As players and DMs we love our tools and toys. The things that make playing Dungeon’s & Dragons even more enjoyable. Assembled here is a list of resources that are available on the web that I’ve found of use during my time playing D&D. I won’t pretend that this is a complete list, indeed in some cases I’m directing you to even more lists of great D&D resources.
I hope you enjoy and feel free to point out other items that might be of interest to others.
The evenings gaming session is going great. So far you’ve had some great role playing, a unique skill challenge and now you’re entering the first encounter of the evening. The defender charges into combat. The NPC’s turn comes up and you decide to attack the defender by using one of the NPC’s encounter powers. You roll the dice and call out the attack score. This is going to hit you think, only to have the defender calmly announce that you’ve missed his AC by a long shot.
What do you do when session after session you can never hit the defender or when one player min/maxs their character to the point of absurdity?
The character builder is great. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s the most important and valuable resource currently available for 4e D&D. It makes creating new character fast and easy. It incorporates all legal source materials from Wizards of the Coast and makes them available with the click of a button. From what I saw at GenCon it looks like the vast majority of gamers are using the character builder. The days of pen and paper character creation are gone. But is this acceptance by the masses of the character builder a good thing?
I’ve noticed a disturbing trend during my last few gaming sessions. The Fighter consistently deals more damage than my Rogue. We’re 9th level, almost at paragon, and I’m struggling to deal more damage than the Fighter. Fundamentally, something seems wrong when the defender can dish out more damage than the striker. My numbers should be consistently higher on a round for round basis, instead my jaw drops as I hear how much damage he’s dealing.
It pays to do your homework when building a character. I’ve played some tough characters in my day, but the Battlerager Fighter I played in a recent LFR game was the toughest melee character I’ve ever played. This is one of the character builds I presented in the Characters Who Deal the Most Damage article from last month and after seeing him in action I don’t know why you’d want to play any other kind of Fighter.
It seems that the Dungeons & Dragons Insider (DDI) is living up to my wildest expectations. In his recent Apersand column (subscription required), Bill Slavicsek provided a lot more detail regarding the new content that Wizards of the Coast will make available during the next year through the DDI.
For those of you who haven’t shelled out for a DDI subscription yet, I’m going to summarize the high points of what’s on the horizon. Hopefully by the time you finish reading this you’ll want to become a DDI subscriber.
Wizards of the Coast has announced changes to the Dungeons & Dragons Insider starting with an increase to the price of your subscription. The good news is that this price hike is accompanied by improvements to DDI and a slew of new content. I don’t think any of us expected the prices to remain the same forever, and it was really only a matter of time before we were asked to pay more money. But in light of all the materials Wizards is promising over the next year, the price increase seems justified and fair. And hopefully the revenue generated from increasing the price of DDI will be put towards the release of the online tools that WotC has been promising us since day one.
The new pricing will take effect on July 2, so I encourage you to either extend your existing subscription or sign up soon if you’ve been holding off. Doing so now will ensurer you get all the upcoming goodies at the lower price.