Dragon+ Issue 32

I'm still playing catch up with Dragon+, the online magazine that is full of free D&D stuff! Every issue has .pdfs and piles of maps, alongside all sorts of other useful things.

Imagining the Ampersand: April Prime

Artist April Prime discusses some of the art she did for Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, including the snowy owlbear. 

This article has a lot of extra art that didn't appear in the book. There's like 10 different images of the knucklehead trout, included when it's cooked up.

She did the art for Angajuk, the whale. That adventuring party on the back of the whale is her home D&D group's characters!

In the Works: Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden

We learn some interesting factoids:

“The adventure did not cycle around Auril at first,” says D&D Principal Narrative Designer Chris Perkins. 

Xardorok, the evil duergar villain, is based on character from an old James Bond movie, Auric Goldfinger.

The Write Stuff: Dan Abnett

Dan has written tons of comics and he wrote Alien: Isolation, a game so scary that I quit playing after 20 minutes and have never gone back to.

It looks like he currently is playing 1st edition AD&D. I tried to go back to 2e in 2011 and man, it was weird. Group initiative was insane! I forgot that we house-ruled it. 

Apparently he got some slack for a photo of his 1e monster manual being all splayed out on a table.

Unearthed Arcana: Subclasses Revisited

We get a .pdf of some new subclasses:

Rogue: Phantom: "These rogues take knowledge from the dead and become immersed in negative energy, eventually becoming like ghosts."

I love the "Soul Trinket" idea - the rogue can take a sliver of a dying soul and use it to gain advantage on a bunch of stuff, and can ask the spirit in the trinket one question.

I really like this subclass! Not for the mechanical options, but for the flavor, which is a super-rare thing.

Warlock: The Genie: As a big fan of Al Qadim, you had me at "genie."

You get a "genie lamp" of your own, which you can magically enter and exit!

Over time, your appearance changes to resemble your genie, and at 14th level you can request a limited wish from the genie (replicating the effect of a spell of up to 6th level).

This one is also tremendous. I assume this stuff will be in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything?

Wizard: Order of Scribes: The spellbook takes center stage here.

One thing that sticks out: "When you cast a wizard spell with a spell slot, you can temporarily replace its damage type with the damage type of another spell in your spellbook, as your spellbook magically alters the spell’s formula for this casting."

So... you could cast fireball, and make it an acidball? Or a forceball? Crazy.

At 6th level, you can make spell scrolls just by touching a piece of parchment to the book!

At higher levels, the spell book becomes a hovering ghostly tome that you can teleport/switch places with.

All three of these are tremendous - the focus is on cool ideas and I love it.

This document brings forward an issue I have in D&D. Products come out, packed with new ideas, but then (for me, at least) get lost in time when everyone moves to the next thing. When I read these subclasses, I try so hard to take a mental note and remember that this "Phantom" subclass exists and that I need to refer to it when I use shadar kai in my games. But chances are, I'll forget.

Maps of the Month

This time around, we get maps from Theros and really, really nice maps of the "casino" lair of a lich from the Acquisitions, Inc. hardcover.

We also get maps of the legendary Green Dragon Inn from Expedition to Castle Greyhawk!

D&D Classics

There is a .pdf containing the details of the Green Dragon Inn from the Expedition to Castle Greyhawk book.

We also get some discussion of The Ruined Tower of Zenopus, a DMs Guild product linked to Saltmarsh.

Overall

Some issues of Dragon+ have more content than others. This one was definitely less beefy that the previous issue, but hey, it's free.