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Review: “Dragon Magazine Annual”

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products_dndacc_242070000_lgpicWhen WotC announced that the venerable Dragon and Dungeon magazines were becoming digital-only offerings, the reaction was controversial at best. The magazines are only available in PDF, and to subscribers of the D&D Insider service. As of now, there is still no way to get the magazines without a subscription to the whole package of DDI. Not too long after the details shook out it was revealed that some of the content would be reprinted in Annuals. Dragon Magazine Annual is the first of these collections, with Dungeon Magazine Annual following next May.

Unfortunately, this first Annual has a few flaws that keep me from recommending it as a product. Namely, it doesn’t seem to have a solid audience. Obviously, if you already have a DDI account, you’ve seen this all already, and even if not, many of the articles are still available for free in PDF. The articles are a mix of player-focused and DM-focused, with some mixture between but many articles being useless if you primarily DM or play. Additionally, many of the articles are a niche audience anyway. While the articles ARE some of the best that DDI has produced, their usefulness to a specific possible buyer of the book makes it difficult to recommend it to a wide audience.

Here’s what you get in the book, with links to the original article posting:

As you can see, something of a mixed bag. You get two monster-focused articles, two organization write-ups, two PC race descriptions, two articles about gladiators, and so on. I would much rather see a book just about monsters (that mixes in the ecology, demon, Fey court, etc. articles) or a book of locations or a book of character supplements then something that is this mixed.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Much of the content is quality. “Wish Upon A Star” is invaluable for Warlocks with some very strong rules options (Sacrifice to Caiphon and Student of Caiphon especially) and some great descriptive text of evil stars. The two articles on gladiators are essential for that style of campaign, and push the rules in an interesting direction (especially for martial characters). Mithrendain is a fantastic location especially suited for Feywild adventures.

In short, I recommend many of the individual articles in this book. But you can get many of those articles individually, DDI subscriber or not. And even if you want a printed book, you’re likely to have large portions of the book that are of little use to you, with little sense of organization to why these particular articles are included in the compilation. For my money, I don’t see much use for this book. It does make me look forward to the Dungeon Magazine Annual, however, which is more likely to be more focused on just being a collection of printed adventures, and far more useful to have in a printed collection.

Comments

  1. Did they fix Yeenoghu? He had an ability when bloodied that was mentioned but not printed in his statblock. That pissed me off so much when I saw it the first time.

  2. Yeenoghu has no ability when bloodied, but I don’t see a reference to one either, so maybe they fixed it the other way 🙂

    Forgot to mention this in the review: from a brief cursory look, they didn’t do any noticeable changes to the rules content, but added some sidebars (mostly explanatory stuff).

  3. There is a bit of errata in the book. For example Punisher of the Gods, the epic destiny from the Planes article, got their biggest gun changed from a free action point on a crit to a free at-will on a crit. That stops a few infinite loops.

  6. @Ishi: I’m not sure how you’d get an infinite loop from a free action point, because I believe the rules as written each character can technically only use one action point per encounter. I’ll have to double check this, but I’m pretty sure that’s the case.

  7. Although WotC is pumping up the annual to DDI subscribers as a worthwhile product, I see this book as more of an advertisement for DDI aimed at the non-subscribers. The audience is “anyone who plays D&D that doesn’t have a subscription”. By including two of everything, it covers the basis of what a subscriber to DDI can expect to see each issue. I don’t need the Annual. But I think it is a good move, assuming it is a product intended to get more subscribers.

  9. Certainly those are fine goals, I just wish they had A. not filled half the book that non-subscribers could get anyway, and B. focused more on making it a useful book to those people. A player-content focused book would go a long way towards showing what DDI can do for players.

  10. The thing that struck me reading it was that they’d specifically included the articles with “Weapon Mastery” multiclass feats and fighting style feats, things that hadn’t been conceived of when the Martial Power book came out (as the domain feats, using the same system that was applied for the fighting style ones, appeared in Divine Power) or else they might have had a home there.

    This makes me think that in addition to providing a lure for new subscribers, the Annuals might also end up serving the purpose of “canonizing” useful additions to the rule set that don’t otherwise make it into a book.
    .-= Alexandra Erin´s last blog ..Screen Monkey for Sunday =-.

  12. Thing is, the Annual doesn’t even seem to have the best Dragon content in it. Specifically, the “Ecology Of…” articles for both Genasi and Drow are incredible player resources with tons of good rules and fluff. The Class Acts series had essential powers not just for Warlock, but also Warlord, Wizard and Swordmage.

    Supposedly they’re re-thinking the organization of the two mags, and I hope so, because this book demonstrates their schizophrenic approach to them so far.

  13. @Bartoneus,

    The punisher of the god’s immortal curse power, as written in the article [now nerfed], specifically stated that you got an AP that you could use before the end of your next turn and it did not count towards the normal restriction of uses of action points.
    Against a helpless monster, for example, assuming you hit it, could generate standard actions over and over until the creature was dead.

    Does anyone have the updated text of the PotG epic destiny immortal curse power? I just hit lvl21 and chose this as my ED and will probably change it since it got nerfed. The whole reason I took it is because my paragon path lets me hand out action points to party members, and it seems that the ED no longer generates APs. :[

  14. @Jake Heidt: Thanks for the explanation, I’m glad they fixed that if it allowed an endless string of actions. Though I would argue there should only rarely be a case where a monster is completely “helpless” and if that happened in my game I would do something to break the string or encourage the player to break it off.

  15. @Bartoneus,

    Level 1 wizard daily power ‘Sleep’ + 1 failed save = unconcious (save ends). With players holding action to all go after the target (assuming failed saves) everyone can gangbang the helpless monster.
    Our party is level 21 and we coerced our wizard to keep that level 1 power because of its ability to make monsters helpless.

  16. @Jake Heidt: Sleep is a really good spell, though I don’t know if I’d still keep it even after level 21 because there start to be a lot of other spells that effect large areas with massive effects & damage (though no other wizard spells in the PHB knock a target unconcious like sleep does). Looking through Arcane Power they’ve filled in some higher level spells along the same lines as sleep – Face of Death (level 9) causes the helpless status and Evard’s Ebon Bindings (level 19) dominates.

  17. @Bartoneus,

    The reason our wizard has it is because, as you state yourself, it is the only spell that currently makes the baddies helpless after one failed save. The amount of damage that a party dishes out with focus fire, each hit critting, is enormous. When faced with a difficult foe, the ‘hold action until after the monsters turn’ with the wizard unleashing sleep, and using magic items to reroll saves and apply saving throw penalties is a solid tactic, time has proven.

    There is another 1st level daily power that still seems better for the party than any other options as of yet, is the warlord power lead the attack. The entire party gets +6 to hit the target. Many times the DM has placed higher level enemies that our wizard and our cleric have a very hard time hitting, due to not getting the proficiency bonus to hit with their implements.

    Back to the choice of sleep – the wizard had retrained it to higher level, but it is simply because it makes the bad guys helpless, and it is currently the only wizard power to do so, that the party pleaded with him to get it back. When every party member lines up and crits the big bad evil dude, they tend to turn into a pink mist.
    The other wizard spells are very useful, especially for controlling large battlefield / group situations, and he has other daily powers that we are all very thankful for (Destructive Salutation, holy hell!), but sleep is the bees knees when we want a few select bad guys dead.

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