Month: April 2011

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D&D Encounters Player Resources

D&D Encounters: Dark Legacy of Evard – Preview

With the thrilling conclusion to March of the Phantom Brigade only days away, we’re looking ahead to the next season of D&D Encounters. The next adventure, Dark Legacy of Evard sets the bar even higher as D&D Encounters continues into its fifth season.

The Adventure

This article is spoiler free, even though I am sharing some exciting tidbits. I want to begin by thanking Wizards of the Coast for listening to feedback. Every season they’ve improved the quality of the adventure, often based on feedback from the field. This adventure is no exception.

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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: Dark Legacy of Evard – Using Leveled Up PCs

Should players have to begin at level 1 again? I know that Wizards of the Coast wants all character to start on equal footing with 0 XP, but is this absolutely necessary? After all, some of the players have come out every Wednesday for over a year now. This is going to be the fourth time that they’ve worked a character up to level 2 or level 3 and once again they’ve being asked (forced) to start all over again.

What makes it even more insulting this time is that there are no new pre-generated characters. So if you’ve been using the PCs Wizards provided not only do you have to go back down to level 1 but you have to begin anew using a character you’ve already seen advance at your game table.

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D&D Encounters Player Resources

D&D Encounters: Dark Legacy of Evard – Pre-Generated Characters

D&D Encounters: Dark Legacy of Evard (season 5) begins on Wednesday, May 11. Although the pre-generated characters provided are the same ones from last season, we’ve created a few of our own.

This is the first time since D&D Encounters began that Wizards of the Coast has not provided six new pre-generated characters. For season 5 we’ll be seeing a lot of familiar faces in the party, namely the six heroes that were introduced when March of the Phantom Brigade began 13 weeks ago. Belgos, Brandis, Fargrim, Jarren, Keira and Valenae all return for another season of D&D Encounters. Just to be clear, these aren’t leveled up versions of the pre-gens, these are the exact same level 1 versions.

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: March of the Phantom Brigade (Week 12)

March of the Phantom Brigade, encounters 11 and 12 could be played in any order. Of course, my table did encounter 12 first. So last week we only covered the events that took place during the encounter 11 parts, skipping over encounter 12 until this week. A bit confusing I’ll grant you, but it worked really well. Be sure to check out the D&D Encounters: March of the Phantom Brigade (Week 11) field report if you haven’t already. That should help clear up any confusion.

Last week at our FLGS we ran a double session covering encounters 11 and 12. The heroes had the opportunity to explore the two rooms that made up the main floor of the Dwarven Monastery before heading down to the caverns below. The adventure clearly indicated that the PCs could explore the rooms in whichever order they wanted to. In order to avoid any spoilers for groups that chose to run encounter 12 first, we simply ran both encounter back-to-back.

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Player Resources

Exploiting Racial and Class Abilities: Dwarven Resilience

The ability to heal your character without assistance from the party cleric was one of the biggest changes in 4e Dungeons & Dragons. It gave every character the opportunity to recover from a devastating attack by themselves. In the category of healing themselves, none are better than the Dwarf. Now, I’ve already stated the Dwarves Are The Best Raceand today I want to examine their defining racial feature: Dwarven Resilience.

Second Wind is a great ability allowing an player to use a standard action to heal. However, let’s be honest, no one likes to use their standard action for anything but rolling dice on an attack power. As a player I feel slightly cheated when I use my second wind. I recognize that it’s a tactical decision, but I would rather be using my standard action for attacking and rolling dice!

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DM Resources

Building Better Monsters Part 4: Monster Themes and Implementing Your Designs

If you’ve read this far you’ve got the goods to design a monster, so now it’s time to think of your creation as part of the bigger picture, as a denizen of a universe. You’ll need to consider how your monster relates to the world around it as well as other monsters so that you can determine how to role-play them and how they will act in combat.

There are loose themes that the most monsters will fit in if your campaign fits into any of the better-known genres. The themes for monsters are based on creature type, location and its association with other creatures.

