Tag: DM Resources

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DM Resources

It’s All About Who You Know

In Dungeons & Dragons, as in real life, there are two things that help people succeed where others fail: what you’ve done and who you know. In D&D we already make a big deal about “what you’ve done” and we call it XP, but there never seems to be much emphasis or importance placed on “who you know.”

Who you know can be interpreted in a few different ways, but when I think of this idea I think of all the people you can call on or a favour. This favour might be something as simple as a piece of local gossip or as significant as borrowing the King’s royal scepter. The point is that who you know is an important part of character development. During a PCs adventuring career he will meet many people and I’ll bet that many of them would be willing to help him down the road if the circumstances are right.

However so few players bother to track these potential allies and fewer still ever make an effort to call upon them when they need something. It’s impossible for an adventurer to do everything himself, that’s why he’s part of an adventuring party. But even his four or five closest buddies won’t always have what he needs. This is where contact can become exceptionally useful.

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DM Resources

RPG Blog Carnival: Toronto’s Underground PATH is a Fantastic Location

Everyday as I venture to work in downtown Toronto I make use of the PATH. The PATH is Toronto’s underground labyrinth of shops and corridors connecting office buildings, shopping centers and public transit together. In the summer it provides escape from the sunny surface streets and in the winter it is a much warmer alternative than walking through snow. Wandering the PATH is the closest I’ll ever come to exploring a real dungeon and it’s a great example of a fantastic location that can inspire any DM.

This month Keith Davies – In My Campaign hosts the RPG Blog Carnival. January’s topic is Fantastic Locations. In the Dungeons Master contribution to the blog carnival we’ll begin by taking you through the PATH before emerging to street level and exploring how to transform a regular location into something fantastic for your next campaign.

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Adventure Hooks

Adventure Hooks – Moral Choices

Adventure hooks are indented as a way to get the PCs into the action quickly. Dangle something interesting in front of them and hope that they take the bait. It might be a greed trap where you offer them a pretty bauble or magical item, or it might be an interaction with a strange or unusual character. In most cases the adventure hook is simple and straight forward (which is not to say boring).

However, in some cases the adventure hook can be more than just a simple way to get the PCs interested in the next leg of the adventure. Every once in a while adventure hooks should be a little bit more complicated than the usual fare. DMs should provide the PCs with a dilemma in which they have to make a choice. Although there isn’t a clear-cut right or wrong answer, either outcome will have serious consequences.

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DM Resources Player Resources

Do You Have The Right Tools (or PCs) For The Job?

I’ve played in a lot of games where things could have been a lot easier if we’d only had a Cleric in the party. Or an archer. Or someone trained in Thievery. Or a controller. The point is that some obstacles are going to be easier if you have the right tools for the job. This is also true when it comes to PCs. The right mix of classes and races in any given party will provide you with a competitive edge that will make many tasks easier.

Many DMs design adventures knowing what tools, skills and abilities the PCs have and create challenges that their unique skill sets will be adequately suited to overcome. However, there are often just as many times where the DM simply needs to throw certain monsters or other obstacles at the PCs and if they don’t have the right tools for the job then things are going to be a lot more difficult. This is especially true of you are playing form a printed adventure like those found in Dungeon magazine. The key to overcoming this issue is to try to ensure that the party is made up of the PCs most suited for the job in front of them; a task that’s easier said than done.

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DM Resources Player Resources

Fixed Maximum Hit Points for PCs

What if you never got more hit points that what you began with at level 1? Think about it. As 4e is set up now most PCs begin with around 20 hit points. This is enough to take a couple of hits but you are by no means invulnerable. As you get more XP and level up you start to improve and one thing that comes with each level bump is more hit points. But lately I’ve been wondering how things would change if your maximum hit points were fixed. How would this change D&D?

In previous editions of D&D PCs could begin with as few as 1 hit point. Some PCs were extremely fragile and a single hit from anything could, and often did, kill them. Knowing that PCs were this vulnerable forced players to play smarter. If your PC was likely to die from a single hit you didn’t run blindly into a group of monsters, even if they were only Kobolds or Goblins. Tactics were important because they often made the difference between living and dying.

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DM Resources Editorial

You Make the Call – Questions About Rules (Part 2)

One of the DM’s Most important jobs is to keep the game moving. When we find ourselves in a situation where we don’t know the correct rule, we trust the DM to make the call on the fly based on his experience to ensure the game continues. Afterwards we look up the correct ruling in the usual places: PHB, DMG, Rules Compendium, online compendium and online forums. Yet from time-to-time we just can’t find a satisfactory answer to our rules questions. In these circumstances we’ve decided to turn to you, the people who read our blog and play D&D to help us make the call.

In You Make The Call (Part 1) we asked you to provide you thoughts and insights on strange situations that occur when you’re prone, and the ability to adjust the size and damage of area attacks. In this installment we want you to make the call on being dazed. These situations don’t necessarily come up often, but they can have a significant impact on the encounter so we want to get it right.

