This week I got a double dose of Dark Sun. I was on vacation last week, but before I left I made arrangements with 6 players to skip the first week and run encounters one and two back-to-back this week. After just two sessions of Fury of the Wastewalker I have to admit that I like this adventure a whole lot more than Halaster’s Lost Apprentice.
D&D Encounters is a 15-part adventure from Wizards of the Coast and it’s played out one encounter each week over 15 weeks.
Even though we’ve spent a lot of time discussing Dark Sun over the past few weeks we still play our weekly game in Eberron and are still committed to bringing you Eberron-specific articles. With this latest installment in our ongoing series, Secrets of Eberron Revealed, we look at how Dragonmarks are permanently removed and how Dragonmarks can be made to manifest for a short time.
Click on the Eberron tab above the Dungeon’s Master banner to find the previous installments in this ongoing series as well as many other great Eberron articles and resources.
The party is in the middle of combat and the plan of attack quickly falls apart. Within rounds the party finds themselves with several PCs making death saves. Things have gone from bad to worse and a total party kill is looking imminent. Options begin running through your head, do you go down swinging? Is it still possible to defeat the encounter? Is retreat the best option? If you do retreat what about your already fallen companions?
No matter the cause of a total party kill, it can have devastating consequences on your campaign or adventure session. From derailed campaigns, frustrated players and torn up character sheets every TPK is going to have it’s own ramifications. The key to avoiding these difficult situations is to avoid the total party kill in the first place.
On shelves tomorrow, Monster Manual 3 is exactly what you’d expect from the new creature catalog. It’s chalked full of new monsters – some brand new and many other old favourites that have been noticeably absent from 4e D&D. There are about 300 monsters in the Monster Manual 3. About 125 are heroic tier, 100 paragon tier and 75 at epic tier. With more of us playing at paragon and epic tier, these new creatures give DMs more high level foes to throw at those poor unsuspecting PCs.
DMs are encouraged to say yes whenever possible in 4e D&D. But in a recent game we experienced a situation that was very unusual and saying yes didn’t seem appropriate. As the DM I said no at the time but agreed that we should do some investigation before the situation happens again. I’ve been scouring the boards to see if anyone else has encounter the same problem and after two weeks of searching I haven’t found a definitive answer. So for the first time since we started Dungeon’s Master I’m asking our readers for their thoughts and interpretation on the correct way to interpret this ruling. I suspect that there won’t be a clear-cut right or wrong answer, but I’d like to get some input from the online 4e D&D community before my next home game.
The first session of D&D Encounters: Dark Sun was a sink or swim lesson in desert survival. This second season of the program takes place on the world Athas, an endless expanse of sand and searing heat having been blasted lifeless by the ravaging effects of magic. On Athas the majority of the population swelters in the heat of oppression in slavery while tyrannical sorcerer-kings live lavish and absurd life styles within the walls of their city states.
Welcome to Athas! Following an introduction to the world that our characters found them selves in, we joined the action as we took part in a caravan as guards. Since resources are so scarce on Athas and the wilderness is inhabited by cruel raiders (not to mention cannibalistic Halflings), cargo moves from city to city in large caravans fortified by hired swords fighting to earn their next meal. It is on this errand that our party was devastated by a rain of jet black obsidian from above which obliterated the majority of the caravan after only one days travel from civilization. It was after most of the caravan was killed by falling stone when we were ambushed.
As lizard men began to raid the wagon train a very strong tone was set that I hope will persist throughout the arc of the season: Life on Athas is pragmatic at best. Where did that obsidian come from? Why is in raining on us? I suspect that these questions and many more will never be answered. Our characters didn’t have time to ponder the source of our assailant because we had the task of grabbing as many days’ supplies as we could before running for our lives into the endless desert. You know that the circumstances are dire when the best course of action includes a life denying wasteland.
D&D Encounter season two kicks off tonight. Unless you’ve been living under a rock then you know that season two is set in newest 4e campaign setting Dark Sun, scheduled for released later this summer. With this in mind we’re bringing you our very first encounter set in Dark Sun. And this wouldn’t be Dungeon’s Master if it the encounter was anything but a skill challenge. The following encounter is intended for use within Dark Sun, but can easily be adapted to fit any campaign world.
Certain class and race combinations in D&D just seem to make sense. They are the old favourites and the stereotypes that define the genre. We know them all, the sturdy Dwarven Fighter, the nimble Elven archer, the cunning Halfling Rogue and so on. These combinations are fun to play because they work and they are safe. Occasionally, a new wrinkle will be added to give these old classics some new flavour.
One of our original articles discussed Overplayed Characters, today I want to look at combinations that aren’t typical. I’m sure there are many other combinations beyond the ones I present here. The options listed below are ones where the racial attribute modifiers play towards the particular class or where engaging role playing opportunities are presented.
D&D Encounters: Dark Sun – Fury of the Wastewalker begins Wednesday, June 9. Wizards of the Coast has provided six pre-generated characters – all of them highlighting unique aspects to the upcoming Dark Sun setting for 4e D&D. Over the past week there has been a great deal of discussion about the character sheets provided. More than a few errors have been pointed out as well. Below are four of the six characters available in character builder format for download along with the cards provided by Wizards of the Coast.
In rebuilding the characters there are obviously certain aspects that can’t be reproduced. Namely the theme’s and the new weapons. In the case of weapons I’ve selected the closest item available through Character Builder. For theme’s player’s will need to manually add the appropriate power onto the character sheet. All the characters are as accurate as I can make them based upon the information available. If you plan to use a character builder version of one of the characters I would advise you to check with the DM who is running your encounters session and to double check that no errors were made in rebuilding the characters.
A Dark Sun novel
I’ve read over a hundred Forgotten Realms novels, a dozen Ravenloft novels and all of the Eberron novels, but this was my first Dark Sun novel. Having never played in the Dark Sun camping setting when it was originally released back in the early 90s I never had any desire to read about a world I was unfamiliar with. However, in light of the upcoming re-launch of Dark Sun for 4e D&D I felt it was time to give the Dark Sun books a chance. I had no idea what I was in for.