As has often been the case, this month's cover is drawn by Roger Raupp. It depicts the six characters from Christopher S. Jones's "Nienna & Friends," the first installment in "The New Rogues Gallery," which is "a continuing feature ... through which members may share their most interesting characters and NPCs." In truth, this is just an outgrowth of the "Encounters" column that began all the way back in issue #8, which had already morphed into something akin to this. In any case, "Nienna & Friends" presents write-ups (including AD&D stats) for the half-Drow fighter/magic-user Nienna, her human cleric mother, Rhodara Larith, and their protector, the Grey Elf magic-user Zered Camaron. Zered's son, Elerion, along with Nienna's evil Drow father, Tray-Dor, and his drider companion, Day-Ron, complete the group. In general, I like articles like this, if only because they give me some sense of what happens in other people's campaigns. I know "let me tell you about my character" is supposed to be cringeworthy, but I genuinely do enjoy this sort of thing (and occasionally indulge in it myself).
"In Search of the 12th Level Mage" by Roger E. Moore is a good article on the much-vexed question of demographics in Dungeons & Dragons. Moore takes a look at the population information provided in the revised World of Greyhawk boxed set and plugs it into the information found in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide regarding the makeup of NPC adventuring parties to arrive at a possible answer. His conclusion is that high level characters of any class are quite rare, especially so for magic-users, who number only about 200 out of every 1000 people (who are themselves only one-tenth of every 10,000 people). Of those 200, only 1 is 8th-level, meaning that the mage of the title would be a special NPC created and placed by the referee. Of course, the question of how many NPCs have classes/levels is itself an interesting one without a definitive answer. Even so, speculations like this are fun and an important part of worldbuilding in my opinion.
Brian Leikam's "In Defense of the Lowly Fighter" is, as its title suggests, a look at the fighter class in Dungeons & Dragons and how to make it more appealing to players. I wrote a post about this article three and a half years ago, so I won't say much more here. However, I largely agree with Leikam that fighters should be more common and better appreciated in D&D, especially nowadays, where the human fighter has more or less become synonymous with "boring."
"Ravager" is the first part of an AD&D adventure by Jeff Grubb. Though it doesn't mention it anywhere, I assume this was a RPGA tournament scenario at some point, since most of the adventures that appear in Polyhedron began life that way. Its premise is that a bandit-king, the eponymous Ravager, has arisen and, thanks to ancient magic, has made himself effectively immortal. The goal of the characters is to raid a tomb in the Grey Desert that might contain information on how to reverse this magic and render the Ravager mortal again. The tomb is small and filled with traps, tricks, and puzzles, in addition to monsters. I expect it would be a challenge to navigate it successfully. Included with the adventure are six pregenerated PCs whose names could well be Asterix characters: Necromantix, Logistix, Goldbrix, etc.
"The Treasure Chest" returns in limited form, offering just back issues of Polyhedron and four RPGA adventures written by Frank Mentzer, like To the Aid of Falx. There's also a similarly abbreviated "Fletcher's Corner" by Michael Przytarski, in which he muses about crossbreeds among the various D&D races, another much-vexed topic in gaming circles. Przytarski offers no new insights or answers here. Slightly more useful is Jeffrey A, Martin's "Beware the New Golems," which offers up four new golem types: copper, oak, brass, and shadow. The last one is notable, because it's a golem that can only be made by illusionists, something you don't see very often in AD&D, where the illusionist was, in my opinion, and underused and under-appreciated class.
Preston Shah's "Little Miss Sure Shot" was unexpected. It's not just a Boot Hill article, but a history lesson as well, providing historical details and game information on using Annie Oakley in your games. I like articles of this sort, but then I'm also a fan of historical gaming, so I'm probably not a good gauge of how well received articles like this would have been received. "New and Old" by James M. Ward is a one-page preview of some aspects of the upcoming new (third) edition of Gamma World. He also reiterates the oft-repeated promise that TSR planned to do a new edition of Metamorphosis Alpha to tie into it as well. That didn't happen, of course, but I don't doubt that it was planned.
"Dispel Confusion" is reduced to one page and tackles only AD&D questions, nearly all of which are highly technical in nature. With hindsight, this is one of those aspects of the TSR era of D&D that seems baffling. At the time, though, a fair number of gamers, myself included, really did care about "official" answers to rules questions. Finally, there's Errol Farstad's review of Timemaster, which he thought had "potential to be very enjoyable," even though it still had a few "rough spots." That's a fair assessment, I think.
And that's all folks – the end of my re-reads of Polyhedron. Next week, as I stated at the beginning of this post, I'll share some final thoughts about the more than 20 issues I read during my time as a subscriber. There's frankly a lot to say on the subject and I think it's deserving of its own post.
So the shadow golem was illusionist only but the oak one wasn't limited to druids? I guess it must not have been live oak.
ReplyDeleteAlso reminded of the cork golem that cropped up on another blog last week, which was a standout for being extremely buoyant as you might expect. Lead to a back and forth in the post comments where someone calculated its volume to determine its "float capacity" in water. All these years and this is the first time I've seen someone determine the number of cubic centimeters a Dwarf takes up.
