Category: DM Resources

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Incremental Encounters

A typical encounter has five PCs facing off against five equally powerful monsters and everything happens simultaneously. But what if the encounter was broken down into five incremental steps, each step representing one monster, and the outcome of each step determined the threat level of the step to follow?

Before diving into this scenario let’s not overlook skill challenges. What if, instead of automatically using five monsters, the DM used five complexity 1 skill challenges, or even a combination of five monsters and skill challenges? Assuming that monsters and skill challenges can be used interchangeably to create balanced and satisfying encounters, is this kind of incremental encounter viable? Absolutely.

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DM Resources Eberron

Secrets of Eberron Revealed (Part 12)

The affairs of Eberron’s surface dwellers are well known and well documented, but very little is known or recorded about the intelligent life that thrives beneath Eberron’s seas. Anyone who’s travelled by sea from Khorvaire to Xen’drik has likely dealt with the Sahuagin, but very few know about the vast underwater society of which they are but a small part. Beneath Eberron’s seas lie vast civilizations as complex and filled with as much intrigue as the cities of the surface world the largest and most cosmopolitan of which is Madidus.

Madidus is the undersea equivalent of Sharn. All intelligent aquatic races live, play and do business here. It’s the centre of underwater commerce. Much like Sharn, Madidus was built around a manifest zone. Where Sharn’s connection to the plane of Syrania allows building to reach heights that seem impossible, Madidus is connected to the plane of air which crates permanent pockets of breathable air. This allows surface dwellers to live in Madidus comfortably. The area of the city enveloped with breathable air is home to hundreds of people from the surface including Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Halflings. Few who end up here make any effort to leave.

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DM Resources Player Resources

What are the Best Feats? Final Round, Vote Now!

Before diving into articles inspired by everything that happened at GenCon this weekend, we’re continuing our quest to find the best feats in 4e D&D. With over 3,000 feats available to level 1 characters, narrowing the list down to a cool 10 was no easy task.

We began with 32 feats and asked you to vote for the ones that you felt were the best. After dividing the list in half, we took the sweet 16 and further subdivided the list down to the top 10. Beginning today you can vote for the very best heroic tier feats currently available in 4e D&D.

We began this whole exercise when we realized that an overwhelming majority of players took the same core utility feats for their characters over and over again, regardless of their class or race. It made us wonder if some feats are just better than others. The answer has been a resounding yes.

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DM Resources Player Resources

In Anticipation of GenCon: Convention Tips 6 for Players, 6 for DMs

GenCon, the best four days in gaming, begins on Thursday. With less than a week to go before the annual gaming extravaganza we here at Dungeon’s Master have decided to re-run a few articles from our archive that we felt would appeal to all the gamers heading to Indianapolis next week. Between now and GenCon we’ll continue running new articles but we’ll also be sharing some relevant gems from our archives in anticipation of GenCon. Enjoy.

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DM Resources Skill Challenges

Skill Challenge Next

I was done with skill challenges.

I don’t know how I got to this point. Perhaps it was my approach to them, trying to account for multiple options or not having a clear objective. Maybe I wasn’t introducing the skill challenge correctly, confusing my players. It’s possible that what I perceived as a skill challenge was better off handled with a few skill checks. It might even have been that I enjoy the tactical nature of 4e combat that I was willing to sacrifice one aspect of the game for the other. Finally, maybe it wasn’t me. Maybe it was my players who either found my challenges boring, lacking in direction, or they themselves desired more combat, less talk.

I’m not going to pretend to know the answers to my skill challenge troubles. What I do know is that this past week everything clicked.

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DM Resources Player Resources

What are the Best Feats? Round 2, Vote Now!

Today the winners of What are the Best Feats? Round 1 begin vying for the crown of best feats in 4e D&D. It started with a simple discussion. Were some feats better than others? All evidence seemed to indicate that yes, some feats were absolutely, head and shoulders, better than others. With over 3,000 feats available to level 1 PCs we kept seeing the same few appear over and over again on everybody’s character sheet. Knowing that there was a hand full of superior, more popular feats, our next step was to identify and rank them.

