This morning we published an article called Make D&D Better, Remove Fighters From the Game. In this article, Bauxtehude attacked the defender role, specifically the Fighter. We expected that his view on this topic would be unpopular, but we didn’t expect the level of negativity and disagreement that resulted. Bauxtehude has long held the opinion that he expressed earlier today and he choose to express his thoughts in a provocative manner.
Defenders suck. Well, maybe not ALL defenders. There are those rare exceptions where a player has come up with a particularly imaginative build like a Warden/Druid hybrid that turns into a swarm of bees and embraces the primal forces of nature. The defenders I’ve got a real beef with are Fighters, specifically any Fighter built like our good friend Conscore McSwordy.
Today we let Bauxtehude off the reigns. He’s got some very strong opinions about defenders. After listening to his ranting at the game table for the past year I buckled and let him have his say on Dungeon’s Master. I may not agree with everything he says in this article but I wanted to give him a chance to rant about it. I leave it to you, the readers, to put him in his place and let him know just how wrong he is about his stance on Fighters. – Ameron
I think we all have a Conscore McSwordy at our gaming table. You’ll recognize him by his heavy armor and shield (giving him an incredibly high AC), a starting Constitution score of 20 or higher and very little going on upstairs. Fighters built like Conscore McSwordy are simply annoying. I particularly hate that they can lock down combat with abilities like “if you attack anyone but me, I get to stop your attack, stop your movement and then pound you for 1W damage” and “I have the highest defenses and hit points, smash my skull all day, Int was my dump stat so I wont even notice.” Fighters are ruining D&D. I say we just get rid of them all together.
After taking a bunch of short rests to maximize healing, the party continued following the stone markers deeper into the swampland in search of Benwick and the Black Dragons.
We played a double session last week so the party for this encounter remained unchanged at seven. There was Berrian, Hagen, Sola, a Dragonborn Sorcerer, a crossbow-firing Human Rogue, a Human Wizard and a Human Cavalier. With a party this large the DM had to add more monsters in order to keep things challenging. I think his modifications over the past two encounters were balanced and appropriate given the party’s composition.
Any time you have seven players in the party you know combat will take a long time. This week’s encounter took us over two hours to complete. We took a serious pounding, which I’ll describe below. In order to keep this write-up to a reasonable length I’m going to skip over some of the more routine actions and just focus on the most exciting, interesting, stupid or controversial things. So just because I don’t account for everyone’s actions every round don’t think they weren’t contributing.
The party approached a clearing as quietly as they could and most of the PCs made adequate Stealth checks. Sola and the Cavalier, both wearing heavy metal armor, stood apart from those hiding as they brazenly walked along the path in plain sight. When they entered the clearing they saw a giant lizardfolk Bruiser standing atop a ruined dais.
The Dungeon’s Master team wishes all of our readers a safe and happy holiday season.
It’s been almost two years since we began this blog and we continue to be amazed by the ongoing support from out readership. Thank you to all of our readers and to everyone who’s helped make Dungeon’s Master a success.
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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 2010. 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.
This article was a reaction to something that happened in one of my games. Although it seemed like a really big deal at the time, this remains the only instance where I’ve faced and opponent I couldn’t beat since I began playing 4e D&D and I think therein lies the real issue.
Players feel that they should be able to defeat everything thrown at them. The D&D Open Championship held at this year’s GenCon is a perfect example. The big opponent was Orcus, arguably one of THE most powerful creatures in 4e D&D. Yet every table of five was not only capable of defeating him, everyone expected that they would.
So the big question is whether or not DMs should – on occasion – remind players that they are not at the top of the food chain. Should the DM put the PCs into situations where they may end up fighting an opponent they can’t beat? If done properly, I think this kind of situation hold tremendous educational value.
Unless players try and fail, they’ll continue to think they’re the best there is. And as true as that is in most circumstances it never hurts to remind players that this isn’t always the case. Just try not to kill off too many characters in the process. D&D players tend to see this as something that needs to be avenged rather than a hard learned life lesson to take away and think about.
Do you want to know more about the upcoming D&D Encounters Season 4? Following this week’s recap, we’ve got new information for you from Wizards of the Coast. This week’s encounter was all business. No small talk, just fighting.
We had a larger than normal party as our numbers swelled to seven. Berrian, Hagen and Sola were accompanied by some familiar companions including the Dragonborn Sorcerer, the crossbow-firing Human Rogue and the Human Wizard. They were also joined by one new party member, a Human Cavalier.
