Author: Ameron (Derek Myers)

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DM Resources

The 5-Minute Work Day: Solutions

What can you do when the 5-minute work day is killing your campaign? The PCs are a bunch of narcoleptics who need to take a nap as soon as they finish a fight. They can’t believe that you really expect them to keep adventuring after they’ve completed one whole encounter? They’ve already used some (or all) of their daily powers and expended a few healing surges. In their eyes you’re a terrible DM to place these unrealistic expectations on them.

Don’t worry; we’re going to help you. Yesterday we addressed the fact that you should Blame the Players for the 5-Minute Work Day. But if they’re not having any of that and still insist that it’s your problem then we have some ideas to help smooth things out.

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DM Resources Player Resources

The 5-Minute Work Day: Blame the Players

Do you want to know why the 5-minute work day is such a big problem in 4e D&D? The players. That’s right, I said it. The players are to blame. DMs are constantly looking for ways to fix this problem and I’m saying that it’s not their responsibility to fix it. Players are to blame and players need to shoulder the burden of fixing this problem.

There’s been a lot of recent discussion on the blogs about how to eliminate the 5-minute work day, referred to by some as the bed problem. In short, the problem is that players want to take extended rests as often as possible and DMs are finding it difficult to come up with good reasons to say no.

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Editorial Skill Challenges

Really Hard Skill Checks

Have you ever needed to roll over 20 to succeed at a skill check? If you’re a combat-heavy PC then the answer is probably yes, but what if you’re a well rounded PC with decent attributes? Does your DM ever make a DC so difficult that it’s practically impossible to succeed? With very few exceptions most DMs won’t present DCs that are out of the reach of the average PC. My question is why not? I know I do when I’m the DM.

There’s been a lot of discussion about the actual numbers when it comes to skill checks and DC. We already covered this issue last week in Bauxtehude’s articles Exploring Skill Checks and the New DCs part 1 and part 2. The point I want to discuss today is whether or not DCs should ever be out of reach to all but the very best and most highly trained characters?

Too many players focus too much on combat and forget just how important the skills are to the game and to their character. Players need to realize that feats and powers that provide bonuses to skills are just as vital to victory as the feat that gives bonuses to attacks and damage or powers that deal multiple weapon damage.

By presenting circumstances where incredibly high DCs rear their ugly head, the DM reminds players that they shouldn’t expect an easy victory all the time. These reminders need to be nailed home for out of combat encounters even more than for combat encounters.

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands (Week 11)

Using the keys found in each of the previous two rooms the heroes opened the doors and entered the vault. They’d found the treasure room. Now all they had to do was find the treasure. The only question now is what kind of guardians will they have to defeat to gain their reward?

Our party had six members this week: Berrian, Eldeth, Hagen, Quinn, Sola and another Wizard. We began the encounter by recapping the events to date for one of the new players. It’s amazing just which details players remember and believe are important when compared to what actually happened and what is actually important.

As the back-up DM for my group I have a copy of the adventure, just in case I need to step up and run an encounter or two. I also use it as a reference after Wednesday night’s game while I’m writing up the weekly article. This gives me a lot more insight into what’s actually going on and is one of the big reasons I try not to be the decision-maker for our party.

When the other players recapped the events from the previous 10 weeks I have to bite my tongue and not chime in with important details that they forgot or overlooked. Fortunately the DM of10 does jump in with subtle reminders when this happens, but not always. This is a problem that happens all the time in D&D, but I think it’s even more prevalent with D&D Encounters. After all we only do one encounter a week. After 10 weeks we’re bound to forget some of the details. Unfortunately for us, forgetting those details, even from just a couple of weeks back, made things a lot more difficult during this week’s encounter.

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Month in Review

Month in Review: November 2010

November was great month here at Dungeon’s Master. The D&D community was abuzz with the release of the new character builder and we couldn’t help but join in on the discussion and debate. Also in November we looked at the art that shaped the D&D worlds of Dark Sun, Planescape and Eberron, we looked at alignment in 4e D&D and we asked you to stop abusing dragons. There were the familiar staples throughout November including D&D Encounters weekly coverage, more Secrets of Eberron, and a detailed look at skill checks and the new skill DCs from D&D Essentials.

With our neighbours to the south celebrating their Thanksgiving last week, we would be remiss if we didn’t take this opportunity to thank all of our readers for visiting Dungeons’ Master, especially those of you who keep coming back again and again.

If you missed any of the great articles we ran in November, this is your chance to get caught up.

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DM Resources Editorial

Stop Abusing Dragons!

