In our earlier skill challenge, the PCs defeated a Lich and managed to find its phylactery. Liches are wily combatants and they plan for all contingencies, including having their phylactery found. If the PCs thought vanquishing a Lich was based on pure combat, then they didn’t do their research properly.
This is the second of two skill challenges that deals with Liches and their phylacteries. In part 1 the PCs must Find The Phylactery and in part 2 the PCs must Unlock The Phylactery.
Defeating a Lich is not a simple as overcoming it in combat. Liches tie their life force to objects known as phylacteries. The phylactery can range from mundane to mystical. Each Lich has their own preference on what constitutes an acceptable phylactery. What Liches have in common is that their Phylactery is to be well hidden and well protected.
This is the first of two skill challenges that deals with Liches and their phylacteries. In part 1 the PCs must Find The Phylactery and in part 2 the PCs must Unlock The Phylactery.
The most common use for knowledge skills is to identify monsters and perform rituals. The knowledge skills tend to take a back seat to social and physical skills during most skill challenges. The knowledge skills are so tightly focused that most players assume these skills have a limited scope. But this doesn’t mean that they have limited uses. It’s up to players to be imaginative and creative.
How do you scare a PC? It’s not as simple as you think. With any role-playing situation, the emotions of the PC need to be separated from the emotions of the player running the PC. So just because something scares Delian the Paladin doesn’t mean it’s going to scare me the player. It’s up to me to role-play my PC’s actions and emotions accordingly. The more I’m willing to get into character the more effective this kind of situation will be.
Hallowe’en is just around the corner and in the spirit of the occasion we wanted to look at undead and how to use them in your campaign. Of particular interest are intelligent undead and how you as a DM can use those interests to your advantage.
Vampires and lichs hold a special place in D&D lore. Some of the greatest villains have been drawn from their ranks. This is due to their longevity, access to resources and single minded desire to complete their objectives.
Following up on Wimwick’s thoughts On the RPG Bloggers Network from this morning, I wanted to add a few additional things to the discussion. To the guys behind the scenes, thank you. Your hard work did not go unnoticed. The RPG Bloggers Network has been very good to Dungeon’s Master, and we’d like to think that we’ve returned the favour by driving readers back to the Network. I credit our involvement in the Network as one of the big keys to our early success.
The RPG blogging community is a fantastic fraternity of enthusiastic gamers who feel so passionately about RPGs that they use their free time to write article, create resources, and share their ideas and experiences with other gamers. We may not all see eye-to-eye on every topic, but debates that stem from these disagreement often give all of us a better understanding of a given situation.
This past week has been a momentous one for the RPG Bloggers Network. The founding members have decided to step aside and hand the reins over to someone new. Of course this decision didn’t necessarily come about through a desire to move onto new projects, rather it was born out of conflict.
First, I must tip my hat to the founding member of the Network. Thank you for your work and your passion. Your desire to foster a community of like-minded bloggers has benefited us all.
After Perception, Diplomacy seems to be the skill used most often in my games. Any time your PC finds himself in a social situation you know that you’re going to end up making a Diplomacy check. But Diplomacy is more that just talking the talk. It’s usually about knowing what to say and how to say it. Your PC’s body language can also have as much of an impact as the words coming out of his mouth.
As we continue our look at solo adventuring we shift our focus from tips for DMs to tips for players. No matter how many hours of D&D you’ve played, taking on a solo adventure for the first time is a real eye-opener. Most players find it challenging yet highly rewarding. For players new to the game who may not have tried this approach to D&D, we’ve provided a few tips that should prove useful. We encourage DMs to check out D&D Party of One (Part 1) and D&D Party of One (Part 2) for the flip side of this series.
The way DMs determine what’s in a treasure horde has vastly improved since the advent of 4e D&D. In previous editions the DM would open up a random treasure table, roll some dice and the PCs would get a mish-mash of random loot. The power level of the items in question weren’t taken into consideration – nothing was. It was totally random. Without a good DM to apply some common sense and adjust random treasure accordingly, things often got out of control in a hurry.
Enter 4e D&D. The DM no longer assigns magic treasure randomly. Random treasure is dead. In its place are treasure bundles. A balanced system in which the party loot is doled out in carefully divided portions. The power level of each item determines whether or not it’s suitable treasure for these PCs at this particular level. No more rolling dice and no more unexpected elements. The inventory of every treasure horde is now chosen by the DM one item at a time. But is this a good thing?