Last week we comprised a list of 32 contenders for the best feats in 4e D&D and asked you to vote. The top two feats from each group in Round 1 advanced to Round 2 which begins today. Round 2 will work slightly differently than Round 1. Rather than put the feats into groups of four we decided to just go with two groups of eight. You can vote for up to four feats in each group.

Since many of these feats received a nearly identical percentage of the votes in the first round, limiting the groups to only four feats each might have unintentionally eliminated or favoured some feats based on which ones they were matched up against. The larger field in each poll should give more accurate results as we try to figure out what are the best feats.

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DM Resources

Eenie, Meennie, Mini

I wasn’t a fan of minis until 4e came along. The introduction of very tactical combat made the conversion easy. I enjoy the different perspective that a large mini represents on the battlefield, how lines of sight might be affected and how the battle in general unfolds. Of course it has also led to several members of the Dungeon’s Master team to develop rather large collections of minis. Which is all to my benefit as a player and DM.

One of the questions I’m constantly debating is whether to use a mini that matches the monster they player’s are fighting. Now let me clear up that last statement. If the players are fighting a dragon, a beholder or a giant I use the appropriate mini. The dragon might not be the right colour, thought that’s usually not a problem, but the mini at least represents the monster.

Where I’m less specific is with humanoid combatants. My half-orc’s might look like humans, and my minotaurs might look like elves. As long as I have a mini on the table I’m usually satisfied.

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DM Resources Editorial

5 Reasons to Say No

I believe that players should play the characters they want to play. I’m a total 4e, say yes convert. It took me awhile to come around but when I’m the DM I encourage creativity and I say yes… a lot. However, I’ve realized that as much as I want to always say yes, there are times when I probably should not. In a few of these cases it’s actually caused me more grief in the long run.

Players make choices during character creation and between levels during character improvement. Normally I’m very hands off as a DM and let the players do whatever they want as long as it’s legal. But it’s this absolute freedom of choice that often ends up causing the most problems. If I’d only stepped in earlier and said no, a lot of the problems I’ve experienced wouldn’t have been problems at all.

It’s taken me a while but I’ve learned the hard way that just because a choice is legal in character builder doesn’t mean that the DM has to automatically say yes to every choice that the players make. In fact the more I’ve thought about it the more I’ve realized that sometimes the DM should step in and say no; especially during character creation. Here are five examples.

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DM Resources Player Resources

What are the Best Feats? Round 1, Vote Now!

As we so often do, Wimwick and I were recently talking about our characters. It began as a discussion on the ones we are running, but quickly encompassed the other characters we’ve run in the past as well as those run by the other members of our gaming group. We realized that almost all of the characters we looked at shared about half of the same feats. It didn’t matter what class or race they were, some feats kept appearing over and over again on everyone’s character sheet.

Our only explanation for this phenomenon was that some feats are clearly superior. Not just better, but far better. The result being that everyone chooses these feats. In fact, characters that don’t have these feats seemed considerably less powerful than those that do. It lead us to conclude that if there are some feats that are practically required for all character why do we have to waste a feat slot choosing them? Why aren’t these feats free to all character?

So we decided that moving forward for our home game we were going to allow all characters to take a few of these “superior” feats for free during character creation and see how things worked out. The challenge now was to narrow down the list and determine which feats should be included in the list of the best feats.

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DM Resources

How Do You Like Your Dungeon Maps?

Map by Dyson Logos


The Dungeon’s Master home group currently uses a rotating DM system. Each of us takes a turn and as we approach the end of our segment we cue who ever is on deck to get ready to take over in a week or two.

The rational for this is that none of us has the time to truly run a long term campaign and it allows each of us to take a turn being the DM. As players we experience different styles in encounter creation, story telling and pacing.

The aspect I’m enjoying is seeing what everyone does with their maps when their shot as the DM comes around.

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