Dragons should be like Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster – often talked about but rarely, if ever, seen. Just because the second “D” in D&D stands for Dragons doesn’t mean that you have to use them all the time. Overusing Dragons amounts to nothing more than abuse. Leave the Dragons alone and leave them out of your campaign.

Call me old school but I believe that Dragons should be feared and revered. When the PCs face a Dragon they should be scared. There should be no smug air of confidence. Any time a Dragon is part of the combat there should be a very real chance that PCs will die. However, very few DMs seem to hold this belief any more. It seems that Dragons have become the standard go-to villain for many adventures, especially low-level adventures. Just look at a random sampling of LFR (Living Forgotten Realms) adventures and D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. From where I’m sitting this amounts to nothing more than Dragon abuse. Stop throwing Dragons at every party!

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Book Reviews

The Dungeon’s Master Book Report

Have you read any of the D&D novels? Hundreds have been written over the past 30 years if you look at all of the different campaign settings and worlds. With new books coming out every month it’s difficult to know which ones are worth reading and which ones you should pass on. Today at Dungeon’s Master we’ve launched a new page called The Book Report. This permanent new page will help you decide what to read next.

When I can’t play D&D I find that reading D&D fiction is a pretty good substitute. I read a lot anyway, so it only makes sense that I’d pick up the novels set in the Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Greyhawk, Ravenloft and Eberron (sorry Dragonlance). It’s not exactly the same as playing D&D, but there are many similarities. I find that the novels often serve as a source of inspiration for my campaign (when I’m the DM) and for the type of characters I might want to play (when I’m a player).

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands (Week 10)

This week’s encounter picked up with the party still trekking through the dungeon. Our party was made up of the same five heroes that entered the dungeon last week: Berrian, Quinn, Sola, an Assassin and a Wizard. It looked like this encounter was going to be nothing more than straight up combat with minimal role-playing opportunities. That was until Sola decided to shake things up a bit.

Before the party opened and passed through the doors, Sola had two things she wanted to discuss with the party. Her first suggestion was to re-activate the statue before they left the room from last week’s encounter – that way if anyone tried to follow the party deeper into the dungeon they would have to deal with the trap. The party agreed that this was a good idea; unfortunately we were unable to re-activate the trap.

Sola’s second suggestion was about division of treasure. Splitting gold three ways seemed unfair. After all the party was doing all the dangerous work. She was also not convinced that Benwick was being 100% honest with the party. So if the PCs decided to keep all of the gold what could Benwick and Gorn do about it? After all, they wanted to keep things quiet. If silence was that important then they’d have no recourse against the party if we changed the deal. If Gorn’s true interest was in the Dwarven Ruins as he said then as long as we gave those to him he should be content, if not a bit irked. The rest of the party had misgivings about not standing by the arranged agreement, but they said they’d think about it and we’d figure it out before we left the dungeon.

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Editorial

Review: Dragon Chess

Heads up D&D fans, there’s a new board game on the market called Dragon Chess. It takes traditional chess and makes it more exciting by adding new pieces – namely Dragons – and expanding and reshaping the chess board. Adding a new piece to chess and calling it a new game might seem like a strange and possibly disastrous idea, but it’s not. In fact it’s brilliant! By adding the new pieces and changing the configuration of the board it becomes an entire different game than the chess you’re used to playing.

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands (Week 9)

Level 2. It took nine weeks, but we finally made it. In addition to this week’s write up we’ve got level 2 versions of the pre-gens available for download below. This week’s encounter began a few days after the events from chapters 1 and 2. Our DM waved his Wand of Revisionist History and we suddenly remembered things differently now that we’d had a week to think about it.

After returning to Restwell Keep and turning Ronnik over to the guards, he was tried for his crimes. The evidence the PC already acquired was quite damning. Ronnik was found guilty after only a few days of deliberation and is scheduled for execution. The PCs spent some time trying to find anything to prove of disprove Ronnik’s innocence since the revelations that happened during the last encounter. All they found was more damning evidence including confirmation that Ronnik purchased supplies from the nearby outpost that were later found in the Cult of Tiamat hideout. No one in the keep had anything good to say about Ronnik either. It turns out he wasn’t very popular.

After a few days rest, Benwick invited the party to dinner with the hint of a new job opportunity. Once at Benwick’s home he introduced us to the captain of the watch, Gorn Hammerfall. He explained that Gorn is a direct descendent of the Dwarven bandit lord Greysen Ramthane, a former resident of the keep. Before Greysen was overthrown by Nerath’s forces he hid his wealth somewhere in the keep. Gorn has found the bandit’s cache but needs our help getting it. He’s concerned that if Lord Drysdale (the current lord) discovers the loot he’ll keep it himself even though it’s Gorn’s by right.

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