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DM Resources Editorial

You Make the Call – Questions About Rules (Part 2)

One of the DM’s Most important jobs is to keep the game moving. When we find ourselves in a situation where we don’t know the correct rule, we trust the DM to make the call on the fly based on his experience to ensure the game continues. Afterwards we look up the correct ruling in the usual places: PHB, DMG, Rules Compendium, online compendium and online forums. Yet from time-to-time we just can’t find a satisfactory answer to our rules questions. In these circumstances we’ve decided to turn to you, the people who read our blog and play D&D to help us make the call.

In You Make The Call (Part 1) we asked you to provide you thoughts and insights on strange situations that occur when you’re prone, and the ability to adjust the size and damage of area attacks. In this installment we want you to make the call on being dazed. These situations don’t necessarily come up often, but they can have a significant impact on the encounter so we want to get it right.

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Don’t Fight to the Death

Doesn’t it seem kind of dumb for monsters – or PCs for that matter – to fight until they reach their very last hit point? Don’t any of the combatants in D&D have any sort of survival instinct? What ever happened to the flight part of fight or flight? In most combat scenarios the PCs beat up on the monsters and the monsters don’t back down until they’re dead. Unless the monster has good reason to fight to the end, why would they? The simple answer is that they shouldn’t.

Eventually all battles should reach a point where one side either surrenders or flees. Fighting to the bitter end is just stupid. Yet this is how D&D works. The PCs fight the monsters until one side (most often the monsters) is decimated. In those very rare occurrences when one or two monsters manage to flee the players will often complain that the DM robbed them of a totally victory (at least that’s been my experience). I think that we need to introduce a little bit more common sense into D&D combat and I know just the way to do it.

As it stands the PCs won’t back down because a balanced encounter gives the PCs a very reasonable chance at success. It’s how the game is designed and I’m the first to admit that as a player, I like it this way. Worrying that you PC might die every time they went into battle would make for a very different type of combat system and it absolutely wouldn’t be the D&D we all know today. But what if we made combat a just a little bit more dangerous? And what if, at the same time, we gave more of the monsters the instinctual awareness that they shouldn’t stick around and fight to the death unless they have a really, really good reason to do so? Here’s how we do it.

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DM Resources

Greatest Hits 2011: Two-Hit Minions

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 2011. 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.

Of all the articles I wrote in 2011, the article on two-hit minions is one of the ones I’m most proud of. Most of our articles are tips, tricks and advice for how to improve your game or make it more fun; rarely do we try and introduce any new mechanics. The two-hit minion was an exception. It was a mechanic that Sterling first suggested almost two years earlier, but when we actually started using the two-hit minions regularly this article was born and the feedback was very positive.

It took a few sessions of play testing before I believe I found the right balance for running two-hit minions, and each time we tweaked the mechanic the players confirmed that it was getting better. I’ve been using two-hit minions in my games, especially D&D Encounters, for about six months now and they always make the game more interesting. The players love the rush that comes from mowing down a bunch of minions, but they really love that some of those minions have the strength to take a hit and get right back up.

I’ve also learned that the key to two-hit minions it not to overuse them. This is good advice for minions in general, but is even better advice when it comes to the two-hit variation. By switching it up and mixing regular minions in with two-hit minions, players stop making broad assumptions about monsters until they actually have a chance to engage them. They no longer assume that six identical minis are going to be minions that will fall with one hit. Now they take into consideration the possibility that some or all of them might survive a blast from the controller so they need to be ready for that eventuality.

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DM Resources Player Resources

Greatest Hits 2011: Make Magical Item Identification Harder

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 2011. 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.

We all like getting stuff, whether it’s in real life or in game. If it’s new, it’s exciting. In the case of magical items they have the added benefit of being powerful; likely more powerful than the items you currently possess. But being able to discover everything about an item over the course of a short rest, a mere 5 minutes in game, is a lot like receiving a gift without wrapping paper. Where’s the surprise? Where’s the suspense? And more importantly where’s the joy that comes from finally discovering what’s actually beneath that disguised exterior?

By making magical identification harder you take something that was once a thrilling part of the game, and add the excitement back into getting something new. When you don’t know what the magic sword actually does (beyond providing a plus or two) it’s like looking at all the wrapped presents underneath a Christmas tree with your name on them. You know that eventually you’ll get to open those presents, but until then there’s the anticipation of what they might be? Is that box a new video game or a pair of dress socks? Does that small packable contain a gift card to your favourite store or is it a last minute bauble from a discount store?