Still maintain its best use is as an oddity in a student pub near a magic university where it acts as mobile dartboard for extra challenge. Alternately, as an encounter in a deities wine cellar. The cork golem's not very dangerous unto itself, but when it pops out of the giant bottle it was keeping sealed the 20HD wine elemental (like a water elemental, but drunk - and you need to keep saving vs. poison when hit or get drunk too) is more of a problem.
Timemaster's no Chill, but it's the best of Pacesetter's other RPGs. Star Ace is just badly executed and derivative throughout, and mostly useful for crossover stuff where a Timemaster game might take place in its time period. Sandman had so little put out for it it's hard to really assess - beyond noting that it desperately needed fleshing out with those never-were supplements.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I’m wrong here, but my perception of the “Lowly Fighter” issue was that it was a remnant of the “3d6 in order” form of character creation. That is, fighter was generally the easiest class to qualify for, whereas the others had requisites that were meant to bar players from generating them too often. As such, fighter is pretty boring on purpose, because a fighter isn’t meant to be “the best at fighting”, they are meant to be a dope with a sword who can’t do anything else, and if they survive then they can become a hero. The other classes start amazing, because they happened to start out gifted. Eventually, this became a problem due to the switch from “3d6 in order whoops I guess I made another fighter” to “4d6 drop the lowest and arrange to taste hey guys guess who is a paladin again!” Again, my perception could be wrong but that’s my take. FWIW, my parents’ AD&D group always had multiple fighters, as they were seen as a necessity, but they are rarely the most notable characters that get reminisced about. They tended to be what they often end up being - meat shields.
ReplyDeleteWe might be wrong together. In Corporate/Executive life there are innumerable references to The Sheep, the Shepherds and the Wolves. Most people are like most other people, essentially. A young man from a starving farm can whittle a stick into a spear, hunt a pig instead of eating groundrot turnips, and take a shot out in the world beyond the muddy fields. Biography of a fighter. 'Poverty makes great boxers' as they say in America. The other classes require cultivation. Sort of like tennis.
DeleteIn a 4-class universe, Fighters were fine. They had the best attack table, could use any armor/weapon, and so had something "special" in comparison to the other 3 classes. My first character, made with Moldvay Basic, was a Fighter. But then I saw the AD&D Players Handbook which offered the Ranger, like a Fighter but only better, so I never made another Fighter. My friend also gave up on Fighters, but for Paladins. In both cases, the subclasses just offered more, so why not pick them. The remedy, I believe, is to grant weapons specialization only to single-classed pure Fighters, thus giving them something to compete with all the new features afforded to the new classes.
DeletePicking up on what Always the Ranger says (my favourite class to play too), the Ranger and Paladin should both really be cleric sub-classes, with their hit points base lined to d6 & d8, cleric attack matrices and their XP progression revisited. This makes the single class fighter the standout combat specialist.
DeleteJacob, luv that idea!
DeleteIronic that one of the more common and persistent complaints about the single best-selling edition of D&D is that rangers are a lousy class, pretty often seen as the worst of the lot. Exactly what its shortcomings are I can't say (and people who do care cite different issues) but the humble fighter's doing not being outshone by them any more.
DeleteAs a player and DM of 5e games, I’ll say the main issues seem to be that the Beastmaster specialization is very tempting to animal loving players and was really poorly constructed in its PHB version. Subsequent books have lessened that somewhat. The other issue is trying to discern what Rangers are supposed to be in relation to the other classes. In 5e, there is always another class that either does what they do or can do it better - fighters make better dual wielders, rogues make better ranged DPS characters, bards get better skill bonuses, etc. But having said all that, in the game I’m running for my family, my daughter’s Dwarven Ranger (Katniss Everdwarf, lol) is absolutely lethal with a bow, and will probably be the main ranged damager since the rogue stays in melee. So the players can make up for a lot.
DeleteI'm a little confused about Roger Moore's numbers. Because if you have 1,000 people and 200 of them are mages, doesn't that mean that roughly 1 in 5 are mages? Which would mean a fantasy world in which mages are extremely common. Unless, by 'people"', he means PCs rather than regular folk. Even then I would have thought the incidence was lower (because the entry requirements for being a thief or humble fighter or even a cleric are much lower)
ReplyDeleteYou are correct: "Ravager" was another RPGA tournament scenario. I played it at NOWS Con (as Necromantix in the first scenario, and as a cleric or druid in the second scenario). It was my first and last experience with tournament play at a convention. It was not my cup of tea.
ReplyDeleteCorrection: In the second scenario I played a monk. I angered the player who was playing a cleric or druid because they took Speak with Animals as a spell — unaware that my monk already had it as a special ability.
DeleteIt seems as though there's an error in the article text here: "...magic-users, who number only about 200 out of every 1000 people (who are themselves only one-tenth of every 10,000 people)." It feels as though it ought to say something like "...200 out of every 1000 people with classes..." or some such.
ReplyDelete