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DM Resources

Building Better Monsters Part 3: Making the Monster Fit the Bill

One thing that keeps coming up is the idea that monster design should be elegant, graceful, smooth and all these other flowery and juicy sounding words. What I mean to say in more direct terms is that your monster needs to realize its design goal with as little effort from you while DMing as possible. When your monster hits the grid and it’s time to throw initiative, the party is going to immediately do its best to murder your new creation. As a result your monster is going to have very little time to make a good impression.

In music one of the mistakes young musicians make all the time is not playing expressively. They practice a piece for ages before they perform it and come to know its subtleties and complexities very well, but their audience doesn’t. In order for people to understand the piece of music on first hearing the way that the musician has come to understand it over a period of weeks, the musician has to accentuate its good qualities so that they are readily apparent.

As the DM you have the very same problem with your monster. Any trimmings that don’t further your goal for the monster should be removed. Strip the monster down to what abilities it really need because it’s only going to get a few rounds of combat to use them.

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

So you’ve got your idea for your monster and you know what you want it to do and how you want it to function in your game. It’s time to put those plans into action. There are a lot of considerations to be made and it can be daunting to figure out where to begin. My outlook is that the best place to start is anywhere. The following considerations are not placed in any special sequence. As you read each heading remember that you can never be too creative.

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: March of the Phantom Brigade (Week 11)

During their time in the library last week, the party discovered the floor plan to the Monastery. They knew only two rooms were on this floor. Even if there was more undead within, how difficult could it be to explore those two rooms and kill anything that shouldn’t be there? The heroes were about to find out.

This week at our FLGS we ran a double session at both tables. The heroes had the opportunity to explore the two rooms that made up the main floor of the Dwarven Monastery before heading down to the caverns below. The adventure said that the PCs could explore the rooms in whichever order they wanted to. Since the rooms were likely to just be two back-to-back, hack and slash encounters with minimal role-playing, we decided to run them both tonight. My table decided to explore the Meditation Room (the week 12 encounter) first. The other table decided to explore the Sleeping Quarters first. But by the end of the night we’d all completed both encounters.

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Class Discussions

Exploiting Racial and Class Features: Fey Step

Knowing you can teleport once per encounter as a move action is like having a get out of jail free card in your back pocket. No matter how bad things get, if you’re conscious on your turn you can get yourself out of a bad situation. It doesn’t matter if you’re prone, bound, marked, surrounded or immobilized – Fey Step will give you options other characters in the exact same situation just won’t have.

There are also amazing, non-combat and role-playing implications that accompany the ability to teleport. Regardless of your class, your Fey Step will often give you access to areas that other characters can’t get to as easily, if at all. All you need it a glimpse of where you want to end up and if it’s within your range you’re there instantaneously. This makes it exceptionally difficult to keep Eladrins anywhere against their will.

Fey Step may not have any offensive implication like other racial powers (take the Dragonborn’s Breath Weapon for example), but you can just as easily build a competent and interesting character around this power. Improving your Fey Step has the added bonus (in most cases) of improving any other teleportation your character makes. With that in mind there are a few classes that provide access to a lot of great teleportation powers and really let you exploit Fey Step.

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DM Resources

Building Better Monsters Part 2: More Than the Sum of Its Parts

In Building Better Monsters Part 1 we talked about the inspiration for monsters and how to identify the ideas that make up a monster design, mainly the monster’s form and its function. This time around we’re digging into the stat block. Every DM has read a stat block before but they’re worth paying close attention to. Stats are the functional manifestation of the monster, and stat blocks are the way that your ideas about monsterhood will be recorded. As such stat blocks are a sort of monster design fundamental, a rudiment for DMs.

You’ve come up with your own idea for a monster so it is time to realize these ideas mechanically. You want to have your design support your plans for your creature as elegantly as possible so that when you get to the table your creature behaves how it ought to with as little effort from you the DM as possible. You have an idea of what you want that monster to do, and good design will let you do that more easily. In order to put all the parts together gracefully a monster designer needs to have a good understanding of what all the parts at their disposal are so that they can put them together creatively.

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