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After a flawless execution of my dual Dragon & Dungeon magazine subscriptions since Paizo took over, I find myself suddenly missing my very first issue. Dragon #355 never arrived and it is now past the date where it will appear on the newsstand. I would appreciate some assistance in the matter. Thanks!
Chapter 1 - Scene 1
Fleurgreen 1, 422 SC (12/11/2004) Dear Knuckles, While wandering the streets of Solanthus this evening, I came upon a human woman being assaulted by one of the local thugs. I still do not know why I choose to intercede into the affair, but something in my snapped and I went after the man with my Hoopak. The actual events of the scuffle are lost to me, but I do remember seeing the man dead at my feat and the woman crying. The city watch showed up and I was taken away to the local jail since the guard wasn’t willing to take the word of the woman who was attacked than I had acted in self-defense. No matter, as I ended up spending the night in a nice comfy bed with blankets, people to keep my company and a good meal. Fleurgreen 2, 422 SC (12/11/2004) Dear Knuckles, I let myself out of jail some time after dawn when the local warden forgot to bring me my breakfast. I headed over to Greenboro Inn to partake in their usual morning buffet and helped myself to two whole portions before they kicked me out. Shortly thereafter a massive human carrying all sorts of weapons wandered out of the Inn along with a handful of other humans. Some of his weapons looked really cool and I wanted to take a closer look, but I was unable to keep up with the guy before he entered some type of government building. He took forever inside and then left n a big rush. I followed him around the market while he shopped but never got close enough to have a real good look at his gear. Eventually, he and his companions packed up and headed outside of Solanthus. Left with nothing else better to do for the day, I followed along. The trip was long, boring and I had to run almost all day to keep up. I was exhausted and totally forgot to bring along any food. When the group of four humans and an elf with silver hair all set-up camp for the night, I helped myself to some of their leftovers. I also had a chance to look at the big humans weapons. He had a massive flail that looked like a great deal of fun. I used it to beat trees, rocks and the other rubbish far enough away to not wake up the sleeping group. Eventually I got tired and found a place nearby to rest for the night. Fleurgreen 3, 422 SC (12/11/2004) Dear Knuckles, I woke up to the human screaming about his missing flail. I had no idea why he was so upset; I had his flail safe beside me all night. I managed to find some rations in my pouches and enjoyed a good breakfast before following the group as they made all sorts of noise while trying to look for a cave entrance I spotted the first six times they walked by it. Eventually they stumbled onto it and went inside. I followed behind since caves like this are usually filled with all sorts of traps, monsters and other neat things; I figured that the humans would probably get themselves hurt without my help. I was so right. The big guy almost stepped on a spear trap that might have ruined hi leg, so I spoke up to warn him about it. Did I get any thanks for my warning? No, instead he accused me of taking his Flail. I had no idea what he was talking about, he left it lying around and I was just keeping it safe. I spent the rest of the day keeping the humans and their elf friend out of trouble. They all wanted to keep stepping onto traps, chase undead around, and generally get themselves into all types of danger. I did find a cool new friend, some older elf ghost who wanted to get some rest. Hen I told him to close his eyes and just all asleep like I do every night, he said that he hadn’t slept in something like forty years. He said that he had to know that the one who had him murdered had been dealt with. I am not sure why, but I agreed to help him out. After all he was such a nice old elf and my hands could pass right through him. How neat is that? We all slept outside under the starts together. This time I helped cook dinner and even provided a few squirrels that I shot on my own. The group was all upset about this guy named Sickle escaping. I guess that Sickle was the guy that the elf ghost needed to have brought to justice. He shouldn’t have cheated and knocked all that rock into the hallway if he wanted to get caught. Fleurgreen 4, 422 SC (12/11/2004) Dear Knuckles, We clobbered a few more skeletons and the old elf wizard managed to find a secret storage room full of neat stuff. We even had to wrestle with some clothes that moved on their own. The room was piled with cool weapons and other stuff. I kept a few things for later. Some of the humans then wanted to give all of the dead humans they found in the caves a proper burial. If you ask me, seems weird to me to go out of your way to bury complete strangers that tried to kill you the day before. Afterwards, we all packed up our stuff and started the long hike back to Solanthus. Everyone was talking about getting paid for all of this fun. I wondered if I would be getting paid as well. I could sure use a new pair of boots or maybe a pretty dress for your birthday this year. Fleurgreen 5, 422 SC (e-mail) Dear Knuckles, Imagine my surprise when we did get paid by the town high mucky-muck and all my new friends even gave me money for hanging it out with them, although they called it y share, not sure what that meant. I’ve never seen so much money at one time. I am not sure what I am going to spend it on yet. Maybe I’ll buy a nice new dress. You’d be so proud of your mother. It is as if the haze of the last ten years has finally lifted.
