The Awakened Psion

To my recollection, this is the second Unearthed Arcana article that’s been posted, which is a way for Dragon writers to pitch various houserules. Despite being in the magazine, they aren’t “official”, and as such cannot be used in RPGA events, nor will they be included in Character Builder. If you want to use them, you’re instructed to take it up with your DM.

This time we get psychic support, giving psionic characters the option to “delve” into a target’s mind as they make an attack. Delving can only be used with disciplines that target Will, and you must declare that you are doing so before the roll. If you hit, the discipline has all the normal effects, but also gives you an additional benefit that you can change each time. They range from being able to see what the target can, to the most likely actions that the target is going to take, to getting bits of information for the targets mind. You can also opt to perform “dangerous delving”, which nets you better benefits–gaining bonus damage, imposing an attack penalty, or preventing shifting–but at greater risk.

Since delving doesn’t cost a feat or power selection, it comes at a cost. When you delve and roll a natural 1 or 20, or get an odd number on a dangerous delve, you suffer from mental contamination and have to roll on a table of consequences. You might just be slightly dizzy and suffer no other ill effects, or be dazed and allow the target to see through your eyes, or (in the worst case scenario) have some of your own memories overwritten by the target’s in addition to briefly sharing the target’s goals, forfeiting control of your character to the DM for a turn (but the overwritten memories are permanent).

These acquired memories and personality traits lead to what is called dissonance, which causes you to take an assload of psychic damage whenever you act in accordance to a memory that you lost or against a personality trait that you’ve gained. To make matters worse they are cumulative, so if you end up acting against two or more memories and/or traits you’d take twice as much damage. This leads to the likely outcome that delve-abusers explode at some point when pause to consider menu items.

It’s good for players that like psionic characters and gambling their character’s sanity, but not so mkuch for players that get attached to characters or groups that constantly have long-term campaigns.

Dragon & Dungeon Magazines For Sale

I’ve got a massive library of Dragon and Dungeon magazines that I’m looking to sell in order to make room on one of my bookshelves before I just donate them to one of my local game stores.

Dragon: Issues 99, 101, 102, 274-277, 283-359 (For the 3rd Edition magazines, I’m missing 278-282). They are all in very good condition, with the exception of the early 270’s, which have some spine damage. I also have the 2001 annual issue, Monster Ecologies, The Art of Dragon Magazine, and Dragon Compendium I.

Dungeon: 103, 109, 110, 119, and 121-150 (the entire run of Age of Worms and Savage Tide adventure paths).

The asking price is between 50 cents and $2 per magazine issue, depending on the condition. If you want to buy all of Dragon magazines, I’d pawn them all for $75. For Dungeon, I’d go $30 since they’re all in great condition. For all the magazines, I’d charge $90. The hardcovers would be $10 each.

November and Beyond

November looks like a pretty busy month, weighing in at three products that I want.


Beholders
I’d forgotten about the Beholder Collectors Set, which in addition to a combined expenditure for Monster Vault and Famine in Far-Go promises to weaken my wallet (savings ends). The set runs $35 and has four beholders, and when compared to eBay prices that’s a really good deal.

They’ve also posted up a preview for a (the?) beholder. This one is only level 9 and not a zombie nor drinks blood, so that’s a plus. My only experience with a beholder was back in 3rd Edition, where we slaughtered it effortlessly (perhaps accidentally) thanks to a min-maxed arcane archer that could shoot fireball enhanced arrows modified with Elemental Substitution (ice) because we were going up against a red dragon. The group in my Tendrils of Fate campaign is good enough for a gauth, but I think I’ll hold off and let them gain a level or two before throwing the real deal at them.

Like a few of their kin, beholders cannot be flanked, which sucks for rogues, and their bite is fairly tame (17 damage on average). I don’t think anyone would really bother with it since they can fire two out of ten eye rays at a time without provoking opportunity attacks despite being ranged, and if you start within 5 squares of it? Well, it gets to shoot you. For free. With no action required. I would say count your blessings that it’s random, but they’ve got some nasty eye rays in their arsenal.

