Drmg101, Dragon
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DRAGON 1
SPECIAL ATTRACTION
39
Creature Catalog III
Two dozen more monsters for added AD&D® game excitement
Publisher
Mike Cook
Editor-in-Chief
Kim Mohan
Editorial staff
Patrick Lucien Price
Roger Moore
Graphics and production
Roger Raupp
David C. Sutherland III
OTHER FEATURES
8
Update from the chief
Gary Gygax
Whats happening in the TSR realm
10
All about the kender
Roger E. Moore
A long article on a bunch of short subjects
Subscriptions
Irene Swan
Advertising
Patricia Campbell
This issue’s contributing artists
David Martin
Larry Elmore
Roger Raupp
Dave LaForce
Marsha Kauth
Jerry Eaton
Joseph Pillsbury
Timothy Truman
Marvel Bullpen
Jim Holloway
Dave Trampier
Edward Wagner
Tony Mosely
Richard Tomasic
16
Plan it by the numbers
Frank Mentzer
Calculate your way to challenging encounters
18
For king and country
Paul Suttie
A different way to deal with the alignment issue
25
The role of books
-John C. Bunnell
Assessments of six stories gamers will appreciate
29
Charging isnt cheap
Peter Johnson
Ideas for creating and fixing magic items
37
The latest super-hero game reviewed
Jeff Grubb
Observations from one designer to another
62
And Adventuring To
Go . . .
Brenda Gates Spiehnan
If you thought the wolves were bad, just wait a few pages
DEPARTMENTS
3
Letters
56 Coming Attractions
91 Wormy
4
World Gamers Guide
69 The ARES Section
92 Dragonmirth
6
The forum
86 Convention calendar
94 Snarfquest
COVER
David Martin, whose work has graced the covers of a plethora of products in the gam-
ing industry, makes his first appearance on the front of DRAGON Magazine with this
action scene entitled Deadly Encounter.
2 SEPTEMBER 1985
Arent we all in
this together?
For PCs only
other PC races. And to help offset some of the
advantages that they do retain, these races are
forced to operate with a handicap when they
venture out into the sunlight. This is a logical
reason from the standpoint of game design, even
though its difficult to rationalize as a fact of
life in the AD&D game universe. Its times like
these when we have to remember that were
playing a GAME here, and once in a while
realism has to take a back seat to playability
By the way, I pronounce it "svirf-nebb-lin,
with the accent on the nebb. KM
Making money might be the main reason
why anyone goes into business; the point of
this essay is not to judge intentions. But
Ive got something to say about methods.
As the deadline for submitting advertis-
ing for this issue approached, we received
some copy in the mail for an ad that you
wont find inside. As all advertising does, it
had some glowing things to say about a
product put out by the company that was
paying for the space.
Yes, thats okay. Anybody has the right to
call their own product the best of its kind,
and we usually wont hesitate to publish
such an ad. Weve even used ads in this
magazine that referred to some other maga-
zine as the best in the business. Whether we
agree with someones claim or not is imma-
terial, and its not our place to judge any-
way that sort of comparative decision
rests with you, the consumer.
Feathering your own nest at the expense
of someone elses, though, is out of bounds.
The ad we refused to run was a combina-
tion of praise for one product and a blatant
put-down of a product put out by another
company in the gaming industry.
Advertising that builds up one product
while tearing down another is not a new
concept. Hamburger franchises, to name
one example were all familiar with, have
been doing it for years. But Id like to think
that the gaming industry is above that sort
of tactic, and I dont think thats being
naive or puritannical.
It would be a sad state of affairs if the
whole industry threw ethics and fair play
out the window and decided that the best,
or the only, way to get your money was to
try to persuade you not to spend it on some-
one elses stuff. Of course, things are no-
where near that bad but if we have
anything to say about it, things arent going
to get any worse, either.
Removing this ad from our schedule is
our way of striking a small blow in favor of
friendly competition. Am I just being naive
again, or arent we all in this together?