Village of Galvinston a.k.a. Bonesville Population: 597 (humans 82%, dwarves 10%, half-elves 2%, half-orcs 2%, gnomes 2%, other 2%)
A few weeks back I was running a party of six monstrous characters averaging CL 11 through the "Old Embers Never Die" module from Dungeon #100. They managed to come face to face the Skeletal Ancient Red Dragon at the end of Act 1 when things got a bit sticky. In the first round of combat the Troll Rogue was attacked and hit with all six primary attacks (Bite, Claw x2, Wings x2, Tail) and took about 140HP of damage. This took him through all of his Subdual damage and most of his Real damage that he had thanks to Regeneration. Needless to say, the rest of the group grabbed the fallen Troll and ran away never to return. Looking closely at the Skeletal Template, which appears to be still using 3.0 rules, it appears to be greatly overpowered. The crux of the template is that it can be applied to any Dragon, dividing the original CR by 2. For this particular creature this meant dropping from a CR 22 to a CR 11. The template causes the original creature to loose all Spellcasting, Breath Weapons, Damage Resistance, Feats, Skills and Fly Speed while gaining Cold Immunity, Bludgeoning DR, and Undead Traits. Natural Armor is greatly reduced, but the all natural attacks all stay the same. I suspect that there is an error in the Skeletal Red Dragon on page 34 because it appears to still use Dragon HD progression for attacks. I am betting that the attack progression is supposed to change to Undead HD. (BAB = 1/2 HD rather than HD). The template seems to be missing this little detail and it carried over to the sample creature. This would drop the sample creature's BAB from +34 to +17, making the attack progression change to +27 Bite, +22 everything else, rather than +44 Bite and +36 everything else. Anyone disagree?
I was reading the "A Surge of Theurgy" article in Dragon #325 and noticed the potential for abuse of the Theurgic Creationist Feat. Essentially the feat allows any character with an item creation feat to stack the caster levels from all casting classes to determine the base caster level for item creation. While this feat makes a lot of sense and I can think of some examples where some of my older characters could have really benefited from this, the feat fails to take into account the Mystic Theurge prestige class. As an example, an ECL 16 character with Wizard 3/Cleric 3/Mystic Theurge 10 would be a caster level 26 using this feat instead of the usual 16 for the purposes of item creation. Effectively ths feat grants a +2 / Mystic Theurge Level to the CL for any type of Item Creation instead of the usual +1. While obviously this wouldn't allow for the creations of EPIC based items prior to EPIC levels, it has the potential of allowing a PC to create a powerful magic item, such as a Rod or Staff with a caster level set inordinately higher than it was even intended for someone of their caster level. I am imagining a 6th level Disintegrate spell in a Staff with a CL of 26 doing the maximum of 40d6 damage instead of the usual 32d6 damage. There are probably other more abusive examples in the case of spells that either have no upper end for their scale or a maximum of +20 reachable at ECL 13 instead of 20. Any ideas how to temper this feat for a Mystic Theurge? A player with a Sorceror 7/Favored Soul 6/Mystic Theurge 10 that ants ot take this at their next feat at ECL 24. That would make them a CL 34 for the purposes of Item Creation. Jester |
