Welcome to the second installment of our Beginner’s Guide to Dungeons & Dragons. In our previous article we discussed the history of D&D and what a new player requires to get started in the hobby.
Today’s installment tackles the issue of character creation. There is a lot that goes into this aspect of the game and considering all of the elements carefully will lead to long term enjoyment while running your player character (PC). If you don’t give character creation proper consideration then you may not enjoy the campaign.
This series is primarily aimed at new players, but I would encourage long time fans of the game to chime in with any tips they have when considering character creation.
Welcome to the first article in a series aimed at new player’s who’ve just discovered the great game of Dungeons & Dragons. I remember when I discovered D&D, I was left to my own devices to learn the game beyond the rules. Fortunately we have the Internet today to assist new player’s and answer any questions they might have.
While this series is certainly aimed at new players, seasoned veterans are just as likely to find nuggets of useful information within and I certainly encourage existing players to add their own nuggets of information in the comments section.
Rituals are the aspect of 4e that I have invested the least amount of time in. This is mainly because I’ve only played classes that don’t receive the ritual casting feat. It is also because I find the ritual system unfriendly. Now, I should clarify the ritual system isn’t difficult to understand, in fact it’s dead easy. What’s unfriendly about rituals is that they feel tacked on to the game; they don’t seem to really have their own place.
It’s very clear to see where rituals originate from in terms of previous editions. Rituals are the utility spells that never had a place in combat. Rituals are, however, a great way to add flavour to any D&D game. As the Dungeon’s Master team transitions into a new campaign, and I into a character who knows over 20 rituals, I have given rituals a renewed focus through my D&D lense. My objective is to find a way to integrate rituals more fully into my game and that might require some tweaking of the rules as written. Fortunately, Ameron is the DM and if there is anything we’ve learned through writing this blog it’s to be flexible regarding new ideas and in the spirit of 4e, to say yes.
While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2009. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.
The Necromancer
The sixth post at Dungeon’s Master was the Necromancer: Heroic Tier, published way back on February 4, 2009. When you consider that two of the preceding posts were launching soon and our official launch post, the Necromancer series was the fourth content post on the site. As a result the series of articles on the Necromancer have a long history. They have also been one of the most surprising series of posts we’ve written.
The articles were originally written to address the lack of specialist Wizards. The release of 4e and the creation of power sources altered the way several classes worked in previous editions and I felt that the Wizard class was most deeply effected. I always enjoyed the idea of specialists and felt that the Necromancer series was a way to address that. I honestly expected to see more about specialist Wizards in Arcane Power, but that was not to be.
As I mentioned, the Necromancer series has been with us since the beginning and has been one of the biggest surprises about the site. The keyword “Necromancer” is one of the most used terms that drives traffic to our site from search engines. Ameron and I were genuinely surprised when we consistently saw that the Necromancer articles were getting multiple pages views a day, months after being published. This trend has not slowed down. What really surprises us is if you just search necromancer through Google, which is how the majority of people find these articles, I’m not sure if we are ranked in the first ten pages. If you add 4e D&D to the search, we come up a bit higher but those keywords are used less frequently.
As a result of the frequency the original articles were being found through Google we decided to write a follow-up piece on the Necromancer. This article, found below, is our take on the Necromancer from a role playing perspective. Resulting from that article were some comments and criticism on the powers for the original series which prompted a revision. You’ll find the links to the original series and the updated powers contained within the article below.
We hope you enjoy our take on the Necromancer. We’ve been enjoying the traffic it has generated and we plan to do more with the class in the future. We also haven’t forgotten about specialist Wizards, they are still an issue that I think have a lot of potential to explore in 4e D&D to push the power system even further.
While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2009. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.
The concept of the dungeon crawl has had a great deal of debate since the release of 4e. The design of encounters in 4e, has changed the nature of the dungeon. Rather than a large, traditional-style dungeon that players explore five feet at a time, dungeons in 4e are more about large set piece encounters. The dungeon is little more than a series of hallways connecting the rooms that drive the plot or adventure forward.
The focus of this article was to debate whether the dungeon crawl could be removed in favour of a skill challenge. The article generated a great deal of discussion amongst the community. Looking back on those comments it’s apparent that the community has a great deal of interest in trying out new concepts. It was also apparent that there is a great deal of passion and debate about how this classic aspect of Dungeons & Dragons should be handled.
Without desiring to launch an edition war, we decided to bring this article out of the archives for a second look. There are a great many concepts presented that we at Dungeon’s Master will be following up on in the new year.
The Holidays are here. Time to kick back and relax with family and friends. Perhaps you’re blessed with a few days off work or a slower paced environment for a few short weeks. As a D&D player your mind will invariably drift to your favourite hobby and how you can get a few more hours of game time in.
My normal gaming group is on holiday hiatus and we won’t reconvene until the new year when we begins a new campaign. It’s actually more of a ressurected 3.5e campaign that’s been given a face lift and fresh legs with 4e, but I digress.
Thanks to everyone who has designed and submitted a dungeon or encounter for our contest. We’ve enjoyed reading all the entries so far.
If you haven’t submitted your entry yet and are worried you might not get it in on time you’ll be happy to know that we are extending the deadline to Tuesday, December 22, 2009. Full details about the contest can be found at the official contest post.
The reason for the extension is that Wizards of the Coast is running a holiday themed encounter contest. We recognize that many of you might be interested in submitting an entry, so we wanted to give you a few extra days for our contest.
Of course you could always double dip. After all, we’re likely to get far less entries here, which increases your chance at winning something!
We thank everyone for their submissions and wish you the best of luck with both our competition and the one being held by WotC.
One of the fundamental design concepts behind skill challenges is that they provide a mechanic for large scale, out of combat encounters. Skill challenges were meant to assist in advancing the story. But the story doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The actions of the PCs should bring about reactions from NPCs or the environment they are in.
This is a problem with many of the skill challenges I’ve encountered, they don’t evolve. We’re guilty of it too, many of our skill challenges are static. Certain checks provide certain information, make enough successful checks and you can get on to the next combat encounter. In other words skill challenges feel like they’re tacked onto the game. I know I’ve participated in more than a few where I wondered what I should be doing next. This is because the skill challenge didn’t evolve. Nothing new happened.
One of the joys of 4e Dungeons & Dragons is that the various tiers of play open the game up, changing the flavour subtly so that it always stays fresh. Recently my regular gaming group decided to try some epic tier Dungeon Delves. In fact, we decided to go for broke and take on the level 30 delve.
It was a blast and no where near as tough as I thought it would be, which is good because it increased my enjoyment factor.
Each of the tiers in 4e D&D adds an additional layer of complication to the game and as you can imagine the epic tier has highest level of difficulty. This is mainly because you have so many options. Not too many options, just lots of options.
Combat in 4e Dungeons & Dragons is a tactical affair. The effective use of conditions and the importance of movement demand that an effective party do more than just attack. The party needs to attack as an efficient cohesive unit, where every resource is used to best advantage.
This requires that someone call the shots. A default assumption might be for the leader in the party to be that person, after all leaders lead. But is that really the best decision? Is the leader dazing, stunning, slowing, moving or immobilizing their opponents?
Didn’t think so, no that duty rest primarily with the party’s controller.