I checked, and they have almost the exact same abilities as a 3rd Edition beholder (which is not a good thing, let me tell you), the exception that instead of a charm monster ray they get brilliant ray. Here’s a list in case you somehow aren’t familiar with an older beholder:

• Charm ray: Dominates for a turn.
• Wounding ray: Deals lots of necrotic damage.
• Sleep ray: Immobilizes you, and if you fail the save you fall asleep (save ends).
• Telekinesis ray: No damage, just slides you around a lot.
• Slowing ray: Has only slightly less average damage than the wounding ray, but also slows (save ends).
• Brilliant ray: Minor amount of radiant damage and blinded…save ends. Bitch.
• Terror ray: Good amount of psychic damage and you are pushed your Speed.
• Petrifying ray: You’re immediately petrified (save ends), and when you shake it off you’re still immobilized. Holy save-or-screw, Batman!
• Death ray: Hefty amount of necrotic damage, and also dazes if the target is bloodied before of after you resolve damage. If you fail your first save, you’re also weakened, and if you fail that save, you die. 
• Disintegrate ray: Minor damage, but also causes ongoing damage.

So, hmm. At first I didn’t care for petrifying ray, but really it’s a lot like the stunned condition except that you get a lot of damage resistance, and you can still shake it off so it’s not quite a “save or fuck-off” effect. Immobilized ain’t so bad, especially if you have ranged attacks at any capacity. The really nasty one is death ray, because if you’re bloodied at all it starts the doom counter. In case all of this doesn’t impress you with just how nasty this fucker can be, when you bloody it, it can also use a recharge 6 ability that lets it pepper you with three eye rays instead of two, and its central eye locks down your encounter and daily attack powers for a turn. It can do this as a minor action, whenever it wants.

Famine in Far-Go
The first Gamma World expansion will add more cards, to some’s dissent and other’s delight, that allow you to reflect an allegiance (if temporary) to a “cryptic alliance”. A group can all be allied with the same group, or everyone can draw one at random, but one thing to keep in mind is that its an optional rule. I’m sure many will conveniently overlook that bit. Each of the cards provides you with a benefit that gives your character an advantage to the detriment of the rest of the party. The efficacy of many will hinge on whats going on, such as untapped Alpha mutations or penalizing Omega Charge checks at the end of the encounter.

As for the actual adventure, expect mold, mold men, and aliens. I can’t say that that the prospect of mold particularly excites me, but all the same I’ll be glad to get my hands on more origins, and if nothing else there’s another “high-level” threat, though I find it odd that an alien ship is actually weaker than a much smaller man-made robot. Maybe they used lots of American parts to repair their ship?

The death saucer is an alien ship that fires death rays, drops a neutron bomb, and can teleport in minion shock troopers occasionally. It can make four death ray attacks each round, and has a solo action ability that it can use up to two times during the encounter (which is really another way of forcing the monster to ration the Action Points that it would have gotten in D&D). So, everything one expects from a solo monster. However, there’s one thing I take issue with: neutron bomb. It recharges once bloodied, but when it becomes bloodied it immediately lands (no action), and while it’s grounded it cannot use neutron bomb (or confinement ray).

Oversight, or am I reading it wrong?

December’s Dragon and Dungeon
Not much dropped here, except that modrons are coming back? o.O

The Wayward Wyrmling Review

Warning: This is an adventure review that contains spoilers.

I remember back in the days of Old Editions Past when dragons had hard-wired personalities based on whether their scales were made from metal or simply gone over with a Crayola, with metallic dragons usually having a Good component appended to their alignment. Like most “Always X Good” monsters, this meant that if you wanted to throw them at the party you had to get “creative”, which is another way of saying using a cliche. Popular ones included a case of mistaken identity/gross misunderstanding, mind control, or just because. 4th Edition makes this easier by having most monsters be unaligned at best or changing their origins, making them easier to justify as opponents.

The Wayward Wyrmling is a level 3 adventure in the Chaos Scar written by Aeryn “Blackdirge” Rudel that tells the woeful story of an adamantine dragon hatchling who loses his mother to adventurers, only to befriend a band of kobolds while meandering about the Chaos Scar region. This might make a good Disney movie except for the part where the kobolds kidnap humans and feed them to the dragon. They also do goblins and other kobolds, but those are monsters so no one gives a fuck. The party can be thrown in the mix by either being re-hired by the dwarf that sent the first party in to fetch some scales, or retrieve the corpses of the good-for-nothing husbands that figured going into a notoriously dangerous region to fetch wood was a capital idea (I do like how if the party helps out the wives for free that they get bonus XP).

The adventure isn’t long, reaching delve proportions, but then quality over quantity is paramount when avoiding a KotS-worthy grindfest. The adventure consists of two encounters tackling kobolds doing what they do best: cower behind shit while trying to goad the party into traps or hazardous terrain, while the last encounter includes a dragon with a twist skill challenge that allows you to–mid combat no less–convince it to change sides. As a bonus if you don’t kill it (the pathological pastime of all adventurers), it can team up with you for a few levels while you tour the Chaos Scar as your personal pet dragon. This is a very well written, short adventure with a twist that’s not too predictable.