Category Archives: DnD

IKCG Official Preview 2

[Cleric of Morrow] The Privateers are at it again. Having shipped the IKCG to the printers back in May, the crew of Privateer Press have decided to wave pages of their long-awaited tome under our noses. Last week we were given glimpses of several sections, and this week we get even more.

The second preview contains a lot of juicy goodness:

  1. A fraction of the explanation of the Morrowan Calendar, including major feastdays and the origins of month names.
  2. The the Cleric class entry and the beginning of the Druid entry.
  3. A snippet of item descriptions for miscellaneous equipment.
  4. The tail end of the description of the god Menoth, and the beginning of Dhunia’s entry. Information regarding the origin of Menoth is especially tastey. We also see that Dhunia has four brand-spanking-new clerical domains, one for each season.
  5. A pageful of alchemical healing items. A couple of them look at lot like what my players have been relying on in my Falconbridge campaign. Volden Mirsk would be proud. My version is a lot more potent and I have made them much more affordable, but I tend to run low-money games, so I suppose it fits. Nothing listed for alchemical goods is what I would normally consider a good bargain.
  6. An appendix of clerical titles (Priest, Chaplain, Battle Chaplain, Rector, et cetera).

Overall, this provides a pleasant combination of fluff and crunchy rules-stuff. I was seriously concerned, when the IKCG and the IKWG were split apart from the original IKCG project, that we’d get a whole bunch of new rules in the first book, and all the excellent Iron Kingdoms fluff in the second book. I recognize that more people are looking for crunchy rules than fluffy background information, but I’m glad that it at least looks like they’re putting in a solid effort to achieve a balance.

Polymorphing for Dummies

[I wanna look like Diana Ross...]Continuing a series of articles explaining the minutiae of how some of the D&D rules, WotC has just recently finished up their official explaination of polymorphing. This includes the spells polymorph, baleful polymorph, and polymorph any object, alter self, shape change, and a number of class features and “special qualities” that some monsters have which have similar effects.

As a four-part series, it starts out slow. Really slow. Painfully slow. Definitions-of-terms slow. They move on to some tastier fare in the second part with almost 300 lines of text describing the Alter Self spell in painstaking detail.

The series really comes up to speed in the third part, which describes the Polymorph spell itself. It’s a little detailed. 837 lines of detail. If only for the sake of DM-sanity maintenance, this spell should probably be stricken from the game. In fairness to the author, a great deal of this mountain of text is simply a repeat of what exactly the “subtype” characteristics are. For every subtype in standard D&D 3.5. Yes, every subtype. While my eyes were glazing over and I was passing in and out of consciousness trying to read the thing I may have missed one or two. I’m pretty sure they’re all listed.

Part Four brings us a return to sanity, as multiple spells are described in short order. Relying upon an assumption that somebody would want to wade through the previous entry on Polymorph itself, it focuses more upon how Baleful Polymorph, Shape Change, Wild Shape, and Alternate Form differ from the previous spells.

This four-part Rules of the Game series brings to light the problems that the most versatile forms of magic introduce into game mechanics. Transmutation and Illusion, as schools of magic, are probably the most open to exploitation (and enjoyment) by players and DMs alike. As such they bring to light the some of the most awkward restrictions and gaping holes in the D20 ruleset. I can only hope that the next entry will be regarding such gems as Minor Image.