I’ve noticed a disturbing trend during my last few gaming sessions. The Fighter consistently deals more damage than my Rogue. We’re 9th level, almost at paragon, and I’m struggling to deal more damage than the Fighter. Fundamentally, something seems wrong when the defender can dish out more damage than the striker. My numbers should be consistently higher on a round for round basis, instead my jaw drops as I hear how much damage he’s dealing.
Author: Wimwick (Neil Ellis)
Moving from room to room in a dungeon has historically been handled by drawing the map and the DM asking the party how they advance. Do they turn right or left at the t-junction. In 4e, the amount of crawling through a dungeon has been reduced with more focus given to large rooms and the encounters they contain within. Indeed, even traps are now incorporated into combat encounters. An adventuring group in 4e is more likely to find a pit trap in a combat encounter than randomly placed within a dungeon corridor.
Pirates and adventure on the high seas haven’t always been the typical D&D adventure setting. However, almost all PCs are required to travel by ship at some point in their adventuring career. The skill challenge below tackles the issue of surviving during a raging storm at sea.
Today is all about Eberron. The Eberron Player’s Guide is finally in wide release and earlier today we posted the skill challenge Maintaining the Karrnathi Army. As an added bonus, here is another Eberron-specific skill challenge.
The lightning rail is a key component of transportation and daily life in Eberron, so when service is disrupted the commerce of the Five Nations is effected. This skill challenge provides the DM with a quick encounter for the PCs that could lead to further adventure and intrigue.
Eberron is here and with our continued focus on skill challenges I thought I’d combine the two. My favourite nation in Eberron has always been Karrnath. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s ruled by a Vampire, the militant nature of the nation or that Atur reminds me of Las Vegas. Either way, I thought a skill challenge about the Karrnathi Army’s undead shock troops would be fun. Enjoy.
Movies and television serve to inspire DMs as we dream up new ideas to run our players through. The Princess Bride is a movie that, on top of providing great drama, incorporates humour into its narrative. The movie will never get old, remaining fresh and entertaining. So, as I reminisced about the Cliffs of Insanity, the Fire Swamp and true love I pondered… could this be turned into a skill challenge?
Of course, the answer is yes, and so I present in all its down and dirty glory The Princess Bride (only the good parts) via skill challenge.
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Is The DDI Now A Must Have?
It seems that the Dungeons & Dragons Insider (DDI) is living up to my wildest expectations. In his recent Apersand column (subscription required), Bill Slavicsek provided a lot more detail regarding the new content that Wizards of the Coast will make available during the next year through the DDI.
For those of you who haven’t shelled out for a DDI subscription yet, I’m going to summarize the high points of what’s on the horizon. Hopefully by the time you finish reading this you’ll want to become a DDI subscriber.
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Knowledge Is Power
I was looking over the pre-generated characters Wizards provided for Worldwide D&D Game Day on May 23. Something interesting about the Eldarin Wizard, Althaea caught my eye. This character is trained in four knowledge skills. This seemed unusual to me as I find there is a tendency to be one dimensional when training skills. Physical characters take physical skills, charismatic characters take social skills and everyone ignores the knowledge skills. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that ignoring the knowledge skills is often a fatal decision made during character creation.
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Rewards Beyond Experience
You’ve just defeated the powerful red dragon. Now it’s time to reap the rewards. As expected, the DM hands out treasure according to the treasure tables and provides experience points. The PCs take an extended rest and then they move onward towards the next challenge. This tried and true system has served us well for years and provides as the primary measuring stick for a PC’s success. Although this is the normal and expected means of progression for the game, there are other ways to reward the PCs beyond heaping new magic items on them or giving them enough XP to level.
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Change Is Coming To The DDI
Wizards of the Coast has announced changes to the Dungeons & Dragons Insider starting with an increase to the price of your subscription. The good news is that this price hike is accompanied by improvements to DDI and a slew of new content. I don’t think any of us expected the prices to remain the same forever, and it was really only a matter of time before we were asked to pay more money. But in light of all the materials Wizards is promising over the next year, the price increase seems justified and fair. And hopefully the revenue generated from increasing the price of DDI will be put towards the release of the online tools that WotC has been promising us since day one.
The new pricing will take effect on July 2, so I encourage you to either extend your existing subscription or sign up soon if you’ve been holding off. Doing so now will ensurer you get all the upcoming goodies at the lower price.