I just got my prescription for the NapraPAC refilled again just now.
Good news: There are apparently so many coupons foisted on my healthcare provider by the vendor that I have three more months of freebie meds coming my way. (Don’t get excited; it’s basically just prescription strength Aleve and Prevacid.)
Bad news #1: When it’s time to pay for it in four months, the cost before insurance discount is $158/month. Yikes.
Bad news #2: My symptoms are starting to get bad enough that the Aleve isn’t preventing most of the problems any more. My left knee has been giving me crap since the weekend and now my left hand is starting to have pain and locking up. I forsee another major crash coming later this year.
The bad news about Races of the Dragon
: The two new races, the dragonborn and the spellscales are just awful. Apparently, someone out there thought that the default dwarf race wasn’t serious or grim enough, and gave us the dragonborn. Likewise, if you’ve ever thought that elves weren’t flighty and magical enough, the spellscale are for you. *gag*
The good news? Those only take up 31 pages of a 158 page book, making Races of the Dragon a very good 127 page book.
Kobolds, who are the stars of the book, get a lot of believable fleshing out, boosting both their links to dragons (but in a low-key way) and their status as underground low level menaces. (It turns out there’s a perfectly valid reason for them being cannon fodder in so many games.) The core kobold is also mildly tweaked to be a more playable race, and by burning a feat, there’s a mild variant kobold race that’s even better.
Half-dragons and the draconic template from the Draconomicon (reprinted here) get a chapter, including a monster class that allows a character to turn draconic and then eventually into a half-dragon without having to wait for the Dragon Disciple prestige class. The book also discusses the issue of exactly how, and why, there are so many draconic and half-dragon creatures running around. (Dragons are less kinky than you might have feared.)
The prestige classes aren’t as flavorful as the ones in the Draconomicon, there’s a counterpart to the Dragon Disciple, turning the character into a draconic character instead of a half-dragon (and more quickly). There are also prestige classes for most classes, although some of them are a bit quirky, like the Singer of Concordance, which is a plane-shifting hotel clerk of Io, or near enough.
Then follows a bevy of feats, which especially ones that boost sorcerers, kobolds, and other “dragon-blooded” characters.
There are also the now-obligatory substitution levels, with kobolds getting access to four of them (including the dragon-blooded sorcerer levels).
There are more spells than in the other races books, although Power Word: Pain is an overly powerful first level spell that you’ll likely see fixed in errata on the official Wizards of the Coast Web site very soon.
The new items and magic items are fairly nice, and include new-to-me draconic grafts.
The book is rounded out with more words in Draconic and a slightly different take on the Draconic pantheon (Kurtulmak is also detailed earlier in the kobold section).
While it’s not equal to the wonderful Draconomicon, Races of the Dragon finally makes kobolds a viable player race, makes them a really interesting foe and adds a lot of nice new stuff for sorcerers.
This is obviously a very targeted book, and if you’re not in the audience for what it’s got to offer, the book will offer little value. If you are interested in more draconic content or especially are interested in kobolds (as all right-thinking people are), Races of the Dragon is a home-run and a must-buy.
Want to rule your favorite message board? Want to have thousands (or tens of thousands) of strangers hanging on your every blogged word?
Wired shows you how. And yeah, it’s not hard to spot folks doing one or more of these techniques if you frequent message boards or blogs.
More fun with Wikipedia:
We all have thought Congress toys with the truth at times. Now, there appears to be proof of it at Wikipedia.
The publicly edited online encyclopedia says it has instituted a one-week ban on Congress from making additions or changes to the site. The ban follows discovery that a senior staff for a Massachusetts congressman authorized changes to his Wikipedia biography that distorted facts.
According to a newspaper investigation, staff for Democratic Rep. Marty Meehan made changes to Meehan’s biography that replaced negative yet accurate information with content having a more positive slant. Among the changes: removing references to Meehan’s promise to serve only eight years.
Further review uncovered thousands of changes made to other Wikipedia entries by House and Senate staffers since last summer. Unlike the Meehan edits, however, some changes weren’t complementary. In one instance, someone from the House wrote that Republican Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia “smells like cow dung.” In another, someone removed criticism of Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware from his Wikipedia page.
I have never personally smelled Rep. Cantor and cannot comment on the veracity of that entry.
Happy 29th, bebe.
We are celebrating the traditional way: By taking the kittens to the vet to be fixed.
(Well, we also went out for a nice breakfast at Shelly’s Place, an OK salad lunch at the Green Tree Inn and Wendy’s for dinner after the school board meeting. I also got her two original pages from “Wonder Woman” #162 custom-framed.)