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DM Resources

Don’t Fight to the Death

Doesn’t it seem kind of dumb for monsters – or PCs for that matter – to fight until they reach their very last hit point? Don’t any of the combatants in D&D have any sort of survival instinct? What ever happened to the flight part of fight or flight? In most combat scenarios the PCs beat up on the monsters and the monsters don’t back down until they’re dead. Unless the monster has good reason to fight to the end, why would they? The simple answer is that they shouldn’t.

Eventually all battles should reach a point where one side either surrenders or flees. Fighting to the bitter end is just stupid. Yet this is how D&D works. The PCs fight the monsters until one side (most often the monsters) is decimated. In those very rare occurrences when one or two monsters manage to flee the players will often complain that the DM robbed them of a totally victory (at least that’s been my experience). I think that we need to introduce a little bit more common sense into D&D combat and I know just the way to do it.

As it stands the PCs won’t back down because a balanced encounter gives the PCs a very reasonable chance at success. It’s how the game is designed and I’m the first to admit that as a player, I like it this way. Worrying that you PC might die every time they went into battle would make for a very different type of combat system and it absolutely wouldn’t be the D&D we all know today. But what if we made combat a just a little bit more dangerous? And what if, at the same time, we gave more of the monsters the instinctual awareness that they shouldn’t stick around and fight to the death unless they have a really, really good reason to do so? Here’s how we do it.

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Editorial Player Resources

Greatest Hits 2011: Are You Willing to Provoke an Opportunity Attack?

While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2011. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.

The most important thing to remember when you provoke an opportunity attack is that it’s not a guaranteed hit. Your opponent still needs to make a successful attack roll against you. Yet most players think that an opportunity attack means automatic damage, and it’s this fear that keeps players stationary during combat. The misconception that they’ll take damage if they move or if they make a ranged attack when next to an enemy will sometimes lead players to use less than their best attacks.

Never forget that dice hate everyone equally, and not just your PC. You can’t assume that the dice will always give the DM a successful hit. In most cases the monster’s likelihood of scoring a hit is in the 50/50 ballpark. So the next time you have to decide if you should provoke an opportunity attack, think about what’s to be gained by doing so and then remember that the odds are probably in your favour.

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DM Resources

Greatest Hits 2011: Two-Hit Minions

While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2011. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.

Of all the articles I wrote in 2011, the article on two-hit minions is one of the ones I’m most proud of. Most of our articles are tips, tricks and advice for how to improve your game or make it more fun; rarely do we try and introduce any new mechanics. The two-hit minion was an exception. It was a mechanic that Sterling first suggested almost two years earlier, but when we actually started using the two-hit minions regularly this article was born and the feedback was very positive.

It took a few sessions of play testing before I believe I found the right balance for running two-hit minions, and each time we tweaked the mechanic the players confirmed that it was getting better. I’ve been using two-hit minions in my games, especially D&D Encounters, for about six months now and they always make the game more interesting. The players love the rush that comes from mowing down a bunch of minions, but they really love that some of those minions have the strength to take a hit and get right back up.

I’ve also learned that the key to two-hit minions it not to overuse them. This is good advice for minions in general, but is even better advice when it comes to the two-hit variation. By switching it up and mixing regular minions in with two-hit minions, players stop making broad assumptions about monsters until they actually have a chance to engage them. They no longer assume that six identical minis are going to be minions that will fall with one hit. Now they take into consideration the possibility that some or all of them might survive a blast from the controller so they need to be ready for that eventuality.

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DM Resources Editorial

Greatest Hits 2011: My Love Affair With Minions

While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2011. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.

I love minions.

It has been almost a year since the original article was published and my love affair with minions has not decreased. If anything the infatuation has only increased. Since this article on minions was published I’ve taken the DM hat off and returned to the other side of the screen. Yet, even as a player I love minions. 

I take great joy in watching how my DM deploy’s his minions, how he frustrates me and other players with their tactical usage. It’s most obscene, but I take a perverse joy when all the minions gang up on the controller. I attack something else for a round just to see what will happen. 

In my mind minions truly are the best tool in the DM tool box that 4e introduced. The ability to add swarms of easy to kill, easy to use enemies is fantastic. Minions can quickly change the dynamic of any combat. Player’s are often left guessing on which monster is the minion during the initial rounds of an encounter. Where minions really stack up is when their synergies mesh with the other monsters in the encounter. 

As a player I feel truly heroic when I dispatch multiple foes with a burst or blast attack. Sure, they only have 1 hit point, but that isn’t the point. The point is what minions truly represent in the game. The fodder. My characters are supposed to be powerful, there are opponents that I am supposed to be able to vanquish with impunity. Minions fill that role. 

I hope you enjoy another read of this article. Since it was first published it has become one of our most searched articles and whether you are a DM or a player I’m sure you’ll find the value, joy and satisfaction that minions inject into combat. As I’ve said, my love affair with minions stands. I don’t see us breaking up anytime soon.

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