Author: Ameron (Derek Myers)

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Editorial Player Resources

Giving Hollywood Stars D&D Levels

Have you ever wondered how NPCs interpret your character’s level? Do they look at you any differently when you’re level 3 then when you’re level 8? What about when you reach paragon tier?

Just because your PC has earned enough XP to advance a couple of levels doesn’t necessarily mean that the world will look at you any differently. But as you continue to gain additional levels you should eventually start to distinguish yourself from other adventurers.

Your level represents a wide variety of things about your character. It’s tied directly to the amount of XP you’ve earned, or in other words the deeds you’ve accomplished. It also reflects the amount of wealth and material goods you’ve accumulated. And don’t forget that as you earn levels you’ll acquire power and influences in social and political circles.

Based on these criteria, I’ve taken a stab at drawing parallels between D&D character level and the career successes of famous Hollywood movie stars. I’ve put together a list of some of today’s most famous and popular stars and tried to rank them according to their corresponding D&D level.

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DM Resources Skill Challenges

Solving the Skill Challenge Problem – Ensuring Everyone Contributes

Has this ever happened to you? The DM sets the scene and you realize that the party is about to face a skill challenge. As the fifth or sixth player to act you only get to make one meaningful skill check before the party achieves overall success. It was a good encounter because during some of the low complexity skill challenge you don’t even get to act before the party achieves their goal.

What makes this situation an even bigger problem is that most players try to use their best skill even though in many cases it makes more sense (from a story perspective) for them not to. They know that they’re only going to get one or two shots at making a meaningful contribution to the skill challenge, and they don’t want to be the guy who flubs the check and wracks up a failure.

The Dungeon’s Master team has come up with a way to ensure that every player gets to contribute during a skill challenge and that every player feel comfortable using the skills that make the most sense to complete the objective and not just the one or two skills that they happen to be strongest in. Here’s what we’ve come up with.

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: March of the Phantom Brigade (Week 1)

This week we began D&D Encounters season 4, March of the Phantom Brigade. At my FLGS we saw a swelling in our overall number as we had enough players to run two full tables of six this week. The last time we had enough players to run two tables was during chapter one of D&D Encounters Dar Sun. I think the idea of a 20-week commitment for season three scared a lot of players away. In any case we began this week with a full house.

My table had four brand new players, none of whom had ever played 4e D&D before. We ended up using five of the six pre-generated characters. The party consisted of Belgos the Drow Ranger, Brandis the Human Cavalier, Fargrim the Dwarf Slayer, Jarren the Human Wizard, Valenae the Eladrin Cleric and a Battlemind. As it turned out this was a perfect balance.

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Editorial

M.I.A. – The Tarrasque

Orcus. Demogorgon. Lolth. All three are extremely powerful foes. They graces the covers of Monster Manual 1, 2 and 3 respectively. These are the elite, showcase monsters of 4e D&D. They are among the toughest that 4e D&D has to offer. Few other creatures are as powerful or dangerous as these three. Defeating any one of them demonstrates that your party truly is the best ever.

And don’t forget about dragons. They too deserve inclusion on any list of the most powerful creatures in D&D. A level 30+ dragon is certainly a suitable foe for the climax of any epic tier adventure.

And then there is the Tarrasque. As I was browsing through the Monster Manual (as I’m wanton to do from time to time) I stumbled across the entry for the Tarrasque completely by accident. As soon as I saw it, I read over its stat block and I realized that Tarrasque has been overshadowed in 4e D&D by the monsters I described above. The creature once agreeably the most powerful monster in any Monster Manual is suddenly a forgotten footnote.

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DM Resources

The Groundhog Day Effect in 4e D&D

In the 1993 director Harold Ramis brought us the Bill Murray comedy classic Groundhog Day. For those unfamiliar with this movie, Bill Murray’s character awakens every morning to discover that he’s reliving the same day, February 2, over and over again. After watching the movie again last week I started thinking about how to use the Groundhog Day effect in an upcoming D&D adventure.

I saw this playing out in two possible ways.

  1. The PCs would find themselves in a situation similar to that of Murray’s character in the movie where they actually had to relive the previous day over again.
  2. The PCs had to face the same encounters a second time after defeating them once before.

Both scenarios allow the players to learn from their previous mistakes. How often have you used a daily power in the first encounter and then realized that it would have been more effective against the creatures in the second? How often have you held onto a daily power and then regretted not using it? The same thing goes for actions points.

The Groundhog Day effect, in essence, gives the PCs a do over. Once they realize that they’re facing the same encounter again they can choose to alter their original course of action.

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands – Report Card

Now that D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands is finished its time to look back on this season and provide some honest feedback.

The Name Game

When I first heard that season 3 was going to be called Keep on the Borderlands I was immediately excited. The classic adventure of the same name is one of my all time favourite D&D modules. Borrowing the familiar name was a good way to get some old-school gamers excited about D&D Encounters.

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands (Week 20)

This was it, the final culmination of everything we’d worked for over the past 19 weeks. The heroes helped defend the keep over the past three weeks while Benwick and his allies, the black dragon and the lizardman army, attempted to take control. This week the heroes had their final showdown with Benwick. There were only two possible outcomes: The death of Benwick or the death of the PCs. Let the showdown begin.

Knowing this was the final week of D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands we had a great turnout. We had a party of eight including Berrian, Eldeth, Hagen, Quinn, Sola, a Cavalier, a Rogue and a Runepriest. The extra party members meant the DM had to balance the encounter by adding more monsters. Add to the mix three soldier minions, the priestess Chendera and a friendly bailiff named Kendon and the battle was a very busy and crowded scene.

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Month in Review

Month in Review: January 2011

We began January with what turned turned out to be one of our most inflammatory articles to date. It created a lot of comments (the most we’ve ever received on any article) and polarized the online gaming community. We also covered a wide variety of other topics in January including the latest DM app for your iPad, action points, henchmen, conflict resolution strategies,adventure hooks, skill challenges, LFR and D&D Encounters (season 3 and season 4).

If you missed any of the excitment throughout January this is you chance to get caught up. Below is a recap of everything we ran during the last month. We encourage you to read any of the articles you might have missed or to revisit some of your favourites.

We want to thank everyone who visited Dungeon’s Master throughout the month of January, with a special shout out to everyone who left us comments. We measure our success largely based on what you, the readers, have to say. We welcome your feedback and encourage continued debate and discussion on every article we write.

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Player Resources

D&D Encounters: D&D Fortune Cards

Included in the D&D Encounters season 4: March of the Phantom Brigade DMs kit was information about the new D&D Fortune Cards. Here’s what Wizards of the Coast provided along with instructions on how to distribute the free cards earned when players accumulate enough Renown Points.

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Player Resources

D&D Encounters: March of the Phantom Brigade – Pre-Generated Characters

D&D Encounters Season 4: March of the Phantom Brigade begins on February 9. Today we’re sharing copies of the pre-generated characters. When comparing these characters with the ones provided over the past three season I have to say that these are by far the best yet.

Not only are the characters built better, but the character sheet layout is fantastic. Finally we’ve got all of the skills actually listed on the character sheet. I was also impressed by the fact that on each character sheet some tactics are provided. This will be a tremendous help for newer players and should speed things up considerably.

Each character also has a difficulty rating from 1-3 stars indicating how much experience is required to easily run each PC. Again, I think this is a fantastic improvement.

One thing that is missing is alignment. I guess Wizards figured that it’s up to the player to determine their own alignment and run the character accordingly.

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