I agree that it was the end of 1st core.  Ever try playing a Cavalier properly?  Always charging in with no thought?  Really made it tough on people who wanted to sneak around.

gkramer wrote:I agree that it was the end of 1st core.  Ever try playing a Cavalier properly?  Always charging in with no thought?  Really made it tough on people who wanted to sneak around.

As a DM, I hated that class!  I can't tell you how many times I tried to kill off my brother's PC.  It made for some real interesting encounters when there was a damsel in distress especially when the group was faced with impossible odds.  Needless to say he didn't make it out of the Demonweb.  Lolth was so much fun to play.  The class was way too unbalanced for my liking.

Zeb wrote:For what it's worth, our policy at the time was that only the first 3 books were core. That basically meant that modules and the like had to work with those books and not depend on material beyond those.

zeb

This makes good sense - when you consider NPCs and pre-gen characters for example they were always 'stock' types, and monsters apperaring in modules were almost always MM ones.

PHB, MM and DMG. Everything else was a supplement. Some good and some bad. I personally liked Greyhawk HC. I know it was billed as a link to 2nd Ed. , but I think it had a 1st ed. personality. UA is agreeably a "dangerous" product as it included some power gaming aspects into the rules system. But it was a breath of fresh air in many respects.

Agent Cooper wrote:I was not a big fan of UA.  That and Dragon Magazine articles were the bane of my DM existence in high school.  

It seems like every munchkin ego-maniac that tried to game with us had a copy of UA tucked under their arm.  It was the Munchkin Bible, and the book they loved to wave in front of DMs to legitimize their BS.  I had to slap down alot of non-core, over powered nonsense in those days, alot of which came straight out of UA.  

"I'm a Barbarian/Anti-Paladin/Ninja!"

Uh--No you're not, buddy!

/rant

Good rant, Agent Cooper!

The Munchkin Bible.....wish I'd thought of that one.

Always difficult to explain to the new, slightly younger guy that just because there is a Dragon magazine article about something does not mean that we are all now "doing it wrong."

My favorite Dragon NPC class series was one about a "Plethora of Paladins."  (The magazine number was somewhere near 100...on the over was a hot Elmore chick standing beside her horse...apparently looking about, puzzled by the sudden disappearnce of her pants.)

There were paladins for each alighnment...except that the chaotic neutral paladin was the only one equipped with combat bonuses and a jet rocket pack.  Guess which paladin everyone showed up wanting to play the next week?

g026r wrote:Dragon #106, Feb. 1986.

Yeah, that was a great Keith Parkinson cover, he is missed...