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Mark Meredith
United States
Great Lakes
Illinois
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I picked up Draconomicon: Metallic Dragons the other day.
Right from the start, the image on the cover is fantastic: An enormous dragon knocking a human off a cart being pulled by rhinoceroses while other humans flee. You had me at “rhinoceroses,” Richard Baker, you had me at “rhinoceroses.”
I’ve always liked the Draconomicon books, both 3e and 4e. They’re chock full of new adventure ideas and fluff, and the Metallic Dragons book is no exception.
A lot of the opening text is similar to that in the Chromatic Dragons book, but I haven’t done a side-by-side comparison, so I couldn’t tell you if they’re identical or not. I doubt it.
I’m not going to move chapter by chapter through the book, pointing out the good and the bad, just a few random things that really stood out.
The various Skill Challenges are great: requesting transport, debating, and even begging for mercy. I’ll be using that Skill Challenge whenever the heroes face of against a dragon they know they’re going to lose to.
I’ve always liked the tiered campaign ideas, which give you a brief synopsis of what a campaign could be like, from Heroic tier, through Paragon and ending in Epic. There are six whole campaign ideas here, ripe for the picking.
I’m a big fan of the artifact: The Blood of Io, a dragon-shaped decanter made of crystal and filled with the blood of the first dragon. Drinking it gives you all kinds of resistances, and it gets pissed of if you kill both chromatic or metallic dragons, so be careful where you’re sipping it.
There’s some awesome characters in the Dragon Hall of Fame, but I’m not sure how much I want to talk about them, since I plan on springing a few of them on my players, including “The Old Man with the Canaries” (read the book and you’ll see what I mean.) I’m also a big fan of Jalanvaloss, the perfect person to introduce to the city of Sharn.
That’s about it for my review. I encourage everyone to go pick it up if you’re in the process of a 4e campaign. There’s enough here for you to drop in just about anywhere.
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King of the Dead
United States
Portland
Oregon
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Thanks for the review. I've always seen these on the shelf and thought they look really cool but I've never thought to crack them open.
It sounds like there's more here than I would have thought. I guess I've been avoiding them because I had the feeling they were going to be for higher level play. Your mention of campaign arcs including heroic tier intrigues me very much.
I'll definitely be giving this a closer look thanks to this review.
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