By making magical identification harder you bring back anticipation. You make the PCs and the players live with the suspense of not knowing what that item will be. And when they finally do discover the item’s full potential it’s just like being a kid on Christmas morning and finally getting to open all those presents that you could see but not open in the day days and weeks leading up to Christmas.

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DM Resources Editorial

Greatest Hits 2011: My Love Affair With Minions

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 2011. 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.

I love minions.

It has been almost a year since the original article was published and my love affair with minions has not decreased. If anything the infatuation has only increased. Since this article on minions was published I’ve taken the DM hat off and returned to the other side of the screen. Yet, even as a player I love minions. 

I take great joy in watching how my DM deploy’s his minions, how he frustrates me and other players with their tactical usage. It’s most obscene, but I take a perverse joy when all the minions gang up on the controller. I attack something else for a round just to see what will happen. 

In my mind minions truly are the best tool in the DM tool box that 4e introduced. The ability to add swarms of easy to kill, easy to use enemies is fantastic. Minions can quickly change the dynamic of any combat. Player’s are often left guessing on which monster is the minion during the initial rounds of an encounter. Where minions really stack up is when their synergies mesh with the other monsters in the encounter. 

As a player I feel truly heroic when I dispatch multiple foes with a burst or blast attack. Sure, they only have 1 hit point, but that isn’t the point. The point is what minions truly represent in the game. The fodder. My characters are supposed to be powerful, there are opponents that I am supposed to be able to vanquish with impunity. Minions fill that role. 

I hope you enjoy another read of this article. Since it was first published it has become one of our most searched articles and whether you are a DM or a player I’m sure you’ll find the value, joy and satisfaction that minions inject into combat. As I’ve said, my love affair with minions stands. I don’t see us breaking up anytime soon.

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Greatest Hits 2011: The Little Details Make a Big Difference

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 2011. 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.

I’m a big fan of adding in little details to my adventures and encounters as often as possible. In my home game my players know that I do this (at least they do now, almost a year after I wrote the original article) and enjoy the decision making and in-game rationalizing that often accompanies their discovery. They have to decide – Is this something important or not? Should we spend time and resources making this detail into something significant?

One other thing my players are learning is that as the little details become more common in my encounters, some of these details are actually quite significant to the adventure. Adding the little details for flavour is fine, but if that’s all you ever do then the players will get bored and start ignoring them. But, if you make a little detail important every once and a while you remind the players not to take any of them for granted.

The idea of using little details to really flesh out a scene is usually a very good idea. However it can backfire, especially if these little details are uncommon in your game. As soon as you do add something a little bit quirky the players will immediately latch on to it as they did in the example I used in the original article. They know how D&D works and if you’re describing it there has to be a reason.

I’ve actually found this is a real problem with D&D Encounters. In order to keep each week’s encounter tight and succinct the authors and editors often trim the fat and provide just what you need to know. This makes any little detail stand out. What I’ve been doing (or trying to do) is to add a little bit of flavour every week. That way when a little detail is highlighted in the adventure, alarm bells won’t immediately go off for all the players at the table. Since they don’t know if the detail is important or not they spend time investigating, and the result is usually some pretty good role-playing. When done right, these little extras will often make an encounter that much more memorable.

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Greatest Hits 2011: Let Monsters Use the Treasure

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 2011. 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.

In our home games the monsters will often use magical items against us (treasure bundles we’ll earn if we defeat the monsters). Where this has become a bit of an issue is when the monster is using a magic weapon and the person who claims it wants to drastically change the weapon type.

For example, in a recent encounter we were fighting Githyanki. They were armed with Silver Swords, a character-defining item for this race. When we defeated them we discovered that one of them was using a +3 silver Greatsword sword against us. The PC who claimed the treasure (because he badly needed a weapon upgrade) was a Rogue who used a dagger. Normally the DM is supposed to just wave his magic DM wand and say “the item is now a dagger because that’s what you, the PC, need it to be,” but in this case the DM decided to do the more sensible thing and said no.

He was willing to change it from one big sword to another, but he felt that going from the biggest blade in the game to the smallest was too much of a stretch. The player was ok with this ruling and we actually though the DM made the right call.

