Sometimes you choose a weapon because it looks cool. Other times you choose a weapon that’s practical. And sometimes you choose a weapon that’s cheap. But most often you choose a weapon because it deals the most damage.
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Category: Player Resources
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Adventuring Company Symbols
What do organized sports teams, military units and street gangs have in common? They all self identify with a shared logo, emblem or colour scheme. In D&D, the PCs are often part of an adventuring party. So if a PC spends all of his time living, traveling and fighting with these comrades, it makes sense that they would see themselves as part of an exclusive group. Do they have team colours? Do they display a common symbol, share a similar piece of jewelry, have matching tattoos or something else that makes them feel like part of the team? If the answer is no, then my question is, “Why not?”
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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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Worldwide Game Day Characters
The pre-generated characters for the May 23, Dungeons & Dragons Worldwide Game Day are available. Download them now as PDFs or for the DDI Character Builder.
The last time I participated in D&D WWGD I found that a lot of time was unnecessarily wasted while people got to know their characters. I’d like to do my part to speed things up this weekend so I’ve made the pre-generated character available for download. I know it’s kind of last minute, but you still have time to review the five PCs and decide which one you’d most like to play. This gives you a chance to sift through your PHB and PHB2 and review exactly what your powers allow you to do.
I’ve discovered the best possible combination of race, class and equipment to ensure that your character will deal more damage every round than any other character. These builds are 100% legal and by the book. I’ve followed all the rules and used only core books published by Wizards. I didn’t make the rules, but I’m sure as hell going to exploit them for my benefit. Keep reading to find out how.
Here are 10 new and alternative ways to use Athletics. Athletics and Acrobatics are not interchangeable. Too many PCs assume that if they’ve got a high Strength they can use Athletics and if they’ve got a high Dexterity they can use Acrobatics. Well I disagree. If these skills were intended to be interchangeable then they would only be one skill. When I’m the DM, I make a point to set up challenges that can only be overcome with Athletics or Acrobatics.
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Skill Focus: Bluff
Everybody lies and you can do it better than most because you’re trained in Bluff. But why limit yourself to just telling a convincing lie? Here are 10 new and creative ways to get more out of Bluff.
Bluff is not only applicable when speaking untruths. Any attempt at a falsehood is covered by this catch-all skill. Whenever you pretend to be someone you’re not, or mislead an opponent in combat, you rely on Bluff.
In many situations a Bluff check can or should be accompanied by another skill in order to make the lie more believable. It’s up to you and the DM to determine which situations warrant secondary checks, the appropriate DCs and what modifiers may apply.
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Skill Focus: Heal
You’re trained in Heal so you can patch wounds and stabilizing dying characters, but it doesn’t have to stop there. Here are 10 new and creative ways to get more out of Heal. Depending on your PC’s background and how you role-play him, Heal can encompass a wide variety of disciplines.
“I am a defender of the faith, a holy warrior and a vassal of my deity. I am not in the party simply to heal your wounds!”
An interesting debate occurred within our gaming group recently. One of our healers, in this case the Cleric, decided that he will not use his Healing Word or any other power that allows others to use healing surges unless a) they are bloodied and b) they have already used their second wind. He is so adamant about following this guideline that he would rather take no minor action instead of healing the other PCs.
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Reputation (Part 3)
Your deeds define your reputation. Basking in your success is the easy part, but what happens when things don’t go quite as expected? Your reputation is easily tarnished by a few bad outings, and now you’ve got to live with the consequences.
This is the third of three articles examining reputation. Reputation (part 1) appeared on The Core Mechanic a few days ago. It was aimed at the DM and provided him with direction for using reputation as a campaign tool. Reputation (part 2) and Reputation (part 3) are aimed at the players and provides insight on how PCs can shape their own reputation and gain the most benefit from doing so.