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DM Resources

Building Better Monsters Part 1: Meet Your Maker, Monster

This article is the first in a series of four on designing monsters from scratch, getting the most out of your homemade monsters and understanding the mechanics of monsters so that you can use and build them creatively in your game.

  • Part 1 deals mostly with the larger ideas behind monster design so that you’ll be able to build the monster that fits the bill.
  • Part 2 is about the stat block, what it means and the relevant in-game and out-of-game factors that can change your understanding of the stat block.
  • Part 3 is about designing statistics for your monster and how various interpretations of the statistics can change the way your monsters will function as part of a narrative.
  • Part 4 is about implementing your designs and the process of review. Now let’s begin.
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Book Reviews

Review: Elminster Ascending

Elminster Ascending
Ed Greenwood

A Forgotten Realms Novel

Ed Greenwood’s Elminster Ascending: The Sage of Shadowdale omnibus collects three novels – Elminster: The Making of a Mage, Elminster in Myth Drannor and The Temptation of Elminster – that tell the story of Elminster’s origin.

Dungeon’s Master again welcomes Soklemon, our Forgotten Realms book reviewer. He is a Dungeon Master, Forgotten Realms fan, aspiring writer and high school student (in that order). We welcome his latest contribution and hope you enjoy his review of the Ed Greenwood Omnibus: Elminster Ascending.

The first novel’s title, The Making of a Mage, is a misnomer in some ways. For most of the first novel, Elminster abhorred magic and all who used it, hunting and killing many of them. He ran into the Magister early on and was awed by the power that magic could bring, but his mind was yet to be changed. The later two novels deal with Elminster apprenticing himself to various other Mages and Sorcerers, and occasionally only being beholden to Mystra, the goddess of magic herself.

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: March of the Phantom Brigade (Week 10)

“Salazar Vladistone is a hero.” At least he was during his lifetime, according to Faldyra. After last week’s battle against the ghosts of Hammerfast, this week’s encounter began with a quick breather in the library. The PCs found Faldyra pouring through old dusty tomes in the library’s basement archives. She’d discovered information about the leader of the Phantom Brigade as well as a possible way to defeat him once and for all.

This week at our FLGS we were running with a skeleton crew. My table had only three players, but one of the veterans was willing and able to run both Belgos and Valenae. The other two players were running Jarren and a new addition to the party, a Dragonborn Fighter. The other table at our FLGS had five players, all of them still sore from the TPK they suffered last week and looking to get back into the game.

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Player Resources

Exploiting Racial and Class Powers: Dragon Breath

Be All You Can Be. This was the recruiting slogan for the U.S. Army for over twenty years. When you create your D&D character do you design them to be the best they can be?

Of course, the term ‘best’ is subjective. Everyone has their own idea of what the best really is. It is also situational, what is best for one situation may not be the best for another. However, there are undeniably certain power builds that exist within D&D. Some are certainly better than others, but all are worth examining.

The Dragonborn’s dragon breath is an interesting power. At first glance it’s a useful and intriguing encounter power that only requires a minor action to use. It gives these characters an extra option during combat and if we’re honest the idea of breathing fire or acid is pretty cool. It lets us get our geek on.

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DM Resources

Foregoing a Short Rest

How important is resting in D&D? The rules allow for characters to rest between encounter in order to heal and regain the use of encounter powers, but just because the rules state that characters can rest does that mean that character should rest?

At low levels DMs always try to find ways to keep the party moving forward. Without a compelling motive, many games end up suffering from a bad case of the 5-minute work day. The players don’t want their characters to die so they’re always looking for an excuse to rest and regain the use of their best powers.

However, I’ve realized from my own recent gaming experiences that as characters get tougher the players are a lot more willing to keep their PC’s adventuring without resting between every single encounter.

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DM Resources

Designing Social Encounters

Creating combat encounters is a lot easier than creating social encounters in D&D. When it comes to combat most DMs have a really clear idea of what they need to do to prepare. Social encounters by their very nature tend to be less predictable, catching many DMs woefully unprepared for the decisions and actions the party chooses. Although there are guidelines on how to set up and run skill challenges, more complex social encounters that rely on role-playing and interaction with NPCs can become more complicated than fighting Orcus himself.