In a another recent game we fought Salamander archers and one was using a Great Bow +3. Again, when the PCs defeated the monsters and claimed the weapon the DM would not allow the bow to become anything other than another kind of bow. And again we were ok with this ruling even though the rules say otherwise.

This is the only real drawback we’ve had when letting the monsters use magic items against the party. You either have to equip the creatures with the exact weapon-type that one of the PCs can use or you have to suspend disbelief and say that the treasure bundle says “+3 weapon” so the PC can make it whatever weapon he needs it to be. In our games we’ve opted to go the former route. In those rare circumstances where we can’t use the form of the item we find we have to expend time and resources to transfer the enchantment or we just sell it. More often than not we sell it because that is easier.

So DMs, before you give the monsters items to use against the party give some thought to how you’re going to handle the inevitable transfer of the item from monster to PCs. Will you let them change the weapon to a more suitable type or will you break the rules and insist that if it was a Great Axe when the monster used it against the party it has to be a Great Axe if anyone claims it as their own?

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No New Magic Items

What if it was no longer possible to make new magical items? We don’t often focus on the magic item creation side of the game; we just assume that somewhere in the background new items are being created. When your PC needs new magical items he can usually got to “Ye Olde Magic Shoppe” and purchase what he needs. But if the supply of new items stopped how would the economy of D&D change and what would that mean for your campaign?

How things play out really depends on whether or not you’re introducing this idea to an existing campaign world where magic used to be plentiful and is about to dry up, or if you’re establishing this as the norm for a brand new setting. If the PCs and other inhabitants of the world don’t know any differently then this is just going to mean a shift in the way your players think about acquiring items. If items have always been rare then the world’s mentality should reflect this. The idea of a party walking around and each PC having 10 or more magic items would be absurd. But if this is a sudden change then the only way to acquire new magical items is to find them in a treasure horde or take them from someone else. Both situations present interesting challenges and both could make for a very interesting long-term campaign.

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DM Resources Player Resources

Nationality and Character Backgrounds

Most players select a background for their PC during the character creation process. In many cases it’s done for purely mechanical benefits. Being from this location may give you a resistance to fire, while this one may give you a bonus to your initiative. In all cases it also gives you access to a new skill or a bonus to one specific skill. When it comes to power gaming, no one overlooks a background benefits.

The background options that I see taken most often are the geographic backgrounds from the Forgotten Realms. Usually the player doesn’t really care that his PC is from Waterdeep, Akanul or Cormyr, they just want to additional benefit that being from those places provides. And that’s fine. It’s not the ideal reason to choose a background but it’s well within the rules. Any character can have any background.

This season during D&D Encounters: Beyond the Crystal Cave the adventure strongly encourages the DM to insist that the PCs choose one of the three backgrounds provided. This helps give the players a good in-game reason as to why such a rag-tag and mismatched adventuring party would work together. Being from one of the three areas directly impacted by the happenings in the adventure gives PCs a strong motive for accepting the mission.

While at first a few of the players in my group resented being told they had to choose one of only three options (none of which they felt provided particularly appealing benefits) after only two sessions these same players really started working their background into the way the characters behaved. Without any prompting from me, the players instilled within their characters a sense of national pride.

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Gaming in Silence

Playing D&D is a social experience. It’s often as much about getting together with your friends as it is about killing monsters. But I’ve noticed that we spend a lot of time talking about stuff that isn’t even related to the game. This has really become a big problem in public-play games at my FLGS. I’ve noticed that over the past few sessions of D&D Encounters I’ve had to ask people (with alarming frequency) to stop talking when it’s not their turn and pay attention to what the other players are doing, and that got me thinking: what if you weren’t allowed to talk during an encounter or an entire gaming session? How would things change?

To begin this kind of gaming experiment, the DM must make it clear to the players right from the outset that anything they say, anything at all, even if it’s something that their characters obviously wouldn’t say, is going to count as an utterance by their PC. Absolutely everything the player says his character says. No exceptions. Silence is going to be the key to success. Excessive noise will either force the PCs to fight something they know they have no chance of defeating (hence all the sneaking around) or it will lead to a final confrontation that is a lot more difficult because the PCs kept talking. In either scenario, the stakes should be incredibly high.

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