Previews for December and Beyond

The previews open up with a reskin of the dehydrated man that you might have gotten from Gamma World Game Day–which I did not. It does basically the same thing, but gives bonuses to other skills.

Next month there’s Caverns of Icewind Dale, a winter-themed Dungeon Tile set. I’ve already got a lot of tiles, but I like the boxes that they’re coming in: easier to sort through them all for something I need.

Also next month, Dragon will feature a Channel Divinity article for Vecna. I’m glad to see that they are doing evil deities, as I’d like some more support with my tiefling paladin of Asmodeus. The feat Command Undead is previewed, which grants you a +1 to all knowledge skill checks and replaces turn undead with command undead. The feat power targets all undead in a Close burst 2 and targets Will. On a hit, you slide the targets, immobilize them, and cause them to deal necrotic damage to enemies adjacent to them. On a miss it instead dazes the undead. So, something either way.

Both the new Dungeon Master’s Screen and Legion of Gold debut in February. Here’s a shot of the screen:

Legion of Gold will–of course–add new origins, including demon, vampiric, and octopoid. Shit yes. During my dark times of playing Rifts, I really dug Splynn Dimensional Market, which had an octoman race that looked badass. If nothing else, there ya go for those wondering how to make the octopus-chick on the Gamma World box. There’s also options for vocations, such as soldier of fortune, mad scientist, and bounty hunter.

For monsters, we’re going to get more cyborgs, haunts, robots, saurians, and the lornak (a giant land squid). Never played any of the older Gamma World editions, so I don’t know if they are throwbacks from an older age.

As for the adventure…well, you start on Gamma Terra, but at some point its bang, zoom, right to the moon. It’s both habited and hospitable, assuming you don’t count all the monsters that dwell within crystalline ruins, wrecked habitation domes, and “forests of weird plants”. Characters start at levels 6 or 7, and should end up at 9 or 10, so combined with previous adventures it would be a simple task of getting from 1 to 10.

The preview for Heroes of Shadow, which comes out in March, gets quite a bit of coverage. The bit on Shadow Magic assures us that, despite all the villainous cliches that typically wield it, its not evil, just easier to get ahold of. Of course, they then preview some flavor text for the new paladin build: the blackguard.

In 3rd Edition, blackguards were a prestige class designed to emulate a fallen paladin. Sith Blackguards are no different, described as shadow warriors that focus divine power through a dark vice or dark emotion, cultivating dominance and fury to fuel their might. “Heroic” blackguards, on the other hand, stem from paladins who tried to exemplify a virtue, but were unable to control their anger (or some other emotion).

Necromancy and nethermancy will also be presented as two new magic schools. Necromancy seems to be more about animating physical undead, while nethermancy focuses more on spirits and ghosts. The spell summon shadow servant is featured, allowing you to conjure up a shadow skeleton (Necromancy) or shadow beast (Nethermancy). 

Token Making

A while back, my group and I decided to buy miniatures. Well, it didn’t work for us at all. Nowadays, it seems that buying miniatures is a luxury for people who wish to use them for their campaign. In the end, we decided to go digital by using Google Sketchup and someone’s huge ass screen as our battlemap. Though awesome as it was, we realized that combat time was increased as everything had to be managed by the DM. Then it hit me. I used to play with tokens back in the day, so why not buy them? Or better yet….make them!
With a budget of less than 50 bucks, I managed to make more than 200 tokens and two battlemaps with the help of reliable friends. Below are pictures of the tokens in the making, as well as the final (sort of,) product. If you are looking for tutorials you can go here for homemade dungeon tiles or you could go here for token making tutorials and/or tiles.

Laminating the tokens already printed:

Laminated strips waiting to be cut:

Final product:

Random pics:

With a laminated battlemap i can just draw on it with a sharpie and erase it afterwards with cotton and alcohol or nail polish remover (my mom is going to kill me).

Harrowing Halls Review

Just picked up a set of Harrowing Halls yesterday, and had time to punch ’em out and see what this whole 3D business was all about. The tiles themselves are mostly wooden textures, suited for interior mapping. This is good because as it stands, there really isnt enough to do buildings justice.

The 3D elements are kind of clever, I think. Most of the tiles have slots that you can use to construct simple shapes like cubes, with the exception of one that lets you build a staircase.

There is sufficient parts to build a few low, square platforms, and I think this is the first set that I’d recommend three sets so that you can get some better height variation going on. The only drawback is that you cant really use the 3D construction tiles because of the tabs sticking off of them. Not that there isnt a massive library of tiles out there that you can use instead, so whatever.

I do like the little “easter egg” from Tomb of Horrors.

Like the PH3, this set tries to do something ambitious, and I’m really satisfied with it as a start. While its not as detailed or “realistic” as DwarvenForge, its got the price advantage by a very, very, VERY vast margin.