Dragon 427
Compilation
By Ed Greenwood, Aeryn "Blackdirge" Rudel, Jon Green, John Rossomangno, Jeff Morgenroth, Claudio Pozas and Matt Sernett
This month, we brush away the dust of ages and reveal primordial beasts that lived before the rise of dinosaurs, or after their extinction. Plus, Nerull, Levistus -- and traits such as bravery, pride and mercy that can help to define your hero.
Talk about this magazine here.
The CD: Nerull article is ok, but not that useful I'm afraid. The Reaper's Blade feat is basically a worse Turathi Weapon Training (which is rarely used) for Nerull worshippers, the CD power is laughably bad as an immediate reaction (still bad as a free action) and the paragon path is reminiscent of the Psion's Thrallherd, which isn't good either. It would be cool if the bound soul's attack did anything besides 1d10+stat damage, but as written it's not very threatening at all.
I like the epic scythe though, very powerful.
Here's the conclusion of my review of the CD: Nerull article over on 4enclave. I hope the author and editors take note:
"This article was obviously written with a top-down approach. This sometimes produces interesting and even good results, but not in this case. Unfortunately the author forgot that his content doesn't exist in a vacuum. It has to compete against every other piece of content written for 4th Edition, and frankly, it's not a fair fight.
There's no reason to fight with sickles and scythes over better blades like daggers, rapiers and longswords, so Reaper's Blade is useless. The Channel Divinity power is simply crap, even when compared to native CD powers that divine classes get, so there's no reason to ever take it. The paragon path, while it does something pretty unique, also does it badly, so why should anyone ever take it over a myriad of other more powerful options?
I'm disappointed that both the author and the editors don't seem to grasp the simple fact that content needs to be at least equally good as existing content or do something completely new, in order to be usable. Since they don't, what we get instead is pagefiller. I can also fill page upon page with words, but I at least try to make it worth the reader's time. Since apparently the authors and editors don't make that effort, I can't say I'm unhappy that the magazines are coming to an end at the end of the year."
Going dark
i will not be renewing my DDI subscription once dungeon & dragon magazine go on hiatus.
There will be no reason to continue to give hasbro any more of my cash without the magazine content.
it will be an incredible challenge to get me to restart my subscription.
The idiots who made this decision deserve to be fired.
I actually don't hate the paragon path. Changing all necrotic to necrotic and radiant starting at level 11 is a pretty nice ability that bypasses and even reverses most of the problems with choosing a necrotic leaning character theme, and while the summon isn't great, it's an allie for flanking, it has a friendly concealment aura, it has a basic attack, so if I'm understanding correctly it can threaten opp attacks, and its only a minor to summon it each and its available each encounter. The daily I actually like. Combined with the encounter power, that's four little dudes, that can all attack with a single standard action each round for the rest of the fight. Sure, it's not a lot of damage, but that damage is necrotic and radiant. In a radiant boosting party, that will add up extremely quickly, as you start exploiting radiant vulnerability up to four times for each of your standard actions.
It's not great. But it is probably the best take on the necromancer character concept I've seen out of 4e, apart from maybe reflavoring a shaman.