abilities and better detailed their scouting and sneaking skills.
There was an excellent article on Custom Character Class Design from the days when different classes needed different XP to advance. Back then you didn't balance classes by adding and subtracting different abilities at each level, but rather altering the rate at which a class leveled and gained its abilities.
This article presented a "Base Class" and experience progression (something like 200 XP to advance to 2nd level) but it was what we would today call an NPC Commoner. If you wanted to scale up your HD from d4 to d6 or d8 or d20 that was fine, you just looked up the appropriate multiplier to your XP chart. Do you want poor or Good or Excellent to-Hit progression, then add the multiplier. Do you want better Saving Throws or Spells? Choose the progression (there were something like 7 different spell tables with a variety of caps and advancement rates) and look up your multiplier.
Once you had completed your "Class Build" you simply combined all your multipliers together and there was your XP Chart. No more multi-classing and every character could be a custom-build.
It was the ultimate precursor of point-based systems, and I'd love to see something like it for 3.x systems that basically said "Do you want a Save progression this level, spend XX-points; do you want BAB progression, spend YY; do you want skills or spells or bonus feats, then spend ZZ points of your allotment for this level; stop when you're out of points." Imagine being a Fighter but trading your HD down to d8 in order to gain +2 Skill Points or giving up a few of your Martial Feats for a limited spell progression. I miss the concept of a point-based class development.
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