Dear Dragon,
I am bringing to your attention something that
I myself just realized. In “Demi-humans get a
lift” by Gary Gygax (issue #95), the aquatic elves
are not represented in the “Elves, Other” sec-
tion. Is this an oversight, or are the aquatic elves
to remain the same as usual?
Alen Parker
Portland, Ore.
do not
apply to aquatic elves because that sub-race is not
open to player characters. New
Sorry, no glow
limits are
only given for the races and sub-races to which
PCs may belong although, to be fain the new
benefits should also apply to NPCs of the same
races within the campaign. Aquatic elves should
be treated as described in the
Monster Manual.
The vast majority of them will be of 1st level
(1 + 1 HD), with certain higher-level leader
types present according to the number of elves
in an encountered group but since aquatic
elves do not use magic, there will be no magic-
users or spell-casting clerics in the group, no
matter how large it is. KM
level
Dear Dragon,
Mr. Findley’s article on the ecology of the will-
o-wisp (issue #99) was great. I have a question,
though. When a will-o-wisp is killed, does the
light keep emanating from its body? In other
words, can you use a dead will-o-wisp as a light
source?
Al Pace
Stratham, N.J.
Id say no, judging by the fact that the will-o-
wisp is able to regulate the brightness of its illu-
mination; if it loses control over the light, then it
loses the light, too. The answer would be differ-
ent if the light were some form of natural phos-
phorescence, but nothing in the creatures nature
indicates that this might be the case. KM
Deep subjects
Dear Dragon,
In Mr. Gygax’s article in issue #95, “Demi-
humans get a lift,” he states that the duergar,
drow, and svirfneblin “. . . will suffer severe sight
problems and sickness due to the exposure to
sunlight.” However, in the descriptions of the
three of them, only the drow suffers any penalties
due to exposure. I am using the descriptions of
the drow and svirfneblin from module D1-2, so
they might not be complete, although I think they
are. By the way, how do you pronounce
svirfneblin, anyway?
Racial inequality?
Dear Dragon:
“Tables and tables of troops” (issue #99) was
written excellently, but I cannot understand why
all the remaining character races were excluded.
In issue #95, demi-humans were allowed to attain
higher levels. With this official change, a PC
lighter of any race may reach 9th level (with the
exception of hairfeet halflings). This means that
other demi-humans could attract men-at-arms.
Would these PCs use the human tables and
simply substitute their own race for that of the
followers? Or would they get only human men-at-
arms? Would the normals be 1st-level fighters and
the sergeants 2nd level? What tables would
gnomes and halflings use since their height is not
favorable to cavalry — the dwarf table?
Robert March
Marlboro, Mass.
Todd Kiehn
Los Altos, Calif.
It could be that the penalties for duergar and
svirfneblin werent mentioned in their original
descriptions because it was assumed that those
races would only be encountered underground,
where sunlight is not a factor. But now that player
characters are permitted to be of those races, its
important to specify how they operate above-
ground; a subterranean PC is going to have to
come out of the darkness in order to be a viable
member of an adventuring group, unless youre
in a real strange campaign where all the activity
takes place below the surface of the earth.
The deeper reason simply has to do with game
balance. Drow, duergar, and svirfneblin PCs as
described in Unearthed Arcana do not have all of
the innate powers and abilities given for those
races in the FIEND FOLIO Tome, Monster
Manual II, and other sources because if they
did, they would be too powerful in relation to
This is a perfect example of the unplanned
obsolescence that has befallen a lot of our recent
articles, and which will be evident in some artic-
les yet to come. The large-scale rule changes that
weve published in the last few issues, and which
are incorporated into Unearthed Arcana, didnt
exist when much of our current crop of article
manuscripts were being accepted. In this particu-
lar case, James Yatess manuscript was accepted
many months prior to its publication at a time
when we didnt know that Gary was going to
DRAGON 3
The increased level limits for demi-human
characters, first outlined in the magazine and
further refined in
Unearthed Arcana,
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