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 2010. 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.
Magic item availability has changed in D&D since we first published this article eight months ago. D&D Essentials brought with it a new classifications of magic items based on availability. This change, a significant one in most magic-plentiful D&D campaigns, makes the discussion of ownership and an item’s origins even more important. With more items falling into the uncommon and rare categories questions of ownership should be on the forefront of all adventurer’s minds when the discover treasure hoards.
Players content with common magic items at lower levels will look to upgrade as the gain levels. Now that the really good stuff isn’t as readily available at Ye Old Magic Shoppe, adventurers really have to work to locate that special something. Before D&D Essentials players knew that as soon as they found enough gold they could easily purchase whatever item they wanted, now they have to either remain content with the common goods (unlikely) or figure out how to find those really rare treasures.
When we first ran this article most of the people who left comments agreed with my recommendation that investigation into magic item ownership was an interesting role-playing exercise that might be done once and a while, but not something they would likely do regularly. Thanks to D&D Essentials and the new item classification this scenario is likely to become a much more important and much more regular part of D&D campaigns.
Where I don’t see anything changing is the PCs willingness to give up their newly gotten riches. If magic items have become that much more uncommon then PCs are probably even less likely to “do the right thing” and return an item that clearly belongs to someone else (or more likely their heirs).
On the flip side, heroes with such valuable and distinct magic items will likely have their own admirers who will keep tabs on their adventures. Should these heroes not return from some quest, you know that these admirers will go looking for their fallen friend (or hire someone else to do it) for no other reason than to recover the rare magic items he possessed.
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 2010. 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.
Ahhhh! The off season. It has been months since I hung up the dice bag and folded up my poster maps, but when the boys at Dungeon’s Master asked me to reflect on my time as a D&D camp councillor I couldn’t resist.
The most important lesson I learned playing D&D with kids was that no matter where you go, people are people. When I started up the Shattered Sea there was a 20 year spread between my oldest and youngest player but I thought nothing of it because I could remember a time when I was still in high school, and I could relate to working 9 to 5 jobs to help provide for someone I cared about. When I got to D&D camp I didn’t know how things were going to go. In talking to my coworkers I was told some of the age old ticks to fill for time and how to prepare quick and dirty campaigns. I needed to run a new story-arc every week and at some point they expected the well to run dry. Instead of doing as suggested, I realized that children have no mercy and if I was going to make it through each day I really had to run my best stuff.
What ended up happening was that the kids at my table went through the same growing pains of picking up my style of DMing and each kid’s playing style that my own adult players did. I encountered the same gamut of interests I found at home. There were kids who where there to just have fun, there were kids who knew the rules inside out on day one, as well as kids who wanted to kill the big bad guy just like in every movie they have ever seen. As I spun my tales at the table the kids of course would never pick up on the sources I was pulling from simply because they had spent fewer years on this earth than I had. At the end of the day I couldn’t get away with bad writing at camp anymore than I could at my home game. I saw the same social problems in my campers that I had seen in people of all ages all my life. I will admit that they kids did have an extraordinary penchant for cheating, something I won’t try to account for.
Bring your A-Ggme DMs, no mater what game you run and no matter who it’s for because every time you roll dice it’s a chance to improve your self as a DM. Moreover it’s a chance for you to better understand the people around you, because at the end of the day, people are people no matter where you go. As you read the account try to place the players at your own table in the seats that my campers took at mine. I think you wont find the exercise too much of a stretch. R.I.P. Stealth Phoenix, I’ll never forget you.
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 2010. 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.
Nothing helps you overcome a problem like talking about it. After I wrote this article I made a point of referring back to it a lot the next time I took over the DM’s chair. I found that seeing these errors in print served as a good reminder not to repeat any of them. In some cases the learning I’d taken away from analyzing these errors actually let me make the right call the next time thereby making the whole experience better for everyone.
As a bonus, I’ve add a 6th Error I’ve Made as DM to the list below. I hope you continue finding these errors educational and that everyone can learn from my mistakes.
With 2010 nearing completion the Dungeon’s Master team is taking another look at some of our favourite articles from the past year. With over 250 articles posted over the past 12 months there are bound to be a few that you missed somewhere along the way. If you’ve only found Dungeon’s Master recently, this is a good way to discover some of our best work. For those readers who have been with us since the beginning, we think you’ll enjoy revisiting these articles again.
Over the next two weeks we’ll dig up those hidden gems that generated a lot of discussion among the gaming community or that we think best represent what we’re all about.