Nod by Nod - July 2010 (#3)

Over at https://landofnod.blog/ you can find posts by John Stater called Dragon by Dragon where he reads through an issue of Dragon Magazine and gives his thoughts about it. I recently bought a big pile of NOD Magazine and thought I would return the favor and go through each issue similarly.

NOD #3 is 123 pages and starts with Beastmen of Nabu. You may recall that NOD #1 had an article on beastmen but that was a generic race for gnoles, orcs, ogres, hobgoblins, etc. This article is for specific beastmen that can be used as races or classes. There are very many of them in this article's 16 pages!

• Goat people are great climbers, can see spirits, and can cast spells. (There are 24 new spells included in this issue!) 
• Monkey people are fast climbers, acrobats, great at picking pockets and magic tricks, and are masters at low comedy and vulgar insults. They also go berserk when brought down to 5 or fewer hit points. 
• Bear people are master brewers and wrestlers. Their mead can heal light wounds. 
• Falcon people are quick, can spring around and use whirling death during combat. 
• Lion people have a mighty roar that can cause fear in creatures with less hit dice. They also have a charge attack and can command animals. 
• Cat people have keen hearing, are light-footed, and have an evasion power. They can also cast a small number of spells. 
• Sheep people have a defensive stance, can ignore 1 point of damage, and have trap sense. 
• Onager people are fearless, stubborn, charioteers. 
• Horse people can command more henchmen, have better horses, and are better in mounted combat. 
• Fox people have great perception, can move silently, and know herblore and a few spells. 
• Night raven people are great at thievery and can prepare body parts to make them foci for casting spells. 
• Camel people sings desert psalms that can ward away animals and the undead also know 2 more languages than normal.
• Swine people are great dungeon delvers who have a nose for gold and can decipher ancient texts.

The next article is Gods of Nabu which covers Egyptian gods. This is the same format as Gods of Nod: Ophir in NOD #1 and describes 37 gods in 10 pages.

The Nabu Wastes is the feature article, a hexcrawl covering in 80 pages the eastern portion of the map in NOD #1. It is an Egypt-like land with dragon men, ant man, giraffe centaurs, along with the beastmen covered in the first article. There are also quite a few ancient tombs to explore.

Next is The Elementalist, a class that commands the elemental spirits to do their bidding. In effect, they can cast certain spells by performing a ritual and having an elemental spirit perform the spell. There are 12 new spells included.

Then there is The Druids of Nod, which gives us the druid class and 26 new spells.

Lastly, we get Phantastes, Part 2, which like in Part 1 found in NOD #2, we get some game notes. This one has notes on fairy food, Sir Percival, and the Alder maidens (tree spirits). 

I enjoyed NOD Magazine #3. You can get the PDF of issue #3 at Lulu or in print at Lulu.