Most social encounters are played out as skill challenges, if the DM even feels that there is a significant challenge involved. If the goal is merely to meet an important NPC or find out a particular piece of information while hanging out at a bar, than a little bit of role-playing may be all that’s required. However, if the goal is more complex and if there are consequences for failing, then a skill challenges is likely the best way to adjudicate the encounter.

The amount of work required by the DM to create these encounters is really dependent upon the group’s play style. If they’d rather just bash monsters with their weapons and spells, then social encounters will be looked upon as the filler between fights. But for groups that enjoy the role-playing side of things, a social encounter presents an opportunity for them to really develop their PC and use skills more heavily then they usually do during combat. Once you know which type of group you’re designing the encounter for then you can decide if you want to do it the fast way or take the detailed approach.

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Player Resources

Character Catchphrases

“I’ll be back.” “D’oh!” “Go ahead, make my day.” A clever catchphrase is an easy way to make a run-of-the-mill character more memorable. As you play more and more characters over time they’ll likely start to blurring together in your memory. Distinguish you next character by giving him a catchphrase.

If you’re playing a public game at your FLGS or at a convention then you often end up at a table with six complete strangers. What better way to distinguish yourself and your character than with a clever catchphrase.

The Wizard that shouts in a funny voice “Heeeeeeeeeere comes my missile” may seem annoying at first, but I guarantee that when you tell your friends about your last D&D game you tell them all about that PC. Meanwhile the other characters all fade into the background.

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: March of the Phantom Brigade (Week 9)

Salazar Vladistone and the Phantom Brigade burned the village of Inverness to the ground. Two months later Vladistone and his Ghost army have returned and are now attacking Hammerfast. The third and final chapter of March of the Phantom Brigade begans by throwing the PCs right into the thick of things.

After fleeing Inverness, the PCs, Malgram, Faldyra and the rest of the survivors managed to make it all the way back to Hammerfast where they were welcomed and provided with food and shelter. In order to help repay the townsfolk’s kindness, the PCs were asked to join the city guard as reserve members. The grateful PCs couldn’t refuse. It sounded like a fair trade. After all, who would be dumb enough to attack a walled city full of battle-ready dwarves? Salazar Vladistone, apparently.

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Adventure Hooks DM Resources

Television Scripts As D&D Adventures

Week in and week out the DMs of the nation are writing phenomenal adventures for the players who gather around the gaming table. The work is endless and occasionally we DMs run out of time and energy. Game day is approaching and we haven’t even started writing out the adventure. We have what is more commonly referred to as writer’s block. We just don’t know what to do with the game this week and a blank page is staring back at us.

Normally, when this happens I put away my D&D supplies and I switch on the television. It doesn’t matter what I watch, I just need to let me mind wander allowing ideas to come to me freely. It’s at the end of several hours of mindless television watching that it hits me, the adventure I’ve been looking for has been literally staring me in the face for the past several hours.

Television and the endless and often mindless content that it produces is the DMs best friend.

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Categories
Editorial

Quitting the Party Mid-Adventure

It’s not often that something happens during a D&D game that I haven’t experienced before, but just a few weeks ago that’s exactly what happened. The circumstances of the adventure terrified my PC so much that he quit. I knew that removing this character from the adventure was the right decisions. Walking away was the only choice he’d make given his detailed and well established background.

In our home game we use a character tree. Every player has a repertoire of PCs that they can choose from at the beginning of each adventure. The adventures run about six weeks and when they’re done everyone levels up. This time around I choose to play my Rogue Daggermaster. He’d been a major NPC in my campaign for years and this was going to be my first chance to play him as a PC. Even though my character wasn’t technically party of the party, he’d been an important part of their lives for 17 levels. This was a character that we all knew as well as any of the PCs.

A major part of the new adventure had the PCs investigating a series of strange occurrences. Without knowing very many details at first we began our investigation. Upon learning what was really going on, I realized that my character couldn’t complete the adventure. Based on his back-story and knowing how I’d played the character through all of those levels as an NPC, the strange happenings would absolutely terrify him.

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