From the monthly archives:

October 2009

Necromancer: Heroic Tier (Revised)

October 30, 2009

Today we revisit the Necromancer and powers for the Heroic Tier. One of the things I miss most from 3e are specialist Wizards. I’m honestly surprised that this hasn’t been addressed by Wizards of the Coast. Though I suppose they have decided to go in a different direction with the Wizard class in 4e. A big [...]

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Survive a Zombie Attack by Using the Zombie Survival Flowchart

October 29, 2009

Are you prepared for a zombie attack? Would you be one of the poor schlubs who gets eaten in the first hours of the zombie apocalypse or are you one of those fanatics who is ready for this unlikely, worst-case-scenario? If you’re anything like the team at Dungeon’s Master then you’re probably not going to [...]

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Skill Challenge: Unlock the Phylactery

October 29, 2009

In our earlier skill challenge, the PCs defeated a Lich and managed to find its phylactery. Liches are wily combatants and they plan for all contingencies, including having their phylactery found. If the PCs thought vanquishing a Lich was based on pure combat, then they didn’t do their research properly.
This is the second of two [...]

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Skill Challenge: Find the Phylactery

October 28, 2009

Defeating a Lich is not a simple as overcoming it in combat. Liches tie their life force to objects known as phylacteries. The phylactery can range from mundane to mystical. Each Lich has their own preference on what constitutes an acceptable phylactery. What Liches have in common is that their Phylactery is to be well [...]

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Skill Focus: Religion

October 27, 2009

The most common use for knowledge skills is to identify monsters and perform rituals. The knowledge skills tend to take a back seat to social and physical skills during most skill challenges. The knowledge skills are so tightly focused that most players assume these skills have a limited scope. But this doesn’t mean that they [...]

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Using Fear: Scare the Player, Not the Character

October 26, 2009

How do you scare a PC? It’s not as simple as you think. With any role-playing situation, the emotions of the PC need to be separated from the emotions of the player running the PC. So just because something scares Delian the Paladin doesn’t mean it’s going to scare me the player. It’s up to [...]

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Using Undead Intelligently

October 23, 2009

Hallowe’en is just around the corner and in the spirit of the occasion we wanted to look at undead and how to use them in your campaign. Of particular interest are intelligent undead and how you as a DM can use those interests to your advantage.
Vampires and lichs hold a special place in D&D lore. [...]

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Changes are Coming to the RPG Bloggers Network, Update Your Blogroll

October 22, 2009

Following up on Wimwick’s thoughts On the RPG Bloggers Network from this morning, I wanted to add a few additional things to the discussion. To the guys behind the scenes, thank you. Your hard work did not go unnoticed. The RPG Bloggers Network has been very good to Dungeon’s Master, and we’d like to think [...]

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On The RPG Bloggers Network

October 22, 2009

This past week has been a momentous one for the RPG Bloggers Network. The founding members have decided to step aside and hand the reins over to someone new. Of course this decision didn’t necessarily come about through a desire to move onto new projects, rather it was born out of conflict.
First, I must tip [...]

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Skill Focus: Diplomacy

October 21, 2009

After Perception, Diplomacy seems to be the skill used most often in my games. Any time your PC finds himself in a social situation you know that you’re going to end up making a Diplomacy check. But Diplomacy is more that just talking the talk. It’s usually about knowing what to say and how to [...]

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