Category: Player Resources

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Player Resources

Don’t Bring A Dagger To A Sword Fight

Dagger or long sword? Club or mace? Hand axe or executioner’s axe? Hand crossbow or great bow?

Which one should you select? What prompts you to select the weapon your PC wields in battle? Are you concerned with aesthetics? Or does the desire to roll as big a die as possible trump all other factors?

I must confess I’m often at a loss over what weapon to select. In the real world a dagger to my heart will kill me just as quickly as a long sword to the heart. Idea’s of d4s and d8s don’t really come into play. Granted a dagger cut to my arm is just that, a cut. A long sword on the other hand might take my arm off.

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Player Resources

Born To Be Wilden

Our exploration of races in 4e continues with the Wilden. The Wilden are one of the new races found in the Players Handbook 3. As a race born of the primal fury of nature, the Wilden are the ultimate defender of nature. Similar to the Shardmind, which we looked at last week, the Wilden are awakened from nature itself. A new race they are a blank slate with no preconceptions or history. With only a primal desire to defend nature in all its forms, the Wilden is a powerful and intriguing new race.

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Player Resources

Join the Dungeon’s Master GenCon Championship Team

Although GenCon isn’t until August, registration began this past weekend. Both Ameron and Wimwick are representing Dungeon’s Master at GenCon this summer. We’re going to do everything we can to win the D&D Open Championship this year and we want you to join our team.

The D&D Championship isn’t going to be our only focus while were in Indianapolis. As you can probably guess, we’ll be playing a whole lot of D&D. We’re also looking forward to meeting other gamers and bloggers, as well as authors and game designers from Wizards of the Coast and other small publishing houses. We plan to hit a few seminars and even try out some new games. Yes, we’re actually going to try something other than D&D – something I haven’t done in a very long time. We’ve already registered for a few games but our schedules aren’t complete yet. As we nail down our schedules we’ll share what we’ve got on tap with our readers. But today I want to focus on the Championship.

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Player Resources

Have You Retrained Today?

One of the great aspects of 4e is it officially recognized retraining. Finally, we had a formal rule for the process of substituting a power or a feat. In previous versions this aspect of the game was either forbidden or house ruled. Now, the concept itself isn’t a big stretch. The idea of swapping this power for that one isn’t new. What is new is the recognition of the game creator to enable this as an official rule.

I’m well aware that many other gaming systems have had such rules for a long time, but D&D has not. Now, you might be wondering what’s the big deal. If I’m not happy with my character I’ll simply change it or speak with my DM about the problem. Fair enough and in most instances a change is able to be made. What happens if you only play RPGA games though and you don’t have a real mechanism to make the changes you desire because a new source book has been released?

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Player Resources

Character Creation: The Importance Of Planning Ahead

If you’re anything like me you spend a substantial amount of time planning your PC’s advancement ahead of time. You debate about feats, powers and item selection. You wonder what each new source book may bring. Will a new paragon path open up a better role-playing opportunity for you? Will a new feat allow you to further optimize your PC in combat? While you may ponder these questions, you realize that in planning ahead you need to work with what you have and make adjustments as new source books are released. Of course if you aren’t like me, then by the time you realize the shortcomings of your PC it’s far too late to do anything about it.

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Player Resources

The Shardmind

With the release of the PHB3 we have four new player character races to add to our available choices. Today I want to consider the Shardmind, beings of raw psionic energy barely contained in a body of gleaming crystalline shards.The Shardmind is built for the purpose of supporting the new psionic power source classes. Of course the Shardmind is also capable of doing much more than this as the player can select how they’d like their ability scores distributed. I’m of mixed minds about the Shardmind, part of me wants to love this race, another part isn’t too sure.

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Class Discussions Player Resources

Death Pact Necromancer

One of the first articles published at Dungeon’s Master was our series on the Necromancer. It started as a way of addressing the lack of specialist Wizards in 4e D&D. As one of our oldest articles, our series on the Necromancer continues to see regular traffic from a variety of sources. The idea of expanding the Necromancer beyond the Wizard class is one that I’ve had for some time now. The Warlock is a natural fit for the Necromancer.

Nothing speaks of a deal for power, as making a pact with death itself. The Death Pact Necromancer does just that, trading their soul for power and a command over death.

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DM Resources Player Resources

Improve Your Defenses With Energy Resistance (DMs Analysis)

I think we inadvertently angered a lot of DMs with our series on items that provide energy resistances. Few players needed our help min/maxing and power-gaming, yet over the past couple of weeks the Dungeon’s Master team made it immensely easier for PCs to find items that will protect them from various energy attacks. Today we’re going to set things right. The final installment of this series is geared specifically at the DM. We’ve analysed the item lists across heroic, paragon and epic tiers and offer some advice to DMs on how to best use energy-specific attacks.

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Player Resources

Improve Your Defenses With Energy Resistance (Epic)

At heroic tier energy resistance is nice to have. At paragon tier it becomes a little bit more important. And at epic tier energy resistance is a must. If a party wants to have any chance at surviving multiple encounters between extended rests then they need to avoid damage, and energy resistance will help you there.

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Player Resources

Improve Your Defenses With Energy Resistance (Paragon)

There are going to be times when no matter how high your defenses are you’re still going to take a few hits. Whether you’re the nimble striker who opts for mobility over heavy armor or the defender who marks opponents to intentionally draw attacks away from others, all PCs eventually get hit hard. Luckily there is a relatively easy way to reduce the damage from some of the hardest hits that deal the most damage – energy resistance.

A disproportionate number of powerful monsters deal more than just straight-up, every day, normal damage. Many deal energy specific damage. So when you’ve done everything you can to raise your defenses and you still find yourself getting hit and taking an obscene amount of damage, it’s time to find magic that provides energy resistance.

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